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!
Overview:
Last month, we began to build a shared understanding of accountability within our BARWE groups. Groups also began discussing how accountability is a practice that connects to anti-racist values. In the video we watched by Project Nia and the Barnard Center for Research on Women, Mia Mingus defines accountability as apologizing, making amends, and changing our future behavior to make sure the harm doesn’t happen again. This month we will be watching another video from Project Nia and the Barnard Center for Research on Women. In both videos, speakers outlined the following as helpful steps to accountability:
This month’s video, “Obstacles to Accountability” will help us think about what gets in the way of taking accountability. Many of these obstacles are internal and bound up in systems of socialization. As Esteban Kelley and Ann Russo discuss in the video, it is helpful to recognize how white supremacy culture creates incentives for distancing ourselves from taking accountability and to reflect on how this affects us, our work, and our communities.
Like last month’s resource, some of the people in the video are speaking specifically about sexual abuse and intimate partner violence because of the context in which this work has arisen from. We encourage you to find connections between their reflections, experience, and ideas and our work as educators committed to anti-racism by recognizing that all levels of interpersonal harm are influenced by our socialization to avoid honesty. We especially want to focus on racial harm and how our socialization to avoid honesty counteracts our commitment to antiracism.
Next month, we will reflect on and discuss what taking accountability looks like in our classroom/educational setting.
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 stto be done in this one document to encourage ongoing attention to commitments and frequent review of previous months’ reflections.
Primary Resources:
Additional Resources
There are so many wonderful resources about accountability out there. In an effort to compile these into one place, we’ve created this Accountability Resources document. We will continue adding resources and linking this document for the remainder of the year. If you know of any resources that you think should be on this list, please email us at barwe215@gmail.com.
Guiding Questions:
Use the following questions to guide a group discussion around the obstacles that can inhibit a practice of accountability. As you think about which experiences to reflect on and share, we remind you to try to keep the conversation focused on race. The examples can be from any part of your life.
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.
Here is a few takeaway from previous meetings:
Don't forget to give us feedback!
Overview:
Last month, we began to build a shared understanding of accountability within our BARWE groups. Groups also began discussing how accountability is a practice that connects to anti-racist values. In the video we watched by Project Nia and the Barnard Center for Research on Women, Mia Mingus defines accountability as apologizing, making amends, and changing our future behavior to make sure the harm doesn’t happen again. This month we will be watching another video from Project Nia and the Barnard Center for Research on Women. In both videos, speakers outlined the following as helpful steps to accountability:
- Listening to the person we hurt with the intention of fully understanding our impact on them.
- Self reflecting, sitting with the uncomfortable feelings that come up, recognizing the harm we caused, and reflecting on why we chose that behavior (especially in the instances that it does not align with our values).
- Apologizing and making amends to the person harmed, committing to different behaviors in the future, and doing the internal work to make those new behaviors possible.
This month’s video, “Obstacles to Accountability” will help us think about what gets in the way of taking accountability. Many of these obstacles are internal and bound up in systems of socialization. As Esteban Kelley and Ann Russo discuss in the video, it is helpful to recognize how white supremacy culture creates incentives for distancing ourselves from taking accountability and to reflect on how this affects us, our work, and our communities.
Like last month’s resource, some of the people in the video are speaking specifically about sexual abuse and intimate partner violence because of the context in which this work has arisen from. We encourage you to find connections between their reflections, experience, and ideas and our work as educators committed to anti-racism by recognizing that all levels of interpersonal harm are influenced by our socialization to avoid honesty. We especially want to focus on racial harm and how our socialization to avoid honesty counteracts our commitment to antiracism.
Next month, we will reflect on and discuss what taking accountability looks like in our classroom/educational setting.
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 stto be done in this one document to encourage ongoing attention to commitments and frequent review of previous months’ reflections.
Primary Resources:
- What are Obstacles to Accountability? By Project Nia and the Barnard Center for Research on Women Featuring Sonya Shah, nuri nusrat, Mimi Kim, Ann Russo, Esteban Kelly, adrienne maree brown, Rachel Herzing, Stas Schmiedt, Lea Roth, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, and Mia Mingus.
Additional Resources
There are so many wonderful resources about accountability out there. In an effort to compile these into one place, we’ve created this Accountability Resources document. We will continue adding resources and linking this document for the remainder of the year. If you know of any resources that you think should be on this list, please email us at barwe215@gmail.com.
Guiding Questions:
Use the following questions to guide a group discussion around the obstacles that can inhibit a practice of accountability. As you think about which experiences to reflect on and share, we remind you to try to keep the conversation focused on race. The examples can be from any part of your life.
- Think of a time when you’ve held yourself accountable using the steps outlined above. What was the context? What was that like for you?
- Refer back to the values you discussed last month and think of a time when your behavior did not align with them. Were any of the obstacles to accountability (shame, blame, self-centeredness, fear of rejection, etc) underneath this contradiction? What comes up when you think and talk about this time? If you find yourself in a similar situation in the future, what would you like to do differently?
- In developing or strengthening a practice of accountability, how can you support each other with the different steps in the process, especially in your school/educational context?
- Practicing vulnerability is an important aspect of unlearning characteristics of white supremacy and creating communities that incentivize accountability. However, it can also be painful. We encourage you to take time at the end of the meeting to journal about the following:
- How did it feel to honestly share about mistakes with your group members?
- What emotions and thoughts are coming up for you?
- What do you need in order to keep going on this journey of self-reflection?
Facilitation Reference Guide:
- Set a day and time for your group to meet - Make sure to send reminders.
- Send this month’s Primary Video 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.
- Pass the Hat and collect donations for The Ahimsa Collective this month.
- Complete the Feedback Form.
- Prepare yourself for December by setting a date and time, inviting colleagues, and looking out for our next Discussion Guide on December 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.
Here is a few takeaway from previous meetings:
Thank you all for your feedback so far, please keep it coming!
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 Ahimsa Collective, a collective of facilitators working to address harm in transformative, liberatory, and anti-oppressive ways. In their own words: “Our north star goals are to replace systems of punishment with paradigms grounded in healing, relationship, and love. To get there, we engage with deep trauma healing and restorative approaches while being grounded in anti-oppression. We work in deep community with people who have committed an act of violence, survivors of violence, and families impacted by harm.”
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 Ahimsa Collective, a collective of facilitators working to address harm in transformative, liberatory, and anti-oppressive ways. In their own words: “Our north star goals are to replace systems of punishment with paradigms grounded in healing, relationship, and love. To get there, we engage with deep trauma healing and restorative approaches while being grounded in anti-oppression. We work in deep community with people who have committed an act of violence, survivors of violence, and families impacted by harm.”