If this is your first year doing this series, we recommend starting with an orientation meeting using the September 2021 material before moving on to the current month.
In addition to the primary article and guiding questions, we are offering BARWE users this notebook as a place to gather their thoughts and commitments throughout the year. In the past, we have sent various tools and handouts in separate months. This year, we encourage all work to be done in this one document to encourage ongoing attention to commitments and frequent review of previous months’ reflections.
Overview:
This month, we aim to cultivate a racial equity mindset and increase our capacity to build strong partnerships with Black and Brown colleagues. When we act without equity principles as white teachers, we tend to alienate equity minded Black and Brown colleagues, as Paul Gorski explains in our reading this month:
“Often, the educators most adamant about racial equity are cast to the margins of institutional culture…Colleagues call them troublemakers for naming what others refuse to name… Educators of color who raise these concerns tend to face even greater hostility…They often are labeled “militant” or “angry” for telling the racial equity truth. This is a failure of equity leadership.” (56)
By examining the equity detours that we and our institutions are most susceptible to, we can prepare ourselves to take the necessary risks to disrupt them. By embodying a set of equity principles in our actions and relationships, we can build an environment where troublemakers are at the center of the institutional culture, not the margins.
Primary Resources: Avoiding Racial Equity Detours
Guiding Questions:
Additional Resources:
If you feel one of these is better suited to your group, feel free to use it as a primary. We have placed an asterisk next to readings with BIPOC authors.
Facilitation Reference Guide:
Feedback Form:
As we grow in year four, we hope that one person in your group can take a few minutes to fill out our feedback form to let us know how it went.
In addition to the primary article and guiding questions, we are offering BARWE users this notebook as a place to gather their thoughts and commitments throughout the year. In the past, we have sent various tools and handouts in separate months. This year, we encourage all work to be done in this one document to encourage ongoing attention to commitments and frequent review of previous months’ reflections.
Overview:
This month, we aim to cultivate a racial equity mindset and increase our capacity to build strong partnerships with Black and Brown colleagues. When we act without equity principles as white teachers, we tend to alienate equity minded Black and Brown colleagues, as Paul Gorski explains in our reading this month:
“Often, the educators most adamant about racial equity are cast to the margins of institutional culture…Colleagues call them troublemakers for naming what others refuse to name… Educators of color who raise these concerns tend to face even greater hostility…They often are labeled “militant” or “angry” for telling the racial equity truth. This is a failure of equity leadership.” (56)
By examining the equity detours that we and our institutions are most susceptible to, we can prepare ourselves to take the necessary risks to disrupt them. By embodying a set of equity principles in our actions and relationships, we can build an environment where troublemakers are at the center of the institutional culture, not the margins.
Primary Resources: Avoiding Racial Equity Detours
Guiding Questions:
- Which of these four equity detours can you identify in your workspace or your own personal approach to equity? Give examples of how they manifest.
- How might these equity detours prevent you from fostering space for authentic partnership with Black and Brown colleagues?
- What sort of risks would you need to take to avoid one or more of these equity detours in order to create more space and a safer environment for your Black and Brown colleagues?
- Communication and collaboration are essential. What do authentic partnerships with Black and Brown colleagues look like in contrast to forced conversations? How do we have conversations that are more authentic?
- How might Gorski’s five equity principles help us cultivate relationships with Black and Brown colleagues around a shared equity vision? What is one practice step you can take to adopt one of these principles moving forward?
Additional Resources:
If you feel one of these is better suited to your group, feel free to use it as a primary. We have placed an asterisk next to readings with BIPOC authors.
- Teaching While Black: An Open Letter to School Leaders*
- What Black scientists want from colleagues and their institutions*
Facilitation Reference Guide:
- Set a day and time for your group to meet - Make sure to send reminders. If you’re meeting in person, snacks are always a good idea!
- Send this month’s Primary Article to your group. Look through the additional readings to see if there is another reading that might be better suited to your group and its interests.
- Prepare yourself to facilitate by reading through our Norms and Discussion Protocol. An optional Problem of Practice Protocol is included at the end of this email.
- Pass the Hat and collect donations for Black Teacher Project this month.
- Complete the Feedback Form.
- Prepare yourself for May by setting a date and time, inviting colleagues, and looking out for our next Discussion Guide on May 1st.
Feedback Form:
As we grow in year four, we hope that one person in your group can take a few minutes to fill out our feedback form to let us know how it went.
Pass The Hat
In addition to being accountable to our colleagues and students of color, we believe it is important to be financially accountable to people of color who are doing this work on a daily basis. Each month, we will recommend an organization led by people of color, in education and beyond, doing the work of pushing for justice.
At the end of each monthly discussion, pass a hat (or a box) and collect donations for the designated organization. You can then have one group member go online and donate in the name of your school. If you want, you can add “Building Anti-Racist White Educators” after your school name.
This month, we encourage you to donate to Black Teacher Project. Based in Oakland, CA, BTP is a program that “sustains and develops Black teachers to lead and reimagine schools as communities of liberated learning.”
In addition to being accountable to our colleagues and students of color, we believe it is important to be financially accountable to people of color who are doing this work on a daily basis. Each month, we will recommend an organization led by people of color, in education and beyond, doing the work of pushing for justice.
At the end of each monthly discussion, pass a hat (or a box) and collect donations for the designated organization. You can then have one group member go online and donate in the name of your school. If you want, you can add “Building Anti-Racist White Educators” after your school name.
This month, we encourage you to donate to Black Teacher Project. Based in Oakland, CA, BTP is a program that “sustains and develops Black teachers to lead and reimagine schools as communities of liberated learning.”
