Issue 2: Stuck
Verb. Unable to move from a particular position or place, or unable to change a situation
Photo of a black car stuck in mud. Photo by Aubrey Odom-Mabey on Unsplash
Check-In:
It’s funny that ‘stuck’ would come after ‘liberation’ but here we are….
As soon as I saw the title of Decoteau Irby’s new book, Stuck Improving, it resonated with me. When working with school districts, I often leverage the sayings of Luis Versalles, who warns to not get caught in ‘random acts of equity’ and Lisa Williams who speaks about just ‘tinkering on the edges of equity.’ It is easy to get stuck in these places. It’s scary when it becomes comfortable and familiar. When we get caught in the ‘busy’- when we are in a constant state of improvement, but nothing is improving.
I’m thankful for my conversation with Marco Ibarra which is excerpted below where he shares his own journey to racial consciousness and the impact on his leadership. I’m thankful for Dr. Irby’s work where he describes the importance of ‘racial self-talk.’
It is these connections, conversations, and shared practices that helped me take a step back, engage in my own racial self-talk and notice that being stuck was not where I wanted to be and needed to do something different to see change. I hope it does the same for you.
Some #mondaymovitation for you:
“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me the most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.” -James Baldwin
Profile of a Leader of the Global Majority:
Marco Ibarra is beginning his seventh year as the Principal of Alliance Jack Gerba Middle School located in the Watts area of Los Angeles.
Mary: Tell me about what you've learned and unlearned about your identity since taking on the principal role?
Marco: I learned that assimilation impacted my identity far greater than I understood. I think that especially being Latino, assimilation sometimes creates a situation where you forget that you're Latino and you just assume that everyone's just viewing you the same way. So, you become color blind.
Marco: I found that you can cause harm regardless of your color. And as a Latino I was blinded to the harm I was causing and the racist practices I was implementing.
Mary: How has your approach changed since this unlearning?
Marco: I started living by my values and my values are love and courage.
Mary: A lot of the leaders I have spoken to have spoken about love as a core value. What does love look like and sound like to you?
Marco: Love is a decision. It's not a feeling. It could feel good, but feelings come and go. I think love is a commitment that is beyond this moment. It is a commitment to student success, commitment to equity is what I consider love. And so, it's a commitment that I need to adhere to. When I push myself to assess those decisions - it is making a positive impact on people? Is this not making a positive impact on people? And sometimes something that may feel negative is positive. So, raising awareness of systemic racism with white staff, it made me feel ugly, but it's a good thing. That's love.
Mary: How do you feel like the rest your leadership team have been impacted by your changed approach?
Marco: There's a level of trust. And, and it's interesting because when you reach a level of vulnerability where you are processing and becoming at peace with yourself, one of the things that starts happening, you start trusting yourself more. There's a huge impact on the people around you when, when they feel like you trust them.
Marco: I was taught my whole life, “hard work, hard work, hard work, hard work”. And if you're not working hard, there's something wrong and it creates workaholism and it's a problem. The less of a workaholic I've been, the better the school has been.
Mary: How has the past few years of the pandemic, racial reckoning, and political backlash impacted you and your leadership?
Marco: I continue to push myself to live by my values. I learned from Brené Brown that if you live by your values, you can't go wrong with yourself. When I live by my values, regardless of what happens, I'm happy with myself. And maybe there's upset parents or maybe upset staff members but that’s cool. I know I did the right thing.
You can hear more from Marco when my book 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:
Stuck Improving: Racial Equity and School Leadership by Decoteau J. Irby
About the author: Dr. Irby is an associate professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research focuses on equity-focused school leadership. He has also published research on equity directors.
Book Audience: “School-based educators of all races who work in school settings that employ White administrators, teachers, and staff members to serve disproportionally high Black and Brown student populations.” (p 9)
Book Focus: A case study focused on Central Waters High School (CWHS), a school the author and other researchers partnered with for over 6 school years to support a variety of equity change efforts.
Book Overview: Dr. Irby dedicates a chapter each to the five resources that he saw CWHS try to leverage in their racial equity improvement efforts:
Chapter One: Black and Brown People’s Influential Presence- unpacks how Black and Brown students’ voices were erased in CWHS and gives concrete ways how to center them including increasing staff diversity, inclusion in decision-making, and creating race-based affinity spaces (p40)
Chapter Two: Curated White Racial Discomfort- discusses the ways the discomfort of white staff members inhibited progress at CWHS and gives principles for leaning into that discomfort including continuous learning, dual focus on adult racial learning and students’ well-being, and grounding learning in proximal experiences (p87)
Chapter Three: Courageously Confrontational School Culture-highlights how fragile school culture can be and the need for educators to engage in practices that will directly support the building of school culture including directly addressing issues or problems, asking yourself “what can I do as an individual given the resources, power, and people I have access to?” and engaging in a confrontation in formal schools spaces (p126)
Chapter Four: Collective Awareness of Racial Emotions and Beliefs- talks about the practice of “ racial self-talk” and how individual staff members of CWHS used the practice to unpack their current emotions and beliefs and gives strategies for implementing your own racial self-talk practices including your own, within your team or in a schoolwide setting (p155)
Chapter Five: Racial-Conscious Inquiry Cycles (Leadership) - introduces race-conscious improvement cycles and ways to integrate them into practice including using questions to unearth the racial structures and patterns, inviting people to problem-solve as a group and using one’s own school setting as primary text (p196)
Highlights:
The race-conscious improvement cycle illustrated in Figure 5.1 (p 172) is clear and explicitly shows how to center race in continuous improvement.
The circle of racial equity actions demonstrated in Figure 5.2 (p 175) is a phenomenal way for schools to analyze their actions and not get stuck in performative and/or random acts of equity.
Chapter 6 brings the resources together in two distinct tables. Table 6.1 (p206) is a nice continuum for schools to use to monitor their progress across resources. Figure 6.1 (p 207) shows all the resources together as well as some of the key indicators of leveraging the resource
Quotes for reflection:
“White supremacy and racism insist on reasserting themselves into any antiracist actions or antiracist thinking that challenges its presence. So even when a school makes an improvement, a new, often more complex instance of racism will present itself.” (p 5)
“Educators who engage in courageous confrontation see and confront more than vivid violence. They pivot from “What happened?” to “Why is this happening” Why? Why? They fight the violence of ‘Midwest nice’ cultural practices that benefit no one.” (p123)
“If one fails to develop an adequate understanding of racial emotions, beliefs, and the experiences that shape them, it is nearly impossible to manage one’s racial emotions, changes beliefs, and create new experiences and ways of being.” (p154)
“…the missing link in improving schools to benefit Black and Brown students is often organizational capacity for racial equity change..racial knowledge and individual practice in changes and beliefs, neither alone nor in combination, can sustain and proliferate change.” (p.221)
Next Book: Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown
You can find a full list of book recommendations here.
Resources:
Some words from MLK remind us that education has both a utilitarian and a moral function.
The blog Fakequity (one of my favorites) has provided some concrete ways to open and close meetings with a focus on relationship-building and reflection.
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!
To forget you are Latino. I can't imagine every forgetting I am Black - but maybe I do and need to do some deeper reflection. Thanks for this thoughtful piece.
Awesome. Love this: “Love is a decision.”
Thank you!