The Allies, Achievers, and Risk Takers: Tapping the Social and Academic Potential of All StudentsThrough Community Building course focuses on developing ways to create an empathetic and caring community and to become culturally proficient in a manner that will foster mutual respect and trust among the students and teachers in the classroom. Topics and activities focus on culture/race, ally/bully behavior, character building, sense of community and communal responsibility, and perspective taking. The course shares how teaching strategies and practices that model building a stronger and more trusting environment of learners will lead to students’ willingness to take more risks academically across content areas, and foster their ability to see multiple perspectives and look through varied lenses within the community as well as in literature.  Literacy units and multimedia resources are shared as ways for students to further explore and apply these concepts through exploration of characters and settings of books and media as well as through hands-on activities and projects.

For those considering the course

At the moment, the course meetings are scheduled for 3:45-6:45 during the school-year (four sessions). These may seem like particularly long sessions, so we aim to “Wow” you! Jan and I are certain that the multimedia we share with you during the sessions will lead to your feeling you can’t wait to apply them in your own school environment and with your student population and peers. We are constantly updating the resource kit we will share and trying new activities with students.

Course feedback has been incredible, and we were pleased to hear that participants enjoy the hands-on activities and encourage us to include more. You got it! AART is going interactive. We can show you better than we can tell you when it comes to the activities that tie into the literature-which nurtures the sense of community and provokes the minds of children-which leads to students feeling as safe as they can feel-which leads to more risk taking in terms of academics, social responsibility, and awareness. The notion of perspective is woven throughout. Take our course and see! We actually had participants suggest they want more. While it is early for AART 2, our course is already packed with fun, mindful, challenging, character building discussion and content. Please send feedback and let us know how we can bring you aboard.

Bill and Jan