Today we’d like to introduce you to Allegra Johnson.
Hi Allegra, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
When I look back across all of my experiences in education, an examination of and quest toward equity is a clear throughline. My passion as an educator is to co-construct inclusive and transformative learning environments, both for children and adults. My actions are guided by my core values: health and caring.
As a black female educational leader focused equity and social justice. I am orienting my work to focus on wellness and belonging so that we can reimagine schools are places that truly support the self-actualization of students and teachers who have systematically been marginalized in traditional educational settings.
Navigating working in education while also giving birth to another child during COVID has really sharpened my resolve that the educational landscape needs to shift and educational leaders have an obligation to rethink our leadership to make sure it is in service of promoting wellness and belonging as a systemic anecdote to the historic marginalization and othering that has occurred through the history of public education in the country.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I began my career in education as a special education teacher and through that experience, I was able to witness firsthand the systematic othering and marginalization of students labeled with disabilities and also the staff charged to support them. As a black woman, I also experiences multiple instances of explicit and implicit othering in school, however there was something particularly problematic about the attitudes being projected on students and teachers in special education.
After teaching for seven years, I moved into an administrative position overseeing special education and again was taken aback by the persistent negativity, dismissiveness, and marginalization that was pervasive around this space. My experience writing my dissertation helped to crystalize the tension I had witnessed and experienced, particularly in our current educational landscape, and that tension is that while more and more people are saying they want to prioritize equity and inclusion in schools, in order to really prioritize equity and inclusion, there also needs to be a personal and organizational reckoning first with where is inequity present in our system, which of our actions are resulting in othering, and what new ways of being are we going to commit to and hold one another accountable towards. This is the struggle I am navigating as a leader right now, how can I shift our ways of being in schools while also showing up with a designers mindset to meet everyone (students and staff alike) where they are at, understanding that COVID has destroyed the illusion of consistency and permanence that experiences in schools were rooted in.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
My official title is Executive Director of Educational Services at Da Vinci Schools. My area of expertise is designing transformative professional learning experiences for teachers and other educational leaders focusing on various aspects of inclusive education. I am also an adjunct profession for Alder Graduate School of Education where I lead teacher residents through courses on Universal Design for Learning, Action Research, and creating focused and intentional systems and workflows so that new teachers can enter into the profession with less overwhelm and self-doubt.
I am a firm believer in modeling the behavior you want to see and I am most proud that my actions as an educational leader are a direct reflection of the ways of being I believe will lead us closer to an educational landscape that is systemically positioned to recognize and serve students of color, students labeled with disabilities, LGBTQ students, students experiencing homelessness, students in foster care, and the multitudes of other student groups who are systematically underserved in schools across the state.
Any advice for finding a mentor or networking in general?
The best advice I can offer for finding a mentor is allowing yourself to ask for help and not let that play into a self-sabotaging narrative that asking for help is a sign of weakness or somehow makes you an imposter. The world is a complex place and it’s impossible for one person to know exactly what to do all the time. We all have to soften into a place that allows us to learn and work in community and that isn’t possible until we all admit that we need help and asking questions and asking for help only makes you and the community stronger.
Image Credits
Stacee Lianna
