Those first days feel so important! First impressions matter! Being overwhelmed and trying to do all the things in those first few days is definitely not on brand for Truth for Teachers. Check out this guide to curate a focused and enjoyable back-to-school plan.

Grab your notebook and pen (or however you like to plan), and let’s get started.

1. Identify what you want students to know, understand, and do

Know, Understand, and Do (or KUDs) are part of the Understanding by Design framework coined by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins. This is a method of backwards planning used for academic units that can be applied in miniature form to the first days of school. Instead of planning backwards from a unit’s final assessment, you’re planning backwards from what you want the class to look and feel like for the year.

In the “know” area, write any absolute information students need to know early. This is about making the “hidden curriculum” clear for all students. This could be:

• Key language you use to cue routines and procedures
• Policies and rules
• Locations of different items

In the “understand” area, write the “universal truths” that will guide how the classroom operates. This is about establishing school and classroom culture intentionally. These could be:

• Identity statements that your whole school uses (e.g. “I am responsible.”).
• Value statements that drive your class (e.g. “We co-create this class everyday.”).

In the “do” area, write things you want students to do in the very first days. This is about establishing the early habits that will become the bedrock of the class. These could be:

• Routines and procedures
• Classroom community builders (like classroom meetings)
• “Light” academic habits (e.g. reading, asking questions, persisting in the face of a challenge, etc.)

Caption: This is the first draft of my list. I added quite a bit to it later on, but I wanted you to have a visual for the process.

2, Identify what you want to know, understand, and do

Once you’ve envisioned what you want students to know, understand, and do, you need to create a similar list for yourself. We don’t plan enough for making sure our needs are met early and often in the classroom so that we can do our best work.

In the “know” category, you may list certain student information, for example:

• Name pronunciation
• Interests
• Ideal conditions for learning
• Motivational style

In the “understand” category, you may list the beliefs you need to hold to have a great start of the year, for example

• I create what I expect.
• There is plenty of time.
• We are here to learn.

In the “do” category, you may list the actions you want to take in those first days. For example:

• Talking with each student
• Observations you want to make
• Choosing carefully how you speak to individual students and the class
• When and how you offer help
• When and how you offer praise
• Self-care activities (this and other activities could be during or around the school day, but they are still important to schedule for yourself).

3. Brainstorm and envision

This part is pure idea generation. List as many different ways as you can think of to accomplish your KUDs for students and for yourself. You can organize this by going line-by-line or just brain-dumping in a long list. There won’t necessarily be one activity for each item on your list. You will start to see ways in which several items cluster together. The important thing is to not stop at one idea. Generate lots of ideas.

This is a place where some teachers may turn to the internet for ideas. I like Tim Ferriss’ encouragement of an information diet–being selective about how much information you take in. I try to stick with what I come up with, just because it’s overwhelming to add ideas from all over the internet too. Sometimes I will search a specific favorite teacher website, which gives me a few high-quality ideas without sending me down the rabbit hole. The point is to have some options, not go on the hunt for the very perfect back-to-school sequence. School is imperfect. Best to accept it from day one.

4. Curate

From this giant list, it’s time to curate. Not everything from the giant list can or should be included. There are several questions I consider in the curation process.

• Will it cultivate understanding? The knowing and the doing are pretty easy to get in a variety of ways, but featuring an understanding is deep, intentional work that is easily lost in service of knowing and doing. Build around the understanding first.
• Is it enduring? I want students creating enduring products or prior knowledge experiences that we can return to throughout the year. I want mileage out of those first few days, and bonus points if I can pull the activities/products into a welcome packet for late-joiners to the class or into a back-to-school presentation for families.
• Is it simple but high-yield? Gone are my days of elaborate pre-cutting and crafting to prepare a one-day activity before students arrive. Gone are my days of complicated directions (their brains–and mine–are still in summer mode). I am here for simple, non-threatening human connection from day one. I am here for finding out so much more by watching and listening. (For more ideas, check out the Ultimate Guide for Authentically Creating a Secondary Classroom Where Students Feel Safe, Connected, and Whole)

5. Schedule

Decide how many days you want to devote to “back-to-school” before starting your academic curriculum. This may depend on your calendar, the age of your students, and/or the activities you want to do. We start with a three-day week, and I teach high school, so I will start with those three days. We will revisit and add throughout the school year, so I am not trying to jam in every single thing those first three days. Most routines I teach naturally the first time the need arises. For more information on this, I recommend the 40 Hour Teacher Workweek, which was my best teacher for scheduling all the routines I need to teach.

How do you want back-to-school to feel?

The choice really is yours. As I said earlier, trust your instincts about the activities you include, but if you are looking for some inspiration, you can read what came from my planning process at Get Back to School with 8 Easy and Fun Activities for High School.

The post How to select the BEST back-to-school ideas for you and your students appeared first on Truth For Teachers.

One of my proudest teaching moments happened the day I helped three students simultaneously write their own short stories. They’d been referred to me for academic support. The rest of their class was done writing, but these three still had blank pages.

This is a common issue, but it is not one I saw much of when I taught general education — I was really good at stacking layers of swiss cheese, as Angela says.

If you’ve had it with late papers, I hope you can walk away from this post with some simple practices that will bring more ease to you and your students.

1. Build background knowledge

The old adage is “write what you know,” but so often, we expect students to write without the background knowledge to succeed. They might be asked to write about something they read and feel insecure that they are enough of an expert to do so successfully. I think this is why students so often shy away from analysis in favor of saying, “It was a really good book.”

Ensuring that they students had tons of time to talk with peers and even plan essays together can help with this. While they might write the final essay independently, good writers incubate their ideas with others. This process builds background knowledge around an unfamiliar topic.

Sometimes students are asked to write about self-selected topics and stories, and they still struggle. This comes from a different type of background knowledge gap. It could be missing the academic language to write about any topic. For example, teaching the words people use when writing with analysis, research, or argument.

In other cases, when you want students to write how they would speak to a friend or family member, they may need explicit acknowledgment that their language is supposed to take center stage. Without this, they may get confused, thinking they have to write about something they love but in a “teacher’s way.”

It could also be a gap in structural background knowledge. I often hear students say they don’t know where to start, and that’s because they can’t envision how the piece could unfold. Providing some simple options for approaches can help, as the next practice suggests.

2. Make sure everyone has a roadmap

For the runners in the classroom, they can relate to the idea of visualizing a course before you run it. A roadmap in writing is the same thing. This metaphor applies across a variety of contexts for different students since humans are wired to think about something and how it might go before it happens.

To this end, we make roadmaps. They are very simple, not at all like elaborate graphic organizers which can become another hurdle for some students. In the case of my three students who needed to write three different short stories, I asked them the following questions.

1. Who is your story about? What does that person want? What’s going to get in the way of that in the story? These questions established the general overview of the story.
2. What’s the character doing? A lot of times people like to give details about the setting at the beginning, so where is it? What time of day is it?
3. What could happen next to move the character closer to the problem?
4. How does the problem happen?
5. How does the character solve the problem?
6. What does the character realize at the end?

For each question, the students jotted down notes on a blank Google doc. It didn’t have to be in complete sentences, just whatever they thought of for the answers. Since I was helping the three of them simultaneously, I would ask a question and then circulate to see their answers before asking the next one.

In a whole-class environment, asking a set of guided questions is a little trickier. Instead, I have students make a little drawing of their papers, so they can see the sections along with the topics.

This was an example I did for a piece on where to eat in New York City. After this process, students who are still stuck can get pulled together for direct questions.

For an argument piece, I could ask:

• What is your topic? What do you want people to know, do, think, or believe?
• Why do you think or believe that? Each reason they give could become its own paragraph.
• Why do you think it is so important for people to know, do, think, or believe that? This provides for a strong conclusion.

3. Train students with writing sprints

This roadmap process is what I used to write every paper in college and graduate school. Once I have my little list of topics, it’s time to write my way through them one by one.

A constant practice in my classroom is writing sprints. Some people call them quick writes. Basically, the idea is that you write without editing yourself or stopping. We practice this almost daily with smaller topics, like speed training for a runner, so when it comes time to write something longer, the students rely on their training.

Often, writing days in the classroom become a winnowing between the students who can keep themselves on task and those who cannot. This is a missed opportunity. Instead, I tell students that we are going to use a writing sprint to write the next thing on their topic list. I give them a word count goal and a time limit they are used to.

The students are consistently stunned by how many words they can write in a certain amount of time. They often think that writing the paper will take forever, which is similar to how I feel about cleaning the house. I used to put it off, saying I didn’t have enough time to finish, but when I actually timed myself and saw how long it took, I realized that it really didn’t take that long. This use of a timer and a word count goal will pay dividends for students who will need to learn to manage their own progress in writing (or a variety of project-based tasks) in their lives.

One issue that could come up in writing sprints for a major paper is research. Nothing has stopped my writing faster than convincing myself that I need to stop writing to find the perfect fact, quote, image, or hyperlink.

When I use this process and I know students need to have research, we write after we have gathered some research and taken some notes. Students can review the notes before the writing sprint, but once it starts, they are not allowed to use their notes. Instead, we follow the “medical medical” protocol.

I read somewhere once that when people write medical dramas like Gray’s Anatomy, the scriptwriters write the script like this: “Quick! We need to MEDICAL MEDICAL before she MEDICAL MEDICAL.” Later on, the doctors on staff fill in the script with accurate terms and information.

In class, this looks like students writing, “According to ****, ******.” They go back to their notes after the sprint is over to plug in the information. Not only does this process keep their momentum up, it helps them write with research rather than over-relying on research.

4. Keep the cursor moving

While students are completing their writing sprints, I am constantly walking around. This is not the time for me to catch up on grading or planning. This is the time for me to prevent anyone from ending up in a late work situation. My entire focus is to keep their cursors moving, to eliminate the blank page so they can see that they have so much to say.

I only talk to students whose cursors aren’t moving. I say, “You stopped. What are you thinking about?” This question helps me solve the present dilemma to get the student feeling momentum again. I only get a couple of answers to this question.

One is that they don’t know how to spell a word or want a piece of information. I tell them to spell it the best they can or put in asterisks for the research and come back to it later.

The other is that they don’t know what to write about. I ask them what the next thing is on their roadmap. They tell me, and I tell them to write about that. Yes, I know how ridiculously simple that sounds, but often the student is starting to think about the writing as a whole. When someone asked Stephen King how he writes so much, he famously said, “One word at a time.” My job is to just help them find the next word.

5. Make it social

One of the strange things about an extended writing project is that it becomes a time of silence and individualism in the classroom. Group work, discussion, games, and chatter are shut down so everyone can “focus.” This sudden change does not benefit all (most?) kids.

After a writing sprint ends, I make time for students to talk. Maybe we do a word count contest and celebrate the top three word counts. Maybe students turn and talk about what went well and what didn’t. No matter the prompt, I want to remind students that while they may be doing parts of this alone, we are actually alone together. This alone togetherness normalizes the struggle everyone is experiencing as writers. We celebrate how much fun it is to do hard things together.

6. Accept “unfinished” work

Most of this list is aimed at getting a first draft from everyone. Ideally, after each writing sprint, students would have time to “reread it and make it better” through revision. Eventually, they could share with classmates and me to keep revising. Yes, I want as much of that to happen as possible. However, when it’s the due date, time is up.

I have students write on Google Docs that I own, so I am always able to access their work. I grade it on the due date, no matter if it isn’t done. No writing is ever really done; it’s just due. From here, I allow students to revise and resubmit for a higher grade (again, on my deadline). Some students need this grade feedback before they’ll take revisions seriously. That pragmatism is okay with me.

If I’ve employed all the other practices successfully, the only students who won’t have anything at all to turn in are the students who have been absent for the life of the project. I have those students too — several of them. I am done being surprised that this is a thing, so for every unit, I have a backup plan.

I know it doesn’t seem fair for a student to skip out on steps (and they are definitely not learning as much), but a chronically absent student often has a mental dilemma going on. Their work has to be perfect before it can be done but they don’t have the time to get to perfect.

I love teaching students how to accept reality and commit to the idea that done is better than perfect (see Angela’s post What Could Be Possible If You Aimed For B+ Work?). For a chronically absent student, my goal at the high school level is to be a reason that student believes they can come back to school, not another reason they feel they don’t belong at school.

Here are some ways I have students make up writing in a hurry:

• Give them research notes to write from. I am always modeling with my own example, so I just give them my notes. They don’t get full credit for doing the research, but at least they can write something.
• Give them a topic they can complete in one writing sprint. If I don’t know when a student will be in school again, I capture what I can on the day they are present. This could be the story of a moment as opposed to an extended story or an argument paragraph rather than an entire essay.

Of course, how this is graded is up to you. My guiding light has been this interview with Cornelius Minor (“Antiracist” Grading Starts With You). My approach feels very in line with 5 Grading Practices Teachers Can Use To Promote Equity Now. For another approach, check out Ending the Late Work Debate: Try Issuing Students a “Credit Score.”

Staying in the Present

Dragging ourselves and our students back through late work keeps us all stuck in the past. It can become a cycle of guilt for our struggling students, and a never-ending slog of paper-chasing for us. We are only ever truly alive in the present. Let’s stay there with our students as much as possible. These practices will help you and your students enjoy the present and accomplish more at the same time.

For more ideas on how I help students write on a deadline, check out Spend More Time on These Three Techniques of Teaching Writing. These underutilized practices also support my students in completing their writing on time.

The post 6 practices that ended late work in my ELA classroom and finally got students writing appeared first on Truth For Teachers.

Chemaly writes that “Anger is a boundary.” In the 2020-21 school year, and even more so, the 2021-22 school year, anger alerted me to where my boundaries were being crossed.

I pitched the idea for this article to Angela in the spring, when the anger was still palpable for me. I had a theory that perhaps other teachers felt the same, quite a few metaphorically saying, “take this job and shove it.” (Angela wrote posts here and here to help guide teachers making this decision). I had a hunch that I was not the only one who was fed up.

This theory — that teachers are more angry than usual — requires some contextualizing, though. Was it just me? Was it just because I read the book and let myself feel that anger?

By the time this is published, we will be at a new moment in society. I may process anger differently from when I first pitched this article, but anger will still be a part of me — a part of all of us — because it is part of the human experience. Chemaly calls us to learn from our anger, to have a plan to navigate this emotion whenever it floods our nervous systems.

Practice anger consciousness

Society as a whole looks negatively upon anger because it can lead to irreversible harm through impulsive actions and words, but Chemally argues that anger is neutral. It is what we do with anger that determines if there is harm.

What Chemaly asks us to do first is to raise our “anger consciousness.” This is our self-awareness that the emotion we are feeling is anger (women in particular may mislabel it as sad, frustrated, etc.). The physical manifestation of anger may vary widely as well, because of socialization. For example, someone may cry or laugh, but they are not sad or happy. They are angry. So much of the harm comes from people trying to get rid of the anger quickly before it’s even fully understood.

Making space to be anger-conscious may be extremely difficult at school. There are usually 35 pairs of eyes on you while you navigate your emotions. You may have an involuntary physical response (or be using all your resources to subdue that response). If you’re not in class at the time, you may vacillate between “keeping it professional” in front of administrators and “just venting” with other teachers–neither of which fully acknowledge the anger.

We’ll talk about what external actions to take, but right now, focus just on what anger feels like to you. Where do you feel it in your body? How are you likely to react? Think about it now, then take some time to practice just naming it in the moment.

I spent months doing this after reading Rage Becomes Her. Something would happen, and I would get this burning feeling from my cheeks to my stomach–I’m feeling it now as I write.

I would feel that feeling, and to myself, I would say, “Anger! There you are! I’m really angry right now.”

When I had the space to reflect, I would even send a little thank-you to it. “You are a big emotion–you clearly have an important message for me. Thank you so much.”

Interpret and act

Sometimes the cause of your anger may seem obvious; other times, not so much, but either way, try to pause for interpretation.

Chemaly writes, “Anger does not, in and of itself, ‘make you right.’” Examine what you’re angry about to figure out what’s your work. Sometimes it’s our thinking.

There can certainly be irritants piling up every day that can lead to anger:

• The student who doesn’t come to class until the last week of the quarter. If you’re thinking, “This kid doesn’t care the whole time and now she wants me to bend over backwards?!” you will likely feel anger in this situation. If you are thinking, “Oh wow, she’s finally here. I’m excited to get to know her. We will take this a day at a time,” you probably aren’t going to feel as angry. I know both are possible, because I’ve seen the same student get radically different reactions across the school day, depending on the teacher, and that teacher’s thoughts. My question becomes, what kind of thoughts will lead to the actions that will create the best results for this student?
• The student who takes things from your desk without asking. Some people see this as a sign of the student’s comfort; others as a boundary violation. If it feels like a boundary violation, it’s important to communicate that calmly and clearly. Pretending that it isn’t a boundary violation will only lead to more anger or an unintentional response. Treating it as a boundary violation when that boundary hasn’t been communicated will also lead to anger.
• The student making passive-aggressive comments in class. This might be interpreted as a threat to the safety of the community you are building or a sign that this student is unsure of how to healthily relate to his classmates. Your interpretation will inform your next steps.

In any situation, it’s important to explore all the ways something can be interpreted before acting so you can choose the best action for your situation.

And what about in the moment when you are angry? This is your opportunity to teach students what to do. A swift, clear response is what is needed in the case of a safety or boundary violation. Anything else can wait, but you can take a minute to regroup. Normalize this so students know how to do it. Here are some possible things to say, depending on your situation:

• “Let’s pause. I’m going to grab a quick drink.”
• “I am going to take a few breaths and let’s start again.”
• “Please wait, I need to write something down real quick.” You can jot down how you’re feeling or anything you need to get out.
• If you have a preset dance party or brain break routine, this is also a good time to use that.

Before any of these actions, you may or may not choose to disclose that you are angry, depending on the situation, but if you want to highlight that you are navigating anger and not suppressing it, you can say, “I think I’m getting angry right now, I will need some time to think about it, but I’m going to reset so I can focus on being your teacher.”

Other times, it may be super clear that the anger is justified. Something like, “I feel angry because it’s important to me that…and…” could be helpful.

I know this modeling might seem kind of cheesy, and not feel like what we want to do in the moment, but this is exactly what we need students to practice. They don’t have to follow the road of anger wherever it leads. They can interrupt the moment and show themselves some care.

I worked with a student last year who engaged in physical fighting when she was angry. Through our consistent practice, she was able to stop fighting and find other ways to articulate her anger. I am so proud of her.

What about the adults?

Even though I think it’s totally okay to admit that sometimes we have class situations that make us angry, I imagine that the majority of the anger at school has to do with colleagues, administrators, and even forces and people outside the school.

Like in the situations above, after you’ve identified the feeling as anger, it’s time to interpret and act. There may be times when it’s really how you’re choosing to look at a situation that is causing your anger.

For example, is your colleague’s email really implying something negative about you? Once I’ve set aside my interpretation of a snarky-seeming email, my action is always to talk with the person face-to-face. This is the best way to clear the air and disrupt any inaccurate perceptions.

“Boundaries” have become the newest buzzword. Here’s how to actually create them as a teacher.

Other times, boundaries may be in order. The important thing to remember is that boundaries are not about changing other people’s behavior. We can’t change others, and we shouldn’t threaten them with our boundaries to make them change. Boundaries are about you and what you will or won’t do.

Let’s say you have a colleague who never has prepped what they are supposed to prep for the PLC. It’s become such a pattern that it seems they are benefiting from your shared preparations without contributing their own. You can state that you will not share what you’ve prepared unless all group members are ready to share. This protects you, and ultimately, the other person doesn’t have to change; they just won’t benefit from your work without reciprocity.

These actions can be more difficult with administrators because of the power deferential. Again, check your thoughts. Our thoughts and perspectives are often limited to the classroom. While we have a valuable lens, there are so many pieces to running a school that we thankfully don’t have to think about. In other situations, your anger may be completely warranted. If it’s a union violation, your union representative is the best person to discuss it with you–rather than venting in the teacher’s lounge (and taking no action).

Radical imagination

In the Rage Becomes Her book, Chemaly writes, “Anger is an act of radical imagination.” This is the true power and possibility when we make space for anger. Without it, we lose the opportunity to imagine outside of the way things are and into what they could be.

If your anger is related to a clear systemic issue, there are many ways to take action: organize, donate money, or connect small daily actions to disrupting the system “out there.”

Completing the stress cycle

While this structure, where you identify, interpret, and act on anger is strong and harnesses the best potential of this informative emotion, you must also attend to your body.

Emotions are a form of stress on the body, and in Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, Emily and Amerlia Nagoski argue that you need to deal with both the stressor and the actual stress. The former process from Chemaly is about dealing with the stressor. The actual stress, the physical sensation, in this case of anger, also needs to be released.

The Nagoskis call this “completing the cycle.” On a primitive level, it’s a way of signaling to your body that the danger has passed. Without it, our bodies begin to think we are constantly under attack. In the modern age, our bodies are stressed daily, so we need daily ways to release built-up stress.

The best way is through physical exercise, though only you know what kinds of physical movement give you that release. Other releases can be positive social interaction, laughter, physical affection, crying, or creative expression. Dialing in to which ones work specifically to release anger will help your body move forward with your mind.

Rage Becomes Her: Supporting students (and ourselves) in expressing our full range of emotions

The post Teachers are angry. Here’s how to channel that anger productively. appeared first on Truth For Teachers.

There’s a lot of potential in the Results-Only Work Environment for you and your students to gain better autonomy, accountability, and results. Here’s how you and your students can experiment with a ROWE approach.

What exactly is a Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE)?

In 2003, Jody Thompson and Cali Ressler conducted an experiment at Best Buy headquarters, where they worked in human resources.

They were curious if framing employees’ work by their results (instead of “you have to be at your desk from X to Y”) would improve both company outcomes and employees’ experiences. Employees were told they needed to deliver X result by Y deadline. Where, when, and how they chose to do the work was up to them.

Between 2005 and 2007, productivity increased by 41% and employee turnover decreased by 90%. Founding CultureRx, home of the Results-Only Work Environment, Thompson and Ressler have helped other companies shift to this sort of a model.

I’m wary of cross-pollinating business ideas into the educational sector (the Industrial Revolution is what got us into our current structure), but this idea still has me thinking: how could ROWE help both teachers and students?

We can imagine that in the work-from-home boom of the pandemic (and the ensuing conflicts about returning to the office) that a ROWE would be quite popular, but ROWE is not just about working from home.

In fact, just sending workers off doesn’t equip them to produce the results, just like sending students off with just the textbook to produce “results” would lead nowhere. The mindset and culture it takes to center results demand a deeper level of change.

CultureRx has three core values that serve as the foundation for ROWE:

• Autonomy
• Accountability
• Results

There may be some limitations in education. Autonomy is not something we perceive students or teachers having much of, and conversations about accountability and results are often used to coerce both parties into “better behavior.”

Let’s see what we can reclaim through the framing of these values from CultureRx.

Core value #1: Autonomy

Autonomous people govern themselves, but pure autonomy is rarely achievable. However, perceiving and practicing autonomy can thrive in most environments.

We might think of the following as examples of student autonomy:

• Playlists and self-paced learning
• Choice in tasks or texts
• Self-checklists and reflections

All worthy activities, but inherently not autonomous because for the most part, students have to go to school and then they must choose one of the choices we give them. And this, among other reasons, cause some students to struggle with self-directed learning.

Thompson and Ressler emphasize that just making these sorts of changes that promote flexibility are not the same as creating a ROWE culture. They share three points that generate deep autonomy:

Make work equitable for all.

When people feel like they’re not being treated fairly, any illusion of autonomy is gone. For example, it is hard to focus on what choices we do maintain as teachers when so many parts feel inequitable.

Self-advocacy, union participation, and quiet quitting are some possible responses for teachers. Quiet quitting is a fairly new label whose definition is still in flux, but the general idea is simply opting out of any extras for the sake of healthy work-life boundaries, something the 40 Hour Teacher Workweek practiced before it was cool.

In the classroom, teachers can look for opportunities to make sure students experience a similar level of difficulty and work for similar amounts of time. There can be equity of voice in class discussions and shared ownership of class decisions.

As much as possible, teachers can make sure everyone has the same tools and resources to access learning. The practices that disrupt white supremacy culture help set up classrooms for equity.

Enable employees to thrive in their professional and personal lives.

For students, this means not only addressing the standards but incorporating social-emotional learning and culturally relevant pedagogy. This is understanding your students’ goals and helping them connect those goals to the purpose of your course.

This goes both ways–where students see the class as a stepping-stone toward other goals AND shifting the course to help launch them toward those goals.

Teachers, seek your own thriving in your professional and personal life. Have goals and interests that stimulate you in both areas. Surround yourself with people who want to see you win. I

f you find yourself in a toxic culture, you have a few options: stay and wilt, bloom where you’re planted, or transplant yourself. Choose the one that will best help you thrive at this moment. For more ideas on dealing with this, check out Angela’s article on principals who don’t “get it.”

Liberate the potential of each person.

Every student is filled with potential that they may or may not release in our classes. Sometimes, they choose not to release it because they believe it will be wasted or go unrecognized. Other times, the students no longer see their own potential, so it is up to us to notice, name, and validate day in and day out how their particular strengths make them a perfect match for the work.

Liberate your own potential. The process of discovering what’s getting in your way could help you discover what’s getting in the way of your students. I’m willing to bet it’s some combination of circumstances and mindset.

For other ideas for teachers, check out this article:

I’ve worked at 2 schools with high teacher morale. Here’s what they do differently.

When people are placed in equitable environments that promote not only their thriving but their potential, they see their autonomy recognized and move with it, no matter the task.

Core value #2: Accountability

The flip side of autonomy is accountability. “With great power comes great responsibility,” Spiderman’s uncle once said. Not blaming or excusing things not going your way. Part of autonomy is finding solutions around the problems–it’s not that there are never problems.

Often, accountability is linked to punishment and consequences. The students’ grades or evaluations are considered their consequences, ones that teach or reinforce accountability.
However, most students could not draw us a clear map from their efforts or learning or growth to their grades, circumventing the script of most morality plays involving grades.

Again, the strategies and tactics for holding people accountable (flawed or not) are surface-level changes. Instead, Thompson and Ressler suggest that we do the following.

Trust each other

Without trust, it is very difficult for people to hold themselves accountable. They are too afraid of how others will react, especially if they’ve made a mistake or fallen short in some way.

In the classroom, one way to build trust is to go on the offensive. Zaretta Hammond, in her book Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, suggests a variety of trust generators.

• Share appropriate vulnerabilities and mistakes with students.
• See and connect with students regularly, especially as you run into them in your shared community (e.g. at the grocery store).
• Find common ground around hobbies, sports, etc.
• Show care about the things that are important to them (e.g. remembering details or asking follow-up questions).
• Demonstrate that you are knowledgeable and willing to help students.

These trust generators can also be practiced between adults. While we have no control over other people’s thoughts, we can attempt to build trust, and most importantly, we can trust ourselves.

Be creatively purposeful

To be purposeful is to know what you want to achieve, and to be creative about it is to be open in how you achieve it. This falls under accountability and not autonomy because being responsible means creating what you meant to create, not accepting when you get knocked off course.

This is mindset work that we can cultivate in ourselves or others, especially through coaching or asking good questions:

• How can this be easy?
• How can this be fun?
• How can I fulfill the purpose of X knowing that Y is the circumstance?

These sorts of questions give our brains an interesting problem to solve and positive answers to seek. Without exploring our creativity, it is all too easy to blame outside forces for our results rather than take responsibility.

Inspire engagement for continuous improvement

This is a process we are familiar with in theory as teachers. Development as professionals is about continuous improvement (or should be). If you find yourself in a rut, it may be time to re-engage yourself in continuous improvement.

Student education is typically focused on end goals (and then measured against the percentage of the attainment of those end goal). What if we engaged students in a culture of continuous improvement?

They could set weekly goals that could be related to content but could also be related to anything else they wanted–maybe a certain soft skill (like always putting their papers in their folder instead of shoving them in their backpack) or managing test anxiety through a certain strategy.

In a culture of continuous improvement, there is no finish line, so accountability just helps you keep moving forward.

When people work within a network of trust, knowing that everyone is striving for growth and creatively approaching the obstacles that always come, accountability becomes about more than blame.

Core value #3: Results

For the ROWE, results are the most important thing, so there are more factors here than in either of the other areas. These factors are about creating the inner and outer environment to produce results.

Deliver exceptional service

What does it mean to deliver exceptional service as a teacher? As a student?

While we’ve talked about the important protections of autonomy, an attitude of service is still necessary. It gets us (and students) out of our own heads. We need to take care of us, but if we only focus on us, we can easily fall into victimhood or martyrdom, which makes it harder to restore our agency.

By focusing on the value we bring to others, we can find deeper fulfillment that leads to better results. There is so much more we could do to engage our students as people who serve.

Remove limiting beliefs to become a game changer

Limiting beliefs are usually absolute and negative (with words like “can’t” or “never”–Angela talked about some common teacher ones here). These beliefs make you feel afraid or unworthy. Acknowledging and naming limiting beliefs can normalize the idea that we often create what we think, believing that we only think it because it’s created.

This has a huge impact on our results. Changing a limiting belief doesn’t happen overnight. The concept of cognitive ladders can help. Sometimes, the leap to a wide-open belief from a limiting belief is too large, and your brain will fight you on it. Instead, you start by thinking just a slightly better thought. When you are used to that, you move on until you reach your desired ideal belief.

For example, a student might believe, “I will never be good at math.”

They could be coached to the facts, “I got 60% on the last math test.”

Then to something neutral: “I take a math class.”

Then something with some promise: “I am still learning in math class.”

From there, it will depend on how big of a leap they want to take, like “I could be good at math,” or “I sometimes do well in math,” or “I can get better at math if I keep trying,” or maybe eventually, “I’m good at math.”

Adapt to the unknown

This is also mindset work. I think teachers have actually gotten pretty good at this in the last few years. For students, I’ll offer a few questions you could frame.

• What could be exciting about this?
• How could this go better than you’ve planned?

Meditation is another great tool for adaptability (check out this meditation mini-lesson for grades 3-8). It teaches you to let go of the outcome, which, somewhat ironically, is usually necessary to produce desired results.

Innovate in a caring way

I can definitely see where companies might innovate in such a way that they lose sight of their employees and customers. I see this less in an education setting, but there are some possibilities.

For example, I have known students to “innovate” around certain constraints and plagiarize. The root of this is survival and results, but it is uncaring innovation.

For teachers, sometimes this is something new we try in our classrooms that causes us to lose sight of our students, an overcorrection that comes down too hard or an innovation that sounds cool to us but does not match our students’ needs.

Create sustainable work cultures for long-term success

Sustainable is the name of the game. Can you sustain what you are doing in five-day stretches for the course of the school year? Can your students? What parts of the work feel unsustainable to them or you?

ROWE is designed to make a company or organization an irresistible workplace for today’s talent.

So it’s worth asking students, “What would make our classroom irresistible?”

Run with it. Have fun. Ask yourself what would make your school irresistible to you. I brought in an espresso machine, and I love it. That’s sort of a light answer, but this could be as light or heavy as you want.

A final caveat:

While the bulk of this article focuses on how to orient toward results, some care should be taken in determining crystal-clear results.

What are the results you want students to produce? What results do you want to produce?

Your results are your North star. The autonomy, accountability, and results-only environment are what get you there.

Before diving into any of the values of this article, I highly suggest that you define your exact results for you and have your students define their results for them, so the work is meaningful and relevant for everyone.

The post Could a ROWE (Results-Only Work Environment) be right for your classroom? appeared first on Truth For Teachers.

I am an academic mentor to ninth graders. When someone starts to fail multiple classes, I find them and have a conversation that usually begins with me introducing myself and asking, “So, how’s it going?”

Some students let it pour out: “I can’t keep up in my classes — and I also have to take care of my dogs after school!”

Others have more serious pressures, like providing childcare or managing anxiety. These students are typically less forthcoming — and nobody owes me anything. It truly is none of my business, but when they take a chance to be vulnerable, I have the opportunity to see and support them at school.

Maybe you are overdue for some conversations around the tough stuff like mental health, academics, attendance, or behavior. Or maybe you have tried everything and nothing seems to be helping.

In this article, I’ll share how I adapted my training as an instructional coach and dialectical behavior teacher to start and sustain these conversations. If you aren’t familiar with instructional coaching, check out this podcast episode on developing a coaching mindset.

My school offers term-long dialectical behavior therapy classes and advisory groups as part of our tiered interventions for mental health. The classes are all co-taught with a social worker and a teacher. I co-lead an advisory group for students who do not have the availability to take the class, are unsure if the class is for them, or have already taken the class and want ongoing support.

Start by identifying the gaps that are creating resistance; then choose a coaching model

Instructional coach and consultant Elena Aguilar writes about her Mind the Gap strategy in her book Onward: Cultivating Emotional Resilience in Educators. Aguilar outlines six gaps that create resistance in people — limitations that keep them from their desired results. These 6 gaps are:

• emotional intelligence
• cultural competence
• will
• capacity
• skill
• knowledge

In my opening conversations, I am curious to see what gap students are willing to say is creating their results. Often, the first thing they state is perhaps the safest plausible answer, which may be accurate, but they also may not know or may be unwilling to ascribe their results to less “safe” topics.

Students will often blame capacity (I don’t have…) or will (I don’t feel like…). Skill and knowledge gaps can feel more threatening. Often, they are unable to articulate how cultural barriers or emotional regulation are impacting their success. I honor this process and validate a student’s reasoning by taking it seriously. This is how I build trust. We can open up other possibilities as we continue to work together.

Here is how the conversation sounds:

I’m noticing (objective result — like late to class 18 times or failing 3 classes). What do you think is causing that to happen?

As the students talk, I am seeking to validate what they say. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) offers 6 levels of validation:

1. Active, present listening.
2. Paraphrasing.
3. Naming the emotions you heard.
4. Contextualizing (if you know the student). “That totally makes sense since…”
5. Normalizing. If their struggle is a common one, you can say how normal it is (e.g. “Lots of people…”). I’ve used this one during the pandemic a lot since there are some fairly common themes that people are experiencing. I try not to compare their experience to mine, as that takes the focus off of them (…and also, who says I’m normal?). I also try not to say this in a minimizing or dismissive way (e.g. “No one wants to get up in the morning, but everyone else does.”).
6. Radical genuineness. In this approach, you let your honest emotional response come through (e.g. “Oh wow, that does sound awful.”). You don’t heap it on, but your honest, authentic response can help students who may feel that way but haven’t found a “socially acceptable” way to express their emotions.

I don’t use all six at once. I always use the first one and then select others based on what the student says and how well we know each other.

If they say they have no idea what is causing their results, I suggest a list of answers that relate to Mind The Gap but also normalize their experience:

Some things that students commonly say are

• Mental health
• Teacher relationship
• Friend pressure
• Access to resources
• Confused in the class
• Trouble focusing/staying organized/being on time
• Not motivated

This list can be adapted, depending on a student’s age or language abilities, as well as what particular topic you are discussing.

Model #1: DBT for emotional intelligence and cultural competence gaps

If students ascribe their results to mental health, teacher relationship, friend pressure, or systemic bias, they may be dealing with an emotional intelligence or a cultural competence gap. You can use Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) to offer support.

Depending on the resources available at your school, you may have enough information to refer them to particular mental health or restorative circle services. These issues may be far beyond your capacity as an educator, and you should ask for help when there are significant mental illnesses or traumas involved. Additional ideas for class-wide support are available in Dr. Byron McClure’s podcast with Angela, where he discusses how to make social-emotional learning real for students.

The one coaching map you could possibly try is popular in cognitive and dialectical behavior therapies, where people look to separate their facts of a situation from their fiction.

This model is best used when students’ results seem to be based on unchangeable circumstances but are really based on their thoughts.

My version looks like this, with sample student answers from a recent conversation:

• “What happened or is happening?” Stick to the facts.
• “I’m not going to math class.”
• “What do you keep thinking about what happened?”
• “I’m not good at it, and it’s boring.”
• “How do those thoughts make you feel?”
• “Bad!” (students may or may not offer you more emotion words, and you can offer some language to help clarify/validate).
• “When you think and feel those things, what actions do you take?”
• “…I skip math class.”
• “What are the results of those actions?”
• “I’m failing math — and now I’m in trouble for skipping.”

Once I’ve asked all the questions, I can help the student rewrite the story:

• “How would you rather feel in math class?”
• “Excited and confident.”
• “What would you need to think to feel that way?”
• “That math is interesting, and I am a good student.”
• “What actions would you take if you really thought that way?”
• “I will go to math and ask questions.”
• “What results will you create if you take those actions?”
• “I’ll be doing better in math. Maybe I will like it more.”

Are the kids alright? A deep dive into the pandemic’s toll on students

Model #2: Planning conversations for skill, knowledge, and capacity gaps

If the student has a more straightforward/solvable problem, try a Cognitive Coaching℠ planning conversation.

Instead of telling students how to solve their problems, this map helps students begin to reflect on and trust their own resourcefulness. Adolescents in particular appreciate maintaining their locus of control while having your mentorship to support them.

There are five basic steps to the planning map.

1. Establish the goal.
2. Decide on the success indicators.
3. Brainstorm a variety of ways to achieve success.
4. Set a personal focus to move forward.
5. Reflect on the conversation.

Here is an example of a conversation I had with a student. I use validation throughout this map.

• “What are you hoping to see happen with your phone use in class?”
• “I am hoping I will not get as distracted by it.”
• “How will you know you have been successful with your phone?”
• “I won’t lose track of time checking it.”
• “What else?” (I usually ask a lot of what-elses in this map to dig deeper).
• “I won’t quit on an assignment.”
• “What else?”
• “I’ll feel like I know what’s going on.”
• “What are some things you have done before that might help you be successful?”
• “I put the phone in my backpack.”
• “What else?”
• “I ask a question if I’m confused instead of checking out..”
• “What else?”
• “I make sure my phone is on silent.”
• “What else?”
• “I’ll use my screen time app to check how I’m doing.”
• “What do you want to be sure you do really well?”
• “I want to start with putting it in my backpack on silent. If I can get into that habit, I think it’ll help a lot.”
• “How has your thinking changed after this conversation?”
• “I didn’t realize how much it was affecting me. It seems so normal to check it all the time.”

Model #3: Conversing with a willful student

Some students will own that they are not motivated to change their results. Others will dodge you with fake answers (for a variety of reasons). You can use this willing/willful map that comes out of DBT.

A willful person is not open to change. It is important to keep in mind that willfulness is the result of internal and external barriers. It is not just being “stubborn” or “difficult.”  We all have things that we are willing to do and willful about. It doesn’t make us bad people. It’s part of the human experience.

Here is the map:

1. Clarifying the facts. Use paraphrasing to make sure you are clear on the situation.
2. Defining and self-defining willing and willful. Introduce the terms but let the student name what fits them right now. Again, obvious, but coaching is about holding space for someone else to do their work, not to do it for them.
3. Connecting actions to feelings and thoughts. This is a return to the earlier model on emotional intelligence.
4. Connecting actions to results. This is also a return to the earlier model.
5. Imagining the alternative. This is helping the students imagine what would be good about getting unstuck from willfulness.
6. Find the willing. A dialectic is about holding two “truths” in tension. A lot of students get stuck in binaries. By making room for “This is not my favorite class and also I will do what I need to do to succeed,” students are able to both validate their perceived reality and also move forward in a way that feels acceptable to them.

I used this map recently with a student who had totally shut down. They wouldn’t do anything (besides scroll TikTok). The conversation looked like this:

• “I’m noticing that your head is down. Usually you come right in and get to work. It seems like there has been a change.”
• “Yeah.”
• “Willingness is when you recognize the facts and figure out what you are willing to do about a problem to meet your goals. Willfulness is when you resist or avoid tolerating the facts with solutions that don’t help you meet your goals. Which best describes you right now?”
• “Willfulness.” (mumbled, head down)
• “What are you feeling and/or thinking that makes you resist or avoid tolerating the situation right now?”
• (long pause)
• “No point. I’m going to transfer from this school anyway.”
• “What is going to happen if you keep doing what you are currently doing?”
• “I’m going to fail English.”
• “If you were willing to accept or tolerate English, what would your feelings and thoughts be?”
• “That I could do it. That I’m good at it.”
• “Would you be willing to do this assignment?” (I show her a short paragraph assignment on her computer and review the directions)
• “Yeah, that’s not much.”

The student completed the assignment and turned it in within twenty minutes. That particular day, the student built some evidence that they could show up and also hold space for how they were feeling.

How to humanize your classroom so kids are known, valued, respected, & safe

Shift your approach from “fixing” the problem to coaching students

Coaching maps help us meet the needs of others, especially when we don’t know what to say or our emotions are getting the best of us. All people want to be seen and heard, and coaching maps can help us do that. The great joy of coaching maps is if you use them consistently, students will be able to use them on themselves to get unstuck.

Of course, a coaching map isn’t a one-time thing. I’ve been practicing self-coaching for years, and I still have to coach myself through saying no to sugar, putting down my phone, going to bed on time, getting up to work out, and on and on. Our students are no different. Coaching maps bring humanity and hope into our classrooms.

The post When you can’t get through to “that kid,” try these 3 coaching models to guide difficult conversations appeared first on Truth For Teachers.

I first encountered their work through training in my district, and once I did, I saw the traits everywhere, even in the most seemingly benign actions.

These traits not only do potential harm to students, but they also harm anyone upholding them.

Since white supremacy culture is the air we breathe, this harm is often unintentional. This list offers language to name each mote and molecule as they enter our lungs. If white supremacy culture can be named, then it can be seen, and if it can be seen then it can be disrupted.

Graphic above provides an overview of the characteristics we wish to interograte, and is from the article What happened when my school began to dismantle white supremacy culture

Graphic above shows alternatives mindsets and approaches from Lydia Hooper’s article Using data storytelling to disrupt white supremacy culture

Disrupt White Supremacy Culture in the Classroom with These Four Practices

Before we discuss how we can name and disrupt white supremacy culture in schools, Okun offers a word of warning about weaponizing these traits against others–or yourself.

The list is meant to guide reflection for the sake of continual learning and growth. It’s not a checklist to prove goodness or badness (this type of reading would actually be a form of white supremacy culture, as you’ll see below).

As you read, check-in with yourself. Are you learning? Are you finding possible next steps in your journey?

If you find yourself wavering into fight, flight, or freeze responses, take a breath. Regroup, come back to the purpose of learning, and find your next steps.

I will not go in-depth on defining the concepts of white supremacy culture as listed, as a foundational read of the text from the authors is at your disposal. My aim is to amplify their work, not replace it.

1. Manage Your Mind.

White Supremacy Culture Traits Disrupted

• Fear
• Defensiveness
• Denial
• Right to Comfort
• Fear of Open Conflict

The root of all white supremacy culture traits is fear and its emotional cousins. The rest of the recommendations are working to disrupt different manifestations of fear, so noticing and managing fear is the first step.

The part of the Human Systems Negative Emotion Wheel shown below offers some granularity for emotions that you may be more likely to feel but are technically rooted in fear. These emotions are closely aligned with the traits listed above.

Fear is a natural human emotion. It’s the way in which we sometimes act in response to fear that can perpetuate white supremacy culture.

Essential Questions

• What emotion is driving this thought or action?
• What’s the best that could happen, and how can I plan for that?
• What are the facts? What am I making those facts mean?
• What can I actually control?

Thoughts and Actions

To manage your mind:

1. Notice when you are feeling afraid.
2. Name the thought that is causing that emotion.
3. Instead of taking action from that thought, practice a thought that helps you feel loving, confident, excited, accepted, or interested and take action from that thought instead.

Here are a variety of examples that I have experienced or heard of from other teachers.

Curriculum

I am feeling anxious.

↓

I keep thinking, “If I don’t keep pace, I will get in trouble with my principal and colleagues.”

↓

I take actions like teaching the curriculum on pace no matter how students are doing on formative assessments.

↓

Instead, I will practice thinking, “Time constraints help me be more creative and selective,” to feel accepted.

↓

I take actions like working with my principal and colleagues on prioritizing and de-prioritizing curricular elements so that I know where and how to spend instructional time.

Instruction

I am feeling nervous.

↓

I keep thinking, “It gets too loud when the students talk to each other and then I lose control and nobody learns anything.”

↓

I take actions like making them work independently in absolute silence.

↓

Instead, I will practice thinking, “Learning is messy and sometimes loud,” to feel loving.

↓

I take actions like plan productive conversations and teach students how to keep themselves on task.

Student Support

I am feeling overwhelmed.

↓

I keep thinking, “This student has so many needs to address right now: mental health, attendance, behavior, reading–all of it.”

↓

I take actions like recommending this student for a lot of simultaneous interventions.

↓

Instead, I will practice thinking, “I wonder what’s working for this student and what this student needs next,” to feel interested.

↓

I take actions like talking with the student about their strengths and successes and then work with the student (and their family) to choose a high-quality intervention that meets what they see as their most pressing need.

Grading

I am feeling powerless.

↓

I keep thinking, “If I don’t grade it, the students won’t do it.”

↓

I take actions like grading everything, spending my nights and weekends getting it done.

↓

Instead, I will practice thinking, “I choose to capture learning, not compliance,” to feel confident.

↓

I take actions like grading only what’s important.

Materials

I am feeling insecure.

↓

I keep thinking, “I don’t have the materials I need to do my job well, and then some students don’t take care of what little we do have.”

↓

I take actions like upholding strict rules to preserve our materials.

↓

Instead, I will practice thinking, “I am thankful for what we do have and excited to see how our community will meet our need for more,” to feel excited.

↓

I take actions like teaching students how to care for our materials and how to conduct a classroom fundraiser.

Caveat: this mind management doesn’t mean that your initial feelings or thoughts are invalid, though there is a difference between the facts and what we make them mean.

Accepting reality is necessary, but working with reality from a positive emotion feels better (and generally leads to better outcomes) than fighting with reality using desperate or apathetic measures.

Furthermore, reacting from afraid emotions can lead to the daily thoughts and actions of white supremacy culture.

2. Cultivate a Learning-Centered Classroom.

White Supremacy Culture Traits Disrupted

• Perfectionism
• One Right Way
• Objectivity
• Either/or and the Binary
• Worship of the Written Word

Essential Questions

• How much of our work and talk is about learning?
• How will the next day’s lesson be impacted by what students did today?
• How are multiple perspectives encouraged and sought?
• How much am I learning as a teacher every day?
• Which learning pathways have been privileged and included as “normal”? What else is possible?
• How are mistakes treated in the classroom?

Thoughts

• We are here to learn.
• There is a multitude of viable learning paths to lead to the same understanding.
• Mistakes are some of our best teachers.
• Learning from differences is a golden opportunity.

Actions

• Plan the bulk of instructional minutes for learning (rather than performing/showing what is already known).
• Use formative assessments to guide the next day.
• Prioritize evidence of learning in the grade book (for more ideas, check out this podcast episode/article).
• Try a variety of supports for students and learn from them what they need.
• Use a variety of learning spaces (e.g. online, flexible seating, community resources, etc.).
• Cluster student desks in groups/partners for frequent discussion opportunities.
• Use the problem-solving guide mentioned in this podcast episode/article on classroom meetings to help students learn and practice necessary behaviors.
• Engage in Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) that emphasize teachers learning together.

3. Share Power.

White Supremacy Culture Traits Disrupted

• Individualism
• I’m the Only One
• Power Hoarding
• Paternalism
• Qualified

Essential Questions

• How much is the class dependent on my orchestration?
• Where have my preferences and experiences been centered in the classroom and treated as the majority?
• To what extent do I collaborate equally with students, families, teachers, and administrators?
• Do I ever find myself thinking that I am the martyr, superhero, or savior of my students?

Thoughts

• There is a wide network of people who care about the students in my class.
• It can be fun and enlightening to do things in ways I never considered before.
• I share the responsibility of my students’ success with lots of people, including the students themselves.
• Every student teaches me about teaching.
• Working with others enriches the experience of the students in my class.
• Every teacher is someone’s favorite teacher.

Actions

• Include students in classroom decision-making, including curriculum, instruction, assessment, spaces, and management (classroom meetings are a good place to conduct these conversations).
• Approach supports as acts of inclusion. Especially as students age, they should have some agency in the types of supports they experience. Consider supports that students can opt into. If they turn you down, listen to the student. Generate meaningful supports together.
• Allow students to select their best work to be graded. For more ideas, check out this podcast episode/article.
• Plan with a colleague and/or an aligned curriculum. Be willing to try someone else’s ideas in order to counteract your own biases and preferences.
• Set up a self-running classroom (Angela Watson’s module in the 40-Hour Teacher Workweek is great for this).
• On issues that are creating problems, create a range of acceptability and let the rest go. For example, I pick a couple of grammar issues that I will comment on for an assignment. The rest are for another day.
• Be willing to admit when you need help and then ask for it.

4. Protect Time for the Right Work.

White Supremacy Culture Traits Disrupted

• Progress is Bigger/More
• Quantity over Quality
• Urgency

Essential Questions

• What’s the rush?
• What really matters?
• How much is enough?

Thoughts

• “There is always enough time for the right work.” (from adrienne maree brown’s  Emergent Strategy)
• There is no hurry.
• Deadlines are arbitrary.
• Time is a construct.
• Fewer things, better. (Check out Angela’s podcast or book with this title.)
• Done is better than perfect. (This may seem counterintuitive–that finishing lots of imperfect things leads to quantity, but there is a law of diminishing returns on taking forever to finish something. Rushing or procrastinating are fighting with time. Accepting the limitations of time and moving on is not).

Actions

• When possible, reduce the curriculum using a priority pacing guide, adding back as time/necessity dictate.
• Use routines. Stick to consistent blocks that build over many days (e.g. read-discuss-write every class period. This is the bulk of my work building literacy-rich classrooms across the content areas).
• Use sponge activities so that no student feels too rushed to finish a task. For example, I typically start a class period with 10 minutes of independent reading. On the days I want students to read something silently, I give them 20 minutes to complete a short common class reading and then transition to their independent reading book.
• Grade what students did finish in a certain amount of time with no punishment for what they didn’t complete. Hint: put whatever’s most important at the start of the assignment.
• Use timers to help students learn about managing time, not to force students to hurry.
• Set grading deadlines a week or two before your grades are due to the school to create space for both you and your students.
• Grade as few items as you can. Check out this article from Angela.
• Teach fewer texts and/or fewer concepts. If you think students will get bored (a fear worth challenging), use variety in the instructional strategies. This makes space for multiple learning pathways instead of doing a ton of things one time in one way.
• Try a few supports for a student for a few weeks before abandoning them to try something else. Check out this podcast episode “To Solve for All Kids, Start with One.”
• Focus PLCs on the most important work. Check out this article on effective data meetings.
• Declutter the classroom to amplify what’s left. Check out this podcast from Angela.

Next steps

If you’ve read this post and want to get started with disrupting white supremacy culture by managing your mind, cultivating a learning-centered classroom, sharing power, and taking time to do the right work, I’m so glad you’re here.

Start with my free resource. You’ll find a self-assessment to help you learn about yourself and take your next steps. There is a planning sheet to support your journey with any of the four practices for disrupting white supremacy culture. By approaching this work with emotional management, deliberately seeking to learn and act, you can sustain it over a lifetime.

Download it here.

The post Disrupt white supremacy culture in the classroom with these 4 practices appeared first on Truth For Teachers.