-Community Empowerment Strand -Open Space Strand
Set F: Tuesday, September 30 8:45 AM to 10:15 AM
You can select one session from both Set F and Set G. If you select from Sets F and G, do not select from Set E. Select one session from Set F:
F01 Courageous Conversations in Fits and Starts (and Stops)
Bringing Courageous Conversations to the Minneapolis Public Schools has been an on-again, off-again struggle plagued by changes in leadership and a resistant district culture. And still, the work goes on! Learn how a determined and courageous group of district leaders is keeping the focus on equity. Understand the importance and challenge of aligning equity work with current and competing initiatives. Engage in thoughtful dialogue and share strategies for starting, supporting, and sustaining equity/anti-racism work in a difficult environment.
Erin Glynn, Assistant Chief Academic Officer, and other members of the District Equity Leadership Team, Minneapolis Public Schools, Minneapolis, MN.
Strand: Equity Leadership
F02 Got Equity? An Approach to Anti-Racist Leadership and the Systemic Implementation of Courageous Conversations in the Institution of Alternative Public Education
Learn from a diversified team about the process of ensuring that equity becomes a district's core focus. Explore programs that ensure equity encompasses not only students' education, but the continuing growth of faculty and staff, as well. Engage in varied culturally responsive, interactive activities as a way of gathering and sharing knowledge and understanding about Courageous Conversation, systemic change, contemporary adaptive leadership theory, and equitable educational practices.
Leilah Armour, Administrator; Jeffrey Heil, Educator; Stephanie Johnston, Student Transition Specialist; Penny McNeil, Educator; and Tammy Reina, Educator, San Diego County Juvenile Court and Community Schools (JCCS), San Diego, CA.
Strand: Equity Leadership
NO LONGER AVAILABLE
Equity leadership teams are infused with complicated authority relationships. Discover how authority can be both a resource for leadership and a constraint within your own equity team and throughout your system. Explore the idea that authority is conferred to regulate systems, entailing both formal and informal contracts for services. Consider Ronald Heifetz's description of direction, protection, and order as major services of authority. Use these ideas to investigate your own relationships to authority and discomfort with leadership within the systems you endeavor to change.
Circe Stumbo, President, and Bob Lesser, Policy Analyst, West Wind Education Policy, Inc., Iowa City, IA.
Strand: Equity Leadership
NO LONGER AVAILABLE
During Open Space Sessions, participants engage in a freeform discussion around the topic, sharing thoughts, ideas, approaches, and asking questions of the other participants. The purpose of Open Space is to allow participants to go deeper in certain subjects, share their own personal work, and provide them a safe place wherein they can ask questions that have not been adequately addressed.
F05 Distinguished Lecturer: Bonnie Davis - How to Teach Kids Who Don't Look Like You: Applying Equity in the Classroom
Dr. Davis will discuss how our primarily White teaching corps can succeed with students from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds through examining culture and its impact on student achievement, recognizing the barriers to working across race and culture, and understanding how one's own race and culture forms a "lens" which impacts our work with students in the classroom. She will provide examples of how teachers successfully use culturally relevant teaching strategies to increase the academic achievement of ALL students; demonstrate brain-based differentiated instructional strategies; review current research; and engage participants in self-reflection.
Dr. Davis’ new book, How to Coach Teachers Who Don’t Think Like You: Using Literacy Strategies to Coach Across Content Areas, is now available from Corwin Press. For 30 years, Davis taught English in middle schools, high schools, universities, homeless shelters, and a men’s prison. Her publications include African-American Academic Achievement: Building a Classroom of Excellence (2001) and numerous articles on literacy and cultural instruction. She appears in The School Improvement Network’s video, No Excuses! How to Increase Minority Student Achievement (2006), and is the co-author, with Curtis Linton, of the workbook of the same title, due out in 2008.
Strand: Anti-Racist Learning and Teaching
NO LONGER AVAILABLE
Organizationally, school systems that build equity for all students and eliminate racial educational disparities must incorporate systemic models of change that align from the teacher's classroom to the superintendent's office. Discover how focus, coherence, simplification, and relentless drive are necessary for equity to take root and succeed at all levels. Learn how district leadership can craft language and school improvement plans so as to facilitate buy-in from all stakeholders in the system. Use common language and establish practices that support Courageous Conversations about race and achievement. Challenge the status quo while maintaining commitment from all educators and the community.
Chet Linton, CEO, School Improvement Network, Sandy, UT.
Strand: Equity Leadership
F07 Moving Beyond Participation to Action: Learning to Lead Others in Courageous Conversation
Energized by Beyond Diversity and Courageous Conversations? Passionate about sharing your knowledge, but struggling with how to bring others into the conversation? Learn how to facilitate small group discussions on race with students, teachers, administrators, and others. Explore the necessary skills for facilitating Courageous Conversations. Examine what personal strengths you possess to help lead your school, district, and state in reducing the racial achievement disparity among the highest and lowest performing students. Share with other participants the successes and challenges of engaging in Courageous Conversations about race.
Terrlyn L. Curry Avery, Connecticut Regional Director, Pacific Educational Group, Hartford, CT.
Strand: Equity Leadership
ONLY AVAILABLE DURING SESSION D06
In its seventh year, the California Alliance of African American Educators (CAAAE) has partnered with Stanford University's School of Education to offer highly-acclaimed professional development focused unapologetically on pedagogies and practices for successfully reaching African American students. Discover how this grass-roots alliance of culturally courageous leaders formed a state-wide organization to combat institutional racism head-on. Learn about CAAAE's "empowering parents" arm, and their math, science, and technology initiative for students of African descent that boasts a 100% college-going rate and support from leading Silicon Valley companies.
Debra Watkins, President, California Alliance of African American Educators
Strand: Community Empowerment
ADDED—MOVED FROM SESSION A10
F09 The Hidden Costs of Power and Privilege: How Racial Disparities in Education Harm White Students
Do white students and families have a vested interest in creating equitable schools? Prepare for a deep exploration of how being educated in inequitable schools actually harms white students; examine how they learn internalized white supremacy; and generate new understandings of the "costs" they pay for such educational environments. Practice using Courageous Conversation strategies for engaging white students and parents in a process of understanding their own vested interest in eliminating racial educational disparities and creating equitable schools.
Graig Meyer, Coordinator, Blue Ribbon Mentor-Advocate Program, Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, Chapel Hill, NC.
Strand: Anti-Racist Learning and Teaching
