Reforming Classrooms For a Level, Equitable Playing Field
As the summer of 2020 taught us, justice is long overdue. A movement started to take place, affecting all aspects of our lives, home, work, and government.
Education and more specifically our schools, were dubbed the ‘great equalizer.’ These institutions were designed to provide an environment for all students to learn, engage, and grow. They were free of the consideration of privilege, or lack thereof, of which a student experiences.
Unfortunately, schools have struggled to integrate that equal ideal and thus, the push for equality is consistently called for. Perhaps we should be asking ourselves if equality itself is sufficient?
We have all seen the image distinguishing equity from equality. Yet, the two words are often used interchangeably, especially in school settings. The image perfectly describes how equity isn't equality, but what does it actually mean, especially for schools?
Equity is providing the tools and services students need to fit their individual circumstances. Conversely, it does not broadly blanket groups of students, with a one-size-fits-all service, as seen with equality services. Equality is an excellent start, but keeping things fair truly levels the playing field.
Taking equity into practice is difficult. No one should assume what each students’ needs are automatic. Thus, equity requires schools to be flexible, innovative, and adaptable to individual student needs and doing so in a relatively short amount of time.
Pursuing equity provides students with the specific needs of their individual circumstances, moving beyond just the academic needs. This program reforms the student-teacher relationship and transcends common stereotypes. Schools need to track much more than grades and performance on standardized tests. Furthermore, they must consider language needs, family crises, hunger, and so much more that is ever changing.
Making a school more equitable needs strong foundations, an area where technology can help. A school-wide CRM that can store information, communicate from multiple sources and provide alerts through workflows. With the right technology and implementation, we can make a school counselor's job that much more focused on what matters, the student.
Salesforce’s Student Success Hub is one such example. A student’s individual needs can be documented and shared with the right people to provide the exact services the student needs. Everything is easily logged using Salesforce’s powerful CRM services tailored for education. But, equity doesn’t just mean services outside of learning, for equity in the classroom is important too.
Equity requires teachers to analyze their students in the classroom; monitoring their interactions and specific coursework. Classrooms must become environments where students' voices are heard; where their choice has an impact on their learning; where students are empowered.
Salesforce, coupled with powerful tools like a Google-Classroom Data Sync and Student Soapbox, allow teachers and administrators to leverage the reporting capabilities of Salesforce. With specific in-classroom data, administrators quickly view how individual students are doing. They can then assess and provide what kind of services, engagement, or academic enrichment a student can benefit from.
It may sound like these services are a lot like an online school. However, equity programs in schools need to go beyond ‘Zoom High’. It requires schools to use the tools which other successful industries leveraged to pivot, innovate and adapt to a changing environment; exactly what education institutions are facing now. It’s a digital transformation to ensure education isn’t for the privileged few, but rather, creating opportunities for the masses.
Online schooling and digital transformation aren’t necessarily correlated, but they complement one another to create a sustainable equity program for successful students. These tools provide teachers and administrators the necessities to easily review their students’ needs and act quickly. Whether their class is in the building or the cloud, students and teachers alike can focus on what’s most important.