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This website supports culture and climate, and family and community engagement. It provides classroom resources that include lessons, learning plans, student tasks, teaching strategies, and film kits.

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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.

Not sure where to begin? Get to know our Social Justice Standards, anchor standards and age-appropriate learning outcomes divided into four domains-Identity, Diversity, Justice and Action. The Standards provide a common language and a road map for anti-bias education at every grade level.

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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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When creating a lesson, educators can visit this website if they are looking for a book, film, or article as a lesson resource. It provides a variety of books that can be used to teach students about similarities and differences between people and to learn the causes and effects of inequality. The books include read-aloud and images to help students make the connection. If an educator wants to learn about positive civic engagement in the classroom, this site provides four interrelated goals of anti-biased education, which educators can use to reflect on identity. There are many articles educators can use that support learning experiences. One of the articles is called Between Families and Schools, which explain how families support teacher and students in the classroom. This website believes that building social justice starts in the classroom, therefore, it also provides many resources educators can use to implement during any lesson.

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This website provides information on conducting a non-biased curriculum. It provides a list of books, films, and articles that can be used during a lesson.

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Anti-bias curriculum is an approach to early childhood education that sets forth values-based principles and methodology in support of respecting and embracing differences and acting against bias and unfairness. Anti-bias teaching requires critical thinking and problem solving by both children and adults. The overarching goal is creating a climate of positive self and group identity development, through which every child will achieve her or his fullest potential.

The book, Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves, by Louise Derman-Sparks and Julie Olsen Edwards, offers practical guidance to early childhood educators (including parents) for confronting and eliminating barriers of prejudice, misinformation, and bias about specific aspects of personal and social identity; most importantly, it includes tips for adults and children to respect each other, themselves, and all people. Below you will find recommended books for young children, teachers, and parents for each chapter as well as additional resources on anti-bias themes and topics.

Readers may also be interested in Freedom Reads: Anti-Bias Book Talk, our new video series for parents, caregivers, and educators, available at SocialJusticeBooks.org.

Books

Recommended booklists that accompany the best selling NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children) publication Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves.

Film

" Reflecting on Anti-Bias Education in the Early Years " is available for educators to stream for free. This 48-minute film is produced with the guidance of Louise Derman-Sparks, this resource offers the four interrelated goals of anti-bias education, along with a viewer guidebook. The film shifts the focus away from the talking heads of experts and on to the voices of teachers committed to equity on a daily basis. By taking viewers into diverse early childhood classrooms, the film seeks to demonstrate the importance of teacher reflection on identity, context, and practice in anti-bias education and provides a much-needed resource for teacher education and professional development.

In addition, a 1990 companion film to the book Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves is available for free viewing on Youtube.

Articles

Article Collections
Available in English and Spanish
DC Educators for Social Justice

Teaching for Change has an initiative to help build and nurture a network of social justice educators in the D.C. metro area. Teachers in the D.C. Metro area are welcome to apply to join the Anti-Bias Early Childhood Working Group. Learn more.

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Anti-Bias Education - Teaching for Change

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Anti-bias curriculum is an approach to early childhood education that sets forth values-based principles and methodology in support of respecting and embracing differences and acting against bias and unfairness. Anti-bias teaching requires critical thinking and problem solving by both children and adults. The overarching goal is creating a climate of positive self and group identity ...

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Educators can assess this website if they are looking for a particular book, book, or article. Educators can introduce a culture or diversity lesson with a book called The Upside Down Boy and All the colors we are. Both of these books provide key details about culture, language and racial identity. There’s also an article called Between Families and Schools that can be used as a resource for supportive learning experiences.  The films provides educators with four interrelated goals of unbas education, along with ways to produce a positive engaging classroom. This can give educators feedback to help them create a effective lesson.

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This website provides training, projects, and hand-outs activities educators can use as a lesson implementation. There are many subtitles that will lead you to other pages for more resources.

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We bolster equity and diversity theory and practice with our We create and disseminate free equity resources to educators and others hoping to grow their capacities to be a threat to inequity in their spheres of influence. Check out the

Equity workshops should facilitate new levels of consciousness and enable participants to become change agents on the ground, today. We specialize in using this philosophy to help individuals, organizations, and schools shift from a "celebrating diversity" orientation to one grounded in principles of equity. We call this approach cultivating Equity Literacy. Our newest initiative is the cutting-edge scholarship for equity practitioners,schools, school districts, colleges, and universities. Our publications run the gamut from peer-reviewed academic journal articles to practitioner-focused magazine articles.Multicultural Pavilion web site, our downloadable handouts, our educational equity case studies, and other free resources on the EdChange family of websites.Equity Literacy Institute, which houses our training efforts.

Visit Our Sister Sites:

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EdChange - Advocating Equity in Schools and Society

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We bolster equity and diversity theory and practice with our We create and disseminate free equity resources to educators and others hoping to grow their capacities to be a threat to inequity in their spheres of influence. Check out the Equity workshops should facilitate new levels of consciousness and enable participants to become change agents on the ground, today.

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Prior to creating a lesson, educators can visit this website to find many resources that help with creating a lesson or implementing in the lesson. There are a variety of free training that teaches racial equity, understanding and appreciation of other cultures. There are projects that aim towards equality and families being involved in the classroom. Also, there’s multiple links to different handouts that can be used while teaching to the lesson or used for homework. Educators can use this information to gain knowledge and to help foster culture awareness.

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Screencast Matic is a site that provides different activities that will help promote cultural awareness. They create products that will help educators to be seen heard, and empowered. This site also allows people to capture and share their ideas through video.

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Guest Post: Classrooms around the country are generally becoming more diverse. From kindergarten through college, the percentage of diversity has grown considerably over the past 10+ years.

While we'd like to think that classroom diversity will naturally translate into culturally aware students, the truth is that students often need learning opportunities designed to develop these traits. Not only will this help them in the classroom, but it will also guide them to develop skills and a worldview in the adult world.

Cultural awareness in the classroom also translates to greater civic participation and creativity later in life.

No matter what you teach, it's important to incorporate activities that promote cultural awareness into your classroom. Here are 10 ideas for things you can do with your students to help make them more culturally aware.

1. Language Learning

Incorporate languages in your class. Even if you're not a language teacher, you can add language lessons into your classroom relevant to the subject you teach-even math!

For example, you could teach students how to count in different languages. Or you can just teach different subject-related vocabulary in different languages. Both of these are great activities for younger children, though teens may also enjoy them.

Create a slide presentation highlighting vocabulary in different languages. Import this presentation into ScreenPal's Story feature. Each slide will become a section of your Story and you can add webcam recordings, narration, and music to engage your class.

2. Potluck

Food has always been a great way to introduce people to new cultures, so why not bring it into the classroom?

Have students bring in a food dish from their culture to share. They can say a few words about the dish they bring in. They could discuss the dish's cultural relevance, but they could also talk about its relevance in their family. For example, maybe a recipe was passed down from a family elder, who brought it with them when they immigrated.

Ultimately, sharing cultural foods can help bring students together and foster a greater understanding of and connection to other people's cultures.

If you are teaching remotely, but still want to use a potluck to introduce students to other cultures, ask students to record them cooking their favorite dish and describe the significance of this cultural tradition. Compile these recordings into a Channel using your ScreenPal hosting account. This Channel can be password protected or unlisted to protect students' privacy. Share the link with your class so they can enjoy a potluck from afar!

3. Multicultural Media

Today's students are largely multimedia learners, and media content related to diversity and culture are always good learning tools. Not only is it important to incorporate videos that talk about diversity, but also videos with culturally diverse people showcasing people of different backgrounds doing everyday activities helps to normalize diversity.

Instructional videos are a good place to start. These might cover topics, such as how to make something from a culture (how to draw Japanese calligraphy, for example). Videos created by members of different communities can also be helpful to highlight differences and similarities between cultures.

But multimedia doesn't have to be just video. It can incorporate music or books from different cultures as well. For example, younger children might enjoy learning traditional children's songs or possibly traditional dances from other cultures. Or if you do story time in your classroom, read books by authors from a wide range of cultures.

4. Presentations

Student-led learning is an excellent way to ignite passion and excitement around a topic, and learning about culture is no exception. Letting students explore a particular topic of interest and presenting their topic to the class can help them become more knowledgeable while inspiring a love for learning.

There are a number of routes you can take when it comes to student-led diversity and cultural awareness lessons. One idea is to have students who are multilingual prepare a brief presentation or lesson on their language and culture to share with their classmates.

Students can also create presentations and learn about other cultures that are different from their own. You might even encourage them to do an "Around the World in 80 Days" type of assignment, where students use a green screen to talk about the different places they would visit on such a trip. Or maybe they simply incorporate a video of their favorite musical act from other countries.

5. "Who Am I?" Creative Projects

Everyone at some point in their life asks themselves, "Who am I?" It's human nature to question our existence and how we came to be here, and that is often tied directly into our own identities.

"Who Am I?" projects are excellent opportunities for students to probe their own cultural identity and background, while also giving them a platform to share that with their peers. These projects could be genealogical in nature, but they can also be another opportunity for students to research and discuss their own cultural backgrounds. While these topics and exercises are often more suited to teens, younger children may also enjoy sharing and learning about each other's culture.

6. Multicultural Decorations

Art projects are always an excellent way to give students hands-on experience in working with complex subject matters like diversity. The best part is that both young children and teens typically love hands-on art projects. Some ideas include:

7. Small-Group Conversations

We've discussed how to incorporate cultural awareness learning as an entire classroom, but small-group conversations can also be a positive and fruitful learning experience.

Small group discussions tend to be low-stress compared to big presentations, but they're also a great way for students to engage each other in an informal way. Of course, it's a good idea to provide some sort of structure to these discussions in order to keep the students focused. Edutopia has some great discussion strategies to deepen student engagement- many in small-group settings- on this blog post.

8. Sensitivity vs. Awareness

While learning and sharing information about different cultures is important, it's also important for students to learn how to be aware of and sensitive to culture differences. What's more, we often talk about these two concepts interchangeably, even though they are slightly different.

Cultural awareness generally refers to being open to other cultures. Sensitivity is more nuanced, referring to knowledge of a culture's difference but not viewing those differences in terms of their value. They're often viewed on a spectrum (pictured below), where awareness leads to sensitivity, competency, and safety.

In terms of the classroom, it's important for students to understand how to interact with people from other cultures. This can be a formal lesson, such as how different cultures greet each other respectfully. Another good approach is to lay out some ground rules that both you and your students follow, such as listening respectfully, not attacking or insulting anyone's cultural identity, and to prohibit any uses of cultural slurs or other derogatory phrases.Try including these ground rules in your class contract that you create at the beginning of the school year or semester.

9. Volunteer Projects

Volunteer projects are excellent ways to get your students involved in a vibrant civic culture, but they're also great opportunities to learn about people from different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. Here are a few ideas for volunteer projects that can reinforce cultural lessons from the classroom.

Volunteer at a soup kitchen

Organize a diversity celebration at school

Organize a school-wide poster campaign supporting diversity

Sponsor a classroom located in other cities or countries

Mentor younger students in underprivileged neighborhoods

Organize a diversity parade (at school or elsewhere)

With volunteer opportunities, students will have a chance to give back to the community and feel like they are making a positive impact in the world. ScreenPal is the perfect tool for documenting these volunteer projects. Students can utilize the ScreenPal's Story feature to combine video, image, and sound artifacts into one video project that they can then share with their classmates and their community.

10. Supporting Inclusivity in Your Curriculum

If you want to develop students with good cultural awareness, then it has to start with the teacher and the curriculum. Teachers should lead by example by making their curriculum as inclusive as possible. Take some time to review your all your materials with a critical eye towards ensuring that minorities and different cultures are consistently well-represented in all your videos and visuals. You might also want to incorporate materials from other cultures into lessons that aren't necessarily focused on that culture itself.

It's also essential for teachers to be aware of their own cultural biases and to ensure they don't let those influence how and what students learn. To that end, teachers need to make sure they're cautious about things like body language, touch, and humor.

Want more ideas for incorporating diversity lessons into the classroom? Check out our blog for more resources and approaches!

About our guest writer: Daniel Waldman is a former agency owner turned expat freelance writer and event manager with nearly 20 years of experience working with a wide variety of brands, organizations, and individuals. He got his start as an editor at a vanity press, and later went on to lead marketing and communications at a variety of agencies before starting his own business. He lives in France with his wife, two daughters and four cats.

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10 classroom activities to promote cultural awareness

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Here are 10 ideas for cultural awareness activities you can do with your students in the classroom to help them become more culturally aware.

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Educators can explore this website to help them develop different ways to incorporate diversity, supportive learning experiences, and civic engagement. language in the classroom. For example, allowing students to talk in their other language or teaching the alphabet and numbers in a different language. Educators can encourage families to bring a meal that represent their culture. It also provides different videos that can be played that highlight the differences and similarities between cultures. This a good website to help educators implement different activities to help students learn from different perspectives.

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This site provides teachers with resources such as videos, games, and website to help teach students about cultural diversity and inclusiveness. There are 11 resource links that can be accessed to for additional resources.

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Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

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Our classrooms are culturally diverse with students coming from different racial, linguistic, and ethnic backgrounds. Diversity is a pedagogical strength which we should draw on to prepare culturally responsive spaces where students learn about the importance of respecting and accepting each other's cultural practices. As the adage goes, diversity is the spice of life and cultural awareness is the antidote to prejudice, racism, bias, sexism, homophobia, ableism, and discrimination.

Being culturally aware means "recognising and understanding that we all have different values shaped by our diverse cultural backgrounds. What we consider to be 'normal' behaviour in one country can be entirely different in another." It is only through embracing the ethos of cultural awareness that the world becomes a more inclusive and a safer place to live in.

To help you educate students on the importance of cultural diversity, equity and social justice, I invite you to check the resources I cured below. These are websites that provide a wide variety of educational materials to help you prepare inclusive classrooms where students learn to value their differences and cherish their diversity.

This section in Common Sense Education features over 30 tools and websites that you can use with students in class to open their minds and "get them to reflect on their own privileges, and help them better understand other people, perspectives, and cultures. Some of these picks will also cultivate students' perspective-taking and integrity, putting students on the path to social change and activism."

Google Arts and Culture offers tons of helpful resources to introduce students to our world's rich cultural heritage. Students can get access to knowledge and stories curated from over 2000 cultural institutions from 80 countries. "From the suffragettes who fought for women's rights, to performing arts at the Paris Opera, to NASA's archive of stunning images, discover stories about our cultural heritage. It's your doorway to explore the art, history, people and wonders of our world."

Learning for Justice features curated resources to teach students about concepts related to social justice and equity. Resources offered touch on diverse topics including: race and ethnicity, religion, ability, rights and activism, bullying and bias, gender and sexual identity, immigration, and more.

The NMAAHC offers resources to help students learn about the African American culture through interactive exhibitions. The museum "was established by Act of Congress in 2003, following decades of efforts to promote and highlight the contributions of African Americans. To date, the Museum has collected more than 36,000 artifacts and nearly 100,000 individuals have become members."

Country Reports delivers content regarding culture, language, religion, history, geography, economy, food, and more on each country of the world. Simply select the country of your choice and click to access its information.

This resource from CIA provides "basic intelligence on the history, people, government, economy, energy, geography, environment, communications, transportation, military, terrorism, and transnational issues for 266 world entities."

The World Digital Library offers a treasure trove of materials to teach students about the world's diverse cultures. These include: "historical documents including books, manuscripts, maps, newspapers, journals, prints and photographs, sound recordings, and films."

The Equity Literacy Institute offers free and downloadable resources designed by EdChange and the Equity Literacy Institute touching on topics related to multiculturalism, equity, and social justice.

So Just provides access to primary source documents on social justice. The site's collection features "historic speeches, songs, poetry, and manifestos on human rights and social justice. So*Just is a free resources from EdChange and the Equity Literacy Institute."

Macmillan Education offers this selection of courses to use in class to teach students about cultural awareness.

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Educational Resources for Teaching Cultural Diversity and Inclusiveness

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Our classrooms are culturally diverse with students coming from different racial, linguistic, and ethnic backgrounds. Diversity is a pedagogical strength which we should draw on to prepare culturally responsive spaces where students learn about the importance of respecting and accepting each other's cultural practices.

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Educators can access this webpage to search 11 links that relates to videos, games, museums, online books, magazine, films, etc. Prior to creating a lesson or during a lesson, educators search this site to help students learn about the similiters and differences between cultures, diversity and civic engagement within the classroom. Educators can access different interactive games designed specifically to help students learn about the world around them. Students can complete this whole group, small group, or independently.