Altynikov1,2, N. Zakirova1 1FSPEI HE «Glazov State Pedagogical Glazov, Udmurt Republic, Russia 2 Institute named after V.G. Korolenko» School of Education, Loyola University Chicago (Chicago, Illinois, USA) Annotation. <...> An outline of the ways of recognizing and utilizing the cultural heritage of cultura lly and linguistically diverse children in Russian schools. <...> As we can see, all the principles that I have extracted from Gay’s study, are closely interrelated and interdependent. <...> I consider three of them to be the major ones. <...> Using students’ background knowledge requires acknowledging the legitimacy of their heritage cultures and incorporating multicultural resou rces. <...> By supporting intergenerational relationships and celebrating individual accomplishments we help students maintain their identities. <...> Key words: culturally responsive teaching, cultural heritage, intergenerational relationshi ps, multicultural resources, maintaining identity, celebrating individual accomplishments. <...> In this connection, situations that teachers have often encountered learners show high level of affective filter because of either 1) limited Russian language proficiency or 2) mentality patterns that don’t always match the “mainstream” (“Russian”) cultu ral norms. <...> It happens mostly because teac hers, as professionals, fail to make quality contact with their learners. <...> They fail to acknowledge the rich cu ltural potential of every single student. <...> This failure le ads to imposing an alternative civic identity (namely, exclusively Russian) on learners, and this in turn either gives rise to internal resistance (which leads to poor academic growth) or causes comple te assimilation into the mainstream culture. <...> This paper explains the ways of recognizing and utilizing the cultural heritage of Russian language learners in educational process. <...> A very precise definition of culturally responsive teaching is given by Genev a Gay, Professor of Education at the University of Washington-Seattle, USA: ”A very different pedagogical paradigm is needed to improve the perfo rmance of . students from various ethnic groups — one that teaches to and through their personal and cultural strengths, their intellectual capabilities, an d their prior accomplishments. <...> It filters curriculum content and teaching strategies through their cultural frames of reference ~ 60 ~ Издание <...>