Find a way to engage with at least one educator or staff member about the issue you have identified.
The issue that I identified is -Dropout among English leaneers(ELs)
Some guidelines to remember are:
If meeting in a group, set some simple norms and agreements in order to ensure that the space is supportive for everyone
Assure participants that what they share will not be attributed to them by name.
Describe for them the Current-State Story that you have identified through analysis of data. (Review Step 2, “Name An Equity Imperative,” in Chapter 9 of The Listening Leader for guidance.) Ask questions to get their perspective or opinion about this.
Listen actively by taking notes and asking follow-up questions.
Do not ask educators to speak on behalf of their racial or ethnic group – simply ask them about their own experiences and observations.
Sample Questions:
I have described a situation or issue in our school that I learned about by looking at [describe data you analyzed]. Do my conclusions seem accurate to you? Does this sound like your experience or observations?
What do you think would be some effective ways for the school to address this issue?
Are there any teachers or staff members in our school who you think provide a model of how to address this issue effectively? Do you have strategies that you have used to address this?
Are there any resources in the community that I should be thinking about as I consider this issue?
These are some examples –
For this assignment I polled four members of the support staff team at my school. The problem I identified in my school was an increase in discipline (in school suspension, out of school suspension, and detentions) for students with disabilities and foundational education (ELL) students at a greater percentage than students who do not fall into either of these categories. I explained the main findings from the data I am focusing on which are:
In all categories, our ELL students make up for 45-55% of the discipline.
In all categories, our students receiving special education services make up for about 25% of the group.
The number of individual days students have been out of school suspended is 577. Our ELL’s have been suspended 309 of those days, and our special ed students 177 days.
The group was not surprised to see these numbers, however most of the members thought the ELL percentage was even higher, and questioned if people were putting everything into our SIS accurately. There were a lot of ideas about how to address this issue, and some of the members brought up specific teachers who do a wonderful job at building relationships with our students. When the students have stronger relationships with the teachers, they spend more time in class, and have less issues with discipline. Some of the ideas we discussed are below:
Hire more teachers and get rid of Edgenuity during the school year. (Edgenuity is an online platform where students take classes if we can’t hire a teacher for a subject, or if a student failed a class they take on Edgenuity for credit recovery)
Have class sizes be smaller so teachers can build more effective relationships with students.
Enforce discipline policies for all students.
Bring back restorative approaches as a school-wide goal. Invest in paying educators after school if needed for restorative conversations/meetings, pay for more educators to be circle trained.
Create translation services in person. Many of our educators don’t speak the students primary language, which can often lead to miscommunication and can make a contentious situation worse.
Community services – We have been working closely with ROCA, however it’s more reactive than proactively working together. Consider having a member of the community ROCA stationed at the school part-time. Meet with La Colaborativa about some community issues. The district just hired an additional SRO – work with the SRO’s more proactively in the building with students who are skipping. Boys & Girls club – consider looking into transportation from the high school to the Boys & Girls club to make it easier for students to get there in the cold weather, and for students who are worried about walking that far in the community.
Overall it was discussed this is a community struggle in addition to it being a school struggle. There was also discussion about what is our responsibility, what is the families responsibility, the police, etc.
Example 2- This week I was able to interviewing three educators from my school. One is a classroom teacher and two were admin within my school. It was fascinating and eye opening to hear their thoughts on my topic, chronic absenteeism in at-risk students, and I was so grateful for the time they gave me!
To begin with, the interview with my colleague and fellow classroom teacher. He stated that just in reflecting on his classroom over the past year he has certainly noticed that students who are tied to more supports in the school, like our school social worker and title one support to name a few, also do tend to be more absent.
When I asked what are some ways he thought our school could effectively address this problem I thought he made the really essential point that the relationship between the home and the school is absolutely essential. Of course this ties back in so many ways to the video we watched this week and the readings, but what he was commenting on was how essential it is to have a relationship of trust established between home and school. He wondered if hiring more social workers would help build this trust and allow more home visits. I thought this was an intriguing idea. If the trust is built and the relational capital established then perhaps families would have more opportunities to say “here is what I need and where I need help to get my kid to school every day”. Do any of you work at schools where home visits are more common? Or you have a larger body of social workers? We have one and she is AMAZING but way way to busy to do frequent home visits.
Off the back of this idea I thought of the chapter in The Listening Leader where they talked about doing “community walks” this is actually such a cool idea and I think it could go a long way to help the school feel connected to the community and vice versa.
In regard to where my colleague has seen other educators handling this effectively he said the same thing my admin did, which is that when teachers make sure kids know they are happy to see them it makes all the difference.He also wondered if teachers who really explicitly fold teaching into the class in regard to regulation, executive functioning, and coping with challenging emotions yields to helping chronic absenteeism issues. I would be interested to see data in that, too!!! Those are all things I teach, but never through the lens of helping kiddos get to school each day, could be an interesting practice!
In my admin interview the folks I interviewed focused exclusively on what teachers could do to help. They mentioned how important empathetic teachers are, and positive reactions when kids walk through the door…which I couldn’t agree more. I wondered, through their lens, what they can do as admin to help teach and model this to staff? If staff aren’t doing this then what is being done to change that? Definitely challenging and something that involves, again, a lot of relational capital!
