About this exemplar
This section features the work of a candidate's 10th Grade Startup Technology course. This teacher has 4 "time blocks" of students in this course and 3 of these time blocks have 100% Hispanic students. Their school is a "college preparatory high school and exclusively serves students of limited economic means."
Advocacy is defined as active support for a cause or of an action. Students need to have knowledge of injustices in the world, be able to develop informed opinions about it, and know that their voice matters and has value. Utilizing advocacy in the classroom is a way to prepare students for the real-world. Students are able to learn how to use their individual assets to challenge inequitable systems that have been put in place. Students need to be able to be able to advocate for themselves and their needs along with bring awareness or changes to challenges and issues they see in the community.
During the planning stages of incorporating lessons on advocacy in my classes, something that was incredibly important to me was to find ways of incorporating content-related advocacy lessons in each of my content areas. In order to accomplish this in the virtual landscape, my 10th grade Startup Technology class focused on action-related advocacy by developing an app that solved a problem in the community, and my 11th grade Pre-AP Biology focused in on conversation-related advocacy through participating in a Socratic Seminar and a reflective writing process. This section goes into detail about how I have actively included direct instruction on advocacy and how students have learned how to use individual assets to challenge systemic injustices and inequity of opportunities.
The outcomes of this section include the following:
I will demonstrate that students have an understanding about injustice in the world, are able to have informed opinions on it, and know that their voice and actions have value.
I will demonstrate that students have learned how to use their individual assets to challenge systemic injustices.
I will demonstrate that students are able to speak and write about real-world problems through the lens of advocacy.
The overarching goal of the Startup Technology class is for students to be able to develop their app development skills in order to ultimately design an app that advocates for a cause or meets a need in the community. Through this class, students are able to learn how to use their individual app building assets in order to challenge systemic injustices or inequity of opportunities. Students not only are able to develop a fully functional advocacy-based mobile app, but are able to speak and write about what they have created. In this particular project, students were tasked with finding a problem in the community or something that they want to increase awareness of. Once they determined what they were going to work on, students embarked on a rigorous app-building project in which they were able to determine how they were going to use their voice and actions to make an actionable change. Through this project, students were able to truly learn about the meaning of advocacy, and by the end were able to have a fully working product that students could use to advocate for themselves and others.
The Startup Technology course is designed to have students from limited to no programming background be able to create functional mobile app by the end of the school year. In order to really build motivation for students and make the course more applicable, students participate in an advocacy based culminating project in which they find a problem in their community and build an app that creates a solution. At the end of the year, students participate in a Startup Showcase where students set up a display showcasing their app, and then members of the community come in to judge the app and see more about what students are creating. The community members who are a part of the showcase are a mix of parents and families, and members of the technology community here in Oklahoma City. This allows students to demonstrate their skills in app-building, and allows for potentially more connections or future opportunities through community partners. This project also allows students to build advocacy skills through communication and a solutions-oriented mindset.
The first lesson of this project explicitly teaches about advocacy, and allows a significant amount of time for students to discuss what they notice and observe in their own communities. I designed this lesson to be inquiry-based, and reflective. The lesson began with discussing the definition of advocacy, and then transitioning into small group work where students discussed what needs they saw in the community. Students then started discussing how they could use their own voices and actions to advocate for those needs. This was the first time in the class that students were able to start explicitly discussing real-world problems and thinking about how their voice and actions could help to solve those problems. This lesson was the opening event to the App-Building Advocacy project, and allowed students to identify different community needs that they felt passionate about and wanted to advocate for during the duration of the project. Students did not have any limitations on what they could advocate for in their app, the only parameter was that this was going to be an app that could be shared with community members and school stakeholders, and that it needed to be community-focused.
At the end of the first lesson, students were asked to reflect on what was covered in the lesson, and share what ideas they had for the project. I just wanted to hear initial thoughts from students and gauge what they were thinking about for the project. At this point, students could still shift their project focus. The question that was asked was the following:
In this course, we will be creating an app that solves a need or increases awareness of an issue that you see in the community. What is the issue or need that you would like to work with for this project? Why?
I really wanted to hear students honest thoughts and did not want to provide many parameters. My focus for this project was to truly let students advocate for a cause that they believed in and were passionate about because that would increase student engagement and motivation. This was a difficult project, especially since each student was working independently. Therefore, I wanted students to truly be passionate about their topic so that they would be excited to be motivated to continue working on the project. This particular reflection question allowed me to assess student understanding of the concept of advocacy, and how it could relate to the class. It also allowed me to see what students took from the lesson, and see what community issues students were interested in working with for the duration of the project.
After going through student responses to the initial advocacy interest reflection, I then conducted a lesson that specifically walked students through each step of the project. At this point, all students had a plan and general idea of the topic that they wanted to pursue for the app, which gave them a starting point for comprehending the requirements of the project. This presentation introduced the scope of the Advocacy App-Building Project to students, and gave students expectations for the duration of the project. Students were also provided clear information for what major checkpoints there would be for the project, and what the objective is. In order for students to truly learn how to use their individual assets to navigate and challenge systemic injustices or inequity of opportunities, they needed to know what to work on for the duration of the project, and what their overarching goal was. Below is the slideshow that outlined the Advocacy Through App-Building Project.
I created a handout that laid out a step by step breakdown of the app-building process. This was created so that students were able to stay organized. This graphic broke down what was due at each step, and provided a question that should be answerable at that point. I really students to focus on the advocacy portion of this piece rather than the organizational aspect which is one of the reasons why I created this handout and broke down the project in this way. These steps also guided students to be able to have the ability to write, speak, and design an app based on real-world problems as it provided a scaffolding mechanism for all students to be able to accomplish this project.
To meet the needs of all students, there needs to be scaffolding in place for the students who may have difficulty in coming up with specific, actionable plan for developing a solutions-oriented app. Those students were provided a modified persuasion mapping exercise from the organization readwritethink (NCTE, 2020). This is a graphic organizer that allows students to break down their app's purpose, and to provide valid reasoning for the solution that they created. This works well for students who are more visual, or need to spend more time in the planning stage of this project. The modification that I made from the original Persuasion Map is that the sections are different to account for using this to plan an app build. For example, instead of utilizing "main reasons" I changed that to "different screens" and instead of "facts or examples" I utilized "components." A copy of the original Persuasion Map from NCTE and my modified version are below. Even though there were not many students who took advantage of using a persuasion map, there were a few students who truly benefitted from having this option.
Student A is an English Language Learner student who had difficulty coming up with an actionable plan for creating the app. This student's original idea was to design an app that would help teachers and parents communicate in Spanish. This student wanted this app to be different from a direct translation app, and to be easy to use to copy and paste different phrases or translations into texts or in Talking Points. This student also wanted to compile a list of different phrases that would be commonly used and sent between parents and teachers, but really did not know how to start designing the app. After working with this student, we decided to try to create a Persuasion Map to help visually map out the direction that this app was going. This benefitted the student as they were able to see what exact steps they needed to take in order to reach their end goal. This exercise was completed digitally through PDF so that they were able to complete this scaffolding activity remotely.
Below is Student A's persuasion map: This helps them to lay out their app and what they needed to develop.
Student B is a high performing student that sometimes has so many ideas that it is difficult for them to focus on one idea and develop it fully. This student wanted to create an app that would map out all of the different places where someone could access food (grocery stores, farmers markets, food banks, etc.) in a certain zip code so that people would know where they could access food even if they did not have transportation. This student wanted to create this app because Google Maps or Apple Maps might provide ideas for the grocery stores or convenience stores in a location, but did not include all possible sources of food. This student kept changing their app idea, so after meeting with me, we decided to try mapping out the idea on the modified Persuasion Map to see if we could focus this student's ideas and start the process of developing the app. This exercise was completed digitally through PDF so that they were able to complete this scaffolding activity digitally.
View Student B's persuasion map below:
In this section, I provide final products that students created for this app. There are two apps in particular that I am showcasing here because they were able to be completely finalized and packaged. These students took two very different approaches to advocacy, but both projects still demonstrated that they were able to use their own individual assets to navigate and challenge systemic injustices and inequity of opportunities through mobile app development. Students were able to choose a real-life problem or a challenge that they saw in the community and develop an app that could address the problem or challenge. Students were able to demonstrate that they were able to both write and speak about the problem through creating a video of the functionality of the app, and by writing a description of the app and what they are trying to advocate for. Both projects demonstrated that the students knew that they could advocate for themselves and others.
Students were tasked with writing a paragraph to describe their app and the problem that they are trying to solve. This allowed students to start developing their thoughts and thinking about what they wanted to include in their pitch and video demonstrating the functionality of the app. Students demonstrated that they knew about various forms of injustice in the world, and were able to develop informed opinions about it. Students also demonstrated that they were able to write about real-world problems and their action to solve those problems. Both students utilized a Canva format so that they could input these written paragraphs into their portfolios in a more engaging manner.
Throughout the year, students practice making videos that demonstrate the functionality of their app. This is so that students can easily share their app with others for additional feedback, and that students are able to practice recording videos that demonstrate how apps work and what qualities the apps have. Both Students A and B created a short video of demonstrating the functionality of their app. Making a video recording ensures that they are building communication and presentation skills and that they are able to truly advocate for the cause that they have selected through speaking.
Above is Student A's written description, which was created using Canva.
Above is Student B's written description, which was created using Canva.
Over the course of this project, all students in my startup technology class have experienced and demonstrated action-related advocacy. Students first had an explicit lesson on what advocacy is and had time to discuss different needs they saw in the community with their peers. Through conversation, students were able to learn about different injustices that are seen in the world, and develop informed opinions about them. Students were able to take skills that they learned in my course about mobile-app development, and create an app that takes action to solve those injustices that they see. With their programming skills, students were able to use their individual assets to navigate and challenge and ultimately do something about the injustices and challenges that they saw in the world. Over the project, students have multiple opportunities where they practiced speaking about real world issues and also learned how to write about them. Through this project and by the various teaching methods utilized for this project, I know that all students in my classes know that their voice and actions have value.
NCTE. (2020). Persuasion map. readwritethink.
http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/student-interactives/persuasion
I designed this project to expose students to systemic injustices and discrimination that can occur specifically with a lens of medicine, particularly because of genetics, race, and disease. I decided to utilize a health lens for this conversation-related advocacy opportunity as many of my students are interested in going into the medical field. Health advocacy also supported the content that has been covered in our Genetics unit so this experience allows students to solidify their understanding of material, learn specifically about advocacy, and also learn how to speak and write about real-world problems. This student Socratic Seminar on Discrimination Based on Genes, Race, and Disease is a particularly relevant, thought-provoking experience that allows students to truly start thinking about content that they have learned in Biology class, such as DNA, genetics, and various diseases, and apply them to a bioethics context. This experience is a thorough Socratic Seminar in which students practice their scientific literacy skills through in-depth reading, communication skills through a seminar style discussion, and reflection skills by participating in an in-depth reflective writing experience following the Socratic Seminar. By the end of this conversation-related advocacy experience, students will be able to see ways in which they can advocate for causes that they are passionate about and learn more skills as to how to communicate their ideas. Students will also have more knowledge of injustice in the world, have informed opinions about it, and know how to advocate using their individual assets.
The first lesson for this project explicitly teaches about advocacy and discusses health advocacy in more depth. The reason why I decided to frame the advocacy project in a health lens is because many students have stated that they wanted to spend more time investigating and learning more about health and inequity in health. Having a in-depth advocacy lesson that is tailored towards students interests allows for more motivation and engagement, and is a way in which students become more interested in engaging with their classmates and truly be invested in learning how to speak and write about real-world problems.
This lesson plan is structured in a way that students will first be introduced to the concept of advocacy, and then learn more about what health advocacy is. This is designed as an introductory, discussion-based lesson where students become more comfortable talking to each other and discussing various issues they see in health care. Students reflect on various discussion questions within smaller Breakout Rooms that have no more than three students. This accounts for the fact that we are talking about more difficult topics, and to make sure that students feel safe and secure. I went through this lesson before I chose the articles that were going to be utilized in the Socratic Seminar so that I could incorporate any particular interests that students had.
This is the first step that students will take in this project where they practice speaking and writing about real-world problems that they might be experiencing or seeing. When students were in Breakout rooms I went from room to room to check in on students and make sure that they were staying on task. Students overall were very engaged, very curious, and having in-depth conversations about what their own personal experiences have been, and what experiences they have seen and heard from friends and families. By the end of the lesson, students were interested in reading more about health advocacy and systemic injustices that occur in the health field.
Below is the slideshow I presented to students to introduce them to Health Advocacy:
For most of my students, this is the first time that they have experienced a Socratic Seminar in a science class. I chose to use this method as a way to solidify student conversation-related advocacy skills as this is a structured method that would guide students to think more deeply about issues in healthcare. A Socratic Seminar allows students to speak about what they have learned and build skills on sharing what they have learned and also in active listening to other opinions and voices. A structured Socratic Seminar also allows students to practice their critical reading and analysis skills as they are tasked with reading specific articles thoroughly and being prepared to speak about what they learned from those articles.
As the majority of my students were new to Socratic Seminars, at least in the science setting, I introduced the topic in a presentation format towards the end of the Genetics Unit. This happened about a week after we had gone over health advocacy so that I could show students the articles that were chosen for the Socratic Seminar, and could answer any questions that had come up. This Socratic Seminar was designed to serve as the culminating activity for the Genetics Unit. At this point, students already had a background in genetics and had learned a little bit about bioethics.
Below is the slideshow that I presented to students introducing them to the Socratic Seminar. This lesson prepared students for participating in a Socratic Seminar about the real-world problem of genetic and racial discrimination in healthcare.
I chose three articles for students to read before the Socratic Seminar. These articles were chosen because they are secondary sources from reputable sources so that students can focus more on getting the content from the articles. These three articles covered various concepts such as discrimination in health care, genetic discrimination in the workplace, and privacy of genetic data. The articles also reflected some areas of interest that students had come up with in the first lesson of this advocacy unit in order to ensure that students were motivated and engaged in the material.
Students read all three articles before the Socratic Seminar so that they could focus on discussing the content and to truly have an opportunity to achieve a deeper understanding about the ideas and values that were presented in the articles. Having all students start at the same level of understanding allowed there to be more of a focus on having deep conversations through the Socratic Seminar and to start developing their own ideas about how to be more of an advocate. These articles all addressed systemic injustices in race, health and genetics, and students were tasked with reading deeply and considering what they would do to advocate.
Below are direct links to three different articles that students read to prepare themselves for the Socratic Seminar.
When assigning students the three different articles to read, I wanted to make sure that students read the articles thoroughly and spent enough time to truly understand the content so that they could start forming their own thoughts and opinions about health advocacy. I assigned students the task of reading each article thoroughly in the following ways:
Identifying the Purpose
Pre-Reading
Interacting with the Text
Extension Activity
The goal of a Socratic Seminar is for students to work with each other by understanding the ideas, issues, and values that are reflected in certain texts. Therefore, to get to the second objective of truly learning how to leverage individual assets to challenge systemic injustices through conversation-related advocacy, students needed to have a text-based similar frame of reference that could be supplemented by their own lived experiences.
In order to check for understanding, all students submitted questions that they came up with while completing the readings. Interacting thoroughly with the text and developing strong questions allows conversations to flow more easily when in a Socratic Seminar. Having prepared, in-depth questions about the articles is a way that students can participate in the Socratic Seminar and continue the conversation. Many of the questions that were submitted were open-ended and related to advocacy, and I chose one of the student submitted questions to be the opening question for the Socratic Seminar.
After reviewing all of the annotations and comments that were included on the articles that students read before the Socratic Seminar, there were a total of 465 questions asked. I went through the questions and determined the common themes and chose a few questions from each theme to compile with a resulting list of 21 questions generated by students. These questions were also provided to the Socratic Seminar facilitating students so that they had more questions that they could utilize if they needed to push the discussion further.
The purpose of a Socratic Seminar is to achieve a deeper understanding about the ideas and values that are presented in a text. In this Socratic Seminar, not only are students diving into a text that details discrimination and inequity in health particularly with race, genes, and disease, but they are also learning how to communicate their own opinions about injustice in the world, have opinions about it, and know that their voice and actions have value. Students are learning that their individual assets can be used to address the inequity of opportunities, particularly in a health and medicine context. As this Socratic Seminar was going to touch on difficult themes and personal experiences alongside textual evidence, I created a list of norms for students to keep in mind while participating in the discussion. As a class, before we started the discussion we went over this list of norms in depth and I checked for understanding to make sure that all students were on the same page. This allowed for students to all be on the same page during the discussion, and to all be worked towards maintaining a positive classroom environment through active listening, and also participating in the discussion with respect.
Above is a handout on discussion norms that I created to prepare students to follow the expectations for participating in a Socratic Seminar.
I decided to modify the traditional Socratic Seminar structure for two reasons, first to allow for more students to develop leadership skills by having the opportunity to facilitate a discussion, and second to make sure that all students had the opportunity to speak about real-world problems. The Socratic Seminar was split into 15-minute sessions, one session for each article. The reasoning behind this was to make sure that students had time to truly discuss and dive into the content and concepts that were brought up in each article. After 15 minutes, students would start discussing the next article with a different group leader, and there would be one more transition for the last article. This allowed for three different student facilitators per small group. Another reason why I decided to have the Socratic Seminar occur in a small group, is that students were able to all be in a breakout room and come off mute so that they were able to truly engage in a more organic discussion.
After the 45 minutes of in-depth article discussion, we came back together as a full class to discuss the systemic injustices that had come up in discussion, what things students took away from the discussions, and what ideas students had for using their own individual assets to challenge the systemic injustices. After the completion of the full group discussion, students had 10 minutes to complete the Socratic Seminar Reflection form.
Due to privacy reasons, I was unable to record the Socratic Seminar that was held on November 9th, 2020 but was incredibly impressed with the level of engagement and interest that students demonstrated while participating in the Socratic Seminar. As this was the first one, I decided to have smaller groups discuss and dive into each article, and each group had about 8 students in it. Three students per group were discussion facilitators and were tasked with having a list of questions and discussion topics prepared before the Socratic Seminar. These students were volunteers and were provided the Socratic Seminar structure handout and also the compiled list of questions if they needed some help to continue moving the discussion forward. As this was a significant amount of time that students were going to be in breakout rooms, I asked for additional help in monitoring breakout rooms from one of the science teachers, and one of the SPED teachers. This allowed me to travel between the rooms, see how students were progressing and to make sure that student discussions were on the right track. I also created the groups before the Socratic Seminar so that groups could be created mindfully and had a mix of students that could work together comfortably and also push each other. Across the board, the first couple minutes of the Socratic Seminar were rather quiet as students were not yet comfortable answering questions.
After some guidance from the group facilitators, students started to really dig into the readings and start discussing systemic injustices that are present in healthcare. Students overall were incredibly respectful, but also were comfortable asking questions, asking students for more clarification, and pushing each other to truly say what their thoughts were from the readings. Something else that I noticed, was that as time continued, about halfway through the discussion of the second article, students started to become more comfortable pushing back on each other. Saying, respectfully, if they disagreed with something, and were willing to listen to various perspectives and thoughts.
Another observation that I made was that students referred often to the readings, and also made connections to their own personal experiences and what they had learned in not only science classes but across contexts. One student brought up BLM and voting rights which they had discussed in their English classes of examples of how there are federal protections put in place to prevent discrimination based on race but that racism and discrimination still exist, how can we protect individuals from genetic information if we cannot protect people from racial discrimination.
Student leaders overall did an excellent job of facilitating the discussion, making sure that discussions stayed on topic. If discussions strayed away from being on topic, student facilitators were able to bring back thoughts directly on the text. Students as a whole communicated well with each other and used a lens of advocacy when discussing the systemic injustices in health care. A recurring question that I heard from room to room was "how can we change this?" and "what can we do to help?" which was my goal of incorporating a direct, conversation based lesson on advocacy. Students also remained engaged in the activity, one reason for that could have been because the groups were small, and it would have been incredibly noticeable if there was one person who was not saying anything. In that same vein, because the groups were small, even students who tend to have more trouble speaking out in groups were comfortable in the environment to participate and let their voices be heard.
This Socratic Seminar allowed for students to truly speak about real-world problems and demonstrate that they had individual ideas on how to challenge systemic injustices that are present in healthcare.
I created a reflection form for students to complete after they completed their three-part Socratic Seminar and our full group debrief. This reflection allowed me to see how students were feeling after the Socratic Seminar, and if students were able to truly learn something from the Seminar and start to develop ideas of how to use their own individual assets to challenge systemic injustices in healthcare. There are four parts to the reflection process which are listed below:
Summary: What are three main ideas that you are taking away as a result of this seminar?
Reflect: What questions do you now have as a result of this seminar?
Connection to Advocacy: What ideas do you have for how you can participate in advocacy related to genes, race, and disease?
Goal-Setting: Is there anything you would do differently to prepare for the next seminar? Why or why not?
Students had approximately 10 minutes to complete the reflection, but there was no time limit. If students needed more time, they could turn it in when they completed the reflection.
I have compiled a selection of responses from students to the various reflection prompts in order to demonstrate how students have grown in their awareness of real-world problems, increased their knowledge of injustice in the world, and learned how to advocate for themselves. This written feedback demonstrates that students are not only able to speak about real-world problems but write about them as well. These responses also demonstrate how students have made progress in increasing their knowledge of injustice in the world and have been able to develop informed opinions about it. students have demonstrated, particularly in the advocacy section, that they know that their voice matters, and that they have ideas on how to advocate for needs that they see within the community and beyond. The goal-setting portion of the student survey allowed students to come up with an actionable goal that they want to accomplish in terms of advocacy, and encourages students to continue to work towards becoming an advocate for others, and makes this Socratic Seminar experience one that they can refer back to, and think about.
This project was designed to be a part of my Pre-AP Biology class and expose students to systemic injustices that occur within the context of medicine and genetics. Many of my students had discussed previously how much they wanted to learn more about issues that occur in healthcare and medicine, and this Socratic Seminar was designed to be the culminating activity for our Genetics unit. Students were able to learn explicitly about advocacy in a dedicated lesson, and then expand upon their knowledge of advocacy in the context of health. Students also learned that they could be key advocates for themselves and for others. This project focused on teaching students how to use their individual assets to challenge systemic injustices that they saw in their community and particularly in healthcare. Students were able to learn about various forms of injustice that occur in the world, and through discussion and structured reading were able to develop informed opinions about it. Students then completed a writing exercise that demonstrated how they were aware that each student's voice and actions have value. Students developed goals and connected what they learned to concepts of advocacy, which allowed for students to experience sustained learning as this is something that I can refer back to for the rest of the school year. Overall, students grew a significant amount from this conversation-based advocacy unit, some students who were less interested in Biology and science have discussed how they feel as though what they are learning has a purpose and that they want to stay motivated to continue to learn about STEM and its application to advocacy.
Alonso-Zaldivar, R. (2008, April 25). Senate backs privacy for genetic data. Los Angeles Times.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-apr-25-na-genes25-story.html
Tello, M. (2020, July 09). Racism and discrimination in health care: providers and patients. Harvard Health Blog. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/racism-discrimination-health-care-providers-patients-2017011611015
Zhang, S. (2017, March 13). The loopholes in the law prohibiting genetic discrimination. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/03/genetic-discrimination-law-gina/519216/
In my classroom I have been able to incorporate multiple methods of directly instructing students on advocacy. This has primarily been through inquiry-based, collaboratively-focused opportunities as I have found that in my own teaching experience, students are more motivated and engaged when they truly feel that they have more voice and choice in their own educational experiences. These advocacy-based learning experiences demonstrated a significant amount of student engagement, and students showed how they were able to take what they learned in class and apply it to challenges and issues they saw in the community to make actionable changes. Students have grown in their ability to speak and write about real-world problems that they see and have learned how to advocate for themselves and others. Building skills of advocacy is critical as it can be applied to various contexts not just academically, but in the workplace and also in life.