Teaching Tolerance's 2012 Excellence in Culturally Responsive Teaching Award

Check out these video profiles of three teachers recognized for their outstanding work in culturally responsive teaching by Teaching Tolerance.  

Viewing guide with questions for analyzing these videos.

Anna E. Baldwin 
Arlee High School, Arlee, Montana

Anna teaches English, composition and speech, and multicultural literature on the Flathead Indian Reservation. About 70 percent of her students are of tribal descent, but she never makes generalizations about her students’ backgrounds. “Culture emanates from more than ethnicity,” says Baldwin. “There is teen culture, home culture, as well as traditional culture. So, I use [texts] that appeal to students’ interests, backgrounds and abilities.”  Her hope is that through “earnest discussion about things that matter, provocative assignments and texts, and supportive and honest relationships, students will leave [the] classroom with a better sense of themselves, their world and their place in it.”

Darnell Fine
Atlanta Neighborhood Charter Middle School, Atlanta, Ga.

As a child, Fine’s household was labeled “chaotic,” and Fine himself “a behavior problem.” Today, his past struggles motivate him to “build on the knowledge students bring from home … [and] emphasize meaningful connections to real-life contexts” in his classroom.  In addition to serving on his school’s diversity committee, Fine makes a point of building relationships with families. He acknowledges the value of his students’ home cultures by hosting open forums, town hall meetings and Socratic seminars. “In my classroom,” says Fine, “inclusion isn’t limited to celebrating cultural differences… [I provide] spaces for [students] to express their multiple perspectives.”

Laurence Tan
122nd Street Elementary School (5th Grade), Los Angeles, Calif.

Five pillars of learning inform Tan’s teaching—engage, educate, experience, empower and enact. He values each student’s identity and celebrates diversity, even asking families to share their expertise with students through mini-lessons. At the end of the year he hosts a parent appreciation night where he and his students acknowledge the important role families play in their children’s educational success. Tan says his students succeed academically—and he accomplishes this by using a social justice curriculum. “The development of youth into socially critical and responsible individuals is of the highest importance,” says Tan.

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