Fish Rise From the Ice
February 14–18, Amherst, MA USA
Seasonal Memoir #57
Tina asked a great question the other day as we drove through Western Massachusetts, “How many of these Black Lives Matter signs in the front yards are put up by people of color (POC)?” Her insinuation was that those who believe themselves to be white are the ones who do most of the signage, water bottle stickers, or flags. Don’t get me wrong, ally solidarity is really important, and signage is a very visible display of values, but I remember hearing from people of color that white people (especially the liberal middle class) are obsessed with talking about skin color and differences. Guilty. Mea culpa. Is this making the situation worse?
Though I’ve been beating the drum on social justice for most of my career (I give Needham High School the credit for getting the ball rolling, and then the Lynch School of Education for formalizing it with professional training), I can’t help but notice that it feels natural to step back from 10 years of teaching critical race theory (from an ally perspective) and let others (i.e. POCs) take up the mantle. I feel like I’ve done my part and can now take the role of supporting and empowering others through leveraging my position as a school leader.
Random thought: our work colleagues are not our brothers, sisters, uncles, etc., so we should stop calling our workplace colleagues family. But these people are something important to us nevertheless. We spend so much of our time with these people, and while we may not show the same vulnerabilities with them, we laugh, cry, get angry with, share meals, enforce hierarchies, help each other grow, and possess many other aspects of a family dynamic. This is perhaps why when we leave a workplace, we often miss it so badly.
One of the hardest of all attitudes to deal with is entitlement, and international schools are ripe with entitled teachers, who expect the institution to bend to their will. Instead of focusing on these individuals, I’d rather give a big shout-out to the selfless teacher, who makes none of what they do about them, but instead, about the children and their learning. We’ve all met teachers like this: quiet at meetings, popular in the staff room, and the first to demure at praise. No whining, and not caught up in their own charisma. Bless them!
