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In this episode, we talk with Dr. Rita Harvey, Partner of Systems and Transformation with the Center for Innovation in Education. With 10+ years of experience in urban education, she is passionate about developing and implementing inclusive programs that engage a range of students.
In our interview, Dr. Harvey shares her profound insights on the transformative power of inclusive and empathetic educational systems, underscoring the need for educational environments that foster a sense of belonging for all children. She also discusses the importance of community engagement and the necessity of listening deeply and setting boundaries to ensure all voices are respected and feel safe to engage in important conversations and change. The Big Dream Dr. Harvey’s big dream for education is to develop and implement systems that are expansive enough to hold all children—particularly those on the margins. Inspired by her dreams for her own young daughter, Dr. Harvey dreams of systems that ensure every child feels safe, welcomed, and included. Further, she emphasizes the importance of developing systems grounded in inclusivity, empathy, co-creation, and reciprocity, which collectively contribute to a sense of belonging and ownership for both students and parents. Mindset Shifts Required To achieve Dr. Harvey’s big dream of expansive education systems, we need to embrace a few mindset shifts. Her work with the Center of Innovation in Education centers on four key habits that tie-in here: inclusivity, empathy, co-creation, and reciprocity. In particular, Dr. Harvey believes that building mindsets around inclusion and empathy is important to create a system that holds as many children as possible. Dr. Harvey encourages us to think about developing inclusive and empathetic mindsets by first asking how we can make the education system a safe space for all children. Then, there’s a mindset piece around empathy that needs to be cultivated—we have to understand the humanity in each other to really begin to transform systems. Action Steps Dr. Harvey’s work with the assessment for learning community requires getting to the center of the spaces that need change and bringing in people from the margins. Annual convenings with education stakeholders actively work to build a space and foundation so everyone feels a sense of belonging, community, and belonging. Stepping into spaces that aren’t always kind to concepts of anti-racism or anti-patriarchy is challenging, but necessary. In this space, conversations are held with empathy and curiosity so honest dialogue can take place. This work can be done by taking these action steps in your specific context: Step 1: Start by getting to know the students and their families, particularly those who seem uninterested or challenging. Build genuine relationships based on understanding and empathy. Step 2: Engage deeply with the community by holding regular meetings and listening to their stories to build trust. This ensures that all voices are heard and respected. Step 3: Create safe and welcoming spaces for dialogue. Prioritize the protection and respect of participants, and set boundaries to ensure that the needs of marginalized groups are met. Challenges? Educators are facing significant burnout, exacerbated by the lack of respect for the profession and the increasing demands placed on them. The challenge lies in creating healing spaces within educational systems that can support and hold taxed educators facing burnout and overwhelm. The other challenge is building spaces of hope and connection, especially when educators are tired and drained. How do we create those healing spaces for folks to continue to do this good work? One Step to Get Started Begin by focusing on a single student or their family who may seem checked out or disinterested. Make a genuine effort to understand their background, needs, and motivations. This small step can lead to a deeper connection and serve as a foundation for building more inclusive and empathetic educational practices. Stay Connected You can check out Dr. Harvey’s work on the Center for Innovation in Education website, and connect with her directly by email at [email protected]. To help you implement today’s takeaways, Dr. Harvey is sharing her principles of practice from the Assessment 4 Learning community with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 180 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
TRANSCRIPT 0:00:03 - Lindsay Lyons Rita Harvey. Welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. 0:00:06 - Rita Harvey Hello, thank you for having me, Lindsay. 0:00:09 - Lindsay Lyons I am so excited. I'm excited to learn more about you, I'm excited to be connected with you and your beautiful work. I am particularly just from before we hit record just excited about all of your ways of thinking that extend my own thinking and ways of grappling with some of these questions. So really excited. And I think for the first question, it's just you know, what do we want to keep in mind? What do you want us, what do you want the listeners to keep in mind today as we jump in? 0:00:38 - Rita Harvey This was an interesting question for me and thinking about what do we want to keep in mind? And so, in thinking about myself, I think there are two really important things that I've been grappling with lately as a Black woman, black mother, and thinking about sort of my history, and I think it's the idea that in this particular moment, I think it's part of my academic intellectual history, but I think Black women are a bomb in this world, and so I think about even the exact moment when we're doing this recording and the things that have been happening and the importance of Black women in particular and my history with Black women and being what it means to heal as a Black woman and as a Black mother. And then the second thing that I've been thinking a lot about is in summer of 2023, I was diagnosed with autism, and so I think about a lot and I approach a lot with an understanding of myself as a neurodivergent person, and I think it comes up sometimes in sort of my even sort of the linear idea of my thinking, and so if I get too divergent, just bring me back. 0:01:52 - Lindsay Lyons Thank you so much. That is such a helpful framing, just from like neurodivergence framing and also in like the beauty of that right and like where that takes us in ways that we need to go to be able to break out of like the way things have always been done, because those don't work, in addition to the healing, and also to contextualize your point, just for listeners to know. So this episode will be published a few months from now and so we are recording this on July 23. And this is just after the weekend where presumably we'll see what life brings us, but Kamala Harris will be the presumptive presidential person on the Democratic ticket. So very exciting things happening and lots of conversations to happen. So thank you for contextualizing us in the time we're in. I think one of the big questions that I love starting with is Dr Bettina Love talks about this so eloquently, about freedom, dreaming. She names them as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. So I like to contextualize kind of our big dreams for education, for the world, even if you want to go that big. But thinking about that with that quote in mind, what are the big dreams you hold? 0:03:03 - Rita Harvey I think on the sort of most macro which I think is also very micro is that we eventually develop and implement systems that are expansive enough to hold all of the children that exist. When I entered teaching I was very young. I was 22 and fresh out of college, having majored in African-American studies, and so it was a very sort of Teaching became the application of a lot of things that I believed in In terms of cultural responsiveness, in terms of I was a special education teacher making sure that I met the needs of those children, but it was still very sort of philosophically grounded. I was faced with these children, and now I am 39 and I have my own daughter, who is just turned four, and so when I think about education and the systems that I want to create, I want to create systems that can hold my child and be expansive enough for all that she is, but also all of the other children that exist and enter these systems, or especially those that exist on them and on the margins, because I think that would also hold those who are currently centered in many ways in the systems. 0:04:19 - Lindsay Lyons Absolutely. I love this notion of expansiveness too, because I think it speaks to like. The problems that we have currently had with our systems is that they are the exact opposite. Right, there is this one way to do school. There is this it is narrow, it is defined. I just love the possibility in the word expansive as well. There's so much possibility there. It's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that as the kind of grounding for the next few questions. One of the things I think, and even that in and of itself could answer this question as well. But I think there's a lot of mindset shifting that has to happen before we do transformative work or transform systems to be more expansive, and I think that can be such a challenge for folks who are trying to live that out. What are some that like? What's a mindset shift that you've either seen coached people through, benefited from? What are those like that come to mind when you think about that question? Absolutely. 0:05:20 - Rita Harvey So I think, in the work that I do at the Center for Innovation in Education, so I think in the work that I do at the Center for Innovation and Education, we, as a small organization, we think about how to develop systems that have four habits, which, in many ways, habits are the beginning of those practicing those mindset shifts. And the four habits that we focus on are how to build systems that are inclusive, empathetic, filled with co-creation and reciprocity. And all four of those habits are, I think, very, very important. But for me, I think I'm really drawn into the idea of how do we make and build inclusive mindsets and empathetic ones. And so when I say inclusion, it's how do we make sure that people feel safe coming into the system of education? How do we make sure that children feel safe coming to school? How do we make sure that parents feel safe being in their school systems and not only feel safe coming into them but feel a sense of belonging and ownership in those spaces and ownership in those spaces. And then, for the second part, it's the idea of empathy as a mindset that needs to develop, because I think we have to understand the humanity in each other in order to really want to begin to transform systems, and I think empathy and the idea of belonging they play into so many other things that are important for me, such as a culturally responsive mindset or a culturally relevant mindset, and if we get into anti-racism, you have to be able to empathize and understand where people are coming from. And I think I start with the idea of inclusion leading to empathy, because you have to believe that your own needs are going to be met by a system before you can begin to empathize with others in many ways, and so I think, for me, building mindsets around inclusion and empathy are really, really important as we think about building systems that can hold as many children as possible, as many of their dreams as possible. 0:07:20 - Lindsay Lyons Wow, that's really great. I'm just thinking about your words around, just the idea of you have to believe that your own needs will be met and before you can start to empathize with others, I think there's so much that I want to like sit with. That's really good and, I think, probably a huge mindset shift, a huge pivotal piece to some of the transformative work that that you do and you help others do so. I'm curious now, with those kind of four habits in mind, or focusing on those, the inclusivity and the empathetic habits thinking about the brave actions required, what is it that either you've done, coached folks to do, seen folks do that really leads that kind of transformative work, or has led to transformative work? 0:08:09 - Rita Harvey So I think I'll focus specifically on sort of the assessment for learning community and I think, well, brave actions. That's such a challenging concept for me because I feel like frequently I don't think of myself as particularly brave. I think not necessarily the opposite of that. But as a deeply introverted person who would rather stay in my little cocoon, I think even facilitating learning communities that are grounded in the idea of inclusion and empathy, and making sure we do an annual convening and we really, as a design team when we have a design team that's for the assessment for learning community that's comprised of largely women of color, queer women, and we come together and it's how do we build a space or build a foundation so that people can come and be, feel, experience that sense of belonging, that sense of community um, a sense of empathy. And we frequently do the work in spaces that are not necessarily kind to concepts of like anti-racism and the things that I believe, and so stepping into those spaces and creating spaces that are filled with love, I don't think that's brave. I think it's necessary um creating spaces where people can speak the truth um about institutional racism and, you know, patriarchy, all of those things, colonialism and the impact they have on all of us. So how do you create a space like that where you can hold many people? And so I think we do that in many ways. I do that a lot of ways by understanding myself but decentering myself. So how do I create an inviting space that allows people to do that? And so I mean maybe it would be braver if I like shared a little bit more about myself. Maybe that's the next step and because I do like to decenter myself in a lot of the work that I do, um, create space for the voices that I think are really vital. 0:10:22 - Lindsay Lyons Yes, oh, wow, there's so much, there's so much. I love the introspection and the authentic like thought process as you're speaking, to think about what you're saying as well. This is just. I'm just so appreciate you, thank you, and I I'm curious to know too, before we hit record you were saying you know that sometimes those those brave moments are really at those that that personal level it's, it's kind of those micro moments as opposed to like the big things, and I think your answer speaks to that. I'm wondering if there is kind of a moment in mind or a scenario in mind or just kind of like a general approach to kind of key moments that you've seen really unlock a transformation in someone or build that space and deepen that sense and experience of belonging for folks. Absolutely. 0:11:09 - Rita Harvey And I'll start by, I think, the idea that the brave action. I think a lot of times we're in this moment where people do say that they're inviting folks in and so part of it is actually doing that. So let's see our latest convening. I guess this is not a space that is not unfriendly to. I'll actually talk about our convening in Tucson, in Arizona, and Arizona has a really complex history with culturally responsive, culturally relevant practices and but they have a really in the city of Tucson they have a really robust culturally responsive program. So when we were planning our assessment for learning convening in Tucson, we wanted to make sure that they felt safe and so we built these bridges and so it really required, I think, even stepping outside of my comfort zone, in the sense that we went to Tucson, we would meet weekly with members of the Tucson community and began to understand what their story was, truly, listened to the things that they were saying and I'm just thinking. I'm thinking about the idea of invitation, not just inviting in, but the, the slow process that's required to even endure, just like the awkward moments when people don't necessarily be, the awkward and uncomfortable moments when you want to fill a space with noise or you want to fill a space and I think this can happen with students as well in the classroom the need to be the expert, but really step back. So my colleague, soraya Ramos and I were planning this meeting in Tucson with two members of the culturally responsive department, and I remember the first meeting. We were online and they just couldn't believe that. You know one meeting after the other, with both allowing ourselves to be human, but also learning their story, learning about the traumas that they faced as a community After their state superintendent had basically gotten a ton of them fired and the ways that they endured to make sure that they could have this culturally responsive department of education and the same commissioner that had done state superintendent that had done that. He was in the year that we were doing the convening. He was re-elected as their state superintendent, and so they were. We had to create a space where they felt safe and we honored the work that they were doing. So I think that was one where I don't know. I don't know if it was brave on our part, but it was brave on their part to be able to do this, and so it meant that we took steps that we wouldn't necessarily have wanted. We wanted to be able to record some things, but we didn't want to put any of them at risk. We wanted to share their story in a way that felt safe for them. So and that's what I'm saying, I don't know if that's brave, but it was. It required immense listening and just stepping back, and, to this day, roshanda and Lorenzo are people that I respect so much because they are brave all of the time, but they have to do it in a way that also ensures that the teachers that work for them are safe, and so it's both. It's stepping forward, but also knowing when to create boundaries to protect folks. 0:15:11 - Lindsay Lyons Yes, I, I was thinking that, as you were saying, that sounds a little bit of a prioritization of you know, like, yeah, I want to go do this thing, we need to do this thing, and I have this other thing that's really important in the protection of people and and I think about that a lot I think you and I have academic backgrounds in addition to, like, practitioner backgrounds. I think about that a lot in terms of, you know, research and and, um, like you know, you need to record things or you need to do this, and it's like what, what's the balance between the human piece and the piece of, like, check the box? We need the thing for some file or whatever, right? So I think that that speaks deeply to me. 0:15:50 - Rita Harvey And I think there's like two sides to I think what I'm. I think there's that there's the actual connecting. But I think, like right now I'm working on a small research project in Kentucky and we're trying to figure out how to get to the margins of the community. And it is not a racially diverse community to get to the margins of the community and it is not a racially diverse community. So what the margins look like is like different than sort of how I've conceptualized the margins at other times. But we find that even as we're working with the district, even they don't know how to get to the margins, and so I think that's brave, but I think I think it's a thing from from the classroom, when you have those students whose parents you know you need to talk to but you're afraid to like, call their parents, um, the same thing it it sort of happens time and time again, and so the brave action is saying, you know what, like, let me put aside my assumptions about a community, about a person, and um, really begin to invite them in and listen to what they need so that they feel safe coming in and not just like, okay, they don't want to be here. 0:17:15 - Lindsay Lyons Right, oh, yes, that for sure. I am also wondering how, with some of these this is a bit more of a technical question, I guess, but thinking about creating these spaces in communities where you're inviting in folks at the margins, what are the? What kind of stakeholder groups are those? Are those educators or those families or those community members who are not maybe formally linked to the education system at the time? Are they young people? 0:17:36 - Rita Harvey Are you talking specifically about the one in Kentucky? 0:17:38 - Lindsay Lyons About any of them really. 0:17:39 - Rita Harvey But yeah, I think it can be. It can be all of those folks I think in the work that we've done. It can be those educators who do their job and then want to go home, which is a position that's. It can be those who aren't necessarily tapped for all of the like, insider, like let's build up this system. It can be the teachers of those students that you, you know. It can be your teacher of your special education students. It can be those who are doing technical, the sort of the technical and career education it can. It's also a lot of the time, I think, when folks tap students, like in the work that we're doing in Kentucky right now, we've noticed that a lot of the students are those who are already centered and they are actually pushing us. They're saying we know that there are some folks who are excluded. Um, how do we make sure that, not just the, the research work, but like, how are they included in this broader initiative around assessment that's happening there? Um, and also the families, and I think that's been. I think that's some of the hardest, um, hardest in getting, because there are sometimes time constraints, there are sometimes language barriers, there are people who have had their own trauma with schools and don't necessarily want to reenter those spaces. So how do we, simultaneously, while we're trying to rebuild a system, make it minimally viable for folks to come in so that we can actually build something that's transformative, and understanding that it's not? It can't happen all at once, so you can't be dishonest and say like we have already transformed when you're in the process of transforming. So what are those first steps? And that's something there's no singular answer for what that first step is, because the things that make people can remember, even in grad school, going to communities that my mother probably would have been very upset that I was visiting, because it would have. She would have viewed it as unsafe, but those were the folks who needed to be at the center of the work. So I think it can. It can look like a range of folks, but I think it can. It can look like a range of folks, um, but I think for me, my brain often lives in those spaces that can be conceived of as untouchable and that other they get those labels of unsafe, um, in some ways right, because I mean, if those folks aren't at the center of making decisions, right? 0:20:26 - Lindsay Lyons isn't it Ayanna Pressley who said the people closest to the pain are close should be close to the power, or some version of that? Right, yeah, I, I think that this probably is really um, it's very important for folks who are listening to hear it, who may live in the technical spaces of. Okay, so give me like a five point. Like what do I do? And I think it's really important when we often kind of rush to action and like do the thing, and we haven't built the foundation, as you said, you don't get to a place of transformative change. It's why we keep doing the same old things right again and again, and so I hope folks are taking away that this, this building it takes a while and like it is absolutely essential to do, to do the thing you're trying to do right in in a just way. 0:21:15 - Rita Harvey Yeah, and I think sometimes I like it almost. It's almost like a snowballing, like we I think about. You know, many schools have a family resource person who's supposed to be a connection to that community and in this research we've been trying to think about, like how do we get to that? But even they only have their layer. So then it's like, okay, if you can put me in touch with those folks, can they put me in touch with someone else? And can they like, put me in touch with someone else? And that does. That takes time. It takes courage to do all of those things, to go into those spaces. 0:21:50 - Lindsay Lyons Absolutely. And I wonder I'm sure there are an enormous, like a number of enormous lists, there we go, of challenges that folks could name in this work because it is so big and so important and so complex in some ways. Are there challenges that you know, folks have repeatedly surfaced for you or you've repeatedly seen in action? And and how might a person listening who's like I'm anticipating this challenge, perhaps work through that? 0:22:18 - Rita Harvey That's so interesting when I saw that. So I saw these questions ahead, obviously, and I was thinking about it in a in way, and I can still address that. But I think right now, in this moment which I'm not even thinking in terms of what it is micro in the grand scheme of things but educators are being asked to do so many things and I think before COVID there was already burnout and then, like you know, a new initiative comes along and you're like, okay, let me just like play along with this until until it fades out, right. But I think the biggest challenge right now is educator burnout because there has been such a lack of respect for educators and I think COVID just exacerbated all of that. So I think building if you're talking about systems level leaders, building spaces that can hold the educators who are taxed is, I think, a massive challenge, because if you're asking someone who's already sort of like doing so many things and facing so many barriers and challenges, and to ask them to do one more thing is just like so much, and so I think that is the thing that comes up the most. 0:23:44 - Lindsay Lyons That was not what I was thinking of, um, but I mean, maybe it's connected and I'm curious to know how you did interpret it or what direction you wanted to take it. 0:23:53 - Rita Harvey Well, I guess it was going to be very, it was going to be very hard and it was just the idea, and so this is why I say maybe it's connected, but returning to hope and like building spaces of hope and connection. It's really easy to get tired and want to give up when you're the idea of the challenge is how do we create healing spaces so that folks can continue to do this work when it's really tiring and draining? 0:24:32 - Lindsay Lyons That is excellent. Yeah, absolutely Right, absolutely Okay, that's. I think that's really connected to what you initially said, connected to all the events which, right we, we sometimes pretend in school systems like we're gonna ignore the outside of the school building and it's like what? No, that impacts how we live lives, like every day. It can't be ignored day. 0:25:02 - Rita Harvey It can't be ignored. It cannot be ignored and it I mean we can put it in packages like culturally responsive teaching. But I think even there are spaces um in. In Aurora, uh, colorado, we did a convening with um at a school that was for parenting teens and others in the community who needed the space, and it was a very small school, but you could see the commitment because the principal was trying to hold the space for the teachers, to hold the students, to hold their children, and so it's just like you can't, you cannot escape from any of the components. It all comes into the school. So even if I say that I just want to teach English or I just want to teach math, it's not possible, and I don't I'm not saying that from like a moral, or it's just like. Even if I like, even if it is a moral imperative to me, that's not what it is. Just you can't, you cannot get children to do what you want them to do without taking care of their basic needs in these ways. But to put that burden on the teacher, you can't just put it on the teacher. So the whole system has to hold the educators, the child, their family, and so I just think about interconnection and interdependence in that way. 0:26:13 - Lindsay Lyons That was so well said that I'm going to leave it at that. That's going to resonate with me for a while. Thank you, I think just to close us out if someone is and I think you spoke to this a little bit earlier, so you feel free to double down on that response but I think when we do this, sometimes it feels like such a big thing. Cultivating the space where people feel a sense of you know, belonging, a sense of perceived safety, you know, all of that is big, big. What's like the first kind of get the ball rolling momentum builder that you would suggest folks do if they're listening to this and going ahead and like entering the day with hope on their brains and in their hearts um, if you're a teacher, I mean there's that student that you're convinced, like as you go into your school year, that is not interested in being. 0:27:01 - Rita Harvey You get to know them. Um, if you're a systems leader, in that way, you get to know the family of that that student. Um start very, very small um and understand and not in a condescending way. Um, like I genuinely want to know who you are. It can be the student who is not interested, but it can also be that student who just drives you crazy. We know you have that student who annoys you. We know that there is someone who you're like you talk too much. Why are they doing that? What is the need behind that? Begin, if you have the capacity to employ a little bit of empathy to understand what's happening in whatever part of the system you're in. 0:27:48 - Lindsay Lyons Awesome suggestions. And then, just to close with that, I love this question for absolute fun. Does not have to relate to what you're doing in your work, but again, what is something that you've personally been learning about lately? 0:28:05 - Rita Harvey This is really. It's very silly, it's not silly, it's not silly. My family, we moved from Massachusetts to Texas in 2022. And we bought our first house in 2023. And I have a garden for the first time and I really want to be successful at gardening and I have killed a number of plants. I am a succulent. I've killed succulents Like it doesn't matter. I killed. So I'm both gardening and learning about gardening from books, from the people in the community, from my dad. So I've been learning and thinking about gardening and ecosystems, which very much so could relate to education, but I'm doing it in the sense that I just I'm learning about what it means for me to get my hands in the soil and get dirty. So that's one thing that I've been thinking about and learning about. 0:28:59 - Lindsay Lyons That is beautiful One I resonate. I kill every plant about and learning about. That is beautiful One I resonate. I kill every plant ever given to me. So I just wish that that wouldn't be my experience. I want to live vicariously through you and it reminds me a lot of Adrienne Marie Brown's writings with like fractals and like just all of the nature-y things. So super cool, I'm so excited. Lastly, people are going to be really excited about your work and interested in connecting with you. So if you're comfortable with it, where can folks learn more about you, connect with you or your organization, if that feels like a better place to direct folks? 0:29:30 - Rita Harvey Sure, I was going to say I think my email address is on there. I can say my email address. It's Rita at leadingwithlearningorg and I believe our website is leadingwithlearningorg. I believe it's not Center for Innovation and Education and if you look, if you search for Center for Innovation and Education, you will find me there. But it will also say that our organization is closed. It is not closed. It's just that we're no longer housed in the space where it was before. 0:30:04 - Lindsay Lyons Amazing Rita. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and brilliance. It was really a pleasure. 0:30:09 - Rita Harvey Thank you.
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AuthorLindsay Lyons (she/her) is an educational justice coach who works with teachers and school leaders to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice, and build capacity for shared leadership. Lindsay taught in NYC public schools, holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the educational blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Archives
August 2024
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