Culturally Relevant Teaching Archives - Read to Lead

7 Ideas for Teaching Juneteenth

Read to Lead Team — Wed, 08 Jun 2022 20:39:04 +0000

Juneteenth is a day of historical significance. However, some Americans are only recently learning about this important historical event due to the lack of a holistic curriculum available in some schools around Black history. For others, this is a day they celebrate with their families and friends and rejoice in the day that enslaved Americans were finally free.

We need to ensure that every generation knows the historical legacy of Juneteenth and how it informs the ongoing movement for racial justice and equality. Awareness and knowledge all begin with a simple first step: READING!

Check out our newest Choice Board filled with activities and lessons you can use with your class to teach about the significance of Juneteenth. Pick one or do them all. The choice is yours!

Download the Choice Board!

Activity 1: Search for your vocabulary word of the day

Use this word search game to introduce and pre-teach vocabulary terms for Juneteenth. Pro tip: The first word your students see can be the vocabulary word for the day!

Activity 2: Read about the history of Juneteenth

Give students this reading comprehension lesson that uses informative and historical texts.

Activity 3: Discuss and debate current events

Spark deep discussion and reflection with your students with a current events debate question.

Activity 4: Create a Public Service Announcement

Inspire action within your students. Allow students to create a public service announcement to educate others about the significance of Juneteenth.

Activity 5: Lead a diverse team in a Read to Lead game

Sign up for free or log in, and assign your class learning game, Unconcious Bias. As the boss, students will learn how to identify and address when a person, whether a friend or colleague, mistreats others based on an unconscious bias.

Activity 6: Watch diverse leaders in the spotlight

Pull up a chair, grab some popcorn, and listen to the journey of any of our guests on Read to Lead: Live! our student-friendly webinar series that gives students a front-row seat into career exploration.

Activity 7: Celebrate Juneteenth with your community

Hold class presentations, and give your students a platform to share what they learned with the community.

What are you waiting for? Sign up for a free Read to Lead account, and use the Choice Board to teach Juneteenth this year!

The post 7 Ideas for Teaching Juneteenth appeared first on Read to Lead.

Teaching Women’s History in the Making

Read to Lead Team — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 17:34:00 +0000

March may be Women’s History Month, but every day is a chance for us to inspire our students to be the pioneers, innovators, and change-makers of tomorrow!

Women’s History Month is a celebration of women who have taken risks, broken frontiers, and paved the way for future generations. It is a recognition of the impact of women in history.

From the Daughters of Liberty, founded in 1765 as one of the earliest formal organizations of women in the US, to the Suffragettes who fought for women’s rights to vote –

From Hedy Lamarr, who invented the technology that forms the foundation for WiFi, first used in World War II, to Claudette Colvin, a teenaged activist and pioneer in the civil rights movement who refused to give up her seat on the bus –

And in more recent times, from Kamala Harris, the first Black-South Asian woman to become the Vice President of the US, to Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani activist for female education and the world’s youngest Nobel Prize laureate –

Incredible women have pushed boundaries, expanded the role of women, and left their mark on history. Indeed, their work continues to impact our lives today.

Our students also have great potential to be the next generation of leaders, innovators, and women making history. They stand poised to be the pioneers for the next generation, and we, as educators, have to equip them with the necessary tools to create history.

Find out how you can empower your students to become the trailblazers of the future with these four strategies!

Debate and Discuss

Women’s issues have come a long way, and every day, countless women are out there continuing to pave a better, brighter future for our youth. However, there is still room for improvement and a myriad of issues that women are still fighting for.

What better way to teach women’s history in the making than to bring these discussions into your classroom? Whether it’s how to get more women into leadership roles, or close the gender pay gap, introducing these topics to your students through debates and discussions can help them become more engaged in issues concerning women.

If you’re wondering where to start – don’t worry; we’ve got you covered! Use this debate question about mandatory paid parental leave from Read to Lead’s special Women’s History Month supplement to promote a discussion through debate.

Introduce Representation and Diversity through Read to Lead Games

Do your students love games? Why not use Read to Lead learning games to highlight just how your students too can become women who make a difference in their communities?

The Read to Lead gamified platform gives students the opportunity to interact with a diverse staff in a wide range of professions, as well as introduces students to women in positions of leadership – all while playing fun games. This array of characters helps expose students to different career paths and shows them that women, too, can try new things, push boundaries, and be agents of change in their community.

By introducing representation and diversity that showcases women occupying important positions in different fields and industries, we empower our students to see themselves in these roles.

Each game in Read to Lead also presents an issue that students need to resolve. By working through these games, students hone their critical thinking and SEL skills. In addition to that, these issues are related to common issues in the workplace and society, including women’s issues.

For example, in the learning game, Financial Crisis (Morning), LaDonna Watkins asks for a pay raise. Educators can use this as a springboard for discussions around the gender wage gap and how this negatively impacts not just women but everyone in society.

Tune in to Read to Lead: Live! a career chat webinar series

Pull up a chair, grab some popcorn, and listen to the journey of a trailblazing modern-day woman entrepreneur – Tiffany Norwood, Founder, and CEO of Tribetan.

At the young age of 27, she raised $670 million to build the first-ever global digital radio platform, launch three satellites into space, support the development of MP3/MP4 technologies, and invest in a new generation of digital radio receivers. Tiffany was also the first in her family to be born with all of her civil rights, thanks to the women activists who fought for them.

Want your students to learn from other women who have smashed gender stereotypes and challenged the status quo? The Read to Lead: Live! Library also has a selection of great interviews with other women who have made an impact in their industry – all for you and your students’ viewing pleasure!

Build Literacy Skills to Empower Women Trailblazers of the Future

Reading and literacy skills are a strong predictor of future success and the foundation to create empowered women. If we want to cultivate the women leaders and trailblazers of the future, we have to start now. By helping our students develop their literacy skills, we are setting them up for success.

But we get it: getting students to read can be difficult! That’s why we’ve created the Million Words Read Challenge!

Combining competition and collaboration while constantly cheering on students to success, this isn’t your average reading challenge – but it’s sure to get your students in the spirit of reading! And with 5,000 words read per Read to Lead game completed, students will be expanding their literacy skills by leaps and bounds, putting them on the path to future success.

Women’s history month is a great time for us to celebrate the successes and achievements of the women who have paved the way to where we are today. It is also a time to look to the future – and see our students as the future generation of women pioneers making history.

Get started on empowering your students with Read to Lead by clicking here!

The post Teaching Women’s History in the Making appeared first on Read to Lead.

Educator Spotlight: Antionette Means

Rachel Samuel — Mon, 03 Aug 2020 20:27:08 +0000

The Power of Culturally-Responsive, High-Quality Education

“A good education empowers students to understand more about the world, including politics, socio-economic issues, art, culture, and themselves. Through education, students can learn how to be positive contributors to their own culture and society.” – Antionette Means

Antionette Means is a School Support Teacher at Westside Academy, a community school in central Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Westside has “high expectations focusing on core academics and the social-emotional development of students to prepare them to be college and career ready.” This mission extends into Westside’s afterschool program, where they officially launched an academic component three years ago.

Ms. Means was brought in as the Academic Coordinator to help identify and implement academics into the program. This opportunity was a perfect fit for Ms. Means, who believes that “education allows students to recognize their strengths and how to build on them, ensuring they are both intellectually and emotionally intelligent and prepared for life after school.”

By incorporating academic components like Read to Lead into Westside’s afterschool program, Ms. Means could help her students continue to build literacy and leadership skills outside of the school day.

To Ms. Means, education is critical because it increases the opportunities for students beyond school. Read to Lead helped her students understand what it means to be the boss, preparing them for their future careers.

“Some kids aren’t used to making tough decisions, and we have to give them the tools to investigate, get the facts, and be a leader. Read to Lead made them more aware that they have the ability to choose how they respond to different situations. They get to be the boss.”

Preparing students for their futures is only one part of Ms. Means’ approach to education. She recognizes the importance of students being able to see themselves reflected in the content they engage with both during the school day and afterschool.

“When Black students see themselves and relate to the content, it helps them understand their importance in our society and in the world. If the Black experience is never mentioned in their education, how can students feel self-pride, hope, strength, and positive self-esteem?”

It’s critical that academic resources are authentic in how they include diverse perspectives. “It’s not enough to just change all the faces brown and give characters different names to be culturally relevant. Quality resources must also include the Black experience, both good and bad. This will not only help students but also educators, many who do not know how to incorporate culturally responsive teaching.”

As an educator, Ms. Means actively looks for ways to incorporate Black voices into the curriculum. She identifies opportunities to relate topics to Black History, culture, and Black experiences. Ms. Means knows that “students tend to be more interested in a topic when they can relate it to their lives.”

Instead of just teaching about the Bill of Rights, for example, Ms. Means extended the lesson to include the historical context for Black Americans. “I had to add to that lesson the mistreatment of Black people and explain how the Bill of Rights did not apply to us. I extended the lesson so we could explore the 13 Amendment and the Civil Rights Act.”

This approach can be tough for educators who aren’t used to incorporating culturally responsive teaching, but the positive impact on students makes it critical. Topics like Anti-Racism need lots of time and a safe environment to explore. Ms. Means intentionally creates space for her students to share their life experiences.

“Initially, students would express anger, sadness, and fear when discussing these issues. Over the course of the lessons, I think my students felt pride, empowerment, and wanted to be agents of change.

This is a new topic that is long overdue for our Nation and should be mandatory in every school. Hopefully discussing this in different platforms will make our students leaders in the movement and valued stakeholders in this nation.”

At Read to Lead, we are intentional about creating authentic learning experiences that reflect the vibrant diversity of our communities. We appreciate Ms. Means taking the time to speak with us about this topic. We agree with Ms. Means that a good education can change lives and that academic resources must be reflective of the students they serve.

We also recognize that there’s still plenty of work to do. If you have suggestions for how we can improve our games and resources to better acknowledge and celebrate the Black experience, please let us know.

The post Educator Spotlight: Antionette Means appeared first on Read to Lead.

It’s More Than Curriculum: Bringing Equity Into Education

Kwamara Thompson — Tue, 30 Jun 2020 17:43:07 +0000

With over a decade of experience as an administrator, teacher-leader, coach, and mentor in district, state, and national levels, I have seen the inequities in education first hand.

While I enjoyed working with children from various student populations in New York and New Jersey, and remain passionate about bringing my creativity to education, it is undeniable that addressing inequity in education goes beyond just changing the curriculum.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed how, when, and where students learn, and as a result, has also exposed the jarring disparities that exist in our education system. To address these inequities, it is necessary to look beyond just overhauling the curriculum— we need to re-think the school experience, elevate student voices and choice, and leverage technology to create a more equitable learning environment for our youth.

RE-THINK THE SCHOOL EXPERIENCE

Create safe spaces for learning

The word ‘school’ calls to mind an image of a safe, inviting, and wholesome environment to play and to learn. Yet, the reality in public school is anything but.

High rates of policing and zero-tolerance discipline policies in under-funded and under-resourced public schools creates a school-to-prison pipeline instead. This disproportionately funnels Black children out of the public school system and into the juvenile justice system.

When so many public schools have metal detectors at the entrance, it is hardly surprising that it doesn’t make for a welcoming experience for the students to inspire them to learn.

We need structural changes and shifts in attitudes to make the culture of schools about learning, not policing. Metal detectors and a culture of rules and punishment don’t make people better human beings. Instead, we need to bring the focus of schools to creating spaces for kids to learn and grow.

Build strong relationships between the school and the community

There has to be more of a relationship between schools and the communities they serve, where the school brings parents to the table and parents are more involved in the curriculum.

It’s amazing how many people don’t feel welcome in these conversations.

We need to create systems and structures that are inclusive of parents, families, caregivers and students. Involving all stakeholders, not just educators and administrators, in discussions about what and how children are learning is one of the effective means of addressing the inequities in education.

Increase representation

There’s no denying that in the past half-century, US schools student populations have become more ethnically diverse. However, diversity among educators and administrators has remained stagnant with 80% being white and mostly female. In fact, as more children of color enroll in schools, the racial gap between students and teachers has widened.

When students of color have teachers who match their race or ethnicity, they see improvement on almost all educational outcomes – better attendance, fewer suspensions, more positive attitudes, and higher test scores, graduation rates and college attendance. It is evident that to address the lack of equity in education, we need more representation in schools. We need more teachers and administrators who look like the student populations they serve.

ELEVATE STUDENT VOICE AND CHOICE

Get to know your students’ lives at home

As educators, we need to put our students front and center of the work we do. We need to strive to really understand our students, to know what their lives are like outside the classroom, their struggles and challenges, and their worries and fears. How can we build a loving place for people to be educated if we can’t understand the trials and tribulations they are going through?

For example, a huge and growing problem in US schools is homelessness. The latest data from federal sources shows 1.5 million students were homeless during the 2017-18 school year, a new all-time high. Nationwide, more than 129,000 students live on their own without a parent or guardian, another number that is rising, and which also poses significant challenges of its own. Unfortunately, homelessness is strongly correlated with poor academic performance, and homelessness disproportionately affects people of Black and minority communities.

Educators need to make their classrooms a safe space. They can ask their Black and brown students how they are feeling. But more importantly, they can have grace with their students. If a student doesn’t turn in an assignment on time, ask them what’s going on in their life that might have prevented them from doing that work. By actively seeking to understand what our students are going through, we can then act more equitably toward them.

Let students opt-in

School closures and the shift to digital learning as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic has allowed students to opt-in or opt-out of what they are learning. Without teachers constantly monitoring their activities, students are free to choose what, how and when they learn. What the pandemic has done is given students agency to be responsible for their own learning.

However, as educators, if we are not teaching in a way that speaks to students or incorporates their interests, they will not opt-in. There is a belief that students do not want to learn, but that is simply not true. Students want to do things that are meaningful to them. COVID-19 has shown us that students will choose to learn in the ways that have value in their lives.

It is a great thing for students to be able to choose their own adventure, to help design what their own schools look like. Going forward, to create education that is truly equitable, we need to involve students in the conversations about designing what schools look like and what they learn in school.

LEVERAGE TECHNOLOGY

Consider technology access equity

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the digital divide that exists in the US. With schools closed and distance learning on virtual platforms becoming the predominant form of instruction, children who lack access to the internet and devices now also lack access to education.

Almost a third of US households lack broadband access, and in households that have access, there is often a shortage of devices for everyone who needs it – including parents who are now working from home and multiple school-going children. Research also shows that Blacks and Latinos are much less likely to have access to home computers than are white, non-Latinos, and that poverty and race are significant factors in lack of access to the internet.

Thankfully, we are starting to have conversations about WiFi as a public utility, like water or power, which can make it more accessible. In order to bring equity to education, it is imperative that we treat access (to the internet and computers) as part of the problem that needs to be solved.

Technology enables students to participate in new ways

COVID-19 has highlighted something many educators already knew – that digital learning (and access to education through digital means) can create equity because it empowers students to learn where and when they are able.

Research shows that Black and minority race children have higher rates of absenteeism, causing them to miss out on valuable instruction and class-time, which impacts academic performance. Technology that allows students to learn from home can help address this problem – even absent students will have access to the material taught in school.

However, districts that are poor tend to have limited access to technology, which hinders the Black and brown students they serve. It is crucial that we start working towards bridging the digital divide between schools and the communities that they serve.

Careers of the future

The need for some measure of digital literacy at almost every level of the employment ladder. Even jobs not traditionally seen as “technology jobs” require some level of understanding and skill of how to navigate digital tools and systems.

We cannot deny that technology is the way of work moving forward, and we would be doing our students a disservice if we did not equip them with these skills. It is incumbent upon schools not to allow their students to opt-out of learning how to use technology. We have to teach students what it means to be digital citizens, and how technology is part of the future in order to give them a fighting chance to be a part of the modern workforce.

CONCLUSION

COVID-19 has made it impossible to ignore the societal inequities that matriculate into schools. School closures have exposed the reality that educators are more than just teachers – they are social workers, they provide emotional support – and that schools are more than just buildings where students learn.

We have to change the structure of how public schools operate in the world. People tend to think that the way they live is the way everyone lives. COVID-19 made it clear that isn’t the case. Education needs to be about more than just teaching students content – it needs to be about equity.

By re-thinking the school experience, elevating student voices and choice, and leveraging technology, we can address some of the inequities in our schools and our education system to create better outcomes for all our students.

ABOUT KWAMARA THOMPSON

Kwamara leads the strategic vision for partner acquisition and retention and thought leadership and professional development, working to elevate Read to Lead’s community of educators across the country.

She holds a Masters in Education Leadership and a Bachelor’s from New York University, and also sits on several boards and helps those organizations strategize and implement their education programming initiatives.

The post It’s More Than Curriculum: Bringing Equity Into Education appeared first on Read to Lead.

We Stand Firm For Black Lives

Rachel Samuel — Thu, 04 Jun 2020 21:00:19 +0000

The Classroom, Inc. team stands with the millions of Americans seeking justice and humanity for Black lives lost including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Trayvon Martin, and countless others. We condemn systemic racism.

Black lives matter and we will continue to use our voice, actions, and platform to fight for change.

Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop said, “All children need a mirror to see themselves, a window to see the world beyond their own, and a sliding glass door to encourage them out into that world.”

We want Black youth to see powerful images of themselves in their learning. We are committed to creating more “windows, mirrors, and doors” that elevate and empower Black lives through the characters, scenarios, and conversations they encounter in Read to Lead.

We will work with our community of educators, families, and supporters, to create and share tools that expose all youth to diverse ideas, diverse people, and tough decisions by:

• Providing Black students with windows to careers through our games: Only 13% of children’s literature includes multicultural content. We will continue to work tirelessly to design new learning games that elevate Black lives and put them in positions of power.

• Supporting educators with the tools for dialogue and processing: We will develop educator resources that help all students navigate deep conversations, tackle tough issues, and broaden their understanding of “other”. These conversations are essential to combat racism, and bias.

• Designing our games to challenge our students to see themselves as leaders and changemakers: We will give students agency to make difficult and complex decisions as the boss, helping them to transform into the leaders of the future. Empowering and preparing youth now will help them create a more just world that is free of oppression against Black lives.

In addition, we commit to critically examining ourselves— identifying new voices and perspectives and creating opportunities for dialogue with our staff, Board, and supporters. Through these efforts, we will hold ourselves and our community accountable for elevating Black lives and dismantling systemic racism.

Yours in grief and hope,

The Classroom, Inc. Team

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