Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County School Board, Minority Student Achievement Advisory Committee (MSAAC) Meeting, Wednesday, September 18, 2024

Date: Wednesday, September 18, 2024
Place: Loudoun County Public Schools / School Board meeting (see BoardDocs / LCPS-TV)
Length: 1h 44m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/1011078767?rel=0
BoardDocs (School Board): https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/loudoun/Board.nsf/Public

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-21. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:19] - Hello and good evening, everybody. It's so wonderful to see so many faces in here and see everybody tonight. Thank you for bearing with us. We had a little technical difficulty and we had to switch gears and we'll just move forward with our meeting tonight.

[00:00:37] Welcome. For those of you that don't know, my name is Erin Kunkel and I serve as the current chair of MSAC. And to my right is... Hi, my name is Trefilia Parker And I'm the current vice chair for MSAC.

[00:00:54] And it is our distinct pleasure and honor to welcome you to a year in joy with MSAC. Our theme for this year is seizing our joy. Our little tagline that we came up with is seize the joy and impact the future.

[00:01:11] And this year we are going to inject a little bit of joy, a little bit of happiness, and just lean into the things that bring us peace, bring us excitement, the things that really just drive us as we get up in the morning and we go about our days. And specifically, we believe in this message because we believe that it's needed in the world that we're living in today.

[00:01:33] It helps our students, you know, to see us excited and full of joy. They get to see and learn that it's okay to be excited and full of joy. So this year, our meetings will all be centered around the topic and the theme of joy. And we want you to have fun, laugh, enjoy each other, enjoy these meetings.

[00:01:52] We're still going to have the hard and sometimes difficult conversations, but we're always going to end in a positive note with an action step if it's needed, or just to just end and just be glad that we were here as a community, in community, together with each other.

[00:02:08] So to get our year started off in joy, I'm going to ask everybody to join me in a little grounding activity. So this is a room full of familiar faces and maybe some new faces. So for the next five minutes, I want you to find someone or someones, one or two people, a face that you may not recognize or a face that you're familiar with, somebody that you may not have spoken to yet, and I'd like you to go up to them.

[00:02:37] If you feel comfortable, share something that has brought you joy this week or this month or even today. If that's not your comfort level, then just share a word of encouragement to uplift the person that you're speaking with. So we have five minutes, one person or two person.

[00:02:55] So everybody up and everybody go meet somebody.

[00:06:33] Okay, everybody, we're going to come back to our seats now.

[00:10:13] Everybody, we're going to get ready or we're going to continue on with our meeting.

[00:10:44] I hope everybody got to speak to someone new, met a new face, had a great conversation.

[00:11:00] And just got a moment to celebrate your joy and the things that are just lifting you up right now, today, in this moment, this week. And we're going to keep going with that at every meeting. So now we're going to do the announcements.

[00:11:19] Please forgive me. We had a presentation, but the system didn't like my computer today. So for announcements, I'm going to turn it over to Truvelya. good evening everyone again we just have a couple of announcements uh the first announcement is that the division of deia under the leadership of dr ellis williams they will be presenting briefing out at next week's school board meeting on the 24th at 6 p.m 4 30. oh the work session thank you

[00:11:55] so much for that clarification so 4 30 at the lcps administration building and we're encouraging all of our delegates, MSAC delegates, our parents, MSAC parents, and our MSAC advocates to come out. And we encourage you to support and attend if you're able to do that. Our next announcement is regarding MSAC and our needs from our community. And so we have a few leadership positions that are available. One is the membership chair, as well as membership admin. I'm looking

[00:12:29] Erin just to make sure I don't need to correct it there and then third is the our social media person for MSAC so if you have an interest in either of those roles or learning more about them we'll send something out but please just come and talk to Erin and I today after the meeting and we'll share some more information with you thank you um we we always like to at least start the year by just reviewing the MSAC mission statement and the MSAC mission statement says that the minority Student Achievement Advisory Committee, MSAC, is dedicated to partnering with Loudoun County Public Schools, parents, and the community to acknowledge and

[00:13:08] promote the needs of minority students. MSAC is also dedicated to building a school system that is culturally and socially competent and positioned to provide fair and equitable learning experiences for all students. And I really want to highlight and emphasize that all our work is, yes, focused on the minority and marginalized students within our communities and in our schools but we really do this work for all students because we have all often found that when a door is opened for one student many students can follow behind that and we are working to change a system and a culture and advocate for

[00:13:44] every student we have our purview and we have our focus but when you're out in your schools and you're talking to just fellow parents and adults of students just let them know that this work really is for all students.

[00:14:00] And I know sometimes that is a hard thing to say, but when you're in a classroom or a PTO meeting full of people and you feel like, how do I, you know, advocate as an MSAC delegate, just remind everybody that this work is really about all students and encourage them to join you in doing that work.

[00:14:19] The next thing I would just like to highlight is that going into this year, I just want to affirm that MSAC is a safe space and everyone is welcome here. We're a community here. Think of us kind of like a little family. We have hard discussions and we ask hard and tough questions, but everyone here is treated with respect.

[00:14:41] Your personal experience is honored. We're not coming out here with pitchforks trying to start a fight. If you want to do that, you have to do that without being an MSAC delegate. We are going to treat everybody with courtesy and respect and kindness. Our spirit is collaboration.

[00:14:59] We want to ask questions. We want to get answers. And there will be times where we got to ask a question and say, okay, what's up? We see this happening and we need to know what's going on. But we always want to show up and be prepared to collaborate and support our schools, support our school board, just support this division in a responsible and respectful way.

[00:15:20] We want to make sure that everyone knows that we're here to help. And that is just a big thing that I would like us to work on, is just letting the communities know we're here to help and that we're here as a support system, but that everybody knows that it's okay to come talk to us. We don't fight. We don't fight.

[00:15:38] We have strong opinions, and we're entitled to our strong opinions. These are our babies, and I'm not going to tell you not to have a strong opinion about your baby. But we want to just make sure that when we're occupying a space, when it's an MSAC space that we're treating everybody with respect and kindness, and we're lifting each other up and encouraging each other as we go along.

[00:15:57] Now I would like for us to turn it over to Dr. Ellis Williams and the Division of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility for their update and greetings.

[00:20:38] Thank you, Dr. Ellis Williams. I guess I have to use the mic because it's in front of me. Can everybody hear me? So we were asked just to give a little bit of an update. again we're gonna have a much more thorough review at the school board meeting coming up in just a few days but we want to talk about something that's most exciting to us is with the expansion of our team we're actually going to have shoulder-to-shoulder support at schools so what's going on this year is that typically we've had our equity leads meet with us in a large group setting that will be over a hundred equity leads and we will meet

[00:21:13] monthly with them and this year we're able to make groups these groups are based on clusters so each of our the members of our team has a cluster or two or three clusters that they're going to be responsible for and they're able to attend meetings and be at the school and really taking part in the equity work of the school so that's that's coming up new for us this year we've already started we've been in several schools already meeting people getting to know the staff building relationships and getting a feel for the school one of the

[00:21:49] things that we talked about was you know what is the impact of that work and why it's so important is that we're able to provide direct guidance in the moment so when people are talking to us about what their focus is for the year what do they want to work on we can really talk them through those projects we can be with them in partnerships through the full fruition of that of that project or that initiate or that initiative until it really comes into full actualization building strong relationships getting to know the staff another thing that has been really helpful is we can talk to the school about their data so we can

[00:22:28] come in with that information sometimes our equity leads our teachers they have a full-time job already so having someone that comes in to say you know I took a look at some of the data from your survey or from your course enrollment and let's look at what's going on in your school and how does this relate to your school improvement plan what are you hearing from students what are you seeing from students so we're really able to bring that conversation to the team and to kind of talk them through those and give me some ideas of how can you address the data that you're seeing what is the story

[00:23:02] that the data is showing and how can we address that also we can really um support all of the the initiatives around student voice. That's always on top for us is that our students have an opportunity to really talk to the school about what is their experience, what does their day look like, and that this is in multiple facets of the school day. So it's not just students who are in the student government, but getting a real pulse of all of the students in the school and having multiple opportunities for students to have a voice. And what do we do once our students tell

[00:23:38] us something? What do we do with that information once we have it? And what are the things that we can lend our expertise or lend our perspective around that? I'll let you. Ditto. No, with the ability, and thank you to Dr. Ellis Williams' leadership and how we've been able to expand our small but mighty division, it's really important that we are able to get closer to the work with schools and Cynthia you know explain that so clearly and eloquently and the thing that I guess I would add to be additive and not

[00:24:15] repetitive is what does that mean for you all and by the way y'all look beautiful thank y'all for being here I mean this is great we'll make sure that this continues throughout the year with so many delegates but what it means for you all is is that you also have sort of like a conduit for communication to the schools now um and to ensure that you have make that connection with the equity leads and if there are situations that rise up where you need someone to help kind of talk through a situation or maybe you're providing agency or advocacy for a fellow parent or your own child

[00:24:54] now you have a point of contact for your school to reach out to so with the planning districts there's six of them and like cynthia said they're based on the high school clusters three high school clusters in each district and now you have a point of contact that you can reach out to to make it easier if there is a need I'm not I want to forecast that optimism and positivity but if they're and and also just to talk about the good stuff that's going on in your schools and invite us out for that as well so really kind of joining and this is also something that we're proud that you know with our MSAC student delegates now joining our

[00:25:32] student equity ambassadors in our meetings our virtual meetings and also our in-person symposium that's going to be in February so these things are going to just really help us streamline communication have a better ability to you know problem-solve or or really support what's going on in the schools and we're really excited about it so that's all I would add. The only other thing I could add to that is it's kind of both it's the best of both worlds because we have a top level view but being in the schools gives us that school

[00:26:08] level view as well where we can still see what are the patterns what are multiple schools experiencing and how can we help our division LCPS as a whole from what we're seeing in the patterns that we're seeing and also kind of build some of those cluster relationships where you want that cluster to be really strong the cluster is your elementary your middle and your high so that we're all working together so our kids are having a streamlined welcoming experience of farming experience from K through 12 and I think what we'll do is make sure that mrs. Kunkel has the planning district document and also all of our emails to

[00:26:46] send out to you all so you have you'll know who the point of contact is and we will send that to you tomorrow

[00:27:16] definitely post another session so that you can either refresh or have a, gain a better understanding of what that consists of. Because anyone can go in and only discuss this on top for them. But when you're going in with a stance of advocacy to affect your change, you're going in with a very different stance in this position. So I'm not saying it's that four crazy paraphrase. You use them how you want to use them. But if you're coming to be a part of a movement that's in a collaboration with our office to be able to make a difference.

[00:27:43] The distinction is when we talk about the ways in which we come together, we come together and we all have different perspectives we all have different experiences and it's the same you are I'm always saying when it's a student it's a microcosm of a larger society where you are a microcosm of the community that we're you know supporting right now so it's so important to be in communication to not hold things and to be able to reach out to us for with a solution-oriented mindset and if you are not a part of a school system or school building that has an MSAC delegate, please consider the common one.

[00:28:18] And it's okay if there's two. It's okay if there's two because then you can back each other up and it might not feel like such a heavy burden.

[00:28:26] So looking at the pathways in which our students are able to excel

[00:29:15] and exceed in IB programs or AB programs, being knowledgeable about what programs or classes students should take, whether in their early grades of, like, level up and those resources, to be able to be in the know. So you are being solicited as conduits to make this work possible.

[00:29:34] We have a small and mighty team, but we need soldiers because this is ever-evolving. I joke with my team, but it's so true. Within the construct of education, we see constant evolution, the cycle of things repeating, right? Those of you who have been here, the only thing that didn't come back was cursive, and I don't want it to.

[00:29:51] And I know these parents are different, so I like to say that. And we've yet to experience a revolution, and we miss that opportunity. but I won't go there. When we started to do things differently, when we started to accommodate the individual student based on their assets, we didn't seize that opportunity. We went right back to business as usual. And for a lot of our students, unfortunately, they're still suffering ramifications after Brown versus Board of Education. And with the influx of new persons that represent communities of color, that is still the stance as well. And I socialized a quote today

[00:30:26] that I do not remember by memory, from 1964 by James Baldwin, 1963. And the quote was so relevant today, and you will get to hear it on Tuesday if you come.

[00:30:43] Or tune in. Or tune in. It was so relevant, and it made me think, like, well, dang, Mr. Muhammad teased me all the time. He's like, you are such a hopeless optimist. You can't afford not to be in this work. I have to get up every day and think that I can make an incremental difference.

[00:30:59] every single day because that's my sense of purpose and that's my why. And I'm open to any conversations and my boss can say, I'm never scared. I'm not. This work is way too important to be abashed. And I've said it publicly before. I am a product of a school system that did it right. And so I know what that looks like. I know what it feels like. I can walk into a school and take a litmus in the first five seconds of whether or not each and every child is being honored for the assets that they bring into that school. And that matters. And when we talk about culture

[00:31:34] responsive institutions, classrooms, schools, there's a formula. There are things that should be happening consistently that you should be looking out for when you go to visit the school and your capacity as parent, capacity as delegate. And we will be sharing those documents with you so you can take a litmus to see, hey, is this environment culturally responsive for each and every child? Or is there a dominant culture that's getting what they need and everybody else is getting the crumbs? And that evolves from school to school. It's not a one size fit all. And it's not a demographic that you might think would be the obvious. But that's the type of data that we're unpacking here. That's the type of information that we'll be sharing in this

[00:32:13] space with a goal for us to make LCBS better than it was tomorrow than today and Friday than tomorrow. So thank you.

[00:32:42] So as you can see, there is a lot in store for us this year and a lot that we will be um collaborating on partnering on and honestly it's really about us as delegates as representatives as parents showing up in the spaces and asking questions and you know being a present in presence in our schools and we want to make sure that you know we send you out as delegates prepared and feeling encouraged and empowered to ask questions because i know it can be hard and

[00:33:19] challenging to go into these spaces and have a conversation. I don't know about you, but I grew up where if your mother was in the school building and you look like me, it wasn't a great thing. And so it took a lot for me to get beyond that notion and say, but no, I'm a parent. I have three children in this school. I have questions. I want to know what's going on. I want to know how I can support the teachers. I want to know how I can support the staff. And being an MSAC delegate it really helped me kind of not overcome the fear but be comfortable in the space just asking a

[00:33:56] question and forming a relationship and I was really proud that I could go into the school building at the end of my second year living here and I could just put my ID on the thing and they were screaming through the little camera hey Erin come on in and you know it was an exciting thing that I was in the building. And it wasn't like, oh, Lord, here she is. Which one of them was it?

[00:34:20] And that was the story that my mom had her whole time raising us growing up was that I had twin brothers. And when those two boys were in the building, there had to have been something going on. And usually it wasn't anything going on. They were telling them about what was happening. But the impression was that as a parent, it was a bad thing that she was in the building. And so I felt victorious to kind of overcome that little bit of trauma from my mom raising me and not have that with our kids and we want to empower you to feel confident to go into school and just say hey I had some questions or I just want to see what's going on in the classroom how can I help how can

[00:34:58] I support if you're courageous and you want to be a room parent go for it I couldn't do the room parent thing I was like too many parties can't do all that planning but we want you to know that You have clusters as an MSAC delegate, and we will take that information when Mr. Muhammad sends it to us, and we will combine that with our cluster information for you all.

[00:35:20] But I'm so excited because you all will have, again, a direct point of contact. So sometimes it might be that you need to reach out and you want to inform us on the executive board of something that's going on, but there might be a direct question you need to ask. And being able to have multiple points of contact and being able to ask a question or at least know who someone is that's there supporting your school and your cluster is very important.

[00:35:43] So when we get that, we will relay that back to you and make sure that you have that information. We will also plan, I started the early planning stages, but we're going to have delegate training. And I know some of us have done delegate training several times, but we're going to work to revamp it and bring it up to date, bring it up to speed to reflect the current culture and climate and how we're working and operating now so you can ask all your questions, you can get the information, you can find out some historical knowledge about MSAC, but we want to prepare you and support you as you go out into these schools, and we want you to know that you are not alone.

[00:36:24] You don't have to do this by yourself. I used to say, as delegate liaison, if you needed me to show up and sit in the parking lot while you went in and had conversations as MSAC delegate for your school and you just needed to know somebody was out there rooting for you and supporting you, that is what we're here for. That is what we can do. If you need somebody to be in that meeting and support you and just be a presence while you go through and talk, even presenting to your PTO, because it can be hard to present to a room full of parents this information and make it palatable for a good majority of them, please let us know you are not alone. You don't have to do this by yourself.

[00:37:02] We will support you. We will help you, set you up in any way we can. We had a delegate packet. It was printed, and then the printer broke at Staples. So I broke the Staples printer, if you were waiting on something from Staples. He told me that.

[00:37:19] He's like, you broke our printer. I was like, okay, sorry. And so we have a delegate toolkit with some items for you to take out into the community for your schools. If you meet someone and they want to know what MSAC is, we have a nice little business card, and they can scan to become a member, a delegate, a student delegate.

[00:37:36] Please encourage students. They are interested. They have questions. And I would also like to give a quick shout-out to all of our student delegates that are in the room. I won't make you stand up, but we are so proud of you.

[00:37:52] We are so grateful for you. and we are so excited that we get to have your very needed voices and your presence in this room. We are just, again, we are so proud of you, and we're so grateful for you, and we're so glad that we can have student delegates after having this asked for a long time.

[00:38:11] So as NSAC delegates, if you know you have a student delegate in your school, just, you know, reach out to them, say hi, let them know that you're there to support them because what they experience, they can relate to you, you can relate to us, and we can get that information out because we can assume a whole lot as parents and adults, but the students can tell us stuff, and I know that for a fact because my daughter had no choice but to be an MSAC delegate, but she tells me what's going on in her schools.

[00:38:40] She gets recruited. I pay her in Frappuccinos, so she's fine, but she tells me what's going on in her school, and she relays information to me, and she tells me if it feels, you know, if it feels odd or did you know this was happening, and I'm like, I didn't even know that it was happening, and I'm part of the PTO, and she's like, well, this is going on in the school, and so we like that we can hear from you guys, and we like that we can hear what your experiences are, and we value that, and we want you to know that we are not going to diminish you or make you feel smaller or tell you you're just a kid you don't understand. You get up, and you go to these schools, and you do all the

[00:39:15] things day in and day out, so we're very proud of you and grateful for you to stand up and be a leader in this way. But with that, I am going to now segue to the next part of our presentation, which is joy in the spaces we create. And we came up with this topic because we were really just thinking about what we aim to do when we're in the schools as delegates, what we do every day in our lives, creating spaces that bring us joy, that provide us respite, peace, that let us be our best selves whether it's lazy sunday and i'm not doing anything or i'm out in the garden or you're

[00:39:54] out with your friends your community the spaces that you occupy and you create we want to bring joy into them and we really thought about what does a joyful space look like for students and when they come to school and when they're in the classroom and when they're walking the halls and And so when we thought about this topic, I could only think of two people that I really wanted us to hear from because they have inspired me, and I feel like they would inspire you.

[00:40:24] And so I'm very grateful that they agreed to present to us tonight. And so I would like to welcome Mr. Brian Kuppel, the principal of Goshen Post Elementary, and Ms. Krishana Goins, teacher and equity lead.

[00:41:02] I was just reflecting over the last two years, we've done a presentation like this. This is our fourth time, so we've talked to principals, elementary principals, we've talked to equity leads, we've talked to the equity school board committee, and now with you all for MSAC.

[00:41:21] And so my name is Brian Klippel, I'm the extremely proud principal at Goshen Post Elementary School in Aldi, right next to John Champ, and I'm joined with the one and only amazing teacher. I'm Prashant Owens. I'm a first-grade teacher at Goshen Post, where I also serve as our school director.

[00:41:40] And so Ms. Goins and I, we attend MSAC monthly. This is our sixth year together attending these meetings. I also want to give a shout-out to our two MSAC representatives who also attend the meetings with us. And so we have Ms. Sharma and Ms. Logan.

[00:41:55] And so we attend the quad of us, and then we have a meeting afterwards with our SEAC reps and our LEAF reps to debrief all of the meetings that we've heard, and then what are we doing at Goshen Post based off the information, how does that work that we've heard about show up in our schools.

[00:42:15] And so something that we often talk about is what might it look like, sound like, and feel like when your school has achieved belonging? And so that's a big question. And that's something that we continually talk about month after month to say, how are we moving the needle forward to ensure that we are supporting each and every child every single day.

[00:42:40] And so just a brief conversation with a shoulder partner. What do you think that would look like when your school has achieved belonging? It'll be a little turn to talk right now, and then we'll hear from a few.

[00:43:04] I thought you could be taller than that.

[00:43:38] It's not like, you know, it would be culturally, but it would be, I don't know, it's really cool. The type is what they're doing. I'm actually actually having a lot of information about the same thing. You can see it and I think because I'm actually like, you know, because I'm a little bit of a school student.

[00:43:56] I think for a lot of people that have to be able to deal more in the information you've seen about school, like, first. I'm going to change it. I'm about to say, "I'm going to show you my soul" and I'm going to be scared.

[00:44:15] All right, I know that there's a lot of really great dialogue and I was waiting for the lull, but I know you're all really excited to talk to one of each other.

[00:44:33] So do we have someone who wants to share what do you think that would look like in your student's school if they have achieved belonging? Yes? Seeing more collaboration amongst the different affinity groups, and whether that be like if it's like, you know, like the...

[00:44:56] Hispanic and Heritage Month, it shouldn't just be just the Latin Student Association or Beyond Horizons, like those are some of our affinity groups here at my school that take on that ownership of that. It should be more collaborative across all the other affinity groups to help kind of boost that together.

[00:45:12] Absolutely, making sure that every voice is at the table. It doesn't matter what is being planned or what is being implemented. Absolutely. Anything else? Yes. Oh, absolutely. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. And so that would be, does anyone else want to share?

[00:45:31] Yes. It would look like peace for both the parent as well as the student. Absolutely. That partnership between the school, family, students, and the community. Absolutely. And so as we have been navigating this, our journey has been to start with building a sense of shared vision and culture.

[00:45:53] This is our seventh year open at Goshen Post. And so we started our journey with bringing four different communities together into one school and making sure that everyone knew that we were there to show up every single day for every single child.

[00:46:09] And so that was our mission from day one. And what that looked like evolved based off of what we were finding out about the community as we were melding four together and how we were going to evolve that. And so knowing our direction and acting on that led us there to make sure, okay, our community, as it's evolving, we are having some areas that we need to support within our school.

[00:46:35] And making sure that we are clear, consistent, and committed. It is every single day worth, and I will not shy away from that. And we want to make sure that we bring in our families. And if there's ever a challenge, I welcome that challenge because we will not back down.

[00:46:54] And so Ms. Goins is going to share our journey, our work. We're extremely proud of a program that we've developed called OneGPE as part of our morning meeting where we partner all of our classes.

[00:47:10] We have a mentor program built into it. And we really break down that sense of belonging for our youngest learners. kindergarten through fifth grade is engaging in this work and on a weekly basis and then applying it throughout the week as well. So with that, I'll pass it over to Ms. Collins. Thank you.

[00:47:28] So this is really what the work has looked like at Goshen. So our mission really lends itself perfectly to doing this work. Our mission is all about achieving excellence every day through authentic rigorous learning experiences for every child every day. What we say at Goshen is that we don't do equity work, we do every child work. So when someone comes to the table with an argument about equity work, we put it back on them to say, how are we going to support every child every day if we're not doing this work, right? You having a problem with equity work, right? That sounds

[00:48:06] like it's okay, but you having a problem supporting every child, that's not okay, right? And we do this work every day in every way. So our beliefs have really always been grounded in one deeper learning. So we believe that by children learning deeply about content but also deeply about themselves, that's going to produce a whole child who is ready to go out into the world and be a contributor. We believe that authenticity should drive the work. So it shouldn't just be what's relevant to us as teachers. It should be what's relevant to the children, right, and how we're going to move that forward. And then we also believe that it is our responsibility to remain

[00:48:44] committed to this work. So it doesn't mean that the work is going to look the same from year to year. It doesn't mean that the work is always going to be linear, but it means that every single day we're going to find a way to show up for every single child. Our mindset has always been, this is the only way. So when people come to us and say, tell us about equity work at Goshen Post, that's a difficult question because equity work is Goshen Post. So it's not what we do. It's not an extra thing on people's plate. This is who we are as a school. This is what we believe. And I think because of that, our children are also entangled in the work with us. So it's

[00:49:21] not just about us doing the work for the children, it's us doing the work with the children. So this is how that has really unfolded for us. So our work started in 2019 when we established our equity committee. Really that first round of support was really helping teachers develop that cultural competence and awareness. So that understanding of self, so that they could understand how they were showing up in learning environments and how that was having an impact on the learning itself. That next year was a little bit different because if you remember we were online right so we had the course correct and what we did was we rolled out a comprehensive

[00:49:59] curriculum to our teachers that was focused on diversity that was focused on identity that was focused on inclusion right so that they could support our students from home and still doing that identity work but we also really supported our staff in understanding how to build that sense community when we were so distant from each other right and how to support themselves in doing the work while they were disconnected from our community but also how to support our families through that in 2021 2022 that was really when that cycle of continuous improvement kicked in so we said hey we're doing a lot of really great work but we think it could be better that third round of staff support really centered around the culturally responsive framework from the

[00:50:37] district but also connecting that to our goals as Goshen posts so we are a wall-to-wall project BASED LEARNING SCHOOL. SO HELPING OUR TEACHERS UNDERSTAND HOW DOES A WELCOMING AND INFIRMING ENVIRONMENT FIT INTO BUILDING AN ENVIRONMENT OF RIGOROUS LEARNING? HOW DOES MAKING SURE THAT YOU HAVE AUTHENTIC ASSESSMENT FIT INTO MAKING SURE THAT STUDENTS ARE ACHIEVING DEEPER LEARNING THROUGH PROJECT BASED LEARNING? SO REALLY HELPING THEM TO BUILD THOSE CONNECTIONS. IN 22-23, WE FOCUSED ON DEEPER LEARNING AGAIN AND WE REALLY STARTED TO THINK ABOUT THAT PROFILE OF A GRADUATE.

[00:51:06] SO IF WE WANT TO CREATE STUDENTS WHO ARE CREATORS, IF WE WANT TO CREATE STUDENTS WHO ARE CONTRIBUTORS, IF WE WANT TO CREATE STUDENTS WHO ARE CRITICAL THINKERS, THAT MEANS THAT WE HAVE TO LEVEL UP OUR CURRICULUM TO REALLY MEET THOSE NEEDS AND ENSURE THAT STUDENTS ARE IN THE CLASSROOM, NOT AS PASSIVE RECIPIENTS OF KNOWLEDGE, BUT REALLY IN THE CLASSROOM AS CREATORS AND DOERS.

[00:51:25] THAT NEXT YEAR WAS REALLY ABOUT THINKING ABOUT HOW CAN WE HAVE COMMUNITY-CENTERED LEARNING, SO HOW CAN WE TAKE THAT LEARNING OUT INTO THE COMMUNITY AND DO THINGS. this year has really been about a reset and an elevation of our practices. What we are doing in our equity committee this year is really supporting our teachers in becoming those advocates and change makers on their teams so that they are able to problem solve independently. So making it real, what does this actually look like in the day-to-day at Goshen? So we have an MTSS leadership team. So that is multi-tiered systems of support. So when we think about social and

[00:52:00] emotional learning, when we think about response to intervention, when we think about our social work that's done in the school when we think about our counselors, all of us meet together with our administrative team to talk about what can we do to find synergy between the work that we're doing so that every single thing has that same through line. The through line within our building is always how can we as citizens of Goshen Post create a great school for every day or every day. That's not just our driving question as the grown-ups in the building, that's the driving question for the students too. So they have that ownership over what we create in our building. We have an equity committee where our focus is really

[00:52:35] on building that capacity so they are my sounding board because I am in my classroom all day so they are my sounding board to come to me and say hey here are problems that we're facing in fifth grade here are problems that we're seeing in third grade here's what's going on in kindergarten here are great things happening over here here needs we have over here then we come together as a committee and we problem solve those things something that's really important to us is that the work is proactive instead of reactive we are not the fire department please don't call us right when everything is burning down. We want to be there to build sustainable structures that build our school up, that allow our teachers to have that capacity proactively so that we can keep

[00:53:13] building onto it. So that is always our mindset as an equity committee, is that we're always thinking about what else can we do instead of what is broken. So we want to build from a place of positivity. We have an MTSS calendar, and what that means is that we have strategically aligned ALL OF THE DIFFERENT GOALS THAT WE HAVE IN TERMS OF SUPPORTING OUR STUDENTS AND DEVELOPING INTO PEOPLE INTO OUR WEEK.

[00:53:35] SO, FOR EXAMPLE, AT GOSHEN ON MONDAYS, WE HAVE OUR ONE GPE LESSONS, WHICH I WILL TALK TO YOU MORE ABOUT IN JUST A LITTLE BIT. ON TUESDAYS, WE DO OUR COUNTY-BASED SEL LESSONS, SO THOSE ARE OUR SECOND STEP LESSONS THAT FOCUS ON A CERTAIN SKILL. ON WEDNESDAYS IS WHEN WE DO OUR HERITAGE MONTH CELEBRATIONS, SO EVERY WEDNESDAY, STUDENTS KNOW THAT THEY'RE GOING TO COME IN AND LEARN ABOUT A DIFFERENT CULTURE.

[00:53:56] And then on Thursdays, those are our thoughtful Thursdays, that's when we really integrate that PBIS. So when there is a challenge that's happening in the classroom, teachers have that day built in to proactively address that challenge with students and talk about what are we going to do to solve this problem? What can we do to actually make a change that's going to make this environment better for all of us?

[00:54:15] And then Fridays is an application day. So we say, hey, we're going to take all the things we talked about this week, and then we're actually going to tie that into solving a problem. When we think about this, we think about finding balance and synergy through PBL. So it's not just that we're teaching our students how to be great people from 8 to 8.30 in the morning and then the rest of the day is content, right?

[00:54:36] It's that these are integrated into everything that we're doing. So if we're talking to students about famous leaders in Virginia, we're also talking to them about kid leaders like them so that they understand that they can make change, right? When we're having conversations about what does it mean to be a citizen, we're pulling in what we're talking about in one GPE to think about tolerance and diversity and how do you advocate for justice and how do you take action and how do you be an upstander. We have our MSAC, CAC leads kind of roundup meetings where we talk about all of the things that we can be doing and that's when we have the opportunity to really collaborate with parents. I'm a little bit biased

[00:55:14] but I think that our parents are really second to none and the reason I say that is because they always come to the table ready to work and they know that we are ready to work they are ready to work and we're going to get outcomes from this meeting so those meetings are never just hey let's hang out for a little bit and catch up right those meetings are always here's what's on the table and here's what's at stake what are we going to do about it or here's what i'm hearing what are you guys going to offer absolutely to that sorry but we've looked at uh discipline data we've looked at it together to say okay if this is an issue how are we going to solve this what are we hearing out in the community and please partner with us so that we can make sure that's addressed in the

[00:55:49] building so that is a really two-way street and they hold us accountable which I appreciate and then making sure that we have actions coming from that so if there's a discipline disproportionality let's tap back into our PBIS system to make sure that it's working for our students and how are we training our teachers to make sure that we're supporting potential challenges that they're seeing within the classroom as well. And similar to that, another thing that we're able to do in collaboration with our PTA is our multicultural night. What I think is really unique about our multicultural night at GPE is it's a celebration of Big C culture and

[00:56:27] Little C culture. When we think about Big C culture, we're thinking about things like our race, our ethnicity, and things of that nature. When we're thinking about Little C culture, that's who is that individual person. So what's nice is that kids get to bring their whole personhood. It's not just cultural tourism, right, where we're looking at other people's culture and going around it, right? It's actually an opportunity for students to show up as themselves authentically and say, this is how I present my culture. And I don't have to be a spokesperson for an entire culture, right? I, as five-year-old me, can just show up with all of my favorite things and share about who I am. And I think that that's such a special experience for

[00:57:04] our students. Something that we are extraordinarily proud of is that we have a program at Ocean post called OneGP. And this program is built around the concepts of identity, diversity, justice, and action. And what this does is that we have morning meetings every Monday, and students are able to engage in conversations about things like their identity. So who am I?

[00:57:26] What is important to me? These lessons are grounded in really high-quality literature, so students have the opportunity to engage in a story as a group, and then they go through a lesson with their teacher, and then they have an actual activity that helps them to start unpacking this. You would be amazed by what our kindergartners do. You would be amazed by how much our first graders know about themselves. You would be amazed by the bravery of some of our fifth graders and talking about the paths that they want to pave to create change in this world. So oftentimes we hear from people, you know, I want to do things, but our kids are too little to do

[00:58:05] the work. They're not. They want to do the work. They're excited about the work. What's really amazing about this is that this goes throughout the entire year. So every single Monday for the whole year, students are engaging in this work. When we get to, it's kind of banded together. So there's a couple weeks that focus on identity because we want the kids to feel really good about themselves. And then once they feel really good about themselves, we move into diversity so they can understand others, right? Because they have the capacity to do that then. Then we start talking about justice. How do other people experience the world? And is it the same or different as me and why. And then we move into action. What's really amazing about the action

[00:58:43] part is that we have a program called Gator to Gator. And what we do is we take our big gators and we pair them with some of our littlest gators and they do morning meeting together. And they have conversations about what does it mean to be an upstander. What is great about those meetings is for like our fifth graders, they've been around the block a while. They've seen some things, right? They've had some experiences. They've tried some stuff out. For our little gators, they're like brand new on this earth, right? So now they have a sounding board to another trusted person in the building to say, hey, I want to do something, but I'm not quite sure. Hey, I'm having this problem with a friend. Can I talk to you about it? What's nice is that one, they have another

[00:59:23] trusted person in the building, but two, what's cool is like for our older gators, they have a person they're accountable to. So when they're walking through the hallway, they see that little gator and they're like, oh, let me, let me straighten up, right? Because there's somebody who's actually looking to see what it is or their little caterers like that's my buddy right they ride my bus or they live next door to me so it's our students are building relationships with each other the other thing that provides our students is the opportunity to build relationships with more staff in the building so they have the opportunity to maybe build a relationship with a teacher who they haven't had before or who they haven't had yet or maybe with a teacher who just

[00:59:58] really gets them they get an opportunity to spend some time with them and then the last part of this it's really that meaningful, rigorous, tailored professional learning. We believe in we will meet you where you are once and then you have to move. So we don't have the same conversation repetitively with people because we said we have supported you and now you are ready to fly, right? So what really helps with that is that we hold people able to do the work. We hold them accountable for doing the work and they know that they're going to be thoroughly supported in doing the work, but they

[01:00:34] also know that that is the expectation so we make the time and space and support accessible to everyone right we're all in this together and everything that we build for our school is built in-house and the reason that that works is because people know that anything i have built for you i also have to do right so i am not going to build something for you that i don't want to do right i'm not going to build something for you that i don't think you're capable of and everything that i build was done with each little person in mind and each teacher in mind. And then we have that intentional building of capacity and ability over time. So because we're not always meeting people in that

[01:01:12] exact same place, we can actually grow those skills. And then the last part is that accountable steps and progress. Everything we do is measured. Everything we do is strategic. Everything we do is sustainable. We don't want to be solving the same problem cyclically. We want to have solutions to problems, that we can continue to grow over time to support our students. But I think the last part of this is that we do really joyful work. I always tell people, so many people say, oh, these conversations are so difficult, or these conversations are so challenging. I disagree, because I think when we're having conversations about what we can do for every child every day

[01:01:48] in every way, that's so exciting, because what are the possibilities of what our school might become if we're able to show up for every single person who is in there. We see the challenges. We know the roadblocks, but we see opportunities in those challenges. We hold our teachers and our students able and restore power to them to do the work. We work alongside each other. We do not focus on that struggle. We focus on joy and justice. We believe that they're very entangled, and we're not going to sit in the struggle together, and I think we have that conversation with our parent liaisons a lot where we say, like, we have a lot of opportunity here, right? Instead of saying we

[01:02:27] have a lot of challenge in front of us, right? So it's that framing that matters. And then we engage in that meaningful self-discovery with students. So there are so many teachers that I talk to who say, I have grown so much from this learning experience with the kids. I didn't know that these things were possible. I didn't even know this about myself until a child said it, right?

[01:02:46] So it's that opportunity to grow as people and professionals alongside our students. So we just Thank you so much for having the opportunity to share. I believe there's a Q&A, potentially.

[01:03:07] So if you all have any questions for us, we'd be happy to answer some regarding what we just presented about. Yes. The MSAC, SEAC, and LEAP huddle you had where part of the goal was to build community with parents and, I guess, other advocates.

[01:03:27] Does that take place with those other stakeholders or is it just MSAC, SEAC, and LEAD? So we sit in with our parent reps as well as Ms. Goins and I, and then we have that conversation. And then we bring that out to our MTSS leadership teams and bring that out otherwise.

[01:03:45] It's just a core group of us, and then we bring that out. I'd love to know, can you kind of paint a picture of how that morning meeting looks like when you're pairing the students in there? So in that morning meeting, what usually happens is we come in with some sort of a focus question.

[01:04:06] So the focus question might be something like, what does it mean to be an upstander? The kids come in, they meet with their buddy, they have kind of a quick turn and talk conversation, kind of like we did at the beginning of this, and then we kind of have them share out. Then from there, we'll put a book in there.

[01:04:21] So we might have a book, like the book Be Kind, and it has various examples of how somebody stood up for someone during the book. after we've talked about, after they read the book, we talk about the book and we kind of debrief those examples. And then we kind of put scenarios in front of the kids where we say, how might we make this applicable to what we do on the playground? Or it might be something like, how can we create some new rules or standards for our school for how we're going to be leaders?

[01:04:47] And like our last lesson of 1GP for the year is all about creating summer commitments. So how are they going to take this out into the community and show these things when no one is watching? So there's always some sort of public product that comes out of that meeting that they've created collaboratively together.

[01:05:04] So it's usually in that kind of format of there's some sort of greeting, they do a read aloud, they have more conversation about that, they create a public product together to share about what it is that they learned. I was just going to ask, is there training for the adults? I think you mentioned there's some trainings for the teachers.

[01:05:25] Who conducts those trainings? How are those trainings organized? So anything that was created in-house at Goshen, we provide professional development. However, there is a significant support system at the district level that provides continuous and ongoing professional learning from the DEIA department for all staff members.

[01:05:45] And then, so do you also train, like, the older buddies on expectations and how to manage their littles? So we kind of do that in the first, like, week that they're together is set some expectations for how it's going to work for everyone. We don't put the burden on the older buddies to be the experts.

[01:06:02] Right? What we do is we're saying we're all coming into the space as learners together. And we talk to them about what does it mean to have respectful discussion with one another, how to respectfully ask questions of one another, what does it mean to respectfully disagree, and things of that nature. So that they have some language to start having these conversations.

[01:06:20] But what's amazing is that because the kids have been getting all of these lessons all year long, and they're differentiated. So K2 gets a set of lessons, 3-5 gets a set of lessons, but they follow the same themes and similar lessons just with potentially simplified language.

[01:06:36] But what's amazing is that because all the kids have the language, they're ready to have dialogue with each other because they're all speaking the same language instead of the older kids having an unfair advantage. So they've really been scaffolded into being able to ask a question. From a perspective of scalability, have you guys, do you have any plans for your older Gators as they start to matriculate into the next grade level?

[01:07:03] So going from elementary to middle school? Yes. Yes. So we as a CHAMP cluster and a Lightbridge cluster in constant communications with the school administration, making sure that the work that we are doing at the elementary level carries over. And if there is an expectation in middle school, we need to make sure that our Gators are prepared for that and scaffolding that transition so they are successful in middle school and then same thing for middle school going into high school as well is that just that the skills competency level or are you looking to duplicate or replicate variation of the model that you have at your school and so

[01:07:40] each school does it slightly different i know mercer does implement um advisory lessons and so it's a similar structure and i'm not too sure how it goes up into champ but i know at the middle school level, they do have similar structures. And then at Willard, we also feed into there.

[01:07:57] They also have advisory lessons so that the work that we're doing does carry up into the middle school. Here and then here. Yes. Can you walk us through the nature of your meetings with the MSAC parents and the LEAF and the SEIC? We haven't had a chance. Some of us haven't had a chance to meet with our principals yet, but I know there are privacy issues when it comes to particular incidents in school but do you discuss with the parents what are some of the trends that are happening what are some of the concerns that are happening from the students or from families what is the nature of the

[01:08:36] conversation you have absolutely and it really varies month to month based off the themes that are discussed at MSAC meetings SEAC meetings and LEAF meetings and so we don't go into specifics like okay we're going into this discipline and really dive in. We talk broadly to make sure that we are protecting our students and we're not breaking any confidentiality concerns. However, we can speak globally and say, you know, we are seeing a rise in disrespect between peers. So we need to figure out what we are doing on our side to address that. And so then it's kind of a think tank between the adults in the room to kind of

[01:09:15] say, okay, how can we tackle this together over the next month? And then we do check-ins every month. So we have our first meeting on Monday, and so we are going to start that work now. But it's usually topic by topic, month by month.

[01:09:30] It's not the same kind of discussion each time. Yes? You both mentioned that everything is measured and tracked in terms of metrics. I'm just wondering how do you go about gathering that data, and is it behavioral or quantitative data? So we first tracked the implementation, and so we wanted to make sure that, again, Every child has access to these lessons.

[01:09:55] And so we wanted to make sure that we were tracking the implementation of that. And then we were comparing that to discipline, concerns, conversations anecdotally that are happening within the classroom, behaviors on the playground. So there was a mix of observational information as well as potential disciplinary concerns.

[01:10:17] And then from like a curricular lens, I think we look a lot at student work samples. So because there's so much public product generation, we're able to kind of look at that student work to see how students are growing over time, but just seeing how different classrooms are doing different things.

[01:10:33] And then we look at like PBL plans. So something that we do is we've integrated something called the social justice standards into our planning. So they have that opportunity to pair their state standards with things like identity, diversity, justice, and action. So how are those things actually manifesting in the curriculum beyond materials that teachers are being provided?

[01:10:52] So in their own planning. I'm sorry. And these meetings occur at the same time every week? Which meeting? Like the meetings where the students read the books? Yes. Morning meeting.

[01:11:07] So we have a morning meeting block of time in elementary school every day from 8 to 830. Yep. And every Monday is one GP for us. Yes. It's apparent that you all have worked diligently to create a culture of belonging, not only for the students, but that's also embraced by the staff as well. However, we know that belonging has multiple layers of complexity, and not all of your teachers are going to agree when we start talking

[01:11:42] about, for example, identity. People have their own beliefs in their value system, even though they are educators. So what does accountability look like when you have educators that are responsible for the development of our children that are not on board with your vision?

[01:12:01] What does it look like to address it? It may not be a choice. Absolutely. And so it is embedded into their evaluation. And so that is a conversation that I have. We bring on people that are specifically aligned with the post. And so during that interview process, we ask specific questions to make sure that their values are aligned with our values. And then if it's not, that's okay. Our school is not for them. And that's fine. There's a school out there for them somewhere else. However, if they do come on board and are not upholding the agreement

[01:12:38] of the expectation that we have that conversation during evaluation for cultural competencies and making sure that that's an expectation. And if you're not meeting the expectation, We will continue to support or support you to grow or support you out.

[01:12:58] To grow or to go. Yeah, to grow or to go. There you go. I didn't mean to say it's not a choice in the sense of, like, you're just going to do it. But I think that we believe in, I think, joyful oversight. So what I will say is that admin is around the building to see what's happening, right?

[01:13:17] So teachers know that the buck is going to run out, right? So you can't avoid this work at Goshen, and we've made it very unpopular, right, for you to come in and say, I don't feel like supporting every child every day. So I think that that framing has really helped staff understand, right, either I'm on board here or, like, this is not going to be the place.

[01:13:40] Dr. Ellis Williams wanted to share about evaluations. One of the other changes you hear about during our presentation is that our team is actually a part of the barometer for evaluating standard six. So we in our classes will be in schools. And so we're in an evaluative stance for admin as well as our teachers. So that accountability piece has been taken up a notch. We had to socialize an understanding around what standard six is, which is a Virginia Department of Education standard. There's seven of them.

[01:14:09] And it all relates to cultural responsibility, the way in which you do instruction, meeting each child where they are. And so within that construct, the lens in which we are going into schools, we will be evaluating as well as sharing with the leadership. So if we see someone who is being a recalcitrant in ways, we're definitely going to support them. And as you said, they'll either grow or go. Because Dr. Spence has made it very clear that he's a superintendent for each and every child, and he's not going to tolerate harm. And me personally, and my team can share with you, there's only two barometers in my world. There's harm and no harm. There is no gray area. And that's it. When we hire, we hire with the best intentions, with the best ways in

[01:14:46] which we can evaluate, but sometimes, and to the point that was made by the parent, people bring in their stuff. They haven't evolved to the place where they check it and compartmentalize it in the park. It becomes the thing that's best for kids, and so we have to be vigilant in making sure that that's happening, and particularly when it has been something that's been welcomed and embraced for so long, and now that the tapestry that makes Loudoun so beautiful has evolved, we have to be more adamant because it is not just the way it was 20 years ago when it was a dominant culture and not the tapestry that we see before. And I think to that point I'll just add something that's

[01:15:23] really important about our equity work is we always tell people like we are not the race and culture club right so we're looking at how are you supporting special education students right we're looking at how are you supporting our students who need additional support outside of just your classroom structure so it's not just that when we look at standard six we're saying okay what are you doing to highlight the cultures within your classrooms it's what are you actually doing to scaffold learning so that every child thrives question over here we do have a question okay yes um this is kind of a comment and a question so um being a part of the msac i hear

[01:16:02] these wonderful stories by these wonderful schools that we present but you know for many of us that's not what's happening in our buildings. And I know we're the delegates, somehow we're supposed to try and help with this. And I'm hoping that one of the things will be, how do we, we heard this great presentation, try to help our building to have something similar. I mean, I've been here for many years. I have an eighth grader, so I've been coming, but it's not easy to, I mean, for me

[01:16:38] personally having a meeting with my principal is very difficult um i my equity lead did finally reach out to me this year i have to get back to her but it just would be interesting to see how some of this you know can and i and i'm happy to hear that you're going to be coming to school to school um but we're on the ground our kids are living it knowing that this great work is out there and many others because we've heard from other schools so of course i'm giving you Wall of the tea right now for my presentation.

[01:17:10] With tea and sugar. Honey. So another piece of this is Dr. Spence has given directive for our office to partner with and collaborate with our human resource and HRTD department to be a part of what it means to recruit best candidates.

[01:17:29] And it's a bonus when they look like our kids. It's a bonus because they understand our kids, their culture, their needs, their assets they bring to schools. And then I got to say, go to post is an exceptional leadership support in a way in which we would love to replicate across the division.

[01:17:49] And if we just sat back and said, can we just clone them? People are going to take over the world, right? And it gives me no pleasure in saying that this is not our standard. This is aspirational to become the standard. And because they get up every day with your children on their minds and their success, that's why this is happening.

[01:18:09] So as we continue to massage the mindsets, dismantle the bias, bigotry that exists within some of our constructs that are barriers for our children, that is the hard work that we have to do. And oftentimes we're called in like, well, what are y'all doing about it?

[01:18:25] We don't do all the things. We're the golden thread throughout every division in this school system. And with that, we put this on top. As many chances we get, because they got real jobs to do, we try to have them be in spaces to share this. When our equity leaves with other schools, when we're meeting with executive principals, because they shouldn't have to be iconoclasts.

[01:18:45] This should be the gold standard. This is what we want to see in all 100 of our schools. They're showing that it can be done. Yeah, it is unequivocal. When she says it's not an option, like you have to, and some of us have been building principals, the building principal sets a tone for success.

[01:19:03] And I just have to say, doesn't have to know everything, but they surround themselves with those that do. Don't they make it look kind of easy?

[01:19:20] It does not. They put that work in over time. So it's really kind of sometimes starting with one thing to build off of each year. And I think that's something that shouldn't be. I think it would be great just to even hear the conversation happening.

[01:19:35] I know they were welcome to come by. We'd love to go by and visit and hang out. Yes, question and question. This one isn't really a question. It's kind of still kind of going off of what you shared. I think one of the things that stood out to me as a school counselor is that language of like welcoming the challenge.

[01:19:54] Because I think a lot of the time when we try to implement things, the barrier becomes like, oh, what are our stakeholders going to think about this? Or what happens if this goes wrong? We want to do this inclusion activity or we want to have this spirit day. But what if, what if, right?

[01:20:10] Well, if something goes wrong or somebody is insensitive or something happens, that becomes a teachable moment that we can work through and then move forward as opposed to continuing to try to, like, walk on eggshells and not have opportunities where maybe things could be sensitive or go wrong, welcoming the challenge so that we can use that as a moment to teach kids and to build bridges.

[01:20:32] And teach staff. We frame all challenges as opportunities, and we grow through them. We don't go through them. We grow through them and making sure everyone is on the journey as well. Yes. Hi, Sequoia here. I am a parent, PTA, co-mom.

[01:20:50] In terms of communication to parents about the work that's happening in the school, from an admin level and from teacher level, staff level, how is that information disseminated? And I ask because what we see in our school, which I think is a great community, We are also noticing that there's the same 26% of family members, guardians, parents, caregivers that are involved.

[01:21:16] How do we incorporate the majority of everybody else to get more involved? And as a PTA, as MSAC representative, we can only reach it so much. Sometimes I'm door to door. But it also happens inside the school. And our school is so helpful and they want to just piggyback on how you guys are doing it that I can bring it back to them as options.

[01:21:39] Absolutely. when we rolled out one GPE, we had an open forum. We brought all the materials, all the resources. And so we were very transparent. We are not hiding anything. We want to make sure that everyone knows what's going on. And so we wanted to make sure we front loaded everything. So we were continually emailing that out. Teachers were sending that out. And then our themes are emailed weekly by our teachers. So this is what's coming up in morning meeting. These are themes that we're going to be talking about we always want to make sure that our families are in the know anything that's happening in the week the upcoming week or in two weeks from now so they can plan accordingly

[01:22:15] and so we want to make sure that we put everything out there so that there's no question on well what what are they doing I don't I didn't know about that or you know I don't trust them we want to make sure that we are as transparent as possible so that we can partner again building a partnership with families to make sure that the work that we prioritize strengthens and continues to grow as well. I think because we've been building that culture over several years, there is that trust. So parents know that we're going to do it and we're going to do it well. So when we had our

[01:22:50] open forum, I think it's really important to share that we had unanimous support. And it's because parents knew that we were going to do this well and that anything that we did was done with intention. It was done with a lot of us combing through it. It was done with a lot of hours of no sleeping. They know that we have built the very best thing that we can build for their child.

[01:23:12] And I think what was great is that we built those parent advocates for the work, that there were a lot of parents who stepped in when parents even tried to say something to say, no, no, no, this is what we're going to do. Right. So I think that it's having that partnership between the school, the parents and like the parents who really want the work to happen to go in there and like be that echo to say no no this is what we want this is what we want to see and continue to push it forward um so what do you do about maybe the rhetoric that comes from home as opposed to like the school environment so an example is at our school it's very welcoming you know we don't have

[01:23:51] much diversity but the diversity we do you know we do kind of collaborate together and share our stories and you know our administration is very you know receptive um but like there are certain things like i'm also on the pto as well where you host these events and it feels very community but then you sense the rhetoric from some of like the parents and things like that like how do you guys address that so um we you know even though i like to think our community is perfect and there's nothing you know wrong you know you hear something bubble up and everyone

[01:24:28] has, you know, the right to opinions and thoughts and everything like that. And it's important for me as a school leader to filter all of that so it doesn't impact what's going on in the classroom. So I want to make sure if I'm hearing everything, I take it all in, I know what's happening. So that when we are being strategic with our work, I have that in the back of my mind saying, okay, if we are going here, we need to make sure that we have backup for this, this, and this to make sure that we can counteract anything that might be happening in the community so it's very strategic it's not oh we're going to roll this out and just start for the best it we sit down and think of everything

[01:25:07] before it hits the community and we make sure that our teachers have those strategies on hand for how to interrupt those things so when those things do bubble up in the classroom they have some really strategic ways that they can respond to that dialogue to really support students and kind of support that re-education and we're doing the same thing where we're about to launch some things related to digital literacy for our kids to help them kind of combat some of the messages that they're getting beyond our building to really understand how do I get good information how do

[01:25:34] I share how do I respectfully disagree with others and things of that nature. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or anything or want to stop by Goshen Post you all are always welcomed but thank you so much for having us come tonight and chat and look forward to being back next month.

[01:26:27] - Okay, thank you again Ms. Goins and Mr. Koppel, we really appreciate it. Thank you for sharing your hard work and inspiring us. Again, I was so inspired when they shared just a little bit with me last year, and I was like, I don't know where the school is.

[01:26:47] Why have I never heard of this school before? And just, I've always just appreciated, even as delegates, when they have shared their comments and feedback and just a little snippet of what they're doing in their school and like we um all heard that it's just knowing that it's possible and what always inspired me was the idea that they are doing this work and kindergartners are learning these things the same way that fifth graders are learning it but it's just handed to their age group and it kind of wipes away the argument that they can't learn it or they're too little or you're

[01:27:24] you know and so i am definitely just so happy that they were willing to come and share with us so i'd like to give them another round of applause so um my computer is not like the permission board so our table topic discussions are going to have to come from memory um but we just wanted to talk about um a little bit about creating joyful spaces i know we've heard what again a gold standard is coming from Goshen Post and the question was asked like how do we do this

[01:28:01] in our schools or how do we the question I want to pose to you just thinking of it and you can just kind of talk about it amongst yourselves for just a couple minutes is what you can do as a delegate to support creating a joyful inclusive space so just for a couple minutes kind of share your thoughts and then we'll come back and if we feel so led we can share some of that out in the open and maybe we can have some ideas to create an action step to take back to our schools in this next month.

[01:34:28] Okay, if we could come back and kind of share um for just a few minutes um i am taking volunteers if anybody would like to

[01:34:53] just share a thought an idea with us that's what i was just thinking i was like don't make me have to call somebody don't make me stand up and do like they used to do us in school like you look like you have something to say well i'll start okay well first off um what a coincidence um for us to kind of sit together, not knowing that we really represent the same cluster. So that in

[01:35:31] itself was really helpful. So now that we can, you know, put faces to names and just really strategize on how we can build more of that community, build more synergy. And so I think, you know, it's one thing to kind of understand like the challenges, the areas of opportunity for at each of the schools, because each school is different, but I think that that would be a good starting point so that we can see how we best leverage the MSAC, the LEAD, the SEAC resources,

[01:36:06] right, and leverage those resources to see how we can kind of build and prioritize and improve those challenges. So that in itself, I know we were a little off topic because we were just happy to connect, but that in itself was value-added for me. Coming from the high school environment, We kind of made mention of our upcoming Hispanic Heritage Month, which our Latin Student Association has done an amazing job.

[01:36:40] Our Latin, Latino-based affinity groups in the school have done an amazing job of kind of setting the tone of a culture where they're sharing different music from different cultures every day. And like in the morning announcements, it's just different things that happen. But like we talked about earlier, making that the ownership of that kind of spread, right?

[01:36:58] So if it's Women's Empowerment Club and they can maybe celebrate some women of Hispanic Latino descent, like if it's the BSA, the Black Student Association, they can also maybe do the same and celebrate some Afro-Latina heritage. Like, just finding more ways to just permeate so that everyone feels connected to this history.

[01:37:19] Like, in another example that comes to mind as I'm speaking, we're doing, like, a pilot of American studies as, like, a combo of AP U.S. history and AP Lang for 11th graders, right? And trying to garner support for kids to go into that class and kind of understanding how much American history is rooted in Latino history, right?

[01:37:42] So, like, understanding how much that is rooted, and you cannot tell the story of American history without telling the story of Latino history, it's impossible, right? So, like, allowing them to kind of have that ownership so that we're, as much as we can, broadly celebrating the heritage that may be connected to one person through, like, their bloodline, but also connected to all of us through the shared American experience.

[01:38:06] That's a big part of what we're doing at the high school level, and we're just looking for more opportunities to plug people in. so me and dj were talking about on how a high school level it's not so much the parents rhetoric that kind of influences the school it's more so students especially because we're at that age where we can sort of like find things on our own terms so it's really combating what they learn themselves and trying to broaden their horizons so we're talking about just making spaces that

[01:38:41] feel inclusive and comfortable for students and we're able to say okay like that's what you

[01:38:47] believe but look at all these other perspectives and this is very personal for me right so and I'll

[01:39:22] try to be as broad as I can with it but in my house one thing with my daughter who tends to be shrink a bit when she's in uncomfortable environments or amongst people she doesn't know. And by shrinking, I mean you're not engaged. She becomes very quiet. So one of those things that I encourage her to do is to take a stance when she sees people are being marginalized in any capacity. And I know it is a risk for her, but it's how you can create joy in spaces by being an

[01:39:56] example, being an advocate for others, even though it can come at a cost. One thing that I do to reiterate to her and my other kids is even if it comes in a halt, meaning there's disciplinary action behind it, if you're standing on business and supporting someone else because you fundamentally see something is wrong and others aren't taking a stance, do it in it. But the light that you cast

[01:40:26] by being the one or in the minority helps to permeate a safe space and it emboldens others

[01:40:36] to do the same okay obviously just one more we're gonna move to closing um before we have our moment

[01:41:25] of joy i just want to say i am so over the moon at the number of people in this room tonight two things i'm just gonna be pitiful like this please please please please please come back please come back we need you you being here matters you encourage others by being here you encourage us as an executive board by being here we are so happy to have you here you are welcome here we cannot wait to partner with you and work with you all year long

[01:42:03] so please come back and this room deserves a round of applause for showing up tonight so at the end of a couple of tables four tables are some qr codes if you wouldn't mind um just scanning the QR code and filling out the Google form because we have so many faces and so many people in the room. We'd like to add you to our mailing list so you can get the updates and get the information on MSAC. And when we put out the meeting minutes and we share information, we would

[01:42:42] like to send that your way. So if you could just scan that and fill out the Google form on your way out, we would appreciate it. And to end our meetings this year, we're going to end with a moment of joy there's no telling what i come up with but today my lovely daughter um found me a quote by Maya Angelou about joy she's very proud of this one and i actually love it and so for a moment of joy i just like to share that we need joy as we need air we need love as we need water

[01:43:16] and we need each other as we need the earth that we share so with that i want you to joyfully go about your evening, drive safe, get home safely. If you need anything, please reach out to us. And thank you for coming. Thank you for coming.

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