• Staff Initiatives

    Our staff is integral to upholding our commitment to equity and inclusion. Our key initiatives include:

    CASEL's Transformative SEL Implementation: Transformative Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) is an asset-based framework that supports a "process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions."

    "SEL advances educational equity and excellence through authentic school-family-community partnerships to establish learning environments and experiences that feature trusting and collaborative relationships, rigorous and meaningful curriculum and instruction, and ongoing evaluation. SEL can help address various inequities and empower young people and adults to co-create thriving schools and contribute to safe, healthy, and just communities." Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) 
CASEL framework

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  • Culturally Responsive Pedagogy Implementation: Teams across departments and schools are reading Zaretta Hammonds's text, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, along with Doable Differentiation by Jane Kise, both of which offer a critical approach to instructional delivery. Our culturally responsive pedagogical framework will be designed to: 

      • Activate and utilize students' prior knowledge
      • Make learning contextual
      • Consider classroom setup and design responsive learning environments.
      • Form relationships in the service of cultivating independent learners
      • Understand and leverage neuroscience 
      • Tap into and incorporate students' cultural capital
      • Honor students and their cultural connections, ensuring that all of our students are represented in curricular content, stories, and authors 
         
    • Sports Can Battle Racism Initiative: In partnership with the Central Suburban League, our coaches and Athletic Directors are engaging in interactive discussions on how to combat racial discrimination, champion moral courage, and empower their programs to create positive change in their communities. The Central Suburban League (CSL) is launching a new program this season: Building a More Inclusive CSL. The mission of the 6-part virtual workshop is to help our student-athletes and coaches learn and grow to become inclusive, anti-racist leaders within their teams, schools, and communities.