District Partnerships

District-Wide Transformation​

It’s time to go big with racial equity!

We all have pockets of good practice in our organization, but how do we leverage those bright spots to transform our whole school district?

Truss Leadership partners with school districts on their system-wide antiracist transformation process. This includes conducting needs assessments and leading antiracist classroom walkthroughs.

Truss Leadership also provides districts with DEI professional development, training for teachers, and leadership coaching. 

 

We have experience working with districts and county offices across the US and in Canada, serving over 15,000 brave educators.

 

The Process

Multi-color blocks with four step process

District Spotlight – San Mateo Unified High School District

 

“We are getting more comfortable using words like white supremacy culture, antiracist, white fragility. As a system made up of many white staff members, we are getting more comfortable talking about racism. We aren’t shying away from it. We know it’s an issue and we are going to talk about it.”

– Dr. Julia Kempkey, Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction

In this documentary learn about the purpose, impact, and hopes for this work.

  • What happened?
  • What did educators learn?
  • What has been the impact?
Hear from teachers, leaders, central office leaders, and consultants.
 

Truss Leadership, along with Safir & Associates, has worked with SMUHSD for the past 2 years to support their racial equity goals. This includes virtual and in-person training for teachers, support for school leaders, and coaching of PD planning Teams.

 

“I’ve seen something happening. I have seen our district begin to make real shifts to centering antiracism as a goal.”

– Lyndsey Schlax, Assistant Principal

District Consulting Services

Group of teachers sitting together at a round table discussing a topic.

Racial Equity Needs Assessment

The Truss Leadership team begins by assessing the current technical and adaptive skills of team members.

With district/organization clients, we use a framework to identify goals, bright spots, and blind spots that support system-wide transformation. This includes the use of various tools including our antiracist leadership competencies, teaching practice rubrics, and racial equity leadership team framework.

This gives us an action plan to customize a coherent plan for trainings, coaching, and leadership development.

A workshop with educators discussing topics in small groups.

Professional Development

Truss Leadership provides racial equity workshops and year-long sequences. This can be customized for in-person meetings, team retreats, and virtual sessions.

Topics include:

  • Overview of diversity, equity, and inclusion
  • Foundational racial equity terms
  • Examination of power and privilege
  • Audit of antiracist teaching practices
  • Characteristics of white supremacy culture
  • Cultivating safe and brave space
  • Setting and assessing meeting norms
  • Growing restorative practices
  • Culturally responsive project based learning 

 

 

An educator workshop with educators sitting in a conference room.

Leadership Development and Coaching

Truss Leadership provides one-on-one coaching for school administrators, teacher leaders, as well as central office/cabinet members. We use routines to discuss your dilemmas and offer relevant skills, which pull from topics from our antiracist leadership course. This includes:

  • Crafting an anti-racist vision statement
  • Managing resistance
  • Leading powerful professional development

We work with leaders to develop their skills based on their self-assessment using our rubrics. During leadership developments sessions, site/central leaders analyze relevant scenarios, discuss possible responses, and plan action steps. Truss Leadership also works to support leaders in connecting their racial identity with their leadership practices. 

Classroom Walkthroughs

Using our antiracist instructional rounds framework, our team members work with you to identify issues, dilemmas, and a clear focus for walk-throughs.

This includes a tailor-made observation tool, and a half or full day process to analyze the observational data and plan next steps. This supports our scope and sequence of racial equity trainings and overall transformation process.

We believe strongly in including teachers, students, leaders, and community partners in the process.

 

educators talking at a table

Strategic Planning

In working with school teams, and district-wide equity committees, we support our clients to backwards map from racially equitable outcomes for students. This includes creating multi-year plans for systemic change. Through regular meetings and checkpoints, we support you to plan meetings, sequence professional learning, and assess progress. This work can include crafting a racial equity vision statement for your school/organization, developing a plan to gather data from marginalized members of your community, and analyzing trends. We also work with coordinating teams to build internal capacity, spotlight internal best practices, and scale change.

Contact Truss Leadership