The Balanced Ecosystem: Creating and Sustaining a Classroom Community that Celebrates Literacy and Offers Relational and Affirming Feedback Strategies
Laura Da’ is a poet and teacher. A lifetime resident of the Pacific Northwest, Da’ studied creative writing at the University of Washington and the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is Eastern Shawnee. Her first book, Tributaries, was published by the University of Arizona Press and won a 2016 American Book Award. Da’ has held residencies at the Richard Hugo House, Tin House, and Jack Straw. Her newest book, Instruments of the True Measure, is the winner of the Washington State Book Award. Da’ lives near Seattle with her husband and son.
This professional development workshop centers feedback, goal setting, and relational community building in conversation with place, Indigenous language, and literature. The metaphor of the meadow and its balanced habitat will open considerations of multiple perspectives on feedback and encouragement of student growth. Seasonality’s waxing and waning patterns of abundance, rhythm, and mutuality underpin strategies to help students create their own objectives and practices of affirming growth in community while sustaining endurance toward goals.
This offering centers a culturally responsive classroom environment as a source of strength and affirmation by connecting learning to place and offering new lenses to consider student and teacher growth, text selection, and meaningful assessment. Participants can expect to leave the workshop with a selection of new feedback strategies and prompts, a recursive strategy for goal setting, and suggestions for bringing literature informed by Indigenous languages into the learning space.
This two-hour workshop will fulfill OSPI’s Continuing Education clock hours (2) for all state educators and meets the requirements for ongoing Racial Equity Training for teacher certification. This course will offer free resources and is