K-12 education
Being the Messenger: Understanding Diversity and Culture in the Classroom, a full day for the adults in your buildings, so every child can do and be their best. Also convocation keynotes, leadership work on discipline and achievement data, and certification for your own facilitators.
What the work addresses
Communities with low educational attainment, chronic unemployment, high poverty, and crime take a toll on a child's ability to perform in school. Often the environment shows up as behavior that has traditionally been read as an unwillingness to learn, and the student ends up with referrals, suspensions, or expulsions because the adults could not relate to the population they were asked to serve. That interferes with the trust and rapport a child needs before any learning happens.
Dr. Starks is a criminologist, so he also knows where that path can lead. Part of the day is the school's own environment: how discipline is handled in the building, and what it would take to break the school-to-prison pipeline.
Students learn best when they know their teachers care. Participants leave with a renewed sense of purpose and with strategies, ideas, and procedures they can put to work the next morning, with particular attention to the children most in danger of falling through the cracks.
Participants learn
- The impact a student's identity has on their educational experience
- How the lens through which society sees individuals shapes a student's journey
- How the culture of a group is essential to its identity and how it is used to navigate life
- How diversity is so much more than race, class, and gender
- How to teach students that differences are our strengths
- How to teach students to treat themselves and others in high regard
- How identity, culture, and diversity overlap into respect for valuing life
- How to disentangle the stereotypes, including lowered standards dressed up as culturally responsive teaching
- The value of two types of education, formal and informal
- How to use your own identity as a vehicle for change
The Education Edition
The full-day training is the Education Edition of the Be The Messenger Framework, the first application of the Framework built for one field. Its curriculum, its manual, and its facilitator certification live at Be The Messenger.
Keep it going
Districts that want the work to continue after the visit can certify their own staff as facilitators through Be The Messenger and the Center for Teacher Effectiveness.
His work with schools and districts
Consulting, keynotes, and trainings for districts, schools, and the programs that train K-12 teachers.
- 2023Orangeburg County School District, South Carolina
Being the Messenger: Cultural Competency in Orangeburg County School District, a training series for teachers and staff with homework between the sessions.
- June 2022Falmouth High School, Falmouth, Massachusetts
"What does Juneteenth Mean to a High School Student."
- 2019 to 2020Red Clay Consolidated School District, Delaware
Consulting and training for the district, including the session "The Isms," on bias, privilege, and how each one shows up in a school.
- 2015 to 2016Lynchburg City Schools, Virginia
Consultant to the district on the disproportionate representation of minority students: overrepresented in discipline, underrepresented in the gifted program. He helped the district use its own data to find root causes and put changes in place.
- December 2016Virginia Space Grant Consortium, IN-STEP Program
Being the Messenger: Understanding Diversity and Culture in the Classroom, for teachers.
- 2016Center for Teacher Effectiveness
Certified Time To Teach trainer, the classroom management program.
- October 2015Portland Teachers Program, Portland Community College
Being the Messenger: Diversity and Culture in the Classroom, for about 50 K-12 educators.
- August 2015NASA Space Grant Consortium, Old Dominion University
A two-part Being the Messenger training for about 20 K-12 educators.
- March 30, 2015Lynchburg City Schools Spring Convocation
Keynote for the district's staff. Watch it on the home page.
- March 2012Richland School District One, South Carolina
Speaker at the district's Closing the Achievement Gap Conference.
- July 2011Eastside Charter High School, Wilmington, Delaware
Workshop, "Student Centered Approaches to Learning."
Organizations he has worked with
- Falmouth High School, Massachusetts
- Eastside Charter High School, Delaware
His work with these organizations includes consulting, speaking, training, academic and staff positions, leadership roles, research collaborations, and community service. A name on this list is not an endorsement.
From district leaders
"He has been helping us to use data to identify core causes of some of our needs and establish ways to implement change. While he has focused on the needs we identify with education, he also wants to ensure that our work links to our community and that our change is social in addition to educational. Dr. Starks is a critical friend and advocate for students who is an important partner in our work to help each student be successful."
"His 'Being the Messenger' course including a presentation and curriculum that helped teachers learn new content, complete a self-reflection, and develop practical and effective strategies that they can immediately implement in the classroom."
"He is equally effective in small group interactions and in addressing a meeting or convention."
How schools and districts work with him
-
Convocation keynotes
Back-to-school and all-staff daysBe The Messenger, or From Survival to The Messenger, shaped to your staff and the year ahead.
-
The full-day training
The Education EditionOne full day for teachers, administrators, coaches, and support staff, delivered by Dr. Starks or by a facilitator he certified.
-
Leadership and implementation
District leadership teamsA multi-day sequence for a leadership team working on discipline and achievement data, the way he worked with Lynchburg City Schools.
-
Your own facilitators
Facilitator certificationStaff certified to deliver the training in your own buildings, so the work continues after the visit.
One Framework, applied to schools and districts
Every engagement is built on the Be The Messenger Framework: four constructs, and the Messenger Method that runs underneath them. The Framework stays the same from one field to the next. What changes is how it is applied to the specific challenges, culture, professional responsibilities, and institutional conditions of the people in the room.
- IdentityWho you are
- CultureWhere you come from
- DiversityWhat connects us
- RespectHow you show up
The Messenger Method: Self-Reflection, Self-Awareness, and Self-Consciousness.
Request the training for your district
Tell us how many people, which buildings, and when. We will come back with options for Dr. Starks or a certified facilitator.
- Your request goes to Dr. Starks' office.
- We reply with availability and set up a short call to shape the engagement.
- You get a proposal, a W-9, and anything else your district business office needs.
Rather talk first? Book a training consultation or a keynote and speaking call.
Prefer email or phone? info@brianchadstarks.com or 434-329-9002.