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Depending on where you live, you might think we've reached a point where society has truly embraced people of all gender and sexual identities, making the topic of LGBTQ rights kind of a non-issue. The truth is, for many LGBTQ students, discrimination and harassment are still a daily reality, and school is one of the main places where they experience these things.

A 2015 national school climate study conducted by GLSEN, an organization focused on ensuring safe and affirming schools for LGBTQ students, found that over 85 percent of these students have experienced verbal harassment and 66 percent have been discriminated against based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. As a result of feeling more isolated and unsafe, many of these students miss school, avoid bathrooms, and stay away from locker rooms. Students who experience more victimization are also more likely to have lower GPAs and to report feeling depressed.

And it's not just other students who create this hostile climate for their LGBTQ peers. Over half of the more than 10,000 students surveyed reported hearing biased remarks from school staff, and school staff often fail to intervene when they hear these remarks at school.

The good news? Overall, the number of students who report being harassed or discriminated against is declining. The climate is improving across the board, but for many students, it's not happening fast enough.

What Teachers Can Do

As educators, we set the tone for how our students treat each other. No, we can't control everything, but we can do a lot to influence the climate in our schools and make sure our classrooms are places where all students feel welcome.

The best place to learn more about the specific things you can do is on GLSEN's website, and I've posted two of their best resources for teachers below, but to get you started, I've pulled some of the most important steps teachers can take. I also interviewed Becca Mui, GLSEN's Education Manager, to contribute her insights to the podcast.

These tips, pulled from resources created by GLSEN and my interview with Mui, will give you a good start toward making your school safer and more welcoming for LGBTQ students.

1. Educate Yourself

If you do not personally identify as LGBTQ or spend time in that community, you'll be a much more effective ally if you commit to listening and learning about the issues. "A huge portion of support is staying educated," Mui says, "so things like listening to podcasts or just reading some blogs about LGBTQ people and continually learning about that can help you become an ally and an advocate in your school."

Making an effort to use whatever terminology is currently embraced by the LGBTQ community is another important way to show respect.

"It's always helpful to have a shared language when you're talking about identity," Mui explains. "One of the things that is tricky about LGBTQ and trans identities when people are not part of those communities is that that language is changing, specifically the language we're using to talk about gender."

This is a challenge even for people within the LGBTQ community. "It is literally my job to be connected, to be supportive, to know what's going on," Mui says, "and I'm constantly finding out that something's been updated, something's been changed." She recommends viewing language as an always evolving process. "Having the attitude that we use the language we have and we are open to learning that something's been updated can be really useful."

With that in mind, let's start here by looking at the acronym LGBTQ:
L = Lesbian G = Gay
B = Bisexual
a person who is attracted to two genders, or people with your gender and other genders Q = Queer
also an umbrella term to describe sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression that doesn't conform to heteronormativity a male-identified person who's emotionally or physically attracted to other males
a person who is female-identified who is emotionally or physically attracted to other females
In some spaces, the term "gay" is used as a general term to describe the LGBTQ population as a whole, but GLSEN is trying to move toward language that's more inclusive, rather than placing gay men at the center.

T = Transgender (or "trans")
an umbrella term for people whose gender identity doesn't match the sex they were assigned at birth

The opposite of transgender is cisgender (abbreviated as "cis"), someone whose gender identity is aligned with the one they were assigned at birth.

"Historically, (this term) was used as a slur," Mui says, "but there is a power in re-claimed words, and we find that across different types of marginalized identities, the power to take a word that has been used negatively and say, 'This is mine' that a lot of young LGBTQ people are feeling."

Another term that comes up frequently in discussions of LGBTQ issues is heteronormativity, which is defined by the Queer Dictionary as the belief or assumption that all people are heterosexual, or that heterosexuality is the default or "normal" state of human being. In our schools and our society at large, we often come from a heteronormative place, speaking of the LGBTQ population as the "other," which communicates to our LGBTQ students that they are deviant or unnatural. We'll talk more about that a little bit later.

To learn more about terminology and other important issues, download GLSEN's Safe Space Kit below.

GLSEN Safe Space Kit
A Guide to Supporting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual
and Transgender Students in Your School

2. Check Your Biases

As with any kind of advocacy, it's crucial to understand your own background and biases. "All of us, LGBT and non-LGBT, have learned messages about LGBT people," reads a passage from the Safe Space Kit. "What were the earliest messages you received about LGBT people and where did they come from? Were they positive, negative or neutral? Understanding the messages we receive can help us identify our own beliefs and biases that we can then challenge, helping to make us stronger allies."

The GLSEN Safe Space Kit provides a "Check Yourself" exercise that will help you take a close look at your own underlying beliefs.

3. Teach Inclusively

The things we teach and how we teach them can send important messages to our students about whether or not they are valued as they are. "So much of our language is gendered in ways that we're not really thoughtful of," Mui explains. "Just saying, 'Boys and girls,' and not really thinking about who we're saying that to, or addressing the compliments that we're giving to students, really thinking about how are we using language, how are we making space in our language for students to identify and be whoever and however they want is a really important step."

Here are some things you can do to make sure you're nurturing your LGBTQ students in your instruction:

Include a variety of gender representations.
When students are presented with a narrow picture of gender roles-and they don't see themselves in any of them-they develop a sense early on that something is wrong with them. GLSEN's Ready, Set, Respect! toolkit for elementary teachers (link below) encourages teachers to make sure that classroom books and materials include diverse families and people whose careers and other life roles don't conform to gender stereotypes.

Group neutrally.
Out of habit, teachers will often divide students into "boy" and "girl" groups. This can make students who don't conform to gender-based stereotypes feel uncomfortable and isolated. The Ready, Set, Respect! toolkit recommends that instead, we divide students more neutrally by birthday month or by numbering them as 1s and 2s.

Evaluate your speech and materials for heteronormative and gender-normative bias.
In casual conversation, in the examples we use while teaching, and in our materials, we often communicate assumptions about gender and sexuality: Boys are attracted to and will grow up to marry girls (and vice-versa), girls will naturally prefer activities like shopping while boys will naturally be interested in athletics, and so on. All of these send the message that there is only one way to be "normal" and that students who don't fit these descriptions are abnormal. As you talk, teach, and look at your materials, ask yourself whether you're communicating these messages, and find ways to replace them with more inclusive examples.

Include positive representations of LGBTQ people in your curriculum.
"Whatever curriculum that is," Mui says, "there are usually people involved in that, whether that's the people you're listing in a math problem or the histories that you're teaching in a history class, there are ways to bring about diversity. Integrating that into your learning helps all of your students to learn more about the world and it helps LGBTQ students see themselves in their learning." GLSEN has resources on LGBTQ history that can help with this. As with all resources, teachers should preview these material before offering them to students. GLSEN serves K-12 students, and you will know best which activities and lessons will meet your students' needs. When sharing facts about LGBTQ history, it's important for educators to balance a positive influence and celebration of icons and leaders while not hiding the truth behind historically important events.

Ready, Set, Respect!
GLSEN's Elementary School Toolkit

4. Be Visible

Let your LGBTQ students know that you are an ally by displaying some visible sign of your support. Hanging a rainbow flag or a Safe Space Poster or Sticker in your classroom can accomplish this. GLSEN's Safe Space Kit points out that this kind of visibility affects students more than we might even realize. "Even if students don't come to you directly, the kit says, "research shows that just knowing that there is a supportive educator at school can help LGBT students feel better about being in school."

5. Respond to Anti-LGBTQ Behavior

When students experience harassment in your presence, take action. Simply saying something like "That language is unacceptable," is enough to acknowledge the act and stop it. The Safe Space Kit includes more detailed information on turning incidents like these into teachable moments and how to respond in more specific situations, like when a student says "That's so gay." But the most important thing to remember is to not ignore it. "Remember," says the Safe Space Kit, "no action is an action - if an incident is overlooked or not addressed it can imply acceptance and approval."

6. Support Students Who Come Out

As you make yourself more visible as an ally, students may be more likely to come out to you about their sexual orientation or gender identity. This important and sensitive conversation needs to be handled carefully, and the Safe Space Kit offers detailed advice for teachers.

Their most important advice is to listen. Instead of assuming that you know what the student needs or that their situation will be similar to that of other LGBTQ people you have known, treat each student as an individual and just let them talk. Ask them what they need and how you can help. You can give GLSEN's new Coming Out Resource to students who are thinking of sharing this part of their identity. It may be useful to let students know about hotlines they can call to get out-of-school support. The LGBT National Help Center at glbthotline.org has a collection of numbers that can help.

Remember that this student is trusting you with confidential information that you should not share until they are ready. To be on the safe side, talk to your administrator and guidance counselor about what your school policy says about confidentiality. If it doesn't go far enough to protect the rights of students, work to change that. Policies regarding confidentiality should also take gender identity into account. GLSEN provides guidelines for these considerations in its Transgender Model District Policy: "It is critical that parental/guardian approval is never a prerequisite for respecting a student's chosen name, appropriate gender, and pronouns... Staff should take guidance from and work collaboratively with the student to ensure that the student remains safe, both at school and at home."

7. Support a Student GSA

GLSEN's research has shown that the existence of a student GSA, or Gender Sexuality Alliance, can go a long way toward improving a school's climate for LGBTQ students. "Those need to be started by students," Mui explains, "but asking students if that's something they want support around" can be a good place to start. A GSA will also need a faculty advisor, so offering your services in that way can make a GSA a reality in your school.

8. Revisit Your School Policies

Making sure that your school's anti-bullying and anti-discrimination policies include language specific to sexual orientation and gender identity can also improve your school's climate, and GLSEN's research has found these types of policies to have significant impact on quality of life for LGBTQ students. Part of your work as an advocate is looking into these policies and working toward real change. Use GLSEN's Model Policies as a reference: www.glsen.org/modelpolicies.

9. Educate Your Colleagues

Apart from being more vocal and open with your own support for LGBTQ students, you can also conduct your own workshops for colleagues. The Safe Space Kit includes a sample 20-minute presentation teachers can give to school staff. GLSEN also offers in-person professional development. "We are a national organization, but we also have 40 local chapters which are amazingly volunteer-run by humans who are really dedicated and fantastic in this work," Mui says. "They're doing this work on the ground, and so we support them here from the national office with resources." Click here to view a map of local GLSEN chapters.

All of these actions will send a message of love and acceptance to your LGBTQ students-those you know about, and especially those you don't. Committing yourself to taking even a few of these steps can make such an incredible difference, impacting students' mental health, their safety, their academic success, and their overall quality of life. It just takes one person to start tipping the scales, to start moving a school culture in a more inclusive direction; I very much hope, for the sake of the students who need you, that you'll be that person. ♥

ONE MORE RESOURCE: LGBTQ+ youth face more than double the risk of experiencing homelessness compared to their nonqueer-identifying peers. In the last decade, many organizations have formed to help these young adults and children, providing support and resources so they can have somewhere safe and stable to live. To address this issue, Architectural Digest Reviews created this guide to housing assistance for LGBTQ+ youth.

There's more where this came from.
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Making School a Safe Place for LGBTQ Students

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Discrimination and harassment are still a daily reality for many LGBTQ students. Here are some things teachers can do to change that.

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What Doesn’t Work: Literacy Practices We Should Abandon

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The number one concern that I hear from educators is lack of time, particularly lack of instructional time with students. Although we can’t entirely solve the time problem, we can mitigate it by carefully analyzing our use of class time.

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Racial and ethnic diversity in literature, and in particular the literature written for an increasingly diverse student body, is of critical importance. Thankfully, in the past decade more young adult novels featuring protagonists of color have emerged.

But according to Black educators who have spent their careers making sure that all students-and especially Black students-get access to books that represent a healthy range of lived experiences, too many of today's best-selling novels offer a limited, even cramped, perspective.

Chanea Bond, an English and Literacy teacher at Southwest High School in Fort Worth, Texas, recently told Edutopia that too often Black protagonists in popular novels face down obstacles on the page that revolve around the same themes: racism, grief, trauma, and oppression.

"A lot of the best literature is born out of authentic feelings, and the universal human experience seems to be suffering," Bond said. "But when you only have, like, five or six books that mention Black and Brown people, and all of them are about slavery, colonization, growing up poor, and being marginalized, it really takes a toll on the kids."

According to Bond, it's common for book lists to recommend acclaimed novels with traumatic themes, such as Long Way Down, by Jason Reynolds (which deals with teenage gun violence), or The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas (which deals with the shooting of an unarmed black teen by a police officer). However, she said that as a Black educator teaching a student population that is largely made up of Black students, she makes it a priority to provide some balance.

"We have to think: What do all these recommendations tell Black kids specifically about themselves?" she said. "It's so important that you don't just have one book by a Black author in your curriculum, or one sort of story. We have to build a full picture."

K. C. Boyd, librarian at Jefferson Middle School Academy in Washington, D.C., and School Library Journal 's 2022 School Librarian of the Year, wholeheartedly agreed.

"Our kids love to see themselves portrayed in books," Boyd told Edutopia. "Which is why I think it's really important to have characters that are going through the full breadth of experiences that they're going through: love, joy, dating, gender exploring. All of that stuff."

Less focus on grievous trauma does not mean an absence of tension or conflict of any kind, of course. Here are 10 books featuring Black protagonists, recommended by Bond, Boyd, and others, that can deepen the spectrum of lived experiences represented in your school or classroom library.

1. Cool. Awkward. Black., edited by Karen Strong
A sprawling anthology celebrating Black geekdom, the stories feature a girl who believes in UFOs; a boy who might have finally found his Prince Charming; a hopeful performer who dreams of being cast in her school's production of The Sound of Music; and a magician with a power she doesn't quite understand. Written by such award-winning authors as Ibi Zoboi and Lamar Giles, the collection both honors and redefines Black geekiness.

2. You Should See Me in a Crown,by Leah Johnson
Liz Lighty has always believed she's too everything: too Black, too poor, too awkward. Her dream is to leave her small town, attend an elite school far away, and play in their world-famous orchestra. But when the financial aid she was expecting falls through, Liz's only hope is to try to win a scholarship set aside for her school's prom king and queen, even though her crush is another girl. "I love this book because it brings so much joy from the perspective of a Black queer girl," said Bond.

6. Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky, by Kwame Mbalia
Tristan Strong feels anything but strong since the day he failed to save his best friend,Eddie,in a bus accident. But when Tristan discovers MidPass-a foreign world with a burning sea, haunted ships, and monsters that hunt the inhabitants-he must rise to the occasion and form an alliance to entice a trickster god to come out of hiding. This epic fantasy takes readers on an adventurous ride and introduces them to African American folk heroes and West African gods in the process.

8. Instructions for Dancing, by Nicola Yoon
One afternoon, Evie Thomas witnesses a couple kissing, and suddenly she sees a vision of how their romance began-as well as how it will end. As she struggles to understand her new power to see into the past and future, she falls for an intriguing boy at her local dance studio. The premonitions of future heartbreak she sees all around her prompt her to confront a fundamentally human question: Is love worth the risk?

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10 Books With Black Protagonists That Don't Center Black Pain

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Racial and ethnic diversity in literature, and in particular the literature written for an increasingly diverse student body, is of critical importance. Thankfully, in the past decade more young adult novels featuring protagonists of color have emerged.

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Many dress codes unfairly target students in certain populations, doing more harm than good. This guide will help you review and revise your current policy.

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This four-step process teaches students how to identify and critically analyze the misinformation embedded in fake news articles shared on social media.

A friend recently emailed me an article filled with misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines. I called him and encouraged him to take a few deep breaths, and then we took a close look at the article. As we talked through the misinformation and spin threaded through the article, I realized that I was basically giving a brief lesson on how to perform a rhetorical analysis of this doomsday article. As an English teacher and AP Language and Composition instructor, I decided to bring this work into my classroom, and the impact was profound.

All too often we tend to teach rhetoric and rhetorical analysis as something that is academic and separate from the outside world. We teach students to explore the elements of persuasion in Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech or the elements of style in John F. Kennedy's inaugural address. As important as these texts are, they tend to reinforce students' understanding of rhetoric as a classroom assignment that does not have applicability in the real world: The texts are too dated, and students encounter them too frequently in the classroom, for the students to feel like the texts have immediate implications for their lives.

There has never been a more urgent time in human history to look at information and language critically. Students are bombarded with unregulated information through social media and media outlets labeled as news that requires critical thinking skills and close-reading skills in language and rhetoric to decipher the extent to which the material they are reading promotes a particular ideology.

Rhetorical Analysis of fake News

Rhetorical analysis and critical reading are necessary tools for students to dismantle the misinformation and disinformation that pervades our media environment. In addition to teaching the standard texts of persuasion and argument, teachers can incorporate real-world applications of these analytical skills by closely examining news and information that spreads on the internet through social media and websites.

Preparing materials: I searched for a variety of articles shared over social media on the same subject matter-in this case, vaccines. It was easy to see the wide range of information that moves across the spectrum of truth and fact to fake.

Teaching degrees of fake news: When I took these articles to the classroom, I started with an introductory lesson that conveyed that there is no clear line between "fake" and "truthful" news. Fake news, in this context, is material that moves away from language with a neutral voice that is intended to deliver unbiased information. Fake news is a catch-all term that covers writing on the spectrum of biased reporting, partisan spin, and propaganda, all the way to outright fabricated information.

Students should understand that most information has bias to some degree, and it's the degree of that bias that should be evaluated:

Unbiased: Generally provides information and facts in a natural tenor.

Biased: Provides information while favoring one side or position.

Partisan spin: Cherry-picks or card-stacks information to bolster one side.

Propaganda: Spins information to mislead the audience.

Fake: Made up or fabricated information.

Developing analytical skills: As students began to evaluate sources, I wanted to equip them with tools that built on the skills of rhetoric and persuasion related to class standards. I also wanted to avoid reteaching the same skills I teach for evaluating scholarly articles. Instead, I focused on the skills for evaluating the style and language of the texts. A few elements of rhetoric I had my students look at included the following:

Author ethos: Who is the speaker of the text, and do they have the ethos to be a trustworthy source or expert on the subject?

Use of expert testimony: What are the sources and who is quoted? Are these specific people who have the ethos to speak on this matter? Are the sources anonymous? Are there unspecific references like "We heard from many people..."?

Hypotheticals: Are the anecdotes and examples steeped in real events, or are they hypothetical and creating a slippery slope fallacy? Does the speaker discuss what is happening or what could possibly happen? Hypotheticals create fear based on a premise of what could be rather than what is, often using things like rhetorical questions: "What if Covid is just the first phase of a mass bioweapon attack?"

Loaded language: Does the speaker use more neutral language that is controlled and academic, or is the language loaded with emotion? Does the speaker use words and phrases that convey information, or do they tell the audience how to feel and what to think? Words like "radical," "experimental," and "mandatory inoculation" create a sense of fear and skepticism rather than reporting.

Source bias: What else does the source or website publish? What other articles come from this source, and what is the purpose of the other articles? Is the same story being run in other sources we know are trustworthy or less biased?

Source bias is most often found by clicking the author's link and looking at past articles they have published. In the vaccine articles we looked at, some sources had other articles that hyped conspiracy theories and latched on to the vaccines especially. Others may be very politically motivated and point fingers at one side or another to place blame rather than discuss all the facets of the issue.

Clickbait and pop-ups: What is the purpose of the website? If it's to convey information only, then it will be fairly clean and plain, but if they are trying to get people to share and grow visits to the site for ad revenue, then look for clickbait and pop-up advertisements as well as advertisements in general.

Finding real-world examples: By teaching persuasion and rhetorical analysis in this way, we not only convey key academic concepts but also make connections with how these skills can be applied in everyday life, starting the day you teach it.

Throughout the year, my students brought in articles and shared posts they found on their social media that they thought had a strong bias, misinformation, or even fake news. As a class, we evaluated these examples as a fun and engaging review of this process to further solidify rhetorical analysis and critical reading as a reflex when reading information shared on social media.

When teachers ask students to apply tools of rhetorical analysis to contemporary texts found in media, students take these skills out of the classroom. It better equips them to navigate the world of unregulated information and to become canny consumers of information.

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This four-step process teaches students how to identify and critically analyze the misinformation embedded in fake news articles shared on social media. A friend recently emailed me an article filled with misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines. I called him and encouraged him to take a few deep breaths, and then we took a close look at the article.

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Sometimes students need a little push to activate their imaginations.

The collection of prompts below asks young writers to think through real or imagined events, their emotions, and a few wacky scenarios. Try out the ones you think will resonate most with your students.

As with all prompts, inform students that their answers should be rated G and that disclosing dangerous or illegal things they're involved in will obligate you to file a report with the administration or school counselors. Finally, give students the option of writing "PERSONAL" above some entries that they don't want anyone to read. We all need to let scraggly emotions run free in our prose sometimes.

If your class uses daybooks (an approach recommended in Thinking Out Loud: The Student Daybook as a Tool to Foster Learning), wait for composition notebooks to go on sale at Target, the Dollar Store, or Walmart for $0.50 a piece. To organize the daybook, direct young writers to leave the first three pages blank and number and date each entry-adding these entries to a table of contents that they create as they work so they can return to specific entries later.

Should cameras on drones watch all public spaces to prevent crime, or is that a violation of privacy?

Do Americans have it too easy? Why do you think that?

What causes racism?

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hires you as a consultant to determine how best to use $20 billion to save the world. What's your plan?

What's the worst thing about the internet?

Would you rather be very beautiful or very smart? Explain.

You can save one object before your house burns down. What is it? What makes that object important to you?

How much control over your life do you have? What makes you say that?

Describe your ideal life 15 years from now. What is something you can do every day to reach that goal?

What would your friends say is your most lovable quality? Describe that quality.

What is something scary that you would like to try? What makes it scary for you? How might you overcome that fear?

What things do you conscientiously do to feed your brain?

What are three of your most profound learning experiences? Where and when did they occur?

By age 18, the average American has seen 200,000 acts of violence on TV, including 40,000 murders. What is it about television violence that is so compelling to people?

Would you rather be loved or respected? Because?

Does social media represent individuals authentically? Explain with examples.

Imagine that it's the last day of high school and you've been asked by a teacher to say a few words that summarize the events that have occurred over the last four years that are most meaningful to you. What do you say?

High School Prompts

Which classmate would be the best to lead us through a zombie apocalypse? Why?

What real-life situations would work out better for you if you were a different gender? Why?

How can you tell when someone your age is feeling insecure? Are most people more insecure or anxious than they let on?

If the internet were to crash forever, what would the benefits be for you? The drawbacks?

Write a scene that features a) a classmate, b) $100 million, and c) magical shoes.

What three features should your future house have? Why?

If you starred in a television show about your life, what would the show be called? What genre would it be? (Examples: comedy, drama, thriller, romance, action-adventure, fantasy, superhero, soap opera, reality, game show, space adventure, Western, tragedy, etc.) Summarize the plot of an episode.

In the future, what extreme sports will people be talking about?

Is your ethnicity an important part of your identity? How so?

You get to take one book, one food item, and one famous person (living or dead) to a deserted island. What and who do you take? Why?

Write a powerfully supportive email to yourself 10 years from now. Send that email to yourself using FutureMe.org.

You have been selected to be king or queen of your school. What are five rules that every kid should follow at your school? What should the punishment be for rule breakers?

What do the five friends you hang out with most have in common? How are you most like them? How are you different from them?

What contributes to someone becoming a bully? What can help stop someone from bullying?

Do you make friends slowly or quickly? Describe how one of your important friendships evolved.

Should we fear failure? Explain.

If a wizard could tell you anything about your future, what would you most like to know?

Do you believe in luck? Are you superstitious? How so? If not, why do you think some people are?

Middle School Prompts

I wish my teachers knew that . . .

What's the most beautiful person, place, or thing you've ever seen? Share what makes that person, place, or thing so special.

Which is better, giant muscles or incredible speed? Why?

What is your most difficult subject in school? Why is it difficult? What can you do to get better at that subject?

Rewrite "Hansel and Gretel" from the witch's perspective.

Describe a scary situation that you've experienced.

What is your first memory? Describe it.

You wake up tomorrow with a silly superpower that makes you famous. What is that silly power? How does it lead to your becoming an international superstar?

Are you a good loser? Explain.

What are examples of things you want versus things you need?

Last Friday, you were given one wish by a magical panda. You tried so hard to make the wish positive, but after the whacked-out events that unfolded over the weekend, you regret ever meeting that tricky panda. What did you ask for, and what happened?

I wish my friends . . .

Describe a routine that you often or always do (in the morning, when you get home, Friday nights, before a game, etc.).

What things do all kids know that adults do not?

What TV or movie characters do you wish were real? Why?

Elementary School Prompts

After they've finished an entry, ask students to read their work aloud or exchange daybooks for a read-around. If you give the entries written feedback, show that their work is respected by using a sticky note or scratch paper.

Don't forget to write along with your students. Why should they have all the fun?

What are your students' favorite writing prompts?

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Sometimes students need a little push to activate their imaginations.

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Incorporating the College Essay Into Your Curriculum

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Writing college application essays is stressful, and this 10-day lesson can help. And the writing practice benefits those students who don’t plan to attend college as well.

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Sponsored by Kialo Edu and Kiddom

This might be the perfect time for this topic. At first I just thought it was a neat idea, something teachers could implement pretty easily, something that would be a nice change of pace from what we usually talk about here.

But now I'm thinking this might actually be the thing that helps wake up a lot of our remote and hybrid classrooms from the white-knuckle, just-get-through-it mentality many of us have settled into as the '20-21 school year grinds through its second half. Just maybe.

I'm talking about classroom jobs, the tasks we assign to students to help keep our classrooms running. This is typically something we associate with face-to-face classrooms during normal times, but I was absolutely delighted -and I don't use the word 'delighted' every day-to learn that not only is it totally possible to assign jobs to students in remote classes, the jobs can make those remote classes really, really enjoyable. On top of that, they'll help students discover and develop passions and talents they can take with them well beyond your class.

When I was a middle school teacher, I didn't do much with classroom jobs. I was too much of a control freak, for one. The other reason was because it wasn't really a part of middle school culture. Elementary teachers are fantastic about assigning jobs to students, but as kids get older, teachers use these kinds of systems less and less. As a result, secondary teachers often work themselves to the bone, doing everything themselves as their students, ironically, grow more capable of taking on responsibilities every year.

Now that I have talked with Thom Gibson about this topic, I wish I could go back to the classroom so I could put some serious effort into establishing a robust system of classroom jobs. Gibson is a middle school STEM teacher from Austin, Texas. He has basically mastered the art of managing a whole program of classroom jobs, and he's made that process work for remote learning, too.

Thom Gibson

In our conversation on the podcast, we talked about why setting up students jobs is such a good thing to do, how to troubleshoot common problems with a jobs system, and what some of Gibson's favorite classroom jobs are-once you hear some of these ideas, I know you're going to want to try them.

Why Setting Up Classroom Jobs is Worth the Effort

It builds positive classroom community and culture. "Students feel like they are actually contributing in a meaningful way that is helping you as the teacher or helping their fellow classmates with something," Gibson says.

It gives students opportunities to explore interests and develop talents. Gibson started to see more value in classroom jobs when he had students create things that could be shared with a wider audience, like podcasts, newsletters, and art. "I started seeing an opportunity to tap into the students' interests with these class jobs as opposed to just getting something done for me."

It lets students learn job application skills. In Gibson's class, students aren't just given the jobs; they have to apply for them. So they gain experience with the job application process.

A Few Cool Job Ideas

Classroom jobs have really evolved past board cleaner and line leader. Gibson has compiled a list of over 25 unique student job titles. Here are ten to get you started:

1. Podcaster: Produces a regular brief podcast on a topic of interest to students, using tools like Soundtrap or GarageBand to make it happen. To keep it manageable, Gibson recommends only having students do one podcast per month, and keeping each episode under 3 minutes.

2. Athletic Trainer: Sets a timer for the middle of a class meeting to lead students in a movement activity, whether students are in the room or in a video meeting.

3. DJ: Plays music for 5 minutes before class. This can be done through the videoconferencing platform if you are remote.

4. Motivational Speaker: Records a one-minute Loom video each week reflecting on a motivational idea or quote to share with the class.

5. Visual Display Artist: Creates posters for in-person class or graphics to be used online for remote learning.

6. Zoologist: Cares for the class pet (or their own pet in remote learning) and lets the rest of the class check in once a week to see how the pet is doing.

7. Tech Guru: Sets up the teacher's classroom tech and helps other students with tech in-person, or troubleshoots and provides help to other students through screen sharing during virtual learning.

8. KonMari Organizing Specialist: Keeps classroom supplies organized. This one works best in an in-person setting, but many teachers probably also have online spaces that could use help with decluttering.

9. Assistant Grader: Helps the teacher with grading. In person, this student would highlight mistakes on assessments for the teacher to look at later. Virtually, this student could assist with some online grading and notify other students when assignments are missing from online platforms like Khan Academy.

10. Tutorial Creator: Makes YouTube tutorials for all kinds of tasks that other students need in the classroom.

Making it Work: The Logistics

A system like this doesn't just spring up out of nowhere; it requires organization and maintenance. Gibson shared a few key components of how his jobs program works:

Job descriptions are provided ahead of time. Students first get a chance to look at all job listings, which include a description of each job along with notes on what personality types would be a good fit.

Students apply for jobs. Gibson has found that this maximizes student buy-in. In the application, students choose their top three jobs and explain why they'd be a good fit.

Job holders get checklists. After students are "hired," (and multiple students may be hired for the same job), they are given job-specific checklists of responsibilities, including when their job is performed, how often, and how to do it.

A teacher's assistant keeps it all together. Although it was not mentioned in the above list, it is essential to have a teacher's assistant whose job it is to remind everyone else to do their job. Gibson recommends looking for "super type-A" students to fill this role.

Teach the jobs like any other curriculum. Students will need practice and feedback to do the jobs right. If a student isn't doing their job correctly, "Make them do it again," Gibson says, "not as a punishment but just as a way of, okay, so now let's try it again."

At a time when we are all hungry for human connection, when classrooms feel more fragmented than ever before, when we sometimes go days or weeks without talking to each other, adding classroom jobs to the mix could be the breath of fresh air we need for our schools. They will give students a new reason to show up, to participate, and to stick around, because in a meaningful way, the classroom will become theirs again.

Learn More from Thom Gibson

Gibson's free course, Essential Student Jobs for the Middle School Classroom of Tomorrow, can be accessed here. His paid course, How to Teach Kids About Money Plus, is here.

Follow him on Twitter, on Instagram, or on YouTube.

Come back for more.
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It's Time to Give Classroom Jobs Another Try

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These fresh ideas for student jobs will invigorate your classroom and get you and your students excited about school again-even if you teach remotely.

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Teachers can use tools like ChatGPT as one strategy in their efforts to teach students how to think critically and write effectively.

As a learning specialist who, along with supporting the students in my charge, works side by side with colleagues in all content areas, I want to encourage faculty as they consider the impacts of tools such as ChatGPT. For English and social studies teachers, for example, this just might be their "calculator moment": As math teachers had to adapt their teaching when calculators became ubiquitous, so, too, must teachers of courses that are rich with reading and writing, now that AI tools are at students' fingertips.

December 2022 saw a spike in the number of articles, blog posts, and think pieces musing about what ChatGPT and the like might-OK, do -mean for education. Many rang alarm bells, and a few pointed out the shortcomings of the tool as currently configured. I spoke to our division's director of technology just before our winter holiday about what's being talked about in his professional circles regarding these artificial intelligence tools.

It was a lively conversation with far more questions than answers. I did respond with certainty, though, when he asked me what my philosophy is about ChatGPT and tools like it. "If I could turn back time and make sure we do not invent such things, I would."

My response gives away the fact that I'm what can only be described as a Luddite. My watch only tells time. I listen to records. Not too long ago, I had a Nokia phone. Still, I'm no ostrich. I continued, "But that horse has already left the barn. ChatGPT is not coming to our classrooms-it's already here."

Here are some ideas for incorporating AI tools into our classes while retaining and reinforcing critical thinking skills.

Prompt dissection

Zeynep Tufekci, a New York Times opinion writer and associate professor at the University of North Carolina, warns that, as tools like ChatGPT are training themselves on everything written on the internet, there's a fairly good chance that there will be inaccuracies in what is being drafted. She describes the risk of being subjected to " a high-quality intellectual snow job."

There can be an upside, however. In a social studies classroom, students might craft a prompt about a topic they've been considering and then examine the machine's response in forensic detail. This may involve a sentence-by-sentence dissection of what the AI has written. By unearthing possible inconsistencies or straight-up inaccuracies, students reinforce their correct understanding of the topic.

Find the biases

As a variation on the above, students create prompts across a variety of related topics, then evaluate them looking for themes of inaccuracy. Since ChatGPT and their ilk are trained on what exists, underrepresented writing and voices will necessarily be marginalized further through the iterative processes inherent in AI tools.

How can we guide our students to not only recognize these blind spots but also incorporate a greater multiplicity of viewpoints in their scholarship?

Spot the computer essay

For a playful exercise, share two or three pieces of human writing from the past year or two and slip in an example from ChatGPT, and have students discuss what makes these examples human-or decidedly not. Nuance, passion, and, perhaps, even fallibility will be clues that students can investigate.

Use primary sources and first-person accounts

This and the following ideas are writing assignments that will make the use of AI tools superfluous, if not counterproductive.

My colleague Joy Xu in the English department asks students to interview someone and connect this person's experience to a text. First of all, the narrative/expository combination provides more points of entry for student writing.

Second, this synthesis ensures that no machine prompt can provide language to express new learning.

Compare two readings

Students will create unique essays that demonstrate their learning, the connections they've made, and the meaning. Again, because these AI tools are trained on what can be found on the internet, the rarer the story, the rarer the computer-generated analysis.

Expect classroom discussion to be used as a resource

This idea, loosely based on another Peter Greene suggestion, considers a key component of what he calls "authentic writing" class discussions. He recommends that the discussion "[become] one of the texts being considered."

A rather positive result that would likely emerge from this idea would be students paying closer attention during classroom conversations. Dare I say they may even take notes?

In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Beth McMurtrie shares that students often submit writing that they consider little more than "an assemblage of words repeated back to the teacher," while we teachers believe that student writing represents their thinking. We want our students to think and to continue to develop their thinking.

Tufekci reminds us in her opinion piece that essay writing teaches students how to conduct research, judge claims, synthesize knowledge, and express that knowledge persuasively and coherently. She continues, "Those skills will be even more important because of advances in AI."

Rather than bury our heads in the sand, let's equip our students for the world of right now and for what it might be going forward.

I'm still going to listen to records, though.

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Some Ideas for Using ChatGPT in Middle and High School Classes

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Teachers can use tools like ChatGPT as one strategy in their efforts to teach students how to think critically and write effectively.

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Everyone gets stumped when they begin a new writing project-even the professionals. Here are some strategies the world's best writers use to push past the doldrums and generate higher-quality writing.

If you're trying to help your students become better writers, what better place to go for advice than professionals?

A recent New York Times article went behind the scenes to get tips from journalists about the best practices they use to make their writing sparkle. One big piece of advice was quite simple: Read your work out loud.

"Whether it's parsing tricky passages or checking for overall flow, they [the New York Times journalists] all agree: Hearing their words makes their writing stronger," the story notes.

Julia Jacobs, a general assignment reporter for the paper, said reading her work aloud is an easy way to slow down and pay attention to small, but crucial details-like the length of her sentences. "It's a way to focus my brain very quickly," she said, adding that she knows particular sentences need more work when she starts to run out of breath while reading them.

Dan Barry, a veteran Pulitzer Prize winning reporter who is often lauded for long narrative features, said reading aloud is a surefire way to "nail the rhythm" of a piece of writing. "Hearing his words," the article notes, "allows him to immediately spot an overworked alliteration, dropped articles, and gaps in logic."

The practice is also backed by science. A recent study asked college students to proofread texts silently and then aloud to assess which approach helped them spot more typos, grammatical mistakes, and errors in word choice. Compared to silent readers, those who read out loud found 5 percent more errors. For more challenging errors-like the common they're/their/there mistake-accuracy jumped to 12 percent.

Asking students to read aloud, while focusing on things like tone, sentence structure, and cadence, is a simple, effective, and researched-backed way to improve their writing-particularly during the revision stage.

That insight got us thinking about other easy strategies-used by real pros-that students can also employ to improve their writing.

WALK AWAY FROM IT
It might seem counterintuitive to prescribe taking a break from writing as a way to improve it, but research suggests short breaks from challenging tasks aren't idle time; they provide the brain with the space needed to resolve tricky issues.

In a 2021 study, researchers observed the neural activity of students as they learned how to type with their nondominant hand. During breaks, the brains of the participants unconsciously replayed the practice session over and over "at an astonishingly high rate of speed" according to the study, flipping the information between processing and memory centers dozens of times in the span of a few seconds. The brain makes progress even when we are not focused on a problem, and "stepping away from the activity, it turns out, is not stepping away from the activity at all," the researchers concluded.

If research isn't enough to sway you, take it from literary luminaries like Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Henry David Thoreau, and William Wordsworth, who are among the scores of writers known to use walks to get creative juices flowing after hitting rough patches in their work.

While it may be difficult to build walks into the middle of a school day, it is certainly something you can prescribe to students as they work on writing outside of school.

TALK IT OUT
Alexandra Parrish Cheshire, an educational consultant and former educator, writes that students who can talk at length about a given topic often freeze up when it is time to get things down on the page-"almost as if they've been handicapped by the task we have set for them."

One easy way to help students to overcome this natural resistance is to allow them to use recorders or voice memo apps to record themselves speaking out their essay, rather than trying to write it out first. They can then play back the recording and write down the most salient points. Free transcription tools, like Trint, can also be used to quickly convert their speech into text.

For students who are really struggling, Cheshire writes that teachers can schedule one-on-one time and give them the opportunity to talk out their ideas, while the teacher jots them down. At the end, students have something to work off of and are able to push past their initial fears. That approach, she says, might free a student up "to express their thoughts without the hesitation that makes some students' minds go blank as they pick up that pen or pencil."

The pros agree. National Book Award winning novelist Richard Powers writes that he's been dictating his work for over a decade, which allows him to "hear every sentence as it's made, testing what it will sound like, inside the mind's ear." Powers notes that the practice dates as far back as the 17th century, when English poet John Milton, who was blind, dictated his epic poem Paradise Lost to his daughters.

HAVE THE COURAGE TO BE (VERY) BAD Another reason students freeze up on the page during the drafting process, writes Christina Torres Cawdery, an eighth grade English teacher in Hawaii, is that they spend a lot of time self-editing and self-critiquing themselves early on-stifling any forward momentum. First drafts can be thought of as a form of doodling, instead, and Cawdery says it's important to create opportunities for informal, ungraded writing that is less focused on content, grammar, or fluency, and more on just getting raw thinking down to be reworked later.

Award-winning author Ta-Nehisi Coates writes that even his first drafts are "cringe-inducing."

Crafting eloquent and persuasive writing, he says, entails revising your worst version of a piece of writing over and over again until it sings. "I believe that many people have the talent to write. But very few have the courage to rewrite. Even fewer have the courage to rewrite, fail, and live to do the whole thing again."

Getting down a bad first draft, quickly, is an approach backed by countless writers and authors who profess the merits of "vomit drafts." So many that it would be worthwhile for ELA teachers to hang up quotes from the professionals as a means of inspiring their students to do it themselves.

In her classroom, Cawdery gets students to generate quick drafts by giving them 10 minutes after reading a prompt or a text to write down as much as they can, unfiltered. "This exercise allows students to get as many ideas on the page as they can, helping them release judgment about 'good' or 'bad' ideas." When time is up, students can take a highlighter to find and mark "hidden gems in their work," which helps them realize that their informal writing can provide them with good ideas to use in higher-stakes assignments.

Cawdery says you can also challenge students to write the "worst" first draft possible of their paper. Explain that they're free to discard grammar rules and come up with the silliest possible connections they can think of. According to Cawdery, more often than not, students will come away with bits and pieces that are useful, and perhaps even more interesting, than if they'd started off the writing process thinking about getting things down as perfectly as possible.

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Things Professional Writers Do That Students Should Too

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Everyone gets stumped when they begin a new writing project-even the professionals. Here are some strategies the world's best writers use to push past the doldrums and generate higher-quality writing. If you're trying to help your students become better writers, what better place to go for advice than professionals?