Inclusion of Families Into School-Based Race and Equity Teams
Recently, a group of teachers at a Northwest High School formally gathered as one of four of the initial district-supported Race and Equity teams (RET). The RET came to fruition as part of teacher’s efforts to negotiate RET into the most recent teacher’s labor contract with the district. A major reason for incorporating RETs was to explicitly address teacher’s concerns related to disproportionate discipline for students of color across the district. RETs started with district-wide professional development sessions on a range of topics including racial identity formation, whiteness, and culturally relevant pedagogy. The goal of these sessions were to provide members of RET with “content knowledge” on race and racism with the expectation that members of the RET would then design professional development sessions for their own colleagues. Because the district provided very little direction as to how the RET would develop over time and at each school site, the team at Northwest HS developed their own school-based plan. Consequently, the team developed a two-pronged approach. In one approach, the team understood that disproportionate discipline was a symptom of deeper issues related to structural and systemic racism. This included an initial analysis of school-level discipline data and 10 focus groups. The second approach involved planning professional development around students’ and teachers’ racial identities and to promote culturally responsive/relevant teaching practices across all academic content areas. An emergent area of focus centers on the lack of inclusion of families in the current configuration of the RET at Northwest HS and on other teams in the district. Given the glaring omission of families, particularly of families of color, the RET agreed to expand their work to include the participation of families of color in upcoming academic year. This paper specifically examines the work of the design team and the ways in which families can productively incorporate themselves in the important conversations related to race, racism, school discipline and equity. A small group of families (4-6 families) will be recruited to participate in a series of family sessions (3-4). The first sessions (1 and 2) will involve engagement with the student focus group data collected by teachers. An outcome of these sessions will be to understand family perspectives on improving student experiences (quality of school life, academic experiences, and school discipline). This includes suggestions for teachers to improve their classroom practices and ways to change school policies to be responsive to the cultural and linguistic diversity in the school community. Subsequent sessions (3 and 4) will pay careful attention to the ways in which families can develop expertise to become an integral component of the RET at Northwest HS and thereby other schools in the district. One potential outcome of these sessions will be to open space for families to expand on the work that teachers have developed to construct their own areas of focus in relation to improving their children’s experiences at school. Further we anticipate this to lead to new family and teacher relationships.
American Educational Research Association (AERA)
Family Leadership Design Collaborative (FLDC)
Paper Summary (via Online AERA Annual Meeting Program)
Co-Designing Family and Community Wellness and Educational Justice: Findings From the Family Leadership Design Collaborative [Session 42.039]
Barajas-Lopez, F. (2017). Inclusion of Families Into School-Based Race and Equity Teams. AERA Annual Meeting, San Antonio.