Ericka Morris

I attribute my success to always wanting to learn and improve. I won't take no for an answer if I don't think it's the right answer. I really dig in my heels and have fortitude, but I also know when to take breaks when I have to. I didn't finish school all in one big swoop, and I didn't finish my master's degree in a quick swoop either. Sometimes you have to take a break and go back, but I just believe in finishing what I started. That persistence and commitment to seeing things through, even when it takes longer than expected, has been key to whatever success I've achieved.

I would say to have faith in your own intuition and believe in it. When you start in a field like education that is very political, very rigid, and sometimes it's my way or the highway, it's important for you to believe in yourself and trust your intuition. Prioritize your own mental health and your own health over anything else. It's very hard for educators, and women are not socialized to put themselves first, so I would say try to learn how to do that. Also, be an advocate and build community with your colleagues and your friends. It's easier for you to support your boundaries, which is the ultimate form of self-care, if other people around you feel that they can also do that. So build community, trust your intuition, protect your boundaries, and believe that you do have what it takes. Just believe in yourself.

I'd say the biggest opportunities are that education is constantly changing and evolving, and because of technology and research, we are working with much more evidence-based approaches, materials, and canons. We are much more informed and much more willing to be informed and use that information. It started with being data-driven, and now across the education field, we are really looking at how technology and research is allowing us to have more evidence-based approaches grounded in real research. However, that is also our challenge. We are moving towards technology and AI, and we need to stay on top of what we're using technology for, how we're using it, how often we're using it, and the research about that as well. Technology can be a two-sided coin. For people like me who have been in the industry a long time and have gone from the classroom level all the way up, the opportunities are about finding ways to use that experience to move into consulting and facilitating. But the challenges include that we're headed into an educational environment where there's much less funding and much less grant money. Previously, we would have been able to have grant-supported interactions with school districts or funding-supported professional development opportunities, and those are now really dwindling. We have to do much more work in terms of how we can get in front of people and access places that we normally would be able to just have a grant funded or foundational funded opportunity in the past.

Integrity is really important to me. I say what I believe, and I believe what I say, and my actions mirror that. I think character is really important. In education, it's easy to just go along with the status quo because that's just easier. I think that having character and not taking the easy way, standing behind what you think, and having integrity are among the most important things you can do in any field, but especially in education. When you're modeling adulthood to younger people, things like apologizing when you've made a mistake, having accountability, and doing that uncomfortable work of fixing things when you've broken them are priorities. Those are characteristics that I hope I'm always modeling and that I use as a guide. I ask myself, can I stand behind this? I don't believe in saying one thing and then doing something else. I believe in really just being authentic. Those are probably the most important characteristics to me.