Some teachers tap into students’ cultures in class, but study finds that other ways of personalizing are more common
When Eleni Saridis taught the founding era in her U.S. history class this year, she described the American revolution and then expanded on the lesson, making connections to historical events in Mexico, Central America, the Dominican Republic and elsewhere in the Caribbean. The vast majority of Saridis’s students are Latino, and at the Margarita Muñiz Academy in Boston, a dual-language high school in Boston Public Schools, connecting the curriculum to their culture is a top priority.
This strategy of tapping into students’ own experiences as part of a lesson plan is an increasingly common one in U.S. schools, as teachers attempt to make a traditional, Eurocentric curriculum personally interesting to a diverse student body.