This past year has been tumultuous, especially for educators. Across the country, school leaders have had to juggle navigating a global pandemic and our nation’s racial reckoning. They’ve transitioned to virtual teaching and learning, created space to discuss police brutality and systemic racism in their schools, and addressed the physical, social, and emotional needs of their students and families. In light of all, they have persevered through. Our School Leaders Who Inspire Series is intended to celebrate and highlight the prominent and impactful educators we have the pleasure of working with.
Over the course of this series, we will share interviews with school leaders about their motivations to lead and teach, their biggest lessons, influences, and best advice. You will learn more about their contributions to the public school system and how they have worked to provide their students with a high quality and equitable education.
Our Conversation with Myron Long
How long have you been working in the charter school sector?
I have worked in the charter school sector for 13 years, and I have worked exclusively with the middle school population. I am one of those educators who is obsessed with the middle school brain and adolescent development. My wife is also a middle school principal and we met while teaching middle school students.
What motivated you to do this work?
I’m a native Washingtonian. I grew up in the 90s here in DC. As a student, I was successful at learning in a factory model. You gave me an assessment and I could meet expectations. I excelled, so my teachers expected me to be on a pathway toward college and career. My friend Walter loved to design and build things, but school wasn’t built to support him as a learner. Our teachers had very low expectations for him. Walter was killed by police when I was in high school. I ended up skipping school to attend his funeral. My theory is that if teachers have low expectations, young people are schooled by the streets.
Low expectations are the result of white supremacy in schools. Mass incarceration, plus the so-called war on drugs, plus an outdated school system have led to the peril of Black and Brown communities. I saw that first-hand, and I knew that if we were going to change the world, we had to have education at the center of it and address the social and political context. I became an educator, taught for several years, and served as a middle school principal for several years.
During that time, I had wonderings about what could happen if students had opportunities to participate in real world learning rooted in social justice. I saw young people really engaged around the killing of Michael Brown. I also saw young people who were starting to construct and internalize negative racial identities in middle school. They were doing it under the table without being supported by parents, teachers, and staff members. We wanted to see if we could develop a school model that is rooted in social justice and identity built around culturally responsive learning that would empower our young people to make positive change in the world.
What book, experience, or resource has had the biggest impact on how you approach this work?
I learned about the history of education and literacy as an act of freedom and resistance in college. There were a few texts and movements that impacted how I approach this work. Some of those texts are Anna Julia Cooper’s, A Voice From the South; W.E.B. Dubois’s, The Soul of Black Folks; and Paulo Freire’s, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. The social movements that influence how I approach this work are the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panther’s Liberation Schools. For me, the central theme of each of these texts and movements is the notion that education and social activism are the drivers towards social change. Young people can and will change the world, all they need are the tools and the time. The Social Justice School (SJS) sees itself as a continuation of these ideas. We are standing on the shoulders and legacies of SNCC, CORE and the Black Panther’s Liberation Schools who understood and practiced the power of combining civic engagement and literacy.
How many Black teachers or professors have you had over the course of your own education?
I grew up in Washington DC during the 80s and the 90s. Washington DC was known as the Chocolate City during that time because it was mostly Black and Brown people who lived in DC. So, most of my teachers from Pre-K to High School were Black. I went to Morgan State University, a Historically Black College and University and there most of my professors were Black.
Does your school have any strategies that your network uses to help support students’ racial identity development?
Yes, the first strategy is that we are courageous enough to engage in racial identity development work with adults and students. Often, schools shy away from talking about race and gender with adults and students. We lean into those conversations at SJS. We start off, with 5th and 6th graders, exploring the concept of intersectionality. Then, we have students write narratives about a time where a part of their identity may have helped or hindered them in their journey. Lastly, we have a process called ‘naming and noticing’ where we call out patterns of behavior, such as who is speaking during a conversation, and we tie it back to potential biases that we may have as a community.
What are the biggest lessons you have learned from your school community?
The biggest lesson that I have learned from my school community is that our scholar-activists and their families are super resilient and we don’t need to teach them grit, they already have it within them. I also learned that at the end of the day, being an amazing educator comes down to love. By that I mean, our scholar-activists, and their families expect us to create the conditions where our scholar-activists and their families are known, loved and academically challenged. We do this at SJS and we start with love.
What is the best piece of advice you have gotten in your career so far and why?
There are two. One piece of advice is that vulnerability is a strength. Leaders often think that they have to have all the answers or that they can’t make mistakes. I have learned that this is far from the truth. I know I don’t have all of the answers and I make mistakes daily. Being vulnerable has helped me model the behaviors that I want to see in my school and has helped me make authentic connections with our crew. The second piece of advice is the idea that conflicts are usually the result of a tension between mission or strategy. This idea has helped me understand the complexities of problems that emerge as a school leader.
About Myron Long
Myron Long joined the Social Justice School in 2017. In his role as Founder and Executive Director, Mr. Long led the design of the Social Justice School and is credited with assembling the team that is currently executing the vision and mission of the school.
Mr. Long is a graduate of DC Public Schools, and veteran DC teacher and principal, most recently at the E.L. Haynes Public Charter School. At every stage of his career, Mr. Long has brought a commitment to social justice into his educational practice. He is a NewSchools Venture Fund grantee and a Camelback Ventures fellow, an inaugural Expeditionary Learning School Design Fellow as well as a 4.0 Schools Fellow.
Our Work with the Social Justice School
The Social Justice School is a high-performing public charter school in their first year as a school that has been a LISC partner since 2020. The Social Justice School’s mission is to catalyze an integrated community of middle school learners to be scholar-activists who are designers of a more just world. To achieve this goal, students are offered an education that embraces and lives out a set of core beliefs about what it means to be human. The Social Justice School implements an educational model that blends rigorous academic instruction with learning expeditions that are rooted in social justice and laboratory design thinking. The Social Justice School creates an educational space where students across differences engage critically with the world and interrupt the systems of inequality toward designing equitable systems with equal outcomes: liberation for all and non-hierarchical society.
Related Articles:
School Leaders Who Inspire: Monique Daviss
School Leaders Who Inspire: James F. Waller
School Leaders Who Inspire: Denise Alexander
School Leaders Who Inspire: Traci Thibodeaux