Rosalind Wiseman's Blog, page 8
September 11, 2020
Best Practices for Remote Learning
It might comfort you to know teaching online is not necessarily more ineffective than teaching in person. However, the challenge is that so many educators are having to learn new ways to bring their teaching to life in a digital space. New platforms, new protocols, new ways to establish relationships with students when you are primarily or even exclusively interacting with them online, the challenges are real and can easily feel overwhelming. But here’s the thing: if educators make clear to their students that they are in this together, that they value their students’ expertise and experience with online learning, young people will work with us to create a virtual teaching space where everyone engages and feels welcome.
Following the best practices for remote learning guidelines can help:
Create group expectations together and be aware of equity challenges as you create them.
Create guidelines together of how everyone (including the teacher) should “show up” for class; including participants’ dress, hygiene, location, etc. You are creating guidelines for how participants will show up for your class with your participants. That said, it’s your responsibility as the facilitator to be mindful of your participants’ different home environments.
For example, in one way, it makes sense to have a group guideline that participants (and you) should not attend the class while in bed because it’s important to separate where a person rests from where they study. On the other hand, a participant may have no other choice but to attend your class from their bed due to lack of privacy in common spaces or limited space overall. This doesn’t even address the challenge of those participants who have limited access to technology. So be mindful of creating guidelines that affirm each participant’s dignity in the online learning space you co-create with your participants.
Use platform features to control the learning space.
Ask participants to mute their mics unless speaking, use group muting functions if necessary, and make sure all participants have equal access to content by sharing within the video conferencing connection, using subtitles when recording or sharing videos, and saving recordings so participants can return to them later.
Ask for feedback.
All participants may not get the chance to, or feel comfortable, sharing with a large group. Through email, google form, or your video conferencing platform find a way to ask your participants if they felt seen, heard, and supported. Be prepared to follow up with those who say no.
Encourage participants to use backgrounds on video.
Remember that we are being invited into our young people’s homes when they turn on their video. Be mindful of how vulnerable this feels. Even if they are silly, backgrounds offer privacy and emotional safety. Privilege of all kinds is easily on display in video calls. Backgrounds can help participants feel comfortable, make the learning space more equitable, and eliminate stereotype threat participants may bring with them into the space.
Ignore the small stuff.
This is new territory for many and you cannot exert the same amount of control over a digital space as you can in a classroom or meeting. If someone is in their bedroom, or wearing pajamas, using a funny background, or have people walking in the background try your best to let it go. What matters is that they are there.
It’s ok if they laugh with you…not at you.
It will be inevitable that the technology you are using to teach will have problems. Or…maybe you’ll do something online that is not ideal. That’s ok and it’s a great moment to laugh together with your students about this situation we are all muddling our way through. What’s not ok is for students to embarrass or humiliate you (or anyone in the virtual classroom space). Bottom line is laugh with, not at.
Photo: Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images
Best Practices to Run a Group
The principles offered below are selected from Cultures of Dignity’s overall principles that we use as guidelines to run productive groups, provide norms for feedback, and can be used to redirect challenging behavior while honoring dignity. The best practices for remote learning:
Be Soft on People and Hard on Ideas
Push on ideas without personally attacking others. Use conversation stems like:
That’s not my experience (instead of you’re wrong about…)
Help me understand…
This is clearly really important to you…
Engage Curiosity
When we find someone’s ideas immediately objectionable, take a breath and get curious before responding.
Have Patience
It takes a while to understand these topics let alone apply them in our lives. Give people room to make mistakes without discounting that they are trying.
People are the Subject Matter Experts of their Lives
Acknowledge people’s paths. We have no way of knowing where everyone is coming from or how their prior experiences are shaping their participation in the current moment. Try to lead with benefit of the doubt.
Validate, Don’t Relate
Avoid telling others we know what they’re going through. While you may have had similar experiences, you don’t know how others’ experience events.
Seek Meaningful Connection
Come to discussion looking to expand your knowledge and understanding of others.
Remember Intention versus Impact.
We cannot control how our words, actions, and behaviors land on others. Be open to the idea that you may have caused harm without meaning to. Getting defensive only makes both sides dig in and shuts down connection. Self-Regulate and accept feedback.
Create Space for Participation and Contribution
Be mindful of airtime, encourage others to share, ask curious questions, avoid judgement.
Remember Who Isn’t Here
Be mindful of who is not in the room and represent their interests.
Acknowledge that Conflict is Inevitable
Conflict is not a competition, it means we are passionate about ideas. However, our passion is not permission to treat others poorly or close ourselves off to the ideas of others. Someone disagreeing with you does not have to be viewed as a personal attack.
Download These Tips
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Best Practices for Remote Learning
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September 3, 2020
How to Help Your Child Maintain Friendships in COVID-19
The following is an excerpt from the brand new Distance Learning Playbook for Parents: How To Support Your Child’s Academic, Social and Emotional Development in Any Setting by Rosalind Wiseman, Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and John Hattie
How to Help Your Child Maintain Friendships in COVID-19
Friends can be everything to a young person. Friendships allow young people to process the experience of growing up and feel connected to others. It’s fundamental to the human experience. It is central to the feeling of belonging that is so important to most of us. It is also the first experience children have navigating the complexities of healthy relationships and boundaries.
For some parents, there has been a tendency to worry if their child doesn’t have a lot of friends. But more important than having a large group of friends is having at least one person who “gets” us, who we can be ourselves around and we can depend on. But friendships, especially in school, have always been complex. Sometimes because of the natural rhythm of young people’s social dynamics, but also because of the influence of adults’ expectations.
We often adopt the personality of our friends as we hang out with them more and it can lead to a loss of self-identity as we try to meet their expectations (ex. the hobbies they like, etc.). As a result, young people can be dynamic with their personalities, and cause up and downs with the relationships with their parents as they try to define themselves. – Jake, 16
In elementary school, you’re basically told that unless you are friends with everyone you are mean and a bully. So often people pretend to get along just to make things easier. As I got older, there were people I was friends with because they were in a class or activity with me. Sometimes I picked friends based on not having anyone else I knew. Sometimes I picked a friend because I had to be around them all the time, so it was easier for everyone if we got along than if we didn’t. Sometimes I was friends with someone just because they didn’t like another person, and we bonded. Friendship has levels and is as complicated for young people as it is adults. – Sara, 17
It’s important to remember that friendships are often multifaceted. Young people can show different facades to different people. How they show up with you may be very different than how they show up with their friends. How they show up with one friend could be different than how they show up with other friends. How they show up to their friends online can be very different than how they show up in person. Young people maintain certain kinds of friendships in specific ways. Some friendships are maintained in group chats, in texts, some over social media, some by talking (in-person, on the phone, or video calls), others by online video games. They all matter. It is essential that your young person feels like you respect the importance of their friendships, even if they are struggling with them. Take their concerns seriously, offer feedback without demeaning their friends, and remember that to young people digital connection feels as vital as in-person so avoid dismissing friends they have made online or prefer to only text or play video games with.
The importance of friendships in COVID-19
Friendships teach us what it means to be in relation with each other. They give us the opportunity to learn how to stay in relationship with people we care about while also learning how to maintain personal boundaries. When young people, like many of us, have conflicts with friends, we can understandably struggle between expressing our anger and worrying that doing so will end the friendships. This is one of the reasons why changing friend groups when a young person doesn’t like one or more of the people in their friendship group is way harder than just finding another group of friends. Especially now when it can feel like you have to hold on to the friends you do have because you have so few opportunities to meet new people.
Coming from such a small, suburban community like I do with an even smaller school where everyone knows each other from elementary to high school, it can be hard to leave those who you’ve known for years at fear of being shunned within your friend group, much less your class. – Charlie, 15
Domino Park in the Williamsburg, Brooklyn via Kathy Willens | AP
How are friendships in COVID-19 impacted by distance learning?
One of your responsibilities is ensuring that your child has a friend, someone they can talk with as they go through this new reality of school and socializing. But of course, how that happens has changed. Young people are having to quickly adjust from the way they made and maintained friendships before COVID to what will work for them now. In the spring, we saw friendship maintenance patterns emerge quickly. Some children and teens preferred “parallel play” by video call with one friend so they could study, watch movies, or do projects together. Others preferred hanging out with a small group after an online class to catch up. Others depended on online video games to maintain friendships. Others depended on long distance relationships from camp and other places to share what they were going through. And often a young person did some combination of the above.
All these strategies are great for maintaining connection with friends when the options to do so are so limited. You may see a major spike in time spent on their phones or other devices, which may worry some parents. While it is important to remain mindful of healthy tech use, if their phone is their only method of social connection at the moment, that is also an important factor to consider. This is an excellent opportunity to invite young people into the conversation and set rules together. If they feel heard and understood, it will likely decrease the amount of conflict around technology use.
All of this to say, friendships will be maintained online in ways that they never have before. Friendships in school help young people feel connected during the day. And young people are worried about how to maintain their friendships during this time. It’s similar to maintaining a long-distance relationship. The ease of just being in the same building or running into someone is gone. It takes much more work to be in relation with one another remotely and takes much more work to sustain relationships that miss the fleeting moments of socializing that makes you feel connected to others. Young people may be trapped in friendships since they have no one else to turn to or can’t socialize at school so they can meet new people. For the near future, it looks like we really are going to have to do our best to make the friendships we have work and that’s why handling conflict is so much more important than it was before. As parents, we have to acknowledge the complexity of friendships right now and understand that they may look drastically different than we would like. Spending hours playing a video game online together or watching a movie on FaceTime is valuable time young people are spending to build and maintain friendships.
With my school we have 1400 kids total and we are going to be divided into 3 groups of 475 that go into school every third day, when we don’t go in, we will be doing virtual learning. So, my main concern is that I won’t be able to see most friends and other kids at school. – Gus, 16
Take Action
How do we help young people know who they want to be friends with and how to maintain those friendships? Here’s an activity you can do with a young person that gives them the ability to develop the friendships that make them feel good and supported. Healthy friendships make everyone’s dignity feel important.
Avoid focusing on a particular person (for example, a child you may not like who they hang out with) while walking through this activity of creating the criteria for any friendship or relationship. We call this a Friendship Bill of Rights and it is an essential reference when a young person is thinking through a problem they have with a friend.
Identify the three most important qualities in a good/healthy friendship.
Identify the three most important qualities in a bad/unhealthy friendship.
Think about the quality of your friendships: Do your friends treat you according to what you value in a good friendship? Are you treating people according to what you say you value in a good friendship?
If the young person is struggling with a friendship, they can compare their list with how they would describe the friendship. Just don’t expect them to realize they are in an unhealthy friendship and break it off. That may be impossible right now. Encourage them to at least admit to themselves when the person is doing something against their friendship bill of rights. Remind then the smallest act of establishing personal boundaries to a friend like this is actually a really brave decision. Recognizing the state of their friendship gets them on the path to making better decisions about their friendships and other relationships in the future.
Remember…
Friendships make it possible to go through incredibly difficult times.
Young people will have different ways of maintaining those friendships and all of those ways are important to them.
We will have limits on our freedom to make new friends so it’s in our best interest to make the friendships we have work.
If we aren’t being treated with dignity in our friendships, then knowing how to articulate those feelings is essential to our well-being and ability to make friends who will.
Having a strategy like SEAL to have difficult conversations with friends can strengthen the friendship.
Make sure that the young person in your care feels that you know all the above.
Recent Posts
How to Help Your Child Maintain Friendships in COVID-19
Webinar: Anxiety and Parenting with Megan Saxelby and NELMS
Advice from a Student: Using Benefit of the Doubt to Strengthen Relationships with Young People
The Distance Learning Playbook for Parents outlines supportive strategies for navigating virtual environments to ensure effective and impactful learning that aligns the needs and expectations of teachers, parents, and students alike.
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August 27, 2020
Webinar: Anxiety and Parenting with Megan Saxelby and NELMS
One of the most crucial skills we can model for the young people in our lives is emotional intelligence. However, many of us were not explicitly taught emotional regulation skills and often feel like we are at the mercy of the many emotions swirling throughout our homes. This feeling has been dramatically amplified by the pandemic and all the uncertainty Covid has created for everyone, from our youngest household members to parents.
In this webinar we will cover the following topics:
An informative, user-friendly summary of the most helpful aspects of the science behind emotions
Walk through a Tiny Guide on Anxiety
Specific skills to understand and manage emotional dysregulation, specifically anxiety
Tips on depersonalizing and normalizing emotion management to increase your sense of self worth and support the health of your family
Tiny Guides
Resources mentioned
Resource and inspiration list behind the Tiny Guides
Infomation on sharing and licensing the Tiny Guides for your communities.
You Hate Each Other, Now What? Blog on family meetings
The Mask You Live In Documentary
Navigating Politics with Dignity in the New Decade Materials
Owning Up Curriculum: Empowering young people to create cultures of dignity, understand emotions, and build essential social skills.
Sensory rings Megan referenced
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August 26, 2020
Advice from a Student: Using Benefit of the Doubt to Strengthen Relationships with Young People
About the Author: I’m Sara Davis, an incoming senior in high school from Colorado. I’m an intern with Cultures of Dignity. In this blog series, I am using the tools I learned, along with my own experiences to show how dignity creates a healthy classroom culture.
Advice from a Student: Using Benefit of the Doubt to Strengthen Relationships with Young People
By Sara Davis
Among my high school choir teacher’s many bits of sage advice, my favorite is “Be generous in your assumptions of others”. We tend to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt and usually believe that we are acting with good intentions, but we typically assume that when others act badly it is due to a flaw in their character. This cognitive bias is called Fundamental Attribution Error (or FAE), and it is something humans are naturally hardwired to do. But with practice, Fundamental Attribution Error is something we can easily overcome to the benefit of all our relationships.
Adults often draw their own conclusions about the meaning of young people’s actions without taking the time to consider, without judgement, a young person’s motivations. This is especially true when it comes to something the adult doesn’t understand, like technology. My generation knows how to navigate social media, video games, and online learning. We use all kinds of technology for getting news, talking to friends, doing homework, or applying for a job. But to adults, who didn’t grow up using it, they may struggle to play “catch-up” with the young people in their lives. Based on what many adults heard from other parents, teachers, and the media, technology is just something for young people to “mess around on”. This perception makes technology something that adults feel they need to control, and clamp down to make sure it’s being used only in ways they are comfortable with. Many adults come at technology from a point of judgement, instead of assuming that young people are using technology to educate themselves, or keep in touch with their family and friends like many adults do.
The COVID-19 pandemic has made FAE much more difficult to manage. Outside stressors, like COVID-19, working from home, and worries about our family’s safety make it more difficult to remember to give others the benefit of the doubt. Due to the overwhelming lack of control everyone feels right now, it is even harder to slow down and stop ourselves from making assumptions.
1. Element of Dignity: Benefit of the Doubt
Treating people as trustworthy, and starting with the premise that others have good motives and are acting with integrity.
Leading with the benefit of the doubt helps to dismantle FAE and strengthen relationships with each other.
In a time when it is so important for adults and young people to do their best to work with each other, here is a list of behaviors that adults do surrounding technology that deprive young people of the benefit of the doubt:
Constant Questions
When a young person is looking at their phone, smiles or expresses another emotion and an adult says, “Who is that?” “What are you looking at?” “Who are you texting?” and often followed by a demand to see the young person’s screen, the adult comes across as annoying, and invading the young person’s privacy.
Impact: It makes young people feel like they have to justify every use of technology, and also makes them feel like adults don’t trust them.
Differing Expectations
These are rules like “No phones at the dinner table” or “Everyone has to take an hour outside without technology per day”. The young person always has to follow these rules, or punishment occurs. But adults break these rules by saying things like “Well, now I work from home so I need to be available” or “I’m just extra busy today”, without allowing young people to utilize the same exceptions.
Impact: It makes young people feel like their needs do not matter as much as yours, and that their experiences aren’t valid.
Invalidation
“Why do you waste so much time on TikTok?” “Ugh! Nobody reads books anymore!” “When I was your age….”. This fails to recognize that young people live in a drastically different world than adults do, and as a result have different experiences. It does not mean that those experiences are any less complex just because they aren’t familiar to adults.
Impact: It makes young people again feel like they have to justify any use of technology, and feel as though their experiences are not valid in the eyes of adults. It also means that we can’t share our experiences online with an adult, regardless of whether those experiences are good or bad.
Young people understandably want to avoid these situations, so they develop their own behaviors to feel a sense of control over their lives.
When adults do not extend benefit of the doubt to young people, it leads to:
Hiding
This can look like flipping a phone down when an adult walks in, turning the screen off, or clicking on a different tab. Usually the young person isn’t doing anything bad. They may be Facetiming a friend, scrolling through Instagram, etc. But because the adults in a young person’s life typically always have something negative to say about young people on technology, we want to hide it. Or when they see a young person doing anything the adult doesn’t like, the technology immediately gets taken away, often without explanation. So it’s often easier for the young person to just hide what they are doing.
Lying
This can be as innocuous as saying “Nothing!” or “Just homework!” when a young person is asked what they are doing on technology. This again can be because of adult criticism, or because the technology has been taken away before the young person ever had a chance to explain themselves. This behavior also becomes common if hiding doesn’t work, because the adult immediately demands to see the young person’s screen (which often feels like an invasion of privacy) when the young person hides their technology. Somehow, the adults in this young person’s life have led them to think that the adult will always be angry about their use of technology.
Avoid seeking help or guidance
Adults see stuff on the Internet that confuses them all the time. Well, this happens to young people too. The difference is that often when young people ask an adult a question about something they saw, the adults use shaming tactics, such as saying “Where the heck did you learn that?” or “What kind of stuff are you looking at?”. I’ve even experienced scenarios where I asked about something I learned in school, and an adult went on a rant about Internet safety. The irony of course being that young people are taught media literacy skills in school, whereas many adults are prone to sharing fake information they found online. This again teaches young people that adults don’t trust them, and therefore young people cannot trust that they will feel safe when they ask an adult a question.
In order for young people to feel that they are being treated fairly, adults have to follow the rules of reciprocity, in all areas of life including technology. That means you respond to a positive action with an equal positive action, for example if you buy lunch this time, I’ll buy lunch next time. In psychology, a primary way to ensure you will be in conflict with someone is to break the reciprocity rules, such as always “forgetting” your wallet when it’s your turn to buy lunch. Asking for the benefit of the doubt from others without extending it to others is a major erosion of trust, and is asking for conflict. The use of technology is not a monolith for anybody, so it’s a very good example of why we should always be generous in our assumptions of each other.
You can also replace the word technology with dozens of other factors in the life of a young person, from listening, to going out with friends, etc. One common phrase young people hear is “life isn’t fair”, as if that makes the situation okay. No, life may not be fair, but that does not mean we can’t treat other people with dignity, and this includes the young people in your life. I resent the phenomenon where anything a young person does that an adult doesn’t like is automatically viewed as doing something with attitude, sass, or disrespect.
As we know dignity and respect are very different, but presumed “attitude” is not permission for the adult to punish or dismiss what the young person is saying, just so they don’t have to acknowledge those experiences. It is dismissive of a young person’s reality, and breaks the rules of reciprocity, since an adult can demand “respect” from young people without extending it to them in return. Adults believe that their greater life experience means they know best, and make the unfair assumption that young people just haven’t learned yet. And in turn, young people then make the unfair assumption that adults can’t be trusted. It seems like an unbreakable cycle, but in reality, there is one simple solution: LISTENING.
At Cultures of Dignity, listening means being prepared to be changed by what you hear. When adults and young people listen to each other, when everyone’s perspective is given fair and equal weight, and they give everyone the benefit of the doubt that they have good intentions, it means everyone is being treated with dignity.
Recent Posts
Advice from a Student: Using Benefit of the Doubt to Strengthen Relationships with Young People
Lesson: Creating an Inclusive Online Learning Space
The Conversation About Reopening Schools Ignores Educator’s Dignity
This is part of the Navigating Politics with Dignity in the New Decade series.
Read Megan Saxelby’s blog on Benefit of the Doubt and Fairness for the educator’s perspective:
Navigating Politics Using Benefit of the Doubt and Fairness
Join the Navigating Politics with Dignity in the New Decade mailing list to receive the rest of the series on the dignity framework directly to your inbox.
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The post Advice from a Student: Using Benefit of the Doubt to Strengthen Relationships with Young People appeared first on Cultures of Dignity.
August 24, 2020
Webinar: Creating a Culture of Dignity with Megan Saxelby & NELMS
This webinar is a call to action to transform the way we create communities where young people can thrive. Using Donna Hick’s Ten Elements of Dignity as the foundation for our relationships with young people, we create a shared vocabulary that empowers their development, supports their emotional needs, and teaches prosocial critical thinking. We will use this approach to give common-sense suggestions to manage the frequent struggles between young people and adults and support through communication breakdowns.
During this webinar, you will…
Be guided through a Tiny Guide on Dignity
Gain strategies to incorporate Dignity in the classroom and school community
Learn specific tools and a new framework to guide your interactions with young people
Resources mentioned
Elements of Dignity Tiny Guide
Navigating Politics with Dignity in the New Decade Materials
Owning Up Curriculum: Empowering young people to create cultures of dignity, understand emotions, and build essential social skills.
Recent Posts
Webinar: Anxiety and Parenting with Megan Saxelby and NELMS
Advice from a Student: Using Benefit of the Doubt to Strengthen Relationships with Young People
Webinar: Creating a Culture of Dignity with Megan Saxelby & NELMS
Get the Cultures of Dignity Newsletter
Email:*
The post Webinar: Creating a Culture of Dignity with Megan Saxelby & NELMS appeared first on Cultures of Dignity.
August 21, 2020
Lesson: Creating an Inclusive Online Learning Space
Image via Vladimir Simicek/AFP/Getty Images
Right now educators around the world are busy learning new online learning platforms and transforming the years of expertise they have developed into teaching online.
New platforms, new tools, and new ways of teaching are all becoming our educators’ daily experience.
And yet the most important goal they have to achieve is creating a sense of belonging for their students in their classroom. If they can create this environment online, young people can engage in their education, ask questions and share their challenges and concerns with their teachers. If educators can’t, online education will be what we fear most: a waste of time, energy and resources and most importantly, our connection to young people to help them navigate this moment will be weakened or lost.
At Cultures of Dignity we are listening to educators about what they need. And what they are telling us is they need support to create this inclusive classroom. They need concrete, interactive activities that help students feel connected to their teacher and each other. That’s why we wrote the Getting Started: Creating an Inclusive Online Space lesson plan for educators. This lesson (below) helps set the stage for the year and establish connection and agreements.
This year will be challenging in ways we have never experienced before but we are confident that the way through is grounding our actions in the purpose of creating the schools our educators and children deserve. We are here with you every step of the way.
Download the Lesson
Lesson: Getting Started
Creating an Inclusive Online Space
Regardless of where and how young people are educated, they do best when they feel they belong, valued and connected to their teachers and peers. For the 2020- 2021 school year it’s essential that we acknowledge this has been an incredibly stressful time and there is a strong possibility that more than one student, or yourself, has experienced trauma on some scale. Creating connections right now is more important than content.
Wherever you teach, your responsibility is to create a safe, supportive, and inclusive environment where young people feel seen and therefore are much more likely to meaningfully participate. Now, a safe learning environment also necessitates that you are responsive to the students’ needs in their online education. Feel free to follow this lesson plan’s script or make it your own but always be willing to respond to your students’ questions, concerns, and views.
OBJECTIVES
To create an online learning environment where students have a sense of belonging
To develop skills to feel comfortable being uncomfortable
To establish agreements for educators and students
To begin building the foundation for mutual trust where students will want to be self-reflective, share their opinion, and engage with the group
MATERIALS
Online platform that supports screen sharing
Access to YouTube if sharing video
Sample Dad Jokes
Session Outline
What Are We Doing Today?
I am so excited to welcome you into this new school year! Since last spring, we have all had to adjust to what feels like constant uncertainty. One of the hardest parts is having to change all the time: change how we feel, change our routine, change learning platforms, change expectations. It can be really hard. However, we have the opportunity to create the online learning community that works best for us. It just means we have to think a little differently, be willing to try new things, and have an open mind. Today, we are going to work together to create a safe, comfortable classroom environment.
ACTIVITY: Cross Your Arms
Time: 5 minutes
Purpose: To connect feeling uncomfortable with the feeling of learning
Ask students to cross their arms.
Ask students to uncross their arms and let their hands hang free for a moment.
Ask students to cross their arms in the opposite direction.
Once they figure out how to do that, ask them to drop their hands again.
Debrief
Ask your students the following questions. They can type their answers in the chat feature or share them audibly with the group.
Why do you think you always cross your arms in the same way?
How did it feel to cross your arms the way you usually do?
How did it feel to cross your arms the other way? It probably feels a lot less “normal” or comfortable that way.
With having school so different, does it feel similar to trying to cross your arms the opposite way?
Takeaways
You cross your arms in the same way most of the time, but that doesn’t make it “right;” it just makes it what you’re used to. Starting a new school year online is a lot like this exercise: it feels weird because it is not how we are used to starting school and it doesn’t feel “normal” or comfortable. It feels just as weird for teachers. We are all trying to figure this out, and all I ask is that we try to work together.
Teacher Note: Feel free to expand because young people know what’s going on. Not naming the issues can increase their anxiety and feel like they can’t be honest in the classroom. Here’s a script you can use: This is new for all of us. We are all trying to figure out how to manage day to day safely during a global pandemic and we can feel strongly about social justice issues all around us. This is confusing, frustrating and stressful for you and for your teachers. It is also difficult for your parents and the communities we live in. I am hoping we can work together and make the best of a tough situation.
ACTIVITY: Creating Group Agreements
Time: 20 minutes
Purpose: To establish session guidelines and signal to students that this is a collaborative learning environment
Creating community is being clear about what we need to feel comfortable, and this is especially important in virtual classrooms. You have now had the opportunity to do some learning online and have a good idea of what works for you and what doesn’t. We are going to collaborate to create agreements, so this digital learning space feels inclusive, accessible, and productive for all of us. Your opinions and ideas matter and will help this be a better experience for everyone.
Teacher Note: Displaying lists digitally can be hard because you want to be able to interact with your students while they are sharing. It is probably best for you to take notes and then screen share once students are done offering ideas. Then you can stop screen share to gather the next set of ideas. Only doing screen share feels alienating, so switch back and forth.
What don’t you want me to act like, be like, or do online when I am teaching you?
Write students’ responses down, place students in breakout groups to generate ideas.
Examples you can suggest if students are stuck:
Don’t lecture all the time and only screen share a presentation
Don’t call on us if we don’t want to be called on
Don’t go over our class time
Don’t embarrass me if I am out of uniform or not following the rules about where I am supposed to be while in the class
What does it sound like or look like when a teacher does something online that you do like? What do you want me to act like, be like, and do when I am teaching you?
Examples you can suggest if students are stuck:
Use all the features the platform offers, like breakout rooms, chat, screen capture, etc.
Record classes so we can go back to them if we need to
Listen to us and give us the benefit of the doubt
Let us participate in class in different ways. Chat can be just as good as verbal sharing
Connect content to things we can relate to
Use different kinds of media to teach content
Ask us for advice on platforms, apps, digital tools, etc. that could enhance the experience
Let us take breaks or get up and move during class
If I am out of uniform or not following the school’s online learning rules, communicate with me privately and tell me what you want me to do instead
Now let’s figure out what agreements and expectations do you want for yourselves?
Examples you can suggest if students are stuck:
Create a learning environment that supports your online learning
Listen to each other
Don’t troll in the chat
Advocate to you if there’s a specific reason we are not comfortable having our camera on all the time
Do not take pictures or screenshots of class, it violates everyone’s sense of safety
What agreements should I have for you?
Examples you can suggest if students are stuck:
If you don’t understand something during an online class and you don’t feel comfortable saying that during the class, let me know by emailing me @ ____.
The same thing goes if you are having a problem with another student or there are other dynamics, social or otherwise, in the classroom that I should be aware of.
Please feel free to email me at any time, but know that I may not check my email after X PM.
When you are listening, let me know if the topics we are covering make sense (or don’t) to you.
Participate! Participate in a way that feels comfortable for you and sometimes challenges you to participate in ways that don’t feel so comfortable. Can someone give me an example of that?
Teacher Note: Here’s an agreement you can share with your students as well: Because we are learning virtually, it can be easy to misread facial expressions. So, let’s assume good intentions. If I have a facial expression or tone that doesn’t make sense to you, please let me know. And I will do the same with you.
ACTIVITY: The Dad Joke Game
Time: 10-15 minutes (or as long as feels right!)
Purpose:Playing this game, or another of your choosing, in the first few days of school is invaluable bonding and culture setting
Materials: List of Dad Jokes collected onto one page
Teacher Note: If students want to compete, they have to have their cameras on they can see each other’s faces. This is a great, low stakes way to get students comfortable seeing each other and sharing on camera. Don’t force students to participate. Though it does tend to be an infectious game and kids want to jump in. If no students participate, you should jump in.
The goal of the game is to have students “compete” by telling really lame Dad Jokes, but they cannot laugh. If you laugh, you lose. The winner takes on another student, and the cycle repeats. Choose a judge and score keeper (either you or a student).
Here are a bunch of Dad Jokes collected onto one page. You can also have students write their own if they know some good ones. You can email this list to students or upload it to the class materials via whichever platform your school is using, so they can each see it and choose their jokes. You don’t want to screen share this list because the objective is for them to see each other.
Here is a Link to an example- starts at 33 seconds that you can screen share to model
You only need to show a few minutes of it for them to get the idea. Stop this video at or before 3:30 (or 1:50 for 10 and younger) for appropriateness.
Play for as long as time allows. This is a great one to come back to throughout the year if things are feeling stale, you have 10 extra minutes, or you and your kids just need a break.
Wrap It Up
It is okay to feel uncomfortable as long as you feel safe
This is a collaborative space and you matter as much as I do
Laughter and lame jokes can be a great way to get to know each other
Let’s close our eyes for thirty seconds and think about one thing you want to remember from our time together.
Now let’s hear from three of us about what we can remember about our time together.
Carry It With You
Try and cross your arms the other way today a few times and see if it gets easier. Maybe ask an adult in your life to try it too and talk about it!
Download the Lesson
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The post Lesson: Creating an Inclusive Online Learning Space appeared first on Cultures of Dignity.
July 30, 2020
The Conversation About Reopening Schools Ignores Educator’s Dignity
Image: Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty Images
The Conversation About Reopening Schools Ignores Educator’s Dignity
Why is the conversation around reopening schools so contentious for educators? The answer is simple: their dignity is being violated.
We talk a lot about dignity and are often inspired by our colleague Donna Hicks who breaks down dignity into 10 Essential Elements. The elements help us understand what people need in order to feel their dignity is being honored. One of the most crucial elements is safety, which Dr. Hicks defines as putting people at ease at two levels: physically, so they feel safe from bodily harm, and psychologically, so they feel safe from being humiliated and can speak without fear of retribution.
The current conversation around reopening schools denies educators this definition of safety. Educators have long abided by the realities of working in a school system: often inadequate pay, being evaluated by students’ test scores that don’t reflect the reality of educating, and demands to be an ever expanding role of caregiver, counselor, and mental health provider. All the while exposing themselves to the regular health risks like getting colds or the flu and managing the anxiety of shooter drills and threats.
Meanwhile, educators are at the mercy of politicians giving lip service to how important their jobs are while at the same telling them they have to go back to school and not consulting them first. If educators voice their concerns, they are shamed for being selfish, for not caring about their students, or are simply being told to get over it. Teachers are so concerned about their safety they are making wills as part of their back to school plan. The impact of the current conversation around reopening sends the message that our educators safety, and their dignity, is unimportant. This is a cycle most educators fight their entire careers: being told what is best for them while being denied the opportunity to share their expertise, and then absorbing the shrapnel from those decisions.
Many educators miss their students and desperately want to see them in their classes. And many parents and children want to go back to school. There are real costs for children staying at home to their physical and emotional health and education. However, ignoring educators’ dignity will continue the contentious relationship between those who educate children and those who make decisions about education.
So, how do we shift the conversation to grapple with tough decisions while also acknowledging dignity?
Use the list of the Elements of Dignity to guide our actions.
Take a look at the list of the Elements of Dignity and think through how your school’s reopening, the national conversation surrounding it, and people in positions of power may deny educators each element of dignity. Carry that information with you when emailing school officials, critiquing educators, reading articles about reopening, or talking with others.
Acknowledge the complexity and understand the confusion this situation generates for everyone involved in school: parents, administrators, teachers, and of course students.
If you are a parent, use the Elements of Dignity to base your thoughts and approach to what your family will do when school begins. Use the elements to prepare how you communicate with your school officials and other parents. Think about the educators’ dignity and express ways to uphold their safety while being able to do their job effectively.
Use the elements to frame the conversation with your family members and ask them to reflect on what elements they aren’t receiving.
Dignity asks you to navigate the world, and your relationships, with the guiding principle that we all matter the same amount, no matter what. This ask does not stop when conversations get complicated and decision making gets hard.
If we force this conversation about reopening schools, without acknowledging the role dignity plays in our relationships, then we are asking for educators to quit, for top performers to be hired away, for teacher strikes, and for continued dismissal of recognizing the inherent worth and value of educators.
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July 29, 2020
Navigating Politics Using Benefit of the Doubt and Fairness
Navigating Politics Using Benefit of the Doubt and Fairness
By Megan Saxelby
The goal of this series of Navigating Politics Articles is to demonstrate how focusing on specific Elements of Dignity will prepare your community to have better conversations about current events as well as increase your community’s ability to manage discomfort when discussions make people uncomfortable.
This post will:
Introduce two new Elements of Dignity
Give examples of how to use these two elements in your classrooms or communities
Provide a role play to experience and grapple with Fairness and Benefit of the Doubt
Our last post gave an overview of Dignity and modeled using Dignity to have difficult conversations. Teaching others to frame their perspective in the context of the Elements of Dignity helps avoid personal attacks and promotes prosocial critical thinking.
Quick reminders about Dignity
Dignity is the inherent worth and value of every human; everyone has it and everyone has the same amount. Dignity is different from respect: dignity is a given, but respect is earned or lost through an individual’s or a group’s choices, actions, and behavior.
When we feel psychological distance from others it changes how we see them, what we think we owe them, and how we think we get to treat them. Using Dignity closes the gap between us and others.
Having shared vocabulary turns conflict into an exercise of demonstrating social skills rather than a reflection on character. The Elements help you name your feelings, get your needs met, and have better relationships and discussions.
This post focuses on two more Elements:
Fairness
Treat people justly, with equality, and in an even handed way according to agreed-on laws and rules. People feel that you have honored their dignity when you treat them without discrimination or injustice.
Benefit of the Doubt
Treat people as trustworthy. Start with the premise that others have good motives and are acting with integrity.
These are two Elements of Dignity that loom large when it comes to discussing politics and current events because:
People rarely extend Benefit of the Doubt to those they perceive have a perspective they disagree with. For example, if you have a student who loudly professes their affiliation for a specific political candidate, other students may have a hard time hearing their opinions with an open mind and assuming they have good motives.
Fairness is complicated since it is hard to have an agreed upon understanding because many agreed-on laws and rules do not extend dignity equally to all people and often have embedded bias. For example, in a school context, rules around dress code impact female students far more than their male peers. Numerous studies also show that Black students are punished within school at much higher rates than their white peers. In a political context, race plays a huge role when it comes to sentence length for a criminal offense.
Ways to use Benefit of Doubt and Fairness in your classroom or community
Use Benefit of the Doubt as the foundational norm for class discussions. This means asking students to be generous in their assumptions of others and that listening means being prepared to be changed by what you hear. Using it to frame conversations can help prime the group to assume positive intent. However, extending Benefit of the Doubt does not mean students have permission to violate the emotional safety of others.
Ask students to explore the definitions and have a seminar discussion about how these two Elements impact them personally and how they see them play out in the larger school community, discipline policies, and politics. Keeping discussion rooted in the Elements helps promote critical thinking because participants can’t make baseless claims, as well as keeping the analysis focused.
As a mediation tool if students are in conflict. Ask them what is getting in the way of extending Benefit of the Doubt to each other, or why they are feeling a lack of Fairness. Have them make a list or share verbally as a way to coach them to think more deeply about the skill of conflict. Using these Elements provides shared vocabulary to coach students to frame disagreement and feedback as a skill, rather than personal attacks.
As a mediation tool if you are in conflict with someone. Frame your feedback around how their words or behavior makes you feel a lack of Benefit of the Doubt or denies you Fairness, and how that impacts you. Avoid personal attacks.
As an analytic tool for discussing legislation, policy, or other political topics. Ask your students to analyze through the lens of fairness and safety, using the definitions from these posts. Using a specific lens to think critically about an issue encourages students to take multiple perspectives and think more deeply about all sides. It is much harder to make hasty generalizations about an idea or topic when you have to dissect it.
Fairness and Benefit of the Doubt In Action: A Role Play
The Danger of a Single Story Lesson Plan below is an interactive role play, called Unicorns and Rhinos, that is an excellent introduction to the importance of Fairness and Benefit of the Doubt. The Role Play demonstrates how easy it is to create conflict by ignoring the needs, perspectives, and values of others.
The role plays offer narratives that prime each side to think they have the moral high ground when it comes to debating the ownership and use of public space. Students are given only one side of the argument, and primed to fight for their cause from a limited perspective.
I created this Role Play activity in the weeks following the 2016 Election. My students were agitated, upset, and having a difficult time creating space for others. I wanted to address the underlying issues my school community was facing and push my students to grapple with Dignity in practical application, not just as a concept we discussed in class.
I have used this lesson in middle schools, high schools, and as an exercise with parents and administrators.
Quick Tips to Increase Effectiveness:
Do not tell students the goal of the lesson beforehand. Introduce it as a critical thinking exercise or a way to practice their debate skills. Prime their competitive natures.
Plan to give this lesson time. The real work is in the unpacking and the processing after, so do not cram into one 45 minute class and then never discuss it again.
Lean into the mess. Some students may disengage and say it’s dumb, some may get over the top invested, some may fall everywhere inbetween. Let the process unfold and try not to judge their reactions. It will get heated and that is okay.
Unicorns v. Rhinos – The Danger of a Single Story
Lesson Plan
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The post Navigating Politics Using Benefit of the Doubt and Fairness appeared first on Cultures of Dignity.
The Danger of a Single Story Lesson Plan: Unicorns vs Rhinos
Unicorns vs Rhinos: The Danger of a Single Story
The purpose of this lesson is to explore how having a limited perspective complicates the capacity for critical empathy and collaborative problem solving. This lesson allows students to work together to negotiate for their side of the story in a mock council meeting and then debrief how their stories connect to the essential elements of dignity and modern politics.
Download the Lesson
Objective: Students will engage in conflict negotiation primed with a single story to explore how having a limited perspective complicates the capacity for critical empathy and collaborative problem solving.
Materials: Narratives for each point of view are attached below the Educator Instructions.
Time: Up to two 45 minute sessions
Preparation
Teachers prime students that the more seriously they take this activity the better it will go. Outline that the objective of today is to try and come to a decision about a local dispute, which they will learn more about once they have their narratives.
Divide students into two groups. Tell groups that once dismissed to work they will be doing the following tasks prior to the debate:
Reading their side’s narrative (which are attached below)
Give each side their narrative but do not allow them access to the other narrative.
The goal is to make sure each side only sees their story
Deciding who will be speaking at the council meeting (can be as many as they want)
Generating their negotiation points
One side is clearly written to be the one with “legal rights” so be prepared that the Unicorns may argue that the issue is non-negotiable
Teacher note: I have run this exercise many times and it goes differently every time. If a student discovers the “trick”, which is that the negotiations are set up to fail, go with it rather than shutting down. Be flexible to the students in front of you. This can still be fruitful, even if students uncover the goal before the reveal at the end.
Unicorn Narrative
Rhino Narrative
Work Time
Give the two groups 25 minutes to read their narrative, choose who will be speaking on behalf of their group, and create their negotiation plan
Ideally, let one group go into the hall or another space in your school so they do not over hear each other. If you are facilitating over Zoom students from each group can go into a break out space.
Town Council Meeting
The groups come back together into the classroom. Each side gets 5 minutes to explain their case and explain their demands in an opening negotiation. The opposing side remains quiet as the other group shares.
Each group then gets 10 minutes to discuss the other side’s opening negotiation and decide if they want to agree to the terms or continue to negotiate.
If they want to continue to negotiate, they have to come up with a rebuttal to the other side and articulate their demands.
If students are able to create a plan, have leaders from both sides agree and shake on it. The more likely scenario is that they will not be able to reach an agreement and each side will be dug into their own perspective.
Teacher note: You can choose to stop the activity after one round if you are under time constraints. You can replicate this process as many times as you see fit. The complicated nature of negotiation allows for this to be repeated as many times as you feel appropriate for your given group of students.
Debrief and Reflection
Ask students to take a deep breath and re-set/shed their animal identity. Give students a few minutes to make some notes in response to the following question:
Why was this activity complicated?
How does this activity relate to the concepts of Fairness and Benefit of the Doubt? Define them here if you have not yet.
Debrief their responses and list their ideas on the board or in the chat on Zoom.
After you feel they have explained the key points, expand the discussion and ask them to make connections between this activity and modern social and political conflicts.
Ways to Extend Learning
Show students Chimamanda Adichie’s TEDTalk The Danger of Single Storyand ask students to make connections between her talk and the Unicorn v. Rhino Exercise.
Have students look for a current example from the news that illustrates a Unicorn v. Rhino type argument.
Have students write a reflection about the activity connecting this experience to their own lives.
Encourage students to discuss the activity with their parents or an adult in their lives.
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The post The Danger of a Single Story Lesson Plan: Unicorns vs Rhinos appeared first on Cultures of Dignity.
July 17, 2020
Webinar: Digital Wellbeing During Tough Times
In this digital wellbeing live conversation, parenting experts Devorah Heitner and Rosalind Wiseman will discuss how to help kids navigate ALL. THE. SCREENS. How can we help them find the balance with tech when so many other options have been taken away? How can we help them navigate friendship drama and conflict online and offline that may come up during this time?
During this digital wellbeing webinar, you will learn…
Strategies to support your child’s digital wellbeing and balance technology
How to understand and empathize with the ways social media can be challenging right now
Skills to help young people understand and process the news cycle–for some kids this is an activating inspiring time, for others it can be overwhelming
How to help our kids deal with anxiety during this time.
Best practices for setting family agreements and routines around technology.
How to manage your reactions with your own digital use. How can we model thoughtful tech use and wisdom?
Resources
Explore Tiny Guides – tools to help you quickly comprehend core social and emotional concepts, understand their impact on you and your relationships, and equip you with tools to put them into action.
Phonewise Book Camp for Parents – Navigating all the connected tech during a pandemic and beyond.
Devorah Heitner on what to do when other parents have different technology rules
Social Media: Connection or Avoidance?
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Two weeks ago, we, Shanterra and Rosalind, met to have a conversation about race, privilege, and what it means to be an ally. This wasn’t an uncommon conversation for us,…
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Dignity is the foundation of social and emotional skills and essential for all of us to thrive and succeed. However, we are rarely taught the power of dignity or the…
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Are you Ok? Can I send you flowers? Can I make you a meal? These all seem like such nice things to say. Words of condolence. But those well-intentioned words…
Webinar: Managing emotions in hard times
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We can all get overwhelmed by our emotions, especially during these challenging times. We need tools to manage ourselves and our relationships with our children.
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The post Webinar: Digital Wellbeing During Tough Times appeared first on Cultures of Dignity.
