{"id":4061,"date":"2016-07-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-08T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/blog\/cw_post\/when-tears-dont-stop-flowing\/"},"modified":"2020-02-05T12:59:08","modified_gmt":"2020-02-05T17:59:08","slug":"when-tears-dont-stop-flowing","status":"publish","type":"cw_post","link":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/cw_post\/when-tears-dont-stop-flowing\/","title":{"rendered":"When Tears Don\u2019t Stop Flowing"},"content":{"rendered":"

I can\u2019t stop crying this morning.\"IMG_0073\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For the Dallas police officers who were killed and their families. For Philandro Castile and his family. For Alton Sterling and his family. And for all the police who live in more fear today and for African-Americans who live in fear every day that they or someone they love could land in jail or worse be killed by someone who has made an oath to protect them.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know what to do to stop this slippery slope into violence, fear, and anger that is tearing at our country. And I don\u2019t know what to do to scrape out the racism that is in every nook and cranny of our society. But I can talk about what we at CompetencyWorks are trying to do in our small piece of the puzzle.<\/p>\n

Get the Values Right<\/strong>: The more Susan Patrick, co-founder of CompetencyWorks and President\/CEO of iNACOL, and I talk about competency education, the more we understand that the traditional system is based on sorting students and that the fixed mindset can also be a racist mindset. We have heard comments along the way that make us realize it isn\u2019t just that some students can\u2019t learn as well as others. There are those who believe that some students shouldn\u2019t<\/em> learn as much as others as it reshapes the educational and economic playing field.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been talking to educators across the country to try to deeply understand the culture and values that are needed to make competency education effective and to ensure that personalized learning will result in greater equity. In mostly white communities we hear discussions about the growth mindset, transparency, empowerment, and responsiveness to students.\u00a0In communities with rich racial diversity, there are others values. At Merit Prep, we heard about safety and making sure students feel valued. In New York City, there is discussion about cultural responsiveness and making sure students feel respected. These values are important because the lives of African-Americans, Hispanics & Latinos, Asian-Americans, and new immigrants are tremendously different based on the color of their skin, their language, or their clothes.<\/p>\n

Now, we really do need to think about this \u2013 the color of skin is no different than the color of your eyes, the shape of your nose, or the length of your toes in terms of who each of us are as a human being. But in our America, we have made the color of skin the thing that shapes our lives and our identities. Whites who haven\u2019t schooled themselves in white privilege might not understand how much being white shapes their identities and their lives. But deep inside they worry \u2013 maybe I haven\u2019t deserved everything I\u2019ve gotten. And therein lies some of the fear.<\/p>\n

A few days ago, in a conversation with Susan about how to strengthen the list of values we raise as conditions for competency-based education, I raised the question of whether it was better to describe the value as \u201ccultural responsiveness\u201d or \u201cstudents feel safe, respected, and valued.\u201d Her reply? Both. We need both. I agree. We can\u2019t emphasize enough the importance of ridding our schools of patterns of institutional racism and ourselves of bias.<\/p>\n

Thus, here is our updated list of values needed in a competency-based system:<\/p>\n