Removing Labels, Grades K-12
40 Techniques to Disrupt Negative Expectations About Students and Schools

Foreword by Marcia Tate

Other Titles in:
Literacy, K-12 | Social Justice

May 2021 | 240 pages | Corwin

Disrupting the cycle starts with you.

No matter how conscientious we are, we carry implicit bias… which quickly turns into assumptions and then labels. Labels define our interactions with and expectations of students. Labels contribute to student identity and agency. And labels can have a negative effect beyond the classroom.

It’s crucial, then, that teachers remove labels and focus on students’ strengths—but this takes real work at an individual, classroom, and schoolwide scale.

Removing Labels urges you to take an active approach toward disrupting the negative effects of labels and assumptions that interfere with student learning. This book offers:

40 practical, replicable teaching techniques—all based in research and best practice—that focus on building relationships, restructuring classroom engagement and management, and understanding the power of social and emotional learning
Suggestions for actions on an individual, classroom, and schoolwide level
Ready-to-go tools and student-facing printables to use in planning and instruction

Removing Labels is more than a collection of teaching strategies—it’s a commitment to providing truly responsive education that serves all children. When you and your colleagues take action to prevent negative labels from taking hold, the whole community benefits.

Foreword

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

Introduction: Interrupting the Cycle Begins With You

Section 1. Individual Approaches

Technique 1. Learning Names the Right Way

Technique 2. Interest Surveys

Technique 3. Banking Time

Technique 4. 2 × 10 Conversations

Technique 5. Affective Statements

Technique 6. Impromptu Conferences

Technique 7. Empathetic Feedback

Technique 8. Reconnecting After an Absence

Technique 9. Labeling Emotions

Technique 10. Solving Problems (Do the Next Right Thing)

Section 2. Classroom Approaches

Technique 11. Creating a Welcoming Classroom Climate

Technique 12. Class Meetings

Technique 13. Classroom Sociograms

Technique 14. The Mask Activity

Technique 15. Asset Mapping

Technique 16. Peer Partnerships

Technique 17. Five Different Peer Partnerships

Technique 18. Self-Assessment in Collaborative Learning

Technique 19. Equitable Grouping Strategies

Technique 20. Gradual Release of Responsibility Instructional Framework

Technique 21. Teaching With Relevance in Mind

Technique 22. Jigsaw

Technique 23. Accountable Talk

Technique 24. Making Decisions

Technique 25. Alternatives to Public Humiliation

Technique 26. When Young Children Label Others—The Crumple Doll

Technique 27. When Older Students Label Others—Insults and Epithets

Technique 28. Trauma-Sensitive Classroom Design

Technique 29. The Dot Inventory

Technique 30. Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies

Technique 31. Schoolwide Inclusive Practices

Technique 32. Student Empowerment

Technique 33. Collective Responsibility

Technique 34. Recognizing and Responding to Implicit Bias

Technique 35. Racial Autobiography

Technique 36. Social Capital

Technique 37. A Welcoming Front Office

Technique 38. Community Ambassadors

Technique 39. The Master Schedule

Technique 40. Distributed Leadership

Coda

References

Index

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Introduction

Technique 1: Learning Names the Right Way

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Removing Labels, Grades K-12
40 Techniques to Disrupt Negative Expectations About Students and Schools

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