Monthly Archives: March 2021

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Visual Arts Dept. Meeting 03/03/2021

Submitted by: james french

The Visual Arts Department came together to discuss a series of questions that had been poses during our prior meeting time. Members of the department were asked to consider:

 

1) What do you value in your art teaching practice? Personally? Professionally? Institutionally?

 

2) How do you share these with your students? Do you try to instill these values in your students? How so?

 

3) What does equity in the classroom mean to you? How is it reflected in your student’s work? How does meeting those goals manifest in how you guide students through their practice?

 

Jeremiah, Rohan james and Shauna shared their thoughts on the questions raised. We discussed the ideas through personal and school practices, projects and materials. There was consensus in students doing work in their voice, work that relates to their self and having a broad range of tools, materials and arts examples that are equitably distributed and reflective of our student’s identities. While we agreed on desired outcomes there was some debate of how to achieve those ends. Unfortunately with the shortened meeting time as the conversation heated up our time ran out. We intend to pick up from and build off of this discussion in our next full meeting.

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Department Meeting Notes For Performing Arts 3/3

Submitted by: Joanne Magee

3/3 Meeting.

Members of the department continued with our evidence of curriculum focus and discussed ways of showing a variety of evidence.

We addressed the continued challenges of teaching our disciplines and in the LS not being able to teach students due to covid protocols. They have rarely seen students for the arts. In MS Desks have been taped in place preventing any flexibility for us to clear space in a room for Dance or Drama. Instrumental programs are limited. The challenges have been seriously compromising but teachers are doing everything in their power to provide the best experiences under the circumstances.

Joanne will start putting a document together to report back all our work on DEI.

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EdTech Department Meeting 3/4/21

Submitted by: Clair

Ordering for Next year

  1. Celeste
    1. I’d love to turn the tech lab back into a lab for things like Yearbook, tech lessons, etc. 
      1. Having just a few students in there would be great (so socially distanced)
      2. Is this a possibility with the CDC saying things don’t really spread on surfaces
    2. If not
      1. Can we get laptops– we’re down to like 4 out of what was 20+
      2. Everytime a device breaks or we have a coverage person, we give them a device from the circulation cart– we need more here if we can’t use the Tech Lab for tech 
    3. Printer
      1. Can we get a new color printer for the tech lab? 
        1. Or an in-between model that would offer both scanning and color printing that’s a bit more robust than lab scanner
  2. Clair
    1. Is there one single inventory of all of the devices that went out last year, this year, and where they are now? 
      1. Candace’s laptop is a perfect example– did we know that was outstanding? 
      2. If we do this for next year, we need to get everything back, cleaned, inventoried, and accounted for
      3. Hotspots? Other devices? 
    2. I’d like to collect them all for summer. They need to be wiped, cleaned, and prepared; 5-8th grade. 8th grade devices can be retired for the most part, or put in backup 
  3. Joy
    1. The status of minis? 
      1. Do we have any for the HS/can we get the ones that are having issues in the LS/MS wiped and reset? That would help bolster the circulation numbers up again 
      2. Can we get them wiped and upgraded?
    2. If we continue to use the library as a classroom next year
      1. Printing needs to be thoughtfully examined
        1. Right now printing is happening in the faculty lab for the kids
        2. Are we going to move those printers to a different space? If we have them in public space they need to be in a place that’s not a classroom and won’t be a traffic issue
      2. We don’t really have a way to circulate equipment right now
        1. Matt has kids drop/pick off devices in a red basket behind Adria’s desk– this is a pretty big security issue
        2. We don’t lend chargers, we don’t lend mice, keyboards, etc.– is it even necessary?
      3. Matt is handling laptop distribution and management
    3. Summer agreement in the HS for devices– if someone breaks it over the summer, they have to pay for it
      1. How will we manage summer devices this year? 
    4. We need a master document of all of the equipment that is being handed out and what’s in every room
      1. When were certain minis installed? How old are they? What are their serial #s and specs? 
  4. Cross-Divisionally
    1. We would like an inventory system that’s a database: we need one centralized system where what we know what everyone has, where things are, and what their information is
    2. Can we plan for what the summer will look like? Can the young alum be hired for the summer to check on, maintain, upgrade and provision devices?
    3. What does the classroom sound look like for next year? With the idea for next year being no remote teachers but still possibly stome remote students, what might that set up look like? 
    4. Can we design some sort of cross-divisionally remote survey– what has your experience been like? What are the issues you’ve had and how are they now? What is your emotional experience like too? 
      1. If the audio isn’t making them feel more connected, what would? 
      2. Remote only pods? 
  5. ECFS Conversation with Joy
    1. Surveyed students about cameras on or off
      1. Mixed bag– wide range of feelings 
      2. Some students felt like they didn’t want people in their homes, body image or gender dysmorphia
    2. Opt In policy allows students to decide today we’ll have it on, and they don’t have to ask to turn it off
      1. Some resistance from the teachers you’d expect
      2. They had some resistance from families at first 
        1. Had a series of meetings to explain why we’re doing this, and what it means for their education, how you can support them
        2. Working with teachers who are used to lecturing that they need to do something different
      3. We might be in a good position to try this
        1. Most HS teachers are teaching in models that aren’t purely lecture based
      4. They’re meeting with their faculty next week to hear about how it’s going and talk about it with them all. We are welcome to go/invited
        1. Joy is talking with Alison and Margaret about it as well 
        2. I brought it up with Susannah as well as part of her support team role and learning specialist expertise
        3. LS– the norms here are cameras on; ECFS has it for all three divisions
          1. If a kid has their camera off and aren’t doing the work, there needs to be another way to assess that they’re not doing it other that “their camera is off” 
      5. They are planning on there being some remote learning next year

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World Language Dept. mtg. 3/3/21

Submitted by: Adele de Biasi Pelz

The World Language department used this time to begin creating a document of questions and ideas around cultivating meaningful information about our students to better serve their needs, interests, struggles and well being.

Ultimately this would take the form of a survey for both incoming and current students by giving them prompts to indicate and reflect on a wide range of issues:
-their interest in and exposure to the  language
-their reasons for studying the language and their goals
-their language spoken at home
-their cultural background and identity
-their previous knowledge of the language
-their preferred learning style
-their interest in specific topics, projects, current events, people and places they would like to explore and learn about.
We will continue our discussion and work in our next meeting.

 

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English Department Meeting 3/3/21

Submitted by: Jane Belton

We built on our collective work from February 24, using the following ideas and questions to guide our discussion:

Erasure and invisibility. Teachers not “seeing” Black students, not hearing or allowing for voice (as an example, not calling on Black students, not seeing individual contributions within group work)

–> How do we create structures and practices within our classrooms that ensure student voice and visibility? How do we create visibility within group work? Create opportunities for group work that necessitate plural perspectives, and can only be accomplished through that?

Silence from white teachers / white teachers not having the language (or choosing not) to name racism when it happens.

–> What are our practices around naming and reflecting on harmful power dynamics? On repair within the classroom? Around speaking up when a microagression has occurred? What practices do we have around providing trigger warnings? What language do we use?

Harmful power dynamics in the classroom and perpetuation of White Supremacy Culture.

–> What practices work to dismantle those dynamics?

Deficit model / thinking.

–> What practices do we employ that dismantle this deficit oriented thinking? What practices do we have around academic support and learning plans to support students of color with learning differences? What are our policies and practices around around late work/revision/extensions?

We each shared a variety of classroom practices that we feel help to dismantle White Supremacy Culture, disrupt harm, and address some of the larger issues expressed in the Black@LREI posts. These fell into multiple categories, including Class Discussion Practices, Group Work Practices, Feedback / Assessment / Grading Practices, and Teacher Lexicon, among others. Here is the jamboard we created.

We plan on exploring some reading around multimodal writing practices in advance of our next meeting.

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Math Department Meeting #4 20-21

Submitted by: Pat Higgiston

After playing around with a few neat maps that I came across on the Internet, we used the short meeting (my last of the year with parental leave in T3) to start thinking ahead to goal-setting for the 21-22 school year.

We discussed the initial frame for the current year, set out by the DEI Coordinators and by the chair (and determined somewhat by COVID times as well). Given that COVID impacts and our community’s commitment to DEI work will continue into next school year, I laid out a framework for goal-setting for the department. Each member will have two personal practice goals: one focused on access and achievement (the “dominant” math ed paradigm) and one focused on identity and power (the “critical” math ed paradigm). They can articulate these now and prep over the summer for their implementation in the new school year. (When the department first meets next year, we’ll be able to reflect on progress so far, rather than starting this process then!)

We will also collectively choose a departmental goal, using the list of questions that the DEI coordinators and Mark offered to us in the beginning of this school year, on the assumption that those questions will still be relevant.

We will set both personal and departmental goals across the last two meetings of the year. For T3, Karima will take over the chair responsibilities of facilitating and recording while I’m on leave.

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History Department Mtg 2/24/21

Submitted by: Thomas John Murphy

Attendees: Tom, Michel, Calvin, Jessica, Amanda, Momi, Suzane

We started the meeting by discussing the Curriculum Audit template that Momi shared. It was seen as useful for gaining insight into our teaching practices. We talked about our habits and assumptions should be examined as closely as our curriculum. 

Next, we went into breakout rooms to work on a unit or activity that we wanted to use in the classroom. The goal was to produce materials that would impact our teaching sooner rather than later. After we returned to the main rooms the groups reported on their work.

Jessica and Amamnda

They were worked on adjusting their Isalm curriculum to COVID times. They could not take students to a Mosque or have a calligrapher work with students. They talked about various online resources and how they wanted to expand their discussion of religions around the world.

Suzane and Momi

Discussed their focus in the course and how to continue to use the DEI framework and the Curriculum Audit to continue to revise their next units.

Michel, Calvin, Tom

We talked about the DIA elective and how the civics focus lent itself to DEI work. It is Calvin’s first time teaching the course and we started by discussing the nuts and bolts of the term (SBG standards, types and number of assessments, the final). After this, we moved on to how each of the lenses we planned to use had a DEI component being with the contested nature of the Constitution.

After debriefing, we decided that next week would continue in our groups to again work on developing DEI material for our classrooms.