When senior Aisha Ali found out teachers are officially receiving mentoring from equity coaches this year, she felt proud because Park is finally taking a step to close the achievement gap.

“I think what the equity coaches are doing will be really beneficial for both the students and teachers because they’re helping bridge the gap,” Ali said.

Equity coach Joy Esboldt said her position entails meeting with teachers to reflect on their teaching.

“My position is to support our educators to look at a really local level of personally how they show up as educators and how they impact student’s experience and student outcome,” Esboldt said. “We will go and observe teachers and meet with them afterwards for mindful reflection.”

Equity coach Lee-Ann Stephens said coaches observe how teachers interact with students of different culture or race.

“We have them reflect on words that were used, material that might have been presented, and I also look at how they are interacting with their students— how they are interacting with their white students, who are they calling on the most, what kind of questions are they giving their students,” Stephens said. “All of those pieces come to play and then we reflect and it’s not this judgement piece.”

Stephens said one of the equity coaching includes connecting with teachers in a deeper level.

“The important thing, especially when you are coaching teachers, it’s really good to have a relationship with them because when you’re having people examine their belief system around race it can be really sensitive and touching so they have to trust you,” Stephens said. “If they don’t trust you they are not really going to go deep and if people can’t go deep in what they believe, then change doesn’t occur.”

Senior Makila Jones said she feels happy to have equity coaches this year so teachers can get in touch with other perspectives.

“I like the fact that teachers have equity coaches this year because now it will be easier to handle the black kids and teach the teachers the black perspective of learning instead of not being able to help or teach them the right way,” Jones said.

Esboldt said an issue the equity coaches plan on is investigating the discipline data of students of color compared to white students.

“In St. Louis Park, like other schools across the country, we have black and brown students that are more likely to get referred to discipline,” Esboldt said. “Academic studies that go in to observe say that kids aren’t acting out any differently, but our black and brown students are getting referred at a higher rate.”

Ali said she wants to know the reason black and brown students are getting disciplined at a higher rate.

“I hope the equity coaches find a solution or a reason for the discipline data because it’s unfair if black and brown students are getting referred at a higher rate even though they found other races are doing the same,” Ali said.

Stephens said her goal is to have every Park student succeed.

“In Minnesota, we do a really good job of teaching white students because the majority of the teachers are white,” Stephens said. “When you can see yourself in a student you tend to be able to connect, so what I’m hoping is that we can see ourselves within all our students and thus being able to help all of our students achieve.”

Stephens said she would like to see student involvement in their racial equity work.

“I think it would be key to have some kind of student racial equity advisory or somehow get students involved in the work that’s being done because they are impacted, so have them at the table as well,” Stephens said.