Leadership Matters: Leading for Civility, Cultural Responsiveness and Community Engagement

1. Leadership Matters: Leading for Civility, Cultural Responsiveness and Community Engagement Dr. Ellen Miller Brown Rana Razzaque

2. Welcome and Appreciations • A message from our sponsors

3. Who We Are and Why We Care • Professor of Practice Educational Leadership and Policy Studies University of Denver • Contact: Ellen.Miller-Brown@du.edu • Doctoral Candidate Educational Leadership and Policy Studies University of Denver • Social Emotional Learning Specialist Denver Public Schools • Contact: Rana.Razzaque@du.edu

4. Who We Are and Why We Care At your table, please share • What is your name? • How are you related to educational leadership? • Why do you care about this topic enough to spend 3.5 precious hours learning about it?

5. Engaging Students to Inform Our Work • Alicia Rennix, Freshman at Centaurus High School in Boulder Valley School District. At my school I have definitely felt both welcome and unwelcome. I have never felt unwelcome by any of the staff members, it has always been because of other students. What is helping me feel welcome is that Centaurus has some amazing staff members who do not tolerate bullying. The only thing about that is that you cannot just tell a kid, “Hey you, stop bullying Alicia.” and POOF! Problem solved. I really really hope that not only Centaurus but other schools can get to a point where feeling welcomed and feeling safe is available for every student. • Dario Rocha, Senior at High Tech Early College in Denver Public Schools. Since my freshman year there have been many changes from regularly renewed staff and continued restructuring of our school. Over time these changes have affected the students because…we start to build relationships among adults… then when individuals leave, they also leave their community and the relationships that were built. The lack of relationships of students with adults and the continuous changes to the school staff are what make me feel most unwelcome.

6. Reflect • Share with a neighbor: • What new perspectives did you gain by listening to the panel?   • What wonderings do you have and what actions might they lead to? • Leadership Logs: • Jot down your thoughts and ideas

7. Proactive Preparation • Work to Lead for Civility, Cultural Responsiveness and Community Engagement • Deeply personal • Emotional • Intentional • Important

8. “I am not suggesting that there is some grand virtue in conflict or in pushing against rules, only that deep reform almost invariably entails creating some hard feelings, upending familiar routines, and overcoming established procedures. Superintendents and principals intent on sidestepping conflict while overhauling low-performing schools and systems will prove, at best, tepid agents of change. Geniality is a good thing, but there is a time for consensus and a time for conflict. Principals and superintendents intent on radically improving schools and systems need to accept and be prepared for a good bit of turbulence.” Hess, Frederick M.

9. Reflect

10. Learning and thriving through challenging, intercultural work • Tools for intra- and inter- personal understanding • Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) • intrapersonal approach to learning about how we navigate culture and how we can develop our “intercultural intelligence”  “...the ability to engage in a set of behaviors that uses skills (i.e., language or interpersonal skills) and qualities (e.g., tolerance for ambiguity, flexibility) that are tuned appropriately to the culture-based values and attitudes of the people with whom one interacts” (Peterson, 2004). • Implicit Bias test via Project Implicit

11. Learning and thriving through challenging, intercultural work • Appreciate the importance of our own cultural understandings and their influences on our work • Our culture and background influence how we mediate and how we interpret being mediated.

12. Our work is so public and potentially transformative “When you are in doubt, be still and wait; when doubt no longer exists for you, then go forward with courage.  So long as mists envelop you, be still; be still until the sunlight pours through and dispels the mists—as it surely will…Then act with courage.”   White Eagle, Ponca Chief

13. Learning and thriving through challenging, intercultural work • Whose responsibility is the work for Civility, Cultural Responsiveness and Community Engagement in your school or district? • Turn and talk:   • Discuss this question. • My recommendation for the answer to this question is YOU! Distribute all other parts of your leadership responsibilities, but do not distribute this one. It speaks volumes if the work of intercultural well-being in your school and community is your responsibility.

14. Learning and thriving through challenging, intercultural work • Learning the perspective of others

15. Learning and thriving through challenging, intercultural work • Engage allies and ask others for advice, express humility • Equity Advisory Team • Leveraging our privilege

16. Learning and thriving through challenging, intercultural work Leveraging our privilege • What are some ways you can use your privilege to be an upstander and lead for social justice? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTvU7uUgjUI

17. Learning and thriving through challenging, intercultural work • Empathetic Listening for the Speaker to Learn • Constructivist Dyad: • Find a partner • Sit knee-to-knee • First speaker will respond to the prompt for 5 minutes • Listener simply listens (without interruptions or questions, avoiding head nodding or sounds of agreement or disagreement) • Switch roles and repeat • Whatever the speaker shares during the dyad may be brought up by the person who shared, but not by the listener • Prompt: What is most challenging for you in working with people from other cultures?

19. Welcome Back!

21. Community Expert Panel • Dr. Angelina Marie Walker, Principal Resident, Denver Center for International Studies at Montbello, Angelina_Walker@dpsk12.org • Beth Yohe, Director of DevelopmentAnti-Defamation League, Mountain States Region, byohe@adl.org • Lee Shainis, Executive Director and Co-FounderIntercambio: Uniting Communities—Communicate, Connect and Succeed, lee@intercambio.org • Pilar Prostko, Program Coordinator/FacilitatorCU Dialogues Program, University of Colorado Boulder, http://www.colorado.edu/cudialogues/

22. Scenarios from the Field • Each expert panelist will be stationed at a table with a scenario they are familiar with. • At your tables, the facilitator will read your scenario and jot down the first 1-5 steps the participants would take to address the scenario. Also, participants will discuss the intended and possible unintended consequences of your response. • Discuss your responses with your resident expert and create the wisest final possible response to the scenario. Be prepared to share with the whole group.

23. Reflections and Next Steps • Step 1: In your Leadership Log, Write down • One new learning • One next step that today’s experience has emboldened you to take • One person you’ll talk with as an equity partner in the next two weeks • Schedule your next steps in your calendar right now to help with your follow-up • Step 2: Review your worst fears and best hopes • Schedule an equity conversation to share a balloon (celebration) and a boulder (challenge) with your equity partner so that your fears for your students are addressed and your hopes for them are realized • Step 3: Share your Leadership Log reflections with a neighbor

24. Evaluation To lead people, walk beside them. As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence … When the best leader’s work is done, the people say, ‘We did it ourselves!’   – Lao Tsu, Chinese philosopher