If there ever was a modern martyr, George Floyd is one. His daughter’s declaration of “Daddy changed the world” was manifested in protests from Amsterdam to Zimbabwe. His death has begun policing policy reform change in Washington and in cities throughout the country and the world is saying his name as they search for ways to bring about change.
People all over the world are not only waking up to the sometimes brutal realities that BIPOCs face, but they are understanding that, like being born pretty, sometimes life comes with unearned privilege that is wielded, unwittingly causing harm.
If you are someone who wants to teach better, include better, be better, join me for Friday night’s 8PM central live launch of #SmallBites. Each week you’ll get a Friday 5 with 5 actionable steps you can use to help create a more level playing field for those of us who all too often never even get inside the ballpark. Want to ask a question? You can do that too.
Fighting racism is a full time job, and most of us already have full time jobs. You can’t do everything, but you can do just one thing. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
For this week’s post, I’d like to invite you to read my latest article, “A Guide to Equity and Antiracism for Educators”, published by Edutopia. It’s all about actionable steps that you can take now.
I would also like to invite you to Small Bites, my YouTube channel soft re-launch, next Friday. If you’re familiar with the UN’s Lazy Person’s Guide to Saving the World, the concept is similar. Look for news on Twitter and Instagram.
We can’t eat an elephant all at once, but we can move forward if we commit to actionable steps that move us forward one bite at a time.
Last night, as I scrolled and double-tapped my way through post after post of black squares for #BlackoutTuesday, after my friends across the globe assured me that they stand with the us in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian and halting mixes of the above, I felt hope. I felt the hope of 2008. I felt the hope of MLK and Johnson. I felt the hope of our collective ancestors crossing the Mason-Dixon line. Even as I read of fires, and of the reprehensible hate-stoking by our nations fearmongers, I felt hope.
The overwhelming support of my less melanated sisters and brothers enveloped me in a warmth and kindled the hope that this time, we just might take a step forward in our fight against prejudice, racism and the inequities that have been plaguing our country since European settlers arrived here and created an Indian problem.
I’ve talked to friends and I’m not the only one who felt that hope. It felt significant. Hope can kindle change bigger than any riot fire IF the outrage of every individual is translated into action. Yes, fighting for social justice is a big ticket challenge. But like eating an elephant, if you do it one small bite at a time, it’ll get done, just start. Here are 5 things you can do today to advance the cause of equity and social justice.
Watch this Mehcad Brooks IGTV video on “the talk” in which black parents explain how to react in police encounters to children as young as 6.
If You Have At Least 30 minutes:
Watch an episode of Blackish. It’s light fare, but the lessons and issues tackled are not.
Conquering, enslaving and oppressing other humans is not a new concept, it is, unfortunately, the concept that has fueled competing powers since the beginning of time. Keeping that in mind, fighting for social justice is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. If you are just joining this fight, don’t get so overwhelmed now that you lose steam. Take small bites. That doesn’t mean don’t act with urgency, we need revolutionary change now. I’m just reminding you to take action at a sustainable pace. Set a measurable, attainable goal for today, for this week, for this year.
You have no idea how moved I have been at the great outpouring of solidarity. Now the question is, how will you translate that into action. What cha’ gonna do?
While being interviewed this week for Ted Nesloney’s #tellyourstory series, we talked a little about equity. He mentioned, rightly so, that the word equity is kind of “buzzy”, meaning that it’s one of the words popularly thrown around in education these days. He asked me what equity means to me. My encapsulated reply is that equity means doing the very best you can do for the student standing right in front of you.
When we think of the Big Concepts surrounding equity, it’s easy to be overwhelmed. Be a culturally responsive educator. Decolonize your classroom. Teach anti-racist curriculum. Where do you start? How do you start? How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. How do you begin to make your corner of the world a more equitable place as an educator? By doing the best for the one student standing in front of you.
Let me be clear: systemic racism is a big problem in the US and across the world and this week we have seen it play out in ugly ways in our country, once again. However, seeing the problem, acknowledging the problem, being aware of the symptoms and solutions of the problem and maybe even seeing your own part in the problem is not going to change anything unless you do one thing: Do your very best for the student standing in front of you. A child standing in front of you needs to know 3 things:
You value all students;
Every student deserves to be valued;
If someone is not valued, you will use your voice to help make sure that they are.
If every teacher would model and teach those three things, we could stop defining terms that essentially all mean the same thing: value others just as you value yourself (if you’re so inclined, you may recognize this as one of the 10 commandments). If every teacher had been teaching those three things, Amy Cooper might have grown up to be a person who leashed her dog instead of pulling the Fear Of The Black Man card. If teachers had been teaching students to value others all along, George Floyd would likely still be alive.
If every teacher would do the best for each child in front of them by valuing all students and speaking out against those who don’t, I wouldn’t have to worry about my teenager driving/running/living while black. That’s a hashtag, you know, #livingwhileblack. My pride and joy, a well-liked 16 year-old kid, who is now taller than I am, is perceived by the world as a black man, and we see what happens to black men, even when they are Harvard educated birders or lying faced down, pleading for breath as a peace officer’s knee crushes the life out of them.
Educators, if you are reading this and thinking that my recipe for eradicating racism is overly simple, I’ll concede that. I just don’t understand why it can’t be.
As a teacher, how can I not use my voice to speak out against wrong and teach my students to do the same? How can I not understand that melanin can mean convictions and rogue justice death sentences, often without vindication? How can I not understand that #blacklivesmatter means that students in your class, who look like me, don’t feel like their lives matter as much as the lives of whites because of what we experience and what we see happening in our communities.
As an educator, how can you not want to hug them and protect them and make sure that everyone who does NOT look like them knows that it’s not ok that they feel that way. It’s not ok that they die early and often for reasons rooted in systemic disenfranchisement, reasons that should make every educator into an activist, even if it’s only for one child at a time.
You want a more equitable classroom? Do your very best for the student standing in front of you. Make your campus a place where fairness and justice are not regulated by race, class, ideology or popularity. Esteem and celebrate those whose stories and histories you may have to look beyond the textbook for. When you read the painful stories of those who are not being valued, don’t look away. Teach your students the truth about what happens to people of color and the ugly historical truths surrounding the ugly present realities. Then teach them that they can make a difference. Send cards and letters to mothers of the slain, work with organizations who fight for social justice and teach your students that the grief we feel today will lessen if they value those who look like them– and those who don’t.
Don’t worry about the Big Concepts surrounding equity. Just do your best for the student that’s standing in front of you.
For those who know me from Twitter, you may know that I am a member of a group of educators that host the popular Saturday morning #CrazyPLN chat. One of this week’s questions was, “What’s your greatest fear about reopening in fall?” That one gave me pause. I have been reading about various district fall plans and contingencies much like Kermit sipping tea, as very much the outsider. Today’s question tapped me on the shoulder and reminded me that this coming fall, fraught with all of it’s challenges, is my world and the world of people I care about. My students will rely on me to provide calm, consistency, courage, communication and care–my 5 Cs of education in the Covid era. It’s hard to do that if I am freaking out–which after this morning’s discourse, I kinda was.
The inequities are being unearthed (for those for whom they were still earthed) and those who control the purse strings are having to consider making decisions based on human need and the fact that, if we are to remain a first world country, we have to decide how to be capitalists and care for the most vulnerable among us. With minority communities being hit hardest by Corona mortality, digital inequities, job loss and food insecurity, 30-40% of the country will suffer lasting, life trajectory altering consequences related to Covid-19. Again, that’s only minority communities. White households experienced a 10% jump in unemployment and our country’s overall employment rate is 14.7%.
While the families represented in our school buildings are suffering, the education sector layoffs have already started with some larger districts predicting 15-25% revenue loss, according to the Washington Post.
Then there is the social distancing piece of the puzzle, with the average square footage per classroom woefully inadequate to allow 6 feet of distance between students, if they even want to be distant. Because, you know, kindergartners never touch each other or their teachers and no one in secondary ever has a boyfriend or girlfriend in school. Add to all that the scarcity of sanitation supplies and toilet paper and…and…honestly, thinking of it all gave me the sweats and a headache.
But then I remembered that this situation, with all it’s uncertainty, is also rife with opportunities and rewards. Spoiler alert, fall will not look like any school opening we’ve ever known and that’s really not a bad thing. Yes, I miss the certainty of knowing just what it will look like, but I am ecstatic that we have to re-imagine the institution of education and its role in our society. I am calmed by the front line workers I know who invest deeply in their students, all while battling their own fears. If we concentrate on those 5 Cs–calm, consistency, courage, communication and care, I can imagine us fighting like heck to get our students to an even better place than they would have been if we’d maintained the status quo. I’m not so much of a naïf that I believe we will magically emerge stronger and better like a Tiktok #dontrush challenge. There will be painful loss, change and more than a few missteps on the way to getting it right. But I do know that if we could transform our whole existing system to an online one within days, we can emerge from any dust with a new vision for educating children that reflects the people and society we are now.
What we’ve been doing hasn’t been working for a long time and now, we have the opportunity do better. Now we’ll have to do better, lean in, try new things. If you’re not sure what new things, read the post below, “From A Distance” for some ideas. Or, I’ll be hosting a virtual learning session Tuesday at 4:30 with the incredible Traci Nicole Smith, PhD to talk about how we can better connect. Join us!
If you are a hedreich.com regular AND a music fan, you may have noticed that the blog article titles are song titles. Music is my thing. I can regularly be seen embarrassing my bio and school kids by breaking into song at unexpected times. Music weaves it’s way into articles, posts, lessons, on guest vlogs and even in PDs. My upcoming webinar is no different. From A Distance was a part of my original webinar title but I thought it was a bit unclear. It remains, however, the theme. From a distance ≠ at a distance. During this time of Covid19 social distancing, we have to lean in.
Leaning in means realizing that not only is from a distance ≠ at a distance, but similarly, distance learning is not the same as distance teaching:
The person who is talking is the person who is learning.
If you are lecturing for your 80 percent of your online sessions you are not building the communication skills of your students, you’re building your own.
If teacher-student connection is the primary socialization in your class, your students are missing critical skill-building opportunities.
The good news is, you can correct that easily. Here are a couple of ideas that you can easily integrate. Assign students to:
“host” the class and be responsible for letting students in and greeting them in the chat while you host 5 minutes of Zoom unmuted chaos.
use the whiteboard or screen sharing functions to teach a part of the lesson.
pull up “guess the gibberish” on Instagram and play with the class (older students, of course).
host a Kahoot for the class.
have group discussions in breakout rooms.
have student led discussions after group work.
Have show and tell.
invite mom, dad, grandparents, siblings, animals, stuffed animals etc to be a part of the final 5 minutes of class. Take a group pic and send it to parents thanking them for all their help.
The point is that drilling information into your kids because you have fewer instructional minutes is not probably going to make them any smarter. The research tells us that making sure they feel connected will, however. So lean in. teaching them from a distance does not mean that you all remain separated by distance. Give them opportunities to interact. Let them do most of the talking. Set up your instructional nuggets as questions as much as possible so they are thinking and making connections– with the content, with you, with each other.
If you want to learn more about it, join me on Wednesday at 11AM (Texas time) for 7 Strategies for Better Online Student Engagement where we’ll talk about learning, engagement and connecting from a distance.
I am fortunate to work with a diverse group of really great educators. Some of them have backgrounds similar to my own. Others come from very diverse backgrounds which heightens our ability to tackle problems from all angles. Sometimes, those same differences are food for thought, providing impetus to greater action. When talking to one of my favorite colleagues recently about the equity issues involved in moving learning online, I felt the difference in our backgrounds like a punch in the gut and it brought me here.
I was raised in a single-parent-ish, multi-generational home, one generation out of Houston’s Third Ward public housing. My mom used every extra penny to give me upper middle class exposure. I traded on those experiences to travel the world, even living and teaching in Switzerland for a decade and a half. My circle is a colorful community of friends who sometimes live in very different socio-economic worlds. Although I am in the Venn diagram middle of those worlds, folks on the high earning end don’t always know what life on the other side looks like. I find myself regularly in a room in which people do not know that living paycheck to paycheck is a real thing, without label and latte habits. I have friends who are shocked when I say that 1 in 4 Americans makes less than 40K. Even my friends who work in the trenches to get their students everything they need sometimes don’t know what it’s like to not make rent or eat 2 corndogs a day until your paycheck comes in. My early career as an artist taught me some real lessons about hunger and the gig economy and I have not forgotten them. I ache for people who are about to sacrifice everything so that we can flatten the curve and I fear that we don’t see the urgency of those needs.
I am glad to be a voice that helps uncover equity and access issues that we may not be aware of, especially now, as we push to get our lessons online. I am glad that my background has taught me how to ask questions and get help, for myself, for others. I am glad that I can raise awareness about the precipice that some of our families live on the edge of. I am also afraid that being a voice is not enough.
Now that we are in an economy that is doing a nose dive for many who were already barely making ends meet, what does equity look like? As we work on connecting kids to learning, have we built strong enough relationships so that we can connect kids to resources that will meet their basic needs? Are we making sure that mental health resources, food pantries, rental assistance and community outreach resources are on our Reminds, campus email blasts and even Google Classroom feeds, where appropriate? Do our kids know how to access a suicide or abuse hotline? Can their parents read well enough to fill out complicated forms necessary to access resources that we do send? Do we have basic needs crisis teams on every campus to provide help and additional services?
My kids are not all ok. I’m pretty sure that most of them are, but I am not content with most. Still, I am lucky. I work with an incredible team of caring educators who go the extra mile. I know that, while I don’t know every name and every need, I can call 3 people right now and they can let me know where help is still needed. For that I am thankful.
My challenge this week is for you to slow down on your Zooms and Flipgrids. Talk about Maslow and mental health in your PDs. Make it a priority to check in with your students. Find out who’s alone all day, who is taking care of younger siblings, who is hiding in his room because he’s stressed or afraid. Find out who can’t do meal pick up because their mama’s car broke down. Find out who is not ok and then do something about it. And if your students are all ok, maybe your students or family can donate to a local food pantry or even #stayhome and volunteer online to help those who aren’t.
Here is a list of resources for families in crisis:
We won’t save every child in our classroom. We couldn’t when we were face to face and that hasn’t changed. But we can make sure that connecting with kids and helping the most vulnerable among us is a priority. For additional resources, see these earlier blog posts and to read up on equity strategies in general, consult my guest blog article on Jennifer Gonzalez’ Cult of Pedagogy.
It’s so easy to be grateful when life is chugging along smoothly, less so when even the lemons you’re squeezing to make lemonade seem to be bitter and moldy.
I know. My brick house of gratitude is mortared with tears and I’m sorrys. “I’m sorry, your husband has cancer”. “I’m sorry, he didn’t make it”. “I’m sorry, we can’t find the baby’s heartbeat”. “I’m sorry your mom collapsed and died in therapy”. I know pain and loss intimately and still, I can write, with confidence, that everything is going to be alright. In addition to a deep and abiding faith that grounds me in the belief that there’s an ultimate OK coming, I have lived through losses and tragedies that should have stripped me of my sunny disposition long ago. I have trudged through bad weeks and months and sometimes years at a time but I’ve come out on the other end. While being dragged, kicking and screaming, up the steep hill of personal growth, I learned the two things that I wouldn’t trade for an easier path; resilience and gratitude. I learned to cling, sometimes desperately, to the belief that by simply putting one foot in front of the other I would arrive somewhere better. I learned to remind myself of even the smallest things to be thankful for. Those reminders kept a glimmer of hope burning. That glimmer of hope was fanned by doggedness and molded by alternating fits and starts of steps forward and leaps back. My “everything will be alright” is not the platitude of a charmed soul, proverbial spoiled rich girl or even someone who is unfailingly optimistic, although I do tend to find the upside. The fact is, once you pull yourself up a few times with “Nobody Here But Jesus” playing over and over as your soundtrack, you find out that you can pull it together and that life will not beat you, it’ll just teach you more than you’d ever planned on learning.
So while you’re reading this, in whatever state of mind you find yourself as we go through this unique, difficult Covid-19 adventure, I would like to remind you that everything will be alright. There will be loss, in some cases, unimaginable tragedy. But there will be rebuilding, recovery and somehow, a new and different alright-ness. In the mean time, hunker down, wash your hands, watch some Tiktok videos and help someone if you can.
My help this week comes from Action For Healthy Kids. Many thanks to the bloggers for collecting such a comprehensive list of resources for everything from online learning to fitness and immune boosting nutrition.
Yesterday as I got to the 5th store on the third shopping day only to find shelves devoid of toilet paper, I decided to buy some emergency toilet Kleenex, get some pasta and call it a day. Once in line, I spontaneously started singing to a crying baby as the mom of 3 in front of me frantically searched for his binky. Baby Shark turned tears to smiles. People around looked up and relaxed their furrowed brows just briefly. A conversation started between the cashier and I; how the silliest songs work magic, how she hadn’t had a break all day, how I’d come in for toilet paper and found none. Again. Then more magic, she produced three packages confiscated from people trying to flout the “limit 2” rule. I took 2, Charmin, my favorite! I had come in, seven rolls between me and dry leaves and I had been spiraling. What if I really couldn’t find any? Would my neighbors share? What if we got the runs?! What if I never found toilet paper, even the cheap kind?! Fear was rising and then, *POOF*, I somehow had exactly what I needed. That taught me something.
Things are rarely as perilous as they seem, “no soup is eaten as hot as it’s served”. We paint worst case scenarios to protect ourselves from worst case scenarios, and that preparation is not bad, let’s just not live there. Let’s take control of the things we can. For teachers, one thing we can control is how we stay connected with our students. If you are converting to distance learning, here are my top five resources, with tutorials and app alternates for non US users:
Screencastify, K-12. Here is the tutorial for recording your voice and integrating Google Slides. Screencastify will record your screen with a voiceover so it’s a great gateway app if you want to make your own tutorials for parents or students. Before you do, check YouTube. There are many great tutorials already out there and many lessons that you may be just about to re-create. While littles won’t need Screencastify lessons, depending on what you’re having them do, it could be helpful for the parents helping them.
Flipgrid, K-12+. Here’s a tutorial in which Ann will get you started and put you in a good mood. She is super upbeat! Once you get set up, you can use it for read-alouds, discussions, video journals and for various peer to peer exchanges during this time of relative isolation. It’s also a great alternative to TikTok for younger kids, if you want to do dance challenges together.
Pixton, grades 3-12+. Here’s a tutorial that gets you started. Pixton is great for ELA, tech, humanities and even math, if you want to really get into word problems. It’s a comic strip creator that allows for a lot of creativity. It would be great to have kids write about how they feel about Covid19 and about how they feel the adults in their lives are handling it. I bet we could learn a few things from their stories.
CS First, grades 5-8, which has interactive, interdisciplinary lessons on various topics, from basic coding and digital storytelling to music and fashion. There are lessons in both English and Spanish. Here are tutorials to get you started. If you are outside of the US, let me recommend Hour of Code, which has lessons in over 45 languages for students in pre-k through high school!
Interland, grades 4-7. No tutorial here, just click and play to learn digital citizenship principles. This is Google based, so if you are out of the country, try Common Sense Education for K-12 digital literacy curriculum and games for grades 3-5. These lessons are especially useful as reminders, since many students will have more screen time than usual.
All of these are good options, and there are many more. My advice? Keep it simple. Send something out using your email or remind system if you don’t have an online classroom set up. Or, set one up. Google Classroom and Schoology are user friendly, free options. With them, share links to any resources in one place and even have students turn in their work by a certain time like in a real classroom. Also, really consider Flipgrid, YouTube, TikTok or a social media platform, as policies allow. Human contact is necessary and being a live, talking, steadying influence for your students will be the most important thing you can do for them.
Finally for some, no matter how great your virtual teaching is, this time will be a nightmare. Consider using your resources to help those who may need more than just an internet connection. Here are some national links that connect you to resources in local communities, I’m sure there are many others.
You may be the first person to sense that something is wrong and that’s a big responsibility. But I think most of us signed up because we genuinely care so let’s move from empathy to action when we see students in need.
Will things get worse before they get better? Maybe. Will people we know get the Coronavirus? Maybe. Will they recover? Maybe. There are a lot of maybes and a lot of factors that are beyond our control. But here’s a spin: as chaotic as things are, we are also alive and living through something unique and unprecedented. That ain’t all bad, is it? You can teach in your jammies and send YouTube videos to your students of you and your dog explaining math. How cool is that? You can try your best to do a TikTok dance, give your kids a Cheerio tower challenge on Flipgrid, or send snail mail notes to ss who are not connected filled with love and message in a bottle challenges. Help your students to see adventure and the chance to problem solve in everything that’s happening. It won’t always be possible, but your calming voice can be the one to remind them that everything will indeed be alright.
While discussing the recent socio-emotional learning boom with a colleague, Kellie Bhari (@Kbhari5), she called to my attention the fact that SEL is indeed salt. In French. Salt is a preservative. Salt is the basis of most seasoning mixes. Salt is essential, regulatory, nutritive, healing, did I say essential?
I won’t bore you with facts and figures, but the research says that students who have a sense of belonging do better in school than students who don’t. When a school is a place students–and teachers–want to be, everyone is less stressed, more content and better able to achieve. Students learn better from teachers they like. So, as much as I hate bandwagons, the SEL one is a bandwagon we should all be on.
I am warm and fuzzy– in a strict, pragmatic kind of way, an emotional hybrid who has always believed that the world could be a better place if we were to be kinder to one another. As a child I would come in crying, not because I was hurt, but because the kids were being mean to one another. I’ve never been much for “roasting” (“the dozens” for Gen Xers), fail videos, boxing or brutal talk and reality TV shows. I’m the person who rescues puppies, helps sick people in parking lots and goes to fish funerals when invited. I am also the person who navigates the social media waters without stirring the pot for discussion’s sake. I am the teacher who has always built on kindness as the foundation of class management and collaborative learning.
Helping students learn to manage emotions and work collaboratively makes magic in a classroom. When students are taught explicitly to check attitudes, mean-spiritedness and cliquishness at the door, it makes a difference. Quiet students learn to speak out. “Smart kids” build alliances with the “popular kids”. Churlish students find their smile. And everybody can risk failing up.
Maybe you are more of a content nerd ( a good thing, btw) or maybe your school has a schedule that doesn’t leave much time for “extras”. Maybe this is the first you’ve heard about kindness being a part of SEL or maybe you’d just like to know more. Randomactsofkindness.org has a host of resources that are easily integrated into an already full school day. If you’re the bucket filler, challenge your students to do one nice thing for someone else today. And join them. And if you are a go big or go home type, introduce SDGs, the UN’s 17 sustainable global goals, where you and your kids can spread kindness on a global scale. Whatever you do, find a way to add SEL components to your lessons and watch the change.
Yes, salt flavors everything. SEL, likewise, so while the pressure is on and you are gearing up for STAAR, don’t put away your SEL shaker. Send a positive note home, tattle about something good your colleague did, do something nice for yourself, your spouse or your “personal” kids. Sprinkle each day with a little extra kindness. Your students will be better for it, and so will the world.
