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Excerpt from Empathy Unchained™ Heal Your Trauma. Uplift the World about Cultural and Identity Taxation

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Informative article about Race- and Color- Blindness.

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Kawania Wooten's voice tightens when she describes the struggle she's having at the school her son attends. When his class created a timeline of civilization, Wooten saw the Greeks, the Romans and the Incas. But nothing was said about Africa, even though the class has several African American students.

Wooten, who is black, spoke to the school's director, a white woman - who insisted that the omission wasn't racially biased.

"Her first comment was, 'you know, we've just been following the curriculum. We're not talking about whether people are white or black,'" recalls Wooten, who lives in Bowie, Md. "I said that the children have eyes and they can see. And I'd like them to see that our culture was a strong, viable culture."

That kind of story brings a groan from Mark Benn, a psychologist and adjunct professor at Colorado State University. He hears similar tales whenever he delivers lectures about race relations.

Such incidents are examples of racial "colorblindness" - the idea that ignoring or overlooking racial and ethnic differences promotes racial harmony.

Trainers and facilitators say colorblindness does just the opposite: folks who enjoy racial privilege are closing their eyes to the experiences of others.

"It benefits me not to pay attention," says Benn, who is white. "I never have to question whether or not my race is being held in question when I apply for a job. It benefits me not to question that (because) it makes it look like I got here on my own."

Paying attention to the cultural experience of students is becoming increasingly important, given the differences between the demographics of American students and their teachers.

According to reports from the National Center for Education Statistics, roughly 80 percent of American teachers are white, while children of color make up more than 40 percent of the student body.

As the nation's demographics shift, the sight of a white teacher leaning over the desk of a brown or black student is likely become more and more common. In order to be effective, teachers will have to learn about the cultural experiences of their students, while using these experiences as a foundation for teaching. The approach is called culturally relevant pedagogy.

But that is hard to do if a teacher doesn't see differences as valuable. That means the blinders have to come off, says Randy Ross, a senior equity specialist at the New England Equity Assistance Center, a program of Brown University's Education Alliance. Ross facilitates workshops on racism and culturally responsive teaching. And in her experience, white people have the hardest time opening their eyes.

"I have never heard a teacher of color say 'I don't see color," Ross says. "There may be issues of cultural competence [among teachers of color], but colorblindness is not one of them. The core of 'I don't see color,' is 'I don't see my own color, I don't see difference because my race and culture is the center of the universe.'"

Such tunnel vision is the reason a teacher can omit Africa from a timeline of world civilizations, Ross says. Still, she cautions, the flaws of the colorblind approach run deeper than curriculum.

Failure to see and acknowledge racial differences makes it difficult to recognize the unconscious biases everyone has. Those biases can taint a teacher's expectations of a student's ability and negatively influence a student's performance. Study after study has shown that low teacher expectations are harmful to students from socially stigmatized groups.

In her article "Culturally Responsive Pedagogy for the Nineties and Beyond", Ana Maria Villegas pointed out that ignorance of cultural differences could lead teachers to "underestimate the true academic potential" of minority students.

"Teachers' judgments on students' potential have profound and long-lasting effects on students' lives," Villegas wrote. "For minority children in particular, such judgments or misjudgments may prove costly...

"The evidence is overwhelming. When compared to their 'high-ability' peers, 'low-ability' students are called on less often in class, given less time to respond, praised less frequently...and prompted less often in the case of incorrect responses."

Ross says a teacher who professes to be "colorblind" is not going to understand how unconscious biases can influence expectations, actions, and even the way a teacher addresses students of color.

After talking to her son's teacher, Kawania Wooten wondered whether her son was being harmed in just that way.

She'd asked for advice on helping the youngster complete a difficult project. Instead, the teacher immediately offered to give him easier work. Just as quickly, Wooten refused. Then she explained the racial subtext of the exchange: the white teacher doubted the intelligence of an African American child.

"I heard that expectations of my son were low," Wooten says.

Such misunderstandings could be avoided, she believes, if the teacher learned some things about African American culture.

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Kawania Wooten's voice tightens when she describes the struggle she's having at the school her son attends. When his class created a timeline of civilization, Wooten saw the Greeks, the Romans and the Incas. But nothing was said about Africa, even though the class has several African American students.

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Ten Tips to Eliminate Elitism in Math Classes

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Ten Tips to Eliminate Elitism in Math Classes

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Inside Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Events and Jobs

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Consider the following scenario that frequently occurs in math classes throughout higher education. On the first day of class, a math professor announces to students, "If you don't know this, this and this, then you may as well leave, because you are not going to pass this course." Five students collect their things and leave.

Who left? The students who doubted whether they belonged in the college classroom anyway. They might be women; Black, Indigenous or people of color (BIPOC) students; formerly incarcerated students; students with disabilities; or first-generation college students. They are students from groups who are underrepresented among those with STEM careers and four-year degrees.

At first glance, it appears that the instructor in that scenario holds all students to high standards. But the fact is that, because of their elitism, they only hold some students to high standards. The five students who collect their things and leave were told that they did not belong. They never had the opportunity to meet the high standards set by the math instructor. Such elitism contributes to inequitable student outcomes in math.

In a totally different scenario, however, another math professor announces to students on the first day of class, "If you don't know this, this and this, it will take more time and effort to excel in this class. Do not compare yourself to other students who have come to this class already with these skills and knowledge. Instead," this professor advises, "access these five resources to help you fill in these gaps in knowledge and succeed in this class: 1) get tutoring at the tutoring center weekly, 2) come to my office hours, 3) review your notes immediately after class, 4) read sections of the text before class to prelearn the material and 5) watch videos from this video bank before and/or after each class to prelearn and/or relearn the material."

The instructor in this second scenario holds all students to high standards and offers strategies that students can leverage to achieve those high standards. Rather than practicing elitism, instructors can use instructional moves and feedback to communicate that every student belongs. And students who feel like they belong in college stay in college.

After teaching math for more than 30 years at community colleges, comprehensive universities and research universities on both coasts in the United States, I have witnessed elitism and exclusion at all levels of higher education. In community colleges, elitism manifests in the singular focus on bolstering the success of students primarily on the STEM pathway, even though the majority of students do not follow that pathway.

I have heard one community college instructor say about another, "They only have a large majority of their students remaining at the end of the semester because they watered down the curriculum," instead of celebrating that the instructor used inclusive, equitable pedagogical approaches to support student retention and success. I have heard another instructor state, "I am not going to accommodate students with learning disabilities, because I will not lower my standards." And at both community colleges and universities, it is common to hear, "Our remedial courses run like a well-oiled machine, and we will not change that," even though research indicates that BIPOC, first-gen and low-income students disproportionately languish in remedial math courses.

One university professor told students, "Forget everything you learned and do it my way." It is as if they are saying, "I am the authority and hold supreme power over your learning ... and we will just forget about years of educational research indicating the value of active, social learning and tapping into prior knowledge." These elitist attitudes harm students, particularly those who are underrepresented in higher ed and STEM careers.

This happens in top research universities, too. You may recall the public attack by math professors at Stanford University and the University of California, Los Angeles, against Jo Boaler, also a Stanford professor-who had challenged the outdated approaches championed by the other professors. When I was Boaler's research assistant from 2011 to 2016, I witnessed the damage caused by this campaign of hate and vilification. These elitist professors could not accept that Boaler's approach did not lower standards but instead improved student outcomes. Boaler's story is only one example of how rigid, exclusive, elitist math department cultures harm not only students but colleagues, too.

There is a familiar saying-"Teach the students you have and not the students you want." We must remember that professors are the providers of a paid service and students are the consumers who pay for that service. We should not be seeking the perfect students who can make our teaching experience agreeable for us. Instead we should be laboring to figure out how to transform our teaching so we deliver high-quality, inclusive instruction that serves every student.

10 Steps for Countering Elitism

We can put the brakes on elitism in math department cultures and instead send the message to all students that they belong in our classrooms. Countering elitism is part of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) work. I suggest 10 steps both faculty members and institutions should consider to change elitist cultures and communicate that every student belongs.

In department meetings, don't be a silent enabler of elitism. Call out math colleagues who act in an elitist or exclusive manner. Start each meeting with DEIA goals.

Stop saying things like, "Students do not belong in this calculus class," as I heard at a world-class research institution. Discourse around blaming students leads to lack of agency among teachers. When instructors change their attitudes and discourse to take more responsibility for student success, all students do better-especially underrepresented students.

Prioritize the success of students not pursuing STEM majors. Focus on the quality of the curriculum, text adoption and instruction of non-STEM-track math courses.

Adopt faculty hiring strategies that prioritize candidates who emphasize inclusive instruction and not elitism. At community colleges, select candidates who have teaching expertise in diverse settings rather than those who possess a Ph.D. in math. Student-centered practices mean hiring instructional experts for non-STEM courses, too.

Implement corequisite courses with transfer-level courses. Or adopt an innovative remedial math curriculum to address the range in preparedness of incoming students.

Offer a cohort model. For example, a course I teach for the Fall Program for First Semester at the University of California, Berkeley, has social justice themes, smaller classes, wraparound support services and individualized instruction for incoming students.

Assign insightful readings about how math instruction can be oppressive and require students to post their thoughts about it on a discussion board. It will inform the professor's point of view, too.

Assign readings about mathematicians from underrepresented groups. Include, for example, those who have disabilities, are from the LGBTQ+ community, are BIPOC or have struggled in math. Have students post comments about how they inspire them and relate to their identities.

Assign social justice math problems that build on students' lived experiences. For example, students in my stats-prep course created or modified data sets that were skewed. A woman who identified as Mexican created a data set of the ages of all her family on either side of the border to feel closer to them.

Most important, welcome the students you have and find ways to support their success. Colleges do not exist to provide math professors with the perfect teaching experience but to provide universal access to high-quality math instruction to every student.

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Why and how teachers must make math classes more inclusive

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Our current approach often translates into racism, classism and sexism-and leaves many students feeling as if they don't belong and can't succeed, writes Felicia Darling. Consider the following scenario that frequently occurs in math classes throughout higher education.

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Five Moves to Build Community on Zoom copy

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Five Tips for Using Breakout Rooms for Group Work copy

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5 Breakout Moves to Build a Community of Powerful Learners

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5 Breakout Moves to Build a Community of Powerful Learners

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Steele's 3-Tiered Wise Feedback to Motivate Students

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Steele's 3-Tiered Wise Feedback to Motivate Students

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0 Steele's 3-tierd Wise Feedback to Motivate 06:19

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Excerpt from Teachin' It! First Impressions Activity

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Excerpt from Teachin' It! First Impressions Activity

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The Ripple Effect Channel helps viewers find new ways to feel great and help others feel great.

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Making Cultural Assets Count Research Presentation

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Making Cultural Assets Count Research Presentation

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Making Cultural Assets Count: Funds of Math Knowledge in a Yucatec Maya Community and Middle School

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ATD DREAM 2020 - Felicia Darling Keynote

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Incorporating Cultural Assets in Yucatec Maya Classrooms. Opportunities missed?

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Incorporating Cultural Assets in Yucatec Maya Classrooms. Opportunities missed?

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Dr. Felica Darling is a math and college skills instructor at Santa Rosa Junior College. Her research focuses on equity in education- including improving access to post-secondary education.

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Dr. Felica Darling is a math and college skills instructor at Santa Rosa Junior College. Her research focuses on equity in education- including improving access to post-secondary education. ...

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Hear Frank Adamson and Sylvain Aubry tell the fascinating story of building a fight-back against international profit-making privatization of public education. Educators have come together from all over the world to help each other build a movement and stop the use of public funds to make the rich even richer. #Abidjanprinciples.

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Education Today Archives | Page 3 of 28 | KPFA

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Hear Frank Adamson and Sylvain Aubry tell the fascinating story of building a fight-back against international profit-making privatization of public education. Educators have come together from all over the world to help each other build a movement and stop the use of public funds to make the rich even richer.

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WAMC Northeastern Public Radio Interview

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WAMC Northeastern Public Radio Interview

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Most students whose high school career was all about college preparation likely don't end up in community college. That means teachers at community colleges have challenges that university instructors likely don't even think about. Getting past those challenges is the topic of Felicia Darling's new book Teachin' It - Breakout Moves That Break Down Barriers for Community College Students. Dr. Darling is an education researcher and long-time community college math teacher. We talked about why she took on the project and who the book is aimed at.

Then, as the Army works to reach its recruiting goals, it's found that replacing on-campus recruiters with video games is one of the best ways to attract new soldiers. Increasingly, the military is holding e-sports events. And it's finding they're often more effective than traditional recruiting methods like visiting high schools or sending out brochures. From Denver, Taylor Allen reports for the American Homefront Project. This story was produced by the American Homefront Project, a public media collaboration that reports on American military life and veterans. Funding comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Finally, we'll spend an Academic Minute with a new way to build homes.

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The Best Of Our Knowledge #1524 "Teachin' It At Community Colleges"

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Most students whose high school career was all about college preparation likely don't end up in community college. That means teachers at community colleges have challenges that university instructors likely don't even think about. Getting past those challenges is the topic of Felicia Darling's new book Teachin' It - Breakout Moves That Break Down Barriers for Community College Students.

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Mention in Chronicle of Higher Education

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Mention in Chronicle of Higher Education

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Engaging Students in Conversations about Race in Ed Week

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Engaging Students in Conversations about Race in Ed Week

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Education Week - Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo

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(This is the 12th post in a series that has appeared over the past 10 months. You can see all of them here.)
The question-of-the-week is:
What are the best ways to respond to educators who say they "don't see race" when they teach?
One would hope that recent events will reduce the number of teachers who take the position that they "don't see race," but I think it's a safe bet to say that many will continue that way of thinking. Though the responses in this post were written prior to the death of George Floyd, the educators' advice is certainly still relevant.

Krystle Cobran , Dr. Mara Lee Grayson, and Dr. Felicia Darling "wrap up" this 12-part series.
When we're afraid we'll say the wrong thing
Krystle Cobran creates conversation about race that opens the doors of connection. Her work begins with listening-to you. You can drop Krystle a note and purchase The Brave Educator: Honest Conversations about Navigating Race in the Classroom by visiting krystlecobran.com:

Teaching that connects doesn't start with having all the answers. About anything. Including how to navigate conversations about race. But the reality is that many teachers feel pressure to know how to effectively navigate conversations about race in the classroom without ever having learnt how to do it. This pressure is real, and one of the ways humans tend to react to pressure is by getting defensive and making a quick escape.

Getting defensive is an understandable reaction, but when we shut down conversations about race in the classroom, we aren't just avoiding a potentially awkward moment. We're denying ourselves the opportunity to connect with the everyday realities our students live. Every student in the classroom is affected by race, regardless of how that student identifies. Every student. It's a painful thought to consider, but the reality is that every person in the classroom is affected by race-including teachers.

Which gets us just a little bit closer to what's lurking at the root of the statement " I don't see race" in the classroom context. This is about a fear of saying the wrong thing. A fear of inflicting more pain or causing accidental harm by diving into a conversation we feel ill-prepared to navigate ourselves.

When we teach from a place of fear, it's difficult for us to meet our students where they are. It becomes challenging for us to connect with the stories, experiences, and perspectives our students bring to the table. And as we cling ever more closely to what we think we know, the trust we've built begins to erode, and our ability to meet our students' needs decreases.

Feeling fear when conversations about race come up in the classroom isn't the problem. Reacting to that fear by dismissing our students' lived experiences is.

We need to engage our with students. Create shared understanding with our students. Build clear pipelines of communication with our students. And in order to do any of these things, we have to be willing to wrestle with the reality that race is much more than an abstract concept-it's a reality that both teachers and students live daily.

So instead of dismissing out of fear, engage with listening. Try replacing " I don't see race" with:

I want to learn from you. Tell me more about how you feel. (And then pause to intentionally listen with the goal of connecting, not judging/dismissing.)

Or

Your voice is important to me. I'd like to do some research on ______________ [insert student question here] so that we can dive deeper. Can we revisit this conversation on ______________ [insert specific class meeting day and time here]? (And then make a physical note of your student's question so that you can carve out time to educate yourself and return to the conversation a bit more prepared.)

And if neither of these options is a good fit, remember this: Conversations about race are conversations about real human pain. Dismissing unfamiliar perspectives because we aren't sure how to cope with the pain of race separates us from our students and can shut down learning. Choose to engage. Choose to discover. Resist the urge to dismiss.

Three actions teachers can take Dr. Mara Lee Grayson is an assistant professor of English at California State University, Dominguez Hills, whose work explores race rhetorics and equitable composition instruction. She is the author of the book Teaching Racial Literacy: Reflective Practices for Critical Writing. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Teaching English in the Two-Year College, English Education, English Journal, The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning, St. John's University Humanities Review, and numerous edited collections. She is currently completing her second book:
Many white people in the United States have been taught, implicitly or directly, not to talk about race. Though race scholars now know better, at one point, colorblindness was framed as something to strive for, especially if you were white. I suspect that a lot of teachers who say they don't see race mean that they don't discriminate based upon race, but what they're really saying is that they don't acknowledge the distinct lived experiences of the students in their classrooms. Race is a social construct that has real, material effects; teachers who pretend not to see race are ignoring its impact on students' lives.

The majority of teachers in the U.S. are white; the majority of students are not. White teachers who "don't see race" are likely to base their pedagogies and practices on their own experiences and beliefs, which are informed by their positionalities as white people in a white hegemonic society. In other words, if we don't see race, we risk applying universally these situated-white ways of teaching and knowing through our instruction. This perpetuates the notion that whiteness is the norm and further marginalizes students whose experiences and ways of knowing are not grounded in whiteness.

So what can teachers do instead?

Bring students' experiences into the classroom. Invite students to share their languages, literacies, and ways of knowing in the classroom. Don't push and don't put students on the spot-forcing students to share can be a major violation, especially for students who feel marginalized. Instead, build opportunities for students to use their own discourses and existing funds of knowledge in your classroom. Assigning a personal narrative encourages students to make connections between the classroom and their lives outside of it. (Bonus: This helps you get to know your students better.) A Think-Pair-Share about a "controversial" topic can highlight the differences among students' beliefs and perspectives and help students explore where those differences (and similarities) might originate. Older students can do hands-on qualitative research in their own communities. These are just a few examples. Pedagogical approaches to honoring student experience will differ depending upon the class subject, the grade level of the students, the resources available, and other contextual factors.

Talk about race explicitly. Research shows that very young children are already aware of race, and pedagogies to encourage racial literacy have been shown to be effective as early as 1st grade. However, having so-called "courageous conversations" isn't enough if those conversations perpetuate inequity. Academic protocol tends to dictate the flow of classroom discussion, but the norms of that protocol (such as hand-raising and dispassionate, logical verbal contributions) don't do justice to the complexity of race talk and often wind up shutting down students of color. So, let students, particularly students of color, talk about race in the ways that make sense for them. Acknowledge emotions when they arise. Invite students to interrogate where those emotions come from. Share a list of readings and other resources available to help students engage in productive race talk and self-reflection.

Learn with your students. As a racial literacy educator, I believe that we must continue to learn, reflect upon our practice, and revise our curricula. For those of us who are white, if we believe ourselves to be nonracist, we must explore the implicit biases and assumptions we bring to the classroom. There are amazing resources out there, such as in-school and online implicit-bias trainings. Finally, to move beyond simplistic solutions like pretending to not see color, we must take on an anti-racist stance that challenges the systems that maintain racism. Notice what's happening in your school: Who benefits from the structures and policies put in place? Who is oppressed or marginalized by them? It can be difficult to do this work alone, so find allies and accomplices on campus or join a regional or national professional network. Think about this as group work-some projects are so big that they require a lot of hands on deck. Working with others toward anti-racist education is a far more inclusive and equitable endeavor than simply pretending race and racism don't exist, and this sort of work helps to model for students ways that they too can work to effect change.

Six questions
Dr. Felicia Darling is a first-generation college student who has taught math in grades 7-14 for 30 years. She leads workshops for K-14 educators and is the author of Teachin' It! Breakout Moves That Break Down Barriers for Community College Students:

A 7 th grade class of 35 students in Northern California might have 16 Hispanic students, nine White students, five African American students, three Asian students, one Pacific Islander student, and one Native American student. "Not seeing race" in this classroom is problematic for three reasons. First, ignoring students' ethnicity/race is ignoring an integral part of their overall identity and heritage that is likely a source of pride and personal power. Second, rendering race invisible is an act of oppression for students from ethnicities/races whose personal narratives may include their roles in the U.S. history of colonialization and discrimination. Third, teachers miss opportunities to build upon students' unique cultural perspectives to teach all students.

Ethnicity/race is not just what we can see on the outside. It cannot be separated from less obvious characteristics of cultural identity like family values, core beliefs and assumptions, attitudes about learning, prior knowledge about the subject matter, concepts of justice, sense of humor, and codes of behavior. To overlook what we see on the outside discounts what is happening on the inside and overwrites the funds of knowledge that students bring to class. We want to illuminate, not overshadow, students' assets. We want to help students draw from their prior experiences to co-construct knowledge with their peers.

Perhaps, the following series of six questions can help a teacher who espouses that "they don't see race" realize how important it is to build upon students' self-concepts around ethnicity/race instead of ignoring their ethnicity/race.

Can you tell me a little bit about who you are? Which identities are most important to you?" (e.g., ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, class, language, beliefs).

What are three core values or customs related to your identity that would not be immediately evident to others upon meeting you? (e.g., I am a survivor of sexual assault; I am Christian; I lived in foster care).

What are some aspects of your identity or your narrative that make you feel powerful and might be assets when learning? (e.g., I inherited my work ethic from my German-immigrant grandmother; I come from a long line of entrepreneurs).

What are some aspects of your identity that might make you feel less powerful and might be considered challenges when learning? (e.g., I did not go to a college-prep high school; I am a first-generation college student; I had a speech issue when I began school; I take a long time to write).

Do you think that a Latinx student might be proud of their ethnic/racial identity? What do you think would motivate this student more: for their teacher to ignore or to acknowledge their heritage about which they feel pride? Why?

Do you think that it would motivate or demotivate an African American student to disregard the reality of their daily struggle to navigate a system that does not treat them fairly? Why?

Hopefully, considering these six questions will help a teacher who espouses colorblindness to realize that this ideology is not harmless.

Thanks to Krystle, Mara, and Felicia for their contributions!

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at [email protected] . When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it's selected or if you'd prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo.

Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material, in an e-book form. It's titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching.
Just a reminder; you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email or RSS Reader. And if you missed any of the highlights from the first eight years of this blog, you can see a categorized list below. The list doesn't include ones from this current year, but you can find those by clicking on the "answers" category found in the sidebar. All Classroom Q&A Posts on the Coronavirus Crisis This Year's Most Popular Q&A Posts Race & Gender Challenges Classroom-Management Advice Best Ways to Begin the School Year Best Ways to End the School Year Implementing the Common Core Student Motivation & Social-Emotional Learning Teaching Social Studies Cooperative & Collaborative Learning Using Tech in the Classroom Parent Engagement in Schools Teaching English-Language Learners Reading Instruction Writing Instruction Education Policy Issues Assessment Differentiating Instruction Math Instruction Science Instruction Advice for New Teachers Author Interviews Entering the Teaching Profession The Inclusive Classroom Learning & the Brain Administrator Leadership Teacher Leadership Relationships in Schools Professional Development Instructional Strategies Best of Classroom Q&A Professional Collaboration Classroom Organization Mistakes in Education Project-Based Learning
I am also creating a Twitter list including all contributors to this column.

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Engaging With Students in Conversations About Race

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(This is the 12th post in a series that has appeared over the past 10 months. You can see all of them here.) The question-of-the-week is: What are the best ways to respond to educators who say they "don't see race" when they teach?

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Interview in Inside Higher Ed about Teachin' It!

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Interview in Inside Higher Ed about Teachin' It!

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Success rates for community college students lag those at other institutions. Why? Many factors are at work. Many community college students come from high schools where they received lousy teaching. A new book, Teachin' It: Breakout Moves That Break Down Barriers for Community College Students (Teachers College Press), argues that instructors make an enormous difference to community college students.

The author, Felicia Darling, a college skills instructor at Santa Rosa Junior College, responded via email to questions about her book.
Q: Graduation rates are much lower at community colleges than at most four-year institutions. What do you consider a good graduation rate for a community college? How should we judge community colleges on completion?
A: Community colleges have lower graduation rates because they have a different mission and serve a more diverse student body. Therefore, three factors should be considered when discussing "good graduation rates." First, the majority of students attending four-year universities seek to graduate with a bachelor's degree. In contrast, while many community college students do seek to graduate with an associate's degree, there is a wide variety of other aspirations represented. These include transferring to a four-year college, obtaining a certification, completing industry-specific training, exploring career options and taking recreational courses. All of these can be attained without actually "graduating" (i.e. completing an associate's degree).

Second, unlike four-year universities with entrance criteria that funnel in students with high levels of academic preparation, the open-access nature of community colleges means that some students attend even without a high school diploma or GED. Therefore students enter community college with a broader range of academic skill development and preparation. Third, due to their mission, community colleges serve more students who are underrepresented among those who possess four-year degrees. These include students of color, first-generation college students, students with disabilities, students from the LGBTQ+ community, students from low-income households and first-generation college students. While underrepresented students may be more resilient and motivated, they are also more likely to face obstacles to graduating. These include navigating a system that is discriminatory, experiencing food and housing insecurity, reintegrating into society after being incarcerated, balancing work and school, and supporting families.

That being said, community colleges should aim for a 90 percent graduation rate within three years for those students attending full-time who declare the goal of attaining an associate's degree. I would say 100 percent, but I recall, with a heavy heart, students like Lisette, a 19-year-old who began the semester with a promising A and wanted to be a nurse. She stopped coming to class after the ninth week, because she had to care for her mentally ill mother and seven younger siblings, who all lived in a homeless shelter.
Q: What are the major problems you see with traditional instruction methods as applied at community colleges?
A: The major issue with traditional approaches like the teaching is telling and the primarily lecture model is that they miss opportunities to unleash the full learning potential of the maximum number of students in the classroom. In particular, there are two reasons why traditional approaches fall short. First, community college students come from diverse cultural backgrounds and embrace a wide range of identities. Consequently, they bring a wealth of cultural knowledge to the classroom. Unfortunately, the traditional, direct-instruction approach, where the instructor is the authority, overwrites these students' funds of knowledge.

When instructors draw from students' wealth of cultural assets during instruction, they communicate that they value students' identities. Using a more egalitarian, inclusive approach like complex instruction can help illuminate students' assets. This means doing more inquiry-based, group learning where all students' contributions are taken up equally and all students are held to the same high standard.

The second reason why the traditional lecture-style approach is so problematic is that community colleges are open-access institutions, so students enter with a range of academic skill preparation and a variety of gaps in content knowledge. When instructors shift their role from lecturer to facilitator of inquiry-based learning in groups, it redresses gaps in knowledge and skills. When students work in groups with carefully crafted tasks, they can approach learning from their strength areas by drawing from their prior knowledge. In addition, they can build on the knowledge of their peers by engaging in scaffolded discussions where they negotiate meaning and co-construct new knowledge. Education psychology theory and cognition research demonstrate that students learn better in groups. This means giving more low-floor, high-ceiling tasks with multiple entry points to give the broadest access to students. Facilitating discussions around group-worthy activities allows all students to build on their prior knowledge and skills and to communicate their unique reasoning and perspectives. In addition, this approach makes student understanding of the content explicit, so instructors can refine instruction to meet the needs of more students.
Q: At many community colleges, a majority of students need some remediation. Are there approaches to remedial teaching that could help many students?
A: While the majority of students entering community college place into remedial courses, there is a growing trend toward placing students directly into transfer-level courses with corequisite support courses instead. The goal is to increase transfer and completion rates of students -- especially underrepresented students. The following three instructional strategies are useful for students placed into either remedial or transfer-level courses. First, it is important to foster a growth mind-set classroom. Community college students frequently have experienced failures when learning in the past, and they may have internalized negative mind-sets around schooling and their identities as learners.

Second, doing "inreach" is a powerful instructional move. This means using instructional time or course materials to connect students with campus resources like financial aid, tutoring, mental health services, academic counseling, mentoring or student clubs. Underrepresented students make up a disproportionately large number of students placed into remedial classes at community colleges. Research indicates that completion rates improve when community college instructors connect entering students to institutional resources. The third approach is that instructors should seamlessly layer college skills into the curriculum in ways that dignify students' lived experiences. Examples of college skills are: using professional academic language when communicating with professors, knowing how to study for and take different types of tests, navigating financial aid, taking effective notes, knowing how and when to get a mentor, or code-shifting. For first-generation college students, instructors may be the only one they know with a college degree.
Q: You have extensive experience in teaching math, and math is a major stumbling point for many community college students. Would you please offer an example or two of making math instruction have more impact on your students?
A: On the first day of class, students do an activity called "Finding Your Growth Mind-Set." Students draw a picture of something they are now good at, something they got better at over time by expending great effort. This is an area where they have a growth mind-set. They draw themselves playing soccer, baking, playing guitar, speaking in public, fishing or writing, etc. Afterward, in pairs they discuss strategies they used when they made mistakes or when things got challenging in this one area where they have a growth mind-set. I scribe their strategies on the whiteboard, then we discuss how these can be applied to learning math. We circle back to their drawings and this class list of strategies as the math content grows increasingly complex and cognitively demanding. This launch activity not only reinforces a growth mind-set but also acts as a springboard for co-developing norms with students around doing the inquiry-based group work that is foundational to the course.

The second activity involves applied problem solving in groups. When I introduce the topic of adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing with positive and negative integers, I do not begin with the typical lecture on the rules followed by having students complete 20-40 problems on a worksheet. Instead, I introduce the topic by having students explore real-life, culturally informed problems that previous students gave me or ones that I created from my Yucatán study. Students work in groups of four and use visuals to solve these problems in their own ways. Then, each group explains their assumptions, reasoning and solution to their problem to the entire class. After two days of solving and presenting, students derive their own rules for using the four operations (+, -, x, ÷) with integers -- and write them in their own words. For homework, students create and solve their own real-life word problems, and these are graded with a rubric. A student from Jordan created a problem to find the distance traveled if one was to travel from the top of Mount Nebo to the bottom of the north end of the Dead Sea. Another student wrote a word problem in Spanish that she developed with her mother about business accounting.
Q: Your book talks about the importance of mind-set -- for students and instructors. Would you explain what you mean by that?
A: The research is clear. Beliefs and attitudes of both instructors and learners impact student outcomes. Many students enter college with unproductive attitudes about school and learning from their prior experiences in elementary or secondary school, with the media or society at large. For example, "Girls do not do well in math"; "People who look like me are not college material" or "People who are good at music are born that way." For community college students seeking to transfer to four-year colleges, their first course lays the groundwork for achieving that goal. Therefore, it is important for instructors to foster a growth mind-set classroom where all students recognize that experimenting, making mistakes, taking risks and expending great effort are all a natural part of being a competent and powerful lifelong learner. Furthermore, recent research indicates that when educators possess growth mind-sets, then their students achieve at higher levels, so it is important for educators to nurture their own growth mind-sets about learning, as well.

In addition to fostering their own growth mind-sets, it is also important for educators to cultivate an equity mind-set. We know that when educators have differential expectations for different students based on their ethnic/racial, linguistic or socioeconomic background, then the achievement gap widens. Therefore, educators need to frame their instructional moves with an equity lens. This may mean exploring their own implicit bias, writing a positionality statement or educating themselves about the cultural backgrounds and histories of their students. This work to cultivate an equity mind-set is particularly important when teaching students who are subjected to discrimination on a daily basis, like students of color, students from the LGBTQ+ community and students from low-income households. By cultivating an equity mind-set, instructors ensure that classroom instruction does not perpetuate these unfair systems but instead disrupts these larger systemic inequities at the classroom level. All students should feel invited to communicate their unique perspectives in the classroom as part of their journey to develop their identities as powerful learners.

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Success rates for community college students lag those at other institutions. Why? Many factors are at work. Many community college students come from high schools where they received lousy teaching. A new book, Teachin' It: Breakout Moves That Break Down Barriers for Community College Students (Teachers College Press), argues that instructors make an enormous difference to community college students.

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Student Agency is Student Ownership in Ed Week

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Student Agency is Student Ownership in Ed Week

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Education Week - Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo

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The new question-of-the-week is:
What is agency and how can teachers encourage its growth among students?
"Student agency" is a term that is tossed around in education circles. This series will explore what it means and what it looks like-practically speaking-in the classroom.

Today's contributors are Keisha Rembert, Sarah Ottow, Laurie Manville, Dr. Alva Lefevre, Dr. Lynell Powell, Dr. Felicia Darling, Paula Mellom, Rebecca Hixon, and Jodi Weber. You can listen to a 10-minute conversation I had with Laurie, Sarah, and Keisha on my BAM! Radio Show. You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.

You might also be interested in The Best Resources On Student Agency & How To Encourage It.
Response From Keisha Rembert
Keisha Rembert is an 8th grade English and U.S. history teacher at Clifford Crone Middle School in Naperville, Ill. Keisha feeds her love of learning by continually refining her craft and has been the recipient of several grants affording her the opportunity to take courses at some of the world's most renowned universities. She has recently been named Illinois' History Teacher of the Year for 2019:
Student agency is ownership. It is command. An active process of engagement and authority over your learning. Teachers must deprivatize education for students to own it. Teachers must be coaches and facilitators and open the classroom floor up to the students. It can never be about covering a subject. I often ask my students questions and let them lead. They run groups and discussions. They tell me how we should assess ourselves. They tell me what is going good and bad in the classroom and how we can fix it. I started a feedback form I had been introduced to at a PD session. It was a biweekly form that gave students agency over content and more in the classroom. It is powerful. I do think I could and need to take that a step further and somehow turn it over completely to students. Response From Sarah Ottow
Sarah Ottow is the founder and CEO of Confianza. In the U.S., Sarah has served as a classroom teacher to inner-city students, ESL teacher to marginalized neighborhood communities, instructional coach, district coordinator and mentor, and bilingual reading specialist, as well as ELL director for the Center for Collaborative Education in Boston. Internationally, Sarah has taught and consulted in private schools in Latin America, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe. She is also the author of The Language Lens for Content Classrooms: A Guide for K-12 Educators of English and Multilingual Learners:
Agency for students means moving from more traditional, teacher-centered ways of teaching to more innovative, student-centered ways of teaching. It means making sure that students get to make decisions about their learning, becoming actively engaged in the learning and assessment process. In a classroom that builds student agency, students know what they are learning, how they are learning, if they have learned it, and what to do with this learning. To encourage agency among students, teachers can go beyond "covering" curriculum to engaging students in the process through connecting to students' backgrounds on a topic, through evaluating their own learning styles, and even giving students ownership over what they are interested in within the given curriculum framework. A KWL (What do you Know, What do you Want to know, and What did you Learn) model can be a useful framework to work through to encourage student agency when teaching a unit. Start a unit by asking students what they know about the topic and generate a discussion about students' experiences of this topic and what they are interested about learning. Post student ideas and the language they use or have students draw or write what they know to share. Then offer students an opportunity to predict what they will learn and share what they are interested in knowing. Spending time with students in a "What do you know?" and "What do you want to know?" can pay off in the long run because students can get hooked on the topic and generate their own knowledge versus just being receptacles of what knowledge the teacher dispenses. Throughout the unit, students can keep track of answering the question, "What did you learn?" as well as what skills and strategies they have been using to make progress. I like to remember what Jim Cummins says, "No learner is a blank slate" and I always have tried my best to connect to something students bring to the classroom even if a topic is unfamiliar to them or it seems irrelevant to their lives. One way you can honor different levels of familiarity with a topic or a concept is having students rate their "level of knowing" with a scale: 0 = I've never heard of this; 1 = I think I've heard of this but I can't tell you what it means; 2 = I've heard of this and I can explain what it means; 3 = I can teach someone else what this means. Furthermore, language-learners really need to practice language through discussions, reading, and writing, and what better way to do that than by having students consistently refer back to what they have learned to monitor their own growth. Beyond the KWL, teachers can use student-generated goals for language and/or for social skills throughout any lesson. Some examples of language goals that student generate themselves is explained in this article
Response From Laurie Manville & Dr. Alva Lefevre .
Laurie Manville is an ELD teacher and instructional coach at Brookhurst Junior High in the Anaheim Union High School district in California. She enjoys helping her students figure out what they are meant to do in life and guiding teachers in lesson-design creation. In her free time, you will find her backstage (or near a stage) assisting with line memorization, costumes or concessions, analyzing a screenplay, or at home journaling or mastering PiYo.

Dr. Alva Lefevre has been a language teacher, administrator, university professor, and teacher trainer for almost 40 years. She is passionate about working with English-learners and finding ways to apply educational research to the classroom. In her spare time, Alva enjoys traveling, gardening, and art.
Student agency boils down to students having a voice in the classroom, choices about how they learn, and how they show what they know. Most important is giving students a voice- meaning giving them the language and the opportunity to express their needs, as well as a mechanism to influence how the class is conducted. Classroom activities should be meaningful and relevant to learners, driven by their own interests, and, where possible, self-initiated with support from their teachers. To encourage agency, teachers need to build in options for learning and assessments and students must understand that they can demonstrate their understanding in more than one way.
One simple, but powerful mechanism that gives students voice in how class is conducted is the consistent use of the Exit Ticket. I am a techie teacher, so I have used Google forms, digital polls, and Kahoot as exit tickets. Here's a Google Form that focuses on the lesson's importance and relevance, as well as student readiness: Exit Ticket This year, I found that establishing a regular "sticky note" exit-ticket routine in my middle school class became a low tech but dynamic way to provide a platform for student voice.
How I make the sticky note work is by having students write a response to a question: personal, academic, organization-related, socio-emotional, community-building-oriented. (e.g., Were they OK in their other classes? How were things going with family and friends? Was their GPA something they could be proud of?) They record their thoughts, comments, or questions on a Post-it note and stick it onto a designated class space. Here's one of my sticky-note questions and student responses: Our space was located next to the classroom door and was entitled "What We Learned Today." The space became much more than just "what we learned" so I'm thinking I'll change the title next year to reflect student voice-maybe something like "Your Ideas are the Road to Change-#Inspired." Sometimes student ideas drove the direction in a unit of study. For example, when the class and I discussed possible action civics projects, homelessness and school uniforms were the unanimous choices.
When I first started this routine with my students, I was surprised how completely engaged they were when we discussed the sticky-note contributions at the beginning of class the next day. I think the primary reason it was so engaging was that students truly felt heard. Sometimes I grouped like sticky notes together, showed the class, and commented on the answers. Sometimes I would address specific questions and feedback. I think that physically holding the student responses, reading from them, and grouping them added more significance to the contributions.
The Single Point Rubric is one of the more complex ways student voice and choice is integrated into my classes. The Single Point Rubric is a powerful tool and anchor for learning goals, feedback, and reflection. The tool has a place for criteria and for written feedback. It's an excellent place to start when creating a space for teacher-student conferences. Reflecting on the feedback, referring back to a product-written, oral presentation-allows for a deeper type of student agency based on revision. Single Point Rubric What makes the conferencing and revision a deeper kind of student agency is that students ultimately have a choice in whether or not they actually make any of the teacher's suggested changes. Hopefully, the teacher's guidance will help the student through questioning and through giving options to make a piece stronger or more refined. If a good teacher-student relationship is built, and students see the value in making whatever change is suggested, it is more likely that a student will make commitments to change and will follow through on those commitments. Response From Dr. Lynell Powell created for an ELD 1 and 2 class combo creating ePortfolios. Single Point Rubric One of the most profound descriptions of student agency that I have come across is from Sean Michael Morris (2017) who shares, "Agency does not give us power over another, but it gives us mastery over ourselves, and an education that does not encourage or facilitate this agency is not an education. An education that convinces us of what needs to be known, what is important versus what is frivolous, is not an education. It's training at best, conscription at worst. And all it prepares us to do is to believe what we're told." Our educational system is not designed for students to experience true agency, that is, the freedom to choose what to learn and how to learn it. However, there is a more common understanding as it relates to a classroom setting which is that agency involves a continuous shift in the role of the learner. This shift is often illustrated on a continuum whereby students gradually move toward taking greater responsibility for their learning through the lens of components outlined by Bray and Mclaskey (2017) including voice, choice, engagement, motivation, ownership, purpose, and self-efficacy. On one end of the continuum, these elements are framed from a teacher-centered perspective and on the other end a learner-driven approach. Let's look for example at the idea of choice. In a classroom setting, a teacher might begin developing student agency by providing options for demonstrating knowledge of the content and gradually help students build the skills to not only choose those options but co-create them. Another example is the idea of motivation through the structure of goal setting. Teachers can assist students in creating academic goals, establishing a process that includes choosing resources to reach those goals, and incorporating structures to reflect on their progress toward those goals. It is most important to note that in any area the emphasis is on building students' capacity over time by finding ways to shift the responsibility to them. created with AUHSD ELD collaborative team with a focus on oral presentations for the Expanding (intermediate) proficiency level. Shift 1: From being skilled students to skilled lifelong learners Shift 2: From having minimal impact on their educational path to co-creating the path they will take. Shift 3: From being compliant learners to committed learners Shift 4:From experiencing delivered instruction to experiencing instruction as a shared responsibility between learner and educator Shift 5: From summative assessments designed to determine if learning has occurred to summative assessments that are a demonstration of mastery. Developing student agency requires teachers to believe that their students are capable of independent thought. It takes a willingness to gradually release control and honor students as individuals. References: Bray, B., & McClaskey, K. (2017). Richardson, W. (2019). Sparking Student Agency with Technology: Why should kids have to wait until after school to do amazing things with technology? Educational Leadership, 76(5)
Response From Dr. Felicia Darling How to personalize learning: A practical guide for getting started and going deeper. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Students have agency when they have the freedom to explore their own voices and unique pathways to mastering the content. To foster student agency, educators can create inclusive, engaging learning environments where students feel safe to take risks, experiment, make mistakes, negotiate meaning, express their unique perspectives, and develop identities as powerful lifelong learners. This involves: (1) facilitating inquiry-based group learning; (2) delivering inclusive, equitable instruction; and (3) fostering a growth-mindset classroom. Below are 5 tips to support the first: facilitating inquiry-based group learning. .
Response From Paula Mellom, Rebecca Hixon, & Jodi Weber . (You might want to use this particular exit ticket after a more difficult concept has been presented.) Agency is about choice and autonomy, but teachers often equate student choice with lack of structure that can lead to chaos. We often worry that the more involved our students are and the more they participate, the more risk there is that we will lose control! But there are ways to increase student agency and autonomy, while still meeting our instructional goals. Choice need not lack structure and can in fact benefit from limits. We frequently say that structured limits open spaces for creative freedom-that is to say, too much choice can be paralyzing, while limited, structured choices can promote agency-but only when we know how to engage. Even when we provide students with opportunities to choose what to study and how to be assessed on instructional tasks that require critical and creative thinking, they often lack the tools to autonomously engage in them. It is therefore imperative that we give them tools for autonomous interaction so that they might take more agency in their learning process. For example, we might create routines in the form of regular centers with familiar task structures that students have had modeled for them and have had the chance to practice. When task expectations are clear and explicit, and given to the students in a format that is familiar and routinized, students will gain confidence and become more autonomous in their interactions and agentive in their learning process. Even kindergartners can engage autonomously in tasks if given scaffolded directions for authentic, relevant tasks as well as tools for productive collaboration (such as sentence stems) and the chance to practice them. It's incredible to see 6-year-olds working through, for example, a "which one doesn't belong" task, listening to each other and asserting their own ideas, using such phrases as "I agree with you because...," "I respectfully disagree with you because...," and "I hear what you are saying, but let me tell you what I'm thinking!" But building agency isn't just a matter of being presented with authentic opportunities and choice in their tasks. Students need to be guided through a regular, recursive process of intentional goal-setting and self-reflection in order to create self-regulatory habits. These habits provide the foundation for autonomously engaging in individual and collaborative group work and the means by which to tackle learning objectives, so students can begin to take ownership of their own learning.

Laurie blogs with Dr. Alva Lefevre at L&M Educational Consulting on their Facebook page and their new website, Educators in the Know:

Dr. Lynell Powell had been an educator for 20 years. During this time, she has served as an elementary teacher, professional learning specialist, school administrator, and educational consultant. Currently, Dr. Powell works at a teacher's college in the area of curriculum & instruction. She is passionate about the topic of joy in schools. You can connect with her on Twitter @drjoy77:

While there is no one exact guide that will address the needs of every learning environment, there are resources that support an understanding of how agency can be exemplified in the classroom. Bray and Mclaskey's How to Personalize Learning offers concrete examples of how to move students along the learning continuum. Additionally, James Rickabaugh (2015) outlines five overall shifts to learner roles including:

Dr. Felicia Darling is a first-generation college student who has taught math in grades 7-14 for 30 years. She leads workshops for K-14 educators and is author of Teachin' It Breakout Moves that Break Down Barriers for Community College Students:

Build Norms Together: Co-develop norms with students on the first day of class around group work. Scribe student responses to: "What do you like to have when learning in groups? and "What do you not like to have when learning in groups?" Incorporate their ideas into class norms and post the norms where they can see them every day. Including their voices when building norms will help them sense their agency.

Include Group-worthy Tasks: Launching the first class of the year with a group-worthy task invites student agency early. Instead of lecturing on volume and then giving a worksheet, a teacher can introduce a group task, like "How many rectangular prisms can your group draw with a volume of 24cm3?" This task has multiple entry points, so students exercise choices around where to begin. Every time students make choices in the process of learning, they are developing agency. This task is open-ended and has multiple solutions, as well. Therefore, students have opportunities both to negotiate disagreement about solutions and to challenge their group's assumptions-and really flex those agency wings. This task is low-floor, high-ceiling, too. This means that students with lower procedural fluency about volume can draw three figures and deepen their conceptual understanding of volume. At the same time, students with higher computational skills around volume will be motivated to think about volume in a more conceptual way and can challenge their assumptions by coming up with an infinite number of solutions.

Use Participation Quizzes: Participation quizzes reinforce skills for successful group work in all grades. In the lower grades, teachers can circulate around the room and award group points when students: "lean in," "have only one person talk at a time," "get consensus on a question before asking the teacher," or "use respectful talk to disagree." In higher grades, teachers can provide actionable verbal feedback about skills that are working or not working for group work. Participation quizzes help to build that structure within which students can explore freely.

Scaffold Learning: Think-Pair-Share and Think-Write-Pair-Share are scaffolds that prepare students to share in groups or whole-class discussions. Another scaffolding strategy is modelling how to disagree respectfully using a fishbowl activity. For example, one pair of students sit in the center of the room and model negotiating disagreement. Other students form a circle or horseshoe around them to observe. Pairs can take turns. Younger students need extra scaffolding to be successful in group work. They can use sentence starter and response A/B cards for building paired-conversation skills. Card A (for student A) says, "Why did you use the strategy of ______?" Card B (for student B) says, "I used _________ , because ____________?" Younger students may also benefit from assigning group roles like notetaker, timekeeper, reporter, and resourcer.

Ask Open-ended, Probing Questions: It is important for teachers to resist the temptation to affirm that students' answer are correct. Instead, respond to all students' comments, reasoning, and perspectives with a consistent, "Thank you" or "Mmm Hmm" whether student responses are correct or incorrect. Also, paraphrase responses so students can hear their reasoning out loud, then respond, "Tell me more;; "What are the assumptions your group is making?;" and "Why do you disagree or agree with group #6." Every time students have a safe opportunity to make choices, take risks, make mistakes, go down false paths, and find their way, it helps them to develop agency.
Just a reminder; you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email or RSS Reader. And if you missed any of the highlights from the first seven years of this blog, you can see a categorized list below. The list doesn't include ones from this current year, but you can find those by clicking on the "answers" category found in the sidebar. This Year's Most Popular Q&A Posts Race & Gender Challenges Classroom-Management Advice Best Ways to Begin the School Year Best Ways to End the School Year Implementing the Common Core Student Motivation & Social-Emotional Learning Teaching Social Studies Cooperative & Collaborative Learning Using Tech in the Classroom Parent Engagement in Schools Teaching English-Language Learners Reading Instruction Writing Instruction Education Policy Issues Assessment Differentiating Instruction Math Instruction Science Instruction Advice for New Teachers Author Interviews Entering the Teaching Profession The Inclusive Classroom Learning & the Brain Administrator Leadership Teacher Leadership Relationships in Schools Professional Development Instructional Strategies Best of Classroom Q&A Professional Collaboration Classroom Organization Mistakes in Education
Paula J. Mellom is the associate director of the Center for Latino Achievement and Success in Education (CLASE). Rebecca K. Hixon is a postdoctoral research and teaching associate for CLASE. Jodi P. Weber is the assistant director of professional development for CLASE. CLASE is a research and development center housed within the University of Georgia's College of Education. Together, they are the authors of With a Little Help from My Friends: Conversation-Based Instruction for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CLD) Classrooms:
Look for Part Two in a few days.
Thanks to Laurie, Alva, Sarah, Keisha, Lynell, Felicia, Paula, Rebecca, and Jodi for their contributions.

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at [email protected] . When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it's selected or if you'd prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo.

Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material, in an e-book form. It's titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching.

I am also creating a Twitter list including all contributors to this column.

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The new question-of-the-week is: What is agency and how can teachers encourage its growth among students? "Student agency" is a term that is tossed around in education circles. This series will explore what it means and what it looks like-practically speaking-in the classroom.

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By Felicia Darling, author of Teachin' It!

We all need more helpers, empathizers, and leaders right now during this coronavirus crisis. This is a tough time in the US. However, it is particularly challenging for community college students, as many lack the basic socioeconomic safety net of more middle-class students. As a result, they will be disproportionally impacted by this global emergency. Community college students possess bucketloads of resilience as they have overcome great challenges to attend college. However, they also have intersectional identities that indicate they are less likely to complete four-year degrees. For example, from student-teacher conversations this semester, I gleaned that 25% of my students overcame substance addictions, 23% rebounded from spending time in prison, 63% identify as students of color, 90% are first-generation college students, 18% are struggling with mental health issues, 30% have disabilities, and 14% identify as LGBTQ+. These groups are underrepresented among students who earn four-year degrees. A big hurdle for many community college students is learning how to do college. Now students have to learn how to be successful at college while navigating a global pandemic. This is where community college faculty can be leaders on the front lines during this emergency. Instructors can make the difference between community college students achieving their dreams-or not.

After a two-week hiatus, on the first day back to class, I joined our real-time Zoom class a half-hour early in case students wanted to talk one-on-one. I spent the first 30-40 minutes of class leading a whole-class discussion about our coronavirus situation. The conversation was not about the politics or the science of the situation. It was about its impact on us-those of us in this class. I called out the elephant in the coronavirus room-mental health. I began with my own story about how I and other instructors were struggling with depression and anxiety at times in the last two weeks. I talked about how I was overeating, and that it is normal for people to engage in their go-to coping strategies during times of stress. I shared that I went to Zoom psych counseling. Also, I explained that my socioeconomic privilege allowed me to get paid to work from home-and that sadly this was not the case for everyone in class. I emphasized that we would all get through this and our coping skills would get better over time. Students shared stories about their therapy sessions, financial challenges, and their fears about getting sick. This opened the door for me to connect students with financial and psych services available at both the college and government levels. While instructors are not first-responders like medical workers or grocery store clerks who put their lives on the line every day, instructors are first responders in the sense that we are front line providers of emotional support and accurate information during this global emergency. Also, we may be the only one who notices when a student is in financial or emotional trouble and needs an intervention.

Below are some instructor moves to support students' mental health and academic success during this pandemic:

Use synchronous learning to keep the community of powerful learners intact. Your class may be the only place where students are connecting with others socially. Instructors can leverage the community of powerful learners, which they co-developed with students during the in-person class, to provide ongoing support. Some students may have disrupted schedules due to the pandemic and instructors can provide an alternative method for attending class-like viewing a video of the day's class and completing a make-up quiz. If instructors do asynchronous learning, they can meet with students one-on-one to specifically discuss how students are doing during this difficult time.

Link students to resources like psych services, financial resources, free food, housing opportunities, and other campus services. Students may feel overwhelmed and may need to explicitly be linked with resources-even if the college has sent out student emails.

Ask students to share tips with the class about how they are staying healthy and mentally strong. Have a class challenge, where you all commit together to getting through the crisis as healthy and mentally fit as possible. Ask students to share their favorite ideas for coping and for keeping healthy. Post them on a forum.

Be a leader on the front lines of this pandemic. You may be the only person in a leadership position with whom these students interact regularly. Become an expert on up-to-date safety guidelines and mental health strategies. In the same way that first-generation-college students look to instructors-the only one they may know with an advanced degree-for guidance on how to navigate college, instructors can lead students on how to navigate this crisis. Maybe this just means explaining to them your own successful strategies or linking them to resources. Maybe this means bringing in speakers from Psych Services to address the class.

The bottom line is that community college instructors are on the front lines during this coronavirus pandemic. We are showing up to teach students how to be successful in college, as always. However, now we are doing it, while we all are simultaneously navigating a global crisis. While medical first responders are risking their lives to quell the rise in cases, we are doing our parts to make sure that students emerge from this crisis, healthy and continuing on their journey to achieve their educational dreams. Our continued work ensures that in a post-coronavirus world, social and economic mobility will continue to become increasingly attainable for all students.

Featured image via Angelqiu122 on Wikimedia Commons

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Community College: Tips to Make It Work during Coronavirus

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By Felicia Darling, author of Teachin' It! We all need more helpers, empathizers, and leaders right now during this coronavirus crisis. This is a tough time in the US. However, it is particularly challenging for community college students, as many lack the basic socioeconomic safety net of more middle-class students.

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Community College Instructors are Frontline Workers in TCP Blog

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Community College Instructors are Frontline Workers in TCP Blog

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By Felicia Darling, author of Teachin' It!

We all need more helpers, empathizers, and leaders right now during this coronavirus crisis. This is a tough time in the US. However, it is particularly challenging for community college students, as many lack the basic socioeconomic safety net of more middle-class students. As a result, they will be disproportionally impacted by this global emergency. Community college students possess bucketloads of resilience as they have overcome great challenges to attend college. However, they also have intersectional identities that indicate they are less likely to complete four-year degrees. For example, from student-teacher conversations this semester, I gleaned that 25% of my students overcame substance addictions, 23% rebounded from spending time in prison, 63% identify as students of color, 90% are first-generation college students, 18% are struggling with mental health issues, 30% have disabilities, and 14% identify as LGBTQ+. These groups are underrepresented among students who earn four-year degrees. A big hurdle for many community college students is learning how to do college. Now students have to learn how to be successful at college while navigating a global pandemic. This is where community college faculty can be leaders on the front lines during this emergency. Instructors can make the difference between community college students achieving their dreams-or not.

After a two-week hiatus, on the first day back to class, I joined our real-time Zoom class a half-hour early in case students wanted to talk one-on-one. I spent the first 30-40 minutes of class leading a whole-class discussion about our coronavirus situation. The conversation was not about the politics or the science of the situation. It was about its impact on us-those of us in this class. I called out the elephant in the coronavirus room-mental health. I began with my own story about how I and other instructors were struggling with depression and anxiety at times in the last two weeks. I talked about how I was overeating, and that it is normal for people to engage in their go-to coping strategies during times of stress. I shared that I went to Zoom psych counseling. Also, I explained that my socioeconomic privilege allowed me to get paid to work from home-and that sadly this was not the case for everyone in class. I emphasized that we would all get through this and our coping skills would get better over time. Students shared stories about their therapy sessions, financial challenges, and their fears about getting sick. This opened the door for me to connect students with financial and psych services available at both the college and government levels. While instructors are not first-responders like medical workers or grocery store clerks who put their lives on the line every day, instructors are first responders in the sense that we are front line providers of emotional support and accurate information during this global emergency. Also, we may be the only one who notices when a student is in financial or emotional trouble and needs an intervention.

Below are some instructor moves to support students' mental health and academic success during this pandemic:

Use synchronous learning to keep the community of powerful learners intact. Your class may be the only place where students are connecting with others socially. Instructors can leverage the community of powerful learners, which they co-developed with students during the in-person class, to provide ongoing support. Some students may have disrupted schedules due to the pandemic and instructors can provide an alternative method for attending class-like viewing a video of the day's class and completing a make-up quiz. If instructors do asynchronous learning, they can meet with students one-on-one to specifically discuss how students are doing during this difficult time.

Link students to resources like psych services, financial resources, free food, housing opportunities, and other campus services. Students may feel overwhelmed and may need to explicitly be linked with resources-even if the college has sent out student emails.

Ask students to share tips with the class about how they are staying healthy and mentally strong. Have a class challenge, where you all commit together to getting through the crisis as healthy and mentally fit as possible. Ask students to share their favorite ideas for coping and for keeping healthy. Post them on a forum.

Be a leader on the front lines of this pandemic. You may be the only person in a leadership position with whom these students interact regularly. Become an expert on up-to-date safety guidelines and mental health strategies. In the same way that first-generation-college students look to instructors-the only one they may know with an advanced degree-for guidance on how to navigate college, instructors can lead students on how to navigate this crisis. Maybe this just means explaining to them your own successful strategies or linking them to resources. Maybe this means bringing in speakers from Psych Services to address the class.

The bottom line is that community college instructors are on the front lines during this coronavirus pandemic. We are showing up to teach students how to be successful in college, as always. However, now we are doing it, while we all are simultaneously navigating a global crisis. While medical first responders are risking their lives to quell the rise in cases, we are doing our parts to make sure that students emerge from this crisis, healthy and continuing on their journey to achieve their educational dreams. Our continued work ensures that in a post-coronavirus world, social and economic mobility will continue to become increasingly attainable for all students.

Featured image via Angelqiu122 on Wikimedia Commons

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Community College: Tips to Make It Work during Coronavirus

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By Felicia Darling, author of Teachin' It! We all need more helpers, empathizers, and leaders right now during this coronavirus crisis. This is a tough time in the US. However, it is particularly challenging for community college students, as many lack the basic socioeconomic safety net of more middle-class students.

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Making Cultural Assets Count in a Community College Math Class

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Making Cultural Assets Count in a Community College Math Class

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The Importance of Challenging Teacher's Microaggressions in Education Week

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The Importance of Challenging Teacher's Microaggressions in Education Week

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Education Week - Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo

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The new question-of-the-week is:
How should teachers respond when a colleague says or does something-knowingly or unknowingly-that is racist?
In Part One, Ixchell Reyes, Gina Laura Gullo, Cheryl Staats, Keisha Rembert, and Dr. Denita Harris offered their suggestions.

In Part Two, Dr. Angela M. Ward, Keturah Proctor, Emily Golightly, and Becky Corr contributed their commentaries.

Today, Dr. Sawsan Jaber, Denise Fawcett Facey, and Felicia Darling "wrap up" this three-part series with their thoughts.
Dealing with "racist microaggressons" Dr. Sawsan Jaber, a global educator of 20 years in the U.S. and abroad, has a passion for facilitating critical conversations about equity. She is an OVA board director and the founder of Education Unfiltered Consulting. Follow @SJEducate:
I approach the topic of responding to the racist microaggressions of teachers and teacher colleagues with a personal lens since I feel this has been a scratched track in my CD of life that has insisted on playing over and over again. With that said, I believe that every response is contingent on the specific situation. There is no generic right answer.

What should be consistent is that whether the misconception was intentional racism or ignorance, it needs to be addressed for the sole purpose that teachers are interacting with diverse students consistently in class. Whether intentional or not, these behaviors are to the detriment of students' feelings of belonging and inclusion in classes, and the absence of those feelings hinders the learning process, ultimately disadvantaging those students-often students from historically marginalized groups that are victims of systems that have intentionally placed them at a disadvantage.

One example of a personal experience I have had was when a colleague interrupted my class after an ISIS bombing in France to ask me how I felt after what "my people" did. This incident took place in front of my students and took me by surprise. I wasn't sure how to react since my students were witness to her racist interjection into our class lesson, so I stood there in shock.

I realized that I needed to address the issue in two ways: I needed to address it by talking to my students and addressing what was possibly the elephant in the room for some of them. Equally important, I needed to address the teacher in a professional manner making her aware that her implicit bias translated into a blatant microaggression and that her racism would not be tolerated. I began with my students by using this teachable moment to ignite conversations about bias; most of what we fear is what we do not know or don't understand. This eventually led to a conversation about what they felt when they saw me as the only minority teacher in the district. I created an opportunity for my students to ask me anything, and they did. I worked to build trust and a culture of inquiry in my class until that point, so they were not afraid to ask questions and have critical conversations.

In dealing with the teacher, I approached her after school so that we could have a professional conversation. She became defensive and could not see the problem with her question. My next step was to discuss this with my union representative and my school principal. This teacher dealt with kids who looked like me every day. The union representative and principal needed to be aware that her views were not conducive to those students or any student. The administration, accompanied by union representation, addressed the teacher verbally, and the situation was brushed under the rug. I don't think the impact of the incident translated to those facilitating the conversation. They themselves could not relate and had not dealt with any situations that were similar before, so the impact of the conversation on the teacher was minimal. I realized that I was powerless with my administration and my power was in the classroom where I could integrate the critical conversations with my students. The more we did, the more students of color shared their experiences of being marginalized in the school context, an opportunity to teach students self-advocacy.

Eventually, I joined the school and district leadership committees because I felt that the principal and union representative's actions were not enough. What about the students I did not teach? Did they just have to navigate these situations on their own? In my capacity on these committees, I did my best to interject the conversations with every opportunity I was given; however, it was clear the committee members were not ready for these conversations. Eventually, it became too heavy for me to carry on my own, so I decided to move on, and my heart ached with that decision. I felt like I was abandoning my students. I still try to reach out to support the district and support their growth in this area. Unfortunately, they still are not ready.

It's not "only a joke"
Denise Fawcett Facey was a classroom teacher for more than two decades and now writes on education issues. Among her books, Can I Be in Your Class offers tips and techniques for whole-child education that makes learning more engaging and relevant:

A racist joke, the racist undertones of a comment, prejudiced behavior, an outright racist diatribe-regardless of whether it's supposedly done in a lighthearted manner or with overt malice, teachers who observe racism have to call it out. Racism does not persist merely because it's supported by its adherents. It also continues because those who oppose it remain silent. When teachers take an unequivocal stand against it, we ultimately protect our students, who are invariably the biggest victims of racist teachers.

When it's a supposed joke, for example, take a vocal stand against it. Remaining silent or laughing just to get along condones the behavior, which basically ensures that it will be repeated. Firmly stating that you find no humor in racism, and then walking away, likely prevents a recurrence. And athough some might say, "It's only a joke," the mindset from which such "jokes" spring is decidedly racist. Refusing to tolerate it compels the offender to consider-perhaps for the first time-the appropriateness of what is said.

Even when racists feign ignorance, observers can't do the same. Whether it's the insidiousness of stereotyping or the long-lasting harm of blatant exclusion, racist colleagues may pretend not to realize what they're doing. However, those who hear or see these racist behaviors have to correct the inaccuracies and reverse the exclusions.

It is the racist teacher who makes negative comments about students' names. It is the racist teacher who ensures that students of color are excluded from gifted classes. It is the racist teacher who pressures the Asian student to excel in math or science and assumes the Latinx student cannot. It is the racist teacher who disciplines boys of color more harshly than all others. And it is all other teachers who have the obligation to negate these efforts, to address the offense directly, to ensure that students are protected.

Teachers of color are often more observant of words and behaviors with racist overtones as each can recount myriad instances of both seeing and experiencing colleagues' racism. And while white teachers cognizant of the pervasiveness of racism are aware of having seen and heard it as well, those divergent experiences are distinguished by the extent to which one is personally impacted. That often determines our reactions as well, but it shouldn't. All teachers have a responsibility to respond in resolute opposition to a colleague's racism in any form. Our students' well-being depends on it.

"We have to speak up" Felicia Darling, Ph.D., is an instructor, author, researcher, and teacher educator. She wrote the book, Teachin' It! Breakout Moves that Break Down Barriers for Community College Students and research articles including Incorporating Cultural Assets in Yucatec Maya Classrooms: Opportunities missed? Currently, Felicia teaches math at the Santa Rosa Junior College in California:
Many of us who are not persons of color, who do not personally experience discrimination on a daily basis, have this tendency to think that racism occurs out there, away from us, in the media. We have this erroneous idea that racist acts are these dramatic or violent behaviors that are captured on video and posted on Instagram. However, racism is ubiquitous. It happens every day through small, almost invisible acts, in our classrooms, in our parent-teacher conferences, in our tenure-review meetings, and in our faculty meetings.

Also, racism does not just happen. We do it. In any given day, white colleagues interrupt colleagues of color during meetings; leaders take up the ideas of faculty of color less frequently than those of white faculty sitting at the table; teachers have lower expectations for students of color; students disproportionally use words like "aggressive" more frequently on teacher evaluations of Black women; and Black students are suspended more frequently than white students for the exact same behaviors.

We arethe agents of racism. Therefore, the responsibility for disrupting systems of inequity falls directly on our shoulders. When a colleague says or does something racist, we have to speak up. While the specific thing we say or do does matter, what is most important is that we say or do something. If we do nothing, we are complicit in the racist act.

We cannot place the burden of speaking up onto people of color, either, given their precarious position in the existing power structure. White people are uniquely positioned to exert significant influence to disrupt the existing inequitable systems, and they must speak up. Here are some things that are better than doing nothing when encountering racist comments or acts among your colleagues. They are listed somewhat in order of increasing potency: Be loudly silent by frowning and glaring; tell the offending teacher privately that their speech or behavior is not OK and why; give the teacher anti-racist readings; publicly express your dismay about the comment or behavior in the moment or later; ask an administrator to provide a schoolwide training, submit a written complaint to your supervisor for repeated or egregious offenses; privately communicate empathy to those who might have been slighted by the remarks or acts; procure funding for a community of practice around equity to transform campus discourse and behavior; and solicit funding for ongoing equity education. Responding in more than one of the above ways is even more powerful.

The important thing to remember is that if we do nothing when someone acts in a racist manner, we are complicit in the act. Stopping racism is the responsibility of each and every one of us.

Thanks to Sawsan, Denise, and Felicia for their contributions!

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.
Just a reminder; you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email or RSS Reader. And if you missed any of the highlights from the first eight years of this blog, you can see a categorized list below. The list doesn't include ones from this current year, but you can find those by clicking on the "answers" category found in the sidebar. This Year's Most Popular Q&A Posts Race & Racism in Schools School Closures & the Coronavirus Crisis Classroom-Management Advice Best Ways to Begin the School Year Best Ways to End the School Year Student Motivation & Social-Emotional Learning Implementing the Common Core Facing Gender Challenges in Education Teaching Social Studies. Cooperative & Collaborative Learning Using Tech in the Classroom Student Voices Parent Engagment In Schools Teaching English-Language Learners Reading Instruction Writing Instruction Education Policy Issues Assessment Differentiating Instruction Math Instruction Science Instruction Advice for New Teachers Author Interviews Entering the Teaching Profession The Inclusive Classroom Learning & the Brain Administrator Leadership Teacher Leadership Relationships in Schools Professional Development Instructional Strategies Best of Classroom Q&A Professional Collaboration Classroom Organization Mistakes in Education Project-Based Learning I am also creating a Twitter list including all contributors to this column
Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at [email protected] . When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it's selected or if you'd prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo.

Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material, in an e-book form. It's titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching.

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The Importance of Challenging Teachers' Microaggressions

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The new question-of-the-week is: How should teachers respond when a colleague says or does something-knowingly or unknowingly-that is racist? In Part One, Ixchell Reyes, Gina Laura Gullo, Cheryl Staats, Keisha Rembert, and Dr. Denita Harris offered their suggestions. In Part Two, Dr. Angela M. Ward, Keturah Proctor, Emily Golightly, and Becky Corr contributed their commentaries.

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Belonging Intervention for Low SES students

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Belonging Intervention for Low SES students

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A customized belonging intervention improves retention of socially disadvantaged students at a broad-access university

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Broad-access institutions play a democratizing role in American society, opening doors to many who might not otherwise pursue college. Yet these institutions struggle with persistence and completion. Do feelings of nonbelonging play a role, particularly for students from groups historically disadvantaged in higher education?

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While presenting ourselves as caring instructors is important in any types of class and times, it has become even more crucial during the Covid-19 pandemic, the social and political protests, and the upcoming election. What follows are some ideas on how to create a space for acknowledging and addressing trauma in our classrooms, as well as some ways to create connections and foster community building.

Katie Linder calls for activities that help our students (and ourselves) cultivate resilience.

Ask students to reflect on their takeaways from the pandemic and the fully-online situation: What will they take with them from this experience? What are they learning about themselves, their abilities, their strengths? Invite students to share their fears and to reflect on their values and how their values have helped them in times of adversity.

Here's a survey on personal strengths that can help students see what is particularly strong in their individual character and personality.

In online classes, our role as instructors shifts to coaching and mentoring, so reshaping our teacher presence to embrace those roles can send a clearer message that we care about our students.

Create a personable teacher presence through a welcoming homepage that uses colors and images on Canvas. Have an instructor card with your contact information and an instructor bio where you share your schooling, experiences, hobbies, research interests, etc.

Share your own struggles as a writer with your students.

In online settings, we miss the informal chit-chat of the face-to-face courses. Fabiola Torres creates non-instructional videos to show students some aspects of her life, such as her pets and garden (Clips on iPhones is perfect for these informal videos).

Making Connections with Our Students

Michelle Pacansky-Brock calls for humanizing our online teaching, and her website is rich in ideas on how to do it. Here are some of them:

Send a welcome email to your students a week ahead the start of the course. This helps reduce student uncertainty and confusion. It also helps to check People on Canvas to see which students are not accessing Canvas and send them a quick note.

Send out a survey at the beginning of the course asking students for their preferred pronouns and names, as well as an invitation to share their worries and goals with you.

Be a "warm demander" and contact students when you see missing work.

Connections Between Students

Towards the last few weeks of classes, ask students to reflect on the successful strategies they've used in your course; share those with your new students at the beginning of the quarter.

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While presenting ourselves as caring instructors is important in any types of class and times, it has become even more crucial during the Covid-19 pandemic, the social and political protests, and the upcoming election. What follows are some ideas on how to create a space for acknowledging and addressing trauma in our classrooms, as well as some ways to create connections and foster community building.

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Hammond distinguishes the differences between culturally responsive education, multicultural education and social justice education. Each is important, but without a focus on building students' brain power, they will experience learning loss.

When it comes to distance learning, applying culturally responsive teaching requires "remixing" education by borrowing from the best practices in how kids learn (Montessori, project-based learning, etc.) in a way that repositions the student as the leader of his own learning. By giving students more agency, the idea is to disrupt old routines around teaching and learning that make the student dependent on the teacher for receiving knowledge.

"It's going to stretch us a little out of our own comfort zones, but it's worth it in the long run if we can get students to continue to do that thinking," said Hammond.

She advises three strategies to help students gain that independence:

1. Deepen background knowledge

Many educators are understandably wondering whether they should teach new content or review familiar material. Hammond encourages educators to do the latter because cognitively dependent learners often have gaps in their background knowledge . "A lot of our students are compliant learners," she said. "They're having a hard time shifting right now [because] they're used to the worksheet, but that doesn't mean they're always processing information."

She advises teachers to help students connect new things they're learning to their brain's existing schema - also known as background knowledge - that comes from home, their community, their interests. Teachers can then give them authentic tasks that help them make meaning and connections. This helps turn new inert information into usable knowledge. "You cannot give another person background knowledge," she explained. "They have to acquire it, but as teachers we can help guide the process." This can be done by building upon student interest.

"Survey your students if you don't know what they like," said Hammond. Ask them what books they enjoy reading or what topics get them super excited. She said It doesn't matter if their interests are broad or narrow; it's important to learn what interests them so that you can use that information to:

Assign non-fiction books that build on student interests.

Create a "Netflix" playlist of documentaries, nature shows, historical events, etc.

Encourage kids and parents to do a walk-about, if that's possible in their community, following social distancing guidelines. Encourage parents and students to seek out community curiosities (landmarks or interesting sights) relevant to students' interest.

With each of these activities, it's important to give the students direction so they know what to look out for. "You have to tell the brain what to pay attention to," Hammond explains. She suggested questions like, "What was your biggest surprise from this book/show?" or thinking routine sentences like "I Used to Think ___. But, now I think ____."

She said to always make sure that students do something with the knowledge as well. She suggested having them share interesting facts they learned either during video conferences or via an audio/video clip. For those students with limited internet access, encourage them to share what they learned with their parents.

2. Cultivate cognitive routines

Growing students' brain power during distance learning starts with building cognitive routines. These routines are essential to processing and hardwiring information in the brain.

"Be the personal trainer of their cognitive development," Hammond said. To do this, she suggested having a routine set of prompts in each packet that become a regular part of the way students think. That way, students begin to think that way even when you're not in the classroom to reinforce that way of thinking.

One example is to ask students to connect the "unknown to the known" or across concepts by asking questions like, " What's the relationship or connection between these things?" or "How does this part fit into the whole? What are the parts of this whole?" These may seem simple, but these questions are critical when it comes to processing information so that students internalize these prompts until they become almost instinctual.

She said students should also be encouraged to sketchnote or doodle to actively process what they're learning as an alternative to note-taking. Sketchnoting can encourage people to make deeper connections to what they're hearing.

3. Build word wealth

Building a student's vocabulary is a key tool in equity strategies for schools. "Kids have different interests in words so find out where their energy is. You can have a differentiated assignment around word collecting, but the idea is to get them actively involved in word consciousness," said Hammond. She said there are many small but high-leverage ways to do this, such as introducing robust word study. A teacher can help students engage in wordplay, word consciousness and word knowledge. This should not happen through a worksheet assignment, but rather begin with building word consciousness of words in their community, home and home language.

Word games like Scrabble, Heads Up, Taboo or even word searches are small familiar but high-leverage activities because they're fun but also require a high cognitive load. You can create your own versions of these games and have students do this in any language. Students can also do word collecting activities like scavenger hunts, or make poetry using magnetic poetry. Students can also do a contrastive analysis, by comparing words they might find in Urban Dictionary to those they might find in a standard dictionary.

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How to Develop Culturally Responsive Teaching for Distance Learning | KQED

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Hammond distinguishes the differences between culturally responsive education, multicultural education and social justice education. Each is important, but without a focus on building students' brain power, they will experience learning loss. When it comes to distance learning, applying culturally responsive teaching requires "remixing" education by borrowing from the best practices in how kids learn (Montessori, project-based learning, etc.)

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While presenting ourselves as caring instructors is important in any types of class and times, it has become even more crucial during the Covid-19 pandemic, the social and political protests, and the upcoming election. What follows are some ideas on how to create a space for acknowledging and addressing trauma in our classrooms, as well as some ways to create connections and foster community building.

Katie Linder calls for activities that help our students (and ourselves) cultivate resilience.

Ask students to reflect on their takeaways from the pandemic and the fully-online situation: What will they take with them from this experience? What are they learning about themselves, their abilities, their strengths? Invite students to share their fears and to reflect on their values and how their values have helped them in times of adversity.

Here's a survey on personal strengths that can help students see what is particularly strong in their individual character and personality.

In online classes, our role as instructors shifts to coaching and mentoring, so reshaping our teacher presence to embrace those roles can send a clearer message that we care about our students.

Create a personable teacher presence through a welcoming homepage that uses colors and images on Canvas. Have an instructor card with your contact information and an instructor bio where you share your schooling, experiences, hobbies, research interests, etc.

Share your own struggles as a writer with your students.

In online settings, we miss the informal chit-chat of the face-to-face courses. Fabiola Torres creates non-instructional videos to show students some aspects of her life, such as her pets and garden (Clips on iPhones is perfect for these informal videos).

Making Connections with Our Students

Michelle Pacansky-Brock calls for humanizing our online teaching, and her website is rich in ideas on how to do it. Here are some of them:

Send a welcome email to your students a week ahead the start of the course. This helps reduce student uncertainty and confusion. It also helps to check People on Canvas to see which students are not accessing Canvas and send them a quick note.

Send out a survey at the beginning of the course asking students for their preferred pronouns and names, as well as an invitation to share their worries and goals with you.

Be a "warm demander" and contact students when you see missing work.

Connections Between Students

Towards the last few weeks of classes, ask students to reflect on the successful strategies they've used in your course; share those with your new students at the beginning of the quarter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
While presenting ourselves as caring instructors is important in any types of class and times, it has become even more crucial during the Covid-19 pandemic, the social and political protests, and the upcoming election. What follows are some ideas on how to create a space for acknowledging and addressing trauma in our classrooms, as well as some ways to create connections and foster community building.

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Being nice is not going to end racism | Robin DiAngelo | Big Think

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Resources on Racism for Parents, Children, Educators & Others | Prevent Child Abuse America

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Having a strong commitment to equity at PCA America, we are continuously working to integrate...

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Bank of Social Justice and STEM Resources

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Bank of Social Justice and STEM Resources

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Social Justice Mathematics and Science Curricular Resources for K-12 Teachers 

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Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education

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Learning to Talk about Race and Implicit Bias in Historically White Districts: Some Guidance for Educators

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Danielle Greene and Ann Jaquith wrote Learning to Talk about Race and Implicit Bias in Historically White Districts: Some Guidance for Educators for SCOPE's district partner after the first year of the Stanford Sequoia K-12 Research Collaborative project.

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Growth Mindset Framed with an Equity Lens

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Growth Mindset Framed with an Equity Lens

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5 Breakout Moves to Build a Powerful Community of Learners

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5 Breakout Moves to Build a Powerful Community of Learners

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My Dad Matthew (the full length short: 6 minutes)

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37 Powerful Equity Moves Educators Can Do Every Day

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37 Powerful Equity Moves Educators Can Do Every Day

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Excerpt from Teachin' It! First Impressions Activity

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Excerpt from Teachin' It! First Impressions Activity

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Ben Woodford Interviews Felicia Darling on Stanford KZSU's Modern Education

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Ben Woodford Interviews Felicia Darling on Stanford KZSU's Modern Education

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‎Modern Education: Dr. Felicia Darling on Apple Podcasts

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‎Dr. Felica Darling is a math and college skills instructor at Santa Rosa Junior College. Her research focuses on equity in education- including improving access to post-secondary education.

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Supporting Black First-Gen College Students

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Supporting Black First-Gen College Students

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100 Ways to be an Ally to Native Americans 

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100 Ways to be an Ally to Native Americans 

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Photo by Robert Alexander/Getty Images.

Natives have been so cancelled out of the American conversation that people don't even know where to begin to include us. "What do we call you? ... American Indian? Native American? Do you guys still live in tipis?" These questions are still asked today-and they will continue to be asked unless we put together some kind of list, a collection of do's and don'ts, and share it widely... Wait. Hang on a tick. What do we have here?

November is Native American Heritage Month, when the U.S. is supposed to celebrate Natives and our contributions to the world. In recognition of the season, let's start with 100 ways you and yours can be allies toward to the Indigenous peoples of this continent-our ancestral land.

1. Stop using the word "powwow" when you plan your office meetings. Conference rooms are not where powwows take place (even if you serve frybread). Powwows are celebrations of our Indigenous cultures, which include dance (in regalia, not "costumes"), food, art, music, etc., and they take place in designated locations that can typically accommodate hundreds of people, not just a few dozen office staff.

2. Stop saying say there are "too many chiefs and not enough Indians."

3. If somebody says, "My great grandma was a Cherokee princess," ask them who the king and queen were. (FYI: There's no such thing as a Cherokee king, queen, princess, etc.)

4. No, just because you say your great, great, great grandma was allegedly Cherokee does not permit you to wear a headdress. In fact: Unless you are a Native who has earned the right to wear one, don't wear headdresses. Ever.

5. Don't say someone has gone "off the reservation." The term comes from a time when Natives were forbidden from leaving the boundaries of a delineated area. It was also the United States' first travel ban. Sound familiar?

6. Change the narrative on "Indian givers." We aren't the ones who reneged on agreements.

7. Never use the word "squaw." It's profane. It comes from the Algonquin word "shunksqaw," which means "woman." White men truncated it to describe what they desired in order to objectify Native women. So please stop using it.

8. Not every Native can/does ride a horse. Don't assume we do just because Hollywood, more often than not, has us pulling up on a horse rather than a Honda.

9. And, no, we don't live in tipis. Please stop asking. Also, please stop purchasing those cheap, fake fucking tipis at Target for your kids.

10. Do not speak with smug entitlement on issues that affect Native communities just because you claim to be a quarter Indian or whatever. For example, do not tell a Native that racist mascots aren't racist because you are allegedly Cherokee and you, yourself, don't find them offensive. Instead, listen to us when we tell you what is and what isn't offensive.

11. Contrary to what movies will tell you, we don't need rescuing. Tell Kevin Costner: Dances With Wolves and other Hollywood westerns perpetuate the white savior narrative. Instead, watch films written, directed, and/or produced by Natives.

12. Do not tag your Indigenous friends in all the racist, triggering content you come across. If a post includes redface, nasty caricatures, or even the acerbic Twitter troll attacking Natives, it's most likely offensive.

13. Also, quit telling us to "get over it." Too often when we bring up the Trail of Tears or Wounded Knee Massacre, for example, we're berated-"It's in the past. Move on, already!" Yet when it's a massacre of predominantly white people it's, "We will always remember," or, "We will never forget." Why do we have to "get over it" when you get to "always remember"?

14. Share Native voices. Please and thank you.

15. Expose your children to as many Indigenous activities as you can. The more children are exposed to the truth of a people, the less they will be affected by stereotypes.

16. Don't allow schools to dress your kid up as an Indian. Playing Indian is always racist, and. my traditional regalia is not a costume.

17. Quit trying to tell me how my history went. Listen. Don't explain our culture to us. Let us tell our own stories.

18. Don't correct the way people choose to identify. Native American, Indian, American Indian, Indigenous, or our tribal names-it's our choice.

19. Don't ask us what our Indian name is. For example: "Him: What's your Indian name?" Me: "Simon." Him: "No, I mean, what's your real Indian name?" Me: "I'm Oglala and my name is Simon."

20. Use your privilege and platform to speak out regularly against the oppression of Natives. Create and empower more allies to do the same. For example, if you have a following or are in a position of authority, use it to illuminate issues in Indian country, and most certainly, maybe most importantly, pass the flippin' mic to a Native.

21. Stop supporting brands like Urban Outfitters. They profit off of our culture and traditions. Instead, support Native-owned businesses. You can purchase better quality Native clothing, jewelry, etc., while at the same time support actual creative Natives.

22. If you invite Native elders into your spaces, treat them with the respect that we do. Let them eat first, let them have your seat, listen to them. They are not props.

23. Loudly speak out against Indian mascots. They are the commodification and dehumanization of Natives and have been empirically proven to harm the mental health and stability of kids.

24. Even if you have a friend who says he or she doesn't have a problem with a racist slur, it doesn't make the racist slur any less of a racist slur. Remind your friend that their sentiments toward a slur does not change its definition.

25. Recognize that DNA does not equate to culture. Ancestry.com and 23andMe, for example, are in the business of biotechnology, not culture. Culture is the community, not your spit.

26. You can't look at someone and "see" if they are Native or not.

27. Don't vote for politicians who support oppressive policies and agendas.

28. Help elect and vote for Native candidates on the ballot. We need more representation at all levels of government-from local to state to national.

29. Stand up to your racist uncle/aunt/parents/grandparents when they use anti-Native slurs.

30. Read up on how the Thanksgiving narrative as you know it is largely bullshit.

31. Speak out against Columbus Day. Columbus was a murderer and a rapist who set into motion one of the world's worst genocides.

32. Don't dress up as an Indian on Halloween. If you see a non-Native person playing Indian, i.e. wearing "war paint" and donning a faux-feather headdress, ask the person, "Would you dress up as an Indian in a room full of Indians? Then why would you think it's OK any other time?"

33. Push for inclusion of Native American history in schools, especially the histories of local tribes.

34. Every racial diversity list, like the ones your company uses to tout its inclusivity, that excludes Natives is an incomplete diversity list. When this happens, speak up; ask them why Natives have been excluded-and maybe why none have been hired.

35. Know how many tribes and nations are in your state and what tribes and nations are local to your specific area. Learn about them. You're on their land.

36. Not every Native was born on (or is from) a reservation. More than 70 percent live in big cities.

37. Speaking of, don't visit a reservation for one week/one month/one year and assume you know everything about the struggles and problems of the people that live there all the time.

38. Don't come to powwows and touch anyone's regalia or take photos without asking.

39. Stop buying "sage wands" at grocery stores. Sage, for traditional purposes, is not to be purchased. Sage, or "smudging," as we call it, is meant to bless and cleanse a person or place. Purchasing some hippie sage wand diminishes its sacred meaning.

40. None of our medicines are to be sold for profit. Please don't purchase any and call out those who attempt to sell them.

41. I know it's tempting, but even if your grandma told you so (or you just got your 23AndMe results back), if you are distantly related to someone who was Native, we don't immediately need to know.

42. Read books by Indigenous writers like Vine Deloria Jr., Louise Erdrich, and N. Scott Momaday. Please don't read fiction by white authors and think you know anything about Native culture.

43. Stop using (and stop your friends from using) the Bering Strait Theory to justify aggressive land theft. This theory (emphasis on theory) suggests Natives crossed a land bridge, but the latest research continues to debunk this antiquated theory.

44. When someone says, "America is a land of immigrants," for fuck's sake, inform them that America is a land of immigrants...and Indigenous peoples and slaves who were brought here against their will.

45. Remind your friends/family/foes that English is a foreign language. Lakota, Ojibwe, Diné, Cherokee, Choctaw, Osage, etc. are the languages of the land. English is from where? Yep. England.

46. Stop touching our hair if it's long. Stop questioning our hair if it's short.

47. Stop referring to early Europeans as "pilgrims" and "settlers." They were invaders, colonizers, and terrorists.

48. Please do not dictate, talk over, or suppress actual Indigenous voices during an important dialogue on Native issues and topics.

49. Your western university degree does not always equal factual knowledge about us, nor does your settler professor have authority in our oral histories. Our elders do.

50. You don't have to travel to another continent to find oppression. Ask a Native.

51. Understand that not all Natives agree on all subjects, just as white people don't.

52. Be a good listener-put your ego aside.

53. If you're a fellow person of color, let's not play the "oppression Olympics." Just because we inform people that Natives, per capita, are more likely to die at the hands of police than any other demographic that is not us playing "oppression Olympics." It's a fact that should be included in the discussion of discrimination.

54. Understand that "Native American" is a very generalized term. Each and every tribe has their own customs and ways.

55. Your family hasn't "always fought for this country" or owned your family farm. You're on stolen land.

56. We are not defined by our blood quantum. Although separate, sovereign tribal nations determine who is and isn't a part of their nation/tribe based on a person's traceable family and lineage, blood quantum is a colonial construct. Today, non-Natives use the one-drop rule (a small percentage of Indigenous blood) to claim Indigenous heritage. One day, people didn't even want to be around us. Now, they desperately claim to be us. Weird.

57. If someone (most often, white people) tries to charge you to participate in a "Native American ceremony," don't go! Also, call them out. There's never an entry fee to attend our ceremonies. Ever.

58. Type in #NativeTwitter. This hashtag is where you can find Native users, perspectives, events, and so on.

59. Also, look up #MMIW (murdered and missing Indigenous women). Native women are 2.5 times more likely to be sexually assaulted than women of any other demographic.

60. Quit assuming I'm not a real Native because I live in a fucking house. I like electricity and WiFi, too.

61. Look for and hang out at your local Indian center. There's one in Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, New York City, Minneapolis...this list goes on! You may learn a thing or two. When you show up, be humble, learn, and just listen. An elder once told me: The Creator gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason.

62. Please do not claim to be Native just to get a job or scholarship. That's fucked up.

63. Don't say "Native American culture." There are hundreds of tribes, each with unique cultures, languages, foods, ceremonies, etc. Not all Native tribes and nations are the same.

64. Don't even think about calling anyone/anything your spirit animal.

65. Don't tell me what I should be honored by. Let me tell you how to honor me.

66. Just because you lead your local Wiccan circle does not mean you understand 500 years of genocide. First, worshipping the gods and spirits of nature, which is a tenet of Wicca, is not directly comparable to Indigenous spiritualities, and second, please do not compare the Salem Witch Trials to the genocide of Native Americans. That's not cool.

67. Don't assume we go to college for free. A Native can't simply walk into Harvard, say, "Hi! I'm a Native American," and get a free ride. Just ask my credit report.

68. Before you make jokey comments about jock stereotypes, recognize that privileged prep-school, East Coast white boys did not invent lacrosse. The Iroquois did.

69. Hire. More. Natives!

70. Are you a student? A professor? When applicable, advocate for or add more Native content, voices, etc. to your syllabi.

71. Not all Natives are rich from casinos. (Again: I'm in so much debt.)

72. Don't claim Cherokee if the Cherokee don't claim you.

73. Don't say "circle the wagons." That's racist. Natives weren't the threat-land- and gold-horny white people were.

74. Dear journalists, stop saying that the Orlando Nightclub Shooting is the "worst massacre in U.S. history." Look up the Wounded Knee Massacre, Bear River Massacre, Sand Creek Massacre, etc. Headlines should not come at the expense of history.

75. It's worth remembering that reservations were first established as prison camps, and Hitler was inspired by them. America doesn't want you to know that one.

76. No, Native Americans are not all drunks. Jeezus. Please stop assuming that.

77. Folks always want to come to a Native community to "learn our ways." I'm like, "It would be much more helpful if you just check your people." But if you do visit a reservation, don't go for self-enlightenment. Go because you genuinely want to learn something.

78. No, you cannot give yourself a "spirit name" at a summer camp. Please stop that.

79. Yeah, the Boy Scouts of America know nothing about being Native. Also, they perpetuate racist behavior, i.e. redface, headdresses, fake Indian names, etc. Don't allow your kids to participate in the fetishizing of Native cultures and traditions.

80. On that note, painting stripes on your face doesn't make it "war paint." Stop doing that and saying that.

81. Don't ask me why I'm studying my Indigenous ancestral language instead of Spanish or Chinese or whatever. I study my peoples' language because it was once outlawed, and yep, I have the right to study whatever I want.

82. Avoid big banks, like Wells Fargo and Chase, that bankroll environmentally destructive oil and gas developments and also violate Native treaty rights. Support your local public banking effort to prevent money going to these colossal institutions. Divest!

83. Not every smoking pipe is a peace pipe, so let's take "peace pipe" out of your vocabulary.

84. Yes, we pay taxes. State and federal. Please don't assume we live tax-free.

85. You're not "part Indian." You either are, or you are not.

86. Not all Natives practice their people's spirituality. Some are Christian, Jewish, Buddhist. Some are agnostic, atheist. Please don't assume all Natives are spiritual and believe in a deity or spirits.

87. Going camping with your pals whilst pounding booze in Patagonia jackets isn't a "vision quest." Please just go camping. No need to call it a "vision quest."

88. There are Indigenous people in the U.S. There are Indigenous people in Mexico. There are Indigenous people in Canada. Natives did not approve of the white man's borders creating the three countries that make up this continent. Remember that.

89. Heteronormativity and archetypal gender roles are post-colonial. Homosexuality is considered medicine in many Native communities. Look up "two-spirit."

90. I don't want to hear about how you watched a PBS special, have you question me about it, and then pretend you know more than me. I am walking, breathing, and living this life.

91. Treaty rights are not "special rights." They are agreements between one separate sovereign nation and another (and most have been broken, unfortunately).

92. Natives, per capita, serve in the U.S. military more than any other racial demographic. Just a fact allies should know.

93. Stop using the words, "tribes," "tribe," and "tribalism" as hip words for interest groups or groups of shared interest. This usage undermines the political, legal and social unique status of tribes.

94. If your girlfriend or wife is Native, don't call her "Pocahontas." Ever. Pocahontas was a child and victim of rape. She only married that white guy to protect her family from murder, mutilation, and enslavement.

95. No, we do not get reparations from the U.S. government, and please do not assume that if you somehow get enrolled into a tribe you'll get a monthly check from the feds. You won't.

96. Peyote is not recreational, it's medicinal, it's spiritual, and no, we can't just give you some.

97. No, we don't all commune with animals. I cannot even get my fucking dog to sit. Please stop asking.

98. If you can help it, please stop asking us if we can date "outside of our race." Yes, we are allowed to date anyone we want, but we also realize we are the smallest racial minority in our ancestral land, and many of us do feel an obligation to make more Native babies. #NativeBabies
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99. Stop saying "Native Americans believed..." We believe. We survived. Being a better ally is about getting to know who we are and who we are not. We are not mascots. We are not mere relics of the past. We are writers, doctors, business owners, your classmate, neighbor. We are still here.

100. The title of this list could also be, "100 Basic Ways to be a Decent Human." So, please just be a decent human being. Don't be an ass.

Simon Moya-Smith is a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation and Chicano writer and reporter. His new book, Your Spirit Animal Is a Jackass, will be available in 2019. Follow him on Twitter @SimonMoyaSmith.

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100 Ways to Support-Not Appropriate From-Native People

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Photo by Robert Alexander/Getty Images. Natives have been so cancelled out of the American conversation that people don't even know where to begin to include us. "What do we call you? ... American Indian? Native American? Do you guys still live in tipis?"

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College Advice for Marginalized Students

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College Advice for Marginalized Students

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~Maurice D. Cox Jr (he/him) University of Kansas

"Don't be afraid to find your niche and circle. I wish I had spent more time in college finding my identity as a Black queer student. Exploring my social identities at the time, I was worried about maintaining an image. If I was the person I am now compared to then...I would be unstoppable."

~Sierra Franklin (she/her) University of Kansas '14

"Find your people. You're gonna need a support group, especially if you're living on campus.

Your white professors might not understand your struggle and might penalize you for things out of your control. Don't hesitate to bring things up with the dean's office and to go beyond them if necessary.

Don't order books on Amazon if they don't have Prime shipping. They may take a month to send your books, the school library should have all the books in the reference section."

~Nicole McCormick (she/her) University of New York

"Nearly every student, faculty member, and administrator in higher education has utilized a network of family and friends to make it in this world. Asking for help, building your networks, creating your chosen family is not selfish. Asking for internships, jobs, research opportunities, what classes to take, from people you respect and trust does not make you less-than or weak. The other kids do it too, they just call home and ask their folks. Some will degrade you for 'asking for handouts' or 'looking for the hook-up.' White, cisgender, heterosexual, wealthy and middle class students use their network all the time. They just call it networking. Be bold, take risks, and find folks who have your back!"

~Ted Lewis (they/them) University of Mary Washington '04, University of South Carolina '06

"You are more than your past traumas! You are not in this alone. Let people help you! Also, join organizations that reflect who you inspire to be."

~Damion Watson (He/Him) University of Kansas

"You didn't run in any election. Don't let professors make you the representative of whatever marginalized community you come from. Your individual experiences are unique and your own."

~Alex Villagran (he/him) University of Kansas '18

"You're f*ckin amazing. You're more than enough. Your presence matters. Your voice is needed. There will be times that you will feel out of place (and you actually might be out of place) because attending an institution of higher education has never been done by anyone in your family. However, think of yourself as a pioneer because well, you are one.

Take care of yourself. Nourish your body. Nourish your mind. Nourish your heart. Be kind to you. Above all, stay true to yourself and stay the course.

Kick ass."

~Omar A. Ramirez (he/him) UNC Charlotte '15, Columbia University '16 MSW

"Special advice for the fat Black girls/women: take up as much space as possible. You are not a sideliner, you are center stage."

~Sheltreese McCoy (she, her, hers) Bowling Green State University 04, University of Wisconsin Madison 11 MS 18 PhD

"Try things on. Be prototypical with yourself...if something doesn't feel like it works or fits, that's ok...try something new, even if it's only kinda slightly maybe new. Wear whatever the f*ck you want, including red lipstick and giant earrings. Question all the things, especially the rules if they are hurting you. All the things are for you despite them treating you like they're not (study abroad, student government, internships, scholarships, student orgs, majors)...ALL. OF. IT!"

~Carmen Rivera (she/her) University of Northern Colorado '98, Colorado State University '04

"Know your value, always. Be fearless in your pursuit of excellence, even if it means losing people you considered close to you. They were never there for you in the first place. Don't get friends twisted with being an ally. A friend can quickly turn. Embrace all of you, all the time...even though people may not understand or seek to understand you. You are not responsible for the ignorance of others. That's their foolishness to deal with."

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24 Pieces of College Advice for Students of Marginalized Identities From People Who Have Been There

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Maurice D. Cox Jr (he/him) University of Kansas "Don't be afraid to find your niche and circle. I wish I had spent more time in college finding my identity as a Black queer student. Exploring my social identities at the time, I was worried about maintaining an image.

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More and more, we live in bubbles. But there are steps people can take to acknowledge their biases and move beyond their own worldviews to try to understand those of other people.

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What Mixed Race Asians Will Never Tell You

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What Mixed Race Asians Will Never Tell You

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What Mixed Race Asians Will Never Tell You

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Author Monique Morris Shines A Light On The Black Girl's Unique Experience In America

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The Literary Canon Is Mostly White. Here’s an Alternative Latin American Reading List

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These books are all great and important, but they hardly include our history.

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The education field runs the risk of framing bilingualism as an asset for monolingual English speakers-and a deficit for English learners.

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In today's current political and cultural climate, it's crucial that everyday Americans are engaging in important conversations about race, bias, discrimination, and privilege. For people of color, these conversations are nothing new; they are a requirement in communities where experiences of racism, bias, and bigotry are a part of everyday life. But for many white people who have never been burdened by a system built specifically to keep us down, these conversations can seem confusing, uncomfortable, and awkward, which is makes them even more necessary. If you're not sure how to talk about issues of race in America, try picking up one of the many incredible books about race instead of asking people of color to explain it to you.

If you really want to be a better ally, if you really want to be a on the front-lines in the war against racism and discrimination in the United States, you have to take the initiative to educate yourself. It isn't up to people of color to inform or reform white people. As " White people, stop asking us to education about racism," a collective piece from an African American voice on Medium, so clearly explains, "Don't ask us to provide the information for you. Instead, participate in your own education. We've already given you enough of our free labor. Don't ask us for anymore."

If you're trying to unlearn the biased systems in America that are designed to keep people of color down, here are 10 books about race in America you can start with.

'So You Want to Talk About Race' by Ijeoma Oluo

In her bestselling book So You Want to Talk About Race, Editor at Large of The Establishment Ijeoma Oluo unpacks some of the biggest racial issues facing the United States today, including white privilege, micro-aggressions, police brutality, the Black Lives Matter movement, and so much more. Simple, straightforward, andrazor-sharp, this book is an accessible and friendly user guide for anyone trying to understand identity, representation, and racism in modern day America.
Click here to buy.

'When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir' by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele

If you really want to understand the Black Lives Matter movement and the people who put their lives on the line fighting for its behalf, When They Call You a Terrorist is a must-read. Written by artist, activist, and Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors and journalist and author Asha Bandele, this powerful and breathtaking memoir reveals what it is like to be Black in today's violently racially charged America.
Click here to buy.

'An African American and Latinx History of the United States' by Paul Ortiz

If you want to understand the racial landscape of modern-day America, you first have to understand the nation's past, and Paul Ortiz's new bottom-up history book is the perfect place to start. Spanning more than 200 years, this alternative narrative offers a definitive and intersectional look at the country's development through the eyes of the African American and Latinx communities that helped it flourish, often to their own detriment.
Click here to buy.

'This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror' by Moustafa Bayoumi

In this eye-opening book about fear, racism, paranoia, and surveillance, Moustafa Bayoumi offers an unflinching look the culture of the War on Terror as experienced by Muslim Americans. A powerful blend of personal experience and academic research, this engaging collection of writing is an important and timely addition to the world of Muslim studies.
Click here to buy.

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10 Books About Race To Read Instead Of Asking A POC To Explain It To You

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In today's current political and cultural climate, it's crucial that everyday Americans are engaging in important conversations about race, bias, discrimination, and privilege. For people of color, these conversations are nothing new; they are a requirement in communities where experiences of racism, bias, and bigotry are a part of everyday life.

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The Benefits of Reaching Out to People Unlike Ourselves.

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The Benefits of Reaching Out to People Unlike Ourselves.

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subscribe to Hidden Brain podcast

There is great comfort in the familiar. It's one reason humans often flock to people who share the same interests, laugh at the same jokes, hold the same political views. But familiar ground may not be the best place to cultivate creativity.

Columbia Business School professor Adam Galinsky has found that people who have deep relationships with someone from another country become more creative and score higher on routine creativity tests.

"There's something about deeply understanding and learning about another culture that's transformative," Adam says.

In one study, Adam and his colleagues tracked business school students during a 10-month MBA program. They tested the students using standard creativity measures at the beginning and end of the school term. They found that students who'd dated someone from another country during the term became more creative. In another study, Adam found that even the simple act of reflecting on one's deep relationship with a person from another country caused a temporary boost in creativity.

Adam's research outside the lab echoes these findings. In one of Adam's favorite projects, he looked at fashion lines presented by major fashion houses over 21 seasons. He found that the time fashion designers spent immersed in a different culture "predicted their entire fashion line creativity."

Through studies like these and the story of a music ensemble with an unusual sound, we look at the powerful connection between the ideas we dream up and the people who surround us, and what it really takes to think outside the box.

Later in the show, we look at circumstances where considering the perspective of someone with a different background may have great emotional rewards, but is challenging, even perilous. We hear what caused two activists to consider the perspective of their enemies, and what happened when they encouraged others to do the same.
Additional Resources
"Collaborating with People Like Me: Ethnic Coauthorship within the United States" by Richard B. Freeman and Wei Huang in the Journal of Labor Economics

"'Going Out' of the Box: Close Intercultural Friendships and Romantic Relationships Spark Creativity, Workplace Innovation, and Entrepreneurship," by Jackson Lu et. al. in the Journal of Applied Psychology

Friend and Foe: When to Cooperate, When to Compete, and How to Succeed at Both by Adam Galinsky and Maurice Schweitzer

Cristina Pato's performance at NPR in 2013. (Special thanks to Soundcheck/WNYC for their recording of "Vojo" used in this episode).
Hidden Brain is hosted by Shankar Vedantam and produced by Jennifer Schmidt, Parth Shah, Rhaina Cohen, Laura Kwerel, Thomas Lu, and Camila Vargas Restrepo. Our supervising producer is Tara Boyle. You can also follow us on Twitter @hiddenbrain, and listen for Hidden Brain stories each week on your local public radio station.

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Creative Differences: The Benefits Of Reaching Out To People Unlike Ourselves

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subscribe to Hidden Brain podcast There is great comfort in the familiar. It's one reason humans often flock to people who share the same interests, laugh at the same jokes, hold the same political views. But familiar ground may not be the best place to cultivate creativity.

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Formerly Incarcerated Students Unite in College

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Formerly Incarcerated Students Unite in College

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Being new on campus can be hard for any college or university student.

Imagine also being newly released from prison, unsure of your place at school or even in society, while trying to navigate class schedules, student benefits and graduation requirements.

"The first month of college, I wanted to quit," said San Diego City College student Ryan Flaco Rising. "I'm super tatted up. I've got tattoos all over the place, and I didn't feel like I belonged there."

Rising had enrolled at City College in 2016 after eight years in prison and said he stuck it out partly because of encouragement from an acquaintance at the UC Berkeley-based Underground Scholars Initiative, a support group for formerly incarcerated students.

He soon discovered the very thing that made him uncomfortable on campus also helped him connect with other students.

"I stand out because I have all these tattoos," he said. "People were coming up to me and saying, 'Oh, you just got out? I just got out a few months ago, too.' I started to recognize there was a lot of formerly incarcerated at the school."

Realizing there was strength in numbers, Rising and fellow student Maria Morales in 2016 founded the Urban Scholars Union, a City College support group for students who had been in prison. Since then, an Urban Scholars Union has opened at Southwestern College and a new one began holding meetings this semester at Miramar College.

"It's exciting that schools are responding to this need and recognizing that this is an issue," said Miramar sociology professor Laura Pecenco, who has run the art program Project Paint for inmates at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in Otay Mesa for five years.

"It has been a shifting tide," said Pecenco, adding that the issue was discussed two years ago at the Senate of California Community Colleges. "People are recognizing that we have to take a look at our criminal justice system and do something."

In a similar effort, the local nonprofit Inspired Innovation was launched last year by City College student Cierra Robinson. The off-campus nonprofit helps formerly incarcerated people interested in higher education navigate the college system and runs support groups for students already enrolled.

Besides the community college groups, the similar Project Rebound program is on its third year at San Diego State University under public affairs and criminal justice professor Alan Mobley.

"There's tremendous stigma with having a criminal record," said Mobley, who once was incarcerated.

Besides that stigma, formerly incarcerated students often are the first in their family to attend college and likely have a distrust of institutions, including school, Mobley said.

"Even when support services are available, they tend to not go out and sign up because of past trauma and past experiences," he said.

With all those issues combined, formerly incarcerated students have a high risk of failing to complete their graduation requirements within a targeted time of four to six years, making the need for a support group even more pressing, Mobley said.

The university and community college groups have different roots and serve different populations, but share a similar mission. Both have weekly meetings where students offer one another practical and emotional support, and the groups recently got together for a screening of "Life After Life," a documentary about men recently released from prison.

While the local groups are relatively new, the original Project Rebound was launched at San Francisco State University in 1967 by sociology and criminology professor John Irwin, who had earned college credits through a university extension program while serving five years in state prison in Soledad, Calif. in the 1950s.

The program has been credited with helping hundreds of formerly incarcerated students earn four-year degrees, and in 2016 Project Rebound expanded beyond San Francisco State University to San Diego State University, Fresno State University, Sacramento State University, Cal Poly Pomona and CSU Bakersfield, Fullerton and San Bernardino.

Mobley learned about Project Rebound in the 1990s when he met Irwin, who died in 2010.

"The '90s were much different from today," Mobley said. "A time where it was a tough law-and-order sentiment in society, where prisons were being built and were overcrowded."

That sentiment began to change with the realization that a high percentage of people coming into prisons were there for parole violations rather than new criminal offenses, Mobley said. Gradually, more focus was given to helping former inmates stay out of prison.

Symbolically, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger changed the name of the Department of Corrections to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in 2005.

Mobley, who had worked on substance-abuse treatment programs inside prisons, came to San Diego State in 2006 and soon began thinking of bringing Project Rebound to the school.

Ten years later, the program was launched at the university with two students, including one undergraduate who wore an electronic monitor on her ankle. Mobley said they told him they heard he was offering support to formerly incarcerated students, and they wanted to help.

From his experience working with prisoners, Mobley wasn't surprised by the offer.

"It's very common among inmates that they want to give back to the community while they're inside and when they get out," he said. "Many prisoners want to mentor young people so youth can avoid the same type of mistakes they made in their lives."

Besides working with students on campus, Mobley also does outreach to jails and prisons in the SDSU service area to let prisoners know there is a program that could help shepherd them into higher education.

The outreach helps prisoners pick the right school, understand requirements needed to be accepted and fill out enrollment applications, he said.

At City College, students at a recent weekly Urban Scholars Union meeting discussed plans for an upcoming dinner and other events, while Rising told members of his plan to create a book with tips for future formerly incarcerated students at the school.

Student Amber Miller told other members what the group has meant to her during the meeting.

"USU has held my hand when I didn't know what avenues to take," she said. "When I first stepped on campus, I was in foreign territory."

Miller said Morales, Rising and other students were there to help her find resources. That help lead the once formerly homeless single mother to $10,000 in scholarships, which allowed her to move out of a shelter and into a home.

"It seemed each member had some kind of resource and solution for each problem I was facing," said Miller, who will begin an internship as a substance-abuse counselor in January.

Barbara Lasure, vice president of Urban Scholars Union, refers to the organization as a family rather than a student club.

"When I came here, I didn't have a voice," said Lasure. "I'd lost my family, every possession I owned, and basically I had been beaten down by society. But I refused to accept that anymore."

Returning to school in her 50s, Lasure said she began to wonder what she she gotten herself into when she first stepped on campus and saw so many young faces. She began to feel comfortable after joining the Urban Scholars Union.

"I would have dropped out of school and just given up on even life if it hadn't been for this group," she said. "They're constantly checking on me."

Lasure, who is planning to become a substance-abuse counselor, said the group has opened many doors for her and helped her in her personal and academic life.

"First of all, I got my voice back," she said.
gary.warth@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @GaryWarthUT 760-529-4939

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Formerly incarcerated students unite in college programs

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Being new on campus can be hard for any college or university student. Imagine also being newly released from prison, unsure of your place at school or even in society, while trying to navigate class schedules, student benefits and graduation requirements. "The first month of college, I wanted to quit," said San Diego City College student Ryan Flaco Rising.

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What Community College Students Say Impede Their Progress.

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What Community College Students Say Impede Their Progress.

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Most community colleges are aware of the challenges students face if they are working, raising children or struggling to afford textbooks. But a newly released survey digs into the nuances of those challenges so colleges can pinpoint ways to lift barriers to college completion and prevent students from dropping out.

Researchers at North Carolina State University designed and encouraged students to participate in the Revealing Institutional Strengths and Challenges survey. The survey found that working and paying for expenses were the top two challenges community college students said impeded their academic success. The researchers surveyed nearly 6,000 two-year college students from 10 community colleges in California, Michigan, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming in fall 2017 and 2018.

About 2,100 students said work was the largest challenge they faced, with 61 percent saying the number of hours they worked didn't leave them enough time to study. About 50 percent of students reported their wages didn't cover their expenses. Students also reported difficulty paying for living expenses, textbooks, tuition and childcare. Thirty percent of students reported difficulty balancing familial responsibilities with college, dealing with family members' and friends' health problems, and finding childcare. Among those who cited these personal problems, 11 percent said their family did not support them going to college.

"We've moved beyond the notion of satisfaction and engagement, which most student surveys tap into," said Paul Umbach, a higher education professor at NC State and a co-author of the report. "We wanted to help campuses identify areas where they can move the needle on student success."

Umbach and Steve Porter, also a professor of higher education at the university, said they noticed a dearth of surveys that asked students about the barriers they face to completing college and wanted to provide a tool that colleges could use to eliminate those barriers and boost graduation rates. The national survey is based on smaller surveys the community colleges used to glean information specific to students on their individual campuses. Each college receives the same survey but has the option to add 10 of its own questions for an additional fee. Umbach and Porter are hopeful more colleges will be interested in purchasing individualized surveys.

"We saw a gap among the surveys out there," Umbach said. "None are asking students directly about the challenges they face and the different strengths their colleges have related to student success."

The most well-known student survey is produced annually by the Center for Community College Student Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin. CCCSE's survey addresses student engagement, which can be an indication of whether students are learning.

But the CCCSE survey is much more than a student engagement tool; it has detailed information about the many barriers to college completion that students face. Those barriers include financial problems, being required to take costly and time-consuming non-credit-bearing remedial education courses, or only being able to attend part-time. These obstacles can discourage students from finishing college and prompt them to drop out, CCCSE executive director Evelyn Waiwaiole said.

The RISC survey isn't the first to ask such detailed questions of students. The Hope Center for College, Community and Justice at Temple University has been encouraging students to identify their housing, food, transportation and financial insecurities, she said.

"I welcome any survey that is providing data to help colleges get better," Waiwaiole said. "We are about institutional improvement."

Kay McClenney, a senior adviser to the American Association of Community Colleges and former director of CCCSE, said the RISC survey identifies issues on a national scale that colleges have attempted to find on their own locally.

She said the work and financial challenges cited by students could be useful for colleges considering initiatives -- such as a plan to encourage more part-time students to attend full-time -- to help students succeed. A growing number of states have been experimenting with different types of financial incentives to encourage students to take more credits, which increases their likelihood of graduating.

"The practice of sharing with every student a full-time financial aid package and allowing them to make a more informed decision between whether to attend full-time or work at McDonald's may make a difference," she said.

Of the students surveyed, about 60 percent attend college full-time and 40 percent part-time. Nationally about 64 percent of community college students attend part-time.

Colleges and states should view the results as evidence that financial aid and social service policies are not doing enough to help community college students succeed, said Katharine Broton, an assistant professor at the University of Iowa and a faculty affiliate with the Hope Center for College, Community and Justice at Temple.

"It's clear that paying for college, juggling work and family responsibilities are academic issues critical to student success," she said.

There are teaching and learning areas that could be improved, too, but equally important is ensuring students' basic needs are met, Broton said

Porter and Umbach expected students to cite work responsibilities and finances as major barriers, but they were surprised by other challenges students identified.

"The biggest surprise we had was parking," Porter said. "This is a big issue for them because of personal schedules or work schedules."

He said many students don't have the luxury of being able to arrive on campus an hour early to look for available parking spaces, only to end up late for class or for exams.

Nearly 1,300 students identified parking as a challenge, with 86 percent reporting they have a difficult time finding parking near or on their college campuses. Only 10 percent said parking near their campus is too expensive.

Another surprise was the 1,300 students who identified online classes as a challenge. Fifty-three percent of them reported difficulties with learning online, and 44 percent said the lack of interaction with faculty is a problem. Nearly 40 percent of students said they had problems keeping up because their online courses didn't have regular class times.

"Throwing courses online with no real interaction is a recipe for disaster," Phil Hill, an education technology consultant and co-founder of Mindwires Consulting, said in an email. "Not providing online community college students with proactive advising and support services is also a big problem."

Hill said the California Community College System's Online Education Initiative, which he worked on as a consultant, is a good example of a well-designed online learning system. It helped close the gap between the rate of students successfully completing traditional courses and online classes from 17 percent in 2006 to 4 percent in 2016.

"Online education can work for community college students and is an important part of student access, but there are no silver bullets," Hill said.

Despite the challenges cited by the students surveyed, they had positive opinions about their colleges that indicated that two-year institutions are doing well over all. Ninety-five percent of students reported they would recommend their college to a friend. About 50 percent of students said their college is worth more than what they're paying, and 48 percent reported their institution had a fair value.

"They do see a better life for themselves, and they have an overriding optimism about the potential of college," said Lauren Walizer, a senior policy analyst with the Center for Law and Social Policy, adding that the survey confirmed much of the work CLASP has done in identifying challenges two-year college students face. She noted, however, that optimism is not always enough to carry students to the finish line.

State funding of community colleges is another contributing factor to students' academic outcomes. State governments often underfund community colleges, which limits the resources and support services they can offer students, Umbach said.

A report released last year by the Century Foundation found that states spend less on community colleges, which enroll high numbers of disadvantaged students, than on public four-year institutions. Educational spending per public four-year college student increased by 16 percent between 2003 and 2013, while per-student community college funding increased by just 4 percent, according to the report.

"Community colleges are already underfunded, and they are limited in many ways and don't have the resources to do more," Walizer said. "Inadequate funding at public institutions is generally a big problem. But with more funding, they could offer more classes at more times and have the resources to pay professors."

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Survey asks community college students to detail their challenges

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Most community colleges are aware of the challenges students face if they are working, raising children or struggling to afford textbooks. But a newly released survey digs into the nuances of those challenges so colleges can pinpoint ways to lift barriers to college completion and prevent students from dropping out.

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Eight downloadable posters celebrating women of STEM perfect for displaying in kids' rooms and classrooms!

The saying, "If she can't see it, she can't be it," speaks to the importance of introducing girls to female role models, especially in areas where women's accomplishments were often overlooked or minimized such as in science, mathematics, and technology. A new poster collection aims to bring more of these women's stories to light - and inspire today's Mighty Girls with the knowledge that she can be whatever she aspires to be!

The free downloadable posters, created by Nevertheless, feature eight trailblazing women who have made an impact in STEM fields. Each poster is also uniquely designed by a different female artist from around the world. Nevertheless, a podcast which celebrates women transforming teaching and learning through technology, hopes that you will download the posters and print them out for your school, home, or workplace. Below, you'll find links to download each poster, as well as a description of the scientist featured and recommended reading for both kids and adults to help you explore her story in more depth.

Of course, one of the best ways to inspire kids is through stories, and there are fortunately an ever-growing number of high-quality books about female scientists, engineers, and mathematicians being written for children and teens! To learn about the the best new releases for all ages, visit our blog post, Ignite Her Curiosity: Books to Inspire Science-Loving Mighty Girls.

The posters below are also available in seven other languages, through zipped folders that contain all eight posters in Brazilian Portuguese, French, French Canadian, German, Italian, Spanish, and Simplified Chinese.
Download Poster
Dr. Cynthia Breazeal is an Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she founded and directs the Personal Robots Group at the Media Lab. She is also founder and Chief Scientist of Jibo, Inc. She is a pioneer of Social Robotics and Human Robot Interaction. She authored the book Designing Sociable Robots, and she has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles in journals and conferences on the topics of Autonomous Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Human Robot Interaction, and Robot Learning.

Artist: Joana Neves is a digital artist from Portugal who loves drawing and started teaching herself how to digitally paint in 2014. She is driven by her longtime interest for fashion, folk tales, burlesque and animation.

Resources: Readers ages 10 and up can learn more about Cynthia Breazeal's early work in Robo World: The Story of Robot Designer Cynthia Breazeal.
Download Poster
Rosalind Franklin was a pioneer of the study of molecular structures receiving recognition among scientists for her research on the molecular structure of coal, viruses, and DNA. Her X-ray diffraction images of DNA enabled the University of Cambridge's Francis Crick and James Watson to identify the molecule's double helix structure. For years her work on the structure went unnoticed as only Crick, Watson and Franklin's colleague Maurice Wilkins received the Nobel Prize for the discovery in 1962. In 2003 The Royal Society established the Rosalind Franklin Award to bring attention to outstanding work of women in STEM.

Artist: Juliette Brocal is an animation student & illustrator from France who likes to draw seaside places, folk stuff and people playing music.

Resources: Rosalind Franklin is one of the inspiring scientists featured in Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed The World for ages 9 and up. Adult readers can learn more about her in the biography Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA. There is also an excellent NOVA episode about her, DNA: Secret of Photo 51.

Mae C. Jemison is an American engineer, physician and NASA astronaut. She became the first African American woman to travel in space when she went into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour on September 12, 1992. She resigned from NASA in 1993 to found a company researching the application of technology to daily life. She has appeared on television several times, including as an actress in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. She is a dancer and holds nine honorary doctorates in science, engineering, letters, and the humanities. She is the current principal of the 100 Year Starship organization.

Artist: Karina Perez is a Mexican American Illustrator/Designer. She's always interested in exploring storytelling through design and color to visually communicate the love and acceptance she receives from those around her.

Resources: You can introduce young readers to Mae Jemison's story in Mae Among The Stars for ages 4 to 8 and You Should Meet: Mae Jemison for ages 6 to 8. She also appears in Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed The World for ages 9 and up, and Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions, and Gravity-Breaking Adventures for ages 12 and up. Jemison is also one of the women of NASA featured in the LEGO Women of NASA Building Kit.
Download Poster
Maria da Penha is a Brazilian biopharmacist and human rights defender. She advocates for women rights, particularly against domestic violence. When Maria da Penha was almost killed by her husband, there wasn't a single police station she could go to in Brazil that specialized in violence against women. The case Maria filed languished in court for two decades, while her husband remained free. Years later, in a landmark ruling, the Court of Human Rights criticized the Brazilian government for not taking effective measures to prosecute and convict perpetrators of domestic violence. In response to this, the Brazilian government in 2006 enacted a law now known as the Maria da Penha Law on Domestic and Family Violence, which increased the severity of punishment for domestic violence against women, whenever it occurred in a domestic or family environment.

Artist: Camila Rosa. Camila is a freelance illustrator and designer from Brazil. Her work translates women from an alternative perspective: Latin-American, brave, powerful, and not fitted to mainstream beauty standards. Camila believes it's important that her work can be used to support and educate girls and women around the world.

Juliana Rotich is a technologist, strategic advisor, entrepreneur, and keynote speaker. She is co-founder of BRCK Inc, a hardware and services technology company based in Kenya. BRCK was formed to realize a vision for enabling communication in low infrastructure environments by developing useful, innovative technologies. Juliana also co-founded Ushahidi Inc., a non-profit tech company, which specializes in developing free and open source software for changing how information flows in the world.

Artist: Thandiwe Tshabalala. Thandiwe is a Cape Town-based graphic artist. Her work is bold, colorful, and conceptual. Her motto as a creative is: "Communicate don't decorate." In 2015 she was awarded with the prestigious Mbokodo Award for South African Women in the Arts, in the Creative Design category.
Download Poster
Dr. Hayat Sindi was born in Makkah, Saudi Arabia and is one of the world's leading biotechnologists. She is the Founder and President of the i2 Institute and a co-founder of Diagnostics For Al l. She was ranked by Arabian Business magazine as the 19th most influential Arab in the world and the ninth most influential Arab woman. Sindi has a Ph.D. in biotechnology from Newnham College, Cambridge, which she obtained in 2001; she was the first Saudi woman to be accepted at Cambridge University to study the field of biotechnology, and the first woman from any of the Arab States of the Persian Gulf to complete a doctoral degree in the field.

Artist: Lidia Tomashevskaya is a freelance illustrator from Tel Aviv, Israel. She has worked with publishing houses on book illustrations and has produced illustrations and graphic design for brands such as Hewlett Packard.
Download Poster
Tu Youyou is a Chinese pharmaceutical chemist and educator. She discovered artemisinin (also known as qinghaosu) and dihydroartemisinin, drugs used to treat malaria. Her discovery was a significant breakthrough in 20th-century tropical medicine, saving millions of lives around the world.

For her work, Tu received the 2011 Lasker Award in clinical medicine and the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, jointly with William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura. She is the first Chinese Nobel Laureate in physiology or medicine, and the first female citizen of the People's Republic of China to receive a Nobel Prize in any category. She is also the first Chinese person to receive the Lasker Award. Tu Youyou was born, educated and carried out her research exclusively in China.

Artist: Xu Hui. Xu Hui is an illustrator from Jinan, China.
Download Poster
Gladys West is an American mathematician known for her contributions to the mathematics underpinning GPS. Her contributions to GPS were only uncovered when a member of her sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, read a short biography West had submitted for an alumni function.

Artist: Geneva B is a self-taught illustrator from North Carolina. She loves working with colors, drawing big hair, and adding whimsy with a touch of realism and happiness.

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Free Posters Celebrating Women Role Models in Science, Technology, and Math

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Eight downloadable posters celebrating women of STEM perfect for displaying in kids' rooms and classrooms! The saying, "If she can't see it, she can't be it," speaks to the importance of introducing girls to female role models, especially in areas where women's accomplishments were often overlooked or minimized such as in science, mathematics, and technology.

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Modern Education Interview of Felicia Darling

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Modern Education Interview of Felicia Darling

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Modern Education, hosted by Benjamin and Emily, guest: Felicia Darling Part 2.

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Multilingual Students and Funds of Knowledge

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Multilingual Students and Funds of Knowledge

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Making Cultural AssetsCount: Lessons from a Yucatec Maya Village 

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Making Cultural AssetsCount: Lessons from a Yucatec Maya Village 

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Dana W. Harris can help you or your child improve in mathematics without having to leave the comfort of your home. Online math tutoring is a very simply and convenient way to get help for you or your child.

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Steele's 3-Tiered Wise Feedback to Motivate Students

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Steele's 3-Tiered Wise Feedback to Motivate Students

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0 Steele's 3-tierd Wise Feedback to Motivate 06:19

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0 Munton's Social Justice Math Activity 04:05:19

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Low-Income Students Penalized for Working their Way Through College

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Low-Income Students Penalized for Working their Way Through College

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When Seth Frotman, the U.S. official who investigated predatory student loan lending practices at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, quit last week, his resignation letter, became hot reading. He accused the agency, under the lead of acting director Mick Mulvaney, of undercutting enforcement of the law, undermining the agency's independence, and protecting bad actors:

American families need an independent Consumer Bureau to look out for them when lenders push products they know cannot be repaid, when banks and debt collectors conspire to abuse the courts and force families out of their homes, and when student loan companies are allowed to drive millions of Americans to financial ruin with impunity.

There's an additional twist. A new study from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce says that "unequal access to support mechanisms and financial safety nets exacerbates challenges working low-income students face" and makes it more difficult than in the past to work their way through college.

With the costs of college continuing to spiral out of control, pressure is enormous on students from lower-income families. Financial aid hasn't come close to keeping pace with costs. Families don't have the resources to help, so students often work.

Nothing wrong with working while studying, except that the extra hours can take a toll. As the Georgetown study says:

As the number of hours worked goes up, the likelihood of good grades and completion goes down for working learners at any income level. However, higher-income working learners require less income to make ends meet, so they tend to work fewer hours. In fact, 65 percent of higher-income working learners who work less than 15 hours a week earn grades of B or higher. On the other hand, nearly 60 percent of low-income working learners who work more than 15 hours a week and on average earn grades of C or lower.

When they choose to work, while enrolled, higher-income students have access to the best jobs and work experience, such as internships and assistantships: 14 percent get jobs in a lucrative career field, such as science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), business, or healthcare, while only 6 percent of low income students work in these fields. Low-income students are more likely than higher-income students to work in food service, sales, and administrative support jobs while enrolled. Work experience in these jobs provides basic skills like conscientiousness and teamwork, but does not provide the deeper technical and general skills that foreshadow good career entry-level jobs.

"You can't work your way through college anymore," a press release quoted Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown Center and lead author of the study.

Only 22% of low-income students who work complete a bachelor's degree in six years or less. For working students from higher-income homes, 37% complete the degree in that time frame. Overall, lower-income students are also more likely to be in a certificate program, a two-year college, or a for-profit school (which have a generally worse reputation than non-profits, whether public or private). Lower-income students are also less likely to eventually earn a degree at all, even if they are better academic performers, and if they do earn a degree, they make less as a group than higher-income graduates.

Maintaining better performance becomes more difficult, which puts lower-income students at a greater disadvantage because they can't choose to work fewer hours as higher-income students can. The disparity continued to bear out: 65% of higher-income working students spend fewer than 15 hours a week working and earn at least a B grade, whereas almost 60% of lower-income working students are at work more than 15 hours a week and earn a C or worse.

This isn't a small problem, given that 43% of working students are low-income. These students "are disproportionately Black (18%) and Latino (25%), women (58%), and first-generation college-goers (47%), while higher-income working learners tend to be White (73%)."

The results shouldn't be surprising, as they repeat data that's appeared time and again. Poorer students are far less likely to complete a degree program, get more inundated with debt, and then, even if they do complete a degree, see much lower income boosts compared to wealthier students, as Brookings data showed a couple of years ago:

Bachelor's degree holders from low-income backgrounds start their careers earning about two-thirds as much as those from higher-income backgrounds, but this ratio declines to one-half by mid-career. For individuals without a post-secondary credential, the pattern is less marked. Those from low-income backgrounds initially earn 80 percent as much as those from a higher-income background, dropping to 70 percent by mid-career.

Going to college with little money has always been a challenge, but there used to be more of a fighting chance. Anyone who condescendingly talks of how they worked their way through college years ago hasn't really looked at the numbers. For example, when I was in school , yearly gross income even in your first year would likely exceed four years of tuition. Today, that leverage factor has flipped, where the four-year tuition bill is probably multiple times the first-year salary. The relative burden is heavier, both while as a student and then after.

Lower-income students face much larger hurdles, don't have the same enrichment opportunities their entire lives, and, on the whole, don't get the same degree of reward. They hold more debt, and given the current administrations inclinations, they are more likely to face the predatory practices Frotman pointed to. That helps continue and expand income inequality to continue the cycle.

Significantly reducing the financial burden would help, but that isn't enough. K-12 education must become stronger and work experience should be connected to long-term student goals, according to the study.

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Low-Income Students Get Penalized For Having To Work Their Way Through College

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When Seth Frotman, the U.S. official who investigated predatory student loan lending practices at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, quit last week, his resignation letter, became hot reading.

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4-part System for Getting to Know Your Students. 

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4-part System for Getting to Know Your Students. 

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A 4-Part System for Getting to Know Your Students | Cult of Pedagogy

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Relationship building is key to good teaching. This system will help you quickly get to know students and benefit from those connections all year long.

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A Conversation with Author Ijeoma Oluo on Tackling Systemic Racism in U.S. Education. 

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A Conversation with Author Ijeoma Oluo on Tackling Systemic Racism in U.S. Education. 

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Educators and Race: A Conversation with Author Ijeoma Oluo on Tackling Systemic Racism in U.S. Education

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The author of So You Want to Talk About Racespoke with SLJ about what educators, and specifically librarians, can do to better serve students of color and changeinstitutional bias and patterns of systemic racism inU.S. education.

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WELCOME
TO RADICALMATH.

RadicalMath empowers educators to address issues of social and racial justice in math classrooms through curriculum, lesson planning resources, and professional development opportunities.

SEARCH FOR CURRICULUM & RESOURCES

READY TO GET STARTED?

Begin planning your lessons by exploring our curriculum guide.

START HERE

OUR VISION

We envision a critically numerate generation of young people empowered to address injustices in their lives and communities through their mathematical expertise.

HERE'S HOW WE'LL GET THERE

NEWS YOU CAN USE.

Addressing systemic racism’s impact on food insecurity.

Yes, social justice can be a tool to teach California students math.

Racial Segregation in the Bay Area

View More

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Curated by educational leader Jonathan Osler, RadicalMath empowers STEM educators to address issues of social and racial justice in math classrooms. RM is a hub for curriculum, resources, and professional development opportunities.

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Voices of Color. Is Talking White a Real Thing?

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Voices of Color. Is Talking White a Real Thing?

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Mispronouncing student Names: A Slight that Can Cut Deep.

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Mispronouncing student Names: A Slight that Can Cut Deep.

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When people come across Michelle-Thuy Ngoc Duong's name, they often see a stumbling block bound to trip up their tongues.

The 17-year-old sees a bridge.

A bridge spanning her parents' journey from Vietnam to the United States.

A bridge connecting the U.S.-born teen to Vietnamese culture.

A bridge to understanding.

"My name is where I come from," Michelle-Thuy Ngoc said. "It's a reminder of hope."

A junior at Downtown College Prep Alum Rock High School, a San Jose, Calif.-based charter school, Michelle-Thuy Ngoc (Michelle knock twee) is among the students backing "My Name, My Identity," a national campaign that places a premium on pronouncing students' names correctly and valuing diversity.

The campaign-a partnership between the National Association for Bilingual Education, the Santa Clara, Calif., County Office of Education, and the California Association for Bilingual Education-focuses on the fact that a name is more than just a name: It's one of the first things children recognize, one of the first words they learn to say, it's how the world identifies them.

For students, especially the children of immigrants or those who are English-language learners, a teacher who knows their name and can pronounce it correctly signals respect and marks a critical step in helping them adjust to school.

But for many ELLs, a mispronounced name is often the first of many slights they experience in classrooms; they're already unlikely to see educators who are like them, teachers who speak their language, or a curriculum that reflects their culture.

"If they're encountering teachers who are not taking the time to learn their name or don't validate who they are, it starts to create this wall," said Rita (ree-the) Kohli, an assistant professor in the graduate school of education at the University of California, Riverside.

It can also hinder academic progress.

A divide already exists between many English-learners and immigrant students and their native-English speaking peers. Despite a national increase in the overall graduation rate, the dropout rate for foreign-born and immigrant students remains above 30 percent, three times that of U.S.-born white students.

Before transitioning into K-12 administration, Santa Clara County Superintendent Jon Gundry taught middle and high school English-as-a-second-language classes for 16 years. Many of his students were newcomer English-learners and he made it a priority to learn the proper pronunciation of each student's name on the first day of class.

"I was their first connection to a new culture, a new country," Gundry said. "As a teacher, I felt that if I didn't make an effort to pronounce their name correctly, it showed I didn't care about who they were."

Rendered Invisible

Effort is the biggest obstacle to learning how to correctly pronounce a person's name; teachers have to want to do it, said Jennifer Gonzalez, a former teacher and author of the education blog Cult of Pedagogy. To even suggest that a child's name is difficult to pronounce is problematic, she said.

"Even the word 'difficult' is a pretty loaded word," Gonzalez said. "It's only difficult because it's culturally different."

As a kindergarten student in 1950s Brooklyn, Carmen Fariña, a native-Spanish speaker, had a teacher who marked her absent every day for weeks because she didn't raise her hand during roll call. The teacher assumed Fariña was being defiant, but the future New York City schools chancellor never heard her name called; the teacher had repeatedly failed to pronounce it correctly, including rolling the r's.

"Mispronouncing a student's name essentially renders that student invisible," Fariña said during a keynote address at the National Association for Bilingual Education annual conference in March.

Kohli produced a study with Daniel Solórzano, a professor of education and Chicano studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, on microaggressions, the subtle slights that are painfully obvious and hurtful to the person receiving them, but unintended and unnoticed by the person saying them. The work, "Teachers Please Learn Our Names! Racial Microaggressions and the K-12 Classroom," is littered with stories of students who endured shame, anxiety, or embarrassment, and sometimes a mix of all three, when their names were called in class.

There's the tale of a Portland, Ore.-area student with a traditional Chinese name who had her name garbled by a vice principal during an honors ceremony. Set to present the student with an award, the principal laughed at his mistake, drawing chuckles from the audience.

To avoid embarrassment, the student slumped in her seat, refusing to rise to receive the prestigious award. She later skipped her graduation.

The mispronunciation wasn't an isolated event. Having endured years of slights, she felt the need to become invisible long before the principal's laughter marked the tipping point.

The woman, who went on to become an educator, changed her first name to 'Anita.'

"If someone mispronounces your name once as a high school student, you might correct them," said Kohli, whose parents immigrated to the United States from India. "But if this has been your entire existence in education, what do you do?"

Kohli's own brother had a teacher mispronounce his traditional South Asian name, Sharad (shu-rudth) as Sharub during a 9th grade class. The teacher and the students decided it was easier to call him Shrub, and it stuck for the rest of high school. The nickname forced him to check part of his identity at the door.

Michelle-Thuy Ngoc didn't always embrace her full name, figuring that it would make other people uncomfortable. For years, she ignored the Vietnamese half of her first name, simply going by Michelle. The order in which Vietnamese names are spoken differs from English.

"I came to accept [my full name] over time," she said.

Building Bridges

If students have teachers who share their cultural backgrounds, they're more likely to hear their names pronounced correctly. But while the diversity of the nation's public school student body has exploded in the last few decades, the number of African-American, Latino, and Asian teachers hasn't kept pace.

Gonzalez, a former teacher in school districts in Kentucky and Maryland, said she often observed a 'these people' attitude from her mostly white female colleagues.

"They approached it like 'It's your fault for having a weird name,'" Gonzalez said.

To some degree, Gonzalez understands the struggle students face. She grew up with a Russian surname, Yurkosky, that befuddled teachers and classmates. She said it rhymes with "her-pots-ski," minus the "t" sound in pots.

"But I did not experience all the other stuff and other ways that a person can feel discriminated against," said Gonzalez, who is white.

Kohli, a former Oakland Unified School District teacher, recommends that K-12 educators identify and expand their cultural limits and recognize the influence they wield over a student's sense of self. While frustration or confusion may seem like a natural response when a teacher faces an unfamiliar name, it can leave a "lasting impact on the way that child sees themselves and their culture," the study's authors argue.

Butchered names are not just a problem for English-learners and immigrants; students from a number of cultural backgrounds have their names garbled or ridiculed. Hawaiian and African-American students, with names that link to their ancestry, also shared stories of how constant mispronunciations made them feel uncomfortable with their names.

Mocking Names?

In an extreme case, a teacher in Wayne Township, N.J. lost her tenure status and job in 2015 for mocking a student's name on Facebook. Several letters in the student's name spelled out a profane word, legal documents show.

More often, the mocking is more direct and reflexive: laughing off pronunciation, asking the student to take on a nickname, or making a spectacle of their name, Kohli said.

"It matters what you do when you're in front of a child and struggling with their name," Kohli said. "Is it framed as my inability to say someone's name or is it framed as the student doing something to make your life more difficult?"

Michelle-Thuy Ngoc attends Downtown College Prep, a 210-student high school that primarily serves first generation, low-income Latino students.

"We're taking the time to understand each person's story," said assistant principal Moises Buhain. "It's as simple as starting with a name."

As part of a social media campaign, the "My Name, My Identity" initiative is seeking name stories with the #mynamemyid hashtag. The push is personal for Yee Wan, the national association's president and the director of multilingual education services for the Santa Clara County, Calif., office of education.

Wan came to the United States as an adolescent English-learner, and almost immediately faced pressure from instructors to adopt an "American name" to replace her given name, which means "warm friendship" in Cantonese.

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Gundry and Wan developed "My Name My Identity" after hearing a principal share a story about his effort to build connections with English-language learners in school, then feeling the push fall flat when he mispronounced the students' names at graduation.

"As educators, we have the power to bring awareness to valuing diversity ... so that all of our students will feel included," Wan said.

Published in Print: May 11, 2016, as Bungling Student Names: A Slight That Stings

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Mispronouncing Students' Names: A Slight That Can Cut Deep

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When people come across Michelle-Thuy Ngoc Duong's name, they often see a stumbling block bound to trip up their tongues. The 17-year-old sees a bridge. A bridge spanning her parents' journey from Vietnam to the United States. A bridge connecting the U.S.-born teen to Vietnamese culture. A bridge to understanding.

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Commentary from Students with Physical Disabilities

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Disability

By Molly Mccully Brown and Susannah Nevison

In July of 2016 Molly McCully Brown and Susannah Nevison met for the first time at the Sewanee Writers' Conference in Tennessee. As working poets with physical disabilities, a condition each explores in her work, they found much in common and quickly became friends, and have grown closer over time. These essays make up a dialogue about being disabled in an able-bodied world that arose from their friendship.

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Credit Dadu Shin

There's SO MUCH standing at this party. Legs are the worst, I hate them!
I send this text from a corner of my university's beginning-of-the-year department get-together, leaning heavily on my cane and trying to arrange my face in such a way that I don't look too uncomfortable. Our department chair's house is up two shallow flights of brick stairs, and anyway, even if I could get my wheelchair inside, the whole place is packed to the gills with people and I could never move in it.

Instead, I make do relying on walls and various pieces of furniture for support. Periodically, I perch for a few minutes on the couch, but no one stays sitting long, and from down there, it's impossible to hear anyone who's standing over the din. The expectation is that you'll circulate.

I love my colleagues, and I'm happy to see them, but every year I hate this party. There comes a point a little way into the evening when the pain in my knees and back and ankles reaches a roaring point and my head is filled with the sound of a false ocean, as if my ear is pressed to the mouth of a conch shell.

I can only half-concentrate on what anyone is saying to me. They're all muted, and my brain is busy balancing and breathing. The truth about pain is that it makes you tired. My body needs to rest, but it's more than that. I'm exhausted by having to feign comfort, and I don't want to translate what's going on inside me, even for my friends. They're sorry when I'm hurting, but for them, the act of rising from the couch and standing is effortless and instant. All that explaining my body will do is widen the gulf between us.

Usually, this is the point where I take myself off to the side for a moment and sit down apart from everyone. This year, though, my phone chimes quietly and brightly in my hand -
I was just thinking the same thing! THE WORST! Lots of standing here, too.
Susannah, a friend and fellow poet, who also has a physical disability, is texting from her own department party across the country, in Utah. Susannah and I publish with the same press, but we hadn't met until this summer, when by chance we ended up at the same writer's conference. She found me the first night, and we fell in like we'd known each other forever, trading medical histories so extensive that one woman, shocked to overhear us, yelped, "You two are falling apart!" We laughed until we couldn't breathe. And since we've gone home to our separate states, we've spoken almost every day.

You're falling apart.This is a version of a truth I've known about myself ever since I can remember: Your name is Molly. You have curly hair. You like to talk. You're falling apart. The medical version of the matter goes like this: As a result of being born prematurely and deprived of oxygen, I have cerebral palsy, a neurological disorder. My particular type increases my muscle tone and hinders my balance. I can walk, but only a little. I can stand, but not for long. My crouched, spastic gate puts too much pressure on my joints and so the cartilage in my knees and ankles is wearing away. I am, quite literally, falling apart, even if it is at a relatively glacial pace.

This fact was delivered, first, in the mouths of doctors talking over my head to my parents about possible surgical and orthopedic interventions: selective dorsal rhizotomy, partial hamstring release, heel cord lengthening, double-upright-KFOs. Then I heard it in the mouths of the people who loved me, trying to give me the tools to live the rest of my life as painlessly and independently as possible: I know it hurts, but you have to stretch, you have to walk, you have to put weight on your legs. Otherwise, you won't be able to walk anymore. If you aren't walking, I learned from the world, your body's no good.

Somewhere along the way, I got cleaved down the middle. There was my damaged body, and then there was the rest of me, desperately trying to hold that body together, thinking: I hate you and then I need you and then thank you and then please don't fall apart!

These days, a lot of the language I use about my own life still reflects that split. I'm visibly disabled, and so I have to talk about my body everywhere I go. Sometimes, it's to assuage people's curiosity: the woman in the shoe store wants to know what happened to me, or the man I'm on a first date with hasn't asked about my family but is weirdly hungry for details about just what exactly my body can do, just how exactly I'm scarred. Sometimes, explaining is a matter of necessity: I need to know if there's an elevator in the building where I teach this semester.

Sometimes, I'm not sure exactly why it is I'm explaining: On the first day of the new semester I ask my students if they have any questions about me, and one boy puts up a hand and asks, utterly guileless: So, what is it that's wrong with you? I'm a relatively new teacher, and this hasn't happened to me before. Still, I answer him the way I've grown accustomed to answering. I have a disability, I say, like it's a shirt I put on in the morning. It makes my balance bad. It means I don't walk very well. After that, we have a conversation about why, in a writing class especially, being careful and exacting with our language is so important, but I can't stop that exchange from pinging around in my skull.

The truth is that even with the people who know and love me best, I have a nasty habit of treating my body like it's a bad suit of clothes or a thing that somehow just keeps happening to me. I don't talk much about it unless I need to explain: I can't do this or Could you give me a hand with that or I'm sorry, I can't go there. Mostly, I try to render it background noise. Sometimes I forget you have a disability, a friend says. An ex-boyfriend said once: It's such a small thing. I did this on purpose. Their forgetting is my most impressive magic trick.

I never forget about my disability - its root system is shot through every part of me. This is true on a basic biological level: It's a feature of my brain and the electrical signals it sends. But I mean it more deeply than that. It's not just that I'm often in pain, or that I have to think about my body almost all the time, although both of these things are true. It's that I don't exist without my body. Its particular margins, and movements and methods for making it through the world are present, not just in the moments when it causes me hardship but in the best and wildest and strongest stretches of my being. My body isn't standing apart from me holding my life in a vise grip: It is making my life, indivisible from the rest of me. We are walking together through the world, as odd and slow as it looks.

I hate my legs, and I don't. I love my body, and I don't. There is a list of things that are wrong with me, and none of them are wrong with me. I go whole stretches of time without pausing to think: I have a disability. I am always, always, always disabled. When I make my life legible to an able-bodied world, all the nuance, all those contradictions, which aren't really contradictions, get sucked out of it, somehow. Even I start to forget them. Any way you slice it, explaining is an act of erasure. Either I am describing my body so that it can be understood and thereby forgotten: Look, it's not so scary after all - there it goes settling down in the corner to sleep. Or I am describing my body so that it begins to subsume the rest of me: Look, she grows curiouser and curiouser - that wheelchair, that weird walk, that way her hands curl up.

Susannah and I are on the phone in the middle of a slow Tuesday and I can't stop thinking how weirdly grateful I feel for her voice on the other end of the line. We're talking about our bodies, and then not about our bodies, about her dog, and my classes, and the zip line we'd like to string between us, from Mississippi all the way to Utah. And then we're talking about our bodies again, that sense of being both separate and not separate from the skin we're in. And it hits me all at once that none of this is in translation, none of this is explaining. Legs are the worst, I say, I hate them. And I know she knows I mean it, but that I also mean: I love them and I'm grateful and I'm glad you're here. I also mean I'm tired. And I also mean thank God.
- Molly McCully Brown

A few years ago, I started going to a new indoor pool. As soon as I had stripped down to my bathing suit in the dressing room, a woman asked, "What happened to you? Were you in some kind of accident?" Like the student in Molly's class, this woman asked me to explain my body. I wanted to simply say no, I was not in an accident, but I've spent a good part of my life making people more comfortable with my body, and offered my prepared translation. Without even thinking, I said, "I've had a lot of surgery."

To be asked to account for my body, especially by strangers, reminds me that my body needs its own introduction, that it visually disrupts or upsets another person's field of vision. My body requires explanation in public spaces because public spaces aren't made for people who look like me.

As long as I can remember, I've been taught to speak about disability as something that exists in addition to myself. I'd say I was born with extensive birth defects in my legs and feet. I'd say I have a lot of foot and leg issues. At no point would I have said I'm disabled. Undoubtedly, this semantic dislocation is related to the fact that I can render disability invisible. If I wear pants, no one sees the scars. To the untrained eye, I walk normally. I have the privilege of passing as completely able-bodied in appearance, if not in practice. This point might seem small, but it isn't. Growing up, I thought I could be in possession of physical disabilities without being physically disabled. Because I could pass for able-bodied, I could perform some kind of normalcy. I could put disability away like a costume; I could take it on and off.

Explaining disability is like speaking two languages, and it is the disabled person who is required to translate for the able-bodied world. Can I refuse to translate? It doesn't feel like an option. A refusal to translate is a refusal to turn the elephant in the room into a mouse. But this is what the world around me asks me to do, and more often than not I oblige. Still, this mouse has the power to terrorize me.

I learned very early on to advocate for myself, to take ownership of my body. I'd rattle off the terms: bilateral club foot. A leg-length discrepancy. Congenital birth defects. Precision in language grants narrative power. So long as I could name it, I could explain it, and in a way control it. I could reframe the way I was seen.

And yet, so often the act of naming disability enables another person to look away, or refuse to see me as I am. I move in an instant from a hypervisible object of curiosity to an invisible nonentity.

I often think of my body, and disability, as an object I command, or try to command. Language shapes how I understand myself - I am both my disability and the mind that needs to exist apart from it. I am always dual. This division of self, or the need to perform that division in language, is something I unwittingly learned from the medical model, as I listened to doctors discuss her deformity or her birth defects with my parents. I also understand my body as a made object.

The body I was born with, as Molly pointed out on the phone the other day, wasn't going to work out so well. The body I live in is the product of many hands: I move through the world in a vessel that was given to me, that was shaped and reshaped through surgery, so that I can propel myself through space and time without the need for a wheelchair. It is both mine and not mine. I have never consciously known my body as it entered the world. It's a strange kind of grief I carry, a weird nostalgia not for something better, but for some truer version of myself. As if to know my original body would somehow move me closer to an understanding of that split I - as if maybe then I would be one and not two, disability a nameable part of me instead of something I hold beside me.

Moments like the one in the pool dressing room, moments where I can see the instant someone registers my body as deviant, force that complicated relationship with disability to the foreground. The removal of sweatpants in a dressing room is the removal of an able-bodied facade. It forces the linguistic toggle between I'm disabled and I have a disability.

When my body misbehaves, as it inevitably does, that distinction between being disabled and having a disability becomes shaky, and shakier still when repeated surgical intervention is warranted. Then, disability is no longer something I command, hide or control. It eclipses me. It becomes a defining characteristic. Under a stranger's gaze, I become the woman on crutches or the woman in the wheelchair. In other people's eyes, I'm clearly disabled. Whether I like it or not, it's impossible to completely separate body and self. In terms of pronouns, we have to figure out how to be me. We have to work as one.

Unlike when I remove sweatpants in a dressing room, there's no point when disability isn't present for me. Though I perform that division in speech, in explaining disability, I'm always aware of myself as disabled. I'm always thinking, consciously, about how I move. If I don't, I stumble. For any major life event, I can tell you what shoes I was wearing and what kinds of surfaces I walked on, whether the cement was cracked, how big the gravel was. I plan my day around how much walking I'll do, and whether it will be flat or on an incline. Why then is it so hard for me to say I'm disabled?

Perhaps part of it comes from the near-constant performance of able-bodiedness. Perhaps part of it is that I've adapted so well, and I've made such progress in the eyes of the medical field. Perhaps I really do believe that I can separate my body from my self, because I do it all the time in language.

When I found out Molly was at the writers' conference, I made a beeline for her table and introduced myself. Within minutes, we were laughing and sharing hospital stories. There was no explaining, no need for back story. No need to define ourselves or our bodies. There was simply the joy of being recognized, that rare and easy space, where there is never any need for translation.
- Susannah Nevison

Molly McCully Brown is the author of " The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded" and a fellow at the Oxford American. Susannah Nevison is the author of " Teratology " and a fellow at the University of Utah, where she is completing a doctorate in creative writing. The authors are collaborating on a collection of poems about disability and trauma.
Disability is a weekly series of essays, art and opinion by and about people living with disabilities. The entire series can be found here. To reach the editors or submit an essay for consideration, write opinionator@nytimes.com and include "Disability" in the subject field. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTOpinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

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Opinion | Explaining Our Bodies, Finding Ourselves

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Disability By Molly Mccully Brown and Susannah Nevison In July of 2016 Molly McCully Brown and Susannah Nevison met for the first time at the Sewanee Writers' Conference in Tennessee. As working poets with physical disabilities, a condition each explores in her work, they found much in common and quickly became friends, and have grown closer over time.

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story

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Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.