229. Build an Equitable Classroom with Dr. Jacobē Bell and Dr. Reshma Ramkellawan

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In this episode of the Time for Teachership podcast, Dr. Reshma Ramkellawan and Dr. Jacobē Bell dive into the transformative power of authenticity and empathy in education. As co-authors of the book Reclaiming Authenticity, they draw from their experience as both educators and researchers to challenge the current narrative that blames teachers for educational shortcomings, advocating instead for systemic change.


The episode emphasizes the importance of educators connecting with their true selves and their students, fostering a liberatory classroom environment that focuses on authenticity, empathy, and collective liberation efforts.

The Big Dream

Dr. Ramkellawan and Dr. Bell's ultimate vision for education is a system where reciprocal trust and humanization flourish. They dream of a system that works for everybody—students, educators, administration, and families. This vision includes breaking away from traditional structures, such as rigid classroom settings, and embracing a more holistic approach that connects education with the outside world and the land.

Mindset Shifts Required

To achieve an equitable, flourishing education system, educators can start to shift their mindsets beyond the technical aspects of teaching and embrace authenticity, focusing on connecting with their own identities and those of their students. 


This shift also involves questioning and disrupting the hidden curriculum that reinforces systemic inequalities. A “hidden curriculum” is the messages we’re sending, whether intended or not—how does the structure or layout of the classroom speak to children? How do our communication styles impact students? This is an important part to unpack and be aware of as educators pursue equity and authenticity in the classroom. 


Action Steps


Authenticity is not just about “being real,” but takes intentional effort on the part of educators. Here are some action steps to get started:

Step 1: Understand what harm is, as it can be hard to see. There are different types of harm—spiritual harm, pedagogical harm, or even curricular harm when the student has no connection to the curricula. Meditation can be a helpful practice to work through these areas of harm, acknowledging it and then working through it. 


Step 2: Engage in self-reflection to better understand and address unconscious biases and harm. Practicing mindfulness by using reflective prompts can help you become more aware of your identity and its impact on your teaching.

Step 3: Implement empathy interviews with your students. This is simply talking to them and asking questions like, “Tell me a time you enjoyed class,” or “What’s frustrating you?” You can also try empathy 360 practices, which is students interviewing teachers or teachers interviewing families. This tool and practice helps build empathy between all stakeholders and help folks see each other.

Step 4: Embrace the liberation lens. Let’s break out of the box and dream big! For example, bringing elements of Afrofuturism and speculative fiction into the curriculum can encourage freedom dreaming and envision alternative futures. Use creative activities like free writing and artistic expression to inspire students to think beyond the status quo.


Challenges?

One of the primary challenges in creating liberatory, authentic classrooms is overcoming entrenched systemic structures and biases that perpetuate inequality. Teachers may also struggle with balancing the demands of standardized curricula while fostering authenticity and empathy. 


One Step to Get Started

Educators can start with the simple step of conducting empathy interviews with their students. You don’t have to start big—just a few students at a time to gain deeper insights into their experiences. From there, consider auditing the curriculum and evaluating what voices are most prevalent and which ones are missing.

Stay Connected

You can connect with Dr. Jacobē Bell on LinkedIn, or Dr. Reshma Ramkellawan on LinkedIn or Instagram. Learn more about their company, Equity Consulting Group, on the website or Instagram, and grab a copy of their book, Reclaiming Authenticity.  

To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guests are sharing Recognizing the Hidden Curriculum with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 229 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: 

• 3:24 “I dream of something outside the box. Right now we have schools—brick and mortar—and students sit at their desks X hours a day. What does it look like to take students outside or connected to the land?” -Dr. Bell
• 14:14 "[Authenticity is] being able to be continuously conscientious of the identities that you’re bringing into the classroom and acting on those identities in a way that allows you to teach and connect to students and humanize them, while also creating a culture of empathy that is reciprocal for you and your students.” -Dr. Ramkellawan
• 20:58 “I believe that educators want to do well by children. I don’t think teachers go into this field wanting to inflict harm … It’s just, how do we become more mindful of what we’re doing and how we’re interacting and engaging with students?” -Dr. Ramkellawan
• 26:22 “I turn to Afrofuturism and speculative fiction more generally because where else are dreams bigger than in these worlds built in books?” -Dr. Bell

​​If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:

TRANSCRIPT

00:03 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Dr Rom Kalawan. Dr Bell, so nice to have you on the Time for Teachership podcast. Thank you so much for being here. 

00:09 - Dr. Jacobē Bell (Guest)
Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. We're excited to be here. 

00:14 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I am thrilled about the book that you wrote. I'm sure you're both thrilled as well that it is out in the world and probably took a lot of labor Reclaiming Authenticity. I want people to know that this is kind of the frame for the conversation, so we'll link at any point. You're like yep, got to get that. We will link to that in the show notes and the blog post for the episode. But is there anything that either of you want listeners or folks engaging with the episode to know or think about as we kind of enter the conversation about the book? 

00:43 - Dr. Jacobē Bell (Guest)
I can start us off with this. I think it's important for us to know, as authors, we are teachers first and we are coaches, and so we enter this with our teacher heart and our coach hat, and it's written from years of experience of like doing this work. 

01:07 - Dr. Reshma Ramkellawan (Guest)
Yeah, to echo what Jacoby said, I think we exist in a time where teachers are often dehumanized, demoralized, seen as the main cause of all of our educational failings as a country, and we wanted to rethink that narrative and shift how teachers can be seen and like poured into when they're receiving lots of external support. 

01:34 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
That totally tracks. Yes, thank you. Thank you both for that framing and I think your book is, I think, a testament to this first question I was going to ask, but I'll ask it anyway. I can see it was a succinct answer, but this idea of freedom dreaming is really important to me. The show, I think, the field of education, and so Dr Bettina Love describes this as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. So I think, thinking about that, what is the freedom dream that you all hold for the field of education? 

02:01 - Dr. Jacobē Bell (Guest)
I think the first thing that comes up for me, rooted in this concept of transformational justice by Maisha N, is that there's reciprocal trust and humanization between students, between teachers, between administration, in that the system works for everybody. Right now, the system doesn't work for anybody, right? It doesn't work for students, it doesn't work for teachers. And so how? 

02:34
My dream is for an education system where students flourish, meaning like both academically, but also their inner self as well, right, their sense of belonging, their sense of who they are, being affirmed and validated, and a system where they see people like them in the books they read, et cetera. And also for teachers, a system where teachers flourish as well, because, as we know, it's hard and it doesn't really work for anybody, which is why so many teachers are leaving the field. And so those are the first things that come to mind. And also, just like I dream of something outside the box, right, like right now, we have schools and a brick and mortar and, you know, students sit in their desks X amount of hours a day. What does it look like to take education outside, or connected to the land, or connected to outside? Things outside the walls, you know, make it more real, which might be more exciting for everybody involved as well. So those are the first things that come to mind for me. 

03:58 - Dr. Reshma Ramkellawan (Guest)
Yeah, there's also this element in our schooling system that is grounded in zero-sum thinking, grounded in meritocracy, which is a false paradigm. 

04:08
There's a gentleman who has done research on that and I'm drawing a complete blank on his name, but he had a TED Talk that came out during COVID, where he talked about it and said we have schooling systems and structures where only a certain percentage are able to thrive to the top and it's kind of the given norm and expectation that a certain percentage are going to fall below. 

04:33
And so if we're truly pushing for this concept of equality for everyone, it means meeting everyone where they are based on their readiness, and creating schooling experiences that don't implicitly tell them their worth because of these structures that don't actually fit who they are. 

04:55
As a learner, as a product of New York City Public Schools, you know I experienced this firsthand in a number of different ways, and now, working in that system and working across our country in like a number of different school systems that are similar in design and structure, and also as the parent of a school-aged child who's in a new york state school system, I see so many different layers of it where we're all. Each system is perpetuating the same rhetoric right that only certain groups of individuals are quote unquote worthy, wanting to only teach a select few, but because the system is, like, unintentionally, intentionally pressuring us to be in alignment with that rhetoric, and teachers get caught in the middle. And so how do you, as a teacher, find the balance between I want all of my kids to thrive and dream and grow up to be humans and adults in society that will feel so their voice and their lives matter when I have competing expectations. 

06:13 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Yeah, actually I wonder if this is a good time to talk about that kind of hidden curriculum piece of your book, because I think that illuminates exactly what you're talking about and describing Like. I was kind of floored when I read the table and also very like head nodding like yes, I have seen this. I've seen this play out, when I don't remember exactly what you guys call it, but it's kind of like the class management approach based on kind of like a class of worker in kind of an industrial system or capitalist system, I should say. And so I'm curious if we can kind of an industrial system or capitalist system, I should say. And so I'm curious if we can kind of unpack that a little bit for folks who don't have the book yet. That can kind of give them a preview. 

06:55 - Dr. Jacobē Bell (Guest)
Sure. So when I think about the hidden curriculum, I think about what are the messages that we are sending, intended or not intended? Right Down to like, what is how we set up structure in our classrooms, or what do our walls say? Or what do our communication styles, like, say, and how does that differ based upon who's in front of us, who the students are in front of us or the neighborhoods in which we're teaching, right? So I think the definition we give in the book is that the hidden curriculum refers to the content, topics or ideologies that purport implicit messaging within larger nation states that citizens are expected to internalize. 

07:49
And, like you said, capitalism in the US kind of like undergirds that. And so, professor Au, like A-U, I might be saying that wrong is kind of who I read to first when I was first exposed to this. And they talk about the working class and how, like, in the working class, teachers are expected. Teachers expect students to adhere to stricter disciplinary codes, submit to like figures of authority, copy things down and not really make too many decisions on their own. And how oftentimes there's like less creativity for the working class and schooling. And then, when we think about the middle class, teachers often expect students to get the right answers and understand how they got it, to occasionally make decisions, to follow directions, et cetera. And then, like the more fluent professional class teachers, expect students to, like complete more creative activities independently. Choose the methods and materials they'll work with right, there's more creativity, et cetera. Choose the methods and materials they'll work with right, there's more creativity, etc. And then the executive it's like develop analytic powers, make decisions, challenge answers, etc. 

09:20
And when I first heard about this as well, I was like oh wow. It helped me also explain, like, some of my experiences living and working in New York City for the last number of years. I've worked in schools all over the city and all different neighborhoods and I remember specifically the first time I was a coach in a school in an affluent neighborhood. That first day I was there, I went into the bathroom and I cried Because up until that point I had been working in neighborhoods that were very different from that, where, you know, oftentimes students were more policed, right, and then being in this school where kids just get out of their seat without permission to go get water because they need water or to go to their backpack, you know they didn't need to get permission and just like juxtaposing that to like, like, don't get out of your seat without permission, like, or just even in creativity, some of them were sitting on the floor during lessons. You know, there wasn't this like you must be in your seats, you must sit up straight, like. 

10:19 - Dr. Reshma Ramkellawan (Guest)
You know, it just felt very different and also the students in that school were from different backgrounds and I just cried because I was like, wow, like from day one kindergarten, they're interacting with schooling very different in ways that create decision making and create and promote creativity and you know all the things there's an additional layer to that too, when we're thinking about the role of teachers, um, in pushing back against these capitalistic systems and, again, capitalism is everywhere we're not gonna, we're not gonna go down that rabbit hole because, because there's like so much that can be said about it, um, particularly as it relates to schooling practice and as jacobi just alluded to, and we adults, children are not really separate from that system. And so I'm going to read a line from page 90 of the book Classism and economics are not the only factors that influence the hidden curriculum. A teacher's intersectional identity can impact the lens through which they see the content and curriculum. In chapter two, page 25, we discuss the concept of intersectionality. 

11:42
People's lived differences or lived experiences, rather differ based on the intersection of their identities. And we go on to talk about what is intersectionality. What does it mean to have to unpack who you are as a person and then how that shows up in the classroom? And how do we do that for students? If we think about our own lived experiences as educators, we having an unconsciously indoctrinated with some of the ideology that relates to the hidden curriculum, that relates back to meritocracy Michael Sandel is actually the scholar who talks about that the concept of meritocracy, by the way and so we have to be continuously conscious of how these paradigms are showing up in our daily work and interactions with kids. 

12:36 - Dr. Jacobē Bell (Guest)
Thanks for that, reshma, because I think I was like softly alluding to that in the example where I'm like I went to the bathroom and cried, right, but it was because of the intersectionality, right, the more affluent school was like more white kids with more money, right, and the schools that I'd worked in the majority of my time up to that, um, you know, were students who, um, experienced poverty, um, and were Brown. So, um, thank you, and I also thank you for bringing up capitalism as well, because it's not like I don't think teachers are inherent, like we're born into the system that kind of feeds us towards these outcomes, cause that's what it's designed to do. So I don't, I just want to be clear. I don't think people wake up saying like, oh, I'm going to teach these kids differently because of who they are. No, it's just a part of the bigger system that we're all born into. 

13:33 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Yeah, I think this kind of connects at least I'm thinking it connects to kind of the authenticity piece and the kind of framing for the whole book. So I'm curious if we could maybe go there next and connect that. Yeah, that'd be great do you guys want to define it for us and kind of think about that through line? 

13:56 - Dr. Reshma Ramkellawan (Guest)
yeah. So jacoby and I went back and forth around thinking about this concept of authenticity. Uh, throughout writing the book and the definition of it definition of it truly changed over iterations. I would say that the final, like the definition that we landed on, was being able to be continuously conscientious of the identities that you're bringing into the classroom and acting on those identities in a way that allows you to teach and connect to students and humanize them, while also creating a culture of empathy that is reciprocal for you and for students. Back to you. We know that there are lots of ed books out there like Teach Like a Champion. We both came from a charter world and we don't mind some of the principles that are in those books, but when enacted, it divorces teachers from who they are and focuses more on the technicality of teaching as opposed to the softer skills that go into it. 

15:03 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
That makes so much sense to me. Go ahead, Dr Browser. 

15:08 - Dr. Jacobē Bell (Guest)
And I was just going to read a line from Chapter 10 in our book where we define authenticity. And it's funny because we talk about like some people may call it, like keeping it real, you know, like who are you keeping it real? Or like having a keen awareness of who you are. So on page 10, we say in this book we define authenticity as being in touch with your inner self, so you don't get lost in pleasing others in ways that are detrimental to yourself and your students. Right, and that's like exactly what Rashma was hinting at in terms of like, when we do technical pieces divorced from who we are, they don't work and we're not keeping it real, and kids know when we're keeping it real and when we're not keeping it real. And also it detracts from our satisfaction in the work as well, at least what I have found. 

16:07 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
The quote you read, I have written down in like three different places. So, yes, I'm so glad you brought that up because I was going to yeah, that is totally, totally it. And I think I mean I'm so glad you brought that up because I was going to yeah, that is totally, totally it. And I think I mean I'm looking at my notes now and thinking about, too, how much, like, from a practical sense of like, okay, so I'm thinking about someone who may be new to some of these concepts, who's listening or engaging with the episode and thinking about, okay, so now I've gotten this kind of gut punch of the hidden curriculum thing. Whoa, that's happening. 

16:34
I'm realizing that like for me to be authentic, to be joyful, to be like not causing harm, but even more than that, to like enable enacting justice and pursuing justice in my class, like I need to ask myself some questions. I think there's so many illuminating conversations I think it's Dr Bell that you had with, with the kind of a teacher who I'm assuming is kind of a pseudonym throughout and there are so many great questions you asked and great sample responses that were given. I also know that there's a bunch of tools in that chapter on harm. So I don't know if either of you want to talk through any of those pieces. There was like the unpacking harm, processing, harm tools and then the audit questions that people can ask about different aspects of pedagogy, instruction, class culture. There's just there's so much. I think, is what I want to get at. For teachers who are in that space, like I, I need to learn more, I need to do this better. I'm motivated to do this, but I need. 

17:28 - Dr. Jacobē Bell (Guest)
That chapter is kind of define harm right, because sometimes harm can be hard to see, right, we may know that something doesn't feel good to us or et cetera, but not always. 

17:53
And so we kind of talk about harm in the different contexts, in terms of spiritual harm Right Dr Patina Love talks about, like spirit murder, right. Or the pedagogical harm, like what happens when with punishment and reward systems or non-rapport, et cetera, or even curricular harm, right, when a kid doesn't have any connections to the curriculum, or social right, going back to what Reshma was saying about intersectionality, neurodiverse you know the list goes on. You know the list goes on. And so some of the tools that we included, one that really sticks out to me is the tool of like meditation. It's something that I was never into, but then, over the pandemic, I got into it more and learned very like concrete tools that, as an educator, helped me work through harm. In our book we talk about harm for students, harm for teachers and like how do you reconcile those two or try not to do harm in those areas? But the first step is really like acknowledging it and then working through it. 

19:18 - Dr. Reshma Ramkellawan (Guest)
Yeah, I love that you mentioned this point, jacoby, of like meditation, and I think for listeners, meditation might initially the first thing that comes to mind and I say this as a practicing Hindu that you're going to sit there palms up, you're chanting Aum's. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about that you are engaging in this work of mindfulness through a series of reflective prompts, which we do include throughout the book, um, and there's a graphic on 117 that I think offers a beautiful visualization of what jacob was referring to, that we come into this work with unconscious harm that has lived in us, that has either been enacted on us or we are unintentionally enacting on others. No one really gets out of the public school, k-12 system without being unscathed in some way, shape or form, and then, if you choose to become an educator, you go back into that system and these unconscious things just kind of show up in your work without realizing it, and so the visual that I'm describing is essentially a tree, and then you have the roots, which are the like, unconscious ways in which the harm might live within us. 

20:29
You have the perpetuation of harm, which is where you know the larger system is represented by a rain cloud and it's like raining down on us and we are unintentionally like putting back on others. Then it's manifested through the growth of the tree, but then, when we stop, reflect and act, we can go towards like a liberatory experience which is symbolized by the sun. You know I'm an optimist, so I think I believe that educators want to do well by children. I don't think teachers, generally speaking, go into this field wanting to inflict harm, which is why the chapter is like parentheses try to to no harm. It's just how do we become more mindful of what we're doing and how we're interacting and engaging with students? 

21:25 - Dr. Jacobē Bell (Guest)
And a couple of the tools related to like what we're talking about. I think one of the first tools we talk about is empathy interviews, and empathy interviews are where you interview your students as a group or one-on-one, like tell me about a time you enjoyed class, or tell me about a time when you felt frustrated in class, why. You know it's. It's under like, what undergirds empathy interviews is this desire to like understand students and like what are they telling you they need from you to help you adjust your classroom instruction, etc. But empathy interviews don't just have to go one way, teacher to student. They can also go the other way as well. So there's also something called Empathy 360, where it's like all around view, you know. So then students are interviewing teachers, like if you had three wishes for our class, what would they be, you know? Or then also teachers can interview caregivers or families, like what would a joyful and good school look like for your child? So it's like this 360 view and it's a tool that builds empathy between all stakeholders in a way to help folks see each other. It's so often to get frustrated of like oh, why can't they just do this thing, or why isn't this happening? Or, you know, we've all had those days and Empathy 360 interviews really help us see each other but then also synthesize into like concrete next steps and as coaches we've seen some really powerful work come out of empathy interviews. 

23:19
Something we do more on the teacher side in terms of like processing potential harm and moving forward is writing an apology to students. You know, acknowledge the wrong Students are so forgiving, so, so forgiving. I know I've had times where something small, like one of my pet peeves, is always like when students would sharpen their pencil with electric pencil right in the middle of my mini lesson. I'd be like, are you serious? You know, but my reaction like that didn't warrant that reaction. You know what I mean. So then it's like I had to apologize and you know whatnot. But so that's one of the tools we offer. And then another tool we offer is like write a letter to your early self, so your early career self. You know what do you want them to know? What is something positive you've benefited from hearing back that you would have benefited from back then. So, like Roshma said, the exercises are really meant to reflect and help people move forward. 

24:31 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I love that minute, I love that you mentioned that. But the interviews I come from the kind of student voice field of research and so there's so much in your book that's like on co-construction and just like all of the pieces that I'm like, yes, this and so that kind of leads me to think about the Afrofuturism chapter, which I adored, and so the liberatory lens examples where you kind of were just dreaming of here's what, here's what it could be, and I thinkored, and so the liberatory lens examples where you kind of were just dreaming of here's what, here's what it could be, and I think, dr Bell, you got it. That's the beginning to talking about your freedom dreamer, like let's think about connecting to place and like being outside of the walls, like what are some of the things, either from the book or just things you would, you would add down in this conversation that you can kind of like dream up or envision for a more liberatory school, either structure, practice, way of being. 

25:25 - Dr. Reshma Ramkellawan (Guest)
That's a big question, sorry, well, I was trying to let rashma go first, but I can go first well, I know the question was for you like, because I you know, in full transparency, jacoby um is a big proponent of afrofuturism in schools and learning spaces and in our work she, like, has brought it in um to professional development. 

25:46 - Dr. Jacobē Bell (Guest)
So I was like I feel like you should lead us in this one Kobe. 

25:51
Okay, I got this. So Afrofuturism. So I find it hard sometimes because we're so conditioned by how things are and it's like easy to think about, like little changes, but when you want to think on like a macro level or whole country, like redo level, it can get overwhelming, you know, and sometimes it's like am I dreaming big enough? Right, like um. And so I turn to Afrofuturism and like speculative fiction more generally to, because where else are dreams bigger than in these, like worlds that have been built in books? And so Afrofuturism is a Black cultural lens used to consider the future, lens used to consider the future. It's also used for other things, but that's like how we take it up in the book, um, as a way to divest from the like status quo, um, and like think about something different. And there's like different tenants that come up, um with afrofuturism. So we I wrote down like some guiding questions to begin to dream what are the things we want to disrupt, being able to notice and name them first, but then also thinking about what are the habits that we need to have to freedom, dream, but then also this idea of centering humanity in it all. So thinking about the full person and the full humanization, humanization, um of folks. And thinking about like to deny someone else's like. 

27:35
As Pablo Freire says, like to deny someone else's humanization is also to deny one's own um. And how it's like. Yes, it's an individual, like I can do what I can do in my classroom, but it's also like a collective endeavor as well and it involves everyone working together students, teachers, parents, admin, like you know, people working together. And then, like when thinking about full liberation, thinking about how the noticing and naming, but also like critical reflection and action, are necessary to transform Um. 

28:13
So I know that's a mouthful, but I think like the core idea that I'm trying to say is like, within our dreaming, centering the humanity um and then using afrofuturism to think outside the box. So I had folks in a pd do a free writing activity, you know, thinking about, like, what brings you joy, where do you feel freedom, where do you feel more happy, what are the conditions, what do you see, hear, smell, and using that as the basis for dreaming. And then drawing a picture or doing a free ride or writing a poem or something that kind of gets at that to help folks dream, and myself included, to dream bigger. Sorry, I forgot the original question. 

29:08 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I was answering. If you want to share, that was excellent, that was excellent for me. And then if you want to share some of the pieces that were on, I don't know if there was a chart there that had like a bunch of examples of like here's what it could look like through a libertarian lens. Like what could education be that it typically isn't currently? 

29:30 - Dr. Reshma Ramkellawan (Guest)
I think that's in here, jacoby, is that okay? All right, so the chart that you're referring to is on 151, table 6.1. But before we talk about that, I just want to echo what Jacoby said, with drawing folks listeners' attention to page 154. If you have the book, if not, I'm going to describe it for you. The three habits that Jacoby was talking about. We broke them down to say what is habits of being, habits of listening, I'm sorry. Habits of living, habits of teaching, and then underneath each, there are a series of guiding questions, definitions and examples so you can understand what this would look like in real time. 

30:08
Then, in Table 6.1, we brought it back to here are some of the structural elements that exist within schooling systems. So you have the general structure of the school, you have curriculum and instruction, you have student agency Three powerful elements that can really, when shifted to take more of a dreaming based standpoint or afrofuturistic standpoint and open up the doors for possibility. And so one of the examples that we talked about was with curriculum and rethinking what gets to be taught. So this goes back to our earlier conversation around the hidden curriculum right, like why aren't we teaching about more global civilizations in our history classes. Yes, I know, in the New York State curriculum you have, like the introductory cursory dip, your toe in the water of, like ancient civilizations. But why aren't we doing a more deeper dive, right? Why aren't we unpacking what schooling looked like in those spaces, what children might have learned, and then bringing that back into our own classrooms and classroom paradigms? 

31:23
Students take more of a sociocratic approach to decisions. Where students are involved, where we put a referendum out and kids have a voice, or students have a desired outcome for their classroom or their schooling community that they are putting it forth, advocating, pushing for the change, and leaders and educators are open to hearing that. They might even I mean some people will say well, that's student government. Yes, but depending on how student government is structured, it could still limit the voices of everyone. Right, where some students might see that as an elite position that you have to advocate for a campaign, whereas from a ground-up, roots-based approach it allows everyone to have input in a say. 

32:10 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Oh, that totally resonates, because I my dissertation was kind of on that, like problematizing student governments and like this needs to be bigger and you need to go outside of, like planning prom or whatever the thing is right, like, yes, okay, thank you for naming that. I realized that we only have a few more minutes. Wow, time flies, and so I'm curious to know I think maybe like two questions, if we could fit them in, we'll do like a lightning round One. We've talked about a lot your book has far more than we've talked about what is maybe one step that people could take after they're done with the episode and they're like I want to just start something now, like I want to do something immediately that's going to help me be in alignment, show up, be authentic in these ways that you describe. Any recommendations? 

32:58 - Dr. Jacobē Bell (Guest)
I think too low lift, but high impact Things might. Things might be the first one to empathy interviews. It doesn't take that much prep time to hear from students, parents et cetera. Um, it doesn't have to be everyone. You could pick five students, um, so I think that's one. I also know it's summer, though, so some people may not be in school. Um, I think another like thing that's easy to do is audit your curriculum. Look at, like, whose voices are the most prevalent there, what's missing. And I know a lot of districts mandate you have to do this curriculum and you have to. Ok, but then how do we layer on, shout out to Goldie Muhammad, how do we do like text layering or something to bring in other voices as well? 

33:55 - Dr. Reshma Ramkellawan (Guest)
Those are my two too, those are like the easiest entry. 

34:00
Yeah, they're like the easiest entry points into doing this work and low effort, high impact. I think the other component would be to think about just start with reflection, and I would say we have a lot of great guiding reflection questions in our book, but I think the two that you would want to start with are what does it mean to create a dream-based liberatory classroom? And then the second would be what would my life be like if I had access to that dream-based liberatory classroom? Um and we're not saying to have folks have like an existential crisis- at all right, it's more so. 

34:49
it's more so thinking about if I can envision what a like a liberatory classroom like feels, like, sounds, like I could touch it. I can see it, smell it. What would that have looked like if someone had enacted that space for me as well? 

35:06 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Those are fantastic. Thank you for those questions. Last question for you all we're going to link to the book in the show notes, but I wanted to know you know where can people get in touch with you or follow the work that you're doing? 

35:18 - Dr. Jacobē Bell (Guest)
Yes, the best place to get in touch with me is via LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn, so you can shoot me a message there. Yeah, and you can get our book from Amazon, from Solution Sharia. 

35:35 - Dr. Reshma Ramkellawan (Guest)
Yeah, you can actually contact me through LinkedIn. My social media handle is Risha0927 for Instagram, and then you can contact me via email Reshma at equityconsultinggrouporg. 

35:52 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Dr Ramkelewan Dr Bell, thank you so much for this wonderful conversation and for your amazing book. 

35:57 - Dr. Jacobē Bell (Guest)
Thank you. 

35:59 - Dr. Reshma Ramkellawan (Guest)
Thank you so much yeah. 

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