Monthly Archives: October 2021

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PE DEIJ Work

Submitted by: Luis Hernandez

At the PE Department meeting we had on 10/23. We talked about what we were working on last year. We also are setting goals for this year.

This is the first year the PE Department is participating in the Departmental goals in DEIJ work.  We are going to start or work with inclusivity in PE. How do we bridge the gap of skill and ability to help foster a fun and safe environment.

Two of the principles we will be focusing on from our Professional day on 10/08/21 will help guide us in this work.

  • Students have differing and overlapping needs.
  • Our actions as educators include the ways we give and receive feedback and speak to our beliefs, goals and values

Since we are new to the table we will have to do some research examining our common language and practices in PE.

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Learning Support Dept Meeting #1 10/12/21

Submitted by: Susannah Flicker

Agenda:

  1. Discussion/Share: What’s different about your role in your division this year? Is it a positive or a negative?

                       MS: able to function as learning specialists again, learning lab open,                                  push-in and pull-out support 

                        HS: “back to normal”

                         LS: struggling with restrictions to pull-out support, many students                                    with low skills who need more support, but                 schedules/expectations aren’t allowing for learning specialists to work with them

 

2. Overarching goal of department work: go over the institutional DEI goals and talk about how to adapt this to our department and practice

 

3. Questions/ideas

 

4. MS shared notes from recent faculty meeting re Supporting teachers-doing a reset to start from a place of compassion, looking at students’ challenges as a need being expressed, acknowledging that everyone’s been impacted by the pandemic- teachers need support in differentiating, supporting executive functioning, etc.

 

5. For next meeting: gathering best practices that we feel promote equity and inclusion

6. Going forward: inviting Kalil to a meeting, meeting with students from the HS learning differences affinity group

 

 

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Math Department Meeting #1, 21-22

Submitted by: Pat Higgiston

Please find the agenda and meeting slides at this link for the overview of the math department’s meeting. Here were a few takeaways:

  • We welcomed Chris and Holmes to our middle school faculty, and Joon to our high school faculty as a leave replacement for Sergei.
  • We reviewed last year’s work on the DEI initiative laid out by the school, and reacquainted ourselves with a central frame that focuses on access, achievement, identity, and power.
  • Michelle updated the department on a change in the structure of 8th grade math classes: the students have not been split into normal- and accelerated-paced classes. To meet the needs of the students, an extra period for support or enrichment has been provided for 8th grade students.
  • Pat updated the department about ongoing work among the high school math faculty, re-visioning the math program there and focusing on a two-year core cycle that leads into a elective program for junior and senior year for all students.

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English Department Meeting 10/12/21

Submitted by: Jane Belton

At the English Department meeting on 10/12, we spent time reviewing the work we did last year (particularly from the winter/spring meetings) and setting intentions and goals for what we want to work on this year in the areas of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Several department members mentioned that learning from each other in our meetings last year was a major highlight, and the group expressed interest in continuing to share and workshop practices, assessments, and units through a DEI lens, asking of ourselves what specific principles these practices, assessments, and units serve or how they might be revised to advance the work of diversity, equity, and inclusion in our classes. The principles articulated at our Professional Development Day (10/08/21) could help frame these teacher-led workshops:

  • Community members have differing and overlapping needs. 
  • Teachers’ and students’ social identities have implications for learning. 
  • School is a place where we must address the over/under representation of certain groups in our society, as this representation is mirrored in our materials and curriculum.
  • Our choices concerning classroom materials speaks to our beliefs, goals, and values.  
  • Our actions as educators, including the ways we give and receive feedback, speak to our beliefs, goals, and values. 

Since several department members are new, and several folks in the MS are teaching ELA specifically for the first time in many years, there was significant in sharing resources and examining our common language/practices for teaching English across 5-12.

We are hoping to plan a half-day retreat for some of this work.

 

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Visual Arts Dept. Meeting 10/13/2021

Submitted by: james french

Present: james, Rohan, Stephen, Susan and Carin

Absent: Jeremiah, Peggy and Shauna

 

We began the meeting by getting caught up with what has been happening in each others classrooms since we last met in person. The focus then shifted to the practical needs that we each have in order to better help our classes run – missing tech, software, equipment, ordering and budget questions, etc… From there we shifted gears to our DEI efforts. We set about establishing a plan for the upcoming years work and possible frameworks / lenses that we may want to utilize in order to best accomplish our goals. We framed the conversation through the DEI mission plan shared by Phil and utilized the principles of progressive education / principles of inclusive communities that we worked with during out professional development day.

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Oct 12 World Language

Submitted by: Adele de biasi Pelz

We began our meeting by using the first guiding question as a point of departure:

What do equity and inclusion mean for  World Language and how do they look in our classrooms?

We then looked at and read through the seven Learning for justice principles of equity and Inclusion and applied them to our individual and collective teaching practices discussing a range of topics that included:
– Student identities
– Teaching styles
–  Skills mastery and explicit lessons illustrating prejudice, discrimination,and social justice,.
     (These lessons are sometimes constrained by the skill level of the students in the target
    language, but not impossible and certainly a challenge we need to confront.
   ie. At the M.S., mandarin students created projects around the prevention of
   Chinese hate crimes for Senior citizens.)
– Materials
– Assumptions
In closing, the department was pleased to have been given specific resources for World Language teaching and for our next meeting will have read the two abstracts provided and be ready and prepared to discuss them.

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Oct 12th History

Submitted by: Tom Murphy

12 October 2021

Elizabeth Simmons, Emily, Tom, CCC, Momii, Amanda, Ann, Michel 

 

We started with brief intro and then watch a short video on Progressive Education in the 1940”s

 

In small groups we discussed the following prompts:

 

What does Progressive Education look like in my classroom?

How to bring in poc, working class in progressive education?

 

  • Discourse and agency
  • Critical thinking

 

We ended with a full group conversation on the Goals for 2021-2022 school year

  • Get 3-hour block of time for department planning 
  • We need curriculum audit
  • Training to center marginalized kids

 

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Science Mtg 10/12/21

Submitted by: Kelly

Present: Kelly, Daniel, Kara, Eliza
Absent: Jeanette, Sherezada, Michael

After some introductions, we read the attached two page article by Rochelle Gutiérrez introducing an equity framework that we think will be useful as we think about our class and try to map our curriculum and classroom practices to the dimensions of equity that they are addressing. 

Equity Framework Article

After reading the article, the four of us used these questions as a guide to discuss the article, how it could be useful in our work as a department this year, and some of the tensions that arise when thinking about addressing both the dominant and critical axes presented in the framework.

In the course of our conversation, we also had an interesting discussion about the LREI Diversity Statement, what the difference is between a “diversity statement” and an “equity statement”, and ways we could imagine it being updated.

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Department Meeting Notes For Performing Arts

Submitted by: Joanne Magee

Perf Arts Meeting: 10/12 R108

Attended: Joanne, Carrie, Nick, Katherine, Aedín, in zoom; Kristina and Susan

Absent: Damon, Joan and Deborah. 

1.On a practical level do we need to address anything;  Spaces? Schedule? Anything? 

  • Winter Concert: Planning . Date? What is it going to look like? Logistical pieces. What are the students working towards? 
  • Nick said maybe we are going to be divisional 
  • LS 3rd and 4th grade are joined together so how will that work? 
  • MS 6th grade band to share in the concert?
  • HS – Susan and Damon to weigh in. 
  • Masks to get- Susan 
  • Susan has spoken to Mark about this – we will follow up very soon. 
  1. Nick, Carrie and Damon would like to create an inventory of instruments. Maybe use barcodes to log things in and out. 
  2. Katherine is teaching the 9th grade Dance rotation. Teaser, introduction. Rotation is now until spring break- so in the final trimester the students have a choice. New to HS this year. 
  • Is there a chance for Deborah, Kristina and Katherine to meet up and talk about the program? Joanne can join/ host if preferable. 
  1. Bravo to Carrie (all kudos to Margaret and Damon! -Carrie) for starting a 6th grade Beginners band.
  2. Bravo to Joan who is in full rehearsal for OUR TOWN. 
  • We will be working on a ticket/seating plan for the PAC. Joanne and Joan to meet and plan. 
  1. HS mission statement work being done in weekly HS meetings – can we help?Margaret Paul has helped with this. 
  2. Start the ball rolling on K-12 Overall Mission Statement – 
  • Let’s look at what we had and then make updates. 
  1. Start the ball rolling on the website for Perf Arts updates– 
  • looks like the website needs some attention- to be continued.  
  1. Continued DEI work this year- creating a system/ protocol for routine reflection of work we are doing.  
  • Pedagogical practice 
  • Equitable grading 
  • Inclusive curriculum 
  • Socio- economic awareness was brought up this year. How do we normalize middle class life in this school. How can we partici[pate in reducing shame in identity?

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Library and Technology Services Department Inaugural Meeting

Submitted by: Karyn

New this year, Library, Ed Tech, and Tech have remixed into one department, and today was the first time the group was able to meet. Much of our time was spent introducing our two new team members and discussing what our various roles are; the staffing and title changes mean that most of us have new job descriptions. We spoke briefly about the guiding questions for fostering equity and inclusion in our classroom practice as well as the need to also look at what this means for our practice beyond the classroom in terms of curating collections of material (books, hardware, software, AV equipment, and all the attendant documentation) and running passive and active programming as well as maintaining two Instagram accounts. In the next few weeks, department members will asynchronously read through the resources from Kalil and gather discipline-specific resources from our professional networks (ALA, AISL, ISTE, NYCIST, etc.) into a shared Google Doc; we will then meet again to establish guiding principles that reflect our work across all three divisions. The librarians had already begun (last year) a process of auditing the books we promote and that work will continue alongside the examination of classroom practices.