During one of my professional development courses, I was required to take over the summer, we were advised to watch a TedTalk delivered by Rita Pierson entitled Every Kid Needs A Champion. Throughout her TedTalk, she discusses the importance of students having a “champion”. In this context, a champion is a teacher who genuinely cares about their students beyond the call of duty. Pierson is a career long educator who was raised by another educator and so her convictions about who and what students need to be successful are strong. We were required to watch this video and reflect on what it means for our own career. Amid our professional discourse, which engaged several educators of various racial, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds who are all serving underprivileged communities, I learned that what it means to be a champion for the students we served for each person was different. What I learned was that many of the white people who were on the call felt that being a champion meant saving students because their circumstances were just unimaginable. While many of the black teachers, including myself, felt that they needed to push students to be resilient and to perform in spite of their circumstances. It appeared to me at that moment that the very approach we take to educating and even caring for our youth is very different. As the conversation amongst colleagues continued, we discussed colorblindness as many of the teachers shared that they didn’t see color, all they saw was students who needed them. As I reflect on this professional discourse and the delivery of the TedTalk, I reflect on how my very own project exposes these variations in approaches and the very impact that it may have on student outcomes. Pierson shared an experience that she encountered while teaching that really touched the depths of my soul and even more got to the heart of my research.
“One year I came up with a bright idea. I told all my students, "You were chosen to be in my class because I am the best teacher and you are the best students, they put us all together so we could show everybody else how to do it." One of the students said, "Really?" I said, "Really. We have to show the other classes how to do it, so when we walk down the hall, people will notice us, so you can't make noise. You just have to strut." And I gave them a saying to say: "I am somebody. I was somebody when I came. I'll be a better somebody when I leave. I am powerful, and I am strong. I deserve the education that I get here. I have things to do, people to impress, and places to go."
I will be using this artifact as a means of sharing a new perspective on how various teachers really approach black students. It even opened a new perspective about the savior complex and how colorblindness contributes to the various approaches. Initially, I focused solely on the negative implications of race and race alone without incorporating this idea of championing for our kids. Does championing cross culturally look different because of limited exposure to underserved and underprivileged youth? As a teacher with colleagues in my program who are mostly white individuals from homogeneous backgrounds, never quite paid attention to the descriptors that they use as they are describing our students, they help those they need and their families until this professional discourse took place as a result of this video. While Pierson has assisted in the development of my educational perspective, to change schools, we have to also analyze organizational leadership as it is equally important.
During my organizational leadership course, I was required to dive into the organizational hierarchy of an organization of my preference. Since I am specifically interested in the interworking of the educational system, I decided to explore the workings of the school system. In the article 27 Mistakes White Teachers of Black Students Make and How to Fix Them, written by Jay Wamsted, a white male teacher, dives into what he feels are the common mistakes that white teachers make when they are in the classroom with black students. While this particular article is written from the singular perspective of a 10-year teacher, the overarching themes and concepts are important. As a school leader and board, how do you properly ensure that the teachers that are being hired are properly prepared to serve and educate black scholars. In the article, Wamsted discusses many mistakes that white educators make that are mostly prompted by implicit and sometimes explicit biases. Which begs me to question what teacher readiness, licensing programs and even districts can do to reduce and address these mistakes head on. During my research, I concluded that the cultural competence approach that is being taken to deliver culturally relevant pedagogy is the most common amongst many public school districts, including my own. Teachers attend a professional development training that exposes them to the obvious things that breed inequality like the importance of focusing on the social and emotional components of teaching.
This article brought close attention to what happens before teachers arrive in the classroom. This article, written from the white perspective, exposes the gaps that are apparent in the educational system as it relates to the way black students receive education from white teachers. As I examined the pre teaching programs from a leadership perspective, it made me revisit public policy. The 45th president of the United States enacted policies that no longer mandated diversity training for federal employees and contractors. While this doesn’t speak to the issues that have happened historically as it relates to white teachers and black students, it reminds us that policy and leadership set the expectation and tone of what is acceptable. In a country where racism is systemic, we must have more intention about the way that we prepare the people getting in front of our students.
Over the past few months, I have spent time becoming acclimated to policy, community organizing and advocacy through synchronous courses with Leadership for Educational Equity (LEE). During this time, I really had the opportunity to dive into policies that either directly or indirectly impact black and brown youth at a disparaging rate such as the zero-tolerance policy, fund allocation and uniform polices. In her 206 article, How Black Lives Matter Activists Plan to Fix Schools by Emily Deruy, Deruy uses a public administration lens to really examine the impact that these decisions have had on black and brown youth collectively. Public administrators are supposed to make decisions with the best interest of the public in mind and as Deruy alluded to, sometimes Black and brown youth (as well as adults) are not benefactors of these policies and instead are on the receiving end of negative consequences associated with it.
Deruy (2016) said that of the largest ten school districts in the country, four of them are staffed with more security officers than they are with counselors. The use of security to address social emotional issues is an educational pandemic. Deruy talks about the way that the Black Lives Matter movement has made its stake on college campuses as it pushes for more inclusion within the curriculum. She also shares that the push is being made for K-12 curriculum without the demonstrated progress.
The outline of these polices are imperative to my research because these very policies are the foundations of my work. The U.S educational system is indeed broken and the proof is in the way that the system is working. As Deruy mentioned, there is segregation within America’s public schools and it is undeniable, even within the most affluent areas. Black youth are still subjected to concentrated poverty which directly impacts student performance and social emotional skills. Black students learn resilience as a required method of survival. Deruy connects this idea of educational reform to the criminal justice system, health care system, the economy and many other public policy issues. In considering all this information, it really contributes to the why. It answers the question rather eloquently as to why we need and required social and emotional learning in schools. It begs to answer why we require cultural awareness and understanding for more than just students to end the perpetuation of this systemic racism that systematically inserts disparities into these various systems. It addressed why teacher preparation programs and who is standing in front of our young people is so critical.
As I completed this assignment and this research, I never swayed from these statistics. I never stopped thinking about how four schools are prime examples of the school to prison pipeline and how our students are being done a huge disservice. I never stopped thinking about how the individuals that make these policies are never the ones who are directly and negatively impacted by its implementation.
While the revisions to my project are plentiful, the biggest revision of all has been the insertion of the policy demands that the Black Lives Matter Movement made to several institutions that serves K-12 students. The reason I am inserting these policies is because I think it is important to understand the full educational landscape, where we are right now and how SEC and resources can possibly aide and address all the issues that we are currently having.
As I prepared to integrate these resources, I incorporated this idea of championing for students. Each student's academic, emotional, and social needs, not to mention the way that we best meet those needs must go through a lens of championing for each one of them. At this present moment, Black and Brown students need teachers who are going to champion for them and talk about the elephant in the room, race. Changing the classroom will hopefully impact school structures thus applying pressure to systems at large. Discussing policy and leadership which falls under the umbrella of Public Administration, will assist in truly dissecting this system so that we are able to have the biggest impact. I am most passionate about educational equity and reconciling other forms of inequities.
Works Cited:
Pierson, R. (2013, May 3). Every kid needs a champion. YouTube. https://youtu.be/SFnMTHhKdkw.
DeRuy, E. (2016, August 05). The Ambitious Education Plan of the Black Lives Matter Movement. Retrieved March 08, 2021, from https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/08/the-ambitious-education-plan-of-the-black-lives-matter-movement/494711/
Wamsted, J. (2020, January 7). 27 Mistakes White Teachers of Black Students Make and How to Fix Them. Education Post. https://educationpost.org/27-mistakes-white-teachers-of-black-students-make-and-how-to-fix-them/.