Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

“Evaluate a Real-World Example”

In this activity, students will demonstrate their understanding of Hammond’s key ideas by using them as a standard for the evaluation of real-world teaching practices.

One of Hammond’s contentions is that even teachers who are familiar with culturally responsive teaching commonly struggle to effectively apply the pedagogy. Can you recognize when this pedagogy is or is not being employed, and if it is, whether it is being employed for its intended purposes? In this activity, you will choose a video of a lesson being presented in a real-world classroom and evaluate the display of culturally responsive teaching practices.

Create a Rubric

Use key ideas from Hammond’s book to create a rubric to measure teacher performance. Your rubric should be divided into three columns:

• The first column should list six to eight key ideas from Hammond’s book that focus on classroom environment, teacher behavior, and other items that can be observed during instructional time.
• The second column should give specific examples of what each idea might look like in practice. These examples can come from Hammond’s book and your own understanding of her ideas.
• The third column is where you will take observation notes as you watch the video.

Watch a Video and Make Observation Notes

The state of Massachusetts maintains a database of classroom observation videos as part of its effort to help school personnel recognize culturally responsive teaching. Choose a video from this site.

• Watch the video and make notes in the final column of your rubric in the appropriate category about the pedagogical practices being demonstrated.
• You should make note of both effective culturally responsive teaching and missed opportunities to apply this pedagogy.

Discuss With a Peer

Meet with a partner and share your impressions. Describe your rubric, the lesson, and your evaluation of the lesson’s cultural responsiveness. Ask your partner for feedback on your ideas; make notes about this feedback directly on the rubric itself in a different color.

Teaching Suggestion: This activity can be completed as homework or during class. If students are working on the activity during class but do not have access to individual devices and headphones or earbuds, you might wish to simply choose one video from the Massachusetts Department of Education site for everyone to simultaneously watch and evaluate. If they need to create their rubrics on paper, you might want to prepare in advance for students who do not have pens in two separate colors.

Differentiation Suggestion: Students with visual impairments may be unable to evaluate videos of classroom practices. A reasonable alternative would be for these students to write a classroom scenario of about two paragraphs and then offer a written explanation of how the scenario does or does not demonstrate culturally responsive teaching. Students who struggle with reading fluency or attention may find it difficult to review Hammond’s book comprehensively enough to create effective rubrics. These students might benefit from a whole-class effort to create a rubric, which may also engender thought-provoking debates about which ideas should be included and how to illustrate these ideas with concrete examples.

Use these essay questions as writing and critical thinking exercises for all levels of writers, and to build their literary analysis skills by requiring textual references throughout the essay.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners or struggling writers, strategies that work well include graphic organizers, sentence frames or starters, group work, or oral responses.

Scaffolded Essay Questions

Student Prompt: Write a short (1-3 paragraph) response using one of the bulleted outlines below. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. Think back to a teaching strategy one of your K-12 teachers employed that made you uncomfortable because of your personality or background. Perhaps you have always hated speaking up in class, reading aloud, or pop quizzes, for instance. Use this memory as the basis for your essay. (For this response, you may use the first person as appropriate.)

• What does this experience demonstrate about the classroom experiences of students from minority cultural backgrounds? (topic sentence)
• Explain how at least three ideas from Hammond’s book support or develop your claim. Cite any quoted or paraphrased evidence with page numbers.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, comment on how your claim is related to Hammond’s larger thematic concern with Disparities in Public Education.

2. Hammond’s book is formatted like a textbook or workbook. 

• How does the format of this book relate to Hammond’s concern with The Intersection of Science and Social Justice? (topic sentence)
• Give at least three different formatting examples and explain how they support your argument.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, offer a brief evaluation of whether the formatting achieves its implied purpose.

3. In the Epilogue, Hammond discusses how teachers working toward becoming more culturally competent might feel incompetent and awkward.

• What analogy can be drawn between these teachers and dependent learners learning new thinking skills? (topic sentence)
• Give at least three examples from the text that support your analogy.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, discusses the significance of the book’s thematic concern with The Responsibility of Consciousness.

Full Essay Assignments

Student Prompt: Write a structured and well-developed essay. Include a thesis statement, at least three main points supported by text details, and a conclusion.

1. What are some domain-specific strategies that a teacher might use to promote a culturally responsive environment? How would these strategies relate to Disparities in Public Education, The Intersection of Science and Social Justice, and/or The Responsibility of Consciousness? Choose one of the common teaching domains (like math, social science, or language arts) and a specific grade range (pre-K, K-2, 3-5, 6-8, or 9-12) and write an essay that recommends and defends at least three specific classroom strategies that would promote goals discussed in Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. Use evidence from Hammond’s text and other scholarly sources to support your defense, making sure to cite all borrowed ideas, language, and data.

2. Read Dr. Andy Porter’s “Rethinking the Achievement Gap.” Do Porter’s ideas affirm, qualify, or refute Hammond’s arguments in Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain? Investigate recent research into the characteristics and causes of achievement gaps and think about the extent to which culturally responsive teaching might provide solutions. Write an essay that contextualizes Hammond’s ideas within the larger picture of achievement gaps. Support your analysis with evidence from Hammond’s text and other scholarly sources, making sure to cite all borrowed ideas, language, and data.

3. Hammond intends not only to explain and advocate for culturally responsive teaching, but also to demonstrate its relationship to neuroscience. The core of this part of her argument occurs in Chapter 3, “This Is Your Brain on Culture.” One idea this section includes is the “lizard brain,” which—among neuroscientists—is widely considered to be an outdated and inaccurate idea. Does this chapter contain other outdated or inaccurate depictions of neuroscientific understandings? Does Hammond argue convincingly for the conclusions about student learning that she bases on neuroscientific concepts? Using outside sources of current, scholarly research and academic analysis, write an essay critiquing the effectiveness of Chapter 3 as an argument. Make sure to cite all borrowed ideas, language, and data.

Multiple Choice and Long Answer Questions create ideal opportunities for whole-text review, exams, or summative assessments.

Multiple Choice

1. Which of the following strategies does Hammond most strongly recommend?

A) Teaching to the test so that students do not get retained in a grade

B) Promoting critical thinking so that students become independent learners

C) Repetitive practice so that no students are left behind

D) Eliminating grades so that students can focus on the process of learning

2. Which of the following most accurately sums up Hammond’s views on how traditional education contributes to the achievement gap?

A) Bias regarding cultural behaviors and the tracking of minority students into remedial courses creates a kind of school-to-prison pipeline.

B) Shallow efforts to promote multiculturalism create division and further marginalize students from underrepresented cultures.

C) The structure of educational funding creates conditions where minority students are often taught by the least experienced or least capable teachers.

D) Stereotypes and the dismissal of cultural preferences create a neural response that inhibits learning and establishes a kind of intellectual apartheid.

3. Which factor listed below does Hammond point to as most important in closing the achievement gap?

A) Building warm relationships with students from underserved backgrounds

B) Building the cognitive resources of students from underserved backgrounds

C) Ensuring that students from underserved backgrounds feel agency in the classroom

D) Ensuring that students from underserved backgrounds are not subjected to microaggressions

4. Which strategy would Hammond likely agree would be most effective in creating a culturally responsive classroom?

A) Choosing instructional strategies based in students’ cultural strengths

B) Including teaching materials specific to students’ cultural backgrounds

C) Teaching directly about the impact of structural inequity on learning

D) Making a conscious effort to treat all students the same, regardless of background

5. What is the main purpose of the anecdotes about specific teachers that Hammond includes?

A) To show that students of color are subjected to teacher microaggressions

B) To show that schools themselves are to blame for the achievement gap

C) To show how teachers can change their practices to become more culturally responsive

D) To show how diverse teaching practices are within the American educational system

6. Which of Hammond’s ideas is the book organized around?

A) The information processing cycle

B) The “Ready for Rigor” framework

C) The three levels of culture

D) The three pillars of learning partnerships

7. Which claim is Hammond explicitly making in this text?

A) Children from underserved backgrounds are intellectually disadvantaged by poverty.

B) Children from underserved backgrounds are not taught the same cognitive skills in the early grades.

C) Microaggressions have a more serious impact on achievement than macroaggressions.

D) Microaggressions are an unlikely source of educational underachievement in American schools.

8. Which nonfiction format is the structure of Hammond’s book most similar to?

A) An academic workbook

B) A memoir

C) A persuasive argument

D) A historical timeline

9. Which of the following is one of Hammond’s main goals in this text?

A) To convince teachers that culturally responsive teaching can be a useful “bag of tricks”

B) To give teachers evidence to use in explaining culturally responsive teaching to parents and administration

C) To create a manual of lessons and strategies for specific teaching domains

D) To help teachers conceptualize how to put culturally responsive teaching into practice

10. Which is the most reasonable interpretation of Hammond’s reason for frequently repeating information and concepts from chapter to chapter?

A) To demonstrate the importance of presenting the same material multiple times

B) To mimic the traditional classroom strategy of repeated practice drills

C) To synthesize previously learned material with newly presented material

D) To eliminate confusion due to the many similar-sounding terms

11. Which of the strategies listed most clearly emphasizes respect for student identity and agency?

A) S. O. D. A.

B) Reframing mistakes as information

C) Building intellective capacity

D) Learning partnership

12. What troubles Hammond about the way that culturally responsive teaching is often implemented?

A) It is presented to teachers as a classroom management or engagement strategy only.

B) It is mandated by administration without regard for overwhelming teachers.

C) It is adopted in response to community pressure but seldom fully implemented.

D) It is not being used consistently from classroom to classroom within the same district.

13. What earlier observation is echoed in Hammond’s Chapter 9 comment that teachers are often more focused on decorating their rooms with artifacts from many cultures than on creating an ethos suitable to making students of all cultures feel safe and comfortable?

A) Teachers focus too much attention on classroom routines and rituals.

B) Teachers are prone to focus on individualist rather than collectivist strategies.

C) Teachers focus too much attention on the shallowest level of culture.

D) Teachers are prone to focus on strategies that privilege written culture over oral culture.

14. Which best summarizes Hammond’s attitude toward standards like the Common Core?

A) Meeting standards like these has overburdened schools with worry.

B) It is not a bad thing that these standards create rigorous expectations for all students.

C) These standards focus on the wrong outcomes and interfere with real learning.

D) Implicit biases in these standards unfairly disenfranchise students of color.

15. Which is the best summary of Hammond’s overall purpose in writing the book?

A) She hopes to make culturally responsive teaching more widespread by giving teachers an expanded vocabulary and new concepts and frames for thinking about this pedagogy.

B) She hopes to use neurobiology as evidence to persuade educators who are not interested in culturally responsive teaching that it has a strong research basis.

C) She hopes to dissuade educators from pointing to the “culture of poverty” as the cause of the achievement gap and highlights how systemic forces in schools contribute to it.

D) She hopes to appeal to a broad audience who will become interested in culturally responsive teaching and create pressure on school systems to adopt this pedagogy.

Long Answer

Compose a response of 2-3 sentences, incorporating text details to support your response.

1. How does the concept of the “Warm Demander” reflect the larger ideas of culturally responsive teaching?

2. What is Hammond’s critique of traditional strategies such as lecture and memorization?