LEARN

The Dangers of the ​Single Story

The single story narrative, illustrated beautifully in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s story, empowers stereotypes.

​The problem with stereotypes is not that they are devoid of truth, but that they are simple and incomplete. Stereotypes make one story become the only story, stripping away one’s individuality and identity. Prejudice occurs when we form an opinion about an individual or a group based on a stereotype.

This concept of the single story helps establish the premise for the academic skills and growth mindset behind Global Education and Cagebusting Classrooms. It also serves an as essential question for our student discussion and writing.
This TED Talk can help to launch a conversation or activity into evaluating implicit bias and the need for Global Ed


​Why we are encouraged to
Discuss Race in NYC Schools?

It is critical for educators to acknowledge racial issues in order to build trust and establish a classroom as a safe space. By acknowledging the elephants are in the room, students and staff can begin to uncover personal and institutional biases that prevent all students, and especially students of color, from reaching their fullest potential.
Many of the academic problems attributed to children of color are actually the result of miscommunication, as primarily white teachers and other people’s children struggle with the imbalance of power and the dynamics plaguing our system. - Lisa Delpit, Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom
In NYC, as in much of the country, there is an imbalance in the racial and ethnic make-up of our teaching staff and student body. Race is often at the root cause of conflict inside of schools, whether it be students to student, teacher to student, or teacher to teacher.
Culturally Responsive Teaching focuses on building equity through rigor, building resilience and growth mindset. It isn’t the diversity celebration emphasized by multicultural education or the analysis of systemic oppression emphasized by social justice education.


​How are we Encouraged to
Discuss Race in NYC Schools?

Culturally Responsive Teaching & Courageous Conversations have served as professional development anchor texts for the 2018-2019 school year and provide students and staff with context and strategies to foster safe, authentic, and effective cross-racial dialogue
The 12th grade teacher team which meets for professional learning every Tuesday starts the meeting by passing around a courageous conversations question ball.
When a participant catches the ball, they answer one of the questions underneath either of their thumbs and attempt to connect their thoughts to an experience at our school and the 4Rs: Relevance, Relationships, Realness & Rigor.
In the TEACH section of the website you can see how the Four Affirmations & Courageous Conversations Compass connect to dialogue during our units of study and cage busting classroom projects


​How Do I Assess Students Growth
Around Global Competency?

In addition to my rubrics for assessing academic thinking and growth mindset, my favorite external resource for assessment is from the Educating for Global Competence: Preparing Our Youth to Engage the World.
The Global Education Checklist, above, is another great resource for educators looking to foster reflection and grow in their facilitation of Global Education


​What Digital Tools Do I Most Rely On To Develop Global Competency?

1.Google Apps For Education is the go to set of resources for helping facilitate a Cagebusting Classroom. If you visit the TEACH section you can see how my students used Google Forms to create our participatory budgeting ballot, to capture their classmates’ votes by sharing the form to students’ email address and to analyze the results of the election.

Made with Padlet
2.Padlet allows students and teachers to calibrate current events articles and share their learning. Above you can see how my students evaluate the news for media bias. Below you can see the protocols students use to participate in current events discussion circles.
3.Newspaper Map allows students to search for newspaper articles by location. Students use this resource in to prepare for their current events discussion circles. In order to foster students ability to assess multiple points of view, students must use different newspapers to analyze contemporary world events from multiple perspectives and how audience and purpose connects to point of view. Additionally, to better understand multiple perspectives connected to political ideology within America, Flipside provides article quotes on a daily issue from both conservative and liberal media.
4.iCivics. Leave it to Ruth Bader Ginsberg to collaborate on a website that contains civics games that students actually enjoy and builds academic skills. I encourage students to play at least three games, Immigration Nation, Win The White House & Be The Jury in conjunction with our three units of study.
5. Quizlet. One of the biggest academic challenges my students face is establishing contextualization in their writing quickly and concisely so they can spend more time analyzing multiple points of view and arguing a thesis. If students develop their academic vocabularies, they are more successful writers. My students use quizlet to collaboratively and competitively preview unit vocabulary in class and for individually self study. Here are links to the quizlet vocabulary for my Economics unit on: To what extent is Investment Gambling? and my Participation in Government’s unit on: To what extent should justice be left up to a jury?