Good morning or afternoon depending on where you are. Welcome to this one-hour webinar co-hosted by the Learning Policy Institute and the National Urban League. This webinar is open to the public and is being recorded. The recording will be emailed to you in a few days and available at the link that was just shared in the chat. Today's webinar is the third in a series of which the Learning Policy Institute and the National Urban League have hosted. The previous webinars, Making ESO's Equity Promise Real and Reaching Equity, Strategies for Solving Teacher Shortages in Underserved Communities, can be viewed at this link. Please do sign up for the Learning Policy Institute's mailing list to receive a notification or check their website's upcoming events page for future webinars. So we're going to go to the agenda overview. Today we'll begin with a presentation by Shana Cook Harvey. We'll then hear from Wendy Lopez-Aflito and then Elmani Viney, followed by a moderated discussion in which some of the previously submitted audience questions will be addressed. And finally, we'll have some time to respond to additional questions we received from the audience during the webinar. We encourage you to submit your questions throughout the presentation in the chat box at the lower right of your screen. Please make sure all participants is selected from the drop-down menu to ensure that we can see your questions. Before I turn the webinar over to Shana, I'd like to briefly introduce her. Shana Cook Harvey is the Director of Social Emotional Learning at Folsom Cordova United School District. There she is leading the effort to design and implement a district-wide approach to meeting the needs of the whole child, social, emotional, and academic. Before joining Folsom Cordova Unified School District, Shana was a senior researcher at the Learning Policy Institute in Palo Alto, where she coauthored the report Educating the Whole Child, Improving School Climate to Support Student Success. Shana has a PhD in Race, Inequality, and Language and Education from the Stanford Graduate School of Education, and she began her career in education as a high school English teacher and literacy coach in Los Angeles Unified School District. Shana is going to begin by sharing more about why these issues matter and the research behind it. Shana? Hi. Good morning, everyone. Good afternoon. So, I'm going to start by first doing a little bit of an overview about what we know from science, and then kind of diving into more about, you know, how that, what the implications are for the whole child's framework that we present in the paper, and then, you know, thinking a little bit about what the different features are within each of those domains. So, let's go ahead and get started. So, what we know is that the brain and the development of intelligences are actually malleable. The brain develops throughout the life, throughout the entire lifespan as a function of experiences that activate the neural pathways, which allow for new kinds of learning, thinking, and performance. And these experiences really matter greatly for this to take place, and that includes secure relationships, a rich and stimulating learning environment, and engaging in back-to-back conversation. You know, we also know that variability in human development is the norm as well. The pace and profile of each child's development is unique, and yet schools are often designed in such a way that doesn't take this into consideration. You know, students are batched in ways that assume that all kids will learn and develop in the same ways. And so, it's time to rethink how we organize students for learning. Furthermore, what we know is that human relationships are actually the essential ingredient that catalyzes development and learning. Adversity affects development and learning as well, and how schools respond or don't respond to adversity actually matters greatly as well. The next piece that's really important here is that learning is social, emotional and academic. The minute we assume otherwise, we're missing an important opportunity to engage the heart, the emotions, and the mind of children in learning, which is required for memory, motivation, creativity, higher-order thinking, and the like. You can imagine, you know, if you've ever been in a stressful situation, we often say, I can't think straight, and that actually is exactly what happens to kids who are living in adversity and trauma, as often they feel they can't actually engage in learning because of those outside stressors. You know, children actually also actively construct the knowledge based on their experiences, relationships, and social context. And in order to really meet the needs of the whole child, then educators must understand how developmental processes interact, and then also unfold over time if we're going to design supportive environments for development and learning. So I ask, what does this mean for how we organize schools and respond to the needs of the whole child? So the whole child's framework is a multifaceted kind of thing that Linda and I and others at the Learning Policy Institute spent a lot of time putting together to try and articulate what are the different features of, you know, a whole child approach to learning. First is the positive school climate within which students are asked to learn, right? So to support student achievement, attainment, and behavior, research suggests that schools should attend to these four domains, school climate, social-emotional learning, instructional strategies, and individualized support. A whole child approach is more than just a common name or something that sounds a catchphrase for now. It really is one that recognizes the inner relationships among all areas of development and designs school policies and practices to support them. If we say we believe in a whole child framework, but we're not actually designing the structures and the elements of the school day to support and allow for that, then we're not actually doing what a whole child framework calls for. So that includes access to nutritious food, healthcare, social supports, secure relationships, educative and restorative disciplinary practices, and learning opportunities that are designed to challenge and engage students while supporting their motivation and self-confidence to persevere and succeed. In a whole child approach, all aspects of a child's well-being are supported to ensure that learning happens in deep, meaningful, and lasting ways. This approach is premised also on the fact that children's learning depends on the combination of all of these features working together, and although our society and our schools often compartmentalize these processes and treat them as distinct from one another, I hear often, oh, that's not my job or that's not my responsibility, we actually can't do that when we're working with children. To treat the child as distinct from the many contexts that he or she experiences is actually erroneous, and the science of learning and development demonstrates just how tightly interrelated all of these are and how they jointly produce the outcomes which we say we want, and actually might get us to closing and eliminating the achievement and opportunity gap that has persisted for generations. I'll say one last thing on this, you know, people often ask, well, why now? Why is there this renewed interest in the whole child approaches, or social emotional learning isn't actually new, it's been around for generations, and part of that has to do with our federal landscape, and moving from no child left behind to every student succeeds allows us to be innovative in the ways that we implement and use research-based practices to create the settings in which we know students will thrive. So, the first component that I want to dive into with this kind of framework is thinking about the learning environment. We know that the environment within which students are asked to learn, and within which teachers are teaching matters greatly. Climate and culture are often conflated or used interchangeably to mean the same thing, and I don't think that's a problem most of the time, but it might be worth distinguishing between the two. So, climate actually is how we feel. It has to do with our perception of the environment. It's our interpretation of the way things are going, which is why in schools that do school climate surveys, children are asked to complete their survey, educators, and parents, and that's because depending on your role, depending on where you sit, you might have, and very often do, have very different perceptions of an environment, right, and that allows educators to actually remedy those things that might be invisible to them if they weren't asking. Furthermore, culture is actually what we do. It's how the people in the school act and behave. These can be explicit or, you know, unintentional things that really where the space and the environment tells us what's agreed upon. I'd like to say sometimes a good example of this would be if there's a sign that says no running in the hallway, but every child is running in the hallway and no adult stops the students from running, then actually the culture of the space is that you're allowed to run in the hallway. So when we talk about climate and culture, it matters greatly in terms of safety and really unlocking the potential for students to take risks, to be innovative, to ask questions without fear, social, emotional, or physical or otherwise. And so part of creating the safe environment is allowing for the conditions for social and emotional and academic learning. And it's worth unpacking here what we mean by social emotional learning. So the definition here is laid out in green, which is articulated by the collaborative for academic and social emotional learning, CASEL. They also identify five main areas of competence, which is evident also in that wheel. I also want to point to the blue rings around the outside of the CASEL wheel to really underscore that social emotional learning takes place in schools and classrooms, but also in the home and in community, which really points to the importance of having those partnerships with community. Educators have long known that academic learning and social emotional learning go hand in hand and are actually mutually reinforcing, which means that the development of pro-social mindsets, skills, and habits actually gives students the capacity to persist through challenging work. It allows them to collaborate with others, take risks, think critically and communicate effectively. Social emotional and other conditions of cognitive engagement actually influence the effect of salience of instruction, meaning including how safe they feel and how students focus their attention and make decisions. And it can include all of the following that are listed here. Opportunities to integrate SEL and cognitive skills. Guidance to develop those skills. Using restorative practices that actually support skill building rather than just punishment, which doesn't do much for changing behavior. The next piece that's critically important is the engaging learning experiences. If we're neglecting the actual curriculum and instruction that our kids are asked to engage with, then we're missing a crucial component of the whole child framework. Researchers have found that student motivation in the classroom is fostered by three major considerations. First, the nature of the task. Second, the nature of the learner. And third, the learning environment. So I want to talk a little bit about the learning experiences here. Our goal should be to create experiences that enhance intrinsic motivation, which we know results in higher quality learning and increased creativity. Educators can provide these sorts of experiences that focus on learning goals rather than grade attainment through the use of scaffolding and support by emphasizing effort and improvement by treating mistakes as learning opportunities by offering students the opportunity to revise their work. That's getting a growth mindset. By minimizing individual competition and comparison and by grouping students by topic and interest rather than by choice or performance. And the final piece that I'll touch on with regard to the research is just how important it is to offer opportunities for personalized and integrated supports. And that can can be a lot of things, including multi tiered systems of support under which you'll have response to intervention and PBIS and SEL efforts. But in essence, schools should be creating a collaborative, unified approach to working with staff, families and support providers to meet the needs of students and address learning barriers based on this shared developmental framework. But if you have the developmental framework kind of as the foundation, then all of the other things that happen in the school environment actually should be working in service to that knowledge. Effective school environment to take a systemic approach to promoting children's development. We also know that within this framework, you know, advisory and trauma occur in all communities as does healthy and development. So it's not to say that adversity and trauma are relegated to certain populations that that's not actually the case. But what really matters is how schools are responding to it. So science has found that stress is a normal part of healthy development, but excessive stress in any of these contexts at home, at school or in other aspects of the community can actually undermine learning and development and have profound effects on children's well being. And so well designed supports, including specific programs and interventions that buffer children against excessive stress, can enable resilient resilience and success even for children who have faced serious adversity and trauma. And that is the science background. Thank you for that, Shauna. And I really appreciate your presentation. As we had brought this idea together to have the webinar today, one of the things that we really wanted to start with was the research case, but also more so with a focus on who this conversation is impacting, which is the child. And so thank you for lifting that up and also for emphasizing what is very important, which is that there is an intersection between the home and the community, the school and the learning environment that all works to create a conditions in which a child can learn. So thank you. A quick reminder to our audience to ask questions or engage in discussion. We ask that you please use the chat box in the right of your screen and select all participants from the drop down. And now I'd like to introduce Wendy. Before we turn to her work, I want to tell you a little bit about her. Wendy Lopez Afleto is the vice president of content and partnerships for learning heroes, which connects parents to useful information and actions they can take to help their children thrive in school and in life. Wendy has a background in philanthropy, family and community engagement and education. She previously worked at American Express supporting a philanthropic platform that was focused on nonprofit leadership development. Prior to that, Wendy worked for Scholastic on their comprehensive family and community engagement initiative. And she has experience in the classroom having been an elementary school teacher. Wendy, we're looking forward to hearing more about the work of learning heroes, particularly in the areas of engaging parents, educators and communities in social and emotional and academic learning. Wendy. Thanks so much, Robin. And to everyone so excited to be speaking with you all today and looking forward to the conversation. So to begin, I wanted to highlight just a bit about the research of our latest study called developing life skills in children. And then the second half of my presentation will be to go over some some resources that will hopefully that might be helpful. And I want to stress that we're really meant to be program agnostic and be supportive of the great work that's happening in our communities around around this topic. So to begin just a bit about learning heroes, we're a relatively young organization about four years old. And our mission is to inform and equip parents so they can best support their children's educational and developmental success. We are not a direct service provider. And so our work really is focused on understanding parent mindsets and research, which is a bit of what I'm going to focus on today. And as it relates to the resources that we create, we really rely on trust messengers, right, the folks working on the ground with parents every day. And so we're really proud and honored to have such a great network of partners like the National Urban League, Unidos US, Univision, Galactic, Great Schools, among many others who help us reach parents day in and day out. And with everything that we create, we're always thinking about how resources can be embedded within existing infrastructures, because we know that a top down approach just does not work. And so as much as our resources can be used and adapted to strengthen local efforts, that's what we're always aiming for with our partners. So we always begin our work with first listening to parents, really listening. And so we want to understand parents, their mindsets, right, so their needs, their concerns, their priorities. And we're really proud to have at this point done an unprecedented amount of research around parent mindsets, which has included over 100 focus groups across 25 states, dozens of in depth interviews, quantitative surveys. And I want to just highlight that we also, part of this, we released national reports, which are really meant to be supportive to the field so that together we can continue to best understand parents, really tell their communications to meet them where they are, as the experts of their children. We always focus on low income parents and communities, African American communities and Latino parents. So I'm really excited to share a new body of work that was meant to get a deeper understanding of how parents think, feel prioritized and talk about the intersection of social emotional, cognitive and academic development. The really great news is not surprising me is that what we found is that parents are really where the science is. As Shannon was speaking, she came around, you know, style and stress, they can't focus at school. And we really saw that parents inherently sort of get that that these skills are interconnected, which is a great opportunity to build on. So just briefly a bit about the studies methodology, our research partner was at research and the study included quantitative and qualitative. A couple of things just to note, it was a nationally representative sample of over 2000 K8 parents, again, with an over sample of African American and Latino parents. And I think what allowed us to really get some some great insight was that we were able to do six focus groups on the front end. Again, looking at these different communities to get a nice cross section of rural, urban, suburban communities. So six focus groups in the front end that then informed the survey and the questions. And then we were able to do four focus groups on the back end to really dig into what we learned with both the quant and the qualitative on the front end. To go through some of, again, these are just really briefly the four main insights. The full study is available at our website at thelearninghero.org. But for the purpose of today's short presentation, wanted to highlight these four. So the first is that parents really believe that these skills, these life skills, as they refer to them, begin at home. They not only feel responsible for teaching these skills, but believe it's important for families to identify what skills are important to them and their family's culture. However, they do expect and want these skills to be reinforced at schools. And the tricky part, which I'll talk about in a moment, is that they want them to be reinforced and expect them to be reinforced at school, but don't necessarily want schools to cross the line as it relates to grading their children around these skills. The second is that real-world examples really help bring these strategies to life. The parents need context examples. They want to know what these skills look like, sound like, how they can be supported. And so we can't underestimate the power of video, for example, to show what we're talking about. And we found that it can really go a long way. The third is that Edu Dargan, as we say, just doesn't translate. So many parents haven't necessarily heard some of the terms that we use to reference this work. And when they haven't heard of them, they sometimes make up their own interpretations of them, have sort of a different sense of what the word might mean. And so in a moment, we'll just give some examples of that and some suggestions. Again, this study was really about communication. We're not necessarily endorsing any one framework. This is just meant to really uncover how parents sort of show up and think about these terms. And the fourth insight, as I alluded to earlier, had to do just with measurement. And so while parents want feedback as to how their children are progressing with these important life skills, they don't necessarily want their child to be graded on some of these skills. And so we definitely sort of heard that pushback, loud and clear pick from parents. So to share a little bit, just for context, in some of our other work, we have seen that parents, first and foremost, really care about their child's overall happiness, as well as their social and emotional development. For the purpose of this study, one of the first questions that we asked was how parents would rank these different areas as it relates to their child's school. And so you'll see, not surprisingly, that safety and security in academics are at the top. But I think interesting to note that the development of social and emotional skills is still pretty up there, with 86% of parents saying that it's a high priority as it relates to their child's school and 47% saying it's a top priority. So as I mentioned, this was really meant to uncover how parents think about, talk about these skills. And so what we did as a sort of a starting point was we took 60 terms that are commonly used throughout many different frameworks and commonly used in schools, and asked parents to rank the top 10 that were most important to them. And so you'll see that these, this is how it sort of fell out. These were the top, so respect, self-esteem, confidence, problem solving, social skills. Interesting to know that respect was sort of clearly came to the top. And yet in the, in the follow-up focus groups is that respect has even, you know, different definitions for different families. For some parents, it meant respecting old elders or respecting others. Other family, my child understands that respect has to be earned. And so that was some of the nuance that we wanted to unpack in some of the follow-up. Interestingly, you'll see that many, a few are selected, some of these skills like curiosity, resilience, growth, mindset. These are all skills that we know are incredibly important. And what we found is that, you know, it wasn't necessarily that parents don't, don't believe that the behaviors related to these skills are important. They just often weren't necessarily as familiar with them. And so I think, you know, one example from here is, you know, curiosity. We know that it's such an important attribute for our children. And yet parents say, well, I don't want my child to be too curious, you know, then, you know, they'll get in trouble as it relates to things that they shouldn't be doing. To give you a little bit more color, as I mentioned, we impact this in focus groups. And this is just an example of how parents sort of interpreted these words or just was clear that parents weren't necessarily familiar with them. For terms like self-regulation, parents said, what does this mean? Is it like therapy? And so one suggestion could be to just sort of really impact it and sort of use parent-friendly speech. So using something like self-control for grit, you know, a term that has been, is used frequently and is really important. And yet for some parents, they said, well, that sounds negative. It sounds like a struggle. They even said that it sounded dirty. And so one suggestion might be to say, you know, taking on challenges or learning from effort. These are things that parents, you know, really value. And so we want to just really, you know, break it down for them. Growth mindset, something that we know is so incredibly important. And yet this really sort of left parents scratching their heads. They said, you know, not sure what that means. Is that, you know, seeing a different picture? One dad in a focus group who was incredibly articulate and clear that he was really involved with his child's education.   And so one suggestion might be just, again, in defining this, that you're explaining that it's, you know, in part around learning from mistakes. So these are just some examples. And this is something that we do with a lot of our work around communicating with parents is to just look at the nuances and how we can just help parents see what these terms look like and sound like in everyday lives, in their everyday lives. So broadly speaking, we started with some, with the focus groups just completely unaided, wanted to see how parents talk about social, emotional, and academic learning. And it became really clear that parents, the most commonly used term was life skills. This is how they started referring to them. And when we probed after the qualitative and the quantitative that demonstrated that this was the term, they said, you know, it's because it's simple, it's all-encompassing, because you use them every day in life, schools, jobs, and family. And again, as I mentioned, parents really sort of got that they were interconnected. So this is not to say that we can't use these other terms, it's just something to, I think, be aware of as we're writing for parent audiences. So finally, to the, to the last insight around pushback on formal assessments, what we saw was that parents very much want feedback. And they, when we asked them to rank the ways in which they would want to hear, you'll see that they said, you know, regular communication from teachers about their child's attitude, behaviors, skill development, feedback from their, from the child themselves, which I think is great to hear, right? So talking to the child about how their school was, discussion at parent and teacher conferences, when we showed, though, some examples of different kinds of assessments, assessments, we definitely did see pushback as it relates to grading. You know, they definitely said that they don't want their child to be graded or given a report card for skills like grit or love, which were some of the examples. So finally, we were able to, we're lucky enough to be able to work with the Commission for Social, Emotional and Academic Development at the same time that they were doing their work in the midst of research. And so they tapped us to contribute to their communications playbook. And so we're excited to be right now piloting, we're piloting some of these tools. Again, they are meant to be program agnostic and really meant to be integrated, adapted, and modified to support existing program models. And so all of the resources are at this link on our website, belearninghero.org, backslash, parent mindsets. And some of the tools include not only the full body of, the full report of the research that I just highlighted, but also a parent perspectives workshop, a facilitator's guide that is meant to foster local conversations to help see what parents, what are some of the life skills that they care most about. We know that, you know, it depends on local community and culture. And so we think, you know, allowing that open forum and safe place for parents to really be partners in identifying and being able to share what are some of the life skills that they care about. And then even talking about what some of the resources that they would want to see for their community and for their children. In addition to that, the Commission has worked with Edutopia to create some really great videos. The Commission has also created some different social media assets and posters. A good portion of these materials are available in English and in Spanish, and the case studies will be available in April. Really quickly, just to highlight with the workshop for parents, it was built in an awfully turnkey way, and so the full workshop an hour and a half, but it also was built to be modular, so you could do the short activities, you know, weekly if you wanted to, or how whatever would fit your program's model. And finally, this is just an example of some of the the print posters that is also, and there's also a social media version of this, that the Commission created, as you'll see. The whole point is to just really communicate that this is how learning happens. And that, you know, if your child, you know, wants to be a, you know, a doctor, a good friend, a basketball player, it's not one or the other, it can be, it can be and, and so the skills that she needs for all of those are really interconnected. And finally, wanted to just provide my contact information. We're always eager for feedback and really welcome the opportunity to speak with you all, and hopefully see if any of these resources or even the insights, you know, are relevant to your work. Thank you, Wendy. We really appreciate this. And before we transition to our, thank you, before you transition to our next presenter, just a quick and final reminder to the audience, to ask questions and engage in discussion, please do use the chat box to the right of your screen and select all participants from the drop-down. I see that some of you all are taking advantage of that. Next I'd like to introduce our presenter, Elmani Vining. Elmani has taught for over 20 years at the Scadaway High School in New Jersey, where he also leads the district's 50 strong peer-to-peer mentoring program. Elmani is also the executive director of the Kappa Alpha Psi Foundation, where he leads and supports the 400 plus youth mentoring programs, serving more than 14,000 young men of color across the country. Under his leadership, Kappa League, Kappa Alpha Psi Foundation's youth leadership program has become recognized as one of the nation's leading programs for young men of color while launching innovative initiatives that have resulted in increasing college acceptance rates of young men and raising millions of dollars in academic scholarships. Elmani serves on the mentoring stakeholders advisory team for the national mentoring partnership mentor, and it's worked closely with the White House Initiative for Educational Excellence for African Americans and the Campaign for Black Male Achievement to share with us the lens of how social-emotional learning, whole-child approaches happen in the classroom, in the community. I present to you Elmani Vining. Once again, my name is Elmani. Hello everyone. Hopefully everybody can hear me. For this part, I don't have any slides. Instead, I want to engage in a very short conversation so that we can just move rather quickly to question and answer. I'm as a high school educator, social-emotional, I think in my once opinion there is an incredible gap between the needs of our students on a social-emotional aspect and our ability to provide and support those needs. And there's a couple of challenges that come with that. And so what I'd like to do is first list the challenges and areas that need to be significantly addressed and then from there I'd like to then move on to just some solutions, some things that we do once again in the classroom. So the first major challenge that we see in terms of social-emotional, especially in terms of on the high school level, is that one, our guidance counseling staff is overwhelmed. The second thing is most of our teachers are not trauma-informed or given and provided professional development as what it means to be informed in terms of cultural competency, in terms of social-emotional wellness. The other thing, and it's a hard conversation to have but it's a blunt one we need to have, is that far often we see in our classrooms many of our teachers not having the same experiences as which our students have. This is especially obvious or overt when we're in areas where as the cultural makeup of the teachers are predominantly white, whereas there is a significant demographic, i.e. between 40 percent of more, where students of color are dominant within the school, and that causes some sort of a friction and I'll give you a perfect example of that. In my classroom I may have a student who is not performing well. For someone like myself I may dig a little deeper and find out that there's an issue going on in the child's home. The child has been exposed to trauma, some other things the child may have to attend. And so when I get a response from the guidance counselor in terms of how is this child doing, for me I'm talking about these underlying issues that may be dulling the academic performance. Unfortunately, sometimes with some of my colleagues I have seen where they just say student isn't doing work, homework's not in, needs to pay more attention in class, and there's no delving infancy if there's something more underlying. And so we see that critical issue happens there that also then falls into school discipline. So when we talk about social emotional we do know that for example children of color even down the kindergarten are oftentimes seen as being older and are just in discipline as older than their white counterparts. And so what do we see here? A young man of color that may be having a bad day maybe speaking out loud then it is trending to for the teacher sometimes to say I'm calling security. Whereas if that was not a young man of color or if that wasn't someone that was seen as hostile it may be thought of we need to send you to guidance counseling. Right there that may not seem like a lot but what ends up happening is one route could lead the child to anywhere between one to 10 days suspension depending on how bad the conflict becomes or the other hand or the other side to where as it's going to the guidance counselor and conflict resolution takes place and the child or the student is heard out. Okay these are some of the conflicts that we see and now I know I have a lot more to go into but I know we're short on time. So let me just highlight a couple of the other issues that's causing this. Right I know I saw something about achievement gap. It's not so much the achievement gap it's the gap in competency and then the gap in services as well as and we go back to competency the gap in terms of the competency of school leaders and board leaders. So for example one of the things that we see that there is a gap in professional development around social emotional wellness and trauma informed care as it pertains to teaching or educating our staff even of the administration. We also see a gap in terms of our schools of education on both the post-secondary and graduate level in terms of confronting these issues or being more overt in its discussion on the graduate level for school potential new school administrators. That's not addressed. The other thing is of course the gap in terms of the number of teachers of color that we do have within our school system and then another thing and this is something that's not often times hard to find but I think for the national urban way this is something that should be. Looking at how informed and educated are our school board members in terms of these issues of trauma informed in terms of the issues in terms of cultural competency as they think about policy especially when they think about how they are judging the academic or judging the quality of the type of teach they have is it more academic driven or is there leeway or flexibility for the teacher to understand the social emotional issues that their children may be dealing with. So these are some of the things last but not least another key thing that we need to understand and it's not just on the high school level but it's also on the district level and this is somebody talked about something about deficit data and that is critical because when you ask what is the mission of a school district it falls into two categories is it to help increase high school graduation rate or is it to increase or maintain improved college acceptance rate that lens makes a fundamentally different trajectory in terms of what the teachers the educators the staff is directed to do. One side is deficit data when we're only saying we're just want them to graduate from high school whereas the other side is more asset space framework because we're looking at the potential of the student as we think about college and career placement but there's a lot more that goes into that but once again looking at time I think it's important to have the opportunity for Q&A for all of the panelists here so I'm going to stop right there to the moderators and feel free to open up for Q&A. Thank you Elimani and I will this is Robin again and I thank you for raising the point about the role of school boards in identifying teachers and the level of preparation that they have. We the National Urban League were recently able to attend the National School Board Association equity symposium and this was one of the key areas that was brought up for discussion with those school board members from across the country. It's a very timely point and intersects with two of the questions that we have so I'm going to share this with all the panelists and any one of you who wants to respond please feel free and so we're going to try to intersect actually two questions. One is what is the role of the state and district in supporting these efforts that all of you all have highlighted and in this particular context how can stakeholders overcome equity issues and race aligned achievement gaps in settings where school system leaders from board members to superintendents central office leaders and school principals at times are driven not simply by ill-informed deficit assumptions but by what is often anti-black racism and elitism how can we have progress what is the role of state and districts in supporting the school board efforts and another one of our participants has asked how can stakeholders overcome these equity issues and race aligned achievement gaps as we work toward supporting student needs. So it's mine I can jump I want to jump in on that and I'll keep my comments brief due to time. I think the number one thing and I think the natural urban league can play a critical role here I think it is important to educate the parents and community in regards to what achievement looks like I do believe that our school systems are driven by systemic racism and classism and gender discrimination. I wholeheartedly believe it I've seen it and it's right up front but you cannot confront it unless you know what the opposite looks like so for example you cannot confront or know hey this is anti-black racism this is a systemically racist school district if the community doesn't understand the difference between how their community is treated or their students are driven or defined or where academic achievement is defined for them i.e. graduation rates versus the school district down the street to where as academic achievement is defined by how many top 50 universities their children get into because now once you educate the parents of the community on that to educate them on the differences of not just instruction but resources that are provided to the student in school after school as well as resources that's provided to the parents in school or after school and so to me the education of the community is most important on what achievement looks like so that they are able to think questions properly individuals running for the board individuals looking to become the next district leaders on the on the as superintendents or school leaders as principals or vice-principals and even guidance counseling so i think that is absolutely critical there thank you for that and that's some of the work that we do through project reading through their equity and excellence program you're absolutely right um shana do you have examples of how um you may have addressed some of these questions within the fulsome kadova school district sure yeah sure that's a it's such a good question um and i think it's something that our district is definitely addressing head-on right now we are working diligently to um specifically disrupt the the status quo and i think that that requires bravery on behalf of the superintendent which our leadership here is really you know leading the charge and charging all of our school leaders as well as our um certificated and classified management leaders to really focus on building positive school climates and in order to do that that requires unpacking all of the different elements that um are you either seen or unseen um in the school system um within classrooms within uh the broader district system overall and so we're we're engaging in some really deep equity training for all of our leadership over the next few months um which will kind of take i feel like we have gotten to a point in our country where equity is a word that we all know we should be using and so we use it but i'm not sure that that necessarily translates to actual action that will get at the inequities that have persisted for generations right and so if we if we really mean that then that will require us to really look closely at all of the different practices policies structures from you know zero tolerance policies to you know allocation of staff to um how we're spending uh you know additional funding uh from like title one and other other resources like that um but but but really really being clear that in order to address racism you have to be able to say the word racism you have to be able to acknowledge that races exist that inequity exists that there we are in a time where we need social justice and that has to be beyond a buzzword and so that will require direct um you know holding people accountable for that and i think if um parents community educators all of the people all of the stakeholders involved in creating and participating in our schools um really coming to the table and being willing to hear one another and do some really deep introspective work on places that we need to improve and i'm actually very proud of my district um in those efforts as we are really launching that today thank you so much and so to that point um at in what ways can we take those difficult conversations and use a culturally responsive practice implicit by trainings or other efforts to ultimately create the inclusive supporter of learning environments that we say we want for our children in a way that supports the adults that might be struggling with difficult conversations but ultimately want to have high quality classrooms for their kids how how do we do that i'll okay i'll jump in um you just have to confront it head on um it's interesting um you know dr kakarvi that that you talked about the issue of equity and and and you're right we just throw that word around but when we talk about kids of color i don't look at the word equity you know i look at the word empowerment and the reason why i make the differentiation because we can you know it can fall into that separate but equal but when you say empowerment and now that's a different aspect right in terms of are we providing the proper resources to advance our children regardless of where they are on the socio-economic stratosphere to be able to go to a Harvard on a full academic scholarship regardless if they're coming from jersey Brooklyn or Compton um and what are the resources that's needed now when we talk about confronting racial microaggression this is where the courage of the conversation has to come in because does that teacher that maybe has come up in a community where they do not interact with children of color or people of color where they do not have friends that are um people of color and maybe is indeed influenced by what they see the stereotype notion can they see within that kid that that kid right there regardless of how bad the community is has the academic potential to be a four-year scholarship award winner at Harvard University and the only way to get them to have that level of competency is to confront the bias and the bias has to be in my opinion school districts need to be required to have real long term this is important here your long um your long professional development more known as professional learning community now what happens and I can't speak for every district that I'm not going to but many districts when we talk about either equity cultural competency diversity inclusion training it happens one maybe two times per year in a 45 minute to I'll be nice and say hour and a half session we have to demand that this becomes a year long processes process that happens every single month um and in some cases on days of in-service happens over a three-hour period and to where as yes the hard topics are confronting because if not we will continue to end up in the same place over and over again okay so this is going to be the last question this is based on what I'm seeing from participants Shana Elmani Wendy you have been able to get people who perhaps um want to do the right thing but haven't quite bought in or want to be connected to the process but hadn't been invited to the table in the case of Wendy with your focus groups what is a first step someone who is struggling to have an equity conversation or someone who just is saying I'm in a place where there may not be the will for people to come together what's the first step what is one thing each of you has done to get people to buy in to the need to have the conversation about using school climate data social emotional learning approaches in order to meet student needs what's one thing for someone who's maybe just getting started and doesn't have the wraparound support for themselves right so I'll I'll say that in in our district the way that we're starting is we're starting at the very top and rolling out this deep focus on equity and bias with our superintendent cabinet team that will extend to our leadership teams that's all of our principals and other managers across the district and then we'll also be doing similar work and batches and smaller groups across the different schools simultaneously so part of what's pushed us to get here I know there's been some will in this regard but the ultimate push has come from actually from external you know external things so significant we're in significant disproportionality and in differentiated assistance which shines a spotlight on those gaps and those inequities and over representation of certain student groups in you know for suspension and identification of special needs so we have a couple of things happening that has kind of pushed us in that way but I know that with the change in leadership we have a new superintendent that she has come to us with that frame and with that mindset and so it's it's kind of a perfect storm to get that happening but you know I think in spaces where there isn't that will and that interest it could start small kind of like Lamani was saying starting with a PLC a professional learning community of people who are interested and wanting to have these conversations it can it can be a group of five teachers at a school and then being committed to bringing that up every time the school gets together to have a staff meeting and calling it out when they see it and disrupting that narrative intentionally with some strategies and tools that are specifically aimed at getting at true equity and empowerment thank you anyone else yeah this is Wendy so to build on that I would say you know I'm being really intentional about listening to the community and when I say the community I mean you know the unusual suspects so not just the same five five parents that might show up you know for for every event but really trying hard to what that means you know reaching parents in their own language you know really leveraging parent leaders you know looking at not only you know the sort of the the usual suspects in terms of after-school programs but of all of the various learning supports that are often like I said really those trusted messengers that are working with with families and with students right so you know asking the crossing guard who who often knows what's happening in students lives even more than when teachers you know really looking at all of those learning supports in the community and starting by listening as we're developing these different ways to to collect data in terms of what's working what's not and what we need to do more of great and I'll just and I'll just close out I'll just close out just give a brief um I think two parts I think it needs to be approached in the micro and the macro on the micro and indeed gathering there's always a number of educated staff members faculty members that do care and I believe start there and along with that build making sure that there's rapport with whether it be external organizations whether it be just community members and starting there and and building a grassroots so it's coming from a heartfelt place I also believe that on the micro and you need to create fish bowls for students to express what's going on with them because nothing nothing nothing drives it home more than the actual stories coming from young people if we had more time today I'd share you something that broke my heart with one of my students today that was incredibly traumatic um but those stories get hard and that's on the micro level but I will always say this in closing at the end of the day nothing moves without policy and I believe we need to really be aggressive and unflinching and uncompromising on the macro level I believe our our leaders in whether being Washington D.C. or within our respective state senate um or our our governors I believe that it needs to the cultural competency and the confrontation of these gaps needs to be placed in policy I think more pressure also needs to be placed on colleges and universities on the secondary I mean post-secondary and graduate school to redefine or develop and redesign their curriculums so that if they have classes that are addressing this because I will tell you I'm in an at least your program right now we have not touched one bit on cultural competency or on racial and gender microaggressions this needs to be enhanced and mandatory from there so that teachers coming in or have their eyes wide open last but not least I believe this I do believe that before anybody runs for a board of education position they need to go through some sort of training uh before they can even run and I know that may be impossible so if that doesn't happen then we need to require more board training certification so that these board members that setting policy and budgets are no longer ill-informed and making assumed decisions on things that require a higher level of expertise and so those are my points there thank you all for this great discussion thank you to the participants for your wonderful thought-provoking questions we will capture all of them and we'll continue to reflect on them and hold them as our assignments as we continue this work we've run out of time but before I close I do want to remind everyone that we are recording this webinar and we'll email you in a few days when it's available as another quick reminder the previous webinars are also posted if you would like information on upcoming 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