Byron's Babbles

Yesterday was another powerful day of learning at Harvard University. It started out with Liya Escalera walking us through changing the narrative, valuing the cultural wealth of our underrepresented students in order to achieve equity. Additionally, she taught some great asset-based approaches to leading for student success. The best part was how she had us start this session. She had us reflect on situations in an educational setting that made us feel unwelcome and then reflect on a situation that made us feel welcome. This was a great way to get us in a mode of thinking about changing the narrative for our students. Liya also worked us through asset based communication. Below is a slide that does a great job of showing what our discussion included: Then we spent time digging into family engagement and making families true partners with Stephany Cuevas of Harvard University. We know that students with engaged families:

• Exhibit faster rates of literacy acquisition
• Earn higher grades and test scores
• Enroll in higher level programs
• Are promoted more and earn more credits
• Adapt better to school and attend more regularly
• Have better social skills and behaviors
• Graduate and go on to higher education

The learning did not stop here. We then spent time with Daren Graves diving into issues of race with intentionality. This was very powerful learning. We discussed how racism can happen without it being intentional. In education we must be diligent in monitoring the areas where we see disparate racial outcomes or impact:

• Curriculum
• Groupings
• Assessment
• Relationships with students and faculty
• Relationships with the community
• Recruitment/Retention

Just like in Thriving Students and Developing & Supporting Our Students: Future Identity Versus No Future Identity here is the top 30 list from our Tuesday learning:

1. Reflect on a situation in an educational setting that made you feel unwelcome.
2. Reflect on a situation that made you feel welcome.
3. Asset-Based versus Deficit-Based Communication
4. It is a bad habit to not look at all our communication through a critical lens.
5. What is the problem? The problem is not our students.
6. Is the problem that our students aren’t post-secondary ready, or that our education system is not student ready?
7. Cultural competence will not cut it. We need to be highly skilled, not just competent.
8. We need to make sure all schools are student ready.
9. Google Translate™ is a good thing, but must be edited, or those reading will feel disrespected.
10. We need information to go to parents as well as the students.
11. We need to offer parents parents questions to ask their students.
12. Our families are collaborators.
13. We need to have parents presenting to parents.
14. Have parents talk to each other.
15. Students need to be thought of as part of a family, and then the family as part of all the practices of the school.
16. Staff needs to view families as collaborators and partners.
17. Staff Relationships With Parents + School Knowledge = Family Engagement As Confident Partner
18. Staff needs to think of themselves as mentors to their parents.
19. Family engagement is a way of thinking, not a practice.
20. Family engagement is a value, not just a practice.
21. There is no gene for race. Science saved the day!
22. Race is an idea.
23. Race is not culture.
24. Race is something that happens, not something we are.
25. It’s not about doing well in school, it’s about doing school well.
26. Racism is usually pretty mundane.
27. A system that confers privilege and produces disparate outcomes on the basis of race.
    1. historically-based systems
    2. actions/beliefs/policies/practices/conceptions
    3. confers visible and unacknowledged privilege
28. Sometimes we set students up for failure by trying to not set them up for failure.
29. Start with implicit biases, then move to structural biases.
30. Racism can happen without anyone intentionally wanting it to happen.