Confronting Racism Together

Tools for Supporting Superintendents in Disrupting Racism

The Superintendent Network for Personal and Professional Work on Race, Racism and Equity drew heavily on the Adaptive Leadership model developed by Ronald Heifetz at the Harvard Kennedy School, which has been used for years by Massachusetts superintendents. (See “Changing Peer Support for Superintendents” and “Connecting to the Messy Reality” in the June 2009 issue of School Administrator magazine.)

It also drew on six years of work my colleagues and I have done, helping more than 60 schools and districts address deep challenges around race and equity through the Reimagining Integration: Diverse and Equitable Schools project I founded at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (rides.gse.harvard.edu). RIDES recognizes how essential personal work about race and racism (e.g., examination of one’s own biases, privilege, skill in relating to people across differences) is to any effective professional action, either as an individual or as part of an equity team. (See the RIDES Equity Improvement Cycle for resources and tools.)

To customize this network, we asked the superintendents to anonymously write what they needed to make it work for them. In the public eye most of their days, they wanted a place they could be learners, where it would be “safe to present inchoate, unsophisticated thoughts, ideas and questions. Safe to be a novice,” as one participant put it.

They wanted to develop solidarity in struggling with their challenges so they could “stand together in our learning and share with others” and be able to “openly engage in difficult conversations about race without judgment.” 

They already individually had done considerable reading about race, racism and whiteness. They wanted to be able to apply those readings in their leadership practice, to gain tools, knowledge and language, and build their confidence in using them.

Design Aspects

To meet these needs, we used these design elements:

 We called the network “personal, professional and practical” and opened our first session by asking each superintendent to give a five-minute “racial autobiography” — where they grew up, when and where they encountered people of color, challenges they faced in recognizing racism and its benefits for them and the hard parts about leading equity work. Sharing the stories built an enormous amount of trust and laid the basis for pushing each other personally, even as we explored the professional and practical.

 We asked superintendents to share the articles and readings about race and racism that were of particular value to them and added readings from The Practice of Adaptive Leadership to provide common framing that would help bring the readings into practice.

 We used the Adaptive Leadership consultation protocol to anchor our work to real practice and to create a culture where deep diagnosis and thoughtful recommendations replace cheerleading and quick facile suggestions.

Finally, we built in periods of reflective writing to help superintendents apply everything we did to their own personal learning and used collective reflection to help us get better at how we worked as a network.

Additional Resources

Lee Teitel suggests these informational resources for taking up a campaign to address race, racism and equity through K-12 school leadership.

Books for Doing Personal Work:

• White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo
• My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem
• How to be an Anti-Racist and Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram Kendi

Articles and Handouts for Professional Work and Workshops:

• Educational Leadership’s April 2019 issue, “Separate and Still Unequal: Race in America’s Schools”
• “The Four I’s of Oppression"
• “Five Shifts to Co-Create Equity"