It’s Time to Take Action

by Daman Harris
Principal, Rockville, MD

 

“Could there be a silver lining in all of this tragedy?” I asked myself recently. I watched the coverage of the protests in the wake of the George Floyd murder with great interest, and I visited Black Lives Matter Plaza to physically connect with the movement. The percentages of young people and White people encouraged me.

One night, while watching news coverage of the events, I turned to my wife and said, “Maybe this will be the time that our allies stick with our cause after a new issue ascends to the top of the news cycle. Maybe this will be a period of sustained change.” She flatly responded, “Perhaps. It’s equally likely that they’re going to move that football again, and you’re going to land squarely on your [back].” My wife’s Peanuts analogy resonated with me, not only because I always root for Charlie Brown, but also because we’ve had similar conversations in the past.

My wife and I have been together almost 3 decades. We experienced the faded outrage over Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Emanuel AME Church, Oscar Grant, Rodney King, Abner Louima, and others. We saw the faded outrage in 2015, when we learned that an unarmed Black man was killed by police every 3 1/2 days somewhere in America. What makes this summer different?  Will Charlie Brown—me, in this case—plan to excitedly run up to Lucy’s football (public support) to kick off toward racial equality codified in practice, policies, and laws? Have I learned the lessons of tragedies past?

I decided that this time would be different, because I’ll use my own darn football. I am a principal, and I have a formal sphere of influence: my school. I can’t control the momentum of the general public, policy makers, or legislators. I can control the focus of the professional learning  and day-to-day practices within my school.

 

Cast a Vision to Your Staff 

Back in January, just prior to the opening of my district’s voluntary teacher transfer window, I told my staff that the 2021 School Year, and subsequent years, would bring a focus on antiracism. I shared the names and work of some authors who had recently influenced me, such as Kendi, Love, Khalifa, Jones and Okun. I explained that Black and Brown students in our district have languished behind their White and Asian peers for decades. At this point, I stressed, our past behaviors indicate one of two beliefs:

• There is a deficit in the students and their families, which keeps them at the bottom of a system that is there to support them.
• There is a deficit in our system that keeps particular groups of students at the bottom.

I explained that I chose to believe the latter, so I needed to become a part of the remedy. That also meant that it was “transfer time” for anyone who was not interested in directly grappling with issues of race, privilege, and systems of oppression.

Here is the rationale that I share with the staff (and my boss):

The world as it is has improved, but I need it to be better. I got into education to change the world. It used to be okay with me if teachers were in my school because they liked to help students in need and they believed that all students could learn.That’s no longer enough for our students, our school community, or me. I need them to prepare students to lead the transformation of our society. That means doing the work on ourselves If staff are not interested in disrupting the status quo, then they should find a new building.

Our staff must step beyond ally status and become co-conspirators. Allies tweet, text their BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) friends to say they care, and attend the occasional protest. Co-conspirators, on the other hand, actively work to deconstruct the system of oppression that has worked as designed for centuries. That means, at times, that co-conspirators will give up their own privileges and the privileges of their loved ones. 

 

Make a Public Declaration of Intent

I made a public declaration to my school community, part of which read the following:

For me, public statements are nice, but they don’t demonstrate a commitment to creating change…Change will come from the actions we take to combat racism and White supremacy, systems that affect far more than law enforcement. Whether it is education, economics, justice, healthcare, politics, etc., injustices rooted in racism and white supremacy are everywhere in our society.

As educators, part of our collective role is to teach our students how to recognize racism and how to work against it. Before we do that, however, we need to recognize and work against the racism in ourselves. The outrage about George Floyd, sadly, will fade. Something else will be on the front page of the newspapers, and many protestors will move on with their lives. Racism and white supremacy will remain. We have to commit to continuing antiracist work on ourselves and in our schools in the long term. When the public spotlight moves to another topic, our personal flashlights must stay focused, in part, on equipping our students with the support they need to not only contribute to society, but to transform it.

Please know that the love we have for your children will never change, nor will our belief in their potentials. However, the care and instruction that we provide will almost certainly be different. Our staff is going to spend next school year and years thereafter considering ways that our growing antiracism knowledge and skills will benefit your children and the rest of the Wheaton Woods community. Just so I’m clear, our antiracist work will not distract from the high standards we hold for your children. Antiracism will make us better instructors as well as better citizens. That can only help our students.

 

Cultivate Co-Conspirators

I am aware that staff members will have varying degrees of comfort, background knowledge, and interest in this work. I will meet them where they are, and we will walk forward from there. For instance, several teachers emailed me to share their idea of a book study. They considered eliminating our school’s academic content committees, which would allow us to sharpen our focus on a book study related to antiracism. Here was my reply:

Hey team,

I’m encouraged by your enthusiasm. Everyone will be doing antiracist work, and I’m cool with book studies. This is not a one-year type of plan. We will need a 3-5 year plan. There are scores of books and hundreds of articles that would benefit our staff and, therefore, our students. We’ll likely engage with pieces of different texts throughout this year to take people on a journey through understanding their racial identities to recognizing the impacts of racist/white supremacist policies on our beliefs. One of my target outcomes for our staff will be for each person to identify an inequity in our building, community, and/or district. The next step will be to develop/implement a plan to interrupt the inequity and measure the impact of the plan. We’ll be looking to change practices and policies, in addition to hearts and minds. We’ll need to keep in mind that antiracist work can come in many forms, at least according to Ibram Kendi, one of the hot names right now. We’ll also consider intersectionality and other forms of discrimination.

I don’t agree with the wholesale replacement of our content focuses. Instruction should also be an antiracist practice, so we should blend those concepts. Additionally, it will be our first year with [a new ELA curriculum] and second with [a new mathematics curriculum]; we’ll also need some of the basics for each program. However, those learning spaces might take place during staff meetings. We’re also going to need to have math and reading nights in the fall to support families with the new form of school, so we’ll need committee work on that.

In terms of how it will look, I’m still thinking. We’ll likely use 75 minutes in our staff meetings twice each month, with 20-40 minutes on antiracism in some fashion. So, the staff will get a “core curriculum,” so to speak. I plan to have a supplemental list of resources that people can read and/or watch in between our meetings. Perhaps you could each lead book studies with different texts, and we could spend time at some staff meetings comparing the concepts. If we used four book PLCs, each person in each grade level (mostly) could read a different text, which would color the conversations in planning meetings.

With that said, I’m open to your ideas.

The teachers and I plan to meet this summer to think through some new plans they have for pushing our school’s collective thinking. They will be antiracist co-conspirators who lead with me this year, and I welcome their partnership.

In addition to the work in my own building, I have begun to consult with like-minded leaders in other schools. Some of us are brainstorming ways to magnify our collective impact. An initiative called the BOND Project has been helpful in that endeavor. They are a well-read, levelheaded, insightful group of male educators of color who push me to be my best self, both personally and professionally.

  

Use Your Own Football

This summer, I plan to frame a professional learning action plan that extends the next three year. McDaniel College’s Equity and Excellence in Education program, founded by Dr. Alana Murray and Dr. Heather Yuhaniak, influences my thoughts in this regard. Their cohort model guides educators along the continuum from awareness of their own racial identities toward critical consciousness. I hope to mirror that progression with my staff cohort. The educators in that program.

I encourage other school leaders to stop waiting for public sentiment, policies, or laws to change. You have your own football that no one can snatch away from you. It’s time for you to kick off and take action. If you find that you need an additional co-conspirator in your work, give me a call.

 

The Center for Education Equity (CEE) at MAEC is inviting members of our advisory board, partners, and other colleagues to share their views on current equity issues. Their opinions do not necessarily reflect CEE’s views or those of the Department of Education and we do not necessarily endorse any products or resources they promote.