Issues Now! Conversations About Equity

On today’s episode, the last of Season One, we will get a look into equity from our superintendent’s perspective, Dr. Marvin Connelly Jr.  Following my conversation with him, I will debrief some of my big takeaways from this episode as well as reflect on the season as a whole.  To provide your feedback on Season One and give ideas for Season Two, please fill out this google form.  Season Two- coming January 2021.

On today’s episode we will be continuing our conversation about equity with the 20-21 Cumberland County Principal of the Year- Suzanne Owen from Cliffdale Elementary School and the Assistant Principal of the Year- Tianna O’Brien from Bill Hefner Elementary School.

Today we begin our final mini series of Season 1 of Issues Now! Conversations About Equity.  I will spend the next three weeks talking with leaders from around my district about what our goals should be and what ideas we have about how we can create a more equitable school system.  Today we begin with a conversation with the 20-21 Cumberland County Schools Teacher of the year- Nicole Rivers from Grays Creek High School, and first runner up-Chris Lucas from Cape Fear High School.

On today’s episode, I talk with my good friend, Duncan McMillan about many aspects of equity in early childhood education.  We look at some of the disparities in the statistics that face our young students of color and really get into how we can be equitable practitioners in early childhood education.

For more information about the NC Early Childhood Action Plan, please visit, https://files.nc.gov/ncdhhs/ECAP-Report-FINAL-WEB-f.pdf.

On this episode, we will be wrapping up our series on LGBTQ issues in schools.  This was originally supposed to be a two part series, but my dear friend Kandy Cox Dillion who was on the first two episodes about this topic pushed me to do a third where we look at this issue from the parent perspective. So, today I welcome back Kandy along with two other parents of LGBTQ youth, Samantha Boyd and Heather Reisenbeck to discuss their experiences with the school system while raising a teenager that is part of the LGBTQ community.

On this episode, I welcome back Ashley Boles, Dustin Best, and Kandy Cox Dillion to discuss their personal experiences as an educator who is also a member of the LGBTQ community.  I am so grateful to these three amazing educators for sharing their personal experiences to help others learn and grow.

On this episode we are diving into a new topic about equity in education.  We will spend the next three episodes exploring issues related to LGBTQ students and staff.  Today’s episode will focus on the importance of, and how to create welcoming spaces for our LGBTQ students.  I am thrilled to welcome three of my friends, Ashley Boles, Dustin Best, and Kandy Cox Dillion for this conversation about equity.

For more information about this topic, please visit The Trevor Project and GLSEN.

In this episode we are dig a bit deeper into the classroom application of becoming an anti-racist ELA teacher.  Last week, I talked with three professors from NC State University about their white paper about this topic.  Today, I talk with two English  teachers from Grays Creek High School, Melissa Bishop and Joel Mayo, about how they are putting some of these practices into action in the classroom.  Melissa is also the president of the North Carolina English Teachers Association and talks briefly about what that organization is doing to promote anti-racist work through North Carolina.  

To nominate someone for the NCETA Anti-Racist Teaching Award, please visit: https://forms.gle/QxGHCcKhmPsvij3r6

In this episode I with three professors from NC State University on how to work towards becoming an Anti-Racist ELA Teacher; Dr. Michelle Falter, Dr. Chandra Alston, and Dr. Crystal Chen Lee.  These three ladies worked together in the summer of 2020 to write a white paper outlining the steps that teachers, specifically ELA teachers, should take towards becoming Anti-Racist teachers.

To read the entire paper, please visit: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11wwUDyWOeiXaYpSlzaE6LvAMG-NJnumnHl-Ud1fiPII/edit?usp=sharing

In part three of our series on White Privilege, I talk with three colleagues from CCS- Larry Parker, Dr. Lillian McDavid, and Jovan Denaut about the importance of having access to teachers of color for our students of color.  We talk about the difficulties of recruitment and the importance of staff development in cultural responsive teaching- no matter the race of the teacher.