California Adult Literacy Professional Development Project

From New York City Department of Education InfoHub (2022) Make a Commitment to Educate Yourself and Work to be Anti-racist

• Educate yourself not only on the current moment, but the historical and structural context of why we are in our current state. Resources are everywhere!
• Reflect on your own identities, biases, privileges, positionality, and how they form a lens in which you make sense of the world and how you see and make decisions on behalf/with our students and families.
• Build your capacity to recognize, respond to, and address biases and inequities in the short and long-term.
• Do not rely on communities of color to explain what is going on, teach you, or tell you what to do.
• Ask yourself: What am I willing to do and give up for justice?

• 5 Ways to Ground Your Teaching in Equity and Justice
• Addressing Racial Equity in our Adult Education Classrooms, Programs, and the Field:
  • Implicit Bias (Cynthia Peters)
  • Classroom Materials and Practices (Riva Pearson)
  • Programs and the Field (Carmine Stewart)
• Microaggressions in the Classroom
• National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) -- Digital Navigator model Definitions 
• SABES ESOL PD Center DEI Resource Page
• Success for All Learners through Equity

• Classroom Equity Audit 
• Implicit Association Test
• Inclusive Classroom Self-Assessment for Educators
• Inclusive syllabus and course design self-assessment
• DEI Self-Assessment
• Cultural Competence Self-Assessment

• How do We Talk About Issues that Matter?
• How to Think about 'Implicit Bias'
• National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) -- Digital Navigator Research

From New York City Department of Education InfoHub (2022) Check-in on Yourself and Others

• Consider the mental, emotional, and physical health of our students, colleagues, families, and ourselves.
• People process trauma in various ways and are experiencing many emotions in real time. Do not take it personally. Listen and ask what you and others need in this moment and throughout this time.
• Prioritize self-care. This is a marathon, not a sprint.

• Association for Psychological Science: Burnout and the Brain
• Cal State East Bay: Social Justice and Wellness
• Harvard Business Review: 6 Ways to Weave Self-Care into Your Workday
• Healthline: Stronger Together: When Self-Care Becomes Community Care
• Mental Health America: Work Life Balance
• Psychology Today: Radical Self-Care in the Face of Mounting Racial Stress
• Science of People: How to Fight Burnout and Get Unstuck in 11 Empowering Steps
• University of Buffalo: Introduction to Self-Care
• University of Buffalo: Developing Your Self-Care Plan
• University of Michigan, School of Social Work: Self-Care & Healing

Classroom Suggestions to help you get started:

• Create classroom norms of conduct with students.
• Assure norms are revisited each day of the unit/lesson.
• Create a space in which students’ voices are honored and heard; allow students to be active participants in the lesson/unit.
• Create opportunities for students to build trust.
• Create opportunities for students to interact with people from other cultures and learn about various identities (e.g., student interview activity).
• Teachers create space for themselves to process potential trauma students may share related to social justice and whatever may come up for them as they plan, deliver, and reflect on the lesson/unit and their own lived experience.
• Create opportunities to celebrate the various cultures and identities within the classroom and program.
• Assure students do not need to defend themselves or their culture within the lessons.

• Establishing Norms https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/teaching-strategies/contracting
• Example Norms (these are norms utilized by CALPRO and CAEP TAP, you may need to reword to make these level-appropriate). Be sure to work with students to establish norms specific to your class needs. See the “Establishing Norms” resource above for steps on creating norms with your students and for more examples of norms.
  • Listen actively with the goal of understanding other points of view
  • Allow all participants time to speak
  • Be okay with not knowing what you don’t know
  • Know that everyone has bias, privilege and stereotypes
  • Commit to learning, not debating
  • Avoid assumptions and generalizations about any group
  • Assume positive intent
  • Stay engaged
  • Experience discomfort
  • Speak your truth
  • Expect and accept non-closure

California EL Civics Civic Objectives
California EL Civics Civic Objectives are general competencies that help ESOL students access their community. During any EL Civics or ESOL instruction, social justice issues may be revealed. California EL Civics Objectives 11 and 53 directly relate to social justice.

• CO 11: Research and describe the cultural backgrounds that reflect the local cross-cultural society and that may present a barrier to civic participation.
• CO 53: Research, identify and utilize the skills necessary to navigate educational, workplace and community environments, access opportunities and/or assert rights.

A COAAP is a plan for a performance-based assessment related to the California EL Civics Civic Objective. Adult education staff members and students involved with administering, creating, delivering and/or participating in instruction and assessment for any California EL Civics Objectives and especially COs 11 and 53, can benefit from utilizing the resources listed in this document. Before delivering instruction in these Civic Objectives, teachers should familiarize themselves with the topics and how they might affect the teacher and the students participating in such instruction.

Access the Civic Objectives and Additional Assessment Plans (COAAPs) here: https://www2.casas.org/elc/index.cfm?fuseaction=COAAPSList.welcome

Suggestions to help you get started with using the COAAPs:
 

• Avoid focusing on social justice in isolation; talk and collaborate with other teachers, whether or not they are also teaching social justice.
  • Have a colleague look at your lesson plan(s) related to social justice to allow for peer input.
• Assure you have time to address the COAAP instruction effectively; these are sensitive topics that cannot be rushed.
• Ensure students understand why you are teaching about social justice.
• Share level-appropriate definitions for social justice related concepts.
• Assure students do not need to defend themselves or their culture within the lessons.
• Create space for students to process the information and offer resources to help with this.

Instructional Materials
 

• Sample Social Justice Lesson
  • Teaching Skills That Matter Civics Education
    • Civics Education: First Amendment Rights Lesson Plan
    • Reading A: Montgomery Bus Boycott
    • Reading B: Martin Luther King Jr’s use of nonviolence inspired by Gandhi

Culturally and Historically Responsive Education (CHRE) Curriculum Exemplars, Developed by Gholdy Muhammad at the request of SABES

• The Change Agent Lesson Packets
  Unless otherwise noted, the materials listed below are written for native English speakers and range in reading levels from 3 to 10. They can be utilized as is or adapted as needed.
  • Indigenous Peoples
  • Making Sense of Extreme Inequality
  • Race and Voting Rights in 2016
    • Intermediate Learners
    • Advanced Learners
  • Talking about Race
    • Student Examples:
      • ESOL Student - Dalsaint Lavoir
      • GED Student- Matias Rodrigues
  • Talking about Race in the Adult Education Classroom
    • Black Lives Matter (High Intermediate ESOL)
    • Talking to the Police (High Intermediate ESOL)
    • Introduction to Racism in the U.S. (High Intermediate ESOL)
    • Equality vs. Equity (Can be adapted for various ESOL Levels)
  • Teaching to Unlearn Racism: A White Perspective
• Teaching Skills That Matter Civics Education
• Unladylike 2020
  • Jovita Idar
  • Grace Abbott
  • Mary Church Terrell
  • Zitkala-Sa

Social justice is about distributing resources fairly and treating all students equitably so that they feel safe and secure—physically and psychologically.

Adapted from National Education Association (2021) Racial Justice in Education: Key Terms and Definitions

Equity means fairness and justice and focuses on outcomes that are most appropriate for a given group, recognizing different challenges, needs, and histories. It is distinct from diversity, which can simply mean variety (the presence of individuals with various identities). It is also not equality, or “same treatment,” which doesn’t take differing needs or disparate outcomes into account. Systemic equity involves a robust system and dynamic process consciously designed to create, support and sustain social justice.

Adapted from National Education Association (2021) Racial Justice in Education: Key Terms and Definitions

People are more willing to talk about issues when conversations:

1. Stress values that unite rather than divide (e.g., “opportunity,” “community” instead of “to each his/her own”).
2. Bundle solutions with any problem description, in order to avoid “compassion fatigue” and helplessness.
3. Focus on situations that anyone might find themselves in, like the loss of a job.
4. Use images that offer shorthand for complex issues, such as competing in a race but having to begin it from behind the starting line as an image suggesting unequal opportunity and ongoing disadvantage.

Adapted from National Education Association (2021) Racial Justice in Education: Key Terms and Definitions

Keep the conversation focused on the results people want to achieve rather than who’s to blame for present inequities. Figuring out how to get the desired results will require a focus on what’s to blame; that discussion can be directed toward policies, programs, and practices that need to be changed.

Adapted from National Education Association (2021) FAQs When Talking About Race

Don’t try to persuade people that their beliefs are wrong. Instead, find a value focus that is relevant to them and their students. The one value that research shows as promising is “opportunity.” Framing issues in terms of opportunity for all:

1. Generally avoids debate about the value itself. Who can be against giving people an opportunity?
2. Resonates with the deeply held ideal of America as the land of opportunity.
3. Is better than framing issues in terms of “fairness.” With the fairness frame, focus groups have gotten into detailed debates about what “fair” means and who is deserving (and who isn’t).
4. Almost by definition focuses on policies, programs, and practices because these are all key elements that can impact available opportunities.
5. Avoids an either-or debate about whether personal responsibility or systems are to blame, since opportunity goes hand in hand with personal responsibility. Since this either-or debate is then off the table, the focus can be on barriers to opportunity, and the evidence can highlight how similarly situated individuals encounter very different circumstances in terms of opportunities.

Adapted from Loyola University Maryland (2022) Affinity Groups

Affinity groups are formed around a shared identity or common goal to build community among members of non-dominant groups and to foster inclusion and awareness in educational spaces. Affinity groups can play an important role in fostering an inclusive school site, including contributing to efforts to:

• foster inclusion and community through a support network of mentors, allies, and peers;
• educate the broader school community on a minority group’s perspectives and concerns;
• recruit and retain members of minority groups and their allies; and/or
• advocate for policies and programs to meet the needs of members of nondominant groups

Adapted from Brown University, (N.D.). Understanding the Impact of Unconscious Bias in a University Setting: A model for Faculty and Staff at Brown.

The unconscious tendency to show preference for those who are like us.