 What is equity diversity and inclusion from its education? How do we talk about class, race, socioeconomics, other factors in our education programming? How do we support our education departments and teaching artists who are attempting to embody EDI values, not only within their organizations but also in the schools themselves? And how can education programs encourage or lead their creators toward examining and embracing these values? So that's one area. The second area focused is on internal interaction and collaborations within theaters. How can theaters better leverage the expertise of their education departments? And we all know that there's just lots of rich discussion around that topic. We have a great lineup today. The agenda is very cool. And I want to make sure you're aware that today's proceedings will be live streamed by an hour round. Thank you very much hour round. We're grateful to you for making this event available to a larger audience. I also want to acknowledge those of you in the room who have served on the Education Pre-conference Plan of your time. Go around and pause for a second here. On the day making sure everything goes smoothly, that's Lori Baskin, who's our director. We're very grateful to you for your hospitality. We have a great incubator space to make work, develop new plays, to do theater for the very young. So we're excited to have something like this in this space. I'm Julia Flood. I'm the director of the managing director. I want to tell you a little bit about Metro Theater Company. We have just completed our 45th season. They were the co-founders of this organization. So all along for the 45 years we've been producing, we have been evenly balanced with education and producing professional theater. Our mission is always inspired by the intelligence and emotional wisdom of young people. We classify ourselves as a theater for young audiences, but we pride ourselves on doing work that speaks to all audiences. We started with both in this region and nationally and eventually internationally in the year in classrooms somewhere in the region, partnering with people like Karen and others in our community. We use the skills that teachers, we use those skills to teach character building and to bring issues forward for discussion. We teach diversity and inclusion. We enact it to young people all across the region from age. Karen, what's our youngest? We're from college and pre-education teachers. So we're out doing the work of education every day in addition to our productions. We have three productions a year at this point. One that tours extensively and two that are larger productions on the stage. And as of this last year we are a resident company at the Grand Health Theater which is around the corner in this wonderful Grand Center Arts District. I think you'll probably be hearing through this week about the Grants for Arts Foundation. It's a really interesting partnership that we, a lot of arts organizations have here building infrastructure in our city. So we are happy to be with that organization as one of their resident theaters. We also partnered with those in our community. Our most recent partnership with Jazz St. Louis. We produced a new version of But Not Buddy. Some of you may know that book. The script was by Kristen Greenidge. The jazz score was by Terrence Blanchard. And it was developed at the Kennedy Center and we were the first ones to do it after that year. And it was a fantastic experience. And we had kids and we had grandparents. And that's our dream. So we serve that in this region. And we were thrilled to have a new partner and that's TCG. Yeah, the partnerships really have been core to the mission for a really long time. It helps us to inform new play development. It helps us to reach out to our partners and the gatekeepers to children. Whether they're teacher, clergy, counselors, pediatricians, whatever. To find out what families are really struggling with or are challenged with right now. In the beginning days they called it just make it stuff up. Now it's called device work. We commissioned playwrights from throughout the country. We've been arts organizations and education organizations. But also health and public health, neighborhood development, faith groups and faith spaces, equity, diversity, inclusion. We see our role as being part of, like I think you are in your community, part of addressing the challenges in our own. And we want to be at that table as a participant or a leader or whatever context we can bring every time we can. I just want to say too, the wonderful paintings, those are local artists who have done artwork for productions that we are producing. So we're partnering all across the community including with other theaters. And we are really thrilled to have you here in our home. A little bit of housekeeping. If you have to use the restroom, there are four restrooms. There are two on either side of the kitchen. So there you go. If you have any questions about Metro Theater Company, that the space or about the neighborhood or St. Louis, we have some staff members and board members here to keep an eye out for a name badge. We'd love to come and tell you about what we love about our city. And we're just so grateful to meet all of you and so grateful for coming and sharing a big part of this today. And one other thing, because I've seen at least one other board member from TYA USA. If any of you would like to know more about that organization, Theater for Young Audiences USA, come to me or Chris, or Chris Moses from the Alliance Theater. He's also a board member. Okay, and we can let you know about that too. But right now, I would like to welcome Jennifer Windsor from Shakespeare Festival. That brought the students to the Fun Not Buddy and they stopped in front of Metro. And I said, no, it's her. I'm the director of Shakespeare Festival St. Louis. And you scroll through your app, you might notice that we have a couple shows going on this week while you're here. So we're hoping you might check out Remy and Julia to watch Shakespeare in the streets, which actually is a community-inspired project that I've had the opportunity to collaborate with Karen Hall's School District and make the literature behind School District on in 2016. So I'm very thankful that I have the opportunity to introduce her today. As also a co-chair of the Post Committee, I welcome you all to St. Louis. It is a culturally vibrant city and I hope that we plan just a jam-pack schedule for you to really experience everything that we have here to offer. I have to say, both as an arts educator and as a parent, it's exciting for me today to welcome Karen on a professional level as I spoke about the partnership and the collaboration that we had with Shakespeare in the streets. The district was just an amazing support for that project. And personally, as a parent, as a parent of a child that struggles in tradition to equity diversity and inclusion really resonates with me personally. So I have to say I'm excited that she can share all of her skills and her knowledge with us today. A wonderful city, but it's hot, cool space. And especially, I am biased, but Mapleville, Richmond Heights is everything. We're going to jump into the work of educational equity in our space. I want to give you a three-part look at how we do our work. MRH is made for Richmond Heights position with being the assistant superintendent. Because I knew exactly where we needed to go next. A wonderful space, it's the transformational space. Prior to me starting in the district, I would say in our early 2000s, 1999, the district was about to shut down. It was about to interrupt predation issues. And so my former superintendent locked arms with the parents and they decided, no more. We want a different space for our children. So I have the blessed stand on the shoulders of that framework and take it to the next level. And I like to call MRH to point out. What you're going to hear about is the work of going deeper with educational equity. So you can type it on the website. So one other thing that I would like to point out, there's a handout here. Community is our real school high school. So it's quite a little space in MRH. It's approximately 1,300 stupas that we have. When we were having our rough time, there were cohorts of like 80 that were graduating. So that's kind of the idea that when we were going there, we were growing a little bit of that space. So our community is eclectic and diverse. In my design, if you look at the physical space, it's situated in a suburban region. It's bordered by St. Louis City. It's one of my borders. And then I have relatively affluent school districts that border me. And I am a mix of that all. And the housing stock is interesting because now MRH is a very popular place to live. So we have, it's kind of hard to see, but we have a thriving retail district. It's thriving. It's a good place to go. A lot of cookies love the floor. It's different. The far break there, like it's a very competitive space. And with some of the smaller bars. And then the middle here are orange in one space. And that's what drives MRH. Having that sense of diversity all mixed in together. The topics are changing here. You see the breakdown of what we have right now. And if you go to the next slide, we look at a poverty status, which is really changing because of the sense of gentrification. For public education, in a sense, it's a beautiful thing. The community can support the schools, but then at the same time, because of where we started and why people want to live there, it's a challenge because we see that the landscape's changing. The mission and the vision captured by this model, which you see and hand out as the first one. When I came into the superintendency, I wanted to capture our work in a way that everyone can understand without being there. I love visual models, so there's a series of support and I'm sharing to you today. So maybe the Richmond Heights made the commitment to close the equity gap. There is a deliberate plan and framework on how we are educating children that we all can excel and have rich shared experiences. So when you look at this, the vision of MRH is in the blue. We've created these visions of education through metaphors. So our early childhood school is school of studio. The elementary school is school as museum. The middle school is school as expedition. And the high school is school as apprenticeship. So what you will see in a moment, the common thread of the inquiry-based approach to education based on the metaphors. When you look at the early childhood incentive at first time of education, you want the students to love learning. And learning isn't sitting in a seat. Learning is by living, getting, dirty, dancing. Dramatic queer-based are experiences in the beginning stages from the regio-amilial approach. Regio-amilia is from Italy. And it's based on the inquiry-constructed approach to education. And then we build on that concept grade by grade. So elementary school is museum. When children are older, you have more content. You have to learn. You have to show what you know of that content. So the children construct exhibits. Teachers' facilities for learning. Students become docents. The entire building converts into a museum. Now we move on to the middle school. School of apprenticeship, excuse me. I don't see the name. Of expedition. And expeditionary learning. That model allows students to explore the world. So we spend about 40% of our learning experiences outside of school. We have local expeditions. And we have expeditions within the United States. We go to the Smoky Mountains. We go to the Mississippi Beach. And we have interdisciplinary units that we experience when we're there. So remember that copy that we have in the space of the have and the have not. We want those rich experiences shared so that we can have that experience together and build on it. When you have children side by side doing research on salamanders in the Smoky Mountains, field research, they contribute to the body of scientific research out there. That's what we're providing our students. And then finally, when they're in high school, the apprenticeship model. Job channel. Career affairs. The end of their time in high school and apprenticeship. And we have partners with local businesses, with engineers, with the fire department, with the computer programming development. We have so many wonderful partners that we can expose our students to. So they can have a general idea of what the real world is going to be like. Really, where they want to go if they decide to go to college. They have more of a realistic pathway. That's what we've designed. And if you go to the next slide, that's our vision. The metahors. That's what we are planning on. That's what we do. This is what we've been refining for the district. To wrap around our kids and our families. To ensure that the students have real world experiences. If you go to the next slide, it goes on into the inquiry piece. We're going to have to talk about it a little bit. This will be explicit in terms of the core elements of what we are doing curriculum wise with our students. Based on the vision of the metahors. Next slide. So the next part of the work that we do is called the cornerstones. So in this particular sheet, you will see a third group of this model. It's our mission. One thing that was important for me is to make the mission in the vision real. And not just on a poster. Or stationary. You know how that goes. So we took out what we call the cornerstone switch. You can see in the pillar, citizenship, leadership, stewardship, and scholarship. For each level, starting with a little one that the early childhood center, they have experiences from our mission which we call the cornerstones. That's developmentally appropriate. I love it when, you know, I'm in the spaces and I hear a teacher say, Oh, John, thank you. You are such a good leader today. Leaders do this if you use the language. We call our students not making it real. We have explicit curriculum that relates to the cornerstones. So what you see on the slide is just examples of the high school level of how the students can demonstrate the cornerstones. Next slide. To be civically engaged, to be a part of the community, and for the community to see our students. Partners and community connections are tremendous. One of the things to be studied in the early childhood centers is to have the students understand community. And it's so cute to see the little ones in preschool walking the community. We have our apprenticeship. We have our coordinator and he goes and meets with different businesses and to learn more about the business model to hear from the business owners in downtown Maplewood. So we utilize our community partners. Nothing goes un-you know, like I said, we use every opportunity and they embrace us. Next slide. Another part of what we do that's important to us is the value that Maplewood, Richmond Heights are our spaces. Once in a while our spaces were not as useful, right? We ensure that our spaces inspire young people, that we use natural light. That, and I know some people come and say, it's really crazy, but we don't like loving spaces and why the store bought... I'm not a judge and it's just free. It's part of our DNA. And so we use that professional development and using our spaces as a tool to inspire people to learn. Because you know how you're going to make sure you're a group and so we take that very seriously and how we design our spaces. So that is our content. What's this up there? We said we want to have educational equity, we believe in this, but this really talks about this itself. I went through facilitated training through agencies to immerse myself in the curricula of social justice education to guide me. You've customized our social justice education we were looking for. We just work around equity. I didn't want to rely on the economy. If you go to the next slide, the slide we approached is from the orange down there and the understanding of social and cultural identity. Only for the people we serve but ourselves, which will lead us to the third mark, is dynamic. And if we're not cognizant as to a situation, you can go in a detrimental way. So understanding who we are and what we bring to the table and our attitude opens up opportunities for our students when we talk about equity. It's not just stuff going through the masses. It's about the people. It's about relationships. It's about seeing the beauty. But you also need to know where am I at? Do I understand myself? So from very courageous conversations and cultural understanding with one another, it's not all rainbows and sunshine. We're going to talk about that. Even in a working place, it's about knowing what's wrong. Just let you know what we do have. And then the third thing in the pack, illustration, we'll do this. So there were two books, a chapter in there that came from there that I loved about coming in after this morning to change agent. This is the powerful piece. I read it from the yellow book, because I decided we needed a tool to ensure that equity was happening. So you can say, oh, what do you believe in equity? You can use it a lot. What does it mean? And when you identify an equity, how do you go about changing it? When this was really helping, but when you see EOCA, it's equity-oriented changing EOCA. So, yeah, it is a lot. Even though it feels that way, you have to be strong. You have to step forward. Because you know this is what your people need. And you have to repeat. And I want to say, you also have to take care of yourself when you are leading this work. But your people need to express to my staff folks we have wonderful ideas. This is a lot. I am taking 12 and 13-year-olds to the Smolny Mountains. In an hour or four, hundreds are sleeping with them for seven nights. Who's yellow? Who's blue? You know what I'm saying? Humanization. I'm so grateful we actually saw this happening. It's what we have on their passionate folks that believe in their work and everyone feels that they're right. And then they clash. And then they're mad. Oh, they don't care about Kansas. Really? We just have a difference of opinion. Call it what it is. Don't make it about the person. So then you can have a conversation with them ever again. So when you talk about social justice work, that's when it really gets touched. When you begin to learn more about this work and someone says something stupid, I mean, it happens. We have to create a space. I'm sure some of you are familiar with Singleton's work for a just conversation. This is something where I want to stop and see some of that. But the language here is so, so true. These are the behaviors underneath the line. No state of age. Speak your truth. You're going to experience this comfort doing this work. Sometimes you're not moving as fast as you expect. But don't stop. You have to believe in that. Instead of you need to talk to someone who's an ally and say, And then come back. And you go. Next slide. Okay, so. The struggle is real. I'm disclosing a personal thing. I don't have a lot of patience. My child's only going to be in third grade for one year. It will endanger the work of the system if I'm always moving really fast. But this leads to the next slide. It's also a part of that. Patience, persistence, and your attitude. If you go into the work and you see a family, you see a family struggling, you just don't see the negative. You believe that there are positive things and aspects in that family or in that child. If you walk and talk and you believe that, it's so important education, especially. Because we can get stuck. Oh, there are three great moments below. They'll never get there. Oh, I agree. You know what I mean? Build on that. It's critical. Structure it in order to have flexibility. Because life has left me since 2014 at Michael Brown's building. I cannot get over all of the traumatic events that have school shootings. We don't ignore it. We acknowledge it. There are seven steps on how we approach this work. Continue to do the right. But you have to have focus. You have to be persistent. Patient, but not too patient. The thing about being a leader is knowing that balance. You feel it. Sometimes you have to have those courageous conversations and say, uh-uh, no. So, again, I'm so honored to be with you for years. And they encourage you to think about that. You can do this. You are doing this. And we need you to come in from the education world. Thank you so much. Thank you. This is a wonderful organization. Anyway, something I really like from y'all's educational model that you spoke about was building on shared experience. And I was just wondering if there was a particular example you might have of a student that may, in partaking in a shared experience, either spoke to you or shared the teacher or how that affected them. Because I feel like us theater practitioners, that's something that, I know, is really important to us as well. Well, you spoke about taking kids to the Grand Canyon to study self-interests. I mean, yeah, that sounds super exciting. So, I mean, and just knowing what you said that your students come from very different, can come from very different walks of life, I was curious. In my school, I kind of have a pretty diverse group as well. Tell you, over time, families have been more accepting and trusting of the experience because when we first started doing this, it was hard for our families in our school, but getting outdoors easily received the National Green Schools for our middle school because we didn't have an urban area. And some kids never seen the beach before. Never had a beach before. So, we had testimonials with kids like, whoa, never been to the beach and feeling sand and what that experience is like. In my, um, they learned how to go all the way like I'm a rose and learn how to climb and not lie to middle school or the day not. It's not only, it's scientific, there's some physics, as well, you know, my child has been in MRH since he was five and started together. So, it's been an interesting, beautiful thing for a multiple year. The stories of our kids, Peter's, it's great that we have a state we take our kids to Chicago and they're there and it's great and it's their capstone experience because they're in all of the wonderful museums in Chicago. So, when we first started doing this families were really really feeling that. Having their child, having their children away from home but now, the parents want to go because they, well, they experience as well. They trust that they want to be a part of their experience as well. So, it's transformational for the community because they embrace it and they expect it. That should experience and it's, when I say it's expected, the children know that they're going to have this time together. It's not where they're separate. Like, oh, I've done this before and oh yeah, I go to Hawaii every year. And they expect to have in the movement support all of them together. Some of them say, oh, they all love having that that moment together. They want to be computer lab. It's like, it's expected. This is what we do. When you spoke of the leadership of social justice and democracy were you speaking that you guys also developed tools or instruments to measure and school and that particular book is a compilation of different authors and one section is from that blue section which talks about equity audits. Okay. And so in the equity audit book it outlines how you can look at different aspects of education. We ended up to my really minister with, you know, collaboration with me. We talk about how we practice and they develop a period of change. So that's the beginning process. The book is for our space and really the rubber that hits the ground is the data component. You know, educators, we like to admire problems and talk about it but we have to develop an actual method of saying what are your steps that you're going to put in place and did that work? You have to have a data collection component and then you do an analysis. And my administrator is also going to be doing the board of education with their audit process to share what their outcomes were. So with the problem of practice are you doing ground rounds where teams are visiting and looking for data and they're okay? Well, that's it. So that's their equity audits is of their period of change. These instructional rounds but that can't and we've done that with other administrators I'm loving when the high school is in early childhood and we're both sharing information but no, not for the auditing piece. That's in-house and they work on that with their teams. That's why I think this might be on the side of the basis. How does this kind of structure change the name of your staff and the retention at your school longer or a few I mean how does it affect the round of two thousand years now? Say it to what I said early support when something erupts administrators can go there and have conversations. We have wonderful parents that are supportive and encourage this work but now because our we are we are an education and I feel very confident that four five years ago we would not have been able to do that. We have courageous conversations which is hard with social justice that is measuring things necessarily. It is about relationships and complicated situations that occur. How do we handle this in our spaces? We leaned into this we didn't back away we had different conversations we were supporting our students. So that is the outcome of this and being the yellow face support the administrators to do that when times are rough. Those are the tools that's what has happened for us for us in order to go deeper to lean in. I was really struck by the slide of the 50-50 that are on free or reduced so I'm just and also resonated with this idea of space and how you negotiate your space. I'm curious of what practices you might put in place on a day-to-day basis or how the space is negotiated to kind of address that divide and how lunch might feel. What is to know your family is deep but the first stage is that we have is a field and our staff has an idea of who's hungry because I'm a vegan this school is called Joe's Choice so I have a small we can leverage that that's how we're aware and how we can negotiate because we know the needs of families. Thank you so much. We appreciate your work and hearing all about it. Thank you.