Creating Culturally Sustainable Literacy Experiences Through Home and Community Connections

Introduction

At the start of a graduate class on pedagogy and instruction in the elementary grades, a professor asks their students to describe the difference between a successful reader and one who struggles (Manzone, 2022). The graduate students engaged in small group discussions to generate a list of the many factors they believe hinder or facilitate literacy development in young learners. The following is a list of their responses:

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  successful readers know and apply lots of strategies to accomplish literacy tasks.

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  successful readers have been exposed to literacy-rich homes at a young age.

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  successful readers enjoy reading and are more likely to participate in literacy-related tasks.

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  successful readers have been exposed to models and other adults as they engage in literacy-related activities.

The results of this exercise highlighted a pattern of deficit thinking. The graduate students neglected to account for students’ cultural and communal assets, or the relationship that exists between the teacher’s recognition, integration, and value of students' funds of knowledge and how they contribute to success in any learning experience. The graduate students were approaching literacy instruction from a culturally deficit perspective, focusing on the knowledge, skills, and opportunities learners have that align with the school setting, rather than how the community and culture contribute to the development of literacy. They were missing the connection to students’ home and community assets and the connection to authentic, culturally sustaining pedagogies in literacy development. According to Yoon (2020), authentic instructional strategies must integrate students’ home pedagogies and life experiences into organizational structures that “affirm the personhood” of children of color (p. 3). Under this approach, authenticity refers to the degree to which the instructional supports directly align to the needs, interests, cultural, and linguistic diversity of the learners. The authors of this chapter contend that balanced literacy instruction must be built on students’ funds of knowledge to create access to literacy skills and strategies in ways that are relevant, responsive, and sustainable to the lived experiences of the students in the classroom.

The construction of culturally authentic and sustaining literacy experiences is not a packaged program or structured series of steps. It is a philosophical belief that can be exemplified in the classroom through a myriad of activities and literacy-based learning experiences. When intentional focus within a learning experience is placed on a student's culture, community, and interests, it increases the equity and access for historically underserved and marginalized populations in classroom settings (Paris, 2012). Culturally authentic and sustaining literacy experiences are anchored by three goals and learning objectives: (a) developing students’ positive racial and linguistic identity, (b) increasing students’ comfort and knowledge about racial and linguistic diversity, and (c) encouraging students’ to recognize and take action against racial and linguistic injustice in the world (Beneke et al., 2019). The development of culturally authentic and sustaining literacy experiences does not happen overnight or in one lesson or learning experience. It is an iterative process that requires teacher observation, critical reflection of practice, the intentional integration of students and their families, and the promotion of social action in the community (Spitzman & Balconi, 2019).