Ep 16: Building Culturally Responsive Thinking Classroom: BTC Meets Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain

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Sometimes, things just kind of have a way of popping back up after a while, and that

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definitely happened to me recently with culturally responsive teaching in the brain, and it kind

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of made connections for me to building thinking classrooms, and I'm wondering if anybody else

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has thought about this too.

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Hello and welcome to Making Number Sense Make Sense.

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A podcast for elementary teachers, specifically early elementary teachers, looking to really

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make an impact in the number sense of their students.

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I'm going to have to take you guys back a little bit to kind of get the full picture

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of my culturally responsive teaching journey.

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So my assistant principal at the time had asked me if I wanted to go to an equity symposium,

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and I was like, sure, I've never been to one before.

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Why not?

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I didn't realize that going to that equity symposium would put me on the equity team

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the coming school year and have us creating and giving professional development to the

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entire staff.

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And one of the resources that I really kind of took to was a book by Zaretta Hammond called

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Culturally Responsive Teaching in the Brain.

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I read the whole book cover to cover, and it was really a different way to look at the

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way that we teach in education and what we can do.

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If you are looking to make your teaching practice more culturally responsive, I highly recommend

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that book.

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She talks about different types of culture.

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She talks about the way that the brain works and kind of strategies and things that we

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as teachers can do to be more culturally responsive and inclusive for our students so that they

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can have the best outcomes possible.

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A lot of times when people think of culturally responsive teaching or culture, they think

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of surface culture like music, food, language.

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And in the book, Zaretta Hammond talks about deep culture, which is like the way that you

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communicate and how you interact with the world being something that can be tapped into

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to support learners.

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And I have to say, it's one of those things where like I was into it, I read it and then

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life happened and I was looking for this book.

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I couldn't find it anywhere.

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This was years ago, mind you.

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Years ago, I could not find this book anywhere.

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I was like, it has to be here somewhere, but I couldn't find it.

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And in my new role, we were talking about or we had to read about culturally responsive

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education.

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And I was like, oh, I already know about culturally responsive education.

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It's just going to be a little bit of a refresher.

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And I kind of came at it with a new lens because I was reading through it, had a lot of resources,

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not just didn't just talk about Zaretta Hammond's book, but I was like, huh.

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And it was kind of like connecting for me with the building thinking classrooms framework

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because as a lot of you know, I had tried it with my kindergartners and it was an amazing

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success.

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The kids loved it.

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And I kind of had to wonder like, why is it working?

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And when you're in it, you don't necessarily need to know why it works.

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You just know that it does.

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Like, I don't know how my cell phone works, but I know that it does.

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So like, I don't know the mechanisms inside of it, but it works.

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And that's all you really need to know.

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But when I was rereading the parts of the culturally responsive teaching in the brain

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book, I was like, you know what?

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I think that maybe Peter Liljadal and like Zaretta Hammond were on the same wavelength

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and they didn't even know it.

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Like I think that these two need to get together and chat because I think that they could really

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build off of each other's work.

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You know, I feel like it just kind of, it's like a collab that needs to happen, you know,

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like Cardi and Megan or Jay-Z and Beyonce or Shakira and anybody, it needs to happen.

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So the more I thought about it and I was like, you know what?

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I think that he might have unintentionally tapped into that deep culture with his research.

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And that's why, or one of the reasons why, his methodology works so well.

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When you think about culturally responsive teaching or culturally responsive education,

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a lot of times they talk about, you know, PBL and bringing in kids real live into the

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classroom to help with engagement, to help activate prior knowledge, all of that.

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But a lot of times when you think about that, it seems like it's a more, I don't want to

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say easy, but it's a more natural flow to talk about culturally responsive education

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through the lens of language arts or social studies because it can connect seemingly more

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easily to our students than math, which I feel can be really removed, can feel very

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removed for a lot of students.

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So when I was thinking about culture and math, I was thinking about the book, like I said,

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and the Building Thinking Classrooms book.

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And I was thinking that what ended up happening is this framework kind of delves into deep

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culture that makes math more meaningful.

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From the content, they are learning how to learn.

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And a lot of students come to us with a rich history of oral tradition, storytelling, talking

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to learn.

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So in the Building Thinking Classroom frameworks, where all of the students are talking and

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learning together, they're kind of building their understanding in a very collectivist

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way, which is how a lot of our students come to us with that history and their brains are

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primed to learn that way.

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So if you can bring in that way of processing to the classroom, it's taking advantage of

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neural pathways that are already there and making them stronger.

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So instead of being held up by content, they look at everything as something they can solve

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because they've had practice solving it and looking at things in different ways and understanding

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that knowledge comes from everybody in the room, not just the teacher.

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Now I'm going to read you this quote, and you're going to have to see if you can figure

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out which book it's from.

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We want them to have the ability to size up any task, map out a strategy for completing

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it and execute the plan.

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Now if you've read the Building Thinking Classroom's book, it could have come right out of there.

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But the sentence before says, our ultimate goal as culturally responsive teachers is

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to help dependent learners learn how to learn.

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And then we want them to have the ability to size up any task, map out a strategy for

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completing it, and then execute the plan.

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I was like, those two things could have come from the same book.

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They're on the same wavelength.

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So what are the similarities between these two books that might be a reason why the Building

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Thinking Classroom's framework works so well?

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Just a caveat before I dig into this, being a culturally responsive educator isn't just

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about using the right strategy.

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It's really about understanding yourself, understanding the way that you communicate

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and how that might differ from your students, and also what implicit bias you might have.

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And implicit in nature means that you don't realize that you have it.

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But it's really about examining yourself as a person to know how to best interact with

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your students so that they can be successful no matter what they're doing.

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The strategies she discusses don't come until the very end of the book because she spends

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so much time talking about what culture is, what you can do before you go to this.

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This is like, do the work on yourself first and then these strategies will make more sense.

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Zaretta Hammond outlines in her book four strategies to lead students through the stages

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of information processing, which are ignite, chunk, chew, and review.

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So in ignite, you're getting the brain's attention.

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In chunking, you're making information digestible.

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In chewing, you're actively processing new information.

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And review is having a chance to apply new learning.

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Now if you're familiar with the building thinking classrooms framework, it falls into those

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categories really well.

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The ignite, getting the brain's attention.

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When you're introducing a math task, you want a story, you want to puzzle something to get

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kids like, oh, I kind of want to figure that out or I want to solve that problem.

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It's a mystery.

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And then chunking, you're starting with a low floor, high ceiling task that is accessible

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to all of your students.

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And then they start to build on that information.

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They might get a task that's a little more challenging after that and a little more challenging

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and a little more challenging.

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And the kids can use the strategies that they worked on for the first task and kind of roll

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it out into the second and third.

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And while they're doing that, they're actively processing this new information.

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They're processing from their partner, they're processing from the other people in the room,

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seeing everybody's work on the boards really helps them kind of understand lots of different

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viewpoints at the same time and kind of make it make sense for them.

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Creating visuals and non-linguistic representations is a really powerful way for students to process

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information.

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So the idea of drawing your problem solving and everybody seeing all these different examples

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can really help with their own information processing and help them understand the problems

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that they're working on.

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And after that with the reviewing or having a chance to apply the new learning, that's

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kind of the consolidation or check your understanding part of the problem solving session where

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they see if they really did kind of understand what they were doing on the boards and be

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able to use that information or use those strategies to new problems in kind of a different

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setting or a different way by choosing their own question or questions to solve that are

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similar to the one that they just worked on.

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And both frameworks just kind of fit so well like a puzzle, like they were part of the

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same puzzle kind of hitting on the same idea and seeing similar positive results, hopefully

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seeing similar positive results.

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I'm wondering if anybody else has kind of put their pulse on this and what your thoughts

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are.

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I'm really curious, am I just making this up or does it seem like it makes sense to

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you too?

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Please send me a message and let me know your thoughts.

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And before I go, I do want to share a little something that just warmed my heart.

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I'm in touch with the teacher that has my students from last year and she was also a

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teacher who was like, oh, I'd like to try building thinking classrooms.

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So she tried last year, she was continuing this year and she said that when my students

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saw like the building thinking classrooms, like little cards I use and everything that

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they were so excited, they're like, oh, we did this last year, I loved it, we get to

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do it again.

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They were so excited and that just, I can't even tell you how exciting that is for me

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to hear, to hear these kids be so excited about doing math, especially because, you

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know, there's a lot of people who just don't like math, they didn't get it, they're like,

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oh, I don't want to do it ever.

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So to hear all of them be so excited about it just warms my heart that hopefully they

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can carry that attitude about math throughout their education career and it's something

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that they don't feel intimidated by, but they feel empowered to do.