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

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.

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:

• White supremacy culture shows up in classrooms when… “Good” teaching is considered an antidote for inequity for Black, Latinx, multilingual students.
• White supremacy culture shows up in classrooms when… Superficial curriculum changes are offered to address culturally relevant pedagogy and practice.

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

We discussed some ideas about next year’s focus, including a book club (focusing on scientific racism and then transitioning into anti-bias work for our classes) and examining computational thinking to determine what we are doing and whether we should or should not be trying to integrate it into science. Other ideas brought up included finding labs to do together or planning for ways to bring science classes together with kids from different divisions.

We will keep it in the back of our minds this summer with the understanding that the departmental meeting structure could (and maybe should) change depending on what the fall schedule and structure looks like.

We talked about what science-specific needs we have for the uncertainty of the fall, and the main concern across all grade levels is how we can make and distribute kits of supplies to students with basic things that will allow them to do more science activities at home in our fall classes.

Submitted by: Kelly O’Shea

We met very briefly to say hello and see if anyone needed help with anything. (No one did.) Given the huge amount of new work in adapting our teaching and the amount of screen time and meetings that we have already had, we ended the meeting very quickly so that everyone could get away from their computers! 🙂

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.