How to (accurately) use Funds of Knowledge in your classroom
Funds of Knowledge is not simply asking BIPOC students to share personal anecdotes or access their schema and then move on. Read this post about what Luis Moll and colleagues truly intended for teachers to do when they use an FoK lens in their instruction.
Over the years I have (re) introduced Luis Moll and colleagues' "Funds of Knowledge" (henceforth FoK) theory to bilingual teachers, and every time I'm surprised by their responses. "Oh, I know that from graduate school- its basically just ask students their prior knowledge of a topic and then move on." Yikes! So I designed an activity that asks teachers to nudge their thinking towards a truer representation of the theory, by critically reading a letter to parents from their school (ideally one drafted in the past year) with an eye for the institutional (achem, technical) tone of voice that accompanies such documents. Rebeca, a 1st grade dual language teacher, commented, "Re-reading the letter below now, after learning more about Funds of knowledge theory, it is very clear to me how everything is phrased as the “official space”, ie. the school, doing all the teaching and just informing parents without asking for any feedback or trying to meet the families half-way." Her classmate Aschlyee similarly realized, " I need to remind myself that these letters shouldn't be framed as though parents are being told to meet the requirements for an assignment." If we (teacher educators, administrators, district leaders) hope to make learning spaces more equitable for historically marginalized families, then taking a hard look at how we message to them is an important place to begin this work.
“Emphasis on standardized testing, and valuing students’ diligent completion of it, is very much making the school’s official academic environment the center of their education. ”
— Rebeca, 1st grade dual language teacher
25 years ago, Dr. Luis Moll of the University of Arizona lead a team of researchers and local teachers to conduct ethnographic studies of border-lands families. They were curious to learn FROM the families, to note how they run their households and build community relationships. He refers to these behaviors and decisions as "household funds of knowledge." Specifically, they wondered: how mothers plan for groceries (economics), how kinship relations show up in their children's lives (community-building), who manages the school work at home (academics), and what modes of communication work for these families (communication). The premise was: school personnel typically operate from a top-down approach when messaging with families. They presume an understanding of family systems and start from a place of ethical hubris (e.g. how white, Anglo-European values dictate right ways of participating in school). To combat this deficit behavior, they sought to disrupt it by wondering: if we are to message and engage with our families, how can we learn from them while bracketing our usual ways of knowing?
See, FoK theory is so much more than asking kids to bring their lived experience to a read aloud or to asking parents to oversee an end-of-unit project. FoK asks educators to un-learn and re-examine Anglo-European ways of thinking about what family involvement and school curriculum can be. For example, one of the teacher-participants (Ms. López) learned that her student Carlos migrates between the Arizona and Mexico border each year. While in MX, he participates in street-vending of chicles (gum) and in his home he speaks about this hobby with an animated flourish, showing a competitive nature to sell the most chicles to the tourists. An idea sparked: to conduct an interdisciplinary unit on commerce. Ms. López tackled economics (how do we price our chicle, how do we market it?), mathematics (the making of chicles, proportions and recipe design) and language development (persuasive brochures, commercials, presentations to local families). She had never seen her students so invested in a unit, and she'd never felt so proud to write feedback comments on their final products. All state standards were met and (frankly) exceeded because for the first time in her career, she shut up and listened to her students and their families.
“It is so important to learn how culture is expressed in students’ lives, how students live their worlds. We can’t make assumptions about these things. Only a part of that child is present in the classroom. We had little idea what Carlos’s life was really like outside of the classroom, and what he knew about the world”
— Debrah Neff, ethnographer
At the tail end of the 2021-21 school year, I'd not dare to ask teachers to disrupt their curriculum because NO ONE has time for this level of boundary-pushing and ingenuity (regrettably). However, I can offer a smaller-scale effort to unlearn and re-examine your practice through an FoK lens by reconsidering how you communicate with your students' families. On the infographic above, I provide a list of "Do's" and "Don'ts" meant to de-center the top-down, official and technical jargon that comes so naturally to us when we're representing school-wide mandates and initiatives. Making linguistic adjustments like replacing all the "musts" and "have tos" with questions like "does this seem doable to you?" or "what am I missing in this assignment?" Consider opening your letter with a student anecdote- think of the craziest story you heard in the past week and celebrate this kiddo's enthusiasm, quirkiness and zest for story-telling. These past 15 months have required us to blend home/school spaces in the most unexpected ways. I often wonder if Moll was conducting his ethnographies during the pandemic, what new insights about household funds of knowledge he'd uncover? Perhaps you can answer that question as you begin to re-imagine what schooling for BIPOC families might be in the 2021-22 school year.