In the wake of Summer 2020, I realized I needed to diversify the voices I was hearing from. My Twitter feed was pretty limited (my sibling and a couple of scicommers was it), so I decided to start actively expanding my Twitter feed to include a broader diversity of voices in the scicomm community. As I read about experiences of a series non-white science professionals, I started hearing common threads- that well-meaning teachers hadn’t gotten how their experiences in academia were not generally applicable to students from wildly different backgrounds, and how many blind spots those same well-meaning teachers had. Along the way, I was introduced to the work of Zaretta Hammond- specifically Culturally Responsive Teaching & The Brain.

If you’re looking for a book that gets into the neurology of learning, why and how culture affects learning, AND gives practical ways to use the first two parts constructively, this is a great book. Even better- it also has a study guide, because it is truly meant to be digested in the community where you can dissect school and personal culture, find blind spots that you didn’t even know you had, and creatively strategize together. 

It was really interesting to dive into the concept of culture, and how it can play into our classrooms in unexpected ways. The standard use of culture in today’s political sphere, which usually refers to things like holidays and traditional clothing, is really just the superficial layer of icing on top of the truly rich culture that students have internally. The deeper cultural levels are things like collectivist versus individualist cultures, the importance of being on time, personal space, etc- things that can be similar across many cultures that appear superficially different. These deeper levels can dictate why individual students behave and potentially introduce conflict. This book is a shift from multicultural teaching, which is all about celebrating student diversity at that surface-level culture, into culturally responsive teaching, which really gets at the deep embedded culture that students don’t even think about.

A truly timely example was given in the book, which had played out similarly in my classroom a couple months before I read the book. In the example in the book, two elementary school Latina girls were murmuring together as they did an assignment, then writing down answers. Depending on the frame of reference, it could appear that the students are cheating or that they are using their mental resources wisely by collaboratively learning. In my class, it was a pair of girls who had remarkably similar final projects- minorly different details, but so many similarities that it was clear they had built the framework significantly together and plugged in the specifics later. For me, it was a no-brainer case of unauthorized collaboration when I had specifically told the students that they each needed to do their own project. In their minds though, they had created individual projects, and they were legitimately confused why this was problematic. At the core, the issue was a mismatch between our basic understanding of what it meant to create your own project, and how much collaboration was appropriate for this type of assessment. 

The other aspect that I love about the book is the focus on moving from dependent learners to independent learners. I know that among faculty there have been numerous discussions about how students just want the answer, they want to have things spoon-fed, etc- this book actually addresses how to scaffold the shift to independence, and WHY it works based on neurology and psychology, using culture. Some of the practical suggestions are things that we all already know- creating a safe environment where they feel supported but challenged, creating rapport, using graphic organizers. But the book also explains why they work, and gives other ways to access and use the deep culture of students to help scaffold them to being independent learners. Other suggestions are not so obvious. For example, what values are we communicating through our environments? What do the artifacts on the walls communicate to students, parents, and even ourselves about what is important? For me, that meant changing my classroom to have science art around the room to emphasize the beauty, diversity, accessibility, and love of science- along with their innate belonging in and among science. 

This book is one that I’m going to have to keep diving back into, and keep implementing and tweaking new small bits. If anyone wants to do a book club for this book, complete with the study guide, I’m in to read through it again!