Long time, no talk

Howdy and whoa!

It’s been two years of quiet on the blog. My big ideas for posting regularly were pushed off my radar by the persistent pandemic, which made teaching wildly unpredictable and energy draining.

While I was directing most of my attention to staying afloat in my day-to-day teaching commitments, one project of note was trying to get a building-based Racial Equity Team off the ground at my school in the fall of 2020. Ten or so staff members came together with the intention of leading the educators through the team-building process.

It went nowhere. Why?

A number of reasons. Here’s are three major reasons:

The pandemic drained everyone’s energy. The educators I work in proximity to were working an additional 8-10 hours just to prepare for virtual learning ON A WEEKLY basis. With that overload, who could make time for additional tasks, even important committees?

I was reluctant to chair the Racial Equity Team (RET), and so was most everyone else. I was already chairperson of the Building Leadership Team, the school’s central governing body, as well as area representative for the union. I may have given the impression I wanted to lead this team by setting up the first few meetings. My intent was to get the interest up and work together. It never happened.

Lastly, we had differing visions of what the RET would address and provide. My experience at my first Seattle school was that RET provided insight into biased teaching and environments through collaboration, data gathering, reflection, and accountability for restorative action. In contrast, when people shared their hopes for our mission, they described potlucks and school-wide events that seemed rooted in culture and relationship building. The later is important, but I didn’t see the direct through line from extra curricular activities to dismantling systemic racism.

I’ve learned from this failure. All new ventures should still be handled like a project or PLC (professional learning committee). People should develop a shared vision and commit to meetings with a rough outline of the work to accomplish. Ad-hoc committees can’t mobilize systemic change. Advocating in the fall bargain for reasonable workloads for educators would lift up RETs and other equity work in the school district. If districts are serious about systemic change, they need to liberate educators too.

It was all virtual for school year 20-21.