We debriefed how our teaching and planning had been informed by the January work and what we wanted to work on going forward. We spend an hour in “work time” on a curricular project for next year, either individually or in small groups that formed around an interest. At the end of the day, Elizabeth S. shared her findings on Writing Interventions from her doctoral work. 

Science and English met together. Our focus was on how we teach students to make observations (and differentiate between observations and inferences). Candace and Calvin led us through a lesson on a poem (a 10th grade lesson) where we shared about one word, one sound, and one image that stood out to us in the poem to keep our focus on observations. I (Kelly) led everyone through a 10th grade physics lesson involving a bowling ball where they had to figure out how to accomplish certain tasks (speed it up, slow it down, keep it at a constant speed, etc). Sherezada shared about non-Newtonian fluids and how students needed to separate observations from inferences and also make higher quality observations. We broke into groups (high school vs middle school) after the shares and continued discussions about what we noticed and what was in common. We started thinking about ways we could make stronger connections for students about how we were working on the same skills in these different classes and how we could reference common language or approaches in both classes.

We did a curriculum review using the “Teaching Tolerance Anti-Bias Framework” and discussed our findings. We shared best practices: Jane shared about building in a service learning component within her Immigration elective and Candace W. talked about the weekly block she’s been using to do identity work with her 6th graders. At the end of the morning, Candace W. ran a “seed” workshop where we jotted down ideas for something we could change or try by the May retreat, inspired by with the work with the framework or the best practices.

Humanities “summit” – sharing names, introducing new folks. 

English → planning for retreat in Jan/Feb. Decided on two half days, one in January and one in March April. 

Rough itinerary: 

January – defining what it means to teach social justice/activism in the context of a literature classroom, how to adjust for developmental appropriateness, some kind of mapping exercise to identify possibility spaces in the curriculum, sharing of a couple of best practices. 

Spring Day – with a thought partner/group, developing a new unit/assessment for one of the spaces identified in Jan.

ACTION ITEMS: Heather to send Doodle poll with possible weeks for retreats