Equity and Diversity continues to be a central priority within Bedford Public Schools. This brief update captures some of our recent work in this area.
Diversity in Hiring
The Equity and Diversity Committee, originally created in Fall 2013 to help the Bedford school community develop greater cultural proficiency among staff, students, and families, has initiated an outreach campaign to build relationships with local university student teacher program directors. The goal is to increase our visibility as a rich, supportive environment for student teachers of color so that we can successfully recruit from that known pool of candidates. We are reaching out as well to local and more distant university teacher programs and placement offices that will recommend to their candidates that they consider Bedford as a unique employment opportunity. In response to a request to teachers to allow us to use their names in outreach letters and potentially joining visiting delegations to local university graduate program, we have already received over sixty volunteers.
The district has also joined the Greater Boston Suburban Human Resources Network (GBSHRN), a consortium of public schools in greater Boston committed to "diversifying its teaching staff to reflect today's changing world." Among its other initiatives, GBSHRN hosts an annual Diversity Job Fair in March. Bedford administrators will help to organize and participate in the 2017 fair.
Equity and Diversity in the Classroom
In recent years the Equity and Diversity committee is focusing its work more directly on curriculum development and support in each building. At the Lane School, for example, teacher leaders from the committee helped to prepare and run professional development last March around using picture books, four at each grade level, organized around common themes from Teaching Tolerance. These themes, Identity, Diversity, Justice, and Action are also used as organizing principles for the Equity-Diversity work at Davis.
Lane teachers worked in teams on the professional development day to create common lessons to accompany each of the 13 chosen picture books. This year, all classroom teachers are using the picture books and accompanying lessons in their classrooms to develop this common experience for students.
The three teacher leaders, Sarah Dorer, Jamie Nolan, and Julia Herman, presented this exciting work at the school committee meeting on November 29, 2016. Their presentation, which gives a much fuller sense of the project, is attached below. As was clear from their presentation, teachers are deeply committed to this work. Key individuals in each building bring creativity and energy to this important ongoing work. MLS and JS
Equity and Diversity at Lane
