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This is one of the coolest programs! It lets students explore different cultures by learning about students just like them but in different parts of the world. It shares stories of their day-to-day lives along with more specifics like the food they like to eat. This could easily fit into either social studies or english curriculum and promote cultural aptitude which is one step to having a more culturally aware classroom. Be aware, only some stories can be accessed for free, others require a relatively inexpensive membership with financial aid available for whole districts.

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One Globe Kids - make friends around the world

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One Globe Kids is an award-winning library of stories from children around the world, friendship activities and education resources. Let's explore the world together!

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In order to create and maintain a culturally responsive classroom, educators must be consistent and not lose site of the importance. This checklist will help to keep educators progressing towards a culturally responsive classroom. It also includes multiple different levels so that a teacher can see exactly how much they have progressed and where they are presently at. Also in this resource is a worksheet for the teacher to utilize to ensure they are not viewing students in the classroom through a biased lens.

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Important Tips for Teachers Striving to Become Culturally Responsive Educators

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Important Tips for Teachers Striving to Become Culturally Responsive Educators

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This website provides informative steps that describe how to go about becoming culturally responsive. I like that it gives some of the do's and  don'ts of this process as well. I particularly like the section that talks about using things from  the student's culture or home life like subway maps or pictures to guide your lesson. This would not only give them some prior knowledge, but also encourage their participation and feeling of belonging.

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Reading about culturally responsive teaching is one thing, trying it in the classroom is quite another. Here's what the experts-and the teachers and ESPs just like you who have tried the approach-think you should know. Some of this may sound familiar, but consider how intensely you're delving into these methods.

Question Everything You Know

Start by asking yourself a few questions: Do I know the cultural background of each of my students? Do I integrate literature and resources from their cultures into my lessons? Do I consistently begin my lessons with what students already know from home, community, and school? Do I understand the differences between academic language and my students' social language, and do I find ways to bridge the two?

Contemplate the home life of the student who is sleepy-eyed or apathetic on a particular morning. Perhaps one of his family responsibilities is caring for a younger sibling or an after-school job. The student with the incomplete homework might be hobbled by her parents' inability to speak English. A student who doesn't turn in an assignment describing her house might be reluctant to admit in front of classmates that she lives in a homeless shelter.

"You can't fix most of these things," says researcher Jacqueline Jordan Irvine, "but knowing about them can help you make adjustments and provide support."

Consider cultural cues as well. In some cultures, making eye contact with authority figures or speaking loudly to them is considered disrespectful. "Students' frames of reference can clash with classroom norms," says American Indian education specialist Denny Hurtado. "Some Native Americans want to silently try to work on things before speaking," he says. "But teachers fear that they just don't want to participate."

Says Meany Middle School teacher Wendy Miller, "Examine your frame of reference." Or, as Irvine puts it, "Be curious."

Don't Just Guess or Fall Back on Old Assumptions

Instead, let students talk about elements of their culture, both positive and negative, removing the burden from you to speculate or ask questions that you fear might be too probing. You can start with an assignment that asks students to discuss their life outside of school. For instance, in NEA's educator guide Culture, Abilities, Resilience, Effort: Strategies for Closing the Achievement Gaps, teachers are urged to have students describe what they enjoy doing outside of school, with whom they spend most of their time, and whom they admire. Having children elaborate on their culture provides a shortcut to learn more about them, while they practice writing skills.

In one activity, students write about their culture's celebrations, greeting styles, beliefs about hospitality, the role of family, and attitudes about personal space and privacy. Another has them pen short descriptions of the languages they speak, the music they listen to, the foods they eat at home, what is considered polite and rude in their family, what manners they have been taught, what they wear on special occasions, and what role extended family plays in their life. Imagine how much of an icebreaker such an activity could be.

Get Out of the Classroom

Irvine believes the first step toward cultural competency is heading out into students' neighborhoods. "Go to their homes, go to the African-American churches, go to the Hispanic community centers." But proceed respectfully. "You have to have cultural ambassadors," Irvine says, pointing to fellow staff members, community leaders, or a parent with whom the teacher already has a connection as potential liaisons. "You have to be invited in. Don't just show up to an African-American church like it's a field trip." Each semester, Irvine, who is Black, brings her teaching students to such gathering places in Atlanta. "Once teachers made the effort, the respect for them rose," she says. Stepping into new environments is rarely easy, but can pay significant dividends. "We have to step outside of our comfort zones and push ourselves," says NEA's Denise Alston. "It will make a difference to the child."

Parent-teacher meetings are valuable tools, but the culturally responsive teacher moves beyond the traditional framework for such get-togethers, considering, for example, the schedule of parents working more than one job. Find out if your district has translators or cultural interpreters available and invite them to attend. Or consider meeting with parents at a location in their community.

In Seattle, grant money-including a $250,000 grant from the NEA Foundation-helps pay for teachers to spend days out in the community, familiarizing themselves with the culture of the students it sends to school.

Teach Them Using What They Already Know

Consider your minority and low-income students' experiences as valuable tools, not deficits, says Alston. It's called an "assets-based model," and it means taking what others might discount as problems for the child-poverty, English as a second language-and viewing them as building blocks for perseverance and resilience.

Using your newly widened frame of reference (remember the first point?), try recalibrating your lessons to match their experiences. For instance, when giving a geography lesson, use the names and patterns of students' neighborhood streets. In social studies, do a substantial unit on South America, Africa, or Asia, inviting students to talk about what they know about the lands from which their families hail. Have your math students write a rap song to describe a principle, such as how to reduce fractions. If your elementary school students use public transportation, have them bring in bus or subway schedules and use them as the focal point for a lesson on time or map reading. "It says to a child, 'You bring something,'" says Alston, "and it lets you build on that."

East Haven, Connecticut, teacher Joseph Marangell's ninth-grade history students spend the first five minutes of the period writing in journals "about issues relevant to both their own lives and the history curriculum," he says. The East Haven High students then share their writing, "providing a springboard for each day's lesson."

Use the Work of Those Ahead of You

Don't try to reinvent the wheel when it comes to selecting appropriate books or lesson plans. Hurtado recalls the day he decided to talk about American Indian canoes in conjunction with a reading lesson and opened a book on the topic. The pictures misidentified American Indian tribes-something he, as a member of the Skokomish Tribe, quickly spotted, but someone else might not have realized.

With that in mind, he and partner Magda Costantino did the heavy lifting, designing their American Indian reading curriculum on a DVD that contains reading passages, photos, and video clips, including interviews with tribal elders. This fall, the pair is adapting the program for the U.S. Department of Education to use nationwide. A similar effort is in full swing in Wisconsin, where members of the state's 11 tribes have partnered with the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC) in developing a culturally responsive education package. Supported with NEA and WEAC grants, the package includes a teacher's guide, DVDs, posters, and magazines. (Head to www. nea.org/crt for more culturally responsive teaching tools.)

Reach out to those who have come before you, too. Within the Black community, retired teachers can be tapped as a resource to share their strategies for reaching ethnic minorities. "There are people out there who know how to do it," says Irvine. "We need to find them.

Know That You're Supported

For NEA, promoting culturally responsive teaching is not subject to the fickle winds of education reform. It's part of the Association's resolutions, which state clearly that ethnic-minority teachers must be involved in selecting educational materials and those resources should contain points of view that realistically portray ethnic minorities' lives. NEA plans to allocate $200,000 over the next two years to promote adoption of cultural competence standards for educators in five policy arenas affecting educator preparation, induction, and professional development.

Tap into Lesson Plans

Culturally responsive lessons available in books and online can often be adapted to address different cultures and different grades. "Make it personal for your students," says Hurtado, and "work with your local communities so it's authentic."

For example, the book Teaching About Asian Pacific Americans offers an adaptable business and marketing lesson. Students select a magazine and compare the number of ads featuring Asian-American models with the total number of ads, and describe the product and company that these models promote. Students then discuss or write about how the ad maintains or breaks stereotypes. Does it have derogatory images or language? Students are asked how they might recreate the ad.

Visit www.nea.org/crt for additional examples of lessons geared toward American Indians, Blacks, and Hispanics.

Return to Resources

Return to It's There: Talk About It

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Reading about culturally responsive teaching is one thing, trying it in the classroom is quite another. Here's what the experts-and the teachers and ESPs just like you who have tried the approach-think you should know. Some of this may sound familiar, but consider how intensely you're delving into these methods.

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Responsible Decision Making Wheel Activity

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Responsible Decision Making Wheel Activity

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This lesson plan provides a great resource for getting students to slow down and think through their decisions. It also utilizes a diagram which may help students remember the steps they are thinking through to make their responsible decision. The activity would be perfect for a class young or old, but be aware the second scenario may be too mature of content for kindergarten or first grade level.

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Fostering Social Awareness Activity- Simulated Glasses

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Fostering Social Awareness Activity- Simulated Glasses

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This PDF is full of great classroom activities to build student social awareness. I particularly like the Simulated Glasses activity because it provides students a chance to learn more about empathy and physical differences through a different lens (literally)! The students put on masks representing different visual impairments and perform tasks.

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Building Relationship Skills Student Scavenger Hunt 

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Building Relationship Skills Student Scavenger Hunt 

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This activity is a classic beginning of the school year icebreaker that fosters relationship skills by pushing students to reach out to different students and engage in conversations about who they are. I like the topics this scavenger hunt suggests because they are more conversational and interesting than the very basics: age, birthday, etc. This can be an introduction to potentially rewarding and healthy relationships between students.

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Students and teachers form bonds quickly when exchanging information about themselves. This scavenger hunt icebreaker activity creates bonds among students and between the students and teacher. Exchanging information fosters trust and connection. As a result, the entire group feels more comfortable and open.

This activity works best for a large group. Adapt it for any group size by ensuring that each category fits more than one individual in the group.

Scavenger Hunt Icebreaker Preparation

In this icebreaker activity, participants find an individual in the group who fits the description for each of the following categories. Be sure that participants introduce themselves before asking questions of individuals they do not know.

Provide each student with a basic handout containing a list of categories, such as the one below. Instruct the students to go around the room engaging with their peers and finding out who fits which category. By the end of the activity, every student should have each of their classmates' names written down next to at least one of the categories. No student's name should appear more than twice on anyone's handout.

Icebreaker Categories

These categories may be adjusted to account for the grade, subject matter, or interest. To extend the time the icebreaker takes to complete and practice writing skills, have older students jot down each category before beginning the activity. Alternatively, type the list of categories beforehand (or simply print this one out), and hand one out to each student. Providing such a list would work well, particularly if you teach younger students.

1. Was born in February

2. Is an only child

3. Loves country music

4. Has been to Europe

5. Speaks another language

6. Likes to go camping

7. Likes to paint

8. Has a job

9. Has five or more brothers and sisters

10. Is wearing colorful socks

11. Likes to sing

12. Has been to Washington, D.C.

13. Has been on a cruise ship

14. Is double-jointed

15. Has been to more than two continents

16. Has gone whitewater rafting

17. Plays a sport

18. Likes Mexican food

19. Dislikes hamburgers

20. Has been to an art museum

21. Has (or has had) braces

22. Has met a movie star

23. Was born in the state where you are located

24. Was born outside the state where you are located

25. Has a twin

26. Has sleep problems

27. Flosses teeth daily

28. Recycles

29. Is wearing the same color you have on today (only one color need match)

30. Has eaten a whole pizza

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New Friend Scavenger Hunt Icebreaker Activity

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Students and teachers form bonds quickly when exchanging information about themselves. This scavenger hunt icebreaker activity creates bonds among students and between the students and teacher. Exchanging information fosters trust and connection. As a result, the entire group feels more comfortable and open. This activity works best for a large group.

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GoNoodle has been a favorite site of mine because the children adore it for brain breaks. I found a whole section titled Mindfulness with different self-regulatory activities including breathing and meditation techniques. The video highlighted is "Melting" where students learn how to reduce tension in their bodies. This is just one of many different self-management techniques that can help self-aware individuals to regulate.

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Practice melting away that icky frozen feeling you get when you're scared, frustrated, or angry.

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Disney's movie Inside Out does a great job of explaining the importance of emotions for young children and this activity pairs nicely with the movie for a young elementary classroom. Students fill in a bar graph style worksheet for the level of each emotion they are feeling to make themselves more aware of how they are feeling (helping to build their self-awareness). This could even be used as a daily warm-up to indicate children's attitudes coming into the classroom each day.

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Yes, I was there on opening night for Disney/Pixar's movie Inside Out!

As a child counselor and parent guide, Inside Out for me could be likened to your child's love for Minecraft or Taylor Swift. A movie that teaches kids about their emotions, memory and the inner workings of the brain... I'm in!

The movie centers on 11-year-old Riley who moves with her family from Minnesota to San Francisco. We get to follow along as her emotions, Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust work at her brain's control panel to keep her safe and healthy as she navigates all the challenging changes in her life.

One of the movie's core messages is that ALL of our emotions are important and necessary. One emotion cannot exist to the exclusion of the others and differing emotions often co-exist within one life experience.

Our emotional system is designed to protect us and send us messages about the world around us. It indicates how things are going in our life.

While, I agree some emotions are more comfortable to feel, there are no good emotions or bad emotions. There is simply learning to hear their messages.

What Are Our Emotions Saying?
Joy's Message: "Yay, I like this."
Joy moves us to approach, seek or get closer to a specific person, thing or situation. It helps us find the fun and see the challenges in life as opportunities.
Sadness's Message: "Do nothing. Lie down and give up."
Sadness is a powerful trigger for seeking comfort and bonding with other people, especially those that are close to us. It supports us to compassionately connect with others.
Anger's Message: "High Alert! It's not fair! It's not right!"
Anger let's us know there is a problem and that things are not going as planned. It can be a motivator for change if we avoid taking it out on others or ourselves.
Fear's Message: "Yikes! Danger! Run! Get away!"
Fear protects us from physical and emotional threats. It is constantly on the lookout for potential dangers and risks. The trick is determining if the threats are real or perceived.
Disgust's Message: " Yuck! That's bad or harmful. Don't get close to it."
Disgust protects us from perceived threats, physically and socially. It judges things, people, places and situations around us and prepares us to avoid contact with the things that repulse us.

Who's at the Control Panel?

In Inside Out, different emotions take their turns at the control panel in Riley's brain. Her thoughts, words and behaviors are influenced by which emotion is in charge.

Teaching your child to identify which emotion is at their control panel, taking into consideration, that there may be more than one, will help them to develop self-awareness, self-regulation skills and self-compassion.
Naming your emotions is key. If you can name it, you can tame it.
When we name the feeling we are experiencing, soothing neurotransmitters are released into the limbic center of our brain and our whole system calms down. Dr. Dan Siegel refers to this process as Name It to Tame It.

When your child is struggling, you can guide them to name their emotion, "I wonder if you're feeling (sad, mad, worried, etc.)?" It's helpful to inquire about their feelings and to avoid telling them what they're feeling.

Your child will use the left hemisphere of their brain to name what's going on emotionally in the right hemisphere and they will calm down. Your child will feel better and you will be teaching them the exact tool they need for anything they'll encounter in life ahead.

Your Turn...

As a fun gift to you, I created the Who's at Your Control Panel? An Emotional Awareness Activity Sheet for Kids.

It's a creative, engaging and fun way to practice this skill at home and to connect with your child as you guide them to name their feelings. The kids I work with love it!

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Yes, I was there on opening night for Disney/Pixar's movie Inside Out! As a child counselor and parent guide, Inside Out for me could be likened to your child's love for Minecraft or Taylor Swift. A movie that teaches kids about their emotions, memory and the inner workings of the brain...

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This TED Talk provides a very engaging and informative definition of culturally responsive teaching. Jeffery Dessources also provides a potential direction for social change and the reform that we need as teachers to help promote culturally responsive teaching. This is a perfect resource to provide to other teachers to draw their attention to the importance of culturally responsive teaching.

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TrillEDU:  Culturally Responsive Pedagogy...  | Jeffrey Dessources | TEDxNewJerseyCityUniversity

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This website provides a broad definition of social and emotional learning along with a comprehensive set of resources for different SEL skills. These resources include programs that can be implemented in classrooms, along with resources to provide to families for discussing these skills with their children. This resource is a great place to start for finding research and tools.

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Common Sense Education provides educators and students with the resources they need to harness the power of technology for learning and life. Find a free K-12 Digital Citizenship curriculum, reviews of popular EdTech apps, and resources for protecting student privacy.