When you are working to make changes in a system or community, it is easy to feel like you’re the only one doing the work or who sees the issue. In my work, I often hear educators talk about feeling isolated and like they are the only ones trying to swim upstream.
Over the last year and a half, fighting for equity in all areas, but especially in schools and for our students, has become exponentially more important and more challenging to do.
Thanks to the LEADER Initiative from College Spark and our local LEADER Advisory through Northeast Washington Education Service District 101 (NEW ESD 101), the ELEVATE Cadre is trying to support the leaders and advocates who have already been doing this work for years.
Elevating Learning Environments Via Anti-Racist Trauma-Informed Education; ELEVATE is a community and healing-centered cadre for education leaders across the region. This is a regional effort to increase and sustain community representation in Northeast Washington.
The cadre is made up of educators from across the NEW ESD 101 region and is representative of many of the cultural and lived experiences of the communities across Northeast Washington.
ELEVATE believes that if we partner with school districts, community organizations, tribal partners, and higher education to strengthen relationships, build awareness, provide professional learning, and take intentional steps to improve recruitment and retention efforts, then we can begin to create conditions for systems and educators to become anti-racist, trauma-informed and healing-centered in their practices. So, we can plan strategically for an educator workforce that is diverse and representative of the students across the region.
As a part of this work, the ESD 101 and the LEADER Advisory are hosting the 5th annual Regional Equity Summit on June 23rd at the Gonzaga University Hemmingson Center.
The Regional Equity Summit is a one-day in-person conference. This year’s theme is Connected for Impact: Building Community, Amplifying Voices. The summit brings together educators from across the region to network with schools and districts, engage in meaningful dialogue, and deepen shared understanding of equity across the classroom, building, and district levels.
Change for students cannot and should not happen without student voice and student leaders engaged in the process. This year, the Regional Equity Summit will have students supporting the day’s events and a student panel with students from across the region sharing their experience and expertise as students.
To ensure student participation as we work to make sure the educator workforce is representative of the communities in our region, ELEVATE will be launching a student cadre in the fall. The student cadre will be comprised of students from across the ESD 101 region and will advise on efforts that will directly impact their own or their classmates’ experiences.
If you are interested in learning more about the ELEVATE work or have a student interested in the student cadre, please contact me at kenji@educationvoers.org. Register for the Regional Equity Summit here.