Chapters International

What is culturally responsive teaching and why is it important? What are the misconceptions about culturally responsive teaching? How do we create the optimum learning environment for racially and linguistically diverse students? How can teachers expand their instructional practice to support those students who have been historically marginalized?

Culturally responsive teaching is more than celebrating different cultures through “food, fabric, and festivals”. In this interactive series, educator and best-selling author, Zaretta Hammond, will address these important questions and explore ideas and practices from her book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students Teaching (Corwin, 2015). She will present principles and practices that allow teachers to use culture as a powerful tool to scaffold deeper learning.

Participation in this workshop will enable participants to:

Understand how culturally responsive teaching is a powerful tool for helping disengaged students recommit to deep learning
Identify the foundational practices and core design principles of culturally responsive teaching that give it pedagogical flexibility for all grade levels and subject areas
Use the core moves and practices to get started building a culturally responsive instructional practice

Potential Audience:

All educators administrators coaches for K-12 schools.

Zaretta Hammond

It’s funny. These days a lot of folks are calling me “Dr. Hammond” since the book has become required reading in many teacher education programs and school districts. Well, to set the record straight, I am not a PhD. I do have a Master’s degree, but I consider myself a “boots on the ground” teacher. I call myself a former writing teacher turned equity freedom fighter. My heart is forever with children and teachers in the classroom, not in an ivory tower, even if these days most of my “students” are new leaders and pre-service teachers. [A quick note: Not throwing any shade at all the PhDs out there doing the work.]

When I was in the classroom back in the day, I taught composition (expository writing). It was where I started to understand how important literacy was to equity, and how neuroscience and culture should inform our instructional practice.

Since leaving the classroom, I have done work as a curriculum designer and professional developer at organizations such as the National Equity Project and the Annenberg-funded Bay Area School Reform Collaborative (BASRC) in the San Francisco-Bay Area. I am a trained facilitator in anti-bias processes and have facilitated groups focused on learning to talk about issues of racial politics and privilege.

My primary work has been linking instruction, equity, and literacy. I have spent time as an adjunct instructor at Saint Mary’s College in Norther California where I taught Adolescent Literacy and trained tutors and parents in reading support strategies for struggling students of color.

As an undergraduate, I attended University of California, Berkley before finishing up my degree at New York University where I majored in English Literature with a minor in Writing. I completed my Masters in Secondary English Education, with a Concentration in Writing Instruction at University of Colorado, Boulder where I simultaneously did my teacher certification program (starting three months after the birth of my son. I do not recommend this).

For the past 25 years, I’ve maintained a small, independent education consulting practice from which I do my research and writing as well as support schools doing deep instructionally-focused equity work.