Culture Check is an interactive, collaborative tool designed to spark meaningful, culture-based dialogues. This versatile card deck helps educators surface mindsets, explore community voices, and inspire purposeful actions—one important conversation at a time.
These cards are influenced by culturally responsive frameworks. Elements of these perspectives are intentionally woven into many of these questions, especially when they focus on students, educators, families, and leadership. We aim to define the ways Culture Check relates to the principles of cultural responsiveness.
Culture Check unites inquiry that encourages change in school culture, collecting the voices of the community for analysis, and cultural responsiveness into a collaborative tool that can mobilize educators to surface current realities and mindsets in the classroom and school-wide environment (Comstock et al.,2023; Pitler, 2024). This is not designed to be a comprehensive assessment of the school. It is intentionally designed as a card deck to guide schools in tackling culture-based conversations in small chunks, but these targeted conversations are opportunities for large impact. There is a range of content on the cards. A few include extension activities for more formal action and others are meant to encourage personal inquiry. Each card will fall under one of the following themes: Educator mindset, Literacy, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics), School Culture, and Family Engagement.
Culture Check is Designed For Educators, But Supportive For Every Student, who are committed TO LEAN IN with inquiry, engage in conversations that matter, and are willing to be curious along this journey: Inquiry stance to engage in conversations regarding learning and teaching outcomes and experiences of students, educators, and families within your system. Conversation starters, not conversation stoppers are educators that are willing to learn and incorporate new practices into their toolkit and self-reflect.
FC Hurdle Consulting, LLC (FCH) knows cultural indifference, bias, and/or micro-aggressions are a threat to school communities that value culturally responsive practices and the role of culture within schools. We all have biases but when they go unchecked the culture within schools becomes harmful to students, families, and fellow educators, especially those whose cultural background and language are different than the majority of educators within the school.
There is a quote, “We teach who we are” by Parker Palmer, Author of The Courage to Teach. Integrating Culture Check conversations into staff meetings, leadership teams, Professional Learning Communities, grade-level teams, department meetings, or parent-teacher groups provide opportunities to share ideas, stories, strategies, perspectives, wonderings, and questions. These discussions serve as pathways for deeper engagement in culturally responsive practices. (Brown, J., & Isaacs, D. 2006).
Culture Check views these aims as essential to guide educators as they build relationships, plan for, teach, and assess the students in their care. This material is about influencing educators to think about how cultural knowledge can produce informed and elevated practices in classrooms and school-wide.
Creator & CEO
“Culture Check brings everyone to the table—it invites educators to share their voices, reflect on how their cultural perspectives shape our systems, and collaborate in ways that lead to meaningful strategies and practices that strengthen classrooms and school communities.”
We specialize in education and leadership services. Our tailored solutions in Educational Leadership equip school leaders with the tools and strategies to enhance leadership effectiveness and sustain continuous improvement.
