We strive to use asset-based language in describing our students and members of our community. Language should not focus on a person's deficits, but rather their strengths. For example, rather than stating that a student does not speak English, this can be reframed as stating that they are a multi-lingual learner.

Student-first language is respectful and honors our learners as their whole selves (e.g., using "student with a disability" rather than "disabled student.")

 

Indigenous

Indigenous peoples are inheritors and practitioners of unique cultures and ways of relating to people and the environment. They have retained social, cultural, economic and political characteristics that are distinct from those of the dominant societies in which they live.

AAPI

Asian, Asian Americans, Pacific Islander

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) are an integral part of the American cultural mosaic, encompassing a wide range of diversity. AAPI communities consist of approximately 50 ethnic groups speaking over 100 languages, with connections to Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Filipino, Vietnamese, Korean, Hawaiian, and other Asian and Pacific Islander ancestries.

Over 24 million Americans, or 7.3% of the U.S. population, are AAPI; however, about two-thirds of the population identify with their specific ethnicity or country of origin.

LatinX

Understanding More About Latinx

Types of Racism

Race and Racism

The idea of race has a complex history.  It has been used for centuries to categorize, reward, and penalize people based on perceived differences.  Despite often being misguidedly defined by skin tone and other physical attributes, race has no genetic basis.  This powerful social construction has a tremendous impact on individuals’ lives because it is often employed to establish and maintain privilege and power dynamics.  Access to resources and opportunities are often distributed along racial lines.

Commonly defined as “prejudice + power,” racism is prejudice or discrimination against someone based on his/her race.  Underlying this is the belief that certain racial groups are superior to others.  Racism can be manifested through beliefs, policies, attitudes, and actions.  Racism comes in several forms, including:

• Individual or internalized racism – This is racism that exists within individuals.  It is when one holds negative ideas about his/her own culture, even if unknowingly.  Xenophobic feelings or one’s internalized sense of oppression/privilege are two examples of individual or internalized racism.
• Interpersonal racism – This is the racism that occurs between individuals.  It is the holding of negative attitudes towards a different race or culture.  Interpersonal racism often follows a victim/perpetrator model.
• Institutional racism – Recognizing that racism need not be individualist or intentional, institutional racism refers to institutional and cultural practices that perpetuate racial inequality.  Benefits are structured to advantage powerful groups as the expense of others.  Jim Crow laws and redlining practices are two examples of institutional racism.
• Structural racism – Structural racism refers to the ways in which the joint operation of institutions (i.e., inter-institutional arrangements and interactions) produce racialized outcomes, even in the absence of racist intent.  Indicators of structural racism include power inequalities, unequal access to opportunities, and differing policy outcomes by race.  Because these effects are reinforced across multiple institutions, the root causes of structural racism are difficult to isolate.  Structural racism is cumulative, pervasive, and durable.

Disability

The ADA defines a person with a disability as a person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activity. This includes people who have a record of such an impairment, even if they do not currently have a disability. It also includes individuals who do not have a disability but are regarded as having a disability. The ADA also makes it unlawful to discriminate against a person based on that person’s association with a person with a disability.

Family Engagement

Family engagement describes what families do at home and in the community to support their children's learning and development. It also encompasses the shared partnership and responsibility, specifically with underserved families, between home and school. Such engagement is essential for school improvement.

Multiracial

Biracial identity development includes self-identification A multiracial or biracial person is someone whose parents or ancestors are from different ethnic backgrounds. ... While multiracial identity development refers to the process of identity development of individuals who self-identify with multiple racial groups.

Agender

Agender is a term that can be literally translated as 'without gender.' It can be seen either as a non-binary gender identity or as a statement of not having a gender identity. People who identify as agender may describe themselves as one or more of the following: Genderless or lacking gender.

Black Lives Matter

The Black Lives Matter Global Network is a chapter-based, member-led organization whose mission is to build local power and to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.

BLM is expansive. BLM is a collective of liberators who believe in an inclusive and spacious movement. BLM also believe that in order to win and bring as many people with us along the way, they must move beyond the narrow nationalism that is all too prevalent in Black communities.

BLM affirms the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, undocumented folks, folks with records, women, and all Black lives along the gender spectrum. Our network centers those who have been marginalized within Black liberation movements.

BLM are working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically targeted for demise.

Black Lives Matter Website

Double Consciousness

Double consciousness is a concept that Du Bois first explores in 1903 publication, “The Souls of Black Folk”. Double consciousness describes the individual sensation of feeling as though your identity is divided into several parts, making it difficult or impossible to have one unified identity.

PTSD

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may arise when people experience a traumatic event such as death, threatened death, serious injury, or actual or threatened sexual violence.

This definition applies primarily to simple trauma, or exposure to one circumscribed traumatic event. By contrast, complex trauma may arise from exposure over time to prolonged, repeated trauma, such as physical or sexual abuse, neglect, or violence. The symptom pictures resulting from simple and complex trauma differ somewhat.

Disability

A physical or mental condition that limits a person's movements, senses, or activities.

Hispanic, Latino, LatinX

• Hispanic- those who trace their ancestry to Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, and the Spanish-speaking countries of Central and South America.
• Hispanic or Latino? While the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, "Hispanic" is a narrower term that only refers to persons of Spanish-speaking origin or ancestry, while "Latino" is more frequently used to refer generally to anyone of Latin American origin or ancestry, including Brazilians.
• Latin X- Pronounced “La-teen-ex,” Latinx is a gender-neutral term for people of Latin American heritage. By dropping the traditional –o or –a ending at the end of the root word ‘Latin,’ Latinx encompasses those who identify outside of the gender binary, such as transgender people or those who are gender-fluid

Middle Passage

Middle Passage: Middle Passage, the forced voyage of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the New World. It was one leg of the triangular trade route that took goods (such as knives, guns, ammunition, cotton cloth, tools, and brass dishes) from Europe to Africa, Africans to work as slaves in the Americas.

Eviction

Eviction: the action of expelling someone, especially a tenant, from a property; expulsion:"the forced eviction of residents"

LGBTQIA

LGBTQIA. Initialism of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, intersex, and allies. Initialism of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, intersex, and asexual.

Apartheid

Apartheid- (in South Africa) a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race.

"At Risk"

“At risk”- The term at-risk is often used to describe students or groups of students who are considered to have a higher probability of failing academically or dropping out of school. (not a preferred way to describe students)

Great Migration

The Great Migration was the mass movement of about five million southern blacks to the north and west between 1915 and 1960.  During the initial wave the majority of migrants moved to major northern cities such as Chicago, Illiniois, Detroit, Michigan, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and New York, New York.  By World War II the migrants continued to move North but many of them headed west to Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, California, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington.

Race

The socially constructed meaning attached to a variety of physical attributes including but not limited to skin and eye color, hair texture, and bone structure of people in the US and elsewhere.

Code Switch

the different spaces we each inhabit and the tensions of trying to navigate between them.

Reparations

noun

1. the making of amends for a wrong one has done, by paying money to or otherwise helping those who have been wronged.

Holocaust

the systematic mass slaughter of European 

Jews in Nazi concentration

camps during World War II

Holocaust Center for Humanity

Human Trafficking

hu·man traf·fick·ing

noun

1. the action or practice of illegally transporting people from one country or area to another, typically for the purposes of forced labour or commercial sexual exploitation.

Courageous Conversation

Courageous conversation is a strategy for breaking down racial tensions and raising racism as a topic of discussion that allows those who possess knowledge on particular topics to have the opportunity to share it, and those who do not have the knowledge to learn and grow from the experience.

Social Justice

noun

1. justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society

Racial Profiling

"Racial Profiling" refers to the discriminatory practice by law enforcement officials* of targeting individuals for suspicion of crime based on the individual's race, ethnicity, religion or national origin. Criminal profiling, generally, as practiced by police, is the reliance on a group of characteristics they believe to be associated with crime. Examples of racial profiling are the use of race to determine which drivers to stop for minor traffic violations (commonly referred to as "driving while black or brown"), or the use of race to determine which pedestrians to search for illegal contraband.

*This can also occur outside of legal/criminal situations

Anti-Racism

Actively fighting racism and its effects wherever they may exist. This is a way for us all to examine institutional power and the ways in which people of all races can gain the same level of access and privileges. To be anti racist means to be active.

Mercy

1. 1a:  compassion or forbearance (see forbearance 1) shown especially to an offender or to one subject to one's power; also :  lenient or compassionate treatment  b :  imprisonment rather than death imposed as penalty for first-degree murder
2. 2a:  a blessing that is an act of divine favor or compassion 
3. 3: compassionate treatment of those in distress 

Immigrant

Examples of immigrant in a sentence

1. One that immigrates: such as a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence
2. Millions of immigrants came to America from Europe in the 19th century.

School-to-Prison Pipeline

Policies that encourage police presence at schools, harsh tactics including physical restraint, and automatic punishments that result in suspensions and out-of-class time are huge contributors to the pipeline, but the problem is more complex than that.

The school-to-prison pipeline starts (or is best avoided) in the classroom. When combined with zero-tolerance policies, a teacher’s decision to refer students for punishment can mean they are pushed out of the classroom—and much more likely to be introduced into the criminal justice system. (Teaching Tolerance)