Warm Demander

 This is going to be a very short post. I'll explain why next week.

I finally finished reading Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students by Zaretta Hammond. I had planned to finish this book at the end of 2021, alongside Jennifer Cadavez and Connie Chan, but the end of the calendar year was too full for us to maintain our scheduled deadlines for reading three chapters at a time.

As I read Chapter 7, I was struck by the term "warm demander". Hammond says this is what educators should be. The sentence was, "As warm demanders, our job is to get students to recognize that putting forth the effort is worth the work". I've been struggling a bit with this, as some of my students have not been meeting expectations. Are my demands still warm? If they fail or get a poor mark, how much of that is on me and how much of that is on them? Did I explain enough? Did I scaffold enough? Did I give enough opportunities to retry? Did I understand the root cause of the issue? How will they think and feel after their learning time with me is done?

As if I needed more things to preoccupy my thoughts! (Happy last week of school!)