CYCLE Turns 3!
Friday the 13th evokes ominous undertones in our broader culture, but for CYCLE, this past Friday, November 13, 2020 marked the 3rd anniversary of our launch at Roger Williams University. It also marked 8 months of our team working remotely in the midst of the COVID-19 global pandemic, 10 looong days of aftermath for the US presidential election, and one more day, like this one, when our CYCLE team was hard at work in support of youth and community leadership in education to advance racial and social justice in our public schools.
In past years, our anniversary post has provided opportunity for reflection, almost a year-in-review. And, while CYCLE has accomplished a good deal over the past 12 months, it seems that our time and mental energy these days could benefit from looking forward. In multiple conversations with staff and partners last week, we noted that CYCLE is turning a proverbial corner, perhaps starting a new chapter, or even expanding our horizon. Whichever metaphor is at play, we are full of excitement and anticipation as we look forward into our fourth year of existence!
Lead with Organizing
As core to our mission, CYCLE supports youth, families, and educators to organize, fight for, and win policies and practices that create equitable opportunities and just outcomes for every student. For us, the change we want to see in the world comes about when communities organize and build power for social justice. The lens of community organizing focuses our work by centering and prioritizing the experiences and expertise of people most negatively impacted by racial, cultural, and class-based oppression.
When working with youth, parents, and community members, our focus on organizing can be seen through our anchoring of the OurSchoolsPVD alliance on the local level, to support the coordination of community-based youth-driven powerbuilding in the context of the RI state takeover the Providence Public School District (PPSD). OurSchoolsPVD is poised to deepen its work in this coming year by forging greater ties with youth, parents, educators, decision-makers and the community at large.
We also believe that effective organizing is grounded in deep analysis. Thus, we are excited to launch our CYCLE Strategy Institute (CSI) in January, which will be accepting applications soon! This year, CSI will develop a collective online learning environment that blends skills training, knowledge sharing, and coaching to support grassroots, progressive organizations that are fighting for educational equity to become more effective at planning campaigns and building long-term, sustainable power. The goal of CSI is to help participants to develop organizing and issue campaigns for addressing and solving root causes of problems facing low-income communities of color in the public education system by concentrating on three fundamental campaign planning areas that are key to building sustainable, grassroots-driven power to win: 1) Analyze; 2) Strategize; and 3) Implement. If you know a team that wants to think intentionally about how to generate new analysis and power building strategy for their next, or current campaign, then let them know about CSI!
What’s the SCORE!?
Last month, CYCLE hosted our Organizing Dispositions for Educational Leadership Conference to advance the idea that educational leaders need to learn from, and think and act more like, community organizers if we are to realize the promise of education as a means to collective liberation. The lessons learned from our conference experience will not only be shared on our website in the coming weeks, but will also inform our approach to working with education systems leaders going forward. It is in this light we are thrilled to announce the Schools & Communities Organizing for Racial Equity (SCORE) project, in partnership with the Social Policy Hub for Equity Research in Education (SPHERE) at Rhode Island College and Parents Leading for Educational Equity (PLEE).
SCORE is a collaborative, action-oriented research project that will bring together an intergenerational community design team consisting of youth currently attending PPSD and parent leaders from PLEE. With support from CYCLE and SPHERE, this team will develop a tool, or “SCOREcard,” that will assess PPSD on equity indicators that the community identifies as important. Too often, accountability for school improvement and success relies on oversimplified measures, such as standardized tests, that leave out the important perspectives and expertise of youth, parents, and community members. In alignment with developing organizing dispositions for educational leadership, SCORE seeks to shift the lines of accountability for school improvement so that they are community-driven, collaborative, and equity-oriented, and so that leaders and educators in PPSD can understand and be responsive to the educational priorities that are important to youth and families.
What Youth Need
The lifeblood of CYCLE has always been our work with youth organizing groups from across New England. Our many partners, who we connect with and convene via the New England Youth Organizing Network (NEYON), teach us so much about what it means to prioritize the leadership of young people. Amidst the national and local conversations about reopening public schools in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, an observation we heard over and over again as we connected with youth leaders throughout the region was that school reopening conversations rarely included the perspectives of youth. Instead, these conversations revolved around adult needs and broader community economic concerns. Without taking away from the importance of these frames, our youth partners pointed out that it is not only during times of crisis (like a pandemic) when the voices, perspectives, and leadership of youth are not heeded, it is in all times.
What would it look like if we authentically considered what youth need, as defined by youth themselves, when making decisions not only about school reopening, but about schooling in general? We are fortunate to work with partners grounded in youth leadership who can provide ready-made answers to this question. For example, Hearing Youth Voices from New London, CT, developed the comprehensive framework, Schools That Work for Us, by centering the experiences and wisdom of young people. Along with Students for Educational Justice, HYV is also one of the youth organizations anchoring the Anti-Racist Teaching and Learning Collective in CT, that includes youth organizing groups and educators who are organizing for statewide adoption of anti-racist teaching and learning practices. Because of our unique privilege and position of being connected to efforts like these across New England, through NEYON, we will be promoting a #WhatYouthNeed social media campaign that can help rewrite the narratives around how decisions about public education are made and what happens day-to-day in our public schools.
Teamwork Makes the Dream Work
Finally, we could not do the work we do without an amazing CYCLE team! Five of the seven founding staff at CYCLE remain and we have welcomed three new staff members over the past three years. In addition, we anticipate adding at least three new team members in the coming months. Our team is made up of wonderfully dynamic individuals, who we hope that you will get to know as our work continues to grow and expand. Over the course of this coming year, be on lookout for periodic profiles of CYCLE team members as we celebrate our growth! In the meantime, please never hesitate to reach out to let us know what you’re up to and explore ways we might be able to, in the words of Mariame Kaba, “imagine while we build,” together.