The Puzzle: Blog

Last winter, the Association of Delaware Valley Independent Schools (ADVIS) and Carney Sandoe announced a joint partnership in creating the MCRC@ADVIS/Carney Sandoe Equity in Action Grant: Pushing for Progress in Our Communities.

The grant is meant to support tangible, measurable, and actionable strategies around DEI themes and subject matters pertinent to educational environments, and independent schools in particular. Independent schools are uniquely positioned to be a model for the entire education industry, and together with MCRC@ADVIS, we hope to provide educators with resources that help foster diverse and inclusive environments.

In spring of 2019, three proposals were selected as the inaugural class of Equity in Action scholars, each receiving a $5,000 stipend for their work. Recipients were asked to completed a significant portion of their projects by the end of the 2019 school year in order to submit proposals to present at regional and national independent school conferences in the 2019-2020 academic year. So far, the grantees have presented at:

• MCRC@ADVIS Cultural Competency Institute (August 22, 2019)
• MCRC@ADVIS DEI Conference (October 11, 2019)
• NAIS People of Color Conference (in Seattle, December 4-7, 2019)

One will also be presenting at the upcoming NAIS Annual Conference in Philadelphia on February 26-28.

We are excited to welcome all of the grantees to our FORUM/Diversity hiring and professional development conference next week in Philadelphia where they will present the results of their grant projects. Each workshop will be a highlighted featured session at the event.

Take a look at their workshops below and register now for FORUM/Diversity before it's too late!

After the Diversity Training: Supporting and Sustaining Instructional Fidelity in the Culturally Responsive Classroom

Friday, January 31 from 10:00-11:00 AM in Regency C

Grantee: Penn Pritchard, Curriculum and Instructional Leader and member of Head's Committee for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, AIM Academy

How do we bridge the gap between professional development offerings and the meaningful, ongoing translation of theory and research into innovative curriculum planning and inclusive pedagogy? In this session, learn how one instructional leadership team is developing fidelity tools to formally establish and define cultural competency as a critical instructional component, describe ideal implementation at the practitioner level, and offer school leaders a framework with which to strategically document observable teacher behaviors and deepen emerging proficiencies. Participants in this workshop will gain familiarity with assessment tools and implementation strategies, engage in self-reflection to identify their own personal and institutional strengths and growth areas in this realm, and work collaboratively to explore the potential impact of instructional fidelity frameworks on their respective classrooms and communities.

Learn more about Penn here.

Upstream: Songs for Building an Equitable, Just, and Loving Community in Preschool-3rd Grade Classrooms

Friday, January 31 from 2:30-3:30 PM in Regency B

Grantees: City Love: Dwight Dunston, Coordinator of Equity and Justice Education, Friends' Central School; and Brian Caselli Jordan, Associate Kindergarten Teacher, The Philadelphia School

Nip troubles in the bud; sow the great in the small. Big things of the world can only be tackled by attending to their small beginnings.” -Lao Tzu. In order to build the world we need, we must head upstream and begin the work of equity and justice with our youngest learners. In this workshop we will share a participatory sequence of our songs and discuss using them to open up meaningful, developmentally appropriate dialogue and action in the classroom around racial justice, equity, identity, solidarity, self-love, and beloved community in the face of role models demonstrating the opposite. We will end by sharing our creative process and putting it to use in order to make a full group song! Come sing with us!

Read more about City Love here.

Engaging Math Students with Civics and Social Justice

Grantee: João Gomes, High School Mathematics Teacher and Upper School Coordinator of Equity & Inclusion, The Agnes Irwin School

Structural inequality is the result of a process that cannot be fully understood without mathematics. Core math classes already cover the topics needed to explore civics and social justice, but rarely do these classes include problems that explicitly explore these themes. At the same time, math teachers often discuss the need for more engaging applications to help students develop a mathematical lens through which to view the world. This workshop will explore justifications for including problems centered around social justice and civic engagement and help teachers get started by providing them with a database of such problems arranged by algebra topic. Students can tell when something is/not important to a school. When topics centered around equity and inclusion are absent from STEM classes or relegated to senior electives for students who have fallen below grade-level, it sends a clear message to everyone in the community. If schools want to show that DEI issues are important, they must find ways to infuse the core curriculum with relevant topics that help students explore America's past and present as we prepare them to lead in the future. Participants will come away with helpful tips and a framework to help them engage with others in their community (including faculty, parents, administrators, and boards) about adding social justice topics to core math classes. They will also be given access to a database of social justice applications, arranged by algebra topic. This will allow participants to hit the ground running when they return to their schools and start the work of creating a more meaningful and transformative math curriculum.

Read more about João here.

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