Culturally Proficient Education: An Asset-Based Response to Conditions of Poverty »

Randall B. Lindsey is principal associate of The Robins Group. He is professor emeritus at California State University, Los Angeles, where he served as chair of the Division of Administration and Counseling in the School of Education. He has served as a junior and senior high school teacher of history and as an administrator of school desegregation and staff development programs. He has worked extensively with school districts as they plan for and experience changing populations.

Using the framework of cultural proficiency, this timely resource offers educators the knowledge and skills to maximize educational opportunities for all students, independent of students’ socioeconomic status.

Foreword Dennis Parker viii

Acknowledgments x

About the Authors xii

Introduction 1

Part I Why Poverty and Cultural Proficiency? 5

1 Asset-Based Approaches to Students From Low-Income or Impoverished Communities 9

Getting Centered 9

The Intent of This Chapter 11

Poverty in Our Communities and Schools 12

Asset or Deficit Perspectives? 15

Recognizing Our Perspectives: Deficit- or Asset-Based? 17

The Promise of Culturally Proficient Approaches 22

Going Deeper 26

2 The Middle Class School in Communities of Poverty 28

Getting Centered 28

The Intent of This Chapter 30

Faces in the History of Poverty 30

Accountability: For Whom? 36

Four Stories Repeated Throughout Canada and the United States 38

Schools as Middle Class Entities: "Saving the Poor" 46

Cultural Proficiency as an Asset-Based Approach 47

Going Deeper 48

3 The Cultural Proficiency Tools Build on Assets 49

Getting Centered 49

Building on Other's Assets: Cultural Proficiency's Inside-Out Process 52

Cultural Proficiency Represents a Paradigm Shift for Viewing Poverty 53

Cultural Proficiency as a Lens 54

The Cultural Proficiency Tools 55

Cultural Proficiency and Resiliency: Educators and Students 62

Going Deeper 65

Part II Prosocial School Applications 67

4 Culturally Proficient Pedagogy 69

Getting Centered 69

Pine Hills High School's Socioeconomic Context 70

Intent of This Chapter 71

Beginning the Inside-Out Process 71

We Create Conditions for Learning 74

Culturally Competent Praxis 84

10 Tenets for Asset-Based Learning 87

Going Deeper 92

5 Culturally Proficient Leadership Support for Instruction 93

Getting Centered 93

Intent of This Chapter 96

Leadership for Learning 96

Reflective and Dialogic Questions 98

Going Deeper 114

6 Policy Development to Ensure and Support Teaching and Learning 115

Getting Centered 115

The Intent of This Chapter 119

Culturally Proficient Policy Development in Two Steps 120

Adaptive Leadership 122

Going Deeper 128

Part III A Call to Action 129

7 A Call to Action: The Time Is Now 131

Our Invitation to You 131

Personal and Organizational Change 131

Your Personal Journey: Issues of Low-Income and Impoverished Communities 133

Next Steps: Being Intentional 135

A Conversation That Matters 136

Resources

A Cultural Proficiency Conceptual Framework 138

B State Teachers' Association Retreat Script 140

C Taniko'sPoem 144

D How to Use the Cultural Proficiency Books 147

References 149

Suggested Additional Readings 155

Index 158