Educators implement effective planning, instruction, assessment and reporting practices to create respectful, inclusive environments for student learning and development.
The lesson, “It’s Okay to be Different”
Reading the book, “It’s Okay to be Different” nicely set the stage to begin conversations on one’s identity. Quickly and intuitively, students began making the connection to themselves and to each other, critically thinking of how and why we are different. Having the students design their own identity though foam silhouettes allowed an abundance of creativity where they fully realized that although we are all different, we do have similarities. This set the stage for starting to create their tree, the tree that represents their identity through this phrase: “My branch is my tree, my tree is myself, this is what is important about myself.” It is them that I showed the students my tree.
They were so amazed with my tree, asking to please make sure that they would create their own tree just like mine. Throughout the lessons, I have found it immensely helpful to go through the activities myself prior to the lesson and sharing my product with the students. It acted to energize them, seeing what they will create. I saw lots of smiles during those components of my lessons.
“It’s Okay to be Different” and “My Tree – Me and My Happy Place” provided for a respectful classroom environment – inclusive of everyone, their identities, their trees, and their happy places.
As a teacher, I will always strive to
- Â meet my students where they are at
- implement long range planning and unit planning in an authentic way so my students can track their own progress and growth
- provide my students endless opportunities to experience hands on, experiential, place, and social emotional learning
- create a learning environment that is safe, inclusive and allows for creativity and curiosity at the center of the learning
- be a reflective and reflexive practitioner continuing to write my reflections after each lesson which gives me such a great perspective on how each lesson went and how it could have been improved