1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,720 Sometimes, things just kind of have a way of popping back up after a while, and that 2 00:00:05,720 --> 00:00:12,780 definitely happened to me recently with culturally responsive teaching in the brain, and it kind 3 00:00:12,780 --> 00:00:16,680 of made connections for me to building thinking classrooms, and I'm wondering if anybody else 4 00:00:16,680 --> 00:00:25,080 has thought about this too. 5 00:00:25,080 --> 00:00:28,380 Hello and welcome to Making Number Sense Make Sense. 6 00:00:28,380 --> 00:00:33,440 A podcast for elementary teachers, specifically early elementary teachers, looking to really 7 00:00:33,440 --> 00:00:36,480 make an impact in the number sense of their students. 8 00:00:36,480 --> 00:00:40,880 I'm going to have to take you guys back a little bit to kind of get the full picture 9 00:00:40,880 --> 00:00:44,400 of my culturally responsive teaching journey. 10 00:00:44,400 --> 00:00:50,640 So my assistant principal at the time had asked me if I wanted to go to an equity symposium, 11 00:00:50,640 --> 00:00:53,720 and I was like, sure, I've never been to one before. 12 00:00:53,720 --> 00:00:54,720 Why not? 13 00:00:54,720 --> 00:00:59,520 I didn't realize that going to that equity symposium would put me on the equity team 14 00:00:59,520 --> 00:01:03,880 the coming school year and have us creating and giving professional development to the 15 00:01:03,880 --> 00:01:05,320 entire staff. 16 00:01:05,320 --> 00:01:11,000 And one of the resources that I really kind of took to was a book by Zaretta Hammond called 17 00:01:11,000 --> 00:01:13,640 Culturally Responsive Teaching in the Brain. 18 00:01:13,640 --> 00:01:19,440 I read the whole book cover to cover, and it was really a different way to look at the 19 00:01:19,440 --> 00:01:24,240 way that we teach in education and what we can do. 20 00:01:24,240 --> 00:01:29,660 If you are looking to make your teaching practice more culturally responsive, I highly recommend 21 00:01:29,660 --> 00:01:30,660 that book. 22 00:01:30,660 --> 00:01:32,720 She talks about different types of culture. 23 00:01:32,720 --> 00:01:37,720 She talks about the way that the brain works and kind of strategies and things that we 24 00:01:37,720 --> 00:01:43,600 as teachers can do to be more culturally responsive and inclusive for our students so that they 25 00:01:43,600 --> 00:01:46,080 can have the best outcomes possible. 26 00:01:46,080 --> 00:01:50,660 A lot of times when people think of culturally responsive teaching or culture, they think 27 00:01:50,660 --> 00:01:55,360 of surface culture like music, food, language. 28 00:01:55,360 --> 00:01:59,960 And in the book, Zaretta Hammond talks about deep culture, which is like the way that you 29 00:01:59,960 --> 00:02:05,600 communicate and how you interact with the world being something that can be tapped into 30 00:02:05,600 --> 00:02:07,640 to support learners. 31 00:02:07,640 --> 00:02:12,760 And I have to say, it's one of those things where like I was into it, I read it and then 32 00:02:12,760 --> 00:02:15,200 life happened and I was looking for this book. 33 00:02:15,200 --> 00:02:16,600 I couldn't find it anywhere. 34 00:02:16,600 --> 00:02:18,560 This was years ago, mind you. 35 00:02:18,560 --> 00:02:20,880 Years ago, I could not find this book anywhere. 36 00:02:20,880 --> 00:02:24,360 I was like, it has to be here somewhere, but I couldn't find it. 37 00:02:24,360 --> 00:02:29,720 And in my new role, we were talking about or we had to read about culturally responsive 38 00:02:29,720 --> 00:02:30,720 education. 39 00:02:30,720 --> 00:02:33,680 And I was like, oh, I already know about culturally responsive education. 40 00:02:33,680 --> 00:02:36,800 It's just going to be a little bit of a refresher. 41 00:02:36,800 --> 00:02:42,080 And I kind of came at it with a new lens because I was reading through it, had a lot of resources, 42 00:02:42,080 --> 00:02:48,520 not just didn't just talk about Zaretta Hammond's book, but I was like, huh. 43 00:02:48,520 --> 00:02:53,840 And it was kind of like connecting for me with the building thinking classrooms framework 44 00:02:53,840 --> 00:02:58,760 because as a lot of you know, I had tried it with my kindergartners and it was an amazing 45 00:02:58,760 --> 00:02:59,760 success. 46 00:02:59,760 --> 00:03:01,320 The kids loved it. 47 00:03:01,320 --> 00:03:05,160 And I kind of had to wonder like, why is it working? 48 00:03:05,160 --> 00:03:09,700 And when you're in it, you don't necessarily need to know why it works. 49 00:03:09,700 --> 00:03:10,700 You just know that it does. 50 00:03:10,700 --> 00:03:13,720 Like, I don't know how my cell phone works, but I know that it does. 51 00:03:13,720 --> 00:03:17,180 So like, I don't know the mechanisms inside of it, but it works. 52 00:03:17,180 --> 00:03:19,120 And that's all you really need to know. 53 00:03:19,120 --> 00:03:24,760 But when I was rereading the parts of the culturally responsive teaching in the brain 54 00:03:24,760 --> 00:03:26,400 book, I was like, you know what? 55 00:03:26,400 --> 00:03:31,920 I think that maybe Peter Liljadal and like Zaretta Hammond were on the same wavelength 56 00:03:31,920 --> 00:03:33,040 and they didn't even know it. 57 00:03:33,040 --> 00:03:37,220 Like I think that these two need to get together and chat because I think that they could really 58 00:03:37,220 --> 00:03:39,600 build off of each other's work. 59 00:03:39,600 --> 00:03:43,640 You know, I feel like it just kind of, it's like a collab that needs to happen, you know, 60 00:03:43,640 --> 00:03:49,320 like Cardi and Megan or Jay-Z and Beyonce or Shakira and anybody, it needs to happen. 61 00:03:49,320 --> 00:03:52,080 So the more I thought about it and I was like, you know what? 62 00:03:52,080 --> 00:03:57,920 I think that he might have unintentionally tapped into that deep culture with his research. 63 00:03:57,920 --> 00:04:03,500 And that's why, or one of the reasons why, his methodology works so well. 64 00:04:03,500 --> 00:04:08,240 When you think about culturally responsive teaching or culturally responsive education, 65 00:04:08,240 --> 00:04:13,720 a lot of times they talk about, you know, PBL and bringing in kids real live into the 66 00:04:13,720 --> 00:04:18,320 classroom to help with engagement, to help activate prior knowledge, all of that. 67 00:04:18,320 --> 00:04:23,000 But a lot of times when you think about that, it seems like it's a more, I don't want to 68 00:04:23,000 --> 00:04:28,720 say easy, but it's a more natural flow to talk about culturally responsive education 69 00:04:28,720 --> 00:04:35,160 through the lens of language arts or social studies because it can connect seemingly more 70 00:04:35,160 --> 00:04:40,280 easily to our students than math, which I feel can be really removed, can feel very 71 00:04:40,280 --> 00:04:43,680 removed for a lot of students. 72 00:04:43,680 --> 00:04:49,880 So when I was thinking about culture and math, I was thinking about the book, like I said, 73 00:04:49,880 --> 00:04:52,040 and the Building Thinking Classrooms book. 74 00:04:52,040 --> 00:04:58,360 And I was thinking that what ended up happening is this framework kind of delves into deep 75 00:04:58,360 --> 00:05:02,200 culture that makes math more meaningful. 76 00:05:02,200 --> 00:05:05,780 From the content, they are learning how to learn. 77 00:05:05,780 --> 00:05:12,280 And a lot of students come to us with a rich history of oral tradition, storytelling, talking 78 00:05:12,280 --> 00:05:13,400 to learn. 79 00:05:13,400 --> 00:05:18,200 So in the Building Thinking Classroom frameworks, where all of the students are talking and 80 00:05:18,200 --> 00:05:22,360 learning together, they're kind of building their understanding in a very collectivist 81 00:05:22,360 --> 00:05:27,380 way, which is how a lot of our students come to us with that history and their brains are 82 00:05:27,380 --> 00:05:29,280 primed to learn that way. 83 00:05:29,280 --> 00:05:34,860 So if you can bring in that way of processing to the classroom, it's taking advantage of 84 00:05:34,860 --> 00:05:38,800 neural pathways that are already there and making them stronger. 85 00:05:38,800 --> 00:05:43,240 So instead of being held up by content, they look at everything as something they can solve 86 00:05:43,240 --> 00:05:48,520 because they've had practice solving it and looking at things in different ways and understanding 87 00:05:48,520 --> 00:05:53,120 that knowledge comes from everybody in the room, not just the teacher. 88 00:05:53,120 --> 00:05:56,420 Now I'm going to read you this quote, and you're going to have to see if you can figure 89 00:05:56,420 --> 00:05:58,880 out which book it's from. 90 00:05:58,880 --> 00:06:05,040 We want them to have the ability to size up any task, map out a strategy for completing 91 00:06:05,040 --> 00:06:07,840 it and execute the plan. 92 00:06:07,840 --> 00:06:11,480 Now if you've read the Building Thinking Classroom's book, it could have come right out of there. 93 00:06:11,480 --> 00:06:16,360 But the sentence before says, our ultimate goal as culturally responsive teachers is 94 00:06:16,360 --> 00:06:19,640 to help dependent learners learn how to learn. 95 00:06:19,640 --> 00:06:24,440 And then we want them to have the ability to size up any task, map out a strategy for 96 00:06:24,440 --> 00:06:26,800 completing it, and then execute the plan. 97 00:06:26,800 --> 00:06:30,680 I was like, those two things could have come from the same book. 98 00:06:30,680 --> 00:06:32,240 They're on the same wavelength. 99 00:06:32,240 --> 00:06:39,120 So what are the similarities between these two books that might be a reason why the Building 100 00:06:39,120 --> 00:06:42,220 Thinking Classroom's framework works so well? 101 00:06:42,220 --> 00:06:47,320 Just a caveat before I dig into this, being a culturally responsive educator isn't just 102 00:06:47,320 --> 00:06:49,960 about using the right strategy. 103 00:06:49,960 --> 00:06:55,480 It's really about understanding yourself, understanding the way that you communicate 104 00:06:55,480 --> 00:07:01,240 and how that might differ from your students, and also what implicit bias you might have. 105 00:07:01,240 --> 00:07:04,840 And implicit in nature means that you don't realize that you have it. 106 00:07:04,840 --> 00:07:12,160 But it's really about examining yourself as a person to know how to best interact with 107 00:07:12,160 --> 00:07:16,200 your students so that they can be successful no matter what they're doing. 108 00:07:16,200 --> 00:07:20,680 The strategies she discusses don't come until the very end of the book because she spends 109 00:07:20,680 --> 00:07:26,000 so much time talking about what culture is, what you can do before you go to this. 110 00:07:26,000 --> 00:07:31,840 This is like, do the work on yourself first and then these strategies will make more sense. 111 00:07:31,840 --> 00:07:37,840 Zaretta Hammond outlines in her book four strategies to lead students through the stages 112 00:07:37,840 --> 00:07:44,160 of information processing, which are ignite, chunk, chew, and review. 113 00:07:44,160 --> 00:07:47,200 So in ignite, you're getting the brain's attention. 114 00:07:47,200 --> 00:07:50,440 In chunking, you're making information digestible. 115 00:07:50,440 --> 00:07:53,880 In chewing, you're actively processing new information. 116 00:07:53,880 --> 00:07:56,920 And review is having a chance to apply new learning. 117 00:07:56,920 --> 00:08:00,880 Now if you're familiar with the building thinking classrooms framework, it falls into those 118 00:08:00,880 --> 00:08:02,720 categories really well. 119 00:08:02,720 --> 00:08:04,760 The ignite, getting the brain's attention. 120 00:08:04,760 --> 00:08:09,100 When you're introducing a math task, you want a story, you want to puzzle something to get 121 00:08:09,100 --> 00:08:13,440 kids like, oh, I kind of want to figure that out or I want to solve that problem. 122 00:08:13,440 --> 00:08:14,760 It's a mystery. 123 00:08:14,760 --> 00:08:20,320 And then chunking, you're starting with a low floor, high ceiling task that is accessible 124 00:08:20,320 --> 00:08:21,960 to all of your students. 125 00:08:21,960 --> 00:08:23,880 And then they start to build on that information. 126 00:08:23,880 --> 00:08:27,200 They might get a task that's a little more challenging after that and a little more challenging 127 00:08:27,200 --> 00:08:28,840 and a little more challenging. 128 00:08:28,840 --> 00:08:35,240 And the kids can use the strategies that they worked on for the first task and kind of roll 129 00:08:35,240 --> 00:08:38,240 it out into the second and third. 130 00:08:38,240 --> 00:08:41,680 And while they're doing that, they're actively processing this new information. 131 00:08:41,680 --> 00:08:46,000 They're processing from their partner, they're processing from the other people in the room, 132 00:08:46,000 --> 00:08:51,680 seeing everybody's work on the boards really helps them kind of understand lots of different 133 00:08:51,680 --> 00:08:56,520 viewpoints at the same time and kind of make it make sense for them. 134 00:08:56,520 --> 00:09:02,360 Creating visuals and non-linguistic representations is a really powerful way for students to process 135 00:09:02,360 --> 00:09:03,720 information. 136 00:09:03,720 --> 00:09:10,120 So the idea of drawing your problem solving and everybody seeing all these different examples 137 00:09:10,120 --> 00:09:14,760 can really help with their own information processing and help them understand the problems 138 00:09:14,760 --> 00:09:15,760 that they're working on. 139 00:09:15,760 --> 00:09:20,480 And after that with the reviewing or having a chance to apply the new learning, that's 140 00:09:20,480 --> 00:09:27,280 kind of the consolidation or check your understanding part of the problem solving session where 141 00:09:27,280 --> 00:09:31,480 they see if they really did kind of understand what they were doing on the boards and be 142 00:09:31,480 --> 00:09:37,560 able to use that information or use those strategies to new problems in kind of a different 143 00:09:37,560 --> 00:09:43,960 setting or a different way by choosing their own question or questions to solve that are 144 00:09:43,960 --> 00:09:47,160 similar to the one that they just worked on. 145 00:09:47,160 --> 00:09:52,000 And both frameworks just kind of fit so well like a puzzle, like they were part of the 146 00:09:52,000 --> 00:09:58,440 same puzzle kind of hitting on the same idea and seeing similar positive results, hopefully 147 00:09:58,440 --> 00:10:00,400 seeing similar positive results. 148 00:10:00,400 --> 00:10:06,640 I'm wondering if anybody else has kind of put their pulse on this and what your thoughts 149 00:10:06,640 --> 00:10:07,640 are. 150 00:10:07,640 --> 00:10:10,340 I'm really curious, am I just making this up or does it seem like it makes sense to 151 00:10:10,340 --> 00:10:11,340 you too? 152 00:10:11,340 --> 00:10:14,680 Please send me a message and let me know your thoughts. 153 00:10:14,680 --> 00:10:18,640 And before I go, I do want to share a little something that just warmed my heart. 154 00:10:18,640 --> 00:10:24,740 I'm in touch with the teacher that has my students from last year and she was also a 155 00:10:24,740 --> 00:10:28,000 teacher who was like, oh, I'd like to try building thinking classrooms. 156 00:10:28,000 --> 00:10:33,680 So she tried last year, she was continuing this year and she said that when my students 157 00:10:33,680 --> 00:10:38,360 saw like the building thinking classrooms, like little cards I use and everything that 158 00:10:38,360 --> 00:10:43,500 they were so excited, they're like, oh, we did this last year, I loved it, we get to 159 00:10:43,500 --> 00:10:44,500 do it again. 160 00:10:44,500 --> 00:10:48,880 They were so excited and that just, I can't even tell you how exciting that is for me 161 00:10:48,880 --> 00:10:53,400 to hear, to hear these kids be so excited about doing math, especially because, you 162 00:10:53,400 --> 00:10:57,160 know, there's a lot of people who just don't like math, they didn't get it, they're like, 163 00:10:57,160 --> 00:10:58,520 oh, I don't want to do it ever. 164 00:10:58,520 --> 00:11:03,760 So to hear all of them be so excited about it just warms my heart that hopefully they 165 00:11:03,760 --> 00:11:09,200 can carry that attitude about math throughout their education career and it's something 166 00:11:09,200 --> 00:11:37,200 that they don't feel intimidated by, but they feel empowered to do.