Reading with Sherry Deckman and Rosa Rivera-McCutchen
Black Space: Negotiating Race, Diversity, and Belonging in the Ivory Tower
In Black Space, Sherry L. Deckman takes us into the lives of the members of the Kuumba Singers, a Black student organization at Harvard with racially diverse members, and a self-proclaimed safe space for anyone but particularly Black students. Uniquely focusing on Black students in an elite space where they are the majority, Deckman provides a case study in how colleges and universities might reimagine safe spaces. This work illuminates ways administrators, faculty, student affairs staff, and indeed, students themselves, might productively address issues of difference and anti-Blackness for the purpose of fostering critically inclusive campus environments.
Radical Care: Leading for Justice in Urban Schools
Educators often invoke the term care to describe why they entered the field and what compels them to continue. This book argues that care, as typically described and enacted, is not sufficient for leading schools, particularly those serving Black and Latinx children. Instead, school leaders need to embrace radical care. Drawing from 20 years of researching and working in New York City public schools, Rosa Rivera-McCutchen outlines the five components of radical care: adopting an antiracist stance, cultivating authentic relationships, believing in students’ and teachers’ capacity for excellence, leveraging power strategically, and embracing a spirit of radical hope.
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