During the last week of June I attended the Equity as Excellence conference at the Dunn School in Los Olivos organized by CATDC and it was a truly enriching and nurturing experience. The facilitators came from a variety of background and they organized the conversations, keynotes, affinity groups and cohorts perfectly throughout the week. The conference/retreat was meant to foster conversations about identity, belonging as well as provide tools to work against bias in education and the world around us.
My goals moving forward are to think of ableism in the Makeries and how we can better serve students who walk through life differently than the majority. Do left-handed students have the same experience through who are right handed? I also want to work closer with Renita to connect threads from E Block to HEART so we're building off of each other's work and conversations. I'm hoping the HEART team can also think about identity, especially in terms of digital citizenship. One thought I also have is are we educating our white students about their whiteness, and possibly we should have a WARE student group to foster those conversations.
A social justice standards for students was shared with the group and I would love to use that material when collaborating with teachers going foward!
I would highly recommend this PD to everyone Burkes. It was incredible having time to focus on this important work and it inspired me to want to keep pursing this work. Also the pool, wine tastings, and ambience was a delight!
This sounds so great Vanessa and I'd like to attend! I love the goal of considering how to better serve the minority group, like left-handed makers! The social justice standards are so powerful and. I would love to collaborate in any way around implementing them in the makery and other learning spaces. It would be great to get a group to attend this PD next summer and thanks for sharing your experience.