Creative Failures in Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy

Although there is widespread support for culturally sustaining pedagogy, there is a lack of understanding about the challenges that teachers face while trying to do this. This kind of instruction can be difficult because teachers often have different backgrounds from their students. Our goal is to help construct a more coherent vision of culturally sustaining pedagogy through a narrative inquiry approach by sharing teachers’ stories of their experiences. Here, each teacher shared a moment when she tried to enact a culturally sustaining lesson but it failed in some way. We hope these narratives will inspire reflection, debate, and dialogue about how to incorporate and respond to students’ cultural, linguistic, and historical backgrounds.