October 19, 2021 by mguhlin

MyNotes: Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, Chapter 5

In this entry, I continue sharing my notes of Zaretta Hammond’s Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. In this entry, I share my takeaways from Chapter 5.

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My Notes

Notes for Chapter 5: Building the Foundation of Learning Partnerships. Again, all uses of the acronym “CRT” refer to Culturally Responsive Teaching rather than Critical Race Theory. My own comments appear in square brackets, and I’ve tried to use quotes to capture exact wording. Most of the time, I’m trying to paraphrase to make it easier for me to remember ideas and shorten text.

Positive relationships exemplify “caring” as one of the major pillars of CRT.
The focus on caring is different than regular schooling’s focus on “the technical aspects of curriculum coverage and testing,” also known as “the factory model of schooling.”
The key ingredient to assisting culturally and linguistically diverse learners is the focus on student-teacher relationships. It’s important to “reframe and reposition” relationships students and teachers have.
“In collectivist, community-based culture, relationships are the foundation of all social, political, and cognitive endeavors.”
Relationships became so important to our survival, the brain created an entire social engagement system to ensure we stay connected and in good standing with the tribe (Porges, 2011).
Trust is at the heart of positive relationships. Care is the mechanism for generating trust resulting in positive relationships.
Not trusting teachers has consequences for students:
Students are unwilling to submit themselves to the uncertainties of new learning
They avoid risk
They keep concerns private
They are cynical of teachers’ instructions
Neuroscience says that “the brain feels safest and relaxed when” people are connected to trusted others.
One way the brain does this is to release oxytocin. Oxytocin release is occurs when:
Smiles
Pat on the back
Touch on the arm
Gestures of affirmation and respect
When you stimulate the release of oxytocin in others, your brain releases it as well. This is because when you are seen as trustworthy by another, it stimulates your own brain.
To make sure we connect with others, our brains developed mirror neurons to keep us in sync with each other.
Mirror neurons encourage us to match our body language and facial expressions to the other person’s to signal trust and rapport.
The culturally responsive teacher relies on this to make more personal, authentic connections with students.
Culturally Responsive relationships aren’t just something nice to have…they are critical [Anyone who has seen a teacher using CRT knows this is true]
The way students open up to us include:
When teachers show they are authentic and caring of the student
Build a culture of care that assists dependent learners move towards independence
This is what Hammond calls a “learning partnership”
Gay points out “caring within a culturally responsive context automatically places teachers in a different kind of emotional and academic partnership with students.” This relationship is:
anchored in affirmation
enjoys mutual respect
validating belief that improvement is possible
Learning partnership’s three components (combine the first two to yield the third) include:
Rapport: focus is on building an emotional connection and trust
Alliance: student and teacher come together to form a team to tackle learning challenges that arise
Cognitive insight: make the invisible, visible, so the teacher can understand students’ thinking. The hope is that the student will become more aware of his own learning and take ownership of his own learning efforts [“self-regulated learner” might be another way of referring to that, as Hattie describes it]
Hammond critiques how teachers currently try to figure out a student’s learning process. They tend to rely on test scores or assessments. Instead, you need to build a safe learning environment where students feel comfortable being “open and vulnerable enough to show you their learning moves…”
For diverse learners, affirmation and rapport are connected. This isn’t about building up student esteem. Rather, it’s about “building trust, not self-esteem.”
The goal is to lower the level of cortisol (fear) since it stops learning for about 20 minutes, and stays in the body for up to three hours.
Trust allows the brain to focus on “creativity, learning, and higher order thinking.”
Lack of care over time leads to mistrust. It puts students and parents on the defensive since it becomes apparent that the teacher doesn’t care.
Validation is the teacher’s “explicit acknowledgement to students that you are aware of the inequities that impact their lives.”
Building trust is a slow process. Use the following strategies to build it:
Listening, not only to words but to the emotional quality of the conversation. Two questions may help:
Ask “How are you?” before engaging
Ask “What are you excited about these days outside of school?”
Suspend judgement and listen with compassion
Honor the speaker’s cultural way of communicating
Be present and devote your attention to the speaker
Trust generators
Share your own vulnerable moments. Storytelling is a solid approach that creates a deeper connection with others
Connect with students at local events and cultivate a sense of familiarity
Create a bond based on dislikes, hobbies, etc. show a common affinity
Show concern for issues and events important to others
Demonstrate competence through skills and knowledge that help others
Put trust generators to work in your classroom, planning them
Hammond offers some specific planners and suggestions for employing trust generators
Steps to assessing current reality in the classroom:
Identify a specific student to build a learning partnership with
Assess the quality of the relationship with the student
Create a system to examine and focus/listen to student
Track student responses over time
Identify one small change you can make to build trust
Track the impact of the one small change
Express care in nonverbal ways that show your concern
Find time to play and have fun as a class
Practice affirmation
Show appreciation for students’ native language, especially proverbs, poetry, and idioms that are passed from generation to generation
Positive interactions occur when you show care, affirm student. Negative interactions occur when you reprimand or redirect student.

Reflections

Again, Hammond offers a practical guide every teacher should be aware of. She provides quite a few checklists and planners you can use in her book. I also left out quite a bit since she illustrates with stories and suggestions. What I found most helpful was her list of trust generators. Can you believe that I have never read a more concise list of trust generators in any of the teaching culture books I’ve seen? Of course, that was my master’s work in BBL with ESL Concentration. There is a recognition that teaching with culture in mind is important, but the goal is always with learning the target language (usually the language of the dominant culture, English). Trust generators seems like such an obvious, albeit seldom practiced set of strategies.

I have had the opportunity to witness when these strategies are not put into practice, as well as see master teachers who do them naturally. The differences are dramatic in terms of student growth. Hammond’s point about building learning partnerships, making students aware of being part of a team, is something I haven’t seen much of in my entire career, except with adult learners. Often, students are simply told what to do…they do it or else.

It may not surprise you to know I wrote 72 referrals in my second year of teaching with inner city bilingual/ESL sixth grade students BEFORE Christmas. I failed profoundly in establishing rapport with students. They were beyond my experience as a privileged educator who went to school in private school. It wasn’t until I prepared a Crock pot meal in December that the ice broke. Sigh.

On the other hand, my wife uses trust generators as Hammond describes almost without thinking. They are natural to her, and I suspect come from her experience as a kindergarten teacher. In her classroom, relationships come first, which allow academics to flourish in time. If I had to do it over again, I would do whatever it took to build those relationships with my sixth graders first. Of course, I didn’t remain so abysmal at connecting with my K-12 students, but much of it was due to how wonderful my third and fifth grade students were. I am grateful to them for showing me the way.

Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure