Networks Anchored in Interdependence
April 4, 2022
“Anything that reaches toward the sky must have a strong foundation to hold it up. That’s how I think of movements - movements reach toward the sky to achieve what has been deemed impossible. And in order to stay sturdy, they need a base - people who keep the movements anchored in the needs, dreams, and lived experiences of those who are directly impacted by the problem at hand.”
Equity work requires community: learning in public, holding ourselves and each other accountable, trying new approaches and working through complex challenges collectively. There are no ready answers or solutions to the complex and unpredictable challenges we’re facing, whether in our classrooms or our climate. But solutions and positive changes (large and small) can emerge through the dynamic interactions of diverse people in relationship, working and learning together.
At the National Equity Project, we’ve been exploring the possibilities of networks for over 25 years, since our founding days with the Coalition for Essential Schools and our support of Oakland’s Small Schools movement. We’ve supported the design and development of leadership networks and communities of practice with school, community, and foundation partners across the country. In addition to our ongoing support of partner networks, today we’re bringing what we know and continue to learn about the catalytic potential of networks into a few NEP-hosted spaces: our Rebel Leader Collective, Black Teacher Project Fellowship, and Building Equitable Learning Environments (BELE) District Network.
One of our biggest lessons is that networks must be, as Alicia Garza named, “anchored in the needs, dreams, and lived experiences of those who are directly impacted by the problem at hand” (Garza, 2020). In BELE, we’re anchored in the leadership and demands of BIPOC youth; in our BTP Fellowship, we center the needs of Black teachers; and our Rebel Leaders Collective is grounded in giving educational leaders who are not in traditional positions of hierarchical leadership what they need in order to thrive and be successful.
Pando aspen clone at Fish Lake, Image by U.S. Forest Service. “When the Pando clone was discovered, scientists named it with a Latin word that means “I spread.” Pando is an aspen clone that originated from a single seed and spreads by sending up new shoots from the expanding root system.” Learn more about the Pando clone.
“All life organizes into networks, not neat boxes or hierarchies. Wherever you look in the natural world, you find only networks, not org charts. These networks are always incredibly messy, dense, tangled, and extraordinarily effective at creating greater sustainability for all who participate in them… Unending processes of collaboration and symbiosis characterize life. These relationships of mutual benefit lead to the creation of systems that are more supportive and protective of individuals than if they had tried to live alone. It’s important to remember that nothing living lives alone. Life always and only organizes as systems of interdependency.”
The potential of a network is in its connections; when we are networked, we give and we take on behalf of something bigger than our individual interactions. The networks that will sustain our movement are places where people are both humble and generous: intentional spaces for people to be vulnerable, ask questions and name what they need or don’t know, and likewise be bountiful with sharing knowledge, resources, access to power and decision-making. These “relationships of mutual benefit” allow for new possibilities to emerge by helping us access “the intelligence and skillfulness of the whole.” (Wheatley, 1999) Our network approach is grounded in Liberatory Design, particularly the mindset of “seeking liberatory collaboration” as we support leaders to transform traditional power dynamics and co-design approaches to shifting conditions, practices, policies, relationships, and experiences.
“Networks are about collective knowledge and action. These complex environments are dynamic, as opposed to being static, rigid, hierarchical - the way most districts are arranged. In a hierarchical state, everybody is sort of working in their little sphere of influence, but there’s not much permeability and certainly not much room for sharing knowledge, wisdom, or experience across the system.
We use the word transformation a lot. It’s a powerful word in the equity and social justice space, but transformation is super rare. In a dynamic system, the system doesn’t transform, it evolves and adapts to varying conditions. What I see in networks is a chance for people to be in a different kind of relationship.
There’s a popular phrase that ‘change happens at the speed of trust.’ It’s 110% true that if people are not in relationship, change is not gonna happen. At NEP, we’re pretty good at creating conditions for people to get into relationship with each other. It’s a precondition for sense-making that can lead to collective action.”
About Our Networks
Black Teacher Project Fellowship
Since 2018, the Black Teacher Project has offered a cohort-based fellowship for Black teachers who are committed to deeply exploring Black Identity Development, Wellness, Black Leadership for Liberation, and Quality Instruction Rooted in Blackness. We launched our 3rd cohort in 2022: an 18-Month experience for Black teacher leaders who have the desire, influence, and capacity to support an effort to forge systems-level change.
Fellows focus on building the knowledge, skills, and disposition needed to catalyze and influence the emergence of transformative practices that foster wellness, thriving, liberated learning, and increased opportunity for teachers, students, and communities. The BTP Fellowship builds a supportive community of restoration and renewal through critical friendship, action learning, and shared experience.
Building Equitable Learning Environments (BELE) District Network
The BELE District Network builds on the work of two regional NEP District Networks, the Midwest District Network launched in 2019, and the Leading for Equity within Redesign Network (LERN) launched in 2020. The current, BELE District Network, is supported by an innovative collaboration between the National Equity Project and the BELE Network Learning Partners including UChicago Consortium for School Research, Project for Education Research that Scales (PERTS), and the Collaborative for Social, Emotional and Academic Learning (CASEL).
The (BELE) District Network is a cohort of 17 school districts from across the country committed to dream, disrupt, and co-design more equitable, healing-centered, and joyful purposes of school and approaches to teaching and learning in partnership with Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) students. By working in deep and sustained partnership with BIPOC students and their families, school districts learn how to co-design approaches that ensure that every student emerges from K-12 education with strong academic skills, social-emotional wellness and intelligence, a sense of agency and civic responsibility, an awareness and appreciation of their multiple identities and a broader set of competencies that equip them to be healthy, happy contributing adults who can make a positive change in the world.
Rebel Leader Collective
Building on the success of our Leading for Equity Fellowship program (5 cohorts, 2016-2020), in 2021 we launched our first group-based leadership development program – the Rebel Leader Collective – for groups of leaders who have expressed a commitment to equity, belonging, and collective liberation in their communities. This network serves as a call to action for leaders and organizations to invest in the skill and capacity of their people to lead for real change by tapping into collective intelligence, creativity, and courage; to co-design new possibilities towards greater equity, justice and love; and to practice rebel leadership.
“A network can create both a space to bridge connection, and a space to create the necessary tensions of critical discourse and push. In the BELE Network, we are focusing significantly on the voices of students who the system has marginalized. We’re working on what it means to be in partnership with students, to co-design. We have created an important disequilibrium by centering the student voices, and we’re still learning how to help the systems really respond. We’re getting them better at listening, but what does it mean for a district to actually respond to student demands? Not just at a felt, empathetic level, but to take action collaboratively.
The typical approach to district change has been driven in a channel: “we’re gonna have professional learning and development, we think that’s gonna lead to change.” It’s generally truncated to some part of the system and some set of people. And then years and years go by and the system’s not changing. In our BELE District Network sites, we are creating a team that intentionally interrupts the hierarchy and makes it possible for innovation to come from anywhere. Innovation can come from this student. It can come from a teacher, it can come from a parent, a board member. ”
Additional Resources
Margaret Wheatley
Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown
An Evolutionary Roadmap for Belonging and Co-Liberation by Sonali Sangeeta Balajee