School Leaders

WELCOME SCHOOL LEADERS!  

As a school leader, you can have a powerful influence on your students’ futures. By building stronger connections to students’ backgrounds, family cultures and your community, your school will be better equipped to support the distinct academic, social, and emotional needs of each of the students in your care. This is the promise of Culturally Responsive Schooling (CRS).  

HOW THE CRS 360° TOOLKIT CAN SUPPORT YOUR SCHOOL 

• CRS Stories, which are short audio excerpts of authentic interviews with educators from across the country in which they describe their experiences with different aspects of cultural responsiveness, including tips for creating an inclusive environment for students and families; strategies to connect your school’s curricula materials, instructional approaches, and assessments to students’ experiences; and ways to take advantage of the valuable resources in your community. The CRS Stories candidly describe the experiences, benefits, and challenges of developing a culturally responsive school from educators who have taken this journey. Each story includes a set of provocative discussion questions carefully crafted to help you explore your own experiences and stimulate conversations about how to develop a deeper understanding of important culturally relevant ideas and concepts.  
   

• CRS Rubrics are the main learning tool in the Toolkit. They are online formative assessments that empower educators and school partners to learn about, assess, and improve their culturally responsive practices in the classroom, school, and district. The rubrics focus on four main topics of Culturally Responsive Schooling:  

  1. A Welcoming and Affirming School Environment which reflects the physical and social climate of the school and affirms and values the range of individual identities that make up the school community. 
  2. High Expectations and Rigorous Instruction which creates learning conditions that are academically and intellectually challenging, and incorporate the different ways that students learn.  
  3. Inclusive Curriculum and Assessment which provides children with the opportunity to learn about perspectives beyond their own experiences, elevates a range of historically marginalized voices, and empowers learners to be agents of positive social change. 
  4. Ongoing Professional Learning experiences for school faculty, which create continual opportunities to develop and sharpen a critically conscious lens toward instruction, curriculum, assessment, history, culture, and society. 

  Breaking cultural responsiveness into these four topics allows you and your school the flexibility to explore each topic at a pace that makes sense for you. Each rubric has items specific to school leadership and common items where you can compare your perspectives with other leaders, teachers, students, and/or parents/caregivers. You also have the option to create and share IDs that will allow you to save and aggregate the data into anonymous reports. Moreover, the rubrics go beyond simple assessments — they are carefully crafted developmental progressions in key areas of practice to both assess where you currently are and provide a concrete picture of what deeper practice looks like to help you move forward.

• CRS Resources are a curated set of guidance, tools, and materials that schools and districts can use to learn more about different aspects of cultural responsiveness. We have combed the internet to develop a searchable database of over 200 resources that provide a range of relevant resources. The resources can be filtered by user/target (School District Staff, School Leaders, Teachers, Parents/Caregivers, and Students), subtopic (i.e. strategies to encourage student participation, enhancing school and family collaboration, supplementing the curricula to meet the diverse needs of student needs, and many more), and format (activities, guides, checklists, curricula, videos, etc.). Whether you're seeking practical strategies, professional development topics, or classroom activities, the resource repository offers valuable tools for all educators. 

Here’s What Leaders Had to Say About their Experience with the CRS Rubrics:​

• “We had a great team conversation about the topics!” - Katrina - High School Principal, New York​
• “It was interesting to discover how everyone read and interpreted the questions. It led to some really valuable discussions, and we now have a more common language.” - Melanie- Elementary School Principal, Minnesota​
• “It was really good to talk about some issues we don't normally discuss.” - James - Elementary School Principal, Pennsylvania​
• “It opened us up for great discussion and allowed us to reflect on past rubrics we have used to see how we are growing and what we still need to work on.” - Kelly - Elementary School Assistant Principal, California​
• “This experience created some good discussions and some very productive brainstorming and idea sharing.” - Dan, High School Principal, New Mexico​
• “I hope our District will do something with the information from our schools.” - Mary, Elementary School Leadership Team Member, Florida

Start your journey towards becoming a more culturally responsive school today!