Culture To The Max

<p><strong>Culture to the Max</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Dr. Shontoria Walker</strong> <span style= "font-weight: 400;">is a graduate from the University of Houston in Houston, Texas with a degree in Professional Leadership with an emphasis in Literacy. Her research focuses on using culturally relevant pedagogy to influence literacy achievement for middle school Black Male Students based on her experiences as a former 8th grade English teacher at an all-boys preparatory academy. She has also served on the Texas Teacher Advisory Board, a Teach Plus Policy Fellow as well as a Senior Policy Fellow with Teach Plus Texas from 2014-2019. During her time and beyond she has advocated for educational policy laws that directly impacted the classroom as well as contributed to policy briefings for the revision of The Every Student Succeeds Act and national policy reports such as If You Listen, We Will Stay: Why Teachers of Color Leave and How To Disrupt Teacher Turnover and more recently To Be Who We are: Black Teachers on Creating Affirming School Cultures.</span></p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Show Highlights</strong></p> <p> </p> <ul> <li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">8 minutes you must hear if you believe in tapping into cultural responsiveness in your schools.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Do something different with your teacher prep to provide a voice to your new teachers with learning opportunities, not just survival techniques.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Stop putting a bandaid on students falling through the cracks and give them authentic engagement opportunities.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Tips to create culturally relevant content that transfers ownership of understanding to provide opportunity to make meaning from the complex process.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;" ari