4. Throughlines
Empowering Families and Communities
- Definition: Families and community members are key stakeholders in determining the ways materials and resources are accessible, equitable, and inclusive for all students.
- Commitments:
- Families and communities are recognized for the strengths, assets, and expertise they bring to the table.
- Families and communities contribute to the decision making that impacts student learning.
- Materials and resources are representative and reflective of families' and communities' backgrounds, legacies, and histories.
Coalition Building
- Definition: The educational environment is co-constructed through a historical reciprocal process of interdependence to ensure all voices are included in building equitable and inclusive learning networks and partnerships.
- Commitments:
- Building coalitions is based in sustainable long-term commitments.
- Coalitions intentionally include groups that are typically excluded.
- Coalitions work to set mutually inclusive goals.
- Coalitions raise awareness of power dynamics and work to dismantle them.
Equitable Practices and Systems
- Definition: Leading learning and knowledge sharing is mediated through equitable and inclusive dispositions and decision-making processes that promote the success of disenfranchised learners and communities.
- Commitments:
- Shifts in expectations, outcomes, and evaluation mechanisms are necessary for equitable practices and systems to occur.
- Entry into equitable and inclusive practices start with the most marginalized communities and identities due to systemic barriers.
- Instructional decisions acknowledge and build on individual students' intersecting multiple identities and community memberships.
- Equitable practices and systems involve Interdisciplinary work that is rooted in equity and inclusion.
Multiple Ways of Knowing and Doing
- Definition: The knowledge and wisdom of the students, families, and communities are centered in content and materials to promote equitable and inclusive learning experiences.
- Commitments:
- Instructional materials, curriculum, and activities are rooted in the intersecting backgrounds, experiences, and legacies of families, communities, and learners.
- Instructional materials, curriculum, and activities facilitate productive tensions between honor, acknowledge and build upon the knowledge and processes of individual students' intersecting multiple identities and community memberships.
- Instructional materials, curriculum, and activities promote multiple pathways for action and outcomes.
Intentional Use of Technology
- Definition: Technology is used in a purposeful manner that is informed by context and is oriented towards building equitable and inclusive learning environments.
- Commitments:
- Technology is used in a way to facilitate sharing, communicating and deep inquiry.
- Technology is used in a way that empowers knowledge and facilitates contributing to the classroom and society.
- Technology is used in a way that builds upon the assets, goals, and practices of communities and families.
- Technology is used in a way that aligns affordances with contexts.
Deep and Transformational Learning
- Definition: The promotion of academic success and transformational ends through a rigorous and integrated process that honors learners and communities as cultural entities and works to change the world to be a more equitable and inclusive place.
- Commitments:
- The ends of learning emphasize deep inquiry and higher order thinking into authentic topics and concepts.
- The ends of learning require that creative and analytic skills and practices be oriented towards shared agency and transformation.
- The ends of learning honor cultural and community ways of knowing and doing as assets.
- The ends of learning involve rigorous interdisciplinarity to promote shared agency and transformation.