[1]When I learned that CREA's 2020 conference theme is "Interrogating cultural responsiveness against the backdrop of racism and colonialism," I thought at once of how much I might enjoy interrogating a racist or colonialist of my acquaintance with the intensity of a film noir detective. Pinning an insouciant wrong-doer to their chair with a spotlight and rapid-fire questions until their arrogance broke and they sobbed out an admission of their guilt sounded pretty darned satisfying!
 
Then I felt a cold cataract of dismay. For most of my adult life I've used these words of Martin Luther King, Jr. as a guide: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." Yet I had forgotten his words when I'd read the CREA meeting theme. And I know why.
 
I've been processing a recent event of colonialism and racism in my own life that was so traumatic I've been thumbing over the memory for months. And while I was doing that, sequential eruptions of first a pandemic and then racially-based violence exploded with nearly surrealist impact. I began to feel like the man who was so sure he was going to die in the Mount St. Helens eruption that he made a video recording for whoever might find his body.
 
Dave Crockett was a 28-year-old news reporter who was at Mt. Saint Helens when it erupted on the morning of Sunday, May 18, 1980.[2] He recorded his attempt to escape on foot, and the story is worth remembering right now. Here it is, in a 4-1/2 minute video Please watch it, all the way to the end, to honor the Experiential Learning and Knowing available in this remarkable event.[3]
 
https://youtu.be/njV9ski1gB4 (embedding code)
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njV9ski1gB4 (url)

What came to my mind, hearing the astonishing transformation Crockett undergoes, was Nazi concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl's words,[4] that "The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance." Those words are important in our current context because Hitler engineered the concentration camp system Frankl survived by studying and applying the practices of genocide that the American government had used on Indians,[5] my own family included. The darkness on our horizon and the despair that's sometimes overwhelming are not unique to us, or to our times.
 
But there's another important thing here. Go to about 3:30 on that video  and hit play again. At about 3:40, an inexplicable change simply ripples through Crockett as he's walking, panting, lungs and eyes burning. Out of the blue, when he just suddenly says he's "got the wrong attitude here," he is still in total darkness. Look at the video and you will see this. I remembered it from 1980 when this clip was first shown on the news. Now keep watching and see when the camera shows the lightening to gray that happened next -- the timing of the moment the wind shifted. The order of events matters.
 
We know Crockett felt the Land in some way because he went to the mountain that day in response to a strong sense that something was going to happen. Had his discernment been trained, he might have realized he actually needed not to go to the mountain that day, and even needed to warn others away. But people in Western culture are not taught to use information from this type of Knowledge, so he just did the best he could. But his connection to the Land likely saved his life, for connection to the Land runs both ways. Please sit with that little piece of Indigenous worldview for a moment, cryptic as it may be (because sacred things should not be hammered out flat).
 
Because some people of the dominant culture have misunderstood Indigenous view of relationship, let me point out, though, that Crockett's experience did not alter the larger event. Mt. St. Helens still blew up. It collapsed and then exploded with a force more than 500 times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The symmetrical "Mount Fuji of North America" was turned into a horseshoe-shaped bomb crater that had lost 3.4 billion cubic yards of material blasted onto the surrounding countryside, and whose highest remaining point was over a quarter of a mile lower in elevation than it had been before the eruption. Although geologists had successfully gotten the state to evacuate local residents and logging company workers because monitors showed an eruption was brewing, 57 people still died. I am not saying it's impossible for a group of people with appropriate Knowledge [6] and experience to at least temporarily influence a natural event, but I am saying that option wasn't on the table in this particular situation.
 
Stories have power.[7] They are sacred, which is why all our religious traditions record them for us who come along later. The people who wrote them down were thinking about the future generations: us. We must never lose sight of those yet to be born. They are counting on us.
 
When Mr. Crockett remembered future generations, it literally changed the way the wind blew.

Blog By: Dawn Hill Adams, Ph.D. (Choctaw)
Co-President and Founder, Tapestry Institute
---------------
[1] Photo credit: "Eruption column from May 18, 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption." Photograph by Austin Post, Public Domain, USGS (United States Geological Survey). Available at https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/eruption-column-may-18-1980-mount-st-helens-eruption.
[2] Dave Crockett's Narrow Escape. Dana Hunter. 2012. Rosetta Stones, the blog of Scientific American. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/rosetta-stones/dave-crocketts-narrow-escape . Accessed May 30, 2020.
[3] Experiential Ways of Knowing. Tapestry Institute. https://tapestryinstitute.org/resources/ways-of-knowing/experiential.
[4] Viktor E. Frankl. Man's Search for Meaning. First published in German in 1946 by Verlag für Jugend und Volk. English translation published by Beacon Press in 1959.
[5] Hitler Studied U.S. Treatment of Indians. Elicia Goodsolder (Navajo/Dakota). Indian Country Today, August 28, 2016. https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/hitler-studied-u-s-treatment-of-indians-pYDkk-692Ei3XkztuwKVhg . Accessed May 30, 2020. The article cites major scholarly books that document the summary provided here for easy access.
[6] IndigenousKnowledge. Tapestry Institute. https://tapestryinstitute.org/resources/indigenous-knowledge
[7]MythicWaysofKnowing.TapestryInstitute.https://tapestryinstitute.org/resources/ways-of-knowing/mythic

We culturally responsive evaluators know all too well that the marginalized communities we serve (and likely reflect!) will suffer disproportionately from the physiological, social, mental, and financial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, morbidity and mortality data already shows this is true. Here in Chicago, we’ve watched with horror, but not surprise, as the city’s death toll rises and Black and Latinx populations bear the brunt of this virus’ impact.
 
As evaluators with combined experience and expertise in infectious diseases epidemiology, culturally responsive evaluation (CRE), and the health and wellbeing of LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and more) populations, the ability of a viral pandemic to devastate marginalized communities isn’t a novel concept for us. As our team turns our attention from our HIV program evaluation work to understanding how this pandemic is impacting LGBTQ+ people – especially LGBTQ+ people of color – the amount of work that remains to be done to ensure our systems are appropriately responsive to the needs of marginalized communities is stark. However, we believe that we can look to CRE as a bright spot with the potential to guide our work to champion equity for LGBTQ+ populations – and other marginalized groups – during this crisis.


Following in the trailblazing footsteps of Dr. Robin Miller, we have long been vocal proponents of the need to infuse culturally responsive LGBTQ+ evaluation into all that we do, regardless of the intervention, program, or initiative. We have given workshops at the American Evaluation Association (AEA) Conference, the Hawai’i-Pacific Evaluation Association (H-PEA) Conference, and the AEA Summer Institute, among others, on why LGBTQ+ evaluation is important, how to incorporate it into program evaluation, and how to meaningfully engage with the LGBTQ+ community. Although our work has primarily focused on disparities in HIV, which is much more common in men who have sex with men and transgender women, particularly those who are also young, Black, and/or Latinx, research tells us that nearly all chronic and infectious diseases are more predominant among LGBTQ+ individuals due to a concomitance of factors at all levels of our society that place LGBTQ+ people at greater risk for poor health. The precise impact of COVID-19 on LGBTQ+ communities is understudied to date, yet clear emerging evidence demonstrates that these populations are likely to suffer disproportionately during this pandemic. Therefore, we believe it is more important now than ever to apply our CRE skills to serve in service of LGBTQ+ people’s health and wellbeing.
 
So, how exactly can CRE help? Simply by being a guiding framework for us to apply to our work. There are real opportunities for those of us evaluating programs – regardless of whether those programs are providing COVID-19 or public health related services – to step up and speak out to ensure no community suffers inequitably from this virus. We’ve laid out a few key things that each of us can do below, guided by our own CRE practice, which we encourage everyone to keep in mind to responsively serve LGBTQ+ populations:
 
1.Ensure your evaluation comprehensively assesses demographics, and tailors any response appropriately. This suggestion is CRE at its core. Unfortunately, our work has demonstrated that very few evaluations collect data on sexual orientation or gender identity. If you don’t know that participants in your evaluation identify as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, or potentially hold multiple marginalized minority identities, you will be unable to adequately address their needs. If you’re not sure where to start, see what our team had to say about LGBTQ+ demographic data collection and considerations for intersectionally-minded work with LGBTQ+ populations on the AEA365 blog.
 
2.Avoid exclusionary practices. Take this as an opportunity to educate yourself and think critically about how your work could better include LGBTQ+ people. More than just avoiding exclusion – what could you be doing to actively include LGBTQ+ people?
 
3.Talk to the community. Though we ourselves are members of the LGBTQ+ community, we feel strongly that being LGBTQ+ is by no means a requirement to conduct LGBTQ+ CRE. However, partnering with community leaders can be an extraordinarily helpful approach no matter your background. Remember, give community leadership roles in your work, and be sure to compensate fairly! Plus, just because someone is LGBTQ+ doesn’t mean they’re an LGBTQ+ expert – but there are plenty of LGBTQ+ people out there who are!
 
4.Speak out as allies. Now more than ever, evaluation’s political inherency must be central. At a time when those in power are actively seeking to take actions that would place the health of LGBTQ+ people at dire risk, we have a duty as evaluators to use our platform in every way we can to resist this. Be loud and firm in your solidarity with LGBTQ+ people, now and always.
 
5.Show up outside the evaluation. Many of us enjoy a level of job security well beyond that of the marginalized communities we often partner with. Now is an excellent opportunity to engage in the practice of mutual aid by redistributing resources from those of us who enjoy greater privilege, to those who don’t. Our team has recently launched a new initiative to direct recurring monthly donations to Brave Space Alliance, a Black-led, trans-led organization and research evaluation partner of ours serving LGBTQ+ people of color on Chicago’s South Side. You can learn more about their COVID-19 response and donate here, or you can find a group in your community to support in a similar way. Now is the time for us to show up for each other in every way we, as CREA family and more.
 
While COVID-19 has the potential to cause serious devastation for marginalized and oppressed communities, potential is not an inevitability. We have an opportunity to resist the systems and structures that create inequities in health and lead the way in understanding and meeting the needs of vulnerable populations. We hope you’ll join us in ensuring that no community is disproportionately impacted by this, or any pandemic. If you want to talk more about LGBTQ+ CRE, and how we can be part of the solution to health inequity, we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us here:

BY: Gregory Phillips II and Dylan Felt
The Evaluation, Data Integration, and Technical Assistance (EDIT) Program at Northwestern University’s Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing

glp2@northwestern.edu | @epiglpii
dylan.felt@northwestern.edu | @mxs_felt
EDIT@northwestern.edu | @EDITatNU

​Thursday, March 12, 2020, was to be a particularly joyous occasion that ended with panic and fear that will forever be etched in the psyche of the Irish population. Against a backdrop of the COVID-19 Pandemic that was rapidly making its way across invisible borders and onto this small island, the toned-down national celebrations for what is referred to as Saint Patrick’s day was about to commence. However, all was about to change and change completely for weeks and months to come.                                                     
A time of celebration, a time to celebrate our heritage and a time to celebrate with pride, our increasingly diverse population (Central Statistics Office Ireland, 2017); it was announced via almost every media outlet in Ireland that the Taoiseach (Irish equivalent for Prime Minister) was to hold an urgent press conference from Washington that would profoundly change the traditional way of life for the entire population.
 
​A familiar narrative that has become part of the discourse of almost all countries, it was announced that among some of the many measures being introduced to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 Pandemic that people should try as much as viably possible to work from home and that schools, colleges, and childcare facilities were to close (Irish Government, 2020). Furthermore, all teaching and learning would have to be done online or remotely for the foreseeable future (Department of Education – Ireland, 2020).
 
As the COVID-19 Pandemic continues to take its toll on the lives of so many across the globe(World Health Organisation, 2020), especially the most vulnerable members of our society, more stringent measures to counteract the Pandemic have since been rightly introduced in countries throughout the world. In the case of Ireland, you can only leave your home if you are providing an essential service, shopping for food, collecting medical prescriptions, and can only exercise briefly within 2 kilometres of your house.
 
For education, all teaching, learning, evaluation, and assessment across the continuum of education must presently be done at your home and with no surprise, CREA comes to fore; terms such as ‘alternative methods of evaluation and assessment’ are no longer considered an option but rather, in the space of a few weeks, are increasingly referred to as the new orthodoxies to enhance performance and learning.
 
While these measures are supported and replicated in many countries and With Cause for Optimism, many educators and students have readily adapted to this new mode of teaching and learning.  However, With Cause for Concern, uncomfortable questions abound. These concerns include but are not limited to the assumption by some architects of policy and practice that students live in a home environment conducive to learning, and educators have the capacity and skillset required to develop alternative methods of evaluation and assessment.
 
Indeed, Pre COVID-19 and inspired by the work of Professors Stafford Hood, Rodney Hopson, and Henry Frierson among other members of the CREA community; a European Union-funded project entitled Aiding Culturally Responsive Assessment in Schools (ACRAS) that was co-ordinated by CREA Dublin at the Centre for Evaluation Quality and Inspection (EQI) at Dublin City University in Ireland found that only a minority of European schools in Austria, Ireland, and Norway for example, had professional development opportunities that allowed staff to adequately diagnose, support, communicate and assess students with migration backgrounds (Brown et al., 2019, Nayir et al. 2019). With no surprise, analysis of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test scores (OECD, 2000 –2017) also revealed that, in most OECD countries, there had been constant achievement gaps between migrant and non-migrant children in the areas of Reading, Mathematics and Science.
 
Post COVID-19, with free-falling educational standards, the move towards alternative modes of assessment and the absence of for many children, the safe haven of the school, it would be reasonable to suggest that those most educationally affected by the COVID-19 Pandemic will be children who are economically disadvantaged and/or from culturally diverse backgrounds.
 
The CREA community knows no borders and inspired by an extraordinary act of humanity when in 1847, the Choctaw Nation supported famine victims in Ireland (Lynch,2018); what is perhaps a most pressing issue to pose to the entire CREA community is as follows:
 
How can we, as members of the CREA community, continue to support and enhance the life chances of those children who are economically disadvantaged and/or from culturally diverse backgrounds during and after the COVID-19 Pandemic?
 
Available at assessment.ie and to ensure that CREA is to fore with all modes of evaluation and assessment in Ireland and around the globe, the initial CREA Dublin response over the course of the last three weeks has been for myself and my colleagues Professors Gerry McNamara and Joe O’Hara to remotely support educators, policymakers, and learners with CREA practices. This has culminated into the rapid re-development and subsequent deployment of a self-contained online course and toolkit to enhance CREA practices that is now available to every education institution in Ireland and throughout the world.
 
A very small step we agree and only time will tell if this initial response has had any effect if at all on enhancing the quality of education for those children who are economically disadvantaged and/or from culturally diverse backgrounds. However, moving forward:
 
We at CREA Dublin City University are eager to support and most eager to know how collectively, the global CREA community can respond to the COVID-19 Pandemic in order to support those members of society that we are privileged to serve.
 
Author
Dr Martin Brown: Research Director, EQI - The Centre for Evaluation Quality and Inspection, Dublin City University, Ireland. Further details at selfevaluation.ie
 
References
 
Brown, M., Altrichter, H., Nayir, F., Nortvedt, G., Burns, D., Fellner, M., Gloppen, S.K., Helm, C., McNamara, G., O’Hara, J., Punzenberger, B., Skedsmo, G. and Wiese, E.F. (2019) Classroom Assessment that Recognises Cultural Difference - A European Perspective. Dublin: EQI. Available at: actionresearch.ie
 
Central Statistics Office Ireland (2017) Census of Population 2016 – Profile 7 Migration and Diversity.
Available at: https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cp7md/p7md/p7anii/
 
Department of Education – Ireland (2020). Guidance on Continuity of Schooling For primary and post-primary schools. Available at:
https://www.education.ie/en/Schools-Colleges/Information/guidance-on-continuity-of-schooling.pdf
 
Irish Government (2020) COVID-19 (Coronavirus).
Available at: https://www.gov.ie/en/campaigns/c36c85-covid-19-coronavirus/
 
Lynch, S. (2018, March 18) Choctaw generosity to Famine Ireland saluted by Varadkar. The Irish Times. Available at: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/choctaw-generosity-to-famine-ireland-saluted-by-varadkar-1.3424542


[1] © Copyright Hywel Williams and licensed for reuse under CC BY-SA 2.0 Creative Commons License

​It doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.
(Oriah Mountain Dreamer, 1999)
 
In the last 3 stanzas of Oriah’s The Invitation poem is the sentiment that we would like to convey in framing our thinking and discourse for our 6th International CREA Conference. 
 
The poem is as much an invitation as it is a welcome, as much a challenge as it is a call to organize and work together.  As the poet writes, it is also a way for us to communicate our priorities as the CREA family and for our upcoming conference.  Inherent in our CREA mission, are several core assumptions about the work we do, aligned with the poem and the upcoming conference.  We speak in our mission to:

• Intentionality and deliberateness.  We are unapologetic in our efforts to build a community of practitioners AND scholars, thinkers and doers, those who like to play with dirt, and those who like to design.
• Stances, practices, and praxes of action, application, advocacy.  We take seriously the issues of power and privilege that dominate our professions, fields, and disciplines, and we constantly push back against neocolonial, discriminatory rules, theories, and systems of oppression and inequity.
• Resourcefulness, responsiveness, and responsibility.  Our CREA family recognizes that we have a responsibility to share, to counter, to interrogate, and if we do not, then we face the indictment of hypocrisy and the perceptions of traitor.

 
We are confident that our keynote speakers, along with the 180 proposals submitted for symposia, papers, and roundtables will once again create a space to nourish and challenge our collective spirit while preparing us for the next phase of our journey as a community. See you then and we request any responses you have now.
 
Aluta continua!,
Stafford Hood, Director &
Rodney Hopson, Associate Director and Senior Fellow

This popular saying about the two sides of a pancake provides salient counsel to evaluators, researchers, and program leaders: there are multiple ways of understanding complex social issues. Through experiences gained from working with clients, peer evaluators, and researchers, we have learned this important lesson: conveying insights and findings on evidence-based approaches to policymakers and others working to improve social issues requires applying an interdisciplinary and culturally responsive lens. Here’s why. 

When we focus on one side of the proverbial pancake, we often create barriers to well-informed assessments.  This one-sided approach has the unintentional consequence of forcing our work into an artificial silo in such a deleterious way that we may miss important cultural context and nuance. 

For example, when evaluating an educational success program, if we neglect to disaggregate gender self-identification or racial and ethnic demographic data (when such data are available), we miss an important opportunity to examine systemic issues affecting individuals in different and profound ways.  As well, if we conduct an assessment of community health, yet exclude economic and political analysis, built environment factors, and the presence of indigenous anchor institutions and leaders as central areas of inquiry, we are sacrificing important context.    

Let’s drill down further and examine the economic inequities facing so-called opportunity youth (youth ages 16-24 who are out of school or the workforce).  According to the Aspen Institute’s Forum for Community Solutions, it is estimated that there are now 5.5 million opportunity youth – also commonly referred to as disconnected youth – in the United States. Unless we are attentive to factors such as reliable transportation access, trust in employer institutions, social networks, job preparedness, prior interactions with the legal system, and family supports, among other factors, we will lose sight of critical factors in the lives of youth.  Piecemeal fixes resulting from under-informed assessments may leave communities, funders, and policymakers without viable and sustainable pathways to youth and family success.   

To further illustrate these points, I was struck by a piece published in the Washington Post, following the death of Freddie Gray.  The reporter offers a comprehensive look at the systemic failures at critical junctures during Freddie Gray’s life and tragic death. 

At one point in his life, Mr. Gray was an opportunity youth.  He lived in a community marked by tough systemic issues, such as staggering unemployment, poor access to sustainable living wage positions, the absence of fresh foods, and the lack of affordable healthier alternatives to fast food restaurants.  The reporter also discussed how environmental factors, such as early exposure to lead toxins, may have affected Mr. Gray’s brain development.  Additionally, by the time Mr. Gray reached his 18th birthday, he had received several out-of-school suspensions, which contributed to missed critical in-classroom learning time.   

The story of Freddie Gray clearly illustrates why it is so essential to apply a mindset that considers the mosaic of lived experiences and deeply rooted systemic issues in a community. When evaluators miss these factors, and neglect opportunities to identify more holistic evaluation designs, we perpetuate system failures. 

Let’s be clear, multi-dimensional approaches to evaluation may add time, further complexity, and costs.  And approaching our work in such a comprehensive manner may require us to sharpen our abilities to work across disciplines, understand cultural awareness, integrate lived experiences into our thinking, and strengthen respect for cultural assets.  But the upsides far outweigh the costs, and the outcomes are stronger.
​
At the heart of CREA’s mission is an unapologetic commitment to understand the character and influences of diverse cultural norms and practices when designing and conducting evaluations. That’s why the need for evaluators to work across disciplines ought to be shouted from the roof tops.  Years of experience confirm that we simply cannot sweep in and out of communities without considering our cultural biases (intentional and unintentional), riding solo without including partners working in other disciplines.  Further, we must stretch ourselves to tap deeply and respectfully into new wells of expertise and knowledge, on an ongoing basis, to understand and consider both sides of the proverbial pancake.