We at the Guild are excited about New York State’s new initiative to bring Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework to New York’s students. The DOE’s new initiative asks educators to develop “strategies that leverage the various aspects of students’ identities, including the rich cultural, racial, historical, linguistic characteristics of students to provide mirrors that reflect the greatness of who their people are and windows into the world that allows students to connect across cultures.”
For the past nine years, the Children’s Arts Guild has been pioneering an education technique we call “Authenticity-Based Social-Emotional Learning” that provides exactly the kind of mirrors and windows needed to accomplish New York’s new Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education goals.
Our professional development workshops for educators address some of the key benchmarks of the state’s initiative including:
Build strong connections with students. Understand their lives, backgrounds, and identities.
Create emotional safe spaces and foster trust among students. Nurture students’ identities and give them a sense of ownership and belonging.
Examine their own personal beliefs around identity, while giving professional learning and support.
See and value the background, views, and needs of all students. This includes experiences related to race, culture, language, or ability.
Our workshops start by taking educators through creative and reflective processes that ask them to examine their own identities and stories. Participants use a critical lens to investigate the ways in which their own life experiences affect their worldview and their work. We discuss the effects of limiting expectations and what it means to live and work authentically.
Through hands-on application of the principles of authenticity-based SEL, we demonstrate how this approach can be applied with students and school communities. We use empathy-based techniques to help educators evaluate their current school or classroom setting. Then we help them plan steps for creating supportive and responsive learning environments for the wide range of identities found in New York’s student population.
We look forward to working with New York State educators on this new initiative, and we invite you to join us.