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Edutopia
The Value of Culturally Responsive Teaching in Distance Learning
Zaretta Hammond shared practical strategies for fostering students’ independence and agency while they are learning at home.
By Laura Lee
June 15, 2020
Teacher educator Zaretta Hammond recently hosted a webinar to explain
how culturally responsive teaching (CRT) can play an important role in
fostering students’ independence during school closures, writes Amielle
Major in “How to Develop Culturally Responsive Teaching for Distance
Learning,” for KQED’s MindShift.
Independence is clearly needed for students working at home, so
teachers should foster it very intentionally, said Hammond, author of
Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. “Culturally responsive
instruction doesn’t mean you’re only mentioning issues of race and
implicit bias,” Hammond said: By seeking to expand learning capacities
of historically marginalized students, “you’re also focused on building
brainpower by helping students leverage and grow their existing funds
of knowledge.”
“By giving students more agency, the idea is to disrupt old routines
around teaching and learning that make the student dependent on the
teacher for receiving knowledge,” Major writes.
Hammond offered three suggestions for implementing CRT in the current situation:
1. Use students’ background knowledge: The knowledge students have from
their families, communities, and lived experiences informs the ways
they process and retain new information, and Hammond said educators can
guide students to connect what they’re learning in classes to that
background knowledge.
Hammond encouraged teachers to survey students to find out their
interests and then use those as the foundation to help them build more
knowledge. Students can take a walk with their parents to find
“community curiosities” that spark their interest, for example, or
create a list of shows or documentaries that focus on their interests.
Guiding students is about more than curating resources, Hammond said.
Provide a framework that shows students how to explore a subject. For
example, ask “What was your biggest surprise from this book/show?”
Hammond suggested. Asking students to reflect on and share what they
observed or learned in a video or audio note can reinforce the
knowledge gained.
2. Build routines for the brain: Establishing questions for inquiry is
“essential to processing and hardwiring information in the brain,”
Major writes. Using a regular set of prompts in every send-home
assignment builds students’ capacity to “begin to think that way even
when you’re not in the classroom to reinforce that way of thinking.”
Hammond called this being students’ “personal trainer of their
cognitive development.”
Hammond suggested asking questions that encourage students to draw
connections between pieces of information and to relate parts to the
whole. For example, a basic question such as “What’s the relationship
or connection between these things?” gives students a consistent lens
for examining new information. While the concepts are simple, the
repetition of these questions will help students “internalize these
prompts until they become almost instinctual.”
3. Boost vocabulary: Creating active student engagement in vocabulary
building is an important equity strategy, Major writes. By helping
“students engage in wordplay, word consciousness, and word knowledge,”
educators boost students’ understanding of words in a way that is more
robust and engaging than a worksheet, she says. Word games and searches
“are small, familiar but high-leverage activities because they’re fun
but also require a high cognitive load.”
Poetry activities and word scavenger hunts, for example, can be
engaging ways to build interest in new words. “Kids have different
interests in words, so find out where their energy is,” Hammond
suggested: “The idea is to get them actively involved in word
consciousness.”
As students develop these skills—connecting new information to
background knowledge, establishing cognitive routines, and improving
vocabulary—they become more independent in their learning. And autonomy
is a valuable asset not only for distance learning but for becoming
more empowered, engaged learners.
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