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Currently...

Our school’s current equity work is happening systemically and in some classrooms as teachers implement culturally responsive experiences individually or in PLC teams. This work has yet to inspire conversations about thoughtful planning and classroom practice at a building-wide level, however.

Moving Forward...

Further, some may have a misunderstanding of culturally responsive education, mistakenly isolating the deficits of a culture by, for example, only exploring African American culture through Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone, which primarily paints its characters as violent and drug-addicted versus celebrating its assets. Our district provided the opportunity to learn more about equity last spring with a talk by Dr. Pedro Noguera.

We would love the opportunity to build on this foundation by walking alongside a fellow practitioner into our planning, classrooms, and into our off hours to thoughtfully plan, deliver, and reflect on instruction. The planning may be of particular import as some devote minimal time to it and, when that planning does transpire, it often results in the planning of an activity versus centering thinking, making compliance the success criteria.

Further, many still plan for content delivery versus the learning of skill; content standards are not enough as a student may still “do”, may still behaviorally engage, and misunderstand. Instead, partnering with an expert would help us thoughtfully consider cognitive engagement and what we want our students to know five years from now. We need Dr. Stembridge’s partnership to push that most important facet of our equity work, understanding students feel Arapahoe’s commitment to equity in the classroom.

With two instructional coaches in the building, via observing and reflecting with Dr. Stembridge on the way he works with teachers, we hope to learn from his skills and tools which we could into the coaching cycles which already exist in our building.

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