I am not a futurist, but I do follow futurist thinking and David Houle's writing has been informative over these past few months as we navigate a vastly altered reality. Here's an excerpt from his recent blog post on A Pandemic of Magical Thinking:
"We are living in an incredibly important, intense, historically significant time. The benefit of that is that we, humanity, can collectively alter our course to shift our trajectory towards a new beginning… a newly designed future for us all. If you don’t like change, you will have difficulty, and resistance to these massive changes will only cause more pain.
That is our collective context."
2020 is indeed proving to be a disruptive and transformative decade and legacy thinking is not going to help us find and navigate a way forward. Legacy thinking is not going to help us address the vast inequities in our education system nor redesign it so that every child, regardless of demography, is able to design, build and live a life of their own choosing. An outcome that I believe should and can be a natural byproduct of an equitable, holistic, whole-person system of education.
(Image Credit: Virginia Martin)
Last month I participated in a virtual workshop, Dismantling White Supremacy Culture in Schools, with Joe Truss, Founder of Culturally Responsive Leadership. The workshop was humbling and instructive. I was challenged to examine my beliefs, prior actions, and inaction. Specifically, as a facilitator, I realized I have been part of the problem with my desire to establish a safe place for conversation - using norms that I thought were conducive to doing so. What I realize now, is that if we are to have a real conversation, it's never going to feel safe. Joe set the stage for our two-day workshop when he called this out explicitly and instead of safe norms, introduced these braver norms:
Be curious in emotional discomfort
Keep liberation for the marginalized/oppressed students at the center of our work
Be part of the solution towards anti-racism
He helped me understand that norms should push us and that safety is usually for the privileged. I think of myself as progressive, but this workshop made me aware of my legacy thoughts - and they were definitely exposed in this workshop. My racial illiteracy is not benign and I have much work to do. In the below article, Laura Crandall poses a question for white business leaders learning to change the system and provides guidance on what to do next. Joe's workshop brought me face-to-face with my white fragility and Laura's guidance is helping me take what I learn forward. If you did not participate in Joe's workshop, I encourage you to participate in the next workshop this weekend. Over 1,000 people attended the last workshop.
Thank you for reading and for being part of the change we all want to see.