DEIB

Suggested Reflection Questions

1. Your role at Burke's

2. When did this opportunity take place?

3. Summary of workshop/ opportunity

4. Goals & Collaborations:

   - What were your big takeaways from your workshop or project?

My first time attending this and it was an excellent blend of affinity space work that POCC used to provide, along with a lot of great sessions on topics such as AI, communication and leadership skills, as well as a range of very special student-performances from varioius Asian cultural heritage groups around San Diego. It was a special opportunity to honor my own family and roots and my mom was able to visit and even hear from the panel speaking about how we can support Arab and Muslim students which was so important in these times. I was able to connect over the conference with many Bay Area leaders as they often arranged our seating by Regions around California and the networking to hear about how schools are addressing AI specifically, was very useful especially as I'm preparing to share our own work on this with the Board next wee…

I attended the Howard Zinn Book Fair– “an annual celebration of The People’s History, past present and future.” This year’s theme was “Fight Supremacy: Actions Against Authoritarianism,” and there were many engaging panels, workshops, and tables. I found the session “Empowering Kids: Social Justice Picture Books” to be most relevant to the work that I do as assistant to the school library. In particular, I can apply what I learned to my goal of incorporating DEIB practices into library displays/read-alouds/collection management. I would definitely recommend the book fair to any and all educators, as it provides bountiful opportunities to reflect on DEIB themes and how they can apply to our work with students. 

Four authors shared picture books that they wrote with various social justice themes (see list below), then went on to discuss why they focus on social justice, how to navigate the “age appropriate” parameters, ways to empower…

Maya McDougall and I had the pleasure of working together on a project centered on belonging and healing. Through the BTP Design Lab (a six week Zoom course) we explored the question "What can we design to support our students to move from coping to thriving?"

This training built our leadership identity and toolkit to reimagine classrooms and schools as liberated learning environments. We used a Liberatory Design framework to identify an equity challenge in our fourth grade Makery classroom. We used the design process to test a few prototypes on engaging our students with practices and projects related to healing.

We were excited to incorporate affirmations into our pinball machine projects. Students record affirmations on Scratch, and players get to hear their words of encouragement and belonging while playing pinball.

This was an exciting learning opportunity that informed my practice all around engaging with students and hearing their voices…