SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL & CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE APPROACH LEAD TO SUCCESSFUL PATHS FOR BLACK & BROWN YOUTH

The fight to end the two ongoing pandemics-the Coronavirus and racism, was felt across industries. One industry that was especially impacted was the charter school system. Success Academy and Uncommon Schools, two major American charter school networks that serve low-income and predominately Black and Brown students, were spotlighted on social media in Summer 2020. Former and current staff, students, and families, shed light on the abusive practices from these organizations, ranging from the policing of student bodies, silencing stakeholders, and upholding punitive discipline systems that perpetuate the school-to-prison-pipeline.

The existence of COVID-19 helped detoxify the United States. As the virus spread, people stayed at home, watching, and listening to reports of the overwhelming COVID related death numbers. While staying at home, there were fewer interactions and distractions from the outside world. Americans were able to fully witness, digest, and respond to the happenings in their homes and their home country. The release of the May 2020 footage of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police officers during a global pandemic, sparked the purge of anti-Blackness and White-supremacist values and practices in the U.S.

In late Summer 2020, leading up to the new school year, Uncommon made the commitment to become an antiracist organization. The aim was to do this through culturally responsive and social emotional practices to create partnerships with students and families that work towards excellence.

Melika Butcher, an Uncommon middle school principal and former ELA teacher, has led the charge in helping her staff unlearn and actively become abolitionist teachers. How has she been able to accomplish this? By first grappling with her own practices, how she showed up years prior, and re-grounding herself in who she was as a student and who she wished she had to help her thrive as a student. Leaning into her fully authentic identity has shifted her leadership and development of staff and student culture to a focus on prioritizing the holistic approach to educating her students. The goal is to not only embrace social emotional and culturally responsive practices, but to weave these practices into the fabric of everyday interactions with families and students. In order to do that, there must be a commitment to the unlearning. Principal Butcher holds the belief that the unlearning is necessary to heal past wounds and prevent the future suffering of students. At Butcher’s school, unlearning is not a solitary act. The process includes holding space for reflection and acknowledgement in conjunction with teaching/training, and collaborative plans and action that aligns intentions and impact for the betterment of all stakeholders in the learning community.

The weight of everything that came with and during the global pandemic was and remains a heavy load for adults and children to carry. According to the Achievement Network and Transforming Education article on a “Head & Heart” approach to meeting the needs of students, “in addition to addressing learning loss due to school closures and recognizing potential trauma resulting from the COVID-19 crisis, educators must take action against the deep-rooted racial injustices people of color have experienced for generations. This includes accepting responsibility for the ways in which schools and school systems have perpetrated harm against students, their families, and the community. We all share a collective opportunity to create systems that respond to the underlying issues of racism..” To fulfill this charge, educators must value relationships as equally important to academics, and not sacrifice one for the other. The fact of the matter is that students link their feelings about academics with the teacher. If there is no relationship, likely the student won’t be bought into the class. Thus, it is imperative that barriers be removed that restrict the authentic self-expression of students and teachers so that hearts and minds can be liberated, allowing connection to happen. According the ‘Restorative Practices for Empowerment: A Social Work Lens’ article, “both teachers and students experience these practices as transformative when enough trust is established to share openly”.

How seriously educators take relationship building is evident in the level of trust that students have with/in them. Students can’t be expected to be open to teaching, and receiving and implementing feedback, if the basis of their interactions is superficial. To mitigate the potential for implicit bias towards their students, educators must prioritize meaningful engagement in exploring differences. This consistent intentionality builds trust, shows care, and expresses love that develops an alliance that sends the message that the educator has the student’s best interest in heart and mind. With this foundation, students are seen as assets to the classroom, which empowers them to be open to teaching, constructive feedback, as well as being active participants in the learning partnership by using their voice to share their experiences. This is the crux of social emotional learning, culturally responsive practices, and a catalyst for student academic achievement.

Rashauna Schuler is a rising Uncommon Schools 6th grader and former Achievement First Charter School student. Rashauna would get a lot of behavioral referrals and negative phone calls home for her attitude prior to joining Uncommon. Currently she gets state and at-risk school support with managing her anger. This was not always the case. According to Shakeema Johnson, Rashauna’s mother, “when Shauna was at AF (Achievement First), she had issues with the way the teachers spoke to her when she was struggling in class. They would give her a consequence and if she didn’t agree with it or fix her behavior, they would send her to the Dean’s office. She would be in there for long periods of the day or end up getting suspended because the school felt she was not ready to be at school or in classes”. Ms. Johnson ended up switching over to Uncommon Schools because she had two older children that were successful during their time at Uncommon. “Rashauna is a very smart child, but it was almost like the AF staff forgot that because of her attitude. They were very short when it came to dealing with her”. Had the leaders of Rashauna’s old school better equipped their teachers with the tools to de-escalate challenging situations with students, Rashauna probably would have had a different experience at Achievement First.

Reflecting on her time at both schools Rashauna said, “I am so happy now that I changed schools. Some things are the same but its some other stuff that changed that I really like. That I wish was at my old school. This year, because my teachers at Uncommon know that I have issues with controlling my anger, they got me a journal. I love the journal because I hate talking when I am upset. At my old school they thought I was being disrespectful when I did that. But my new school understands that I don’t like to talk when I am mad or sad, and they don’t make me. They let me take a break and use my journal. That makes me calm, and usually I am ready to talk to my teachers after I journal, or I just get over whatever was bothering me.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRAOp5Z_9pw

Rashauna’s struggle with anger management was normalized rather than stigmatized with her 5th grade community. “Since it is not that many 5th graders that come into the building for hybrid, my teachers and principal helped me do some Yoga/calming classes with my classmates. I’ve been able to teach them my tricks to calming down. That made me feel good.” According to her principal, Melika Butcher, “we see the growth that Rashauna has been making and the wisdom that she now has about this challenge in her life. She was only able to be successful with guiding her classmates and feeling confident to lead this all on her own because her teachers created a culture of collaborative learning amongst the 5th graders.”

Althea Russell, a parent of an Uncommon Schools elementary school student, says that “since everything that happened on Instagram last year with Uncommon, the school has made changes for the better. Malachi and his classmates get to speak more about feelings and things that are going on with them or the world around them that no one else talks to them about but they hear or see it.” Russell expressed that going back to school during the pandemic was one of the best things for Malachi. According to Althea, “Before COVID, Mali could not handle his emotions. Now, his school talks about feelings and how to deal with them. He is doing much better in talking about his feelings instead of acting out. I appreciate the new changes.”

Jayden Davis, Althea’s nephew and a rising Uncommon Schools 8th grader, also noted his appreciation for a culture of discussion in his middle school classes. “I had trouble making friends at my old school. The other kids didn’t know me and so I usually stayed by myself. No teacher every helped me or did anything to help kids in the class make friends” Jayden stated about his time before Uncommon. Unhappy, lonely, and not doing well academically, his Aunt Althea got him transferred to Uncommon. When asked about how he feels now being a student at Uncommon he said, “I feel better about going to school. In our classes, advisory, and community meeting times our teachers give us time to share how we feel about anything, and we get to learn about them and each other. I made a lot of new friends because we learned how much we have in common when the teachers let us talk about different things.”

In the pursuit of academic excellence for marginalized students, educators will likely meet barriers, academic and behavior struggles from their students, that have the potential to recede progress. Knowing this, school leaders must prepare teachers and consistently develop their ability to plan and implement social emotional and culturally responsive practices so that learning is never sacrificed or undermined by oppressive actions that have devastating consequences.