Act

As a TA, this one is hard for me.  I work in a rural, predominately white, low income district.  In the classroom that I am in we make sure that our students know that it is a safe place for them and that they can speak their mind. We won't judge them and will be honest and open with them at all times.  We offer a "giving closet" in our classroom where there are clothes and snacks for them as needed.  Our school also offers a "giving closet" for and a diversity club that is all inclusive and has been well attended.  

I do a good job with a variety of sources and works for my twelth grade English students, but I need to work and add some things to my 9th grade English classes. I teach mostly texts from either white writers or black writers. Although this does cover most of my students population, it is important to include others such as Hispanic, Asian, and Native American. Especially today, it is important to include LGBTQ authors and poets to the classroom experience. 

Also from a parent perspective, I want my two little kids who read books before bed all the time-I want to make sure they are getting exposed to images and words regarding other races, cultures, and perspectives. Hopefully this will help them to grow with less bias toward others they don't know.

Classroom Audit with a quiz chose Option 2 and completed the quiz on identifying your own privilege by way of checklist. I scored 17% on the quiz and the results suggest that I am not privileged even though I am white. I came from a middle- class family but raised in working class neighborhood. My parents were raised working class and held off from doting on us kids because they didn't want us to be spoiled but what they didn't realize was that the mental disorders of my two siblings had became a very difficult burden for my family, and that that would cause my brothers to be co-dependent and a tremendous burden on my parents. I would go out of state to get a very inexpensive state college education and work full time so as to not rack up student loans. Sometimes I acknowledge my privileged moments in my upbringing but as a young adult learned that in some instances I was not privileged. 
doggielove 22 3 days ago

I chose Option 2 and completed the quiz on identifying your own privilege by way of checklist. I scored 17% on the quiz and the results suggest that I am not privileged even though I am white. I came from a middle class family but raised in working class neighborhood. My parents were raised working class and held off from doting on us kids because they didn't want us to be spoiled but what they didn't realize was that the mental disorders of my two siblings had became a very difficult burden for my family, and that that would cause my brothers to be co-dependent and a tremendous burden on my parents. I would go out of state to get a very inexpensive state college education and work full time so as to not rack up student loans. Sometimes I acknowledge my privileged moments in my upbringing but as a young adult learned that in some instances I was not privileged.

When looking at data for summer school the majority of kids who are tentatively tracked for summer school also have multiple discipline referrals throughout the year.  Part of summer school this year for our middle school is going to be SEL learning.  The SEL curriculum and lessons for summer school need to be based on helping kids so the same referrals aren't constantly repeated.  The restorative justice and trauma informed ideas are going to be incorporated.  There also needs to be conversations and plans on building those skills learned into the next school year.  For that to happen there will need to be continued education for teachers and staff.  

Since I am the school librarian, I wasn't able to take a full equity check on the entire collection (though that is something I would like to do in the next year or two). I completed the rubric based on my current knowledge of the collection as it's developing. Since I started working, I think it has moved in the right direction. I have taken things out of the collection that contained outdated and stereotypical representations of a multitude of groups. My focus on developing the collection has been to bring in more diverse representation in subjects and creators. Where it stands, though, I still have a long way to go. Each of the sub scores on the rubric ended up in the negative. However, reflecting on this has helped me focus in on the areas that are in the most work.

I knew what the end result of this would be, but I did it anyway: my music library is dominated by straight White men. I stuck to my band library (I have a Chorus library too, and that's also a big problem), but examining the different "authors" (composers/arrangers), I documented over 50 unique white men. There was one Black man (multiple pieces from him, but the same composer), and 3 White women (several concert band pieces by the same woman, and then jazz band arrangements of Lady Gaga and Adele). I found one Latino composer/arranger in my jazz band library. I found no nonbinary authors, and the only LGBTQ+ representation I could find was the Lady Gaga piece.

While I didn't closely examine my Chorus library, I know that it's not quite as ugly as my Band library, but it's still not good. There are more women who get published as composers for middle school chorus, and the arrangement of pop songs represent more Black and Latinx performers/songwriters, as well as more LGBTQ+ performers/songwriters (but, especially in the case of LGBTQ+ songwriters, "more" is not "a lot more").

I knew this was true, I have worked to address it recently, but I am still deeply ashamed at how non-representative this music is. Much of it is multicultural music, even, arrangements/settings of folk music from around the world, but not presented by a member of said culture. I need to clean out music that I won't use (especially if it's blatantly offensive) and replace it with more women and nonbinary composers, as well as more composers of color. I will say that the range of published composers of school music is extremely limited, especially at my kids' ability levels, but if it's out there, I need to bring it into my library. Every single one of my kids deserves representation, and so far not all of them are represented.

I completed the Culturally Responsive Curriculum Scorecard on the new ELA program being used for the grade I teach.  I am disappointed to see that the majority of the authors and characters are white males and females.  There are Asian, Black and People with Disabilities represented as characters as well as authors, but small in comparison to the white audience.  I realized the reading materials I use when not using this new program are more diverse.  I will be paying more attention to this moving forward and will look at presenting other materials to my students to provide a more diverse and well rounded experience.

Yesterday after school I audited myself and the materials I have in my classroom.  Due to the nature of my content, Spanish, I actually don't think I did too terribly.  The books in my student library are almost entirely written by individuals from the different cultures I teach about, many of them discuss the differences in cultural identity, and several speak directly about the immigrant experience in this country.  THe images I have on my walls are mostly cultural artifacts or landmarks and student work.  Where I can definitely improve is in the content I include in my lessons.  While I do a decent job with different cultures, thats pretty much where my inclusion of different identities ends.  I am going to make a direct change with including different pronouns, religions, and images to help become more inclusive.

During the day I conducted an equity audit within the classrooms I work in.  I found that in the ELA classroom the diversity was expansive.  I would recommend finding writings from the LGBTQ communities.  Other than that I believe that all other communities were well represented.  In other classrooms I was in I found similar circumstances,  however in a few they were sparce and I feel I would like to discuss with the individual teachers and research what could help with the diversity the curriculum.  However,  when talking to one of the teachers, he explained that the diversity was worked into his curriculum and not necessarily available as reading.

As I predicted, our overall 5th grade curriculum is insufficient in cultural representation. We have books with some diverse characters (mostly African American) but they are primarily written by white men or women.  We have no books featuring middle eastern, Asian/pacific, or Latino characters. I am excited for next year however, when we will be reading the book "Refugee" (by again another white male) but at least it will depict 3 new diverse characters from their perspective and point of view.  When I was asking for feedback from my team one of my TA's said, "wow I guess we better get on that (having more representation)"!