Time to vote for this year’s SRI Board election! Below are descriptions of the ten incredible candidates standing for election. The six candidates who receive the most votes will be seated to serve on the SRI board beginning in 2020.
Read about the passion each of the candidates holds for the work and mission of SRI. Consider the rich and varied experiences and expertise that each brings to SRI and vote for all the candidates you believe will best serve in the capacity of board member for SRI. Voting is open today through midnight on November 8, 2019.
The SRI Board is seeking four members who have (1) considerable experience with, (2) a strong commitment to, and (3) a positive record of working with schools and students around educational excellence and equity. We are looking for colleagues who have worked in transformative ways particularly with students of color as well as students with language diversity. SRI hopes to increasingly focus on issues of school transformation especially around issues of educational equity, and, ideally, our new members will be able to help advance this important goal.
Voting is open to SRI affiliates. Current affiliates will receive an electronic ballot by email, in which they will be able to select as many of the of the ten candidates listed below as they choose. To become an affiliate, please complete the affiliation form at http://www.schoolreforminitiative.wildapricot.org/page-1650134. After submitting your affiliation form, you will receive a ballot by email.
If you are an SRI affiliate and you haven’t received your ballot, or if you have any technical questions, please contact Chris Jones at chris@schoolreforminitiative.org.
2019 SRI Board Election Candidates
listed in alphabetical order by last name
I am interested in being on the SRI Board because I believe in the work. As I type this at my desk in my classroom, there is the SRI Protocol booklet stacked against math resource books. It’s well worn and it has tabs sticking out. I’ve used this book so many times in my class that now I have specific math standards written on the tabs so I can quickly turn to that section when we engage with that lesson. If being on the board means I should have knowledge about the work we are doing, then I’m on track.
As I grew into a classroom teacher of a hundred plus students, I recognized how important it was to be critical of my work. As a teacher, I had a duty to guide my students into seeing more and being more so I grew to be a facilitator first in my classroom. I saw how my students reacted when we peeled the onion on a classroom dilemma involving math anxiety. It felt revolutionary for 12 year olds to be part of co-constructing knowledge. I’ve never gone back to teaching traditionally again.
Serving on the School Reform Initiative (SRI) board would be a great opportunity to share my passion, knowledge, and commitment throughout the field of early childhood education in connection to viewing ‘what we do’ more intentionally. This opportunity will allow me to collaborate with fellow SRI board members, affiliates, and stakeholders as prominent education leaders and role models. This collaboration will strengthen the overall mission and goals of the organization as well as the field.
It is very evident that SRI values transformation not as a word, but an action required to experience the true commitment around approaching our work through an equity lens. In order to truly learn about SRI’s commitment, I needed to approach the work a little closer with individuals who were experienced in this specific area. Therefore, attending an SRI event was definitely a must.
I am interested in serving SRI as a board member because I rely on SRI for professional and personal learning – support and challenge – and I therefore have a vested interest in its vitality. SRI is where I have learned to be a better teacher, educator, leader, facilitator, and person. As someone who relies on the organization’s work and network, I feel that standi
ng for election is a way of stepping up and giving back to the organization that has given me so much. It is a way of showing support for the organization; I have time and energy I’d like to give back to the organization. I also know how much colleagues, students, and former students depend on SRI as a place to find resources, like-minded colleagues, and community. As a board member, as described in the position description, I commit to: enact SRI’s mission, advocate and network, lead and learn.
One of SRI’s successes is keeping access to protocols open to educators and friends of SRI. Yet that is also a challenge. I am aware each time that I click on the website for a protocol or resource that, while it exists with open and free access, that it is not “free” – and my ongoing volunteer work and financial contributions to SRI are with that in mind. As a community there are many ways for us to support SRI – and the organization needs all of those ways. I am invested in the success of SRI and would work diligently with colleagues on the board and in the community of affiliates and friends to sustain SRI.
Beth I. Graham (Massachusetts)
I am a candidate for the SRI Board of Directors because I wish to give back to the organization that has given so much to me, personally and professionally, for the past twenty years. SRI has been instrumental in my development as educator, school and district leader, facilitator, and learner, and I’ve benefited greatly from my long-time affiliation with SRI and its network of facilitators from around the country. I know in my heart and from personal experience how SRI’s principles and practices can make a difference in the ways teachers and leaders work together, and, more importantly, in the success of every child we serve.
The 10th anniversary of SRI is a significant marker for the organization. Looking back, we can see how far we’ve come. Looking forward, we may be thinking about how to build upon the energy and successes of the past decade to ensure our financial sustainability. I want to be in the room when these conversations happen, as they’re likely to require the Board to manage complexity and contradiction, and to avoid traps like answers and linear thinking.
James Greenwood (New Hampshire)
I first became involved with the School Reform Initiative through one of the organization’s seminars on Facilitative Leadership led by Gene Thompson-Grove. I was deeply impressed with the quality of presentation and resources offered. With the resources I gained at the workshop, I later employed many of the strategies and utilized the provided protocols to further aid my work with educators moving forward. Learning more about SRI’s work through that experience, but also through continuing to be engaged through the ongoing workshops and newsletter, I would like to become more involved with the School Reform Initiative to help forward its mission and goals in service of students and educators. I believe my skills, networks, and diverse experiences can help contribute to the SRI Board and furthering the organization’s mission.
I think SRI is extremely successful in providing quality professional development opportunities and resources for educators. The resources provided through seminars, workshops, and coaching help foster equity and reflective practice in both school classrooms, but also in educational leadership. Improving the quality of equity practice in leadership and in teachers invariably has an impact on improving the educational experiences of our students.
My role as a global citizen is to actively seek opportunities for collaboration that connect my passions, education, and skill set with the needs, skills, knowledge of others to develop and/or support sustainable activities that serve both my local and global community. I am interested in serving as a Board Member for SRI because the mission and vision align with my epistemological and pedagogical beliefs about teaching and learning. However, though the mission of SRI is to “… create transformational learning communities that are fiercely committed to educational equity and excellence”, my personal experience has been that sometimes my peers and colleagues struggle to make the connection between the use of protocols in practice and whole-school change to create equitable learning communities. As a result, the focus can often be on the use of protocols as a strategy for creating a product or completing an instructional task rather than developing a school culture. To better understand this disconnect, I have focused my research on the examination of teacher educators’ facilitation of critical dialogues about issues of race and equity, including the employ of protocols as a tool to frame dialogue in teacher education programs or with practicing educators. My interest in serving on the board is also driven by the hope that I might contribute to the ongoing work of SRI leadership in developing institutional practices that support the continued collegial examination of our stance as culturally responsive educators. It would be an honor to participate in furthering the current work of SRI affiliates and in envisioning the ways the School Reform Initiative can broaden its impact on teacher education and systems change.
My interest in being an SRI Board member lies in my own experience as a learner. I am the educator I am right now because of my work with SRI. As difficult as this work is, I have a sense of purpose and mission because I have had the opportunity to learn through SRI practices. Participating in the collaborative and challenging learning groups available through SRI has transformed me as an educator and as a person.
One success of SRI is the development and training of protocol use for difficult conversations. I have used these protocols with staff and families to lead productive discussions about dangerous and difficult topics, such as individual or group student achievement, equity, identity and bias. My staff has been trained in use of protocols and the focus and impact of our work has improved due to use of protocols.
A challenge for SRI is to increase its scope beyond educators and into the organizations that support schools – PTOs, Education Foundations, School Committees. These stakeholders have influence over the work that happens in schools. They need to view equity and anti-bias work as key to transforming schools and making them equitable for all students.
I want to be on the SRI Board because I want to serve as an advocate and champion for reform initiatives that create opportunities for collective efficacy models that lead to effective teachers and school leaders that create and sustain learning environments where students can excel academically, socially and emotionally.
Additionally, the opportunity to align myself with like -minded individuals through a peer to peer leadership model is an amazing way to increase my knowledge, skills, and abilities as I continue to grow as an educator. I see this opportunity as a vehicle to raise more awareness for the work of SRI and increase membership and affiliate participation so that every educator can benefit from SRI’s amazing dedication to educators and their practice.
SRI has developed a stellar reputation for delivering evidenced best practice professional development in a reflective community of practice. Teachers and school leaders have respectively credited SRI for their advancement of their practice and increased student achievement. SRI’s work with protocols have become a shining example of how to push and challenge educators to think strategically and intentionally about who they are as educators and the impact that has on the students they serve.
I have worked in the education field for over 15 years from Los Angeles to New York City and the challenges remain the same. Our educators are often working in silos with few support systems or structures to elevate their practices and ensure that all of our students are seen and able to learn. Our system of education is more critical then ever. Our country is wrestling with our own identity, what we believe in and who we will stand for. Our educators are on the front lines every day working with students from a cross section of our larger society and they are grappling with seemingly insurmountable challenges and asking for our help in meeting the needs of each student they serve.
I have been lucky to work in collaboration with SRI throughout my career. Through this work my beliefs have been challenged, my mind has been opened and my heart has been filled. Six years ago I was asked to serve on the board of SRI. I was not sure the timing was right, or that I had enough to offer in support of this growing organization. I looked to others who had, what I perceived as, “more experience” to step up and lead, but I was encouraged by other affiliates to get involved and share my experiences in order to help provide a new perspective to SRI. Since leaving the SRI board I have transitioned to new roles in my career as a Director of Special Education for 240 schools across Brooklyn and now as the Executive Director for the Office of Nonpublic Schools throughout all five boroughs of NYC supporting over 800 religious and independent schools. I believe my diverse leadership experience across difference will bring an important lens to the challenges SRI is facing today.
The work we do in schools and in education in general is some of the most challenging and rewarding work. There are so many pressures facing educators today, including funding, standardized test culture, shifting societal expectations in schools, and many more. It is easy for teachers to feel overwhelmed. Now, more than ever, we need to lean on one another and find ways to build our individual and collective capacity to find creative ways to handle our challenges. In my experience, the School Reform Initiative has served as a catalyst to give me and others hope and energy in moments of difficulty. By listening, learning, and surrounding myself with others willing to engage in the messiness of having a solution-orientation to remarkable and unprecedented challenges, SRI has helped to envision an optimistic future for the landscape of education.
Every SRI gathering I have attended has been thoughtfully planned and facilitated in order to help each member have access to rich content and discussion. SRI is a learning organization focused on surfacing really tough questions and creating space for us to all dig-in. To me, the idea that every SRI experience will require a cognitive lift for every member around the table illustrates that the identity of the organization is consistently understood and implemented. Regardless of size or scope of the meeting, the members around the table are there to address the questions that keep them up at night as a way to move our profession forward.