BOE Workshop (24 August 2021)

001the topic being diversity equity and inclusion and beginning conversation so again thanks to all board members who were able to make it today and thank you as well to the staff we're going to be introduced to all of them so thank you in advance for your time we know how busy this start of school year calendar is so for you to be able to break away and join us is terrific so thank you okay uh dr smith i will turn it over to you absolutely so i just want to say um first welcome everybody thank you for taking time out of a very busy uh day um we're looking forward to this beginning conversation i think that would be the piece i would underline this is something we've been talking about thinking after some time

002but at least with all of you as a board this is really our first um conversation and so we're looking forward to getting into it and i'll turn it over to chuck who will kind of set the format for us and then he can introduce the rest of our participants sure so welcome everybody i'm glad to have this beginning conversation with all of you about diversity equity and inclusion the way i've structured today is basically pretty college i'm going to start by talking about what diversity equity and inclusion are and then why it's important that we address it in our schools first and then we'll talk about how we address it both through the curriculum and through our policy and practice so it's basically three parts the what in the why then the how in

003two parts curriculum and then policy and practice so what i'd like to ask is perhaps let us do each of those sections go through the presentation and then we'll stop after each section and you guys can then ask questions make comments we can have a discussion and then i'll leave time at the end for us to have a broader discussion that's right okay also made sure you had paper and pens at least i was supposed to do that so that you can take notes while we talk um i have with me here today karen breneke who is our coordinator for humanities eight michael gordon who is the chair of the diversity inclusion committee and by zoom we have some of our high school teachers laura fayette molly palmer and paula harany they'll be talking specifically

004about the high school any questions okay so i thought it would be a good idea to just start with what diversity equity and inclusion are at least what we mean by them here in the world in public schools so diversity is really about making sure that the wonderful diversity in the world is represented in our organization and in our curriculum equity refers more to our policies and practices that ensure that everybody is treated fairly that there's quality of opportunity and fairness and access to information and use and inclusion is really about school culture making sure that everybody feels like they belong that they have a voice and that they're able to participate in again all of the wonderful things that happen now why is that important okay there are a bunch of different reasons that

005i'm going to go through i think the first and most important is that differences are a part of being human right and it has been in the past it is now and it will be in our students future particularly with the increase in globalization of our our society students need to be able to understand differences and they also need to be able to work productively with a diverse group of people it affects their success in their future careers and in college and currently as well we also have to keep in mind that by understanding differences we're helping our students to grow cognitively right that idea of being able to take multiple perspectives helps our students to think more critically and more creatively and then finally i think when we create a school environment where students

006feel safe where they feel respected where we believe that everybody adds value we're creating adults who will go out to the world with that expectation and hopefully help you create a bubble goal i also think it's really important that we understand that um there are demographic demographic changes occurring in welcome so the graph that you have up there shows the ethnic makeup of the student body for the past 20 years from 2002 to 2021. you can see that probably back in 2002 about two or three percent of our students were would be considered from other than a white european background but now it's one in three of our students you know i think these changes have occurred gradually in our community but they are dramatic that's what i meant previously that our students are currently

007dealing with a lot of diversity and so it's incumbent upon us to make sure that they're equipped to deal with it effectively and that they understand it all right now before we get into um how we address diversity equity and inclusion in our schools through the curriculum instruction i just wanted to pause for a minute and see whether anybody had any questions or comments thank you you're good to go okay so when it comes to curriculum instruction i'm going to provide some broad overview as we approach this topic and then i'm going to turn it over to karen to talk a little bit more specifically about how we do it in the humanities in kindergarten through eighth grade and then we'll have our high school friends talk a little bit about how it's addressed at

008the high school so if i were to um provide you with one big idea about how we approach diversity equity inclusion it would be the concept of yours and homeworks and i think you'll hear that throughout our presentation today so one of the things that we need to do is to facilitate our students development you know we're in partnership with parents to make sure that kids develop a good self-identity and a good understanding of the way they fit in the world and this this touches on the concept of becoming our kids are becoming people and we need to help support them in developing that sense of what they could become right and to do that we do that both by providing them with resources and materials that reflect their own culture right that's the mirror

009so when students see themselves represented in instructional materials and in books it helps them develop a sense of a positive sense of belonging in the school community a window is in like it says up there a resource that offers students a view into somebody else's experience it helps them to develop a broader understanding of the world and so students really need both of those they need to have a mirror into what their own identity is their own culture that helps them to develop and to understand where they fit in the world but they also have to have an understanding of what other people's identities and experiences are so kids can understand where they fit with what they could become does that make sense so the other thing i wanted to do was to relate to

010some of the work that we've been doing around the portrait of the graduate so whenever we talk about how we are going to address something in schools we always start with the end in mind what is it that we want students to know and be able to do and so what i'm putting up here are some of the portrait of the graduate learning targets that reflect some of the things that we want students to know and be able to do in regards to diversity equity and inclusion so when you think about things like becoming a multiliterate scholar or becoming a courageous ethical leader or an active socially sensitive citizen there are certain basic competencies we want students to be able to develop and one of those competencies is recognizing perspectives it kind of cuts across

011some of those what are we calling those attributes of the of the of the graduate i also thought this would give you a good sense of what we call developmentally appropriate progressions for students what it is we want students to know and be able to do at each of the different levels so you'll notice here for recognizing perspectives at the primary elementary level what we want students to leave uh miller driscoll knowing and being able to do is to identify their own feelings about certain situations and identify the feelings of others as we move through the through cider mill the upper elementary that becomes a little bit more nuanced and sophisticated so we want students to not only identify but to describe what their own perspective on situations events or issues are identify the perspectives

012of other people and groups and explain how this is where it gets even more sophisticated it can explain how access to knowledge technology and resources affects viewpoints and behaviors again at middle school that gets even more sophisticated they can analyze influential factors that affect their own perspective as well as the perspectives of different cultures and groups and by the time they're at the high school we've gone from identifying to describing to analyzing now evaluating how perspectives are created and influenced by interactions experiences and relationships and they can predict how differential access to perspectives may affect their understanding here's another competency in its cultural awareness so at the lower elementary we want students to identify when others have ideas that are different than their own identify types of words and behaviors that may hurt others and

013explain the importance of using their words to talk to others about how they feel when we get to the upper elementary explain how my beliefs affect how i understand information and identify bias and things that i read seeing here and explain how the words and behaviors i use can help me communicate with others at the middle school we're talking about recognizing how cultural beliefs and biases affect how we create share and receive information recognizing and explaining how diverse audiences may infer different meanings from the same information explain how verbal and non-verbal cues help hinder my communication with diverse audiences and by the high school we're getting into rather sophisticated analysis of how cultural beliefs bias and assumptions influence the way the way we generate and receive information and so forth okay and then finally i

014gave you an example of a oops a social emotional learning target and that has to do with recognizing individual and group similarities and differences i'm not going to read through these i know you'll have to read but it gives you a sense of exactly what it is that we're expecting kids to know and be able to do and the progression from one level to the other these competencies live in various places in the curriculum a lot of it is in humanities um but it you know things like digital citizenship is one of the areas in which we we visit and revisit many of these learning targets okay so i wanted to talk a little bit about so i just kind of want to clarify the different ways in which we can approach uh diversity equity

015and inclusion and there are three main approaches that i kind of wanted to explain the first is multicultural education which focuses on celebrating diversity and centers around creating positive social interactions across differences and this is where our diversity and inclusion efforts live and it's really about exposing all students to multiple perspectives in other cultures and ensuring that students of color see themselves represented in the curriculum and the goal there basically is social harmony social justice education focuses on exploring how society's social and political aspirations and realities play out you know we have a lot of aspirations as a as a culture as a society and we want students to understand what those aspirations are compared to the reality and then figure out what they need to do as members of as citizens to make sure

016that we're actualizing our aspirations and this is where our anti-bias efforts live and it's really about critical consciousness critical thinking culturally responsive teaching focuses on improving the learning capacity of diverse students who may learn differently based upon their cultural backgrounds it centers around the affective and cognitive aspects of teaching and learning and this is where we're trying to close the gap close the achievement gap and it it really is about developing the information processing of students by capitalizing on the way they learn which may be based on cultural differences and the goal here is independent learning so one of the examples i can give is um in response to uh culturally responsive teaching there's this concept of the way we approach learning can be very individualistic or collective and certain cultures kind of fall into

017one of those two buckets it so happens that the united states tends to approach learning from a very individualistic approach um you know it's very much about personal responsibility kind of pulling yourself by up by your own bootstraps that's how we approach learning in the united states and in much of western europe as well but on the other side are cultures which are more collectivist in nature where it's not so much about the individual as it is about the group and that learning occurs within group settings and so one of the things that when you know teachers are thinking about their students and how they learn best they may want to think about how they can balance both an individualistic approach to learning as well as a collectivist approach now the thing i want you

018to understand is that although we say americans are individualistic that doesn't mean that every single american approach is learning that way right when we talk about cooperative learning peer tutoring group work those are ways in which everybody can benefit um from learning right it's not an either or um and what's important to understand is that this is kind of within the context of um responsive lesson planning so you if you have a student who's struggling there are a number of things that you need to consider to help accelerate their learning one of those might be their cultural background and what how does that what aspects of that culture might inform ways in which you may work with that particular student to accelerate their learning things like maybe i should think about how i can leverage

019cooperative learning for this particular student another way of doing it is storifying things making it into a story making sure that when you introduce a lesson that you are connecting it to prior learning connecting it to the prior experiences of that particular student okay now i do believe you received the connecticut state board of ed position statement on culturally responsive education and joint statement building proposal responsibility [Music] i hope you had a chance to read it kevin did you want to give them an opportunity to read it yeah so yeah you have it if you didn't have a chance to look at it we don't need to go into depth or detail but i think as chuck was just describing this joint statement that was released maybe about a month ago i think really captures

020the the spirit certainly the spirit of what we're aiming for here in the wilton public schools but i think it also um was well timed in that all of the kind of major organizational stakeholders in the state came together around this idea and we're you know able to kind of develop this platform um upon which we can lean you know as we are attempting to describe our work and share our work and um you know promote the work that we're doing with kids but um you know there's some i just thought it was very um well crafted um and really you know zeroes in on you know what's most important and that's about you know making sure that our instructional approach um really is factoring all the considerations that go into helping to learn and

021grow individual kids and you know certainly cultural background is a major piece of that there are a couple of quotes from here that i think are particularly relevant maybe the connecticut state board of education understands that culturally responsive educators become conduits of learning by affirming their content expertise through their own identity as a result the learning environment establishes a reciprocal relationship of respect between the educator and the students thus cultural backgrounds become the foundation of the knowledge base for learning and academic success the state board of ed also understands the family engagement and community partnerships are necessary to help close the historically persistent gaps that have threatened our students success for generations under such empowering learning conditions culturally responsive education leverages critical inquiry to inform approaches against racism discrimination bias and depression and then finally

022we want our students to graduate as responsible well-rounded and productive citizens who are ready to engage with others and pride in our interconnected diverse global society our students are best served and empowered with the tools to understand and investigate the countless lived experiences so i think those two quotes resonated with me and i think encapsulated the approach that he has taken care of chuck where's the one that you just read it's in the second one the joint statement position isn't that the position statement unfortunately that the first paragraph i read was from the position state yep it's yeah the second one it's from this one and the second one right there on the back and it was the second where [Music] on the first page so both those statements you just read i had highlighted

023myself um the first one though i at some point in time not i think it needs to be unpacked more okay to kind of talk about what does that mean for wilton and how does that you know work for us because this is um the connecticut board reflects the circumstances of the entire state where our district has some different circumstances so i just want to do more learn more about okay about that and the second statement very much resonated with me and how that fits in with the portrait of the graduate and what our overarching i think community goal um should look like as we develop this project great i'm happy to the first one you read and maybe this is i'm just going to emphasize ruth's point when it states that cultural backgrounds become

024the foundation i have a hard time understanding that kind of questioning it's it's one piece of a foundation i don't know that it's the foundation so i don't want us to get into just your only your cultural label and then um uh this the second one that you read i kind of think well gosh if we could keep it that focused and that simple that might be it okay i do think it's important to understand we said this before mirrors and windows yeah teachers need to develop close relationships with students right in order to do that we have to have a deep understanding of each other's identities our backgrounds pass them it's not the only thing i agree with you but it is very foundational to developing a relationship to understand where i am as

025a teacher what i bring to our relationship and more importantly understanding what your students bring to the relationship and that's how i did that first paragraph okay yeah i've got a question so when we're reading these i mean i've been reading them and just listening to kind of talk what are you hoping from us out of this are you hoping that we're gonna comment and share our thoughts about things you do you want us to help with thinking about a position statement for like a policy or for us like what are we what are what's our whole purpose here today is to simply make sure that everybody understands how we're approaching these rather sensitive issues okay and i hope you will take away from this that we're doing in a very thoughtful and considered way

026with the best interests of our students and families okay that's it all right okay all right so we're ready you may have more questions so i think to your question too i think maybe [Music] so what you see on this slide is a timeline of the work to date um so in 2018 19 that school year was our first full year of implementation of social studies units of study that are were fully aligned to the connecticut social studies frameworks and why that's important is the connecticut social studies frameworks united the 2010 call to have students college and career ready by adding a third aim beyond college beyond career but to be prepared for civic life so that they be aware of their changing cultural and physical environments so that they know the past and its

027impact on the present and future and so that they read write and think deeply and act in ways that promote the common good back in the fall of 2019 i presented the k-8 social studies 6141 to you and we talked a little bit about the disciplinary thinking that the frameworks require of our kids to think like a historian to think about what the past means and what people in the past were thinking about and talking about and how that impacted how they behaved in the ways that they did to think like geographers i'm thinking what that focuses on place and space and seeking to understand why humans deal with them in the ways that they do and with what consequences thinking like an economist comparing the marginal costs to the marginal benefits to allocate resources

028in a manner that maximizes human well-being and finally civic minded thinking which deals with how power with how power flows in that framework we talked about some professional learning that we were going to be engaging in around student-centered inquiry the vertical progression of writing skills kindergarten through eighth grade and cultural and linguistic responsiveness inclusive of an understanding of all social barriers that impact equity beginning in january of 2020 our first group started attending the tc equity and inclusion institutes which we continue to send teachers to now um all the way through and plan to send teachers to in the coming school year it's not the only professional learning that we've engaged in we've engaged in some professional learning that michael has planned as well that has moved us toward more cultural responsive pedagogical practices is

029tc teachers college i'm sorry it is teachers college thank you for clarifying last year in 2020 21 a grant opportunity was brought to the 8th grade social studies team to integrate more diverse perspectives through primary and secondary sources into their units of study so that we can analyze perspective across texts routinely and to engage in exploring diverse perspectives they weren't ultimately awarded the grant but they are committed to engaging in that work and this summer they worked to align primary and secondary sources from both the historical perspective that probably most of us grew up with along with more diverse perspectives for voices that have previously been marginalized we've been partnering with pablo wolff who is co-author of the civically engaged classroom along with mary arnworth who is a senior staff developer at teacher's college reading

030and writing project he has subsequently created a coalition for civically engaged educators um which is a place where he works to connect educators engaged in this work across the country and he put our eighth grade team in touch with sheree phelan from keller texas she's a curriculum coordinator she's k-12 unlike man k-8 and she shared their experience as well as some documents that they have used to support parents in understanding the work that we're engaging in moving forward then in the coming year we are looking to create those conditions for civically engaged instruction culturally responsive instruction those safe respectful classroom communities encouraging curiosity and risk-taking we have a lot of work to do within critical literacies and you're starting to see in the information age that the way your kids are probably approaching informational text

031is very different well at least i'm i'm i almost gave my age and now i'm a little hyper aware that we are recording so i'm not going to do that but i'm older i was taught non-fiction is true and fiction is stories that are made up um that's no longer the case we teach kids that informational texts provide information but that just like in fictional texts informational authors come with their own bias and perspectives that are embedded in their text so we teach kids to read around the text we teach them to read about the authors asking who are they what's their area of expertise is anything in their bio suggest any agendas we teach them to read for sources where did the author get their information do the sources seem to represent any particular

032groups or coalitions we teach them to read other perspectives and to seek out additional sources are there nuggets that appear in most sources or that suggest an underlying truth and are there highly contested parts or versions all that critical reading work that we engage in heavily as adults we teach our students to read analytically reading for reasoning does the author state an explicit opinion does the author try to lead their audience to an opinion and does the author acknowledge other opinions we teach them to read for evidence in what ways does the author support an opinion or claim is the evidence convincing we teach them to read for angle what aspect of a big topic is the author spending most of their time on what do they not mention or spend very little time on

033we teach them to read for craft and structure word choice writerly techniques and structure and finally we teach them to read for representation and perspective who is this piece written for whose voice is heard and whose voice is silenced all in service of taking informed action through writing and speaking and you'll see all of those skills outlined in our ela program philosophy and also in our social studies program philosophy okay fine along here are some of the things that our professional learning has enriched our instructional practice with we're going to demystify some of them i'm going to take you through a 5th grade activity today so we've been working with some identity work and really looking within and webbing our identity so that we can use that as a lens for fiction we are reading

034as well as informational text that we are reading asking what in my identity um offers a bridge to deeper understanding of this author's perspective and what serves as a barrier to a deeper understanding um one of the tools that um we have used is the courageous conversations compass i know that every meeting i've attended in michael's work has used that courageous conversations comfort compass this is really a tool for self-reflection to kind of monitor where you are in the conversation are you in your head are you thinking through your belief system are you um thinking from an emotional place or are you trying to take action and in these conversations we try to stay centered so that we can not only understand where we are in the conversation but also the perspectives of others in

035the conversation i think that's about it there don't change it though yet chuck um i want to tell you where this learning oh go ahead this is all done these are faculty activities this is some of the new learning that we have learned through our tc equity and inclusion institutes as well as other professional development provided by craic and others so these are some instructional shifts that we and some instructional tools in our toolkit for facilitating these conversations both with adults and with our younger learners so i wanted to show you where the learning lives it says curricular revisions on there but not all of them are revisions our third grade example is a writing unit in which our third graders it's called changing the world which i just love that the title of that

036unit um and its subtitle is persuasive position persuasive petitions speeches and essays and it's an opportunity for a third grader not to change the world but to change a piece of their world so they look around their space and they ask what's beautiful here um and where are some places for improvement this unit usually um pummels dr falcone with a lot of letters and conversations with our third graders around ways to improve our recess experience or ways to improve our hallway flow or we've got garbage where we shouldn't have garbage kindness rocks those types of things in fourth grade we have infused our investigating character and historical fiction units with power and perspective lessons to use those as lenses for close reading to approach texts to understand both that historical thinking piece as well as

037that civic-minded piece as they're reading historical fiction texts and to better understand characters in grade five they take that investigating power and perspective to a bit of a deeper level and they have a unit that will be new next year around investigating power and perspective sixth grade has an essential research skills for teens and that unit is about ethical research um grade seven has a whole class novel unit that focuses on role of thunder here my cry by mildred taylor they spend about three weeks in that shared text before turning to book clubs where they more independently apply the strategies that they were taught and finally grade 8 is considering an unlocking contemporary fiction unit for this coming year and that unit is about literary advocacy how are we doing okay you're a wealth of

038information no one's ever played it that way before jen and we met in a totally positive way truly every time we have the teaching and learning committee meetings i go out like oh my gosh um are you at all comfortable posting all of your info absolutely and actually none of this is secret we have all of our course outlines already published online i'm in the process of updating them for the coming year and i was going to mention this at a later slide i'm going to put a pin in it and i will mention it on a later slide but if i don't mention course outlines again just nudge me okay and i think i'll double down on that because that's something that we talked about um at the end of last year was helping

039um some of our parents better understand yes what the content is what core sequence is so on and so forth and so that's something karen had committed to at that time and um is already has plans in the process to i think post some apparent evenings as well as um you know letters that go out before particular units totally stepping on my later slides yes the books that are used in the curriculum are not assured across the grade level for example grade six essential research skills for teens last year that iet our instructional effectiveness team decided to have an equity focus for their curated texts which had some implications for later independent inquiry which we'll talk about um but the classroom teacher is certainly happy to let you know what will be um what texts

040will be used and i'll talk more about that on on that partnerships partnership slide yeah right is that i think it's critical for my parents know in detail here are the books that your children will be reading here here's what we're reading now the classroom teacher is the best source for that information they need then to be diligent about getting that information out to parents so there's no nothing hidden so since that you know is it so you look at the news you mean i mean i well i don't go there but the more open we can be and the more details we can provide what we're teaching your children in the classroom here are here are the books we're using there's curriculum the better off we're all going to be we agree i couldn't

041agree with you more and i have a plan in place for that that i'll discuss on that later slide yeah the story recently about the woman who tried to sue to get the curriculum from the school system what they were teaching and then they suit her this excuse i mean it's crazy you know yeah we're not there um i'm happy to i want you to i want you involved in what your children are learning 100 absolutely and i i hope our parents appreciate that and understand that that's something okay good all right chuck i'm ready for the next slide oh half of what i thought it was all right this particular slide is designed to show you the developmental progression of um some of the some of the social justice standards i have a handout

042for you that has the anchor standards along in those domains there are four domains to the social justice standards the first is identity the second is diversity the third is justice and the fourth is action and there is a k2 sequence for those four domains there's a three five sequence and there's a six eight sequence and you see those are the social justice domains they are and what i'm sending what i'm sending around the table now are the anchor standards dr chuck smith mentioned earlier that we start with the end in mind this is the college this is the college this is the high school graduate expectations so by the time they leave us this is where we would expect them to be but i want you to see how they developmentally progress from kindergarten

043through eighth grade so if you look at the first row that those are identity standards um in kindergarten i know and like who i am and i can talk about my family and myself and name some of my group identities by third through fifth grade i know that all my group identities are part of who i am but none of them fully describes me and this is true for other people too we're gonna do an activity with that one geared toward fifth grade students in a couple minutes um let me share yeah that's fine as long as they laugh and finally by middle school i know that overlapping identities combine to make me who i am and that none of my group identities can tell their can on their own fully just define me or

044any other person so i wanted to kind of take you through an identity mapping um [Music] activity that we would use this one is designed specifically for the read aloud that we're going to use the fifth grade read aloud that we're going to use in a few minutes um feel free to follow along with me or you can simply watch me demo um doesn't matter i have designed the prompts for this based on what this text is going to ask our fifth graders to do and i've also considered that this is the beginning of the school year and we're just now getting to know each other this is something that will grow and expand throughout the year and that we will revisit many times as we use it as a lens to look at texts

045so for today's read aloud ahead of today's read aloud i might just ask them to consider who they are in their family i'm the firstborn daughter i have a sister um often wished i was an only as i demo this for you i'm gonna demo this as my 10 year old self because i don't need to complicate my students 10 year old minds with my adult perspectives i might ask them is there anything on there that you haven't thought about your family that you'd like us to know and i'm going to share that i grew up a navy kid and i grew up very near a naval air station and that's important for many reasons but i think the most important being that my dad wasn't home all the time because service was very important

046to my father and he was away for probably half of my childhood so for the other half of the time i had a very strong mother who led our family i then asked them are there any groups to which you belong what groups do you belong to perpetually a fifth grader girl scout my friendships are very important to me i'm gonna put friend there as kids are starting to write groups that they belong to down it's not necessary for this one but as i noticed that kids are starting to it's fifth grade so by fifth grade they're at the higher end of our 3-5 band and some may be starting to write religion and other cultural groups down they may start to be including their race and if i notice that they're doing that i

047may say i'm noticing that some of you are including your race i think i'm going to add that to mine or i notice that some of you are including your religion that's so brave i think i might add that to mine as well um i'd probably also share that i was a bookworm even at 10 um and the library was my people so um then i'd push them to think about who is it that they admire and why um on my list of people that i admire is my father as i said my father dedicated his life to service he was in the military for 23 years and then when he changed careers when i was 15 he became a minister so service was very important mrs duff was my fifth grade teacher and she

048is the um i knew i liked to play school but it was mrs duff that inspired me to become a teacher um because of how relatable she was with her class and finally mrs day who was my sunday school teacher and then it just is there anything else you want me to know about you a bit of an overachiever and a people pleaser next slide so as we take a look at this text we're going to do a close read of this text close reading is rereading um we do this over multiple days it's really hard to convince a 10 year old that i've read it once why do i have to read it again and to really squeeze some more meaning out of it so i'll take you through the first read and then

049i'll describe for you what subsequent reads would be like sound okay the first read is going to focus on that identity three five standard identity three i know that all my group identities are part of who i am but that none of them fully describes me and that this is true for other people and you'll see why i did not probe them to name race but i accepted it as it came up naturally this particular book is by ittihaj muhammad um muhammad if you don't know her was the first muslim american olympic athlete in the sport of fencing to wear a hijab as she competed she was the first muslim american woman to meddle in the olympics she earned a bronze she is also an activist a writer and an entrepreneur she wrote a memoir

050called pride which inspired the first hijabi barbie so as we go through this text i'm going to be asking you to think about your identity map and i'm going to pause you at certain places to ask is this a window moment for you or is this more of a mirror moment for you sorry michael mama holds out the pink mama loves pink but asia shakes her head i know why behind the counter is the brightest blue the color of the ocean if you squint your eyes and pretend there's no line between the water and the sky it's the first day hijab asean knows it i know it we're sisters the next day i wait a new backpack new light up shoes i feel special i feel like twirling asia comes out of the house and

051i stop it's the most beautiful first day of school ever is this a window moment for you or a mirror moment for you when you have an idea let me see your thumb thumbs down let me see if it's a mirror first day of schools are great aren't they all those new school supplies i love our light up shoes let me see your thumb if it's a window what's a window for you dr smith yeah she's got her first steaky job on i'm walking with a princess so i pretend i'm one too but even princesses have to stop to cross the street asia takes my hand in hers says come on visa we speed walk it 14 steps 14 light ups to get across asia takes me to my line first hugs me goodbye i

052turn to watch her leave give a little curtsy to the princess going to the sixth grade area she's easy to see her hijab smiles at me the whole way my first day hijab is going to be blue too what's that on your sister's head the girl in front of me whispers a scarf i whisper back i don't know why a whisper came out i try again louder now a scarf hijab oh she whispers as you think about this as a window moment or a mirror moment i want you to kind of push yourself to think beyond the hijab is there anything in your identity that you've downplayed before or whispered you don't have to share it but if you can just think about it and hold it in your mind if you're feeling really brave

053you can add it to your web but i won't ask you about it you can just hold it hold it in your mind as is hijab isn't a whisper asia's hijab is like the sky on a sunny day the sky isn't a whisper it's always there special and regular are you thinking about that part of your identity that maybe you keep quiet is it special and regular the first day of wearing hijab is important mama had said it means being strong i turn but i can't see the blue anymore i run to the big kids side 27 steps to see asia i need to give her another hug i need to see her smile fisa asia's eyes wonder why i'm here are you excited i ask about the first day of hijab she nods smiling

054big and i feel better someone laughs from nearby a boy pointing at asia why you looking at their faces who are you relating to embarrassed your sister surprised a little outraged associates hijab isn't a laugh asia's hijab is like the ocean waving to the sky it's always there strong and friendly some people won't understand your hijab mama had said but if you understand who you are one day they will too in class i draw a picture two princesses in hijab having a picnic on an island where the ocean meets the sky the girl who whispered in line says she likes it she says it's so loud the teacher comes over to see it i wonder if asia drew a picture too recess time is for five cartwheels in a row i land the last one

055near the sixth graders near asia and her friends near a boy yelling i'm going to pull that tablecloth off your head i wonder how fiza will react will she stand up to them will she just stand by will she do something else asia's hijab is on a tablecloth asia's hijab is blue only blue asia turns away her friends turn away they race to the middle of the schoolyard their shoes pounding the pavement playing tag mama don't carry around the hurtful words that others say drop them they're not yours to keep they belong only to those who said them it takes me 48 steps to get away from the yelling boy so we seem to have a different way of being there just to let it go after school i look around i look for whispers

056laughs and shouts but i only see asia waiting for me like it's a regular day she's smiling strong we cross the road hand in hand i can't wait to get home to show mama the picture i drew to show asia that i'm wearing the same hijab in it because asia's hijab is like the ocean and the sky no line between them saying hello with a loud wave saying i'll always be here like sisters like me and asia so we'd follow that read aloud probably with a turn and talk about family and relationships um about what we have similar as well as what we have that's different um and then on subsequent reads once we have exhausted the identity piece i might share with them the part of my identity that i keep kind of on

057the down low there i'm not going to share it with you anymore that i'm going to share my age with you today but i would definitely share it with my class but later on we've looked at this through the lens of identity later in the week we might analyze the language the images the details that were included and omitted why the illustrator chose to leave the boys harassing asia as silhouettes rather than have details there why the author that's a later one i'm going to hold on to that the words and phrases used we might look at all of mama's quotes and talk about how that helps make asia and fisa strong on the second read the third read actually a little while later we might examine where your where our mirrors occurred in the

058story a lot of fifth grade girls can relate to that very first scene of shopping with mama and sister getting ready for back to school many can remember their first pair of light up shoes and getting ready for the first day of school particularly since we're reading it the first week of school and we might wonder why the author chose to have those relatable moments so early on in the text on a fourth read we would examine the author's notes looking for expertise looking for prejudice against their favoritism for and we might look to describe how a narrator or speaker's point of view influences how the events are described why the author made the choice to have asya's story told from fisa's perspective as a third grader and as you read the bios note you

059hear that the inspiration for this story came from her own life watching her own sister on her first hijab day um so those subsequent three reads are aligned to the literacy standards each of those is so we're immersed in doing the literary work at that point sir why yeah you don't talk at all about islam about the religion what how old do you need to have it why do you why do you get a job at a certain point in time how old are you so there are with every book i could teach so many things and i and i have to make choices as a teacher and today my focus was on the identity standard three and those three literary over the course of that week but okay i mean i just have to

060think those are critical questions i mean why why is this her first his job i would apologize when you turn 13 do you get it in fifth grade those questions are going to come up in my meeting area and they're going to ask those questions so we're going to have those organically they're just not my instructional focus okay thank you excellent so this is the partnership slide that i mentioned before to glenn's point you're going to remind me of what yours were um jen but just bear with me to glenn's point about communication i've been thinking a lot about how we can better keep parents in the loop as true partners we take our roles as facilitators of learning very very seriously um but we can't be there all the time and as kids mature

061and grow and age their independent inquiry beyond what we explore in the classroom will take them deeper into topics that they're going to need more trusted adults for at home i have begun writing beginning of the year letters explaining our approach to dialing up student voice and choice both in independent reading in writing topics and in research and inquiry topics the teacher is always guiding what is read in class but again as kids move into more independence and transfer they may in their research find things that as a family you're going to want to talk about um so these are invitation letters to the course outlines and the unit outcomes for every unit in that grade level as well as um an invitation to please talk to your child about what they are reading what

062they're writing what they're researching i know that as they get to middle school my 13 year old says nothing um but we have to probe a little bit deeper and have those conversations so to dr smith's point i am planning a couple of parent workshops over the course evening workshops over the course of the year to talk about how to have those conversations with kids so if we're going to talk about voice and choice are we providing our children with an array of choices and then they get to pick something that they'd like to tackle typically through middle school we start with a curated text set that is based on topics um though ahead of those units i'll send another letter that explains what choices are there that one will come from the teacher um

063because the teacher has some discretion there based on the kids in their room to make those choices and that's where glenn's question about text titles comes in too we typically curate a lot of informational texts on padlets those can be shared in advance but we'd invite you ahead of the unit to help guide your student your child our student in their choices okay so i guess like one of my biggest questions is this story is great and it's a different perspective than many of our kids have and i'm just wondering how do we make sure that we present something on every different race and every different culture and every like how do we truly expose our kids to everything as opposed to only exposing them to some things or having the majority of the population

064feel like there's not something that they can relate to because we're focused on so many things that they're not accustomed to and are different and that's why my office doesn't name the texts that are being used in the classroom because as a classroom teacher i want to make sure that every kid in my room feels represented in the what we read as well as provide windows into other cultures that leads me to the question about the email that we got from a parent last year at middlebrook with her daughter coming home in tears because the books they're reading you know they're not about her and i don't know that we ever responded to it i never saw a response that we sent to her but it was a very well-written email from his parents that

065in middlebrook i don't know what grade i think i think i spoke to the parent of the summer and i think the other piece you know that we're talking about here and you know karen can speak in more depth in detail but across you know many units over multiple years our curriculum and the materials we curate i think are representative and in fact i would say you know probably um the majority of our curriculum materials for many years have really represented that kind of western european voice and so in more recent years we've turned a more critical eye to looking at our materials and ensuring that you know there is a portion of our the content we carry that is you know just genuinely diverse and so um i think in that you know in

066that particular moment i think what the parent was we were you know at a moment in time where that wilton reads was really focusing on you know particular american voices i think there were a couple of other things that were it was kind of a confluence of events that might have led that child to conclude that it felt like you know all we were doing was looking at uh minority perspectives um that's not necessarily representative of the entire year yeah yeah but it's something to be aware of we need to be sensitive and aware of those situations because there are kids and that's why i'm saying it's so important to communicate to parents ahead of time here's what we're doing in great detail these are the next six books that we're going to read okay

067and if you want to talk about them let's do that but i you know it's that you know we need to keep our parents as as informed as we possibly can about what it is we're doing in the classroom so we eliminate those questions that the parents can can work with the child the child comes home upset well this is what we're doing this is why i understand boom and deal with that but i mean it was a well-written i was i was i was really troubled by it well glenn that's nothing new like i had children go through middlebrook and you know come home and say when am i gonna you know they might have not have been getting much diversity in terms of race or ethnic um representation but every book had a

068male protagonist it was all about boys coming of age and you know to this day they can still list it so i mean you know and as a parent my response was like that sucks you know what can we do society but then you know supplemented with um you know hear some books with strong girls or but i'm also thinking about like berkeley high school you know this was 30 years ago they were like oh god there's one teacher only teach women talks about women and then the reality was she did she talked about women less than half the time but because until they took her class they never heard about women so sometimes it's the perspective too like also like wow i've never you know read a book about african-american child you know and

069then you know now i've read two i mean it's just kind of we don't even i mean i think that's probably part of the journey um for all of us you know i mean because when i was 12 i wouldn't have even thought like oh i just wrote another book about a boy you know that just seemed normal all the books i read were about boys and i probably would have responded the same way if i also had to read a couple books about girls you know um that's all i'm saying is you know i think it's also a little it's important as we do partnership and share that text the title of a text alone doesn't really kind of complete the picture without really identifying what the object or what the standard is that's

070going along with that text or how or why it's being used especially um in some of the um lower grades so you get a more rounded picture about how the study might progress over the course of the year and not just in that one one isolated incident because i know that i've been going through the curriculum online and kind of piecing together and look at the standards and stuff and so without having to having a fuller understanding i think that for me i kind of get lost in the um the purpose or the idea or how it all fits together to come across to you know to complete the the standard or the piece what would help complete that picture for you in a course outline format what is missing there that you would like

071to see so sometimes i think i see the standard that the um that it's meant to achieve but i don't really see a clear picture of what an example of a project or a work might be that's used to achieve that and so it makes it very abstract for me not having an education background where i i look at pedagogy and just kind of then put the pieces together um myself so it becomes a little bit too much jargon for me and i don't quite understand how it so it works like this you reading this and doing this was great like now i i've seen the the language the technical language of the standard and i've seen an example of a text and kind of see how it fits together in the classroom and how

072their text can raise other questions but you're tailoring the lesson to fit these three pieces so that to me was extremely helpful so i'm hearing that if we were to have parent nights um doing more activity to based work and looking at actual student work and how it aligns to the course outlines would be beneficial i personally i don't want to speak for every parent but as as this parent yes i would find that helpful and i think some other parents would find that as well i think the other pieces are important too but having that available or um would also help kind of make a better picture about what's what's going on it also involves the age-appropriate piece so you have the standard which i think is important because that's the y and the

073example you know that's great that's not grade three and it's not grade eight so i think it brings in hawaii so that um i think one of the earlier slicing spokes are age appropriate and just developmentally appropriate i think some parents may be questioning you know are we throwing too much too soon at kids in a way that's not is going to be over their heads and just confuse them but you know by giving the you know the titles to one's point or an example of an assignment you begin to say oh that's what it means for the third graders so the readability of this text is far below fifth grade but the thinking work that we were doing in this text was fifth grade thinking work a teacher may choose to use this text

074to explore family and family relationships at a lower level so it's not the text or the title of the text it's really the task reader considerations in alignment with the text but i think that's a topic that we probably need to explain so that's kind of what i meant when you just kind of do a dump of these are all the texts without a kind of correlation or understanding about what the texts are being used to further in the classroom then you know why they were chosen yeah yeah and then i think that helps kind of close some of the the gaps or the questions about what what's kind of happening within in the room thank you i agree with you i also think going back to your point it gets and kind of what

075laura was sharing as well like it gets kind of tricky in terms of we're a school district right and as far as i and my true belief is that we should focus mainly on academics and that teaching about cultural diversity and whatnot is important because that makes our kids well-rounded but our focus should really be on the academic aspect of it and we should just be introducing them to some of these things and that the greater discussion yes you can have discussions at school but some of it kind of like you were saying the partnership has to be done at home like we get into some of these greater discussions that really like i might have a different perspective on what i want my kids to understand versus what their teacher wants them to understand

076and so i think that's also where i kind of struggle with all of this um and then going back to the whole point of hey i don't like this past year a lot of things seem slanted one way and i think a lot of our kids felt that way and i just want to make sure that when we're presenting information to them even if it's a choice activity that they're that there's a wide choice and that truly and it may be and like you said like that's where it comes into a teacher but i think also sometimes our teachers need a little support in in maybe choosing what might be more appropriate for for everybody those iets work very closely with their instructional coach and with me in planning um and yes there were i

077think intention was looking for some thematic connection for kids in the instance you're speaking of and there may have been some unintended consequences to that that we are exploring in deciding to put together choices that were around equity um exclusively so they are reflecting on that um i do want to point out that three-fourths of the work that i mentioned within this book is academic and tied to the common core state standards twenty-five percent of it was the identity work okay um and maybe this is a question for a separate time but i know one of our teaching and learning meetings we were talking about um was it the social standards that we were talking about and not that we're required as a district it's not common core it's kind of something separate that came

078in and we were talking about i think we were and and i tabled it at the time but if we're getting back into school year into the school year again revisiting like what social standards are appropriate for what grade right like we were talking about some social standards that some of us felt like well maybe that was just we were introducing it and the kids were just too young to truly understand i think there was some lists that you had it was the ducks so is there special justice anchors [Music] again this is this is the end of 12th grade expectation and what you saw on that previous slide banded it by k2 35 and 6 8 so that you can see that developmental progression i did not walk through every single standard but i

079did walk through some identity standards some diversity standards some justice and some action so when do we talk about like specific topics per grade like if i were gonna and not to go back onto this whole thing cause i was even talking about something different a second ago but to go back to like the gender identity thing like who decided that that should be introduced in sixth grade that is an example of the reading in class being around gender equity where the independent inquiry then later led to some um additional deeper concepts there that were more sensitive than what was handled in the classroom um so do we as a district decide that in sixth grade that is a topic that we want our kids to talk about or are you saying that it kind

080of came up in a different way and the way it came up in the instance that you're referring to is the teachers had a desire to link the work they were doing in that ethical research unit to the wilton reed's work and to provide continuity there so they decided they would expand that concept of equity to include more perspectives and more voices and it led to gender equity food equity um ability ability equity okay so i think that gets to a piece where um we need to be cognizant that our children are coming into the classroom having seen things heard things been around things that are probably beyond what we're doing in the classroom and maybe even beyond what should be explored in the classroom with that particular age so making sure that we have

081an understanding of what those what those ideas may be and how then if the the book is being focused on on a and then there's independent thought that brings in kind of some topic that is tangentially related but not the focus of the class that there are some that there are boundaries there and maybe i'm speaking too kg yeah yeah so i mean even like with something like with with gender identity um they're i'm kids are exposed to the concepts and ideas of pronouns in the larger world around them some kids more some kids less depending on what technology resources they have at home or what they talk about at home so i think that if a conversation is going to be had that may lead to there in a grade that perhaps that is

082not where the conversation as a district we find that to be age appropriate or ready or necessary that we kind of have some understanding of where we're going to be focused and where we're going to leave off and and how to handle that within a classroom no i'm sorry we are engaging in those conversations at the middle school level around sensitive topics and developmental appropriateness and really holding up a mirror to our curriculum and deciding where's the line and where are we preparing them for future conversations academically and also just also but i also don't want to leave our kids kind of out there without an anchor in terms of knowing where they could if they have these questions to be able to um have appropriate resources whether it's through their family or you know

083through a library or whatever that may be but um i do agree about that yep but age-appropriateness is really difficult like and i tell you two stories sorry to tell all stories um one is my son being assigned um they were doing a wonderful program it was a to z and he was z and he was um he was a slave and he come here was like what's a slave and i was like oh my god you know how he's too young how do i explain this to him like what was the teacher thinking i was complaining to one of my friends and she said laura when do you think jewish parents tell their kids about the holocaust and when do you think black families tell their children about racism you know and here you

084are and she was she didn't have to say anything more i got it you know um and this is before you know well not quite about the time white privilege was appearing in academia but it was so much an example of that and you know there is always age-appropriateness like the proper language and i was so grateful jessica for pointing that out to me because then i could talk to jason about that and you know i think of how that had an impact on him through till today you know um 25 years later but also um the gender identity issue is sensitive because some parents like we don't want to talk about it you know we don't want this to know there's a certain age well let me tell you kids who are questioning their

085gender identity they've already done it by the time they're 11. you know and that's one of the issues is then again it comes to age to prove news and they feel isolated and marginalized they don't have the language now is school the best environment for that probably not like i have to say you know it's tough right but um you know and parents don't always have the ability or the language and it's hard um as to be a parent um with this group of you know with any child but i think it's so everyone's experience is so different you know what i mean and so we might disagree on what's the appropriate age you know um right chuck you and i might you know but again like part of this perspective and experience but it

086also comes down to the family and how the teacher is going to address it you know i had a you know our teacher senator mills said why can't molly just put a bow in her hair and i'll stop calling her matthew you know like you know molly was pretty you know like was perfect um you know and so like how do you deal with that and how the teachers i'm sorry to go off on a tangent but i think it comes out to like who is determining what's appropriate and is the final word the parent and the parents should have more of a say but also like how sensitive are the teachers being and is it better not to say anything than to say something horrible i don't know i wrestle with those still one

087thing i think that ties it back together is the social emotional learning you know being that sensitive to our students because when these questions come up it is something that's on their mind and we don't want to be insensitive to to that you know we want to respect what they're saying we want to respect what they're bringing to us that they're being brave enough to to share this in our group setting and we also just want to be just mindful that you know there is a boundary you know there is that partnership but also you know there's that understanding of you're the parent we are the educator and we're working together and we're not doing this in a vacuum we're not doing this on our own and completely going off what we think is best

088we're trying to address and the moment the question or the concern is brought to us but also we're trying to bring you into what's going on we're trying to include you as much as we can um now we can't email you in the moment but we certainly can reach out to you afterwards and say hey listen you know this something that came up your children may come home your child may come home and question you about this and that way we can keep this going because really that partnership is the only way that we are going to help our children grow and really become you know again we talk about becoming become who we want them to be these sensitive kind wonderful educated uh adults who not only can perform well academically but also can

089connect with others right you know and i think to your point i think to your point that's perfect and the two of you are like a perfect marriage right if you go i mean not really but you know if you go first and introduce to our parents like hey this is what we're thinking and a teacher follows up with hey this was the broad topic that karen was talking about and this is the way our conversation led like kind of ended up in class based on who we have in our class that would be perfect so when our kids come home and we're not like totally blindsided by some massive conversation and that would be wonderful and i think mr you said about perspective i think he's our perspective you know because remember our children

090come home and they they may like my boys may take that one word that was said and share that one thing in their minds of what it meant again based on the experiences they've had with me growing up in our culture and our family and completely just make it something that it's not right and then it's my job to go are you sure really and that's where tell me more yeah that's where i also think it's helpful knowing kind of what the text was used and what it was used being used to achieve or what the standard it was tied to it sorry i'm clogging up so that when your child comes home and kind of relates out of context to you what what happened you're able to say to have like a step back

091see the educators and to understand kind of what maybe the larger framework was the larger picture was and then to see well i can you know see how it wound up going there even though that wasn't the intent of the lesson and and work together um with within the you know with the teacher and the classroom and also to have that trust to know that your teacher you know where it ended up was not where it was started or meant to go and and how we all you know work together to figure out boundaries i'm hearing that we have some work ahead at strengthening our partnership um and i'm more convinced than ever that these parent forums are the way to go about that so i hope that you'll come and participate i i think

092that all this conversation yeah i i think really points to how difficult it is to be a teacher today what a challenge it is to be a good teacher your kid i grew up we had three tv sessions three channels when i was growing up all the way through high school had a cbs sound on abc and nbc that was it they all signed off at midnight there was no tv after midnight life was so much simpler yeah so much it was a lot simpler than it is today for kids okay i would add parent to your list of you know complex tests well no it has become incredibly difficult parenting and teaching i mean today i mean our kids are so bombarded with all the social media crap i mean every there's no way

093to stop it it's out there that you just cannot turn the clock back or present it doesn't exist because it's there it just makes your job as teachers and educators so damn hard but you know it also makes it more critical information can be biased yeah absolutely so our job is to kind of take control of that and build the capacity of our students too um i'm going to say navigate that information in a literal way right it's just so hard today to be a teacher so much forward we're we are in wilson i think pretty darn lucky that we've got the staff the teachers we do uh and i mean that occasionally look there's we're all going to make mistakes they're going to make mistakes they're going to go off on a tangent perhaps

094they shouldn't have and i'll get them right bring them back in it is difficult today to be a teacher kid and kids are learning things hearing things that they're not socially mature enough to handle to deal with and it's just it's common the world is a complicated world today we've got to recognize that and be sensitive to it it makes our job harder to keep our keep parents advice as to what what's going on and what we're doing what we're about it's a harder job today i think you know so i think you know just and we have one more section to be here and i've had some folks in high school about some other issues here too like you know attend your question before about what is the role of the board here is

095this conversation is unfolding today i think this is a big part of the role you know we're facilitating opportunities you're facilitating opportunities to have questions asked to promote deeper understanding to start to parse apart process around how we manage really complex issues and i think that's you know in on that communication side is you know we're all working together or certainly enroll as board members as those questions are you know presented to you it's now here here's how we're going to you know respond to this as a system here are resources individually that you parent can turn to so you can get good accurate timely information um and again you know like i guess we need to continue you know more opportunities like this and and even wider your audience yeah i mean i think

096workshop is twofold one is receive a strategy and talk about are these the standards etc and then how is it implemented what's it look like in the classroom so that when anybody asks us we have a much better grasp of where to start talking and how to start talking and refer people so we're communicators and we also have to sort of guide the strategy so today was trying to get it all out of the table and see where the district is where we where our questions are and then we'll follow it up but in order to do that we really got to get through today's agenda so i hate to be such a task master but i want from the high school thank you welcome and thank you for joining us today can you have

097you been able to hear the conversation so far terrific i'm so glad you're pretty well good okay so we um we're at a bit of a disadvantage here um i'm gonna try to split the screens if that's okay um so that way we can see you and see our screen can i help you with yeah all right you're the expert here brian great okay great and then um i'll sit here and i'll just advance the slides okay all right so uh we're having a little bit of a hard time seeing what's on the screen but um i think we're supposed to be on display i'm a yes in the english department at the high school and this conversation has really been quite fascinating and interesting because i think a lot of the questions and discussions

098pretty much transcend age or uh school many of these questions that you know we still kind of struggle with at the high school level and uh and uh i guess a great way to start is to say that we'll start with with all of the foundations and the skills that you any questions that karen have brought up um is pretty much a foundation of where we are as well but we're just going to take it and talk about a common high school model what does that look like and you know the question is how do we continue to develop these in order to include the themes of racial diversity equity and inclusion and so as we've got these particular goals in mind which are about you know raising awareness developing that awareness which hopefully uh

099will lead to understanding for empathy that's really difficult because it's a kind of a soft sort of skill and also the representation student selection of courses as well many of the courses are fanatical nature and the program of studies outlines those pretty clearly and i think there was a huge question around the text specific texts that are used in particular courses that also is outlined in the program of study so hopefully both students and parents who are taking a look at course descriptions will be able to focus in on what texts are being used so um just to kind of start i'm going to just get an overview maybe [Applause] um [Music] so the idea is exposure and analysis and the high school um differentiates is that we do get into the analysis at a

100much deeper level so karen mentioned close screening because not only now are we looking at the various perspectives but we're also looking at how language influences um expression so in other words if i have a particular identity or i'm coming from a particular segment of the population how is my language the way that i express myself um but also into what are we doing with that analysis how would we then uh use that or find that not something that's uh get into a little bit later um so what are we doing we're looking at broadening perspectives first first and foremost and that is um looking at non-western castes looking at texts that deal with some of those marginalized or minority populations we're looking at defining what does the argument mean who are these marginalized people

101and in what day what would an author's experience what way does that author's position in society um allow them or prompt them to communicate in a particular kind of way and then another thing is that there is no one particular narrative that in a given time period in a given experience historically that there are many different narratives that we can read and many different perspectives that we can we can kind of synthesize and so that's that's one of the words right it's not just reading one perspective and analyzing it but taking all of those into account comparing contrasting them synthesizing them drawing conclusions looking at the language how do people communicate to us how is communicated and really with that you know we know that our students are consumers of information they are whether it's

102social media or news reports whatever they're reading they are consumers of information and uh being able to analyze and critically think about the information with which they are presented is going to be a life skill for them and you know we're trying to expose them to that so the exposure and the analysis sort of go hand in hand um i'm an english teacher and lara and molly are both social studies teachers and of course we've got a wide variety of courses within those disciplines but as an english teacher um i can say that you know we again use this this idea of community and also not just fiction non-fiction these these perspectives so there was another question that come up earlier about you know do we deal for example something comes up about the muslim

103culture what do we do how are they going to be aware of it will these give us the opportunity to bring in even in an english class um where we're dealing with maybe more fiction or novels or plays or poetry allows us to bring in a lot of non-fiction texts as well so that we have an idea or a basis with which to evaluate some of this material so it's all about informing it's about analyzing it's about looking deeply into the language and processing that so along with these very perspectives we're also taking a look at uh identity and how is that developing and karen talked about how that starts very early on and the idea is a continuum and just getting a little bit more precise and more analytical as we go on and

104once again identity influences expression influences language and influences ways of communicating and how do these particular authors communicate their own experiences through language so i'll just i'll move on to lara and she'll talk a little bit about how those trends how that translates into application or engagement hi i'm lara figg nice to see you guys from afar um just wanted to make sure our is everybody looking at the slide uh titled engagement application and creation yes yep um so just as hal had mentioned those are a lot of skills and emphasis that we want the students to continue to work on in school at the high school so another piece of that is then applying those skills those ideas identities those perspectives into real world scenarios that include authentic audiences so um and then be

105able to empathize with those individuals so project-based assessments are i would say pretty are done in many classes so that really ties in those real-world scenarios those audiences and then allows students to use varying perspectives to identify issues or problems in the real world and then try to find solutions definitely in the social studies department that is a big emphasis in many of our classes we also you know through the process of reading research presentations we want to make connections between the past and present that things are not isolated in the past and are not isolated in the present but helps help them to find that continuity by exploring a variety of resources and perspectives and because we want the students to make those connections and be able to express what they've learned authentically to

106themselves we also um we have surveyed or we had asked the staff to kind of give us some insight on different kinds of projects they've been working on um and you can see in the third point all the ways that teachers said that they they've had their classes explored and be able to express what they've learned such as ted talks essays graphics arts paintings etc so you know it's really allowing students to um connect in the best way um that's meaningful to them and then another important part that we are emphasizing in the high school is how to practice and engage in civil discourse you know it's so important to be able to have these discussions about controversial issues you know in a structured uh environment in the classroom when students learn the skills how

107to ask questions how to listen and and um you know represent their own perspectives and we you know also hope that that can be applied outside the classroom as well okay hi everyone uh so we're gonna kind of tie things up on this last slide for us that says looking forward so i'm just going to kind of talk about some of the things that we've discussed some plans and goals for moving forward with this work at the high school so a few things uh you know spending more time making additions and revisions to curriculum in all subjects with these issues in mind particularly incorporating diverse topics voices and perspectives working with schools throughout the districts to streamline curriculum and establish some kind of common language you know as students are kind of moving through their

108their school careers working across the disciplines within the high school and across the different departments to collaborate and work towards our shared goals continuing professional development to raise the faculty's awareness of their own social positions and increase their comfort with these types of discussions and then finally um looking forward we are going to be working to develop and implement the state mandated black and latino studies course that is a full year elective that all connecticut social science departments are going to be offering in the 2022-2023 school year so those are some of the things that we're looking at moving forward at the high school that might be that might be our big update here thanks molly and then questions for um paula molly or lara um i just think similar not really a question but

109just a point similar how um we had some examples or kind of about how the text might interact with a project or um or an end goal within the classroom i think that that also would be useful on the high school level as well when i got was looking through some of the syllabuses and and the course outlines to be able to see an example or an idea of what an actual project may be in connection with a specific text or unit of study in the social studies curriculum along those lines not for every single one but just kind of have um a little bit of a clear understanding of how the standard and the syllabus and the project all work together and again i guess the only comment i had was the text at

110grade level the what other yeah uh i guess the the going back here non-western what non-western text are you using and is it each grade level this is a football is it only the same year that this is being done or so i think it's course dependent so paula um and molly and larry did you guys hear that question from glenn yes yes they are course dependent and that's why i would say that the program studies the tests that are to be used in the courses are actually identified in each of the classes that's a little bit different on the high school level because it is of course where would i find what those texts are in their course outlines right they would be included in the course outlines that you get the actual text

111okay okay so i can i can go there and of course i think i just add one comment um building on jen's point um the academic piece um i know that what's embedded here is critical thinking i'm assuming it is but i just wonder if in some of your descriptions you could highlight that better you know in terms of critical thinking the analysis synthesis all that sort of stuff i think it's implied but you didn't state it directly so i think that would be helpful that there's the you know the rigorous academic high school work that you know when you start analyzing different perspectives it's it's more than superficial it's you know it's pretty comprehensive it's pretty challenging so all of those standards related won't mind that all of those standards are incorporated um regardless

112of what it is that we're approaching right right yeah i think we could you just need to i would just suggest it would just be highlighted a little bit more again it's implied all of that i get it but some of the more vigorous stuff that goes on in high school needs to come through great anything else for our street high school colleagues here i'm looking at the time and i want to thank you for taking time out of what must be a crazy few days before school starts so thank you thank you and thank you thank you guys thank you thanks yeah appreciate it i will see you soon great and then the last piece tomorrow see you tomorrow yes how we address diversity equity and inclusion through our policies and practices i'm not

113going to turn this over to michael to talk a little bit about our diversity equity and inclusion committee i want to first start by saying thank you for being here for to have this conversation as a board it's not easy and we know you've probably heard lots of things throughout the past couple year and a half um related to diversity equity and inclusion from parent perspective student perspective and it's great that you're here now so that we can all be on the same page so to speak and we can just again have a better understanding and to continue to move forward um i want to draw us back to uh as we look at this mission statement some things that were said earlier specifically multiple perspectives when we began this work which was the summer

114of 2020 after the work coming out of teachers college in 2019 multiple perspectives meaning parents community leaders students staff administrators we all came together to to begin to discuss equity inclusion diversity in wilton and we said what what are our challenges and what do we want to come of this we didn't isolate ourselves just as staff and administrators we included everyone and thankfully i mean if you remember what the summer of 2020 was like we had quite a number of folks who from represented every walk of life here in wilton and at one point we we actually i think crashed zoom to where we couldn't fit any more people in um and we had to extend our license to allow more people so during that trying time when we were just coming out of our

115quarantine it was really telling that so many people from the community decided to volunteer and come on board and have this conversation about what should our mission be and that's what the you see before you um coming out of those discussions and continuing to what we have in front of us i just want to draw your attention to a few things in there first of all just out of the conversation it was a resounding first of all we want to make sure everyone feels heard we want to make sure everyone feels like respected and understand that we're trying to do the best that we can to to be sensitive to what's happening in the world around us to what's happening in wilton to what's happening just in the lives of the children in our care

116so as the mission statement says and i'm not going to read it to you i just want to point out some things that to respect them as individuals you know in alignment with our social emotional goals we want to make sure that the students understand that we recognize their individuality as well as that we respect their um their cultural background they respect their their choices as it relates to i mean remember like to be a middle schooler trying to identify and establish your identity you know to be different but at the same time to be the same as everyone else you know how can we support that and help others be supportive as well meaning peers and the adults in their lives so our district students must be honored and it was nice that um

117the group put the word must it was emphatic that they must be honored and valued in every classroom um it's not an option and we want to make sure that we support the social emotional and cultural needs and you know as it reads there you know just some ways that this can be achieved and again i'm not going to read the whole thing to you but just point out that it's through the practices that we implement every day that have the impact i'm sure we all recognize that we understand that and especially those that have to do with understanding what we believe how those beliefs influence how we interact with each other and how we can begin to understand each other better so without reading the whole thing to you that's the mission statement in

118a nutshell i'll give you a moment if you haven't already read it to take a moment to look at it and read it for your own uh you know digestion this is a voluntary faculty committee this the committee is a voluntary faculty committee but where this mission statement took you know the inception was from our some of our civic leaders some of our organizational leaders like a better chance of wilton um our staff our faculty parents in the community students and these were regular summer occurrences like once a month we met on zoom to discuss okay what do we want what is the desire when it comes to diversity equity inclusion for for wilton to to make progress to come forward and to to show that we are listening and we are trying to you

119know make things better for anyone who might be feeling marginalized or might be feeling ignored or left out yeah now i just wanted a sense of how big the group was is it teachers only is it k-12 is it community people the official committee is only staff throughout the district um but through our summer sessions it was over 50 um on their first one and then we got to somewhere near a hundred on one of them so that's where that comes from okay michael what did you all see as being the district's primary challenge oh the primary challenge it comes to diversity equity inclusion um you know one of the the biggest challenges is again this um understanding that our beliefs affect what we how we interact with each other and that's the primary challenge

120because we we don't ever want to approach to say that someone's belief system is wrong because it is what it is but how can we now start to understand again going back to the courageous conversations compass how do we understand where you're coming from what are your beliefs and where where your perspective comes from and hopefully now you can understand where mind comes from and then we find our way to re-center ourselves so that when you're speaking i can hear you based on your your beliefs and where you come from and then we move forward together you know and someone said trust earlier you know that's where trust begins the fact that i'm gonna i'm willing to listen to you and not just listen but to understand where you're coming from and you're willing to

121do the same with me whether you agree or not but just that willingness gets us that much close to the trust and as we trust each other more then we can now make strides and begin to make this work a reality and did you kind of to your point right your view might be different than mine but neither of us are wrong it's just different i guess in terms of our teachers and teaching our kids who kind of monitors that and who is there anybody that kind of watches out for that and make sure that our teachers are presenting both sides to every story and and that it's not slanted one way yes have a district committee and in each building we also have a building committee that has representatives as part of the district

122committee okay and we regularly invite um again parents uh to be part of the discussion because again we we don't want to leave that part of the partnership out you know and it's critical that we're all in this together okay okay all right next one okay so some of the work we've been doing with our staff as you can see um after coming out of the off the heels of attending teachers college we began our summer book study white fragility again we presented this to our staff members of a volunteer basis so no one is compelled we had an overwhelming response unfortunately quote it and i'm very pleased to say we had three sessions going on during the summer with three different sets of facilitators from different grade levels um of white fragility and again

123this is after all this work that um you know dr smith and clint did with the district leadership team of this book study of white fragility so that's where we began we also had our district uh professional learning sessions with uh facilitators from the capitol regional educational council correct and they walked us through throughout last year you know looking at cultural competency in the classroom the power of words you know expanding our cultural knowledge uh individually and as a district as well as the power of our actions um you know why they're writing our cultural lens we also had the wonderful fortune to be included and take part in what we call the diversity actually inclusion in the workplace certificate program it was hosted by the south florida college of business and this was free

124and they had over 5 000 participants worldwide and a number of our uh our faculty did take part in that and received their certificate and it was weekly and you had to sign in it was a few hours each night you had to go through the quizzes at the end uh and they weren't simple yes no ap multiple guests type they were thought provoking and you really need to go back and revisit the transcripts revisit the videos to uh digest the information and synthesize it into you know to pass the quiz so that at the end you can receive your your certification and your badge from there and also attendance at the dis systemic racism conference offered by cert in may of 2021 but we're pleased that we did have 16 staff and 10 students

125from wilton high school now the staff is representative from each building not just the high school middle school it was uh members from the committee at every level so that way again we make sure that all ages are involved we're all getting the same information at the same time debbie and just um explain what circus that is the education resource so they're an agency that provides professional development and technical support two sisters so similar to some of the correct yeah yes i'm sorry i mean crack is just but it's connected also to the state department yes there are um four or five across the state and these are agencies designed to provide [Music] in this area we have what's called ces cooperative educational services correct is the ces around hartford okay and also in line

126with our staff professional learning opportunities we do have some opportunities for students as well one of them being the high school racial equity and diversity club which was uh you know formed by one of the students after some of the events uh that took place here and he just felt the need he says we need to do something we need to be involved as students they're also the black indigenous and people of color student advisory council which was uh started last year to again guide our thinking as a leadership team from the student perspective of what's really happening in class what's really happening outside of the class uh you know as they're walking to the field the practice fields when they're you know sitting at the diner when they're just going about daily student life

127that's in between school and home you know what's happening still when there aren't any adults around basically and how do how do we address them what are our students seeing what are they experiencing and how can we really help them navigate that so that student advisory council is really uh important um the dismantling systemic race citizen conference which i mentioned as well again having high school students bringing that information back and also sitting with us saying all right now that we attended this this is the information we have and these are some things we think will help us move further along all right and as i mentioned earlier there are different committees at each building tied into the larger district committee so continuing towards progress um we know it's a continuum you know it's not

128a final destination we are continuing uh towards progress and one of them is cultivating relationships between local students and students of color and surrounding districts thankfully wilton has been a pioneer since the late 60s early 70s back when project concern was here i don't know who remembers that but so that was a wonderful thing that i'm pleased my family and close friends were part of being blessed from bridgeport to come to wilton early in the morning and to experience not just the education here but also now that you know my siblings and my friends are older the relationships that they have with the kanan and the kellogg's and you know the different families who've been here for for years again that builds that trust it helps to cultivate that that different understanding not based on

129what we see in the media and television and in the movies it's reality to where when you know if i can get personal for when my brother who played on the football team couldn't um it came down to they cancelled the program and he couldn't get back and forth wilton to play football where the kenans said my mom we'll take care of him if you let if it's okay with you let him stay for the week and we'll send it home on the weekends just families to do something like that of a different background especially during that time in america speaks volumes to how much wilton has continued to do and then bring it closer to home where um is here and the support of the community of the students of color who come in

130to just try to understand not to change anyone but to understand the conditions that they're coming from and that to think that our students get to experience that on a daily basis our students get to interact not because they're told to not because it's a curriculum piece but because it's real life that but now when they ride a train and they're having to see a person of color they don't jump to a conclusion right away that's based on something that they saw on television or on social media or maybe something they heard from another friend now they can rely on the experience that they've had with an actual human who sat in class with him who they know gets hurt like them has laughs like them you know goes through the same struggles and worries

131of is my hair right today you know just unfortunately we don't have a large student population of color in wilton but that's okay because there are surrounding communities that do and i think there's a lot that we can um you know we can benefit from from creating those relationships in our districts with other industries um also we're in what's called phase one right now called rid and that's again going back to those mirrors and windows you know that we're in the mirror phase reflecting on those beliefs and those things that we are perceptions right identifying those beliefs and perceptions and then dismantling policing perceptions that can perpetuate you know treatment of anyone okay and we're moving into phase two so we're not completely done with phase whatever phase one um i can make a corny

132joke there we are moving from phase one to phase two to where we are now um more about applying uh what we're doing here and apply just simply you don't have the access to the slide like i do so i'm just gonna get to there so a bot means we're in the point of either applauding or appreciating or addressing um some of the systems that are in place you know so when there's an issue that that centers around diversity like will those letters show up how do we address them you know or if there's something that was fantastic we applaud those so not to really just read everything on for you um so applying is really about cultivating a culture of change and that's where we are right now that's the thing we're in right

133now with this conversation and to look forward as far as including the entire town uh a series called we are brave and as you know this is an acronym and it stands for um we have our welcoming exercises and then we also have our uh anti-bias work which is the a for our reflective work um our research looking at research of trauma and then also engaging and fostering uh authentic relationships with uh members of the community you know because it's a challenge for families of color and this is based on our conversations to feel like they're accepted and not looked at as different based on um you know their differences in their cultural backgrounds and the braves just simply means it's a celebration at the end of that we're bold and wilted we're responsive to

134what what the information is brought to us we're accountable for our actions and what we do uh of course we're vibrant about trying to continue this work and we're exerted you know we want to make sure that we put our best foot forward and make sure we're always taking in the information and the feedback so that we can continue to be sensitive to the needs of our students and our staff all right [Music] all right um there are just some other things that we do here in wilton you are familiar with the reason we originally wanted to have a fan here to talk a little bit more about that program but i think we're all pretty familiar i think she did the whole presentation about it and she also wanted you to know about her

135efforts to diversify our collection she has a whole way of actually measuring the diversity of our library collections and roles around it we are increasing our diversity so just that this is where i'm cognitive we're well over our time at this point so just very briefly in the effort to create a supportive and inclusive environment and program for all we have a series of policies already on the boats here well where the the new policy that we drafted this summer is titled equity and diversity the policy committee hasn't yet met this year so this is in draft form you've seen it already um we'll be reading to review discuss it revise it as necessary and then again at some point um at the start of this school year um we'll come forward for an indian

136board meeting and we'll just talk through the goals of policy i think we're in a good place i really do i think we have been in a good place and this the work we're talking about today is going to make us better i think all in all i think we we're very fortunate great staff great great system the great people in new york you know i just don't get this i mean this very unique community a lot of positives about being here uh unlike perhaps one of our neighboring communities that fell apart the other night uh we're very very lucky in wilton and i thank you we owe a lot of it to our educational staff to our school system here and to our parents to raise great kids i think we're in a good

137place we'll just keep getting better i think my only final comment would be just let's make sure we strike a balance a true balance between what's what's too much what's not enough what's how many times does it come up in a child's day throughout the curriculum how many i want our kids to be we live in a bubble i mean we truly do wilson is a bubble and that's fine um and i think we all want our kids to be exposed to all of these things i think it's just truly trying to find that balance where they don't feel like they're being bombarded with so much diversity that suddenly now they start to feel like they're wrong for lack of a better word um i think that's just what i want to make sure of

138but there's nothing wrong with any of our kids like we're just trying to expose them to some new things and i think that sometimes when they get stuff coming at them from every direction and every subject i know i joked about this at our teacher learning community right like somehow we had you know diversity and equity and inclusion hit four different subjects in one day but we can't get math to cross multiple subjects right like and that's where i just that's bringing me by striking a balance like i just want to make sure that you know all of our kids um you know if you're comfortable in always that'll be that collective effort of all of us to actually you know conversation with our kids in conversation with our teachers can you just weigh in

139just a little [Laughter] i just think that it's important that we recognize like that that will and it's does have a bubble element to it and that um exposing our children to the greater world around them in a healthy and positive way in also than in service of rigorous educational components is positive and i think the more we do it the better they become and the better our future world becomes so i'm glad that we're doing this work it's i think personally equally as important as math standards and english standards when i think of the world that the classroom that my daughters will be sitting in as freshmen in college and the multicultural environment that is the workplace that more more is better um yeah that makes sense um i'm probably more cynical than most

140people but um i think our kid i mean you know there's a lot they have to deal with i think a lot of it can be dressed outside of school as well um but that again i think that's the balance we're also looking for is like there is it should never feel like a bombardment when you're addressing diversity and here's all they do all day is talk about diversity you should never feel a bombardment and i feel it's done sometimes that's 20 21 and i i see i feel like we've slid back from where we were when i started grad school in 1988 in regards to those things and um just you know keep working at it and you know keep the communication open and hoping that you know parents do go to your meetings

141and continue with and thank you michael for what you do i mean you know when kevin's like well michael girls um for obvious reasons you know and um you know that's just you know but we just have to keep going because if we don't go forward and work on that then we'll just backslide more i just want to add our thanks to all the presenters and all the work that went into the slides all the work that went into the demos and teachers who took time out of a crazy point in the year uh to join us for this um and just you know just emphasize this is the beginning sort of conversation and the more that we can increase our understanding ask some really good and tough questions because i do think the six

142viewpoints that we bring to the table all make the the initiative a whole lot better in the long run it does as painful and as slow and you know as frustrating as it might be i think working together will create um an even stronger and continue our strengths and build on them so anyway so thank you for everybody's effort today and i think we've done with the workshop topic so let's adjourn and we'll see each other soon enough meaning third well thursday for our meeting and some of us and some of us um right you