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. 

Don't forget to give us feedback!

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: 

Last month, we explored cultivating a racial equity mindset and increasing our capacity to build strong partnerships with Black and Brown colleagues. This month, we will continue to work towards these aims by exploring the lived realities of Black educators through Sharif El-Mekki’s Open Letter to School Leaders. He reminds us that while “… district and school leaders have increased efforts to recruit Black educators, [they have paid] scant attention to their retainment…demonstrating outright indifference to what it takes to nurture their curiosity, mastery, and purpose.” So, we encourage groups to reflect on the experiences of your colleagues, your school environment, and action steps you can set individually and collectively to better support and retain Black and Brown colleagues.  

For those of you working in an all-white organization, we encourage you to interrogate why and add the extension questions to this month’s discussion. 


Primary Resources: Teaching While Black: An Open Letter to School Leaders


Guiding Questions: 

1. What do you know about the experiences of Black educators in your school? How do you know these things? Which of these things may be assumptions you have made and which are things you've learned about your colleagues through relationships with them? 

1. Does your organization offer enough opportunities to authentically hear the stories of your Black colleagues, making sure these opportunities do not put your Black and Brown colleagues on the spot? If not, would any of the equity principles from last month’s article help create more opportunities? How might we leverage these principles to support Black educators in the liberation of education? 

1. The best recruitment strategy is also a strong retention strategy.  How does your school/institution strategically retain BIPOC staff?  What might it look like for white teachers to advocate in this space?

1. Sharif El-Mekki identifies four ways to support Black educators. Re-read these and identify an action step, either individually or collectively. How will you ensure accountability?

If your organization is an all-white space, please consider the following question:

Heather McGhee, author of The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, describes a zero-sum theory that operates in our society. She describes this theory as being an us and a them structure in which there is a belief that what’s good for “them” is bad for “us”. McGhee believes this is a harmful way of thinking and says: “We are greater than, and greater for, the sum of us.”

We recognize this conversation looks different if you are working in an all-white space. However, systems of white supremacy harm all of us. How are you impacted by white supremacy culture and how might you perpetuate it? How are you impacted by inequities within our larger systems? What are some ways white people can work to challenge the zero-sum theory?

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.

• What Black Scientists Want From Colleagues and Their Institutions*
• Citing Racism and ‘Years of Bullying,’ Dena Simmons Resigns From Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence
• ‘Threatened, devalued and tokenized’: Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence Assistant Director resigns over workplace racism*
• Why Black Teachers Walk Away
• How to Be An Ally for Black Women in the Workplace
• Through Our Eyes* (previously used by BARWE)
• The Burden of Being a Black Teacher (previously used by BARWE)

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 Center for Black Educator Development this month.
• Complete the Feedback Form.
• Prepare yourself for June by setting a date and time, inviting colleagues, and looking out for our next Discussion Guide on June 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 the Center for Black Educator Development, an organization that addresses educational inequities to improve academic and social outcomes for all students through increased teacher diversity.