Author: Mandi Bozarth

Agreements for Talking about Race: Assume Positive Intent and Take Responsibility for Impact

Reading Time: 3 minutes

As you engage with your team in talking about race during professional development, staff meetings, or other formal conversations, a set of shared agreements can support your team to deepen discussions, to engage deeply in self reflection, and to learn from one another. (To learn more about why and how to use agreements, see the Using Agreements blog post.) To ensure that your agreements work for your team, it is key that you spend time together digging into what each agreement means to you as a team and how you will use it. In this blog we will discuss the agreement “Assume Positive Intent and Take Responsibility for Impact” to unpack ways to understand it, ways it can feel challenging, and ways to engage with it during conversations about race.

Continue reading “Agreements for Talking about Race: Assume Positive Intent and Take Responsibility for Impact”

Recognizing Holidays and Cultural Celebrations at School: Halloween

Reading Time: 6 minutes

In recent years, schools across the country have modified Halloween celebrations to better meet students needs — some have moved parades to after school, stopped the sharing of candy during school, replaced events with alternative celebrations, or cancelled Halloween celebrations. This blog provides considerations and key questions to support you to center race and ethnicity as you think about and plan for school-based Halloween celebrations and the use of costumes. Continue reading “Recognizing Holidays and Cultural Celebrations at School: Halloween”

Equity Considerations for Social and Emotional Learning

Reading Time: 3 minutes

by Mandi Bozarth and Isaiah McGee

During the past several years, Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) has grown as a topic of educational programming and planning. Evidence shows us that implementing SEL can result in improvements to classroom academic success and school culture and climate. As we return to class this fall, many districts and buildings are considering a new emphasis on SEL practices as early as the first weeks of school to support students who have experienced disruptions to their education due to the pandemic. With the growth of SEL programming and implementation, we are also aware of challenges some systems face when SEL is implemented without considering equity. If implemented in a color evasive way, without considering differences in the experiences of students of color or without taking into account the impacts of implicit racial bias, SEL can have negative impacts on marginalized student populations.

Continue reading “Equity Considerations for Social and Emotional Learning”

Equity in Personalized Learning

Equity in Personalized Learning

Reading Time: 2 minutesThis summer the International Association for Online Learning (iNACOL) and CompetencyWorks invited me to the 2017 National Summit on K-12 Competency-based Education to explore personalized learning and CBE. The Summit brought together experts and leaders from across the country to focus on 4 key areas: 1) quality, 2) equity, 3) meeting students where they are, and 4) systems and policies. Continue reading “Equity in Personalized Learning”

Check out the Dream Center’s Summer Leadership Camp

Check out the Dream Center’s Summer Leadership Camp

Reading Time: < 1 minuteDreamCenterlogoCheck out the awesome work of our partners at the Dream Center during their Summer Leadership Camp 2017. Congratulations to the team and nice job to the participants!

Enjoy their video HERE.

To learn more about the Dream Center visit them online HERE or on Facebook.

Note: this post was updated in May 2020 to correctly link to the Dream Center’s new pages, Dream City IA.

Why Personalized Learning?  A Parent’s Perspective

Why Personalized Learning? A Parent’s Perspective

Reading Time: 4 minutesPersonalized Learning 300This is the first in a series of blogs to explore personalized learning.  In the first installment, I share my own journey as a parent to understand why personalized learning should be a goal of PK-12 systems and how I came to believe that.  The “evidence” for my parental belief is almost purely anecdotal and formed from supporting my own children in school.  The next blogs will focus more on the evidence and data that convince me as a professional working in education policy that this shift is necessary.  In subsequent blogs I plan to explore several education initiatives and programs aimed at personalized learning, such as Genius Hour, competency-based education practices, and project-based learning practices. Continue reading “Why Personalized Learning? A Parent’s Perspective”

2015 Martin Luther King Day of Service

2015 Martin Luther King Day of Service

Reading Time: 2 minutesMLK_2015 “Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding  will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.”

              — Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail

This Monday communities will come together to celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and to take part in service to others in the name of justice and equality.  This past year we have continued to see prejudice and injustice spur fear and divide our communities.  We have also seen strong black leadership across the country and in our own communities speak out to guide us toward justice. Continue reading “2015 Martin Luther King Day of Service”

Facilitating Communities of Education Professionals

Facilitating Communities of Education Professionals

Reading Time: 4 minutesCoP Growing
No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.

–John Donne, No Man is an Island

 

We are all parts of communities where we engage daily – with family, friends, neighbors, and colleagues; face-to-face, online, and on the phone; as parents, volunteers, members, and even dissenters. I could go on and on with this list. For each of these communities we take on different roles; join for different reasons; look for different outcomes; and bring different expectations about what we get, what we give, and how we and other community members interact. Continue reading “Facilitating Communities of Education Professionals”

Learning to Celebrate

Learning to Celebrate

Reading Time: 3 minutesCelebrate (2)My children’s elementary school recently celebrated our 60th birthday.  We gathered at the school, listened to alumni who are now junior high and high school students play orchestral music, ate cookies, picked a few remaining vegetables from the school garden, and spent time with our friends and neighbors.  Retired teachers, staff, principals, and alumni returned to share their memories.  We heard story after story about how the school changed lives and how teachers, staff, and principals impacted generations.  It was a nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon – and it was a celebration of our community, our students, our school, and an acknowledgement that education matters deeply to us. Continue reading “Learning to Celebrate”

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