It takes a village: Education in post-DEI Iowa

They sat me down in late November. I had just rejoined my sophomore class after a brief maternity leave; at the height of the teen mom epidemic that saw seven babies born to every 100 girls in my age range, I was certainly not the only girl in my class who had a baby that year. However, I was the only one brought down to the tiny meeting room in the main office of Iowa City West and told they “just didn’t believe I would be successful there anymore.”

I can remember their flat expressions — the principal and the school counselor, who had barely offered me a passing glance before this moment. I felt so embarrassed, so ashamed. I had never even had a detention. Never been in trouble at school. Never skipped a class. While I was in the hospital, one of my teachers actually showed up to tell me I’d won the essay contest I had submitted the morning I went into labor. Kicked out of high school. In sophomore year, your high school socialization might as well be the whole world. I felt incredibly isolated, the meeting room table an ocean, and myself drifting further and further from everyone else my age.

It was over 15 years later when the book Pushout by Dr. Monique Morris was released that I discovered I was far from alone. So much of the narrative about the school to prison pipeline had focused on the criminalization of Black boys that until this critical work, the stories about girls had been missed. It wasn’t until I read Pushout that I found language for what had happened to me. This wasn’t just my story — it was a pattern. Across the country, Black girls are punished not for behavior, but for being visible. For being too loud, too quiet, too expressive, too withdrawn. The line between support and surveillance is often drawn along racial lines. As Morris writes, “Too many Black girls are misunderstood and mischaracterized, and therefore rendered vulnerable to victimization.” I had internalized my removal as a personal failure. In truth, it was a systemic one.

What does it say about a school system that views pregnancy as a disciplinary infraction? Or that punishes girls for showing up with trauma instead of wrapping support around them? When I read Pushout, I finally saw the thread connecting my experience to thousands of others. The data is damning — Black girls are six times more likely to be suspended than white girls. Not because they misbehave more, but because they are perceived differently.

This kind of representation, acknowledgment, and research is presently under siege in our country. Labeled “DEI,” and vilified because some of those who discover history has provided them unearned privilege that is not enjoyed by everyone to become uncomfortable, and they prioritize their feelings above all else. In order to avoid feeling this discomfort, the current administration has taken the slaughter of DEI federal — slashing funding for research and programming that had been making steady progress on these issues for years. It is truly challenging, evidently, to discover that you never pulled yourself up by the bootstraps. You were issued boots. Loans. Land. Access. Economic mobility. The benefit of the doubt. Freedom. Subsidies. Investment vehicles. Education. Second chances. The ability to have that baby and go back to class.

Last night, I observed a master class as Morris interviewed the namesake of the hit show Abbott Elementary and the inspiration for Sheryl Lee Ralph’s character, Joyce Abbott. The two educators discussed, at length, what it looks like to serve as an intentional and integral part of the village that raises a child. Both cited their own personal policies of no suspensions and no expulsions; Ms. Abbott in the context of her classroom, and Ms. Morris in the school that she founded.

Ms Abbott: “For a child to be successful, everyone is a stakeholder. You have to include every important stakeholder in that child’s life. It’s important to know the community that you’re serving in. Do you know the churches, the grandparents, the rec centers, the coaches, the dance instructors … Several parents said the only time they ever got a call was when the child was doing something wrong, especially for students who had been labeled with behavior problems.”

Dr. Morris: “I want to reinforce that the data supports everything that you’re saying. When you look at the research, you see that when you build community relationships students perform better. When you build relationships with parents at the outset of the school year, you build the relationships that allow parents to be less combative during the school year … also if the parent is unavailable, for whatever reason a parent might be unavailable, have a surrogate. We built in proxies where there was a mama, an auntie that would come in as an advocate that would serve on behalf of the needs of that child. It was an opportunity for us to say, ‘this child is ours.’”

During their exchange, I found myself thinking of the many conversations I have had with Black educators in Iowa. Educators who have felt both discriminated against within the school system as a professional by their peers and superiors, and who have also felt the exclusion, criminalization, and discrimination against the students who look like them. The crush of oppression, past, present and future.

I asked Morris if she might share with me any thoughts she has for those educators; for the Black teachers working to create a meaningful education experience in post-DEI Iowa for the children who we already know will be overpoliced, excluded from employment, excluded from housing, receive lower quality health care, and who will remember vividly the death of DEI that brought an end to studying these inequities in order to pursue pursuing solutions.

Is there anything you believe educators in Iowa right now should know in our post-DEI world? What advice would you have for educators who are working to support these children the best that they can?

Morris wasted no time in her response, saying, “It’s important for us to anchor in the needs of the children. Our work as educators is and always has been centering the whole child in our development of curriculum and pedagogical practices that produce the highest outcomes for our young people. You cannot teach young people by ignoring who they are and the totality of their communities, and expect for them to enter society well-prepared to compete and/or understand and be productive in a global economy. It is important for us to maintain our understanding of research-based best practices when we are talking about educating young people, and not bow to the political whims that are unfortunately not rooted in rigorous research.”

If someone had built that kind of village for me — had been able to see me not as a problem to remove but as a person to support — I wouldn’t have spent years believing my story was a failure. I would have understood that I was worthy of staying. Of succeeding. Of being seen. And I know I’m not the only one. Across Iowa, across the country, there are girls who are still being pushed out of classrooms instead of pulled into community. What Ms. Morris and Ms. Abbott model is not just what’s possible — it’s what’s necessary. If we truly want a future where all children thrive, we must invest in school cultures that treat them like they belong there.

Monique Morris’ next title, Girls Unlimited How to Invest in Our Daughters with More Than Money, is scheduled for release in October.

Sofia DeMartino is a Gazette editorial fellow. sofia.demartino@thegazette.com