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In this paper we build a conceptual framework to argue for culturally compelling instruction that leads to
teaching for change. Culturally compelling instruction calls for a substantive shift in how teachers view their
students, communities, and what the perspective might mean for students’future when they have access to
alternative learning opportunities. The framework encourages teachers to take a stance and assume responsi-
bility and ownership for their own decisions about the curriculum and instructional delivery. Most prominent
is to acquire a depth of understanding of their students’identities and needs. To represent our vision for cul-
turally compelling instruction we use the lead poisoned water crisis in Flint, Michigan, USA as an illustrative
case. Our work provides an example of how a real-world circumstance such as Flint’s may be integrated into
content area subjects to frame a culturally compelling instructional practice.
literacy, culturally-compelling-instruction, African-American-children, contaminated-water, Flint
10.1515/mlt-2017-0025
Almost ten years ago the Common Core State Standards ( National Governors Association Center for Best Prac-
tices, Council of Chief State School Oicers, 2010) became the status quo for reading and writing instruction—or
otherwise what might be perceived as the gold standard (italicized for emphasis) for literacy teaching and learn-
ing. Initially adopted by 44 states and the District of Columbia, upon close examination and analysis, one would
be challenged to nd reading and writing Standards that promote strategies for reading texts critically; media
texts and multimodal approaches to teaching and learning are virtually non-existent. What is more, the major-
ity of literature in the Common Core State Standard’s (CCSS) exemplars are from “the canon”thus, excluding
a plethora of high quality contemporary and multicultural literature written by and about people who come
from diverse races, ethnicities, and cultures (Boyd, 2012/2013).
To address the limitations of the CCSS, teachers might embody culturally compelling instruction and take a
stance that: a) challenges the status quo of reading and writing instruction by using curriculum materials and
instructional approaches that oer alternative points of view beyond mandates, and b) call into question the
status quo of teaching and learning mandates when they are not relevant to students and their community.
One way that teachers might raise questions and address such limitations is through dialogue and inquiry
on real world issues that ood the news and media on a daily basis. For instance, we used the water supply
crisis in Flint, MI as a case to raise children’s awareness of how a city’s water system—whose majority of its
residents happen to be African American—was intentionally poisoned through systemic racism sanctioned
by the state government (e.g., New York Times, 2016 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/22/us/a-question-
of-environmental-racism-in-int.html?_r=0). Little work has been done on the “intellectual labor that teachers
perform (or might perform) as they develop and enact inclusive curricula and pedagogies while simultaneously
adapting these to the cognitive, emotional, and political-evaluative capacities of their students”(Kelly & Brooks,
2009, p. 203). Still, little research exists on the deliberating of controversial public issues in lower grades (Camicia
& Dobson, 2010).
We assert that teaching children about themselves and their communities enacts a sense of teaching for so-
cial justice and change. It is also culturally responsive (Au, 2011; Gay, 2010), relevant (Ladson-Billings, 1995 and
2014), and sustaining (Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2014), “giving students signicant ownership of their learning
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[beyond] tokenistic ways”(Smyth, 2012, p. 15). Haag and Compton (2015) reect on a year in an English as
Second Language (ESL) classroom, and argue how important it was to stay student-centered, and to continu-
ously question and reect on practice in order to help students negotiate their own learning through multiple
learning opportunities. Boyd et al. (2006) argue, “Teaching is a political act, and in our preparation of future
teachers and citizens, teachers and teacher educators need to be advocates for and models of social justice and
equity”(p. 332), while Banks (2006) states, “An equity pedagogy exists when teachers modify their teaching in
ways that will facilitate the academic achievement of students from diverse backgrounds”(p. 148). When teach-
ers choose to include students’cultural, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds and experiences in the curriculum,
they are choosing to help close the opportunity gaps (Hilliard, 2003; Milner IV, 2015) faced by many children.
Moreover, students’voices must be heard in order to forge an empowering critical pedagogy (Ardizzone, 2006)
and to promote authentic and eective learning environments (Haag & Compton, 2015).
We believe that real change comes from within, where teachers and students are constantly developing a
social awareness and consideration of others, and often gain a critical consciousness to think about ways to
disrupt and change the patterns of oppression (Adams, 2016; Bell, 2016; Camicia & Dobson, 2010; 2016; Ridge-
way & Yerrick, 2018). To combat injustice and oppression it is essential to understand the ways in which these
concepts operate both at the macro (institutional) and micro (individual) levels (Adams, 2016; Bell, 2016; Dim-
ick, 2012). For instance, schools are structured such that students—from kindergarten through 12th grade—are
placed in academic tracks (Oakes, 1985) that reproduce social inequality which often limits equal access to vari-
able opportunities. Likewise, society assigns roles to people based on their educational level(s), socioeconomic
class, race, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, primary and secondary discourses (Gee, 19xx), and historical, so-
cial, and political ideologies. We assert that these conditions need and should change, and in order for change
to occur teachers might take a proactive role by enabling children to engage in critical learning opportunities
about themselves and their community (Hinchman & Boyd, 2015). In the next section, we provide an overview
of culturally compelling instruction—a conceptual framework we use to discuss our vision for this framework,
as well as examples of our work with children to investigate water quality.
We employed a culturally compelling instructional approach (Hinchman & Boyd, 2015) to raise children’s
awareness of how race and racism impacts the basic human rights of a group of people, such as access to clean
water. Drawing on Ladson-Billings’(1995) theory of culturally relevant pedagogy, Paris (2012) explained that
culturally sustaining pedagogy “supports the value of our multiethnic and multilingual present and future”
and
requires that our pedagogies be more than responsive of, or relevant to the cultural experiences and
practices of young people—it requires that they support young people in sustaining the cultural and
linguistic competence of their communities while simultaneously oering access to dominant cultural
competence (p. 95).
Hinchman and Boyd (2015) adapted and modied Paris’(2012) notion of culturally sustaining pedagogy to
theorize what they call culturally compelling instruction that centers on
using pedagogical resources that are anchored in students’funds of knowledge, their understanding of
local community discourses, and their linguistic and cultural experiences and interests …[it] extends
students’perspectives by drawing on important stories and perspectives from an array of cultures—rich
narratives and ideas that are so compelling they resonate with students regardless of backgrounds (p.
265).
A culturally compelling instructional framework positions teachers and students as autonomous and they
are empowered to assume ownership of the curriculum, pedagogy and pedagogical approaches to foster mul-
tiple pathways to meaningful teaching and learning. When a sense of empowerment is promoted we can then
encourage and foster the teaching profession to take on real world social concerns—such as contaminated water
systems—in communities where students live (McMillon & McMillon, 2015). In turn, classrooms can become
sites where all students—regardless of race, gender, socioeconomic class, and religion—can embrace the learn-
ing process where their voices are heard by teachers, peers, and members of the community (Haag & Compton,
2015). Au (2011) states, […]“if we wish to close the literacy achievement gap, we must take seriously the notion
of building on the strengths that students of diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds bring with them from
the home […]”(p. 51), and Moll, Amanti, Ne, and Gonzalez (1992) assert students’ “funds of knowledge”
play an essential role and importance in their personal, cultural, and communal knowledge when designing
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learning activities. These scholars’notion of teaching and learning are in contrast to the call for curriculum and
materials designed to teach to the CCSS and to existing patterns, found in many schools where teaching accord-
ing to conventional methods—based on mainstream ideologies—do not apply to a large majority of students
from diverse ethnic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds.
In the remainder of our paper we present the lessons we learned as illustrative of a vision for culturally
compelling instruction that may lead to judicious teaching and learning about topics relevant to the lives of
children. We begin with the community context followed by examples of lessons focused on examining issues
related to water quality.
The setting for our work was a summer youth camp at Norlina Community Center (NCC). Norlina is an old
industrial city in the northeast, and the building is located in the middle of a large housing development. The
residents are predominantly African American, and the community center provides a wide range of services for
them including a food pantry, job training, activities for seniors, and a Head Start program for young children.
The majority of sta members are African American who also live in the community. Every summer NCC oers
a free full-day camp for the children. We learned from one sta member that limited advertising is done because
within two days they are at full capacity.
Organizing the summer camp is no small feat. To ensure that the children have a rewarding experience, the
sta plan academic, as well as hands-on practical activities such as eld trips to local college campuses and
museums. Additionally, the center employs and mentors high school aged youth who live in the community.
Together, the sta and high school youth work collaboratively to best support the children. The care by the NCC
sta that we observed aligns with Gay’s (2010) assertion:
This kind of caring is one of the major pillars of culturally responsive pedagogy for ethnically diverse
students. It is manifested in the form of teacher attitudes, expectations, and behaviors about students’
human value, intellectual capacity, and performance responsibilities. Teachers demonstrate caring for
children as students and as people (p. 45) (italics in original).
For two weeks, we worked with children ages 9–11.
We started our study of water quality by using an informational text retrieved from the National Institute of
Environmental Health Sciences’website titled, “Lead Poisoning.”With the article in hand, the children follow
along as Monica (second author) reads it aloud. As she reads she also thinks aloud about various points to
better promote the children’s understanding about the content. For instance, the article notes that lead is a
heavy metal and basic chemical element. Monica explains that we take vitamins and minerals because our
body needs these nutrients. She says, “To function and stay healthy, our body needs some metals such as iron,
while others such as lead should not be consumed into our bodies because lead is poison and can make us very
sick.”As Monica reads the children raise issues that reveals shock from their childhood perspective. We oer
the following vignette as an example of an exchange between the children and Monica that demonstrates their
interactions:
“They are tryin’to kill us!”Jamaal shouted. “It [article] said lead can be in soil, our school water, toys, anything!”
Toni shouted. “Why do we even use lead pipes when they can poison the water?”asked Averick. Monica always
gave each child armation with a nonverbal gesture or verbal response. When the children would react to the
text unexpectedly she would pause from reading, engage in brief dialogue, or give the children time to nish their
exchanges. After reading that houses built prior to 1977 could contain lead paint she asked the students to tell her
what they were thinking. Samuel stated, “They need to knock all these old houses down!”As Monica continued with
this lively interactive read-aloud and discussion, she paused to engage the children in an exercise to demonstrate
how many children are aected by lead contamination nationally: “Children in the United States between the ages
of one to ve have elevated blood levels, and more than one-fth of African American children living in houses
built before 1946 have elevated blood lead levels. I want each one of you to count one, two, three, four, ve until
everyone has counted.”After everyone had counted, Monica said, “Now I want each ve to stand up. Now look
around this room. Everyone who is standing is visually representing African American children. You are the only
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racial/ethnic group mentioned in the document, and the students standing represent the number of children who
would be contaminated by lead.
Topics of environmental racism are not typically the goal and purpose of lessons for upper elementary grade
students, especially if they are members of historically marginalized and underserved populations. The read-
aloud coupled with students standing up was intentional so that they might personalize the text, and critically
think about why they are the only ethnic group identied in the article.
After the read-aloud, Monica and Fenice (rst author) show the children a short video about Flint Michigan’s
water supply crisis. The video provides excerpts about how the city’s water system became contaminated with
lead. The children use a response sheet to generate notes while they watch the video. At the conclusion of the
video, they work in small groups to share ideas, and write down additional thoughts. The video response sheet
included four broad prompts:
–That’s New to Me: Student captures new information learned from the video
–I Agree or Disagree: Student states opinion about information presented in video
–Questions I Still Have: Student shares areas she or he found confusing, or questions about which she or he still
wonders
–Links Back to Me: Student makes a personal connection to content of video
To set the stage we encouraged the children to engage in an interactive discussion as they asked critical ques-
tions. The response sheets were useful for the children to use as a reference in their discussions with each other.
Students were able to share their empathy and frustrations about the Flint water crisis. Equally important, the
children queried their peers about how such a travesty could happen in Flint and wondered if their city was at
risk of lead poisoning based on the similarities between the cities.
Every activity encouraged these African American children to connect personally to the text and activities.
We postulate, the connecting of literacy, water quality, lead contamination, and Flint, MI positioned them as
knowledgeable members of their own community who could discuss current events, ask critical questions about
their own context so as to engage as active members of society. We suggest that as previously revealed in the
vignette, the children would not have had such deep connections without purposeful scaolding. Next, we
provide portraits of other activities.
Another activity involved assisting the children to activate cultural knowledge about their own uses of water.
Fenice facilitated this by employing K-W-L (Ogle, 1986) as an instructional strategy. She invites the children to
share what they already know about water (K) and what they wanted to learn (W) as they read and discuss arti-
cles, watch relevant videos, and engage in various hands-on activities and discussions throughout the lessons.
Fenice explains that at the conclusion of each discussion, reading, and video, they will revisit what they learned
(L) to add information to the K-W-L chart. In the following sections, we present how we: a) explored students’
lived experiences, b) challenged misperceptions about lead, and c) tested water brought from their homes.
As Fenice places the giant post-it notes on walls around the classroom, there is happy chatter in the air. Monica
has lled small plastic cups of water and placed one on each child’s desk. Some sit looking at the cups curiously
while waiting to see what is in store for the rst activity. Suddenly, Fenice speaks with a commanding but
pleasant voice: “All eyes on me”! And the chatter immediately subsides. “We’re going to do an activity called
K-W-L because I want to know what you think about some things.”After Fenice explains what each letter means
she says, “Let’s think about what we already know about water.”Initially, the children struggle to come up with
ideas. Jamie blurts out “water cycle”and Fenice ask Jamie to explain what he means by encouraging him to be
specic. “So, tell me what you mean by water cycle?”Jamie follows up by saying that water evaporates. As the
children struggle to share what they know about water, Monica reminds them that they can use the container of
water in front of them to think about what they know. After this prompt, the classroom immediately erupts with
overlapping chatter. “Water forms the shape of the container.” “If we don’t drink water we will get dehydrated.”
“It’s healthy.” “It’s made of hydrogen and oxygen.” “It evaporates.”Fenice states, “You’re using big words like
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hydrogen and dehydrated. That’s very good!”As the children continue to shout out what they know, and raise
questions that address what they want to learn, Fenice voraciously writes them down.
In this example, we convey one way in which we set the tone for students to freely contribute their thoughts.
Using K-W-L to elicit students’prior knowledge, we are not looking for any one right answer, but rather, what
the children know about a necessary resource they use on a daily basis. While facilitating the group discussion,
we notice that the children began talking to each other when someone raised an interesting idea. For example,
when Jayla stated that she wanted to know (W) if the body is comprised of 75% water, Pamela turned and asked
her how she came up with 75%. This exchange demonstrates that Pamela was listening to Jayla and that they
connected through a sense of curiosity. It is moments like these where teachers might embrace student dialogue
that may not appear to be a part of their agenda, yet relevant within the context. Figure 1 is the K-W-L chart
that the children generated across multiple lessons over a two-week period.
Figure 1: Children’s ieas generated during K-W-L activity.
To foster an inclusive learning environment all of the children had an opportunity to contribute their
thoughts and experiences. The discussion around water, using K-W-L as the guiding framework provided a
structure to activate their prior knowledge, and describe everything they could think of before moving into the
focus on lead as a contaminant. Our facilitation for building content enabled the children to personally connect.
In this case, potentially, students would not have been able to make a personal connection to the water sup-
ply crisis in Flint, MI had we not scaolded so that they could explore their personal realities (if they are aected
by the situation), and ultimately connecting the issue or dilemma to the larger societal system; in this case, their
own community. Open classroom discussions are more likely to evoke a more cogent story of students’reason-
ing, pertinent knowledge, and background experiences. As noted by Tharp and Gallimore (1988) instructional
conversations can be a fruitful way for teachers to learn about the intellectual resources that children from
diverse backgrounds bring to the classroom. Further, instructional conversations can be advantageous (and
reciprocal) for teachers and students; teachers learn about their students’identities and students learn more
about each other. In the next section, we describe the pedagogical framework we created so that the children
could test water they brought from home.
Culturally compelling instruction calls for purposely making content relevant to the children byproviding them
with multiple opportunities to share their own stories and perspectives. As noted by Adams (2016), “Learning
is most powerful when it is relevant”(p.42). Providing the children with access to engaging literacy learn-
ing activities to make connections to their home lives, as stated earlier, we implemented a real-world issue
to practice this tenet by using Flint, Michigan’s water supply crisis as a case. To set the stage for testing tap
water, we asked the children if they had heard of lead and four students raised their hands. Letisha stated,
“My bus aide told my cousin to stop poking me with a pencil because of lead.”We recognized that Letisha’s
bus aide actually had a common misunderstanding about lead being in pencils so, Monica explained that an-
other element called graphite is the mineral actually used for the stylus portion of pencils. When graphite
was discovered it was referred to as black lead, but it actually does not contain lead at all (Retrived from:
www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/11/why-pencil-lead-is-called-lead/). “However, lead was in pen-
cils until the middle of the twentieth century, which was a long, long, long time ago, even before I was born!”
she says with a smile. “So, in the past pencils were a source of lead poison when people would ingest the paint
by chewing on the pencil.”Toni shared that she remembered when her mother had her tested for lead.
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This section describes the children’s experience in testing the quality of water they brought from home. To
enhance their learning experience, we purchased two water-testing kits. One kit tested for pH, chlorine, iodine,
copper and hardness or softness of water, and the second kit tested for lead only. All of the water testing was
conducted during one class session.
The children worked in groups of two to three, and each was given a think sheet to record the results of
the water quality. If a child forgot to bring water from home, she or he participated in the activity by assisting
in the testing of the water quality with a teammate, so as not to draw attention to the child for not bringing in
water as assigned. We provide a sample report generated by six children in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Sample results from children’s water quality reports.
The water quality report included three questions that gave the children an opportunity to interpret the
results: (1) Did you nd something in your water that you did not expect? What? (2) Did you expect to nd
something in your water that you did not nd after all? What? (3) What made you think it was there? (Example:
colored stains, smells, etc.). Jasmine answered all three questions. For question one, she wrote, “Yes, because I
didn’t know I had a little bit of [chlorine] in my tap water.”Jasmine went on to say the color was what made
her think the chlorine was there. Brandon wrote that he found copper in the water he brought from home, and
he did not expect to nd this element. In his report, Brandon noted that the color of the water turned when
he tested it and that was what made him think copper was in his tap water. As a nal example, Jamaal said
he expected to nd iron in his tap water but was surprised that there was none. Although the level was low,
Jamaal wrote that he did expect to nd chlorine in his tap water.
When it was time to test for lead the children, Fenice and Monica were all eager to learn what the results
would convey. The children wanted to know, “Is there lead in my water?”Monica explained that there was
one lead test that the class would conduct on only one water sample: “We have to think about whose water
we should test?”She facilitated another energetic discussion that drew upon students’knowledge along with
their reasoning. For example, the children asked from where the water samples came, of which most were from
the housing complex that was a relatively new building not far from Norlina Community Center. Two samples
came from the houses that were in an older section of Norlina. Based on what they learned from the National
Institute of Environmental Health Sciences’article, and from the information they gathered from each other, the
children agreed the one water sample tested should be Alana’s or Jewel’s. Monica asked both girls to write their
names on a post-it note then folded it. She had a third student draw a name and Alana’s name was drawn. As
Monica read the water testing kit directions aloud to the class, the children leaned forward, listening intensely.
Monica prepared the sample and inserted the lead testing strip. It would take ten minutes before the results
were ready. While waiting, the children stood in a circle and tossed around a ball and shared what they learned
as they anxiously waited for the water test to process.
When the sample was ready, they huddled around Monica to read the results as she pulled out the testing
strip; “There is no lead in this water. The test reads negative!”and the children sighed with relief. Through this
activity the children were able to personally connect to the topic of water contamination, by testing water from
their own community.
As stated at the beginning of this article we used the water crisis in Flint, MI as a case study of a unit on water
contamination. We made Flint’s case relevant by discussing water in general, reading and watching videos
about water contamination, and nally testing the children’s water they brought from home. Our nal activity
was to provide the children with an opportunity to synthesize what they learned in a culminating activity by
designing a poster. The purpose of the poster was to present what they learned about water to the Mayor and
the Norlina City Council. The children would later request a meeting with these elected public oicials to tell
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them what they learned about water contamination, express their concerns, and to ask them critical questions
about the water system in their own community. Additionally, the posters were assessment tools, and helped
us to review and clarify any misconceptions the children still had about lead in general, and lead contaminated
water specically. For instance, if the children’s poster included statements such as “lead is found in pencils”
this misconception was addressed during reviews.
The children worked in groups of three to four, and each group was given a giant post-it note, markers,
pencils, and all the articles we used during reading and discussions. We explained that their poster could be as
creative as they liked, but in their creativity, we wanted them to convey what they learned over the past several
days. We walked through the room conversing with each group as they worked. The children eagerly explained
their ideas as they worked through the design of their poster.
We noticed that ve out of the six posters included pictures. Also, ve out of six groups of children, without
being prompted, modeled their posters and language after the K-W-L chart they created during discussions,
including statements like “What I learned”and “I learned that.”One poster that did not include pictures cap-
tured a detailed list of warnings about lead. This suggests that the children had modeled their posters based on
the instructional strategies we used during the class sessions. The groups that referenced the original articles
contained more information, and more importantly more accurate information. We provide two posters created
by the children in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Samples of children’s posters.
Teachers must be aware of the political and racialized social landscape to engage in critical pedagogy. Our
purpose in this article is to begin a dialogue to share our vision for culturally compelling instruction, and to
encourage educators to utilize more real-world examples in their teaching practice. One way to do this is by
capitalizing on current events as they relate to content area subjects. In classrooms, it is important to address
issues that impact the lives of the students we serve, and one approach to address this is by moving away from
…reductive and transmission-based models of literacy teaching and learning, and instead produce
a compelling vision toward a pedagogy of participation and possibility, where discursive spaces are
opened up, and students’and teachers’voices and experiences are recognized, extended, and used as
bridges to new learning (Anders, Yaden, Jr., Da Silva Iddings, Katz, & Rogers, 2015, p. 9).
Our work was not in a curriculum guide or part of a “scripted”teacher’s manual. Nor did we focus on
the CCSS, but yet, our lesson design and activities addressed standards, and we had high expectations of the
children. Through this approach, a teacher through artistry, can connect current events, issues and concerns to
their students’lives and community. By researching information on the Internet, we retrieved reading materials,
videos, news articles, etc., to aid in scaolding student learning in preparation for discussing the event. More
often than not, students are likely to hear about these events but some may not be able to access them at their
ability levels which can impact their understanding and participation in the topic. Our students were able to
engage in conversations—with some critique—about an environmental topic. Designing culturally compelling
instruction can be done in every subject area.
It can be overwhelming to understand that the Flint water crisis was not an isolated and unfortunate inci-
dent. Rather, Flint’s water crisis is telling of the ways in which systemic racism and oppression within the U.S.
operates. Furthermore, Flint will not be our last brush with environmental racism. For true change to happen
we as educators must stay abreast on how oppression can evolve and operate over time. We need to be vigilant
in our eorts to prepare students to be actively engaged and involved citizens in their own community. With
this in mind, our pedagogy and curriculum must be accommodating to adapt to real world situations in real
time.
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Moreover, culturally compelling instruction oers an opportunity to design an engaging curriculum and
pedagogical approach. Current events can be developed in an interdisciplinary manner to strengthen rele-
vancy to subject areas and content knowledge. Teachers can design projects to meaningfully engage children
in making connections to events that are important to their lives and community. The study of lead in water,
using Flint, Michigan’s water supply crisis as a case study aorded us an occasion to delve into a topic, and
to use instructional strategies, to enhance students’reading, writing, speaking, listening, and thinking skills
in literacy and science. Through scaolding, students gathered data (i.e., water tests), made predictions, and
connected to science content in relevant and valid ways.
As we completed a draft of this paper in September 2016 Flint’s water crisis was still unfolding. In fact, there
were news reports about lead in water in our own neighboring communities. There is no real beginning, middle,
and end to this event. The case we used to design a culturally compelling instructional approach involved
a real event with real people. While the planning process may feel laborious the gain for the children with
whom we worked was memorable to them, the NCC sta, and us. The children’s awareness about lead in water
was enhanced, and they wanted justice for Flint’s community. A culturally compelling instructional pedagogy
should go beyond informing children of events, to providing them with a platform to have a voice and respond
accordingly.
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