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This source takes you through a series of videos and readings that talk about the process of getting started on teaching UDL in higher ED.

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This section provides an overview of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework and how it applies to higher education learning environments and additional resources for deeper understanding. It also offers practical information about getting started, c…

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This is a video that takes us “behind the scenes” to hear some stories and important strategies about intentionally implement antiracist practices into your teaching.

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Sharing Stories: Antiracism and Universal Design for Learning with Andratesha Fritzgerald

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This article talks about the need for antiracism teachings in middle school and high school levels.

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After a series of racial confrontations--both verbal and physical--and the appearance of Ku Klux Klan literature, the 7th and 8th grades of a rural Georgia school gathered for an assembly, where a guest speaker gave a presentation on the Klan. The students' anonymous response forms included the question, "What did you like best about the class today?" While many students offered such comments as "I liked learning about the Klan and how to stay away from them" or "The Klan can get you in trouble," one child articulated his faith in the process itself. What he liked best about the class, he wrote, was: "Black and white united together in a friendly way."

Students at the middle- and high-school levels need--and deserve--anti-racism education. For the health of our society, their concerns should be answered.

During the past several years, bias crime and hate violence have become more and more the province of young people. A number of young whites have adopted the "skinhead" image, with an accompanying "white power" or neo-Nazi ideology. Many of these teenagers, spewing racist rhetoric and adorning themselves with swastikas, have carried out brutal, random attacks on blacks, Asian Americans, Jews, and others. In some instances, students as young as 8 and 9 have begun to emulate the overtly racist skinheads.

Cross burnings, robes and hoods, assaults, and slurs are no longer relics of the Deep South in the 1920's or Germany in the 1930's--they are part of the fabric of life at schools across the country, including many colleges. According to the National Institute Against Prejudice and Violence, 174 universities publicly reported incidents of violence against ethnic groups during the school years 1986-87 and 1987-88.

Most observers agree on two phenomena: first, that underreporting of such episodes is likely; second, that no easily defined factor exempts a college from incidents of blatant racism and bigotry. Neither regional location nor reputation mitigates or exacerbates racial tension.

How do we account for reactionary behavior in collegiate settings, where there should be a reasonable expectation of enlightenment and sophistication? What is the basis for the increase in racist violence among young people?

This year's college freshmen are only last year's high-school students. All too frequently, their experience has been segregated--in their neighborhoods, places of worship, and homes. Even students who have sat side by side with classmates of different races have not automatically learned respect for other cultures and ethnicities.

Unprecedented social and economic changes, shrinking resources, and the erosion of the American middle class magnify the stress, confusion, and search for identity that attend adolescence. Some white children have inherited a backlash from an adult population that resents a perceived loss of white-skin privilege; many teenagers feel victimized and threatened by any assertions on the part of people of color.

Our young people are arriving on college campuses with baggage containing prejudice and ignorance along with wardrobe, tennis racquets, and cassette players. Of the youngsters who drop out of school or go directly from graduation into the job market, too many have an incomplete understanding of the multicultural nature of our society, and many fall into hostility and scapegoating. A disturbing number of white students harbor the idea that somehow they have been given permission to act out racist attitudes.

Teenagers who show disaffection from traditional institutions--such as church, family, or school--are primary targets for dedicated and sophisticated white supremacists. From the crudest cartoons to the most explicit "white power" rock music, with videos and with clothing, the Klan and neo-Nazis persist in their attempts to reach out to children.

Sometimes these efforts take the form of direct-mail initiatives to students' home addresses. This year in Oregon, for example, mass mailings have been sent to public high-school students inviting them to join the "National Socialists." For private preparatory-school students, the mailing is a glossier, more subtle white-supremacist book, accompanied by a letter containing intellectualized insinuations that encouragement of minorities constrains whites' chances of being admitted to "better colleges." Education in racism is, at least to some extent, being made available to students.

Most school administrators find it difficult to acknowledge publicly that racial tensions or bigoted attitudes are prevalent in their schools. After a week of fights between whites and blacks in one high school, absences more than doubled--but the system's superintendent said that the "incident" had been "blown out of proportion."

Black students in another high school who had skipped classes to observe the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. were directed by their school-bus driver to sit at the back of the bus, whereupon they were jeered by white students. After the second day, when the black students refused to move to the back of the bus, they were punished for disobeying the driver. The system's board of education concluded that "it cannot be said ... that the actions were racially motivated discrimination."

Individual teachers are sometimes hesitant to confront even clearly destructive racist behavior. In a Wyoming community where a self-avowed white supremacist was running for public office, one 6th-grade teacher wondered how to address a white student's intimidation of a mixed-blood child--because of the "politically sensitive" atmosphere. In a California middle school, white students passed around several dolls dressed in the Klan costume and another depicting a hanged black person. The teacher confiscated the dolls without comment. A black student said she reported the incident to the principal, "but he wouldn't do anything." Yet despite such efforts to downplay or ignore racist behavior, schools from Georgia to Wisconsin have had to close for one or more days because of "racial tensions."

A conspiracy of silence also seems to surround the issue of race relations in most schools' curricula. In comparatively few academic settings are the history and development of racism in the United States addressed in a comprehensive, pro-active manner. For some high schools, Black History Week signals a heightening of group tensions rather than an opportunity for honest interaction and conflict resolution.

The empirical experience of most children contradicts assurances that ours is a "color blind" society. Most youngsters have been told that equal opportunity has been achieved--and as a result, many white students view affirmative-action policies as an unfair special concession. And to deny the reality of a historical legacy of racism is to saddle students of color with an additional burden of alienation and self-doubt.

To improve racial harmony, anti-racism education is imperative. Though moralistic intervention may not be appropriate in all settings, our schools must teach the American democratic ideal of pluralism, the fascistic nature of white supremacy, and the inherent justice of defending minority rights. And while there is no shame in celebrating our European-American heritage, educators must also wholeheartedly address the role of blacks, Asian Americans, and others whose concerns and contributions have been consistently treated as marginal both by society at large and by our educational system.

The most effective point to undertake anti-racism education may be the early secondary-school years, when students are receptive and are old enough to understand the issues. School systems should design lessons and strategies appropriate for their own needs; at the same time, they can draw on a wide range of existing resources. These include such curricula and materials as the National Association for the Education of Young Children's "Anti-Bias Curriculum"; the National Education Association's "Violence, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Struggle for Equality"; the holocaust-education materials of the "Facing History and Ourselves" group; and the Center for Community Change's "Bibliography on Racism." Professionals are available to conduct training and give technical assistance.

Students who have participated in such programs report that they have begun to change their behaviors and convictions. And anti-racism education helps prepare high-school graduates for the confluence of cultural diversity and competition they will meet in the workplace or on the college campus.

Multicultural education in elementary school can lay an important foundation. But by the time students reach junior high or middle school, the harsh and pervasive reality of racism has touched most of them. They look to their teachers and school administrators for guidance and explanation. If they are not given honest answers, confusion and anxiety mount.

Left to their own devices, or to the ministrations of confirmed racists, both students of target populations and perpetrators of bias crime are at risk of having their lives blighted. The traditional "three R's" will not suffice for the 1990's. Our children need the new "three R's": racism, respect, responsibility.

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The Need for 'Anti-Racism' Education (Opinion)

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After a series of racial confrontations--both verbal and physical--and the appearance of Ku Klux Klan literature, the 7th and 8th grades of a rural Georgia school gathered for an assembly, where a guest speaker gave a presentation on the Klan.

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This article talks about addresses parents concerns about teaching antiracism in schools and explains that antiracism teaches students that no "race" is superior.

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There's a lot of caricaturing of "anti-racist" work going on these days. The state legislature in Iowa (where I grew up) recently passed a bill banning "divisive concepts" in diversity training, including any suggestion that racism is fundamental to our history or society. Idaho, Oklahoma, and Tennessee have passed similar laws targeting anti-racist teaching, with other states poised to follow suit. Parent organizations and politicians around the country are mobilizing against an imagined version of "critical race theory," convinced that anti-racism trainings or K-12 activities vilify white people and teach that "one race or sex is inherently superior to another." These anxieties are replicating nationwide-probably in a community near you.

Are you an educator getting pushback from white critics for what you thought was basic education effort that helped everyone? I'm in your corner. You can tell folks with confidence: Anti-racism trainings and other learning efforts in workplaces or schools actually are designed to teach people that no "race" is superior to another. They don't say white people are inferior. They simply say we're not superior.

You can tell folks: Anti-racist efforts factually explain how the myth that white people are superior is baked into American history (and opportunity patterns and media and curriculum and daily behavior) and still shapes unequal opportunities to learn and feel welcome in schools today. Anti-racism helps us proactively treat all human beings as equally valuable.

In my own books and tools for teachers, I've worked hard to show how throughout U.S. history, "white people" (a social category built on a biological fiction) really have gained disproportionate privilege, wealth, and opportunity from societal racism. I've taught lots of young people these facts, too.

Kids get it: Anti-racism is about leveling the playing field of opportunity, dismantling opportunity barriers, benefiting from the rich diversity of all communities, and treating all people humanely.

It's a pro-human lens.

That's why we can tell critics that anti-racism isn't cruel or divisive or "hateful" or "reverse racist" at all, but a collective investment in an improved society. Through this pro-human lens, white people too can see that the overpolicing killing Black and brown human beings is a human rights problem. We can see that to limit opportunity access for people of color robs the entire shared community of talent and contribution. We can see that if lots more kids get prepped to help cure diseases and innovate improvements to our shared communities, nation, and globe, all our kids get to live in a better society.

When other kids stay healthier, my child stays healthier. When I experienced a major health emergency, my kids were quite clear how my diverse medical team helped me literally to survive. And crucially, improving schools to support children of color better-to enrich curriculum, ensure challenge, include everyone-actually makes schools better for all.

Anti-racism is not some zero-sum game of "us" vs. "them." It's a collective investment in the human "us."

When critics balk at the term "white supremacy," I simply remind them that tackling "white supremacy" means critiquing two basic things: 1) the old fiction that "white people" are a "superior" type of person, and 2) centuries of disproportionate opportunity ("white privilege" or "white advantage") organized around that fiction.

Our history curriculum has denied many of us this foundational information. So, in my own anti-racist workshops and books for educators, we go matter-of-factly through these facts. We all need to learn about how Europeans and European Americans used the idea of races to justify slavery and colonialism. Genetically, there are no "racial" subgroups to the human species. European-Americans used the made-up category "white" to legally denote a "type of person" who could get paid for labor and not be enslaved.

( They also wanted poor "whites" to focus on celebrating their new status over "Blacks" instead of seeking better wages from rich white people. This is one major way that racism hurts white people too.)

As European Americans gained legal advantages as "whites"-such as the right to immigrate and become citizens, earn wages, vote, own land, and more-they then wrote more laws to keep those advantages. Laws kept racial categories central to who got which opportunities, creating race-class inequalities of disproportionate white wealth and privilege still with us today. Meanwhile, pseudoscience and media supported false ideas about "white people's" superiority to justify racially unequal distributions of opportunity, bolstering harmful and false ideas about ranked "races" that remain with us today.

This is just accurate history. Shouldn't we learn it? I know lots of white kids who aren't threatened to learn it; they're energized. As adults, we should be just as energized.

Basic history teaching and critical race theory are now being targeted (and distorted) in a strikingly coordinated fashion across the country. You can tell critics that such crucial anti-racist learning about systemic racism shows how unequal opportunity patterns are pervasive in our society, history, and laws. Anti-racist learning about implicit bias helps us see how harmful and false ideas are also buried in our daily interactions, often unintentionally.

In my own professional-development efforts, I focus on how racism is still present in schools in any act or situation that (even unwittingly) treats people of color as less worthy or less complex than white people, or accepts race-class inequalities in opportunity. You can tell folks that anti-racist efforts actually assume participants are good people, by asking: Don't you too want opportunity barriers eliminated for all?

When I do anti-racist work in schools, I say explicitly that anti-racism means supporting the full human talent development of every child and all groups of children-and pursuing a future where all of us can thrive. Making more opportunities to go around, making more for students least connected to the opportunities that exist, and investing in the future of all children makes our whole community a better place to live.

You can ask folks: Don't you agree?

Finally, you can say that racism hurts white people because it prevents us from uniting with fellow human beings against common foes like public health threats or limited wages or threats to our shared democracy.

So feel confident when you say it: Anti-racist teaching is not racism, partisanship, or propaganda. Martin Luther King Jr. put it simply: Pursuing anti-racism is just trying to "make America what it ought to be."

All Americans should join this work, not censor it.

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No, It Isn't Racist to Teach Anti-Racism (Opinion)

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There's a lot of caricaturing of "anti-racist" work going on these days. The state legislature in Iowa (where I grew up) recently passed a bill banning "divisive concepts" in diversity training, including any suggestion that racism is fundamental to our history or society.

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This article talks about how teachers can keep the spark in learning by looking at their lessons through a UDL lens.

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Weeks of creating our classroom environments are now behind us, and we are well into the school year. We know our students. We know our content. We are set with our planning, teaching, and learning routines. The excitement of the new school year is still in the air. But let's be real-as the weeks move along and the curriculum picks up steam-teachers and students may need a little spark to keep an ongoing connection between learners and classroom-learning environments.

Let's keep the excitement of the new school year fueled by our decisions to create learning experiences that motivate, excite, inform, and inspire! The best part is-all teachers can keep the spark in the learning by looking at their lessons plans through a Universal Design for Learning lens. That's right-any lesson-any teacher-anywhere.

It's All About the Process

Through a UDL lens, our curriculum supports our decisions in guiding students how to learn. The content is taught within a strong learning process, so students experience learning rather than just receiving it. With the research to support learner variability, we know that all students in any classroom need a variety of conditions for optimal learning to occur. These conditions include three brain networks that, when set in motion, serve to guide each learner in our room to connect to the content in significant and personal ways.

Let's consider a hypothetical 7th grade social studies class: As the students walk in, they notice the clearly stated learning target posted on the board. As the teacher introduces the lesson, she weaves in key vocabulary words, which are also posted on the board. She engages the class in a brief discussion to ignite their connection to the content. After watching a brief video clip, the students share their thoughts about the video with their peers.

Just within this 15-minute introduction, students set goals, activated their background knowledge, deepened their understanding through multimedia input, and shared their thinking through peer interactions. During the remaining minutes of class, students were provided choices for reading about the day's topic. Some read from textbooks, some read on iPads, while others listened to peers read within cooperative groups. Some students chose to engage in discussion and jot down key words, while others chose to write a brief paragraph to demonstrate their understanding for the day.

Even in the most basic lessons, all three-brain networks can be illuminated. Simply provide opportunities for your students to think.

Strategies for Affective Networks: Providing Multiple Means of Engagement

Imagine your class filled with wide-eyed, eager, motivated students. Sometimes we feel like we've hit the mark with our lessons, while other times we know a lesson falls flat. That's a lot of pressure to put on ourselves. We know it is not just up to us to create the motivation in the room. We must guide our students to become intrinsically motivated, so they will be engaged in the learning without depending on us to entertain them. Yet we must create the scene. We facilitate the opportunity for our students to be purposeful, motivated learners. Here are some examples to ramp up the engagement:

Make time to hear what your students think.

Shake up the seating plan-form cooperative groups and peer interactions.

Strategies for Recognition Networks: Providing Multiple Means of Representation

The ultimate goal is to guide our students' abilities to comprehend and to use their resources as they gain knowledge and skills. Here are a few low-tech examples to support recognition networks:

Provide multimedia input such as visuals, auditory, movement, and kinesthetic modalities.

Strategies for Strategic Networks: Providing Multiple Means of Action and Expression

Sometimes teachers feel that a well-managed class is a quiet class of students who sit, take notes, raise their hands-but above all remain silent. But teachers, listen up! There's no need to be protective of every moment-release some responsibility to the students for their own learning. Meaningful learning should be noisy, active, and above all, productive! So let's make that happen. Take a look at one of your upcoming lesson plans. How can you guide your students to be strategic with a clear focus on the learning goal(s) for the day? Perhaps one of these examples will be worth a try:

If UDL feels like something new to you, just begin by printing a copy of the UDL Guidelines and selecting one guideline each week to embed in your teaching cycle. Before you know it, you will be noticing the natural ways that you can embed UDL principles into your daily routines. In addition, you may use the guidelines to identify specific strategies to target the needs of the learners in your classroom. The bottom line is that UDL is the perfect go-to teaching tool to guide our instructional decisions as we strive to create clear access between the curriculum and the learners in our room. This is an all-access pass that will keep that spark of the learning process alive and well in your classrooms.

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Sparking Up Lessons With Universal Design for Learning (UDL) (Opinion)

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Universal Design for Learning is the perfect go-to teaching tool to guide instructional decisions, Elizabeth Stein says.

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This is a video that talks about the basics of UDL and a few practical ideas for implementing it.

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What is Universal Design for Learning (UDL)?