Читать книгу Five Practices for Equity-Focused School Leadership - Sharon I. Radd - Страница 30

Once you identify your own stories, and the stories around you, your next task is to change the story. But what does this look like? In order to provide practical strategies, we return to Ezra, who began a series of reflective conversations with his staff unpacking the stories they were telling themselves about why they couldn't do better. He shared the case studies above, and then asked teachers to work together with him to identify the key takeaways. His teaching staff identified these important considerations for their practice:

Sometimes educators engage in deficit thinking as a coping mechanism. When they have been working so hard and tried so many strategies that work with some students, they find it easier—perhaps natural—to blame the students or their colleagues who are still struggling. Try this:

 Recognize when you engage in deficit thinking toward your students, their families, or your colleagues. Notice times when you say, "They can't, won't, or don't …" as these terms often signal deficit thinking.

 Note that deficit thinking can be malevolent (angry, frustrated, judgmental) or benevolent (empathetic, emotionally generous), but both see students and their families as less than and limit their possibilities.

 Offer empathy to yourself and others about the struggle you all face. Remember that inequity is historical, institutionalized, and structural, and the path to change is to work together. Avoid blame, and instead focus on the strengths and assets that everyone brings to the situation. From there, listen and collaborate with other stakeholders to develop and implement systemic solutions.

Parent involvement has been framed in a culturally specific way that sheds a positive light on the ways many middle- and upper-class White families often show up at school. This framing provides increased access to power and influence for families with privilege while it diminishes all the other ways that parents and guardians can and do support their students' learning. Try this:

 Assume that the school has primary responsibility for student learning, regardless of family background or circumstance. Make sure that students' success in school does not depend on their family's resources or involvement.

 Reframe your ideas of family involvement to be more inclusive. Identify strategies to engage more authentically and respectfully with all families. Be certain to provide all communications to families in their home language, no excuses. Consider these adjustments in your wording to communicate a more inclusive and respectful stance:– Rather than parents, use parents, guardians, and caregivers.– Rather than mother/father, use parent/guardian/caregiver.– Rather than "They don't speak English," use "They speak [insert home language here]." (Remember that everyone has a language, and bilingualism is an incredible asset. When a family speaks a language that is different than the language that is spoken at school, the problem isn't the family's language, but the fact that both the school and the family speak a different language than the other).– Whenever you catch yourself saying, "They don't …" or "They won't …" consider how that usually represents a deficit orientation.

 Restructure parent/guardian/caregiver committees to ensure that all families are represented in decision-making groups.

It is easy to get trapped by fear of others' backlash when you take a stand for greater equity. This can cause you to ignore marginalization, oppressive conditions, and persons who are underserved or excluded. Equity leaders need to be concerned for all persons, most especially persons with marginalized identities. Although leaders need to be strategic about when and how to increase inclusion and equity via potentially controversial plans, you can't allow this to deter you from moving forward in a timely way to increase inclusion for all groups. Try this:

 Conduct an Equity Audit (see Practice IV). This process will help you identify those populations and processes that need your attention. The strategies for engaging with stakeholders and building coalitions found in Practices III, IV, and V will help you design and implement plans with a greater likelihood of effectiveness and constituent support.

It's possible for equity leaders to make excellent progress on behalf of one group while ignoring the marginalization, exclusion, or substandard learning conditions for another group. It's tempting to limit your concern to only those students who are in your classroom. Equity leaders, however, need to promote a concern for the entire school community among the entire faculty and staff. A spirit of collectivism has many benefits for advancing equity work. In the case of Ezra's school, it helped the teachers see that they were responsible for all students in the school, not just those in their classroom, and inclusive of students with a variety of marginalized identities. Try this:

 Avoid the "Oppression Olympics" (see Chapter 10 for more on this). Take an anti-oppressive stance, demonstrating concern and commitment for all forms of marginalization and exclusion.

 Promote the spirit of collectivism. Encourage systems and processes that support staff and faculty to take ownership for students throughout the school. Remember, "We all do better when we all do better."

The standardized testing movement has transformed our education system, directing attention to equity gaps. It is also creating an increasingly narrow and bleak education in schools that serve historically marginalized students as they reduce or eliminate art, science, music, and social studies and increasingly spend time on skill-and-drill literacy and math. As a nation, we have a moral and ethical obligation to seek the highest levels of learning for all children and better serve the many students who historically (and currently) have not been offered a robust opportunity to excel. Try this:

 Focus on the conditions of learning and the opportunities that are available across demographic and identity groups. Avoid the temptation to do more of what isn't working, and especially reject any efforts to narrow the curriculum and learning opportunities. Instead, trust that if you create and ensure engaging learning activities, environments, and relationships for all students, they will learn and achieve.

Some educators have done extensive work on themselves to understand key issues, and some educators are newly engaging with these critical topics. It's tempting to think you've learned enough after attending some training sessions. It's even more tempting to feel like you've arrived if you've had a life-changing epiphany about equity. However, moving toward equity is not a linear process, nor is there an endpoint. Equity leadership is not binary (i.e., a person is either an equity leader or not). No matter how much you do or don't know, you will always have more to learn. Try this:

 Step back from certainty and engage with curiosity. Assume you don't know enough. Commit to ongoing learning.

 Remember, there is no neat and tidy destination when it comes to equity leadership; instead, everyone must always stay open to new learning.

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Leaders play a vital role in creating excellent schools and ensuring equitable learning opportunities for all students. This includes those with positional authority, such as school principals, superintendents, and department chairs, as well as those with informal authority, such as revered teachers who are viewed as leaders by peers. Effective school leaders set directions for school communities to be academically ambitious and ensure that organizational structures support these ambitions while eliminating systemic inequities. They build the instructional capacity of the faculty and staff, drive organizational learning (Bryk, Sebring, Allensworth, Luppescu, & Easton, 2010), and include stakeholders (e.g., teachers, parents) in decision making (Leithwood & Riehl, 2005). As we move forward, remember that effective equity leadership is not a solitary activity, but instead a collective enterprise in which you consistently engage with others (Darling-Hammond, LaPointe, Meyerson, Orr, & Cohen, 2007). It is only through this collective approach that you make measurable, sustained, and systemic change to benefit marginalized students, as well as the system as a whole. The remainder of this book will help you develop your skills, mindset, and tools in leading this approach.