We’re excited to announce our partnership with Owl Street Studio. Owl Street Studio uses the power of marketing and design to build place for everyone at the table, and they help us shape our social media content. Through our work together, we continue to evolve and think about how to have thick conversations on thin mediums, and we wanted to share some of this behind the scenes work with you.
We’ve always wanted to be succinct enough for a punchy tweet, or capturable enough so that one of our social media posts would really “sum us up” – we could go viral, reach a larger audience, and shift more hearts in a shorter period of time.
The truth is, our work is too thick for 280 characters. It’s not one reel, one splashy Facebook post. Now, there have been many brilliant ideas that have gone viral. And they have touched on big concepts that have had a meaningful impact on folks who hold privilege and also want to center justice work, especially as it relates to parenting/caregiving. But after the sharable, tweetable, feel good, moral superiority, virtue signaling, when we actually have to ACT on our ideals, how do we REALLY know what we are doing?
Sometimes the act of choosing a non-resource-concentrating, non-White-concentrating public school feels so monumental, we can rest on our self-righteous laurels for a bit. (Who doesn’t like spending some time on the “Moral High Ground”?) Many of us also know before (or figure out shortly after) we make this choice that it is only a starting point. It’s an important starting point, as it is vital to be in relationship with people who have been historically failed and oppressed by our social and economic systems if integration and equity are values we intend to center, but it is only the beginning of our work.
At some point, meaningful change requires building a constituency for brave policy. And we have to decide, not only what does it mean to choose a school… but also what does the practice of anti-racist school integration look like outside of our own individual choices?
There is no shortage of lightning rod issues in education. Public, private, charter, vouchers, community schools, suburbs vs cities, busing, universal choice, PTO, PTA, reform, teacher’s unions, big districts, small districts, testing, tracking, gifted & talented… The list is endless and staunch supporters on either side of every issue do not fall neatly along racial, economic, or political party lines.
And since we are in a country where districts, regions, and states have wildly different interpretations of what education should and could be for citizens, we cannot prescribe a universal opinion for each and every issue.
With this in mind, here’s our current thinking on how we gauge what to support/endorse/believe. Spoiler alert.. It’s thick and complex.
INTEGRATION: It should go without saying, integration guides everything we do. Of course, it is the goal of our social justice activism and work, but it also guides our day-to-day decisions, our ideological framework, and our stance on educational issues. For us, integration is more than a political term. It’s a philosophy and way to live.
Because we believe in integration, we find the best answer, the best approach, and the best solution to any problem or issue is the one that brings as many separate parts as possible together into a unified whole. With each education issue today, instead of following political lines, we follow this: Does it increase equity for the student and their family? Does it lift up, or does it marginalize? Does it help share and distribute resources, or does it help hoard and withhold resources? Does it help share and distribute power and decision making, or does it retain power for people who have always held it?
Most often the answer is yes and no. In some communities, because of that area’s specific historical and cultural context, a specific policy choice may help bring people together and increase equity, while in other communities, that same policy choice may do the exact opposite. Centering integration makes us evaluate each issue and situation independently while simultaneously giving us a steadfast waymarker to guide us through each specific debate and conversation. Said another way, using integration as a guide allows us to see the nuanced and layered complexity of each situation, and it gives us a clear direction and direct steps of action.
Like we said, it’s thick and complex, so let’s keep unpacking all of that. Another way we summarize our work is the connection between integration and integrity (in every sense of the word).
INTEGRITY: There’s a reason the word “integrity” is within the word “integration,” because you can’t have genuine integration without steadfast integrity. To apply an integration framework to your everyday life, to your local community, and to our national discourse requires an immense amount of integrity, an immense amount of firm, stalwart adherence to a specific moral and ethical code.
It takes standing up for justice and equity and fighting against resource hoarding and an oppressive hierarchy. Integration takes determination, because those with wealth, power, and resources (most often) do not willingly let go of what they have. They must be convinced, urged, pressed, and directed. And it takes steadfastness to speak truth to power.
Integration also takes integrity and determination in a different way. Genuine integration and equity building requires nuance and specific, specialized solutions instead of one-size-fits-all answers. That means integration requires flexible thinking, deep perspective taking, and focused self-reflection. Said another way, integration requires the integrity of staying firm and steadfast to a balanced approach. This may sound counter-intuitive, but with many people today determined to dig into “all/or nothing thinking” and to a “my side vs. their side” approach, it takes a different kind of integrity and determination to go against that trend and to center a holistic, balanced approach. To center a balanced approach requires the integrity to challenge your own thinking again and again and again and to push yourself beyond political lines and social tribes while maintaining focus on the values that drive you, and avoiding bothsidesism.
Integration may sound fluffy and nice and aspirational and positive. But the truth is integration takes hard work, a firm stance, and direct action. In other words, it takes integrity.
Like we keep saying, it’s thick. So let’s recap what we’ve laid out so far. First, integration, uniting separate parts into a unified whole, guides everything we do. Next, integration is impossible without integrity. And we don’t mean integrity as in moral superiority, we mean integrity as in being complete and undivided and standing for a moral code. Then, integration and integrity come together to achieve the true end goal: equity.
EQUITY: We use equity to evaluate today’s education issues, conversations, and debates. Focusing on equity like this requires a balanced and nuanced approach to each issue. We believe each community is unique and requires an education system tailored to their specific needs. That’s why we believe there is no one-size fits all answer. But on the other hand, we do believe there is one simple, clear-cut criterion to evaluate every issue, debate, discussion, and policy decision: Does it share resources equitably to everyone? Or does it hoard and concentrate resources to a select few?
Using equity to evaluate an issue stops us from getting lost in the emotional minutia and from losing the forest for the trees. It also stops us from falling into political dogma, group think, and modern tribalism. It’s too easy to get swept up in defending your side instead of focusing on helping the most people. But when we center equity, we stop caring about our side and start truly caring about our community; about justice, fairness, and integrity; and about the marginalized, disenfranchised, and ostracized people in our communities.
So, for us, right now, in this moment, we frame our beliefs, work, and day-to-day decisions around the trident of integration, integrity, and equity. These three words may seem simple, but following them has pushed us and forced us to face things that forever change how we see ourselves and how we see the world.
“You do not have to be me in order for us to fight alongside each other. I do not have to be you to recognize that our wars are the same. What we must do is commit ourselves to some future that can include each other and to work toward that future with the particular strengths of our individual identities. And in order for us to do this, we must allow each other our differences at the same time as we recognize our sameness.” – Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
This is so concretely helpful. Thank you!
This is amazing! Thank you integrated schools for beautifully articulating and bringing together the ideas that help me make sense of this journey each step of the way.