# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
9:28 - 12:14:21  TEJ Virginia Inquiry Collaborative - Participant Agenda

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
We offer flexibility to fit your schedule.

Don't have a lot of time? Our one-hour webinars introduced you to a timely issue, featured expert, or engaging teaching strategies. If you miss a live webinar, most are available for on-demand viewing.

For those with more time, we offer a wide-range of self-guided and facilitated workshops, courses, and seminars.

Many of our offerings are free or low-cost. Payment assistance is also often available for fee-based professional learning. Applications for financial aid via grant or scholarship can be filled out as you are completing the registration application, as well.

After participating in professional development, we are here to support you with everything that you need to create effective and impactful classroom experiences. Educators who take professional learning with us will receive:

A Certificate of Completion: Awarded upon successful completion of the session you registered for. The number of creditable PD hours varies per offering. It is the educator's responsibility to ensure that they are meeting the requirements of their state or district.

Continuing coaching and support-from our Program Associates, who can answer questions, problem-solve, and help you plan your unit; through our extensive online resource library; and at follow-up webinars and other events.

You will become part of the Facing History educator network, with access to a rich slate of educator resources, including unit and lesson plans, study guides, and multimedia.

- Participant, Teaching Coming-of-Age Literature Workshop, March 2022

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Don't have a lot of time? Our one-hour webinars introduced you to a timely issue, featured expert, or engaging teaching strategies. If you miss a live webinar, most are available for on-demand viewing. For those with more time, we offer a wide-range of self-guided and facilitated workshops, courses, and seminars.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
At Facing History, we understand the profound challenges of closing the academic achievement gap, as it persistently shows racial disparities not only in achievement, but also in suspension rates, graduation rates, and college attainment.

We know that many courageous educators and administrators across the country are acknowledging that schools themselves-both the practice of schooling and the outcomes students are achieving-are not always equitable across lines of race and class. To help schools face these challenges, Facing History has designed a professional development model to help educators address these troubling and historically rooted disparities.

The Professional Learning Approach

Our professional development model takes school leaders and teachers on an inspiring, challenging, empowering, and intellectual journey. The shifts in policies and practices that we encourage ultimately lead to more equitable student interactions and outcomes. Our approach begins with an examination of self, individual bias, and the impact of stereotypes. This type of self-reflection helps us lead educators into an exploration of the historical roots of school inequities.

Next, through interactive and engaging pedagogy, educators examine past decisions concerning who would be educated and for what purpose in the history of American education. They further examine how those decisions have legacies and are tied to current systems of inequity. These systems, when uninterrupted, continue to this day to privilege some students and communities over others. Exploring these historical roots is critical to bringing a shift in mindsets and educator practices today.

Teaching for Equity and Justice Modules

Working with Facing History, whole schools (including administrators) engage in a professional learning series called Teaching for Equity and Justice (TEJ), consisting of four modules that can be done over time or in one 8-hour training:

Module 1: Establishing Brave Space for an Adult Learning Journey Centering Equity

Module 2: History of Race, Racism, and Educational Inequity

Module 3: Critical Consciousness for Equity-Based Work

Module 4: Building Teacher Efficacy and Student Agency

Schools that engage in this training series become intentional about implementing more equitable educational policies throughout the school and more equity-based and culturally mediated practices in the classroom. Educators gain awareness of mindsets they may take for granted as they increase their awareness of the societal barriers their students face. This awareness empowers them to raise their expectations for their students, resist negative stereotypes associated with students' communities, and place a greater emphasis on improving instruction rather than citing deficiencies in students when they are not learning. Administrators also create systems and structures around scheduling, discipline, student voices, and whole-school events and programs that are more reflective, inclusive, and fair.
Contact us to To request information about the TEJ series
Expected Outcomes

The expected outcomes of the Teaching for Equity and Justice series is based on four "pillars" or areas for which we have strong quantitative or qualitative evidence:

Pillar 1: By exploring the history of race, schooling, and academic identity, educators gain a better understanding of the root causes of present-day educational inequities.

Pillar 2: School leader and teacher self-efficacy and cultural awareness increases, leading to shifts in practices in classrooms and other interactions with students and their families.

Pillar 3: Student academic engagement, motivation, sense of civic responsibility, and agency improve. Research shows that higher engagement and motivation impacts student achievement.

Pillar 4: When this model is fully implemented, whole-school culture and climate shifts to more equitable schoolwide practices such as restorative discipline models, more equitable access to advanced courses and enrichment opportunities, and deeper respect for students and their families.

After completing the Teaching for Equity and Justice series, educators are better prepared to engage in more student-centered and culturally responsive classrooms across all content areas. School leaders are also more inclined to consider school policy through an equity lens.

However, humanities and ELA educators can have the deepest impact as they move to integrate Facing History's core curriculum units which explore moments in US and World History where issues of inclusion, freedom, and justice are at the core of the learning. Through these 4- to 6-week units, students develop their voice, discover their agency, and move from being passive consumers of information to becoming actively engaged in their learning and the world around.

This kind of engagement is what moves education that treats students as empty vessels to a transformative model that values what students bring to learning through their lived experience. Research shows that higher levels of student engagement impacts student performance and effectively the achievement gap.

TEACHING FOR EQUITY AND JUSTICE at Facing History means that each student receives what they need to develop their full academic, social, and civic potential. This is achieved by disrupting deficit-focused narratives associated with students' racial and/or cultural identities. In equity-focused learning environments, adults confront their unconscious bias and work to mitigate the impact of historical racism on educational practices and policies.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
At Facing History, we understand the profound challenges of closing the academic achievement gap, as it persistently shows racial disparities not only in achievement, but also in suspension rates, graduation rates, and college attainment.

# data[].attributes.body
Untitled Poem by Beth Strano https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/untitled-poem-beth-strano

Envisioning Our Classroom Space
https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/back-school-2021-building-community-connection-and-learning/activities-first-days-school/envisioning-classroom-space

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
There is no such thing as a "safe space" -

We exist in the real world.

We all carry scars and have caused wounds.

This space

seeks to turn down the volume of the world outside,

and amplify voices that have to fight to be heard elsewhere,

This space will not be perfect.

It will not always be what we wish it to be

But

It will be our space together,

and we will work on it side by side.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There is no such thing as a "safe space" - We exist in the real world. We all carry scars and have caused wounds. This space seeks to turn down the volume of the world outside, and amplify voices that have to fight to be heard elsewhere, This space will not be perfect.