Culturally Responsive Training in New Mexico
- Sean Stambaugh
- Jul 8
- 6 min read
Exploring Cultural Responsiveness and Ocotillo Training and Consulting's approach to delivering authentic and engaging educational experiences for all learners.
What is Cultural Responsiveness?
Aside from naming its origins in education, it is difficult to pour a concrete history of Cultural Responsiveness. As a term, it is relatively new, showing up in academic literature starting in the 1990s, then evolving as it was increasingly studied in the 2000s and 2010s until now. There is a lot of published research on Culturally Responsive teaching, curriculum, and education, particularly as it applies to school environments (see particularly the well-cited works of Lisa Delpit, Geneva Gay, Jacqueline Jordan Irvine, Kevin Kumashiro, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Tara Yosso, and many more). The conclusions are resoundingly the same across all of these authors and decades of research: Culturally Responsive education is more effective than so-called “traditional” approaches. As a practice, however, Cultural Responsiveness is much older than its academic legacy would lead us to believe, and its history is likely not fully written.
This is one of the areas where academia can fall short: a lot of stories are left untold, for numerous reasons. Whether its privileging of standard written language practices and devaluation of oral storytelling, active erasure or academic gatekeeping, hyper-individualism, or any other among a number of forms of non-listening and/or silencing, there are many mechanisms at play to prevent tracing a fully truthful history of what it means to be Culturally Responsive. So, let’s take a moment today to explore the less academic and more human side of things.
I postulate that versions of Cultural Responsiveness have shown up repeatedly across human history, both inside and outside of learning environments. Perhaps a small and borderline token example in the grand scheme of things, I imagine that (some) folks have long expressed authentic thanks for shared food from a different cultural background, even if it didn’t match their personal tastes. It’s Culturally Responsive to recognize that one’s own moderate comfort (“I don’t like this taste”) is less important than the connection created by showing genuine gratitude for a meaningful offering (“this is another way of living and I am being invited to join in a small way that is tied to histories of sustenance”)—especially when positioned from power or authority. Of course, this example would vary based on the importance of food offerings or shared meals in particular cultures and many more factors, but I think it is still illustrative.
Much like the example above, Cultural Responsiveness asks educators to tune into context and meaning rather than our own comfort. This is not only the best way to steward effective and transformational learning and growth, but also the responsible and ethical thing to do, because providing education comes with power. As educators, we decide what others learn, how they learn it, how important our topics are (or aren’t), how our audiences will (or won’t) engage, and so much more. There is inherent unbalance there, and the result is that it's easy to slip into our own assumptions as we attempt to educate others, whether those assumptions be cultural, personal, communal, dominant and based in implicit bias, or otherwise.
At Ocotillo Training and Consulting, we take this power differential as seriously as is warranted, truly honoring our commitment to culturally responsive training, especially in a State like New Mexico. We know that the history of this land is colored by authenticity, hope, theft and horrors, resistance, beauty, blood, spirit, power, fortitude, and countless other stories, both told and untold (or unlistened). We also know that we will never understand or comprehend or become competent in or otherwise academically wrangle these histories into neat packages, and that attempts to do so miss the point entirely.
That’s why we don’t pay cultural lip-service to matters on which we have no authority to speak. In fact, the philosophy at the core of our practices is that the best approach is to listen. Instead of offering platitudes, we actually show up and we listen to your stories, your strengths, your needs, your values, and whatever else you want or feel compelled to share. If during an initial consultation that means you decide you’d rather meet in person, we’ll be there.
This is why we particularly enjoy working with clients through our Custom Training Solutions’ consultation process, when possible: so that we don’t step into the pitfall of making assumptions about you, your community, or your values. We want to opportunity to actively listen so that we can work alongside you, taking the critically important time to do our own learning before we attempt to help you with yours.
How does Ocotillo Integrate Culturally Responsive Practices into its Training Services in New Mexico?
To integrate Culturally Responsive practices into professional learning environments, we find it helpful to begin not with content delivery but with curiosity, which is part of why we enjoy working through consultation. We find value in asking:
Who is in the room?
Who isn’t in the room? (thank you to my friend Terrence)
What stories, lived experiences, and wisdom arrive with these diverse people and communities, and what do we assume about them?
Drawing on the funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, and González) that already exist in your space is our starting point for living up to our mission of delivering culturally responsive educational experiences. It is also how we ensure our own cultural humility. This approach not only honors your unique individual and community values, beliefs, and practices, it also has the added benefit of being an educationally sound strategy as it allows us to connect our new training content to your own prior knowledge.
From a neurological standpoint, this is how most people learn—connecting what they don’t know with what they do know. This is especially true when combined with the appropriate level of complexity and challenge in learning content: finding the “sweet spot” of the Zone of Proximal Development (or ZPD; see the work Lev Vygotsky). By walking alongside you as we develop services that fit your needs and align with your cultural values, we are able to deliver this educational best practice, learning about how to engage your team in ways that are affirming and transformational. Some teams and communities do well with worksheets, templates, and written reflections. Others do well with sharing stories and experiences to evoke meaningful change. We're here to find out what works for you.
Moving beyond our planning process into our actual training sessions, we live our mission of cultural responsiveness by ensuring psychological and cultural safety for all attendees. This often involves setting group agreements before engaging with training content, particularly in multicultural settings where certain voices or narratives can and do take over. And we don’t excuse ourselves from this accountability, actively inviting any attendee at any time to interrupt or approach us, whatever feels safest, if we are inadvertently making an assumption or otherwise causing personal or cultural discord and disconnection during a training session. If setting group agreements doesn’t resonate with you culturally, we want to know what we can do that will. We welcome these difficult and critical conversations because they are how we learn and grow, too, creating the symbiosis that we strive for in our company’s Vision.
At the core of both of these approaches, which are just two small examples among many ways that we strive to be culturally responsive, is humility; we know that we don’t know, and that’s ok. That’s what makes learning magical and powerful. It’s what keeps us going, keeps us listening, as you continue to inspire us on this lifelong voyage. We embrace this growth mindset not only with regard to education, but also with regard to our own long-term journey as a business serving New Mexico’s people.
How Ocotillo Training and Consulting Can Support Your Journey
If you believe that your New Mexico team is best served by a Culturally Responsive Training approach, Ocotillo Training and Consulting is here to help.
We offer professional development that goes deeper than what you're used to. Our trainings in Motivational Interviewing, leadership, education, public health, and DEI are designed to help professionals embody person-centeredness while deepening their cultural responsiveness.
Whether you're a clinician, educator, supervisor, or community leader, we’ll work with you to create learning experiences that are engaging, inclusive, and tailored to your context. Our goal is to help you build trust, evoke change, and foster transformation that lasts.
Visit www.ocotillotraining.com to learn more or reach out to explore how we can support your team’s growth. We’re honored to walk alongside you.
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