In this series, we explore the roles teachers can play in shaping AI technologies to meet the needs of their classrooms and communities.  Today’s educators are navigating extraordinary challenges—the youth mental health crisis, the profound impacts of poverty, systemic inequities, and the eroding support for public education. They shoulder the weight of preparing students—whether in the most under-resourced urban environments or the most affluent settings—for an increasingly complex and  uncertain  future.

This month, we’re doing something special at 228 Accelerator. We’re featuring an essay by Sharon Michaels, Ed.D, the Founder of Disrupt Forward, a social impact consulting firm committed to enhancing the well-being of K-12 teachers and school leaders. I believe Dr. Michaels’ words capture much of my own feelings at this moment, and I hope you find solace in them, as I have.

In times of disruption, schools face a critical opportunity: not just to adapt but to redesign systems that prioritize equity and inclusion. By centering marginalized voices, fostering empathetic relationships, and modeling equity in every interaction, educators can shape a more just future. This moment calls for more than resilience—it calls for a collective commitment to build environments where all students and staff thrive, living the future we envision today.

In the grand tapestry of history, the stories we tell form a web of intersecting lines. Some of these lines are celebrated and pulled to the forefront, woven into the fabric of our collective memory. Others are buried and tangled in the background, their importance obscured by the prominence of a few. Cesar Chavez is one of those bright lines—a leader whose legacy shines through the history of labor movements in America.

When she grows and is allowed to grow, her core is strong. When crowded, she will stretch up to the sun for light. When she has room, she branches left and right in all directions.

At 228 Accelerator, we are driven by the belief that the most powerful changes begin at the margins, where voices often go unheard.

Today, we are thrilled to reshare an essay by Lauren Overton, Principal at Penn Alexander School District in Philadelphia and a good friend of our organization.

As a reminder to readers, we’ll include the introduction to Andre’s piece here, then we’ll jump into the second lesson he shared with us.

For the past three years, I have been working on my doctoral studies in educational and organizational leadership the centers the significance of organic critical literacies (Campano et al., 2013) and formulating a research study that embodies multiple truths about myself: my intersectional identity as Filipinx and Queer; my love for the brilliance and authenticity of our queer youth; and my passion for collectivist and collaborative inquiries.

For the past three years, I have been working on my doctoral studies in educational and organizational leadership the centers the significance of organic critical literacies (Campano et al., 2013) and formulating a research study that embodies multiple truths about myself: my intersectional identity as Filipinx and Queer; my love for the brilliance and authenticity of our queer youth; and my passion for collectivist and collaborative inquiries.

On Friday, May 17, 2024, our country celebrated the 70th anniversary of Brown vs The Board of Education—the landmark decision that declared segregation an inequality, legally mandated the integration of schools, and pushed us closer to creating a multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic democracy.

Everybody loved Gladys’ sweet potato pie. On the highest of holy days, this was our communion—in each bite, we shared the memories of the fingers that assessed the size and readiness of the sweet potatoes, the hands before that selected the right ones, boiled them, and peeled the skin; and the muscular and tender arms that whipped the cooked potatoes—thick, sweet, buttery— also held the stories that never got outdoors. They stayed inside and folded into family secrets and spices.

Exploring the depths of cultural memory and the hues of identity, this post delves into personal memories that resurfaced after witnessing the latest rendition of 'The Color Purple'. This introspective piece reflects on Caroline's vivid holiday experiences, interweaving personal narratives and blood memories with insights from Toni Morrison's 'The Bluest Eye'. It contemplates how schools can act as conduits for cultural and racial understanding, breathing life into collective memory and reorienting relationships. This blog not only acknowledges the intricate tapestry of past and present but also envisions a future where diverse experiences and memories coalesce, advocating for a shift in educational paradigms towards inclusivity and environmental justice.

The New Year welcomes us to engage in instants of reflection.

We collectively pause, reconsider, recollect, and remember. These rituals may manifest in commitments to our bodies — to drink less or lose weight — or they may be slower, otherworldly journeys that challenge the beliefs about the body, its purpose, and its home. For the latter, each step is a pilgrimage of sorts: a journey intentionally crafted to remember and to put the self back together again.

As a child, I did not know that Bayard Rustin was a gay black man with brilliance, strategy, and a prophetic fire that fueled a vision that many could not see or imagine. As the chief architect of the March on Washington, few people could imagine what the multicultural, multiracial democracy would look like once realized. The dream, inspired by the imagination of a black woman—Prathia Hall, and rhetorically remixed by Martin Luther King—crystallized the dream for the masses. But the dream itself—an iteration of the multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural democracy may actually have been realized in the March on Washington, itself.

Anti-blackness is the progeny of white supremacy that haunts not just white people; it haunts everyone. It haunts our standards of beauty. It haunts our structure of language and expression. It casts spells of inadequacy, urgency, and scarcity, fomenting fracture in its wake. It waits patiently for its next host, exploiting heartbreak, grief, and misfortune. Its conjuring strikes the fear of deprivation and poverty, forcing bodies to conform to invisible standards of acceptance that always seem to shapeshift in proximity–quite devilish indeed.

Summer School was our 11-week practice of “holding it together” and sharing this burden with other educators. We humbly stand in the lineages of black and white teachers who taught enslaved black Americans how to read. We stand in the lineage of learners who spoke their languages as acts of resistance in Indian boarding schools. We stand in the lineage of Horace Tate, who created safe and brave spaces for black teachers to organize and align in progressive teaching practices in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. And we stand in solidarity with all educators who continue to do the hard thing because it's often the right thing.

You are not alone. We are standing with you. And the ancestors are, too.

By Lauren Overton

I was first introduced to this West African proverb when I heard Dr. Howard Stevenson speak. I was in an executive leadership program, hoping to become a school principal. Dr. Stevenson opened with this adage and then segued into stories about his childhood, his family, and fatherhood.

First, transformative empathy can challenge all permutations of body supremacy, with the designer seeing herself as a part of the design challenge, not separate from it. The notion of a fragmented thought system would create the ground for this type of thinking and the supremacist acts engendered.

This piece is written for all the LGBTQ+ educators and educator leaders, centering Black and Brown queer educators, doing the work - publicly, behind the scenes, and on ourselves.

Creating a multicultural democracy in schools and organizations is possible, but first, individuals must learn how to prepare their physical bodies to design for equity.

Characterizing equity issues as a paradox allows the nature and form of the phenomena change. Revealing paradoxes and contradictions allows us to begin to design equitable experiences that make the lines of the paradoxes visible, not to other people, but to holders themselves.