Knowing yourself is important because, it will bleed through into how you run a classroom. If you are unaware of how you are and how you act you could miss out on foraging those authentic connections with students.

recognizing that the dominate culture makes it hard to see ourselves sometimes will help when thinking about how we design a lesson. I think by having check ins with students and offering a variety of different options for an assignment would be the best way to keep the lessons and activities focused on the students at all times.

If you can do it, they can do it! Having a student centered doesn't mean letting them have free reign, they can have a liana hand in helping make rules but before they have it down, they need to see it modeled and that's where your pedagogical practices come in.

Restorative Justice is another teaching strategy that can be used to help kids learn responsibility and that no mistake is truly permanent.

Understanding your Sociopolitical identity is crucial here, and I think even more important than being self aware because this refers to your social group standing. If you are a teacher who is a part of the majority need to be aware of how that influences their power in a certain setting depending on who you are teaching. If we hold "our way" as better that is a problem. Being aware and letting students have the option of choice will help avoid this problem I think.

The first 5 mins and the last 5 mins are important to classroom management because they are predictable for students. By being predictable students already know what is expected of them they also help students to hold themselves accountable for their own learning.

student lead guidelines for using material and space is another way we can keep our teaching student centered. By helping students make up their own rules about how to take care of valuable items they will be more incentivized to keep them nice because they were the ones to set the rules in the first place.

Classroom responsibilities are great for enacting a democratic classroom because every plays a role in keeping the environment clean and ready to use for the next class. By assigning roles that switch up every so often all students are taking part in the responsibility of keeping their space nice, once again incentivizing them to stay on top of cleaning and keeping materials nice.

By setting routines and expectations at the beginning of a class or better yet the beginning of the year students are able to have more freedom because they know what they are supposed to be doing for the first and last 5 mins of every class. By incorporating those routines into our teaching students can garner more independence as the year progresses giving them the foundational skill that they need to grow and improve upon self-accountability.

By using transitions in your lessons you are giving students a break from front loading them with information and also by use of transitions you can incorporate cross curricular ideas for students who are especially excited about a topic from another class while also giving those who need it extra practice with that particular topic.

Making their own rules on how to care for materials give students a space to come together and have a running dialogue with the teacher and peers. That will help with overall camaraderie in the class environment

Going back to classroom jobs, each student will get a chance to at least do one of every job throughout the school year, by rotating that keeps everything fair and doesn't have some students doing more than others.

Transitions are good because they help students stay focused on what they are doing. By integrating these into every lesson we can increase the amount of students being engaged in a given lesson even if they are easily distracted.

Having students have a hand in making their own set of classroom rules is great for the power balance scale that the students and the teacher have going on. By relinquishing rules to them they can feel like that have a solid hold in the classroom as well and it is not a teacher take over situation.

Dewy (1899) says that schools are a microcosm of society. This to me means that the way you run your classroom, the rules you set and how you behave will be implicitly and explicitly showing students what is okay and what is not okay in the "big-person" world. It is extremally important to use strategies that allow for democracy and autonomy to flourish in the classroom environment.

Making sure students voices are heard in a meaningful and authentic way is another classroom management tactic that will encourage democratic practices. By letting the students have a voice in what they are learning and how they are learning they are more likely A) retain information B) be more engaged.

Rick Ayers

Strong democratic practice means the inclusion of the many different types of communities and practices that come into your classrooms with your children. This also means that you have to find a way to manage your room but not be insensitive to the cultural practices a student might have.

Ayers brings up good points about how Dewy had a good idea but it wasn't a vision made with a lens of equity. By teaching in a way that puts student's first whether that be with personalized activities or by having current event conversations in the classroom we can take Dewys framework and make it equitable.

By adding in community building activities as a regular practice you can make and sustain a student-centered classroom. (ex. flexible grouping).

Walter Parker

By letting students have the freedom to debate on topics and have a community led discussions the class remains student centered while still being on task with the standards and curriculum

The parker readings discussed the importance of debates as I have mentioned previously, but I think it deserves to be mention here as well (many things can go in multiple categories I think). By having a monitored debate the teacher can make sure they are 1 communicating with each other and 2 that no one is interrupting anyone who wants a chance to speak. By having multiple questions many students may be inclined to speak, even more so if you already have that strong classroom bonds.

By having mixed grouping and making the room a space where everyone talks to everyone the idea of the "stranger" will slowly dissolve as students find common ground within each other and with the teacher as well. This will not work without a foundation of authenticity

Making sure that students are interacting with material that is relevant to them and their lives will be important for continued engagement, no one like busy work. By making learning purposeful with interactive classroom strategies like moving around the room, projects and think-pair-shares we can use multiple brain functions to help the information stick.

Making sure that you have a space for students to calm down is a trauma-centered classroom management approach. When kids are in downstairs brain, they are liable to act rash on upsetting emotions. By having a system set in place that they are aware of you might be able to help mitigate some of the harsh responses they have to triggers.

Reading

Having different activities to help reengage those students who might be manifesting behaviors due to ACE's, such as class clownery and disruptions may be avoided if we can find something they are interested in.

The sooner that we can assign motives to a students disruptive behavior the sooner we can pivot and change our plan to keep everyone at least semi on track.

Making sure that what we read bleeds into our practices is important. It is one thing to say you will be a trauma-sensitive teacher but another thing to put what you've learned to practice. Making sure that your methodology matches your actions will ensure the students get the best approach possible that centers the students through a trauma sensitive lens.

Making sure you see a student as more than their story is essential. No two students are alike, though they may have similar experiences.

Understanding how ACE's affects the brain will help you better spot Flight, Fight or Freeze responses in your students. Finding a way to help them come back to us with little fan-fare would be the best course of action, middle schoolers tend to be self conscious of their peers. So making sure you have a designated plan and space to reintegrate them after an episode or hiccup would help loads I think.

Trauma unfortunate is not as uncommon as we wish it was in trauma so it is your job as the teacher and adult in the room to be aware of how you are presenting yourself and your classroom. By having a predictable classroom routines, like a do now or an exit ticket will help students be calm because they know what is going to happen.

Children do not learn in survival mode so making sure to have relationships with your students is very important. You need to know what's going on with them so you don't accidentally trigger something or if you do, they need to be comfortable coming to you or a space you have for help. By fostering strong bonds you can help keep your room inclusive.

Reading

Though strategies are important it is all imperative that you don't loose sight of the student the main focus should be getting them to shift focus to positive ideas and get them back into their upstairs brain.

Having students heavily participate in making their own norms will be beneficial because they are 1) more likely to adhere to them 2) letting them know immediately that their voices have value in the classroom.

You can make it a democratic practice by having the students build their own norms on an anchor chart but also showing them the schools rules to make sure everything matches up.

By holding students accountable to their own rules will help set foundations of respect and accountability in the classroom.

making sure that directions are clear and concise and not to many steps will breed room for open communication in the classroom.

Having on-going conversations in the classroom beyond the first few weeks of school will help maintain a student-centered classroom and open dialogue.

Making sure your pedagogical approach matches up with the values of the school and the norms you are helping students co-create is extremally important so that consistency comes naturally.

Going back to the co-creation of the classroom rules and norms making a fun activity out of it can be super helpful for example using an anchor chart where they can collaborate.

Vison Board activities like we will be using in our microteach is also good for building classroom community so that we can all share our hopes and dreams and build bonds through common ground of working towards a goal.

Having you as the teacher, also participate in the co-creation or sharing of these instructional activities will also show vulnerability and transparency to the students.

Setting expectations early on in the year about how to debate will be huge for democratic practice.

Letting students know that they can have an opinion but it is on them to be able to defend it makes the room student centered by giving them that responsibility.

Having rules about what will and will not be tolerated in discussion is a good way to manage the classroom, for example if someone is just being hateful for the sake of it, shutting that down immediately because it is not productive to anyone in the room or the community that is trying to be built.

Having a collaborative approach is essential for having good conversations with your students

Being culturally responsive to topics that may come up and being knowledgeable enough to guide a conversation in a healthy and productive zone without hurting anyone in the process.

Being reflective is also huge because as the conversation progresses you need to be able to learn from your students and reflect on how that may have changed your prospective so you can better serve them as your community of learners.

Discussion (Socratic seminar style ) on topics that the students bring up with teacher moderation to make sure everything goes smoothly

Giving students resources to research whatever they have an opinion on before there is a discussion.

Practicing how to listen to both sides of an argument even if you don't agree with the counter to the topic being addressed.