From the Executive Director
Dear Colleagues,
Welcome to the School Reform Initiative (SRI) weekly newsletter! January was a busy month for SRI. With the help of SRI Practitioners, our national office provided professional learning to over 200 educators last month. We are working diligently to collaborate with other districts, schools, and non-profit organizations to continue that momentum throughout 2020.
As I reflect on the districts, schools, and organizations we supported last month, it is evident that we have a tremendous reliance on programs to transform our schools. Rigorous state and federal accountability systems have leaders hard-pressed to implement the next best program to address student achievement quickly. In my experience, this practice of school improvement consistently yields the same undesirable results—minimal academic improvement that is not sustainable.
What if our goals to achieve equity in schools focused more on people and less on programs? Specifically, what if we focused on everyone in our schools at the individual level. If we allowed time for individuals to break the surface of their knowledge of content, pedagogy, or leadership, and their biases, mental models, and belief systems—then what? Michael Fullan, in Change Forces: Probing the Depths of Educational Reform, suggests that organizations do not change; the individuals in the organizations change. If this is the case, then perhaps school transformation toward equity is, in fact, individual transformation toward equity.
As schools focus more on setting equity goals to ensure that every child succeeds, they must understand and value the current demographic reality of the students and the communities in which they serve. The cultural, social, racial, ethnic, and linguistic differences between educator and student populations often have a significant impact on student outcomes. As such, educators must be supported to build their cultural capacity so that their orientation to diversity is an asset-based belief about students as opposed to the prevailing biased-based perceptions typically present in schools.
We believe there is power in educators knowing how their culture, values, racial or ethnic background, and lived experiences impact their worldview and practice of educating all students. Professional learning experiences that encourage a change in practice place a premium on constructing individual meaning, honoring the prior experiences of the individual, and valuing ideals central to social change. SRI Equity First Institutes support this change process. They use protocols and other tools that guide educators through deep reflection to understand why their beliefs about self and others exist and the effects those beliefs have on students. Educators are then encouraged to do the work to address their beliefs and experiences that are creating barriers to the teaching and learning process for diverse students. Through reflective dialogue and shift in mindsets toward equity consciousness, educators are finally supported to analyze and respond to their school and district data, student work, and adult work through an equity lens.
Thank you,
Deirdre Williams
SRI Executive Director
PS If you haven’t registered for our upcoming Equity First Institute, please register today for the May 14–15 event as space is limited.
#10forSRI
SRI affiliates genuinely care about the students and communities we serve and recognize that schools as they currently exist need to improve so that all students have the chance to succeed. Our affiliates are passionate about making such change. Loving and caring about all students is at the center of where we start. Our goal for 2020 is to help educators remember why they became educators, and to do whatever we can to not only help them to ‘feel’ supported, but to actually ‘be’ supported, and work together to create the schools our students deserve. I hope you will join me and continue to support SRI!
SRI is fiercely committed to educational equity and excellence, and we cannot do this work without your support!
Thank you for your commitment to students, families and communities!
Do you have news to share? Interesting things happening in your area? Please let us know so we can share with our community! Email Chris Jones, chris@schoolreforminitiative.org.
Thank you,
Deirdre Williams and Chris Jones
On behalf of School Reform Initiative
