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Creating Safe Environments Issue 1 - Season 4: Big Kids Edition 2 Season 4 : Big Kids EditionCreating Safe Environments Creator: Gail Joseph Authors: Amber Costello, Sophie Biddle Contributing Authors: Sheely Mauck Designer: Ceci Skolrud Copy Editor: Randi Rohde Circle Time Magazine Issue 1, 2021 For questions or comments contact ctmag@uw.edu This document was prepared with support from the Washington State Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) and partnership with School’s Out Washington (SOWA) For more great resources on this topic, and to watch the Circle Time Magazine professional development talk show series, check us out at: 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 Contents Notes to Educators Highlights and Key Ideas Youth Voices Radical Welcome Let’s Talk About It Strategy Spotlight: Program Norms Pyramids for All Ages Resources for Educators Analysis Framework for Culturally Responsive Content and Activities Two-Minute Tips Lesson Plans Dive Into Books Library Time: Just Ask! Be Different, Be Brave, Be You Let’s Reflect! 18 19 203 Season 4 : Big Kids EditionCreating Safe Environments Notes to Educators This season we are looking at high- quality practices for an expanded age range. We’ll be focusing on supporting school-age children in Expanded Learning Opportunities (ELO) programs. ELO programs include places where children are cared for before school, after school, or during summer and school vacations. Many providers serve both early childhood and school- age children. During the COVID-19 pandemic several ELO programs have expanded their services. Some providers are serving school-age kids for the first time; other ELO programs are serving school-age environments are defined in both early childhood and school-age care settings. Safe environments focus on the well-being of everyone involved to create a sense of belonging. We will explore statements from children, researchers, and providers about why safe environments matter for learning and engagement. We will review activities, materials, and facilitation skills you can implement to create a program where all children feel safe to be their true selves. “We are defining safe environments as spaces that are anti-bias, anti-racist, and culturally responsive.“ kids all day while also supporting remote learning. This issue will review practices to support both experienced and new ELO providers. In this issue we will learn about the importance of creating safe environments for school-age children and how practices you implement in your programs can have a lifelong, positive impact on the children and families you work with. We are defining safe environments as spaces that are anti-bias, anti- racist, and culturally responsive. This is consistent with how safe Season 4 : Big Kids EditionCreating Safe Environments 4 Definitions and key terms: What is an ELO Program? ELO stands for Expanded Learning Opportunities. ELO programs include places where children go before school, after school, or during the summer and school vacations. What is a safe environment? A safe environment offers both emotional and physical safety. Safe environments are physically safe, meaning they follow the recommended licensing guidelines for health and safety. A safe environment is also emotionally safe, meaning that it is anti-bias, anti-racist, and culturally responsive. Safe environments focus on creating a sense of well-being and belonging for everyone involved. It’s a place or environment in which a person or category of people can feel confident that they will not be exposed to discrimination, criticism, harassment, or any other emotional or physical harm. Highlights and Key Ideas Anti-bias is the act of actively opposing or prohibiting unfair discrimination against people based on race, religion, abilities, gender, apperance, and other immutable aspects of one’s identity. It means preventing or counteracting bias. Being anti-bias includes values of respecting and embracing difference. Anti-racist is the active and conscious effort to oppose acts of racism. Anti-racism requires the active resistance of racism; to create policies, practices, and procedures to promote racial equity. Culturally responsive means providers are aware of and support children’s backgrounds. It entails making connections to the children and their families with program materials and community resources that reflect their diverse cultures, languages, and experiences. Well-being can mean many things, such as a state in which the individual realizes their own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to their community; a state of being happy, healthy, and prosperous; the presence of positive emotions and moods. Key objectives in this issue: 1. Understand that safe environments are the foundation for learning and engagement. Everyone needs to feel safe, heard, and seen in order to actively participate in your program. 2. Identify strategies for promoting a sense of safety and belonging for your program participants. 3. Explore connections between anti-bias, anti-racist, and culturally responsive practices for creating safe environments. Children want adults to: • Make time to connect one on one • Use small groups to do activities • Be skilled to support small groups • Be understanding of what’s going on with kids • Have a clear program structure and expectations • Offer fun activities, provide homework help Kat, Kai, Gabby, and Cydalise all emphasized the importance of having a clear program structure, a set of agreements and expectations for behavior, and a strong relationship with the adults in the program. All these help them feel safe and ready to learn. When you listen to the voices of the children you work with, you can begin to create an environment that enables children to feel comfortable being themselves. When children feel heard and seen, they can focus on learning and growing in a positive way. In this issue we’ll share four activities (The Garden of Kindness, Program Norms, Appreciation Circle, and I Spy Wall) that you can use in your program to establish a sense of stability and build nurturing relationships. A key tenant of a high-quality ELO program is centering youth voice. This season, we’re lucky to have two Jr. Hosts to help us hear directly from children about the topics we’re exploring. Our Jr. Hosts Gabby (age 10) and Cydalise (age 12) asked two of their friends, Kat (age 9) and Kai (age 18) the following questions about what a safe environment means to them. What does a safe place mean to you? Kai: “A safe place to me is a space where I am heard and seen by everyone around me and I feel comfortable enough to be myself in.” Cydalise: “Where I am seen and I’m heard and I can be myself and I know that nobody’s going to judge me for being me.” What can a safe afterschool program look like? Kai: “I think a safe afterschool program would look like small groups, so we are closer together and it’s easier for the teacher to focus on us, or we can have a little bit better independent time.” Kat: “I think having a bunch of different age groups [in afterschool]. Another important thing would also be, like, space for doing homework or time to finish other work we need to work on.” What advice would you give to teachers or counselors on how to help you feel safe? Kat: “I’d say they should talk to students more and bond [with us]. They should know what’s going on, like, if there is a problem, and [a kid is] bothering other people, there is a lot more going on at home or outside of school.” Season 4 : Big Kids EditionCreating Safe Environments 5 Youth VoicesSeason 4 : Big Kids EditionCreating Safe Environments 6 Azure’s Three Tools to Support Children of Color Welcoming children into your program space is a great way to cultivate a sense of safety and belonging. Greet all children by name, and ask them a question about how they’re feeling or how their day was. Warmly greeting and showing interest in each individual child is a high-quality teaching practice. Every child needs to feel welcome, wanted, seen, and heard in order to engage in learning, environments. Azure is a student organizer, activist, and writer. Azure talked about how the foundational practices of nurturing relationships and safe environments are critical for learners of all ages, and especially students of color. Radical Welcome Azure talked about his book You’ve Failed Us: Students of Color Talk Seattle Schools. Azure described some of his feelings about the interactions he has had with teachers in school. He explained the importance of these strategies being radical, saying, “All of these are radical because when you are fighting against such a strongly ingrained racist system, it can’t be half way done. It has to be all in and do it radically.” Azure identified 3 things that educators can do to support children of color: Radical welcome - Ask students their name, find out who they are, and bring them into the classroom, every day, not just on the first day. Continue to let students know they are in the room for a reason and that they belong here. Radical support - Build a relationship, so you know how to support them. Build a foundational relationship so they feel comfortable coming to you and you can support them. It needs to be consensual—you can’t force support on a student. Radical empowerment - Encouragement that empowers is key. Regularly give affirmations and specific, supportive feedback. “They already have the power, you don’t need to give it, they already have it. You don’t need to give them power, they may not see it but they have it.” Think about times you have felt welcomed and valued, and consider ways you can help all children in your program feel connected, important, and seen. “I have had a lot of bad experiences with teachers. And most of the bad experiences I have had, have been with white male teachers, it’s just very clear that they expect very little of me in the class and don’t really see me as someone who can and will succeed. When you feel that from a teacher, and especially when you are already in an all white class and you’re feeling that from your peers, it’s so much harder to, like, try, it’s so much harder to put so much into it when nobody believes in you in the first place.” Pause and Reflect What spaces did I feel safest in as a young person? What did an adult do or say in those spaces to help create a sense of safety? Season 4 : Big Kids EditionCreating Safe Environments 7 How to Promote Anti-Bias, Anti-Racist, and Culturally Responsive Environments Let’s Talk About It Ultimately when we create anti-bias, anti- racist, and culturally responsive spaces, we are supporting the basic human right to belong. Taking steps to be anti-biased, anti-racist, and culturally responsive results in immense gains for children, particularly children most negatively impacted by systematic oppression. Creating safe spaces that value respect, inclusion, and diversity increases the quality of your program, and helps all children be compassionate, involved community members. We’re all on different steps of our anti-bias and anti-racism journeys. We encourage you to join us with an open heart and open mind. Many of these practices will be simple additions you can weave into your work with children and families. One example of a foundational practice for creating culturally responsive environments is taking the time to co-create a program culture that is reflective of the students involved in your program. The Strategy Spotlight on the next page offers more information on this practice. Safe environments are explicitly anti-bias and anti- racist. This means we’re engaging children in deeper ways where they get to learn and be themselves without giving up who they are. All of us hold multiple identities, are part of social groups, and have intricate personal backgrounds that are worthy of dignity and respect. In order for us, as providers, to support impactful learning we must recognize that we play a role in systems of oppression that are in place around us. We must commit to continuous learning so that we can best support all the children that we work with. Safe environments are also culturally responsive. This means providers are sensitive to children’s backgrounds, providing materials in the program space which reflect diverse cultures, languages, and experiences; and connecting participant families with community resources. Season 4 : Big Kids EditionCreating Safe Environments 8 Strategy Spotlight: Program Norms One way to create a clear program culture is to have program agreements that everyone, providers and children, are held accountable to. This is an easy activity and behavior management tool that can be applied in both early childhood and school-age programs. To create these as a group, talk about how everyone wants to be treated. Scaffold discussions to help children connect actions, feelings, and outcomes. With preschoolers you might ask: Have you heard the word respect before? What do you think it means? How might we show respect to ourselves? How do you show respect to our friends? How does it feel when someone treats us with respect? Should we make “respect ourselves and our friends” an agreement here? With older children these discussions can be more complex. You might ask: What is a community agreement? How do you want to be in a community together? What commitments or expectations do we have in our program? What do you expect from others to feel safe and heard? What makes you feel safe? Agreements can include strategies for how we repair harm or make amends, especially if we hurt someone’s feelings or do damage to someone else’s belongings. Children and adults are able to co-create solutions and conflict management, which helps avoid punishment, promotes community growth, and builds self-accountability. Children can sign or draw on the agreement documents to indicate their acceptance. Post the agreements for easy reference to revisit as needed. It is helpful to reference your commitments specifically during conflict, and use the agreement document as a tool for growth. Hold yourself accountable to the same expectations. This helps build trust. As a provider you might say: “Oh, you know what, one of our agreements is to be a good listener and that includes not having our phones out when we are talking with each other. I have mine out right now and I’m sorry for breaking an agreement. I’m going to put my phone away and I will be ready to listen.” We all make mistakes sometimes, and showing that you’re holding yourself accountable to the same standards and expectations is foundational for relationship building. Quote From the Field: “All of the rules come from three basic expectations: everyone’s body is safe, everyone’s feelings are safe, and everyone’s stuff (their things/property) is safe. Even younger children—even those with attention issues, or on the spectrum, or whatever challenge they may have—[they] can understand, [they] can connect with that and then discuss the challenge they had in those terms. Because that is so simple and central, everything revolves around that and grows from that. When you have kids who have ownership in the rules of our community, then everything ends up being better. Looking at rules from that perspective was one of the best things we ever did.”Season 4 : Big Kids EditionCreating Safe Environments 9 Pyramids for All Ages Let’s look at the Teaching Pyramid—a framework often used in early childhood settings for high-quality teaching— and the Social Emotional Learning Pyramid of Program Quality—a framework often used in school-age and youth care settings—to see how high-quality practices for these age groups have a lot in common. The Pyramid Model At first glance we can see how these pyramids have much in common. The Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Pyramid as a whole could actually be housed in the “all” and “some” parts of the Teaching Pyramid. Both pyramids emphasize that responsive relationships and safe environments are foundational for learning. All children and adults benefit from having positive relationships and feeling safe in their environment, but this is especially important for people who have experienced trauma or toxic stress. Nurturing relationships and safe environments aren’t a one and done activity. By consistently engaging in self-reflection, striving to build positive relationships, and implementing activities and facilitation strategies that cultivate a sense of belonging, you’ll uplift your whole program. The Social Emotional Learning Pyramid of Program Quality ALL SOME FE W Adapted from David P. Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality. Social Emotional Learning Pyramid of Program Quality.Next >