One Plus One Equals Three
Chapter 8: Working from strengths
Happy Sunday!
Welcome to our fall book study of Alex Shevrin Venet’s Becoming and Everyday Changemaker: Healing and Justice at School. If you’ve missed any of our previous posts, I’ve linked them below. Leave a comment and help us keep the conversation going!
Each post will provide a brief summary of the week’s chapter, a reflection, and a series of discussion questions designed to spark conversation in the comments. Feel free to jump in at any point! You can also find our entire fall reading schedule and vision.
Chapter 1: Messy Scares Me (And That Might Be a Problem as a Teacher)
Chapter 2: I'm exhausted!
Chapter 3: When SMART Goals Aren't That Smart
Chapter 4: What if?
Chapter 5: A Space Between Fear and Hope
Chapter 6: Ripples to Create Change
Chapter 7: Why Slowing Down as a Teacher is So Ridiculously Hard
Summary
Chapter 8 discusses the importance of locating our power in change efforts. We can’t do everything, and Venet reminds us that finding a place to start is empowering. Venet opens the chapter describing how finding our sphere of influence is an important place to begin. For example, many change efforts in public education feel overwhelming because of the “vastness and complexity of the interlocking systems that guide education.” However, when we focus on the ongoing process of change instead of the final outcome, we recognize the bigger picture and how we fit into it.
Venet offers an activity to help us identify where we are best positioned in our strengths and capacities to focus our changemaking efforts. She identifies many ways educators can influence change, and invites readers to reflect on how we feel about adopting certain ones for specific contexts. Venet ends the chapter discussing power, identity, and influence and the delicate balance between resistance and personal risk.
Teaching can be a lonely career. Despite the dynamism of the classroom, I have often felt isolated in my desire to create change in public education. Pushing against the status quo is exhausting when you feel like you are the only one pushing. Advocating for change is frustrating when year after year, nothing changes. As I read this chapter, I began to recognize that much of my exasperation stems from residual symptoms of white saviorism and wanting to do everything myself. When I first learned of the achievement gap, I remember thinking, I’m going to close this gap in my classroom! I cringe now, thinking of how naive and presumptuous I was early in my career.
I had no idea how pervasive white supremacy and structural inequity are in perpetuating the disproportionality and racial predictability of the lowest and highest achieving students. I struggled to see the bigger picture and my sphere of influence. Every year, despite my efforts, the status quo remained largely unchanged. Sure, I created some awesome classroom experiences for my students, but the overall school experience continued to perpetuate negative stereotypes. I worried that true change would never come and I would continue to labor in vain.
In 2014, I left the classroom to try and widen my sphere of influence. Perhaps if I worked at the district level, I could impact more teachers to change. The truth is that the more engrossed I became in the system, the more challenging it was to change the system. As an instructional coach, I could make suggestions and try to influence others to change, but I couldn’t force anyone to do anything. As disheartening as this was, I’m grateful for the experience because I was able to learn more about how systems operate. I learned about leverage points and systems mapping and how I could use design thinking to reverse engineer positive change.
The most important thing I learned was that one plus one can equal three when working with others. When I was invited to be a part of a tiger team of educators, administrators, coordinators, and instructional coaches, we tapped into our individual strengths to create change in our school district. Each one of us had something to contribute, and our contributions amplified each other’s efforts. Since systems are so complex and difficult to change, I learned how to be more strategic in engaging with equity and justice work. Being a part of that collaborative team was one of the best professional experiences I’ve had in my career. I was a part of a changemakers group.
Now that I’m back in the classroom, the challenge is how to leverage the strengths of those around me. Not everyone I work with has the same desire to change the status quo. Many teachers are comfortable with the way things are. Some are uncomfortable or fearful to change. I have learned to work from my strengths while simultaneously leveraging the strengths of my colleagues and administrators. Whether through direct action, advocacy, coalition-building, or experimenting, I continue trying to build another tiger team where our strengths add up to a sum greater than our parts. I experiment, reflect, and try again. I still feel that sense of urgency for change, but I’m learning to slow down and embrace the both/and of changemaking:
Teaching is important enough on its own. And: teachers can use our voices and take action to create change.
As a white, male, cis-gender, heterosexual, able-bodied teacher, I know that I have a lot of privilege, and therefore, can stand to risk more than my colleagues of color. I’m constantly evaluating my power, identity and influence when advocating for my students or pushing our school system to change. The more I surround myself with like-minded changemakers, the larger our web of relationships grows, and the more we can support each other in acting for change. When I push myself outside of my comfort zone, while supporting others, that’s when I feel the power of 1 + 1 = 3!
Now it’s your turn!
Share your thoughts, questions, or anything you’d like about Chapter 8 in the comments. The above discussion questions are just a guide. Feel free to share how this chapter resonates with you and your own experiences as a changemaker.
If you are interested, we are having a Sunday morning chat over on BlueSk at 9:30 am EST to discuss Chapter 8. All are welcome!
Next week, Marcus Luther will share his thoughts from Chapter 9: Tuning in to many streams of information. See you then!
The both/and of changemaking is essential, and it's also really challenging to embrace. It takes a while to understand the limitations of systems, of people, of your own energy. And it takes a while to see that there are opportunities within those closed systems as well. It's all of the above.
Appreciate you sharing your Circle of Concern activity a lot—I plan on doing that later today, too, and pinning it in my classroom as a constant reminder. The way it combines not only reflection but actions (using the "ways of influence") is incredibly tangible, in my mind, and the type of movement I'm sensing in this book as we move into its homestretch.
There is something empowering about it, really: naming how we can take steps to address things we believe we need to change.