There are many schools and districts claiming to be culturally responsive, mainly to serve mantras of equity and diversity rather than to better teach underserved students. As I continue to travel across the country, training scores of educators hearing these claims of cultural responsiveness, my reaction is the now popular question, are you kidding me? I think that it is about time for a culturally responsive screening to support or to refute such claims. Here are six ways to know if you are culturally and linguistically responsive (CLR):

First Way -You can define it in your own words.

A very quick way to know if you are really CLR is to take a quick survey of all the key players in the professional development branch of your district or the diversity team at your school or the clichéd blue ribbon panel on diversity at the district. There is only one question on the survey. What is your definition of CLR?

My guess is that you will get as many definitions as you have team members, unless your team has been to our training. The first item on the agenda after introductions for us is to define CLR and have everyone who is participating in the training agree on one definition. In case you have not been trained by CCRTL, please go see our website the definition.

Second Way - You know who you are culturally and linguistically. 

Simply put, to be one is to know one. As poignantly stated by Villegas and Lucas in their book Creating Culturally Responsive Teachers, in order for culturally responsive teachers to be culturally responsive, they must know their own identities culturally and linguistically, shedding the comfortability and confidence that comes with knowing who you are. More frankly, a confused educator cannot be responsive to the students.

An educator knowing and appreciating his/her cultural heritage and language can go a long way, creating an empathetic understanding that will enable cultural responsiveness, therefore benefitting the students. Educators who couch themselves as humanists do an injustice to the topic and most importantly become inauthentic to the students. Educators who hide behind whiteness, which is simultaneously invisible and dominating, can be equally inauthentic to students who are seeking clarity about the differences between race and culture. Yes, cultural responsiveness starts with the adults.

Third Way - CLR is something that you are, not that you do.

I cannot tell you how many times I have been told by administrators at a school site or at the district level, “We can't do CLR right now because we have too much on our plate.” I have even had some administrators make a calendar requests for 2012 already, noting that then they will be ready. If your perspective is CLR is something that you do, then you are NOT culturally responsive by default.

At best, your wanting to do CLR might be considered the best intentions. CLR is being, not doing. It is something that you are, not that you do. An educator, a school, or a district has to become CLR. It is a process, a journey, and an evolution.

Fourth Way - You know who you are serving with CLR.

Most times I am called to conduct a professional development it is because students of color are being served poorly by the institution. I am keen on requiring that in being culturally and linguistically responsive the educator is focused and targeted with whom the approach can best serve and why, while at the same time realizing that CLR benefits all students in one way or another.

Unfortunately, most educators have pigeon-holed CLR for the "black students." CLR is much more than that and those who miss that aspect are clearly not being culturally responsive.

Fifth Way - You don't still celebrate Black History Month.

Or put another way, you have wrapped your cultural responsiveness in a superficial cloth. For you, being culturally responsive is merely about celebrating holidays, dead albeit heroic people, and surface cultural elements like music, foods, and clothes. You know how it goes: play some cultural music, wear cultural garb, eat cultural foods and, play cultural historical fact, then call it a culturally responsive day.

Did you know that the creator of Black History Month, originally known as Negro History Week, did not intend for this "celebration" to go this long. Dr. Carter G. Woodson began this call to America to honor all its history in 1915 with the thought that schools would adopt the knowledge and methodology to instill for the entire school year. Why? He understood what it meant to be culturally responsive.

But heed this warning, if you are not planning on celebrating cultural all year long in meaningful and authentic ways, keep Black History Month. Something is better than nothing.

Sixth Way - You practice CLR everyday in everyway. As I say in my trainings, CLR is not episodic, periodic, or an only on Fridays thing. It is not what we use to reward students with if they are well behaved. CLR is useless if it stays in the central office or with the administrators.

Being culturally and linguistically responsive must be practiced everyday and used strategically in teaching and learning, just like math, reading, or science. CLR should be infused into the fabric of the school, of the culture. It should become apart of the school and district culture from the leaders to the teachers to the students.

After reading the six ways to be culturally and linguistically responsive, ask yourself am I truly culturally responsive?