Читать книгу Assessing with Respect - Starr Sackstein - Страница 6

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I believe that, as educators, we all enter the profession with this valuable and honorable mission: to have a profound and positive impact on students, families, colleagues, and the greater learning community. This mission can sometimes feel impossible and overwhelming with so many factors and challenges pushing against us, our students, families, and communities. Systemic racism and the oppression it creates are real factors that affect the mental and physical health of individuals, families, and communities.

Our students walk into the school building as complex human beings who bring forth not only their innate gifts and talents but also the joy and toll of their life experiences. Some may arrive with the aura of love and care, some with the sense that what they receive is never enough, some with a bitter sense of the world, some with the hope for better. To fulfill our mission as educators, we are tasked with supporting students in meeting academic requirements while providing for the social, emotional, and physical ones as well. We do this while simultaneously caring for our own needs and those of our loved ones.

How do we meet the individual needs of self, family, students, staff, and our communities? How do we push beyond the skin in which we live, the seat in which we sit, and the experiences that shaped us in order to meet the needs of students and staff who are so very different from us? How do we support the social, emotional, physical, and academic growth of students, staff, and community?

Starr Sackstein, and those who contributed to this book, provide educators with the answers to these questions. Right now is the time, and learning communities are the place where we must wrap around students and families, providing the academic, emotional, physical, and social support needed.

Although there is no formal oath for educators comparable to the Hippocratic oath for doctors, we should all strive to be ethical in our personal and professional lives and commit to do no harm to those we serve. Education is an honorable profession, as we accept the responsibility for the intellectual, emotional, social, and even physical development of our nation's youth. We may not realize it when we step into our first classroom, but educators choose the responsibility to provide all students and their parents—especially the most vulnerable and marginalized—with high-quality educational programming that includes comprehensive support and services.

Our Black, Brown, and Indigenous students are the most likely to drop out of school and to enter the juvenile justice system, which deposits them into the school-to-prison pipeline. As educators and educational leaders, we must become leaders of equity. We must investigate and accept how it is that we have systematically failed our students, so that we can transform these systems. Our students need and deserve an educational experience in which they, and each member of the learning community, feel recognized, valued, and accepted—simply for being who they are.

My decision to become an educator was two-pronged. First, I was a single 21-year-old mother of two little girls, and I wanted nothing more than to provide stability for them. Second, I wanted the opportunity to be the educator that my friends and I had needed, especially during the early 1990s when I was in high school. We were all products of the circumstances and neighborhoods created by the system of racism upon which our country is built. One of my friends was abandoned by her mom and lived with her boyfriend and his family. Another sold drugs out of her locker for her boyfriend. One girl, who had been repeatedly sexually abused by different men her mother brought into the house, would leave school to hook up with men at a nearby park. One of my best friends confided in me that her mother's boyfriend, who was married and paid their rent, had been abusing her, and she was worried that her little sister was next. It was easier to get high or drunk in school than it was anywhere else due to availability and lack of concern from our teachers and the school staff. The adults within the school walls didn't seem to know how to connect with us, so we continued on our paths with no meaningful interventions. We were able to maneuver our way through classes and accountability by doing the bare minimum and lying when necessary, and every time our lies were accepted by school counselors and teachers. Maybe it wasn't acceptance, but resignation. Even if we had told the truth of our realities, the system was not set up to respond. So when I was 21 and preparing to move from community college to San Diego State University, I had to finally choose a major. It was with my daughters and my high school experience in mind that I chose to become an educator and commit to the honorable mission of making a difference.

My professional life has provided so much for me in the way of personal and professional growth. The experiences in the K–12 learning system taught me a few key things that I have been able to carry with me into all aspects of my life (including work). These learnings include the following:

 It is imperative to continue doing the work of reflecting on my experience, my actions, and my motivations.– I attribute this work to how well I know myself and my ability to authentically enter any space.– I have committed to never leaving a conversation or a space without saying or doing what my heart and spirit call me to say or do.– By diving into my own journey, which can be horrendously painful, I ultimately get to know myself better, which helps me connect with others.

 Every person, regardless of age, joins me on this journey as a whole human being with a lifetime of experiences that should be honored. In my role I have chosen to do the following:– Listen to them and communicate how valuable they are.– Provide the guidance needed, when invited to, to promote their intellectual and personal growth.

 As much as I hope to affect others, I am the one who has been truly changed by being allowed to join others on the journey.– Every time someone shares a piece of themselves with me, they are honoring me with a gift of themselves. Their gift could be the sharing of pain or joy.

These foundational learnings guide my approach to life and our collective work in education. First, we must do the work within. Then we can use the knowledge of self to connect with others to begin the heavy lift of supporting individuals and learning communities. Fortunately, in this book, Starr has provided a resource to support educators in doing their work while building truly comprehensive systems of support that have the potential to transform realities for our students, families, and communities.

Marisol Rerucha