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Building Smart Education Systems |
Voices in Urban Education
Archives
Getting to Equity
VUE Number 11, Spring 2006
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EXCERPT:
Honesty, Scholarship, and Dialogue: Going to Scale or Cultural Transformation?
By Jonny Skye Njie
Jonny Skye Njie is a district reform facilitator for the Providence (Rhode Island) School Department.
> Complete Biography
Empowerment of all members of a school community is essential for equity. Empowerment
requires frank and open discussion of values and how they affect day-to-day decisions.
As a reformer, I have been working from the premise that young people are the most compelling lever of change in schools. Students are the best advocates for reform – they are the most honest and they are savvy sociologists. They understand the inner workings of their school culture, can describe the power dynamics, and articulate their own condition, as well as feel for the condition of their peers. Young people speak about their experiences and what they mean. Students also make up the majority of any school community. They bring enormous capital to school reform, as long as they have sincere adult allies, know what the possibilities are, and have not simply a voice, but a legitimate role, in the reform process.
Based on this premise, I have concluded that it is only through the empowerment of all members of a school community that the static social ethic in urban public schools, deeply rooted in the regeneration of inequity, will be lifted. Framing reform with values of empowerment – honesty, scholarship, and dialogue – is essential for meaningful and sustainable change at scale to be possible. The irrelevant industrial imprint of order, hierarchy, and silence keep the solutions, many of which can be found in schools and the central office, from being realized. The answers to growing rigorous, highperforming urban schools are not the privilege of administrators or parents, the superintendent, or students, but rather will be found when all perspectives are allowed to generously interact and speak from their hearts in chorus.
The Need for Honest Dialogue
The realization of excellence and equity in urban public education requires a frank examination of our society's values, the ways they imprint on our individual decisions, and how we work with one another in schools and the central office. How is our range of abilities or level of willingness to talk about race and class impacting our work? How does our American social ethos inform what we talk about, who is talking to whom, with whom, and who gets to talk at all?
Having that deep, honest dialogue will be difficult. We need inspiration. We need purpose. Until we see schools as sites of social change, as sites with the potential to seed a truly integrated society built on the basic human need for dignity, as sites where generosity, respect, belonging, and achievement are understood to be co-dependent, we will not have the will to take on the daunting social and personal interrogation necessary to interrupt our behaviors – the very behaviors that keep us from the realization of excellence and opportunity for our youth (Brendtro, Brokenleg, & Van Brockern 1990).
Archives
Getting to Equity
VUE Number 11, Spring 2006
| VUE Home | Archives | Order Print Copy |
EXCERPT:
Honesty, Scholarship, and Dialogue: Going to Scale or Cultural Transformation?
By Jonny Skye Njie
Jonny Skye Njie is a district reform facilitator for the Providence (Rhode Island) School Department.
> Complete Biography
Empowerment of all members of a school community is essential for equity. Empowerment
requires frank and open discussion of values and how they affect day-to-day decisions.
As a reformer, I have been working from the premise that young people are the most compelling lever of change in schools. Students are the best advocates for reform – they are the most honest and they are savvy sociologists. They understand the inner workings of their school culture, can describe the power dynamics, and articulate their own condition, as well as feel for the condition of their peers. Young people speak about their experiences and what they mean. Students also make up the majority of any school community. They bring enormous capital to school reform, as long as they have sincere adult allies, know what the possibilities are, and have not simply a voice, but a legitimate role, in the reform process.
Based on this premise, I have concluded that it is only through the empowerment of all members of a school community that the static social ethic in urban public schools, deeply rooted in the regeneration of inequity, will be lifted. Framing reform with values of empowerment – honesty, scholarship, and dialogue – is essential for meaningful and sustainable change at scale to be possible. The irrelevant industrial imprint of order, hierarchy, and silence keep the solutions, many of which can be found in schools and the central office, from being realized. The answers to growing rigorous, highperforming urban schools are not the privilege of administrators or parents, the superintendent, or students, but rather will be found when all perspectives are allowed to generously interact and speak from their hearts in chorus.
The Need for Honest Dialogue
The realization of excellence and equity in urban public education requires a frank examination of our society's values, the ways they imprint on our individual decisions, and how we work with one another in schools and the central office. How is our range of abilities or level of willingness to talk about race and class impacting our work? How does our American social ethos inform what we talk about, who is talking to whom, with whom, and who gets to talk at all?
Having that deep, honest dialogue will be difficult. We need inspiration. We need purpose. Until we see schools as sites of social change, as sites with the potential to seed a truly integrated society built on the basic human need for dignity, as sites where generosity, respect, belonging, and achievement are understood to be co-dependent, we will not have the will to take on the daunting social and personal interrogation necessary to interrupt our behaviors – the very behaviors that keep us from the realization of excellence and opportunity for our youth (Brendtro, Brokenleg, & Van Brockern 1990).
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