advocating for equity and equity 101

Advocating for Equity in our

Schools and Locals

Welcome!

Think about the current state of “Equity Work” in your school and/or local…

Lenses of Equity

● race● gender● sexual orientation● socioeconomic status● ability● home or first language● religion● national origin● age● physical appearance

Focusing in… on RaceIndividually and collectively, we need to develop the skill, knowledge, and capacity to:

• come to deeper understandings about race in our personal and professional lives

• make visible, and actively work against, systemic racism

• exercise leadership to disrupt systemic racial disparities

Four Agreements

● Stay engaged● Speak your truth● Experience discomfort● Expect and accept non-

closure

Six Conditions

• Focus on the personal, local and immediate• Isolate race• Normalize social construction & multiple

perspectives• Monitor agreements, conditions and establish

parameters• Use a “working definition” for race• Examine the presence and role of “Whiteness”

Senge et al. (2002). Schools That Learn

As we experience the Iceberg we:

React to Events

Predict Patterns and Trends

Design Systemic Structures

Transform Mental Models

The Iceberg

8

Affirmative Involvement Plan: Human Rights Committee and EMAC

“Equity 101”

• Unconscious Bias• Privilege• Critical Race Theory• Microagressions

Understanding Privilege

• Privilege is defined as those conditions and circumstances enjoyed by a person because he/she is a member of the majority group in a society at any given point in time.

• Majority group refers to the largest group, while a minority group is a group with fewer members represented in the social system.

• For the purposes of a discussion about privilege, majority group also signifies the group that has historically held advantages in terms of power and economic resources.

• In an American context, it refers to able-bodied men of Anglo-Christian, heterosexual background.

Unconscious Bias• Refers to stereotypes about groups of people that

individuals forms outside their own consciousness• Replicates the social hierarchy and influences behavior• Results in decisions and actions based on perceptions of

people’s gender, race, class and other characteristics• Often completely incompatible with our values

Critical Race Theory

What does this documentary say about the interplay betweenour individuality and our membership in social groups?

How do we frame and discuss this video, in terms of education?

A Girl Like Me (2006), a short film by teen producer Kiri Davis. Online at http://www.reelworks.org/watch.php

• The ability to make increasingly more complex perceptual distinctions about one’s experience with cultural differences

• As a person’s experience of cultural differences becomes more complex, the ability to adapt behavior appropriate to a cultural context increases

• The ability to perceive - and therefore experience - cultural differences in more complex ways is the central dynamic of the DMIS theory

Intercultural Competence/ Sensitivity

Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity

Denial DefenseReversal

Minimization Acceptance Adaptation Integration

Ethnocentrism Ethno-relativism

A theory-referenced inventory




Ethnocentrism Ethno-relativism


Denial Defense/Reversal


ethnocentrism ethnorelativism

Characterized by polarized us/them distinctions

Cultural difference now has more reality

Needs to become more tolerant of differences

Tends to exalt other cultures and puts down own

Capacity for self-criticism

Needs to recognize all cultures have good and bad elements



Minimization

Acceptance Adaptation Integration


Cultural differences are placed in familiar categories

Recognizes essential humanity of every person, common ground

Needs to learn to avoid projecting your culture onto everyone else’s experience





Characterized by elaboration of categories of cultural difference

Recognizes cultural differences and sees value

Needs to develop capacity to “shift perspectives”

Achievement Gap Data

Watch the first portion of the video.

• Describe the dancer’s strengths.• Describe the dancer’s deficits.• Compare your lists.• Insights? Implications for learning and teaching?

Common Subjective Evaluations of Behavior

Hyperactive• Impulsive• Distractible• ___________• Inattentive• Unpredictable• ____________• Stubborn, irritable• Aggressive• ____________

Energetic• ___________• Creative• Imaginative• Global thinker with a wide focus• __________• Independent• Committed, sensitive• __________• Unique

What can you do?

Asset-mindset

Believing students have potential they can nurture also diminishes the stress (and its debilitating hormones) teachers experience from the feelings of incompetence or hopelessness that are precipitated by a constant focus on weaknesses. The stress hormones are replace by endorphins (pleasure hormones) stimulated by the observations of students’ potential, making teaching more gratifying. This feeling of gratification is then manifested in behaviors (receptivity, responsiveness, energy) that make the learning experience more pleasurable for the students as well.

Setting goals

Amplifying your voice by USING it.What does this look like?Over time?Large and small scale?EdMN and other resources…

advocating for equity and equity 101

Education