Tag: Equity

Categories
SEL Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Creating Brave Space

Brave Space
Makwa Grizzly Bear. Public collection Canadian Native Centre of Toronto

Brave

… from the root work for bold, courageous, untamed, savage. It’s interesting we use the term BRAVO when we are cheering someone on.

To the Anishinaabe, bravery is one of the seven teachings of our grandfathers.

Zoongidi’ewin – Courage or Aakwa’ode’ewin – Bravery is represented as the bear. The Bear carries courage. We seek the strength and courage to face our greatest enemy-oneself. The bear will give us the understanding to seek resolutions through spiritual intervention: hence, spiritual healing to deal with anger, pain and ourselves.

To be brave means you seek to apply your spiritual truths to your life, in order to assist you in growth and transformation.

To face life with courage is to know bravery. Find your inner strength to face the difficulties of life and the courage to be yourself. Defend what you believe in and what is right for your community, family, and self. Face your fears to allow yourself to live your life.

Brave Space

Social Emotional Learning

Bravery plays a big part in social emotional learning. The five competencies of SEL are self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.

Considering that courage and bravery play a big role in our own self-awareness. Cultivating a brave space makes complete sense to supporting our social emotional learning skills.

Brave space is also recognizing the wholeness of our experiences. That we have wounds and traumas that do not always feel good, comfortable or safe.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

A brave space is a space where participants feel comfortable learning, sharing, and growing. It is inclusive to all races, sexes, genders, abilities, immigration status, and lived experiences. This is something we should strive for in all our experiences where we interact with one another. Leading towards a more inclusive way to insure all voices are heard and everyone is seen.

Living a life where we are unafraid to be who we are and share our stories with one another, is the only way to true peace and harmony.

Consider using the term brave space over safe space, and comment to let me know what you think about the difference.

Categories
Education Diversity, Equity & Inclusion SEL

Maryland Cultural Proficiency Conference 2022

cultural

What is Cultural Proficiency?

Cultural proficiency is the result of finding out what makes us feel valued. It is responsiveness. The ability to find out what someone needs… to feel valued, seen, and heard.

The ultimate goal of each of us is to feel valued and be appreciated for who we are. Being seen by others is a huge reason why we do things, and is a result of the things we do.

When we come into a situation with breath first, we are more open to being genuine and authentic. This is a culture of care, one that supports accountability and humility. Working to align our inner voice to our goals in order to support the work. The vision must be at the center of what we do each day.

What is the GOAL of our existence?

What is it that we do what we do for… what do we want to build, create, share, express, learn, experience?

I believe when we begin questioning ourselves in such ways, it leads to deep self reflection and self awareness. It leads to building community and creating innovative experiences for the good of all. When we being to spend time aligning ourselves with our vision, then we are able to connect to one another on a deeper level.

MCPC

I was invited to the Maryland Cultural Proficiency Conference in October, at Morgan State University. It was my first time at the conference and visiting Morgan State. The conference theme was A Reckoning: Equity, Consciousness, & Healing.

The presentations that I attended and speakers I saw were fantastic. There was a diversity that reiterated what the conference is about equity, diversity, and inclusion, and social emotional learning.

Climate of Mutual Respect

When Dr. Amer F. Ahmed spoke he shared his journey and the experiences that lead him to arrive on our stage. He shared that we must create climates of mutual respect that consists of self-awareness, empathy, tolerance for ambiguity, flexibility in thoughts and behaviors, patience, curiosity, and active listening.

This reminded me of the Seven Teachings of our Anishinaabe grandfathers; Love, Trust, Humility, Honesty, Bravery, Courage, & Wisdom.

Culturally Responsive Curriculum

This presentation was on ways we can incorporate more culturally relevant articles, materials, and learning into our curriculum. Attending this presentation opened my eyes up to new ways to incorporate different cultures into my art classroom. Simple things like teaching my students something about my culture, such as how to say hello in Anishinaabe. We need to normalize multiple perspectives!

Positive Schools Center

The presentation by the Positive Schools Center was perfect. We participated in practices we are being asked to use with our students. We sat in a circle and started with a welcoming ritual. Then we shared something we needed. This presentation was so inspiring and helpful in getting a handle on how I can implement more meaningful interactions with my students.

Revolutionary-Ed

Lead with vision, integrity and passion says Dr. Gregory C. Hutchens Jr. He shared with us highlights from his book, Getting into Good Trouble at School. Six things we can do to achieve diversity, equity and inclusion in the classroom:

  1. Know your history
  2. Commit to racial equity
  3. Eliminate de-facto segrigation
  4. Differentiation, discipline vs. policy.
  5. Engaging in strategic thinking and planning
  6. Display courageous bold leadership.

Adult SEL

During the conference, we were treated to mindful moments, chair massage, reflexology, great food, and time to socialize. This is vital during any professional development as it assists with practicing what we are preaching. How do we want and deserve to be treated, and how do our students?

I have gained so much from this conference. I am excited to bring the knowledge back to my classroom and to my professional learning communities!

Categories
Education Art

Connected Arts Network 2022

In March I applied for a Connected Arts Network (CAN) Teacher Leader position, and was accepted into the program. I will be part of a virtual, nationwide Professional Learning Community (PLC). Over the course of five years, I will learn and collaborate with other visual arts educators, gaining resources to positively impact your students.

Arts educators are expected to increase their self-efficacy in and use of practices that incorporate equity, diversity, and inclusion; social-emotional learning; and leadership in their standards-based arts instruction. For students, this will lead to improvement in their expression of their identities, cultural backgrounds, and beliefs; understanding of their peers’ artworks and processes; and knowledge of the societal, historical, and cultural context of artworks.

Connected Arts Networks

What is CAN?

CAN stands for Connected Arts Network.

The National Art Education Association (NAEA), in partnership with the Educational Theater Association (EdTA), the National Association for Music Education (NAfME), and the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO) is launching Connected Arts Networks (CAN), a five-year grant initiative to create nationwide virtual Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) with educators in visual arts, music, theater, dance and media arts. The overarching vision for CAN is to build a sustainable model of professional learning for arts educators to strengthen their pedagogy, instruction and leadership skills in order to better serve students. This project is modeled after the successful structure of the PLC program in New York City, initiated by the Office of Arts and Special Projects (OASP), another partnering organization.

https://www.arteducators.org/news/articles/839-connected-arts-networks

As a Teacher Leader I will receive specialized virtual training to build my capacity to address Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion and Social-Emotional Learning within arts education. After year two, I will facilitate my own virtual PLC of arts educators of my same art discipline and student grade levels.

I am very excited about this opportunity and feel this is the beginning to something big.

Overall goals of the project

  • To develop highly effective arts educators, building their capacity to address ED&I and SEL in their standards-based arts instruction through sustained, intensive, and job-embedded blended professional learning.
  • To develop a local and national cadre of Teacher Leaders in the arts by building their content knowledge and leadership skills in order to expand the impact of arts learning for students and their communities.
  • To develop accessible arts-based instructional materials, strategies, and toolkits to disseminate to arts educators nationwide, including synchronous and asynchronous professional development programs and digital resources.

Equity, Diversity & Inclusion

  • Diversity is where everyone is invited to the art studio
  • Inclusion means that everyone gets to contribute to the artwork
  • Equity means that everyone has the opportunity to explore

These there aspects of the human journey are great to consider when collaborating and co-creating. To me they are no brainers, to create a world we all desire… we must encourage all people to find their self expression and support their journey to that the best way we can. For the Connected Arts Network teachers, we will be supporting through resources, workshops and sharing our stories.

Social Emotional Learning

Social-emotional learning (SEL) is the process of developing the self-awareness, self-control, and interpersonal skills that are vital for school, work, and life success.

Creativity is the number one way to assist in developing self-awareness and self-actualization. Interpersonal skills are developed through creative expression as well. When a person shares their stories with another, they are learning about themselves through a new perspective while teaching the other person something new as well.

We are all Connected

I am so excited to be apart of the Connected Arts Network, and to be able to have a platform to share my stories, ideas and experiences so that others might come to a place where they feel safe to fully express themselves.

So far we have had one meeting with each arts network: Visual Arts, Music, Dance and Theater. It was so inspiring to be with such amazing art educators!