Articles

Recover from Failure with a Dose of Self-Empathy In my classroom, I encourage risk-taking and often reassure my students that making mistakes is an opportunity to learn. However, I do not always practice what I preach: like many adults, I work hard to avoid failure.   So how do we…

Dr. Thomas L. Benson, a high school principal with twenty-six years of experience as an educator, shares the simple routines that create positive relationships between everyone in the classroom.   It’s the simple routines that create positive relationships between everyone in your classroom: Make that early morning greeting the most…

Nine years ago, I wrote a short article to explain to myself what it meant to be a Responsive Classroom teacher (which you can read in its entirety below). Here are some thoughts I have now as I revisit these ideas through the lens of my experience teaching since then,…

Most people can recall at least one instance in which a teacher showed caring and kindness toward them at just the right moment in their lives. For me, it was my third grade teacher, Ms. Reese. Third grade was an especially difficult year for me, and Ms. Reese was a…

Growing up, I always looked forward to Black History Month at my public school in New York City. My teachers taught lessons about Black people who made notable contributions to our country. We sang spirituals that my ancestors sang and recited works from great writers such as Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn…

Centering equity and justice in my teaching practice has taken time and even caused moments of intense self-doubt and feelings of failure. Sometimes these feelings of doubt come from the sense that the process of creating equity needs to be complex and deep. But over the years, I’ve found that…

Black History Month is a critical time to acknowledge the systemic oppression and racism that Black people have experienced in this country while also celebrating their incredible contributions to American history and society. Heritage months were established to honor cultures that otherwise went ignored or underappreciated. However, observances like Black…

For students to belong and feel significant, they need to feel seen for who they really are and get the sense that they can be their authentic selves. Crucially, seeing students for who they are includes recognizing and valuing their cultural identity. Having their culture embraced by their community is…

Recently there has been discussion in our education ranks about how students have not had an uninterrupted school year for over eighteen months. The disruption started at the end of the 2019–2020 school year, and we are still not back to normal. Yet we’ve persevered and continued creating highly engaging…

Julie Kelly and Kirsten Howard are Responsive Classroom consulting teachers and contributing authors for the forthcoming Empowering Educators series (Julie worked on Empowering Educators for Grades 3, 4, 5; Kirsten worked on Empowering Educators for Grades K, 1, 2). For these new resources, both authors wrote about the importance of…

  Empowering Adults to Support Each Other at the Beginning of a New School Year:  A Conversation with Authors Emily Parrelli and Lisa Dewey Wells   Emily Parrelli and Lisa Dewey Wells are Responsive Classroom consulting teachers and contributing authors for the forthcoming Empowering Educators series (Emily worked on Empowering…

  In the first week of my teaching career, I had a colleague say to me, “You get only one chance to start the year off in a good place – if it starts off wrong, it will stay wrong.” As a new teacher, this statement really impacted me. I…

In July, the school is quiet. The daily stream of buses has stopped rolling in. Students, educators, and families have signed off from final Zoom meetings. July is a month for every member of the community to take a collective deep breath, soak in the warmth of the sun, and…

I recently had the opportunity to reconnect with educators I worked with at the school where I began my teaching career. Many of them came straight from productive days in their various current school assignments, and everyone had a lot to share. One teacher showed pictures from a science experiment…

  All of us, students and teachers alike, approach the end of the school year with a wide variety of feelings. Just as teachers might be feeling burned out right now, it is normal for kids to be exhausted and disengaged in the final stretch. The end of the year…

The past year has added so many additional stressors on educators: virtual teaching, juggling teaching formats, and wearing masks, to name a few. Teachers must find ways to manage stress to avoid emotional and physical exhaustion. Book clubs, fitness classes, eating healthy, and getting enough sleep all help teachers recharge…

Cultural relevance can be defined as empowering students to maintain cultural integrity while succeeding academically. Culturally responsive teachers and leaders are reflective and gain a deeper understanding of themselves and how they impact others, leading to more cohesive and productive academic and social-emotional development for all students. The connection between…

Picture this: you are in a stressful situation – a really heated moment – and out of your mouth slips a sentence or two that you instantly regret. We’ve all experienced times like this, when our mouth was faster than the filter in our brains, and we ended up saying…

How can we encourage all our students to talk and participate in school each day, with an emphasis on empowering Black and other traditionally marginalized voices? How can we be culturally responsive with the methods and styles of communication in our classrooms?  Who Makes the Rules? As a White educator…

Reflective teaching is an important tool in helping you examine your role as an educator in order to both celebrate and sharpen the value you bring to teaching. Fundamentally, reflective teaching is about looking at what you do in your classroom, thinking about why you do it, and considering whether…

This time last year, I published an article titled “Building a Positive Community Through Reflection.” The article began with excitement for the start of a new year and a new decade. Little did I know that the way we deliver education was about to change drastically just a few months…

Helping students create a habit of reflection is an essential step in teaching them how to establish and maintain self-control. But sometimes teachers with positive intentions inadvertently ask questions around reflection that add a layer of shame. For example:  “Think about your work today. What could you have done to…

Ever since March 23, 2020, when the school where I work, Steel City Academy, transitioned to virtual learning, I’ve found myself constantly asking what education will look like moving forward. This school year, the majority of students at Steel City Academy are still learning virtually (a small percentage of students…

The excitement of a new school year generally greets me in a place of confident anticipation. Like the edge pieces of a newly begun jigsaw puzzle, cherished September routines provide a familiar boundary as I await the colorful scene that will take shape within. My knowledge and experience provide comfort…

Along with new structures and strategies teachers are employing in response to the multitude of changes to their teaching environments, the beginning of this school year is defined by the conversations across the country regarding social justice issues. Middle school students are going to want to have rich, deep conversations…

In early 2018 I presented my first Responsive Classroom course at the American School of Bombay (ASB) in Mumbai, India. This independent day school follows a college preparatory curriculum that supports an American Diploma or an International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma for grades K-12. During that time I met Casey Faulknall, middle school…