ClassLink

What do we stand to lose when we finally give up on “those kids”, when we think of discipline only as a series of escalating consequences and punishments, and security as a system that eliminates the freedom and psychological safety to be brilliant? We are often told: “Achieving equity is a marathon, not a sprint”, but so many of us are tired of running marathons with no end in sight. It’s tempting to get overwhelmed by the big picture, to believe that the system is irreparably broken and call it a day. But we are the system and we, as educators, have real power to engineer conditions at the human level that have the potential to create tangible change for our “hardest to reach” kids. If we could, minute by minute, begin to make practical choices that foster a learning environment that works for the “toughest cases”, each and every student could begin to thrive, to feel joy, and to learn. We start this work by acknowledging the pain that we all have felt and still feel, and then we imagine what a better school day might look like tomorrow.