9/9 Faculty Meeting Summary and Reflections

Thank you for your participation in yesterday’s faculty meeting.  My learning goal was that you would understand the connection between Marzano’s definition of “low expectancy” and justice and equity in the classroom.  My hope was that after the meeting, and after some thought and reflection on your own, you would understand the relationship between low expectancy and justice and equity in the classroom and that you would be able to adjust your teaching strategy because of it (this is from the “Proficient” level on the scale I shared yesterday and connects to the first goal of our SIP).

These were, perhaps, big or new ideas for a variety of reasons:

• Marzano’s definition of “low expectancy” may differ from what we might have expected,
• The idea that individuals are situated at intersections of identities may be new, and/or
• Monitoring our response to students based on our (conscious or unconscious) biases may be new or challenging given the diversity of students we have and the variety of experiences, personal and otherwise, that we bring to the classroom.

So to review:

• “Low expectancy” in iObservation refers to those students from whom we expect less based on a(n) conscious/unconscious bias we may hold.
• These biases may come from the intersection of our multiple (and unique) identities and experiences.  We stand at the intersection of a variety of raced, sexed, gendered, aged, abilitied, etc., identities.  I favor the metaphor of intersections because it includes us all, still leaves room for conversations about race, ability, and other identities, and limits, I hope, divisive feelings of feeling other than (as an unintentional result of a one-identity-at-a-time approach).  The Audre Lorde quote I shared prompts us to think in terms of intersections, I think: “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”
• Monitoring our own responses to students requires us to be reflective of our own situations and considerate of the situations each student represents in our classrooms.

One context to which we might apply some of the above thinking is the MAP achievement of our subgroup. We know our subgroup achievement is markedly different from our overall achievement.  How might our attention to how we respond to students whose identities include being African-American, Hispanic, and/or ELL and/or have an IEP and/or participate in the Free and Reduced Lunch program benefit their learning and achievement? 

If it’s helpful to review the presentation from yesterday, click here.  If you’re interested in any of the following concepts to which or people to whom I referred yesterday, click the following: Audre Lorde, intersectionality, Critical Race Theory, and Marzano and Low Expectancy Students.

With great expectations,

Jason