Gifted Course:

INTEGRATING CULTURAL AWARENESS

Julie Thompson

CONSULTANT: Julie Thompson

Julie is a mentor teacher in Tucson, Arizona. After 10 years in high school humanities classrooms, she transitioned to coaching and supporting educators who strive to teach culturally relevant curriculum in a responsive and rigorous framework. She currently works with middle school and high school educators to bring students' lived experiences into the classroom and harness the beauty and brilliance of each culture represented. Through art, literature, history, ethnobotany, and dialogue, Julie has worked collaboratively to create and implement a series of professional developments which focuses on social justice, agency, and critical thinking, woven together in the fabric of the integral relationships between teachers and students in classroom spaces. Gifted learning strategies and equity pedagogies have overlapping interests and skillsets, which Julie centers in her classroom and her coaching. She holds a Bachelors of Arts in English and Creative Writing, as well as a Graduate Certificate in Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy. Born and raised in the stunning Sonoran Desert, Julie loves hiking and reading, as well as spending time with her 4 children, feisty cat, and desert Tortoise. 

Class Description:

  • Explore strategies across multiple disciplines that center learning on student co-construction of knowledge.

  • Design tasks that foster students' academic and ethnic identities.

  • Engage in lessons that connect students' intersecting identities and lived experiences to historical and communal cultures through rigorous and student-centered dialogue structures.  

  • Plan project-based and social-justice oriented learning to grow student agency and critical thinking.

  • Develop a consciousness of culturally relevant and equity-based pedagogies in students and in ourselves.