MODULE 2

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.