Design Principles

SPS-UW Research-Community-Practice-Partnership (RCPP) 

As educators, researchers, families and community leaders, we collaboratively lead racial and educational justice systems change alongside SPS youth and families to re-center their identities, communal wellbeing, transformative agency and power. We equally privilege the process and the outcomes of this partnership to build more racially equitable schools and systems. 

Our current phase grows from the deep commitments of African and African American communities to education and literacy that are tightly bound with freedom-seeking, cultural practices, and community wellbeing despite deep systemic racial injustices. We seek to codesign more culturally-affirming critical literacy learning for K-3 Black boys and more equitable Black family-educator collaborations. 

We commit to: 

1. Make Sankofa a routine practice 

• Name and regularly revisit how our work relates to histories of both institutional oppression AND the survivance (survival and thriving) of Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color communities  
• Be explicit about addressing anti-Blackness and racism (bc color evasiveness often defaults to white dominance) 
• Design from a starting point of brilliance despite injustice, not a blank slate or a vacuum 
• Show up as our full selves (with our own histories) 

2. Build from the priorities and dreams of Black children and families (& other communities of color) 

• Start with the stories and specific visions of those on the ground (not in the abstract or in ways that gate keep their participation/voices) 
• Kings, families and communities are part of key deliberations and decision-making whenever possible 

3. Partner in ways that build solidarities and intersectional justice 

• Build and cultivate reciprocity and humanizing relationships  
• Develop politicized trust over time (recognizing racialized, gendered, & positional power dynamics), not transactional interactions 
• Intentionally sponsor in new partners who can demonstrate they center Black possibility & brilliance (don’t ask people to rubber-stamp predetermined outcomes, limit the number of historically-dominant voices and perspectives, offer one-on-one meetings bf and after joining partnership)  
• Center race and other intersectional identities (both/and) 
• Use resources to compensate students, families, and community members for their time and expertise. 

4. Flatten hierarchical power, tap diverse expertise 

• Modified consensus decision-making (e.g., everyone agrees or can live with a particular decision), except for organizationally-specific issues (e.g., budget or personnel decisions might need to go to steering committee/PIs/district leads with positional authority). 
• Differentiated participation based on interest/time/capacity 
• Rotate meeting facilitation, inclusive agenda-setting 
• Integrate feedback loops, mechanisms for updates & sharing 

5. Name and lean into tensions that move us towards justice-focused change 

• Be ok with messiness, willing to jump in the “double dutch” of work in motion 
• Critique to build or refine, not solely to perform or pontificate 
• Commit to our collective learning  

6. Work to make this “thing a Thing” (RCPP integrates into system; project integrates into ongoing work of schools/communities) 

• Continue to de-silo the work 
• Identify opportunities and work to integrate our learning into other spaces and efforts 
• Everyone takes responsibility for leading and sharing the work (e.g., we check in with the group once a need has been identified but do not solely wait for direction or action from others) 

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