I attended the Summit on School Climate and Culture in Des Moines last month and had the opportunity to attend a session on white privilege with Dr. Eddie Moore Jr. He had a series of slides that suggested that if your movie selections look like this: 

and the TV shows you watch look like this: 

and the magazines you read look like this*: 

Then you're probably not ready to truly bring your students a culturally relevant classroom. Because even if all the faces looking back at you really do reflect your own on the surface, you don't always know the stories that go with them - and if the ALL faces looking back at you do reflect your own AND their backgrounds and families also ALL reflect your own (check again, I doubt it), it's still our job as educators to share a world of differences with our students. At some point I promise they really will leave the homogenous bubble, and then what? 

In a world that allows us to stream and access more content than one could ever truly consume in a lifetime, I want to share a few of my favorite spaces to educate myself beyond the faces and backgrounds that are similar to my own.

1. Teaching Tolerance - My all-time favorite go-to site for info and lesson plans and videos on ALL the things! Seriously, there are age-appropriate resources on pretty much every topic from K-2 lessons about gender identity to teacher resources around understanding implicit bias and everything in the middle. 
2. Netflix/Hulu/Amazon Prime Documentaries (and not) - my personal favorites include (please add to this list in the comments - always looking for more!):

• Teach Us All
• 13th
• When They See Us
• Time: The Kalief Browder Story
• Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj
• Crime + Punishment
• Whose Streets?

3. Check out how Soundtrap is capturing voices from youth with unique experiences from the juvenile justice system.
4. StoryCorp provides not only a series of video interviews with people from all walks of life, has created teacher resources for facilitating student/classroom conversations, and has an app to help record your own stories. 
5. Safe Space Radio put together a great playlist around talking to White kids about race and racism
6. The New York Times put together a series of short films about identity in America that is particularly powerful. 
7. Explore art! You don't have to be an art teacher or artist to appreciate the creativity of others and the role that art plays in society. The Smithsonian American Art Museum has teacher resources for art from all different types of people and backgrounds in the United States, while Google Arts and Culture offers insight into basically every genre under the sun.
8. GET ON TWITTER! Or whatever social media, but check out #educolor. Participate in the #disrupttexts conversations! #WeLeadEd is doing a book study of Ibram X. Kendi's How To Be An Antiracist right now (also my current read, definitely worth picking up at your local bookstore/Audible/Kindle/whatever). Spaces like #ISTEChat are promoting more diversity of voice. #NYEdChat just featured Cornelius Minor. You almost have to TRY to avoid these conversations and this learning if you're on social media. Don't try. Don't avoid. Jump on in!

These are just a few of the millions and millions of spaces out there to explore and learn and connect, but they are a great starting point to broaden your own understanding of the world as well as that of your students. Definitely don't play Hasan in the classroom, that stuff is NOT PG, but he does raise some really interesting points and questions in his comedic take on the world around us. There's not one movie or one voice or one story that is going to make you an end all expert, but taking the first step is important because when we know more we can do more.  

Over the next few weeks I want to visit a few different practical strategies and tools for creating a more culturally responsive, accessible classroom for all students. First up? Information processing and oral traditions.

​One of the ways that we can help students learn is by tapping into the values of their culture. Stories are important to any culture, and the means and methods of recording and sharing those stories have evolved over time. In many cultures though, oral storytelling specifically is a hugely important tradition and a rich way of transferring information, from spoken word to chants to songs to the epic orations of historic greats like Homer (the Greek poet, not Simpson). When my husband and I visited the newest Smithsonian museum this summer, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, on each floor of the History Galleries experience (a three-level experiential trip into the depths (literally - you ride an elevator underground) of African American history in the United States) they had booths where visitors could enter and record their stories and reactions to video prompts. The recordings were then shared on the walls for all to experience. 

So how do we utilize this type of powerful narrative in the classroom? We give students a chance to tell their own stories. We give them a chance to capture the mood and rhythm and tone that make an oral story so powerful and captivating. And how do we do that? I have a few tools in mind.

1. FlipGrid

​FlipGrid is a video discussion tool that is provided free to all educators by Microsoft. ​Creating grids allows a teacher to provide a prompt and students to record their responses in anywhere from 30 seconds to 5 minutes. Why is this one so powerful? I love that it provides the opportunity to "speak to" others with the safety-net of a draft or "re-record." I can see your face and hear what you're saying and watch your expression as you tell the story. Students can respond to teachers and each other, can contribute to another student's thoughts and ideas, and the video responses can be shared with the class or even the world. Many educators are already using FlipGrid in their classrooms, and it's a great way to connect beyond walls and class periods, but I challenge you to use it to intentionally capture the rich tradition of oral storytelling.

2. Synth

Synth is a free micro-podcasting platform, providing users with the opportunity to share stories in 256 second increments. Synth provides classrooms with the opportunity to capture and share short stories, ideas, and learning opportunities, threading them together into a playlist that can be shared with others. There are different levels of privacy, as well as an opportunity to turn on video and record, and also attach links and files, but I appreciate the "true to form" version of the podcast most. 

3. Soundtrap 

While the classroom version of Soundtrap is not free, the robust platform including collaboration, music creation, audio creation, and remixing and sharing is definitely worth the $250 price tag for 50 users (teachers and/or students) for the year. If you're ready to invest in the complete package of digital storytelling, from creation of original music to enhance the mood of your story to professional downloading and publishing to share with your audience, this tool is worth considering. No, I don't get a cut of sales, but the fee includes not only the tools, but meets online safety rules and regulations for kids and privacy. I don't typically opt for the paid apps, but once in a while you come across one that is worth the cost for all that it offers, and this is one of those. 

What other oral story-telling tools do you love? Share yours in the comments!