Fish Don’t Know They’re in Water

by Vicki Sedlack, Executive Director of AEF

In our October e-newsletter, I wrote about ‘What is Equity?’ and how AEF is focusing on making equity central to our work. Now that it has been a few months, I wanted to share some reflections on this journey and invite you to reflect as well.

The journey began with each of us on the board and staff taking individual and collective deep dives into learning more about ourselves: our beliefs, values, assumptions, emotions, ambitions, and aspirations. How did we describe ourselves? What did we include? What did we leave out? When did a particular aspect of our identity work to our advantage? To our disadvantage?

Fish don’t know they’re in water. The story as told by David Foster Wallace goes like this: There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”

While there are many interpretations of this metaphor, I look at it as a description of how we tend to see and interpret things through our individual lens, meaning that without conscious effort we may not see the most obvious and important realities around us. Like the fish who don’t know they are in water.

Using what we learned from our reflective work, AEF is working on Guiding Principles to direct us to be more conscious of the realities others are facing around us by:

• Focusing the distribution of resources and access to opportunity on students and families that have experienced structural and institutional discrimination and oppression.
• Addressing programmatic/procedural barriers that could result in inequities based on race, gender, socioeconomic status, and other identity markers that historically contribute to inequity (e.g. programmatic, procedural, etc.).
• Creating and implementing new internal systems, policies, and practices that institutionalize equity and inclusion and support the sustainable enhancement of K-12 public education in Alameda.

So far it has opened our eyes to new ways of working, including:

• Refocusing our Middle School Sports program so we give consideration not just to how individuals will impact a team, but how being on a team will impact an individual.
• Maximizing our Enrichment program scholarship funds to make more programs available to more students.
• Forging connections with school and family liaisons who can help us get the word out to underserved families about AEF enrichment opportunities.
• Imagining new programs that are developed specifically for often-marginalized students.
• Streamlining decision-making processes to prioritize social justice and responsiveness, such as in decisions around technology support and mini grant awards.

Our Guiding Principles are currently in draft form as we test them out in our work. Like I said, it is a journey. And I am so glad you are on it with us.