This is the final in a four-part series in which we consider what innovation in the classroom will look like going forward. Thank you to today’s contributor, FFT Fellow Liza Eaton. Liza is also our director of Ramsden Project programming.

In 2017, Fund for Teachers began to envision a new chapter for itself  — doubling down on its commitment to teachers’ professional learning by asking the questions:

What if, in addition to self-designed fellowships, we engaged teachers in the design of additional opportunities to identify, address and solve problems of practice in partnership with other Fellows? 

What if Fund for Teachers were to create programs with teachers, instead of just for them?     

This move would take self-designed professional learning to a whole new level: for teachers by teachers. 

Typically, programs are designed by contractors who observe classrooms to identify needs and dream up new (and sometimes crazy) ideas to implement in schools.  Notable programs have been designed this way, like Khan Academy flipped classrooms, or IDEO’s lunch redesign.  What rarely happens, however, is that designers sit alongside users to design programs.  This approach takes teachers out of the design process. Instead, they are expected to use ready-made curriculum, fit into ready-made schedules and implement ready-made assessments — neglecting important teacher insights. 

However, with Fund for Teachers grants, teachers have stepped up to the plate and created their own, self-designed professional learning experiences for the past twenty years. Time and time again, teachers share how this experience re-charged their batteries and elevated their professionalism.  Beyond that, the relevant and purposeful learning experiences that teachers were inspired to create have increased engagement and ownership in classrooms across the country.     

In 2020 we began to expand our programming beyond the summer fellowship, sitting alongside Fellows to do so.  Of course, we used surveys, focus groups and interviews to understand our Fellows’ most pressing needs.  But beyond that, we engaged a consistent Fellow Design Team to partner with us to glean insights and opportunities.  Following the Design Thinking process, we dreamt up solutions to teachers’ needs:  

• Fellows told us that they needed someone to help them navigate their learning experience and implementation, so we designed a Mentor Program.  
• Fellows identified a handful of topics that they needed support with: so we tested professional learning communities.  These PLCs morphed into a new grant program, Innovation Circles, based on Fellows’ needs for learning opportunities with less travel.   
• Our current design challenge:  How do we spark teachers’ leadership and innovation with all of the rich, first-person resources gathered on fellowships? 

These programs are new so the results of our endeavors are still to be realized, but we have already identified important benefits to our approach.  Partnering with Fellows helped us understand more clearly teachers’ needs and elevated our insights beyond those gathered from more traditional methods.  For example, early this year, we set out to design an online platform to host Fellow-designed lesson and unit plans, only to find that that was not something that our teachers’ really needed.  In addition, we have been struck by how many fellows are looking for leadership opportunities.  We have been flooded with interest from our fellows – many wanting to be mentors, leaders and designers.  Not only is this trend important to our program design, but it points to a real need in education:  leadership pathways for teachers.  

Time will tell how our programming will grow and develop, but our experience thus far has reinforced our belief in our program mindset: for teachers, by teachers. 

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Liza Eaton (a 2006 FFT Fellow) is the director of Fund for Teachers’ Rasmden Project, an initiative to support and engage grant recipients beyond their initial fellowships. Her expertise lies in educational design and instructional coaching, leveraging her experience as a consultant and teacher with EL Education, Shining Hope Communities in Nairobi, and various schools in the Denver area. Liza holds an undergraduate degree in Environmental Policy & Behavior from the University of Michigan; a master’s of Curriculum and Leadership from the University of Denver; and is pursuing a doctorate in Education Equity from the University of Colorado Denver.

This is the third in a four-part series in which we consider what innovation in the classroom will look like going forward. Thank you to today’s contributor, FFT Board Member Jonas Zuckerman. With over 25 years in education, Jonas is dedicated to building the capacity of educators and providing disadvantaged students a high-quality education by closing equity gaps.

As we emerge from the coronavirus pandemic, American education is facing significant challenges, including the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on historically underserved populations. While we know that the pandemic has exacerbated already existing opportunity gaps, we are still assessing the full magnitude of the impact, partially due to disruption to statewide assessments. At the same time, schools and districts do have local data and are able to use that data to identify student needs. It is critical that schools focus post-pandemic efforts on serving all students, and work to mitigate the impact of the pandemic and school disruptions.

There is also no doubt that the pandemic has changed classrooms and schools, and some of these changes may be part of the solution moving forward. Teachers and schools want to come back to a better future that will permanently close the equity gaps, and there are some opportunities coming out of the pandemic that may have a positive impact.

For example, due to the pandemic, investments have been made in infrastructure, including expanded internet access in rural and urban areas. While there is still not equitable access to the internet, an essential in today’s world, there is better data on the precise nature of the situation including which areas do not have reliable internet service. This thorough understanding of the problem is necessary in order to make change.

Similarly, there has been an investment in hardware devices, which is also essential for an equitable educational system. These, and other investments, were made possible by unprecedented funding provided to schools by the federal government, almost $300 billion across three stimulus bills.

It is also important to note that much of this funding will be available to schools for the next few years, until 2024, as we know that recovery will not be immediate. As a requirement tied to this funding, schools will need to address “learning loss” or “learning disruption” that occurred due to the pandemic. Specifically, schools are required to focus on learning loss, and they must do so in consultation with stakeholder groups. In an even more direct attempt to address equity gaps, Congress required schools to not just address learning loss generally, but specifically to focus on historically underserved populations, including racial and ethnic groups, students with disabilities, students experiencing homelessness, students from low-income families, and other specific student groups. There is a clear and direct mandate from Congress to ensure that schools are attending to the students who need the most support, and it will be the responsibility of schools and districts, with support from states, to fulfill this mandate.

Schools are also required to use evidence-based strategies in their efforts, and there is ongoing research around what the best strategies will be. One specific recommendation for a post-pandemic evidence-based strategy comes in a new report issued by TNTP, in partnership with Zearn, titled “Accelerate, Don’t Remediate,” which offers strong evidence that the best way for schools to help students get back on track is through “learning acceleration,” ensuring students have access to high quality, grade level curriculum and that targeted help is built into the grade level assignments. This report demonstrates why the practice of remediation, or utilizing curriculum from lower grades, is not effective at helping students recover from learning loss. The federal funds provided can help schools both adopt high quality materials and provide professional learning so teachers can implement them effectively in classrooms. This is one example of the type of evidence-based strategy that will need to be implemented post-pandemic, and it is informative because it challenges conventional wisdom about what practices are best. In this case, the remediation strategy has long been used, but this evidence shows it is not effective. In order to move to an equitable, post pandemic world, we will need to continue to challenge conventional thinking about what practices work best, as we cannot utilize the same strategies that created the inequitable system and expect to see different results.

The global pandemic has irrevocably changed the educational system and it is up to all of us to work to ensure that the new system is truly equitable and just.

On Monday, we shared the work of an FFT Fellow to educate his Tulsa students about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre for the first time. Today, as Pride Month begins, we elevate another lesser-known, yet seminal event in our nation’s quest for social justice — this time for the LGBTQ+ community.

On June 27-28, 1969, New York City police raided Stonewall Inn, a Greenwich Village bar known for its gay, lesbian and transgender patrons. The BBC story “Stonewall: A riot that changed millions of lives” proposed that Stonewall was to the gay rights movement what Rosa Parks was for the civil rights one. “And just as Ms Parks’ refusal to give up her seat on a bus in Alabama to a white man had the effect of animating the civil rights movement 14 years before,” wrote author author Tom Geoghegan, “so Stonewall electrified the push for gay equality.”

For more information, watch this “Stonewall Uprising” episode of PBS’ American Experience.

Use these Learning for Justice resources on this topic in your classroom.

Five miles south of Stonewall Inn sits Eleanor Roosevelt High School, with the mission of “challenging students to act with courage, integrity and leadership [while] preparing them to embrace the moral, social, and intellectual challenges to come.” Leading this work is Tony Cacioppo, humanities teacher and faculty advisor for the Gender & Sexuality Alliance.

In 2015, Tony was named the Live Out Loud Educator of the Year for ensuring his LGBTQ+ students receive the highest quality education and feel supported emotionally and socially throughout the process. To support this work, he designed a Fund for Teachers fellowship to explore how London schools give voice to the LGBTQ community in their curriculum and to strengthen representation and support of LGBTQ students and their allies.

“Statistics show that when compared to heterosexual students, queer students all across the country miss more days of school, experience higher levels of depression and other mental health issues, and are much more likely to drop out of school,” wrote Tony in his grant proposal. “I want my school to do more to fight this trend.”

Tony’s guiding questions throughout his month-long tour of the United Kingdom included:

1. How do we ensure that all students—queer or not—truly understand the history and current lives of LGBTQ people?
2. How do we eliminate bias, even when it’s unintentional, from the school community?
3. How do we include LGBTQ achievements, concerns, and topics in the curriculum of all courses in a way that feels authentic and purposeful? And,
4. How do we ensure that queer students are not singled out and or marginalized in any aspect of school life, including in classes, sports teams, extracurricular activities, school dances and field trips?

His exemplars were individuals and organizations at the forefront of the effort to expand the inclusion of LGBTQ voices and issues in schools through the 2017 Children and Social Work Act in England, which requires all schools to teach sex and relationship education (SRE) from the age of 11 on, with plans in place to begin this fall. Tony’s itinerary included:

Gay Pride Flag, National Museum of Dublin

• An interview with a former SRE educator/current staff member at Stonewall (a London advocacy helping to make schools more LGBTQ inclusive) that led to introductions at Stonewall’s School Champions network, where staff have been trained on best practices for LGBTQ inclusion.
• Meeting with Peter Tatchell, a longtime human rights activist and founder of The Peter Tatchell Foundation that turned into a strategy session on implementing his recommendations for inclusion of marginalized students at Eleanor Roosevelt High School.
• Workshops through Bish Training, a group that specializes in providing SRE training for schools, and Brook, an organization dedicated to ensuring the sexual health and well being of young people, which yielded best practices to better support the development of healthy sexual identity in adolescents and teenagers. And,
• Discussions with Dr. Polly Haste, the Head of training and Practice for the Sex Education Forum, focusing on ensuring that LGBTQ content is embedded into curriculum rather than discussed for one day so that the school can say it has “covered” the topic.

“One unexpected result was being told by several of the professionals that I spoke to that when it comes to addressing the mental and physical health needs of young people, doing certain things badly is worse than not doing them at all,” said Tony. “We must be extremely careful and thoughtful when talking to students about healthy relationships, sexuality and gender, drug use and eating disorders, etc. We don’t want to do more damage to an already fragile student who is in need of support.”

Tony’s long-range plans include incorporating more LGBTQ+ literature into his 11th and 12th grade English classes.
The culmination of the school year, pre-COVID, was to be a unit specifically on the Stonewall Riots, which he provides here.

“This fellowship helped me to see that there is amazing work going on all over the world if you take the time and have the opportunity to go exploring,” said Tony. “The people that I met and learned from were not just other classroom teachers; they were activists and advocates who care about the same things I do–namely the well-being of young people–and have chosen another path for helping to achieve a similar goal. This showed me the power of educators forming partnerships with anyone who is willing to help.”

“As teachers we get extremely focused on what is going on directly in front of us and with the things that we need to do by the end of the day, week, semester, or year,” he continued. “This project gave me to the opportunity to step out of my own small world and see the big picture. I now recognize that lesson plans and grades have their place, but that teaching can truly be powerful and transformative when it supports who students are and helps them become the people that they are meant to be.”

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Listen to Tony’s acceptance speech at the Live Out Loud Educator of the Year Award Ceremony.

This is the second in a four-part series called “Fellow Voices” in which we turned to our grant recipients for their insights into what innovation in the classroom will look like going forward. Thank you to today’s contributor, Kari Baransky.

Teaching in this post-pandemic world has been, to say the least, challenging.  There are many times when I think about and question my skills as an educator. Am I doing the best that I can for the students that I teach? Am I creating lessons that help students improve their social skills as well as meet content expectations? Am I being supportive to my colleagues during this trying, ever changing, challenging time?

After asking my students what they miss about their “old” lives, several students were concerned about not remembering how to get along and socialize with their peers. Others were just worried about missing out on the connections that they had built before the pandemic changed their lives.  I wanted to find ways to support the psychological well being of my students.  I researched brain development and how the brain changes when met with adversity.  

After searching for any type of research on SEL and how I could apply it to my students and colleagues I found Richard Davidson’s work.  He spoke about  the four pillars of the science of training the mind: awareness, connection, insight and purpose.

• Awareness is to be self-aware. How many times have you blindly been going through the motions of your day and not realize the impact that you could have had on others? Davidson stated,  “If your mind is distracted, it exacts a toll on your well-being,” 
• Connection is the key to successful relationships and having a positive outlook on life.  
• Insight is the ability to recover from adverse situations. 
• Purpose is having a sense that life has meaning and is linked to faster recovery from negative events. 

Davidson has hoped that people will make cultivating well-being a part of their daily life, like brushing their teeth. “This is a kind of mental hygiene.”  This statement hit home with me because we go through the motions of our lives never taking the time to take care of our own mental stability. I downloaded the meditation app to start to plan a way of introducing the power of meditation to my students and colleagues.  I know that in order for students to embrace something new, it needed to be quick at first.  The app has a variety of meditations for specific purposes, some are less than two minutes, perfect for the middle school student.  Davidson cited research suggesting that meditation can change their underlying brain function. People that have practiced meditation show changes in key brain connections that help with emotional regulation and a quicker recovery from negative experiences. 

Watch Richard Davidson’s TED Talk “How mindfulness changes the emotional life of our brains” here.

I continued my research and found the Learning and the Brain Foundation that offers research based professional development.  This foundation does not endorse a single research company or specific ideology.  Having a variety of researchers agree upon a concept is reassuring for the direction that I am going in. Be on the lookout for information on ways to implement this great research about brain development through meditation and mindfulness, I am excited to share what I find out this summer with my Fund for Teachers Innovation Grant.

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Kari Baransky teaches math at Washington Middle School in Meriden, CT. With two colleagues, she used a Fund for Teachers grant to research & analyze restorative practices that are used in schools in three European countries to optimize a preventative approach to behavior issues leading to the improved behavior systems and increased empathy among middle school students. See images from their fellowship and read their summary here.

Kari offered the following resources for more learning on the topic of supporting the psychological well being of students:

1. Richard Davidson’s address to the Harvard School of Public Health on training one’s mind to improve well-being
2. The Emotional, Social Brain in Schools online institute – July 12-16 
3. Dec. 2007 Forum recording with Neuroscientist Richard Davidson, The Heart-Brain
4. Social-Emotional Learning and the Brain: Strategies to Help Your Students Thrive by Marilee Sprenger

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, a historic event that occurred in the town where Kyle Peaden taught students who knew nothing about it. We are grateful he shared his design process that led to his fellowship and its outcomes…

In my 2012 Fund for Teachers grant proposal, I wrote:

I see history repeating itself. I see that my students do not know or comprehend of the hate and bigotry that violated our city in the early 20th century in what is regarded as one of the most destructive race riots in the 20th century. While my students may not be involved in the repulsive actions of racist groups of individuals in the past, I can see hints of the same distance from understanding. Students are letting bullying and anger fill the voids where communication, discussion, and understanding should be. I hope to bring about understanding of racism, hate, and intolerance by contrasting the history of South Africa to the history of our city. By visiting South Africa to show the history and recent developments in Apartheid and segregation I can bring students to look closer at their own local history. This quiet city holds scars and wounds from one of the largest race riots in America and it remains a difficult subject to face. These wounds are ignored, and the impact of the race riots still linger. By bringing students to my experiences in South Africa I believe they will be able to use an unbiased process of examination to the history of South Africa and eventually to our history.

 

Sometimes it is too difficult for a child to think that something so awful could have happened in their home town. A sense of favoritism holds strong in their heart that would leave them less willing to hear or realize what happened here not too long ago in their own backyard. It is my hope to go to South Africa to learn firsthand why one person can do terrible things to another and how the goodness in humanity can prevail. I hope to bring a community of students closer to understanding what did happen, what can happen, and what we can do to make sure none of that will happen here ever again. By looking at examples of strength, ignorance, and hope abroad in South Africa and right here in our own back yard these students will work through questions dealing with morality and morality that can help their own understanding of such subjects.

My exploration started at home in Tulsa. I wondered how a city could recognize and reconcile the immense tragedy of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. This question took me on a journey over 8,700 miles away to South Africa. South Africa is a country that exemplifies the evils of racism and the hope that can bring a society from those dark times. I wanted to study the culture of South Africa, its art, food, and people, so that I could gather a greater understanding of what happened and how the country has adjusted from Apartheid.

My journey began near Johannesburg where I spent a week in Soweto, the largest and arguably most influential townships during the resistance against Apartheid. During my stay I met the most welcoming people during my whole stay in Africa. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to teach a lesson at a local art school as soon as I found one and my work with Emilia Potenza, the curator at the National Apartheid Museum, gave me a greater background understanding to the reasons and history behind Apartheid. Not far from this epicenter of struggle I visited the Cradle of Humankind where the fossilized remains of our direct ancestors are found. From Johannesburg I traveled through Kruger National Park driving amongst natures most raw surroundings to the Drakensberg Mountains. The Drakensberg site is home to thousands of Bushmen paintings throughout the mountain ranges. After hiking and documenting these ancient works of art I continued south toward the Cape of Good Hope.

In Cape Town I visited the many cultural and historical sites that represent so much of this diverse country. The blend and recognition of cultures reminded me so much of the country I grew up. I started to understand and recognize the steps towards reconciliation in South Africa and a small step to what might be needed at home. The art and history of this wonderful country helped me to see what steps my students and I can take to repair and resolve our troubled past. While my journey is a personal one, I know that the impact of my steps and my efforts will help students to further their own passage through the difficult topics of race, racism, hate, and hope. In my exploration our dark history nearly broke my heart, the people of South Africa filled it with joy, and my students carry it forward with hope.

I stayed in Tulsa teaching for another two years and my wife and I moved to Wisconsin. I ended up working with the Title I program at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction because I felt like much of what I learned is the systems and structures established during Apartheid had some of the deepest impacts on South Africa and the black community of Tulsa. I wanted to work on addressing those policies and by working at the state level I could work towards a more equitable education system.

My Fund for Teachers experience has helped to inform the decision making and policies in programs I work with. By acknowledging the impacts of multiple landscapes and their relationships with race I am more prepared for the injustices that our youth face. Wisconsin has some of the largest gaps for students of color and our state agency has made the work of closing those gaps one of our highest priorities. Personally, I work not only with Title I-A but in programs that support incarcerated students, students that are placed in foster care/out-of-home care, and I am a part of some of the equity work occurring in our agency. I’ve worked on teams that developed and train all staff in our agency on equity to build a foundational experience for our work. I think it is from the experiences in South Africa, learning from the Apartheid museum, the cradle of humanity, Soweto, and the people (most importantly the people!) that could tell their story that helped me build an understanding of how I can listen and work towards a more equitable education system for all our students.

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Kyle recommends the John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation as a starting point for those wanting to know more about the Tulsa Race Massacre. He also encourages us all to reframe language you might hear this week referring to the event as the Tulsa Race Riots. “I’ve learned since my fellowship that the word riot incorrectly places blame on Tulsa’s Black community, which acted in response to an unlawful arrest and subsequent rounding up of 6-8,000 Black Tulsans – many for up to eight days,” he said.

The last four years have been exciting. I have been working at developing an arts-integrated environmental education and outdoor skills program at my school. I have watched as students connected with nature, became involved in volunteer work, got internships, added healthy hobbies to their schedules and explored possible career paths. Then… the Pandemic happened.

As in classrooms all over the world, the swap to remote learning and subsequent return to restricted face-to-face instruction revealed multiple accessibility hurdles. For my program, which relies heavily on field studies and site visits, I noticed that students at an economic disadvantage are less likely to be successful without the built-in supports that we rely on in a normal school year.

Students who are at an economic disadvantage sometimes can’t complete a field activity, even if the site is local. They are also less likely to have access to appropriate supplies and technology. Students with a physical disability, away from school-provided supports, are less likely to be able to independently perform outdoor activities, and those with learning disabilities often struggle to engage with the material on their own.

I was curious about what innovations I could try in order to help students meet the program goals despite all of the obstacles that the Pandemic threw our way. Virtual programs have been a great help during the Pandemic, but let’s face it: Kids in an outdoor program aren’t in it to sit in front of a computer for hours. They want to get their hands dirty. I needed to take what I was doing pre-Pandemic and transform it into something that students could complete in a variety of settings and using materials easily found in the home, neighborhood or schoolyard.

See Starr’s students in action out in “America’s Amazon” — the terrain surrounding their high school.

Some of the innovations that have come to my classroom as a result of the Pandemic will benefit us even after things become more normal. A team of teachers and students at my school came together to build an outdoor classroom that will serve as a lab for science classes, a spot for the art classes to practice scientific drawing and a peaceful sanctuary for other groups who want to learn in an outdoor setting.

We have been using the iNaturalist citizen science app, so students can identify living things wherever they happen to be. We have focused on urban nature journaling, which helps students realize that they don’t have to be out in the wilderness to experience nature. They can look for interesting observations of the natural world, even if they are in a city setting. These are activities that we can continue for years to come.

While we have made some progress, we are not there yet. That’s why I was so excited to find out that Fund for Teachers was offering a new program called “Innovation Circles.” As part of an Innovation Circle, I’ll be able to collaborate with other Fellows around the common topic of accessibility. We will all be able to learn from one another as we work through self-designed professional development projects related to our topic. I can’t wait to see what ideas everyone will come up with!

The Pandemic has pushed educators to our limits in many ways. The Innovation Circles will give us the opportunity to combine our talents, creativity and problem-solving abilities to move forward despite the obstacles. The solutions we create together will benefit students for years to come.

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Starr Weems is a two-time FFT Fellow who teaches at Ardmore High School in Ardmore, AL. In 2013, Starr used a grant to observe in Israel the confluence of the Abrahamic religions and research how religion affects art, both ancient and modern, to enhance a combined art/foreign language curriculum and cultivate cross-cultural awareness. With her second grant in 2017, Starr gained wilderness skills, deepened knowledge of the taiga biome, explored art in Iceland and participated in Wilderness First Responder certification in North Carolina to expand a new artist-naturalist program for students and to improve safety during fieldwork. (See images and read about her experiences here.)

Starr earned undergraduate degrees in Art and German from Belmont University; a certificate in Spanish Language and Literature from Centro de Norteamericano de Estudios Interculturas in Seville, Spain; a certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults from Cambridge University; and a Master’s degree in Spanish from Auburn University. She also authored the book Teach Your Child Spanish Through Play.

Starr offered the following resources for those interested in taking students outside of their classrooms and/or comfort zones:

• “Make Just One Change” by Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana 
• John Muir Laws: Nature Stewardship Through Science, Education and Art
• iNaturalist Citizen Science Project
• “Keeping a Nature Journal” by Claire Walker Leslie

One year ago, my community suffered a devastating loss, which called into question the very systems upholding the safety of the neighborhoods my students and I call home. In the wake of this tragedy, street art has been popping up around the community. This art is varied and unique, giving a platform to unheard voices. It is empowering, celebrates diversity, and represents an outcry for justice. I began to wonder how I could include these amazing pieces in my classroom to foster conversation, create an opportunity for my students to share, listen, and learn from one another, and connect with what I’m teaching in Algebra.

Through this fellowship, I will travel to Philadelphia, home to the nation’s largest public art program. I will explore the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, learning about the ways that one community has used art to ignite change. My primary activity while traveling will be to explore the murals of Philadelphia, the world’s largest open-air art gallery. I will participate in three different walking tours, led by professional guides and local experts:

• The “Mural Mile City Center” tour will introduce me to the stories of Philadelphia’s culturally rich downtown.
• The “West Philadelphia” tour will teach me about leaders and change-makers who faced tremendous barriers and
  paved the way for change in Philadelphia for years to come.
• Lastly, the “Morals & Murals: Tales from Our Hood” tour will use art to teach me about the experiences of life in Philadelphia from one of its very own community members.

Once home, I will reframe my Linear Functions unit through the lens of art – drawing inspiration from both the established art scene of Philadelphia and new works of street art appearing in my own community.

My ultimate goal is to explore how art can empower personal expression, celebrate who we are, and move us forward, while also deepening connections to foundational Algebraic understanding.

I will utilize what I’ve learned to reframe my Linear Functions unit, a foundational skill for Algebra and higher-level math, through the lens of art. I hope that through this reimagining, I will be able to better engage my students in learning, make my curriculum more representative of my students and their experiences, and connect the content to my students’ realities. As we move further into our unit, exploring art will drive our mathematical learning. We will use graphing software to recreate parts of the murals that sparked the students’ interests, exploring how modifying the slope, y-intercept, or domain of a function changes the design of a piece.

After using Philadelphia’s murals to explore linear functions, students will leverage their mathematical understanding and creative inspiration to create their own piece of original “linear artwork.” They will first design their art using graphing software, and then bring their artwork to life on the walls of our school. My principal has already given her permission for a student mural, and I colleagues in the art department who are willing and eager to collaborate with me on this endeavor.

I work in a district where, according to our most recent state-wide test, only 29.3% of students are proficient at math. We know that algebra is a gateway to graduation and future success in college and careers, so our school has responded by doubling the amount of time our students spend learning math. Even so, students are still struggling. Despite my best efforts to bring the world into our classroom, many students wonder, “Why do we have to learn this?” It can be challenging to find authentic opportunities to connect social justice to my curriculum. This problem is complex and I certainly don’t have all of the answers. But I do know that when students feel disconnected from the content being taught, their engagement, and ultimately learning, suffers. If students feel that what they’re learning doesn’t matter, some don’t buy into what’s happening in the classroom. If the world around my students feels like it is imploding, and I as an educator do nothing to address it, I am tone deaf to the lives they lead.

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Emily Kjesbo-Johnson teaches high school math and drama at Washington Technology Magnet School in Saint Paul, MN. She has been teaching since 2008 after working as a Peace Corps volunteer in Uganda and an AmeriCorp volunteer on Saint Paul’s West Side. Emily holds an undergraduate degree from Bethel University and a Masters in Teaching from Hamline University. She is also a two-time FFT Fellow.

• In 2019, Emily captured in virtual reality Thailand’s history, culture and architecture to create case studies for the analysis of geometric properties and theorems set amidst the rich backdrop of the Southeast Asian nation. Here is her summary of this fellowship.
• In 2014, she used a grant to explore how Apartheid continues to affect issues of racial injustice, self worth, motivation and academic achievement to inform discussions on social justice and build a math curriculum based on the principals of reconciliation. Watch her presentation about this experience here.

Emily was awarded one of Fund for Teachers’ new Innovation Grants to undertake her research in Philadelphia this summer. Click here for additional Innovation Grant recipients and to be inspired by their plans.

Reflecting on today’s birthday of Malcolm X, we share the thoughts of an FFT Fellow used her grant to research past and present resistance movements (but in Mexico) to use these as a model for student writing and meaningful resistance to injustice in local communities. Sara Boeck Bautista teaches English at Leaders High School in Brooklyn, NY, and works to make language arts a catalyst for social change in her students’ lives. She chose to research grassroots political and social movements in Mexico, where movements have often hinged on the words and actions of young people and other oppressed groups. “I wanted to document, study, and model these grassroots movements by people in society who, like my students, have historically felt that their voices didn’t matter.”

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As a social justice educator, the struggle to continue moving forward in the face of increasing inequity and continual global and local problems is difficult. My studies in central and southern Mexico with a Fund for Teachers grant not only gave me countless practical materials, texts, artifacts, interviews, and photographs to bring back to my students, but it also revitalized my passion for social justice and renewed my belief that the struggle of social justice is worth it.

Over the course of six weeks, I met women’s rights activists who are providing support for women in indigenous communities in central Mexico, professors who are committed to lifting up the indigenous culture into the space of the dominant culture of formal education, LGBTQ activists and scholars who know that change will come and believe that the system can be changed, and ordinary women and men who work to empower families and inspire gender equity by helping their communities walk away from the legacy of machismo.

In Mexico, I learned at length about the ties between the history of colonization and the current daily challenges of indigenous and other oppressed people (queer, Black, women, and those at the intersections of these identities). In my class, we have continued to explore the ties between history and our present by studying the role that science fiction and Afrofuturism in particular have on supporting visions outside of the norm that seek to liberate oppressed people. In my class this semester, students are reading Octavia Butler’s 1993 science fiction novel Parable of the Sower and are considering their own relationship to change in their lives and in this pandemic and racial uprising. The lessons I learned six years ago in Mexico are still embedded in my mind as we grapple with the recent turmoil in the US political system, justice system, and educational system.

In response to the colonial legacy of oppression, I have framed my thinking as decolonizing and reindeginizing my classroom and my approach to social change. This looks like lifting up oppressed voices and honoring the vast knowledge, creativity, and expression that has come from oppressed communities and honoring the creativity it takes for those who are not free to imagine a future of liberation.

What sticks with me in reading Parable of the Sower and reflecting on my experience learning about the Zapatistas, in particular, is the power that change and autonomy can have even if it is not done through the powers of government. In Chiapas, I met people who are making their own utopias in spite of the colonialist legacies that still exist in Mexico. But the autonomous communities in Chiapas are a living example of an intentionally developed autonomous community. The main character in Parable of the Sower also develops and creates her own intentional community, envisioning and creating her own sacred space outside of the oppressive systems in her world. The connections are endless and endlessly inspiring.

To quote Octavia Butler, “All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is change.”

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In recognition of Sara’s professionalism and student impact, Expeditionary Learning awarded her it’s highest honor in 2019 – The Klingenstein Award. Listen to her acceptance speech here (starts at 4:05).

Our high school is co-located in a converted elementary school building that still feels very much like an elementary school building (low sinks, low toilets, tiny lockers, a gym the size of a glorified broom closet). As our school prepared to open for in-person, synchronous learning this fall, COVID-19 reminded us just how small our school is. It was difficult for administrators and the janitorial staff to accommodate the maximum of ten learners in a classroom.

Meanwhile, students often speak about the resources at the more elite public schools in our area. And many a student laments his or her school choice in spite of our strong test scores and STEAM offerings because our high school (now their high school) does not resemble anything they’ve ever seen on television. There weren’t feral cats, rats and cockroaches on Riverdale. Nor were there methadone clinics and brownfield sites located on the same block of the TV high school.

A major gap exists in our city and in our school district and in our adjacent school community.

And those gaps are exacerbated by COVID-19 and the ongoing struggle for Black lives. Furthermore, our school is located in an area exposed to 95% more hazardous waste and waste water discharge and PM 2.5 and ozone than the rest of the US. When compared to the locations of elite (public and independent) schools located within five miles of our school, the percentiles that gauge environmental and demographic risks to public health drop to below 50%. It doesn’t take a genius to overlay the demographic information and quickly surmise that the elite schools are located in more affluent, white communities, or are composed of predominantly white students and staff, compared to our school.

Clearly, something’s wrong here.

I want to know why educational, economic, environmental, and public health gaps exist in my community by traveling to our seat of government and seeking answers.

With my Fund for Teachers grant this summer, I will follow a trail of important civil rights sites from New York City to Delaware, West Virginia, Washington DC, and Virginia to analyze the lasting impact of Brown v. Board of Education on students’ economic, environmental, and educational opportunities.

• The first stop will be Howard High School in Wilmington, Delaware on June 29th. Howard High School is connected to the U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education “that found racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional.” Black parents in Wilmington sued to enroll their children in the local all-White high school.
• Then I will visit Harpers Ferry. Harpers Ferry is known for many things, including John Brown’s assault on slavery and the massive surrender of Union troops during the Civil War. But, I will focus on something that I recently discovered in my research. Harpers Ferry is the site of one of the earliest integrated schools in the US. Former slaves received an education at a small college called Storer. Why did that happen? And how was it possible that this wasn’t possible for the rest of the nation until after Brown v. Board?
• In Richmond, I’ll visit Virginia Civil War Museum exhibits and explore the journey from the Civil War to Civil Rights.
• In the central Virginia town of Farmville, I’ll visit Robert Russa Moton High School and Robert Russa Moton Museum. This was a public school built for Black students living in Prince Edward County. The school’s conditions were something my students can relate to: overcrowding, a leaking roof, limited educational resources like books and chalk. The brave actions of two students, Barbara Johns and John Arthur, who organized a student walkout, catalyzed the Brown v. Board of Education decision.
• The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial will be my first stop in Washington DC, followed by a walk across the Mall to visit the Supreme Court of the United States where the Brown v. Board decision was made and numerous other cases that have influenced who I teach and where my students learn. I plan to visit the National Archives and research the various court decisions that have influenced or decided where and who I teach.
• Also in DC, I’ll visit John Philip Sousa Junior High School. This school denied admission to twelve Black students. The
  case was argued by a professor James Nabrit, Jr. of Howard University. Later, the case was folded into Brown v. Board. In addition, I’ll visit three sites at Howard University connected to the history of Brown v. Board of Education: Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel, Frederick Douglass Memorial Hall, and Founders Library. Founders Library has the largest collection of “African American documents, letters and oral histories about the African-American experience.” I’ll visit the library and research the Black experience in schools – focusing on the post Brown v. Board ruling to see how it impacted the education of Black Americans and other Americans of color.
• My fellowship will conclude at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. I’ll visit all the exhibits,
  but pay special attention to “A Changing America: 1968 and Beyond.”

I did not know until I started researching this fellowship
the number of cases that made up Brown v. Board of Education.

The problems are so vast, but I can distill it into the questions my students asked me after the insurrectionists overran the Capitol police force and simply walked out of the building joyous, and unscathed by the same state apparati that wreaked havoc on black and brown bodies just a few short months prior.

Why is it different for us?

Why have Black and Brown students been treated differently than White students since the founding of this republic?

Why did (does) the promise of Brown v. Board of Education go unfulfilled in classrooms across America?

Why are my students exposed to more air pollutants, more toxins in the soil, more asbestos and lead, more vermin carrying infectious disease?

And how can we operationalize this knowledge to bring about change in our school community?

Students will benefit from the clear history and timeline of the economic, educational, and environmental injustices taught to them through the accounts of those who experienced the same injustices but fought back.

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Patrick Callahan (pictured with students at Buckingham Palace thanks to a grant through ACIS) is an Sloan Award winning science educator at the Bronx Center for Science and Mathematics. He is a Math for America Master Teacher Fellow and a recent finalist for the Big Apple NYC DOE Award. He has taught for 11 years in the South Bronx. He is currently the Science Department Chair and Director of Enrichment Programs.

On Teacher Appreciation Day (May 6), Fund for Teachers announce with a national release the names of 191 public, private and charter school teachers to receive $325,000 in grants for self-designed summer fellowships and experiential learning opportunities.

Now in its 20th year, Fund for Teachers encourages the self-directed professional development of pre-K to 12^th-grade educators across the country and has provided $33.5 million in grants to more than 9,000 teachers. In light of the pandemic, the national nonprofit specifically asked teachers applying for grants to focus their proposals on transformational learning experiences within the continental US that address equity, diversity, inclusion, climate change and civic engagement.

“Teachers heroically met the needs of students and their families this year more than ever before,” said Karen Eckhoff, executive director. “The fact that these 2021 grant recipients also found time to craft proposals aimed at improving their practice and, in turn, students’ learning speaks volumes about their professionalism. They are problem solvers, innovators and role models for their students.”

This year, Fund for Teachers granted summer fellowships to 77 educators from 27 states including New York, Texas, Oregon and Minnesota. In their proposals, selected Fellows addressed topics such as how to create culturally responsive classrooms and how to increase accessibility and learning opportunities for all students. They also focused on the environment and learning in the natural world. Jenny Roberts (Houston, TX), for example, will complete forest school teacher training in Berkeley, CA and a mindfulness workshop in Portland, OR to help design authentic, learner-driven activities for her students, while Veronica Wylie (Hazlehurst, MS) will complete marine life training on submerged conservation projects in order to guide her students into a more accurate understanding of scientific concepts and processes.

Also this year, for the first time, Fund for Teachers awarded 114 Innovation Grants to previous Fellows. Innovation Grant recipients receive $1,000 to individually pursue experiential learning around one of four problems of practice—Accessibility, Equity, Art & Design or Social Emotional Learning—along with the opportunity to collaborate with their peers, share what they learned and amplify impact in the classroom.

A complete list of 2021 FFT Fellows and Innovation Grant recipients can be found on the Fund for Teachers website at www.fundforteachers.org.

In response to the recent Ed Week article Summer School Is More Important Than Ever, But Teachers Are ‘Fried’ And Need A Break, we invited FFT Fellows to weigh in. Beth Mowry, who is also leading this summer’s Innovation Grant Circle on Social Emotional Learning, weighed on the state of teachers’ well-being:

Teachers are Tired

Everyone is tired and incentivizing teachers to work over the summer is so short-sighted. We saw at the beginning of the pandemic how teachers were lauded as “amazing” and “essential workers.” Now when teachers are setting self-care boundaries, and choosing to NOT work over the summer, we are reprimanded for not “doing this for the kids” (moral manipulation!)

In regard to “Learning Loss”

It’s such deficit-thinking. “Falling behind” is another phrase that just frustrates me to the core – behind what? Some arbitrary line drawn in the sand by education policy-makers with little experience actually working with young people in the classroom? The phrase also can be interpreted as teachers aren’t working hard enough.

Students are Tired

I appreciate the superintendent in the article who is using the money for more direct intervention IN THE FALL. The kids who were disengaged in remote learning are definitely NOT going to magically engage in the SUMMER. There are so many systemic, trauma-response and poverty-driven reasons behind why kids did not engage in learning this year. I’d love to see a study done to really find out some hard data about that. Maslow’s Hierarchy is a pyramid FOR a REASON – humans can’t engage in higher levels if their foundation is crumbling at the edges.

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Interestingly, Fund for Teachers’ Fellows demonstrate that teachers’ batteries are recharged by learning.

This summer, our grant recipients fall into two categories: Teachers pursuing learning with our traditional summer fellowships (with up to $5,000 per individual and $10,000 as a team; and previous FFT grant recipients (Fellows) using $1,000 Innovation Grants to individually pursue learning around the topics of Social Emotional Learning, Accessibility, Art & Design, and Equity. These teachers are in the process of meeting in these cohorts virtually prior to their fellowships and will convene again throughout the fall to reflect on their findings and brainstorm on classroom implementation.

We thank Beth for her insight and for choosing to lead 13 other Fellows in the SEL cohort throughout the summer and fall. On her fellowship, Beth conducted paleontology research at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center, earning credentials in paleontology to support student scientific studies and journals.

When Sterling Morton went west in the 1870s, he found the Nebraska territory’s lack of trees a real issue – agriculturally and aesthetically. The newspaper editor proposed a “tree planting holiday” that we continue to celebrate on the last Friday of April. This Arbor Day we highlight the plans of one our our newest Fellows, Megan McCall (Daphne, AL). This summer, Megan will participate as a citizen scientist in the Earthwatch program “Climate Change: Sea to Trees At Acadia National Park” to gain credibility through first-hand experience with data collection and guide students’ research projects that validate the existence of climate change.

“Students are often curious about the topic, but are confused about what climate change actually is and often mistake it as ‘a hole in the ozone layer,'” said Megan. “Climate change can be a daunting subject because it requires us all to make adjustments to our creature comforts; however, I believe climate change must be addressed for students to become informed citizens. If they do not understand the topic, they will not have information rooted in science and not be able to make informed decisions affecting the future of our valuable resources.”

A goal of this Earthwatch program is to determine the response of the composition and structure of the park’s mainland and island forests and associated understory communities. Bayside Academy, where Megan teaches, is located directly on Mobile Bay, which has a coastline very similar to Acadia National Park. She plans to use data collected from her fellowship to guide middle school students’ comparisons of Acadia National Park with the wetlands and delta literally in their own backyards.

The big questions Megan hopes to answer are: How are the scientists collecting the data, what is the historical data, and how can she translate these methods to research studies her students can conduct on campus.

“The most critical time for students learning science is middle school as there are many research studies which indicate this is when many students loose interest and become disengaged,” said Megan. “As a teacher for 18 years, I understand this is typically when science becomes more abstract and being able to offer them real world research topics will definitely help them see the relevance of the topic of climate change and be more engaging.”

Follow Megan’s fellowship on Instagram.

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Megan is a two-time FFT Fellow. In 2014 she conducted environmental investigations in Hawaii that incorporated the cultural values of kuleana (responsibility), malama (caring) and laulima (cooperation) to cultivate students’ STEM skills. She holds an undergraduate degree in environmental science, a master’s in secondary education-general science, and a doctoral degree in education-instructional design and development. Megan is the winner of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science Teaching award (the nation’s highest honor in K-12 teaching); the 2013 Secondary Science Teacher of the Year given by the Alabama Science Teachers Association; the 2015 STEM Teacher of the Year given by the Air Force Association and Mobile Chamber of Commerce and a 2015-2106 Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching for studying science education in New Zealand. We are grateful that Megan will be co-leading Fund for Teacher’s Innovation Circle on social emotional learning this summer.

After our 2020 grant recipients’ plans stalled due to the global pandemic, our organization faced an interesting situation. No Fellows pursing learning beyond the classroom or applying their experiences inside them. And we didn’t know if 2021 grants would even happen. Entering our twentieth year of supporting teachers, what did that look like when teachers couldn’t leave their homes or hometowns?

Fund for Teachers created a new grant that provides the space for teachers to support each other. Beginning in May, select FFT Fellows will meet virtually in Innovation Circles focused on four topics: Social-Emotional Learning, Equity, Art & Design, and Accessibility. A summer of pursuing individual experiences with a $1,000 grant will be bookended with community building, brainstorming, reflection and application — together with and led by the following Fellows:

Social-Emotional Learning

2009 Fellow Beth Mowry (Brooklyn) will co-lead this Innovation Circle alongside 2021 Fellow Megan McCall (Daphne, AL). “I recognize and honor the power inherent in being able to guide a learner to deeper understanding through experiences, a well-timed question or a probing reflection question,” said Beth. “This Circle structure is designed to give learners the Goldilocks amount of support and structure that will lead to incredible innovation. 

Equity

2003 Fellow Mekiva Callahan (Houston) is not only a FFT grant recipient, but also a college professor and administrator. In a variety of classrooms, she’s witnessed the impact a “decentralized” classroom can make. “My classrooms are more participant centered, and that’s what excites me about this format,” she said. “The Circle Structure removes the burden from me to carry the cognitive load shifting to participant centered work. This pedagogical style is ideal, even for a classroom setting, as we will co-construct the learning and reform the curriculum together. We will learn from one another, and that is the most exciting part–what we all take away from the experience.”

Mekiva will co-lead with 2018 Fellow Josh Frost (Brooklyn). “It will be an invaluable learning experience to be able to discuss and help develop projects rooted in these same themes with educators/Fellows outside of New York that teach in diverse communities from around the country,” he said.

Art & Design

2019 Fellow Mia Corvino (Madison, CT) and 2015 Fellow Adam Burns (Troy, MI) brings experience from teaching at Columbia Teachers College and Adam from participating in our Innovation Circle pilot program last fall. “What I really liked was being exposed to so many different ideas. I could try them out, tinker, adapt, ignore, whatever,” he said. “What I love about the circles is they capture that idea of always questioning why you are doing what you are doing, of knowing that things don’t always have to be the way they are.” Mia added, “I am always happiest when I can be a facilitator rather than a lecturer, guiding and helping others to build and brainstorm, to be more creative and think outside the box, and to reflect back to the group what I am hearing and seeing so that they can reach their own conclusions.”

Accessibility

2013 April Chamberlain (Trussville, AL) is stepping up to this cohort. “The community aspect is key for me as I have had the opportunity to be a part of communities that I have taught me, challenged me, and supported my growth,” April said. “I wish to facilitate this experience for others and “coach” rather that lead the educators in the design and implementation of their learning plans.”

“Seeing teachers’ response to this opportunity for collaboration with other Fellows has been so encouraging,” said Liza Eaton, director of Fund for Teachers’ Ramsden Project, a new initiative focused on grant recipients post-fellowship. “Synergizing teachers’ collective years of experience and passion for a topic will result in authentic engagement for all of their students.”

Check back on April 30 for the names of FFT Fellows awarded $1,000 grants to participate in our first season of Innovation Circles.

Four years ago, the land behind Daphne High School lay fallow and Betsy Anderton’s kids lay on the sofa looking at their phones. This combination did not sit well with Betsy, who held a Master’s and Ph.D. in Instructional Design but had not been at the head of a classroom for more than 25 years.

“I felt committed to getting kids off their phones and involved in purposeful, outdoor projects that would carry into their lives beyond high school,” said Betsy. “I hadn’t taught before, had no experience in agriculture and didn’t really have a vision for where I would take the program, but I knew that it was an opportunity to teach kids in a different way while also incorporating all of the great things they were learning at school.”

Pivoting from her career developing curriculum content for online platforms, Betsy joined the staff at Daphne High School near the Gulf Coast of Alabama, requisitioned school land and began building an agriculture education program that incorporates aspects of other teachers’ curriculum. She built a “Shakespeare Garden” for English students and had chemistry students demonstrate cationic exchange and pH balance. Storm water issues from the nearby Tiawasee Creek watershed inspired the “history” component of her curriculum, and Fund for Teachers provided the opportunity to research it.

“I became interested in the Mexican chinampas because they seemed to be dealing with so many of the issues we deal with here,” Betsy said. “I also wanted to be able to teach agriculture from a sustainable perspective. So, the fellowship took me further into an area I was already very excited about.”

Elizabeth designed a 2019 Fund for Teachers fellowship to join an EarthWatch team’s study of traditional farming and wetland preservation in the Xochimilco Wetlands of Mexico to enhance current studies of wetland conservation with other professionals who can encourage student learning on these efforts.

Watch several videos Elizabeth made on her fellowship here.

“The experience informed every aspect of my instruction from our studies on integrated pest management to traditional farming and storm water management,” she said. “My students created a  chinampa on our school farm. My greenhouse class now uses the process of soil blocking from the chinampas and agriscience students are using the story of the threatened axolotl salamander to understand environmental threats caused by invasive species as well as the importance of managing the fertilizers we use which, if not used properly, can end up in our waterways and eventually Mobile Bay.”

Currently, Betsy’s students are creating an outdoor classroom for the feeder schools with interpretive signs and various types of gardens and examples of best management practices for the region. Her students also deliver harvests from the gardens to a local food pantry. (Watch media coverage here.) To facilitate the construction of new greenhouses, watershed solutions and supporting structures, Betsy writes grants — and has secured more than $120,000 from local, regional and national organizations, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Environmental Protection Agency, Harbor Freight Tools and Future Farmers of America.

“I think as teachers it often feels like we have achieved a goal if we get our lessons to a point where they are stable and we can just go in and teach,” said Betsy. “It’s easy to forget that this minimizes the chance for flexibility and improvement but, most importantly, it may not be keeping us engaged at the level our students need to witness if we are to model life-long learning. It is important that we remain challenged in our teaching, even to the point where we are learning alongside our students, as it is only then that we can understand the questions they are asking as they climb the ladder to expert.”

Thank you to Betsy and her students for filming the video (above) of their garden and farm at Daphne High School in Daphne, AL.

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Betsy Anderton is a high school agriscience teacher born and raised in coastal Baldwin County, AL. She spend many weekends on her family farm in Mississippi and feels passionate about connecting students with both land and water. This commitment is inclusive of using agriculture to create communities, helping students understand the importance of environmentally friendly practices, repurposing items for alternative landscaping and gardening, and agritourism.

When thinking about teacher leaders, who comes to mind? Union reps? Data team leaders? Committee chairs? Leadership is about more than labels. There are countless individuals in classrooms around the world who do not fit into any of these categories, but are creating impactful change in their school communities. What does it really mean to be a teacher leader? A teacher leader is someone who seeks feedback, is a lifelong learner, understands the importance of relationships, and is willing to take risks.

Teacher Leaders Seek Feedback

Teacher leaders are reflective educators who recognize feedback as essential to their growth and development. Instead of waiting, teacher leaders actively seek feedback related to lessons, situations that are occurring, and new ideas. When I am looking for feedback, I rely on three different sources: social media, my colleagues, and my administrators.

1. Social media: Sometimes when looking for feedback, I am interested in the ideas and experiences of people outside of my school building. As a teacher who has spent my whole teaching career in the same building, I appreciate hearing ideas from others. When this happens, I sharing an idea or something I have tried on social media and ask questions so that I will receive feedback that will help push my thinking. Using social media can be a powerful tool to gather feedback from educators all over the world!
2. Colleagues: Sharing ideas with colleagues at my school is very beneficial because unlike feedback from social media, my colleagues understand my school context and take into consideration as they are giving feedback. They are people that I can talk to continuously throughout my thought process due to their proximity.
3. Administration: Seeking feedback from my administrators has helped me because in addition to understanding my school context, they also have seen practices in other classrooms throughout the building, have their own teaching experiences, and have a big picture view that can help me further reflect on my plans and ideas.

Teacher leaders… are lifelong learners

            Teacher leaders know that learning is not just for students in classrooms. Teachers are learners too! Being a lifelong learner is a key characteristic of teacher leadership because it means recognizing there is always more to learn, even on topics you are very familiar. Learning for teacher leaders extends beyond the professional learning opportunities that are provided through school and districts. Being a lifelong learner means seeking opportunities to learn more about topics that you know a lot about and seeking out opportunities to learn more about topics that you don’t know about. This includes attending conferences, participating in webinars, joining education communities on social media, or reading a book.

Educators like LaNesha Tabb @Apron_Education, and FFT Fellow Liz Kleinrock @TeachAndTransform, exemplify true teacher leadership. Learning from their work over the years has taught me so much. I also enjoy attending the National Association for Multicultural Education conference, the Ron Clark Academy Educator Training, and the Get Your Teach On National conference. Beyond the opportunity to learn from amazing presenters, I really appreciate getting to network with educators from around the world at these conferences.

Teacher leaders…understand that relationships matter

          We hear the phrase “relationships matter” when it comes to teachers working with students and their families but teacher leaders also value their relationships with colleagues. This doesn’t mean being best friends with everyone in their building, but it does mean recognizing the power of collaboration. There is a song by the artists Fabulous and Ne-Yo that says “I’m a movement by myself, but I’m a force when we’re together.” Teacher leadership means understanding that although an individual teacher leader can do amazing things, when they take the opportunity to bounce ideas off of others, collaborate with others, and get feedback from others even greater change is possible.

My experiences with Fund for Teachers is a great example. One of my colleagues and I received a Fund for Teachers fellowship to travel to South Africa for over two weeks. Upon return, we created a social justice library for our school and engaged our colleagues in conversations about incorporating social justice and activism topics into their lessons.

Teacher leaders…. are innovative and risk takers

            An important characteristic of teacher leaders is the willingness to try new things. Teacher leaders are not only innovative and creative but also risk takers. Taking risks can be an intimidating process but a teacher leader knows that things will not be perfect and that is okay. Teacher leaders are willing to make mistakes and most importantly, to learn from those mistakes.

Being creative and trying new things is one of my favorite things about teacher leadership because it turns thoughts and what ifs? into action. [For Women’s History Month and Black History Month, Tracey-Anne dresses as individuals she wants her students to remember and emulate in some way.]

Fostering Growth and Development of Teacher Leaders

Administrators can support teachers in ways that will help them continue to grow as leaders. What does it look like to support and foster teacher leadership? Administrators can start by listening. Innovative teachers are likely to stop and say “Do you have a moment for me to run an idea past you?” They are going to come up with new ideas and creative solutions for problems that can be a great asset to the school community. Taking the time to listen to these ideas shows that the voices of teacher leaders are valued and develops an atmosphere where leaders can feel more comfortable dreaming big and voicing their ideas!

Administrators can also encourage teachers to try new things. Teacher leaders are risk takers and lifelong learners but feeling that they are supported in their risk taking can make a huge difference, especially for those new to leadership. Encouraging teacher leaders to attend a workshop, suggesting a book for them to read, or even encouraging them to implement something new in their classroom or school community shows teacher leaders once again that they are valued as leaders.

Finally, to foster teacher leadership skills, administrators should provide teacher leaders with a level of challenge. When a teacher comes to their administrator with an idea, instead of automatically saying yes, the administrator should ask questions that challenge them and push them to think more deeply about their idea. This type of feedback is exactly what teacher leaders need to continue growing.

To my fellow teacher leaders…

Thank you for your creativity, innovation, and inspiration. Your passion and efforts continue to make a difference for students. As you continue to embark on this journey, please take care of yourself along the way. Remember that it is okay to delegate, it is okay to ask for help, and it is even okay to say no! To be the best that we can be, we need to reset and recharge regularly. As you speak up for your students and your school community, remember to speak up for yourself as well.

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Tracey-Ann Lafayette is a third grade teacher in East Hartford, CT, who is passionate about teaching her students about speaking up for injustices in their community, the nation, and the world.  She is a co-founder of two organizations (collegiate and professional) that focus on supporting pre-service teachers and educators of color across the state. Follow her on Instagram and read more about her fellowship here.

This morning, SxSWEdu kicked off virtually with a keynote by Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Bruce Perry on the topic of how childhood experiences change the biology of our bodies and brains. The discussion was based on research comprising a book they co-authored called “What Happened to You?” which will be available April 27^th. Because teachers were busy teaching during this livestream, here are a few highlights…

What is trauma?

• Trauma is an experience that can literally influence the way your stress response system works and, as a result, have long-term impact on a person.
• The experience itself is not necessarily the trauma: It’s the ability to manage that experience based on events that have prepared or not prepared one to do so.
• The trauma doesn’t have to be “huge,” but can be “silent traumas” that have equal impact.
• Our body’s stress response systems housed in the brain are malleable in response to the pattern of stressor that we experience. If our experiences with stress are unpredictable (i.e., we have no control over them) we can have changes in stress that look like a “Capital T” trauma. For instance, if a minority in a majority community experience unpredictable “micro aggressions,” those little events make us overly sensitized and makes us biologically predisposed to diabetes, heart disease, asthma, etc.

Oprah’s Main Message

• Our brain development and decision-making patterns are shaped by the first few years of our life experiences. Not 0-6 years, but the first two months of life.
• This is the “Bing Bing Bing Moment”: Traumatic experiences during development change our biology and make us at an increased risk for health problems, substance abuses, etc.. But if look at WHEN those adverse experience take place, it’s the first couple of months.
• Kids with lots of adversity and few relational supports who get into healthy environments after those first two months have worse outcomes than kids who have nurturing first two months and THEN have trauma.
• Key Thing: The older a child gets and the more they struggle, the more the world misunderstands their behavior. “Your inattention and misbehavior” vs. “Something happened to you.”

The Brain as a Layered Cake

• Envision brain as upside down triangle.
• Regulatory systems that control breathing involved in the stress response is the bottom layer, the foundation. When activated, we shut down the top layers of our brain responsible for sensory information, motor skills and reason — the cortex.
• When someone speaks with us, that information goes into lower part of the brain first, through the lower reactionary part of brain, then the emotional part of brain, and, finally, reasoning part of the brain.
• As parents, teachers, therapists, we must figure out how to balance students’ regulatory systems (that bottom layer) before we can reach and teach them. We will never get to where we want to be with students if we don’t address the trauma response.

Regulate to Educate

• When a child’s Initial signal from the world is that they are in a place of danger, even when in a safe place (school), the brain is wired to believe everything is a threat.
• Our brains are exquisitely tuned to the relational cues people are giving. We can’t coach, reason, teach students when they are during their anger. Biologically, it will not work.
• Being “regulated” means being in balance. Our bodies have all these systems to keep us in balance (lungs balance oxygen, for example). Our stress response systems in lower part of the brain are continually getting information from the outside and inside world. One of the major set of signals are the relational milieus, signals from people around us. When we get signals from people around us that we belong, we feel safe. When we don’t, when we feel marginalized or degraded, we feel dysregulated.
• Perry’s main message to teachers: “We must regulate first before you can have any kind of reasoning.”

 

The Pandemic’s Impact on Teachers and Students’ Mental Health

• A Center for Disease Control report states that “beginning in April 2020, the proportion of children’s mental health-related ER visits among all pediatric ER visits increased and remained elevated through October. Compared with 2019, the proportion of mental health-related visits for children aged 5-11 and 12-17 increased approximately 24% and 31% respectively.”
• The question: Will the education community and those who support it be willing to do the things to help these kids become better regulated and restore their resistance?
• This year drained the reserves of educators and children. And, there were many who started this pandemic already on empty.
• The way forward is revisiting the “sequence of engagement” – the brain as a layer cake. When the cortex is shut down and dysregulated, no matter how much we teach, won’t change what’s happening in the cortex. The first thing we must do is help kids get regulated, get back in routine.
• Pushing teachers and students when they’re dysregulated will make it worse and everyone will fall further behind.

How to Regulate?

1. Being with other people. When we’re in the presence of people with whom we belong, we feel safer. Kids need to play with each other. We need to reconnect and encourage relational interaction.
2. Take advantage of rhythm. Rhythm is a gift we have. One of the first primal sets of memories we have is the power of pattern and repetitive memory and being regulated in the womb. Let kids run, dance, play.

Signs of Trauma Teachers Can Look For?

1. Inattentiveness: Either hypervigilance or tuning out (disassociation). Both get labeled as “ADD” and students frequently end up on medications that don’t help.

Disassociation: A lot of teachers’ first thought is: “What’s wrong with this kid? I’m teaching and they are daydreaming.” However, we tend to disassociate to protect   ourselves. Usually, the first thing that shows up with people who have been traumatized is disassociation. This is a confusing presentation for educators. One of the confusing presentations of  disassociation is the student who loves reading. They go to another world. But when they attempt math – they can’t do it. Math requires linear, sequential focus and these kids are dipping in and out of focus. When a kid has all A’s in reading and D’s in math, one could think “I know you’re smart and that you can do it, but you’re choosing not to.” It’s really an example of dissociation.

2. Passivity and compliance: It’s easy for teachers to misinterpret passive and compliant students as quiet little learners who are following direction. If one looks carefully, however, the kids who are doing these compliant behaviors (not always, but often) are wanting to get the teacher to leave them alone.

How Can Our History Bring Clarity?

• Teachers often feel as if misbehavior is directed toward them. However, if students have a history of trauma, everything is fight or flight for them. A teacher’s physical nearness (such as coming up behind their desk) triggers a physical cue.
• If we teach educators about trauma and the responses, teachers can shift in the way they understand the child. Teachers no longer take it personally, but ask, “What happened to you?” and the interaction changes.
• Over the years, children have been punished, ostracized, made to feel shamed by the behavior which only makes it worse.

The Hope

• All parts of the brain are malleable, the key is actually reaching the parts of the brain with sufficient repetition to cause change.
• Children who have these early life insults and profound disabilities during development, if they also have exposure to nurturing relationships, can and will get better. It just takes time.
• “All it takes is one person who believes in you,” said Oprah. “I was saved by Miss Duncan in the fourth grade. All it takes is one person who believes in you and for a lot of children in this world that’s all they have…and that safe place is schools for most kids.”

Happy International Women’s Day! This year’s theme is “Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world” and pay equity is certainly a large part of that equation. After his 2019 fellowship attending Stanford University’s Mindset Mathematics workshop to create a positive math culture that encourages problem solving, Nate Moore (Santa Fe School for the Arts & Sciences) is using his learning and the topic of women’s pay disparity to teach math with an equitable lens. He shares his story below:

Through my original Fund for Teachers fellowship, I learned the importance of rich tasks in math class for increasing student engagement and enjoyment of math. I have extended that fellowship by participating in groups like #ClearTheAir on Twitter and the NCTM 100 webinar series. Through these professional development opportunities, I have seen that there are many great math tasks available, and even some wonderful tasks incorporating social justice; however, one of my goals as a teacher is to create more tasks that connect with issues my students and I care about.

Through last fall’s Equity Innovation Circle, I had the chance to create some rich tasks that I think are important for kids at my school to know about and that they will also care about. I am lucky to work at an amazing school where I have total control over my curriculum, and I work with incredible students every year.

I know middle schoolers are deeply aware of what’s fair and not fair. I chose to focus in on some of the specific math lessons that I teach and see if I could incorporate more issues of social justice into these lessons.

I have to say, I’m a beginner at this. I also am a believer that change can start slowly. So I decided to focus on creating a few interesting tasks involving these issues of social justice, with the goal of building up a library of these sorts of activities over time.

The first lesson I created had to do with the gender pay gap. In algebra, we often talk about “one step equations” and this topic got me thinking about how we could model and quantify the gender pay gap. I did a bunch of research and because I knew some of my students were interested in soccer, I focused some of my research on soccer; this had also been a prominent example of the gender pay gap recently. So then I had my students, over a couple of lessons, investigate some of the research with me. Using algebra, we were able to learn things about salaries that had not been directly written in the articles. We modeled the pay gap in different ways and looked at more data around gender pay gaps in other fields. I’ll reiterate that I’m a beginner at this and I’m trying to incorporate change in a way that is manageable to me as a teacher, and one area where I still have a lot to learn is in facilitating the reflection and debrief of activities like this.

Especially in math class, it is so easy to see the worksheets, the textbooks, and the standardized test questions and to think that is what math is. This fellowship showed me (and continues to show me) that math is beautiful, free, creative, interesting, useful, fun, visual, and powerful beyond my expectations. Now, I get to figure out how to share that with my students in ways that are relevant and memorable to them.

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Nate Moore is a math and science teacher at the Santa Fe School for the Arts & Sciences. He loves learning along with his students. For the past 11 years, he has strived to create engaging learning experiences for middle schoolers. Nate is especially proud of the River Warriors project, through which students have collected data and engaged in ecological restoration at the Santa Fe River since 2010.You can follow Nate’s teaching on his blog and Twitter.

In celebration of  International Women’s Day, we share the teaching of Neha Singhal (Montgomery County Public Schools, MD). In one of our more unique fellowships, Neha conducted mini-ethnographic research on the experiences of doulas and other birth workers in New Delhi, India, to increase IB Anthropology students’ understanding of fieldwork and data analysis, and to spark interest in maternal health justice in the United States. Neha exemplifies what can happen when teachers are given the trust to design experiential learning. She combined her educational background (an undergraduate degree in international business, international development and conflict management and a master’s in social justice), previous experience (work with a non-profit on the Texas/Mexico border), and a passion for women’s health to create in-depth, project based learning for students.

My high school was only the second school in our district (the largest in the state) to offer IB Social & Cultural Anthropology and has become one of the few schools in the country to offer such a course. This study, aimed at deciphering the complexities of what makes us the same and different from one another, is extremely relevant for my students who come from 30 countries and speak multiple languages. The subject also corresponds to my commitment as a teacher to develop students’ analysis of history, oppression, power, and social justice to help equip them with the tools necessary to transform themselves and their communities.

In addition to being a social studies teacher, I am also a full-spectrum doula who is trained in providing nonjudgmental support to pregnant people in all decisions and phases of their journey. I became trained in this role after watching a documentary and doing my own research on the experiences of women giving birth at hospitals. It is unacceptable that the U.S. has a steadily increasing maternal mortality rate, which is also the highest in the developed world. There is a clear need for more attention to the issue and community-based solutions, and I used my Fund for Teachers grant to accomplish both.

For one month in 2019, I conducted mini-ethnographic research on the experiences of doulas and other birth workers in New Delhi, India, to understand what challenges and opportunities they see in lowering maternal mortality rates. I chose India partly because it holds significance to me as my birthplace and because the maternal mortality rate has decreased by 22% in the country from 2011 to 2016 according to recent data. I met with individuals in hospitals and nonprofits such as Birth India to collect data through a mixed-methods approach, using both participant observation and interviews, which are two popular methods in cultural anthropology.

Conducting this fieldwork gathering and analyzing data equipped me with new primary resources that now model and support my students’ research inquiries for their IB Anthropology projects. And, undertaking fieldwork helped me become a better teacher because I intimately understand the challenges and excitement that comes with “doing anthropology.” Now that I did the work I ask of my students, I can better explain the process of collecting data and articulating analysis about social phenomena.

Students benefit tremendously when their teachers are given the time to become energized and gain new ideas and perspectives. Teachers who have been invested in, invest in their students in return! The type of learning Fund for Teachers affords allows us to engage in creative experiences that enhance our connections with ourselves and our subject areas. It is also great role-modeling for students to see that teachers are lifelong learners and continue to have passions and goals. As a result of my fellowship, I am now waiting to hear about my acceptance in a PhD program in Cultural Anthropology!

While my fellowship helps me most readily with my 11th and 12th grade IB Anthropology students, with whom I piloted a new Medical Anthropology unit introducing the subfield focused on the impact of social, cultural, and historical forces on health and illness, how illness is experienced by various communities, prevention measures, and the process of healing. However, my experiences in India also benefit my 10th grade students in my U.S. Government class, as well as my Latin American Studies elective course. In my government class we have a unit on domestic policy where I implemented a research project that allows students to pick an issue, such as maternal health, and propose a policy-based solution. Our high school also hosts a medical careers program, which trains a sizable amount of our student population to explore careers in the healthcare industry and my students now present their new learning about birth, public health, and combating maternal mortality to students in the medical careers program.

Learning about issues women face in India regarding birth and realizing how similar those are to what we see in America made me even more confident in creating a unit on maternal health justice. At some point in their lives, it is very likely that students will either know someone pregnant, be the person giving birth, and/or be the partner of someone giving birth. Being in any of these three positions warrants the knowledge of pregnancy and birth as one way to tackle the crisis of maternal mortality in the United States (as well as many other countries). This fellowship is leading to learning outcomes that:

• Help students understand a specific situation (maternal health and birth) both in a global context and in their country of residence and
• Teach the practice of using research to solve real-world problems.

By directing my Fund for Teachers grant to confronting the problem of maternal mortality, I’m positioning my students as the solutionaries of the present and future.

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Neha Singhal is a high school teacher in Maryland who has taught students in several courses: IB Anthropology, Government, U.S. History, Latin American Studies, and College/Career Prep. She has also taught various courses in Asian American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park and University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Prior to becoming an educator, Neha worked with La Union del Pueblo Entero, a grassroots immigrant justice organization at the Texas-Mexico border, where she supported organizing efforts to fight for neighborhood development, immigration reform legislation, and workers’ rights.