At the beginning of the school year, we focus our attention on standards and content knowledge as we map the curriculum and develop lesson plans. We attend “professional development” sessions regarding administrative matters that oftentimes could have been presented just as well in an email or video. What about the bigger picture? What about the philosophies, principles, and ethics that guide our work?
Radical Pedagogy Institute offered an open session entitled “Student and Teacher Humanity at the Forefront: Centering Healing, Self-Care, and Re/humanization as We Begin the School Year” for the purpose of exploring these questions. We called on bell hooks and her conceptualization of loving practice in terms of justice, care, and affirmation to frame this inquiry. Below is a product of the session: a collectively produced list of teaching practices accompanied by resources to assist in understanding and implementation. For more teaching resources, see our searchable database.
#1 Create Community Agreements with your students to allow them to create a sense of shared ownership of the classroom community, as well as to foster a student’s sense of belonging. This practice also helps to begin the year from a space of love, care, and mutual respect. It is equally important to ensure that the Community Agreements are not simply displayed on the wall and forgotten as the school year progresses. Instead, make sure you revisit your agreements throughout the year and have students evaluate how they are keeping to those agreements and if the agreements need to be updated.
RESOURCES
Guidelines for Classroom Interactions by University of Michigan’s Center for Research on Learning and Teaching
Developing Community Agreements by the National Equity Project
Guide for Developing Community Agreements by EdChange
Sample Community Agreements by Resource Media
RESOURCES
Using Talking Circles in the Classroom by Alaina Winters
Trauma Informed Teaching Practices by Instruction Partners
Leading Conversations after Crisis by Learning For Justice (the Structured Listening section is particularly relevant)
Critical Practices for Anti-bias Education – Classroom Culture by Learning for Justice
Student Sharing by Responsive Classroom
#2 Provide instructional time and space to allow for sharing of experiences and feelings. Many teachers often naturally build in time for students to pause and reflect on their learning and share their understanding. To create a community of love, it’s equally important to provide space for students to share their feelings, experiences, and other seemingly “non-academic” ideas and questions. Providing such space is essential for recognizing the full humanity of our students, honoring student experience, and engaging in culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogy.
#3 Celebrate everyone’s full humanity, including culture, gender, sexuality, religion, language, and more. Having representation of different people in your curriculum demonstrates the principles of diversity and inclusion. Creating multilingual spaces encourages students to use their language assets. Teaching students strategies for processing information, particularly taking a questioning stance, assists in dispelling myths and their associated stereotypes.
RESOURCES
WRITE Center Blog reviewing Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy by Gholdy Muhammad
Rehumanizing Mathematics: A Vision for the Future by Rochelle Gutiérrez
Inqu[ee]ry across the Curriculum by Brandie E. Waid and Kristen Hawley Turner
RESOURCES
Equity, Period by Coshandra Dillard (Learning for Justice)
Growing Seeds of Understanding by Dr. Ruth Wilson
Liberated Roots by Jey Ehrenhalt
#4 Create shared community spaces and experiences for students in order to help foster a community of love in a number of ways. For example, shared spaces that allow students to come together and nurture or care for the space (e.g., a community garden, community supply closets) can help students to foster a shared sense of responsibility, mutual care, and healing. Such spaces can also be used as a tool or catalyst to help students understand injustice (e.g., food deserts, food insecurity, income inequity, housing inequity, menstrual inequity) as well as social action that might be taken to combat those injustices. Additionally, shared community spaces provide students with opportunities to learn about the role such spaces have played in various communities both historically and presently. Organizing shared experiences for students, for example sharing a meal together, or designing a structured team-building activity (e.g., escape rooms) can also serve to foster community relationships and allow students opportunities to work together for a common purpose or engage in shared, unstructured conversations.
#5 Organize meaningful service projects for your students that require some type of exchange with someone. Service projects build relationships, thereby strengthening community, and bolster civic engagement among young people. Student choice is essential to this assignment. What are the issues the students would like to explore? Projects with an intergenerational aspect are highly encouraged.
RESOURCES
Service Learning by Edutopia
How can I use oral history as an educator? by Oral History Association
RESOURCES
Reality Pedagogy by Dr. Christopher Emdin (Specifically Cogenerative Dialogue and Coteaching)
Including Voice in Education – Addressing Equity Through Student and Family Voice in Classroom Learning by Institute of Education Sciences
Improve Your Teaching By Asking for Student Feedback by Chris Seeger
#6 Solicit student feedback and needs through exit tickets or other structured activities or “assessments”. In communities of love, all members of the community (students and teachers) are seen as valuable sources of knowledge to drive the community in meaningful directions. In order to drive community learning in meaningful directions, it is essential for teachers to solicit feedback and community needs from students. Exit tickets or writing prompts are excellent sources for this sort of activity. For example, an educator might provide students with an exit ticket asking, “What are you thinking and/or feeling in relation to what we did in class today?” The teacher could explain to students that the question is open to their interpretation–they could write something content related (“I didn’t understand this thing from today” or “I think we are good with this and it’s time to move on), about learning strategies or lesson design (“You keep doing this thing and it’s really working for me/not working for me” or “I wish we did more of X”), about how a student is feeling generally (“I’m having a bad day” or “I didn’t get much sleep last night”), or anything else. Students might also be given the opportunity to share their exit ticket or to simply submit something saying “I have completed my reflection.” Such activities build community trust and send a message that every community member has a say and is important in the development of the classroom space and learning.
#7 Use participation quizzes to assess community dynamics. Participation quizzes (sometimes called group work feedback) are opportunities for teachers and students to better understand how to improve group dynamics. These quizzes often focus on a specific behavior (e.g., active listening, making sure all group members can explain something, etc.) that the teacher observes as they are moving between groups and observing how students are working within those groups on a given task. The quizzes are excellent opportunities to create and work toward shared community goals. For example, at the start of the year if students have co-constructed community agreements, a teacher might ask students to reflect each week on an agreement that the community needs to improve upon. This might be the basis of the participation quiz for the following week.
RESOURCES
Participation Quiz / Groupwork Feedback by San Francisco Unified School District Mathematics Department
Participation Quizzes by Sam Shah
Equitable Group Work by Mathematical Agency Improvement Community
RESOURCES
Introduction to Differentiation: Responsive Teaching by Carol Ann Tomlinson
5 Ways to Explore Science Concepts Through Movement by JaShan Wilson
#8 Create opportunities for differing forms of expression through differentiation of product and process for students. Writing is the dominant form of expression across content areas. What are other ways students can demonstrate understanding and learning? Examples of other forms of expression include dancing, singing, visual art, mathematical, and interpersonal.
#9 Provide space for everyone to be both experts and learners. Each person in a classroom community should have an opportunity to make a contribution to the learning space. Design assessments that call for students to present their understandings to an audience beyond you as the teacher. In this way, they will be authentic, real-world assessments. Additionally, ask students to share what they already know about the subject before starting a lesson or unit.
RESOURCES
Giving Students More Authority in Classroom Discussions by Stephanie Toro
Designing and Using Authentic Tasks and Projects for Meaningful Learning and Assessment by Jay McTighe, Kristina Doubet, and Eric Carbaugh
RESOURCES
Amplify RJ Programs and Resources
Toolkit: The Foundations of Restorative Justice from Learning for Justice
Implementing Restorative Justice: A Guide for Schools by Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority
#10 Implement restorative justice practices in your classroom as well as advocate for them to be adopted at the school and district levels. As Amplify RJ notes, there are a multitude of definitions for restorative justice, but at the heart of this approach is a commitment to repairing relationships when harm is done. Conflict may not be avoidable; what do we do when it occurs?
