Our campus represents an outstanding model of the idea that vibrant relationships are the foundation of student success. This was accomplished with deliberate and thoughtful actions surrounding our district’s core beliefs. Throughout the summer months and into the fall our community collectively developed our purpose statement which speaks to our culture and to clearly sets the highest of expectations for our community. In collaboration with our schoolwide team, Campus Advisory Council, students, and their families, we desired to create a purpose statement that would carry us into the future while ensuring high levels of learning for all, both students and staff.
We wrote:
“Bear Creek Elementary is an inclusive community who intentionally advocates for a culture of connection through integrity, resilience, courage, and empathy. We are evolving, curious, and diverse solution seekers, who are deliberately making a positive impact and contributions to the local and global community.”
We chose action words to demonstrate our desire to ensure equally high outcomes for all Bear Creek students by removing the predictability of success or failures that currently correlates with any social or cultural factor and interrupting inequitable practices, examining biases, and creating inclusive multicultural school environments for our community.
So to that end at the core of our campus culture everything we do is done with a lens of equity, striving to bring about social awareness and responsibility, which has been our focus as professional learners in our inaugural year. We dug deeply into identity work over the summer and have now shifted our professional learning to culturally responsive teaching using Zaretta Hammond’s Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain. We also made the decision to become a Responsive Classroom school and each staff member eagerly volunteered four days of their time over the summer to learn the Responsive Classroom philosophy, techniques, and strategies which in turn have helped us create the ideal environment for our students, families, and schoolwide team. At the foundation of the Responsive Classroom model is the guiding principle that what we believe to be true about our parents and students comes to fruition which has been a springboard for our work on recognizing implicit bias in traditional educational practices.
We have been very deliberate to use diverse literature that represents as many perspectives, people, and cultures as possible. The first book we read to our students over the summer was “All Are Welcome” which was done so very deliberately to send the strong message that we are a campus of many colors, cultures, and perspectives.
Every Bear Creek action done with keen eye on equity and providing our children with the most diverse lens possible to better prepare them to participate and eventually led in a global society.
Becoming Bear Creek Elementary has been a dream come true.
