Poetry Month Activity-Help students share cultural identity

Getting to Know Each Other: Celebrating Students' Cultural Heritage
Check out this lesson, inspired by George Ella Lyons' poem, 'I Am From'. The format of this poem is accessible to a range of ages and learning styles. Students can invoke ordinary sights, sounds, smells, from their lives to paint a vivid picture of their family and cultural identity.
Sharing your own writing in genres that you assign to students can build trust and show students you are willing to take the same academic risks you are asking them to take. In addition, it can be a great way to model the process, including your struggles and strategies.

Instruction begins when you, the teacher, learn from the learner; put yourself in his place so that you may understand . . . what he learns and the way he understands it. Soren Kierkegaard

http://www.scholastic.com/dreamincolor/pdfs/TeachWiththePoster.pdf

FREE Resources for teachers!!

Teaching Tolerance is a wonderful resource for free teaching kits and unit/lesson plans for all ages on a range of social justice/ social emotional themes. For example, the award-winning video on Bullying is accompanied by an extensive viewing guide and standards-based lesson-plans.
On the Teaching Tolerance website, you can search by subject area or grade level. Materials are free, with a limit of one per school. These are high-quality materials, with engaging content across the curriculum. Perhaps most importantly, they address critical issues that all of us have to address while meeting our students' academic needs.

Other titles: Mighty Times: The Children's March, Mighty Times: The Legacy of Rosa Parks, Viva La Causa (Cesar Chavez).



Please come back and comment on any kits that you have used and how these may have been helpful in your classroom.



Teacher Spotlight on Resources:
Diala, 2nd-year UNITE teacher found some much-needed FREE books at SCARCE in Glen Ellen.

"I got 70 copies of Lord of the Flies and 36 brand new Writers Inc Student Handbooks. The place is amazing. If you are a teacher you can pick up whatever they have for free!"
Diala, 2nd-year UNITE teacher

Check it out or send one colleague with your wish list.
Thanks, Diala!
http://www.bookrescue.org/books/default.asp?page=Boverview

Social Justice Planbook: Check this Out!!

Planning to Change the World
A Plan Book for Social Justice Teachers
by Tara Mack, Bree Picower

Planning to Change The World: A Planbook for Social Justice Teachers 2010-2011 from Social Justice Planbook on Vimeo.

Social Justice Resources FREE!!

YES! is a national ad-free quarterly magazine published by the Positive Futures Network, an independent, nonprofit organization. We honor classroom teachers and faculty for informing and inspiring the next generation.

Thanks to the generosity of YES! donors, we are able to provide middle and high school classroom teachers, college faculty, and homeschool resource center instructors with a one-year introductory subscription at no cost.

If you qualify for this offer and are interested in a magazine with positive, solution-oriented stories about environmental sustainability, economic and social justice and peace, simply complete the form below and click “Submit.” We are able to provide only a limited number of subscriptions each year, so apply soon. As a subscriber, you will automatically receive our Education Connection newsletter.

* * * * * PRE-REGISTER BY NOVEMBER 20th! * * * * *

6th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON
TEACHER EDUCATION AND SOCIAL JUSTICE:

Reframing Race, Gender, and Teacher-Education Policy

Dates: 5-6 December 2009
Location: University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), U.S.A.

Co-Sponsors:
Center for Anti-Oppressive Education
Department of Educational Policy Studies, UIC
Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy, UIC

hat does it mean to prepare teachers to teach toward social justice? Across the United States and around the world, educators face many challenges. Especially troublesome are the economic, social, and political contexts that make difficult our attempts to address differences and oppressions in schools and society. Yet, in the face of these challenges, teacher educators are continuing to produce significant theories, practices, and coalitions. The largest conference to date, the 6th International Conference on Teacher Education and Social Justice will offer rare opportunities to discuss cutting-edge research, develop innovative resources, build networks, and explore possibilities for new directions in teacher preparation. The Conference draws together hundreds of educators from around the world with diverse experiences but with shared commitments and priorities, including scholars from Australia, Canada, Chad, Chile, India, Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Palestine, Uganda, and across the United States.

** Special Note** The Conference Organizers are pleased to announce that registration is free for the 6th International Conference on Teacher Education and Social Justice. All participants must pre-register for the conference by November 20th. Space is limited, and on-site registration will not be available, so please pre-register early. Participants are responsible for their own transportation, lodging, and meals. CAOE does not issue letters of invitation to participants from outside of the United States.

http://antioppressiveeducation.org/2009conference.html

Curriculum Fair Basics - FAQs 1) What happens at the Curriculum Fair? For those who don't know...The Curriculum Fair is like a Science or History Fair, except teachers “exhibit” their curriculum oriented toward social justice, we have a keynote speaker and a number of workshops (and food!), and hundreds of like-minded people gather and learn with each other. 2) What does it mean to "exhibit" curriculum at the CF? Each teacher gets a 6-foot long table at the Fair to set up her/his materials. Many teachers exhibit curriculum by bringing a tri-fold board (like those science fair boards) and bring lesson or unit plans, student work, assignments, artifacts, video, whatever, to share their curriculum ideas. Many bring their students along who sit at the table and explain the work with their teachers. The CF is set up so that we can browse the “exhibits,” talk with each other, and share lessons. 3) Does the curriculum have to be a finished, perfect product to exhibit? Is there such a thing? The whole point of the CF is to recognize that teachers collectively produce knowledge about, for example, how to teach for SJ, and that we have much to learn from each other. There are no blueprints here, and we can learn from our mutual experiences. We stronglyencourage teachers to share work “in progress” and to give and get feedback from others in order to further develop our collective understanding of what teaching for SJ means in theory and practice. Sometimes people may feel that their work is somehow not yet “there,” and our view is that the CF is as good a place as any to strengthen it. It has been our shared experience that both exhibitors and non-exhibiting attendees have learned much from participating in the fair. 4) What are the workshops? Although the main focus of the CF is person-to-person contact through the exhibitors at their tables, we also have a limited number of one-hour workshops. These range from curricular innovations about SJ pedagogy to, for example, using multicultural children's literature. These provide more in-depth, interactive ways for teachers and students to present what they’ve been learning and doing in their classrooms.

Getting to Know Each Other: Celebrating Students' Cultural Heritage

Check out this lesson, inspired by George Ella Lyons' poem, 'I Am From'. The format of this poem is accessible to a range of ages and learning styles. Students can invoke ordinary sights, sounds, smells, from their lives to paint a vivid picture of their family and cultural identity.

Sharing your own writing in genres that you assign to students can build trust and show students you are willing to take the same academic risks you are asking them to take. In addition, it can be a great way to model the process, including your struggles and strategies.

Instruction begins when you, the teacher, learn from the learner; put yourself in his place so that you may understand . . . what he learns and the way he understands it. Soren Kierkegaard

http://www.scholastic.com/dreamincolor/pdfs/TeachWiththePoster.pdf