We know that understanding the community we serve is essential to how we serve it. To fully support our students, we must understand their world, not just the one inside our classrooms, but the one outside our doors. That belief drives King in the Community Day, an immersive, hands-on professional learning experience where our staff spend a part of their summer retreat walking our neighborhoods, visiting key community partners, and deepening their knowledge of the resources available to the families we serve designed to reframe how we see our work, not as something that happens in isolation, but as part of a much larger ecosystem of support and opportunity.
Staff heard directly from community leaders about the work they do, the challenges they navigate, and the ways we can collaborate more effectively as partners.
But King in the Community is also about walking. Our staff spend time physically moving through the neighborhoods where our students live, seeing firsthand the distance some families travel to school, noting where there are sidewalks and where there aren’t, observing where children play, where families gather, and where support is easy, or hard, to access.
Our staff will be asking questions like:
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What does support look like beyond the school day?
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How can we build stronger bridges between school and home?
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Who are the trusted voices in this community and how can we work alongside them?
This day is about listening just as much as it is about learning. By walking the same paths our families walk, our staff gain insight into how location, transportation, safety, and access impact everything from attendance and behavior to engagement and achievement. It also allows us to reflect on how we, as a school, show up not just as educators, but as neighbors.
We are constantly working to be more intentional in how we serve our students and families. We recognize that strong schools are rooted in strong communities and that means showing up, not just in the classroom, but on the block. It means knowing the names of the neighborhood leaders, understanding the daily realities of our families, and seeing firsthand the opportunities and barriers that shape the student experience.
Our students bring their whole selves into our building every day their histories, their identities, their challenges, and their dreams. King in the Community helps ensure that our staff are just as present, just as informed, and just as invested in walking alongside them.
This day reminds us that every home, every business, every organization we visit is part of our larger educational ecosystem.
We are proud to call this community ours. And we’re committed to continuing to learn from it. For more photos, visit us on Facebook!