Day 10 - Rachel

​What is one new practice you want to adopt for the new year?

I've already written about this, so I don't want to beat it into the ground, but I am going to spend a lot of time making sure my classes are more representative of my students as a whole. My students aren't all white and my imagery and readings shouldn't be either. I want to make sure all students can see themselves in my curriculum.
So...

• I will be looking at our materials as I prepare them for my classes and considering whether they are inclusive or exclusive materials. It's important to consider whether I am creating a welcoming classroom, and I'll be looking at whether we only tell the tales of the "conquerors," to steal a term from a webinar put on by ACTFL's Critical and Social Justice SIG, or if we are also looking at the people of the Roman Empire as they were before Rome. 
• I will be paying close attention to the images I draw and steal from Google to make sure that they are inclusive of all kinds of students. One area of representation that came up in one of the presentations at ACL Institute was students with disabilities, and I realized that I absolutely have no images of students with disabilities in anything I've produced. This is a gaping hole in representation in my classes.
• I will be doing my best to make sure that anything in my room is inclusive too. Basically I want to make sure that what my space communicates to my students--and it's surprising how much our room communicates to our students--is that my classes are for everyone and that everyone is valued in my classes.

This is what I'm working to incorporate into my classes this year. I'll discuss more when we talk about books!