Bringing together community members from across the county, the Community Roundtable Series created virtual and in-person spaces for thoughtful conversation, connection and alignment around system-level indicators
A sketchnote summary of the Community Roundtable Series, by See in Colors.
Our education outcomes are fueled by many things.
Per-pupil funding. School climate and discipline. Financial barriers to post-secondary enrollment. Culturally responsive curriculum. Family-centered employment practices.
When students have everything they need to thrive -- when our systems are operating at optimal levels -- we can imagine what each of these indicators looks like. Per-pupil funding is high. Students of all backgrounds and cultures feel safe and welcomed at school. All students with a desire to attend two- or four-year college are able to, without facing significant financial barriers.
Measuring these system-level indicators allows us to look at the big picture — the norms, policies and practices that form our local education environment. And we know that any of these indicators can move the needle on education outcomes. But which one do we start to tackle? What are our community’s greatest needs and wants? Where is there already synergy or movement?
In December, community members and advocates from across the county gathered at a Community Roundtable Series to tackle just those questions -- and begin the process of aligning around a select set of systems indicators.
“That was most important for us to figure out, because if we as backbone staff want to support co-developing community solutions that address some of these indicators, then we want them to be indicators that community has chosen,” said Sylvia Ellington, Collaborative Action Facilitator for Alamance Achieves. “You’re going to be more willing to take that up if it’s about something you think is important.”
The roundtable conversations are the first iteration of a series that aims to bring together community members, advocates and field experts to identify priorities and areas for alignment.
The series lifted up several themes, including:
We have great teachers who are dedicated and engaged
Minority-focused punishment fuels drop out and underperformance
In a perfect world, we would have: smaller class sizes, diverse and well-trained staff, transportation and money for teachers
We need to build partnerships between organizations and schools
We need to address lingering issues and trauma of parents’ school experiences
See In Colors, a graphic artist, visualized these themes as sketchnotes. The visual representations help capture community voice and hold the Alamance Achieves partnership, as a whole, accountable to what they said. The visuals also enable staff to present themes that arose from the roundtables back to our community and partners in a creative and meaningful way -- giving much more context than a traditional report.
A sketchnote summary of the educator roundtables, by See In colors
Responding to communIty, changing course
The series is part of a larger Community Voice Project -- a multi-year project to envision education equity with listening sessions, while also centering healing and restorative practices. The project is fueled by a co-development methodology, where community members, grassroots leaders and parents work alongside organizational field experts to design, implement, and launch efforts to address themes and structural inequities that arise from the listening sessions.
The roundtables were not a part of the original plan. They were actually the result of a major pivot that happened when partners came to the table to plan the listening sessions. Together, they realized that many other community engagement initiatives were happening at the same time.
Partners had a tough decision: should we move forward with the listening sessions, potentially adding an extra burden to community members who are being asked to share their experiences and stories? And is there a way we can align efforts in the future?
In order to be responsive to community, the team decided to pause the listening sessions -- and the idea for the roundtables was formed.
“In the process of pausing, we realized that the listening sessions had several purposes,” said Lucia Lozano Robledo, Elon Year of Service Fellow at Alamance Achieves. “It was to gather community voice around education equity, and also to guide our internal priorities for the new year.”
Although not part of the original plan, the roundtables accomplishes a primary goal of the Community Voice Project: to create a shared list of systems indicators that could guide the work of Alamance Achieves.
“We decided to move forward with the roundtables as a way to begin having those community conversations on a smaller scale, to pilot what that would look like, and also because we wanted people to begin prioritizing some of those systems indicators,” Sylvia said. “We moved forward because we knew it would drive some of our internal work.”
Creating Welcoming Spaces
In all, there were eight roundtables – two each for parents and caregivers; educators; literacy advocates; and partners on the Beyond the Classroom team, a group of local leaders who provide services for students outside of school time. And each group brought a different lens to the discussion.
“We tried to create affinity within the group by organizing this based on people’s interest,” Lucia said. So when participants entered the space, they knew that other folks likely cared about the same things they cared about.
This created opportunities to deepen the conversation quickly.
“We wanted it to be more of a dialogue versus Lucia and I talking at people. Some of the sessions were a bit smaller, with one or two other people talking,” Sylvia said. “There was a richness of conversation we could have going back and forth – it was really more of a discussion, and really fit into what we wanted that space to be, which was dialogue.”
Using a Systems Lens
Although each group brought a different set of perspectives and experiences to the table, there was one common theme: a focus on the practices and policies that fuel our outcomes.
“We tried to frame the conversation using a systems lens,” Lucia said. “So trying not to focus on individual or student-level performances, but how can we really begin to hold the systems accountable.”
Thinking about our outcomes through a systems lens can be difficult — it’s often easier to think about individual actions or programs as the causes of our outcomes.
By zooming out to see the larger picture — the policies, practices and systems at work — we can unearth structural barriers or systemic inequities that can lead to unfavorable cradle-to-career outcomes.
“Thinking on a systems level is a hard concept to wrap your brain around,” Sylvia said. As facilitators, “we tried to set that context and weave it throughout the conversation. We really tried to set the scene for them about why we were asking them to prioritize systems indicators and how that changes the way that we’re developing solutions.”
Measuring systems indicators is a shift from how we typically measure academic outcomes — test scores, achievement gaps, benchmarks. By looking at the policies that create or exacerbate those outcomes, we can pinpoint and change practices so that all students thrive.
“How we define problems shapes how we create solutions,” Lucia said.
This set of systems indicators was identified by StriveTogether, the national collective impact initiative that Alamance Achieves is part of. These indicators have been shown to impact outcomes nationwide, and communities across the country are aligning around them.
Cradle-to-career systems indicators from StriveTogether.
What’s Next?
So what’s next for the roundtables?
First, a pause -- a moment of intentional reflection, learning and relationship-building.
“One of the biggest lessons coming out of the process and piloting of roundtables was relationship-building,” Lucia said. “We want to foster partner alignment to do things together, to do less and at the same time do better. We learned how much more work it actually takes to build the relationships to the degree that will allow for that alignment.”
But there will be more to come.
“I think I was both surprised and not surprised that people thought this was a much-needed space,” Sylvia said.
Participants had ideas for how to take the roundtables into other spaces.
“For example, one of the teachers brought up the idea of creating a group that meets frequently to have conversations like this,” Sylvia said. “How can we go to places where people are already gathered and continue to have this conversation?”
A core value of the backbone staff is to only ask of partners things that the staff is also willing to do. Leaning into this value meant changing plans in response to new information. It meant scaling down the listening sessions into smaller dialogues. And it meant learning from the experience in order to scale the practice to be stronger and better.
“There was a desire to be a part of a conversation like this, thinking about action but also thinking about systems,” Sylvia said. “Community is beginning to realize we’re having all these conversations, but nothing is happening and that’s really frustrating. Now community is becoming more comfortable with demanding to know what’s happening next, or what are we doing with this information. What are we doing with this, and how are we making this different from every other conversation that’s happening? Hearing the interest and enthusiasm was refreshing, but then how do we use that momentum now and get people energized to actually do something?”
