Engagement and Inclusion of Students

**Video submitted separately in Canvas Portal. File too large for blogger

For chapters 8&9, I wanted to share my discussion board idea for my theoretical classroom. In addition, I wanted to share a video I created for my students at my internship to promote diversity. My school was engaged in "Start with Hello" week. Weeks like these are to promote inclusion and to embrace diversity. For that week we had several activities and engagements revolving around the ideas of inclusion. I think it is a great idea to incorporate issues like racism into weeks like those!  I don't think there is an age too young to learn more about each other and our various experiences. 

Discussion board idea:

Since the population I work with is elementary students, I would want to start off simply by asking them to define their perception of terms in their own words. In addition, encourage them with other activities to get them thinking. I think it's so important to bring up difficult topics in young communities because they will be much more open-minded with these concepts as they become an adult. I would want to touch on the topics of racism and oppression from Chapter 9 of Sensoy and DiAngelo. As I said, I would start this discussion board by asking them to define terms in their own words, or with research, so that they could start to critically think about these topics. Following those definition questions, I would love for the students to dive into personal experiences so that we can learn from one another and bring about awareness of each other's stories.

Describe the following terms in your own words using your own understanding of these concepts:

What is race?

What is racism?

What is oppression?

Answer one of the following questions:

Have you experienced racism or oppression through a personal experience that you would feel comfortable sharing?

Have you witnessed racism or oppression in your community?