Our students are increasingly diverse and varied in their resources and needs and yet achievement gaps and opportunity gaps continue to persist. School leaders set the tone, the priorities, and the manner of being in their colleges, and are crucial to ensuring access to a quality, engaging, rigorous, and relevant school experience.
The convening included nearly 40 participants throughout the education spectrum. The subject of the day was preparing and developing culturally responsive school leaders.
One of the day’s participants remarked, “The Summit has forced me to recommit to my mentor work for new principals, and re-energized my view around the value of veteran principals.”
This was the third gathering we hosted this year focused on school leaders.
The day focused on problem-solving across domains of school leadership, specifically addressing two questions: 1. How do principal preparation programs address developing culturally responsive leadership? 2. What elements can be built into programs that address this area for principals which will allow them to personalize and build better learning conditions for all students? The afternoon also included a listening session with Secretary DeVos.
As part of this summit, I shared a slide featuring an infographic demonstrating the school to prison pipeline. In sharing this slide, I explained to our team that if we do not change some of our practices to be more culturally responsive and engage all of our students in learning, we will be enabling this system to perpetuate, rather than disrupting it.
The photograph at the top is from a Principals at ED gathering at the U.S. Department of Education occurring before the gathering referred to in this post.
In June, our school’s administrative team hosted a two-day Climate Summit for our entire staff. The aim was to collaborate around our school’s newly defined core values; clarify our common practices around creating a safe and positive school climate; articulate our social-emotional learning strategies for the upcoming year; and standardize our field practices to ensure consistency, fairness, and, most importantly, improve opportunities for our students to be in class, rather than excluded.
Investing in creating culturally responsive principals requires cooperation, time and engagement from many different sectors. Most importantly, it requires brave leaders at all levels who are eager to reflect, model, learn and lead to be able to disrupt systems that fail to serve all students.
How do we take this significant aspiration and realize it through our practices and actions?
Dana Nerenberg was a 2016-17 Washington Principal Ambassador Fellow
The assembled educators and thought partners collaborated on different strategies which may be implemented by local school districts, principal preparation programs, and much more informally through networks of school leaders collaborating together. These include intentionally recruiting teacher leaders to become principals; fostering collaborative networks among attorneys; and simplifying systems of support for administrators throughout their careers.
Engaging teachers and your school team in a conversation about race and equity and disproportionality in field data isn’t a simple task. Every school leader wants to close achievement gaps, serve the entire child and make sure their teachers feel supported and safe. How do we engage in the bold and intricate conversations around our data, practices and policies while understanding the role of institutionalized racism in an ever-changing school landscape? Ensuring all faculty leaders, at every stage of their career are well-prepared, reflective, constant learners engaging in culturally responsive leadership is essential.
Source: TPd Paying for College Feed
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