What’s the most important question we need to be asking as educators in this moment?
Equity
How do you ensure that every student feels valued, empowered, and successful?
Whose voice is not being heard?
Without much context, a friend who is not an educator in the formal sense, but is an amazing community advocate and champion for our most marginalized and minoritized students and families, sent me the following text inquiry:
“What’s the most important question we need to be asking as educators in this moment?”
Despite the fact that this message arrived in the middle of my work day and I was, as we always are as educators, in the middle of something else, a response came to me immediately. I quickly replied, “Whose voice is not being heard and how can I create the conditions for empowering that person/group?” After some reflection time, I stand firmly with this response.
We are navigating rapidly changing conditions of a world shaken by a pandemic, social unrest, and global climate crisis. Thus we can look to this question to guide us as leaders in a digital learning space, and there are things to consider.
In a recent interview, Dr. Karla Vermeulen, author of the forthcoming book Generation Disaster and researcher on post traumatic growth, talked about the unique nature of our current state. While most disasters have a direct impact on a finite group of individuals and create the context for another group of individuals to serve in relief and restoration roles, our current disaster has all of us playing both the role of survivors and responders/helpers. In systems which were already inherently inequitable like education, this dynamic has created some unique, and often intense, dynamics for all of us. In a time when many of us were working to dismantle and rebuild our systems in a more equitable fashion, a large sector of our communities, who may have previously been choosing between playing no role or playing a responder role, were thrust into a survivor role as well. Suddenly, almost everyone had needs to be met, and the struggle to be heard rapidly intensified. In far too many spaces and in far too many ways, this struggle has resulted in dramatically increased inequities and harm to our most vulnerable students and families.
Continuous Improvement
This leads me to my question, “Whose voice is not being heard and how can I create the conditions for empowering that person/group?”
If we become too focused on re-establishing normalcy and do not thoughtfully center the voices of those who have not historically been heard, we are almost certain to recreate and perpetuate an oppressive, inequitable system. As we work to build a more equitable system in this current reality, a couple of the questions from the Wisconsin Digital Learning Collaborative’s continuous improvement planning guide rise to the surface for me:
What role do students, families, and teachers from diverse backgrounds play in providing feedback and insight about how to best meet the needs of all students and families?
How do you ensure that every student feels valued, empowered, and successful?
In a time where everyone we serve has very real, very legitimate needs, how do we as leaders and designers make sure we are indeed prioritizing the voices of our most marginalized students and families in order to ensure that every student feels valued, empowered, and successful?
Middleton Cross Plains Strategies
In the Middleton Cross Plains Area School District (MCPASD), one strategy that has led to some early signs of success has been the thoughtful introduction and support of what we are calling “Learning Partners.” In the spirit of Dr. Zaretta Hammond’s concept of rapport and alliance leading to cognitive insight and Dr. Torie Weiston-Serdan’s concept of critical mentoring, the goal of learning partners is to first establish strong relationships with students and then to invite the learner into a partnership with an adult (or even better, adults) aimed at both supporting them in identifying, setting, and reaching their goals AND providing feedback to the system on what adjustments need to be made to ensure the success of all students. Implementing this model during a summer session which had to run in a fully virtual manner with a group of students who had been struggling in a fully virtual model proved to be such a powerful success that we continued the model into the school year and expanded it to all levels. Creating a structure which supported a philosophy that our systems must be designed with a deep understanding of the experience of our most significantly impacted students and families in order to have any chance of reaching equitable outcomes lead to meaningful success for students in some of the most challenging conditions and deep learning for the educators and the system.
As we make decisions moving forward, I would encourage all of us to reflect upon these or similar questions:
Do we have a solid system in place to ensure that we are hearing the desires and dreams of the students and families who are most marginalized directly from them rather than presuming that we know based either on our perceived historical expertise or the interpretation of those who are the loudest or have the greatest access?
If we don’t have a solid system for this, what do we need to do to begin the healing process and regain the trust of those who have been historically harmed by the systems we represent? Who is having success with this and how do we build upon that success?
As we build this system, is it firmly grounded in an approach which will be culturally sustaining for those who have historically been marginalized and minoritized and are we prepared to make significant adjustments to our system based on what we learn?
If we aren’t prepared to make these changes, what work are we doing internally to prepare for this while we work to develop this system to connect us directly to the voices that most need to be heard?
Possibilities and Potential
In an earlier post, I reflected upon the lessons we have learned and the possibilities that this crisis has created for us. There is a great deal of potential that lies within the new tools we have all mastered and the expanded set of skills students, educators, and families have developed as we worked to survive the past year. And...we must not lose sight of the history of our education system and its deeply rooted inequities. We must thoughtfully and actively listen and center the voices of those who know best in order to build a system that is designed to truly serve all of our learners.
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Jill Gurtner
Principal, Clark Street Community School and Administrator for Secondary Digital Learning
Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District