SRI Leadership Academy – Application Deadline Today!
This cohort-based model invites school, district and nonprofit leaders to engage in a year-long academy to support them to design concrete, achievable goals for school and organizational improvement.
Achieving equity in schools requires strong and informed leadership to spur necessary changes within systems, organizations, and practice. It also requires engaging in deep and often difficult conversations about inequities that currently exist within these systems, organizations, and practice. In the absence of intentional conversations about equity as well as the ways in which leaders are aware of their power, privilege, and underlying assumptions the improvement process in their schools and organizations may be incremental and technical, but it will not be transformational, adaptive, and sustainable. Schools, districts, and organizations need leaders who possess the motivation, commitment, energy, knowledge, and skills to do the complex work of facilitating transformational and adaptive change. SRI’s Leadership Academy develops leaders’ capacity for complex learning to increase their organization’s capacity for change, improvement, and reinvention.
SRI’s Leadership Learning Model focuses on three core dimensions: Equity Leadership, E-Continuous Improvement by Design, and Cultures Conducive for Change. This model combines the research-based SRI reflective learning community design with improvement science and facilitative leadership practices. The year-long experience provides an opportunity for leaders to learn and grow and design new initiatives with feedback from colleagues as they work collaboratively in reflective learning groups to improve their organizations through a continuous improvement research project.
Applications for the 2020 SRI Leadership Academy Close July 1.
Summer Virtual Meeting – Early-Bird Deadline Extended
August 5-7, 2020
Keeping it Fierce: Affirming our Commitment to Equity and Excellence
August 5, 2020 – Opening and Keynote 10am EST
August 6-7, 2020 – Virtual Reflective Learning Groups 8am-1pm (with breaks)
We invite you to join us virtually August 5-7 for an educational conference like no other — SRI Summer Virtual Meeting 2020 — a conference where educators create a community of learners who share their professional practice and learn from its close, public examination. Join the virtual Summer Meeting to practice the skills, habits, and dispositions of professional collaboration and reflective discourse using SRI protocols and resources.
Highlights of Summer Virtual Meeting 2020
- Reflective learning groups — the centerpiece of SRI Summer Virtual Meeting is what distinguishes our meeting from other educational conferences. In these groups, we’ll use SRI protocols to hold us as we engage in complex, challenging, and sometimes, difficult conversations about leading, teaching, and learning; and
- Keynote Speakers, who will charge us in our work to push for equity in our schools and our practices.
Keynotes Presented in partnership with Pegasus Springs Education Collective
Dena Simmons
Dena Simmons, Ed.D., is an activist, educator, and student of life from the Bronx, New York. She is the Assistant Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and an Associate Research Scientist at the Yale Child Study Center. She writes and speaks nationally about social justice and culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogy as well as creating emotionally intelligent and safe classrooms within the context of equity and liberation. She is the author of the forthcoming book, White Rules for Black People (St. Martin’s Press, 2021).
Shawn Ginwright
Shawn Ginwright, PhD is one of the nation’s leading innovators, provocateurs, and thought leaders on African American youth, youth activism, and youth development. He is Professor of Education in the Africana Studies Department and a Senior Research Associate at San Francisco State University. His research examines the ways in which youth in urban communities navigate through the constraints of poverty and struggle to create equality and justice in their schools and communities. Dr. Ginwright is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Flourish Agenda, Inc., a national nonprofit consulting firm, whose mission is to design strategies that unlock the power of healing and engage youth of color and adult allies in transforming their schools and communities.
Reflective Learning Groups
Reflective learning groups will be East (CST and EST) or West (PST and MST) with their schedules running 8am-1pm Pacific (West groups) or 8am-1pm Central (East groups) August 6-7. Breaks are included!
More Information and Registration – Early-Bird Deadline Extended to July 13.
Virtual Connections
School Reform Initiative is still facilitating “Virtual Connections” for our community on Wednesdays. We love connections as a protocol because all we have to do is prepare ourselves to lean in to each other, there’s nothing to prepare and no other expectations. The rules are simple – speak if you want to speak, don’t speak if you don’t want to speak, and speak only once until everyone has had an opportunity to speak. We’re hoping that if everyone connects for 20 minutes sharing whatever is on their mind that we’ll be able to provide a virtual community because we are not alone in our efforts to balance supporting our students, creating virtual learning for potentially the first time, homeschooling our own children, feeling isolated or anxious, and so many other realities. Remember, there is power in community. We are stronger together and while we may not be able to be in social gatherings for a while. Join SRI for “Virtual Connections” Wednesdays at 10am Central.
Facilitating Virtual Learning Communities Webinar
Dates: July 7, 9, 14, 16, 2020 OR August 4, 6, 11, 13, 2020
Time: 7-8:30PM Eastern
Our most popular virtual institute is back! Participants in these sessions will engage in a variety of SRI protocols and practices to explore how SRI critical friendship can foster and sustain professional learning communities in a virtual space. Ample time will be reserved to debrief the virtual experience, examine implications for our work, and develop next steps in using virtual professional learning communities to engage more teachers and students in SRI’s Mission and Guiding Principles. Participants will need a web-enabled device (desktop or laptop with camera preferred) to use during these sessions.
More Information and Registration
Teaching Tolerance Educator Grants
The mission of Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, is to help teachers and schools educate children and youth to be active participants in a diverse democracy. Teaching Tolerance Educator Grants support educators who embrace and embed anti-bias principles throughout their schools. These grants, ranging from $500 to $10,000, support projects that promote affirming school climates and educate youth to thrive in a diverse democracy. Projects will be funded on three levels: school, classroom, and district. Educators nationwide in public or private K-12 spaces, as well as in alternative schools, therapeutic schools, and juvenile justice facilities are eligible to apply. Applications may be submitted at any time. In addition to the Educator Grants, Teaching Tolerance is currently accepting applications through its Future Voters project for grants ranging from $500 to $2,000 to support school community members and students in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi to host voter registration drives at their schools and in their communities. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis through September 15, 2020. Visit the Teaching Tolerance website to access the funding criteria, guidelines, and FAQs, and the online application.
#10forSRI
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
