Growing Brave: Creating a Culture of Courage in the Classroom
We are Demonstration Teachers in a multi-age primary classroom at UCLA Lab School, working with students between the ages of six and eight. Founded as a laboratory school to explore innovation in education, UCLA Lab School operates with a three-pronged mission: teaching and learning, outreach and public engagement, and research.
Teachers at the Lab School use a constructivist, inquiry-based instructional approach. Lessons are often project-based and arts integrated. The school places a strong emphasis on educating the whole child and weaves social emotional learning, as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion, throughout the curriculum.
Understanding a “Brave Space”
In our first faculty meetings in the new school year, our team was lucky enough to work with Monique Marshall, a consultant who works with school communities to build and develop equitable practices and explore identity work. As part of our sessions, not only did we dive into our own identity exploration but we also focused on building and creating a “Brave Space” in our classrooms. Monique encouraged us to launch our classroom community-building at the start of the year using the idea of a “Brave Space” rather than the concept of “safe space” as we had often used. A “Brave Space,” as Monique shared, means leaning into the discomfort of not knowing something and committing to growing together as a community of learners. The idea of creating a brave community space was intriguing – something that felt actionable. This shifted our perspective, and we thought that creating a brave space meshed perfectly with some of the needs and themes that were coming up in our room of first and second grade students.
At the beginning of the year, as we began the long path of building a classroom community and getting to know our students, we noticed something: many of them seemed afraid. Not afraid of things like the dark or spiders, but afraid to make mistakes, try something new, even to write their names or begin to put words onto a page. Some students would cry or become frustrated when faced with tasks that seemed small to us as educators—like putting away a backpack, writing a name, or brainstorming a topic. Over the past few years, this has felt like a growing trend: children arriving with a fear of imperfection and a lack of confidence in their ability to try. Even before starting an activity, we heard them say things like, “I can’t do this,” or “I don’t know how.” When writing, students would often erase, crumple up papers, or worry about spelling and letter formation, despite our reminders to simply get their ideas down using the skills they already had.
After one particularly challenging Writing Workshop, as a teaching team, we posed the following question: What would happen if we made “bravery” our central touchstone in all that we do this school year in our classroom? What if we explored the idea of bravery and integrated it, not only into our academic content, but wove it into the daily mindset of our classroom—for both us as teachers and our students?
First, our team talked about what we hoped and dreamed for our students with the lens of bravery. We hoped that as a classroom community we could:
be ok with making mistakes
open ourselves up to something new or different- whether it was an experience, skill or idea
understand the difference between being out of our comfort zone and feeling unsure versus genuinely feeling afraid and unsafe.
acknowledge that “bravery” isn’t necessarily a character trait that some people have and others don’t but that it could be a mindset with which we might approach problems or situations – big or small.
Project Beginnings
In the first weeks of school, we spent a great deal of time (as we always do) building a classroom community. This time, we approached this beautiful, slow (and often exhausting!) part of the year with the mindset that we wanted to begin to facilitate lessons, conversations and experiences around the idea of bravery. We began with read-alouds as a driving force in beginning our process. Reading books like Spaghetti in Hot Dog Bun, Braver than Brave, Jabari Jumps, Brave Irene and more helped us begin conversations and critical thinking about what “brave” means or the various ways that bravery can look in our world.
We knew that we would be doing read-alouds and having conversations all year, but we also knew there were several key places that we wanted to deeply integrate bravery into our project- based classroom in four key ways: visual art, dance, writing and social studies.
Brave Art
Connecting with caregivers and families was important to us as educators and we invited a classroom parent and artist to teach a lesson on the history of making “Brave Art.”
The idea of “Brave Art” came about because we noticed that, for some students, simply making a mark on paper—using color or an unfamiliar art tool—could trigger fear, withdrawal, avoidance, even outbursts or tears. We weren’t focused on creating images of bravery or depicting brave people doing brave things. Instead, we wanted the act of making a communal art piece to be a chance to practice being brave. We called this type of artwork Brave Art. Students who were tactile-sensitive or hesitant to use paint were offered a variety of different tools. The prompt was simple: Make a brave mark. Try a new tool or medium. Use it in a new way—have you ever painted with your fingers? Toes? Walked, skipped, or danced on a large canvas? Give it a try. Our whole class is here to encourage and celebrate every mark you make.
Continuing the theme of highlighting brave artists, Charlotte—a parent and artist—introduced our class to groundbreaking creators who worked outside the box, including Jackson Pollock, Frida Kahlo, and herself. She shared amazing photographs of her process of collaborating with contemporary dancers to create beautiful photographs of the dancers moving, rolling, dancing and jumping with paint on their bodies, creating shapes and poses. Our class was excited and inspired to try to create our own collaborative art on a large canvas. We taped off the word “Brave” with blue painter’s tape, and children used brushes, rollers, hands, and feet to paint. With music playing and the beauty of our outdoor campus around them, they giggled, danced, and encouraged one another—eager to make their mark using a variety of tools and materials.
Below are a few student reflections in response to our prompt:
“Tell us about the Brave Art Mural.”
Student 1: “I felt like I could get really messy and I walked all over the mural.”
Student 2: “I felt comfortable and I could get messy.”
Student 3: I was scared of putting my feet on the canvas but Charlotte helped and I did it and I became brave.
Student 4: I didn’t want to do my feet because it was too messy but I liked paintbrushes. It felt comfortable. It felt like a brave space. I made up my mind on what I wanted to do.
Student 5: I was afraid of getting messy but then when I saw other people doing it I wanted to do it.
Student 6: I felt like I could do anything with my brush, I moved the brush side to side.
Student 7: I felt brave because I never did my feet painting before and I stepped in the paint and I walked all over the place.
A student creates art with their toes.
Brave Writing
Each year, primary students work on personal narratives as part of our writing workshop. This fall, we gently shifted that focus by inviting students to create a “brave book” centered around two questions: How are you brave? and Who or what has helped you to be brave?
Students brainstormed and shared their brave story ideas—like a first trip to the dentist, a COVID shot, or riding a roller coaster—and began planning their narratives. We also invited community members, teachers, administrators, staff, and parents to read a brave book or share their own stories of courage. As a community of writers, the children found connection, meaning, and strength in both telling their stories and hearing the bravery of others.
Brave Dance
Traditionally, our school hosts a big end-of-year celebration called Together Through Music and Dance (TTMD), where each classroom showcases a dance for the school. Throughout the year, another way children were building their bravery was through movement. Whether it was brain break games like freeze dance, creating brave yoga poses during our daily yoga and mindfulness practice, or moving as a warm-up for phonics or math, we teachers harnessed our shared love of dance—and our understanding that young children need lots of movement throughout the day as a regulation tool.
As we moved into the later part of the year, we decided as a teaching team to co-choreograph our dance piece with the students, using their brave yoga poses as a starting point. The children chose the song “Try Everything” from the movie Zootopia, and we began by reading the lyrics chorally as a class and in partnerships, sketching pictures inspired by the lyrics, and creating simple dance movements based on the words and music. Our final piece incorporated brave yoga poses and movements originated by each child in the class.
Brave Social Studies
In the final weeks of school, we began an in-depth study of the history of Pride. Pride Month is an annual celebration dedicated to honoring and supporting members of the LGBTQ+ community, recognizing their history, accomplishments, and ongoing struggle for equality. Students read books, watched videos and slideshows, and created informational posters to share with classmates and the school community. Alongside this study, we read books about advocacy and changemakers in history who stood up for others.
In the final two weeks of school, we decided to create one more collaborative, large-scale art piece using the leftover canvas from our Brave Art project in September. This time, the children wanted to include the whole school and create a piece of Pride art.
Room 11 students create the base of our Pride art using color pastels.
What began as the students creating a simple rainbow made with paint strokes with their hands, cotton balls, paintbrushes and more, evolved into an all school collage piece, with each child in our school invited to glue down a loose part piece onto the rainbow. Adults in the community were invited to add the brown and black of the pride flag colors by writing words of encouragement in the letters inside the large collage. It was a true embodiment of the school community making a brave and bold statement that everyone is welcome at our school and that being brave can be both an individual and a whole community wide mindset.
Final Thoughts:
As partner teachers in a room of 28 diverse and unique students, we are constantly trying to support and care for all the young children in our room. At the start of the year, when faced with learners who were struggling in some common ways, we simply started with a few questions: What is the struggle? What lens or emphasis can we approach the struggle with? How can we integrate the emphasis we choose intentionally and try to weave it in, not just in the early weeks of school, but all year long?
Throughout the year we found our students willing to take small, brave risks — trying new dance moves during a freeze dance game, sitting with different peers at lunch or attempting something a few times on their own before asking for help. As educators, having a shared focus that integrated both academic and social-emotional learning made us more reflective and intentional in our planning. With bravery as a yearlong lens, we were able to go deeper into our teaching, noticing and celebrating acts of courage every day.
The child who once refused to speak in a group now raises her hand in class discussions. The child once afraid of public speaking now asks to read a speech during our community celebration. The child who cried at the mention of a writing activity is now the first off the rug, eager to get started.
Being brave doesn’t always mean jumping off the high dive, riding the fastest roller coaster, or giving a speech to hundreds of people—although, for one of our shyest students, it meant doing all three this year. Bravery, as many of our students could recite by the end of the year, is not the absence of fear; it’s feeling afraid and doing it anyway.
Our students didn’t become completely free of tears or hesitation when faced with something new. But our deep dive into bravery gave us tools, strategies, and a shared language to face fear and uncertainty—both big and small—together.
Our Completed Mural
Caroline Johnson has been an educator for almost 7 years and has a Masters degree in Early Childhood Education and a Bachelors degree in Dance and Movement Studies. She is also a certified children’s yoga teacher and loves integrating movement and mindfulness into the classroom. Caroline is particularly passionate about supporting all learners, especially those with learning differences and is currently pursuing her certification in Educational Therapy outside of teaching in the classroom.
Anna Terrazas is a Demonstration Teacher at UCLA Lab School, where she has spent nine years working with primary students in multiage classrooms. With over 20 years of teaching experience, she designs project-based, arts-integrated learning experiences and also participates in educational research, outreach, and public engagement. Outside of school, she enjoys salsa dancing, bike riding, listening to audiobooks, and spending time with loved ones.