This is the final week of our exploration of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students.
We don’t often think of the person that has repeatedly failed as a winner. Yet, the experiences and understanding they have gained by losing is probably worth more than all of the accolades from their peers. I connect this to success in school. The accolades that schools often seek from learners are grades. If they fail, it means the school was a failure too. Since many schools are funded by the government or private investors, it’s difficult to justify that failure is a good thing. If we look at every success story of every genius that walked the earth, they often talk about all of the failures they had. These experiences spurred them on to finding the correct solution or inventing a tool that would better mankind. Embracing failure is vital in this process. This is what independent learners do. Building Intellective CapacityIn chapters 8 and 9, there are numerous strategies that Hammond provides, but I want to give you the chance to pick and choose the ones that best fit your context. I am going to lean into the ones that most resonate with me. I hope that is okay. Many of these ideas are multi-step and I want to honor our time together. Ignite How do we ignite the brain to wake up and pay attention? I’ve been asking myself this for years, because what worked five years ago doesn’t work on learners today. We have to continuously modify the ways that we provoke and wake up the imagination and connections of our learners. This is why relationships matter so much. We already know how they learn best, because they have already shared their ideas and methodologies. This is now in response to their learning preferences. Ignite the brain
The rest of the process is quite clear and short in the book. I relate it to my thinkchat lesson cycle, which is a similar scaffold for learning. Pose a question: I present an open-ended question about what we are exploring and ask learners to share their unique perspectives about how it might look and feel and their implications.
Warm-Up Activity: I might present a provocation of objects, imagery, video, music, etc. for learners to discuss or solve a problem. They are engaging in talking through the ideas and how it connects to the question initially posed.
During the pose a question and warm-up activity, I am listening to learner responses and jotting down notes of misconceptions, amazing connections, and ideas I want to highlight to extend the thinking. New Information: This is the only time I will speak to the class directly. I present my findings and the new information as a way of possible exploration. I don’t call out misconceptions directly, unless it is blatantly wrong. In other cases, I will say, “I heard many groups say this, I wonder what my alternative viewpoints are. Here are some suggestions.” This usually helps them to recalibrate that they might not be on the right track. I will present a short new idea or concept at this time for only 10-15 minutes. I want it to be sizable information that they can apply to their prior thinking.
Play with Ideas: This is the longest section in the lesson cycle. It’s where learners get to play with their new ideas and how they connect with their prior learning.
Reflect: Have learners reflect on their process.
I really appreciate this approach to exploration, because it’s mostly driven by the learner. They are able to incorporate their unique perspectives while learning about others. It requires an open mindset that must be first established for it to flourish on its own. Summing it UpThere are many strategies from page 114-151 that you can explore to deepen your practice to become more culturally responsive. I know what you are thinking…Lu, you’ve just stopped once it’s gotten good. I know, but I always want to honor your ability to apply it to yourself. It’s just too much to cover in these sessions.
As I reflect on my experience with this analysis, I just want to thank Zaretta Hammond for being brave to bring this book to the forefront of the discussion. I live in a country where people are being canceled for expressing their opinions that do not align with the vast majority. This book goes against that status quo. It says there is a problem, without casting blame on certain populations. We can all do better to make every learner feel like they belong in our classroom. It’s an opportunity to create a space where learners can be their authentic selves. I can’t wait to return to the classroom next year to apply these concepts to my practice. I hope you will too.
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Hammond begins by stating, “Our job is to get students to recognize that putting forth the effort is worth the work.” I don’t know about you, but I’ve had plenty of learners who just would not put in the effort, no matter how many times I met with them or explained the positive benefits. Before they came to me, they had already fallen into learned helplessness and I struggled to get them to trust me. We have to be real here. At the same time, we can’t give up on those learners. They need people like us more than the highly motivated kiddos who will go home and make a project based on their learning during the week. These students make us feel good about our role as a teacher, but we really haven’t done much to spark them. Let’s be honest. This academic mindset is hard work. It just doesn’t pop into our minds and we tell ourselves that we will do it. But, there are tools that are available within this chapter to help you. Of course Zaretta would not let us down in our greatest moment of need! Ms. Hammond created an Academic Mindset Components on page 109 that is on fire. She has four basic components. I will unpack them with her ideas, but in my own words. I belong to this academic community: this is where learners believe they belong intellectually and not just socially. This reminds me of the story I shared about Ben Carson in my last episode where he felt intellectually below his peers, so he acted like it. Our learners will take on the roles we give them, which is why I am mostly against homogeneous groupings. I say mostly, because there are times where we need to lean into remediation of pertinent skills and ideas that a group of learners are struggling with. It actually helps in those situations to know that I’m not alone in not understanding this idea or skill. But for it to be effective, the teacher needs to establish that the area of growth does not shape the whole experience of learning, because everyone has areas that they are continuously developing. I can succeed at this: learners believe they can achieve something in particular and that they have the skill set to make it happen. When I read this for the first time, my initial response was self-efficacy. The heart of self-efficacy is the belief that I am capable and it partners with self-esteem that I am worthy enough to make it happen. In a time where learners are just understanding who they are, we need to be putting learners into self-reflective moments where they focus on their positivity, instead of their deficiency. My ability and competence grow with my effort: this is embracing a growth mindset and I am just on one portion of my learning journey. This means that we have only begun to learn and understand, so we need to be patient and kind to ourselves. As educators, we need to share with our learners our journey and the struggles that we had along the way. This helps them to see that we are not perfect and that there is a chance for them. The work has value for me: the ideas a learner is exploring has relevance to their own personal experience and knowledge. It may not connect to the lesson objectives, but it needs to be recognized as an authentic application. This will help learners to realize that all learning is connected to everyday life if we just look for it. As they grow in their understanding of the world, they will see it manifest in different ways. Personal ConnectionAs I went through this reflective practice for myself, I was instantly sent back to seventh grade. Being shy and a selective mute, I strived to be invisible, particularly in math class. To be honest, I stank at the subject and everyone knew it. I just couldn’t understand the purpose of the formulas and algorithms, so I constantly felt like I was in a state of fog. One day, a math teacher shared in front of the class, “I don’t understand why you don’t understand this, your brother had no problem.” Just like that, I grew to hate math for the rest of my schooling career. I avoided the subject as much as possible. In college, I took the least amount of credits possible, because I didn’t want to be called out for being an imposter again.
Hammond proclaims, “As culturally responsive teachers, we have to address the real root of the problem -- students’ self-doubt that leads to a negative academic mindset. This means that as culturally responsive teachers our focus has to be on shifting mindset rather than on trying to force engagement or cajole students’ motivation. Students have to become self-motivated. That’s one of the hallmarks of an independent learner.” So how do we do this exactly? Educator Self-Examination Here are some possible ways to shift the mindset.
I don’t know about you, but this has been a self-reflective practice. There are many things to consider as we are trying to reinforce a positive academic mindset. I’m open to making some changes in my practice and hope you are too. Hammond provides many ways to create positive academic mindsets, but it all begins with our self-examination as educators. What might we be unknowingly doing to support the negative academic mindset? This is where it becomes real. Microaggressions: small, seemingly innocent verbal, behavioral or environmental indignities that send a hostile or derogatory message to people of color. What I experienced in math during middle and high school was microaggression. I heard teachers say, “You are Asian. They are known for being super smart. Why aren’t you?” I internalized this as You are Asian, so why aren’t you smart? This must mean that you aren’t quite Asian enough. This reinforced the feelings I was already experiencing with the absence of my Korean mother and the remarriage of my father to a white woman. The sad part, I believed the message for far too long in my life, because of simple comments that were made to me in passing. How do microaggressions show themselves? There are three possibilities that Hammond outlines on page 113. Microassaults: this is the misuse of power and privilege in subtle ways to create different outcomes of children of color.
Microinsults: this is being insensitive to culturally or linguistically diverse students and trivializing their racial or cultural identity.
Microinvalidations: these are actions that negate or nullify a person of color’s experiences or realities. This can also be expressed when we don’t want to recognize that structural racialization or implicit bias exists.
How do we change the narrative?
I am super excited to have a follow-up chat with Misty Paterson about our progress, questions, and wonderings from Pop-Up Studio. Our group was small, but mighty and it was wonderful to get support from the source. Misty also shared about her experiences at Reggio Emilia, which was exciting.
Have fun watching our follow-up video and be sure to read Pop-Up Studio for yourself. It's not so heavy and you don't have to do it all in one go. My kind of book!
The chapter begins with a quote by Rita Pierson, “Every child deserves a champion, an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection and insists they become the best they can possibly be.” Many of you have probably seen this powerful Ted Talk that was immortalized in 2013, but still resonates with the needs of our learners today. I had to take some time to rewatch it again, because even we need powerful messages to lift us up. I’ll post the link in the bio, so you are able to reconnect with this powerful educator. To set the stage for this chapter, Hammond purports, “As culturally responsive teachers, we have a particular duty to help dependent learners build their intellective capacity so that they are able to do more independent learning and higher order thinking.” When I read this passage, I connected to this past week in the #tccbookclub where we explored the difference between tasks, understanding, and skills. If we only teach tasks, we create a learning disposition that can only replicate processes as directed by the teacher. Learners are not able to use the skills on their own, because they don’t understand the underlying purpose of the task.
Academic mindsetHammond presents two ways of thinking that shape a child’s learning experiences: academic mindset and learned helplessness. “Academic mindset is defined as a student’s attitudes, beliefs, and dispositions about school, learning, and his capacity as a learner that are associated with effort, perseverance, and positive academic achievement.” I internalize this as a learner recognizing their effort pays off if they have perseverance and a positive mindset. This is reinforced by a strong school culture that focuses on a growth mindset, rather than solely on academic achievement. This impacts a learners attitudes, beliefs, and disposition about school and learning. Conversely, “learned helplessness is the student’s belief that he has no control over his ability to improve as a learner. Because he doesn’t believe he has the capacity, he doesn’t exert any effort when faced with a challenging work assignment or a new skill to develop.” This is reinforced by the relationships that have been created with teachers and peers. If a child is continuously reminded of their deficits, they will expect to always not measure up to expectation. This reminds me of the childhood of Ben Carson. He grew up with a single mother and his brother in an at-risk community. His mother worked three jobs, so she was not at home very often. When she discovered that Ben and his brother were getting into trouble, Ben’s mother demanded that they expand their reading and turn in a book report each week. Ben was challenged to read a wide variety of books and expand his mind. At school, he was known as the dummy of the class, because he was not a strong student. Due to the increase in reading, he quickly transitioned from being the lowest to top performing student in the class. This was all due to his illiterate mother who saw her children headed down a dangerous path and demanded an alternative outcome. All of the reading developed a love of science and Ben became a prominent surgeon at Johns-Hopkins Hospital and was one of the first neurosurgeons to successfully separate twins that were conjoined at the brain. Building Alliances
Hammond shares three key components to alliance:
When I look at this list, I want to know how exactly I’m going to be able to achieve this with every student. Let’s take a moment to break them down and support them with ideas from the reading. A shared understanding and agreement to tackle a specific goal The first thing that came to my mind was setting a goal using a success criteria. As the educator, you know what specific skills learners will need (cognitive, affective, metacognitive) to understand the content they will be exploring. Choose two skills per each type of skill to put in a success criteria.
If this is too much for you, there are some ideas that Hammond shares on pages 95-96.
A shared understanding and agreement about the tasks necessary to reach the goal along with confidence that these activities will lead to progress We can always assess the success criteria and ask learners to assess their goal (WHY). Ask them (HOW) they will break it down into smaller ideas and connect them together. Then, consider (WHAT) individual tasks need to be completed first before relationships can be created. Another way is by creating a pact. Hammond outlines some ways to make this happen naturally in your class. I will only refer to some of them, which can be found on pages 95-96.
There are many more suggestions on page 96, but this is the heart of how we can move forward with supporting learner progression. A relational bond based on mutual trust that creates an emotional connection and sense of safety for the client in order to do the hard work necessary to reach the goal. At the heart of this part is authenticity. You won’t know and connect with every learner. This is okay. But, they still need to know that you believe in their capacity to succeed. This comes in many informal ways. Something that I appreciate are some help tips that Hammond provides on pages 100-101. It begins with using kid-friendly vocabulary to clear processes for reflecting and acting on teacher feedback. It doesn’t matter how you do this, but be consistent. Our learners crave consistency from the teachers, because it may be the only safe space in their world. Feedback to move ForwardWhen learners have clarity of how to move forward, they are more easily able to apply it back to their practice. Hammond provides many different ideas about types of feedback and here are my highlights.
Page 103 Quality Feedback has some distinct characteristics
Page 105 For negative feedback, include:
If you want to go even further in this process, consider examining The Asset-Based Feedback Protocol on page 105 that provides step-by-step directions on how to give feedback and check on progress. It’s amazing. I know that there have been so many ideas in this chapter, but it’s all about supporting our learners so they can be successful. More importantly, so they know that we have their backs and won’t let them fail. We all make mistakes, but our role as their teacher is to guide them towards independence. Reference Rita Pierson: Every Child Needs a Champion
I've seen it many times. A teacher creates a wonderful plan, but what happens in the classroom is something completely different. As I grow in my own understanding of learning, I know we can all do better to make learners to feel seen, heard, and valued. ![]() C134 (Book Club): Supporting Culturally Responsive Relationships with our Learners (pg 72-87)4/16/2024
As a teacher and PYP curriculum coordinator, I saw this all the time. Teachers jump right in to setting the classroom expectations and how the students would behave in response to these expectations. I once heard a teacher tell me to be mean until Christmas break and then show them a sweeter side. When you are born in the decade of hearts, rainbows, and unicorns, this approach will not work for you. There is something to be said for being a teacher and friend. I was never the friend in my classroom, but I wasn’t a dictator either. My learners knew my expectations of them and myself. There were many times that these expectations were undermined and I had to come in with my lethal teacher stare. You know the one that I mean…a cross between a Disney villain (take your pick) and your mother. In my case, she was a teacher too, so it was a double dog stare. When a learner received the hard stare, they knew they had crossed the line and breached some trust. As a coordinator, I was pressured to get to the curriculum right away instead of doing that fluffy stuff, such as relationship building. With so much pressure on my shoulders, I caved and gave into the populace. Unfortunately, this single decision created a rift between me and my staff, because I proceeded to make changes before building relationships.
As we think about this statement, how do we build trust within our relationships with learners? Hammond continues, “We have to not only care about students in a general sense but also actively care for them in a physical and emotional sense.” How does this connect to the brain? Hammond purports, “The brain feels safest and relaxed when we are connected to others we trust to treat us well. It responds to this sense of connection by secreting oxytocin, called the bonding hormone. Oxytocin makes us want to build a trusting relationship with the other person we are interacting with.” As an educator, you are probably wondering, how do I bring about more trust within my relationships with my learners, so they feel like they can trust me. Hammond suggests that it comes through simple gestures such as a smile, simple nod of the head, a pat on the back, a touch on the arm, or other forms of confirming behavior. Learners are hungry for these simple reassurances that we care about as educators. To be honest, my response was…doesn’t everyone do this? Isn’t this what we are supposed to do when creating a classroom of trust and safety? Then, I sit back and reflect. There are several teachers who come to mind that I’ve known throughout my career that yelled at learners, shoved workbooks into their hands instead of teaching them, and made learners feel like they were a visitor in the teachers classroom. I can’t say that I’ve never done those things too. I’ve been pressured to be that type of teacher, so I wouldn’t outshine members of my team. I played along until I realized the damage it was doing to my learners and stopped. One teacher told me, “This is the only way they will respond. They are like animals and will run over us if we are too nice.” I whole-heartedly disagree. I saw the same learners shout out my name in the hallways and run up to give me a hug on the way to class. I couldn’t understand how these kiddos were disrespectful in class, so I had to step back and analyze the teacher/learner relationship. Hammond speaks about the connection between rapport (a student knows a teacher cares about them), alliance (building a relationship of trust) with cognitive insight (the ability to critically and creatively think.) I sit and ponder this simple algorithm, I think of my own young life as a selective mute. In high school, I had an English Teacher named Mr. Jensen for two years. He was passionate about the music of Kenny G, poetry, and prose. He would babble on about the power of words and how they shape our thinking of the world. His goal was for us to connect with the ideas that we were exploring, especially for those of us who were terrified to speak them out loud. Somehow, I felt a rapport with Mr. Jensen and soon I was trying out new ways of writing that helped me to find my voice. All it takes is a little bit of trust to move a learner forward. “Affirming is simply acknowledging the personhood of each student, appreciating all aspects of them, especially those culturally specific traits that have been negated by the dominant culture. Validation, on the other hand, is your explicit acknowledgement to students that you are aware of the inequities that impact their lives.” How do we make this happen? Hammond suggests some listening with grace and trust indicators on pages 78-79 that may help you. I’m more interested in something that is more specific and applicable, so your learners know you affirm their personhood. This process is going to require some vulnerability on your part, so you can move your practice forward. On pages 82 to 85, Hammond gives step by step directions on how to assess your level of rapport with your students by examining a particular learner in your classroom. Are you ready to find out what is happening? I will only provide some brief ideas, so you will need to read for deeper step by step directions.
Naturally, this is just a broad overview and you need to internalize the process for yourself and your context. This is not a one-size-fits-all process. Hammond poses a question that really resonated with me that might close this session. How would you characterize your relationship with students of color, English learners, or other students who are different from you? I can’t speak for you, but I would say my response is curiosity. I’m always wondering why people do things differently and if they know the nuisances of their behavior. I get my learners to question why do some things out of habit and research the cultural or communal connections. Oftentimes, these rituals are put in place by family, so they could remember where they came from. I love that notion. Let’s be better at making the time to build relationships with our learners. It may be easier for us primary/elementary homeroom teachers. It’s still doable for specialist and supporting teachers. It may take you a bit longer, but it’s possible. I can’t wait to hear how you make it happen, so we can support our secondary teachers to do the same. Zaretta Hammond states, “Caring is one of the major pillars of culturally responsive teaching. This reality stands in contrast to the dominant factory model of school, with its focus on the technical aspects of curriculum coverage and testing to sort and label students. In the factory model, relationship building is seen as a secondary issue related to classroom management more than learning. “
I don’t know about you, but my brain exploded. This is completely normal, when we peel back the layers of our own cultural frames of reference and compare them with our learners. Zaretta Hammond references a three part process for widening our own lens called description, interpretation, and evaluation. I introduced it in the last episode to get you thinking, but this time, we are unpacking it to the fullest. Are you ready for description, interpretation and evaluation? I’m ready to get vulnerable and make changes in my practice. DescriptionIf we want to better understand our thinking and feelings about events in our classrooms, we have to take a step back and examine them with a fresh set of eyes. Are you ready to see things that may surprise you? It’s not that difficult, but will have an impact on how you act moving forward. Quite simply, think about a recent event that happened in your classroom. As you write down your thoughts, simply describe what a person said or did in the situation and capture as many details as possible. Think of them as stage directions in a play. This person said this, while the other person did this. InterpretationLook at our observations that have been written down. Write down your initial thoughts and feelings that you were having at the time of the event. What did you think about the learner or other adult? What did you think was happening? What do you think they were thinking about the situation? “Make a list of your assumptions, reactions and interpretations of the behaviors. What specific thing did you react to? How did you interpret it? Based on what belief or assumption?” Now, go out of your comfort zone and reframe your interpretations. What are other things that they were thinking or doing during the time of the event? How can you look at it differently? EvaluationNow, let’s evaluate your description and interpretation. What does it say about your thoughts and feelings about the student(s) in the event? How does it frame how you think and feel about them moving forward? Are there any possibilities of generalizing based on culture, race, or ethnicity? This all sounds so easy to do, right? I don’t think so. We have a thing called implicit bias that governs how we think and feel about situations, based on our backgrounds, learning, and cultural roots. It’s normal, but we have to do better.
Zaretta Hammond provides a Mindful Reflection Protocol by Dray and Wisneski and helps us go through these steps:
To receive more details about this process, be sure to read the chart on pages 63-64. As I reflect on what we have read so far, I am mindful of my own practices and the students that I may have not understood, because I was not being culturally responsive. I may have misread the cues of their behavior, because they were not aligned with my own practice. To be honest, I think this protocol can be applied to our interactions with anyone that is different from ourselves and our natural reactions to them based on prior experiences and interactions.
This section of this book reminds me that we all have triggers and some of them are so deeply rooted into our psyche that we might not even know they exist until someone else points them out. Hi, I’m that person. No matter who we are, we have implicit bias. It’s how society is structured. We have been taught from a young age that certain cultures are better than others based on access, power, economics, skin color, and influence. We see this philosophy in subcultures where colorism is prevalent; the lighter you are the more desirable you will become in society. Hammond reminds us that negativity bias is quite harmful, because, “the brain is more than 20 times more focused on negative experiences than on positive ones.” To help us, she makes a generous list of strategies to help us focus more on positivity and give us some grace to move forward. Identify what sets you off. Duh, why didn’t I think of that? Because sometimes, we have to do some really difficult work to get to the root of what sets us off. We may think it’s about cultural differences, when really it’s about ideology clashes from christianity to islam. Hammond provides some questions that we can ask ourselves to really get to the root of what sets us off.
Can you imagine if everyone was this reflective after an emotional encounter with someone else? We all know people in our lives that thrive to get a response from us. They know how to push our buttons to make us angry, frustrated, or feel a loss of control. Once we see the pattern, we need to identify what sets us off, so we can change our response. Let’s face it, they will continue to try to push our buttons as long as we let them. Once we change our response, they will lose interest and change their behavior as well. Create an early warning system. This is our internal system that helps us to recognize that something is about to set us off. Once we know our trigger, we can see the warning signs that help us to pivot our response. Hammond describes this as the S.O.D.A system, which STOP, OBSERVE, DETACH, and AWAKEN. To honor the S.O.D.A. system, I am going to let you read it for yourself on page 68. The one thing I will say is that it helps you to detach from your personal emotions in a situation and begin to see how the other person is reacting. This is so important in moving forward as a humanity. To reinforce our profession, we need to learn how to work better with each other. This is the power of culturally responsive teaching. It’s not only about how to teach culturally different learners, but how we engage with others and better understand each other. If we are living this way in our classrooms all day long, it will naturally impact how we operate in greater society. I am an eternal optimist and believe there is more good than bad in humanity. This book has helped me so much to see how I can do better. It’s not about a race to the finish, but changing ourselves, so we can help one learner at a time become their best selves.
Hammond begins this chapter by stating, “The true power of culturally responsive teaching comes from being comfortable in your own skin because you are not a neutral party in the process. You can never take yourself out of the equation.” This is sometimes difficult to talk about when society can be polarizing. If you express your views, you may be canceled or dropped from a friendship circle or school. If you don’t say anything, you allow uncomfortable behavior to persist, which will impact the next generation of young people. A reminder that the lizard brain, which is composed of the amygdala and reticular activating system (RAS) have been created to protect us. When we deal with uncomfortable situations, it “sounds an alarm designed to remind us of the dangers that exist outside.” This can come in many forms, but in this case, it’s about talking through uncomfortable topics not normally shared in polite society. Let’s be clear, this book is not about placing blame. It’s about our self-awareness about our actions. That’s it. We all can be better, so it’s time to reframe this conversation by beginning with intention. What do you want to learn more by going through this book study? What do you want to learn about yourself? This intention will put you on the right course. How does our cultural identity shape the way we operate our classrooms? It all stems from prior work of surface, shallow and deep culture. Hammond asks some profound questions to guide this work. Here are some ones that resonated with me. Surface cultural beliefs
As I reflect on these questions, I think about my own racial identity. I grew up in rural and suburban areas as a young child within a tight familial network in South Korea, the land of my mother. When my father was transferred back to California when I was 41/2 years old, many things changed for me. The identity that I knew ceased to exist and I was quickly taught that I must lean into my American heritage to survive. The stories that I was told about my mother growing up was that she was emotionally unstable. She divorced my father to live a party lifestyle and failed at a remarriage. Yet, as I unravel my own issues with being bi-racial, I can only imagine how much a shock it would have been to lose your cultural identity by coming to a new culture. We have evolved somewhat from this narrative, but there are still attitudes within my own culture that create this polarity. I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve heard people say, “You are in America now, so you have to speak English.” Having lived in non-English places, I can clearly state that this is not always easy. You may have a strong desire to learn an additional language, but your brain has difficulty processing the grammar structure Shallow cultural beliefs
As a young child, I remember that I was told to remain quiet at all costs from my mother, grandmother, and teachers. I followed their lead to a fault where I eventually became a selective mute. I never spoke. Largely it was due to my Korean language. I had no space to speak my language once my mother moved out of our home. My means of expression died with the divorce. While traveling through my educational journey, I discovered a false narrative that all Asian children are smart. When I did not perform up to the expectations of teachers, I was questioned about my level of Asianess. I was continually asked, “Are you sure you are Asian, because every Asian kid I’ve known was really smart.” This implied that because I did not have the skills to express myself orally or academically that I was not smart. I carried this with me for decades. Deep cultural beliefs
As I grew into a young adult, I did a lot of reflective practice about the harm of the cultural narrative. By the time I was ten years old, my father married outside of my race. My new mother was caucasian and had different stories to tell about her childhood in Utah. During her childhood, it was a growing state with many possibilities and people with similar points of view. Through my experiences with my new mother, my viewpoint towards the world became even whiter. I began to change the narrative in my mind from I have to be smart at everything to let’s try everything, because in white culture this is the narrative that is shared. When people challenged my level of whiteness, I stood up representing 50% caucasian and 50% korean. Neither were less than the other, but I recognized that I needed to lean into my whiteness to survive and thrive in 1990’s America. Unpacking our InterpretationAs I reflect on my own experiences as a child in the public school system, I connect to Hammond’s “cultural frames of reference”. She refers to a story where a teacher gives a directive to a child through a question, which is opposite to how the child operates in his home culture. The teacher took offense to the lack of compliance and the child was sent to the principal’s office. When you peel back the layers, we discover that the teacher had a different cultural frame of reference of gaining student compliance. It wasn’t the child’s fault for not reading the signs.
This leads us to a conversation about misinterpretation. As educators, we are not in the role of fixing our learners based on their socio-economic situation or linguistic challenges. Instead, we are here to try to understand learning from their lens, so we can provide scaffolds for success. Hammond refers to a simple protocol created by Gudykunst and Kim (2003) for widening our interpretive aperture to see what is truly going on. Description: Describe what you see. Leave out any judgment or interpretation of a situation. Your own implicit bias will want to make assumptions, but you must not allow them to enter the conversation. Interpretation: Interpret what is going on. Write down all of your interpretations of a situation. What pattern do you see in your observations? Are some of them driven by your own cultural view of the world? Evaluation: Review your interpretations. What do they say about our own views? How do they impact how we see our learners? What judgments have been made? This simple tool will help you to identify some patterns in your practice. In the next episode, we will continue discussing our roles as culturally responsive educators and what we can do to spot our implicit bias. It's almost that time! I can't believe that we are finally getting back together for a book club. This time, #CITLreads and morphed into #TCCBOOKCLUB. I'm super excited to join old friends to read new books. If you are interested in UDL and helping your learners, please feel free to join our book club. The more the merrier. Here is the book club outline. See what connects with you. It's BOOK CLUB time ! We are going to begin our deep dive into Seen, Heard, & Valued by Lee Ann Jung. I've had the chance to read this book already and I have to tell you it's a good one.
If you have time, please feel free to join our little book club. We are small, but we engage in some amazing conversations. This time, we have Ragini joining us as a co-host too. Exciting!
Ever since I was 18 years old, I heard about this magical place from my sister-in-law. She would tell me stories about her childhood, the places she would go, and the boy she used to love. All of these stories were mixed with her wonderful cooking and I quickly became entrenched in Peruvian culture. When the opportunity to lead a workshop arose in Lima, I was so excited to live my life-long dream to visit this magical country. What surprised me is that I felt like I was returning home instead of visiting for the first time. This speaks to how open-minded this culture is to foreigners and as a society in general. I bring this up, because we’ve just discussed how culture frames everything that we think, believe, and do in our lives. Now, we are transitioning towards how cultures program our brain. I’m not going to lie, this next part of the book makes me feel like a numpty. Zaretta Hammond begins the chapter by stating, “If we want to use culturally responsive teaching to support the cognitive development of dependent learners, we have to know how the brain uses culture to make sense of the world. When we know this, we can easily piggyback on the brain’s natural systems to activate its unique ability to grow itself.” I don’t know about you, but this sounds really beyond my pay grade, but I’m going to do my best. What are the parts of the brain?The one thing that helped me to understand this process is that Hammond describes the “physical structures of the brain as hardware” and “culture as the software”. Now, she is speaking in terms that are relatable. To help us understand our hardware, Hammond unpacks the three layers of the brain and the first layer is the oldest. Interesting. Let’s get into these layers and see what you think about all of this neuroscience. The first brain layer is our reptilian region or the lizard brain, because it’s made up of the two parts of a reptile’s brain: the brainstem and cerebellum. Apparently, this part of your brain does not think, but only reacts. The entire purpose of our reptilian region is to keep us alive. It regulations our breathing, heartbeat, body temperature, digestion, blood pressure and balance. Don’t ask why, but the picture in my mind is of Taylor Swift's bodyguards. I don’t see them personally, just a group of faceless men that must need to circle her at every given moment. They are constantly following her around to ensure that no harm happens to her when she is singing on stage or hanging out with that football player. For all the Swifties out there, you’re welcome for the plug for your queen. For those who can’t connect, you need to watch more YouTube and Tik Tok videos. In all seriousness, if we are using a computer hardware metaphor, this sounds like a cooling system to make sure we don’t physically or emotionally overheat. The second layer of the brain is the limbic region. Apparently, this region is only found in mammals. Yay for us. We made the club. I think this must be my favorite part of the brain, because it combines our emotions, behavior, and cognition to create memories and experiences. This helps us to be more prepared for future encounters that are similar in nature. In the limbic region, there are three parts that are important that Hammond refers to as the watcher, guard dog, and wikipedia. The Watcher (Reticular Activating System)
The Guard Dog (Amygdala)
The Wikipedia pages (Hippocampus)
When you put all of these parts together, it reminds me of an operating system of a computer that continually checks for viruses and any other threats to the system. The third layer is the neocortex region. This is where our executive functioning skills lie, such as planning, conceptual thinking, organization, and self-management. Per Hammond, this is where our “imagination lives.” Isn’t that just so beautiful? I think of every creative person that has shared their interpretation of the world through their choice of medium: visual arts, performing arts, coding, writing reports, sewing, furniture upcycling, and so much more. I’m on Canva everyday creating something, so my neocortex must be on overload. When I connect to the hardware metaphor, it reminds me of Windows Explorer with all of the folders that create organization for easy retrieval of the information. I’m always using it to find files and continue expanding on my ideas. Why does this all matter?When you think about our brains, we have to go to the neuron level. We have to look at all the layers of the brain work and how it impacts learning within a classroom. I know I’m not doing Hammond’s work justice, but she speaks to learning and the impact of complex information processing. Hammond states, “When the brain is learning something new it clusters neurons together to create a neural pathway, similar to a pathway in a forest. Neural pathways are important because when we go back and forth along this pathway when thinking or problem solving, it helps drive new learning deeper into long-term memory until it becomes automatic or deeply understood.” Basically, the neural pathways are important because it creates a track in our brain to tell us that this information is important and these are the ways to use it. We need these neural pathways to be revisited or the information will be erased. Hammond continues,”When we don’t practice or use new dendrites (the neural pathways) shortly after a learning episode, our brain prunes them by starving them and then reabsorbing them. It assumes you didn’t revisit the activity that grew the dendrites that information wasn’t important to keep.” This reminds me of things I’ve learned in the past that children need exposure within 24-48 hours to an idea or it’s lost forever. I’ve also heard that we need to revisit an idea 4-5 times before it permanently stays in our working memory. This makes sense based on what Hammond has proposed based on neural activity. How is the brain connected to culture?Be mindful of microaggressions. They are subtle everyday verbal and nonverbal slights, snubs, or insults which communicate hospital, derogatory, or negative messages to people of color based solely on their marginalized group membership. This reminds me of many films I’ve seen where someone walks into a shop or restaurant and they are not being served, while others enter freely.
Hammond warns, “ familiarize yourself with common actions or conditions that make students feel unsafe, even if they cannot articulate the sense of threat. Your definition of what feets threatening or welcoming may be different from the students’ definition.” This really resonated with me, because we don’t know the experiences different children have had while living in the world. We need to have honest conversations, so we don’t make these big mistakes. Cultural connections. Learning is more effective when we use “common cultural learning aids ---stories, music, and repetition.” This makes sense, because these are the things that we remember when engaging with our friends and family. Prior Knowledge connections. According to Hammond, “What we already know is organized according to our cultural experiences, values, and concepts.” Isn’t that beautiful? I want this to be my success criteria for when I’m teaching something new. Challenge thinking. Our brain growth is parked when we are learning something new. This thing has to be complex, open-ended, and a puzzle. We all yearn to solve these puzzles, because they stretch us beyond where we are to become independent thinkers. We all deserve this opportunity. I don't know about you, but my thinking has been challenged. This is the second time I have reviewed these ideas and it’s finally making sense. I strongly urge you to get a copy of this book, so you can make your own meaning of this section. This is foundational to everything else, so you need to know it well.
Zaretta Hammond states, “Building background knowledge begins with becoming knowledgeable about the dimensions of culture as well as knowledgeable about the larger social, political, and economic conditions that create inequitable education outcomes…teachers also have to be aware of their beliefs regarding equity and culture.” We all heard about culture being referred to as an iceberg, which is the work of psychologist Edgar H. Schein, but Hammond refers to it as a tree. A tree has many different levels, but it’s also part of a bigger ecosystem, rather than being socially isolated. This makes sense to me, because our cultures have similar roots to other cultures, but how we engage with them might be different. If you have ever seen a cultural iceberg or tree diagram, you know that there is a tip, which can be quite superficial. It’s what we can see, such as the food, dress, music, art, and holidays. These are at the surface culture level and if used to describe a culture can feel like tokenism. For example, when I moved to Dubai, someone asked me if I knew how to surf and did I know any celebrities, because I came from California. I began talking like a Valley Girl, if you don't know what I’m talking about researching it on YouTube, and shared that I knew so many actors I couldn’t count them all. The next level is shallow culture. This is what makes up everyday social interactions and norms, such as friendships, concepts of time, personal space between people, communication styles, and eye contact. These aspects help us to know how to interact within society. For example, when I moved to Germany, I had a difficult time interacting with everyone. Every time I left a shop, the clear would say “tschüss”. I didn’t know how to respond so I would hurry away until my German teacher shared that they were simply saying, “bye”. Hammond describes deep culture as a way of being consciously and unconsciously that drives our worldview, such as ethics, spirituality, health, and theories. “Deep culture also governs how we learn new information.” This part stopped me in my tracks. I had to think about an example of what this means. Hammond gives this example that adds clarity, “In Eastern culture, the color red means good luck while in most Western cultures red means danger.” This makes sense, because I usually associated red to danger and violence growing up in the United States. It’s sad to say, but these are the messages that I saw growing up with red being associated with blood and death. Not all Americans might think the same of course, but it has been a common thread since I was a little girl. Naturally, we are going to have learners with different cultural backgrounds in our classroom. So how do we honor each of them? Hammond suggests building relationships that are based on the deep level. Look at the shared values, principles, and worldviews that we all share and how they are demonstrated similarly and differently. This makes sense, because this is the heart of international or global mindedness. We seek for areas where we have similar ground and work up from there. Even within similar cultures, there are going to be differences based on how the culture is orientated towards collectivism and individualism. She speaks about people moving from different communities and how it can create individualism. I noticed this while teaching in Germany. Weather in Europe was cold in the winter, so many colleagues would scamper home after work, except my Spanish colleagues. They would frequently meet up and do things within their latin community in Koeln. Anyone was a friend, including myself, whereas German colleagues were much more reserved and primarily spent time with school mates. My Spanish colleagues were used to living in a collectivism society whereas my German colleagues were used to individualism. Neither is better than the other, but it does shape our level of expectations and interactions. Hammond delves further into this process by looking at Hofstede's list of individualism-collectivism continuums. Looking at individualism, Hofsted looked at self-orientation, individual effort, competition, etc. No surprise that the United States scored 91 out of 100. We are a very individualistic community that strives for excellence and living the American dream of going to university and home ownership. This isn’t a bad or good thing once again, but just another way of identifying similarities and differences. While Guatemala scored the lowest for individualism, which means there is a strong emphasis on making decisions within the community. It’s all about building up the community so everyone thrives. Very interesting. All of this discussion reminds me of an interesting book that I have on my shelf called The Culture Map. This book was recommended to me from a mentor, Dalit Halevi, about being more aware about how culture drives out interactions and transactions with each other in the business world. I remember reading a story about a woman who transferred to the United States for work. Her reviews were broad, so she assumed that she was doing a wonderful job while the employers were distressed about her approach of communication. This miscommunication occurred, because of the two contrasting ways of evaluating employees. It’s not right or wrong, just recognizing that we can’t assume that people from other cultures know our way of doing things. What are specific things we need to be mindful of in learning?Now that we have set the stage about how culture shapes our interactions, what are some specific things that we need to be mindful of in our practice?
Oral and written traditions: Some learners will prefer to share their ideas in a story-like format. This is natural in many cultures where oral traditions are alive and thriving. While sharing oral and written traditions, learners are building relationships with each other while demonstrating language skills such as figurative language, alliteration, movement, and emotion. Implicit bias: our unconscious attitude and beliefs towards certain groups based on their race, class, and language. An example is meeting learners from a certain community and determining that they cannot achieve, because of their linguistic ability. Structuralized racialization: how social, political, and economic policies strive to make neutral policies, but have racialized outcomes. An example, public/state school funding in the United States is based solely on property tax values. The areas with the lowest amount of values receive the least amount of support. This is justified, because they didn’t have to pay the same amount of property tax. It is deemed equitable. Culture of poverty: there are certain stereotypes of families with lower economic means as not caring about education, lifestyle choice, and being involved in illegal activity. For example, my eyes were opened about the culture of poverty while working in a low income school. Many parents were considered lazy, but they were struggling with their own issues and did the best they could. Cycle of poverty: this is where families are trapped in the cycle of poverty for three generations. There is no living member of the family that has ever possessed the intellectual, social, or cultural power to get out of poverty. This shapes the next generation to lose motivation in school, because they know that poverty will continue with their lives. I’ve seen this with my own eyes and it breaks my heart each time. As you can see, culture has a lot to do with our roles as educators. I’ve engaged with other people from around the world who tell me that racialization is a United States problem. Ironically, this was coming from a person of Caucasian heritage and I wonder if the answer would be the same from a person of color living in poverty.
The repetitive instruction sparks behavior issues, which increases learners from being removed from the learning setting. The decrease in instruction widens the gap for developing young people who can critically and creatively think. The pipeline can largely be attributed to the “pedagogy of poverty”. Hammond describes this as, “setting up students up to leave high school with outdated skills and shallow knowledge. They are able to regurgitate facts and concepts but have difficulty applying this knowledge to new and practical ways.” Unfortunately, you often see this at the elementary/primary level in poorer schools. Having worked in these conditions, I’ve seen the pedagogy of poverty used repeatedly by teachers who came from a similar background. They are often perpetuating the same low-level instruction to the next generation without knowing it.
AwarenessAwareness is the first part of this dynamic framework. We examine our own social and political viewpoint and how it impacts our instructional practices. We begin by asking ourselves these questions:
This particular portion of the framework became clear to me when I worked in a pre-dominant culture that was not my own. I had to learn about how my behavior was building a culture of responsiveness or a wall of exclusion. I had to face some truths about my behavior and level of privilege compared to my peers and learners. Learning PartnershipsLearning Partnerships focuses on building strong relationships where learners trust us and our process of delivering learning. They know that we are doing everything we can to create opportunities for their growth. We might develop these partnerships by asking these questions:
Relationships always come first before instruction. At the beginning of the school year, I heard Emmanuel Acho cite this quote: Rules before Relationships = Rebellion. This is true to all of us. As a teacher, we might take umbrage with a new administrator demanding curricular or cultural changes before they have learned about our teaching practice. If we don’t like it, why would we do it to our learners? Information ProcessingInformation Processing is about deepening our learner’s intellective capacity, which has been defined by Hammond as, “the increased power the brain creates to process complex information more effectively.” This requires us to examine our teaching practice to determine if we are using the adequate processes, strategies, tools, and products to help learners engage with the curriculum at a deeper level. We can examine our practice by answering these questions:
Community BuildingCommunity Building focuses on leveraging the power of the group to create a safe and caring environment that connects with the learner’s background. It’s difficult for them to connect to something they don’t understand, which may be our view of what a community looks and feels like based on our personal experiences.
Things to considerThe thing I appreciate about each chapter is there is a summary of the big ideas, invitation to inquiry questions for application, and additional resources to explore further. This really helps us as learners to broaden and deepen our perspective.
Can you believe we have only made it to chapter 2? There are so many nuggets of wisdom that I can’t contain myself! The thing that has stayed with me the most is preparing our learners for rigor, so we get out of the loop of watered down instruction for more economically disadvantaged youth. I’m so grateful that this book openly addresses so many concerns that rest upon my heart so beautifully. Before you know, we are heading into the chapters about neuroscience that went over my head. I’m excited to revisit them through a new lens to help us grow into loving and appreciating this amazing book. Have a blessed day. I'm always amazed at how many new terms come out in education to describe certain theories and practices. Sometimes, I get very confused. One set of terms that has caused debate is between culturally responsive teaching and critical race theory. Sonya Whitaker provides an easy to read article about the difference between critical race theory, which was meant for college students and culturally responsive teaching. I found an article by Future Ed that speaks to the benefits of culturally responsive teaching and its origin story. At the end of the day, both approaches to exploration within curriculum are centered on race, culture and sexual orientation and how those subjects should be included in classroom teaching. Depending on your culture, you might have strong opinions of these topics being shared in school. You have the right to your beliefs and values. For those who would like these explored in school, they also have the right to allow their child to be exposed to these ideas. The importance is that culture is one way that we can misunderstand each other. One idea in one culture is perfectly acceptable, while in another it is very taboo. This is the importance of culturally responsive teaching. Recognizing our differences, but allowing our unique voices enter into the curriculum design. This is what I champion for in the current educational landscape.
Let me start off by saying that, Zaretta Hammond is the first person in a long time that made me excited, weep, and find hope in a short span of time. This book made me excited to see all of the possibilities that are available to learners from diverse backgrounds if we just focus on building rigor instead of watering down curriculum. She made me weep, because I think of all the learners I wasn’t able to reach during my teaching career, because I didn’t have this book to guide me. Zaretta made me hope that if more people read this book, then we will have less learners falling through the cracks of the education system. I choose to focus on hope. In the forward, Dr. Yvette Jackson makes a harrowing statement that has stayed with me for the past year. She purports, “If all brains are wired for expansive learning, high intellectual performances, and self-determination, then students of color should be experiencing this state of being. Since neuroscience has proven the variety of the premise of this syllogism, this is the time for a seminal question to be reckoned with: Why are so many students of color underachieving?” This does make you wonder. If we are all neurological created to think at the same capacity, why is there always a deficit in certain communities and not others. Zaretta speaks about being able to get access to a different type of education than her peers within her neighborhood, because her family used her grandparent’s address. Even as a young girl, she noticed the differences in experiences, types of explorations, and resources that she had access to that her neighborhood friends did not.
As a trainer, I see this all the time. There are many well-meaning teachers who are working diligently to make school meaningful for their learners, but they teach to the test or to parent expectations. I call it checklist teaching. They look at all of the content standards or expectations within a given period of time and check off when they have taught them, because this is how they were trained. One thing I try to do is to look at content and process standards as tools to build learner independence. I train teachers to look at learning from a progression of gradual release of responsibility from a teacher-driven to a learner-driven process. This isn’t new and I didn’t come up with it. Many people have used this model to discuss inquiry (Kath Murdoch, Guy Claxton, Trevor MacKenzie) and assessment (Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano and Janet A. Hale), and other areas of teaching. Zaretta Hammond considers the difference between communities in access to learning skills for life. She states, “Classroom studies document the fact that underserved English learners, poor students, and students of color routinely receive less instruction in higher order skills development than other students. Their curriculum is less challenging and more repetitive.” This made me reflect on my own experiences as a teacher and which schools were routinely less challenging and more repetitive. These were the schools that were so worried about their testing outcomes than learner growth. They put pressure on teachers to prepare for the end of the year exam from January through rote reading and math exercises. Teaching became a process: a reading passage put on the overhead projector, learners parroting what the teacher stated, and repeating the process with a new question. This is not learning, this choral reading. As learners, we thrive when we are put into moments of productive struggle, where we must solve problems individually and collectively that rely upon skills that we have recently mastered. This process allows learners to apply their thinking to relevant and significant issues, so they can transfer it again in the future. When we teach the test, this productive struggle is not happening.
This pressure around performance creates a huge anxiety in learners, especially those missing fundamentals skills to keep up with the rigor of the curriculum. This creates a dependence on the school-to-prison pipeline. Without adequate skill development, many children of color are “pushed out of school because they cannot keep up academically because of poor reading skills and lack of socio-emotional support to deal with their increasing frustration” (Hammond, 2015, pg 13).
All of these ideas made me think about what we are doing as educators to aid or block learner agency from happening. This beginning portion of the book is quite heavy, because this is a deep-rooted systemic problem in my country. We have a strong divide of who is properly educated and who is not. As an IB educator, I’ve always believed that every child deserves the same access to education. Yet, have I always provided them the tools to be independent? Honestly, I have not. I hope the rest of this journey in the book study will help both of us to awaken our understanding of what it means to be culturally responsive in our teaching practice. For now, what have been your aha moments as we have explored the first portion of this magical book? If you could tell Zaretta Hammond one thing, what would it be? In the meantime, check out Zaretta’s keynote address at the Toddle TIES 2023 conference. You can access it here: https://www.toddleapp.com/ties/speakers/ I can’t wait to uncover the hidden gems in this book and see how it impacts my practice. What is culturally responsive teaching? How does it impact the brain? What is it's connection to inclusion? These were some of the questions that passed through my mind as a discovered the new book that we are going to uncover in my podcast. Get ready to have your mind expanded.
Did you know that Zach Rondot and Grayson McKinney wrote two books about the Expert Effect? Want to know more about what these authors? Scan the QR code below or click on this link. Happy nquiry reading! As we close out The Expert Effect book club, I just want to take a moment to thank all of our #CITLreads regulars who get up in the middle of the night or the crack of dawn to attend from around the world. I appreciate you so much! You make our book club what it is, so thank you for continuously returning for a new adventure. What is selective perfectionism?When learners are given the space to create, oftentimes there is a side effect of selective perfectionism. What is it? According to the Urban Dictionary, selective perfectionism is when we choose to complete random tasks to perfection, but lack the ability to perfect or even attempt the other necessary tasks in life. Where do we see this play out in real life? This past week, I had two major deadlines while battling terrible allergies. I didn’t have the energy to deal with them, so I spent a lot of time reading regency era novels, like Pride and Prejudice, to pass my time. I read with perfect ability, but I couldn’t muster up the energy to do the things I had to do. Why do we engage in selective perfectionism? Oftentimes, the tasks we are striving to achieve are uncertain or there are too many steps to them. We get lost in the volume of the process. As a selection perfectionist, we have the full potential to get it done, but we choose not to do it. In other words, we become procrastinators. How does it impact learner inquiry? Something I’ve learned through years of experience is that many times we procrastinate, because we are overwhelmed by the process or outcome. This will happen with your learners, if each step of the process is not clearly outlined. Even then, they might get bogged down, because they don’t know how to complete each step. To circumvent this situation, we need to heavily model and guide the process from whole group, small group, to individual learning situations. Think like an early years teacher who must repeat the steps over and again until independence has been achieved. As our learners age, it’s almost an expectation that they will learn it in one lesson. Why should we allow learners to connect globally?We’ve talked about ways to reach out to the local and global community. In most of this section of the book, Grayson and Zach provide ample resources where you can connect to organizations and different industry experts that can help your learners succeed. Many times, the biggest obstacle is YOU. I’m sorry to be harsh, but I speak from personal experience. I used to hold my learners' expertise in my classroom, but a learner requested permission to contact a famous marine biologist to support their understanding of healthy oceans. WIth their parent’s guidance, my learners were able to connect with the marine biologists, which expanded their understanding of human impact on the oceans far greater than any video or book. There are many networks that exist to help learners to connect with experts. You need to find the right one for your class and you. Main Takeaways from this Book StudyReaching beyond the borders of your classrooms is where true application happens. When we engage with real experts in various fields, we get a bigger picture of how the world works. We learn to question, engage in academic language, interview, reflect, and apply. These are necessary skills for thinking humans. As a fifth grade teacher, I’m seeing the connections between these experiences and preparing for the PYP Exhibition. Before the pandemic, there may have been many constraints to engaging with an expert. With Zoom, the world is literally opened to us. If it were me, I’d start small in my local area and have learners research people they would like to connect to and design what they want the conversation to look and feel like. Make them take ownership of the experience, because the person doing the work is doing the learning. The Expert ExpeditionWelcome, dear learners. We know why you’re here. You’re chasing adventure like a brave buccaneer! Sailing the high seas and surfing the web, Searching for answers From Algiers to Zagreb. No, nothing can stop you! You’re a kid on a mission, and it’s finally time for your big expedition. You’re not after riches like silver and gold… The thing that you seek can’t be bought or be sold. Yes, you’re after knowledge - There’s so much to know. it’s worth more than treasure in a ship’s cargo hold! So off you must go with your sails flown unfurled. To get the whole story, go out into the world! Our Trip around the GlobeTo my global audience, I just want to thank you again for enriching my life through social media, our #CITLreads book clubs, and so much more. Let’s stay connected, because we are stronger together. Over the next two years, I hope to continue to engage with you virtually and in-person. I plan to travel around the world meeting like-minded educators and sharing ideas. This fall, I begin the journey within Europe. I will be participating in an IB continuum math conference at the International School of Stuttgart. If your school is interested in participating in a professional development with me while I am in the area, just let me know at [email protected]. The rest of the world, I’m coming to you shortly. In the meantime, I have some reflections about the top five places with the greatest listeners. This is one point in time, but I always seem to have a personal connection with each place. Melbourne, Australia: If you’ve followed me on my podcast journey, you know how much I love this city. It’s the place that I learned that public relations was not for me and I wanted to give back to my community. Little did I know that I would become a teacher, but passing Wesley College a couple times a week must have left its impact. Mumbai, India: The people of India have always fascinated me with its rich culture, history, Bollywood films, and Thali dinners. While living in Dubai, I had the pleasure of visiting this beautiful country, but only in certain regions. I didn’t have a chance to visit Mumbai, but it’s on my list! I’m grateful to have built a lasting friendship with Vidhya, whom many of you know if you are on social media and I can’t wait to visit her in Tamil Nadu. Singapore: I traveled through this lovely island country many times and I had to venture downtown on a trip. It’s amazing to see east meet west in this mighty nation and I hope to return again soon. Hanoi, Vietnam: I have yet to visit Vietnam, but I have friends who live in Ho Chi Minh City, so I know a journey to Hanoi is on my list! Brisbane, Australia: Hello Brissie, you are the one spot I didn’t get to on my Aussie adventures during uni. I plan to return back to the country that made me feel so much at home and I can’t wait to see you. I have some mates there and a catch up is long overdue. Sydney was number #6, so I’ll chuck them in too on my adventures in Oz tour. Thank you for joining the journey of The Expert Effect. I look forward to exploring new ideas and worthy reads in the upcoming months! Be sure to follow the authors on Twitter: Grayson McKinney @GMcKinney2 and Zach Rondot @MrRondot. This week, we were fortunate to have the authors of the Expert Effect join our conversation! Unfortunately, I was unable to attend, because I was traveling for a workshop. The positive thing is that we were able to record the session. Click here to watch the session. From the beginning, I was captured by a quote that lingers. “Learning should feel like discovering something new, not simply being told a fact.” How many of us are a product of this learning model? We were told as young learners to be quiet, compliant and do our work. This touched me, because as a second language learner, the traditional model didn’t work for me. I needed more experiential learning to connect the ideas together, which drove my teaching practice. This idea was transferred to our book club chat as my co-host Mike Medvinksy asked a simple question: The responses were interesting.
Grayson and Zach usually ask, “What do you remember most about school?” Most people remember the things that they were doing, creating, and making an impact on our lives. If these are the things that we remember the most about school, how do we support it? Creating Memorable Moments
When Giving Students Choice Over Their Learning…What Stays the Same for All?
How can we Differentiate?
Two Truths and a Lie When you become a master of the curriculum for your grade level and specialty, it is easier to know where the learning journey is going to create more learning peaks. It takes time to create a culture of learning that is focused on project-based learning. There will be inevitable changes, but by knowing our content, we can weather the storm. Pacing is key to this process. Each child has their own pace for taking in information, organize their ideas, and take action. By knowing our curriculum, it allows us that flexibility, because we know what is coming up ahead. You need to be prepared to be flexible. What does this mean? You need to have a plan, but be flexible enough to go where the learners want to go. Newer teachers often bring a fresh perspective and open-mind to curriculum development. It allows for fresh ideas. The SAMR ModelHow do we leverage technology to drive our learning and teaching beyond using Zoom? How do we use technology in a different way? Look at this SAMR model interpretation by Emily Cordwell.
George CourosGeorge Couros urges educators to be mindful of technology being used as a thing to do, instead of a tool to create thinking opportunities. This aligns with the goal of the approaches to learning to create independent thinkers who are able to use tools to create their own learning pathways. The connection I make to this idea is the current rage of ChatGPT. I know many educators that are going gaga for this tool, because it can spit out lesson and unit plans at the drop of the hat. It’s a wonderful tool to use, but what is our ultimate purpose?
Ultimate Purpose
There is a major difference between the two answers. I am all for using technology to support our learning, but it doesn’t replace your ingenuity, creativity, and connection with your learners. We can be easily lured in by the easy, but I would argue that the productive struggle is where the most growth happens. I’ve truly enjoyed unpacking this section of the Expert Effect and listening to Grayson and Zach’s thoughts in our book club. Be sure to check out both in the club tab on my website. Welcome to the third episode in our series about the Expert Effect. I apologize for such a delay, but sometimes our personal life takes time away from our passion projects. I hope to get back on track with this fabulous book in hopes to help you get connected with the expert effect. Something we investigated in this section was talking with experts. Our opening question made me ponder about how well we connect with others. Hmm…this question made me question, do I engage with experts near and far or do I tend to rely upon the known in my community? I greatly enjoy engaging with others from my local area, but what are some benefits from engaging with others with different perspectives and ways of doing things? How might this enrich the learning experiences of our learners, so they can develop international mindedness? Some of the ideas from our book club included: Expert talks: getting people from different cultures, occupations, and perspectives to share their ideas and stories with our learners Field trips: go on physical and virtual field trips to enrich the learning experiences. There is nothing better than touching ideas that we find in a book. I’ll never forget the week long science camp that I attended with my learners while living in Dubai. We learned about life in the desert, GPS, different types of sports, and building bonds. I can’t imagine what that must have been like for a child, because it was pretty amazing as an adult! Parent community: we keep speaking about our parents, because they are a wealth of knowledge. Depending on culture, you may want to ask your parents to come into school to share their ideas, past experiences, and reflections. Not all parents want to participate, so be mindful of this as well. As the conversation emerged, it was really interesting that our group kept going back to some experts that we have connected to as a teacher learner. No surprise that Trevor MacKenzie’s name kept popping up, because of his ability to connect through social media via webinars, online workshops, Toddle presentations, sketchnotes, pictures, and more. One of my personal favorites is Erin Dealey. She is an author of many picture books for younger learners, but I was connected to her while teaching in Dubai through Skype for Education. Long before the technology existed, Erin was chatting with my fourth-grade learners about her process of taking a seed story and turning it into a published piece of work. She shared about her process, frustration, and elation once a story came together. Erin was so relatable that my reluctant writers were eager to get started once we ended the call. Recently, we’ve had the chance to reconnect on social media, which brought back that sparkle for writing to me as an adult learner. There are lesser known educators who have greatly impacted my thinking through their selfless sharing and interactions on social media. Here are a few names to connect with if you haven’t already. @levi_allison42 Levi Allison is a connector of ideas and people. He has helped me to shape so many ideas and increase my understanding of transdisciplinary learning through the lens of the specialist teacher. He is always seeking ways to make local and global connections through reflective practice. @ajoytoteach Amber Bernard is a dynamic first grade teacher who uses play to get her learners to connect to big ideas. I always enjoy reading her posts to make me think deeper about the needs of younger learners. Her learners are always connecting ideas back to the bigger world. @MathewBhavna Bhavna Mathew inspires me to be more connected. She is a truly globally minded educator and shares her passion through her book clubs, webinars, and free materials. Her use of the UN Sustainble Development goals is truly inspirational and helps learners to make deeper connections to issues facing our global community. Talking with ExpertsOnce our learners get excited to talk with experts, they can’t stop! How do we prepare them for the experience? One possible way to teach them how to ask a variety of open and closed questions. A tool that I frequently use as a trainer and educator is the Wiederhold Question Matrix. It provides leveled questions that lead to a factual, conceptual, and debatable response. Try it out! You can find a copy in my guide, Plan for Inquiry. Chalk TalkTo synthesize our thinking, we went into break out rooms to participate in Chalk Talk, a visible thinking routine. Here are the steps: What connections can you make to others’ responses?
What questions arise as you think about the ideas and consider the responses and comments of others?
A final question that I will leave with you: Please join us for our next episode as we delve into pages 91 - 130 of the Expert Effect!
Welcome to the second episode exploring the book, The Expert Effect by Grayson McKinney and Zach Rondot. It has been an absolute pleasure to read this book and learn how to set the conditions for engaging with experts. Now that we have started with our WHY, we can move forward with engaging with experts. Here are some ideas from our book club group
As an educator, I would use all of these resources to enrich the learning experiences of each of my units of inquiry. Something that can bring about excitement is using your parents, fellow educators, and peers as part of a human library. One possible idea is to post the topics that you will be exploring in the year by unit of inquiry. Ask care-givers to sign up for topics of interest or areas of expertise. This will greatly enrich learning experiences, because learners will have a human interaction about topics they are exploring, which is more experiential than reading about it on a page. Warm-Up ActivityOne quote that resonated with me in this section was this one posed on page 31. What do you think? Our group discussed that our roles as teachers have changed from being a teacher to a facilitator of information. We no longer are the fountain of ideas, but rather a guide to process and analyze the information. It’s also about transformation. We are going away from controlling the power of the learning experience. We are transitioning towards co-creating learning with our learners, because the person who wields the power is the one who learns. There is also an increased focus on the learning engagement design. We are no longer looking for information recall, but rather a vehicle to bring about critical and creative thinking. We referred back to this EXPERT model, but this time looking at it as a success criteria for choosing experts that will resonate with your learners. This new lens helped to deepen my approach to using a variety of experts, because sometimes a person may be brilliant, but they struggle to relay it in a kid-friendly way. For our play with ideas section, we went into break out rooms to complete his prompt: Make a list of strategies that will bring about more local and global connections Some ways to connect
These are a sampling of ideas found in The Expert Effect. What are your ideas that you’ve used? How do you bring about more local and global connections into your practice? Be sure to post on Twitter @thinkchat2020 and LinkedIn @lugerlach. To close out the experience, we used the PZ visible thinking routine, Unveiling Stories. This is an interesting routine to get your learners to peel back the layers of what are the untold stories. Our book club applied our understanding as seekers of knowledge and how we take on different roles as book whisperers. What’s the story: becoming a book whisperer by engaging in this book club intellectually and emotionally What is the human story: embracing our own love of reading and learning, so we can inspire our learners What is the world story: acknowledging that everyone in the world has the capacity to become a book whisperer, irregardless of ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, disability, and language acquisition What is the new story: connecting to inquiry and concept-based learning. Our reading and understanding of text increases drastically when applied to an inquiry model and viewed through a conceptual lens. What is the untold story: sharing our stories helps us to own our truth. For some of us, we are lonely, sad, disconnected, and frustrated by our condition. Becoming a book whisperer can help us to overcome our obstacles and see beyond our present circumstance. How are you setting the conditions, so your learners can unveil their stories?Welcome to the #CITLreads Book Club for The Expert Effect by Grayson McKinney and Zach Rondot. I am so excited to explore this book through my podcast and appreciate the authors for indulging my connections and reflections. Choosing Your RolesSomething we do differently in our book club is that we use a variety of roles to guide our practice. Last year, we were sparked by this process using the Pop-Up Studio book club kit by Misty Paterson. This year, we are modifying the process through the lens of the IB Approaches to Learning or ATL and Kath Murdoch’s skill that focuses on being a Contributor. Here are our roles. Think about the role you will take as you go through this week’s episode and how it will shape the lens that you view the content. We are modeling best practice, so we can replicate it with our learners. Even our early years learners can engage in a modified form to get them thinking about roles in our reading. Examples in Action
Start with WHYGrayson and Zach remind us to start with our WHY as educators as discussed in Simon Sinek’s video, How Great Leaders Inspire Action. I’ve referred to this model at the beginning of my podcast series in the Five Day Inquiry Challenge. Think about our school year, some of us are half way through while others are transitioning towards summer holidays. Try to answer this question: There were many ideas that stayed with me, but it was always founded on our passion to shape young learners. I believe that all teachers have this motivation at the heart of their practice. The main thing to consider is how do we share our “WHY” on those difficult days? This is difficult for everyone, but we all need to find our way to take care, so our “WHY” does not fizzle out over time. Defining an ExpertWhat is the success criteria that someone is an “expert” at something? Our book club attempted to define this using a Frayer model in small groups. It was really interesting to hear everyone’s interpretations of what an expert looked like and what they did to show their expertise. The real aha came, when I shared Grayson and Zach’s definition. E is for Experienced: “We want our learners to hear from the people who have made mistakes and learned from them, not some self-proclaimed, know-it-all, perfect guru.” X is for eXciting; “No matter what subject, if we have a passionate expert, kids will get excited too, creating a positive effect on the entire learning process. P is for Purposeful: “We do not want you connecting your students with experts just for the sake of doing it; it must be purposeful to the content in your classroom.” E is for Empowering: “Connecting them with experts empowers them to keep the dream alive or create a new vision for their future.” R is for Real: “We want experts to have real-life experience to talk about and uncover the relevance.” T is for Talk to Kids: “We must find people who can speak on a level your children can understand, relate to, and learn from.” As I look at these definitions, I plan to use it as a success criteria in selecting experts to use with learners in the future. It’s so important that we find the right people who will connect with our learners in our varying contexts. Essential AgreementsTo begin the process of engaging with experts, we need to set some ground rules of how we act and what we do to prepare for these learning situations. In the PYP, we call these essential agreements. It was fun to listen to various ways that fellow educators inspire their learners to create essential agreements in their classrooms. Kath Murdoch shared a strategy a few years ago that stayed with me and made such a positive impact in my learning community.
This process allows for more learner ownership and acceptance of the positive and negative consequences, because they created them. Name-Describe-ActWe concluded our session using the PZ visible thinking routine, Name Describe Act. Think about your practice and answer these questions.
After this book study, I decided to try something different. Instead of picking random goals for my action plan, I pulled quotes from each week and partnered them with the enhanced PYP types of action: participation, advocacy, social justice, social entrepreneurship, and lifestyle choices. I chose 3 or sometimes more quotes that resonated with me and placed them in a column. At the end, I created a menu of options. My next task is to choose ONE goal from each column to work on this school year. Now, let’s go through the process together and you choose which one resonates with you. To be honest, it might be easier to read the blog post for this one, but we’re still gonna try it out! I’d have paper and pencil ready too. Download the attached file to see the table of possible reflections. Have fun with it! ![]()
Welcome to our final session of our club for Getting Personal with Inquiry Learning by Kath Murdoch. This session leads out with a bang by looking at resources that make personal inquiry manageable. A big thanks to Bhavna Mathew for being our moderator. As usual, she posed some deep questions for us to ponder and we used a visible thinking routine to synthesize our ideas. What a great way to end our book club! Making it manageableMost authors leave the back of the book for the bibliography, endless templates, and genuinely a menagerie of goodies that seem overwhelming. Not Kath, she provided us with some purpose and reminders when curating our material. Librarian and Library SpacesThe library can be a valuable tool when getting learners to engage with personal inquiries. The space is no longer a stagnant place of informational retrieval. Now, library spaces have morphed into communal spaces that are dynamic and often driven by collaboration. Teacher librarians have morphed their roles to meet the demands of the learning space design. Kath reminds us, “School librarians can assist enormously with ensuring that physical, digital, and human resources are available to all learners and the library or resource center is seen not just as a place for knowledge consumption but also knowledge creation. Like the art and music studio or tech lab in a school, the library might be made available during personal inquiry workshops, meaning learners have more access to diverse spaces in which to work on their projects and can tap into the expertise of the librarian.” Don’t be afraid to partner with your librarian, because they are passionate and knowledgeable about texts that will support personal inquiries. ResearchWhen we have our learners begin their personal inquiry, Kath warns that many educators feel the need to get everyone on a divide to conduct “research”. The internet is just one form of research that we can conduct. Yes, there are a lot of YouTube videos that are useful, but we want our learners to create on their own. Kath warns, “Different kinds of inquiries require different resources: physical, digital, local, and human.” How are we preparing our units with this in mind? Here is a suggestion that Kath provides that I think might take the pressure off in finding authentic research. “Many personal inquiries we have undertaken in my partner schools have involved learners in conducting surveys and interviews - the data from which became their main source of information. For creative (making) projects, it can be helpful to make learners aware of the material resources available in the learning spaces, so they can pitch their ideas accordingly.” Let’s not make it more complicated than it has to be. Human ResourcesOut of all of her suggestions, this resource resonated with me the most. “Within our communities, we can build a resource bank of experts to contact for personal inquiries - creating what is often referred to as a human library…a way of bringing people’s stories to the public in a safe and supported way, the emphasis being to challenge stereotypes and champion diversity. Human libraries are held as events around the world where ‘people are the books’.” Who can be part of your human library?” We might include: parents, grandparents, aunts/uncles, educators, leadership, staff, and older students. When we are curating our human library, Kath presents some talking stems that will spark the conversations and help to dig deeper into a human story:
Tangible ResourcesAs always, Kath has left us with a lot of resources that we can explore on our own to deepen our practice. Be sure to take a look.
As I was talking with my peers in a break out room, I shared that even the resources section of the book had a purpose and inspired inquiry. This speaks to Kath’s passion for her work and helping us to improve our own. Be sure to join for the next episode as I try to make meaningful action with the enhanced PYP. C97: Documenting, Reflecting, Assessing, and Sharing the Process in order to Take Action (3.6-3.7)8/23/2022 Welcome to Week 7 of our Getting Personal with Inquiry Learning book club. This fabulous book by Kath Murdoch has stretched our capability of thinking about personal inquiry learning. This episode, we will explore how to document, reflect, assess, and share our process, so we are able to take meaningful action, which are sections 3.6 - 3.7 of the book. We have to give a big thank to Ragini who moderated our session this week and helped us to dive into this section. She is a true delight and we are so grateful that she shared her insight and talents with us. She was the ultimate risk-taker this week by moderating, when she usually enjoys observing and discussing ideas. Ragini, we couldn’t have done this week without you! Also, a big thanks to Kath for joining our book club after a full day of teaching and travel. She contributed to our conversations and we appreciate her dedication to our club. Documenting, reflecting, and assessingAs an inquiry educator, I am always seeking ways where I can give a learning engagement that is a reflection and a piece of assessment. I like more bang for my buck, since time is so short in the school day. Kath suggests, “The three elements of documenting, reflecting and assessing are intertwined. In the act of documenting learning, for example, we come to understand more about the learner's thinking which prompts us to reflect and subsequently consider new possibilities and pathways for their learning.” How is it that she takes the ideas in my mind and captures them so beautifully in print? This is half of my joy in reading this book! There are many possibilities of documenting the personal inquiry. Kath reminds us to make sure, “Recording the learning should never compromise the learning itself; ideally the documentation contributes to and is part of the process.” Sometimes, I think we feel the overwhelming need to monitor and document everything that is being produced. This can be quite taxing on your brain, your body, and your learners. Remember, documentation can be in the forms of “photos, videos, handwritten notes, shared digital documents, drawings, diagrams, artworks, and voice recordings. This documentation is about making the learning visible.” One of my favorite examples of how to document data is the triple-entry journal. Kath provides an example on page 138. Quite simply, it’s a running reflection that answers these categories. Recount
Reflect
Plan
Can I just tell you, I love this so much! It scaffolds back to the main idea in the last episode that the power remains with the learner. They are doing all of the thinking and planning. Love this! Here are some tools that Kath has put together to guide this process.
When we are guiding our learners, we need to collaborate with our peers to calibrate what we are looking for as we document, reflect, and assess. Kath suggests, “Having a shared understanding of what we are looking and listening for, alongside an attitude of openness to the unexpected, makes for authentic, transparent assessment.” By having a shared understanding, it shapes what we are looking for as we engage with our learners. It guides what we will document and bring back to our colleagues to assess. On page 150, Kath provides a protocol for collaborative inquiry into learner progress, which outlines each step of the calibration. Genius! One idea that I’ve not used is paired interviews. Kath states, “At the end of a personal inquiry, before or after learners have shared their learning with others, learners can team up to interview each other about the experience.” I really like this idea of hosting the interview before the sharing, so they aren’t focused on the product, but the process they have gone through. This will make it easier to share those ideas with the rest of class or small group later. On pages 148-49, there are some reflection sheets for early years and elementary age. Sharing and taking action“Enabling even our youngest learners with the belief that they can take action to bring about change is surely one of the most significant purposes of schooling in the twenty-first century.” While reading this quote, my mind reeled through different children that have inspired me by their actions. Here are some young people who have taken action that you may know while others you may not.
These are everyday learners who saw a need and filled it. How did they do it? They have parents, educators, and community members that saw their passion and set the conditions for it to turn into action. To create those conditions, we can begin by asking “so what” questions. Kath reminds, “The implications of this deceptively simple question can leave us feelings both inspired and decidedly uncomfortable.” Here are some of her “so what” questions that can be found on page 151.:
Kath quotes Michele Martin, which sums up our purpose in taking action beautifully. She says, “It’s about giving kids a say, a choice. Letting them delve into something that they’re really deeply passionate about for their own selves, in their own lives or for the greater good of the community or even their family. It’s about what they really want to do in their heart. So they need to see that we’re invested in it as they are. And then they want to do it. They want to act. It’s not ‘I want to do it for this teacher’ - ‘I want to do it for myself but they (the adults) have got my back’.” What can we do to support action daily? Kath has many suggestions that you can read more in-depth about on pages 153-154; 158. My favorite is an entire page of ways to make a contribution. It’s almost like a Wordle of big ideas and the most relevant are bolded. To share with our peers and provide feedback, Kath has given many examples on pages 154-157. No surprise, she has some amazing questions and exit tickets that spark the reflection while sharing feedback. Well, that’s it for this episode. Be sure to join us for section 4. |
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