Monthly Archives: June 2021

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Visual Arts Dept. Meeting Final Meeting

Submitted by: james french

A considerable amount of our final meetings were spent reflecting on the challenges that we faced as a department this year: teaching materials over Zoom, being displaced from our normal work spaces – art on a cart, less time with our students, working a new temporary dept. member into the. mix, introducing SBG into our assessment practices and focusing on DEI and antiracist curriculum and practices into our work. We discussed our Visual Arts showcases. Finally we individually wrote responses to the 4 questions posed regarding DEI work. Below are some of the responses and a more comprehensive – and specific – list will be shared directly with Kalil.

1: Specific effort to introduce more topical art and artists, integrating more self-designed projects, more identity work, greater emphasis on resource sharing within the dept.

2: Universally we found this second question challenging to answer as the year was so different to manage, all things were challenging.

3: We would love the have Kalil occasionally attend meetings, share resources and look at curriculum.

4: Much of our departments work in the lower and middle divisions is in support of the humanities. While we are all under an umbrella the work that we each do – div/subject – are very different.

We concluded by celebrating our accomplishments this year and looking ahead to next.

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World Language Department

Submitted by: Adele de Biasi Pelz

5/26

We used this meeting to summarize and reflect on the curricular changes and additions to our program to better include a broader range of diverse authors and topics that reflect anti-racism, equity and a wider array of countries, cultures, people and families around the world.
Some examples:
L.S. : – Creating families “different” from your own
          – Poetry by pablo Neruda
M.S. : – Researching countries that reflect the personal history of or connection with the students.
H.S. : –  In Spanish and French, researching, creating websites, writing blog posts and reading stories and texts about hispanic and francophone speaking nations, people and culture.
           –  In Mandarin, comparing Chinese and American school systems and learning about and exploring the geography, history, and hardships of life in the provinces.
6/2
At this end of year meeting we reflected on and discussed the questions provided to us to further support the DEIJ work along with our department.
1. Some positive movement for us would be expanding our curriculum to include issues of diversity, responding to the needs and identities of our students, and creating safe spaces for our students.
– Gender equity : We will continue to examine with each other and our students any biases in language, gender, pronouns, accent, vocabulary, speech and expression.
– Inclusion : We will continue to give our students a voice in choosing what it is they would personally like to pursue, study and explore, albeit that those choices do not always align with our goals for anti-racism. And we will attempt to create a safe space for our students of color to share their voices with confidence, support and respect.
– Survey : At the beginning of the year, we will give the students an opportunity to share information about themselves, their background, the languages they speak at home, how they identify, what they hope to achieve, and why they chose to study the language of choice.
2. An ongoing challenge is always contact time, which  requires prioritizing and flexibility. However, it is often  native speakers who do not get enough contact time and are also students of color.
-We need to address ways in which we can educate and raise the awareness and accountability of our white students in ways that will move them towards making more informed curricular choices and being better listeners and agents of transformative change.
– We need to keep these discussions going, they have only just begun.
– We need to keep evaluating our content, assessing our practice, and searching for ongoing sources, materials, and P.D.that represent diversity. With so many expectations put on educators, it is critical to know and discuss as a faculty the needs of the students.
3. Our department can be supported by recognizing that World Language is by definition a model for diversity. To study language and culture is to understand the existence of people authentically in the surroundings in which they live. We cannot be fair to people from other cultures and countries who live in the US when we put labels on them. In our classes it is more important to represent the culture of the language we teach.
4. We are dedicated to bringing people together through globalization and multiculturalism. Learning a language other than your own is becoming culturally competent and can open doors without which you would not have access and this needs to be acknowledged.
In conclusion, our goal and challenge is to highlight the diversity within the countries about which we are teaching. At the same time, we live in a society that tends to label, group and all too often separate rather than include. So trying to bring our students to a place of understanding through a cultural lens is our World Language mission.

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Department Meeting Notes For Performing Arts

Submitted by: Joanne Magee

In the final meetings we made final comments and reviewed our narrative responses for the DEI work we covered this year.

Performing Arts report 2020/21 Academic Year 

 

Members of our Department: 

Music: Susan Glass, Nick Wight, Damon DueWhite, Carrie Nichols, Aedin Larkin. 

Drama: Joan Jubett, Joanne Magee

Dance: Kristina Walton, Deborah Damast, Peggy Peloquin. 

This year was particularly challenging for the performing arts department as our programs were understandably compromised and re-imagined in several ways in order to meet the needs of our students during the global pandemic. Many of us taught very different classes. In the LS, specialists were extremely limited . We all were unable to provide our usual programs so it was very hard to change the actual curriculum if it was not being taught. As we had a priority to revolutionize our programs as we adapted to the spaces, the remote times and the constraints, we also worked as best we could on the following process. We hope to continue with more time and focus in the years to come as this year was especially herculean for the performing arts.

DEI Narrative responses and work throughout the year. 

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Lib-Tech Department Notes 6/1

Submitted by: Karyn Silverman

The following notes are from the joint Library and Educational Technology Departments. We work closely and will have only five faculty between the two departments across all three divisions next year, all of whom were present at this meeting.

Positive movement regarding DEI initiatives:

Although this has been a complex year to navigate, true for all but specifically for Library and Technology complicated by lack of access to our spaces (both libraries and the Tech Commons at 6th Ave were repurposed to accommodate distancing and space requirements as dictated by the DOH), we are happy to report that we did manage to move forward in several target areas.

From a content access perspective, the librarians continued their work building  a more inclusive, diverse collection; publishing has centered specific stories (generally focused on white, American, cis-het characters) and our collections have reflected that bias in available material. The recent explosion of greater diversity in the authors and experiences being published allowed us to significantly overhaul areas of concern. Specific areas of focus this year were picture books at the 6th Ave campus and the romance collection at the Charlton campus. Focal areas in picture books were greater representation of POC and female characters and authors. In romance, focal areas were greater POC rep and less heteronormative focus.

The librarians also significantly expanded our digital holdings, particularly recreational reading material in e and audio formats. This has been an on-going initiative, but was particularly critical this year to support fully remote students. There was some overlap between fully remote students and race and fully remote students and socioeconomic status, and increasing these collections meant those students were not further disenfranchised by lack of access to school resources. Expanding the audio collection is also a boon to neurodiverse students. Digital literature also allows students who may be working through questions of sexuality or gender to read freely without fear of anyone being aware of what they are reading, although we don’t know how significant an issue that is for members of our community.

Finally, we examined what books we promote passively and actively, and we began the process of auditing the books selected for readalouds (6th Ave) and promotion on the library Instagram (Charlton) and increasingly expanding the representation in the books we center. As part of this process, for the 2nd year running, our HS summer reading list focuses on generally underrepresented voices (works in translation, works set in other countries, works by and about authors and characters of color across all genres, greater representation of LGBTQ+ authors and stories, and almost all books available in audio as well as print and e-print).

From an equipment access perspective, this year marked a hige increase of getting devices into the hands of lower and middle school students. We hope to be able to continue this level of access and support even as the pandemic draws to a close.

When it comes to information access and awareness, the HS digital and information curriculum for grades 9 & 10 has continued work on finding sources that show women and POC in the fields of information science and digital studies. Our focus on teaching media literacy continues to use current and topical case studies that reflect an issue of social justice (e.g.: connecting cultural appropriation in TikTok to copyright; studying algorithms through the lens of human biases and social inequity). 

 Challenges:

The biggest challenge has been working within patriarchal systems of communication. We are a predominantly female department (whether considered jointly or separately) and our work is often complicated or stopped by a lack of communication from male administrators. Regardless of intent, the impact is that we feel left out of important conversations, and that our expertise in our content and pedagogy is neither respected nor included in policy and decision making.

Lack of materials: we continue to be frustrated that we cannot always find research materials that center experiences other than white, cis-het, usually male perspectives; this is a particular issue with databases.

Looking forward, the lack of staff will be a challenge. Fewer staff means a lack of equity for our students. The libraries (which at 6th Ave encompasses the Tech Commons) have long been spaces that allow students to stay at school until 5 or 6 pm. For students who may not have printing or robust internet connections, or a quiet workspace at home, this access is crucial to their academic success. Looking beyond the academic, the long hours have also allowed students who live far from the school and far from one another to spend social time together. With the staffing reductions in our library faculty and staff next year, we will not be able to provide this level of access.

Ways we would like to be supported: 

  • More training in facilitating DEI conversations
  • Regular meetings to talk through what it means to de-colonize research materials, something we know needs to happen but is hard to do when the easily available resources are not always what we want
  • Regular conversations about equity and access in materials (tech, research materials, books) and access (facilities, equipment)
  • Help in identifying other ways that we can advance schoolwide DEI initiatives through our information and digital literacy curriculum, and technology integration in general.

What to know about our department:

We are thrilled Kalil will be joining LREI and looking forward to working with him!

We work well together and prefer to work collaboratively, whether with each other or with our divisional colleagues. Our focus is on learning — our own and that of others — and our modality is support and connection.

We are in the midst of a massive reorganization; this is a moment of flux and we are struggling to navigate the balance between growth and function. This reorganization has left us understaffed to a degree that will slow our forward momentum on DEI work. We are eager to do the work, but we feel limited by external institutional factors (staffing and money; structures that disempower our department). We are deeply embedded in the pedagogical and progressive mission of the school and responsible for many services that support students and faculty across all divisions, which means that if we cannot keep our momentum, we risk stagnation or backwards movement that will effect many other departments, particularly in as regards entrenched dominant and supremacist voices in research and reading material and as regards access to technology that can be used to support mission-drive, project-based progressive teaching in the classrooms.

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Math Department Notes for 5/26 and 6/2

Submitted by: Karima Hassan

  • Fifth Meeting (Karima ran this 5/26)

    • PD and useful tools shares

      • Karima shared Goformative paid version

      • Sergei shared that he went to a Wolfram Alfa PD and the tool is great and super powerful, but not useful unless you get the paid version

      • Majula suggested that math department teachers should go to this free PD about data science this summer (link)

    • Reviewed goal setting and asked more to complete The survey for next meeting.

    • The jamboard

  • Sixth Meeting (Karima ran this 6/2)

    • The jamboard

    • Edited letter to rising 9th graders

    • Created a departmental goal

      • Revisit our grading practices through the lens of the book “Grading for Equity”.

    • Answers these questions for Kalil, the incoming Director of Equity and Community.

      • What is some positive movement that your department made this year that you want to continue next year? Identifying the most important content and removing some of the less important content. But we have more to do. Being intentional about using data and how it was related to social justice topics. Since our departmental goal is focused on grading for equity, we feel we are doing most of what needs to be done, but want to take it to the next level.

      • What is an area of challenge that you have not yet found a way to address? Including more practical (for life) math topics while also meeting the need for Standardized test and calculus preparation. How to provide support for students when you notice real gaps in their knowledge rather than just “dragging” them along.

      • In what ways and in what areas are you hoping that Kalil can support your department’s work next year? Pop into dept meetings from time to time to talk about things as they arise throughout the year.

      • What else do you want Kalil to know about your department? The time spent as a department is quite limited and we don’t have a regular attendee from the lower school. There are two new middle school math teachers this year, and for one year, Sergei will be in Latvia, so there will be a teacher in the high school to replace him.

    • Celebrations, appreciations and lamentations

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English Department Meeting 5/26 and 6/2

Submitted by: Jane Belton

For our last two meetings of the 2020-2021 year, we focused on examining our writing pedagogy and practices through an anti-racist lens.

Grounding Questions

  • How do we / might we use writing practices to disrupt White Supremacy and harmful hierarchies?
  • What does “polished” work mean?
  • How do we talk with students about the relationship between the kinds of writing we do and “education as the practice of freedom” (bell hooks)?
  • What writing practices do you want to question, trouble, or stay curious about? 

On 5/26, Megan A. and Anna G. shared two practices to inspire and generate discussion.  Megan shared her work using mentor texts in the 5th grade, and Anna shared her “Index Card Essay” process and assignment, both of which disrupt traditional hierarchies and ideas of “polish” within writing.

On 6/2, Ileana led us in a discussion of multimodal writing practices, sharing work she has done in response to In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, by Christina Sharp and Esther Ohito’s article, “The creative aspect woke me up”: Awakening to Multimodal Essay Composition as a Fugitive Literacy Practice.”

We identified a few goals for next year’s work:

1. Planning a retreat for next year and/or doing a Bard-style teacher collage workshop inspired by In the Wake and Esther Ohito’s article.
2. Continuing our discussions about writing practices and transforming them into concrete actions.
3. Further examining our biases in language and assessment practices.
4. Tracing the ways we have been leaders in DEI work past to present and sharing it in a broader way; thinking about what we still need to work on.
At the end of the meeting we each reflected on the work we have done, the challenges we are finding along the way, and the support we hope for. Here are the responses in full.  I’m including our responses to the final question below:
In what ways and in what areas are you hoping that Kalil can support the department’s work next year?
  • I’m hoping he can be a channel for students to communicate to us some things they might need; I’m hoping he will let us find opportunities to share the good work we’ve done with other departments and build a culture of inclusive teaching practices at our whole school.
  • Though I won’t be here next year, I think Kalil is in a unique position to be able to survey/interview our students about their experiences surrounding discussions of race in the classroom. He’ll be new to them and new to us, and I wonder if they might share with him information that none of us would capture in the same way if we asked.
  • It would be great to trace the development of our work in racial and gender justice from the last 20 years. I think it would be productive to look at this through the lens of a transformative teacher activist stance that the department has taken towards our pedagogies for a long time. Given that we are entering our centennial, it would be great to do this institutional memory work for the benefit of our department members both new and established, our colleagues in the larger school, as well as our students and their families. If possible, it would be great to trace this work back even further beyond the last 20 years. We have so many archives of this work in terms of papers, photos, videos, etc.
  • I hope we can continue examining specific writing units, and I hope Kalil can be a part of those conversations.
  • It would be nice to have him join a meeting or a retreat with us and learn with us or teach us.

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Science Meeting 6/2/21

Submitted by: Kelly

In our final meeting of the year, we continued some of what we started last week. Kara shared an activity from her Food Sustainability 11th grade class. We answered the provided questions for Kalil. (Answers in this Jamboard.)

Then we spent around 15-20 minutes discussing the idea of accumulating resources for bulletin board space (potentially only in the high school based on the discussion) to share information and resources about activism in science and/or expand what we think of what science is and/or what it could be. It could be a starting point for sparking conversations among students or in classes. We didn’t have a lot of time, so it’s just a start that we could come back to in the fall (or not…! But it will be there either way!). The Padlet that we started is linked in the slides.

Here are the slides from this meeting.