Submitted by: Jane Belton
The goal of this meeting was to decide on a particular focus for our work together this year and actions steps for undertaking that work.
- We reviewed our notes from the October 21 meeting
- We brainstormed ideas about the direction we wanted to take, deciding to focus our attention on classroom practices. The following is a set of guiding questions for that work:
- How do power & white supremacy show up in our classrooms & practices, in peer & teacher-student interactions. How might we disrupt harmful dynamics/power systems?
- We also acknowledged the intersection between this area of focus and other areas, including text selection and communication/transparency with students and families.
- We then generated ideas about what examining classroom practices might look like through a shared jamboard.
- First Step:
- Our first step will be to examine several Black@LREI instagram posts for thematic threads. What are BIPOC students, alums, and faculty communicating to us about what they need and are experiencing in the classroom? How can looking at the posts hold up a mirror to our work in the classroom?
- Subsequent Steps:
- Making a list of “common” classroom practices and language that we want to investigate, trouble, or rethink from an anti-racist stance.
- Examining discussion protocols, norms, and habits.
- Engaging in readings that help us examine classroom practices.
- Auditing student groupings and student-student dynamics within our classrooms
- Working with white students on greater self-awareness and self-reflection around ways they perpetuate harmful systems of white supremacy.
- Inviting students to engage in naming the values that the class seems to hold; connecting these values to anti-racist practices, or troubleshooting if the values students identify do not align with the values we hope are clear.
- Examining our physical spaces through an anti-racist lens.
- Workshopping lesson-plans