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In this episode, we chat with SL, an equity-centered designer and researcher from Optimistic Design. She shares her journey from the tech industry to focusing on systems and services to reshape educational systems with a focus on empowering historically underserved students.
We dive into the critical importance of co-creating educational environments that honor students' cultural and experiential knowledge, moving away from hierarchical teaching structures to foster collaboration. SL highlights the need for a healing-centered approach in education, shifting from deficit-based perspectives to recognizing students' strengths and agency. This helps transform empathy into actionable change. The Big Dream SL envisions education as a powerful tool for increasing critical consciousness among young people, enabling them to become more than consumers, but "critical designers of the futures they want to see." She dreams of an educational system that not only imparts knowledge but also equips students with the tools to understand the world and take meaningful action within it. SL believes we can empower students to co-create their educational journeys and envision a future that transcends current limitations. Mindset Shifts Required Educators are often excited about student voice, but when it comes to true co-creation with students, they may be hesitant or unsure how to get started. But to truly empower students, educators must embrace a shift from being mere authority figures to becoming co-creators of knowledge with their students. This mindset shift involves acknowledging and addressing inherent power dynamics in the classroom, moving beyond token support for student voice to genuine collaboration. Ultimately, it’s about challenging the idea that the person standing at the front of the class knows best. Instead, we all learn and grow together. Action Steps To begin co-creating with students in your classrooms, educators can follow these key steps: Step 1: Acknowledge and Map Power Dynamics Educators can begin by mapping out areas where power is traditionally held in the classroom, such as curriculum choices and disciplinary actions, and identify opportunities to share decision-making with students. This involves looking at yourself as an educator, analyzing your age, mindsets, experience, etc. to see what you bring to the classroom. It can also be a collaborative process, working with other educators to map these power dynamics out. Educators can also zoom out to bigger systems in our society—the justice system or financial system, for example—and analyze how those things feed into our educational system. SL talks about the "iceberg diagram” that helps you analyze what’s under the surface, digging down into the underlying societal structure. Step 2: Create Opportunities for Student Choice After understanding where power dynamics exist, you can continue mapping out places where power can be shared and transferred. Educators can introduce small changes by allowing students to have a say in curriculum topics and classroom discussions, promoting both peer-to-peer learning and individual work preferences. Start by asking: is there choice here? How can students inform curriculum or activities in the classroom? Small steps to share power build up to shared decision-making. Step 3: Provide Tools and Transparency Equip students with the necessary tools and knowledge to navigate educational systems, and be transparent about any constraints that limit decision-making power. One key shift is creating something visual that transforms the process from simply talking about it to making it tangible and real. Step 4: Get Continuous Feedback Educators can always look out for what’s working and what’s not working—it’s how we learn. Seek continuous feedback from students as an opportunity to grow. Asking students for feedback is a way of showing them you’re really listening. Challenges? One of the main challenges in implementing equity-centered design in education is overcoming entrenched hierarchical structures and mindsets. A lot of young people experiencing marginalization are led through the educational system from a very deficit-based lens. Instead of focusing on what’s wrong, we can shift to an asset-based perspective. Young people and students have so much to offer, and it needs to be acknowledged. This shift can be key to breaking down traditional teaching methods and embracing co-creation with students. One Step to Get Started This transition can feel really big for educators—action can seem like a huge step. But to start co-creating with students, educators only need to take small steps forward. One place to begin is by starting to map out those opportunities to share power. They can be small and seemingly-insignificant things, but they build into a bigger classroom culture of co-creation between students and educators. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guest on LinkedIn or on the company website, Optimistic Design. To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guest is sharing the Modernizing math toolkit and report with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 227 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:
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TRANSCRIPT
00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Hi SL, Welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. 00:05 - SL Rao (Guest) Thank you so much for having me here. 00:07 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I'm really excited to have this conversation with you. Same and let's just dive right in. I'm really excited to learn more about you and invite you to just share. You know, what should the folks who are listening to the podcast or reading the blog version of the podcast kind of keep in mind as we jump into our conversation today? 00:26 - SL Rao (Guest) Yeah, definitely so. I want to set context that I am a equity-centered designer and researcher, currently at an organization called Optimistic Design. We are a qualitative research and product design firm. We have deep expertise in education, all the way from early learning to higher ed. At the intersection of product design. We do services and strategies as well. But that's our deep expertise because a lot of us also come from the product space. So another aspect of our work is we take a systems lens and focus on learning from and with students who have been historically underserved by the existing systems. So part of taking a systems lens is also understanding all of the other variables that impact student learning and teacher practice and those kinds of things. 01:15 And then a little bit of very quick background about you know, what brought me to Equity Center Design, research and co-creating, co-designing with students is um. 01:25 I started my work in technology, actually um, but I have navigated over to systems and services, having worked in global health, in government um, designing public policy. So I've I've kind of expanded outside of just like product to thinking about services and systems and policy and how all of these things impact our experiences within the world, our behaviors and the historical contacts that are driving some of the decisions that happen today. So that's kind of the lens that I bring. Overall, throughout my career, a major focus has been kind of working with and focusing on communities, young people, students who are not served by the larger system, really recognizing that you know, it's not to be nice, but it's really recognizing that a lot of innovation, ideas, perspectives exist that we're not harnessing, and so by really focusing on communities and people who have the least access to power, we're able to design better services and systems for everybody. So that's kind of the perspective that I come from. 02:33 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Oh my gosh, that's a fantastic perspective. I love all the lenses that you bring in, all of that experience that you have that's even outside of education but so clearly relevant for education, so so excited to keep going with this conversation. I think you spoke a lot to things that I imagine are part of kind of your freedom dream, if we were to go to that question, and so I just love the language that Dr Bettina Love uses where she describes them as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. So I guess, with that framing, what is, you know, that big dream that you hold for education? 03:01 - SL Rao (Guest) Yeah, I think it's exactly that right that you hold for education. Yeah, I think it's. It's exactly that right, like education as a tool to increase critical consciousness for young people. A lot of the times, the way I was educated, I grew up in India, studying in India. I was not necessarily, I didn't necessarily see the things I was. So I have an engineering degree, for example. 03:22 So engineering, what I should have abstracted, which I had to do myself, but it wasn't necessarily something that I received as part of my education was all of the science system, classes and engineering. There wasn't a clear connection to say like here are the critical pieces or here are the mindsets that this is showing you to review and look at the world around me. So I had to do that myself. And so ways in which like education can very clearly, from the beginning, give students the tools to understand the world, take action, see their part of the system. 03:55 Because right now, the way technology is evolving, it's evolving at such a fast pace and to a level of abstraction that it's really hard to like disentangle how it actually works. And I bring up technology because we are all consumers of technology and it is continuing to revolutionize how we communicate with one another how we learn, but we don't want young people to just be consumers. We want them to be critical designers of the futures that they want to see right. So we don't want futures to just happen, and so I think education has so much to do with that and is a critical component of shifting that perspective and the mindset, and I would yeah, there's obviously already a lot of like advocacy and action and kind of demystifying happening with young people Would love that to be a critical component of our educational process and system. 04:48 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Wow, I love so much of that. And then, specifically, I just wrote down the critical designers of the futures. They want to see part, because I think that's so powerful and I think about that. It's so clear in kind of the STEM and STEAM realms. It's also clear, I think, to me when I think about being a former literacy teacher or social studies teacher. Right, we study the past to figure out what the future is going to look like and how we can co-create that. 05:12 Right, like literacy, like thinking about, like Afrofuturism and like sci-fi and fantasy and like imagining that idea of what the world could be in those spaces. Like there's so much that connects to all subject areas. This is so cool. Okay, let's keep going. I think, you know, sometimes teachers are, I think about teacher school right, the like don't smile until Christmas and like authority figure, you know ridiculousness. That is part of, like, traditional teaching methods. And I think that sometimes when we talk about student voice, teachers are like yeah, yeah, great, but then when we're like no, it's a true co-creation, there's some hesitancy and I'm just curious to know what mindset shifts that you would kind of coach people on to truly get to that place that you're describing, versus kind of the nominal like yay, student voice, but not really co-creating, co-creating. 06:01 - SL Rao (Guest) Yeah, that's a that's a great question. In we coach a lot of product teams, organizations around like co-design and a lot of people just want to learn the methods. They're like show me that participatory design, research method right. And so we actually step back and say like we want to understand how your organization is set up. What are the mindsets that exist within the organization? What is the culture for true co-design? 06:27 Are you actually able to shift power in ways that is meaningful and not just you know a namesake? You're just saying, yeah, you know students have power, because I've been in spaces where you know government agencies are trying to do their best. They're like we're going to bring young people in. You know the most marginalized young people experiencing housing insecurity or maybe the foster care system. We're going to bring them in to give us feedback. And when they do create that space to give that feedback, they are they're like they didn't. They didn't say the right thing, or they didn't say the thing that we wanted, right, or it's like it didn't apply to what we are doing. It's like did we spend the time educating young people? 07:05 So I think a big part for me in the mindset shift is you just mentioned is like you know, traditional teaching has a lot of like one way knowledge dumping, right, like the expert, the teacher, the, the person standing in the front. There's like a persona for that person, which is interesting even in our research, especially with younger kids, even like middle school students. When we ask about variations of like classrooms, a lot of them actually default to they want the one where the teacher knows and they tell them the thing because that's what they're used to. Right? And so really thinking about this old school belief that one person standing on the podium knows best, and a good, you know teacher has the mindset of learning together and making knowledge with students. So creating those opportunities to shift those mindsets with students, teachers and themselves, where actually knowledge making is happening together, like what are we learning? What is happening? What are we seeing? 08:02 Because students come with their own bodies of knowledge, their own cultural knowledge, and you know, we want, we want to create that space. We're doing that together. So co-creation starts there. Those like small pieces of shifting away from here's everything that we learned in history or here's everything that's happening right now. It's like the future is going to look different than the knowledge that we have. We're going to bring together and create something new that's more applicable than these, like you know, thick sets of knowledge. So, yeah, I think that would be my really big one and even for leaders, like creating that space where that's possible and I know there's a lot of other incentives that are against this where you know it's like tests and you know really thinking about these bigger incentives that de-incentivize this kind of knowledge making, but I still have hope. 08:54 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, such a good point about the de-incentivization of like, because stuff like this takes time, right, it takes time to like build the relationships with students and like get students to kind of come out of that space, because as a former high school teacher that tried to do that, I can tell you so many times where students was like just tell me what to do or what to do. 09:11 - SL Rao (Guest) Yeah, you're making too much work. 09:14 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) It's so wild and I'm like, don't you want this? And it's like, yeah, I think you probably do, and like you have just been told year after year that this is how school goes, and so it's so hard to break out of that. And so I'm really curious about the how. Like how does this work? Like, how do you share power with students in this way? How do you have, like, a steps or a framework for this? 09:38 - SL Rao (Guest) Yeah, I think this is, you know, it's small steps, right, like it's all the small things that we do. You know, even if we have shared lived experiences with students, you know we might have like age affinity or you know we might have like other like indicators that are like, oh, we have like similarities. So this is going to be very easy for us to shift that power. But really, I think a big part of it is really recognizing, as educators, as leaders in the education space, what our positionality is right, the way our society favors, like age, for example. So at any given point, a teacher is going to have more power in the system, just in society as a whole. So I think, you know, really thinking about stepping back and really recognizing, like, how are we showing up, what are we bringing into the space and how we teach, what mindsets we bring? Are there other mindsets that relate to student assets or student deficiencies or and these are things like we've, I think, over the last few years, a lot more conversation and discussion, willingness to talk about these things and be able to confront our own biases and, you know, our own, the preconceived notions that we're bringing in, to understand the underlying layers, in which ways in which, like our positionality, um, can cause these like power differentials, right. And then part of it is like being able to acknowledge that, you know, power in a space isn't bad. It is when it is, when we are pretending it doesn't exist, right, um. 11:19 And then the second piece is really uh, what are ways, small places where, as educators, we hold power? What are the ways? Like mapping those out within the classroom? So, is it in like being the knowledge share, setting the curriculum, disciplinary action, action, you know what are all of the ways, and I think that's part of like doing it with other educators as well, because they might bring up other perspectives. You also are the conduit to the parent, like the parents are going to, a lot of times, listen more to the educator than they will their own child, right? So there are these pieces of like. What are we saying? How are we saying that? And are we thinking in a deficit lens? Are we thinking an asset-based lens? Are we able to really, you know, think through those pieces? And then we start thinking about okay, where are the places along that continuum of like where power is held? Are there places where we can start creating space where power is shared, right, like there might be small things like and really we need to acknowledge that there's always a spectrum and we might not get to the final end of full collaborative. You know power sharing within the space, but there are steps that you can take where you're like really mapping that out and I think, as long as we're aware and we're not overselling it, it's okay. So you know you're, you're coming in and you're saying okay, is there choice? 12:46 We start with choice over what is learned, like what we can focus on. We go into like are there ways in which students can inform the curriculum? Are there ways in which students can inform how the class discussions happen? Again, like you know, there might be things within literature where it's like okay, peer-to-peer learning is great and we want to implement that. Can we give students choice over it? Because not all students are going to want that. Some students just want to work independently. 13:12 So the more spaces we create in, those are small, those feel very small, right, but they are ways in which we are sharing that power to get to a point where there is shared decision making happening. There's a lot more power. Are there ways in which then you know it escalates outside of the classroom Is there. You don't want to create a space where students have a lot more power in your classroom but they go outside and they're, you know, hitting up against like larger structures. Are there choices? A lot of times, school leadership will do like surveys or like listening sessions that I've heard of, but a lot of those are not necessarily implemented. 13:49 Again, with this perspective that, oh, students are telling us things that we don't want to work on or we can't work on. Sometimes you can't, you know you're, you have budgets and these other things, but can we be clear about those limitations so that students are smart, you know, we don't have to hide things from them and we don't have to give them free reign. When there isn't free reign, we can talk to them about what are these constraints and then give them the opportunity to design within that and create space, give them the tools. And a lot of times I think we don't empower young people with the tools we say we should. We're shifting power and we're like we shifted power, you're not doing anything with it. It's like do they have the tools, do they have the knowledge to navigate these spaces? And we as educators and, you know, adults who've been in the system where we have had like, uh, post-secondary education and master's degrees and maybe even PhDs. We just take some of these things for granted, even if we have a lot of affinity with young people is like really recognizing like we've had the opportunity to learn and grow in these ways and we need to create those spaces for young people. 14:53 And really I think for me, shifting away from just like talking about things and sitting there with other teachers and mapping things out make something visual and takes it out of just this language and makes it more clear. So it is a really great tool and it doesn't need to look pretty right Like it's just lines, dots, numbers. You might also something's what I do when I'm mapping out, and I think of this also as a version of a systems map, mapping out and saying like, okay, what are incentives potentially? Is there like a money incentive? Are there other structural policy related things that might impact this and how do we work within this? Or it gives us information about what are other pieces of knowledge that we need to share with students to help them, and we can start those at an early grade as well. 15:42 Right, like start giving choice variation and then extend that to get to a point when students are able to have a lot more free reign. Some structure is good, especially when they're younger, and giving choice within that, and we know that over time, like even with parenting, and really recognizing, like having them see their choices have a reaction, an impact, and what that feedback looks, because we also need to learn those pieces of it I think is really helpful. And then the last thing I want to say is like continuous feedback, right. I think as educators, leaders, we need to keep getting feedback on what worked and what didn't work, and we need to be open to that because we might put our heart and soul and a student might come back and be like I just wanted to go back to how it was and that's okay, right, like really understanding that there's feedback isn't bad, it's an opportunity to grow. 16:36 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Wow, you said so much. This is so cool. I love all the things. The things that are resonating with me specifically are like the Lundy Laura Lundy has this model of student voice that like connects very deeply to what you're saying. So the way that I'm sure that's probably what connected to what you, you guys, have put together. 16:51 So the idea of influence is really, I think, a big one, like the audience and influence piece where, like, yes, you have to listen, but then you have to come back and be like, okay, you gave us this feedback in the survey, right, here's why we didn't go forward with it, because we have these parameters, right, or whatever. 17:05 And like that means so much to kids because otherwise it's yeah, I wasn't really listened to, I'm not going to tell you and take the time to tell you the next time. 17:13 Right, it's such a critical step that's so frequently missed that it's like, yeah, I just. I love, also, from a systems lens, this idea of mapping with a team, because so many times we look at school schedules and we're, you know, doing the where everyone is and all that, and it's overwhelming, and so, for either simplicity or because we don't have better models, sometimes we're like, okay, well, we just don't have PLC or team time and you just have to figure it out and like, try to touch base in the hallway and it's like, no, this is so critical because it affects every moment of the day and it affects things like this like the true co-creation, like we're going to do just things so much better if you have that team time. So I love that you named that. I also, you know. Another piece I was thinking is strategic planning conversations from like a leader lens, but also I mean, I've had students do like root cause analysis for not a strategic planning conversation because they like found an issue they're interested in and wanted to make change. 18:10 But I've led some of these and they can be great and they can also just fall really flat. They can be great and they can also just fall really flat. And so I'm curious if you have either suggestions or like a particular experience that went well or didn't go well, and kind of an analysis of that, of just like, how do we do those better? How do we actually find a root cause and be able to move forward and like make authentic, co-created change, versus just like check the box, which I've seen a lot at, like the state level, for example, just being like we did it, we wrote something in the box. 18:40 - SL Rao (Guest) Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I think the big thing with root cause analysis is we have to one understand the systems at play, and when we are experiencing the systems, it's really hard to see it. It's like you know your fish don't see the water. 18:55 I mean, it might not actually be true, but you know, we don't we don't, we don't see the air that we're actually going in, and so so systems can be like very specific and organized right, like like the education system. You can be like, ok, there is like the federal and you know there's like district level, state, district level. You can kind of identify, you're like, okay, this is kind of clear where the money flows, where the policies come in, and you know X, y, z, and then you can see some of the players. But it can also be kind of more complex systems that intersect, like, let's say, the, uh, the justice system or the financial system, where the financial system, yes, you can map it out from like a structural level, but there's so many influences where there's like, oh, there's the larger market, and I'm just sharing that it might not necessarily it does actually impact the education system, right Like it impacts like parent choice and interest, because they're like OK, now we want school choice for these very specific reasons, these financial incentives that then drive like variation and change and I'm talking really big systems. Right, like we want to be able to understand everything that could potentially impact this thing at a classroom level or a societal level. 20:07 Some people go, you know, go into like the seven whys process. I don't know if that's what you use. It's like, okay, this is happening, why? And then you answer you're trying to get to some of the deeper pieces, the deeper pieces in that structure, because it doesn't have necessarily like an expectation of hitting something, like you can just get to, like why? Because parents don't want to, but we don't necessarily understand, like is it the mindset, is it a financial incentive? Is it X, y, Z? The teacher doesn't want to? It's like they just don't want to. And it's like OK, we need to get to the bottom. So a couple of things. That which I think, as educators and you know, other people within the system, I feel like everyone is, uh, you know, has that you're constantly designing. 21:03 So, um, she talks about the iceberg diagram, where you're looking at what is about, like what is actually visible within the system and you might see the visible pieces might be the more obvious things. It's like you know, uh, maybe their behaviors, or they might be the more obvious things. It's like you know, maybe their behaviors or they might be like actual, something like more tangible. And then you start digging under the system and she has, like these very specific things that you get to. So you know, by the end of it you're trying to get to the underlying, like societal structure, those mindsets, so it's forcing you to go beyond the obvious. So that's one way to think about it. So then you're getting to some of those bigger pieces. The other one is what I've done is, after doing kind of a systems map, is using a fishbone diagram, which can also be difficult if you've done that, right, because but you have to find all of the right, you know limbs off of the fishbone. So it's like it for the viewers who can't see me randomly gesturing uh, or listeners, um, you know, there's the middle, which is the spine of the fish, which is you're getting to like your from your problems, your solution, and there are different kind of lines at a diagonal which look at different um pieces that can be influencing the problem. And within that piece, what I usually do is I write out all of the possible. 22:24 So if we say, let me give you an example, if we think about I'm going to go to youth homelessness, because that's kind of top of mind for me right now, so if we think about young people experiencing homelessness and we are like, ok, what is the underlying, what is what, why Right? And so there's the poverty is one. The other is could be racism, there could be lack of housing, and so you think about, like the socioeconomic, so could be lack of housing, and so you think about the socioeconomic. So there's that financial factor. Within the financial factor, you have workforce development, you have lack of I don't know federal funding or cuts to federal funding, so pushing families deeper into the poverty line. So you think of all of the factors that come from financial. So you have the entire map as a way to pull from and finalize like what, what we want to pull. 23:27 This is the other thing with the fishbone diagram, is it? It prevents us from getting stuck on like a single source for the root cause? I think really recognizing that there's probably multiple root causes right For, like for young people experiencing housing insecurity, it's a combination of like. Actually it's happening at the level of their parents too. So it's like there's a lack of opportunity, there's, you know, that causes poverty and systems involvement. 23:56 There might be other things that all intersect and just create this environment where the young person can no longer stay at home, and so we want to be able to be open to that and we won't find a single answer. It can feel overwhelming, especially, you know, for people who are not used to doing something and then feeling like, oh, we can't do anything with it, is really getting to this piece of what are the things that we want to act on within this, what are the things that we can influence? Right from our earlier question is like what can we influence and what can we take action on? What can we change? With the expectation that it could potentially cascade to some of the other pieces. 24:33 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Thank you for just going there, it was a deviation from from what you're talking about, but I think there's so much in here. I mean, I love the idea of the iceberg model, thinking about the societal structure or mindset underlying it. I've thought about mindsets before. I've never thought about like let's name the societal structure. That is brilliant and I think gets to kind of the root of pieces. But I even love even more just the idea that there can be multiple and that's what the fishbone like emphasizes. 24:59 I was even thinking about right like youth homelessness could be like familial, like homophobia or transphobia. It could be like homophobia or transphobia from potential employers, and then those are actually connected even though they're different systems on the fishbone. But you could like do an annotation about highlighting how actually other mindsets come up there, like there's so much that you can kind of like blend those two things. So I love that you're giving multiple models because I see such a nice synergy there and I do wonder if that's something that even students could engage with, right in that co-creation where, like you have this either lived experience or interest, or just like you want to take on this lens of either the system or like this identity or like whatever it is that like is interesting to you and then you're going to go in this way and then, like it just so clearly, would illuminate the value of having multiple people at the table to do the thing. I it's just, it's really exciting. Now I want to go do one. 26:03 - SL Rao (Guest) I want to say um, I did this work with um, with young people experiencing housing insecurity a few years ago when I was at the state. We didn't do a fishbone diagram, we just like brainstormed together and I think what was helpful for for the young people in that process is like I was also learning, we were all learning together, right, but a lot of times they were involved in systems that they didn't even realize that the system officially existed. It was a formalized system that they intersected with because our lived experiences don't necessarily show us that those pieces right. And so they realized they were intersecting with all of these systems and they also saw that there's other young people around them, either because of their friends or, you know, the friends had involvement or they had involvement. Just noticing that that they are not alone, because a lot of times we're going through this alone. So like doing this root cause with young people is like you're giving them a lens to see the larger system. But you're also a lot of times what we do is we, we do that and we leave them there, right, and that's kind of, you know, taking someone up the mountain and just being like OK, you're done, you want the closure, so you want to move it into action. 27:11 And that's a lot of times, I think, as as adults in the system, we are like OK, we saw the system, yay, but it's actually you're leaving them in a space of like trauma, of being like what do I do now? Like you're in that like fight or flight space, of like trauma, of being like what do I do now? Like you're in that like fight or flight, you want to close it out and say like okay, how are we actually moving towards action? Like what are the action steps we can actually take? Because then you're creating a space where you're closing that out. And so I know it sounds very floofy, but really just like when we think about our own like body experiences and how we want to see things closed out, and I think it's not necessarily just to like thumbs up it, but it gives people an opportunity to act or the action and those kinds of things Right. So we want to keep them in a place of like empowerment and action and not in a place of like feeling like you're stuck in headlights. 27:53 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Absolutely, and one of the things I've been playing with lately that's going to lead us into this next question I hope this transition works is action can feel really big for both teachers and students and like, okay, we got to go act. 28:05 And people have this idea, I think, in their head sometimes that action means you need to change a federal policy or you need to go amass a thousand person protest or whatever the thing is, test or you know whatever the thing is, and that thinking again about like that bodily experience and just like the idea of healing when we're all like I just think societally, politically, like there's such an intense divide that is is actively like harming kids and and right, that like we, we need to like have conversations across difference without like harming kids, or like identities right and like making sure dignity is upheld. So I'm very interested in like these kind of like micro ways of action and like just being in community and learning a new way that has, like I've just read that you have, you know, a healing orientation to your work in education and I'm curious if you could say more about that because I'd love to learn. 28:58 - SL Rao (Guest) Yeah, definitely. 28:59 So this is built on the work from Sean Ginwright, who talks about like, healing, centered engagement, and a lot of our work is in like how, when we it's from. A lot of it is from the perspective of research, which I think can still apply here, where a lot of research, if you read online, like, even just like looking at you know behaviors of um, young people who are experiencing marginalization. It's a lot of like people who don't have that shared lived experience going in and studying um, let's say, like indigenous students in colleges and putting a very deficit-based lens on it, right. So saying things like oh, the community is holding Indigenous students back from succeeding in college because we have such a individualistic perspective of like, if you need to succeed in college, if you need to succeed in this mainstream American culture, you have to be individualistic, kind of selfish, and you're building, you're approaching it differently and we don't really look at the assets that young people come with, which is a lot. Sometimes it can be their entire community, their culture, cultural backgrounds, their resiliency and, you know, creativity and all of those pieces, right? 30:16 So when we a lot of research focuses on like, what is wrong with you? Why are you doing this. I saw this a lot when I worked in across housing, insecurity, foster care, juvenile legal systems. You know, social workers are trained in those systems to understand, like, what happened to the young person. Young person has to repeat the same story over and over and over again. So you're always asking, like, what is wrong with you? Um, what has happened to you? And you're keeping it in that space, um, and so young people are leaving those spaces still, you know, holding their trauma, and so I think even in education we don't talk about trauma as much. I'm seeing a little bit more of that. Um, also, I think there's this piece of like, when you have only a trauma oriented focus, again you're, you're, you're like empathizing, but a lot of times the empathy is in that space of like. It makes the trauma bonding, makes us feel better, but it's not actually helping the other person move forward, right, and so we feel great about having heard the story. Oh, my gosh, this young person went through so much. This young person who's in our classroom is going through so much at this moment, um, and and we, you know, ask for information and we move forward. Um, a big part of thinking about it from a more. Healing center perspective is like shifting our research practices and methods. 31:37 So it's also shifting how we engage with young people is and and focusing, um, focusing more on you know, instead of saying what is wrong with you, is recognizing all of the assets that young people are bringing into the classroom and the school, right, um, how can we challenge ourselves about how we think about the students and the young people? We have these like social norms and expectations that we kind of push on young people. That then recreates a larger expectation of, like these deficits versus really really acknowledging the ways in which they are continuing to thrive and do all of these things despite everything that's happening. Like there's an assault on their identities, there's, you know, they're on their freedom and even like preventing them from having access to information, right, and so they are learning how to work within that system where the adults are actively suppressing their educational experience and you know, not every single adult but many adults which are which can cause a sweeping like change in their experience. So so that's kind of like a healing centered orientation and again, this piece of moving to action. We don't want to stay in this piece of like let's learn about what's, what's happening, how scared you are, how tired you are. 33:02 So we had this, um, we did this project, uh, called modernizing math, and, um, part of that work was like understanding what the future of math education can look like, and it was exactly what you mentioned earlier. We understood the history to then, uh, bring young people, caregivers and teachers together to design what the future of math can look like. But we wanted it to not be without constraints. We recognize there's a lot of changes happening in the world, like climate is changing, there's technological advances, there's political changes, economic changes. What would, what would, what are potential worlds that could exist because of these changes, right? And so we worked with another organization called Knowledge Works, who does more of like futures foresight work, and so they develop these like five different models. 33:49 We immersed young people in these like worlds and had them think about what could education and learning math look like. We did see that in the beginning, you know, there was a lot of like yeah, it's going to take our jobs, there's no point, right, like there was this just like a very dark conversation that we went into and really recognizing, yes, that that could be true, yes, and what can we do about it? Given that what would we like to see, and moving that into like action. Acknowledging and then moving into action is not in any way diminishing what people are feeling, but really recognizing like our power is in. Like what does it mean to take action in these places and have agency and control? 34:33 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) You're reminding me so much of early, like right after I had graduated and done my dissertation on student voice, I was doing some presentations with a person who has a trauma background in youth and our kind of thesis was that this like voice and agency were the way that you interact with trauma is like this is the pathway. So like when we can co-create, when we can imagine this future, right, like that's, that's an action step. So I just total full circle, a little bit of like that's so awesome, and I recognize we're almost at time, so maybe we'll do a quick like lightning round for a few more questions. Does that sound? Okay, awesome, all right. So one thing usually you know there's so many ideas that people get when they listen or they read over. They're like okay, I need to like narrow it down to what am I doing in the next 24 hours or something. So is there one thing from this conversation or in addition to this conversation that you would say here's a good starting point. You can do this today or the next week or so. 35:33 - SL Rao (Guest) Yeah, I think could be. What we talked about earlier is like, if you know, people are thinking about sharing power, co-creating, mapping out where opportunities, even just starting there, just seeing it, and it feels less daunting. 35:46 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I love that so much. I also know everyone on this podcast. This next question is just everyone kind of identifies as a lifelong learner, so I'm just curious, either personally or professionally. 35:57 - SL Rao (Guest) What's something you've been learning about? 35:59 I also do improv, um, I'm on the ensemble ensemble of a improv group in Seattle and, um, I think one thing that comes up to me is like ways in which like movement can really help change the ways in which we think and bring out other parts of our brain and creativity, because that's why you're doing an improv right, like people a lot of times say oh, it's so hard, I would never be able to do that. 36:24 I'm like, no, you wouldn't be able to do that right. Because it is the ways in which we intellectualize, we sit, we, we close off our bodies a majority of the day, and that's how our education system is also set up ways in which we can move to help create that space to bring up creativity, use voice, use our like imaginations in different ways. We can't go from zero to 100, but we can create that pathway through our body, our voice, our memories, our imagination and start that process. So that's something that I'm always learning and I feel like there's so such a vast space for me to learn and grow, to be a better improviser. 37:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) You are such a cool person. One and two, that is such a brilliant idea, so thank you for sharing that. And finally, just where can listeners learn more about with you or connect with you? 37:11 - SL Rao (Guest) Yes, so our website, optimisticdesign, is a great place to pop in. I'm also on LinkedIn, so people are welcome to find me with my name. And, yeah, let me know how they heard about me in the notes, so I can make sure to add. 37:28 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Amazing Essel. Thank you so much for this conversation, yeah. 37:32 - SL Rao (Guest) Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me here.
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AuthorLindsay Lyons is an educational justice coach who helps schools and districts co-create feminist, antiracist civics-based curricula, discussion opportunities, and equitable policies that challenge, affirm, and inspire all students. A former NYC public school teacher, she holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Lindsay believes all students deserve literacy, criticality, and leadership skills. Archives
January 2026
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