Arria Coburn:
We had some incidents at the school, and I think that as a leader, you toggle between trying to be neutral when you’re hearing information of like let’s hear both sides, lets hear what happened. I had one of my students call me out and say, “Ms. Coburn, I just can’t figure you out. I see you, you lead our school, you’re a woman of color, but what side are you on?”

Alec Patton:
This is High Tech High Unboxed. I’m Alec Patton. And this episode comes to you from the 2021 Deeper Learning Conference. We’re bringing you an exclusive recording of a den talk on the topic of leading school staff and work to address equity and racism. It’s hosted by the one and only Ron Berger, so I’m just going to get out of the way and let Ron introduce this episode.

Ron Berger:
I want to welcome everybody. I’m Ron Berger from EL Education. I’m your host. We have two award-winning principals and an award-winning teacher here who are also among the educators I most admire. They have done, I think, some of the most important work I know in dealing with issues of race in urban education. There’s no easy answers here, they’re not going to come with easy answers for us. But I think their real stories of their hard work in their schools are a really great provocation for all of us in the grappling that we’re doing on that. The structure will be I’ll be interviewing all three of them after I introduced them and then we’re going to open it up. So you can be putting questions into the chat throughout this time because we really hope that there’ll be specific strategies and ideas that come up that will be useful to you today.
I’m going to frame today by saying I’m not going to try to give an argument for why it matters that we deal with issues of race in education. I assume that everyone who’s attending understands that really well. When I’m talking about race and education, I’m saying I understand that students are not going to succeed in school unless they truly feel they belong. And by belong, I don’t just mean allowed to be there, I mean valued and respected, feel like they have agency, feel like their voice is respected and their voices heard, and they can take a leadership role. So belonging is not just being allowed in the room, belonging is being valued and respected in the room. There’s many different aspects of students that we need to value, race is just one of them, their gender identity is one of them, their sexual orientation is one of them, their culture, their language, their body type, all of these things matter.

But we’re actually separating out race today not because the intersectionality of all of those things don’t matter and aren’t always present, but because race is an entirely separate issue in America because we have this crazy culture built on racism, where skin color actually matters profoundly in our lives. So we need to talk about all those issues of belonging and we also separately need to talk about race because it would be easy for race to get lost in other issues. We have to talk about all those issues and we need to directly talk about how racism affects the students that we’re dealing with and their identities and their self image. So that’s what today is about. I’m not going to ask any of our speakers to say why that’s important, we assume that’s important for students to feel like they’re valued and respected in their building. We’re going to talk about how do we help faculty and staff deal with their own identities, their own privilege, their own sense of who they are in ways that they can productively work together to make a culturally responsive culture in their building.

The two schools that are being featured today have done that hard work as much as any schools I know, and they are not done with it. They are in the middle of it and it’s hard for them all the time. But I had such admiration for them that I pleaded with them to come share some of their learning so far. So from Capital City Public Charter School in Washington, DC, we have two award-winning leaders. We have Laina Cox, Laina, can you give a shout to everyone here?

Laina Cox:
Hi, everybody.

Ron Berger:
Laina is the principal of the middle school at a public charter school that serves 1,000 students, pre K–12. Every graduate of that school has been admitted to college since they had a graduating class. The students are almost all low-income, almost all students of color. From Capital City, we also have the first Latin X DC teacher of the year, Justin Lopez-Cardoze. Justin, can you say hi to everyone?

Justin Lopez-Cardoze:
Hello, everyone. Nice to be here.

Ron Berger:
Justin was the state teacher of the year last year in Washington, DC. We couldn’t be more proud of him. And from Springfield, Massachusetts, we have the award-winning principal of the Springfield Renaissance School, which is a 6-12 school, mostly low-income students, mostly students of color, 700 students. That’s a district school, it’s not a charter from which every single graduate has been admitted to college since the school had a graduating class. That I think, Arria, is probably 13 graduating classes at this point. I’ve gone to those graduation ceremonies, most of them, and just been around all the parents crying and cheering, it’s a remarkable thing. Arria is the principal of that school and also like Laina, a mom of kids that are struggling through this pandemic crisis. Arria, can you say hi to everybody here?

Arria Coburn:
Hi, everyone.

Ron Berger:
So once again, we’ve got Laina and Justin from Capital City Public Charter School in Washington, DC, we’ve got Arria Coburn from Springfield Renaissance School in Springfield, Massachusetts, both fairly large urban schools. What they have had to do is work with their staffs and they have diverse staff. They don’t have staffs that are mostly staffs of color or mostly white, they had diverse staffs with all kinds of backgrounds of people. And they have grappled with how do we have their staffs have conversations about race and about their own identities and about doing work around race with their students. Arria, I’d like to start with you. You have done incredible work by bringing in outside organizations to work with you right alongside you to help your staff grapple with their own identities. Some of that’s gone easy, some of it’s been really hard, can you talk to us about that process?

Arria Coburn:
Absolutely. So we have been knee deep in talking about race and equity, I would say for the past eight, nine years. I have been principal for six of those years, and at the start of our journey we partnered with several different organizations that we thought would help move us along. So we did some of the traditional experiences, so for example we had partners come in and we did the crossing the line, we had partners come in and we did affinity groups. Some of those experiences split us further apart. For example when we had been placed in affinity groups, we didn’t have the bandwidth to continue the work after our partners left. So we had these great professional development experiences that we weren’t able to maintain.

We’ve also had partners come in and give us tools that have lived on. So for example we partnered with a professor at Harvard and she came in and each of our teachers had to share their story of self. That was for us the most impactful experience because we have been talking about race but teachers weren’t sharing their own personal journey with it in the sense of how they were entering the conversation. So for us, that was a lesson that you can’t talk about race unless you’re really clear about where you’re entering and being okay with saying, “I’m not okay with talking about this.” Even for me as a leader of color, I didn’t want to talk about race. So as I shared my story of self, I shared I’m not comfortable talking about this because race is something that I talk about with people that look like me, so that was very impactful.

We also had a partner this past year, Kalise Wornum, she’s out of Brookline, Mass. And she led us through how you mark the moment and you interrupt those ouch moments. So those experiences have allowed us to deepen our work with the conversations about race and equity. But definitely not easy. And I can tell you that I’d be lucky to say that half my staff was like, “Yes, I’m ready to go.” For the most part it required a lot of intentional work, but we dedicate time to talking about it.

Ron Berger:
And Arria, since I’ve admired that work, can I ask you one hard follow-up question?

Arria Coburn:
Absolutely.

Ron Berger:
When I visited the school, there were certainly teachers, often white teachers, who just said, “This is really uncomfortable for me. This is just really hard for me.” And there were also teachers who said, “There were times when I felt like this work made our staff more divided than all on the same team.” Can you talk about how you worked through that with people? How did you get beyond that?

Arria Coburn:
I think it was first having a retreat with the leaders because we had to be really clear that the folks in a leadership role were comfortable talking about race, myself included. So we have partnered with different organizations who worked with just the leadership staff and then we had them work with the entire staff. I think it was really me meaning this is a goal and this is a priority. It was written into our school improvement plan and it was written into our work plan. Everything that we did, we came back to it. Every professional development, race was built in on it. So it wasn’t something that we did at the beginning of the year to check a box, it was ingrained in all of that we did. We shared it with our parents, we shared it with our students.

And that was more so me wanting the accountability. So we said to our parents, and we’re about 80% students of color, we said, “We are going to talk about race and when we mess up, when your kids come home and say, ‘You know what, Mrs so-and-so said this and I’m not comfortable.’ Please call us out on it.” So parents were okay with that and they absolutely called us. So teachers knew that it was something that we were going to do throughout the year. And when we had professional development, we revisited it.

Definitely got some pushback. I can remember getting a call from my union rep because a teacher felt that we were talking about race but I got to get the students ready for the state assessment. I said, “No, no, no, we can’t do that, students need to know that this is important. Forget the state assessment, we are talking about this.” And I pushed ahead. I also had support from the district. So I know that there’s a question in the chat about what’s the difference between charter and a district school. A district school, we are bound by the rules of Springfield Public Schools, and so I don’t have full autonomy to do whatever I want, I have to follow what the district says, so that’s the difference with the district school.

It’s taken a while and again even being in this journey for about nine years, we don’t have 100% of staff who are eager to go, but they know it’s a priority, the students know it’s a priority. All of our career lessons this year, so careers advisory, all focus on race and equity, you see it everywhere.

Ron Berger:
Arria, that was beautiful. Thank you. Laina and Justin, I’d love to have each of you talk about the fact that at your school anybody that’s joining your staff goes through a training around their sensitivity and understanding of how race is going to affect their work as an educator. it’s a part of your entire culture that’s built in. Could you talk about how you’ve come to be that way and what that is like? How do you orient people? How do you keep that alive in your building so it’s central to your whole definition of what a staff member is at your school?

Laina Cox:
So our school is 20 years old and I started nine years ago. So there have been a lot of iterations of what our training, professional learning, professional development has looked like over the course of the past two decades. But it has always been required and it has always been something that it’s an automatic. If you work at Capital City, you are going to do this work, we are going to say the thing, and you are going to do this work. We even back it up to the interview because there’s no reason for you to start with us and then discover who we are. So there’s a flat out question that is towards the beginning of the interview around you really speaking specifically. And we want to hear examples of work that you do to be an anti-racist educator. Your answer to that will determine if we go to the next question or if we jumped down three or four questions and end the interview early. We are very serious about who we’re bringing into our building and who’s going to be standing in front of our students. So that’s from the beginning.

And then when teachers start, and our new teachers go through about two weeks of professional development in the summer before the… Well, they go through one week and then the rest of the teachers join a week later. There is intentional and very direct work around diversity, equity, and inclusion, and anti-racist professional development that happens over the summer. It is led by Capital City teachers and teacher leaders and staff members. So those staff members are trained, and Justin will talk about that because he’s a member of that leadership team, but those staff members design the professional development, they implement it, they’re the ones who run it during the summer. Then during the school year, it is built in to our regular professional development cycle. So we have weekly professional development and our equity work is on a six to seven week cycle that all staff members participate in.

The other part of our equity work along with the larger conversations, we also, like Arria talked about, we do affinity groups. We are a 200 person staff, and that is from our maintenance staff all the way to our head of school, everyone has to participate in equity work. If you work outside in operations and you’re part of the staff that greet our families at the front door, you have to go through equity training. If you are running the school as the school principals and our head of school and our senior leadership team, you have to go through equity training. Everyone is a part of that teaching and a part of that learning.
Then the last thing I’ll say before I have Justin talk more about the committee and some specifics of the professional development, really is just our push has always been beyond that typical question that sometimes comes up in equity work, where it’s like, “Name and describe the first time you experienced race.” I’m a black woman, I experienced it the day I was born. So let’s move past that conversation and the privilege that there are some people who are adults and that was the first time that they experienced it. When you are a student of color, when you are a teacher of color, we can’t afford for everyone else to catch up and decide that now is the time they want to do equity work and they want to understand the experience, that has to be from the jump and that has to be from the core. So we really push the intentionality behind the questions that we’re asking in the courageous conversations that we’re pushing. That’s critical for us because you can’t stand in front of our children and not be doing the work for yourself.

Justin Lopez-Cardoze:
Following up from Laina’s excellent summary of how we treat and pursue equity and liberation at our institution, I want to talk a little bit about the professional structure that we use to facilitate equity professional development at our institution. We know that there are several problems existing within the educational landscape. One of them in Washington, DC is that the Latino population is demonstrating the lowest percentage of graduation rate as of last year’s graduating class. That’s just one of the very many problematic statistics that we are seeing in our landscape. Part of that may be because how equity is being treated in a very large landscape is that this type of professional development is viewed as a, “Well let’s come together to this one workshop where we’re invited from different Les and different schools from around the district. Let’s all come together for this one day or to talk about it, leave, and just hope that we’re going to strive towards the academic justice of our students.” And that is certainly not the case.
Equity, professional development, and personal development is something to not be treated as transient. Which is why we are instilling an institutional based equity, professional development program for all staff, instructional and operations through the enactments of what is called our Equity Core Committee. Our Equity Core Committee is composed of three to four members of each campus and organization, we are, as Ron mentioned, in early childhood through high school institution, where there are three to four representatives that vary across racial backgrounds and other identity markers to come together and to lead the work that is necessary to develop our staff personally and professionally through the lens of anti-racism and racial equity.

Some of the paths that we take as an Equity Core Committee is we focus on three main dimensions of equity. So we see it as a path towards sustainability, how are we serving and protecting our staff of color for example, particularly our black African-American and Latinx staff to be recruited and to stay teaching in our institution? The second avenue is through professional development. What is the most important, relevant professional development given all the roles that we serve at our institution that will move the needle and allow our students to be guided in the direction of academic justice? And then we also focus on policy at Capital City, and making sure that the policies, the rules, the regulations, the handbooks are being cross-referenced through an anti-racist lens.

Once again, we do not just see this professional development and how we do equity at Capital City as a one-time thing. We also don’t see it as an extension or in a silo for instance. Even though we do have equity professional development, equity is engraved in everything that we do. Whether we are in team meetings, whether we are working as an instructional leadership team, as a senior leadership team, as an operations team, equity is always the overarching topic and theme with the intentions of ensuring that we are meeting our students and meeting our families where they are given their various racial, ethnic, and other identity marker backgrounds.

Ron Berger:
This is beautiful guys, I couldn’t hope for more in the clarity and the passion from all of you. I want to push all three of you, Arria, I will start with you. There’s a misperception that because you are admired leaders of color that this will be easy for you, that you have instant credibility, that your students will be able to… You can talk about it easily, that you can lead people to do this easily, and I know that’s not true. So I’d like you to talk a bit for us about your personal identities, what’s hard for you? Your vulnerability in this work. Arria to start with you, I know you’re an admired black woman who is a great principal, but that doesn’t give you instant credibility for your blackness with all of the students in your school. Your identity is much deeper than being a black woman and that you’re leading that work and speaking about your race in front of the whole student body has not been easy for you. Can you talk about that? Talk about your own process, about how to be a black leader and make that work.

Arria Coburn:
Yes. So coming in as a new leader, and I knew that the school was already deep into conversations about race and equity, I hesitated to want to talk about race because I didn’t want to be a leader coming in and as a black leader saying, “Oh she’s coming in as a black leader, of course, it’s a priority of hers.” I also struggled with being comfortable talking about race with my staff. My staff is not very diverse and so for me to talk about race meant to talk about hurt and pain and also to put myself out there for the risk of someone saying something that I didn’t like and then struggling with, how do I pull that person in to say that what you said was offensive and you can’t see that. And because I was in an emotional place, it wasn’t going to sound pretty. Because I was in a place of being frustrated with always talking about race, always having to carry the weight of it.

So for that first year, I did not talk about it, I had others lead the work as I figured it out. Actually it was a student who called me out. We had some incidents at the school and I think that as a leader you toggle between trying to be neutral when you’re hearing information of like, “Let’s hear both sides, let’s hear what happened.” I had one of my students call me out and say, “Ms. Coburn, I just can’t figure you out. I see you, you lead our school, you’re a woman of color, but what side are you on?” It hurt me to the core because I said, “I know that I can’t be neutral when it comes to talking about race.”
So it was at that moment, an incident had happened at our school and I actually pulled the whole grade level together. I remember saying like, “Okay, I have to break down this barrier of being neutral and I need to speak from my perspective as a black leader.” It was at that moment I can remember that the students of color came to me and said, “Finally, finally, Ms. Coburn.” So they needed me to be authentic. And that was hard for me, that was hard to share my positionality with them but I know that students needed it.

So I think the other piece that I deal with is sometimes I feel like my staff bothers me in the sense of, “Oh, you’re so successful as a black woman, the struggle must not be that real because you’re doing good.” Every now and then, I call it code switching, I said similar to what Laina said, “At the end of the day when people look at me, I’m a black woman. I operate as a black woman. Being a leader is secondary for me. When I wake up in the morning I am black and I am proud and I’m not going to hide that.” Because when I am navigating in a system with people who do not look like me, when I walk into a district meeting, the first thing that they see is that’s a black principal. So sometimes it’s hard to work with my staff that I feel looks at me, and I don’t know if it’s being colorblind, but it’s putting me in this box that, is the struggle really that hard when you are so successful as a black woman?

So I think that that journey for me has been easier over time because of just me being comfortable talking about it, me being aware of where I stand, and me not being neutral when it comes to race because you can’t be neutral, you can’t. I want to make sure that for my students they see that I’m authentic and that I’m not just having these private conversations in my office with the students of color but then when I go out in front of everyone I’m walking this line. So it was a journey for me and I’m in a good place now with talking about race. We have several student groups at our schools and the focus of those student groups that meet once a week is race and equity, and it’s led by students and it’s work that happens once a week.

Ron Berger:
Arria, thank you. Thank you for your vulnerability and honesty in sharing that. Same question, Laina to you and Justin, your own personal identities, how does that play out in your professional work?

Laina Cox:
I say it clearly myself in all spaces, I am unapologetic about who I am and the pride that I have as a black woman, the pride that I have even just my educational background and the experiences that I’ve had, and I carry all of that into my school every single day. So there’s a lot of emotional pain and hurts from childhood experiences and attending a private school in Connecticut. So there were a lot of racial issues that I was dealing with there that I carry with me and things that I’ve had to learn through those experiences. So one of the biggest things, in addition to being unapologetic about myself and my own identity and pride, everyone who works with me and knows me also knows I’m unapologetic about that as it pertains to black and Latinx students and their voice and them being seen and heard.

So I feel like I carry the weight of all of that all of the time. Because for me it’s never ever about what I say, it’s about how I say it. My tone is always taken into so many different variations. The amount of times I have to reread an email before I hit send, the amount of times I have to play out a conversation that I’m going to have with someone, sometimes I role play it, sometimes I’m just playing it out in my head, I’m writing down notes, things that I shouldn’t have to do and practice. But I’m a black woman and I’m the school leader, so I always have to think about my tone and how it’s going to come off. I could say a white school leader could say the exact same thing that I say, but the way I say it and because it’s coming out of my mouth as I wear my natural hair and big hoop earrings, it comes off differently. So I have to constantly check that, it’s unfair but it’s life, I have to constantly check that.

The other thing just in full vulnerability and just honesty, imposter syndrome is real and I have it. So when you are a leader of color, it doesn’t matter what backgrounds I have and what experiences and what degrees hang up in my office and all of that, I’m constantly questioned. And not just at Capital City, I don’t mean that, I don’t necessarily feel that at that in those moments. But I’m questioned, just things that I may say or choices that I may make make me sometimes have more doubt on myself. Whereas there are other people that wouldn’t think twice about it and they would just do it, and it’s a part of being a leader.
But I’m not a leader, I am a black woman leader and there’s a difference. So I have to always think about that with things that I’m saying and that I’m doing. But in the end, the biggest thing that I remember is I’m that model for my babies. Those kids are seeing me and I want them in 20 years to remember their middle school principal and who she was and what she represented and all of those types of things. So I wear the weight of wanting to be that person for my students.

Justin Lopez-Cardoze:
So I would like to share a story that I’m actually really nervous to share, but I hope that it’s well received. I’m calling myself out on my own prejudice and my own potential racism. I feel unapologetic, as Laina terms, I feel unapologetic as a Latino. And many of the students that I serve and work with are from El Salvador are from Central America, which is where my family is from. So I feel this instant affinity and connection, particularly to my Latinx students who are from Central America. But there has always been one facet of my identity which has brought about a lot of insecurity, which is my sexual orientation, so I identify as a gay man. I’ll speak from the I when I say that every year when I meet a fresh group of new students, I feel like well, my identity is now becoming questioned, my students are going to see my mannerisms or they might see how I interact or how I use different language and my personality and they might start feeling, “Well, is Mr. Lopez-Cardoze gay?”

And this constant and continuous coming out or this feeling of, “What will my students think? What will my families think? What will my Latinx families think in particular?” Because when I go back to my own experiences of coming out to my family, it was not well received at all. And granted things have gotten much better since I’ve come out to my family, but I attributed the experiences of coming out to the Latinx side of my family as a prejudice, unfortunately for the families and students that I have served. That happened to me in the past, I got married in 2018 and my name changed to Cardoze and a lot of kids are wondering, “Well, who did you marry? And what was that like?” Eventually my students found out that I was gay and that I have a husband.

I’ll never forget there was a family that I worked with, we operate in advisories or crews at Capital City in the middle school, and there was one family that I had and the mom reminded me so much of my grandma or my abuela. And my abuela unfortunately did not receive my coming out well at all. So I felt myself batching it so to speak, deepening my voice, being more calm and placed and less emotional. When she found out that I was gay in the next student led conference that we had, she ended up making me rainbow cupcakes. It really confronted me in that moment that prejudice can exist and prejudice is real, even for me as a proud Latini I can be prejudice towards my own Familia, my own [foreign language 00:33:37]. And that’s something that I need to change and that I am still working through. I hope that I can continue growing in overcoming that barrier that I’ve experienced in my own personal life, so that way I can be the best educator and the model and mentor that my students deserve.

Ron Berger:
Well, all three of you are modeling courage for us today. I have a lot more questions I would use to dry you out, but I want to open this up. Is there anyone here with a question that you would like to push? You’re a teacher, you’re a school leader, you’re an organization person who is dealing with this same issue of how do you get your staff to have these hard conversations, these courageous conversations. So I’ll welcome anyone to either put in the chat box or turn on your mic and you can ask a question of Justin, Laina, Arria, or all of them.

Elizabeth:
So I have a question. So our school is primarily Latino. So the problem that, I guess I shouldn’t call it I should pick a better diction there, the situation that I see is that our kids their acceptance of others is very limited because all they know is the Latinos. So my children are bi-cultural so I have the Blackxicans, I have black and Mexican kids together. So when kiss makes certain comments, I’ll be like, “Do you know my kids are black?” And they’re like because I’ll have pictures of my children, but my children look like me. But I tell them, “But they’re black, their father is black. So they take after their father.” So I’ve worked in three schools in Southern New Mexico and now in Texas and it’s the same thing across the board.

It is how do we open up their minds? How do we open up the culture? Because we are almost one race culture, one ethnicity culture, and it’s hard for them to have those eyes. I tell them, “The moment you drive eight hours to Dallas, Fort worth, you’re going to see something else. The moment you drive four hours to Albuquerque, New Mexico, you’re going to see something else because the diversity begins to expand.” So what type of tips do you have for us to be able to work with our schools, where the kids we need to open up their eyes to other ethnicities?

Laina Cox:
One thing I would just say, and this is just it’s a lucky part of who we are because we are a part of EL Education. So our curriculum and the expeditions and the texts that we read and all of those types of things just naturally lend to interesting conversations and very real conversations around current events and around different things going on, so so much of it. Then it also then doesn’t feel separate because it’s just a part of the class, it’s a part of crew, this is what we’re going to talk about today. Like Arria was saying in their crews, it’s about equity. So this is what we do so you should definitely look into EL Education curriculum.

But thinking about how to pull those conversations to be real about those, the other part that I find when when we are having students disputing and whatever it is, our restorative circles and those types of practices have brought out so much that we’ll sit back in a restorative circle, and the things that come out there. You really want to stand back and just let them have that space because I would much rather than get into it in a restorative circle where we can repair that harm and have those deeper conversations.

So the more that you can implement restorative practices, not restorative discipline, restorative practices, so that those are just natural things that are happening and allowing that space and exposing students to having those open dialogues with some norms, with the a talking stick, with set criteria, I’m always amazed at the types of conversations that kids have when they’re given the space to have it. They’re generally not allowed to have those types of conversations, then we expect them to be able to do something when they get in trouble or be able to handle it differently. But we’ve never taught them how to have those types of arguments or how to have those types of conversations. So implementing restorative practices regularly, that are just a part of conversations, have been a huge thing thing for us.

Arria Coburn:
One thing that I’ll add building off of that is marking the moment, so I’ll give you an example. Our crew lesson has been focused on the incident that happened in Atlanta. So I had a student post something on social media, and it was a black student post something on social media against Asian Americans. And an alumni actually sent me a message on social media to say, “Ms. Coburn, have you seen this?” I changed my entire schedule, entire schedule, went to every class and said, “This is unacceptable. By the end of the day, I want to find out who did it.” So it’s that tough love and it’s also again, I’m going to mark the moment. This is on social media, this is about our school. And I ground it back into the mission, these are our goals. So the student who did it immediately sent me a message in the chat and said like, “Okay, it was me.” And we had this conversation and then it gets that what Laina said now, how do we repair?

So obviously I’m thinking about, “Here’s what I want to do.” But I said, “Okay, during lunch we’re going to meet. And by then you need to figure out how you’re going to repair this. You have to repair it with your crew, with your class, with the school. I want you to list all of the things that you are going to do. I am then going to follow up tomorrow and make my way into all of the classes so that I can have that conversation, so that the kids can know that this wasn’t something that was handled private, it is very public.” So I think when you have those situations, you have to make the time for it. We will alter our entire schedule if there’s an incident that has happened. We will have a special schedule, we will have a full school assembly if we have to, but we will always mark the moment.
So I saw a question in the chat about how do you start the conversations? To Laina’s point, the students lead that. So we have two student groups, we have Current Ambassadors, we have a Student Voice Group. And the Student Voice Group, their whole responsibility is looking at policies and rules in the school. They have been very, very integral in changing some of the policies that we had, even with our Zoom norms. Students were saying that they weren’t culturally inclusive, they wanted teachers to use names every single time. Stop saying, hey guys, hey kiddos, use my name. I was like, “Okay.” And I gave it to the teachers and we changed it. So as we’re getting ready to reopen, that group has been sharing their voice about what they want to see and then I’ll respond to it. So I’m not just listening to what they have to say so like, “Great.” I’m giving it to the leadership team and then they see it implemented so students know that they are partners with us on the journey.

Elizabeth:
So just a follow up question to that. So are we talking, and I see someone, I think Anna put a good question in the chat too, are we talking at the principal level? Are we talking at the district level? Because how does this work when… And I’m not saying that our school doesn’t have their support, we do have their support. But where in the hierarchy does this begin or how low in the totem pole can you be and still affect change?

Ron Berger:
And Ann Well’s question, thanks, Elizabeth, Ann Well’s question in particular is, if there’s racist structures built into the systems that you have to deal with, how do you begin the conversation to confront those? So for example, Arria, you’re in the district, there’s district policies, those district policies are set primarily by white people in your district. How do you get the policies that are racist, how do you get that conversation even happening at that level?

Ann Well:
Part of the reason why I was asking that question was mostly because I work in a county office of ed. So we have 42 different school districts, it’s higher than that even. And when you’re trying to dismantle structures in order to design new ones, that means that certain people who currently have the most power are probably going to lose some of their power. And that becomes an issue where you have to do it in a way that people are willing to give up that power so that the people that are never at the table where the decisions are being… They’re effecting them, they’re affecting their children, the table doesn’t usually get bigger. So how do we start having conversations so that other people have access to that power and that the people that are giving it up give it up willingly? How do we have those conversations?

Justin Lopez-Cardoze:
So do you want to go first?

Laina Cox:
Let me just say this real quick, Justin, and talking about it from the highest level. So while we are a charter and we’re different than the district, we’re still like we’re our own school district essentially of 1,000 students, 200 staff members. Our head of school during a retreat this fall, and I was trying to look up the exact name of the thing, it’s from the Center for Community Organizations by Dismantling Racism Works it’s called White Supremacy Culture in Organizations. It breaks down all of the different aspects of a school culture where… We live in this country that was built on white supremacy. So we know that white supremacy lives within all institutions in this country. And schools were never designed for black and brown children, so when we come to that fact and really look at those breakdowns and you start to break down the aspects of a school culture, our head of school had us look at our discipline policies, our attendance and engagement, had us looking at all of these aspects of our school culture and of our school community.
It’s essentially a protocol that’s taking you through how to dismantle white supremist policies that exist in your institution. So I point that out because that is taking it from the top down essentially and really looking at these policies exist, we know who created them, and we know why they were created. So now what? How do you dismantle them? What do you do with them? What types of conversations do you have to have as teachers? What kinds of conversations do we have to have with our families? What are those real conversations, and the courageous ones? And then what are the next steps? What are the action items to do with that? So that’s years of work, but it has to start with actually naming what we know already exists historically and contextually, and then actually breaking those policies down and being real about what exists in our institutions, and not being afraid to name that thing and to say it and call it out. That’s the only way we’re then going to be able to dismantle it.

Justin Lopez-Cardoze:
I’ll say this as a teacher on this call who actually has my principal on this call. So how would I want to approach Laina in this situation if I am interrogating a policy and I am seeing that there are elements of racism that are embedded in this policy? So proactively, I think it’s really important for the relationship between a teacher and an administrator to have a strong degree of trust. But trust is a construct, what are the elements of trust that are needed to have successful communication between a teacher and an administrator before tackling a very sensitive issue that can be intimidating to approach someone in a position of power. So how I view that trust is for an administrator to demonstrate three qualities masterfully, building credibility, building reliability, so being about it, being about the words that you say, and having an authentic intimacy with your staff. If you have those three characteristics as an administrator, your staff will build that trust that will favor the probability of them approaching you for a sensitive topic.
Also, it’s important to establish this trust to depress the self orientation of a leader. So making more selfless moves as a leader to increase that level of trust. So as a proactive measure, building that trust with your staff as a leader will be super important and will open up the avenues to be anti-racist. Being anti-racist is interrogating and confronting those policies or interrogating and confronting the people who are in power, who are contributing to elevated prejudice and corrupts power. So opening up that avenue of trust, I would approach Laina because I personally have a strong relationship with her. There was once a circumstance a couple of years ago where I felt particularly a certain type of way about restorative practices running in our school. I thought that we were doing a good job but we had the potential to do a better job. So I approached her and asked to facilitate a protocol for our instructional leadership team for all of us as a leadership team to discuss, “Okay, what is the data saying about our restorative practices? And how are we managing towards desirable outcomes?”

So the next piece of advice that I have for any educator on here is how I framed it with Laina a few years ago, was managing towards those desirable outcomes, putting the perspective on the outcome, putting the perspective on what will lead to sustainable social positive change. And since I feel like when we were implementing restorative practices in person and being mindful of restorative practices virtually that it improved. And that’s because of that foundational trust that Laina and I have. And that’s all I have to say.

Ron Berger:
Thank you, Justin. Let me just push that last to Arria. How do you deal with constraints that are vestiges of a white supremacist system that you don’t have power over always?

Arria Coburn:
So three years ago I would have answered this question differently, going to district meetings certainly. We at Renaissance do things different, being an EL Education school. I was always cognizant of what that meant for our school and changing any policies. But I think now to Laina’s point, when I show up, I’m a black woman. And so regardless of the fact of what the district is saying, if I hear something that doesn’t feel like it’s going to be in the good service of my black and Brown students, not just at my school but any school in the district, I am going to speak up, I am going to show up, and I’m going to disrupt and dismantle anything that I hear. And I think that that’s what we have to do when we are pushing this work.
Even if you may say that doesn’t apply to my school because we do things different, you can’t be at the table in a position to disrupt some of that racism and sit there and say, “Well, that’s not my role, that’s not my responsibility.” So for me, I am okay with being very vocal and unapologetic, to Laina’s point about what needs to happen to better advance black and Brown students, not just at my school but in all areas where I have a seat at the table.

Ron Berger:
Great. We have time just for about one more question. I’m going to totally selfishly use my power as moderator to throw in a question of my own that’s hard for each of you for our last comments. Sometimes racism is really overt and sometimes it’s easier to deal with when it’s overt. But one of the hardest things to deal with is when you have teachers, and I’m sure all of you have had this with your colleagues and your staffs, who don’t seem to truly believe in the capacity of their students. They don’t actually give their students hard enough work, push their students hard enough, believe in their students enough because of the heritage of racism that they’re carrying. How do you deal with that as a colleague, Justin, as a school leader, Arria and Laina?

Arria Coburn:
So we’ve definitely dealt with that. We did a book study, Zaretta Hammond, and then we also looked at deficit thinking. So it’s been something that we’ve been using. But we pushed the conversation, we definitely are a data-driven school and we’ve been trying to create narratives for students that are based off of data, but not with the deficit lens. So EL has definitely provided us a lot of frameworks of how do you look at the data and not create this like, “Oh, the kids just can’t do it. Look at the achievement gap.” We’ve been focused really on the opportunity, you have to say, “What are the conditions for learning that we need to create here at the school?” Let’s stop talking about what students can’t do, lets talk about what they can do, and let’s talk about what our role is in creating those conditions because we have to look at what our responsibility is and making sure that the students are getting the opportunities that they deserve to better their learning outcomes.

Laina Cox:
I would completely piggyback off of everything Arria said. And really thinking about there’s obviously a ton of books to do book studies and having these conversations. Data is critical in looking at, and I was having this conversation in the chat, we don’t just look at test scores, we believe in three dimensions of achievement. So we’re looking at mastery of knowledge and skills, we’re looking at character, we’re looking at high quality work, so it’s not just a standardized test. So we’re looking at all of that and really building this full picture of who the student is and really trying to coach the teachers and work with the teachers, and the next problem be transparent.
If that doesn’t work, then you can’t teach at my school and I’m going to have to coach you out because my kids can not be sacrificed. So I’m going to try and help you and I’m going to give you as many resources and I’m going to put supports in place and I’m going to work with you and I’m going coach because I’m a forever teacher and I’m a forever educator. But there comes a point where if you’ve made it clear that you can’t see that side to my students, then my school is not the place for you. That actually has to be called out and we can not continue to have teachers just in our schools even though when a teacher shows you who they are, believe them. So we work with you as long as we can and we do everything possible, but we can’t sacrifice our children for that. And so if that doesn’t work after we’ve done all of that, if that unfortunately doesn’t work, I will happily help you find another career path because educating is not it.

Justin Lopez-Cardoze:
Period, period, mic drop. Listen, I operate off the motto of if I see it or hear, I’m going to say something. I know that that is much more difficult done than said. But I view myself as just as racist, just as problematic of being silent and not speaking up and saying something. Now, some folks… My style, I call out, I don’t have a problem calling out anyone because this is something that I’m very passionate about. But just because I might even perceive myself as a little outspoken every now and then doesn’t mean that someone who isn’t as passionate doesn’t mean that they can formulate a way to engage in a courageous conversation with someone about something that they’re seeing. So one of the things that Capital City does, is we actually share a courageous conversation protocol in the event that something happens.

So if a teacher is interacting with another teacher and it’s like, “Oh my goodness, there was some racist notions that were made about our students or deficit based that are linked to race or ethnicity.” Then there’s a protocol that we have developed as an Equity Core Committee for those folks to refer to and to think about it. We have the 24-48 hour rule, 24 hours, if it’s still bothering you, you got to say something but you have to say something within that 48 hours of the occurrence happening. Then there are steps that can be taken that we’ve outlined for our staff and they’re based on the courageous conversations and the literature that we’ve leveraged during our professional development. But in a nutshell, how do I deal with it? I confront it and I’m not afraid to because it’s not time, we don’t have time to deal with racism, not in our school, not with our staff. No, thank you.

Ron Berger:
Well, I’ve got some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that we’re going to have to close, the good news is that Alec Patton has been recording all of this and is going to publish a podcast of this entire session. So if there’s someone that you love or care about who’s an educator who you think, “I wish they had been here to listen to these three brilliant educators open their hearts and souls,” they will be able to listen to it by tomorrow because Alec is so organized that he’s going to have this thing as a published podcast by tomorrow as part of the Unboxed Podcast Series. So thank you Alec.
But mostly put some love in the chat for three of the educators I most admire in the world. This was an incredible session. Boy, I could not have asked for more. Thanks to all of you for coming here and opening your hearts to listen to this. This is the most important work for us to be doing. We can’t walk away from it. So Laina, Justin, Arria just deepest thanks to you for your practice and for your openness here today.

Arria Coburn:
Thank you.

Laina Cox:
Thank you.

Justin Lopez-Cardoze:
Thank you, Ron. That means a lot coming from you.

Ron Berger:
Have a great conference, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us.

Alec Patton:
High Tech High Unboxed is hosted and produced by me, Alec Patton. Our theme music is by Brother Hershel. Huge thanks for this episode’s guest host Ron Berger and to his guests Laina Cox, Justin Lopez-Cardoze, and Arria Coburn. You can find out more about the Deeper Learning Conference and find links to other great stuff from this year’s conference at www.deeper-learning.org. Thanks for listening.