Staff Resources

New Trier provides faculty and staff members with numerous and ongoing professional development opportunities each year on issues around identity, bias, and race. For more information about current professional development offerings, contact Chimille Tillery, Director of Curriculum and Instruction, at tilleryc@nths.net . Examples of recent seminars, workshops, and lunch and learns include:

Beyond Diversity  
This is a two-day seminar designed to help teachers, administrators, support staff, students, and parents understand the impact of race on student learning and investigate the role that racism plays in institutionalized academic achievement disparities.  Participants will engage in a thoughtful, compassionate exploration of race and racism and grapple with how each influences the culture and climate of our school. 

Seeking Educational Equity & Diversity I (SEED I)
Seeking Educational Equity & Diversity! The purpose of SEED I is to create a circle of staff and faculty who will come together to learn, listen, think, debate, and build a stronger more equitable community. SEED provides opportunities for New Trier staff and faculty to become grounded in their own beliefs about the purpose of an equitable community and to start thinking more critically about policies, structures, and practices that are damaging to the goal of educational equity from birth to young adult.  We will journey together to deepen our understanding of ourselves, expand our knowledge of the world, and become leaders in making our educational community more equitable for all people. 

Uncovering Unconscious Bias: Opening the Door to Understanding Differences between Us
This series of workshops is designed to develop understanding and self-awareness of bias and its role in our relationships with others, especially those different from us.  Participants will examine bias with respect to race, religion, culture, gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation.  The first workshop will focus on unconscious bias in the morning and racial bias in the afternoon.  The second workshop will focus on religious and cultural bias, the third on gender and sexual orientation bias.  In order to build a community of trust in which participants can be open and honest in expressing themselves, participants must attend all four workshops . Enrollment is limited to the first 40 people that register.