How do you support students and families through equity work? Shifting the culture of a school and district requires students (and often families) to have input and be part of the process. Due East offers companion lessons and engagement for secondary students as the adults in their school/district work with our team for professional development.
Our work with students may include:
- Building a common vocabulary and understanding terms
- Understanding what it means to lead/take agency
- Understanding structural systems and using an equity lens on campus
- Using case studies or real scenarios to identify, acknowledge, and unpack critical events
- Supporting continued consciousness and activity of students who are already equity-motivated
- Content-specific lessons and series
- Co-teaching lessons in the classroom
- Focus groups and experience-gathering regarding curriculum, culture of the school/district, equity review of policies and practices, etc.
- Content-aligned parallel development for students (building a common understanding with building educators)
- Creating ways to provide equity feedback to adults; accountability and measures for creating equitable change
- Processing towards healing and systemic change through past and present critical incidents
- Working within their community outside of campus to create and sustain equitable change
As with all of Due East's work within districts, the structure of our work with students will be tailored to your school/district's needs. This might look like: working directly with student groups (student-run clubs, leadership programs, etc.), direct engagement via workshops or short modules, partnering with classroom educators, developing connections with cultural liaisons, facilitating community partnerships, and more.