Why Inclusive and Culturally Responsive Pedagogy Still Matters

Recently, one of my sons was sitting in Health class listening to a lesson about the origins of human diseases. The one for discussion that day had a strain that they learned may have originated from a species of monkey.  A classmate turned around, looked and pointed at him while mouthing, ‘you.’  When he came home, my son (who identifies as a Black Jew) reflected about how he was not prepared for the amount of racism he would encounter and questioned whether this moment should mark the end of his Jewish day school career.  This is why this work still matters.

In this post October 7th world we are all managing sets of -isms that are making us feel less safe moving through the world as openly Jewish people.  As a result, a narrative has emerged over the past several months that has called for a separation from ‘communities of color’ who are perceived as not being in ideological lockstep with the ‘Jewish community.’  This perspective assumes both that each community is monolithic in their views and that full agreement is a condition to working towards our shared liberation project. I listen in rooms and zooms with an open heart while I’m also keenly aware that my body represents both the ‘us’ and the ‘them’ being debated in these conversations.  In the midst of it all, inclusion work is under scrutiny with legislation working to ban it altogether.  So, how do we wade through the noise and move forward in this work when our moral and emotional compasses are spinning out of control?  Let’s reroll our scrolls and start from the beginning.

Exploring Levels of Culture

The study “Jewish Day School Educators’ Perceptions of How Their School Communities Engage with Race and Racism” explores the challenges of persevering in this work in environments that remain largely racially homogenous.  It illuminates how administrators struggle to bring culturally responsive education into their school’s Jewish values amidst a range of stakeholder buy-in.  In Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, Zaretta Hammond (2014) gives us a way to meet these challenges by incorporating inclusive education through unpacking three levels of culture in the classroom and school environment.  

With the inclusion work many have engaged in so far, we have become familiar with Surface Level Culture—which involves what we can readily interact with.  These are the low stakes areas that we are the most comfortable with knowing how to incorporate into our school communities, like diversifying the books in our libraries and incorporating foods and rituals from Jews around the world.  

As we continue in this work, however, we should challenge ourselves to dig a little bit deeper.  Hammond continues with an exploration of Shallow Culture.  It is at this level where we begin to explore the lens through which we see the world– including our concepts of time, personal space, ideas of respect and courtesy, use of touch and treatment of elders.  For example: I was raised with the idea that it is a sign of respect to refer to my teachers (and other elders) by their honorifics and it was a challenge for me when my children came home from school referring to theirs by their first names.  It was also difficult to get used to having their teachers and friends call me by my first name because, even as a fully actualized adult, this is something that is not done.  With my culturally responsive educator hat on, I recognized that this was my own cultural and generational bias.  Without that awareness I may have scolded my children for being disrespectful to their teachers and I might have felt disrespected by their teachers and friends.  Building our awareness and understanding on this level can help us navigate the cues we need to look for in our interactions with others along lines of cultural difference: are we making another person uncomfortable by speaking too closely? Are we judging others for not being on time (or for being too on time by showing up early)? Are we approaching the nature of our relationships differently by understanding how we each delineate acquaintance from friendship?

The third level of culture that Hammond explores is Deep Culture– which governs our core values.  This is where our sense of fairness and spirituality come from, individualist vs. collectivist perspectives, as well as how we see the world as right/wrong or good/bad.  While we may not fully explore Deep Culture with our students, it is a layer that we need to become more conscious of as leaders and peers.  

Think for a moment about the culture associated with your own ancestral country of origin.  Social psychologist Geert Hofstede would invite us to explore where it falls on the Cultural Dimensions Index.  Living in the United States, the cultural norm is highly individualist but as a Black woman with ancestral roots in several African countries, I have belief systems that are more collectivist.  While I believe that everyone has the right to their own opinions, I also believe that my actions are a reflection of my family.  As a result, I consider the impact that my choices may have on all of us regardless of what my own individual interest may be.  That comes into conflict with others who come from a different set of lenses that may expect that I ignore that instinct and make decisions from a place of self.  In the workplace, that might look like feeling out of sync with colleagues when engaging in goal/mission/vision setting and with parent and grandparent groups when establishing priorities for the year.

Respond Through the Lens of Teshuvah

By accepting that Jews are a multiracial people with anywhere from 12-15% of us identifying as Jews of Color, we are obligated to lean into all of what that means.  It does not merely mean that we learn about important people from different ethnicities or simply add different foods to our holiday celebrations.  It might look like: asking us not only for our pronouns, but how we’d like to be addressed; not assuming that we all hug and kiss to say hello; understanding that to some of us, ‘on time’ means 30 minutes early and to others start times are merely a suggestion; and understanding that after working so hard, our mentees of color may want to send money home to their families rather than treat themselves to a new gadget.  

It also means accepting that it is inevitable that in trying to get this ‘right,’ incidents are still going to occur.  Luckily, Jewish tradition gives us a framework around which we can build a Maimonidean system of repair and restorative justice in our institutions:

• How do we expect our stakeholders to name and own harm to others, including within our own communities?
• How do we start to change?  What does that look like?  
• What does restitution look like?  What shape does accepting accountability or consequences take?
• What are procedures around apology?  How does consent, mediation and emotional support factor in?
• How do we ensure pragmatism and encourage our stakeholders to move forward making different choices based on what they learned through this process?

We learn in Bava Kamma 26a:22 that regardless of whether it was intentional or not, we are liable to “pay the full cost of the damage.”  In our time, we are not talking about broken pottery and fallen oxen, we are talking about macro and micro aggressions along all parts of our intersected identities.  When we are fully committed to seeing each other on deeper levels, we then do our best in each interaction because we believe that our communities are not complete without the richness that each of our sparks brings to them.  Through that lens, we can work through harm in a way that makes us stronger together rather than wedging us further apart, which is at the core of our Jewish values.

Rabbi Heather Miller is a professional educator and school leader. She is the founder of the Multitudes, an organization aimed at supporting Jewish organizations in their goal to be the warm and welcoming spaces they aspire to be.