Mrvaudrey

Category: Equity

  • #PostCovidChart

    A reporter from Mashable reached out with some questions about my tweet from last week. One of her questions is a whole body of work by itself, so I’m adding more thoughts that wouldn’t fit in her article [link to come].

    4.) Ibd love to hear more about your entire lower left quadrant. How did the pandemic change school in a way you want it to maintain? Why donbt you think itbs likely to happen?

    There are plenty of exceptionally social students for whom pandemic ruined their experience of school this year. Loads of high school students fall into this category, as does my second-grade daughter.

    Additionally, there are loads of students who have flourished with the absence of the distracting (and sometimes overwhelming) classroom environment, like my Kindergarten son. Hebs plowed through several years worth of math instruction, but he will likely struggle for the remainder of this year to adjust to the structure of a classroom environment and the expectations that come with it. Today, he was upset because they played Simon Says for too long, and when he’s at home, he can quit stuff whenever he wants.

    For both of those groups of students, we teachers have had to adjust our academic expectations and ask questions webve been able to avoid for years.

    • Whatbs the minimum amount for a student to show mastery of a topic?
    • How do we know if theybve mastered the topic, and what do we do if they donbt?
    • Whatbs the purpose of high-stakes assessments, and are there other ways to get the same information?
    • Is there a pattern for which students are doing well and which ones are struggling with remote learning?

    For teachers like me, the social dynamic and the academic one are inseparable, and webre hustling, finding ways to adequately and accurately teach students whose learning environment might be distracting, unreliable, or otherwise inequitable.

    The kids in my house have won the Privilege Bingo; we have plenty of art supplies, books, reliable Internet, quiet places to work, and two parents who work reasonable hours and can be involved in the kidsb schooling, so my family is going to be fine. The other students will be disproportionately affected by a this year, where schools were unable to serve them.

    And all these students will be in the same classes as my kids next year, so how do teachers adjust our expectations to include everybody, while providing extra for the students that need it?

    It’s going to take more than a snazzy app to create fair conditions as classes return to school buildings.

    There are plenty of education companies chomping at the bit to cash in on blearning lossb, which many educators (including me) consider to be a fallacy.

    No students blostb anything in the last year, but we will need to provide accommodations for every student, even kids like mine who logged in every day and did the work.

    I haven’t really suggested any solutions here, because a windfall of Education funding is unlikely to drop from the sky. If the state superintendent called me up, I’d suggest smaller class sizes, more adults in classes, and two free meals for every child, K-12 before we get to classroom culture training, hiring full-time implicit bias and racism instructors, and moving the start time later in the day for High School students.

    Since that phone call is unlikely to happen, I need to be ready for my local schools readjusting the funding that we have to make do.

    And here’s the tough pill for some middle-class, white families to swallow:

    As a parent, I must be prepared for our neighborhood school to allocate resources toward groups of students who donbt/didnbt have the resources at home that my kids do. Dr. Tyrone C. Howard defined equity as bgiving more to students who have historically gotten less,b and privileged families like me need to be enthusiastically in favor of these measures, since webre all living in the same world.

    Inequity anywhere is a threat to equity everywhere.

    ~Matt “Willing to sacrifice a little, because my kids are going to be fine” Vaudrey

  • Big Shifts, Little Trainings

    There’s a 100% chance that I’m paraphrasing this idea from someone, but it was a half-baked idea we discussed over lunch, and I’m expanding it here.

    <triumphant voice>

    The Biggest Challenge in Effective Professional Development

    When getting a group of Educators in the room for P.D. (Professional Development), there are three forces at play.

    1.) What the administrator or director thinks is necessary.
    2.) What the teacher thinks is necessary.
    3.) What the trainer or consultant thinks is necessary.

    In a dream sequence, the teachers and administrators both have a shared idea of the work, and they bring in an expert to help them make progress.

    three people pulling the same chain, which is attached to a weight

    Sometimes those three things are all pulling in different directions; I’ve definitely sat in trainings where I wanted practical classroom management strategies, the administrator wanted to raise math achievement, and the presenter had a litany of software tools to show me.

    three people holding chains, pulling in three different directions

    Not much progress was made.

    Robert Kaplinsky notes (and cites some research) about how Teachers don’t often get the amount of P.D. they want/need, and it’s not a stretch to suggest that neither Teachers nor Admin are aware of that research (I definitely wasn’t).

    As a classroom teacher, I was often confident that I understood best what we needed. After all, we’re the ones in the classroom with our kids all the time.

    Sometimes the teachers and administrator are united in what they want, but the presenter…

    b+ might have some new research to share,
    b+might extend the idea past what the teachers and admin were expecting,
    b+or they might be all excited about a fresh idea and completely ignore the contract they signed with the school.

    You know… hypothetically.

    two people holding a chain, pulling against a person holding the other end of the chain.

    When I’m consulting with a district or speaking at an event, I’m most often the person on the right in the image above; trying to convince a room of people that they’ll like what I’m cooking, even though it’s not what they ordered.

    a pile of pasta with peas and parmesan.
    “Yeah, I know you ordered a bacon burger, but this is better for you in the long run and you’ll be glad to got it. Trust me; we’ve just met and I don’t know anything about you.”

    Here’s an example: earlier this month, I kicked off day two of #AddItUp in St. Louis, and my keynote focused on bravery and transparency in risk-taking.

    I gave lots of research backing up my idea, concrete examples of how to encourage risk-taking, and some free takeaways so teachers could start being braver.

    And.

    I bookended the teacher-stuff with a lot of hard topics for white folks to think about.

    b+Students of color are suspended and expelled more frequently than their white peers, beginning before Kindergarten.
    b+If we aren’t brave with stuff we don’t understand, we’ll never get better, and that includes interacting with race relations.
    b+We must model bravery for students and staff, and that means failing publicly because growth is important. Watch me as I do that exact thing.

    Consensus is hard, and it’s rare to get 100% agreement, even with a school site that serves the same population of students. If we wait until everyone is ready, we’ll be too late.

    Quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr: "The time is always right to do what is right."

    And yeah, I lured my audience to the auditorium to discuss risk, then offered input on whiteness, a dish they didn’t order.

    It’s my hope that they will be more interested in the dish after seeing it. Maybe not today, but eventually.

    My role as a P.D. provider is to smush big-picture change (Equity, racism, special education) into accessible topics (bravery, Appetizers, Desmos). On conference applications, I don’t often mention those big-picture topics, but I sure as hell will mention them once y’all are in the room.*

    Equally important is a humility on my part; I must be open to the idea that I’m pulling hard on something that isn’t important, but I think it is.
    Gotta keep listening.

    That’d be a good sticker to put on a laptop.

    ~Matt “Keep Listening” Vaudrey

    P.S. If you have research or ideas about this kind of thing, I recommend you hop into this thread with author and education expert Ilana Horn, who has much more academic chops than I do about this (and about everything).

    *If you’re an administrator or conference-application reader, and the above post sounds like a bait-and-switch, ask yourself; how many workshops that explicitly mention the hard topics are you supporting?
    Most often, it’s zero, so that’s why I smush equity into a workshop on warm-up activities.

  • White Folk and White Spaces

    As a white person, there is a hesitance about intrusion into black spaces.

    On the podcast The Sporkful, the interviewer sits in an all-black diner and asks the owner about white people being welcome. The owner responds, “Do you have the same concerns for black people who are in all-white spaces all the time?b

    Since I spent most of my life around people who looked just like me, I feel no qualms voicing my opinions in those spaces, but I am more reticent to inject myself into mostly black spaces. This could be fear of rocking the boat, some sense of sacredness, or wanting to keep a respectful distance, and is likely some combination of all three.

    Much has been said this week about the white privilege article from a white basketball player. If you haven’t yet read this article, go do that, then come back.

    Done? Okay, cool.

    Now this quote:

    Itbs not enough to say bI donbt think about race.b  Because in a community, how one member is doing affects the whole.  And for those of us not in the dominant racial group, we donbt have the luxury of saying bI donbt think about raceb because racial issues affect us on a daily basis.  So let me encourage all of us to try having these conversations, to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and quick to forgive each other when we say something stupid.  Thatbll happen if you start to have conversations, and we just have to have grace for each other if we make mistakesbitbs better than not talking. 

    ~Francis Su, Mathematics for Human Flourishing

    Still here? Okay.

    Last week at NCTM, I spoke to a group about building Bravery in teachers and students. In an attempt to model bravery, two things are happening:

    1.) I will continue to invite white folk to discuss hard issues in mostly white spaces. We (white folks) are more likely to engage with a hard topic if we donbt have to couch our language; my goal here is long-term change, not policing or shame, so I’m willing to sacrifice a bit for people coming up the Equity trail behind me.

    2. The other goal is to continue improving myself, modeling vulnerability and humility around things I donbt understand, and paying close attention to those up in front of me on the the Equity trail, stumbling as I go.

    This means getting involved in the Twitter chat tonight, even though I might say something unintentionally ignorant. Ibm prepared to be brave around things I donbt fully understand in hopes I can improve.

    One of the most obvious ways I can improve is tied to my musings above; I feel more comfortable joining a Twitter chat led by a white person than the wildly successful #ClearTheAir chat earlier this year, led by people of color.

    I’m weak, but getting stronger. But I’m going to engage in this chat anyway instead of shaming myself out of it.

    And if my kids take my time, I’ll get on it later tonight or tomorrow.

    ~Matt “Weak, but Getting Stronger” Vaudrey

  • Equity Goofus

    Therebs a scene in the movie The Sandlot where the main character finally plucked up the courage to get into the game. He borrows a glove and walks to the outfield, muttering to himself, “Don’t be a goofus. Don’t be a goofus.“

    Once the game begins, it becomes very clear he has no idea what hebs doing. As a boy between the ages of eight and 15, he should know more about baseball by now.

    But he doesnbt.

    image: Alamo Drafthouse Cinema

    The other players are initially shocked at his incompetence, but they forgive it and teach him, until he is as capable playing the game as they are. With some practice, he grew more comfortable and more capable in a context where failure was expected and corrected.

    image: smithsverdict.com

    Last week, I sent a thread of tweets into the Internet while muttering to myself, “Donbt be a goofus.” Since I’d rather be a clumsy advocate than a silent one,1 I chose to engage even though I was unsure of how to do it.

    The following day, I read the chapter in Dr. BrenC) Brownbs book about oversharing and using vulnerability as a crutch to gain sympathy.

    Oops. There’s a good chance I was doing that.

    Anyway, Marian Dingle immediately reached out via direct message on Twitter with equal parts encouragement, questions, and correction. We sent several hundred words back and forth before she finally said, “How about we just talk on the phone?”

    It’s worth noting here that Marian didn’t owe me anything; she extended her hand to offer support unprompted support, and she persisted to address any and all questions I had. It must be exhausting for people of color to constantly do that, and I so appreciate it. Give that woman a medal.

    She helped me wrangle some clarity on three big issues, all of which are lifelong journeys and could be full blog-posts in themselves.

    1. As a white person, I have the luxury of not dealing with issues of race on a day-to-day basis. It doesnbt define the safety of my children or me, so I can go days or weeks without even thinking about the inherent white supremacy of school systems.

    The main character in Sandlot wasn’t aware that he was missing out on something important until the neighbor pulled him out onto the field. I’m incredibly thankful for the people of color in my orbit who are pulling me onto the field, knowing that I’m pretty inexperienced.

    image: Hollywood Reporter

    2. The reflection happening in private direct messages or in isolated Twitter discussions is fine for white people, but it leaves people of color out of the healing process. Also, white folk tend to center themselves in the discussion (like I’m doing right now on my website, more on that later).

    Marian used a great illustration to describe this:

    Imagine we’re in a crowd of people and some are stepping on other’s feet. Eventually, they cry out, “Quit stepping on my feet! It hurts!” The foot-steppers could respond in a variety of ways that don’t actually address the hurt they’ve caused:

    What? I didn’t notice I was doing that. I’m not the kind of person who would step on feet. If you don’t like it, move your foot. The real villain is the people who designed such a narrow hallway! That’s why feet are getting stepped-on!

    The best response is, “I’m sorry. I’ll do better,” and address the hurt you’ve caused by stepping on feet.

    image: 20th Century Fox

    Twitter is great for this; BIPOC Educators are being very honest about how white folks can step up. Give these a read.

    I have no good reason why I haven’t been engaging in #ClearTheAir chat on Twitter, where my peers are addressing hard topics publicly. I’ve been telling myself that I don’t have time, but in reality, I just didn’t want to figure out how to jump in.

    Yeah. It feels just like that looks.
    image: popsugar

    3. The challenge for me is a white person is to de-center myself while “doing the work” (the work of addressing injustice, both personally and systemically) and being public about it. Holding those two values at the same time is tough.

    Too public, and I risk appearing performative.
    Not public enough, and I risk appearing complicit, like I have no issue with things-as-they-are.

    In my case, Marian pointed out in our phone call that I appear to care a lot about how I am perceived online and off. She’s right; I’m entering a season of interviewing for Admin jobs and there’s a 100% chance that the interview panel will find my blog or Twitter feed.

    So far, I have been airing on the side of quiet and inviting. My goal is not to showcase my woke-ness so people of color will award me the badge of bGood White Person.”

    My goal is to talk about equity in a way that encourages further conversation face-to-face.

    I own a Black Lives Matter T-shirt, but I wonbt wear it to a job interview. Kicking in the door and forcing a difficult conversation will likely make things worse in any sensitive discussion.

    So for now, I’m speaking calmly about systemic oppression of BIPOC and unfair policing and inequitable discipline practices and ways to improve capital-e-Education for all students, because all of those are important to me. Once people are listening, then we can begin doing the hard work of changing hearts and minds, both in my fellow white people and in myself.

    If you’re reading this, you’re welcome to join me on the field. I’ll go first, even though I have no idea what I’m doing.

    Above: Happy children tearing down systemic racism in school systems
    image: imdb

    ~Matt “Awakening and Talking About It” Vaudrey

    UPDATE 28 March 2019: The day after this posted, Ijeoma Oluo dropped this masterpiece, which makes a strong case for the exact opposite approach of what I advocate in the last three paragraphs.

    Clearly, I still have much to learn and much to think about, but I’m leaving this post as it was. Like everything else on this site, it’s a cairn left on my journey, and I’m not going to sterilize it.

    image: Fedora Magazine. Literally.

    (…Dammit, I just re-centered on my white feelings again. Bye.)

    1. Bill describes it well here

  • Focusing Impact

    My kids love to play with the hose in the backyard.

    We live in the semi-desert of Southern California, so it’s too hot to play without a sprinkler for about 8 weeks during the summer, but they’re even thrilled to dance in the rain yesterday, as the rest of the country is grappling with record snows.

    Anyway. They really like the nozzle below.

    image: elitza

    My daughter likes the mist setting, she can spray a little bit of water all over the place without soaking anything.

    That’s a lot of how I feel about my job as a coach: spreading a tiny bit of water all over.

    (Astute readers will note this is the second recent reference between water and instructional coaching. Yep. Keep reading.)

    In the last few years, getting a bird’s-eye view of capital-E-Education has made me awaken more to the world outside the four walls of my classroom. Public education must be effective for all students, and my Equity bone has been aching more and more.

    So I want to focus my impact, twisting the top of this nozzle, to be less spread-out and more focused.

    image: nomadswe.co

    As noted in recent posts, a job focused on relationships is more likely to produce growth. A site-level administrator would have more concentrated impact, more time to build relationships with staff, and more authority to produce equitable conditions for students and staff.

    All the chatter about becoming an Administrator is due to something I learned in August: My job as Ed/Tech Coach expires in June.

    Now, I’m not upset about this; like many TOSA jobs, my position was designed to have a shelf-life, and five years ain’t a bad run for an Instructional Coach.

    And b if I’m honest b it’s probably time.

    Of all the teachers I supported last year, 51% of them were classes I visited only once during the year, and never saw again.

    Nearly three out of every four classrooms I visit are people I only see once or twice a year. It’s hardly hyperbole to guess that I’m not improving the instruction of those teachers, which begs the question,

    Do we need a full-time instructional coach if I’m only driving change in 25% of my visits?

    Now, there’s a much larger conversation to be had about effective instructional coaching and an ideal staff-to-coach ratio (It’s probably not 1,000:1), but the conversation I want to have is about impact.

    I want to focus my impact on a smaller group, and it’s becoming clearer that site-level administration is a good next step in that direction.

    So as the 2018-19 school year wraps up and I clean out my desk, I’ll be looking that direction.

    More to come.

    ~Matt “Ready to be Mr. Vaudrey again” Vaudrey