Digitally Video Record Your “Self-Reflective Responses” to the Following Questions:
1- To what extent do you believe all children and youth learn successfully when informed and caring educators assist them and make sufficient resources available to them? How do you demonstrate your beliefs?
2- To what extent do you ensure students are well-educated and successful learners? Be specific.
3- To what extent you create both an educational environment and learning experiences for students that honor and respect who they are?
4- To what extent do you ask yourself uncomfortable questions about racism, cultural preferences, and insufficient learning conditions and resources that are obstacles to learning for many students?
5- To what extent do you ask questions about racism, cultural preferences, and insufficient learning conditions and resources that are obstacles for others in your district/school?
6- To what extent do you engage in practices and policies that align with the belief that all students benefit from educational practices that engage them in learning about their cultural heritage and understand their cultural background?
7- To what extent do you engage in facilitating dialogue regarding the influence of cultural understanding and historic distrust that can result in cultural discomfort and disagreements?
8- Think about your own assumptions and stereotypes about people from cultures other than yours or about students whose living situations may be much different from yours. How do assumptions and stereotypes block you from responding thoughtfully and respectfully towards others?
9- To what extent do you engage in the implementation of educational practices and policies that improve instructional practices that effectively serve all students? Be specific?
10- To what extent do you engage in posing questions/collecting data/analyzing data/proposing research-based solutions/facilitating action plans for information integrated into the larger school structure/system to provoke changes to policies, procedures, and practices to promote equity for all children? Be specific.
11- To what extent do you use disaggregated data to understand more precisely the achievement status of all students and use that information to identify and implement effective instructional practices and policies? Be specific.
12- To what extent do you communicate across cultures and among diverse cultural groups about policy and practice to improve student learning? Be specific.
13- Respond to the following: “When we teach, write about, and model the exercise of leadership, we inevitably support or challenge people’s conceptions of themselves, their roles, and most importantly their ideas about how social systems make progress on problems. Leadership is a normative concept because implicit in people’s notions of leadership are images of a social contract. Imagine the differences in behavior when people operate with the ideas that leadership means influencing the community to follow the leader’s vision versus leadership means influencing the community to face its problems…leaders mobilize people to face problems, and communities make progress on problems because leaders challenge and help them do so”-Ronald Heifetz, 1994.
14- Respond to the following: “To do nothing, once informed, is tantamount to the immoral position of conspirator. The moral position is to commit oneself to end oppression.” What is your first reaction to this quote? To what extent do you demonstrate the willingness to facilitate this dialogue with others and reflect on the impact practices and policies have on improving schools for all children?
