Meet our Equity Advisory Board: Christian Sawyer, Principal
Behind the Board with Christian Sawyer, Ed.D. Principal, Denver Public Schools
As we continue our accelerated effort to champion equity of the K-12 Equity Advisory Board, let’s dive into this week's spotlight featuring Christian Sawyer!
Today’s Highlight: Christian Sawyer
Dr. Sawyer is a nationally recognized leader and career-long educator who holds equity as his core value. With twenty years of school leadership and classroom teaching under his belt, Dr. Sawyer has led large teams of urban educators to embrace equity-minded growth, build innovative approaches to teaching and learning, and expand access, opportunity, and achievement in his schools.
Can you briefly describe your career path and how you came to be a part of the advisory panel?
I consider it a meaningful opportunity to share my “principal voice” on the Advisory Board and get to help shape the dialogue around equity and inclusion in student learning. I’m a career-long educator of twenty years, having taught high school Social Studies and Literacy for a decade and served as a principal in urban public schools — also for a decade. Throughout my leadership in schools, I have always tried to keep the classroom as the heart of all decisions I’ve made. I believe to my core that teachers are the heart and soul of schools and student learning: when we “center” how to support teachers and empower teacher leadership, student growth blossoms. I came to be a part of the Advisory Board through collaboration with a scholar whose ideas and coaching enriched and transformed my teachers’ work in Math classrooms — Dr. Lanette Trowery. In my journey, Dr. Trowery’s research fundamentally shaped my thinking on how equity must be our compass in classrooms, as I saw how powerfully her scholarship in equity-centered teacher dispositions accelerated my students’ learning. In fact, we became the top-growing middle school in Math in our district through her influence. When I saw that she was launching this equity work at McGraw Hill, I wanted to be a part of the dialogue!
What do you hope you accomplish or change while being a part of the advisory panel?
It is my hope that serving on the Advisory Board allows me to both share perspective as well as learn from the dialogue and grow as an educator. In my opinion, I must approach equity the dialogue to share perspective but also to listen deeply, learn from others, and consider ways I can grow and improve in my approaches to fostering inclusion, belongingness, and an expansion of equity-centered spaces in schools. So I approach my service on the Board both to support growth within McGraw Hill’s vision and direction and also to consider how we can scale the progressive work the Board is doing to broader spaces in education. For me, this is a generative starting place.
Why are you passionate about the work that you do?
Each classroom should be a space of transformative access and growth for each and every student. Through my years in education, it is clear to me that our system of education has not provided the promise of such access and growth to marginalized communities, such as for Black children; LGBTQ+ children, multi-lingual communities, and educators. For example, I have listened to my Black students share with me how much the lack of diversity in their teachers has impacted their educational journey and how they advocate for change. I’ve had the experience of launching the first-ever school booth at the Denver Pridefest’s Children’s Zone, where I spoke with hundreds of LGBTQ+ educators and families who shared their stories of being oppressed, forced into hiding their identities, and even terminated as educators for coming out — but who, in spite of such pain, marched forward to lead change. For all of the courageous change-agents who came before us, both as students and educators, we can and must keep growing with equity! To accomplish this, I also know, the change must come from within — so I see the change as starting within my own outlook, perspective, and commitments.
For more on our approach to equity, inclusion, and diversity, see:
