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Are my classroom and activities culturally responsive? How? 

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Are my classroom and activities culturally responsive? How? 

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My classroom and the activities I have in it to promote SEL and create an inclusive environment for growth are culturally responsive. Within all of my activities and aspects of classroom culture one can see they are generated to empathize with each of my students, promote inclusivity and positive relationships with each other and oneself, eliminate bias, practice advocacy, allow students to express themselves rather than be told how to act and molded to societal ideals.

Below are the ways that an activity/classroom culture taken from each competency column are or are not culturally responsive and why.
Self awareness: Reading self awareness literature such as "The Name Jar," It's Okay to be Different," and "I am Enough," is culturally responsive because these are books that show characters that come from different cultures and families so each student would be able to view themselves in the lesson. These books are considered culturally relevant literature and promote self love and identity to young children.
Social awareness: The breaking stereotypes activity could be considered not culturally responsive because it could make some students feel singled out if there is a stereotype based on them or someone in their family. It could also accidentally give the students new stereotypes to think about and use negatively if they do not grasp the concept and activity.
Self Management: Grounding techniques and meditation as an activity is culturally responsive because it promotes mind fullness and stress management that any student could use in differing situations. The students can tailor this practice to their specific needs.
Responsible Decision Making: A student-elected council may not be culturally responsive because it runs of the risk of bias and students playing favoritism in the classroom. It also does not allow for the voice of each, individual student to be heard and acknowledged.
Relationship Skills: Having classroom goals with incentives is culturally responsive because it encourages all of the students to work together to reach objectives. They each get to use their own strengths and build bonds with their classmates.

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In order for the students to continually develop all of these skills, it is crucial to send home SEL resources and activities for families. This way, they will be constantly practicing these competencies and learning how to use them in and outside of the classroom. Here are some activities that can be done at home for each SEL component.
Self Awareness: The students will be given their own journal to take home and write a self awareness prompted entry in every night. They will be encouraged to share these entries with members of their family and there will be a blank space for the family member(s) to write their own entry below the students'.
Social Awareness: For social awareness practice outside of the class, I will ask the parents/guardians to occasionally point out neighbors, family members, friends etc. that may be going through a tough time. They will then ask their child how they might be able to help and/or write them a meaningful letter to make them feel better.
Self Management: The students will be asked to create at-home to do lists, which could include things like chores, sports practices/games, helping cook dinner, playdates, walking the dog... They will also be encouraged to ask their parents/family members if they use to do lists or calendars and how it helps.
Relationship Skills: Having good relationships at home, which could be between parents, siblings or grandparents, is a good model for how to utilize and build these skills in school. Students will be encouraged to demonstrate strong, healthy bonds with their family. Examples of this could look like cooking together, teaching them manners and acknowledging when they use them and reading together, and pointing out good relationships between characters.
Responsible Decision Making: Send home infographics or pamphlets regarding how children make decisions and how important it is that they grow in decision making. Make suggestions to the family about how their can include their students in decision making processes. This could look like helping pick grocery items, how much to tip a waitress or how to respond to a certain scenario.

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What are Relationship Skills?
Relationship skills are the abilities to initiate and establish healthy, nurturing connections, be able to communicate and listen effectively, be involved in teamwork and collaboration, show leadership, know when to ask for/offer help, stand up for injustices and withstand negative peer pressure. This is an extremely important skill for children because it allows them to work well with their peers and in the classroom and build meaningful lasting friendships.
Activities/assignments for the classroom:
-Write personal narratives about a relationship that is meaningful to them and why. How did you meet? How does this person make you feel? What do you do together?
-Team Puzzles; table groups race against the clock to put a jigsaw puzzle together
-Read alouds of literature regarding relationship skills such as; "The Not-So-Friendly-Friend," "How Full is your Bucket?" "Fill a Bucket," and "The Circles All Around Us"

Classroom culture:
-We will have "classroom goals" that the students work towards together; jar of marbles to earn eating lunch in the classroom, pajama day, extra recess etc.
-Weekly student shout outs; one student each week will get to create a poster about themselves to hang and showcase inside the classroom. There will be a stack of sticky notes beside it and their classmates will make positive comments and compliments on them/their poster.
-Have the students help each other before coming to the teacher.
-Lots of collaborative group work with different partners each time.
-Frequently talk about current/past social injustice issues and how to stand up for others and the importance of using our voice.

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What is Responsible Decision Making?
Responsible decision making is the ability to make productive, positive choices about one's own behavior and communal interactions in different situations. This looks like; identifying solutions, problem solving, considering your own and others well being when taking action, showing open-mindedness and learning how to make proper judgements based off of facts and information as opposed to bias or stereotypes. Students need to know that decisions affect their lives, so it is important to build these skills early and have a strong process for decision making.

Activities/ assignments for the classroom:
-Reflection essays that bring out empathy and narratives of making mistakes.
-Decision making flip book
-Practice mindfulness through meditation and breath work, this allows the students to slow down, practice patience and not jump to quick, irresponsible choices
-Activities that compare safe and unsafe behaviors, this could look like scenario discussions, literature, visual boards that show and sort different actions.

Classroom culture:
-Have a student council, with peer elected members, that discusses our classroom needs and events, instead of the teacher always organizing and making decisions.
-Create a class contract at the beginning of the year that hangs in the classroom and is followed and respected.
-Constantly practice decision making with anchor charts and scenario discussions
-The teacher should always model responsible decision making, being open minded in situations and not use bias in the classroom.

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What is Self Management?
Self management is the ability to manage your own behaviors, emotions and thoughts in differing circumstances. It is also the ability to demonstrate self discipline, stress management and motivation in order to achieve goals.

Activities/ assignments for the classroom:
-Ask open ended questions/scenarios and have students write/role play their answers to how they would handle the situation.
-Grounding techniques meditation for stress relief with a class/partner debrief after.
-Create vision boards with clear goals and aspirations
-For younger grade levels playing games such as Mother, May I, Follow the Leader, and Simon Says as brain breaks.
-Students will create their own behavior log that they monitor and fill out daily to hold themselves accountable and reflect.

Classroom culture:
-Have anchor charts and posters around the room with coping skills for students to view whenever they need to.
-Provide checklists and rubrics to student assignments and activities to allow them to build organization skills.
-Flexible seating in the classroom; no strict seating chart, variety of places for students to work, different seating than traditional chairs such as exercise balls, beanbags etc. This allows the students to take ownership of how they feel they work best and model appropriate decision making.
-The teacher always demonstrates coping skills and positive self management to model for the students

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What is Social Awareness?
Social awareness is the ability to demonstrate empathy, grasp different perspectives, appreciate people who have different cultures and experiences and treat everyone with equity, respect and appreciation.

Activities/assignments for the classroom:
-Small group listening circles where the students get to take turns answers questions about themselves while their peers listen, without interpreting. Some questions could be: Who do you look up to in life and why? What is your dream career? What are some of your favorite things in life?
-Have the students read short stories and write about the main characters needs and feelings that they interpret.
-Breaking/exposing stereotypes activity; Have the students write down words like "doctor, cheerleader, grandfather, fast-food worker, electrician," then read the words aloud and have the students write their initial thought of the descriptor. After, we will all share and see if we got similar answers and the teacher will describe stereotypes and why they can be damaging since every person should be looked at as an individual.
-"How would you handle..." scenarios.
-Culture projects that are put up in the classroom and used in gallery walks.

Classroom culture:
-Read inclusive/diverse literature to showcase different backgrounds so that every student gets a chance to see themselves in the classroom and learn about different sociocultural experiences.
-Teacher always demonstrates empathy for everyone in the classroom to set a model for the students.
-Educate yourself and the students about issues in school and the world regarding injustice.
-Start with respect from the beginning of the school year

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What is Self Awareness?

Self Awareness is the first component of SEL practices. It is described as the ability to understand your own emotions, values and thoughts and how they influence behavior across different contexts. It is important to note that in order to help your students gain self awareness you need to first monitor your own self awareness, if you are not regulated you CAN NOT help or regulate your students!

Activities/assignments for the classroom:
-Keep an emotions/self awareness journal with prompts that we fill out during morning meetings. Prompts could be things like: What are things you like and dislike about yourself? When are you happiest in life? How did you feel when you woke up this morning?
-mindfulness meditation
-Emotion check ins
-Create self collages and identity posters..."Student Star" activity: students get a blank star and draw themselves in the middle. Each point of the star will represent a category that the student will fill in.

Classroom culture:
-We will read positive affirmations at the beginning and end of each day.
-Read self awareness literature such as "The Name Jar," It's Okay to be Different," and "I am Enough."
-Hold classroom show and tells, we will have multiple some will be for anything they chose and want to share, others will be cultural and describe their values.
-Reflect don't react
-Use and define new words to describe emotions.