The stories we tell and who tells them

 I said the following on Thursday at the Worcester School Committee meeting:

I was reflecting as I was reviewing the presentation that there's power in story. 

And there are a lot of people in Worcester who are accustomed to telling Worcester Public Schools' story for us.
There is now corresponding discomfort that we are both telling our own story and changing what that story is.
I was thinking that even before you, Madam Superintendent, this morning were at Centro conducting a caretakers' session in Spanish, which I believe is something that has never happened with a superintendent of the Worcester Public Schools before.

And that makes some people uncomfortable.

And I think that we as a School Committee have a responsibility to remember that that's part of what's happening here, too: we're changing, and that's great for our students and for our staff, but there are people who that is going to challenge.
In some cases, it's going to remove some authority and power that they thought that they had, and that's okay.
That's in fact, I would argue, exactly what we voted for last spring.
But I think that we need to remember that some of what is happening here is also effectively a backlash. And I think that we should treat it as that.