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Learning Inclusivity - Hopkins School 11-2-21

Over the past several years, the school district has committed to priorities around inclusion. Broadly speaking, inclusion can be defined as the extent to which students, faculty, and staff feel a sense of belonging and value within our schools.  Inclusive practices, over the past five years in particular, have become increasingly manifest in our corridors, classrooms, and curricula in so many ways. Of course we’re still studying reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic--we’re just weaving inclusivity into our curricula and instruction along the way.

 

A couple of weeks ago on a sparkling fall morning, liberated from meetings, I found my way to Hopkins School. As I entered, I met a student doing laps in the hallway, flanked by an adult. This particular kiddo wasn’t having the best morning, but was holding it together because he had a trusted grown-up walking alongside him, building his confidence, steadying his temperament, and bolstering his stamina for the day. Pausing momentarily, I marveled at how our schools so aptly meet the needs of individual students. Helping a child self-regulate means getting him access to curriculum--essentially including him in the classroom setting. 

 

Classrooms buzzed with learning, and I was drawn into a place where a teacher held her students rapt with what we call an “interactive read aloud”.  Picture about 15 kids sitting on the rug, eyes on the teacher, hands raised to answer questions, faces animated for moments of “turn and talk.” The text, a beautifully illustrated book entitled The Name Jar, chronicles a little girl’s move from her home in Korea to the United States. At first, she is reluctant to share her name, a Korean name--“Unhei”--with her new classmates, because it is an uncommon name, which for some American children proves difficult--initially--to pronounce. In response, the class puts a jar on Unhei’s desk and fills it with all kinds of American names, as suggestions for the girl to adopt as her own. 

 

The reader comes to learn that Unhei’s name translates to “Grace,” and that her mother and her grandmother, when they were in Korea, went to visit a name master to choose the little girl’s name. Unhei has a wooden stamp of the characters that make up her name. What makes this text so spectacular, I think, is that it is a story around the power of names and the ways names identify children. Many of the students in the Hopkinton Public Schools do not have traditional American names, and while they see themselves in this text and perhaps identify closely with Unhei, certainly students with American names can find themselves in the text as well. Essentially, names have meaning to the human beings they identify. The importance of respecting and valuing ALL names--and people!--is central to the text. Here we see inclusivity incorporated into an English Language Arts lesson.

 

In another space--a corridor, actually--I was able to witness a lesson in the program known as Understanding Our Differences, a curriculum dedicated to fostering respectful and inclusive schools and communities for people of all abilities. The lesson was focused on the gifts and talents that students with some kind of learning disability bring into our schools and into friendships. Students first discussed the students in the scenarios they had studied; then, they made connections to self. So many of the kids could describe someone they know who has a learning disability of some kind and also an ABILITY that makes them stand out in some other unique way.

 

Finally, I went into a classroom during a social studies lesson. With the lights dimmed, the classroom housed students engaged in a lesson on early American colonization. Many of you will hearken back to the days when social studies was taught largely through a Eurocentric lens, meaning the story would have been told through the vantage point of the white European settlers. During this lesson, students were asked to do some pre-reading about Massasoit, a Wampanoag Indian Chief who, throughout his life, maintained a reciprocal, peaceful, and respectful relationship with the English settlers in Plymouth Colony. After Massasoit’s death, however, the relationship deteriorated, leading to King Philip’s War and led particularly by Massasoit’s son. 

 

In this classroom the learning was focused on betrayal. Massasoit had fostered relationships with the Pilgrims, and some years later Massasoit’s descendents were left with broken promises. Students were asked to engage in perspective-taking, to evaluate whose behaviors were justified. 

 

The kids were using technology to write a short response on their chrome book, which the teacher could then project onto the whiteboard at the front of the room. The students’ responses appeared one at a time, without the kids’ names attached. The teacher could ask her students to discuss different responses projected on the board. One student wrote the following:

 

“Massasoit’s sons feel this way because the English were revoking resources and land rights in other areas and feared this could cause a domino effect, spreading to Massachusetts. I think they were right and had a perfect reason to feel this way, but Massasoit was not in the wrong either for his kindness.”

 

 As you look at this particular student's response, you will see the balanced approach this student took, essentially being able to understand the position of Massasoit as well as the position of his sons, who lived on after him. Essentially, these social studies learning tasks are foundational to kids growing their disciplinary literacy. This kind of perspective-taking, while applied to a fifth grade social studies lesson, will benefit our children throughout their lives. 

 

Whether we are talking about meeting kids’ individual needs,  respecting and celebrating our identities, understanding students with learning challenges, or perspective-taking in a social studies classroom, the Hopkins School has responded beautifully to the district’s initiatives around inclusion, all while adhering to grade level curriculum standards.

 

We have a lot to celebrate in Hopkinton. In addition to content, your children are learning a lot about respect, care, and their humanity.  As always I am proud to lead a district in which we are growing children whose minds and hearts are open and whose teachers, support staff, and administrators foster the inclusion of all.