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Welcome to The Anti-Racism Leadership Institute, where we engage in thoughtful conversations with professors and visionary leaders who are dedicated to dismantling racism in schools and transforming education. Join us as we explore their inspiring journeys, innovative strategies, and impactful initiatives aimed at creating more inclusive, equitable, and anti-racist learning environments. Our podcast is a platform for sharing insights, stories, and actionable ideas that can help shape a brighter, more just future for education. Tune in and be inspired to be a part of the change!
Hello!
Welcome to the Anti-Racist Leadership
Institute Research to Practice Podcast.
Today is a solo podcast where I am
going to answer some questions from the
ask me anything option on our website.
We're found at AntiRacismInstitute.com.
There we describe what we do, who we
are, and we also have an option on the
About Us tab at the top of the page where
you can scroll down to ask me anything.
And you can literally ask me anything
about anti-racist leadership, DEI
work, oppression, racism, structural
racism, and I will do my best to
answer that question either via
email or on a session like this one.
And so, today I'll be talking about five
of our top questions that we get either
through the ask me anything, but we
also get them in person when I'm doing
conferences or workshops in the field.
And so, the first question I'm going to
field is, How is anti-racist leadership
different than DEI, that's diversity,
equity, inclusion, DEIB, the B is
belonging, JEDI I've heard, justice,
equity, diversity, and inclusion.
So how is anti-racist leadership
different than these, these phrases that
we often hear in the education space?
And everything I share with you is my
personal opinion in terms of being in
this work for over a decade and how I've
seen the work manifest in the field.
And so the question, once again,
is how is anti-racist leadership
different than DEI, DEIB, and JEDI?
And through my experience and what we
do, we're an Anti-Racism , Leadership
Institute, is we seek to validate that
we're actually alleviating oppression
on historically marginalized community
of color, communities of color.
And our philosophy and also an accepted
definition of anti-racism is actually
validating that we are alleviating the
oppression on communities of color.
So for example, in our work, that if
a school district is having an issue
with over representation of Black
and Brown kids in special education.
We'd not only want to increase the
consciousness and awareness raising
around this as a phenomena, but we also
seek to have individuals understand how
to build their skill set and leadership
capability to actually address the issue
so they can reduce the overrepresentation.
Now, how that has looked different
in, in the DEI or DEI B or JEDI space
that I've seen in my experience is
that organizations sometimes come in
or experts come in, and this is not
a judgment on what they do, but how
it happens and how, what makes us
different is that most organizations
I find and consultants rely on the
consciousness and awareness raising.
And changing mindset with a hope that it
transitions to outcomes for kids, right?
And so But anti-racist leadership, we
start with the students first, meaning
that we want to identify the problem with
specificity and then backwards plan on how
we build the infrastructure, the thinking,
the planning, the leadership, and the
moves to make sure we're actualizing
the outcomes for kids and in the
DEI space, what we've seen through
practice and through experience, and
also when I was a leader being subject
to this type of training, is that
there's a large gap between conscious
and awareness, raising and mindset
and actualizing the outcomes on kids.
And so what the difference is,
is in our approach, in the anti
racist approach, we seek to
validate and actualize the outcome.
And in a DEI space, I'm not sure
that there's been a connection
between what is sort of the
learning and what are the outcomes.
There's space for both.
And I'm not making any judgment
on which way is right or wrong.
But what I'm saying in our work, what is
different is that we actualize the results
to the benefit of black and brown kids.
Question number two.
And this is something that folks actually
ask, but also ask in a way that they
receive this as sort of what they see
as resistance to working around race.
Question number two is what about
other identities as an LGBTQIA
plus, students who are learning
english as a second language,
students from low SES backgrounds.
And these are all areas where folks
with different identities come into
the school space and they may be
experiencing hardships that are
particular to their identities, alright?
And so the question again is what,
you know, as we're talking about
race, what about other identities?
When are we going to talk about them,
in a way that we talk about race?
And our approach is not to say
that, you know, race is more
important than other identities.
Our approach is that when there
are discernible outcomes by race
within a school system, it's a
problem that needs to be addressed.
Now within the LGBTQIA community,
within the home language community,
within the SES status community,
race does play a factor as well.
So when we are looking at these
other identities, in terms of
creating strategies, to make sure
that their schooling experience
is one that's fruitful for them.
We should be careful that we use an
intersectional approach, meaning
that all these identities may have
certain ways in which they experience
a schoolhouse that might not be the
most positive for them, whether it's
academically or socio emotionally.
That these identities are, are ones in
which, we can look at in isolation, but
we also need to use an intersectional
approach because a lot of the same
systems that are set up that disadvantage
students of color, are also systems that
act in different ways among students
from the LGBTQIA plus community,
students who home language is not
English and who are of low SES status.
And so, it's not that we should
ignore any, any 1 of the identities
we need to make sure that we're being
inclusive or being intersectional
when we have these conversations
and not pushing race off the table.
Paul Gorski writes this
article on equity detours
and he talks about this as one of the
detours that when we bring up and we
put race on the table, often folks
get so uncomfortable that they want
to sort of crowd the table with all
these identities and do it all at once.
But what happens is race is often the
most uncomfortable topic out of all
the topics on the table, leaving it
to either be cordoned to a very small
discussion or pushed off the table
altogether in service of addressing
the issues of other identities.
So what I encourage us to do, that
if we are using an intersectional
approach, always keeping race as a
part of the conversation, even when
we seek to solve issues that are
pertinent to other identities when
students come to school as well.
So question number three and this
comes from our leaders who, who are
engaged in this work, who are really
invested in this work and really want
to do best by students who are learning
along their anti-racist journey.
And the question is, " What do
you do about teachers who do
not have the 'right' mindset?"
And this comes from a place where leaders
are on their anti-racist journey, right?
And they're realizing that systems
and structures in the school building
might not be set up in a way that's
beneficial for students of color.
And they're coming to a better realization
about their role as a leader and as
their role in terms of influencing
the people who are closest to the
students, which are the teachers.
And so, often they come back with as
they're leaning into this work and not
just doing the DEI work of talking about
it, but trying to execute and helping
teachers shift their practice from just
talking about it to actually doing the
work and actualizing outcomes for kids.
And then the question becomes,
what do you do about teachers who
do not have the right mindset?
And that we take that and sort of switch
the sort of switch to framing around
what that question is asking, right?
Because if we set up this dichotomy
between right and wrong, and we as leaders
are on the side of right, that means
those who aren't on the side, are wrong.
And when we take that approach,
we create this unnecessary divide
between who we are as educators.
And I'm not going to say that 100 percent
of educators come into the profession
because we love kids, we want to, we want
to work in schools and it's our calling.
I'm not going to say that that is 100
percent of every educator, but we have
to realize that you know, educators,
especially those who've been in for quite
some time, who we might say doesn't,
don't have the right mindset, they come
to school for some reason, and it often
has to do with their feeling of being
important and an important process in a
child's life, helping them go from where
they were at the beginning of the year,
all the way to the end, trying, liking
to see the growth and development that we
have a role in playing in a child's life.
And so we, and I consider myself to
still be a practitioner myself, come
and do it on behalf of students.
Now, when we come to this point where
we believe that we are on the side
of right and someone may need to come
over to our side, our first job is to
lead with an empathy approach, right?
And this is very, very hard to do, right?
Because leaders are under enormous
pressure to make monumental change
in a short window of time, often
with what in one school year.
That's sometimes real, but sometimes
pressure we put on ourselves that
we feel we should make prolific
change, be able to make prolific
change in a short amount of time.
Even if a vestige of structural
racism has been in the school of
school systems for decades, right?
We often hold ourselves to
unrealistic expectations that we
fixed it within a school year, right?
And that often then puts us in this space
of, you know, these folks aren't moving
fast enough and now we want to get them
to comply with what we want them to do
because they don't have the right mindset.
And again, it sets up this dichotomy
where we're necessarily at odds.
Now, in this situation, we need
to lead with tremendous empathy.
We have to first empathize, meaning
that we need to lead with inquiry
and understand their perspective.
Like, if we think that a teacher might
not be invested in our initiative
to reduce office referrals for black
and brown kids, and this is a problem
we see in a lot of districts, right?
That we have to first understand from
that teacher, why they believe they're
Over reliance on office referrals is
something that's necessary, and that's
good for kids in their mind, right?
We have to suspend our judgment, suspend
our beliefs, and truly seek to understand
the motivations of teachers or even our
co-leaders who might not be on the same
page with our anti-racist leadership.
And only when we can truly understand
where they are coming from, and
how they believe their practice is
actually in benefit of kids, and
we can understand that, we don't
have to agree, but we actually
understand where they're coming from.
Then, and only then, should we
engage in finding, meeting them
where they are, and finding a way
to partner towards our overall goal,
which is alleviate, alleviating the
oppression on students of color.
So a point in case, I have an example of a
teacher who was over reliant on, and this
is a recent case in one of my clients,
who was over reliant on office referrals
for particularly Latino boys, right?
And the assistant principal that I
coached, I asked her to go back and
just ask a bunch of questions of
this particular teacher around why
they felt the need to write so many
referrals, get the office involved,
and constantly be reliant on this
office for their classroom management.
And by leading with inquiry, what the
teacher found out, I mean, what the
AP found out from the teacher is that
pretty much the teacher had never
really learned how to effectively,
one, develop engaging instruction,
so the students aren't disengaged.
And two, develop a classroom management
system that was tightly coupled enough
that they could have a progressive
system where they could redirect students
without having using, not having to
use a nuclear option of referral.
Now, the teacher didn't say this in
so many words, but what they did say
is that they've been trying everything
they can with these two particular
classes, and they just can't seem to
get it right with this subset of kids.
And that's what gave the assistant
principal the understanding, the
teacher did not have these tools in
their toolbox, was able to enter in,
they wanted what's best for kids
because they'd expended the toolbox
and did everything they knew how to
do, but they didn't have any more
tools to then expend and use in order
to reduce their reliance on referrals.
And so the approach was then to
partner with the teachers to help
them develop something, so they
could understand how to develop more
engaging lessons and really increase
their classroom management structure
so they wouldn't have
to rely on referrals.
And that's the empathy approach opposed
to the compliance approach where you
had 50 referrals in the first quarter,
we'd like you to cut that in half to 25.
It's a very technical approach that
relies on compliance that puts a lot more
pressure on teachers who may not have the
capacity to develop systems where they are
improving their pedagogy in a classroom
management, it just produces more
stress with the teacher that doesn't
have any more tools in the toolbox and
may lead to burnout, disengagement of
the teacher, or the ways in which a
classroom may be more chaotic while
we might have less referrals, but
doesn't actually build their toolbox.
And so what do we do about teachers
who don't have the right mindset?
We enter with empathy and inquiry
to really understand where they're
coming from and their approach so
that we can be on the same page about
entry points to work together to
partner towards our anti-racist goals.
Okay, question number four, and
this sort of goes along with
question number three very closely.
How do we address the resistance?
How do we address resistance within maybe
our co-leaders maybe within our direct
supervisor the central office level?
I'm talking about the principal
AP position now, about addressing
resistance within these positions,
resistance within teachers.
And I'm going to use an analogy that
what we expect at least myself, when
I was a teacher, as well as when I was
an administrator of teachers, that if
a student was in my class or in a class
of one of the teachers who worked at my
school and the student was was disengaged.
Say they came to school and they
would sleep on their desk, or they
wouldn't bring back their homework,
or they would race through end of
unit tests and really do poorly
and exhibit signs of being
disengaged in learning.
My expectation of myself as
their teacher was to adjust my
instruction and differentiate to
figure out how to engage them.
And get them to willfully invest in
their education in a way that I could
reach them to realize the importance
of education and investing in math
and science, which was my cognate.
Same thing of teachers that work with
me in my building, that if a student
is disengaging, they can't just
write them off and say, "well, you're
resistant as a student, so I'm not
going to serve you until you figure out
how to be a student in my classroom."
The expectation of myself and most, you
know, anti-racist administrators is
that we adjust and most administrators
in general that teachers adjust,
we differentiate for the for the
student, we seek out resources to
invest the student in learning.
Now, when we get into a position
where we're no longer a teacher and
we can understand this approach as a
teacher, we never get from students.
When we level up to the position
of being an administrator,
whether it's an AP or, or a
principal, or even a superintendent.
But in this case, the example that
I'm using is as AP or superintendent.
When the question comes up,
how do I address resistance?
We have to think about our
teachers are now our classroom.
So just like we expect them to
differentiate for students who are
disengaged, who may be resisting learning.
If we find that certain teachers
are resisting coming aboard to our
anti-racist goals, we have to find a way
to differentiate our approach in order
to help them understand the purpose and
also join with them in a way that we can
get on the same page and move forward.
Now this is easier said than
done because it's so easy,
super easy for us as administrators
to say, "Oh, this teacher is just
resistant, they're difficult.
They're of the old school.
They've been around for 15 or 20 years
and I don't want to change or they don't
like those brown kids" All of these
negative attributes we can totally attach
to that teacher and say, "it is not my
responsibility because you are this way",
right?
And that is often a cop out, because
it's no longer our responsibility.
It is your fault as a
teacher that you're this way.
Hence, you're a resistor, and I'm
just going to go for compliance.
You do this or else.
Now, we understand not doing that
when it comes to kids, right?
We can't say this kid comes into
class, he or she sleeps, or they
don't come to class, they skip class.
"Oh, well, you're just a resistor.
I'm going to give up on you.
It's your problem."
We expect teachers to absorb that
and say, "how can I engage you?"
So the same thing goes for administrators,
we find out that individuals are
resisting, what that means is there's
something about our approach that's
failing to invest them in our process.
And again, I completely understand
this is easier said than done, right?
Because a lot of the adult behaviors
really irk us and we often want to think
that our approach is the right approach.
And hence, how could they not understand
where we're going and come aboard?
"They're just a resistor."
If we use the more, like I said
before, the more empathetic approach
to seek to understand the, the source
of that resistance and where it comes
from and often comes from a noble
place where they believe they're doing
the best thing on behalf of kids.
So, for example, and I'm talking
about a recent case in which a school
system and it's in a particular school
was diversifying rapidly over the
course of five years where previously,
the school served 98 percent students
from middle income White families.
And a lot of the teachers had become
experts in developing a pedagogy
and a style to reach the families
in which they served because
that was the main population.
Now, over the course of five years,
it switched from 98 percent middle
to high income white students to
more of a Hispanic Latino population
from middle to high income to
low income latino population that
reduced the White population and the
school began to have issues, right?
With engaging students in learning,
suspension rates, over representation
of Latino boys in special education.
And everyone saw this, you know, the
administration saw this as a problem.
But when they came to address this with
the teachers as a whole, they encounter
that, "Well, it's not our fault, right?
It's these students who are
bringing in the problem".
"Well, it's not our fault.
If these students would just be like our
old students it wouldn't be this way."
So a lot of distancing and
blaming it on the students
and not taking responsibility,
right?
And what we have to understand about the
approach from the administrator is we
have to understand where this sort of
absolvement of responsibility comes from.
It often comes from a place like we
don't have, we've never had the necessity
to develop the skill set to properly
educate this other group because we've
never had them in our school before.
And we've been around 10 or 15 years.
So instead of saying, you know, "I just
don't know how to serve these students."
The defensiveness comes from
that, I really don't know how
and I don't understand why you're
putting pressure and make me feel
guilty and shameful that I don't.
Hence, I'm going to resist.
And so another approach is to understand
what the one on one communication and
really narrowing it down for teachers,
that we're having an issue right,
with developing an education process
that's best for this new population.
How do we understand what we are good
at and what we are not so good at and
how do we change our approach and ways
of being not just in the classroom, but
as a school as a whole in our processes
to better educate this new population?
So we don't see teachers as
resistors to a new population, but
as partners in a way that we need to
change our approach and way of
questioning and partnering with teachers
so that we don't run up against what
seems like resistance, but often
is a lack of tools in the toolbox.
Okay, the last question, I'm
going to read this verbatim too.
It's kind of long, right?
I wrote it down.
All right.
Question number five, and this comes
from a lot of schools that come our
way in, in search of partnerships.
And it says, "we have been doing
DEI work for years with little to no
evidence our organization has changed,
and a lot of teachers and leaders
are frustrated and ready to move
on and not talk about race anymore.
How do we reset and
re-engage staff in this work?"
So basically, the environment
has run out of racial stamina.
We've been doing this for
years and years and years.
We can actually go down the line
and litany of providers we've
had, we've read Glenn Singleton's
greatest conversations book.
We've read your book,
Unconscious Bias in Schools.
We had Goldie Muhammad come and speak.
We were understanding more of
cultural responsive teaching.
We've done all this
work with adults, right?
Over the course of years and years and
years and individuals has leaned have
leaned into the work, they've attended,
they've engaged and it's four years later.
And what we were intended
to do was to increase our
outcomes for students of color.
But we're noticing that when we do our
data analysis, nothing much has changed
from when we started and now individual
or check individuals are checking out.
They really don't understand why
we have to keep talking about this.
We've gotten to a place of apathy around,
we've done as much as we can do as adults.
We've done this work for 4 years.
Now, can we just move on
and do something else right?
And so, what I say to individuals who
ask how do we reset and re engage staff
that have gotten to this place of having
done this work for so long that they've
run out of racial stamina, the best
way to re-engage is to pause, reflect,
and then decide on what outcomes are we
looking for specifically with students.
Because what we see more often than not,
when organizations get to this place
where they've been doing this for years
with little nothing to show for their
efforts, is that from the beginning,
they did not start with an ended mind.
They didn't start with a
problem of practice around
where are we going exactly?
What's our North Star?
All right.
So without an exact and understanding from
everyone who's subject to the training
and the initiative, knowing where we're
going, where we are currently, you know,
according to data analysis and where
we're going exactly, we end up in the
space where we're doing a bunch of stuff.
And I call it just a bunch
of adults doing stuff.
Good stuff.
Conscious awareness raising, you know,
having courageous conversations to
sort of, build our own dexterity to
have conversations around the work in
our own knowledge base, but without an
aim about what practices are supposed
to change in service of what goal.
So the idea behind this is a
hard reset in terms of we need to
pause, decide where we are, right?
according to student outcomes,
whether it's academics, attendance,
behavior, special education process,
all the number of student outcomes
and data that we have access to.
Decide where we are now and then decide
where do we intend to go with this work?
How is our practice going to change
when it comes to realizing the
outcomes in which we've identified?
And so we have a very particular
process to get folks to reset,
where we, one, identify the problem.
right?
Two, we identify what's, what's
the end of the year goal?
Where are we going?
You know, very
clearly that we can explain to
anyone who works in the building.
And then once we've decided what
the end of the year goal is, okay,
what are then our milestones?
How are we going to measure along the way?
At what point in time are we going
to decide that we're making progress
according to how we should be, how we
should be during the school year, so
we ultimately know that we're headed
towards our end of the year goal?
Once we've decided on milestones, then we
decide on, all right, in order to reach
the milestones, what are the adult changes
in practice that we are going to implement
with fidelity, with the expectation that
we're going to achieve these milestones.
And by doing that, we're able to
create a process where we implement
change, we implement the treatment
and change in adult behavior.
And if we aren't meeting our milestones,
we then have something to talk about on
whether one, is everyone implementing
these interventions with fidelity?
Or if we are implementing
these interventions as adults
with fidelity, why aren't they
working to meet our milestones?
And we can adjust along
the way and course correct,
right?
So we have the changes in adult behavior
that we've all agreed upon that we could
talk against according to our milestones.
And then we complete the process.
And the last thing in the process,
which often is first, where I think
is the biggest mistake we decide
on, what is a necessary professional
development that the adults are going
to need to change their behavior?
So again, instead of going from, we
identify a problem, we go right to
professional development, and then we
hope for the best, which is typically
how we end up in a situation where
we don't see results among kids.
And again, instead of problem
identification, professional development,
hope for the best, it's what we see a lot.
Instead of that process, we start with
problem statement, what are our goals,
what are our milestones, what are the
changes in adult behaviors that we're
going to buy into and implement with
fidelity, and then the last thing
is, we're going to decide on the
professional development necessary to
support the adults doing this work.
And by completing this thinking
before we launch any initiative.
We have then something, a process, that
if it works well, we can replicate.
We can replicate over time because
we know what we did exactly.
And if it doesn't work well, we have
the opportunity to look at the adult
behaviors and the milestones and
decide how do we change our practice
in real time during the school year
to make it meet our milestones.
And so how do we re-engage staff?
Who has been doing the work for a
while and hasn't seen any little to no
progress, we reset by having a specific
focus around a problem of practice
and then deciding the right steps in
terms of where we're going and sort of
closing the loop on change rather than
just having PD and hoping for the best.
Now, those are the top five things.
The questions that we get asked a
lot from our ask anything option
on our website and also in person.
If there are any more questions you have,
feel free to visit our website, pop it in.
There's no question that's off limits.
And I'll have another one of these
sessions sometime in 2024 and we'll deploy
it to answer the questions that come in.
I will also respond to you directly.
If it's a question that's burning that
you want an answer to, feel free to
check our website and the ask anything
website is AntiRacismInstitute.com
and click on the about us and then
the ask anything tab will open
and you can shoot me any question.
I appreciate you joining us for this
episode of the Anti-Racism Leadership
Institute Research and Practice
Podcast, and we'll see you next time.