MACOMB — John Meixner believes the culturally responsive teaching and leading standings that the Illinois State Board of Education recently approved has been misunderstood by the public.
The regional superintendent said the culturally responsive teaching and leading standings will be a set of ISBE guidelines for teacher education programs to help new teachers understand the cultural backgrounds of their students. He said ISBE put together a team of educators from diverse backgrounds to help the state education board to create the standards and sought public comment before the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules finally approved them last week.
“It would be standards for teachers that are coming into the field,” Meixner said. “There’s not anything that’s going to be out there where all of our teachers have to learn everything now.”
The regional superintendent said the culturally responsive teaching and leading standards will not become in effect until October 2025 to give higher education teacher education programs time to adjust their curriculums to fit the standards. He said he was unaware of any requirements for current teachers to undergo culturally responsive teaching and leading standards training for continuing education.
Referencing negative public opinion expressed on social media about the standards, Meixner said people were likely not fully reading the standards, and this has prompted misunderstandings about the standards. He said he has talked with education professors at Western Illinois University and area teachers about the standards, and they told him they had already started becoming aware of cultural differences even before the ISBE issued the standards. He also said today’s political climate has prompted people to have misgivings about the standards.
Not a curriculum
The regional superintendent was clear that the standards were not there to create a K-12 curriculum, but rather to give teachers a better understanding of their students’ cultural backgrounds. He said during his time teaching in the Minneapolis suburbs, teachers had a hard time reaching out to Hmong families because they did not understand the Hmong culture. As for west-central Illinois, he said there was not much diversity, especially in the rural areas.
“It's not about indoctrinating people,” Meixner said. “It's not about changing the type of curriculum; it's about just understanding what you have … the students you have in front of you and how would you probably adapt some of your lessons to make sure that it is both culturally responsive and understanding to all the different diversity that you have in your classroom.”
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