New York educator resource
Place the NYS Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework at the heart of every learning experience, then use the Triple E Framework to make technology purposeful, equitable, and connected to student growth.
The destination
The NYS Portrait of a Graduate describes the knowledge, skills, and dispositions students need to thrive. Click an attribute to explore CR-SE-centered and Triple E-aligned teaching moves.
CR-SE-centered move: Honor students’ lived knowledge while maintaining high expectations and multiple ways to demonstrate rigorous learning.
Triple E teaching move: Use feedback, targeted practice, accessible resources, and authentic standards-based demonstrations.
CR-SE-centered move: Invite cultural knowledge, community experiences, and personal interests into the design process.
Triple E teaching move: Engage students in choice-rich design, prototyping, revision, and sharing.
CR-SE-centered move: Support students in examining whose perspectives are represented, absent, centered, or challenged.
Triple E teaching move: Use annotation, data visualization, media-literacy routines, and evidence evaluation.
CR-SE-centered move: Create affirming spaces where students’ languages, voices, communication styles, and perspectives are valued.
Triple E teaching move: Support purposeful publishing, discussion, collaboration, feedback, and authentic audience communication.
CR-SE-centered move: Connect learning to community knowledge, equity, civic participation, sustainability, and democratic life.
Triple E teaching move: Extend learning through authentic audiences, local issues, partnerships, and responsible digital participation.
CR-SE-centered move: Use reflection practices that help students recognize identity, agency, belonging, strengths, goals, and aspirations.
Triple E teaching move: Use portfolios, goal trackers, feedback cycles, and learner-owned evidence of growth.
The foundation
The NYS CR-SE Framework helps educators create learning communities where students’ identities, languages, cultures, experiences, and communities are recognized as strengths while all learners engage in rigorous, relevant, and transformative learning.
When CR-SE is the heart of planning, students see themselves in learning, develop relationships across difference, use critical thinking to understand systems, and apply learning to meaningful futures.
Design learning that affirms students’ racial, cultural, linguistic, gender, family, and community identities. Invite students to bring their full selves and funds of knowledge into academic work.
Engage: Engage: Invite students to choose digital media, languages, and personal or community knowledge that represent who they are.
Enhance: Enhance: Use multimedia tools to connect identity and academic content.
Extend: Extend: Publish an identity-affirming portfolio for an authentic audience.
Build caring, reciprocal classroom communities where students are known, heard, respected, and able to collaborate across differences with shared responsibility.
Engage: Engage: Use collaborative spaces where every student can contribute in a preferred mode.
Enhance: Enhance: Provide captions, translation, voice, and flexible feedback pathways.
Extend: Extend: Connect learners with peers, families, or community partners to build belonging beyond the classroom.
Maintain high expectations while offering multiple entry points, scaffolds, feedback cycles, and meaningful opportunities for students to demonstrate sophisticated thinking.
Engage: Engage: Pose a meaningful problem and let students select tools or roles.
Enhance: Enhance: Use simulations, visualizations, feedback, and accessible creation tools to deepen disciplinary thinking.
Extend: Extend: Share evidence-based solutions with an authentic audience for critique and revision.
Support students to investigate fairness, representation, power, and opportunity while using their learning to imagine, discuss, and contribute to more just communities.
Engage: Engage: Investigate a current issue through multiple perspectives and sources.
Enhance: Enhance: Use data tools, mapping, or media analysis to examine power, representation, and opportunity.
Extend: Extend: Collaborate with a community audience to communicate findings and take informed action.
The approach
The Triple E Framework helps educators choose technology because it serves a clear learning purpose: engaging students in the task, enhancing learning, or extending learning beyond the classroom.
Review the six Portrait attributes, then use the Triple E planning questions below to guide purposeful, equitable technology choices.
Technology focuses students on the learning goal through active participation, collaboration, and meaningful choice.
Are students focused on the learning goal?
Are students actively participating through meaningful choice, collaboration, or interaction?
Does the technology help every learner access and contribute to the task?
Technology adds value by scaffolding, personalizing, creating, or helping learners show thinking in new ways.
Does the technology add value beyond what could be done without it?
Does it support higher-order thinking, accessibility, feedback, or creation?
Are students using the technology to show or deepen their thinking in a meaningful way?
Technology connects classroom learning to authentic audiences, current issues, future pathways, and communities beyond school.
Does the technology move learning beyond the classroom?
Does it connect students with authentic audiences, communities, or future pathways?
Does the learning invite meaningful contribution or action beyond the lesson?
The application
Explore practical classroom moves that use Engage, Enhance, and Extend to help students grow toward each Portrait of a Graduate attribute.
Try a student-centered task that develops this attribute: Builds a strong foundation in NYS learning standards and the knowledge and skills needed for college, careers, civic engagement, service, and life.
Engage: Focus learners on a meaningful standards-based question connected to their lives.
Enhance: Use technology for scaffolds, feedback, rehearsal, and multiple ways to demonstrate rigorous learning.
Extend: Connect learning to authentic audiences, college, career, civic, service, or life pathways.
Try a student-centered task that develops this attribute: Uses imagination, curiosity, and flexible thinking to solve problems creatively, develop new ideas, and adapt to changing circumstances.
Engage: Invite choice and curiosity through a problem that matters to students.
Enhance: Support ideation, prototyping, collaboration, and revision with flexible tools.
Extend: Share designs with authentic users or communities and invite contribution beyond class.
Try a student-centered task that develops this attribute: Analyzes information thoughtfully, evaluates evidence critically, and identifies patterns and connections to address complex issues.
Engage: Pose an authentic question that requires investigation and evidence.
Enhance: Use technology to compare perspectives, visualize patterns, and test reasoning.
Extend: Apply analysis to a current issue, community question, or responsible action.
Try a student-centered task that develops this attribute: Articulates ideas clearly through speaking, writing, and media while listening actively to diverse perspectives.
Engage: Give students meaningful choice in how they participate and communicate.
Enhance: Use collaborative tools for feedback, multimodal composition, and audience-aware revision.
Extend: Publish or present to authentic audiences beyond the classroom.
Try a student-centered task that develops this attribute: Acts responsibly and ethically within local, global, and digital communities.
Engage: Engage students with a local or global issue that invites shared responsibility.
Enhance: Use technology to connect perspectives, investigate systems, and collaborate ethically.
Extend: Move learning into community dialogue, civic participation, sustainability, or service.
Try a student-centered task that develops this attribute: Uses reflection to identify strengths, set meaningful goals, and make responsible decisions.
Engage: Begin with a meaningful goal, aspiration, or real decision students want to explore.
Enhance: Use portfolios, trackers, and feedback tools to make growth visible and actionable.
Extend: Connect reflection to future pathways, mentoring, community goals, and next steps.
The practice
Open any exemplar for a complete adaptable lesson plan with learning objectives, preparation, instructional sequence, assessment task, and four-level rubric. Use these plans as a foundation for local collaboration, student voice, and standards alignment.
10 complete lesson-plan plans for K–2
Students create a beginning–middle–end digital story from a personal, family, or imagined experience.
CR-SE connection: Students choose stories, languages, family knowledge, and community experiences that shape their narration.
Students investigate repeating and growing patterns in classroom, home, art, music, and neighborhood contexts.
CR-SE connection: Patterns are gathered from students’ homes, cultures, art, clothing, music, and neighborhood spaces.
Students document and map examples of care and belonging within their school community.
CR-SE connection: Students define care, belonging, and community responsibility through their own lived experiences.
Students design, test, and improve a prototype that helps solve a real classroom or community challenge.
CR-SE connection: Students identify real problems that matter to them and design solutions with peers.
Students interview a community helper and create a picture-and-audio profile of their contribution.
CR-SE connection: Students select community members and communication formats that reflect their families and neighborhoods.
Students use geometric shapes and recycled materials to build and improve a stable classroom structure.
CR-SE connection: Students use accessible materials and multiple ways to show engineering thinking.
Students collect family-connected data, represent it, identify patterns, and make a class garden recommendation.
CR-SE connection: Students bring family knowledge into data collection and representation.
Students create and revise a soundscape that communicates the mood and sequence of a story.
CR-SE connection: Students’ languages, cultural sounds, and lived environments are treated as creative assets.
Students identify classroom routines that support participation and propose one belonging-focused improvement.
CR-SE connection: Students center varied abilities, communication styles, and access needs.
Students compare evidence of a local place across time and create a narrated change story.
CR-SE connection: Students’ families and local knowledge guide inquiry into place and change.
Students collect schoolyard environmental evidence and propose a realistic stewardship action.
CR-SE connection: Students connect environmental evidence to community knowledge, access, and local priorities.
Students create a cited timeline that includes multiple historical perspectives and overlooked voices.
CR-SE connection: Students seek multiple perspectives and question which voices are missing from historical narratives.
Students evaluate age-appropriate sources and recommend which belong in a research project.
CR-SE connection: Students consider how source identity, power, audience, and representation influence information.
Students redesign a classroom resource after identifying and testing for access barriers.
CR-SE connection: Students center access, dignity, and voices of people who experience barriers.
Students create a short, cited audio story about a local need and community expertise.
CR-SE connection: Students’ community expertise is treated as a source of knowledge.
Students analyze school energy observations and communicate an evidence-based reduction recommendation.
CR-SE connection: Students connect data to local priorities and stewardship.
Students solve fraction challenges through family and community food traditions.
CR-SE connection: Students’ cultural and family knowledge becomes a rigorous context for mathematical reasoning.
Students prototype and test an inclusive welcome guide or interactive map.
CR-SE connection: Students center belonging, multilingual access, and user voice.
Students compare media representations and create a revised message with fuller context.
CR-SE connection: Students examine representation, power, and whose voices are centered.
Students build a gallery connecting geometric ideas to local architecture, parks, or public art.
CR-SE connection: Local spaces and community aesthetics shape the mathematical investigation.
Students use a public dataset to make a claim-evidence-reasoning dashboard about a community question.
CR-SE connection: Students ask how data affects different communities and whose experiences numbers may not fully represent.
Students research, interview, and publish a concise cited podcast on a local issue.
CR-SE connection: Students practice ethical listening and elevate community voices, experiences, and expertise.
Students analyze online identity and privacy scenarios, then create a responsible-choice guide.
CR-SE connection: Students examine how identity, bias, belonging, and power shape online spaces.
Students curate artifacts and research to connect strengths, aspirations, and measurable next steps.
CR-SE connection: Students connect aspirations to identity, relationships, community assets, and changing futures.
Students map transportation access and develop an evidence-based question or recommendation.
CR-SE connection: Students examine access, power, and lived experience across communities.
Students analyze water-quality evidence and revise a CER explanation after critique.
CR-SE connection: Students connect environmental health to community priorities and unequal impacts.
Students ethically record, verify, transcribe, and publish a local oral history.
CR-SE connection: Community members are collaborators and knowledge holders.
Students develop and test a playable game with adjustable controls or multiple participation modes.
CR-SE connection: Students center disability access, agency, and user voice.
Students create an ethical data story about language practices and classroom belonging.
CR-SE connection: Students’ linguistic identities are assets and data ethics are explicit.
Students model a local system, test scenarios, document assumptions, and identify a leverage point.
CR-SE connection: Students analyze how systems distribute opportunity and responsibility.
Students research a civic issue and deliver a cited, equity-centered policy recommendation.
CR-SE connection: Students analyze equity impacts and develop recommendations responsive to affected communities.
Students investigate how bias enters classification systems and develop safeguards proposals.
CR-SE connection: Students investigate how bias, representation, and unequal power can enter technology systems.
Students curate evidence of growth and present a forward-looking readiness narrative.
CR-SE connection: Students author an evolving story of identity, strengths, learning, relationships, and future goals.
Students co-design and publish a multimedia local history or challenge story map.
CR-SE connection: Students collaborate with community members to tell complex, asset-based local stories.
Students partner with a community organization to investigate and return findings in a useful format.
CR-SE connection: Students share authority with community partners and connect inquiry to action.
Students evaluate local climate adaptation strategies and revise a cited proposal after expert feedback.
CR-SE connection: Students examine unequal impacts and center local knowledge.
Students create and test an accessible multilingual information campaign for a community need.
CR-SE connection: Language diversity is an asset and audience access drives design.
Students evaluate an AI-supported system using privacy, fairness, transparency, and access criteria.
CR-SE connection: Students analyze bias, representation, power, and accountability in technology.
Students prototype a community-benefit service or product and pitch an evidence-based plan.
CR-SE connection: Students build from community assets rather than deficit assumptions.
Students defend a cross-disciplinary portfolio with evidence of growth, revision, and future goals.
CR-SE connection: Students author identity-affirming stories of learning and agency.
The toolkit
Search commonly used education tools by category and learning purpose. Apply a CR-SE lens to access, representation, student voice, language, belonging, and community connection.
15 of 15 tools shown
Presentations, infographics, video, and portfolios
CR-SE planning lens: Consider whose voices, identities, languages, experiences, and access needs are centered when this tool is used.
Writing, feedback, research, and shared projects
CR-SE planning lens: Consider whose voices, identities, languages, experiences, and access needs are centered when this tool is used.
Block-based coding, animation, and game design
CR-SE planning lens: Consider whose voices, identities, languages, experiences, and access needs are centered when this tool is used.
Differentiated nonfiction reading and discussion
CR-SE planning lens: Consider whose voices, identities, languages, experiences, and access needs are centered when this tool is used.
Idea boards, reflection walls, and resource curation
CR-SE planning lens: Consider whose voices, identities, languages, experiences, and access needs are centered when this tool is used.
Student work documentation and family communication
CR-SE planning lens: Consider whose voices, identities, languages, experiences, and access needs are centered when this tool is used.
Multimodal books, journals, and class publications
CR-SE planning lens: Consider whose voices, identities, languages, experiences, and access needs are centered when this tool is used.
Collaborative math investigations and visual reasoning
CR-SE planning lens: Consider whose voices, identities, languages, experiences, and access needs are centered when this tool is used.
Geospatial inquiry and community data storytelling
CR-SE planning lens: Consider whose voices, identities, languages, experiences, and access needs are centered when this tool is used.
Civic learning games and democratic participation
CR-SE planning lens: Consider whose voices, identities, languages, experiences, and access needs are centered when this tool is used.
3D design, circuits, coding, and engineering prototypes
CR-SE planning lens: Consider whose voices, identities, languages, experiences, and access needs are centered when this tool is used.
Interactive science and mathematics simulations
CR-SE planning lens: Consider whose voices, identities, languages, experiences, and access needs are centered when this tool is used.
Digital citizenship, privacy, and responsible technology resources
CR-SE planning lens: Consider whose voices, identities, languages, experiences, and access needs are centered when this tool is used.
Universal Design for Learning planning and accessibility guidance
CR-SE planning lens: Consider whose voices, identities, languages, experiences, and access needs are centered when this tool is used.
Participation tracking and reflection on classroom voice
CR-SE planning lens: Consider whose voices, identities, languages, experiences, and access needs are centered when this tool is used.