You already are. You are enough. We already are. We are enough.

“How’s your heart? What is the light in your life?… How are you (re)claiming your joy today? Who are you? When did you know you wanted to be a teacher and learner? What legacy or imprint do you desire to leave as an educator? How are you working toward it? When you encounter resistance… how do you respond?” -Gholdy Muhammad, Unearthing Joy

Let me start by saying, you are enough. You are whole. You were born worthy. That was determined long before you decided to engage in the act of working. As educators, the communities of people that we choose to partner with are enough. They are whole. There is wealth that existed within them before we got there and that power lives with or without our presence.

For many educators, the winter months bring about the time of year when we reflect on our practice through the formal performance evaluation process. As I prepared to have reflective conversations with the leaders I support this year, I started to feel my heart race. My thoughts weren’t as clear, I was having some difficulty breathing, and it was hard for me to resist thoughts that could be characterized by fear and worry.

Taking stock of what is happening in my body, alongside my thoughts, as I engage in work is important to me. Spending years ignoring the physical manifestations of high levels of stress has only led to burnout. I desire to stay in this work towards freedom for the long haul, so I make time to notice these days. This pause led me to understand that I had work to do with shifting my perceptions with the hopes of finding ways to lead more humanizing experiences for myself and others.

Picture this, I am sitting at my desk, preparing for a conversation with my direct manager on my progress as a school leader. I pull out my rubric that tells me what I should be heading towards. It is supposed to let me know how well I am doing as a school leader, based on what is in place at the school. As I read through the indicators, I attempt to find myself, the other leaders at the school, our teachers, our students, and their families within this rubric. I don’t see them. I make a note of that. I am honest. Where we are and what is noted as where we should be, are not congruent.

I put the rubric inside my notebook and for the rest of the day, I am in a fog. I walk through the hallways, where children laugh as they excitedly walk into their classrooms, and I do not feel their joy. I observe leaders coaching teachers and can tell they both feel more powerful in their practice. I listen to two family members talk through the challenges they are experiencing. Then I see them end their conversation with a hug. I see all of this. I see the community we set out to create and feel like a failure. I did not make any notes, alone sitting at that desk, that supported me with leveraging what was working toward moving us closer to our shared vision. My reflection only pushed me further away from myself.

Telling Counternarratives of Self.

At the start of every school year, I would discuss Chimamanda Adichie’s (2009) idea of the danger of the single story with our staff. I asked them to learn more about the people and then share counternarratives of strength, joy, care, and genius. I wish I had also reminded myself of the danger of the single story I was telling about who I was as a leader and person. I needed to be more careful about believing my worth as a person was tied up in the results I achieved. Rather than thinking I was only as good as what I was able to produce, I wish there were more stories of compassion and care. A collection of never-ending goals to achieve or mistakes to learn from became part of how I saw myself.

There have been versions of my work self where I have been hyper-focused on getting things “right.” I have been my toughest critic; always looking for ways to improve rather than sitting with ways that I am wonderful and strong. There have been times in my career where I have entered into cycles of setting extremely challenging goals, achieving them, and still feeling like I was not doing enough. There were moments when I felt like I was not enough. Systems existed that upheld and fostered this way of being.

I have engaged in evaluation processes where I have given myself ratings, collected evidence, and measured myself against professional standards that I had no part in creating. I have thought of my success as solely based on assessment scores and not considered how what I had done may have impacted the experiences of the people. I believe in a world where we can all be free; so therefore, I am open to the idea that there are other ways of evaluating our work as educators.

Goal Setting and Reflection Reimagined.

A distinctive feature of the reflection process I wish I had as a school leader is that it was done in collaboration with the people. Much of our work, particularly when it comes to determining how well we are doing, is separate from the people and communities we are partnering with. In education, this separation may communicate disbelief in the importance of the voice of those we partner with. I know the people are powerful and our voices matter. If educational leaders are going to truly create anti-racist school systems, there has to be a way where we; in community with students, families, and school staff, figure out evaluative processes that determine to what extent our work leads to all people achieving what Cyndi Suarez (2018), names as “liberatory power.” Suarez writes,

As a school leader, I craved the opportunity to leave reflective spaces feeling powerful. An entire community knowing and living liberatory power is possible if we reimagine goal-setting and reflection processes.

If we reimagined the evaluation process that I described above, I would not have been sitting at my desk alone feeling powerless. I would have gathered a diverse group of people all interested in reflecting on how we were doing with moving towards our community-responsive goals. Our reflection would help us see how our work connected us all and it would include affirmation. We would take the time to construct new learning through listening. We would spend time asking and answering the question of “how might we…?” rather than focusing on how we did not. We would spend time reflecting on ourselves, both individually as well as in a community, so that we developed a strong sense of identity. We would all be clear on what our role in this work looks like moving forward. We would leave that space with a better understanding that when we focus on creating interactions that leave us all feeling powerful, we can also move closer to ourselves, and ultimately liberation for all people.

In Solidarity,

Dr. LeAnna Majors

References:

Adichie, C (2009, July). The danger of a single story [Video]. TED Conferences. https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en

Muhammad, G. (2023). Unearthing Joy. Scholastic Inc.

Suarez, C. (2018). The Power Manual: How to Master Complex Power Dynamics. New Society Publishers.