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    • Image promoting Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education, featuring a tree made of colorful hands.Every individual reflects on these words differently, with personal viewpoints, beliefs and experiences. As a nation and even in our own communities, addressing these differences often has become uncomfortable and divisive. School districts – including Spencerport – understand the potential of these conversations; yet we also understand the responsibility we have as parents, community and educators to ensure all students receive equal access to a quality education in a learning environment that is safe, welcoming, and free of discrimination.
    • Long-range Equity Plan, 2024-27

  • What is Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education?

    The CR-SE is a framework utilized in New York State education that creates student-centered learning environments to: 

    • Affirm racial, linguistic and cultural identities;
    • Prepare students for rigor and independent learning;
    • Develop students’ abilities to connect across lines of difference;
    • Elevate historically marginalized voices; and
    • Empower students as agents of social change.

    The framework itself is grounded in four principles:

    • Welcoming and Affirming Environment
    • High Expectations and Rigorous Instruction
    • Inclusive Curriculum and Assessment
    • Ongoing Professional Learning

    The 64-page framework, which may be found on the NYS website at nysed gov/crs/framework, goes into more depth on each principle and its intended outcomes.

    Locally, the Spencerport Central School District initiated work around CRE three years ago with a multi-tiered approach led by now Superintendent Ty Zinkiewich. This approach, which is outlined on these pages, engages different stakeholders in a series of conversations in the area of CRE.

    • Spencerport holds regular virtual meetings with our middle and high school students, to continue the conversation around race, diversity, culture, and equity, and more specifically to learn about their personal instructional and social experiences within our district and schools. 

    From these meetings, the students developed the following recommendations:

    1. Teacher and staff professional development
    • Training on how to address use of the n word
    • Honest conversations about microaggressions and their impact
    • Extend dialogue and acknowledge diversity –going beyond black and white
    1. Analyze policies that involve discrimination (i.e. Code of Conduct)
    • Engage students in conversations about restorative practice procedures for individuals that display prejudice in schools
    1. Continuation/expansion of student summits, Equity Committee, faculty meetings, professional development, and candid conversations

    Students also helped to inform and develop the following target objectives:

    Infographic with four points about community awareness and understanding.

    • Spencerport’s Board of Education, superintendent and leadership have committed to ongoing professional learning and support around CRE. Last summer, administrators focused on social emotional learning, as well as CRE, during their annual retreat. 

    The Washington Square Arch frames a view of the sky and buildings, with NYU Steinhardt text.

    Over the last few years, SCSD teachers, counselors, principals and administrators have attended a six-part training to further develop CRE competency within our district. The training is offered through NYU and Monroe 2 BOCES, and:

    • examines what it means to be culturally responsive
    • helps to assess and develop CRE practices, and
    • provides a reflective framework to shift believes, policies and practices to support students and their families to address inequities
    • Faculty meetings during the 2021-22 school year will continue to build upon the progress made in the last two years
    • Engaged the expertise of Shane Wiegand, a fourth grade teacher in Rush Henrietta who has developed lessons about racism
    • Spencerport, along with other Monroe County school districts, have partnered with Wiegand and the PathStone Foundation to provide more in-depth curriculum focused on structural racism in Rochester - from its history to present day, as well as resistance against it.

    • Community engagement is another key area in Spencerport’s work with CRE. The district has held a number of meetings to connect with our Urban-Suburban parents.
    • The Equity Committee, consisting of parents, students, community members, civic leaders, and staff, has met both in-person and virtually to grow our efforts around CRE.

    • New York State’s public school student population is among the most racially and socioeconomically diverse in the United States.
    • Statewide, enrollment data shows public school students are 45% white, 26% Latinx, 18% Black, 9% Asian/Pacific Islander, 2% multiracial, and 1% Native American.

    Spencerport Central Schools are not as diverse compared to these state figures, however a comparison of data from 2000-01 to 2017-18 shows our population has changed to reflect more student diversity:  

                                                                         

    • Population                         2000-01     2017-18
    • White                                 92.5%        81%
    • Latinx                                1.4%           7%
    • Asian/Pacific Islander        2.5%          2%
    • Black/African American      3.5%          5%
    • Multiracial     no data          5%

                  
                              

    • Spencerport held a series of summits to gain student perspectives on culturally responsive education in our district. In addition, students helped to define the following terms as we move forward with this work.

    Equal Learning Opportunity (much like an Equal Opportunity Employment Statement)

    • Spencerport Central Schools is an equal opportunity educational system and will work to ensure that our curriculum and instructional materials reflect the needs of our students. The responsibility of education throughout the Spencerport learning community involves making connections and providing students opportunities to enhance their personal and academic well-being. Spencerport is responsible for educating each and every student through a culturally responsive approach to provide equity and access for all.

    Equity Diversity Inclusion (DEI) Statements:

    • Diversity – Continuously valuing, reflecting, and acknowledging the differences among the stakeholders here in Spencerport including, but not limited to race, ethnicity, customs, gender, physical appearance, religion, socio-economic status, and sexual orientation.

     

  • The Sesame Workshop:

    • Coming Together: talking to children about race, ethnicity and culture

     

    The Sesame Workshop logo features the words 'Sesame Workshop' in gray text.

     

    Words that don't belong to everyone.

     

    • Teaching Tolerance: a website to help teachers and schools educate children and youth to be active participants in a diverse democracy.
    • Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators—teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners—who work with children from kindergarten through high school.

  • Podcasts:

    More Videos

    CNN: 5 tasks for white people struggling with issues of race

    People hold signs with messages during a demonstration.

  • Compiled by Monroe2BOCES and located on their library site:
    White Fragility

    Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain

     The New Jim Crow

     How to be an Antiracist

     Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

     We Got This

     Stamped from the Beginning

     Stamped- Racism, Antiracism, and You: A Remix of the National Book Award from the Beginning

     Automating Inequality: How High Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor

     Be the Bridge

  • Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework

    • New York State
    • Education Dept.
    • Mar., 2019 

    Implicit Bias Test

    • by Harvard for
    • Project Implicit

    Everyone has invisible bias

    • Jacquelyn Whiting
    • EdSurge
    • Sep., 2019

     A White Teacher grapples with his Privilege

    • by Colin Turner
    • Education Week
    • Sep., 2019

    Student video:"In their own Words"

    • Democrat and Chronicle
    • Dec. 16, 2018

     A Look at Race Relations through a Child's Eyes

    • CNN Anderson Cooper
    • Apr, 2012

     #HatchKids discuss Microaggressions

    • SheKnows Media
    • Feb. 2015

     What is Privilege?

    • Buzzfeed
    • Jul., 2015

    White Fragility article

    • by Robin DiAngelo
    • International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 2011

    White FragilityDebunking the most common myths

    • video by Robin DiAngelo/NBC News
    • Sep., 2018

  • Image promoting a culturally responsive book list, featuring a stack of yellow books.

    • Increasing diversity in character and author representation
    • Choosing mentor texts kits for writing instruction and author studies with a focus on increasing diversity in our representation.
    • Purchasing books for each classroom teacher for use in SEL and CRE instruction with a focus on increasing diversity in representation for both authors and characters.
    • New titles were BOE approved for use in grades 6-12 that focused on increasing the diversity of characters, authors, and perspectives. Class sets of books were purchased and will afford teachers the opportunity to use them in literature circles, book clubs, and independent reading.
    • Shift to the new US History exam has social studies teachers focusing on teaching students to read for bias and the ways it may impact the message of a text (i.e. article, advertisement, cartoon, book, speech, etc.)
    • High School English curriculum underwent major revision, changing focus of the units of instruction from a central text to a genre study with a focus on developing specific transferrable literacy skills.
    • The 2020-2021 school year included the implementation of the Informational genre unit.
    • Every year, an additional new unit will be implemented.
    • Curriculum has been written so that any text can be used in a unit, allowing for increased diversity in representation and social justice issues.
    • The informational units at each grade level provide an opportunity for conversations on social justice topics, reading from a wide variety of perspectives, and the invitation for students to share their voices through their topic selections for publishing and researching.