Happy Women's History Month!
Around this time of year, we are usually thinking about filing taxes or watching an upset loss during NCAA's March Madness, but the last days of Women's History Month have been bombarded by the discussion, dissection, and dissemination of a slap during an award's ceremony over the weekend.
This is not a newsletter about pop culture, but the events that happen in our culture sometimes make an intersection with the work that we the IDEA team does at the Center. The A in IDEA stands for access, and the event that occurred at the Oscars had me thinking of another A word: Accountability.
What does accountability look like without harsh punishment? I pose this question because the work that we do often finds ourselves in classrooms with that student. You know, the one who cannot seem to get it together. What I usually witness when authority figures interact with this child either results in detention or worse, suspension and expulsion. During my time as an educator, all I have learned is detention, suspension, and expulsion do not disappear classroom problems, they disappear students. Can there be another form of accountability that does more good than harm? Perhaps the slap can show us how.
As always, please share and forward this newsletter to anyone whom you may think would like to know or would benefit from the work that the IDEA team is doing at the Center.
Fight on!
Anne Areta
