OCM BOCES-Responsive Classroom® Blog: Trauma in the Souls of our Classrooms: Deeper Learning – Part 2 of 3

Last month I started a 3 part series on childhood adversities. This blog series was inspired by an individual study that I did as part of my professional development for my Responsive Classroom Certification.

The main resource we used for the study was one that I would highly recommend, Paul Tough’s book Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why (2016). You can visit Tough’s website and either buy the book or download it for free! It would make for a great professional book talk book for whole faculties to share with one another. I made so many connections with Tough’s book with the work I have done with Ruby Payne and Eric Jenson and their work on Poverty. Tough starts his book answering the question why poor children struggle in school and what to do to best respond to children who live in stress.

Teaching Social Studies = Using the News (Part 2)

In the first half of this two-part blog, I shared an article from C3 Teachers that addressed the problems that using the news creates for our students. Research and experience shows that students have a difficult time differentiating, news from commercial content, fact from fiction, real news from fake news. In this issue, I share an article that provides an idea about how to engage students in “curating” the news to determine whether news articles are important or interesting or both.

This blog is from Future of History, a blog on MiddleWeb which contains articles and resources for teaching the middle grades.

Let Your Students Curate Current Events Articles
by Sarah Cooper

One of my favorite activities to help students understand the richness of the news is also one of the simplest. I often do it at the beginning of the year, but you could do it anytime you wanted students to think more deeply about the news stories they are hearing, watching or reading.

Contemplating Race

One of the first times that I heard about microaggressions was when amendments to the Dignity for All Students Act took effect in July, 2013. While we were preparing the first version of our new certification class, I ran into the word in the required syllabus published by NYSED. Under the heading “Understanding how school climate and culture have an impact on student achievement and behavior” the syllabus states that participants will understand the relationship between harassment, bullying, cyberbullying, microaggression, marginalization, and discrimination on student achievement, attendance and dropout rates.

I remember spending a significant amount of time that summer reading about microaggressions, especially racial microaggressions.

Adults Need Closure Too

It is hard to believe that we are at the end of the school year already. And, just like with student learning, closing the learning journey with adults is important. If you are like me, I am trying to find a ways to have closure with my coachees for the school year. Here are some activities you might ask your coachee to complete in order to wrap up the school year:

Empowering Students to Become Leaders

2017 Syracuse PR/HYLI Delegation in Albany. Edward Marte, Namirely Pizarro, Greichalyz Rivera, Henrique DeLemos, Geriane Irizarry, Ilan Mizrachi, Charles Thomson, Alisandra Torres, Ashmir Zephyr Sanchez, Itamar Almanzar Perez, Karla Garcia, Naysha Rios, Omarys Rodriguez, Aruasy Barrios, Milton Estevez, Ruth Rodriguez, Gerson Casimiro-Elías.

On March 27, 2017, a bus filled with 17 sleeping juniors and seniors from districts across the Central New York region; including Syracuse, Binghamton, Utica, Ithaca, Solvay, and Whitney Point, made its way back to Syracuse from Albany. Besides the fact that they’re teenagers, what else could have made these students so exhausted? How about three days of waking up before 7:00 am and working nonstop until midnight! Despite the lack of sleep and overworked brains, the first thing out of their mouths as we said goodbye in Syracuse was, “I can’t wait till it starts again next year!”

These words were spoken by the students of the Puerto Rican/Hispanic Youth Leadership Institute (PR/HYLI) Syracuse delegation.