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Bringing Universal Design for Learning to the World Language Classroom

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Bringing Universal Design for Learning to the World Language Classroom

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Differentiated Instruction

Shifting to student-led instruction through UDL can be challenging in these classes, but it can work with the right scaffolds.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an educational framework that aims to provide all students with equal learning opportunities by setting firm goals, maintaining high expectations, and ensuring that students have access to multiple means of engagement and representation along with various methods of action and expression. However, implementing UDL in world language classes presents unique obstacles.

Although voice and choice are critical, shifting to student-led instruction while maintaining 90 percent target language usage and ensuring comprehension is challenging. Fortunately, barriers can be minimized in the world language classroom by setting firm goals and offering flexible means within the UDL framework.

5 Ways to Integrate UDL into World Language Classes

1. Articulate a firm language goal. The key to making each unit successful is establishing a firm daily language objective using the National Council of State Supervisors for Languages and ACTFL's "can-do" or "students will be able to" statements.

Ensuring a specific, measurable can-do every day helps determine if students can meet the objective, allowing them to demonstrate understanding through partner discussions, drawings, or sticky notes (e.g., "I can express a sincere apology in the target language"). This approach ensures that students will have completed at least 180 tasks by the end of the year.

2. Foster self-reflection. After sharing the daily language goal, provide students with opportunities to activate their background knowledge and reflect on what they already know as they work toward the ACTFL World-Readiness Standards.

For example, when aiming for an objective like "Students will be able to compare Costa Rican and U.S. school lunches and describe their ideal lunch," use tools such as a know-wonder-learn (KWL) chart; the task's rubric; a free write; or a products, practices, and perspectives chart to prompt student thinking. This approach helps students build a deeper understanding of cultural context and linguistic concepts, fostering self-awareness and academic growth.

3. Scaffold inputs. To provide multiple means of engagement and representation, input strategies can include visual cues, pictures, total physical response (TPR), body language, target-language equivalents, tangible examples, common associations, and personal connections. For instance, to introduce new vocabulary, a teacher can employ a game called "class vs. teacher."

In this activity, the teacher displays a picture with a word underneath it. When the image matches the word, the class repeats it aloud; if not, they remain silent. Points are awarded to the teacher or the class based on correct responses. This interactive method encourages students to connect words with visual representations. When students are ready to access text, the same images can be shared, allowing students to make familiar connections and rely on visual cues rather than English translations.

4. Scaffold outputs. Comprehensible output scaffolds include providing sentence starters and chat mats, encouraging pair or small group discussions to lower the affective filter, using the "I do, we do, you do" method, and incorporating cognates to support multiple means of action and expression. These strategies, however, can sometimes lead to students reverting to English, such as with the turn-and-talk method. To address this, offer a chart with sentence starters in the target language, such as "If I... could be/had been... famous, older, younger, rich... I would/have..."

Modeling these language structures in context with examples and guiding brainstorming sessions can support the target language. Additionally, structure tasks with clear guidelines, accessibility, and time frames (e.g., one minute, adjusted for proficiency levels), and use timers to maintain focus. During discussions, providing phrases on a "chat mat," such as "It is your turn," "I don't know," "Tell me more," or "Can you clarify?" help further support the use of the target language among students.

Leer con una pareja: Read aloud with a partner, taking turns.

Leer en un grupo: Read the story in a small, teacher-assigned group, where students take turns reading.

Leer individualmente: Read the story independently. Students can record themselves reading the chapter aloud using sites such as vocaroo.com. The audio can be shared for others to listen to and review with permission.

Leer con la maestra: Read in a small group with the teacher. The teacher may read aloud or assign reading roles to students in the group.

5. Provide construct-relevant choice. Offering authentic resource choices in the world language classroom can be challenging according to students' ability to access and understand specific vocabulary and language structures. Instead of allowing students to choose from various resources, provide options for accessing a high-quality resource.

For example, if the goal is for students to describe the main character and three events from a text in the target language, offer different methods, or multiple means of representation, to achieve this. This approach ensures that all students can work toward content and proficiency goals with high-quality inputs, agency, and autonomy.

Similarly, if all students are working toward a speaking goal, they will all have to speak; however, options for action and expression can include demonstrating a spontaneous conversation in a partner presentation or creating a slide presentation with an embedded video showcasing their speaking skills. For writing goals, options could be a free write, a smashdoodle (words and doodles), or a haiku poem (three lines, five-seven-five syllables).

While maintaining language comprehensible for student access, applying the core principles of UDL will help create learning experiences that work for all students and make effective inclusion possible. This means creating multiple pathways for students to learn and demonstrate what they "can do" every day. The key is to elevate both the World-Readiness Standards and language goals and ask, "Is there another way that students could learn or share what they know without sacrificing quality and rigor? If the answer is yes, try it!

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Bringing Universal Design for Learning to the World Language Classroom

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With the right scaffolds in place, implementing UDL in world language classes can be done even in situations with beginning students.

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Reducing Student Anxiety About Creative Digital Work

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Reducing Student Anxiety About Creative Digital Work

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When students feel comfortable sharing creative work on open-ended projects, they're better able to show what they know.

Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for EDUimages

"Is there an example I can look at?"

As educators, we often hear these questions from students, especially when creative technology tasks like video creation, podcasting, or digital design projects are assigned.

The two of us have worked hard to integrate open-ended projects into our curriculum that showcase students' creativity and voice, as well as encourage out of the box thinking. Technology offers new opportunities for our students to express their thoughts and mastery of concepts in the classroom. From Flipgrid videos to more complex projects, this work can at times require students to share a piece of themselves. Every video, picture, voice recording, or digital product provides a tiny peek into students' lives.

Many jump at the chance to work on these projects, but others are challenged in uncomfortable, anxiety-inducing ways that can impact their performance. Helping our students show what they know, even when they're nervous about doing so, is ultimately our goal as educators. While we can't remove anxiety altogether for students struggling with more open-ended creative digital projects, we can make choices as educators to help them manage it.

Employ Universal Design for Learning

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) has become an instructional planning staple in our classrooms, serving as a catalyst to implement various modes of creative sharing to challenge and support students. We believe the strength of UDL lies in how it supports learner variability by providing options when and where needed.

The UDL principle of engagement challenges us to think deeply about protecting our learners when sharing creative projects. Sarah has found that some students thrive when exhibiting their creative work, while for others the social demands of presenting can feel daunting.

Meeting one-on-one with students to discuss concerns and identify alternate ways of sharing their work.

Using small group "showcases" vs. full class or public screenings of projects to ease anxious students into sharing their work publicly.

Leveraging flexible room setups so learners can present their work in comfortable, authentic ways; students in Sarah's classes often sit on the floor, rearrange desks and chairs, or create their own spaces around the classroom.

Offering the option to create screencasts of student work if live presentations aren't necessary.

To reduce creative anxiety around digital projects, Sarah encourages:

Robert Wheatley, a middle school teacher we work with, suggests "adding in different modes of presentation: in front of class, in office hours, breakout rooms, or screen sharing." Taking into consideration students' comfort level when sharing work diminishes anxiety levels and helps them feel protected and empowered.

The UDL principle of action and expression encourages us to provide our students with different modes of creation to demonstrate learning. Offering students two or three tool choices with clear user guides keeps them from feeling overwhelmed by options. This gives students the opportunity to take action in a way they find comfortable and increases their confidence in the work they create.

When working remotely with middle school students, Emily let them choose to create a video, discussion post, or digital slideshow to show their understanding. In a recent digital storytelling project, Sarah gave her students the choice of a video, podcast, or photo essay.

Focus on What Is Being Measured

Try using backward design to align components of your creative projects with student learning outcomes, and ask yourself if these outcomes can be achieved by students in a variety of ways. CAST, the organization that developed UDL, suggests "considering how goals are articulated and communicated." Goals with narrow definitions of learner success may "inadvertently privilege, exclude, and under-engage learners."

Emily meets with students at the beginning of each project, collaborating on what learning outcomes are manageable, achievable, meaningful, and measurable. Defining these metrics together builds student confidence and provides direction.

Sarah never includes "creativity" in rubrics, but instead asks what successful student projects look like. What do we want students to be able to do at the end of the project? You can replace "creativity" on your rubric with critical thinking tasks like developing criteria, designing multiple solutions, or evaluating tools to meet project needs.

Our colleague Brenny Kummer creates sample products for students to critique using the rubric, focusing on project outcomes for improvement. Brenny also assigns regular reflections throughout the project to help students reflect on the process and see the progress they're making over time.

Leverage Group Work

Students benefit from hearing a range of voices and ideas while producing creative work-from the brainstorming stage to creation of the final product. In our classrooms, we've observed that seeing examples of each other's work and sharing ideas reduces students' creative blocks and helps them become more comfortable with the creative process.

Provide a range of tasks, allowing students to focus on their strengths, and help them discover a role where they can confidently contribute.

Create opportunities for group or community stories when sharing personal stories might make a student feel too vulnerable.

Balance freedom and ownership with clearly structured tasks.

Add a fun factor.

Group work on creative projects can:

The growing use of creative digital projects in online and blended learning has left many students feeling anxious. Utilizing strategies to accommodate creative diversity encourages a safer learning space for all students to create, no matter where they fall on the creative spectrum. Ultimately, we can foster new opportunities for our students to build their confidence and grow through creative self-expression, even in spite of their anxiety.

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Reducing Student Anxiety About Creative Digital Work

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When students feel comfortable sharing creative work on open-ended projects, they're better able to show what they know.

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How to Choose Words That Motivate Students During Online Learning

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How to Choose Words That Motivate Students During Online Learning

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Self-motivation. Ownership. Engagement. We have always wanted students to feel passion for learning and to be intrinsically motivated-to be driven from within. With much learning moving to an at-home environment, these student characteristics are more important than ever, and the way that we, as educators, frame at-home learning experiences can have a profound impact on how students feel about them.

This will be especially important for some students. Consider the barriers that may impact student learning at home: lack of internet, devices, and support. Add to the mix competing priorities like supporting siblings, having essential jobs, and coping with stress and trauma, and it's clear that motivation, resourcefulness, and self-regulation are critical.

This isn't to say that student engagement is everything. Districts and schools have to consider barriers through an equity lens and ensure that all students have the essential supplies to access learning, but access alone will not equate to equal opportunities to learn if we don't also help students become engaged, innovative, and empowered.

Yet if we learned anything last spring when schools shut down and kids stayed home, it was that many students struggled to stay engaged. What if part of the problem has been how we have framed the work? What if, without meaning to, we have taken engaging, inspiring, and awesome work and made doing it acts of compliance instead of engagement, simply by the way we framed it?

For example, let's say a teacher has incorporated elements of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as students build an understanding about how geography affects human settlement and resource use. Students are offered multiple means of representation to learn (attend a live Zoom or watch the recording, read or listen to an online article, view a documentary, read the textbook, etc.) and several choices of assessments to express their understanding (journaling or writing a paper, producing a video reflection, recording a podcast, etc.). Sounds awesome, right? Kids should be excited, shouldn't they?

What This Looks Like in Practice

Let's consider how teacher messaging might impact students' enthusiasm.

Teacher 1: "OK, everyone. I've got several choices for you to learn about how geography affects where people decide to live and the way they live. I expect you to choose at least two different resources to explore for me, and I want you to also pick one activity to try. To get full credit on the assessment, you will need to cite the resources you used."

Teacher 2: "OK, everyone. You have several choices for how you get to learn about how geography affects where people decide to live and the way they live. Don't forget to use at least two different resources, and then pick an activity to try. You can do more than one if you want! Remember to cite resources to give credit to other authors and organizations and boost the credibility of your work."

Notice that the first teacher emphasizes compliance through the use of teacher-centric language ("I want," "I expect," "I've got") and extrinsic motivation by emphasizing getting "full credit." The belief behind this message is, "Kids probably won't want to do the work, so I need to tell them what to do and motivate them to do it." The second teacher uses more student-centric language, offering invitations and suggestions, while speaking primarily in the second person instead of the first. Their assumption and expectation is that students are motivated to learn, and their role is to guide and support students' learning.

The suggestions below may help you to reflect on the power of language as you design and deliver learning that embraces variability; eliminates barriers; and helps students to build intrinsic motivation, sustain effort and persistence, and self-regulate during Covid-19 and beyond.
Moving From Compliance to Engagement

Instead of "I expect you all to...," try "Your next challenge is..."

Instead of "I want you to...," try "What's a goal you have..."

Move From Teacher Ownership to Student Ownership

Instead of "Here are three things you need to do...," try "Here are three things to try as you..."

Instead of "I've created some choices for you...," try "You have several choices to consider..."

Shifting From Extrinsic to Intrinsic Motivation

Rather than tell students what they need to do to get a good grade, consider explaining what they should keep in mind as they aim for high-quality work. When it comes to things like the importance of citing sources, don't frame it as something that's necessary for a good grade. Instead, show how this improves the work. Suggest to students that it boosts the credibility of their work and gives credit to other authors. Offering rewards for completed assignments also can backfire. Instead, you can ask students about their goals for the work.

Changing language habits is really hard. So here's something to try. As you're teaching and talking with students, record yourself using the voice-memo app on your phone; or, if you're teaching remotely, record the session. You may also want to review directions within your learning management system, rubrics, and letters home. Which phrases do you use that emphasize student ownership, engagement, and intrinsic motivation, and which ones may unintentionally indicate the reverse? Pick one phrase or habit to work on so that you don't feel overwhelmed.

There is so much to adapt to support students' at-home learning that it can feel overwhelming, and there's so much that feels out of our control. Language is a simple and powerful thing we can control.

This work isn't about us. We don't have power over our students, but we provide them with the support so they can find the power within themselves. And when we talk about learning as though it is the reward, and provide students with the scaffolds and support to pave their journey, we will be closer to our intent: students finding the resources they need and using their voices to share what they know in ways that are relevant, authentic, and meaningful to them.

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How to Choose Words That Motivate Students During Online Learning

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Self-motivation. Ownership. Engagement. We have always wanted students to feel passion for learning and to be intrinsically motivated-to be driven from within. With much learning moving to an at-home environment, these student characteristics are more important than ever, and the way that we, as educators, frame at-home learning experiences can have a profound impact on how students feel about them.

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Udio: A Technology-Rich Literacy Experience for Students with Reading Disabilities

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Udio: A Technology-Rich Literacy Experience for Students with Reading Disabilities

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Reading Challenges Students with Disabilitites

With each new grade level, literacy demands increase substantially -- texts become longer, sentence complexity increases, and content vocabulary begins to expand exponentially. For students with disabilities, these challenges are especially daunting.

In 2013, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reported that 91 percent of eighth-grade learners with disabilities performed at or below the basic reading level, with 60 percent performing below basic. Furthermore, students with learning disabilities read 3.4 grade levels below peers who are free of disabilities. By middle school, academic outcomes in multiple content areas are inexorably dependent upon students' ability to independently learn from text and express what they know through text.

Fortunately, help is on the way.

In an attempt to exploit technology that can help struggling readers, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Programs (OSEP) funded the Center on Emergent Technology, Disability and Middle School Reading. The goal of this Center is to leverage emergent technology in the service of reading comprehension, skill development and improved motivation for reading, so that whenever students are reading they will be able to practice and grow their skills through "just-right" reading challenges. The Center, led by the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) in collaboration with Vanderbilt University, represents a large system of partnerships designed to leverage and connect the most current knowledge from the learning sciences about reading development in students with disabilities, best practices within education, and innovation at the leading edge of education technology.

The Center's work has focused on exploring how emerging technologies can be leveraged to:

1. Accelerate reading skill development

2. Enhance student motivation, engagement and self-efficacy related to literacy learning

3. Improve efficiency in the use of educational resources (e.g., open educational resources that increase academic learning time via text)

Udio Will Help Struggling Middle-Grade Readers

The Center is researching and developing a technology-rich learning environment called "Udio" that will make it possible for schools to provide all students with appropriate literacy experiences as they read independently across the curriculum. The goals of Udio are simple:

1. Foster a passionate interest and investment in reading for students who have traditionally been uninterested in, or disenfranchised by, traditional classroom literacy practices.

2. Substantially improve the reading comprehension skills of middle school students who have experienced recurrent failure in the domain of reading.

Udio is a dynamic web of authentic, current and widely distributed Universal Design for Learning (UDL) reading environments.

Reading materials avaiable through Udio are contributed by a network of partners whose online content is already on the web and of high interest to struggling adolescent readers and their teachers. Current Udio partners who provide access to reading content include Scholastic, the Smithsonian Museum of American History, the SERP Institute/Word Generation, the Poses Family Foundation/Story Share, Sports Illustrated for Kids, and Time Magazine for Kids. When completed, Udio will provide readers with:

A space to explore content that provides students with access to hundreds, and eventually many thousands, of high-quality, high-interest articles

A platform to read, discuss and collect media of interest that supports the use of reading comprehension strategies, provides substantive opportunities for active and social experiences of text, and provides access to UDL supports for just-right reading challenges (including access to text when word-level reading skill is low)

A supported space to create and share projects that leverage writing in the service of reading comprehension skills development

A dashboard and analytic system that supports students in developing an understanding of their interests and allows learners to track the volume and pace of their reading experiences in Udio

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Udio: A Technology-Rich Literacy Experience for Students with Reading Disabilities

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With each new grade level, literacy demands increase substantially -- texts become longer, sentence complexity increases, and content vocabulary begins to expand exponentially. For students with disabilities, these challenges are especially daunting. In 2013, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reported that 91 percent of eighth-grade learners with disabilities performed at or below the basic reading level, with 60 percent performing below basic.

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Changes to curriculum and grading policies can go a long way toward helping a school level the playing field for all students.

For the first time in my 16-year-long career as a school administrator, I feel like we're finally starting to get to a place of actually having real conversations across the country about figuring out diversity, equity, inclusion, and antiracism in education.

At the end of 2020, the Massachusetts chapter of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (MASCD) came together through a webinar to revisit the topic of racial equity in schools. Panelists included school leaders from our state and across the country. The lessons learned that day have shaped my actions regarding equity throughout this school year. I'm a 49-year-old White educator, and I understand my privilege in this system. However, no matter my role or background in education, I have to listen, learn, and grow. I want to share some of what I learned from that session to help other educators who are striving to provide students with a more equitable education.

We have to start by taking a whole-child approach. We must understand that our students' needs come before the curriculum or standards. We have to know our kids and where they're coming from-both where they live and their perspective. To do this, we have to move out of our comfort zones and into a place of discomfort to accept students however they show up to school. Having these conversations with students will allow them to get comfortable with the infinite possibilities of who they are and where they are in their educational journey.

It's hard for us to realize that some of the work we've been doing for a long time has helped only some students and not all students. What is more challenging is that sometimes we're not sure how to break that cycle. These strategies from our team will help you get started.

9 Ways to Increase Equity in Your Building

1. Hire an equity and diversity director. When a district has explicit leadership to champion equity and diversity, the initiative will come from a positional authority and have the follow-through needed to build momentum and long-term success.

2. Eliminate giving students a zero for late work. Allow students to turn in work late to earn a percentage of the points. Zeros or multiple zeros for late work are incurably damaging for students. We don't know students' situations or support at home. If the goal is learning, allow for flexibility when needed. Additionally, permit the students to redo an assignment. Again, if the goal is learning, why do we give them one shot and hold them to a low grade? This pattern leads to frustration and eventually giving up.

3. Remove prerequisites for honors and Advanced Placement classes. Having entry barriers eliminates many Black and Brown students from higher, more challenging courses. Judge students by potential, and use honors and AP as opportunities to identify kids who can make that educational leap. Take the time to speak with students individually. Interview them as a way to coach them up and say, "Listen, you can do this work." Our panel has seen firsthand where students who would not traditionally succeed in those courses excel with support, individual motivation, and encouragement.

4. Move toward standards-based grading. Moving to this practice will focus on learning and student growth rather than having the student identify with a number or letter. Fully understanding that colleges need student transcripts, we encourage standards-based grading whenever possible. This practice will level the playing field for students to focus on a journey of learning, not a final grade.

5. Increase staff training. Having in-house staff-led sessions will bring a passion and relevance to the training. If you don't have someone available for this, try bringing in educators from outside your school. You may want to start the year with a keynote on equity that gets followed up in faculty meetings.

6. Review hiring practices. Review the websites where you list district jobs and what college campuses you visit to recruit. If you're not getting candidates of color, change your recruitment and interview process. Additionally, look at how you screen résumés. Too often, we look at where someone went to college, not the individual. Hire talent wherever you can find it.

7. Disaggregate performance data. When we look at school and district data as an average, it may show that the school is on par or successful. However, look deeper at each student who is struggling. We cannot look at the whole picture of data without looking at the parts. Every student counts, no matter the standing of the school.

8. Review curriculum. Look at the curriculum to ensure that all students see themselves reflected in it. Updating the curriculum to mirror your current population will allow students to feel connected to it, increase learning opportunities, and increase content retention and engagement.

9. Involve students in the conversation. Take a look at your school/classroom culture to see if you're shutting down racial equity conversations in class. Ask yourself, "Is there space for kids to have these conversations?" Ask Black and Brown graduates about their school experiences and find out their views of the curriculum. Increasing student conversations is critical because the person doing the talking is the person doing the learning.

Increasing student talk around racial equity can be difficult for educators at first. Ensure that educators' strategies to participate in these conversations with students are part of the staff PD discussed above. Empowering educators to respond with "I hear you" will show that you value student voice. Our students need encouragement and comfort to support them during their educational journey.

I applaud so many teachers who have done the work. When we have crucial conversations like the MASCD event, the change happens.

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Changes to curriculum and grading policies can go a long way toward helping a school level the playing field for all students.

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An Antiracist Roadmap for Discussing Tough Topics in Class

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An Antiracist Roadmap for Discussing Tough Topics in Class

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Discussions about racism and how to proactively address it are happening among White educators, and that’s a good thing. There’s no perfect formula for becoming an antiracist teacher, but on the Damascus road toward antiracism, the first thing is to understand the terms racism and antiracism.

Dr. Ibram Kendi, founder of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University and author of the book How to Be an Antiracist, defines racism as the “marriage of racist policies and racist ideas that produces and normalizes racial inequities.” Antiracism is the opposite—measures that eliminate racial inequity on the basis that racist policies are the cause of racial inequities.

For Kendi, you cannot identify yourself as “not racist” absent identifying yourself as an antiracist—being an antiracist is the only alternative to being a racist. Simply being neutral isn’t enough for Kendi: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said that “the hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral during times of great moral conflict.”

Exploring These Definitions in Action

With these terms defined, you can explore how racism plays out within society, the community where you live and work, and your school. Racism is designed to maintain White supremacy, which Dr. Crystal Fleming defines as the social, political and economic dominance of people socially defined as “White.”

Some people define racism as something within a person’s heart rather than policies and ideas that shape the experiences of racial groups, but Fleming says that White supremacy is maintained from one generation to another through socialization, the process through which our families, peer groups, and social environments shape our behaviors, beliefs, and identities. For Fleming, it’s not what’s in your heart that matters because we live in a racist society and racism is all around us.

Teachers seeking be antiracist can next explore the connections between how racism in society informs racism within their school and how racism within their school helps to maintain racism within communities—and how these things maintain White supremacy.

For example, aggressive criminal legislation, in addition to racist ideas, is the foundation of mass incarceration, a policy under which Black people have been disproportionately imprisoned. And in an effort to deter Black children from walking down the wrong path, or to gain their compliance, zero-tolerance policies based on the “broken windows theory” have been adopted by schools.

Exploring racism in real time to understand how it works is critical to the ability to speak on it. This only happens, however, when terms are clearly defined.

Assessing Your Classroom

Having defined key terms and examined them in action, the next step is to determine whether your classroom—instruction, assessment, content resources, and discipline management—is a racist or antiracist classroom. To determine that, you must ask yourself some key questions:

Is your method or philosophy of teaching student-centered—accounting for your students’ strengths, needs, culture, and experiences, in addition to what they learn and how they learn it? Or is it teacher- or administrator-centered—focused only on students achieving benchmarks in a one-size-fits-all approach? Concern for what and how students learn is important, but a benchmark is incomplete when it is centered only on the display of a learned skill rather than on a display of the skill and its acquiring under an equitable set of circumstances. If you’re not factoring in how a student’s history of experiences and culture informs their classroom experience and performance, you’re doing a disservice to the student.

Does your teaching utilize culture and community as a foundation for collaboratively building new knowledge, using core content knowledge for the purpose of building skills like critical thinking and problem solving in order to empower students and strengthen communities? Or is your teaching limited to lecturing, memorization, or reading aloud, whereby you talk and identify what students need to know and your students are to listen and obey? That may seem archaic, but I’ve seen teachers who continue to teach this way. Even if teachers use engaging techniques that make learning fun, education must involve a greater purpose rather than simply conveying information. Learning the game of basketball may be fun, but it is without purpose if I never play the game—we must likewise encourage students to see a purpose in their schoolwork.

Are you utilizing resources such as texts, artifacts, images, documents, and stories that are reflective of the racial and ethnic demographics of your classroom, school, community, and society at large in order to affirm the identity, history, and humanity of your students? Or are your resources limited to items that reflect a Eurocentric framing of intelligence, history, beauty, and humanity?

Establishing a Classroom Centered on Community

When I taught, I frequently engaged my students in conversations about racism, police brutality, and income inequality. I did this with students from grades 7 through 12. To do that, we established a community in which we established and protected our sacred space as one of shared ideas, transparency, intimacy, respect of truth and all voices.

For tough discussions, we would use these norms:

Organize desks in a circle and provide yourself a seat in that circle. This creates a community among your students and brings you in as part of that community.

Introduce debating rules and facilitate organized debates. This framing normalizes discourse procedure whereby procedure becomes culture.

Ask your students to address each other by their last name—Mr. Smith, Ms. Jones—and you do the same. This reminds all within your community that everyone is of value and worthy of respect. This was a norm of my classroom culture at all times, not just during debates.

Prime students for discussions with questions for which they must read and do research to get informed prior to the discussion, establishing that facts and evidence must inform interests and passion-driven opinions.

Never excommunicate anyone from the circle or community. Always reprove in love, then rectify or remedy the violation and restore the student. This establishes your community as one not of punishment but justice.

As I mentioned earlier, there’s no perfect formula for becoming an antiracist teacher. Nevertheless, these action items are critical to becoming the person you hope to be and the teacher all students desperately need.

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An Antiracist Roadmap for Discussing Tough Topics in Class

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This long-term strategy for guiding conversations on topics like racism requires prep work to ensure that the classroom is truly inclusive of all students.