![]() They believed that this was something they were waiting for, that this kind of online experience, tackling something that was taboo and equipping them with the resources to better communicate with their own students, was something they had never seen before. “When we conducted the polls,” Watkins says, “we struggled to find someone who was critical. ![]() Participants who describe the course as life-changing say they would like all educators to take it. In February 2018, Broward County enrolled 300 of its educators in the course, and the results were significant. “What we found was a lot of pockets of good work,” he says, “but not a systemic process to make sure it falls into the hands of teachers across the system as end users.” That`s the idea behind Courageous Conversations About Race, an online course that teaches participants how to talk about race. ![]() David Watkins, Broward`s director of justice and diversity, says that while district leaders have always implemented progressive policies and worked to reach their most vulnerable youth, the work was disjointed. Broward County includes 31 cities and serves nearly 300,000 students from diverse backgrounds, representing nearly 200 different languages and cultures. Thank you very much! One school district that found itself in this situation was Broward County Public Schools in Florida, the sixth largest school district in the United States. Where is the best place to start? Any ideas? I don`t want to offend anyone, but I`d love it to be welcoming and welcoming to others. I could really use some tips on how to start lesson plans with CCAR tools at our Park Springs Elementary School. “And for me, that`s what makes my job, I think, the best job in the world.” I am currently taking your course in Broward County, Florida. “Diversity training doesn`t usually work in its traditional form (because) we don`t address the why in advance.” “I watch human transformation unfold in a relatively short period of time around a topic that many believe is intractable,” he says. The course begins by helping educators understand why it`s important to talk about race “to help them understand how differences work, what differences are, and why an understanding that actually improves their productivity and work,” says Glenn Singleton, who created the course. A set of instruments is called the four chords. During the process of exploring why, the course also helps teachers take an in-depth look at their own beliefs and equip them with tools to talk about them. All the others gave extremely positive reviews. Of the 300 participants who registered for the course, only three did not complete it. Singleton has seen this kind of growth several times in teaching this course, and he attributes much of that to the course`s approach to meeting people where they are. The course, supported by PCGs EducatorEd, is based on the idea that one of the biggest barriers to progression on racial issues is people`s discomfort in talking about it, giving participants the tools they need to have these difficult conversations. Even without taking the course, learning these four chords can shed light on what it takes to progress in a conversation about race. “How can they allow this very important rich conversation to take place in their room, but not make themselves vulnerable to a misstep in communication and potentially cost them their jobs?” A key element of the Courageous Conversations protocol is the four agreements, rules for participating in these difficult discussions. For fear of misunderstanding these conversations, many teachers have simply changed the subject. Recent events have added another level of difficulty: teachers felt ill-equipped when students wanted to talk about the racist stories that kept appearing on the news. Regardless of your ethnicity, conversations about race feel like they`re loaded with landmines just waiting to go.
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