Educating all students: Creating culturally responsive teachers, classrooms, and schools [Electronic version

The dramatic demographic shift in the United Sates is more apparent in the public schools than anywhere else. But this change in the racial, cultural, and linguistic di-versity of the student population is not the problem. The problem lies in the way educators have responded to that change. A positive or negative response could affect the self-esteem and academic success of students from these varied racial, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds. There-fore, many researchers (Au & Kawakami, 1994; Erickson, 1987; Gay, 2002; Jordan, 1985; Ladson-Billings, 1990) over the past few decades have challenged schools and educa-tors to find creative ways to work with students from cul-turally and linguistically diverse (CLD) backgrounds to ensure that they receive a high quality and equitable ed-ucation (Phuntsog, 1999)