Course Description

The 2025 Teaching Equity Conference is dedicated to eliminating opportunity gaps for all students while creating classroom cultures that increase both academic and social emotional student outcomes. As professional educators, participants will cultivate effective classroom cultures based on Washington State’s Equity-Based School Practices: Cultural Competency, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for the purpose of improving student engagement, academic confidence and learning for all students. This will be done through the lens of creating classroom, school and district narratives based on the power of “Asset-Based Story Telling” for students, families and school staff. Asset-based narratives creates school cultures that center student to educator relationships and student to student relationships. Effective and authentic relational classroom system have a direct impact on social emotional growth and academic achievement.

Course Objectives

Objectives:

1. Apply the power of asset-based story telling to drive the classroom narrative and culture to strengthen student sense of belonging, academic confidence and engagement.

2. Apply relational systems in the classroom to establish educator to student and student to student relational systems in the first 4-6 weeks of school.

3. Apply the WEA Equity-based CCDEI Practices Rubric to the conference for the purpose of applying the strategies to the participant’s school communities.

4. Identify resources and trainings to return to the participant’s school communities to increase student sense of belonging, academic confidence and engagement through a CCDEI lens.

5. Apply the WEA CCDEI rubric to effectively integrate the objectives of the large group sessions and break out sessions into the participants classrooms, programs and practices.