February 2025: Newsletter

In our most recent team meeting, we continued our discussion of Shawn Ginwright’s book, The Four Pivots: Reimagining Justice, Reimagining Ourselves, taking a deep dive into Chapter 3: Clarity. In this chapter Ginwright reminds us that when seeking to bring about transformational change, we must develop a sense of clarity about who we are, our context, and what is important. He defines clarity as, “a state of vivid and transparent certainty, which illuminates an unambiguous path toward a desired goal or direction. Clarity is the ability to be lucid with a coherent awareness about your journey… (it) is something we feel from deep inside and involves accepting a sense of calm certainty of what is important and what is not.” (p. 73)

He goes on to emphasize the importance of clarity when we find ourselves in the dust storms that life often pulls us into – the moments where unexpected things happen that disorient or confuse or obscure reality and our “lens.” In these dust storms, having a sense of clarity involves engaging our ability to hold an “unobscured vision of what is happening” and to then take the necessary steps or actions to move through it towards the outcome we are seeking to bring about. At this moment, you might be finding yourself in a dust storm of uncertainty. Rapid changes are taking place across the landscape of education, impacting teaching, research, and the way we support educators and students. It is important that we take time (more than ever) to find clarity and to clean our “lens” – a sense of clarity that can help illuminate our path and help us to remain steadfast as we work towards our goals. For our team, we continually think about the goals at the center of the Anchor Competencies Framework as our “north star,” guiding what we create and what we are helping educators to create. Through our ongoing practice of reflection and discussion, we continue to refine our “lens” and find clarity as a team, so that we can bring about the transformational change in education we are envisioning. Gaining clarity is an ongoing practice that involves both internal “mirror work” and efforts to understand the external context or reality.

How do you find clarity on your path? Ginwright proposes that clarity comes when “we shed all the barriers, confusion, distractions, amusements, and excuses that get in the way of what we really want” (p. 73). Can you carve out time this week to find stillness and shed some of these aspects, allowing yourself time to reflect on the questions that he poses below?

What am I creating? What am I building?
What is unclear, and what am I not seeing?
What is most important right now in this moment?
Is my ego making this unclear?
What do I most fear in this situation, and why?
What would my mentor do in this situation?

We can lose clarity when our ego gets in the way or we resist something that we are unaware of. We hope you and others you work with can take time to explore that which might be obstructing your sense of clarity on your path to making change happen.

In joy for the work,

The CRTWC Team

Check out a recent journal article about our Anchor Competencies Framework and its application across various teacher preparation contexts by Dr. Nancy Markowitz and Dr. Suzanne Bouffard.

Join Us to Support Educators!

Signup for Updates

Contact Us

Email: info@crtwc.org