Culturally Responsive Collaborators

If you aren't currently following Melodie Gallico on Instagram then I suggest you read through this THEN head over to Instagram and find her @socialstudies4socialjustice Her account is full of actionable ideas for YOUR classroom. Thank you Melodie for being a leader and collaborator!

Starting the year with some Community Building Activities , regardless of the learning format! Here are some ideas that either I had or that were shared with me on Facebook & Instagram: I was thinking of creating a “get to know you” survey, keeping it short and sweet, and at the end of the survey ask your students what THEY want to know about their new classmates. Create a Student Created Survey from their questions and have fun with that one!  I am in LOVE with Padlet  (see if you school has an account or get the free one) and if possible would like students to create an “about me” Padlet to share out with the class, but this could be done with Google Slides as well. I read one idea that really sounds like a good way to engage with any age of learners-teacher creates an “Investigate the Teacher” Bitmoji Classroom full of artifacts related to our lives and students take turns making inferences about you. See LitCircle for more ideas she complied  - many other excellent ideas for m

In the spirit of Culturally Responsive Collaborators , who aim to hold space for educators of all backgrounds and areas of expertise, we will be highlighting various educators. We are all better together, and frankly teachers need other teachers! That statement has never been truer.

We are a group of teachers who are aiming to better serve our students by helping our peers expand their social and cultural perspectives. It is not enough to simply be "not racist" and "teach all of our students regardless of color or who they are". We need to develop anti-racist practices, approaches, and curriculum. Our initial goal is to provide some basics on "where to start," because all educators have an innate ability to make something their own. We have vetted a few texts for grades K-12, paired them with actionable resources, but by no means are we writing this curriculum. However, we wanted to get some text suggestions and resources in your hands ASAP. In addition, we have added articles to further our own professional development, thoughts, teaching lens, and to help us all generate powerful conversation. Some of these articles are also simply lists that help point you to more culturally diverse texts for our students. Our next steps will be ta

     We would love to hear from you!       We created a survey to gather feedback from community members on their own personal education experiences, what their children have experienced, and what they would like educators to know and understand.       All responses are anonymous! We will share and use this info to inform us on ways to select better curriculum, to make better choices within our classrooms, to expand our perspectives and push past our privileges. Diversity Survey