Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: In this episode, Soraya Ramos discusses the dream—and the challenges—of creating equitable learning environments. For more than a decade Soraya has worked to promote and support anti-racist teaching and learning practices through her roles as a teacher and as an assessment designer. Soraya served as a Senior Associate at the Center for Collaborative Education (CCE). There she worked in partnership with schools and districts in New England and nationally to design high quality performance assessments systems that promote equity and engagement and co-led a consortium of districts in Massachusetts in their pursuit of designing an alternative assessment and accountability system. Soraya is currently an Assessment Design Partner at Envision Learning Partners where she partners with districts across the nation to design and implement high quality systems of assessment ranging from student-led conferences to portfolio defenses. Soraya believes that lasting assessment systems need to be in alignment with a community’s vision and coherent to a district and school’s priorities. Soraya holds an Ed.M. in Education Policy and Management from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a B.A. in Chicana/o Studies and Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles. Our conversation covered the importance of human-centered design in education and fostering relational trust and empathetic listening. Soraya shares her dreams for education alongside practical examples and success stories to create a more equitable future for our young learners. The Big Dream Soraya’s big dream for education is that all children—all young learners—get to access high-quality learning experiences that help them feel like they can shine and tap into their innate brilliance and genius. She underscores the importance of allowing kids to just be kids—to learn, to fumble, and get back up without pressure and high stakes. How can we allow all kids to feel like they can play and have fun? Mindset Shifts Required To achieve Soraya’s dream of allowing kids to be kids and experience an equitable learning environment, some important mindset shifts need to take place. Soraya’s still experiencing her own shifts and is particularly inspired by the work at the National Equity Project around liberatory design. The arc of this work is that it’s all human-centered—keeping people at the center of everything we do as educators. With this in mind, a crucial mindset shift is to build relational trust and invest in relationships with intention and empathetic listening. Instead of seeing yourself as the knowledge holder, try to listen and respect where someone is coming from. Other key mindset shifts include understanding that self-awareness is an ongoing practice, and embracing complexity—the messiness of adaptive leadership—is key to creating better systems. Action Steps In a more practical sense, there are a few key action steps for educators seeking to create equitable education systems. Soraya believes that it all comes down to creating a school culture—an energy—that is positive, inclusive, and equitable. This can be done through a few key action steps: Step 1: Build reciprocity with your colleagues and education partners. It’s not about having transactional, tit-for-tat relationships, but being reciprocal in the way you interact with and help each other. This cultivates strong, meaningful relationships that prioritize support and accountability. Step 2: Recognize oppression by always being aware of the ways power comes in. If you’re going to partner with other people, recognize and call out power dynamics that are present. This can be a very uncomfortable conversation to have, but is so important for building more equitable systems. Step 3: Embrace an abundance mindset. We’re often convinced or conditioned to think there aren’t enough resources. And while we may not have access to them right now, there are resources available to us. It may not always be financial, but there is an abundance of other resources that come from our unique communities—we need to work together to access them, not compete with others to divide scarce resources. Challenges? Soraya sees one of the biggest challenges as navigating the political landscape in education. Unfortunately, understanding these dynamics and agendas can introduce a not-so-flattering side of humans, our motivations and behaviors. So, understanding how to operate in these spaces can be challenging. Educators need to navigate tricky dynamics where power is involved, sometimes honesty isn’t rewarded, and you have to know when to observe and when to speak up. One Step to Get Started Big changes often start with an internal shift. Soraya recommends starting by asking yourself, "What kind of world do I want to live in, and how can I contribute to creating that world?" Then, reflect on your energy, motivations, and the values you wish to embody. Use this guiding question to align your actions and interactions in your next meeting or collaboration, aiming to foster a positive and inclusive atmosphere. Stay Connected You can connect with Soraya on LinkedIn. To help you implement today’s takeaways, Soraya is sharing a High-Quality Performance Assessment Overview with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 183 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 Soraya Ramos. Welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. I'm so excited you're here. 0:00:08 - Soraya Ramos Hi Lindsay, Thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure. 0:00:11 - Lindsay Lyons I'm really excited for we were talking about, before we hit record like all of the ways that our paths have like almost intersected and I think our work aligns very closely as well. So really excited for our listeners to hear from you today, and I just want to know if there's anything that folks should keep in mind as they are engaging with this podcast episode today. 0:00:31 - Soraya Ramos I thought about this one and I think one of the main things for me that I try to remember is that I'm always a learner and that I'm always learning and that I don't always have it or need to know everything or need to have the answer. So I think that, being really forgiving to myself and gracious, I like I'm always learning, we're always learning and it's just part of like life. We're always evolving, making mistakes and then learning from them and coming back from it. So I want to, like you know, hold whatever I say now at this point in time might, might evolve in the next years or decades of my life. So I'm really excited to capture where I'm at right now with you. 0:01:09 - Lindsay Lyons I absolutely love that framing because just this morning I was looking back from like four years ago. I wrote a blog post and I'm like hmm, wouldn't, have done it the same way Would have changed that Like that's so true. I love the snapshot in time idea. 0:01:20 - Soraya Ramos It's true, it's true. I think it's what we want to do with kids too, right, we're always. They're always evolving and physically growing and like we, see the difference. 0:01:32 - Lindsay Lyons So, um, I'm glad that that you, that it resonates with you as well, deeply, yes, thank you for that framing, and I think it'll also be, um, really nice for listeners to hear it, just because I think in our days we can often be unforgiving of ourselves, and so it's a, it's a nice reminder. We're in it together, we're all learning. I love it, and so I guess kind of to think about the continuation of this, like the place we're all trying to go as we learn. I like to ground this or all episodes really and Dr Bettina loves the words around freedom dreaming, where she says you know their dreams, rounded in the critique of injustice, and so I'm curious to know what is that big dream that? 0:02:09 - Soraya Ramos you hold for education. I love her work. I will say that this question got me thinking of like what my freedom dreaming was. Maybe 10 years ago is slightly different, but still similar to the core. But one thing that came to mind around what is that dream that I have for kids, for my younger self, for the kids that come after me, is that all children, all young learners, get to access high quality learning experiences that help them feel like they can shine and that they can tap into their brilliance and their their genius that's so good. 0:02:49 - Lindsay Lyons I love that and it really I love that there's like aspects of you know, goldie Muhammad's work in there and just like that the genius is part of all kids, right, this is not something that we as educators give to them, but like this is there and we're just like helping to cultivate and helping to shine and like I love that framing absolutely, and I think you're right. 0:03:08 - Soraya Ramos Like it's like where did I get all this from? I'm like I've learned from people who have, who have taught me right, or that I've learned in my roles in the past, and, um, I think one of the things that that would add to that is like how do we allow kids to just be kids, to learn to fumble and then get back up without them feeling like there's some kids have higher stakes than others and I'm just curious of like how do we just have them all feel like they can play and have fun? 0:03:39 - Lindsay Lyons I love that. That's, that's so, so good. Thank you for that. And and I think so, sometimes we maybe lose sight of the things, the reasons that we kind of get into education and that knowing that kids have this genius, they have this light, they have they, they should be able to be kids all this stuff and we get into like the nitty gritty and all the things on our plate right. And so I'm wondering if there are specific mindset shifts that folks kind of go through to be able to do the work that you do, for instance, around kind of equitable assessment and all of those pieces. Are there things that we may be no going in lose sight of along the way and need to really kind of reframe our thinking around that you've noticed either people be successful with or that you would just advise folks just entering the work to think about? 0:04:31 - Soraya Ramos My own mindsets have. I've had to go through my own and I'm still going through those shifts now and like really believing in those. I will say some of those mindset shifts that have inspired me in the last few years have come from the work at the National Equity Project around liberatory design, and I think they were able to provide a language to what I already felt to be true and some of those mindsets it's all about. I think the arc of it all is that it's human centered, that we're centering anything, any experience the design of a summer school program, the design of an assessment system on the state level or even a local level is that we're really truly centering humans and putting them at the center. So I would say one of the things that the Libertarian Design Framework says is one of the mindsets is building relational trust is how do we invest in relationships with intention and especially across difference, and we have to honor people's stories and practice empathetic listening. So if I'm going into your home, into your community, what is my role is to to be there as humble as I can, to listen to your expertise, because that is your lived experience. So I think that that's a really powerful piece that I always try to hold is that we're not the I am not the knowledge holder. I am here to listen and I am in your home, your home, and that is in my culture. There's something really important about I respect where, when I'm, when I'm here and you're in your space. So that's one build a relational trust. I think a second one for me is practicing self-awareness, is understanding like what mirror is in front of me, who am I and how do these experiences that I grew up with influence the way I see things, the way I'm understanding an issue, and our perspectives impact our practice. So I think that practice of awareness is constant and so necessary for me, because sometimes I feel like, oh, i'm'm the hero in this story and I'm gonna, and I'm gonna save, and I'm gonna save these kids, or like when I was, you know, entering teaching um, but it wasn't. It wasn't that no one needs saving um. So self-practicing self-awareness. And then I would say I have a lot that I could share, but I'm going to keep it short. But the one I really feel like that I haven't mentioned is embracing complexity, that the equity challenges are really complex and they're messy and they stay open for possibility. And one thing that I have the cards in front me and one thing that it says here in the card is that powerful design emerges from the mess, not from avoiding it, and so I think that's where sometimes we put pressure on our leaders to have the answer, that one right way. We actually respect people who speak with a lot of confidence in that one solution when it's actually a lot more complex. And how do we do this together to figure it out with the humans that we're trying to serve at the center? So those are, I think, some of the top, but I could keep going, but I'll stop there. So I would say building relational trust, practicing self-awareness and embracing complexity. 0:08:07 - Lindsay Lyons Wow, all of those are so good. And also just tying it to that liberatory design piece, I think is really important and food for thought for folks who are listening now and are like, oh, I haven't heard of that or I want to dig deeper into that. Like there's richness there to dig into. And I love the idea of the last piece really reminds me of both the complexity piece around, like adaptive leadership and recognizing that it is really messy, and also I think you're speaking to the like a shared leadership element as well of right like the leaders are not necessarily the people who have admin titles right, they're the people in the community and the students, right, and the people at the center who who, as you said, have a lived experience and are really informing the change. And to uh, think through how to navigate so many voices when we're talking about all the students and all the families is messy but so worth it, and so I appreciate that framing and that grounding in those, in those three specifically. 0:09:03 - Soraya Ramos Yeah, thank you, thanks for summarizing that in in such a in those three specifically. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for summarizing that in such a nice way. 0:09:09 - Lindsay Lyons I just love connecting it to like. Sometimes I'll use these like leadership reasons. My background is in leadership education and so I think through like things I've said in the podcast before. 0:09:17 - Soraya Ramos I'm like, right, here's the through line, right it's true, there's like these mindsets yeah, it could keep going on, because I'm also a leadership nerd and I'm like learning all these things. And how do we create a culture? Right, how does our leadership impact the culture that we're trying to build here? And I think these elements, these mindset shifts, have to be in there. Um, because we have to live it so that it can. It's almost contagious, it's part of the space that you come into. Yeah. 0:09:45 - Lindsay Lyons I like the idea of contagious. That's good, that's really good. So I guess, thinking about that right, like what does that maybe look like? Feel like what's you know the actions that we, we take to kind of cultivate that and and and live that out and make that contagious and I mean I think about the work that you've done with equitable assessment and like systems of assessment, I mean that's, that's really big work. So thinking about maybe a leader or a community who is like oh, this is such a cool idea and it feels big, it feels messy, it feels like like how, how, really, how do I get started and what does that potentially look like? Could you describe for us a little bit about those like brave actions required to get there? 0:10:29 - Soraya Ramos That's a really good question and I think that it's. I'm always in pursuit of figuring that out. This is a tangent which we can include or not in the podcast. But recently I started working the second, the second job with my mom and it's called. It's a delivery service and we're shoppers at a store and we're shoppers at the same store every single time. And so I started doing it as like a side gig on the weekends and just trying it out with my mom. And what I realized is like every single time that I went into the store and you let me know if I could, if I could tell you, but it's one, it's one of my favorite. So I go in there and I'm like I know people have such a good experience at Target and it's like a very much like a good experience, and so, but going in there as a shopper, I noticed that there was a pattern. I'm like why are the workers so disgruntled and unhappy? Is it just that one location? Is it just that one person? That one day, and I started noticing a pattern in the ones in my area where it's like no, I think there's something going on in the culture of this company. What is going on that? Are we treating our, how are people being treated while they work here? And it's almost and again it was very contagious and like my experience as a consumer versus a like kind of a shopper right beside these employees was a lot different and not as joyful either. So I think that also communicates into schools. Right, like, culture is everywhere. When we go into a place of business, when we go into a place of education and I know that this is something that you know many educators in the field have already said like the first, the first signal of what a culture is at a school is when you step in the front door and you and you experience what it feels like to be in that space. It's, it's like an energy thing. I don't know much about energy, but I could feel it. And right, it's like um. When you, for example, and no one really greets you, um, or when they do, it's it's kind of like what do you need? Um versus good morning, how are you Welcome to our school? You know, here's our protocol, sign in. And it's a different um experience when you go into these spaces. So I would just say, like, what is the culture in this, in this space? And so I would say how do you make the? I think your question was how do we start? What are the brave actions that we need to make sure is we really need to be the, the creators of that, of creators of that energy, right, like, if a school is off that morning, like how can I go in there and try to? I'm not gonna change it, but I can say just remind them like hey, I'm new to this space, what do you wanna show for your school and your community? But one of the things that the brave actions that needs to happen is the way that I work with other people, whether it's building an assessment system at a state level or building an assessment task with a teacher is what kind of, what kind of relationship are we building around my responsibilities, your like and our accountability to each other? I think the reciprocity is a word that I've used a lot in the work I've done with in the past few years is it's not transactional but it's reciprocal. Is, you know, if we do these for these things for each other, without keeping tab on what it is right, like tip for tat? And so one of the brave actions is really holding that reciprocity part. The other part is recognizing oppression, like always being aware that power can always come in, and being able to like balance that out and calling it out. I think there's something really important about calling it out. If we're gonna partner with each other, let's talk about what the power dynamic is or isn't. So I would say that's super brave action to mention it, because it's an uncomfortable and fearful conversation, especially if you're working with teachers all the way up to superintendents or state commissioners. So that's the brave action. So I'm thinking about another one. I think one is knowing the culture and like reading that Working from a place of reciprocity the one that's really challenging and it goes against maybe the way that our country works is and our system works is we need to come from a place of abundance rather than scarcity. I think when we're trying to build systems or create solutions for education, we think that there aren't enough, like we're actually in some way conditioned or convinced in some ways, like some of us may be able to note why, but that there's always enough resources. This is really hard for me to actually understand it right, because in my own life it's like well, I grew up with very scarce resources, financial resources. So I think like understanding, like there are resources out there. We may not have access to them right now, but we know that they're out there. That's the thing. They just may not be right in front of us, and so I think, knowing that no one's here to steal my job, we're not trying to do the work of another organization in competition with them. It's we're all playing in the same sandbox and in service of the same communities, people, learners, etc. So those are just a few that come to mind, and I'm sure there's more profound other actions, but those are actually super hard. It's like the power, the power piece. How do I work with others in ways that are loving and actually honest and authentic, without my secret agenda, and while also knowing that, like, the resources are real, there's some. There's a perceived notion that there's scarcity out there, but there really is an abundance, and maybe the abundance comes from a different type of resource, not not the financial one. Maybe it, the abundance, is the community that we work in and that's our superpower. So that is where I'll leave it, cause I think that was a lot, but and I'm sure I'm sorry that it's a little bit scattered, but it was my best attempt to try to put them into words- it was perfect. 0:17:02 - Lindsay Lyons Oh my gosh, I love so much of this, and I think I mean even just the abundance versus scarcity. I love what you said at the very end of you know, maybe the resource is just something that's not financial Absolutely. Source is just something that's not financial Absolutely. I mean we even from. So the last few years I taught, I worked at a school with 100% students who were learning English at the high school level, and so a lot of times in like multilingual learner education spaces, people like, oh, you know that the scarcity mindset of we need to build English language proficiencies right, and it's like, look at the abundance of linguistic knowledge and proficiency in other languages. I mean some of these kids are trilingual. Like what on earth? This is nuts. Like that is incredible. And we just don't think of the abundance frame, we think only in scarcity. And so I love that you mentioned like it can be financial but it can be otherwise, that we think about these things and what a huge mindset shift to be able to to get to that side of abundance. 0:18:03 - Soraya Ramos And I love that example that you're mentioning, because that's where we miss it. We're conditioned to believe that these other metrics are actually more important than the richness in the culture, in the, in the multilingualness, in like the community, that that they come from, their worlds or realities is. It's like that's where that, that there's richness, there, that we I think the last part I'll say is like I don't know where this fits in the questions you asked me, but there's a, an element of critical consciousness that it's like almost seeing behind the like someone's pulling the curtain, that like these assessments are important but I could see through them that they are problematic, that they can cause harm, that they're imperfect, that they're a measure, but not the measure of our kids and our and our young people. So I think that's where I'm, my role is like how do we get people to see, recognize oppression? Right, but like within? That is like how does this assessment work within that Like it's not the ultimate truth? And, like you said, let's not ignore these beautiful like humans that we get to work with every day, and then their multilingualness and get them to shine. 0:19:15 - Lindsay Lyons I just want to double down on that phrase. Like a measure, not the measure, right, yes, and not the ultimate truth. Yeah, we put so much stock into things that we can measure and put numbers or letters on and it's like no, I'm a human child, like this is a person, totally yes, I mean, I'm curious, you've done such powerful work with so many communities. I'm wondering if there's maybe a success story or kind of quote unquote case study that we can use to just illuminate the possible, like what are the great things happening out there and what can we celebrate? 0:19:50 - Soraya Ramos I appreciate that question and it's the success stories. I feel like you don't see it in the moment. I feel like when you work in schools or in education, sometimes it takes years for you to see your impact as a teacher, for example, and then the kids come back, you know, and they let you know like this is the impact you had, or it could take more than five, ten years to see it. But I think in in I've been really fortunate to have this position as like third party kind of uh roles in my in education now. Uh, where I get to support school districts and I have this different viewpoint, a lay of the land where I can, I can kind of see who the players are and what the strategy is and the vision and et cetera. One of the things that I have not done this alone and I think I've been put into really wonderful teams where I've been able to co-construct these different ways of how to assess kids, how to think about assessment in a more human centered way. Um, you might have I believe that some of the previous speakers on this podcast um Ms Rita Harvey and Charlie Brown, they were. They're some of my uh, they're. We started our journey together as assessment design partners. Uh, in new England, and we had, I believe, a lot of really wonderful case studies that we got to see from the teacher level. So we got to travel to different districts across New England and design assessments, performance assessments, with teachers at an individual school, while also working with their superintendents to build a arc of learning around their pd. So that year, for example, what I I think this is um, we're getting to that that success story is what makes it successful is that you had buy-in from the, from the, from the teacher role all the way up to a superintendent role, and the board as well is how do we get everyone on board about around this one thing and that one thing for one district in particular was how do we get everyone on board around performance assessments? And so year one was what is performance assessments? What are we doing? Why don't we bring in students that have worked with our coaches hence me and my other colleagues to come in and share their experiences with a standardized test versus a performance assessment? And so they got. We have this all happened in one particular district in Attleboro Public Schools, and so that was one of the things is we have support from all folks we get to coach in individual schools and they all have design teams. So the admin at the school had already pre-selected some people that they felt were going to be champions of this work. So that was a huge element, while at the same time, we are facilitating meetings with a consortium of superintendents who are all trying to work towards the same goal, which is how do we build an alternative assessment system that we can apply for a waiver for in the state of Massachusetts? So we have superintendents engaged through the consortium. So we have superintendents engaged through the consortium. We have assistant superintendents supporting us with designing an arc of learning for all teachers in the district around performance assessments year one, and we also have board meetings where that could be like our performance assessment per se, where teachers and students can come in and demonstrate their work. So I would just say like those are some of the levers that this district was able to pull and were super successful because after year two, performance assessments didn't go away. Performance assessments, we went deeper. We said rubrics 101. So part of a performance assessment is a rubric right, like how do we know that you've met? How do you know that you've met the target? So rubrics was like. We noticed that there was. Maybe we needed more literacy around that. How do we build everyone's capacity? So, yeah, every year the learning arc. So everyone was doing the same thing. During those teacher learning days we had multiple opportunities for them to come and present to the consortium and to their boards. So I would just say like those are some of like a really effective leadership moves and decisions that were created in this particular district in Attleboro that we were really proud of. They were so committed and people were not confused around initiatives. It felt like they all knew what we were doing and we were able to reach all teachers within three years around performance assessment. Unfortunately, things were paused because of the pandemic, but the fact that we have such good momentum and people were just like champions and it was like this groundswell of support I remember that's a word that Charlie would mention a lot. We need to get the groundswell of support and I think that was a really powerful thing, instead of it coming down as a requirement. 0:25:01 - Lindsay Lyons Yes, another kind of tied to that shared leadership piece. Right, it doesn't come from the top, it has to be that ground salt. That's so good. There is so much here that I appreciate you have just kind of laid out. I'm thinking of a leader listening who's like how long does it take and what happens each year? You've just laid out what is possible and I just really appreciate that clarity for someone who's kind of new to it. I also want to speak to if someone's unfamiliar with that consortium in Massachusetts, like New York has one as well. But just the idea of schools coming together to say like we can do better than standardized assessment, is this really great way to not do it alone? And so I'm wondering if there is. I don't know if this is speaking to the next question I was going to ask or not, but just thinking about the challenges of the work Sometimes I wonder if it's like oh, we're on our own and kind of this island of we think it would be a great idea to do this, but we don't have a consortium to tap into or something like that. Is there any kind of school model that you've worked with there where it's like they're not part of a larger organization, but they're just choosing to do it because they know it's what's fast and they're going to move forward. 0:26:07 - Soraya Ramos Absolutely. I think there's folks that are connected to a wider net and others are doing it within their own district. I think that it's really helpful when you are part of a group, a consortium, or whether it's a learning group or anything else. I know that there's some here in California as well, where you just get to learn around practice with each other. It's like what are you all doing? Oh, this is how we're choosing to implement graduate profiles right now is a really is a really big thing, and it actually is very trendy to have a graduate profile, or you know these learner outcomes of what we want kids to learn and competencies we want them to have by the time they graduate. But how do you know? And how do you know that? How do if you're doing it right, right, like? A lot of people are like, okay, great, we have really cool posters, now what? So that's where people turn to these communities, where they're like this is how we're learning how to bring this poster to life and it's super beneficial. I'm part of this. I'm really glad that I'm part of this group called Scaling Student Success, and then we get to learn from each other around best practices of how to bring graduate profiles to life and everyone's at a different stage, so there's different groupings of districts. So it is a really cool opt-in opportunity that I've seen on the West Coast. But what about folks that aren't connected outside right Like? We know that this is best practice period and I think that's why they bring some of these districts, bring in third party technical providers, and that's where people like myself come in third party technical providers and that's where people like myself come in and envision learning partners who we may not be creating the space for everyone to come in as a consortium or a learning space, but we are the communicators of oh, you have also shortages with subs. This is actually a trend that's happening across the country and people are actually some of the people are actually very surprised when we tell them that they're like really, I thought we were the only district, oh no, I'm like this is going on across the country. Um, you are not the only one. And how do we get creative so um around like pds, right, if you can't have everyone out on the same time? Like, how do we, how do we create this more flexible uh plan? So I don't know if I kind of lost track of your question, lindsay, but that was perfect. 0:28:31 - Lindsay Lyons I guess are there any other like either challenges that folks have faced and you wanted to talk through, or is there just anything else that you wanted to share before we move to wrap up? 0:28:42 - Soraya Ramos Yeah, okay, so I don't. I'm like I was like thinking, I'm like how honest can I be? And and I think I've realized how naive I've been in most of my career as an, as an educator, and in the best way, like my, my naivete is more of like I don't think people would be capable of doing this or, you know, like we're all in it for the kids and and and it's a very naive way of thinking and and um, one of the things that I realized at a different level of is through, uh, bowman and deal, the, these folks have these, these four frameworks of what it means to be a leader, and one of the frameworks that they say that leaders have to learn how to navigate is the political, is the, and that's like they call it, the jungle, where it's like people have different agendas and people have different ideas of what they want from a project or from a collaboration or whatever it is. And I think that for me has been this language, this world, where I have to think about understanding humans in a different way that the political realm introduces a not so flattering side of of humans and our motivations and and our behaviors, and also attached to people's wellness, right, like if, like they are reflections of who they are internally is kind of what they project at work. So one of the things for me is like how do I read situations, what is being said that isn't being said out loud, and how do I move accordingly? Because sometimes being honest is not the way for me Speaking. Sometimes spaces aren't ready to hear that, sometimes spaces aren't ready to hear that, especially when you have power involved. And so that, for me, is something I'm still learning is how do we navigate the political realm and understand humans and not letting it get too personal, like taking it personally is understanding, like what people are and aren't capable of, and knowing who to trust. I think that for me right now is how do I learn to build trust and who to trust in, especially when we're doing this kind of work in education? 0:30:55 - Lindsay Lyons Oh, that's such an important challenge to name because I think a lot of folks I've certainly been there felt that and I love that you trace the arc of similarly me but going and being like everyone's awesome and for the right reasons. And there is no political agenda, there is, and so I think it reminds me of Heifetz, Graschau and Linsky talk about in their adaptive leadership. Stuff is like naming the stuff, like having an activity as a leader where you kind of sit in the meeting and like, okay, observe what's not being said, like observe where the avoidance is happening, where a joke's being made to deflect, like that kind of thing, Right. And and so it's like that's a cool tool for for folks listening to this episode, like just try it, like try that out and just kind of notice, or invite folks to notice like what is not being said, right, what is being avoided. And I think that's a nice opportunity to kind of, like you said, it might not be that in the moment we shout it out, but it's a nice like jot it on a post-it note, hand it in at the end of the meeting, right, We'll like we'll get there because we should, Absolutely, I agree, yeah, and so I think just to close this out, this is a wonderful conversation. I don't want it to end but I recognize everyone has things to do and I'm sure you have a busy schedule. So what is one thing as we kind of wrap up that listeners have been listening tons of ideas shared but they want to kind of take one next step as they end the episode, kind of going into their day or getting ready for next week or whatever that they can kind of world do. 0:32:33 - Soraya Ramos I want to live in, how do I want it to feel, how do I want it to sound for for myself, for kids, for young people, etc. And how can I be the creator of that? How can I contribute to a world like that? So I think that self-awareness piece goes back to that is, if I'm walking into this meeting, how do I want to walk in, what do I want to contribute in terms of my own energy, my motivations? How is this contributing to the world that I do or don't want? And I think being that is a start and something that can feel like it's a forced, but like how can I be that light, or how can I be that positivity or that understanding mind in the workplace where I don't have to get to the point where I'm disrespecting people and I'm still living by my values? So I think it really begins with the self and the world that you want. So then, how are you going to start being that in that next meeting, in that next, in whatever collaboration you're in? So it's really difficult because we have difficult days, but like, how do I, how do I still stay with, with dignity, right, like dignity and respect is for me really important. So knowing what people's values are and making sure that they're actually living aligned to those values, and catching yourself when you don't, because we're also imperfect, so the misalignment will happen. But just knowing that, like what am I contributing to this world and how can I, you know, be self aware. 0:34:09 - Lindsay Lyons I love that for multiple reasons. One just for the leader lens, but also, like this could be a guiding question for schools, like how do teachers engage with that question? How do students live out that question Right? Like how can we just be in community with one another in alignment with our responses to that question? So good. And so I think the final two questions I have for you one is super fun just could relate to education, but could totally not. So, whatever direction you want to take it, you mentioned, like we're all kind of learning. We're on a lifelong path of learning all the things about life. What is something that you have been learning about lately? 0:34:44 - Soraya Ramos Oh, have been learning about lately. Oh, I have not been learning any hobbies recently, but I think what I'm learning is just my role. As I get, as I'm getting older, my roles are changing in my life and who I take care of, and and and being a caretaker this past month. And for me it's just understanding that, like life will always be lifing, it's always going to be doing what it wants to do. But at the end of the day is, how am I centering myself to and my needs first, so that we're all, not we're all, so that I'm strong enough to care for others when I, when I can and I need to? So I think that's one thing that I'm really learning how to practice, whether it's an acupuncture appointment, whether it's that massage that I've been like thinking about months ago, a walk has been huge. I think learning how to slow down is the biggest lesson for me, because I used to be a runner and it felt like if I didn't do 10 miles, I didn't do anything like it, like it had to feel hard for it to feel like it mattered. And now I'm like a walk and being patient and being in silence, like that's actually hard for me too. So maybe those are some of the lessons that are coming Like. Life is always evolving, my role and my responsibilities are with that too, so how do I always remember myself though? And it could be, and a walk is enough, sufficiency, yeah. 0:36:14 - Lindsay Lyons Everything you said deeply resonates. Thank you for that, and I think, finally, folks are going to just want to get in touch with you or follow your work, so what's the best place to get in touch or see what you're doing? 0:36:25 - Soraya Ramos I am on LinkedIn, so that would be one way. I'm trying to be better at staying on it every single day, but that could be that is one way to reach me as well on LinkedIn, and I would say that's the best way. Like is more reliable way to reach me, so I'm happy to connect with anyone who's out there who'd like to just kind of be thought partners or like if folks are going through similar things that that I shared some of the things on this podcast. I would love to just even having like a mirror or a window into like what are? you experiencing OK, how did you resolve it? Or et cetera. So I would love to get in touch with folks if they're they're willing to. 0:37:02 - Lindsay Lyons Amazing. Sorry. I thank you so much. This was such a wonderful conversation. I appreciate your time thank you, lindsay. 0:37:08 - Soraya Ramos I appreciate you having us and me and my other colleagues that have also come up in the episode, but thank you so much for inviting me into this conversation. I really appreciate you absolutely.
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9/23/2024 182. Let Go of Fear: Whiteness, Emotionality, and Education with Dr. Cheryl E. MatiasRead Now
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This transformative episode is with Dr. Cheryl E. Matias, a passionate professor, motherscholar, race consultant, and academic coach. In this interview, she emphasizes the importance of overcoming fear and shifting mindsets to truly address white supremacy in educational practices.
Dr. Matias advocates for educators to engage deeply with systemic issues beyond superficial checklists, integrating their professional efforts with personal life, and ensuring open, humane discussions about racial issues. A committed educator, activist, and researcher, Dr. Matias is deeply motivated by both her passion for racial justice and, more significantly, being a motherscholar of three and giving her own children the education they deserve. The Big Dream Dr. Cheryl Matias's big dream for education is to let go of our fears—fearing what we do not know, fearing conversations, and fearing being labeled. In letting go of these things that hold us back, Dr. Matias envisions an educational system where we’re no longer guided by fear. Instead, we can reclaim education by fostering courageous conversations that challenge white supremacy and cultivate a deeper understanding of racial justice. Mindset Shifts Required In Dr. Matias’ view, changing our mindsets is the key way to overcome fears. To move beyond our fears, it’s important to shift the mindset and rethink how we talk about race in the education system by addressing embedded white supremacy. As part of this mindset shift, Dr. Matias calls for a move away from viewing racism as merely intentional malicious acts and discourse to recognizing the "unintended consequences" and the collective force of white supremacy in our education system and society. Action Steps Step 1: Stop relying on checklists and thinking there is one right path to “getting it.” Instead, it's important to rely on educating yourself by diving deeper into the issue at hand. If you haven’t studied whiteness or the emotionalities of whiteness in education, that’s a place for educators to start. Educate yourself—don’t just wait to check the boxes someone else offers you. Step 2: Advocate for scholarly experts to come into the schools and share their research. It’s important to be judicious about who you bring in, as there are many experts doing diversity work now. Dr. Matias advises advocating for those who have some practical in-school experience so they know the dynamics and wrestle of ideological liberation, but working within the constraints of school mandates. Step 3: Teach others what you’ve learned. If educators truly believe education is transformational, then we should be ready to teach the most racist of all students. That means beginning the conversation in your own home and having those hard conversations, with boundaries and humanizing it—if you’re not ready to do that, you’re not ready to teach others. Challenges? One of the main challenges in this work is the fact that there isn’t a checklist on how to approach these things. There’s no set path with your students, your partner, your family—you have to have trust and boundaries, learning healthy communication practices. There’s an emotional journey here, and we all have some barriers, fears, and discomfort associated with addressing racial issues. Dr. Matias encourages us to stop looking for a utopia that does not exist but embrace the full range of human emotions that will come up in doing this work. One Step to Get Started To jumpstart your journey in racial justice advocacy, Dr. Matias recommends a simple yet powerful action: Read a book! If you need a place to start, she suggests her own book, Feeling White, to understand how racialized emotions impact racial justice work. And don’t do it on your own—engage in communal learning by reading together with a colleague or friend, fostering deeper conversations and shared growth. Stay Connected You can stay connected with Dr. Matias on her website, on Facebook, or by email To help you implement today’s takeaways, Dr. Matias shared her video presentation on critical whiteness studies with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 182 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
TRANSCRIPT 0:00:03 - Lindsay Lyons Dr Cheryl E Matias, how are you? Welcome to the podcast. 0:00:08 - Dr. Cheryl E. Matias Thank you so much for having me. I'm doing great. I hope you're doing well as well. 0:00:13 - Lindsay Lyons Yes, thank you. I am so thrilled to talk to you today. There is just so much of your work that is brilliant and amazing and listeners, if you don't know it, go get it immediately. 0:00:22 - Dr. Cheryl E. Matias But you're going to learn today. 0:00:24 - Lindsay Lyons I'm going to learn today. Thank you for being with us. I think the first question is really you know what is important for folks to know about you, or just to keep in mind in general as we have this conversation today. 0:00:35 - Dr. Cheryl E. Matias Oh, thanks, you know what. It's funny. I was kind of confused about the question at the beginning. But you know, I think people know me as a racial justice scholar doing work as a professor in education. But I think people forget some of the important things that I was a classroom teacher both in LA Unified in South Central Los Angeles and in the New York Department of Education in Bed-Stuy, brooklyn. So I've taught in both of the biggest counties or the biggest school districts in the nation. That's important. But I think the more important thing about me is people ask like, why would you do this? Of course I'm passionate. I grew up in LA and I, you know, I was a teacher and I saw so many black and brown students not giving their props. And so I, you know, I think the biggest thing that motivates me is I'm a mother scholar of three. I have twins who are now going into their senior year in high school and I have a little one I call my post-tenure baby. So as much as I am so committed as an activist, as an educator, as a researcher, my deepest motivations have always been to give my own children the education they so deserve. 0:01:47 - Lindsay Lyons That is such a beautiful grounding for our conversation and just for our work in the space. I think it's so deeply personal and I thank you for sharing that with folks. I'm curious to know what the kind of big dream you alluded to it, but what kind of the big dream for the grand scheme of education is. I always love grounding this in Dr Bettina Love's work how she discusses freedom. Dreaming, I think, is really inspiring and also grounds us in that justice work right Dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. So what is that big dream that you hold for the field? 0:02:22 - Dr. Cheryl E. Matias Thank you for asking. First, I'm very pleased to hear that you're grounding the work and how Bettina frames everything. I think she is such an inspiration in how we conceptualize the work and I like to even draw further from her with her ideas of like Black joy and Black love. So I think one of the biggest dreams I have for education is to reclaim that by particularly letting go of fear Fearing that which we do not know, fearing conversations, fearing being labeled something fearing. We need to let go of fear because fear shouldn't be deciding the type of avenues that we have in our lives personally, nor should it be what we are guiding our decision-making and policies for education. 0:03:16 - Lindsay Lyons That is so good. I, literally an hour ago, I was just with facilitators who are talking about, we're talking about and planning events for thinking about history, education, and one of the values that we landed on was courage, and we need to have courage to do this well and just to be human beings in community with one another, and so I love this idea of letting go of fear. So many times I think there are things that come out of that fear that are so disruptive and we don't identify fear as the root. So I really appreciate you naming this, thank you. I think a lot of this work around racial justice is really sometimes the biggest shift for me has been a shift in mindset that gets me to the point of like, okay, now I see things differently, this is a new lens, this is a whatever. I'm just in a different headspace and now I can proceed. I can like be better in this space, I can be a better community member, I can be a more courageous. You know that it just comes easier when we have that like mindset shift, and I'm curious if you know of folks who a mindset shift, where you've seen folks really kind of move forward with more thoughtfulness, purpose, whatever it is after having made it, if that question makes sense. 0:04:32 - Dr. Cheryl E. Matias Yeah, it does. I mean, I think that's the most important aspect moving beyond fear right Is changing your mind shift. Let's take, for example, something that you're fearful in personal life. For me, at one point I was super afraid of dogs and I couldn't be around them. But I had to shift my mind, my mind frame, and say and put myself amidst dogs my sister's dogs, actually dogs got a whole weekend before my kids and just really said no, I am going, I'm not afraid, I am going to enjoy this, I'm going to embrace this as a part of my journey of becoming a better person. In the same vein, we really need to think about mind shifts as a way of rethinking how we think about race. Now, we know we all grew up whether you're a person of color, whether you're white, we all grew up with the same Kumbaya story of Dr Martin Luther King, that we all bleed the same blood. It doesn't matter about race. And then you know, post Michael Brown and Breonna Taylor, of course the world saw what they like to coin a global racial awakening, right. But you know, the truth is we're not post-racial, we're not seeing race. We need to rethink how we see race and racism Because if we really think about it. Racism is not the problem in education. Racial bias is not the problem tripped out. What the biggest problem is is how white supremacy gets instituted in the fabric and the everyday of our practices, and it does so by the ideologies of whiteness. We need to tackle the actual disease and not the symptom, and that's what I've always said. In patriarchy, right, we talk. It's absolutely important that we understand how glass ceilings, rape culture and sexism impact women In this. At the same token, we also need to understand how male privilege, toxic masculinity and all of that, you know, impacts how women are, how women engage and navigate this society. So, in the same vein, we need to also think about how white supremacy held up by individual acts of whiteness, your ideas of whiteness, emotions even of whiteness, which I've written extensively about. We need to understand how those individual acts become a collective force to uphold white supremacist ideology. And so I think that shift needs to happen and we need to move away from American history X, you know, and Edward Norton's great display of a neo-Nazi. We need to shift what we understand about being culpable of racist acts and racist discourse and racist behavior. It's not a person who's obviously always trying to be malicious, but it could be. These quote-unquote unintended consequences right. So remove intention and let's move ourselves through our fear and start to understand a new way of understanding race, white supremacy and whiteness in society. 0:07:49 - Lindsay Lyons Oh my gosh, that's just so well said, thank you. Thank you so much for that. I really appreciated how, in the introduction to the other elephant in the classroom, you and Paul Gorski talk about how it's both the systemic structure pieces and the individual acts, right, and that sometimes talking about the structural pieces removes the individual like. That was just a really big moment for me to be like right, that's exactly what is happening in discourse now, particularly amongst white liberals, right, and that idea of white liberalism coming into discourse. And so I just am so amazed by all of your work and I think it is truly helpful for the mindset shifts just in the way that you talk and write about it. 0:08:34 - Dr. Cheryl E. Matias So thank you for that grounding, really thankful that you pointed that out, because that's what we're seeing a lot, and I remember writing that because I am so thankful that there's more people interested in racial justice. Whether you are a black indigenous person of color or white racially identified, you know, the thing is we need to always keep in mind that when we talk about these larger isms, we still have to honor that we are still part and parcel of different systems and so you don't want the situation that Eduardo Bonilla Silva wrote, where it's like there's racism without racist. We have to be culpable of certain actions that we hold. So when we talk about larger system things and I know we've been pushing that with the critical race theory, to understand race in a larger systemic, and that's wonderful, I'm glad people are grasping but then they moved away from taking their own onus and agency like, well, I'm not, or they start to put these factions on white people themselves and I'm like, hey, hold up now. So in the same token, with any other ism for men, for heteroaggressivism, we need to still take onus of that privilege that might unintentionally harm others. So thank you for pointing that out, lindsay. 0:09:49 - Lindsay Lyons Absolutely, and I think, for maybe a school leader who is listening to this conversation and thinking about their own thoughts, mindsets and those of their staff, I'm curious to know what your thoughts are in terms of the brave know the brave actions required, as folks are in these instructional spaces, in these school communities and responsible for both themselves and leading and working in community with you know staff. I don't know if you want to speak to either the teacher lens of that or the leader lens or both, but I'm curious to know what those actions look like as we engage in this meaningful work or labor for justice. 0:10:28 - Dr. Cheryl E. Matias Absolutely, and everyone plays a role, whether they're in the academia, you know, doing the scholarship and the research, whether they're the K-12 teachers on the ground doing, you know, working with our babes, or they're the, or they're administrators, you know, trying to, you know, balance this fine line of wanting to do justice work but still having to, you know, you know, cater to the needs of the district. So I think some of the greatest advice I would take is it's so important one to stop looking for checklists, because when we rely too, too surface-like, on checklists, then we think, oh, I got it, I'm done, you know. But I think the More important thing is we really need to investigate more deeply the real issue here. If we're talking about racism, that's one aspect, but I told you that that was the symptom of white supremacist thought. So if they have not studied whiteness or even the emotionalities of whiteness in education, they need to delve deeper, because once we have a thorough understanding of the problem can we engage in different types of policies, actions that will change and pedagogies that will really change the context. So stop relying on checklists, start relying on hey, we're educators, rely on educating yourself, you know. So that would be a number one action. Number two is advocate as you're starting to read and learn yourself as a student, because we're lifelong learners. We always say that, so believe in it. I think it's important that we think of, we advocate for these people who are doing the research to come into the schools, and we should be judicious, because I know there's a lot of people doing diversity work, but maybe, if we're talking about K-12 teachers or administrators, we might want to actually have people who've been in that role. You get wonderful scholars who do this work and their work is amazing. Don't get me wrong, I honor it. At the same time, if you want advocacy about getting some stuff done and getting some like you were saying, book clubs earlier, or getting scholars to come, you want to make sure that they too have been k-12 teachers or they too have been school principals, so they understand the dynamics and having to wrestle with the dynamics of ideological liberation to the, the constraining. I mean I taught during open court, you know. So you know having to balance that with school mandated stuff. So that's another thing. And I think the third thing that is so important so you did the individual, you did the advocacy for your community is, you know, to start teaching others. Right. We're great, we're educators. Guess what we truly believe? Education is transformational. Then we should be ready to teach the most racist of all students. And it starts at home. I always ask my students why is it that you don't talk about race and whiteness at the dinner table when Uncle Joe comes over? And I said if you can't have that conversation with Uncle Joe and make boundaries and still make it humanizing, then you're not ready to teach that to others. And so I think those three let me stop at that because if it gets overwhelming, because we have so much to do as teachers but I think those are three one, educate yourself. Two, it's a matter of advocating now for the knowledge that needs to be brought in. And three, doing what we do best teach others those are so good. 0:14:16 - Lindsay Lyons and I also love how you really brought it to the personal family dinner example, because I think sometimes we block off. This is my work at school and this is who I am at home, and this is about being a full human in all of the spaces and doing the work in all of the spaces. And I think it's very easy for white liberalism to like come to the table, come to the dinner table, right, and be be part of that there in that silence and avoidance. So I just appreciate that specificity because I think that probably hits home for a lot of folks. So thank you. 0:14:49 - Dr. Cheryl E. Matias Absolutely. I actually had a student once. Oh no, she was a professor and she wanted to learn. She had asked me to help her, coach her, in becoming a better professor on racial justice. But it turned out for the whole year she was doing a lot more work on cultivating a more humanizing relationship with her father and her family members in the Midwest. And I said that is the most important thing, because it's not about us versus them, because if you literally start to think like that, you're adopting ism, ism type of men, binary thinking, and that's what racism, that's what white supremacy, that's what heterosexism, that's what I know. Uh, all of that does it creates us in binaries. So it's about how you can continue to have humanizing relationships with people with boundaries and with love. So it's not a matter of shutting Uncle Joe's out, it's a matter of saying no. I hear you when I study this and I need you to honor my perspective in this. 0:15:53 - Lindsay Lyons And what a great space if there's already love present, right? As opposed to creating love from scratch in a brand new group of students every year, right? What a great place to practice that. 0:16:02 - Dr. Cheryl E. Matias Exactly exactly, and education goes not only to our K-12 students or our college students. You're an educator. You educate the people around you. Absolutely, I am imagining folks who are listening, might be thinking about. You know, oh, this moment that I tried this thing, or I, you know, I invited Uncle Joe in and it didn't go well. Or you know, whatever, what are the challenges that you see come up for folks. And then how do like in any relationship with K-12 students? No checklist, right? You don't have a checklist to deal with your spouse or partner. You don't have a checklist to deal with your parents. You don't have a checklist to deal with your cousins, your aunties and uncles, and so you have to trust on human behavior and boundaries and healthy communicate. That's it right. So you can expect and I always tell this, I do this, but you'd like a little pedagogical tool on K-12 teachers or school leaders who want to do this exercise. I would say okay, and I tell them to write it out because I don't want them taking a picture after I write it on the board. I say okay, tell me why you don't talk to Uncle Joe at the dinner table about race. Tell me why and have him list all the reasons. They'll tell you everything like oh, he's going to say that was yesteryear. He'll get angry. He'll start screaming at me. Everything. He'll dismiss everything I said. He'll make me start crying, he'll make me, you know. Just write it all down. And I think it's really important to say okay, now when I'm learning anew and I'm discomforted and I feel fearful and I feel I'm being attacked or whatever, say, don't act like Uncle Joe and just know that those are the actual emotional mechanisms and hence why I study white emotionalities in my book, feeling White. But these are the actual things and emotional journey you will go through and it's not to say it's bad. You know people always think they just want sunshine and rainbows and unicorns, but you know, part of human life is feeling the yin and the yang of it all. So when you actually stick at the table and you, you may not come out perfect on the first time, but it's a matter like. Any parent would know this, any teacher would know this, any person who has always been a good friend, daughter, spouse. It's about the longevity. You know. It's about the ride, not the end goal. And so at this point, as you engage in this type of work, stop looking for utopia that does not exist. In fact, critical race theory. I know I'm going to bust your bubble. Derrick Bell straight up said there's gonna be a permanence of racism. It will mutate in the most awfully grotesque way, right, but it's an amazing awfully and grow like how did it turn to that now? But, um, at the same time, it's about the longevity. It's about how we continue to fight as humanity, how we continue to advocate for a more humane society, because that's what this is. It's not partisan politics, it is literally a human rights issue. So when we engage in these conversations, be ready to feel the full range of human emotions and how beautiful welcome that. Embrace it and say, yeah, this still makes me passionate that I get really anxious or mad and then pull yourself back and say, but I'm not giving up. 0:19:35 - Lindsay Lyons That's so beautiful and I I think about the folks who are even working with you know, like preschoolers my kid is two and a half at this moment but, like you know, thinking about how we nurture emotions and allow kids. You know, I've heard many people say at all age levels oh, kids aren't ready for this conversation. Okay, kids are ready for the conversation. Number one I think we could agree. And then two, like the nurturing of being able to have conversations and feel emotions can be normalized at any age and that's so much of just our daily work as humans and as educators that I love that you brought it there, because I think that's part of it. Right, we need to be emotionally healthy people and like that is a like building that will constantly happen in conjunction with our anti-racist advocacy and humanity and all the things. Is that? Am I on the point there? 0:20:29 - Dr. Cheryl E. Matias Yes, absolutely. People think this is about hatred and cancellation. It's not. No, don't get it twisted. We started most racial justice. People have done this because they wanted a greater understanding of love. And those of you that are really interested in doing like critical race parenting, which is another work that I do I actually published a popular press. Anyone can act to say it, um, but it's called um and you can google my name, cheryl matias, and mommy is being brown bad and it's on my own children and, um, it's an article that you can download and just kind of understand how to you do these conversations with children, because by 18 months they've already internalized dominant messages about race, gender. I mean, I have boy, girl, twins and at 18 months everyone gave me pink and blue and I would put the sippy cups on the table and my son would take the blue and give the pink one to his sister and vice versa. So if we're acting as if, oh, our kids are too young to study race, they already know, just like we have to talk about sex drugs to our kids. What messages do you want your child to have about a certain topic? So talk to them about race. 0:21:48 - Lindsay Lyons Thank you. I think there's kind of a lifelong work to this, to all of this right. This is lifelong, as you said, and so I'm curious to know what's a good, like momentum builder, what's a good one next step that someone could take if they're listening to this on the drive into work, for example, and they're about to start the school day, or they're listening to it on the way home and about to like go be with family, like what's that one first step that you would encourage someone to do to kind of keep it going or kind of jumpstart some action? 0:22:21 - Dr. Cheryl E. Matias Well, you know what? Read a book. Read a book, right, we're a bunch of nerds. So how about that? How about you read a book with someone? Pick up, pick up my book feeling white. How's that? You know, if you want to understand how racialized emotions really impact, how we do racial justice work, because you're feeling so anxious, let's find out where that comes from, feeling white. If you want to know how whiteness impacts people of color in the education, from k all the way to 20 to college, you know, like, like, oh, I'm a good person. You can pick up my book Surviving Beckys and that's just all stories. There's no citations on that book and there's even discussion questions. You've got all genres, from horror, sci-fi it's all just stories. And then you can see the messages behind each story. It's all just stories, and then you can see the messages behind each story. So pick up a book. Come on, guys, we're educators. Start there and don't do this journey on your own. Say you know what cousin, you know what? Uncle Joe, you know what? Maybe a former student who has become your mentor? 0:23:28 - Lindsay Lyons Let's read this together. That is a great call to action. Yes, let's do this together. I love it, and so I will link to. For anyone listening, driving, doing dishes, whatever, I will link to those books in the blog post, so no need to pause what you're doing and write them down. I'll link them. As a close, I think I love that we've been talking about lifelong learning, and so I'm curious. This question is purely for fun. It can relate to what we talked about or something different. What is something that you personally have been learning about lately? 0:23:57 - Dr. Cheryl E. Matias Oh, gosh One. I think I constantly learn. Those of you that don't know me I'm a salsa and bachata dancer. I am constantly learning. I have been to Cuba, puerto Rico, I've been to the Dominican Republic to perfect my bachata, my moves, my salsa. That's one thing I'm always perfecting too. On being a mother, for goodness sakes, I think I got it down and then I'm like my kids just school me and call me sus, you know. So you know, no cap right. So I'm literally trying all the time to be a better mother, because, as the work that I've done mother, scholar work, to be a better mother it makes you a better scholar, and make a scholar makes you a better mother. So that's another aspect I'm always trying to learn. And the third is I'm actually coming back to my faith, which I've had, I think, a lot of justice workers. We pushed away from our faith, thinking, oh, it's too rigid. But if we push away from our faith, we're never in the spaces to make change. We're never in the spaces to make change. And so I'm just learning how to come back into my faith, be a service to God and, you know, just not make it seem like those people who are these type of Catholic Christians or whatever the case may be. They're the enemy, but showing them nope. You know what Jesus was, the first social justice worker. So I think it's a lifelong learning. I can list thousands. And does it make me overwhelmed and anxious at times? Absolutely. But I'm going to do an epistemological shift that I just told you, a mindset reframe. How exciting that I don't know it all and I'm still ready to learn. 0:25:56 - Lindsay Lyons That is so good. Okay, we're gonna quote that. That's great. That is so good. I think people are gonna want to grab your book, get in touch with you, follow you wherever you exist, in the online spaces or in-person spaces. Where should folks connect with you, if that's okay? 0:26:12 - Dr. Cheryl E. Matias I do have a website at CherylMatiascom, but I don't check that email as much. I'm sorry, guys, it's just too much, it's too many hats. But you can always connect with me on Facebook. I have a professional Facebook. I know people try to connect with me on Insta, but that's personal family, so don't take it personally. But Facebook I'm old, I'll do Facebook. You can Google me and I'm at the University of San Diego now. I'm no longer at University of Colorado, no longer at University of Kentucky for those 15 years, but I'm back home in California University of San Diego. But I'm back home in California University of San Diego. You can email me anytime and I definitely appreciate the calls. I think I just met with someone who read my book just about a couple months ago and we just, you know, sat and drank tea and talk shop for a little bit, you know. So I really appreciate the feedback. I even had someone who reached out from South Africa saying it feels like, after reading Feeling White, I had coffee with you, like you're my girlfriend and I'm like, well, I am now. So I think it's important, just like, google me, email me at my university, email at San Diego and follow me on Facebook. Amazing, dr Martinez. Thank you so, so much for being on Facebook Amazing, Dr Martinez. 0:27:31 - Lindsay Lyons Thank you so, so much for being on the podcast today. I appreciate your time. 0:27:35 - Dr. Cheryl E. Matias Oh, absolutely. Thank you for having me here and hopefully it reaches the ears that needs to be heard or be encouraged or supported.
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In this episode, we’re exploring the list of 10 elements of white liberalism developed by Dr. Cheryl Matias and Dr. Paul Gorski, which I read in their call for proposals for the book, The Other Elephant in the (Class)room.
Why? In the Introduction to their book, Matias and Gorski write “we often have the hardest time finding traction in schools with large numbers of liberal-ish white educators: the ones who are enthusiastic about celebrating diversity and learning about cultures, but squeamish when it comes to more significant efforts to redistribute access and opportunity,” (p. 1). They explain “liberal” is, in alignment with McLaren’s (1997) use of the term, as in contrast to “critical,” writing “critical approaches go right to the heart of the matter, uncovering systems of advantage and disadvantage, privilege and oppression…In that absence [of critical approaches], the liberal stuff creates the illusion of antiracist movement, the optics of racial inclusion, but not actual racial justice. We can’t Multicultural Arts Fair our way to racial justice,” White liberalism, they write, “individualizes racism and obscures systemic oppression…undermines antiracism efforts, and…poses no serious threat to racial injustice.” (pp. 1-2). What are the 10 elements of white liberalism?
What do we do? This school year, actively notice where these elements show up in your school community, in your own individual actions. Nurture a community that celebrates such identification, and pivot to the critical end of spectrum. In the authors’ words, “Although some may argue that it is out of line to critique the well-intentioned actions of others, we see it, instead, as an act of love and justice,” (p. 15). To help you consider ways to sustainably advance racial justice in your school or district, I’m sharing my Systems Transformation Playlist with you for free. (You’ll want to check out page 3!) And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 181 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. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02 - Lindsay Lyons I'm educational justice coach, lindsay Lyons, and here on the time for teachership podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting, because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings. If you're a principal assistant, superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nerding out about co-creating curriculum with students, I made this show for you. Here we go. Welcome to another episode of the Time for Teachership podcast. I am very excited today to talk about the 10 elements of white liberalism, so we'll really dive into what is white liberalism. How do you know it is happening and be able to identify it yourself in your educational community? Now I'm exploring this with you because this is actually a list of 10 elements that was developed by Dr Shira Matias and Dr Paul Gorski, which I read in their call for proposals for the book the Other Elephant in the Classroom, and Dr Cherie Bridges-Patrick and I contributed toa chapter to that book, which is super cool. Definitely grab the book, but here we go, we're going to get into it. Let's do this. So this episode is really going to be kind of a microcosm of, or maybe even just an intro intro to the book, the other elephant in the classroom and I'm very excited to kind of share some quotes, share the elements that are really the framework for the book, that I first saw in the call for proposals for chapters for this book. So let's get into the why. I'm going to use the author's own words, because they're just awesome. And so in the introduction to their book, dr Cheryl Matias and Dr Paul Gorski write, quote we have we often have the hardest time finding traction in schools with large numbers of liberal-ish white educators, the ones who are enthusiastic about celebrating diversity and learning about cultures, but squeamish when it comes to more significant efforts to redistribute access and opportunity end quote. And they contrast this directly with, like, the openly racist folks in spaces, right. So actually those folks are very transparent about what is happening and they are very honest about their stance on racial justice, and so it's actually really hard to get traction because we're not even speaking aloud, we're not even to use a less ableist term like acknowledging, right, the racism that is part of, really truly embedded in and formed from the structures of white supremacy, right. If we're not acknowledging it, then we can't really do anything, and if folks are just openly acknowledging where they stand, well, we could like address it directly. So I think this is a really big mindset shift. We often talk about mindset shifts on this podcast and I think this is a big one. So we have to redefine what anti-racism activity looks like, what racial justice activity looks like, and we have to be open to acknowledging white liberalism, which is not racial justice, which does not advance racial justice and often, to the author's point and the contributors to this book's point, collectively it actually inhibits racial progress, racial justice and racial transformation. And so, I think, racial justice transformation. There we go. I think what I really want to do is continue with the author's words here in their introduction to the text and I keep saying authors, they are the editors of this volume, they authored the introduction and then they did a beautiful job curating all of these chapters together. So let's dive into their words from the introduction a bit more. So they explain that liberal in the term white liberalism is actually in alignment with McLaren's 1997 use of the term liberal, in contrast to, maybe, the term critical. And so they write, quote critical approaches go right to the heart of the matter, uncovering systems of advantage and disadvantage, privilege and oppression. In that absence of critical approaches, the liberal stuff creates the illusion of anti-racist movement, the optics of racial inclusion, but not actual racial justice. We can't multicultural arts fare our way to racial justice. I love that quote. So it really gives a framework right for why white liberalism is simply not enough right. And white liberalism specifically, they write quote individualizes racism and obscures systemic oppression, undermines anti-racism efforts and poses no serious thought to racial injustice Excuse me, serious threat to racial injustice. So I think this is a really good point that if we are truly to be dismantling racial injustice, if we are truly to be anti-racist activists in the context of educational spaces, then we truly need to acknowledge that white liberalism activity is just not enough. And so the question now is what is white liberalism activity? How do I know that it's not actually racial justice? What do these things look like? What are the things that I personally might be doing, or that I might see fellow colleagues, teachers, staff members participating in, that they might not even know is actually white liberalism and not contributing to racial justice? So we're going to walk through those and, again, these are from that list that the editors developed in their call for proposals, so I will link to that document as well. But I'm just reading straight off this list and then I can go into a little bit of depth as well for each one. These are also listed on the blog post for this podcast episode, which is located at lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog, slash 181. So if you're driving and interested in catching them all, you do not need to take notes. Know that that is written for you in a safe location and you can access it later when you need it, perhaps to share it with your staff and have everyone do a kind of introspective, reflective activity where it's like where have we seen these things or where have we actually participated in? Not just observed, but what have we participated in, because it's really hard to acknowledge our own stuff. However, that's a huge part of this and I really love the author's sentiments of really this is an act of love to be able to critique and highlight when we're just not doing enough. And we know that if we are pursuing this, pursuing racial justice, and we call ourselves anti-racist educators or whatever the phrase may be that you name yourself truly to do it well. We want to do it well. Right, if we name ourselves that and truly to do it well. We need a community of folks who are contributing to highlighting when we're not doing well enough, and we need that for ourselves. So with that in mind, here we go. What are the 10 elements of white liberalism? Number one mistaking celebrations of diversity for racial justice progress. So, again, in the words of the editors right, we can't multicultural arts fare our way to racial justice, like that's what it is, when we have these culture days, when we have these moments of like, learning about different cultures or celebrating different foods or music or clothing. Right, that's not that it's bad, it's just not enough, right, we can't have an absence of the deeper stuff. So if that's where your kind of quote unquote, dei initiatives end, that's just not going to contribute to racial justice. Number two equating peace, the absence of tension, as Dr Martin Luther King Jr described it in his letter from Birmingham jail with justice. So the idea of equating peace with justice, right, that's not racial justice. Right, racial justice is not. Oh, we don't talk about it. So there's no tension we're avoiding, we're all good. Right, that is not justice we have to be able to have the constructive conflict, the disorienting dilemmas, all that stuff that we've talked about before on this podcast many times, one of the quadrants of discourse that is not contributing to racial justice. Right, this is avoidance, this is peace as the absence of tension. And we've been folks have been saying this, right, people have been saying this as the collective we for a very long time, right, dr Martin Luther King Jr's letter was decades ago and he was calling it out then, and he was calling it out then. Peace is not justice. No-transcript. There are so many times in my life that I have had good intentions and the impact did not match the intent and I felt defensive. I think we've all been there, right, I continue to do that, just in daily, day-to-day things. Right, maybe not racial justice related specifically, but oh, I didn't mean to say it that way, oh, I didn't mean right. And so that defensive response is natural and normal, but we have to interrogate it, we have to critique it, we have to reflect on okay, what was the impact? What were my actions? What was the impact in terms of the felt experience of whoever experienced my actions? Right, and it doesn't really matter what my intentions were if my impact was bad. So we have to have actions that promote racial justice, not saying, oh, we tried but it failed. But, well, create space for accept and transform our actions based on any sort of feedback that someone wants to give us that the impact was bad, right, that's a huge growth moment for us. That's a very big risk that someone is taking to highlight, even internally, right To reflect on your own stuff, to say, ooh, actually my impact was not good. That's good on you for reflecting, right. So that idea of being open to critique, I think, is a kind of corollary here that I'm personally just adding All right. Number four slowing racial justice progress by insisting on quote baby steps and quote developmental processes that protect white people from having to grapple seriously with racism. So this idea of I will share an example that I think often of in this case and I think it's related. So it's the idea of setting in a strategic goal conversation, setting goals where the percentage of students who achieve the goal is not 100%. This bothers me so much. Now I understand things happen and it is hard. It is very challenging to reach 100% and there are many factors to consider. However, if our goal is to educate all students. Our goal is to educate all students, and all that other stuff is on us to figure out. And if we don't quite get there, like, okay, we figure it out some more, we go a little bit further, we reflect, we learn more right, all of the things that we do as educators and really as learners. But we don't say that the goal is only 80% of our students are going to achieve, only 80% of our students are going to achieve, only 80% of our students are going to be able to read by the end of this year. Right, like 100%. We can't say, oh, these are our baby steps on the way to 100%, that we will get to eventually someday, maybe in the future, but in the meantime, all of the students who are here are just not going to achieve and suffer, right? So this idea of, like, demanding action now, this sense of urgency, this sense of the students in front of us deserve 100% to be our goal, I think is really important here. That's what that number makes me think of. Okay, number five adhering to a savior mentality or some other ideology that positions white people as the fixers or saviors of students and families of color. So this idea that I am helping, I am giving back to community. This is like a sacrifice for for me to like, go in and like do this thing gross right, like, no, like. Why are you doing this work? Dr Cherie Bridges-Patrick has said to me you know, as a white person like Lindsay, you need to do this work for yourself. You can't do this work for me because in the long run you are not going to stay committed because you're doing this for someone else. You have to believe that you, as a community member in this, in this space on this earth, as a member of the human community, are harmed by the racial injustice that impacts fellow about right. That happens to white people when we are complicit or participating in or even just observing silently or just like living in right this racial injustice, right A society that perpetuates racial injustice, right? So this idea that like the savior mentality, or like we are the folks with the answers, as white folks, like no. I think also this speaks to the shared leadership component that we often talk about on this podcast, where it's like Ayanna Pressley says this best Her mom has the quote of like the people closest to the pain should be closest to the power, or something I might be paraphrasing a bit, but the folks who are experiencing the negative impacts need to be part of the conversation of how to dismantle white supremacy. So I think that's another piece that, like the knowledge, the wisdom, the experience, the ideas for moving forward, the felt experiences are in the space. Like those folks should be leading the way and we as white folks I'm speaking as a white woman should be allies right, should be co-conspirators, should be whatever name you give it, all right. Number six misconstruing equity as equal numbers or representation, rather than the elimination of inequity and oppression. I see a lot of folks who are in the leadership space who are saying things like we are going to increase our numbers of BIPOC teachers by this percentage this year, great, awesome, you should. And if you are saying that is enough, it's not enough. Folks are not going to come to your space and stay in your space, or perhaps they will out of necessity or whatever, but they're not going to enjoy it and be thriving if we don't eliminate the inequity and oppression that prevented people from applying in the first place right or prevented people from being hired in the first place, and this is a huge piece. Number seven superficially expressing a desire for diversity, but rarely engaging in meaningful practices that substantially incorporate the voices and desires of racially marginalized communities. So, again, I think the same point that I was just talking about right when we actually engage in shared leadership, in decentering our white selves right. Again, I'm speaking as a white person here because I'm just being reflective of my own experience and things that I've learned and I'm still learning. But if white folks, white liberals right in this white liberal space, are not decentering ourselves, white liberals right in this white liberal space, are not decentering ourselves, then we are just engaging in white liberalism. We are expressing the desire for diversity but not engaging in the meaningful practices. Number eight refusing to acknowledge the expertise or authority of people of color, even on matters of racial equity. Do not tell people what their experience is and what the answer should be. Right, this is I've I've repeated this multiple times in the last few points, but I think I think this is a big one. Number nine white educators manipulating the narratives of people of color in order to position themselves as quote well-intentioned or quote innocent. Again, this is related to some previous numbers on this list and some conversation and ad-libbing that I've done around this, but the idea of thinking you can use someone else's words to make yourself seem well-intentioned, a good person, whatever the narrative is, even when you have messed up, even when you have ignored racial injustice, when you have contributed to white liberalism and not engaged more fully in thoughtful conversation, pushing the boundaries, being critical of the structures of white supremacy. You can't just take someone else's words who happens to be Black or Indigenous or Latinx or Asian American or whatever right Native. You can't just take those words like oh, this person likes me, so like I'm cool. No, number 10, engaging in toxic positivity, insisting that conversations about racism are too quote negative and we should focus on the quote positive. So again, I think this one is similar to that idea of avoidance and the confusion of peace and justice. Right, conflating the two. Really important that, even if it's uncomfortable, we lean into that discomfort. We will not have growth without the discomfort and that's something we really want to and should be normalizing in our spaces. We have to be able to grapple with discomfort. I mean, even on a, on a super basic academic level, students need to be uncomfortable with being wrong. Right? Students make mistakes all the time. That's how we learn. We learn from the mistakes with formative feedback. Right, that's how learning works, and we are institutions of education. We need to tolerate, engage with, lean into the discomfort and view it as a learning opportunity, experience it as a growth moment. That might not be comfortable, but boy am I going to be better after, right. So what do we do with all this? This is a lot and, honestly, as I was reading this, I'm like, yes, I can identify an instance, at least an instance of every single one of these numbers on this list, right, that I have personally engaged with. That does not feel good. So what do we do with this? I think the school year as a very first step. I often end podcast episodes with, like what's the one next step to gain the momentum. So there's a lot of steps, right. There's a lot of structures we could look into. I will link to my systems transformation playlist on the blog post. You can check out page three, which is all about racial justice. Lots of resources and guests on the podcast who are way smarter than me and have a lot more expertise and wisdom to share on this, but you can check that out. If you're looking for bigger things, you can certainly buy the book, and so we'll link to that as well in the blog post. The other elephant in the classroom again is the name of that. But again, I think the first step to get the ball rolling here is actively notice where these elements show up in your school community this year. Reflect on your own individual actions. Where are you engaging in these, even in this moment? Reflect, even listen to this podcast episode again, or open up the blog post and read through and identify for each one. Where have you most recently done this? Right, it's okay, no shame. Done this? Right, it's okay, no shame. Just like acknowledge it and then do better, right? Also, nurture a community that celebrates that identification of when it's showing up, that kind of calls each other in, so to speak, to the conversation and says, hey, I noticed this. Right. And, of course, being able to pivot to the critical end of the liberal critical spectrum, that community piece, tolerating the discomfort, engaging with it, seeing it as growth, being able to truly celebrate as growth opportunities and celebrate the vulnerability of whoever is pointing it out as well. Right, that is huge. If you can create a culture like that, you are on the path to sustainable success. That is a winning culture of true justice. Right, you have to have that community built to be able to do this work. In the author's words I'm just going to conclude with those because they are brilliant and again, author's editor's words. In the introduction which they authored they write although some may argue that it is out of line to critique the well-intentioned actions of others, we see it instead as an act of love and justice. If you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazzed as I am about my coaching program for increasing student-led discussions in your school. Shane Safir and Jamila Dugan talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book Street Data. They say students should be talking for 75% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period? I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling to yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm how I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan, witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy, no strings attached brainstorm call at lindsaybethlyonscom slash contact. Until next time, leaders think big, act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network Better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there. Explore more podcasts at teachbettercom slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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In this episode, we talk with Dr. Rita Harvey, Partner of Systems and Transformation with the Center for Innovation in Education. With 10+ years of experience in urban education, she is passionate about developing and implementing inclusive programs that engage a range of students.
In our interview, Dr. Harvey shares her profound insights on the transformative power of inclusive and empathetic educational systems, underscoring the need for educational environments that foster a sense of belonging for all children. She also discusses the importance of community engagement and the necessity of listening deeply and setting boundaries to ensure all voices are respected and feel safe to engage in important conversations and change. The Big Dream Dr. Harvey’s big dream for education is to develop and implement systems that are expansive enough to hold all children—particularly those on the margins. Inspired by her dreams for her own young daughter, Dr. Harvey dreams of systems that ensure every child feels safe, welcomed, and included. Further, she emphasizes the importance of developing systems grounded in inclusivity, empathy, co-creation, and reciprocity, which collectively contribute to a sense of belonging and ownership for both students and parents. Mindset Shifts Required To achieve Dr. Harvey’s big dream of expansive education systems, we need to embrace a few mindset shifts. Her work with the Center of Innovation in Education centers on four key habits that tie-in here: inclusivity, empathy, co-creation, and reciprocity. In particular, Dr. Harvey believes that building mindsets around inclusion and empathy is important to create a system that holds as many children as possible. Dr. Harvey encourages us to think about developing inclusive and empathetic mindsets by first asking how we can make the education system a safe space for all children. Then, there’s a mindset piece around empathy that needs to be cultivated—we have to understand the humanity in each other to really begin to transform systems. Action Steps Dr. Harvey’s work with the assessment for learning community requires getting to the center of the spaces that need change and bringing in people from the margins. Annual convenings with education stakeholders actively work to build a space and foundation so everyone feels a sense of belonging, community, and belonging. Stepping into spaces that aren’t always kind to concepts of anti-racism or anti-patriarchy is challenging, but necessary. In this space, conversations are held with empathy and curiosity so honest dialogue can take place. This work can be done by taking these action steps in your specific context: Step 1: Start by getting to know the students and their families, particularly those who seem uninterested or challenging. Build genuine relationships based on understanding and empathy. Step 2: Engage deeply with the community by holding regular meetings and listening to their stories to build trust. This ensures that all voices are heard and respected. Step 3: Create safe and welcoming spaces for dialogue. Prioritize the protection and respect of participants, and set boundaries to ensure that the needs of marginalized groups are met. Challenges? Educators are facing significant burnout, exacerbated by the lack of respect for the profession and the increasing demands placed on them. The challenge lies in creating healing spaces within educational systems that can support and hold taxed educators facing burnout and overwhelm. The other challenge is building spaces of hope and connection, especially when educators are tired and drained. How do we create those healing spaces for folks to continue to do this good work? One Step to Get Started Begin by focusing on a single student or their family who may seem checked out or disinterested. Make a genuine effort to understand their background, needs, and motivations. This small step can lead to a deeper connection and serve as a foundation for building more inclusive and empathetic educational practices. Stay Connected You can check out Dr. Harvey’s work on the Center for Innovation in Education website, and connect with her directly by email at [email protected]. To help you implement today’s takeaways, Dr. Harvey is sharing her principles of practice from the Assessment 4 Learning community with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 180 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
TRANSCRIPT 0:00:03 - Lindsay Lyons Rita Harvey. Welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. 0:00:06 - Rita Harvey Hello, thank you for having me, Lindsay. 0:00:09 - Lindsay Lyons I am so excited. I'm excited to learn more about you, I'm excited to be connected with you and your beautiful work. I am particularly just from before we hit record just excited about all of your ways of thinking that extend my own thinking and ways of grappling with some of these questions. So really excited. And I think for the first question, it's just you know, what do we want to keep in mind? What do you want us, what do you want the listeners to keep in mind today as we jump in? 0:00:38 - Rita Harvey This was an interesting question for me and thinking about what do we want to keep in mind? And so, in thinking about myself, I think there are two really important things that I've been grappling with lately as a Black woman, black mother, and thinking about sort of my history, and I think it's the idea that in this particular moment, I think it's part of my academic intellectual history, but I think Black women are a bomb in this world, and so I think about even the exact moment when we're doing this recording and the things that have been happening and the importance of Black women in particular and my history with Black women and being what it means to heal as a Black woman and as a Black mother. And then the second thing that I've been thinking a lot about is in summer of 2023, I was diagnosed with autism, and so I think about a lot and I approach a lot with an understanding of myself as a neurodivergent person, and I think it comes up sometimes in sort of my even sort of the linear idea of my thinking, and so if I get too divergent, just bring me back. 0:01:52 - Lindsay Lyons Thank you so much. That is such a helpful framing, just from like neurodivergence framing and also in like the beauty of that right and like where that takes us in ways that we need to go to be able to break out of like the way things have always been done, because those don't work, in addition to the healing, and also to contextualize your point, just for listeners to know. So this episode will be published a few months from now and so we are recording this on July 23. And this is just after the weekend where presumably we'll see what life brings us, but Kamala Harris will be the presumptive presidential person on the Democratic ticket. So very exciting things happening and lots of conversations to happen. So thank you for contextualizing us in the time we're in. I think one of the big questions that I love starting with is Dr Bettina Love talks about this so eloquently, about freedom, dreaming. She names them as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. So I like to contextualize kind of our big dreams for education, for the world, even if you want to go that big. But thinking about that with that quote in mind, what are the big dreams you hold? 0:03:03 - Rita Harvey I think on the sort of most macro which I think is also very micro is that we eventually develop and implement systems that are expansive enough to hold all of the children that exist. When I entered teaching I was very young. I was 22 and fresh out of college, having majored in African-American studies, and so it was a very sort of Teaching became the application of a lot of things that I believed in In terms of cultural responsiveness, in terms of I was a special education teacher making sure that I met the needs of those children, but it was still very sort of philosophically grounded. I was faced with these children, and now I am 39 and I have my own daughter, who is just turned four, and so when I think about education and the systems that I want to create, I want to create systems that can hold my child and be expansive enough for all that she is, but also all of the other children that exist and enter these systems, or especially those that exist on them and on the margins, because I think that would also hold those who are currently centered in many ways in the systems. 0:04:19 - Lindsay Lyons Absolutely. I love this notion of expansiveness too, because I think it speaks to like. The problems that we have currently had with our systems is that they are the exact opposite. Right, there is this one way to do school. There is this it is narrow, it is defined. I just love the possibility in the word expansive as well. There's so much possibility there. It's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that as the kind of grounding for the next few questions. One of the things I think, and even that in and of itself could answer this question as well. But I think there's a lot of mindset shifting that has to happen before we do transformative work or transform systems to be more expansive, and I think that can be such a challenge for folks who are trying to live that out. What are some that like? What's a mindset shift that you've either seen coached people through, benefited from? What are those like that come to mind when you think about that question? Absolutely. 0:05:20 - Rita Harvey So I think, in the work that I do at the Center for Innovation in Education, so I think in the work that I do at the Center for Innovation and Education, we, as a small organization, we think about how to develop systems that have four habits, which, in many ways, habits are the beginning of those practicing those mindset shifts. And the four habits that we focus on are how to build systems that are inclusive, empathetic, filled with co-creation and reciprocity. And all four of those habits are, I think, very, very important. But for me, I think I'm really drawn into the idea of how do we make and build inclusive mindsets and empathetic ones. And so when I say inclusion, it's how do we make sure that people feel safe coming into the system of education? How do we make sure that children feel safe coming to school? How do we make sure that parents feel safe being in their school systems and not only feel safe coming into them but feel a sense of belonging and ownership in those spaces and ownership in those spaces. And then, for the second part, it's the idea of empathy as a mindset that needs to develop, because I think we have to understand the humanity in each other in order to really want to begin to transform systems, and I think empathy and the idea of belonging they play into so many other things that are important for me, such as a culturally responsive mindset or a culturally relevant mindset, and if we get into anti-racism, you have to be able to empathize and understand where people are coming from. And I think I start with the idea of inclusion leading to empathy, because you have to believe that your own needs are going to be met by a system before you can begin to empathize with others in many ways, and so I think, for me, building mindsets around inclusion and empathy are really, really important as we think about building systems that can hold as many children as possible, as many of their dreams as possible. 0:07:20 - Lindsay Lyons Wow, that's really great. I'm just thinking about your words around, just the idea of you have to believe that your own needs will be met and before you can start to empathize with others, I think there's so much that I want to like sit with. That's really good and, I think, probably a huge mindset shift, a huge pivotal piece to some of the transformative work that that you do and you help others do so. I'm curious now, with those kind of four habits in mind, or focusing on those, the inclusivity and the empathetic habits thinking about the brave actions required, what is it that either you've done, coached folks to do, seen folks do that really leads that kind of transformative work, or has led to transformative work? 0:08:09 - Rita Harvey So I think I'll focus specifically on sort of the assessment for learning community and I think, well, brave actions. That's such a challenging concept for me because I feel like frequently I don't think of myself as particularly brave. I think not necessarily the opposite of that. But as a deeply introverted person who would rather stay in my little cocoon, I think even facilitating learning communities that are grounded in the idea of inclusion and empathy, and making sure we do an annual convening and we really, as a design team when we have a design team that's for the assessment for learning community that's comprised of largely women of color, queer women, and we come together and it's how do we build a space or build a foundation so that people can come and be, feel, experience that sense of belonging, that sense of community um, a sense of empathy. And we frequently do the work in spaces that are not necessarily kind to concepts of like anti-racism and the things that I believe, and so stepping into those spaces and creating spaces that are filled with love, I don't think that's brave. I think it's necessary um creating spaces where people can speak the truth um about institutional racism and, you know, patriarchy, all of those things, colonialism and the impact they have on all of us. So how do you create a space like that where you can hold many people? And so I think we do that in many ways. I do that a lot of ways by understanding myself but decentering myself. So how do I create an inviting space that allows people to do that? And so I mean maybe it would be braver if I like shared a little bit more about myself. Maybe that's the next step and because I do like to decenter myself in a lot of the work that I do, um, create space for the voices that I think are really vital. 0:10:22 - Lindsay Lyons Yes, oh, wow, there's so much, there's so much. I love the introspection and the authentic like thought process as you're speaking, to think about what you're saying as well. This is just. I'm just so appreciate you, thank you, and I I'm curious to know too, before we hit record you were saying you know that sometimes those those brave moments are really at those that that personal level it's, it's kind of those micro moments as opposed to like the big things, and I think your answer speaks to that. I'm wondering if there is kind of a moment in mind or a scenario in mind or just kind of like a general approach to kind of key moments that you've seen really unlock a transformation in someone or build that space and deepen that sense and experience of belonging for folks. Absolutely. 0:11:09 - Rita Harvey And I'll start by, I think, the idea that the brave action. I think a lot of times we're in this moment where people do say that they're inviting folks in and so part of it is actually doing that. So let's see our latest convening. I guess this is not a space that is not unfriendly to. I'll actually talk about our convening in Tucson, in Arizona, and Arizona has a really complex history with culturally responsive, culturally relevant practices and but they have a really in the city of Tucson they have a really robust culturally responsive program. So when we were planning our assessment for learning convening in Tucson, we wanted to make sure that they felt safe and so we built these bridges and so it really required, I think, even stepping outside of my comfort zone, in the sense that we went to Tucson, we would meet weekly with members of the Tucson community and began to understand what their story was, truly, listened to the things that they were saying and I'm just thinking. I'm thinking about the idea of invitation, not just inviting in, but the, the slow process that's required to even endure, just like the awkward moments when people don't necessarily be, the awkward and uncomfortable moments when you want to fill a space with noise or you want to fill a space and I think this can happen with students as well in the classroom the need to be the expert, but really step back. So my colleague, soraya Ramos and I were planning this meeting in Tucson with two members of the culturally responsive department, and I remember the first meeting. We were online and they just couldn't believe that. You know one meeting after the other, with both allowing ourselves to be human, but also learning their story, learning about the traumas that they faced as a community After their state superintendent had basically gotten a ton of them fired and the ways that they endured to make sure that they could have this culturally responsive department of education and the same commissioner that had done state superintendent that had done that. He was in the year that we were doing the convening. He was re-elected as their state superintendent, and so they were. We had to create a space where they felt safe and we honored the work that they were doing. So I think that was one where I don't know. I don't know if it was brave on our part, but it was brave on their part to be able to do this, and so it meant that we took steps that we wouldn't necessarily have wanted. We wanted to be able to record some things, but we didn't want to put any of them at risk. We wanted to share their story in a way that felt safe for them. So and that's what I'm saying, I don't know if that's brave, but it was. It required immense listening and just stepping back, and, to this day, roshanda and Lorenzo are people that I respect so much because they are brave all of the time, but they have to do it in a way that also ensures that the teachers that work for them are safe, and so it's both. It's stepping forward, but also knowing when to create boundaries to protect folks. 0:15:11 - Lindsay Lyons Yes, I, I was thinking that, as you were saying, that sounds a little bit of a prioritization of you know, like, yeah, I want to go do this thing, we need to do this thing, and I have this other thing that's really important in the protection of people and and I think about that a lot I think you and I have academic backgrounds in addition to, like, practitioner backgrounds. I think about that a lot in terms of, you know, research and and, um, like you know, you need to record things or you need to do this, and it's like what, what's the balance between the human piece and the piece of, like, check the box? We need the thing for some file or whatever, right? So I think that that speaks deeply to me. 0:15:50 - Rita Harvey And I think there's like two sides to I think what I'm. I think there's that there's the actual connecting. But I think, like right now I'm working on a small research project in Kentucky and we're trying to figure out how to get to the margins of the community. And it is not a racially diverse community to get to the margins of the community and it is not a racially diverse community. So what the margins look like is like different than sort of how I've conceptualized the margins at other times. But we find that even as we're working with the district, even they don't know how to get to the margins, and so I think that's brave, but I think I think it's a thing from from the classroom, when you have those students whose parents you know you need to talk to but you're afraid to like, call their parents, um, the same thing it it sort of happens time and time again, and so the brave action is saying, you know what, like, let me put aside my assumptions about a community, about a person, and um, really begin to invite them in and listen to what they need so that they feel safe coming in and not just like, okay, they don't want to be here. 0:17:15 - Lindsay Lyons Right, oh, yes, that for sure. I am also wondering how, with some of these this is a bit more of a technical question, I guess, but thinking about creating these spaces in communities where you're inviting in folks at the margins, what are the? What kind of stakeholder groups are those? Are those educators or those families or those community members who are not maybe formally linked to the education system at the time? Are they young people? 0:17:36 - Rita Harvey Are you talking specifically about the one in Kentucky? 0:17:38 - Lindsay Lyons About any of them really. 0:17:39 - Rita Harvey But yeah, I think it can be. It can be all of those folks I think in the work that we've done. It can be those educators who do their job and then want to go home, which is a position that's. It can be those who aren't necessarily tapped for all of the like, insider, like let's build up this system. It can be the teachers of those students that you, you know. It can be your teacher of your special education students. It can be those who are doing technical, the sort of the technical and career education it can. It's also a lot of the time, I think, when folks tap students, like in the work that we're doing in Kentucky right now, we've noticed that a lot of the students are those who are already centered and they are actually pushing us. They're saying we know that there are some folks who are excluded. Um, how do we make sure that, not just the, the research work, but like, how are they included in this broader initiative around assessment that's happening there? Um, and also the families, and I think that's been. I think that's some of the hardest, um, hardest in getting, because there are sometimes time constraints, there are sometimes language barriers, there are people who have had their own trauma with schools and don't necessarily want to reenter those spaces. So how do we, simultaneously, while we're trying to rebuild a system, make it minimally viable for folks to come in so that we can actually build something that's transformative, and understanding that it's not? It can't happen all at once, so you can't be dishonest and say like we have already transformed when you're in the process of transforming. So what are those first steps? And that's something there's no singular answer for what that first step is, because the things that make people can remember, even in grad school, going to communities that my mother probably would have been very upset that I was visiting, because it would have. She would have viewed it as unsafe, but those were the folks who needed to be at the center of the work. So I think it can. It can look like a range of folks, but I think it can. It can look like a range of folks, um, but I think for me, my brain often lives in those spaces that can be conceived of as untouchable and that other they get those labels of unsafe, um, in some ways right, because I mean, if those folks aren't at the center of making decisions, right? 0:20:26 - Lindsay Lyons isn't it Ayanna Pressley who said the people closest to the pain are close should be close to the power, or some version of that? Right, yeah, I, I think that this probably is really um, it's very important for folks who are listening to hear it, who may live in the technical spaces of. Okay, so give me like a five point. Like what do I do? And I think it's really important when we often kind of rush to action and like do the thing, and we haven't built the foundation, as you said, you don't get to a place of transformative change. It's why we keep doing the same old things right again and again, and so I hope folks are taking away that this, this building it takes a while and like it is absolutely essential to do, to do the thing you're trying to do right in in a just way. 0:21:15 - Rita Harvey Yeah, and I think sometimes I like it almost. It's almost like a snowballing, like we I think about. You know, many schools have a family resource person who's supposed to be a connection to that community and in this research we've been trying to think about, like how do we get to that? But even they only have their layer. So then it's like, okay, if you can put me in touch with those folks, can they put me in touch with someone else? And can they like, put me in touch with someone else? And that does. That takes time. It takes courage to do all of those things, to go into those spaces. 0:21:50 - Lindsay Lyons Absolutely. And I wonder I'm sure there are an enormous, like a number of enormous lists, there we go, of challenges that folks could name in this work because it is so big and so important and so complex in some ways. Are there challenges that you know, folks have repeatedly surfaced for you or you've repeatedly seen in action? And and how might a person listening who's like I'm anticipating this challenge, perhaps work through that? 0:22:18 - Rita Harvey That's so interesting when I saw that. So I saw these questions ahead, obviously, and I was thinking about it in a in way, and I can still address that. But I think right now, in this moment which I'm not even thinking in terms of what it is micro in the grand scheme of things but educators are being asked to do so many things and I think before COVID there was already burnout and then, like you know, a new initiative comes along and you're like, okay, let me just like play along with this until until it fades out, right. But I think the biggest challenge right now is educator burnout because there has been such a lack of respect for educators and I think COVID just exacerbated all of that. So I think building if you're talking about systems level leaders, building spaces that can hold the educators who are taxed is, I think, a massive challenge, because if you're asking someone who's already sort of like doing so many things and facing so many barriers and challenges, and to ask them to do one more thing is just like so much, and so I think that is the thing that comes up the most. 0:23:44 - Lindsay Lyons That was not what I was thinking of, um, but I mean, maybe it's connected and I'm curious to know how you did interpret it or what direction you wanted to take it. 0:23:53 - Rita Harvey Well, I guess it was going to be very, it was going to be very hard and it was just the idea, and so this is why I say maybe it's connected, but returning to hope and like building spaces of hope and connection. It's really easy to get tired and want to give up when you're the idea of the challenge is how do we create healing spaces so that folks can continue to do this work when it's really tiring and draining? 0:24:32 - Lindsay Lyons That is excellent. Yeah, absolutely Right, absolutely Okay, that's. I think that's really connected to what you initially said, connected to all the events which, right we, we sometimes pretend in school systems like we're gonna ignore the outside of the school building and it's like what? No, that impacts how we live lives, like every day. It can't be ignored day. 0:25:02 - Rita Harvey It can't be ignored. It cannot be ignored and it I mean we can put it in packages like culturally responsive teaching. But I think even there are spaces um in. In Aurora, uh, colorado, we did a convening with um at a school that was for parenting teens and others in the community who needed the space, and it was a very small school, but you could see the commitment because the principal was trying to hold the space for the teachers, to hold the students, to hold their children, and so it's just like you can't, you cannot escape from any of the components. It all comes into the school. So even if I say that I just want to teach English or I just want to teach math, it's not possible, and I don't I'm not saying that from like a moral, or it's just like. Even if I like, even if it is a moral imperative to me, that's not what it is. Just you can't, you cannot get children to do what you want them to do without taking care of their basic needs in these ways. But to put that burden on the teacher, you can't just put it on the teacher. So the whole system has to hold the educators, the child, their family, and so I just think about interconnection and interdependence in that way. 0:26:13 - Lindsay Lyons That was so well said that I'm going to leave it at that. That's going to resonate with me for a while. Thank you, I think just to close us out if someone is and I think you spoke to this a little bit earlier, so you feel free to double down on that response but I think when we do this, sometimes it feels like such a big thing. Cultivating the space where people feel a sense of you know, belonging, a sense of perceived safety, you know, all of that is big, big. What's like the first kind of get the ball rolling momentum builder that you would suggest folks do if they're listening to this and going ahead and like entering the day with hope on their brains and in their hearts um, if you're a teacher, I mean there's that student that you're convinced, like as you go into your school year, that is not interested in being. 0:27:01 - Rita Harvey You get to know them. Um, if you're a systems leader, in that way, you get to know the family of that that student. Um start very, very small um and understand and not in a condescending way. Um, like I genuinely want to know who you are. It can be the student who is not interested, but it can also be that student who just drives you crazy. We know you have that student who annoys you. We know that there is someone who you're like you talk too much. Why are they doing that? What is the need behind that? Begin, if you have the capacity to employ a little bit of empathy to understand what's happening in whatever part of the system you're in. 0:27:48 - Lindsay Lyons Awesome suggestions. And then, just to close with that, I love this question for absolute fun. Does not have to relate to what you're doing in your work, but again, what is something that you've personally been learning about lately? 0:28:05 - Rita Harvey This is really. It's very silly, it's not silly, it's not silly. My family, we moved from Massachusetts to Texas in 2022. And we bought our first house in 2023. And I have a garden for the first time and I really want to be successful at gardening and I have killed a number of plants. I am a succulent. I've killed succulents Like it doesn't matter. I killed. So I'm both gardening and learning about gardening from books, from the people in the community, from my dad. So I've been learning and thinking about gardening and ecosystems, which very much so could relate to education, but I'm doing it in the sense that I just I'm learning about what it means for me to get my hands in the soil and get dirty. So that's one thing that I've been thinking about and learning about. 0:28:59 - Lindsay Lyons That is beautiful One I resonate. I kill every plant about and learning about. That is beautiful One I resonate. I kill every plant ever given to me. So I just wish that that wouldn't be my experience. I want to live vicariously through you and it reminds me a lot of Adrienne Marie Brown's writings with like fractals and like just all of the nature-y things. So super cool, I'm so excited. Lastly, people are going to be really excited about your work and interested in connecting with you. So if you're comfortable with it, where can folks learn more about you, connect with you or your organization, if that feels like a better place to direct folks? 0:29:30 - Rita Harvey Sure, I was going to say I think my email address is on there. I can say my email address. It's Rita at leadingwithlearningorg and I believe our website is leadingwithlearningorg. I believe it's not Center for Innovation and Education and if you look, if you search for Center for Innovation and Education, you will find me there. But it will also say that our organization is closed. It is not closed. It's just that we're no longer housed in the space where it was before. 0:30:04 - Lindsay Lyons Amazing Rita. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and brilliance. It was really a pleasure. 0:30:09 - Rita Harvey Thank you.
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9/2/2024 179. Systems Change Comes from People Closest to the Learning with Julianna Charles BrownRead Now
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This episode features Julianna Charles Brown, who goes by Charlie, a champion for student-centered learning. The conversation highlights the transformative potential of education through a focus on collaborative change, equitable grading, and systemic reform.
With over 10 years of experience working with a variety of educators and a background in history, philosophy, facilitation, and anti-oppressive education, Charlie supports the development of dynamic change efforts to drive equity. Charlie is passionate about connecting the worlds of policy and practice with a critical lens to create more meaningful, responsive, equitable and lasting systems for every learner. Charlie’s career began at the New York City Department of Education in policy, working with schools on programming and providing guidance on working within state regulations. Charlie also worked on the Quality Performance Assessment Team at the Center for Collaborative Education, helping teachers and schools implement equitable performance assessment systems. Additionally, Charlie co-founded the NYC Mastery Collaborative, supporting schools in their implementation of competency-based education practices and advocating for the work to grow across NYC. The Big Dream Charlie’s dream for education is rooted in centering those closest to the learning process, including students, educators, and their communities. This differs from the current top-down approach and imagines an education system where decision-making is turned on its head and done by those closest to the learning. With this approach, Charlie believes the system can be meaningful for students and teachers alike. Mindset Shifts Required To move away from traditional, top-down systems and towards a student-centered approach, educators can use the power of dialogue and conversation to change mindsets. To break free from the current mold, teachers can have open, honest discussions about the changes they want and why they want them. This is the starting point to shift mindsets towards student-centered education and shared decision-making that energizes teachers and students. Action Steps To shift from top-down decision-making to collaborative, student-centered decision-making, educators can: Step 1: Initiate deep conversations between educators, students, and leaders to unpack beliefs about learning and co-create shared values and goals. Honest and open discussion is the first step to dig a bit deeper and create a new system. Step 2: Exercise autonomy within the classroom to implement equitable grading practices that prioritize feedback and growth over arbitrary marks. Students often internalize grades as identity markers, affecting their self-worth, so it’s important for educators to move away from this system. Step 3: Engage in cross-pollination of ideas between educators, policy-makers, schools, and school districts. This fosters important interdisciplinary dialogue that helps everyone learn from various educational models and strategies to develop a culture of continuous innovation. Challenges? Ultimately, this type of change to the education system involves disrupting systems of oppression, as the traditional academic models are inherently oppressive to students by sorting and stratifying them. To become more equitable and help learners thrive, the major challenge is overcoming the entrenched nature of these systems and the resistance to change. It’s important to be very clear on the why behind these changes to get educators to really pursue new ways forward. One Step to Get Started For educators seeking a new path forward, the first step is to figure out who you’ll have your first conversation with. Open dialogue is key to change, so determine who you want to talk to and explore ideas around the type of pedagogical experiences you want to see in your classroom. It all starts with a conversation! Stay Connected You can connect with Charlie on LinkedIn. To help you implement today’s takeaways, Charlie is also sharing a free PDF with our listeners: Beyond The Horizon: Blazing a Trail Toward Learner-Centered School Quality Systems. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 179 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
TRANSCRIPT 0:00:03 - Lindsay Lyons Charlie, welcome to the time for a teachership podcast. I'm so happy to have you on today. This is going to be such a fun conversation. I'm so looking forward to it. I think first just like what is important for our listeners to know, either about you you have the coolest bio in the world or what do you want people to think about as as we jump into the conversation, like what should be in people's minds yeah, yeah, so what would it be helpful to say a little bit about me and where kind of how I come to this work? absolutely. We'll put the bio at the front of the episode so people will have just heard it. But feel free to share additions to that highlights from it yeah, sure, sure. 0:00:42 - Charlie So sort of just contextualizing some of the stuff that I've done. I've had the great fortune to be involved with education and educators now for a little bit over a decade, to work with just like some of the most caring, innovative educators who are just like the people who raise their hands and want to try to do what's best for kids and want to think really creatively and differently about that. And over the course of my time doing various pieces of the work, I've just learned so much from people who are really taking this work on in the classroom, taking this work on in the classroom. So I think a lot of my view of this work is informed by those educators that I've learned from. So anything that I share today know that, as I stand on the shoulders of giants and I just, you know, would express up front my gratitude to all the great colleagues and collaborators that I've had. So let's get into it and talk about some systems change. 0:01:47 - Lindsay Lyons Yes, oh my gosh, that's a beautiful introduction. I absolutely love that you're honoring, like all of the work that happens collaboratively, because sometimes it very much feels like when we're asked questions or in the space of like leadership and education, it very much can feel like here's this idea that I just came up with out of nowhere. 0:02:08 - Charlie It's like no, no, this is all very collaborative, Right, right, you know, and I would never want to come on a podcast and be like this is all my brilliant thinking. It's like very, very much just having learned from some of the most brilliant educators in the business. So so cool, Thank you, Thank you for sharing that. 0:02:21 - Lindsay Lyons Yeah for sure, for sure. The first question I really want to get into is the dream. So thinking about freedom dreaming Dr Bettina Love writes so beautifully about this. This dream's grounded in the critique of injustice. What is that big freedom dream for you? 0:02:38 - Charlie Yeah, 100%, and I love this question and I am just so inspired every time I have the opportunity to read or hear from Dr Love. So I love that we're starting here. See what I did there. And I think for me, the dream is really kind of connected to this concept that I've been trying on lately, which is really centering people closest to the classroom, right, so I come from and within the student-centered learning world, which I think that's a fabulous and beautiful dream, and I also think that including a slightly larger table of people that are closest to the learning is really what comes to mind for me lately, which is to say that you have two well, you have lots of people in the classroom, but you have learners and you have educators, and then you have the families, communities, guardians that surround those learners. Right, and so for me, when I think about those closest to the learner, closest to the learning, that would be my vision or hope for what we would have as a future of our education systems. Right, because right now our systems very much do center levels of the system. So, for example, we have a very top-down system of education right now. Right, decisions get made at the federal level. Additional decisions get made at the state level, that gets pushed down to districts, that gets pushed down to schools, that gets pushed down to classroom, that get pushed down to learners. And I think, for me, having a system of education that really authentically sort of turns that concept on its head and puts those that are closest to the learning at the center of all decision making around education, it would just be a completely different way to operate and I think that we would get to learning experiences that were authentically meaningful for learners and learning, an experience of the profession for teachers that would just be a lot more fulfilling, grounded and closer to what most of us got into this business to do, Because I think, you know, none of us really got into this game to be millionaires right, we all got into it because, you know, we generally care about young people and their learning, and what would it look like to have a world and a system that allowed us to live that dream every day in the classroom. 0:05:10 - Lindsay Lyons I love that there is this honoring of student-centeredness and this honoring of teacher well-being and just like fulfillment in your words, so good, so good that we can have both. It's very much like a both and not like an either, or, which I really appreciate. 0:05:29 - Charlie Yeah, and you know what? I think that this is like kind of unpacking that concept a little bit more is that when we think about how our systems are constructed right now, often what they do is they're constructed in such a way that it forces us to do things to learners that we don't actually agree with right. So I think a really good example of this is grading policy right, or the standards that we're required to teach right which is not to say that I'm anti-standards and I'm anti-assessment right, like I'm very much for those things. But because of the way we've constructed those systems in that very top down way, what ends up happening in the classroom is you're living out a bunch of decisions that were not made with those people in mind, and so, as an educator, you're in the classroom and you're doing grading to a student in a way that, if you really think about it and unpack what is happening with grading, I think most educators wouldn't actually agree with that practice, right? It's like this horrible feeling that you get when you have to put a number or a letter at the top of a kid's piece of work and you don't actually have time to provide them the meaningful feedback and you actually are reporting that feedback in a way that doesn't help them get any better. But you have to do it, and you have to do it 50 times, and you have to put that in a grade book, and it's like all of these things that we, as educators, are forced to do because of the way we've set the system up, and if we thought about designing the system from the center out as opposed to from the top down, we would end up with a very different set of we would end up with a very different set of sort of operating procedures. 0:07:13 - Lindsay Lyons There is so much going through my mind right now. I'm not sure what question to go with next, so I'm going to share some thoughts and then you can tell me where you want to go. Yeah, I can roll. One thought I'm thinking is the way in practice that educators try to get around that, but not from kind of a systematic lens or like a structural, like we're changing the system from the ground up. It's more of like in practice, what I see is okay, well, we're just going to grade this for effort or something Right. And so then you like to your point. You don't get the feedback on the standard that we're trying to improve. So we're just going to kind of manipulate the system we have to work in, but not in like a cohesive way that gives students feedback on the thing they need Right. And? And then there's also this idea of like. I think what that path looks like is probably listeners are probably thinking what does that look like, right? That feels so different from how things are done, like. What are the possibilities for doing something like that in my school or my educational community? So feel free to go either direction. 0:08:15 - Charlie Yeah, 100%, 100%. I mean I think that there are some really powerful techniques that, as an individual educator, are within your locus of control, right so, and there are some really good, just like evidence-based practices that you can build into your classroom level grading policy. So I would encourage everybody to read Grading for Equity and with the acknowledgement that, depending on the context where you're teaching, you may or may not actually have the authority to make that decision, and that's like we're the real crux of centering students and educators and their communities in the design for learning systems. That's. There's a big piece of work there, because I think if you are not empowered as an educator to be involved in that type of decision making and by that I mean setting of a school or a district level grading policy then it can be hard to navigate the change. And so I think that, while change efforts or systems change efforts, should be grounded and led by educators, students, in ways that feel appropriate for them to be involved. I also think that for any leaders that may be listening right like, it also requires leaders to think and move in a very different way, with full acknowledgement that, like, principals and district leaders, are being compressed from the top as well. So it's not necessarily. You know, we're all kind of in this top-down workflow. So I would say, for whatever level of the system you operate in, there are things that are coming down that you may have to do, and then what are the ways that you can interrupt them so that students can lead or whoever you know? Whatever level of the sandwich that you're at, you know the people that you're responsible for facilitating and supporting. They have maximum amount of autonomy and the maximum amount of support and guidance, as opposed to sort of like just leading with authority and that's like all sort of very amorphous. I think that until you use an example like grading Right. So it's like as I, for example, as a school or district leader, there may be some systems with which you have to comply as a result to reporting grades, crediting policies, things of that nature. But what does it look like to support your staff in having a conversation about how can we make what we have to do most meaningful? So, and then this thing can be true for an educator or a group of educators, perhaps at a department or at a grade level. You can say you know, we understand that we have to report grades. Maybe we have to are required to report them in a particular format, and what logic can we put behind how those grades are generated to maximize the amount of feedback that we're giving to students, so that those grades aren't just your? You know you're getting a b or an 80 and you just have to sort of like internalize that with no understanding of where that comes from or what to do next and so, and then I would encourage people to work together to say you know, once you've started to work within what is in your locus of control and identify the barriers. If you have a few people having that conversation with whoever is sort of the next up the authority chain, that's a very sort of interesting way to start to make changes. So if you hear from a whole department or a whole grade band team that, like we've tried some stuff out, we found this particular grading practice to be really impactful, here's the barrier that we're experiencing, right, like that's a very different conversation than, like you know, one person kind of going in alone, or what often happens is you just kind of like close the classroom door and do what you think is right, but maybe I'm not sure it's right, and so I would encourage people to like see how you can do what you're required to do in the way that is, like, most aligned with your values, and do it with others who share your values. And then for system leaders, I think it's like look for that type of leader. You know you have people in your schools and in your buildings who are interested but maybe not activated, and you know part of what your job is as a leader is to activate people and support them and provide them cover. 0:12:52 - Lindsay Lyons Quite frankly, and I notice you know this person is maybe the chair of a department really eager and interested in, like you said, maybe not activated yet. What is the thing that you have found? Or maybe a couple of things. Sometimes I see this like aha moment. When we rethink grading, we like, for example, it's about feedback, not the final number that goes in the grade right, or some sort of like mindset shift that's like whoa. This unlocks possibilities for me. Do you think there are those things that, as a leader, I could tell that chair of a department to kind of like nurture these mindset shifts in the team to be able to then try the thing? Does that question make sense? 0:13:42 - Charlie Oh, it totally, totally does, it totally does. And I would say that I think that again, kind of going back to that spirit of collaboration, co-construction, right, like I think that the power of dialogue and conversation amongst so say, like you and I are that teacher and leader, right, like we should get together and have really deep conversations and unpack what we believe to be true about learning, because that'll do a couple of things right, and this can be true, right, so this can be a principal teacher, this can be a teacher, student, you know. This can be a, you know, district leader, principal. It could be a district leader, student, it could be you know what I mean, right. But these conversations, when we actually start to get into what do we believe to be true about teaching and learning? And I would venture to say, unless people have gotten very jaded, which also happens but like, most people believe that young people can learn, most people believe that, you know, young people have great capacity and if somebody doesn't believe that right now, that's a whole other conversation to have, right, I think that's one thing, but I think we're talking about you see somebody in your building or you see a student who you perceive to be a possible leader, I think, engaging in a dialogue, coming to some shared understanding about what are the key, either changes we want to see key understandings about. Again, maybe using the example of grading policy, like what are the key shifts that we might want to see and why? Because I think human beings crave, why, and I think also when you provide somebody a really good why, it's very, very difficult to go back from that. So again, I'll use grading as an example because that's, like you know, kind of my thing, but also it's just a good through line for that conversation. But if you take people through the thought experiment about, like one that I find to be particularly powerful, for grading is like when you talk to a student about their grades, especially if you're in a very traditional academic setting, right, what do they say about their grades? Do they say I have a B student? Right, and because young people internalize their grades as an identity marker, they carry that identity marker through the way that they experience the rest of their learning. Right, and so that's. And for that B student it gives them very little information about. Maybe I'm the kind of B student that puts a lot of effort in, but like is a little bit, needs a little bit more support to master content. Maybe I'm the type of B student who, like, tries very little but just the content or the you know transferable skills or whatever. They come very easily to me, but I don't know that I'm just a B student. That's like a lack of information for the, for the B student, but they have internalized that identity. It's devastating if you're a C student or a D student or an F student, because that is very, very difficult to unlearn and it doesn't just impact your academic identity Like, it impacts your self-worth as a person. And I don't think teachers want to do that to kids. I really don't. You know, 99.999% of teachers don't want to be harming young people and so if they understand that the pedagogical practice has an impact and we need to change it, and that's why and we have that conversation now you've got an ally and we need to change it. And that's why and we have that conversation Now you've got an ally and we are on a team and we are going to make this change. How do we have the next set of conversations and bring in additional allies? Right, because, like, change can't be mandated, it just cannot. Right, like, change is Change is very, very like ecological, I think. In its nature right, it spreads slowly but it does make sense, you know, like if you think about the way like seeds move or forests grow, it just like it's slow but it's continuous, given the right set of conditions Anyway. So I'm going a lot of different directions there, but I hope I answered your question. 0:18:10 - Lindsay Lyons Wonderfully. Oh my gosh, I just think about. I was taking furious notes. One of the things I wrote down is the idea that students internalize grades as as identity markers and that it affects their self-worth. I mean, if there's no other takeaway from the conversation, like that is huge, right. Like that's huge to recognize, and my brain went to like I started numbering some of the things you were saying. It's like is this the process, right? So like one to unpack beliefs about learning and how powerful to do that with students not just teachers, but with students, right. And then to try something as a team, like, okay, we're gonna try. We're just gonna try some things out. We're gonna notify our leaders when we have a. We're just going to try some things out. We're going to notify our leaders when we have a barrier. We're going to look for that ongoing support and space to tinker, kind of. Is that kind of correct? What would you add to that? What would you? 0:18:58 - Charlie change. I think that's it. I mean, and I think it's about establishing the type of culture within your learning community where that's the workflow right. I think that we are so, and again, I'm talking about our more traditional learning environments. But, like, our more traditional learning environments are very sort of like perfunctory in their collaboration and iteration, right. It's just sort of like well, here's our strategic plan. I'm going to present on it at a few staff meetings. We're going to get some PD in this. You know what I mean. It's like it just kind of happens in this way that doesn't really like engage or inspire. And again, I'm not saying every school is like this. I think there are a million billion fabulous schools that are doing like really cool stuff with PD. But I'm saying, like, in a traditional learning community it just sort of feels perfunctory, whereas if you can establish ways of working together that center young people and their feedback and their thoughts and then provide educators the space to like process, what that means for pedagogy and then has sort of like a leader that understands their role is to make all that happen, not actually make a whole lot of the decisions right, but provide the conditions for the people who are closest to the learning to make those decisions and what that looks like. It's not hard. I think you've really sort of nailed it. It's like give people space to have the conversation, to try things out, to iterate, and if you have those workflows built into the way that collaboration works in your building or in your district or even in your state, that can be really transformational, because things will you know, if people have the space to have those conversations, things will start to move, especially if you are able to bring in new and exciting ideas at strategic moments. So I think that's another piece of it is like who are we who and how are we partnering to bring in new ideas and how are we doing that in a strategic way? So it doesn't. It doesn't feel like every couple of months there's a new thing we're doing, right. So I think that's like getting that sort of workflow down and then understanding how new things are going to be tested and tried and supported in a strategic way. That doesn't feel like. It's like that Goldilocks principle, right. It's like it's enough change in momentum, but not so much that people feel overwhelmed with all the stuff we're trying to get done. 0:21:36 - Lindsay Lyons And what that makes me think about is that underlying why. So if you've had the conversations and you recognize, wow, students are internalizing their grades as it affects their self-worth, then you are like, okay, I'm willing to receive and engage with all of this new PD because it's strategically supporting the fact that I don't want my students to internalize a C identity, right, and I want them to grow their skills. So I will now engage with a possibility of switching to competency-based feedback or, you know, rating on a one to four scale instead of zero to 100 or whatever the thing is Right, right, I think that's really cool, that there's like that anchor there. 0:22:15 - Charlie Right, because if I understand, like what are the principles or the values or the commitments, or whatever you want to call them behind it, the decisions make sense and they become very clear, right. So again, right To the point of standing on the shoulders of giants, my a good friend of mine and close collaborator, meg Stentz. What's up, meg? New York City Competency Collaborative says teachers are responsible for making more decisions a minute than almost any other profession, with the exception of air traffic controllers. That's a direct quote from Meg and that can be very overwhelming unless we understand what is the reason between taking one decision direction versus another right. And when you have those core beliefs about what you believe to be true, about students, their capacity to learn, how you want to support them, those decisions become much more clear as opposed to just feeling like an onslaught. 0:23:09 - Lindsay Lyons Absolutely yes, when you have those core values you're like. Well, this is the clear next step. 0:23:14 - Charlie That's it. 0:23:15 - Lindsay Lyons We hope it's usually that easy, but I think when you mentioned competency, collaborative I actually was thinking about could there be, is there either a school or a pattern amongst the schools that you worked with, either then or in any other capacity where you've been since, that you've seen kind of? This is kind of phase one of a transition from maybe a traditional grading system to really having that like ground up systems, change for grading for equity kind of thing. 0:23:44 - Charlie Yeah, I think I think the competency collaborative is a great example in New York City. Yeah, I think the Competency Collaborative is a great example in New York City. So those that don't know about it, it's a well, in New York it's considered a small program I think they have like 50 to 75 schools a year, depending on how many but also just a lot of cross-pollination around grading practices, competency-based education. So from a district level that's been really interesting because you have schools from all across the district with very different learning models, still able to learn from each other and there's like that meaningful sharing across schools. And then I would also just say sort of like the context of New York in general. The district is set up in such a way that teachers have a lot of time. They just have a lot of time like individual work time, collaborative time, and schools in New York have really set up you know, of course, not every school, but schools that are really thinking and leading in this learner, human-centered way really use that time in a very impactful way. So you've got sort of like in the building time and then you also have this cross-pollination effect where we're learning from, yes, some folks who are experts in coaching roles and also coaches in that model really understand the value of sharing people who are working on life problems, right. So it's that that tends to be the most impactful, which is to say, like I can speak to somebody who maybe is currently trying or recently tried the thing that I'm about to do and see how it went for them, consider the implications that they learned about, and then I think that space of collaboration can be really helpful. I think that in general, right so that cross-pollination model we my current organization, knowledgeworks we do that in learning communities from South Carolina, North Dakota, nevada, and it's core for us because we feel like if you are kind of on an island, it's very difficult, so you can actually see this kind of as a structural model at each level, right. So in the building you need to get outside of the walls of your individual classroom and I actually think some of the most powerful conversations can be cross-curricular, right. Like I think people think like, oh well, like I'm a humanities person, I have nothing to learn from a math person or vice versa, and actually when you really start to talk about pedagogy, like those can be some of the most powerful conversations because there are meaningful, just like discipline, specific differences in the way we construct knowledge and the way we understand the world, and there are meaningful alignments. So, like having opportunity to learn from people in your building and then, anytime right, you can get people out of the building, even if it's in a virtual way or in like a you know Zoom type coaching thing. It just that that really helps people just get inspired and, and you know, energized, I would think. I would say I love this. 0:27:09 - Lindsay Lyons This is amazing. I love the structural nature and so, like when we were at Manhattan International High School, they used to the international network would say one learning model for all. So there was like, as educators, you do this right and invite the students to do the same things. And so I really love that and I see that in the structural pieces that you're saying on this level, on this level, we're doing it repeatedly, Right, right. 0:27:33 - Charlie And often the okay again, not a knock on anybody, right, like the system is this way, but like the people who are at those higher levels of the system are the least accustomed to working and moving in that way. Because, I mean, I think it's the nature of the beast in some of these, like district leader roles, these state leader roles, it's very, very difficult to a there's just like a huge crush and demand on time. There's a lot of different things that people are considering, right, like those people are thinking about facilities and funding formulas and like there's a lot going on there. And I think also it's just difficult in that at that space, to have the time and the space to be a learner. And I have a lot of admiration for a lot of the visionary leaders who do make that space, even though it's very sort of antithetical to the way a system would typically be set up. But I think it's also very freeing, right, because at any level of leadership, if you are actually distributing leadership, then that's like one less thing. I mean, you all are ultimately responsible for the decisions and their execution, right, but it's like you're sharing the load in a way that really you can have more confidence in the decisions that are coming forward because it's like, well, we made this decision together, it didn't go the way we planned, now we can pivot, or we made this decision together and it went fabulously and now we can all share and own it. So but I do think that it's it's it's harder for for, you know, once you get at those higher levels and then I think, at the federal level, it's it's, you know, not to get like way, way out there, but I think it's it's just harder because our, our federal leaders have very little connection to the world of the classroom and understanding of what the implications are of big decisions that they make and how they show up in the classroom. So we can talk about that if that's an area of interest. And actually one of the resources that I did share was a fabulous conversation that we had the opportunity to support that brought together people from every level of the system so students, educators, building leaders, state leaders, federal leaders to talk about what it might look like to build student-centered assessment and accountability systems. Right, and that was the most like. It was one of the only opportunities I've had in my career in this space to see all those people kind of together and understanding and learning from each other. Like this is what this actually looks like and feels like for you. It's a very cool opportunity. So it's the Beyond the Horizon Report, so I've definitely encouraged people to check it out in the show notes. 0:30:26 - Lindsay Lyons Absolutely. Yes, we'll definitely link it in there. I, that sounds beautiful. That sounds so, so cool. I'm wondering for the listener who is thinking like I'm I'm not there yet, or like I don't have access to that system or whatever yet. What is like I'm imagining something is going through their head, Like, oh, there's going to be bumps along the road, right, we're going to hit these barriers, like what's the challenge that you've seen people kind of frequently come up against? And then how have you like seen them overcome it, coach them to overcome it? That kind of thing, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. 0:30:57 - Charlie That's a great question I would say. I think that, right like at the core of what we're talking about, we're talking about systems change and we're talking about I mean, I think my orientation, a lot of the orientation of the listener, will be like we're actually talking about disrupting systems of oppression, right like. So our current like not our like, but current traditional academic policies are inherently oppressive. They are designed to sort and stratify students and when we start to talk about the whys and why we would make some of these changes, it's because we believe we want a more equitable system and we want all learners to actually be able to grow and thrive. And systems of oppression are very sticky, very difficult to undo. It takes a lot of effort and then there are going to be times where the work maybe doesn't go well. And then what a system like that? So like any oppressive system, it will say like well, that didn't work, we should go back to what we were doing. And that is, I think, the most dangerous conversation, or that can be like a very dangerous point for any change effort, because just because what we tried didn't work doesn't mean that we shouldn't continue to try to make the change and it doesn't necessarily mean that the why behind what we were doing is wrong. It just means, like that iteration of what we were trying didn't work the way we hoped. And I think it's important to norm up on that at the start, at the middle and every moment all the way through, because your change effort will go through iterations, your first grading policy or your first set of competencies that you ever write like you're going to look back on them in a few years and be like what on earth were we thinking? But progress through that, because the why is still there and that doesn't change, but sticky systems will try to retrench you to where they were. And then there are going to be considerations right, there are people and communities that are benefiting from that sorting and stratification system. Right, like, let's get real. Like they port inside schools ratings into the real estate software now, so you go on Zillow and you've got an inside schools rating on there. And when you start to come up against that type of backlash, it's a whole different conversation. And that's where, right, we also need leaders to step up and provide some covers for people. And again, continuing to return to that why? Because you are doing this for the right reason, so keep it moving, yeah. 0:33:44 - Lindsay Lyons Oh my gosh, brilliantly put and great example with Velo I have. That is a frustration I continue to have. I have thoughts, yeah, agreed, I think, as we kind of wrap up our conversation, I'm curious for that listener who's like I want to get going, I want to get started. What's that next step after they're done with the episode that they could take to kind of build that momentum? 0:34:08 - Charlie 100%, and I think I'll just could take to kind of build that momentum 100%, and I think I'll just go back to kind of like the first conversation is like who do you want to have your first conversation with? Like who is going to be that person? Who you, you know, maybe they they're on your, maybe they're on your team, maybe they, you know, there's somebody that you went to school with and they work at another school or another. You know, maybe you're a school leader, it's another school leader, or you know, just find your person or your group of people who you want to go through this with and start to have those questions about why, why we might want to make this change. Because, again, I think that's just such an important thing and you know that you know, if you're looking about where to start that conversation, it's like what is happening in the pedagogical experience of our classroom and do we believe in it? And if we don't, what would we want to see that we could believe in, that we could be proud of that, we would be excited to get up and go to work every day to do. And then how do we get from where we are right now to here, and that's you know. Once you start to have that conversation, I think it's very hard to go back. 0:35:19 - Lindsay Lyons So yes, oh my gosh, that's so good and a conversation is such a nice starting point because you can do that tomorrow, like you can find the person and go start the conversation tomorrow. 0:35:28 - Charlie You don't have to wait. Yeah, I think that, um, you know, this is hard work, but it's good work, and it only um, you know, we can really only do it together, yeah, yeah. 0:35:40 - Lindsay Lyons Oh, well, said so, I am curious what is something that you have been learning about lately? This is like a fun question that you could answer related to your work, or it could be something totally outside, like Charlie, as a education person. 0:35:55 - Charlie Okay, I'll share a fun example. So so I'm really you know, in our work we do a lot of like relational thinking, deep thinking, right and, and sometimes at the end of the day, I'm really just like I need to do something, that it's like I can do it, I can see the outcome, and so I've been really leaning into learning about home restoration and building techniques and I've actually been taking some classes and it's been so fun because it's just like you have a nail, you have a hammer, you drive it. And it's been so fun because it's just like you know, you have a nail, you have a hammer, you drive it, it's, it's done. And so I think it's really important to find a balance of you know, when you do the type of work that we do, how do you also, um, find things that ground you in the moment and in like impact that you can feel and see and hold? Maybe that's crafting, maybe it's cooking, maybe it's, you know, messing around in the garage, but I think that having that balance to make sure that you have the energy to go back and continue to do the heart work and the brain work all day, every day, is a, it's just a. It's been really, really powerful for me. 0:37:07 - Lindsay Lyons That so deeply resonates. My dad was a PE teacher for elementary school students and he was like you never see the growth. Occasionally kids will come back and tell you the impact they had on you, but what he would do in the summers, on summer break, was paint houses and he was like you can see it is a finished product, it looks good and I did that right. It is so different work, work, and it's so cool to have both. I would. 0:37:31 - Charlie I would encourage anybody to to to get that sort of like immediately gratifying activity or work that they can do, cause it's, it's, it's fantastic. 0:37:42 - Lindsay Lyons Yeah, absolutely Okay. Last question when can people learn more about you? Connect with you online, connect with your organization, all the things? 0:37:50 - Charlie Definitely so. My organization, knowledgeworks, has a fabulous website. The resource that I shared is on the KnowledgeWorks website, so I would definitely encourage people to check out. We have tons of different articles, videos, things on that website. I also have a bio on that site and then I'm also sharing my LinkedIn page things on that website. I also have a bio on that site and then I'm also sharing my LinkedIn page. If anyone wants to reach out and connect, I'd be more than happy to chat on LinkedIn and or, if you want to, you know, use that as a way to have a deeper conversation. I'm I'm here for it, so Charlie, thank you so much. 0:38:20 - Lindsay Lyons This has been wonderful. I really appreciate your time. Thank you. 0:38:23 - Charlie It's been a real pleasure and you know, anytime you you want to talk grades or or you know systems change, please just let me know it's been, it's been an honor.
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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
November 2024
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