Teachers need to have a sense of awareness and a rich background in order to instruct their students so that they are knowledgeable of the different cultural dimensions that can be present. This can help allow them to build awareness and become more aware of their personal beliefs. (Hammond, 21). Teachers need to focus on building background knowledge in order to fully understand their students. This will help them have more of an open eye to these students differing cultures rather than making assumptions about how they might learn. (Hammond, 21). 

Culture being the software for the brains hardware means that the culture is what allows humans to have meaningful events and to make sense of how things are structured in the world. This means that in order to reach these different student full potential within the classroom, there needs to be culturally responsive teaching so that these students are able to adapt easier. (Hammond, 22). Surface culture is considered to be physical things that relate to a specific way of living such as food or music. This is considered to have a low emotional level because these individuals are open to change. Shallow culture is considered as unspoken rules that make up every day norms. This has a high level of an emotion because these are considered to be values that are held within the culture. Deep culture is centered around learning new information. This is an emotional level that is higher because it helps with decision making. (Hammond, 23).

Deep culture can affect learning by helping to formulate decision that people make after having a worldwide view of how things work in the world. This can help specific people evolve within their culture since they have a different way of seeing things. (Hammond, 23). Culture can be a scaffold for learning because it allows students to be taught in a different way since they come from a different culture. This means that the strategies that teachers use can be beneficial in instructing the culturally diverse students as well as exposing everyone else in the classroom to other methods. Deep culture in regards to feelings of trust can allow students to feel more comfortable within the classroom if the teacher or other students have a similar level of understanding of their culture. (Hammond, 23). 

In order to scaffold for deep culture, the teacher must find ways of understanding different values and meaning in order to teach what they mean in the students new culture. This will show these students that you can understand how they feel about specific issues and can show them how they relate in other cultures. (Hammond, 23). The sociopolitical context that teachers need to acknowledge is the fact that what’s they teach students could be seen differently compared to how they think of it. This means that what is being taught to these students needs to be free of any bias. Implicit bias is considered to be the different opinions or stereotypes that people hold towards different groups unknowingly. This means these thoughts could be racist but are based off of the opinions that you might have heard or have about specific people. (Hammond, 29). 
 Structural racialization is considered to be how people see different groups fit into society. An example of this would be assuming that a specific group is wealthy, poor, or live in specific types of communities based off of their race. (Hammond, 29). “Teaching to the test” became a focus in closing the learning gap in schools in order to get schools more funding as a result of No Child Left Behind. This was the wrong focus because it only focused on improving standardized testing scores within schools and not improving the learning. 

Schools can break the school to prison pipeline by putting more experienced teachers in needier schools where students are more likely struggling. This shows that some school systems feel as though that the needier schools are not going to succeed and are pretty much given up on. If these students are given more of a chance, they are less likely to end up in prison and susceptible to success. (Hammond, 30). We can stop subjecting these dependent learners to inadequate instruction by allowing someone who is more culturally responsive to instruct them. This will allow them to find methods that work well with them so that they are able to achieve success. 
Intellectual apartheid can be described as creating an environment for dependent learners to gain skills that aren’t really applicable to the rest of the class. This segregated style of learning only serves the purpose to say that a student is learning even though they are not gaining the skills that they need. (Hammond, 31). People have the wrong idea of poverty being a culture because they feel as though it is a type of lifestyle that those people have chosen. It is important for teachers to be aware and acknowledge that this does not define a specific culture because poverty is all around the world. (Hammond, 32). 

The idea of poverty is incompatible with with culturally responsive teaching because it promotes the idea that teachers are teaching to an impoverished crowd. This makes it seem as though the teachers are only instructing the students in a specific way because of their economic status which is wrong. The implications for building intellectual capacity are that teachers need to have awareness of the current world that we live in while also recognizing that past racial history has shaped how some people think. (Hammond, 33). Understanding culture can help to build trust because it shows others that are culturally diverse that you can relate to them in some sense. This can be comforting for those students because they know that there is someone who understands them on a deeper level than just knowing where they came from. This is essential because students will only learn from someone that they trust and respect. 

One thing that resonated with me is the idea that some individuals feel as though poverty is a culture. I feel that this is the result of ignorance and that they should be taught to be more culturally aware of how a person economic status should affect how they are learning as long as they are receiving everything they need to succeed. 

 

Hammond, Z. (2015). Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.