Teaching in a Post-Truth Society:

Empowering Students as they negotiate digital literacy, identity, and socioemotional learning

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Welcome!

Before the U.S. became a country, this land was already someone’s land. I want to acknowledge that we are having this conversation on the traditional land of the Yemassee and Cusabo Peoples in what today is the Low Country region of South Carolina, who lived here for many generations but are continually and systematically erased by policies and practices that remove their histories for this place. I also honor the enslaved people who, for centuries, built the wealth of a few through hard work and daily struggle. I am grateful for the opportunity to be here, and I want to invite you to reflect on what else can we do beyond acknowledging those whose humanity was questioned because of their difference.

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BEFORE WE BEGIN…

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Hello!

Ian O’Byrne, PhD

Associate Professor of Literacy Education

You can find me at digitallyliterate.net and wiobyrne.com.

Carlos Lavín, PhD.

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•EC Teacher for 7 years

•TA for 2 years

•Charter/ K-12/ bilingual

•Interpreter/ Translator for school district

•MTSS Chair

•Pre-K ESL

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•Ph.D. in special education from George Mason (June 2020)

•Assistant Professor of Special Education

•Research interests: Emerging Bilinguals and the intersectional space they occupy between disability, immigration status, and race/ethnicity

•International special education

•Counter spaces and counternarratives k-12 settings and higher education settings

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Married 11.5 years

2 kids

Born in Mexico City

Love to play sports

Never played organized soccer until I moved to the U.S.

I believe I am a good story-teller

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How do we put down roots?

Tree activity

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In your mind I want you to picture a tree. What does it look like? How tall is it? Where is it located? In a forest? By itself?,

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Now, take a selfie during a part of your day. Where are you? What are you doing? Are you with others? What can they see? As we move through our day, we have any interactions with other people, throughout these interactions we show others part of who we are, sometimes we communicate this just from our appearance, and sometimes it comes through our interactions.

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As with trees, we have visible and an invisible parts. Trees have root systems (for the most part not visible), we have personality traits and values that are not visible either but these also sustain us and help us grow. Just as trees are wholly dependent on the health and function of their roots, our microcultures shape our development and serve as a primal means to connect with others. Moreover, tree trunks all include unique variation that individualizes them from others. The same holds true of humans, who may outwardly present certain predominant characteristics, but also maintain individual traits that change over time, based on their experiences and microcultures. In addition, just as the branches and leaves of a tree interact with nature (e.g., animals, weather) and are influenced by context (e.g., season), in this analogy, branches and leaves may represent the interactions a person has with other individuals and settings. Some interactions are fleeting (e.g., passing neighbors during a walk), whereas others are more consistent (e.g., dinnertime with family), and all are dependent on context (e.g., school, home, community).

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Try it: if you were a tree, what are your roots? What does your tree trunk look like?

How about the leaves?

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As educators are constantly inundated with images and messages from mass media and other social inputs that stigmatize differences such as language, country of origin, disabilities, educators need to recognize these messages and understand ways in which to combat them.

How do you feel about your tree? Do you think your tree is better than the tree next to you?

Why?

SEL & The Profile of the SC Graduate

Transformative SEL

What is the Purpose of SEL?

Looking at your trees, looking thinking about whose tree is better or worse…

We grow up thinking that success means self-sufficient, autonomous and financially well off” (Way & Rogers, 2017, p. 229).

But is it?

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Melting Pot

If we continue teaching SEL through a melting pot ideal, we continue replicating the same inequities and and ideas of superiority that come with it.

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Instead, we can use other approaches.

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Culturally Relevant Pedagogy is one example

Specifically the third component.

Next Steps

Land acknowledgement and then what else?

Shift our focus

When the starting point of the conversation centers around the strengths students bring to the table because of their differences, not in spite of them, we know we are on the right track

What else?

It’s not a cookbook, not always a step by step guide to becoming (insert description here). But it begins with each one of us. Self- Reflection is key.

Let’s begin

Your turn

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QUESTIONS

Ian: obyrnei@cofc.edu

Carlos: Lavince@cofc.edu