As we prepare for our Return to School, it is not lost on anyone in the DSST network what staff, students and families have had to endure and grapple with since schools closed in March. Every known and ignored inequity surfaced all at once: health, economic, social justice, racial, gender, sexuality, technology, and food to name quite a few. In addition, mental health, wellness, and trauma (specifically racial trauma) further illuminated and exasperated how far our nation has come and how far we still have to go to achieve a society where "all are created equal...with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". As COVID-19, the Black Lives Matter Protests, the Presidential election, and the attack on our nation's capitol has shown us, we are a nation divided across every aforementioned inequity and more. This "new Civil Rights" movement as it was called during the summer and the "Third Reconstruction" as it is called now, informs us that we are living in a time that most assumed and/or hoped we would never have to experience.
The dismantling of the First Reconstruction in the 1870s and 1880s, along calculated and violent attacks on marginalized and minoritized groups throughout the 1900s leading up to the Civil Rights Movements in the 1960s reminds us that "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will...The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress". The past, the current, and the future have come together for a national reckoning on social justice reform that will undoubtedly play out in education. Therefore, it is critically important that we acknowledge and accept that this is the reality our students are living and will bring with them, physically, mentally, and emotionally into our hallways, offices, and classrooms on February 1, 2021.
Not one of us were prepared for this moment. Scholars and researchers in this area are clamoring to identify the ways to minimize the impacts on communities through their tried and true methodologies - cultural responsiveness and relevance. To be culturally responsive is to value the unique experiences and background of others through our actions and behaviors within any setting - decentering the dominant cultures discomfort for the sake of others lived TRUTHS. To be culturally relevant is to bring in representative topics, concepts and archetypes that de-centers the dominant cultures hold in exemplary representation. Students are able to see themselves represented as the center of success and hope, not "secondly" as the one being saved or needing saving in our subject area contexts. Each of us recognizing, accepting and acknowledging our Positionality in this given context will strengthen our ability to navigate the moment with our students and colleagues, not separate from one another. Our Network-led Affinity Group spaces are a great place to unpack your positionality with others who share one similar to yours.
We will all need to continue to DYB - Do Your Best. That is the most we can expect our students to do. This is new to them as well and they too do not know all to do. Yes, they will look to us for guidance and to make sense of the world for them. Like every other system and organization in our nation, we are all active participants in the gravity of this time in our nation’s history and context. However, DSST will not be performers. Each of us must show the curiosity to learn by doing our own research and personal work to grow in our support of our students. Do for our students and colleagues, what we would want others to do for us when grappling with any difficult moment. Several individual staff members and schools began this work during Virtual Learning and have continued throughout, planning to hold spaces when students return. They are accessing the DEI Resource Hub for DEI informed practices and strategies and Trauma Informed resources in addition to partnering with Student Services and the DEI department. The Student Services team is providing an optional session for school re-engagement leads titled RTS with Trauma Informed Practices on Wednesday, January 27th at 1 PM. We implore everyone to connect with other staff across our network and in other places who either have plans, have begun this work, and/or who are seeking partners. We will need each other and our students will need us.
