Some of my motivating principals when I design curriculum or when working with a classroom of students is prioritizing creating a supportive space, making sure everyone knows like they are cared for, and that they feel safe to make mistakes. Some of my favorite Tier 1 universal supports include tools to adapt teaching modes, resources materials, and content to accommodate different learning styles and abilities. I use Making Thinking Visible protocols, physical and digital graphic organizers, and rely heavily on the Building Thinking Classrooms strategies to provide lots of opportunities for students to talk about the process of solving problems (not just the math kind too). My favorite lessons are when students can recognize and appreciate when there is more than one way to move toward a solution.
While not exclusive to Tier 2 Targeted Supports, for the past two and half years I have been developing resources for targeted instruction to small groups of students in 7th and 8th grade math and science. After attending two virtual trainings with Katie Novak with EARCOS and later with SENIA I have really enjoyed collecting tools to support students with different strengths, prior knowledge backgrounds, and learning styles. For the Middle years students, giving them the opportunities to choose how they want to meet an objective AND opportunities to reflect on the efficacy of their choices is very powerful. January 2023, I presented with our Learning Support Specialist about UDL to our SFS staff, and then in February we shared our work at the SENIA Africa: Beyond the Label Conference in Johannesburg, South Africa.
While the IB’s has a lot published on the topics of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, I like the part where they say that as educators of the world’s future learners we need to “embrace learner variability so that our learners are not excluded on the grounds of any of their characteristics, and so that our stakeholders can develop and thrive in a culture of equal opportunities for learning, personal growth, and developing the ability to make positive change.”* What that looks like in my classroom is being aware of my own bias and being a conscious role model when I demonstrate being open to learning about and respecting the cultural backgrounds of my students. I’ve considered ways in which I can make my learning environments more inclusive from alternative lighting, purposeful wall displays, and modified seating options like leveled desks and rolling chairs. But most importantly, it has involved educating myself about the difference between accommodating and modifying & applying UDL principles to an assessment tasks SENIA and EARCOS training, and then sharing that understanding with my peers and leading by example.
In addition to academic content, I hope to also continue to develop them as empathetic, passionate, life-long learners. But a SEL curriculum starts with building strong relationships between peers, and with their advisory teacher. I do this by collaboratively working with the grade level team of advisors and school counselors to support the whole student through timely, targeted, and customized interventions. In Egypt, we used the Service Learning Approach from Catherine Berger Keye to engage students, increase students’ awareness of needs around them and empower them to take action. In South Korea we are using the Second Step curriculum and the MARIO Framework to build vocabulary around emotions, tools to self regulate, and opportunities to create action plans when confronted with social dilemmas like building, social pressures, parental expectations, and health life choices.
Seoul, South Korea
