Submitted by: Susannah Flicker

-Discussion: embarking on DEI work as a department. How does this look for us as learning specialists? What are the ways in which we, as a department and as individual practitioners, are working to include and support students and families of color? What are the areas in which bias and exclusion may show up?

Some of the topics that came up in our discussion of these questions were:

-the need to diversify the clinicians/evaluators that we refer families to

-the need to explore the notion that smartness = whiteness and how this may be evident at LREI

-equity and the assumptions that are made about families’ ability to access support outside of school

-how the school can support families who don’t have the financial means to access tutoring, evaluations, and other outside supports

We decided that we would like to read the text Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad and use the exercises in the book to frame and structure our next few conversations.

Submitted by: Susannah Flicker

We met on 10/1 and planned for our focus for the upcoming year. We decided that we want to schedule a professional development as a department with an evaluator to help us develop our ability to read and interpret evaluation reports and test results, and work with classroom teachers and parents to more effectively understand student learning profiles and accommodations. We have since scheduled this with Dr. Anya Barak for 2/25/20 and will meet in January to plan for that session, as well as for the work we hope to do with our divisional faculty members afterwards.