ABSTRACT
Researchers, teacher educators, and school administers generally agree that pre-service teachers in the 21st century, who aspire to be responsive to an increasing number of children of color, must recognize, value, and capitalize on cultural backgrounds within the classroom setting. This chapter offers a discussion of how one reading teacher in a low-income urban school recognized, valued, and capitalizes on students’ cultural backgrounds as they engaged in discussions of multicultural literature. Family members as a source of cultural knowledge initially surfaced in the data when the students began discussing family responsibilities apparent in the story, Scorpions. Community life emerged as the second cultural source relied on by the study participants. The just-cited examples of popular media references as a type of cultural source underscore how children make associations that often emerge from contexts situated in their immediate lives, although constructed geographically outside of the urban community resided in by the participants.
