SAS has taken a deep dive into what is truly needed to ensure diversity, equity, and inclusion, and that work is often messy. It has to be messy to get to the point of being unapologetic about providing a safe environment for all members of our community. That messy work has meant uncomfortable conversations and educating all members of our community from faculty and staff, students and parents, and all those involved in the SAS experience. It will take time and courage to continue to build DEI as a norm but I believe we are ready to do it. It is truly messy, uncomfortable, and exhausting work but it's at the heart of what we need to be about if we are truly preparing our students for the future.
DEI is an integral part of SAS. Understanding the importance of our faculty and staff’s identities, while honoring differences, lifts our morale and overall attitudes in our respective roles to support and help one another. SAS provides a robust DEI program that engages every member of our community with professional development allowing for open and honest discussions. We are currently learning from one another through insightful stories and varying degrees of perspective. As we challenge ourselves along this new journey, we continue to learn.
BARBARA HARVEY, HIGH SCHOOL VISUAL ARTS
JULIE ZHANG, THIRD GRADE CHINESE IMMERSION TEACHER
In the continued interest of providing a safe learning environment for all students (straight from our child safeguarding policy), the Curricular Development Culturally Responsive Learning Community is working to create an anti-bias/anti-hate speech policy in collaboration with students. The words that we use at SAS in all of our community spaces and interactions should be safe. We will also continue to review our current policies around hate speech to make sure that there are explicit steps known to students, parents, teachers, and all stakeholders to address biased incidents at our school. We continue to support and celebrate students’ self-advocacy and student-driven learning regarding DEI-related topics, alongside continuing to review research-based content and practice to best support our students’ growth as culturally responsive learners. We want to further educate our entire community about anti-hate speech so that students and educators will know how to become upstanders who embody SAS’s core values, and react to these situations in the moment, through culturally-responsive curricula. The Professional Learning Culturally Responsive Learning Community used the Panorama data from 2021-22 and feedback from faculty to inform our proposal to the SAS leadership team that K-12 professional learning communities (PLCs) set a specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timebound (SMART) goal connected to DEI and culturally responsive teaching for the 2022-23 school year. We proposed that SMART goals are shared with DEI specialists in each division, worked towards in at least one meeting each month, and reflected on with DEI specialists each quarter. It is our hope that the existing PLC structures will provide a strong framework for sustained inquiry into how we can ensure our unit plans, practices, and the resources we use with students affirm and center our students’ identities. The Recruitment and Retention Culturally Responsive Learning Community continues its exciting journey to help SAS examine and refine its hiring and retention practices. As a world leader in education that highly values diversity and inclusion, we strive to attract, retain, and sustain a diverse and highly qualified faculty and staff. After examining multiple sources of data, themes have been identified that guide the work of this committee. A list of recommendations has been generated based on newly published research and relevant data collected internally.
The School Climate Culturally Responsive Learning Community identified the numerous data points we have access to already at SAS, such as the StepUpSAS, Panorama data, and Tripod data. These data points highlight the voices of our SAS community, which includes students, parents, employees, and alumni. We intend to consolidate and analyze all the data to gain a deeper, more comprehensive view of the school climate with our stakeholders, examining trends and gaps, and creating further questions that help us formulate next steps. With this information, we will be empowered to continue to work towards an inclusive school climate for all SAS community members, including students, families, and employees. Culturally responsive learning communities increase cultural competence and reduce biases to better serve our diverse school community. Forming these requires an inclusive and equity-based leadership approach that invites diverse stakeholders at every level of SAS to share in collaborative learning, decision-making, and change. It further entails culturally responsive learning and leading, in addition to rejecting actions that fuel racism and all other forms of discrimination. It is our hope that our proposed strategies and steps will help SAS-community members to not only form new knowledge but also use that knowledge to implement culturally responsive practices and policies that promote diversity, inclusion, equity, and social justice.
Stereotypes and the labels we attach to people carry the power to influence how we perceive them in terms of their competence, their behavior, and capability. These stereotypes are growing stronger and choking the global community spirit. DEI initiatives are imperative to create a welcoming community where everyone can be successful, where people feel valued for who they are. The DEI initiative at SAS is encouraging conversations about topics that we may have previously taken for granted. The community is curious to recognize and understand the effects of conscious (and unconscious) biases and that is a great start!
SHRUTHI RAMESH, LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT MANAGER 7
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