Why Study History?

Elizabeth Eliades

EDU 5010

November 30, 2020

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: A Manifesto

Taken together, the three words “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” contain within them the power to transform American education from kindergarten through high school and beyond. In brief, I understand Diversity to describe who we are as a nation of students and teachers, Equity to indicate the intended goals of education, and Inclusion to provide the means of achieving those ends. As an historian, I cannot help but reflect on the events of 2020 and America’s imperfect response to those events as signaling the urgency of policies and practices that acknowledge the Diversity of our nation’s children, that provide the resources to deeply and Equitably educate each and every child, and that proceed from a philosophical and pedagogical stance of Inclusion rather than Exclusion. Only by attending to these objectives in this way does America stand a chance of transforming her relationship to the twin legacies of genocide and slavery that marred her founding, the pernicious effects of which persist to this day for example in the repeated unjustified killings of People of Color by agents of the State. Only in this way does America stand a chance of bringing its disparate populace together to acknowledge and find solutions to the most pressing problems of the twenty-first century, global pandemics and climate change included. Because the stakes could not be higher, acknowledging Diversity, demanding Equity and mandating Inclusion in education is an urgent call to action.

Diversity is a word that describes the socio-cultural reality in America in 2020, and by extension the K-12 school-aged population. In fact, the index of nominal diversity has been increasing since the late 1970’s as a consequence of immigration to the United States largely from countries in Latin America and Asia. (Nieto & Bode, 2018). By nominal diversity, I mean the outward signs of difference such as language, national origin, ethnic identity, socio-economic status, religious affiliation, etc. From 1995 to 2017, the percentage of children attending schools in diverse districts increased from 45 to 66 percent, where a diverse district was defined as one in which no one race made up more than the 75 percent of that district’s overall student body. (Rabinowitz, Emamdjomeh & Meckler, 2019). Nieto and Bode estimate that approximately ten percent of children enrolled in American public schools speak native languages other than English. Then there are diversities among student populations, for example those involving Gender and Sexual Diversity (GSD), that are less obvious and sometimes even invisible in the absence of safe spaces and explicitly inclusive policies. (Lewis, 2020).

If Diverse is an increasingly accurate way to describe the American school-aged population, then Equity must be the ultimate goal in public education. The philosophies, policies and practices that reigned in American education during an era in which the school population was less diverse are no longer acceptable, both from a moral and a pragmatic perspective. Salient examples of inequitable practices include “sink-or-swim” English language immersion programs for emergent bilingual students and inflexible forms of ability tracking. The moral argument for Equity recognizes and holds in highest regard the human dignity of every child, and the corresponding right of all children to be educated to their fullest capacities. The pragmatic argument for Equity holds that each child comes to the schoolhouse door already possessed of significant human capital, and that it is the obligation and responsibility of educational institutions to acknowledge that human capital, valorize it, invest in it, and shepherd its growth for the benefit of both the individual and the society at large. If equality as a process means treating all children the same by providing them with the same opportunities and resources, then Equity means considering the needs of each individual child and meeting those needs with appropriate resources and learning strategies. Because Equitable practices require differentiation and individuation, they allow all children to succeed regardless of their original circumstances and thus to approach equality in outcomes. In addition, research demonstrates that Equitable practices in education benefit all children, not only those whose specific requirements occasioned the initial program or intervention. A paradigmatic example of an Equitable practice of benefit to all children would be the introduction of two-way bilingual education into a school with both monolingual, dominant-culture children and multi-lingual, non-dominant-culture children. Commitment to such a program would ideally create a fully bi- and multi-lingual student body with shared social and cultural experiences as well as enhanced cognitive capacity among all participants. (Nieto & Bode, 2018).

If Diversity is an expanding socio-cultural reality in American schools, and Equity rather than equality is the ultimate goal of public education, then Inclusion characterizes one of the principal means of achieving that goal through educational policies and practices. The term Inclusion is an umbrella term that implies the reintegration into the general education classroom of groups of students historically segregated from that classroom for different reasons. Emergent bilingual students and students with disabilities are salient examples of students who have historically been excluded from American classrooms. Full inclusion for emergent bilingual students would imply two-way bilingual education for both those students and monolingual English speakers, although there are inclusive steps of different intensity from full exclusion to full inclusion such as transitional bilingual education. (Nieto & Bode, 2018). Inclusion of children with disabilities in school settings is federally mandated under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1975. According to the American Occupational Therapy Association, “Inclusion is a social justice issue” that “refers to integrating students with disabilities with their peers into a variety of general education settings….” (AOTA, 2015). But there is another kind of exclusion more diffuse that requires intentionally Inclusive practices, and that is the exclusion of invisibility, for example, of the gender non-binary student who faces a gender-binary school environment or the mixed race student whose Puerto Rican heritage on her mom’s side gets obscured by her Black heritage on her dad’s side. (Lewis, 2020; Nieto and Bode, 2018). These invisible exclusions require different kinds of remedial Inclusive practices, such as a teacher modeling a norm of preferred pronouns as a safe sign to GSD students or beginning of year intensive funds-of-knowledge work with students to draw out otherwise invisible identities.

Just as there is no “objective” historian, there is no educator without a context. Scholars and commentators have proposed that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion work must begin with an inquiry into the contours and boundaries of one’s own self: identities, history, context, position. (Kendi, 2019; D’Angelo 2018). Before one can fully understand, critique and then transform existing inadequate and discriminatory norms and institutions, one must locate one’s self in relation to those norms and institutions. I am a White, middle-aged, heterosexual female with one child and three post-secondary degrees living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Complicating the picture, I was also raised in a European-socialist, matriarchal-immigrant household by middle-class parents in a racially-mixed, working-class neighborhood in New Jersey. As an outsider who looked like and was able to seamlessly function as an insider, I reaped the benefits of the dominant culture while simultaneously aware of my own discomfort in that culture.

What understanding my own positionality gives me is an insight into the positionality of others, specifically of my students. For students born into and unselfconsciously raised as members of the dominant culture, my first job as a teacher is to create in them an awareness that their own realities are largely constructed and contingent; not natural, inevitable or inherited. When these students are able to see, identify and name their relationship to the dominant culture instead of experiencing that culture as a monolithic, invisible and ahistorical norm, then space exists for those students to see other students from non-dominant cultures in a qualitatively different light.

In concrete terms, in southern Marin County, California, the dominant culture is upper-middle class White. In concrete terms, as an educator in southern Marin County, California, I understand my task as problematizing Whiteness and class for upper-middle-class White students. Only when these students can understand these categories as socially constructed and enforced by custom, law and violence do they have the tools necessary to stand outside their privilege and fully encounter people from non-dominant cultures as fellow human beings rather than as objects of effective and coordinated systems of oppression.

If Whiteness and class, for example, are largely invisible without more to students who live inside the bubble of the dominant culture, then it is the students themselves who are invisible without more when their histories, origins, languages, abilities and identities place them outside that bubble. My task as an educator with these students is to bring these facets of identity forward, celebrate them and meaningfully integrate them into the curriculum and the classroom experience.

In deconstructing class and Whiteness, I am guided by the principles of Anti-Bias/Anti-Racist (ABAR) stance which finds concrete support for implementation in the comprehensive Anti-Bias Framework (ABF) developed by the social justice organization Teaching Tolerance (TT). (TT, n.d.). An ABAR perspective holds that racism and bias against specific identities are ubiquitous and systemic, with devastating effects on academic achievement and self-concept of directly affected students, and that any approach that seeks to meliorate and ultimately eradicate racism and bias in education must be comprehensive, systematic and long-term in scope. (Kleinrock, 2020). An ABAR perspective likewise holds that comprehensive strategies for addressing bias and racism in schools will benefit all students, not just those historically disadvantaged. Viewing the task of education in 21^st-century America through an ABAR lens also demands that teachers, especially White teachers, first confront their own identities, seek to understand how those identities have defined their experiences, and engage in the daily and difficult work of personal, professional and institutional transformation. Only in this way, ABAR holds, will the education system over time ultimately be able to achieve social justice and equitable outcomes.

In considering how best to achieve Equity and Inclusion, I have been particularly influenced by the related ideas of an assets-based approach to education and a commitment to learning about student funds of knowledge. If an assets-based approach takes differences that have been traditionally viewed as deficits and reconfigures them as strengths, then deep interdisciplinary curricular explorations into those differences can be transformative for all students, both those who closely identify with the subject being investigated and those who do not. (Nieto & Bode, Curricular Adaptation 1: A Study of Cambodia and the Cambodian American Experience, 290-298). Similarly, a funds-of-knowledge approach seeks to tap into the rich life experiences of students in their families and cultures outside the classroom and bring that wealth into the classroom, again for the benefit of all students. (Nieto & Bode, Multicultural Teaching Story, 264-266). Along with assets-based and funds-of-knowledge pedagogies, I believe in setting high expectations for all students as a corrective to historically low expectations that have plagued non-dominant culture students with correspondingly corrosive effects on both their academic performance and their social and emotional development. By incorporating an ABAR perspective into assets-based and funds-of-knowledge pedagogies, I would describe myself as a practitioner of Critical Pedagogy, the educational philosophy developed by Brazilian educator Paolo Freire. Critical Pedagogy relies on “a reciprocal relationship between the teacher and students in a democratic environment that allows everyone to learn from each other,” where teachers employ a problem-posing approach that emphasizes process and dialogue in contexts where “correct answers” are elusive. (Diaz, n.d.).

One example of equitable practices in education that reflect Critical Pedagogy is the concept of Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT). CRT starts with the identities and lived experiences of historically marginalized students in their families, communities and cultures, and seeks to leverage those identities and experiences to improve the learning capacity, cognitive development and academic performance of those students. Zaretta Hammond distinguishes CRT from multicultural education and social justice education by focusing on the increase in cognitive capacity at the center of CRT efforts. (Gonzalez, n.d.). If the teacher does not share elements of identity with the diverse students in the classroom, then it is incumbent upon that teacher to draw out strands of identity that students are willing to share as well as engage in a personal process of intensive learning about other strands of identity that may be obscured by history, language or culture and include these elements to the extent possible in the curriculum. These elements include both content and instructional strategies. In a CRT classroom, a teacher’s knowledge about cultural beliefs and practices of the students and their families is imperative because those beliefs and practices may diverge significantly from the teacher’s own. For example, a student may come from a family and/or culture in which gender roles appear more rigid, elders have more authority, the collective well-being of the group as opposed to the individual is of paramount importance, and communication styles are fundamentally different. CRT functions best in a classroom environment suffused with “culturally sensitive caring,” meaning an environment in which the teacher demonstrates high expectations for all learners. Similarly, CRT teachers focus on community-building with diverse students, engaging and facilitating cross-cultural communication, and implementing holistic learning strategies that fuse identity-work with academic content areas. (Gay, 2002). As part of the intensive cultural work required by CRT, teachers need to be aware of and ready to recommend appropriate community resources for students and families needing access to those services. Important examples are health services, mental health services, food and housing security networks, anti-domestic violence services, and gender and sexual diversity resources, to name a few.

In the context of CRT concerns with identity, I would like to address here equity and inclusion for students whose identities may be invisible or emerging. Although an ethnic, national, linguistic or cultural identity might also be at first glance invisible to a teacher, many of the CRT strategies will ideally draw those identities to the surface through family-history projects and student story-telling and memoir, for example. With Gender and Sexual Diverse students, the strategies must initially be different because they must create spaces and opportunities for inclusion that may remain empty until a student feels ready and/or comfortable entering those spaces and making use of those opportunities. Because GSD persons constitute a significant part of the population even if no student in any given classroom at any given time appears to personally embrace a GSD identity, teachers must create safe zones and spaces known to students and engage in practices that telegraph acceptance and inclusion such as claiming pronouns, designating a physical space as a Safe Zone, and sponsoring a GSA club, for example. These practices are in addition to formal academic instruction on the history and contributions of gender-diverse persons to various fields of inquiry. The organization Gender Spectrum has a Gender Inclusive Schools Toolkit that provides a comprehensive approach for educators. Likewise, Teaching Tolerance has a publication entitled Best Practices for Serving LGBTQ Students that identifies policies and practices that promote inclusion of GSD students. These include guarantees of freedom of expression for GSD students, privacy rights, outlines for a robust schoolwide anti-bullying policy, a school culture accepting of diverse gender expressions, and inclusive sex education programs (See Resources below).

Another way of approaching equitable practices in education is through the lens of social justice. Social justice education in its narrowest aspect focuses on highlighting the historical experience of traditionally marginalized students, taking for example a less intimate and hands-on approach than CRT. But the Social Justice Standards formulated in 2018 by Teaching Tolerance, the education arm of the Southern Poverty Law Center, provide a comprehensive blueprint for equity education in the four domains of Identity, Diversity, Justice and Action (IDJA) in an effort to both reduce prejudice in the dominant culture and encourage collective action to improve conditions for historically marginalized groups: “The standards recognize that, in today’s diverse classrooms, students need knowledge and skills related to both prejudice reduction and collective action.” (TT, 2018, p. 2). Styled as a kind of manifesto, the Social Justice Standards identify twenty anchor standards spread out over four domains, each of which begins with the words “Students will…,” which begs the question as to exactly how teachers will implement the standards. I think that the answer lies in understanding that the standards move from the individual student (Identity) to other students (Diversity), through to society (Justice) and then to the realm of change (Action). Because the Identity domain, which begins with the objective “Students will develop positive social identities based on their membership in multiple groups in society,” implicates the same areas of concern as CRT, educators versed in CRT strategies will be well-equipped to implement the five Identity standards. If Identity elements are scaffolded appropriately as CRT scholar Geneva Gay recommends (Gay, 2002), then the five standards in the Diversity domain which begins with “Students will express comfort with people who are both similar to and different from them and engage respectfully with all people,” are also well within reach. The Diversity standards can be seen as corresponding to some of the original objectives of Multicultural Education. (TT, 2018).

The social justice elements of the Teaching Tolerance Social Justice Standards are located most squarely within the third and fourth domains, Justice and Action. It is in these two domains that the hallmarks of social justice education for equity reside. As an historian, the objectives of social justice education are most familiar to me because the examination of history lies at the center of two of the five standards in the Justice domain: “Students will analyze the harmful impact of bias and injustice on the world, historically and today,” and “Students will identify figures, groups, events and a variety of strategies and philosophies relevant to the history of social justice around the world.” (TT, 2018). For example, teaching the history of the United States Constitution through a social justice lens means locating that document and its textual provisions in an eighteenth-century America in which slavery was a defining institution and not just an unfortunate element. Slavery ordered American society and polity in that era, and its fundamental importance was specifically reflected in the Constitution. This is a very different way of teaching the history of the Constitution, which before the claims of social justice education had largely focused on the concept of separation of powers, an idea borrowed in any event from Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws.

In a sense the Action domain of the Social Justice Standards reflect the reality that the darker elements of history cast a long shadow on the present, urging as they do student action to combat bias, prejudice, unfair treatment and injustice (“17. Students will recognize their own responsibility to stand up to exclusion, prejudice and injustice.”) The Action domain is likewise fundamental because it contains norms of student behavior that teachers need to model in order to realize a vision of equity and inclusion predicated on ideals of social justice, specifically “Students will express empathy when people are excluded or mistreated…” and “Students will speak up with courage and respect when they or someone else has been hurt or wronged by bias.” (TT, 2018). Teacher modeling of empathy and zero tolerance for bullying anywhere at school are necessary elements for creating an inclusive environment free of that biological and physical stress that interferes with cognitive development, and one in which maximal learning can take place. In this way, social justice education is linked not only to the domain of Action but also to social and emotional learning. Teaching Tolerance has an abundance of classroom resources to facilitate social justice education, including lessons, learning plans, student texts and student tasks that are linked to their four domains. The Zinn Education Project likewise has useful materials for social justice education that are organized by time period, theme and resource type. (See Resources below).

The equitable practices and policies I have discussed here are just a subset of the strategies and approaches that educators and school districts are implementing in an effort to fully reach the increasingly diverse students who attend public schools in America. The challenges of the 21^st century are too formidable to squander any of the rich reserves of human capital those students represent by meeting them with outmoded attitudes and methodologies originally tailored to a White, Eurocentric, gender binary, Ableist dominant culture. Which is not to say that the conceptions and practices identified here would be inappropriate for educating gender-binary White children from European backgrounds. Research clearly demonstrates that Equitable and Inclusive practices benefit all children. So let me leave you with a vision of the future in which White children, Black children, Mexican American children and Cambodian immigrant children are educated in a two-way bilingual Spanish program K-12. Monolingual children are now bilingual, bilingual children might be trilingual, all the children can do math in two languages, and perhaps most importantly, these children from diverse backgrounds have a new community created from shared educational experiences to add to their communities of origin. These are the children who can imagine a world in which reparations for slavery and indigenous genocide are necessary, law enforcement abuses are unacceptable, and concerted international action to effectively address climate change is both possible and achievable.

Resources

American Occupational Therapy Association. (2015). Inclusion of children with disabilities: Occupational therapy’s role in mental health promotion, prevention, & intervention with children & youth.

https://www.aota.org/-/media/Corporate/Files/Practice/Children/Inclusion-of-Children-With-Disabilities-20150128.PDF

Diaz, K. (n.d.) Paulo Freire. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

https://iep.utm.edu/freire/

Gay, G. (2002). Preparing for Culturally Responsive Teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 53(2), 106-16.

http://www.cwu.edu/teaching-learning/sites/cts.cwu.edu.teaching-learning/files/documents/PreparingforCulturallyResponsiveTeaching%2C%20Geneva%20Gay.pdf

General Commission on Religion and Race of the United Methodist Church. (2018). Deconstructing white privilege with Dr. Robin D’Angelo. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7mzj0cVL0Q

https://www.genderspectrum.org/resources?category=education-and-gender-expansive-students

Gonzalez, J. (Host). (n.d.) Four misconceptions about culturally responsive teaching (No. 78) [Audio podcast episode]. In Cult of Pedagogy.

https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/pod/episode-78/

Kendi, I.X. (2019). How to be an Antiracist. One World.

Kleinrock, E. (2020). Anti-racist work in schools: Are you in it for the long haul? Teaching Tolerance Magazine, June 30, 2020.

https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/antiracist-work-in-schools-are-you-in-it-for-the-long-haul

Lewis, K. (2020). “The unnecessary gendering of everything”: Gender diverse adults speak back to their K-12 schools. Dominican scholar: Faculty authored books and book contributions. Myers Education Press.

https://scholar.dominican.edu/books/155

Nieto, S., & Bode, P. (2018). Affirming diversity: The sociopolitical context of multicultural education. (7^th ed.) Pearson.

https://www.tolerance.org/classroom-resources/lessons

Teaching Tolerance. (2018). Social Justice Standards: The Teaching Tolerance Anti-Bias Framework. Southern Poverty Law Center.

https://www.tolerance.org/sites/default/files/2020-09/TT-Social-Justice-Standards-Anti-bias-framework-2020.pdf

Rabinowitz, K., Emamdjomeh, A., & Meckler, L. (2019, September 12). How the nation’s growing racial diversity is changing our schools. The Washington Post.

Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/local/school-diversity-data/

https://www.zinnedproject.org/

Educational Philosophy

One of the core values that guides my commitment to education is the belief that violence is inversely correlated with learning. I am convinced that resort to violence as a means of solving problems is less likely to occur in the presence of educated minds. By educated minds, I mean not just knowing minds that can find pieces of information willy-nilly from the various sources around them. I mean also thinking minds that weigh evidence, options, and sensitivities, and connect those disparate pieces into a coherent whole that supports rather than undermines humanity and the complex ecosystems that sustain it. I believe that deeply-educated people would choose vaccination of the global south over pharmaceutical profits and biotech patents. I believe that deeply-educated people would choose to know the truth about settler colonial genocide against indigenous peoples so that the unavoidable work of healing, reconciliation and restitution can begin. Because without healing, reconciliation and restitution, there will be a reckoning, and the reckoning will likely as not involve violence. Finally, I believe that deeply-educated people would want to deeply educate all children so as to increase the quotient of human happiness rather than reduce it, because “there but for fortune, go I.” (TPE 1: Engaging and Supporting All Students in Learning)

In educational and pedagogical terms, I am devoted to critical thinking, to considering what critical thinking is and is not, to teaching my students how to do it, and to showing them the power that it holds for solving problems in the real world. Critical thinking is a habit of mind that involves asking more questions than there are answers, asking questions of the questions, and leaving the mind open to other possibilities. I hope to demonstrate this habit of mind to my students and help them explore what it means for themselves. I believe that one of the advantages I bring to the profession as an older teacher is long experience with critical thinking, or what I would also call honing an analytical mind. I have previously worked as an attorney, as an historian, and as a poet. Each enterprise involves gathering disparate pieces (evidence, facts, words) and organizing them into a coherent narrative for a specific purpose (advocacy, public truth-telling, private truth-telling). I believe that I have a rich background from which to embrace and support my students in the acquisition of analytical skills, and also to define and refine my own practice as a teacher.

Lastly, I have a strong commitment to social justice which informs my teaching. I have worked in prisons as an attorney and on prison reform as a private citizen. I have seen the hunger for education in the eyes of incarcerated persons, an experience that convinced me that the stories of their lives might have been radically different had they had the educations they deserved as citizens of the United States. I have seen the power of differentiated instruction in the classroom, even as practiced by a teaching novice like myself. I think that the next wave of educational philosophy might seek to join the power of social justice thinking to the power of differentiated instruction to arrive at a proactive restorative model in education. My own investigation into the question of whether there is constitutional right to education in America led me to the shocking story of the Detroit public schools in the case Gary B. v. Snyder (2020). It should not take litigation under the U.S. Constitution and a settlement decree with the governor of a state to ensure that children of color get educated in America. The legacy of slavery and racism runs deep in our country, and I will do what I can in my power as an educator to help heal those wounds. (TPE 6: Developing as a Professional Educator)

History is a subject that is easy to teach poorly, and difficult to teach well in part because the essential focus of most history-teaching is misplaced in my view. When most people recount their experiences with the subject of history in school, they inevitably roll their eyes and say that they found it incredibly boring, that they couldn’t get their heads around all the facts that kept swimming in front of their eyes, and that they can’t remember anything that they learned.

I think that the essential job of the history teacher is not to get students to remember what happened and in what sequence, say, during the French Revolution, but rather to teach students how to think about what happened. Particular knowledge about what happened during the French Revolution is a click away on the internet. Transferable knowledge about how to think about causes and consequences of events, how to compare events, how to identify interests among actors, and conceptualizing alternative outcomes are more elusive skills that need to be specifically taught. These are valuable skills that students can take with them and use to their advantage in the real world. The subject of history also provides fertile ground for developing literacy skills such as close reading, academic vocabulary, and rigorous analytical writing. It is my observation that these skills are under-emphasized in most high-school history classes, which is one reason that I am seeking a dual single-subject credential in both Social Studies and English. (TPE 1: Engaging and Supporting All Students in Learning; TPE 3: Understanding and Organizing Subject Matter for Student Learning)

I have observed that the most valuable teaching strategies in history and social studies involve collaborative and creative projects that directly involve students in their own learning where the teacher plays more of a guiding rather than leading role. I like to use Think-Pair-Share, Collaborative Discussions with Peer Review, and Jigsaw in particular to get students thinking and working together. I intend to mix up table groups at regular intervals, and also adjust task groupings based on student needs and abilities. In terms of teaching materials, I prefer to deemphasize the textbook with its superficial coverage. I like to supplement and/or replace the textbook with some high-quality video sources such as Kahn Academy for chronology and background, and then focus most of the instruction on working with primary sources of varying levels of difficulty and with secondary sources that highlight different interpretations. I will always provide alternative ways of accomplishing some performance tasks and assessments to accommodate diverse student learning styles and interests while staying focused on foundational literacies. Every writing project or its equivalent (visual or auditory) will receive extensive and specific comments and feedback. (TPE 1: Engaging and Supporting All Students in Learning; TPE 5: Assessing Student Learning)

There are some key concepts that I have learned during my long engagement with the historical profession that I would seek to impress upon my students. First, history does not repeat itself even if it appears to do so at first glance. Second, nothing is natural or inevitable in history. Human actors always have other ways of proceeding and engaging with each other and their circumstances. Third, to use a powerful metaphor from mathematics, history is an over-determined system, meaning that causation is so multivalent that divergent interpretations can be legitimately supported. This last point is sophisticated, and more appropriate for advanced learners who have engaged extensively with secondary works of historical interpretation. (TPE 3: Understanding and Organizing Subject Matter for Student Learning)

My two primary ethical responsibilities to students are to keep them physically and psychically safe, and to treat them with equal dignity and respect. Keeping students physically safe is a function in part of awareness of school policies and procedures in the event of emergencies, but also attention to individual health and well-being. This latter obligation requires continual observation and periodic check-ins to try to assess elements of wellness, both physical and psychological, that might not be immediately observable. In the event that I suspect or encounter something of concern, it is my responsibility to take action with appropriate parties to address my concerns, including parents, administrators, counselors and other wellness personnel. If I suspect that a student is being neglected or abused, I have a mandatory reporting obligation to Marin County Children and Family Services. (TPE 2: Creating and Maintaining Effective Environments for Student Learning)

Treating students with equal dignity and respect begins with showing interest in all students as individuals with particular histories from families with different backgrounds and cultures. It is my responsibility as their teacher to learn about my students, their families and backgrounds so that I am able to engage in Culturally Responsive Teaching. For example, in a World History class with Spanish-speakers I might substitute study of the Mexican Revolution for the Haitian Revolution in a unit on political revolutions. My ethical responsibilities as a teacher extend to active differentiation of instruction for all learners. I have a responsibility to make myself aware of accommodations and modifications required for students with 504 Plans and IEPs, and also to implement those accommodations and modifications to the best of my abilities. Although advanced learners do not typically have 504s or IEPs, I nonetheless need to differentiate for them to make sure that they are sufficiently challenged, for example, by assigning them a more difficult primary source with which to work. I also need to observe closely the proficiency levels of the majority of students in the middle so that I adjust their challenges accordingly to keep them expanding their skills at a manageable pace. (TPE 1: Engaging and Supporting All Students in Learning; TPE 4: Planning Instruction and Designing Learning Experiences for All Students; TPE 5: Assessing Student Learning)

My professional obligations as a teacher are many, and include awareness of and familiarity with state content and literacy standards for Social Studies and English Language Development Standards for emerging, expanding and bridging English learners. I have professional obligations to my students, their parents, other faculty, school and district administrators and support personnel. I will meet with parents, attend faculty meetings, attend IEP meetings, district meetings relevant to my content areas, and professional development events whenever possible. I need to stay abreast of developments in curriculum design and educational technology applications in my subject areas. I will practice collegiality with other teachers in my content area, my school, my district, my state, the country, and internationally. In the classroom, I will solicit student input to establish a culture of mutual respect and reciprocal obligations. I will always be prepared, but also prepared to change course when that is necessary to support student learning. I will give my students my complete attention and model respectful and active listening and communication. (TPE 2: Creating and Maintaining Effective Environments for Student Learning; TPE 6: Developing as a Professional Educator)

In order for me to teach historical content and process to my students, I first need to create an effective Learning Environment for them, something which begins but does not end with the physical environment. The physical environment of the classroom is nonetheless crucial as it is the first thing that students see when they enter. I will endeavor to create a physical environment that signals immediately my receptivity to all cultures and identities. I have seen this done effectively with posters of historically important persons from a variety of cultures and identities, and quotations and banners that indicate receptivity, identity and safety. I will also organize my classroom to emphasize my role as leader and guide rather than traditional sole source of knowledge with decentralized table-group desks, multiple points of foci, a few quiet carrels, some comfortable seating, and a learning center with a variety of print and audio materials for student use. With these physical elements, I hope to make it immediately clear that all learners of any identity are welcome in my classroom. I will emphasize this sense of receptivity and openness by seeking to create a classroom culture, with the participation of my students, that stresses mutual respect and care for one another in our shared learning community. We will draw up a classroom code of conduct together and be mutually accountable for seeing that its precepts are observed. I will seek to model openness and acceptance of difference by sharing my hearing disability with my students, and explaining to them what it means in terms of learning together. I will do this in the hopes that some of my students will feel comfortable sharing some of their learning differences, what it means for their learning, and how their fellow community-members can support them. I will seek to build community as well with parents, and develop strategies for introducing family and cultural history into my classroom to support all my students. I will provide opportunities for students with different identities to teach and learn from each other so as to create the most effective Learning Environment possible. (TPE 2: Creating and Maintaining Effective Environments for Student Learning)

In terms of teaching and learning theories relevant to my practice, I start with the developmental features of adolescents, who are layering on physical, cognitive, social-emotional and ethical nuance, sophistication and ability to already-existing structures. Adolescence is a time when the ability to engage in critical thinking owing to neurological and corresponding cognitive development, is at an all-time high. This awareness leads me to challenge my students just beyond their comfort zones so that they reach for unfamiliar cognitive territory, thereby establishing new neural pathways and hopefully achieving a sense of accomplishment as well. As for a course development theory most suited to all students including adolescents, I am most influenced by the Understanding by Design (UbD) framework developed by Wiggins and McTighe in 2005. The UbD framework reverses traditional course design to begin the course or unit development with the big ideas, essential questions and desired student learning outcomes. This first stage is followed by identification of appropriate formative and summative assessments that show evidence of the learning outcomes. The last stage in the UbD framework identifies activities and learning strategies that are closely keyed to the identified assessments to enable student accomplishment of the course learning goals. The UbD framework also allows for frequent revision of the different stages as the course developer engages in the process and reflects on the alignment of learning outcomes, assessments and activities. (TPE 4: Planning Instruction and Designing Learning Experiences for All Students)

Another critical course and lesson-design theory influential in my teaching practice is the Universal Design for Learning or UDL framework developed in the 1990s with the goal of using insights from new learning in neuroscience to reach all learners by way of differentiated instruction. Each of the three domains of Engagement, Representation, and Action and Expression in the UDL framework is keyed to a different area of the brain. The UDL guidelines seek to make explicit the ways in which teachers can reach all learners and increase learning outcomes by providing options for Engagement (multiple means for generating self-regulation, sustaining effort and persistence, and recruiting interest); Representation (multiple means for comprehension, understanding language, mathematical expressions and symbols); and Action and Expression (multiple means for developing executive functions, multiple media for expression and communication, and different ways of incorporating physical action). As a history teacher, the UDL framework is key because it encourages me to engage at all times in student-centered teaching that emphasizes the relationship between what we are learning to students’ lives, provides multiple means of accessing the material and multiple means of expressing learning outcomes. The UDL framework provides explicit, research-based strategies for differentiating instruction along the four lines identified by Carol Tomlinson: content, process, product and learning environment. (TPE 4: Planning Instruction and Designing Learning Experiences for All Students)

I believe that I am a good teacher in large part because I am a life-long learner. I have never lost that awe in the face of new knowledge and insights, and that openness to learning that I possessed as a child. I take joy in learning, which is something that I would like to instill in my students. I have had an unusual and superior education myself, elements of which I would also like to provide my students, such as an analytical frame of mind and a strong commitment to social justice. In this, I follow the example of educational philosophers such as John Dewey and Paolo Freire. My challenges as a teacher are many, and include skepticism about the effects of the New Digital Age on the brains and psyches of adolescents, lack of long experience with educational technology, how to counter student despair in the age of COVID and climate change, and understanding that education can only change some things about young lives. I would seek to focus my professional development as an educator around the challenges I perceive, for example, enrolling in educational technology courses, following developments in brain science and education, and cultivating elements of my teaching practice that encourage optimism and hope for the human race and the planet it inhabits. I have to say, though, that encouraging optimism and hope when studying history is a difficult task by definition because history tells the story of a world surrounded by a vale of tears. I believe that I will need to continue and deepen my personal practices of self-care such as yoga, meditation, poetry-writing and cello-playing in order to walk the line between the optimism and despair and stay true to my philosophy of education. (TPE 6: Developing as a Professional Educator)