Math Town Hall
Written by Ryan Colon
Over the past year, members of Teaching Lab’s Net Promotor Score (NPS) math team have been working to improve our content development process. This has included everything from diving deep into a new project management platform, developing new systems to aid in collaboration, and engaging in the equity design course as a way to understand how to center equity in our design process and breathe life into Teaching Lab’s mission.
One process we have worked to revise and implement is the content-vetting protocol. As content designers, we hold a lot of power and responsibility in every decision we make, including what information is presented, what points are made, how we engage our participants, and even the assumptions we make about their learning needs and contexts.
In our professional learning, decisions made during content creation can either set the stage for teachers to explore and implement Culturally-Responsive Sustaining Education (CRSE) or not. In order to combat WSC and set the stage for CRSE, one design principle sits at the center of our content-vetting process: “cede power.” By digging into what that means and looks like, our team is able to leverage a variety of perspectives to lead to the best professional learning experience for our teachers.
Content Vetting as a Practice in Ceding Power
Designing professional learning content can often feel like a lonely endeavor. We may find ourselves creating content for a partner that has yet to be identified, their unique needs not yet fully understood. We tend to do this on tight timelines and on teams that may be stretched too thin for meaningful collaboration. Additionally, the work requires a lot of (well-meaning) assumptions about what our partners need and don’t need, what they bring to the table, and what they don’t know.
Design work does not need to be an individual sport, though. These challenges are rooted in the way we operate, not as a design truism. It’s time for us to consider ways to integrate collaboration and shared decision-making throughout the content development process. This is why our team has been reflecting on how to cede power in the design process. This principle is outlined below:
If we have found ourselves engaging with or leading a design process, we are likely experiencing having unearned power. In order to cede power, however, we first need to Notice what kinds of power, power dynamics, and power differentials currently exist and where they came from, Own our own (often unearned) power, and the implications and impact of that power on others, Advocate for the redistribution of power towards a more equitable reality which includes first having a vision for what an equitable and appropriate power distribution is for a given situation and then Cede our own power to shift us towards that reality. We call this process “No A/C,” since room temperatures tend to raise when this is happening ;-) (Ortiz 2022)
We use the content-vetting process to bring more voices into the design process and share decision-making. Because there is (unearned) power in design, by sharing the process across the team, we share power and are able to bring in diverse perspectives that lead to more thoughtful design choices.
In the content-vetting protocol, there is a clear expectation and process to share the design process: a designer shares the professional learning content they wrote (which can be really scary at first, but is so rewarding!) so that the team can experience the impact.
Engaging in the content-vetting process creates empathy for the people who will experience the professional learning, both participants (teachers, leaders, etc.) and our facilitators; we share the experience and emotions of the participants we aim to serve. Feedback is given at the moment and there is shared responsibility for making decisions, enacting change, and following up.
We use the content-vetting process to bring more perspectives into content creation, but we have more to do. There are many ways to include their voices in the design of content (including user-centered design), and content vetting is just one way. Recently we had the opportunity to share this process with the full Teaching Lab team.
One colleague noted, “The fact that you did [the content vetting] as a role-play allowed [the two designers] to have a lens of the participant—whose experience is then centered in the content-vetting process.” This is only one small piece of the pie; in order to truly shift the paradigm of teacher professional learning for educational equity, we have to intentionally incorporate the voices of those most impacted by the challenge: the teachers and leaders we serve.
Our team is also making a commitment to include the perspectives of our partnership managers, facilitators, and other stakeholders from across the organization in our content-vetting sessions. We also commit to finding a way to include actual teachers and leaders in our content-vetting process and allow them the chance to directly influence the content we create.
Ceding Power
Ceding power is like the film Inception: it requires us to spend time addressing the challenges within challenges; there are so many layers of systemic inequities to unpack on this journey to equitable education. These layers exist for our partners as well as within our own organization. To illustrate this, let me share a personal anecdote. When I stepped into the director role, I adopted a set scope and sequence for our professional learning. I’ve had to learn how to find the balance between staying true to the strategy behind our scope and sequence and being more responsive to partner needs. As my team grew, I had to learn to cede power in order to let their brilliance and originality shine, thus allowing us to meet a wide range of partner needs. This role affords me the positional power to make “final” decisions and serve as the “approver” of our content, and it is only made more complex by my intersecting racial and gender identity. As someone who has had little to no power most of her life, it’s not always easy to cede power in this role.
This is an area of growth for me (as I’m sure it is for many others), but the equity design course provided me with a framework for assessing and ceding power.
I notice power dynamics within our team and with our partners.
I acknowledge the positional power I have.
I actively seek to create structures and processes on our team that redistribute and balance power.
I let go.
Does it happen perfectly all the time? Absolutely not, but I genuinely try to be honest with myself when I struggle and get it wrong. That’s why this process is a journey and not an event. The design course has provided my team with an opening to continue to have conversations about how our identities and privilege intersect with our content design.
At all levels of this organization, we must do the heavy work of understanding the power we hold. This includes within Teaching Lab and the broader educational landscape. One of our Directors of District Design and Partnership gave a great example of this when he said, “Collaboration and letting the field inform the work we do is a key way to distribute power and responsibility.” We used the opportunity with the full team where we shared our content-vetting process to start a conversation about how they cede power within their own teams.
Sharing what we do well in a public space is always easier than sharing where we need to grow, so I challenge us all to take this private moment to consider how we hoard power, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Consider where the need to hold on to power comes from—because it’s personal and unique for each one of us. Consider using the visual below to imagine possible power dynamics at play. Consider, concretely, who is impacted when you hoard power and decision-making.
Sources:
Ortiz, Christine. “Homepage.” Equity Meets Design, 2022. https://courses.equitymeetsdesign.com/.
