Current headlines about education are focused on post-pandemic schooling test scores and a narrative of learning loss (which really is schooling loss). There are also reports of student unhappiness and increases in student mental health support needs. When looking into the data of anxiety causing factors for students in learning settings, we find a trend in assessment impacts. High stakes testing, student competition and comparison, celebrations of hierarchical lists of student ability, and emphasis on what students have missed and are unable to do in comparison to pre-pandemic times is inundating our young people with pressure and expectation that lacks humanity and meaningfulness.

As educators working to ensure that there is an alignment between liberatory philosophies and practices in learning spaces, we found an opportunity to reset the relationship with assessment by sharing our Assessment as Revelation, not Destination framework. This lays the foundation to create the partnership we seek for educators and students and an opportunity to walk our talk about liberatory learning possibilities.

As previous DL Equity Fellows, we continued our collaboration pushing the education field through any possible partnerships we could establish. In one of our conversations, we discussed the challenges with the assessment experience and institutionalization of assessment within American schooling systems. We also talked about how our work on the edges of this institution, such as competency based assessments, performance assessment, mastery learning etc. although building some alternatives, was still shy of the type of meaning and relationship we sought for our young people. The concept of the finish line- this “destination” that a student must reach surfaced as a key barrier to more liberatory learning experiences. We wondered, what if we shifted the mindset of assessment to experience it as a journey and revelation vs a destination? That shift would be significant for the learning culture and learning experience for students. With this construct in mind, we developed a framework to map out that shift and began to think more specifically about what revelatory assessment feels like, looks like, sounds like, etc.

Defining Revelation and Wayfinding

As the framework was emerging, and in acknowledgment of the power of words as both identifiers of culture/identity/ideology as well as tools of power, it felt important to establish some definitions. Beginning with the central idea of the framework of revelation, we wanted to capture the essence of what we believe to be possible with an experience of learning… namely the embodied experience of wonder and joy. With that in mind, we are proposing the following definition for revelation:

• an emergence of meaning, understanding, and/or action about self, community, or world that reveals the use and purpose of learning and growth, and encourages how to best continue onward through wonder and discovery.

The last part of the definition refers to our belief that an important and beautiful aspect of revelation is that it can show us where we are in our learning journey, and then point us to where we might wonder next. This led us to the concept of wayfinding. We want to note that we know wayfinding has been used to appropriate and misuse indigenous cultures and contexts across the globe. We do not use wayfinding to co-opt ways of knowing from time immemorial, but rather propose our own definition in relationship to revelatory assessment:

wayfinding:

• a continuous journey that seeks and trusts that what we need is in us and our relationship with our community and place. We persist onward honoring the mutual reciprocity of living and knowing alongside the earth and each other.

Revelatory Assessment Characteristics

It is a funny thing to try to design something that is rooted in liberation, wonder, and discovery while also working to articulate it such that others can imagine it as well. Without trying to create another framework that strictly delineates what is and what is not, we landed on five characteristics that illustrate how assessment can be more revelatory.

• Personal: There is a purposeful, meaningful, and authentic “why” to the assessment, designed by the learner, and an invitation to bring all of the rich identities of the learner into the moment
• Narrational: The assessment centers storytelling and other non-quantifiable methods as a way of knowing/being that is valued, and the learners are the authors and narrators of their own stories of learning
• Relational: The design of the assessment is rooted in sharing power to support meaningful exchanges of insight and learning between all those engaged in the learning and reduce positionality
• Iterative: The assessment is built into a continuous cycle of learning that offers insight and celebration as to the current milestone along a journey
• Reciprocal: The assessment is built upon the importance of giving into and receiving from the community at large, and asks the question “what impact will students have on the collective wisdom, knowledge, experience of those around them?”

Because these characteristics emerged in part from inspiring innovation that we were seeing in the field, we have collected examples of how different folks are implementing these characteristics across the country. Each time we share this framework with others, the hope is that we can continue to learn about, collect, lift up, and share the ways in which this work is already happening. It is very important to us that we propose Revelatory Assessment not as a novel concept that no one has conceived of before, but rather an assemblage of visionary and deeply rooted wisdom and practices from those who have come before us and who are doing the work right now.

Mālama Honua Public Charter School

We found the Narrational characteristic at the foundation of an incredible learning community on Oahu, HI is Mālama Honua Public Charter School. Mālama Honua is one of seventeen Hawaiian-focused Charter Schools (HFCS) that are “working on reclaiming Hawaiian rights and practices directly tied to traditional and ancestral knowledge.” (EdWeek article) A K-8 school serving the Waimanalo community, Mālama Honua students deliver portfolio defense presentations at key moments throughout their journey that are structured as stories. Beginning with an ʻŌlelo noʻeau, students choose and often sing a traditional story that connects to the overall learning they will then narrate during their defense presentation. (ʻŌlelo noʻeau are “proverbs or wise sayings that hold and reflect the beauty, wisdom, and flavor of the Hawaiian worldview”, as defined by community partner, Hoʻokuaʻāina). In front of a panel of teachers, peers, and community members, students tell their story of how they are learning the wisdom of their kupuna (their ancestors) and making meaning of it in today’s world. They tell the story of their learning in at least two languages – Hawaiian and English – and they do this through song, dance, images, and their own academic work. These presentations are just one version of the important rites of passage that the school has incorporated into their model, and we think they exemplify how we can center storytelling that is rooted in culture, ancestry, and intellectualism.

Current revelations from our facilitation journey of Revelatory Assessment reveal:

1. Often when ideas push on the status quo of things, it is the mindsets and mental models of those who have positional power that need to shift before anything actually changes within a system. This has come up repeatedly as we share Revelatory Assessment with folks, and the need for ways to help move the adults in learning systems continues to be voiced and emphasized. Because of this, we are working to expand the “Mindset Shifts needed” part of the framework, and developing collaborative learning sessions during which adult educators and facilitators of learning can examine and explore the lived experiences, training, and messages that shape our current notions of assessment so that we can take on the work of shifting them.
2. There are so many examples of folks who are incorporating one or more of these characteristics into assessment already! We want to know about all of them so that we can highlight the people, places, and communities where it is happening, and continue to learn about how all of this can live and breathe within a system. The more opportunities we all have to point to how this is possible, the more opportunities we have to unlock the collective wisdom and imagination of learners and facilitators of learning everywhere… and to ultimately shift the system of assessment itself.

We are learning so much as we share our framework and journey with others into liberatory assessment practices. If you have examples you want to be part of our assessment as revelation collection or would like to learn more about how you can begin these shifts in your classroom, school, or district, we’d love to connect with you. Find out more about upcoming workshops and events at https://core-shifts.com/events.

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My humanity. My unapologetically, Black bi-racial, constantly cursing and seeking liberation for students’ hearts and minds humanity. The humanity of abundance and collaboration. The humanity of meaning and purpose, free from compliance and status. The humanity of justice. The humanity in our ability to answer “yes” to every student we serve in learning spaces – do you see me? Do you love me? Do you see me and love me for who I truly am? The humanity to answer ‘yes’ to that question to everyone we work with in our learning communities. The humanity in that answer of ‘yes’ being given to me, and I believe them…

“But we are all human, I thought, wondering what I meant.” (Invisible Man)

My father was the only person I wholly believe saw me. He was the reason I became a teacher; not the cause of my conviction for educational system change, but the confirmation of my ability to be able to be a change agent. He died almost a year ago. I miss him desperately. The loss of being seen is a despair I’ve never experienced before. It’s a despair I now know I feel in community with others, like our students, teachers and families who show up to educational spaces: unseen everyday.  

Here there is no water but only rock.

Rock and no water and the sandy road

The road winding above among the mountains

 Which are mountains of rock without water

If there were waterway should stop and drink

Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think

(What the Thunder Said)

The erasure of humanity is the rock upon which the institution of education in America stands. Even after almost twenty years in this work, it surprises me when I trip over it and fall, scraping my soul across the serrated rock. Hope smeared across its jagged edges. I see other hope stains- as there are many of us, traversing the Waste Land of institutions, desperate for the life in learning. Learning is liberation work. Education is oppression work. The hope smears paint a beautiful contrast to the cold rock. I see you, hope. I see souls shining in the distance. The shine of ancestors and wayfinders. The shine reflects into my eyes. Hope sees me, too. I keep walking.

“I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I’ve tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied” (Invisible Man)

In my leadership, oftentimes I share soul stories. I take up the time and space, organize the agenda and elicit outcomes centered on the soul of learning. The soul is complex and dynamic; it’s not easily understood. Most people don’t want to hear the story. They want to revise the story or get to the point of it. They make it about them. But they aren’t the soul story I’m telling. I’m telling them about people and things they don’t see. I’m answering their problem-solving questions and establishing smart goals in a language they can’t comprehend. We get lost in translation. The work, the soul work, is lost. I can’t get it into view. I can’t get into view.

“That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact. A matter of the construction of their INNER eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality.” (Invisible Man)

There are people researching and positing that we are in an educational leadership crisis. Our leaders and teachers are leaving the field, and there is no one who wants to replace their jobs. They reference it as an “exodus”.  Except, we are out here. There are leaders we need, right now, in front of you. Yes, there are specific types of leaders leaving the field. Yes, there are those of us in crisis, and we will not continue to perpetuate or enlist ourselves in oppressive practices. We don’t want “those” jobs. But, the future leaders of learning and learning systems are here. Those out there stranded in the education industry, they don’t see the learning work; the soul work. They can’t see the future. Or the work for the future.  They just don’t see us. Sometimes, we can’t see ourselves.

“When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.” (Invisible Man)

That’s the humanity of the student journey in the education industry, isn’t it? The sincere effort to discover who they are. In spite of what the industrialized education system wants them to be. They walk halls, sit in classrooms, complete assignments. We never see them. We never love them. We complain when they don’t show up on our reports. We wonder where they are. We take up the time and space, organize the agenda and elicit outcomes centered on their coming back and being there. We never see them.  When they reflect back what they see in us, we dismiss it. There is no humanity. There are foundational skills. Outcomes. Students trip on the foundation scraping their soul across the jagged edges. I see their hope stains. I get back to work.

If there were water

And no rock

If there were rock

And also water

And water

A spring

A pool among the rock

(What the Thunder Said) 

My leadership moves upstream. Maybe there, a learning community could form. Maybe with water and rock there could be life-giving learning experiences. In the pool of water among the rock, we can see ourselves in the reflection. We look up, and we see each other. We are the one’s we have been waiting for. We can thrive here, with what we need, as who we are. We are learning as liberation practice.

“What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?” (Invisible Man)

I see souls shining in the distance. The shine of ancestors and wayfinders. The shine reflects into my eyes. Hope sees me, too. I keep walking.

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For years I have been an education futurist, scheming ways we can “decolonize” the American education institution. In the name of liberation, intentional disruption, and empowering the brilliance and souls of our young people, I have been working towards decolonizing education. You know, breaking down the structures and freeing us from the patriarchal, white, western colonization of our education institutions and centering students, families, communities and meaningful learning. Is that actually an effort towards decolonization? What are the tools being used to break structures? What are the resources assisting the journey to liberation? Is decolonization of education used as a metaphor, like equity, that has a fresh spin of settler-colonization all around it?

It is important to start with the fact that decolonization relates to the settler-colonization of land and peoples. School systems created by the colonists, for the colonists, are purpose fulfilling systems. If we speak of decolonizing American schools, we then seek to unsettle the country, return land to rightful Indigenous communities, eliminate the United States’ power and government and schooling, and millions of newly displaced people must earn the ability to be in right relation with the harmony of non-colonized communities and ways of living, or navigate a new migration journey.

There are many assumed actions and priorities and shifts happening in education; both in K-12 and Higher Ed spaces made with “good intent” that are misrepresenting decolonization, thus, increasing the gaps of the actual work and outcomes of decolonization. We need to get clear that decolonization is not:

• Social Justice
• Creating learning pathways with settler-colonial tools that lead to different outcomes
• Writing a book, developing curriculum and marketing a process to change educational outcomes
• Centering student well being and inviting their collaboration and ownership of their learning experiences

These are all good examples of more equitable and human-centered learning. They are important to continue the shifts from industrialized school systems. But they cannot be misrepresented as decolonizing. If educators wanted to act within just one step of decolonization, it must be to seek truth and understanding. Settler colonialism is woven ever so tightly in American existence- it’s in America’s DNA. There is much unlearning and removing to be able to see and know the truth.

Until we as educators are able to know who we are, where we stand, and where we are going, we will never be able to move. Whether that move is out of the way, returning the stolen land upon which we stand (decolonization), or move out of oppressive contexts that still operate in a colonized space, but more justly for more people, or move forward on the journey to a human ecosystem that seeks healing, reconciliation and liberation.

The post Getting Clearer: Decolonizing Education appeared first on Getting Smart.

It goes to say that pre-pandemic leadership allowed mediocrity, perpetuation of status quo, and erasure/marginalization to exist without much consequence. Keeping the district/school settled without much controversy was appreciated. Investing in the resources and partnerships to appease broad goals for categorical labels and outcomes was considered successful. However, the last two years took away covers in educational systems that revealed areas of neglect and inefficiency. It also revealed opportunities for community partnerships and student-centered learning. There were leadership traits that flourished in ambiguous, vulnerable, collaborative circumstances, and there were leadership traits that perished in these circumstances.

Reports share an exodus of leaders due to unforgiving circumstances such as conflicting information for health and well-being, lack of resources, divided communities and demoralized staff and students. There is a level of exhaustion experienced in all levels of education systems that diminishes the ability to see a way forward. But only for some leaders, who know the ways of leadership that were not made for these times. They were made for predictive circumstances, set routines, rhythm of legislative cycles and policy processes. They were made for status, ladders to be climbed to a set destination with predictive goals and outcomes. What we see now is the inability to preserve that way of being.

Our current times call for leaders that are able to meet current challenges with curiosity and diligence. We need leaders that are creative, collaborative and humble. We need leaders able to see through a new generation of communities, who can hold pain, and heal wounds. We need new legacies, and leadership that builds anew not maintains what was. We need leaders who center students for who they are now, and for their future, and not hold on to a nostalgia for the past. There is a reckoning consuming us in the cores of our humanity- our vulnerability in health, identity, government, race, community. Who can lead us forward in these times? What is the legacy we need?

Leadership for Legacy, demands:

Laser Sharp Vision: Susan Enfield, recently named 2022 WA State Superintendent of the Year, has a clear vision for students in her district, “all students are known by name strength and need” and she relentlessly pushes for improved practices of school leaders and school systems to serve the needs of each of every student they serve.

Capacity Building: The Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City has prioritized investment in community capacity building, through a key initiative, Real World Learning in K-12 schools that ensure each student graduates with meaningful and marketable experiences and capacities.  

Interdependency: Better Together: when students, staff and community members can trust each other and work together, great outcomes occur for students, as seen by this collaborative research study in Arcadia School District.

Nimble Systems: When we think about a skilled workforce able to live full lives with financial security, the college education argument has become vulnerable and questioned. However, higher ed institutions like SHNU and ASU are nimble in their access points and personalized pathways that will tell the future story of higher education for years to come.

Creative approaches: We can see a new way forward for schooling when we follow the lead of organizations like the Center for Love and Justice that chart new paths for school design and partnerships.

Community Centered: Learning Policy Institute is leading efforts to engage more students in community-based learning experiences, and showing us a future for student learning with their four pillars. 

Humility in place and time: When leaders decenter positionality and let go of their “expertise” to be in the work with others and lead from a place of humility and service, learning communities thrive, as explored in Shane Safir’s book, The Listening Leader.

In times of challenge, the human condition finds a way to survive. It survives by learning, adapting and establishing ways to live and navigate new demands and resources. Education can cultivate the abilities for future generations to learn best, adapt well, and establish themselves in ever-changing circumstances and thrive- given the right leadership to see our learning systems forward.

The post The Future of Leadership is about Legacy, not Self-Preservation appeared first on Getting Smart.

In reality, there is little to any real progress that has been made in our American education system since its inception, and in fact, in our current politically charged post-Trump atmosphere there is a reenergized resistance to anti-racist efforts and aligned attempts to decenter whiteness in our learning cultures that organize school board elections and legislation to prohibit any challenge to the power of whiteness in American school systems.

While socially this may have seemed to not be the case in the wake of George Floyd’s murder — the significant din surrounding straightforward efforts to teach students about the history of race relations in the U.S. (largely targeted at the dog whistle of “Critical Race Theory”) would say otherwise. Our American democratic structure was designed with a belief that counternarratives were essential to our growth; this is under threat.

The conversations that are currently surfacing around ‘how might I better teach Black learners?’ is itself framed problematically. Not only does this framing oversimplify the challenge, it reduces it and exemplifies the need for decentralizing. (It also normalizes the concept that we were meeting the needs of non-black learners.) Zaretta Hammond, esteemed author of Culturally Relevant Teaching and the Brain, would thoughtfully advise us to stop teaching as if all students learn the same and certainly to stop teaching in a manner as to reinforce and normalize expectations that fit the mold of a “dominant white culture.”

Decentering whiteness is not decentering white people. Whiteness is not emblematic of a race of people; it is the pervasive dominant culture in the United States. This culture erases any validity of other cultures or ways of being. It is the normed reference for what is often “proper,” “appropriate,” “successful,” and “worthy.” American school systems are set up, implemented and measured by whiteness standards.

The Journey Ahead

This will not be easy work and with difficult work there is resistance. Decentering requires a shift of learning paradigms, and shifting these paradigms requires most in education settings to question and refine their viewpoints, identities and ways of thinking. Such work is rarely ‘new,’ but rather repackaged in a way that is designed to make the pill easier to swallow. Thus the widely (and falsely) accepted belief that we are somehow improving in our efforts to be more equitable by asking how one can teach a group of people better, and the widely (and falsely) held perspective that awareness of a problem equals change.

Instead, we should be focused on the concept of personalizing learning for every learner that centers the agency of each learner, and not the righteousness of education systems. This change in teaching and learning challenges prevailing theories and assumptions about how humans learn and collaborate. It also changes the way we see society, roles, personal and group identities. It changes the way we see ourselves and one another. It also changes the DNA of American educational institutions.

The global Covid 19 pandemic created an opportunity for more widespread openness to shifting the way we “do school” in America. But what has surfaced in the immediacy of the new school year, is an immediate bounce back to muscle memory of the school of years past, standardized assessments, comparative models and grade-level expectations that discount the needs for the human condition and need for connection and purpose in a global pandemic era.

As we begin to embrace the concept of not ‘doing school as usual’ then we have to look at the role of whiteness, white culture and white supremacy have had in our learning system and our society. Within this exploration, we have to think about the role of educators in service to learners and to a more equitable society. Moving from teaching ‘about racism’ in units and courses to rebuilding how we frame learning, the process, the reporting and the celebrating.

Self Reflective Questions to Shift the “Center” of Whiteness

• Who is determining success?
• What are the students asking for?
• How do we know this to be true?
• Who do we see, hear, and collaborate with in this learning experience?
• Why is that considered expertise?
• Is each child seen, valued, and loved as their authentic selves? How do we know?
• Why are we uncomfortable with this?
• Who else can do this?
• What did our parents say about that idea?
• Who’s convenience is centered in this decision?

Small Steps Continue Toward Change

You can’t overthrow the education system in the name of decentering whiteness. Overthrowing is a colonial tool, and colonization is part of whiteness. In order to decenter whiteness, you must use tools and approaches that do not subscribe to or result in the pervasive dominant cultural norms. Taking steps to shift a decision-making process or hiring process can result in outcomes that no longer hold whiteness at the center. Shifting organizational structures (like removing organizational hierarchy charts) and titles can no longer hold whiteness at the center. Turning to wonder instead of depending on expertise is decentering whiteness. Naming whiteness and seeing how it shows up in the fabric of your educational system is a key first step. Being overwhelmed by expectation or immediate results is in fact, another tactic and tool of whiteness.

In order to sustain the change, the journey must be the new way of being as an educational system rather than an intended outcome. Take the small steps and keep walking. Share your learning story. Share that your story will never end, as learning never ends. Walk alongside others and learn from them. Hold on to the abundance of possibility and the wealth of the community. Each step taken that centers the well-being and actualization of each and every child as their authentic self is a step that no longer centers whiteness and surely shifts the educational space to the future of all in its belonging.

The post Decentering Whiteness from Our American Schools appeared first on Getting Smart.

With an insistence from federal and state leaders to ensure in-person learning for students this year, many of the status quo institutional pieces are back in place, but we have a renewed commitment to learners and their families. Every action we take toward redesigning and creating now will benefit the learning systems of the future. These actions will put every learner’s needs at the forefront and at the core of learning design. If we want all of our students to get out of this pandemic ready to succeed; schools, families, and community partners will need to work together for all of our children.

School leaders can take on this responsibility for engagement by creating circumstances of listening, learning, collaborating, and strategizing. Many school systems proclaim the need for students to be able to think critically and communicate effectively. Therefore, systems must model this ability and be the elders our future generations need to find and name the common good and work towards it, collectively. Our learning systems can often be the start of a journey, but it is certainly not the end. Our promise as educators is for learners to leave with agency, vision, and the belief that they can and will shape their future.

Ways school systems can build community towards solutions:

Focused Listening Circles

Build trust by staying open to diverse ideas and feedback. Create opportunities and structures to listen, learn, and build a better community understanding. Many of our communities have experienced trauma. Listening and becoming more aware of our communities is the first step toward healing.

Inform, Listen, Learn. Design and deliver a “Roadshow” to build understanding, to listen, to respond, and to later incorporate this into a coauthoring of the path forward with stakeholder input.

Build Trust. Stay in a listening disposition and create transparent communication strategies and then over-communicate events, and share outcomes:

• Provide opportunities to build background knowledge and understanding for suggested changes and surface tensions.
• Consider training community leaders to facilitate and to help collate the feedback. Read more about this process in Mesa County School District 51.
• Intentionally invite voices that need to be heard and will be a large part of the work, your teachers. Gather collective feedback. Share and report this feedback.

Collective Action Committees

Collective action committees come together with the direct purpose of action. Collective action committees come together with a clear and direct purpose of action, this is not an effort to collect feedback that defaults to the systems leader, this is about action. CACs are effective at the return on investment analysis, cost-benefit analysis, and can serve as a task force for outcomes based on other stakeholder group designs, discussions, and feedback data.

Codesigning Equitable Paths Forward. Establishing committees explicitly to get things done is an efficient way to recruit a team wanting to get to outcomes and centers opportunities for training and capacity building on actionability:

• Codesign actionable steps in response to listening circles and build community consensus and a set of common agreements.
• Consider co-chairing instructional design work around learning models to co-select workgroups and review. Learn more from the perspective of a Teacher Association president.
• Respond to and incorporate feedback. Highlight where this feedback influenced courses of action or changes.
• Read more about this process in the Journeys to Personalized Learning, a case study from FSG.

Student Facilitated Focus Groups

When communities come together, in the interest of what is best for kids, and kids are leading that conversation, it keeps the work focused by and with the people we care most about- our students. Some communities will require intentional time and continued space for healing the unique and compounded scars inflicted over time. System Leaders must nurture healing practices and include bridge-building events and activities into their community engagement.

Students As The Leads. Students should be at the helm of developing focus group learning, facilitating focus group discussions, and being key analysts for focus group feedback will help legitimize findings and build trust quicker in the process and next steps from that data. Great examples of this can be found on the OneStone site where you can learn more about the different labs and support available to build and support learner’s voices.

Bridge Building Events

Trust building and community building are imperative for sensitive change work. There are communities that have generational experiences of distrust and harm from schools and school systems. Provide opportunities for students, families, school staff, and community partners to come together without key tasks, but rather ways to build context and learn about each other develops trust among key stakeholders. Ideas for bridge building events:

• Student learning exhibitions & showcases;
• Community gatherings in honor of student success, meeting goals, the start of the year, mid-year, end of year benchmarks, etc.;
• Annual events in honor of legacy partners and/or community traditions;
• Hosting committee retreats and encouraging small groups to attend retreats to build capacity and trust.
• Our students know their needs and their wants, and they are creative thinkers! They are also, with quality training and experience, excellent facilitators of learning conversations and dialogues.

Design Thinking

A generative process with collective insight is a change of energy that can shift a sense of being powerless. This process is creative, expansive, and fun! It is also concentrated in a process that centers on understanding a problem that needs to be solved and incorporating multiple stakeholders to inform and design solutions.

• dSchool at Stanford facilitates training on a variety of topics that can utilize design thinking for creative solutions and possibilities to improve.
• Liberatory Design focuses on design principles centered on inequitable practices and outcomes.

School systems set the future of communities. We ask hundreds of students to share space, be vulnerable, work through conflict, and share in celebrations and challenges together every day in a school setting. If our young people can create communities that learn alongside, no matter their context and differences, then our education system leaders must be able to model and facilitate the same abilities. This also requires the intentional design of community building with active participants, partner stakeholders, parents, students, and representative staff. When our communities are isolated and people/positions are targeted, and voices rise that are not part of the learning community, or seeking the best for those in the community, then those systems will stay fractured.

Collective efforts with representative views will weave the repair necessary of current divisions. When learning communities see each other, know each other and care for each other, authentically, for who they are, they can commit to the best interest in an informed and inspired way.

The post Collaborative Conversations to Shephard Communities Forward, Together appeared first on Getting Smart.

As quickly as people mobilized in support of building community, there is a new mobilization of people fighting against the collective learning and action to heal and support a united country moving forward, particularly in public education settings. One key campaign currently being proposed by legislatures and in many communities across the country is an appeal against teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT) in K-12 schools. Why would a legal theory be threatening to K-12 education? Why would a scholarly legal theory not present in K-12 curriculum be something concerning in K-12 education conversations?

What is Critical Race Theory?

Critical Race Theory was founded by legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberle Crenshaw and Richard Delgado. It is an academic theory for legal frameworks that center race as a social construct. It is utilized in other disciplines and academic research related to humanities and sociology. It is a theory- a critical lens. It is exemplified through academic research and analysis. It is not a curriculum. It is not relevant to K-12 standards or content.

Critical race theory is not synonymous with equity, cultural competency, critical thinking, or other responsive and respectful ways of being for that matter. However, if you look at organized campaigns against CRT at board meetings and through records requests across the country, you wouldn’t be too sure. The information presented conflates CRT with equity frameworks and culturally responsive pedagogy. There is fear that if teachers and students learn about race and how to build relationships across racial identities that it is divisive because it names racial identities and builds racial awareness. Parents and organizations are storming school board meetings demanding we eliminate policies that center each student and ensure learning access in the name of CRT. Legislatures are prohibiting students from accessing curriculum and questioning key skills like critical thinking because of CRT.

Cultural Competency is the active learning and practice of seeing, valuing, and engaging across cultural contexts and building community with others and among others whose culture is unlike your own. Culture is not race.

Equity is ensuring that each and every student, no matter circumstance or need is able to access meaningful learning experiences so that they can pursue their goals. It eliminates barriers. It empowers families and key stakeholder partnerships. Equity work is not limited to race, but it is incomplete if not accounting for race-based injustices and barriers.

Critical Thinking is a key skill necessary for our students to discern information and be able to problem-solve. In order for students to compete in a nuanced global economy, they must be able to think critically and analyze information from various sources and multiple platforms. Thinking critically does not mean learning to criticize based on race.

Teaching Our Students CRT

Are we teaching our students CRT by protesting against teaching CRT? Our students are watching. The irony in the efforts to prohibit students from learning about CRT is the fact that all of this fear-mongering intrigues our young people to know what all the fuss is about. They are googling CRT and asking on social media sites and downloading legal scholarly articles. Students are learning what certain people in their communities believe, and what they fear. And then they wonder why. Our students are asking at the dinner table, they are asking at community events, they are talking about it with friends, with other adults, and they are learning about CRT. K-12 students would not know about CRT unless this attack on CRT in K-12 schools started. Now more students are learning about it than ever before.

“I had no idea what critical race theory was until I saw the Facebook post about getting it out of our schools,” one student in Idaho shared. “I went to school the next day and asked my government teacher and he said, ‘I have no idea what that is.’”

What students will do with this learning will impact local communities and the futures of young people for years to come.

“Seeing what parents and politicians are organizing against recognizing students like me in school, or learning about my people’s history makes me see that white people don’t want Black lives to matter in America,” shared another student in California.

Teaching the Truth

The future of our country depends on public schools’ ability to teach the truth as well as build skills of critical analysis, civil debate, and informed disagreement. Participatory democracy that represents the people (for the people, of the people, by the people) is not currently under debate. However, it is under attack with voter restrictions being passed across the country. There are also examples of states and school boards restricting access to curriculum and shifting policies to prohibit student access to historical accounts, resources, publications, and perspectives. That eliminates participatory democracy as it limits the informed understanding of voters. If this country is expected to thrive through significant shifts in economy, environment, and technological advancements, the people in this country must be able to engage in informed civil debate and informed disagreement. Citizens must be trusted with the truth, from a young age, to grow into adults who value the complexity of humanity. Compromise arrives in the company of quality information, empathy, and trust. If students are restricted from quality information, they are not trusted by, or able to build trust in, compulsory systems and other people. Significant ethical questions and resource dilemmas await our current and future generations.

Tyler Kingkade said in a recent interview on NPR, “even elementary school kids – they see what’s on TV. They hear what parents are talking about, and they need some sort of frame of reference to understand these issues. So we can’t just ignore them and say, well, we haven’t come up with a solution to police brutality or we haven’t come up with a solution to systemic racism, so let’s just not talk about it for now. I mean, educators are saying, no, we – if we want our kids to be prepared to talk about them, to address them as they become of age, we need to start teaching them when they’re young.”

If America allows its schools to be controlled by forces stemmed from fear and power, American democracy will perish. We know this because many countries exist in this way now. We know this, as these countries are further along with human experiment than America. We also know it because we are taught it through a comprehensive world history curriculum.  And we might not know it in a few years, as our democracy declines, and we find ourselves in those circumstances of other less free, less powerful nations. Unable because we allowed the institution founded to ensure America has an informed democracy to become the institution preventing information and participation.

For more, see:

• What Families Need to Know About Critical Race Theory in Schools
• Ron Crutcher on I Had No Idea You Were Black: Navigating Race on the Road to Leadership

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The post First They Came for Critical Race Theory… appeared first on Getting Smart.

I’m not quite sure the exact time when I finally started listening. There had been many messages and communication attempts. No matter how many times I heard them, it took me a while before I listened.

I heard about the microaggressions from colleagues. I heard people discuss their broken-heartedness. I heard the resignation announcements. And then the other announcement. And the other. And a few transition plans. I heard myself say [out loud] that I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and reading and hearing. I heard the board meeting comments. I heard the voices of discontent and attack through the words in emails. I heard about the openings. I heard colleagues talk about their application processes and rounds of interviews. I heard their interview feedback. I heard my interview feedback. And then I heard who got the jobs.

I heard the news about my father’s health. And I heard my son yell at me to put the computer away because I was always working. I heard the beautiful stories of ancestry, futurity, and liberation in my doctoral leadership workshop. I heard being called, Dr. Niccolls. I heard my parents say they were proud of me. I heard my daughter yell for me when I was on an evening work call, “Mom! Mom. Mom!! Mom. Mom!!!! Mom! Mom…”

This is not my circus. That’s what I told myself on the way home. Suddenly, that day, I listened. I continued home, releasing myself from an unworthy attachment and finally believing a community that was day in and day out showing me who they are. When I finally listened, I felt ashamed. I was misaligning my actions from my convictions. I was living my life at the end of someone else’s strings and sacrificing my family, my (educator) soul, and my health.

Zora Neale Hurston said, there are years of questions, and years that answer. This is a year of answers in my educational leadership journey. And many of us are finally listening. We stand on the edge and we hear it: the sounds of our mentors. The sounds of future generations. The sound of the genuine. The reason why we entered into the work. And then, many of us look around and see nothing familiar. We are lost. We have been consumed by the institutional machine and were unable to look and hear clearly, until now.

The COVID-19 global pandemic was a storm that dragged educational leaders to the edge, blew away all the distractions, and revealed the clarity of our communities, school boards, legislatures, and what people are really able to stand for and stand against.

The future of public education is dependent on if/how leaders at the edge will listen and respond. Some of us are stepping off the ledge, venturing out beyond what we can see, and finding our truth there. Some of us are retreating back, afraid of the risk. Some of us are stuck and unable to move or be moved.

Now is the time for us leaders, steadying on the edge, or out beyond, to shine our souls and find each other. To:

• Extend our hands, and connect.
• Find our footing in collective strength and know we are not alone.
• Hear each other and trust our wisdom so that we do not retreat or fall off the edge, but rather cross the threshold into the future of public education.
• Be wholehearted, unapologetic, and relentless in our pursuit of what is best for our young people and communities.
• Continue to listen to and trust each other.
• Believe our communities when they show us who they are, and listen for what they need us to be.
• Know where we stand, and regularly ask if we are where we need to be.
• Be willing to act as soon as we know what we need to do.

The future of our young people depends on the ability of our educational leaders to do what is right, just, and worthy.

Resources to Continue Your Leadership Journey

Here’s a place to start if you are searching for answers or need to clear the noise to hear the truth:

• Brene Brown and Courageous Leadership
• What Some Leaders Are Doing in Response to Public Outrage
• Making Space: Remixed. Dreaming, Dialogue and Healing in Classrooms
• LiberatED
• Center for Courage and Renewal
• Our Collective Lesson Plan [On Teachers of Color in this Moment]
• The Nap Ministry
• Dare to Lead
• Healing Leadership
• The Soul of Enterprise: Interview with Howard Hansen
• AASA Leadership Network
• ATN: Resources for Agitators
• Irresistible: Archive for Healing and Social Justice
• The Return: Leading Systems Towards Healing with Love with Kristi Dominguez and Ellen Dorr

For more, see:

• Yoga Ed. Addresses Trauma Through Teacher, Student Self-Care
• Helping Teachers Prioritize Social-Emotional Learning

Stay in-the-know with innovations in learning by signing up for the weekly Smart Update.

The post Year of Listening appeared first on Getting Smart.

The institution of education (and those in power struggling to keep control of it) is continuing the schooling assembly line by mechanizing equity. Oh? So the pandemic (further) revealed that schooling can throw students off the conveyor belt? Or allows them to fall off? Or doesn’t bother to bring them back on the belt because they just couldn’t fit right and keep going? No worries! Equity will fix that.

Except, equity is not a tool that improves machine operation. It is a way of being in the human condition. It is a belief in the abundance of each of us, as we are, in our authentic self. It values community. Equity wants for all children. It cares for each other. Equity is nuanced and personalized. It wants what is possible and knows all are worthy. This is why, if we are truly ready to weave equity into schooling, we must dismantle the machine and emancipate equity for learning justice.

Social justice is about identifying and attempting to address structural disadvantage, discrimination, and inequality by refocusing on the process, participation, and collective rights. Learning justice frames this work transparently within our educational and social system.

We have guides that are leading the way. They are inviting us back into the human ecosystem that is natural, and full of wonder and resources. It is our birthplace. Learning is our birthright. Generations of Indigenous peoples have cultivated a way of schooling that included equitable practices. Our human ancestors, representative of varied and rich cultures and communities across the earth, learned, grew, progressed, and thrived for millennia. Each generation offered us ways of knowing that have enabled us to continue in this developing world. It is these knowings we need now, more than ever, to repair and restore our natural world, and to heal our social systems.

Equity Tends to Heart and Soul

When equity is a belief and value, it is not the intellectual performance of a student that matters most, it is their well-being that is prioritized. Equity-centered learning communities focus on each child, value the intergenerational learning opportunities, and seed belonging, not production. In recent years, there has been a focus on “the whole child” and research/resource on Social Emotional Learning. That concept [Social Emotional Learning] is another opportunity for liberation and justice to be mechanized before our eyes. But fear not! Dena Simmons is guiding us forward to true equity-centered SEL through LiberatEd_SEL. Her leadership is surfacing capitalistic and oppressive approaches to human knowledge and showing the way the work can be done to tend to all hearts and souls in education work.

These are adult and student hearts and souls alike. This is the liberatory heart and soul work that looks deep into our being–good and bad. Equity-centered social-emotional learning knows that all learning is social-emotional and that all of us in the learning community must be in the “right community,” where we can be whole, seen, and trustful. That means journeying together, committed to each other through conflict, reconciliation, and celebration. We learn who we are. We teach who we are. We belong to each other. We need each other. We contribute to each other. We ask and we receive. We give when there is a need. That is equity.

Equity Respects Minds

Our young people are brilliant. Those of us centered on equity know this. That’s why we push for multiple modalities to experience learning, varied school contexts, authentic relationships between content and community, and meaningful assessments that engage and empower each childs’ brilliance. While much of the mechanized approach to schooling depends on standardized tests and competitive ideals of meritocracy, there are leaders in the field that are leading the work of respecting student brilliance and cultivating the minds of our youth and we can follow along in the journey to ensure no student mind is lacking respect.

Young minds are brilliant and are ready to engage in complex thinking. Akiea Gross is inviting young minds into brilliance through their #wokekindergarten learning. There are organizations leading the connection of little fires burning everywhere- shining light of student brilliance through learner-centered communities.

• Gholdy Muhammad is informing equity-centered literacy cultivation in her book, Cultivating Genuis: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy.
• #Distrupttexts is pushing what we know as “canon” texts to ensure all student contexts can be seen within the deep understanding of the human condition through literature.
• Education Reimagined is a leader in the work of inviting, connecting and celebrating learning communities that respect student minds and center on their brilliance.
• Big Picture Learning Schools respect the minds and time of students. BPL honors student brilliance and their interests through a school model that engages students in real-world learning, centered on their interests and goals. Students are centering their learning time in ways that honor their brilliance, their choice, their interests, and most importantly, their future.
• Many educational organizations have gone beyond making public pledges and committed to making change. KnowledgeWorks publicly sharing their commitment to Getting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Right in the Workplace, have also added more resources to their shared hub, Students at the Center, that share research-based recommendations for educators to center equity in their classrooms.

Equity respects the minds of our youth. Equity sees students. Equity loves students. Equity cultivates learning that celebrates students as they are and cultivates experiences for students to grow to be who they want to be.

Equity Centers Community

The industry of schooling has created buildings that hold all the information. The representatives of the schooling institution hold the knowledge. Students are required to go to the school building and parents are required to go to school offices, and whatever they are told when they get there is “right” or “best”. Equity is not isolated. Equity is not something or someone to accommodate. Equity is collaborative. Equity asks, listens, and responds. For students to experience learning-centered equity, that learning experience is organized and facilitated in the community. Students are cultivated in interdisciplinary experiences, with multiple stakeholders that build relationships with content and real-world application along the way.

Equity-centered learning experiences value families as first teachers and collaborators. The book Learning Forward invites us to the table of learning where parents, students, and educators gather in the best interests of children. Just Schools shares research and stakeholder voices prioritizing family engagement centered in equitable practices that empower the community and cultivate community-centered learning for students.

Equity also centers community for students through meaningful relationship development where students can be vulnerable and experience a sense of safety to develop fully actualized in their learning communities. The machine of schooling is appropriating an advisory curriculum to “teach” students this. However, there are leaders of this cultural development; Expeditionary Learning schools have been a trailblazer of authentic relationship development, and you can learn more about their Crew model as an equity-centered approach to student community building.

Equity engages all stakeholders in learning, as exemplified in the project Learning in Places. This project facilitates learning in harmony with the Earth, students, families, educators to engage in rich, meaningful place-based learning. Learning in this way is equitable across all layers of our humanity and in community.

As students develop, their need for self-awareness and actualization becomes more apparent. Most schooling experiences ignore student development and focus on student production. There are ways to ensure students are learning in ways that invite them to find purpose and actualize in ways where students can contribute to the community and know their value in the community. Difference Making provides examples of how this intentional work is happening in various learning communities.

Know Equity, Know Justice

The dominant system of schooling locks in students and moves them along. Students and families are told what matters, when it matters, and how students fall in line with knowing what matters in that system. This is not learning. This is compliance. We must shift to cultivate learning communities, and we need to center equity in our communities so we can learn towards justice.

In a Learning Policy Institute article, Janel George and Linda Darling-Hammond rightfully call out that investment to improve our learning system for underserved populations improves learning for all. ”Investments in social and emotional learning, restorative practices, and mental health supports—as well as in community schools providing health and social services that address the trauma many children experience—pay off in stronger relationships, safer schools, and better achievement. So, why then are not all schools investing and committing to the work of equity, the hearts, souls and minds of learners?

This commitment entails more work, and as we are rebuilding and planning for a new way forward, it is the right work. We know this to not only be good practice but at the core of what education should always promise to do, SERVE. And to start by serving those who have historically not been. It is a moral obligation. Equity, and ultimately true agency, are the promises we should all be making when learners walk through our doors. We must center equity in our schools so they become foundational experiences for our future generations to engage in the human journey. And as educators, we must settle into the necessary work of wayfinding to the horizon of justice.

For more, see:

• Expressing Learning Journey Through Digital Portfolios
• Insights From the InspirED Fellowship 

Stay in-the-know with innovations in learning by signing up for the weekly Smart Update.

The post Emancipating Equity for Learning Justice appeared first on Getting Smart.

Students are experiencing school loss and peer interaction loss, not learning loss. Our students are learning every, single day. They are learning deeply, personally, and significantly about many things. What they are not doing is schooling. There is a narrative in America that assumes schooling is learning. It is not. There are stories being told right now assuming that since students are not schooling in the ways they did before the pandemic, they are losing access and they are “behind”. Behind what? Behind the content and measurement of the set of students that navigated schooling at that grade/level before them? That is true, and it is also true, that now our students are not journeying on the same path set by soft metrics derived from a perceived average student as that set of students were. None of our students are there anymore. We are off the machine belt and we are on a shifted ground.

There is no schooling based learner in this pandemic time, moving forward without the impact of the pandemic. There is no child behind now, that wasn’t behind before. Students in exceptional circumstances and/or wealth are continuing in those circumstances, and students marginalized by systems of oppression and inequity are continuing in those circumstances. The concept of leveled competition, or ”meritocracy”, showcasing the ability to succeed in an education system like everyone else, was exposed in a new way through this pandemic as false and harmful. We see it clearer now. We see it through a different lens. We name it in pandemic terminologies like digital inequity, or lack of internet and technology access, or learning loss.

Students have been prohibited from accessing meaningful content and learning experiences well before pandemic schooling circumstances. Students are not failing more now than they were before. The system is failing more now than it did in the past. The controls of location and delusional thinking that students at school, in buildings, sitting in classrooms means that they are learning has been unable to translate to remote instruction. The static outcomes for what we learned in schooling a year ago, no longer apply. Our human ecosystem has shifted. We will never be back to what was; we are all changed. We must let go of standardization and turn towards personalization and actualization. Our ability to do this well will be a turning point as the entire world shifts into a new way of being, post-pandemic.

The pandemic is a portal for the opportunity and not a setback. Our children are experiencing continuous learning. They aren’t necessarily learning what we measured in the schooling of the past. They aren’t predetermined content, formulaic, rote, memorized, or skilled question analysis and multiple-choice selections types of learning. It is agile time learning. Learning in constraints. Learning in family and local communities. Learning about the human condition. Learning about their own human condition. They are learning in relationship with digital resources. It is the responsibility of those of us in post-pandemic learning communities to welcome in our students and get to know each other again. We need to listen to our families and communities and establish our steps together as we continue forward in our learning journey.

Renew Your Learning Community and Learning Outcomes

As school and district communities prepare for the next school year and beyond, keep in mind you are not returning to school.  Prioritize these steps:

• Rebuild and renew “schooling” with families and community partners.
• Ensure you take time to know your students, as they are in the present, not what they were in the past. Investigate all the ways your learning community has grown. Invite students and families to share with you all that they learned while in remote schooling and pandemic circumstances.
• Prioritize time for teaching communities to re-engage with each other and reflect on their transformed teacher identities, abilities, and priorities for the facilitation of learning.
• Invite ideas for the best ways to design student learning differentiation, course and content modifications, and personalization strategies.
• Expand options for students to personalize their learning through competency-based pathways, performance assessments, and individualized learning resources.
• Continue to build on the capacity of asynchronous learning experiences, a digital resource, and a learning management system organization.
• Let go of  Monday-Friday seat time and create options for a meaningful time in learning communities. Work with community partners as learning places and establish partnerships for child care flexibility to accommodate families with more fluid, intentional in-person learning schedules.
• Look towards shifts in post-secondary education and workplaces to revise/refine graduate outcomes, content, and experiential priorities.

The post Getting Clearer: Schooling Loss, Not Learning Loss appeared first on Getting Smart.