It has been years since I have written on this blog. My first thought was, "Do people even use Blogger any more?" But, the blog is still active, so for the time-being, this is where I will continue to write until I make a better plan.
That being said, I have taken a leap of faith. After 19 years in PreK - 8th grade school districts (10 years as a teacher and 9 years serving in building and district administrator roles), I have left the school system to shift to higher education. I started at Loyola University Chicago in August, serving as a Teaching and Learning Instructor for undergraduate education students part time while pursuing my Doctorate of Education full time. While I am excited, it has been more than a little nerve-wracking leaving my better salary, health insurance, and state pension plan to pursue what I am truly feeling called to do.
Loyola's EdD program is called "Curriculum, Culture, and Communities". This essentially focuses on the intersection of curriculum design and social justice, thus better supporting learners, their identities, and the communities we serve. Given where we are in place and time, I feel there is a sense of urgency in this work. Empathy, human rights, multiple perspectives, and discourse have never been more important.
One of my courses in this first semester of my doctoral program is called Privilege, Power, and Possibilities: Multicultural Education in Urban Classrooms. This course continues to challenge me to reflect more deeply on how educational systems uphold inequities. As a white educator, I see the importance of listening, learning, and working alongside students, families, and colleagues to disrupt unjust structures. The readings and conversations in these first five weeks have continued to expand my perspective and underscore the urgency of collective action for systemic change.
I deeply believe in the power of learning, unlearning, and social justice as means for closing achievement gaps and creating a better world for historically marginalized groups of students. I also know what a mammoth task this is, and I need to continue learning to be able to make more of an impact.
Harris (1993), in Whiteness as Property, explores the deep historical roots of racism—a theme that connects clearly to the research of Ladson-Billings (1998) and Delgado and Stefancic (2017), who emphasize that racism in the United States is ordinary, woven into the nation’s fabric since before it was founded as an independent country. Because our country—and therefore our education systems—are so entrenched in racism, it becomes clear that knowledge itself is a social construct. Schools can simultaneously function as sites of indoctrination and as “cultural terrain that promotes student empowerment and transformation” (McLaren, 2017, p. 57). In acknowledging the dialectical nature of schools, we then must lean into investigating the resources and pedagogies used to propel student learning and growth.
As Freire (2014) points out in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the “banking” concept of education is not the optimal way for any student to engage in learning. Students become disengaged, lose their sense of curiosity, and fail to develop the necessary critical thinking skills. However, by presenting content in isolation without meaning and/or by perceiving students simply as vessels to be filled, students in historically marginalized groups are surely at the greatest disadvantage. Their funds of knowledge are not being honored, nor do they see their lived experiences as relevant and meaningful to what is considered “important” in school-based learning. This leads to further oppression when considering the white, euro-centric curriculum resources that many schools and districts have historically used.
The last three years I served a PreK - 8th grade school district as the Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction. Our suburban district was richly diverse, with over a third of students identified as multilingual and more than 50 languages spoken within our community of learners. Because of this, I led curriculum review cycles with stakeholder committees to adopt new core resources in the areas of English Language Arts, social studies, and math, with a primary goal of being more culturally responsive. We utilized culturally responsive scorecards/rubrics to help guide our decisions as a part of this curriculum review process. Additionally, we engaged in district-wide professional development with Dr. Gholdy Muhammad around her HILL model for culturally and historically responsive pedagogies, and my curriculum team collaborated with teachers to support shifts in instructional practices. I also worked in partnership with Northwestern University’s Center for Talent Development to revamp our Advanced Learning Program to instead focus on talent development.
Prior to departing my role, I began the historical data collection and analysis to determine the impact of these shifts. While there were small positive improvements in data points related to state and NWEA MAP testing, as well as in the student demographics represented in our Advanced Learning Program courses, it honestly did not feel like enough. Change takes time, certainly. However what I anecdotally noted was that pedagogical shifts happened in pockets, not systemwide. Some educators leveraged the more culturally responsive resources to their intended extents so more perspectives were represented. Some incorporated more inquiry, student agency, and identity work. However, we did not have everyone on board, and leaders within the system found it challenging to hold teachers accountable for these shifts. How, then, will we make progress? How, then, will we expect our future students to break the systems of oppression that currently inhibits too many of our learners from accessing high quality education, higher education, jobs, financial security, and above all else how they see themselves as humans and realize their aspirations?
These are the big questions at the intersection of leadership and culturally sustaining pedagogies I hope to continue to explore throughout my doctoral research. In the meantime, I must remain accountable for continuing my learning (and unlearning), amplify marginalized voices, and take responsibility within my own spheres of influence to push for more culturally responsive and culturally sustaining practices. The work is necessary, urgent, and our students deserve this.
References cited in this post:
Delgado, R., Stefancic, J., & Harris, A. (2017). Critical race theory: An introduction (3rd ed.). New York University Press.
Freire, P. (2014). Pedagogy of the oppressed (30th anniversary ed.; M. B. Ramos, Trans.). Bloomsbury Academic.
Harris, C. I. (1993). Whiteness as property. Harvard Law Review, 106(8), 1707–1791.
Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465–491.
McLaren, P. (2017). Critical pedagogy: A look at the major concepts. In A. Darder, R. D. Torres, & M. Baltodano (Eds.), The critical pedagogy reader (3rd ed., pp. 61–83). Routledge.
