Engaging in Challenging but Essential Equity Conversations with Colleagues

 

Our children are inheriting a world with complex social, ecological and financial problems. There are no easy or quick fixes. Finding solutions will require collaboration among innovators from diverse backgrounds and cultures.  Education needs to prepare students for this world by offering them equitable learning environments where they have the opportunity to practice independent thinking, to collaborate on projects and to develop the skills necessary to become effective agents of social change. But defining an equitable learning environment proves challenging sometimes. For instance, as we seek to create an environment that supports all students as they put their best foot forward; does this mean heterogeneously grouping them or sometimes sorting them by race, gender, language of origin, socioeconomic background, even ability to more easily meet their needs and give them a space where they feel understood by their peers? This is not an easy question to ask, and it is one that I have struggled with over the years because it requires me to address the reality of the world as it is, not as I want it to be. However, as educators our willingness to explore this dilemma individually and more importantly together remains a necessary precursor to designing the learning environments that will prepare our students for the world they are destined to inherit.

 

Philosophically, I have struggled with the concept of tracking even in its many disguises. On the one hand, I have always seen it as inherently flawed because it segregates and divides. In The Critical Pedagoy Reader , Peter McLaren proposes that we are doing in education is giving new names to tracking to conceal the truth about it, even to ourselves. “Dissimulation results when issues of domination are concealed, denied or obscured in various ways.  For instance, the process of institutionalized tracking in schools purports to help better meet the needs of groups of students with varying academic ability. However, describing tracking in this way helps to cloak its socially reproductive functions: that of sorting students according to their social class location.” (McLaren, p.12)  No matter what we call it, tracking inherently ends in an inequitable learning outcome. Ultimately, “certain children are left farther and farther behind. The rich get richer, while the poor get worksheets.” (Kohn, 2011, p.3)The most easily defined forms of tracking are seen in high school where we know that well meaning educators often support AP, Honors, Regular Ed, Remedial and Special Ed, because it allegedly provides each student an opportunity to receive an academic program that is well-designed to meet his or her needs. The only problem is, “Who assesses what students’ need and are the testing measures we employ culturally fair or biased?” Historically, there have been a disproportionate number of people of color represented in special education and underrepresented in advanced placement. Today, this inequity is still played out as revealed in recent research cited by Kohn, in Poor Teaching for Poor Children. “One [study] found that black children are much more likely than white children to be taught with workbooks or worksheets on a daily basis. (Kohn, 2011, p.2) Often this ultimately means inequities in the quality of education that children receive. “In books like The Shame of the Nation, Jonathan Kozol, another frequent visitor to urban schools, describes a mechanical, precisely paced process for drilling black and Latino children in ‘obsessively enumerated particles of amputated skill associated with upcoming state exams.’ “(Kohn, 2011, p. 2). This practice seems to be the norm even though “a three-year study (published by the U.S. Department of Education) of 140 elementary classrooms with high concentrations of poor children found that students whose teachers emphasized “meaning and understanding” were far more successful than those who received basic-skills instruction.” (Kohn, 2011, p. 4) But tracking doesn’t just happen at the high school level.  The sorting often begins as early as kindergarten. Clearly, tracking in any form only perpetuates the inequities, and it will continue to debilitate our world today if we don’t make changes to the pedagogy and structure of our schools.

 

On the other hand, it is important to consider that as we restructure our learning environments; the reality is that the world now can be a critical and challenging place, and our children have to face it every day. As Freire reminds us, “Educators need to know what happens in the world of the children with whom they work. They need to know the universe of their dreams, the language with which they skillfully defend themselves from the aggressiveness of their world.” (Freire, 2005, p. 130) When we address the issues surrounding how we group children, this is an important fact to remember.  It’s a challenging profession; teaching. It’s so personal and at the same time embedded in societal forces, mostly beyond our direct control. Over the years, I have tried my best to close the door of my classroom to the isms: racism, sexism, and classism. But closing the door doesn’t make the reality go away. That’s why I appreciate Andrea Smith’s article, Heteropatriachy and the Three Pillar of White Supremacy because she brings to light the ugly reality of the roots of different isms and how they impact each other. Even though I find it uncomfortable to read about these realities, this knowledge helps me as an educator to minimize its influence in my classroom. For instance, understanding the reality that “Blackness as the bottom of the color hierarchy” (Smith, 2006, p. 70), “is central to racial and political thought and practice in the United States.” (Smith, p. 71) informs me about the source of the emotional armor I often see African-American students wear as they walk through the door. I want the classroom to be a safe space where they will feel like they can take off that layer of protection and relax, but I can’t do that by pretending outside forces don’t exist. Then I would be seeing the reality of my students as I want it to be, not as it is.

 

After listening to two student panels High Tech High (Students of Color and the LGBT) share their reality, it becomes clear that sometimes everyone needs a space to feel understood without explanation. When some of the students of color expressed their need for a Black Student Union, it made sense and resonated with empowerment born of meeting a need in today’s world. In theory, I am opposed to such fragmentation. We have enough disunity in the world already and don’t need to inadvertently contribute to it with the structures and groupings we allow in our schools. However, no matter how much I question any program or curriculum that might stand us on a slippery slope towards tracking, it’s clear that groups like these represent something different and can have a positive impact on the culture of the school in general. Rather than enhancing further fragmentation, they actually serve to improve relationships among diverse populations. For instance, Denizet-Lewis’ article, Coming Out in Middle School (2009) explains the benefits of having a Gay/Straight Alliance on campus. Referring to the G.S.A. at Daniel Webster Middle School, the principal explained, “This is a club that promotes safety, and it gives kids a voice. And the most amazing thing has happened here since the G.S.A. started. Bullying of all kinds is way down. The G.S.A. created this pervasive anti-bullying culture on campus that affects everyone.” (New York Times, 2009, p. 12) This example effectively illustrates the benefits of allowing children with similar needs or cultures to come together. Rather than isolating students, bringing them together empowered the whole school community to embrace diversity. The differentiating factor in groups like the GSA and the BSU seems to be student voice. In tracking and its many academic disguises, student voice is alarmingly absent. In the aforementioned groups, student voice serves as the common denominator and perhaps can provide us a gauge for determining the equity of other forms of grouping as we move forward with educational reform.

 

This year I have 3 boys in class who prefer pink above all other colors. They are clearly more gentle and feminine in their manner than some of their counterparts in other classrooms. I don’t know their sexual orientation and perhaps they don’t even know yet. According to a handful of studies, “most didn’t identify gay or lesbian until 14, 15 or 16, the mean age at which they first became aware of that attraction was 10. Boys tended to be aware a year earlier than girls.” (New York Times, 2009, p. 5)  But even so, this is the most feminine group of boys I have seen in many years and even though I frontload the year with a lot of explicit readings and conversations about the myths of “boy” and “girl” toys/colors, I can’t keep them with me forever. I have to wonder at the uphill climb in life they might have either way. Having each other might make that journey a little less lonely.

 

Over the years, I have endorsed other forms of homogeneous grouping when I thought it helped children, and though not always meant to outright track, certainly favored that philosophy.  For instance, there was a time when I found myself advocating for a version of homogeneous grouping in a bilingual program called the “buddy-lingual” program at La Jolla Elementary School. This was back when forced integration and busing was the norm. The program segregated native Spanish speakers to give them the opportunity to continue learning in Spanish in the mornings, and then partnered them with a native English Speaker in the afternoon for integrated learning. Many teachers on the campus wanted to do away with the program. They questioned its efficacy, citing the low test scores of the native Spanish speakers who were required at the time to take standardized tests in English. I saw the program as a way to provide a space for the children from different linguistic, racial and socioeconomic backgrounds to make meaningful connections with each other and from that foundation, a place for authentic learning to take place. In a perfect world, all the children would have accepted each other without intervention. However, the reality was that direct and targeted focus was needed to help them form friendships across boundaries that do exist in the world today. So, “tracking” in this instance gave learners the opportunity to advance academically while socially connecting them, and had a valid place within a program that I supported.

 

On a personal level, I utilized tracking for my own child, who was being left behind in a school culture influenced by the “No Child Left Behind Act.” As the teachers and administration at my son’s elementary school struggled to repay the education debt, focusing more attention on children who were not meeting standardized benchmarks in testing; those students demonstrating on or above grade level competencies were routinely set aside. Since a complete restructure of the educational program proved unrealistic, I did my best to navigate the educational reality while trying to support my son, who expressed frustration at not learning anything new. That meant allowing the school to evaluate his IQ, identify him as gifted, place him in a specialized program and skip him a grade through more testing. I wanted my own son to be academically challenged. There are statistics for the tracked “gifted and talented” group that show an alarmingly high rate of drop out in college and even suicide. So, as he progressed through a traditional school setting, I hoped that he would have the opportunity to make mistakes, trust that he would survive and actually learn joyfully from the failures. I hoped that he would come to see himself as a hard worker, not just a smart person and to learn to see failure as just another learning opportunity. I saw tracking as the only way to accomplish this.

 

In the end, these measures proved unsuccessful, even though my son seems like one who would most benefit from tracking. He is the kid who took the SAT in seventh grade because he wanted to skip high school and proved with his test score that he could academically. He’s the kid that the teachers “Google” because his brain stores facts whether he wants it to or not!  And yet, tracking failed because it created in him what Carol Dweck in her book, Mindsets, the New Psychology of Success, describes as a fixed mindset instead of a growth mindset. Explaining the difference between the two, she states, “In one world, effort is a bad thing. It is like failure, means you’re not smart or talented. If you were, you wouldn’t need effort. In the other world, effort is what makes you smart or talented.” (Dweck, 2006, p. 16) By inadvertently reinforcing the idea that he is valued as a smart student, not a hard working one, tracking led to a rigidity of thought that has been toxic and often paralyzing for him.  

 

Ultimately, I chose to remove him from tracking environments like an International Baccalaureate program, which he seemed well suited for by ability and learning style. Instead, I enrolled him in High Tech High, a place with no AP classes or tracking. High Tech High integrates students across all ethnic and economic boundaries by implementing a lottery system based upon zip codes to establish ethnically and socioeconomically balanced enrollment. Recent research supports such integration. “Socioeconomic integration is a win-win situation: Low-income students' performance rises; all students receive the cognitive benefits of a diverse learning environment (Antonio et al., 2004; Phillips, Rodosky, Muñoz, & Larsen, 2009); and middle-class students' performance seems to be unaffected up to a certain level of integration. (Potter, 2013, p.2) In addition, High Tech’s project-based, heterogeneous learning environment helps students learn to appreciate each other’s unique talents. Although my son’s “intelligence” is valued, it is not the only asset to a group’s success. Ultimately, he is only valued for his willingness to contribute his talents to the groups’ efforts and to work hard. His peers challenge him if he does otherwise! Clearly augmenting carefully planned out integration with a culture of excellence led by skilled educators gives children like my son a fighting chance to develop talents to benefit humanity, and to learn how to collaborate with people from diverse backgrounds instead of becoming a drop out or suicide statistic.

 

Although individual reflection about equity topics such as tracking remains critical, it is collective evaluation that will ultimately have the greatest impact on educational reform. Recently, I overheard a conversation among some educators who felt that the grouping strategy they were considering would benefit a special population of learners. It was clear, that although there is value in homogenous grouping some times, like when student voice is leading the decision, in this instance I genuinely questioned the need. It was a conversation to which I was not invited but just happened to overhear, as one often does in staff lounges and workrooms. Since this was a topic that I had been personally exploring, I was eager to consult with others struggling with similar topics, but again, this was not a conversation that directly involved me. Then I remembered a comment made by a youth representative from one of the High Tech High student panels who visited our graduate class recently. He explained what made his school feel welcoming and safe. “We tackle issues here right away. We are not a school of bystanders, the teachers or the students!” It is our willingness to engage in consultation about difficult and often controversial topics that creates the school culture and learning environment we all seek to provide for children.

 

So, I invited myself into the conversation as respectfully as possible. I offered the use of the Tuning for Equity Protocol (McDonald, Allen and Hastings) for their consideration in solving the grouping dilemma and asked if perhaps we could consult together since this was a topic that all educators must face every time we group students. Maybe we could learn from each other? I even explained that I was new to the protocol and welcomed the opportunity to learn with them. However, though everyone was polite, it became clear that several of the group members were not completely willing to engage in an authentic conversation and therefore not seeing the need for a protocol.  In hindsight, I realize that perhaps they didn’t even see the situation as a dilemma! With great courtesy, I was unofficially dismissed from the conversation!

 

There are several factors that might have influenced the lack of willingness for this group to engage in conversation, at least with me. First, the topic itself is challenging and we often only enter into such conversations when we have a strong connection and trust built up with someone, or at least something external that provides a common if temporary bridge of understanding. Second, protocols that can serve as temporary bridges between different programs of growth do not exist in this context. Informal methods of communication work well for many concerns that come up in the educational world, but there are times when the challenge is too emotionally charged and formal protocols provide a less threatening venue for exploration. Third, I might have overestimated my cultural capital by misreading my professional connection or value as a part of this group. We work in different areas of expertise, with different age groups and do not have enough common ground to stand on in order to engage in critical conversations that prove challenging without the use of protocols. Essentially, we don’t have enough of a history of serving together.

 

I could give up on exploring this issue further, after all discord can be uncomfortable. But then In Building Community out of Chaos , Linda Christensen worked past her own impulse to avoid conflict to accept that sometimes “real community is forged out of struggle.” (p.2) I admire her courage. Ultimately, the equity issues surrounding grouping and tracking prove too critical for educators to explore in isolation or even in individual groups. It is a collective issue for anyone working with populations of people in today’s world, and we will learn the most by sharing with and challenging each other to go deeper with our reflection. I know that the conversations with other educators during the Equity, Diversity and Design Principles course in the High Tech High Teacher Leadership program have encouraged me to go deeper in my own reflections.  More importantly, this situation has brought to light the need to establish stronger lines of communication for more topics than just this one regarding grouping.

 

Some background information might provide a better context for understanding the challenge a simple conversation provides and explain why I might have been so quickly dismissed from the conversation. I suspect that I am not part of the perceived culture of power at the school as mentioned in Delpit’s, The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Other People’s Children.  Delpit explains that, “those who are less powerful in any situation are most likely to recognize the power variable most acutely.” (Delpit, p. 26) In addition, I experienced what Steele calls, “stereotype threat-the threat of being viewed through the lens of a negative stereotype.” He explains that everyone experiences it because we are all members of some group “about which negative stereotypes exist.” (Steele, p.3)  This might be a contributing factor to this conversation and one that collaborative conversations in the future might help to alleviate.

 

The reason is that I teach in a specialized program with a team of two other teachers at Innovations Academy, a project-based K-8 school in San Diego. We collaborate to develop and grow a specialized program at the school; a sort of school within a school. We operate independently of the rest of the staff, design our own staff development and meetings, plan parent workshops, collaborate regularly and address issues like equity on a daily basis, together. We share the same campus with the rest of the staff and though many elements of our program overlap, we rarely interact because the populations we serve have different needs. Most of the school is a five day program. Our program meets two and half times a week for cooperative, student-directed learning opportunities that are designed by the learners based on areas of intense interest and curiosity.  It stands as a unique alternative to typical independent study programs because students form meaningful connections to a school community, have the opportunity to participate fully in authentic project-based learning opportunities; all while maintaining the option for continued independent study at home with their families. Essentially, we collaborate closely with and support the parents to create an easy flow of learning between home and school. It is unique that Innovations Academy provides such options for its families and I value the choice this school provides.

 

Over the past three years, I have encouraged the decision to grow the program within, but separately from the rest of the staff and school.  In fact, along with the director we have even considered growing it into a separate school. However, for the present it exists as an option within the framework of Innovations Academy and if it is going to continue to do so; then as the school grows, more collaboration across programs will need to exist. Although, I believe that there is value in holding separate staff meetings and professional development most of the time, I now realize the benefit of establishing some protocols for communication beyond just our director, who currently serves as the bridge between our two programs. I guess in some way I thought that because most of my teaching experience has been in typical, public, five day programs, I was a bridge of sorts, as well. There are misconceptions among homeschooled families about public school families and vice versa. Having worked with both populations now, I feel that I understand the issues of both and therefore erroneously assumed that others understood that about me as well.

 

This experience has really taught me the value of not taking certain realities for granted, and about the importance of establishing mutual respect and open lines of communication before the need for them becomes critical! So, before solution-oriented conversations can begin about tracking and equity, we must do some team building in order to establish a culture of trust. Some possibilities I will consider collectively with my team, director and the rest of the staff are as follows.

 

• Host occasional joint staff meetings and professional development where careful, preplanning can avoid filling the time with housekeeping items that usually prove to be program specific. Since equity issues are ongoing in education and common to both programs, perhaps this can be a common topic we share together and learn from each other, checking in as a staff to take the “equity temperature” of the school a few times a year.

• When we host a school-wide workshop, which our director invites us to do annually, include staff voice and essential questions ahead of time and possibly utilize a student panel to address them.

• Collaborate on the financial planning of the school.

• Have a representative from our program attend the five-day teacher’s staff meetings occasionally to stay better connected to the heartbeat of the school in general.

• Practice protocols across programs and grade levels with non-emotionally charged topics such a project tuning since that is something that both programs share. That way if difficult issues arise in the future we can benefit from the habit of communication already formed with people beyond our immediate teams.

• Open up the parent workshops that we design to the whole school.

 

 

If I could turn back the clock and be in exactly the same place, hear exactly the same conversation with the same set of colleagues, I would do a few things differently. First, I would remember that equity issues, especially in regard to tracking are complicated, multifaceted and not easily resolved. Therefore, conversations need to occur in a venue where respect for all individuals and the topic itself is honored and explicitly stated. And those conversations need to begin with an honest assessment of the reality of the professional culture that exists among the individuals involved.

 

As educators we need to skillfully and thoughtfully create a common framework so that our conversations and actions can contribute to the development of learning environments that will prepare our students for the world they are destined to inherit. That takes time, but patience with the process can have a powerful impact on the outcome. Through my service as an educator, I want to continue to become an effective agent of social change, and I will have more impact if I am working with a team instead of alone. Baha’u’llah, the Prophet-Founder of the Baha’i Faith taught that people are like different colored roses growing in the garden of humanity and for us to rejoice to be in this garden. He said, “Ye are the fruits of one tree and the leaves of one branch. Deal ye one with another in the utmost love and harmony. So powerful is the light of unity that it can illumine the whole earth.”  But He also said that sometimes “From the clash of opinions comes the spark of truth.”  Even though these conversations are sometimes full of sparks; they remain essential, especially between professionals committed to educational improvements and social justice.

 

The world today is fragmented because nations and peoples do not see themselves as members of one human family, yet. No matter what choices we make, we need to make sure that we do not inadvertently prepare children to perpetuate the status quo. If we want to give them the tools to solve today’s problems, then we better be ready to make hard choices about tracking, instead of just trying to rename it. We better be willing to take risks to restructure our learning environments, beginning with a willingness on the part of educators to engage in challenging conversations that often include opposing viewpoints. In the final analysis, these conversations are worth struggling through because as Kozol explains, “We are children only once; and after those few years are gone, there is no second chance to make amends. In this respect, the consequences of unequal education have a terrible finality.” (Kozol, 1991, p.6)

 

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Christensen, L. (2000). Reading, writing, and rising up: Teaching about social justice and the power of the written word. Milwaukee: Rethinking Schools Ltd.

 

Coming out in middle school. New York Times, September 2009.

 

Delpit, L. (1995, excerpt). Other people's children. New York: The New Press.

 

Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset:  the new psychology of success. New York: Random House.

 

Freire, P. (2005). Letter eight: Cultural identity and education. Teachers as cultural workers: Letters to those who dare to teach, Chapter 8.New York: Perseus Books.

 

Kohn, A. (2011). Poor teaching for poor children…in the name of reform. Education Week, April 27, 2011.

Kozol, J. (1991). Savage inequalities. New York: Harper Perennial. (Excerpt).

 

Potter, H. (2013) Boosting achievement by pursuing diversity. Educational Leadership, 70, 8, May 2013, 38-43.

 

Smith, A. (2006). Heteropatriarchy and the three pillars of white supremacy. Chapter 6 in Smith, A. et. al., eds. Color of violence: the INCITE! anthology. New York: South End Press.

 

Tough, P. (2006). “What it takes to make a student.” NY Times Magazine, November 26, 2006.