If this is your first year doing this series, we recommend starting with an orientation meeting using the August 2018 material before moving on to our current series.
Overview:
In our second month of reflecting on our classroom culture, we are using what we learned in February to do an audit of your classroom culture, using either the Co-Constructing Spaces of Joy tool or the Classroom Culture Audit. These handouts were inspired by Jess Lifshitz’s curriculum audit we used in January. We think the tools pair well with the work we did around recognizing white supremacy culture and centering Black joy in our first few sessions of Series 3. As we reflect on our classroom culture, we want to keep in mind the importance of resisting white supremacy culture and nourishing Black joy.
For this month’s meeting, we encourage participants to come ready to make a plan for future action: either collecting data on white supremacy culture in their practice, planning for the co-creating of spaces of joy with their students, or both. Facilitators should carefully read through the Classroom Culture Audit Worksheet and Co-Constructing Spaces of Joy tool in advance and plan how to best structure their meeting in order to give participants time to work through the worksheets and share their process with a partner in the group.
This work cannot be completed in one meeting, so it is important to name next steps in this process that everyone can take after the meeting ends. As you move toward action motivated by the audit, we encourage you to join us on Slack and share how you are using this month to transform your inquiry into action.
If you chose to look at resources other than the SEL article last month, we still encourage you to use this month as a time to dig deeper, reflect, and move toward action. This can look like:
- Interrogating your school’s discipline or dress code policy, focusing on ways that white supremacy culture is showing up in them
- Gathering and reflecting on school-wide discipline data, looking specifically at racial breakdowns and coming up with a plan to resist inequalities
- Reaching out to students and families by building connections with parent organizations that already exist at your school. If no such organization exists, make a plan to help foster one. Allow this relationship to help gather family feedback about school-wide policies and SEL. Where do families want to see change?
- If you are not in a school context, you could look at societal systems of policing and culture. Where can you have an impact on these systems? Write letters, make phone calls, organize for the change you want to see made. Keep in mind there are many organizations already doing this work. How can you join them in the fight?
Facilitation Reference Guide:
- This month’s work is based on the topics from February. - Take time to engage in that discussion before you do this month’s meeting and audit.
- Set a day and time for your group to meet - Make sure to send reminders.
- Use the Classroom Culture Audit Worksheet and/or Co-Constructing Spaces of Joy tool to reflect on and discuss your classroom culture.
- Prepare yourself to facilitate by reading through our Norms and Discussion Protocol.
- Pass the Hat and collect donations for the Dignity in School Coalition this month.
- Complete the Feedback Form.
- Prepare yourself for April by setting a date and time, inviting colleagues, and looking out for our next Discussion Guide on April 1st.
Feedback Form:
As we grow in year three, we hope that one person in your group can take a few minutes to fill out our feedback form to let us know how it went.
Below is a takeaway from a previous meeting:
Thank you all for your feedback so far, please keep it coming!
Pass The Hat:
In addition to being accountable to our colleagues and students of color, we believe it is important to be financially accountable to people of color who are doing this work on a daily basis. Each month, we will recommend an organization led by people of color, in education and beyond, doing the work of pushing for justice.
At the end of each monthly discussion, collect donations for the designated organization. You can then have one group member go online and donate in the name of your school. If you want, you can add “Building Anti-Racist White Educators” after your school name.
This month, we encourage you to donate to the Dignity in School Coalition. From their website: The DSC challenges the systemic problem of pushout in our nation’s schools and works to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline. As a national coalition, the Dignity in Schools Campaign builds power amongst parents, youth, organizers, advocates and educators to transform their own communities, support alternatives to a culture of zero-tolerance, punishment, criminalization and the dismantling of public schools, and fight racism and all forms of oppression. We bring together our members through direct action organizing, public policy advocacy and leadership development to fight for the human right of every young person to a quality education and to be treated with dignity.
Pass The Hat:
In addition to being accountable to our colleagues and students of color, we believe it is important to be financially accountable to people of color who are doing this work on a daily basis. Each month, we will recommend an organization led by people of color, in education and beyond, doing the work of pushing for justice.
At the end of each monthly discussion, collect donations for the designated organization. You can then have one group member go online and donate in the name of your school. If you want, you can add “Building Anti-Racist White Educators” after your school name.
This month, we encourage you to donate to the Dignity in School Coalition. From their website: The DSC challenges the systemic problem of pushout in our nation’s schools and works to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline. As a national coalition, the Dignity in Schools Campaign builds power amongst parents, youth, organizers, advocates and educators to transform their own communities, support alternatives to a culture of zero-tolerance, punishment, criminalization and the dismantling of public schools, and fight racism and all forms of oppression. We bring together our members through direct action organizing, public policy advocacy and leadership development to fight for the human right of every young person to a quality education and to be treated with dignity.