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The pandemic has shown us what we already knew, education does not happen in a silo. Every part of a students’ life impacts their ability to thrive academically. Click on the arrow to read more about my commitment to centering the whole child as an educator.
The pandemic has shown us what we already knew, education does not happen in a silo. Every part of a students’ life impacts their ability to thrive academically. Click on the arrow to read more about my commitment to centering the whole child as an educator.
In this turbulent year, even more so in the past, we have needed to be attuned to the social, emotional, and economic toll the pandemic has taken on our students. This has meant fore-fronting social-emotional well-being, and, as much as possible, creating a warm, inclusive, and stable learning environment for students. This hasn't been an easy feat given the constraints and pressures of this historic moment. We've had to up our game in regards to social-emotional learning and adopting trauma-informed practices. Students have been facing weighty social-emotional challenges-- feeling more anxious, stressed, depressed and alienated and at a time in their development where socialization with peers is central. As we return to a new normal in teaching, get back into more traditional classrooms, we should not leave behind all of this hard learning. I plan to mainstream social emotional learning and trauma-informed practices in my teaching praxis going forward. Take a look below at some of the ways I have started this journey.
Trauma Informed Teaching
Trauma Informed Teaching
Relevant Trainings
Relevant Trainings
Learning agreements are key to building a safe, inclusive, and socially- accountable classroom environment
Learning agreements are key to building a safe, inclusive, and socially- accountable classroom environment
Social contracts are important vehicles for students to become true stakeholders in classroom norms. Online learning combined with high rates of social anxiety created new challenges for educators wanting to create a sense of community. Jamboard provided me a new way to pursue this community-building on a virtual platform. It allowed students multiple ways to engage with each other. Students worked individually answering prompts about the social contract. Afterwards, they worked in small groups to decide on key values/ norms, using the jamboard as a way to visually collaborate and display their ideas. We then we came together as a class to form consensus on our class values. I saved our final social contract as an image and used it as an equivalent as an online poster. Whenever we worked collaboratively, faced challenges, and/or engaged in high stakes conversations, I would include a slide reminding students of the social contract. The top picture is the final social contract my 6thy grades made. The images below display the group brainstorms of 8th graders.
Literature can be a vehicle for social-emotional learning
Literature can be a vehicle for social-emotional learning
The students I teach have been highly impacted by the pandemic, both personally and academically. Many students have family members who are frontline workers, have experienced illness, and/or experienced economic insecurity, and are struggling with social alienation and anxiety. On top of this, the demands of online learning has meant that students are unable to have ELA the entire year, leading to losses in literacy learning. I put literature and social-emotional learning at the center of my advisory class. As a class we listen and follow along to a chapter of Jason Reynold's novel Look Both Ways that discusses the inner and social lives of middle school students. Each story recounts a student's trip home from school. The reader sees the perspectives of a different set of characters in each chapter. Themes discussed include economic insecurity, family illness, bullying, death, friendship, and kindness. Students respond to prompts on a personal Jamboard where they are free to express their reflections in a number of ways. Students then share as they feel comfortable. I am additionally using literature as means to help students develop more granule emotional vocabularies.
Restorative Justice Practices
Restorative Justice Practices
I attended a training through Venetia Valley where I began learning some of the core tenets of restorative justice and how I can begin building relationships foundational to moving toward restorative circles on a virtual platform. My lead teacher and I will be implementing these practices in my 8th grade advisory class with support from a professional restorative justice coach.
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