TEL Alumni Spotlight, Dawn Brooks DeCosta
Summer 2024
We are grateful to Dawn for the wisdom and vision she has brought to the TEL community, and to the larger field of culturally responsive social and emotional learning and leadership.
Current Role and Context
Dawn currently serves as the Deputy Superintendent of Harlem Community School District 5 in New York City, a position she moved into 2 years ago after being in Harlem for 26 years—first as a teacher, and then as a Principal. She knows Harlem well and has a deep love for the community. As she states: “I always talk about how much I am in love with Harlem and everything about it, even the parts that are difficult and sad. I love the people, the culture, all of the opportunity, everything that it represents… because for me, it's really about unlimited possibilities.” Indeed, it is her love and vision for what is possible for her community that keeps her going: “It’s been a joy to come and do this work every day. I feel good about it, even on the difficult days… this is the kind of work that you have to love, because sometimes it is hard.”
Leadership Journey Through TEL
In reflecting on her leadership journey, Dawn acknowledged that, “like many things that have happened in my career and life, it's been about following a calling.” Her first formal training was as a Fine Arts educator, and she taught art and literacy in Harlem for 15 years before becoming a Principal. She shared, “I believe that you can reach so many students through the arts and have them feel a level of positive self-concept for who they are and the talents and gifts that they bring. And once you recognize those things, they will apply themselves in other areas.” Dawn was mentored by world renowned artist, educator, feminist, historian and activist Faith Ringgold who has recently transitioned.
She did not aspire to being a principal but joined the Summer Principal's Academy (SPA) under the leadership of Dr. Craig Richards at Teachers College, Columbia University to get her second Masters degree. At the SPA, she “saw the possibilities of having a wider impact and being able to touch more people and do many of the things like the arts and cultural responsiveness and all of the things that I was already doing as a teacher with a full school community.” An opportunity soon arose to become a Principal at her school, the Thurgood Marshall Academy Lower School. She said yes and served as Principal for the next eleven years.
At the time she joined TEL, she was grappling with leaving her school to become a Deputy Superintendent. It was not an easy decision because she loved her school community. However, she found that “being at TEL was really meaningful for me to be at this crossroads, because I had not really made a decision. I did not really want to leave my school again. But part of being at TEL was doing that deep internal work, looking for a breakthrough, and just engaging in all of the practices that TEL is about in terms of transforming.”
An important part of TEL is doing the internal work with a community of like-hearted leaders who provide a mirror to reflect back what you need to see. Dawn found that “through the work we did, I really started to hear a lot about where my life was going… people heard the calling (in me) even though it wasn’t something that I felt I was saying.” Just as she had felt a calling to become a Principal, Dawn realized that she was being called again to the Deputy Superintendent position. At the time, Dawn also had a new grant to apply the Culturally Responsive and Affirming Social and Emotional Learning (CRASEL) framework she had developed across the district. So she had “to reflect on whether I wanted someone else to lead my work across the district or whether I was being called to lead that work myself. And that was the thing that moved me from one place to the next.”
Culturally Responsive and Affirming SEL Framework
From serving as a Principal at Thurgood Marshall, Dawn saw a need for culturally responsive and identity-affirming approaches in social and emotional learning (SEL). Through her doctoral work at Teachers College, Dawn developed the CRASEL framework and has since published papers on CRASEL, contributing to the wider field of SEL.
Dawn first encountered SEL and self-awareness in the Principals Academy at Teachers College. She brought the practices into her classroom and saw a shift in students being able to engage and “to build more positive relationships with each other because learning is collaborative.” It wasn’t until she became a Principal that Dawn realized why SEL and these practices needed to be part of a leadership program: “You see the level of stress that you're going through but that other people are also going through and how it impacts learning, how it impacts the whole school environment.” As she put it, “Students, parents, every crisis - it felt like everybody was dropping this at my door. It was overwhelming.”
As a Principal, Dawn reflected on what she had learned and wanted to give everyone the gift of these tools. She aimed to “build a community of care where everybody was contributing to that, and that it wasn't just my responsibility to do that.” She introduced yoga, meditation, and various programs for emotional awareness. While it took years to get people on board, she communicated that it would take everyone doing it together so that students would experience “all of this rich social and emotional learning… in every space of the building.”
For Dawn, social and emotional learning and cultural responsiveness were inseparable. “You can't attend to somebody's social and emotional needs if you don't see them, who they are in their wholeness and celebrate them for who they are and where they come from and their families. There has to be that first before you can now talk to me about how I'm feeling.” This cultural responsiveness was built into the premise of her school, Thurgood Marshall Academy Lower School. “We were teaching the students models of excellence that look like them… where students (could) see themselves in the text, in the teachers, the staff… in every part of the learning.”
In her doctoral research, Dawn focused on this intersection. She studied Black school Principals’ perspectives on SEL, and found they were already doing culturally responsive SEL but wanted a systems approach to anchor their leadership. Thus the CRASEL framework emerged from this need for “culturally responsive and affirming social emotional leadership… because it starts with the leader, and it's so important that the school leader embodies and represents all of that, all that they're asking their community to do.”
CRASEL integrates frameworks from scholars like Zaretta Hammond, Mark Anthony Gooden, Muhammad Khalifa and the CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning) framework with her insights on school leadership. As Dawn explained:
“Leaders need to be self-aware. They need to practice self-care. They need to build community. They need to be advocates for their community. They need to nurture and have high expectations. They need to sustain a positive school culture.”
With a million dollar state-funded grant, Dawn is now leading the implementation of the CRASEL framework across all 23 schools in her district.
How to Lead for School Transformation
Dawn emphasized that true transformation in schools begins with the adults who are leading and teaching the students. “I needed to start the work with the adults, which is the same thing that I've done as Deputy Superintendent. The people that are standing in front of the students, if they don’t do the self-awareness, and use the tools of social and emotional leading and learning, if they don’t experience it, they're not going to lead the work authentically,” she explained.
For Dawn, it was crucial that educators feel the value of SEL and cultural responsiveness in their own lives to genuinely commit to this work. "The commitment of that work will be so much different than if I just give you a curriculum and say, follow this," she noted. This approach involved continuous engagement with staff through practices such as racial reflections and autobiographies to deepen self-awareness and build a common language and understanding.
Co-creation with the entire school community was another essential element of Dawn’s strategy. “Sitting down with the team and co-creating with students, parents, and teachers, what does this look like and sound like in our school? That was really important,” she shared. By documenting these visions and integrating them into daily schedules and curriculum maps, Dawn ensured that cultural responsiveness and SEL were woven into the fabric of the school’s operations. She stressed the importance of involving students and parents in this process to foster a sense of ownership and agency: “If you really want something to be transformed, then all of the constituents have to participate in the co-creation of this vision.”
Cultivating Community Partnerships: The Mecca Framework
Dawn has reimagined the concept of schooling through strong community partnerships, particularly highlighted during the pandemic. “The school is not a place. The school is the people. And wherever those people are, they are the school,” she stated, emphasizing that the essence of education lies within the community itself. This perspective has led her to engage partners in providing diverse learning experiences outside the traditional classroom. “Learning can happen in so many different spaces and from so many different places,” Dawn explained, showcasing how partnerships with institutions like MoMA, the Met, and the Studio Museum in Harlem have enriched students' educational experiences.
Dawn has always valued the arts as a critical tool for education, integrating cultural institutions to provide hands-on experiences that go beyond textbook learning. "We can have a literacy lesson in the museum looking at a piece of work that can serve as a primary document of our history and have that be such a rich experience," she noted. This approach has allowed students to engage deeply with their learning material in dynamic and meaningful ways.
A new initiative in the district co-created by Superintendent Sean Davenport, Dawn and their district team, called “Mecca,” has been about fostering collaboration among various partners to align with the district’s mission of uplifting the people of a community, “who have historically been told that they're failing.” Dawn explained, "The Mecca framework came from during the Harlem Renaissance, (which was a) return to the renaissance and the excellence of arts, education, and culture." She continued, "We have had all the partners meet each other, meet together and make sure that we are all aligned with the total mission and what everybody is providing. So that has been very powerful." The framework prioritizes mindfulness, excellence, capacity building, collaboration, and co-liberation. Dawn expressed her gratitude to TEL for the term, co-liberation, noting, "I'm so appreciative to TEL for that concept and action. It’s how all of those things work together to create this vision of excellence that we wish to see in a district."
Skilled Vulnerability as a Leader
Being a leader requires a level of “skilled vulnerability,” which Dawn describes as a way of being authentic with the people you are working with to create a “community of real belonging” where we are “bringing our whole selves and [not] hiding parts of yourself or wearing a mask.” Dawn emphasizes that this authenticity is crucial in fostering genuine connections within a team. She observed, “When you don't show up as a human being, then people actually start to treat you like you're not a human being, right? That you're, like, you're a machine without feelings.”
Dawn shared her own experience of initially trying to shield her staff from the difficulties she was managing. "I was trying to hold everything back from them because I thought I was saving them from something by just taking everything on and not explaining to them what I was doing to keep things running smoothly," she explained. However, this approach led to a lack of trust. Dawn realized the importance of being skillfully transparent to rebuild that trust. She needed to show her team that, despite being a leader, she also faced challenges and needed their support.
The challenge for female leaders, but as Dawn noted, “especially Black women, they have this superwoman thing happening–like we don't feel pain and we don't cry and we don't get hurt. And it's not true. We’re human beings and things are hard for us, too." By acknowledging this, Dawn highlighted the importance of leaders being open about their vulnerabilities while still being clear in their leadership role. This balance of vulnerability and strength helped her cultivate a trusting and supportive environment.
How Do You Sustain Your Resilience and Compassion as a Leader?
As Dawn shared, “whatever we're going to ask our staff to do as leaders, we have to be willing to engage in that same work.” This extends to asking staff to create nurturing environments for students, and ensuring “that they also experience that with me, in order to be authentic.” She also noted that in asking staff to practice self-care, that she had to be transparent when she also needed to practice self-care. From her experience, Dawn found that although being transparent as a leader could be perceived as a weakness, “it actually strengthened my leadership to be open and transparent about my feelings with the staff when I was struggling, when I needed their help as a leader.”
She acknowledged that it is still sometimes “a struggle because there's so much to be done.” But Dawn shared that: “I read, I write, I pray, I meditate, I seek the counsel of the ancestors on a daily basis.” She feels the legacy of the people who have come before her, and she seeks guidance in moments of stillness to receive their wisdom and inspiration for the path forward.
The Impact of TEL
Dawn described her TEL experience as “really life changing” because it allowed her to be still, receive, and learn. She highlighted how it guided her path forward and informed her leadership and priorities in very specific ways. “The kind of professional development that we don't get as leaders is more about the self, and that is the most important thing in leadership - the self,” she reflected.
Dawn emphasized that TEL provided her with a unique opportunity to pause, listen, and learn, which is rare for leaders who are often responsible for guiding others. “I came to be transformed myself. I didn't come for anyone to transform me. I came because I wanted to change the way that I was thinking about something. I wanted to be able to pause, which I often don't get time to do. I wanted to be a listener and I wanted to be a learner,” she explained.
The TEL Fellowship offered an opportunity for Dawn to gain clarity about her life's direction and leadership goals. As she noted:
“It was a time that I got to just be still, to listen, to read, to hear, to be mindful, to have conversations with other leaders. Through that work that we did and those different protocols, I really started to hear a lot about, or started to feel where my life was going.”
For Dawn, the TEL experience provided her with the space to reflect deeply, and the practices helped her realize her calling in a profound way.