Leading for Equity
The difference between equity and equality is that equality is when everyone gets the same thing, and equity is when everyone gets the things they deserve.
– DeRay Mckesson
INTRO
In the Portico community we are committed to relentlessly challenging and supporting each other to transform the student experience. We do this with leaders by disrupting the status quo and creating space for critical conversations. We work together to create systems that recognize and honor the voices of students and families. This includes challenging those who have traditionally had power within the educational system to let go of power that does not allow students to have agency to discover and nurture their strengths, and graduate ready to pursue their interests and reach their aspirations.
OBJECTIVES
- Understand what it means to lead for equity
- Consider how ready your system is to begin equity work
- Set the conditions for success in equity work
Leading for Equity With Tara Cooper
Tara Cooper joined Inflexion in 2021 as the Chief Operations Officer. With a focus on talent development and organization effectiveness, Tara works with the visionary leaders at Inflexion to strategically develop and support processes and systems to advance our business strategy and impact in schools and the education industry.
Tara has worked in the field of education for more than 20 years with a focus on access, equity, and student engagement. For the past ten years she has served in leadership positions in those areas and in organizational change and leadership development with roles in nonprofit organizations, the California Community College system, Portland State University, and the Northwest Regional Education Service District. She also served as the interim CEO of the Black Parent Initiative, as the regional Post Secondary Administrator at Northwest Regional Education Service District, and for the past three years, as an independent consultant. In her consultancy, Tara works with growing businesses, not-for-profit organizations, and school districts, providing executive coaching, strategic planning, internal systems planning and development, equity leadership mapping, and professional learning opportunities.
In addition to her experience in advancing equity and inclusion and leading organizational change, Tara holds a master’s degree in intercultural communications and is currently completing her doctorate in adult learning and leadership. Her research explores the dynamics and experience of leading transformational cultural change within a business from an executive-level perspective.
Leading for Equity Video Series
Part 1: Tara’s Story
Equity and inclusion has been on the forefront for a long time but in the last few years it has been getting the attention it really deserves.
Part 2: Assessing Readiness
Oftentimes folks have the best of intentions, but it takes more than intentions to do equity work that has roots in an organization.
Part 3: Equity vs. Equality
Equity is about having what you need in the way you need it so you can be successful at whatever you are trying to do.
Part 4: Rethinking Equity
How do we as leaders create an atmosphere where we can work collaboratively and understand how we can support all students?
Part 5: Student Voice
In what ways in our work do we allow space for the diversity within the student experience? How are we including all voices in the process.
Part 6: Voice and Agency
Set the conditions for success so people can show up, try things, fail, and keep going to reach their potential.
How Do You Lead for Equity
Reflection
- What is your approach to coaching those who have differing beliefs or values from your own?
- How do you navigate and/or approach courageous conversations about difficult or uncomfortable ideas, beliefs, or situations?
- What progress do you personally want to make in regards to leading for equity by the end of the school year?
- Provide examples of how you and/or those in your community are leading for equity.
- What does equity mean to your school community? Do your current supports and resources that your students have access to align to your community’s view of equity?
- Are the students who need extra support at your school receiving it?
Toolkit Connection
Connecting Equity to a Shared Vision for Readiness
The Inflexion Approach emphasizes the power of recognizing and leveraging the diverse strengths of all students—culturally, linguistically, and differently-abled—while building meaningful partnerships with families and communities. Schools can and must move beyond traditional norms to adopt a holistic approach to student readiness—one that goes beyond reading, writing, and math to include critical life skills such as collaboration, perseverance, and community impact. The long-standing structural inequities in education, rooted in white-dominant cultural norms, are a barrier that must be dismantled to achieve a transformative vision that redefines education to empower students for success both in school and beyond.
Listen to the Students
Including students in decision-making throughout the education system creates inclusive school communities students actually want to be a part of and educators want to bring their best to. Because often, students know what’s best for themselves, and what’s best for students, is best for everyone.
Empowering students is a key strategy for helping students develop invaluable life skills that are often lacking in traditional curricula and top-down learning environments.
Toolkit Connection
This is Equity
California students have big dreams. Unfortunately, some students face a much tougher road to achieve them. It’s up to us to remove barriers in the education system that get in their way.
Empathy Interviews
Empathy Interviews provide an opportunity to really understand a student, or group of students, by diving deeper than the surface-level question, “How are you?” and receiving the typical response, “I’m fine.”
These interviews inform intentional classroom and school-level action by elevating student voices and garnering a better understanding of student needs (SEL and well-being), and experiences (engagement).
Toolkit Connection
This work by Inflexion is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
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