Three

1.  I believe a classroom needs time to be together.  Trust is so important and to build trust students need time to be together, play together, and get to know each.  Asking students to do hard work like learning about racism, they need to feel safe and know that they will be a chance for them to unwind after difficult conversation.  They need to feel cared for.  To be able to have an anti-bias classroom students need to have relationships with each other. If the goal is to teach students about the true history of the United States, there needs to be incredible trust already in place. 

In re-reading my 5 ingredients, I think this idea expands on my 5th ingredient, "great snacks and time to play" because it emphasizes the need to know each other have time to foster relationships and that happens when we're just having fun, for example lunch breaks and happy hour ;)

 

2. I believe teachers can create this sense of community by taking time to get to know their students and how they interact.  I think it’s the responsibility of the teacher to ensure students connectedness, taking the time to talk about tricky problems instead of forcing meaningless apologies, to have fun and be together as a group, and celebrate everyone’s birthday.  The assumption is that the role of teachers in society is to impart knowledge about reading, writing, history, and math, to their students and send them on their way.  But really teachers are creating a tiny society and showing their students how to be in the world.  Teachers have the ability to create kind, connected citizens through intentional community building.

 I am connecting this to my first ingredient, space to be together.  A classroom needs a place to meet together in a group where you can see everyone's faces.  Notice how three of our classes are arranged in a circle?  There's something there, there's something to that!  How are you going to learn to cook if you don't have a kitchen?  You need the space to learn how to be a community.

3.  In my classroom I value stories that are overlooked which offer an opportunity for students to delve into a curriculum steeped in social justice, allowing students to ask big questions about the history of US, who wrote it, who wasn’t included, and how to find voice that have been left behind.  We are our stories and our stories connect us.  The hardest piece of this work is asking why the oppressors did what they did and truly taking on a perspective you may disagree with.  For example, did the people who designed and worked at Native American boarding schools think that they were doing something wrong?  What about the white children who grew up on plantations?  Did they think that having slaves was racist? Teaching children to take on and hold multiple perspectives is an incredibly valuable lesson because it develops their skills as critical thinkers.  Having stories helps take on multiple perspectives because it’s a safe way to think about something new.

This is inline with my ingredient about great books.  There is nothing in the world as inspiring as a great book.  Great books give us all a chance to think from a completely different perspective and it's such a fundamental tool.  Like Lolita for example--I don't condone what Humbert did in any way, shape or form, but how fascinating to truly see inside his head like that!  What a rare opportunity and gift to be reminded that at the end of the day, we're all human and deserve to be treated that way.  There are, of course, lots of wonderful children's literature that give students the opportunity to see into other, more age appropriate minds, like Crash, Maniac Magee,  and The Green Glass Sea.