Culturally responsive teaching and the brain

The most important part of this work is a willingness to do something different to get different results, with the goal of increasing academic achievement.ДЇor your audit, take some time to ask yourself hard questions and reflect on past and current practices. In addition to HammondвЂ™s Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, another great resource is Affirming DiversityВ by Sonia Nieto. Give them context and donвЂ™t be afraid to talk about the tough subjects that may not be addressed in your school. Students need to understand the system that is working around them in schools. Harvard UniversityвЂ™s Project Implicit has anВ online testВ you can take to examine yourВ implicit bias.Д¬ulturally responsive teachers also have to be aware of the sociopolitical context schools operate in and dare to go against thatВ status quo. These unintentional, unconscious attitudes impact how we relate to our students and their parents, and how we choose curriculum, assess learning, and plan lessons.

The experiences weвЂ™ve had along our journey in life have formed stereotypes which have then turned into implicit bias. The first step in being culturally responsive is to do an internal audit-yes, you read that right, an audit: truly digging deep inside of ourselves and recognizing and naming those things we donвЂ™t want to look at or talk about. This alone makes being culturally responsive one of the most important things you can learn at this moment. In her book Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, Zaretta Hammond writes that вЂњby third grade, many culturally and linguistically diverse students are one or more years behind in reading.вЂќ CRT is one of the most impactful tools for empowering students to find their way out of that achievement gap. Culturally responsive teaching (CRT) attempts to bridge the gap between teacher and student by helping the teacher understand the cultural nuances that may cause a relationship to break down-which ultimately causes student achievement to break down as well. These aspects of culture are among the most misunderstood in the teacher-student dynamic and are often the things that cause students to get into the mostВ trouble in the school discipline system. When I talk about culture, IвЂ™m talking about norms, beliefs, and behaviors that are passed down from one generation to the next-the things that explain why a student might answer a question the way he does or why another might not feel comfortable looking you in the eyeВ when youвЂ™re speaking to her. The world of education is buzzing with talk of being more culturally responsive, but what does that mean, and how important is it really?

Culturally responsive teaching and the brain