Got a Gap? Get a Plan…

1. Got a Gap?Get a Plan… Race and Equity Kickoff Training August 22, 2008

2. Outcomes • By the end of this session we will have: • Identified factors of diversity, how it applies to our population, ourselves, and the implications of our instructional program. • Practiced and discussed one equitable strategy that is effective with diverse learners • Examined the 4 agreements of Courageous Conversations

3. Something to think about… The less we know about each other, the more we make up. - Donna Ford

4. Community Tour Reflection • By participating in this professional development experience, I have changed my thinking about…………… • Having this information makes me think………… • What are the implications for me as an educator in this community? • How does the community in which I live compare (similarities and differences) with the community in which I work?

5. Who Am I? Directions Complete the sentence, “I am…” using as many descriptors as you can think of in sixty seconds.

6. Who Am I? FACTORS OF DIVERSITY • GENDER • RELIGION • REGION • AGE • RACE • NATIVE LANGUAGE • SOCIO-ECONOMIC • CLASS

7. Something to think about… “Not learning tends to take place when someone has to deal with unavoidable challenges to his or her personal and family loyalties, integrity, and identity. In such situations there are forced choices and no apparent middle ground. To agree to learn from a stranger who does not respect your integrity causes a major loss of self. The only alternative is to not-learn and reject the stranger’s world.” Herb Kohl I Won’t Learn From You! The Role of Assent in Education

8. Essential Question #1 • How do awareness, knowledge and understanding of one’s own culture promote effective teaching and learning?

9. Courageous Conversations about Race

10. Courageous Conversations A courageous conversation engages those who won’t talk, sustains the conversation when it gets uncomfortable or diverted, and deepens the conversation to the point where authentic understanding and meaningful actions occur. By Glenn Singleton & Curtis Linton

11. Four Agreements to Courageous Conversations • Stay engaged • Speak your truth • Expect to experience discomfort • Expect and accept that we will not reach closure

12. Stay Engaged Personal commitment each person makes, regardless of the engagement of others. Staying engaged means remaining morally, emotionally, intellectually, and socially involved in the dialogue. To stay engaged is to not let your heart and mind “check out” of the conversation while leaving your body in place.

13. Speak Your Truth Requires a willingness to take risks. Speaking your truth means being absolutely honest about your thoughts, feelings, and opinions and not just saying what you perceive others want to hear. Without speaking his truth, the educator who has remained silent has allowed his own beliefs or opinions to be misinterpreted or misrepresented.

14. Experience Discomfort Courageous conversations necessarily create discomfort for participants due to the state of racial conditions in our society. This asks participants to agree to experience discomfort so that they can deal with the reality of race in an honest and forthright way. Participants need to be personally responsible for pushing themselves into a real dialogue-the kind that may make them uncomfortable but also will lead to real growth. Such conversations require that people open up and examine their core racial beliefs, values, perceptions and behaviors.

15. Expect & Accept Non-closure Encourages participants to recognize that they will not reach closure in their racial understandings or in their interracial interactions. The solution is revealed in the process of dialogue itself. We cannot discover a solution to a challenge if we have not been able to talk about it. The solutions discovered are ever forming and ever changing; therefore participants must commit to an ongoing dialogue as an essential component of their action plan.

16. Looks like… Sounds like… The 4 agreements …

17. Reasons for Heterogeneous Grouping/Random Seating • Students get to know people different from themselves while working toward a common goals. • Greater perspective taking occurs with the greater diversity of ideas. • Quality of reasoning increases through the opportunity to consider multiple explanations. • More frequent giving and receiving of explanations deepens understanding and the accuracy of long-term retention. • Learning is a shared responsibility. • Students develop collaborative skills essential to success in a diverse and ever-changing workplace.

18. Something to think about… “We cannot teach students well if we do not know them well.” Dan Hoffman Barbara A. Levak Personalizing Schools Educational Leadership, September 2003

19. Racial Questionnaire • Name the racial group that has the most significant achievement gap in our school: • African-American • Hispanic • Asian • American Indian

20. Essential Questions #2 & #3 • How do awareness, knowledge and understanding of the cultures of students promote effective teaching and learning? • How can educators establish culturally sensitive learning environments and modify instruction to be culturally reflective? • When educators fail to address these questions, they are often left searching- knowing there is a problem, but not knowing what to do about it. -Glen Singleton

21. Here’s the gap…

22. What’s our plan… • Deepen our Courageous Conversations and increase our engagement around issues of race in our school. • Gain a better understanding of the unique gifts and challenges each student brings to our classroom. • Improve our classroom practices to help narrow the racial achievement gap.

23. Final thought… • The world we have created is a product of our thinking. We cannot change things until we change our thinking. - Einstein