I can understand the feeling of “performing inclusion,” because inclusion can very easily turn into a checklist of things we added instead of something students are actually experiencing. For me, one of the clearest ways to tell whether it is working is to look at the relationships in the room. Are students feeling seen? Is trust building between students, and between students and the teacher? Are they able to recognize themselves in the learning and also encounter people, perspectives, cultures, and ways of being that are different from their own? I keep coming back to Rudine Sims Bishop’s idea of mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. Mirrors let students see themselves reflected in the curriculum, the stories, and the learning. Windows let them look into perspectives and experiences that are not their own. And doors give them ways to actually connect with those other perspectives, not just observe them from a distance. That has to be built intentionally into the curriculum. It is not just adding a diverse book, image, holiday, or example. It is helping students connect, compare, contrast, question, learn, and get used to a classroom where the same people are not always centered. But I also do not think inclusion can live only in the content. It has to show up in how we treat students, how we build community, how we respond to conflict, and how we repair relationships when something breaks. If there is an insult, an injury, a rupture, a misunderstanding, or some other harm, we need ways to restore connection, solve the problem, and move forward in a way that builds more trust rather than less. True inclusion shows up in greetings, meetings, circle time, classroom routines, lessons, conflict, repair, and all the small interactions that tell students whether they actually belong here. It is not just about what we say we value or what we put in the lesson plan. It is a general practice of seeing the people who are really in front of us, not just the people we expected to see, and building a classroom where they can be known, connected, challenged, repaired with, and fully part of the community. What does inclusion look like in your classroom when it is working, not just when it is planned?