Submitted by: Kelly
present: everyone!
The science department met to work on filling out the worksheet for the summer curriculum group. We added notes in about what we had there (still needs to be cleaned up to be viewed externally, so not attaching here), then had a discussion about our observations of students in various grades and how their behaviors, attitudes about learning, etc were developing this year given the disruptions they’ve experienced over the past three school years.
Submitted by: Kelly
Present: Michael, Sherezada, Eliza, Daniel, Kara, Kelly
Absent: Jeanette
Our goal from our last meeting was to continue thinking about how our courses, classrooms, and curriculum can be designed for adjustability and variability (rather than “average”)—and how we can evaluate whether and how we are doing just that.
Building off of what we discussed after listening to the podcast last time, we started thinking about Universal Design by watching a video of a lecture by Sara Hendren, a professor at Olin college, that touched on many ideas about design and ability.
Here is the video that we watched: https://vimeo.com/134764010
We had a short discussion after the video, then spent a little time exploring the UDL Guidelines as one potential avenue for guiding our thinking in designing for adjustability—and a potential avenue (alongside tools more explicitly focused on race and other aspects of identity) for building a tool to evaluate our work.
In our next meeting, we plan to pull together different things that we’ve looked at this year to pass along to those in the summer work group.
Submitted by: Kelly
Submitted by: Kelly
Present: Daniel, Kara, Jeanette, Kelly, Sherezada, Michael
We spent this meeting using the equity framework that we read about last time to try mapping a recent project or unit in our classes into the 4 dimensions of equity that were outlined in the paper we read. (We had this handout, a selection of slides from a presentation at a workshop I attended this summer, as a “cheat sheet” for our work.)
We each made whiteboards of our maps, and then we shared with each other and discussed.
We noted the similarities of the ease of filling the access and achievement boxes and the relative difficult of filling the identity and power boxes—something to return to in a future meeting.
We also discussed what it means to be focusing on equity in an inherently inequitable situation (private school).
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.
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.
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.
Submitted by: Kelly
During our May meeting, we did some reading, reflection, writing, and commenting (and then discussion) on the bigger, conceptual level about science—based on a prompt from Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s recent book The Disordered Cosmos. We talked about the ways that science is inextricably linked to power, whether we could imagine a future of science that wasn’t that way, and the connections to and implications for our classes.
Next, we had two shares of ways that we have worked on incorporating anti-bias/anti-racist teaching into our pedagogy and/or curriculum this year. I (Kelly) shared about a sequence of activities from my 11th grade sustainable energy class, and Daniel shared about an ongoing intervention he has been doing with one of his 9th grade classes where the effects of the students being grouped by their tracked math classes seems to be impacting the motivation, participation, and the overall way that 9th graders have approached Chemistry this year. In our discussion, we connected the situation to the starting prompt and messages about power this grouping sends and reinforces for students. Links to documents, student responses, etc can be viewed in the slides from the meeting (linked below).
Our third activity was to create a Jamboard together (also linked in the slides) where we talked about what the 2.0 version of the science ABAR work could be, what we want to learn, and what things we could get started on next week in our final meeting to set us up to start the year with momentum. We talked about several ideas (which can be seen on the Jamboard), including more discussion of what Daniel shared and what we can do next year when students in 9th and 10th grade classes will be back to a less “tracked” experience to better understand the way that the math tracking impacts the experience and approach of our students in our untracked science classes.
Here are the slides from the meeting.
Submitted by: Kelly O’Shea
Due to jury duty, medical appointments, and more, the science department could not muster a quorum on Wednesday afternoon. At 4:10, we decided to save the work that we had planned for that day so that we could do it with a larger number of department members next week.
Submitted by: Kelly O’Shea
We continued our work using the math equity toolkit and workbook.
We completed the 5th step of the cycle that we started in October by reflecting on our plans from last month and how we have begun to implement them.
Then we started on the November work. The theme for November is “How am I authentically including Black, Latinx, and multilingual students?”
The Engage prompts for this month started with:
We spent time writing in response to the reflection prompts for these topics, and then had another good discussion about what we had written and what it had raised for us. We talked about the tensions between competing goals of our work and the steps toward progress in equity work in science. For example, important steps (like “good” progressive teaching practices that help all students or incorporating scientific role models of diverse backgrounds into our curriculum) on their own are not enough to achieve equity in our classes or to view the work of science itself differently. For another example, we talked about how making moves toward anti-racist science teaching might mean eliminating some content to open up time for different kinds of discussions, but also might leave students less prepared for eventual college work in the subject (which would obviously have its own negative equity effects). (I’m not sure if I’m capturing everything about this discussion well enough, but this is a taste of some things that came up!)
Then we worked on updating our personal plans and action steps to incorporate what we thought about and discussed this week.
Here is the slide deck that we used: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/156qpEbmxa-fTieSZtZsZxQxHvJqz8YZy0mfV1HJ-9mQ/edit?usp=sharing
Submitted by: Kelly O’Shea
Science met and followed the plan outlined in this slide deck (which we used as a Pear Deck): https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1RVB6Wq7J-obBuJnImRim4-9ZskgEHlV1CBjctzJoEec/edit?usp=sharing
The workbook we are using in our meetings focuses on identifying ways that white supremacy culture shows up in our classrooms and helping us make changes to counteract/subvert/move away from that.
For this meeting, we focused on the October theme of “What am I teaching?
Procedural fluency is preferred over conceptual knowledge.”
There was a lot of great quiet reflection and thinking, and then we had a good discussion that landed on thinking about how many of our students seem to see procedural fluency as the hallmark of being successful and do not value conceptual knowledge in the same way. Although we feel we value it in our classes and thought about many ways that it shows up, we were thinking about how to help students shift that belief—and where we can act to reinforce that shift in values. (Personally, I was thinking about examining whether my assessments do a good enough job of testing for and showing the value of conceptual thinking.)
Then, we used the tools from the workbook we are using (see slides) to make plans and list steps for how we will act with accountability to work toward our goals. Some of the goals include: allowing more room for students discussing how they feel about areas in science that are inequitable, introducing scientific role models of diverse backgrounds, not rushing/compromising/cutting corners due to the current situation, working on assessments for concepts and not only skills.
We will work on our plans over the next month and reflect on our progress in the next meeting… as well as moving on to the next activity in the workbook as we continue to examine our classrooms and curriculum!