Humanizing Classrooms, Our What, Why & How
Humanizing History Visuals
Welcome to Humanizing History™! Every month, we feature a central theme. Each week, we dive into different areas of focus.
This month’s theme: Humanizing Classrooms, A Guide to Cultivating Inclusion and Belonging
This week’s focus: Identity Literacy, or helpful frameworks to expand how we approach identity
Today’s edition of Humanizing History™ is about 1,000 words, an estimated 3½-minute read.
The Why for This Week’s Topic
This month, we’ve chosen the theme “Humanizing Classrooms, A Guide To Cultivating Inclusion and Belonging” to honor teachers and the essential work of education.
Last week, in our newsletter, “Humanizing Classrooms, Where the Work Begins,” we shared ideas for how to begin creating inclusive practices. We discussed the importance of first examining our own lenses and identifying both strengths and areas for change. We also highlighted the power of storytelling and the importance of recognizing our own values, along with a prompt designed to inspire deep reflection.
Today, we’ll explore a framework that may be a helpful next step: identifying our own “What, Why, and How.”
As a quick reminder, this month, Monique is going to share lessons learned as both a classroom educator and consultant who has worked with thousands of dedicated educators around the world.
Remember, what we are suggesting are some ways, not the only way.
It's important that we step into action that feels authentic to us, so choose what works for you — your community, your context, your needs, your goals and values.
Introduction to “What, Why & How”
When considering ways to be more inclusive — or ways to cultivate belonging, or essentially how to humanize our classrooms — we are addressing big ideas.
These ideas can be at once cognitively demanding and emotional. And it is within this complexity that the opportunities lie.
Because if we can do the work of examining our own lenses (or unpacking the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves), we can be better prepared to understand various interpersonal dynamics, identify goals, and take action — from curricular content to communication patterns to how we build relationships — in ways that are more attuned and more likely to cultivate psychological safety and connection.
Following a “What, Why, How” framework can support the creation of humanizing classrooms. For example, at its most basic, we can ask: What is inclusion? Why does it matter? How can we cultivate it?
Identifying Our “What, Why & How”
Our What
To unpack our own “What,” we can start by asking: What truly matters to us? What are we trying to accomplish? Are we aiming to be more inclusive? More expansive? Are we focused on creating belonging in diverse spaces, or in spaces where there are numerical “majorities” and “minorities”? Once we begin to unpack and identify our “What,” we can then move on to our “Why.”
Our Personal Why
Our “Why” can, and likely will, vary. It may involve questions like: Why are inclusive, expansive, and humanizing practices important — or even essential — in education? Our “Why” will likely be rooted in our values, lived experiences, and identities — the social identities we carry, as well as the parts of us that cannot be contained by social constructions. These include the assumed identities others may see when they see us, and the parts they may not see but still matter to us deeply.
To ground the work in a universal “Why” — such as “Why do inclusive practices or perspectives matter in education?” — we can also turn to neuroscience.
Our Universal, Human Why
The human brain is complex. To begin to simplify its complexity, we can bring in the work of neuroscientists, like Dr. Matt Lieberman, who asserts that the brain is largely wired for social protection and/or social connection. This suggests that our brains are scanning the environment for both social threats and sources of connection.
In fact, Dr. Lieberman describes the urgency of this, “Our brains evolved to experience threats to our social connections in much the same way they experience physical pain.”
When we experience social disconnection — such as from identity-based harm — our brain reacts as if we’re in physical danger. It sends signals that release stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol into our body. Adrenaline can fade quickly, but cortisol can linger for hours — sometimes even days.
To learn more, check out Dr. Dan Siegel’s Hand Model of the Brain — a simple visual tool that helps both adults and children understand the power of integration. It uses the hand to represent different parts of the brain, showing how they work together to help us manage emotions, stay connected, and make thoughtful choices.
Our How
There are many ways to carry out our “How.” We’ll highlight one approach here and continue to share more ideas in future newsletters.
An example “How” is how we frame “tolerance,” or the word “tolerate,” which has been popularized in education for decades. Sometimes it’s utilized as a rule or aspiration: we must tolerate each other. Yes, tolerance is integral to the classroom experience, but it’s more of a starting point, not the end goal.
At a minimum, every person in a space — especially a classroom — needs to find ways to tolerate one another, to literally and symbolically share the learning environment. With care, we may go a step further and “accept” one another, like a symbolic handshake, where we are willing to “break bread” together. With more attunement and opportunities to build trust, we may go even further and “embrace” one another, like a symbolic hug, where care and connection are present.
For years, Monique had a “tolerance chart” posted in her classroom, with three words stacked on the wall: “tolerate” at the bottom, followed by “accept,” and “embrace” on top. Years later, a perceptive student — one who had expressed that he often did not feel like he belonged — offered a small but powerful revision. “Can we add another word?” he asked the class one day. And what was that word? Celebrate.
A small visual, packed with meaning: tolerate, accept, embrace, and celebrate. Tolerance is the minimum — it’s the most basic level of human decency. We can ask this of all of our students, of ourselves. While we may not be able to demand that everyone celebrate one another, it can be a shared ideal — something worth striving for, whether it’s our classrooms, communities, nation, or with people across the world.
Next week, we’ll continue to explore the “How.”
In the meantime, visit this link to download the Tolerate to Celebrate visual for your classroom or home.
Join Us for a Professional Development Workshop This Summer!
If you, and your colleagues, are looking for professional development opportunities this summer, Michael Matthews, of Authentic Education, and Monique Vogelsang of Humanizing History™ are co-leading a hands-on PD experience for classroom teachers and other school leaders.
"Inclusive Curriculum Design — Backwards Planning for Equity and Belonging."
Join us for an in-person, 3-day intensive to expand your thinking around best practices for including underrepresented voices, untold stories, and broader perspectives into your curriculum design — resulting in more inclusive and culturally expansive units.
Visit this link to learn more and sign up.
There's a limited number of spots!
Reach Out, Say Hello
We’d love to hear from you! Do you have ideas or questions that you’d like to add to the conversation? Please contact us.
You can support our work by forwarding this newsletter to a friend or colleague.
We work with educators, schools, and other organizations. Reach out if you’d like to discuss our faculty workshops, student assemblies, and other ways to support educators in developing rich, humanizing curriculum.
Follow us on social media: Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn.
Thank you!
Theme: