The Conscious Kid Children’s Book List
Children’s book list for educators to reference in their efforts to by culturally-affirming and responsive in the classroom all year long.
Classroom Strategies
Social & Emotional Learning: Classroom Strategies
These short courses, tools and resources make up key components of a school that has a healthy culture and climate, which supports students’ academic and emotional well-being. Learn about creating safety, promoting emotion regulation, and reasons for providing calm spaces for students, and get an overview of adult social and emotional learning.
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Making Culturally Responsive Teaching More Manageable
Zaretta Hammond explains why one of the biggest challenges teachers struggle with when first embracing this approach is trying to operationalize it in their classrooms. They worry that they have to learn 19 different cultures – their customs, holidays, foods, and language. This simply isn’t true. The other instinct is to reduce it to a set of checklists for each culture as a way to make it manageable. Cultural responsiveness is more of a process than a strategy. The process begins when a teacher recognizes the cultural capital and tools students of color bring to the classroom. She then responds positively by noticing, naming and affirming when students use them in the service of learning. The teacher is “responsive” when she is able to mirror these cultural ways of learning in her instruction, using similar strategies and tools to scaffold learning. The author offers three easy starting points to help make the process more manageable.
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Calm Down Corner
One way to help children learn how to self-regulate is by providing them with calm down corners. A calm down corner is a designated space in a home or classroom with the sole intent of being a safe space for a child to go to when they feel their emotions are running too high and they need to regain their emotional and physical control. Gain some tips for creating a calm down corner in this short article.
42 MTSS Intervention Strategies for Your Student Support Team
Every student comes into the classroom with their own experiences and needs. As educators, we can support students by choosing intervention strategies designed to help them succeed. A strong Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) depends on individualized, research-based intervention strategies. Intervention plans must be relationship-informed as well as data-informed, building on what we know about our students and determining how best to support them. Check out these ideas for your student support team.
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Making Connections: Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain
Elena Aguliar interviews Zaretta Hammond about her book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students. Read about how cultural responsiveness is more of a process than a strategy. It begins when a teacher recognizes the cultural capital and tools students of color bring to the classroom.
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Creating Identity-Safe Schools and Classrooms
This research report addresses the ways in which practitioners can build inclusive and affirming school environments with keen attention to identity safety that can support all students in feeling safe, protected, and valued in school environments. A growing body of research points to effective school-based practices and structures, described below, that educators can use to foster the identity safety that nurtures student achievement, positive attachments to school, and a genuine sense of belonging and membership for each student.
Choosing Trauma Informed Care for Children with Intellectual Disabilities
We live in a world where all children can experience challenges with their mental health, including those caused by trauma. We know all children can heal after trauma; this includes children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Sometimes recovery from trauma requires partnership with child- and family-focused mental health care providers. Caregivers play a large and important role in their child’s treatment and recovery, so having information about what help is critical. It might be time to seek help from a mental health provider if a child has experienced trauma, or you notice concerning changes in your child’s behavior or mood that suggest a traumatic experience may have occurred. For more information on that, check out Understanding Trauma Responses in Children with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and When to Seek Help. This is especially the case if these changes leave caregivers feeling overwhelmed.
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Transformative SEL
“Transformative SEL” is a form of SEL implementation where young people and adults build strong, respectful, and lasting relationships to engage in co-learning. It facilitates critical examination of individual and contextual factors that contribute to inequities and collaborative solutions that lead to personal, community, and societal well-being. Through SEL, students and adults develop social and emotional skills needed for school and community engagement, with a focus on rights and responsibilities for creating learning environments that are caring and just.
The Power of Relationships in Schools
This video highlights the importance of supportive and nurturing relationships in schools and the positive effect this has on students’ social, emotional and academic outcomes.
