“ROUNDTABLE: Equity & Social Justice in Education.” Center for Teaching Quality #CTQCollab, 12 Nov. 2018
At Thurgood Marshall Middle School
- We Are Committed to supporting and sustaining an educational community that is inclusive, diverse and equitable. We are committed to nurturing an open, collaborative, and trusting environment because the work is enormous, deeply personal, emotional and often difficult. The values of diversity, inclusion and equity are inextricably linked to our mission of academic growth and social responsibility, and we embrace these values as being critical to development, learning, and success. To fully realize our mission it is imperative we recognize the institutional barriers, including racism, privilege and bias, that contribute to the pervasive, disparate educational outcomes within our school system.
- We Will Take Action to eliminate barriers as we strive for educational equity for all student groups. We expect nothing less than an accessible, multicultural community in which civility and respect are fostered, and discrimination and harassment are not tolerated. We will foster a purposeful curriculum emphasizing social justice and equity and where all students are actively and meaningfully engaged in rigorous instruction. We will examine policies and practices that are directly and indirectly pushing the most at risk students out of school and on a pathway to the juvenile and criminal justice systems and thereby work to interrupt the “school to prison pipeline.” We will intentionally build the capacity of diverse teams that are more reflective of our students. We will engage families as partners in meaningful ways. We recognize that our work to respect diversity and to include all in our community has roots in a history that has privileged certain groups while excluding and oppressing others. In our work with our schools and community, we will work to address the detrimental effects of this history through our teaching, practice, training and service.
- We Are Vigilant to advance the voices and needs of our marginalized populations, given the existing power differentials within our community and in the larger society.
Did you miss the most recent episode of the Mustang News & Cornwall Connection?
Episode 9: Stop AAPI Hate & Spotlight on Thailand
The Cornwall Connection is a student-created, organized, and performed weekly video newscast within our Mustang News to spread awareness about topics such as racial equity, social justice, BIPOC representation and stories, anti-racism, and more.
READ WOKE CHALLENGE
Join Teacher-Librarian of the Year 2020, Cicely Lewis, and Teacher-Librarian at Thurgood Marshall Middle School, Cassie White, as we embark on the Read Woke Challenge. Click here for more details.
Glossary
- Equity: the fair treatment, access, opportunity, and advancement for all people, while at the same time working to identify and eliminate barriers that have prevented the full participation of marginalized group
- Anti-racism: the practice of intentionally opposing racism
- BIPOC: Black, Indigenous, Person of Color
- Marginalization: a person or group of people who are treated as less than by other individuals with power, or/and systems of power
- Systems of oppression: discrimination against a social group that is backed by institutional power
A process where students and teachers build strong, respectful relationships founded on an appreciation of similarities and differences; learn to critically examine root causes of inequity; and develop collaborative solutions to community and social problems.
- Outcome 4: Have the skills, knowledge and courage to identify and confront personal, systemic and societal bias.
- Outcome 6: Be critical thinkers who contribute to and collaborate with our local, global and natural world.
Teaching Tolerance
- Identity: Mustangs will recognize traits of the dominant culture, their home culture, and other cultures and understand how they negotiate their own identity in multiple spaces.
- Diversity: Mustangs will examine diversity in social, cultural, political, and historical contexts rather than in ways that are superficial or oversimplified.
- Justice: Mustangs will recognize that power and privilege influence relationships on interpersonal, intergroup, and institutional levels and consider how they have been affected by those dynamics.
- Action: Mustangs will recognize their own responsibility to stand up to exclusion, prejudice, and injustice.
Advisory
Purpose
Advisory is the designated time for educators to connect and support students socially/emotionally. SEL includes students reflecting on their own experiences, feelings, and thoughts through their own lens. With the resources provided to us by the district, our job is to help students develop coping skills to process their local, global, and natural worlds. For our BIPOC students and marginalized students, systems of oppression such as racism are a part of their lived experience. In order for us at TMMS to ensure that all students are seen, valued, and heard within our classrooms we must acknowledge and openly talk about how these systems may be impacting their well being and the way they perceive themselves and their worlds.
Curriculum Guide
- Identity
- Essential questions: What is identity? How is identity developed? How does identity affect our perceptions?
- Diversity
- Essential questions: What is diversity? How is diversity experienced in different ways?
- Justice
- Essential questions: What is justice? How do stereotypes affect us? How does systemic discrimination influence our world? How does privilege influence justice?
- Essential questions: What is action? What are different ways of understanding, experiencing, and taking action? How does action impact our way of understanding each other and our world?
Tools we will be using to build our advisory lessons
Resources families can use to help guide conversations at home