Cultural Proficiency A Manual for School Leaders (Chapters 5, 7 Resources D/E) Response

 

How can understanding the “continuum” be helpful to planning Culturally Responsive work with individuals within your organization?

When I opened up chapter five to start reading, the pull-quote by Ellis Cose from his book, The Rage of a Privileged Class has me rethinking everything, and I cannot move past it; he wrote, “If we tell ourselves that the only problem is hate, we avoid facing the reality that it is mostly nice, non-hating people who perpetuate racial inequality”  (Cose 1998, p. 20). In my organization, as well as in the state of Minnesota, we know the ‘nice’ people are at the center of some of the most horrific, disabling, and learning-killing proposals and policies from the Minnesota Department of Education granting over $245 million to a non-existent agency for feeding children and families during the 202o COVID-19 quarantine, to its lack of diversity, inclusion, and color in the agencies upper leadership . These ‘nice’ people make sure the status quo is never disrupted and will not address disparities because it might disrupt one's social status, religious affiliations, or political party politics (you would think that Minnesota governor Walz being a former teacher would take actions that benefit the masses versus selling out to Education Minnesota. Dominant culture educators are sometimes tired of buzzwords and theory. I find it exhausting to hear words like we need more Black male teachers, equity, diversity, inclusion, and differentiation, student-centered, and equitable when they aren’t paired with actionable strategies and planning time. Articulating a vision for learning without the how isn’t useful. It’s like author Robert Louis Stevenson said, “Some people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind.”  To me, chapter five in Cultural Proficiency: A Manual for School Leaders triggered several challenges inside  me. As a Black male, the burden of proof must be maintained meaning that if my organization's dominant culture has generationally failed students that look like me they will continue to do so because there is no intent, action, nor process to eliminate disruptive social/cultural historical assumptions that have traveled in first class with BIPOC students, educators, and families.   

The continuum and barriers in my educational setting means the continuum and its barriers for cognitive cultural engagement are mismanaged, maintained, nourished and coddled by a system that today, in 2022 says ‘it’s okay to have low expectations for those kids who probably will  not do any better than their parents’ (biological determinism). They include Cultural Blindness-see the difference, act as if you don’t; Cultural Pre-competence-see the differences, respond inadequately; and Cultural Incapacity.  See the difference, make it wrong.Recognizing that lack of knowledge, experience, and understanding of other cultures limits your ability to effectively interact with them.  It’s the ultimate threesome, low expectations, no expectations, and avoiding the obvious and the movement forward to reward mediocrity.  

What barriers are apparent in your educational setting? How are those addressed?

Our schools ELA high school PLC have had two restorative justice circles by outside consultants. The first time was because someone told me that SPPS hiring me was like hiring a woman. The second was that an English teacher that’s worked at my school for more than 10-years (her first full time job out of college) said, “I’m not listening to that n****r tell me anything,” while I was chair of the department. We have mostly Asian scholars in our school and the overwhelming majority of services are focused on this cultural group, and other groups of students are mismeasured, categorized, and sorted into what I call ‘levels of victimhood.’ When this happens, as it does across Minnesota, there is no fair chance for these kids to become lifelong learners. 

How can understanding the continuum help you deal with the barriers identified in Chapter 5. 

I haven’t found a way to stop institutionalized racism in education. While chapters five and seven provide a detailed breakdown and target challenges in cultural proficiency, we are the only ones reading the book; the books and the information inside are siloed in schools of education, and rarely get out into the public sphere. I’m not an angry person, but reading this and understanding the surreptitious nature of why and how this is still happening (400 years plus) later continues to annoy me. Are there solutions to fix it? How many scholars of Superintendent Licensure have read this? Why are we still talking about it if graduate students passed this class with an “A.” Dominant cultures will never change - they don’t have to; historical assumptions about your BIPOC co-workers is a well-oiled construct regardless who the majority will be in less than three-years (MN specific).  In my organization, I continue to push boundaries and barriers that I know should not be inside of any school district. It’s the ‘nice’ people that get uneasy. 

What are some of Resource D & F that could be used with members of your organization to foster Cultural Responsiveness?  

After reviewing both professional developments in D and E, my organization's majority would consider this an attack on their whiteness versus an exercise to see barriers. This cannot possibly be done without some type of stare-down. It’s like when the district told us we would be reading Hammond for the next couple of school years, PLC’s did everything within their power not to read the Hammond book citing data cycles, planning, etc. I’m not exaggerating, this is a fixed lot of folks.