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Have you sought out your marigolds? Are you a marigold for someone else?
This month's habit is "know yourself." Recognizing and owning our own stories is a vital step in working towards more equitable educational systems. But that is only the first step. Once we know and own our own story, then we must begin the even more difficult task of getting to know how our story impacts the work we do with our students. That takes time, effort, and knowledge-building, lots of trial and error, and a good dose of vulnerability and courage. When we're not sure exactly where to start, sometimes knowledge-building is that place.
Many of us set aside time over the summer for both personal and professional reading. Both online resources and book ideas are found below.
Online Resources
Online Resources
Learning for Justice website
Learning for Justice website
This site provides free resources to educators who work with children from kindergarten through high school. These materials are designed to supplement the curriculum, inform educator practices, and create inclusive school communities where children and youth are respected, valued, and welcome participants.
Facing History and Ourselves
Facing History and Ourselves
This site provides educators with free resources and uses lessons of history to challenge teachers and their students to stand up to bigotry and hate. Their driving philosophy is that facing our collective history and how it informs our attitudes and behaviors allows us to choose a world of equity and justice. Lessons are designed to help students connect choices made in the past to those they will confront in their own lives.
The Center for Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning
The Center for Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning
The Center for Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning (CCRTL) exists for making cultural responsiveness a meaningful aspect of everyday life. The number one objective of this organization is to sway school communities, professional communities, and the general public to become culturally responsive. Being culturally responsive is an approach to living life in a way that practices the validation and affirmation of different cultures for the purposes of moving beyond race and moving below the superficial focus on culture. Cultural responsiveness is for everyone.
Story Corps
Story Corps
The mission of this site is to preserve and share humanity's stories in order to build connections between people and create a more just and compassionate world. They do this to remind one another of our shared humanity, to strengthen and build the connections between people, to teach the value of listening, and to weave into the fabric of our culture the understanding that everyone’s story matters.
Books to Consider
Books to Consider
This text focuses on how to use the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of our students to drive engagement and instruction.
This text focuses on how to use the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of our students to drive engagement and instruction.
Introduction to the foundations of the culturally and linguistically responsive teaching and learning pedagogy from the author himself.
Introduction to the foundations of the culturally and linguistically responsive teaching and learning pedagogy from the author himself.
"To be human is to be biased." In this book, diversity expert Howard J. Ross explores the biases we each carry within us. Incorporating anecdotes from today’s headlines alongside case studies from over 30 years of diversity consulting, the author helps us understand how unconscious bias impacts our day-to-day lives and, particularly, our daily work lives. And, he offers answers the oft asked question: “Is there anything we can do about it?”
"To be human is to be biased." In this book, diversity expert Howard J. Ross explores the biases we each carry within us. Incorporating anecdotes from today’s headlines alongside case studies from over 30 years of diversity consulting, the author helps us understand how unconscious bias impacts our day-to-day lives and, particularly, our daily work lives. And, he offers answers the oft asked question: “Is there anything we can do about it?”
Short video from the author exploring some of the foundational concepts behind the book.
Short video from the author exploring some of the foundational concepts behind the book.
"The aim of Blindspot is to explain the science behind bias in plain enough language to help well-intentioned people like all of us in education achieve alignment between our behavior and our intentions. By gaining awareness, we can adapt beliefs and behavior and “outsmart the machine” in our heads so we can be fairer to those around us. Venturing into this book is an invitation to understand our own minds."
"The aim of Blindspot is to explain the science behind bias in plain enough language to help well-intentioned people like all of us in education achieve alignment between our behavior and our intentions. By gaining awareness, we can adapt beliefs and behavior and “outsmart the machine” in our heads so we can be fairer to those around us. Venturing into this book is an invitation to understand our own minds."
Drawing on his own experience of feeling undervalued and invisible in classrooms as a young man of color and merging his experiences with more than a decade of teaching and researching in urban America, award-winning educator Christopher Emdin offers a new lens on an approach to teaching and learning in urban schools.
Drawing on his own experience of feeling undervalued and invisible in classrooms as a young man of color and merging his experiences with more than a decade of teaching and researching in urban America, award-winning educator Christopher Emdin offers a new lens on an approach to teaching and learning in urban schools.
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