Check-In:
Since we live in an age in which silence is not only criminal but suicidal, I have been making as much noise as I can. This quote from James Baldwin is part of the quote that I have hanging in my office. High on the wall, above my stack of books, I can look-up from a meeting I’m having and I can read Baldwin’s words. This poster followed me from my principal’s office where is was also positioned in a place where I could see it from my conference table.
I have been working on my voice for a minute now. I always thought I was quiet because of being the youngest child who mostly grew up alone. However, my former therapist helped me see that I wasn’t alone- at church, camp, and school, I was with other children and adults all the time but no one encouraged or valued my voice. I was muted. That experience of being muted turned me into an adult who opts to listen. An adult who requires concentrated effort and energy in order to speak up in the moment.
I also am working on the purpose and impact of using my voice. It’s easy for me to use my voice by using a hashtag or retweeting a message on social media but what’s the impact? When I learned of the death of Keenan Anderson during an interaction with LAPD, all I wanted to use my voice for was to scream, STOP KILLING US.
So my constant goal is to speak up in the moment. I have the privilege to have a seat at the table and the least I could do with that privilege is say something.
Monica Verra-Tirado is a natural-born confronter and shares how she speaks up in my interview with her. Eve L. Ewing shows the importance of voice when she chronicles the history and experiences of the school closures of 2013 in Chicago Public Schools in Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side.
At the end of the book, Ewing tells us that yes, the voice needs to be used to lift up inequities but we also must voice solutions. “In addition to taking honest account of the many ways school districts get things wrong, we must continuously set our sights on what it would look like to get things right and we must integrate those visions into our rhetoric and our strategy. Audre Lourde said It is our dreams that point the way to freedom,” (p. 165).
How are you deliberating using your voice?
#mondaymotivation: “Find a voice in a whisper.” -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can't Wait
Interview with a Leader of the Global Majority:
Dr. Monica Verra-Tirado is the Chief of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Hillsborough Public Schools, FL. She has been in the role for over 2 years. These comments are the personal reflections of Monica and her experiences, they do not reflect the opinions of her district.
Mary: So how do you speak up without getting the response, "Oh, she's just angry," so that you're heard when you bring an issue to the table?
Monica: Well, I'm working on not being perceived as angry.
Monica: As my loving husband says, "Monica, you are a natural-born confronter." So... (laughs)
Monica: So, for me, it is being prepared with clear facts and information and not being afraid to speak. I would rather speak up than not. Now, here's the thing, no matter what we do, we're told, "This wasn't the right place."
Monica: My response? “Well, then when is it? When and where is the right place?” There's never a right way to talk about race, and in my opinion, that will allow all people to not be offended.
Monica: I'm fortunate that in my current role, the superintendent knew me when he hired me and he knew that I have plain speak, and I'm going to say something. He said, "That's why I hired you, and I want you to say something." So, I try to be careful and diplomatic, but some things just have to be said.
Monica: So, I don't know that there's an easy answer for that. I think we must be... and this is where the heaviness comes…we must bring 100%...200% every single time. I cannot ever misstep, or have a wrong quote or wrong number because if I speak the truth, I better be able to back it up.
Monica: Because as soon as I misstep, the issue will be discredited, "She's just another token person who's angry about whatever."
Monica: And that's the problem and that's the hardship that we face.
You can hear more from Monica 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: Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side by Eve L. Ewing.
About the author(s): Dr. Eve L. Ewing is a poet, professor, and writer born and raised in Chicago, IL.
Book Audience: Anyone in education
Book Overview:
This book focuses on school closings in the historically Black neighborhood of Bronzeville, Chicago in 2013. Ewing is a native Chicagoan, a graduate of Chicago Public Schools (CPS), and a former teacher of one of the schools on the list to be closed. She shares the stories of the students, families, educators, and community of a few schools that were impacted by the year’s closing to give voice to those whose voices were minimized during the process.
Ewing had two guiding questions for her research: Why do people care so much about schools the world deemed to be “failing”? If these institutions are supposedly so worthless, why do people fight to save them? (p6)
It is quickly understood that it wasn’t just about the school. When community members stood up during school closure hearings to give their testimony, they spoke not just of their individual schools but the system of CPS and the city of Chicago. Also, the consistent use of the word ‘family’ to describe the school unit and the tearing apart of the family shows that the closing of the schools was bigger than academics (p. 110).
Community members are fighting for an acknowledgment of past harms, an honest reckoning of present injustice, and an acceptance of their reality- a reality in which a school’s value is about much more than numbers (p. 124)
Ewing always gives us a historical perspective. During many hearings, CPS officials stated that the closing schools were “underresourced and underutilized.” She walks us through how Black people became concentrated in the South Side of Chicago and then how housing and schools have been linked. As public housing complexes began being built in the 1940s enrollment in schools began to rise. As schools in Bronzeville got more crowded, the schools in the white parts of the city sat empty and the district deemed bussing too costly. When the complexes came down due to dangerous conditions so did school enrollment. From 1989 to 2000, Bronzeville school enrollments dipped an average of 20% (p.87). However, the city didn’t leave the Bronzeville schools empty like their white counterparts- they were slated for closure.
A fight for a school is never just about a school. A school means the potential for stability in an unstable world, the potential for agency in the face of powerlessness, and the enactment of one’s own dreams and visions for one’s own children (p47)
Walter H. Dyett High School was named after a music teacher who sparked his students’ love for music for decades, was slated to close but was reopened as a community school. However, although touted as a community effort, the evidence points out otherwise. Community marches, hunger strikes, and responses for a new school idea all went unnoticed but when a new superintendent and alderman with further political ambitions, saw that reopening the school made sense, then the school was spared from closure.
Ewing ends the book by stating that the purpose of her book is not to say that school closures should never happen. However, she hopes that district leaders expand their lens when they approach the process and add these questions:
What is the history that has brought us to this moment?
How can we learn more about that history from those who have lived it?
What does this institution represent for the community closest to it?
What gets to make the decisions here and how do power, race, and identity inform that answer to that question? (p. 159)
This book shows leaders that decisions cannot be made unless we embrace the voice of those most impacted by the problem.
Next Book: Street Data: A Next-Generation Model for Equity, Pedagogy, and School Transformation by Shane Safir and Jamila Dugan. You can find a full list of my book recommendations here.
Resources:
In Trading Baby Steps for Big Equity Leaps the authors make give concrete reasons why we need to stop developing DEI initiatives for the sake of comfort and instead make real, systemic changes.
If you’re looking for more books to read there are lots of lists to help you find your next read: Here are 62 books by women of color being released this year and 102 new African, African-American, Black-Brit, and Caribbean books. There’s also a list of LGBTQ books to look forward to this spring. Finally, a list of independent bookstores to go buy these books. Happy Reading!
Reminder:
My book is available for pre-order!! Publishing day is April 10th. I’m so thankful to have this book out into the world for you all to read. Can’t wait to hear what you all think!
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!