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Improving Outreach and Collaboration with Families and Community
Families and the broader communities that schools are located in are essential stakeholders and tools that educators and leaders can work with to improve their school community. Understanding and capitalizing on the variety of cultures, ethnicities, and languages represented in a school community can support teachers in meeting the diverse educational needs of their students. Leaders can role model expectations of culturally relevant teaching as well as facilitate teachers' reflection on their practices and how they benefit the cultural needs of their students. In international school settings, it is especially important that leaders work to build a community that acknowledges and honors the variety of cultures and languages present among families and students.
Artifact 1
Culturally responsive teaching is vital for our students' well-being, learning, and development. In international schools, culturally relevant teaching is essential as we provide education to students from various backgrounds, as well as third culture kids. In an effort to make my own curriculum culturally relevant and free of racist materials, I have reviewed and done my own research on the backgrounds of various folk songs used in elementary classrooms. Many of these songs are folk songs that English language learners have been taught for decades; however, some of them have a racist history, including using derogatory language that has been white-washed so that current teachers and students are unaware of its harmful past. Over the past two years, I have been working to meet with teachers and educate them about folk songs and chants that have problematic histories. Since early years teachers typically teach more nursery songs and chants to students, I started by meeting with the ECE team to discuss DEIJ topics, present them with examples of problematic songs and their histories, and provide them with resources to know which songs are problematic so that they can choose to remove and replace those songs with more appropriate and less harmful options. During these meetings, I strive to be approachable and open-hearted to provide a space where teachers can have hard discussions about problematic songs they have taught or enjoy. I have received positive feedback after these meetings and have noticed that teachers have started to remove songs and chants from their classrooms in favor of appropriate music. My future goals include working with older elementary teachers to educate them about these songs as well as sending out monthly emails with problematic songs, their history, and replacement songs that are more appropriate for our students.
Problematic Songs.pdfEngaging families to transform education infographic.pdfArtifact 2
During one of my graduate courses, a partner and I learned about the importance of engaging families in their student’s learning and created an infographic of the important concept. Parents and guardians are our students' first teachers. Learning for students does not only occur at school; therefore, it is vital that parents understand their role in their student's learning. As teachers, it is essential for us to remember that parents are not only our partners in their student's development but are also resources that we can use to deepen our students' learning. At my current school, my teaching partner and I are working to bring in parents who volunteer their unique skills and knowledge to help deepen students' musical learning. We have created and sent out interest surveys to parents in five languages and are using that information to reach out to parents and partner with them to offer learning experiences for our students. As COVID restrictions are loosening, our goal is to incorporate parent and community members into our musical curriculum on a regular basis.
Teacher Leadership Exploratory Consortium. (2011). Teacher leader model standards. https://www.ets.org/s/education_topics/teaching_quality/pdf/teacher_leader_model_standards.pdf
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