Please identify your school. Share a piece of your discussion and next steps. Identify anything you need from Central Office leadership to be ready to present to your school on religious sensitivity.
Tags: Session 3
Please identify your school. Share a piece of your discussion and next steps. Identify anything you need from Central Office leadership to be ready to present to your school on religious sensitivity.
Tags: Session 3
In reviewing the many topics covered by coalition presenters (religious sensitivity, the 3 R’s, value alignment, dialogue vs. debate, responding to triggers etc.) we feel the area that would benefit our school the most would be exploring the idea of cultural sensitivity as it relates to student expectations. As a majority minority school, the ethnic make up of our teaching staff is not reflective of our student population and, as such, we could benefit from investigating teacher expectations of students. We like the idea of presenting real life case studies from our classrooms to illustrate the necessity of cultural sensitivity. We would also like to continue to expand upon the emphasis already in place at Montrose on building relationships with students and the community we serve. We continue to look for outreach opportunities within the community and strive to develop a deeper level of comfort (within the entire faculty) with community involvement.
Ideas we are exploring at this time include:
1. Holding PTA meetings off site at various neighborhood facilities (churches, apartment club houses, etc).
2. Contacting non-participatory parents via phone for an informal discussion on how we can involve them more in school events.
3. Presenting a case study at each faculty meeting to spur discussion and highlight importance of cultural sensitivity.
We will be utilizing some of the case studies used in these trainings at our faculty meetings and would love the have the Virginia Center for Inclusive Communities present the information shared at the first coalition meeting regarding the Cycle of Prejudice and Family Engagement.
When looking at a focus area for our school, we will concentrate on our newly redistricted families to be sure they are fully included in all aspects of our school.
We have plans to share several ideas with staff at the first faculty meeting of the year in August on ways to include are newly redistricted students on the first day. At the PTA board meeting, the principal will discuss with board members ways to include our newly redistricted parents in PTA leadership as well as involvement in school events. We will better educate our faculty and staff regarding cultural norms (acceptable or offensive).
Over the last two days we have learned a great deal about the imporatance of incorporating RTI in the school program. With such a diverse population, Hermitage will stand to benifit greatly from initiaing such a program. We will use activities shared during these sessions during pre-school week to introduce our faculty to these concepts. During Staff development we will continue to educate our faculty and staff about the importance of implementing inclusive and equitable communities.
Also our school counseling department will visit homerooms monthly to educate the students in the areas of bullying, character education, and other areas of sensitivity. Peer helpers and mentors will also be instrumental in this endeavor.
Additionally, we will invite renowned motivational speaker, Josh Sundquist, to share the importance of accepting and celebrating personal differences as he shares his experience as a physically handicapped athlete.
On Monday, August 9, key teacher leaders and members of the Coalition for Inclusive Schools will meet to determine how our recent training will translate into our school improvement plan for 2010-2011. We anticipate that we will focus on disciplinary referrals as a data point for measuring progress. Members of our Coalition Team will present to our staff during Teacher Workweek and will focus on describing how inclusive schools are the foundation for a successful RTI Program. Religious Sensitivity as a strategy for creating a sense of belonging will be part of the workweek presentation.
We have also determined that a first step for promoting active awareness with students, faculty, and staff will be to hold an International Night as our October PTA Meeting. Our October faculty meeting will continue the discussion with staff in preparation for this program.
We would be interested in having from central office a copy of the introductory video on RTI and also a list of several specific “best practices” for teachers in promoting religious sensitivity in their classrooms.
At Harvie Elementary, we plan to discuss religious sensitivity during the teacher work week to begin the school-wide discussion and focus on inclusiveness and belonging. Although on the surface, it doesn’t appear we have many different religions represented with our student body, we have several small groups of students who practice religious beliefs that are different from the mainstream population. From this beginning activity, we will continue the staff training on creating a sense of belonging for all of our students and staff. Some of the activities completed during the coalition training will be included in the staff training and will incorporate:
- balloon activity
- dialogue vs. debate
- identifying gaps in relationships (faculty, staff, parents, students)
- communication among staff members
- increase parental involvement
Once these activities have been completed, the team members will re-evaluate the needs of the school to ensure all students were included in the total classroom and school program. In addition, the PTA will be included in some of the planning of the activities.
Our discussion has focused on staff buy-in and how to present the content to our larger community. We feel that we have had a focus on equity and are working to identify ways to move deeper with our discussions as a staff – including how to bring other voices to the table. Our focus remains on closing the achievement gap (especially with regards to students with disabilities) and on family engagement.
We would appreciate support in identifying models of multi-cultural clubs (especially at the elementary level). We hope to start such a club with 4th and 5th graders at our school. Additionally, a literature resource list as well as a “tip sheet” of common cultural norms (some not wishing to say “yes ma’am”; refusal to maintain eye contact; respect for women as authority figures; etc) would be most helpful to our staff.
We enjoyed the two day self reflection and discussions. At Tuckahoe we recognize that on the surface our demographics do not reflect much diversity as many other schools in HCPS; however, we acknowledge that within our population there is diversity in less obvious ways. As a result, a goal is to begin by acknowledge what we know to be present and to dig deeper to identify hidden areas where individuals or groups may feel marginalized. We discussed using surveys as a means of identifying target areas for growth, beginning in September with our school staff. This will lead us to further conversations about inclusion and equity in our classrooms. Our ultimate goal is to address academic performance targeting relationship, relevance and rigor.
At Mehfoud Elementary we feel we have learned a lot in our 2 day conference of understanding what equitable learning for every child looks like. Our next steps at Mehfoud are going to involve the planning and preparation of a Community Priorities Workshop in September.
One objective we would like to focus on as a staff this year is to involve more families in our school and in the education of their children. In order to achieve this goal, we would like to plan an ice cream social the first month of school for our families. We believe this will be a great first step in developing relationships with our families and free ice cream would give them incentive for joining us. In addition, we would like to have families sign their name on an ice cream cone poster that we will then display in the front of our school to show our appreciation for their attendance. Other plans we have this year are to establish more workshops, family game nights, and possible family dinners.
In our religious sensitivity discussion we have dialoged about religious diversity and agree that Mehfoud’s faculty and staff do an effective job of showing sensitivity towards our religious diversity within our school. Some areas we are going to discuss with our staff are some scenarios of conversations we may have when children or parents ask us questions about religion. In addition, we are going to give a calendar to our faculty and staff to make sure we are all aware of the different holidays that our children will be celebrating throughout the year.
As a team we will meet with our principal to discuss the survey results to determine where the gaps are in relationships. This will aid us in developing a sense of belonging with the faculty, the staff, parents, and the students in the school and classrooms so that Varina Elementary is an inviting place.
Our plan will include acknowledging the religious holidays that are up coming in the year on the morning or afternoon announcements. This will help validate various religions and provide awareness of the diversity in our school for our students and the world around them.
Our plan will also include the possibility of a religious/cultural dress day that will allow students and/or parents to participate by sharing artifacts of culture and customs.
These events will hopefully help us begin to build more parent involvement in our school-our primary school focus.
Building Inclusive Relationships…
Staff development to introduce RTI
Share the data
Develop school wide norms
Educate faculity, staff and students on the importance of building relationships
Create classroom norms
Follow up data each marking period
Create teacher blog for feedback
Twin Hickory will continue to focus on finding ways to create a sense of belonging for our students, staff and parents. For the 2010-2011 school year, we will be welcoming two classrooms of hearing impaired students. This will present many opportunities for us to use the information presented to help Twin Hickory become a more inclusive community. In the past three years we have held an “International Night” to highlight our diversity. We want to be more aware of religious sensitivity and focus on the 3 R’s. (Relevance, rigor and relationships) Having a list of religious holidays and a video on religious sensitivity from central office will be helpful. We are really looking forward to a GREAT school year!!!!
On our path to reach our goal of increasing student achievement and strengthening our partnership with our parents we will start by developing our schools climate for sharing openly when discussing change in our school. We will begin with activities and discussions around “norming”, dialogue vs. debate and then move into examining our own biases and prejudices as the year progreses. In doing this, we hope to create a safe and trusting environment for our faculty to discuss and prepare plans that will improve our school community (i.e student achievement and parent participation).
We look forward to receiving the materials on religious sensitivity that will guide our discussion about diversity.
These are a few areas we’d like to focus our attention this year:
First is to continue to increase our school community’s awareness and sensitivity of our students from different cultures. We will have an international night sponsored by the PTA.
This year we will have two new self contained autism classes. For these children to be included in the mainstream properly, we will need to provide a staff development piece for the all of the faculty and staff. This will be addressed in our August staff dev day for the teachers.
We were very excited about providing a rigorous curriculum and integrating student driven lessons that involve higher level thinking and problem solving. We are interested in offering a PLC group that would focus on the book Black Ants and Buddhists.
And finally we would be interested in having from central office a copy of the introductory video on RTI.
Holladay is very fortunate to have a wide diversity represented in its student population. Our focus for the coming year will be to find ways to better include the families of our ESL students, many of whom have language barriers when it comes to participating in school/PTA events. We will work with our PTA and ESL team to find ways to make this population of families feel more included. We will also be focusing on ways to welcome and include our newly redistricted families. When it comes to the 3 R’s, we work very hard on relationships and are proud of the approach our teachers and staff take in this area. We feel a good area to look at in the coming year would be “relevance.” This ties in well with our Effective Schoolwide Discipline approach, as the more relevant you can make learning for a child, hopefully the more engaged and focused that child will be. Also, as we have a significant economically disadvantaged population, we would like to look at using the book “Teaching with Poverty in Mind” as a professional book club choice. We used Ruby Payne’s “Framework for Understanding Poverty” this past year and this looks like it would be a good follow-up to that.
At Short Pump, we have decided to address bullying as our area of focus for the 2010 – 2011 school year. We discussed the importance of building positive relationships between students and plan to work together with all stakeholders to create a plan of action. We also discussed the challenges that we will face this year and how important it will be to promote positive dialogue. In order for our team to build a culture of inclusiveness, it will be essential that we work together as a faculty first to give students a sense of belonging. We also need to be open to the ideas and feelings of each other, the students, parents, and community to foster positive communication. We plan to use the resources of our counselors, administrators, teachers, staff, and central office to help achieve our goal.
We discussed the need for faculty awareness and education regarding cultural and religious diversity within our student and staff population. Specific areas of focus to address:
-grade level ideas for addressing multiple religious holidays are shared
-discuss sensitivity issues regarding email and in school social situations- examples- teacher’s lounge conversations, forwarding religious emails to others, etc.
-review religious holidays/calendar, discuss main points of various religious practices in order to develop understanding of other cultures/religions
-pursue ways to increase cultural awareness via morning announcements and other media
-seek parental support and involvement in the education of cultural awareness in our school
-Diversity Day- school-wide or grade level
-coalition members will address monthly upcoming religious holidays and make information available to staff. Coalition team will assist staff in ideas to differentiate instruction.
-share results of the equity audit with staff
Needed from Central Office: In addition to the religious calendar, we would like an “easy reference” guide for the various religions/cultures and their practices. This would be helpful to teachers to become more familiar with issues that may affect instruction in the classroom and to help create a sense of belonging for all students. Also a data bank of ideas in which teachers have addressed religious and cultural diversity in their classrooms.
Our focus will be discipline. Surveying teachers about ways we can improve our discipline procedures and their thoughts on current procedures will be administered via Quia during teacher work week. A school wide discipline plan will be implemented to create a sense of responsibility and belonging for all of our students and staff. We will continue to focus on our NBA (Bullying Program) incorporating character education each month as a reminder to students and staff. We will track the number of cafeteria referrals per month as well as discipline referrals to the office using Mac School. A mid year and end of year survey will be administered to see growth in our focus area.
We will also continue to focus on maintaining our core subject scores with a focus on reading. Differentiation, technology integration, RTI, and improving literacy resources (book room) will aide in this goal.
We are looking forward to a great year!
Needs from Central Office: We would like to hold a community priority workshop at our school as soon as possible.