Equity Starts with Reflection

Conversations around equity are difficult and at times, uncomfortable, but crucial to ensuring a learning experience is truly personalized.  As shared in a recent blog post, The New and Improved PL Toolbox, including equity in the newest version of the tool was imperative and creating equity as its own domain was intentional.

Over the past six months we’ve had a continuous conversation with teachers and school leaders about it equity looks like in a personalized learning classroom. From these conversations we identified teacher actions centered around bias, identity, access and expectations that would ultimately become the foundation of our 4 phases: Self-Awareness, Diversity in Design, Collaborative Grouping, and Access to Materials.

Observing self-awareness in a 20 minute observation is not the same as observing routines and procedures.  For this reason we are recommending that this domain be used as a reflective tool by teachers that promotes self-efficacy within to recognize implicit bias, push curriculum to represent the students who are engaged, and consider how learners are grouped and access materials.  For coaching purposes, this domain can be used to guide conversations, set goals, and connect with colleagues in a safe way.

To help you get started, here is a list of questions to guide self-reflections -

• How do I track and understand my interactions with students in order to help me increase the quality of those interactions?
• How do I calibrate proficiency levels for student work with other team members in order to identify patterns of bias?
• How do students learn appropriate language for asking questions about others’ cultures and sharing details of their own in my class?
• ​How are the racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds represented in the classroom and in student output?

• How often do groups change in this class?
• How are groups selected in this class?

Want to go deeper, but not sure where to start?  Here’s what is inspiring our team -

• Disrupt Implicit Bias by Personalizing Your District
• Making Caring Common Project - Harvard Graduate School of Education
• Exploring Ethnic-Racial Identity
• Closing the Gap:  Creating Equity in the Classroom

Jason Broussard
Manager, Personalized Learning Campus Coaching 
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Jason Broussard is a Manager of Personalized Learning in the Dallas Independent School District. Jason primarily focuses on coaching and developing school leaders and instructional coaches to support teachers moving towards personalized learning. ​