Gunderson High School Staff Retreat | Roses Talk Project

Gunderson High School is opening the 2026–27 school year by bringing its entire staff—roughly 100 educators, support staff, and instructional associates—together with San José Unified School District (SJUSD) leadership, including Superintendent Nancy Albarrán, for a day of professional development at Stanford grounded in the Roses Talk Project.

The Roses Talk Project, a partnership between the Stanford Center for Racial Justice and SJUSD, spent 2025 listening directly to Gunderson’s “at-promise” students—those most likely to be suspended, chronically absent, or otherwise underserved, yet who often hold exceptional insight into what would help them succeed. Their voices shaped the Roses Talk San José Unified report, released in February 2026, and informed the district and school’s policy development work this spring through “Stakeholder Workshops”—which included students, parents, teachers, staff, school administrators, and district leaders as well as the Center’s research team. Through a participatory governance, co-design process, these workshops led to the selection of creating a school-wide relationship-building strategy as one of the school’s initial and primary recommendations to implement. A complete set of recommendations from the report can be viewed in the Executive Summary.

School staff will spend the day together examining student experiences from the Roses Talk study, reflecting on their own practices and assumptions, and collaborating on shared, Gunderson-centered relationship strategies to carry into the new school year. Their participation throughout the day in addition to a reflective survey will provide meaningful feedback on the project and shape its next phase of research and policy development.

This convening is co-hosted by Gunderson High School, San José Unified School District, and the Stanford Center for Racial Justice and is supported by a Propel Grant from the Stanford Research Development Office.