Dr. Rosa Isiah, A blog about my journey as an Educational Leader for Social Justice

Being a connected educator has allowed me to develop my capacity as an educational leader and learner.   Over the last few years I’ve connected with a number of brilliant and passionate people who have inspired me to find and share my voice through chats, podcasts, research, and blog posts. One of those professional learning network connections is Jeff Zoul, teacher, leader, presenter, author and someone whose work I follow and admire. Last year I received an exciting email from Jeff. He invited me to be part of a project with nine tremendous educational leaders. In his email Jeff shared a bit about the project and I immediately knew that I wanted to be part of it. The book project is titled #EdWriteNow VII and the plan was to write the book over a couple days AND publish 6 months later.   I was familiar with #EdWriteNow Volume I and the great organization associated with the project, The Will to LiveFoundation . The Will to Live Foundation is an organization dedicated to the pre

Recently I read a quote by a popular actor that troubled me. His words:  "The best way to stop racism today is to stop talking about it."  Interesting thought. Should we end poverty by not talking about it? Should we close the achievement gap by avoiding the topic? We could begin to change so much of what is wrong in our nation if we engaged in honest and courageous conversations about our biases, beliefs, and misconceptions. One of those misconceptions is the myth of colorblindness .  Colorblindness is the belief that we don't see color or race, that we see people and that we are all the same. These beliefs are widely held by wonderful and well intentioned people, including educators and school leaders. These are idealistic beliefs and there are a number of issues with this ideology: We are beautifully diverse. Colorblindness negates our diversity, race and culture We all see color and we all have biases. When we identify as colorblind, we are suppressin