My efforts to build personal connections with students include validating student emotion chart check-ins and going beyond academics to support student interests and needs. The email check-ins showcase the execution of intentionally planned SEL strategies to cultivate personal connections with my students. SEL check-in's that lean positive will be recognized verbally in class, while difficult emotions receive private emails reaching out with support and validation. This is one way to build trust with my students by making them aware that I am listening to and interested in their wellbeing. 

Beyond validating my student's emotional wellbeing, I actively make an initiative to support my students outside of academics. Throughout the year, I make an effort to ask questions about what students do outside of school. The video on the left highlights my effort to attend student sporting events and take interest in their athletic passions. 

The efforts above become stepping stones for continuously building personal connections throughout the year. My student-athletes participate in multiple sports which offers multiple opportunities to check-in with their performance or connect it to academic examples. These check-ins may appear as simple questions while greeting them at the door or when floating around the room during small-group or independent work. As a result, the personal connections through check-ins ease students’ academic stress, promote intrinsic motivation, and inform me of how to breakdown questions using culturally relevant examples.

Culture is ever-changing which implies my approach to culturally responsive teaching must continuously learn and adapt to the changes. I must proactively work to confront my unconscious biases and learn more about inequitable, oppressive systems that impact my students and community. 

One example of my intention to grow and learn more is evident by the summer electives. When given the extensive list of summer electives, I decided to choose a course on Race, Power, and Policy in Education. This course took a critical lens at the structure of inequitable systems within our country and schools. The hallmark of this course was the Reflective Policy Analysis Paper. I chose to research Zero Tolerance Education and its disproportionate impacts on nonwhite student outcomes and wellbeing. This is an issue my school faces with its current zero-tolerance disciplinary policies. The policy paper focused on preparation and learning about zero-tolerance education to better understand my school.

The next step I am taking to apply this information is to continue reading literature and reports about zero-tolerance education, but also pursuing a year-long professional development opportunity that focuses on socio-emotional learning strategies. I am enrolled in a program called YogaFoster which seeks to apply yoga and mindfulness as part of an SEL framework. Through this opportunity, I will be able to support my students and work to mitigate the effects of our zero-tolerance disciplinary policy. Ideally, I will set up an extracurricular organization that focuses on SEL development in a way that actively engages my students in the practice. 

Lastly, my personal endeavors to continuously engage in ongoing reflection are reflected by the content I read and listen to in my free time. Currently, I am reading one of the NY Times bestsellers, Caste by Isabel Wilkerson. The description of an American caste system is not entirely new and was first introduced to me in the New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. While looking for a new book to begin reading, I came across Wilkerson's new release and now spend my off-hours learning more about how the American caste system takes shape. Beyond Caste, I naturally tend to be an overly introspective person who thinks deeply about their own thoughts and feelings in relation to those around me. I actively participate in mindfulness to support the healthy exploration of these thoughts and feelings. In my mindfulness education pursuits, I learned of Ruth King's Mindful of Race and acquired it on audible. King's collaboration of mindfulness and racism is an interesting perspective about building awareness of one's biases and using mindful practices like love and kindness to address these heavy topics. Ultimately, my ongoing reflection to confront personal biases and better understand my inner monologue and beliefs is reflective of my continuous mindfulness strategies used in collaboration with informative novels and online news articles.