The Fear of Writing
By: Dr Debbie Donsky
Tags: Story, Leadership, Blogging, Voice, Education

The Fear of Writing

Finding Your Voice When Writing within an Organization

As a public school educator, writing about education can be daunting. We are not certain what lurks below the surface. We sense fear but is it really there? There is a commitment we have made to support the organization in which we serve. The Ontario College of Teachers has guidelines about professionalism in online spaces.

The Ontario College of Teachers clearly states:

There is a distinction between the professional and private life of a teacher. Ontario Certified Teachers are individuals with private lives; however, off-duty conduct matters and sound judgment and due care must be exercised. Teaching is a public profession. Canada’s Supreme Court ruled that teachers’ off-duty conduct, even when not directly related to students, is relevant to their suitability to teach. Members must maintain a sense of professionalism at all times — in their personal and professional lives.

At this point, every board will have Social Media Guidelines for Staff. Here are the guidelines for my board. These guidelines stress that there is no personal vs professional social media accounts. As educators, as cited from the Ontario College of Teachers guidelines, we are always held to the highest moral standard. We will always represent our school, board, and system when we post. We must be mindful of board polices as they relate to human rights, equity and inclusivity as well as character education. We must reflect the board’s mission, vision and values.

But what if what we see is not reflective of each of these things? What if we want to share our insights and enlighten those who may not see things as we do given their vantage point, positional power, and privilege? What if we are part of those who cannot see given our privilege? Is it wise to create a space of fear? Where is the place for feedback from those who live out our provincial and system decisions each day? And what are the repercussions for speaking truth to power?

My friend, NooN, Nada Aoudeh, does this each time she writes:

We have to be clear on why we write.

When I began writing my blog, it came at a time when I needed to find my voice again. I had left a school, team and community I adored and entered into the world of system leadership. This space is one where you must “tow the party line” so to speak. I wonder now about the truth of this when I began writing. It really depends on the leadership at the helm.

As a school principal, I have always told those interested in joining the leadership team that their job is to challenge me, share their thinking, and advocate on behalf of their colleagues as they would have access to opinions and experiences that I may not have given my positional power in a school. As a system principal, one of the first things my superintendent at the time, Kathy Witherow, told me was that I would have to adjust to no longer making decisions in the way I had in a school. At the same time, she listened to us and in fact, encouraged us to share our thinking. She sought innovation with the ultimate goal of improvement for students at the heart of every decision. She listened to those on her team about what they believed was involved in this work. We even wrote together…A Sense of Balance: District Aligns Personalized Learning with School and System Goals.

The blog began as a personal exploration to find my voice and soon morphed into responses to professional learning, educational ideas, and a sprinkle of parenting as my children agreed to be the stories I told outside of my own. In fact, there are times my children’s experiences were my inspiration for writing. I promised myself that I would only write when the inspiration came to me but, now, after four years of writing publicly, I can say that inspiration is more present when I take the time to write more.

One of the first blogs I wrote, What stops you? And what you can do about it? accompanied by the image below, was about just that.

It wasn’t so much about being afraid to post content related to my work but more so, how my own fears were my biggest barrier.

One of the first questions I get when I teach the course on Collaborative Leadership Inquiry/Digital Leadership Portfolio for the Ontario Principals’ Council is whether or not I am afraid to post what I post. I may be asked this question in different ways such as:

How do you continue to be authentic when you write?

Have you ever gotten in trouble for what you have written?

Have you ever had to take anything down that you have written?

Is there anything you have written but then were afraid to post?

When the participants in the course ask these questions it could be about their personal fear about putting themselves out there but I think it is more to do with backlash of the systems in which they work, the communities they serve, the staff in their schools and even just speaking truth to power.

A colleague was kind enough to share some of her writing with me earlier this year. It was excellent, accessible, and something that a system should heed as sound advice and a clear path to become more critical in our approaches to Indigenous education, equity, leadership and learning but she had to post under a pseudonym. She does not feel safe enough to post under her name. What is the fallout of this stance?

A brilliant educator cannot let her voice be known.

A system does not know this is an observation of their practices and therefore an opportunity not only for improvement but also building the leadership capacity of the individual or team who speaks truth to power.

The most marginalized students in the system continue to be underserved, underrepresented, and fetishized in some ways.

Others feel the fear of speaking up and out and as a result, the system perpetuates the silencing of staff, particularly those who have less power.

Many years ago, I had taken my son, Max, to a local community centre for a program. He was two. In the program the teacher was trying to read a story. Every child was calling out, engaged in the story, and desperately trying to share how they connected to it. Each time a child spoke up, the teacher said, “Not now. Wait until the story is done. You have to listen when I am reading.”

Ironically, we were talking about student voice and engagement at the school where I was vice-principal. We were talking about text connections: text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world connections. We had to teach children how to find their voices, how to engage, and how to connect. But I saw so clearly, these children knew how to do all of those things. We train them to be quiet. We train them to listen. We train them to leave us, the educators, with the ability to remain in power. We tell them that is what a good student looks like.

In her book, Troublemakers, Carla Shalaby writes:

In school we generally identify the most pleasant, most compliant children as our leaders, but if being a leader means doing exactly as one is told, we should wonder what it means to be a follower…

Now think about this at the staff level. We have principals and vice-principals, charged with leading a school. We entrust them with the safety, well-being and achievement of all the young lives in their schools. We entrust them to support staff to be successful in their classrooms, community relationships and instruction. We create spaces that are filled with innovation, creativity, and professionalism. At the same time, we fill them with fear so that they cannot write. They fear repercussions for their words.

What if we created spaces where educators, who have the best interest of their students, staff and community were able to tell you what they really thought? What if those who want to improve the system were able to speak to what would do that? What if we could listen to one another and remove our ego from that feedback and listen with our whole hearts always knowing that the criticism or feedback was to improve conditions for those who continue to be systemically oppressed and marginalized in a school system that claims to want to uplift them?

If we are unwilling to listen to those who are on the ground, working in the schools, and seeing the implications of system and provincial strategies each and every day, how will we ever expect to make schools better for all children?

So now I don’t blog to find my voice though, admittedly, I believe that I express myself with more clarity when I write. I believe this is the case because when I am in a group, I am always assessing the power in the room. I am wondering if it is worth speaking up, whether or not I will be heard, how I will be heard, whether I have spoken with clarity, whether my convictions and beliefs are worth sharing. After twenty-five years in education I have come up with two questions to measure my willingness to speak/share/write:

Am I standing in my integrity?

Is it in the best interest of the children I serve?

If I can answer yes to both, then it is worth speaking, writing, sharing. Fear is always there but if I am serving children, families and communities, then my fear takes a backseat to integrity and service. Always.

There is always a lingering question of whether what I say will make a difference. When I first started writing I would obsessively check the number of reads. I talked to my friend, spicylearning, Royan Lee, about what I believed was a problem I was having, always looking for higher numbers. He had been blogging for years before me. In fact, I knew about him through his blog before I ever had the privilege of meeting him and calling him a friend. He told me then, that if what he wrote made a difference to one reader, it was worth the effort.

So in the end, here is my advice:

If you speak truth to power and you are standing in your integrity in the service of students, it is worth it.

If you make a difference to one person because you were willing to share your story, it is worth it.

If you find your voice through the writing and have a clearer sense of your beliefs, convictions and leadership, it is worth it.

Just start writing. It is worth it. Your story was meant to be told.