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How to Package Cookies — The Best Ways to Gift This Season’s Tastiest | Xtrema Pure Ceramic Cookware

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It wouldn't be the holidays without an influx of homemade cookies from neighbors and friends. If you're the type who whips up a whole storm of cookies - from cutout trees to cute little gingerbread people - eventually, you'll run out of space in your kitchen, as well as room in your belly.

And, as we all know, the solution to this non-problem is giving away the goods. Nothing beats giving or receiving a plate of homemade cookies. A goodie box, dish or jar functions as the perfect gift for all the different relationships in your life - from newer neighbors and your great-aunt to your hairstylist and your closest friends.

But if you want your peppermint bark, peanut brittle and perfectly decorated snowman cookies to truly impress, you'll need to step up your plating game. To help you out, we've included some of our favorite cute ways to package cookies.

If you're still in need of a cookie recipe, check out our favorite Christmas cookie recipes for some ideas!

Think Green: How to Package Cookies With Recycled Items

Got extra cardboard laying around? Hoarding Pringles cans like there's no tomorrow? Well, clear out that pantry just in time for the holiday season. Just make sure this stuff is clean, and maybe dressed up a bit.

Pringles Can

Serial snackers, rejoice. If you've got extra chip cans lying around, consider transforming them to house something a little different. First things first, you'll want to wipe out the container. As much as those pizza or barbecue-flavored crisps were delicious the first time around, the flavoring doesn't exactly add extra je ne sais quoi to those double-chocolate macaroons you slaved over for hours.

Here are a few quick steps for transforming your Pringles tubes. You'll need:
Instructions
1. First, wrap your cookies in plastic wrap. This will help keep them in the desired tube shape and prevent any lingering chip dust from making its way into those yummy baked goods.

2. Next, measure the wrapping paper so it covers the can, end to end.

3. Cut paper and glue it to the canister. Use glue sparingly.

4. Trace the lid of the canister with contrasting wrapping paper, and glue paper in place.

5. Let dry and place cookies inside the container.

6. Wrap the canister with twine and attach a gift tag, if desired.

Empty Foil Containers

Like their chip-holding counterparts, aluminum foil or plastic wrap boxes work great as packaging for baked goods of all types. Wrap 'em up with your favorite holiday paper - we like the Kraft paper look - but sparkles and over-the-top Christmas kitsch rule, too.

Here's a quick tutorial. You'll need the following supplies:
Instructions
1. Remove the sharp edge from each box - cut them with scissors or use an X-Acto blade for more precision.

2. Wrap the outer box with paper of your choosing and secure with a few drops of glue.

3. Line the inside with parchment paper, then fill with the treat of your choice.

4. Close the box and top off with twine or a thin ribbon.

Inside Another Gift

Sometimes the perfect gift item requires a little something extra to sweeten the deal. For the baker friend, share some of your favorite recipes, while inspiring new ones. We're talking bakeware accented by the flavors of the season. From new coffee mugs to mixing bowls, cupcake pans and more, here are some gift ideas both edible and lasting.

Cupcake pan: Got a friend who's obsessed with cupcakes and all things baking? A cupcake pan serves as the perfect vessel for a homemade cookie sampler. Line with festive cupcake liners - or, if you're feeling generous, brand-new silicone ones - and put a different variety in each opening. Rounded cookies - like chocolate chip or peanut butter - or flat varieties - like brittles and barks - work best for stacking.

New coffee and tea mugs: If you're putting together a holiday gift basket with all the bells and whistles, consider adding some homemade cookies in the mix, with a favorite tea or coffee and a new set of mugs. Sweets are a great way to add an extra touch to a practical gift.

Bread pans: A new pan is another great way to present a friend with a fresh loaf of homemade banana bread or a lineup of this season's best cookies - straight from your personal recipe book.

Plastic, Paper and the Basics

Here are few ideas for the cookie baker who doesn't have time for an additional craft. We know you're busy, so there's no need to go all out - from sleeves to plastic wrap, simple doesn't have to mean lame.

Cellophane wraps: Cellophane sleeves function as a way to package treats, especially if you're passing out goodies to your child's class or everyone at the office.

It's worth noting: Sturdier cookies work best here. Make sure you make cookies that can be stacked and tossed around a bit, as cellophane doesn't offer much protection. Add some ribbons and gift tags, and you're good to go.

Paper sleeves: Hit up your local craft store for some pre-made packaging options. Paper sleeves - much like you'd use for a CD a few years back - work great if you're passing out one or two larger cookies. The same goes for a cool envelope. Think of it as a greeting card you can eat.

Brown paper bags: If you've got kids or are a frequent desk eater, chances are you've got a significant back stock of the classic food delivery system, the humble brown paper bag. Cookies are a noticeable upgrade from a soggy PB+J or a sad desk salad, but adding a few embellishments can take your sack to the next level.

To-Go Containers

Unlike the Pringles can idea, you can't really get away with recycling used to-go containers. But buying a handful of new ones can add an element of professionalism to your baked goods packaging.

Aluminum to-go boxes bring the ultimate minimalistic approach. Arrange your cookies in rows, and make sure you package them snugly and securely. Top the package off with some twine and a candy cane or a little sprig of mistletoe, and you've got yourself a sweet treat ready to share.

Plain white or Kraft-colored Chinese food boxes may have a more fun look and feel. This type of container works well for smaller cookies, like chocolate chip, jam thumbprints or brittles and bark.

Or, look toward the fast food biz for inspiration. Cardboard boxes built for housing French fries are a cute way to package cookies. No need to eat your way through your city's drive-thrus, either - most craft stores sell these little boxes. Dress up your arrangements with bows, ribbons and cute little tags.

Jars and Glassware

Jars of all shapes and sizes, as well as those mismatched pieces of bric-a-brac found in your local Salvation Army, are all perfect vessels for sending cookies off to new homes, where your friends can enjoy them with abandon.

Mason jars: Smaller jars work well if you're gifting smaller bites like homemade candies and chocolate-covered nuts. Give multiple small mason jars full of treats. Your recipients will be sure to enjoy the variety. Larger mason jars can play the role of classic cookie jar - perfect for bringing a big batch or two of cookies to be enjoyed throughout the season.

Vintage plates and bowls: If you're a collector, chances are you've got a big selection of unique plates or bowls. Arrange your cookies and top off with plastic wrap and a cloth ribbon.

Metal tins: Metal tins and buckets provide a rustic, throwback look and are relatively inexpensive. Stock up on a few holiday-themed tins and give to friends - they'll likely keep these around for future cookie swaps and gift baskets.

Adornments Galore

Want to dress up a basic box or bag? Here are a few tips and tricks that'll impress your friends and family. No one needs to know these are reasonably easy wrapping hacks - so, non-crafters, rest assured.

Paper Snowflakes

Most people probably recall making these little paper snowflakes in elementary school - but did you know they also make the perfect DIY gift tags for simple boxes and cookie-filled bags? We know it's probably been a few years since you've tried this, so here's a quick how-to:

1. You'll need a square piece of paper and a pair of scissors.

2. Fold your paper in half diagonally to make a triangle shape.

3. Fold in half once more, so the two pointy corners meet.

4. Then, fold your triangle into thirds and cut the bottom - the end with the two pointed edges - so it's straight.

5. Cut various lines and shapes into the folded paper.

6. Unfold and secure to gift box with string or ribbon.

7. Write recipient's name on the flake.

Or...Just Use a Doily

Doilies! Remember those?! Breathe new life into these old paper decorations - attach to folded-over paper bags and staple in place. This detail functions as both an easy upgrade to a basic bag, as well as a gift tag.

Make Your Own Stamps

If you've got lots of people on your holiday list, and prefer to keep things simple, wrap with parchment paper or brown paper. Make your own holiday-themed stamps. Trust us: This approach looks cute and rustic, and best of all, like you put in a lot more effort than you really did.

Carve stars or tree shapes into half of a potato, or cut sponges into basic shapes. Add paint and paper, and you're in business.

Mini Wreaths

Fashion a miniature wreath out of Christmas tree trimmings. Grab some wire and twist together to attach the ends, securing in a circle shape. Cover with a red ribbon and, voilà, you've got the cutest package toppers in town.

Natural Adornments

If you got a real Christmas tree this year, cut a small piece off your tree and tie it onto your gift box with a bit of twine or raffia. Or, look toward dried flowers, mistletoe, a piece of holly - whatever strikes your fancy. Hey, some of this stuff is probably in your house or yard, too. Easy as pie.

Custom Gift Tags

If you've got an artsy streak, purchase a box of old-school luggage tags. Draw or paint a little something on one side and tie onto any bag or box you've put together. A little more original than those stick-on tags, if you ask us.

Tips for Shipping Sweets

Finally, if you wish to send along a little taste of home to faraway loved ones, you'll need to consider a few things before you package those homemade treats. We're guessing you'd prefer to keep your frosted Christmas trees from looking more like chopped firewood by the time they reach their destination. Here are some tips for sending cross-country greetings that taste ultra-sweet upon arrival:

Airtight packaging: The trick to shipping cookies is to pack them in an airtight container. A tin or jar with a seal works great, or you can use Tupperware. For best results, individually wrap each item in the box.

Double up on boxes: This tip goes for just about anything that can break en route to the recipient. You should double-box your cookie arrangement - adequate defense against whatever happens after you drop it off at the post office. Pack your gift in one inner gift box, then again in another. The outer shell doesn't have to be anything glamorous - just grab an extra box at the post office.

Size accordingly: Even if you've found the most beautiful cookie tin on the planet, if it's too big, you're in trouble. Choose a tin that comfortably fits your cookie arrangement - cookies should be snug, up against one another, but not packed so tightly they start to break. Pack your tin in a modestly larger box to keep your arrangement in place.

Secure the boxes: Ideally, you'll want to package your boxed cookies with sufficient padding to avoid breakage. We know this all sounds a little redundant, but we're just looking out for the cookies. Your perfect cushion is about two to three inches on all sides of the wrapped gift.

Bubble wrap and packing peanuts are always useful, but if you'd like to show your love for the planet by going a little greener, swap out your plastics for shredded newspaper, magazines or junk mail.

Are You Prepared for Baking Season? Shop Ceramcor's Ovenex Bakeware

In the end, we hope you realize giving cookies as a gift doesn't have to feel impersonal. Stepping up the presentation makes all the difference - skip that wimpy paper plate and add a little flair.

Now, before you get caught up in the crafting part of the equation, check out Ceramcor's selection of bakeware for a kitchen upgrade. We've got a solid selection of everything you need to spread holiday cheer, from mixing bowl sets to versatile stoneware baking dishes that bake brownies just as well as they can poach fish. Check out our selection of wares today - and brighten up your kitchen in short order.

The post How to Package Cookies - The Best Ways to Gift This Season's Tastiest Treats appeared first on Xtrema Ceramic Cookware Blog - Ceramcor.

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How to Package Cookies - The Best Ways to Gift This Season's Tastiest Treats

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It wouldn't be the holidays without an influx of homemade cookies from neighbors and friends. If you're the type who whips up a whole storm of cookies - from cutout trees to cute little gingerbread people - eventually, you'll run out of space in your kitchen, as well as room in your belly.

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Strategies to Encourage Middle and High School Students to Turn Their Cameras On | Edutopia

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Incorporating SEL approaches, playing games, and giving students options can inspire them to show their faces.

While there is a tremendous amount of value to being able to see your students' faces during distance learning, we can't force them to be on camera, just as during in-person teaching, we can't force unengaged students to lift their heads or remove hats or hoodies that obscure their faces.

With experimentation and persistence, however, you can arrive at strategies that work. Whether they need options, encouragement, or trust in order to turn their cameras on, there's likely a solution that is the right fit for your classroom, circumstances, lessons, and students.

SEL Strategies to Encourage Camera Use

If you want to incorporate social and emotional learning (SEL) strategies to prompt camera use among your students, start with the recognition that words matter: Our communication with our students needs to be rooted in community, not compliance.

From there, you could leverage any number of SEL approaches.

Build relationships. Focus on trust, both teacher to student and student to student. Students who know they are safe and cared for by their community will be more comfortable having their cameras on.

Survey students. Ask students individually or in a Google form what deters them from using a camera and what would make them comfortable. Once you identify the barriers to camera use, you can collaborate with students to reduce or remove those barriers.

Use icebreakers. Try community-building activities that encourage camera use. For example, prompt students to "find the largest yellow thing in your house that you can safely bring back to the camera." As a variation, try within reach. Pass the pen is also a playful approach to building community remotely.

Play games. Rock, paper, scissors works well in a remote classroom setting, as do Pictionary and charades. Explore 25 games to play on Zoom, which includes options that work for different ages.

Visually vote or share understanding. Have students vote with their thumbs up or down on a topic, or poll the class with a Fist-to-Five, a simple signaling system that can engage reluctant students and build consensus within a group.

Encourage students who have social capital to use their cameras. The best role models are likely in your classroom already. Consider using a Google form to ask students to name three classmates with whom they would most like to be in a breakout room or with whom they would most like to work on a group project. The students with the most requests are likely the students with the most social capital and can be positive role models for camera-on activities. You can also consider using a sociogram to identify the best role models when it comes to camera use.

Be empathetic. Share with your students times when you haven't felt like being on camera in a meeting. Talk about how you prepare yourself to turn on the camera, even when you're not in the mood. If you're self-conscious about looking prepared or about multitasking while on camera, talk about it. Sharing will bring out your humanness.

Zoom Tips to Encourage Camera Use

Admit students into class one by one. Arrive to class five minutes early and enable the waiting room. As students arrive, admit and greet them individually, and check in with them about camera use. You might be able to check in with only a few students before needing to "admit all," but those who arrive early and have their cameras on will gain comfort from being in a small group to start. Plus, as the other students enter, they will register that some cameras are already on.

Use the "Ask to Start Video" option. As the host, you can invite participants to turn on their cameras by clicking the participant's black screen; then click the horizontal "..." and select "Ask to Start Video."

Send a private message in the chat. Use the chat feature to welcome the student, check in with them, and encourage them to turn on their camera.

Encourage virtual backgrounds. It could be that a student is resistant to using their camera because of their home environment, so teach them how to use Zoom virtual backgrounds or introduce them to Unscreen.

Instructional Tips to Encourage Camera Use

Let students know when cameras can be optional. Brainstorm with your class times when it is fine to have the camera off and when it's best to have it on. Discussing camera-optional policies and having camera routines provide students with predictability and autonomy.

Allow students to show only part of their body or space on camera. Some students are particularly self-conscious about exposing their face on camera. Consider allowing students to dip their toe into their onscreen time by encouraging them to turn the camera so that only a portion of their body appears.

Provide options for rubrics that include camera usage. At the onset of a lesson or unit, share rubrics or criteria for success for a given objective. If having the camera on is relevant to your objective, then consider including it as a criterion for success. Many students will align themselves with the rubric if they know the expectations upfront before instruction begins. To avoid forced compliance, consider providing options for students to create their own rubric based on the objective.

Have students submit a prerecorded video demonstrating skill or objective. If students need to visibly demonstrate a skill, allow them to make a recorded video. While the whole class won't see it, you can still assess the student and build their comfort with being on camera.

Ask students to suggest alternatives. Your students might have insights into other ways to participate and share their learning visually. Many educators have found that students will share videos on TikTok, Vimeo, or private YouTube channels or Instagram accounts.

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Strategies to Encourage Students to Turn Their Cameras On

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Incorporating SEL approaches, playing games, and giving students options can inspire them to show their faces.

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The Shift from Engaging Students to Empowering Learners

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Teaching Drama Online / Remotely

A Growing List of FREE Tools & Resources for Distance Learning
As schools and theatre programs deal with closures due to COVID-19, we thought it would be useful to begin compiling a list of online resources to help keep your drama programs running. This list has been curated by the Beat by Beat Team. For even more distance learning content, check out Teaching Theatre Online, a 182-page eBook with step-by-step lesson plans for your virtual camps and classes.

Introducing Teaching Theatre Online, a new resource with step-by-step lesson plans and over 250 distance learning activities.

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Teaching Drama Online - Theatre Education Distance Learning Resources

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Teaching Drama Online / Remotely A Growing List of FREE Tools & Resources for Distance Learning As schools and theatre programs deal with closures due to COVID-19, we thought it would be useful to begin compiling a list of online resources to help keep your drama programs running.

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March 21, 2014
Today while I was browsing through my Twitter feeds I came across this fabulous Bloom's Taxonomy wheel of apps shared by Anthony. If you still recall, some previous versions of this wheel have already been featured here in Bloom's Taxonomy for Teachers section .

As you can see, the wheel outlines a wide variety of verbs and activities related to each thinking level of Blooms taxonomy coupled with iPad apps that go with it. These apps are supposed to help teachers and students better cultivate these different thinking levels in their use of iPad apps. And because the the visual is not hyperlinked, I went ahead and provided the links for each of these apps in the lists below. Enjoy
Create
Evaluate
Annalyse Apply Remember/understand
This wheel is originally discovered on the website of Paul Hopkin's education consultancy site mmiweb.org.uk adopted by Allan Carrington.

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A New Fantastic Bloom's Taxonomy Wheel for iPad Apps - Educators Technology

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March 21, 2014 Today while I was browsing through my Twitter feeds I came across this fabulous Bloom's Taxonomy wheel of apps shared by Anthony. If you still recall, some previous versions of this wheel have already been featured here in Bloom's Taxonomy for Teachers section .

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a.) Identify Desired Results (Enduring Understanding & Essential Questions)Check out Jay McTighe's collection of This home page covers basic curriculum development:

Understanding by Design

Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning Objectives

Universal Design for Learning

Differentiation

Wiggins & McTighe's (2005) Understanding By Design (UbD) is a planning framework:

b.) Determine Assessment Evidence (Performance & Criteria)
c.) Plan Learning Experiences and Instruction (Materials, Activities, & Supports)
Read an introduction to their instructional planning process:
McTighe, J. & Wiggins, G. (2012). Introduction to UbD - White Paper. Alexandria, VA: ASCD. Retrieved from http://jaymctighe.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/UbD-White-Paper-June-20141.pdf

High School UBD Lessons.

Jay McTighe's Definition of Backward Design

Grant Wiggins Workshop Seminar on Understanding By Design
Bloom's 21st Century Taxonomy
Bloom's Taxonomy is a classification of education learning objectives. It has been revised to focus more on action and production.
The taxonomy covers the three domains of learning: cognitive (knowledge/understanding), affective (feelings/attitude) and psychomotor (manual/physical).

Universal design for learning. In E. Baker, P. Peterson, & B. McGaw (Eds. ). Elsevier. Retrieved from
Universal Design is an architectural concept that focuses on the design of products, buildings, or environments so they can be used readily by the widest possible range of users. International Encyclopedia of Education, 3rd Ed. Oxford: http://www.udlcenter.org/sites/udlcenter.org/files/TechnologyandLearning_1.pdf

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework for teaching and learning that often capitalizes on the power and flexibility of modern technologies to address the needs of the broadest possible range of students

​UDL has three primary principles:
1.
Multiple means of representation, to give diverse learners options for acquiring information and knowledge (content)
2. to provide learners options for demonstrating what they know (product)
3. to tap into learners' inte rests, offer challenges, and increase motivation (process)

See High School UDL Lessons & UDL Examples and Resources
Using UDL Strategies can benefit not only the students that need extra support, but the entire class.
The TPA requires differentiation strategies with different content, process or product for different students, not UDL.

When considering a lesson,
think about what your student will struggle with -
how can you change the content, process or product
to make sure your student will be successful.

a. What will you look for to know if this strategy is helpful? a. What will you do to monitor the student's progress? b. What will you do if the student is not showing evidence of their learning? c. What will you change about your strategy to help the student learn? DIFFERENTIATION DESIGN PROCESS: ISEAM
1. I nformation about Student: Identify student's readiness/proficiency level, interests, & learning profile;
a. What do you know about this student's readiness?
language proficiency? subject area knowledge? skills mastered?
b. What are the student's interests? What motivates the student to learn?
c. What is the student's learning profile? How does the student take in information?
Multiple Intelligence Preferences? True Colors? Personality?
2.
a. What about this lesson would be difficult for this student? Content? Process? Or Product? S trategy Alignment: Aligns content, process or product to student's readiness/proficiency level(s), learning profiles or interests;
b. What could you change about the content, process, product that would help the student be successful?
3.
Explanation: Provides an explanation of why the content, process or product is appropriate for student's readiness/proficiency level, learning profiles or interests; a. Why is this strategy a good match for this student's readiness, interests or learning profile?
4.
Assessment Criteria: Describes the criteria for assessing the students' success with the content, process or product based on their readiness/proficiency level, learning profiles or interests;
5.
b. What will the student do that is evidence of their learning?
Monitor: Monitor and adapt content, process or product to support student progress;

d. What are your back up differentiation strategies?

Accommodations & Modifications
refer to specific types of differentiation strategies.

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a.) Identify Desired Results (Enduring Understanding & Essential Questions)Check out Jay McTighe's collection of This home page covers basic curriculum development: Understanding by Design Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning Objectives Universal Design for Learning Differentiation Wiggins & McTighe's (2005) Understanding By Design (UbD) is a planning framework: b.)

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In case y'all forgot 👀 a little refresher on some ways to address and denounce white supremacy... ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ✨ Within you ✨ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Acknowledge your privileges, beliefs, and behaviors that have manifested from white supremacy. Actively listen to BIPOC's and build empathy for experiences that may contradict your own. Re-educate yourself on racism while decolonizing the history/education you've been falsely taught. Now, a lot of folx stop right here and think they're done - but....acknowledging your privilege isn't anti-racism...this is just the prerequisite for entering the conversation. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ✨ Within your immediate circle ✨ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Now that you've learned a bit, it's time to hold everyone in your life to the same standard. You cannot claim to be anti-racist if you are complicit with racism - educate, amplify, and help open the minds of those you have the most impact with. It's never too early in a relationship to bring up anti-racism - not to friends, potential partners, and especially children. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ✨ Within your community ✨ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Let's channel anti-racism into every part that white supremacy reigns: your workplace, your school, the oppressive systems in which you consume, shop, and move through inside and outside of your community. Follow BIPOC activists who have been leading the charge for years and offer your support financially, emotionally, and physically while still taking your fair share of the work. Demand reform and abolition, relentlessly. This is where meaningful change will be made - and it won't be made in a day, or even a few hundred...but that doesn't make it any less worth it. Commit to long-term advocacy and make allyship a philosophy that touches every step you make - not just the easy ones.

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here are some of my favorite tools. no one application, website, or platform has everything we need. just like back in the classroom, it's all about trying things out and remixing. make things work for you and your students. take what you want and leave what you don't want. ex: I use newsela and commonlit for texts but seldom use their questions. other things I use and include (in part or as a whole): google classroom, google docs, google image search, YouTube, Twitter, news websites and platforms, etc. captured here: 1. google slides 2. padlet 3. plickers 4. Apple Music 5. screencastify 6. newsela & commonlit 7. teaching tolerance & facing history and ourselves before you comment or ask about any of these, google to learn more about what they are and think of how you might adapt. also know that there are diff versions of the tools listed. some of these are free, others are not! #iteachmiddleschool #iteachela #teachersofinstagram #studentcentered #backtoschool #onlinelearning #community #teacherresources #googleslides #socialjusticeeducation #antiracisteducation

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Reposted and caption from @socialstudies4socialjustice For too many students in the U.S., school is traumatizing. The factory model of schooling is dehumanizing. Being shuffled from class to class, being told what to do and when to do it, being told to shut up and listen, not feeling validated, seen, or heard, being seen as a test score and not a human, being punished for resisting or for being yourself, not seeing yourself or your culture validated in the school culture or curriculum, seeing police roam the halls, among many other experiences that students regularly face, can all be traumatic. Included here are some simple ways that we can make school less traumatic for our students, while at the same time working toward a radical rebuilding of our educational system. 🔅 #socialjustice #socialjusticeeducation #decolonizeeducation #decolonizeyourcurriculum

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Inspired by James Baldwin's truth-telling treatise on justice in America, The Fire Next Time, and our endlessly changing world, Chapter & Verse: The Gospel of James Baldwin is a 21st century ritual tool kit for justice. A call for revolution. A gift during turbulent times.

1. Call Dial 1-833-4-BALDWIN (1-833-422-5394) or visit the call page for international dialing and access using our digital phone pad. Discover songs, meditations, and chants to ease your mind any time, day or night, when you need it most.

2. See Experience visual testimonies of Baldwin's text with original music created by Meshell and our artistic collaborators, including Suné Woods, Nicholas Galanin, Adebukola Bodunrin, and Charlotte Brathwaite.

3. Read Download our monthly broadsheet featuring Baldwin's words and calls to action. Available as a printable PDF.

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Inspired by James Baldwin's truth-telling treatise on justice in America, The Fire Next Time, and our endlessly changing world, Chapter & Verse: The Gospel of James Baldwin is a 21st century ritual tool kit for justice. A call for revolution. A gift during turbulent times. 1.

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Random Acts of Kindness | Free K-8 Lesson Plans: New 

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We have taken our CASEL approved, highly effective, evidence-based Kindness in the Classroom ® social emotional learning curriculum and made it better. By including a focus on equity, teacher self-care, and digital citizenship, we are excited to share a more engaging, relatable, and inclusive curriculum.

Grades K-5 Grades 6-8 NEW High School Curriculum

If you've gotten used to the previous version of our curriculum, don't worry... we are still focused on all the same skills. We've just simplified it, updated it and included all kinds of new, fun stuff! If you need access to the earlier version, they are archived here.

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FREE K-8 Kindness in the Classroom® Curriculum

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We have taken our CASEL approved, highly effective, evidence-based Kindness in the Classroom ® social emotional learning curriculum and made it better. By including a focus on equity, teacher self-care, and digital citizenship, we are excited to share a more engaging, relatable, and inclusive curriculum.

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Posted 09/04/2020 by Jennifer Kass (@jennkass)

Icebreakers are important parts of any learning environment - they encourage students to participate from the start of class, allow students to get to know one another, and perhaps teach you a thing or two about your class. But with many schools across the country starting virtually, getting to know your students, with a computer screen between you and them, has its challenges. For starters, a virtual setup makes it harder to read students' facial expressions, and it limits the conversation that naturally happens in a traditional classroom.

But, have no fear! We've created a list of quick and easy icebreakers that can be done virtually to help build human connection and a sense of community among your classes. Try one, or try all three!

We've adapted some of our favorite icebreakers for a virtual environment. They are quick and easy and will help teachers get the school year off to a strong start.

#1: Quick Poll (If you have less than five minutes)
Make a list of five to 10 items to learn more about your students by learning what activities they participated in over the summer. Of course, you'll want to customize the list based on the age of your students and the area where you live. Ask students to raise their hand (or their glass) if they did any of the items as you call them off of your list. You could even ask students that raised their hand to elaborate. Below are some ideas to get you started:

Binge-watched an entire TV series

Read a book or two (or more)

Took a road trip

Got a new pet

Started a new hobby

Tried a new food

Got a job

Went swimming

Played more video games than your parents would have liked

Checked out books from the library

#2: This or That (If you have between 5-10 minutes)
Make a list of items that are related to one another to learn your students' preferences. Think Netflix or Hulu, mustard or ketchup, pencil or pen. There's a link to a Google Doc™ that you can copy and customize for your students.
Once you have created your own list, call out the two items, and ask students to indicate if they like THIS or THAT. Tell them if they prefer THIS to raise their right hand or if they prefer THAT to put their left hand on their head. Another option: You could have students write THIS or THAT on two pieces of paper, and they could hold their signs up. This game is always a great conversation starter!

#3: Scavenger Hunt (If you have between 10-20 minutes)
Learn a whole lot about your students and how they think by hosting a virtual scavenger hunt. Get your students up and moving by asking them to collect several items around their house that match different descriptions. You can access a Google Doc™ with some ideas to get started. Simply make a copy of the document and customize it based on things you think would be fun for your class.

To play, simply call out something on your list, such as an item in their home that is in the shape of a pyramid. Then, send them off searching for the item to bring back and share with the class on video. To increase the level of difficulty, make it a race, and see which student can find their item the quickest. I did this recently with my work team, and it was a big hit!

Whatever icebreaker(s) you choose, just remember that these activities can, and should be, an important part of the new school year. Students have been through a lot over the past several months, and building a sense of community where they feel comfortable and safe is especially important. Hope it's a great school year!

Google Doc™ is a trademark of Google LLC.

About the author: Jennifer Kass is the Director of Marketing for TI Education Technology, where she has worked for 15 years. During her career, she has worked in chemical engineering, finance and operations. She is also the mom of four kids, an avid runner and a Disney movie and parks aficionado.

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Posted 09/04/2020 by Jennifer Kass (@jennkass) Icebreakers are important parts of any learning environment - they encourage students to participate from the start of class, allow students to get to know one another, and perhaps teach you a thing or two about your class.

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Are you feeling swamped or "behind" with grading? Consider these questions to interrogate your practice and relationship with assigning work. Typo on slide 7. 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️ 🔑 * Assignments should always serve a purpose and be connected to learning. * Students should not be expected to learn new information or a new skill independently without proper support, scaffolding, and checks for understanding. * There is such thing as too much! * Learn from student feedback: how is the work completion? are you receiving a lot of questions around instructions? are students feeling challenged and engaged? I encourage you to interrupt your urge to work and be productive. Being busy is not a badge of honor. Let's practice what we preach aka actively interrupt dominant, white supremacy culture. (further reading: "the characteristics of white supremacy culture") What to try instead: * plan ahead. * create or adapt a planning tool that will help you look ahead at your lessons. * determine when and what you will assign, grade and/or give feedback on. * incorporate columns for tasks, purpose, assign on and return by.. * consider other ways to learn support students in learning (whether that be additional live lessons, office hours, recordings, etc.) Always be open to change especially as you learn more about your students and their needs. I see planning tools as guides. They do NOT limit me. #iteachmiddleschool #iteachela #teachersofinstagram #studentcentered #backtoschool #onlinelearning #community #teacherresources #grading #feedback

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Make a video? Facilitate on ZOOM? We're on it. Here's the hard part: transposing our responsive, interactive, in-person practice to settings that partially or totally separate us from our students. How is that supposed to work?
Ask the right questions, and you'll be in a better position to plan (and bid, if the compensation is at all flexible) distance learning gigs. Find out what is being asked of you by asking these four categories of questions. Maybe you don't ask all of these questions at one time, but the answers will come clear sooner or later - and sooner is better!

Goals/vision come first: who are you trying to serve, and how will this experience benefit them? Next, logistics/nuts and bolts, which should be easy to figure out; your sponsoring organization should have a vision for what they want, and a budget to support it (including your compensation). Finally translating your teaching artist craft from live-in-the-room to online.

Let's take a look at all of it, so that any distance learning you facilitate can be some of your best work, and genuinely benefit each community of learners you serve. Near the end of the blog, I'll share my personal thoughts about the quality, merits, pay and purpose of distance learning, as well as some tools for scripting your videos.

But to start with, I'm going to stick with those four categories of questions.

This is the foundational part. Most Arts-in-Ed orgs have clear mission statements and goals (their funding depends on it) and should have specific answers to these questions. However this View is defined (Youth Empowerment, social/emotional awareness, self-expression, arts integration, fulfilling mandated standards), it should determine the Design of the students' experience; the links between values and beliefs and the program's design should be explicit, and TAs and Arts-In-Ed orgs should see eye-to-eye on these foundational ideas:

This is the easy part. These questions are a distance-learning subset of what any TA needs to know before committing to a teaching project.

*Heads up: that "free form / or linked..." checkbox is not as innocent as it appears: linked, connected to, informed by, based on are so subjective that your linked lesson might require, dependent on meaning, five or fifteen hours to plan and realize. Creating a learning arc is an even bigger mystery - will that even be possible? We'll take a closer look at this in the Translating section.

In "All The Right Questions" (the first section of the DESIGN chapter in my book A Teaching Artist's Companion - How to Define and Develop Your Practice, Oxford University Press, 2019 ), I detail these questions, and why they are crucial for a TAs success (download those pages here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/w9h04gh0impwgxt/Levy%20on%20DESIGN%20%28book%20excerpt%29%20.pdf?dl=0). In the Designing A Curriculum chapter, you'll find an even more complete Workshop Space, Time, and Resources Checklist. Both are applicable to any teaching artist gig in any artform.

This is the "as yet to be seen" part. After the spring 2020 mad rush to create online Arts-In-Ed content, many TAs and Arts-in-Ed orgs have a better idea about the effort, time, skills involved. The Kennedy Center is currently offering $750 for a 3-10 min video ( https://thekennedycenter.smapply.io/prog/online_teaching_artist_proposals/), and other orgs have been steadily producing and compensating TAs for the work (The New Victory Theater's ARTS BREAK series https://newvictory.org/stories/category/family-engagement/, and ArtsCorps Seattle's work that includes materials packages sent to students' homes https://artscorps.org/programs/covid-19-online-learning/).

But any standards for distance learning work and compensation are at the moment up for grabs - and for negotiation. As communities figure out what they want and need from their arts partners, then arts-in-ed orgs can formalize a plan and be able to answer these TA compensation questions. These aspects should inform your fair compensation, and should be spelled out in a Letter of Agreement (aka LOA, a brief contract) before you start the work:

The intellectual property questions this brings up are worth a blog post of their own. Start a conversation in good, constructive faith, with the understanding that bringing up these points is in everyone's best interest - we all want to do our work in a fair and sustainable way. For a more in-depth look at TA compensation, please see my earlier post https://daniellevymusic.com/teaching-artist-compensation-101/ ‎

This is the hard part. What happens to TA practice when we are by degrees partly (via ZOOM) or totally (via video lessons) separated from our students? So much of what we do is determined by the beautiful living feedback loop of our students' responding to our invitations, our responding to their responses, and so onwards. Earlier in the blog I referred to View, Design and (now) Respond:

Teaching artist work falls into three parts or phases: View, Design, and Respond... View is your personal take on how teaching and learning happen, your values and beliefs. It includes your overall point of view (such as your definition of your roles as a teaching artist and the overlapping communities where these roles play out) as well as your ideas about how to apply what you know. Design and Respond are the phases of teaching artist work where View manifests in real time and space. To Design is to plan a teaching and learning experience before entering the classroom. Respond refers to our actions in the company of students as we actually teach a workshop. - from the author's book A Teaching Artist's Companion - How to Define and Develop Your Practice, Oxford University Press, 2019

During Respond, we discover what works and what doesn't; we shift modalities, adapt, differentiate - and in doing so end up altering our Designs and often our Views. To re-state the opening question in this translating section: what happens to teaching and learning when there is no Respond phase?

I guess we are all about to find out.

My own very recent experience with distance learning has included teaching 80 individual online private music lessons; creating 70 minutes of curriculum-specific videos (four videos for 92Y Discover Music Series) and 65 minutes of skills-based workshop videos (three videos for a middle school after-school guitar workshop ADD LINK), a one-off songwriting lesson for Little Orchestra Society ADD LINK, and taken part in multiple online ZOOM distance learning PDs for TAs. I've seen most of maybe twenty of the recent home-made and organization-supported TA videos across disciplines. I've coached TAs on making videos. Before that, I'd scripted and edited around two hundred educational and promotional videos in the past eight years, so I'm handy with the gear and the medium. But in spring 2020 I found the biggest learning curve (for me and others too) is not the shooting and editing, but the planning, which requires that translation process, our taking an interactive, responsive teaching practice and re-casting it as a static video.

Here is where, gentle reader, my expertise fails us both. I'm still in process figuring out how to do that translation. To complicate the matter, I'm resistant to doing so, because I believe -as deeply as I believe anything- that a teaching artist's Responding is irreplaceable. The idea of teaching without being able to interact with students makes me want to just STOP, until such time as we can get back to human-to-human contact. Do you have any answers? I hope you will communicate with our TA community by responding to what I am writing and sharing: what have you learned about translating what we do?

For now, I can offer these two unrelated supports with confidence:

Access old or build new relationships

The work will be easier with students who already know you. You'll be re-establishing connection. However with old friends or with a new community, take extra time to be personal, share yourself, name and recognize the individuals you are addressing (to whatever extent you can), and the Covid-19-altered situation we find ourselves in. It'll take some time and some doing, but the Vygotsky-style community of learners you want won't form without that trust and connection. Cultivate it. The beginning and end of my ONLINE GUITAR LESSON #1 are an example of what I mean, and maybe MEET UNCLE EARL isn't too bad either (read on for both).

Script your videos before you shoot

Especially if you are making a series of videos. Create and include recurring rituals (openings, closings, warm-ups, physical motion breaks and activities that can be video copy-pasted). Figure out the right balance of direct-address lead and modeling, mixed with interpolated video from YOUTUBE and other sources, such as this K-4 music lesson (the first of five video lessons that finish up a four-concert, twelve-classroom-visit year that as you will see had a TON of support from 92Y in the form of the printed curriculum, student activity books, and videos they provide their TAs, all referenced and used in the video):
Meet Uncle Earl Video Lesson (16 min)
live greet: final concert / this is video lesson #1 of 4: meet uncle earl

live hello song with TA

VIDEO ASL hello song

live do you remember all four artists? review

VIDEO MOTA VIDEO (full length)

live turn to page 41 in MMJ (on screen) / read aloud + show 41 (all)

VIDEO meet uncle earl

live this is going to be a lot of fun, much more to share with you, but now ...

live goodbye song with TA

VIDEO ASL goodbye song

Hmm, maybe outline is a more accurate term here (while shooting script is the industry term for a script + each shot planned out). A simple script (even at the above level of detail) will help you

stay on topic and on-process (i.e. stay engaging)

structure sensible transitions (Now that we've..., let's try...)

stay active (making & doing, rather than talking & telling)

Once the activity sequencing and transitions feel clear, you can in good conscience go ahead and spontaneously demonstrate as needed (and very occasionally instruct a bit - I'm anti-lecturer, pro-make-&-do) as you shoot an activity, just the way you would in a live situation: you'll intuit that at a given moment it would be better if participants experienced THIS, demonstrate it, then get back to the making and doing. Often this will be a step in the scaffolding of an activity that you forgot or neglected to imagine when you Designed. These moments when your natural relaxed artist-educator-self steps up don't need to be scripted, and in fact trying to do so (and trying to adhere to such a script) will REALLY slow you down.

Here is the script/outline I used to create a three-video sequence for a lovely middle school after-school guitar class that was rudely interrupted by Covid-19, along with links to the resulting videos:

Distance Learning: Daniel's Guitar Class #1 of 3 (19 min)

live greeting with names / set up space with no distractions

live LH hands and fingers review / RH hands and fingers

VIDEO tuning

live play through who did

live play through miss mary mack

live play through polly wolly doodle

Distance Learning: Daniel's Guitar Class #2 of 3 (25 min)

VIDEO greeting (repeat)

VIDEO tuning (repeat)

live play through Bob Marley Three Little Birds

VIDEO play along with Three Little Birds video + graphics

VIDEO play along with Bronx's Prince Royce and Royal Wedding Stand By Me

live play through Stand By Me chords and strum

live strum Stand By Me chords with live melody and metronome

Distance Learning: Daniel's Guitar Class #3 of 3 (24 min)

LIVE greeting / how's it going?

VIDEO tuning (repeat)

LIVE play through Hey Mama Kanye chords and strum variations

VIDEO play along with Hey Mama Kanye + graphics

Full disclosures: A) all three scripts were different, not as fun, before I started shooting. I only sensed that during the shoot, when my imagining of being with my students - seeing them in front of me- was stronger. I jettisoned certain activity sections in favor of the ones that are represented here. B) Inserting the chords and lyric sheet graphics is editing-labor intensive - but I was/am so in love with that class that it didn't matter - they'd just been sent home from school (with their guitars!), and it was the right moment to pitch in and try to make a difference for them. C) The occasional crackling sound you hear was 14-year-old analog to digital audio converter slowly dying. I went through a closet, and sold off enough old gear to pay for a new interface = happy ending.

I have a lot more to say about activity Design, be it distanced or not - structuring invitations, accessing prior knowledge, using multiple modalities... and most of it is in my book, which I hope you'll read and find useful.

I'll end with a more personal ramble, some of the questions that led me to post this in the first place. I find myself asking Is doing distance learning really good for our field? Is this work really needed? and wondering about...
A) Quality
Is this our best work? Look at the content we've been putting out so far. Our home-made stuff, not the Carnegie Hall three-camera shoots with pro lights, sound, and editing. Good vibes? Yes. Entertaining? Mostly. Shows each artist's genuine expertise as an artist? Some. Shows each TAs expertise as an educator? Hmm, maybe too few. As this content lives online for an unspecified amount of time, it may become a de facto observation / TA audition (i.e. here is a video of me at work) one that may be used to judge our work (should I hire this TA? Hmm, let's look at their video...). Are we each aware of this? Is it what we want? Should we be content to have work that is less than our best be what represents us?
B) Merit
Are we educating and healing, or filling time? We are mostly doing one-offs, what at Lincoln Center we used to call "back-pocket lessons" that we all have handy. These hit a wide age range, are easy to do, easy to teach, are road-tested, and translate fairly well into the static, non-interactive video medium. Deeper work will be much harder to structure. Is it a good idea to say "yes" to the one-offs, when they do not reflect the quality and merit of the work we really want to do?
C) Pay
Artists may once again be asked to step up to the plate to be of benefit for a reduced fee. For example, my usual fee for creating video content is $125/hour (soup to nuts: scripting, vetting existing footage, shooting, performing, editing, watermarks, graphics, FX). The most recent work I've been offered (to create a ten-minute video) budgeted a fee that was the equivalent of teaching two 40-minute classes. I accepted and completed the work, 1) in the spirit of being helpful during a crisis, 2) because I wanted to see if I could solve that "translation" problem and come to an understanding of what kind of time and effort would be required to make the format really work, and 3) because I wanted (as we all do) to do something positive and healing for my students. In the end, creating work that I was reasonably proud of ( https://youtu.be/dqMC87PRcGs), my effective rate of pay was $20/hour. Is this a good precedent to set? Will we be asked in the fall to create similar content for similar too-low fees?
D) Necessity and Purpose
Why were we in such a hurry to post and share video content? Future conditions and resources are still unclear. Would it hurt to slow down a bit, and think about goals? Who does the content serve? How does it serve them? What is the longer arc these decisions imply for TA practice, and our relationships with sponsoring Arts-in-Ed orgs and schools?

Readers: you are all generous people, or you wouldn't be doing Arts-In-Ed or TA work, and I don't want to impose on your time. Thank you for considering my blog thoughts. There is a lot happening that I do not know about, and I have surely overlooked possibilities and successful practices here. If you have the bandwidth, kindly respond, and I'll share out:
What's resonating with you? Where am I off-base or uninformed here? Which of these would be constructive topics to address in a more public or interactive forum? What's next?

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Distance Learning for Teaching Artists: all the right questions, and some possible answers

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Make a video? Facilitate on ZOOM? We're on it. Here's the hard part: transposing our responsive, interactive, in-person practice to settings that partially or totally separate us from our students. How is that supposed to work? Ask the right questions, and you'll be in a better position to plan (and bid, if the compensation is at all flexible) distance learning gigs.

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It's Week 5! Here are some everyday teacher moves (subtle yet impactful gestures and actions) I make while teaching online. I can't stress enough how important it is to your know students and to always read the room. 🗣Acknowledging when students take a learning risk: are students unmuting or turning on their camera for the first time; asking a question, or pushing someone's thinking? 👁Noticing when students self-correct or make an improvement: have you noticed an improvement in habits like coming to class earlier? 🗣Welcoming students when they arrive late and catching them up without drawing attention to them: make it a point to welcome students when they come in. verbals can be short and done mid-sentence; catch them up and do not shame them! try: "if you're just coming in, welcome! We are..." describe the task. 🗣Letting students know it's okay to make mistakes: celebrate growth mindset and use language to reframe mistakes as information; see students and notice if they get down on themselves or others. 👋🏼Greeting family members and pets who pop up on screen: when possible, say hello, wave, or make a respectful and non-invasive comment. use your best judgment. if you aren't sure their relation, don't guess. I love saying hi to babies 🥺 🗣Inviting students to unmute and bring their voice into the space: invite students to take that risk and show appreciation, especially if the day seems chat box-heavy. 🗣Vocaling responses from the chat box and engage, when possible: monitor the chat box as much as you can during a live lesson. lift those voices by bringing them into the space or calling on someone to help 👁Noticing the little things: new pets, haircuts, cool shirts, different pair of glasses, changes in student behavior, etc. 👥Modeling and recognizing prosocial behaviors when students engage in them: recognize students giving compliments, offering and help support, gassing each other up, etc. If you aren't responding in the moment, you might be taking inventory of what you're hearing or observing. That's also teacher move. #iteachmiddleschool #iteachela #teachersofinstagram #studentcentered #backtoschool #onlinelearning #community #teacherresources

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This was inspired by a question I received. One of our goals as educators is equity for our young people. We can either support or hinder this with our teaching practice. To give students access to the same learning and services is to not see and honor our students fully and to be colorblind. From this post and an earlier post of mine: "in order to achieve equity in the classroom, teachers must 1) understand their students and their students' needs deeply and 2) make instructional choices that help all students learn despite differences in background and/or needs." Here are some questions to help you think critically about your current practice. These questions work for virtual and physical spaces. I am working on some of these myself. Let us not use the screen as an excuse to not serve our students the right way. Let's not think that what's easy is enough. #teachersofinstagram #socialjusticeeducation #teacherresources #antiracism #antiracisteducation #teachersofcolor #oaklandteachers #whiteteachers #backtoschool #decolonize #pedagogy #teacherresources #studentcentered #learning #blacklivesmatter #blm #classroom #curriculum #studentsofcolor #equity #teachersofoakland #abolitionistteaching #teachersofcolor #teacherideology #learning #teaching #literacy #ideology #decolonizeyourmind

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Ibram X. Kendi: The difference between being "not racist" and antiracist

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There is no such thing as being "not racist," says author and historian Ibram X. Kendi. In this vital conversation, he defines the transformative concept of antiracism to help us more clearly recognize, take responsibility for and reject prejudices in our public policies, workplaces and personal beliefs.

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Episode 1: Tools for Anti-Racist Teaching

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by Abaki Beck

In order to further engage with the resources, the second Tuesday each month we'll "deconstruct" one of the texts featured on POC Online Classroom. This month, we're looking at Decolonization is not a metaphor by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang.
Wait! Before we start, let's quickly define "settler-colonialism," since it is used frequently in this article. Unlike other forms of colonialism, settler-colonialism is when colonists come not only to exploit resources and people, but to stay and "create" a new nation. This makes decolonial practices in the United States and other settler-colonial nations unique, because the colonists will never leave and there will be no "post-colonial" United States. Patrick Wolfe, a well known settler-colonial theorist, argues that settler-colonialism is not a historic "event" (as we typically think of colonialism), but is instead a structure. Its violences permeate every aspect of American culture and politics.
To summarize the text in thirteen words: Land was taken, so decolonization does not occur until that land is returned. But what does it mean to do the work of decolonization? Does it mean centering indigenous knowledge or ways of being? How can land be "given back" in a settler-colonial nation, in which the settlers aren't going anywhere? In this piece,Tuck and Yang address an issue that they see within discussions of decolonization: that it is often relegated to the metaphorical realm, enabling settlers to "move to innocence".

For Tuck and Yang, decolonization is not just about privileging indigenous ideologies (see "decolonize our schools" and other expressions), it is quite literally about returning land and restoring indigenous relationships to that land. As they say, "critical consciousness does not translate into action that disrupts settler colonialism" (19). That is, even if an indigenous person is empowered, they are still in a "subordinate" position in a settler-society. More must be done than simply ensuring that indigenous people are "equal" within a society that thrives economically off of land stolen from them. This does not mean returning to "how things were" or attempting to rewrite history, but giving indigenous people agency and control over their homelands. Of course, many may argue that in a place like the United States this is not possible or even necessarily desirable. The authors emphasize that decolonization must be uncomfortable and indeed "unsettling."

However, both white people and people of color can make "moves to innocence" that decenter indigenous peoples in these struggles and erase them in settler society, making decolonization even more difficult to attain. For white settlers, this often takes the form of "becoming" native (lowercase n). For example, it is a well known phenomena for settlers to claim indigenous heritage even if they do not have a familial or community connection (please see white people who are descended from "Cherokee royalty"). In addition, white people being adopted by/into Native American tribes is a common trope in U.S. literary history (please see Dances with Wolves or the Last of the Mohicans). Both of these work to erase actual indigenous people, instead replacing them with settlers who are somehow more "deserving" of being native than Natives are. This wanting to become and replace the Native is a very different racial construction in the U.S. than blackness. Because historically black people were property in the U.S., the authors argue that blackness is expansive, which brought about the historical "one drop rule." Indigenous people in settler societies, however, are not "valuable" in the same way - in fact, they are a barrier to settlers access to land and thus must disappear.The erasure of indigenous people was/is both physical (through warfare, allotment, boarding schools, and other policies) and social (through adoption fantasies, settlers claiming Native heritage, etc.).

Because of these distinct racial formations, struggles for black versus indigenous racial justice movements cannot and should not be collapsed, or the specific marginalization of each community may be overlooked. The authors note that this often occurs in social justice settings, in which decolonization is placed under the umbrella of social justice or racial justice, even if the unique marginalization of indigenous people is not specifically addressed. This allows racial justice activists to "move to innocence;" to claim inclusivity even while they refuse to address their own privilege as settlers. Similarly, non-indigenous people of color can be complicit in settler-colonial structures of power. The authors note that people of color often express the need to "decolonize their minds," even if they are not indigenous people. Tuck and Yang call this "colonial equivocation." Colonial equivocation enables people of color to remove themselves from the position of settler, a position of power and dominance in U.S. society. As the authors note, "for many people of color, becoming a subordinate settler is an option even when becoming white is not" (18). They argue that diluting the word "colonization" by using it as a replacement for any kind of racial oppression works to further erase indigenous people.

As this text expresses, there is a lot of work to be done to decolonize the U.S. Though this piece is an obviously "academic" text, to me it is just as much about theory as it is about how to be an ally in decolonial struggles. It would be remiss of me not to mention that I did not agree with everything I read in the article. Even as an indigenous person who thinks myself to be very liberal, some points made by the authors made me slightly uncomfortable and seemed too "extreme" (I will not elaborate to allow readers to form their own opinions). However, I want to sit in this discomfort. This work will be challenging for indigenous people as much as it is for settlers and non-indigenous people of color. Because indigenous peoples and histories are so often left out and erased from school curriculum, policies, and other measurements of "existence" in U.S. society, work to decolonize and bring justice for indigenous peoples must be proactive, and in many ways, confrontational. By addressing some of the "moves to innocence" that Tuck and Yang discuss, decolonization becomes less daunting. When our society begins to recognize the worth, rights, and power of indigenous people, granting them the ability to control their lands and destiny becomes a more accessible idea, and perhaps even realistic.

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(De)Constructing Knowledge: Decolonization is not a metaphor - POC Online Classroom

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by Abaki Beck In order to further engage with the resources, the second Tuesday each month we'll "deconstruct" one of the texts featured on POC Online Classroom. This month, we're looking at Decolonization is not a metaphor by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang. Wait! Before we start, let

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This is a pretty accurate depiction of how I teach my kids, and a major reason I decided to homeschool since day one. Too many kids are raised without learning about these issues, without learning to look critically, without learning how misogyny and racism have impacted how and what we learn. Via @socialstudies4socialjustice ・・・ "Any subject can be taught using a social justice framework. When we teach, we either reinforce the oppressive status quo, or we work with students to dismantle it. These are just a few ideas, please share ways that you have incorporated social justice into your subject area!" __________________________________________ #socialjustice #socialjusticeeducation #decolonizeeducation #decolonizeyourcurriculum #socialstudiesteachers #mathteachers #scienceteachers #artteachers #worldlanguages #criticalpedagogy #educationforliberation #antiracisteducation #homeschooling

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Student-Centered World: A Student-Centered Learning Resource

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So often teachers fail to prioritize self-care because of the plethora of items overflowing their plates every day. Teachers who are often underfunded and overworked are too busy trying to keep afloat then too set boundaries to help preserve their own health. However, taking the time to do so is not only important on the most basic levels, but it is also beneficial for our students, especially when taking trauma-informed teaching into consideration.

The irony is that we usually are not taking care of ourselves because we are putting our students first. However, if we are taking care of ourselves, we can take care of those students even better.

It is no secret that many of the children we teach have been affected by trauma in some form or another. So often we internalize their struggles as we try to help them navigate this world through the lenses that they are living through. It is important that we make sure that our mental health and stability is as strong as it can be when acting as trauma-informed educator s.

Trauma-informed teaching strategies

Besides all the other aspects of teacher burnout that every educator is susceptible to, teachers who are educating students who have been impacted by a traumatic experience are also at risk for falling victim to compassion fatigue. Compassion fatigue is often found in teachers, social workers, and those who work in the health care profession. Compassion fatigue is defined as, "the emotional duress that results when an individual hears about the firsthand trauma experiences of another" according to The National Child Traumatic Stress Network.

The symptoms of compassion fatigue are often one in the same other symptoms of the person who is experiencing trauma. There is often an extremely high chance of denial also being part of the equation, especially when it comes to teachers. So many see it as a sign of weakness and have the misconception that it means that we cannot do our job properly. The ironic part of this is that denying compassion fatigue makes it so we cannot do our job properly, as opposed to dealing with the issues at hand in a swift and compassionate manner.

You are at risk for burnout and compassion fatigue if you find yourself putting everyone else's needs before your own while navigating trauma-informed teaching. You simply run out of energy each day and are convinced that there is not enough time to do everything that you are tasked with.

The worst part is that many times you know that self-care needs to be a priority, but you just don't know how to do that with the laundry list of tasks that you need to complete every single day. And there is a lot of merit to this. It seems that each year that passes teachers are expected to do more with less and the number of children coming into our classroom who have experienced trauma, have learning disabilities, or just seem to be failed by the system seems to be ever-increasing.

We are constantly told that we need to do everything possible to help our students with their problems through trauma-informed teaching, and this is very true, but if we are not taking care of ourselves who are dealing with the same issues in a secondary sense, and sometimes even a primary sense, then we are not going to be efficient and helping them the way that they need the most.

Somewhere along the line, the standard became that you are considered a good teacher if you put your student's needs above your own. As I have mentioned here at Student-Centered World time and time again, you simply cannot pour from an empty cup. Working for someone else 24/7 and not taking care of yourself is going to backfire.

Look at the teachers around you. While everybody has their own styles and ways of working, you can probably think of at least one teacher off the top of your head that seems like they have it all together.

While everybody has bad days, this teacher is usually positive, organized, and generally the person you want to be when you grow up. This does not mean that they are a better teacher than you; it simply means that they have a system that works, and that system probably does include some type of self-care for themselves, especially in the era of trauma-informed teaching.

Trauma-informed teaching self-care

It is all about having good habits and focusing on what you do have control over and working on the things that will make a difference overall. Have you ever heard the saying if you want something bad enough, you will find a way and if not, you will find an excuse? That comes to mind in this very scenario.

Keeping it together as a teacher is all about forming habits. If you find that you are burning out, then you are probably making bad habits a priority without even realizing it. This isn't a dig at you, it's just something to think about. Trauma-informed teaching shouldn't cost you your mental health.

The first thing you need to do in trying to figure this out is getting into the right frame of mind to be able to move forward with positive changes. Check out this Facebook Live that I held in our mastermind Facebook group about three things that teachers can do to help organize their thoughts and get into the proper frame of mind to move forward.

These activities do not take long to do but they make a world of a difference. Taking care of yourself is not selfish; it means that you are making sure that you can, in fact, give everything that you have to your students. They will benefit more when you are relaxed, happy, and energetic as opposed to exhausted, frustrated, and downtrodden.

You need to take time for yourself, whether that is taking a quick walk on your lunch break or immersing yourself into a hobby once a week. You need to make sure that you are taking care of yourself if you want to be able to take care of others.

The key to this is you need to do it on a regular basis. You cannot take time for yourself once every couple of months for a few hours and expect it to be enough. You need to schedule time on a regular basis to take care of you. This is a choice and you need to make sure you are making the correct one for your own mental health.

In determining what you would like to do with this time, you need to find something that you would like to do long term. This will turn it into a habit and make it something that you look forward to when you know the time is coming to complete it. You should also pick something that is meaningful to you and will have a positive effect on your life somehow. Even if it is as simple as reading a chapter of a book a few nights a week or taking a go-at-your-own-pace course on the internet. Find something that will fill you with joy and run with it.

Being a trauma-informed educator is so important. Often, we are the glue that holds our students together when they do not know where else to turn. We cannot be everything that we want to be for them if we do not put ourselves first. You would put your own oxygen mask on before you helped someone else on an airplane, right? You need to ensure that you're doing this in your everyday life as well.

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So often teachers fail to prioritize self-care because of the plethora of items overflowing their plates every day. Teachers who are often underfunded and overworked are too busy trying to keep afloat then too set boundaries to help preserve their own health.

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What happens when you ask 50 educators what their favorite web tools 

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What happens when you ask 50 educators what their favorite web tools 

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The update on the demands we shared with the UNIS administration continues today with Decolonizing Education. UNIS has stated their intention to make some revisions to the curriculum but 3 out of 4 demands have not been addressed. Be sure to check out the update from yesterday on Accountability. Next up... Representation. #blackatschool #decolonizeeducation #decolonizeyourcurriculum #decoloniseeducation #diversifyeducation

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TEACHER TALK 2020 MAY5: LESSONS FROM ADVANCED ONLINE TEACHERS AND ADVICE FOR GETTING STARTED IN ONLINE TEACHING

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On Demand Digital Accessibility & Website Makeover Courses

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8 Strategies to Improve Participation in Your Virtual Classroom | Edutopia

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In every classroom, there are students who always have their hand raised to participate, and those who are hesitant to engage. Whether they're introverted, tend to think awhile before they contribute, or are just having a bad day, it can be hard to bring kids into discussions who are reluctant to add their voices.

The challenges of getting students to participate have intensified during remote learning, we've heard from many teachers. Digital platforms can create added communication barriers by making it hard to know when to talk, for example, or how to read subtle but important elements of discourse like a person's body language and facial expressions. Additionally, online discussions are often hindered by variability in students' access to technology and by privacy concerns, and consequently many teachers have had to rely on students' submitting work over isolated channels like email, which can leave back-and-forth between peers (and between students and the teacher) by the wayside.

Getting kids to contribute in virtual classrooms takes some work, it turns out. "We keep calling this generation digital natives as if they are simply whizzes at everything computerized. They aren't," wrote Tim O'Brien on Facebook. "They need personal support, scaffolding, and reassurance that technology does not provide. It is simply a tool, not a teacher."

To find out how to improve student discussions and participation in online learning, we culled through hundreds of comments on social media and followed up with more than 20 educators to see how they tackled the challenge last spring. Teachers offered a range of smart strategies, both synchronous and asynchronous, to integrate the values and the voices of all kids-even the quietest or those with disrupted schedules-into their classes this fall.

Synchronous Strategies

For synchronous learning, some teachers said they translated traditional discussion strategies from the classroom to live video chats, while others found that digital tools helped boost classroom participation.

1. Spider web discussion: During remote learning this spring, students in Shai Klima's high school class led their own discussions over Google Meet. Before the live class, students answered questions independently, and then shared their responses at the start of the meeting as a jumping-off point for a broader class discussion.

While students conversed on video, Klima listened and drew lines on a sheet of paper tracking the flow of the conversation, resulting in a spider web. At the end of the discussion, Klima shared the drawing over video, and then asked students to reflect on the experience and what they learned about who talked, who listened, and who built on the ideas of others.

"It has been successful as a means to get kids to credit their peers with helping them come up with new ideas, which helps build rapport," said Klima, who let students struggling with bandwidth call in to the meetings.

2. Using chat to check for understanding: After giving lessons last spring, Paul France had his third-grade students use the Google Chat feature to ask and answer questions or type in emojis, like a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, to show whether they understood a concept. To create structure around the responses, he guided his students in creating norms around using the chat feature-they decided as a group to use only one emoji at a time, for example. France said the practice helped him check for student understanding and pushed students to engage more with the content.

Kindergarten teacher Ruth Calkins, meanwhile, used Zoom chat when holding live lessons with her kindergarten students. She said they enjoyed typing "T" or "F" for true and false questions while answering math problems in the chat box, and some even attempted to write sentences in response to her questions. Typing responses also provided a lot of keyboard practice for her young students.

3. Flip your classroom to stimulate deeper discussion: Forrest Hinton, a high school math teacher, says he found that a blend of asynchronous and synchronous instruction worked well to stimulate student discussion during remote learning.

First, he taught new content asynchronously through recorded videos and online activities. At the start of his live class, students briefly summarized the concepts they had learned together and then divided into breakout rooms to solve related problems in small groups. Flipping his classroom allowed Hinton to spend less class time in direct instruction-and listening to students at the start of class and in small groups helped him identify, and then address, where his students were struggling. "This has allowed me to clarify concepts in a more targeted way and better assist students," said Hinton.

4. Adapting think-pair-share to Zoom: Ryan Tahmaseb, director of library services, says he found that giving more project-based learning activities to his elementary and middle school students-and allowing them more autonomy over assignments-naturally encouraged richer discussions in virtual learning. "If we give students as much freedom as possible to experiment, research, and pursue interests within our content area, then they inevitably have a lot more to say," said Tahmaseb.

When it came to class discussions, Tahmaseb adapted think-pair-share to Zoom. Students were given a prompt, broken into groups, and then placed into breakout rooms to discuss and record their answers on a shared Google doc, which allowed students to share their thinking in writing or read aloud. Since Tahmaseb wasn't in each breakout room to listen to the conversations, the Google doc kept students accountable. Once they returned to the whole class, volunteers from each group shared their answers with everyone.

5. A new twist on show-and-tell: To get students comfortable with online participation, Brittany Collins, the teaching and learning coordinator at Write the World, a global online writing community for middle and high school students, converted the familiar show-and-tell activity into "think, write, share."

In one activity, Collins asked middle and high school students to find a photo, painting, or drawing that represented intergenerational connection and independently respond by writing to the following questions from the Making Thinking Visible Framework before discussing them over video as a class: What are we looking at? What makes you say that? What do you notice (see, feel, know)? What more can we uncover? What do you wonder? "It helps to break the ice in a virtual learning setting where unplanned participation can prove challenging for some students," said Collins.

Asynchronous Strategies

Although some teachers-and students-said that synchronous discussions were more engaging because they resembled a traditional classroom, many educators found that asynchronous discussions were more equitable because they opened up participation to students with low bandwidth, who had schedule limitations, or who were uncomfortable engaging with the full class.

6. Online forums create back-and-forth dialogue: Angelina Murphy, a high school English teacher, said she used Google Classroom's question feature to get her class to respond to readings and discussion prompts during remote learning this past spring. When each student commented, Murphy replied with clarifying questions to create a back-and-forth dialogue and also asked every student to respond to at least two of their peers' comments to create a broader base of discussion.

Fifth-grade teacher Raquel Linares said she used Nearpod Collaborate (Apple, Android), a virtual collaboration board, to get students to share images or write a response to show what they had learned about an article they read. To inspire connection and reflection among classmates, Linares also used Flipgrid (Apple, Android), so that students could hear their peers' voices even though they were remote.

7. Seeing and critiquing peer work through virtual gallery walks: Virtual "gallery walks" give students an opportunity to view their classmates' projects while learning from each other, according to Joe Marangell, a high school social studies teacher. After his students presented their own projects through five-minute screencasts, they were then required to give feedback to at least two other students on theirs.

Using Google Sheets, students provided feedback to their peers by answering the following prompts: What's something new I learned about this topic?; What's something that surprised me about this topic?; What's something I liked about this presentation? The online format gave every student the opportunity to see their peers' work and their assessment on theirs for deeper reflection, Marangell said.

8. Moving station brainstorming online: When carousel or station brainstorming activities are conducted in traditional classroom environments, small groups of students rotate around the room to different stations to answer prompts-and view and add to each groups' responses.

To translate this online, Marangell divided his students into groups online and created shared Google docs-or a series of Google slides-for the prompts/questions. Each group left their thoughts under the questions by the assigned date and then followed up by commenting on the other groups' responses the next day. "The strategy still allows them to maintain a sense of classroom community [in a virtual setting]," said Marangell.

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8 Strategies to Improve Participation in Your Virtual Classroom

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Educators share their best synchronous and asynchronous strategies to boost student participation during online learning.

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Read the caption. Here are my LIVE LESSON ESSENTIALS through @crtandthebrain 's ignite-chunk-chew-review framework. If you're unfamiliar, it is a culturally responsive teaching framework that supports learning! I like it because it helps me plan purposefully and because it's 🧠-based. I've offered online learning tips for the different "phases" of the framework. Remember- this is all an adaptation! Here's the minute breakdown (ROUGHLY) 12 min check in/grounding 10 ignite 28 chunk-chew 5 review (plus asynchronous learning) I emphasize ROUGHLY because good teaching involves adjusting in real time and being sensitive to everyday realities. Do not be afraid of time. If you feel the need to push things back, you better push things back. (You already know how I feel about pacing guides). Re: planning- I plan in a doc and use Google Slides afterwards to support me. It helps me organize 💡. I ENCOURAGE you to experiment with it! Venmo linked in my bio! 👋🏼 #teachersofinstagram #socialjusticeeducation #teacherresources #antiracism #antiracisteducation #teachersofcolor #whiteteachers #backtoschool #iteachmiddleschool #pedagogy #teacherresources #studentcentered #learning #blacklivesmatter #blm #classroom #curriculum #studentsofcolor #equity #teachersofoakland #iteachela #teachersofcolor #teacherideology #learning #teaching #ideology #decolonizeyourmind #educationforliberation #distancelearning #virtualclassroom #culturallyresponsiveteaching #zarettahammond #DLstrategypost

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September is here! Which means that Bookmarks: Celebrating Black Voices from @netflix is here as well! I love that each Bookmarks episode features a children's book about Black experiences written by a Black author and read aloud by a Black celebrity. Marley Dias is the Host and Executive Producer of the new series. You may remember Marley from her #1000BlackGirlBooks initiative, whose mission is to increase the circulation of books featuring Black girls. Here are the participants and books they'll read below. Tiffany Haddish reads "I Love My Hair" by Natasha Anastasia Tarpley. Illustration by E.B. Lewis Grace Byers reads "I Am Enough," by Grace Byers. Illustration by Keturah A. Bobo Caleb McLaughlin reads "Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut," by Derrick Barnes. Illustration by Gordon C. James Lupita Nyong'o reads "Sulwe," by Lupita Nyong'o. Illustration by Vashti Harrison Marsai Martin reads "ABC's For Girls Like Me," by Melanie Goolsby. Illustration by Princess Kay Karamo Brown reads "I Am Perfectly Designed," by Karamo Brown. Illustration by Anoosha Syed Jill Scott reads "Pretty Brown Face" and "Brown Boy Joy," by Andrea Davis Pinkney and Thomishia Booker respectively. Illustration by Brian Pinkney and Thomishia Booker Misty Copeland reads "Firebird," by Misty Copeland. Illustration by Christopher Myers Common reads "Let's Talk About Race," by Julius Lester. Illustration by Karen Barbour Jacqueline Woodson reads "The Day You Begin," by Jacqueline Woodson. Illustration by Rafael Lopez Kendrick Sampson reads "Anti-Racist Baby," by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi. Illustration by Ashley Lukashevsky Marley Dias reads "We March," written by Shane W. Evans. Illustration by Shane W. Evans Which one are you most excited about? I can't wait to hear Lupita Nyong'o read her book SULWE! I'm also a huge fan of Misty Copeland's FIREBIRD! 📸: @helpingkidsrise

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The Benefits of Differentiation in K-12 Teachers’ Professional Development | Edutopia

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No one owes their trauma to archivists, or, the commodification of contemporaneous collecting

I've journaled every day for years. Sorry, you can't have my pandemic journal until I'm dead.

As the pandemic began to unfold, I've noticed that some archivists and historians urged people to keep a journal or record some real time thoughts about the pandemic for future generations/the historical record/etc. This started weirding me out for reasons I had difficulty articulating, and I began writing this blog post almost 3 months ago to process my thoughts.

As the story of the pandemic is shifting to the mass protests against police violence prompted by the killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, I'm also seeing some similar rushes (though far fewer than with COVID-19, for important reasons I'll share below) to document this latest round of unsettling and trauma-laden news.

Fellow archivists, it's time for us to look at whether some of these contemporaneous collecting projects, even if they are well-intentioned, are simply the newest form of archival commodification.

SOME BACKGROUND

As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded, many institutional archives publicly encouraged their community members to collect their own documentation (photos, social media posts, diaries, recordings, etc) about how they were experiencing the pandemic and share it with the archives. There are so many of these projects that there is now an 11-page document listing them.

A "send us documentation of how you're experiencing this moment!" project allows archivists to maintain some semblance of normality and relevance ("our work still matters even when the world is falling apart! Look how little documentation survived from the 1918 pandemic!"). But I also think that this stance betrays a certain form of vocational awe (please read Fobazi Ettarh's work on this if you aren't familiar with the concept). From those I've spoken with who've organized COVID collecting projects, the experience seems to be varied in terms of how many submissions have been received (ranging from zero to more than anticipated).

We're now a week into mass protests across the United States against police violence. So far there has not been quite the same public rush of archivists to document this compared with COVID-19... yet (I think things could majorly change in the next several days). I believe that the major difference is because many Black archivists including (but not limited to) Jessica Ballard, Dorothy Berry, Micha Broadnax, Aleia Brown, Jarrett Drake, Meredith Evans, Lae'l Hughes-Watkins, Bergis Jules, Jes Neal, Chaitra Powell, Holly Smith, and Stacie Williams have led the way by spending arguing for and building frameworks around the ethics of documentation around Black-led activism and historical struggle.

Several of these efforts began after Ferguson (though it's important to recognize that Black archivists have spent decades creating archival spaces and projects representing Black life), with projects like Documenting the Now, Archiving Police Violence, Project STAND (Student Activism Now Documented), Archives For Black Lives Philadelphia, and the Blackivists. This has been an uphill battle in a profession that is white-dominated and with a long track record of overt hostility to Black archivists. It is to the credit of their work that I think many archivists are (I hope) pausing to figure out if there is a better approach to take right now that centers documentation ethics and the real needs of Black people living in their community, than a mad rush to collect things for the sake of feeling like we need to respond right away.

And even so - there are archivists and administrators among the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) world who haven't gotten the message yet. Last Sunday, Jason Scott of the Internet Archive tweeted out that if anyone had protest footage, they could upload it to archive.org. Several archivists pushed back ( a few examples), noting this was a really bad idea from the standpoint of protecting protesters, and highlighting the importance of following the lead of organizations like Documenting the Now and Witness.

THE DOCUMENTATION OF TRAUMA

There is something really unsettling about archivists, particularly those from institutions which don't have a great track record of supporting their most marginalized workers or constituents, suggesting that the historical record should be a high priority while people are trying to keep their shit together and attempt to not die. Furthermore, archivists themselves aren't somehow isolated from experiencing traumatic events that the rest of the community is experiencing.

My first visceral experience of how archivists navigate trauma they themselves have been through was my experience living and working in post-Katrina New Orleans. I moved to New Orleans in 2008, just weeks before the first mandatory evacuation after Katrina. My roommate at the time had actually been through Katrina, and she evacuated long before I did because it triggered something that I now realize was probably a form of PTSD.

The archive I worked at between 2008-2013 was not involved in any attempts to actively document the post-Katrina history of New Orleans while I was there. While some of it was related to dealing with the recovery of flooded materials, limited resources, and collection policies,given the similar stances of many archives in town at that time, I think there was a deep fatigue around the expectation of telling and re-telling Katrina stories to outsiders. It was as if the stories of trauma had become a commodity for outsiders to consume every time hurricane season rolled around or a new anniversary took place.

I remember this most clearly when SAA came to New Orleans in 2013. There was some expectation from the program committee that the local arrangements committee would put together some material telling the narrative that outsiders so badly wanted to believe of "Devastation to Revival." Of course, anyone who knows New Orleans' history and recent past knows that this is not a clean or easy story because New Orleans is not a city that fits well into any US historical narratives. I have very vivid memories of local arrangements committee meetings in which archivists who had been through Katrina felt deep resentment at the idea that their stories and the collective experience of New Orleans was material for consumption by other archivists there for an annual conference, and that many of them no longer wanted to talk about their trauma, because at that point it had become something for outsiders rather than something for themselves.

Of course, we all experience trauma differently, and I don't mean to represent this example as universal for all archivists working in New Orleans during Katrina and its aftermath, or even indicative of how a similar situation would unfold today. But if so many archivists felt this way about sharing their trauma with other archivists, then why the hell would we expect non-archivists to be quick to share their trauma with archivists?

I sometimes encounter archivists who seem to have this cultural expectation that we are entitled to people's trauma in the service of constructing a comprehensive historical record, despite the fact that few of us have any meaningful training in trauma-informed practice. This is incredibly fucked up, and it is an impulse we really need to re-examine. Not everyone processes trauma the same way, and where one person may find a great sense of relief in sharing their stories, another person may find that their trauma is reactivated. For years, archivists have argued that because of our resource restrictions, we cannot accept every donation of archival material or schedule every group of records to be transferred to the archives. Why then, do we increasingly feel the need to go out and document every traumatic event that comes along?

Archivists have an ethical obligation to understand that respecting people's privacy and right to forget their own past means accepting that we will lose parts of the historical record that others may wish we had gone to great lengths to get. When I first met my husband I would occasionally needle him about trying to get stories out of his elderly grandmother who fled Europe as antisemitism swept through it. To his credit, he refused to do so because he knew her way better than me. She passed away over a year ago, and while we never heard stories directly from her, we have since heard some stories passed down from his mother. It has been a lesson in trusting that unrecorded history will sometimes still be there even if you think you've lost your chances at recovering it.

Turning back to contemporaneous collecting projects: Consider that those who will be suffering the most from the pandemic or police brutality, or have the greatest frontline views to current events (such as healthcare workers or organizers) will have the least time, energy, and ability to create a full documentary record of what's going on as it unfolds. Will the contemporaneous collecting projects of white-dominated institutions simply acquire the materials of well-off people who remain on the literal or metaphorical sidelines? What does it actually mean to document a pandemic if you're not documenting the reality, an unfurling horror show of death that has disproportionately affected the elderly, prisoners, poor people, and people of color? How do you archive a phenomenon when the people it affects the most are the least likely to be in the archive in the first place? Do we have the contacts in the most impacted communities to actually acquire documentation showing the true human costs of these collective experiences of trauma? If the answer is "we'll do oral histories when things calm down," consider too that people who lost the most or were on the frontlines may be extremely vulnerable to retraumatization if we attempt to document this pandemic without training in trauma-informed interviewing and oral history skills.

And if you're documenting protest activities that could include depictions of property damage or bodily violence....... what is the plan for when law enforcement tries to subpoena your material for investigations? This is not hypothetical. If you don't have a plan for how to protect the people whose documentation you are collecting, then you should never collect it in the first place.

Many archivists have written extensively about trauma, community documentation, and archives, so I'd refer anyone who is interested in learning more to read through the work of the archivists and organizations linked above. There is also an extensive peer-reviewed literature on these topics - again, far more than I could ever link to, but you can start with: survivor-centered approaches to documenting human rights abuses in community archives, secondary trauma among archivists, and the role of archival records in colonialist-inflicted trauma.

THE MANUSCRIPTS TRADITION VS THE PUBLIC RECORDS TRADITION

Here's where I want to lodge a major critique that I haven't seen raised against contemporaneous collecting activities by archivists who work within white-dominated long-established GLAM institutions: many of these projects function as a renewal of the historical manuscripts tradition. These projects make us feel like we're doing something relevant and signal that we care about what our community is experiencing. It's meant as a bulwark against our own anxiety about the ephemerality of records created in social media and on cell phones. These projects provide our administrators with feel good press releases so they can somehow show that we're responding to societal concerns, but without actually requiring any accountability or significant resource allocation on the part of the institution itself.

Many of these projects run the risk of giving us a false sense of relevance. Because one of the most overlooked but important things that archivists working in hegemonic institutions can do is to ensure the acquisition, preservation, and accessibility of the very records that hold that institution accountable to its constituents. One of the most profound reference experiences I've had in the last few years was when student activists were trying to confirm a rumor they'd heard about a past university president's stated commitment to increasing resources for a previous generation of Black students. They were able to integrate that information they found in the university's archives into the new set of demands they were issuing, recognizing that this was not the first time our institution had failed to meet their needs, and with the documentation to back up their argument.

I think what we have is the re-emergence of a new set of battle lines within archival discourse between the historical manuscripts tradition (i.e., collecting external materials that are then brought in and housed at the institution) versus the public records tradition (i.e., ensuring that the records of the institution itself are preserved). I think that much of the social justice discourse within the US archives profession has found its comfortable home within a framework of collecting external materials as a counterbalance against institutional narratives. But the problem is that we've neglected to stay engaged with the vast social justice implications of institutional records that are not well-managed.

Working with institutional records can be profoundly challenging work, because it means trying to get the records that cast institutions themselves in a bad light. No one has ever courted a donor on the premise of "We need to fund the university archivist because last year she helped a journalist research how the Board in 1995 knew all about the Famous Public Intellectual who quietly resigned and now is the subject of the latest Me Too scandal." It means constantly feeling frustrated with many of the top figures of your institution who may be reluctant or resistant to transfer records to the archives, in case those persistent student activists come by to do some research. And as a result, many institutions end up with archival silences that can be traced back directly to the difficulty of getting the records that would hold our own institution accountable. But if institutional archivists don't do this - who else will do that work?

ARCHIVAL ETHICS > MAKING ADMINISTRATORS LOOK GOOD

Archivists at long-established historically white GLAM institutions: if you're feeling compelled to rush in and document things, ask yourself why you're doing it. Are you fully prepared to follow all of the best practices for documenting in times of crisis? Is there a community archive independent of your institution that is better positioned to document what's happening because they are led by and have the trust of marginalized communities? If this is a rush to document high-visibility activism in the form of public protests, and all you can think of is grabbing a bunch of videos off YouTube or Twitter or putting out a press release instead of building relationships with organizers first, maybe sit with why you feel that way. And why you haven't built those relationships in the last few years.

If you are being pressured from your administrators to document things as they unfold and you don't have the resources, staffing, or ability to adhere to ethical guidelines to do so, resist these unrealistic expectations until your administrators provide you with the resources to do your job.

Finally - one of the biggest elephants in the room right now is that budgets are being slashed at virtually every GLAM institution. There are already lists tracking archivist layoffs, librarian layoffs, and museum staff layoffs. Most GLAM institutions, particularly those dependent on public money or smaller institutions, did not fully recover from the 2008-2009 recession. Even archivists I know at well-resourced, fancy pants institutions with far more staff than my own, regularly tell me how overworked and overwhelmed they've been for years. This is particularly true of those dealing with the less sexy work of institutional records that are so critical to the process of institutional accountability.

If we felt this way in the Before Times, then I'm going to go out on a limb and say the best thing archivists can organize right now is not whatever handful of donated diaries we can coax out of the people who read our institution's blog. The most important organizing right now is to organize the hell out of our institutions and profession to demand a world with far fewer billionaires, athletics coaches, six-figure salaried university administrators, cops, CEOs, and galas to make big donors feel good about themselves, and actually hire more permanent and well-compensated archivists to do the work we need for the future we deserve.

Categorised as: archivists

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No one owes their trauma to archivists, or, the commodification of contemporaneous collecting

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As the pandemic began to unfold, I've noticed that some archivists and historians urged people to keep a journal or record some real time thoughts about the pandemic for future generations/the historical record/etc. This started weirding me out for reasons I had difficulty articulating, and I began writing this blog post almost 3 months ago to process my thoughts.

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A virus has brought the world’s most powerful country to its knees.

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For every $1 billion invested in projects, $122 million was wasted due to poor project performance, according to the Project Management Institute. Understanding project management basics can help you avoid that level of waste.

One of the key aspects of a project management plan is a project schedule. In this piece, we'll explore how you can create your own project schedule to help successfully complete your next project.

At a glance: How you can create your own project schedule

Step 1: Quantify your project's tasks and required resources

Step 2: Determine dependencies

Step 3: Estimate the time required to complete tasks

Step 4: Find the critical path

Step 5: Pick your milestones

Step 6: Document risks and assumptions

Step 7: Set deadlines

Step 8: Review and complete your project schedule

Overview: What is a project schedule?

A project schedule is a formal timetable that enumerates start dates, deadlines, and resources required for a project.

Depending on the complexity of a project, a schedule can be as simple as a checklist of tasks with deadlines or a complex multipage document.

Regardless of the size of the project, creating a schedule is one of the most important project management steps.

Generally, creating a project schedule falls under the responsibilities of a project manager. However, all stakeholders within a project should be involved in the process.

Realistic and detailed project schedules are important because they help keep projects within budget and on schedule. They also avoid miscommunication between stakeholders and eliminate ambiguities across project teams.

What factors should be considered when making a project schedule?

Project schedules consist of multiple factors that need to be quantified before the formal schedule is finalized.

Getting each of these factors right helps ensure you're creating a realistic schedule that will lead to a successful project.

Deliverables

Deliverables are the outputs of a project. Different tasks within your project schedule will produce different outputs as they are completed.

Deliverables can be tangible or intangible. Exactly what a deliverable looks like depends on the stage of the project and the tasks it consists of.

The finished product or service you provide to your client is obviously one of the most important project deliverables. However, well-planned projects often have other deliverables for internal or external stakeholders throughout the course of the project. As you might expect, deliverables for external stakeholders (usually your client) are external deliverables.

Similarly, deliverables for internal stakeholders (usually any stakeholder other than your client, such as employees, contractors, etc.), are internal deliverables.
A few key characteristics of a project deliverable are that:

It's within the project's scope

Relevant stakeholders agree to it

It's a result of deliberate action

It's related to achieving project objectives

Examples of external project deliverables include a finished house in a construction project, a wireframe to show your client what a website will look like, or an improved workflow.

Examples of internal project deliverables include meeting minutes, internal project progress reports, or audit reports to ensure quality.

If you're having a hard time telling internal and external deliverables apart, just remember this: If it goes to the client, it's an external deliverable.

Deadlines

Deadlines in project scheduling are just what you'd expect: due dates for task and project completion. The concept is simple, but deadlines and timeframes are vitally important to successful projects.

Setting realistic deadlines means finding a balance between budget, available resources, and client expectations.

Of course, this is easier said than done. All too often, despite the best efforts of stakeholders, projects miss their deadlines. This, in turn, hurts customer satisfaction, morale, and budgets.

By creating a well-planned project schedule, you increase the probability that you can set and meet realistic deadlines.

Resources

In project management, resources are all of the people, capital, tools, and technology needed to carry out a project and the associated tasks.

While time constraints related to deadlines are an important part of creating a project schedule, it's crucial not to overlook your resource constraints.

As a project manager, you'll need to carefully allocate resources to ensure they're in the right place at the right time. For simple projects, resource management may come down to assigning tasks to a few employees. For complex projects, you may need to coordinate access to facilities and equipment across multiple project teams with varying schedules.

Dependencies

In many cases, projects involve tasks that cannot begin until a prerequisite task is completed. Dependencies define the relationship between different tasks throughout a project.

For example, suppose you're managing a construction project with the intent to build a house. Before you can install insulation, you need to finish running electrical wiring. Before you run electrical wiring, you must complete the frame and exterior walls of the house.

In this case, the insulation depends on the electrical wiring being installed. Similarly, the wiring depends on the frame and exterior walls being complete.

Milestones

In project scheduling, milestones indicate when key project objectives have been completed.

Using milestones enables you to track the status of a project at a high level. Sticking with the house example, if the frame should be complete one week in, that could be a project milestone.

If you check in with stakeholders and see the frame is complete in week one, that's a good sign. Alternatively, if you see that that milestone hasn't been met, you can investigate and work to get back on track.

A Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

Technically, a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is a deliverable related to a project. However, it is important enough to call out separately as it's an important part of a project schedule.

The Project Management Institute describes a WBS as :

"a deliverable-oriented hierarchical decomposition of the work to be executed by the project team to accomplish the project objectives and create the required deliverables. It organizes and defines the total scope of the project."

Given that description, you may ask, "What's the difference between a WBS and a project schedule?"

A WBS focuses on project deliverables and is not concerned with time constraints or dependencies. With the WBS, you can get a clear idea of the work required to produce your project's outputs. A project schedule brings time and dependencies into the mix and enables you to properly allocate resources and set deadlines.

How to create your own project schedule

Now that you understand what a project schedule is and the key components, we can start creating one. Before you dive in, you should already have a clear understanding of the project's scope and objectives.

Step 1: Quantify your project's tasks and required resources

To begin, you'll need to quantify all of the tasks associated with completing your project. At the same time, be sure to detail the associated deliverables and required resources.

Quantifying all of your project's tasks and deliverables enables you to make accurate estimates going forward.

At this stage, you may need to collaborate with internal project teams to understand the various subtasks required.

You'll also want to make sure your client has the same external deliverable expectations you do. For complex projects, this stage will include the creation of the WBS.

Tips for quantifying your project's tasks:

Engage your stakeholders: Project team members can provide you with the technical expertise needed to clearly quantify project tasks and required resources. Hold meetings or have your list reviewed by stakeholders to ensure accuracy.

Be clear about deliverables: Mismatched expectations can cause huge problems down the line. Make sure the customer is on board with your external deliverables and that project teams are on board with internal and external deliverables.

Understand the resources required for your tasks: A person can't be in two different places at the same time. Similarly, two tasks may require the same piece of equipment. Make sure to quantify what resources are needed for your tasks to avoid double-booking your team members or resources.

Step 2: Determine dependencies

Now that you know what tasks you need to complete, you can begin to map dependencies. There are a few different types of dependency relationships:

Finish-to-start: This is the most intuitive dependency type. To start one task, you must finish a prerequisite task.

Start-to-start: The start date of a task is tied to the start date of another task.

Finish-to-finish: The finish date of a task is tied to the finish date of another task.

Start-to-finish: The start date of a task determines the finish date of another task.

Mapping out the dependencies for all of your tasks is an important prerequisite for realistic scheduling and resource allocation. Collaboration with your internal stakeholders is vital to getting this part of your project schedule right.

Tips for determining dependencies:

Use a network diagram: A picture is worth a thousand words. Spelling out dependencies with words alone can be confusing and lead to errors. In a nutshell, a network diagram is a graphical representation of dependencies that can make project scheduling easier.

Don't set timelines yet: Remember, at this point, you haven't begun to generate time estimates or set deadlines. At this step, you're setting the stage to create accurate timelines.

Step 3: Estimate the time required to complete tasks

Now that you understand the dependencies that exist between tasks, it's time to estimate how long they will take. Doing so will help you set realistic deadlines and identify the critical path later on. You'll need input from relevant stakeholders to complete this step.

Tips for estimating the time required to complete tasks:

Track your time once the project starts: Even for experts, estimating the time complex tasks will take is difficult. Do your future self a favor and track how much time tasks take on all of your projects. This will provide you with a precedent for future estimates.

Experiment with different time estimation techniques: Most of us have an optimistic bias when it comes to estimating the time required to complete a project. Different estimation techniques, such as PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique), can keep your estimates honest.

Step 4: Find the critical path

After you've laid out your dependencies, you'll be able to determine the critical path for your project. In short, the critical path is the set (or sets) of dependent tasks that dictate if your project is completed on time.

Many paths in a project can have some slack built in, meaning that even with some delays, the project can still meet deadlines.

That isn't the case for the critical path. Unless you can work some magic, a delay in the critical path means a delay in project completion.

Tips for finding the critical path:

Your project can have multiple critical paths: Complex problems can have multiple critical paths. As a project manager, you need to identify and track all of them.

Critical paths can change throughout a project: The real world is never as clean cut as your network diagram. If one set of tasks is completed ahead of schedule, and another set is behind, your critical path can change.

Get familiar with CPM (Critical Path Method) and PERT: PERT is an excellent project management technique for time estimation. CPM complements it well and helps you mathematically identify your project's critical path.

Step 5: Pick your milestones

At this point, you'll have a solid foundation for your project schedule. From here, you can take a step back and pick your milestones. It can be easy for project management beginners to trivialize milestones.

After all, if everyone executes as planned, all that matters are the deliverables and deadlines, right? While that makes sense at a high level, as a project manager, you need to make sure everyone is on track to deliver. Milestones help you do that.

Tips for picking your milestones:

Spread milestones throughout your project: Improving monitoring and visibility is one of the core benefits of creating milestones. Therefore, it's important to ensure you spread out milestones to make sure you're executing consistently throughout the project. It's easy to focus on the end-of-project deliverables. However, early and mid-project milestones such as contract signings and approvals are key to making sure you stay on schedule.

Remember that milestones aren't tasks: A milestone is a marker, not a task. This is important to remember because milestones don't take time to complete; they simply indicate when a phase within a project begins or ends.

Step 6: Document risks and assumptions

Assumptions are often stigmatized as negative. However, in project management, you must make assumptions regularly.

For example, if your procurement team tells you that materials will arrive on February 1, that's an assumption you're banking on.

Inherent to any assumption is an amount of risk. For example, say there is a 10% risk those materials don't show up until February 8. That means there's a 10% chance that one assumption could delay your project by a week.

When you quantify and document all of your risks and assumptions, you're able to forecast your project's overall risk, create contingencies and backup plans, and reduce the impact of one of your assumptions falling through.

Tips for documenting your risks and assumptions:

Quantify impact and probability: Some assumptions have a low probability of being false, but getting them wrong could derail the entire project. Conversely, other assumptions may be more likely to be proven false but have less of an impact on project completion. Make sure to take both risk and probability into account at this stage.

Offload and mitigate risk where possible: If you're dependent on just one supplier, find a backup just in case. Additionally, be sure you have adequate insurance to protect all aspects of your project.

Step 7: Set deadlines

Now you should have a firm grasp of the time your project will take as well as the risks and assumptions underlying your estimates. At this point, you can set the deadlines for your project.

Deadlines are a simple enough concept, but getting them right is a challenge. There is constant tension between speed and quality.

As the project manager, it's your job to create realistic deadlines that balance the demands of different stakeholders.

Tips for setting deadlines:

Set deadlines for deliverables and milestones: While the final deliverables to your client or end user are important, you need deadlines throughout the project to keep your team on track. Be sure to set deadlines for all of your major milestones and deliverables.

Give your team some wiggle room: Don't set deadlines based on your most optimistic projections. Add a cushion that allows you to avoid a situation where a single setback derails the entire project.

Use scheduling software: If you're dealing with a team of more than a handful of members, consider using a project scheduling software to avoid miscommunications. Dedicated project management software like Asana or Wrike can help increase visibility and awareness around deadlines.

Step 8: Review and complete your project schedule

At this point, your project schedule is effectively complete. This step is where you review your schedule for accuracy and have stakeholders sign off on the schedule's feasibility.

A few items to check for during the process are:

Only in-scope tasks are included in the schedule

Resources are available for the dates and times you allocated them

Milestones are spread out throughout the project

Deadlines have a cushion that is proportional to the risks and assumptions tied to the underlying tasks

Tips for reviewing and completing your project schedule:

Engage your client: While you need your team's expertise to create work estimates, you also need to make sure your client is happy with the schedule. Not only do you want to make them happy, but you may need them to sign off on various deliverables and milestones throughout the project.

Don't overlook holidays and vacations: When you're in the weeds, creating a schedule, things like paid time off can be easy to forget. The employees and contractors working on your project may have days off during the project. Now is the time to verify that you've accounted for that.

Should you use a project management software for your project schedule?

If your project is complex enough to warrant an in-depth project schedule, using project management software probably makes sense.

Identifying the best project management software begins with understanding the general benefits project management software can afford you. From there, you can select a specific software based on features, your needs, and pricing and then create a plan to implement the software.

To help you get started, let's take a look at some of the primary benefits of using project management software:

Improved visibility: Keeping everyone on the same page is a big part of successful project management. With cloud-based project management software, team members can check project status, schedules, and reports from anywhere. For example, Jira offers Scrum Boards that allow Agile team members to quickly identify which tasks are "blockers."

Granular reporting: Project management software enables you to create reports at a high level or drill down into the details. In many cases, you can even extract the data to perform analytics and improve your decision-making.

Improved collaboration: Communication is vital to project success. Project management software can enable team members across the globe to stay in the loop via chat, virtual meetings, and real-time updates of project documentation.

Purpose-built project management features: Network diagrams, story mapping, Gantt charts, budgets, and project schedules are just a few examples of the resources project teams may need. With dedicated project management software, you benefit from having many project management features available to you. Of course, more features can mean more complexity and a more difficult time for users. That's why ease of use and an intuitive interface are important as well. monday.com is an excellent tool that balances a robust project management feature set with an easy-to-use interface.

If most of your projects are small in scale, you may wonder if project management software is worth the cost.

After all, you can probably get by without it. It's true that smaller projects may be manageable through spreadsheets and whiteboards alone, but dedicated software can add value for small teams, too.

If software isn't in the budget, free versions of TeamGantt or Podio may meet your needs without any licensing costs.

Create a schedule to keep your next project on track

It's become a cliche, but those who fail to plan are effectively planning to fail.

By developing a detailed project schedule early in the project life cycle and using the right project management tools, you can make your next project a success.

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How to Create the Perfect Project Schedule

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For every $1 billion invested in projects, $122 million was wasted due to poor project performance, according to the Project Management Institute. Understanding project management basics can help you avoid that level of waste. One of the key aspects of a project management plan is a project schedule.

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In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team Patrick Lencioni once again offers a leadership fable that is as enthralling and instructive as his first two best-selling books, The Five Temptations of a CEO and The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive. This time, he turns his keen intellect and storytelling power to the fascinating, complex world of teams.

Kathryn Petersen, Decision Tech's CEO, faces the ultimate leadership crisis: Uniting a team in such disarray that it threatens to bring down the entire company. Will she succeed? Will she be fired? Will the company fail? Lencioni's utterly gripping tale serves as a timeless reminder that leadership requires as much courage as it does insight.

Throughout the story, Lencioni reveals the five dysfunctions which go to the very heart of why teams even the best ones-often struggle. He outlines a powerful model and actionable steps that can be used to overcome these common hurdles and build a cohesive, effective team. Just as with his other books, Lencioni has written a compelling fable with a powerful yet deceptively simple message for all those who strive to be exceptional team leaders.

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The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable

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The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable [Lencioni, Patrick] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable

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RACI Chart Definition, Template, & Example | TeamGantt

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It's a fact: Complex projects make it easy for teams to lose track of tasks. You might have an air-tight project plan and a stellar team to back it up. But if you're not crystal clear about assignments-or even involvement-on a task level, confusion, crankiness, and even demotivation will creep into your project team.

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Here are some tips for using Google Classroom and Zoom. These are ideas that both empower students and build agency. Nothing will replace teaching, learning, and building community IRL, but there is opportunity and potential for meaningful learning to take place. Hope these are helpful. Will be a part 2.... at some point. If you are saving, screenshotting my work, or would just like to show appreciation- drop a line in the comments and/or consider donating to my Venmo or ask for my Zelle. 💫💫 #teachersofinstagram #socialjusticeeducation #teacherresources #antiracism #antiracisteducation #teachersofcolor #backtoschool #iteachmiddleschool #pedagogy #teacherresources #studentcentered #learning #blacklivesmatter #blm #classroom #curriculum #studentsofcolor #equity #teachersofoakland #iteachela #teachersofcolor #teacherideology #learning #teaching #ideology #decolonizeyourmind #educationforliberation #distancelearning #virtualclassroom #pedagogypost #culturallyresponsiveteaching #googleclassroom #zoomtips

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the journal of critical digital pedagogy

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Photograph: "Pinback button stating "Black Lives Matter Everyday," from Million Man March 20th Anniversary." In the Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
All Black Lives Matter Tony McDade should still be alive
Breonna Taylor should still be alive
George Floyd should still be alive
Ahmaud Arbery should still be alive
Nina Pop should still be alive
Jamel Floyd should still be alive
All the Black people who have died from Covid-19 should still be alive They were all killed by state-sanctioned violence carried out by racist police and the racist systems that prop up our healthcare, education, economic, social, and cultural infrastructure. We Love Black People. We affirm the value of ALL Black people's lives and we commit to doing memory work both in our personal and professional lives that will lead to dismantling systems that continue to harm Black people. Our work must support efforts to defund the police, abolish prisons, and redirect resources to the communities that have suffered the most under these racist structures that exist and thrive solely because Black people's lives are consistently devalued around the world.
We are Black memory workers committed to documenting the Black experience during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and the current uprisings brought about by racist police violence against Black people. Our work is imperative, especially as we witness this dual assault white supremacy has unleashed on Black people. We offer this call to action to ethically and comprehensively archive during this moment, to ensure that we shine light onto the oppressive systems that disproportionately subject Black people to generational pain and suffering.

Facebook post by Darnella Frazier, the 17-year-old African American girl who filmed George Floyd's murder while on her way to run an errand. Retrieved from TMZ on 6/6/2020.

We offer this call to action because we know moments of crisis and Black suffering are also opportunities ripe for institutional exploitation and professional opportunism in the cultural memory sector, where harmful activities involved with building collections for institutions that don't care about Black people, become more important than documenting the root causes of why Black people are suffering in the first place. We do not offer this call to action on behalf of our affiliated cultural memory institutions. Instead, we offer this call in solidarity with our Black communities all over the world.

We reject attempts to document this moment that fails to center the Black experience or that fails to document the facts about the State's role in inflicting Black pain. We commit to modeling care in our memory work because Black people deserve care. We commit to doing ethical memory work that protects Black people because racist state-sanction violence also resists documentation. We commit to archival practices that support accountability and historical accuracy because when the dust settles attempts will be made to rewrite the history. We commit to an intersectional archival practice that also presents a global perspective of Black suffering and the response to it because we acknowledge that Black people with disabilities, and from working-class, queer and immigrant communities have suffered negative and disproportionate harm due to white supremacy and capitalism. We believe that Black memory workers should lead the documentation response when Black people are suffering. And we believe Black memory workers should be supported and given the space and resources to do this work.

We invite anyone to complete this form to sign onto this call to action in solidarity with Black memory workers. We are also organizing efforts based on this call to action. If you are a Black memory worker interested in joining our efforts, please identify yourself as such in the form.

Join Us!

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Call to Action: Archiving State-Sanctioned Violence Against Black People

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All Black Lives Matter Tony McDade should still be aliveBreonna Taylor should still be aliveGeorge Floyd should still be aliveAhmaud Arbery should still be aliveNina Pop should still be aliveJamel Floyd should still be aliveAll the Black people who have died from Covid-19 should still be alive They were all killed by state-sanctioned violence carried out by racist police and the racist systems that prop up our healthcare, education, economic, social, and cultural infrastructure.

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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Talking about race, although hard, is necessary. We are here to provide tools and guidance to empower your journey and inspire conversation.

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Access short classroom videos, webinar recordings, and self-paced workshops that offer professional development hours and are available anywhere, at any time.

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NBT: Brief History of African American/Black Theatre History

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Playwrights of Color, White Directors, and Exposing Racist Policy

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Nicole BrewerNicole Brewer examines a prominent racist policy in theatre-when plays written by people of color are staged by white directors-through the lens of actors, theatregoers, and playwrights themselves.

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Egalitarian in theory, the practice is more often used to exclude performers of color. But even well-intentioned efforts at increasing diversity create complications.

"Hamilton" has been celebrated as a bold exemplar of diversity. But it's not enough to simply slot actors of color into historically white roles. Credit... Disney+

Late June brought news that the animated shows "The Simpsons," "Family Guy," "Big Mouth" and "Central Park" would recast characters of color who have been played by white actors.

A week later "Hamilton" dominated the cultural chatter on Independence Day weekend when Disney+ premiered the film version of the Broadway phenomenon.

In both situations performers inhabited characters of racial backgrounds that were different from their own, often referred to as "colorblind casting." But one provoked the usual apologies and promises to do better while the other was celebrated anew as being a bold exemplar of diversity - though it ultimately presents a set of more complex concerns.

Still, the difference between the two lies in their approaches to the all-encompassing nature of whiteness in American industries and narratives. Whereas the world of voice-acting for animation is just another dominated by white workers, casting a person of color as a typically white character is an act of subversion, a normalization of something other than the white standard. The Black and brown founding fathers of "Hamilton" make the story of America something that can finally be owned by people of color, as opposed to the reality, which so often refutes the relevancy of their lives and contributions.

Though egalitarian in theory, colorblind casting in practice is more often used to exclude performers of color. It's a high-minded-sounding concept that producers and creators use to free themselves of any social responsibility they may feel toward representing a diverse set of performers.

The history of the practice in live-action takes is more egregious, and has been well-documented: Mickey Rooney's notorious Asian landlord in "Breakfast at Tiffany's"; Alec Guinness's Arab prince in "Lawrence of Arabia"; Laurence Olivier in blackface as Othello. In the past decade alone, Natalie Portman, Emma Stone and Scarlett Johansson, among others, played characters onscreen who were of Asian descent in the source material.

And though this trend so often favors white actors - if you have a few hours, or days, to kill, Google "whitewashing controversy" - it certainly isn't limited to them. People of color are often tagged in to represent an identity different from their own, as though Chinese is synonymous with Korean or Mexican is synonymous with Indian.

It seems needless to say, and yet, here it is: Any casting of a performer in the role of a race other than their own assumes that the artist step into the lived experience of a person whose culture isn't theirs, and so every choice made in that performance will inevitably be an approximation. It is an act of minstrelsy.

Kristen Bell, who voiced the biracial Molly Tillerman in the Apple TV+ show "Central Park"; Jenny Slate, who voiced the biracial Missy Foreman-Greenwald in "Big Mouth"; and Mike Henry, the voice of the Black "Family Guy" and "The Cleveland Show" character Cleveland Brown, each announced their decisions to gracefully bow out in the name of proper representation. Hank Azaria, who for years voiced the Indian "Simpsons" character Apu, stepped away from the role earlier this year - last month the show announced that it will no longer use any white actors to play characters of color.

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Mike Henry, who played Cleveland on "Family Guy," was one of several white actors who recently announced that they would stop voicing animated characters of color. Credit... Fox, via Associated Press

Despite this recent trend, actors and creators have defended such choices with purportedly merit-based arguments. Earlier this year, in fact, Loren Bouchard, one of the creators of "Central Park," explained Bell's casting by saying "Kristen needed to be Molly; we couldn't not make her Molly."

More often than not, when the defense rings out in the chord of "they were the best person for the job," that "best person" is white. That is no coincidence.

Another popular defense that pops up, most often in internet discourse, involves canon: The story, the holy text, must be preserved as written. Even if this defense didn't presuppose that anything canon should not be open to challenge or reinterpretation, it would still fail to recognize that in many stories the character's whiteness is incidental to the narrative. So why not use that opportunity to re-create the character as someone who doesn't fall into the majority?

The fact that Ariel is white has nothing to do with her story about wanting to be with her love and walk on land. The casting of a Black actress to play Hermione Granger in the play "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" provoked howls from many fans, but the character's whiteness never had any bearing on her brilliance. In fact, stories that do not take their characters' whiteness as a given may find fresh relevance and invite new audiences into their sphere, because for so many people of color, they don't get to see themselves represented in the media they consume.

For me, it was "The Wiz," starring Diana Ross as a Black Dorothy; I loved it so much more than the original "Wizard of Oz." And in 1997, it was Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical "Cinderella" film, which was completely colorblind. The singer-actress Brandy was a Black Cinderella, with a white stepmother (Bernadette Peters) and a Black stepsister, as well as a white one. The prince was of Filipino descent, with parents who were Black and white (Whoopi Goldberg and Victor Garber). And Whitney Houston was a glamorous fairy godmother.

The whole movie was a visual feast, with bright costumes and playful dance numbers, and it never explained the puzzling genealogies of its characters. It simply allowed the audience to soak in the story and characters as they were.

A 1997 film adaptation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "Cinderella" starred Brandy as the title character and Whitney Houston as her fairy godmother. Credit... Disney

But however well-intentioned, there are complications that come with works that aim to use colorblind casting to highlight people of color who wouldn't otherwise be represented. Creators may cast blind, thinking their job done, failing to consider that a Black man cast as a criminal or a Latina woman cast as a saucy seductress - even when cast without any regard to their race - can still be problematic. One kind of blindness can lead to another.

And then there's also the "Hamilton" problem. The show may place diverse bodies on the stage, but productions that would subvert a narrative traditionally owned by white characters must not just tag in actors of color but reconsider the fundamental way the new casting changes the story. In "Hamilton," the revision of American history is dazzling and important, but it also neglects and negates the parts of the original story that don't fit so nicely into this narrow model. The characters' relationship to slavery, for example, is scarcely mentioned, because it would be incongruous with the triumphant recasting of our country's first leaders. (The "Hamilton" star and creator Lin-Manuel Miranda responded to this criticism this week, calling it "valid.")

The trouble of a colorblind production might not be the casting itself, but the fact that the casting may still erase the reimagined characters' identities. ( If Willy Loman is Black, wouldn't he have a more complex understanding of the American dream?) Careless colorblind casting - in animated roles, in live-action roles on TV, movies or the stage - assumes that identities amount to nothing and that all experiences are transferable, which is far from the reality.

In a 1996 speech, the playwright August Wilson spoke out against colorblind casting overall, saying:

To mount an all-Black production of a "Death of a Salesman" or any other play conceived for white actors as an investigation of the human condition through the specifics of white culture is to deny us our own humanity, our own history, and the need to make our own investigations from the cultural ground on which we stand as Black Americans. It is an assault on our presence, and our difficult but honorable history in America; and it is an insult to our intelligence, our playwrights, and our many and varied contributions to the society and the world at large.

Wilson called not for colorblind casting, but for institutions that invite art by and for people of color, to tell their own stories and not simply ones adapted for them. He doesn't call for blindness, but visibility: people of color seen on stages and behind the curtains. This applies to all art forms - people of color should be on movie screens, on the TV and in recording booths giving voice to stories about them.

It's hard not to see his point. Even times when it's employed with good intentions, colorblind casting often fails in the execution. It's a larger problem of the narrative of our nation, which frequently refuses people of color their own stories, reflexively opting for a white purview or offering stories written for white characters but with people of color haphazardly slotted in. We're forever fighting our America's racial default.

Blindness is no excuse. In a moment when we're reassessing everything surrounding representation, perhaps it's time for all of us to finally open our eyes.

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'Hamilton,' 'The Simpsons' and the Problem With Colorblind Casting

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Egalitarian in theory, the practice is more often used to exclude performers of color. But even well-intentioned efforts at increasing diversity create complications. Late June brought news that the animated shows "The Simpsons," "Family Guy," "Big Mouth" and "Central Park" would recast characters of color who have been played by white actors.

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A playwright, a director, an artistic director and an actor share their experiences - and prescriptions for change.

Clockwise from top left: the playwright Lydia R. Diamond; the actor Jelani Alladin; the director Kenny Leon; and the Penumbra Theater artistic director Sarah Bellamy. Credit... Clockwise from top left: Lawrence Agyei for The New York Times; Idris Solomon for The New York Times; Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York Times; Glen Stubbe/Star Tribune, via Getty Images

What has been the impact of race, and racism, on African-Americans working in the theater world? How should that world change? Those questions have taken on renewed, impassioned life since the killing of George Floyd, the shooting deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, and the nationwide protests over racial injustice that have followed.

On Monday night, 300 artists challenged "White American Theater" in a blistering statement. This week the Broadway Advocacy Coalition is holding a forum on racism in the industry. We asked four African-American theater figures - based in different parts of the country and in different corners of the business - to share their first-person accounts. Here are their edited responses.

THE PLAYWRIGHT: Lydia r. diamond

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My experiences of the theater are no different from my experiences of the world at large, which is that it's very difficult to navigate in a racist and sexist world. Sometimes I think that theater thinks it's somehow immune to being complicit in the intrinsic racism of our world. What I've seen over the course of my career is institutional racism and sexism at every level of the American theater. And that saddens me.

I hear so often from white men in the theater, "Oh, we don't know what to do because all of the black people get the opportunities." But you have only to look at the numbers. And it's shocking.

Every second of every moment of my career is touched by some degree of a kind of racism that is just pervasive in the landscape of America. This moment, where the world is blowing up, comes out of a pent-up frustration about the way we as people of color have been navigating the world. It is frustrating to me and, I will presumptuously say, most other African-Americans or people of color in my industry.

I could list off some anecdotal "this thing happened and that thing happened." I will say that I feel it around marketing. I feel it around reviews. I feel it around opportunities. For years - it's a little bit less, because I've asked my agent to address this - but for years, it was a given that if I was produced, it would be in the [company's] smaller theater.

It's every production at every institution - with an acknowledgment that even within those institutions, I have been supported and nurtured and given an artistic home. Because that's the [expletive] of racism in our country. The people that you're working with love you, often. And you love them, often. And the country is entrenched in institutional, societal racism.

Oh my God, I'll say this and then never have another Broadway production. But I think this is the time to speak truth. Everywhere there's this racism and a lack of opportunity, and we know that the Great White Way is even more so. It's a world that has been run by white men, and it's a world that has high, high stakes. The higher the economic opportunities in our country, the more black people are denied access. Period.

You look at our Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights who are African-American, and you look at our genius-grant-winning playwrights who are African-American, and then you measure how many people who have those kinds of accolades have access to venues on Broadway who are white versus who are black. You look at the people with those credentials and how many regional theater shows they have had, main-stage shows, next to their peers. And it's tangible.

On the first day of a rehearsal, the whole theater company comes into the room and you do the meet-and-greet, and then you read the play. Always those rooms are at least 98 percent white people. The institutions aren't diverse in any way.

The theater world is made up of really smart people. You figured out how to make people buy seats at between $150 to $500. You can figure out how to not be racist.

But there's not a real investment in it. There just isn't. And that's how our country has functioned. We talk a good game about it. All of the institutions are writing letters about how they stand in solidarity. But until you show me institutional change, I don't want to hear it.

I wrote a play called "Smart People." It was at Second Stage, Off Broadway. At the heart of it was this idea that if white leaders of institutions, and white people in general, could just acknowledge the depths of their embracing a kind of white supremacy that allows them to allow institutions to be not inclusive and not equitable, maybe we could fix it.

But that means real institutional change. For real. Not a program where you now have three interns who are black. And I have not a lot of faith that the theater structure, the way it's built right now, wants that.

The institutions are still not as they should be. And it's crushing.

Lydia R. Diamond made her Broadway debut in 2011 with the comic drama " Stick Fly." A year ago, Off Broadway, she won raves for her baseball bioplay, " Toni Stone." Based in Evanston, Ill., and frequently produced in regional theaters, Diamond, who is 51, is also known for the campus drama " Smart People" and her adaptation of Toni Morrison's " The Bluest Eye."
Interview by Laura Collins-Hughes.
The Director: Kenny leon

Many of us have been pushing toward this moment. Of course all lives matter, but that's not what I'm talking about. We're talking about the black house on a street in a line of houses, and that black house is on fire, and has been on fire for 400 years, and needs our considered attention, resources and intervention to put that fire out. I mean the fire of racial injustice.

The message I want to say to my black brothers and sisters, whose heritage is rooted in racial injustice and who have been on the front lines of this struggle for 400 years, from my great-great grandfather, to my great-grandfather, my grandmother, my mother, but also people like Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee and the work of the Negro Ensemble Company and New Federal Theater: I want to honor their commitment.

To my white friends and colleagues: I want their help to create a more just world. My experiences have led me to know that if white citizens were honest with themselves, they can remember incidents where moments of racism entered into the atmosphere and they didn't say anything about it.

Sometimes it could have been on the golf course, it could have been in a rehearsal hall, it could have been a corporate meeting. But now, when we have the ears of the world, there has to be a discussion, a dialogue. And especially for Broadway, it has to be a dialogue and it can no longer be one way. There hasn't been enough listening with my well-intentioned white friends.

There needs to be more diversity in the theater. There needs to be more diversity of storytelling. Money should not always lead the discussion. We need different voices at all of the tables, and I think we can do that.

Of course, I've experienced racism.You cannot live in America and not experience racism as a black man.

I ran a major regional theater company. Many people in that community were very happy - white and black people. But, also, I received a death threat. It was handwritten, and it said, "When we go to the theater, we want to see our own, not some uppity, pushy coon."

On a given day, after I leave, working hard there, you end up going to a reception to raise money, and you have to go to the governor's mansion. So I'm shaking hands and begging for money to do the challenging stories, and sometimes people were afraid. "Now, wait a minute. You had 11 plays, and three of them were by African-American writers. What are you trying to do? Are you trying to turn us into a black theater?" And then on the way home I may get pulled over by the cops just because my car looked a little too fancy or I was laughing too much in the car and the policeman wondered why.

When producers and regional theaters don't look at you as a whole individual, and only interested in what you can bring to the racial conversation, I think that's a form of racism as well. And to me, it's a form of racism when you don't give black people, and people of color, an opportunity to write about the work that's created. We need to work harder for diversity in terms of who is writing about what's onstage.

I have a radical optimism, built in my heart, that says right is going to win, and we are going to get there. I'm not giving up on regional theater, I'm not giving up on Off Broadway theater, I'm not giving up on Broadway theater, I'm not giving up on America and I'm not giving up on our world. But I think it's going to take listening. It's going to take all of us.

What do I think our world should look like? We're storytellers, so I think this is a great opportunity for artists to build that vision. All I can do is go by the plays that a lot of artists have been doing over the years - the Katori Halls of the world, the Jocelyn Biohs of the world, the Tarell McCraneys of the world, the Jeremy O. Harrises of the world. My world is shaped by the hopes and dreams of those plays. I definitely see a world where we don't have the knees of the people that are supposed to protect us on our necks, suffocating the life out of us.

Kenny Leon, a 64-year-old director, served as the artistic director of two Atlanta nonprofits, the Alliance Theater, which is one of the nation's leading regional theaters, and True Colors Theater Company, which he founded to celebrate black storytelling. He has directed 11 productions on Broadway; the most recent was this year's revival of "A Soldier's Play," and in 2014 he won a Tony Award for a revival of "A Raisin in the Sun."
Interview by Michael Paulson.
The artistic director: Sarah bellamy

A couple years ago, I wrote a treatment for play that started with a scene in Minneapolis in which a police officer killed a young black man, and then the city started burning. At the time, I was like, "That would never happen in Minneapolis." I mean, certainly police violence has, but not the city on fire. And now here we are. But I think people are listening. I see people taking care of each other and the community mobilizing. That's not getting reported, but I'm heartened by the ways that people are showing up for each other.

More and more, I think we need to focus deeply on racial healing and attend to the most vulnerable. We've known this for some time, but I'm so glad that more folks throughout the country are starting to understand that Minnesota is a crucible of so many deep inequities for black Americans: housing, jobs, health, policing, incarceration and detention, just sector after sector.

I'm really interested in how Penumbra can lend the tools of our practice to help solve some of those inequities in really meaningful partnerships with people on the front lines of that work. That's the work I'll be commissioning, that's the equity work we'll be doing. That's how we'll serve the community.

I come from a tradition of making art by, for and about black folks, and certainly everyone's welcome. I was given an opportunity to be loved and to be trusted and to try and test and fail and given cover in a way that I think a lot of other people haven't. But right now, we're seeing artists of color who have been proximate to white-led theaters start to organize.

I haven't grown up proximate to that whiteness and white power and that leveraging of money, so I haven't experienced the kind of abuse that these brilliant artists have had in white theaters. And there is a tension, a generative tension, I think, between folks who are kind of embedded within and caring for legacy institutions and those working as free agents.

Some of those folks have even been required to be gatekeepers, to keep other people of color out. And when you start to realize that you've been used in that way, or required to perform that role, that's a deep wound. Our activist mothers and fathers warned us about this tactic. Larry Neal, in one of his early essays, said "The Black Arts Movement is radically opposed to any concept of the artist that alienates him from his community."

I want to draw upon the proud moments when black artists have stood up to the American theater. Folks are drawing now on August Wilson's critical speech, " The Ground On Which I Stand." I've read that speech 40 times over my career and what I'm noticing about this most recent collective uprising by free agents, by individual artists working within regional and Broadway theaters, is that they seem to want the posture but not the prescription.

August didn't call for integration into white theaters. He said, "Fund black theaters." He said, "Black theater is alive and well; it's just not funded." I invite these black artists who have been wounded by their efforts with the Great White Way to come back home, to come and invest in our companies and to bring their wealth and their talent and their broken hearts back to these legacy institutions, where we can heal them and nurture them because we really need their help.

I differentiate between black theater and plays with black people in them. Black theater always has a social justice imperative and community uplift embedded in it, whereas plays with black people in them might actually be injurious or do harm to the black community.

If white institutions would be willing to take up the work to involve, educate and activate white audiences, that would go a long way in helping us move forward. Activate your white audiences to talk about whiteness. Say, "We are going to roll up our sleeves, and we're going to work with our white folks to support racial equity, to fight white supremacy and anti-blackness." That would be tremendously powerful. Whether or not they're willing to do that work, I don't know, because it's hard.

In the same way, a legacy black institution like Penumbra Theater is going to lean in hard to attend to the black community and support people of color. There's a role for everybody in the movement.

The most profound thing that we can practice right now is discernment - to be patient, wherever we sit, whether we're an artistic director, a playwright, a producer, whether you're white or black or whether you're emerging or at the pinnacle of your career. Using discernment to figure out exactly what your most potent role can be. And not getting distracted by the shiny things that might get flashed in front of you.

Sarah Bellamy is the artistic director of Penumbra Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota, one of only three professional African-American theaters in the nation to offer a full season of performances. It was founded by her father, Lou Bellamy, in 1976; since taking over as artistic director in 2017, Bellamy, 42, has produced "For Colored Girls," "This Bitter Earth" and most recently, "The White Card."
Interview by Salamishah Tillet.
The actor: Jelani Alladin

The most heartbreaking thing is people keep asking: What is the message? That is by far the most racist question of all. The message is the same it always has been, since the first slave stepped on to the rich soil of this stolen land. SET. US. FREE. That is the message.

The message is, start over the American systems that were made in hopes of keeping black people out of the picture. This includes capitalism, this includes politics, and this includes the Great White Way.

The message is, clear a space at the table, so that we can sit beside you and enjoy the benefits of the seeds our ancestors planted for this now blossoming nation; seeds that for so long, only you, the white privileged, have harvested.

I am 27, just beginning my career as an artist. I have done only one show on Broadway, but I can share with you multiple stories of the racist actions and words that have been flung at me. I simply have no interest in that. Those wounds have healed. I am more interested in preventing the master from ever beating me and my fellow men ever again.

How do we bargain? How do we start again? How do we right this wrong? We come to the table with demands. And for me, it's about three words: communication, collaboration and care.

I would like there to be more communication between blacks, artists of color, and whites; an investment in listening, and not listening to hear, but listening to understand. A conversation is a talk where news and ideas are exchanged; not looted, not stolen, exchanged, which means to give something and receive something.

I would like there to be more collaboration. A show cannot happen without producers, writers, directors, choreographers, stage managers and actors all working together, but where is the inclusion in each of these job positions? Why is there such a lack of black and people of color producers, writers, directors, choreographers and stage managers? Why do black and P.O.C. actors so often get shut out?

When we talk about the Great White Way, there is one thing we can never separate from it, and that is the American dollar. The Great White Way is a commercial business. I get it, money must be made. But for so long this business has put forward the message that with black and P.O.C. producers, writers, directors, choreographers, stage managers, and actors, money can't be made. That is simply false. That is simply racist. That is not taking a chance on the power of collaboration.

How many white artists are given the chance to try and fail, over and over again, before becoming critical successes? Yet for blacks and P.O.C. it's a one and done deal?! That is unfair.

Furthermore, if you so strongly believe that black and P.O.C. artists don't possess the necessary skills, then provide the space to teach us. I am interested in producing. Invite me in, so I can learn; then give me a chance to execute, without the pressure of having to soar above and beyond the first time. Because the truth of the matter is, you are just looking for any excuse to take me down.

Lastly, I would love to see more care. That may sound simple and trite, but it's a basic human decency often passed over. I need you to take care in the way you choose to speak to me. I need you to take care in the construction of the sentences you choose to say to me.

A white person of power once gave me a note at intermission of a performance about a song I sang, in a moment where the character knows he is singing, with a little more passion, and they said, "You're not in 'The Color Purple'!" There was no care given in the choice to say those words to me.

I also need you to take care in your actions. That can be as simple as greeting me when you see me for the first time that day; or not as simple as considering for yourself, if asking a black man to steal an item onstage from a store is really pushing forward the appropriate narrative, before handing me this new addition to the story.

I want the same care as my co-workers who are open about their mental health issues and get to take days off. Yet when I am slandered on social media as "the [racist slur] in 'Frozen,' " I must take it, and do my show as expected and not be checked in with until after?! More care.

Each person's experience with the systematic racism of the Great White Way is unique. They are all valid. They must all be communicated, in hopes of successful and inclusive collaboration led with care.

It is possible.

Jelani Alladin, a 27-year-old actor, starred as Kristoff in the original Broadway cast of "Frozen," and in the title role of a stage adaptation of "Hercules" developed by the Public Theater.
Interview by Michael Paulson

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Four Black Artists on How Racism Corrodes the Theater World

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A playwright, a director, an artistic director and an actor share their experiences - and prescriptions for change. What has been the impact of race, and racism, on African-Americans working in the theater world? How should that world change?

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The links below have been collected by Drama League staff, alumni, artists and colleagues to share knowledge regarding the need for systemic change in our field, and actions we can each take to dismantle racism, ableism and the many oppressions operating in our field. This list is by no means comprehensive; it is intended more as a point of departure for your own explorations. If you have suggestions for articles, resource lists, or story additions, please contact us at education@dramaleague.org with the URL address.
THE AMERICAN THEATER AND ANTI-RACISM
ANTI-RACISM IN REHEARSAL, PRODUCTION AND PERFORMANCE

ANTI-OPPRESSION RESOURCES

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The links below have been collected by Drama League staff, alumni, artists and colleagues to share knowledge regarding the need for systemic change in our field, and actions we can each take to dismantle racism, ableism and the many oppressions operating in our field.

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We are the Canon: An Anti-Racist Approach to Theatre Pedagogy Teaching Artists is a collaborative work produced by Dr. Daphnie Sicre and Karl Williams. The purpose is to change the discourse in theatre education by presenting a diverse canonical collection of work to reflect Black and Latinx students in the classroom. Together they are empowering educators at the collegiate and K-12 levels to reimagine their curricula to reflect diversity as well as use facilitate theatre in a virtual domain. Listen to how relevant theatre is in the midst of pandemics and other societal interruptions. Happy listening!  JD Pryce

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Episode 5- "We are the Canon..." ft. Dr. Daphnie Sirce and Professor Karl Williams.

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Your Roadmap for Teaching Controversial Issues | iCivics

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AALBC.com, the African American Literature Book Club

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Add a Black-owned bookstore to this list. Read about AALBC's Founder's favorite 10 Bookstores.

124 Black Owned Bookstores Found (sorted by state, city, name)

1 - Pyramid Art Books & Custom Framing
1001 Wright Avenue, Suite C
Little Rock, AR 72206
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: 501-372-5824
Email: pyramidartbookscustomframing@gmail.com
Opened in: 1988
Last updated: 2014-03-19 (7)

2 - Nubian Nook
Court Street Hamilton
Bermuda, BM
Owner/Proprietor: Rosheena Beek
Phone: 1 441-516-8258
Email: mommysays@yahoo.com
Opened in: 2017
Last updated: 2017-05-19 (174)

3 - Ethnic Notions Bookstore
433 Solano Dr
Benicia, CA 94510
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: 707-334-3060
Email:
Opened in: 2000
Last updated: 2014-03-21 (10)

4 - Smiley's Bookstore
940 East Dominguez Suite K
Carson, CA 90746
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: (310) 324-8444
Email: info@SmileysBooks.org
Opened in: 1993
Last updated: 2014-04-04 (13)

5 - Hanna's Ethnic Bookseller
240 Blue Mountain Way
Claremont, CA 91711
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: 909-626-5051
Email:
Opened in: 2000
Last updated: 2014-03-21 (11)

6 - Zahra's Books and Things
900 North La Brea Ave
Inglewood, CA 90302
Owner/Proprietor: Renee Mendscole
Phone: 310-330-1300
Email:
Opened in: 2000
Last updated: 2014-03-19 (14)

7 - Shades of Afrika Bookstore
1001 E 4th St.
Long Beach , CA 90802
Owner/Proprietor: Sista Renee Quarles
Phone: (562) 436-2210
Email:
Opened in: 1994
Last updated: 2014-04-06 (140)

8 - Eso Won Bookstore
4327 Degnan Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90008
Owner/Proprietor: James Fugate and Thomas Hamilton
Phone: (323) 290-1048
Email: jmfugate@msn.com
Opened in: 1990
Last updated: 2014-03-19 (4)

9 - Zambezi Bazaar
3347 W 43rd Street
Los Angeles, CA 90008
Owner/Proprietor: Jackie Ryan
Phone: (323) 299-6383
Email:
Opened in: 1990
Last updated: 2016-04-12 (135)

10 - Ashay by the Bay
1411 Webster Street
Oakland, CA 94612
Owner/Proprietor: Deborah Day
Phone: 1-844-543-7732
Email: ashaybythebayceo@gmail.com
Opened in: 2017
Last updated: 2017-06-05 (175)

11 - Marcus Books (Oakland)
3900 Martin Luther King Jr. Way
Oakland, CA 94609
Owner/Proprietor: Johnson Family
Phone: (510) 652-2344
Email: info@marcusbooksoakland.com
Opened in: 1960
Last updated: 2017-06-05 (12)

12 - The Multicultural Children's Book Store
1116 Hilltop Mall Drive
Richmond, CA 94806
Owner/Proprietor: Tamara
Phone: (510) 422-5304
Email: multiculturalbookstore@gmail.com
Opened in: 2019
Last updated: 2020-02-04 (206)

13 - West County READS Multicultural Children's Book Store
2325 Hilltop Mall Drive
Richmond, CA 94806
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: (510) 422-5304
Email:
Opened in: 2017
Last updated: 2018-04-25 (189)

14 - Carol's Books
1913 Del Paso Blvd
Sacramento, CA 95815
Owner/Proprietor: Carol
Phone: (916) 646-6525
Email:
Opened in: 2017
Last updated: 2017-06-04 (9)

15 - Underground Books
2814 35th Street
Sacramento, CA 95817
Owner/Proprietor: Georgia West "Mother Rose"
Phone: 916-737-3333
Email: gwest@underground-books.com
Opened in: 2002
Last updated: 2017-02-02 (110)

16 - Black Books Galore, Inc.
65 High Ridge Rd., #407
Stamford, CT 06905
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone:
Email:
Opened in: 1992
Last updated: 2014-08-19 (15)

17 - DC Bookdiva's Mobile Bookstore
Various Locations in DC
Washington, DC
Owner/Proprietor: T. Short
Phone:
Email: dcbookdiva@yahoo.com
Opened in: 0000
Last updated: 2014-03-19 (98)

18 - MahoganyBooks
1231 Good Hope Rd SE
Washington, DC 20020
Owner/Proprietor: Derrick and Ramunda Young
Phone: 703-730-3873
Email: customerservice@mahoganybooks.com
Opened in: 2017
Last updated: 2017-11-23 (177)

19 - Sankofa Video Books & Cafe
2714 Georgia Ave.,NW
Washington, DC 20001
Owner/Proprietor: Shirikiana Gerima
Phone: 202-234-4755
Email: sankofa@gmail.com
Opened in: 1982
Last updated: 2012-03-24 (86)

20 - The Children Of The Sun
2802 Georgia Ave NW
Washington, DC 20001
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: 202-299-0279
Email:
Opened in: 0000
Last updated: 2014-06-10 (147)

21 - Loyalty (Petworth) Bookstore
843 Upshur NW
Washington, DC, DC 20910
Owner/Proprietor: Hannah Oliver Depp
Phone: (240) 863-2087
Email: hannah@loyaltybookstores.com
Opened in: 2019
Last updated: 2020-04-17 (208)

22 - MeJah Books & Crafts
Holly Oak Plaza, 2099A Philadelphia Pike
Claymont, DE 19703
Owner/Proprietor: Ms. Emlyn Q. DeGannes
Phone: 302-793-3424
Email: mejahinc@yahoo.com
Opened in: 2000
Last updated: 2016-03-07 (16)

23 - Chez Alpha Books
Behind YumYums-Ouakam
Cite Africa Dakar, Senegal, DKR
Owner/Proprietor: Angela Franklin-Faye
Phone: +221 33 8206359
Email: maizie@chezalphabks.com
Opened in: 2011
Last updated: 2019-11-09 (203)

24 - Pyramid Books

Boynton Beach, FL
Owner/Proprietor: Denise & Shaka Akbar
Phone: 561-731-4422
Email: pyramidbks@aol.com
Opened in: 1993
Last updated: 2019-07-23 (91)

25 - Dare Books
245 N. U.S. Highway 17-92
Longwood, FL 32750
Owner/Proprietor: Desmond A. Reid
Phone: 407-673-3273
Email: DesmondR@darebooks.com
Opened in: 1982
Last updated: 2014-03-19 (118)

26 - The Gathering Awareness and Book Center
314 N Devillers St
Pensacola, FL 32501
Owner/Proprietor: Georgia Blackmon
Phone: (850) 438-4882
Email: awarenessg@thegathering.gccoxmail.com
Opened in: 1989
Last updated: 2017-12-03 (179)

27 - Cultured Books
833 22nd St. S.
St. Petersburg, FL 33712
Owner/Proprietor: Lorielle J. Hollaway
Phone: (727) 328-4822
Email: stpetereads@culturedbooks.com
Opened in: 2017
Last updated: 2017-12-18 (181)

28 - Best-Rich African Diaspora Literature Museum
1463 Tampa Park Plaza
Tampa, FL 33605
Owner/Proprietor: Skip Richardson, Gigi Best-Richardson
Phone: (813) 944-2112
Email: bradlcmuseum@gmail.com
Opened in: 2018
Last updated: 0000-00-00 (193)

29 - Présence Africaine
25 bis rue des Ecoles 75005
Paris, FR 75005
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: +33 (0)1 43 54 15 88
Email: presaf@club-internet.fr
Opened in: 1949
Last updated: 2019-07-27 (196)

30 - Medu Bookstore, Greenbriar Mall
2841 Greenbriar Parkway
Atlanta, GA 30331
Owner/Proprietor: Nia Damali
Phone: 404-346-3263
Email: nia@medubooks.com
Opened in: 1989
Last updated: 2014-03-19 (22)

31 - Sisters Bookshop
209 Edgewood Ave S.E.
Atlanta, GA 30303
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: (404) 585-6243
Email: svbbooks@yahoo.com
Opened in: 0000
Last updated: 2014-04-04 (138)

32 - The Shrine of the Black Madonna
946 Ralph D. Abernathy Blvd SW
Atlanta, GA 30310
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: 404-549-8676
Email: buyer@shrinebookstore.com
Opened in: 1970
Last updated: 2019-11-06 (25)

33 - The Listening Tree
2308 Candler Rd.
Decatur, GA 30032
Owner/Proprietor: Omar and Kimberly Finley
Phone:
Email: listeningtreebooks@gmail.com
Opened in: 2014
Last updated: 2019-11-08 (204)

34 - Black Dot Cultural Center
6984 Main St.
Lithonia, GA 30058
Owner/Proprietor: Adigun Kazemde Ajamu
Phone: 404-519-8107
Email: info@blackdotcc.com
Opened in: 2017
Last updated: 2018-12-13 (191)

35 - Book Boutique
2929 Turner Hill Rd
Lithonia, GA 30038
Owner/Proprietor: Rodney Daniel and Monique S. Hall
Phone: 770-484-4595
Email: bookboutiqueatl@gmail.com
Opened in: 2018
Last updated: 2018-12-10 (182)

36 - All Things Inspiration Giftique

Mableton, GA
Owner/Proprietor: LaVonya Tensley
Phone:
Email: allthingsinspirationgift@gmail.com
Opened in: 0000
Last updated: 0000-00-00 (201)

37 - NuBian Books
1540 Southlak Pkwy, Ste 7A
Morrow, GA 30260
Owner/Proprietor: Marcus Williams.
Phone: 678-422-6120
Email: marcus3x@yahoo.com
Opened in: 1999
Last updated: 2014-03-19 (24)

38 - Lushena Bookstore
607 Country Club Drive, Unit E
Bensenville, IL 60106
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: 630-238-8708
Email: lushenabooks@gmail.com
Opened in: 0000
Last updated: 2012-03-24 (31)

39 - Da Book Joint
2311 E. 71 St
Chicago, IL
Owner/Proprietor: Verlean Singletary
Phone: 773-655-3146
Email: verlean@dabookjoint.com
Opened in: 2007
Last updated: 2014-03-21 (124)

40 - Frontline Bookstore
5206 S Harper Ave
Chicago, IL 60615
Owner/Proprietor: Sekou
Phone: (773) 288-7718
Email:
Opened in: 1987
Last updated: 2014-03-14 (136)

41 - Semicolon Bookstore & Gallery
515 N Halsted St
Chicago, IL 60642
Owner/Proprietor: DL Mullen
Phone: 312-877-5170
Email: info@semicolonchi.com
Opened in: 2019
Last updated: 2019-09-11 (199)

42 - The Underground Bookstore
1727 E. 87th Street
Chicago, IL 60617
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: 773-768-8869
Email: TheUndergroundBookstore@gmail.com
Opened in: 1992
Last updated: 2014-03-19 (121)

43 - Black Expression Book Source
9500 5 Western Ave
Evergreen Park, IL 60805
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: 708-424-4338
Email:
Opened in: 2000
Last updated: 2014-03-19 (28)

44 - Afriware Books, Co
1701 S. 1st Ave., Suite 503
Maywood, IL 60153
Owner/Proprietor: Nzingha Nommo
Phone: 708-223-8081
Email: afriwarebooks@afriwarebooks.com
Opened in: 1993
Last updated: 2015-12-13 (27)

45 - The Brain Lair Bookstore
714 E Jefferson Blvd
South Bend, IN 46617
Owner/Proprietor: Kathy M Burnette, Book Dean
Phone: 574-400-5572
Email:
Opened in: 2018
Last updated: 2018-07-06 (190)

46 - Bookophilia
92 Hope Road
Kingston, JA
Owner/Proprietor: David Thomas
Phone: 1 876-978-5248
Email: info@bookophilia.com
Opened in: 2008
Last updated: 2016-03-27 (163)

47 - The Wild Fig Books
726 N. Limestone
Lexington, KY 40508
Owner/Proprietor: Ronald Davis & Crystal Wilkinson
Phone: 859-381-8133
Email: wildfigbooks@gmail.com
Opened in: 2011
Last updated: 2014-03-19 (89)

48 - Akoma Novelties & Books
1401 Triplett St. Suite. B
Owensboro, KY 42303
Owner/Proprietor: Brittney Odom & Sharkoo Barrett
Phone: (812) 463-2427
Email: info.akomalife@gmail.com
Opened in: 2015
Last updated: 2019-07-08 (192)

49 - Between the Lines Bookstore
4242 Government Street Suite #113
Baton Rouge, LA 70806
Owner/Proprietor: Kim Knight
Phone: (225) 389-6392
Email: betweenthelinebooks@icloud.com
Opened in: 2014
Last updated: 2015-06-09 (151)

50 - SanKofa With Me
7720 Linwood
Caddo, LA 71106
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: 318-560-1136
Email: sankofawithme@gmail.com
Opened in: 2017
Last updated: 2017-12-26 (184)

51 - Community Book Center
2523 Bayou Road
New Orleans, LA 70119
Owner/Proprietor: Vera Warren-Williams
Phone: 504-948-7323
Email:
Opened in: 1983
Last updated: 2014-03-19 (34)

52 - Nubian Cultural Outreach Center
7720 Linwood Ave
Shreveport, LA 71106
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: (318) 686-4477
Email:
Opened in: 0000
Last updated: 2014-04-06 (139)

53 - New Beacon Books
76 Stroud Green Road
United Kingdom, LN N4 3EN
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: +44 20 7272 4889
Email: newbeaconbooksuk@gmail.com
Opened in: 1966
Last updated: 2019-07-27 (195)

54 - The Jazzhole
168 Awolowo Road
Ikoyi, LOS
Owner/Proprietor: Kunle Tejuosho
Phone: +234 706 064 8580
Email:
Opened in: 1991
Last updated: 2019-11-10 (205)

55 - Frugal Bookstore
57 Warren Street Roxbury, MA 02119
Roxbury, MA 02119
Owner/Proprietor: Leonard Egerton
Phone: 617-541-1722
Email: frugal_books@yahoo.com
Opened in: 0000
Last updated: 2019-11-17 (119)

56 - Olive Tree Books-n-Voices
97 Hancock Street
Springfield, MA 01109
Owner/Proprietor: Zee Johnson
Phone: 413-737-6400
Email: olivetreebooks@msn.com
Opened in: 2004
Last updated: 2014-03-19 (42)

57 - MasterWorks Books
2703 Curry Drive
Adelphi, MD 20783
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: 301-422-2168
Email:
Opened in: 2000
Last updated: 2014-03-21 (36)

58 - Everyone's Place
1356 W. North Avenue
Baltimore, MD 21217
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: 410-728-0877
Email:
Opened in: 1986
Last updated: 2014-03-19 (35)

59 - Expressions Books and Frames
222 N Paca Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: (410) 783-0195
Email:
Opened in: 0000
Last updated: 0000-00-00 (166)

60 - Jay Books
400 W Lexington Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone:
Email:
Opened in: 0000
Last updated: 2016-05-13 (164)

61 - Vision Christian Bookstore
10398 Piscataway Road
Clinton, MD 20735
Owner/Proprietor: Robert & Cheryl Woodard
Phone: 301-234-0035
Email: armorofgod@comcaat.net
Opened in: 2011
Last updated: 2017-12-21 (183)

62 - Wisdom Book Center
5116 Liberty Heights Ave.
Gwynn Oak, MD 21207
Owner/Proprietor: Bro. Tehuti & Bro. Elliot
Phone: (410) 664-1946
Email: wisdombookcenter@verizon.net
Opened in: 1997
Last updated: 2016-01-27 (162)

63 - Cartel Cafe & Books Store
5011 Indian Head Highway
Oxon Hill, MD 20745
Owner/Proprietor: T. Styles
Phone: 240 724-7225
Email: cartelcafeandbooks@yahoo.com
Opened in: 2008
Last updated: 2014-03-19 (120)

64 - Loyalty Books
823 Ellsworth Drive
Silver Spring, MD 20910
Owner/Proprietor: Hannah Oliver Depp
Phone: 443-466-6773
Email: hannah@loyaltybookstores.com
Opened in: 2019
Last updated: 2020-04-17 (207)

65 - Silver Spring Books
938 Bonifant Street
Silver Spring, MD 20910
Owner/Proprietor: Cynthia Parker
Phone: 301-587-7484
Email:
Opened in: 0000
Last updated: 2015-12-06 (159)

66 - Urban Knowledge Bookstore
3731 Branch Avenue
Temple Hills, MD 20748
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: (301) 702-0717
Email:
Opened in: 0000
Last updated: 2016-05-13 (165)

67 - Source Booksellers
4240 Cass Ave Suite 105
Detroit, MI 48201
Owner/Proprietor: Janet Jones
Phone: 313-832-1155
Email: info@sourcebooksdetroit.com
Opened in: 1989
Last updated: 2014-06-03 (146)

68 - Off the Beaten Path Books & Cafe
33314 Grand River Ave
Farmington, MI 48336
Owner/Proprietor: Salathiel Palland
Phone: (248) 987-6055
Email:
Opened in: 2010
Last updated: 2014-04-06 (141)

69 - Nandi's Knowledge Cafe
12511 Woodward Ave
Highland Park, MI 48203
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: (313) 865-1288
Email:
Opened in: 0000
Last updated: 2014-11-08 (152)

70 - Detroit Book City
24361 Greenfield Rd, Ste. 305
Southfield, MI 48075
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: (248) 209-6880
Email:
Opened in: 2016
Last updated: 2017-12-13 (180)

71 - The Truth Bookstore
21500 Northwestern Highway, Northland Mall Store # 779
Southfield, MI 48075
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: 248-557-4824
Email:
Opened in: 1994
Last updated: 2014-03-19 (92)

72 - Hood Book Headquarters
20900 Dequindre Road
Warren, MI 48091
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone:
Email:
Opened in: 2000
Last updated: 2014-03-21 (107)

73 - Black Stone Bookstore & Cultural Center
214 W. Michigan Ave
Ypsilanti, MI 48197
Owner/Proprietor: Kip Johnson and Carlos Franklin
Phone: (734) 961-7376
Email: info.blackstoneproject@gmail.com
Opened in: 2013
Last updated: 2014-03-21 (134)

74 - Ancestry Books
1104 W. Broadway Ave. North
Minneapolis, MN 55411
Owner/Proprietor: Verna Wong and Chaun Webster
Phone: 612-521-4090
Email: hello@ancestrybooksmn.com
Opened in: 2014
Last updated: 2016-11-28 (169)

75 - Progressive Emporium & Education Center
1108 North Sarah Ave.
St. Louis, MO 63113
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: (314) 875-9277
Email: progressiveemporium@yahoo.com
Opened in: 0000
Last updated: 2014-05-01 (144)

76 - EyeSeeMe
7827 Olive Blvd
University City, MO 63130
Owner/Proprietor: Pamela Blair
Phone: (314) 349-1122
Email: customerservice@eyeseeme.com
Opened in: 2015
Last updated: 2016-01-15 (161)

77 - Magnolia Tree Books
310 N. Magnolia Street, Suite 101A
Laurel, MS 39440
Owner/Proprietor: zaji
Phone: 601-342-0990
Email: info@magnoliatreebooks.com
Opened in: 2013
Last updated: 2014-03-21 (130)

78 - Aframerican Book Store
3226 Lake St
Omaha, NE 68111
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone:
Email: aframerican@yahoo.com
Opened in: 2000
Last updated: 2014-03-19 (44)

79 - La Unique African American Books & Cultural Center
111 N 6th St.
Camden, NJ 08102
Owner/Proprietor: Larry Miles
Phone: (856) 338-1958
Email: Simba@launiquebooks.net
Opened in: 1992
Last updated: 2014-04-30 (143)

80 - African American Book Store
216 1st St
Hackensack, NJ 07601
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone:
Email:
Opened in: 2000
Last updated: 2014-03-19 (45)

81 - Source of Knowledge
867 Broad St
Newark, NJ 07102
Owner/Proprietor: Dexter George
Phone: (973) 824-2556
Email: sourceofknowledge867@yahoo.com
Opened in: 1998
Last updated: 2019-12-19 (157)

82 - Urban Books On Wheels
28 Old Tpke
Pleasantville, NJ 08232
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: (609) 383-9100
Email: Futuredj1164@aol.com
Opened in: 0000
Last updated: 2014-03-21 (106)

83 - Imoya Treasures, Inc
1465 Irving Street
Rahway, NJ 07065
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: 732-388-4955
Email:
Opened in: 2000
Last updated: 2014-03-21 (48)

84 - Janco Books
2202 W Charleston Blvd
Las Vegas, Nevada 89102, NV 89102
Owner/Proprietor: Christina Benton
Phone: 702-522-9286
Email: books@jancobookstore.comOpened
Opened in: 2017
Last updated: 2018-01-21 (185)

85 - The Lit. Bar
131 Alexander Avenue (btwn 134th St. & Bruckner Blvd)
Bronx, NY 10454
Owner/Proprietor: Noëlle Santos
Phone: (347) 955-3610
Email: thebronxreads@thelitbar.com
Opened in: 2019
Last updated: 2019-08-02 (197)

86 - Black Mind Book Boutique
610 New York Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11203
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: 718-774-5800
Email:
Opened in: 2000
Last updated: 2014-03-21 (52)

87 - Cafe con Libros
724 Prospect Place
Brooklyn, NY 11216
Owner/Proprietor: Kalima DeSuze
Phone: 347-460-2838
Email: info@cafeconlibrosbk.com
Opened in: 2017
Last updated: 2018-02-02 (186)

88 - Official Connection
312 Livingston Street
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: (718) 488-0006
Email: official.connection@hotmail.com
Opened in: 2010
Last updated: 2015-08-13 (142)

89 - Yoruba Book Center
610 New York Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11203
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: 718.774.5800
Email: yorubabookcenter@yahoo.com
Opened in: 0000
Last updated: 2014-03-21 (94)

90 - Zawadi Books
1382 Jefferson Avenue
Buffalo, NY 14208
Owner/Proprietor: Kenneth and Sharon Holley
Phone: (716) 903-6740
Email: jordanholley@aol.com
Opened in: 2012
Last updated: 2017-12-12 (150)

91 - Grandma's Place
84 West 120th Street
Harlem, NY 10027
Owner/Proprietor: Grandma Dawn
Phone: (212) 360-6776
Email: grandmasplaceinc@email.biz
Opened in: 2009
Last updated: 2015-01-25 (154)

92 - Blenheim Hill Books
698 Main Street, Suite A
Hobart, NY 13788
Owner/Proprietor: Cheryl Clarke Barbara Balliet &
Phone: 607-538-9222
Email: blenheimbooks1@gmail.com
Opened in: 2005
Last updated: 2017-03-10 (172)

93 - Becoming Gods Answer Bookstore
1832 Madison Ave (between 119th and 120th st)
New York, NY 10035
Owner/Proprietor: Rev Joyce Eady
Phone: 646-215-6119
Email: c.brown@becominggodsanswerbookstore.com
Opened in: 0000
Last updated: 2014-03-19 (102)

94 - Sister's Uptown Bookstore
1942 Amsterdam Avenue (at 156th Street)
New York, NY 10032
Owner/Proprietor: Janifer P. Wilson
Phone: 212-862-3680
Email:
Opened in: 2000
Last updated: 2014-03-19 (58)

95 - Mood Makers Books & Art Gallery Village Gate Square
274 N. Goodman St.
Rochester, NY 14607
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: 877.223.1730
Email: sales@moodmakersbooks.com or info@moodmakersbooks.
Opened in: 1994
Last updated: 2014-03-19 (56)

96 - Smith & Hannon Book Store
50 E Freedom Way
Cincinnati, OH 45202
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: (513) 641-2700
Email: info@smithandhannonbookstore.com
Opened in: 2003
Last updated: 2019-09-11 (200)

97 - A Cultural Exchange
12624 Larchmere Blvd.
Cleveland, OH 44120
Owner/Proprietor: Deborah McHamm
Phone: 216-229-8300
Email: aculturalexchange@fsbcglobal.net
Opened in: 1991
Last updated: 2014-03-19 (64)

98 - The African Book Shelf
1324Q Euclid Ave
Cleveland, OH 44112
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: 216-681-6511
Email:
Opened in: 2000
Last updated: 2014-03-21 (61)

99 - Black Art Plus
43 Parsons Ave.
Columbus, OH 43215
Owner/Proprietor: Mike Miller
Phone: 614-469-9980
Email: blackartplus@att.net
Opened in: 1987
Last updated: 2014-03-19 (62)

100 - The Book Suite
887 E. Long Street
Columbus, OH 43203
Owner/Proprietor: James
Phone: 614-252-4552
Email: james@thebooksuite.com
Opened in: 0000
Last updated: 2014-03-21 (112)

101 - Ujamaa Book Store
1493 E Livingston Ave
Columbus, OH 43205
Owner/Proprietor: Mustafaa Shabazz
Phone: 614-258-4633
Email: juneteenthohio@fuse.net or smustafaa@aol.com
Opened in: 1997
Last updated: 2014-03-19 (66)

102 - Mocha Books
5525 E 51ST STREET, SUITE 205
Tulsa, OK 74135
Owner/Proprietor: McGlory Shionka
Phone: 918-236-9019
Email: mochabooks@gmail.com
Opened in: 2019
Last updated: 2019-11-03 (202)

103 - Knowledge Bookstore
177 Queen Street West
Brampton, ON L6Y 1M5
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: 905-459-9875
Email: sales@knowledgebookstore.com
Opened in: 0000
Last updated: 2014-12-08 (153)

104 - The Black Reserve Bookstore
319 W. Main Street, Suite #6
Lansdale, PA 19446
Owner/Proprietor: Anwar Muhammad
Phone: 267-221-3090
Email: theblackreservebookstore@gmail.com
Opened in: 2017
Last updated: 2018-03-24 (188)

105 - Books & Stuff
23 W Maplewood Mall
Philadelphia, PA 19144
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone:
Email: 215-844-0844
Opened in: 2015
Last updated: 2017-09-24 (176)

106 - Color Book Gallery
6353 Germantown Ave
Philadelphia, PA 19144
Owner/Proprietor: Deborah Gary
Phone: 215-844-4200
Email:
Opened in: 0000
Last updated: 2015-09-11 (156)

107 - Hakim's Bookstore and Gift Shop
210 S 52nd St
Philadelphia, PA 19139
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: (215) 474-9495
Email: bookstorehakims@gmail.com
Opened in: 1959
Last updated: 2014-03-19 (70)

108 - Harriett's Bookshop
258 E. Girard Ave
Philadelphia, PA 19125
Owner/Proprietor: Jeannine Cook
Phone:
Email: info@harriettsbookshop.com
Opened in: 2020
Last updated: 2020-04-17 (209)

109 - Uncle Bobbie's Coffee & Books
5445 Germantown Ave
Philadelphia, PA 19144
Owner/Proprietor: Marc Lamont Hill
Phone: (215) 403-7058
Email:
Opened in: 2017
Last updated: 2017-11-27 (178)

110 - Turning Page Bookshop

Goose Creek, SC
Owner/Proprietor: VaLinda Miller
Phone:
Email:
Opened in: 2019
Last updated: 2019-05-13 (194)

111 - Malcolm X Center for Self-Determination
321 W. Antrim Drive
Greenville, SC 29606
Owner/Proprietor: Efia Nwangaza
Phone: (864) 239-0470
Email: wmxp955@gmail.com
Opened in: 1991
Last updated: 2014-06-28 (149)

112 - The African Place
581 N 3rd St
Memphis, TN 38105
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: (901) 524-0800
Email: theafricanplace@aol.com
Opened in: 0000
Last updated: 2015-11-02 (158)

113 - Alkebu-Lan Images Bookstore & Gift Shop
2721 Jefferson Street
Nashville, TN 37208
Owner/Proprietor: Yusef Harris
Phone: 615-321-4111
Email: alkebulanimages@gmail.com
Opened in: 1986
Last updated: 2015-01-07 (73)

114 - Pan-African Connection
828 Fourth Ave.
Dallas, TX 75226
Owner/Proprietor: Akwete Tyehimba (CEO)
Phone: 214-943-8262
Email: panafric@airmail.net
Opened in: 1989
Last updated: 2014-03-19 (96)

115 - Enda's Booktique
428 N. Main Street
Duncanville, TX 75116
Owner/Proprietor: E Jean Pemberton Jones
Phone: 972-460-6362
Email: endasbooktique@gmail.com
Opened in: 2019
Last updated: 0000-00-00 (210)

116 - The Dock Bookshop
6637 Meadowbrook Dr.
Fort Worth, TX 76112
Owner/Proprietor: Donya Craddock
Phone: 817-457-5700
Email: thedockbookshop@gmail.com
Opened in: 2008
Last updated: 2014-03-19 (6)

117 - African Imports Houston
12300 North Fwy Ste 147 Greenspoint Mall
Houston, TX 77060
Owner/Proprietor: Obi
Phone: (281) 875-0056
Email: donbasel@yahoo.com
Opened in: 1997
Last updated: 2014-03-21 (131)

118 - Black World Books
500 N Fort Hood Street Suite 504
Killeen, TX 76541
Owner/Proprietor: Maeva Jackson
Phone: (254) 554-5559
Email: info@blackworldbooks.com
Opened in: 2016
Last updated: 2017-04-17 (173)

119 - Harambee Books and Artworks
1132 Prince Street
Alexandria, VA 22314
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: 703-299-2591
Email: info@harambeebooks.org
Opened in: 2016
Last updated: 2018-02-05 (187)

120 - Riches In Reading
912 Canal Dr.
Chesapeake, VA 23323
Owner/Proprietor: Kenyatta Ingram
Phone: 929-445-7427
Email: info@richesinreading.com
Opened in: 2015
Last updated: 2017-01-04 (171)

121 - Urban Moon Books: The Indie Author Outlet
Chesapeake Square Mall, 4200 Portsmouth Blvd
Chesapeake, VA 23321
Owner/Proprietor: Fanita Pendleton
Phone: 757-465-3858
Email: urbanmoonbooksandmore@gmail.com
Opened in: 2016
Last updated: 2016-05-26 (167)

122 - House of Consciousness
633 West 35th Street
Norfolk, VA 23508
Owner/Proprietor:
Phone: 757-314-1943
Email: hocbulletin@gmail.com
Opened in: 1986
Last updated: 2015-03-17 (137)

123 - Timbuktu Bookstore
3601 East Ocean View Avenue, Unit C.
Norfolk, VA 23518
Owner/Proprietor: Bro. Furqaan S. Ali
Phone: 757-374-4591
Email:
Opened in: 2003
Last updated: 2014-04-06 (116)

124 - Positive Vibes
6220 B Indian River Rd.
Virginia Beach, VA 23464
Owner/Proprietor: A Partnership
Phone: 757-523-1399
Email:
Opened in: 1992
Last updated: 2014-03-19 (82)

Please let us know about any inaccuracies by entering corrections in the comments section at the bottom of this page.

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Add a Black-owned bookstore to this list. Read about AALBC's Founder's favorite 10 Bookstores.

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Panel from The Institute for Anit-racist education 

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Panel from The Institute for Anit-racist education 

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BOOKS | August 10

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This beloved bestseller-over 180,000 copies sold-has helped caregivers worldwide keep themselves emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, and physically healthy in the face of the sometimes overwhelming traumas they confront every day.

A longtime trauma worker, Laura van Dernoot Lipsky offers a deep and empathetic survey of the often-unrecognized toll taken on those working to make the world a better place. We may feel tired, cynical, or numb or like we can never do enough. These, and other symptoms, affect us individually and collectively, sapping the energy and effectiveness we so desperately need if we are to benefit humankind, other living things, and the planet itself.

In Trauma Stewardship, we are called to meet these challenges in an intentional way. Lipsky offers a variety of simple and profound practices, drawn from modern psychology and a range of spiritual traditions, that enable us to look carefully at our reactions and motivations and discover new sources of energy and renewal. She includes interviews with successful trauma stewards from different walks of life and even uses New Yorker cartoons to illustrate her points.

"We can do meaningful work in a way that works for us and for those we serve," Lipsky writes. "Taking care of ourselves while taking care of others allows us to contribute to our societies with such impact that we will leave a legacy informed by our deepest wisdom and greatest gifts instead of burdened by our struggles and despair."

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trauma stewardship: an everyday guide to caring for self while caring for others

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self-help / self-management / stress management

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self help; mental health; compassion fatigue; caregivers; burnout; trauma; self help books for women; self help books; self improvement books; self development books; personal growth books; health; empathy; domestic violence; how to; take care of yourself; overwhelmed; therapy; empathetic leadership; stewardship; how to be a better leader; leadership; self care; stress; anxiety; stress management; wellness; medicine; happiness; motivational books; gratitude; motivation; medical books; sociology books; medicine books

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self-help / self-management / stress management

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Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others

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Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others - Kindle edition by van Dernoot Lipsky, Laura, Burk, Connie. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others.

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Access our Pre-Recorded Panel

Despite the widely held belief that trauma only impacts students of color living in low-income communities, research has proven that trauma is ubiquitous, appearing in all classrooms.

In this panel, we explore how trauma directly affects learning and behavior in the classroom. Additionally, we share some of our favorite tips to help teachers utilize a brain-based, trauma-informed approach.
Panel was originally recorded on August 10, 2020.

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Despite the widely held belief that trauma only impacts students of color living in low-income communities, research has proven that trauma is ubiquitous, appearing in all classrooms. In this panel, we explore how trauma directly affects learning and behavior in the classroom. Additionally, we share some of our favorite tips to help teachers utilize a brain-based, trauma-informed approach.

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70 Elearning activities, templates and tutorials

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G Suite

It's easy to feel anxious, overwhelmed and frustrated if you're asked to create elearning activities and teach remotely because of a school closure.

You might be asking ...

What are my students going to do?

How can they continue learning at a high level?

Can I maintain that teacher/student connection through elearning?

How can I keep up with the demands of elearning?

Some ideas and examples to follow can help. Having some plug-and-play activities to assign students can help, too -- even if you need to adjust them to fit your students' needs.

We've got you covered.

In this post, you'll find 100 elearning activities, templates and tutorials. They'll help you create elearning activities that lend themselves to powerful learning when students are away from school.

Some ideas to keep in mind as you roll out your eLearning activities:

Keep communication with students and parents at the forefront. Be ready for questions. Make your communication more thorough than you anticipate.

Simplicity is key. Activities that are too complicated can be hard to follow through without the proper support.

Make space for students' emotional needs, too. Their routine is disrupted. They don't get to see their teacher or their fellow students. Help them to make those connections while they're away.

Don't be too hard on yourself. If you've never taught with eLearning activities, it'll be a learning process. Do your best. Learn and improve.

Lean on others for support. Use social media and colleagues in your school/district to brainstorm ideas.

Here are over 100 remote learning activities, templates and tutorials you can use tomorrow:

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Downloadable planning guides

Lifetime access

Forum for sharing ideas

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101 Practical Ways to Ditch That Textbook, Matt's insanely practical guide full of new teaching ideas.

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Teach better. Save time. Make a difference.

The short how-to tutorials on Google Classroom are EVERYWHERE. But how do we teach well with it? In this book, you'll find practical ideas to do great teaching with Google Classroom and thrive.

Looking for more remote learning resources? Our distance learning page has TONS of resources for bringing learning directly to your students no matter where they are! 💻 100 remote learning activities templates and tutorials
💻 Distance learning lesson planning guides and templates
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100 remote learning activities, templates and tutorials

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Remote learning activities can be fun AND promote quality learning. Here are lots of examples and templates to use!It's easy to feel anxious, overwhelmed

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Formative assessment-discovering what students know while they're still in the process of learning it-can be tricky. Designing just the right assessment can feel high stakes-for teachers, not students-because we're using it to figure out what comes next. Are we ready to move on? Do our students need a different path into the concepts? Or, more likely, which students are ready to move on and which need a different path?

When it comes to figuring out what our students really know, we have to look at more than one kind of information. A single data point-no matter how well designed the quiz, presentation, or problem behind it-isn't enough information to help us plan the next step in our instruction.

Add to that the fact that different learning tasks are best measured in different ways, and we can see why we need a variety of formative assessment tools we can deploy quickly, seamlessly, and in a low-stakes way-all while not creating an unmanageable workload. That's why it's important to keep it simple: Formative assessments generally just need to be checked, not graded, as the point is to get a basic read on the progress of individuals, or the class as a whole.

7 Approaches to Formative Assessment

1. Entry and exit slips: Those marginal minutes at the beginning and end of class can provide some great opportunities to find out what kids remember. Start the class off with a quick question about the previous day's work while students are getting settled-you can ask differentiated questions written out on chart paper or projected on the board, for example.

A quick way to see the big picture if you use paper exit tickets is to sort the papers into three piles: Students got the point; they sort of got it; and they didn't get it. The size of the stacks is your clue about what to do next.

No matter the tool, the key to keeping students engaged in the process of just-walked-in or almost-out-the-door formative assessment is the questions. Ask students to write for one minute on the most meaningful thing they learned. You can try prompts like:

What are three things you learned, two things you're still curious about, and one thing you don't understand?

How would you have done things differently today, if you had the choice?

What I found interesting about this work was...

Right now I'm feeling...

Today was hard because...

Or skip the words completely and have students draw or circle emojis to represent their assessment of their understanding.

2. Low-stakes quizzes and polls: If you want to find out whether your students really know as much as you think they know, polls and quizzes created with Socrative or Quizlet or in-class games and tools like Quizalize, Kahoot, FlipQuiz, Gimkit, Plickers, and Flippity can help you get a better sense of how much they really understand. (Grading quizzes but assigning low point values is a great way to make sure students really try: The quizzes matter, but an individual low score can't kill a student's grade.) Kids in many classes are always logged in to these tools, so formative assessments can be done very quickly. Teachers can see each kid's response, and determine both individually and in aggregate how students are doing.

Because you can design the questions yourself, you determine the level of complexity. Ask questions at the bottom of Bloom's taxonomy and you'll get insight into what facts, vocabulary terms, or processes kids remember. Ask more complicated questions ("What advice do you think Katniss Everdeen would offer Scout Finch if the two of them were talking at the end of chapter 3?"), and you'll get more sophisticated insights.

3. Dipsticks: So-called alternative formative assessments are meant to be as easy and quick as checking the oil in your car, so they're sometimes referred to as dipsticks. These can be things like asking students to:

write a letter explaining a key idea to a friend,

draw a sketch to visually represent new knowledge, or

do a think, pair, share exercise with a partner.

Your own observations of students at work in class can provide valuable data as well, but they can be tricky to keep track of. Taking quick notes on a tablet or smartphone, or using a copy of your roster, is one approach. A focused observation form is more formal and can help you narrow your note-taking focus as you watch students work.

4. Interview assessments: If you want to dig a little deeper into students' understanding of content, try discussion-based assessment methods. Casual chats with students in the classroom can help them feel at ease even as you get a sense of what they know, and you may find that five-minute interview assessments work really well. Five minutes per student would take quite a bit of time, but you don't have to talk to every student about every project or lesson.

You can also shift some of this work to students using a peer-feedback process called TAG feedback (Tell your peer something they did well, Ask a thoughtful question, Give a positive suggestion). When you have students share the feedback they have for a peer, you gain insight into both students' learning.

For more introverted students-or for more private assessments-use Flipgrid, Explain Everything, or Seesaw to have students record their answers to prompts and demonstrate what they can do.

5. Methods that incorporate art: Consider using visual art or photography or videography as an assessment tool. Whether students draw, create a collage, or sculpt, you may find that the assessment helps them synthesize their learning. Or think beyond the visual and have kids act out their understanding of the content. They can create a dance to model cell mitosis or act out stories like Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" to explore the subtext.

6. Misconceptions and errors: Sometimes it's helpful to see if students understand why something is incorrect or why a concept is hard. Ask students to explain the " muddiest point" in the lesson-the place where things got confusing or particularly difficult or where they still lack clarity. Or do a misconception check: Present students with a common misunderstanding and ask them to apply previous knowledge to correct the mistake, or ask them to decide if a statement contains any mistakes at all, and then discuss their answers.

You can use sticky notes to get a quick insight into what areas your kids think they need to work on. Ask them to pick their own trouble spot from three or four areas where you think the class as a whole needs work, and write those areas in separate columns on a whiteboard. Have you students answer on a sticky note and then put the note in the correct column-you can see the results at a glance.

Several self-assessments let the teacher see what every kid thinks very quickly. For example, you can use colored stacking cups that allow kids to flag that they're all set (green cup), working through some confusion (yellow), or really confused and in need of help (red).

Similar strategies involve using participation cards for discussions (each student has three cards-"I agree," "I disagree," and "I don't know how to respond") and thumbs-up responses (instead of raising a hand, students hold a fist at their belly and put their thumb up when they're ready to contribute). Students can instead use six hand gestures to silently signal that they agree, disagree, have something to add, and more. All of these strategies give teachers an unobtrusive way to see what students are thinking.

No matter which tools you select, make time to do your own reflection to ensure that you're only assessing the content and not getting lost in the assessment fog. If a tool is too complicated, is not reliable or accessible, or takes up a disproportionate amount of time, it's OK to put it aside and try something different.

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7 Smart, Fast Ways to Do Formative Assessment

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Within these methods you'll find close to 40 tools and tricks for finding out what your students know while they're still learning.

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3 simple online energizers & icebreakers for your virtual meetings ⚡⚡⚡

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3 Easy Icebreaker Games to Play on Video Conferences

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#education #teaching #teacher #teachersofinstagram #teachers #classroom #educator #quotes #teach