I wanted to make sure that when I finally unzipped The Pencil Case, it held something worth keeping such as tools you’ll actually use, reflections that feel honest, questions that center what matters most and ideas that actually move the work.

I’m Ashley Tierra Hendricks, former teacher, former principal, and now the person leaders call when their equity strategy isn’t showing up in classrooms. I started Equidigm because I’ve seen what happens when systems don’t work, and I’m committed to helping leaders build ones that actually support the teaching and learning they believe in.

This newsletter is my way of sharing what we’re seeing, what we’re building, and what leaders in real schools can use right now.

Welcome to The Pencil Case.

Who We Are & What We Believe

There’s a single truth that my team and I keep coming back to:

If your instructional system keeps producing inequities in student outcomes, it was designed to. Period.

At Equidigm, we help leaders move from believing in equity to realizing it through instructional change. We don’t do quick fixes because our approach lives in systems and structures. We are an 8-person team of practitioners with a history of effective classroom instruction, school and district leadership experience, and expertise around how equity becomes operationalized through systems. Since 2024, we’ve impacted over 10,000 young people across the nation with a primary concentration in New England and an intentional commitment to communities of color.

We invest in structural change, and we’re excited to dive into what that looks like through this newsletter series!

An Invitation to Tighten Practice

Most leaders don’t set out to build inequitable systems that unfairly impact children who are historically furthest from opportunity.

Despite that, a lot of the instructional systems we see are producing exactly what they were designed to produce. You may not have intended to create a system that produces inequities in student learning, but why is it happening anyway?

That’s what we’re digging into in our upcoming FREE webinar on Sunday, May 31st at 4:30PM EST:

👉 Why Your Instructional System Is Inequitable (and How to Fix It)
Registration Coming Soon! Zoom Link Here.

👉 Why Your Instructional System Is Inequitable (and How to Fix It)
Registration Coming Soon! Zoom Link Here.

What We’re Lifting Up

On March 13th, we brought a group of school and system leaders together for our inaugural Spring Systems Summit in Dedham, Massachusetts. The goal was clarity, not inspiration… and, chile, we had A TIME!

Across the day, leaders stepped back from the urgency of their roles and asked a harder question:

Not what’s written in the plan.
Not what we hope is happening.
But for real, for real: What’s consistently showing up across classrooms?

What surfaced wasn’t surprising, but it was clarifying:

By the end of the Summit, teams were leaving with sharper understanding of what needs to change; and where to start. We’ll be building on this work in the months ahead.

If you’re thinking about how to move your system from intention to coherence…

👉Book an Intro Call with Me here.

One Tool to Measure Equity

One of the hardest shifts for leaders is moving from asking,
“Are we working hard enough?” to asking, “Is our system designed equitably enough?”

At the Spring Systems Summit, we used a Structural Planning Worksheet (get a copy here!) to help leaders do exactly that. The tool is designed to have you step back and measure not just outcomes, but the design of the system itself because equity lives in structure.

When you hold a ruler up to one of your adult learning structures, you’re asking if the structure is clear, consistent, aligned, and fair.

We’ll be sharing more tools like this in the months ahead.

Thanks for opening The Pencil Case. Remember to mark this email address as safe so that you receive future communications with ease.

If this resonated, email Ashley to share why and send it to another leader who’s trying to make sense of their system.

~ Ashley 🍎

[email protected]