Culturally Responsive Teaching with Zaretta Hammond, ep. 186

Culturally Responsive Teaching with Zaretta Hammond, ep. 186, Instructional Coaching with Ms. B Podcast

Chrissy Beltran  00:00

Hey coach, if you’ve been waiting for the competent literacy coach course to open up, your wait is almost over. The course is opening soon and I want you to be the first to know, make sure you’ve signed up at confident literacy coach.com to be included on the waitlist, you’ll be notified as soon as it opens for enrollment this year is going to be even better than before. I’ve updated the reading and writing modules to provide you with the knowledge you need to support your school and implementing practices that are proven to build skilled readers and writers get the PD you need to provide the PD and learning they need join the waitlist so you can join the course.

Chrissy Beltran  00:37

Welcome to instructional coaching with Miss B where we believe that every teacher deserves a coach and every coach does too. I’m Chrissy Beltran, an elementary teacher who became a coach, and I had to create my own coaching program that worked. Now I teach coaches how to design their coaching programs, build a school wide action plan and use differentiated strategies to support teachers. Plus, I’ve got a special spot in my heart for literacy coaches. Now let’s dig into the episode. And welcome to episode 186 of instructional coaching with myth B. Today we are talking about culturally responsive teaching with Zaretta Hammond. I feel like Zaretta Hammond is practically a household name at this point. And she is so tied to culturally responsive teaching because she is so knowledgeable in this area, I am really excited to talk to her because I think she’s going to have some great information for us today.

Chrissy Beltran  01:26

But before we get into it, I want to share a couple of important things with you. One, the confident literacy coach in May, it’s going to be amazing, I have got thick modules for you that are full of resources that are going to help you coach reading and writing in classrooms and in PLC meetings. So if you want to join the waitlist, you can do that at confident literacy coach.com. And you will get a coupon code for 15% off starting in May. So definitely join that waitlist because I want that for you. I know it’s going to be supportive of you literacy coaches, as you are trying to coach teachers in so many things and helping them make changes. Which brings me to my second point, my free webinar making the shift is available at buzzing with msb.com/shift I want you to grab it, it is going to give you tips on how you can help teachers embrace new learning and actually apply it in their classroom. Because we’ve all spent way too much time giving professional development only to head to classroom and see that no change has happened at all. So please check out buzzing with msb.com/shift I made it just for you because I know it’s what you need right now. And you can grab that, that webinar, watch it make the changes, and I know you’re gonna love it. Okay, so without further ado, we want to welcome to read of him in to the podcast. Though I’m so excited to welcome you to the podcast, Zaretta, thank you for being here. Thank

Zaretta Hammond  02:46

you for having me. I’m so excited for this conversation. Well,

Chrissy Beltran  02:50

that’s good, because I am too and to get to know you a little bit. Before we get started. I want to know a couple of things. I would love to learn about who you help and how you spend most of your time and energy at work. Yeah,

Zaretta Hammond  03:01

who do I help? It is a combination. So I have particularly a focus around instructional coaches. So those that are tasked with helping teachers in the classroom. When I have the opportunity, I certainly tried to keep myself as close to the classroom. So I’m supporting teachers as well. But I also am talking to leaders. I just came back from doing a keynote for all the superintendents across Connecticut had gathered for their conference. So I’m in front of a lot of leaders, talking to them about how do they support the work that should be happening within instructional core. So those are my three core audiences that I support.

Chrissy Beltran  03:48

I love that because that is how we can make change happen sustainably at school is to have people empowered in those leadership positions that can support the change in the classroom over time. Change that takes so much time. Now one fun question I want to know about is one of the movie you could watch every day. But

Zaretta Hammond  04:07

wow, let’s and I am such a movie person. So I’ll go two ways so I all things Marvel. I can watch the Captain America Winter Soldier. Anytime just put it on repeat. The other is Lord of the Rings. I currently like two towers, although you know give me returning to the king give me Lord of the Rings extended version any day. But that two towers right that is just there’s just perfection there.

Chrissy Beltran  04:40

I love that because so my brother and I, my brother, youngest brother, I have three brothers. I’m the youngest one is 16 years younger than me. And we live in the same city. And every Friday, every Saturday night he comes over and we watch a movie and every Saturday we would spend 20 minutes what are we gonna watch? What are we gonna watch? What are we gonna watch? You know? Finally we said we’re We’re gonna watch series of movies so we can decide one and let it ride forever. So we started watching Marvel back in 2020. And we watched all of the Marvel theories. And our next theory that we’re gonna watch after we finished on hard is Lord of the Rings. We’re gonna go back to Lord of the Rings. That’s so funny.

Zaretta Hammond  05:17

Because it’s so good. All right.

Chrissy Beltran  05:20

I did, he had, he had to get new contacts. And so he had to wait until a new contact came in to watch one of the races he needed to see everything, everything. Okay, that’s it. Oh, now to get into the stuff that is your area of expertise? Can you please share a definition of culturally responsive teaching?

Zaretta Hammond  05:39

You know, I think, um, you know, it’s the kind of example non example but culturally responsive teaching in its broadest sense, the way Dr. Gloria Ladson. Billings talked about it is really a pedagogy that is counter to the kind of inequitable kind of sorting that happens in public schools from the beginning, right. So to counter that process, she talked about culturally responsive teaching. So building the right kind of relationships with students that allow the student and the teacher to have the kind of trust, that teacher can focus on rebuilding and helping that student reclaim academic prowess. And along the way she uses, which she’d never called it brain science, right, but the understanding of schema, and that the relevance of that content to the student was really about helping the student, not just see themselves really reflect it. But to actually understand how the student had organized knowledge in their own head, I do think that’s important to talk about the non example. So everybody’s shaking the term culturally responsive teaching on everything, right, just like gluten free, like you go into a grocery store meets gluten free, well, it’s always been gluten free, what are you gonna be selling here? So very much like that we see culturally responsive teaching. And a lot of times, unfortunately, it gets truncated to relationships, right? And or motivation. And so relevance, if you just show them something that comes from their cultural background as quote, unquote, relevant, then that’s going to motivate the student to lean into learning. Now, we haven’t even examined instruction. And that doesn’t even you know, talk about whether that instruction is robust enough to get the student ready for rigor. And instead, it sells culturally responsive teaching as only about engagement, or motivation, as if that’s the problem. Those kids just aren’t motivated. So even though somebody might be doing culturally responsive teaching in their mind, if that’s the mental model they come with, that’s deficit orientation. So just because you say it’s culturally responsive, if you’re coming with that belief, those kids are broken, or they’re unmotivated because of their zip code or whatever other background label you’re identifying, then that’s still very deficit oriented. Yeah.

Chrissy Beltran  08:31

So we want to think about how our instruction is meeting the way that kids learn and the way that kids have organized with information in their brains and really reaching them where they are. So how does culture affect the way that we learn? Well,

Zaretta Hammond  08:45

I’ll go back to the point that I just made culture is the software to our brains hardware. Most educators, particularly white educators, think of culture as I’m talking about issues of race, racial politics, so that it gets conflated with anti racism. So the reality is, that is a again, very limited way of thinking about it. I think what happens too often is teachers don’t think about the responsive part. So the responsive part is what Defour talks about, when he talks about kind of the three or four questions that guide PLC work, what do we want students to know and be able to do? What we will, what to say? Second question, oh, how will

Chrissy Beltran  09:33

they know when they learned? Thank you?

Zaretta Hammond  09:38

That’s right. And the third is, what will we do if they don’t learn it? And if you know the fourth, how do we extend for students who are ready for more? When a lot of times that third question, right? What will we do when the students don’t learn? It? gets overlooked and I take it down to the instructional core say what will you do when the student is confused? Just so this is back to responsive, that dialogic with the teacher and the student or the teacher supporting the student, to actually become not only metacognitive, but meta strategic. So the connection to culture is if the teacher does not know, the students schema, the teacher cannot prompt the student to activate the problem solving tools and strategies that she or he may have already taught the student. So we have, you know, kind of ignored instructional decision making that responsive part of culturally responsive because we are so hyper focused on always trying to talk about culture, as if it’s just for diverse students, and I have to put something that’s relevant in front of them. And we just diminish the power of what that particular a pedagogical approach has in it that Dr. Ladson billings was trying to lift up.

Chrissy Beltran  10:59

Yeah, I think that’s such an interesting point. Because I also hear what I’m hearing a piece of what you’re saying is, sometimes we’re only thinking about teaching on like, the macro level. And so we think about, okay, what is our unit look like? Like maybe an instructional coach will help teachers plan that unit, but then we’re, you’re looking at individual responsiveness like this individual student, you know, in this moment, I need I can respond to this student in this way. It’s not only macro, but it’s also like micro responsiveness.

Zaretta Hammond  11:26

Oh, here’s what I would add to that, or extended, you know, maybe after an offer a shift is it’s not even looking at the lesson, it’s looking at the instruction curriculum is one thing, instruction is something different. Unfortunately, we have collapsed them. So teachers believe if they’re covering their content, or moving students to the lesson that that’s instruction, and we know it is not. So the idea of thinking about instruction is not just what’s on the macro, right? That’s where the curriculum is the teacher has set that up has kind of embedded the kind of engagement, that’s going to get students thinking in an extended way. But how the student actually has to process that information. So this is back to the force question when they get stuck, that may be whole class that may be small group that may be individual, but that teacher still has to know that have that flexibility of being able to do that, in any one of those settings, I see too many teachers still holding a whole class. So kids who are struggling, who may not in him, you know, maximize their opportunity or their capacity to process information, kind in the whole group. So again, if the teacher doesn’t have that opportunity to actually talk with the student, and not just talk to them about their, you know, personal relationship being friendly, but have a instructional conversation, talk to them about learning, what does it mean to be in a community practice for students? So this is one of the things that I again, talk about. And because that’s not typically associated with culturally responsive teaching, or pedagogy, again, we’re so hyper focused on what is culture versus how will I help the student actually build cognitive independence, right, being able to leverage what they already know, to extend that. And so that is what I think is the biggest, you know, addition to what I’d say it’s not just macro micro, it’s really helping the teacher understand the difference between how they are facilitator of the curriculum, and how they then are a coach to the students cognitive development during that instruction, which may happen with some whole class interaction. It may happen in small group it or may be happening one on one, I was a writing teacher when I was in the classroom. So part of what I always had to do is think about conferencing, or when students were doing peer editing, how was I helping them kind of get into their zone of proximal development? So they were stretching themselves? Where’s the cognitive stretch? And how are you actually supporting that so what the gods ski says is, when you’re in Arizona Proximal Development, you need a more experienced learner to take you a guide, it could be peer, it could be teacher, right? But so we’re how is the teacher setting that up in the classroom? How is that happening? What are you saying and doing that not only give a one word prompt, but also ask the student to tell you how are they thinking about that? This is what Ron Ricker calls being meta strategic.

Chrissy Beltran  14:45

And, and to do this, we do need to know our students, not only like you’re saying something, maybe they could fill out a questionnaire but also how they think and how their brains work and what kinds of things we can do to engage them in different ways. And thinking yeah, Here’s

Zaretta Hammond  15:00

the problem with what I see a lot of teachers faces, they don’t invest in building the relationship in to a level of trust with the students. So the student doesn’t reveal that to them. And this is what I talk about in culturally responsive teaching the brain with the Learning Partnership. The first is rapport building personal wealth, warmth, and connection. But the second is building an alliance, me and you student up to something. And that that student, it’s, I’m not doing it, you know, without telling the student, I’m not doing it to the student, and I’m doing it with the student, I’m gonna bring this kind of coaching just like a NBA coach would, but the player also knows you’re bringing your skill. And together, we’re working to help win the game helped make the team better, right. And so I do think there is a way in which teachers don’t invest in the opportunity to talk with students about what does it mean to learn? What does it mean, not just, here’s a questionnaire Tell me about yourself? Or reveal your thinking to me? Well, if I don’t believe you’re helping me get better as a learner? Why should I reveal anything to you? So particularly if you have microaggressions going on, student doesn’t feel psychologically safe, or there are, you know, dominant narratives about who the student is. So now we are looking at microaggressions as stereotype threat. These are the pieces I think that Dr. Gloria Ladson, Billings put together really, really well. That if you don’t have a classroom that feels psychologically safe, there’s intellectual safety, to make mistakes, and not that those mistakes are not attributed to your linguistic background are your racial identity, your cultural orientation, then I won’t continue to be vulnerable in front of you.

Chrissy Beltran  16:59

What are some things that a coach can do at a school level that would address some of that? If that’s what they’re seeing in classroom? Because as this other person coming into classrooms who do see so much going on, that the teacher is maybe not even aware of? Because it may be a subconscious sort of bias? Or they’re just not? They’ve never really been called to have those kinds of conversations before? Because in many places they have not? And will? Go ahead, yeah, go ahead.

Zaretta Hammond  17:24

What conversation that you want to have, my suggestion is you never start, depending on what your relationship is with the teacher, because you know, as a coach, that your first order of business is to build your own partnership with the, with the teacher, and to help the teacher see what you see. So you can’t just say, hey, you know, here’s a thing you need to do. Because it looks like you have racial microaggressions going on, that really has to come from the students. And a lot of times it’s funneled through the parents, which gets funneled to the front office. And that then could open up the conversation. So you know, when I’m working with coaches, this is a conversation we have all the time, which is where do we start with this, I see what’s happening? Well, you have to find the right starting place, depending on the level of relationship that you have with the teacher. And so you’re always nurturing and building that. But you have to help the teacher see, because even if that teacher is open to having conversation with you, they’re just taking your word for it. Because that’s not what they’re saying. So one of the things I always do is I encourage teachers I’m working with, and coaches that I’m training to work with teachers to always start with assessing the current reality. And I know this is something that Jim Nye doubts about Elena Aguilar talks about and their coaching models. And the way that my focus of coaches is not to supplant those wonderful foundational coaching skills, but it’s the what, that they should be changing that a lot of coaches don’t have any, you know, background in or don’t know, what, what should I say or do. So we start with assessing current reality. And that means just getting the teacher to see what you see. And a lot of times the videotaping get your iPhone out audio tape, just so that you can have some kind of artists that for lack of a better word, or if you want to use data in a space that helps that conversation. So it’s not just us talking, but it’s actually looking at what’s in the third space, that space that we can talk about this artifact. I love just simple audio recording. And then I asked the teacher, you know, send me that clip after you’ve listened to it. I’m going to create a transcript. There are lots of good tools nowadays that will just you know to run the audio or video and you get a whole Transcript of the dialogue, and then I have the teacher read it, and we read it together and in the opportunity for the teacher starts to see, oh, I’m talking a lot, or Oh, the students giving me one word answers, or I didn’t realize that was the nature of that exchange, that opens a window for us to now have a conversation. Without that window, I cannot support the teacher to move to a new level. Right? So this is not always the skill set that our coaches have around. What would you do? Even if you bring that, you know, awareness? What would you do after that? Because a lot of times, it just catches a teacher of God. And they just I just need to stop doing that. Well, yeah, you do. But it depends on what it is. If you’re talking too much, how do you shift that? If you’re over scaffolding, how do you stop that? Because you can’t stop over scaffolding until you increase student capacity? Right? How do you do that? So it’s the how do you do that? That when that teacher has the hunger for that, that the coach can partner with that teacher in a really powerful way? Yeah,

Chrissy Beltran  21:13

I think that’s a great method to you that we’ve talked a lot about video coaching, and the audio is great, too, because so many people are nervous about video. And the audio can be a good way also to be respectful of students, because some students are not able to be recorded things like that. So that’s a really, I love that idea of just using audio that I

Zaretta Hammond  21:33

have a couple of teachers that I it’s so funny, because I just did a four week masterclass for instructional coaches and shared some of the audio and video and one teacher shows. For some reason, I don’t know if she couldn’t figure out how to work the audio on her phone, the voice memo. But she said, I’m just going to record it. And all we saw was the ceiling. Like, as long as we hear, we don’t care that we’re looking at we won’t look. Yeah, you’re right, it’s super easy. And what I try to tell coaches is really help teachers not focus on strategies, or focus on themselves, because a lot of times the focus is like, how am I teaching, the students should be the center, our job is to coach students to become you know, metacognitive of their own learning moves, and then meta strategic about how to manipulate those. So our focus has to be on the students so that audio is really about what is this? How do we get the student to say more than a one word answer, right? What am I saying? So that the symbiotic dialogic part of that is really what we’re focused on to unfortunately, a lot of times teachers think it’s just about me executing this strategy, or me teaching this lesson. So a lot of the audio or video is really about that when it should be the student.

Chrissy Beltran  22:53

Yes, I think that’s a really good point. Whenever we’re looking at, at what’s happening in classrooms, we’re trying to collect data about what students do as they respond to what the teacher is setting up. And so whenever we’re, we’ve, we’re focusing only on what the teacher said, but then the kids are not producing any of the things that you know, that they need to in order to demonstrate learning and to acquire new knowledge and new strategies that have their own than their, we’re missing the point, really, I mean, the teacher can do all sorts of things, but the kids aren’t responding to it, that it’s not working, we’re not report

Zaretta Hammond  23:22

to absolutely, and what that really means, right? If we unpack that statement, you just made that if it’s not, if I do the thing, and the students not learning it, that’s on me that I need to go back and say what needs adjusting, right? So just like a coach, I just like the personal trainer, if I’m a personal trainer, someone’s come to me to get healthy. And whatever the the metrics are, that we’re tracking are not changing, I have to look at the program, both in how am I putting the the elements together? But also, how am I motivating that person to carry them out? Because again, it’s only that person who’s going to do the exercise, and they’re only going to be at the gym for, you know, an hour what what about the other, you know, six days of the week? 24/7? Right? So if they’re not going to make those changes, if I can’t motivate them to do a new thing, then that’s on me. And my my coaching of them my teaching of them. So this is the same with teachers, it the reality is if the student is not learning it, this is the fourth third question. It doesn’t say what do you want the student to do? It says what will we do because whatever that process was, was ineffective. So we just need to tweak it. This is where inquiry is so wonderful. A running experiments are a continuous improvement, but it’s more than, you know, the plan do, you know at study cycles, because you can do and you can study it but what’s your adjustment And the adjustment has to be what is the student say? Or do? Can I get the student to say, or do a new thing or stretch themselves? Or take a new risk or manage their emotions the closer to the learning episode when they’re going into the learning that what is it that I want and need to change? And that, to me is where the coach and the teacher have such a powerful connection. And when they’re looking at it through the lens of how do we disrupt the kind of inequity in our school that’s just become kind of commonplace. Dr. Richard Elmore used to call it The unexamined wallpaper, it’s there, and we just keep walking past it. Every year, we see the same data, same kids at the bottom, same kids at the top top, and we just shrug kind of like, ah, that’s just the way it is. But culturally responsive teaching really says no, we get to interrupt that kind of cognitive redlining, when we really focus on helping the student become a more powerful learner. And that’s very different from, oh, we just want to see how the student is thinking.

Chrissy Beltran  26:02

So then, what are some of the key moves that that teachers shouldn’t be implementing? In order to support students differently? And to do this disruption to actually change the way that we’re working with? Kim?

Zaretta Hammond  26:13

That’s a really great question. And I do think too often, what we’re sold are culturally responsive strategies, right? And so that question kind of falls into that, tell me the thing to do? Well, first off you teacher or the strategy and instructional coach, you are coaching teachers to be better instructional decision making makers. So the first thing we do is we talk about because I kind of crafted the ready for rigor frame, which is a slightly different approach to culturally responsive teaching, different only in that its primary focus is instruction and instruction that is centered around getting the student to be able to evolve in level up their learning that it’s why it’s actually called ready for rigor, how do we get kids ready to take on more of that cognitive load? So it’s kind of broad? And what are the ideas that I’ll suggest here? And this is actually why I run the masterclass that I run a six month PLC program, because it is kind of more of a time, you know, longer time to turn these things around. But immediately, what you can do is I call it preparing the dojo, how do you create the right environment that becomes a container for these things, the very first thing I think is most important and outside of getting to know your student, that’s an ongoing thing. And we should be doing that beyond the first four weeks of school. Right? Think about kind of, how are you using the second, six weeks of six weeks of school to get to know the student as a learner, and then to duck them into a you know, Apprenticeship of learning or community of practice of learner. So anybody that knows my framework knows there’s some quadrant that is actually called community of learners, right? There’s a quadrant, that’s a weirdness, there’s a quadrant that’s focused on learning partnerships, and then there’s a quadrant focused on information processing. So they’re all kind of intersecting at all times. But the way that you start to enact those is create, you know, prepare the dojo classroom, instructional course, a dojo. And you can do that by reframing mistakes, creating a culture of errors that typically can take, I’d say, depending on the grade level, and what foundational pieces a teacher may have already put in place that could take, you know, four to six weeks, because most students are looking for the right answer. Because you know, there’s a lot of compliance going on. And you’ve have to actually break students of that habit, they’ve been socialized to be compliant, how many points is this, this, this is going to be on the test, when you’re trying to get them to be more reflective. But that means you’ve got to, you know, use formative assessment in a powerful way. You gotta have seed back loops, you have to have time to talk to them. So one of the things that I get in time for them to talk to each other, I wrote an article called The Power protocols in educational leadership, a FCDs publication, April 2020, if anyone wants to look it up. So that’s a very practical element you can put in start using protocols. Again, it’s gonna probably take you two to four weeks to get students to do it in a way that has students owning and understanding how to move through the process versus you having to be the conductor all the time and the prompter all the time. And that’s critical, right? And then getting this culture of errors where you’re reframing feedback as Information errors as information that I think is the number one, anything else there, I can’t give you a here, just do this because it’s not magic beans. And unfortunately, that’s what happens, oh, I’m doing these culturally responsive practice. But again, if you’re doing them, but the students not learning any better, or not paying attention or learning to, to use those tools, independent of your prompting, then what are you doing?

Chrissy Beltran  30:29

Yeah, I was I was looking at your there was a document that I found on your site, and it was just, you know, some of the the five key culturally responsive teaching move. And, and so then, yeah, you did refer to a few of those. Throughout our conversation today, that I also the one about using ritual reputation, repetition and rhythm as content processing power tool. I think that would you share a little bit about that? Yeah.

Zaretta Hammond  30:54

And I think that goes into creating the environment. Again, those aren’t strategies, those are things that you actually start to integrate. So the idea of processing information, how are students knowing to go back to get it? So this is very much aligned with retrieval practice, right. So the recitation is students actually rehearsing and practicing saying out loud, but what they’re not saying out loud is the content, what they’re saying out loud is the learning move. Because again, teachers aren’t talking to students about their learning moves, right. So one of the ways that I, you know, help teachers think about that is, so what do you tell the student when they’re stuck? Right, what they’re doing, they’ve got an assignment, and I’m confused, and I’m calling the teacher over every 10 minutes, right? The way that you empower the student is like, here are three things I’m going to ask you to do, you’re going to size it up, right? So look at the tasks take time, and the teacher actually can structure this and slowly say, that scaffold in which they are actually having a few minutes right underline what is this asking you to do? Slides it up? Break it down? What are the first steps what should you be doing, then what are the tools I should be kind of pulling out of my head to actually get started? Right. So that is the recitation of the students need to know that, versus I’m just going to repeat the content in some call or response, that doesn’t build any brain power.

Chrissy Beltran  32:27

Yet, it’s a treat knowledge. It’s not helping them learn how to think whenever they’re approaching the situation.

Zaretta Hammond  32:33

Yeah, and I would use the words learn how to learn learn how to think thinking and learning are the same things. And there was a way in which we keep saying, Oh, we want students to think that if they haven’t actually been able to develop their information processing skills, right? This is learning how to turn inert information to usable knowledge, they can’t think. So we can’t just say, Oh, we want them to think because then we do these thinking strategies, and we have this, but no one’s taught them how to turn this information into usable knowledge. This is the meaning making part. So I think we overuse the word. So we want students to think, yes, we all do, but then teach them how to learn that content, and actually improve their information processing cycle. This is what the science of learning is teaching us. But there’s a way in which I think coaches really have to help teachers elevate their own mental models through the way they talk about this. Because this is what happens often, teachers I want my students to be able to think or to do you know, the higher on Bloom’s or deeper on websites, like Yeah, we do want them that that depth of knowledge, you know, will to be a little higher. But the fact is, you have to build their skill set in order to do that processing. And that’s not a here’s a strategy. Here’s a sentence frame. And unfortunately, too many of those things turn into crutches because we don’t phase them out. We’re over scaffolding. So this is the counter right? cultural responsive teaching is designed to build a student’s capacity. So the teacher does not have to over scaffold those students capacity. So they know how to take inert information and turn it into usable knowledge without a lot of prompting from the teacher. And if the teacher doesn’t find the students are motivated, then the idea is to look at how are we not leveraging the brain’s dopamine systems, right? Dopamine is that brain chemical that we get rewarded with because the brain thinks it’s the yummy this thing, once we do hard stuff, or we do interesting, complex stuff, and kids are doing this all the time at home. So why are they so disengaged in your classroom? Right? And this is where coaches can bring the science of learning not like, oh, let’s read research. But let’s actually talk about the Brain Rules we need to have in place. Let’s actually talk about what doesn’t mean when you have someone coming from a collectivist culture and how they their schema has been developed. Too often what I see is that in when people are talking about culturally responsive teaching, they just think that’s more group work. So I think Oh, Collective’s culture, then we just do collectivist thing. So that’s just more group work. That’s not building an individual’s capacity to carry more of the cognitive load. That’s called group work. And the kids who are struggling can hide in the group. So it’s actually counterproductive, but satisfies the teacher who thinks, oh, I’m doing this thing. So I’m culturally responsive. It’s not about you. It’s about the student.

Chrissy Beltran  35:45

Yeah, yeah, I think those are such great points. And thank you for sharing all of this information with us, I know that coaches are going to walk away, maybe with another lens to look at their school with and then I know, they’re gonna want to learn more from you. So how can people keep learning more from you, if they would like to do that? Yeah,

Zaretta Hammond  36:01

they should first get on my newsletter, they can go to my website, CRT and the brain.com. And there’s a place where they can opt in. And usually, once I send my newsletter out, they are going to know about upcoming opportunities. I did a series of master classes last fall for leaders, coaches, and teachers. And then in the spring, I do one that’s four weeks, two hours every week for coaches. So we’ll have another one coming up in August, right before school that will run for weeks before school and set coaches up to really think about developing these skills. And they can also, you know, be culturally responsive teaching the brain on working on a new book in and that should come out in late fall. So again, getting on that newsletter is the best way to be in touch with what’s going on and connecting with me on LinkedIn, that’s always a good way as well. Because it’s a place that I share it, and you know what’s going on a little bit, but it’s more just about building our network. And I’d love to be connected with more of the coaches. Because again, this is it takes a village. And this is, you know, heavy lifting, and we all have to kind of be there for each other.

Chrissy Beltran  37:22

Yeah, yes. I love that. Well, thank you so much for joining us today.

Zaretta Hammond  37:26

You’re so welcome. Okay,

Chrissy Beltran  37:28

I know I don’t use the phrase drinking from a firehose very often, but that was a lot of good stuff. And I know that you’re walking away with new ideas, things you want to think about things you want to learn about, please go check out this the website, there’s some great stuff there. And I think that newsletter is a really good way to be notified about new stuff and to learn a little bit more every week about about what culturally responsive teaching looks like and how you can support it at your campus. Remember, I’ve got that making the shift webinar for you, you can check that out at buzzing with b.com slash shift. And that will help you with supporting teachers and embracing new learning and new ways of thinking. And I want to remind you that next week, we’re going to continue our minutes many theories on better instruction with an episode about the science of reading. So you’re going to get a quick overview of Scarborough’s reading robe in this episode, and you’re going to learn what this instructional looks like in the camp and classroom. And that’s happening next week. Until then, happy coaching.

Chrissy Beltran  38:29

Now that you’ve got so much to think about, head over to buzzing with buzzfeed.com to grab some free downloads, become a VIBee, and check out the podcast show notes. Happy coaching!