Educating Adolescents at the Intersection of Social-Emotional Learning, Civics, Equity, and Academics

Hello. Welcome, everybody. Thank you so much for joining our webinar on Educating Adolescents at the Intersection of Social-Emotional Learning, Civics, Equity, and Academics.

Before we begin, I'd like you to see a housekeeping webinar-- I'm sorry, a housekeeping video that will help you understand our webinar platform. So thank you again for joining us, and we'll be right back.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

Welcome to our professional learning webinar. Before we get started, we'd like to run through some important items to help you engage with the webinar. We invite you to join us on social media and tweet about this webinar using the hashtag #FHONLINE.

Please select the Captions button to access the live captions of today's conversation. If you have any questions throughout the webinar, whether for our presenters or for our team such as a technical issue, please use the Questions window. The most common technical issues are no sound or a frozen screen. If that happens, please try refreshing your browser.

You can also find the resources we will be discussing today in the Resource List. Please feel free to access these resources at any time during the webinar. And now, onto your facilitator. Thank you for joining us, and we hope that you enjoy the webinar.

[END PLAYBACK]

 

Thank you so much for that housekeeping video. Want to say welcome again. My name is Phredd MatthewsWall. I'm a Senior Associate Program Director for Staff Development with Facing History.

I'm physically located in the Chicago, Illinois, area. I'm actually a former classroom educator. And I've been on staff with Facing History and Ourselves for over 30 plus years. I'll be joined by my colleague, Lisa, who will introduce herself.

Hi. Thanks, Phredd. I'm Lisa Lefstein-Berusch.

I'm a Program Director in the Cleveland office of Facing History. I am also a former History, Social Studies, and English teacher. And I have been with Facing History for over 10 years.

Thank you so much, Lisa. So now, I'm going to go over our agenda briefly with you. So we've done our introductions.

Throughout this webinar, our focus will be centering adolescents, because that is our primary audience for many of the resources that we've created. We're also going to talk with you about our approach to civics, equity, SEL, and academics. And we're actually going to take you during this hour on a classroom visit. So you can actually go into virtually, of course, and view a classroom and have a brief discussion after that. And then we'll go to next steps and letting you know about some upcoming events that we will be doing.

So right now, I'd like to do a poll with you. And that poll is about how familiar are you with Facing History & Ourselves. So if you can click on either of these responses-- I'm brand new to Facing History, I'm a little bit familiar with Facing History, or I'm very familiar with Facing History. That will help us get a sense of the audience. And while you're doing that, if you don't mind putting in the chat box what city you are actually virtually visiting us from, we'd appreciate that to get a sense of how broad the audience is.

Oh, thanks, folks. Good to see someone else from Ohio, someone from Chicago like Phredd. We'll give you another moment. Oh, here they're coming fast. We're going to give you another moment--

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

Great. California.

Like I saw someone else from Cleveland on there. All right. So we're going to go to, are we ready for our poll results? Great. All right.

So we're going to go to our poll results and see how familiar our folks are with Facing History. Fabulous. So we have sort of a range here. A few of you, some of you are brand new, some a little familiar and very familiar.

So we cover the gamut here. That's great to know. We are so happy to welcome those of you who are new to Facing History, that 12% of you and have joined us to learn more about our work. And for those of you who already know us, welcome back. It's good to see you again.

We hope this webinar gives all of us a chance to think about how Facing History center's adolescence and provides resources and strategies that allow us to meet our students' social, emotional, and academic needs in equitable and civically minded learning environments. We want to acknowledge the massive challenges that all of you have been facing for the past two years. And we thank you for taking the time to join us in this webinar. We know it's time beyond your already full teaching days and we recognize and value your commitment to your students.

So these questions here are questions that we know are on your mind a lot. This is why we're all here together, because of our deep regard and care for adolescents, their well-being, and their growth and development as learners. These questions ask about who adolescents are and what they need. And these questions, most likely guide your work, and are going to guide our discussion for the next hour or so. Since Facing History's founding 45 years ago, adolescents have been at the center of all that we do.

At Facing History & Ourselves, we use the lessons of history to challenge teachers and their students to stand up to bigotry and hate. This has been the core of our work for over 45 years, and it remains as important as ever. Adolescents are at the core of our work. Our approach to education is designed to help adolescents consider the habits and practices that they need to develop into informed empathetic and active participants in our society. In order to center adolescents, let's ask ourselves some questions about where they are at this time in their lives and at this time in the world and what they need to be able to be their happiest, most fulfilled, and most secure selves.

So we're going to show you a picture of an adolescent. Here we are. This is our adolescent for this evening.

We are going to use our character map teaching strategy to think about adolescents, young people from around age 10 and into their early 20s, who they are and what they might need. And you can find that character map teaching strategy in our resource with it later. So let's think about who adolescents are, and we are going to start with the head.

So this adolescent, what is this adolescent thinking about? And this is where we're going to need this enthusiasm that you've shown in the chat box already. We've got people from all over the world here.

So we represent adolescents far and wide. What do you think adolescents are thinking about? Love for you to share some ideas in that chat box. What are adolescents thinking about?

Friends and family, food. [CHUCKLES] Absolutely, friends. Yes, definitely think about social.

How other people think about them? So school, gaming, COVID, social media. Right. So we're seeing a lot of things coming in right around current events, around COVID, about friends, social engagement.

They have a jumble of thoughts, the opposite sex, wondering where they fit in, social media. Thinking about-- I love the people are saying they're thinking about themselves, but they're also thinking about what other people are thinking about them, which can lead to a lot of anxiety. So lots of things going on.

I love it. FOMO. Absolutely. They're worried about do they belong.

And some adolescents are thinking about opposite sex and some adolescents are thinking about the same sex. So thank you person who pointed that out. Absolutely.

Who am I and where do I belong? Wonderful. All right.

So that was the head. And that was a lot. So let's go on the heart.

So we talked about what adolescents are thinking. What are they feeling? What are some things adolescents might be feeling? What do they care about?

And it might be some of the same things that you've already shared and what they're thinking about right. But what are some things that they're feeling are caring about?

What are some emotions that they're having, insecurity, fear, confusion, anxiety? It's interesting. I mean, I think a frightened-- I think it speaks to the time we're living in that a lot of you are sharing some very, very frightened, nervous, anxious sorts of thoughts, which is not surprising because we're seeing what adolescents have been going through in these really uncertain times. So feelings of overwhelmingness-- and then, right, these pressures they're having from parents, from peers wondering where they fit in. Thank you.

What do I do that matters? I love that question, Angela. All right, so lots of feelings that have to do with worry about the world, about friendship, about family. So that's hard. It's a hard time. So they're thinking about themselves and where they fit in. They're feeling some feelings of worry and what other people think about.

So this might duplicate what we already talked about because a lot of the feelings that you shared were things that we're worried. Are there other specific things that adolescents are worried about? A lot of you mentioned current events, how they look. They might worry about that, how other people are feeling about them, about things that have to do with COVID or security, food security.

So if there's something else that we left out of all of that worry, you can put that in the chat box. But I think we've shared a lot of-- family issues, social status, absolutely, the future, absolutely. I think a lot of young people are wondering about how the future may have changed. Yes, decisions made by adults that impact them. So thank you.

So we're going to do one more. Yes, a lot of things to worry about here, unfortunately, for our adolescents. Oh, no, we're not going to do one more. Sorry, I lied. OK, so let's look at then this whole adolescent. Let's look at the whole adolescent. So if we think about this whole person, and you've shared so many of the things that are on this list here, you can see we've added a few more things to our character map-- where this teen is going with their feet, what they see with their eyes, what they might be doing with their hands, what they're saying with their mouths.

We'd love for you to use the chat box to add anything that we forgot that hasn't been said yet that we didn't include, or you can comment on and highlight those items you see on our character map that really resonate or feel very familiar to you in your work with adolescents. So I love it. I mean, people are really showing the range of the kinds of things that adolescents need to think about in their world.

As you're adding or commenting on the chat, let's think about what this character map tells us about this period of adolescence, again, beginning around age 10 and continuing well past a young person's 20th year. This is a dynamic time of growth, change, and possibility. And during this time, we know young people explore their identities. A lot of you spoke to that. They form values, interests, and goals that will shape their futures. And they can be worried about those futures, right?

So we know that adolescents are developing new capacities to think critically and, abstractly and they can also consider multiple perspectives different from their own. This is a time when they're interested in questions of fairness and justice. And they have a growing capacity for relationships, which a lot of you commented on, empathy and connection, and thinking about the needs of others as well as themselves.

They seek respect, support, and belonging from groups. They're wondering about their own identity and the various factors about their identity, race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, ability, or other qualities. And one big question, and I saw some of you comment on this in the chat box, one big question for adolescents is, who am I, and where do I fit in? We recommend the Understanding Adolescents reading in our resource list if you want to think further about what is going on with adolescents cognitively, socially, and morally.

But the question we're asking tonight is that, how do we best teach and support adolescents during this time of self-discovery and change and growth? So thank you all. Thanks for your participation. Yes, I love the questions you're asking in the chat. Our mouth got misplaced there. That's OK.

OK, so to meet the needs of that whole child that we just saw and who's thinking about and wondering about all the things that you've included in the chat box, to answer all the questions that they're asking of themselves, of others in their world, we need to integrate their academic work in a way that meets students' social-emotional needs and has them also consider their civic agency in creating a more equitable and just society. I love someone just said, how much power do I have? They're asking questions of power. Those are civics questions. Those are equity questions. Those are social-emotional learning questions.

So to give you a better sense of how Facing History's work meets adolescents where they are and incorporates all these elements, these four elements we're showing you here, we want to show you a short film about our work with one of these components, civics. We have to start somewhere. We're starting with civics.

So as you watch this film, this short film, we would like you to think about the character map of the adolescent that we just created and consider how our approach to civics meets the needs of adolescents. You might also note how our approach to civics incorporates SEL and ideas of equity. And we'll, of course, ask you to participate in the chat when the film is over.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

 

- One of our most important jobs as educators is to prepare students to be active participants in democracy. In fact, young people have often been at the forefront of political and social movements to build and sustain democracy from the American Revolution to the Civil Rights movement and right up to the present day.

You may wonder, how can educators help young people develop their sense of civic agency? Facing History & Ourselves' approach to civic education is guided by the following five key principles. The first key principle is that civics isn't just about curriculum. It's about how we teach. We help educators create classrooms that embody equitable and democratic values and root civic learning in students' own identities and lived experiences. Students understand that they belong and their voices matter, not just during a civics unit but every day of the school year.

A second key principle of the Facing History approach is that civic education must confront bias and develop a sense of the common good. It's essential for students to understand political parties, elections, and the courts, all the ways people engage with government. But a healthy civic life also depends on how people relate to each other. Democracy can't drive amid fear, mistrust, or even hate. The Facing History approach to civic education builds empathy, respect for differences, perspective taking, and a sense of the common good.

A third key principle to the Facing History approach is that civics and history belong together. At Facing History, we believe that people make choices, and choices make history. We study government in its messy, real life complexity, not in the abstract. And we're honest about the ways we fail to live up to democratic ideals. With our case studies, students learn that the United States is the product of history and of the choices of people in the past. Students discover the power of their own choice to participate today.

Our fourth key principle is that current events are key to civic education. We introduce the issues, dilemmas, and controversies that shape civic life today. When classrooms foster skills of dialogue across difference and media literacy, students are empowered to make informed and meaningful choices.

Our final key principle is that civic education should include both action and reflection. Students need a chance to act and to practice civil skills like deliberation, collaboration, and advocacy. They also need the opportunity to reflect on themselves, their thinking, and their learning. This combination of action and reflection makes civic learning more effective, relevant, and equitable. Facing History's approach helps students understand that democracy depends on each one of us. Progress toward a more just, equitable, and inclusive society isn't inevitable. It's the result of our choices.

[END PLAYBACK]

 

Thank you so much for showing that video, Lisa. Love to see takeaways that people have in the chat box if you're able. And while you're doing that, just a reminder on the slide that you're seeing, which shows the intersection of civics, equity, SEL, and academics, I just want to remind you about the five principles that were shared in the video piece.

One, that civics isn't just about curriculum. It's about how we teach. Civic education must confront bias and develop a sense of the common good. Civics and history belong together. And current events is key to civic education and should include both action and reflection.

So I'm seeing in the chat, can you talk about the intersection of civics and service learning? So those are components that we are talking about now. And some folks see a difference between service learning and civic engagement, which is more about agency. Thank you for the shout out to Facing History's messages about empowering students. And speaking to the agency, someone had referenced so important to have students feel like they have a voice and are heard. So that's what's really important in the work that we're doing and how we're looking at this connection here.

OK, so this slide is sharing with you about our approach to social, emotional, and academic development, which some acronym SEAD. And this is a link. On our Resources page, there's a document that we have linked there that you can go into more information about our social-emotional learning and academic development approach. So that's something that I wanted to remind you about in the resources.

And then as we move from thinking about the social-emotional learning, remember, we want to combine social-emotional learning, equity, civics, and academics all together and not do them as isolated entities, which is the way it has been often done. So first, I'd like to just share about our approach to equity. And there's a lot of organizations in a lot of places out there that are doing equity and have their definitions. Just like to read ours to you.

So our Teaching for Equity and Justice, which is a PD that one can attend, at Facing History means that each student receives what they need to develop their full academic, social, and civic potential. It's achieved by disrupting deficit-focused narratives associated with students' racial and/or cultural identities. In equity-focused learning environments, adults confront their unconscious bias and work to mitigate the impact of historical racism on educational practices and policies.

And as many of you educators in the audience might note, this is one of the issues that we're all confronting right now because it has become a hot conversation. But our belief is that adolescents can handle difficult and challenging topics if you present it to them in a way that they can access it and begin to build upon those ideas.

So the next piece I want to share with you is about CASEL and SEL. So CASEL is a premier organization that has done a lot of work on SEL. And they have looked at the work that they've started and developed on social-emotional learning and decided to bring in an equity focus.

Just as we just talked about equity related to Facing History & Ourselves, CASEL has looked at that also, and they're calling it transformative SEL. Part of the reason why they went there is because often SEL has been seen as a way of trying to control students. And what they are raising as well as we are, it's about providing agency for students.

So in their definition of transformative SEL, they identify it as a process whereby young people and adults build strong, respectful, and lasting relationships that facilitate co-learning to critically examine root causes of inequity and to develop collaborative solutions that lead to personal, community, and societal well-being. So you can see it's a much broader understanding than maybe social-emotional learning may have had in the beginning.

They also go on to say this form of SEL is aimed at redistributing power to more fully engage young people and adults in working toward just and equitable schools and communities. It emphasizes the development of identity, agency, belonging, curiosity, and collaborative problem-solving within the CASEL framework is what they are referring to. And these are critical pieces. I'm so glad that CASEL has relooked at this and identified its Transformative SEL.

So here's the way that Facing History & Ourselves with the work we've talked about already and shared, the way we connect with the principles that are outlined within SEL through CASEL. So it is about self-awareness, and you can see that we foster deeper awareness of identity, including how a student-- many of the resources that we create that we'll show you a little image of later begins with that foundational piece around identity. As many of you had mentioned in the chat earlier, that that's often where adolescents are. As human beings, we're constantly trying to navigate that, a sense of identity and self-awareness.

Self-management, students actively engage with complex issues that elicit different perspectives and opinions. Facing History teachers emphasize respectful communication and deliberation. And students report decreased conduct problems in school. You'll see when you look at the video possibly that idea of navigating respectful communication and deliberation when students are working together as a whole class or in small groups.

Also, the idea of social awareness, which is focused around perspective taking and developing empathy, relationship skills, which as an educator, you know how important that is. I've heard educators say it's about relationship, relationship, relationship, and we agree with that in Facing History. And we've noticed that it's improved ability to communicate, cooperate, collaborate, and deliberate with others who hold different points of view about meaningful social and civic issues. And then the responsible decision-making is the other way in which we navigate the SEL principles that are identified here.

So as I referenced before, here are a few of our resources. I think the important thing-- and as I said, this is just a few of our resources-- the important thing about the resources that we choose to develop is that they are often, whether they are based in literature or within a historical context or our current events website, they are based in the idea of there's some kind of conflict or something that speaks to the fragility of our own democracy and about agency and raises those questions about human behavior, and why did things get to where they are? And what were the pressures that were on the individuals that lived at that time?

But as the name of our organization, Facing History & Ourselves, it's often that movement back and forth between looking at the historical moment and making connections to how we live our lives today. What do we think about identity? How does that inform us about questions of we and they?

Very pertinent when we're looking at current events because our current events resources look at what's happening right now at the time, but it's often asking students or readers of our current events lesson ideas to step back historically so that they have some understanding that what we're looking at today didn't pop out of nowhere, and that they have had precedence there.

And so that's the core and important piece around many of the resources that we create. And as you can see, we do provide some in Spanish as well. So I'm going to turn it over to Lisa to take us into thinking about a classroom, and she'll take it from there.

Thank you, Phredd. Before we visit our classroom-- I hope you're all ready for our classroom visit-- we had a question from Robert about the issue of Facing History in responses to resistance to so-called CRT, Critical Race Theory, that's happening across the country.

And I would say, and I think you'll see this in the classroom that we're going to visit, our response is that, and some of your commenting about this in the chat, that we really believe students, especially this stage in development, can wrestle with the tough truths about our nation's history or any nation's history, and they're owed a really thoughtful and complete education about our past.

And so we hope that with the infusion of Social-emotional learning and the civics and an eye toward equity along with our pedagogical framework thinking about that ethical and moral lens that we bring to this teaching, we're giving them the tools to grapple with that history. So that's sort of our response right now. We're continuing to do what we do and trusting students to be able to wrestle with these ideas.

So we're going to see that now in a Facing History classroom. Phredd has shared with you our approach to our work at the intersection of academics and social-emotional learning, civics, and equity. So we're going to visit this classroom to see what it looks like and feels like and sounds like when all these elements are blended together and when students are grappling with some tough history.

So we're going to visit an eighth-grade classroom where students are studying Choices in Little Rock, the Facing History unit that Phredd just showed you. It examines the choices of politicians, educators, students, parents, and community members when nine Black students enrolled in and attended the previously all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. So as part of this unit, these eighth graders have closely read and analyzed the 1896 Plessy versus Ferguson case that legalized the concept of separate but equal.

So students in this classroom are going to engage in a Fishbowl discussion about the Plessy decision. So in a Fishbowl discussion, students arrange themselves in an inner and an outer circle. Only students in the inner circle discuss these two main questions that you see here about the Supreme Court case. And students in the outer circle will listen and take notes. And when they're ready, they tap in, and they replace someone in the inner circle who's already spoken, and they join the discussion. And if you want to learn more about this teaching strategy, you can find it linked on our resource widget.

But for this Fishbowl, we're adding a layer because we're on the outside of the Fishbowl looking in, and we're watching and taking notes, too. So I'm afraid, though, you cannot tap in and join the discussion. So during our five-minute classroom visit, please take note of where you see civic education, conversations about what it means to build an equitable society, students practicing their social-emotional competencies, and overall, learning that centers the needs of these adolescents.

And you might also see evidence-- because we're only going to see five minutes, you might also see evidence of where learning must have already occurred in this classroom in order for students to have this classroom discussion. So when the film is over or even during the film, we look forward to sharing your observations in the chat box. So now let's go visit this classroom.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

- OK, start thinking about if you would like to start in the Fishbowl. We're going to start with the first two set of questions. So if you want to go back up to those two questions to see if you are prepared to speak to something, we're going to have about five to six chairs in the center Fishbowl, and then the rest of us are going to be on the outside. So take about a minute. Think about are you in a place where you're ready to share out. And remember, with Fishbowl, you can tap someone out. So you're not in there the whole time.

If you are ready to talk in the middle, take your chair into the middle. Otherwise, take your clipboard, any resources you need, turn your chair into the center. Try to be as smooth as possible about it. A lot of you were talking about a great thing. So starting with those first two questions, Daniel right here, can I get you to read them out loud again for us? And then anybody in the center can start.

- How does the majority opinion expand its ruling in the case? What justification does the majority provide for maintaining segregation?

- One of the things that I wrote to talk about was even though you want-- there was this equal rights within political terms or whatever, but there's not equal rights within social life. And it's like you can't force one race to be the same as another.

- With the idea of equality, the majority rule didn't really fit with this idea of equality because it was only supporting them, and it wasn't really supporting Plessy at all and that idea of how we're being taken advantage of.

- Johnny, nice job. Let's go.

- In the first section, Justice Henry Brown delivered a majority opinion, it says laws permitting and even requiring the separation, and I think that line relates to the second question of what justification does the majority provide for maintaining segregation. And it's saying that they're not really targeting the inferior race. It was clearly what's going on.

- It doesn't target a specific race, but then people still use that law anyways in order to target races. So I guess my question is, is there a danger of being color blind and not having specific laws?

- If you're color blind, you don't see color. You don't see my experiences either.

- Basically, what you're saying is the Constitution-- the Constitution is, I guess, in a way racist, I guess, and only includes a certain amount of, I guess, the white people, I guess. And it says on what the court decided, our Constitution is colorblind and we do now-- tolerates class suits among citizens.

- I don't necessarily think that the Constitution is racist, but I think it did sort of set it up so that people could later influence it to be sort of racist. They never really have specific laws in the original Constitution that dictate, certain laws that differ based on race. But I didn't think it was important to look at based on when the original Constitution was actually written. It was written during a time where slavery was still a huge thing, and it was written during a time where the only people that could really make choices and have power were white men.

- All right, really strong, everyone. Thank you so much.

[END PLAYBACK]

So thanks, everyone. Would love for you to do some reflection in our chat box around our Fishbowl discussion. So where did you see students engage in questions that had to do with civics or equity? Where did you see them using what they've learned about social-emotional learning or practicing those five competencies of social-emotional learning that Phredd talked about?

We all know good teacher wait time. So since Phredd and I are both former classroom teachers, we're using our good teacher wait time to see what folks have to say. Thank you, folks. Thanks, Katie, for getting us started. Yeah, there was a lot of willing participation when we think about some of those social-emotional learning competencies, right, Wendy, like asking questions instead of attacking, disagreeing in a way that honored each other's perspectives.

Yeah, getting that chance to break out of the conversation, incredibly good listening skills to each other. A lot of bravery, [INAUDIBLE] talk, there were some really thoughtful responses and some honest responses. They had been-- and thank you, Corey, for naming some of the scaffolding. Something has to happen before this conversation can happen. The clarifying questions for each other, the respect they showed each other, right.

And they showed-- and some people are naming, too-- I didn't ask you about intellectual rigor, but people are pointing out they had learned a lot about the Constitution and history. They're analyzing the text and implications of a Supreme Court case and thinking about historical context, right? Lots of disagreement with each other that was done in a lovely way, that they listened to each other. So they were discussing with facts. I saw people looking at the text.

So I can't read all of your comments because now they're coming fast and furious, which is wonderful. But I see people also talking about this fact that they're thinking about some of these big questions around race, around the Constitution, and they're comfortable having this conversation talking about the one girl, the one Black girl, who talked about her own identity and pointed that out to the white student. They were comfortable having this conversation.

And they're asking these questions about power, asking civics questions about, who has power, and what does a fair and just society look like? And asking, what does the Constitution provide for, and what difference does it make around the historical context? These are really big questions around civics and equity that they're asking.

And a lot of you are really pointing out the social-emotional learning skills. They use listening to multiple perspectives, sharing about their own identities, which takes self and social awareness, and then the self-management and responsible decision-making to make those arguments, to clarify misunderstandings-- yes, thank you-- and decide how and when they want to enter into the conversation.

So we all know as educators that creating a nurturing, the kind of classroom where this conversation can take place, takes a lot of intentionality, scaffolding, and work. And a lot of you pointed that out in your comments. So fortunately, Facing History has many resources to help you and to help the teacher in the video, help you build relational trust and community in your classroom. I want to just take a moment to listen to this teacher reflect on the discussion and hear what she notices about the skills that students needed to develop and how this unit met their needs.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

- Facilitating that, it started to feel more just like a conversation, which is something that we're looking to help students acquire are those conversational skills in addition to the academic, more literacy-rooted skills. Communication is obviously integral in that, but it's not always explicitly taught.

Building those relationships is so essential in students trusting enough to be vulnerable in conversation that requires honesty, and it requires you almost doing something that feels uncomfortable in order to grow. And so if they don't have that foundation of trust, it becomes a lot more difficult to engage students.

[END PLAYBACK]

Thank you so much for showing that. It's wonderful to be able to hear what the teacher was thinking about in terms of the purpose of this activity. And hopefully, you also saw our rationale about not doing SEL independent of rigorous academic conversations because, as you pointed out in the chat box, you can see how the relationship building and the courtesy that they were showing each other and the way in which they engaged.

I could tell-- that was an eighth grade class-- and I could tell that there was some nervousness there because you can pick that up in the body language, but that didn't impede from my perspective the students being actively involved. I know there was a question in the chat about, how do you grade something like this? And I've done these kinds of activities before in my own classroom, and I use at moments like this participation grades, meaning, how much did you participate, and not just in the Fishbowl, but throughout the entire process?

I've also had students do self-assessments to get a sense of how they thought they did and see how that may be connected with what I thought, but also, to be able to give them a sense of agency and to be able to be reflective about their own learning and their own practice.

For one student in there, they may have said more words in that Fishbowl than they've said in the last month. And that's important. That's significant because they're getting more comfortable with themselves and with the class. As several people have said before, there's a lot of work that's going in beforehand just as the teacher has shared as well.

There was a question also in the chat about the intersection of service learning and civic engagement. One of the ways you can look at is that service learning in particular is a curricular kind of strategy, a way of building skills, for students to be able to know how to engage with issues that they are thinking about that they need to practice skills maybe around, how do you reach out or write letters to representatives, politicians, et cetera, or to local agencies.

Whereas the social-emotional learning or the civic action is often something an individual or groups are doing about a current and particular issue that they want to address. It could be as simple as they don't like the food that they're getting in the cafeteria, or they think that there should be more recycling or things of that sort and they want a change to happen.

But they are well connected because you need skills in order to be civically engaged, but you can also learn those skills or some of them while you have an issue that you're very passionate about and want to engage with. So hopefully, that answered that question that was raised in the chat.

So one of the things I just wanted to share as we are starting to come to the close, and we appreciate that folks have been already putting questions in the chat box throughout. I forgot to mention that we're not having a formal Q&A at the end, at least that's not our plan, but that questions will come up throughout, and they have been.

So when we think about data because particularly if there's any administrators on or evaluators, they want to know how do you know this works, and not only our social emotional learning process, but Facing History and Ourselves. And what you can see in this slide is some of the proven impact that we've gotten from the evaluations that we've done.

And we can see that there's been increased tolerance for others, particularly with different political views; that there's been decreased racist attitudes; stronger growth mindset. We've had improved higher-order and historical thinking skills, again, thinking about the academic component; increased capacity for civil discourse, meaning that students are able to stay in the conversation even though they may not like the point of view or what someone has said, they're able to stay present in the conversation; an increased sense of civic responsibility and civic agency. They often get fired up about these things.

And remember when we were talking about the character map of an adolescent, there's lots of things that they're thinking about, and going through this kind of a process, it gives them a sense of purpose. It can give them a sense of purpose and agency to do something about those kinds of things. So those are evaluations that we've done.

Here is a slide from CASEL and some independent recommendations that we've been given in the process of doing our evaluations. These are evaluations outside of us. So there's CASEL, the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, as well as evidence for the Every Student Succeeds Act. So those are things that we want you to pay attention to. When you look at the resource that we have about our SEAD work, that page, towards the bottom, you can click on another link to bring you to some of our other evaluation material.

So I'd like to begin to end our webinar with this quote from someone that we miss dearly, Congressman John Lewis. And this is a letter that he wrote actually to us with the intention of it to be out after his passing. And so some of you may have read this, but we're just going to read an excerpt from this.

He says, "Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself. Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble."

He goes on to say, "though I may not be here with you, I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe. In my life, I have done all I can do to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it's your turn to let freedom ring.

When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century, let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression, and war. So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide."

Thank you so much for joining us, and at this point, I want to share with you about some upcoming events that you can attend. Some of those are online learning opportunities, a workshop that we have on Teaching for Equity and Justice as you can see there, early March.

Then another webinar, Confronting Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories, mid-March, March 22nd, and Workshop for Teens, Explorations, Building Learning Communities through SEL, Equity, and Civic Education, and that's in early April. So hopefully, you can sign up for those. Also, on our website, you go to Professional Development, and you can see a list of other opportunities as well. So now I'll have us close with our final housekeeping-- not housekeeping, but parting video.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

- Thank you for joining us for this learning opportunity. The resources from the webinar can be accessed from the resource list window. You will receive an email with links to these resources after the webinar. Your completion of this webinar gives you one hour of professional development credit, and you can download your certificate of participation via the window below. You will also see a very brief survey. Please take a couple of minutes at the end of the webinar to fill out this survey. We really value your feedback.

We will keep the webinar open for the next five minutes so you can download your certificate, complete the survey, and open the resources. Thank you for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you at another online professional learning opportunity soon. From all of us at Facing History & Ourselves to you, take care. Wherever you're joining us from, we wish you peace, health, safety, and community.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

 

 

 

[END PLAYBACK]