Image description: A quote from Nanci Day reads: The work cannot be done alone; it is something that clearly must be a communal effort. Feeling the support of one another as we experiment with ideas that will build equity into the fiber of all aspects of our organization makes it a thrilling cause to be a part of. A photo of Nanci accompanies the quote. Nanci is an early childhood education specialist at NWRESD. 

As our mission states, Northwest Regional Education Service District is committed to equity and the success of each and every student. The primary way we systematically approach equity work is through our 19 equity learning teams.  

These teams represent several programs and sites within our agency. Each team is composed of staff members who are committed to ongoing learning and to examining the systems in which they work to identify ways to create more equitable learning environments. 

Patricia Jolly, left, an early childhood education specialist at the Tualatin Early Childhood Center, discusses liberatory design during an equity learning team training on Sept. 30. Brandon Zuel, right, a speech-language pathologist, and Katie Jones, NWRESD’s equity learning coach, participate in the discussion. Photos by Kelsey Cardwell. 

Examples of actions some of our equity learning teams are taking to address equity challenges include:

• Columbia Academy, a social emotional learning school in Beaverton, has created a student leadership committee and classroom community circle where students can share ideas for improving their own educational experiences. Educators will also connect with parents through empathy interviews to ask how parents could better be supported.  
• Educators at the Tillamook Service Center are worried that Black, Indigenous and other People of Color (BIPOC) are having difficulty accessing Early Intervention and Early Childhood Special Education services for their children because of structural barriers. The team has started asking families who are recently eligible and those who have been receiving services longer about the issues they encounter as they try to access services. They are also hosting an event in April to help families apply for free preschool. 
• The Tualatin Early Childhood Center educators are working to cultivate trust among BIPOC children and families so they feel more comfortable accessing Early Intervention and Early Childhood Special Education services, especially inclusive preschool options, and other community resources.
• The Early Learning Hub is working to make sure families and young children of color have access to the free preschool options they prefer. 

During design labs, participants on equity learning teams use liberatory design to examine how their systems impact students, families, and community partners.

When NWRESD first embarked on equity work, we sponsored equity workshops focused on personal awareness, implicit bias and microaggressions. Under the leadership of our equity and family partnerships team and Superintendent Dan Goldman, our equity work has accelerated to also catalyze more opportunities for translating learning into action that will lead to a better educational experience for students and families. These teams are a mechanism for distributing leadership and responsibility across the agency so everyone plays a role in advancing equity and antiracism.

“Although learning is an ongoing process, we also recognize that action must take place in order to move our organization forward on our antiracist multicultural continuum and improve our systems to better support our community,” says Katie Jones, NWRESD’s equity coach. 

“The goal of our equity learning teams is to create meaningful relationships with those we serve and co-design solutions to the barriers that have been built into our systems,” says Katie. 

Once equity learning teams have identified these barriers, otherwise known as equity challenges, teams can begin to understand their complexities, engage with those impacted through various listening techniques and begin thinking about ways to remove those barriers. 

Nanci Day, an early childhood education specialist working on the equity learning team for the Washington Service Center, says her experience so far has been enriching. 

“At every step, we have been gaining new insights and ways to make an impact and using evidence-based methods along the way,” she says.

Nanci’s team is working to break down barriers for families of color and families who speak languages other than English. The group is hosting a story circle this spring with families from Washington County. A story circle is a small group of individuals in a circle, sharing stories — usually from their own experiences or imagination — focusing on a common theme. As each person, in turn, shares a story, a richer and more complex story evolves. Story circles build perspective, empathy, cultural humility, listening, courage, vulnerability and healing. 

Following the most recent in-person winter training, Nanci said she appreciates how equity work is not a solo endeavor. “The work cannot be done alone; it is something that clearly must be a communal effort. Feeling the support of one another as we experiment with ideas that will build equity into the fiber of all aspects of our organization makes it a thrilling cause to be a part of.”

The agency began a partnership with the National Equity Project in 2020 to make sure our equity work was making a difference for students, staff and families. During the 2020-21 school year, every NWRESD administrator attended several training sessions that taught concepts such as the theory of change, host leadership and liberatory design. The following year, we formed 12 site-based equity learning teams with staff who work directly with students. Through several professional development sessions, participants learned about liberatory design, which is a design practice that is meant to:

• Create designs that help interrupt inequity and increase opportunity for those most impacted by oppression
• Transform power by shifting the relationships between those who hold power to design and those impacted by these designs
• Generate critical learning and increased agency for those involved in the design work  

These concepts help participants understand systemic racism, personal bias and the ways in which social systems are rigged against marginalized communities. Participants then learn techniques and strategies for building empathy, healing relationships, redesigning programs and changing the way they problem-solve and collaborate with others. 

Meet the equity learning team trainers: Tom Malarkey, left, a trainer with the National Equity Project, Sharif Zakir Liwaru, director of NWRESD’s equity and family partnerships, Melia LaCour, a trainer with the National Equity Project, and Katie Jones, an NWRESD equity coach pose for a selfie after an in-person training. 

Read more about the work we accomplished during the 2021-22 school year. 

This school year, we added six new equity learning teams that include staff working in operations such as human resources, fiscal services, technology and communications. 

There are now 130 NWRESD staff members participating in this equity work. We’ve hosted four full-day workshops this year so teams can identify equity challenges, collaborate with other teams and hear directly from the students and families receiving services. The final session of the year is April 14.

“Our equity learning team efforts are all about dismantling barriers for students who have been historically pushed to the margins,” says Dan Goldman, superintendent of NWRESD. “These leadership teams give our staff an opportunity to innovate and test ideas together so they can see what works best for students and families and scale those ideas across the system. That’s how we will actually change our behavior and do things differently for students.”

Visit the equity learning teams Google site for more information about this work.