Why it works
Culturally sustaining literacy builds on a simple, well-supported finding: students read, write, and engage more when they see themselves in the work, and when their languages and cultures are treated as assets to sustain rather than deficits to overcome. The idea runs from Gloria Ladson-Billings's culturally relevant pedagogy to Django Paris's culturally sustaining pedagogy, which goes a step further and asks schooling to actively sustain the languages, literacies, and cultural practices students bring, not merely use them as a bridge to a dominant norm. In a literacy classroom this is concrete. It starts with the text set: students need both windows and mirrors, books in which they see their own lives and communities and books that open onto others, and a classroom library that is overwhelmingly one demographic quietly tells many students the stories are not about them. It extends to whose knowledge counts, inviting community and family funds of knowledge, oral traditions, and multilingual texts into the room as legitimate literacy, and to what students write about, letting them draw on their own communities and bring their full voices rather than erasing them to fit a single register. It does not mean lowering rigor; culturally sustaining classrooms hold high expectations while connecting learning to students' lives and identities, and the evidence links this to stronger engagement, belonging, and achievement for students who are too often disengaged. The practical core of the workshop is auditing the texts and practices already in use and planning concrete shifts so that every student's language and culture is visible, valued, and sustained in the literacy classroom.
The research: Culturally relevant and culturally sustaining pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, Paris).
The run-of-show
Choose your slot. The agenda, timings, and length update to match.
The core activity: audit texts and plan shifts
The heart of the session is auditing the texts and practices in use and planning concrete culturally sustaining shifts.
- Audit the text set for windows and mirrors: whose lives students see, and whose are missing.
- Invite family and community funds of knowledge, oral traditions, and multilingual texts as legitimate literacy.
- Let students write about their own communities and in their full voices, without erasing them to fit one register.
- Hold expectations high while connecting the learning to students' lives, languages, and identities.
Facilitator notes
- Sustaining is more than relevance; the aim is to sustain students' languages and cultures, not just bridge to a norm.
- Culturally sustaining does not mean lowering rigor; high expectations and students' identities belong together.
- Start with an honest audit; good intentions do not fix a text set until you actually look at who is in it.
Adapt it
- Elementary: a library full of mirrors and windows, and families invited to share stories and languages.
- Secondary: text sets and writing that let students analyze and draw on their own communities with rigor.
- Any setting: audit honestly first; you cannot sustain what you have not noticed is missing.
Participant handout
One page for every teacher. Print it, or save it as a PDF.
Culturally Sustaining Literacy: windows, mirrors, high expectations
Reflected and sustained: audit the text set, invite community knowledge, honor students' voices, and keep rigor high.
- Whose lives my current texts reflect, and who is missing:
- The text or library shifts I will make:
- How family and community knowledge enters the room:
- How I let students write in their full voices:
- How I keep expectations high throughout:
Make it stick
Sustaining is ongoing work, not a one-time audit. Close by setting the follow-up:
- Name a check-in: are more students seeing themselves and engaging?
- Bring one text or practice shift that landed.
- Keep auditing; a text set drifts back toward one story without attention.