This is the latest post in a monthslong series on how we can lift up student identities in the classroom.
‘All About Me’ Books
Jessica Wood is the director of experiential marketing for EL Education with 25 years of experience as a teacher, counselor, and outdoor education enthusiast.
Kristin Hoins is a former school designer for EL Education with 25 years of experience as a teacher, project- and place-based curriculum designer, leadership and team coach, and dedicated organizational belonging and inclusion researcher:
Identity is who we are, who others say we are, and who we desire to be; we are constantly socially constructing our identities, redefining and revising within a fluid, multidimensional, and highly relational social and cultural ecosystem (Muhammad, 2020). Literacy practices within a curriculum that embraces and celebrates diverse student identities offer humanizing pathways for students to explore and express their unique perspectives, promoting empathy, understanding, and self-advocacy. Ensuring that students and educators have time to explore together a multitude of facets of self-hood is foundational to identity development.
Knowing oneself through ongoing inquiry prepares us to live in the world with belonging, purpose, and agency. Optimally, learning to learn, live, and love through identity-affirming experiences in school and beyond helps us live joyfully in the world, a world that may tell us negative things about who we are. School community learning experiences that prepare students to seek an understanding of our differences and engage with culturally defined power differentials help students take this inquiry stance from an early age.
EnCompass Academy, an EL Education partner school, in East Oakland, Calif., puts students’ wealth of knowledge at the center of their school experience, empowering them to cultivate their own genius while countering the negative narrative about young people in their city. With 66 percent of students being English-language learners and 76 percent identifying as Hispanic, EnCompass scholars learn that the path to a better world must “start with self, be guided by family, engage with community, and be rooted in ancestors.”
Students at EnCompass create “all about me” books called My Compass Guide, which include personal and familial research, hopes and dreams, maps of family birthplaces, and special stories about parents/caregivers and living or ancestral grandparents. Students share their unique books with their school and local community in a gathering that honors storytelling as a pathway for academic and cultural transformation. Creating and sharing these compass guides builds students’ confidence, self-awareness, and expertise in their histories, springboarding them toward futures as active citizen scholars.
At least “half of the curriculum walks in the classroom as the textbooks of (students’) lives” (Style, 2014, p. 67). The My Compass Guide schoolwide project is a great example of how a school community can connect to their students’ and families’ funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992) and funds of identity (Estaban-Guitart & Moll, 2014) to honor their stories and support their well-being and learning (Campano, 2007). Funds of identity are the “historically accumulated, culturally developed, and socially distributed resources that are essential for a person’s self-definition, self-expression, and self-understanding” (Estaban-Guitart & Moll, 2014, p. 31).
The wealth of knowledge and experiences accumulated by students’ ancestors and immediate family create a household body of knowledge and skills.
When these funds are actively brought forth and shared in the community, students have opportunities to integrate their multiple identity dimensions and to feel whole as a result of bringing their full selves to their learning and growing experiences. This inclusion and validation of student and family experience diversity are foundational to cultivating belonging, agency, and purpose. Rich literacy practices that include students’ identity content through storytelling help students, their families, and teachers develop a broad regard for themselves, each other, and the variability of human experience.
Arbor-Vitae Woodruff School, another EL Education partner, in Woodruff, Wis., is deeply committed to empowering each student to make a positive difference and to achieve personal greatness as demonstrated in three dimensions of student achievement: character, mastery of content and skills, and high-quality work.
With 6 percent of the student body identifying as American Indian or Alaskan Native, the foundation for this work is building an understanding of and respect for the Indigenous tribes of Wisconsin, both the native people that historically lived on the lands these students inhabit and the native people that live there today. Students build connections directly with tribe members as they learn and create together. In 2023, students celebrated Better World Day by learning to introduce themselves in Ojibwe, practicing written Ojibwe language in a community-garden project, and collaboratively creating original artwork with Ojibwe symbols. The work culminated in a schoolwide powwow and drum circle led by local Ojibwe elder Brian Jackson, Big Buck.
Historical and community-based ways of understanding are specific sets of knowledge that help shape how we see and understand the world.
Arbor-Vitae Woodruff School attends to the history of their land and the native people in their Better World Day project, demonstrating their culturally responsive school leadership practices (Khalifa, 2018). The learning process was all-encompassing as students engaged in a collection of cultural and linguistic experiences that gave them windows to deeply understand the experiences and ways of knowing the Ojibwe people of their greater school community.
There are a multitude of ways of seeing and reading the world and a more expansive approach to literacy learning that socially constructs and cultivates students’ knowledge of themselves, their families, their ancestors, and community members with different identities, as well as the larger history of their community lands and people. It also gives students and teachers an ecologically “balanced sense of their place in the world” (Style, 1998). Perhaps most importantly, the incredible learning conversations that take place in these identity and relationship-prioritized learning pathways illuminate our shared humanity found in seeking an understanding of another’s experience while deepening our understanding of ourselves.
Encouraging students to tell their own stories—sharing who they are and what is important to them—supports individual identity development and cultivates the relational capacity of students and educators to sit with difference.
This support of a wide array of experiences and perspectives through storytelling is the meaning-making process and nourishment students and teachers need to develop as learners and people. Storytelling is also the antidote to many systemic cultural practices that can dissuade us from tapping our cultural collective interdependent potential.
‘Sharing Stories Is Foundational’
Becky Corr is a coordinator for the Language, Culture, and Equity Department in Colorado’s Douglas County school district and the owner of EdSpark Consulting. She develops and leads family, school, and community partnerships; professional learning, and coaching opportunities:
Classroom environments that honor student identities create spaces for belonging—for students and families alike. In the words of Brené Brown, “Teachers are the guardians of spaces that allow students to breathe and be curious and explore the world and be who they are without suffocation.” Building classroom environments that honor student identities supports deeper empathy and understanding among students as well as higher achievement and well-being.
Teachers are not alone in creating these spaces. When practitioners partner with families to create environments that honor students’ stories and identities, students thrive academically, socially, and emotionally. There are many benefits for teachers as well. Teachers who have a focus on partnerships report higher levels of satisfaction with their profession because they are spending less time on behavioral challenges and the relationships they have with caregivers are positive. When educators, schools, caregivers, and the community have established positive partnerships, everyone wins.
Three big ideas lay the foundation for the strategies we’ll explore: Two-way communication, sharing parents’ stories, and honoring multilingualism. These big ideas support trust-building with students and caregivers, which is necessary for students to share their stories and what’s important to them.
Two-Way Communication
Teachers have a lot on their plates, so it’s important to focus on some high-yield, quick strategies that will pay dividends and save time in the long run. One such strategy is to ask parents to write the teacher a letter or create an audio recording. Ask parents to share about their child, their interests, and anything that’s important for the teacher to know. This video from Colorin Colorado gives an example of one parent letter and how the teacher got to know more about the child and her identity. Tools like Google Translate and the Say Hi app are helpful with all caregivers but especially those who are multilingual.
The app, Talking Points, can be used by parents and teachers to communicate in multiple languages, and it promotes two-way communication throughout the year. It can be easily used to send positive text messages to families, which is another high-yield strategy according to the Flamboyan Foundation. Communication is fundamental to building trust and these strategies can make teachers’ lives a bit easier by opening the lines of communication in positive ways.
Share Parents’ Stories
Each year, we have an English-language development celebration for our district. Our students share their talents and accomplishments, and we honor educators who are ambassadors for our multilingual families. Each year, we invite parent speakers to share their stories. This year, a parent spoke about her family’s story of fleeing Afghanistan. Another parent shared her story about the struggles of finding belonging when she immigrated from India and how educators supported her family. By partnering with our families, we have been able to shine a light on their stories and improve our practices. What opportunities might already exist in the classroom for parents to share stories?
Honor Multilingualism
Encourage students to use their full linguistic repertoire and honor multilingualism in the classroom. Being bilingual is a gift and building intentional opportunities for students to use all the languages they know supports their identities, language development, and their academic achievement. Labeling classroom objects in multiple languages and grouping students with similar languages together during a classroom discussion or project are just a couple ways to support and honor student identities and linguistic gifts.
Encourage students—even students who are learning world languages—to discuss a topic in multiple languages. As a teacher, I’ve asked students to describe a math concept in English and another language as they felt comfortable. The classroom was a flurry of explanations in Vietnamese, Ukrainian, Spanish, English, and Mandarin. Students had a new respect for each other and their gifts. The lesson was a powerful way to honor student identities and celebrate all linguistic and mathematical talents. Honoring multilingualism in the classroom honors students’ identities.
Sharing stories and partnering with caregivers is not something extra; rather, it is foundational, intentional, and transformational. Building in these practices in small but meaningful ways lays the foundation for students and families to share their stories to transform our classrooms and our schools.
Thanks to Jessica, Kristin, and Becky for contributing to today’s post.
Guests answered this question:
What are ways to encourage students to tell their own stories; to explore, write about, share about who they are and what is important to them? And how do you develop a classroom environment to ensure that student identities are supported?
In Part One, Crystal Watson, Kwame Sarfo-Mensah, Courtney Rose, and Erica Silva contributed their responses.
In Part Two, Jacquelyn Fabian, Michele Myers, and Angela M. Ward shared their answers.
Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at lferlazzo@epe.org. When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.
You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo.
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