Work In Equity
It has been said that we are both all alike and all different. I firmly believe this statement. As an educator, a primary objective in my classroom is teaching respect and acceptance of all students. I hope to foster a wonderful learning environment by teaching students about the value of each individual and their perspective.
If you're still curious about my teaching tactics in the classroom, feel free to take a look at my field experience evaluations. These evaluations range from both my elementary and high school student teaching placements. You can view these documents here.
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For the past several years, I have been a member of my school's Equity Team. This group of committed individuals strives “to ensure that each child receives what they need to reach their academic and social potential.” Team members collaborate around equity issues, potential equity issues, and proactive ways to engage stakeholders about future challenges arising from inequities. We focus on providing equal opportunities and representation in our building as well as listening and keeping an open line of communication with all stakeholders to better understand all perspectives. It was through this work that I began my graduate focus on equity and culturally relevant curriculums within schools.
Equity, Social Justice, & Cultural Responsiveness
While teaching and going through my Education Specialist program, I began to focus significantly on cultural responsiveness and equity in schools. I work at a very diverse school with a need to not only better serve all of it's various students, but to also provide more equal opportunities, representations, and conversations about what it means to be a part of these diverse groups. Since beginning the program, I have become a part of our school's Equity Committee (along with many other teachers and staff at my school) and we are working to implement change throughout the building. Some of our current projects include: cultural responsiveness professional development for staff, proposal for equity standards in our student handbook/rules, proposals for new courses based on African American history and literature, the development of a new track in social justice in which students can "minor" in this topic, a scholarship opportunity with UK for students of color who wish to become educators, and so much more.
Feel free to contact me and we can talk more about all the projects and proposals I have going on within this area!
Design for Professional Development:
"Culturally Relevant" PD
In the spring of 2020, I collaborated with colleagues to create a professional development opportunity focused on helping teachers include more "culturally relevant" content and develop related lesson plans, no matter what their teaching area may be. Below you will find links to the materials for this professional development opportunity.
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• Website Designed for PD With Resources
Action Research Proposal:
Social Justice + The Arts
In 2020, I began reformatting my high school's standard visual arts course for all students: Art I. During this overhaul, I worked to study whether the infusion of social justice content into a visual arts course will provide students with opportunities to relate to different cultures and perspectives. Surveys and questionnaires assessed students’ thoughts on basic social justice themes. Additionally, each unit in the course studied a different artist or art movement related to that media and a social justice topic. Their final unit was a study of graffiti art in which students will select and research their own social justice cause and then symbolize in a graffiti piece to be presented before the class. Overall, this restructuring was meant to be an inquiry into the extent that students can learn to think critically on a variety of social justice topics through expressive arts-based instructional methods.
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To read my action plan, the data, and related information, you can view it here.