Tag Archives: #antiracistteaching

Top Ten Posts of 2020

Since I actually stayed true to my commitment to blog weekly this year (I only missed a couple of weeks) I thought that I would share out the most popular posts of the year.

10. The Power of Making Thinking Visible Online

Based off from the popular book, this post includes free templates for face-to-face or virtual use of Visible Thinking Routines.

9. When Teachers Choose to Escalate

Too often we blame kids without reflecting on how our approach to a situation has made it worse. This is especially problematic when we teach children of color without reflecting on our internal biases.

8. How PBL Gets All Kids in the Game

An analogy between different kind of students relationship with sports and their relationship with school. PBL is the “game changer” that invites all kids into meaningful learning.

7. The Power of Class Rituals

This might be my personal favorite as it is all about connecting and building culture in the classroom. How have you developed rituals, especially if you are teaching remote?

6. Using PBL Themes for U.S. History

This one is for the history teachers who want to teach thematically, instead of chronologically. Includes a free download of my projects for the year.

5. Why I’ve Been Afraid to be Antiracist

This was the first of the Anti-racist series in which I share a personal story of getting into “good trouble.” The second half of the post was written by my friend Dara Savage, sharing how she dealt with racism that her daughter experienced at school.

4. 5 Social Distancing Group Work Strategies

This post continues to be popular as teachers struggle with remote learning. It is challenging, but here’s some ways that it can be done.

3. 26 Anti-racist PBL Ideas

This was a collaboration of ideas from many friends at PBLWorks. Check out K-12 anti-racist projects across the content areas.

2. 10 SEL Ideas to Launch the Year

Written back in August with Covid in mind, these are great to introduce in January when school starts back up. It’s a great time to renew norms, build culture with some team builders, and reflect on goals.

1. How to Teach Students to Manage themselves

This post was far and away the most popular of the year. Probably due to two downloads: a Google Sheets student scrum board and Group Contract Scenarios. Check them out if you missed them the first time around, they are still free.

Honorable Mention:

The Marriage of SEL and PBL actually comes from 2019, but it was the second most visited post of the year so check out how SEL seamlessly integrates with PBL.

Questions? Interested in SEL and PBL Consulting?  Connect with me at michaelkaechele.com or @mikekaechele onTwitter.

26 Antiracist PBL Ideas

This is the third post of the new Caucus Series: “Everybody’s talking about it at home, but nobody wants to talk about it at school.” Check out these links for the continued conversation about how to be an antiracist in the classroom.

We started off this series with a post containing two examples explaining the fear of addressing race at school ending with “Cheers to the Troublemakers” and extolling teachers to speak up on racial issues.

The second post was Jim Bentley’s personal story of becoming an antiracist teacher. It is vital, especially for white teachers, to “do the work” first of learning more about the history and experience of Black, Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) in the United States before diving in with students. Without first reading and listening to BIPOC and spending time on introspective reflection about one’s one beliefs and actions, the white teacher is in danger of shallow responses that can be micro aggressions or presenting themselves as a fraud.

Once you are deep in the self-work of learning antiracism and are ready to lead your students into explorations on the history and implications of race, then of course Project Based Learning (PBL) is a great framework for deep inquiry. Many teachers have shared antiracism resources for the classroom and the purpose here is not to duplicate them, but rather share specific project ideas, many of which have already been successfully implemented in the classroom.

These are not fully developed PBL projects with worksheets that you can buy off TPT and photocopy, but PBL ideas that need to be adjusted and adopted for your students and community. The projects can be scaled up or down in age from 4 to 100.

You are never too young or old to learn about equity, justice, empathy, and love!

Most of these projects could be integrated across multiple content areas for an interdisciplinary deep dive. Below the table are some other resources including an extensive, final product list. The final products listed in the table are suggestions and you may want to pivot to a different one depending on your student interests and community involvement. Choosing a product that has a strong impact locally, will make the project experience something that students will never forget!

So check out this table of Antiracist PBL ideas at bit.ly/AntiracistPBL and remix them for your students and let us know how it goes!