The Arts Office provides funding, curricula, and training to NYC public school arts teachers. One of its key initiatives is to implement a citywide program promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and Social-Emotional Learning (SEL). Our arts teachers collaborate with Dr. Gholdy Muhammad’s HILL Pedagogies and ArtsConnection to create culturally responsive education for all students.

Through this work, our teachers develop unit plans that foster students’ identity, elicit intellectual discourse, address the history of inequity, and—most importantly—bring joy through the arts. In the process, our teachers have also rekindled the joy of their own practice.

I specifically represent the South Brooklyn and Staten Island region. Alongside the Brooklyn Borough Arts President, I co-lead 17 DEI facilitators in training 120 teachers to analyze data and develop strategies that advance DEI. Over the past three years, our work has focused on cultivating student identity, belonging, and agency. Additionally, our primary programming goal is to improve teacher retention by organizing more engaging events and opportunities for teacher recognition. These efforts have increased enrollment by 5%.

I co-lead the DEI intervisitation committee, which provides teachers with the opportunity to observe one another and demonstrate best practices. I host intervisitations for the South Brooklyn and Staten Island region, using artist-centered feedback protocols to ensure that teachers' instructional goals are observed, supported, and refined. This year, our programming focused on two demographics that our survey data identified as needing the most instructional support: elementary and special education teachers. After nearly a year of intervisitations targeting these specialists, the outcomes have been positive— surveys indicate high levels of satisfaction with instructional guidance and community engagement.