M4 Reflection

Hammond, Z. (2015). Culturally responsive teaching & the brain: promoting authentic engagement and rigor among culturally and linguistically diverse students. Thousand Oaks: CA: Corwin.

Main Points:

1. School systems write off the “culture of poverty,” which further perpetuates the achievement gap.

2. Educator labels and create a “pedagogy of poverty” which dumbs down the cognitive skills, rigor, and engaging work, by underestimating what our “labeled” children are capable of.

3. A growth mindset would foster resilience in our students and can be accomplished through the vehicle of culturally responsive teaching.

4.  The singling out of children, even with the best of intentions, causes them to feel as though they do not belong, and students will, therefore, withdraw from the learning community, perpetuating gaps and stereotypes.

5. The brain, and especially the amygdala and neocortex, play crucial parts in the detection and minimizing of social and physical threats.

 

Discussion: 

    I read this book a year ago, and yet I keep returning to it throughout this program to understand Hammond's claims more substantively. Most impactful is the neuroscience behind what we know to be the ethical and just treatment of individuals. The brain which lives under duress cannot learn as effectively as one which experiences no threats. We must be mindful in our practice of conscious choices of representation, labeling, and course design, as well as in our unconscious and implicit biases reflected in potential microaggressions of how each and every one of our actions impacts the learning in our rooms. 

Greenberg, M. T. (2006). Promoting resilience in children and youth: Preventive interventions and their interface with neuroscience. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1094, 139-150.

Main Points:

1. Improving academic outcomes begins with fostering executive functioning which builds resilience.

2. Lived stress has detrimental cognitive and social impacts on the brain.

3. Adversity and resilience are linked to an individual’s development of an effective set of responses to stress.

4. Preventive interventions aim to improve emotion regulation and problem-solving skills which comprise executive functioning. 

5. The PATHS preventative curriculum based on the ABCD model of development attempts to reduce aggression and behavior problems by developing social-emotional competency in children. 

Discussion: 

    As a parent of a child with ADHD, and the teacher of students in Remedial Education Classes, I find the notion of preventative interventions backed by neuroscience intriguing. We often sing the praises of emotional regulation and teaching executive functioning, but rarely do we emphasize resilience in the classroom. Only over the last few years have classrooms in my school begun to incorporate visible thinking strategies and a growth mindset. I would like to share some of the findings with the Senior Psychology teachers and propose a cross-curricular discussion or activity. 

Luther, S.S., Cicchetti, D., & Becker, B. (2000). The construct of resilience: A critical evaluation and guidelines for future work. Child Development, 71 (3), 543-562.

Main Points:

1. Multiple definitions and operationalizations of the term resilience exist with little consensus.

2. These discrepancies also apply to the determination of resilience as a personal trait or dynamic process.  

3. Inconsistency also exists in the application of the terms used within the models of resilience as well as the terms "protective" and "vulnerability" 

4. Resilience manifests multidimensionally, and children often have resilience in different areas.  

5. In order for progress in resilience to occur more research and recognition of development must occur as well as attention must be paid to the methodological issues which lead to inconsistencies in research. 

6. Resilience potentially impacts the understanding of processes affecting at-risk individuals. 

Discussion: 

    The term resilience has recently been thrown around as a trait we would like to instill in our students. Resilience is often made to seem like a cure-all for motivation and engagement. This article calls attention to the need for teachers to dig deeper and investigate to operationally define the characteristics we seek for our learners so that we may better plan. In my school, we often cite characteristics from the IB learner profile but rarely do we dig in to operationally define what they look like in our individual classrooms, or much less make the connections for students to our lessons which we hope help them to achieve that goal.