As an organization of former and current educators and leaders, we at 2Revolutions are consistently engaging in the difficult conversations and training for a constant cycle of improvement. When you are in the education world, you know there is never a point in time when you do everything exactly the right way, and when you have learned everything possible. There is always room for growth and things that need to be learned, unlearned, enhanced and changed. We all are human first and we all have flaws. A diamond with a flaw is more valuable than a brick without a flaw. What are you allowing to weigh you down? Throughout the last couple of months, a trend has emerged in our conversations, in our partner meetings, in planning for our internal development sessions, and amongst our coaching staff: that trend is where the title comes from for this piece. “Say the thing.”

Global Lab Schools are a community practice that is driven by a focus on instruction, and is anchored in learner-centered and equitable practices. Throughout the school year, coaches from 2Revolutions and partners from overseas, work with school leaders and their implementation teams to determine school-wide opportunities and build skill sets and systems that will prioritize those opportunities into growth.

Race in America has traditionally been viewed through a monoracial lens. Hence the “one-drop rule” of hypodescent, where having one drop of black ancestry meant one was raced as black. Hence the omnipresence of the “What are you?” question. Hence the insistence of diversity experts to “view America as a ‘salad bowl’ with separate racial/ethnic contributions, view diversity from a narrow-minded American viewpoint, and rely on one critical theory - the ownership of power - that requires each race/ethnic group to be completely separate in a hierarchically oppressed system” (Baxley, 2008).