Cultural Self-Awareness: An Initial Step in Home-School Partnerships

Abstract

The US is becoming progressively diverse and so are our classrooms. Home-school partnerships are essential to supporting diverse learners. It is critical both new and veteran practitioners make intentional efforts to provide culturally proficient practices when building home-school partnerships. Cultural awareness is identified across disciplines as the initial step to being a culturally proficient practitioner (e.g., CCPEP, nd; Randall-David, 1989; SAMHSA, 2014). Self-awareness is an important but often overlooked step in cultural awareness. This article addresses three techniques to increase cultural self-awareness as an initial step to building effective home-school partnerships with diverse families.