Tina Hall-January blogpost

1st Post: What is invasive curiosity and how can we hold space to best model positive curiosity while supporting classrooms where risk taking is needed and encouraged?

Invasive curiosity I think is the need and wonder about others and not knowing how to ask questions and not knowing what questions are too personal or not. Kids are not always supported in how to ask questions and can often be told not to ask questions when they are curious about differences. 

I have found that adults ask invasive questions when they notice differences or find out there is a difference and wnat to know personal information. It is usually information that they don’t need to know but want to understand or know more about. It is not usually information that they would ask from somebody who is cis-gendered, white, or able-bodied. 

I always start my year with a slideshow that shows diverse people and engages them in using language around race, language, culture, disability, and gender so that they are comfortable with using that language. Often times, kids will say things that can come off as rude and it becomes a good moment to educate on what language to use, and how to ask a question (or what not to ask if it’s too personal) and education them on why something might be too personal. I also make sure I have plenty of diverse literature to help when questions come up or topics come up to help teach things to students. Conversations and questions are greatly encouraged in my class and supported by my principal, as well as my colleagues, which makes things easier. We build a classroom culture where students feel comfortable asking questions and gather more information. Diversity is a part of our daily schedule and teaching in the classroom to help students have awareness and acceptance of differences. 

I will also bring in experts as needed (such as our OT, PT, Speech Pathologist, our MLL teacher [Multi Lingual Learner]) to help teach things in areas I might not be as knowledgeable in, as well as to bring in other teachers to collaborate with that students might not be aware of. 

2nd Post: Reflecting on the discussions we have had in our PINE Project Workshops, how can this month’s SEL Connection about responsible decision making be integrated into classroom settings? Feel free to specifically use the picture books we read this month, but do not feel as though this is your only choice. You get to decide how to integrate these ideas into your student’s learning. 

We do a lot of discussion on diversity in the classroom. When telling the students about the project, one immediately said “But we already do that kind of work in our class!” They were also very excited about having such nice books and noticed that we already had some in our classroom. 

We just finished up our heritage project (looking at our ancestry) and learned that many of us do not come from Native Americans, but from other countries long ago. They were very interested in learning more about where their families came from. We did some exploration about Ellis Island and learned about immigration and what it means for some people (moving for safety, moving for a new life, moving closer to relatives, etc). 

We read The Suitcase this month and it took a little bit to connect the dots on how it was about immigration, but they were not impressed by the fact that the 3 animals didn’t believe the new character just because he was new and connected it to our classmates who are deaf and non-speaking. The mentioned that it would be unfair to judge someone just because they are different and how we know that there’s a lot that our 2 classmates can do even when they don’t communicate in the same way we do. We can’t just assume stuff about others based on looks.