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Gloria Ladson-Billings

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Dr. Jeff Duncan-Andrade

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"There are a lot of other things that we're not attentive to enough, and that we're not measuring, to make it important in schools," Duncan-Andrade said. Educators have known about Maslow's hierarchy of needs for decades, but Duncan-Andrade contends it has to be at the center of everything educators do. He's found it essential that students believe he cares about them on that basic level before they'll be willing to learn from him.

Research coming out of the medical field about adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) fuels Duncan-Andrade's argument that inequality has a huge impact on the health and learning of children. Some researchers estimate that one in three residents of urban areas with high rates of violent crimes has post-traumatic stress disorder. But even worse, these young people aren't "post traumatic" because the trauma they experience is ongoing, around them always. Researchers have come up with a new name for this disorder: complex post-traumatic stress disorder.

"The symptoms are more complex than what they're seeing in the military," Duncan-Andrade said, and schools are not equipping teachers to handle this health crisis. "The best I see in schools is a one-off training on trauma, and now you're trauma-informed and go help those kids." That's nowhere near enough to equip people to show up for kids in the difficult but necessary ways required.
THE ROLE OF HOPE
"Hope is the best indicator for the degree to which kids will successfully navigate toxic stress, and the degree to which kids are less likely to engage in self-harming behavior," Duncan-Andrade told me in another interview. But he warns the hope he's talking about can't be a false hope -- kids see right through that.

Too often, he said, teachers send the message that if students come to class and study hard they will succeed. The problem is that's often not true, and kids know that. It's a type of hope that comes from outside the community, based on assumptions that aren't rooted in the reality that many of the most struggling students experience. Parroting this message devalues the lived experiences of kids by ignoring them.

But there's another kind of hope that's equally bad -- deferred hope. This is when people know better than to blame the kids, so they blame the system instead. "The problem with this is, of course, that their critique never results in a transformative program for the kids," Duncan-Andrade said in a talk he gave at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Blaming the system defers a solution for the kids in school right now, waiting for a utopian society where inequality, racism and poverty don't exist. Kids need hope now.

That's why Duncan-Andrade advocates for something he calls "critical hope." To achieve critical hope educators have to combine material resources, like great teaching, with fierce love for students demonstrated with actions, not words. This is incredibly hard work, but through all its ups and downs critical hope requires educators to continue believing they can do what they've never done before. Duncan-Andrade knows what he's asking is hard, but he also knows that students are watching the adults.

"Wounded children tell the most truth," Duncan-Andrade said at the Deeper Learning Conference. "And they tell it in the most raw ways. And it's painful to hear that." But when teachers send those wounded children out of class, passing them off to someone else in the building, it sends a message that they're too difficult to love. He's clear that fiercely loving students does not mean there is no conflict. Any good parent knows sometimes doing what's best for kids doesn't make them like you, but it should always show your love.

"You win the heart to get to the head," Duncan-Andrade said. "We keep banging on their heads."

The most "hopeful" teachers for Duncan-Andrade are the ones who see their classrooms as microecosystems. Teachers have no control over the institutional racisms kids face, the families they come from, where they live, or what happened on the way to school that day, but they can control the conditions of their classroom. They can create a new kind of soil for the roses to grow in, soil that isn't toxic, that allows them to flourish.

"No master gardener blames the seed for not growing," Duncan-Andrade said. "They know they have to change the soil. You've got to license yourself to be audacious."

Students will make mistakes on this journey; they'll lose all the progress they've made when another destabilizing event happens. And it will be incredibly frustrating to the teachers that love them. But, "We have to learn to love that about kids. And when we learn to love that about kids, we can remain audaciously hopeful," Duncan-Andrade said.

As a high school teacher, college professor and founder of the Roses in Concrete Community School in Oakland, Duncan-Andrade tries to embody the tenets of effective teaching that he champions. He admits he doesn't have it all figured out. He has never had a perfect day, but he hopes that approaching teaching as "radical healing" will start to heal the community, too.

He doesn't want the battered roses growing up in his square of Oakland concrete to get transplanted to a rose garden, never to return. He wants them to go off to institutions of higher education and take advantage of the knowledge, resources, opportunities and access found there before coming back to reinsert themselves into the concrete. Because when the people who "got out" come back, they widen the cracks for the seeds coming up behind them.

"So much of what we teach our young people is that those battered petals are bad, as opposed to that's what enabled them to reach the sun," Duncan-Andrade said. He thinks young people still love Tupac because his narrative is about staying connected to the concrete -- the parents, community and places of one's childhood -- even when one has become a healthy, thriving rose.
*A previous version of this article incorrectly stated Duncan-Andrade was still teaching at Fremont High School. He no longer does. We regret the error.

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Why Critical Hope May Be the Resource Kids Need Most From Their Teachers

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"There are a lot of other things that we're not attentive to enough, and that we're not measuring, to make it important in schools," Duncan-Andrade said. Educators have known about Maslow's hierarchy of needs for decades, but Duncan-Andrade contends it has to be at the center of everything educators do.

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Instructional Equity

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Zaretta Hammond is a former classroom English teacher who has been doing instructional design, school coaching, and professional development around the issues of equity, literacy, and culturally responsive teaching for the past 18 years. She teaches as a lecturer at St. Mary's College's Kalmanovitz School of in Moraga, California.

In addition to consulting and professional development, she has been on staff at national education reform organizations, including the National Equity Project and the former Bay Area School Reform Collaborative (BASRC). She has trained instructional coaches in reading development, especially targeted at students of color and English learners. She has also designed national seminars such as the three-day Teaching with A Cultural Eye series for teachers and school leaders. She is regularly invited to present at regional and national conferences. She has authored articles that have appeared in publications such as Phi Delta Kappan.

Along with a focus on culturally responsive teaching, Ms. Hammond has a strong research agenda around literacy, vocabulary development, and equity. She has designed culturally responsive tutor training programs aimed at volunteer reading tutors for a variety of non-profit organizations. She currently designing a literacy program to accelerate low reading skills among high school students. She holds a Masters in Secondary English Education.

She also writes the popular ready4rigor.com blog. Zaretta is the proud parent of two young adult children, both of whom she taught to read before they went to school. She resides in Berkeley, CA with her husband and family.

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Zaretta Hammond: Coaching for Instructional Equity

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In this episode of&nbsp;Talking About Practice,&nbsp;we chat with Zaretta Hammond, the best-selling author of&nbsp;Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain. Zaretta Hammond is a former classroom English teacher who has been doing instructional design, school coaching, and professional development around the issues of equity, literacy, and culturally responsive teaching&nbsp;for the past 18 years.&nbsp; She teaches as a lecturer at St.

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Last month, I reviewed Zaretta Hammond's fantastic book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. Now I'm proud to have Zaretta here as a guest writer to share some specific strategies with us.

Culturally responsive teaching. Everybody is talking about it. The big question is: How do you actually make lessons culturally responsive? That comes up regularly when I am working with groups of teachers to improve outcomes for diverse students who are struggling. I remember working with a group of sixth grade teachers on improving learning for their at-risk students. These teachers were frustrated that their students, 95 percent of them students of color and English language learners, were not applying themselves to learning.

I suggested that we explore making lessons more culturally relevant in order to accelerate student learning. I remember the reaction of Janice, the science teacher. "I am not going to be rappin' about the periodic table," she said defiantly as she crossed her arms and sat back in her chair.

I couldn't blame her. Google "culturally responsive teaching" and you can find a dozen videos of well-meaning teachers leading some call-and-response chant about exponents or rapping about the Boston Tea Party while students sit back and giggle. That's because we usually talk about culturally responsive teaching only as an engagement strategy designed to motivate at-risk students to take learning seriously. Or we try to find a race-based connection to the content to make it "relevant" to minority students.

One of the biggest misconceptions about culturally responsive teaching is thinking you have to tie the lesson's content to African American or Latino students' racial background. The common belief is if you mention Africa, Mexico, or famous black and brown high achievers, it will spark students' attention. Then they will be motivated to participate.

In reality, culturally responsive teaching is less about using racial pride as a motivator and more about mimicking students' cultural learning styles and tools. These are the strategies their moms, dads, grandmas, and other community folks use to teach them life skills and basic concepts long before they come to school and during out-of-school time.

Culturally responsive teaching leverages the brain's memory systems and information processing structures. Why? Many diverse students come from oral cultural traditions. This means their primary ways of knowledge transfer and meaning-making are oral and active. It's a common cultural tradition that cuts across racial groups: African American, Latino, Southeast Asian, and Pacific Islander communities all have strong oral cultures. Each of these cultural groups uses the brain's memory systems for turning inert information into useable knowledge. They use memory strategies to make learning sticky, like connecting what needs to be remembered to a rhythm or music (that's why we still know the ABC song) or by reciting it in fun ways like a poem, riddle, or limerick.

I asked Janice what area of learning she wanted to help her kids improve. She said science vocabulary; they weren't learning the weekly words and it was getting in the way of their understanding of key concepts. She was frustrated and at the end of her rope. I asked how she was teaching it. She used the typical approach: On Monday, she listed the words on the board. Students copied them down and were required to look each word up and use it in a sentence. On Wednesday, there was a vocabulary test.

I suggested that we design word study to be more culturally responsive by making it more like the students' own cultural learning process. She was open for trying something different.

I offered her these three tips for transforming any lesson into something that looked and felt more culturally responsive to diverse students, something that would allow them to engage more and process the content effectively.

Games are the power strategy for culturally-grounded learning because they get the brain's attention and require active processing. Attention is the first step in learning. We cannot learn, remember, or understand what we don't first pay attention to. Call and response is just a way to get the brain's attention. Most games employ a lot of the cultural tools you'd find in oral traditions - repetition, solving a puzzle, making connections between things that don't seem to be related (Ever play Taboo or Apples to Apples?).

Organizing learning so that students rely on each other will build on diverse students' communal orientation. This communal orientation can be summed up in the African proverb, "I am because we are." Even making learning slightly competitive in a good-natured way increases students' level of attention and engagement. It's why the T.V. show Survivor has been around for so many years; it's a social-based game.

The brain is wired to remember stories and to use the story structure to make sense of the world. That's why every culture has creation stories. In oral traditions, stories play a bigger role in teaching lessons about manners, morality, or simply what plants to eat or not eat in the wilderness because it's the way content is remembered. Diverse students (and all students, really) learn content more effectively if they can create a coherent narrative about the topic or process presented. That's the brain's way of weaving it all together. (Bonus: It also offers a great way to check for understanding and correct misconceptions.)

So Janice took her weekly list of science vocabulary and created a variety of sorting and matching games for students. She built a set of simple card games based on Go Fish or Old Maid. In addition she created some team games. Each week students had different active ways to learn the vocabulary. For 10-15 minutes a couple of times during the week, students got to play these learning games rather than look up words in a dictionary. She gave them instructions for making the games at home if they wanted to.

Instead of the traditional weekly vocab test, she asked them to "storify" their understanding of key concept words like metamorphosis, using vocabulary from past weeks.

When I checked in with the group a few weeks later, she was the first one to share. She said student engagement was like night and day. Now all students were participating. She said she knew they were learning the vocabulary at a deeper level because they were actually using the new science terms during discussions and in their writing with no prompting from her.

The big A-ha's for the group that day were that (1) Culturally responsive teaching doesn't have to be some performance the teacher does to entertain students and (2) It doesn't have to mention race or reference culture at all. Instead, what makes a practice culturally responsive is that it mimics students' own cultural learning tools. They all realized that these practices are helpful for all students, not targeted at minority students.

The real trick is to use these strategies regularly as part of your instructional routine rather than doing them randomly every now and then. Consistency is the key. ♦

Learn more about how to improve diverse students' information processing skills and actually grow their brains in Zaretta Hammond's book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students .

Stick around.
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3 Tips to Make Any Lesson More Culturally Responsive

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Google "culturally responsive teaching" and you can find a dozen videos of well-meaning teachers leading some call-and-response chant about exponents or rapping about the Boston Tea Party while students sit back and giggle.

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Resources

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If You’ve Never Heard of the ‘Homework Gap’ This Video Will Shock You

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What makes something better is connection

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Zaretta Hammond- CRT and the Brain

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Culturally Responsive Teaching

Zaretta Hammond shared practical strategies for fostering students' independence and agency while they are learning at home.

Independence is clearly needed for students working at home, so teachers should foster it very intentionally, said Hammond, author of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. "Culturally responsive instruction doesn't mean you're only mentioning issues of race and implicit bias," Hammond said: By seeking to expand learning capacities of historically marginalized students, "you're also focused on building brainpower by helping students leverage and grow their existing funds of knowledge."

"By giving students more agency, the idea is to disrupt old routines around teaching and learning that make the student dependent on the teacher for receiving knowledge," Major writes.

Hammond offered three suggestions for implementing CRT in the current situation:

1. Use students' background knowledge: The knowledge students have from their families, communities, and lived experiences informs the ways they process and retain new information, and Hammond said educators can guide students to connect what they're learning in classes to that background knowledge.

Hammond encouraged teachers to survey students to find out their interests and then use those as the foundation to help them build more knowledge. Students can take a walk with their parents to find "community curiosities" that spark their interest, for example, or create a list of shows or documentaries that focus on their interests.

Guiding students is about more than curating resources, Hammond said. Provide a framework that shows students how to explore a subject. For example, ask "What was your biggest surprise from this book/show?" Hammond suggested. Asking students to reflect on and share what they observed or learned in a video or audio note can reinforce the knowledge gained.

2. Build routines for the brain: Establishing questions for inquiry is "essential to processing and hardwiring information in the brain," Major writes. Using a regular set of prompts in every send-home assignment builds students' capacity to "begin to think that way even when you're not in the classroom to reinforce that way of thinking." Hammond called this being students' "personal trainer of their cognitive development."

Hammond suggested asking questions that encourage students to draw connections between pieces of information and to relate parts to the whole. For example, a basic question such as "What's the relationship or connection between these things?" gives students a consistent lens for examining new information. While the concepts are simple, the repetition of these questions will help students "internalize these prompts until they become almost instinctual."

3. Boost vocabulary: Creating active student engagement in vocabulary building is an important equity strategy, Major writes. By helping "students engage in wordplay, word consciousness, and word knowledge," educators boost students' understanding of words in a way that is more robust and engaging than a worksheet, she says. Word games and searches "are small, familiar but high-leverage activities because they're fun but also require a high cognitive load."

Poetry activities and word scavenger hunts, for example, can be engaging ways to build interest in new words. "Kids have different interests in words, so find out where their energy is," Hammond suggested: "The idea is to get them actively involved in word consciousness."

As students develop these skills-connecting new information to background knowledge, establishing cognitive routines, and improving vocabulary-they become more independent in their learning. And autonomy is a valuable asset not only for distance learning but for becoming more empowered, engaged learners.

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The Value of Culturally Responsive Teaching in Distance Learning

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Culturally Responsive Teaching Zaretta Hammond shared practical strategies for fostering students' independence and agency while they are learning at home. Independence is clearly needed for students working at home, so teachers should foster it very intentionally, said Hammond, author of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain .

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What do I know? What do I notice? How do I teach?

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What do I know? What do I notice? How do I teach?

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It's almost impossible to ignore that K-12 classrooms in the U.S. are filled with students from increasingly diverse cultural backgrounds: race, nationality, religion, economic, etc. Many teachers, though, still aren't sure how to move from recognizing the diversity to creating a mutually responsive learning environment. In his presentation, "Culturally Responsive Teaching: Key Principles and Practices," Dr. Ken Springer, Professor of Education and Chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning at Southern Methodist University, explained why teachers should view diversity as an opportunity and what questions to ask to ensure they're building a culturally inclusive classroom.

Question 1: What do I know?
Teachers should investigate what sources of diversity they have in their classroom. This can come from institutional knowledge about the students and their families, asking the kids questions about their culture as appropriate, talking with other teachers, and having conversations with the parents. The key is to not make assumptions but to do personal investigations.

Question 2: What do I notice?
In addition to actively learning about students' backgrounds, teachers also need to make continuous observations. While some behaviors, like being deferential to authority figures, may be cultural, they could also be a part of the student's personality. Teachers need to get to know all aspects of their students.

Question 3: How do I feel?
Teachers need to constantly reflect on their own behaviors and any biases they have brought into their classroom. The idea is to understand how teachers might be reacting to different student populations and check their own attitudes and assumptions.

Question 4: What do I say?
This question applies to both students and parents. Educators should make sure that what they're saying in the classroom isn't reinforcing stereotypes; outside of school, they need to be culturally sensitive. For example, don't suggest after school activities if the parent needs to take off work to provide transportation.

Question 5: What materials do I use?
Here, Springer advocated for teachers providing lessons and content that reflect the students in the classroom. When students can see themselves in their learning materials, they are more invested in the lessons.

Question 6: How do I teach?
Springer offered four principles of culturally responsive teaching.

1. Have high expectations for all students. Research shows a teacher's expectations influence student performance. Teachers should work with the students to set learning standards and make sure the goals are understood.

2. Recognize and honor all students' cultural backgrounds. The goal is to teach students to respect others' heritage and develop an inclusive environment. For instance, let students teach their peers about their holidays-and make sure that assessments and project due dates don't occur on the holidays.

3. Build bridges between home and school. Make the curriculum meaningful for students from different backgrounds.

4. Recognize that students are individuals as well as members of cultural groups. In other words, a student's culture is just one part of who they are. Even though the teacher does need to make great efforts to understand the diversity in the classroom, "the broader message here," said Springer, "is that you have to understand and engage with each student as an individual."

This edWeb broadcast was sponsored by VIPKid.
WATCH THE EDWEBINAR RECORDING
This article was modified and published by eSchool News.
About the Presenter
Dr. Ken Springer is a professor of education and Chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Dr. Springer has an abiding interest in culturally responsive teaching. He has worked with teachers in multicultural settings in the Dallas Metroplex, served as a board member and program director for Mi Escuelita, taught classes on diverse learners to teachers pursuing graduate degrees, and spent a year as a visiting professor in China, where he continues to maintain professional connections through teacher training, research on differences between US and Chinese students, and consulting activities.
Join the Community
Helping ELL/ESL Students Succeed is a free professional learning community on edWeb.net that focuses on supporting ELL/ESL students to improve their academic achievement and English language learning.

VIPKid is a global education technology company that connects children with the world's best teachers for real-time online English immersion learning. VIPKid's mission is to inspire and empower every child for the future. VIPKid believes that education is not one-size-fits-all, rather all students are unique and the world is within their reach when connected with great teachers capable of personalizing learning and sparking curiosity.

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Six Questions to Ask to Build a Culturally Inclusive Classroom

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It's almost impossible to ignore that K-12 classrooms in the U.S. are filled with students from increasingly diverse cultural backgrounds: race, nationality, religion, economic, etc. Many teachers, though, still aren't sure how to move from recognizing the diversity to creating a mutually responsive learning environment.

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*especially episodes 13 and 14

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Upcoming ONLINE Workshop Series

In many ways, the racial injustice being highlighted in this time in history is not new. What IS new is the way racial justice is now being covered by the mainstream media and discussed in every forum. Students are looking to their teachers to help navigate and make sense of what they are seeing.

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In many ways, the racial injustice being highlighted in this time in history is not new. What IS new is the way racial justice is now being covered by the mainstream media and discussed in every forum. Students are looking to their teachers to help navigate and make sense of what they are seeing.

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5-minute films fest

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The changing racial and cultural landscape of America is certainly a much-discussed topic -- some researchers studying U.S. Census data and demographics even say that America could be a "minority majority" country as early as 2050. While the barriers between countries continue to come down, and globalization continues, how can teachers address the needs of students from a variety of cultural backgrounds and upbringings? This collection of videos introduces culturally responsive teaching (CRT), and includes some techniques that you can use to help students from diverse backgrounds succeed together.

Video Playlist: Culturally Responsive Teaching

Watch the first video below, or watch the whole playlist on YouTube.

1. Valerie Purdie-Vaughns on Unintentional Bias (3:04)
In this short video from Big Think, researcher Valerie Purdie-Vaughns explains how bias and assumptions can unconsciously affect the way you act. Although it's geared toward diversity awareness in the workplace, this is a good primer on cultural discrimination.

2. Expanding Teacher Self-Knowledge (1:27)
Since bias is often unconscious, one of the first things a culturally responsive teacher can do is be aware of assumptions about themselves and their students. This quick tip from the Southern Poverty Law Center's Teaching Tolerance initiative explains the value of self-reflection.

3. Office Chat: Culturally Responsive Teaching (9:24)
In this interview, Dr. Kavatas Newell, a faculty member at the University of Mary Washington, introduces some initial ways that teachers can incorporate culturally responsive teaching methods into their classrooms. The audio quality here is a bit low, but the tips are worth it.

4. The Danger of a Single Story (19:16)
Author Chimamanda Adichie's amazing TED talk introduces "The Danger of a Single Story." Teaching students of other cultures may require that you look past familiar stories and narratives to find school materials that resonate with your students' experiences and lives.

5. Building Trust With Families (14:12)
Many students from other cultures are English-language Learners (ELL). Although this video is long at 14 minutes, the panel of teachers and principals organized by Colorin Colorado offers great tips for connecting with the families of ELLs.

6. Recognizing Individual Characteristics (1:10)
This quick video, also from the Teaching Tolerance initiative, reminds viewers to respect students' individuality, even as you learn more about cultural differences and introduce more responsive practices into the classroom.

7. Education: Culture Matters (14:25)
This video from the Kamehameha Schools showcases the importance of culturally responsive educational programs. Students from the native Hawaiian population thrive when they learn in programs that incorporate their cultural heritage and traditions.

More Resources on Culturally Responsive Teaching

Whether you've been teaching diverse learners for years, or you're just starting to think about how to incorporate CRT into your classroom, these organizations and articles can help.

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5-Minute Film Festival: Culturally Responsive Teaching | Edutopia

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The changing racial and cultural landscape of America is certainly a much-discussed topic -- some researchers studying U.S. Census data and demographics even say that America could be a "minority majority" country as early as 2050. While the barriers between countries continue to come down, and globalization continues, how can teachers address the needs of students from a variety of cultural backgrounds and upbringings?

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Mini-films and lessons from the NYT

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26 Mini-Films for Exploring Race, Bias and Identity With Students (Published 2017)

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To help teachers make the most of these films, we also provide a grab-bag of teaching ideas, related readings and student activities.

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Are you aware of your own empathy gap?

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The Empathy Gap | The Science of Empathy

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Link: The Science of Empathy

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Learning for Justice provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school.

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Foster knowledge, skills, and attitudes across five areas of social and emotional competence;

Establish equitable learning environments and coordinate practices across four key settings that support students' social, emotional, and academic development.

Download more information on the framework (available in and Spanish).

Use our reflection protocol to facilitate a discussion on implementation efforts in your school, district, or other setting.

Read more about the 2020 update to our framework, which highlighted the potential of SEL in promoting educational equity and excellence.

Back to top

Communities

Communities. Community partners often provide safe and developmentally rich settings for learning and development, have deep understanding of community needs and assets, are seen as trusted partners by families and students, and have connections to additional supports and services that school and families need. Community programs also offer opportunities for young people to practice their social and emotional skills in settings that are both personally relevant and can open opportunities for their future. To integrate SEL efforts across the school day and out-of-school time, school staff and community partners should align on common language and coordinate strategies and communication around SEL-related efforts and initiatives.
Learn more: CASEL Guide to Schoolwide SEL - Community Partnerships

Families & Caregivers

Families & Caregivers. When schools and families form authentic partnerships, they can build strong connections that reinforce students' social and emotional development. Families and caregivers are children's first teachers, and bring deep expertise about their development, experiences, culture, and learning needs. These insights and perspectives are critical to informing, supporting, and sustaining SEL efforts. Research suggests that evidence-based SEL programs are more effective when they extend into the home, and families are far more likely to form partnerships with schools when their schools' norms, values, and cultural representations reflect their own experiences. Schools need inclusive decision-making processes that ensure that families-particularly those from historically marginalized groups-are part of planning, implementing, and continuously improving SEL.

Schools can also create other avenues for family partnership that may include creating ongoing two-way communication with families, helping caregivers understand child development, helping teachers understand family backgrounds and cultures, providing opportunities for families to volunteer in schools, extending learning activities and discussions into homes, and coordinating family services with community partners. These efforts should engage families in understanding, experiencing, informing, and supporting the social and emotional development of their students.
Learn more: CASEL Guide to Schoolwide SEL - Family Partnerships

Schools

Schools. Effectively integrating SEL schoolwide involves ongoing planning, implementation, evaluation, and continuous improvement by all members of the school community. SEL efforts both contribute to and depend upon a school climate where all students and adults feel respected, supported, and engaged.

Because the school setting includes many contexts-classrooms, hallways, cafeteria, playground, bus-fostering a healthy school climate and culture requires active engagement from all adults and students. A strong school culture is rooted in students' sense of belonging, with evidence that suggests that it plays a crucial role in students' engagement. SEL also offers an opportunity to enhance existing systems of student support by integrating SEL goals and practices with universal, targeted, and intensive academic and behavioral supports. By coordinating and building upon SEL practices and programs, schools can create an environment that infuses SEL into every part of students' educational experience and promotes positive social, emotional, and academic outcomes for all students.
Learn more: CASEL Guide to Schoolwide SEL

Classrooms

Classrooms. Research has shown that social and emotional competence can be enhanced using a variety of classroom-based approaches such as: (a) explicit instruction through which social and emotional skills and attitudes are taught and practiced in developmentally, contextually, and culturally responsive ways; (b) teaching practices such as cooperative learning and project-based learning; and (c) integration of SEL and academic curriculum such as language arts, math, science, social studies, health, and performing arts. High-quality SEL instruction has four elements represented by the acronym SAFE: Sequenced - following a coordinated set of training approaches to foster the development of competencies; Active - emphasizing active forms of learning to help students practice and master new skills; Focused - implementing curriculum that intentionally emphasizes the development of SEL competencies; and Explicit - defining and targeting specific skills, attitudes, and knowledge.

SEL instruction is carried out most effectively in nurturing, safe environments characterized by positive, caring relationships among students and teachers. To facilitate age-appropriate and culturally responsive instruction, adults must understand and appreciate the unique strengths and needs of each student and support students' identities. When adults incorporate students' personal experiences and cultural backgrounds and seek their input, they create an inclusive classroom environment where students are partners in the educational process, elevating their own agency. Strong relationships between adults and students can facilitate co-learning, foster student and adult growth, and generate collaborative solutions to shared concerns.
Learn more: CASEL Guide to Effective SEL Programs

Self-Awareness

Self-awareness: The abilities to understand one's own emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behavior across contexts. This includes capacities to recognize one's strengths and limitations with a well-grounded sense of confidence and purpose.

Such as:

Integrating personal and social identities

Identifying personal, cultural, and linguistic assets

Identifying one's emotions

Demonstrating honesty and integrity

Linking feelings, values, and thoughts

Examining prejudices and biases

Experiencing self-efficacy

Having a growth mindset

Developing interests and a sense of purpose

Check out this video from PBS Learning Media for more information.

Self-Management

Self-management: The abilities to manage one's emotions, thoughts, and behaviors effectively in different situations and to achieve goals and aspirations. This includes the capacities to delay gratification, manage stress, and feel motivation and agency to accomplish personal and collective goals.

Such as:

Managing one's emotions

Identifying and using stress management strategies

Exhibiting self-discipline and self-motivation

Setting personal and collective goals

Using planning and organizational skills

Showing the courage to take initiative

Demonstrating personal and collective agency

Check out this video from PBS Learning Media for more information.

Social Awareness

Social awareness: The abilities to understand the perspectives of and empathize with others, including those from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and contexts. This includes the capacities to feel compassion for others, understand broader historical and social norms for behavior in different settings, and recognize family, school, and community resources and supports.

Such as:

Taking others' perspectives

Recognizing strengths in others

Demonstrating empathy and compassion

Showing concern for the feelings of others

Understanding and expressing gratitude

Identifying diverse social norms, including unjust ones

Recognizing situational demands and opportunities

Understanding the influences of organizations and systems on behavior

Check out this video from PBS Learning Media for more information.

Responsible Decision-Making

Responsible decision-making: The abilities to make caring and constructive choices about personal behavior and social interactions across diverse situations. This includes the capacities to consider ethical standards and safety concerns, and to evaluate the benefits and consequences of various actions for personal, social, and collective well-being.

Such as:

Demonstrating curiosity and open-mindedness

Learning how to make a reasoned judgment after analyzing information, data, and facts

Identifying solutions for personal and social problems

Anticipating and evaluating the consequences of one's actions

Recognizing how critical thinking skills are useful both inside and outside of school

Reflecting on one's role to promote personal, family, and community well-being

Evaluating personal, interpersonal, community, and institutional impacts

Check out this video from PBS Learning Media for more information.

Relationship Skills

Relationship skills: The abilities to establish and maintain healthy and supportive relationships and to effectively navigate settings with diverse individuals and groups. This includes the capacities to communicate clearly, listen actively, cooperate, work collaboratively to problem solve and negotiate conflict constructively, navigate settings with differing social and cultural demands and opportunities, provide leadership, and seek or offer help when needed.

Such as:

Communicating effectively

Developing positive relationships

Demonstrating cultural competency

Practicing teamwork and collaborative problem-solving

Resolving conflicts constructively

Resisting negative social pressure

Showing leadership in groups

Seeking or offering support and help when needed

Standing up for the rights of others

Check out this video from PBS Learning Media for more information.

Social & Emotional Learning

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is an integral part of education and human development. SEL is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.

SEL advances educational equity and excellence through authentic school-family-community partnerships to establish learning environments and experiences that feature trusting and collaborative relationships, rigorous and meaningful curriculum and instruction, and ongoing evaluation. SEL can help address various forms of inequity and empower young people and adults to co-create thriving schools and contribute to safe, healthy, and just communities.

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Our SEL framework, known to many as the "CASEL wheel," helps cultivate skills and environments that advance students' learning and development.

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https://aasb.org/wp-content/uploads/CRESEL-Brochure.pdf
Alaska example

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When you meet someone new, you should look that person in the eye, offer a firm handshake, and smile.

Right?

Greeting someone new (and making a good first impression!) is an important skill - one that falls within the complex and multifaceted umbrella of social and emotional learning (SEL). Students are often taught specific strategies, such as making eye contact and shaking hands, to support the development of SEL. In fact, research has demonstrated that integrating SEL instruction into the academic day is critical for positive and continuous growth in both academic learning and in SEL, the set of skills typically framed in terms of broader core competencies, including building relationships, setting goals, developing self-awareness, and making responsible decisions (Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger, 2011).

Experts caution, however, that a one-size-fits-all approach to SEL instruction may not be the best fit for many learners. The reason for this lies within human nature itself: our social interactions, behaviors, and emotions are intricate and fluid; moreover, they are heavily influenced by other factors, such as our cultures.

For example, consider again: how should we greet a new person? In many cultures around the world, the strategy of making eye contact would be considered disrespectful rather than friendly or polite. Other cultures employ different strategies entirely. In Tibet, it is often considered more appropriate to extend one's tongue to say hello. In Zambia, a greeting might instead begin with clapping. In still other cultures, an initial greeting should always begin with a bow. With so many different types of greetings, how do we decide which to teach?

Now take this a step further: if we teach students one set of social practices, how might such teaching impact a student whose native culture may recommend something else entirely?

The intersection of culture and SEL is an important one, since school settings are often meeting grounds for learners and educators from a rich and diverse range of cultures, languages, and behavioral norms. Given this, scholars across several disciplines are exploring how cultural responsiveness, or the practice of respecting and learning from a multitude of cultures, can influence how students develop SEL competencies.

Researchers in California and Texas, for instance, have examined how a culturally adapted SEL program can support adolescent Latino students (Castro-Olivo, 2014; Cramer & Castro-Olivo, 2016). To adapt the program, the researchers not only translated materials into Spanish from an existing English-only program, but also found that they needed to incorporate new and culturally relevant content that had been tested with focus groups and experts to ensure that it was aligned with cultural norms, goals, and values of the participants and their families and communities. In addition, teachers were provided with specialized training in the social and emotional needs of students prior to delivering the program. Initial results of this work were promising: in studies of the program, students demonstrated significant growth in SEL knowledge and emotional resiliency through the adapted program.

In discussing SEL initiatives, Dr. Dena Williams notes the need for more work in this area, stating that "school-based social-emotional learning programs have the potential to shift the climate and culture of our schools, but they do not always guarantee that students will apply the skills they learn at school to their lives outside the classroom, especially if those skills seem irrelevant to their realities" (2017, n.p.). A culturally responsive approach, one that situates and celebrates learning within the rich cultural contexts of students, may be the key to bridging this gap and ensuring that all students can reap the full benefits of SEL instruction (Irvine & Hawley, 2011; Ladson-Billings, 1994).

Currently, there are few established best practices to guide the design and implementation culturally responsive SEL, but stakeholders across the education ecosystem are already working together to explore new possibilities. In Alaska, for example, the Association of Alaska School Boards is working on a four-year grant to improve school climate through school-wide commitments to teacher and student SEL programming. Within the Culturally Responsive and Embedded Social and Emotional Learning (CRESEL) program, students and teachers work together address surface strategies ("how should we greet a new person?") and move into deeper territory, such as how to co-create a culturally relevant school climate and how to help teachers examine any implicit bias they may bring to the classroom. Importantly, this model also takes into account regional topics and practices, such as how to incorporate seasonal subsistence into skill-building in the classroom, and how to acknowledge the nuances of different Native Alaskan tribal values when teaching students about behavioral practices.

For many, though, the concept of culturally responsive SEL is still quite new and may seem rather challenging. This is understandable; if something as straightforward as a greeting is actually not very straightforward at all, then tackling the entire spectrum of social and emotional learning from a cultural lens can seem even more daunting. On this, however, experts already agree: just as when we greet new people, a good first step is to open our minds, open our hearts, and simply decide to begin.

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Culturally Responsive Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)

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When you meet someone new, you should look that person in the eye, offer a firm handshake, and smile. Right? Greeting someone new (and making a good first impression!) is an important skill - one that falls within the complex and multifaceted umbrella of social and emotional learning (SEL).

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Introducing: Nice White Parents (Published 2020)

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A new five-part series about building a better school system, and what gets in the way. New episodes of “Nice White Parents” are available here, brought to you by Serial Productions and The New York Times.

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Just what is going on with white people? Police shootings of unarmed African Americans. Acts of domestic terrorism by white supremacists. The renewed embrace of raw, undisguised white-identity politics. Unending racial inequity in schools, housing, criminal justice, and hiring. Some of this feels new, but in truth it's an old story.

Why? Where did the notion of "whiteness" come from? What does it mean? What is whiteness for?

Scene on Radio host and producer John Biewen took a deep dive into these questions, along with an array of leading scholars and regular guest Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika, in this fourteen-part documentary series, released between February and August 2017. The series editor is Loretta Williams.

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Just what is going on with white people? Police shootings of unarmed African Americans. Acts of domestic terrorism by white supremacists. The renewed embrace of raw, undisguised white-identity politics. Unending racial inequity in schools, housing, criminal justice, and hiring. Some of this feels ne

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Parents and other caregivers are seeking resources to help them hold children through the current, terrible wave of racialized violence, which is exacerbated by the tensions and vulnerabilities exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. As scholars, writers, and parents who use books to connect with our children and spark conversations with them, we've developed this book list to help engage the broad range of emotions and needs of diverse children in our multiracial society. In some cases, we've highlighted worthy, albeit lesser-known titles. Some are older books, some are newer, and a few will publish later this year but are available for pre-order now. This list skews heavily towards #ownvoices books and is arranged alphabetically by title.

Please use these books to help you do the work of making the world a safer, more equitable place for all children.

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20 Picture Books for 2020: Readings to Embrace Race, Provide Solace &...

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As scholars, writers, and parents who use books to connect with our children and spark conversations with them, we've developed this book list to help engage the broad range of emotions and needs of diverse children in our multiracial society.

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From film kits and lesson plans to the building blocks of a customized Learning Plan—texts, student tasks and teaching strategies—our resources will help you bring relevance, rigor and social emotional learning into your classroom—all for FREE.

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Frameworks. Check out the articles link also

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Our Leading for Equity Framework provides a frame of reference that enables leaders to navigate the complex territory of equity challenges and to develop the capacity to engage in purposeful leadership action. In its simplest form, the Framework helps build habits of mind that are continually in practice. In its more elaborated form, it provides a set of tools, frames and processes that leaders can use in their work.

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Access free equity frameworks from the National Equity Project designed specifically to help educators approach challenges and lead with an equity lens.

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Safe Space Radio - courageous conversations

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Safe Space Radio - courageous conversations

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Most embarrassing moment as a white mom- racism is violence

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How one educator decolonized Language Arts in Arizona

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What are the challenges of implementing CR?

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Opinion

Understanding the nature of the impact on students is critical

Culturally responsive teaching, culturally relevant pedagogy, culturally sustaining pedagogy. By any name, it's a very timely topic, brought into the spotlight by a new wave of recognition that the nation's schools have failed too many students of color for far too long. Hopes are high that by better grounding education in students' lives, cultural responsiveness, or just CR, will be the fix we need. As a result, you likely have participated in a CR workshop, used CR materials, or directed your staff to take the CR plunge.

But what do these programs bring to schools? And do they improve students' experiences and outcomes?

Culturally responsive approaches draw from students' identities and cultures to reshape traditional teaching and learning. CR aims include:

* Building academic and social-emotional skills;
* Affirming students' social and cultural histories; and
* Helping students recognize, analyze, and address social inequality and racist policies.

Teachers in CR classrooms do this work by changing curriculum and pedagogy. For example, they use instructional techniques that reflect ways of learning in students' home communities and texts from authors linked to familiar people and places. They set academic tasks in students' everyday activities and encourage students to tackle social issues through carefully structured projects. Ideally, CR programs are shaped locally, with input from families and community members.

A critical part of the pedagogy is the teacher's connection with students. Studies by Gloria Ladson-Billings, H. Richard Milner IV, Franita Ware, and others have produced rich descriptions of teachers who hold high expectations for students, express commitment to students' learning, and demonstrate respect for students' knowledge and agency.

Evidence from descriptive studies, often portraits of teachers expert in CR, suggests that students who spend time in high-quality CR classrooms benefit in several ways. They are more engaged and active learners; they build knowledge of their community's culture and history; they recognize and respond to inequality.

Many fewer studies, however, assess the effectiveness of programs intended to help educators become expert in CR approaches. Fewer still of those studies meet our series' criteria for high-quality program evaluation. In that group, the programs being evaluated were either centered on 1. revised curriculum or 2. revised instructional or classroom management methods. As I detail below, evidence of effectiveness is stronger for the first class of programs than the second.

1. Curriculum. One study described an effort to rethink core curriculum along CR lines. In Alaska, researchers worked with Yup'ik teachers and elders to build a mathematics curriculum around the community's everyday activities and that also incorporated the community's base 20 mathematical system. After the use of the curriculum in the classroom, 2nd grade students performed better than control-group students on measurement and place-value topics.

Read the full series here.

Other CR programs carve out class time for students to explore their ethnic identity, study racial or ethnic groups, or learn about social movements in U.S. history. Such a curriculum often also features social-emotional skill-building, for example, improving self-regulation and decision-making. Evaluations suggest these curricular programs can be highly effective.

A study by researchers Thomas Dee of Stanford University and Emily Penner of the University of California, Irvine, showed that high school students assigned to an ethnic studies course increased their attendance by 21 percentage points year over year, as compared with a similar group of students not assigned to the course. The study showed equally substantial improvements in earned credits and GPA.

The same authors also studied the African-American Male Achievement program in the Oakland, Calif., public schools, which features a class with cultural, historical, and social-emotional components. Dee and Penner found that the program reduced the one-year high school dropout rate for black males by 43 percent.

In a smaller study, Adriana Umaña-Taylor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education showed that a course exploring students' ethnic or racial heritage led students to a stronger sense of self-identity-a protective factor in future schooling and professional experiences.

2. Instructional and classroom management methods. Many CR programs focus on changing teachers' pedagogy or classroom management, but I found only two studies of such programs that met our research standards. A study of one program showed positive impacts on English-learners' English-language arts test scores, but the program itself lacked many of the pedagogical features that characterize CR approaches.

The remaining evaluation showed that a CR coaching program reduced disciplinary referrals for black students. The coaching program, however, used only teachers already trained to provide behavioral support for students, so whether the result would be the same with teachers who didn't have the earlier training is unclear.

Despite repeated searching, we found no studies of the broad CR programs that have likely been established in many districts-an introduction to CR philosophy and teaching, with additional time for teachers to collaborate, adapt, and plan pedagogy and curriculum. I find the lack of studies in this area unnerving, especially given district investments of both money and teacher time in CR programs.

The upshot: From the evidence, I feel optimistic about curriculum changes that include ethnic studies and identity development. Done thoughtfully, they can lead to better outcomes for students of color. Because research on efforts to change pedagogy and classroom management is more ambiguous, investing in such programs is riskier for schools.

What's left to know? A lot.

Clearly, the field has a critical need for more studies of CR programs. We, like many others, emphasize that student outcomes cannot solely (or maybe even at all) be measured by standardized tests. Instead, they must be measured by students' persistence, well-being, sense of belonging, and hope for the future. Research funders should support studies of the most promising CR innovations and do so quickly.

We also need to know how CR programs can scale up so they can reach thousands of teachers and millions of students. Answering this question is vital. CR approaches require teachers to develop curricula and pedagogies that fit the needs of their students and not simply pull a program from a kit. Such work is difficult, particularly for teachers already stressed by competing demands. The changes to curriculum and pedagogy must avoid stereotypes.

Further, many of the programs with positive results described above used teachers who from the outset were deeply committed to the work. By contrast, equipping a largely white teaching force with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to successfully lead CR classrooms is likely to prove challenging. Many teachers feel uncomfortable discussing ethnicity and social equity, and many do not themselves have deep knowledge of nondominant political and cultural histories.

All this said, I regard carefully designed CR programs as one of the most promising avenues open to educators for improving children's lives.

Published in Print: March 18, 2020, as Does Cultural Responsiveness Work?

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Culturally Responsive Teaching Is Promising. But There's a Pressing Need for More Research

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Opinion Culturally responsive teaching, culturally relevant pedagogy, culturally sustaining pedagogy. By any name, it's a very timely topic, brought into the spotlight by a new wave of recognition that the nation's schools have failed too many students of color for far too long.