Support and Retain Educators of Color with Andrea Terrero Gabbadon
Ross Romano: [00:00:00] Welcome in, everybody. You are listening to the Authority Podcast on the BE Podcast Network. Thanks, as always, for being with us. Really pleased to have you here today. If you've heard the show before, even though it's not always the main topic of conversation, you've probably heard me reference retaining and recruiting educators as a pain point in the field, and I'm sure it's also not a secret to you.
Anyway, if you're listening, but certainly something that we've thought about a lot, talked about it in relation to a variety of topics, and it's certainly going to be core to our conversation today. My guest is Dr. Andrea Terrero Gabbadon. She is an author, scholar, and the founder and lead principal consultant of ILM Consulting Group.
Dr. Gabbadon's work touches on culturally responsive and sustaining education, school, racial climate, and educator diversity. Her scholarship has been published in leading academic journals, such as Urban Education, the Urban Review, and Educational Leadership Magazine. And she is the author of a book [00:01:00] called Support and Retain Educators of Color, Six Principles for Culturally Affirming Leadership.
It is published by ASCD. It is now available and it is what we're talking about today. So Andrea, welcome to the show.
Andrea Terrero Gabbadon: Hello, welcome, or rather thank you for having me. It's really exciting to be in conversation with you today.
Ross Romano: Yeah, we're delighted to have you here. And and this is you know, an important topic and really one of the foundational topics to determining you know, the potential of what we're going to achieve in our schools and our school system for our students. over this and the next generation, right?
So, something that we need to be discussing and doing something about. So, let's start with a couple of questions to sort of contextualize the topic for listeners. And one of the statistics that you share early on in the book is, relates to how educators of color are underrepresented in schools as compared to the student population.
About 20 percent of [00:02:00] educators identify as people of color compared to about 50 percent of students. What are some of the reasons why is that just been a self perpetuating thing over the years? Are there other reasons why more educators of color aren't being hired into schools?
Andrea Terrero Gabbadon: That's such an interesting place to start in terms of that disparity between the student workforce and the teacher workforce. I mean this oh goodness, student workforce, my brain is all over the place, the student body and the teacher workforce. Obviously right, students we can understand are increasingly diverse because of immigration and a host of other factors.
When we think about who is coming into the teacher workforce We have to consider what it means. to become a teacher in the United States. And so that includes a host of factors such as you're graduating from high school, you're going to college, you're going into an educator preparation program, you're [00:03:00] graduating, you're going you're pursuing, right, like your certification credentials, you're taking these tests, right.
And so there's all these different goalposts, right, that in many ways, specifically for people of color, disproportionately impact them, right. And so when we think about this, Things such as college graduation rates, right, folks of color graduating at lower rates, right, from post secondary institutions in comparison to their white counterparts.
When we think about the certification tests, right, folks of color, because of the nature of how these tests are written and the the ways in which There are class as well as racial benefits, right, to taking these tests, right? They disproportionately impact folks of color. When you think about hiring, right, we know that there is bias in the hiring process, right?
So, I think there is this misconception often that like, folks of color don't want to become teachers, and that's why we have this low representation. Really, it's around [00:04:00] all these different barriers. that exist to becoming a teacher and how they disproportionately exclude more folks of color from becoming a teacher.
One last thing I'll also add because all these barriers that I'm mentioning are things that impact the educator workforce in the here and now, but we also have to take into consideration the historical context. One of the most important, um, court cases of our time, Brown v. Board, we know served to overturn the kind of legal you know, enforcement of segregation in our schools.
And when schools were therefore required to become racially integrated, racial integration was accomplished for students, right? It seldom worked against the the benefit of teachers. And so through Brown v. Board, [00:05:00] Actually, over a third of the black teacher workforce was laid off, many principals laid off, demoted and it's part of that legacy we're living in the shadow, essentially, of that legacy where the pipeline of educators is actually much greater.
But. Through this historical precedent, it narrowed, and then again, all these current barriers, again, kind of perpetuate or reproduce this underrepresentation that we're seeing.
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Ross Romano: I think related to what he said about, it's not that. Maybe young people of color don't want to go into the profession. It's making me think about, I recently recorded an episode of our Resilient Schools podcast with Jen Perry from Edmentum and one of the the key topic we were talking about was chronic absenteeism and sort of engaged versus unengaged versus disengaged, right?
And that there are students [00:06:00] who have been kind of actively disengaged, like. taught that this school is not really serving your needs, it's not really preparing you for what you want to do in the future and so you have specific reasons why you're choosing to not engage with it versus like you just were intrinsically never engaged in the first place.
And I, I mean, I think there probably is plenty of that goes on in schools as well, as far as whether students are who are their models in schools, right? What types of teachers do they have and are they exposed to and what other messages, implicit or explicit, are they getting from the schools and the school system about their.
Place and their belonging in that system. And the reasons why it may not be on the list of, okay, these are things I might want to do in the future is not, [00:07:00] again, it's not like in the job description of the role or anything to do with the potential salary, the benefits, the skillset of the individual. But.
All those various things that kind of indicate, yeah you're not necessarily going to be welcomed into this, or we're at the very least, we're not encouraging you to go into that. And of course, that's why. Again, another reason why all of this is so important because it's not just about what can we do for next school year to continue or begin trending things in a positive direction, but it's about what happens in 10 years, 20 years, so on,
Andrea Terrero Gabbadon: It's a really interesting point that you bring up around like student mattering, right? Because I think the same could be argued for why don't young people want to move into teaching right in the first place, colleges of education. Have experienced a significant decline in enrollment, right?
Young people don't want to move into the profession. Like, [00:08:00] yes, like salary isn't great comparatively to other sectors, but there's also this idea of it's not attractive. I don't see myself in that role or for young folks of color, right? I haven't seen myself represented. I don't see myself mirrored in a positive way, maybe beyond, A dean or someone who holds a role that's not a classroom teacher, right?
Like how often are we having positive role models that make being a classroom educator attractive for young people. And we haven't even, you and I haven't even started the conversation around teacher turnover, but that's yet another factor, right? So it's a whole ecosystem that we have to take into account when thinking about this under representation of teachers of color, what it takes to increase the pipeline and Create a sustainable pipeline, but then also to ensure that it's not a leaky pipeline, right, and that we're plugging those holes so that we keep the educators [00:09:00] that we're bringing into the field.
Ross Romano: Right. Yeah. And their specificity with respect to all students, because I've had many, like over the past few years, conversations, discussions, interviews, and written a lot of content about the teacher shortage, right? And all the various people. And one of the things that it boiled down to as far as why there is a shortage of teachers.
teachers graduating with education degrees entering the profession is that the profession has a marketing problem. And well, one of the principles of marketing is that it's based on your target audiences, right? And every so there's this general piece of the system and the profession as a whole, and the individuals that are in the profession don't communicate things that make it attractive to people to look at as.
something they want to go into. There's when they surveyed parents, there was a huge disparity between and a huge downtrend over the years. I [00:10:00] forget what the, it was a, within the past few years, it was the first time ever that the parents surveyed that, A majority of parents said they would not want their child to become a teacher.
And it was the first time ever, but it's like trends over time. And there was a big, there's a big difference between those who might say that it's a good respectable animal profession. And those that say, well, I would want myself or somebody in my family to do it. And that's for everybody, right?
And then within that, there obviously are specific elements of that about, okay, are we being mindful about who might potentially be the educators of the future, and what are we telling them about what this profession is, and what are we showing them, and how are we building that? So, There's one other piece here that I it may be somewhat beyond the scope of what you uncovered in your research, but I'm curious if you've seen even anecdotally anything about it.
As I'm wondering these [00:11:00] statistics that we talked about earlier are broad kind of nationwide statistics. Are there areas where there's like more or less imbalance? And I'm guessing, and again, You tell me. You know, one of the reasons why the gap is as wide as it is because there's not a lot of areas, if any, where, it's the opposite balance, right, where there's a higher percentage of educators of color compared to the student population.
If you have a school that has 100 percent students of color, and. 80 percent of educators of color. Typically that would be considered like pretty good representation, but still like the percentages, right. They're going to add up. And then I'm sure you have a lot of areas of the country where it's 0%.
And so, but you know, are there. Are there any certain places or pockets where where there is more of a [00:12:00] representative balance and if so, and if you have that information what it what does that illustrate or what can we learn from that?
Andrea Terrero Gabbadon: That's a wonderful question. In terms of, even just to take a step back, right, around this idea of 20%, approximately, right, 20 percent of educators. And the American Teacher Workforce Identifying as Folks of Color. That isn't like a new phenomenon that we're trying to address, right? So, back in 1988, Richard Riley who was one of the spokespers spokespeople for the Department of Education delivered this address.
And he talked about, like The American teacher workforce must be excellent and they must look like our democracy, right? Like I'm summarizing, the language that he used, but I share that because this isn't a new problem. That's number one. And two, it illustrates from the fact that when he gave that speech.
That actually kicked off, both on a national as well [00:13:00] as local level, a series of policy interventions intended to increase or attract more educators of color. And in many respects, right, there actually have been higher, proportionally, there's actually higher numbers and rates of educators of color that are moving into teaching as a result of, right, these various policy and advocacy initiatives.
And this is where my book comes in. The problem continues to be around that leaky pipeline where we see educators of color leaving the workforce at higher rates than their white counterparts. Fast forward to the here and now, right, 2024, there are a lot of states who have successfully built on the Recruitment efforts that have been sparked over the last three decades and have really begun to shift to retention.
I think about the work that Travis Bristol is doing out on the west coast, not just to bring attention to the importance of a teacher workforce on a state and local level, but then also what are concrete [00:14:00] strategies that can be implemented to retain teachers. Travis does a variety of work with a variety of partners, but one of the things that I appreciate is his work with leaders.
Both at the preparation stage as well as on a district level around this is how you can build district conditions that retain your educators of color. And I don't have the numbers offhand, but I certainly would point to Travis's work and his work with districts around kind of, stemming the the tide of attrition and creating more balance or parity between teachers and students.
I would also point to the work there's a public school district out in Texas with like Harmony Public Schools, similar they have been doing tremendous work over the last couple of years with leaders, right, increasing the diversity of their leadership pipeline. And we know, right, research tells us when you have a diverse [00:15:00] leader workforce, right, diverse, racially diverse principals, superintendents, they're more likely to prioritize.
Racial diversity in hiring. And also, they're associated often with higher levels of retention when it comes to the diversity of their workforce. And they've been able to do both, right? Both increase the diversity of their principal pipeline, and in turn, been able to increase and retain a higher number of teachers.
And so that's a district, right? How many public schools? Zooming in even more on a building level. So I'm from Philadelphia. Philadelphia is what I would call home. I've been here for almost two decades now. And there's an amazing small network of charter schools called Boys Latin. Led by two excellent black male principals, and again, black male principals that prioritize hiring black teachers for their 100 percent black student population.
In addition to increasing goodness, I was in conversation, I think [00:16:00] they said something around 60 percent or 70 percent of their educators identify as black males, right? Classroom educators, they're teachers. In addition, though, to that prioritizing recruitment and retention, they've even started what's called the Grow Your Own program, where they bring in former students from their high school who graduated from college.
They say, hey, do you want to be a game changer in your community? Do you want to be an advocate for social change? Become a teacher. To your point about marketing, right? And they create this, it is, it's amazing. And I talk a little bit about their work in the book, as well as some other case studies, but it's such a genius way, under the umbrella of brotherhood, of mentorship, and also the reality of identity.
If you're a recent college grad, you need a job. Go back to your high school. Get the training you need. We will give you a job. And that pipeline actually creates a sustainable mechanism for new teachers when the time comes to hire new, right? And so those are [00:17:00] three, like, state, district, local school level.
Folks are doing tremendous work across the U. S. It's really around honing in around, like, what works.
Ross Romano: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And those grow your own programs, whether it's in or rural or remote areas where people that You know, grow up there, go to school there, may have some investment in the local community, but it's going to be much harder to recruit people to move there or city schools where you want to diversify the teaching population can be really effective and critical to, and not only, Mission driven, but practical and understanding like we need to we don't want to be going year to year and trying to fill three positions and only having two people available.
So, a good thing to highlight there. So we're going to transition into the retention piece the support piece, which is really the core of this. As we're kind of making that transition, I'm [00:18:00] wondering like, if you want to briefly contextualize some of the language, right? You kind of give the preface of the book around the importance of the clear and precise language.
We're using people of color, educators of color here and just to make sure that listeners are following along and that they're seeing how this is represented in their schools. Maybe if you want to just briefly talk about how you use that term in the book and how that you know, we're trying to use it the same way in this conversation.
Andrea Terrero Gabbadon: So just to provide a little bit of clarity around what is meant by educators of color. So, yeah, I think You know, it is absolutely critical to zoom in on the population that we mean, and I appreciate your attention to detail in this way. When referring to educators of color, I'm referring to, right, if you think about, let's say, census categories, right? Black, African American, Hispanic, or Latino, Latina, Latine educators, Asian American, right?
Those that have been [00:19:00] racialized, right? As being non white, right? And we know that these Census categories are imperfect. We know that there are overlaps and intersections with the way that whiteness shows up but we're referring to those that have been minoritized because of their ethnic or racial background.
And it's really important to elevate that because when we do that, we imperfectly acknowledge the unique social identities and the experiences that accompany those identities because of the ways that people are racialized, right? That's a lot of fancy language. What does that mean? Like when you acknowledge the fullness of my Latinidad, right?
The fullness of my ethno racial gender, the language of my ancestors, the place where they're from, and how that impacts how I navigate the world, that, that means a lot, right? It's not just I have brown [00:20:00] skin. I know this is audio folks can't see me, but it's not that I have brown skin. It's the ways in which I am may be vulnerable, right?
To historic or even current structural inequalities or oppressions because of the identities I hold and the ways in which those are often devalued in society. And I'm really clear in my language in the book around this isn't to this isn't an oppression Olympics, but rather just honoring, like, First of all, we need to honor all educators, all educators, all teachers, particularly in the K 12 space who are doing God's work, but it's important for us not to assume that all of teachers have the same experiences and that it's important to give credence and acknowledgement to the racialized experiences.
that non educators of color often have, don't always have, but often have within their work setting. And that's, that then becomes a launch point around how are we supporting folks not with a [00:21:00] colorblind lens, but acknowledging like the fullness of their social identities, willing to walk with a cultural humility, and then also a willingness to think about and enact policy and practice that ensures that whatever forms of structural inequality you're, you experience out in the world, that we're not reproducing that in this school, because we acknowledge that those types of harms can, and often do, push people out of of schools.
Ross Romano: I think that naturally leads to like, is there a kind of a point of identification where recruitment and hiring and the processes involved in that part of it diverges from the support and retention piece and who is responsible for that and what's required to be more effective at those pieces. Yeah, I think that naturally leads to like, is there a kind of a point of identification where recruitment and hiring and the processes involved in that part of it diverges from the support and retention piece and who is responsible for that and what's required to be more effective at those pieces.
Independent of who [00:22:00] you're hiring and who in that part of it.
Andrea Terrero Gabbadon: I think we're doing better with this, particularly in light of the teacher shortage. I started working on my book prior to and then during the pandemic, right? So a lot of has shifted. I would say that the national consciousness as well as just in how as a sector, right, education, right. And education related organizations have had to navigate.
And so in terms of like The best recruitment strategy should be coupled with a retention strategy, right? So it's not just your campaigns The career fairs, it's around how am I going to get people to the door and clearly message from the beginning of our professional relationship. This is how I intend to value through the support mechanisms and this is how these support mechanisms are going to add so much value to your professional life.
This is what's going to make you want to stay, right? In terms of who owns that, it really is a partnership. Yeah. I have found myself, [00:23:00] particularly with this book, having a lot more conversations with the HR folks and I love them, right? Like, thank you for coming to any workshops I do. Thank you for inviting me to speak or do a book study, right?
That I love working with HR folks, but they're also, and I write about this mostly because of my own background as an instructional leader and as an assistant principal and someone who hired and supported educators and was often responsible for, like, staff retention metrics. Like, we cannot, I cannot speak enough of the role of the principal, as well as members of the instructional leadership team with this retention piece.
Going back to just turnover, right? Like, there have been numerous national studies where educators have talked about why they leave, and they're not leaving. Because of the kids, but they're leaving because of leadership quality, right? Leadership behaviors. And so this requires a partnership between HR and leaders around how do we rethink [00:24:00] our partnership for the purpose of making sure that once we bring people into our district or our network, that they feel valued.
in the day to day interactions that the educator has with their direct manager, with the grade team lead, with that AP, whomever that instructional leader is and how it may be defined or operationalized in that school.
Ross Romano: There other than maybe anything we've already discussed factors that are more critical to the retention of educators of color related to the overall retention? You mentioned the leadership piece, right? And that's the thing that comes up time and again in education and in other professions as well.
I left because. of poor leadership, weak leadership, didn't see eye to eye etc, right? And of course, what that means to different people is going to be different things their interpretation of that and and certainly the emphasis on the retention and the retention as a primary objective of [00:25:00] the leader and making that something that is set by the district systemism.
To having that follow through on this hiring versus retention piece, right? And and, but I guess, is there, yeah, anything else we want to pull out before we get into some of these principles and the specifics about what school leaders should be doing? That is That we shouldn't, I guess, just have a blanket understanding of what retention means.
But specifically when we have goals around retaining you know, the underrepresented educator populations or the people of color, does that mean something different? Yeah.
Andrea Terrero Gabbadon: And so I would, before I kind of get into it, I would say whatever retention strategy is enacted for folks of color often has, leads to positive outcomes for all staff. Right. But to your point, right, there are specific strategies or conditions that need to be addressed [00:26:00] that uniquely impact or uniquely have a unique interaction, right, with communities of color.
I spoke about one already, which is this idea of your racialized work experience. Right. And I say racialized because the ways in which your social identity is shaped. is often associated with certain stereotypes, assumptions, microaggressions, and how folks of color are impacted by these differently, right?
Then folks that are not racialized as ethno racial quote unquote minorities, right? And I would argue we're the global majority. We're not minorities. We've been minoritized. But how does that play out? Right? So acknowledging the ways in which race does impact a school, right?
Acknowledging the ways in which perhaps folks of color might be pinpointed as a disciplinarian, right? Right. You're going to, you're going to work with the most challenging group of kids because you hold that identity, or, oh, this is our new teacher, they're going to work with perhaps the low, the lowest level of learners, [00:27:00] right?
Because those are the kids that that really just, they need, they just need a strong hand. What do you need by a strong hand, right? What assumptions are being made about kids and the teacher you've selected for that position? Also acknowledging that the disparities that do exist, I think, particularly around, let's say, teacher leadership across the board, even in the literature, right, teacher leaders are less likely to be folks of color, and there's a lot of reasons for that. But in what ways, right, are you reproducing or perpetuating this thing, right, that disproportionately impacts people of color? In what ways are you potentially reproducing that in your school, right? In what ways are there you know, folks of color on average implement culturally responsive pedagogies?
More often than our white counterparts, right? How often are you sending mixed messages, right, around allowing curriculum to be responsive and reflective [00:28:00] of kids backgrounds, right? So there's like these little moves where implicitly, or maybe even explicitly, the decisions and policies that our instructional leaders employ on a daily basis can and do often impact folks of color differently.
And their white counterparts. And so that's what we mean when we mean, like, support and retain. It's drawing attention to policy and practice, who it impacts, who's, who benefits, right? And shifting the paradigm to ensure that everyone's voice is centered and valued in the school community.
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Ross Romano: When I kind of broke into two buckets what I heard from everybody from Teachers themselves to district HR people, administrators about why teachers would leave, either leave their school or leave the profession. I believe [00:29:00] the one big bucket was leadership, bad leadership, poor leadership.
The other one was some version of, I no longer felt like I could make a difference. I no longer felt like I could make an impact and that can mean a variety of things, but you can certainly extrapolate from that. Some of what that might mean to an educator of color who comes into a school that has not traditionally hired a high percentage of educators of color, maybe, and they have a specific belief around the difference they can make for their students, especially students that look like them, and if it's not represented in the curriculum and the pedagogy and the culture of the school, at a certain point, Draw a conclusion like me being here is not making a difference.
And also it's hurting me to be a part of this system. I don't want to be a representative of this. And and that's why I think this piece about the divergence between the hiring and the recruitment from the support and retention [00:30:00] is there's a lot. of like systems versus culture and versus conclusions of like as a district organization, you can put in systems for your recruitment, for your processing of applicants, for your hiring that might help you meet certain goals or metrics around diversifying your workforce.
But then if you're consistently having turnover among specific populations, A bad faith read might be, well we shouldn't have been doing that hiring stuff in the first place because clearly they don't really want to be here. And that's what I was making me think about the accountability of, well, look, like, you're going to have, if you're a school leader and this is what's occurring in your school, you're going to have to answer for that.
And, determine, like, because once I'm in the job, now it's about what's the culture of the place, what do I feel like I'm doing? So anyway, let's talk about that. Let's talk about those, some of those principles for the culturally affirming [00:31:00] leadership and what leaders need to be doing. And I think we've talked a bit about kind of parts of, Principle 1, Acknowledging that Educated Adversity Matters, and some of the difference that makes for students and so let's spend a little more time on, on Principle 2 Cultivating Reflection and Self Awareness.
There's a piece in there about closing the gap between intent and impact. Can you talk about that a bit and what that's, what that means?
Andrea Terrero Gabbadon: Yes and so, In the book I talk about, well, rather, I always assume that folks are coming from a place of good intent, right? No leader becomes a leader because they wish to exclude or push out any population. In fact, even saying the word push out can often Cause someone's body to tingle, right? With an unpleasant sensation at the thought of, am I committing an act that could result in pushing educators out?[00:32:00]
You don't want to believe that about ourselves, right? Even in the educate with the educators that I work with, I want to believe that I'm doing good, that I'm supporting effectively, right? That we're creating the change that we wish to see. But that's why it's important to understand that intense is not the same as impact. I think it's also important, as we're having this conversation about ethnicity and race and the ways in which those go hand in hand with culture and other aspects of identity, right? Because identity is, we aren't just racialized beings, right? But gender, sexual orientation, right? Linguistic background, socioeconomic status, right?
We bring a host of different elements of identity with us as we navigate the world. And so I say that to say it's important for leaders to suspend assumptions and about their work and begin to interrogate Not just what did I mean to do, but what was the results of my actions. [00:33:00] So going back to your example around, we hired all these educators, but they're leaving. In order to effectively address this important issue of educator diversity, I would argue we need to consider, okay, what's my role in this? What are the conditions of my school? What are the elements of my leadership? What are the, if perhaps, and I think all districts at this point are doing this if there's exit interviews, and you're beginning to look through that, and you're determining trends, or even if you hear whispers of things and rumors, don't assume necessarily it's always an isolated issue, or brushed off as, oh, they didn't get it, I actually meant this. understand that, but we need to, just like we encourage educators to have outcomes driven lessons, we need to have outcomes driven leadership to think, if my outcome of retention is not being met, if my retention goals have not been met, why? And [00:34:00] let's begin to unpack and move backwards. What are the things that occurred?
What are the complaints? What are the trends? What are the concerns that people have? then begin to do the work of elements of their own practice and school level policy or district level policy to then say, okay, how can we connect the dots? That might have not been the intent of that new curriculum that we adopted that was supposed to boost reading scores.
If now 25 percent of my teachers are leaving, that was the impact. And we can't, we often say, oh, they weren't a good fit. That's a reality. Sometimes people aren't a good fit, but Sometimes you also lose good people and we have to ask ourselves why. And so that's the spirit of acknowledging that intent is not the same as impact.
We really need to be questioning our leadership impact.
Ross Romano: Yeah, and there's an opportunity in a lot of these ways for like to take intent and intention a few steps beyond where we usually stop. So if we stop our intent with, well, we want to [00:35:00] have to hire or a more representative population of educators and you stop there then you can accomplish that in a variety of ways that are not Making a positive impact.
You could keep turning them over every year, but as long as you have a sheet that whatever the racial designation is, it's like, well it's kind of aligned to our student body. And yet that's not creating a high quality teaching and learning environment for students, not creating a positive work environment for educators that you're not supporting.
It's not actually furthering your goal of having a. highly qualified, right, master masterful educators because it's just a constant churn. Similarly I think with, as far as the sport,
some of the leaders might say they're in their intent I guess is to be more, be more culturally affirming, let's say. And That's stops a little short. I would think like the goal would be more to make [00:36:00] your multicultural educators feel more culturally affirmed, like have them actually have the impact of feeling supported and what that looks like.
And that's part of the, I think, importance of this reflection on intent versus impact that it's not enough to say, well, I had good intentions but I actually didn't really evaluate, like, was it doing what I wanted it to do? And part of that, in this case, Is you sort of referenced, like, not not having things be surface level or making assumptions, but I guess, like, is there a good way for leaders to understand, like, ascertain the self identification of their educators and not just, I mean, because it's probably, it's going to be incomplete and probably felt more acutely by a variety of individuals in the building.
If it's like, okay, well, like I can kind of tell who my educators of color are and who my other people are. And there's all these other [00:37:00] aspects of identity, but also some of those educators may really identify in a similar demographic to the other. Some of them might not feel like that at all.
And the way that they might wish to feel supported would be different. Yeah.
Andrea Terrero Gabbadon: Yeah, I mean, I think it's always going to be important to really seek to understand the experiences. of those in your building. And that's not just students, right? And that's the educators as well, right? How do you experience being an educator in this building? We need to be asking those questions about educators social sense of social belonging, sense of do they feel welcome?
Do they feel supported? What does feel supported? What doesn't feel supported? How do you want to feel supported? Right? And these are questions that you can put on a quick Google form and ask all staff because there's value in getting that information from all staff members, right? But at the same time, how are you desegregating [00:38:00] that data?
How are you analyzing that data? How are you really centering, again, those that may be underrepresented In this particular case, again, we're talking about ethno racial identity, but how are you creating space to center what those folks are saying and being willing to create structural changes? And I also imagine, right, that there may be folks listening that say, well, like, that's great.
I can analyze the data more robustly. I can determine a trend if maybe a quarter of my staff identifies folks of color, but we don't have any, right? Or we have one. Okay, so in what ways are we working at a district level to examine data of educators of color across our district? Or is there state data that we have access to?
Oh, we don't have. All right, I get that. And Even at the hiring process, right? Are there ways that we can, I've worked with districts that one of their pain points was, well, we're interviewing a lot of educators [00:39:00] of color, but for some reason, they're just not choosing to work in our district. Okay.
Have you asked them survey them about. Have you surveyed all applicants around what were their experiences at the application process, at the interview process? Have you gotten a chance to desegregate and examine the data and make changes? Were there ways in which there was a perception that this particular district wasn't welcoming, right, to folks of color?
And so I think at the heart of it, it's around looking at the data and thoughtfully examining the data related to different. qualities or different criteria. Again, it could be by ethnic or racial identity, but it could be gender. It could be career status, right? Early career versus mid career.
It could be those that went to educator preparation programs versus emergency search, right? There's a variety of ways, but at the end of the day, what learnings are you willing to emerge or surface from that and then make actionable changes in relation to it, right? And that comes with You know, [00:40:00] putting out programs or things of that nature changes to policy, changes to practice, right?
And then continuing to take an iterative approach where you're refining that model to ensure that the impact aligns with the intent, right? So if social belonging data isn't what you want to see, great. Start some affinity groups. Use data to monitor the effectiveness. Does that, those affinity groups actually impact the social belonging of educators of color in your building?
To what extent are they working? If they're not, how do you continue to take an iterative approach to, to if we talk about progress monitoring with kids, how are we monitoring the progress or the effectiveness of these interventions while continuing to center not what we think as leaders benefits us, But censoring and valuing the concerns and the values of the educators that are participating in this ecosystem, whether it is that program, or maybe the one that is experiencing that [00:41:00] procedure or that policy.
Ross Romano: So you referenced data there, right? And there's another principal assessment plan for action. And I guess one form of data could be an exit survey. Okay, we hired this educator. They worked here for however long they decided to leave. We talked to them. They said, well, if you would have done this, and this differently, I might have you know, Made a different decision and okay, now let's take what they said and try to apply it to the next person.
And now we found out that wasn't the right thing for them. And now we're using their exit survey and so on. Or, you talk about pulse meeting and maybe a more consistent and frequent way of getting more actionable data. And so specifically with those pulse meetings, can you kind of talk about what they are, what they're about?
Andrea Terrero Gabbadon: Yes. So, Pulse meetings. really are 15 minute standalone meetings that are not connected to any type of deliverable check in this is not an evaluative conversation because those are often accompanied with various types of pressure, right? A Pulse meeting is simply like, how's it going?
What's [00:42:00] working for you? What's not working for you? You're getting the pulse of that educator within that building. So often, particularly when I was a school leader I was socialized. You know, you want to start with a nice community builder and there's this nice human connection that's made in the first two minutes of meeting, but it's all business.
There isn't a real place for educators to surface concerns, to surface questions, and we often don't get that. As leaders, we don't often get the feedback that we need about, to your point in earlier questioning what is, how is someone experiencing this workplace? And. Educators are very busy.
We all are navigating multiple and competing priorities, but there is value in slowing down, scheduling 10, 15 minute check in. Now there is a power imbalance here. So you can bring in a consultant, you can bring in maybe a teacher leader, but again, there's value in. Listening to what [00:43:00] people are saying, and I argue for, in the book, these meetings over just another survey, because one, we know that we're over surveying our educators, and two, There's often unique insights and experiences that folks either for either time or whatever reason are just not sharing and you're able to dig in and understand some of these pressing issues that educators might be experiencing in a unique way.
And so I always encourage folks. Just check in, just have that human touch, see what comes up get feedback on your leadership, get feedback on new curriculum, or it can just be open ended. What's worked for you in the last three months? What's allowed you to feel supported? What isn't working for you?
What can we do differently to support? Where do you see yourself in three months, three years, etc.? Very simple, open ended questions. And after the leader asks the questions? And that's another piece where we often, we talk [00:44:00] about listening and active listening. You know, I went to a principal certification program.
You know, that was the life that I was intending to live. And then I had a different pivot with my career and I remember we would practice listening and it was great. I love my principal program because of the demands of the job. I often wasn't able to put that in practice. So I'm encouraging educators, encouraging principals and other district leaders to really go back to the roots.
Of cultivating that human touch with their leadership?
Ross Romano: Yeah. So, as we're wrapping up the conversation, I kind of want to ask about support at two different levels. So, one being school leadership, teachers, and specifically creating a supportive environment for those teachers to be themselves. To teach how they teach. To utilize what they teach. the strengths that they are going to have in actually having a, maybe a culturally responsible approach to students [00:45:00] or any any type of, whatever it is, right?
Stylistic content wise or otherwise. So what that kind of looks like or what leaders should be thinking about in that regard and I guess we'll start there and then I'll not to throw too much at you at once.
Andrea Terrero Gabbadon: That's a big question. So help me narrow the focus a little bit. In terms of thinking, Yeah. Now the focus for me a little bit so we can cause I want to make sure that we're leaving listeners with something by its size. We've been super theoretical
Ross Romano: Sure. Sure. So. To the point of intent, so I'm a well intentioned school leader, and I have hired some new educators into my building, and they are Educators of color, they are representative of my student body, and I want this to be successful. I want to support them, and maybe one thing that I realize or haven't thought about is the fact that diversity means a lot of things, and one of the things it means is I [00:46:00] shouldn't try to make them do their job exactly the same as It was done when we didn't have any diversity.
So it's more about like, how can I support and we do talk about those dialogues and dynamics, like support them to feel confident, to try things, to try something new, to address an area where we usually hasn't worked, or to just try to explore Finding their own their own way of teaching, their own way of connecting with students and being kind of upfront and explicit about that, right?
Rather than having trepidation about, okay, if I kind of try to bring myself to the classroom in this way, I'm going to be out of step with the way everybody else is doing it here. And and it may not be that. There's a punitive approach from that leader, but if the leader is not explicit about [00:47:00] saying that I want you to try things and then I might be afraid to even try it in the first place and the result is similar, which is, I'm uncomfortable.
I don't really feel like I'm finding my place here. And all of that might, I still might end up getting the message that this isn't really the right place for me, even if nobody was telling me not to do it.
Andrea Terrero Gabbadon: Yeah. So for that kind of beginning or rather the leader that's at the beginning of this journey, I would argue that, or you don't want to think about how do we need to, I have an educator of color. What do I do now? My wondering would be. What is the status quo? What is the ecosystem of your school? And have you spent time really learning or assessing your school's readiness in the first place to be a place that values ethno racial diversity and that can allow folks to feel welcome?
And [00:48:00] the reason why I would argue that we need to assess what's happening first is because we What we may inadvertently do, and with our good intentions, is then begin a host of programming that either is inconsistent with a pre established culture that may not achieve the outcomes that we're hoping for, or may not be pinpointing the right problem.
So before you create something new, or say, how do I, What's happening, right? So, in what ways does my school vision and mission, there's I talk about this in principle three, there's four kind of areas that I encourage folks to do this type of landscape analysis. One is does the vision and mission of my school, is it welcoming and affirming to ethno racial diversity, right?
Looking at the second thing, what's the culture of your leadership, right? Who's on your leadership? Who's represented? Who's not represented? Whose viewpoint is elevated? Whose viewpoint is missing, right? Looking at [00:49:00] staff dynamics, right? What is the ethno racial kind of composition of my staff, right?
Thinking about age and gender diversity as well, right? And then also thinking about the fourth thing, which is instructional culture, right? So what are the expectations around teaching and learning? Whose knowledge is amplified? What types of curricula are my educators using? What what are the expectations even around the deliverables, right?
The lesson plans. Are there books that we're reading? What's the type of PD, right? We have to assess what's happening first. To then pinpoint what are the highest needs or highest leverage strategies that we can then adjust to better center the educators of color in our building. And I would argue if you're listening and you are in a place where you want to diversify your workforce, but you're having difficulty doing that, start here, right?
Start at assessing what's happening first before you [00:50:00] make any decisions. And before you add programs, before you adjust anything and if you have educators of color building welcome their input in this process. Think about what are their concerns and in what ways can you strategize around the things that they have mentioned need to change in the school?
Or conversely, maybe there's really strong aspects of the school community that can be amplified to better support and retain educators of color. Maybe you have an amazing teacher leadership program that can now transition to being a mentoring program for early career educators, and then you want to invite local student teachers from the college the educator program down the road, right?
Like, there's different ways that we can rethink our strategy, but I would encourage folks to start there, start with the landscape analysis. pinpoint what those needs are and then make change. Because there may be some things that you're unaware of that would yield a higher impact than maybe [00:51:00] some of the most obvious things.
Ross Romano: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it presents a new opportunity to implement some practices that will be effective. For everyone. So he said, like, having a diverse faculty is going to be benefit all students in different ways. It's similar. I mean, a lot of this is about individualizing versus generalizing because it could be any anything where you have any ways in which the.
The teaching population is shifting, changing you could be an elementary principal who has been there for 10 years and you just hired your first male teacher and there may be things that they react to differently or or now we're having Gen Z enter the workforce, right? And there's things that they have, or just individual differences and all of that.
Like, I think. You know, any ways that, that educators and [00:52:00] professionals in different roles are feeling supported to confidently go about their job and to be part of creating the culture, just as you know, the culture is being fostered at a leadership level are good things. And not just. Yeah, due to a shock to this, oh my gosh, now we have these new people, now I have to, now I have to start paying attention.
Right. Excellent, well, so, I mean, there's, I mean, we could talk for hours and hours, and maybe you'll have to come back again to talk more on this, or some of our other shows but Andrea Yeah, anything else you want to point our listeners to, we'll link to your book over at ASCD and your website so they can find more of your work there, but anything in particular that would be good for listeners to check out.
Andrea Terrero Gabbadon: So I'm thinking about you know, we're in this beautiful time of summer planning, right? And I realized, as I think back to my response to the last question, while doing the landscape analysis [00:53:00] is absolutely critical, you might be, as a leader, dealing with 100 million other things. And maybe your thought process is like, I don't have the capacity.
What's the low hanging fruit? If that is the case, and you're trying to figure out what is a smaller more focused version of a landscape analysis that you could probably do in an afternoon, it would be to interrogate three things, and I would argue your investigation to these three things will yield a high impact, regardless of the demographics of your educated workforce, but particularly for educators of color, right?
So I just want to leave these three things for that listener who is a leader, And really reflecting on, is their school or is their district ready for ethno racial diversity? The first thing would be, how am I supporting educators? How am I supporting their growth? How am I supporting the growth of all educators, right?
But doing so in a way that's individualized. purposeful, and that benefits the educator's long term growth. The second thing is how am I protecting my educator's [00:54:00] autonomy, right? Preserving that space for educators to use their agency and to create classroom lessons that reflect the background and respond to the needs of their students.
And these are things that are good for all kiddos and we need to be protecting the autonomy certainly of all educators. And the last thing is, in what ways am I equitably providing? Opportunities for Teacher Leadership and Advancement. Right? And if educators are in a place where they feel supported, they feel autonomous, and they feel like they have an equal chance at being a leader, or advancing to the next place in their career, that will do a game change that will be a game changer.
If there are ways in which support, autonomy, and opportunities are not present, that is where we have these emerging concerns around retention and turnover. And so I, again, kind of just moving away and closing this up. Support, autonomy, opportunities. Those are the three things. If we [00:55:00] want educators to stay, how are we looking at our systems and mechanisms for support, for autonomy, and for equitable opportunity for leadership and advancement.
Ross Romano: Listeners, yeah. Find the book support and support and retain educators of color from A SCD. We'll put the link there. You can go to Andrea's website, ilm consulting group.com and find her on LinkedIn. So we'll put all of those links where they're easy for you to find. Please also do subscribe to the authority if you have not already.
We'll have more author interviews coming your way each week and covering as many topics as we can that support you in your role and in having an impact, or visit bpodcast. network to learn about all of our shows. Andrea, thanks for being here.
Andrea Terrero Gabbadon: Thank you.
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