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Reflecting on the current learning context with an equity audit. Before we can create something new, we need to look around us and better understand where we are from the student’s point of view. The video shows how to look beyond the data, such as diploma rates and proficiency rates of students, to listen to students lived experiences. While the data focuses on one high school, the stories have universal themes. Try it out yourself with your school. Look at your school data. Then conduct empathy interviews with students to listen.

In listening to students’ lived experiences, listen with an equity mindset. The video shows how an equity mindset infuses how to identify structural, instructional, and curricular barriers and how to test supports that develop students’ academic, cognitive, social, and emotional skills. We provided a list of readings to expand learning about educational equity.

Structural aspects of schooling are the organizing principles and mechanisms such as policies, programs, and procedures of how we “do” school. These include written and formal procedures and policies as well as unwritten and informal procedures and policies. Students experience structural barriers—from grading policies to procedures to take rigorous courses. The workbook guides you through a cycle of Adaptive Implementation to identify a structural barrier via empathy interviews or other data and testing out your supports.

Curricular aspects of schooling are content and activities that engage the content. Types of curricula can include Recommended, written, supported, tested, taught, learned, hidden, and excluded curriculum. Students experience curricular barriers—from lesson plans that do not prioritize ways to motivate and engage students to content with no connection to students’ lived experience. The workbook guides you through a cycle of Adaptive Implementation to identify a curricular barrier via empathy interviews or other data and testing out your supports.