"Supporting Welcoming Schools"
Overview
This project proposes to help schools create a welcoming community for all students and their families by offering a series of anti-bias, multi-cultural workshops for parents. Our goal is to help parents develop specific skills to broaden dialogue with their children and other community members about inclusion, with a special focus on race and sexual orientation, and to give parents strategies for helping their children treat each other with respect. This project builds on earlier work funded by a 1998 LEF Bowman school grant entitled "Tackling Racism Together" which funded anti-racist training for parents.
Project Description
1. Supporters
This project has been initiated by a coalition of parents and staff involved in anti bias efforts in the Lexington Public Schools. It is sponsored by the Estabrook Anti Bias Committee and PTA, the Harrington Diversity Committee and PTA, the Bowman Diversity Committee and PTA, and the Jonas Clarke School Association, together with the principals of Estabrook, Harrington, and Bowman Elementary Schools, and of Clarke Middle School.
2. School District Priority
Multicultural, anti-racist work has been a Lexington School District priority for several years. In June of 1996 Lexington joined what is now known as the Empowering Multicultural Initiatives (EMI) Collaborative and adopted as a district goal "to create multicultural, anti-racist classrooms where children of all backgrounds feel affirmed and are able to achieve academic success." (2001-2002 Professional Development Handbook, p. 19.) As part of that effort, 90% of the system administrators and 130 of the district's teachers had received the intensive EMI anti-racist training by August of 2001.
3. Parent Support
During that time the PTAs and Anti Bias/Diversity committees from these schools supported this effort in numerous ways, including holding multicultural book fairs, creating multicultural book bags, holding a biannual international Games Day, hosting international potluck evenings, providing school assemblies focusing on Martin Luther King and Mohatma Gandhi and conducting meetings in Boston to make it easier for Boston parents to participate in committee activities.
4. Recent Staff Training and Parent Efforts
Recent staff training over the past three years reflects the system’s commitment "to deliberately address inclusion as it pertains to ...sexual orientation" (2001-2002 Professional Development Handbook). Each elementary school and both middle schools
have been providing workshops addressing issues related to gay and lesbian people, especially parents and students. The Anti Bias/Diversity committees at the various schools have been working hard to support this extension of the anti-bias effort as well, by sponsoring events such as spring family movie nights showing "That's A Family" (which features children from numerous family configurations talking about their families), parent workshops entitled "Is Your Family Like Mine?" and helping to fund the purchase of books for the classroom that include non-traditional families.
5. Current Need
To change and improve the school culture, parents need to be a part of the dialogue. There have been a number of racially-based incidents in Lexington's schools that range from excluding children of color from birthday parties to name calling to actual fights. The Lexington Public Schools have also been documenting discrepancies in achievement levels that exist between white students and students of color and are looking at ways to analyze and evaluate this information and provide support to the children who can use it.
The presence of gays, lesbians and their families in our schools is not often acknowledged or discussed in a respectful way. Reports of harassment and name-calling are common at all grade levels in Lexington. The Massachusetts Department of Education's 2001 Youth Risk Behavior Survey indicates that high school students who describe themselves as gay, lesbian, or bisexual were three times more likely to have attempted suicide and to miss school because of feeling unsafe than their peers. Teasing and harassment based on gender stereotyping that involve anti-gay language also hurt many children who may not be gay or have a gay family member. And when some children feel unsafe, other children - the bystanders - feel unsafe as well.
Parents, teachers and staff have made many requests for more multicultural, anti-racist, anti-homophobia training opportunities. On January 22, 2002 the Joint Administrative Council participated in a workshop focused on creating safe schools for Gay and Lesbian students. In their evaluations participants asked for more education for parents to help them talk to their children about gay and lesbian people, and to help their children feel safe talking with their parents about such issues. Both teachers and administrators expressed the need for parents to understand and support the work that they are doing in the schools on welcoming and supporting gay and lesbian headed families, students and staff. At the February 25, 2002 Harrington Faculty training on gay-lesbian related issues, teachers specifically requested a similar training for parents.
6. Project Goal
The goal of this proposal is to support the Lexington Public Schools by offering parents training that is similar to the anti-racist and anti-homophobic training that has been offered for staff. The expectation is that parents will be empowered to have conversations with their children and neighbors that will promote respect, empathy and awareness of the diversity of all children and their families. By including parents in the dialogue that addresses racist and anti-gay behavior, classroom teachers will receive important support for the work they are doing to create multi-cultural learning environments where differences are not merely tolerated, but welcomed. As Joanne Benton, Superintendent of the Lexington Public Schools, wrote in a recent memo to staff, "I encourage all teachers to create a classroom or group culture where difference is welcomed, not merely tolerated." Together, parents and teachers can begin to address deep-rooted attitudes that underpin these situations and enable further progress toward an inclusive and welcoming school community for everyone, celebrating both our similarities and our differences.
Objectives
The goal is to achieve schools in which all children feel safe and respected and welcomed through a reduction of student name-calling and harassment and an increased sense of affirmation for children and their families. This grant can help bring this about through the following enabling objectives
Target Population
This project will target Estabrook, Harrington, Bowman and Clarke parents, and, as space is available, parents from other Lexington schools. The training would accommodate 30 parents. We would like to bring in as many perspectives as possible into the training, including those of people who are not currently active in anti bias work.
Activities
We intend to attain these objectives through engaging Visions, Inc., a non-profit educational organization that has over a decade experience offering multi-cultural training to profit and non-profit institutions alike. They would collaborate with a trainer from the Massachusetts Department of Education Safe Schools program, facilitating twelve and a half hours of multi-cultural, anti-racist and anti-homophobic training: one 5 hour session on a weekend day, plus three 2.5 hour sessions offered in the evening.
The workshops will include small group discussion, case studies, movies, and action planning. Participants will examine their own beliefs and their context, and learn how to handle common questions relating to issues of race and gay and lesbian related issues. Stereotyping and its negative manifestations will be examined. Workshop leaders will provide the participants with activities that lead to creating a supportive environment to nurture a community of parents and staff working to counter racism and anti-gay bias, and the development of action plans that fit each parents' school setting.
Time Table
Activity Person Responsible Time
Recruit parents Project Director, June/Sept.
School Contacts.
Engage Vision trainers Project Director, June
Plan and schedule training Project Director June
Hold workshop Project Director/Visions Fall
/DOE
Follow up meeting Project Director Winter/Spring
School Contacts
Final report to LEF Project Director Spring 2003
Impact
Evaluation Procedures
We will evaluate the participants' experience with the Visions/DOE-led training through individual workshop evaluations to be completed by all participants at the end of the workshop. We will prepare a final report for the LEF that will summarize that evaluation and document the number of workshops conducted, the number of people in attendance and the impact of the training on the participants and their schools. The impact of the training on the schools will be documented through a compilation of the individual Action Plans, and a follow-up description of participants' implementation of their Action Plans.
Dissemination Plans
After the program, the program director will share the report on individual action plans, and their implementation, with the other elementary schools and the central office. An article will also be prepared for school newsletters and the Lexington Minuteman describing the workshops and their results.
Replication Potential
We view this as a "train-the-trainer" model activity and anticipate that "graduates" would be available to talk about the training to parent groups at other schools, and help them assemble their own plans for such training.
Budget
Estimated Costs:
Consultants: Trainers
(Visions, inc. 3 trainers/session, @ $1000/trainer/8 hour day, for total 12.5 hours, plus 10% overhead, $ 5156
plus 2 hours consulting time @$125/hour plus 10%) $ 275
(Dept. of Education trainer 1@$150/hour for 5 hours) $ 750
Supplies $ 300
Total Estimated Cost $6481
Income:
Bowman PTA $250
Estabrook Anti Bias Committee $100
Estabrook PTA $500
Harrington Diversity Group $300
J Clarke School Association $500
In kind contribution - Mass. Dept. of Education trainer 1@$150/hour
for 5 hours $750
Total non-LEF Income $2400
Requested Lexington Education Foundation funds $4081
Trainers:
The workshops will be provided by VISIONS, Inc. and the Safe Schools Program for Gay & Lesbian Students of the Massachusetts Department of Education.
A. VISIONS, Inc., a non- profit, educational corporation, was established in 1984 by four African-American women from Rocky Mount, North Carolina. VISIONS, Inc. is a consulting and training organization committed to respect for group and individual differences and faith in the potential of creating just and equitable institutions.
Today VISIONS has offices in Rocky Mount, Cambridge, Richmond, Atlanta, the San Francisco Bay Area, and South Africa.
VISIONS provides opportunities that:
1. Increase people's abilities to recognize, understand and appreciate cultural differences and similarities;
4. Strengthen participants cross-cultural communication skills and help them develop effective action plans.
VISIONS has clients in both the public and the private sector. Locally VISIONS has provided the diversity training for the Espiscopal Divinity School, the Cambridge Public Schools, and has had a ten year relationship with the Winchester Multicultural Network. Winchester resident Sandy Thompson was inspired by a VISIONS four day workshop ten years ago to found the Winchester Multicultural Network. For the past four years the WMN has offered annual two day VISIONS community workshops on racism and multiculturalism for parents and teachers. Sandy enthusiastically recommended VISIONS for our parent training.
B. The Massachusetts Department of Education's SAFE SCHOOLS PROGRAM FOR GAY AND LESBIAN STUDENTS and it's consultants have been educating teachers, administrators, parents and community members throughout Massachusetts since the May, 1993 recommendations of the State Board of Education to improve safety and support to gay and lesbian students and to implement the December 1993 law that added sexual orientation as a class to the statute prohibiting discrimination in the public schools. Lexington Public Schools have had numerous well-received trainings by the SAFE SCHOOLS PROGRAM, as mentioned previously in this grant.
C. Project Director
Meg Soens is a Lexington parent who has two children in Estabrook School and two more entering kindergarten next year. Active on the Estabrook Anti Bias committee, Meg initiated discussion of gay and lesbian issues at Estabrook and has been involved in planning several elementary school staff gay/lesbian-related trainings. She has also organized several related events in the broader Lexington community, such as the Respecting Differences weekend event in October 2000. Meg is a vice president of the Estabrook PTA, and has also been involved in numerous conference presentations about the work of helping make elementary schools safer places for children of gay parents and others who are hurt by homophobia. Before she stayed home to care for her four children, she was a securities analyst at Fidelity Investments for several years.
Joanne Benton
Jennifer Wolfrum
Joni Jay
David Crump
Malcolm Astley
Pamela Houlares, Kim Hogan and Sharon Kelly
Ellen Silberman and Cathy Gill
Debora Hoard
Diana Schlosser
Bill Friedman