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Creating a sense of belonging for all students in a classroom and at a school is essential to learning. What can leaders do to make students feel safe and welcome? What can teachers do to create an environment in which students feel supported, capable and competent? Based on Steele and Cohn-Vargas's book, Identity Safe Classrooms: Places to Belong and Learn, participants will study the concept of stereotype threat and then learn a set of behaviors that are within the teacher's and leader's spheres of influence and control in order increase identity safety for all students. Participants will learn how to Apply the concept of stereotype threat to their context Apply the key elements of the Identity Safe Classroom research to their context Refine their understanding of Dweck's growth mindset work and speak to how it connects to creating identity safe environments Thoughtfully choose from a variety of strategies for creating a sense of belonging in one's classroom, and also in one's school, one's department and/or grade level

Read Chapter 1 and Chapter 5. "Teaching Adolescents To Become Learners summarizes the research on five categories of noncognitive factors that are related to academic performance: academic behaviors, academic perseverance, academic mindsets, learning strategies and social skills, and proposes a framework for thinking about how these factors interact to affect academic performance, and what the relationship is between noncognitive factors and classroom/school context, as well as the larger socio-cultural context. <br /> <br /> It examines whether there is substantial evidence that noncognitive factors matter for students' long‐term success, clarifying how and why these factors matter, determining if these factors are malleable and responsive to context, determining if they play a role in persistent racial/ethnic or gender gaps in academic achievement, and illuminating how educators might best support the development of important noncognitive factors within their schools and classrooms. <br /> <br /> The review suggests some promising levers for change at the classroom level, and challenges the notion that hard work and effort are character traits of individual students, instead suggesting that the amount of effort a student puts in to academic work can depend, in large part, on instructional and contextual factors in the classroom. <br /> <br /> In addition, the review also presents challenges for future research on noncognitive factors. "

Founded in 1943, ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) is an educational leadership organization dedicated to advancing best practices and policies for the success of each learner. Our 175,000 members in 119 countries are professional educators from all levels and subject areas--superintendents, supervisors, principals, teachers, professors of education, and school board members.

"If we are serious about closing achievement gaps, we will have to move beyond the simplistic rhetoric of "It's the family," or "It's the schools," or "It's poverty"-or "It's stereotyping," for that matter. " In this article, the author argues that stereotype threat, an invisible factor, negatively impacts the performance of affected students, ranging from African American males to girls in math-oriented domains. It may account for some of the achievement gap. Stereotype threat occurs when others have negative expectations of the student's performance based on some external stereotype. The student then has to overcome the inherent negative threat, thereby facing two potential failures - actually performing poorly and the perception of performing poorly because of the stereotype. Research by the author and a colleague demonstrates that due to this additional stress and pressure, the student does more poorly precisely because he or she tries too hard in a situation in which a more relaxed concentration leads to success, particularly in high-stakes evaluations. Because stereotype threat is partly situational, the author believes that students can be taught to overcome it and that teachers and others can learn to avoid it. (WestEd)

Tiltfactor Laboratory's buffalo is a 20-minute card game for 2-8 players, ages 14 and older. It was created as part of a National Science Foundation-funded project to design and study games to combat implicit bias and stereotype threat against girls and women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields.

Sian Beilock's blog on "brain science behind "choking under pressure" and the many factors influencing all types of performance: from test-taking to public speaking to your golf swing. "