History

2016

Principal Craven led a 10 hour “Choice Course”, Facing Race, Bias, and Ourselves, in which RAUC staff read a range of texts and watched videos that provoked conversations about the role race, identity and bias play in our lives.

For more on the course, including goals and resources, click here.

2017-2019

  • Staff work: In these two years, we dedicated five staff meetings a year to equity work.

    • Our goal, as laid out in our School Improvement Plan, was to “deepen our capacity as culturally proficient educators and as a culturally responsive institution in order to better meet the needs of our diverse student population through whole staff meeting time for learning and conversations about equity.”

    • We planned and led our work in 2017-18 and collaborated with outside facilitators, Gene Thompson-Groves and Dr. Darnissa Amante in 2017-18 to ensure we were facing our blind spots.

    • While there were times when people chafed at not having a clear action step to take, we recognized what our facilitators kept reminding us--that at this point talking together was “the work.”

    • Some of the most powerful conversations happened when we explored mini-case studies of school scenarios that resonated with our experience. The case studies were chosen from the book, Case Studies on Diversity and Social Justice Education, by Paul Gorski and Seema Pothini. You can see case studies we discussed here.

    • We ended 2018-19 with a dynamic equity glossary, all terms we explored together. Having a common vocabulary has enabled us to make our conversations increasingly rigorous and real. You can access the glossary here.

  • Co-sponsored Courageous Conversations initiated by a parent planning group and with the support of the Peabody and Baldwin schools

    • Click here to see a history of Courageous Conversations up to Sept 2020.

  • Piloted a series of conversations with American Born Black families to explore their experience with school, done in collaboration with Gately.

    • Co-facilitated by community partners Bo Lembo and Melinda Barbosa

    • We learned a lot from this experience which we applied to future work.

2019-2020

Based on end of the year surveys from staff, we created new goals for the coming two years: Become a more culturally responsive institution so we better support the academic growth of all students, particularly our culturally and linguistically diverse students. Specifically, we will strengthen our capacity to see how race, implicit bias and the 4i’s of racism affect our interaction with students, families and each other AND we will strengthen culturally responsive instruction.

  • Staff work:

    • Focus on culturally responsive instruction:

      • We planned six staff meetings with outside facilitators, Gene Thompson Groves and Brittney Sampson, to support us in reaching our goals.

      • We read and discussed Ch. 8 of Zaretta Hammond’s Culturally Responsive Instruction and the Brain, we watched and discussed videos, developed action research for our own classrooms based on Hammond’s framework, and reflected together in groups to support each other and to hold ourselves accountable for following through on our commitments to integrate culturally responsive instruction into our practice.

      • We also reflected on what we were learning on a common document shared with all staff because we believe that public reflections help keep us accountable to each other and enhance our collective learning.

      • NOTE: Because of COVID closures, we did not have our final two meetings in which we had planned to analyze our reflections and set professional learning goals based on them. However, many staff continued to meet and discuss informally in response to the spring’s racial reckoning.

    • On-going focus on culturally responsive instruction during regular “coaching” sessions--dedicated periods in the school day when teachers work with school or district-based instructional coaches to reflect on and improve their practice

  • Focus on partnership with families: We also committed to seek out and listen more intentionally to the voices of our families, particularly our families of color.

    • In early September, staff reflected on family engagement survey results and caregiver quotes excerpted from the Building Equity Bridges report to guide our approach to family engagement for the year.

    • In October, staff listened to a Community Engagement Team panel representing our American Born Black community as well as our Haitian Creole, Bengali, and Amharic speaking communities. The focus was: what is it important that we know about your community that will help us partner in support of student success?

  • Community work: Our School Council joined with the School Councils of Baldwin and Peabody to co-sponsor continued Courageous Conversations within our triad, which included providing space, dinners, child care, and funding for facilitators.

    • Fall 2019: the triad community piloted for the district an exploration of the Barriers to Equity that came out of the Building Equity Bridge project

      • The community attendees identified these four barriers as most resonating with them:

        • Educators of Color are not Being Centered

        • Whiteness, Privilege, and Bias

        • Youth are Not Centered

        • Inequitable School and Classroom Experiences

      • In session 2, the community identified the school they dreamed of if these barriers were removed.

      • The Courageous Conversations group created posters highlighting these four barriers and the dreams connected to them.

        • RAUC, along with each triad school, posted these barriers in our hallways as a visual reminder of our challenges as well as our hopes and dreams.

    • Winter/Spring 2020: Courageous Conversations was able to hold live one of its planned series of facilitated triad conversations before COVID closures; there was one virtual conversation as well.

  • History of Courageous Conversations can be found here.


2020-2021

Click below for more information about areas of this year's equity initiative that correlate explicitly to various Building Equity Bridges (BEB) barriers.

  • Staff Professional Development Work (Barriers addressing: Whiteness, Privilege, and Bias; Inequitable School and Classroom Experience; Youth are Not Centered)

    • All RAUC educators engage once a month in differentiated personal equity work around these common goals:

      • Expand our beliefs and actions (behaviors) around race & equity and deepen our individual and collective commitment to ways of being that are anti-racist and anti-biased.

      • Through dedicated, regular focus on anti-bias, anti-racist learning, push ourselves to develop ways of being as a group and as individual educators that

        • elevate our students as whole human beings deserving of our admiration and

        • provide them with opportunities to engage in meaningful and challenging work.

      • Grow as a reflective community through public reflections around common focus questions

    • You can review the more detailed Equity plan, including resources staff are engaging with, here.

    • You can also review a list of the conferences and specific coaching and trainings staff have attended and received here.

  • Maintaining focus on culturally responsive instruction

    • Daily staff notes from principal regularly highlight culturally responsive and anti-racist/anti-bias instructional practices and “teacher moves” to encourage staff to continuously inspire and learn from each other

    • Continuation of dedicated coaching periods supporting culturally responsive instruction

  • R.E.A.L. Team (Race and Equity Advisory to Leadership Team)

    • Barrier addressing: Educators of Color are not Being Centered

    • This group helps leadership identify and understand the central race and equity challenges (and opportunities) at RAUC. These challenges may be related to the experiences of students, families, staff or any combination. The R.E.A.L Team also provides feedback on leadership plans to address those challenges and take advantage of those opportunities so as to move the school forward as a culturally responsive and equitable learning institution. Finally, the R.E.A.L Team helps determine benchmarks of progress to hold the school and leadership accountable to growth. The Core Leadership Team will still be responsible for doing the work of turning these plans into action as it relates to their particular roles (as admin, coaches, and liaison).

    • For a more detailed description of the composition of and rationale for this team, click here.

  • Educational Leadership Team (ELT)

    • The ELT is comprised of team leaders (6th, 7th, and 8th grade teams, All-grades team, Special Ed team), the Family Liaison, Library and Technology Specialist, Literacy and Math Instructional Coaches, Assistant Principal and Principal.

    • The ELT meets bi-weekly and is explicitly focused on supporting the school mission and School Improvement Plan initiatives through their leadership roles, with an emphasis on equity.

    • Team leaders meet monthly with building principal to reflect on their equity goals and leadership work.

  • Family Partnership Work (Barrier(s) addressing: Whiteness, Privilege, and Bias; Families of Color not Centered)

    • School Council: explicit focus on equity

    • Continued sponsorship of Courageous Conversations

    • Launching of affinity group- RAUC caregivers of color

2021-2022

For a summary of this year's equity work, please watch the video>> from student representatives on our school council or read below.

  • School Council: In addition to staff and family representatives, this year, we also added student and community representatives.

  • Theory of Action & Underlying Beliefs: Our core leadership team developed our theory of action and underlying beliefs. This was informed by ongoing conversations during quarantine and listening to staff, student & family voices.

  • One main focus for equity work this year was reflection and listening to diverse family and student voices in our community. There were three main ways we did this:

    • Equity self-assessment: As part of a larger district initiative, our school council participated in an equity self-assessment to identify some areas of potential growth. This process involved evaluating policies, programs, and practices in terms of equity through a consensus-building process.

    • Family survey: In order to hear from more family voices, our school council also created a family survey that went out to all families at RAUC.

    • Listening sessions: We also conducted listening sessions/dinners with particular groups, such as Ethiopian families, Muslim families, and Families of Color.

  • For a summary of our findings, click here>>.