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"If we learn to hear them, we can build our own capacity for refusal and our own imagination for schools; and for a world, in which there are no throwaway lives" (Shalaby, xx).

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XVII Reflection:

We need to stop teaching violence and teach more beautiful more human possibilities.

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XXI Reflection:

Children who make trouble are classified as disruptive, hyper, and problematic. These could also be signs of suffering or a cry for help. Sometimes it helps to change our perspectives. We shouldn't just punish that student right away! We should try other methods first like talking to them, level with them, and maybe there is more laying underneath.

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175 & 176

She includes a graph on how we as teachers can teach in a more loving way oppose to the traditional way.

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"Teachers are on the front lines of making things more right. You are the holders of our precious communities of children - their caretakers, their advocates, their teachers. We adults are going to one day leave this world to the children sitting in your classrooms. They will be tasked with caring for the babies, the elders, the ailing planet. We need to do a better job than we have. Let's start by offering them a solid model of how to love, so we might all finally begin to learn freedom" (Shalaby, 181).

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Relationships With Students:

Teachers should try and get o know their students on a deeper level. We should also allow them to get to know us as well.

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Our students are also human. They have lives outside of the classroom just like we do!

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Open hearted teaching and engagement for social activism

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Teachers are also learning, same as the students.

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Critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication, creativity, respect, and understanding.

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The "Default Mode" In Our Thinking About Culture:

" 1. Cultural differences are problems rather than resources for learning.

2. Pupil performance is the result of the two primary factors of pupil psychology and family socialization.

3. Cultural background is largely determined of school achievement and future socioeconomic standing" (Florio-Ruane, 35).

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Durable Narratives In Education:

" 1. Cultures are unique, bounded groups-often standing in conflict with one another;

2. Culture is passed on essentially intact from generation to generation within families;

3. Immigrants and subsequent generations of their offspring have in common a static stock of cultural knowledge and practices usually referred to as ethnicity;

4. The worth or value of cultural knowledge and practices is measured by the by the economic success of the ethnic group holding them;

5. When ethic groups fail to thrive economically, that failure is explainable in terms of the inadequacies of their culture, especially its family and childrearing practices"

(Florio-Ruane, 38).

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"Differences in language, race, ethnicity, and social class are seen as explanatory of school failure and, as such, are problems rather than resources" (Florio-Ruane, 38).

- This needs to change.

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"In order to create a profession of more reflective of the strengths of our population's history and diversity, we need to transform the tests and contexts of teachers' learning to include multiple vocies and stories of culture, literacy, and education" (Florio-Ruane, 44).

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"It is important for the curriculum of teachers education to prompt examination of diverse narratives of culture..." (Florio-Ruane, 48).

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Direct effort is needed for change!

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By the editors of Rethinking Schools

Illustrator: Sophia Foster-Dimino

The world is broken. But instead of giving up, instead of resigning, teachers need to pivot to make teaching an act of defiance, a declaration that the only way forward is through lessons that teach students to remember joy, to activate their muscles of imagination, kindness, laughter, playfulness, and solidarity.

The fear that the world cannot be mended is a story told by those who benefit from today's distorted relationships of wealth and power, and thus have an interest in keeping us docile. So instead of surrendering to despair, let us choose to create a different path.

We must reject district initiatives that begin from a narrative of "learning loss," echoing the tired lines used over the decades to track students by their test scores with problematic and inaccurate assessments tied to ineffective and deadening teaching. What our youth don't need is another year of a fact-packing, harried pace of "catching up" because they are "behind." They need lessons that intimately link the struggles of their families and communities to past and present struggles for justice around the world. They need a curriculum that teaches them to unravel the causes of racism, our climate crisis, the vast and growing economic inequality, houselessness, and war. They need to probe social reality through activities that can simultaneously build their literacy and numeracy skills and their capacity to imagine a different world - and, at the same time, fire them to life. They need a steady diet of narrative and poetry writing about their lives that tethers them back to joyful moments of their childhood, memories of standing with others, hilarious stories that remind them of laughing big, belly laughs as well as weeping collectively at shared tragedy. We need to reject the supposed need to be "efficient" in the classroom and instead take the time required to restore young people's fractured relationships with others. What may be efficient at racing another few pages through the textbook may be decidedly inefficient at building community and a love of learning. Our students need to pause to share their work in read-arounds, even when these take "valuable" class time, because sharing their writing and their stories connects young people and nurtures friendship as well as academic skills.

Instead of surrendering to despair, let us choose to create a different path.

In We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom, Bettina Love argues that joy is a product of the Black freedom struggle - and has animated that struggle; it renounces alienation, oppression, exploitation:

Simply put, many of our schools function as spaces of dark suffering. . . . What is astonishing is that through all the suffering the dark body endures, there is joy, Black joy. I do not mean the type of fabricated and forced joy found in a Pepsi commercial; I am talking about joy that originates in resistance, joy that is discovered in making a way out of no way, joy that is uncovered when you know how to love yourself and others, joy that comes from releasing pain, joy that is generated in music and art that puts words and/or images to your life's greatest challenges and pleasures, and joy in teaching from a place of resistance, agitation, purpose, justice, love, and mattering.

Our students need this pedagogy of joy, and we educators need it as well. As Rosa Parks said, "There were times when it would have been easy to fall apart or to go in the opposite direction, but somehow I felt that if I took one more step, someone would come along to join me." We need to be there to join each other. A failure to believe that change is possible is a miserable lesson and one that is as contagious as all the COVID variants worming our way.

Joy is not a synonym for happy. Our students - and we educators - can be joyful even when we engage in some of the harshest topics in the world. Think of lessons described in Rethinking Schools articles in recent years: Rachel Hanes' 2nd graders learning about oil pipeline pollution and joining together in their Storyline enactments to resist company enticements to accept pipelines through their community; Martin Urbach's New York City high school music students creating their "Song for Tamir Rice" to commemorate the 12-year-old Tamir Elijah Rice, murdered by a white Cleveland police officer; Erin Green's 5th graders "meeting" and surfacing the struggles and courage of Civil Rights Movement activists in a mixer activity; Moé Yonamine's students writing and performing their "1.5 Because" poem to denounce climate policies that put their Pacific Island homes at risk: "We are not drowning, we are fighting"; Cierra Kaler-Jones' Black Girls S.O.A.R "co-researchers" in Washington, D.C. and South Carolina, who used oral histories to explore how racism, and resistance to racism, shaped the lives of their loved ones.

Joy is not an escape from the hard realities of our world, but a dive into them.

These and so many other teaching stories demonstrate how joy and academics go hand in hand. Joy is not an escape from the hard realities of our world, but a dive into them. Students experience joy from their connection with one another, how we invite their lives into the curriculum, the new insights sparked from their studies, their engagement in things that matter. Joy is the product of our respect for our students as intellectuals, writers, artists, and activists.

Yes, we know this is a hard, hard time. It is why we so desperately need to insist that our classrooms and schools be sites of joy, of imagination, of humanity. It is why we need to resist the narrative that after two and a half years of the pandemic, schools should be hurry-up sites where we single-mindedly address "learning loss." Joy and academic achievement are partners, not enemies. Social justice educators should recommit to the vision of classrooms and schools that blend our commitment to building a better world with our love for the children in our care. Joy should be central to everything we do in schools.

Want more content like this? Subscribe now to Rethinking Schools! A one-year subscription is just $24.95 and helps support our efforts to provide antiracist and social justice curriculum and articles for educators everywhere.

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Joy is not an escape from the hard realities of our world, but a dive into them.

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"The world is broken. But instead of giving up, instead of resigning, teachers need to pivot to make teaching an act of defiance, a declaration that the only way forward is through lessons that teach students to remember joy, to activate their muscles of imagination, kindness, laughter, playfulness, and solidarity" (Rethinking Schools).

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"Instead of surrendering to despair, let us choose to create a different path" (Rethinking Schools).

# data[].attributes.body
"Joy is not an escape from the hard realities of our world, but a dive into them" (Rethinking Schools).

# data[].attributes.body
"Our students — and we educators — can be joyful even when we engage in some of the harshest topics in the world" (Rethinking Schools).

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"Our students need this pedagogy of joy, and we educators need it as well" (Rethinking Schools).

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"We need to reject the supposed need to be “efficient” in the classroom and instead take the time required to restore young people’s fractured relationships with others" (Rethinking Schools).

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"They need to probe social reality through activities that can simultaneously build their literacy and numeracy skills and their capacity to imagine a different world — and, at the same time, fire them to life" (Rethinking Schools).

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A school teacher and his students radically reimagine classroom “norms” by focusing on needs-based reflections.

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"We’re all trained from a young age in the “right answers” to the classroom norms discussion. We know which rules we are supposed to regurgitate" (Rethinking Classrooms).

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Despite the students being different in age, race, and class their answers for what they wanted the classroom norms were similar.

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Examples of Classroom Norms:

One mic

Use kind words

Be respectful

Ask questions

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The students thoughts should be considered when thinking of the "culture of school".

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"...classroom norms could be used as a tool of connection and healing" (Rethinking Schools).

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Students needs are human needs!

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Community agreements are important because is helps create a learning environment where all students feel they belong and their needs are met.

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Creating community agreements and classroom norms are a great way for students to share their opinions and engage in meaningful conversation.

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What would a classroom look like if understanding and respecting differences in race, culture, beliefs, and opinions were at its heart? Welcome to Mary Cowhey's Peace Class in Northampton, Massachusetts, where first and second graders view the entire curriculum through the framework of understanding the world, and trying to do their part to make it a better place.

Woven through the book is Mary's unflinching and humorous account of her own roots in a struggling large Irish Catholic family and her early career as a community activist. Her students learn to make connections between their lives, the books they read, the community leaders they meet, and the larger world.

If you were inspired to become a teacher because you wanted to change the world, and instead find yourself limited by teach-to-the-test pressures, this is the book that will make you think hard about how you spend your time with students. It offers no easy answers, just a wealth of insight into the challenges of helping students think critically about the world, and starting points for conversations about diversity and controversy in your classroom, as well as in the larger community. [From publisher's description.]
Table of Contents
Contents

Foreword by Sonia Nieto

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Compassion, Action, and Change

Chapter 3: Routines: A Day in the Life of the Peace Class

Chapter 4: It Takes a Village to Teach First Grade

Chapter 5: Talking About Peace

Chapter 6: Learning Through Activism

Chapter 7: Teaching History So Children Will Care

Chapter 8: Nurturing History Detectives

Chapter 9: Seeing Ourselves and Our Families Through Students' Eyes

Chapter 10: Responding When Tragedy Enters the Classroom

Chapter 11: Building Trust with Families and Weathering Controversy

Chapter 12: Going Against the Grain

Afterword: "Take This Hammer"

Appendix

References

ISBN: 9781571104182 | Stenhouse Publishers

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Black Ants and Buddhists: Thinking Critically and Teaching Differently in the Primary Grades - Zinn Education Project

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Teaching Guide. By Mary Cowhey. Foreword by Sonia Nieto. 2006. 256 pages. Practical examples and classroom stories about bringing a people's history and peace education to grades 1 and 2.

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The Prologue:

Discusses how the ants in the classroom simply shaped aspects of the curriculum. As a bunch of ants were gathers on the classroom floor, students screamed and was going to kill them. Suddenly another student stated that we shouldn't kill them because they're living. It created a conversation and students understanding each others beliefs.

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"The black ants helped us explore a variety of perspectives and helped us to learn, then compare and contrast, the rules of a variety of spiritual traditions" (Cowhey, 13).

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"Teaching critically listens to and affirms a minority voice that challenges the status quo. Instead of forcing assimilation and acceptance of dominant culture, it reexamines culture assumptions and values and considers their larger ramifications" (Cowhey, 13).

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"Critically teaching this. conflict and the subsequent investigation changed student behavior at school and at home, to make the world a little better" (Cowhey, 13).

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Every students voice is heard!

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"Multicultural education is a process of comprehensive school reform" (Cowhey, 19).

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Do not single out any students!

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Challenge Stereotypes!

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"...children wanted to see themselves and their families in the classroom and in me" (Cowhey, 165).

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Relationships with your students are important!

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"Learning through activism is powerful because the need to use vital academic skills for social justice motivates their acquisitions." "...helps children develop a sense of social justice, a sense of fairness and equality that begins with personal and community experience and extends globally and historically" (Cowhey, 103).

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Each mouth students are shown a different artist. These artists vary in gender, race, sexuality, social class, and background. Different techniques and mediums are also taught.

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It was amazing to experience Halloween with the school. They do a parade around the block and grownups/parents cheer them on.

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Demo Using Indian Symbols To Tell A Story:

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Demo Using Indian Symbols To Tell A Story:

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Students with autism during their recess on Thursdays have to choice to join us outside and create artwork of their choice.

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Although in this photo the students are all huddled on the bean-bag together with books. This corner is typically used when a children just simply needs a breather. They can get up from what they're doing, lay there, and have a moment. I wish I had something like this in my classroom growing up.

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Hinchey: Unpacking The Way it Is in Finding freedom in the classroom: A practical introduction to critical pedagogy, 2010, pp. 17-32

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Hinchey: Unpacking The Way it Is in Finding freedom in the classroom: A practical introduction to critical pedagogy, 2010, pp. 17-32

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Pepón Osorio, ReForm; Students envision the new Fairhill School: 

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Pepón Osorio, ReForm; Students envision the new Fairhill School: 

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About

In 2013, two-dozen Philadelphia schools were shuttered by city authorities in an effort to close a budget deficit. In response to these closings, Temple Contemporary commissioned artist Pepón Osorio to create a new installation specifically addressing the loss of the Fairhill Elementary School in North Philadelphia, not far from Temple University.

Osorio, in collaboration with a group of teachers, students, parents, and neighbors created an art project inside a Tyler School of Art classroom which incorporated objects gathered from the closed Fairhill School building.

The exhibition is currently closed. reForm remained open to the public from August 28th, 2015 to May 20th, 2016. A series of free public programs surrounding themes of education also took place inside and outside of the installation.

We encourage you to please follow reForm on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram to stay in touch with next steps.
Major support for reForm was provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, with additional support from the Surdna Foundation and Sterling Lawyers.

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This nine-month installation will serve as a living exhibition and discussion space for those most impacted by public school closures.

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Christensen: Where I’m From: Inviting Student Lives into the Classroom from Rethinking Our Classrooms, Vol. 2, 2004

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Christensen: Where I’m From: Inviting Student Lives into the Classroom from Rethinking Our Classrooms, Vol. 2, 2004

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Hinchey: Rethinking what we know: Positivist and constructivist epistemology in Finding freedom in the classroom: A practical introduction to critical pedagogy, pp. 33-55.

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Hinchey: Rethinking what we know: Positivist and constructivist epistemology in Finding freedom in the classroom: A practical introduction to critical pedagogy, pp. 33-55.

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bell hooks: Love as the Practice of Freedom

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bell hooks: Love as the Practice of Freedom

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Artist Nick Cave discusses the experiences that force him to confront his identity as a Black man-including being racially profiled by police-and how they fuel his impulse to create. Cave explains that in these moments he gets quiet and avoids lashing out in rage. "And if I do, lashing out for me is creating this," he says in reference to his intricately constructed Soundsuits.

"The Soundsuits hide gender, race, class and they force you to look at the work without judgment." The exhibition Here Hear, which included a large-scale community performance, was installed at Detroit's Cranbrook Art Museum in 2015. The museum is associated with the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where Nick Cave attended graduate school in the 1980s and was the only minority student at the time.

More information and credits

Credits

Producer: Ian Forster & Nick Ravich. Consulting Producer: Wesley Miller. Editor: Morgan Riles. Camera: Jamin Townsley. Sound: Richard K. Pooler. Artwork Courtesy: Nick Cave. Special Thanks: Cranbrook Art Museum, Robert Faust, William Gill & Laura Mott.

Art21 Exclusive is supported, in part, by 21c Museum Hotel, and by individual contributors.

Closed captions

Licensing

Interested in showing this film in an exhibition or public screening? To license this video please visit Licensing & Reproduction.

Nick Cave creates "Soundsuits"-surreally majestic objects blending fashion and sculpture-that originated as metaphorical suits of armor in response to the Rodney King beatings and have evolved into vehicles for empowerment. Fully concealing the body, the "Soundsuits" serve as an alien second skin that obscures race, gender, and class, allowing viewers to look without bias towards the wearer's identity. Cave regularly performs in the sculptures himself, dancing either before the public or for the camera, activating their full potential as costume, musical instrument, and living icon. Cave's sculptures also include non-figurative assemblages, intricate accumulations of found objects that project out from the wall, and installations enveloping entire rooms.

"I don't ever see the Soundsuits as 'fun,' they're really coming from a very dark place."

Jacquelyn Gleisner speaks with artist Nick Cave about his immersive installation Until, on view at MASS MoCA through September 2017.

Donate

Art21 is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization; all donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law.

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Nick Cave discusses the experiences that force him to confront his identity as a Black man-including being racially profiled by police-and how they fuel his impulse to create.

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Rethinking Schools: Queering Our Schools

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Rethinking Schools: Queering Our Schools

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Rethinking Schools: Creating Classrooms for Equity and Social Justice 

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Rethinking Schools: Creating Classrooms for Equity and Social Justice 

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Human-size sticks of chalk-each 64 inches long and approximately 120 pounds-fill Gallery 7, which has been transformed into an environment open to spontaneous mark-making. With a chalkboard spanning the walls and floor, this art installation by collaborators Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla has been presented in cities around the world, including Lima, Peru; Zapopan, Mexico; Sydney; Paris; Boston; and New York. Chalk provides a physical forum for participants to exchange ideas, evolving into a social and political portrait of the community.

Puerto Rico-based Allora & Calzadilla have collaborated since 1995, creating works that reach across sculpture, video, performance, and photography. Through their incisive practice, they engage with questions of history, culture, and geopolitics.

Curator: Victoria Sung, assistant curator, Visual Arts

Artists Statement

We could say that the trace is our medium; at once a poetic trope and a set of material operations, the trace links presence and absence, inscription and erasure, preservation and destruction, and appearance and disappearance.

Chalk synthesizes several strands of art history-Minimalism, process art, Happenings, Conceptual art, critical public art, and performance, among others-to pose essential questions about the nature of the communication systems we build, ranging from monolithic machines to means of personal and intimate expression. At once a geological substance and writing tool, Chalk can be experienced as a place of entropy, with monumental cylinders becoming ruins, and as a place of complex social and political exchange.

-Allora & Calzadilla

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Based in Puerto Rico, collaborators Jennifer Allora (b. 1974) and Guillermo Calzadilla (b. 1971) create works that reach across sculpture, video, performance, and photography. Chalk (1998) is an ongoing art project in which the artists place human-size sticks of chalk-each piece measuring 64 inches in length-in public spaces for passers-by to use as they choose.

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Four Seasons, 2006

Series of 4 Archival pigment print on Sunset Fiber rag, 21 x 24 inches each

Red Star's early self-portrait series, Four Seasons (2006), signals a point of departure for several serial photographic projects that followed. This is one of the earliest series in which Red Star used herself as a subject, and it captures the humor and playfulness integral both to Crow culture and to her artwork. In the series, Red Star poses within constructed dioramas filled with inflatable animals and artificial materials, a project that pokes fun at the boundaries between conceived authenticity and stereotypical portrayals of Native subjects. The portraits encourage self-reflection, making viewers aware of the deeply ingrained stereotypes of Native Americans in popular culture. By staging herself in artificial scenes, Red star evokes precedents like Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills from the late 1970s, in which the artist posed in fictitious scenes that make visual reference to Hollywood B movies. Like Sherman, Red Star draws on feminine stereotypes constructed and reified through popular culture. However, rather than performing the self as multiple, as Sherman does through her constantly changing disguises, Red Star is driven by the complex narrative of her identity as an Apsáalooke woman and by an awareness of the difficulties that Native women encounter navigating the art world. In this sense, her series represents a strategic mode of intervention into the conventions of portraiture and can be understood through its signifiers of race, cultural rootedness, and female agency, tying this body of work instead to self-portraiture precedents like artists like Carrie Mae Weems, Ana Mendieta, and Laura Aguilar.

- Text from Wendy Red Star: A Scratch on the Earth, Newark Museum exhibition catalogue, 2019, Nadiah Rivera Fellah and Tricia Laughlin Bloom

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Series of 4 Archival pigment print on Sunset Fiber rag, 21 x 24 inches each Red Star's early self-portrait series, Four Seasons (2006), signals a point of departure for several serial photographic projects that followed.

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Artist, Organizer & Social Justice Activist | Favianna Rodriguez

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This collage is part of a series of portraits about people impacted by the pandemic, especially folks from marginalized communities who have experienced the most devastation. 2020 was one of my most prolific art years, with over 300 works created. I stopped traveling in early March 2020, when the shelter-in-place orders began, and remained mostly in California for the remainder of the year. This meant that I had more spaciousness to experiment and create in a more deliberate way. For these portraits, I began with a selection of cutouts of noses, lips, eyes and hands that had been printed via linoleum block. I created a container in which I could remix the elements of faces and tell a different story through each piece. As my experiment evolved, I became more creative with each of the facial structures, as well as the clothing and accessories. It was a playful space for me to try out new ideas.

When I'm working on art, I'm usually listening to news podcasts about the incidents that are happening throughout the United States and in the world, and connecting to the stories of impacted people. Much of that energy emerges in my prints. Through these works, my intent was to show the resilience and humanity of people, as we have been spatially separated during the pandemic, While we have less physical human contact, it's critical that we hear each other's stories and channel our empathy into real action for social change.

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Faces of 2020 #11 | work of art by Favianna Rodriguez

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This collage is part of a series of portraits about people impacted by the pandemic, especially folks from marginalized communities who have experienced the most devastation. 2020 was one of my most prolific art years, with over 300 works created. I stopped traveling in early March 2020, when the shelter-in-place ...

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Bondy, Ross, Gallingane, Hambacher: Creating Environments of Success and Resilience: Culturally Responsive Classroom Management and More 

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Bondy, Ross, Gallingane, Hambacher: Creating Environments of Success and Resilience: Culturally Responsive Classroom Management and More 

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Brown: 10 Ways to Move Beyond Bully Prevention (And Why We Should)

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Brown: 10 Ways to Move Beyond Bully Prevention (And Why We Should)

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Gillespie: Oliver Herring’s TASK in the Classroom: A Case for Process, Play and Possibility

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Gillespie: Oliver Herring’s TASK in the Classroom: A Case for Process, Play and Possibility

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GillespieOliver Herrings TASK in the Classroom A Case for Process Play and Possibility.pdf

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In my classroom, effective classroom management looks like a well-organized and welcoming environment where clear expectations are established. It sounds like an environment of open conversation, cooperation, and positivity. It feels like an environment where students feel encouraged to express themselves freely and participate in the learning process with passion and mutual respect. It is inclusive, safe, and supportive. Students can flourish in a peaceful learning environment that is supported by proactive communication, fair consequences, and consistent routines. In my future classroom, I plan to implement love and freedom into my classroom management style. After reading the book, Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School, By Carla Shalaby, It has truly inspired me to take this specific approach in my teaching style. I will incorporate love and freedom in my classroom by creating a nurturing and inclusive space where students feel valued, encouraged to express themselves authentically, and empowered to explore their learning journey with a sense of autonomy and joy. Loving tactics that create a sense of community in the classroom include encouraging accountability, showing concern, and creating real relationships. This entails creating a welcoming and inclusive environment where students feel appreciated and recognized, introducing cooperative learning activities to promote teamwork, offering tailored assistance, and setting clear expectations. In the classroom, fostering a feeling of community through acts of kindness, attentive listening, and acknowledging individual successes helps to create a climate based on love, trust, and shared accountability for learning and development. A culture of love may permeate classroom management by placing a high value on empathetic relationships, open communication, and pleasant interactions. Being love is, in my opinion, the embodiment of qualities like kindness, empathy, understanding, and compassion. Being love involves more than just feeling; it also involves taking acts that contribute to the happiness and well-being of others around us. When reflecting on what I have seen in the classroom I see many acts of students representing love. On the other hand, there are times when I have seen students not be so kind and I want to see students who are able to reflect on their own actions and change them. I'll solve problems for my students, support their growth as problem solvers in my classroom, and pay attention to what they have to say. I'll pay attention, make an effort to help them work through their difficulties, and relate a time when I had a similar issue and how I resolved it. By letting them in and telling them that even their teacher has similar issues, I may be able to assist them when they hear the advice I'm offering them.

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The Interactions and dynamics in the art room are generally respectful, kind, joyful, and loud. The most prominent voices in the room are the students when they’re working. If the teacher is giving a demonstration that is when the students are quiet and listening. I would say there is a great balance between the teacher's voice and space and the opportunity for students' voices to be heard. The interactions between the teacher and students are always kind, gentle, and loving. For instance, if a student seems to be having a difficult time, not listening to directions, and causing disruption in the classroom Stephaine never raises her voice or has a harsh tone. One of the first things I noticed when starting my student teaching is how all the teachers I have met never say “NO DONT DO THAT” It is always, “No thank you”. Also when speaking to a student individually Stephaine and other teachers will say,” eye power” to ensure the student is actually listening. Stephaine encourages and models active listening by maintaining eye contact, reciting student responses, and demonstrating genuine interest and respect for each student's perspective. Teachers and students share space by fostering a collaborative environment where everyone's voice is valued, encouraging shared and mutual respect to distribute power and authority within the room by understanding the classroom agreements/norms. Students interact with each other while working on their artwork talking about life and the assignment. They engage with the teachers/paraprofessionals while doing so and have open respectful communication. They utilize diverse communication strategies to communicate with students who are non-verbal by still talking to them and acknowledging they may not respond by making sure they're included. For the students who do not speak English another student in the classroom who speaks their language helps them and includes them in conversation. The students at this school are so loving and inclusive, I will miss them dearly and hope my future students share similar qualities that they possess.

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By setting clear standards, encouraging open communication, and encouraging a sense of common responsibility for each student's performance and well-being in the classroom, Stephain builds and sustains a sense of community and accountability. In order to promote a sense of belonging and understanding among classmates, she helps to establish community by posing open-ended questions that inspire students to share their experiences, passions, and viewpoints. The students are involved in the lesson's introduction by listening to what the lesson entails, answering questions posed by Stephaine, and discussing in a group about the lesson being taught. They’re fully involved in the process of the lesson as they’re creating their own artwork. When the lesson is done the students come together and have an “art talk/walk”. Students are asked questions about their artwork, what they like/don't, how it makes them feel, etc., and assess each others work as a group.