Present: Karen Thielen, Chris O’Brien, Nancy Johnston, Chris Terry, Stuart Strothman, David Schoales , Mikaela Simms, Ron Stahley.
Location: BAMS conference room
Accepted minutes of November 4, with a few edits. Now including time and location of meeting.
Diversity/Equity Committee website presence
We would like to strengthen our web presence. We will ask for a link to be created from BUHS and/or WSESU websites, as well as other school sites in the district. The Superintendent suggested the link could be right from our district home page.
Currently the predominant content is curriculum related—extensive sets of links to other good diversity-related sites. However, it does not have discrete stand-alone lessons.
The diversity committee can include various pieces: minutes, action plan, members. This will be completed by the February committee meeting.
Also can include resources from committee: contact page, other stand-alone, quick, very usable diversity curriculum. Our goal is to bring resources like this to the February meeting.
Survey—Anti-bias inventory. Need two weeks for survey completion. Administrators will talk about it Dec. 11. Launch January 4?
We believe it should have a question which identifies which school the person is from, and not which grade they teach, as that would damage confidentiality.
The response is a concern—how to ensure good response. We would like it to be about 10 minutes to take, rather than 30. We would like it to be a requirement—but we are not sure how to make it happen. Small schools could have everyone take it at once, in a staff meeting. Other places may have different approaches. Incentive? Pizza party for highest percentage of respondents?
Committee Interests. What presentations would we like to have in our meetings to improve our awareness? World Café could be used—Scotty T or Lyle could do it, maybe with some BAMS kids. Responsive Classroom—Stuart. Green Street diversity committee. Some troubles of limited staff diversity discussed, and parental concerns. Field trip to Kathy Thielen’s room. Practical classroom applications of meaningful inclusion. We’d like to know more about Esteyville and Life Ed. Maxine Stent or Kate Hudson on assistive technology. Kurzweil (text to speech software). In January Stuart will do Responsive Classroom (a ten-minute overview).
Discussed meaningful inclusion briefly, and Karen shared copies of related articles.