Equitable Classrooms

We are excited to bring you a Fall edition of our newsletter, "Equitable Classrooms!" These newsletters are dedicated to sharing and celebrating teaching practices that foster uplifting all students within our classrooms and school buildings within the Rye Neck district.

Our newsletter is dedicated towards a commitment to celebrate, explore, and amplify the richness that diversity brings to our Rye Neck community.

We invite your feedback and suggestions to make this a valuable resource for your classroom. If you have things going on in your class or school that you would like to share, or books or other media to introduce to your colleagues, please let us know and we will do our best to include your ideas in our next newsletter!

Best,

Tara Goldberg & Meegan Lawlor

RN Coordinators

On our first district-wide wellness day, we focused on the theme of Connections. In the Middle School that included students coming together to create a charter of how they would like to feel in school and how they will help themselves and others feel that way. We also created a "Unity Quilt" where each student created a square illustrating what they love or what makes them unique.The idea is that when we connect the squares, we create something greater than each individual square. (The quilt will be displayed soon, more info to follow!) To wrap up the day, we connected students with kids in other grades during a Minute to Win It contest.

Our most recent district wellness day focused on Compassion. At DW students participated in a “Cultivating Compassion Assembly,” exploring how to listen, notice emotions, take perspective, and practice empathy through interactive activities.

They rotated through stations including:

• Listening: Let’s play “Panther Says”

• Noticing Emotions: Facial Expressions Headbands Game

• Perspective Taking: What Do You See?

• Practicing Compassion: Role Playing

To wrap up, each student reflected on how they can bring more kindness and understanding into their day by writing their own Compassion Goal with their classroom teacher.

At FEB, students learned about Compassion during Morning Announcements and it culminated with grade-level Town Hall Meetings on Friday in which students painted encouraging, motivating and inspiring Kindness rocks to be placed in their class assigned garden bed in the Bellows Life Garden!

This year, the DEI Leaders' Action Network will be focusing on Liz Kleinrock's book, "Start Here, Start Now" and how it connects with New York State's Portrait of a Graduate.

Amazon describes this book as follows:

Most educators want to cultivate an antibias and antiracist classroom and school community, but they often struggle with where and how to get started. Liz helps us set ourselves up for success and prepare for the mistakes we’ll make along the way.

Each chapter in Start Here, Start Now addresses many of the questions and challenges educators have about getting started, using a framework for tackling perceived barriers from a proactive stance. Liz answers the questions with personal stories, sample lessons, anchor charts, resources, conversation starters, extensive teacher and activist accounts, and more. We can break the habits that are holding us back from this work and be empowered to take the first step towards reimagining the possibilities of how antibias antiracist work can transform schools and the world at large.

We must remind ourselves that what is right is often not what is easy, and we must continue to dream. Amidst the chaos, our path ahead is clear. This is our chance to dream big and build something better.

• What is the difference between diversity and inclusion and how would you define your work or school space with these terms in mind?
• What implicit biases exist in your school or workspace and how can you and your colleagues build inclusive spaces?

Following our district screening of Counted Out on 11/4, here are some big picture questions to keep reflecting~

Many of us are taught to believe “math” is just computation or arithmetic: making numeric calculations, solving equations, etc. Under that definition, what daily activities would you describe as “math”? (Think about estimating costs at the grocery store, calculating a discount on a 10-percent off sale item, calculating a tip at a restaurant, balancing a checkbook, etc.)

Now imagine that you understand math more broadly: as a way of describing complex patterns, assessing relative risk, or identifying the deep structure of how things work. Under this new definition, what daily activities count as math? (Think about deciding whether or not you need to refinance your mortgage, or how likely you are to experience side effects from a medicine,, or which route you should take to work during rush hour.)

What daily activities feel like math now if you use this definition of math?

This year, we have created a collection of tools that can help you on your DEI journey, Feel free to examine the links in this "workshop" slide. Throughout the year, we will add resources to this slide. When you come across resources you think may help others on their DEI journey, please forward them to one of us so we can add them.

ADL Education

Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility

Learning for Justice

NYSED DEI Resources

RN DEI "Workshop"

We welcome feedback to help make this publication as resourceful and inspiring as possible, and tailored to your interests. We invite you to reach out to us if you have resources to share and/or questions to ask. 😊

DEI Page RNWebsite

RN DEI "Workshop" RN DEI "Workshop"

Tara Goldberg: tgoldberg@ryeneck.org

Meegan Lawlor: mlawlor@ryeneck.org