As many know, in addition to teaching for seven years and leading schools for fourteen years, I have been public speaking for 39 years. In preparing for the over 3000 presentations I have conducted over the past 39 years, there’s always a preliminary discussion with the client to learn all of the particulars relative to the client’s needs and everything I need to know about the audience toward maximizing my effectiveness. Once I get to the venue, I ensure that I get there early enough to conduct my own audience analysis…said differently, “reading the room.” I want to know all I can know about that audience before I stand before them. What’s the mood of the room? What’s the “temperature” of the room? What’s the culture of the room? Who’s sitting with whom? Is it a young audience? Is it an older audience? Is it a mixed age audience? Is it a racially diverse audience? It is a predominantly white audience? Is it a predominantly black audience? Are audience members sitting together along racial lines? Are there administrators in the audience? I can go on and on but I think you get the picture. If I’m going to be the best version of myself for that audience, I need to analyze the audience….read that room so that I am confident in “who I need to be” toward delivering the best and most appropriate content and using the best and most appropriate delivery style.
As this is an essay on equity and it’s classroom implications, you might ask what’s the relevance of the aforementioned paragraph? My response: EVERYTHING. As a speaker, I have to consider who’s in the room. Let me give you an example…there are times when my audience is 100% black and the event location is in an urban, black environment. There are other times when my audience is all white and situated in a white environment where even the politics of the community conflict with my own. Question – do you think I am the same speaker in both environments? Of course not. The difference between the two environments is like night and day. I have to adapt in two salient ways: My content and my delivery style. In other words, treating the two audiences generically or in a “their just people” approach will translate into a disastrous day for everyone involved. In other words, this is really just plain old common sense. We have to adapt to our environment toward making connections.
Schools and classrooms work the same way. As I type, today in February 10, 2025. We have a new U.S. president and an executive order was signed on January 20, 2025 which is entitled, Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing. Obviously, this has public and charter school implications because schools are government entities. To that end, I want to take just a few minutes of your time to advocate for children. Just as no two audiences are the same, neither are any two children. If there are 20 children in a classroom, there are 20 children who are very different from one another. So many educators are in a frenzy right now around DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) because rightfully so, they don't want to bring any repercussions to themselves, and superintendents (and school boards) don’t want to lose one penny of federal funding, which is understandable. HOWEVER...and to be clear...the children are the big losers in this equation. With my focus being on the "E" in DEI for this essay, equity has a multiplicity of definitions which is a challenge in and of itself for schools due to a lack of universality relative to definition. As a long time educator, I have added to the chorus of definitions. I simply define it as, Meeting the children where they are…AS THEY ARE!
What I mean by this definition is that children are bringing their own uniqueness….their own individuality to the classroom every day which is inclusive of their experiential backgrounds with life, how they make sense out of new information, their reading and math readiness, not to mention their unique cultural backgrounds relative to how they make sense of their worlds through the own lens, and so much more. This is an equity issue meaning meeting the children where they are…AS THEY ARE as opposed to refraining from meeting the children where they are…AS THEY ARE and instead treating the children generically through an equality lens where they are all treated the same, regardless of differences. I am certain that everyone who will read this essay will agree that treating them all the same is detrimental to most of the children in the classroom given the diversity of the room. Equity must therefore be the norm, the standard and the mission.
I say all of this to say, that whatever is happening at the federal level regarding government programs, as educators, we can never, ever lose sight of the academic, social and emotional needs of the children. The children are why we do this work and if we are truly serious about them; in fact, if we truly love them, their uniqueness and their individuality can never become obscure in our classrooms.
Principal Kafele's new book, What Is My Value INSTRUCTIONALLY to the Teachers I Supervise? is available at Amazon or ASCD.org.