Sponsored by Transforming Education and the Center to Improve Social and Emotional Learning and School Safety at WestEd
How do educators think and talk about students? Stereotypical language, damaging labels, and negative mindsets can lead some adults to view a student’s culture and language as deficits.
This archived webinar can help educators cultivate and model strong Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) tier-one practices. Tier 1 of the MTSS framework encompasses core instructions and primary interventions that help to create a supportive atmosphere and build positive relationships between staff and students.
What You Will Learn
Administrators, coaches, teacher educators, and teachers will:
- Learn how to contemplate and interrupt historically deficit views and responses to students from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds
- Reflect on where they show up on the Cultural Proficiency Continuum, which provides language that helps individuals describe unhealthy and healthy values and behaviors within themselves and others and within the policies and practices of organizations
- Analyze how they respond to differences, interpret data, and decide when to move students through tiers
Presenters
Dr. Adrienne Kennedy, Lead Partner at Transforming Education, has over 20 years of experience working with and on behalf of systems-involved youth. She has worked with individuals at many levels of education, from students to teachers, principals, superintendents, and district and state leaders. Dr. Kennedy has also spent over a decade working with adults and children and navigating the foster care system. Her core value is justice, and she is passionate about helping adults working within systems to identify and counter the mindsets, practices, and policies that perpetuate adverse outcomes and experiences for historically marginalized youth.
Dr. Angela Ward draws from her 25 years of experience in education to help ensure that each student is supported by a robust set of systems and practices that nurture their agency and self-efficacy. Dr. Ward also builds internal capacity using an inquiry stance and collaboratively leads a high-performing team focused on inclusiveness. Dr. Ward is a mother, wife, and internationally recognized, award-winning antiracist educator. She brings over a decade of experience in foundational equity work in Austin Independent School District, where she managed the district’s efforts on Cultural Proficiency & Inclusiveness, and restorative practices.
Julia Joy Dumas (du-mah) Wilks, also known as “The Healstorian,” – is a human, healer, historian, heart-led educator, and hopeful autism mom. Julia is on a mission to encourage, enlighten, and empower the next generation of compassionate and curious global citizens capable of healing the world. Julia serves as a secondary teacher specializing in Special Education & Social Studies. She dreams of a world where humans use stories to find their voice, speak their truth, protect their joy, and cultivate healing and reconciliation. She believes that effective co-teaching is a key model for building equity and empathy.
Kimberly de Jongh (she/her) is a middle school teacher at The John Dickinson School in the Red Clay Consolidated School District. She teaches sixth-grade geography and seventh-grade civics and economics in the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme. De Jongh contributes as a member of The John Dickinson School Building Leadership Team, Tier 1 Team, district Mikva Teacher Leader, and member of the Red Clay School Board Policy Committee. She is a doctoral student at Wilmington University, researching how to support secondary students’ development of communication skills.
Monique Martin has 20 years of experience in education, specializing in continuous school improvement and school turnaround. Her experience includes leading linguistically diverse, impoverished, marginalized, disenfranchised, and affluent school communities. She previously served as an award-winning leader, principal, assistant principal, instructional leader, professional developer, academic coach, new teacher and urban principal mentor, collective bargaining team negotiator, teacher, child and family advocate, business owner, community activist, and national consultant. Monique is pursuing a Ph.D. in education. She holds a Master of Science degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Bachelor of Science degree from Bowie State University.
Wendy Turner is the 2017 Delaware Teacher of the Year and teaches 2nd grade in Wilmington, Delaware. Through dynamic classroom experiences, she fosters student growth in compassion, empathy, resilience, citizenship, and growth mindset. Wendy is also a Delaware Compassion Champion Awardee, an Foundation Global Learning Fellow, and a Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching Science recipient. Currently, she is an SEL expert, advocate, and trainer on her own and for the authors of Fostering Resilient Learners and is serving on the Delaware State Board of Education.
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