About Us

Leading Transformational School Change. Advancing Student Achievement.

Our Purpose

We empower schools to create welcoming and effective communities that enable ALL students to achieve their fullest potential. We work with educators, from paraprofessionals to superintendents, to ensure that schools have the conditions necessary to meet the needs of ALL learners.

SELF continues to do the work to become an anti-racist organization. We see diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, justice, and accessibility (DEIBJA) as integral, ensuring that people from different races, intersectionalities, and identities have a seat at the decision-making table. We actively pursue a culture where all voices are sought and heard and all people experience acceptance and belonging. Our actions and words strive to dismantle white supremacy culture.

Core Values

We believe that everyone, regardless of their identities and learning profile, can achieve their highest potential. We work hard to understand where we hold biases, power, privilege, and unlearn mindsets and behaviors that could compromise that belief.

Belief

  • We do our own work to understand our biases, power and privilege
  • We assume the best in others
  • We are mission centered in both belief and actions

Responsibility

  • We address mindset as well as behaviors in ourselves and others
  • We design systems that create equity for all students
  • We address problems with a solution-oriented approach
  • We use data at the center of decisions
  • We give clear and concise feedback and develop a cycle of feedback that makes space for multiple perspectives
  • We consider language and how we talk about kids
  • We encourage a culture where biases are regularly examined
We understand the deep responsibility we have to ensure that all students have access to equitable, inclusive and anti-bias classroom spaces. We use our own talents and capacities responsibly to take action to that end.
We prioritize collaboration to ensure a stronger sense of belonging. We lead ourselves and others in a way that places all students at the center of our work.

Teamwork

  • We are critical in our work to better meet the needs of the kids
  • We know our own strengths, what we can offer, and where we need support and clearly articulate that to others
  • We make space to reflect, plan, and consider action together
  • We have high expectations for all team members, ensuring that all are keeping mission and values centered
  • We ask questions

Disability Justice

We look to the Principles of Disability Justice as articulated by Sins Invalid and Patty Berne to guide our work as educators transforming a historically ableist American school system. Drawing on the legacy of the disability rights movement of the 1960’s and 70’s and Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality, the disability justice movement centers the idea that we must work together collectively to design structures that meet the needs of all people, rather than seeking to conform all people to the narrowness of what currently exists. 

At SELF, we ground ourselves in the understanding that…

  • Disability is context-dependent, socially constructed, and inherently political 
  • All kids learn when they can access the learning
  • The “average” student does not exist


We understand that ableism is real and pervasive and that our journey towards these principles is lifelong, so we engage in ongoing cycles of self-reflection to check our own biases and do better when we know better. We look to the guidance of disabled thought leaders and organizers such as Alice Wong, Imani Barbarin, Mia Mingus, and Judy Heumann.