Hello everybody welcome welcome welcome so good to see the numbers climbing I'm sure I'll see your chats and get to know you a little bit throughout this process my name is Melissa Sanjay and Welcome to our udl guidelines 3.0 webinar Series this series is the essential updates and practical applications so you may have seen shantee and I a couple weeks ago do the overarching enhancements and now we're Going to talk about specifically about that engagement I like to hold my guidelines when to talk about them that engagement column that green column um talk about what
are the enhancements that we've made there you will see uh in the chat Patrice is going to drop the links yes Wendy she's going to drop in just a second the link to the um the link to the the uh PowerPoint it will have links in there uh you can either use that QR code or you can type that Bit.ly straight into your url I'm going to move us forward but if you miss the link TR is going to keep dropping it as people come in hello hi from Ireland we got you oh wow awesome
nice all right so that chat box thank you for jumping in there Trudy and others and saying who you are and where you're coming from Corey good to see you from New Hampshire I love to see Mount Prospect here um you can use that you can use that chat box to introduce Yourself to ask a question to share an idea or quote sometimes people will quotee things that folks said either in the chat or over the mic and um just to double down on it say they really like that quote you can put that um
hyperlink in for your colleagues if you have resources looks like we got Nebraska Texas oh Texas there you go Shante shant we go B Oregon Dallas New Jersey San Diego finger Florida y'all be safe say that I said I saw some folks from Florida so I say y'all be safe that's right yeah hope you're all hunkered down there Ontario Canada Seattle Knoxville look at all that Ohio Canada Prince Edward Island awesome welcome everybody thank you so much for joining us today yeah for sure so um you can use that chat box everyone is fig a
lot of folks have figured out how to use that chat box you just want to select either it either will say everyone or it'll say all panelists and attendees depending on Your version of Zoom I think and you can contribute um if you chose choose just the host or the panelist then you'll just it'll just come to myself and Shante if you want to respond to something that folks said in that chat box you can do at in their name and respond directly to something they said either start having a conversation or um tell them
how much you agree with them or uh anything else if you're also from Auckland New Zealand welcome burned uh You could also say that there in the chat just kind of get to know each other that's the way we're going to be able to interact today today love it and Melissa before we go on someone put udl is not something we do it's something we believe I love that thank you for starting it us us off thank you Illinois we got Sunni El is is uh saying she has a daughter there at Texas A&M no
awesome Right where you are shant there we go all right our accessibility commitments so we have taken steps many of us not just Shante and I with some of our folks behind the scenes shout out to Cassie who's been helping us a lot with this to make sure that this deck is accessible so we use a tool to perform an automated check micro Microsoft's accessibility Checker we also have checked manually to ensure the clear reading order of the screen read for Screen reader users and we're providing the deck to you so you can personalize your
experience as we speak to go along with the deck um go a little forward go a little back if you miss something and we will welcome any feedback you have on proving proving this experience for you we are always looking to improve always looking to iterate and move forward my name as I said is Melissa Sanjay I'm an implementation specialist at cast that means that I go around the Country sometimes around the globe to teach Universal Design for Learning in different contexts so sometimes I'm working with teachers sometimes I'm working with school leaders on our
schoolwide implementation criteria we do have little plug we do have a webinar coming up or a workshop series coming up about that so um Patrice has been putting that in the chat so if you're interested in that you can click that link and check that out um prior to Coming to cast about six years ago I was first a social worker and then a teacher and then a principal for about 17 years and Boston's alternative schools so those are the schools for the students who are 14 to 21 and either dropped out or were pushed
out of their homeschools and they were coming back to uh get their credit so that's where I came to udl and really um out of necessity found out how to make learning environments and spaces accessible for all students And uh allow them to have some agency in their learning and my colleague shantee is with me yes I am front and center with my dear colleague Melissa we've been spending a lot of time together but hello I'm from Brian Texas um yes home home of Texas A&M here in Brian College Station um I am I am
a Shanta singer I serve on both I have the pleasure really of serving both on the professional learning team where you'll see a lot of my existence online and behind the Scenes but I also have a foot in um our research and development department here at cast and so it's so important I believe in making sure that our there is that research to practice um collaboration and connectivity and so I love reading doing um being enthralled in all of the research um that exists but prior coming to Cass I was actually at um service center
here in in in Texas providing professional development around all Things special education so access acceptability um and then prior to that I was in Baltimore County Public Schools I saw some some some of my um folks from Maryland uh where I was an instructional coordinator for special education and so my heart is my heart was introduced if you will to um udl my journey began there in Baltimore County I wish I had known of the fabulous framework back when I was a special education teacher in DC public schools uh for some quite Some time because
I truly believe in the framework in terms of what it provides and what to not only students and learners but also for teachers as we develop engaging and motivating and all the things related to learning um experiences and environment so anyway I'm going to stop talking about myself and let's get in to the content awesome and I'm hoping that you know you heard Chante talk a little bit about the research to Practice Loop that we have it cast and that hopefully this webinar will try to kind of bring some of that alive what's the research
what does it mean for our practice um but before we do that let's talk a little bit about cast we have been doing these 3.0 webinars we are the authors of the Universal Design for Learning guidelines and our mission is that cast leads inspires and convenes a global Community to design Equitable inclusive learning experiences through Our Universal Design for Learning framework and if you're not familiar with our Universal Design for Learning framework I'm just going to give you a little definition and there's going to be some free webinars you can go back and check out
that can get a you can dig a Little Deeper if you'd like but um in terms of a definition what you L is is it's an educational framework based in research in the learning sciences that guides the development of flexible and Accessible methods materials and environments that Embrace variability minimize barriers and develop learner Agency for all and we do that primarily through our framework that it guides us on how to use these Universal Design for Learning guidelines and that's what we're going to be talking about mostly today is the some of the the enhancements for
the changes in the Universal Design for Learning guidelines 3.0 so what how have we made it better Enhanced it and wider from 2.2 as we used to call our our previous version of the guidelines to 3.0 so given that that is kind of what we're going let's set Our intention today because we know in udl that our brains are goal directed and if we set an intention ahead of a learning experience it's going to cue our nervous system to pay attention to what we need to in order to achieve that goal so the goals that
this particular side deck are Aimed at are for you to understand the engagement enhances in 3.0 to understand that research behind those enhancements and then be able to use that those engagement enhancements in your practice so given that's kind of what we're aiming for today what are your goals for today so you can take a minute you can hold that in mind you can write it on a sticky or anywhere you have in your learning space that you use to jot things down or you can throw it in the Chat and let us know so
we can try to aim some of our comments and um things that we say towards towards those goals absolutely as we wait for those goals to come in I'll read us over the uh oh we have here we go to learn about the updates and the rationale great we'll have some of that Tracy we'll have um some of why we changed it some of how we changed it and some of um what we can do now that we have these changes SE and language strategies nice Engagement in practice ideas for implementing updates in our program
awesome and we're also Deborah going to have a um School leader also School leader um webinar coming up if you'll check out those those guidelines 3.0 webinars that um Patrice keeps dropping in the chat there'll be some things for leaders too and how to implement them schoolwide online and I know here for um engagement here today but just know that We have had some other um specific webinars on learner Agency on the overarching changes and so some of you may find Value in uh looking at those webinars that are posted currently on the E guidelines
website nice nurture join play oh I love that and whole section for you school yeah exactly love that awesome connect the framework I love your so big picture what are these enhancements for engagement um the first Is to Center affirm and sustain learner strengths and identities and there was there is going to be an identity webinar that's going to go over that and we went over it a little bit when we talked about the overarching changes so we won't dig deeply into identities today but that's one of the big changes to be aware of another
of the big changes to be aware of is uh we're considering how we can address bias threats and distractions in learning so that shows Up in engagement but it also shows up across the other guidelines as well and we did have an A- whole webinar on bias um and how to think about that how to how to design to address it so you can go and check that out um in the 3.0 webinars but today we're going to dig into these last three emphasize the role of belonging in teaching and learning emphasize the role of
joy and play in teaching and learning and cultivate empathy and repair harm with restorative Practices so those are our considerations we call them design considerations so those are the considerations that we're we um highlighting that are new or enhancements um from the 2.2 so our agenda will be to go over those um enhancements which we just did we're going to start with belonging we're going to go into nurture and play and we're going to um finish up with cultivate empathy and restorative Practices so let's dive in Shante let's go all right so our first uh
consideration that we are or concept that we are diving into is this idea of belonging and one thing we tried to do is really provide some clarity around what we mean by the terms that we're going to be using today so when we think about belonging right um while we could come up with one definition I want to make sure that it is grounded in literature and research and so Fernandez At all which there we will see uh listing of our resources or references at the end of this presentation but basically says that how a
person defines belonging is based on their experiences when we talked about bias we talked a lot about like our truths are in what in our experiences what we hold true is is through our daily experiences activities cultures things we've been taught and so that sense of belonging is actually the same how someone defines belonging is Really about those instances where they have felt like they have belonged and those instances where they felt like they have not belonged um and so uh Fernandez at all talks about the fact that when someone says they have a sense
of belonging they feel as though they can show up as their authentic selves they are not they are not an afterthought who they are has been considered in the planning in the design in the development of whatever it is We're referring to in the situation learning they have also um uh individuals when they feel like they along are able to recognize and connect with others in the community so within the udl guidelines 3.0 we talked about uh collective learning and so that that part of being a community is also a large sense of what happens
or what it means to be to to be to belong Melissa go to the next slide and so what we tried to do as well in our um Demonstration of or explanation of our enhanced ments is really talk about some of the themes that came up as we were um talking to our communities our advisory boards and to give you specific quotes that were surfaced that uh really did drive us to make some of the enhancements to guidelines 3.0 and so what you're seeing here is a few quotes from our um Advisory Group and it's
we asked them you know what this was something that that that popped up that Kind of categorize into this sense of belonging we said what what does belonging really mean it says a person feels like you're here like this is this is your space you're um you're not invited to be a guest but you're actually representative this is for you right it's maybe the idea of being able to identify ways to feel welcome and valued and appreciated and love so people who have a sense of belonging feel this way in their space it's their Space
it's not it's not um ostracizing or it's not something like I said at afterthought another quote that resonated or came up is that when you're developing a sense of belonging it's You're Building trust right you're building that trusting Rapport um that there's people where you don't feel threatened or you don't have to clock out when you have a community like you're engaged you feel safe right and also by doing this we're empowering the Learner we're making sure that they feel safe we're making sure they feel welcomed and belonged so these are some of the quotes
that popped up that really did resonate with us in terms of wanting to ensure that the guidelines provided this sense of belonging all right Melissa So based on many of the the the um conversations as researchers we categorized or we created themes around these ideas and so what we noticed even though this the the words Caring and empathy and belonging came up it didn't appear anywhere in our previous iteration so um if you're thinking about 2.2 um the word belonging didn't appear anywhere so we needed to fix that right um we also recognized that um
we wanted to provide a space that was inclusive inclusive and Equitable um and that happens when it is a place where you're when you feel like you want where you feel like you want to Be so a learning environment that is design with the udl guidelines in mind is a place where you want to be it's a place where you feel like you've been thought you've been thought of you inv valued and so um we wanted to surface some of the research now I will tell you kind of throughout and you may hear me say
this more than once throughout our our conversation today is that the pieces or research or literature that we pulled out is by no means what we're Seeing is the best or or um you know are the ones that you should rush and read these are a sample of the research that support the changes that were made so they're supporting these concepts of belonging and so three in particular I wanted to highlight the first one um was or the first two are centered around this idea of belonging within higher education and so um Peddler at all
talks about this sense of um belonging when students at the University level felt a Sense of belonging it was shown to contribute to their motivation it allowed them to be more attentive and actually um re retain their participation at the University level these also um as it relates to belonging Incorporated those feelings like I mentioned before of feeling value so when students felt value there were there was a greater sense of of that belonging which led to higher motivation which led to more engagement Higher academic self confidence and overall High um Higher Achievement uh the
next piece of research that I wanted to or literature that I wanted to um explain to you was uh price Smith and fox and here they did a great job at really explaining how we create or to provide a process for design designing an environment where inclusion and belonging was at the at the foundation so I appreciate this article because it does provide uh how You set up spaces where students feel welcome and when they feel that they value when they when they feel that they have been considered and so this was something that we
really did um pride ourselves on in including in the enhancements the last one is a little special to me um because this talks about um this need for authentic inclusion and this actually was a article that was written it was a narrative from a uh a family of a Student who or of a child who was a neurode Divergent learner Lear neurod Divergent learner and I wanted to read just a snippet of this article for you um Melissa and in community so that you can see exactly just how it feels for the authentic inclusion um
and how it demonstrates um a sense of belonging so ear in kindergarten Benny was invited to a birthday party with a sports team and my husband took him to the party and waited on the side yet called me soon With worry in his voice it seemed Benny was running around acting like a puppy while the party organizers were trying to organize a sports game for the children my husband was anxious and asked me what should he do we both knew that Benny did not do well with r Direction when he was stressed I suggested that
my husband hang back and see what happened next he called back in a few minutes to some extent relieved it seemed that now many of the children Were running around like dogs and cats Benny was no longer alone he told me that the other parents were laughing and the only folks who were bothered were the party planners there's as a teacher I knew then that had B's unusual behavior been made an issue of the children would have shunned him rather than joining him there's a fine line between shaping behavior and allowing children to be themselves
here we see an example of the way that Benny was Allowed to change the community rather than being forced to be the one to conform so I love that because it really does Foster it really does demonstrate what a sense of belonging in community can actually and to me Shante um it sort of highlights how all of these a lot of these ideas in 3.0 are intertwined because once we make space for a young person to be authentically themselves not only are they feeling more belonging But the other young people are having more empathy for
different ways of of moving throughout the world absolutely so what does this look like in practice so what are some ideas what can we do um to create those spaces so that uh students can belong or feel that sense of belonging so one thing is to vary the activities and sources of information we know that Learners vary we know that Learners are going to connect to different things so have a Varied um ways that we can personalize or contextualize to our Learners lives have culturally relevant and sustaining options socially relevant age and ability appropriate or
even appropriate for different racial culture ethnic and gender groups and the key there is to vary these activities and Vary these sources so that there's space for everyone to sort of see themselves in the curriculum another thing you can do is have opportunities to share Perspectives and ideas because you of course cannot you cannot um know every single young person how they are and what their authentic self is especially on day one so how do we create that space for our students to share who they are to share their perspectives and share their ideas in
particular around belonging around what do I need in this space to feel like I belong what Feels Like Home to me what feels safe and then in that process as part of that safety Examine and address when and how bias may be creating barriers to belonging so when you see young people's maybe shut down in terms of their sense of belonging because of something that has done something that is said something that exists in the in the space we don't ignore it we address it and we talk about it and that's going to come up
even a little bit more when we talk about um restorative practices so those are some ideas and as I say they're kind Of all intertwined but we want to build um build this classroom Community using these ideas and the uh we have a little example here we'll play for you um an idea like a specific strategy on how to uh Foster belonging in community from Edge Utopia oops there's so many a sense of belonging is really critical for success in school that sense that we are part of a larger hole that there is a fit
Between me and my environment but the data does suggest that student sense of connection at all grade levels is on the decline internationally there are pedagogical practices that convey to students you belong here and jigsaw is a brilliant example of that jigaw classroom is classic research by El Aronson that's inspired so much of the Cooperative learning movement in US education and they found this to be very effective at Reducing Prejudice and improving the performance of minority students in the aftermath of desegregation basically what you're doing is you're creating a collaborative situation where it's in people's
self-interest to treat each other nicely and to cooperate and so what he did was to create these small learning groups five to seven kids working together and each individual gets a separate piece of the lesson plan so if you're studying American history One kid would get the original sat liers another kid would get something later in American history like the' 60s each kid under the guidance of the teacher becomes an expert in their little piece of the puzzle and so each kid is kind of like a jigsaw piece and it's only by pooling our information
and sharing it that we can learn the whole lesson in its entirety the Brilliance of this is that there's so many positive outcomes it's in the kids' interest to cooperate It encourages kids to talk and get to know one another better it Fosters equal status another benefit is subjective psychological I learn that hey if I'm struggling on this work it's like other people are often struggling too so I don't take it as personally uh there's social proof that it's the difficulty of the work and not something about me and my belongingness that explains my difficulty
I think what a lot of teachers including myself can get wrong Is can't just put people together into groups and say go to it group learning when it's structured appropriately can make a a world of a difference to those people who feel themselves to be or are seen as Outsiders if you can kind of bolster people at that key moment where they're trying to get a foothold it can be a catalyst for health and achievement and and growth [Music] so we wanted to take a minute and just Do a little reflection what questions ideas do
you have about Foster and belonging and what strategies can you share and I see we have some things in the chat about higher education settings you want to address that Shante yeah I was just going to say I love that and the two um articles that were referenced were actually at um University or higher education level so I totally appreciate those comments thank you for constantly reminding us that udl is not just a K12 Framework it really is um there to support all of us yeah great and belonging is the the impact of belonging and
learning is neuroscience right so that's right happens at all all levels of development go ahead and type those things in the chat what questions you have what strategies do you want to share just looking through some of the chats oh there's a question about which two articles relate to higher Edge Shante um it is is let me give you the one if you're if you're on the slide deck excuse me I just was it pedler pedler was one and then the other one was uh pedler was one and then the other one was um uh
Fernandez Fernandez great then we have another comment I feel everyone has something to give others can learn from them their words are important and of value also and Fernandez was actually um A university in in the United Kingdom so has an international perspective awesome yes pedler and like I said if you look at the slides at the bottom we put the references or put the references um to the research articles that we um have as well as the uo guidelines for each of the considerations we do have research pages and so we invite you definitely
to explore um those citations as you um see great we have a Comment in the chat about um maybe something as simple as asking someone if you're pronouncing their name correctly when you meet them build a connection that that uh flows right into how they identify as a person right yes for sure video maing intention um that you can go to that um video link and there should be more information in the comments on the YouTube around uh what the context is um I don't know the Exact context uh how they group their students if
it was um if it was by level or other ways um I don't understanding or choice or things like that personal reflection assignments are opportunities talk about your feelings great all right they're com thank you all for your comments appreciate that you want to jump into joy and play sure let's learner surveys nice yes so joy and play this is again a particular importance to me as well Personally um also professionally and so I said I want to kind of give you a idea of what we mean by these terms as we're talking about them
so in terms of Joy uh goalie Muhammad defines joy as being fun and celebratory um it's related to advancing happiness right byel by elevating the beauty of humanity I love that um as well as embracing truthful narratives and representation of diverse people in the world and we'll get a little bit More into this when we talk about representation a different seminar but just the fact that um we want to embrace different differences we want to embrace diversity and when people see themselves in themselves when they see themselves in what they're learning um this this Sparks
a sense of Joy uh and play uh uh leather Hopper and OB which we'll talk about in one of the examples defines play as not just about games that's kind kind of where our our head goes first When we think about play directly to games but that playfulness is an attitude and it's an approach and it's a philosophy of life so these are the definitions or kind of the grounding Concepts or ideas that we'll hold um for this this next um part of our conversation here today some of the quotes that came up or some
of the um comments that came up in our in our various focus groups and I believe this one was from our learner Agency uh group talked about the fact that our society really does value worth on production or titles but that joy and play is huge and it should be part of this shift this Paradigm Shift it's not just about being productive and what this said to me is that it's not just about quantity but it's about the quality right um then there was another another comment that talked about teacher retention so it says we
have a huge issue about teacher retention I Think it boils down to the fact that they've Educators lost have lost their agency they've lost their satisfaction they've lost their connection to kids that relights their fire it's all about getting the job done and that they forget what the job is maybe the missing piece is our own heart to finding ourselves and establishing and rejuvenating ourselves um and so what that what's the why behind why you became an educator right And so just a few things a few articles that I wanted to highlight here um and
I saw that many of you talked about um you know how I incorporate joy and play into your you know secondary or postsecondary environments and um excuse me and so uh the first article here by feel Wen talks about um this idea that that play while learning has become really um a privilege right so when you think about and this this very much resonated with me but I think about as an instructional Coordinator when I went to observe sometimes the special education resource rooms I noted some of the practices there the the the constant drill
the constant practice the constant conformity but then when I visited the gifted and talented classrooms there was a lot of creativity and Innovation and thought process and I wondered why there was this disparity between those two educational environments and So within this article he talks about the fact That you know we we we got to get back to um bringing joy into learning because it Fosters a sense of creativity and innovation um as students are learning the second one by leather it all talks about uh supporting playfulness in the postsecondary education uh classroom and so
many of you are in the higher education content and wonder what this is like so that article really does an amazing job at explaining not just how But why playfulness is so important at that post-secondary level because right not only does it enhance creativity but it Fosters humor and motivation and positive inner emotions with you will which is so important when we think about not just belonging but learning in general right um we have this idea that that play and joy is just for our babies right like just Early Childhood maybe but no as an
educator like I want to feel Joy when I am teaching and when I Am designing to so I'd like to dispel that myth out there if it if it if it does it exist um and then the last article that I wanted to highlight is um Jennifer Adams uh this um article on cultivating black joy and she does this with a focus on science learning and so if you haven't heard of black Joy it is a framework for Designing uh curriculum research to practice but it actually centers on Black Liberation and it Offers oftentimes counternarratives
to the dominant narrative that that's often highlighted in the curriculum so examples of um one thing that comes to mind is when you think of a scientist sometimes what are those um you know what are those dominant ideals or ideas of a scientist I remember I asked my students this you know one time and uh I had to remind them that we have scientists of different racial ethnic identity um backgrounds right it's not Just the ones that we tend to see in our textbooks or the ones that we tend to see on TV right there
is a um there are a plethora of other representations of scientists and who that is and so this um article talks about how we cultivate uh black Joy if you will by bringing a Blackness and the black liberatory education back into the curriculum and that all go ahead oh that just highlights for me again this interconnectedness right so that Counternarrative making space for counternarratives is is addressing bias right at the same time as allowing students to um show up authentically with their full identity so some of these big ideas of 3.0 we throughout all of
the the new checkpoint enhancements Melissa I love this comment in the in the chat it says some of this is true for any profession I recently introduced this guideline to medical students um and they struggled with it Though um they loved it and the feedback was it's hard to find playing joy in pure science um and the high stakes multiple choice tests that are required to take in Concepts that they need to know and so I just just a that the udl guins can definitely be used in other fields other than education I feel like
learning is cross everything like we learn just by walking on the street sometime right um and so I appreciate that comment great thank You so some key takeaways from that um from the research is as we've said over and over Joy isn't just for children we can all be joyful we can all experience it be and that Joy releases the serotonin and dopamine and that supports long lasting learning in our in our brains play Sparks curiosity Wonder and Imagination that helps us to construct new understandings make connections develop relationships and then that last piece around
historically marginalized Learning Lear Learners finding a s a sense of Joy centers on ideas of Freedom imagination and community and love and it can even serve as an act of resistance to oppressive systems so Joy is powerful right it's not just fun but it's powerful so what does that look like um in practice so we talked about how like we have joy in our learning and sort of put together this little gear shift right that will help us retain more Information improve our social connections and we improve our social connections that Fosters more joy and
it just uh the hope is it that just Builds on itself so what can we do in our classrooms and our universities um we can nurture exploration and Discovery like make space in our in our learning designs to really just explore I'm getting a weird PowerPoint message I hope that Doesn't mess this up okay we can we can um nurture connection a curriculum we by having diverse representations in our curriculum it can have our students be able to connect to more things when there's more variety and diverse representations there's more opportunities to connect to our
identities our self of self and our community and that builds pride and joy and connection and love and relationship um have a space for Students to shine and and Trauma informed um practice they call this creating islands of competence and we saw that in the jigsaw activity where we became experts on one thing and that really builds that those good feeling chemicals and that sense of joy to really allow students to become experts that we have some of the more common ones that we think about when we think about Joy games role playing art music
sensory play imaginative play Creations Creating things Sparks joy in people and storytelling storytelling like the foundation of us as humans and storytelling can often spark Joy I see something on the tip of your tongue Shante do I oh no I was just I'm just excited about this this one like I said one that's near and dear to my heart and so I just appreciate all of the the examples here nice so we have a little video this has some Littles and some some um some older students it mostly Focuses on K12 but here's some ideas
about playful approaches to Joy in teaching I love the conversation unfortunately the Clos captioning is not working on this video but you can turn on your Zoom close caption it should caption it for you true right when students are really engaged and they want to be in the room and they want to be learning that makes it so much easier for a teacher because You're all invested in the learning that's happening so it does help a lot with burnout because everyone wants to be there it like really changes your outlook on [Music] it right so
if we push this down when I first started our play based journey I was very apprehensive about it because you are taking a step back and you are kind of letting the children need their learning it's really about empowering Children um allowing them to be part of their education to be involved in planning the organization the initial input can be quite heavy but I think it's then a beautiful opportunity for me to be able to observe my children and how they're getting on and developing the skills my God yes one more time [Applause] you're also
allowed to have props for your videos so playful learning means Different things for each class or each grade and for my ninth graders it means doing activities where the students are more creative or autonomous the students always are in a frenzy in the beginning because there's so much stuff in here that they can touch and use but that's what we want because that's an indication of them being motivated and then being engaged in the lesson and actually having fun with it some trees that would be a good idea I would say That it does benefit
the teacher as well as the students you have more flexibility with your time to get to know the children I didn't think it would come natural to me in the beginning but every time we do something that's not what we would call traditional it just brings a different energy yeah once upon a time tell me about your beautiful housing I don't like to be Bored in the classroom and so I often when when I'm teaching if I'm like oh I'm getting a little tired that's when I you know I say okay I got to do
something to change it up and you see it in their faces so I think that's when I see them giggling and laughing I say yeah that's it that's great they're going to go home and say I had fun at school today and that's what I want look at I think someone's at the door oh I see what you're saying you're Muted Melissa it froze but I think we got the the Gest of it I think that's the weird PowerPoint message that keeps giving me about media enable media oh I see so um so we wanted
to let's go on to our reflection here um we have a couple different reflection questions what questions do you have about joy and play how would you convince people the value of joy and play because we know sometimes there's a little like push and pull around that and what strategies can You share and you've been looking at the chat what are you seeing in the chat yeah so just one of the comments uh when we talk about you know words like joy and play um and words are words right they're meant to convey meaning but
if you say potato and I say potato they stand for the same thing right so if Joy and play Don't resonate with you things like creativity or innovation or um playfulness or enthusiasm those can be used as well right and so I don't want Us to get to bogg down on those words because the words are just the words it's the meaning behind it's the ACT it's the intention those are the things that we want to convey in the message so um you know I I would love we we we always love your feedback but
just know that um you know it's it's the it's the intent right sometimes behind the the words and how that is can be portrayed in our design as we're establishing um those environments great and we had a Comment about maybe a good place to start is digging deeper into people's biases about the word what do you really talking about G play enjoy and then there's a question I think you might have some answers to Shante I do a lot of virtual instruction with adults ideas on creating joy and play in Virtual learning spaces right oh
my gosh so I have found again because like that's kind of the world I live in both at cast but also as adun faculty at Texas A&M Right that manipulation and choice are very good in terms of nurturing joint play there's something about if I have agency to decide how I want to do things how the creativity comes out so like for example instead of uh like having papers even though I know that's sometimes a standard right that we have um doing things like creating presentations or creating apps or things like that so that students
can express themselves really does it sense there's a level of Not just authenticity but creativity and I see the enthusiasm oftentimes from students when they have the choice of how they want to express or engage in the content so even though that's just one suggestion is definitely something that um I'd recommend for um for our higher education and one other question Tracy's asking um I wonder how we model this in our PD for teachers does anyone have suggestions um I know one thing that Sparks a lot of joy and creativity Uh that we do at
cast and some of our professional learning is um we'll do activities where we'll allow choice and how you express yourself so you know let's let's uh solidify our understanding of what udl is or let's solidify our understanding of the engagement principle and you can express yourself in a poem in a song in a in an essay in any way you like and that just brings out all the creative juices and people work together and you can work on Your own or together and people work together and really it Sparks a lot of joy in play
so even that just like simple choice of you don't have to share out right you don't share out on a poster paper but you can share out in the way that feels the most engaging to you can be helpful some of the other other wonderful things coming up in the chat um around strategies are things like gamification instead of saying join play Gamification we know that today's world is heavy on technology and development so I love the whole the gameification idea um because that does resonate with a lot of our our older Learners um things
like cahoot I do that in college as well and I know my daughter in her third grade class do does that too right yeah I see Legos oh my gosh Legos are a thing like they really are for both younger and older of folks it's amazing so I appreciate all the comments and Ideas um that we're developing in the chat yeah there's lots of stuff in there um thinking about how Joy varies too Elie is asking us to think about how Joy varies and people find joy and other things and I wish we could keep
talking about this but we got one more to go and about 10 more minutes minutes so we're going to move on to um empathy and restorative practices um but keep it coming talk to each other in the chat share your Ideas all right you ready Shante for empathy I am ready even though Zoom just kicked me off I am back again um my goodness so I know right so we started this time with with quotes right um we do have a actually let's go back since we've been doing that can we go to the for
um the definition since that's how we've been starting and then we'll go back yeah thank you um so I wanted to again to start with definitions that we're operating under if you will oh oh Melissa if you want to talk to this because I know this is these are the ones that you this is my This Is My love language restorative practice it brings you Joy it brings me joy it does so um the suffix Center for restorative justice is here in Boston it's out of suffk law um the law school in suffk um suffk
university and they Define restorative practices as restorative practice involve interventions when harm has happened and We as practice and well as well as practices that help prevent harm and Conflict by creating a sense of belonging safety and social responsibility within the school Comm community so they're very clear that we start of practices are not only when someone's in trouble they're not only when something bad has happened but you do them proac actively start to learn more about each other share your emotions in this circle practice or in These these conversations being open to one another
so that when harm does occur that you've already we already have this practice of how we work together to solve things and then empathy and I don't know how to say this this researcher's name Shante but I'm GNA take a stab cak um empathy is the art of stepping into the shoes of another person understanding their feelings and perspectives and using that Understanding to guide your actions so Shante and I spent some time really looking for a definition of empathy that is um in keeping with the spirit of udl 3.0 because we want it to
convey not only we don't want it to convey sympathy or feeling sorry we want to convey really trying to understand um where someone is coming from and their experience and thinking about how um how can we use that to guide our actions and our interactions with them I love that so we can go to the previous there we go and so just some of the empathy quotes and really these were um some comments that were again um brought forth at during our Advisory Board and we asked the participants what would it look like if classrooms
engaged all Learners and developing empathy um and interdependent collective learning which is another consider consideration as part of our 3.0 guidelines and some of the ideas that came out as you see on The jam board uh but some of the the the things that I wanted to surface were that Learners would empathize with each other Learners would feel their emotions freely as they're learning Learners would be braver right and Learners would would know that it's okay to make mistakes that one was very powerful um and then Learners would communicate in a caring way so I
totally can appreciate many of the um comments that came forth when we think about what does an Empathetic learning environment look like and so not only do you appreciate um do you feel value right but you appreciate the learning experiences perspectives and outlooks of other people so we can go and so some of the themes that we brought brought forth in uh 3.0 guidelines is that we wanted to create a space for Learners um to develop the skills and knowledge um that created a safe space for both the classroom community and cultur we wanted Uh
our Learners to feel Valu right to feel safe to feel Brave to be their authentic selves and then we thought to ourselves how might the guidelines more fully emphasize restoration and healing and and so this specifically was talking or was mentioned um as it relates to trauma that may have been uh developed or experienced within schools and so what has or how has perhaps school-based experience developed you know tra Traumatic experiences for our students and how could can the guidelines you know how can we consider practices in that healing in that restorative um approach to
heal that and so just again highlighting three examples of some of the research that supported uh our considerations one was by swan in in in 2021 who really looked at how people were develop um defining empathy right and so um they talk about the fact that not only can we actually Define empathy But we can teach about it right and it can be practiced we can see it and so when teachers have developed this empathetic um characteristic they're able to recognize Learners and students signals whether it's related to their cognition or behaviors and be able
to respond in a more empathetic way um and so this article I think was fascinating in developing or sharing what are some of those things what are some of those signals that we may be a that may help Us be more um mindful of or be more mindful but be more in and be more empathetic as we respond to students uh the next uh article here U by Martin focused on really uh using restorative practices or the mindset if you will um but focused on empathy and so they used uh an approach and this was
a man who talked about his experience in a a school setting where you know the morale was down and the climate was down and the school really were the school Was really the school and its systems were really failing the students because they had this very punitive approach uh to to to everything really and so the school embraced this restorative approach and they said a restorative mindset to help not only the teachers be more empathetic but to look at their policies and also to when they they found that when they implored these restorative practices that
it help students become more empathetic but also Help them make different choices and I say the right decisions so when they had to choose between you know decision a and decision B that empathy kicked in and they were able to do things like increase attendance and um you know um have more family involvement because of the because of the um focus on on empathy and and restorative practice and then the last one uh is very interesting because it talks about uh kind of the tension between students or individuals Showing up as their quote unquote authentic
selves and being empathetic so if I show up as a my authentic self with y'all I have to say sometimes I'm allow um or or p question it right you know can someone truly empathize with me right and so there are these um these idea are these are these ideal one and the same can they support one another so I challenge you to go read that article to see what the article says about that Because sometimes those two things can work against each other um and so we just want to be mindful of how they
can be used to support creating empathetic environments for our Learners and Shante we have in the chat some of this more like intertwining of these ideas so we had a comment that said um empathy is the gateway to belonging and based on what you just said around um showing up as your authentic self it appears to me that Addressing bias is essential ABS empathy so they're all kind of intertwined and we have to make space for all of that um in our in our learning environments so we only have a few more minutes so we'll
we just go over a few strategies there's more in the deck but um and you can look at some of the more the the restorative practices of things as you go along but one strategy for developing empathy is that cirle Circle practice really it's spending time thinking about protocols For students to really listen to one another and share with one another so they can better understand each other um facilitate Learners sharing not only their coping strategies but their coping needs and even their emotions so there's research that tells us that the more words we have
for emotion the better we understand emotion and then we can understand identify emotion in each other and that really grows our social emotional skills um there's protocols Like a buddy bench in a in an elementary school where you sit if you need some need a friend at reesus or if we're talking about higher ed we could have accountability Partners different ways to build relationships and help students build relationships with one another co-creating facilit uh facilit and facilit ating classroom agreements and facilitating kind accountability if those Agreements are broken so things like our circles for restorative
Practices oops and ouch where I can say ouch you hurt me and Shante can say oops I didn't mean to um here I but I recognize my impact right the uh calling in and as opposed to calling out people really talking taking time to really talk about the issues and making cont communal decisions through those restorative practices is about how to restore the whole Community after an agreement has been broken because in the restorative practice the tenants are Relationships are important it's at the center right we are we are hardwired to connect and everyone deserves
to be treated with respect regardless of how they behaved all involved in an incident should be part of the healing and those persons who are responsible should take accountability for the impact of their actions and but the community should determine the solution to together and the needs of the community and the person responsible should be addressed And as we said the beginning it can be both proactive and reactive because the key takeaways from using those restorative practices in um in classrooms is that humans are Hardware hardwired to connect and those restorative practices help students so
learn those social skills around empathy identification of emotions how to collaborate how to be accountable within a community and as we said many of the Ideas are sort of intertwined um and they build on one another and make space for each other so as we end any last words um Shante no just that um I appreciate all the engagement and activity within the chat um I love the connections that were made and we will definitely be saving the chat and ensuring that many of your comments suggestions recommendations um are are are um further enhance or
further our part of Our conversation as we teach about the um enhancements to 3.0 so thank you thank you so we have a couple if you're interested in more professional learning at Cass you can email at pl we have our Workshop series that um that uh Patrice will put in the chat and uh for next steps just think to yourself as you sign off um it's not showing up on my screen here it is it's up here oh it's coming now here we go something that affirmed your thinking pushed your thinking what Do you uh
what what your learners need you to do next so thank you everybody thank you all
