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TALE ACADEMY CATALOG - EXPLORE BY SESSION

Explore all 7 modules and 58 sessions in the TALE Academy and enroll in modules or sessions that meet your professional learning needs. Click here to learn more about each module.

You can filter the TALE sessions by specific modules or tags to customize your learning.

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Module 1

Session

1

From Emergency Remote Teaching to Teaching Across Learning Environments

Before we can implement TALE, we need to shift our mindsets about remote, hybrid, and in-person teaching. In this session, we explore the difference between emergency remote teaching (ERT), which defined teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic, and teaching across learning environments (TALE) as a sustainable approach. Key to this mindset shift is adopting resilient design for learning (RDL), which guides teachers to develop learning experiences that are extensible, flexible, and redundant.

mindset, emergency remote teaching, resilient design for learning

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Module 1

Session

2

The 4 Constants Across Learning Environments

During the pandemic, we became more aware than ever of the inequities within and across our educational systems. In this session, we focus on addressing this issue within the classroom. We explore four components of an equity-centered, trauma-informed classroom: predictability, flexibility, connection, and empowerment. We then look at how we can build TALE practices that are grounded in those four components.

equity, trauma

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Module 1

Session

3

Building Classroom Community Across Learning Environments

When we shift across learning environments – remote, hybrid, in-person – we also have to shift our practices for building and sustaining community. In this session, we explore ways to build community through the eight phases of instruction that take place regardless of the learning environment. How can you translate your effective practices from in-person teaching to remote or hybrid teaching? And how can you integrate practices from remote or hybrid teaching to more effectively build community in person?

community, culture

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Module 1

Session

4

Engaging Students Anywhere

How do we engage students across learning environments? It begins with a shift from thinking about engagement as something students demonstrate to something students experience. This shift moves us away from looking for behaviors, affect, and cognitive outcomes and toward emerging signs, such as attraction, persistence, and delight. Once we make this shift, we can explore design strategies to generate student engagement in traditional in-person classrooms and across remote and hybrid learning environments.

engagement, instructional strategies

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Module 1

Session

5

Planning for Instruction Across Learning Environments

In this session, we explore five instructional design practices that should inform teaching across learning environments. We then look at three strategies that teachers can use to build solid instructional plans that work across those learning environments: (1) essential questions, (2) backward design, and (3) universal design for learning. These three strategies connect us to Session 1 and resilient design for learning (RDL), as the three strategies align with the three practices of RDL: (1) extensibility, (2) flexibility, and (3) redundancy.

planning, instructional strategies, universal design for learning

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Module 1

Session

6

Excellent Teaching Happens Everywhere

Continuity of learning, a phrase we heard throughout the pandemic, is about the continuity of effective practices regardless of the physical learning environment. We describe these kinds of practices that are effective across learning environments as being portable. In Session 6, we explore three portable practices: (1) academic conversations, (2) checks for understanding, and (3) community-building circles.

continuity of learning, instructional strategies, community-building circles

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Module 1

Session

7

Teaching with Technology

As of June 2022, there were 9,575 edtech startups in the United States, more than 520,000 educational apps available for use by teachers and learners, and a Google search of “educational apps” tallied more than 9.35 billion results. Integrating all of this edtech into our classrooms can be challenging, as there is little time for training on and trying out technologies before they go “live.” In this session, we explore two frameworks for implementing technology that are teaching-centered, meaning that teaching guides technology use rather than the other way around.

technology, instructional strategies

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Module 1

Session

8

Shifting with Family Partners

In this session, we focus on building partnerships with families, regardless of the learning environment. We return to the four constants across learning environments that we discussed in Session 2 but from the perspective of building strong partnerships with families. We explore strategies to integrate predictability, flexibility, connection, and empowerment into communications, interactions, and collaborations with parents. And we explore them as strategies that can be used across learning environments.

partnership, family, communication

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Module 1

Session

9

Designing Meaningful Assessments

In Session 4, we learned about different ways to engage students across learning environments: how to motivate students to do their work, be proactive, and ask questions. In this session, we take that a step further and discuss how to provide guidance to students and give them feedback that motivates and leads to student-centered learning and investment in their work. We explore how to leverage that student investment to fuel authentic assessments. We then look at how to ensure those authentic assessments are viable across all learning environments.

feedback, student-centered, assessment

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Module 1

Session

10

Reflection and Continuous Improvement

Our hard work and reflection throughout the nine sessions of this module can serve as a springboard for our professional growth. In this session, we explore how to take the knowledge and skills we have acquired to think critically about the teaching practices we would like to adopt or adapt so that our students stay engaged, active, and successful across all learning environments. Specifically, we engage in reflective practice to consider the possible changes we might like to implement in our teaching based on what we have learned.

professional growth, reflection

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Module 2

Session

1

What Is CRSE and Why Does It Matter When Teaching Across Learning Environments?

We start this module by looking at how we can teach the whole student by understanding their cultural identities and creating student-centered learning environments. Using CRSE both as a lens and as a vehicle and leveraging the New York State CRSE Framework, we can reframe practices in ways that help us better connect with students and maximize their learning to improve social, emotional, and academic outcomes.

mindset, emergency remote teaching, resilient design for learning, culturally responsive-sustaining

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Module 2

Session

2

Cultivating Welcoming and Affirming Communities Across Learning Environments

Does your classroom embrace the four elements of a welcoming and affirming community? This session explores these elements and discusses strategies we can leverage in physical or virtual classrooms to help students feel a sense of belonging. This session helps us cultivate learning environments that ensure students feel safe, free to be themselves, valued, and connected to the classroom community.

equity, trauma, culturally responsive-sustaining

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Module 2

Session

3

A Seat at the Table: Student-Centered Approaches to Engage and Empower

As teachers, our job is to engage and empower students while fostering growth mindsets. In this session, we explore student-centered approaches that set a high bar for learning across learning environments. We also explore how backward design can allow for authentic student-centered engagement. The session concludes by exploring how we can help students develop a sense of ownership related to what they learn.

community, culture, culturally responsive-sustaining

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Module 2

Session

4

Putting Relationships First

Our relationships with students are essential to their learning experiences – we need to know our students before we teach them. This session begins by exploring the importance of building these positive relationships with students, including knowing, understanding, and valuing their cultural contexts. We then explore the three foundations of building culturally responsive and sustaining relationships and conclude with ideas on how teachers can empower students as the authors of their own learning.

engagement, instructional strategies, culturally responsive-sustaining

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Module 2

Session

5

Developing Sociopolitical Consciousness

Leveraging youth participatory action research (YPAR) as part of instructional design is one way to help students develop their own sociopolitical consciousness. The session shares nine steps of effective YPAR and questions students can ask themselves if they want to be changemakers in our society. These practices help students develop their own sociocultural responsiveness while creating learning opportunities that resonate with them emotionally and intellectually.

youth participatory action research, sociopolitical consciousness, culturally responsive-sustaining

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Module 2

Session

6

Culturally Responsive Assessment Practices

We can’t just change the way we teach and engage with students; we also must transform the way we assess learning. This session introduces culturally responsive authentic assessments, sharing examples of how we can adapt current practices to create CRSE-aligned assessments. In this session, we learn strategies for assessing student learning across environments and questions we can ask to identify, discuss, and dismantle implicit bias in assessments. The session concludes with ideas on how we can implement more equitable grading practices that are grounded in CRSE principles.

culturally responsive-sustaining

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Module 2

Session

7

Curriculum as Catalyst: Selecting Culturally Responsive Content

We continue exploring CRSE by examining how teachers can select culturally responsive content across learning environments to foster 21st-century skills. This session provides thoughts on how to develop a CRSE curriculum and how to check for representation, intersectionality, critique and challenge, and avoiding trauma. It concludes with a set of questions we can use when designing a curriculum, strategies for portability across in-person, remote, and hybrid environments, and thoughts on how to elevate student voice and choice in the learning process.

curriculum, trauma, culturally responsive-sustaining

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Module 2

Session

8

CRSE in the Home: Inviting Families into the Learning Process

As we conclude Module 2, we explore how teachers can partner with families to better support their students and involve families and caregivers in the learning process. It looks at obstacles to family engagement and how CRSE-aligned practices can help mitigate these challenges, including how to make these practices portable across learning environments. This session concludes with helpful questions to consider when leveraging family engagement strategies and how the digital divide and digital literacy can impede family engagement.

family, partnership, engagement, digital literacy, culturally responsive-sustaining

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Module 3

Session

1

Inclusion Across Learning Environments

Serving students with disabilities starts with inclusion in the classroom. This session begins with New York State’s Blueprint for Improved Results for Students with Disabilities, focusing on two principles for general and special education teachers that are key to improving results for our students with disabilities. We then explore the components of an inclusive classroom and the necessity of fostering beliefs and attitudes of positive orientation to inclusion, a strong sense of self-efficacy, and growth mindsets to help develop truly inclusive classrooms.

students with disabilities, inclusion

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Module 3

Session

2

Universal Design for Learner Variability Across Learning Environments

Educating all students calls for the practice of universal design for learning (UDL) to account for learner variability in our classrooms and create meaningful, challenging learning opportunities for all students. UDL challenges us to reframe our thinking related to learning barriers by focusing on the three domains of UDL — engagement, representation, and action and expression. This session provides guidelines on how to implement UDL within our classrooms, questions to ask ourselves about student engagement, and examples of learner variability in action.

students with disabilities, universal design for learning, learner variability

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Module 3

Session

3

Accessibility Across Learning Environments

An inclusive classroom ensures accessibility across all parts of the curriculum and learning environment, from educational materials to assistive technologies. This session introduces four key content development principles that help ensure learning materials are accessible — is your content perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust? We also explore scenarios that help us see how planning for accessible learning can be portable across learning environments. The session concludes with the importance of explicit instructions as part of making content accessible, a topic that will be further discussed in Session 7.

students with disabilities, inclusion, curriculum, accessibility

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Module 3

Session

4

High-Leverage Practices Across Learning Environments

We learn in Session 4 that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel — a set of 22 high-leverage practices (HLPs) for general and special education teachers shows us how to support all students’ learning. These practices fall into four categories: collaboration, assessment, social emotional behavior supports, and instruction. Understanding HLPs helps us become flexible problem-solvers able to overcome barriers across learning environments and open up new opportunities for teaching and learning.

students with disabilities, high-leverage practices

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Module 3

Session

5

Flexible Grouping Across Learning Environments

In this session, we take a deeper look at the high-leverage practice (HLP) of flexible grouping to foster an inclusive learning environment. We unpack what we mean — and don’t mean — by flexible grouping, how it can be implemented in our classrooms, and how it benefits all students, regardless of ability. We explore a series of questions that help us plan for flexible grouping across learning environments.

students with disabilities, high-leverage practices, planning, grouping

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Module 3

Session

6

Progress for ALL Students: Scaffolded Supports Across Learning Environments

This session brings the adage “There’s more than one way to learn how to ride a bike” into our classrooms through the high-leverage practice (HLP) of scaffolded supports — a learning process that is transparent, flexible, chunked, and within the control of the learner. We revisit how backward design helps us identify barriers to learning and how we can supercharge our scaffolds by digitizing educational materials. We explore how to implement scaffolded supports using gradual release of responsibility and moving our content from passive to active to interactive.

students with disabilities, high-leverage practices, scaffolding

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Module 3

Session

7

Explicit Instruction: Showing and Telling Across Learning Environments

A recipe can easily turn sour when a step or ingredient is missing, and so can our instructional plans. Paying careful attention to the high-leverage practice (HLP) of explicit instruction helps our students with disabilities through well-developed directives for each learning task. Baking this practice into classrooms includes purposeful and meaningful descriptions, the 16 elements of explicit instructions, and step-by-step instructions resulting in your final masterpiece learning experience. This session also includes a few twists on old recipes to help us embrace explicit instruction as part of instructional planning.

students with disabilities, high-leverage practices, planning, explicit instruction

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Module 3

Session

8

Collaborating to Support Specially Designed Instruction

Collaboration between general and special education teachers is a hallmark of inclusive classrooms. This session starts by defining specially designed instruction (SDI) and the critical partnership of our teaching teams to serve the needs of students with disabilities while maintaining high expectations for their progress. We then explore how SDI intersects with universal design for learning (UDL), high-leverage practices (HLPs), and teaching across learning environments to foster student success. Module 3 concludes by helping us build our skills and capacity for collaboration with our colleagues.

students with disabilities, collaboration, inclusion, specially designed instruction, universal design for learning, high-leverage practices

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Module 4

Session

1

Equitable Instruction for ELLs

New York classrooms serve more than 2.5 million English language learners (ELLs) with more than 150 home languages. This session shows us how to embrace welcoming and affirming linguistic diversity by first understanding the road to proficiency for our ELL students. We introduce the Blueprint for English Language Learner (ELL)/Multilingual Learner (MLL) Success and explore how we can shift our mindsets to honor and utilize our students’ linguistic diversity and foster equity across learning environments.

equity, english language learners

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Module 4

Session

2

Leveraging ELLs’ Home Languages

This session starts by exploring the experiences of a student that has immigrated to a Chinese-speaking country and explores the scaffolds they might need as a Chinese language learner, including how to leverage their home language as an essential practice in their language acquisition. We revisit the Blueprint for English Language Learner (ELL)/Multilingual Learner (MLL) Success, this time focusing on Principle #1, which asserts that we are all teachers of ELL and MLL students and must plan accordingly to ensure their success. The session concludes by demonstrating Principle #1 in action and sharing key takeaways for your classroom.

home languages, scaffolding, english language learners

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Module 4

Session

3

Using Translanguaging to Create Equitable Access to Instruction

In this session, we explore translanguaging – the language practices of bilingual people – as an instructional strategy proven to effectively teach content and language to English language learners (ELLs). We see how this practice can be applied in the classroom to differentiate learning according to each ELLs’ individual progress in learning English. We also look at instructional strategies that support translanguaging and tools you can use across learning environments. Through this session, we will explore multiple pathways for students to use their linguistic repertoire as a strategy for learning grade-level content.

equity, accessibility, translanguaging, english language learners

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Module 4

Session

4

Using Comprehensible Input to Make Lessons More Accessible to ELLs

The concept of comprehensible input helps us make content “just right” for English language learners (ELLs). This session shares how we can add additional context to learning materials through physical objects, gestures, and visuals to make lessons more comprehensible based on students’ proficiency levels. Through the examples shared in this session, a set of questions to use during lesson planning, and ideas on how to make your lessons more comprehensible, we will be better prepared to support ELLs to achieve proficiency across learning environments.

comprehensible input, accessibility, english language learners

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Module 4

Session

5

Equitable Assessment Practices for ELLs

Being able to assess what students know is critical to our work as teachers. This session supports us in creating equitable assessments for English language learners (ELLs) by exploring how we can modify our existing methods to effectively gauge the learning of our ELLs. In embracing the mindset shift to use students’ home languages to assess understanding, we can more accurately determine what ELLs know. We conclude this session with ideas on how to offer equitable assessments to ELLs through a variety of methods across learning environments.

equity, english language learners

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Module 4

Session

6

Supporting the Oral Language Participation of ELLs

As teachers of both content and language, we know that deliberate planning for the oral language production of our English language learners (ELLs) is crucial. This session introduces practices that enable us to scaffold discussions and use translanguaging supports to aid ELLs as speakers in our classrooms. We learn that by encouraging translanguaging – and scaffolding language demands – ELLs leverage their entire linguistic repertoire to engage meaningfully in grade-level academic content as they learn the language. We leave this session with tools to apply these concepts in our classrooms.

oral language, scaffolding, translanguaging, english language learners

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Module 4

Session

7

Supporting the Written Language of ELLs

Now that we’ve gained tools to help us support English language learners (ELLs) in developing speaking and listening skills, we’ll examine how to support the written language of ELLs. This session introduces the concept of recomposing to allow ELLs to develop grade-level ideas in multiple ways without the heavy demand of language production. We learn how to integrate writing scaffolds across the writing process to better guide ELLs in developing their writing skills. The session concludes by introducing two additional portable instructional strategies – sentences from boxes and round robin writing – to further support ELLs across learning environments.

writing, scaffolding, instructional strategies, english language learners

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Module 4

Session

8

Designing Equitable Learning Experiences for ELLs

The final session of Module 4 helps us put it all together so we have a toolbox full of supports for English language learners (ELLs) across learning environments. We revisit the mindset shifts needed to adapt our lessons by using portable practices that work across learning environments while promoting equity for ELLs. We’re reminded that a pillar of our work is the relationships we build with our ELLs. As teachers, it is up to us to find their strengths as part of selecting scaffolds that are “just right” for each classroom activity.

equity, english language learners

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Module 5

Session

1

Re-Thinking Family Engagement Across Learning Environments

Our students’ identities start with their families. It’s our job to ensure that families are valued, engaged, and represented in our classrooms. In this session, we revisit the four constants of an equity-centered, trauma-informed classroom — predictability, flexibility, connection, and student empowerment. These constants help guide our engagement with families to build trust and transparency. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that families want to be part of their children’s education. We’ll explore how to involve and engage with them throughout the rest of this module.

family, community, engagement, equity, trauma

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Module 5

Session

2

Trust, Transparency, and Capacity

Our families know our students best. If we want to move from family involvement to family engagement, we need to engage in genuine two-way communication, break down implicit bias, and recognize families as partners in supporting learning. This session challenges us to break away from a deficit-based view of parent involvement and move toward building trust, transparency, and capacity. We explore each of these outcomes in detail and examine how each relates to effective school-family partnerships that support school improvement and boost student achievement.

family, community, engagement, trust

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Module 5

Session

3

Bridging the Digital Divide Across Learning Environments

The pandemic brought the undeniable socioeconomic and racial inequities highlighted by the digital divide into sharp and glaring focus across New York State. This session explores our role in ensuring families have everything they need to participate in their child’s education, including navigating the difficulties of the digital divide. We look at three ways to leverage what we learned during the pandemic to help our families stay involved and engaged, as well as resources we can share with families to help bridge the divide.

family, community, engagement, digital divide

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Module 5

Session

4

Effective Communication Across Learning Environments

Effective, two-way communication is essential to building our capacity around family engagement while honoring our own self-efficacy. This session explores strategies for communicating with our students’ families, moving us from one-way communication practices to two-way communication activities that foster engagement. We review collaborative scheduling, partnership-building techniques, and ideas that foster active meeting engagement with families.

family, community, engagement, communication, partnership, meetings

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Module 5

Session

5

Engaging with Funds of Knowledge Across Learning Environments

Our students’ families are rich in funds of knowledge that are an asset to our classrooms. We learn in this session that seeking out this cultural capital can deepen our relationships with families and help us develop our own cultural competence. We can take this one step further to embrace cultural humility and strive for self-awareness, empathy, and mutual understanding to work collaboratively to address inequalities. This session concludes by introducing four teacher practices that leverage our students’ funds of knowledge across learning environments.

family, community, engagement, funds of knowledge, culturally responsive-sustaining

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Module 5

Session

6

Elevating Family Voice for Educational Equity

In order for our families to stay connected and involved with our schools, they must feel welcome and respected. This session explores the family-school partnership, including common barriers to engagement and ways we can build up our connections to reimagine the role families can play in our classrooms. Strategies introduced in this session related to building family partnerships include cultural reciprocity and shared decision-making.

family, community, engagement, equity, partnership, culturally responsive-sustaining

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Module 5

Session

7

Family Learning Partnerships

This session begins with a checklist for equitable student learning in digital spaces, including four leverage points that increase equity while supporting families as co-teachers across learning environments. To build capacity for families as learning partners, we need to focus on the 3 “R” Framework: relationships, routines, and resources. We conclude with digital resources to share with our families to help them embrace their role as learning partners in their child’s education.

family, community, engagement, relationships

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Module 5

Session

8

Family and Community Engagement

Symbiosis isn’t limited to nature; it’s a strategy to bring together our students, their families, and our community to create and foster mutually beneficial partnerships. After conducting a comparison of needs and resources, we can leverage service-learning projects to elevate student voice; engage students in self-management, self-motivation, and social skills; and empower students' with responsible decision-making and problem-solving skills. The session concludes with examples of service-learning projects we can adapt for our own classrooms and communities.

family, community, engagement, service-learning

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Module 6

Session

1

Teaching the Whole Learner

We start this module by introducing the frameworks we’ll explore throughout our learning, starting with the New York State Social Emotional Learning Benchmarks, which show us how SEL can be integrated into instruction regardless of the learning environment. We also explore the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) model’s five areas of SEL competence and how they align with the New York State SEL Benchmarks. This session concludes by sharing three ways to integrate SEL into day-to-day instruction.

social emotional learning

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Module 6

Session

2

The Portable Practice of SEL

In this session, we consider the CASEL 5 social emotional learning (SEL) competencies through the lens of portability — the ability to take instructional practices or routines and shift them to another learning environment. We explore how to leverage the CASEL 5 competencies in portable, consistent, and achievable ways across the four key settings in which relationship-building occurs: in the classroom, in the school, at home, and in the community.

social emotional learning, community

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Module 6

Session

3

Social Awareness and Relationship Building

Our classrooms are our communities, and our students need to master the social emotional learning (SEL) competencies of social awareness and interpersonal skills in order to thrive in school and beyond. This session provides a refresher on the key components of social awareness and relationship skills. We explore community-building circles, including five foundational principles, easy steps to execute this practice in our classrooms, and how to redesign this practice when teaching across learning environments.

social emotional learning, social awareness, relationships, community-building circles

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Module 6

Session

4

Self-Awareness and Self-Direction

Helping students develop self-awareness leads them on the path towards self-direction, building key life skills for their development. This session looks at three student scenarios demonstrating how instruction and support can be delivered to help students develop their self-awareness and self-direction inside and outside the classroom and across learning environments. These scenarios give us ideas and strategies we can embed in our own instruction to help students on their path.

social emotional learning, self-direction, self-awareness

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Module 6

Session

5

Responsible Decision-Making

Responsible decision-making is another CASEL core competency students develop through social emotional learning (SEL). This session provides an overview of the skills and indicators of responsible decision-making competence. It details the cognitive process for making a decision and how we can teach these skills in the classroom across learning environments. The session includes a self-assessment for responsible decision-making to help students pinpoint areas of strengths and weaknesses related to this competency.

social emotional learning, responsible decision-making

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Module 6

Session

6

Culturally Responsive and Sustaining SEL

Social emotional learning (SEL) is not a stand-alone program. This session looks at ways we can integrate the principles of culturally responsive-sustaining education (CRSE) to design SEL experiences that are embedded in academics and portable across learning environments. We examine three strategies we can easily apply in our classrooms to make SEL more culturally responsive. The session concludes with two instructional practices — project-based learning and civic learning — that are great ways to authentically integrate SEL and CRSE to engage and empower students.

social emotional learning, culturally responsive-sustaining, project-based learning, civic learning

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Module 6

Session

7

Social Emotional Learning and Digital Citizenship

Our students are living in an increasingly digital world for which they need to develop specific navigational skills. This session introduces six core topics of digital citizenship and makes the connection between these topics and social emotional learning (SEL) through three guiding principles. We also explore how to discuss and teach digital citizenship by grade level and how we can model healthy online engagement in our classrooms.

social emotional learning, digital citizenship

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Module 6

Session

8

Social Emotional Skills and Well-Being for Educators

Taking care of ourselves isn’t just good for our well-being; it also provides us an opportunity to show our students what managing emotions, setting personal goals, and investing in healthy relationships look like in difficult circumstances. This session allows us to consider how we can practice social emotional wellness for ourselves in ways that also positively model that behavior for our students. We review portable strategies for building resilience and additional resources we can leverage to support skill development.

social emotional learning, teacher well-being

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Module 7

Session

1

Shifting Mindsets: From Emergency School Management to Leading for TALE

The time has come to switch from emergency school management as a result of the pandemic to leading for teaching across learning environments. This session explores the challenges school leaders faced during the pandemic and change leadership in the new normal of education. We introduce the framing of a VUCA world — one characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity — and how to shift our thinking using the hallmarks of effective leadership.

leadership, change leadership, mindset, emergency remote teaching

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Module 7

Session

2

Resilient Design for Leading

Resilient design for learning (RDL) teaches us to use extensibility, flexibility, and redundancy to design learning experiences that are adaptable to different learning environments. Resilient design for leading helps us make mindset shifts from volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) to vision, understanding, community, and agility. We also explore how using resilient design for leading helps school leaders and teachers to create learning environments that are grounded in predictability, flexibility, connection, and student empowerment.

leadership, resilient design for learning

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Module 7

Session

3

Leading to Support Excellent Teaching for Everyone

Universal design for learning (UDL) focuses on three domains to create equitable, flexible learning environments that accommodate individual learning differences: engagement, representation, and action and expression. While UDL can help transform the way we teach, its implementation often faces barriers. In this session, we explore the phased approach of the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) to implementing UDL schoolwide, including strategies to support implementation across learning environments.

leadership, universal design for learning

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Module 7

Session

4

Leading to Support High-Leverage Practices Everywhere

Making a teaching practice portable begins with pinpointing a learning barrier to teaching across learning environments, creating a learning goal, and identifying practices to address the goal. To help us become skilled in this way of teaching, we can rely on professional learning communities (PLCs) with our peers. In this session, we look at how we as school leaders can support collaboration to help teachers adopt new practices for teaching across learning environments. This includes strategies we can use to create successful PLCs.

leadership, collaboration, professional learning communities

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Module 7

Session

5

Leading for Student Engagement Across Learning Environments

The shift from how students demonstrate engagement to how students experience engagement (attraction, persistence, and delight) is part of creating trauma-informed, equity-centered learning environments. The topic of student engagement is explored throughout the TALE Academy; however, this session focuses on how we as school leaders influence student engagement by the way we support teachers as designers of learning environments.

leadership, engagement

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Module 7

Session

6

Leading for Family Engagement Across Learning Environments

Throughout the TALE Academy, we explore how to treat students’ families as partners in students’ learning. In this session, we explore the ways our organizational policies and structures support family engagement and provide resources to help us advance family engagement, including the Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships. We also explore how to expand the instructional core for teaching and learning to include families. We conclude with elements we should consider when selecting technology tools that support family engagement.

dual capacity-building, leadership, family, partnership, technology, engagement

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Module 7

Session

7

Leading for Schoolwide Social Emotional Learning

Building a schoolwide culture of social emotional learning (SEL) starts with school leadership. In this session, we revisit what SEL looks like in the classroom using CASEL’s five SEL competencies and the New York State Education Department’s SEL Benchmarks. Then we zoom out to explore a schoolwide approach for SEL. We share indicators to help us monitor SEL in our schools and ways we can model SEL for teachers and students through our own leadership practices.

social emotional learning, culture, leadership

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Module 7

Session

8

Technology for TALE

In order to be effective, technology must be integrated into our teaching practices, not just leveraged as an add-on. To do this, teachers need to thoughtfully approach technology integration and consider how it can engage students, enhance their learning, and extend beyond the classroom. This session helps us embrace technology by looking at the expanded instructional core and considering how technology can support the four constants of learning: predictability, flexibility, connection, and empowerment. It also provides a technology decision-making matrix to help guide our adoption of technology to support teaching across learning environments.

leadership, technology

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