Teaching and Learning Presenation
Washington Elementary School:
Making It Real: Washington School Leading for Equity
As Presented to the Board of Education May 25, 2005
Board members examine 'Making It Real' teaching materials
Principal Rita Kimball and Family & Community Resource Coordinator, Kate Graves introduced themselves, explaining that although there are 6 teachers that are part of the team who does this work, no teachers are present due to work to rule. All Board members were given portfolios describing the project, teacher's lessons and reflections, focus student data, grade level collaborative and whole staff work.
Rita Kimball explained some of the reasons we want to share Washington Equity work: to show the strong collaborative work in the classrooms, to acknowledge the existence of the achievement gap between white students and African American and Latino students and the importance of addressing these issues in the classroom and school wide. The consultants Washington hired from the Pacific Educational group - who do "Beyond Diversity" training and the "Collaborative Action Research for Equity" (CARE) project with classroom teachers, generally work with entire districts. Our hope is that we can spread this important work throughout Berkeley Unified and we are looking for District support. .
Washington emphasized the importance of having high expectations for all students and that different strategies may work for African American and Latino students. We define Equity -Equity does not mean treating everyone in the same way. It means doing what it takes to bring everyone to the same status. It consists of using extra and different measures to bring about equality. Equality is the goal. Equity is the approach.
The main goals of the Washington School CARE project are:
- Promote the academic achievement of all Washington's students with a special emphasis on traditionally unterperforming groups of Latino and African-American students.
- Eliminate the racial predictability of academic success at Washington
- Reduce the impact of institutional racism at Washington School
Equity work at Washington has spanned four years and started as part of Healthy Start's community set goals. In 2000, our entire staff did the two day "Beyond Diversity" training with Glenn Singleton. In 2002 we began working with P.E.G. consultant Jamie Almanzan. We have had a team with the Principal, Healthy Start/Family Resource Coordinator, Magnet Coordinator and 5 classroom teachers for 3 years. The first year the main focus was on choosing African American or Latino focus students, trying different classroom strategies withthem and sharing our results. Non-teachers focused on more schoolwide work with families, discipline and referral issues. We completed 5 seminars as a team to deepen our conversation and knowledge around issues of race, racism and white privilege and became familiar with a variety of usable educational frameworks. The second year, in addition to classroom strategies, we expanded to even more whole school work. In 2004-05, our third year, we are also leading "Courageous Conversations" with all of our teaching staff each month.
Our portfolio includes Principal Rita Kimball's "Vision for Equity at Washington," data such as our literacy goal, 6 year API scores indicating a narrowing of the achievement gap between our African American and White students, classroom strategies and focus student data and reflections. Also included is information about our whole staff "Courageous Conversations" around issues of race and white privilege and notes from grade level meetings which demonstrate ways to collaborate about culturally relevant teaching, state standards, and individual students.
The importance of this work around issues of equity and racial disparities can not be underestimated. Washington's goal in the 2005-06 school year is to continue this work on-site while trying to collaborate with other Berkeley schools to more effectively address these issues district wide. For more information please contact Rita Kimball or Kate Graves at Washington, at 510-644-6310.