Removing Labels, Grades K-12

40 Techniques to Disrupt Negative Expectations About Students and Schools

Dominique Smith, Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey

• Publisher: Corwin
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781544398174
• eBook ISBN: 9781071838297
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Disrupting the cycle starts with you.

No matter how conscientious we are, we carry implicit bias… which quickly turns into assumptions and then labels. Labels define our interactions with and expectations of students. Labels contribute to student identity and agency. And labels can have a negative effect beyond the classroom.

It's crucial, then, that teachers remove labels and focus on students' strengths—but this takes real work at an individual, classroom, and schoolwide scale. 

Removing Labels urges you to take an active approach toward disrupting the negative effects of labels and assumptions that interfere with student learning. This book offers:

• 40 practical, replicable teaching techniques—all based in research and best practice—that focus on building relationships, restructuring classroom engagement and management, and understanding the power of social and emotional learning 
• Suggestions for actions on an individual, classroom, and schoolwide level
• Ready-to-go tools and student-facing printables to use in planning and instruction

Removing Labels is more than a collection of teaching strategies—it's a commitment to providing truly responsive education that serves all children. When you and your colleagues take action to prevent negative labels from taking hold, the whole community benefits.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Publisher’s Acknowledgments
• Introduction Interrupting the Cycle Begins With You
• Section 1 Individual Approaches
• Technique 1 Learning Names the Right Way
• Technique 2 Interest Surveys
• Technique 3 Banking Time
• Technique 4 2 × 10 Conversations
• Technique 5 Affective Statements
• Technique 6 Impromptu Conferences
• Technique 7 Empathetic Feedback
• Technique 8 Reconnecting After an Absence
• Technique 9 Labeling Emotions
• Technique 10 Solving Problems (Do the Next Right Thing)
• Section 2 Classroom Approaches
• Technique 11 Creating a Welcoming Classroom Climate
• Technique 12 Class Meetings
• Technique 13 Classroom Sociograms
• Technique 14 The Mask Activity
• Technique 15 Asset Mapping
• Technique 16 Peer Partnerships
• Technique 17 Five Different Peer Partnerships
• Technique 18 Self-Assessment in Collaborative Learning
• Technique 19 Equitable Grouping Strategies
• Technique 20 Gradual Release of Responsibility Instructional Framework
• Technique 21 Teaching With Relevance in Mind
• Technique 22 Jigsaw
• Technique 23 Accountable Talk
• Technique 24 Making Decisions
• Technique 25 Alternatives to Public Humiliation
• Technique 26 When Young Children Label Others—The Crumple Doll
• Technique 27 When Older Students Label Others—Insults and Epithets
• Technique 28 Trauma-Sensitive Classroom Design
• Section 3 Schoolwide Approaches
• Technique 29 The Dot Inventory
• Technique 30 Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies
• Technique 31 Schoolwide Inclusive Practices
• Technique 32 Student Empowerment
• Technique 33 Collective Responsibility
• Technique 34 Recognizing and Responding to Implicit Bias
• Technique 35 Racial Autobiography
• Technique 36 Social Capital
• Technique 37 A Welcoming Front Office
• Technique 38 Community Ambassadors
• Technique 39 The Master Schedule
• Technique 40 Distributed Leadership
• Coda
• References
• Index
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