Social and Cultural Literacy

“Teaching and learning happen within cultural, political, and social circumstances. As much as we want to deny it, we all have biases based on our life experiences. Each of us — teachers and students alike — enter classrooms from different perspectives and points of view. We must learn to negotiate those differences to better understand each other and our worlds, and to advocate for a better, more equitable future. To do so, we need to build a set of social and cultural literacies via multicultural education, social justice education, and culturally responsive pedagogy that help us navigate difficult conversations, acknowledge and challenge bias and prejudice, create inclusive classroom spaces, and fight for social justice”. – Common Sense Education

Common Sense Education has developed a collection of hand-picked, regularly updated resources and comprehensive curricula including lessons, videos, downloadables, and games organized by a few key topic areas – facilitating tough conversations, understanding bias and prejudice, and getting students civically engaged. EGUSD will be including links to these resources highlighting our EGUSD Board adopted Common Sense curriculum and the connections to Equity/Race/Identity on our internal EGUSD Digital Citizenship Curriculum Google site to share with district and school administrators and our digital citizenship site coordinators. You can view the new Common Sense Education resources by clicking on the link below.

Social and Cultural Literacy Resources for Classrooms

Resources

• Talking with Students About Shocking or Disturbing News (by Common Sense Education): Children see and hear more of the news than we often realize, whether it’s at home, through friends, or on social media. Shocking or disturbing stories could be about a natural disaster, a mass shooting, racist violence, political strife, or even wall-to-wall coverage of the pandemic. Use this article’s age-based tips and lessons to help students process upsetting events.
• Talking About Race – I Am A Parent Or Caregiver (by the National Museum of African American History & Culture) – Explore talking about race topics such as bias, race and racial identity and community building.
• 5 Ways to Deal with Hate Speech Online Video (by Common Sense Education) Cruelty against a religion, ethnicity, sexual identity, or race has reached a fever pitch and often finds its way into kids’ lives. Here are some tips to help parents and kids deal with hate speech online.
• Where Kids Find Hate Online – Help kids recognize and reject racist, sexist, homophobic, and religion-based hate content. (by Common Sense Education)
• Books you can read with kids about racism and social justice, the Holocaust, diversity, and the immigrant experience. (by Common Sense Education)

EGUSD Resources