Great Blue Herons

Our Mission

As a collaborative community of just educators, we pursue four goals:

Goal #1

Students will feel safe being vulnerable in the classroom, and their perspectives will be heard about how the material relates to their lived experiences.

Our first goal is aiming for learners to feel safe and comfortable in the classroom, enabling them to engage in the curriculum/learning process without the fear of making mistakes. Students building relationships with their peers will help them feel safe and comfortable by allowing them to be vulnerable in this space. Feeling safe means no fear of judgment from either their peers or their educator; feeling comfortable implies that the learner is at ease to participate in activities within the classroom.

Goal #2

Students will approach the classroom environment with a dedication to restorative justice.

Our second goal is to encourage students to approach class content and discussions with a lens of restorative justice. Interacting and practicing empathy during interactions with each other with the intent of strengthening relationships and repairing any harm that is done to them.

Goal #3

Our third goal is that schools first prioritize students' well-being before they can teach.

This means we will provide a space to support students' physical, emotional, and mental well-being so they enter the classroom prepared and ready to learn. Utilizing a social-emotional approach will aid educators in achieving open communication with students, which will help students feel more welcome within the classroom. This means students will be able to become more self-aware and self-actualize. As a result, students' well-being would come before curriculum and lessons.

Goal #4

Our fourth goal is to help students expand their perspectives within the classroom and better understand power dynamics.

This means that students will broaden their perspectives in the classroom and go deeper into power dynamics. Power dynamics refer to how power is distributed in society and understanding the historical context behind that. Personal practice reflection happens when students can engage in discussions that lead to considering their educational journey, but also reflection as a group with the purpose of finding similarities or differences between the students. This reflection will expand their perspectives and critical thinking by questioning the educational system, norms of oppression, authority, knowledge, and success.

To achieve these goals, we implement four strategies:

Having students reflect individually on their interests and values and empathetically reflect on their likes and dislikes can help students better understand themselves and their peers.

This will be done through an open discussion in small groups, then eventually sharing highlights with the whole class. An inquiry about their views regarding a particular topic will be done through the use of technology apps such as Poll Everywhere. This encourages participation without the fear of being targeted and maintains some anonymity. Participants’ information/ email addresses will be recorded for the sake of grading, but their responses will not be specifically attached to their information. They are not required to have an original response if someone has already posted their ideas, similarly.

Encouraging students to work together to create a classroom environment that suits their ideals and needs.

This will be achieved through encouraging students to share and communicate on establishing common boundaries and collectively developing consequences meant to address actions that can potentially harm the safe space cultivated by the community/classroom members. This can be done with weekly discussions, where members of the classroom/community can bring up issues that have occurred throughout the week, or offer any suggestions or possible solutions to the issue with the interests of the collective community in mind.

Educator's giving students time to assess their well being provides students with tools to self assess. Encouraging this creates the ability for students to be self-aware and effectively communicate their feelings.

One of our strategies is utilizing activities and exercises before, during, and toward the end of the class, to promote physical and emotional health for students. One exercise that could be helpful is stretches, they can release tension and reduce energy. The best time to use it is during transitions and near the end of class to have smoother transitions and unwind at the end of the day. Mindful meditations are something that can be used at any point in the day to regulate the students and ground them. Another is a quick self-assessment after the mindful meditations to help students become more aware of their needs. The last tool is providing a space for students to communicate their present feelings and help they might need. This tool is most helpful on a one-on-one basis and should happen at a comfortable time.

Encourage students to reflect on their educational experiences and how their community, family, and schooling have impacted their learning and beliefs.

Educators will facilitate discussions where students can reflect on their educational experience and identities through guided conversations and dialogue, encouraging students to think and share personal stories and experiences. Bringing students' experiences into an identity mind map will make them reflect on their educational path and expand their perspectives on how their community, family, and schooling have impacted their learning and beliefs, thereby gaining a better understanding of their positionality. Also creating cultural awareness activities by creating spaces for the students to celebrate and embrace their culture and others. This will help us close the gaps between inequities in the education system because they will be able to become more aware of themselves and others in the classroom.

Connection #1

Highlighting diversity and inclusivity inside the classroom will promote educational, social, and emotional growth because students will feel comfortable speaking out about their experiences and listening to others’ experiences.

Having students empathetically reflect on their likes and dislikes (interests and values) can help students better understand themselves and their peers. Making space/activities for students to share their thoughts, perspectives, and feelings without having the fear of judgment will in return create an environment based on acceptance and respect because students will have an easier time understanding themselves and their peers.

Connection #2

By encouraging students to take agency in creating boundaries and consequences with one another that they believe are just and appropriate, students will feel a stronger sense of ownership over their learning and classroom environment. The classroom and the community feel more equally catered to everyone due to the role everyone plays in establishing the environment.

Connection #3

By creating a space and time to focus on students' physical and emotional health; it creates a socio-emotional learning approach. Students will feel prioritized in the classroom, sending the message that they are valued as much as their academics. When students feel supported they are more likely to be prepared and ready to learn. By making this connection, students will be able to become more aware of their needs and be able to communicate with teachers and staff by self actualizing. When centering students' well-being in the classroom we will be able to process, regulate and recognize emotions, so students mitigate any harm done during issues with peers/educators.

Connection #4

Expanding student's perspectives and understanding of power dynamics is crucial for a strong educational environment. Reflecting on personal experiences and peers' perspectives helps them appreciate diverse viewpoints. Small group discussions and identity mind maps enhance empathy by linking personal stories to material being taught in class. These small group discussions address educational inequities and empower students to become informed and empathetic individuals, creating a supportive atmosphere for all.

Implementing our Strategies

Conceptual Objective:
Core Understanding -- What is the main insight you would like students to gain from the reading(s) through your activity? This could be an idea developed by the author(s) and an idea that you create in response to the author(s).

Constructivism is not just one idea, it’s different perspectives that help us understand how people learn. Each perspective highlights specific parts of the learning process and how individuals create knowledge. One perspective is the exogenous viewpoint, which examines how learners recognize and understand particular concepts and skills. This is important for successful learning because it relies on understanding the material and being interested, which promotes active learning. Another perspective is the endogenous viewpoint. This one focuses on the internal learning process, learners go from novices to experts. Students gain skills and confidence over time. The dialectical view looks at the role of social influences in learning. Interactions with peers and role models can shape understanding and improve problem-solving skills. It highlights the different perspectives on how individuals gain knowledge and learn, using their experiences and identities in the learning process. Rather than just receiving information from teachers or textbooks, learners actively engage in the learning process. They synthesize new information by connecting it with their existing knowledge, questioning their beliefs or biases, and drawing conclusions from their own experiences. This approach fosters critical thinking, problem-solving, and a deeper understanding of concepts, as learners are motivated to engage with the material meaningfully. Through discussions, hands-on projects, and collaborative work, students can explore ideas and construct their own understanding.

Purpose -- What does it mean to be a just and caring educator? Why is this insight important for our development as just and caring educators?

Being a just and caring educator means encouraging students to engage in the practice of self-actualization, by bringing in student experiences we, as caring educators, can work to involve those experiences in their learning environments. Bringing in student experiences sets a foundation for the rest of the ideas we want to implement in our development toward truly being just and caring educators. In most educational spaces there is a lack of consideration for student experiences, we want to change this norm and make learning more student-centered.

Activity Rationale

The first strategy is having students reflect on their interests and values individually, starting with individual reflection, and then giving time for students to share. The identity tree allows students to be open about their identities to one another. Through sharing these identities in groups, and later reconvening as a whole class, students will be able to better understand themselves and their peers. Part of the strategy involved the usage of technology to engage the classroom, but in the case, that technology cannot be used (or there is a paper-focused activity such as the identity tree), having students engage with one another through discussion will be just as beneficial in creating an open environment.

The second strategy is encouraging students to work together to create a classroom that suits their ideals and needs. The identity tree and following discussions allow students to share possible experiences they have had with others misjudging their identities, and create collective solutions for making the classroom a safer space. It also allows educators to foster space in which students feel comfortable speaking up about their opinions or perspectives. The meditation gives students time to focus on their thoughts and reflections.

The third strategy is having students assess themselves and their well-being to promote self-awareness when interacting with others. With the meditation activity that we have set up at the beginning of the lesson, students will be given some time to focus on their physical selves and pinpoint any personal thoughts/feelings that they may be struggling with. We also give space for students to share what may have come up for them during the meditation exercise, encouraging communication with others.

The fourth strategy is encouraging students to reflect on how their community, family, and schooling have impacted their learning and beliefs. One of the lessons from the identity tree we want to highlight is understanding your positionalities and identity about the world/your peers. By giving students time to reflect on their experiences, especially educational experiences, and sharing with others, we aim to highlight diversity and encourage self-awareness.

Impact Assessment:

The impact goals we would like to represent are students will feel safe being vulnerable in the classroom and their perspectives will be heard about how the material relates to their lived experience. We will be able to assess this goal by opening with a self-introduction, which tells them a little about ourselves and gives them background on us; which will make them feel more comfortable to share about themselves. We want this action to set the tone for the atmosphere of the class, (in relation to our fourth goal in a perspective of reflection with a lens of power dynamics). Next, we will have a meditation activity; that helps the students focus and helps to reduce anxiety. Having a discussion, (afterward), about what came up for them during the meditation, helps to establish an open classroom that fosters sharing between the students. In addition, it allows the students to see our third goal of prioritizing students’ well-being. In order for students to share how they are feeling after the meditation with one another and educators, it sets a precedent for students to be able to have open communication with educators and classmates.

We will start the lecture by having a tree activity, that helps the second goal by implementing learned experiences of who they are and making the students feel comfortable to share about themselves. The application of the tree activity will help students strengthen their relationships with one another and help to create a positive learning environment. —maybe expand on that a little bit.

In order to incorporate our last goal, we will ask students about a story/important time in their life they'd like to share, (if they feel comfortable to), after the tree activity. We want students to feel like the classroom is an open space where thoughts/ideas/inspirations can be shared with one another. By sharing an influential story in their life, the students will be able to reflect on their educational journey and see similarities and differences with peers. This will help to begin the expansion of their perspectives which will in turn expand their critical thinking. Our hope is that this will help them reflect on their own position in society with relation to power dynamics.

The observable characteristics of these goals:

–Goal 1

Students will feel safe to be vulnerable in the classroom environment and their perspectives to be heard about how the material relates to their lived experiences.

*They will pay attention during the lecture, and engage with the material by:

-Students will be able to share reflections and thoughts with their peers and with educators, (either in relation to material or discussion times).

-Students will be engaged in the learning material and discussions with peers and educators who will engage with the learning material in a reflection of personal experience.

-Goal 2

-Regardless of content and whether students agree on a topic or not, students will be able to have discussions with one another and discuss disagreements in a respectful tone with one another.

*Discussions that have disagreements will have respectful, courteous words used and people will stay calm, cool and collected. There will be no shouting, or name calling.

-Students will approach class content with the perspective of understanding the inequalities within the educational system by sharing thoughts and reflections with empathy for their peers and having educators there in order to help guide and facilitate discussions.

*Students will encourage other students to speak about their own experiences.

-Goal 3

-By utilizing self reflection activities, students will understand that educators believe in their health and well being first and foremost.

*Students will come to educators for advice or problem solving if they aren't feeling well enough to participate in activities during class.

-Educators will communicate to students about the importance of their well being during these activities and add that if a student needs additional resources, to pull them aside. By communicating this and having self reflections with meditations, students will naturally feel like educators care and are more approachable to speak to.

*Students will share in the classroom their thoughts and feelings and approach educators if they are needing additional support.

-Goal 4

-By sharing with their peers, students will gain new perspectives on topics and discussions.

*By interacting with other students, it will help to give a student's different perspective on an individual topic. Students can share stories with each other and the class and by engaging in the material; they will share with educators as well, which gives them a new perspective on material.

-Students will learn about sociocultural theory,(a method on how we learn) and through this lesson gain perspective on societal structures within the classroom. Structures such as student, pupil and how a classroom or information is presented will depend on how the information is processed. Through this, students will gain a better understanding of power dynamics within and outside of the classroom and can reflect on that in our discussion about the material.

Forms of data to assess impact:

We will have a group member notate and assess students' peer work to understand their reactions. The note taker will listen to discussions and assess the effort of the students. Additionally, if students feel comfortable to share about themselves during the tree activity and the story activity; we can assess the students thoughts about how they felt sharing this with the class. A way we can do this, is open the floor to discussion and ask what the students think. If anyone feels/chooses to leave their tree activity, or share a story; (depending on the information given), it can show us what the level of comfort is by the type of story/self reflection through the tree activity. Another form of data will be an anonymous survey at the end of class to assess how effective our lesson was on the students. After data collection, we will analyze the findings to determine if any adjustments need to be made or changed. Then reflect with the students and see if they want to share any additional suggestions to help improve this goal/strategy.

Findings

Did We Meet Our Goals?

After reviewing the Class Data

After reviewing the data we collected by observing the class during the presentation, the end-of-class survey, and the identity trees, we found that students were less engaged during the beginning of the presentation and the meditation exercise. Connecting to our feedback on the meditation, we can tell that the students might felt a little bit disconnected from the meditation activity in the beginning. Another trend we have noticed during the lecture is that the students had some distractions like screen and loss of focus as time went on. However, it was noticeable that tables with smaller populations seemed to pay more attention. The identity tree and discussion activity showed a pattern in which the students showed interest and positivity. By looking at the students' feedback and inferring from their body language and expressions, we can see that the students were very invested in this activity. Through our observation, we can see that the students are mainly satisfied with the lesson since they gave 4 and 5 for the end-of-class survey. Referring back to the meditation; there was some mixed feedback when it came to the meditation activity. From the trees we have collected from students, we can see from the data that students found the activity meaningful.

We conclude that based on the observations made during the presentation, the survey results, and the student's work, we achieved most of our goals with the strategies we implemented. At the same time, there is room for reflection and growth that could happen to use the strategies implemented to meet our goals better. Through analyzing the trends and patterns we were able to think about what could be done differently.

Our Findings

What each data source showed:

We had three sources of data, the first source was our end-of-the-class survey. We had an overall 4.63 out of 5 in terms of how students felt after the lesson. There was a positive skew towards the higher ratings when we asked students about how they felt after the lesson. Regarding our question about how students felt after the meditation activity, there was a mix of reactions and ratings. 25% (4 students) responded that they had felt less than 3 out of a 5-star scale after the meditation. We assume that most of the students felt unfamiliar with this practice, which led to them feeling uncomfortable/unsure during and after the activity. For a classroom to feel better about this activity, we think that it would be useful for the activity to be regularly done in class.

After our lesson and our lecture, there were also mixed responses to how much students understood the concept(s) of constructivism. 6.3% (1 student) reported that they felt that they would be able to identify the theory of constructivism. 37.5% (6 students) reported having an understanding of constructivism and being able to explain the key points of the theory. 43.8% (7 students) reported that they felt they could apply/use the theory of constructivism in an appropriate classroom setting. 12.5% (2 students) reported having a good understanding of constructivism and would be able to teach others about the theory while also applying it.

Most of the students' questions about constructivism theory involved how it should be applied in the classroom. In the future, we could have a short activity, (like Kahoot), that poses 10 multiple choice questions simulating different types of constructivism in the classroom and asks them to identify what type the example shows to help students understand types of constructivism.

The second source of data was the tree activity. The students filled in the tasks trees with passion, and the feedback on the tree was generally positive.

The third source of data was the class observation, the class observations related directly to the two other sources of feedback that we had collected. We observed that students were working on the tree activities even before we had fully given instructions for the activity, and were continuing to work on them even after we had formally concluded the activity. We observed that students had very in-depth conversations about their identity trees, and had even asked for more time to discuss the trees when we had tried to stop the discussion.

Students seemed more interested/involved in the tree activity compared to our lecture, but they were still able to apply some of the ideas of constructivism that we had gone over during their discussions with peers when relating the ideas of the theory to their trees.

We also noticed physical indicators that helped clue us into how involved the students were during our presentation. At the beginning of our presentation, there was a lot of movement from the students which we believe means that they were getting settled in and were anticipating the presentation. The general attention of the students would waver during different parts of the presentation, halfway through the video we had shown the attention level seemed to lower, and we noticed that the attention levels seemed to go back up during the tree activity, especially whenever the presenter would share something personal.

Patterns or gaps we noticed:

A gap we have noticed was with less guidance during the meditation activity, the learners were indecisive on how they would perform their meditation and some got distracted and were never able to get back to the activity until the timer ended. We believe that if we opened the meditation activity with a discussion about what was on students minds, their attention would be focused on meditation. Also, if we discussed the meditation more, it would have facilitated a calmer atmosphere and helped students focus. Additionally, we decided more guidance was needed for the meditation to assist those who were unfamiliar with this activity; to give students clear instructions, and to help focus their attention.

A pattern we have noticed was with the interactive parts of the lecture, (tree activity), learners were more engaged (they were already very interested in the activity even before instructions were provided; learners were customizing their trees using tools provided such as colored pens, writing words that describe them and their background showing personal reflection were made, and during sharing time, they were interested in hearing about each other’s trees and sharing their own) with their peers and the presenters. When presenters continue their lectures, learners lose attention. It would be important to give more time for sharing with students to keep their attention during the lecture parts of our presentation.

We believe we met each of the goals, (to what extent?):

We believe that we met our first impact goal of making a safe space for students to be vulnerable as the discussions were met with great engagement and even requested additional time. This shows that when given the opportunity and space to discuss and reflect, learners use the chance to share their perspectives with their peers. With the extent of interactions and time used by groups to talk about their identity trees, we believe that we met our second goal as learners were immersed in their conversations and learning from each other’s histories. The vulnerability that the identity trees uncover, (which some were then discussed within their group), presented a chance for learners to hear from different perspectives and reflect on their own.

Providing a time to meditate, focus on their own breathing, and be aware of themselves in this space, we believe that we met our third goal of prioritizing their well-being before learning in class. This enables them to focus on their individual self, and not as a collective so that they can be more self-aware before being a part of a group discussion. We believe that we met our fourth impact goal of helping students find their perspectives within the classroom to understand power dynamics through the discussions heard during the tree identity activity. This activity encouraged them to reflect on their identities and experiences and how they relate to one another, fostering a deeper awareness of the power and privilege in their lives and society.

Implications: What Will We Do Next?

Suggestions for Future Students

What strategies or approaches would you recommend for students taking this course in the future?

Don’t miss class for group assignments as this builds camaraderie in the group and creates a better learning and working environment throughout the quarter. Don't be afraid to ask questions related to the class in general, Mack is always willing to answer your questions, but you have to of course ask questions to be able to get answers :) Have a sense of open-mindedness and be respectful of other people’s identities and perspectives. We all have our own unique backgrounds and identities.

What pitfalls should they avoid?

Prioritize the first 4 discussions to create a foundation for yourself for the rest of the class (given that the structure of the class does not get changed)-In order to create your website, you have to have completed the first 4 discussions and feedback from the teaching staff, so you can begin to implement your goals and strategies. Time management is important, and you shouldn’t push assignments to the last minute. You can build off of your initial thoughts and insights the moment you are made aware of the assignment and add to it as days lead to the deadline to maximize your thinking process and learning progress. If the format of an assignment doesn't work, change it (for example, this assignment with the random bullet points everywhere)

What advice can you offer for effectively designing and implementing activities?

Get a group consensus as to what everyone thinks would work best for activities. Utilizing activities or modifying activities that you've seen in classrooms before and gaining examples from Professor Ikeru that are more feasible for the time allotted. Make sure to build in checkpoints, create checkpoints purposefully when building an activity, so you can accurately keep track of classroom engagement during the presentation.

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