INTRODUCTION
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quity work is not the next best thing—it is the thing. It is the lens through which we as educators and citizens see everything in our society. I liken it to a journey; and no matter where you are in your equity journey, you are a part of the system of education, and your learning can make a difference. It is neither another curriculum nor professional learning. It cannot be reduced to a few hours of work or a checklist. Instead, equity work is a state of mind and a set of values; it is how we talk to people and how we see students and families. It is about creating a counternarrative to the way things have always been done and challenging the status quo. When an educator complains about a student by saying, “He is always late,” equity stops to look deeper before it asks, “Why doesn’t he want to go to class?” Equity is inclusive and states “our students” instead of “those kids.” Equity centers students and families and shouts, “Their families love them and want the best for them” instead of “They don’t value education like we do.” I once heard an educator note that we can’t talk about equity in schools until we talk about how schools were never meant to be equitable in the first place. The bold simplicity of this statement struck me. I had never heard this said so plainly. Indeed, as far back as the late eighteenth century, Thomas Jefferson (1814) proposed two tracks of learning in the United States: one for the laboring (to qualify them for their pursuits and duties) and one for the learned (as a foundation for further acquirements). The learned track was for those who could in the future conduct “the affairs of the nation” (Jefferson, 1814). For generations, Black, Latino/a, and Indigenous students were barred from any form of formal schooling and faced serious repercussions for becoming literate (Race Forward, 2006). There is a long history in education of disproportionality in discipline data between White and Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) students, institutional bias against groups that have been marginalized, and curricula steeped in Whiteness 1
