This book is fantastic, a triumph; a truly ground-breaking work that may forever change the way teachers in America face the challenges of their profession. I’ve been a teacher for over thirty years and always felt I was pretty damn good at it, as good as anybody. But about halfway through my reading of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, I was suddenly stuck by the horrific realization that if I had known when I started teaching what Zaretta Hammond writes in this book, I would have been not just a good teacher, but perhaps a great one. I have always been focused on getting my students--whatever ethnic or socio-economic background they might have sprung from--to be interested in their studies and to give it their all. I tried my damnedest to motivate them to want to excel, not just in school, but in life. I sometimes succeeded, sometimes didn’t. I always smugly thought nobody (well, almost nobody) could do a better job than I was doing. But Ms. Hammond’s book destroyed that glib notion quickly. Reading her book was like being repeatedly, page by page, hit in the head with a brick. Soon I could see with absolute clarity that I could and should overhaul my thinking and my methods. By following the techniques suggested in Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain I could make quantum strides in my individual approach to each of my students and be confident that every last one of them could reach for and achieve their best.
Before reading the book I’d thought of cultural responsive teaching as academic eduspeak sort of stuff, a fancy label for what good teachers have been doing all along--pumping up an underachieving kid’s self esteem, blah, blah, blah. But I now know I was dead wrong. When the teacher really gets tuned into a student’s culture and ethnic identity as described in Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, the teacher forms a partnership of learning with the student that does more than just jack them up; it actually facilitates the growth of the student’s neuroplasticity (brain cell connections). How cool is that? Properly intellectually stimulated, a student will grow millions, if not hundreds of millions, new brain cells; brain cells with trillions of synaptic connections that will enable the student to think in more intellectually sophisticated ways, as a bulked-up muscle will enable an athlete to pump more iron. A pumped-up dependent learner is soon transformed into an independent learner. What is called the “achievement gap” between high functioning independent learners and low functioning dependent learners disappears.
Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain goes on to show how culture is the way that the brain makes sense of the world and forms our world view. We all adhere to two basic cultural archetypes, collective and individual. It tells you how to use these archetypes to create the environment to help the student to transcend the achievement gap in a step-by-step process that is complex, yet easy to follow. Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain is therefore a rich resource of techniques for transforming the lives of students. I’m sorry that I can only give it five stars: that’s the maximum that Amazon allows. It deserves ten. It’s readable, profound, and empowering. Using neuroscience, it brilliantly takes learning theory to a deeper level without being esoteric or pedantic. No teacher should get in front of a classroom until she or he has read and digested every paragraph of this book.
Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Di
4.7 | 3,499 ratings
Price: 16.5
Last update: 08-27-2024
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Top reviews from the United States
James N. Frey
A Revolution in Teaching
Reviewed in the United States on December 20, 2014forgetmeknot531
Textbook... found it extremely interesting!
Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2023Andrea Lockwood
Important read
Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2023Remy Wells
Got what I expected
Reviewed in the United States on April 15, 2024Cien Anos
Good book. When you see where we are as a country with education, makes you want to get to work.
Reviewed in the United States on March 1, 2024Paula Tucker
Evidance is great but actual tools to use in the class is the best!
Reviewed in the United States on May 20, 2021Heather
relevant and important
Reviewed in the United States on June 20, 2023
Tobye Ertelt
fabulous education thinking
Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2023