List of 9 items.

• CURRICULUM

  We have been re-examining our curriculum to incorporate a social justice lens, de-center Anglo-European voices, and elevate all voices. This work has included a race and representation audit in our English and History Departments. Additionally, we created a new interdisciplinary course on social justice that ran in the Spring of 2022. See below for detailed progress by department. 
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  English

  This year, the English Department has launched several new courses that align with  department's ongoing DEI goals and initiatives. Staring Winter of 2022 and continuing in Spring 2023, the Department will work with Quinnipiac University Professor Jennifer Dauphinais to explore pedagogical responsibilities in teaching complex and dynamic contentious literature. To prepare, teachers read from Alex Shevrin Venet's Equity-Centered Trauma-Informed Education this summer. Our current work builds off of recent efforts to include a broad range of voices in the English curriculum, including:

  • In spring 2021, New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) and National History Teacher of the Year Nataliya Braginsky led the English Department through three sessions on culturally relevant pedagogy. 
  • In summer 2021, groups of teachers worked on culturally relevant teaching materials for Never Let Me Go and Lord of the Flies (English 9) and Sula (English 10) in summer 2021. Those materials were shared with the rest of the Department for use during the 2021-2022 academic year. 
  • Over the past two summers, teachers have also read from Grading for Equity and The Cambridge Companions to Shakespeare and Race, American Literature and the Environment, The Postcolonial Novel, and Queer Studies.

   

  History

  Recently, the History department has spent considerable time collaborating with an educational consultant, Ben Justice from Rutgers University, who has offered guidance on the following actions:

  • Coming to consensus on departmental goals for our graduates that are in line with both the Hopkins school mission and the DEI goals
  • Evaluating our existing core courses in grades 7-12 with respect to these departmental goals
  • Exploring and interrogating curricular proposals from department members
  • Conducting three student surveys to inform research and next steps
  • Providing research on topics such as History standards and other schools’ programming (locally and nationally), as well as activities that enable students to share their historical work beyond Hopkins. 

  In addition to wrapping up and reviewing our research and benchmarking work, our main goal for 2022-2023 is to reformulate our core high-school curriculum.  In reimagining our high-school program, we seek to craft a program with longevity, ensuring that the History program fits in optimally to the school’s long-term vision for the academic program and curriculum. 
  
  

  Science

  The Science Department has participated in a Culturally Responsive self-assessment to determine areas for growth and worked in collaborative groups throughout the 2021-2022 school year. These teams were both content-specific as well as interdepartmental in order to gain as much perspective on our practices, have opportunities to reflect and support one another, as well as make any necessary changes to further our goals. 
  
  

  Office of Equity and Community
  A course on social justice ran in the Spring of 2022. It was available for Grades 10–12 and was organized and facilitated by the Office of Equity and Community (OEC).
  
  

• FINANCIAL AID

  For the 2022–2023 school year, we will support $6 million in aid, and will aim to increase that aid each year moving forward.

• SOCIAL JUSTICE FUND

  In 2022, we established a Fund for Social Justice, which provides annual grants to projects in four broad categories: student research, activism and internships, campus-wide events and speakers, and long-term programs with community partners.
  
  The advancement team will continue to define the various buckets of this fund for engagement and fundraising. 
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  The advancement team will be visioning for the Fund for Social Justice to gain clarity on the various buckets for engagement and fundraising.

• HOPKINS’ HISTORY

  After thorough research scouring many historical societies and libraries, Hopkins obtained clearer information surrounding the founding of the School, including the role slavery played in that history and the relationship between the School’s founders and the area’s Native population. At this juncture, we will connect with local historians in order to write a comprehensive and multi-lens timeline of events to contextualize our School’s history. Doing so will honor and acknowledge the many perspectives and lived experiences at the time, as well as recognize that Hopkin’s history lives within a larger picture that informs, impacts, and influences the school, its culture, and its community. 

• ALUM AFFINITY GROUPS

  With the ongoing slow flow of the pandemic the past couple of years and a transition of new leadership, we look forward to reinvigorating the vibrant and robust Hopkins Black Alum Network (HBAN) programming. The Chairs for 2022-2023 are Alycia Powell ‘03 and Phil Stanley ‘81.

  
  

  During the 2022 Alum Reunion Weekend, we launched our first-ever Alum of Color and LGBTQ+ social hours, a tradition we look to continue in years to come. Relatedly, we aim to host zoom meetings for all Alum Affinity Groups throughout the school year to build connection, create networks, and strengthen and grow our community.

• COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

  The pandemic, over the past couple of years, has proved a great challenge by limiting or completely restricting access to neighboring schools. As such, our Director of Community Engagement is excited to continue previous goals as listed below: 
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  • We have developed a partnership with Lincoln Bassett School which will include work with Pathfinder and Admissions. In the future, this partnership will also include Hopkins faculty working alongside Lincoln Bassett faculty. 
  • Hopkins Read and Readiness Scholars (2) will be selected from a group of 6th-grade students from Lincoln Bassett and Wexler Grant. 
  • This year's Book Buddyz, a book club for 4th and 5th grade African American and Latino boys, will take place at both Lincoln Bassett and Beecher Schools.

  The 2022-2023 school year includes United Way of Greater New Haven playing a more active role and partnership with Hopkins by working with various schools (mostly Dr. Reginald Mayo Early Learning Center), community homelessness, and food insecurity.

• PATHFINDER

  We will expand Pathfinder, our after-school and summer outreach and educational enrichment program focused in New Haven and Bridgeport, so we can broaden our impact on the children in the greater New Haven area. The four-year tuition-free program currently serves 120 students. We will devise a plan to fund a minimum of 200 students within five-years. 
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  • Data collection for the After-School and Summer Program curricular alignments have continued and are nearing completion. However, data analysis is still in a preliminary stage.
  • Under the stewardship of our new director of admissions, we have strengthened relationships with guidance counselors around the city, and are recruiting a new class of incredible students to join the program. Due to the team's herculean efforts despite the difficulties of remote recruiting, applications for the program are already back at pre-pandemic levels.
  • In preparation for our expansion, Pathfinder has begun examining its After-School and Summer Program curricula with an eye to increasing student learning by horizontal and vertical alignment of student coursework across the four years of the program. These efforts have included a curricular census, evaluating our curricula’s relationship to state standards, and rearranging the order of courses across the grade levels. 
  • The program has also engaged our community partners in the New Haven public schools, strengthening relationships with guidance counselors across the city, streamlining our admissions processes, and reevaluating our recruitment strategies and catchment area. The program has also developed a logistical strategy for increasing the number of students in the program to 200 over four recruitment cycles once funding is available.

  • Additionally, we have partnered with the Director of Community Engagement to strengthen our partnerships at targeted schools and develop relationships with non-school organizations as we think about ways to improve how we serve students even as we grow.

• PARENT & FAMILY ENGAGEMENT

  During the 2021-22 school year, we founded the DEIJ Parent Council as a Subcommittee of the Hopkins Parent Association (HPA) in an effort to support our parent and family community around identity, culture, inclusion, and belonging. The co-chairs are Khalilah Brown-Dean P’26 , Miriam Gohara P’24 P’26, and Eliza Halsey ‘96, P’25 P’28. Be on the look out for upcoming events and programming. If you’d like to participate in the Council, please email Rebecca Flores Harper at bharper@hopkins.edu 

• DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION + SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING (DEISEL)

  Newest Initiative: We will examine the particular mental health needs of our students of color and create tangible structures to support them.
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  • At the beginning of the summer, the School Counselor and  Director of Equity and Community ran professional development workshops on DEISEL for a group of faculty as a pilot program which we aim to replicate this upcoming school year and beyond. 
  • The Teacher Enrichment Cohort, which runs throughout the school year, will focus on DEISEL as its main theme, similarly to how it focused on Culturally Responsive Teaching practices in previous years.