Seattle Schools Ethnic Studies Updates

 From the January 18, 2022 Student Services, Curriculum and Instruction committee agenda:

We partner with various community-based organizations from the Filipino American community to determine topics, curriculum, and ways to leverage community expertise for the new Filipino American 8th and 11th-grade courses. This work includes organizing professional development partnerships to support educators in content delivery.

We are collaborating with El Centro de La Raza to gather information around the needs of the SPS Latinx community. We are exploring partnerships to utilize grassroots organizing to institutionalize supports and resources for Ethnic Studies/Latinx Studies while fostering student agency and autonomy.

We presented at the DREA Racial Equity Team institute on December 11, 2021, to provide a foundational understanding of the scope of Ethnic Studies, its relevant history, and how it looks in P-12 environments. We will collaborate with DREA on future professional development for educators and our internal team.

Black Studies Curriculum

We have been developing the high school scope and sequence document for units and lessons. The scope and sequence for 11th grade is complete. We will have twenty-eight (28) weekly units that will be completed by the end of the school year. The middle school Black Studies Curriculum units will be ready for teacher feedback by mid-February. To support cross-content implementation, our CAI content managers/district staff have had four professional learning sessions with Dr. Muhammad on curriculum unit development.

The Black Studies department launched its first course (virtually) in January 2020. Since then, we have piloted a 10th grade World History Black Studies Course at Cleveland High School (21- 22). We continue to get strong feedback from students and families. We have a feature story being published through public affairs that will highlight this work.

We will provide professional development for teachers in the spring and offer an institute in the summer for teachers teaching Black Studies in our secondary schools. We are working on summer credit-bearing skills/course work. (i.e. financial literacy, health, etc.).

We collaborate with SPS educators to expand and update the Ethnic Studies curriculum. We are working to align curricular materials with Dr. Gholdy Muhammad’s Historically Responsive Literacy (HRL) framework. We will publish the curricular materials on the mySPS website during the second semester of the 2021-2022 school year. We are also working DOTS to ensure online material meets accessibility requirements on mySPS website. Lastly, we have convened community learning circles with educators in preparation for our 3rd Annual Liberation Through Antiracist Education Institute, scheduled for August of 2022.