Jaimee Martin, sophomore at Shaker Heights High School
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“I think that the struggle of a white student who has
been in honors classes all their life and who has been
missing out on the perspective of a Black student is not at
all equivalent to a Black student who’s had the idea instilled
within them that they are inadequate and that they are
not good enough. That’s heartbreaking and I’ve felt that
personally.”
Martin added that the District should reimagine its
definition of success. “True success is more than just trying
your best. Because trying your best and succeeding don’t
equal each other,” she said. “Instilling integrity and pride is
important through each step of detracking. Finding integrity
and hard work within this effort is really important.”
Marla Robinson says the District is working to ensure
that inquiry, imagination, and innovation are incorporated
into all classrooms and is leveraging diverse instructional
methods and hands-on learning experiences that
incorporate technology.
“Our hope is that students will come home and say, ‘My
teacher posed this problem and we researched it and had this
great debate.’ This is the kind of learning that keeps students
excited about and engaged in their learning,” she says.
Professional learning for teachers will be a key
component throughout the District’s work to achieve
educational equity.
Earlier this school year, the District’s secondary-level
teachers participated in professional learning on Nearpod,
an interactive web-based tool that facilitates student
engagement, which is especially important when teaching
students at multiple levels. Teachers also participated in
professional learning related to setting student performance
tasks, identifying their depth of knowledge levels, and
matching those to student outcomes.
Wilder looks forward to these sweeping, sustainable
changes at the District and across the country, especially
as more communities and organizations engage in equityrelated
conversations and actions. “The work we’re doing is
aligned with work at the national level,” she says.
Despite these positive steps, Wilder cautions against a
sense of complacency. “Our biggest threat is that we rest
on our laurels and say that ‘we are Shaker and we’ve done a
lot.’ But that’s not enough. It’s taken some time to get where
we are and it’s going to take some time to work through all
this,” she says. “We have all these resources, all this history
and contemporary ways of thinking. We have to use all that
to do better. We have a moral obligation to be better.” SL
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