Picture of the author, Mary Rice-Boothe, at 7 months of age, in a white dress with a basket of white and blue flowers placed next to her.
Check-In:
I’m the youngest of four children. My older siblings are 13, 12, and 8 years older than me. Something happened after I was born. My mother recalls that she often proclaimed, “The novelty has worn off of Mary.” This was when I didn’t live up to the excitement or expectations of my siblings- I was sleeping when they ran home to see me after school or crying or just being a baby. Thankfully, I grew up and evolved to be a little more entertaining and built some staying power but not all novelties have the same fate.
New Year’s Resolutions are another type of novelty. According to the time management firm FranklinCovey “Four out of five people who make New Year’s resolutions will eventually break them. In fact, a third won’t even make it to the end of January.” There are a lot of tips for keeping a resolution- making the goals SMART, personal, and additive versus subtractive are just a few.
As we start a new year, it’s easy to look for the next best thing but as leaders of the global majority, we still haven’t reached our goal of creating equitable school systems from last year or the last few decades. We need novelties with purpose, power, and prosperity.
In my interview with Henry, he talks about using the novelty of a new equity policy to focus on strategy. Carter C. Woodson, who is profiled in Jarvis Givens' Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching, used the novelty of associations (NAACP, Urban League, etc.) to create an inclusive association focused on Black children learning their history.
In a recent Fakequity blog, the author reflects on a talk she recently attended with Justice Yu- Washington’s first Latina and Asian justice, and the first member of the LGBTQ community to serve on the court, and Justice Montoya-Lewis- the second Native American in the nation to serve on a supreme court. “They don’t want to be unicorns, they want rooms to be like them, reflective of the full diversity of Washington. There is no need for unicorns when we have justice.”
Let’s make 2023 the year of more justice and permanent prosperity and less novelty and unicorns.
How are you turning novelties into prosperity?
#mondaymotivation: “If you wait to be unafraid, you will die waiting. The terrors of this world do not sleep. Liberation is for those who tremble.” -Cole Arther Riley, Creator of @BlackLitergies
Interview with a Leader of the Global Majority:
Henry served in the Office of Equity for a large northeast school district for over 5 years. His name has been changed.
Mary: As an equity officer your job is to work across multiple departments so you're literally positioned to go against the grain of how traditional school districts are set up. Your role is to encourage others to work in a different way, break down those silos, and have people work in connection with each other. I'm curious about what that looks and sound like for you.
Henry: It is hard. The district went through three different structures and our office was positioned in three different departments in the past.
Henry: But we now have an equity policy that overlaps with the entire district. It's the main thing we are trying to do, and it’s written in every document, and it's the center of everything and it’s priority number one. So, we're now a separate division of equity instead of being within the division of academics and having a direct report to the superintendent.
Henry: We also focus on strategy. If we create the conditions, then we won't have to always put out so many fires all the time. But the current construct is reactive, reactive, reactive. And we've always been in strategy, strategy. Yes, we'll help react, but if we do this and deepen this, we don't have to ever deal with that in that way again.
Henry: So, the silo, it's hard. Whatever people's interests or reasons are, it's hard to really do what we often say we're going to do.
You can hear more from Henry when “Leading Within Systems of Inequity in Education: A Liberation Guide for Leaders of Color” is published in April 2023. Let me know if you would like to be interviewed and/or recommend someone to be profiled in this section.
What I’m Reading: Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching by Jarvis R. Givens.
About the author(s): Jarvis. R. Givens is an associate professor of education and African & African American studies at Harvard University. He specializes in the history of African American education.
Book Audience: Anyone interested in history and Black education
Book Overview:
“The violent assault on black life begins in the classroom for all students…” (p. 241)
Carter G. Woodson felt this assault personally as he pursued his college degree and as the second Black male to receive his Ph.D. from Harvard after W.E.B. DuBois. In learning about Carter G. Woodson and how he navigated educational institutions in the early 20th century, I could make direct correlations to today. He recognized the importance of curriculum and the importance of teaching true history. His quest to document and uplift the history of Black life in schools is as needed today as it was during his time. While Woodson’s first textbook in 1922 included extensive coverage of fugitive slaves and slave insurrections (p.130), the approved textbooks for classrooms declared that the white race took the lead on the world’s progress so the textbook would focus solely on their historical events (p135).
“The whole educational system as applied to the Negro is wrong.” (p. 194)
It is the approach to leadership that stood out for me the most in Givens’ description of Woodson. When Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH) in 1915, its mission was to “transform the representation of black life and culture in Westen knowledge” (p63). Although the mission and actions of the Association were critical, it was Woodson’s approach to leading the association that is memorable for me and an example for all of us leaders of the global majority. Different from many of the groups of the time, Woodson’s group was inclusive of all classes and backgrounds in the Black community. Teachers, professors, and community members were all equal members. Educator Mary McLeod Bethune was head of the board of directors for 15 years- a role rarely assumed by women at the time. Although the Association started with an interracial board and Woodson accepted funding from white philanthropists, he didn’t concede to their requests of how he ran it. He believed the role of funders was to support Black people support themselves not direct the work. The Association was also independent. It was never tied to any college or university despite the pressure to do so. Finally, Woodson used collaborations and all forms of communication to get the word out about the work of the Association. He collaborated with Black teacher associations and used newspapers, journals, textbooks, and conferences to impact schools and teachers in the US and abroad.
“I believe in the Negro schoolteachers…With the proper training, they are the finest teachers in the world because they have suffered and endured and nothing human is beneath their sympathy” -W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Tragedy of Jim Crow” (1923)
The establishment of Negro History Week and the Negro History Bulletin were two strategies leveraged by Woodson to spread the mission of ASNLH. Woodson’s regular distribution of materials and suggestions for how to lobby for books and curriculum changes gave teachers the skills to approach their pedagogy differently. Issues of the Bulletin also critiqued curriculum being used in schools pointing out inaccuracies of the role of Black Americans in historical events. These strategies also allowed him to critique the formal training being received by Black teachers. He noted that Black teachers were not prepared to teach Black history and often didn’t push outside the confines of the white supremacist teaching they experienced in their formal education.
Jarvis R. Givens defines Fugitive Pedagogy as encapsulating the enslaved and their descendants engaging in the process of thinking the world anew and building an educational protocol with this curricular object at the center (p.230). Woodson embodied this definition as a teacher, professor, mentor, collaborator, and creator of ASNLH.
Overall the book is a good reminder that the fight we are currently experiencing in K12 education is the same as when schools for Black students were formally established during Reconstruction. And although we are still pushing for students to learn about themselves and real history, Woodson gives us a blueprint of how to keep moving forward.
2022 Reading in Review:
My goal was to read 52 books in 2022. I read 76. I intentionally read books by authors of the global majority as I wrote my own book for leaders of the global majority. Particularly, I looked for as many different cultural representations under the umbrella of ‘Asian’ and Native American writers to expand my lens…and my “to read” list is still very long. I’m a big fan of non-fiction, particularly memoirs and essay collections and as a former high school English teacher, I love a good YA book on any day. I recently commiserated with a good friend about our aspirations to be paid to be full-time book readers… someday…until then, let’s see what 2023 brings. Next Book: Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side by Eve L. Ewing. You can find a full list of my book recommendations here.
2023 Brings:
My book is available for pre-order!!! I’m so thankful (and a bit nervous) to have this book out into the world for you all to read.
In connection with the book launch, I will be adding additional 10 posts this year!!! Each post will be a tool that can be used to practice one of the competencies introduced in Leading Within Systems of Inequity in Education: A Liberation Guide for Leaders of Color. There are ten competencies introduced in the book (see below). The first post will support Competency #1- “Demonstrate self-awareness.” The tool will only be available if you are a paid subscriber. If paying is not a possibility for you right now, please let me know. If you aren’t interested in the resources, you will continue to receive the bi-monthly posting as usual. Thank you for your support!
Competencies:
Individual
1. Demonstrate self-awareness.
2. Operate outside your comfort zone.
3. Practice love and rage.
4. Practice self-care.
Interpersonal
5. Engage in authentic dialogue.
6. Attend to relationships.
7. Create a coalition.
Institutional
8. Be patient but persistent.
9. Take a stand in pursuit of a liberatory education system even if it’s unpopular.
10. Act to change systemic racism every day in policies, procedures, and systems.
Resources:
It is goal-setting season. If you like structure, Chris Guillebeau’s blog post provides a structured format to set your goals for the year. If you prefer less structure, Elena Aguilar suggests writing yourself a letter from the future reflecting on your accomplishments.
Some 2023 calendars to ensure you are acknowledging all culturally significant dates in 2023 from Senior Executive and Fakequity hasn’t released their 2023 calendar yet but their 2022 list can get you started.
This article pulls together thoughts from DEI professionals to provide 9 strategies on what you should be measuring and why in your organization’s DEI strategies.
If this is your first time reading, please go back and read my Introductions post.
Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think. If you like it, please share it with your network!