Student Experience Research Network Summer 2020 Virtual Briefing

WELCOME & OPENING REFLECTION

• Lisa Quay, Executive Director of Student Experience Research Network, will give opening remarks and moderator Rhonda Broussard will lead a brief reflection activity.
• Rhonda Broussard is the CEO and Founder of Beloved Community, a non-profit consulting firm focused on implementing regional, sustainable solutions for diversity, equity, and inclusion. She also leads the organization’s Equity in Schools practice, where she designs supports that transform operations, pedagogy, student culture, and adult culture for sustainable inclusion and equity. Rhonda is a Pahara-Aspen Institute Fellow and a member of the Aspen Global Leaders Network. She has served on the Board of Directors of PROMO Missouri and the Missouri Charter Public School Association; currently she serves on the EdNavigator Board. Prior to founding Beloved Community, she founded St. Louis Language Immersion Schools, an intentionally diverse school community that was the first public school in the US to offer this rigorous academic model to a socio-economically diverse, majority minority student population.

RESEARCH PRESENTATION

• Dr. DeLeon Gray is an Associate Professor and University Faculty Scholar in North Carolina State University’s Department of Teacher Education and Learning Sciences. He works jointly with education stakeholders to disrupt structural aspects of schooling environments that leave students of color vulnerable to anxieties about belonging. He currently serves as Associate Editor of the journal, Contemporary Educational Psychology, and recently completed the 2019-2020 academic year as Scholar-in-Residence in Michigan State University’s College of Education. He has been featured in Black Enterprise Magazine as one of 100 men of color who are “living up to a standard of excellence and using their talents and influence in their respective industries to shift the perception of men of color to create and encourage a positive narrative.”

PANEL DISCUSSION

• Ron Berger is the Chief Academic Officer for EL Education, which guides a network of over 150 public schools in more than 30 states, and works with urban districts that serve over 500,000 students. EL Education’s core work is building teacher capacity in schools and districts through professional coaching, resources and open-source curriculum. Ron also works closely with the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he currently teaches a course that uses exemplary student project work to illuminate standards. He is the author of six books, an Annenberg Foundation Teacher Scholar, recipient of the Autodesk Foundation National Teacher of the Year award, and co-founder of Models of Excellence: The Center for High-Quality Student Work. Ron was a public-school teacher and master carpenter in rural Massachusetts for over 25 years.
• Chris Chatmon is the CEO and Co-Founder of Kingmakers of Oakland, a non-profit organization committed to improving life outcomes for Black boys. Chatmon began his career in education teaching history and physical education in the San Francisco Unified School District before becoming the Principal of an alternative high school in San Francisco. He served as Executive Director of Urban Services at the YMCA in Oakland and the Executive Director for African American Male Achievement and Deputy Chief of Equity for Oakland Unified School District. He has received several awards and acknowledgements for his commitment to improving life outcomes for all youth and especially African American males.
• Dr. Sasha Rabkin is the Chief Strategy Officer at Equal Opportunity Schools, a non-profit dedicated to ensuring that students of color and low-income students have equitable access to America’s most academically intense high school programs and succeed at the highest levels. For 6 years, he led the Partnership Department at EOS, growing the reach of programs from 42 schools to 370 while ensuring that 75% of the EOS budget was derived from fees for service. During this time, EOS supported schools to enroll an additional 42,000 students of color and low-income students into AP and IB courses. Prior to EOS, Sasha spent 12 years at the Institute for Community Leadership, a community based, social justice, youth leadership organization, where he led the School and Family Relationship Team. Sasha has worked in public education for over 20 years.

AUDIENCE Q&A

• Please submit your questions for the presenters using the “Ideas” tab under Polls and Discussion (available above).

FUNDER REFLECTIONS

• Dr. Gisele Shorter, Program Officer in Education at the Raikes Foundation
• Dr. Brooke Stafford-Brizard, Director in Whole Child Development at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
• Dr. Charmaine Mercer, Program Officer in Education at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

We recommend the following resources to supplement the event discussion.

• Why Black Adolescents Are Vulnerable at School and How Schools Can Provide Opportunities to Belong to Fix It, a research article by Dr. DeLeon Gray, Dr. Elan Hope, and Dr. Christy Bird 
• What We Know About Belonging from Scientific Research, a research synthesis by Student Experience Research Network 
• Is My Voice Heard? Does My Voice Matter?, a video essay from the 2019 Student Experience Research Network funder briefing 
• We are Part of the Problem, an argument for a renewed commitment to anti-racism in educational assessment and accountability by Dr. Susan Lyons for The Center for Assessment
• Resources for Agitators from the Abolitionist Teaching Network 
• I Need More From My Daughter’s School Than Lip Service About Racism, an Education Week opinion piece by Funmi Haastrup, a parent and co-founder of Equity Journey Partners 

Please open this shared Google file for the closing activity. All contributions are anonymous unless you choose to include your name as part of your responses. We will share themes from these reflections as part of our follow-up materials.

Tweet with us (@MindsetScholars) using our event hashtag, #BelongingNow.

If you are experiencing any issues viewing the livestream, join the meeting via the Zoom app using this link https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85890838012 or call in directly using the following details:

• +1-669-900-6833
• Webinar ID: 858 9083 8012

For other technical support, questions or concerns, please email info@mindsetscholarsnetwork.org.