The New Definition of Anti-Bias: Appreciation

What else is social studies? 
An in-depth look at the anti-bias curriculum. 

As a future educator of social studies, it is my responsibility to promote students’ civic competence considering that: “The primary purpose of social studies is to help young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world” (National Council for the Social Studies, 1994, p. 3). To fully prepare students to engage in their roles as global citizens in a “culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world,” students must be provided with authentic experiences that challenge them to appreciate differences in their peers’ cultures and perspectives. Thus, teachers become responsible for providing students with these experiences so that they may lead students to analyze the inaccuracies and stereotypes within their own thinking and what they have been told, considering that “prejudice is contagious” (Anti-Defamation League, 2000). Failing to prevent the early formation of prejudicial attitudes in the elementary grades, when prejudice is at its most vulnerable, increases the likelihood that students will embark upon a life-long path of hate and violence: “Stereotyping, prejudice, discrimination, bias, and hate are part of a broad continuum of behavior.  Along that continuum are a number of negative behaviors, including bullying, threats, exclusion, harassment, bias-motivated behavior, and hate-motivated violence” (Partners Against Hate, 2001, p. 9). Exercising the inquiry process, I have explored how to incorporate anti-bias instruction into the social studies curriculum, and uncovered activities that can be utilized to impede the hate escalation continuum, and foster appreciation for diversity instead. Therefore, this assignment has expanded my content knowledge of what social studies entails, underscored the value of controversial discussions and cooperative learning to promote civic competence, and developed my pedagogical knowledge of how to target anti-bias and cultural appreciation domains in my future classroom.

Prior to my inquiry journey exploring anti-bias and anti-violence curriculum, I understood that prejudicial attitudes were typically passed down generationally within families and were largely the result of ignorance, unfamiliarity, and fear. However, I minimized the role teachers can play in challenging prejudices and curbing their development in such young children: “Both the seeds of respect and the seeds of intolerance are planted when children are very young and nurtured by their experiences and by the attitudes of those around them as they grow” (Partners Against Hate, 2001, p. 25). Similarly, Caryl Stern of the Anti-Defamation League asserts: “No child is born a bigot. Hate is learned and there is no doubt it can be unlearned.” Recognizing that, “after age 9, racial attitudes tend to stay the same unless the child has a life-changing experience,” I now can appreciate the critical importance of specifically teaching the main tenets and emphasizing the essential questions that come with anti-bias curriculum (Aboud, 1988). The essential questions of the anti-bias curriculum that I think are most important, and even incorporate and weave in some of the global education and character formation curriculum that my colleagues discussed, include: How is prejudice different from dislike? How does humanity as a whole benefit when people from all backgrounds are appreciated and included? How does hate influence negative behavior, and why does this harm our global community? Specifically, my inquiry process has led me to generalize, as I expressed in my presentation, that the highest form of anti-bias, the goal teachers should have for all students, is appreciation of differences: “We can learn to respect differences, to see them as a source of strength in our lives and society, even celebrate them” (Anti-Defamation League, 2000).

To develop this appreciation, which goes hand-in-hand with students reaching the highest level of civic competence, students must be provided with genuine opportunities to determine for themselves why diversity is something to be valued as opposed to hated. Prior to this inquiry process, I was most familiar with teachers directly telling students that hate, bullying, and prejudice are wrong, and this having limited benefits. At most, I felt that this approach following the behavioral model could accomplish tolerance as students come to find that any prejudice at school will not be allowed. Research has confirmed my hypothesis, and overwhelmingly advocated that activities falling within a combination of the other three models of instruction – information processing, social interaction, and personal – are superior in promoting the ultimate goal of the anti-bias curriculum: to foster appreciation of cultural diversity. In particular, the cooperative learning method is celebrated for showing “consistently positive effects on student achievement, conflict reduction, and intergroup relations. Of particular interest in the area of interrelationships, students who experience cooperative learning techniques have shown gains in friends of different backgrounds and have made more positive attributions to other groups” (Partners Against Hate, 2000, p. 43). By having students engage in tasks cooperatively, and more specifically, challenging students to engage in cooperative problem solving in which an interpersonal conflict must be resolved utilizing a non-confrontational framework, students are required to confront their prejudices and adjust them in light of new information (Four Worlds Development Project, 1988). In other words, positive interaction breeds improved relations.

Also, while in the throes of researching for this presentation, I attended a seminar entitled, “Building Bridges for Our English Language Learners through the Introduction and Analysis of Latino Literature,” given by Karen H. Dakin and Jenice Mateo-Toledo. While they did not explicitly claim to be presenting on anti-bias curriculum, I quickly recognized that their presentation aimed at incorporating quality multicultural literature and analyzing how literature changes with culture, meets not only standards for English Language Arts but also works toward fostering a better appreciation and understanding of cultural differences. The seminar taught me that selecting literature written by cultural insiders that challenges dominant stereotypes provides students a “greater self-awareness and greater understanding of others, a more realistic view of the world, and the ability to use what they have learned to make meaningful changes in their own lives” (Ada, 2003, p. 84). The Partners Against Hate confirm that, “Children’s literature serves as both a mirror to children and as a window to the world around them by showing people from diverse groups playing and working together, solving problems, and overcoming obstacles” (2001, p. 36). Consequently, the Partners Against Hate demand that: “Because there is such a relatively small number of children’s books about people of color, people who are gay and lesbian, or people with physical and mental disabilities, it is extremely important that adults make every effort to see that high-quality children’s literature by and about these groups is made available to children” (2000, p. 36). Through this “window,” students’ empathy and appreciation for cultural diversity can be increased while fear of the unknown is decreased.

Thus, the anti-bias curriculum goal of leading students to appreciate differences among cultures as opposed to progressing down a continuum of hate that leads to bullying and violence targets the first theme of the National Curriculum Standards for the Social Studies: Culture. Through this curriculum, “students will acquire knowledge and understanding of culture through multiple modes, including fiction and non-fiction, data analysis, meeting and conversing with peoples of divergent backgrounds, and completing research into the complexity of various cultural systems” (NCSS). Similarly, the curriculum integrates New York state social studies and English Language Arts standards across all grade levels. For example, a lesson emphasizing peaceful conflict resolution using a cooperative problem solving method within the social interaction model of instruction targets the Common Core sixth-grade social studies civic participation standard: “Participate in negotiating and compromising in the resolution of differences and conflict; introduce and examine the role of conflict resolution.” Similarly, an anti-bias lesson using multicultural literature as described above would meet the sixth-twelfth grade New York State Common Core Career and College Readiness Standard for Reading 11: Students will “Respond to literature by employing knowledge of literary language, textual features, and forms to read and comprehend, reflect upon, and interpret literary texts from a variety of genres and a wide spectrum of American and world cultures.”

As I explained in detail in my glogster presentation, to target these and other standards, as well as integrate anti-bias curriculum with the disciplines of social studies and other content areas, Partners Against Hate present a plethora of activities for all grade-levels. For kindergarten and first-graders, I would suggest beginning by exploring differences and how they are not essentially bad, which will hopefully help to prevent students from making rash judgments of the unknown later in life. To explore differences, students can read a poem by Nikki Giovanni titled “Two Friends.” By analyzing this poem, students can make the generalization that people can have differences between them and still be friends. Second and third-graders can engage in an anti-bias curriculum research project by interviewing their parents and relatives about their own culture and sharing these stories with the class. The teacher can then promote communication and bridge-building by asking students to identify at least one similarity between their family’s story and a classmate’s family story. Fourth and fifth-graders should focus on exploring the difference between prejudice and dislike and the harmful effects of intolerance and violence. In this way, the anti-bias curriculum can be taught in conjunction with both historical accounts, utilizing primary documents, and present-day accounts, using non-fiction world news articles like those on Newsela, of intolerance and violence. A Partners Against Hate activity (2001, p. 71) that addresses the essential question regarding the difference between prejudice and dislike is to have students act out different scenarios, and then evaluate whether prejudice or simply dislike is present in the conflict.

Other anti-bias activities can be utilized and adapted for students in upper elementary, middle school, and high school grades. An activity with which I was familiar before researching this assignment was having students draw pictures of a certain population before receiving instruction about that group. Typically, many students will draw pictures incorporating stereotypes about the given population. In fact, when I participated in this activity at a recent workshop for teachers and teacher candidates, I was surprised to find that many educated adults still fell into the trap of stereotyping when asked to draw a Native American. While this activity is typically succeeded by a multicultural book about the population to alter students’ perceptions, I think the lesson would be even more powerful if teachers could arrange through Skype for students to interact with the given population from another place in the world or a person of that culture who transcends a negative stereotype, whichever is more appropriate for the given population. Students can then form the generalization that stereotypes inaccurately label individuals, and that they should interact with individuals to learn about them, not trust what they have heard from others.

As can be seen from all of these examples, it is critical to the anti-bias curriculum, as with all curricula, that students actively engage the material with peers of heterogeneous backgrounds, make personal connections to the material, and form generalizations that are meaningful to them. Overall, students must be provided with opportunities to progress through the inquiry process to explore examples of both hate-based and appreciation-based behaviors in history and presently. This will allow students to form generalizations about the side-effects of those actions, and apply these new understandings to their own lives and how they perceive their peers. As I explained in my presentation, students who develop appreciation for differences through reasoning as opposed to biased opinions passed down from ignorant adults or fear of the unknown are far less likely to employ cyber-bullying or hate-based violence. This is why I chose to emphasize the formation of appreciation, as opposed to the side-effects of not instilling it in students. Most importantly, the cultivation of appreciation, the ideal  for which the anti-bias curriculum strives, cannot be taught through a behavioral model of instruction. Students must discuss the information, have their own views challenged, and connect personally in order for the curriculum to be successful in exterminating the “racial attitudes that begin to harden by the fourth-grade” (Partners Against Hate, 2001, p. 16). As students are learning, there will be instances in which students express prejudices. While it is important that these hurtful ideas be corrected, it is more important that students understand why they are incorrect in the first place: “Telling the children that their behavior is hurtful and inappropriate is certainly in order, however, without explaining why, little learning will take place” (Partners Against Hate, 2001, p. 31). Students must be challenged to think beyond the stereotypes and prejudices that they have previously encountered, and form the generalizations that appreciation of all groups leads to a better world and that people of all cultures are more the same than different, through participation in activities that fall within the scope of the information processing, personal, and social interaction models of instruction.

References

Aboud, F. (1988). Children and prejudice. Oxford, OX, UK: B. Blackwell.

Ada, A.F. (2003). A magical encounter: Latino children’s literature in the classroom. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Dakin, K., & Mateo-Toledo, J. (Speakers) (2015, April 18). Building bridges for our English language learners through the introduction and analysis of Latino literature. 22nd Annual Conference on Literacy. Lecture conducted from Collaborative for Equity in Literacy Learning, Newburgh, NY.

Four Worlds Development Project. (1988). Unity in Diversity Curriculum Guide. Lethbridge: Four Worlds Development Project, University of Lethbridge.

LaRosa, C. (2000). The Anti-Defamation League's hate hurts: How children learn and unlearn prejudice. New York, NY: Scholastic.

National Council for the Social Studies. (1994). Expectations of Excellence: Curriculum Standards for Social Studies. Washington, D.C.: NCSS.

National Council for the Social Studies. (n.d.). National curriculum standards for social studies. Retrieved April 28, 2015, from http://www.socialstudies.org/standards/strands

New York State Education Department. (2011). New York State P-12 Common Core learning standards for ELA and literacy. Retrieved April 28, 2015, from https://www.engageny.org/resource/new-york-state-p-12-common-core-learning-standards-for-english-language-arts-and-literacy

New York State Education Department. (2015). New York State K-12 social studies framework. Retrieved April 28, 2015, from https://www.engageny.org/resource/new-york-state-k-12-social-studies-framework

Partners Against Hate. (2001). Program activity guide: Helping children resist bias and hate. Retrieved April 25, 2015, from http://www.partnersagainsthate.org/publications/pahprgguide302 .pdf

Future Powerhouses: Economics in Action!

On March 31, 2015, approximately 50 Newburgh fifth-graders, with their own college IDs and course schedules, became college students for the day, attending mini-classes and pushing themselves through athletic practice while interacting with 60 Mount Saint Mary College student volunteers.

The "College Sneak Peek" Event:

This Mount Saint Mary College event was cosponsored by the Conversations to Inspire Reading Children's Literature with Engagement Club (CIRCLE),the Men's Lacrosse team, and the Women's Soccer team. After organizing and executing a successful read-a-thon in fall 2014 as featured in the Poughkeepsie Journal, CIRCLE was approached by a local elementary school to arrange a similar experience for the whole fifth-grade which would serve as the students' field-trip. Understanding that, "Students apply to college in their senior year, but it is at least five years earlier, in the middle grades, when students really make the decision to go to college, and more importantly, when they must start taking steps to make that decision a reality," I understood that CIRCLE was

being provided an immense opportunity to greatly influence the course of fifty students' lives at a critical time (Breakthrough Collaborative, 2010, p. 1). Similarly, Robert Balfanz (2009) writes in "Putting Middle Grade Students on the Graduation Path" that, "It is during the middle grades that students either launch toward achievement and attainment, or slide off track and placed on a path of frustration, failure, and, ultimately, early exit from the only secure path to adult success" (p. 13). Knowing that many of the fifth-graders had not before stepped on a college campus and did not have family members or close family friends who attended college, it became our mission to have the concept of "college" and all of its benefits become part of students' knowledge. 

To meet our goal, we wanted students to learn about the admissions process and how to prepare for college, social life at college, and academic pursuits of college. Luckily CIRCLE had great support from the MSMC Admissions Department which arranged an information session and tour emphasizing not only the strengths of Mount Saint Mary College, but also the opportunities that generally come with attending college. Then, students were able to witness this message in action when they participated with MSMC students, more specifically members of the Men's Lacrosse and Women's Soccer teams, to experience athletics and get a taste of college sports practices. Next, CIRCLE members planned and implemented, with the help of Men's Lacrosse players and other MSMC volunteers, four mini-classes in some of the areas in which MSMC offers majors. In the nursing class, fifth-graders studied the relationship between heart rate and level of activity; in the math/science class, students studied slope and velocity by racing cars down ramps of different slopes; in the English class, students watched a video clip of college students protesting fossil fuel divestment and then debated environmental issues; in the combined business and information technology class, students created their own companies complete with a company website, t-shirt product, and video recording of their product commercial or pitch to venture capitalists just like on Shark Tank. During all of these "classes", the fifth-graders were treated as real college students working alongside MSMC students to accomplish tasks and gain an appreciation for college. 

   

Focusing on developing students' career and college readiness goes hand-in-hand with our goal as social studies educators to promote civic competence. Wanting students to actively engage with the college experience and feel like they were working as college students as opposed to being taught, CIRCLE members developed mini-classes based on constructivist tenets. In each mini-class, students were actively engaged as two of the mini-classes incorporated technology, and the other two were hands-on activities. Students explored each mini-class with peers which helped to build social interaction skills and heighten the experience: "Learning reflects a social process in which children engage in dialogue and discussion with themselves as well as with others (including teachers) as they develop intellectually" (Reys, Lindquist, Lambdin, & Smith, 2012, p. 22). 

Fostering Entrepreneurship through Economics: 
As I discussed in an earlier blog, one of the disciplines within social studies is economics. Economics studies how to balance infinite wants with scarce resources to make wise decisions. Therefore, most business decisions are economic decisions. During the event, fifth-graders worked with MSMC Business and Information Technology majors to create their own company websites. Nicole and I developed the structure of the mini-lesson by adapting ideas from Bizworld.  In short, Bizworld offers "hands-on, engaging programs...that teach valuable lessons about entrepreneurship, business, and financial responsibility while emphasizing the importance of valuable skills like collaboration, critical thinking, leadership, and creativity"(Bizworld: Making Entrepreneurship Fun for Kids). Allotting only thirty minutes for each group to actively engage in the mini-class, we had to select specific focuses of the program and adapt them to meet the needs of the event and students with whom we were working. We selected the following activities within the BizMovie program to adapt: 

 

The first change that I made was to not utilize worksheets as BizMovie does. Filling out worksheets would have wasted precious time and I felt it was more valuable for students to be thinking about, discussing, and apply the concepts instead, as they would in a true college setting. Therefore, the thirty-minute workshop utilized the activities of the worksheets above, but transformed them into the following experience: 

1. Fifth-graders and college students discussed what it means to be a business or information technology major at Mount Saint Mary College. College students shared their career goals for after graduation and how these majors would prepare them to reach those goals.
2. Next, students were presented with their real-world problem: Create a business. Each group of students' "company," was provided with a user-friendly website template from Google Sites. Students were asked to create the homepage of the website by displaying the company name created by the students, the names of the entrepreneurs creating the company, and to explain the mission of the company, the product they are selling, and their target buyers. 
3. Entrepreneurs then needed to design t-shirts for the company. Some companies decided that the t-shirts would be the main product being sold, while other companies selected to have t-shirts just be one of the products being sold to raise awareness for the company's bigger mission. Students then selected a price for the shirt and had to justify why they selected that price. Did it need to be easy for poorer people to buy as well? Is it a novelty item that not a lot of people should be wearing? 
4. Lastly, some companies created a video-recorded pitch to venture capitalists (as the students had seen on the popular show, Shark Tank) while others preferred to create a commercial to entice the public to purchase their product! 

This workshop was meaningful because it provided students an authentic task that taught "important ideas for understanding, appreciation, and life application" (NCSS). Additionally, because of the set up of the entire event, the presence of college students majoring in business and information technology, and the company website, "the significance and meaningfulness of the content was emphasized both in how it was presented to students and how it was develop through activities" (NCSS). The mini-class was integrative because it required students to create their own websites, company names, products, and pitches by channeling their personal "beliefs, values, and attitudes" (NCSS). Similarly, the students' active experience promoted their digital literacy as students worked first hand with a laptop building their company websites through Google Sites, and designing t-shirts with an interactive website. The mini-lesson can also be described as value-based as many companies designed products to help people, and made decisions about the cost of their products based on how it would impact people of different economic backgrounds. Therefore, they "consider[ed] the costs and benefits to various groups that are embedded in potential courses of action" (NCSS). Fourthly, the workshop was challenging for students because they were required to reconcile their ideas with other entrepreneurs to best meet the needs of their companies. Additionally, groups had to critically evaluate what would motivate venture capitalists to invest in their companies and what would motivate potential customers to buy their products. Lastly, students were active throughout the mini-class, constructing their own meaning of the concepts of "business" and "entrepreneurship," and making decisions for the health of their companies. Students were afforded the opportunity to be "independent and self-regulated learners" during an "authentic activity that called for real-life applications using the skills and content of the field" (NCSS). 

Examples of Student Websites: Smartbots and Air Floaters

 References

Balfanz, R. (2009). "Putting Middle Grades Students on the Graduation Path."Association for Middle Level Education - AMLE. 

Breakthrough Collaborative. (2010, January 1). Middle school: The fork in the road to college. Retrieved April 16, 2015, from https://www.breakthroughcollaborative.org/sites/default/files/bt-research-brief-ms-fork-in-the-road.pdf

National Council for the Social Studies. “Principles of Teaching and Learning.” Expectations of Excellence: Curriculum Standards for Social Studies.

Reys, R.E., Lindquist, M., Lambdin, D.V., & Smith, N.L. (2012). Helping children learn mathematics (10th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. 

Producing Economically Savvy Decision-Makers

     

   E C O N O M I C S   

"Economics is defined as a social science that studies how individuals, governments, firms and nations make choices on allocating scarce resources to satisfy their unlimited wants. Economics can generally be broken down into: macroeconomics, which concentrates on the behavior of the aggregate economy; and microeconomics, which focuses on individual consumers" (Investopedia).

As social studies educators, our goal is civic competence for all of our students. Without knowledge of economics and the ability to evaluate economic concepts when making financial decisions, students cannot fully function in our democratic society. For instance, voters today cannot understand and choose between the domestic economic policies of presidential candidates without understanding macroeconomic concepts like the the relationship between taxation and job creation. However, the importance of economics is even simpler to understand when considering the decisions people need to make daily. In short, people need to have the wherewithal to differentiate between needs and wants and work within a budget. 

For my economics project, I focused on teaching students how to make the necessary choices that are required when infinite wants surpass available resources (money), using decision-making models. While economic concepts can be very abstract, students are often motivated by working with money and do have personal knowledge of spending money and having unfulfilled wants which teachers can target to make economic lessons meaningful for students.

As part of my presentation, I provided a guideline for how students should work through the decision-making model. Much like the inquiry process, students are required to analyze information before drawing a conclusion/making a decision. I explained that the PACED model leaves out a key component of good decision-making: Reflection to evaluate whether a decision was correctly made. I purposefully added this onto the guide because reflection is key to students becoming self-evaluative and developing metacognitive skills. As I discussed in an earlier blog, making decisions in a vacuum without reflection would not be valuable over the long-term because students would not consider how they could improve in the future and grow in their abilities. Dunning, Johnson, Ehrlinger, and Kruger (2003) found that without metacognitive skills, "people [who] lack the skills to produce correct answers, are also cursed with an inability to know when their answers, or anyone else’s, are right or wrong” (p. 85). Our hope is that teaching students to reflect back on decisions they previously made will help them to grow as decision-makers over time.


Just as the teacher or students pose questions as part of the inquiry process, the teacher or students can pose a problem in which there exist many alternatives for students to consider the best possible alternative. Considering alternatives to best solve the problem requires students to analyze the restraints caused by scarcity and the opportunity cost of what is lost when an alternative is selected. Kelli explained both of these ideas in her slides, emphasizing that scarcity forces choices to be necessary and that when one alternative is chosen the other becomes the opportunity cost. Thus, with every decision, something is always lost: The path not taken. Furthermore, the best way to pose a meaningful problem is to make it relate to the students' lives outside of the classroom. This will also encourage students to apply the decision-making process to choices in front of them when they leave classroom. Nicole, in her slides, provided examples of how economics influences the lives of all people, including children. As I explained earlier, students know what it is like to want something and not be able to have it. Similarly, students are fully aware that some people are able to obtain more of their desires because they have access to more resources than others. Therefore, I also provided links of concrete examples of problems that students can answer using the PACED model, pictured above, to master the economic decision-making: Food, gift certificates, and classroom supplies. I particularly like the classroom supplies activity in which students are given a set budget and then they

need to make choices about what supplies should be selected and which should be left as opportunity costs because it reminds me of the school funding activity in which I actively participated during my Orientation to Teaching course. I still remember the experience semesters later, and was able to form generalizations about the role of funding in school districts' decision-making. I want to provide my students with a similar experience.

Additionally, I just want to stress that the discipline of economics, like many of the other disciplines within social studies, is all around us and constantly part of daily life. Thus, teachers will be presented with many unplanned teachable moments in the area of economics. Mark Schug, author of Economics for Kids: Ideas for Teaching in the Elementary Grades (1986) asserts that teachers should capitalize on informal opportunities to review economic concepts when they present themselves in the news or the classroom. If a student needs to make a decision in which there are multiple alternatives, encourage him or her to use an economic decision-making model. Let students' questions and problems lead to genuine and value-based economic lessons.

References

Chick, N. (n.d.). Metacognition. Retrieved April 13, 2015, from http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/metacognition/

Dunning, D., Johnson, K., Ehrlinger, J., & Kruger, J. (2003) Why people fail to recognize their own incompetence. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 12(3), 83-87.

Economics Definition | Investopedia. (2003, November 18). Retrieved April 14, 2015, from http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/economics.asp

Schug, M. C. (1986). Economics for kids: Ideas for teaching economics in the elementary grades. Washington, DC: Joint Council on Economic Education and the National Education Association. 

The Economics Detective. (2012, July 14). What is Economics? Retrieved April 14, 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YULdjmg3o0