A review by mitskacir
Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students by Zaretta L. Hammond

3.0

This book was a short and easy read, and I recommend it to anyone looking for an introduction to culturally responsive teaching. There was a lot of interesting content that I can easily relate to my experiences in the classroom, and helped give me some clarity. For example, how common it is for students to respond to challenging material by shutting down and why this might be a natural response. It even gave me some thoughts on how to help these students build the tools necessary to allow them to engage with challenging material. The framing of students as independent and dependent learners especially was helpful in working my mindset away from a deficit-based one. I would say that there was a lot of this book that I didn't find very helpful - with all the learning I've done about culturally responsive teaching, my biggest gripe is still that it seems very easy to stereotype, assume, and tokenize when approaching teaching through this lens, which is exactly the opposite of the goal.