Modeling Behavior, Consistency, Collective Accountability, and Relationship building You can’t hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree.—Malcolm X Being a principal is a rewarding profession. It is also one of the...
Author - Sharif El-Mekki
America is turning a corner. Or so it hopes; so it claims. We have just elected a rational adult to the Presidency, thanks in no small part to the turnout of Black Americans in places like Philadelphia, Atlanta...
“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.” —Angela Davis Last year today, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania took a noteworthy step to change the unacceptable: a...
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” -Audre Lorde After one of the most tumultuous and fraught elections of our lifetime, Joe Biden was chosen to be...
The more things change, the more they stay the same.” It’s hard to disagree when you consider the totality of the Black radical tradition—our struggle today, and the struggles of those who came before...
There has been an admittedly welcome rush to support Black and brown communities and causes in our national reckoning with systemic racism. Some $5 billion of philanthropic funding has flowed in support of racial equity work in...
In the 1930s, the incomparable Billie Holiday sang about the horror of Black lynchings—the strange fruit hanging from Southern trees, the blood on the leaves that flows from the savage anti-Blackness at the root. Nearly a...
I was a principal at Mastery Charter School-Shoemaker in Philadelphia for many years. We took to heart the concept of windows and mirrors, decorating our walls with images and quotes from popular heroes; Malcolm X, Dr. King, Rosa...
As a principal of three neighborhood schools serving majority Black students, I was always in talent acquisition mode. More on point, I was always in talent acquisition and cultivation mode, since the best recruitment strategy is...
By now the names of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Rayshard Brooks have permeated our national dialogue. That is to say, most white Americans can identify them as the latest victims of an unjust and violent policing culture in...