ELA with Avery

The most successful classrooms are safe classrooms. This is an idea continuously hammered into educators' heads, and rightfully so. But what does that really mean? Creating a positive and safe classroom environment requires intentional work that starts on day one and continues throughout the school year. You have to design a space that allows students to fully be themselves and embrace their own identities, as well as those of their peers. It is only when an educator creates a classroom community that allows for this that their teaching can be fully effective. Thankfully, many methods, activities, and skills can be relatively easily implemented to make that mission possible. Although some are more time-consuming than others, I believe they are well worth the extra effort. Starting the School Year Successfully Creating a successful, safe classroom can start with how you design it before the school year even starts. Turning again to Tricia Ebarvia’s 2023 book Get Free: Antibias Liter...

  Addressing Bias in Education Bias is a complex subject, especially in the classroom. Although typically viewed in a negative light, bias itself is not inherently good or bad. Biases are simply “the automated processes in our brains that inform our decision-making” (Ebarvia 14). However, many of our biases are the result of being socialized in a society that too often normalizes problematic behavior like sexism, racism, classism, homophobia, etc. As educators, we have a duty to be aware of that socialization and our own biases, to work against them. Of course, no good teacher ever intentionally creates an ineffective lesson or unsafe classroom environment. But bias can be a sneaky issue that can easily inform our instruction. In her 2023 book Get Free: Antibias Literacy Instruction for Stronger Readers, Writers, and Thinkers , Tricia Ebarvia discusses five types of bias that can commonly influence educators. By examining them, we will be able to better understand not only bias, bu...