The Antiracist School Leader: What to Know, Say, and Do

[00:01] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. welcome everyone to principal center radio i'm your host justin bader and i'm honored to welcome to the program dr damon harris dr harris has been a public educator for a quarter of a century currently serving as the manager of higher education partnerships for a school district in maryland dr harris holds a phd in education policy and is also the co-founder and co-leader of the building our network of diversity or bond project a non-profit organization

[00:36] SPEAKER_00:

Thank you so much for having me. And he's the author of The Anti-Racist School Leader, What to Know, Say, and Do.

[01:08] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[01:10] SPEAKER_00:

Dr. Harris, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[01:12] SPEAKER_01:

Thanks for having me, Justin. I'm excited to be here.

[01:15] SPEAKER_00:

Well, I'm excited to talk with you about the book. And I would love to start just by diving in a little bit to what prompted the book. What did you see happening in our profession that told you that this was the right book to write at this time?

[01:26] SPEAKER_01:

So it was my reading of Ibram Kendi's How to Be an Antiracist. So for the better part of 20 years, since right around 2000, I've been talking with different groups about equity work, anti-racist work, culturally responsive work. You know, you name the phrase, they're all in that same DEIB space in schools. And it used to be that I was able to talk with my teams at my schools when I was a principal to say, hey, it's okay with me that you love kids and I'm going to help you teach and learn and teach you some strategies and some skills and we'll be just fine. And it really wasn't until I read Ibram's book where he says the framework is way more simple than what you're thinking, Damon.

[02:18]

I felt he was speaking to me directly and said, you're either being racist or you're being anti-racist at any given moment in time. And if you're being anti-racist, you are actively seeking to disrupt the systems that are in place that are restricting the growth or the opportunities of the students who look like you, who came from backgrounds like you came, or who will primarily dominate the school that you were serving at the time. And it changed my mindset when I realized that I was being racist more than I was being anti-racist. And so I told my staff, there's a shift in my mentality. So now there's going to be a shift in our school's vision. It's no longer enough that you love kids.

[02:58]

I need you to be able to work with me to disrupt the systems that are recreating some problematic circumstances for our students and their families. Or you're in the wrong building.

[03:10] SPEAKER_00:

Reminds me of the age old saying, we can be part of the problem, we're part of the solution. And I'm excited to talk with you about your book because I think like a lot of people, I read Kendi's book and I think he makes a lot of good points in that book, but it doesn't necessarily translate automatically or give us specific action items to apply in K-12 schools. So as you had undertaken the project to write this book and you've spoken with audiences of educators around the country, what are some of the specific ways that that work manifests itself? Because there's a tendency, you know, and especially a lot of the people who are talking the most about this topic, you know, tend to be academics. They tend to not work with students directly. How does some of this translate into the work that we do every day in schools?

[03:54] SPEAKER_01:

So when I was in schools, I would share with my staff some data across the board and it would be student outcome data. And we break it down by race and ethnicity in those student groups and let folks see that the groups that are at the bottom of all the good categories and the groups that are at the top of all the bad categories, bad outcomes. You know, so good you can say is graduation rates, report cards, scholarship opportunities. Bad, you could say suspensions, office referrals, special education identification in some cases. Those groups, our students and the ones that my school served, they're at the bottom of all the good categories. I mean, and at the top of all the bad categories year after year.

[04:42]

So we've used different curricula. We've changed school building leadership. We've changed school district leadership. We use different phrases. At the time, folks were talking about grit or now we're talking science or reading when before it was some other thing. But what I call these demographic hierarchy, they've been the same.

[05:02]

So. We have to think, for me, that there are two choices with that data, because it's been the same for 100 years. We either have to believe that there are deficits in our students and their families and the communities in which they live that recreate these demographic hierarchies, generation after generation, or there's something with the system as my buddy ashford hughes in metro nashville school said to me recently the system's gone system right so there's either something wrong with the system that is helping to recreate these demographic hierarchies and at this point we tried a whole lot to fix these holes in our kids and our families for years and we haven't aimed ourselves at the system So this is the why. Now, the reason why we're taking this approach and we are thinking more theoretical before we jump into the practical is because, and I shared this with a group recently when I spoke, you use your own internet search engine search, right, to find anti-racist instructional practices.

[06:04]

In three tenths of a second, 999 000 hits you don't need me or anybody else to tell you what strategies you can use to take away that stuff is out there our work is to figure out why you haven't already And how can we process those things together? So that's why this type of book is about helping folks, helping leaders shape the mindsets that will shape the systems. And there are some practical steps along the way to help do that. So I often hear when I speak about these issues, folks...

[06:42]

pull me to the side or come up to me after the presentation. And we have some conversations and folks say like, I want to learn more about this because I'm not quite sure if I'm using the right phrases, if I'm using the right approach to talking with my staff or talking to my community members, talking to my supervisors. I know I want to build a climate of inclusivity and diversity in our organization. Just not quite sure what that means. I want to be, and I think I want to be an in-race school leader, but I'm not really a leader. I'm not a principal.

[07:10]

I'm a third grade teacher. So I'm not quite sure if I fit this. And I hear these phrases like white supremacy or CRT or, you know, critical race theory, and it all just gets jumbled and lost. And I just don't know where to begin. So where do I start? What should I consider?

[07:27]

What steps should I take? Like this book is for those folks. And I begin with telling folks right from the start, you don't have to have a title to be a leader, right? And the audience here are mostly administrators, but I imagine there are also folks who aspire to be administrators and folks who are supervised administrators and folks who are administrator adjacent, so to speak. So you don't have to be the formal leader entitled to be a leader in your building and a leader on your team and a leader in your community. And so let's start there.

[08:01]

Secondly, if you are thinking that this is the space where you need to grow, it's time for you to educate yourself and commit to the work. So that means you need to look at what research is out there. You need to look at what other literature is out there, not just empirical stuff. You need to self-assess about where you are in your growth in this area. There are tools in one of my chapters that can help you gauge really simply, are you in a zone of fear? with this work?

[08:32]

Are you in a zone where you're trying to learn about this work? Are you in a zone where you've learned a lot and you were ready to like push off and grow and thrive in this work? And you can do the same measurement, same assessment for your local context. There are also dozens and dozens of book titles and summaries, or at least sort of summaries of some of the books that will give you a ton of insight into this area there are podcasts listed there are websites that are there so there are a lot of different pieces of literature that are there and resources for you to learn about what this topic can be so that you can begin to apply this as you say I'm ready to go And once you are personally ready to go, now you're ready to cast a vision about this work to your team.

[09:22]

And sometimes that vision needs to be cast publicly, in large group settings, but it also needs to be cast privately in smaller group settings. And that means you're casting them to your assistant principal or your leadership team. That means you are casting this to your school building. That means you are announcing this at community events. you are talking to your supervisor. I remember talking with my supervisor about this and giving her some talking points about here's what I'm thinking.

[09:56]

Here is the draft letter to my community that says we are about to embark on this work. And What do you think? You know, and she gave me some feedback and we went back and forth. But it was very clear that she supported the effort that I was undertaking. But it was also clear to her and to everybody else around me that I was ready to get fired for this. So this is that important.

[10:20]

And so there were no issues. We worked together to shape the craft of sort of a message that was palatable to both the school district and to me. And we were able to begin that work in those first steps to make some announcements. And so I began with this by organizing the talking points that I would use for each of my stakeholder groups. Now at the time, so that stakeholder groups included the caregivers, the community, my teacher, my supervisor, and students is another space where we also need to consider what conversations we're going to have. I taught at an elementary school.

[10:58]

So I didn't really need talking points for my students. My staff was going to help me shape key phrases that we would use uniformly across our different grade levels. So it was different than if I had 15 year olds or 17 year olds in my space who are much more ready to take on some more leadership in that regard. I talked to people about using the right vocabulary. Sometimes we get caught up, for example, with race and culture, and we conflate the two. Race is not culture, so I don't use the phrase black culture, for example.

[11:32]

So just little bits and pieces of there's a difference between culture and nationality. So again, I don't use the phrase Ethiopian culture or Guatemalan culture because different folks in those different spaces may have different subcultures within those regions. So that's a nationality versus that. So I talk about using the correct vocabulary because sometimes the folks who are resistant to this work will perseverate on the one time you use the one word wrong and hijack a conversation. And so we want to avoid what Paul Gorski calls those equity detours. And then I also tell folks that they need to be prepared to use some storytelling elements, some visual elements to help engage and provide some visual interest so that folks can sort of see almost concretely, even though it's still in that sort of pictorial representation piece about what the issue is and where we want to go relative to that.

[12:32]

And it was helpful to me to develop a conceptual diagram with my staff to say, hey, here are some steps that we are going to take over the next three years and each step is a different topic along the way. And so those are the first couple of steps that I recommend that people use. First, is educate yourself on the topic and be ready to commit to the work because it's going to be challenging, just like all school leadership is. And two, that be ready to cast that vision, organize some talking points for your different stakeholder groups, consider what elements of storytelling and visuals you're going to use, whether it be verbal analogies or pictorial metaphors, or like I said, the concept diagrams. There are recommendations for all of those things in the chapters in the book.

[13:20] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and I was going to ask about the kind of becoming aware of how this might unfold and kind of what to be aware of. And I know in chapter one, you have a diagram that has the fear zone, the learning zone, and the growth zone that gives people a little bit of a roadmap and a heads up about what to expect. And you mentioned just a minute ago, you know, that you said, you talked to your supervisor, you were willing to be fired for this. And I think everybody has in the back of their minds that possibility as a real possibility, right? Like there are places where a certain set of language is safe and another set of language is not safe. But most people now, especially I would say in the suburbs are in the middle where they're going to face pressure no matter what language they use, no matter what priorities they press for and building coalition and not scaring people with the first time you bring up a topic.

[14:08]

I think is a very real concern. So I love that you started with just kind of informing yourself and then starting to cast that vision and being aware of how other people are going to hear that. Take us in a little bit more to the vision piece. So like once someone is clear in their own minds about where they need to go with things and what changes might need to be made, how can leaders get ahead of some of the fear or the pushback or the reactions that they might reasonably anticipate?

[14:37] SPEAKER_01:

One of the chapters is titled Embrace and Encourage Resistance. And in that space, there are some recommendations for leaders to consider right away. And that is, in this context of our conversation, it's about the anti-racist work, but Encouraging dissent and embracing resistance is a natural part of great leadership at the school level anyway. So you definitely need people who are not yes people around you. You don't need sycophants to just tell you that all your ideas are great because that's not what's good for kids. So you don't want sycophants, like I said, because that part is not good for kids when you don't have a good sort of cross-pollination of ideas among a bunch of leaders in the school, not just the folks with the titles.

[15:22]

So encouraging dissent and being ready to embrace resistance, I think, is the way we should be and is sort of the natural disposition of school leaders. And the difference with this work is sometimes when we are on opposite sides of the same team, there can be a misattribution of the cause of the opposing points of view. And so as a school leader, you need to be ready to investigate. What I say is investigate that rationale for the resistance. You have to actively listen to the folks who are coming at you with the opposing points of view, but assume that these are members of your family and that they have positive intentions. Don't attack the person about their particular view.

[16:06]

Think about a way to dialogue about the construct of their arguments and see how you can use what they're saying to better inform the work that you're both trying to do together. For instance, someone may say in all authenticity and be really genuine when asking, but I don't understand why we have to say Black Lives Matter. We can't say all lives matter. And it could be really genuine in that, which could be really upsetting to some members of the team of your school family. But if we all understand that as a family, we are not cutting any of us off. We're going to hold hands and we're going to walk through this together.

[16:44]

Then we start to have a recognition that this stuff happens or we have these views because we have our life experiences. So the folks who have different views, they're not less intelligent. They're not less informed. They're not immoral. They are folks with different life experience and you have your views because you have separate life experiences. And what we need to do as leaders and as members of a school family is we need to craft some activities where we can create new life experiences together and that can shape all of our views.

[17:15]

Now, when I take what your background and I take my background and we mix them together, it can only be awesome for kids, especially when we start to include the backgrounds of the kids and their families. In the book, I write about Adam Grant, who is an organizational psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. At least he was at a time that he wrote the book Think Again. I think he still is. And he writes about if you are not willing to change your mind, about your particular stance at the time, whatever the disagreement might be, or the exchange of ideas, then why should the other party be willing to change their minds about this work? We all have to come into this with open minds.

[17:58]

And Adam, he gives four different perspectives of folks who are trying to change people's points of view. And he says, one of them is the preacher. And the preacher point of view is I have faith that what I am doing is the right thing, that my way is the right thing. So you can just have faith like me and you'll eventually see that this is the right thing. Right. He also has an additional point of view or perspective or way of trying to sway someone's mind.

[18:31]

He calls it the prosecutor. So in the prosecutor, we're not saying that in the preacher mode that what I'm saying is right because I have faith. It is saying what you are saying is wrong and I can prove it to you. So that preacher mode is I have faith that what I'm saying is right, that that prosecutor is saying that what I believe is that you are wrong and I can prove that to you. And then he says there's the politician. And in politician mode, you were saying, why don't we both win?

[19:02]

I can say some stuff that feels right to you. You say some stuff that feels right to me. And then we can move forward that way. And we don't really have to disagree too much. We just kind of stick with the stuff we agree on. And we can try to create a win-win scenario with NASA base.

[19:16]

And those three Ps are what Adam says we often try to use to try to sway folks' opinions to our side. he recommends a fourth way to go. And the fourth way is to use the scientist mode. And when the scientist mode says, hey, you have a hypothesis, right? You have an idea about what you think is right. I have an idea about what I think is right.

[19:37]

Let's collect some data around that. Let's employ some practices and do some plan, do, study, act sort of activities and see what the data says where we were and where we are now based on some of the things we've now tried. right now we can see which way is the best based on what the qualitative and quantitative data show so if we are taking that approach we are not arguing about people's intentions we are not arguing about people's intelligence we are taking a road of fellowship in this journey together where we're going to try to shape each other's ideas and craft a joint vision that supports the whole school community. Two things come to mind as I'm saying this. That means that one, we're going to have to balance who gets centered. Because sometimes folks say, one is we need to be all about the students.

[20:29]

Well, school leaders, they just don't like me because I put students first. Well, in order to put students first, and have best outcomes for kids, you have to put that first at times. So you have to be invested in the comfort, the growth, the support, and the productive struggle at times of your school community, the educators, so that they can do what's best for the students. It's kind of like when you're in the airline, when they say, hey, if you're sitting in your plane, they give you the airline talk, the flight attendants, if the mask drops down, put it on yourself first. And before you put on the young child next to you, because you have to be your whole self in order to be able to help someone else. So same thing.

[21:12]

So we're gonna have to balance who gets centered. Sometimes being all about the kids means being all about staff. In a similar vein, when we're working in this anti-racist work, sometimes we're gonna have to center the experiences of white people or the experiences of the folks in the dominant culture. Oftentimes that gets lost in this mix, but if they are going to be the learners in some cases, we have to connect to their experiences and to their backgrounds. So you're going to have to center whiteness some of the time. And that's okay, because that's a natural part of the growth in this whole process.

[21:48]

The other part of acknowledgement is going to be to acknowledge the intersectionality of this work. Now, because there's going to be not just racial and ethnic issues. There are going to be issues of socioeconomic status. There are going to be issues of language dominance. There are going to be issues of sexual orientation. You name it, there is a lot that is there.

[22:11]

And you can acknowledge those things. and still do the work that is supportive of the black and brown students in your school or any other students who are from marginalized groups, historically marginalized groups. So you won't use those intersectional discussions to avoid the omnipresent topic of race that's in your building.

[22:36] SPEAKER_00:

I'm glad you're not shying away from the difficulty and the complexity of some of these discussions, because as our starting point, you know, kind of being part of the problem or part of the solution, being racist or anti-racist, you know, on a moral level, that's an easy decision to make. But on a practical level, when we actually get into talking about specific policies in any specific school, those discussions are not easy. And I think there can even be a tendency, frankly, I've seen this especially among younger white educators, to try to simplify a complex discussion by casting it solely in anti-racist or racist terms and not really realize just as a result of their lack of experience with education in general, that policy is often very complicated. We often have to make very challenging decisions. And you said that there's a wisdom in resistance, that pushback, we need to not be afraid of that.

[23:28]

Take us into a little of what that can look like when schools are actually considering Making changes to policy, making changes to curriculum, hiring, you know, whatever it may be that needs to change. How do we not get trapped in kind of reductive labeling and name calling and things like that? And when we're actually trying to make the decisions to implement the work.

[23:49] SPEAKER_01:

There are probably a couple of different scenarios that come to mind. And some of these I mentioned in the book. So there's a table in the book where I highlight a couple of expressions of resistance that basically say we're resisting the work, but it's in different forms. So sometimes there is sort of an accentuation of nuance, and sometimes there is something that's just more like sledgehammer stuff, and there's just a total disbelief. But in the table, I outlined some of those types of resistance statements and how any racist school leader might consider some counter moves to those spaces. So for instance, some folks may express a disbelief.

[24:29]

And any dark racism just in general, they may say like, I know some people can be racist, but that doesn't mean like systems are racist. That doesn't mean there's an institution that is that way. And one counter move to that could be to connect, because again, this is about life experiences and helping folks to see that they just haven't had the same background as each other. And that's why we're not having this. So making a connection to the participant, like your staff or community members beliefs in a form of bias that they might have an easier time relating to. So when I was a school principal, most of my staff were women or at least a majority of my staff were women.

[25:11]

And it was easier for me to help to say, hey, some of you, some of our female colleagues have explained that their experiences with discrimination, there have been some things that they could see that I was totally oblivious to because I have a male privilege. So I didn't have to think about that, but they could see that. I couldn't see that sexism, that misogyny in the stuff that we were doing, but they could. And when we look around the room and we start to get a bunch of nods, yes, because that's the background you have. Your experiences have shown you that that's the case. It's the same way with some of this racial stuff and this ethnic stuff.

[25:53]

You don't see the obstacles that aren't in front of you. It's the human condition. And sometimes, for example, there's another form of resistance. Sometimes people will shout out some cliches like teaching anti-racism makes white children feel guilty and encourages black children to hate white children. And this is why this divisive content should never be discussed. allowed in schools.

[26:18]

And for me, that counter move is to ask more measured questions about their information sources of folks who use those types of arguments. Because maybe there are some empirical pieces of research that they're considering, or maybe there are some historical trends that they are aware of that I'm not. Maybe there's some school district data that is out there that I'm not aware of. So I would, in that circumstance, would ask the folk, hey, I'd like to learn more about those concerns. Can you point me to some examples where that hate was created by doing that? Because I want to learn more about how, if that happened, how to avoid that, right?

[26:55]

Or how to mitigate that. Like those types of things are in the book where that stuff could come up. It's likely to come up. And how would you resist? Now, there are also some where people just shout provocative stuff on your social media. My own district Facebook page or the school's X page.

[27:17]

I'm just like ignoring them. Like that is all we need to do. Fred Jones writes in Tools for Teaching about the school discipline stuff. If you get lured into an emotional exchange with a student who's being disruptive, then what you're doing is you are agreeing to star or at least co-star in a play that is written, performed, and directed by the student in this case, right? So if you start to get into a social media back and forth, with someone who's just shouting provocative things, then you are getting into a play. You are co-starring in a play that is directed, written, produced, and co-performed by that provocateur.

[28:00]

So that stuff, I'm just ignoring. And I recommend other folks do the same.

[28:05] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and the public arguments that go nowhere, they're a dead end and no substitute for the work in schools to have these discussions and to make progress. Well, Damon, I think every school is facing a slightly unique set of circumstances and will go on their own journey of having these discussions. But one of the things that I think every school is faced with is the challenge of hiring and retention. And I had a podcast guest recently who pointed out that hiring is only half of the issue. If we want to recruit a diverse workforce, we can't just recruit. We have to also retain people.

[28:39]

And I understand you have a podcast where you talk about that in each episode. Take us a little bit into Bondcast and your guests and what kinds of things you talk about.

[28:48] SPEAKER_01:

Thank you. Like you said earlier, I'm the co-director of a nonprofit called the Building Our Network of Diversity Project. We also call it the Bond Project. And it is an initiative that supports the recruitment, retention, development, and empowerment of black and brown men in education. And a part of what we do is we provide platforms for black and brown men who are educators to share opportunities how they're feeling, to share their expertise, to share their backgrounds in ways that personally empower them, but also connect to the larger story and help other men and boys feel like they connect to the ecosystem. What's also helpful for folks who are a part of the Bondcast audience is that even if you aren't a black or brown man, you get to hear from a black or brown male educator

[29:44]

about why they became teachers or educators, why they stayed in this field, you also hear what are the things that are important to them. In some cases, they talk about their unwavering desire to elevate students' voices. In other cases, they talk about how they want to help the next generation of educators grow because they didn't see that in their communities. and still in others, these guys just want to be heard. And they say, the human resources directors, when you say, Ivory Tolson says in his book, No Bad Stats, He writes, I don't believe just as someone's word that the reason why we don't have as many black male teachers or brown male teachers in our schools is because there aren't enough candidates.

[30:38]

He says, check racism first. Right. And so these guys are saying people need to hear our voices. So if you are a school principal and you are trying to figure out how to make your school a better space for men of color or for boys of color, then this is one of those educating podcasts for you. We say in the Bond Project, our theory of action is if schools were better places for boys of color, then more of them would want to become teachers. And if schools were better places for men of color, then more of them would stay in education.

[31:15]

And so if you want to learn how to make your school a better place for boys of color and for men of color, then the vodcast is where you should start.

[31:25] SPEAKER_00:

So the book is The Anti-Racist School Leader, What to Know, Say, and Do. And Dr. Damon Harris, if people want to get in touch with you or learn more about the vodcast, where's the best place for them to go online?

[31:37] SPEAKER_01:

So you can find us at bondeducators.org online. We are at bondeducators on social media. And you can email me directly at dharris at bondeducators.org.

[31:51] Announcer:

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