The district is committed to developing a true culturally responsive curriculum in which diverse accomplishments, perspectives, and significant historical events are thoroughly covered.  The first step in the process was the formation of the Inclusive Curriculum Committee (ICC), which met for the first time on July 20th.  

July 20th was a day of professional learning, explorations, and goal setting facilitated by Fiona Borland, Melissa Hodgson and Damian Pappa.  We began the day by setting norms for our discussions and creating a safe space to learn and make mistakes.  Both teachers and administrators suggested norms that would help foster trust and progress.

 That morning, the ICC joined a call with 5 parents representing diverse families in our district.  The parents served as our panelist and shared their experience and opinions in response to four questions posed by Ms. Borland:

• Why is the representation of diverse people groups in the school curriculum important to you? 
• What was/is the impact of growing up without hearing about the history of BIPOC or LGBTQ+ in school?
• Did you have any experiences in your homes/families to counteract what was/is being taught in the classroom?
• What do you hope the outcome of the curriculum work will be?

Following lunch, the ICC participated in two professional learning activities around Understanding Privilege and The Importance of Representation.  These activities were facilitated by Ms. Fatima Mughal, a third-grade teacher at Village Elementary School.   

The final hours of the day we spent goal setting for this summer, which will include:

• Beginning to develop a collection of exemplar lessons that will be added to our current curriculum database and distributed to teachers through their CLT/PLCs.
• Identifying additional recommendations for diverse literature for K-12 ELA curriculum.

This is only the beginning of the curriculum work in the district. (See the following timeline below).  The ICC will host two more collaborative workdays this summer, with the goal of creating and conducting peer reviews of the new lessons.