Equity & Inclusion

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Equitable Safe & Supportive Schools

This work is about:

A “whole-school approach” that values the expertise of educators and includes the voices of students and families.
Building community connectedness and positive relationships with adults and peers of similar and different cultural, ethnic, and racial backgrounds.
A school that constantly reflects and adapts to the ever-changing needs of students, families, and staff.
Helping all students learn and develop life skills that allow our kids to navigate a complex and diverse world.
Ensuring that we value students’ identities and create learning environments that welcome, include, and support all students to deeply learn, grow, and thrive.
Schools utilize DATA across with a “whole-school approach” making sure we eliminate any disparities, and ensuring students are engaged and challenged to achieve their fullest potential.

Cultural Relevancy & Teaching

What is Culturally Proficiency?

Cultural Proficiency is the ability to successfully teach students who come from cultures other than their own. It entails developing certain personal and interpersonal awareness and sensitivities, developing certain bodies of cultural knowledge, and mastering a set of skills that, taken together, underlie effective cross-cultural teaching. NEA 2008

What is Culturally Relevant Teaching?

Teaching uses students’ identities and backgrounds as meaningful sources for creating optimal learning environments. It entails immersing both students and teachers collaboratively in the process of developing an understanding and appreciation of multicultural perspectives through the study of rich content and the use of a variety of instructional practices. It teaches to and through the strengths of these students.” Gay & Ladson-Billings (2013). The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto Curriculum Inquiry

Equity

SEL & Equity

SEL advances educational equity and excellence through authentic school-family-community partnerships to establish learning environments and experiences that feature trusting and collaborative relationships, rigorous and meaningful curriculum and instruction, and ongoing evaluation. SEL can help address various forms of inequity and empower young people and adults to co-create thriving schools and contribute to safe, healthy, and just communities.

PBIS, School Behavior & Equity

Educational systems cannot not be considered effective until they are effective for all student groups. PBIS provides an ideal framework for increasing equity in student outcomes. Research shows that schools implementing PBIS with fidelity have greater equity in school discipline, specifically for African American students. However, PBIS teams may need to include equity-focused strategies in their action plans to achieve equitable outcomes for all student groups.

Ways PBIS Frameworks positively impacts equity;

Increase the voice of students and families in their educational systems
Use strategies to make every student feel safe and welcome
Examine school-wide expectations and teaching matrices for hidden biases and to increase cultural responsiveness
Disaggregate data to assess and address disproportionality in exclusionary discipline
Use engaging instruction that builds on students’ prior knowledge
Support educators in replacing exclusionary responses to problem behavior with instructional responses
Revise punitive policies that disproportionately harm students
Ensure un-biased collective responses about student behavior and replace deficit thinking with a strengths-based approaches.

Trauma Sensitive Schools

Support for Trauma Sensitive Schools

Support for Trauma Sensitive Schools as a whole school, whole community approaches.

Trauma-Sensitive Schools and Social and Emotional Learning: An Integration. Safe, equitable, and engaging learning environments can prevent and mitigate the effects of trauma and help students build skills that foster resilience en route to lifelong thriving. (AIR)

AIR - Integrative Approaches

Helping Traumatized Children learn

No Place for Hate

No Place for Hate is a collaborative initiative that provides PreK-12 schools with an organizing framework for students, administrators, teachers and family members to develop long-term solutions for creating and maintaining an inclusive and equitable climate.

Collaboratively

Building inclusive and safe communities in which respect and equity are the goals and where all students can thrive
Empowering students, faculty, administration and family members to take a stand against bias and bullying by incorporating new and existing programs unders one powerful message.
Sending a clear, unified message that all students have a place where they belong and should be treated equitably.

Additional Resources

Why Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion?

The Holliston Public Schools is focused in building an Equitable Safe and Supportive school system in which our school culture is safe, inclusive, diverse, and cements an experience of belonging for every learner.