Helping Leadership Teams and Professional Learning Communities Create the Trust and Structures Needed to Address the Racial Achievement Gap Please click the arrow keys to move through the presentation.

Prior to working with a school, we ask the Leadership Team members a series of questions about their school. Please read the questions on the following six slides and answer AGREE or DISAGREE for each question. After answering, you will be able to compare your answers to those of 6 other Leadership Teams.

1. Racial, ethnic, and cultural differences among staff, students, and parents affect student achievement and parent involvement at this school. 95.2% of leadership team members agreed with this statement for their school.

2. Some staff members do not have the awareness and skills necessary to teach and develop relationships with African American and Latino students. 90.4% of leadership team members agreed with the statement for their school.

3. I am personally able to engage all students regardless of race, ethnicity, and culture. 48.6% of leadership team members agreed with the statement for their school.

4. The Leadership Team has the trust necessary to discuss racial and ethnic barriers to student achievement and parent involvement. 48.6% of leadership team members agreed with their school.

5. I have the skills, strategies, and confidence to lead my team in conversations about race, ethnicity, and culture. 26.3% of leadership team members agreed with the statement for their school.

6. The Leadership Team has the skills, strategies, and confidence to address teachers at the school who struggle to effectively teach African American and Latino students. 1.1% leadership team members agreed with the statement for their school.

Based on the answers…we can say that in these schools…

Race impacts student achievement and parent involvement. These schools have some teachers who do not know how to build relationships and/or teach African American and Latino students. Many staff and school leaders do not have the skills, strategies and confidence to talk about race with their staff. Leadership doesn’t have the trust necessary to have conversations on the impact of race, ethnicity, and culture at the school. Leadership teams do not collectively have the skills, strategies, and confidence to support teachers who have demonstrated the need for help teaching African American and Latino students.

So…How can Study Circles address these challenges? Study Circles provide a structure to help leadership teams: Develop the trust, skills, and confidence needed to have an honest dialogue about race and other challenging issues. Create the structures to productively challenge each other through on-going conversations and exploration. Create a shared a vision and understanding of the barriers to that vision.

The process is divided into three steps: Practice analyzing a problem through a racial lens Step 3 Learn how to talk about race with colleagues Explore different racial experiences and viewpoints Step 2 Develop trust and begin to understand each others experience. Step 1

Step One sets the foundation. The goal of Step One is to begin building the trust. Participants go through a series of activities that help them develop a foundation for honest and productive dialogue on racial barriers to achievement. Many teams make the mistake of skipping this step, or will simply do a brief activity at the beginning of a meeting. Step ONE, however, takes time and is vital to the rest of the work.

Here is what Leadership Team members have said after Stage One Learned peoples’ perceptions, beliefs, what defines who you are, where they are coming from. This activity opened up a window It was important to work on our relationships and trust before having the hard conversations Not feeling judged by others feeling more connected and safe Feel like a wall was knocked down… We need to know each other to trust each other Its about moving the entire school forward and we can’t do that unless we bond, compromise and learn about each other. I understand how slowly you have to go with this because you have to be able to trust each other at another level to be able to talk about race Openness to tell our stories and show our vulnerability and empathy

Step TWO builds on the trust to help participants practice having an honest and productive dialogue on racial barriers to achievement. Participants are taken through activities that slowly get deeper. Little by little, participants see that they can have honest and respectful conversations about their different experiences with stereotypes, skin color, and racism.

Here is what Leadership Team members have said after Stage Two Even though some is hard to hear, it’s good to know we are getting somewhere…finally. I feel that we have been able to have an open and honest dialogue about race and how it affects our work Sense of commitment and openness Everyone’s stories and coming from different backgrounds and walks of life and how that impacts our life There is much that I don’t know and would like to know Not done, unfinished business, painful, honest, courageous, tense I am feeling excited about the trust we showed by speaking about our experiences. Hopeful. We came together to discuss a difficult issue and we were productive I feel like being part of the solution! A shared vocabulary, open hearts and minds, vulnerability

Step Three focuses on the school or office… Step ONE helped the group develop the trust. Step TWO gave the participants the confidence to discuss different racial perspectives and experiences. Participants are now ready to look at different real-life examples from the school or district and practice analyzing them from a racial perspective.

Bringing in different viewpoints… Many Leadership Teams are not as diverse as the student population. To provide more perspectives, facilitators bring in student, parent, and teacher voices using notes and videos from student and parent/staff study circles.

By the end of the 3 steps, Leadership Teams will have: Begun to develop mutual trust and respect Heard and discussed different perspectives and experiences Been given the opportunity to challenge perceptions Started to create a shared understanding of the problem Created mutual accountability

Outcomes from Leadership Study Circles The school moved the staffing positions to create an ESOL Support Teacher to support ESOL students in the classroom. All staff and team meetings start and end with the question, “How do our decisions impact African American and Latino students?” The Staff Development Teacher created a professional development plan for the staff on how middle school students develop their racial identity and academic identify. Perceptual data from stakeholder study circles are included in the school improvement plan. The Leadership Team is speaking in one voice on the need to address teacher beliefs and practices. Leadership teams now use SMART-R goals (R is for Race Conscious)

What Principals Say… I feel equipped to look at situations from a lens of race and equity and feel compelled to ask myself the questions, "Am I walking against the moving sidewalk in the decisions that I make as a leader?"  I feel more comfortable having conversations about race with my staff due to the work we have done as a team facilitated by study circles. - Ms. Monifa McKnight, Principal Ridgeview Middle School Providing us with the framework needed to keep the importance of equity at the forefront of our decision-making will offer each of the ILT members a tool to use when having those same discussions or making the same decisions with others in the building. - Ms. Sheila Harrison, Assistant Principal Kingsview Middle School It has helped me to be honest about my feelings about race to the ILT and the influence it has on academic achievement. - Ms. Traci Townsend, Principal Earle B. Wood Middle School

In my 13 years as a school administrator, our work with Study Circles/Equity Team in 2012-13 was the best professional development for the leadership team that I have ever experienced. Not only did we develop a community of leaders who is now able to talk about race and the persistent achievement gap at our school, but we came together as a strong, cohesive team to a degree that we had never experienced. We got to know each other’s stories and brought levels of trust, commitment, accountability, and shared leadership to new heights. This unintended outcome has strengthened the ILT more so than I ever envisioned, and has launched us into a renewed commitment to confront issues of race and work together to close the achievement gap. Scott Murphy, principal, Watkins Mill High School October, 2013

…In addition to its work with Leadership Teams and Professional Learning Communities, the Study Circles Program supports schools with other formats to help engage all stake holders. Some of the formats include….

For more information about this format, click Partnering with parents To build a unified group of diverse parents, teachers, and students that understands the challenges and benefits of a diverse school. Schools have used these study circles to inform their School Improvement Teams, to develop better parent engagement strategies, and to create ongoing Principal Advisory Committees. For more information about this format, click Here for a brief video.

For more information about this format, click Spanish Language To create an on-going Latino Parent Committee. To create a partnership among Latino parents and school staff to improve student achievement and parent involvement for Latino students and families. Facilitated in Spanish and interpreted to English. For more information about this format, click Here for a brief video.

Students To understand the students’ experiences and perceptions on race, and how race impacts their education. To help students and staff talk together about racial barriers to achievement. Click HERE for a brief video about this format

For More Information WWW.MONTGOMERYSCHOOLSMD.ORG/DEPARTMENTS/STUDYCIRCLES 301-444-8630