One example that I feel as though I had of productive struggle within the classroom as a student is sometime during middle or high school with vocabulary units in English classes. I felt as though we were learning sets of different words to memorize but was only meant for the skill knowing it. This type of education did not feel as though it was helping in any specific way since the words in the units were only memorized for the unit tests and were not used much afterwards. I feel as though the inequality from this statement comes from the fact that these students are not on the same language level as everyone else in the classroom. This means that these students are seen as more of a struggle to teach solely because they have to learn a new language in order to make academic progress. This doesn't mean that these students are incapable of learning or know nothing but it is harder to teach. A dependent learner can be defined as a person that is unable to learn new things on their own without assistance from their teacher or peers. This means that they would need constant coaching or assistance in order to understand new material while an independent learner is able to come up with their own strategies in order to process and make good use of the information that they are attaining. These independent learners might need some help from the teacher at first but are able to quickly adjust to the task at hand. 

The reason Hammond describes as to why students of color, ELS, and students of poverty perform lower than everyone else in the classroom setting is that hey do not get the same opportunities to gain and use cognitive skills to their advantage. Others attribute this effect towards different views that these groups might have about education such as thinking that it might not be as important. Increased standards and instructional rigor has not reversed the achievement gap because it is not something that will automatically make students smarter. This can mostly affect the dependent learners because they are probably more likely to not be on the same achievement level as independent students. In order to reverse this achievement gap, these students need motivation to want to learn as well as they need the help of increased brainpower. 

I would define culturally responsive teaching as being being able to create a welcoming environment for diverse students so that they are able to to receive the same equal educational opportunities as everyone else within the classroom setting.  Culturally responsive teaching is rooted in cognitive science and learning theory because the mental process of the learning needs to be analyzed. This means that there are ways of instructing culturally diverse students but teachers need to take the time to find out which methods are beneficial or work the best. 

The first of the four components of framework is awareness. This should help enable teachers to be aware of the environment that they are teaching this culturally diverse student.Learning partnerships allows students dive deeper into their learning by being constantly challenged. Information processing allows teachers to help students understand what they are learning to build more diverse skills. Community building allows these students the ability to see how their cultural aspects can be seen in the classroom as a whole. This was a very informative chapter that allowed me to see how students with cultural differences see a differing educational system. This allowed me to reflect and think about how some of the ELL students in my own school experience saw school.