Challenge Day Highlights: Education, LT'21
To keep you connected to current issues and topics discussed in the Flagship Program, LT shares highlights and resources from our Challenge Days. This write-up is a brief overview of the day and is organized around the three curriculum outcomes.
To get a feel for the full day, read the agenda HERE. For a full list of resources related to this Challenge Day, read the prework HERE. The day was designed to support movement toward these learning outcomes:
Community and Belonging: Build strong connections among people across many lived experiences. Feel inspired and empowered to act by belonging to an enduring community of regional stewards.
Regional Challenges and Opportunities: Understand regional challenges and opportunities and how they are interconnected, including how systemic racism impedes our ability to create a healthy community for all.
Leadership: Grow skills, tools, and strategies to act as a leader and change agent in one’s own chosen area, including an ability to work within and across sectors to address systemic racism and build a more resilient and equitable region.
Many thanks to Comcast and Kaiser Permanente for their sponsorship of this day and leadership in our community.
Learning Outcome: Community & Belonging
Sharing Educational Journeys
Class members watched "The People Vs. The School System," a short video that highlights the limitations of of standardization in education and advocates for more critical and creative approaches to teaching and learning. Class members reflected individually and then in small groups about their educational journeys.
Learning Outcome: Regional Challenges and Opportunities
Transforming Educational Policies, Mary Fertakis, Curriculum Committee; Shomari Jones, LT’10, Curriculum Committee
LT'21 analyzed two examples of school discipline policies which have characteristics that are common across educational settings: "Zero Tolerance Policy" and "Student Behavior, Corrective Actions and/or Interventions Policy." The class explored the ways inequities take shape in policies and thought together about how to revise the policies to work toward greater equity and justice.
Learning Outcome: Leadership
Educational Leadership and Change in Action at the School, District, and State Levels with Mary Fertakis, Curriculum Committee; Shomari Jones, LT’10, Curriculum Committee
Shomari Jones, LT’10, Curriculum Committee
Mary Fertakis, Honorary LT, Curriculum Committee
Felicia Ishino, a member of the LT'21 cohort, facilitated an engaging conversation with Mary and Shomari about their educational leadership journeys. Here are a few takeaways:
We need greater diversity in our community of teachers. In Washington state, 89% of teachers are white (mostly women and middle class). Kids of color make up 48.9% of the student population.This needs to change because teachers bring cultural norms and implicit biases to their work that may be shaped by their racial identities.
Policies are not neutral. They either exacerbate inequities, perpetuate inequities, mitigate inequities, or eliminate inequities.
People are a barrier to systemic change, due to lack of knowledge and experience, as well as fear of change.
Change comes from questioning our educational system. Within your realm of authority, where can you push on the system? How can you leverage your positionality to make change?
Policy transformation is a long process, which should involve the voices of staff, board members, families, students, and historically marginalized groups.
