Carly Crone's Blog

I was really intrigued by this chapter, “Establishing Alliance in the Learning Partnership” of Hammond’s book, Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain . This chapter is dedicated to further explaining the learning partnership of the Ready for rigor framework. What I want to hone in on, is her section on the power of feedback on learning.  I found this section so interesting because it is something we, as teachers, need to be aware of everytime we want to praise our students when informally and formally addressing or critiquing their work. This chapter ignites our background knowledge about the brain and neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to change and grow in order to meet challenges present in the environment (pg. 101). So, when we give our students meaningful praise and feedback it literally builds brainpower, how incredible! Yet not all feedback is good feedback. Hammond explains four points to help guide our feedback. First, our feedback needs to be instructiv...

               Chapter four of Hammond’s book, Culturally Responsive Teaching & The Brain , began to describe how we can be culturally responsive practitioners. Hammond thoroughly explained three main points about becoming a culturally responsive practitioner. She explains that we must understand ourselves and our culture, practice self-management, and expand our interpretations of student’s cultural displays of learning, social interaction, and actions. First, to be a culturally responsive educator, one must be mindful and present. With this, we have to be mindful of our implicit biases and understand our personal backgrounds, our own cultural identity, family history, what makes us tick, our habits, etc. Hammond calls us to list information about ourselves and our culture, in order to recognize who we are and what our culture is all about. Once we do this, our implicit biases will shine through and we will know what we must work on....

 Hi! I am Carly Crone, a student at Mount St. Mary's University studying Elementary Education!