Contributing Editor: Amy Hildenbrand, Director of Publications
Center for Responsive Schools (CRS) is committed to supporting learning communities where all students are welcomed and find hope and joy every day. CRS recognizes diversity, inclusion, and equity as essential to positive and healthy school and classroom communities.
The year 2020 has forced a spotlight on equity, first with the pandemic and then with cries for social justice. Equity is not the same as equality, which means treating everyone the same and providing the same opportunities and resources. Equity goes beyond that, providing individualized support and addressing the barriers students face based on race, gender, and other factors. Understanding these key differences will allow us to move forward and turn our vision for school communities into reality.
This issue is filled with diverse voices and perspectives surrounding the topic of social-emotional learning and equity. Dr. Abul Pitre and Dr. Terrence McAllister share the importance of teachers and administrators building strong multicultural classrooms. Caltha Crowe offers advice to prevent bullying by ensuring equity for all students. Ina Pannell-Saint Surin shares Responsive Classroom practices to help bring equity into the classroom, and Emily Hemingway explores how the power of teacher beliefs can combat inequities. Riverview Charter School’s journey will inspire you and provide a road map to their success.
This issue will offer you ideas, next steps, support, and hope. Working together, we’ll forge a new path forward to meet the needs of every student, every day.
Compiled from an interview with AnnMarie Bowden, Coordinator of Curriculum and Instruction at Riverview Charter School When educators at Riverview Charter School in Beaufort, South Carolina, describe the school’s belief that a small group of citizens can change the world, they know what they’re talking about. Founded in 2009 as the first charter school in…
Change is something the world has had to come to grips with over the past six months. This is especially true in our schools. It’s hard to overstate just how pervasive the shifts have been, from a near-overnight pivot to online education in March 2020 to this summer’s uncertainty about what the 2020–2021 school year…
We Just Experienced Trauma The 2019–2020 school year was an extraordinary one for all students, families, and school staff worldwide. The COVID-19 pandemic caused everyone to experience a rapid shift to distance learning in early spring that created a range of mixed emotions. Educators rushed to learn new and unfamiliar platforms so that instruction could…
More than 300,000 new teachers join American schools each year (Snyder et al., 2019). Although these educators have already completed teacher preparation programs, they will learn crucial skills on the job: how to create equity and safety in their classrooms, inspire curiosity, maintain high expectations for all students, take a proactive approach to discipline, and…
Caltha Crowe is a Responsive Classroom consulting teacher and author of How to Bullyproof Your Classroom, Solving Thorny Behaviors Problems, and Sammy and His Behavior Problems. Before the pandemic, she volunteered at New Horizons, a multicultural and multilingual parent cooperative preschool whose motto is “Playgrounds without borders.” We wanted to draw on her experience and…
Public schools in the United States have become increasingly more diverse in the twenty-first century, and this trend is expected to continue (Banks, 2019; Howard, 2020). While there has been growth in diversity among the student population, the majority of the teacher workforce has remained White and female. The cultural differences that exist between teachers…