Daily Archives: May 22, 2021

Stefania Arteaga is the Regional Immigrants' Rights Strategist for the ACLU of North Carolina.(Photo: Contributed by Stefania Arteaga)

For Stefania Arteaga, the fight for immigration rights is a deeply personal mission.

When she was 7 years old, for safety reasons,Arteaga and her family moved to the U.S. from El Salvador.Her childhood was defined by moments that illuminatedexperiences similar to many Central American immigrants.

Her family was in New Bedford, Mass., when theyexperienced one of the largest ICE raids of the Bush administration, she said. After moving to North Carolina following the 2008 financial crisis, her journalist mother began covering deportations at a time when North Carolinas Latino population was rapidly growing.

Arteaga went to work in her own way.Sheco-foundeda grassroots group, Comunidad Colectiva and pushedto elect a newsheriff, whounlike his predecessor,refused to cooperate with ICE. The groupalso fought against an uptick in ICE traffic stopsduring the Trump administration, and their work was featured in the 2020 Netflix documentary "Immigration Nation."

Nowthe regional immigrants' rights strategist for the ACLU of North Carolina,Arteagais fighting against SB 101, which would require all local law enforcement agencies in North Carolinato cooperate with ICE.Arteaga spoke to USA Today's The American South about the immigrant experience, the power of grassroots organizing, and the systemic biases against Central American migrants.

The American South:There's a moment in the documentary where, after one of the traffic stops you arrive at to live stream, you get in your car and admit feeling afraid. You say, You never know what will happen. What's something that most Americans don't understand about (this specific)immigrant experience?

Stefania Arteaga: The fear. The fear of knowing that there's some intentional structures even, you know from your local government, that try to erase your existence. I think there's this common misconception that immigrants are here to steal jobs or take resources, but there's so many ways that we're not allowed any protections. That's something I saw clearly under the Trump administration, the way people were just trying to wipe their hands clean of anything that had to do with immigrants or immigrant support, just allowing the system itself to try to figure out how to continue to put us in the deportation pipeline. I think the structural racism that exists at state, local, even non-profit levels really affects us, and communities of color in general.

Related: I was so afraid to die alone: COVID-19s toll on Mississippis chicken plant employees

En Espaol: Tena tanto miedo de morirme solo: El costo del COVID-19 para los trabajadores de las procesadoras de pollo de Mississippi

TAS:How did your parents prepare you for that experience?

SA:Growing up, my dad was always really fearful for us. He constantly preached that we had to be twice as good, that any mistake that we could possibly commit could put us in a situation that would return us to a country that we hadn't seen since we were toddlers.

TAS:Was there a particular event growing up that drove home those challenges and that mantra of having to be twice as good?

SA:It wasn't until I was 18 when I was able to get my driver's license, when I saw folks in my neighborhood in East Charlotte repeatedly being stopped at driver's license checkpoints, because the police knew that they didn't have identifications, because they were taken away and having to pick up my neighbors knowing that it didn't matter that they were leaving church with their kids or going into the grocery store or leavinga soccer game. They were going to be repeatedly targeted, because law enforcement knew that they didn't have status, and they filled a quota.

TAS:In Immigration Nation, theres a white man who mentions being thankful that migrant workers are working on houses after a hurricane, but he adds that they should follow the rules and become citizens. Is it as simple as some people think?

SA:I think it's so relative to where you are geographically. You know, if you're an immigrant, trying to seek refugee status through the court system in North Carolina, you only have about a 1% or 2% approval rating at the Charlotte immigration court. We have one of the most punitive immigration courts in the country, but we have one of the lowest denial rates. And so the immigration system as a whole has not been built to be unbiased. Simply obtaining status is just not attainable for many people, when there's intentional barriers for people to obtain them in the first place.

If we look at the history of migration in this country, as we've taken steps to provide pathways to legalization for communities, we've also seen significant increases in criminalization of those same communities. I don't think we're anywhere near reckoning with the fact that this country continues to exploit immigrant labor for profit. I think communities are still seen as disposable.

TAS:Your grassroots work with Comunidad Colectiva helped elect a sheriff in Mecklenburg County who opted out of the federal program that allowed the previous sheriff to work with ICE. What can other states in the South learn from that work?

SA:Shortly after 2018, we saw the same campaign tactics being utilized in DeKalb County, Georgia, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, immigrant communities, building real intentional coalitions around solidarity and mutual understanding of policing. I think we're seeing what community building looks like throughout the South, and how we can really question elected officials and law enforcement who are elected and accountable to communities. I think we're seeing it slowly but surely across the country. Progress is done, at the end of the day, at the grassroots level, and I think that's what we try to accomplish here in Charlotte is making sure that communities who are over-policed understand that their Black and Brown brothers are also being over-policed. I think it was that education that really helped us have an intentional community conversation about this.

TAS:What have you learned about grassroots organizing that helps build community-wide support?

SA: You build family, and organizing is a lineage of people that are planting little seeds here and there over time that create generational change. Change doesn't come quickly. We slowly build it together.

Note: The interview was edited for length and clarity.

This story is part of Shaping the Souths Future, a Q&A series byThe American South, centered on courageous conversations about the topical issues of our time.

News tips? Questions? Call reporter Andrew Yawn at 985-285-7689 or email him at ayawn@gannett.com. Sign up for The American South newsletter.Follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Read or Share this story: https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/american-south/2021/05/20/netflix-documentary-immigration-nation-put-activists-work-centerstage/5095250001/

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What this North Carolina activist says we need to move immigration rights forward in the South - Tennessean

(Illustration by iStock/ma_rish)

Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets, physician and health-policy expert Paul Batalden said.1 This much-repeated quote captures a way to conceptualize equitable implementation that takes into account factors like the history of racial discrimination and access to health care when studying why disparities exist and assessing the needs of a community to eliminate them.

Implementation sciencethe study of the uptake, scale, and sustainability of social programshas failed to advance strategies to address equity. This collection of articles reviews case studies and articulates lessons for incorporating the knowledge and leadership of marginalized communities into the policies and practices intended to serve them. Sponsored by the Anne E. Casey Foundation

Some very alarming statistics reveal population-level disparities within our social and health-care systems. One prominent example is the 30-year gap in life expectancy between people living in the poor, predominantly African American neighborhoods on Chicagos South Side, as compared to those in the more affluent, predominantly white neighborhoods just nine miles away in Chicagos Loop. This is the largest life expectancy gap in the United States, according to the City Health Dashboard,2 and is attributable to few economic opportunities and high rates of obesity, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and stroke in South Side neighborhoods.3 The origins and ramifications of this wide difference in life expectancy are deeply, systemically entrenched and must be acknowledged if we are to effectively close the gap.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the urgent need to tilt health-care systems toward equitable outcomes,4 the causes are rooted in centuries of systemic racism, economic exploitation, and other factors. Further, mistrust of the health-care system and of medical research runs deep in communities of color,5 and for good reason. For example, in the Tuskegee Study, which ran from 1932 to 1972, the US Public Health Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention intentionally withheld treatment from African American men with syphilis in order to study the progression of the disease.

A primary way to advance health equity is to focus exclusively on implementing interventions in communities that experience disparities in treatment. Simply including populations with disparities in larger studies with nondisparity groups potentially neglects the need for strategies that address underlying structural causes of the disparities, such as the disinvestment in communities of color that has resulted in scarce and under-resourced health-care systems.6

You need both fertile soil and viable seeds for plants to thrive, yet medical research too often focuses on the seeds while neglecting to cultivate the soil. The field of implementation science aims to improve health outcomes by studying how to deliver the best available interventions (i.e., the seeds) in a manner that overcomes barriers and leverages individual, system, and community assets (i.e., the soil).7 Using implementation science to address health inequities has only recently become an explicit goaleven though a prominent report by the National Academy of Medicine declared equity, which they define as quality care that does not vary simply because of personal characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, geographic location, and socioeconomic status, as a standard back in 2006.8

To establish equitable health care, customized awareness, and accessibility and availability of interventions, implementation researchers must bring the voices of community members to the forefront and integrate those voices throughout their work. How researchers engage with the community is critical for the sustained success of any improvement initiative. The key to hearing and listening to the community starts with creating synergy among trusted voices on a particular health-related goal.

Below we detail the key ingredients to achieving equitable implementation of an intervention for hypertension among African American adults living in Chicago. Our three-pronged strategy includes understanding the specific challenges identified by the community that need immediate attention; intentional inclusion of community stakeholders as early as possible in order to prioritize their perspectives; and building and delivering tangible resources for addressing the needs expressed by the community. Doing so will yield enduring solutions and effective strategies required to address awareness of, access to, and capacity for implementation of better interventions in these communities.

Implementation science has long recognized the critical role of meaningful partnerships with the various persons and entities that are involved in the delivery of new interventions,9 but it is often underdeveloped and not explicitly leveraged in service of achieving equity. Much of the focus has been on the partnership between academic researchers and more traditional health-care delivery systems, such as safety-net community health centers (CHCs).

Years ago, the three of us began setting the groundwork for a seven-year project focused on hypertension among African American adults, with equitable implementation at the fore. We officially began the project, called Community Intervention to Reduce CardiovascuLar Disease in Chicago (CIRCL-Chicago), in August 2020. In CIRCL-Chicago, our partnership model included working with Pastors for Patient-Centered Outcomes Research (P4P), which is a hub for faith-based communities and leaders interested in research engagement.10

Since its inception in 2013, P4P has successfully engaged church congregations and leaders in health-related initiatives.11 Even for nonreligious individuals, churches in predominantly African American neighborhoods serve as crucial anchors and trusted voices for community gathering, resources, and support.12 P4P includes stakeholder input by actively listening, proactively involving, and quickly training members of the communitynot as segregated contributors but as members of a collaborative partnership. CIRCL-Chicago takes this partnership model a step further by connecting churches with CHCs in the same neighborhoods to both engage participants in the process and to deliver the intervention. Our approach includes the voices of people who have experience both with hypertension and with the local health-care system.

P4P leads community-driven processes for identifying health priorities to give local churches a voice in how to care for community members. In 2016 and 2018, P4P administered a 10-item community health assessment to 836 residents living in 12 ZIP codes that corresponded to member churches.13 High blood pressure was the highest-rated health priority both years. This priority is consistent with the high prevalence of hypertension among African Americans both in Chicago and across the United States.14

In planning CIRCL-Chicago, we convened diverse stakeholders, including P4P leaders, academic researchers, community-based research organizations, CHCs serving our study community, and representatives from organizations such as the American Heart Association and American Medical Association. We jointly selected an evidence-based, multicomponent intervention for high blood pressure comprised of evidence-based blood pressure-control guidelines, a health system-wide hypertension registry, quarterly blood pressure-control reports, follow-up visits for blood pressure measurement and management by health-care professionals, and promotion of single-pill combination pharmacotherapy.15

Developed and tested by the Kaiser Permanente of Northern Californias health-care system, this multicomponent intervention is now being adapted to the context of Chicagos South Side neighborhoods in partnership with community members. Prior efforts to translate the Kaiser intervention bundle to CHCs were successful, but less so than the trial by Kaiser Permanente of Northern California that first established its effectiveness.16 This suggests there is a need for a focused effort to implement the bundle in a way that is both acceptable to community members and feasible to implement.

Now six months into the project, CIRCL-Chicago has met with leaders from churches, local CHCs, P4P and members of the community who might participate in the intervention, local and national professional organizations, and academic experts in implementation science, blood pressure control, informatics, and community-engaged research. Based on these meetings, we are following an established process for adapting the intervention17 to ensure a systematic and comprehensive approach that stays true to the core aspects of the Kaiser bundle responsible for its effectiveness, while making necessary adaptations for the intervention to be successful in the local community.

For example, P4P ensures that the initial program messaging is delivered from a trusted community voice and makes certain that in every face-to-face meeting, familiar faces are there to provide service and answer questions. We plan to enlist such community health workers to take blood pressure measurements instead of using medical assistants. We hope this strategy will help mitigate mistrust of the health-care system that patients may experience and reduces the burden on understaffed CHCs.

We also propose a registry that will provide blood pressure-control reports. The goal of this platform is to enable the sharing of data concerning participants blood pressure and treatment across care settings such as churches and CHCs to create enhanced opportunities to identify and treat people with hypertension. P4Ps practices include free-of-charge follow-up contacts to ensure honest and consistent communication, including virtual meetings to discuss progress and findings.

The CIRCL-Chicago project will first see whether the adapted Kaiser intervention bundle can be delivered in a small number of churches and CHCs. Early testing of the implementation provides critical data to inform the ongoing process of adaptation that is constantly informed by the community. Next, we will begin a community-level trial within the South Side Chicago neighborhoods that experience the greatest disparities in hypertension and cardiovascular health outcomes.18 Within these neighborhoods are approximately 16 churches that are part of the P4P network and 12 CHCs that are members of two health-center networks, AllianceChicago and Access Community Health Network.

Based on estimates of the prevalence of uncontrolled blood pressure in these neighborhoods, we expect to enroll between 600 and 1,800 participants in the adapted Kaiser intervention bundle, and we will compare our outcomes to participants residing on Chicagos West Sidean area with similar disparities in hypertension rates to the South Sidethat are receiving the usual health care in their community.

CIRCL-Chicago seeks to comprehensively evaluate the implementation of the Kaiser intervention bundle.19 To determine whether the implementation is successful, we will track the proportion of eligible adults in the community that experience blood pressure control (i.e., <130/80 mm Hg) from the intervention. We will also dig deeply into these data to understand the representativeness of the participants that are referred to and receive the Kaiser intervention bundle, and those that experience blood pressure control.20 CIRCL-Chicago will be implemented in neighborhoods that are predominantly African American, and we will focus on patient age, gender, insurance status, and health-care system variables that could lead to inequity within this population. Any differences that emerge signal the need for deeper exploration to understand the nature and cause of variable impact.

CIRCL-Chicagos community-driven approach shows that neighborhoods like the South Side, and indeed many other communities across the United States, need investment in different implementation strategies and resources than those used to support implementation in other populations. Neglecting this reality has the potential to exacerbate disparities through inequitable implementation.

The premium often placed on generalizable findings in implementation research runs the risk of assuming equality is the answer. But real solutions are only possible with equitable strategies that recognize the contribution of historical and contemporary policies, economics, and health-care access, among other factorsthe consequences of which are repeatedly underscored in health disparities. Community-driven, equitable implementation approaches hold the key to unlocking sustainable solutions to eliminate health disparities that are embraced by the community. A key driver of sustaining this intervention hinges on fostering co-leadership, co-ownership, and equal decision-making among all partners and stakeholders.

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Community Intervention to Reduce Cardiovascular Disease Offers Community-Driven Health Solutions for Hypertension Among African Americans in South...

Broken furniture. Flashlights with leaking batteries. Disfigured Barbie dolls.

Problem is, too many such items could most accurately be described as trash. Many of the donations are defective or worn-out items gifts from well-intentioned people who want to reduce waste but who donate items that simply shouldnt be donated.

The thrift stores, wary of discouraging donations, say that, as always, they welcome most contributions, especially after a recession that inflicted harm most heavily on the lowest-income Americans, many of whom now depend on them. And they note that most of the items that arrive at their stores remain perfectly acceptable.

But in the midst of spring cleaning season, the stores want to slow a barrage of unwanted contributions that increased during the COVID-19 pandemic.

For the thrift stores, such donations aren't just a hassle to dispose of. They also magnify their garbage-disposal costs. The stores need time and staffing hours to process them.

The spikes in trash expenses can divert money away from other services the agencies could spend in their communities, like workforce development programs.

Goodwill Industries regional office out of Spokane oversees the Goodwill stores in Moses Lake and East Wenatchee. Goodwill Regional Vice President of Marketing, Heather Alexander, says the stores her district encompasses can get inundated with trash from time to time. She says some of the trash dropped off is unintentional and some of it is intentional.

Every dollar we spend on throwing out trash, takes money away from our program, Alexander told iFIBER ONE News. We do ask people to be mindful what they donate and when they donate.

Alexander says Goodwill will not accept anything that is ripped, cracked, completely broken, soiled, or anything with major blemishes.

Though, within the last decade Goodwill has created a salvage program that takes subpar items that conventional stores wouldnt accept and transfers it to various outlet stores. If the outlet stores dont accept them, they work with various recycling vendors. Alexander says the salvage program helps give additional purpose and value to donations.

Continued here:

Unloading of trash at local Goodwill stores prompts message to communities - iFIBER One News

Last year, Providence invested more than $1.7 billion in improving the health of its communities

Why Providence Addressed Each Key Initiative in 2020:

"The community health investment team responds to our Mission's call to serve," said Justin Crowe, senior vice president of community partnerships. "By generating resources for our community programs and partners, we're creating an ecosystem that amplifies the voices of our local communities and promotes health, grassroots advocacy and a culture of inter-connectedness."

The community investments include the costs of uncompensated care for Medicaid, free or low-cost care, and many other programs and initiatives focused on improving the health of our communities, increasing access to care and making care more affordable.

These intentional investments make it possible for people to live their healthiest lives and allow our communities to reinvest in other vital programs. Caring for our communities has never been more important. To see community investments by state, visit the Annual Report to Our Communities website to view regional reports.

About ProvidenceProvidence is a national, not-for-profit Catholic health system comprising a diverse family of organizations and driven by a belief that health is a human right. With 52 hospitals, over 1,000 physician clinics, senior services, supportive housing, and many other health and educational services, the health system and its partners employ more than 120,000 caregivers serving communities across seven states Alaska, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, and Washington, with system offices in Renton, Wash., and Irvine, Calif. Learn about our vision of health for a better world at Providence.org.

SOURCE Providence

http://providence.org

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Providence Releases 2020 Report Showcasing $1.7 Billion in Community Support - PRNewswire

By Caroline White Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service

This story was originally published by Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service, where you can find other stories reporting on fifteen city neighborhoods in Milwaukee. Visit milwaukeenns.org.

Members of the African American Roundtable believe there is untapped leadership potential in communities all over Milwaukee.

And they want to unlock it.

The roundtable, which comprises dozens of groups and individuals, has played instrumental roles in local causes, including voter education, calls to increase the minimum wage and the push for justice for victims of police brutality. Along the way, roundtable members have made an intentional effort to include and educate Milwaukee residents on the causes that affect them.

If no one is giving you the skills, how will you know? said Markasa Tucker, executive director.

Currently, the roundtables efforts are focused on ensuring the community has a say in how the money the City of Milwaukee is receiving through the American Rescue Plan Act is spent. The plan, a COVID-recovery economic stimulus package, was signed by President Joe Biden in March.

Milwaukee received the first of two $200 million dollar payments on May 10, and the roundtable is demanding that no money be spent until city leaders formulate a plan to include community voices. The groups complete list of demands, including that no money go to the police, can be read on its community sign-on letter.

Making moves

In January, the African American Roundtable, also known as AART, moved its home base from Wisconsin Voices to the Hmong American Womens Association, or HAWA. As a fiscal project of HAWA, it has been able to hire new staff members and launch a paid community leadership fellowship program. At the end of March, which is Womens History Month, the group unveiled its all-woman-led board.

Tammie Xiong, the executive director of the Hmong American Womens Association, said the collaboration between HAWA and AART is natural and mutually beneficial. Both groups are working to uplift women, LGBTQ people and people of color through their community organizing efforts.

The work being led by AART is also liberating our communities and giving us an opportunity to re-imagine a community that we can all thrive in, Xiong said in an email.

The long-term goal for the roundtable is to become an independent nonprofit and perhaps one day have its own building. These plans come after nine years of working on campaigns under other nonprofits.

Humble beginnings

The African American Roundtable began under Citizen Action in 2012 with the leadership of Mike Wilder, the first executive director. It was funded by grant money given to help engage and educate Wisconsin Black voters in the gubernatorial recall election of that year. Specifically, the group worked to dispel misinformation about voter identification laws.

Anita Johnson, now a board member of the roundtable, has been a member of AART since the beginning. She said these early organizing efforts showed her and other members how influential educating the public could be.

The power is in giving the information to the people, Johnson said. The power is in educating the community.

The roundtable operated under different organizations as Wilder changed jobs. In 2013, when AART was a part of Wisconsin Jobs Now, the group became involved with the Fight for 15, a movement to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour.

The Fight for 15 transformed into a more localized campaign to increase the hourly pay of those employed by the City of Milwaukee. In July 2014, the city announced the wage of workers would increase from $9.51 to $10.80 per hour.

Wilder described that as a huge morale booster that showed him and other roundtable members that their work could influence real change.

When we saw that we could make an impact at a local level, that was just amazing, Wilder said.

The roundtable then became a part of Wisconsin Voices at the beginning of 2014. Months later, Dontre Hamilton, a 31-year-old Milwaukeean, was shot and killed by a police officer at Red Arrow Park.

Following his death, AART members and other community organizers worked to support the Hamilton family and push for accountability and reform within the Milwaukee Police Department through the Coalition for Justice.

Wilder described that time as a turning point for the group. Hamiltons death garnered national attention. The roundtable worked to rally the community to demand answers from the city.

Ive seen some big movements, but I havent seen anything like that, Wilder said. The whole city came together.

In 2016, the United States Department of Justice spent 10 months auditing the Milwaukee Police Department and Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission. A draft report was leaked and then made public, but a final report was never produced.

In response to the incomplete audit, the roundtable worked closely with the Collaborative Community Committee, formed by the Common Council, to continue the push for police reform. In 2017, the groups held nearly 50 public meetings to discuss policing and public safety with community members.

Tucker, who joined the roundtable in 2014 and the Collaborative Community Committee in 2017, described that period as exhausting but life-changing for her.

I wanted to be a part of something tangible to change the things I was seeing, Tucker said.

During this time, Tucker and other community organizers began to turn their attention toward the city budgetspecifically, how much money was being dedicated to the Milwaukee Police Department.

Tucker said she knew the community would pay attention if they knew how much money the police department was funded compared with affordable quality housing, youth programming, violence prevention and other causes. The problem was that barely any residents attended the city budget hearing. Tucker recalled that in 2018, only five residents turned out.

I vowed at that point that that would not be the case next year, Tucker said.

On Juneteenth Day 2019, the roundtable and over 25 other community partners announced LiberateMKEa campaign that demanded a $25 million divestment from the Milwaukee Police Department.

LiberateMKE organizers spent the rest of the summer surveying over 1,000 Milwaukeeans about policy recommendations and opinions on what funds should be reallocated in the city budget. The groups also held sessions to prepare residents to speak at public hearings and train them on how to lobby their alderperson.

Over 350 people attended the city budget hearing in 2019. Police funding in the 2020 budget was decreased by $900,000, and the staff was reduced by 60 officers. An additional $72,000 was allocated to summer youth internship programs, $300,000 went to create an emergency housing program and $240,000 was allocated to Health Department programming.

LiberateMKE relaunched in 2020 and the campaign demanded a $75 million divestment in the 2021 budget. In the final adopted 2021 budget, the police budget was reduced by almost $2.2 million and 120 officer positions were cut.

Tucker said that although these reductions were not as much as the campaign organizers had hoped for, she sees the value in incremental change and knows that new community leaders will step up to continue this fight and others.

The roundtable has started investing in and empowering new community leaders through book clubs, study groups and, most recently, paid fellowship programs called Leadership Development Cohorts.

We know community wins because we have people power, Tucker said

The roundtable hosts monthly meetings for Black community members every second Tuesday of the month starting at 6 p.m. on Zoom. Register here. https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAvde6tqzMoGdEOezHCtMhoI36zyXLg8V1f

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NNS Spotlight: 'People power': How the African American Roundtable Works to Educate and Empower Leaders - Milwaukee Courier Weekly Newspaper

Insights is a SmartBrief Education Originals column that features perspectives from noted experts and leaders in education on hot-button issues affecting schools and districts. All contributors are selected by the SmartBrief Education editorial team.

Children, families and communities have stories unique to their journey, and all of those experiences exist within the broader context of the history we share. For too long, curriculum has presented children with an incomplete view of this shared past by failing to include all of our voices and perspectives. The youngest learners must understand their place in the world, develop an understanding of the events that created current circumstances, and recognize the consequences of past choices that led to failures and successes.

Learning only one point of view does not provide students with the context they need. Curriculum reform is necessary if we hope to provide our children with an opportunity to learn from past mistakes and solve future problems. Here are a few suggestions to begin working toward a more inclusive curriculum today.

The process of auditing curriculum content helps educators understand gaps in representation, voices missing, and content that needs to be reviewed. Before an audit can begin, teams must establish their own expectations and the guidelines for the curriculum that they hope to build. Once a team has the end goal in mind, they can begin to create a rubric or tool to support the review with a standardized lens. The rubric should highlight guiding principles such as broad, asset-based representation; factual details for historical events; authentic cultural context; variety of perspectives offered in literature and historical details; and more.

It is also essential to prioritize including a diverse team to complete the audit process. Any audit that is completed by a team with only one perspective will not result in a holistic view of the curriculum.

Just as we are always learning best practices for effectively instructing students, curriculum designers are always finding new resources and voices to include in their design. School and district leaders should spend time outlining their own principles in relation to the population of students they serve and then reviewing curriculum based upon those priority guidelines.

Its also a good idea to ensure that all voices, such as parents, students, and teachers, are represented on the request-for-proposal team along with leaders within a school or district. Setting aside time to learn about a curriculum designer teams guiding principles for development and the ways in which they audit their own content is also important.

Identifying a curriculum developed with a specific commitment towards including a diverse array of experiences and a wide range of representation is the first step. This is only the beginning though. A universal curriculum must include a continuous commitment to ongoing learning and development in collaboration with communities being served by the content.

Even with reviews and alignments to standards, an organizations commitment to their ongoing learning and continuous improvement is essential. If school and district leaders can work in partnership with curriculum teams, theyre more likely to be investing in organizations that are committed to building diverse learning experiences for children.

Educators need support when learning how to implement, create, and modify curriculum to meet the needs of the students they serve. Learning specifics about the populations of students within their community is often a missing piece for teachers. Seeking out perspectives that have historically been missing from conversations about past events, and giving teachers access to these experiences, can help build their own understanding about how we must be intentional as we present content to children.

Giving teachers specific support to guide classroom conversations and time to role-play and practice is also important, as is creating opportunities for adults to explore their own biases and blindspots. If we hope to change the ways in which our children learn about diversity and how to include everyone in conversations, then we must model this by supporting the ongoing learning for the adults who interact with them each day.

Teachers themselves can model perspective-taking and supplement curriculum with the experiences of those who may not already be represented. For example, if a class is learning about their own community, they may not think to interview those who live near them. Incorporating real-life examples into the curriculum creates a greater chance that the ideas will be culturally relevant to students and families.

After interviewing members of the community, the teacher could model the practice of checking to verify that all voices are heard. The children might remember that they did not include the voice of their local mail person or librarian. They could then make the effort to interview those community members and learn how important each person is when researching and investigating a topic.

Families are essential members of a school community, and throughout the pandemic, we have learned just how important caregivers are to a childs success. They also have lived experiences, cultural collateral, and knowledge that should be incorporated into learning experiences within the school. Often, schools invite families for international day or career night, which is a great beginning; however, asking them to be a part of all school choices and initiatives is a more intentional way of bringing community voices into decisions that impact children and learning. We simply do not know what we do not know. We must seek out support from others who might illuminate our perspective and shine a light on the ways we could more effectively impact children.

There are even plenty of examples where children and families create books or resources together that become part of the curriculum of the school. This is definitely a two-way support system that must be built on strong, trusting, authentic relationships. Communities and school leaders bear the responsibility of creating an environment where those relationships can flourish. The best way to begin to instill trust is to ensure families see themselves represented in and respected by the content their children are learning.

Jenni Torres, the senior vice president of curriculum and instruction at Waterford.org, is a passionate curriculum designer and educator who manages the development of research-based content, correlations to standards, and creation of teacher and family resources. During fifteen years in the classroom, Jenni was selected by the U.S. State Department as a Fulbright Exchange Teacher for Uruguay and was awarded Teacher of the Year honors at the school, county and district levels. You can connect with her on LinkedIn or follow her on Twitter.

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4 keys to improving representation in classroom content - SmartBrief

In summary

Why cant California utilize prescribed burns that everyone knows are key to restoring biodiversity and resilience?

Jane Braxton Little, based in the northern Sierra Nevada, is an independent journalist covering science and natural resource issues for publications that include the Atlantic, Audubon, Discover, National Geographic and Scientific American, jblittle@dyerpress.com.

Land managers agree. Policymakers agree. The science is unequivocal. If we dont get more beneficial fire on the ground in California, were going to lose it all to wildfire.

Yet last year, when wildfires scorched more than 4 million acres and killed 33 people, federal and state agencies treated an only 80,000 acres with prescribed burns 16% of what scientists believe California forestlands need to maintain biodiversity and resilience.

As summer approaches and worse-than-ever blazes are predicted for the state officially sinking into drought, the urgency to dramatically increase controlled fire has morphed into frustration-fueled dread. Why cant California set the intentional burns everyone knows are key to restoring biodiversity and fire resilience?

A century of fire suppression and industrial logging has distanced us from natural fire, a keystone ecological process as essential to forests as sunshine and rain. We have severed that critical relationship maintained by Native Americans, who for millennia lit fires to keep forests cleansed of flammable underbrush.

Cal Fire and the U.S. Forest Service, the agencies responsible for managing most of the states forestland, have institutionalized this disconnect by relying on an ethic that calls for controlling natural resources, including fire.

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Fighting fire is Cal Fires major mission, confirmed by renaming the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection in 1995. The U.S. Forest Service has never rid itself of the century-old mentality that all fires must be suppressed by 10 a.m. the next day.

As recently as the 1970s, agency officials were arresting Native Americans for setting intentional fires. Their academic counterparts mocked UC Berkeleys School of Forestry Professor Harold Biswell, who promoted prescribed burning as a management tool, calling him Burn-Em-Up Biswell.

Today both agencies retain unerring allegiance to this control culture despite their public commitment to the benefits of returning natural fire to forest ecosystems. The U.S. Forest Service offers few incentives to district rangers who initiate prescribed burns, instead penalizing them for the less than 1% that escape beyond control lines. These are agencies that reward caution at the expense of innovation even when science supports it.

One ramification is a reluctance to commit to developing a workforce of trained year-round burners. Both the Forest Service and Cal Fire continue to rely on crews trained to fight, not light fires. When a wildfire breaks out, these crews drop their rakes and drip torches for the chainsaws and helicopters that promise overtime pay and macho glory. Even the 2019 Caples prescribed burn, planned for three years as the largest intentional fire in the Sierra Nevada, saw two interagency hotshot crews leave mid-burn for higher priority fire assignments.

Some of these barriers are starting to come down. The Forest Service and Cal Fire have each committed to treat 500,000 acres per year by 2025 with mechanical thinning or controlled burning. Prescribed burns are a fraction of these on-the-ground treatments. Still, Cal Fires 30,000-acre target for this year is 10 times the actual prescribed fire acreage accomplished in 2015; it has already burned 11,000 acres. The Forest Service applied intentional fire to nearly 60,000 acres last year and has gradually increased its goals.

Attitudes, too, are changing. When the 1,080-acre Caples Fire escaped the designated area and burned 2,355additional acres, Eldorado National Forest and regional officials backed the local leadership, calling the escape a calculated risk and part of the learning process.

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But even the agencies accelerated goals pale against the acreage scientists say forests need to be resilient. Historically natural fire burned nearly 500,000 acres annually in the Sierra alone, according to a study published in the Society of American Foresters. The backlog of prescribed burns has grown to nearly 3 million acres. At the current rate two-thirds of Californias national forest lands will never be treated with intentional cleansing fire.

Along with entrenched agency reluctance, robust prescribed burn programs face another major hurdle: smoke. No one likes it, and prescribed fires emit it. When their constituents complain, politicians pressure agencies to stop both intentional burns and monitored lightning starts.

These short-term political fixes extend the long-term fire deficit. Air emissions technology is evolving rapidly, allowing agencies to determine where smoke plumes are heading and manage fires to limit pollution in communities. Using prescribed fires strategically can actually protect public health by reducing out-of-control fires, which emit far more toxicity than controlled burns, says Craig Thomas, director of the Fire Restoration Group: Its a tradeoff. We either work with fire or it eats our lunch.

To achieve forest resilience we need to change our relationship with fire. When his Karuk ancestors caught a whiff of smoke in the air it made them feel safe, says Bill Tripp, director of natural resources and environmental policy of the Karuk Tribe. They knew their communities were better protected.

With wildfires incinerating entire towns and torching millions of acres of forestland, management agencies should heed the nurturing power of natural fire. Managed thoughtfully, it is a guardian we can trust to protect us from uncontrolled infernos.

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Jane Braxton Little has also written about the paradox of the California condor, conserving Tejon Ranch, reclaimed homelands of Northern California tribes and how the pandemic ended the 153-year-old Feather River Bulletin.

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To achieve forest health, we need to change our relationship with fire - CalMatters