Using Creative Inquiry and Metaphor as Tool to Explore Leadership Identity, Equity and Practice
How do we design, adapt, and use creativity to build equity centered strategies in leadership? In this session you will explore your own leadership identity and practice through the equity lens of Creative Inquiry. Using self reflection, mapping, metaphor, symbol making and Studio Habits of Mind, you will engage with others and plot a path to your personal and site based leadership goals.
Facilitators
- Judy Goodwin (Leadership Coach Field Supervisor UCB PLI)
- Cammie Harris (Leaders Emeritus Alameda Unified)
- Marilyn Zoller-Koral (Leader Emeritus SFUSD, Co-Facilitator Creative Strategies for Educational Leadership)
- Trena Noval (Leadership Initiatives for Integrated Design for Education, the Arts and Leadership, Co-Facilitator Creative Strategies for Educational Leadership)
Communication Matters
Leading for justice requires facilitating discussions about race, ethnicity, and culture. Using a framework for global education, we will explore why identity matters and practice some strategies for engagement and inclusion in collaborative, courageous, and compassionate conversations.
Creating an Impactful Leadership Practice
Putting creative practices at the center of leadership and learning is an equity strategy. Developing and maintaining a creative practice illuminates personal interpretation and imagination. It values individual identity. Creative practices support innovation and invention in approaching problem solving by lifting up individual ideas and voices in a collective community. This session will engage leaders in hands-on creative processes that promote well-being and healing in communities and can both bridge and bond communities who practice together. In this session we will explore the intelligence of the artistic mind, how creative practices can support reflection and deepen understanding of standards of professional leadership and how rituals and routines can support critical movement towards change through maintaining a creative practice.
Facilitators
- Cammie Harris (Leaders Emeritus Alameda Unified)
- Constance Moore (K-12 Art Teacher, Maya Lin School, Alameda, Children’s book illustrator)
- Trena Noval (Leadership Initiatives for Integrated Design for Education, the Arts and Leadership, Co-Facilitator Creative Strategies for Educational Leadership)
- Judy Goodwin (Leadership Coach for 21CSLA, Principal Leadership Institute, Leadership Programs)
The Value of Collaborative Dollars: Layering, Braiding, and Blending Funds
The benefits of collaboration in education have been well established; this session will create an opportunity to apply this skill to funding streams. We will explore ways in which dollars can collaborate with each other to meet the needs of our scholars. Participants will gain an understanding of layering, braiding, and blending strategies and delve into specific examples currently in use by school districts and charter schools.
Presenter: Dr. Luz T.Cázares
Luz T. Cázares is a fierce advocate for equity in education and expert in PK12 leadership, finance, and operations. Luz is known for taking complex education and finance-related information and translating it into digestible, meaningful, and actionable components. Most recently, Luz launched Lucid Partnerships, Inc. to eliminate the racial predictability of success in our school systems by supporting educators in transforming good intentions into evidence-based, actionable strategies and real results. Luz has worked at the local and state levels for over twenty years in a range of districts—from the large and diverse Chicago Public Schools to the small and suburban Alameda Unified School District. She deeply understands education policy and program and models her conviction that the role of every school leader is to support effective teaching that impacts learning for EACH student. Luz earned her BA from the University of Chicago and her Master in Public Policy from the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government. She is a Lecturer for the UC Berkeley Principal Leadership Institute master’s program and the Leaders for Equity and Democracy doctoral program and serves on the National Center for Youth Law advisory committee on school funding inequity.
Equity Leadership Actions toward Justice: Developing Coherent Understanding of Our Own Work
Participants and teams in this breakout session will:
- Critically reflect on the actions they have taken (and seen) for equity and their meanings,
- Deeply examine how different educational leadership actions relate and support one another (or not) toward a shared goal,
- Collaboratively develop a shared view of a just society, and explore how schools can help reach the goal,
- Examine the characteristics of different challenges educational leaders face when leading for equity (e.g., at the classroom level, school level, system level), and understand where they can make important differences,
- Start to make school-wide plans with steps to create equitable schools toward social justice
Presenter: Dr. Aki Murata
Aki Murata is the Research Coordinator of 21CSLA State Center, helping set directions and overseeing the research projects to investigate how professional learning offered through 21CSLA Regional Academies support educational leaders to learn to lead for equity and how the impacts are made in California UTK-12 schools. Aki has previously held positions of assistant professors of elementary mathematics education at Stanford University and UC-Berkeley. Aki has conducted numerous research studies examining how educators and students learn in schools and is best known for her work using collaborative professional learning contexts (e.g., Lesson Study, Community of Practice) as research settings. Her research synergistically informs her practitioner practices while her practices create the research contexts, making a full interactional circle. Educational equity is always central to the work, informing educators how diversity can support and create rigorous learning experiences. Originally from Japan, Aki brings a cultural lens to analyses of learning that critically informs what is invisible to a mono-cultural view.
Realizing a Community Schools Vision: Transformative Coherence
Community schools offer an opportunity to co-create with educators, students, families, community partners, and public agencies to transform the way we do school. The California Community Schools Partnership Grant (CCSP) supports the development of community school programs. We know that receiving a CCSP grant is only the beginning and that effective community school strategies must prioritize and actualize alignment of multiple initiatives, funding streams and grant programs.
In this session, we will frame community schools as a strategy to provide:
- Coherence to whole-child, whole-school teaching and learning
- Emphasize on the need for intentional vision setting and alignment
- Examine the power of building trusting relationships within your school community
- Additionally, we will explore ways to set a vision and goals, lead with intentionality, and collaborate with others to realize the transformative potential that community schools offer.
How Inquiry Based Instruction Can Advance Equity and Student Learning
In this interactive session focused on instructional leadership, participants will consider how leaders can foster and support inquiry-based learning as a lever to advance equity and improve student learning.
More details to come.