WE ARE COHORT 23: A COLLECTIVE STATEMENT FOR JUNE 2023

We are cohort 23.
We are courageous, strong, wise, and kind.

We believe that all students should have equal access to the best of all possible learning
opportunities.
We believe power is meant to be shared.
We believe that families need to be integral to the decision making process of their
children’s educational trajectory.
We believe in empowering students by teaching them to see the margin as a site of resistance
where change can be enacted through radical healing.
We believe high expectations, self reflection, and maintaining radical hope can lead to breaking
barriers of marginalization.
We believe that when African American students are at the center of our pedagogical approach,
then all students will experience powerful learning premised in equity.

We are cohort 23.
We are courageous, strong, wise, and kind.

We plan to build collective democratic capacity.
We plan to listen more than we talk and revoice what we hear for clarification.
We plan to surround ourselves with individuals who will support us in seeing what we
cannot see.
We plan to create, and then work through, cognitive dissonance.
We plan to acknowledge historical hoarding and the unequal distribution of power.
We plan to become resilient and stay the fight, making new paths when roadblocks are placed in
front of us.
We plan to use the trust we have established as a foundation for healing and restoring.
We plan to use our political race as a powerful vehicle to enact change.
We plan to shake the system to its foundation.

We are cohort 23.
We are courageous, strong, wise, and kind.

We need leaders, policy makers, and stakeholders to “Remain Awake Through a Great
Revolution.”
We need more control over every decision that affects our campuses, including every dollar
needed to be spent building equitable systems.
We need your help to alleviate barriers that prevent students from flourishing mentally,
academically, and physically.
We need your help for schools to become hubs of resources that will eliminate stress from
families.
We need your help and your trust to do it all, because this can be difficult and isolating work.
We need you to join us in our community with your whole selves, including all of your ideas and
positionalities and concerns.
We need you to be as vulnerable as you are willing and able to be, so that we can co-create a
community that includes you, because it is through learning about one another that we become
better.
We need you to take the time to dialogue and share and listen to our identities and
positionalities.
We need you to join us in creating, sharing, and trying out ideas that are outside of the box.
We need you to understand that sometimes this will involve conflict, sometimes collaboration,
sometimes celebration, and sometimes this will involve taking a break and coming back to the
situation.
But, we need you to know that it will always involve staying in (or returning to) community.

We are cohort 23.
We are courageous, strong, wise, and kind.
This is how we roll.