Re-centering: Why Equity-Minded Leaders Should Reconsider Their Role in Education
Headlines across the nation are describing a massive teacher shortage. Barrages of social media posts by educators detail the untenable contexts of teaching. Their recounts of uncertainty harken back to an article I wrote entitled “Is This Your Last Year Teaching?” I wrote the article after experiencing the loss of my godfather, accepting the fact that the second “dream job” that I had recently accepted was not a dream after all, and feeling painfully lost in my own professional life.
Here we are a year later and, for some, not enough has changed. Educators dug in deeper and made a way to keep teaching or leading in schools. Educators found a way to make it all make sense. Yet the need for a deeply transformational change has remained. A change that aligns to our values, professional gifts, and financial stability.
Thankfully the story isn’t over. Educators can take this moment to re-center and reconsider our role in education. “Centering” has become a popular term. Yet what each person means varies. Some use “center” to focus on self-care, others use the term to describe their commitment to equity. I use the term to bring into forefront how we focus our attention. This use is aligned with the psychological definition of centering:
technique whose aim is to increase and focus attention and energy, to provide relief from stress and anxiety, or both.
What’s important to notice in this definition is that the goal of focusing our attention is to reduce stress and anxiety. Centering ourselves means intentionally shifting our focus and energy toward outcomes that create a living experience that we want to have.
The Challenge of Re-centering
Putting others first is the main challenge to re-centering. Equity-minded educators can get lost by focusing their attention on what others need and expect. I learned a hard truth about myself during the pandemic. I don’t have trouble saying no the first time someone asks me to do something that is out of alignment to my values and professional goals. However, if the person is one whom I consider to be a close colleague and they ask me to reconsider, I begin to question my own focus and attention. I start to ask myself if maybe I am missing an important aspect of their request. This is the start of movement away from my intuition. For the next several days, I ponder and vacillate. By the third ask, I have talked myself into saying yes.
The energy needed to continually engage this way is unsustainable. Not only is it unsustainable, but it also increases stress. Eventually we mistake a sense of being overwhelmed and out of alignment as a sign that we are engaging in powerful equity work. Often, we are just missing the mark. We get close to the space in which our gifts can have an expanded impact, and then we get distracted — our attention is pulled to the crisis and needs of others.
Staying in a State of Crisis Decreases Impact
Crisis is often the enemy of equity. While initial movement may come out of crisis — such as the focus on racial justice growing from the crises of police-overuse-of-force — that movement is not enough to reach true equity. In fact, remaining in crisis mode decreases the chances of success. Equity-minded educators’ ability to make innovative and impactful decisions goes away. This is not simply my opinion — this is tried and true knowledge. Research has again and again found that when leaders are in crisis, they rush to decisions that are mostly based on their current perspective, past experiences and limited information. One key strategy to interrupt this type of decision-making is to stop, think and reflect. If our current education system is untenable, then as equity-minded leaders we must pause long enough to envision our impact beyond the current reality. Only in pausing are we able to identify and focus our attention on novel, equitable solutions. We cannot engage in this reflective work if we are stuck in crises.
Maintaining a Role Beyond Its Usefulness is a Form of Crisis.
You might be thinking — well, my school is not in crisis. Educators have figured out how to get to a “new normal.” Yet, the crisis is such a part of the everyday experience that staying in that role is the crisis. As equity-minded leaders our identities can become so intertwined with our current role that we don’t recognize how the role is the foundation of the crisis.
In the past month, I have spoken to several leaders who resorted to whispering — on a Zoom call with just the two of us — when asked how they would define themselves if they didn’t consider their current role as their identity. For a few educators, this question also brought tears. Their commitment to equity had become entrenched with having a particular role. That role had become suffocating.
If we are to center ourselves — breathe deeply the experience of our lives — then we must be willing to reconsider our role. Educators first have to ask the difficult question of what is core to our being — our authentic way of moving the society toward a more just and equitable world — and then what role is most aligned.
I have been tasked with this same question. If I am not a university educator, who am I? If I am not supporting pre-service teachers and literacy scholars, how am I making an impact? After 26 years in education, is this still a space in which I can center myself and have an impact? The hardest part of answering these questions is being clear on how I define impact and the roles I want to inhibit.
If I focus and attend to the spaces where I can see my impact without experiencing stress and anxiety, I know the answer to all of the questions. It is the reason I write, the reason I founded The Literate Self.
Re-centering as a Continuing Question
Each day I struggle with holding onto the role I already know. It is easier to continue the forward movement of the path we are already on — to continue to meet other’s expectations.
The real question is, am I willing to be as committed to centering myself as I am to striving for equity for others?
Are you?
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Dr. Lanette Jimerson is a writer, educator and scholar. She helps equity-minded leaders expand their impact and craft a career trajectory that centers their professional and financial needs. Learn more at www.theliterateself.com
