What it means to practice transformative education: A culture and systems perspective

I keynoted Khan Lab Schools’ Summer Institute two-day workshop: Embedding Social-emotional Learning & Executive Skills In Your Curriculum this AM. (shout out to KLS!) My topic was “What it means to practice transformative education: A culture and systems perspective,” which I’m sharing notes from here:

What it means to practice transformative education: A culture and systems perspective

7.20.21

How did we (education in the 21^st century) get here: needing a special, optional workshop in July about embedding social-emotional learning (SEL) and executive skills (ES) into curricula?

There’s a paradox:

“Children aren’t born with these skills—they are born with the potential to develop them” (Harvard Center on the Developing Child).

And yet, while these skills are considered important to develop…

Here we are at an optional summer workshop (that requires your personal-professional commitment and additional funding). That’s not accidental. That’s by design.

Let’s talk about this additive model of education.

Right now, (some) educators and schools are adding, integrating, embedding SEL, ES…

What else are you striving to include/integrate/embed in your curricula and pedagogy?

• mastery-based learning
• media literacy skills
• restorative justice
• …

This additive model is exhausting, and again, by design.

• There’s always more (more, more…) in addition to what’s “core” in curricula
• We’re not adding to a core that is welcoming or even “neutral” regarding SEL and ES. We’re adding to core curricula that was designed against SEL and ES.

Against? yes.

“Budget speaks values” (Obama). So does the allocation of any limited resource – like curricula and class time.

SEL has historically not been part of the program, and ES has been diminished.

SEL in particular is still too often cast in conflict with academic rigor. Thus any time for SEL “takes away from” rigor.

This is true because it’s a set-up. When we buy into the additive model, something has to be subtracted.

This is also false. Consider the costs of not explicitly teaching and learning SEL and ES as an integral part of academics. Too many students are still concluding (early on!) that they’re just “good” or “bad” at a subject (ex. Math) and may subjectively report and stress about “how much time” they spend on homework. The stopgap of schools providing estimated amounts of time students should allot for homework tells them what to perform, without always teaching them how to self-monitor “effort” and effort.

Which of these is not a critical skillset for learning any subject at a rigorous level (i.e. when it gets tough)? self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making (CASEL)

Note: SEL and ES, like DEI fluency, aren’t standalone understandings and skills. They are always practiced when doing “other” things. They are about how we learn to write, how we learn to love, how we show up for our first day at school/work, how we play on a sports team, how we assign or receive grades…

Because SEL and ES aren’t already part of the design, we need some “radical analysis” and redesign.

“Radical analysis is about systems and structures; in this case, systems that perpetuate injustice. To personalize that which is systemic, to shift focus to individuals, is to bury the lede and lose the benefits of a structural framework” (Tim Wise).

Wait… injustice?

How does the marginalization of SEL and ES in education perpetuate injustice? FLIP: How could SEL and ES embedded in education realize justice?

Because SEL and ES center humanity as curricula. Curricula isn’t just materials: it’s the interaction among teachers, materials and students.

But any old SEL and ES education are not necessarily just. Justice is possible in the experience and outcomes…

… when SEL and ES development are grounded in (1) the presumption of diversity – that at a group level, there are differences of identity that correlate with disparities of status, access to resources and systemically activated privileges and disadvantages (Blink) – and, therefore, (2) the commitment to empower all, not just some, students to thrive

… and if SEL and ES don’t just equip students to survive-thrive in the social systems and expectations that exist, but to scaffold their capacity to continue redesigning those systems, for personal and collective thriving

We need not just add, but to radically analyze our systems to discern what’s helpful to maintain, add, integrate and radically transform.

These aren’t either/or actions – e.g. you can embed sporadically without transforming the system and culture, and you can strategically maintain some aspects of a system while transforming it.

What’s the culture driving and perpetuating the sidelining of SEL and ES? Why aren’t these understandings, skills, habits and tools already systemically integrated?

• progress is bigger, more
• either/or thinking
• individualism
• fear of feelings (Okun)

… taken to the extreme (see “either/or thinking”)

To transform our schools, classrooms and interactions with students, we need to recognize how we’re systemically and culturally designed against SEL and ES… including our “go to” methods (like: “just add more”).

How not to take on the self-defeating task of “doing it all”? Go to the heart of your work (Tesha Poe): e.g. curricula (and pedagogy)… and then within our curricula, identify: what is core and vital there?

A challenge for today and tomorrow: focus on what’s core in your curricula and “not the place” for SEL, what’s core and “not about” ES. Try embedding SEL and ES in core curricula that has somehow been immune to or exempt from SEL and ES, because this is where the growth edge is. This is where we learn whether SEL and ES are, in fact, essential or nice to have (here and there, where it’s convenient, and as long as it doesn’t really change anything in the curricula, classroom or students’ learning experiences and outcomes).

When we talk about transformation, there is a perception that: maintaining (requires the least effort) < adding < embedding < transforming (requires maximal effort). I would argue, though, that individually and institutionally, stasis can require more effort than transforming.

What makes change additionally effortful is taking the “whack-a-mole” approach: constantly reacting and trying to adapt each and every way. What makes change not easy but less unnecessarily hard is having a sense of where “all of this” is going, and, along the way, how it’s going.

For schools to advance SEL and ES systemically and radically, you’ll need your PHILOSOPHY of SEL and ES (your why) that includes why SEL and ES are a priority, and what their relationship is to “all the other things” (hopefully, not just “and… etc.” on a list of everything else).

Wayfinder’s SEL framework provides an example of emergent prioritization and connection: “DEI + SEL + Trauma Informed.”

Taking it further, I would assert that diversity is a fact, which requires SEL grounded in principles and practices of equity and inclusion, because SEL is not-one-size-fits-all, as if, as a critical example, everyone is trauma-free (which we are not: this is diversity). This is an example of how we need to own our priorities: as a list, they can be useful, but as a molecule they are stronger building blocks.

In addition to your “why” SEL and ES, you’ll need your VISION (your aspirational “toward what”) to define MISSION (your current “what” in practice) and a STRATEGY to arc audaciously toward what you envision for your students, yourself, your school and the world. Vision and mission empower you and your students to prioritize your focus and efforts, and assess progress and impacts formatively, over the lifelong process of not just learning, but practicing SEL and ES in ever-changing arenas of life.

“Performative rage”

I recommend reading Tim Wise’s “Performative Rage is Not Activism.”

Honestly, I read the title but not the author when I dove in, and I was struck by what felt like the performative rage of lines like this:

The system will not bend, let alone break, because some stupid-ass white kids in Eugene smashed restaurant windows, even as Black activists begged them not to because they knew Black folks would get blamed (and they were right). 

I just assumed that the author couldn’t possibly be a white person, given the thesis, which is not just about performative rage, but white performative rage.

I was wrong.

So why, you may be wondering, do I recommend this article?

Because, still.

Wise makes a clarifying point about the difference between advising white activists to not just scream and “tone policing”:

… contrary to fashionable thinking among some, this is not “tone policing.” To say that one should carefully consider the words one uses or the signs one carries is only tone policing in the way that telling you not to go to work on Monday and scream at your boss or co-workers is tone policing. In other words, it’s pretty decent life advice. Being asked to think before you rage for the sake of personal catharsis is not oppression. It’s strategy. No social movement in the history of the world has succeeded without it, and there has never been even one that accomplished its goals while operating on the assumption that its participants should say whatever is on their minds, whenever they feel like it, without regard to consequence.

Note: as well, tone policing is typically directed at under-represented and marginalized groups. So to suggest that white people are being “tone policed” is to subtract privilege from the authority and impact of the policing.

Wise also challenges the stereotype that it’s people of color (and women, I’d add) who are inappropriately or excessively emotional and rage-y, while white people (specifically cis, hetero men) are objective:

Working-class and poor folk of color are some of the most strategic people I’ve ever known. They have to be. You don’t survive broke and Black in America unless you strategize, hustle, and figure out how to work the angles. To suggest that such persons operate from unfiltered emotion is an insult, not to mention wrong. 

Btw, once I realized Wise wrote this piece, I re-read passages like this, hearing what was the same and different for me, first inferring that the author was a POC (and specifically Black) and then knowing the author is a white man.

Wise brings also tears into sloganeering as a practice of white performative rage (his analysis of “ACAB”: All Cops are Bastards is spot on – it’s inaccurate, and perpetuates the belief that racism is located in individuals, not systems) and offers this:

Radical analysis is about systems and structures; in this case, systems that perpetuate injustice. To personalize that which is systemic, to shift focus to individuals, is to bury the lede and lose the benefits of a structural framework.

… the system won’t be transformed by misanthropic anarchist wanna-bes setting fires at the federal building and breaking windows at a Boys and Girl’s Club in Portland. That is not activism. That is theatre. It’s not Paris, 1789. It’s Les Miz, circa 1988.

But this is not entertainment. This is people’s lives.

And for those lives to finally matter in the eyes of the system, we will have to remain focused on that system. Yes, systems are maintained by individuals, so when officers like Derek Chauvin murder under cover of law they must be held accountable. A systemic focus doesn’t let individual killers and abusers off the hook for their actions. But such a focus does recognize how even those individuals are shaped and misshapen by the machinery of which they are a part. If we take our wrath out on the machine’s operators while leaving the conveyor belt in place, we can trust that someone else will come along to crank the gears or push the buttons necessary for its perpetuation.

Yes, we can trust that.

… which got me thinking about another performative rage: the rage of the “anti-CRT” (critical race theory) campaign. One of the most frustrating – and effective – aspects of the pushback on “critical race theory” (which I place in air quotes because most of the pushback is directed at any DEI work, not specifically or even accurately Bell et al.’s framework) is how personally its detractors are taking systemic issues.

I understand that people take it personally when they’re confronted with the racism of something they did or said. Of course, what they may be missing is that it’s not just about them: it’s about their participation in systemic injustice. So it’s personal, and not.

However, taking personally that systems reproduce racist inequalities at a mass level that can’t be explained otherwise (unless you accept the idea that some groups are superior or inferior in intellect, drive, capacity, ability on the basis of race… which is, yes, racist)?

It’s frustrating because it’s not personal. Yes, systems are built, maintained, defended and reinvented (or not) by people. Each of us plays a role in the system of racism. But the fact of racism (I still have a hard time saying “systemic racism” because, well, systemic is indicated in the –ism, isn’t it?) and the act of naming racism is not a criticism of anyone’s character. Yes, it’s a criticism. Offered, if you think about it, because people believe enough in the US and in people to bother bringing it up. Because we believe we can build a better system.

But this performative rage doesn’t heel to logic. It doesn’t need to. The performance of rage is really all it needs to be effective, just like the performative rage of Wise’s “performative revolutionaries.” Effective at what? Keeping the system, and us, in place.

Rules are rules, for some

In “Elite Track, Are You Okay?” journalist Megan DiTrolio writes about the disqualifications of several elite female track and field athletes from competition in recent years, including Sha’Carri Richardson, for testing positive for marijuana; Brianna McNeal, for changing the date of a mandatory drug test, while recovering from a medical procedure; and Christine Mboma and Beatrice Masilingi, for having natural testosterone levels that are too high. That’s right: natural testosterone levels.

According to DiTrolio, “World Athletics’ policy on Athletes with Differences of Sex Development (DSD)… requires all women competitors’ testosterone levels to fall under a certain level if they are competing in certain events. This rule does not extend to male athletes.”

Notice this not an “Athletes who Identify as Transgender or Nonbinary” policy. This is a policy about differences of sex development, which, just to be clear, you can find between any two people. Because sex development has patterns, and is unique.

Of course, this policy is concerned with differences of sex development beyond a range deemed typical by… (I’m not sure whom: World Athletics? The “medical community” (which is not unified regarding the gender spectrum of identity and development)?

Whatever this acceptable range – in this case, of testosterone – is, the premise is that athletes must fall within it, for competition to be fair.

But only for women. “For men competing, higher-than-average, naturally occurring testosterone is a competitive advantage. For women? It threatens their professional career.”

I had to read this a few times for it to sink in.

It is totally acceptable for men with natural “higher-than-average” testosterone levels to compete against men with average or below average testosterone levels, while it is a disqualifier for women because…

Men are immune to differences in levels of testosterone? (No.)

And so, I appreciate DiTrolio’s question to elite track, which is where it seems the issue is: not with Mboma’s, Masilingi’s, McNeal’s or Richardson’s “unique challenges,” but with the system making the rules.

Rules may be rules (Biden), but when rules are also sexist, racist, classist and transphobic, we have to ask ourselves if we’re OK with that.