Teaching Channel Talks Episode 118: How Strong School Culture Reduces Chronic Absenteeism (w/ Khari Shabazz)

Dr Wendy Amato 00:00

Welcome to Teaching Channel Talks. I’m your host, Wendy Amato, and as often as I can I jump into conversations about topics that matter in education. Today I’m speaking with Khari Shabazz, and we’re talking about driving decisions that are rooted in passion for excellence. Khari, thank you for being my guest.

Khari Shabazz 00:18

Thanks for having me, Wendy.

Dr Wendy Amato 00:19

Can you tell me what your role is at K12 Coalition?

Khari Shabazz 00:23

Currently, I’m serving as the managing director of schools and school partnerships. Uh, I help schools improve coach leaders and teachers along that vein. Uh, and, um, I’m doing that all across the country. So it’s a dream job.

Dr Wendy Amato 00:38

It sounds like a lot of responsibility. Can you tell me a little bit about some of the things that you do on a daily basis, or what’s a day in the life of Khari Shabazz?

Khari Shabazz 00:49

Yeah, I spend most of my days in schools alongside other educators, really pushing for strong academic results. And so a day in my life might be coaching a school principal through a certain scenario or in classrooms coaching teachers in real time with leaders, uh, with me, so that we can embed that practice into the work that we do.

Again, all in service for strong academic outcomes for kids.

Dr Wendy Amato 01:16

Sometimes when I hear coaching a leader or coaching a principal, it makes me worry that we have leaders and principals who are weak, but that’s not the case. Talk to me about what it means to coach for excellence.

Khari Shabazz 01:32

I definitely don’t start from the areas of weakness.

It’s always an asset based conversation and so if you are in a school with children and you are looking to improve, I assume that you are competent in. All things education, right? Uh, and wanting to improve. Uh, the mindset around that is incredibly important. And so what I try to do is I try to lean into the assets that folks have in classrooms, in schools in order to help them become the best versions of themselves.

Dr Wendy Amato 02:06

Sometimes I think about coaching in a sports metaphor and even an excellent athlete, a pro, has a coach and watches film and gets feedback and is constantly thinking about improvement. We have to offer the same in education. Your role sounds essential for that to happen.

Khari Shabazz 02:26

And I do come from a sports background.

So, uh, I grew up, for example, in the martial arts in the dojo. And I received immediate feedback. And of course I don’t give feedback the way my sensei gave me feedback as I was coming up, uh, because that would be offputting. But being able to get feedback in real time and act upon that, uh, is incredibly important in education in particular.

Dr Wendy Amato 02:51

Can you share a little bit more about your professional history? What has your pathway been to this role?

Khari Shabazz 02:58

I started out working in, uh, charter schools in New York City. Success Academies. Being specific, started as a founding dean at Harlem One. And, uh, being a school principal was not the thing that I was actually thinking about.

I really enjoyed the Dean role, uh, and I wanted to spend time developing other adults to do that role well. Uh, but as, uh. Fate would have it. I was encouraged to go into the assistant principal role. I spent two years doing that, and then I was able to go into the school principalship. Uh, and that started with elementary schools at, uh, in the same network.

And then from there I moved to middle school where I served as a principal at a middle school in Harlem as well. All schools that I worked at, by the way, have been in Harlem. And so that was been, that’s been my trajectory.

Dr Wendy Amato 03:48

What do you think characterizes a school in Harlem?

Khari Shabazz 03:54

I think I’ll work backwards from the richness that Harlem actually possesses historically and, um, and present day. Uh, Harlem to me is the epicenter of black culture, African diasporic culture, and, uh, when you are in schools in Harlem. That tapestry, that beauty, uh, that Harlem represents is also captured in schools.

The genius and the excellence that have been synonymous with Harlem over decades are in those schools as well. And you can see that in the way in which the children move. It is a wonderful opportunity to see black excellence front and center when you’re working in schools in Harlem.

I would add black and brown excellence for sure, because east Harlem as well has a rich history. And I, I combine those two when I speak about, uh, Harlem, because I lived in East Harlem as well.

Dr Wendy Amato 04:53

In the seventies and early eighties, I lived on 120 second Street in Manhattan, and I am appreciative of hearing you describe the community for its beauty and history.

Thank you for that.

Khari Shabazz 05:05

No problem.

Dr Wendy Amato 05:06

Khari, recently you wrote an article that was published in the 74. Your focus was on combating absenteeism. It sounded from reading the article that that was a topic that had been just churning for you, that had been on your mind and an important one for you to help solve.

Tell me about that article and writing it.

Khari Shabazz 05:32

When I think about how I got to the point of writing the article, I never thought about myself as an expert in the topic. And I, I still don’t, I have a perspective, uh, and that perspective comes not just from being a school leader, but also as a parent sending my kids to school and also really thinking about.

What the school did or did not do in order to keep me and my child connected. And so going into my role as a school principal, I thought about absenteeism as an adult, school adult and not necessarily a problem that comes with children or the families that we serve. And, uh, that conversation that I’ve been having with myself for a very long time around why children don’t show up to school.

Came out in this particular article in a way that I think can help other educators think about absenteeism in their schools, whether it’s chronic or not, right? Whether, you know, it doesn’t matter what type of absenteeism it is, but particularly when it’s chronic, you need to really look inward and think about what you are not doing to bring folks into your school.

Children, families in particular.

Dr Wendy Amato 06:50

 In the article you wrote, chronic absenteeism is one of the most urgent and misunderstood signals. What do you wish more educators and policymakers understood about what drives absenteeism today?

Khari Shabazz 07:05

I wish I’m gonna go back to this, Wendy, probably often is what you need to do internally in order to understand where you are in that problem.

I think educators need to accept responsibility for chronic absenteeism or absenteeism in general, and then work backwards from that acceptance to come up with ways in which to make sure children are able to come to their school. I think about it from a perspective of if, uh, children weren’t forced by law, right?

If you weren’t forced by law to send your kids to school, would the kids still show up? Uh, and that’s how I think about. Absenteeism and having children report to school, but not just report from a compliance issue, but actually engage what educators and children and families have to offer in the learning process.

Dr Wendy Amato 07:57

I hear you envisioning a school where it is the student’s community. They know they belong there, they want to be there. And that is very different from compliance. You described shifting your own mindset from compliance to culture when tackling absenteeism. What was a turning point for you as a school leader that led to that shift?

Khari Shabazz 08:25

I was talking to parents recklessly and they were calling me out on it, and I started to realize how that sounds. I was more worried about data points and making sure that my boss wasn’t upset with me for not having folks in schools. And then I started to realize that, that level of anxiety wasn’t the way at which I wanted to lead and wasn’t what I wanted to communicate, uh, to families and children in particular.

Uh, and so I had to make a shift in that mindset. I’m here to serve people. I’m not here to wave my finger at them or talk to them in ways which are disrespectful to their existence. Uh, and once I made that shift, I was more comfortable leading my school community in that regard.

Dr Wendy Amato 09:22

In my mind, I just heard the phrase, if you are too big to serve, you’re too small to lead.

Khari Shabazz 09:28

Yes. Yep. That is important to remember. And that’s definitely a tagline, uh, that, um, I, I hope folks understand what, especially in this context, why that’s so important.

Dr Wendy Amato 09:43

Can you share a specific moment when there was a shift in student ownership, like daily announcements or student led clubs? Can you share a specific moment when that kind of student ownership led to a visible change in attendance or in engagement?

Khari Shabazz 09:59

It was a scholar who came to me and said something along the lines of, I’m stuck in here during my lunch periods and I have friends who are my age in other areas of the school who get a chance to leave for lunch. And that’s the kind of school I want to be in where I’m trusted, uh, to do things that other children are able to do.

And so that helped me think about. An opportunity obviously with folks, with other folks in my network of schools. Think about opportunities for children to be able to leave campus and go to lunch. And that might sound like a very small thing, but, imagine a, a kid feeling as if they’re not trusted enough to have lunch on the outside and they’re not trusted enough to come to school and they’re gonna look elsewhere for their options.

The kind of kids who approach you and who want to be a part of the government. Who wanna be a part of have agency to set the tone for what they want. That’s the kind of school you wanna lead. That’s the kind of school you wanna be a part of. And you want to make moves to make sure that you give children what they ask for.

Obviously there needs to be some guidance around that, that adults need to participate in that guidance properly. Uh, but, uh, these kids, uh, the kids that we serve. They come in at genius level and they have great ideas, and all of those ideas are incredibly important to follow up on. So I say all of that, Wendy, to say, that was just one of many moments when I started to realize that I had to give over decision making idea, ideation, decision making over to children, uh, and then act upon that so that we could have a better community.

And so as a result, we came up. With an opportunity for children first we had to have some, some metrics, right? So if you had a quality GPA and we define what that was, or you showed growth academically and of course. You were not, you were great citizens of the school community and also outside. Then it was an opportunity for you to go to lunch on your own.

Uh, and we set that system up. Of course, parents were involved in that conversation as well. They provided the permission to do so. And what we saw was incredible investment. Not only in kids around their GPA, but also in other areas of the school. They’re more likely to play sports or join clubs.

Uh, and continue in that particular way. So, uh, that was one of the moments.

Dr Wendy Amato 12:36 Your article emphasizes connection over correction, things like, we missed you yesterday, not where were you. How can leaders and teachers build that mindset into daily routines without adding more to their plates? Can we talk a little bit about teacher preparedness and teacher mindset?

Khari Shabazz 13:00

Well, the first thing I wanna do is, is demystify the thought that you’re adding to your plate. You’re actually making a shift, right? So if you approach, uh, a young person, a scholar, uh, whatever you call your students at your school, uh, and they’ve been absent and it’s where were you? You missed a lot of work or you can’t make that up your GPA if it sounds like that that I would encourage educators to make a shift, Hey, we missed you.

You have a valuable voice when it comes to science. You’re one of the strongest mathematicians we have. When you’re not here, that learning doesn’t happen for all. Uh, you are a genius in that regard. We love your perspective. You were reading To Kill a Mockingbird when I was in your class one day, you had some great.

Right. When you’re not here, you’re not able to push the conversation in the wonderful ways in which you do, but also display that incredible brain that you have, right? I mean, I think, I just think that it’s a shift in a conversation that’s not adding to your plate. And so there’s no work in empathy.

There’s no, you don’t need a talent in order to talk to kids properly, you and to treat them well. And I do think, I do make a distinction between one way or the other as being a way in which you properly talk to children. And so I do want to, I do wanna say it’s not adding to the plate and what educators can do.

And what I did was I made sure I had accountability partners. I call all educators to. Work with people in their buildings to give them feedback on conversations they have with everyone. How did that sound? Was I, you know, did I deliver the message that I wanted to deliver but still hold a high bar for outcomes?

How do you but then also. You gotta go to the kid too. Hey, like, we just had a tough conversation. How did that feel? Do you have feedback for me? Is that something that, the conversation that we had, do you imagine whether or not your friends or your peers would respond as favorably as you did or in the way that when you did what you felt like there was something amiss?

Right. You have to, you have to talk to kids about your practice and your delivery. Um, and so accountability partners is important from adults, but also. You gotta make children your accountability partner as well, too.

Dr Wendy Amato 15:20

When you talk about these conversations with the students, with the scholars, I get a sense that these are not formal, like you getting called into the office.

Khari Shabazz 15:31

No.

Dr Wendy Amato 15:31

Talk a little bit about how, uh, as you mentioned this in your article, you highlight quiet, informal spaces, casual opportunities for connection and talking, walking side by side. Cafeteria chats. Why are those so powerful?

Khari Shabazz 15:48

Because that’s, I loved hitting kids up at lunch, right? Mm-hmm. Ear hustling children is the most important.

You get data from that that you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t believe, and their hair is down. They’ve gotta talk to you about the things that bother them over a sandwich, right? And it is the most cleanest piece of data that you can ever get. But also. It’s human. Right. You’re breaking bread and having conversations in that way is important.

So I, I loved cafeteria. I loved the recess opportunities as well, for sure. Uh, but for those reasons. But I generally love children, so I, it didn’t feel anything to me like some kind of strategy, right, to get along or to build culture. It just seemed normal, right? And if you have children, you have normal conversations.

Hopefully, you’re having normal conversations with them at home. Uh, why cannot that be the same? And so, uh, if I saw a kid cutting down the hallway fast, running through the hallway, it wasn’t stop running, it was, come here. You seem excited. What are you running to? Help me understand more about why you’re moving through here at Top Speed.

Right. It, it’s a, it is a different thing, right? And it’s hard to explain. Uh, I keep trying to explain it, but those connections are important particularly for children because you know, children can be unforgiving and if you, ruin a relationship particularly with kids in middle school.

If you do things that ruin that relationship, it’s hard to get it back. It’s hard to have restorative conversations because they’ve made up, you know, they’ve made up their mind that you may not like them. And that’s hard, that’s hard to get back. And children do not work well with adults who don’t like them.

They not work well with adults who show them animosity or. Who show them that I’m only really here for a paycheck. Right? And so, I think it’s important to engage children authentically throughout your school community without there being a risk of being in trouble. Right. So, although I’ve had plenty of conferences in my office. I had plenty of that were formal.

I also had more informal touchpoints, uh, with children throughout the day. Uh, that, um, I thought was incredibly important. And sometimes it irked my teachers, you know, I would go into the classroom, disrupt a lesson to have a conversation.

It’s not fun for a teacher. And I get that and I apologize to all the teachers who I did that to. But it’s really, um, it’s really. Just part of, uh, being a leader at a school that I think is important.

Dr Wendy Amato 18:29

You’ve talked about your appreciation of math and science and access to high quality literature. You’re all across the content areas, driving for excellence. Where do those come from in you?

Khari Shabazz 18:47

You know, I’m my family. Most, if not all, are from the Caribbean. Uh, and I come from a group of teachers. My mother, my grandmother was a teacher.

We were all read, but well-read, not for the purposes of being, uh, elite. Or just to get by. In school, we were, well, we were well-read because we believed in the power of literacy. We believed in the power of language and also just how transformative it can be. For your life. It could take you places where you know you’ve never been when you have, uh, that kind of command.

And so it was also fun. I grew up on Hardy Boy Mysteries, Nancy Drew books. I grew up on, matter of fact, I grew up also on Donald Goines, which I wouldn’t recommend you give to your kids, but I, you know, I, I read that as well too. And I had an opportunity to steal away, uh, and read stuff that my mother didn’t want me to read.

Right. I read everything, you know, from Donald to Malcolm X, right? And so I think, uh, that exposure as a youth to reading helped me understand the importance and the power of it. But then I saw how not being able to read in particular, we’re talking about reading now, I’m sure we’ll get to math, but not being able to read was weaponized against children.

It was a way in which children become sorted in American society. And that sorting mechanism, which is brutal puts them in positions where they are either going to be the haves or the have-nots. It’s it’s a part of a social engineering that I think is really a stain on the American public education system.

And so being able to read is even more important for me when I’m working with the kids that I’m working with in the schools that I’m working with. For that reason.

Dr Wendy Amato 20:35

Before we switch to other content areas, let’s talk a little bit more about reading because it is a, a priority for you personally and professionally.

Literacy is, uh, the door opener to I would say everything, really. How do you communicate the urgency without having a student feel like you are scolding or punishing or pushing them? I mean, maybe pushing them is good, but how do we communicate the necessity?

Khari Shabazz 21:11

I think, well, it’s important to be able to do that for children, and I think to be able to do that for children actually starts in the conversation around the love for reading, instilling a joy. If you get the joy for reading down, then you’re gonna have much less conversation with older kids in particular why the importance of reading is a thing.

So you, so the joy of reading is the precursor to having to have those lectures, Wendy, with children who never developed that joy of reading and so they don’t understand why I have to read these books. Right. So I’m gonna start there, but let’s say you are working with some of the folks who are not believers kids, right, who get to a certain age and they’re not a believer in reading.

It is our job to show them. What happens when you can’t in a way that makes them understand? I, I am not perfect on that, to be honest with you. Right? I haven’t figured out the magic conversation, but I do know it has to be voluminous. I do know that it’s not a one-time conversation and you have to constantly connect literacy to all aspects of life that would lead to children having a choice filled life as adults.

And so that’s the best way I can answer that.

Dr Wendy Amato 22:31

My neighbor’s niece was visiting last summer and said, uh, I said, “What are you reading these days?” I assumed there was an assigned summer reading or something from the school. There wasn’t. And she just said, “Hmm, I don’t, I don’t like reading.” And I without hesitating, I just said, “Oh, that just means you haven’t found what you like to read yet.”

And we went to the public library and she brought home some romance novels, but, her nose was in the book during her whole visit. And I thought, okay, this is you, you meet them where they are and um, and you move the dial a little bit.

Khari Shabazz 23:04

A hundred percent agree.

Dr Wendy Amato 23:06

It was great. Let’s all, let’s, let’s add that as a recommendation to educators.

If you have a, a student who doesn’t feel like a reader, maybe our approach is, let’s find what you do like to read. We just haven’t made the match yet. Maybe it’s, um, a guidebook on how to repair your bicycle and there’s new vocabulary in there and you’re following written directions. Or maybe it’s a recipe for her, for a family, um, meal that you love.

There’s gotta be something. Yeah, there’s some motivation for everyone.

Khari Shabazz 23:36

Gotta  be something. And it has, and it’s, it is gonna be joyous once that light go, once that light bulb goes off.

Dr Wendy Amato 23:41

Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about math and science. Is the approach the same here where we’re talking about content areas and passion and leading and teaching and learning?

Khari Shabazz 23:54

Yeah, I, I, I deeply believe that the, and by the way, we’re having a conversation around the joy and so there’s joy in math and science as well, and educators have to bring that out. You have to make your learning activities come alive. And I think what I’ve noticed for young people in particular, when the math is real.

It has some real real to life meaning for them that they could actually sit down and work themselves through a rigorous problem that sounds very familiar to a scenario that they’ve been in or that they could be in. I think that’s a great start and allowing children to really explore and investigate their mathematical reasoning and decision making and have conversations around that in class opens that joy up to the point where they may consider a math or science profession as they get older, which, you know, is quite hard for black and brown children to get into in terms of those fields.

And so I think one of the reasons why I’m incredibly passionate about that is because I believe in access to everything. And that access to everything comes through. This belief in building your knowledge base in all the content areas. And we’re talking about math and science now, but plus there’s a beauty to that, right?

There’s a, you know, science has an aesthetic and I think once kids are able to really think about that and do hands-on scientific activities, that aesthetic becomes more obvious to them and part of their journey.

Dr Wendy Amato 25:24

Khari, you’re a leader in an organization that has national influence.

What advice do you give to school administrators everywhere who want to improve their culture and reap all the benefits that a beautiful school culture brings?

Khari Shabazz 25:41

Don’t discount the importance of rigorous academics as a way to lead that culture. I think many people assume that children are turned off by intellectual struggle.

I think many people assume that children can’t intellectually struggle, don’t want to intellectually struggle and need to be saved from intellectual struggle. And I argue that’s quite the opposite. If you want children and families to be engaged. School, make sure that you respect them with providing rigorous academics and you always press academically and intellectually in your school.

You should send children home exhausted from having to be thinkers, exhausted from having to provide a rationale for their mathematical reasoning, exhausted from having to provide a literary analysis for Catcher in the Rye, right? The kids need to be challenged. And you need to recognize the brain science that is behind that, right?

That when you are able to do that, you help grow brains in a way that you are not able to do if you’re giving them worksheets that are boring. If you’re showing movies in your classroom, if you’re giving out puzzles or just downloading a lesson off of the internet, right from teachersresources.com, and you’re not providing them with the glorious opportunity to read a text or to engage in a full day math problem.

I would argue that that’s where it starts. And you want children to get in the car after school or ride the train home or be at the dinner table, not talking about foolishness that happens at the cafeteria between themselves and some other classmate, but more so about how this great conversation happened in classroom around this book that we’re reading, or how Jonathan or Wendy or Khari solved this math problem differently, and you learned that.

Oh, there’s a number of strategies that I can use to get at this, right? And so, that is where I would begin. It’s the academic rigor that cannot be sacrificed for any reason.

Dr Wendy Amato 28:19

Imagine that I’m a teacher. You’re overhearing me, I’m picking up some copies, let’s say from the teacher workroom, and I’m talking about the lesson was too hard.

These kids can’t learn it. They, they just seem confused. They didn’t respond well to my lesson. I, I’m frustrated. I’m blaming my students. What are you gonna say to me? Khari?

Khari Shabazz 28:41

At first, I have to gather my thoughts, right?

Dr Wendy Amato 28:45

Like, fix your face, right?

Khari Shabazz 28:48

Get, align my chakras, because that’s an important thing to address.

And then I, of course, want to hear more about the things that happened in that lesson. And then I’m gonna offer an opportunity to come in with that teacher, prepare that lesson, and let’s take a stab at it again, because this here is in their wheelhouse. I’m confident that if we made some tweaks to the lesson, you’ll see a different, a different response.

Right? And that’s just based on an assumption about what I think I know about this particular teacher. I’m gonna hopefully know who my teachers are before I do that, but I’m certainly going to dive in right there and offer an opportunity to partner with this teacher. To explode either a mindset stereotype that they may have about kids.

And by the way, that could just be for that lesson. So, you know, there’s some investigation you have to do, right? This teacher may not believe that for all of the lessons, but whenever I hear that, it’s an opportunity for school leaders to partner with teachers to find a better way.

Dr Wendy Amato 29:54

Khari, thank you for this conversation.

Thank you for your commitment to excellence. Thank you for sharing important advice, uh, and for the priorities that you represent in your personal life and your professional world. Thank you,

Khari Shabazz 30:08

Dr. Amato. Thank you for having me,

Dr Wendy Amato 30:10

Educators everywhere. Thank you for enjoying this conversation with us. If you’d like to learn more about the topics that Khari and I discussed today, please check out the show notes at teachingchannel.com/podcast.

And be sure to subscribe on whatever listening app you use. It will help others to find us. I’ll see you again soon for the next episode. Thanks for listening.