Equity In Action
2) How has your specific work aligned with our equity work?
3) What steps have you taken to look at inequities within your systems? How have you tried to address these?
4) What collaboration has taken place within your sphere of influence to create different outcomes for the District?
Katherine Myszewski, Elementary Band Teacher
1) From your perspective, what impact has the ICS planning/work had on students and/or the community so far?
The ICS work that Shorewood School District has been engaging in has had an impact on staff, as they have started to examine their identities, privilege, and systems that they are a part of. Although this work has started, equity is a lifelong journey where school staff are continuously reflecting on their practices and systems. I have seen many courageous and uncomfortable conversations happen amongst staff through ICS. The ICS work has had an impact on students because conversations around social justice, related to race, ethnicity, and gender are being held and welcomed within the classroom.
2) How has your specific work aligned with our equity work?
My work with Rainbow Crew has aligned with the ICS work because Rainbow Crew supports LGBTQ+ students. Members in the LGBTQ+ community are historically marginalized; thus examining systems and restructuring them to affirm LGBTQ+ identities is a necessary part of the ICS work. I chose to start Rainbow Crew because I saw a need for additional support for LGBTQ+ students at the elementary level. Shorewood High School and Shorewood Middle School both have student clubs that support LGBTQ+ students. When I started at Shorewood, this type of support did not exist at the elementary level. Through establishing Rainbow Crew, I wanted to create a safe place for students to feel comfortable talking about gender and sexual orientation. Rainbow Crew is an affinity group for LGBTQ+ students and allies at both Lake Bluff Elementary School and Atwater Elementary School. Rainbow Crew meets once a month to discuss various topics related to gender and sexual orientation. Students participated in activities, conversations, and even designed Pride Month posters which were sold at the Lake Bluff Student Market to raise funds for UNICEF. Between both schools, there are over 180 students involved in Rainbow Crew.
3) What steps have you taken to look at inequities within your systems? How have you tried to address these?
In my role as the Shorewood Elementary School Band Teacher, I have noticed the lack of a culturally responsive curriculum written for elementary band. This past summer, I wrote out the Shorewood Elementary Band curriculum in the form of a guaranteed viable curriculum. Marzano (2003) says that “a guaranteed and viable curriculum (GVC) ensures that all students have an equal opportunity to learn (OTL). Each student will have access to an effective or highly effective teacher, and access to the same content, knowledge and skills in each section or class.” The Elementary Band GVC is standards based and will create opportunities for all students to show their mastery in the music standards.
Part of having an equitable curriculum is having culturally responsive curriculum resources to support learning the standards. After reviewing past band method books used in Shorewood (a curriculum resource), I have also adopted a new curriculum resource for fourth grade band that is more culturally responsive. Many elementary band method books contain popular songs that are also minstrel songs (“Camptown Races” and “Jingle Bells” are a few examples). Minstrel songs were used in minstrel shows. Minstrel shows were composed of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances that characterized people of African descent in a racist way through the use of blackface. Although these tunes are well known and are easy for beginner band students to learn, I wanted to eliminate these songs from the elementary band resources because their roots are steeped in racism. Thus, I have adopted “Habits of a Successful Beginner Band Musician” as a resource where all songs are screened for cultural responsiveness.
4) What collaboration has taken place within your sphere of influence to create different outcomes for the District?
Many staff members have collaborated with me to support Rainbow Crew at the monthly meetings. Additionally, with each lesson, I have created a caregiver guide that educates adults on the monthly Rainbow Crew topic. These documents were intentionally made to provide care and support to caregivers who in turn can provide care and support at home to the scholars in Rainbow Crew. The caregiver guides were designed by myself in relation to the monthly Rainbow Crew topic. The staff members that help with Rainbow Crew also review these guides and provide feedback. The Rainbow Crew caregiver guides highlight learning targets, new information learned, question prompts, and activities to extend learning. In the process of creating the caregiver guides, I learned the importance of supporting initiatives that are happening within the school building at home. In order for change to truly work, it needs to be a community effort. Thus, caregivers need to be educated about the initiative topics and how they support their scholars in the school’s work.
Outside of Rainbow Crew, I have collaborated with the previous Shorewood High School Band teacher, Bryan Kujawa, to discuss and review our band literature to work on programming more culturally responsive music.
Links to Rainbow Crew Resources:
Rainbow Crew Caregiver Letter
Rainbow Crew Meeting #2
Rainbow Crew February Caregiver Information
Rainbow Crew March Caregiver Information
Jody Brooks, Recreation Department Director

The ICS work is in year three of implementation, so we are working on how we continue to inform the public about the work our staff is doing. The work continues to build our capacity to support students moving forward. The Rec Department sees how our equity work can give more accessibility to our students, our families, our community members, and our staff.
We pursue accommodations to make participation possible as much as possible. We do this on a case-by-case basis. Each situation is different based on the needs of the participant we are accommodating. We do our best to get everyone in the room, on the court, in the pool, etc. that would like to be there.
Samantha Pietenpol, Lake Bluff Sixth Grade Teacher

3) What steps have you taken to look at inequities within your systems? How have you tried to address these?
4) What collaboration has taken place within your sphere of influence to create different outcomes for the District?
Kelly Steiner, SIS Science Teacher

Sometimes it's hard to see the incredible progress that we've made, but this year when SIS was doing our review and revisit of ICS work so far, we celebrated the growth that has come from each step. We revisited our model of school that we created when we first embarked on ICS work, and saw all of the ways we have changed. We still have a lot of work to do, but it's also important to celebrate our growth. I am proud of us as a district for wrestling with the work that is so hard, but the right thing to do. We have made a lot of mistakes, but those are also learning opportunities and we can't make mistakes if we're not trying to move forward.
One of my roles in the district is a co-program lead for the induction program. We work with new teaching staff to support their growth as educators. Equity is a centerpiece of this work. Since working with Dr. Capper and Fratura, we have worked to improve our job postings to make sure that we're making it very clear that we're seeking people who are serious about doing the work of unpacking our systems and building a more equitable world. Our interview questions have changed to challenge potential hires to reflect on inequities and wrestle with the difficult work we're engaging in. As a result, our new hires have been absolutely amazing.
At SIS, we have been moving toward having collaborative planning time to co-plan to co-serve to co-learn. The Induction program works with the building lead mentor, the trained mentors, and district leaders to continually reflect on our program and improve it. Equity has become a centerpiece of all conversations at all levels, which is an incredible step and will help us to continue to move toward our vision.
Emma Zuehlke, EMLSS Implementer/Program Support & Cate Sebastian, Atwater Reading Specialist
1) From your perspective, what impact has the ICS planning/work had on students and/or the community so far?
Through our ICS work, the staff has committed to creating more inclusive environments for all students. We have been working collectively to meet the needs of all students academically, socially, emotionally, and behaviorally through instruction in the general education setting. As part of this work, we have examined our personal identities and how these identities impact our interactions with others and the decisions we make as educators. We have also looked at the systems within the district that have contributed to inequities and looked for opportunities to proactively address and transform these systems to create more equitable outcomes for all students. As a staff, we have challenged each other to reflect on our practices within our classrooms and larger school community in an effort to provide individual students with opportunities for support within their classroom setting before seeking support outside of the classroom.
2) How has your specific work aligned with our equity work?
The Equitable Multi-Level Systems of Support (EMLSS) process drives our work. At the center of the EMLSS framework are the strategic use of data, collaboration, and high quality instruction. In order to create equitable outcomes for all students, all layers of the support system framework must work in tandem. Using this framework has helped us make some impactful changes in our approach to literacy instruction in the primary grades. For example, as a result of our data team meetings, we noticed that many of the students identified for reading intervention support had gaps in their phonics skills and knowledge. We recognized the need for a universal approach for teaching these skills in a systematic and explicit way, so we implemented a phonics pilot for grades K-3 in the Fall of 2021. The pilot became the impetus for us to reexamine our literacy instruction as a whole; last summer, a group of teachers from Atwater, Lake Bluff, and SIS met to identify priority standards in English Language Arts and begin the process of developing common assessments for reading and writing units. By developing clear visions for teaching and learning, we are better prepared as a system to meet our goal of providing equitable outcomes for all students.
3) What steps have you taken to look at inequities within your systems? How have you tried to address these?
Several years ago, a district Response to Intervention team was gathered to address the disproportionality and overrepresentation of Black students within special education. This team looked at root causes and possible solutions to create a more equitable learning experience for all students. In order to create a more objective process for identifying students in need of additional support, the team recognized the need for a data-driven approach through the EMLSS process. One of the outcomes of this work was the implementation of a universal screening tool (FastBridge) for reading and math K-8, which is administered three times per year. The FastBridge data provides grade-level teams with information that can be used in connection with other data gathered to design instruction for all students in their classrooms. We were also able to use the data to look at overall trends in student achievement and identify opportunities for our district to shift instructional practices, such as the implementation of a phonics program to systematically address the development of foundational skills in the early grades.
4) What collaboration has taken place within your sphere of influence to create different outcomes for the District?
One of the strengths of Shorewood’s staff is their willingness to collaborate on a range of topics to the benefit of all students. Collaboration occurs in formal and informal ways throughout the school year and over the summer. For the past two years, classroom teachers and support staff specialists have been meeting as grade level teams to analyze data from multiple sources at regular intervals throughout the school year. At these data meetings, staff identify strengths and areas for growth for students. Using asset-based language, grade level teams develop plans for whole group instruction as well as opportunities to support small groups or individual students working towards specific learning outcomes. In our supporting roles, we are in constant collaboration with teachers to ensure the best possible outcomes for our students. This can range from something as simple as identifying common language for introducing a phonics skill to spending weeks together in the summer to develop units of study for reading and writing that align with our vision for student learning outcomes at each grade level.
Sarah Kopplin, SIS World Geography Teacher

2) How has your specific work aligned with our equity work?
- 6th Grade: World Geography & Cultures "Then & Now": Drawing connections between ancient and modern worlds
- 7th Grade: Civics & Contemporary Issues
- 8th Grade: US & Wisconsin Studies/Civics 1924-1981
3) What steps have you taken to look at inequities within your systems? How have you tried to address these?
4) What collaboration has taken place within your sphere of influence to create different outcomes for the District?
Emily Berry, Shorewood School Board Vice President

I think maybe the most powerful impact has been the consistency of taking a systemic approach rather than trying to resolve inequities and improve outcomes one at a time. Even if there's still trepidation and questions about specific implementation steps, I think we've moved past the idea that we can just take a one-and-done training and be done talking about educational equity. Inequities aren't weeds in an otherwise perfect garden - they are planted there and thrive because we continue to re-seed and fertilize them. That's the system we have to re-engineer if we want to see different results.
That's a long list, from talking about the ways we engage with community members (i.e. do we make it easy for everyone to reach us), to what I mentioned above about revising our policies and operating expectations. We never stop that self-examination around how we are moving the needle forward equity. In fact, we added that to our usual debrief questions, so if you're still awake at the end of our meetings, you can hear us talk about how we spent our meeting time and whether we missed any opportunities to promote equity and eliminate barriers to excellence and growth for all students.
4) What collaboration has taken place within your sphere of influence to create different outcomes for the District?
Our board is very collaborative with each other and with our Superintendent, along with her cabinet. All of our work begins with asking how we are using our resources - our money, our people, our expertise and our time - to support high-quality teaching and learning for all students, and to what extent we're seeing the outcomes we expect. I think back to pre-pandemic times for one of the most powerful examples: In 2019/early 2020, we recalibrated our strategic plan to embed equity rather than making it a standalone element. We were lucky to have many staff and faculty join us along with community members and students, and we were able to set goals that still anchor our work today.