By Melissa Salazar, Ph.D., ESCALA CEO and Founder
As Dr. Garcia pointed out in her last blog post, this year is shaping up to be a challenge for practitioners in Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs). The spread of anti-DEI sentiment from states and now by federal legislators means that many more HSI practitioners may find themselves in the double bind of having to push forward their HSI race-centered initiatives within a government or even institution that actively discourages it. Dr. Garcia made the case several years ago that in spite of the anti-DEI legislation there are structural ways HSI practitioners can continue working on improving their Latine student outcomes. Considering the current climate, the strategies described in that post are worth a revisit.
At ESCALA, our professional development organization, I've heard from several HSI partners that the chilly external climate for equity has increased the internal resistance to HSI-based work. I'd like to share some of ESCALA's training strategies to support those in this situation, hoping you'll find them helpful for your own work. Over the past decade we’ve worked with thousands of staff, faculty and administrators in our various programs and along the way we have experienced many “resistors”– people who question why systemic racism, whiteness, and racial identities are important to discuss in HSIs, or worse, try to disrupt the trainings we give. With the right process strategies, you can reduce the negative impact of equity resistors and may even convert some initial resistors into equity advocates down the road.
Strategy #1: Teach colleagues to recognize and expect discomfort as a natural part of learning and change.
While it would be easier to just keep preaching to the choir, for your HSIs to truly transform, it’s important to engage your entire institution in equity work, not just the colleagues who are eager to do the work (or who have it in their title.) For this reason, you’ll have to consider how to engage people in your institution in learning about what it means to work in an HSI who have radically different developmental understandings of equity, racism and whiteness, as well as commitments for improving Latine student success. One way that we account for these differences at ESCALA is to start with what might feel counterintuitive - reflecting on what’s common to all. At the start of each session, we align our shared goals as higher education practitioners: to improve our students’ learning, advance the educational goals of our community, and at the most basic level, to feel like we are doing a good job. After the group is feeling good, we have them reflect on the hard work of learning, and the reasons that negative emotions may arise in talking about improving as an HSI. Naming some of these reasons helps; perhaps for some it’s a discomfort with change and knowing how much work it might be, for others it might be a lack of expertise on the topic of the workshop, and/or preconceptions that they will be ‘called out’. No one likes being a novice, and people in higher education are no different. We find that starting out with these 3 things: defining terms and concepts, speaking the common group objectives and then laying out the emotional landscape of equity can go a long way towards getting people to lean into tougher conversations later.
Strategy #2: Sharing racial equity data? Have the group create observations first, rather than discuss what it means.
HSI equity efforts require teams to routinely examine student outcomes by students’ race and ethnicity. If you’ve done this with colleagues in your HSI, you might recognize that discussions about racially disaggregated data can be another flashpoint for resistance, and cause hostility within the group about why there are differences in student outcomes by race. To prevent this from occurring we recommend that you do not allow open ‘free for all’ discussions when data by race is being presented. Instead, we recommend the ATLAS Protocol, a tool that creates rules for how groups of educators discuss student data. The reason ATLAS is useful in HSIs is that practitioners in varying stages of development may have very different explanations for why equity gaps exist in student outcomes. Practitioners in early developmental understandings of systemic racism may question the validity of the data or blame students. Others in the group may want to jump immediately into a discussion of institutional racism and exclusion, and what policies and practices need to change. ATLAS slows the group’s divisions down by using a stepwise system where the group first reflects on what they see. Only after several cycles of group and individual reflection and discussion about what the data shows/doesn’t show is the group allowed to draw interpretations of why gaps may exist. We often employ ATLAS when we facilitate mixed groups such as students, faculty, staff and presidents and find it helps the group to develop a more cohesive understanding of what questions to ask, not what conclusions to draw.
Strategy #3: Allow time for people to process through their emotions, but not let it take over.
The final recommended strategy is what to do when big emotions exist and how to prevent them from taking over and derailing HSI work. Quite a lot has been written about how shame and guilt felt by white practitioners can derail the work to serve students (and the anti-DEI argument that “DEI work causes hostility” is a case in point.) We find that practitioners of color also have many emotions they would like to express during discussions of racial inequities (usually despair and frustration over lack of resources and support for HSI work) but they share them less often usually due to positionality or fear of playing into stereotypes. To counteract these racial inequities and ensure that emotions don’t decenter the collective work, we recommend embedding times to reflect on what emotions are coming up. Private journaling, meditative breathing, and short pair shares are all effective ways to defuse the potential of any individual’s emotions to disrupt the group process. With time to reflect and process we find that negative emotions often fade away and have less power. What information can you get from the feelings you are experiencing right now? is a great self-reflective writing prompt that our colega Dra. Maribel Jiménez often asks participants in our programs. This could be one that you adopt as well.
As you embark on this difficult year, remind yourself and your colleagues prior to discussing racial issues that acknowledging both the reality of systemic racism and the emotions it generates is essential for fostering meaningful dialogue about racial inequities in your HSI. And for those of you who feel restricted in using equity or race in your work, know that DEI happens every time you help your colleagues better understand your Latine students’ experiences. Hard conversations are a necessary part of the work and they can be a lot more productive with some rules of engagement and time for reflection. If you could use some community in this area we invite you to join us for our free HSI Practitioner Support Circles, open to anyone who wants to engage in discussions of managing emotions and dialogues about race in this challenging time.
For more information about ESCALA’s programs for HSIs visit https://www.escalaeducation.com/
Dr. Melissa Salazar is the founder of ESCALA Educational Services Inc. which in 2012 became the first professional development organization dedicated to educating practitioners in Hispanic Serving Institutions. Prior to starting ESCALA, she was a teacher educator and taught culturally responsive Education, Chemistry, and Nutrition courses at HSIs in California and New Mexico. As an “near dropout” in STEM she is dedicated to ensuring educators in all disciplines enact culturally responsive practices for Hispanic and Latine students. You can reach her at escalaeducation@gmail.com or at linkedin.com/in/escalaeducation.
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