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In this compelling episode of the Time for Teachership podcast, Kwame Sarpomenta shares his transformative journey from classroom teacher to influential consultant and author. He emphasizes the importance of discovering one's identity beyond professional labels, envisioning an education system where students can truly express their authentic selves without fear, drawing from Dr. Bettina Love's concept of freedom dreaming. Kwame also discusses the essential mindset shifts needed among educators, particularly those from dominant groups, and underscores the significance of critical humility in understanding diverse identities and addressing systemic inequities.
The Big Dream Kwame Sarpomenta articulates his big dream for education as a system where "every young person can go into a school as their unapologetic, authentic self, without having to leave any part of who they are at the door." He envisions educational spaces where students are welcomed and accepted for who they are, without any questioning or interrogation of their identities. This dream is grounded in Dr. Bettina Love's concept of freedom dreaming, which calls for an education system that does not perpetuate "spirit murdering" but instead fosters environments of acceptance and authenticity. Mindset Shifts Required To achieve this big dream, Kwame highlights several crucial mindset shifts: Embrace Self-Learning and Humility: Educators, particularly those from overrepresented groups, must undergo a process of self-learning and humility to understand diverse identities deeply. This involves recognizing the vast array of experiences and perspectives that exist beyond one's own. Critical Humility: Kwame emphasizes the need for critical humility, which involves questioning one's ideologies and biases around race, gender, and other identity markers. This is crucial for disrupting the status quo in education. Empathy and Active Listening: Developing empathy and actively listening to the experiences of marginalized communities is essential. Educators should engage in conversations with people from different backgrounds to understand their firsthand experiences. Action Steps Step 1: Affirm Student Identities Create an inclusive classroom environment where students feel safe to express their authentic selves. Affirm and celebrate the diverse identities of all students. Step 2: Combat Dominant Narratives Actively counter dominant narratives through counter-storytelling. Incorporate diverse perspectives and voices in the curriculum to challenge stereotypes and broaden students' understanding. Step 3: Foster a Collaborative Classroom Culture Co-create a compassionate and collaborative classroom culture. Encourage open dialogue, mutual respect, and a sense of community among students. Provide opportunities for students to work together and learn from one another. Challenges? One of the significant challenges in this work is the fear of making mistakes. Kwame acknowledges that perfectionism can be a barrier, as it perpetuates white supremacy and hinders genuine progress. Educators may worry about saying the wrong thing or not having all the answers, which can deter them from engaging in meaningful conversations and actions. One Step to Get Started To begin addressing these challenges, educators can start by engaging in self-reflection and seeking out resources to deepen their understanding of diverse identities. As Kwame suggests, the first homework is to do the deep digging and interrogate one's own ideologies and biases. By committing to ongoing self-learning and demonstrating critical humility, educators can take the first step towards creating more inclusive and equitable educational environments. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guest on their WEBSITE - https://identitytalk4educators.com INSTAGRAM - @kwam_the_identity_shaper TWITTER - @identityshaper LINKEDIN - https://linkedin.com/in/kwame-sarfo-mensah PATREON - https://patreon.com/kwamesarfomensah To help you implement today’s takeaways, Kwame is sharing Free learning resources from his upcoming book, "Learning to Relearn" with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 192 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:
0:00:03 - Lindsay Lyons Kwame Sarpomenta. Welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. I'm so happy you're here. 0:00:09 - Kwame Sarfo-Mensah Thank you, Lindsay. It's an honor to be here. 0:00:12 - Lindsay Lyons I love that. We connected many years ago and now we're coming back full circle. You have the most incredible book that I have read in a while. I am so excited oh my gosh for sure, top book of the year. I am so excited oh my gosh for sure, Top book of the year. I am very excited. So I am really excited to just learn from you on this journey and this conversation. I want to also have space for you to say anything that you think listeners should be aware of, know about you keep in mind as we jump into the conversation today. 0:00:42 - Kwame Sarfo-Mensah Of course I'm ready. 0:00:46 - Lindsay Lyons Is there anything I feel like there's a lot of, you know, formality to bios, like there's, like here's the list of things that define me as a human. But is there anything beyond that, either like you as a human person roles outside of like the list of things that are traditionally in bios, or just kind of something that you've been thinking about as you have been writing the book and going through the very tedious process of publishing a book that you think people should be aware of before, kind of like our big first question. 0:01:18 - Kwame Sarfo-Mensah I think, in terms of who I am, if you want to look for all the professional credentials and everything, you can go to my LinkedIn profile. You'll find it all there. So, beyond the profile, I will tell you that I am a father, I'm a husband, I'm Dorothy's son Dorothy is my mom's name and I'm somebody who is still learning what it means to be a human outside of being a teacher, because for about 13, 14 years, I was working in the classroom, either as a teacher assistant or at a lead teacher capacity, and then, when I finally moved abroad with my family and transitioned more into consulting, it gave me more time to spend with my sons, more time to spend with my wife and more time to spend with the people I love, and through that process, I was able to untap certain facets of my identity that allowed me to do what I do now. I discovered writing during that time, I discovered podcasting. During that time, I discovered just a lot of different things, and it's amazing what happens when you make that pivot and you allow yourself to be immersed in all these different worlds. 0:02:50 - Lindsay Lyons So much of your story resonates with me as a former teacher who became a consultant and podcaster and and, and just that, um still learning to be human, that deeply resonates. So thank you, thank you for that. Yeah, so I think one of the big questions I like to jump off with is, um Dr Bettina Love describing freedom, dreaming in terms of the dreams grounded in the critique of injustice, and I love thinking about you know, the big dreams we hold for education, but I specifically like thinking about them in that framing right, because without that, what are we really doing? And so I'm curious to know, like, what is that big dream? If you could encapsulate that big dream in a response here big dream- if you could encapsulate that big dream in a response here. 0:03:27 - Kwame Sarfo-Mensah Well, to use Dr Love's words, there's a lot of spirit murdering that happens in our schools, and I saw a lot of that during my time, whether it was as a Boston Public Schools teacher or even a teacher teaching at different schools throughout Philadelphia. I would say that the big dream for me is to see every young person be able to go into a school as their unapologetic, authentic self, without having to leave any part of who they are at the door. They're able to go into spaces where teachers and all others in that community welcome them for who they are and they don't question or interrogate any parts of their identity. That's what I want for every young person, including my sons, to have as an educational experience. 0:04:25 - Lindsay Lyons Thank you for sharing that. I think that's like. That is, that is the minimum right, like that is like we right, like this should be happening education community right. Yeah, thank you for naming that and and naming that. It's not right, that it's not, it's not happening now and so things need to shift right, things need to change and I'm curious, in your coaching and your consulting and in writing the book even, I think there's a lot of things that you that you name that are maybe different ways of operating, different ways of interrupting or disrupting oppression, different ways of positioning yourself, particularly for, like, as a white educator myself, right, thinking about what, what are the various mindset shifts that folks with various identities or particular identity that you have in mind? I know that most of the teaching staff in the US is white women, so I mean, I'm operating from that perspective and acknowledging that that is a very overrepresented group. But are there mindset shifts that you think and you coach on in terms of getting to that space, getting to that goal that you just described of like everyone being their unapologetic, authentic self in schools, that we need to kind of like, change our thinking around or operate from a different place? That's going to kind of unlock movement towards that goal or 100% success for that goal. 0:05:46 - Kwame Sarfo-Mensah Yes, for sure. And when I wrote this book Learn to Relearn I knew that this was going to be a book that was going to be about transformation. But I knew that in order for this transformation to happen, in order for teachers to actually do what the title suggests they do, they had to do their own self-learning and to get to that place of humility where you feel like there's so much that you have to learn about different people, different cultures, different backgrounds, all these different identity markers. You have to go to the source backgrounds, all these different identity markers. You have to go to the source and I had to go to the source in order to get the information that I synthesized for this book. So, when you look at those first five chapters of the book, that was hard research I had to do. That included a lot of call-ins from very close and trusted colleagues and friends of mine, who are also phenomenal educators, who were telling me about their firsthand experiences and what it was like to be in school and what life is like holding these different identities. Because the reality is, you know, being a cis, hetero, black, male, I can't speak about everybody's experience. Heck, I can't even speak about the experiences of all black people, because we know that none of these communities are monolithic by any means. There is so much diversity and there's so much nuance and there's so much nuance and there's so much beauty within each community. And in recognizing that, I knew that I needed to tap in to all the different people who contributed to the book. I actually ended up tapping into close to 50 different educators and out of the 50 educators, about 30 of them made the book. So I still have a whole bunch of interviews, a whole bunch of conversations that have not been leaked out to the public that I may use for a future book, who knows? But the biggest thing that I had to learn in that process is, in order to truly understand what it means to be a good human to somebody and this transcends the education space you have to have empathy, really have to have critical humility, and these are things that Dr Ilana Sibi-Ruiz talks about when she talks about the archaeology of the self, when she talks about her racial literacy development framework. She brings up these different things In order for you to get to the point of interruption where we're disrupting the status quo in education and all these things that we know are wrong and really bad in our system. We have to go through the steps. We have to have the empathy, we have to have the humility. We have to do that deep digging those excavations that she talks about, where we have to question our own ideologies and thoughts around race, around gender, around these other identity markers. We have to interrogate those experiences that we had growing up that led us to have these stereotypical thoughts and ideologies about what's going on. That's the work that we have to do. That's the first homework that we have. That's the work that we have to do. That's the first homework that we have. And then from there you talk to people who have the first experience. You talk to people in academia. You talk to K-12 teachers. You talk to people that are within the community who may not be in education, but guess what? They hold these experiences and they know what it means to have this identity like. I couldn't tell you what it feels like to be a queer person, because that's not an identity that I hold. But from listening to people who are from that community, they tell me because you are a cis-hetero male, you have privileges that I don't have. You're able to walk around in spaces that I'm not able to access. I had to learn that In addition to the language, to be able to articulate that and understand the nuance there. Matter of fact, one of the biggest inspirations for writing this book was a call-in, and I talk about it in the second chapter where I talk about Native perspectives. So I have a friend named Tricia Mokino. She goes by the Indigenous Educators on Instagram. I was doing a virtual conference back in 2020, 2021. And my goal was to try to make it as intersectional and as diverse as possible and hit all the different markers, and I thought I was doing a pretty good job of it. And then, when I posted the flyer for it, that featured all of the presenters and it's about 20 of them. I see this comment from Tricia and it says hey, are you inviting any indigenous presenters for this conference? And sadly, I said no. And at that point she said you know like I support your work, I love what you're doing, but we're going to have to have a conversation about that. I did. It still perpetuated the invisibilization of Native people in the country, which then perpetuates the settler colonialism that happens within the country, and so we went to a whole deep dive on that. She told me what it meant for Native tribes to get their land back, what it means to have a relationship with nature, the land, how that relationship is sacred. We talk about the responsibility of non-native people to To invest and give back to federally recognized tribal nations because we are on their land. So, understanding water rights and other indigenous rights and all these different aspects of the culture that helped me to have a more informed understanding of my own actions, of the culture that helped me to have a more informed understanding of my own actions. And then that got me curious about what else there was to learn about Native tribal nations. And it then just segued into a deep rabbit hole where I'm now trying to learn about the different nuances and the complexities within the Latinx communities and then the Asian American Pacific Islander communities, and then understanding whiteness to a great degree, not as someone who has been a victim of it, but as someone who is curious about why society functions in a way that it does and why, from the time they were born, we indoctrinate these different principles and ideas of what it means to live in the society, ie dominant culture and the different rules that they inform and impose on others who are in this space. So this was me learning as I'm writing. So, when I write those words, this is me sharing the learnings that I've acquired over this three to four year period some very traumatic events that happen in their lives. For them to be that transparent, it only brings an additional layer to the whole experience of the book. So it's a learning journey and it still is a learning journey because what I know now will probably be more in the next year or two, because I'm sure enough going to learn something new. I'm going to have to correct something that I wrote in the book, because it's not a book that is going to be perfect. There's going to be mistakes, there's going to be nuances and things like that, and it was something that I had to understand, because one thing that I learned through this writing process is that, even though people may be in that same historically marginalized community, it doesn't mean that they share the same language. It doesn't mean that they think about things in the same language. It doesn't mean that they think about things in the same manner, even like some of the words that I would use that you would think are universally recognized within the community. No, you get into a semantics conversation, and this is between people within their own community. Having this conversation so me being outside the community you want to make sure you're being respectful and using the right words to give it justice, but then you realize you can't make everybody happy. Somebody is going to be disappointed in the end in the end. So once I was able to get past that mentally, then it became a little bit easier to write the book. But I'll be honest, lindsay, that really hung me up a little bit. 0:16:19 - Lindsay Lyons That makes so much sense. And to speak to a piece of your book right, perfection is a tool of white supremacy, so I feel like that is a piece. Right, it's the culture that we're seeped in the water we're swimming in. Right, I think that's right. Yeah, there's so so much in there. I just want to say thank you for all that you just shared here on the podcast, but also so much in the book. You, you like. It is clear, you live what you're telling folks to do like you're living it, like you. The um, uh, trisha, you said her name was right. Trisha, is that right? yeah you included like the screenshot of the conversation so people could literally see this is what was said to me. This is how I responded, like that was so cool to me as I was reading it, just just like, wow, the the um. I think you use the term critical humility earlier in our conversation and and I just I can see that in in what you have put together in this book and I I love, like for the um, white supremacy section I think it was chapter one, but, like you, you literally name like each of the pieces and then you give so many concrete examples. It's almost like a little, not little, it's like a. It's a series of call-ins for educators to recognize that in themselves. It's like a little like coaching support and I I have not seen a book do that with such depth and specificity before and I just it was so cool. I just want to say thank you. I think it's what I'm saying, that you are just living out the learning. It is evident and I think it's going to be a great tool for others to kind of see what that looks like as they're engaging with the work. 0:18:02 - Kwame Sarfo-Mensah Thank you Because that was the biggest thing I noticed in other books that were in that anti-bias, anti-racist bent. They talked about it in generalities and there are a lot of good books out there. So this is in no way me talking bad about those books, because some of those books I used to help me write this book, but the one thing I kept asking myself was what if there was a book out there that really got into specific detail about how each of the different historically marginalized communities are impacted by the K-12 education system in the United States? I have not seen a book that has done that. Now you might have books that are exclusively about Native students in the K-12 system, books that speak about Latinx students in the K-12 system, black students in the K-12 system. There are a lot of those books out there, asian American students, pacific Islander students in the K-12 system, but there isn't one that brings them all together. Oh, we can't forget to mention LGBTQ plus students and understanding how Sith heteronormativity is something that permeates in just about every school in our country and beyond. Permeates in just about every school in our country and beyond. We know that. But how do we tie that to all the other communities. I just mentioned how that kind of spreads across the board. So I want to do something that brought all those different worlds together to really start to get people to understand when we talk about DEI, when we talk about being an anti-bias and anti-racist educator. This is what the work looks like. It's not the only way to do the work, but it's one way in which you can get the work done. So, as I'm going through the process, I'm writing these chapters, I'm talking to the people, I'm getting guidance, I'm getting counsel, I'm getting pointed to leads as far as documentaries to watch, publications to read, people to talk to. This is all happening simultaneously and this is what you have amazing. 0:20:37 - Lindsay Lyons I one of the things you just named too is, uh, just finding the resources right, and I it brings me to, um, you have a really great section. You have a lot of great sections. One of them I want to name first, actually is the intersectionality that you merge like the multiplicity of identities. You just you put that front and center as part of the kind of framing of the book. I really appreciate that and I think that, specifically, is lacking from a lot of other spaces, not lacking completely, but lacking in its expansiveness that you have it as, and so I really appreciate that. Lens I also am just thinking about, you know that, the section between allies and co-conspirators, like you really delineate, right, and you have a breakdown of like here's what this looks like being an ally, here's what this looks like being a co-conspirator. And the biggest difference I'm thinking of Dr Sheree Bridges-Patrick and I have like, talked a little bit about like in terms of like, racial justice discourse one of the ways you don't hit the mark is like you intellectualize it and so you stay up in this heady space that is not like the heart space, right, and so we're like oh, I read this thing or I heard this on this podcast. So, as I'm hearing you do that, I recognize in myself like, oh, I want to consume more information, but there has to be an and there has to be an. And what will I do with that information? To take action towards justice and, in community with folks who are going to take the lead, provide direction right? So I'm not running things right and so I think there's a lot of pieces in the book like that. That is just like some nice aha moments for people to be engaging with. I'm also thinking of, like the second section of the book, after they get all of the synthesized information which, as we talked about before, we hit record. It's like a dissertation level, better than most dissertations I've read like a level of detail you talk about like, I think, the let me make sure I'm doing this right, so it's starting to work with you which you mentioned before. And then you have affirmed the identities of your students, combat dominant narratives through counter, counter storytelling. You've been reading, and then co-creating a compassionate and collaborative class culture. Oh my gosh, I don't. I love these steps. I don't know if I just want to make space for if you want to touch on any of these or talk about, like, how you came to that process, Cause I think that's it's really helpful for people to think about. 0:22:57 - Kwame Sarfo-Mensah Yeah, I think well, I can't take all the credit. I got to give credit to my main editor, tracy Zager, who was with me from the not day one, but pretty much from the beginning, all the way through to the end when we got the production. She really helped me in formatting the book and the chapters. So when we decided that we were going to go in this direction, she was the one who said, hey, let's front load all the historically marginalized community chapters so that can serve as a primer for folks who may not have that background, knowledge or schema around those communities. And then, starting from chapters six through nine, the ones you just referenced we can then talk about the practical aspect of the work, how we can apply it into our classrooms and how we can do that while we're serving our students. So I give her a lot of credit for helping me with the formatting, because I had the ideas and I had the vision, but I needed somebody to help me map it out in a way that was sequential, in a way that made sense to the reader, and Tracy did a lot in terms of helping me conceptualize that. 0:24:26 - Lindsay Lyons And I think, like you know, know educators listening this is just grab the book and dig into it and and dig into these sections, because I do think it's. It's a beautiful thing to just see again all of this mapped out as you're doing all the things you've done, all of the things right that you've done, and you're describing this learning journey for people. It's just a it feels like a real, authentic invitation to, to, to learn and unlearn, right that that you've described for us, one of the things that I'm conscious of time. I don't want to take too much of your time. One of the last big questions I have is around like the kind of daunting nature of some of of of the work, like the fear of saying the wrong thing right, which you, which you name, like the, the um perfectionism piece, that that people sometimes are like they're stopped, they're stopping themselves from action, from learning, from unlearning, right, because of this kind of like fear piece. I'm thinking that's a challenge that I often hear people name. I'm wondering if that's a challenge you hear, if you, if you have a thought on that, or if there's like another challenge that folks that you coach and consults with face or are worried about that you could like kind of coach them through, and and what would that kind of coaching look like, or what's a thing for them to be thoughtful about as they engage? Does that question make sense? 0:25:42 - Kwame Sarfo-Mensah it makes perfect sense. I think that's part of the work, though, as I mentioned earlier, there were things I had no clue about, and when people called me in and pointed out things I needed to read and study, I did just that. But what made it easy for me to do that was how they went about educating me. They didn't berate me, they didn't do anything like that. They saw that my intentions were good and I just needed a little bit of guidance. So the first thing is recognizing where people are and being able to pull them to the side and say, hey, you probably shouldn't say that, because X, y, z, here's an article that I recommend you read. Why don't you go ahead and read it? And then, after a few days, we can come back together and have a discussion about it and see how it connects to this issue. So these are things that I talk about in chapter nine, the last chapter, where we talk about co-creating a compassionate and collaborative culture, the call-ins, the educational piece that is so crucial, because there is no such thing as perfectionism in this work. I'm still going to make mistakes, I may end up misgendering somebody by accident, and I still may do it from time to time. But the difference between me now and how it was a few years ago is I have a radar. I recognize when I'm doing it and I'm able to self-correct myself because of the learning, because of all the call-ins. So my brain is programmed to self-correct. So it doesn't mean that I'm not going to make a mistake ever again. If that was a case that, that wouldn't be human. I'll be a robot, and we already got AI handling that, so no. So, for those who really want to engage in this work, don't deter from it because you're afraid of making a mistake. Or don't deter from it because you're afraid of making a mistake Because by you deterring from it, you're now being complicit to the spirit murdering that is taking place within schools. You're allowing more and more students, particularly those of color, black, indigenous and other students of color, to keep on getting harmed, and there's more than enough identity-based harm happening in our world right now, and I don't even need to get into all the examples in which it's manifesting itself. You all could read the news and watch what's happening. There's a lot going on, and I believe it is a paramount reason why we need a book like Learn to Relearn, because it gets us back to what matters the most, and that's treating people the way they want to be treated. Getting people to see that and this is an Audre Lorde quote it's not our differences that divide us, it's how we feel about the differences. That's what divides us, like the thoughts, the stereotypical notions, the implicit biases, all these things that those are the things that separate us more than anything, things that those are the things that separate us more than anything. Even the political rhetoric that's happening right now. It stems from implicit bias. It stems from messages that have been recycled over time with no type of empirical research or backing, empirical research or backing. So how do we get ourselves out of that mode? To learn about each other in a way to treat each other better, as opposed to listening to somebody with the purpose of getting a rebuttal in. We have to shift from that to this, and that's what this book is about. 0:30:19 - Lindsay Lyons I love that. Thank you for that. I think that's a beautiful note to kind of wrap up with, and I think I mean just my personal learning. Right now I'm going to ask you a question about things you've been learning. Despite your whole book being about things that you've learned, I'm curious to know if there's something you're learning about lately. Is there something like that's kind of front and center at the moment? One of the things for me is actually as a social studies teacher. I used to do a lot of claim evidence reasoning, like there's a lot of like argue based standards. That's like you have to hold your position, you have to find the evidence, you have to like stand strong in it and actually, now that I'm out of the classroom and coaching, I find myself coaching on. Wouldn't it be cool if we were actually assessing people on their ability to seek to understand others versus stand strong in your position and use you know? Right, like it's's I'm. I'm unlearning with you, so I just want to name that like that is that? Is there anything for you that's like front of center in this particular moment that you've been learning about related to education and this work? Or just like learning how to play an instrument, or something could be really. 0:31:21 - Kwame Sarfo-Mensah yeah, I think for me, being being a married man, being a father, learn how to be a better parent. Learn how to be a better husband. What does it mean to be emotionally available for my wife? What does it mean to confront your own trauma? What does it mean to be present for your children, and not just present in the physical sense, but to be emotionally invested in your child's growth so that they know that you're really there and not just there in the physical form? So those are the things that I'm continuing to learn each and every day, just to get better. What can I do today to be a better father to my two sons? What can I do today to maintain and improve my relationship with my wife so that she knows that I'm still very much invested in her and I still love her, just like I did from day one? Like, what are the things that I can continue to do to really cultivate those relationships being a family man? So that's where I am right now. 0:32:40 - Lindsay Lyons That also deeply resonates. I have a two and a half year old and a partner that I am. I'm in the same space, so thank you that that means a lot that you shared that I. Finally, I just want to make sure people know how to get in touch with you and follow your work. We'll link to the book once it's it'll be published. Once we release this, where's the best place to find you? In online spaces? 0:33:01 - Kwame Sarfo-Mensah I think honestly and not to be cocky or anything you can really Google me. If you Google me, you'll find all my social media resources. If I were to go through each one, it'll take too long, but you could also go to my website, identitytalk4educatorscom. Over there you'll find information about my services, my offerings. Like I said, I podcast. I also consult with K-12 schools, not just in the States but also other parts of the globe, and I do write from time to time blogs, books, other publications so everything identity talk related you can find on that website. Check me out, reach out, let's build together. 0:33:49 - Lindsay Lyons Amazing Kwame. Thank you. I am so, so grateful for your time today. Thank you for being on the show. 0:33:55 - Kwame Sarfo-Mensah Thank you, lindsay, this was awesome.
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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
March 2025
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