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There is more to culturally responsive teaching than selecting multicultural texts and designing inclusive lesson. This paper aims to support teachers in becoming more culturally responsive by guiding them in how to recognize and respond to microaggressions in their daily interactions with students, colleagues, and parents.

Microaggressions have been defined as “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color”.

When classroom interactions contain microaggressions, students are damaged in both seen and unseen ways. Interactions between teachers, students and parents afford powerful occasions to analyze classroom communication and provide windows into the nature of student–student, student–teacher and teacher–parent relationships.

Regardless of where, when, why or how they occur, these interactions provide brief opportunities for culturally responsive teachers to demonstrate that they respect their students’ home and community cultures, accept who their students are and honor the education that they receive both inside and outside of school.

Becoming more adept at recognizing and addressing microaggressions is one way that teachers can become more culturally responsive. For students, being able to identify and respond more effectively to microaggressions creates greater opportunities for all students to think critically and engage in social action.

This paper presents an original viewpoint on identifying and reducing microaggressions in classrooms and school communities.

To examine whether or not exposing novice teachers in a graduate literacy education diversity course to particular texts and activities focused on economic diversity and lifestyle differences among students makes them more likely to positively respond to these lesser understood forms of diversity in their own teaching and if so, in what ways. The research design was qualitative and included written reflections from the teacher–participants at the beginning, middle, and end of the semester, and videotaping and transcribing activities and post-activity discussions. Ethnographic observations and notes were made by the primary investigator. The theoretical frameworks that were foundational to the study were critical literacy and teaching for social justice. The findings of this qualitative study indicate that exposing teachers to texts, discussions, and activities that educate them on economic diversity and lifestyle differences among students makes them more likely to positively respond to these forms of diversity in their own teaching. Specific examples of how participants did this are provided. This study contributes to the literature on diversity in literacy instruction by providing concrete, research-based suggestions for how both teacher educators and K-12 teachers can expand their definitions of student diversity to include economic disparities and lifestyle differences among students. It includes recommended texts and activities for both teacher educators and K-12 teachers to address less typical forms of diversity, with a focus on economic diversity and lifestyle differences.