Black and white picture of the smiling, glasses-wearing, hand on her right hip author wearing a white t-shirt with the words “Make Every Month Black History Month” in Black letters
Check-In:
It’s Black History Month and I’m not sure how I feel about it. Growing up my schools ignored the month but as I got into high school, I began having my own Black history years. It began with Zora Neale Hurston’s Dust Tracks On A Road which lead me to the Autobiography of Malcolm X, The Bluest Eye, and many more…When I got to college, I took as many Black Studies classes as my schedule allowed. I started unpeeling that onion of whiteness that had been seeping into me since entering the school system at 5 years of age.
When I recently took a deep dive into Carter G. Woodson, the creator of Black History Week, I had a deep appreciation of the goal and intention of the week. Woodson’s original intention was to ensure that Black children knew their own history and the power of liberation. Today, being one of the shortest months of the year, having to share it with Valentine’s Day, Presidents Day, etc., and the over-commercialization of the month all made me feel like the month wasn’t for us anymore.
In the past two weeks, we have seen Florida deny the teaching of AP African-American History, articles talking about anti-Blackness in DEI, and the death of Tyre Nichols after being brutally beaten by Black Memphis police officers (no linked article here because I will NOT post the video footage and unfortunately most articles include it). Dr. Christpher Emdin does an excellent job of connecting all of these events in this LinkedIn post.
These stories tell me that we need to take this month and every month to dismantle and create a new system that is centered on the liberation of Black and Brown folx. These stories emphasize that the history of Black people is not known by our own people and is still not valued by others decades after Woodson. These stories emphasize that whiteness is not about being white. It’s about embodying the systems and structures that uphold the dominant culture and taking on the role of the oppressor and plenty of Black and Brown folks do this for a living.
In my interview with Shakira and in Street Data: A Next-Generation Model for Equity, Pedagogy, and School Transformation by Shane Safir and Jamila Dugan, they all speak about how much history is in the stories, words, and experiences of the children in our classrooms and we need to hear, honor and center the history that has been placed in the margins.
What history do you need to know to fully show up for the present?
#mondaymotivation: “What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice.” ― Carter G. Woodson
Interview with a Leader of the Global Majority:
Dr. Shakira Holt is the District Equity Officer for Centinela Valley Unified High School District, CA. She has been in the role for 3 years. These comments are the personal reflections of Shakira and her experiences, they do not reflect the opinions of her district.
Mary: Are there any particular challenges that you have experienced?
Shakira: What happens a lot is a matter of performance. Doing stuff to look like you're on the right side of history, or on at least the popular side of things.
Shakira: That's where things tend to fall apart. That's where I'm looking. I'm looking at the changes being made and I'm wondering [what they mean for the future of equity work in this district].
Mary: When you hear and see folks who are more in a performative space than an actual wanting to do the workspace, how do you respond to that?
Shakira: Data. Use the best tools at your disposal to make sense of it and to plan activities based on what you find out, and what you discover.
Mary: What have you come up with in regard to looking at your data?
Shakira: There are questionnaires. Each year now, our students fill out this survey about how welcoming they find teachers. Are they experiencing teacher bias? So, we have data from that, that we use. We have of course all the test scores and that kind of data, the dashboard data. We have other questionnaires that we ourselves made up internally to give to students.
Shakira: We also did a range of focus groups with all the different populations of students. We were able to get a bunch of data and student voice to let us know exactly what they were experiencing in our district as 15, 16, and 17-year-olds. And seeing where we were supporting them, where we were letting them down, what they wished, what they wanted more of, and what they needed less of. Again, we're just getting ready to make that data widely available to teachers. But what we have done is in training and things, we have taken direct quotes from our students about these different areas and put them on slides and just had teachers come face to face with that student voice. That has been impactful. Teachers respond like, "Oh, wow." Because it's hard to argue with when it's a student quote. This was their experience.
You can hear more from Shakira 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: Street Data: A Next-Generation Model for Equity, Pedagogy, and School Transformation by Shane Safir and Jamila Dugan.
About the author(s): Shane Safir and Jamilar Dugan are both former school leaders who currently provide coaching and professional learning to districts across the country.
Book Audience: Primarily teachers, coaches, and principals
Book Overview:
Street data is the qualitative and experiential data that emerges at eye level and at lower frequencies when we train our brains to discern it. Street data is asset-based, building on the tenets of culturally responsive education by helping educators look for what’s right in our students, schools, and communities instead of seeking out what’s wrong…Street-level data are ubiquitous, offering deep insight into students’ and educator experience (p2)
I can tell you that when I first saw the title of this book- I wasn’t a fan. Thankfully, the foreword by Dr. Christopher Emdin quickly flips the concept of “street” on its head and shows beauty and liberation with the use of the word in a way that only he can.
The book is broken down into four parts. I will give some highlights from each section.
Part 1: Why Street Data, Why Now?
Dugan’s chapter on Equity Traps and Tropes is necessary. Her list of 8 ways that the mechanisms used to generate change are leading directly to the wrong outcomes. From “equity warrior” to “navel-gazing equity” to “tokenizing equity” I have seen it and/or participated in it all. This chapter is a great assessment tool to ensure your approach will lead to real outcomes.
Part 2: Choose the Margins
This section introduces us to the Equity Transformation Cycle (p.74). This improvement cycle that is built for short 6-8 week cycles centers on street data. Safir introduces four mindsets necessary for change: the “mindset of radical inclusion”; “mindset of curiosity”; “mindset of creativity” and “mindset of courage.” The questions she provides and explicit examples kept me focused on ensuring the voice of students and families are central to an improvement cycle. One quote to emphasize this approach is when she’s talking about the mindset of creativity. “The reimagine phase is about inquiry with those at the margins, not inquiry for, which can default into a dangerous type of paternalism or white saviorism,” (p. 89).
Part 3: Deepen the Learning
This section focuses on the pedagogy of voice. Safir defines pedagogy of voice as a pedagogy that emerges at the intersection of critical pedagogy and culturally responsive education, offering an instructional technology and a way of being that shifts the locus of learning and power to the student’s voice. A pedagogy of voice transcends numbers and metrics to create street-level learning experiences that foster healing, cognitive growth, and agency.
For leaders of the global majority, chapter 6 focuses on coherence. It introduces the idea of a profile of a graduate, performance-based assessment system as a way to build coherence and redefine success. Both strategies are also a way to engage every educator, student, parent, and caregiver. I have seen many districts create profiles in recent years but the process and the list of considerations (p. 128) offered here are helpful self-assessments.
Part 4: Transform the Culture
The connective tissue for all of this work is an antiracist, anti-bais adult culture in which educators develop the will, skill, vulnerability, and courage to uproot systemic racism and deep-rooted biases (p. 198).
This final section focuses on the leader and the role they play in creating a new culture. Safir gives structures such as co-generative dialogues and equity learning walks as ways to embrace vulnerability. The final stance is warm demander. The warm demander framework has 3 components: 1. show strength, 2. listen and affirm, and 3. challenge and offer a choice.
Overall, this book compiles research and ideas from a variety of sources to reimagine how educators use data to support students. It is FULL of frameworks, question guides, and tools that can be used by teachers, coaches, and principals as a way to center the voices on the margins.
Next Book: Unwrapped: The Pursuit of Justice for Women Educators by Kendra Washington-Bass and Kelly Peaks Horner. You can find a full list of my book recommendations here. Please note that I am an affiliate with Bookshop.org and receive compensation for your purchase when you use the links provided.
Resources:
From Anti-Racism Daily: In a new report, “Strangers at Home: The Asian and Asian American Professional Experience.” two-thirds of AAPI professionals stated that ongoing violence against their communities has negatively affected their mental health. USA Today
The Othering & Belonging Institute produced a clear, short video explaining the difference between interpersonal, institutional, systemic, and structural racism: VIDEO: Structural Racism Explained - Video & Teaching Guide
The Anti-Racism Newsletter created by Sharon Hurley Hall is a must-read. One of her latest posts is a breakdown of 10 articles to read from January 2023.
Their Children Are Their Retirement Plans this NY Times article by Mike Dang focuses on East Asian Immigrants but as noted in the article many of us in the global majority are having similar experiences with our parents.
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!