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The Conversation |
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BE 1! is a conversation about transforming the Kansas City, Missouri School District (KCMSD) into a district that creates educational achievement for all scholars. To be the transformation we wish to see, we must be aware of the dominant conversation about our schools, acknowledge our participation in it and choose actions that create a new conversation. Awareness The foundation of the dominant community conversation about our school district sounds like this: "There is no hope for that district." This conversation comes across in our actions and occurs at work, in our faith communities, in our neighborhoods and in our homes. The dominant conversation inspires and even glorifies apathy. Inside of this conversation, there can be no transformation. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Our willingness to converse directly about this dominant conversation and its impacts -- to be fully aware of it -- determines our capacity to impact it. Acknowledgment
BE 1! speaks directly about the dominant conversation. Doing so creates an opening for a new conversation and with it new possibilities for our scholars. This new conversation empowers us to assume ownership of our school district rather than endure the experience of being victimized by it.
Action
To be aware of the dominant conversation clears the way for a new conversation. To acknowledge our role in its perpetuation allows us an opening to create a new conversation that is empowering (rather than simply recreating a different one that -- if we're lucky -- would only be slightly more/slightly less disempowering). Two requests, when engaged from a place of acknowledgment, create the transformational action of the BE 1! conversation:
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