Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Sam.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: All right. Hello and welcome to JSL Jabber. My name is Ian Mehta. I use he him pronouns. I am an Associate professor of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University at Buffalo and I'm a board member of the Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership.
JCEL publishes peer reviewed cases for educational leaders who are in preparation programs as well as for practitioners who want to connect theory to practice as part of professional development efforts.
The journal is available online and the goal of JCEL is to help educational leaders create more equitable learning experiences for communities across the globe.
Each case has a narrative, teaching notes, discussion questions, and learning activities for educational leaders to consider.
JSAL Jabber is a way to help educators consider how one of the cases from JCEL could be used to support learning for leadership.
JCELL Jabber is a quarterly podcast that helps highlight special collections of articles that are temporarily made available for free to increase access around issues of inequities that exist in school systems.
[00:01:53] Speaker C: My name is Curtis Brewer. I'm a Professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio. I am a co editor of the Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership.
We provide listeners with this brief 30 to 45 minute podcast to engage more deeply with a published case and hear nuanced analysis of the issue.
The podcast also connects the listener with the author who provides additional details about the case and provides a discussion with a scholar from the field. In this episode we review Shannon Waite's and Dr. Courtney Wilkinson's case study. Are educational leaders of color truly able to lead for equity, maintaining the status quo or disrupting unequitable systems?
This case was published in the September of 202023 and critiques the politics that often prevent equity oriented and anti racist educational leadership from being enacted. At the heart of this case is the importance of how culturally responsive school leaders address the resistance when principals and superintendents attempt to disrupt the status quo of privileged perspectives and identities.
[00:03:02] Speaker B: So for this episode we're recording live from the annual meeting at UCEA in Minneapolis and we're excited to be here and make this part of the conference experience for a second year in a row. So big shout out to Carl and UCEA for helping us make sure that we can record this session and meet the technical requirements of recording for a podcast. And we should note that our third team member, Dr. Terry Watson, could not be at UCEA this year, but she continues to be part of the JSL Jabber podcast team and will join us in January when we engage, hopefully with the one and only Goldie Muhammad. So stay tuned for that upcoming episode.
So to set the stage for this case and for the listener to hear from the author, we wanted to review how anti racism, culturally responsive teaching and culturally responsive school leadership are or are not supported as they're implemented in the school system. In the US we see examples of parents from privileged socio cultural backgrounds including but not limited to race, ethnicity, religion, birth, sex, class orientation, ability, and other lived experiences leverage their political and social currency to maintain status quo to benefit their children rather than disrupt inequitable outcomes produced by school systems.
So for many in the U.S. particularly those that are committed to anti racist and culturally responsive school leadership, educational leaders experience a struggle to navigate core beliefs about equity and access and the political realities of principals and superintendents.
This can be particularly true when education systems examine their policy driven and academic outcomes, which can include differences in rates of attendance, discipline access to advanced coursework, and academic achievement across race, ethnicity, sex free and reduced lunch status, and 504 or IEP status. In the US we see examples of pushback from both parents and teachers when examining inequitable outcomes.
Culturally responsive school leadership requires educators to sit with the discomforts of the inequities produced by their own school system and then reimagine what is possible in a more culturally responsive schoolhouse.
By developing a more critical consciousness, culturally responsive school leaders can challenge Eurocentric perspectives and deficit oriented perspectives about students.
With an ongoing development of critical consciousness, school leaders can help lead school systems to address school improvement efforts through ongoing cycles of reflection to increase awareness about internalized racism and discriminatory practices.
[00:05:39] Speaker C: And as we noticed some of the challenges to implementing culturally responsive teaching and culturally responsive school leadership in the U.S.
we witness a pushback from the privileged social cultural identities. For example, white upper middle class parents sometimes vocalize their beliefs that culturally responsive teaching dumbs down instruction despite the focus on inclusivity and culturally affirming pedagogies. Additionally, sometimes parents question if culturally responsive teaching has a historically accurate lens, suggesting that an ahistorical approach could might be less critical and therefore more appropriate for a PK12 setting.
As Dr. Waite and Dr. Wilkinson review, in this case, some parents become concerned about the teaching of children to think critically and challenge dominant narratives that critique our racialized U.S. society.
Moreover, as noted in this case, parents can actively leverage political currency by discrediting attempts to implement culturally responsive programs, practices and intentionally misconstruing or misrepresenting attempts at addressing inequitable outcomes. This can be especially true when addressing instructional or policy driven outcomes that attempt to level the playing field by redistributing resources away from privileged group of students and parents.
In this case, resistance to the equity efforts employs the ideology of pull yourself up from the bootstraps that is prevalent in US Culture. This discourse is enacted by Chinese American and immigrant families in the case and they want to protect the gifted and talented programs that have acted to segregate Vietnamese families into lower tracts. The ideology becomes a coalescing agent in the formation of a resistant coalition of wealthy white families, Chinese American families, and newly arrived immigrant families. This this coalition leans on local politicians in an attempt to prevent the superintendent's plan to provide greater equity and access through a redevelopment of the GT programs into culturally inclusive curriculums.
So we want to create the opportunity for Dr. Shannon Waite and Dr. Mark Gooden to engage in a discussion about the article and potential challenges of implementing culturally responsive leadership.
Therefore, we'd like to welcome Dr. Shannon Waite, who is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Howard University, as well as Dr.
Mark Gooden, who is the Christian Johnson Endeavor professor of Education Leadership at Teachers College. Shannon Mark, welcome to the show.
Briefly introduce yourself to the audience.
[00:08:25] Speaker D: Thank you guys so much for this opportunity.
As you've already said, I am an assistant professor at Howard University.
I am a scholar activist. That's how I like to think about myself and the work that I do. And my research agenda has varying components, but this particular case is in alignment with what I've been writing about heavily right now, which is the development of critical consciousness in education leaders.
[00:08:55] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: Awesome. Well, thank you all for having me on the show.
As you said, I'm a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University.
My work really centers on this, these concepts of anti racist leadership, cultural responsive school leadership, but also with the focus on looking at the law and how it intersects with policy and some of the practices that go on in school. So looking forward to jumping into that. I'm not going to speak too much about that because I'm ready to get into that the case.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:09:23] Speaker C: Great. So I'll start off with what should be a fairly easy question. Shannon, why did you write this case and who was your audience?
[00:09:32] Speaker D: So I jumped at the chance to write a JCEL case.
And the call that I responded to in particular was for a special issue of LSJ focused on anti racist leadership and the target audience, ideally as all graduate students.
You know, I'm an ed leader.
I am in the field of ed leadership, but also teaching teachers, students who are pursuing those degrees, master's students who are seeking to become school building leaders.
So really anyone in the field of educational leadership, but specifically those who are seeking the principalship and superintendency.
[00:10:17] Speaker B: So we'll ask Mark first and then we'll go back to you, Shannon. Mark, in your opinion, what do you think?
What do you think are the biggest challenges facing educational leaders who hope to create safe spaces for educators to reflect on the inequities that their schools produce?
[00:10:34] Speaker A: Yeah, good question. You know, I think the interesting thing about this work is Shannon talks about this of kind concept of critical consciousness.
Believe it or not, I still find that there are a lot of leaders who are looking for the problems out there and they say, hey, you know, I'm glad you showed up to help us with those people. And you know, how are we going to fix some of my colleagues who just don't get it? And the tricky thing about that is the whole introspective piece is lost. So starting with you and really reflecting on your own consciousness and your ability to recognize those many levels of inequities is really important. I think that's hard. But a really closely connected issue is just this idea of courage.
So many leaders have come through programs in my 22 years of doing this. You can do the anti racist leadership, you can do the critical conscious development.
But when it's time for the rubber to hit the road, there's still a question about a number of educations educators, many white educators, whether they're going to take the risk and stand up for black and brown kids. So I find that those two closer connect when we start thinking about this content.
[00:11:41] Speaker B: That's right.
Shannon, can you share your thoughts on challenges for educators engaging in this work?
[00:11:47] Speaker D: Yes, I think that to underscore Mark's point, this work is intra before it is ever inter.
And the problem is there are many people who are doing who are attempting to lead from a space that they know nothing about.
And for me, the biggest challenge, or one of them is the expectation that these leaders are supposed to create these spaces without the proper guidance, training, or in many instances, professional development to support their ability to do the work themselves. Right. Like how am I supposed to create these spaces in schools when no one has ever created this space for me? How am I supposed to push these teachers to think this way when I'm unclear about how I feel about these topics? Right. We all drink from the Kool Aid of racism that is embedded in Pre K through 12 education.
And so there are times that leaders, regardless of race, weaponized white supremacy against all students because really everyone loses white supremacy and the construct that is whiteness. It takes no prisoners, and everybody loses inclusive. This is going to sound shocking. White children, they lose too, and they lose big time.
And I think that in educational leadership, I'm really passionate about this because I feel like we are the last stop and we have a moral imperative to interrupt the pathologies of white supremacy and racism because we put so much onus on leaders and all that they're supposed to do, Right. They're supposed to make waves, move mountains, and do all of this work, and they're not given the proper supports or training.
[00:13:37] Speaker B: So we're unpacking race. And Mark one time I heard you give a great presentation. Can you just quickly, for the podcast, can you talk about some of the other privileged socio cultural identities we might want to be aware of as educational leaders that we might want to unpack or as we think about privilege?
[00:13:53] Speaker A: Absolutely.
So one of the things I recommend in my work is starting with race. I want to be clear about that because I often get the question, like, are you just talking about this thing between black folks and white folks? And I really try to impress upon people it is a racial hierarchy in this country that's tied to our histories, the structural inequities, the historical, the institutionals. So I want to make sure we understand that. So at the start of race, we can move, for instance, to socioeconomic status. We have really some deep entrenched issues around how we treat people living in poverty, how we tend to systematically exclude them from the conversation.
We know about intersectionality, but once again, we got to start understanding those identities individually, in my view, before we can start talking about individuality, gender inequities, talking about gender, gender identity. You go to some schools in the south and they're still pushing for religious approaches, talking about Christianity being the majority religion and saying, oh, I can't support kids with gender identity in their lives because, you know, I'm a Christian. So once again, we have to recognize our invisibility around it and our tendency to invisibilize those students under the guise that we're Christian, which again, we talk about religion. So we don't do enough to talking about what's happening with religious minorities in this country. Right. For example, Muslims. I mean, that is a hot topic now around what's happening in the world, what's happening in schools, what's been consistently happening in schools, how we marginalize Muslims kids.
So I can go through all those items, but I'm just giving a few as you ask and happy to Keep going.
[00:15:34] Speaker B: Thank you.
So, Shannon, back to you. And then Curtis can take it for a little bit, given what you've talked about, what Mark has talked about, and not to pace for privilege. Can you talk about you had a quote in the case, go slow to go fast.
[00:15:50] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:15:50] Speaker B: And can you talk about what does that mean when you're engaged in this work?
[00:15:53] Speaker D: So I was introduced to that quote, honestly through some work I'm doing with the Wallace Foundation.
And in that instance, they were telling us that we needed to go slow to go fast in order to properly address the problem.
And I think that that is very representative of education overall. Right. Because in education within the field, we have a terrible case of solutionitis. There is a solution for everything. We have a remedy for everything.
The problem is, is that we don't go slow to go fast. We don't take our time to actually diagnose the problem because we're too busy treating symptoms.
And because we are so busy treating symptoms, we never actually get to diagnose that someone really has the flu, they have bronchitis, they have Covid because we're too busy making sure that they have an antibiotic to take care of, you know, that cough, or we give them Tylenol with codeine for that headache. We never actually take the time to think and really interrogate to get to the bottom. And Mark talked about the historical legacies.
Historical context is incredibly important in the field, in the country, in education.
And so without really being able, without going slow to go fast, it's at times just this constant cycle of solutionitis and we keep finding ourselves dealing with what feels like a new problem, but it's really the same problem. It's old wine in a new bottle.
[00:17:34] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:17:36] Speaker C: Shannon, can you tell us a little more about the creation of the case?
For example, the superintendent in the case seemed to do everything correctly implementing the culturally responsive school leadership, yet was stymied. You know, what is it that you want people reading this case to remember when engaging in culturally responsive school leadership practices?
[00:17:55] Speaker D: I'm going to read what I've written here because this is really good.
[00:17:58] Speaker C: Okay, nice.
[00:18:00] Speaker D: I want educators who are attempting to engage in culturally responsive leadership practices to remember that it is their. That their silence will never save them.
And that given the current socio political context of the nation and really the globe right now, it's really unstable.
And within the field of education right now, times are terrifying. It's a terrifying time to be a teacher. Right. As rewarding as it is, it's a terrifying time. It's a terrifying time to be an administrator. It's a terrifying time to be a bus driver. We can't get enough bus drivers. I have to drop my daughter off at school every day. Right.
So I really want folks who are engaged in the field, and particularly those with their names associated in leadership in those buildings. I want them to see that you can do everything correctly and you can still face challenges that can shut you down. And I want leaders, and particularly leaders of the global majority and women to remember that their silence will never save them. You will never, ever, ever do it right enough to protect yourself from the machination that is white supremacy.
Right.
Because all it does is kill. And I just want to end with this quote from Audre Lorde. She said, and this is from the transformation of silence into language and action. I was going to die, if not sooner than later. Whether or not I had ever spoken myself, my silence had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.
[00:19:46] Speaker C: Wow, that's really powerful. Thank you for that quote.
[00:19:50] Speaker B: So, Mark, I'll ask you this, and then, Shannon, I'll ask you the same thing. So, Mark, when you think of a case like this, what are your biggest hopes or dreams, then maybe also, what are your concerns for how we can think about reimagining a more equitable education.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: System in the U.S. yes, it's funny, you end with that word system. Right.
When I see a case like this, which. Which I really enjoyed, by the way, it really gets at the intricacies of systems, system politics, the ways we have to navigate this space. Like Dr. Ramirez, ultimately, I like her because she could raise it to say, you know, I should just say, spoiler alert, I'll stop there. But anyway, I like the way she navigates these really complex ways, and I like the way this case helps us understand that. Ultimately, moving beyond the interpersonal stuff, if we don't lift this conversation to systemic inequities, we're just doing stuff that works on us. It's like going to yoga on Sunday, right? You're just doing something that's great for you. You may feel better. But if you can't point to some real changes, which inevitably she does, we're not really doing anything for kids. And I hate to say that to some leaders because they get stuck spending a whole year of critical consciousness. We got it. Now we reflect. I say, okay, now tell me, the outcomes show many changes.
[00:21:07] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:21:07] Speaker A: Oh, we're not there yet. You have to have at least more than just your own personal change. So the systemic piece is really important. And then sustainability follows that very closely. So we have to be moving in that direction.
[00:21:18] Speaker B: Thank you.
Shannon, what are your biggest hopes or dreams or concerns as we think about reimagining what the schoolhouse might look like?
[00:21:26] Speaker D: So I'm gonna go with dreams.
[00:21:27] Speaker B: Love it.
[00:21:28] Speaker D: Because that was an option.
And you know, Dr. Patina, love talks a lot about freedom dreaming. So on this one, I'm a freedom dream. And my dream, a part of it would be that we would.
Educators would all come together to conspire to try to dismantle the house from the inside.
Right.
And if we found that we couldn't, that we would then collectively decide that we were just to going. Going to demolish it and rebuild it with more equitable, sustainable practices and incorporate a true vision of equity for all students and a clear definition that equity means fair. Right. It does not mean equal because that often gets conflated in education.
And that since I'm dreaming that just the community would respond in a way that was supportive and that folks would do the work of educating themselves to understand that the pie, the construct that there is a pie and that if there is more, if the slices are redistributed, that that means you're going to get less of it.
That that would just be a thing of the past. That's the. My dream.
[00:22:49] Speaker B: Thank you.
So I think we have some time, if people in the audience would like to come up and ask our panelists a question.
Speak right into the mic.
[00:23:02] Speaker E: Okay. You made a statement earlier about.
I'm from Canada, so I realize the rule, the context are not exactly the same, but we have.
We have racism. We tend to be attending more to the indigenous piece, the black racism, but it's still there, too. Anyway, you made a claim, though, that you said that the K12 system has racism embedded in it.
Now, that strikes me as a strong statement, probably based on history, but I'm wondering is at some point, would there be any metrics or evidence to show that maybe racism is less embedded or less prevalent? You know, like, you know, how cancer can reduce a tumor. Is there any evidence, Is there any way to show that maybe we can get to a stage where we can say, well, maybe racism is not embedded, but it's still there. Just like we have crime in society, but we can say our society is crime. Vetted.
[00:23:49] Speaker D: Thank you for the question. I think it's an important one.
I'm a teacher at heart, so if y' all will rock with me. And I'm a call and response type of girl, right So I did say education.
Candidly, I'll just, just be even more honest.
The United States was founded on racism at its founding. This country is inherently racist. And I can give you a receipt, as I'd like to say, right, There is in the Constitution there's something called the preamble, right? And the preamble says we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, right?
And so this is the part where I need y' all to talk back to me.
Who is the we when it says we hold these truths to be self evident?
White men. Can you speak louder for them? White men. White men. What about those white men? Land owners, Land owning white men. Anything else about those land owning white men?
Christian. They were Christian. Land owning white men.
So that means just on those parameters right there, that at the founding of the country, not all white men were created equal, right? Because Thomas Jefferson and the rest of the founders fit all of those bills.
And there were a ton of white folks who didn't fit that bill.
So at the founding of the country, right, when the document was signed, there's something in there called the three fifths compromise, right? I think we're all familiar with the three fifths compromise. It said that for every one enslaved African, they were three fifths of one white man, right?
And so ladies, right, and my non binary folk in here, we ain't even.
Those documents ain't even talking about us.
So when I make a claim like education is founded, sorry, that racism is embedded. I'm really talking about the foundation of the country. So for me, I'm, as I said, critical race. I said scholar practitioner. I should have also mentioned that I use critical race theory as my primary method to analyze inequities in education.
So this whole country, racist, right? But with regard to education, I think that we can look across every metric, every metric and every variable that feeds into education. You can look at quality of life measures across health care. You can look at employment, you can look at housing.
And you will see no matter which way you look at that data and how it is spun, that for some reason black folk, and unfortunately they don't care about the diaspora, right? They don't know that you immigrated here from Haiti. They don't know that you immigrated here from Nigeria. They just know that you black black folk generally are doing, they have the poorest outcomes.
And so I cannot give you the metric that you were hoping for, but I hope that I have answered your question.
[00:27:10] Speaker E: Can I just, can I push back on one thing?
Two things One.
Now, I'm not American, so I don't know all the legalities, but that document says we the people. I know when you interpret court doc or legal documents, part of it is reading who the authors of the adopted were. But because adopted says read the people, it may be true that people who signed it may all been white males, but the legal consequences consequences would flow to others anyway because that's why the Constitution eventually incorporated the fact it wasn't just white males who had these rights. So that'd be one thought. But the other thing is it may be true that historically certain things were. So I guess my question is just because it may BE so in 1776, is it still so in 2023 that that same racism is at the same degree as it was then? Is it the same?
[00:27:58] Speaker A: Yeah. So let me bring it closer home with education.
So take for instance, Brown vs Board of Education, 1954, which supposedly was to desegregate schools in 1955, was to do it with all deliberate speed. Historically, if you look at that thread from 1954 to 2023, it was supposed to eliminate segregation in the United States of America. Are most United States public schools still segregated? The threat is historical. It's still there. The reality is, has not changed. You can take special education.
Special education kids were systematically excluded. They were told that they were uneducable because they couldn't be educated with the general population. This is still true in our schools today.
[00:28:38] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:28:39] Speaker A: Most educators are trained to say, we don't want to mainstream those kids because if we do that, white kids are going to have their education violated in some way. It's going to be decreased, it's going to be diminished. Not my kids. So we're going to come up with ways to separate them. So that thread is historical, but we ensure that it's also structural. In fact, we even say it's institutional through our laws. Policies and practices. Follow the case law and the case law will show you the same results of where we are right now. It's all legally constructed. Going from Brown versus Board of Education 20 years later into Milliken versus Bradley. Thurgood Marshall said, this is terrible. This is sad, because we had in 20 years, two short decades, turned our eyes away from Brown versus Board of Education. That doesn't even talk about what was going on in the South. I'm from Georgia talking about local control. Black folks don't like to hear that in the south because that means there's some white boards that were controlling the school boards that doesn't even talk about all the black educators who systematically lost their jobs, never ever gained those jobs or those property rights back. So we have to recognize that there are Multiple examples, as Dr. Waite said, that are there. We just have to be looking at it. Otherwise it's invisibleized by higher ideas about we the people.
[00:29:55] Speaker D: And if I can just add one more thing to the point about because it happened, it was true then, is it still true now? You can still in the United States of America look at a housing deed and you can still see if you trace back the legacy of where it says this domicile shall never be owned by an African, should not even be inhabited by an African American. I'm sure they don't use that word. But an African American, unless it's in a domestic capacity, that's still true today. There are still districts that are under consent decree right by the US Government to force things. So while I understand that at times it's uncomfortable to make a claim that because something was was true back then, is it still true now? We just have to examine the thread and see the receipts. And unfortunately, even though we like to believe that the Constitution, that the rights in the Constitution flow, I think that we can take a look at some of the most recent constitutional policies and laws that have had to go down to states to be codified because those rights were reversed. And it is because that they were not talking about. Right.
If Justice Scalia had had his way, women never would have had certain rights because it does say men in the document.
[00:31:25] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:31:26] Speaker B: I'm just going to add this. I think when you look at student information system data also right from right now present time, you're going to find inequities based on race free and reduced lunch status for 504 IEP status. Right. So we see those inequities continue in outcomes. And I think that's what we're trying to talk about. How do you address the inequities in the schoolhouse?
Is there another question? A couple questions that we'd like to.
[00:31:51] Speaker D: Ask the panelists or comments.
Hi.
[00:31:55] Speaker F: So I'm wondering if you can expand a little bit on the concept that you brought up of teachers, that your silence will never save you. My experience as an educator and the messaging that I've received from the people in my school district that are in charge is essentially don't bring your opinions to school with you. My leadership has said you will never know what we think because we are agents of the school board, which in our Case is a racist, homophobic, all the things.
And so I'm wondering what you would say to that mindset in this context.
[00:32:40] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:32:43] Speaker D: What I would say. Well, I tell you, I'll tell you what I do say. And I actually have a student in the audience so he can hold me accountable to whether or not I say that or I don't.
Former student. He's now Dr. Dr. D. Phillips.
I tell students that they need to be very clear about whether or not this is their job or this is their calling. I use the word ministry calling, et cetera.
Education is a vocation to me. It is not something that I did because I couldn't do anything else.
Education. And so it also happens for me to be a part of what I feel like I am called by a greater power to do.
And so because for me, it is tied to that, I can only speak to folks who feel the same way. So this may apply, it may not. Right. For people who. It's a job.
This probably won't apply. But there has to be a hill upon which you, you need to be willing to die.
And you have to have a set of non negotiables about things that you will or you will not do. And so for me, I have a couple of non negotiables. I got to be able to get to sleep at night and I got to be able to look myself in the mirror. And so if either of those two things can't happen, I'm going to have to have the hard conversation with myself. Right? Because money is real.
Right? Like I can't pay my rent with. Well, God called me to teach.
[00:34:16] Speaker C: Right.
[00:34:17] Speaker D: That's a very real thing. And so in response, when I have had to do hard things, I have called my mom and I said, mommy, you know when you said that we can always come home, were you serious about that?
And she's like, shannon, you and your brother can always come home. I'm like, me and the girls. She's like, yes, y' all can come home.
And so when I have had to do hard things, because this is my calling, I have always been okay, Right.
I am a former school board member of New York City Public Schools.
They don't have a school board. It's called the Panel for Educational Policy.
I was a mayoral appointee. I served under Bill de Blasio, and I served particularly under Chancellor Richard Carranza, who made a lot of waves in New York City with the work that he did.
And there were a number of times when he was attacked, and I felt the spirit move. And in that moment, I was terrified, but I was more terrified of what would happen if I did not do what I was being, what the spirit was calling me to do. And so in those moments, I did the hard things. I tell my students they need to be very clear because I don't have a job for them. I say that right, Chris?
I don't have a job for you, but you need to understand. And I see my colleague, Dr. Shawn Joseph, he says. And Shawn, correct me when I get it wrong, because, you know, I always mess it up. He says that if you focus on your purpose, you will always have a job. But if you focus on your job, you may lose your purpose.
And so I would ask folks in those positions, is this your job or is this your purpose?
And then the expectation would be that they move accordingly.
I don't know if I answered your question, but I hope I provided some insight.
[00:36:07] Speaker A: I mean, the only thing I'll add, beautifully said, is that, you know, education is serious.
I mean, my people said Malcolm X Spencer said, education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today. I mean, I stand by Jim Anderson's claim that the education system in the south was generally built by black folks who saw into the future and said, we want our kids to have a better opportunity than we've had coming out of being enslaved and then sharecroppers. So for them, education was the way to really move yourself out of poverty. So much so that they mortgaged their labor into the future to build shanty schools because they knew the power of education.
We got some people who understand that today, and we got some people who are into education because it's convenient.
We got some people who are in education and perpetuating white supremacist stuff. We got people who say, it's safe for me not to say anything, but I think I hold leaders accountable for not raising the right kinds of questions. When you can look to say, if we have in this country 16% of the black children, 16% of the population made up of black children, yet for decade after decade after decade, they make up 32% of the kids who suspended the first time.
Look at your data from the civil rights data. Look at your. If that's happening in your school, something's wrong. And I submit to you, those folks are not educators.
Not for those kids, black kids, they may be there to maintain white supremacy and say, I'm doing the status quo. So those kids who come to me already, who are not already have what they need. Well, I'm just going to do that.
I don't call that education. I call those people just kind of maintaining the status quo. And that is what has hurt black and brown kids in this country, because so many of us see that we know what's wrong. I've had all kinds of educators of all kinds of races nationalized. Oh, I saw it, but I didn't do anything. I've had educators tell me, you know, I don't really believe that suspension is the best way to discipline kids. But we don't have anything else. What you're really saying is, I'm not willing to look and try anything else that's humane. Because these black and brown kids, after all, when I go home, when I finish my job teaching, I go to my neighborhood, I go somewhere else because these ain't my kids. Now, they don't say that directly, but I'm clarifying your meaning because that's what I got out of that when I looked at your data.
Right? And so if we're not courageous to call that out, we're part of the problem.
People don't like me to say, but I'm nice, Dr. Good, I'm kind, but you're part of the problem.
[00:38:50] Speaker D: And just to underscore, we are talking about both of our positionality, right? I leave from my positionality. I teach, I write everything from my positionality. I am a black woman, so I do talk from that perspective. And because I am a human being, I can also say white supremacy ain't killing it for white kids either.
There is a segment of white children that are woefully, woefully undereducated in this country. And that is intentional too, right?
It is intentional, too.
And it is because there is a hierarchy around whiteness in this country that folks don't want to admit.
And unfortunately, because whiteness will sacrifice its own self to save and preserve itself.
That is why we are in this very cyclical experiment around education.
At least in my humble opinion, that's one of the reasons.
[00:39:51] Speaker A: No.
And remember, if we can just go back to the historical, structural and institutional peace, this thing is working for some folks.
[00:39:59] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:40:00] Speaker A: Look and see who it's working for. Now.
Look back 50 years, 100 years, it's the same, folks.
And the problem, when Santa says white supremacy, most of us believe that's okay. Or we're too scared to say and do something different because it's been normalized.
There are a lot of people, like I said, educators are all racist.
Very much comfortable seeing black and brown kids in those stats that I've just said to you.
We collect data on that. Every two years, principals fill out a survey, go check it out. It's public information. It's looked the same every single year.
[00:40:42] Speaker D: And I know we gotta move on, but I'll say this. Yesterday I attended my colleague, Dr. Sean Joseph's roundtable, and Sean made this very profound statement, and he said, so if you're telling me that you aren't comfortable with those types of numbers around children, right, let's say it's literacy rates for black children and you know these numbers and you don't do anything about it, then that essentially means you are comfortable with those rates for black children. And I know people don't like binaries, right? And we have to understand and we have to give grace and we have to meet people where they are. I do think, though, that at this point, the rubber has to hit the road if we expect something to change. Right? Because if you are not comfortable, I always, I told my students, I tell my students, we have to be comfortable, comfortable being uncomfortable. You have to be comfortable having the uncomfortable conversation. You have to, because children's lives are depending on it. If you do not interrupt these pathologies, who else is going to do it?
Who else if not us?
[00:41:58] Speaker B: Thank you.
Let's do one more comment or question and then we'll wrap up with the podcast.
[00:42:08] Speaker A: This is an underhanded lob for you right here.
Is there a best approach to build.
[00:42:15] Speaker D: Critical consciousness through professional development? Absolutely there is.
In fact, I happen to write a chapter on the importance of critical consciousness for culturally responsive instructional leadership.
And again, it goes back to what Mark said earlier in the podcast.
You have to start intra before you can do inter.
And there are varying frameworks that exist.
There are people who do research on this. There are people who do trainings on it. My underhanded lab, I happen to do both. I consult. Thanks, Dr. Joseph.
And I'm happy to.
And I will say that all of my work is grounded in Mark's work. And so I have to. I always, whenever I have the opportunity, I have to pay homage to the people whose shoulders I stand on. And when I have the opportunity to do that with the living legends, I try to do that because it is the work of Dr. Mark Anthony Gooden, Dr. James Earl Davis, Dr. Muhammad Khalifa, Dr. Barbara Jackson, Dr. Linda Tillman, Dr. Terry Watson. I can go on and on and on and on to the people who have come before me and who have created a space Dr. Judy Alston, who created the space for me to sit here at this podcast and say the words white supremacy and racism. And both Edie and Curtis aren't like, they cool with it, right? They knew what they were going to get when they invited me, right? They knew what they were going to get when they invited us.
And so I think that this right here is just an example of how the shift in the narrative around thinking about these complex conversations is happening.
And when it comes to best practices, Doctors Linda, I still rely on Dr. Linda Darling Hammond, Dr. Maria Hyler, and Gardner. I don't know Dr. Gardner's first name, but they developed, I want to say it was 2016 or 2017. They developed a best practice sort of how to key components, seven key components that have to be embedded in professional development in order for it to be effective. They reviewed the literature.
Doctors I just rattled them off.
Khalifa, Gooded and Davis did a literature review and that's how they developed the CRSL Culturally Responsive School Leadership Framework. So the research is there, the guide, what is it? The blueprint? It is there.
And there are those of us who are writing about the work. It can be done. You just have to be brave enough and willing enough to do it. And it starts with you. It is not those other people out there there. It is you.
It is you.
[00:45:36] Speaker B: This has been, I think, one of my this is Top podcast that I think we've done up to this point. Powerful messages. Dr. Waite, I'm so appreciative of you. And we talk about the idea of how do we develop more culturally responsive instructional supervisors starts with that development of critical consciousness. What does that mean for developing equity oriented instructional leaders? You are a leader in that field and we are grateful for you and Dr. Gooden. You have always been here for this work. You have been supporting Shannon's work and in a lot of ways my work.
And we are grateful for your expertise and your time today also. So thank you both.
[00:46:12] Speaker D: Thank you.
[00:46:13] Speaker C: Thank you all both for sharing. It's outstanding.
[00:46:16] Speaker A: You're welcome.
[00:46:18] Speaker C: If you would like to access this article, please visit our special Collections page linked to this podcast. Every 90 days we will post five to six articles that will be available to everyone. If you would like to see our whole body of work, please visit your local university library or talk with Sage about a subscription. If you have questions, you can email me directly at Curtis brewertsa.
[00:46:42] Speaker B: Edu And I'm Ian Mehta and you can email me at ianmettte buffalo.edu. you can follow me on Twitter Ianmeta and we look forward to joining you next time on jsail jabber.
[00:47:15] Speaker D: Sa.
