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Welcome to our new series about specialist and supporting teachers.  I have been thinking a lot about this series over the past couple months, especially during a visit to Le Jardin Academy in Kailua, Oahu, Hawaii.  I had a candid chat with the specialist team and it made me think that other specialist and supporting teachers might appreciate the same guidance.

This episode, we will review some of the common misconceptions about the role of the specialist and supporting teachers within our schools.  We will begin to discuss how we might support their roles, so they feel more part of the planning and teaching process.

I want to clarify that these ideas are my personal opinion and not necessarily of the IB.  You need to confirm everything with your IB consultant and IB world school manager.  This is based on my experiences alone. 

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This is the final week of our exploration of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain.  We will explore how to build more intellective capacity with Zaretta Hammond.  At my age, I feel like this capacity is waning, so I hope to pick up some tips!

The chapter begins with a quote by Benjamin R. Barber, a political theorist. He states, “I don’t divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and the failures, those who make it or those who don’t.  I divide the world into learners and non-learners.” 

As I read this quote, I thought about how many people view success in life based on financial status, fame, and acquisition of stuff.  The more that they have, the more successful that they feel.  We don’t often think of the person that has repeatedly failed as a winner.  Yet, the experiences and understanding they have gained by losing is probably worth more than all of the accolades from their peers.

I connect this to success in school. The accolades that schools often seek from learners are grades.  If they fail, it means the school was a failure too.  Since many schools are funded by the government or private investors, it’s difficult to justify that failure is a good thing. 

If we look at every success story of every genius that walked the earth, they often talk about all of the failures they had.  These experiences spurred them on to finding the correct solution or inventing a tool that would better mankind.  Embracing failure is vital in this process. This is what independent learners do.


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I can’t believe that we are almost done with Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain by Zaretta Hammond.  This book has reaffirmed that some things I am doing are reflective of cultural responsiveness and that there are many ways that I can still grow.  As we talked about in the last episode, it’s all about having a balanced academic mindset.  We know that tasks may be challenging, but with time and practice, we still attempt them with a belief that we can do it. This is a game changer for those tough times.

Join us for this episode as we explore how to support a positive academic mindset and how to support struggling learners.  This is a super-packed episode. The longest one ever!

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Welcome back my friends to another episode of Confessions of a PYP Teacher.  This episode speaks directly to my heart and I hope it will resonate with you too.  Zaretta Hammond focuses on building deep alliances with our learners in chapter 6 of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain.  We will uncover some parts, but it’s not possible to unpack all of the ideas.  Have fun reading and finding your own nuggets of wisdom.  

The chapter begins with a quote by Rita Pierson, “Every child deserves a champion, an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection and insists they become the best they can possibly be.”

This sets the stage for ways to support our learners by building a strong alliance, so learners can build an academic mindset over learned helplessness. 

For a written blog post and other resources, visit:   https://thinkchat2020.weebly.com

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Something I’ve been thinking about has been learner relationships and why they are not the primary focus in many elementary classrooms.  Usually within the first month of school, teachers are building systems and routines of how the classroom will operate, but do they really take the time to get to know their learners personally?  Zaretta Hammond points out, “Too often though, we ignore the quality of our interactions with students and instead focus primarily on the curriculum.” 

In this episode, we will explore how to build more authentic relationships that help us to affirm and validate our learners.

For a written blog post and other resources, visit:   https://thinkchat2020.weebly.com

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In the past episode, we discussed our own role as a culturally responsive teacher and how it shapes our frame of reference when teaching a classroom full of learners from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds, let alone language acquisition, disabilities, and gender identity needs.  This was compared to our understanding of surface, shallow, and deep cultural beliefs and ways we may trigger amygdala hijack without knowing it.

I don’t know about you, but my brain exploded.  This is completely normal, when we peel back the layers of our own cultural frames of reference and compare them with our learners.  Zaretta Hammond references a three part process for widening our own lens called description, interpretation, and evaluation.

I introduced it in the last episode to get you thinking, but this time, we are unpacking it to the fullest.  Are you ready for description, interpretation and evaluation?  I’m ready to get vulnerable and make changes in my practice.

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Welcome to another deep dive into the fabulous book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain by Zaretta Hammond.  This week will be full of insights about ourselves.  Are you ready to go deep into your practice?  To be honest, this chapter left me with a feeling of being exposed, but that is the process of recognizing how our beliefs and behaviors shape cultural responsiveness or not.  Yikes, we went there already, but this is all part of our growth into becoming more aware educators while honoring the things we are doing well.

This episode will explore how culture has shaped our view of our learners.  Hammond asks some deep questions that have sparked my reflection and hopefully yours.  

For a written blog post and other resources, visit:   https://thinkchat2020.weebly.com

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Welcome back to another episode of Confessions of a PYP Teacher and our exploration of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brian by Zaretta Hammond.

I’m not going to lie, this next part of the book makes me feel like a numpty.  Zaretta Hammond begins the chapter by stating, “If we want to use culturally responsive teaching to support the cognitive development of dependent learners, we have to know how the brain uses culture to make sense of the world.  When we know this, we can easily piggyback on the brain’s natural systems to activate its unique ability to grow itself.”  I don’t know about you, but this sounds really beyond my pay grade, but I’m going to do my best.

Join me as I attempt to unpack the connection of culture on the brain. 

 For a written blog post and other resources, visit:   https://thinkchat2020.weebly.com

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Welcome back to another episode of Confessions of a PYP Teacher.  We are continuing our exploration of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain by Zaretta Hammond.  This week, we will examine the influence of culture and shine light on our need for awareness.

Zaretta Hammond states, “Building background knowledge begins with becoming knowledgeable about the dimensions of culture as well as knowledgeable about the larger social, political, and economic conditions that create inequitable education outcomes…teachers also have to be aware of their beliefs regarding equity and culture.”

What are some of the ideas that pop to your mind?  Listen to this episode to find out more. 

 For a written blog post and other resources, visit:   https://thinkchat2020.weebly.com

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Welcome back to our book study of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain (CRT) by Zaretta Hammond.  As I reviewed my notes for the last episode, I discovered that I missed two key significant ideas that I want to explore before moving forward. 

Hammond refers to the school-to-prison pipeline, which is something that is quite prevalent within the United States.  This pipeline consists of learning systems that withhold rigorous instruction to children of color, particularly black and latino boys.  The repetitive instruction sparks behavior issues, which increases learners from being removed from the learning setting.  The decrease in instruction widens the gap for developing young people who can critically and creatively think. 

The pipeline can largely be attributed to the pedagogy of poverty.  Hammond describes this as, “setting up students up to leave high school with outdated skills and shallow knowledge.  They are able to regurgitate facts and concepts but have difficulty applying this knowledge to new and practical ways.”  Unfortunately, you often see this at the elementary/primary level in poorer schools.  Having worked in these conditions, I’ve seen the pedagogy of poverty used repeatedly by teachers who came from a similar background.  They are often perpetuating the same low-level instruction to the next generation without knowing it.

Listen to this episode to find out how we can address the school-to-prison pipeline and the pedagogy of poverty through Hammond's Ready for Rigor framework.

For a written blog post and other resources, visit:   https://thinkchat2020.weebly.com

Thanks for listening! Please find us on X @thinkchat2020, LinkedIn @lugerlach, Instagram @thinkchat2020, Threads @thinkchat2020, and Bluesky @thinkchat2020.bsky.social.

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