LEARNING MODULE: Whole School Change for Equity Consciousness
Whole School Change for Equity Consciousness files to download to support professional development. The PowerPoint follows the module on this page including images and video, and the PDF file is of the PowerPoint without the video.
- PowerPoint
- PDF file
“Diversity is about all of us, and about us having to figure out how to walk through this world together.” ~Jacqueline Woodson
Post Jacqueline Woodson’s quote on diversity in a place that all students can see and read — online screen, poster and/or on a paper for small groups. Then model with one student doing Powerful Questions on the quote. Continue with pairing up two students as a model for the class, then pair up all students. After 2-3 minutes, have students share to the whole class. Later in this sequence, the students can return to their questions, write them on individual papers for classifying inductively by similar questions.
Go to the Strategy Page on Inductive Thinking with Visual Tools for an outline and examples including video with students and teachers.
Use Powerful Questions for the image below, following the same format as with the quote above for collaboratively using Powerful Questions.
Key Academic Vocabulary Prediction
The purpose of sharing key vocabulary prior to reading a text and/or viewing a video clip is to develop an understanding and knowledge of particular vocabulary with the goal of creating dialogue that increases interest and understanding of what is to read and/or watched.
| water thriving system factories challenges | evolved weather storm ingenious master danger | Post the words on the right on a slide deck (virtual or in the classroom) for all students to see together. |
Video
Watch the short video clip on the innovative lizard and then respond a paired comprehension discourse on everything you remember you’re your watching and hearing:
- Facilitator—Participant modeling
- Participant — Participant modeling
- All Participants in pairs
- Return in small groups, have each group share what matched with their prediction, and what did not.
Next have the participants watch the video a second time after a brief discussion on the first viewing.
Thinking Maps®: Cause and Effect — Multi-Flow Map
Organize Thinking with Thinking Maps
Multi-Flow Map for Cause and Effect
Use a Multi-Flow Map in small groups to organize the thinking on the causes and effects of the gifts and innovation of the Lizard.
Thinking Maps® are a visual language of eight different cognitive processes. Each can expand information with a Frame of Reference.
Frame of Reference
After viewing, discourse, and mapping about the gifts and innovation of the lizard, add the frame of reference to the Multi-Flow Cause and Effect Map. In the frame of reference add how the knowledge of an eagle’s change applies to your thinking with change in the education community for equity consciousness.
In your Reflective Journal, use your Multi Flow Cause / Effect Map to write a brief paragraph on your gifts and innovations needed in education in regards to equity consciousness.
Anchor Information from The Pedagogy of Confidence
Excerpt from The Pedagogy of Confidence article Transformational Pedagogy
When people are valued for their potential, tools and opportunities are expressly created to mine for that potential and to eradicate hindrances. In education, believing in and valuing the innate potential of students is apparent in a school district’s written vision and policies for students. These articulate and support an image similar to the one posed by Paulo Freire: students being engaged and supported to be self-actualizing so they can transform themselves to both thrive in as well as transform the world (Freire, 1970).
Neuroscience has demonstrated that all brains are predisposed for high intellectual performances and the imperative for self-actualization, yet in urban districts around the country, Freire’s vision is still not applied to students of color. “Potential,” “thriving,” “flourishing” and “self-actualization” are actively absent from the lexicon of vision statements for urban schools. Without a district vision statement that clearly articulates genuine belief in the currency of the potential of students of color, equitable practices are hard to put in place. Staff is not inspired to believe in the potential of their students and is therefore unmotivated to search for, or even envision, possibilities for practices and opportunities that would surface the potential of these students (Jackson and McDermott, 2012). Students’ innate potential remains elusive, unidentified and uncultivated. With this loss of potential, student engagement and achievement degenerate in response to low-level repetitive tasks, which stifles motivation and results in underperformance.
Thinking Maps®: Qualities — Qualities with the Bubble Map
After reading the passage from the excerpt from The Pedagogy of Confidence article Transformational Pedagogy, discuss in pairs of small groups what are the qualities of change with equity consciousness in mind.
Bubble Map for Qualities Needed for Change
Use a Bubble Map to write or draw in the bubbles around the center bubble the qualities needed for change. In the frame of reference write or draw how does that come about?
Read The Pedagogy of Confidence
Read the complete article Transformational Pedagogy: Cashing The Promissory Note Of Equity For All Students – Especially Those Who Are Marginalized.
EXTRA: Neural Power
Smart skin deployed in sophisticated ways that could be evidence of an alternative form of intelligence.