SIPP In The Summer. Seriously?

Fifteen years ago, when my son entered public school as a kindergartener there was one Hispanic and one black child in his class. That felt safe to me. At that time I was only comfortable with white middle-class kids and families. I wasn't sure how much diversity in my child's school I would be comfortable with, but I sent him off on the bus the first day holding my breath, and a box of Puff's tissues.

I worried that every Hispanic boy was a part of MS-13. I worried my son would pick up the bad behavior of kids who had not been to preschool or had little adult supervision in their young lives. I am not sure how I could have verbalized why I felt that way. It was small minded, but it was what I knew. I have since then forgiven myself. I grew up in a white middle class world. I only knew what I knew. It's not that my family didn't spend time around people of a different color and culture, or that racism was spewed with hate in my household. It was NOT. From my memory, racism just wasn't talked about much. My Dad had, and still has, a picture of Martin Luther King Jr. along with a famous phrase from his "I Have A Dream" speech, and a picture of Ghandi with poignant words from the great leader. I know we talked about these people and how they changed our world with non-violent protest, we listened to important speeches by MLK and talked about how it was important to care for all people, but from what I remember, there was no real practical conversation about racism and how we could actively change things. My parents were the best example of loving all of humanity that I could have asked for.

The 770 student elementary school that my son entered in 2004 is where I now teach. It has changed from a white, middle-class neighborhood to a microcosm of the world, where many cultures and colors are represented. I would not want it any other way. I embrace it. I welcome it. My fear now is not that our school will be diverse. My fear is that due to our own lack of self-awareness as teachers and administrators, we will have difficulty seeing the forest through the trees.The forest is quiet because the trees have pulled the overt forms of racism down into its roots and have run it underground. They have quieted it by calling things “equitable“ while still using standardized tests and parent pressure as a means of determining who moves into AAP classes. So quiet that the same inherent racism that our children and their families face in the world outside of our school will be duplicated inside of our school. I have kindergarten parents asking me when their child will have access to these AAP classes and worry that their child's brilliance will be dumbed down by "those kids" because we as teachers MUST be teaching to what is considered the lowest common denominator. Then there's the PTA I'm still waiting to see something other than white middle-class parents at our PTA meetings. What have we done to create that limitation in our school and how can we fix it? Why in our 6th grade AAP class are the majority of students white, middle-class kids? And HOW will we EVER fix that? This question is where my little story begins.

At the end of the 2019 - 2020 school year, I volunteered to join our school improvement planning team ( better known as SIIP ). I needed the money and decided that if change was going to happen in our school, that I wanted to be a part of it. I clearly had forgotten how much I liked sleeping in and long lazy pool days when I volunteered my summer time. As I dragged my ass into our first SIIP meeting at 9 am I saw that our work was to be based on three goals: creating a caring and culturally responsible environment, collaborative grade level teams where equitable learning opportunities are a priority, and high quality instruction in which a variety of methods are used to assess students' knowledge of what they have learned.

Our summer groggy SIIP team dribbled in one at a time. We laughed as we drank coffee, ate chocolate and caught up with each other. This was the easy part of our day.

As the morning went along and we began talking about equitable learning experiences, the issue of student assessment came up. How could we use equity and cultural responsiveness to assess our students more accurately. How could we change the make up of our AAP classes to represent the exceptionalness of different types of learners and different expression of critical and creative thinking. AAP classes that are not only made up of white, middle-class kids. We knew the state assessments were inherently biased. We knew that white boys generally do best on these tests. So why were these types of assessments continued to be used as a baseline into AAP classes? We also knew that minority children from low socio-economic backgrounds would most likely not have parents who were able to advocate for them. The struggle for creating equitable assessment practices and access to AAP classes was (and is) very real.

We decided that the first thing that needed to happen was to find a more creative way to assess our students and pass students' exceptional work on to each of their teachers from K - 6th grade. Just like any school that is socially and economically divided due to bussing or housing, the wealthier, whiter kids have the benefit of the impassioned advocacy of their parents. Students who benefit from higher standardized test scores that will allow them easier entrance into level 2,3 and 4 classes. I get the idea of wanting your kid to be challenged in school and away from "those kids". After all, that younger less knowledgeable me had been that parent. This is no blame game.

After hours of scratching our heads, pitching out ideas, talking over each other and staring at empty, window-sized chart paper, we finally decided to come up with a way to create learning portfolios for each and every student in our school. These portfolios would contain what was created during higher level thinking activities, informal teacher narratives, some tests, and some creative and critical thinking projects. The portfolios would begin in Kindergarten and travel with the students through their seven years of elementary school. These folders would be digital and passed on to the next teacher each child has. There would be a general consensus on the types of student learning that would be included in their portfolios and these items would show different types of responses to a variety of activities and assessments the child had given throughout the year. The portfolios would include pictures of student work and teacher narratives on students strengths. After a year of trying to figure out how to implement this idea, in September of 2020, in the middle of a pandemic, our SIIP team held our noses and jumped. So brave. We met virtually, we discussed next steps to create student portfolios and our AART lead helped us put these portfolios into action. There was some pushback from our teachers, but with any systemic and hard change, there always is. It's part of the process.

Several weeks ago, we completed our teacher narratives and our work samples for our children that we were recommending for Young Scholars and Level 2 and 3 classes. The portfolios our K-team created for our students led to rich conversations with our AART about children's strengths regardless of language spoken and race or socio-economic background. I had three children that would have slipped through the cracks of the academic rigor they are worthy of had we not created these vibrant and varied portfolios for our kids, filled with work samples and teacher narratives. These 3 would have been unlikely candidates for a level 2 AAP class the year before. Not this year. Not now. Not even during the most bizarre in person school that has ever been. These three children are the lucky ones. They are the first group of kids who will be sifted in a way that is less biased, less white washed and more equitable for all. I cannot wait to watch these portfolios move grade to grade and see the positive ways they will impact our kids. I cannot wait to see my 3 Kinders who may have slipped through the cracks excel in an environment that honors equity and changes in current assessment thinking. I can't WAIT to see them fly. I'd drag my butt into any meeting in the summer that can do this work. I'd even bring Starbucks for everyone. I am so proud of this work.