Instead of a general reading response, I ask my students in Culturally Responsive Teaching to complete CSQs–claim, support, question–on their reading.  Because the work of culturally responsive teaching often means knowing yourself, your position on various topics/issues/challenges, and confidence in those positions, it isn’t enough to summarize a reading.  I spend the first 3 or 4 responses getting most students to actually stake a claim. Then we build depth in their support and thoughtfulness into their questions.

But there are usually at least a few students who, though their own life experiences, already have a well-developed sense of cultural responsiveness.  I’m gifted with a few this semester and one, in her second CSQ, coined a term I’m going to chew on for awhile: “rose-colored schema.”
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