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A guide to Indigenous land acknowledgment

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After hosting an Indigenous land acknowledgment event, we put together this written guide to based on our panelists' responses.

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Episode 6, Season 2 Each autumn, Thanksgiving brings a disturbing amount of inaccurate information and troubling myths into classrooms across the United States. Most students don't learn much about the history of Native...

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As you discuss Thanksgiving with students, we hope you'll reflect and use these resources to guide them to a more comprehensive understanding. It's critical to address the truth and violence surrounding the day while also ensuring your students feel safe and prepared.

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The pedagogy popularised by E.D.Hirsch, and recently promoted by the likes of Civitas, reduces teaching into nothing more than a bleak transmission model of learning.

Hirsch's theory focuses on what he calls "cultural literacy". He argues that all students need a "core knowledge" so they can develop into better citizens. In one of his books, he lists various facts, phrases and historical events that he believes all young Americans should be aware of, including the Founding Fathers and Adirondack Mountains.

It's Hirsch's belief that if children aren't taught such cultural literacy at home, responsibility for it should lie with schools. He developed a structured curriculum to deliver this, which is now being advocated by an increasing number of schools and academies in the UK.

But Hirsch's "cultural literacy" is a hegemonic vision produced for and by the white middle class to help maintain the social and economic status quo. It deliberately fails to consider the values and beliefs of any other particular race, class or gender. Young people who enter the educational system and don't conform to this vision are immediately disadvantaged by virtue of their race, income or chromosomes.

Moreover, teaching a prescribed "core knowledge" instills a culture of conformity and an insipid, passive absorption of carefully selected knowledge among young people. It doesn't encourage students to think critically about society - nor does it fire a desire to challenge the views they are taught. Schools that adopt this method become nothing more than pipelines producing robotic citizens, perpetuating the vision of a capitalist society and consequently preventing social mobility.

Social stagnation through education is epitomised by the recent influx of Teach First practitioners. The narcissistic notion that we can help underprivileged students by providing them with teachers who are privileged young graduates from elite institutions is a mistake. This outlook pays no attention to - and fails to value - the backgrounds and identities of the students it intends to save. Rather it continues the problem by trying to inflict the values and beliefs of the dominant social class on others.

Teachers can't ignore the contexts, culture, histories and meanings that students bring to their school. Working class students and other minority groups need an education that prepares them with the knowledge of identifying the problems and conflicts in their life and the skills to act on that knowledge so they can improve their current situations. Now is the time for our schools to incite a desire in students to challenge the accepted social truths purveyed by media and education.

Schools must develop a commitment to civic courage and social responsibility that ignites bravery in young people to realise they have the power and opportunity to challenge the status quo. School leaders have a duty to promote learning that encourage students to question rather than forcing teachers to lead drill-oriented, stimulus-and-response methodologies. Teachers must awaken the passions of their students and teach the knowledge and skills needed to direct and sustain it.

Students need the freedom and encouragement to determine and discover who they are and to understand that the system shouldn't define them - but rather give them the skills, knowledge and beliefs to understand that they can set the agenda. Educators must be prepared to embrace a radical pedagogy and believe that each school should be one of freedom that provokes students to fight against the corridors of power and enforce equality for themselves and others.

Critical pedagogy is the only way to achieve this. The philosophy was first described by Paulo Freire and has since been developed by the likes of Henry Giroux, Peter McLaren and Roger Simon. Critical pedagogy isn't a prescriptive set of practices - it's a continuous moral project that enables young people to develop a social awareness of freedom. This pedagogy connects classroom learning with the experiences, histories and resources that every student brings to their school. It allows students to understand that with knowledge comes power; the power that can enable young people to do something differently in their moment in time and take positive and constructive action.

Education has the power to change social inequality by nurturing a generation with an educated mistrust of everything that has been indoctrinated before. This educational stance is one that we must all strive for as the moral purpose of education.
Tait Coles is vice principal at Dixons City Academy in Bradford. His first book, Never Mind the Inspectors, Here's Punk Learning, is published next month, details can be found on his blog he tweets as @Totallywired77.
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Critical pedagogy: schools must equip students to challenge the status quo

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The pedagogy popularised by E.D.Hirsch, and recently promoted by the likes of Civitas, reduces teaching into nothing more than a bleak transmission model of learning. Hirsch's theory focuses on what he calls "cultural literacy". He argues that all students need a "core knowledge" so they can develop into better citizens.

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subscribe to TED Radio Hour podcast

Part 2 of the TED Radio Hour episode Teaching For Better Humans
About Liz Kleinrock's TED Talk
When one of Liz Kleinrock's fourth grade students made a cringe-worthy comment about race, rather than change the subject, she chose to turn the moment into a teachable one - and start a conversation.
About Liz Kleinrock
Liz Kleinrock is an anti-bias educator and consultant based in Los Angeles.

Kleinrock earned her M.Ed in 2013, completing her thesis on social and emotional learning based on research conducted with her students.

She is also a published author with Teaching Tolerance, an organization that creates curricula for teachers. Her work has gained national recognition through a mini-documentary called Ms. Liz's Allies. She received Teaching Tolerance's 2018 Award for Excellence in Teaching, and currently serves on the Teaching Tolerance Advisory Board.

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Liz Kleinrock: How Can We Broach Hard Conversations In The Classroom?

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subscribe to TED Radio Hour podcast Part 2 of the TED Radio Hour episode Teaching For Better Humans About Liz Kleinrock's TED Talk When one of Liz Kleinrock's fourth grade students made a cringe-worthy comment about race, rather than change the subject, she chose to turn the moment into a teachable one - and start a conversation.

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The events of a troubling summer have reminded us all about the importance of affirming Black Lives Matter in schools. But acknowledging Black students and celebrating their culture isn't enough. Anti-racist educators are pushing their schools to respond not through vague statements or gestures but with actionable steps toward dismantling systems that harm Black students. As a first step, educators must examine how whiteness operates-and is weaponized-in schools.

In late May, on the day news broke of George Floyd's murder, a different video was receiving widespread national attention. In it, a white New York City woman calls 911 on a Black man as the two stand, yards apart, in a secluded section of Central Park.

The man, Christian Cooper, had insisted that she put a leash on her dog, per posted rules. The woman responded with aggression. And, understanding how minor disputes have led to Black people's deaths, the man had begun recording the interaction.

"Unfortunately, we live in an era with things like Ahmaud Arbery, where Black men are seen as targets," Cooper said in a CNN interview. "This woman thought she could exploit that to her advantage, and I wasn't having it."

He had good reason to be concerned.

"I'm going to tell them there's an African American man threatening my life," she says.

In the video, the woman's tone goes from calm to frightened in a matter of seconds. She mentions twice to the 911 dispatcher that an "African American man" is threatening her and her dog. Her voice turns panicky.

"Please send the cops immediately!"

Unpacking the Pattern

Typically, the weaponization of whiteness happens this way: There is a demonstrated sense of entitlement, anger and a need for retaliation, feigned fear and, finally, white fragility.

It's easy to recognize this pattern when it's caught on video. We can observe for ourselves racial slurs, exaggerated fear and the privilege of whiteness forcefully taking up space. But when we publicly shame white people caught on video or demand severe penalties for their transgressions, we are individualizing racism rather than seeing how it can easily manifest in any white person because of how whiteness works in our society.

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The Weaponization of Whiteness in Schools

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Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

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A global lesson plan in collaboration with Google Earth's audio collection Celebrating Indigenous Languages.

Sign up or log in to save your favorite stories and lessons, create custom collections, and share with others.

As a companion to the Google Earth audio collection Celebrating Indigenous Languages, this curriculum provides ways for students to explore the linguistic diversity and vitality of Indigenous languages from speakers around the world. Students will discover how Indigenous languages are interconnected through identity, cultural heritage, and traditional ecological knowledge and how Indigenous peoples and communities are a vital part of the fabric and story of humanity.

It is essential for our global culture to value and protect Indigenous voices and perspectives. Tania Haerekiterā Tapueluelu Wolfgramm, a Māori and Tongan activist and educator who helped create the tour said, "Hundreds of languages are a few days from never being spoken or heard again. By putting Indigenous languages on the global stage, we reclaim our right to talk about our lives in our own words. It means everything to us."

What is the importance of language? How is language connected to culture?

What are Indigenous languages? How do Indigenous languages preserve traditional cultural, social, and environmental knowledge?

What is Indigenous language revitalization? Why is it important to the world's cultural heritage?

Students will:

Celebrate the diversity and vitality of the world's Indigenous languages

Explore the world's Indigenous linguistic and cultural heritage

Illustrate how language is an integral element of culture

Recognize people in society whose language and cultural heritage are at risk

Identify the causes of language loss

Understand the importance of Indigenous language revitalization and preservation

Using the Google Earth tour Celebrating Indigenous Languages, students will explore Indigenous languages around the world, some of which are at risk of disappearing. Students will learn about the importance of language revitalization from the unique stories and perspectives of those who speak the world's Indigenous languages.

In this lesson, students will make connections between language and culture, discovering the ways in which Indigenous peoples and communities are dedicated to preserving and revitalizing their languages. Students will engage in activities to learn how Indigenous language vitality is interconnected with a speaker's identity, family, community, and relationship to the land. By learning more about Indigenous peoples and communities, students will be encouraged to broaden their perspectives about the world's diverse cultural heritage and to consider how we are all a part of the global story.

1. Tell students that they will learn about Indigenous language speakers and communities around the world with the Google Earth tour Celebrating Indigenous Languages. Explain that the tour celebrates the diversity and vitality of the world's Indigenous languages. Through audio clips, Indigenous individuals share their favorite greetings, phrases, and songs.

2. Tell students that short descriptions are included in the tour. These provide details and facts about each language. Explain to students that they will need to pay attention to these components.

3. Play the introductory video "Meet Indigenous Speakers and Learn How They're Keeping Their Languages Alive." (Under 3 minutes.) The video is also available on YouTube.

4. Ask students to share their initial thoughts. In what ways do they think language and culture are connected?

5. Read The World's Indigenous Languages in Context. This provides an overview of Indigenous languages, causes of language loss, and language revitalization efforts.

6. Give students the vocabulary sheet.

7. Divide students into pairs or small groups.

8. Organize groups evenly among the following four themes for a well-rounded dialogue. Explain that each group will explore the Google Earth tour, Celebrating Indigenous Languages. Visit the How-To Guide to go over how to use Google Earth and Voyager.

9. Explain to students that they will respond to questions based on the following four themes. Introduce and explain each theme.

Identity, Family, and Community. Identity can be defined as the various ways individuals and groups define themselves by their beliefs, ethnicity, and culture, among other characteristics. Indigenous peoples may identify themselves through their tribe or tribal nation, and the Indigenous language they speak. Students will explore the connections and relationships between language, identity, family, and community.

Songs. Songs, or oral storytelling, often reflect cultural values, ethics, and beliefs. In Indigenous cultures, songs are passed down from generation to generation and many are under threat of disappearing. Songs can be stories that honor ancestors and the living world. Many Indigenous songs do not translate directly into another language, a reflection of how the messages are unique and specific to people and place. Students will explore the connections between songs, culture, and language vitality.

Language and Landscape. Indigenous languages reflect and express interconnection with land. Indigenous communities around the planet have developed traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and ways of knowing through generations of intimate contact with their homelands. These bodies of knowledge express the relationships of living beings with the environment. Students will explore how language and landscape are intertwined.

Language Revitalization. Language revitalization can be defined as learning activities, including language immersion schools and programs, to cultivate new speakers, especially where intergenerational transmission of the language has been disrupted. Students will explore the various ways in which each Indigenous speaker is keeping his/her language alive.

10. Access and distribute the question sheets for each theme:

11. Ask students to use this note-taking sheet. Students will explore the questions and record their observations, responses, and reflections, using evidence from the Google Earth tour Celebrating Indigenous Languages.

12. After groups complete the questions and reflections, ask students to share their responses as a class.

About Google Earth's tour Celebrating Indigenous Languages

Google Earth

Global Oneness Project

The Global Oneness Project thanks the following individuals and organizations for their insights and feedback on this project: Tiffanee Brown, Elizabeth Crawford, Ph.D., Marina Drummer with Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival, Leanne Hinton Ph.D., Betty Krapfl, Luisa Maffi, Ph.D., with Terralingua, Carla Marschall, Clare McGowan, Paula Ospina, and Iyekiyapiwiƞ Darlene St. Clair.

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Exploring Indigenous Language Vitality with Google Earth

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A global lesson plan in collaboration with Google Earth's audio collection Celebrating Indigenous Languages. Sign up or log in to save your favorite stories and lessons, create custom collections, and share with others. As a companion to the Google Earth audio collection Celebrating Indigenous Languages , this curriculum provides ways for students to explore the linguistic diversity and vitality of Indigenous languages from speakers around the world.

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"I remember having a conversation with a teacher who could not figure out why her relationship with her African American students felt strained. She was especially troubled that several African American girls in her class had refused to participate in a mask-making activity in which the kids placed plaster strips across their face all the way up to their hairline. One girl spoke up and told the teacher that her mother would be upset with her if she got water or the grainy plaster in her hair. The teacher causally dismissed their concerns and insisted they do the activity along with everyone else. The teacher was unfamiliar with the significance of hair in African American culture-how it's cared for, its connection to self-esteem and self-expression.

In turn, she missed an opportunity to affirm the students' cultural needs by simply making scarves available in the classroom when doing activities with water, sand, or any other substance that might mess up their hair. Whether it's being insensitive to Muslim students fasting during Ramadan by having a class party with food and drink or ignoring a low-income family's ability to provide money for a field trip, these small actions chip away at trust and personal regard that are at the core of authentic relationships. This lack of care leads to mistrust, which, over time, can put students (and parents) on the defensive. This underlying mistrust is the reason some parents seem antagonistic. They become defensive and protective based on the perception that the teacher doesn't care."
― Zaretta L. Hammond, Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students

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Zaretta Lynn Hammond Quotes (Author of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain)

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33 quotes from Zaretta Lynn Hammond: 'One of the goals of education is not simply to fill students with facts and information but to help them learn how to learn.', 'We routinely put the less experienced teachers with the neediest students. No other profession does this.

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7 resources to teach students about the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol

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Citizens of the United States watched in shock on Jan. 6 as a group of pro-Trump supporters, who continue to maintain that the presidential election has been rigged, stormed the U.S. Capitol Buildi...

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The U.S. reached an important milestone several years ago-minority students now comprise the largest demographic group in our nation's public schools. While there is great diversity within our student population, the majority of educators still do not share the same cultural experiences with the diverse students they serve.

However, many effective teachers have consistently been sensitive to and culturally aware of student backgrounds. These educators intuitively understand that the more inclusive their classroom is, the more engaged their students will be, and that engagement ultimately leads to achievement.
Related content: How does culture impact our ability to learn?
Culturally relevant teaching respects the traditional backgrounds of students as an asset in the classroom. In my own experience as a young child, I grew up in the U.S. with my parents having just arrived from Cuba, speaking no English. At the time, my teacher had very limited resources to help English learners, but she connected with me, and made a sincere effort to communicate with my parents and my family-and that made all the difference. My teacher made it clear through her words and actions that she was invested in me and my success. Just as my teacher did for me all those years ago, educators can all invest in the success of bilingual and multilingual students.

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José A. Viana, Senior Advisor, Education Partnerships, Lexia Learning

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6 ways to create a culturally responsive classroom

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The U.S. reached an important milestone several years ago-minority students now comprise the largest demographic group in our nation's public schools. While there is great diversity within our student population, the majority of educators still do not share the same cultural experiences with the diverse students they serve.

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By Yvette Jackson, Ed.D., CEO, National Urban Alliance for Effective Education

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men [and women], yes, black ... as well as white ... would be guaranteed the "unalienable rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

(Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., March on Washington)

What makes equity so hard to achieve are its many facets, so numerous and complex they are hard to define. This inability to define equity handily is especially confounding for urban districts that reach out to our organization, the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education (NUA), for help in translating their commitment to "equity" into practices to stem the tide of unnecessary underperformance plaguing their schools. These districts are predominantly in cities where "urban" is a euphemism for "low-performing" students of color and their teachers (Jackson, 2011, p.1).

Martin Luther King understood the difficulty in defining complex concepts such as equity, so he employed metaphors to help people decipher and grasp the concept. In this context, equity is the promissory note he spoke about in his I Have A Dream speech: equity for all people to be free to pursue a life of happiness. In both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, this right to the pursuit of happiness was based on belief in the potential of Americans (at that time specifically male, land-owning Americans of European descent) to develop strengths and abilities for self-actualization. These strengths and abilities were valued for their currency ... for their worth in contributing to a developing society.

When people are valued for their potential, tools and opportunities are expressly created to mine for that potential and to eradicate hindrances. In education, believing in and valuing the innate potential of students is apparent in a school district's written vision and policies for students. These articulate and support an image similar to the one posed by Paulo Freire: students being engaged and supported to be self-actualizing so they can transform themselves to both thrive in as well as transform the world (Freire, 1970).

Neuroscience has demonstrated that all brains are predisposed for high intellectual performances and the imperative for self-actualization, yet in urban districts around the country, Freire's vision is still not applied to students of color. "Potential," "thriving," "flourishing" and "self-actualization" are actively absent from the lexicon of vision statements for urban schools. Without a district vision statement that clearly articulates genuine belief in the currency of the potential of students of color, equitable practices are hard to put in place. Staff is not inspired to believe in the potential of their students and is therefore unmotivated to search for, or even envision, possibilities for practices and opportunities that would surface the potential of these students (Jackson and McDermott, 2012). Students' innate potential remains elusive, unidentified and uncultivated. With this loss of potential, student engagement and achievement degenerate in response to low-level repetitive tasks, which stifles motivation and results in underperformance.

Osta and Perrow have provided a catalyst for a transformational vision to build deepened understanding of equity. They explicate equity as having three salient dimensions:

1. Removing the predictability of academic success or failure based on social, economic or cultural factors;

2. Interrupting inequitable practices, eliminating biases and oppression and creating inclusive school environments for adults and children;

3. And discovering and cultivating the unique gifts, talents and interests that each human being possesses (Osta and Perrow, 2008, pp. 3-4).

The transformative part in this definition is the third element, yet this is the one that is rarely utilized to guide vision statements or equity efforts. For us, if discovering and cultivating the unique gifts, talents and interests of students of color and other marginalized students fueled a district's vision and its resulting policies and practices, then predictability of academic success or failure based on social, economic or cultural factors would be removed and inequitable practices interrupted, eliminating biases and oppression.

Realizing the Third Element

The disregard for the third element is readily apparent to our organization during our intake discussions with districts. When asked what practices they have currently instituted to promote equity, the majority delineate a short list of "reform" procedures, the most frequent being increased offerings of Advanced Placement classes. Access to Advanced Placement courses alone does not result in the potential of students of color being identified or supported to flourish. In fact, most often the opposite happens - their success withers. Success in such courses depends on students being previously "gift-ed" with exposure to conceptual understandings that expand their frames of reference; high-level thinking skills that deepen how they construct, communicate and create meaning; and supports that motivate development of the habits of mind that build competence and confidence. Most underperforming students of color are school-dependent, i.e., they depend on schools for the promise of equity-driven pedagogy that "gifts" them with such exposure and support. Unfortunately, that promise most often goes unkept.

Pedagogy of Confidence: The Medium for Equity

Pedagogy and equity must work together. When we are truly committed to equity, we design pedagogy that achieves its original purpose: "to lead a child" for self-actualization and self-transcendence; self-actualization that enables students to thrive in society, and self-transcendence that motivates them to contribute to that society (Chen, 2014; Freire, 2012; Gladwell, 2008; Jackson, 2011).

One ideology that offers a concrete vision of what equity-driven pedagogy should be is "gifted education." (As used here, gifted education is distinguished from programs for students "labeled as gifted.") In this ideology, students are "gifted" with pedagogy in which: a) belief in and expectations for their ability drive the direction, instructional choices and opportunities that are made available to them; b) their education is actually designed as an invitation for them to explore the "frontier of their intelligence; their innate capital"; c) the practices, strategies and opportunities are designed to identify and cultivate their unique strengths, gifts and talents; and d) the invitations they receive through their education are complemented by guidance on how to apply the discoveries they make about their intelligence so they can better determine what they want to pursue to feel self-actualized and to experience agency and investment in society (Jackson, 2011, p. 86; Whyte, 2002).

Equity-driven pedagogy that generates practices and structures reflective of "gifted" education and the pursuit of excellence is what our organization describes as the Pedagogy of Confidence®. The Pedagogy of Confidence is based on the fearless expectation that all students are capable of high intellectual performances when provided High Operational Practices™ that motivate self-directed learning and self-actualization. High Operational Practices are actually labels for the categories of supports fundamental for eliciting high levels of engagement and intellectual processing. The practices can serve to guide teachers in choosing effective pedagogical strategies to optimize learning.

The High Operational Practices include (Jackson, 2011, p. 71):

Identifying and activating student strengths

Building relationships

Eliciting high intellectual performances

Providing enrichment

Integrating prerequisites for academic learning

Situating learning in the lives of students

Amplifying student voice

These practices are the fulcrum around which our meaning of "gifted" education revolves, gearing the objectives for each practice to facilitate students' exploration and action on their own potential to produce the high intellectual performances that can motivate self-directed learning, self-actualization and self-transcendence.

Three beliefs reflect the science behind the High Operational Practices:

Intelligence is modifiable.

All students benefit from a focus on high intellectual performance.

Learning is influenced by the interaction of culture, language and cognition (Jackson, 2011, p. 71 and 89).

Neuroscience has substantiated the impact that "gifted" pedagogy has on reversing underachievement, stimulating motivation and activating self-determination.

Neuroscience has substantiated the impact that "gifted" pedagogy has on reversing underachievement, stimulating motivation and activating self-determination. The strategies and practices inherent in "gifted education" serve to enhance how students construct meaning and comprehend the world, resulting in strengthened competence, confidence, resilience and high intellectual performances. Confidence acquired from competence causes an individual to become intensely stimulated. This stimulation causes a burning of glucose, which results in the brain being energized, making an individual feel stronger, increasing the sense of confidence. The sense of competence and confidence activates neurotransmitters of pleasure: The endorphin release that helps students enjoy learning more focuses their attention more deeply and motivates a desire for self-directed learning. When feelings of competence are increased, the sense of possible achievement catalyzes the quest for self-actualization, while decreasing the release of catecholamines, the body's natural chemical response to stress (Jackson, 2011, p. 9).

Learning and teaching are reciprocal processes, so approaches such as the Pedagogy of Confidence have a positive effect on teachers as well. For teachers, demonstrations of student learning and competence resulting from their pedagogy provide affirming feedback about their teaching. This feedback is a great asset to teachers, for it catalyzes positive relationships with students, generating enjoyment in work and a deep sense of competence and being valued. These responses activate the release of endorphins, dopamine and oxytocin, which increase creativity in the pursuit and design of effective teaching strategies and inspire greater collaborative relationships with students and staff (Jackson, 2011, p. 9).

The evidence from this research is unequivocal. It substantiates the power and efficacy of an equity-driven pedagogy as a core medium for equity.

The Consequences of Inequitable Practices: The Science Behind It

Research that supports a pedagogy of "gifted" education shows that the philosophy of gifted education (i.e., assets-focused, enriching learning experiences for all students) has not been part of equity efforts for political and social, rather than genuinely scientific, reasons. The most pernicious of these reasons are beliefs that drive policies grounded in a degenerative focus on what are labeled as the weaknesses of our underperforming students of color. These policies not only translate into disenfranchising instruction, they also perpetuate debilitating myths and generate marginalizing or "otherizing" labels - "low-achiever," "minority," "subgroup" - which imply our students of color possess little intellectual potential. These myths become disenfranchising practices that echo disbelief in the potential of these students:

Static, narrow testing;

Remedial education;

Tracking across all disciplines based on standardized test scores;

Unsubstantiated referrals to special education; and

Inequitable suspension practices.

Declaration of belief in the innate potential of students and commitment to equity are nullified when labels and practices that segregate, marginalize, prejudice and withhold "gifted" pedagogy are vetted and institutionalized in districts. The implication of these labels causes the capacities of these students to be devalued and unaddressed, resulting in predictable underachievement and disengagement.

The detrimental impact on achievement of inequitable, marginalizing practices and labels is also substantiated by cognitive and neuroscience. Research shows that weakness-based approaches are the antithesis of what stimulates learning. In the cognitive domain, the remedial, un-enriched, decontextualized instruction (often euphemistically labeled as "literacy programs") that is implemented results in under-performance in reading (and, consequently, learning and achievement across the disciplines) for an inordinate number of students of color. Inequity that results in the absence of enrichment or contextualized instruction causes short-circuits to occur in the cultural anchors needed for cognitive functioning and comprehension. In the neurobiological domain, lack of enrichment and instruction that connects to students' life experiences or frames of reference, hinder the development of neural patterns that make the learning process more efficient and expansive (Feuerstein, 1979; Holloway, 2003; Jackson, 2011, p. 48; Medina, 2008). There is also a damaging, neurobiological impact from inequity-producing "otherizing" labels (e.g., low-achiever, minority, subgroup) on learning and achievement. Such positional or marginalizing language associated with prejudice, degradation or stereotype threat incite high levels of stress (Steele and Aronson, 2004). This stress causes the emission of cortisol, which inhibits comprehension and causes regions of the brain associated with executive decision-making and goal-directed behaviors to degenerate.

The diminishment of achievement, executive decision making and self-directing behaviors incite a cascade of repressive, inhibiting repercussions for students emotionally (low self-esteem and self-confidence), socially (resistant behaviors provoked by low self-esteem and low self-confidence, often leading to dropping out either in-school or out of school, literally or figuratively), and culturally (lack of access and underrepresentation in programs that signify achievement or talent, ineligibility for higher education and limited career options). These repercussions are barriers to the development of the dispositions, habits of mind and growth-mindset upon which competence, confidence, self-actualization and positive contribution to society are built.

The effect inequitable practices and labels have is staggering but not irreversible. Neuroscience has substantiated the powerful findings of the eminent cognitive psychologist Reuven Feuerstein that when students are provided with the mediation of High Operational Practices, cognitive impairments can be mitigated and learning capacity optimized (Feuerstein, 1979; Feuerstein, et al, 2010).

The Common Core State Standards and Equity-Driven Pedagogy

There is a value-added benefit of the equity-driven, Pedagogy of Confidence. The strategies and methodology of High Operational Practices are exactly what students need if they are to achieve the college- and career-ready goal of the Common Core State Standards. The conception of this goal is founded on six very specific assumptions:

1. Staff believe that all students have the innate potential to be college and career ready.

2. Teachers are knowledgeable about the learning process and the science behind that process.

3. Districts will guide and support teachers in creating pedagogy, practices and structures to elicit high levels of thinking and learning dispositions/habits of mind that motivate and enable self-directed learning.

4. Districts, schools and classrooms will address the barriers that inhibit high levels of learning.

5. Teachers will be guided to institute formative assessments that demonstrate growth of thinking and identify strengths.

6. And students will be provided opportunities and supports for authentic application of thinking and discipline-related concepts of learning that engage and encourage demonstration of high intellectual performances.

Ignoring these assumptions by propagating inequitable, marginalizing practices make the goal of the Common Core and other state standards a goal denied to students of color. Effectuation of these assumptions comes when districts provide a Pedagogy of Confidence - a pedagogy that fosters delivery of the practices and structures that enable students' innate capacities and motivation to flourish so they can develop into citizens who thrive in the world.

Mediative Equity-Driven Capacity Building

Helping districts develop and act on a vision based on the real, innate potential of all students comes about through effective, equity-driven capacity building: It is generative, inspiring and catalyzing. The key to equity-driven capacity building is transformational mediation.

Mediation, as developed by Reuven Feuerstein, is a process that highlights the quality of interaction a mediator (adult or youth) uses to intervene between a learner and his or her environment to inspire in the learner a personal motivation for learning (Feuertsein, 1979; Jackson, 2011, p. 157). In equity-driven capacity building, mediation is directed at transitioning staffs and the community from the repressive focus on weaknesses and narrow perceptions about the potential of students of color and other marginalized students to belief in and value of their innate potential. Mediators of equity-driven capacity building recognize that for many of the districts they assist, such transition necessitates reculturation that requires techniques for second-order change (Marzano, Walters and McNulty, 2005). That is, for many districts a new vision that reflects a belief in and the value of the potential students of color and other marginalized students possess will be outside staff's existing paradigm, conflicting with their prevailing values and norms, and requiring them to develop new knowledge and skills.

Mediators intervene by providing understanding, strategies and techniques they have honed from an epistemology informed by human dynamics as well as the cognitive and neuroscience research that substantiate the innate potential of all students to achieve high intellectual performances and the human imperative for self-actualization. Through strategic and mindful mediation, the district sheds its former perceptions to craft a transformational vision that reflects a belief in and the value of the potential their students of color and other marginalized students possess. Mediators assist districts in ensuring that this vision is effectively transmitted by guiding realignment of district functions to create the architecture of support needed to increase the capacity of its schools to implement an equity-driven pedagogy.

We have found that effective mediators of equity-driven capacity building are skilled in

Demonstrating sensitivities that inspire, influence and cultivate trust in order to engage collaboration, involvement and action;

Utilizing specialized competencies that guide reculturation of the awareness, attitudes, beliefs and perceptions of staff about the innate potential of students of color, low-income students and students who speak languages other than English;

Delivering professional learning that incorporates the science of learning to arm the staff with understandings and skills that build their competence and confidence to engage student learning and motivate self-determination;

Implementing strategies that create a shared culture of confidence - a culture that recognizes and capitalizes on the assets and values of the students, their teachers and their communities;

Facilitating dialogue to garner productive community investment and support;

Employing techniques to engage the district, school staff and school board in shared responsibility for implementing equitable practices and eradicating inequitable, marginalizing practices that perpetuate prejudice and segregation; and

Guiding the development of a system-wide vision that articulates belief in and the value of the strengths and potential of all students.

Manifestation of Equity-Driven Capacity Building

Inspiration and Direction from the Top

When districts embrace belief in and the value of the innate potential of all their students, these beliefs and values are clearly articulated in their vision and mission statements.

When districts embrace belief in and the value of the innate potential of all their students, these beliefs and values are clearly articulated in their vision and mission statements. Mediators astutely recognize the power of language to broadcast a message of equity and excellence. They assist district leadership in affirming, inspiring and mediating equity by guiding them to reflect on how the current language in their vision and mission statements would change if they articulated the district's commitment to realizing the potential of all students (Jackson and McDermott, 2012). Mediators guide the introspection and search for appropriate language through a lens they craft from the strategic reordering of Osta and Perrow's dimensions of equity so the dominant focus is on the third dimension - discovering and cultivating the unique gifts, talents and interests that each human being possesses (Osta and Perrow, 2008). This focus steers the identification of language that acutely conveys the message that all district goals will be aimed at enabling all students to thrive inside and outside of school. As districts develop the policies, practices and structures that emanate from these goals, mediators use the other two dimensions described by Osta and Perrow to navigate the identification of inequitable practices that perpetuate disbelief in the innate potential of students of color; practices they determine will no longer be permissible.

The bold vision statements of San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) and the Robbinsdale Area Schools (Minnesota) provide two poignant examples of equity-driven approaches. The mission statement of the SFUSD, delivered through its strategic plan entitled " Beyond the Talk: Taking Action to Educate Every Child Now," states:

The mission of the San Francisco Unified School District is to provide each student with an equal opportunity to succeed by promoting intellectual growth, creativity, self-discipline, cultural and linguistic sensitivity, democratic responsibility, economic competence, and physical and mental health so that each student can achieve his/her maximum potential (SFUSD LEA Plan, 2008).

The goals and objectives of SFUSD's strategic plan ensure clarity about the expectations of the district.

Access and Equity: Make social justice a reality.

Diminish the historic power of demographics.

Center professional learning on equity.

Create an environment for students to flourish.

Provide the infrastructure for successful learning.

Student Achievement:

Engage high-achieving and joyful learners.

Ensure authentic learning for every student.

Prepare citizens of tomorrow.

Create learning beyond the classroom.

Accountability:

Keep our promises to students and families.

Provide direction and strategic leadership.

Create a culture of service and support.

In Robbinsdale, the statement is delivered through its Unified District Vision: High Intellectual Performance through Equity. The vision states:

Robbinsdale Area Schools is committed to ensuring every student graduates career and college ready. We believe each student has limitless possibilities, and we strive to ignite the potential in every student. We expect high intellectual performance from all our students. We are committed to ensuring an equitable and respectful educational experience for every student, family and staff member, focusing on strengths related to:

Clarity about Robbinsdales's expectations is delineated in four goals.

1. Implement policies and practices that open pathways to academic excellence for all students.

2. Utilize culturally relevant teaching and personalized learning for all students.

3. Engage family and community members as partners.

4. Engage and empower students by amplifying student voice.

The strategic plans of both districts are ambitious, but relentless ambition and unwavering direction from the top are what is needed for a systemic, cultural shift from the traditional focus on weaknesses that influences student expectations to outcome-directed belief in the intellectual capacities of all students (Jackson, 2011, p.139).

In just one year, the transformational impact of Robbinsdale's Unified District Vision and its goals is manifested in many policies, practices and structures, including:

An Office of Integration and Equity with a District Equity Council and Equity Teams at the school level

Recruitment and hiring are driven by what the district identifies as an "equity consciousness," resulting in one-third of the district leadership team (cabinet, school administrators and instructional coaches) now comprised of people of color.

School Improvement Plans explicitly reflect the Unified District Vision, with schools specifically describing both practices to identify and develop student strengths and fortify underdeveloped skills, as well as practices identified and labeled as the impermissibles: those which will no longer be permitted.

Cohorts of teachers from all 14 schools have participated in professional learning through equity-driven capacity-building (provided by NUA mentors or certified coaches) in the Pedagogy of Confidence, ensuring coherence and a shared vision for learning and teaching.

All professional learning for the superintendent's leadership team (cabinet, school administrators and instructional coaches) is aligned with the Unified District Vision aimed at developing and supporting effective, equitable practices, opportunities and structures at all levels and across all schools.

Data walks engage teams in collecting evidence about specific equity practices reflective of the Pedagogy of Confidence and the emphases set forth in the Unified District Vision. Classroom walk-throughs have been expanded to include students. Together, teachers and students identify examples of high engagement, discuss principles of engagement and exploring ways of developing strategies and practices to increase engagement.

One high school has now de-tracked the ninth grade English program, making pre-AP classes available to all and providing ongoing support to students and teachers for the new arrangement. This process will extend to English 10, and discussions are underway for the redesign of the English programs in the middle schools.

These changes have demonstrated a new culture of learning and teaching in Robbinsdale; a culture that boldly articulates belief in and value for the innate potential of all the district's students; and a culture that portends equity-centered pedagogy throughout the district's schools.

Schools as Mediative Learning Communities

Mediators of equity-centered capacity building provide the mediation to transform schools into environments where the district's equity vision of belief in and the value of the innate potential of all students can be realized.

Mediators of equity-centered capacity building provide the mediation to transform schools into environments where the district's equity vision of belief in and the value of the innate potential of all students can be realized. We at NUA call these environments Mediative Learning Communities. Just like a mediator, a Mediative Learning Community deliberately intervenes in the lives of its school-dependent students and teachers by creating an environment where equity-driven pedagogy can flourish, where strengths are the primary factors for cultivation, and where intellectual growth is optimized. Schools where staff engage in professional learning communities (PLCs) are primed for co-creating a Mediative Learning Community.

The driving intention of the Mediative Learning Community is to cultivate strengths and mitigate the impact of factors that are barriers to learning for many students of color and poverty: stereotype threats, feelings of failure, focus on weaknesses and remediation, absence of enrichment, and stigma associated with marginalizing labels (Jackson, 2011, p. 157; Jackson and McDermott, 2012; Noguera, 2008; Steele and Aronson, 2004). Mediators of equity-driven capacity building assist in creating Mediative Learning Communities by supporting staff in activating this intention for the students as well as mediating the considerations for the staff themselves. They appreciate that, like students, teachers have emotional needs that have to be addressed in a safe, supportive environment where they can continually rejuvenate their spirits and energize their competence and confidence so they can provide pedagogy that elicits the innate potential of their students while mitigating their needs.

Equity-driven capacity building is most effectively mediated in schools through professional learning that emanates from an equity-driven pedagogy such as the Pedagogy of Confidence. This professional learning

Guides teachers in developing an ecological perspective that begins with a deep understanding and appreciation for the realities of students' lives that affect their ability to learn. It includes a strong belief in their potential and desire for excellence;

Integrates the findings of cognitive and neuroscience research through training in High Operational Practices that build teachers' competence and confidence to elicit and optimize student potential for high intellectual performances and self-actualization; and

Equips teachers with strategies to dynamically assess and increase their students' depth of conceptual understandings, facility with literacy, use of higher order thinking, and the capacity to learn how to learn and apply learnings.

A compelling metaphor for a Mediative Learning Community is an oasis in which students who have struggled and been marginalized feel they belong - they see themselves reflected in the culture of the school (Jackson, 2011). Mediators assist teachers in nurturing this culture by creating opportunities for student input through authentic collaboration in such things as professional learning sessions focused on the science of learning, student-led report card conferences, town hall meetings, teacher-student committees, co-created inquiry projects (students with staff) and participation in the design of school standards for academic and social behavior. NUA has codified these collaborative opportunities through a process we call StudentVoicesNUA™. These opportunities encourage student investment in creating a shared culture, facilitate bridges between students and teachers and develop the currency of academic language. They also strengthen the competencies of the Common Core and other state standards as illustrated in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Reflection of Common Core State Standards in StudentVoicesNUA[1]

Students who are college and career ready in reading, writing, speaking, listening and language ...

How shared professional development, enrichment opportunities and student-led report card conferences correlate to the targets of the standards.

Demonstrate independence.

In student-led report card conferences, students select the work samples they wish to present and decide on their own learning goals. Initiating, executing and controlling processes that were formerly out of their hands gives students a pronounced sense of agency.

Build strong content knowledge.

Because students are responsible for following up on shared professional development by delivering lessons in a variety of subjects and grade levels, they not only learn about pedagogy, but also deepen their understanding of the content. As every beginning teacher knows, the best way to learn something is to teach it.

Respond to the varying demands of audience, task, purpose and discipline.

Enrichment opportunities open up new venues for expression (video, radio, blogs and wikis) and target real audiences (fellow students, teachers and the community). Although the products vary, one purpose permeates StudentVoicesNUA projects: They provide a platform for students to investigate and express their insights, concerns and perspectives on subjects that matter to them. During a clean water project (for example), students took on many roles, from learning to expert. They faced multiple audiences, conducted different tasks for different purposes and negotiated the language and conventions of the various disciplines in which they worked.

Comprehend as well as critique.

Shared professional development is built on a foundation of engagement and open-mindedness. Students engage in activities that give them a profound understanding of the content and the learning process, teach them to express their learning needs in a language that teachers will understand and hear, and spur them to challenge assumptions with sound reasoning.

Value evidence.

As students who participated in the clean water project examined different aspects of the issues, they became experts on those aspects. They gathered and evaluated evidence, developed a point of view about what they researched, and presented their positions to colleagues on Skype.

Use technology and digital media strategically and capably.

StudentVoicesNUA enrichment activities are awash in the use of technology and digital applications. These, in turn, reflect the six areas of proficiency identified by the International Society for Technology in Education / National Educational Technology Standards (ISTE/NETS), including:

Creativity and innovation

Communication and collaboration

Research and information fluency

Critical thinking, problem solving and decision-making

Digital citizenship

Technology operations and concepts

Come to understand other perspectives and cultures.

One of the first reactions students have to shared professional development is empathy for teachers. Invariably, students will say, "I had no idea how hard it is to teach." This response is generally followed by self-reflection: "Now I will pay more attention in class."

Teachers similarly see students in a different light as students provide insight into what makes learning work for them. This opportunity to shift their frames of reference is purposely orchestrated to bridge the divide between student culture and teacher culture.

Equity is contingent upon a transformation in how we as educators, capacity builders and systems change agents consider our students who have struggled and been marginalized, which are too often students of color and students living in poverty. Instead of students who only need access to address what they are lacking, they are students whose innate potential provides the capacity for developing strengths and abilities we have been privileged and entrusted to nurture. We can demonstrate the value and importance of this privilege by "gifting" our students with equity-driven pedagogy that elicits their innate potential so they can not only thrive and transform themselves to be self-actualized, but also self-transcend by contributing to transform our country and world to reach its highest potential. This "gifting" is the promissory note Martin Luther King Jr. described. Mediative, equity-driven capacity building facilitates the long overdue delivery on that note.

REFERENCES

Chen, Ingfei, http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/08/18/how-a-bigger-purpose-can-motivate-students-to-learn/ (2014).

Costa, Arthur, and Robert Garmston, "Mindful Mediation: Conversations That Promote Self-Directedness," paper presented at the National Urban Alliance Summer Coaches Academy. Alexandria, Virginia (2007).

Doidge, Norman, "Our Amazingly Plastic Brains," http://www.wsj.com/articles/our-amazingly-plastic-brains-1423262095, (2015).

Dweck, Carol, Self -Theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality and Development (New York: Psychology Press, 2000).

Feuerstein, Reuven, "Cognitive Modifiability in Retarded Adolescents: Effects of Instrumental Enrichment," American Journal of Mental Deficiency 83, no. 6 (1979): 88-96.

Feuerstein, Reuven, Refael Feuerstein, and Louis Falik, Beyond Smarter: Mediated Learning and the Brain's Capacity for Change (New York: Teachers College Press, 2010).

Freire, Paulo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970).

Freire, Paulo, Myra Bergman Ramos, and Donaldo P. Macedo, Pedagogy of the oppressed, 30th anniversary ed. (New York: Continuum, 2012).

Gay, Geneva, Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice (New York: Teachers College Press, 2000).

Gladwell, Malcolm, Outliers (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008).

Hargreaves, Andy, Changing Teachers, Changing Times: Teachers' Work and Culture in the Postmodern Age (New York: Teachers College Press, 1994).

Hilliard, Asa, "Classical Failure and Success in the Assessment of People of Color," in M. Coleman (Ed.), Black Children Just Keep on Growing (Washington, D.C.: National Black Child Development Institute, 1977).

Holloway, Marguerite, "The Mutable Brain," Scientific American 289, no. 3 (2003): 79-85.

Jackson, Yvette, Pedagogy of Confidence (New York: Teachers College Press, 2011).

Jackson, Yvette, and Veronica McDermott, Aim High, Achieve More: How to Transform Urban Schools Through Fearless Leadership (Alexandria, Virginia: ASCD, 2012).

Jensen, Eric, Teaching With the Brain in Mind (Alexandria, Virginia: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), 1998).

Ladson-Billings, Gloria, The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994).

Marzano, Robert, Timothy Waters, and Brian McNulty, "School Leadership That Works," (Alexandria, Virginia: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development (ASCD), 2005).

Medina, John, Brain Rules: Twelve Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School (Seattle: Pear Press, 2008).

National Urban Alliance, Professional learning model, unpublished manuscript (Syosset, New York: Author, 2012).

Noguera, Pedro, The Trouble with Black Boys ... and Other Reflections on Race, Equity, and the Future of Public Education (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008).

Osta, Kathleen, and Margaret Perrow, "Coaching for Educational Equity: The BayCES Coaching Framework," (Oakland, California: TheBay Area Coalition for Equitable Schools, 2008), www.bayces.org

Robbinsdale Area Schools, Unified District Vision: High Intellectual Performance Through Equity, Robbinsdale Area Schools 2014 Strategic Plan_Final (Robbinsdale, Minnesota: Robbinsdale Area Schools, 2014).

San Francisco Unified School District, Beyond the Talk: Taking Action to Educate Every Child Now, SFUSD 2008-2012 Strategic Plan (San Francisco: San Francisco Unified School District, 2008) retrieved from http://portal.sfusd.edu/template/default.cfm?page=home.strategic plan

Steele, Claude, and Joshua Aronson, "The Stereotype Threat," retrieved from http://www.mtholyoke.edu/offices/comm/csj/092404/steele.shtml

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Whyte, David, Clear Mind, Wild Heart: Finding Courage and Clarity Through Poetry (CDs) (Boulder, Colorado: Sounds True, 2002).
NOTES
[1] Adapted from Y. Jackson and V. McDermott, Aim High, Achieve More: How to Transform Urban Schools Through Fearless Leadership, (Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2012): p.95-96.

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About the Author

Yvette Jackson, CEO, National Urban Alliance for Effective Education (NUA)

Yvette Jackson is internationally recognized for her work in assessing the learning potential of disenfranchised urban students. Changing this reality for these students to one in which their intellectual potential is believed in, valued and optimized has been Yvette's calling for her entire career. She has applied her research in neuroscience, gifted education, literacy, and the cognitive mediation theory of Dr. Reuven Feuerstein to develop integrated processes that engage and elicit high intellectual performances from underachievers. She designed the New York City Board of Education's Gifted Programs Framework while serving as Director of Gifted Programs. As New York City's Executive Director of Instruction and Professional Development, she led the creation and implementation of the Comprehensive Education Plan, which maximizes the delivery of all core curriculum and support services in the Public Schools of New York City.

Dr. Jackson currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer of the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education, founded at the College Board and Teachers College, Columbia University. She works with school district superintendents, administrators, teachers, and students across the United States and internationally to customize and deliver systemic approaches that enable students to demonstrate high intellectual performances. She bases her work on the principles and practices of the Pedagogy of Confidence, which she created to enable educators to accelerate the intellectual development and academic achievement of their students.

Yvette has been a visiting lecturer at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education, Columbia University, and Stanford University. She has also served as a member of ASCD's (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) Differentiated Instruction Cadre. She is a keynote presenter at national and international conferences including the Feuerstein Institute, Israel; the Conference of ANEIS - Associação Nacional para o Estudo e Intervenção na Sobredotação, Portugal; and Thinking Schools, United Kingdom.

She has been published in numerous educational journals. Her most recent book (co-authored with Dr. Veronica McDermott): "Aim High, Achieve More: How to Transform Urban Schools Through Fearless Leadership" follows her previous bestseller: "The Pedagogy of Confidence: Inspiring High Intellectual Performance in Urban Schools" which received the 2012 ForeWord Reviews' Silver Book Award.

On September 15, 2012 the Academy of Education Arts and Sciences Educators Voice Awards honored Yvette for "Education Policy/Researcher of the Year."

Yvette's mission is to rekindle, in educators, the passion and beliefs that led them to choose education as their career. She is driven to provide and promote pedagogy that enables school dependent students to demonstrate their high intellectual potential, and to enable educators to fulfill their potential as outstanding teachers and administrators.

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Transformational Pedagogy: Cashing The Promissory Note of Equity for All Students - Especially Those Who are Marginalized

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By Yvette Jackson, Ed.D., CEO, National Urban Alliance for Effective Education In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall...

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Sustaining curiosity, collaboration, and connectedness in a pandemic

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Real-time polling, original instructional videos, virtual conferences, and live on-screen annotation are just a few new skills teacher Jonathan Delgado is adding to his teaching toolkit this school...

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This school year, I have the privilege of working shoulder to shoulder with teachers who are rolling up their sleeves and asking hard questions about how they can better serve their under-performing students who are disproportionately English learners, poor students, and students of color. They are working to incorporate culturally responsive practices into their classrooms.

I believe culturally responsive teaching (CRT) is a powerful method for accelerating student learning. But truth be told, most educators are not really sure what it is or what it looks like. For some, it seems mysterious. A number of leaders discount it because it seems too "touchy feely" or only focused on raising students' self-esteem, when they need to raise achievement levels. But CRT is so much more than that. It's the reason why I wroteCulturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. ( Brief podcast on CRT)

Two of the biggest challenges I see teachers struggle with when first embracing CRT, is understanding the role culture actually plays in instruction and how to operationalize culturally responsive practices. They worry that they have to learn 19 different cultures -- everyone's individual customs, holidays, foods, and language. This simply isn't true. Here are four other big ideas about culturally responsive teaching to keep in mind:

1. Culturally responsive teaching isn't the same as multicultural education or social justice education. Too often we use the terms culturally responsive teaching and multicultural education interchangeably, when they're different things. They are related, but only culturally responsive teaching focuses on building students' learning power. It's important to remember that CRT isn't about diversity training, but about helping students reach deeper levels of understanding.

2. Culturally responsive teaching builds students' brain power by Improving information processing skills using cultural learning tools.This isn't an aspect of CRT we talk about a lot. Instead, educators like to focus on the affective elements. Keep in mind one way that the achievement gap manifests itself is by creating dependent learners who find it hard to do critical thinking or independent learning. When we focus on using culture as a cognitive scaffold, then we're able to leverage students' neural pathways that make learning easier.

3. Culturally responsive teaching is grounded in social and cognitive neuroscience. Neuroscience is giving us new findings every day that support why culturally responsive practices work. For example, social neuroscience reminds us that relationships are the on-ramp to learning, meaning if a student doesn't feel heard or seen, then it leads to increased stress. Stress hormones like cortisol impair the brain's executive function. So in order to create a learning environment conducive to all students learning, we need to lower stress hormones by building those relationships.

4. Culturally responsive teaching requires teachers to recognize the cultural orientation we call "collectivism."Teachers are often confused about how culture plays a role in culturally responsive teaching. They think they have to mention race, ethnicity, or cultural artifacts like ethnic food, music, or literature all the time for every different group. Instead, a key starting point to making cultural responsiveness manageable is to organize instructional activities around collectivist cultural principles -- group harmony and interdependence. Vygotsky talks about this as "socio-cultural learning" and highlights that it is necessary to move students into their zone of proximal development.

Here's another important point to make: Culturally responsive teaching isn't a program or set of strategies. First and foremost, it is a mindset. That means that it's equally important to do the ongoing "inside-out" work to build your social-emotional capacity to work across social, linguistic, racial, and/or economic difference with students and their families. Too often I hear educators say that they are "color-blind" or don't understand the socio-political issues that lead to inequities in education -- like disproportionate discipline outcomes for boys of color or low achievement data for English learners, poor students, and students of color in general.

We have to make it our personal business to build our emotional stamina to address our own blind spots and biases. One of the nation's leading implicit bias scholars, Patricia Devine of the University of Wisconsin, compares implicit bias to habits that, with intention and practice, can be broken. Her research has found that three conditions need to be in place for individuals to successfully "de-bias":

1. Intention: You have to acknowledge that you harbor unconscious biases and are motivated to change.

2. Attention: You have to pay attention to your triggers and know when stereotypical responses or assumptions are activated.

3. Time: You have to make time to practice new strategies designed to "break" your automatic associations that link a negative judgment to behavior that is culturally different from yours.

"De-biasing" requires a level of metacognition. In this case, you're not thinking about your thinking, but thinking about your unconscious reacting. Remember, it isn't about getting rid of our biases, it's about rewiring our brains to not respond unconsciously to the negative dominant narratives about the learning capacity of poor students, students of color, and English learners. We have to tame our amygdala, our brain's fight or flight defense mechanism, and take advantage of neuroplasticity - our brain's ability to change itself and respond differently to emotionally charged situations, like talking about race, culture, and inequity.

At the end of professional development sessions with teachers, I usually share this quote from Atul Gawande, author of the Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right: "Better is possible. It does not take genius. It takes diligence. It takes moral clarity. It takes ingenuity. And above all, it takes a willingness to try." Operationalizing CRT may seem overwhelming, but start with something small but high leverage, and grow your comfort and skill level. We can do this!

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Culturally Responsive Teaching & The Brain

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This school year, I have the privilege of working shoulder to shoulder with teachers who are rolling up their sleeves and asking hard questions about how they can better serve their under-performing students who are disproportionately English learners, poor students, and students of color.

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April 2020 | Volume 77 | Number 7
Deeper Discussions Pages 45-50

Zaretta Hammond

When I taught expository writing as a classroom teacher, I found the fastest path to improving my students' writing was to build their capacity to engage in deep discussions so they were able to work through their thesis or arguments-testing their claims and hearing their peers' perspectives. This pushed them to revise their own thinking. John Hattie's research around academic conversation and discussion confirms what I learned by direct experience: Academic conversation is one of the most powerful practices we can bring to our classrooms to promote higher achievement (Hattie, 2012).

So now, as a consultant, when I go into classrooms as part of an equity audit or as a coach supporting school teams to incorporate more culturally responsive practices, one of the first things I look for is who is doing most of the talking during instruction. As the old adage has it: "Whoever is doing the talking is doing the learning." This notion is supported by the growing evidence from researchers such as Aida Walqui and colleagues and their work with English learners at WestEd (2019), and Ron Ritchhart and his work around the cultures of thinking out of Harvard's Project Zero (2015). This body of research highlights that talking in all its forms- conversing, discussing, debating, and dialoguing -helps increase students' brain power so that they are able to take on more rigorous work and engage in deeper learning down the road.

But to grow students' brain power using academic conversation as a strategy, we need robust talk structures that allow more students to join in the conversation confidently, especially English learners, introverted students, disengaged students, and historically marginalized students. These are all students whose communication styles and funds of knowledge are not typically leveraged in classrooms.

For the most part, schools have limited the range of everyday talk structures and processes in our classrooms. I often see teachers only using turn and talk as a discussion strategy, sometimes alternating it with think, pair, share. These two strategies have become instructional staples. But while useful, they are not sturdy enough for deeper discussions that facilitate deep thinking or what I call "cognitive chewing."

Free-Flowing Structure

In addition to adding more robust discussion practices, we also want to make these practices more culturally responsive by centering them around the principles of youth culture and collectivist practice. I encourage teachers to find talk structures and tools that:

Honor the funds of knowledge each student brings to the conversation.

Give marginalized students greater access to the flow of the discussion.

Give students more agency in directing the conversation.

Give students a more robust cognitive workout by leveraging their everyday modes of communication.

That's why I suggest that a good starting point for facilitating deeper, more equitable discussions is to use structured protocols. Protocols are more than a fancy word for strategies. Made popular in the early 1990's by the Coalition of Essential Schools and promoted by the National School Reform Faculty, discussion protocols are rules or procedures that provide a structure and process so everyone has time to think, talk, and listen.

Protocols are now widely used in adult learning communities and a growing number of classrooms across the country. They come in a variety of formats, from techniques to gather focused feedback on a project or piece of writing before revising-like a tuning protocol-to interactive processes like the gallery walk protocol, in which students build on each other's knowledge about a topic or content to promote higher-order thinking through cooperative learning. The good thing about protocols is that they can be modified to suit multiple purposes and different types of discussions. Despite their variety, they have common features: There is structured turn taking during a discussion, and speaking and listening are usually timed so more students can participate.

The overly structured nature of protocols might seem counterintuitive to the goal of encouraging a free-flowing discussion that welcomes all students. In reality, it is just the opposite. Protocols create ways into the discussion for students typically left out. We often see the same students talking in class, namely those who are comfortable conversing in English, have mainstream background knowledge, or are more extroverted.

Five Steps to Support Protocols

The following five steps will enable you to begin creating the conditions for incorporating protocols into your classroom to increase engagement and access for all students:

1. Offer structures and time for small talk that paves the way for social-emotional safety later in academic conversations. Building a culture of academic conversation begins with building a culture of connection. Creating opportunities for students to talk to each other and get to know each other sets the social-emotional stage for them to engage collaboratively during academic discussions.

Protocols such as dyads can offer a container for a social-emotional grounding to the school day or beginning of the class period. Made popular by math equity educator Julian Weissglass and community organizer Ana Becerra (2004), a dyad is a listening and talking exchange between two people that provides a structure for constructivist listening-a process in which the speaker is listened to for a dedicated amount of time without being interrupted.

For more interactive group protocols try the tea party, which can be used with quotes and images that students help curate, or diversity rounds, which explores personal identity. Both of these protocols provide students a fun but structured way to learn more about each other and build relational trust.

2. Use protocols to shake up inequitable participation patterns during academic discussions. One of the dynamics I often see in classrooms is unequal participation. Even when we use powerful strategies and structures such as Socratic seminars, we see the same students doing much of the talking. This leads to inequitable outcomes for English learners, introverted, or struggling students who don't feel confident enough to actively engage in free-flowing class discussions.

Well-defined protocols can make discussions more egalitarian by providing time for everyone to get practice talking about their ideas about the content. For example, the typical protocol is done in "rounds" with a small group of 3-5 students. Each protocol round has three important steps that foster equitable participation. First, the process begins with 3-5 minutes of uninterrupted time for one person ("the presenter") to talk. When that person is finished, the other members of the discussion group have a set amount of time to reflect on and respond to what the presenter shared. The presenter has a final moment to respond to on the advice given by his partners. Then a new presenter from the group is invited to share his or her thinking and is given the same 3-5 minutes to talk. This process continues until everyone in the group has had time to talk.

Two protocols that should be staples in classrooms are the tuning protocol to help students revise and improve on a piece of student work in preparation for larger group discussions and the text-rendering protocol, which can help students access grade-level text by starting with noticing and naming what is familiar or what sparks one's curiosity in the text.

3. Use the elements of hip-hop culture to modify protocols and make them more responsive to students' interests and knowledge base. Many of our middle and high school students are steeped in hip-hop culture, regardless of racial background or socioeconomic status. Hip-hop has grown up and become mainstream. Although widely considered a synonym for rap music, the term hip-hop actually refers to a complex culture organized around the values of social justice, respect, self-worth, community, and having fun.

While maintaining the integrity of the discussion protocols you choose to use, think about ways to include fun as a design principle in classroom discussion. As Chris Emdin (2013) reminds us, much of today's students' schema-the brain's network of knowledge, associations, allusions, references, and connections that give content meaning-is influenced by hip-hop culture. So why not leverage interactive hip-hop structures like the cipher and rap battles to help students access their existing funds of knowledge? These features of hip-hop culture have dialogic qualities that we can use to help students see that they are competent at deep thinking. How to do this? Consider a mash-up of a traditional protocol and one of the hip-hop structures:

Remix the fishbowl protocol as a cipher. The fishbowl protocol has a small number of students seated in an inner circle discussing a topic or text and using specific academic conversation skills the class is practicing, while the remaining students sit around them in an outer circle. The students in the outer circle listen to the discussion and take notes. At a designated point, the students in the inner circle rotate out, join the outer circle, and a new group of students comes into the inner circle. This has a lot in common with a hip-hop practice called cipher, in which a crowd of spectators and onlookers surrounds rappers engaged in "freestyling" as each rapper steps into the cipher to share their rhymes. In a remix or mash-up of these formats, you can introduce a more free-flowing type of fishbowl, building on collectivist, participatory elements common to hip-hop culture. For example, students in the outer circle can more actively engage and comment on what they're hearing from within the fishbowl with finger snaps. Or, you can make movement between the outer circle and inner circle more free flowing by letting students tap each other in.

Use a cipher-style protocol like the kiva to help students focus on "cognitive stitching" as they build on each other's ideas, In a kiva, rather than having an inner and outer circle, four students are positioned in a square, and four more seats are lined up behind each of them so that the pattern resembles a wheel spoke. The four speakers in the square discuss the topic and questions of the lesson. After some time passes, new students rotate from the seats behind the speaker into the center seats and continue the conversation, building on what's been said. The goal is seeing who can take the discussion deeper, make interesting text-based connections, or find real-life connections to academic concepts, depending on the subject area.

Reconfigure the chalk talk protocol as a graffiti tag billboard. Invite students to "tag" the "billboard" using elements of sketchnoting, doodling, collage, and written word to stimulate thinking before a discussion begins or to deepen it afterwards. The idea is to leverage students' comfort with multimodal expression as a way into dialogue, discussion, or debate.

4. Invoke performance elements of spoken word poetry for deeper thinking during discussions. Like hip-hop, spoken word is part of youth culture and flows out of the oral traditions of many indigenous communities and communities of color. Spoken word is a poetic performance art that is word-based, and it can center around either poetry or prose. It looks like fun, but the fluid use of word-play and metaphor makes it serious cognitive work. According to Rick Wormeli (2009), metaphor is a powerful tool for making meaningful connections and demonstrating understanding of complex concepts that changes the structure of our brain, allowing us to do more rigorous thinking as a result. The lyrical nature of spoken word techniques can give in-class discussions energy and flow, which increases engagement.

5. Give students the power to facilitate. Because culturally responsive teaching is about building student agency and brain power, it is important to train students to self-facilitate discussions. Protocols offer the needed structure and procedural "wireframe" to get them started.

Teach them to "hand off" the conversation to each other rather than have it always flow through the teacher.

Pick an MC for the discussion. In street parlance, MC stands for the "master of ceremonies." In hip-hop culture, when a number of rappers have gathered for a performance, the MC manages the energy of the crowd and the flow of the set. Help students channel their inner MC as facilitators in protocols. They need to focus not just on the procedural aspects, but also on the social-emotional climate of the discussion or debate to ensure norms are being following and a positive vibe is maintained.

Making It Work

Incorporating protocols into your classroom routines takes some planning and guided facilitation to build all students' capacity to engage in powerful discussions that lead to deeper learning. Here are a few additional tips to keep in mind:

Rethink how you use time. Discussions that go beyond the surface of a turn and talk take time. Do a time audit. How are you currently using instructional minutes? Maybe two to three days out of the week you can combine guided practice time and independent work time to make more room for academic conversations using protocols.

Be patient. Remember the rule of the first pancake. Recognize that, like the first pancake, deep discussions are going to be a bit messy in the beginning. But after making some adjustments, the pancakes will come off the griddle round and ready to eat. Similarly, over time students get used to using protocols to take their discussions deeper. This is where the design thinking principles of prototyping and iterating are important.

Teach the value of code switching. You need to have norms in place to effectively implement protocols. But resist the urge to police students' use of language, like slang, non-mainstream English like African American Vernacular English, pidgin, or creole dialects like "Spanglish."

Let students talk in the language most comfortable for thinking. Be aware of the number of different languages and dialects spoken in your classroom. As a culturally responsive educator, find ways to leverage this linguistic diversity. Early in the school year, talk with students about the positive connection between discussion, thinking, and their home languages. In addition, teach them to "code switch" across registers. A register is defined as the level of formality in language that's determined by the context in which it is spoken or written. We have three common registers-a social or community register, a "business" register, and a more formal "academic" register.

There is a big difference between moving back and forth across registers (code switching) and having to abandon one's language assets. This isn't about modulating. Rather, it is a matter of "both/and". Students should not feel like they have to abandon their home and community language when they come to school. It is actually one of their assets.

On Equal Footing

Protocols can be a powerful equity tool. Leveraging protocols in our classroom can ensure equal participation in discussions that grow understanding and brain power for all students, as well as help them access their funds of knowledge, using practices from youth culture to ignite engagement.

References

Becerra, A., & Weissglass, J. (2004). Take it up: Leading for educational equity. Santa Barbara, CA: National Coalition for Equity in Education.

Emdin, C. (2013). Pursuing the pedagogical potential of the pillars of hip-hop through sciencemindedness. International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 4(3), 83-99.

Fisher, D., Frey, N., & Hattie, J. (2016). Visible learning for literacy: Implementing the practices that work best to accelerate student learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for teachers. London: Routledge.

Ritchhart, R. (2015). Creating cultures of thinking: The eight forces we must master to truly transform our schools. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons.

Walqui, A., Bunch, G., et al (Eds.). (2019). Amplifying the curriculum: Designing quality learning opportunities for English learners (Language and Literacy Series). San Francisco, CA: WestEd.

Wormeli, R. (2009). Metaphors & analogies: Power tools for teaching any subject. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.

Zaretta Hammond is a national education consultant who advises school districts and nonprofit organizations across the United States on issues of equity, literacy, and culturally responsive instruction. She is a former high school and community college writing instructor and the author of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain (Corwin, 2014). Follow her on Twitter.

KEYWORDS

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April 2020 | Volume 77 | Number 7 Deeper Discussions Pages 45-50 Zaretta Hammond When I taught expository writing as a classroom teacher, I found the fastest path to improving my students' writing was to build their capacity to engage in deep discussions so they were able to work through their thesis or arguments-testing their claims and hearing their peers' perspectives.

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Hindered by video screens, fluctuating schedules, and health regulations, teachers are up against the odds this school year when it comes to getting to know their students.

"It's hard to really get to know your students through a webcam," @mark_bevacqua wrote on Twitter, while @cheri_cheralex shared her struggles of seeing students in masks or "with eyes only."

While get-to-know-you activities are typically earmarked for the first weeks of school, they shouldn't end there, say educators and researchers.

Whether it's that they love to play baseball, have three brothers, or enjoy writing or photography, celebrating your students' unique experiences and identities can bolster connections that keep them engaged and performing better in school. Students who have a deeper sense of self- and purpose -are also better able to define their goals and stay focused on pursuing them, concluded a 2014 study from David Yeager, Angela Duckworth, and colleagues.

We collected an array of class exercises from interviews with teachers, online resources, and our archives that will help students develop greater self-awareness and purpose. These insights can also give you a better sense of who they are, so you can be responsive to their interests-even if you're separated by screens or masks.

Reflecting on Experiences: 'Laws of Life' Essays

In the early 2000s, educators in an urban, high-poverty district in New Jersey gave their middle and high school students an interesting essay assignment: Write about the values and principles that guide your life.

The seemingly small activity, called "Laws of Life," is based on the work of philanthropist John Templeton, and it turned into a much bigger project that helped students develop a stronger sense of self, purpose, and possibility for the future, according to Maurice Elias, a psychology professor at Rutgers University. The project has since been replicated all over the world.

To run the assignment in your class, Elias recommends asking students to reflect on their past-in and out of school-and the experiences and people that made them who they are. From there, have students discern key characteristics that have influenced their lives and then craft an essay-or create a video or other multimedia content-focused on the "laws" or principles that drive them.

Question prompts like "Who do you admire? List three of their admirable traits" and "Describe an incident or event from which you learned a lesson 'the hard way'" can help guide students. Periodically throughout the year, have students refer back to their essays to reflect on what they wrote and ask themselves, "What's changed?" and "What's stayed the same?"

Exploring Identity-and Perceptions About It: Identity Charts

To get to know her students and ensure that they felt seen in her classroom, middle school teacher Shane White created a lesson to help them explore their identities. First, White set a foundation for discussion by defining identity and explaining how identities can sometimes be visible, like age, or invisible, like a person's life experiences.

Then, with the permission of six of her friends, White shared photos of their faces and had students guess their "identity characteristics." Afterward, she revealed the true details and led a class discussion about making assumptions about others based on how they look or act. To finish the project, students drew their own "identity portraits" or a picture of their face with half the face showing visible characteristics and the other half showing invisible characteristics.
Courtesy of Shana White
The education organization Facing History and Ourselves recommends a similar exercise called the "Who am I?" activity for middle school students. To start, select some key historical figures or fictional characters-think inclusively and avoid stereotypes, selecting a wide range of people from different backgrounds-and ask students to discuss "factors such as religion, gender, and geography" that influenced their identities.

Next, have students read the chapter "My Name" from the book The House on Mango Street, where the main character, Esperanza, talks about her name, revealing details about her culture. Ask students to create an identity chart for Esperanza, answering questions such as "What is her family like?" and "What does her name reveal about her personality?" Guided by the reading, students can then create identity charts for themselves and share them with the class.

Learning Important Details: Student Inventories

Student inventories can help teachers quickly discern details and facts about students that shape who they are, and can be used to plan further class activities and lessons. Ask students to list their favorite musicians, songs, sports, activities, games, or food, for example, or probe deeper with questions about their culture, memories, and family.

Another option is having students write 20 sentences that complete the prompt, "I am someone who..." or asking a short list of thought-provoking questions in one-to-one Hopes and Dreams conferences. Target questions that tap into who students are now and who they hope to be, such as "What are some things that bug you about the world?" "What inspires you?" and "What dreams do you have after high school?"

Look for patterns in student responses, and use what you learn to make classroom lessons and activities connected to students' interests, advises Rebecca Alber, an education professor in California, who says, "Students need to see connections between learning and their lived experiences."

Understanding Interests: Passion Blogging

In Allison Berryhill's high school English class, literary analysis exercises left her students "frozen," and free-writing assignments produced hard-to-read rants. Influenced by the book Beyond Literary Analysis, Berryhill started offering a new exercise called "passion blogging" last year, in which students write about topics that interest them.
Courtesy of Allison Berryhill
Students start by drawing "heart maps," or large hearts filled with illustrations and words that represent their passions. Then, they select one or two topics to explore further and look for related articles, images, and videos. Berryhill also gives accompanying class lessons on attribution of sources, texts, quotes, and imagery, and shares mentor texts to guide students' writing.

Students' blogs have run the gamut in subject matter, from pheasant hunting to hunger strikes to hiking, and give them an opportunity to dive deeply into things they care about. As part of the process, students are also tasked with reading and evaluating several of their classmates' blogs. Overall, the low-stakes activity has served as a springboard to build students' literary analysis skills for harder assignments, says Berryhill, while helping her get to know them better.

Documenting Your Life: Movies, Photos, and Podcasts

Though many teachers and students are feeling virtual brain drain, digital tools can provide new, creative outlets for students to share and define their interests and personalities. Teachers are having students create autobiographical mini-movies or trailers about their lives and produce podcasts or write articles for digital school newspapers on issues they care about.

Influenced by her community's experiences during the pandemic, Wendy McElfish, a high school teacher in California, taught a lesson on Dorothea Lange's famous black-and-white photography from the Great Depression. Then, she had her students take their own photos with phones to document their lives. She guided them with the themes "life outside your door," "through a window," "different life inside," and "porch photos of your family."

"When kids are faced with terrible circumstances, sometimes it helps to take an artistic approach," she said. "A lot of kids aren't good writers, but they have an eye and they have a voice... [and] they can show the world what I see."

Similarly, Lori Wenzinger, a middle school social studies teacher in South Carolina, paired up with a local photographer to create a three-week multimedia project called "Finding Your Joy." After the photographer taught two classes on photo composition and mood, students were tasked with taking photos that "capture joyful moments throughout their day," sharing and reviewing them as a class, and selecting their three favorites to keep in the class Google Drive.

Having Fun: Icebreakers, Games, and Accolades
Courtesy of Cathleen Beachboard
In addition to more comprehensive assignments and lessons, teachers can build in short, entertaining activities that keep students engaged and reveal insights about who they are.

Trevor Boffone, a high school teacher in Texas, asked his students to submit their favorite song to a list at the start of the year. Now, at the beginning of each virtual class, he plays music to kick things off, incorporating students' picks and his own.

Throughout remote learning, Cathleen Beachboard, a middle school teacher in Virginia, says she's including fun activities like show-and-tells and theme days. This fall, she also adopted a practice that her superintendent uses for staff meetings called "Three Cool Things I've Seen." Once a week, Beachboard calls out three things she's observed about students from classes that week that recognize them for their individuality.

"I know a lot of teachers are struggling right now getting students pulled in. I found the more encouragement and authentic praise we give to students, the more they dive in," she said. "These are scary times, but by giving students time to showcase their individuality, they will feel safe and ready to fully engage in learning."

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6 Exercises to Get to Know Your Students Better-and Increase Their Engagement

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Hindered by video screens, fluctuating schedules, and health regulations, teachers are up against the odds this school year when it comes to getting to know their students. "It's hard to really get to know your students through a webcam," @mark_bevacqua wrote on Twitter, while @cheri_cheralex shared her struggles of seeing students in masks or "with eyes only."

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We believe, as Jeannie Oakes (2015) has argued, that public schooling remains our most hopefulsite for disrupting inequality and injustice.

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We believe, as Jeannie Oakes (2015) has argued, that public schooling remains our most hopefulsite for disrupting inequality and injustice.

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Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain

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I will never forget my first experience with implicit bias as an undergraduate at University of California, Berkeley. I had turned in my first in-class writing assignment in Medieval Literature. I loved the topic of courtly love and whatnot. The professor was an older White man and nice enough. There were no other people of color in the class, but I shined that on. I was excited to be reading these literary classics. I got my assignment back and his comment at the bottom was, "actually this is quite good." I was stunned. Actually? Clearly he had a different expectation of my knowledge and skill, a lower expectation. I couldn't believe that he put that thought in writing. That's implicit bias in action.

While on Spring break this past week, I thought a lot about implicit bias. That's when I remembered my professor's micro-aggression. The topic of implicit bias is so complex and emotionally messy that it's tempting to just want to gloss right over it jump to culturally responsive lesson planning and instructional strategies. But an important part of being culturally responsive is the ability to build trusting relationships with diverse students and to validate their experiences. If you are genuinely validating them then that means you don't trivialize bias. That means as culturally responsive educators we educate ourselves about implicit bias - how it operates and what we can do to interrupt it.

In Part I, we looked at how the Department of Justice's findings on the culture and climate in Ferguson city government. It exposed a pattern of explicit racism and implicit bias. Naming and exposing these patterns is part of recognizing the effects of structural racialization. This is the first step in interrupting unconscious bias.

In Part II, I explained what's going on in our brains when our amygdala gets triggered. We learned that the amygdala has been unconsciously programmed with subtle messages aimed at dehumanizing the "other" - be it people of color, women and girls, or immigrants. Because it's passed off as "joking," we let these messages into our subconscious. That why they are so hard to get rid of.

The $64,000 question we are trying to answer now is - how do we stop implicit biases if they are unconscious? It's a good question because it turns out that even if we call ourselves social justice educators, implicit bias gets triggered because of our hidden beliefs. Interesting three-year study done by Dr. Stephanie Jones at the University of Georgia documented the experiences of student teachers who self-identified as social justice or anti-racist educators but when actually in physical proximity of a diverse group (especially when they were in the minority) they experienced classic signs of implicit bias - irrational nervousness, anxiety, and fear - when they were in no immediate danger.

The Good News! - Implicit biases are not permanent.

According to folks studying implicit bias change or "de-biasing" as they call it, our biases are not permanent; they are malleable and can be changed by re-programming our brains and creating new "cognitive habits." The catch is using the right strategies.

What doesn't work?

I know over the past two decades, in education there have been a lot of equity focused trainings and workshops to address issues of racism and implicit bias. Some are helpful; some are really harmful. So, before sharing what seems to work, I want to say a few words about what doesn't work and why.

There are three common approaches I've seen schools try in an effort to address implicit bias in the classroom. Research backs up their ineffectiveness.

Whole staff "diversity training". Most diversity training focuses on having white people look at their white privilege or explore the painful racial history of the United States through a rational lens. While this approach makes people more knowledgeable about past history and injustices, it doesn't do much to educate people about structural racialization or to change deep-rooted, unconscious biased beliefs.

The race talk (aka cross-racial dialogue). Another approach has been to have cross-racial dialogues. Sometimes it's bringing together Black or Latino parents to talk with a mostly White teaching staff. The belief behind this strategy is that ending bias will happen when there is more racial harmony. While cross-racial dialogue is important in building strong communities, this alone does little to actually shift deep-rooted unconscious beliefs. Without skilled facilitation, these conversations can become very harmful. People of color can carry a great deal of hurt and anger over everyday micro-aggressions that others often trivialize or invalid as "being too sensitive." White teachers often come to these discussions concerned about being personally blamed for racial inequality or accused of being racist.

This only triggers the brain's amygdala, reinforcing unconscious biases around people of color being "out of control" or "violent". The presence of stress, anger, and negative emotions without proper processing leads people to shut down.

Data-driven equity conversations. By far the most popular approach since we began disaggregating data under No Child Left Behind is the data-driven equity conversation. The idea is that every teacher disaggregates his student achievement data and gets a clear picture of who is achieving and who isn't, which usually creates a color line with culturally and linguistically diverse students regularly at the bottom. The belief is that seeing this predictable pattern will shift beliefs or at the very least spark some call to action to change this.

Neuroscience tells us why this strategy hasn't been successful. The brain has what they call confirmation bias. Without new beliefs, data simply leads to a person interpreting information in a way that confirms his preconception. So when students of color end up at the bottom of the achievement scale, many teachers say, "See...their parents don't value education," or "they don't apply any effort." The data simply confirms implicit bias rather than interrupts it.

What does work?

One of the nation's leading implicit bias scholars, Patricia Devine of the University of Wisconsin, compares implicit bias to habits that, with intention and practice, can be broken. Her research has found that three conditions need to be in place for individuals to successfully "de-bias":

1. Intention: You have to acknowledge that you harbor unconscious biases and are motivated to change.

2. Attention: You have pay attention to your triggers and know when stereotypical responses or assumptions are activated.

3. Time: You have to make time to practice new strategies designed to "break" your automatic associations that link a negative judgment to behavior that is culturally different from yours.

De-biasing requires a level of metacognition. In this case, you are not thinking about your thinking, but thinking about your unconscious reacting.

Devine and her colleagues developed a "multi-faceted prejudice habit-breaking" intervention that lasted eight weeks. Participants were given a "toolkit" of five strategies, and asked to practice at least three (3) of them consistently on a weekly basis.

Here are four of them:

Re-Association (Stereotype Replacement): An individual recognizes that he or she is responding to a situation or person in a stereotypical fashion. (S)he considers the reasons and actively replaces this biased response with an unbiased one. Another way to use this strategy is to reframe negative associations such as, "Black students are loud and disruptive. A reframe would be, "African American students are enthusiastic and energetic."

Refuting (Counter-stereotypic Imagining): Once a person recognizes she's stereotyped a student of color, she thinks of examples that prove the stereotype to be inaccurate.

Perspective-taking involves stepping into the shoes of a stereotyped person. What does it feel like to have your intelligence automatically questioned, or to be trailed by detectives each time you walk into a store? Perspective-taking can be very useful in assessing the emotional impact on individuals who are constantly being stereotyped in negative ways. It is also a way to checking one's self if you begin to judge a person of color for reacting a particular way in a stressful situation.

Increasing Opportunity for Positive Contact: Another strategy for reducing implicit bias is to actively seek out situations where one is likely to be exposed to positive examples of African Americans, Latinos or others people of color. This can involve either being in a very diverse social setting such as going to a farmer's market in a more diverse part of town or seeking out personal contact through shared group activities with a diverse community.

It's important to point out that interrupting implicit bias requires self-motivation. That's why it's nearly impossible to "make" someone confront his biases. As coaches, parents, or teachers, we may see a teacher behaving in ways that are biased, but we can't make him change. He has to want to change. Or, we have to help that person experience a shift in consciousness by helping him entertain different interpretations of students' behavior or learning moves.

Interrupting implicit biases is a complex work. I've only scratched the surface here. More in the future.
What's been your experience with interrupting implicit biases - yours or another's?

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Four Tools for Interrupting Implicit Bias - Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain

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I will never forget my first experience with implicit bias as an undergraduate at University of California, Berkeley. I had turned in my first in-class

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November 2019 | Volume 77 | Number 3
A Culture of Coaching Pages 12-13

In her book Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain (Corwin, 2018), Zaretta Hammond seeks to direct attention to the "cognitive aspects of teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students." For her, culturally responsive teaching is a multifaceted approach to fostering higher-order thinking and helping disadvantaged students become independent learners. A former teacher, Hammond believes that instructional coaches can play an essential role in helping educators grow in this practice.
You have misgivings about some current tendencies in professional development on culturally responsive teaching. Where do schools most often go wrong?
Culturally responsive teaching is about improving instruction and helping students of color who've historically been deprived due to structural inequities in our education system become better learners. When done right, it can be powerful in helping students improve their learning. But many educators confuse culturally responsive teaching with multicultural education or social justice education. There's nothing wrong with these things, but they're not about teaching children how to learn, which is the key. Unfortunately, in their haste to implement, schools oversimplify the algorithm-all the pieces that need to come together to get impact. Culturally responsive teaching is a multi-pronged methodology that works through synergy. As I detail in my book, it comprises cultural awareness, information processing, learning partnerships with students, and supportive learning environments. That's not the way it's generally promoted to teachers-it's promoted to them as a simple toolkit of strategies or surface content changes like adding diverse authors or including hip hop.
You say it's important for instructional coaches to generate "creative tension" with teachers in their work on culturally responsive teaching. What do you mean by that?
Good coaching is about being in partnership with teachers and helping them see what they need to do differently to get students to step into their learning in powerful ways. By generating creative tension, the coach can help the teacher see with new eyes what's often going too fast in the classroom, so the teacher can understand what's getting in the way. So, creative tension is a kind of gap analysis. We look into the classroom and help the teacher see current reality around the quality of relationships or who is carrying most of the cognitive load during instruction. That way, we are not just offering generic strategies, but truly helping the teacher get a sense of what she needs to keep doing because it's working and what she needs to stop doing because it's not working. What I see happening now is administrators expecting coaches to bring in a set of one-size-fits-all strategies, but not focus on improving ways to get students to actively process new content.
Are there reflective practices you'd recommend for instructional coaches who want to be better prepared to work with teachers on culturally responsive teaching?
Absolutely. Coaches need to sharpen their own equity lens first. They need to do their own "inside out" work around cultural proficiency and implicit bias. But they also have to delve into the science of learning. They have to understand the teaching moves that get underprepared students not only to re-engage, but also to learn at deeper levels. I'd strongly encourage coaches to engage in their own inquiry cycles and their own professional learning communities. Be a hawkish observer of student learning. Smart districts will invest in building capacity among their instructional coaching ranks before they roll out culturally responsive teaching to their teachers. They've typically done it kind of backwards, so that the coach is trying to learn alongside the teacher. That doesn't work.
Are there common red flags, in terms of teaching practice, coaches should be on the lookout for when helping teachers become more culturally responsive?
Yes, there are. Too often, in observations, we look for multicultural artifacts but don't look at whether students are becoming stronger learners. The first red flag is when a teacher makes culturally responsive teaching all about relationships but leaves instruction unchanged. The next one is, who's carrying the cognitive load? Is the teacher doing all the talking, and are the kids only talking when the teacher tells them they can, like in assigned group work? That's another misconception-that group work equals culturally responsive instruction. Doing more group work doesn't make the instruction culturally responsive. The coach has to understand what truly makes instruction "responsive" and assess how is the teacher igniting intellectual curiosity and chunking content so there are cognitive hooks that draw on students' understanding and current experience.
In your experience, what keeps teachers motivated as they do the difficult work of becoming culturally responsive educators? How can coaches help them keep the vision alive?
Well, I think the key is to start small. You can't just go in and say, "We're going to be culturally responsive in these four areas in 2 months." That's too much and unrealistic. You want to focus on a small, high-leverage step. It might be a shift in how feedback is delivered. Or it can be making the classroom an intellectually safe place so students aren't afraid to take risks. Or it might be a change in classroom routines or rituals. Coaches can help teachers find that "lead domino" of success. This creates curiosity and a process of inquiry that honors teacher knowledge and expertise.

Here's the thing: Coaching around culturally responsive teaching is about helping teachers improve the dynamic within the instructional core so that kids learn better, so they want to take on hard things. That's the dance of instruction, and it can be very exciting. That's what coaches are there to promote.
-Anthony Rebora
Editor's Note: This interview has been edited for space.

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Zaretta Hammond on Coaching and Culturally Responsive Teaching - Educational Leadership

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November 2019 | Volume 77 | Number 3 A Culture of Coaching Pages 12-13 In her book Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain (Corwin, 2018), Zaretta Hammond seeks to direct attention to the "cognitive aspects of teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students."

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On a recent Wednesday morning, Andrea Houston greeted her fourth-graders with a question.

"Have you guys," she asked the roughly 20 9- and 10-year-olds gathered on Zoom, "heard the buzz in Alexandria City Public Schools?"

Two boys' hands shot up. One mentioned signs he'd seen on neighbors' lawns, something about "Rename TC Now" - a reference to T.C. Williams High School, Alexandria's only public high school. Another boy bounced up and down in his eagerness to speak, until Houston called on him.

"They want to change T.C. and Matthew Maury [Elementary School]'s name," sandy-haired Garrett Wright said in a rush. "Because they were both Confederate generals. I think."

Houston nodded. Both boys were right, she said: Some in Alexandria are calling on school officials to re-christen T.C. Williams, named for Thomas Chambliss Williams, a segregationist former superintendent who fought to keep Black and White children learning separately. Some also want to rename Matthew Maury Elementary School, whose title honors a naval officer, oceanographer and astronomer who fought on the side of the Confederacy in the Civil War.

Matthew Maury Elementary is where Houston teaches - " We are the hot topic right now, my friends," she told the class - and so, for the next 45 minutes, she would teach the class everything they needed to know about Maury. The lesson on Maury, developed over the summer and into the early fall by a specially convened group of administrators and teachers, is part of a broader "Identity Project" that the Alexandria school system launched in the wake of nationwide protests over George Floyd's police killing.

The project - which also involves "community conversations" about Alexandria's history of school desegregation - came as a direct response to community petitions demanding name changes for T.C. Williams and Maury Elementary, both started around the time of the Floyd demonstrations. In addition to the classes at Maury Elementary, Alexandria has rolled out lessons at the high school level that cover the personal history of Superintendent T.C. Williams.

And officials hope to soon offer classes on the topic to all middle-schoolers, said Sarah Whelan, an instructional specialist for social studies who was instrumental in developing the new courses.

"We are trying to make sure that our curriculum is more inclusive," Whelan said. "That it provides an accurate and full perspective of history and tells some stories that have not been included."

Although they would learn together, Houston told the class that day, each fourth-grader would decide on their own whether they think Maury is "a fitting representative of the school community" as it exists today. For the duration of the lesson, she would refrain from sharing her own views.

"No he isn't!" interrupted one student, although another quickly fired back.

"Yes he is," the second boy said. "He laid the first telegraph cable on the ocean floor!"

The debate over renaming playing out in Alexandria mirrors conversations taking place throughout the nation, but especially in the South and Virginia, which has the second-highest number of schools - 24 - named for men with links to the Confederacy, according to an analysis by Education Week. Most of these schools were christened for Confederate heroes in the 1950s and 1960s, as an angry White response to the seminal Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, which mandated desegregation of public schools.

In recent months, many Southern schools have dropped Confederate names, spurred by an outpouring of protest from parents, students and alumni. The trend has come to Virginia, too: Prince William County renamed Stonewall Middle School - a tribute to Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson - for Celestine and Carroll Braxton, a local Black couple active in the quest for civil rights. In July, Fairfax County renamed Robert E. Lee High School, one of its most diverse schools, for the late congressman from Georgia John Lewis.

But the process in Alexandria has moved more slowly. The school board agreed over the summer to consider renaming T.C. Williams and Maury Elementary and is slated to vote on renaming both schools at a meeting in late November.

In the meantime, officials are proceeding with the Identity Project. The slow pace has frustrated some advocates of renaming in Alexandria, but Whelan said she thinks it's good to take time and make sure children - and their parents - understand what's going on and the history at play.

"I also think it builds curiosity and the need to look more critically and engage in dialogue and listen to others' perspectives," Whelan said. "The goal is not to convince students of a particular position, it's to provide them information so they can make their own decision."

Aaliyah Royster, a sophomore at T.C. Williams who is taking a class that in part focuses on the history of the man her high school is named for, said she had no idea who Williams was before this semester. She never even thought about it.

Now, though, she has learned that "he really, really promoted separating Black and White students," said Aaliyah, who is Black. Williams, who served as Alexandria's superintendent from the 1930s to the 1960s, ferociously resisted integration, argued that Black and White children learn differently and fired a Black cafeteria worker when she joined an NAACP lawsuit compelling the school system to end segregation.

Her newly acquired knowledge makes her feel a bit "uncomfortable" at school, Aaliyah said.

But she'd rather know about Williams, and feel icky, than continue obliviously.

"It's better to be informed," Aaliyah said. "Maybe Alexandria isn't as liberal and progressive as we thought it was. Being a bit uncomfortable may not be what people want, but I think it's necessary in order to move forward as a community."

Houston, the fourth-grade teacher, was a little concerned ahead of her first lesson on Maury, precisely because the topic tends to generate strong feelings and at times awkward discussions. She was most worried about pushback from parents - but discovered that many mothers and fathers are supportive, with one dad even emailing to thank her for handling a sensitive issue so well.

She has been careful to proceed deliberately and remain open to all perspectives. She asked the class to watch a 3 minute 41 second video about Matthew Maury, produced by Alexandria school officials, and jot down notes. The video explains his accomplishments, including how he helped make the sea safer for navigation, but also less positive aspects of his past, such as his service in the Confederate army - where he found ways to boost the effectiveness of underwater torpedoes.

"After the war, Maury left England for Mexico," the video states. "He tried to persuade other former Confederates, including Robert E. Lee, to immigrate to Mexico and form a new Virginia that would salvage the attributes of the South's plantation society, especially the exploitation of unfree, non-White labor."

After the video, Houston asked the children to share what they had learned, in preparation for an upcoming homework assignment in which they would argue for or against changing the name of Maury Elementary.

Someone noted he "had a lot of jobs." Another agreed: "Too many." Someone else pointed out he was an oceanographer, and still another student mentioned his development of underwater torpedoes.

Kaelyn Stewart, who is 9 years old and Black, waited a few minutes before responding.

"He didn't want to end segregation," she finally messaged the class. "He thought we learned differently."

In an interview later, Kaelyn said the lesson made her feel bad because previous teachers - in kindergarten and second grade - had always portrayed Maury as such a good person.

"It's just not fair that kids have to walk in the hallway, Black kids especially, of a school named after somebody who just wasn't great to them in the past," she said. She would like to see the school renamed for Harriet Tubman, or maybe Barack or Michelle Obama.

But the lesson also made her feel good, Kaelyn said. For one, she enjoyed developing her own opinion about her past and present and the place she goes to school. And she thinks everybody in America needs to learn history.

"Sometimes our history is good, sometimes it's not so good, but it's just the world we live in," Kaelyn said. But "if you don't know history, you don't know if something ever happened before."

What she wants to do next, the 9-year-old said, is learn a lot more.

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Alexandria turns controversy into opportunity by teaching students the racist history behind school names

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On a recent Wednesday morning, Andrea Houston greeted her fourth-graders with a question. "Have you guys," she asked the roughly 20 9- and 10-year-olds gathered on Zoom, "heard the buzz in Alexandria City Public Schools?" Two boys' hands shot up. One mentioned signs he'd seen on neighbors' lawns, something about "Rename TC Now" - a reference to T.C.

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I can speak to this conflict autobiographically. When I was a kid, I remember a teacher on a school trip to the [Minnesota] capitol scowling at a group of Native American activists who were protesting, and saying, "All those Indians are just a drag on welfare; they should just go back to Canada, where they're from." I wasn't the only Indian in class-and that was my high-school teacher.

Things are starting to change, but the changes are long overdue. And those changes trace back to the boarding schools: In many ways the plan succeeded, but in many ways it didn't, because of various unintended consequences. For example, it took all these Native kids from different tribes who previously knew nothing about, or had been habitual enemies with, each other and put them in schools to suffer together. As a result, when they left school and went back to their homelands to promote the welfare of their individual tribes, they were armed with a network of other like-minded, educated people on whom they could rely. So, in this sense, the policy inadvertently strengthened tribes.

Today the vestiges remain in that many Natives are suffering. But as a Native person, I know that for every kid you find, say, standing in a pile of garbage, there are 20, 30, 50, 100 other kids selling Girl Scout cookies or going to tennis lessons or doing their homework or competing on the math team or getting excited about prom-often while also going to ceremony, for example, and speaking Lakota and engaging in other cultural customs. They're living their lives-they're not just exhibiting their pain.
Read: Native American education is changing-subtly
Wong: How are Native youth today living their lives differently than their predecessors in your generation and from the generations subjected to the boarding schools?

Treuer: When I was in college, Princeton was in the process of hiring someone to teach American Indian studies and was debating what role that academic would have. I remember a faculty member turned to me and said, "You can either be a university professor or a medicine man-you can't be both." I remember being so upset, thinking, Who in the hell do you think you are to tell me what is possible? But he was expressing a long-held belief that you could be Indian or you could be American, that you could be Indian-which is to say the past-or you could be modern, which meant educated. And as much as I rejected this professor's comment, it was an uneasy rejection.

Now I look at today's kids-I look at my own children, other people's children-and there doesn't seem to be any tension in being Native and being modern. To them, being Native is not merely or only to be of the past, or to suffer, or to be a victim, or to be less than ideal Americans. They're happily modern and Native at the same time; they happily switch between things like Fortnite and [tribal] ceremony and don't see any contradiction between the two. Native kids today are way smarter and better off than I was.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Alia Wong is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where she covers education and families.

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full effect of the boarding school system

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The Schools That Tried-But Failed-to Make Native Americans Obsolete

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I can speak to this conflict autobiographically. When I was a kid, I remember a teacher on a school trip to the [Minnesota] capitol scowling at a group of Native American activists who were protesting, and saying, "All those Indians are just a drag on welfare; they should just go back to Canada, where they're from."

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Over the past few years, we have done a ton of work at Centennial School District around instructional equity, led by my colleague Shawanna Coles and the Equity and Excellence team. During our equity review process, and the dialogue that followed, I constantly went back to the same book, again and again, to focus on the more practical aspects of leading and coaching for instructional equity.

That's why I was so excited to share a conversation on this recent podcast episode with Zaretta Hammond. She is the author of Culture Responsive Teaching and the Brain: Promoting authentic engagement and rigor among culturally and linguistically diverse students. She's a former classroom English teacher, and she's been doing instructional design, school coaching, professional development for the past 18 years. She's been on the national education reform organizations, National Equity Project, the former Bay Area School Reform Collaborative, and she does work every single day around the idea of practice, specifically in culturally responsive teaching and instructional equity.

Listen to Zaretta Hammond on the podcast here (or on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify) or watch on Youtube.

Here's some of what Zaretta shared on the podcast. My questions are in bold, followed by her responses.
How do you define practice?
I define practice as getting better, right? The path toward mastery around something that feels really, really important, so for educators or adults, you know, we want to get good at something, and so in order to do that, you need to practice, but I think we have a lot of misconceptions about practice, and similarly, you know, we want children to be good learners, and to develop skills, and sometimes it's not just knowing stuff, but it's being able to actually understand it, recall it, and be at a higher level, so all of those are some aspect of this simple thing we call practice.
How did you improve your practice as a teacher?
Yeah, it meant that I had to, I had this moment, right? I'd come out of my teacher ed program, and all the techniques, and had taken my methods classes, and I remember sitting with a student, Adam, right, even all these many years ago, decades at this point, I remember sitting with him and conferencing, having our writing conference, and I could not get him to really understand that he was making these consistent errors, right? Run-on sentences, comma splices, and, you know, I could use all the red ink in the world, but he would just like, "I don't really understand" "what I'm doing wrong here," and I had this epiphany that if I couldn't get him to see, not just see the mistake and learn how to correct it, because that's a lot of what we do, but to actually think about his learning moves.

I couldn't help him get better because only the learner learns, so after that epiphany, unbeknownst to me and to Adam, that meant that we had to do some practice, and the way I broke practice down is, I needed to help him internalize some information, then I needed to help him practice that, right? But the practicing, and I think that this is a piece that educators really get wrong, that practice requires feedback, so just doing the same think over and over is not practice.
Why is feedback so critical to practice?
And unfortunately, too many educators think, "Oh, let's just keep doing it," but if no one gives you corrective feedback, all you're doing is reinforcing bad habits or misconceptions, right? And so there has to be a feedback loop in there, and that feedback loop has to not just be right or wrong. There are different types of feedback that you have to give, and that feedback has to come in a timely fashion. It's got to be actionable, and it's got to help you see where the gap is, where your gap analysis is. Where are you on the road to actually mastering that? So if you can't give people that feedback, kind of like GPS, Siri to, you know, and here's, and we go past our exit, she's like, "Rerouting," right? So that's feedback, right? She tells us, "You're getting close, you're getting close." "Oops, no, you passed it." If our young people don't get that, they can't get better, so I knew I had to do that. I had to get, you know, mentors, a group of other educators who were trying to get better, as well, so we could be thinking about this, so I could take my practice and kind of open it up and be in conversation and collaboration with others, and so it meant, you know, I had to have conditions that made that happen. Sometimes it's hard for teachers to get, and I think we forget what a true professional learning community should be about, right? It should be getting better, so it was really in the service of teaching writing effectively, not just the techniques, but helping students actually use them and improve that I started to understand about practice and the need for opportunities for students to do things over, check to see, "Am I getting closer?" And if they weren't, "What did I need to adjust?" And so, practice has a lot of different pieces to it. Here's the other piece I'd say is really important. There's a socioemotional piece to practice as well, meaning I have to be okay with being bad because in the beginning, when we're getting good at something, we are conscious of how bad we are, right? It's called, conscious incompetence, right? And at first, we're just unconscious of our incompetence until it becomes important to us. "Oh, I can't do that, but I really want to get better." Now, I'm knee-deep in this conscious incompetence. "I suck at this," and you're probably gonna suck for a minute, right? But if we can't emotionally move through that as part of learning, not as some, you know, thing that says, "I'm bad at this," right, or, "I can't get it," or, "I'm not capable," right? There's so many messages connected to that because we want instant, you know, application. We want instant mastery, so helping people actually move through conscious incompetence is really important.
How did you take what worked in the classroom, those four to six practices that we talked about, and actually translate that into professional learning?
So the biggest challenge that I saw were number one conditions, so when I came out and started to do, and you're right, for a time it was, you know, doing both, and then eventually, I came out of having my own classroom and really just started working with adults, but I found that I was much more frustrated than having my own classroom, because there have to be conditions of practice, so I call it the dojo, right, that the dojo, when you start to think about martial arts, there's this space that people come into, and it's padded. It's set up for that kind of thing.

We have very few dojos for adults in their learning, meaning we don't help them getting socioemotionally ready for that first pancake because they feel they are fearing evaluation. Many don't have coaches who are giving them feedback, so the feedback loop is not there. Many don't have time, so they're, what I ran up against wasn't just, how do I take these techniques I've used with kids and use them with adults, is how do I actually, to begin with, find the right conditions? I found very few districts, very few school leaders that were actually creating the conditions, even what they call PLCs right now.
What does it look like to coach instructional equity?
Well, the reality is, this is where, even when we talk about culturally responsive, the operative word, the first word we should focus on is not the culture, but the responsive. Who's the person in front of me?

So I first have to understand that person as a learner, but I can't get that close, right, until I have some relationship where they let down a little of the facade, so practice, right, getting to the point where practice, and you're recognizing that I'm not as good as I want to be yet, comes with vulnerability, so the relationship becomes key. How do I get close enough to have some cognitive insight so that I can pick the right tool, so that I can see where you need to strengthen? Your kick is good, but when you rebound, right? So that coach is that second pair of eyes, and the teacher has to be that. The leader has to be that for teachers. If you're just doing walk-throughs and you're just dinging folks for not having something on the board, or not, then, the teacher gets and starts to believe that there's no practice.

That this is all just evaluative, versus, there's feedback for me to get better. That there's a culture of getting better and moving toward mastery. This is how we manage, as adults, conscious incompetence. We hold each other up. This is why the collaborative inquiry process becomes so critical. I see some districts doing PDSA cycles, right, and the reality is, when they are doing, or trying to implement a new strategy, it's all about the strategy, not about the kids.

And so, part of the practice in working with adults is actually helping them understand how we get better at things, so, because that's not something they quite understand coming out of their education prep, their teacher prep programs, so, you know, part of my work these days is, how do we get good at stuff? Helping them create the right conditions, helping them talk about it, helping them manage their own socioemotional stuff so that they actually can tolerate that conscious incompetence until they move on the other side of it, and when we embrace it, and actually lean into it, that's how we get better faster.
Why does progress and momentum matter in coaching?
So what that means is, you have to either have peer coaches, or you have to have an instructional coach who can be your other pair of eyes, and sometimes we have to self-coach. If you don't have that, then you need to set up a videotape, right? Or maybe you do audiotape. What's happening during that period of instruction that I want to get better at? What am I saying? You know, maybe you're just tallying who's doing most of the talking, right, because here's the thing. Self-reporting's 100%. "I'm doing everything." "It's going great," until somebody shows us it's not, right?

And so sometimes, we don't see our own progress, right, and that's the other piece, that we continue when we see progress. The brain actually has this thing called a progress principle. It's why we love our Fitbits and our pedometers. You will actually hang in there longer when you see that you're making incremental progress.

So where are we starting to see that? We love to do this with kids, chart your fluency, chart your, but we don't do this with adults.

Right? How many times, how can you change these things? What are the three things you need to change? Leaders need to give that detailed feedback, and for teachers who know they want to get better at a certain aspect of instruction, you know, maybe it's, "How do I hook the students' curiosity?" I call it igniting, or, "How do I get students to chew on their content" "so I am not doing all the cognitive work" "in the classroom," right? I want to get better at that. Okay, you're gonna have to set up your own inquiry. You're gonna have to set up your own practice. Then you're gonna have to tape-record or audiotape so that you have a baseline because if you don't know where you're starting, you don't know if you're progressing, and therein lies the real challenge, so we have attentional density. You've gotta pay attention to fewer things. You have deliberate practice. What's the small, but high-leverage thing? Where are you gonna get your feedback?

So these are critical things, you know? Being able to set that up in a school setting in many ways is antithetical. We don't always create schools as dojos for teacher learning.
Are there specific practices that we can do to help develop those cognitive skills?
Wow, yeah, we can do a whole nother podcast on that, right? And that's what I'm actually trying to unpack for people in my upcoming book is really understanding what that is and how we help students develop this because I think it goes back to what you just said. We didn't get a lot of that. We got a little bit in that ed psych class and maybe we read a book over here, and we're stitching it together ourselves, but we don't really understand how it all comes together to either create inequity by design, under-educating the most vulnerable kids, or equity by design, right? Deliberately making sure that we get those things in that will help them accelerate their own learning, and I think the biggest thing that I try to help educators understand is, this is not just, we're gonna teach thinking skills, and it relates to practice. I actually need kids to develop ways of looking at a task and having a mental algorithm, like when I, here's what we know. The minute you look at something new, you're in confusion. The minute learning gets hard, you're in confusion. First, I have to help you socioemotionally be okay, yes, because it triggers our amygdala. We all panic a little. "Ah, this is confusing," or, "Oh, this is hard." All right, how do you coach a student to that next level, right, and so the cognitive structure, the first cognitive structure would be, "I understand," has sized things up, right? And that sizing things up when we look at cognition is really around classification. What is this in front of me? But that means I've internalized some things. Teachers don't teach how to learn, right? Learning how to learn, and back in the day, we did HOTS, higher-order thinking skills, and it was a separate curriculum. We're gonna teach HOTS over here, and here's our content.

We're now doing socioemotional learning and development. It's over here, 15 minutes over here, and then we'll go back to instruction. People don't understand, emotions and cognition are linked, so I've gotta first get myself, brain, calm and ready, like, "Yeah, I'm in confusion now."

- [AJ] Right.

- "But this should be an exciting place to be," right? And now, I have to be able to size it up. What is this? Is this relationship, we call these thinking dispositions. Then, there are habits of mind, right? They're things I actually internally move myself through. Here's the thing I want to say about that. For the independent learner, these are unconscious things. They don't know that they actually do them. For dependent learners, they know that they can't do them. They see people doing things to the point that their lack of understanding about these invisible cognitive structures, for them, it just means, "I'm stupid," and if they, particularly black and brown kids, get the dominant narrative that goes along with that, then we just chalk that up to, they don't have the intellectual capacity. We know intellect is malleable. We can grow parts of our brainpower, and so, you know, we have inclinations, people have, you know, can gravitate toward things. There are talents that we have, but we all can get smarter, and part of what teachers don't learn in their own process of professional learning in the profession, as well as their training prior to entering the profession is how brains get smarter. What do those structures look like? What's the dojo kids need to be in while they're taking in the new content that actually does that? So yeah, in this new book, that's actually what I'm trying to break down for folks.
So, break down for me the difference between culturally responsive teaching and instructional equity?
That's really what I'm striving for is helping people, you know, get past the label of culturally responsive. That's confusing. It's misleading. Right now, it's just moved into the jargon realm.

So I want people to think instead about instructional equity. How are we making sure that all students, particularly the most vulnerable, historically marginalized kids, get the most powerful teaching that helps grow their brainpower, so not just the content to, you know, I mean, the teaching to move through the content, but the teaching that actually helps them expand the mental algorithms that allowed them to literally level up the amount of content they can take in in the process. That's the goal. That's equity in a nutshell.
Want to learn more about Zaretta Hammond's work? Check out her book, her website, and follow her on Twitter!

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Coaching for Instructional Equity with Zaretta Hammond

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Over the past few years, we have done a ton of work at Centennial School District around instructional equity, led by my colleague Shawanna Coles and the Equity and Excellence team. During our equity review process, and the dialogue that followed, I constantly went back to the same book, again and again, to focus on the more practical aspects of leading and coaching for instructional equity.

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A simple mindful exercise to help older children manage feelings of overwhelm, stay in the present moment, and not get caught up in strong emotions and thoughts.

As the new school year begins, we might want to take a moment to consider how we can harness the excitement around mindfulness in schools for our own classrooms. Kids are more anxious and stressed than ever, consumed with fears about the future - be it dealing with social anxiety, college pressure, or even school shootings. There is far less enjoyment of the learning process, which means both less happiness, and less learning. How can mindfulness restore a sense of reward to this vital part of development?

It took me years of mindfulness practice to truly understand the promise of present moment and why it is a helpful place to hang out. As an anxious teenager, I can vividly recall how, in the face of a looming exam, my mind would sometimes spiral into self-defeat. A typical thought stream might look something like: "I'm going to fail this test, then fail out of school, never get into college, probably die homeless and alone under a bridge, and no one will come to my funeral..." But when I practiced mindfulness and staying in the moment, I realized that I could still prepare for the future, like just studying for the darn test, without getting caught up in story of how badly it could go. The future is where anxiety usually resides, for both adults and kids. Think about it: Most of the horror stories we tell ourselves are about events that haven't even - and probably will never - happen! Mark Twain even once said "I've experienced many terrible things in my life... only a few of which actually ever happened." Other kids might find themselves stuck in the past, reliving traumas or ruminating over social drama from the past weekend's party.

Once we've identified these sensations as sensations, emotions as emotions, thoughts and actions as just those, we can empower ourselves and our kids to get some perspective and make a different choice.

Our thoughts are often racing off to the past and future, overwhelming us with emotions, or distracting us. But we can teach ourselves and our kids to check in to the present moment by getting in touch with our senses and emotions, thoughts and the actions that we want to take, and then learn how to manage that anxiety more effectively. I call it taking a mindful SEAT. Begin by sitting up, and taking a few calming breaths, then check in with yourself.

S is for Senses and Sensations
Start by checking in with your body. What information are you getting through your five senses, and what information are any sensations in your body giving you right now?

E is for Emotions
What emotions are present in this very moment?

A is for Actions
What do you feel like doing in this moment? Any urges or impulses to action?

T is for Thoughts
What thoughts are present in this moment?

Encourage kids to take a Mindful SEAT during transition times, or at potentially anxiety triggering moments in the day and in their lives.

Try this together with your child, or invite them to write down a few words or even pictures to describe what's happening in each part of the mindful SEAT. Just putting it on paper or sharing out loud, we start to get some perspective. Encourage kids to take a Mindful SEAT during transition times, or at potentially anxiety triggering moments in the day and in their lives. It can be as simple as:

Sense/Sensation: I can see the teacher is announcing a pop quiz, everyone is groaning. I feel my heart pounding.
Emotion: I'm scared!
Action: I want to to scream and run out of the room.
Thought: There must be something wrong, I'm going to fail the test!

Once we've identified these sensations as sensations, emotions as emotions, thoughts and actions as just those, we can empower ourselves and our kids to get some perspective and make a different choice, like a simple regulated mindful breathing practice, or a simple sensory awareness like feeling the sensations of our feet on the floor, or using another skill to relax and regulate our minds and bodies back together for learning.

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Helping Children Take a Mindful SEAT to Calm Down - Mindful

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A simple mindful exercise to help older children manage feelings of overwhelm, stay in the present moment, and not get caught up in strong emotions and thoughts.

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Getting Started With Culturally Responsive Teaching

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Understanding students’ lives can help teachers foster a sense of belonging and ensure that all students feel respected and challenged.

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Photo of coastal beach rocks, sand, and a tiny plant popping up. Photo copyright Erin Okuno

Next week is US Thanksgiving holiday. This is a holiday that is problematic for many since it celebrates the colonist mindset and many of the Thanksgiving stories, legends, and beliefs are myths. Many consider it a National Day of Mourning, and fast on the day.

November is also Native American History month. I need to learn more about Native American and Indigenous history, customs, and ways of being. I am fortunate to have many friends who share their cultures and customs. It is always best to learn directly from people of a culture, so whatever I write next please know I am writing as a third party to share what I have learned through research and listening, and I am sharing it as a way to document my own learning not as a substitute for learning from Indigenous people. Please do not expect Indigenous people to teach you. It isn't their job to teach just because they are Native or Indigenous. If they do share knowledge of their culture, it is a gift for us to receive.

One of the practices I've witnessed and participated in over the past few years is making land acknowledgements before meetings or events. This has become a more common practice over the years, especially before the start of large public events. I've started to do more learning on land acknowledgments, including their history, how they are put together, and how as a non-Native person I can work to be in more just relations with my Native and Indigenous colleagues when I make a land acknowledgment.
History of Land Acknowledgments
From what I learned land acknowledgments are a modern invention brought to the US via Canada. In Canada's Truth and Reconciliation process, based on the process South Africa used to heal after apartheid, there were 94 recommendations. Many see land acknowledgments and acknowledging the Indigenous people who were forcibly removed, their land stolen, and their rights stripped away as the start of implementing many of these recommendations.

Hailey Tayathy (they/them), a member of the Quileute Nation, shared at a Town Hall presentation they traced the practice back to canoe landings and the protocols used to ask permission to land a canoe on someone else's territory. This includes asking permission, naming who's clan and family you are from, and an acknowledgment as a guest on someone else's land you will act with respect. They note the practice of land acknowledgements may be different in other parts of the country/world since Indigenous people have very different practices in other places.

Earlier today a colleague, Rosemary, stayed online for a few minutes after a meeting to say how she appreciated hearing us make a land acknowledgment and as a Native person she often ties the acknowledgment with how she introduces herself. Her introduction includes sharing her tribe's name, her clan's name, naming her parents and elders. She shared how she sees the two intertwined - land and self - and as such acknowledging the land is a way of acknowledging her people.
How to Make a Land Acknowledgement, Especially for Non-Native People
There are many guides online on how to make a land acknowledgment. If you are like me, a non-native person, it is best you read up and really understand the practice before you read a pre-written statement someone hands you. Making a land acknowledgement shouldn't be made to gain wokeness points or to be performative. Hailey Tayathy reminds us land acknowledgements are meant to be disruptive and to remind non-Native people we are on stolen lands. As an act of disruption a land acknowledgement should not be cheered - sit and contemplate how you have benefited from the land and Native people, give thanks to the land itself, and thank the Native people who have stewarded the land and continue to fight for the sovereignty and health of the land.

Land acknowledgements can also help to center Native and Indigenous people in a gathering. A friend recently told me that after we made a land acknowledgment at a meeting she felt more seen and understood our intentions more. As an organization centered on people of color, that is one of our goals, to put our POC relations first and working to build relationships.

My colleague Heather Miller formerly of Chicago's American Indian Center talked about how land acknowledgments shouldn't be pre-scripted statements your organization uses again and again. Heather and her colleagues talked about how they personalize statements and put a lot of thought into each statement they write. Felicia Garcia shared: "The statements are not just statements they are commitments to being in relationships with Native communities."

Land acknowledgments should educate and share commitments of being in just relationship with the original people of the land, to pay respect to their history and ways of being. My friend James said when he is asked to give land acknowledgments, especially as a Native person, but guest on other Indigenous people's land, he does so carefully. He ask that a donation be made to the Duwamish tribe (in Seattle where we are) and he ask the organization inviting him to give the land acknowledgement to provide copies of the treaties between Native tribes and the US Government. He reminds people that these treaties are our treaties and we need to work to honor the treaties.

As a non-Native person who sometimes makes land acknowledgments I try to share and model what I am learning about Native American and Indigenous culture. For me this keeps my land acknowledgments a living statement and hopefully I am reaching forward to my non-Native colleagues to be better allies as well.

Other learnings I've gathered about this topic:

Be specific about who's land you're on. Do your research and use the name of the tribe, even the Indigenous place name if you can learn it. To make it even easier text this number, (907) 312-5085 with the zip code or city, state (use the format city comma state) and it will text you back with who's land you're on (your cellphone carrier may charge for text sent and received). I've used it while traveling to deepen my commitment to learning and to encourage my kid's to learn with me.

Land acknowledgments need to be done with respect and be respectful.

Do not rush through the acknowledgment.

Do not clap or cheer, it is about reflection and learning.

Customs and practices may change depending on local traditions. I am writing from the Pacific Northwest and West Coast. A land acknowledgement may look different in the Plains, or in different countries. Please research your local practices. I was raised in Hawaii, and have witnessed acknowledgments in the form of a blessing, chant, or song.

Give to Native organizations and people. An acknowledgement cannot just be a statement. Return land to Native communities, share your resources with others - if you something to share (e.g. space, relationships, information, monetary resources, etc.) share it with the Native communities in your neighborhood.

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Note: No blog post next week. I will be taking the week off. See you in December. Photo of coastal beach rocks, sand, and a tiny plant popping up. Photo copyright Erin Okuno Next week is US Thanksgiving holiday. This is a holiday that is problematic for many since it celebrates the colonist mindset and...

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Watch on demand

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Join Teaching Tolerance for a webinar on the importance of educators practicing self-care. Featuring middle school literacy coach Geneviéve DeBose and school social worker Shoshana Brown, this webinar will help educators understand the science and psychology of self-care, including how educator self-care affects students. You will learn a variety of practices and tools, and you will be able to identify practices that work best for you so that you can thrive and really show up every day in your school community.

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Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

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Celebrating Indigenous Languages

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Indigenous/ Native Americans

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Educator quality and effectiveness are often discussed in terms of knowledge, skills, and dispositions. With a focus on the increasing diversity of the student population in United States schools, addressing educator quality and effectiveness in preparing culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) learners for equitable access to a good quality education and post-school outcomes is important. For decades, scholars have called for teachers to engage in "good teaching"- for all students - that is culturally appropriate (Au & Jordan, 1981 as cited in Aronson & Laughter, 2016); compatible (Jordan, 1985 as cited in Aronson & Laughter, 2016); congruent (Mohatt & Erickson, 1981 as cited in Aronson & Laughter, 2016); and informed by pedagogy that is relevant (Ladson-Billings, 1995) and sustaining (Paris, 2012). We acknowledge the history and intent of these terminologies, which all point toward a need for education that is socially just and prepares students to be agents of social change.

Aronson and Laughter (2016) reviewed the literature on CRE and identified the interconnectedness of culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995) to inform culturally relevant teaching (Gay, 2010), delineating how "teaching affects competence and practice whereas pedagogy affects attitude and disposition" (Aronson & Laughter, p. 167). In other words, your "who" affects what you "do." The three unifying elements include intentional attention to academic achievement, awareness of and sensitivity to self and other, and critical analysis of systems and society. We use the CRE framework to structure this CEM. Paris (2012) and Ladson-Billings (2014) recognized the foundation of culturally responsive pedagogy and the importance of resisting stagnation - resting on our laurels or becoming complacent. Paris and Alim (2014), with the backing of Ladson-Billings, urge us forward to "incorporate the multiplicities of identities and cultures" (p. 82) represented in classrooms through culturally sustaining pedagogy. Educators must bring into the classrooms the extracurricular lives of their students and also take schooling into the community, providing opportunities to increase sociopolitical consciousness and set new norms. The figure below represents the trajectory of terminology while the intent remains the same - providing an equitable educational opportunity by affirming and including the cultural backgrounds of diverse learners.

Acknowledging related bodies of work that are no less important, but are not explicitly addressed, are important and include Instruction of English Language Learners and Multicultural Education. Please visit the Additional Resources section for selected resources on these topics.

Glossary of Additional Terms

Bias may be implicit or explicit. Implicit bias is the unconscious attitudes and stereotypes we hold that influence the ways in which we understand, interact with, and make decisions regarding groups of people. Because they are unconscious, our implicit biases may not align with our conscious beliefs. Implicit bias typically favors our ingroup, but being biased against one's ingroup is possible. Explicit bias is bias that is conscious. Because explicit bias is conscious, it may be revealed or concealed from others by one's own will.

Culture is a set of values, beliefs, or behaviors shared by people based on race, ethnicity, nationality, or other social group configuration. One's cultural norms inform the ways in which they identify, assign meaning to, and interact with their own context.

Cultural competence is developed over time by attaining cultural knowledge, demonstrating awareness of one's own cultural values and beliefs and sensitivity to those of others, and using culturally relevant education practices in one's role. Levels of cultural competence include destructiveness, incapacity, blindness, pre-competence, competence, and proficiency.

Culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) is a term used to describe individuals and groups whose culture is not Caucasian/White American and/or for whom English is not their first language. CLD is also a term used to characterize English language learners (ELLs) in appreciation of their distinct backgrounds and in recognition that their educational needs go beyond just learning English.

Diversity is the variety of backgrounds that individuals bring to a community or other social-group configuration. In common usage, diversity has come to mean the collection of people of various races/ethnicities, socioeconomic classes, genders, sexual orientations, religions, and the like.

Equity requires providing what students need to remove barriers and create the same access, opportunities, and outcomes for all that advantaged students enjoy. Equity differs from equality wherein everyone is treated equally regardless of their need and/or the barriers they face.

Latinx is a gender-neutral term relating to a person of Latin American heritage. It was added to Merriam-Webster Dictionary in 2018

Race and ethnicity are social constructions with no biological basis, and widely recognized is the fact that more genetic diversity exists within racial categories than across racial categories. Still, to identify inequities and provide resources that socially recognized racial/ethnic groups need, education institutions are required to collect race and ethnicity data using a two-part question. The first question asks individuals to identify their ethnicity as Hispanic/Latino or not Hispanic/Latino. The second question asks individuals to identify their race as one or more of the following: White, Black, Asian, Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, American Indian/Native Alaskan. Hispanics/Latinos can be of any race.

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Educator quality and effectiveness are often discussed in terms of knowledge, skills, and dispositions. With a focus on the increasing diversity of the student population in United States schools, addressing educator quality and effectiveness in preparing culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) learners for equitable access to a good quality education and post-school outcomes is important.

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Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students
by Zaretta Hammond, 192 pages, Corwin, November 2014

This article contains Amazon Affiliate links. If you click these and make a purchase from Amazon, I will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.

For eight years, I taught students who would likely be labeled "at risk." Not all of my kids fit that description, but at least half belonged to the groups we talk about when we talk about the opportunity* gap: Students whose race, culture, home language, or socioeconomic status are not necessarily a match with what many schools teach and value. I did my best to meet their needs, to challenge them and set them up for success in life, but when I look back with the knowledge I have gained over the last few years, I know I did a crappy job.

I think about Dion, one of my seventh graders, who sat listlessly through most of my classes, whose assignments were always half-finished, who always scored low on tests, who used his cute, slow smile as a cover any time I tried to push him to get his work done. I'd keep him in at lunch and after school, let him do piles of make-up work to try to bring his grade from an F to a D, and talk to him about how he needed to change his habits. But none of it worked. All of us, his other teachers and myself, met with Dion and his mom more than once to try and figure out how to get Dion to improve.

The discussion often went like this:

"What do you think is the problem here?" from one of my colleagues.

Dion shrugged. "I'm not doing my work."

From another teacher: "And what do you need to do differently?"

Another shrug. "Start doing my work, I guess."

Nothing changed. Dion managed to keep his grades up just enough to move on to eighth grade. His skills never improved, his habits stayed about the same, and he went on with his life, like hundreds of others moving through that same school system every year.

If we had read Zaretta Hammond's book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain , things could have been completely different for us, for Dion, and for so many other students in our school. This practical, insightful, and absolutely necessary book will help teachers do a better job of teaching a more diverse group of students.

A Brain-based Blueprint for Reaching Diverse Students

Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain is not just a "bag of tricks" teachers can pull from to help students from more diverse backgrounds do better. It is a thoughtful, holistic, brain-based approach to teaching the whole child.

By looking through the lens of neuroscience, Hammond shows us how the brain responds to various teaching approaches and learning environments, and helps us understand why, despite our best efforts, many students simply haven't responded to the kinds of interventions many schools put in place for them. "The problem of the achievement gap won't be solved by simply trying to motivate students of color to become more engaged learners," she writes. "We have to create school environments that welcome their natural ways of learning and shape content so that they see its connection to their lives and funds of knowledge."

The book is built around the Ready for Rigor Framework, four separate practice areas that, if used together, give us the tools for culturally responsive teaching. The practice areas are:

Awareness. Before teachers can truly meet the needs of diverse learners, we must develop the right mindset. This requires us to understand what "culture" really means, fully explore our own cultural beliefs and biases, and study how the brain learns.

Learning Partnerships. To succeed in school, diverse learners need to feel as if they are in partnership with their teachers. To create these relationships, we need to build trust with students, help them develop positive mindsets, and give them the language to talk about their learning.

Information Processing. Teachers need to understand how to expand students' intellective capacity so they can engage in deeper, more complex learning. This requires teachers to learn brain-based information processing strategies common to oral cultures like metaphors, rhythmic mnemonics, and "story-ifying" the content.

Community Building. Culturally responsive teachers work to create supportive, welcoming environments, places that feel socially and emotionally safe, so that students are comfortable enough taking the risks required to stretch their brains.

Apart from being incredibly useful and clear, what's great about this book is that it won't make teachers defensive. Rather than attacking teachers for taking the wrong approach, Hammond simply shows us why some methods are ineffective, then explains why a different approach works better. This lack of judgment is likely to give her message a bigger reach, and to help far more teachers develop the skills they need for this important work.

We Can Do Better

Maya Angelou said, "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better." I believe most teachers are doing the best they can to serve all of their students. They just don't have enough tools. This book is without question a way to know better. I urge anyone who works with culturally diverse students, second-language students, or students who have grown up in poverty to read Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain . There's no way for me to reach Dion now, but there are millions of others just like him. Now we have the tools to really change their academic paths.

Now we know better. We just have to do it. ♦

Zaretta Hammond is a former English teacher who has been doing instructional design, school coaching, and professional development around the issues of equity, literacy, and culturally responsive teaching for the past 18 years. To read more of her work, visit her blog, Ready for Rigor, or follow her on Twitter at @Ready4Rigor.
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*Author's note, June 2018: This post has been revised slightly since its original publication in 2015, when I used the term "achievement gap" throughout. At the time, I was not aware of the way this term perpetuates deficit thinking about some of our students. My revisions are an attempt to use language that better represents our need to reach all children in a way that works for them.

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A Must-Have Guide to Culturally Responsive Teaching

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This practical, insightful, and absolutely necessary book is a guide for teachers who want to help culturally and linguistically diverse students not just survive, but thrive.

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Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain

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in seeking new landscapes,

but in having new eyes."

-Marcel Proust

This quote by French novelist and essayist, Marcel Proust has always influenced my teaching philosophy and practice at an intuitive level. Quotes can become a touchstone that help us remember deeper truths and processes.

Here are a few others from my quote book that might resonate with you as well.

"Children grow into the intellectual life around them."
Leo Vygoskty
"Every person needs a place that is furnished with hope."
Maya Angelou
"Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world."
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
"Preservation of one's own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures."
Cesar Chavez, Mexican-American Activist
"Culture is the widening of the mind and of the spirit."
Jawaharlal Nehru, first Prime Minister of India
"When I dare to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision, it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid."

Audre Lorde, African-American Poet

"Better is possible. It does not take genius. It takes diligence. It takes moral clarity. It takes ingenuity. And above all, it takes a willingness to try."

Atul Gawande, Surgeon and Author

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The Culturally Responsive Mindset: 7 Quotes to Teach By - Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain

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This quote by French novelist and essayist, Marcel Proust has always influenced my teaching philosophy and practice at an intuitive level. Quotes can become a touchstone that help us remember deeper truths and processes. Here are a few others from my quote book that might resonate with you as well.

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"Caring for my self is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation and that is an act of political warfare." -Audre Lorde

We live in a time where the terms "self-care" and "treating ourselves," albeit well-meaning, are common and commercial language. The terms bring to the forefront the ideas of placing oneself first, caring for our mental and physical health, and-in many cases-affording ourselves the pleasures that will allow us to feel good. But Audre Lorde's popularly quoted phrase about self-care means much more than that for me, a Black woman who has worked in schools with mostly Black children.

Audre Lorde embodied intersectionality, a term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw that refers to the multiple forms of oppression people of color belonging to multiple marginalized groups experience simultaneously. A lauded poet, essayist and activist, Lorde nonetheless experienced multiple forms of oppression because of her experiences as a queer, Black woman. Lorde's writing was not separate from her experiences, but was, in fact, rooted in them.

For Lorde (and all Black women, particularly those of us who teach and reach the children who look like us), caring for herself was radical and dangerous, an intentional act of resistance. It's resistance to a country that, James Baldwin cautions in The Fire Next Time, "set you down in a ghetto in which, in fact, it intended that you should perish."

Lorde's work centers the experiences of Black women, who not only experience oppression based on race, but oppression due to gender identity, sexual orientation, and for many, oppression based on class. For Lorde, caring for the self is a way to sustain ourselves, honor ourselves, and actively resist systems of oppression that have been intentionally put into place to destroy us. And in this sense, thriving and surviving in a system that has sought to destroy oneself is radical; it is political warfare.

Those of us who see education, particularly teaching, as a vehicle for resistance and liberation must realize that if we are silent and do not resist, then we are complicit, passive, and aid in perpetuating the systems of domination and oppression that do exist in schools. Teacher-activists, scholar-warriors, social justice educators, and anti-bias educators can also apply Audre Lorde's words and declaration to our work and to our lives. If those of us who are in the trenches are not actively caring for ourselves, if we are not preserving ourselves so that we can carry on in this work, then we cannot resist, we cannot liberate, we cannot educate for freedom, we cannot transgress, we cannot heal, and we cannot educate our students in ways that will lead to their own freedom and the freedom of others.

What does it mean for educators, particularly educators of color, to care for ourselves as we engage in this work, as we work through and deal with issues and challenges that our white colleagues may not be experiencing?

The work that we do requires the deepest and fullest attention to ourselves and our well-being. How can we engage otherwise? How can we turn some of the outpouring we so readily give to our school communities and to our students to ourselves?

How can we remember ourselves, too, on this journey? How can we replace our beliefs around what is selfish and self-centered with a celebration of wholeness and wellness? How can we prioritize preserving ourselves so that we can keep going?

How can we honor our physical and mental health alongside that of our students? How can we plan for our financial future and stability so that it is not an added stress or pressure? How can we advocate for the compensation we need and deserve?

Many teachers today are also experiencing mental health issues that are directly related to the work. How can we prioritize preserving ourselves? How can we structure our time to understand what may be happening with us mentally? How might we address the work environments and demands that compromise our mental health and overall well- being?

How can we insert joy into our teaching and into our own lives? How can we add time for ourselves and the pieces of our lives-be it health, food, dance, hiking, therapy, yoga or sleep-to our lists of the things we "must" do?

How can we be gentle and caring enough to ourselves to believe and act on the premise that caring for ourselves and being good social justice educators, being good teachers, are not mutually exclusive?

To teach well is an act of selflessness. To engage in education in a way that leads to liberation, disruption, joy and resistance is radical work. And in our current social and political climate, the work that we are doing is political. But if we cannot do the work-because we are burnt out, because we are tired, irritable or hungry, because we are stretched too thin, because we are sick and afraid-then we cease to be our most powerful selves. And to engage in the work that we have been called to, we must be our most powerful selves.

Caring for ourselves and being anti-racist, social justice educators are not mutually exclusive. Anti-racist work requires questioning, deep critical thinking, original and creative lesson planning, resisting and finding sometimes-crafty ways to do what we know is best for our students.

At times, this means engaging in uncomfortable discourse with our colleagues, administrations and peers. It means having conversations and expectations for students that others may not have with or for them. It means working late sometimes, and it means working differently so that we can honor our bodies and life commitments and limit how often we work late.

It means beginning to have conversations around boundaries, and believing, truly believing, that boundaries and self-care are not selfish, but self-preservation. It means explaining to others, even other educators who are engaging in the work, that forms of resistance may begin to look different for you-as they often have historically-and for you, it may mean saying no and setting boundaries so that you can show up each day your fullest self, so you can continue to engage in work that takes everything out of you.

For educators of color, especially Black women, this is painfully true. White educators cannot, and will never, fully understand the weight of what it means to educate the students who look like you. They will never understand the weight and burdens you carry, even when you try not to, because you are seeking to teach about and mitigate systems of oppression while you are living and experiencing them. They will not, and cannot, understand the gnawing and sometimes empty and lonely feelings of aiming to teach our children well. Because no one understands in the ways you do that their liberation, their freedom and their healing are inextricably linked to your own.

So it is OK, dear teacher and advocate, to say no to leading that club or new initiative, to save that energy to push back to defend culturally sustaining lesson plans and ideas that will lend themselves to deeper and fuller understanding for your students.

It is OK to spend a bit more time preparing what you will place into your body than responding right away to that email. It is OK to not engage in work-related tasks or banter on the weekends (although I know you do). It is OK to take a moment in the break room to breathe. It is OK to step outside for two minutes to catch a glimpse of the sun.

If we are not well, we cannot fight. We cannot be the advocates our students need, and we cannot commit to the journey of work that lies ahead as we use our profession to bring humanity just a little bit closer to freedom.

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Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

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NORTHERN PLAINS Treaties

This online lesson provides perspectives from Native American community members, images, documents, and other sources to help students and teachers understand the difficult choices and consequences Northern Plains Native Nations faced when entering into treaty negotiations with the United States. Scroll to begin an exploration of the intentions, motivations, and outcomes of two treaties: the 1851 Horse Creek Treaty and 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty.

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Apsaalooke (Crow), Arapaho, Arikara, Assiniboine, Dakota (Sioux), Cheyenne, Hidatsa, Lakota (Sioux), Mandan, Nakota (Sioux), Northern Cheyenne

Government and Civics, History, Social Studies

Great Plains, northern plains, plains, Plains Indians, Plains Indian wars, Crow, Cheyenne, Northern Cheyenne, Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold, Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota, Dakota, Nakota, Oceti Sakowin, Sioux, Arapaho, Assiniboine, treaties, U.S. Constitution, 1851 Horse Creek Treaty, 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, sovereignty, Black Hills, Westward Expansion, Doctrine of Discovery, diplomacy, treaty ratification, U.S. Senate, U.S. v Sioux Nation, colonization, history, Manifest Destiny

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Framework for Essential Understandings about American Indians

Building on the ten themes of the National Council for the Social Studies' national curriculum standards, NMAI's Essential Understandings reveal key concepts about the rich and diverse cultures, histories, and contemporary lives of Native peoples. Woven throughout the lesson, the following Essential Understandings provide a foundation for students to thoughtfully approach the difficult choices and consequences Northern Plains Native Nations faced when entering into treaty negotiations with the United States.

This resource addresses the following Essential Understandings:

Essential Understanding 2:

Time, Continuity, and Change

European contact resulted in devastating loss of life, disruption of tradition, and enormous loss of lands for American Indians.

Providing an American Indian context to history makes for a greater understanding of world history.

Essential Understanding 5:

Individuals, Groups, and Institutions

Today, because of treaties, court decisions, and statutes, tribal governments maintain a unique relationship with federal and state governments.

Essential Understanding 6:

Power, Authority, and Governance

Long before European colonization, American Indians had developed a variety of complex systems of government that embodied important principles of effective rule. American Indian governments and leaders interacted, recognized each other's sovereignty, practiced diplomacy, built strategic alliances, waged wars and negotiated peace accords.

A variety of political, economic, legal, military, and social polies were used by Europeans and Americans to remove and relocate American Indians and to destroy their cultures. U.S. policies regarding American Indians were the result of major national debate. Many of these policies had a devastating effect on established American Indian governing principles and systems. Other policies sought to strengthen and restore tribal self-government.

A variety of historical policy periods have had a major impact on American Indian people's abilities to self-govern. These include: Treaty period, 1789-1871.

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Common Core State Standards

College, Career & Civic Life-C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards

Video: Let's Talk Treaties

What are treaties and why do they matter? Watch this video and consider the significance of the legal promises nations make to one another in treaties.

Julie Cajune
Educator from the Salish Nation

Treaty Making and Treaty Breaking on the Northern Plains

This inquiry explores the legal and ideological frameworks that underscore the treaty making process and the history that unfolded between the expanding United States and Native Nations. Treaty-making, like most other aspects of U.S. Indian policy in the 19th century, was solidly rooted in the worldview of the Europeans who colonized the Americas. Implicit in the concept of the Doctrine of Discovery was the "right" of the discovering nations to gain title to Native lands. And, as the Europeans and, later, the Americans desire for more land grew, the concept of Manifest Destiny evolved and was embraced as inevitable progress. This worldview contrasted starkly with Native philosophy and political ideology.

The Horse Creek Treaty of 1851 involved the Oglala Sioux, Brule Sioux, Cheyenne, Assiniboine, Mandan, Gros Ventre (Hidatsa), Arapaho, Crow, Hidatsa, Arikara, Snake, and Shoshone, although the Shoshone were uninvited attendees. The United States wanted permission from Native nations to build roads and outposts on Native lands. The government was also seeking assurances for unhindered travel for European settlers heading west. At the time of the treaty, however, some roads and outposts had already been established. So, seeking Native agreement to be able to build more roads and outposts on Native lands, while simultaneously saying the government did not want any land from Native Nations, made the United States government's stated intent appear disingenuous. Furthermore, by decreasing the proposed annuity payment for the land from 50 years to 10 years, the Horse Creek treaty was then actually violated even before its ratification.

The desire for Native land continued once gold was discovered in Montana. The building of the "Bozeman Trail" to make access to the gold easier brought scores of settlers through Native territories. Native people began resisting those incursions into their territory. The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 sought to bring an end to the conflicts and to definitively determine territorial boundaries for the Oglala, Miniconjou and Brule bands of Lakota, Yanktonai Dakota, and the Arapaho Nations. Assurances were given to those Native Nations that they would have "absolute and undisturbed use and occupation" of their lands. But, the treaty was violated eleven years after it was signed when the U.S. government took the gold-rich Black Hills, an area that had been designated as unceded Sioux Nation lands. The taking of the Black Hills remains a major controversy today.

A treaty is a formal agreement between two or more sovereign nations about something of mutual interest and importance. Thus, making treaties with Native Nations reflected a clear recognition by the United States government of the inherent sovereignty of the Native Nations with whom they treated. Although Article VI of the United States Constitution declares treaty law as the supreme law of the land, Native Nations found out that treaty promises-solemn legal obligations-would not always be honored by the United States government.

Long before their contact with the Europeans, Indigenous people populated the Americas. While it is difficult to determine with certainty the number of Native Nations that lived on the lands that are now known as the United States, what is indisputable is that these lands were extensively occupied. This map shows some of the diverse Native peoples, governments, and societies that lived and thrived on their homelands before contact with Europeans and Americans.

European nations viewed the homelands of Native Nations as territory to be taken and used for profit and settlement. By the early eighteenth century, several powerful European nations laid claim to vast territories that were already inhabited by many different Native Peoples and Nations.

Treaties Still Matter: The Dakota Access Pipeline

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Native Knowledge 360°- Northern Plains Treaties: Is a Treaty Intended to Be Forever?

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This online lesson provides perspectives from Native American community members, images, documents, and other sources to help students and teachers understand the difficult choices and consequences Northern Plains Native Nations faced with entering into treaty negotiations with the United States. #NK360

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At a glance

Culturally responsive teaching is a rich, intentional approach woven into every aspect of student learning.

It focuses on the assets students bring to the classroom rather than what students can't do.

It raises expectations and makes learning relevant for all students.

Culturally responsive teaching is a research-based approach to teaching. It connects students' cultures, languages, and life experiences with what they learn in school. These connections help students access rigorous curriculum and develop higher-level academic skills.

Our brains are wired to make connections. It's easier for our brains to learn and store information when we have a hook to hang it on. That hook is background knowledge. Students bring this knowledge to the classroom every day.

But for students of color, English language learners (ELLs), and other underserved student populations, those assets are often overlooked. When that happens, educators miss the chance to use them to support learning. (See recent work by Zaretta Hammond for the neuroscience behind this.)

Culturally responsive teaching values and reflects the assets of all students. By doing that, it raises academic expectations for all learners. It also sends the message that multiculturalism is an asset.

Dive deeper

The benefits of culturally responsive teaching

How culturally responsive teaching, UDL, and SEL work together

For educators: Culturally responsive teaching in the classroom

For educators: How to partner with families

About the author

About the author

Educators Team at Understood is made up of passionate writers, editors, educators, and subject matter experts who have worked in classrooms and with students who learn and think differently.

Reviewed by

Reviewed by

Karla Vigil, MAT is the chief executive officer and co-founder of the

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Culturally responsive teaching is a rich, intentional approach woven into every aspect of student learning. It focuses on the assets students bring to the classroom rather than what students can't do. It raises expectations and makes learning relevant for all students. Culturally responsive teaching is a research-based approach to teaching.

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Native Knowledge 360° | Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian

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Educational resources, lesson plans, teacher training, and strategies to support positive change! Native Knowledge 360° is a national initiative to inspire and promote improved teaching and learning about Native America. #NK360

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Resources provided by Corwin

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Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students

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Welcome to the companion website!Table of Contents and Front MatterFigure 1.2: Ready for Rigor Framework Figure 2.1: Culture Tree

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As communities become more culturally and linguistically diverse, community-based service organizations (CBOs) are called to do more to reduce disparities in access and use of important social services. An important strategy is developing cultural competency-behaviors, attitudes, and policies that enable CBOs to work effectively in cross-cultural situations. This resource guide identifies easily accessible resources on cultural competency that CBOs can use to become more responsive to the needs of their targeted populations, and to help attract funds to support their important work.

In this guide

This resource guide addresses the following topics:

1. Defining and understanding cultural competency

2. Choosing interventions for diverse populations

3. Conducting a needs assessment

4. Measurement considerations for diverse populations

5. Collaboration through a diversity lens

6. Workforce diversity

7. Budgeting

Each section discusses existing resources that organizations can use to develop or improve their ability to provide culturally competent
programs. Tables within each of the sections provide links to specific resources that correspond to particular needs.
View the fact sheet based on this guide >> View the webinar recording and slides based on this guide >>

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Developing Culturally Responsive Approaches to Serving Diverse Populations: A Resource Guide for Community-Based Organizations - Hispanic Research Center

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As communities become more culturally and linguistically diverse, community-based service organizations (CBOs) are called to do more to reduce disparities in access and use of important social services. An important strategy is developing cultural competency-behaviors, attitudes, and policies that enable CBOs to work effectively in cross-cultural situations.

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Films to help teach about Central America.

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Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

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In June, when the Black Lives Matter protests first broke out in cities across the country, something clicked. The protests kept spreading, radiating through suburbs, hopping oceans and crossing borders. There was an undeniable momentum - one that teacher Joana Chacon and her colleagues wanted to seize.

"This summer has opened up spaces in which teachers have begun to speak more openly and honestly about race in our school systems," Chacon said.

Chacon, an English teacher at Newton South High School, was inspired by the work of Bettina Love, a pioneer of abolitionist teaching, instruction rooted in combating systemic oppression and racism. Chacon and her colleagues formed a book club to discuss anti-racist teaching. That quickly evolved into an online conference. At first, she thought maybe 50 people would attend.

"Within days, we had hundreds of teachers from seven states," she said. "Now we're in all 50 states and we're in 24 countries."

The response has been overwhelming. Nearly 6,000 teachers - and counting - are attending the National Educator Anti-Racism Conference, which kicks off this weekend. Attendance is free, thanks to local sponsorship. Love, a Black professor of education at the University of Georgia, will be the keynote speaker. She and other prominent education experts will provide training on how to create an anti-racist school and curriculum, spanning every field, from the arts to math and special ed to counseling, all the way up to the principal's office.

Anti-racist teaching is not new, but it has picked up steam in recent years, with educators around the globe forming anti-racist educator collaboratives. And it now seems more urgent, as COVID-19 has exposed deep social and racial inequities. Add to that the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the country appears finally to be poised to face its ugly past and address systemic racism. That, Chacon said, can start in the schools.

"An anti-racist teacher recognizes that racism exists in our school system. Second, an anti-racist teacher agrees that to do nothing about the racism in our school system is to be complicit," she said. "And third, an anti-racist teacher makes a commitment to fight against white supremacy in our school system by working with communities of color and by allowing their work to be led by those communities."

So how does anti-racism fit into a math curriculum, for example? If the STEM workforce is any indication, race plays a large role. A 2018 Pew Research Center report shows that people of color are largely underrepresented in the STEM workforce, with Black and Hispanic adults holding bachelors' degrees or higher making up only 7 percent and 6 percent of the STEM workforce, respectively.

Luis Leyva, an assistant professor of math education at Vanderbilt University, said the absence of Black people in the pipeline starts in the classroom.

"One common type of an event would be if an instructor says, 'If you can't do this problem fast enough, you should consider dropping down or no longer continuing with the calculus pipeline.' And so if we think about that, there is no explicit naming of race," Leyva said. "But in our work, we found that students who are coming from racially minoritized backgrounds and thinking about representation, about who's in that classroom space, who is in STEM fields, they might register this in a way that they might be saying, well, maybe, mathematics isn't for me or maybe STEM isn't for me, questioning their belongingness, or no longer continuing with mathematics."

Leyva, who identifies as Latinx, will be speaking at the conference with his Black colleague, Nicole Joseph. Herresearch explores how white supremacy shapes underrepresentation of Black girls and women in mathematics. She said educators need to unlearn a lot of what they internalized as students themselves.

"Learning how to be an anti-racist math teacher has a lot to do with the self and less to do with math content. I think you have to do a lot of internal work. You have to read a lot. You need to be in community with, you know, communities of color." Joseph said. "I try to help our secondary teachers understand that poverty, segregation, gentrification, all of these things [are] going to impact your child sitting in your geometry class. And we talk about how, and a lot of that is historical."

Leyva added that contextualizing problems and presenting them through a social justice lens could make math more culturally relevant.

"What are the problem-solving opportunities that students are having and how is that reflecting their own lived realities?" Levya said. "How can you do your job well, still teach standards-based approaches to instruction, but doing it in a way where you allow - especially racially minoritized Black and brown students - to see themselves reflected in the work and feel as though they're developing positive mathematical identities?"

That positive reflection is what Chacon, who is Latina, wants to foster in her classroom.

"In my classroom, as an English teacher, anti-racism means that I'm teaching a balance of white authors and authors of color. It means I'm teaching lessons that go in-depth about communities of color and doesn't just teach about the oppression those communities face," Chacon said. "It teaches how those communities have in the past advocated for themselves and how they continue to advocate for themselves."

These are lessons that Imani Fonfield, a rising senior at Newton South who is already an established student activist, said everyone should learn.

In June, she staged a die-in in front of Newton City Hall during a Black Lives Matter protest. As a peer leader in the high school's Anti-Defamation League and co-president of the Black Student Union, she said conversations about race don't really take place outside of those circles. When they do, she's often the only Black person involved.

"It gets frustrating when I'm the only voice, and only Black voice, that has to represent a whole culture. And it's intimidating. And I don't think I should have to," Fonfield said. "So having this anti-racism curriculum really shows the voices in what we're learning. And you could take the pressure off of me and some of the other Black students and students of color."

Fonfield will be leading a discussion this weekend about students and anti-racism. She's hopeful this conference is the first step towards lasting change.

"I don't expect everything to just change overnight. And I don't expect us to have the conversations around race normalized immediately. And I don't think it'll get more comfortable," Fonfield said. "I do think that teachers will really reflect on what they've done in the classroom or what they haven't done and that will show in their teaching."

That's why Kate Fussner is attending the conference. Three years ago, she "decolonized" her ninth-grade English curriculum at Fenway High School in Boston, to better reflect the largely Black and Latino student population.

"When I was growing up, it was very much, everyone reads one book. We talk about that book. We write about that book. We move on. Most of the writers that we read were white. Most of the writers that we read were dead," Fussner said. "My curriculum focuses on giving students choice to find what they love to read and to find their voices, their inspiration in living writers, in particular, writers of color and queer writers to make sure that students are really seeing themselves reflected in the books."

Fussner, who is white, said the conference is an opportunity for white educators - who make up the vast majority of public school teachers in the U.S. - to build on the progress that teachers of color have made over generations.

"We cannot make all of this work the work of Black educators and Latinx educators," Fussner said. "It's our turn to make sure that that work continues to get done. And so we need to be there to push each other, to call each other out and to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, because ultimately, I think that's what's going to move us forward."

When the conference wraps up next week, Chacon said everyone should leave equipped with strategies that they can immediately use to move towards creating anti-racist lesson plans. Then, what she is really excited about, is making those available to any teacher who sees racial justice as part of their calling.

"We're hoping that they will be the founding contributors to our database, who will contribute hundreds of thousands of lessons with every content area in mind to support the work of our teachers today, [and] teachers decades from now," she said.

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Dismantling Systemic Racism Starts In Schools, Educators Say

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A Newton teacher's initiative draws 6,000 educators from every state to learn about anti-racist instruction.

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Necessity: Oil, Water, and Climate Resistance takes up gripping questions at the heart of the fight to save the planet. As activists increasingly call for acts of civil disobedience and federal and state laws impose criminal penalties for pipeline activism, how do concerned citizens decide whether to join the resisters? What are the legal considerations and consequences of engaging in direct actions to stop the pipelines and oil trains? And how do regional activists form alliances across potential divisions, including race, gender, nationality, and class, in responding to the climate emergency?

Grounded in people and places at the heart of the climate crisis, Necessity traces the fight in Minnesota against the expansion of pipelines carrying toxic tar sands oil through North America. The film is structured around two stories of indigenous and non-indigenous activists engaged in civil disobedience and using the necessity defense, making a moral case for acts of civil disobedience.

One case centers on activists locking down a local Wells Fargo, a major investor in the pipelines. The other centers on climate activists as they prepare for a landmark jury trial after temporarily shutting down the flow of tar sands oil as part of a multi-state coordinated action. Movement lawyers defending activists in court must prove that the threat of the climate emergency justified acts of civil disobedience and that there were no legal alternatives.

Water Protector Debra Topping guides us through areas where pipelines cross tribal lands and where native resistance is mounting. Tribal attorney Tara Houska shows how the destructive path of these pipelines endanger indigenous communities most directly. Necessity brings climate struggles and their legal consequences down to a personal and practical level while attending to the larger contexts and meanings of climate action.

Watch the trailer

Necessity is still a work in progress, but is available for classroom use by request and with the agreement that you will send feedback. A list of feedback questions will be provided to you when you request the film.

If you would like to stream the film in a class or other educational setting, please fill out the form linked below.

We offer a free lesson, Teaching Climate Disobedience: Using the Film Necessity in the Classroom, for grades 7+ by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. Students are introduced to the central figures profiled in Necessity: Oil, Water, and Climate Resistance through a mixer role play. The lesson includes multiple cohorts of climate activists: Indigenous leaders in the Climate Justice Movement, valve turners using civil disobedience to stop the flow of oil, and the legal team that uses the "necessity defense" in the courts.

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Necessity: Oil, Water, and Climate Resistance - Zinn Education Project

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Necessity: Oil, Water, and Climate Resistance takes up gripping questions at the heart of the fight to save the planet. As activists increasingly call for acts of civil disobedience and federal and state laws impose criminal penalties for pipeline activism, how do concerned citizens decide whether to join the resisters?

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Dirty Secrets: Jennifer, Everardo & the CIA in Guatemala for High School use only

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By Bill Fowler
In Central America, we generally associate indigenous peoples with Guatemala. However, if you look closely, you will also see much evidence of Salvadorans' indigenous heritage. If you look at a map of El Salvador, you will find many place names of native origin, most of them having derived from the Nahuat language of the Pipils, once the dominant Indian group of El Salvador. If you listen closely to Salvadoran Spanish you will hear many words that derive from the Nahuat dialect. Knowledge of herbal medicine is strong in El Salvador, and this art comes from pre-Columbian Pipil practices. Traditional agriculture is widespread and based on Indian techniques. Obviously, the heritage of the Pipils remains strong in El Salvador.

Pre-Colonial History

In the early Colonial period, El Salvador was commonly known by the Pipil name of Cuscatlan. Its indigenous inhabitants were descendants of several groups of Mexican migrants who had migrated in the 11th century from the central highland plateau and the Gulf Coast region of Mexico via the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. They migrated to escape a series of droughts that plagued central Mexico as well as to seek better social and political conditions. They brought their place names with them when they moved from Mexico, and scholars have long noted the many parallels between Nahua place names of Mexico and those of Central America.

The route of the migrations took the Pipils from central Mexico to the Gulf Coast region where Nahuat is still spoken today-south across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and then along the Pacific coastal plain to Guatemala and El Salvador. Some Nahuat speakers continued southward as far as Nicaragua and Costa Rica, where they became known as the Nicaraos. In addition, a few scattered enclaves of Pipils were found in Honduras.

The Pipil population of El Salvador probably numbered close to 1,000,000 on the eve of the Conquest. In addition there were probably at least another 100,000 Pipils in the southeastern coastal region of Guatemala.

The Spanish conquistadors who arrived in Central America found that the territory of western and central El Salvador was actually divided into two aboriginal Pipil states: Izalco to the west and Cuscatlan in central El Salvador. Cuscatlan was by far the larger of the two. To the west of the Izalco kingdom was another Pipil state centered on Escuintla, Guatemala, and between Izalco and Escuintla was a wedge held by the Xinca, an extinct language group that may represent the original indigenous inhabitants of coastal Guatemala. North and east of Cuscatlan lay the territory of the Lencas, possibly the most ancient inhabitants of El Salvador. All these groups were in close contact with one another. Although their relations were often hostile, both the Xincas and the Lencas were strongly influenced by the Pipils.

The name "Pipil" derives from the Nahua pi piltin which means "nobles" or "children." The term has often been explained as a derogatory reference by the Aztecs who presumably regarded Nahuat as a childish version of their own dialect. It seems much more likely, however, that the nobility referent was the more operative one since the Pipils, and other ancient Mexican cultures, were organized socially into noble lineages, and these lineages are yet another typically Mexican feature that the Pipils shared with the Aztecs and other groups of central Mexico.

Political Organization

The noble lineage was stratified internally, specifying its titular head, nobles, and commoners. Commoners were not members of the lineage, but were attached to it and were dependent on the titular head for land. The head of the lineage distributed lands to commoners and nobles in return for tribute and personal service. In the political sphere, the noble lineage formed a close-knit group of kin and subjects. Nobles exercised a wide range of politico-administrative offices. Political connect ions among noble houses were based on common descent from a single noble lineage. Thus, a single lineage often had several noble houses and lords, each with his own land and subjects. This pattern of sociopolitical organization is traced to pre-Aztec central Mexico.

Economic Organization

Pipil commoners were farmers, hunters, fishers, weavers, traders, and warriors. Agriculture was based on the widespread Mesoamerican cultigens* of maize, beans, squash, and chili peppers. Other important food crops included tomatoes, peanuts, avocados, and amaranth. The most important commercial crops cultivated were cacao (chocolate) and cotton.

The hunters and fishers provided food as well as raw materials. The most prominent game animals of the Pipil area included white-tailed deer, cottontail rabbits, tapirs, and peccaries. Objects were made from animal skins, feathers, bones, and marine shells. Before a hunt, a deer would be sacrificed and its heart burned with rubber for the gods. Their method of hunting was to create a circle of fire in the forest, driving the animals to one place in the center. There they would kill their prey with clubs and arrows. In addition to hunting, fishing was also an important means of securing food. The lakes and rivers were abundant with fish which were commonly taken with nets.

Many women participated in the economy through weaving. Pipil women spun and wove cotton cloth from which a wide variety of garments was made. They made inks and dyes using plants and minerals. One plant they used was indigo, which is the source of blue aniline dye. They made red from the bodies of wood lice.

A vibrant system of marketplaces was serviced by professional traders who bought and sold foodstuffs, clothing, and other items. We know about the markets through Spanish documents of the early Colonial period. These same documents tell us what crops and goods were produced and traded.

The Pipil economic system was characterized by specialization in production. An unusually complete tribute document dated to 1532, less than ten years after the entrada of one of Hernan Cortes's most brutal but effective captains, Pedro de Alvarado, and scarcely five years since the pacification of the region, provides details on economic production in the province of Cuscatlan. The data in this document indicate that cotton and cotton cloth were the most important items produced for exchange. Many settlements of Cuscatlan produced maize, beans, and chiles for trade in the marketplace. Very few produced cacao, and this crop was probably a production specialty of the pre-Columbian Izalco state. Other items produced by the settlements of Cuscatlan included salt, dried fish, pineapples, honey, and wax.

Warfare and Militarism

Pipil men served as part-time soldiers, and they were among the fiercest warriors that Alvarado met in the conquest of Central America. Warfare was endemic in south eastern Mesoamerica during the Postclassic period, and, of course, it was through armed conflict that the Pipil dislodged resident populations and seized territory. Warfare for the Pipils, as for most ancient Mesoamericans, was an expression of political force and an important means of social mobility. Military orders were powerful social and political institutions through which highly specialized warriors achieved fame and recognition.

At the time of the Conquest, the Cuscatlan state was at war with the expansionistic Cakchiquel Maya state centered on Iximche, Guatemala. The Escuintla Pipil state was also at war with Iximche. Cuscatlan seems to have been encroaching on the territory of the Izalco Pipil state, and at the time of the Conquest Cuscatlan had taken control of two settlements formerly in the domain of Izalco.

Weapons included atlatls (spearthrowers), lances, bows and arrows, and wooden swords edged with razor-sharp obsidian blades. Warriors protected themselves with thick padded cotton armor which extended to the waist and sometimes covered the thighs. Alvarado described Pipil warriors in a letter written to Hernan Cortes: "The fields [were] full of warriors with their plumage and insignias and with the offensive and defensive arms. To see them from afar was terrifying, because most of them had lances thirty palms long, all raised high." Pipil warfare was closely connected with religion, and no enemy was engaged without the aid of religious prophecy.

Religion

Pipil religion was very similar to that of the Aztecs. A specialized priest hood formed a special caste among the nobility. The priests, who are de scribed in early historical accounts, lived in their temples and wore special clothing and accoutrements that distinguished them from other members of the nobility. Their duties were to perform rituals, to preside over ceremonies, and to act as intermediaries between the gods and the people.

The Pipils worshiped a series of Nahua deities very similar to those of the Aztec pantheon. These deities are well known through ceramic sculptures and figurines, and they are identified through their close affinities with the gods of pre-hispanic central Mexico which are known through the chronicles. Among the most important Pipil gods were Quetzalcoatl (the Feathered Serpent), Tlaloc (the Rain God), Mictlanteuctli (the Lord of the Underworld, the God of Death), and Xipe Totec ("Our Lord the Flayed One," the God of New Spring). These deities were worshiped on different ritual occasions observed in the sacred calendar of 260 days which was correlated with the solar calendar of 365 days to produce the common Mesoamerican ritual cycle of 52 years.

The most remarkable of all Pipil religious ceremonies centered on human sacrifice. Two types of sacrifice ceremonies were described in 1576 by the Spanish judge Diego Garcia de Palacio who probably based his account on an earlier source. The first was auto-sacrifice to extract blood offerings for the gods. The second form of human sacrifice involved the execution of human victims, usually war captives, by specially designated priests. These sacrifices were described in considerable detail by Palacio, and they are also attested by archaeological evidence. It is important to note that human sacrifice is a very ancient Mesoamerican cultural practice. Its elaboration by Nahua groups such as the Pipils or the Aztecs represented an extension of its religious function to the political realm as religious ideology began to play a role in state formation and maintenance.

The Mesoamerican ball game was an important ritual for the Pipils. They built pyramids with staircase sides for their temples. Next to the pyramidal temples were courts for playing the ritual ball game. The ball court was bounded by two large parallel walls with two vertical stone rings, one in the center of each wall. These rings were the goals. At the opposite end of the court were tiers of seats for spectators. The game was played with a solid rubber ball and players moved the ball with their knees and hips, trying to pass the ball through the stone rings, which was very difficult and rarely occurred.

Education

Education was based on the oral transmission of the knowledge obtained through the experiences of past generations. Rulers and priests received formal education in religion and cosmography. Ordinary people probably did not receive a formal education from teachers; rather, they were most likely taught by their parents. This education must have been very effective, since many cultural expressions are found in archaeological remains and close ties to cultural heritage are still preserved among the indigenous people of Central America today. During the Conquest, the Spanish attempted to erase this earlier culture and religion as "idolatry," particularly through the imposition of Christianity.

The Conquest

In June 1524, with the conquest of the Aztecs complete, the Spanish conquistadors looked to the south for new lands of riches. Hernan Cortes dispatched Pedro de Alvarado to Guatemala. He led his 250 Spanish troops and some 5,000 to 6,000 native auxiliaries from Mexico down the Pacific coast of Mexico and into the Guatemalan highlands, where they fought bloody battles against the Cakchiquel and Quiche Maya. The first Pipil groups that they encountered inhabited the Escuintla region of the southeast Pacific coast of Guatemala. After a brief scorched-earth campaign in Guatemala, the Spaniards moved on into El Salvador.

Their first battle against the Pipils in El Salvador was near the modern port of Acajutla, on the Pacific coast. The Pipils strategically situated themselves close to a hill. Alvarado determined that his soldiers on horseback would not be able to attack the Pipils efficiently in this position, so he feigned a retreat. The Pipils, not suspecting that this was a trap, attacked the conquistadores with spears and arrows. They were drawn out of the refuge and into an open field. At this point Alvarado's men turned around and launched an attack on the Pipils.

The Pipil warriors wore protective clothing made of very thickly woven, padded cotton. This precaution proved to be fatal. The stiff cotton armor made it very difficult for the Pipil warriors to get up after they fell on the ground. They were at the mercy of their enemy. Alvarado reported in a letter to Cortes that all the Pipil troops in this battle were killed.

Spanish losses were also heavy, and Alvarado himself took an arrow in the leg which penetrated his thigh and lodged in his saddle. This wound would remind Pedro de Alvarado of the battle of Acajutla for the rest of his life, as it left him with a permanent limp. Five days after the encounter near Acajutla, the Pipils organized another large force near the village of Tacuscalco. The outcome of this battle was, as Alvarado put it, another "great massacre and punishment."

Thereafter the Pipils shifted their strategy. Rather than gathering in large numbers to challenge the Spaniards on the open field, they engaged the conquistadores in guerrilla skirmishes.

Colonial Domination

The Spanish Conquest led to the incorporation of the Pipils into the European world system. This meant that the Pipils would now produce wealth for the Spanish empire, and their wealth was mostly in the form of agricultural production since El Salvador did not have the precious metals that became the primary objective of Spanish conquest throughout the New World.

A system known as encomienda was established in order to grant land and Indians to Spanish overlords. This institution provided the principal means by which labor and goods could be extracted from Pipil peasants. The most important commercial tribute item was cacao, produced in increasingly large amounts by the Izalco towns. Important and influential Spaniards received encomienda assignments as a form of pension in reward for their services to the Spanish crown.

A small clique of encomenderos who held towns in the Izalco region became extremely wealthy from tribute payments in cacao from the Indians. They not only received the cacao tributes that the Spanish colonial system considered their entitlement, but they also extorted the Indian. One of these cacao lords was said to live as if he ruled his own personal fiefdom.

The cacao industry had run its course by the end of the sixteenth century. Soil exhaustion, overplanting, and climate change combined to bring an end to this lucrative enterprise. By the 1580s, with cacao production already in decline, ranching and indigo (blue dye) production rapidly became popular pursuits in the former provinces of Izalco and Cuscatlan.

Commercial agriculture was closely tied to the decline of most Pipil settlements. In order to survive, many Indians found it necessary to leave their towns and move to the countryside. This trend had started by the middle of the sixteenth century, but with the rise of indigo production and cattle ranching as primary economic activities many Pipils decided to pass from the villages to the countryside seeking jobs and minimal protection from individual Spanish and ladino owners of ranches and indigo mills.

European disease also had a tremendous impact on the Pipil population during the Colonial period. Three waves of serious epidemic disease struck with tremendous mortality in the sixteenth century: smallpox in 1520-21, pneumonic plague or typhus in 1545-48, and smallpox and typhus in 1576-77. By the late sixteenth century the Pipil population was reduced to about 95% of its late pre-conquest level, and it did not fully recover until the late eighteenth century.

Resistance

Pipil resistance to Spanish rule in the Colonial period took the form of conscious and deliberate adaptation to the new conditions of existence, passive resistance couched in the new terms of economic, social, and political interaction. Revolts against the government did not occur until after independence was granted from Spain, and even then they were relatively small-scale.

The most serious revolt occurred in 1932 as the culmination of the alienation of communal lands that began in 1881. The 1932 uprising was centered on Izalco. The peasants organized, as the poet Dimas Castellon Mariano Espinoza describes,

Over there in the hills
en thousand and more
white sombreros
are coming down

Coarse cotton trousers
and sharpened machetes

The peasants evicted
evicting
are coming now

Over there in the hills
ten thousand and more
white sombreros
are coming now

The government's response was the indiscriminate massacre of at least 30,000 Indians--men, women, and children--over the course of just a few days. Peasants were rounded up and tied with their arms behind their back and shot.

The repression of the popular insurrection was a genocidal act aimed specifically at El Salvador's Indian population. Believing that Indians were the backbone of the rural rebellion, General Maximiliano Hernandez ordered his troops to kill anyone that appeared to be Indian, as evidenced by their clothing style and other outward features. Thomas Anderson, a U.S. historian who studied the massacre, stated,

The extermination was so great that they could not be buried fast enough, and a great stench of rotting flesh permeated the air of Western El Salvador.

The memory of this brutal slaughter, known as La Matanza, is still fresh in the minds of many Salvadorans.

Conclusion

Many say that few Pipils survive today. (One estimate is that 2000 speakers of Nahuat live in the Izalco region. ) As a result of the 1932 massacre, few Indians will admit to speaking the language, and most will not wear Indian clothing. Nevertheless, the Pipil heritage of most Salvadorans is evidenced by their culture which remains indelible in El Salvador.

About the Author: Bill Fowler

Bill Fowler is an archaeologist and historian. He teaches in the Department of Anthropology at the Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. We asked him to tell us a little about how he began to study the Pipils and his current work:

While a graduate student at the University of Calgary in the mid-1970s I went to El Salvador to participate in a salvage excavation of archaeological sites that were about to be flooded by the reservoir of a hydroelectric dam. I immediately fell in love with the country and the people, and I found many archaeological problems in El Salvador that deserved attention. After a couple of years on the salvage project I learned about the Pipils and of the need for research on these remarkable people combining archaeological and historical methods. I taught myself to conduct primary archival research and soon was workin gin archive sin Spain and Central America in an effort to bring Pipil history to life.

In addition to the historical research, recently I have been directing archaeological research in the Izalco region of western El Salvador. Some of the problems that we are addressing in this project include the time of the arrival of the Pipil immigrants in this region from Mexico, the role of cacao in the pre Columbian Pipil economy, the importance of irrigation in pre-conquest and colonial cacao production, and Pipil resistance to Spanish colonial rule.

The Legacy of the Pipil Culture

The influence of the ancient Pipil culture can be seen in many aspects of contemporary Salvadoran life. Below are just a few examples. Most of this information is derived from a publication titled: Etnografia de El Salvador published in 1985 by the Ministry of Culture and Communications, San Salvador.

Cooking

Corn has played an important role in both the material and spiri tual life of El Salvador. In pre-Hispanic times, corn was a basic part of the daily diet and it was also an integral part of the religion. Present day Salvadoran cooking reflects the traditions of the ancient Salvadorans, corn playing as important a role today as it did ten centuries ago.

Many traditional foods are based on corn, such as:

atol: a hot drink made of ground corn sauces

chicha de maiz: an alcoholic drink

cafe demaiz: a coffee-like drink made of toasted corn

Also typical in El Salvador are pupusas, tortillas stuffed with pork, cheese, or beans.

Other basic foods which have been traditional since ancient times include beans, squash, and other plants native to the region. Traditional drinks include coffee and chocolate.

Musical Instruments

Many of the traditional musical instruments of El Salvador have their roots in pre-Hispanic customs. In pre-Hispanic times, music was used during ritual ceremonies and other important events such as weddings, initiation ceremonies, etc. Some of the instruments in use during those times were drums, turtle shells, maracas, and wind instruments such as flutes, whistles, sea shells, and trumpets. Many of these had a symbolic character, for example, seashells represented fertility. Pre-Hispanic musical instruments are still in use in many Salvadoran communities and are played during important religious festivities. Other traditional .musical instruments were introduced during colonial times, such as the marimba (from Africa), the guitar, and the violin (both from Europe) .

Health Care

In El Salvador there is an extensive use of traditional medicine, particularly in the rural communities. Traditional medicine incorporates an extensive knowledge about the causes of illnesses which can be attributed to physical, psychological and spiritual problems. Cures often combine the use of plants and herbs with therapeutic properties and specific rituals. Among the physical causes of illnesses, sight and blood are considered important elements. One can have "strong" or "weak" sight; strong sight could cause an illness. Blood is also a determining factor. Many illnesses occur because "la sangre esta mala" (the blood is bad) or ''la sangre esta debil" (the blood is weak.)

The knowledge of the curanderos (healers) is based on a long tradition derived largely from indigenous medicine and in part from colonial European practices.

When a patient visits a curandero, they are asked questions about: what they have eaten in the last few weeks; recent physical exercise; exposure to rain, cold, sun, etc; their dreams and visions; and enemies who may have caused the illness. Their pulse is taken. The office of the curandero includes an altar with images of saints, flowers, candles, glasses of water and offerings.

The curandero plays a particularly important role in rural communities. Here modern medicine is often too expensive. More importantly, modern medicine is often ineffective because it is de-humanizing and lacks a spiritual component.

Just a few of the dozens of herbal remedies used in El Salvador include:

Ajo (garlic): for inflammation of eyelids.

Albahaca (sweet basil): for dizziness

Maquilishaut: Anti-dysentery

Mora(blackberry): Local analgesic for toothaches

Ruda (rue): emetic

Tabaco: Anti-venom

Language

Many words currently in use in El Salvador have origins in Nahuat, the language spoken in the region by the Pipils. For example:

Atol: from Atuli: a hot drink made of ground corn.

Ayote: from Ayut: squash

Cacahuate: from cacahatle: peanut

Caite: from cacti: sandal

Copal: incense

Chirmol: a condiment made of tomatoes, onions, and green chili.

Elote: from elut: green corn

Milpa: from mili, pan: cornfield

Mish: from mishtun: cat

Tusa: dried corn husk

Zopilote: from tzupilot: vulture

Many place names in El Salvador also have their origins in Nahuat. Following are just a few. Can you find them on the map?

Ahuachapán: from Ahuachia Apan: splashing river.

Chalatenango: from Shal, At

Tenango: place of water and sand.

lzalco: from Its, Sahl, Co: place of black sand.

Usulután: from Usulut, Tan: City of ocelots

Coatepeque: from Cuat, Tepet: hill of the serpent.

Panchimalco: from Panti, chimali, co: place of flags and shields.

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The Pipils of El Salvador - Teaching Central America

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By Bill Fowler In Central America, we generally associate indigenous peoples with Guatemala. However, if you look closely, you will also see much evidence of Salvadorans' indigenous heritage. If you look at a map of El Salvador, you will find many place names of native origin, most of them having derived from the Nahuat language of the Pipils, once the dominant Indian group of El Salvador.

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Based on "Ten Quick Ways to Analyze Children's Books for Racism and Sexism." Updated in 2013.*
Children's books continue to be an invaluable source of information and values. They reflect the attitudes in our society about diversity, power relationships among different groups of people, and various social identities (e.g., racial, ethnic, gender, economic class, sexual orientation, and disability). The visual and verbal messages young children absorb from books (and other media) heavily influence their ideas about themselves and others. Depending on the quality of the book, they can reinforce (or undermine) children's affirmative self-concept, teach accurate (or misleading) information about people of various identities, and foster positive (or negative) attitudes about diversity. Children's books teach children about who is important, who matters, who is even visible. Consequently, carefully choosing quality children's books is an indispensable educational and child-rearing task.

It is important to offer young children a range of books about people like them and their family - as well as about people who are different from them and their family. All of the books should be accurate and appealing to young children. Fortunately, there are some good anti-bias children's books, which are available as a result of the ongoing activism of many individuals and groups over many years. However, while choices have improved over past decades, the lack of quality multicultural kid's books currently being published has frustrated many communities. The number of children of color in the United States continues to rise, but the number of books published by or about people of color stays the same or even decreases.

Check the Illustrations

Look for Stereotypes: A stereotype is an oversimplified generalization about a particular identity group (e.g., gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, ability/disability), which usually carries derogatory, inaccurate messages and applies them to ALL people in the group. Stereotypes dehumanize people. So, too, does misinformation. ( See Box 1 below for a list of common, harmful stereotypes).

Unfortunately, all of us absorb socially prevailing stereotypes about a range of people, even if we do not consciously subscribe to them. To alert you to stereotypes in children's books, as well as other media, it is useful to list all the stereotypes you know about various groups of people as precondition for critically reviewing children's books. The books you choose should depict people compassionately and as real human beings. Also consider if images depict all people as genuine individuals with distinctive (rather than stereotypical) features. Books containing stereotypes require you to engage children in critical thinking, but should probably be eliminated from your collection.

BOX 1: Common Harmful/Undermining Stereotypes

Strong, independent girls and women are "manlike"

Book-loving or nonathletic boys and men are "effeminate"

Latino men talk funny, are lazy, gang members, or wear oversize sombreros

Latina women are earth mothers or subservient

African American men are gang members, oversexed, or underemployed

African American women are too independent, oversexed, or "welfare moms"

Arab and/or Muslim men are terrorists

Arab and/or Muslim women are voiceless and passive

All Muslims are Arab / All Arabs are Muslim

American Indians live in teepees, carry bows and arrows, or are half-naked in winter

American Indians were only significant in the past (read)

Disabled people are not independent or are to be pitied

Disabled people must "overcome" their disabilities rather than just live with their disabilities

LGBTQ+ people are invisible

Poor people are invisible

Poor people are depicted as passively needing help from others

AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islanders) are depicted as the "model minority"

AAPI are exotic or their food is exotic/abnormal

All AAPI know martial arts or are meek and compliant

AAPI are portrayed with slanted eyes or just lines to represent eyes

Jewish people are all Zionists (read)

Jewish people are wealthy and yield undue influence in the financial and political world

Look for Tokenism: This is the "one only" message. Regularly seeing only "one" person of any group in a book teaches young children about who is more or less important. Examples of tokenism include books with only one African American child among many white children or having only one book about children with disabilities among many other books. Tokenism also becomes stereotypical. It only allows children to see one view of a group of people, rather than the diversity that exists among all groups.

Look for Invisibility: What children do not see in their books also teaches them about who matters and who doesn't in our society. Invisibility in their storybooks - as well as in textbooks as they get older - undermines children's affirmative sense of themselves and reinforces prejudiced ideas about people who are not seen (See Box 2 for examples of groups who tend to be invisible). The booklists on this website include a great variety of books with groups who are often excluded. (The titles are vetted by Teaching for Change.)

BOX 2: Examples of Groups of People Who Are Often Invisible in Children's Books or Mainstream Media

Families who live in rural areas

Blue-collar workers

Musicians, artists, and writers

Families with two dads or two moms

Single mothers or fathers

Homeless families

Families with an incarcerated parent

People of Middle Eastern descent

Families who practice Islam

Transgender adults and children

Check the Story Line and the Relationships Between People

Even if a book shows visual diversity, the story line may carry biases related to how it handles power relationships among people of various identities. Are whites or male characters the central figures with people of color or female characters in essentially supporting roles? To gain acceptance and/or approval does a child of color, a girl, or child with a disability have to exhibit extraordinary qualities or be the one to understand, forgive, or change? Are the achievements of girls and women based on their own initiative and intelligence, or are they due to their looks or relationship with boys/men?

Are people of color, women, low-income families, or people with disabilities depicted as needing help or in passive roles, while whites, men, and "able-bodied" people are in leadership and action roles? How are problems presented, conceived, and resolved? Who typically causes a problem and who resolves it? Your book collection needs a balance of different people in "doer" roles.

Look at Messages About Different Lifestyles

Do the lives of people of color or people living in poverty in the story contrast unfavorably with the norm of white, middle-class suburban life? Are negative value judgments implied about ways of life that differ from the dominant culture or economic class (e.g., people are to be pitied, or the story is about one person who "gets out" of the less desirable way of life)? Do images and information go beyond oversimplification and offer genuine insights into the lifestyle of the characters in the story? Does the setting reflect current life - or past assumptions about life? Does your book collection depict diversity among people within a specific racial/ethnic group, such as a range of family structures, living environments, socioeconomic conditions and types of work, and male/female roles within the family? (Remember that every racial/ethnic group has diversity, including people who self-identify as white).

Consider the Effects on Children's Self and Social Identities

In addition to specific books, also examine your book collection. Do your books reinforce or counteract messages that teach children to feel inferior or superior because of their skin color, gender, family income, able-bodiedness, or type of family structure? At school, will all of the children you serve see themselves and their family's way of life reflected in your book collection? Will all children of color, including those with mixed heritage, girls, and children from the many types of family structures, children living in poverty, and children with disabilities see one or more characters with whom they can readily and positively identify? If they are visible in your book collection, are the illustrations and information accurate and respectful? Does your overall collection balance the backgrounds of all the children in your program? Does it also show diversity within the social indentity groups to which the children belong (e.g., a range of ways to be female and male, families reflecting different kinds of jobs within a racial/ethnic group). Does your book collection also include a balance between diversity within your classroom and beyond your classroom?

At home, does your book collection reflect diversity among the groups to which your family belongs? Does it have stories about people like you who have contributed to creating a more just world? Does it also include a range of books showing diversity beyond your family and neighborhood?

Look for Books About Children and Adults Engaging in Actions for Change

To fully develop a strong sense of self and a disposition toward cooperation and fairness, children need to know how to stand up for themselves and others when faced with unfairness. They also need to know about people from all social identity groups who have - and are currently - working for justice for all. In addition to previous criteria, here are more items to consider: The story line should be about children and adults working together, rather than perpetrating the myth that change happens because of special, individual people who do it by themselves. Does your book collection include a balance of people who have made important and honored contributions to American life as well as the world community - and not just the traditional white, male "heroes?" Do some of your books about important people include struggles for justice? Do they show people who were/are poor or from racial/ethnic groups of color? Are people with disabilities engaged in these struggles for justice?

Consider the Author's or Illustrator's Background and Perspective

All authors write from a cultural as well as from a personal context. In the past, most children's books were by authors and illustrators who were white and members of the middle class. As a result, a single cultural and class perspective dominated children's literature. There are now excellent books by people of color from a range of backgrounds - although not nearly enough. Consider the biographical material on the jacket flap or back of the book. What qualifies the author or illustrator to deal with the subject? If the book is not about people or events similar to the author or illustrator's background, what specifically recommends them as creators of the book? What is the author's attitude toward her/his story characters? Are the images accurate and do the illustrators respectfully render the people in the story? Do you have books reflecting a balanced range of author and illustrator identities and experiences?

Watch for Loaded Words

A word is loaded when it in any way demeans or makes people invisible because of any of their identities. One example is the generic use of the word "man" to stand for women as well as men (although the opposite never occurs). This traditional terminology is now questioned by many because of its sexist implications. Here are some examples of ways to avoid sexist language: community instead of brotherhood; firefighters inserted of firemen; human family instead of family of man; ancestors instead of forefathers; chairperson instead of chairman. Examples of adjectives applied to people of color that carry racist messages include: "savage," "primitive," "superstitious," "backward," "inscrutable" and "treacherous." Always consider the context in which a word is used and to whom it applies.

Look at the Copyright Date

Copyright dates indicate the publication year, not the time of its writing, which might be two to three years before the copyright date. Although a recent copyright date is no guarantee of a book's relevance or sensitivity, copyright dates are useful information. More children's books began to reflect the reality of a pluralistic society and nonsexist and non-ableist perspectives in the 1970s. Since then, the range of accurate, respectful, and caring books reflecting diversity has increased significantly (unfortunately the diversity of books published in the United States still does not accurately reflect the actual diversity of the people living here). When considering new books for your collection, begin with most recently published ones and then continue with descending copyright dates.

Assess the Appeal of the Story and Illustrations to Young Children

Although these guidelines focus on the messages about diversity and equality reflected in children's books, it is also important to take quality into account. Be sure the book is a "good read." If children find the story or illustrations boring, a book will not hold their attention, even if the book adds a specific kind of diversity you need. Check for active, interesting story lines where different kinds of people are integral to the people in the story, not the main topic. For example, in A Chair for My Mother, a young child tries to save money to get a comfortable chair for her waitress mother. Although the book shows a single parent, working-class family, and a resourceful girl, it is not didactic. Also look for illustrations that are colorful and recognizable to young children. Although they enjoy a range of styles, illustrations that are too subdued or abstract may not hold their attention.

Check for age appropriateness. Most booksellers list any picture book as appropriate for early childhood even if the story line is really for primary grade children. Sometimes a book for older children will work if you simplify the story or "tell" the story rather than read it. In some cases, this is the only way to get books that present specific groups of children (e.g., stories with Cambodian children or children with learning disabilities). Some additional issues to consider:

Many children's books use animal characters instead of people and there are some excellent books that explore diversity with animal characters (e.g., And Tango Makes Three or A Coyote Solstice Tale). Children enjoy these. However, such books are not a substitute for exploring issues of diversity and anti-bias fairness with people as the main characters.

Some early childhood teachers wonder if it is necessary for every book in their collection to show diversity. Every book needs to be accurate, caring, and respectful. However, you will want individual books about specific kinds of people (e.g., a biracial family or a family with adopted children). Diversity becomes essential in the balance of your book collection, where you want to avoid invisibility or tokenism of any group.

Folk and fairy tales have long been a mainstay of children's literature. In the cultures from which they come, folk and fairy tales were used to teach important lessons and values related to their culture of origin. Children love them in their original versions - not their commercially sanitized adaptations. However, folk and fairy tales also carry messages that convey sexism, classism, and racism and must be used thoughtfully as part of introducing young children to diversity and anti-bias values of quality and fairness.

Overuse of folk tales to "teach" about a specific ethnic/cultural group leads to misinformation and confusion. They are about animals and occasionally people from a mythical past and are designed to teach core values and beliefs in their culture of origin. They are not about how people actually live in contemporary society - and that is what young children need to understand. Information and images about how people really live now is what enables young children to build connections to people who are from different cultures while countering stereotypes that children have already absorbed (e.g., how American Indians really live).

Finally there is the somewhat sensitive issue of what to do about "classic" or "well-beloved" children's books. Many of these are wonderful as children's literature, but unfortunately they often convey values of sexism, racism, ableism, or even colonialism. People who love the books that pose this dilemma argue that it is OK to use them because they "reflect their times," which they imply somehow excuses their biased messages. For example, I adored the Babar series of books as a young child and was unpleasantly shocked to realize as an adult how much the images and story lines reflected messages of European colonialism in Africa. I chose not to use them with my own children, wanting them to learn accurate information about how people in Africa really live. Not sharing childhood favorites may sadden some, but it is far better than the harm caused by reinforcing messages of racism and colonialism.
In a nutshell - as you choose books or critically examine your current book selection, always keep in mind the power of books - their words and their images - to nurture or, conversely, to undermine a child's sense of self, positive attitude toward others, and motivation to act for fairness.
Additional Resources

Louise Derman-Sparks is an internationally respected anti-bias educator and author (along with Julie Olsen Edwards) of Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves. She has co-authored several additional books with Dr. Carol Brunson Day (Teaching/Learning Anti-Racism), the ABC Task Force ( Anti-Bias Curriculum: Tools for Empowering Young Children), Dr. Patricia Ramsey (What If All the Kids Are White?), and Dr. John Nimmo and Debbie Leekeenan ( Leading Anti-Bias Early Childhood Programs: A Guide for Change). She speaks throughout the United States and abroad, and served on the NAEYC Governing Board from 1998 to 2001. Louise has a lifelong commitment to building a more just society for all people. Her children Douglass and Holly, now grown, were her inspiration. A Pacific Oaks College faculty member for 33 years - when its mission and pedagogy reflected anti-bias education principles - Louise is now retired.
*In 1980, the Council on Interracial Books for Children published the book Guidelines for Selecting Bias-Free Textbooks and Storybooks. A shorter version of the book in pamphlet form, "Ten Quick Ways to Analyze Children's Books for Racism and Sexism," followed. One of the first guides written for teachers and families, it became an invaluable tool for hundreds of thousands of people. Both the book and pamphlet have been out of print for several years. Rethinking Schools published their adaptation of the original Guidelines in 1994.

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Guide for Selecting Anti-Bias Children's Books - Social Justice Books

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By Louise Derman-Sparks Based on "Ten Quick Ways to Analyze Children's Books for Racism and Sexism." Updated in 2013.* Children's books continue to be an invaluable source of information and values. They reflect the attitudes in our society about diversity, power relationships among different groups of people, and various social identities (e.g., racial, ethnic, gender, [...]

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Building Equity from the Ground Up with Dr. Darnisa Amante-Jackson

Episode Summary

In this incredible conversation, Bethaney interviews Dr. Darnisa Amante-Jackson, the Founder and CEO of Disruptive Equity Education Project, or DEEP. Bethaney and Darnisa talk about contextualizing our racial identities, the journey from diversity to equity, how leaders adequately build towards a more equitable future, and about the challenges and opportunities of creating a truly equitable social enterprise. Dr. Darnisa Amante-Jackson is an educational and racial equity strategist that is deeply committed to the study of culture; innovation; and adult development. Since earning her master's degree in Anthropology from Brandeis University, and her doctorate from Harvard's Educational Leadership Doctorate (Ed.L.D.), Dr. Amante-Jackson has honed her knowledge of culture and adult development to transform organizational and school cultures on issues of equity; change management and re-design. Dr. Amante-Jackson currently serves as the CEO of The Disruptive Equity Education Project (DEEP) and as system level leadership lecturer at Harvard's Graduate School of Education.

Episode Notes

Learn more about DEEP: www.digdeepforequity. org
The Diversity Gap is a two-year exploration into the gap between good intentions and good impact. You can learn more at Need help processing today's podcast? Head over to The Diversity Gap is a project of Plywood People. Click here to learn more. www.theDiversityGap.com to find a conversation guide with definitions and questions for reflection. www.thediversitygap.com. You can also follow along on Instagram @thediversitygap or on Facebook!

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Building Equity from the Ground Up with Dr. Darnisa Amante-Jackson

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In this incredible conversation, Bethaney interviews Dr. Darnisa Amante-Jackson, the Founder and CEO of Disruptive Equity Education Project, or DEEP. Bethaney and Darnisa talk about contextualizing our racial identities, the journey from diversity to equity, how leaders adequately build towards a more equitable future, and about the challenges and opportunities of creating a truly equitable social enterprise.

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Teach In 2020 Keynote—Winona LaDuke: Water and Food Justice

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Elections often bring about differences of opinion and strong feelings. Use this collection of resources in schools and at home to teach young people about civics, how government works, the electoral process and more.

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Teaching About a Divisive Election-and What Comes Next

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Five social studies teachers discuss their experiences teaching students about the most crucial and controversial parts of a chaotic election season.

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This resource is for educators working to build their own competency facilitating classroom conversations about critical topics like identity, discrimination and inequality.

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Maintaining Strong Communities in Polarized Classrooms

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Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

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Barbie and Nikki Discuss Racism | Barbie Vlogs | @Barbie

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In every classroom, there are students who always have their hand raised to participate, and those who are hesitant to engage. Whether they're introverted, tend to think awhile before they contribute, or are just having a bad day, it can be hard to bring kids into discussions who are reluctant to add their voices.

The challenges of getting students to participate have intensified during remote learning, we've heard from many teachers. Digital platforms can create added communication barriers by making it hard to know when to talk, for example, or how to read subtle but important elements of discourse like a person's body language and facial expressions. Additionally, online discussions are often hindered by variability in students' access to technology and by privacy concerns, and consequently many teachers have had to rely on students' submitting work over isolated channels like email, which can leave back-and-forth between peers (and between students and the teacher) by the wayside.

Getting kids to contribute in virtual classrooms takes some work, it turns out. "We keep calling this generation digital natives as if they are simply whizzes at everything computerized. They aren't," wrote Tim O'Brien on Facebook. "They need personal support, scaffolding, and reassurance that technology does not provide. It is simply a tool, not a teacher."

To find out how to improve student discussions and participation in online learning, we culled through hundreds of comments on social media and followed up with more than 20 educators to see how they tackled the challenge last spring. Teachers offered a range of smart strategies, both synchronous and asynchronous, to integrate the values and the voices of all kids-even the quietest or those with disrupted schedules-into their classes this fall.

Synchronous Strategies

For synchronous learning, some teachers said they translated traditional discussion strategies from the classroom to live video chats, while others found that digital tools helped boost classroom participation.

1. Spider web discussion: During remote learning this spring, students in Shai Klima's high school class led their own discussions over Google Meet. Before the live class, students answered questions independently, and then shared their responses at the start of the meeting as a jumping-off point for a broader class discussion.

While students conversed on video, Klima listened and drew lines on a sheet of paper tracking the flow of the conversation, resulting in a spider web. At the end of the discussion, Klima shared the drawing over video, and then asked students to reflect on the experience and what they learned about who talked, who listened, and who built on the ideas of others.

"It has been successful as a means to get kids to credit their peers with helping them come up with new ideas, which helps build rapport," said Klima, who let students struggling with bandwidth call in to the meetings.

2. Using chat to check for understanding: After giving lessons last spring, Paul France had his third-grade students use the Google Chat feature to ask and answer questions or type in emojis, like a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, to show whether they understood a concept. To create structure around the responses, he guided his students in creating norms around using the chat feature-they decided as a group to use only one emoji at a time, for example. France said the practice helped him check for student understanding and pushed students to engage more with the content.

Kindergarten teacher Ruth Calkins, meanwhile, used Zoom chat when holding live lessons with her kindergarten students. She said they enjoyed typing "T" or "F" for true and false questions while answering math problems in the chat box, and some even attempted to write sentences in response to her questions. Typing responses also provided a lot of keyboard practice for her young students.

3. Flip your classroom to stimulate deeper discussion: Forrest Hinton, a high school math teacher, says he found that a blend of asynchronous and synchronous instruction worked well to stimulate student discussion during remote learning.

First, he taught new content asynchronously through recorded videos and online activities. At the start of his live class, students briefly summarized the concepts they had learned together and then divided into breakout rooms to solve related problems in small groups. Flipping his classroom allowed Hinton to spend less class time in direct instruction-and listening to students at the start of class and in small groups helped him identify, and then address, where his students were struggling. "This has allowed me to clarify concepts in a more targeted way and better assist students," said Hinton.

4. Adapting think-pair-share to Zoom: Ryan Tahmaseb, director of library services, says he found that giving more project-based learning activities to his elementary and middle school students-and allowing them more autonomy over assignments-naturally encouraged richer discussions in virtual learning. "If we give students as much freedom as possible to experiment, research, and pursue interests within our content area, then they inevitably have a lot more to say," said Tahmaseb.

When it came to class discussions, Tahmaseb adapted think-pair-share to Zoom. Students were given a prompt, broken into groups, and then placed into breakout rooms to discuss and record their answers on a shared Google doc, which allowed students to share their thinking in writing or read aloud. Since Tahmaseb wasn't in each breakout room to listen to the conversations, the Google doc kept students accountable. Once they returned to the whole class, volunteers from each group shared their answers with everyone.

5. A new twist on show-and-tell: To get students comfortable with online participation, Brittany Collins, the teaching and learning coordinator at Write the World, a global online writing community for middle and high school students, converted the familiar show-and-tell activity into "think, write, share."

In one activity, Collins asked middle and high school students to find a photo, painting, or drawing that represented intergenerational connection and independently respond by writing to the following questions from the Making Thinking Visible Framework before discussing them over video as a class: What are we looking at? What makes you say that? What do you notice (see, feel, know)? What more can we uncover? What do you wonder? "It helps to break the ice in a virtual learning setting where unplanned participation can prove challenging for some students," said Collins.

Asynchronous Strategies

Although some teachers-and students-said that synchronous discussions were more engaging because they resembled a traditional classroom, many educators found that asynchronous discussions were more equitable because they opened up participation to students with low bandwidth, who had schedule limitations, or who were uncomfortable engaging with the full class.

6. Online forums create back-and-forth dialogue: Angelina Murphy, a high school English teacher, said she used Google Classroom's question feature to get her class to respond to readings and discussion prompts during remote learning this past spring. When each student commented, Murphy replied with clarifying questions to create a back-and-forth dialogue and also asked every student to respond to at least two of their peers' comments to create a broader base of discussion.

Fifth-grade teacher Raquel Linares said she used Nearpod Collaborate (Apple, Android), a virtual collaboration board, to get students to share images or write a response to show what they had learned about an article they read. To inspire connection and reflection among classmates, Linares also used Flipgrid (Apple, Android), so that students could hear their peers' voices even though they were remote.

7. Seeing and critiquing peer work through virtual gallery walks: Virtual "gallery walks" give students an opportunity to view their classmates' projects while learning from each other, according to Joe Marangell, a high school social studies teacher. After his students presented their own projects through five-minute screencasts, they were then required to give feedback to at least two other students on theirs.

Using Google Sheets, students provided feedback to their peers by answering the following prompts: What's something new I learned about this topic?; What's something that surprised me about this topic?; What's something I liked about this presentation? The online format gave every student the opportunity to see their peers' work and their assessment on theirs for deeper reflection, Marangell said.

8. Moving station brainstorming online: When carousel or station brainstorming activities are conducted in traditional classroom environments, small groups of students rotate around the room to different stations to answer prompts-and view and add to each groups' responses.

To translate this online, Marangell divided his students into groups online and created shared Google docs-or a series of Google slides-for the prompts/questions. Each group left their thoughts under the questions by the assigned date and then followed up by commenting on the other groups' responses the next day. "The strategy still allows them to maintain a sense of classroom community [in a virtual setting]," said Marangell.

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8 Strategies to Improve Participation in Your Virtual Classroom

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Educators share their best synchronous and asynchronous strategies to boost student participation during online learning.

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Best Practices for Supporting Parents with Remote Learning

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Spread the loveStudents and teachers aren't the only ones who play a major role in remote learning. As much as possible, schools must also involve parents. That's because students will be spending their time at home instead of in school. Parents will be there to act as facilitators and even take a teacher's role during online classes.

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Editor's Note: In the next five years, most of America's most experienced teachers will retire. The Baby Boomers are leaving behind a nation of more novice educators. In 1988, a teacher most commonly had 15 years of experience. Less than three decades later, that number had fallen to just three years leading a classroom. The Atlantic's "On Teaching" project is crisscrossing the country to talk to veteran educators. This story is the 17th in our series.
Ask black students who their favorite teacher is, and they will joyfully tell you. Ask them what it is about their favorite teacher, and most will say some version of this: They know how to work with me. So much is in that statement. It means that these students want to work, that they see their teachers as partners in the learning process, and that they know the teacher-student relationship is one in which they both have power. In other words, black students know that they bring intellect to the classroom, and they know when they are seen-and not seen.

As the principal of San Francisco's Mission High School and an anti-racist educator for more than 30 years, I have witnessed countless black students thrive in classrooms where teachers see them accurately and show that they are happy to have them there. In these classes, students choose to sit in the front of the class, take careful notes, shoot their hands up in discussions, and ask unexpected questions that cause the teacher and other classmates to stop and think. Given the chance, they email, text, and call the teachers who believe in them. In short, these students are everything their families and community members have raised and supported them to be.

I have seen some of these very same students walk into another teacher's classroom, go to the last row of desks, and put their head down. I have seen them sit frozen in their seat, staring at an assignment-when earlier I had heard them make jokes, talk excitedly about the content of their history class, celebrate solving a vexing algebra equation, or shake a test tube with authority, waiting for a result. Their report cards often reveal this disparity in classroom experiences: A's and B's in classes where they feel valued and C's, D's, or even F's in classes where they don't.

When black students' academic strengths are overlooked, black students are marginalized. They are kept out of advanced courses, given bad grades, and sent to the dean's office. Over the years, the power that they initially bring to school is siphoned off by educators at every level of the educational system who do not respect, and in some cases do not wish to respect, the intellectual contributions of black students.

Anti-racist teachers take black students seriously. They create a curriculum with black students in mind, and they carefully read students' work to understand what they are expressing. This might sound fairly standard, but making black students feel valued goes beyond general "good teaching." It requires educators to view the success of black students as central to the success of their own teaching. This is a paradigm shift: Instead of only asking black students who are not doing well in class to start identifying with school, we also ask teachers whose black students are not doing well in their classes to start identifying with those students.

I spent the majority of my career in the classroom, and I loved it because-to do it well-it required that I call on all aspects of my humanity. Standing in front of my black students, I knew that it was my responsibility to invite them into the classroom and then to see, push, and protect them once they were there. Over the years, collaborating with other anti-racist educators, I co-developed an approach that was successful-and it showed in the students' attendance, grades, and quality of work.

We read articles and books, and we attend workshops centered around black pedagogy. That helps us examine cultural differences in discourse styles, so we can better understand black students' analytical approaches in essays. We learn how to integrate oral language into our curriculum, such as adding a debate unit or a poetry-recitation assignment, and to provide ample opportunities for students to work together. And we learn that nothing goes without saying and that praise and direction should be plentiful. In essence, we do what works for black students, which also works for all students.

Educators who are committed to black students use evidence in their own classrooms to find ways to improve. They analyze the assignments handed in, identifying ways in which their teaching reached-and didn't reach-all of their students. They recognize the brilliance of a black student's contribution to a class discussion and seize on it. They disaggregate data such as grades and attendance by ethnicity, look for patterns, and problematize their own practice-rather than assume that their students weren't motivated or sufficiently prepared to engage with challenging material. They ask themselves: Why did Taylor get a C on the final when he earned an A or a B on all of his other assignments, many of them equally demanding? Why is Vince silent in his group? What inspired Hile to write multiple drafts of her essay, each time asking for more detailed feedback? They seek support from colleagues who are effective teachers for all of their students, including black students, because they know that the changes they make to their teaching practice will have an impact on their students' achievement. All of this makes them better educators.

Teachers who do not value black students will shift the discussion away from their own practice when they see that black students are not succeeding in their classes. They will create bonds that eventually turn into factions with fellow educators who are also unwilling to change their approach.

To fight against systemic racism means to buck norms. Educators at every level must be willing to be uncomfortable in their struggle for black students, recognizing students' power and feeding it by honoring their many contributions to our schools. Teachers need to insist on using their own power to consistently reveal and examine their practice, and seek input from black stakeholders; they must invite black parents to the table, listen to their concerns and ideas, and act on them. Principals must clearly and consistently communicate the anti-racist vision for their school, create professional-development opportunities for staff, recognize teachers who successfully teach all of their students, and intervene when they see problems. District-level administrators must more firmly root their anti-racist messaging in black students' school experiences, making expectations for educators clear. And school-board members need to listen to educators who have shown efficacy in educating black students. They must enact policies that hold us all accountable to our black families. We must make demands of ourselves and work together in our communities.

The only measure of our anti-racist teaching will be the academic success of all of our students, including our black students.
This article is part of our project "On Teaching," which is supported by grants from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Panta Rhea Foundation.

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What Anti-racist Teachers Do Differently

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Editor's Note: In the next five years, most of America's most experienced teachers will retire. The Baby Boomers are leaving behind a nation of more novice educators. In 1988, a teacher most commonly had 15 years of experience. Less than three decades later, that number had fallen to just three years leading a classroom.

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We are happy to announce more classes in Teach the Black Freedom Struggle series. These classes offer the chance to learn directly from leading historians and to meet peers from across the country.

The classes are held at least once a month on Mondays at 4:00 pm PT / 7:00 pm ET for 75 minutes. In each session, the historian is interviewed by a teacher and breakout rooms allow participants (in small groups) to meet each other, discuss the content, and share teaching ideas. We designed the sessions for teachers and other school staff, however, parents, students, and others are welcome to participate.

Below are the 2020-2021 year sessions and more are in the works. Register for one or more of the upcoming sessions here. Miss a session? Recordings from previous sessions are available through each session's dedicated resource post, which you can access by clicking on its title.

Oct. 19, 2020: Organizing for Voting Rights: Lessons from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) | Charles M. Payne, the Henry Rutgers Distinguished Professor of African American Studies at Rutgers University Newark and the Director of the Joseph Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Research joined us to discuss voter suppression and white terrorism in the mid-20th century, in a conversation led by Cierra Kaler-Jones. Read highlights and stream the recording.

Nov. 16. 2020: Paul Robeson, Political Outlaw: Lessons for Today from the Black Radical Tradition | Greg Carr, in conversation with Jesse Hagopian, talked about Paul Robeson and the Black radical tradition. Carr is an associate professor of Africana Studies, chair of the Department of Afro-American Studies at Howard University, and Adjunct Faculty at the Howard School of Law. Carr is co-founder of the Philadelphia Freedom Schools Movement and an advisor for the Zinn Education Project's Teach Reconstruction campaign. See Carr's two-minute history lessons on key figures and events in U.S. history.

Dec. 14, 2020: Reconstruction: Repression and Resistance | Kidada E. Williams, in conversation with Tiffany Mitchell Patterson, discussed the history of repression and resistance during Reconstruction with contemporary connections. Williams is a Detroit-based writer and historian who studies African American survivors of racist violence. Williams is an associate professor at Wayne State University. She is the author of They Left Great Marks on Me and co-editor of Charleston Syllabus: Readings on Race, Racism, and Racial Violence. Her podcast, Seizing Freedom, will be released in early 2021.

Jan. 11, 2021: The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks | Jeanne Theoharis, in conversation with Jesse Hagopian, spoke about Rosa Parks' activism prior to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, her trip to the Highlander Folk School, and the decades she dedicated to challenging racism in the North. This session is based on the young readers edition The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks by Jeanne Theoharis and Brandy Colbert, to be released in February 2021. There is a companion classroom lesson for this session by Bill Bigelow.

May 10, 2021: How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America | Clint Smith is a poet, staff writer at The Atlantic, and teaches writing and literature in the D.C. Central Detention Facility. Smith, in conversation with Cierra Kaler-Jones, will talk about his new book, How the Word Is Passed, an examination of how monuments and landmarks tell myths or truths about the central role of slavery in U.S. history and its legacy today.

Spring 2020 Series
This is such a wonderful series - content-wise and soul-feeding. This is one of the best professional developments I have ever been to, hands-down. I am so grateful. This series is giving me hope in this difficult time. Phenomenal series so far. Even more important during our current situation, as people are engaged and able to see each other. I've been here every Friday and look forward to these talks.
These comments are from three of the hundreds of teachers and students who attended our Friday afternoon online classes while school buildings were closed in the Spring of 2020. Author Jeanne Theoharis suggested the series (called People's Historians Online: Black Freedom Struggle from Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Movement) and offered to host the initial sessions in conversation with high school teacher and Rethinking Schools editor Jesse Hagopian.

Fridays became a time to look forward to learning through stories about people's history, to meeting other educators, and to finding a road map forward in the midst of this pandemic. As one participant said, "Thank you for getting us together and giving me hope that we are not alone, and that we can think and act ourselves out of this pandemic."

The Zinn Education Project staff, in collaboration with Jeanne Theoharis, held sessions from March 27 to July 10, 2020. Each link below includes highlights from the session, a list of the resources recommended by the presenters and participants, participant reflections, and a full video recording.

March 27 and April 3: The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks Based on Jeanne Theoharis's book of the same name, this session introduced participants to Rosa Parks' activism prior to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, her trip to the Highlander Folk School, and the decades she dedicated to challenging racism in the North. Bill Bigelow wrote a lesson to bring this more complete story of Rosa Parks to classrooms.

April 10: Teenagers in the Civil Rights Movement This session, led by Jeanne Theoharis and Jesse Hagopian, highlighted the leading role teenagers played in the Civil Rights Movement - from desegregating Montgomery's buses to the student sit-ins to the high school walkouts of the 1960s. Two contemporary youth organizers spoke as well.

April 17: The Civil Rights Movement in the North Jeanne Theoharis' discussion with Jesse Hagopian challenged the traditional narrative of the Civil Rights Movement with descriptions of oppression and resistance in the North. (Did you know the biggest civil rights action of the 1960s was in New York City?) She talked about Los Angeles, Milwaukee, and Boston.

April 24: Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee On this 60th anniversary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), we hosted SNCC veterans Courtland Cox and Judy Richardson, in conversation with high school teacher Jessica Rucker. They described the role of popular education materials and a network of organizers across generations.

May 1: Rethinking Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. On International Workers' Day, Jeanne Theoharis and Jesse Hagopian discussed the radical history of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Theoharis shared stories about the influence of Coretta Scott King and on Dr. King's role in the North, the Memphis sanitation workers' strike, and the Poor People's Campaign.

May 8: Women in the Black Panther Party. Robyn Spencer and Mary Phillips introduced the role of women in the Black Panther Party through discussion, a video clip, and art. They were introduced by Jesse Hagopian who co-wrote a lesson on the Black Panther Party at the Zinn Education Project website. In the words of a participant, they "deconstructed the Martin-Malcolm dichotomy, centering women and gender in the history of the Panthers."

May 15: Black Athletes and the Black Freedom Struggle. Sports writer Dave Zirin joined Jesse Hagopian to discuss the activism of noted athletes, including Jackie Robinson, Curt Flood, Wilma Rudolph, Wyomia Tyus, Muhammad Ali, John Carlos, Tommie Smith and organized campaigns such as the Olympic Project for Human Rights.

May 22: Black Left: 1930s to the Early 1950s Robin D. G. Kelley described and challenged stereotypes about communism in U.S. history, in a conversation with Cierra Kaler-Jones, describing the histories of the Scottsboro Nine, the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, and other individuals.

May 29: Black Feminist Organizing: 1950s to the 21st Century Barbara Ransby joined in conversation with Jesse Hagopian about the history of Black feminist organizing. That day, the nationwide rebellion in protest of police brutality was in everyone's hearts and minds, and Ransby made connections between past and present struggles.

June 5: Examining the Historical Roots of the 2020 RebellionKeisha N. Blain and Jesse Hagopian addressed the role of police throughout U.S. history, the connection between lynching and police brutality, and the importance of highlighting stories of resistance, particularly by women of color in the fight for human rights.

June 12: Reconstruction and Issues of Citizenship, Suffrage, and Movement Building in the 19th Century Martha Jones, in conversation with Tiffany Mitchell Patterson, addressed the themes of our campaigns to Teach Reconstruction and to teach about voting rights. She highlighted the vital and too often ignored role of Black women in the fight for voting rights.

June 19: Reconstruction and Juneteenth Greg Carr and high school teacher Jessica Rucker talked about how Juneteenth is one of many days where African Americans celebrate being "freed" but still not "free" and how the times we are in today could be considered a third Reconstruction or a second Founding.

June 26: A History of Rebellions Jeanne Theoharis and Jesse Hagopian discussed various rebellions in U.S. history - including what they have in common and how they differ from current events. Theoharis encouraged educators to consider "the many tendrils" that led to this current movement and others before it.

July 10: Abolitionists and Reconstruction Manisha Sinha joined high school teacher Adam Sanchez to talk about the abolition movement and Reconstruction. Sinha explained that the abolition movement should not be taught as a collection of individuals, but instead as a radical social movement, with connections to the Movement for Black Lives today.

Each session or mini-class is for 75 minutes. There are breakout rooms for 12 minutes about half-way through the session to allow participants (in small groups of five or six) to meet each other, discuss the content, and share teaching ideas. We designed the sessions for teachers and other school staff, however, parents, students, and others are welcome to participate. The session format is as follows:

Presentation by a historian in conversation with a high school teacher or another scholar.

Small group conversations by participants (using Zoom breakout rooms) to discuss insights from the talk and approaches to teaching.

Presenters respond to questions with the full group and share teaching resources.

Evaluation by participants.

Questions? Write to [email protected]

These sessions are made possible thanks to support from the Communities for Just Schools Fund, individuals, and the donors to the Teach the Black Freedom Struggle campaign.

Please add your support and make a donation so that we can continue to offer people's history lessons, resources, workshops - and now online mini-classes - for free to K-12 teachers and students. We depend on individuals like you.

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Teach the Black Freedom Struggle Online Classes - Zinn Education Project

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We are happy to announce more classes in Teach the Black Freedom Struggle series. These classes offer the chance to learn directly from leading historians and to meet peers from across the country. The classes are held at least once a month on Mondays at 4:00 pm PT / 7:00 pm ET for 75 minutes.

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In 2014, the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Eric Garner in New York City, Tamir Rice in Cleveland and too many others caused waves of nationwide protest and appeals for stronger protections against police brutality...

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Talk About Police Violence With Your New Students

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After this weekend, we-like many members of our community-are mourning the police shootings that killed Trayford Pellerin in Louisiana and left Jacob Blake in serious condition in a Wisconsin hospital. We understand how hard it can be to know how to support students in the face of ongoing police violence against Black people in the United States.

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CRT: A Teachers' Teacher's Perspective  Pt. I by Deneen Snow 

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CRT: A Teachers' Teacher's Perspective  Pt. I by Deneen Snow 

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So, I have been teaching HS students online for the past two weeks (11th and 12 grade).  I am loving it!  My kids are amazing.  They are engaged.  We have gotten into heavy stuff already particularly with my government class.  My 12th graders are writing personal revolution poems inspired by Gil Scot-Heron's The Revolution Will Not Be Televised and Talib Kweli's A Beautiful Struggle.  I heard one student 's poem already - mind blown.  
The challenge many of my colleagues are having is working from a single lap top computer while trying to watch the class and present at the same time.    I have purchased a second monitor, but there are many teachers  that can not afford it.  If you would like to help teachers at your school, donate a monitor to a teacher at your local school.  Work through your administration and PTA. I saw a non-profit that is doing this, but I think it is better to give locally and personally.  We got this!

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About Us

Lee & Low Books is the largest multicultural children's book publisher in the country. We are also one of the few minority-owned publishing companies in the United States.

Founded in 1991, we have always been family-owned and independent, which means we publish what we want and aren't afraid to take risks. Our books have won major awards including the Coretta Scott King Award, the Pura Belpré Award, the NAACP Image Award, and many more.

Lee & Low Books is committed to publishing diverse books that are about everyone, for everyone. We are dedicated to cultural authenticity, and we make a special effort to work with new authors and illustrators of color.

We publish multicultural children's books for every age, including leveled books for beginning readers, picture books, early chapter books, middle grade, and young adult books. We also publish a wide selection of bilingual and Spanish language books.

Visit our testimonials page to see some of the people and organizations who support our work!

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Lee & Low Books is the largest multicultural children's book publisher in the United States. We are your diversity source.

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The Mood Meter helps a person understand how energy and pleasantness interact to create emotions the affect how we react to situations in our life. The more intune we are with our emotions the less...

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Conversation is a cornerstone of Cicely Woodard's classroom. Every day last spring, her eighth-graders at Freedom Middle School in Franklin, Tennessee posed questions , discussed math problems in small and large groups and responded to one another's ideas. Woodard wanted those experiences to continue when her school switched to distance learning during the coronavirus outbreak , but she knew that key elements would be missing. She wouldn't, for instance, be able to read body language or see students' work in real time. Like many teachers, those differences made her uncertain about what to expect . Once virtual classes got rolling, though, she was gratified to see that familiar classroom techniques worked to get kids talking online, too. "I was very intentional about continuing to use (these strategies), because I wanted to keep as much normalcy as possible," said Woodard, a former Tennessee Teacher of the Year . In an interview after her final virtual class this year, Woodard shared six strategies to generate student discussions online.

Woodard's students attended one live class per week during distance learning. Woodard opened each of these virtual classes with a question unrelated to math, such as "How are you feeling?" "What are you grateful for today?" or "What's bringing you joy?" The activity mirrored the "circle time" exercise that her classes usually did on the first day of the week in school. "I think this time at the beginning of our virtual sessions helped all of us to feel more connected and helped them to feel more comfortable talking about math in a virtual setting," Woodard said. She noted that students always had the option to pass, but they rarely did, and at the end of the year, many highlighted circle time as their favorite part of class.

Just as she would during in-person classes, Woodard chose problems for virtual classes carefully, selecting ones that had a real-world context and could be looked at in multiple ways. "I knew that I had to choose problems that were open to discussion," she said. Before getting to the discussion, though, Woodard gave students time to think and write down ideas. She would set up the problem with the full group, then set her timer for two minutes. That time allowed students to develop their reasoning and helped eliminate the anxiety caused when speed is prioritized in math. It also gave Woodard insights into student thinking. "I'm often surprised because there are things I think they might say, and they come up with something completely different," she said.

Drawing from her training in inquiry-based learning , Woodard often asks her students, "What do you notice?" in regard to a number, pattern or problem. When raising that question online, she shared her tablet screen and used a stylus to underline, make notes or add drawings as students commented. In one recent class, she showed a graph of two quadratic equations that she created with . Asked what they noticed, most students talked about the vertices, whether the parabolas opened up or down and other visual details . The last student who spoke pointed out something different, though: the equations used for the graph were written in standard form. Woodard said she didn't expect anyone to discuss the equations, which were written on the side of the graph. "They're looking at this entire screen and these pictures, and you don't know what they're noticing until you give them an opportunity to talk about it."

Woodard's use of her stylus to record student ideas had a purpose beyond note-taking. "When a student gave an idea it was powerful for the entire class to see that idea written...because it allowed the child to feel like their idea was validated," she said. That goes for ideas that are on the right track and ones that lead to incorrect solutions. Both enabled students to elucidate their mathematical thinking and help each other look at problems differently. And Woodard recommended another way to validate students that is easy to do online: thanking them every time they contribute.

Most of Woodard's classes included paraprofessionals, so she was able to take advantage of Zoom's breakout room feature to allow students to discuss problems in small groups. In advance of class, she sent her colleagues the problems and a list of questions they could ask to guide discussions. In the small groups, students had more opportunities to agree, disagree and try out ideas. Small groups can be employed without paraprofessionals, too. After his initial experiences with whole group live instruction, New York City math teacher José Vilson switched to meeting with subgroups. The change made virtual classes more manageable for him and more engaging for students. "The subgrouping has been very helpful because it's allowed for specific students to talk to each other about how they can do the work together, and I've seen some of them collaborate without me there," Vilson said.

During discussions, Woodard typically waits ten seconds after a student asks a question to allow other students to contribute. The silence can feel awkward, especially in a virtual session when not all students are using video. "Waiting is hard, period, for teachers, because sometimes we want to rescue them. We don't want that uncomfortable struggle ," Woodard said. But it's often at the last second when she is about to speak that a student chimes in. To be OK with wait time, Woodard said, "I have to remind myself that I want my students to think."

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6 Classroom Strategies that Work for Generating Student Discussions Online - MindShift

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Conversation is a cornerstone of Cicely Woodard's classroom. Every day last spring, her eighth-graders at Freedom Middle School in Franklin, Tennessee posed questions , discussed math problems in small and large groups and responded to one another's ideas.

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Teaching Tolerance's new streaming classroom film, Bibi, tells the story of a Latinx father and son who can talk about anything-but only in writing, in the letters they pass back and forth when conversation seems too much.

And after Ben, affectionately called "Bibi" by his father, hands his father a letter that reads "I'm gay," the two don't talk at all.

Based on the experiences of the filmmakers behind the project, the 18-minute film explores intersectionality in a powerful way, illustrating the beauty and conflict that can arise as we move between languages, places and societal expectations.

Ultimately, however, it's not just the story Bibi tells that makes the film a strong addition to any classroom library. It's also the questions it poses: How do we come to be who we are? How do we communicate that to others? How do we respond when others share themselves with us?

For those who work to help young people honor their own and others' complex and unique identities, Bibi and the lessons for grades 6-12 that accompany it are remarkable resources. The story sparks critical conversations about identity, culture, family and belonging.

A film by Victor Dueñas, Bibi stars J.M. Longoria, Omar Leyva and Oscar nominee Adriana Barraza.

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Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

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Class Discussion Norms: For a community of inquiry, perspective taking, & empathy - Re-imagining Migration

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Building a community of inquiry, perspective taking, & empathy

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Resources that include a digital short on the topic of anti-racism featuring everyone’s favorite aardvark, Arthur.

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Software/Apps | Clothing/Apparel | Books/Video | Miscellaneous | Suggest a Pick

Resources to discuss Racism

Arthur on Racism

Arthur, Buster, and Mrs. MacGrady talk about ways we can all fight racism and stand up for what's right.

Children's Media Association

Resources About Racism and Bias for the Children's Media Community

ACT.TV Animated Explainers

Animated videos that explain difficult topics

Kevin and Jamal

Systemic racism explained by Kevin and Jamal animated video

Racism and Police Violence

Racist roots of police violence against Black people explained in animated video

Common Sense Media Videos

Parents: It's Time to Talk about Race

NMAAHC: Let's Talk About Race

The Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture online portal designed to help individuals, families, and communities talk about racism, racial identity and the way these forces shape every aspect of society, from the economy and politics to the broader American culture.

Social Justice Books.org

Carefully selected lists of books for children and educators, book reviews, and articles on social justice, multicultural children's literature.

Software/Apps

Ubongo Kids

Africa's leading producer of edutainment content for children ages 3 - 14 on holistic early childhood education to STEM skills.

Smart Buddies

Teaches coding by featuring a diverse set of characters on self-balancing, programmable scooters.

NMAAHC Stories

The Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) mobile app features highlighted objects from collections, multimedia, and augmented reality.

Quackenworth

Quackenworth is an educational media company that specializes in mobile games and educational web products.

Genii Games

Genii Games is a collection of interactive mobile apps and web videos for kids to learn about African Culture through games, animation, languages, folktales, and digital storytelling.

Science Underground

Science Underground is a two-minute podcast hosted by TED speaker and scientist Ainissa Ramirez. The show explores a range of topics-some that are pulled right from the headlines, others are topics you've been wanting to know.

Crazy Aunt Lindsey's Fab Lab

This site is all about connecting the dots between the magic of everyday life to the scientific process. The videos, projects, and resources you find here brings science to life through beautiful, useful DIY projects.

Clothing/Apparel

Blended Designs

Backpacks, apparel, and gear designed to inspire children of color.

Hero Heads

Hero Heads is a clothing brand with unique, hand-drawn designs of inspirational people, allowing you to 'wear your heart on your tee'. We contribute 10% of profits to a charity related to the hero's cause. In order to create high quality clothing with artistic designs that last, we screen print with the best inks on high-end fabric that is super comfortable, resilient, and produced responsibly.

African American Heritage Store

Celebrate the history, influence, and accomplishments of the African American community through our carefully selected products.

Books/Video

Cocoa Girl Magazine

United Kingdom's first magazine for girls of color ages 6-13.

Sometimes We Do (MathTalk)

Picture book featuring early math concepts.

Look, Listen, and Learn

Early learning educational program that showcases Black and Indigenous people and people of color learning, teaching, and exploring.

Bino and Fino

Made in Nigeria, The Bino and Fino Show is about a brother and sister who live in a modern day African city.

Lee & Low Multicultural Books

LEE & LOW BOOKS is the largest multicultural children's book publisher in the country; publishing books about everyone for everyone. They are also one of the few minority-owned publishing companies in the United States, with books for children from pre-K to 12th grade.

Coretta Scott King Award Winners

Books by outstanding African American authors and illustrators that focus on the African American experience for youth audiences.

Sweet Blackberry

The mission of Sweet Blackberry is to bring little known stories of African American achievement to children everywhere.

The HistoryMakers

The HistoryMakers is the single largest archival collection of its kind in the world designed to promote and celebrate the successes and to document movements, events and organizations that are important to the African American community and to American society.

Miscellaneous

Puzzle Huddle

Puzzles and products that affirm and inspire diverse children.

Black Illustrations

Series of FREE digital designs of black people for your next online project. Free for commercial and personal use.

Natural Hair Girls

Natural Hair Girls is an online store that sells ethnic dolls with customized hairstyles.

Literary Safari

Literary Safari develops, produces, and publishes inclusive children's media rooted in an understanding of learning science, educational standards, narrative design, and good, old-fashioned fun!

WideOpen School

Powered by Common Sense Media, free resources from leading education organizations to help students learn.

African Ancestry.com

African Ancestry is the world leader in tracing maternal and paternal lineages of African descent. With the industry's largest and most comprehensive database of over 25,000 indigenous African samples, African Ancestry determines specific countries, and more often than not, specific ethnic groups of origin with the highest level of detail, accuracy and confidence.
Suggest a Pick

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Software/Apps | Clothing/Apparel | Books/Video | Miscellaneous | Suggest a Pick Arthur, Buster, and Mrs. MacGrady talk about ways we can all fight racism and stand up for what's right.

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Strategies for Building an Inclusive Bookshelf (Recorded Webinar)

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One question that many school leaders and practitioners are grappling with is how they can best support Black students. A litany of data has highlighted disparate outcomes for them at the K-12 level. We must do better. Teachers can and must be part of efforts to improve classrooms for Black students. Teachers who make a difference are able to move beyond traditional classroom practices to ensure that they feel comfortable and safe in classrooms.

As a former classroom teacher and student, I can attest to the need for extra attention and care to help Black students feel comfortable in historically excluded spaces. Schools explicitly exclude them by way of suspensions and implicitly exclude them through curriculum, culture, and policy. Black students are not the only ones who suffer racial discrimination in school, but in light of the recent protest for Black liberation across the country, it is imperative that Black students receive particular emphasis and focus. School practices must account for their experiences and needs. When we find ways to demonstrate care for Black students, our empathic actions benefit all students.

Here are five suggestions for how we can show care for our Black students:

1. Make sure curricular materials are inclusive and positively represent all Black folks.

We must consider Black students when creating curriculum to ensure instructional materials are inclusive of all Black life. By "all," I mean men, women, LGBTQ+, mixed-raced folks, and those with disabilities. It is not enough to discuss Black people briefly during thematic units on marginalized groups. Their historical exclusion in instructional materials contributes to the lack of care Black students experience in school. Without curricular representation, the contributions of Black innovators, the examples of Black excellence, the struggle for Black liberation, and the diversity within Blackness are absent from curricular materials. Black people must be equally represented across all disciplines to ensure that Black students feel included in the learning environment. As educators, we should ask ourselves:

*Are any of my books written by Black authors?
*Do my books and curriculum materials illustrate the diversity that exists within the Black community?

2. Seek feedback from Black students.

It is impossible for any teacher, regardless of race, to understand the experiences of Black students in our classes, unless they ask their Black students directly. As teachers, we rarely seek feedback from our students, and this prevents us from understanding how Black students may be experiencing our class. Black people experience this country in unique ways based on structural disadvantages and systemic racism. Unfortunately, the experiences in classrooms are no different. It is important to listen to the voices of Black students because they are often those who suffer most in the learning environment.

To show care for them we must seek answers to questions such as:

*What does it feel like to be a Black student in my classroom or in this school?
*Do Black students feel safe in my classroom?
*How can I help Black students experience success in my classroom?

3. Educate ourselves and our students on the nature of racism.

It is difficult for anyone to combat racism, if they do not understand it. Racism is a complex, multifaceted issue that has permeated American society for centuries. Racism is so deeply embedded in American culture that it often goes ignored by those not directly affected. To psychologically and emotionally protect Black students in the classroom, we must develop our understanding of racism and the many ways it presents itself.

As teachers, we can learn more about racism by watching lectures on combating anti-Blackness, attending anti-racist workshops, and reading anti-racist literature. As we educate ourselves about racism, we must find ways to educate our students as well. We must engage in difficult conversations with our students that support the elimination of anti-Blackness in our classroom and school. And we should ask ourselves:

*Do my students understand the racial context of the text, lesson, and/or unit?
*Do my students see me discuss race- related issues?
*Do my students know how to interrupt racism by my example and by examples they've learned in class?

4. Believe Black students.

Many Black students go through school simply not being believed or constantly trying to prove their innocence. Blackness in school is often seen as a sign of guilt, which means that Black children are not often viewed as innocent in the same ways that other children are viewed. Far too often when Black students express themselves in school, they are ignored or not given the same attentiveness as their peers. Black students need teachers to believe them when they speak about how they experience schooling. The information students share should inform future policy around issues such as curriculum, discipline, and overall school climate. Black students need allies who will support them in times of turmoil and back them in conflicts with other adults on campus. Not only must we support them through conflicts, but we need to celebrate all of their successes and progress as well. Black students need to feel trusted, and teachers must show them that their thoughts, opinions, and experiences matter.

5. Build relationships with caregivers.

One of the best ways to show care for Black students is by building relationships with their families. As teachers, we must get to know Black caregivers in efforts to demonstrate our commitments to their children's success. In the book I recently co-authored, No More Teaching Without Positive Relationships, I wrote about the benefits that come along with teachers finding ways to build relationships and collaborate with caregivers. Caring for Black students requires an understanding of the way care is demonstrated in their home lives. It is important that Black students view their teachers and caregivers as members of the same team working hand in hand to ensure their success.

It is not enough for schools to release a formal statement about how they are supporting Black students. Black students should not have to wait until the murder of another unarmed Black person in order to feel like their educators care about Black life. As educators, we have a responsibility to take consistent actions and create environments that are safe for all Black students. What are we waiting for?

Jaleel R. Howard is a former classroom teacher and current doctoral student in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

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5 Ways to Show You Care for Your Black Students

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One question that many school leaders and practitioners are grappling with is how they can best support Black students. A litany of data has highlighted disparate outcomes for them at the K-12 level. We must do better. Teachers can and must be part of efforts to improve classrooms for Black students.

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by Doug Reeves

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By Douglas Reeves August 30, 2020
In my live and virtual travels around the country, one consistent concern I am hearing is the difficulty of establishing and maintaining emotional connections between teachers and students. We can't wait for schools to resume live instruction for this vital part of learning. Here are five ideas you can apply right now:

1). Old fashioned telephone calls. I've seen instances of students holding pictures of their teacher while they speak on the phone - one to one- with their teacher. It's only a few minutes, but just five or six calls a day do wonders for the students and, most especially, their teachers. They all crave human connection that doesn't happen in a group video call. This is an obligation that should fall not only on teachers, but every staff member - para-professionals, bus drivers, admins - anyone drawing a paycheck should be helping teachers make personal connections.

2). Sidewalk visits with safe distance - this requires some support, and perhaps some gas money, but while the weather is still good, it's great for teachers to be outside and great for students and families to see and talk with their teachers, if only at a distance.

3). At-school in-person meetings. You didn't say if your staff is working from school or from their home, but the advantage of being in school is that they are safe - the only person in the classroom, but they can also engage in PLCs with easy social distancing. Collaboration on units, common formative assessments, parent communication, etc. is essential, and there is nothing better than face to face, mask to mask, communication.

4). Focused assessments - I'm seeing teachers move away from traditional unit assessments and homework to highly focused checks for understanding done during the live video instruction - just two or three items, followed by 3-4 minutes of work, then random (equity stick) checks for understanding. 100% of students are engaged, and the teacher knows that the student - not their parents - is actually doing the work. This does require carving up traditional projects, assessments, and tests into very small increments, but I think that's just good teaching and precisely what we need now.

5). Intensive checks for disengaged students - we need to acknowledge that many students simply checked out during the past six months, and some remain checked out no matter how many computers ware distributed. Before we assume that they are just disengaged, let's take steps to find out why - again with personal calls. Perhaps they are bored, but perhaps they are caring for siblings while parents are at work in essential jobs. Perhaps they are sharing technology with other siblings. Perhaps - and I've already seen this - they are taking on manual labor or other jobs to help pay the rent. We can't come up with more innovative solutions to engagement if we do not first learn why students are disengaged.

We are supporting schools in key areas of focus (the most important standards and the highest leverage practices), equity, and relationships. Please call me directly at 781.710.9633 and share with me your greatest challenges as this new school year starts. Thanks!

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Five Ways to Support Emotional Connections Between Students and Teachers - Creative Leadership Solutions

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Five Ways to Support Emotional Connections Between Students and Teachers By Douglas Reeves August 30, 2020 In my live and virtual travels around the country, one consistent concern I am hearing is the difficulty of establishing and maintaining emotional connections between teache

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Reading list by Ryan Rideau
Bettina Love writes, "Antiracist teaching is not just about acknowledging that racism exists, but consciously committing to the struggle of fighting for racial justice" (p. 54, 2019). This is a lifetime commitment. Antiracist teaching is about fighting for more equitable and just institutions, and policies that support the thriving of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color). Below is a list of resources to support you as you begin this work. While not exclusively, this lists intentionally centers the knowledge and voices of BIPOC, most prominently women of color. It does not include many popularly referenced titles featured on many recent anti-racism reading lists in attempt to provide different voices and perspectives. These readings may be difficult for some. To quote, Lori Patton Davis and Chayla Haynes Davison (2020), "If you experience resistance, acknowledge it and keep reading." The list begins with readings about whiteness, before offering resources on teaching practices.

Examining and Interrogating Whiteness

For White faculty members, the first phase to fulfilling the promise of anti-racist teachings in your course is through the examining whiteness, White identity and White supremacy and the way it impacts your everyday life.

Anderson, C. (2016). White rage: The unspoken truth of our racial divide. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.

Estrada, F., & Matthews, G. (2016). Perceived culpability in critical multicultural education: Understanding and responding to race informed guilt and shame to further learning outcomes among White American college students. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 28(3), 314-325.

Haynes, C & Bazner, K.J. (2019). A message for faculty from the present-day movement for black lives. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education,32:9,1146-1161.

Leonardo, Z. (2004). The color of supremacy: Beyond the discourse of 'white privilege'. Educational philosophy and theory, 36(2), 137-152.

Matias, C. E. (2016). Feeling white: Whiteness, emotionality, and education. Brill Sense.

Patton, L.D. & Haynes, C. (2020). Dear White People: Reimagining Whiteness In the Struggle for Racial Equity, Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 52:2, 41-45.

Young, D. (2020, July 10). Yeah, let's not talk about race. The New York Times.

Teaching Practices

The sources here serve as an introductory guide about practices to create an anti-racist classroom. This begins with decolonizing your curriculum, disrupting white supremacy, and centering BIPOC in your courses. These resources discuss ways to do this.

DeChavez, Y. (2018, October 8). It's time to decolonize that syllabus. The Los Angeles Times

Haynes, C. (2017). Dismantling the White supremacy embedded in our classrooms: White faculty in pursuit of more equitable educational outcomes. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 29(1), 87-107.

Hooks, B. (2003). Teaching community: A pedagogy of hope (Vol. 36). Psychology Press.

Hooks, B. (2014). Teaching to transgress. Routledge.

Jett, C.C. (2013). Culturally responsive collegiate mathematics education: Implications for African-American students. Interdisciplinary Journal of Teaching and Learning, 3, 102-116.

Kishimoto, K. (2018) Anti-racist pedagogy: from faculty's self-reflection to organizing within and beyond the classroom, Race Ethnicity and Education, 21:4, 540-554.

Kleinrock, E. (2020, June 30). Anti-racist work in schools: Are you in it for the long haul? Teaching Tolerance

Laboiron, M. (2019, August 10). Decolonizing your syllabus? You might have missed some steps

Love, B. L. (2019). We want to do more than survive: Abolitionist teaching and the pursuit of educational freedom. Beacon Press.

McKamey, P. (2020, June 17). What anti-racist teachers do differently. The Atlantic

McMurtrie, B. (2020, July 2). Interrogating your discipline, and other ways into anti-racist teaching. The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Warren-Grace, A. (2019, August). Show don't tell: Decolonize your classroom, syllabus, rules, and practices. Liberated Genius Blog.

Other Resources

SEE ALSO
Integrating Anti-Racist Teaching Practices into Your Course

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Reading list by Ryan Rideau Bettina Love writes, "Antiracist teaching is not just about acknowledging that racism exists, but consciously committing to the struggle of fighting for racial justice" (p. 54, 2019). This is a lifetime commitment. Antiracist teaching is about fighting for more equitable and just institutions, and policies that support the thriving of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color).

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A Guide For Selecting Anti Racist Books

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Guide for Selecting Anti-Bias Children's Books Freedom Reads: Anti-Bias Book Talk Series Social Justice Books Featured on CNN Sesame Street Town Hall We Are Kid Lit Collective 2020 Summer Reading List Hair Representation in Children's Literature Diversity in Children's Books Graphic Distribution Sense of an Ending: Picture Books as an Entry to Activism The Struggle [...]

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Teaching Ideas for  Middle and High School Students

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Teaching current events can be challenging: the news cycle moves quickly, the issues can spark strong feelings, and classroom time is tight. Yet engaging with current events is an essential part of educating young people to be informed and humane participants in a democracy.

Use our resources to foster thoughtful classroom conversations and build your students' capacities for critical thinking, emotional engagement, ethical reflection, and civic agency.

We will be releasing new Teaching Ideas and current events resources approximately every two weeks during the 2020-2021 school year. Sign up below to receive our Teaching Ideas.

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Teaching With Current Events in Your Classroom

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Teaching current events can be challenging: the news cycle moves quickly, the issues can spark strong feelings, and classroom time is tight. Yet engaging with current events is an essential part of educating young people to be informed and humane participants in a democracy.

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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Five You Should Know: African American Suffragists

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The women's suffrage movement had many heroines who bravely fought for the rights of women in the United States. Here are the stories of five African American suffragists who helped women in America secure the right to vote. The crowning glory of American citizenship is that it may be shared equally by people of every nationality, complexion, and sex.

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The coronavirus pandemic is forcing educators to adapt to unprecedented shifts in how we interact with students, all while the United States continues to grapple with ongoing issues around race, policing, voting rights, and more. Students develop knowledge, skills, and informed civic responsibility when they are invited into conversations that are emotionally engaging, intellectually challenging, and relevant to their own lives. Engaging in civil discourse means bringing your mind, heart, and conscience to reflective conversations on topics that matter, in ways that allow you to extend your understanding in dialogue with others. It does not mean prioritizing politeness or comfort over getting to the heart of the matter.

This PDF resource was originally published in 2016 under the title Fostering Civil Discourse: A Guide for Classroom Conversations. Read our blog post to learn more about why we decided to update this guide in 2020.

The ideas and tools in this updated version of Fostering Civil Discourse: How Do We Talk About Issues That Matter? are designed to help you prepare your students to engage in civil discourse, whether you are teaching in-person, remotely, or transitioning between the two.

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Fostering Civil Discourse: How Do We Talk About Issues That Matter?

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The coronavirus pandemic is forcing educators to adapt to unprecedented shifts in how we interact with students, all while the United States continues to grapple with ongoing issues around race, policing, voting rights, and more. Students develop knowledge, skills, and informed civic responsibility when they are invited into conversations that are emotionally engaging, intellectually challenging, and relevant to their own lives.

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28 MORE Black Picture Books That Aren’t About Boycotts, Buses or Basketball (Vol. 3)

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Objectives

This lesson will explore students' voices from multiple perspectives around Covid-19 and Black Lives Matter. The foundation of the activity is excerpts from statements that elementary students have shared during listening circles we have facilitated. It will also create an opportunity for your students to reflect on their own experiences and share them. (See our related lesson for students grades 6-12.)

You might consider these guidelines for discussing difficult issues before you facilitate this session.

New York BLM Protest by Carla Ann Cote

Gathering: Mindfulness Moment

Ask students to close their eyes and take four deep breaths in and out to prepare for the content of the lesson.

Introduction & Community Agreements

Share a community agreement or practice that is important to consider while discussing difficult issues. (This might be listening carefully while others are speaking or not sharing what is said here with others, etc.)

Share with students:

We have gone through a lot together, from the impact of Covid-19 on our community to the protests against police brutality and racial injustice. After the death of George Floyd, an African American man who was killed while in police custody, people were tired of seeing this type of injustice happen too many times. As a response they have gone into the streets to demand justice.

In this lesson we will explore what we know about what's happening, the feelings that have come up in each one of us, and what we can do about it.

We are going to use the circle process to give you a chance to listen to other students' voices around Covid-19, police brutality, and racial injustice. We will talk about how we have been affected by these events and how to help each other as we put the world back together.

Community agreements for listening circles include:

Before you open up the topic, review your community agreements or "community practices" (that is, ways that we want to treat each other in this and other gatherings). These might include:

It's okay to pass if you need more time to think or would rather not respond.

Speak from your own point of view.

Be your own barometer - share as much as you feel comfortable sharing.

Confidentiality is important. We need to agree that what we share among ourselves will stay private.

Listening

Invite each person in turn to share what they are thinking and feeling right now about what is going on in the world.

Listening to Student Voices

We will now hear the voices of students taking part in conversations and listening circles at elementary school P.S. 6X Bronx and P.S. 224 Brooklyn. We thank them for the depth of the conversation and their wisdom.

You, or the student will read the questions and excerpts below and then use the reflection questions to process the excerpts.

1. I am scared, I haven't got Covid-19 yet, but I live in a building with lots of people and I am fearful that I might get the virus.

2. With all of the things going on the world now from Covid-19 to the police brutality protests, people on the frontline are trying to work towards more justice in our world, but at the same time there is the risk of Covid-19. We all need to find ways to support one another and fight against injustice, providing people with food who need it, or to be showing up to protests.

3. There was this guy named George Floyd and as everyone has heard he has died because the police put his knee on his neck and he shouldn't have, and everyone said he can't breathe, he can't breathe and then the police officer still did not take his knee off George Floyd. Next thing you know he has died." Now the police officers are in jail.

4. It is a constitutional right and they are exercising their right because they are angry about the inequality because the cops aren't being equal, and they are treating Black people wrong.

Reflection Questions

When it comes to Covid-19, the police brutality protests, or George Floyd, what have you heard?

What questions do you have, or want to learn more about?

1. I want to be able to be outside with my friends, I miss seeing my friends.

2. I really miss my grandmother; I haven't seen her for a long time.

3. I feel scared that I might be killed for the color of my skin, this world is unfair, I hope we can live equally to white people.

4. I wish to live in a world where everyone is treated equally, and where police don't hurt our people.

5. My family is stressed because my dad is an essential worker because every day we are scared that he might come home with something. He has to be out there in the public working.

Reflection Questions

Considering the quotes above and all that is going in the world today, describe how these students are feeling.
Reflection Questions

Have the students look at the quotes. Then ask them to name some of the strategies that these students used to feel better.

Now ask the students to name some strategies they themselves use to feel better when they are worried, scared, or angry.

Reflection Questions

Have the students look at quotes, and then name some of the strategies that these students used to stay strong during time.

Then ask students to share what they themselves do to stay positive and strong during challenging times?

1. There was a poor lady across the street, and she wasn't able to go out, so me and mom bought food in order for her to have food to eat. It felt really good to do that for her.

2. I called an old friend from school to see how he was doing and it turns out it was his birthday a couple of days ago and since his family was spending money on food, they couldn't get him a present, so me and my family sent him some birthday presents over. When I delivered it, he texted me back. He was like OMG thanks so much. I felt really good about it because he didn't get any presents and he deserves that.

Reflection Questions

What do you think about the ideas of these students?

What have you done, or seen other people doing during these times to make things even better?

Name some things that you can do during these times, to make your community an even better place?

Do you you think that the students gave good advice to adults on how to deal with these challenging times? Why or not?

Is there any additional advice you would give to an adult about how to deal with these challenging times?

Reflect for a moment on the hopes and dreams of these students. What are your hopes and dreams?

Evaluation

What did it feel like to listen to other students' voices about what is happening in the world?

What is one step that you can take toward making that hope or dream a reality?

Additional Activities

Provide students with the opportunity to use different modalities to share their own story about their experience during the Covid-19 quarantine, or their response to police brutality, racial injustice, or the protests. For example, students could make a video, write a poem, make a piece of art, or create a song. Then invite students to share their creations with classmates.

Listening Circle
Facilitate a listening circle with your students about Covid-19 and the protests against racism and for racial justice.

Here are some relevant prompts:

When it comes to Covid-19, the protests, or George Floyd, what is happening? What have you heard, or what have you seen? What do you know?

How does it make you feel?

When you have these strong feelings, what are some things you can do at your age to make yourself feel better? What else can you do to make yourself feel better when these feelings come up?

How do you stay strong during these challenging times?

What have you, or other people been doing to make it even better?

What is one piece of advice that the adults would give the students and one piece of advice that the students would give to adults about how to deal with these challenging times?

What are your hopes and dreams around these issues, and what actions can you take to contribute to making them a reality?

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Student Voices on Covid and Black Lives Matter

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This lesson will explore students' voices from multiple perspectives around Covid-19 and Black Lives Matter. The foundation of the activity is excerpts from statements that elementary students have shared during listening circles we have facilitated. It will also create an opportunity for your students to reflect on their own experiences and share them.

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For Trinity Thompson, the decision of whether or not to address high-profile killings of black people with her second-graders was a no-brainer. She was teaching in Harlem soon after Eric Garner was killed by a police officer in a nearby New York City borough.

"How do I respond to this?" Thompson recalls asking herself. "And then from there, it was like, How do I respond to this- again?" Each time news reports covered another black person dying at the hands of police, her students-most of whom were black-asked more and more difficult questions. A career-long social justice educator, Thompson was committed to a response that focused not only on the problem, but also on how people were resisting it and seeking solutions.

And that meant teaching second-graders about Black Lives Matter (BLM).

She knew it was risky. When the Black Lives Matter movement comes up in conversation, it is often characterized in one of two ways: as the work of strategic activists drawing attention to and combating issues that harm black people, black communities and humanity at large, or as a movement marked by violent outbursts and driven by an exclusionary, racist, anti-police agenda.

This split gives some educators pause when it comes to teaching about BLM. Others embrace the topic, recognizing it as an opportunity to teach about collective action and to link past racial justice movements to the present. But all educators, by virtue of the fact that their students have either direct or mediated exposure to Black Lives Matter, should know the basic facts about the movement's central beliefs and practices.

Not all of us are like Thompson; the students who sit in front of us daily are not always directly affected by the killing of unarmed black people or any of the other injustices that plague our nation. But as teachers who function as caretakers, truth-seekers and advocates of justice, we can acknowledge how the threat of justice in one community is, to borrow from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a threat to justice in every community. We have a civic responsibility to be educated about Black Lives Matter and, as we learn, we must teach.

The Beginning and the Hashtag

The Black Lives Matter movement began with a commitment to ending police brutality and state-sanctioned violence and injustice against black people. It is also dedicated to affirming black people's "contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression," according to its founders. The movement was started by three black women-Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi-following the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman, a Florida man who had shot and killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, the preceding year. Garza took to social media the night of that acquittal, stating in part, "Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter." A year later, Michael Brown, another unarmed black teenager, was shot and killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri; the officer was not indicted. Shortly thereafter, the internet was filled with messages of outcry and support that included #BlackLivesMatter.

Since the Ferguson action in 2014, BLM has taken shape as a multichapter national organization; 37 chapters currently operate in the United States, one in Canada. Many BLM chapters and other organizations that embrace the movement mobilize people to demonstrate in communities where police shootings have occurred and to convene at large gatherings-such as political rallies-to bring awareness to police brutality. The website of the original group, blacklivesmatter.com, also lists other types of local and national events, such as teach-ins, panels and Twitter chats, and encourages organizers to submit their own events.

In an October 2016 interview with TEDWomen, Cullors explained what the movement means to her.

"Black Lives Matter is our call to action. It is a tool to a reimagined world where black people are free to exist, free to live. It is a tool for our allies to show up differently for us," she said. "I grew up in a neighborhood that was heavily policed. I witnessed my brothers and my siblings continuously stopped and frisked by law enforcement. I remember my home being raided. And one of the questions, as a child, I had was why? Why us? Black Lives Matter offers answers to the why."

Myths and Criticisms

People who don't follow Black Lives Matter usually become aware of the movement when news sites report on BLM actions or protests. What many people don't realize is that the leadership also embraces policy change and legislation as necessary elements to end oppression of black people-and that the work and the leadership are not limited to the Black Lives Matter network.

One common misconception about the BLM movement is that it is leaderless. But there isn't one leader; there are many. "BLM is composed of many local leaders and many local organizations including Black Youth Project 100, the Dream Defenders, the Organization for Black Struggle, Hands Up United, Millennial Activists United, and the Black Lives Matter national network," organizers explain on the website. "We demonstrate through this model that the movement is bigger than any one person."

Another misconception is that the movement is solely a mechanism for protest. In fact, the many people and organizations with agendas and goals that overlap and align with BLM have produced detailed policy demands and proposals for institutional reforms. Campaign Zero, for example, outlines a list of policy proposals largely focused on ending police brutality. It is a strategy for addressing one of the most visible, damaging and deadly symptoms of systemic racism. The Movement for Black Lives, a collective of more than 50 organizations, advances a platform covering six areas of domestic-policy reform, including economic justice and investment in equitable education and health care instead of criminalization and incarceration.

Many people, however, view the BLM movement as violent, seeking to "sow a racial divide" and intent on interrupting the work of police officers commissioned to protect and serve the public. For example, Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, said in a television interview that the movement is "inherently racist" and "divides us." He further stated, "They don't mean 'black lives matter'; they mean 'let's agitate against the police matters.'"

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Why Teaching Black Lives Matter Matters | Part I

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For Trinity Thompson, the decision of whether or not to address high-profile killings of black people with her second-graders was a no-brainer. She was teaching in Harlem soon after Eric Garner was killed by a police officer in a nearby New York City borough. "How do I respond to this?"

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Teaching About Race, Racism and Police Violence

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In 2014, the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Eric Garner in New York City, Tamir Rice in Cleveland and too many others caused waves of nationwide protest and appeals for stronger protections against police brutality. These events—along with the lack of accountability for the police officers wh…

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Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

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The Zinn Project offers exciting ideas and resources for encouraging diverse perspectives in the classroom  

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The Zinn Project offers exciting ideas and resources for encouraging diverse perspectives in the classroom  

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Reminder: Teaching Materials for Educators and Families About the Pandemic

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New Lesson: Coronavirus Tribunal View as Webpage Teaching About the Pandemic Credit: Peter Kneffel/dpa via AP. We are becoming new teachers, new teacher educators, new parents. ﻿The pandemic has deman

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Lessons, Articles, Recommended Books, Films, and more

The Civil Rights Movement is celebrated in our national narrative as a people's struggle for social justice. However, the powerful stories of everyday people organizing and working together for social change are lost in the teaching of a few major heroes and dates. Our book Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching and companion website emphasize the power of people through a diversity of stories, perspectives, essays, photographs, graphics, interviews, and interactive and interdisciplinary lessons.

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Educator Resources - Teaching for Change

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Lessons, Articles, Recommended Books, Films, and more The Civil Rights Movement is celebrated in our national narrative as a people's struggle for social justice. However, the powerful stories of everyday people organizing and working together for social change are lost in the teaching of a few major heroes and dates.

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Culturally Responsive Instruction

Culturally responsive teaching is a research-based approach that "invites students to bring their expertise to the table" (Fleming, 2019) by identifying and harnessing the assets of students who have historically been underserved in schools. Here are some resources providing an overview to CRT.

Overviews: Research & Resource Guides

Overviews: Articles, Blogs, and Tools

Resources from Zaretta Hammond

Books

Videos and Podcasts

Key Concepts

Funds of Knowledge

Cultural Orientation: Collective vs. Individual

Classroom Resources

Culturally Responsive Books

Academic Language & Literacy

Inquiry and Project-Based Learning (PBL)

Making Local Connections

Student Populations: Resource Collections

American Indian/Alaska Native Students

English Language Learners (ELLs)

Students with Special Needs

Equity Issues

Bias

Race

Culturally Responsive Family Engagement

References

Fleming, J. Personal communication. October 15, 2019.

Fleming, J., et al. (2015). More Mirrors in the Classroom: Using Urban Children's Literature to Increase Literacy. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Hamayan, E., et al. (2013.) Special Education Considerations for English Language Learners. Delivering a Continuum of Services. Philadelphia: Caslon Publishing.

Hammond, Z. (2015). Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Rothstein-Fisch, C. and Trumbull, E. (2008). Managing Diverse Classrooms: How to Build on Students' Cultural Strengths. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Vigil, Karla. Personal communication. November 1, 2019.

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Culturally Responsive Instruction: Resource List

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Culturally responsive teaching is a research-based approach that "invites students to bring their expertise to the table" (Fleming, 2019) by identifying and harnessing the assets of students who have historically been underserved in schools. Here are some resources providing an overview to CRT. Resources from Zaretta Hammond Equity Issues Bias Race Fleming, J.

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Listen to ‘1619,’ a Podcast From The New York Times (Published 2020)

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An audio series on how slavery has transformed America, connecting past and present through the oldest form of storytelling.

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Articles about teacher self-care, online engagement strategies & more

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The thought ended almost before it started: "This is so overwhelming." It was all one teacher managed to type before she stopped short, vexed into silence, perhaps, by the sheer size of the problem. In the pregnant pause that followed, undoubtedly, every teacher tracking the unspooling thread-about the dizzying, rapidly escalating viral crisis that was closing schools across the country-recognized the chasm they were all facing as well, and took a deep breath.

In the next few hours, over 500 teachers joined two Facebook conversations about teaching during the coronavirus pandemic, spilling out their concerns and anxieties: What will we do if the schools close for months? How can I shift to online learning if we're closing tomorrow, or even in a few hours? How will special education students be cared for, and IEPs administered? What about children who have no internet access, or who will be required, as Keith Schoch thoughtfully noted, to "become de facto babysitters" for their brothers and sisters. "There is no digital divide, but there is a digital abyss, and America's rural poor are living at the bottom of it," said Anne Larsen, with devastating concision. What if, in the end, the school systems decide that online learning is working just fine, and never reopen?

The panic was all perfectly understandable.

But there were plenty of teachers in the mix who had weeks of crisis experience under their belts by that time-several in Hong Kong and Italy and the state of Washington, for example-and others who had long careers in online and distance learning. In the end, too, there were many fantastic, highly creative teachers providing strategies as fast as the obstacles appeared.

At the highest level, a shift in mindset would be required-even the most optimistic educators conceded the point. There are plenty of strategies and tactics we're covering at Edutopia-and we'll continue to-but here are the crucial emotional and psychological scaffolds that our audience agreed would be needed to teach in this new paradigm.

Expect Trial... and Plenty of Error

Start by being reasonable with yourself. It is, in fact, impossible to shift to distance learning overnight without lots of trial and error. Expect it, plan for it, and do your best to make peace with it.

"I can tell you, now that we're in week 7 of online learning, that much of what you will do will be trial and error," wrote Stacy Rausch Keevan, who was teaching in Hong Kong. "Don't stress about that-it won't do you any good. For my middle school English and humanities classes, I'm offering the same lessons I would normally do live, but in smaller doses."

Acknowledge the Extraordinary

Reset your baseline. We're all operating in the shadow of a global pandemic, and it is disorienting and limiting. Business as usual is unrealistic.

The real "points to consider" are not "the strict adherence to 'regular' conditions and norms," wrote Amy Rheault-Heafield in a reply to a question about how to structure distance learning like more typical learning experiences, "but how to provide a rich experience to all learners who are now without 'traditional' teachers standing beside them in classes."

So while you should try to provide "meaningful activities," cautioned elementary teacher John Thomas, "we should remember that on short notice-and because many of us have limited PD utilizing these tools-we can't tackle everything immediately. In other words, we should give ourselves the time and the permission to figure this out."

Reduce the Workload (for Yourself and Your Students)

If your district allows it, you should plan to do less. Students won't be able to work as productively, anyway-so if you can't scale back you'll be sending them work they cannot do-and your own life and family need added care.

"Feedback from students and families over the last 10 days in Italy is 'less is more,'" commented Jo Gillespie. "Consider that parents are trying to work from home, and siblings are vying for computer and Wi-Fi time. Try Google quizzes using Forms, a reading log, some short live sessions with teachers and classmates, maybe vocabulary extension, maths and geometry problems (but not too many). And that's probably enough."

And Keevan, the teacher in Hong Kong with weeks of experience, confirmed that time and distance play funny games during a crisis: "What would normally take you one class period to teach in the classroom will probably take you twice as long."

No Person Is an Island

Humans are social animals. Working from home, or worse, from quarantine, is isolating and often depressing for both teachers and students.

Make a concerted effort to speak to other colleagues and trusted professionals to provide emotional and psychological context to your work. Teaching at this moment is extraordinarily hard, and you'll need the virtual company of people who are experiencing what you are.

And don't forget to "reach out to students as often as you can," said Keevan, who still teaches classes live despite a (slightly inconvenient!) 13-hour time difference. Or you can facilitate peer-to-peer communication. John Thomas assigns pen pals in his first- and second-grade classes, so that kids with no internet can feel like they belong.

Everyone Thinks They Can't-Before They Can

Some degree of pessimism and self-doubt comes with the territory. Teachers in the Facebook thread advised more perspective-taking and being more patient with yourself: You know how to teach, and you will figure this out in time.

"We are in week 7 and I have three children of my own at home," wrote Salecia Host, a teacher in Tianjin, China, reflecting on the arc of her emotional response to the crisis. "Just take it day by day. It gets less overwhelming and more routine."

Try to remain calm-though you'll have a few moments where that goes out the window-and keep plugging away: "Being open-minded and flexible is key," said Kaz Wilson, who also works in China. "Everyone thinks you can't until you pause, talk it out with folks who are doing it, and know that you'll get through it."

Mind the Gap

Your work will be hard, but there are students facing more severe challenges. Students with no internet or no computer will need support, as will those with learning differences or other circumstances that make distance learning especially difficult. Supporting these students was on almost everyone's mind-it came up dozens of times in the Facebook thread.

"I'm in Italy. Our schools closed a few weeks ago without any previous warning. We shifted to online immediately. It is hard and exhausting," admitted Eleonora Borromeo, before providing a ray of hope. "Equity is an issue. Assessment is an issue. But the students are doing their best and giving us the strength to go on."

Solutions from our audience of teachers focused on the old analog approaches: paper-and-pencil tasks, workbooks and activity packets that can be mailed home, and updating parents and students via phone calls daily.

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Teaching Through a Pandemic: A Mindset for This Moment

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The thought ended almost before it started: "This is so overwhelming." It was all one teacher managed to type before she stopped short, vexed into silence, perhaps, by the sheer size of the problem.

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First year teachers share their experiences during the Covid pandemic

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First year teachers share their experiences during the Covid pandemic

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As Frazier, a fourth grade teacher in Hinesville, Ga., describes, "I will always remember my first year by the pandemic ... knowing that COVID really just kind of came in and cut the school year almost in half. But I'll also remember we got through it."

Though their experiences are unique, nearly every educator interviewed for this story said the hardest part of remote learning was the loss of student connection and the way their relationships suffered. They worried about kids who were already struggling, and about those with unstable home environments. They missed the silly jokes and the sound students make when they finally understand a new concept.

Despite all that COVID-19 took away, many first-year teachers noted that they learned more about teaching and themselves than they likely would have in an average year. They gained confidence in their abilities. And they found it comforting that during remote learning, none of the teachers-not even the veterans-really knew what they were doing.

In reflecting on the last year, they also expressed concern about the upcoming one. What will it be like to do this all over again, but with students they don't know? How will they build trust and make the impact that drew them to this field?

The nine educators profiled below together represent seven U.S. states, from California and New Jersey to Oklahoma and Georgia. Some held live video calls with students during remote learning in the spring. Others haven't seen their students' faces since March. Some taught students who lost family members to COVID-19, or who nearly succumbed to it themselves. Others haven't really felt the effects of the virus yet.

Here are their stories-as told to EdSurge reporter Emily Tate, lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Jamie Wong Baesa

Seventh grade math Taught:
School: Lorena Middle School in Lorena, Texas
Students served: About 140
Roommates: One
Technology classes in teacher prep program: Four, including one graduate class
Prior experience with group video calls: Student teaching experience: Two semesters
Salary: $40,000 Started the year feeling: Excited, nervous, eager
Ended the year feeling: Relieved, uncertain, thankful
Just before spring break, shortly after all the students at Lorena Middle School had finished reading "Call of the Wild," they went on a field trip to see the film adaptation of the novel in theaters. Everything seemed completely normal, Jamie Wong Baesa recalls. She told students goodbye, expecting to see them after break in a week. That's when COVID-19 hit. Wong Baesa's district did not meet in person again after that, and there was no live instruction during remote learning. She didn't get to see or talk to her seventh graders after spring break. Instead, her middle school assigned a different subject for each day of the week. Wong Baesa, the only seventh-grade math teacher at her school, taught math to all seventh grade students on Mondays via pre-recorded video lessons, and spent the other days grading and planning for upcoming lessons.
" On a normal school day, in person, I teach six periods. So, during first period, if the lesson doesn't work, it becomes apparent very quickly. And then it's like, 'Well, scratch that. I'll reteach it tomorrow.' But with remote learning, it was a lot harder because there were maybe two or three lessons where it just flopped. Students were like, 'We don't get this at all.' All their work was wrong. I'm like, 'Where did I go wrong?' But by that point it was already too late, because e veryone had already seen the lesson and didn't get to try again till the next week.

One of the challenges was that I'd never taught this stuff before to a live audience, and now I had to figure out how to teach it to a remote audience. So that was definitely difficult-wrestling with how to make this accessible on technology in a way that [students] can understand. Because you miss the facial expressions, the ways they can instantaneously ask questions in real life.

It was hard not being able to check in and see how they're doing-learning from administrators, 'Oh, yeah, he's taking care of his four younger siblings and that's why he hasn't been doing his math homework,' or hearing from distressed parents, 'I'm so sorry, we haven't had electricity,' or 'We have five kids, and they're all sharing one computer.' And you're like, 'Oh, there's so much more to this school dynamic and day.' It helped me remember what's really important in this time.

I kept thinking about my students who had hard home lives or [those who] would get really frustrated when they do mathematics, and not being able to just pull them aside and say, 'Hey, you're doing great. You're going to be okay.' That was really hard.

And [at times] I was like, 'Oh my gosh, I'm totally failing as a teacher,' but having to reconcile that with, 'O.K., everybody's learning, we're doing the best we can do. At the end of the day, if the students don't know this one concept, they're probably going to be okay.'

I think, at the end of the year, remote learning helped confirm that I am in teaching for the relationships. Being able to see students learn and grow and develop has been so big for me. Especially because COVID took some of that away, it just made me realize that, without relationships, it would be a lot harder to believe deeply in what I do.

When I think about next year, if we don't have any sort of face-to-face component and we do have to go online,I don't know how that will work. Especially if it's with students who I've never met in the flesh before."

Hannah Long

T-K and kindergarten One, plus an adorable dog: Two semestersPassionate, driven, excited Age: Taught:
School: Two Rock Union Elementary in Petaluma, Calif.
Students served: Roommates:
Technology classes in my teacher prep program: Prior experience with group video calls Student teaching experience
Salary Started the year feeling:
Ended the year feeling: Devastated, incomplete, hopeless
After studying painting and printmaking in college, Hannah Long spent a few years as a full-time artist. While working at an art studio for young children, her boss said she was such a natural with kids and ought to become a teacher. And that's exactly what she did. The irony is that Long's own experience in school was not wholly positive. She was diagnosed with severe dyslexia and ADHD in third grade, and her elementary school years were shaped by those learning challenges. She describes herself as one of the kids who was "left behind" during the No Child Left Behind era. Today, she teaches "littles"-T-K and kindergarteners-at a rural elementary school in Northern California, about a 10-minute drive from where she grew up. When school closed during COVID-19, about half of her students lacked internet access or devices, so she used a combination of online learning and paper packets and sent each student handmade sensory bags-filled with items like glue, bubbles, Play-Doh and water beads. Given their young age, Long says it was difficult to teach 4- and 5-year-olds virtually and keep everyone on track.
"COVID-19 happened and we were told we all had to have websites, so we made websites. Then we were told we were using Google Classroom [instead], so we scrapped the websites and made a Google Classroom. And then I was told that six of my kids didn't have internet or devices. It was probably more like 10 kids that either didn't have a device, internet or accessibility-so almost half of my class. So then we were doing paper packets, as well as having all the information online.

[Live Zoom meetings] turned into more checking in and talking. They got over-very quickly-doing anything academic. ... I guess the buy-in wasn't there. When I teach in my classroom, I can give the kids games where they don't realize that they're learning, and they can be really enthusiastic. There was less of that.

At the beginning of quarantine, the idea that 'It's OK to not be OK' was floating around. And that's very untrue. When I had a Zoom call, there was no 'not being OK.' There was no texting their parents, like, 'Having a bad day. Your child doesn't get to learn today.'

So that was hard because it's like, I have a life. I have a mom with cancer. My wedding was being canceled. My fianc é is in a high-risk group. It was a scary time. And so to say, 'Everything is fine' and to reinforce, 'It's going to be OK' and to try to explain that to kids was difficult.

I could say, 'I'm feeling a little sad today' or 'Miss Hannah is having a hard day,' but I couldn't not show up for my kids. There was a day when I was crying and then my fianc é was like, 'What's wrong?' And I was like, 'This, this, this' and 'I'm scared.' And then I was like, 'Oh! I have a Zoom meeting' and wiped the tears off my eyes and [logged in and] was like, 'GOOD MOOORNING!' So that was really hard.

And this might be because I'm a novice teacher or just maybe my personality, but I have a hard time setting boundaries. I knew this was hard for parents. And I don't have kids. So when I was done Zooming at the end of the day, I could just go do whatever I wanted. I knew that parents were in a hard situation, and I just wanted to make sure that I was there for them as much as possible. I was getting messages late at night that they couldn't figure out something, so I would get on the computer with them and work it out for an hour.

I feel like there's the 26-year-old me and there's teacher Hannah. I'm Hannah, and then I'm Miss Hannah-the same person, but different. It was exhausting to be constantly 'on,' and to have to be OK [even] if you're having a hard day. But at the same time, the parent involvement and being able to see the parents get really involved with their kids was amazing.

Next year, I'll be a second-year teacher. And that's not what parents want. I mean, I wouldn't want to be on a pilot's first flight. So it's hard. I kind of had to win over my parents this year-and I did, a lot of them-but how do you do that if you're remote? And the beginning of T-K is like, 'This is what we do in class.' And it's repeating myself over and over again: 'We sit criss-cross applesauce with our hands in our laps ... our eyes are on me,' and then it's forming a classroom community. How do you create a strong classroom community and a bond with your kids over a computer? "

Geri Zamora
Everything was falling into place last summer for Geri Zamora, a first-generation college student who was born in Costa Rica and raised in Chicago. They had just landed a job teaching U.S. history at Chicago Public Schools and started their teaching career, a dream of Zamora's since childhood. Then came the Chicago teacher strike. At the time, Zamora thought the strike would be the biggest event of their first year as a teacher. But it proved to be the first of many major challenges-and losses-that they would weather.
"During the strike, the main concern was financial. [It was] my first year out of college, I had a whole bunch of loans, I had just gotten an apartment in Chicago with my best friend, and I didn't know when I'd go back to work. My mom was in no position to help me financially-I make more than she does. She's a single mom and all of my other family is in Costa Rica.

After the strike, unfortunately, at my school, we had some other tragedies due to gang violence and gun violence. And then there was a really terrible [car] accident where we lost two seniors. So we had a very heavy year already as a school. And then the shift to remote learning happened.

So first semester ... woof. But the second semester-that adjustment from not only figuring out what kind of teacher I wanted to be, but [also] how to translate that to a computer-was really difficult.

Burnout from remote learning was very real. I'm not sure what about my experience made it so bearable. I had a lot of community support. I have really lovely people in my life that were willing to hear me out, to listen to all my frustrations when I needed support. But some of my coworkers who are veteran teachers were having an incredibly difficult time through this. It just felt like I was seeing all these lovely plants wilt, and it killed me because, you know, I'm just a sapling. I want to grow up to be like them. And if I'm seeing them wilt, I mean, it's discouraging.

But we got to a point [with remote learning] where we were like, well, we're doing our best. And if students come, perfect. But it's a pandemic on their end, too. A lot of my kids were going through battles. These kids carry more on their shoulders than the average adult.

One of my students caught COVID ... and was on a ventilator-no health issues prior to this-and she almost died. She's fine now, but things like that were going on.

One thing we did to cope was on Friday nights we'd have movie nights, and we'd just watch something together [as a class]. Little virtual things, where I was connecting with my kids, made it at least a little bit more doable.

Despite all of the changes and turbulence, I really felt like I was where I belonged. It's now 100 percent ingrained that this was the job I was meant to do. If I could handle this, I can handle anything. And I think that goes for anyone else who is still really into this profession at the end of this.

This year in general was a big self-discovery year for me, not only as a teacher. My gender identity has always been something I kind of questioned. I identify as non-binary. I've told my coworkers. But I wasn't out to students. I wasn't out at school. I was really reflecting, especially during the pandemic, on how I want to present myself in the classroom and what my kids need.

At the beginning of the year, I was just Ms. Zamora. But after this year, I'm like, I don't really care what people think. And I have a lot of students that maybe could benefit from knowing that they have a queer teacher. So fall 2020, I'll make my debut as Mx. Zamora."

Mikia D. Frazier
Mikia Frazier comes from a family of educators, the most influential of whom is her mother, a high school principal. After dreaming of becoming a teacher for nearly 20 years, Frazier secured a job at a school that serves many military families, due to the district's proximity to the Fort Stewart Army base in eastern Georgia. While Frazier was teaching in the 2019-20 school year, she was also taking online courses to earn her master's degree in elementary education, which she recently completed. Her district is one-to-one, and Frazier started using learning technologies with her students in the first semester, but that still didn't prepare them-or her-for full-time remote learning in the spring.
"My first year was definitely a whirlwind. But I loved every minute of it.

I absolutely loved my students. I loved going to work every day. ... Then of course, in the middle of the school year, out of literally nowhere, there's a pandemic, and no one really knows what to do. One day it's, 'OK, well, we're going to take a week off from school and we'll be back next week.' And then 'next week' turned into two weeks, and then two weeks turned into next month and next month turned into the next semester.

It was kind of sad to see my first year of teaching cut short. But one thing I can say is that, as a first-year teacher, it taught me how to adapt. Education is always unpredictable, but we just kind of learned to roll with the punches that came with a pandemic. It was uncharted territory for everyone. No one really knew what to do. So I didn't feel like the first-year teacher who was just clueless. Everybody was in the same boat at that point.

Being that we're very technology-heavy in our classrooms, it was a more seamless transition to remote learning, because our students had knowledge of what Google Classroom is, what Canvas is and how they can use it at home. The difference was that Ms. Frazier was talking to you through a screen as opposed to sitting in front of you or standing next to your desk.

When we first went digital, I felt like I was trying to continue teaching as if I were still in the classroom. Next year, I want to focus more on having them engage with the content so that they're actually gathering their own thoughts and ideas. Of course, I'll still teach, but I want to give them more opportunities through digital platforms for them to engage with whatever concepts we're learning.

My students surprised me so much. They just kind of jumped right in and they were able to adapt to it. So that was something that brought me a little bit of peace, knowing that, 'OK, well, it's not all terrible. My kids are still working. They're still learning.'

The most difficult part of remote learning was not seeing my students. I'm really big on interaction, and seeing them every day really just changes the trajectory of any type of day I'm having. I'm a hugging kind of teacher. Anytime they see me, they want to hug and want to talk for hours. And just not being able to see my students in person, that was really difficult for me personally.

I definitely learned that my passion for teaching stems from seeing my students thrive. I always knew that teaching was my dream career; I always knew that it was what I was going to do. But after going through the strain of a first year such as this one, it really proved to me that this is where I am supposed to be. Because most people would experience this pandemic and they would say, 'Never again, there's definitely a new career for me somewhere.' But I feel like this gave me much more strength to know that, no matter what comes in the way of my students' learning, there's a way to break down that barrier, because COVID definitely became a major barrier to my students."

Lauren Bayersdorfer
By the first day of school, Lauren Bayersdorfer was already wondering if she'd gotten in over her head. She had been a math major in college and was excited to teach the subject, but the then-23-year-old didn't expect to be teaching AP Calculus to seniors. Nor did she expect to become the high school cheerleading coach, having never cheered a day in her life. In both cases, she had a lot to learn to be able to support her students in the ways they needed. Those commitments made for long days in the first semester. She describes grading papers while eating dinner and agonizing over lesson plans in the shower. Her district had been one-to-one with Chromebooks for several years when the pandemic hit, and she says teachers were given a lot of autonomy around how to conduct remote learning with their students. As a district located just across the Hudson River from New York City, many of Weehawken's students and staff were affected personally by the pandemic.
"[In the first semester, I wondered], 'Are the kids going to be able to tell that I have no clue what I'm doing?' That was my fear: 'Can they tell how anxious I am, and how intimidated I am?' With COVID, it was more like, 'How can I make sure I'm doing my job well, given the circumstances?'

I really struggled to get all of my students into a Google Meet with me. Even if I held it the same time and day every week, I would still only have five to 10 students come-if that. There's not really a way to force kids to come, which is the problem. You can say you'll count it as a grade. They don't care. You can say, 'We'll play hangman.' They don't care.

So they don't care to come, and that's fine. [But] I wish I could have all 18 of my kids on camera so we could do a little activity-not even a math activity, just a bonding activity. I wish we were able to do that.

There came a point where I just didn't stress it, because it's a tough time for everyone. As long as they were doing the work, that's what I cared about.

I definitely lost the connection with students. One of the reasons I enjoy my job is being able to see students. A teacher's favorite sound is, "Ohhhhhh!" Like, when they finally get something? But you don't get to see those moments [online]. You don't get to see them struggling with a problem. You don't get to see them interacting with their peers. Those little memories that I have from the year-those are all pre-March. You don't really have those with virtual teaching, so I definitely missed that.

Our school got very lenient toward the end of the year because you can't expect kids to learn quadratics when they're on their own, [especially] given the whole situation of COVID-19 and how especially impacted we were here [in New Jersey].

My biggest question is did they actually learn? With math, it's just so easy to cheat-because of all the apps, because of their peers, because they're so connected all the time. It was just an ongoing question I had in my mind: Are they actually learning? And to what extent did they learn? That was a big question mark that me and my entire department had because it's just so easy to get the answers elsewhere."

Kristen Stein
Kristen Stein started college pursuing a career in cybersecurity, but soon switched her major to education, realizing that teaching is where she was "most naturally gifted." After years of babysitting and working with children at her church, it felt like the right move. But the decision did not come without doubts. Stein's student teaching experience was difficult, and led her to question whether she was cut out for this work and could continue doing it long-term. Given the challenges that arose during her first year teaching-at a district a few miles from where she grew up, just outside of Oklahoma City-some of those same concerns and insecurities presented themselves again.
"It was really a struggle to drive to work every day and convince myself I have what it takes to do this job. [But] it was really exciting at the end of the day to drive home and say, 'That was worth doing.'

The first semester, I remember feeling a lot of stress and anxiety. There's so much more to teaching than writing lesson plans, standing up in front of kids and delivering those lessons. There's paperwork and emails and meetings and committees and entering grades. So I felt really blindsided by just the sheer amount of hours that it takes to really do this job well.

I felt like, 'Soon, they're going to realize I'm a sham and I'm not going to get asked back to teach here.' And that's so scary. I felt a lot of that pressure and a little bit of imposter syndrome, even though everyone was so welcoming and encouraging. But I put down a lot of those burdens the second semester. I worked less hours. I tried to have a better balance of work and life. And from January to spring break, I laughed with my kids a lot more, and I noticed the fun things that were happening in their friendships. Releasing some of the pressure to perform perfectly helped me to enjoy all the little things that I was missing in that first semester.

And then in the fourth quarter, everything was turned upside down. But when I think back on it, I enjoyed [remote learning] more than I expected. I found that it was such a great comfort that no one else knew what they were doing either. All of a sudden, I wasn't the only one that was out of my depths and confused and trying to keep up. And I felt more of a sense of, 'We're all trying to figure this out together,' rather than they all know what they're doing and I am the one that has no idea. So I felt more of a sense of belonging and community when everything was up in the air for , not just me.

My first year ... helped me to see that that's the nature of life. There are things that we're going through that are hard, and there are things that we're going through that give us a lot of joy, and those are happening at the same time. I had to choose, a lot of the time, which thing I was gonna focus on-and sometimes the struggle needed more of my attention. But at a certain point, I [could] choose to enjoy a relationship with one student that's going really well, even though I might be struggling in my relationship with another. My first year teaching taught me so much more about balance in life than any previous life stage."

Ranjini Nagaraj

Ninth grade science and 10th grade chemistry: Inspired, excited, nervous Age: Taught:
School: Polytechnic High School in Fort Worth, Texas via Teach for America
Students served: Roommates Technology classes in my teacher prep program: Prior experience with group video calls: Student teaching experience Salary: Started the year feeling
Ended the year feeling: Relieved, frustrated, reflective
Ranjini Nagaraj, a California native, is a Teach for America corps member serving in Texas while she applies to medical school. She teaches high school science and chemistry at a Title I school in Fort Worth with a student population that is about 70 percent Hispanic, including many English language learners. When Nagaraj came back from spring break in March, her school was scrambling to adjust to the new realities brought on by COVID-19. To complicate things further, the school had just suffered a malware attack-everything from copy machines to computers had stopped working, which caused delays in online learning among students and staff. In Nagaraj's telling, the incident cost her class about three weeks of instructional time.
"The first day of school, I was very nervous. I really had no idea what I was walking into. Being just out of college, living on my own basically for the first time, doing all of the adult things, along with being responsible for over 120 kids was very overwhelming.

The transition-like August, September and, honestly, most of October-was very difficult because I didn't have my lessons prepared more than two days in advance ... and being in the kind of school I was in, where there was so much emotional trauma and emotional baggage, was also a challenge.

The best part of it, though, was getting to know my kids, having authentic conversations with them and really building those relationships, which helped me so much when I started in January again after the break. It was light years better than the first semester, which is why I was very frustrated when coronavirus hit.

In the beginning of March, I felt like I was finding my footing in terms of my relationships with the kids, figuring out the best ways to deliver a lesson, the best kinds of support I could give them. And that all changed when online learning started.

We never went back after spring break. ... I worried about all my kids all the time, honestly. Because they were in such unique circumstances. A lot of my kids had to look after their younger siblings because [their] parents were considered essential workers. And a lot of them-if they weren't in physical school-were expected to also contribute to their family's income by getting a job, like at a grocery store or in construction. So I worried a lot about their basic needs being met-if my kids had enough to eat, if my kids were doing OK mentally and emotionally. And especially for the kids that I was not able to get in contact with, that was really hard. Because of course my mind is going to worst-case scenarios.

I ended up adjusting my expectations a lot. Instead of being, like, 'You didn't meet your growth goal of 10 percent over the unit. We're going to have a conversation,' it was more like, 'Was I able to have a good conversation with one kid today? Was I able to make one kid smile? Was I able to make one kid's day a little bit better?' I realized that is what success should be for me in this situation. They're going to forget the chemistry that they learned, but I think it's harder to forget the impact that someone was able to make on them. Switching gears and focusing more on the social-emotional aspects of school was really beneficial for me in terms of the expectations that I had for myself and the expectations I had for my kids."

Ashley Levy

Sixth gradeNewtown Elementary School in Newtown, Pa. Four (family members): Two semestersNervous, enthusiastic, passionate Age: Taught:
School:
Students served: Roommates:
Technology classes in my teacher prep program: Prior experience with group video calls: Student teaching experience
Started the year feeling: Ended the year feeling:
Inspired, dedicated, motivated
For her first year in the classroom, Ashley Levy taught sixth grade at the elementary school she attended herself in Newtown, Penn. Many of the same staff-the librarian, the music teacher and others-were still at the school, and she enjoyed reintroducing herself to them as "Miss Levy." Many of Levy's colleagues guided her through the first semester, answering the many questions that she had, showing her the ropes and supporting her through a big transition. During the second semester, Levy says, the tables were turned: As the youngest person on staff and one of the most technologically savvy, she got to "return the favor" by assisting other teachers as they adjusted to virtual learning. But even though she had the technology part down, Levy realized that other components of teaching-such as motivating students and maintaining relationships-were difficult to control from a distance.
"I fully expected this first year to be very similar to student teaching. While I was student teaching, I was like, 'Oh, this is what teaching is. This is what working in a school is like. This is great. I love it.' I still had time to go hang out with friends and do whatever I wanted after school. And it's not that I did not have that this year, but when you walk in and you are the head teacher, you are responsible for so many things behind the scenes that you don't see during student teaching-that you don't see until you are put in the position yourself.

So whether it was grading, benchmark testing, team meetings or planning ahead, it was very different than what I expected, solely because of the amount of work and the amount of dedication that it takes. I wouldn't trade it for the world. I don't want to be in any other profession. But it was a big surprise.

In the classroom, you have this routine that you get into. You get used to seeing the kids every morning, and you can feel out their moods. You can feel out how the rest of the day might go, simply based on when they walk in the room and the conversations you have. You can set the tone. You can create an environment where the kids want to be there and are excited to learn.

And then, when you go virtual, you're totally separated from their personal lives. In school, they could come in and leave anything that was happening at home, at home. When you're virtual, whatever's happening at home is brought to school because that their school. That is where they're completing all of that work.

So I think the motivation factor was one of the most difficult parts of the second semester, because when you're in person, your attitude, your tone of voice, the things that you plan and the incentives or goals that you set for the class can motivate the students.

Part of me is happy that I got to be part of this crazy year, that I got to experience both virtual learning and in-person learning. Because while I hope that this is not something that we ever do have to experience again, it is always a possibility. So having had the opportunity to be a professional for the entire year and experience everything that came with it-both good and bad-was great. And it helped me gain more confidence for the fall."

Steve Middleton

Seventh grade digital communicationsEd White DATA Middle School Magnet Program in San Antonio, Texas None - I live with my wife and two kids (ages 5 and 6): Excited, cautious, proud Age: 42 Taught:
School:
Students served: Roommates:
Technology classes in my teacher prep program: Prior experience with group video calls: No Student teaching experience: Salary: Started the year feeling Ended the year feeling:
Success, relief, sagacious
About two years ago, after Steve Middleton was let go from his engineering job, he began to wonder if he was in the right field after all. He says he was a good engineer for over 10 years, but something was always missing. Plus, his two young children were growing up fast, and he wanted to be around for that. This thinking led Middleton to make the leap into education last year. He got a job teaching digital communications to middle schoolers at a design and technology academy (DATA) in San Antonio.
"I'm really good at thinking on my feet. As an engineer, I had a job once where I did a lot of computer-aided design, and I had a boss who wanted me to make changes to this big machine that we were designing. That was awful. He'd stand behind me and say, 'OK, stretch this thing, make this bigger and then change this dimension.' I had to do it in real time. Nobody does that, but I got really good at it. So that really helped me, when the second semester popped up, [since] no one had any warning.

I was concerned about my family. My kids are 5 and 6, and I had to help them with their distance learning and balance it out with my own work schedule. My kids are my world, and they needed my time. I couldn't stick them in front of a movie all day.

Being right next to them, like one wall away from them ... that was hard. But I knew what I was doing was important. It was very unfair for [my students] and their parents, what happened-that suddenly they're at home, and suddenly their parents are at home and they have to become their teacher now. From my point of view, doing that with my own kids-maybe I'm the greatest teacher in the world, but it doesn't matter. At home, I'm Dad. I'm not a teacher,. And so there is some confusion about dynamics and roles.

It turns out that I got a lot more comfortable with ... the parts of myself that I've been kind of putting down, like being a little nerdy-I'm wearing a Stark Industries T-shirt-and being OK with that, and becoming a better, more patient dad from all this. I imagined my [own] kids in five years, thinking, 'OK, if that was my kid in this classroom, how could I give them the best experience?'

I started the school year thinking teaching is about making students feel important and teaching them to be great people. I put that up on my board and I told the kids, 'This is our class goal: I don't want you to be great students. No, I don't. I want you to be great people first, and then you will be great at anything that you do.' That was really the goal. And I left with that being a lot more solidified in my mind, as a philosophy. It's not about force-feeding students information. It's about teaching them to navigate their lives, in any situation, and have confidence.

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'If I Could Handle This, I Can Handle Anything': First-Year Teachers Reflect on the Pandemic - MindShift

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The move to emergency distance learning was tough for all teachers, but first-year teachers had a unique experience last spring. Despite all that COVID-19 took away, many first-year teachers noted that they learned more about teaching and themselves than they likely would have in an average year.

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Distance learning started as an emergency in the spring, but teachers are finding ways to make it better, even for students working on smartphones.

As the new school year looms in the U.S., many teachers are unsure of the exact amount of time they will need to dedicate to remote teaching. With departments of education and districts looking to maintain both teacher and student attendance while minimizing the risk of coronavirus outbreaks in their schools, we know that remote learning isn't going away at this time.

Through staggered calendars and schedules, many schools hope to keep their students and staff safe by reducing class sizes in efforts to maintain social distancing for the time being. Although research on staggered scheduling shows that the practice can have positive effects on academic results, educators will need to continue making pedagogical shifts and pivots to adjust to yet another new instructional day in their efforts to engage all learners.

Whether students are in classrooms or are working fully at home, teachers will want to maintain personal contact with them, especially their most disadvantaged students. Frequent check-ins-in person, over phone or email, or through the class LMS-will help teachers better understand students' needs, providing them the insight needed to design more equitable lessons that address both academic and social and emotional learning for disadvantaged students, and all of their students.

In the months since the pandemic caused an emergency rush to distance learning, many teachers have made significant strides in improving the remote teaching skills they need to reach all learners. The new school year can allow us to improve our online lesson delivery still further by balancing the effective use of edtech with good teaching practice. Here are two relatively simple strategies to make online instruction better.

Make Lessons Interactive and Accessible 24/7

When teaching students face-to-face, my strategy for engagement is to use systematic and reflective strategies in tandem with interactive activities. This consistent practice helps build a collaborative culture, establish and maintain norms, and develop an inquiry mindset in students. Teachers will need to recreate this online to make their remote lessons engaging.

Nearpod can help, through a student engagement platform designed to make lessons interactive and accessible with or without a facilitator. This feature aids learning remotely because it allows students multiple chances for capturing the content and improving both their skills and transfer. Teachers can launch their lessons in a student-paced mode and can monitor the completion of the work.

Nearpod also allows teachers to add interactive activities to lessons, which enables student participation in both real-time and self-paced lessons in fun ways. This feature is multifaceted and has several interactive options, including adding polls, fill-in-the-blank activities, matching pairs, short quizzes, and open-ended questions, and having students draw a picture to show their learning. Each of these activities can be designed to fit the context of all age groups and generates data back to educators about how well the content is being learned.

It's also worth mentioning that students can easily access Nearpod on their parents' or guardians' smartphones, ﻿making the learning more accessible to students who do not have Wi-Fi access or a computer at home.

Foster Student Collaboration Via Virtual Breakout Rooms

Having students work together in pairs during activities or in teams to complete a task or product is critical learning work in lessons that teachers do not have to eliminate when teaching remotely. Incorporating collaborative activities during virtual class meetups enhances instruction the same way it does when teaching in person. For this purpose, I like to use the Zoom platform to place my learners in breakout rooms at various points of my lesson. I use either strategically or randomly chosen groupings depending on my purpose. For example, when students need to partner for project work, I group them purposefully. For activities like turn and talk or learning circles, they can be randomly assigned a partner or partners.

Again, students who lack Wi-Fi access and/or a computer can join live lessons via smartphones and still participate in all of the activities along with their peers.

Collaborative activities that can be conducted via breakout rooms include storytelling, turn and talk, learning stations or centers, workshops, jigsaws, think pair share, and feedback protocols like critical friends and gallery walk.

Mastering working in groups virtually will take some practice before most students become pros, but relatively quickly the experience will keep them engaged in enhancing their communication and problem-solving skills. Teachers in kindergarten to second grade will need to encourage parents and guardians to log in to assist learners with navigating the tech. Older kids can learn to schedule their own teamwork time once they are comfortable using the Zoom app independent of their teachers.

For schools that don't use Zoom, other platforms with the breakout feature include GoToMeeting, Microsoft Teams, and RingCentral.

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2 Simple Ways to Improve Online Instruction

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Distance learning started as an emergency in the spring, but teachers are finding ways to make it better, even for students working on smartphones. As the new school year looms in the U.S., many teachers are unsure of the exact amount of time they will need to dedicate to remote teaching.

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Shawn Ginwright Ph.D.
From time to time, researchers, policy makers, philanthropy and practitioners all join together in a coordinated response to address the most pressing issues facing America's youth. I've been involved with this process for long enough to have participated in each of these roles. I recall during the early 1990s experts promoted the term "resiliency," which is the capacity to adapt, navigate and bounce back from adverse and challenging life experiences. Researchers and practitioners alike clamored over strategies to build more resilient youth.

In the early 2000's the term "youth development" gained currency and had a significant influence on youth development programs, and probably more importantly how we viewed young people. Youth development offered an important shift in focus from viewing youth as problems to be solved to community assets who simply required supports and opportunities for healthy development. Since that time, a range of approaches have influenced how we think about young people, and consequently our programmatic strategies. I have, for the most part, attempted to nudge and cajole each of these approaches to consider the unique ways in which race, identity and social marginalization influence the development of youth of color.

More recently, practitioners and policy stakeholders have recognized the impact of trauma on learning, and healthy development. In efforts to support young people who experience trauma, the term "trauma-informed care" has gained traction among schools, juvenile justice departments, mental health programs and youth development agencies around the country. Trauma informed care broadly refers to a set of principles that guide and direct how we view the impact of severe harm on young people's mental, physical, and emotional health. Trauma informed care encourages support and treatment to the whole person, rather than focusing on only treating individual symptoms or specific behaviors.

Trauma-informed care has become an important approach in schools and agencies that serve young people who have been exposed to trauma, and here's why. Some school leaders believe that the best way to address disruptive classroom behavior is through harsh discipline. These schools believe that discipline alone is sufficient to modify undesired classroom behavior, but research shows that school suspensions may further harm students who have been exposed to a traumatic event or experience (Bottiani et al., 2017). Rather than using discipline, a school that uses a trauma informed approach might offer therapy, or counseling to support the restoration of that student's well-being. The assumption is that the disruptive behavior is the symptom of a deeper harm, rather than willful defiance, or disrespect.

While trauma-informed care offers an important lens to support young people who have been harmed and emotionally injured, it also has its limitations. I first became aware of the limitations of the term "trauma-informed care" during a healing circle I was leading with a group of African American young men. All of them had experienced some form of trauma ranging from sexual abuse, violence, homelessness, abandonment or all of the above. During one of our sessions, I explained the impact of stress and trauma on brain development and how trauma can influence emotional health. As I was explaining, one of the young men in the group named Marcus abruptly stopped me and said, "I am more than what happened to me, I'm not just my trauma". I was puzzled at first, but it didn't take me long to really contemplate what he was saying.

The term "trauma informed care" didn't encompass the totality of his experience and focused only on his harm, injury and trauma. For Marcus, the term "trauma informed care" was akin to saying, you are the worst thing that ever happened to you. For me, I realized the term slipped into the murky water of deficit based, rather than asset driven strategies to support young people who have been harmed. Without careful consideration of the terms we use, we can create blind spots in our efforts to support young people.

While the term trauma informed care is important, it is incomplete. First, trauma informed care correctly highlights the specific needs for individual young people who have exposure to trauma. However, current formulations of trauma informed care presumes that the trauma is an individual experience, rather than a collective one. To illustrate this point, researchers have shown that children in high violence neighborhoods all display behavioral and psychological elements of trauma (Sinha & Rosenberg 2013). Similarly, populations that disproportionately suffer from disasters like Hurricane Katrina share a common experience that if viewed individually simply fails to capture how collective harm requires a different approach than an individual one.

Second, trauma-informed care requires that we treat trauma in people but provides very little insight into how we might address the root causes of trauma in neighborhoods, families, and schools. If trauma is collectively experienced, this means that we also have to consider the environmental context that caused the harm in the first place. By only treating the individual we only address part of the equation leaving the toxic systems, policies and practices neatly intact.

Third, the term trauma-informed care runs the risk of focusing on the treatment of pathology (trauma), rather than fostering the possibility (well-being). This is not an indictment on well-meaning therapists and social workers many of whom may have been trained in theories and techniques designed to simply reduce negative emotions and behavior (Seligman 2011). However, just like the absence of disease doesn't constitute health, nor the absence of violence constitute peace, the reduction pathology (anxiety, anger, fear, sadness, distrust, triggers) doesn't constitute well-being (hope, happiness, imagination, aspirations, trust). Everyone wants to be happy, not just have less misery. The emerging field of positive psychology offers insight into the limits of only "treating" symptoms and focuses on enhancing the conditions that contribute to well-being. Without more careful consideration, trauma informed approaches sometimes slip into rigid medical models of care that are steeped in treating the symptoms, rather than strengthening the roots of well-being.

What is needed is an approach that allows practitioners to approach trauma with a fresh lens that promotes a holistic view of healing from traumatic experiences and environments. One approach is called healing-centered, as opposed to trauma-informed. A healing centered approach is holistic involving culture, spirituality, civic action and collective healing. A healing-centered approach views trauma not simply as an individual isolated experience, but rather highlights the ways in which trauma and healing are experienced collectively. The term healing-centered engagement expands how we think about responses to trauma and offers more holistic approach to fostering well-being.

A shift from trauma informed care to healing centered engagement (HCE) is more than a semantic play with words, but rather a tectonic shift in how we view trauma, its causes and its intervention. HCE is strength based, advances a collective view of healing, and re-centers culture as a central feature in well-being. Researchers have pointed out the ways in which patients have redefined the terms used to describe their illnesses in ways that affirmed, humanized and dignified their condition. For example, in the early 1990s AIDS activists challenged the term "gay-related immune deficiency" because the term stigmatized gay men and failed to adequately capture the medical accuracy of the condition. In a similar way, the young men I worked with offered me a way to reframe trauma with language that humanized them, and holistically captured their life experiences.

A healing centered approach to addressing trauma requires a different question that moves beyond "what happened to you" to "what's right with you" and views those exposed to trauma as agents in the creation of their own well-being rather than victims of traumatic events. Healing centered engagement is akin to the South African term "Ubuntu" meaning that humanness is found through our interdependence, collective engagement and service to others. Additionally, healing centered engagement offers an asset driven approach aimed at the holistic restoration of young peoples' well-being. The healing centered approach comes from the idea that people are not harmed in a vacuum, and well-being comes from participating in transforming the root causes of the harm within institutions. Healing centered engagement also advances the move to "strengths-based' care and away from the deficit based mental health models that drives therapeutic interventions. There are four key elements of healing centered engagement that may at times overlap with current trauma informed practices but offers several key distinctions.

Communities, and individuals who experience trauma are agents in restoring their own well-being. This subtle shift suggests that healing from trauma is found in an awareness and actions that address the conditions that created the trauma in the first place. Researchers have found that well-being is a function of the control and power young people have in their schools and communities (Morsillo & Prilleltensky 2007; Prilleltensky & Prilleltensky 2006). These studies focus on concepts such as such as liberation, emancipation, oppression, and social justice among activist groups and suggests that building an awareness of justice and inequality, combined with social action such as protests, community organizing, and/or school walk-outs contribute to overall wellbeing, hopefulness, and optimism (Potts 2003; Prilleltensky 2003, 2008). This means that healing centered engagement views trauma and well-being as function of the environments where people live, work and play. When people advocate for policies and opportunities that address causes of trauma, such as lack of access to mental health, these activities contribute to a sense of purpose, power and control over life situations. All of these are ingredients necessary to restore well-being and healing.

The pathway to restoring well-being among young people who experience trauma can be found in culture and identity. Healing centered engagement uses culture as a way to ground young people in a solid sense of meaning, self-perception, and purpose. This process highlights the intersectional nature of identity and highlights the ways in which culture offers a shared experience, community and sense of belonging. Healing is experienced collectively, and is shaped by shared identity such as race, gender, or sexual orientation. Healing centered engagement is the result of building a healthy identity, and a sense of belonging. For youth of color, these forms of healing can be rooted in culture and serves as an anchor to connect young people to a shared racial and ethnic identity that is both historical grounded and contemporarily relevant. Healing centered engagement embraces a holistic view of well-being that includes spiritual domains of health. This goes beyond viewing healing only from the lens of mental health, and incorporates culturally grounded rituals, and activities to restore well-being (Martinez 2001). Some examples of healing centered engagement can be found in healing circles rooted in indigenous culture where young people share their stories about healing and learn about their connection to their ancestors and traditions, or drumming circles rooted in African cultural principles.

Healing centered engagement offers an important departure from solely viewing young people through the lens of harm and focuses on asset driven strategies that highlight possibilities for well-being. An asset driven strategy acknowledges that young people are much more than the worst thing that happened to them, and builds upon their experiences, knowledge, skills and curiosity as positive traits to be enhanced. While it is important to acknowledge trauma and its influence on young people's mental health, healing centered strategies move one step beyond by focusing on what we want to achieve, rather than merely treating emotional and behavioral symptoms of trauma. This is a salutogenic approach focusing on how to foster and sustain well-being. Based in positive psychology, healing centered engagement is based in collective strengths and possibility which offers a departure from conventional psychopathology which focuses on clinical treatment of illness.

Adult providers need healing too! Healing centered engagement requires that we consider how to support adult providers in sustaining their own healing and well-being. We cannot presume that adulthood is a final, "trauma-free" destination. Much of our training and practice is directed at young peoples' healing but rarely focuses on the healing that is required of adults to be an effective youth practitioner. Healing is an ongoing process that we all need, not just young people who experience trauma. The well-being of the adult youth worker is also a critical factor in supporting young peoples' well-being. While we are learning more about the causes and effects of secondary on adults, we know very little about the systems of support required to restore and sustain well-being for adults. Healing centered engagement has an explicit focus on restoring, and sustaining the adults who attempt to heal youth- a healing the healers approach. Policy stakeholders should consider how to build a systems that support adult youth worker's well-being. I have supported organizations in creating structures like sabbaticals for employees or creating incentives like continuing education units for deeper learning about well-being and healing.

Marcus's comments during our healing circle "I am more than what happened to me" led me to question our approach to trauma. What blind spots do we have in our approaches to supporting young people who experience trauma? How might the concepts which are enshrined in our language limit rather than create opportunities for healing? What approaches might offer "disruptive" techniques that saturate young people with opportunities for healing and well-being?

The fields of positive psychology and community psychology offers important insight into how policy makers, and youth development stakeholders can consider a range of healing centered options for young people. Shifting from trauma informed care or treatment to healing centered engagement requires youth development stakeholders to expand from a treatment-based model, which views trauma and harm as an isolated experience, to an engagement model which supports collective well-being. Here are a few notes to consider in building healing centered engagement.

Healing centered engagement begins by building empathy with young people who experience trauma. This process takes time, is an ongoing process and sometimes may feel like taking two steps forward, and three steps back. However, building empathy is critical to healing centered engagement. To create this empathy, I encourage adult staff to share their story first, and take an emotional risk by being more vulnerable, honest, and open to young people. This process creates an empathy exchange between the adult, and the young people which is the foundation for healing centered engagement (Payne 2013). This process also strengthens emotional literacy which allows youth to discuss the complexity of their feelings. Fostering empathy allows for young people to feel safe sharing their experiences and emotions. The process ultimately restores their sense of well-being because they have the power name and respond to their emotional states.

An important ingredient in healing centered engagement is the ability to acknowledge the harm and injury, but not be defined by it. Perhaps one of the greatest tools available to us is the ability to see beyond the condition, event or situation that caused the trauma in the first place. Research shows that the ability to dream and imagine is an important factor in fostering hopefulness, and optimism which both of which contributes to overall well-being (Snyder et al. 2003). Daily survival and ongoing crisis management in young people's lives can make it difficult for them to see beyond the present.

The greatest casualty of trauma is not only depression and emotional scares, but also the loss of the ability to dream and imagine another way of living. Howard Thurman pointed this out in his eloquent persistence that dreams matter. He commented, "As long as a man [woman] has a dream, he [she] cannot lose the significance of living" (p. 304). By creating activities and opportunities for young people to play, reimagine, design and envision their lives this process strengthens their future goal orientation (Snyder et al. 2003). These are practices of possibility that encourage young people to envision what they want to become, and who they want to be.

Healing and well-being are fundamentally political not clinical. This means that we have to consider the ways in which the policies and practice and political decisions harm young people. Healing in this context also means that young people develop an analysis of these practices and policies that facilitated the trauma in the first place. Without an analysis of these issues, young people often internalize, and blame themselves for lack of confidence. Critical reflection provides a lens by which to filter, examine, and consider analytical and spiritual responses to trauma. By spiritual, I mean the ability to draw upon the power of culture, rituals and faith in order to consistently act from a place of humility, and love. These are not cognitive processes, but rather ethical, moral and emotional aspects of healing centered engagement.

The other key component, is taking loving action, by collectively responding to political decisions and practices that can exacerbate trauma. By taking action, (e.g. school walkouts, organizing peace march, or promoting access to healthy foods) it builds a sense of power and control over their lives. Research has demonstrated that building this sense of power and control among traumatized groups is perhaps one of the most significant features in restoring holistic well-being.

I ran into Marcus at a street fair in Oakland not long ago. He was excited to see me and wanted to share with me that he was in a new relationship so he introduced me to his girlfriend. "This is my friend Michelle"! He introduced her with a sense of pride, and accomplishment. He also shared with me that he had enrolled in a program that was training him to become a medic. As we chatted for a while in the warm sun, dodging children, and fast walking parents, he leaned toward me and whispered, "yeah Dr. G, I'm not entirely healed, but I'm hopeful". I smiled, gave him a "brotha hug" and we departed ways.

I suppose, that if we had more time to chat he would have explained that healing is a process that we navigate for a lifetime. He might have shared with me that the future of his healing journey had just begun. Seeing him again, holding hands, sipping a soda with his new girlfriend was a powerful reminder, that he was so much more than the trauma he had experienced. As practitioners, researchers and policy stakeholders we need to listen and learn from young people who have insights that can advance how we think about trauma and healing. Shifting to healing centered engagement offered new questions, and strategies about how to support young people who experience trauma. Healing centered engagement is just a step toward a more holistic, and humanistic framework to support young people who have been harmed. Such an approach encourages us to think and act more boldly about how to restore young people and create places where they can truly flourish.

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The Future of Healing: Shifting From Trauma Informed Care to Healing Centered Engagement

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From time to time, researchers, policy makers, philanthropy and practitioners all join together in a coordinated response to address the most pressing issues facing America's youth. I've been...

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Decades of research-and conventionally held wisdom-say that positive teacher-student relationships matter. But do you really have to love every student? And what if you don't?

"We go into [teaching] with the idea that we're going to love our students, we're going to be like the teachers in the movies, ... all of the kids are going to be motivated, there's going to be a soundtrack, it's going to be amazing," said Vickie Crockett, a high school English/language arts teacher in Atlanta. "I think we allow ourselves to get boxed into [the idea] that we're just going to fall magically in love with all of these disparate personalities that come into our classroom."

But the reality is not quite like the movies. As most teachers can attest, some students are challenging. They might be disruptive, or disengaged, or even rude. Some might genuinely dislike their teacher for reasons outside of the teacher's control. Sometimes, no matter how hard a teacher tries, he or she can't "click" with a certain student.

Strong student-teacher relationships, however, are linked to both short-term and long-term improvements on multiple measures: higher student academic engagement, better attendance, better grades, fewer disruptive behaviors and suspensions, and lower school dropout rates. These effects hold true regardless of students' individual, family, and school backgrounds.

Experts say that forging positive relationships with the full range of students, including the aloof, withdrawn, and even defiant ones, is not necessarily an intuitive skill-it comes with training and experience. Yet there's a stigma against admitting that connecting with some children is easier said than done, teachers say.

"We are allowed to say that our spouses frustrate us, we're allowed to say our [own] children frustrate us, we're allowed to say that we don't necessarily like our colleagues or even supervisors," Crockett said. "But we're not allowed to say that there's a child that I work with that I find very difficult, and the truth of the matter is that I weep a little inside when I see them coming, and I rejoice when I see them leaving."

Still, teachers "don't get to act on those feelings," she stressed. "I do think that it is imperative that we understand where our students are coming from."

So how do teachers connect with a student who may be hard to like? Education Week spoke to both experts and veteran teachers from all grade levels to get their advice.

Try not to take it personally. Remember that the disruption and mean comments probably don't have anything to do with you, and it's human nature not to mesh with everyone, educators said. Still, that's easier said than done.

"You can't judge this person because of the way they're behaving in this moment, there's always some underlying thing," said Audrey Green, an 8th grade Global Scholars program teacher in Broward County, Fla. "But how do you get through the day if the kid is acting like that all the time?"

For example, she said, a student once told her that she shouldn't be a teacher. The comment stung.

"It's very hard to not take it personally," Green said. "You immediately become the middle schooler. We're all human. If you have people berating you all day," it's going to hurt.

That's why it's important for teachers to learn how to regulate their own emotions, and take a step back in the heat of the moment to calm down, said Allison Riddle, a veteran teacher who is now the elementary mentor supervisor for the Davis school district near Salt Lake City.

"I felt so much better inside when I was able to just be calm and have empathy for a student-as soon as I learned, 'This isn't directed at you, this person is in pain,'" she said.

Find something to like about a prickly student. A student isn't defined by their attitude in class, teachers say.

"It's easy to like the kid who is compliant," said Wendy Ramos, a high school English teacher in Weslaco, Texas. "It's more of a challenge to like the kid who's giving you trouble; but that doesn't mean you can't. I think you can find things in most students that you like. ... I think that, sometimes, you can even just like the challenge that they're giving you, to help you grow as an educator and as a compassionate person."

This starts with forming relationships with students at the beginning of the year, teachers said. Learn about their interests and hobbies, and try to find common ground.

After all, "the more you get to know somebody, the more that you develop empathy for them, the stronger the relationship is," said Vicki Nishioka, a senior research adviser with the nonprofit group Education Northwest who studies teacher-student relationships.

Teachers said they try to engage their students in personal conversations before or after class. At the elementary level, recess might even be a place for teachers and students to forge a common bond, said Kevin Parr, a 1st grade teacher in Wenatchee, Wash.

"Sitting down one-on-one is almost a confrontation, but if you're shooting baskets or playing tetherball, it's more of a safe space to talk," he said.

Step outside the authority role to better connect with students. Don't be afraid to open up with students, Nishioka said.

"It helps students to see [a teacher] as a person who maybe has had some of the same struggles, ... or had some failures and made some mistakes that they've recovered from," she said. "I think it's important as a model, but also for relationship-building, for students to hear some of those stories."

When Green, the 8th grade teacher in Florida, allowed her students to use the game Minecraft for a class project, it put her in the learner's seat. Her students knew more about how to build virtual worlds in the game than she did.

"You become human," she said. "[They see] you are fallible, and you're trying."

Build a positive classroom culture. It's important for all students to feel welcomed by their teachers, experts said.

"I think that establishing a sense of belonging for students is so essential for them to want to come [to class], for them to want to engage with teachers," Nishioka said. "I can't tell you how many times a student has told me I did my homework, but I was mad at the teacher so I didn't turn it in."

That's why it's critical to continue to try to show support to students, even if they're resistant, teachers said.

"Even just a little smile can go a long way," Parr said. "If you act positively toward a kid, eventually they'll act positively toward you. They'll gain the trust."

Also, other students can help: "If there's a positive classroom environment, and everyone is treating each other respectfully, ... over time, that challenging student will assimilate to the rest of the group," Parr said.

And when a student isn't acting appropriately, teachers have to be "emotional detectives," said Tyrone Howard, a professor of education at the University of California, Los Angeles' graduate school of education, who co-wrote an upcoming book called No More Teaching Without Positive Relationships.

A teacher should try to pick up on cues that a student is upset about something, he said, and ask questions like, "Is there anything I can do to assist, or maybe just lend an ear? Do you need some additional time to complete an assignment? Is everything OK? Do you need a counselor you want to talk to?"

"I think students can tell if teachers really are truly interested in their well-being by demonstrating what I call authentic care," Howard said.

Build a relationship with parents, too. They can be both a valuable ally and an insight into why the student is acting out, teachers say.

Crockett, the English teacher in Atlanta, said reaching out to parents early on gives her a "partner at home-someone I know who is batting on my team."

One time, she said, she had a student who "loathed" her and would push back on everything she said. Crockett met with the student's mother, who immediately knew the problem-Crockett looked just like the student's father's new girlfriend. The mother was then able to talk to her child and help her get through the school year.

"I was never her favorite, and she was never mine, but we were able to reach a compromise," Crockett said. "It's not the ideal, but sometimes it's the reality."

Make sure to confront any unconscious biases or stereotypes. Data show that black students are more likely to be disciplined at school at disproportionate rates. And teachers make the first decisions about behavioral consequences.

Nishioka said it's important for teachers to confront their implicit biases, which might influence how they treat students in their classroom. For example, white teachers-who make up 80 percent of the profession-might see a black student as more aggressive or unruly than a white student, and could dole out harsher consequences for similar behavior.

"I think many teachers will say, 'I'm fair to everybody,' so it really takes a lot of work, and probably work that they need to do on their own but also in partnership with other people," Nishioka said. "I think it's hard to look at yourself inwardly without getting some information from teachers around you."

Part of that, Nishioka said, comes from having a school community that values the cultural differences of students and teachers.

"If we begin to ask students and listen to them about their story, then we begin to appreciate and maybe begin to challenge some of our own misconceptions or opinions that we made about the students," she said.

Don't try to force a resolution with a student who is not receptive. Trying to resolve a problem when the student and the teacher are still upset won't be productive, teachers say.

Riddle, the elementary mentor supervisor in Utah, said she learned over the years that it's important to give everyone involved some space and calm down before addressing the conflict.

"It feels better to walk away and let a child de-escalate than it does to stand there and stay angry," she said. "It feels better for everyone. ... It feels better for the learning atmosphere."

Students still have to be held responsible for their work, their effort, and their actions, Riddle said, but it will be more productive if they're allowed to calm down first. "You have to give grace sometimes," she said.

Even in the long-term, some students might not want to build a relationship with their teacher, despite the teacher's best efforts.

"One of the things that kills teachers is that there are always going to be students who, for whatever reason, don't engage or are not receptive," Howard said. "You shouldn't press it, if students are not wanting to receive it, because that can oftentimes go really bad."

Instead, he said, teachers should be consistent and let students know they're always available to talk.

Don't expect instant results. Building meaningful relationships with students takes time, experts said, and it might take longer than a semester or even a school year to yield fruit.

"I've seen over the years teachers say that a student that they thought they never made an impact with will come back a year later or two years later and say, 'I appreciate you because you always checked. I never did open up, but you continued to check to see how I was doing, you still made yourself available,'" Howard said. "We tell teachers, don't always expect immediate results."

Green, the 8th grade teacher, said she's had a few challenging students reach out years later-a sign that she was doing something right, even if it might not have felt like it at the time.

"They come back from high school where they've matured and say, 'I get it now,'" she said. "It doesn't happen that often. But that's where the measurement should be."

Published in Print: February 26, 2020, as When It's Hard to Really Love That Student

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Do You Have to 'Love' Every Student? And What If You Don't?

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Decades of research-and conventionally held wisdom-say that positive teacher-student relationships matter. But do you really have to love every student? And what if you don't? "We go into [teaching] with the idea that we're going to love our students, we're going to be like the teachers in the movies, ...

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Culturally Responsive Teaching in Special Education

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Spread the loveElementary age students in special education classes and/or dyslexia intervention deserve access to the highest quality literary resources and culturally relevant classroom experiences. Young students with special needs must have the opportunity to experience multi-modal learning formats in positive, safe, and supportive environments.

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Asset-Based Mindsets for English Language Learners

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Spread the loveEnglish Language Learners (ELLs) have often been considered a minority segment of school populations. However, ELLs are growing as a learner population twenty-five times faster than overall student population growth (Mavrogordato & White, 2020).

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Start with episode 1

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How do school promote equity among students 

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How do school promote equity among students 

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6 minutes

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Pedro Negara Monica Noguera Dr. Pedro Noguera Pedro Noguera TED Talk Joaquin Noguera Pedro Noguera Book Pedro Noguera Home America Noguera Dr. Pedro Noguera Curriculum El Hermano Pedro Pedro Noguera Achievement Gap Pedro Noguera Leadership Monica Noguera Biografia Pedro Fernandez Salud 2 Pedro Audio Pedro Educate Yutube Dr. Pedro Caron

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Sage advice from the culturally responsive practice OG's

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Culturally Responsive Instruction

Culturally responsive teaching is a research-based approach that "invites students to bring their expertise to the table" (Fleming, 2019) by identifying and harnessing the assets of students who have historically been underserved in schools. Here are some resources providing an overview to CRT.

Overviews: Research & Resource Guides

Overviews: Articles, Blogs, and Tools

Resources from Zaretta Hammond

Books

Videos and Podcasts

Key Concepts

Funds of Knowledge

Cultural Orientation: Collective vs. Individual

Classroom Resources

Culturally Responsive Books

Academic Language & Literacy

Inquiry and Project-Based Learning (PBL)

Making Local Connections

Student Populations: Resource Collections

American Indian/Alaska Native Students

English Language Learners (ELLs)

Students with Special Needs

Equity Issues

Bias

Race

Culturally Responsive Family Engagement

References

Fleming, J. Personal communication. October 15, 2019.

Fleming, J., et al. (2015). More Mirrors in the Classroom: Using Urban Children's Literature to Increase Literacy. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Hamayan, E., et al. (2013.) Special Education Considerations for English Language Learners. Delivering a Continuum of Services. Philadelphia: Caslon Publishing.

Hammond, Z. (2015). Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Rothstein-Fisch, C. and Trumbull, E. (2008). Managing Diverse Classrooms: How to Build on Students' Cultural Strengths. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Vigil, Karla. Personal communication. November 1, 2019.

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Culturally Responsive Instruction: Resource List

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Culturally responsive teaching is a research-based approach that "invites students to bring their expertise to the table" (Fleming, 2019) by identifying and harnessing the assets of students who have historically been underserved in schools. Here are some resources providing an overview to CRT. Resources from Zaretta Hammond Equity Issues Bias Race Fleming, J.

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Amid a national reckoning on race sparked by the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black people, thousands of high school students joined demonstrations across the country against police abuse. Some are now leading campaigns to force their school districts to create anti-racist curricula.

Against that backdrop, Education Week spoke with 10 Black high school students from across the country about how they think issues of race and racism should be handled in school.

In the first two videos of this series, students tell educators what they need from their schools to feel safe and supported, and how they've experienced classroom discussions about race. The next two videos focus on students' views on the importance of having Black teachers, and the role of school police.

Black Student Voices: What We Need From Our Schools

In the first video of this series, Black high school students share what they need from educators to improve their school experience. Students, they say, need a seat at the table so they can identify school policies that lead to inequities and advocate for things like counseling supports and representation within curricula.

Black Student Voices: Classroom Discussions on Race

In this video, students shared concerns about the lack of representation in curriculum, open conversations about racial injustice, and diversity education for all students and educators. Some students also spoke about positive experiences talking about race and what their teachers did to make the conversations meaningful and productive.

* Classroom Discussions on Race: Hear What 5 Black Students Say They Need

Black Student Voices: Security and Police Presence in Schools

In the third video of this series, students talk about the impact of policing in schools. The students spoke about feeling uneasy and unsafe around police officers. Security should be aimed at protecting students from intruders or other sources of harm, they said. Instead, the policing of students is often a critical step in the school to prison pipeline.

Black Student Voices: What Educators Should Know

In the final video of this series, students share what they wish educators knew. Here they spoke about the importance of Black educators, the effects of racism and anti-Blackness in and out of school, and the need for teachers to better understand where students are coming from.

In alphabetical order, the students featured in the videos are:
Jaden Adeyemi, a senior at Highland High School in Albuquerque, N.M.; Helena Almaw, a senior at DSST: Green Valley Ranch High School in Denver; William Bell, a recent graduate of Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington, D.C.; Malik Coleman, a recent graduate of Fairfield Central High School in Winnsboro, S.C.; McKenzie Curry, a recent graduate of Shaker Heights High School in Shaker Heights, Ohio; Onome Grell, a senior at John D. O'Bryant School of Mathematics and Science in Roxbury, Mass.; Zoë Jenkins, a senior at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, Lexington, Ky; Davion Pilgrim, a junior at Morningside High School in Inglewood, Calif; Zion Sanders, a senior at Booker T. Washington High School in Miami; and Rena Mateja Walker Burr, a junior at Cleveland High School in Seattle.

Credits:
Video edited by: Bridget Fetsko
Text: Madeline Will, Catherine Gewertz, Sarah Schwartz

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Black Student Voices: Reflecting on Race and Racism in Schools

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Amid a national reckoning on race sparked by the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black people, thousands of high school students joined demonstrations across the country against police abuse. Some are now leading campaigns to force their school districts to create anti-racist curricula.

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Jay Wamsted has taught math at Benjamin E. Mays High School in southwest Atlanta for fourteen years. His writing has been featured in various journals and magazines, including Harvard Educational Review, Mathematics Teacher, and Sojourners. He can be found online at The Southeast Review, Under the Sun, and the TEDx YouTube channel, where you can watch his 2017 talk "Eating the Elephant: Ending Racism & the Magic of Trust." Full profile →

During World War II, riding out the Blitz in his native London, theologian and fantasy author C. S. Lewis wrote, "The war creates no absolutely new situation; it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it." The same is true for us today.

If you are reading this, I would be willing to bet you have angst about distance learning. So many parents are worried about what their children are missing at school and feel unprepared to act as a surrogate teacher. But I am going to make a host of assumptions here when I write this grand proclamation:

If you're reading this, then your children's education will be okay. To be clear, I'm talking about salaried middle-class families.

Dear Teacher

Every day of the pandemic widens the educational gulf between the rich and the poor

Children of the salaried middle class will be fine

The rest will start next year at a huge disadvantage

We need to start talking about how we are going to handle that crisis
- Jay Wamsted (@JayWamsted) March 23, 2020

They might fall a little behind in a subject or two, especially if it is one in which you yourself feel a tad weak. But I am assuming that you-a reader who has the free time to click on a link to and read an article about education-are more than equipped to guide your children through these unprecedented days.

I am assuming that even if their teacher hasn't set up all of the distance activities perfectly, you will advocate for your child and get things straightened out. I am assuming that if for some reason you can't do so, you will figure out a way to teach the material yourself, from scratch.

Here is the hard truth. Your children are going to be just fine-because all around the country millions of students are sitting at home who, over the next few months, are going to fall behind. They don't have the advantages your children do. Even if your child merely stands still, he or she will begin next year relatively ahead of these children. This is a terrible thing. It is, however, true.

Remember C. S. Lewis. The inequity we are going to see over the next few months was not created by COVID-19 and our need for quarantine. Rather, that inequity already existed; COVID-19 is merely going to bring it into the light.

Our Kids Are Going To Be Fine

My wife and I woke up Monday morning and, like so many of you, fed our three elementary-age children breakfast before beginning our distance learning plan. We set up both laptops in the family room, moved the children through in shifts, had them practice piano during school time even. My wife's office had been completely shut down (she is a pastor) as had the high school where I teach. We were home with our four college degrees, our lifelong love of learning and our children to direct. Except for the potty-training 2-year-old, it was a piece of cake-even when it wasn't.

Links were broken, logins forgotten. Emails and notifications poured in from their school, overwhelming us with conflicting information that we had to parse. The first grader didn't have quite enough to do, the fifth grader a little too much. And, like Goldilocks, the third-grader felt just about right. All the while we had to borrow computers away from the children in order to address tasks from our own jobs that we couldn't handle on our phones. But through all this, we finished a day's worth of school before lunch. Our kids are going to be just fine. I'm willing to bet that yours will be too.

I'm Worried About My Students

In contrast, take the day I spent monitoring online classrooms for my 10th grade math students. I teach in a Title I school-education-euphemism for "poor"-and my students come into class at the beginning of the year for the most part already running several grade levels behind. Their parents by and large did not go to college; they do not work the kinds of jobs where their offices shut down and pay them decent salaries to work from home. I don't know the data, but I'd be willing to bet that most of my students spent the day taking care of younger relatives as Mom and Dad went off to work-global pandemic or no.

Of my 131 students, nine did some sort of schoolwork that first day. In one case, the work was only an email asking for a login. Some of this dearth is about internet access, but not most; almost all of my students have phones with some Wi-Fi capabilities. My students are going to drift primarily because they don't have adults looking over their shoulders at every task. Please don't think that this is because these adults don't care about the education of their children every bit as much as you care about the education of yours. It is because these adults have no choice but to leave the house and go to work.

If you're reading this, your children are going to be just fine. Truth to tell, your children might be better off after a month at home with 100% attention from Mom or Dad. My students, though, already among the most vulnerable members of our suddenly oh-so-vulnerable society, the ones who don't have an overly-educated parent at home sipping coffee and looking over their shoulder? My students will fall further behind. It is reality, and it is tragic.

Your children will be just fine. What we as a society are going to do about the rest of our children-that is the question we will have to answer before the start of the next school year. It is a question we should have answered long ago.

We owe it to my students. We owe it to children everywhere.

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The Inequity Between Students Isn't New, COVID-19 Is Just Bringing It to Light

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Jay Wamsted has taught math at Benjamin E. Mays High School in southwest Atlanta for fourteen years. His writing has been featured in various journals and magazines, including Harvard Educational Review, Mathematics Teacher, and Sojourners.

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How will we change the experiences of marginalized and oppressed students? 

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How will we change the experiences of marginalized and oppressed students? 

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Reality Pedagogy: Christopher Emdin at TEDxTeachersCollege

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2017-2018 MSAN FOCUS AREA FINAL REPORT Advanced Learning Increasing the number of underrepresented students enrolled and succeeding in advanced learning opportunities