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Staffulty Operations:  How we do business... Sept 18 2024

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Staffulty Operations:  How we do business... Sept 18 2024

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June 2024 - River - One Pager - EP, SIP and OP (1)

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Col. River - A Beginner’s Guide to Interrupting HateBias Language Digital Notebook

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August 2024 Professional Learning at River 

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August 2024 Professional Learning at River 

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Will focus on Interrupting Hate & Bias Speech

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February 2024 KWL Chart/ RIVER ML Teachers Cohort A&B

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February 2024 KWL Chart/ RIVER ML Teachers Cohort A&B

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Accreditation Slide Deck Presenation

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Schoolwide Video Series: February 10, 2023

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Part 5: CRHS x Vision x Culture x Community

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Habiba Addo kicks off River's Black History Month Assembly February 3, 2023

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Habiba Addo kicks off River's Black History Month Assembly February 3, 2023

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Based in Portland, Oregon, Habiba Addo is a performer and teaching artist working in the traditions of Afro-Cuban and Ghanaian dance, drumming, singing and storytelling as well as contemporary performance.

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1300 Cards and Coins ready for distribution!

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DEC MLK Assembly Jan 13, 2023 - Featuring Klarissa Hightower

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DEC MLK Assembly Jan 13, 2023 - Featuring Klarissa Hightower

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River: Ch. 3 & Ch. 4 Belonging Through a Culture of Dignity

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Celebration Time!!!  December 9, 2022:   The remodel is complete and will be able to accommodate Affinity Spaces for student groups

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Celebration Time!!!  December 9, 2022:   The remodel is complete and will be able to accommodate Affinity Spaces for student groups

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Link to Affinity Spaces / updated Classroom assignments

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Special guest Tyler Monk launched a year-long challenge for River.

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Copy of Columbia River HS Staff Session 1

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Equity Team continues work on VPS Team Goal Setting Template August 2022

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Character Strong on-boarding effort - August 2022

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Character Strong on-boarding effort - August 2022

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River CharacterStrong / LINKCrew Supported Implementation Plan 2022-2023

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Belonging thru a Culture of Dignity idea (1).JPG

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River's IBCP has TWO! members of the Class of 2022 complete the Certificate

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River's IBCP has TWO! members of the Class of 2022 complete the Certificate

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Classroom / Curricular Department Inventory and Equity Audit - May 2022

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Classroom / Curricular Department Inventory and Equity Audit - May 2022

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Staffulty make recommendations for use of the ESSR Headwinds Funds - April 2022 and June 2022 for the 2022-2023 school year

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Staffulty make recommendations for use of the ESSR Headwinds Funds - April 2022 and June 2022 for the 2022-2023 school year

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Access Google Forms with a personal Google account or Google Workspace account (for business use).

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Student Voice & Participation at Faculty Equity Meetings March 29, 2022

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Student Voice & Participation at Faculty Equity Meetings March 29, 2022

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Campus wide {synchronous} participation in Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. recognition and Honoring Black History Month

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January 24, 2022:  Students' & Staffulty review of November (Panorama) survey results round #1

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January 24, 2022:  Students' & Staffulty review of November (Panorama) survey results round #1

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ASB Leadership review session connections to SIP Plan Goal #2: Students' "..sense of belonging"

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January 19, 2022 - Erin Jones selected to address River Community in honoring MLK Day in partnership with River's DEC 

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January 19, 2022 - Erin Jones selected to address River Community in honoring MLK Day in partnership with River's DEC 

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A widely celebrated teacher wants to lead Washington's public-education department, and despite a lack of political experience she has collected wide-ranging support. If elected, Erin Jones would be the first black woman to win statewide office.

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For a candidate with no track record in elected office, Erin Jones has pieced together an unusual coalition of support, a Venn diagram that mixes progressives with right-wingers, labor groups and business leaders. All of them hoping the charismatic former teacher can bring something new to Olympia.

"In education, we're not looking at conservative versus liberal," said Jami Lund, a former policy analyst for Washington House Republicans, longtime critic of public-sector unions and current education adviser at the Freedom Foundation, a conservative think tank. "What we're looking at is change versus status quo, and Erin Jones, in my view, is Team Change."

Lund's endorsement - which he emphasized as a personal preference, separate from his work with the foundation - is inspired by Jones' outsider status. Despite her long history as an educator working in districts across the state, Jones, 45, did not win support from the state's largest teacher union, nor from the lengthy list of politicians who back her opponent, veteran legislator Chris Reykdal.

The establishment stronghold is also what Sharonne Navas wants changed. As executive director of the nonprofit Equity in Education Coalition, Navas can count on one hand the places where her viewpoints align with Lund's. Hope that Jones will become Washington's education chief is among them.

"That office needs someone who understands people on the ground, including students of color, parents of color, teachers and administrators," Navas said. "It actually makes me feel better that Erin works with both conservatives and progressives."

Those who support Jones say they are impressed by her years in the classroom, her time in administrative posts at the state Office of Superintendent for Public Instruction (OSPI) and her unconventional story, one that suggests a lifetime of successfully navigating between disparate worlds.

She is a black woman who has lived in some of the toughest parts of Tacoma, yet was educated alongside elites at the American School of The Hague. Her biological parents gave her up for adoption as an infant, and Jones was raised by two white educators from Minnesota.

They moved to the Netherlands to teach at The Hague when Jones was 6. There, she sat alongside the children of diplomats and returned to the United States to study at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, imagining that she'd become a lawyer for the United Nations.

By then, the college freshman stood 6 feet tall, spoke four languages and felt immediately ostracized.

"We need 10 of you - that's why you're here," she recalled one schoolmate sneering, in reference to racial quotas. Jones never forgot that wound.

It flared again on a basketball court in Philadelphia, where she played pickup ball with a series of young black men and realized not one of them could read. That was, Jones says, the day she changed career paths.

She speaks passionately about shrinking the gap in academic outcomes between students of different races, and has worked as equity and achievement director in the Federal Way Public Schools.

"She really laid some of the groundwork in our district for how we have conversations around race and breaking down barriers," said Geoffrey McAnalloy, president of the Federal Way school board. "These are hard conversations, and she was a voice that pressed that issue when not many wanted to hear it."

She also shows little hesitation to criticize current education leaders, including her former boss at OSPI, Randy Dorn.

"Much of Randy's work is done on golf courses" or in the Legislature, Jones said in an interview. "I can't tell you how many teachers don't even know what he looks like. Randy Dorn is just talking to legislators. But the answers to problems in public education are not in Olympia."

That assertion will be tested next year, as lawmakers face a deadline to answer a court ruling that found Washington drastically underfunds its public schools.

Many see this impending battle as Chris Reykdal's ace. He has worked in Olympia for more than 15 years and knows all the players. It also defines the superintendent's race itself - a contest between a seasoned lawmaker with support from most of those working at OSPI, versus a career educator hailed by the White House as a Champion for Change.

"I don't think it's necessary to have spent time under the dome," said Susan Hutchison, chairwoman of the state Republican Party, who is supporting Jones. "That office yearns for somebody new. We're talking about leadership to bring people together and take initiative."

With Lund and Hutchison in her corner, Jones has found herself painted as a right-winger, despite a career spent advocating for students of color, immigrants and the otherwise marginalized.

In an email to his supporters, Reykdal attacked her as the beneficiary of "millionaire corporate-style reformers," an apparent reference to campaign contributions Jones received from former Starbucks President Howard Behar, Seattle Mariners co-President Chris Larson and organizations such as Teach for America and the League of Education Voters, which have supported charter schools.

Jones waves off the broad-brush strokes. As of early October, she had raised $179,800, most of it in individual donations of a few hundred dollars. (Behar kicked in $3,000, Larson $2,000.)

The interest from fiscal conservatives, she believes, stems from her position on school finances - specifically, that money alone will not solve Washington's education challenges - and on the teachers union.

"The WEA is a political organization," Jones said. "Its job is to make sure people are getting paid, not on teaching and learning."

Reykdal, too, has big-money donors. His $205,900 includes the beer-and-wine lobby, Weyerhaeuser and Rayonier timber companies, Microsoft and the Sabey Corp.

It surprised many of Jones' teaching colleagues that her greatest campaign misstep surfaced in the arena of social policy. In June, she said it was inappropriate to teach transgenderism to elementary students. The blowback was fierce. Jones weathered a week of attack from LGBTQ advocates, including The Stranger alternative weekly, which withdrew its support for her candidacy.

Jones, who has three children, says her written comments were taken out of context. But she also says her views have shifted.

After her remarks went viral, she phoned Anne Hawkins, a longtime friend and openly gay teacher raising an interracial son in Tacoma.

They spoke for nearly an hour.

"It was a tough conversation," Hawkins recalled. "But Erin was brave enough to ask and strong enough to listen to an opinion that until that point was unheard-of for her. She just kept asking, 'OK, tell me more.'?"

To be shamed so publicly was painful, Jones said. "But if that's what's driven me to better support a community that I didn't know how to support, it was absolutely worth it."

Such person-to-person interactions are her forte. In early September, Jones walked into the PAX gaming conference in Seattle without entourage or managers, to speak on a panel about encouraging more play in learning.

"Testing is not teaching," she said to resounding applause from a room packed with educators. "One of the reasons I decided to run for OSPI is we've spent so much time talking about testing and not enough on teaching and learning."

That position aligns closely with the Washington Education Association. Yet the teachers union endorsed Jones' opponent.

"It wasn't that anything was wrong with her," said Pam Kruse, who represents the union in Pierce County. "It's that Chris was better. He's been there with us, as our advocate, talking about funding for years. With his experience in the legislative branch to the administrative, it will be the smoothest transition we've ever seen."

Critics note Jones' history of bouncing quickly from job to job, her relentless campaigning while an administrator with Tacoma public schools (she has since resigned her position), and her failure to vote in at least four school-related elections in her home district of North Thurston.

Those missed votes were irresponsible, she acknowledges, but they came from her intense focus on being in schools, hour after hour, educating kids. For those who know Jones, the explanation fits.

"Erin Jones is on a long-term mission to impact student learning, and she is coming to this from an authentic place," said Stephanie Jones, executive director of Community and Parents for Public Schools. "This is not the next step in a political career."

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Ex-teacher Erin Jones champions change in race for state schools chief

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A widely celebrated teacher wants to lead Washington's public-education department, and despite a lack of political experience she has collected wide-ranging support. If elected, Erin Jones would be the first black woman to win statewide office.

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The 500 wing is finally outfitted with furniture and a structure built for collaboration.  Housed in The New 500 Wing:  Algebra, Coding, Credit Recovery (Heights Branch), Geometry, Social Studies, English, AVID and state of the art labs:  IB Chem, IB Physics, IB Bio and Mechatronics

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November 18, 2021 Principal's Council launch

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November 18, 2021 Principal's Council launch

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Students will be reviewing the Equity Policy documents from VPS

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November 10, 2021 Staffulty Review of VPS Equity Policy

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November 10, 2021 Staffulty Review of VPS Equity Policy

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November 2-4, 2021 Residency Work with ELA 9th & 10th 

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November 2-4, 2021 Residency Work with ELA 9th & 10th 

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Dr. Stembridge worked with ELA Teachers for 3 days on Planning for Equity in classrooms

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September 8 presentation and discussion slides

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River Staffulty reconnect after a much deserved summer break. Small teams continue efforts during August Professional Learning Days

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Small teams gathered to refine School Improvement Goals in SMARTIE (specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, timely, inclusive, equitable) language.  Refer to document.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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IB World School Reauthorization & Five Year Review

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Staff led equity workgroups established
- Mission/Vision and Equity in IB
- Equity-Focused Campus Culture
- Equitable Classroom Practices, Culture, and Student Support Systems
- Equitable Grading Approaches and Practices

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Create a new spreadsheet and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Sheets to edit Excel files. Free from Google.

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IB Application Review (Group notes and slides attached)
Staff came together over a series of 3 separate meetings to review the current IB application process and suggest improvements.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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All staff retreat (agenda attached):
Unity Project
Honest Conversations: Avoiding Racial Equity Detours
Compass Protocol used to determine future staff equity workgroups

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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To read Isabel Wilkerson is to revel in the pleasure of reading - to relax into the virtuosic performance of thought and form one is about to encounter, safe and secure that the structures will not collapse beneath you.

In the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist's first book, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, Wilkerson evinced a rare ability to craft deeply insightful analysis of deeply researched evidence - both historical and contemporary - in harmonious structures of language and form.

Now, in her sophomore effort, the former New York Times Chicago bureau chief does not disappoint. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is a masterwork of writing - a profound achievement of scholarship and research that stands also as a triumph of both visceral storytelling and cogent analysis.

What is caste? According to Wilkerson, "caste is the granting or withholding of respect, status, honor, attention, privileges, resources, benefit of the doubt, and human kindness to someone on the basis of their perceived rank or standing in the hierarchy." Racism and casteism do overlap, she writes, noting that "what some people call racism could be seen as merely one manifestation of the degree to which we have internalized the larger American caste system."

Wilkerson's central thesis is that caste, while a global occurrence, achieves its most violent manifestation in the treatment of American Blacks, set at the lowest level in society through historical and contemporary oppression, marginalization and violence - all legally maintained through systems of law and order. "The English in North America developed the most rigid and exclusionist from of race ideology," Wilkerson writes, quoting the anthropologists Audrey and Brian Smedley.

Wilkerson establishes a correlation between American Blacks, whom she names the "American untouchables" and the Indian "untouchables," or Dalits, as the lowest caste; while whites in America are the dominant, highest caste equivalent to the Indian Brahmins. Describing the treatment of Blacks in America, Wilkerson writes:

"The institution of slavery was, for a quarter millennium, the conversion of human beings into currency, into machines who existed solely for the profit of their owners, to be worked as long as the owners desired, who had no rights over their bodies or loved ones, who could be mortgaged, bred, won in a bet, given as wedding presents, bequeathed to heirs, sold away from spouses or children to convene an owner's debts or to spite a rival or to settle an estate. They were regularly whipped, raped, and branded, subjected to any whim or distemper of the people who owned them. Some were castrated or endured other tortures too grisly for these pages, tortures that the Geneva Conventions would have banned as war crimes had the conventions applied to people of African descent on this soil."

Wilkerson's argument is based on an exploration of what she names the three resonant caste systems in history: the Indian caste system, the Nazi caste system and the American caste system - which the Nazis researched when creating their own. "There were no other models for miscegenation law that the Nazis could find in the world," Wilkerson writes, citing Yale legal historian James Q. Whitman as evidence: "'Their overwhelming interest was in the 'classic example,' the United States of America."

Wilkerson supports her analysis with an immense compendium of documented research that spans centuries. Through her detailed historical research, she unearths evidence that the violence toward Blacks that the American caste system espoused was too much even for the Nazis; they balked at replicating some of the more horrific acts of American racism toward Blacks. "[Herbert] Kier was just one of several Nazi researchers who thought American law went overboard," Wilkerson writes, while others, like Hans F. K. Günter, thought the American laws so outrageous as to be untrue.

Caste, Wilkerson posits, is dependent upon the dehumanization of the other, most powerfully seen in the use of Jews and Blacks as the subject of horrific experiments by the respective dominant caste systems of Germany and America. "German scientists and SS doctors conducted more than two dozen types of experiments on Jews and others they held captive," while "in the United States, from slavery well into the twentieth century, doctors used African-Americans as a supply chain for experimentation, as subjects deprived of either consent or anesthesia," Wilkerson writes.

One of the most poignant examples Wilkerson describes is the violence done by Dr. J. Marion Sims, lauded as the founder of American gynecology, on the bodies of Black women:

"He came to his discoveries by acquiring enslaved women in Alabama and conducting savage surgeries that often ended in disfigurement or death. He refused to administer anesthesia, saying vaginal surgery on them was not painful enough to justify the trouble. ..."

Wilkerson says Sims would "invite leading men in town and apprentices in to see for themselves. He later wrote, 'I saw everything as no man had seen before.' "

Medical experiments were also carried out on Black men and Black children: Wilkerson notes Harriet Washington's research in Medical Apartheid in which a plantation doctor "made incisions into a black baby's head to test a theory for curing seizures" with "cobbler's tools" and "the point of a crooked awl." The horror is legion.

Wilkerson documents the pogroms of violence against the caste of American untouchables as waves throughout history - whether the violence of slavery or the waves of vigilante violence that that rose during Reconstruction and have continued since; incidents such the Ocoee, Fla., massacre in 1920 or the 1921 destruction of Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Okla., are set in a continuum that meets with the attacks on Black Americans in Birmingham, Ala., 40 years later in the 1960s, and then again in Charleston, S.C., by Dylann Roof on a Black church five years ago. This violent terror is a marker of the caste system, Wilkerson writes. The descriptions are vivid in their horror; the connections travel across history and time to resonate in the mind.

This structural move is a classic trademark of Wilkerson's style, and one of the attributes of her unique voice that imbues her writing with such textured depth. Wilkerson's use of a poetic focus on imagery and detailed characterization allows us an intimate and personal relationship with the lives of those she chronicles; when this empathic closeness is juxtaposed with the harsh brutality of the historical record the contrast is resonant and haunting, becoming a towering memorial to those violated by the violence of caste.

Caste is divided into six sections exploring the various aspects of caste: its origins, its sustainment and far-reaching "tentacles," and its effects - whether detrimental health for the givers and receivers of racism or the expected white supremacist backlash to the election of the first president of recognizable Black heritage: "The ability of a black person to supplant the racial caste system," Wilkerson writes, quoting the political scientist Andra Gillespie of Emory University, was "the manifestation of a nightmare which would need to be resisted."

Although a claim can be made that the opening chapter or two on the fallout of the 2016 election appear dated, this to be fair, is only because of what has happened to America in the interim since Wilkerson penned those words.

What is problematic is the glaring absence of Africa in a book that aims to position itself as a seminal text on the concept of a global caste system and the positioning of Blackness within that global caste system. Wilkerson glances at this briefly with a scant mention of South Africa in a couple of paragraphs and by quoting a woman identified only as a Nigerian playwright saying that "there are no Black people in Africa" - and then keeps it moving. Both are moments that do need to be unpacked. It is understandable why Wilkerson does not walk through this door to explore caste in Africa - Caste is 400 pages before adding the impressive list of research sources. But if Wilkerson is not opening that door, there does need to be an acknowledgement of why not, an acknowledgement of that absence.

Simply put: With colonization, European colonizers brought their caste system to Africa and implemented it over the already existing caste systems among many African ethnic groups.

Perhaps the absence of Africa is because of the caste system Wilkerson speaks of itself - to get people in the dominant caste to care about a narrative about Blackness and Brownness, about the lower castes, there must be a strong presence of whiteness in the conversation because it is the dominant caste system within the narrative.

And thus the caste system rears its head to affect a work about the caste system in real time.

This points, ultimately, to the role of personal accountability within a caste system. What does one do with this knowledge of the violence of caste? Does one perpetuate it? Eradicate it?

Interestingly, Wilkerson at times seems to argue not for an eradication of caste, but to create space for her, and others she meets, who have been miscast in their "caste" - regulated to the lowest caste when by intelligence or other attribute they should be in the higher caste, or vice versa. "We had defied our caste assignments: He was not a warrior or ruler. He was a geologist. I was not a domestic. I was an author," Wilkerson writes. Even the ending "Awakening" section, couched as a look forward, is depicted less of an articulation of the possibilities of a world without caste, and more of her desire simply to be seen as equal to those of the dominant caste.

In this, Wilkerson leans to biology. She offers the example of wolves as her support for the necessity of this hierarchal structure - the necessity not just of the alpha, but of the omega, or the underdog, beaten and abused by the others, the "untouchable." When the underdog dies, she writes, the whole pack is destabilized. No one wants to be the lowest of the low, "the scapegoat," but the pack needs one to survive.

Without the untouchable, Wilkerson argues here, society collapses. The untouchable is needed. Wilkerson just does not want to be one.

Writes Wilkerson:

"The great tragedy among humans is that people have often been assigned to or seen as qualified for alpha positions - as CEOs, quarterbacks, coaches, directors of film, presidents of colleges or countries - not necessarily on the basis of innate leadership traits but, historically on the basis of having been born to the dominant caste or the dominant gender or to the right family within the dominant caste."

I would argue that the tragedy, rather, is the need for these positions such as "omega" to still exist, which then justifies the need for this caste structure and its continued existence - even if it exists with Wilkerson's proffered edit that would allow an individual, no matter "background or caste," to hop into their desired caste and profit from the continued oppression of others the caste system welds.

If we are to look at biology as evidence, let us consider the research of Eli D. Strauss and Kay E. Holekamp on hyenas in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the official journal of the National Academy of Sciences, which offers another model for social positioning. Within the hyena community, as with wolves, there is a strict hierarchy of dominant caste and lower castes. But, if a female understands the hierarchy as unjust and challenges a more dominant member of the higher caste and her female peer group agrees with her, they will rise up across caste and challenge the dominant caste; if this female cross-caste coalition wins, the hierarchy is destabilized, and this radical feminist hyena and her cross-caste pack become the new dominant caste.

It is not enough, but it is a start.

Let us think not just about our own individual desires to be seen as a member of the dominant caste and benefit accordingly, but about the necessity to challenge this entire system of oppression radically. Let us think not just about replicating oppressive patriarchal systems but about alternative models such as matrilineal cross-cultural communication and connection.

Let us look not to the wolves, but to the hyenas.
Hope Wabuke is a poet, writer and assistant professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

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'Caste' Argues Its Most Violent Manifestation Is In Treatment Of Black Americans

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To read Isabel Wilkerson is to revel in the pleasure of reading - to relax into the virtuosic performance of thought and form one is about to encounter, safe and secure that the structures will not collapse beneath you.

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March 2021: Book Study; Culturally Responsive Education

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March 2021: Book Study; Culturally Responsive Education

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Culturally Responsive Education with Dr. Adeyemi Stembridge

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Adeyemi Stembridge agreed to answer a few questions about his new book, Culturally Responsive Education In The Classroom: An Equity Framework for Pedagogy.
Adeyemi Stembridge, Ph.D., is an equity-focused, technical-assistance and professional-development provider working with schools to identify root causes and classroom-based practices for closing gaps in school achievement. LF: In this book, you discuss what equity is and what it is not. Can you talk about that here? Adeyemi Stembridge:
Simply stated, Equity is not equality. Equality says, Give everybody the same thing, and that's a fair opportunity for success ... while equity says, Give everybody what they need to be successful, and that's a fair opportunity. Though both ideas have the goal of fairness, they are fundamentally different. Equality is an input-focused measure meaning opportunities are determined to be fair based on everyone having the same resources at the starting line. Equity, however, is output-focused meaning fairness is determined by patterns of performance at the finish line. We will know we've accomplished equity when students' backgrounds are no longer reliably predictive of school achievement. Equity is about providing resources that allow all students to best take advantage of the opportunities that school may provide.

But more than that, I think of equity as a belief. It's the belief that if our practices are informed by the commitment to be responsive to the assets and needs of our students, we'll facilitate more rigorous and engaging learning opportunities.

Needless to say, equity is easier said than done. I think the fact that equity requires difference in how we treat and teach kiddos in order to achieve a fairer representation of achievement in outputs is inherently challenging and frankly terrifying to a lot of educators. We shouldn't pretend that it isn't. It would be easier to pursue equality rather than equity-though it must be stated that we have never provided equal educational opportunities in the United States. But while the goals of equality are beautiful, in terms of education in the 21st century, equality isn't enough. All of this is what makes equity an honorable goal of education and also an absolutely frightening prospect.

LF: Culturally Responsive Education is a major focus of the book. Can you share some examples of what this looks like in practice? Adeyemi Stembridge:
I think of Culturally Responsive Education (CRE) as a practice-based approach to pedagogy that is effective in closing opportunity gaps. Put another way, CRE is what we can do in classroom instruction in order to advance the cause of equity. CRE is instruction that centers students-their voices, questions, experiences, their full humanity-in the effort to create meaningful learning opportunities. Most importantly, I think CRE looks like students being able to bridge their in- and out-of-school identities in the interest of school success. Examples of the practice of CRE appear throughout the book, and I begin and end chapters one through five with a fairly detailed description of classroom-based learning experiences that I think exemplify the goals of CRE. In this way, I'm trying to bring readers into the discussions I have with teachers as we plan, teach, and reflect on what best supports our kiddos' learning.

This is a fine line I walk in both the book and my work. There's a constant tension between theory and practice. When teachers ask me for examples, I sometimes worry they might be thinking at the DOK 1 level--recall and reproduction. A major point in the focus on Culturally Responsive Education is that responsiveness requires us to give careful consideration to context ... as in What are my students' assets and needs? and How can what I want my students to learn be bridged with what they already know? In my view, examples of CRE in practice are defined less by the lessons than the planning. The effective replication of a culturally responsive learning experience is a complex task that requires one to approach the practice with an understanding of the thinking that inspired the success. It's not like following a step-by-step recipe to make a pound cake. It involves messy work like talking about race and culture (ours and our students') and reimagining our practices so that they are a better fit for our 21st-century learners. Instead of trying to grow our practices in more responsive ways, we have tried to contain the mess. This is not possible, though.

So while I provide practical examples throughout the book, I am modeling how practices might be discussed with a culturally responsive lens. I am careful to not be too legislative in talking about culturally responsive practices because I think they can look differently in a range of spaces and yet still hold the integrity of what I think of as CRE. I am hoping to recreate the energy and conversations I have with teachers when we are designing learning experiences meant to be both rigorous and engaging for all students, and I am encouraging teachers to look for ways to stretch themselves and their practice. I know that may seem like I'm skirting the question, but I devote an entire chapter to examples in the book, and yet, any of those may or may not be the best illustration of CRE for any particular classroom teacher. I don't mean that to dismiss the asking, but the clarification is necessary; otherwise the answers will be misapplied.

LF: You also discuss Culturally Responsive Education as a "mental model." What do you mean by that? Adeyemi Stembridge:
Teaching is certainly one-part technical work, but I see cultural responsiveness as largely adaptive in nature. In addition to teaching people how to do what culturally responsive teachers do, our focus should also be on developing teachers' capacities to think in the ways that culturally responsive teachers think. A mental model is an explanation of someone's thought process about how something works in the real world. It's a tool to better understand how to solve novel problems in changing circumstances. Mental models can help shape behaviors and set an approach to our practice and the challenges therein. Rather than a simple checklist for CRE, it's more like an algorithm that leverages beliefs, values, and skills into a culturally responsive mindset.

If I use "love" as an example... mindset is the difference between analyzing the actions of persons in love with the study of lyrics of the world's greatest love songs. The unique circumstances of any particular situation go a long way toward governing specifically what it is that "love" does... but it's remarkable how universal love-song lyrics can be in describing how lovers think. The lover's mindset is a more reliable mechanism for generating actions that will be perceived as loving than merely the replication of other loving acts.

The mental model I use is comprised of six themes which define touchstones and references for our thinking and five planning questions to chart the course for designing culturally responsive learning experiences. I tell teachers that if we are thinking about these themes in the right ways, then our students will more likely perceive our instruction as culturally responsive. Though the premises of CRE are supported by scholarship from a range of fields in the social sciences and cognitive sciences, the work of cultural responsiveness also requires an artistic sensibility. I often make art metaphors because I think of culturally responsive teaching as a creative expression. In effect, a CRE mental model can help us to be more artful in our practices.

And I'm reminded often that teachers already have enough "to do." The focus on practices alone can add to what may already feel to some like an overwhelming to-do list. A mental model helps us to see the opportunities to bring our practices into alignment with our beliefs about fairness and opportunity.
LF: What do you think you learned from writing this book? Adeyemi Stembridge:
I composed most of the book in the summer of 2018 while I had the great fortune of traveling in Spain and France spending time with some of the most brilliant masterpieces in the Western European tradition of canvas painting. As an art enthusiast and an admirer of artists, I was able to deepen my understanding of the artistic forms of brilliant teaching. The writing of this book was an exercise in reflection of what I've come to understand about brilliant teaching through my own study, research, and practice. Being duly immersed in my own writing and also the close study of masterpiece paintings revealed myriad parallels between the work of teachers and artists. I've always thought of teaching as an art genre, but I'm clearer now about what that means and further, what that requires of teachers. Every brilliant masterpiece on the walls of the Prado or the Louvre began when a blank canvas met the artist's skill, imagination, and commitment to be fearless; in my observations, I've found the same to be true about brilliant teaching.
LF: Is there anything I haven't asked you that you'd like to share? Adeyemi Stembridge:
Maybe a question about my audience for the book. ... As a former high school English/language arts teacher, I know how important it is to be aware of the audience for one's writing. So if you ask me, for whom did you write this book?, I would answer that this is a book written for teachers who want to be great for all of their students. We shouldn't assume that to mean the book is written for all teachers ... because there are teachers who prioritize their own comfort and convenience over what's good for their students. This book is written for teachers willing to do the hard work of looking deeply into themselves and their practice. I used to believe that it was all-important that teachers developed beliefs first before thinking about strategies, but now I understand that's just how I like to learn. I now have a more nuanced appreciation for how profound learning can be for teachers when the insight originates from an experience in the classroom and not a passage on a page. I no longer care how teachers learn to be more responsive to their students, I just want us to get better.
LF: Thanks, Adeyemi!

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Author Interview: 'Culturally Responsive Education in the Classroom' (Opinion)

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Adeyemi Stembridge agreed to answer a few questions about his new book, Culturally Responsive Education In The Classroom: An Equity Framework for Pedagogy . Adeyemi Stembridge, Ph.D., is an equity-focused, technical-assistance and professional-development provider working with schools to identify root causes and classroom-based practices for closing gaps in school achievement.

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Authorization to offer the IBCP at River

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March 2020:  Book study: Culturally Proficient Leadership (2nd Edition)

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March 2020:  Book study: Culturally Proficient Leadership (2nd Edition)

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Art of Hosting: Diversity

Part I. Leadership Is a Developed Personal Perspective

1. The Leadership Journey Begins Within

2. The Cultural Proficiency Leadership Lens

3. Constructing Your Cultural Autobiography

Part II. Knowing Ourselves

4. Leaders Responding to Issues Related to Race, Ethnicity, and National Origin

5. Leaders Responding to Issues Related to Language, Gender, and Social Class

6. Leaders Responding to Issues Related to Sexual Orientation, Faith, and Ableness

Part III. Leading From an Ethical Framework

7. Culturally Competent and Proficient Leadership Actions

8. Educators and the Promise of Democracy

9. A Note to Those Preparing Educational Leaders

A. Authors' Autobiographies

B. Cultural Proficiency Books' Essential Questions

References and Further Readings

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Art of Hosting: Diversity Part I. Leadership Is a Developed Personal Perspective 1. The Leadership Journey Begins Within 2. The Cultural Proficiency Leadership Lens 3. Constructing Your Cultural Autobiography Part II. Knowing Ourselves 4. Leaders Responding to Issues Related to Race, Ethnicity, and National Origin 5.

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Completed application and review of the IBCP Application at River

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Dare to Lead staff book study

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I've spent twenty years studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy, and I recently completed a seven-year study on brave leadership. The goal of Dare to Lead is to share everything we've learned about taking off the armor and showing up as leaders in a skills-based and actionable playbook. Here are a few of the big ideas that emerged from this research:

You can't get to courage without rumbling with vulnerability. Embrace the suck.

Daring leadership is a collection of four skill sets that are 100% teachable, observable, and measurable. The foundational skill set of courage-building is "rumbling with vulnerability." Once we have built these rumbling skills, we can move on to the other three skill sets: Living into Our Values, Braving Trust, and Learning to Rise. Our ability to be daring leaders will never be greater than our capacity for vulnerability.

Self-awareness and self-love matter. Who we are is how we lead.

The greatest barrier to courageous leadership is not fear-it's how we respond to our fear. Our armor-the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that we use to protect ourselves when we aren't willing and able to rumble with vulnerability-move us out of alignment with our values, corrode trust with our colleagues and teams, and prevent us from being our most courageous selves.

To scale daring leadership and build courage in teams and organizations, we have to cultivate a culture in which brave work, tough conversations, and whole hearts are the expectation, and armor is not necessary or rewarded. We have to be vigilant about creating a culture in which people feel safe, seen, heard, and respected.

The skill sets that make up courage are not new; they've been aspirational leadership skills for as long as there have been leaders. We just haven't had the courage for real talk about courage. But it's time. And if you want to call these "soft skills" after you've tried putting them into practice-go for it. I dare you. Until then, find a home for your armor, and I'll see you in the arena.

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Daring leadership requires brave work, tough conversations, and showing up with our whole hearts.

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Dedicated .2 FTE of Differentiated Funds for the 2019-2020 year to Climate & Culture 

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Dedicated .2 FTE of Differentiated Funds for the 2019-2020 year to Climate & Culture 

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Climate & Culture became focus on Principal's Council Meetings with students, Principal and Administrative Intern

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AVID Elective 9, 10, 11 and 12 offered at River reaching 10% of student population.

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Learning for ALL:  Three Minute Video - Head of School's rationale for expanding the IB Spring 2017

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Learning for ALL:  Three Minute Video - Head of School's rationale for expanding the IB Spring 2017

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Learning for ALL

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Get access to files anywhere through secure cloud storage and file backup for your photos, videos, files and more with Google Drive.

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Excellence & Equity Grant Application Sept 2017

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Excellence & Equity Grant Application Sept 2017

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E2 Planning Cohorts for Workshops 2.docx

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Book Study: Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain

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Book Study: Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain

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Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain

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Hey. Thanks for stopping by my blog. You might have found your way here through a number of possible paths. Maybe you heard about my book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. Or, maybe you typed in www.ready4rigor.com and those shadowy internet puppeteers redirected you here. Maybe you ended up here because you were doing a Google search for culturally responsive teaching practices

Or maybe your school is reading Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain in a book study and you wanted to know more about this Zaretta Hammond chick who wrote it.

It doesn't matter how you got here. What's important is that you and I are now connected.

Since you are an equity-minded educator like me, you are probably waging your own private movement to bust the myths behind student engagement (or the lack of) among low performing students of color, poor students, and English learners.

Well, you are in the right place. This is a blog where we can get answers to our collective and individual questions about how we can help students become confident and competent learners. In this space, I want to highlight what I am learning from being out in schools and classrooms with teachers who are successful with diverse students. I want to focus on how we can take everyday strategies and practices and put them to work in their classrooms to be more culturally responsive.

So, again, welcome!

Just to let you know, on average, I publish a new post every other week - two times per month at the least (sometimes a few more). That gives me time to be in schools and to write. If you don't want to miss updates on what I am seeing and learning, sign up for my newsletter by pushing that button below.

Binge-worthy Posts and Podcasts

Books are good, but sometimes you want your knowledge in bite-sized doses. That's what I like to deliver: consumable, usable, and entertaining food for thought (and action). Here are some of the most popular blog posts and guest podcast interviews to sample.

About Zaretta Hammond

It's funny. These days a lot of folks are calling me "Dr. Hammond" since the book has become required reading in many teacher education programs and school districts. Well, to set the record straight, I am not a PhD. I do have a Master's degree, but I consider myself a "boots on the ground" teacher. I call myself a former writing teacher turned equity freedom fighter. My heart is forever with children and teachers in the classroom, not in an ivory tower, even if these days most of my "students" are new leaders and pre-service teachers. [ A quick note: Not throwing any shade at all the PhDs out there doing the work.]

When I was in the classroom back in the day, I taught composition (expository writing). It was where I started to understand how important literacy was to equity, and how neuroscience and culture should inform our instructional practice.

Since leaving the classroom, I have done work as a curriculum designer and professional developer at organizations such as the National Equity Project and the Annenberg-funded Bay Area School Reform Collaborative (BASRC) in the San Francisco-Bay Area. I am a trained facilitator in anti-bias processes and have facilitated groups focused on learning to talk about issues of racial politics and privilege.

My primary work has been linking instruction, equity, and literacy. I have spent time as an adjunct instructor at Saint Mary's College in Norther California where I taught Adolescent Literacy and trained tutors and parents in reading support strategies for struggling students of color.

As an undergraduate, I attended University of California, Berkley before finishing up my degree at New York University where I majored in English Literature with a minor in Writing. I completed my Masters in Secondary English Education, with a Concentration in Writing Instruction at University of Colorado, Boulder where I simultaneously did my teacher certification program (starting three months after the birth of my son. I do not recommend this).

For the past 25 years, I've maintained a small, independent education consulting practice from which I do my research and writing as well as support schools doing deep instructionally-focused equity work.

Stay in touch

I hope this blog inspires, motivates, and challenges you to try some new practices that move you toward being more culturally responsive. If it does, send me a note. I'd love to hear from you. The best way to keep in touch with me is to sign up for free email updates (where you get all kinds of exclusive goodies).

Other Ways to Connect

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About - Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain

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Hey. Thanks for stopping by my blog. You might have found your way here through a number of possible paths. Maybe you heard about my book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. Or, maybe you typed in www.ready4rigor.com and those shadowy internet puppeteers redirected you here.

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In November 2017, schools were selected to participate in E2 to create changes that open access to DP and CP programmes for all their students, especially low-income students and students of colour.

The IB had developed online professional development for school leaders, coordinators, counsellors and teachers to enable them to remove barriers to DP and CP participation for under-represented students and deliver services to schools that are designed to achieve success.

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The IB Excellence and Equity (E2) Initiative aimed to support IB World Schools in the USA to fully reflect their diversity and academic excellence.

This initiative challenged school leaders in the USA to consider how to elevate the conversation about what is academically possible for low-income students and students of colour. The focus goes beyond proficiency, with a wider focus on preparing all students to graduate with the skills and tools needed for post-secondary education and lifelong learning. Research indicates that less than 1% of diverse schools nationwide have advanced programmes in which their students reflect the diversity of the overall school population. The E2 Initiative aimed to change this statistic.

Through the E2 Initiative, leadership teams at IB World Schools learned how to promote the inclusion and success of under-represented students in the Diploma Programme (DP) and the Career-related Programme (CP).

The mission of this collaboration was to support secondary school leaders and faculty in their work to remove barriers to DP or CP participation for under-represented students, to create pathways to the DP or CP, and to deliver services to schools that are designed to positively impact the success of under-represented students enrolled in the programmes. The first cohort of IB World Schools participating in this initiative started in 2017 and was slated to run through the 2019 school year.

How did we ensure diversity is reflected in DP and CP?

In November 2017, schools were selected to participate in E2 to create changes that open access to DP and CP programmes for all their students, especially low-income students and students of colour.

The IB had developed online professional development for school leaders, coordinators, counsellors and teachers to enable them to remove barriers to DP and CP participation for under-represented students and deliver services to schools that are designed to achieve success. These support services included:

a series of equity focused webinars designed to support school goal setting efforts

access to an interactive online tool, the E2 (Excellence and Equity) Framework, a tool that helps schools evaluate current equity practices and policies and identify school-specific goals. Download the E2 Framework document here [1.7 MB]

sixteen registrations for four online workshops focused on achieving equity and success in DP and CP enrollments. These workshops were launched in February 2018 and will focus on addressing core areas of practice that have the greatest impact on participation and success of low-income students and students of colour in the DP and CP. Administrators, counselors and teachers will participate in these online workshops.

two years of marked IB exams (May 2017 and May 2018) for professional development purposes.

an action-planning process embedded within online professional development to improve school practices, policies and culture to ensure that all students are provided with an equal opportunity for advanced education.

access to case studies and webinars that highlight best practices for access and success from around the USA.

Learn more about how to increase access and equity in your school

The Excellence and Equity Initiative took place in many schools around the country from 2017-2019. Schools who participated continue to work towards providing a more equitable IB experience for students on their campus. The IB World Schools department works closely with all authorized schools to incorporate the strategies and tools used in the E2 Initiative. If you'd like to learn more about these tools, please contact your IB World Schools manager, or email IB Answers at support@ibo.org.

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The IB Excellence and Equity (E2) Initiative aimed to support IB World Schools in the USA to fully reflect their diversity and academic excellence.