Professional Learning Network

Chicago Public Schools. (n.d.). Chicago Public Schools Restorative Practices Guide and Toolkit.

https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/ce3c4c_f002ea99c616491ca34c013eefb043eb.pdf

This is a guide and toolkit created by the Chicago Public School system for implementing

restorative practices in your school and teaching. This guide gives insight into many aspects of

restorative teaching practices, and how to include them in different settings. The guide gives the

proper explanation on what restorative practices are, and why we should implement them in our

schools. This guide and toolkit provides many charts and graphics including one that explains

the difference between a restorative justice mindset vs. a non restorative justice mindset, and the

key restorative language we need to use in our classrooms. It also gives alternatives to the

“punishment-only” way of discipline, and provides examples of using restorative practices

instead. There are many more amazing topics discussed in this guide that I found very helpful

and interesting. This source helps me grow as a restorative educator, and gives me plenty of

amazing examples on how I can implement restorative practices in my future classroom. I

believe practicing a restorative approach is extremely important, and has endless benefits for

students, classrooms, schools, and communities. This source not only acts as a guide, but also a

toolkit I can take with me into my future career.

Dweck, C. (2014, November). The power of believing that you can improve. TED conferences.

https://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing_that_you_can_improve

In her talk, Dweck provides a powerful message about the power having a growth mindset gives

students, and how we as teachers can help our students practice this mindset. Dweck also
explains the ‘power of yet’ in the classroom. The power of yet has been shown to build a growth

mindset in students and lead them to success. Instead of simply telling students they’re wrong,

we can tell them you're not there YET, and that’s okay! Giving a challenging assignment can be

detrimental to some students, yet exciting for others. For those students with a fixed mindset, we

want to solidify the word yet, and teach them that they can, and will, get there! This talk really

stuck with me after listening to it the first time. I know how important a growth mindset is, and

this talk really solidifies the power behind it. This talk reminds me to always be pushing my

students and praising them that they can, and will, succeed. Teach students that challenge is good

and preach the power of yet!

Hertz, C., & Mraz, K. (2018). Kids 1st from day 1: A teacher’s guide to today’s classroom.

Heinemann.

Hertz and Mraz wrote this amazing book marketed towards new teachers. This book gives

valuable insight and information from these two teachers collected after their first few years of

teaching. This book is very fun and easy to read, yet is packed full of valuable information and

tips and tricks for your first years of teaching! This book gives helpful information on topics

such as the layout of your classroom or the type of teacher you are and what it means. I found

this book not only easy to read and comprehend, but very insightful. This book gave me many

tips and tricks that I will definitely be implementing in my future classroom. Hertz and Mraz

created this book in such a way that makes me so excited for my first year teaching, and has

given me tools to be much more confident going into it!

How to Center DEI in Teaching. (2020). Carnegie Mellon University. June 23, 2023,

https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/designteach/diversityequityinclusion/index.html
This source provided by Carnegie Mellon University, is a great resource on including DEI

(Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) into your teaching. This source offers examples to include DEI

in both course design and course delivery. They offer examples in learning objectives,

assessments, course content, and also grading & feedback, discussion, and group work. Reading

through these examples and the side bars of each were very helpful. Each section has multiple

ways to include DEI practices, and examples. This source provided me with ways to incorporate

DEI teaching that I hadn’t thought about before, such as “grade one question at a time rather than

one student at a time”. I want to make sure I'm incorporating DEI as much as possible in my

future classroom, and this source has provided me with many examples on how to do so. This is

definitely a resource I can continue to look back on, and dig deeper into, to find more ways to

properly include DEI practices into my classroom.

Love, B. (2020). We want to do more than survive: Abolitionist teaching and the pursuit of

educational freedom. Beacon.

In her book, Dr. Love provides the impact of her own personal experiences in education as a

black female, and also brings attention to the work that needs to be done in the education system

regarding students of color. Love brings attention to the disparities in schools regarding students

of color, and the inequitable treatment they so commonly receive. This text emphasizes how

students of color are simply surviving in schools, and how students of color do and don’t matter

to the school system. Love gives insight on what it means to be an abolitionist teacher and the

issues we need to address as future educators. This book helped give me a perspective I hadn’t

seen before, and opened my eyes to the bigger issues embedded in our education system. I know

that this book was a call to action, and as a future educator this book helps me understand what I,

and other teachers, should be focusing on in our future classrooms.

https://www.ted.com/talks/rita_pierson_every_kid_needs_a_champion

Rita Pierson voices a powerful message in this seven-minute podcast. Pierson explains the

importance of relationships between teachers and students in the classroom. She states “students

don’t learn from people they don't like!”. Pierson goes on to explain the power you have to

create these beautiful relationships with your students that will help them grow and learn as both

a student and a person. Pierson makes many powerful points in her talk that resonated with me

heavily. Pierson does an amazing job of voicing how important relationships are with your

students. Giving your students the same treatment and respect you expect them to give you, and

working to build up your students as much as possible are both ways to create a wonderful class

environment. Pierson comments that you’re not going to like every student, but the key is to

never show it. This job is difficult of course, but not impossible! This message is a beautiful

reminder of how much we affect our students, and how much our relationships with them matter.

This talk is heartwarming as well as inspiration for me to become the teacher who my students

will always remember and love.

Student Achievement Partners. (n.d.). Coherence Map. Achieve The Core.

https://tools.achievethecore.org/coherence-map/

This website is designed by the Student Achievement Partners non-profit organization. This

website has a variety of resources available from articles to classroom resources. The particular

resource I’ve found increasingly helpful on the subject of mathematics is the coherence map.

The coherence map shows the connections between the common core state standards for

mathematics. This map has been extremely helpful when writing lesson plans and dissecting
students' work to be able to see where they fit between grade level standards. This resource is

also beneficial because it shows the connections between standards, and how they grow into one

another. Using this map can help track any gaps in students' understanding by tracing back into

the standards and their prerequisites. This source visualizes the link between concepts across

grade levels, which is very useful when planning lessons and assessing students. The map also

helps me to visualize and understand how the supporting standards relate to the major goal and

work each grade level is working towards.

University of Florida Literacy Institute. (n.d.). UFLI Foundations Toolbox.

https://ufli.education.ufl.edu/foundations/toolbox/

This free resource created by the University of Florida Literacy Institute, is an extremely useful

resource for English Language Arts instruction. This toolbox includes pre-made slideshows,

games and activities, decodable passages, and homework sheets for multiple literacy skills.

Some topics include vowel teams, prefixes and suffixes, ending spelling patterns, and more. This

toolbox acts as a simple yet complete guideline for literacy instruction, and provides many

resources to help guide instruction. The slideshows included walk through step-by-step how to

teach specific literacy skills such as the ones I listed previously. They also give examples of

literacy games you can print and have students play to further their knowledge in a fun and

engaging way! This website also has decidable reading passages readily available, which is

extremely helpful when working with students on a specific literacy skill and you need a passage

that highlights such skill. This website has been a great guideline in planning phonics lessons,

and gives many great ideas on how to teach certain literacy skills. The provided decodable

passages, games, and slides are all great resources to include in literacy instruction. This

resource will greatly benefit me in the future as a guideline and quick reference of how to teach
many phonics and literacy skills. The University of Florida Literacy Institute offers many other

resources that I have also found beneficial such as online sorting mats. Overall, this is a great

resource to use for free and effective literacy instruction materials.

All of these sources have, and will continue to be beneficial for me in my future profession as an

educator. These sources all offer important and useful information on the ways we can support

all of our students. These resources all share the common trait that they can be used to better

instruction and support students' learning. Some of these sources help me as a future educator

learn more about how I can grow, and where my priorities should lie in my future classroom.

Others are resources I can use to help guide my instruction and make sure I am teaching my

students quality lessons. All of these sources are focused around us as teachers, and how we can

improve our teaching and connections between us and our students in one way or another. The

main themes pulled through these sources are creating relationships, becoming a transformative

educator using DEI, restorative justice, and growth mindsets, as well as helpful items to add to

your teacher toolbox. Each of these sources will help me to be a transformative educator by

providing me with powerful reminders, examples, and outside experiences that I can take into

consideration, and learn from, in order to best support each and every one of my students. These

sources are all great places for me to refer back to throughout my career to further my

knowledge and guide my instruction. These resources provide me with information I can use to

teach for diversity, equity, equality, and inclusion, use restorative justice practices, and improve

the contents of my lessons. The sources above will continue to help me educate myself on

important topics and give me the tools I need to change the system and empower my future

students to be the best they can be!