Twisted Teaching

Stop focusing all your efforts on “fixing” kids and shift that energy to fixing the systems in your schools that have failed your kids and their communities 🤷🏽‍♀️🤷🏽‍♀️🤷🏽‍♀️

Student feedback got you in your feelings?

These students will come for you will NO 👏🏽 ONE 👏🏽 SENT👏🏽 FOR 👏🏽 THEM. But still, their voices must be sought out, heard, and consider… ALL of em! Even your favorite student 😒 who always has something to say when you didn’t ask.

You know how to get them together, take control of your thoughts and take action on their feedback.

My guide for processing students feedback is guaranteed to transform your mindset and the cultism’s climate of your classroom by answering the questions “how do I ensure I’m meeting the needs of all students?”

Click the link in bio, subscribe to my newsletter, and prepare to shift the way you process and reflect on student feedback!

The truth is HARD to hear!

Students were asked “what do you want adults to know” and BABY…they didn’t hold back.

We sent for them and they came. But now, what do WE do with this feedback. How do we use this feedback to transform their learning experience, advocate for them and, most importantly, teach them to advocate for themselves.

Being REAL with students requires humility and ego checks. When they call us out on our stuff, we can act like they didn’t say what they said!

So again, what are WE going to do with it? Who do you do when your students give your FEEDBACK?

In urban spaces, student feedback MUST be included in all aspects of their learning experience—THEIR VOICES MATTER. If you struggle with accepting, reflecting, and taking action on student feedback, don’t fret… I got something special for you.

Tomorrow I’ll be going LIVE at 6:00 PM CST to discuss my reflection on some of the FEEDBACK recently received from students and I’ll show you my process for INTENTIONALLY reflecting on and implementing student feedback when they KNOW their voice has been heard!

This will change how you use student voices in your learning space.

See you tomorrow!

😡😡😡😡 This is not a case of gentrification, this is ERASURE and is pure EVIL.

When K Dot () dropped these words it made me think of the millions of students, sitting in , that have been deemed “out of control.”

Whew child…this can cause a conversation that can go on for hours and hours and hours.

This IS NOT normal. This SHOULD NOT be normal. As a mom of 4, my heart could only imagine the anger, hurt, and questions.

Like I said earlier this week, schools should be a SAFE space but what happens when the “creators and curators of safe” spaces don’t know what a safe space looks, feels, or sounds like?

We model problems for students and give them opportunities to practice before we expect them to demonstrate mastery, right? 🧐🧐🧐

Thanks for allowing me to share my voice and passion in your work of art . To all my fellow educators, while we love what we do, that love can only fully come from a place where loving ourselves is more important. I’ll be the first to tell you that it’s okay to walk away.

Thank you for your Weekly Doses of Joy and for being the bad mama jamma that you are!

Culturally responsive classrooms allow for JOY to exist but these spaces are only made possible by educators who are committed bringing JOY into their own lives.

I was a social butterfly mixed with a avid fence hoping ditcher!

I started skipping school in about the 7th grade and by the time I made to high school, I graduate from ditching to go hang at a friends house to ditching and going to hang at the beach (perks of being a Cali girl).

School didn’t interest me really until about my 11th grade year because I felt so disconnected and judge for my older brother’s behavior or my mother’s drug addiction.

So, what kept me in school was the opportunity to be social. If we’re being honest, I went to because I just knew it was a LITUATION!

Let me ask this, how are you capitalizing on your students desires to be in community? Over the past three years, I’ve talked to countless students about their views on school and many expressed an excitement with being about to be back around their friends while at the same time still feeling disengaged and disconnected.

I know we’re in the mist of some crazy times and just trying to survive. My concern, however, is the impact disengagement and disconnection will have on ALL students but most importantly, the historically underserved and vulnerable students/schools.

Now I’m not saying high energy instruction is a must everyday but CONNECTIONS and COMMUNITY are a non-negotiable.

During such as time as this, how are you building community inside your classroom/school and ensuring students, families, and communities feel connected? Let me know in the comments 👇🏽👇🏽

If you work in a school that serves students of color and they can’t bring aspects of their social life– song, dance, vernacular, social media trends–into your academic space….🚩🚩🚩YOU’RE COMMITTING VIOLENCE. Like really, you’re asking for a lot if you require students to leave their authentic selves at the door and you wonder why you feel like you can’t “reach them”.

Like what do you expect?

When students hail from collectivist cultures, their social life is a BIG part of their identity. Instead of asking students to police their authentic selves, use these three questions to connect students' social life to your instruction and watch your class become more relevant to them.

Let me know in the comments what question resonates with you and your best strategy for connecting students social life with your instruction.

I don’t know about y’all, but I know I went to ONLY socialize. Like seriously, my friends are what kept me coming to school and if they weren't at school, I was trying to be where they were at.

It’s saddening to hear when my 8yo says he can’t talk to his friends during lunch or I go into classrooms and schools and kids are punished for socializing.

Like let’s be honest, if it weren’t for the ability to socialize at school, some of y’all schools and classrooms would be dead.

Let me let you in on a little secret, you can still manage your classrooms and hallways AND let students socialize…especially when you’re connecting what’s happening in your classroom/school to what is relevant to THEIR lives and communities.

But, this is going to require you to do a lot of relationship building and I know how y’all educators like to tussle when it comes to losing instruction time during the Spring.

Calm your butt down! You can still build meaningful relationships with all students and let your students have a joyful social life, in your class/school, WITHOUT losing instructional time. I got you!

There are many relationship building activities on the TwistED Teaching website (link in the bio) that will support you in connecting your content and instruction with students’ social lives. Check it out and let me know in the comments did you go to school to socialize with your friends or “learn”?