To ensure all students, especially those historically marginalized, are ready to learn deeply, we have to help students not only feel a sense of belonging on a social level but also have a sense they belong to the academic community.

As educators we have to help students evolve from just being a community that gets along to a community of learners that use their collective wisdom to do deep learning. Culturally responsive teaching offers a powerful set of practices that help bridge the social and intellectual dimension of the classroom.

In this interactive series, educator and best-selling author, Zaretta Hammond, will address these important questions and explore ideas and practices from her book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students Teaching (Corwin, 2015).

When I was in the classroom back in the day, I taught composition (expository writing). It was where I started to understand how important literacy was to equity, and how neuroscience and culture should inform our instructional practice.

Since leaving the classroom, I have done work as a curriculum designer and professional developer at organizations such as the National Equity Project and the Annenberg-funded Bay Area School Reform Collaborative (BASRC) in the San Francisco-Bay Area. I am a trained facilitator in anti-bias processes and have facilitated groups focused on learning to talk about issues of racial politics and privilege.

My primary work has been linking instruction, equity, and literacy. I have spent time as an adjunct instructor at Saint Mary’s College in Norther California where I taught Adolescent Literacy and trained tutors and parents in reading support strategies for struggling students of color.

As an undergraduate, I attended University of California, Berkley before finishing up my degree at New York University where I majored in English Literature with a minor in Writing. I completed my Masters in Secondary English Education, with a Concentration in Writing Instruction at University of Colorado, Boulder where I simultaneously did my teacher certification program (starting three months after the birth of my son. I do not recommend this).

For the past 25 years, I’ve maintained a small, independent education consulting practice from which I do my research and writing as well as support schools doing deep instructionally-focused equity work.