I founded my school's Equity Team in 2020 when I realized the school did not have a space to discuss issues around race, language, culture, or other equity related topics. I sought out talented, equity-minded members to form our equity team. Since then, my team has created a space where we have vulnerable discussions, create and share culturally responsive resources with staff members, and find solutions to school-wide issues. With the goal of being action-oriented, resourceful, and inclusive, this team has helped our elementary school become representative of the students and families we serve. My role on this team involved recruiting members, creating meeting schedules and agendas, finding and sharing resources, and facilitating meetings. I made sure our team continued to meet our objectives and goals.
Being a problem solver, I was eager to join the Multilingual Program Review Steering Committee. In this role, I was able to participate in collecting data in order to analyze trends of multilingual education and researching best practices for multilingual students. Using this data analysis and research, I wrote recommendations to the district about changes to make to their program. This was a collaborative process with innovative and action-oriented educators and I loved hearing from each member's expertise.
I was a member of the Building Leadership Team during the 2020-2021 school year. On top of the team's typical responsibilities, such as creating the master schedule, solving building-wide issues, planning building events, and analyzing and assessing team work, we also provided staff support during the year of distance learning. This was a very unpredictable time for staff, and our team's focus was to help our staff feel heard, valued, and safe.
I was invited to share about supports for multilingual students in a K-2 Music classroom at an undergraduate class at the University of St. Thomas.
I shared how teachers can community build in the beginning of the year. I also shared tips about collaborating with their site's Multilingual Learner teacher.
My colleague, a special education teacher, joined me in modeling how to support both multilingual students and special education students. Here, I am modeling how to write a language objective.
Representation matters, and I shared the benefits of setting up a classroom that is representative of the students.
I was so happy to use this opportunity to guide future teachers toward creating an inclusive classroom for multilingual learners.
Copyright © 2024 Jane Beeninga - All Rights Reserved.
Powered by GoDaddy
We use cookies to analyze website traffic and optimize your website experience. By accepting our use of cookies, your data will be aggregated with all other user data.