Ten Factors that Impact Action toward Greater Diversity in High School Curriculum Design & Review8/20/2020 I have held several leadership responsibilities in secondary education over many years. As a consultant for a national network, director of school support for a regional network, and high school administrator, one focus has been my curiosity, increased self-awareness, and work toward racial equity in schools. This has grown over my years of being engaged in this work, despite failures along the way. 15 years ago, I was part of a conversation with academic department chairs at my school, where I asked, “How come we don’t have student data, disaggregated by race?” As eyes looked down, I was quickly told by a tenured department chair, “We don’t do that . . . and you are a racist. Everyone in this school gets treated the same way.” That particular comment continues to guide my curiosity and growth. No one around the table was ready, perhaps. As one direct response to the racial unrest because of the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, I worked with a group of educators (regionally) to develop a race/ethnicity Examination (audit, really) for a regional network of high schools. This audit allowed a school to reflect while gathering and evaluating perceptions about race in their schools – to begin to examine policies and systems. The first iteration of the Examination also had the potential of comparing and contrasting results with other schools in-network and across time. When we invited schools to participate in a pilot project to test this Examination, we got no volunteers, for various reasons. The initiative faded. Schools were not ready, perhaps. I was introduced to Courageous Conversations about Race (Singleton & Linton) in graduate school. Since then, I have introduced this framework in my own school and with a network of diversity directors in schools regionally. We practiced. We modeled. And the practice grew to other schools and works. During those various practices with Courageous Conversations, I grew by listening to others and by developing my own racial autobiography, where I reflected on this central question: “What can you recall about the events and conversations related to race, race relations, and/or racism that may have impacted your current perspectives and/or experiences?” (Singleton, Linton). Over the past few years, have been part of a high school working curriculum group as part of the Slavery, History, Memory, and Reconciliation Project, sponsored by the UCS Jesuits, and I have recently participated in my son’s school diversity & equity summer book read: How to be an Antiracist (Kendi). It is valuable for me to be continuously engaged in this work . . . to learn new things about others and myself. At the same time, it is frustrating to make mistakes, missteps, and fail; and, it is challenging because the work is slow, with dead ends. However, I/we must continue . . . Today, our school is guided by the Jesuit Universal Apostolic Preferences (specifically, accompanying youth and walking with the excluded). Our school’s Black Student Union (BSU) recently responded to the summer’s racial uprisings by developing a practical list of “asks,” of the school – pathways for our school to engage in changing policies and systems. Last winter and spring, I had one-on-one reflecting conversations with faculty. Reflection trends around last year’s conversation thread of race/ethnicity complement the recent list of BSU asks. When I see connections between and among independently organized initiatives aimed at changing policies and systems, I feel consoled. Finally, last week, our Examination (audit) group from many years ago began communicating to re-ignite that once-failed initiative. And, in partnership with The Boniface Foundation, I participated in a few days of examining how we approach race conversations among colleagues at school and with our students in class. All of these past & current initiatives focus on policies and systems and inform my way of proceeding this year, as I consider 10 factors toward re-imagining a course I will be teaching in the department of English at my high school. Re-imagining it to be more diverse. These factors also complement the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm for learning and teaching that we employ at my school. And each factor presents concrete challenges for us all as we design and review curriculum through the lens of diversity. Factor 1: Work on the Work My past and current work on racism allows me to feel comfortable being uncomfortable and informs how I proceed, decisions I make, and actions I take. My goal is continuous quality self-improvement (progress, not perfection), continuing to stay plugged into this important work, listening to others, and taking advantage of professional development opportunities that focus on racism and my roles. I listen to those who know more than I know and challenge me about my own racist baggage. Just this morning, I responded to an email from my son’s elementary school about participating in the next book club focusing on Between the World and Me (Coates). I said yes, and today I will order the book and begin reading it. I listen and respond to where I am being called. This is a continuous process of working on the work. For me, working on the work results in action & praxis. Reflection: where is your entry point for starting or continuing work on racism? Factor 2: Use Data At my school, we developed a perception survey that students take toward the end of each year, which informs the way we proceed and the areas of focus we have for the coming year. It is not a perfect tool – we are continuously revising it, but it is an institutionalized tool applied to a system to help change that system. This survey’s results are disaggregated by race to provide us with a clear picture about trends in academics, faith formation, sports participation, co-curricular involvement, and family life. From results, we can clearly identify consolations and desolations, as they pertain to policies and systems in the school. As a teacher, I also have access to my student course list, where I see specific information about my students that includes photos, race/ethnicity, indication of learning preferences and plans, family background, residential addresses, etc. This data provides me with a broader picture of the students I teach and gives me a glimpse into their lives outside my class. I use this information during my class when I’m challenging students to connect the experiences of the our content to their lives. Reflection: what data points can you readily access and how does data inform action? How does data analysis reveal strengths and challenges to your school’s policies and systems? Factor 3: Examine Course Assumptions Everyone brings baggage into school and into classes – my students and me. This baggage is based upon our lived experiences, and it informs the way we operate in the world – the decisions we make and the actions we take. In The Assumptions of White Privilege and What We Can Do About It, Fr. Bryan Massingale talks about how we become racist . . . “It’s something that you absorbed by just living. Just by taking in subtle clues such as what the people in charge look like. Whose history you learned in school. What the bad guys look like on TV. The kind of jokes you heard. How your parents, grandparents and friends talked about people that didn’t look like you.” When I reviewed the process of reflection during the creation of my own racial autobiography, I learned this: racism is absorbed by just living – having the freedom to make decisions based upon experiences. But what do I do? As a teacher, I continuously revisit the assumptions I make based upon my baggage (based upon my lived experiences), and I examine existing course assumptions and experiences I bring with me to my curriculum and my classroom. I also challenge students to examine their own baggage, assumptions, and ways of proceeding. Reflection: what baggage do you bring with you into school every day? How does that baggage inform your assumptions about your curriculum, your classroom, and students? How do those assumptions drive your actions? Factor 4: Employ Existing Frameworks I use resources I’m given by colleagues and professionals to continuously re-examine how I approach classes and my work. Recently, I was given valuable tools that help me shape my course this year. Our director of diversity and inclusion and our school’s Jesuit chaplain recently introduced me to Ignatian Conversations, a framework with suggestions for listening and talking. Our director of diversity and inclusion introduced me to Critical Analysis of a Curricular Unit, a framework for reviewing lessons through a cultural competency lens. I am continuously reviewing and revising our class visit rubric, based upon Characteristics of Professional Development, which includes a diversity, equity, and inclusion component with specified cultural competency indicators. I use these existing frameworks to re-shape my classes, to be better. Reflection: what existing frameworks do you use to help you re-shape your course curriculum? Factor 5: Start at the Top I changed the title and overarching theme of my (English) course to be more inclusive. I replaced “The American Dream” with “American Voices and Dreams.” This new title suggests a vision for my course that is not limiting or reductive. It is expansive. This new title reminds me how I should think about creating a more inclusive experience for students. Reflection: how do you rename an existing course to suggest an expansive and inclusive vision? Factor 6: Review & Design the Course During a review of my course curriculum over the summer, I removed literature and replaced the removed items with a more diverse selection of voices. In addition, I am cognizant of the times in which we live. To that end, I include immigrant narratives and contemporary black voices, while I integrate history lessons from diverse primary sources. In fact, this year, we will discover how the pandemic affects all types of people in this country. In addition, I develop specific action-experiences for students during units and lessons that help students “live” the lessons of the literature and challenge us to reflect on “How do we think and act in new and different ways after having read this material?” My course is relevant to 2020, while exploring how we got here. Reflection: where is your entry point for reviewing and re-designing your curriculum and how are you making it relevant to today? Factor 7: Integrate Experience From day one, we develop a community of trust in our class, as we begin to understand one another and our individual contexts. We use community conversations, so we begin to understand one another. I challenge students to connect their own lives to the lives and ideas within the history and literature, and I model this by providing experience examples from my own life. Reflection: where is your entry point for learning about and using experiences? How do you share your life with students? Factor 8: Teach Vocabulary I use discipline-specific language with students and set high expectations that we all use the same discipline-specific language during class. We practice using the language. I also use specific phrases when practicing difficult and courageous conversations, and I teach students to use those phrases during conversations in and out of our class. Here is a list of phrases we will practice this year during class:
Helping students learn and appreciate vocabulary and introducing students to helpful conversational phrases is culturally responsive teaching that promotes equity (Lee). Reflection: what are discipline-specific vocabulary terms you teach and use with students? How do you teach students important phrases to use during class conversations? Factor 9: Reflect on Policies & Systems I use cultural competency critical analysis – along with a focus on policies and systems (ref. Kendi) – with students to frame conversations during class. This analysis challenges us to think about how to explore and change policies and systems. Prompts include:
Reflection: identify policies and systems at your school that need work or change. Factor 10: Construct Rules & Protocols Finally, I use our “Ignatian Conversations” framework to model and practice conversations during class, that assumes Ignatius’s Presupposition of good intention and includes 5 attributes:
These conversation attributes are in my syllabus and they challenge us all to a higher level of respect and understanding. Reflection: how do you explicitly model and assume good will? Sources Kendi, Ibram. How to Be an Antiracist. Penguin, 2019. Lee, Laura. “The Value of Culturally Responsive Teaching in Distance Learning.” Edutopia. 15 June 2020. Massingale, Bryan N. “The Assumptions of White Privilege and What We Can Do About It.” National Catholic Reporter, 1 June 2020. Singleton, Glenn and Curtis Linton. Courageous Conversations About Race. Corwin Press, 2006.
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Last week was our annual PD Summer Seminar, developed for teachers. Sixty-four voluntary participants attended throughout the week – including educators from two additional Jesuit schools in our Jesuit province (UCS): Loyola Academy of St. Louis and Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas (TX). During the week, we learned about our new way proceeding (on campus and remotely) in the coming academic year, and we practiced concrete strategies for remote learning. Why? After our spring semester, we felt positive about our remote learning experiences. We had specific systems and supports in place, we tried new strategies, and we set high expectations for student learning and engagement – yet we remained flexible. Our belief in continuous quality improvement always challenges us to continue to get better. This PD Summer Seminar was the vehicle to help us get better. Below are 7 qualities of this experience that might prove useful to other schools and teachers when planning, implementing, and evaluating professional development. Coincidentally, teachers can use these same qualities with students as they plan for the coming year. Mission Especially during this pandemic, we are renewed in our mission as a Jesuit high school. Despite tremendous challenges (and trauma), we are hopeful we can continue to creep toward joyful giving through companionship and accompaniment with one another, through prayer, and by being reflective practitioners. As Ignatian educators in the Jesuit tradition, we live a certain way with one another and with our students. The Magis – How does the ongoing pandemic and racial inequity and unrest continuously challenge us to evaluate and be creative in new responses and in renewed reconciliation? As teachers and as students, how can we challenge one another in hopeful creativity and renewed reconciliation? The First Principle and Foundation - For everything has the potential of calling forth in us a deeper response to our life in God. Everything. As teachers and as students, how do we understand and live this ideal? How can we help one another to see this? The Life of St. Ignatius – “Ever since Manresa, the pilgrim had the habit when he ate with anyone not to speak at the table except to answer briefly; but he listened to what was said and noted some things which he took as an occasion to speak about God; and when the meal was finished, he did so.” (Powers of Imaging: Ignatius de Loyola - Antonio de Nicholas). As teachers and as students, how are we attentive to others? How do we note and speak to God? Cura Personalis – How do we simplify content and skills, while adding three essential components students need to be successful: executive functioning skills, digital competencies, and building trust and communities (on campus and remotely) by being authentic and allowing students to be authentic and feel supported. Jesuit Universal Apostolic Preferences – How do we walk with the marginalized (for us that is black students, GLBTQ students, students who are socio-economically disadvantaged, students – all – who experience trauma, and those students who have diagnosed learning differences and as such have school Learning Plans)? Especially today, how do we examine the impact of the pandemic and racial unrest on students and families? During this time, how do we accompany youth – living in the tension of competing priorities, all the while being hopeful amidst the continuous reality of an uncertain future? Ignatian Indifference (when simplifying curriculum) – What’s the big deal? A colleague raised this question during a conversation earlier in the PD Summer Seminar week. In terms of content, what’s a big deal for us to cover? Why? Is it because it’s essential or is it because we have a predisposition toward the content or skills? What’s most important? What’s not a big deal if students don’t get it this year? Indifference (Ignatian) means being detached enough from things, people, or experiences to be able either to take them up or to leave them aside, depending on whether they help us to “to praise, reverence, and serve God” (Spiritual Exercises 23). How can we apply this concept to curriculum choices we make: to simply and slow down? How are we living in Ignatian indifference and how can we model that for students? Students: How can we work with students to consider the life, choices, and way of St. Ignatius, to help us to know Jesus and God better? Data & Talent We designed our PD Summer Seminar after synthesizing survey results from faculty, students, and parents. Throughout the spring semester, we continuously surveyed and gathered data, talked with stakeholders during remote learning, and changed things up. One central question we posed to teachers: What do you need to be successful in the coming year, if we were to continue to be remote? During conversations with stakeholders, we were careful listeners, noting resources, tools, and strategies students and teachers need to be successful during remote learning. Our PD Summer Seminar design was the result of our attentiveness to needs. Who does what well? During our design process, we identified Area Experts in our building, based on experiences from March – May. We offered Area Experts opportunities to lead sessions through the PD Summer Seminar: teachers-teaching-teachers. This model has many unintended positive results: it provides Area Experts opportunities to lead; teachers are open to being led by their peers; and it gives everyone opportunities to practice with our technology infrastructures before the year begins. Students: How does data collection through student surveys and conversations drive our classrooms? How can we use Student Experts to help with technology and to help animate content and skills this year? Logical & Purposeful Design We designed our PD Summer Seminar with logic and flow that is similar to what students could experience in our courses this year. We began by introducing larger, philosophical and theoretical frameworks: Teaching and Learning in a New Model (session 1) and Creating Classroom Models for Remote Learning (session 2). We began with the why. We asked teachers to integrate research and external best practices with their own experiences from the spring to create new resources for themselves and others. Next, we narrowed our focus by re-introducing our digital platforms that we use with students: OnCampus and MSTeams (sessions 3 & 4). Third, breakout sessions led by area experts re-introduced participants to specific tech tools they can use during blended learning this year (sessions 5 & 6). The PD Summer Seminar ended with broader conversations about classwork, homework, assessment, curriculum initiatives, simplification, themes, creativity, and collaboration (sessions 7 & 8). There was strategy to our design. There was an ebb and flow. There was an effective interplay between offering content and practicing skills. Students: How can we revisit our academic curriculum, using logic and purpose, for students? Research, Best Practices, Experience The PD Summer Seminar sessions were rooted in research and best practices. Throughout the design of the Seminar, we gathered relevant research and best practices. As we continued to shape each Seminar session, we carefully chose specific research pieces for support. We asked Seminar participants to come to sessions having read the research and completed pre-session reflections and surveys. Finally, we embedded the research into session content, frameworks, and projects. We challenged participants to be reflective practitioners – using their experiences (IPP reflection and experience) to animate a new (and improved) way forward this coming year (IPP action and evaluation). Students: how can we work to integrate student experiences, reflection, action, and evaluation in the coming year? Practical & Product-Based Our PD Summer Seminar began with philosophical and theoretical frameworks: an overview of our schedule and building models for remote learning. But, we did not stay there. Quickly (after day 1), we moved to teaching and practicing. We provided concrete and practical strategies – tools – teachers could use in the coming year. Each day, we used meta-cognitive reflection to challenge teachers to articulate what, from the days, they will use. In addition, we embedded projects throughout the week. Participants walked away having either created or contributed to building individual and group products for use in the coming year. We began work with an Inventory Project that challenged Seminar participants to integrate research-based components into their way of proceeding in the coming year. These included how to help those most vulnerable by employing trauma-informed practices, culturally responsive teaching strategies, and suggestions for students with our Learning Plans. We continued by offering a session where Seminar participants worked together to develop strategies for our Remote Learning Classrooms. In both projects, we reminded Seminar participants throughout the week to continue to build and “add to” these evolving works. Throughout the week we introduced resources for Seminar participants to “contribute to” and use in their own Inventory Projects and Classroom Modeling Projects. We asked participants to comment on and contribute to our school’s Remote Learning Handbook. We asked Seminar Participants to look at their curriculum through the Jesuit Universal Apostolic Preferences (especially Walking with the Marginalized and Accompanying Youth). We provided strategies for curriculum simplification, and we challenged participants to continue to think about their own curriculum through the lenses of being creative and collaborative. PD Summer Seminar participants left the week with concrete frameworks and products that they worked on – individually and as a group – throughout the week, to use in the coming year. Students: How can we embed frameworks and project-base learning with students during our classes this year? Walking with the Marginalized Walking with the marginalized (in particular, black students, those who have experienced trauma, students with Learning Plans) is a priority during an academic year that is hybrid (on campus and remote) and unpredictable. During the Seminar, we re-introduced trauma-informed teaching practices, culturally responsive teaching strategies, and methods for assisting students with Learning Plans. Students: Our new way of proceeding impacts those on the margins. How will we continue to embed relevant strategies to help these students and how can we continuously respond to their needs through research-based strategies, best practices, and based upon our existing experiences? Modeling We are living in a new and different reality. When we return to school, our way of proceeding will be influenced by trauma and by circumstances that have required us to change our facilities. PD Summer Seminar teachers participating on campus during the week got a preview of what is to come: they saw a building changed and they practiced safety procedures. Our classrooms are different. Seats are spaced 6’ apart in every classroom. Non-traditional spaces are now classrooms. New technology has been added, while previous technology in place in our building is no longer usable. Teachers practiced wearing masks, continuously sanitizing, and maintaining 6’ of distance. This stuff is strange and hard. But, because we want to succeed in school, we are adapting and flexible. PD Summer Seminar teachers participating remotely experienced what students experience, and they practiced about how they will be teaching and how students will be learning in the coming year. Finally, the PD Summer Seminar integrated choice and flexibility:
During the PD Summer Seminar, we purposefully modeled choice and flexibility. Students: How can provide our learners with voice and choice this year? How can we model and expect flexibility with students? Meta-Cognition and Growth During the PD Summer Seminar, we frequently challenged participants to “step out” of the Seminar – noting specific design strategies they could use in the coming year. I stopped sessions and said, “Let’s take a step back, note, and add to our list of strategies” – not only challenging participants to list strategies embedded in their experiences but also asking them to look at the overall way we were proceeding – for clues on how teachers could teach in the coming year. This meta-cognition is essential. Concrete lists of take-aways is important. The final session of the Seminar (session 9) was a review of all the content and skills from the week. During the review, we encouraged participants to break open their notes, highlight important concepts, circle ideas, and underline important strategies. Finally, we challenged teachers to revisit/create two goals for the coming year, perhaps based on the Seminar. I encouraged faculty to revisit their Growth & Renewal Reflections (from May) and offered these questions:
Tying the PD Summer Seminar to other institutional frameworks– like our existing Growth & Renewal – challenges teachers to make sense of new knowledge and skills in the context of predictable and supportive processes. Students: How can we continuously remind students of connections in our classes and beyond, during the school year? |
Pete MussoAssistant Principal, Curriculum & Instruction Archives
May 2022
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