Responding to 2020

This resource from the National Association of School Psychologists outlines some ways that parents and educators can support students in processing and understanding COVID-19.

The Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility has a lesson on "Writing & Art on Covid and Black Lives Matter."

There are a wide range of resources around trauma-informed teaching at Share My Lesson.org, including helping students talk about their feelings and process recent tragedies in the news. One of the premises of teaching social and emotional skills is that they are the prerequisite to students' academic learning. It is vital that as educators we help students process some of the difficult events unfolding in America.

Americans are finally having the conversations that are hundreds of years overdue, and it's important to help our students consider the issues and learn more. This resource page on Share My Lesson, Teaching about Race and Racism, includes a wealth of lesson plans, including a link to the 1619 project by the New York Times, along with curriculum to support it.

Another invaluable resource is the website Teaching Tolerance, which provides free educational materials on interesting topics that promote diversity, equity, and respect in the classroom. This might be a good resource to explore with a teacher team, since there is such a wealth of resources here and it may be overwhelming.

Another resource whose surface I barely scratched but certainly is worth a deep dive is the Zinn Education Project. There are some interesting ways that content-area teachers can bring current events into the classroom, as seen in this article "Plotting Inequalities, Building Resistance," which describes how math teachers in a San Francisco high school shed light on the ways economics and racism affect education, housing, and job opportunities. The website allows users to search by time period, theme, resource type, grade level or keyword.

This lesson plan, created by the Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility, is called "Addressing Change and Loss for Middle and High School."

It centers around a poem, "Keeping Quiet," by Pablo Neruda. The lessons and activities are "intended to help students be in community together, supporting each other with you as a trusted adult at the helm." There is a link to an audio recording of the poem.

This would be a powerful way to hold space with your students and begin to process some of the events of 2020.