Inclusion and Teaching in Chicago

The full title of this post is All the Small Things (That We Do to Include All) but first I want to bring it back to 1999 when Blink 182 was all over the radio, my flared jeans were essentially bell bottoms, and we were talking seriously about how the turn of the century could mean Armageddon for us all! So before we get into inclusive practices, brew yourself some coffee, put your baseball cap on backwards, and enjoy the smooth, pop punk stylings of Mark, Travis, and Matt. Is th e upbeat skater pop surging through your veins? Good, now you're ready. Read the list below! Oftentimes when we talk about inclusive practices and environments we mention co-teaching, accessibility, communication, cooperative learning, etc., etc., etc.  While we see these as giant, involved tenants of an inclusive environment, there are a lot of small, subtle ways to show anyone walking through the hallways that we value and include all our community members. 1. Both co-teachers' names are o...

For Unique Week, we also created activities for each classroom. Below is a run down of what we did.  Primary: Students read It's Okay To Be Different by Todd Parr. After the read aloud, students completed an activity that can be found here or here. Below is a picture from one second grade teacher's bulletin board.   Intermediate: Students read Have You Filled a Bucket Today? by Carol McCloud. After the read aloud, students completed an activity that can be found here or here. Below are some pictures from the AMAZING co-taught lesson in fourth grade. You can see that one teacher is reading while the other asked discussion questions while sitting with the student's on the rug. The teachers referred to one another often and the students were so excited and engaged. It was a great lesson to watch! Middle School: Students watched this video from Kid President. It's called "20 Things You Should Say More Often" and it...

Monday was our first day of Unique Week! Unique Week is where we take a whole week to celebrate our community and everyone in it. Below is a break down of what went on! Slogan: The week before Unique Week started, I started a contest in middle school. I asked students to come up with the best slogan using our Unique Week theme: community. Our winner was a seventh grade girl that came up with the snappy but elegant slogan of UNITED BUT DIFFERENT. Nice. Posters: Two weeks before Unique Week started, a wonderful parent took the time out of her day to come to our school and take pictures of students playing and laughing together in groups. She took pictures of students during lunch and recess. The amazing art teacher created posters using these pictures and we displayed the pictures around the school. These posters will stay up all year. Teacher Lunch: We had a teacher appreciation lunch on Wednesday. Not only did we want to work on the classroom community, but we al...