Rochelle Lee Teacher Award Study Groups are school-based professional learning communities. Study groups develop a goal to guide their learning throughout the school year, and meet monthly to discuss instruction and push their practice to reach their goal. Learn more about Hibbard Elementary School’s study group and what they learned about building a community for learning.
School: Hibbard Elementary School
Text: Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students by Zaretta Hammond
Study Group Leader: Bridget Heneghan
Study Group Members: Emily Barnowsky, Jin Dokko, Jessica Hodges, Sora Lim, Stephanie Michl
Goal: To provide students with the skills to become independent learners by understanding how culture impacts our students’ ability to learn. We wanted to focus on how we could integrate various student cultures in a meaningful way into the curriculum in order to improve student engagement and help our students feel safer and supported in the school environment.
This book had less of a focus on immediately implementable strategies for the classroom, and more of a focus on the principles of self-reflection, building learning partnerships with students, and ultimately building a community for learning.
Reading this text gave us a framework in which to look at how we were building community through a cultural lens. We often focused on classroom community at the beginning of the year, but through our study of the text, we started to focus on this as an integral everyday practice through a culturally responsive teaching lens. We used Hammond’s strategy and lens to rework morning meeting structures and discussions and other classroom procedures.
