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In this episode, we talk with educators and authors Kassia Wedekind and Christy Thompson about insights from their recent book, "Hands Down, Speak Out." They offer a transformative vision for education that centers on student voices. The pair has spent time teaching and coaching together, and share big ideas on how to reimagine education while also working in the realities of the current system.
Kassia and Christy address the real challenges educators face in balancing prescribed curricula with authentic student engagement, advocating for small, actionable steps to create dynamic and inclusive classroom environments. The Big Dream Kassia and Christy’s big dream is that they want children’s voices and experiences to be the center of education—the place from which education grows and develops. They believe that teachers are the people who are positioned to listen to, understand, and capture those voices. Mindset Shifts Required Kassia and Christy recognize that fear often stops us from trying something new. Losing control or thinking of what things “should” be like can hold educators back from making big changes. So, a key mindset shift to embrace is that you can start small. Shifting toward a student-centered approach simply means looking through a lens of curiosity rather than critique or deficit. Action Steps Here are some key action steps for educators who want to shift to a more student-centered approach: Step 1: Reflect on current classroom practices and identify areas where student voices can be more prominently featured. This might involve rethinking traditional conversation structures to allow for more student interaction. Step 2: Start small by integrating open-ended questions into classroom discussions. These questions should encourage students to think critically and express their ideas freely. Teach students the skill of conversation, and how there are different types of “talkers” in each context. This helps students learn to share the conversational space and speak directly with each other. Step 3: Create opportunities for students to engage in collaborative projects that spark curiosity. Kassia and Christy emphasize that curricular materials need to be interesting for students. There has to be something engaging to discuss so that students can really engage and speak up with their thoughts and opinions. Step 4: Embrace ambiguity in your conversations and curricular materials. Things are not so black-and-white, so educators can become more comfortable with ambiguity, allowing conversations to flow based on various interests, viewpoints, and curiosities. Challenges? One of the significant challenges educators face is that people in power are not in classrooms but are still making decisions on behalf of educators. This means teachers often grapple with the constraints of curriculum requirements while trying to create space for student voices and interests. Another challenge is time constraints and making appropriate decisions in the moment that foster engagement. Educators must always be thinking about the actions that will lead to an outcome of engagement and learning. One Step to Get Started One small step for educators to embrace is to reflect on your school day and identify a moment where you can listen more to your students. For example, you might have a time when you are normally organizing paperwork, but could actually go over and engage with some students and their conversations instead. Another action step is to ask a question that you don’t know how the students will respond. It’s interesting for both the students and educators. Stay Connected You can find Kassia on X, Instagram, and Bluesky, and Christy on Instagram. You can also connect with them on their website, Hands Down, Speak Out. To help you implement today’s takeaways, Kassia and Christy are sharing several turn and talk micro lessons and The Why Chart from their book with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 214 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
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TRANSCRIPT
00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Katia and Christy, welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. Thanks for having us. Absolutely, I am so excited about your book Hands Down, Speak Out, and I'm really excited to dive into it. But first, before we get to it, I'm curious to know is there anything you want listeners to know about you, you know, beyond the typical bio or anything that is kind of on your heart, on your mind in this moment? To kind of on your heart on your mind in this moment, to kind of ground our conversation today. 00:29 - Kassia (Guest) Um, I think that, um, well to know about us, um, Chrissy and I spent a lot of time teaching together, um, in elementary schools and also coaching together. Um, I'm a math coach and Christy was a literacy coach, so I think a lot of the things that we think about are, yes, sometimes we're thinking about big ideas and big ways to reimagine things, but also, as people that live in the realities of schools, we also like to think about the small details of change and how to work within systems that are not perfect, but are what we have and what children are going to and teachers are going to every day. And how do we make those spaces as as as good as we can, in the kind of everyday ways, in addition to the to the big picture ways, too in addition to the big picture ways too, Christy anything you want to start us off with. 01:32 - Christy (Guest) Oh, I think Kassia covered that very beautifully. I mean, I also think that it's important to know that, although Kassia and I agree on a lot of things, we do disagree on important things, like she and I like our opinions on mayonnaise and other big things like that. So you know, we spend a lot of time figuring out what things we can push back and forth on each other with, and I think having a partner that pushes you to try new things like I believe it's okay to eat on an airplane, and Kasia really does not so we um try to spend a lot of time, I think, like pushing each other's boundaries and um, as well as finding our common ground. I absolutely love that. 02:18 - Kassia (Guest) And I think in outside of our you know mayonnaise and airplane eating conversations, I think that um, like, uh, having the different lenses of, like, christy spent more time immersed in literacy and I've spent more time immersed in math and thinking about, like, where is there overlap? And we think there's lots of overlap in, um, good practices in elementary school and then where, sometimes things like oh, I would approach this a little bit differently in math or this is how I would approach it in literacy. So, yeah, it's nice to have a thinking partner and you know, we hope that we do that a little bit through the book be the thinking partners of readers, and we also hope that readers get a chance to have thinking partners of their own in schools. 03:04 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I have to say, as a major fan of the book, I think you guys do that really well. Like there are ways that it's like right, this is like the same type of micro lesson that I would use in both scenarios, but here is like a transcript for math and a transcript for like. It was really well done in the ways that it was different because it really pushed my thinking as, like a literacy history person. It pushed my thinking as like a literacy history person. It pushed my thinking around math and I'm actually coaching someone in math now and I'm like, oh, like, even though you're teaching high school math, like these moves are totally relevant and it was really cool to see that come alive. 03:33 So thank you for all of the that work you did in the book and I and I think the book itself and just what you, what you jumped into, already kind of speaks to. I think this next question I usually ask but I'm curious to know, if you want to expand on it kind of what your idea of, kind of a freedom dream you hold for education is. So Dr Bettina Love has a beautiful quote around this dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. So, with that in mind, what are those dreams that you each hold? 04:01 - Christy (Guest) I think our big common dream, amongst many smaller ones, is that we want children's voices and experiences to be the center of education and like the place where education grows and develops from, and I think that teachers are the people that are positioned to listen and understand and capture those voices no-transcript and that we you know that's not always easy and there are there are definitely roadblocks and reasons why that's very challenging and and so you know, as a classroom teacher right now, I'm often reflecting like how well did I do that today? And I'm often dissatisfied with my. You know I often have higher expectations for myself than I'm meeting, but it is like the thing that we keep coming back to together. 05:21 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That's beautiful Kasia. Anything to add, or did that sum it up for you? 05:26 - Kassia (Guest) I think that's that. That sums it up for me well said. 05:31 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That's beautiful. I think one of the things that I think a lot of educators that I hear from are, you know, saying is this is really interesting, I really want to do more of this, and I I have, you know, whatever feelings of pressure, whether it's time or covering curriculum or what's going to happen if I hand a conversation over to students. Right, there's just like fear or worry, and so I'm curious to know if you've seen any like kind of aha moments or like strategies you've used as coaches to kind of shift teacher mindsets around, like the possibilities for this work. 06:10 - Kassia (Guest) Yeah, I think. 06:11 I mean I think that is is often what stops us from trying something new is fear and fear of losing control or what we think we should be, how we think something should look or be, and so I guess like a strategy perhaps is just to particularly around conversation is just to start small. 06:42 Our book focuses a lot on hands-on conversations, which are whole class or larger group conversations, but we also do a lot of work in smaller turn and talks or small group conversations, and sometimes those can be safer places to try some of this work, where you're letting students or making space for students' voices to kind of lead the conversations and try some new things out. And then usually in those situations like I'm just so amazed by what students can do, even when it's imperfect and weird, things happen, like they just have so many skills that sometimes we underestimate have so many skills that sometimes we underestimate that, like when I have time to like reflect on what students do in those spaces, I'm always impressed and it always inspires me to like to keep going and keep trying to center students' voices in conversations because you know, we have to trust that students can do it and I think when we can replace some of that fear with trust in students' abilities. That helps us to continue on and helps us get over some of our own hangups as adults. 08:01 - Christy (Guest) I think, yeah, when you're in the middle of it and you're kind of in the trenches, it's very easy to look at all the imperfections from a deficit lens and to think this kid never, or this class always, blah, blah, blah. 08:22 And even you know in my case, sometimes to then put that on myself what's wrong with, what am I doing wrong? And that kind of thing. And I think whenever I am able to get a little snippet of a recording of what is actually happening or when I have the luxury of another person coming into the room who write down a little bit of what they see and give that to me, and then I can step back and get curious and think, oh, I wonder why that child is doing. That mindset shift from the critical eye to the curious eye really helps me then approach like what might be some next steps here, what are all the things that they are already doing and they already can do? And I think that it's very hard when you're on your own and you're in the middle of it, but it really helps to have, you know, either just your phone to take a little step back and watch or another person to come in and kind of give you that little bit of that observational perspective to shift your mindset. 09:44 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I love those ideas. They're so concrete and actionable, which I think speaks to the larger kind of why I love your book as well. It's like there's the dream and here are the practical ways that we get to that dream, and so I mean one of the things that I think is really powerful. And you guys close the book beautifully too. I think I'm going to be paraphrasing wildly here, but I think it was something around, like you know, letting the students lead, as opposed to like having our plans in place and we're going to do this but we're going to let the students like kind of dictate where we're going. 10:13 And one of the things I really love is that you're cultivating and helping teachers kind of build capacity for listening to what's happening, taking those transcripts or listening to an audio clip or inviting observers to tell you what's going on, and then making a clear decision about where we go, based on what the students can currently do, which I think is what every educator wants to do. But it's just like it's really hard amidst all the things. So I love kind of the setup. You have ideas for how to, you know, start conversations and everything, but then you have these micro lessons that are, if you see this and you're ready for this move, I just I wonder if you all could either speak to how you came up with that, the creation of that, or even just like ones that you really love or have worked well in conversation. 10:58 - Christy (Guest) I think, a lesson now I'm not going to have the number off the top of my head, but a lesson that, depending on the conversation, you're a different, you're different kinds of talkers, and so it's important to have the skill of knowing how to step back and how to step up Because, depending on the circumstances and the topic, we all are one. You know, sometimes we're monopolizing a little and sometimes we're maybe letting others. You know, voices overrun us and we're having hard time getting our voice in. So that's definitely an actionable step that we've taken. I think, in every talk environment that we've been in, if I I don't know what you think, kasia, but in most of the cases that I can remember, that's definitely one that we start with pretty early on. 12:08 - Kassia (Guest) Yeah, I think if you're shifting from kind of a traditional classroom conversation where, like, every comment feeds through the teacher and you're moving towards the kids, like talking more to each other, whether it's one-on-one or in a whole group, you probably want to do some teaching around how to share the conversational space. And especially as you get to larger and larger groups, that's just harder by nature of having more people, more perspectives. You probably have fewer experiences talking in larger groups of people. Talking in larger groups of people and it's just being cognizant of your own voice in a conversation. 12:50 I feel like something that we're like working on for a lifetime. I know that it's something that I think about sometimes when I'm talking with adults, like have I done too much talking? Have I asked anyone else what they thought about this? Or have I just like steamrolled in with my goal? And I'm sure we could also think of like people in our lives that we wish would do a little bit more listening and conversation. So it's something that we're like kind of chipping away at for a lifetime. 13:17 And so to have like to get to like interact with children around learning to do that is challenging, but it's also like really rewarding to see. You know, maybe some, maybe a student who like, really like is dominating the conversation. For many, many conversations learn to like, ask someone, or just to notice that someone's trying to get their voice in and say, like so-and-so is trying to say something here, let's let them go. That can be a really rewarding part of the work too. So we often do like multiple lessons around sharing of the space, you know, at the beginning of working with a group of students, but also like throughout the time working with them. 14:09 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I mean to your point, I think so many of us would probably say just like our like, just the media, the social media, the news, political coverage, like all the things it's like. Could we do a better job about like being in conversations, like these literal kindergartners are doing in your classes, like I mean, yeah, it's like. These are kind of the lifelong skills that I hope that everyone in my community would have. So it's so cool that you can cultivate them at such a young age and and continue to grow them, you know, over over a lifetime. I think about, like, the importance of like priority standards or skills or something like these. These are it right. These are such a through line. 14:44 And one of the things that I loved is that in the back, you have kind of the nurturing debates and planning to disagree sections which are, I think, to the point that I'm thinking about right is. This is when communication often breaks down. Like. Often we can do the thing where we come in and we say our position and then the other person comes in and says their position and then we like, remain like, just that's it, that's the end, and I love this idea that we can cultivate and manufacture some disagreement around like which box is bigger, for example, right, and then go have a conversation where students are learning these skills in a really fun, interesting, like tied to ELA or math standards way. So I'm curious to know, like, what are your favorite parts of those chapters? Or if you want to kind of speak to any of those chapters for folks, because I think people are really curious of how to cultivate that. 15:37 - Kassia (Guest) I think one of the most important things about cultivating, you know, a conversation where people are going to have different opinions, disagreement or just cultivating any engaging conversation is there has to be something worth talking about and interesting to talk about, something where you actually care to listen to what the other person is saying and unfortunately so often we're given curricular materials or questions in our pacing guides that just aren't very interesting for kids to discuss and there's no motivation to really listen to what someone else thinks because it's about performing of knowledge rather than constructing knowledge together. 16:28 So the best thing I think I've learned from having those conversations is how to craft a question that people are really interested in talking about and has some ambiguity and doesn't have a right answer and is going to get at those things that we want to learn about. Like, of course we're interested in working towards the standards, but in a way that nurtures curiosity and kids' questions and like gets at the spaces of ambiguity, because you know, so much of the interesting stuff in life is kind of like ambiguous and could be. There's many aspects of it to think about and we want schools to be places where kids get to engage with those questions and not just the kind of knowledge regurgitation that unfortunately happens a lot in schools. 17:18 - Christy (Guest) Yeah, and I'm thinking about how a lot of the curriculum that we're asked to teach would like to pretend that there isn't ambiguity because it's it's cleaner and it's more efficient to just say you know so and so in history did this because of that and was you know that was the right thing to do, because this was the cause and this was the effect, you know, and just tie it up in a right, nice, neat bow, whereas a lot of you know social studies and science and like these fields out in the wild, like outside of the elementary school classroom, are really quite messy and like thrive on um the ambiguity and that's what like quote unquote, real people who are in these fields are focused on right, so like, even though the children that we're talking with are quite small, I think that they also are very curious and interested in that ambiguity and and it it's sort of insulting to them to just say like oh no, it was this way and we're moving on. 18:28 We've studied that person in history and we, you know we needed about 20 minutes to understand him or her and we're ready to go on or whatever the the topic at hand is like digging in on our own in the background and like finding out more about the topic until we uncover the ambiguity, is, like, both interesting to us as teachers, mentally, and it engages them right. It wakes the kids up and gets them into the conversation rather than just being the receivers of this neatly packaged knowledge. 19:09 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Absolutely. I mean, I was just thinking about you. You guys had the section on, like critical numeracy and critical literacy and like just so much of what you do is centered in justice, which I really appreciate as well, because I think any time that you're like, let's talk about this thing, and I think I think one of the call out boxes that you guys had was like, yeah, we're not going to like take on the perspective of a Nazi or something that you just you don't need to entertain, that both sides are not valid. Like I really appreciate the grounding that you had in both the engagement and also like there there are bumpers on this conversation and we are in the spirit of justice. So just wanted to name that before I forgot to go there. But I also think that idea of curiosity is so present and I can't remember where I read this. 19:53 Eric Francis maybe was citing some research around three to five-year-olds ask like 300 questions a day or something, and I have a three-year-old right now. So I'm like, yes, that is, we're there, 300 questions a day or something, and I have a three-year-old right now. So I'm like, yes, that is, we're there. And by high school, like when I had my students in high school. The curiosity has just I'm sure it's still there, but it is not coming out in the space of a class conversation. So I love that this is a place for them to grapple, because it is present and it actually is probably more present than in older grades where we might actually be willing to have those conversations around nuance more. 20:25 And I think, relatedly, one of the things I loved is I think it might've been in the math section you were talking about like a lovely entry point is often just what do you notice and what do you wonder. Like let's get kids talking about something. As well as all of the real projects Like I loved the target one where you got to print off all of the shoes and say like what, what do we notice about these shoes and gender and color and all the things around branding. So I just I think there are so many amazing things you guys are doing. I just want to like shout them all out for people who haven't bought the book. You need to. But I also wonder you know what is the biggest, maybe challenge that you've either faced as educators yourselves or in coaching teachers? What's like the biggest challenges? They enter the work and they're kind of doing the work that they grapple with and kind of what's that path through or has been the path through for you? 21:17 - Christy (Guest) I mean, I think one of the big challenges, especially right now, is that we're competing as teachers. We're competing with a lot of people in power who are not in schools and who don't know the children in our classes, making decisions for us, and if we're working to center the children that are in our classrooms, like we are the experts or we can work to be the experts on them, and so, you know, trying to find those spaces in our curriculum and in our policies and that is a really big challenge right now and trying to find, okay, like, where can I bend this part of the curriculum to represent the children's interests that I am observing? Where can I get my children's voices heard? And finding physical time in the day to do that as well, as sort of finding the space in all that we're being asked to quote, unquote cover, I think, is the really big challenge, right now kind of way to either mentally like be like okay, we're still doing it and this is why, or like practically kind of how do you, how do you find time? 22:52 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Cause you're, you guys, are clearly finding the time somehow, right. So what? What's a good tip for a teacher who is struggling with that exact thing? Cause I think that is probably many of our listeners and readers. 23:00 - Christy (Guest) So many of our listeners and readers. Well, one is that I know I'm going to have more engagement if I do that right, so I can make the argument that I don't have time for that. But then will my outcome justify speeding through and making sure that I've, you know, read every word of my script and I've made no time to hear anything that anybody said, like what actually went on in the child, children's brains, and what evidence do I have that there was actual learning? And so I think, when I'm like you know, I'm outcomes driven right, we are, as a profession, supposed to be outcomes driven. So I think, if we want to justify making time and making space, we need to look at, like, what is our evidence of engagement and of learning? And if we have more evidence that there was engagement and learning when students were actively involved, their voices were heard, their interests were reflected. You know, for example, I was just saying to Kasia yesterday that we are teaching, we have been reading a selection of different texts about robots and what, how they improve our lives, and one of the students kept interjecting by saying things about how robots are going to take over and robots aren't actually good and they're making people lazy and she was sort of detracting, you know, like it was not. 24:45 I had not asked for her opinion on the matter and we weren't having a debate per se, and so I sort of had to like kind of make this decision. Do I honor that? Do I, you know, chastise her for calling it out? You know, like that decision in the moment there when a kid is presenting like she was trying to come up with a debate and she has a valid point too, right? So, like, not every technological advance in the world of robotics has been unequivocally an improvement on our lives, or or it has at least the potential to go awry. So, um, you know, so I I'm making the choice then to say, okay, as we continue to like read these things, that's an interesting debate to be thinking about. 25:37 Like, here's a robot, is this an improvement? Is this making people's lives better in your opinion or not? Like, this child often is erring on the side of no, and so, like, giving her time to err her thoughts is increasing her engagement. And I know from knowing this child that if I was to just chastise her for that interjection, she would have shut down, like she literally would put her head on the carpet and stop engaging. So yeah, I think it's those like in the moment decisions where you're trying to decide, like what is the outcome that I'm going for? Okay, so then like, what is the action that will get me to that outcome of engagement and learning? 26:22 - Kassia (Guest) then, like, what is the action that will get me to that outcome of engagement and learning? I think, yeah, I guess one of like the challenges and ways through that that I've been thinking about, like working with, um, a group of teachers who are working with like a really restrictive text that's not designed for student centered conversation at all and all the texts that students are going to read are chosen for them and um, and and this particular group of teachers doesn't have a lot of choice there, so they're not like feeling a lot of agency or an autonomy, but they, they value students thinking and talking together and like and I guess something that inspires me is that even when teachers are served um crap better word like they're like brilliant and innovative at like finding ways through, even when, like what I want to do is like just like throw it out the window and be like you can't work with this, but like they're in charge of showing up the next day and figuring out like what am I going to do with what I have here? And so, like I've been very inspired by that group's like efforts to both bring like a lens of criticality to it and thinking about the text that they do have. Like thinking about like this is a text about ancient Rome. Like like whose lives in ancient Rome is this text representing? Is there anyone who's not here? I wonder what you know. I wonder if this is true about their lives. 27:59 And also, just from a more pedagogy perspective, like thinking about like often curriculums will like say, like you should ask your kids like these 15 questions, right, so if you were to just like go through that, you'd just be like peppering them with these questions and they'd just be like little robots like feeding answers back to you or at least like that's what the curriculum thinks kids are going to do. And and they've been working to like okay, how could I take like one of those questions, revise it to be a little bit more open and give chance kids to talk? And yeah, maybe it's not the text I would have chosen, ideally but how do we like swim through the time that we're in, in the systems that we're in, and like bring some light to it? 28:45 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I love that. I'm curious to know. I feel like we as teachers have these moments or people I guess people in general have these moments in our lives that are like oh, that was like a very memorable experience, whether in the classroom or not. And I'm curious to know if you have a memorable experience of like either a favorite conversation topic, a favorite thing that a kid said, a favorite, like proud teacher moment, or even just like noticing the body language of engaged kids, like, is there some moment in hands down conversations that has been in your brains? 29:20 - Christy (Guest) I have a couple from last year. I mean, I think each year I'm like watching the trajectory of a class. So this year I'm still in the thick of it, but last year of it. But last year, um, one that I was very proud of is a student who I'd been working with for all year to try to hear others and to notice when he was monopolizing. 29:46 And, um, in one of our later in the year kind of May I conversations, he noticed a kid who had tried five different times to speak and the kid kept talking at the same time as others and letting the others go first. And this was a very, a very empathetic child who always would let others go first. You know, finally, this other child who had been monopolizing noticed that and made space for the more empathetic child to get his voice in and I, like I almost jumped up and down in the middle of the conversation like you did it, you did it. Um, like Kasia said, those are extremely rewarding moments where you think maybe if they forget a lot of the things I taught, they might just take that into their lives somewhere else at some other future moment and make, like humanity, a slightly more empathetic place where people hear each other where people hear each other. 30:54 - Kassia (Guest) I think I'm putting on my math teacher hat for a moment. One of the things that I try to make space for as a math teacher is for kids to get a chance to do more than just computation and math. Like a lot of school, math is about computing in elementary school how do you add and subtract and multiply, divide and how do you follow processes and rules and like. That's such a little tiny corner of what math can be and is outside of school that I want to make sure that kids get a chance to talk about like what is true in math, and is that always true? When is it true? When does it work? When does it not work? Why does it work? Some of those bigger questions. 31:41 So I think, like in my math class we would have a conjecture wall. So conjecture is like something you think may be true in math. It's like a hypothesis kind of, and so when we had like done enough of that that, a kid would say like I have a conjecture and like want to put an idea up there that felt like very rewarding, that they had like come up with like a generalization. They had like discovered something and figured something out that is like brand new knowledge for them, whether it's like you know, it might be something you know, very common knowledge to adults, but like the discovery of something and getting to have that experience felt like that was like opening up good space for children's thinking. 32:33 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That is so cool. Thank you both for sharing. Those are beautiful stories. I think, knowing that we're almost out of time, I'm going to do kind of a three question speed round here. We'll wrap us up. I could talk to you guys all day, so we'll get to it. The one thing that teachers should or could not should could do once they're ending the episode what would you recommend? Like, if they're like I'm interested in this, I haven't bought the book yet or it's in the mail on the way. I'm going to try something small to start. 33:14 - Christy (Guest) What could that? One thing that we had thought of was to just kind of reflect back on your school day and find a place where you could do a little more listening to your students. So even if you didn't start off with like I'm gonna have a full hands-down conversation with my whole class, you know, just saying to yourself um, you know, at this time of day I'm usually kind have a full hands down conversation with my whole class, you know just saying to yourself you know, at this time of day I'm usually kind of shuffling paperwork or organizing, you know, which is obviously a big part of the teacher's job. But I could probably put that to the side for the moment and go over and listen to what you know these students are talking about as they're unpacking their backpacks or ask some questions. You know, even if it's just a kind of transition moment like that to find a time to position yourself as a listener, it's just one kind of small action where you start to like shift from the teller to the listener. 34:10 - Kassia (Guest) I think maybe try asking a question that you, that you don't know what kids will say too, and that there's many things to say, because that is like both so interesting as a teacher and interesting for students too. 34:23 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Love those ideas. What is something you have been learning about lately? Could be school related, could be different. 34:31 - Christy (Guest) Okay, so I've been digging into Donovan James's book Beyond February and I've been trying to learn and educate myself a lot more about teaching Black history all year, not just in February, and I've been learning a lot and a lot about very interesting people and history, and it's been exciting sharing that with my students. 34:59 - Kassia (Guest) Adding on a different book. I've gotten a chance to read a book that is not yet out yet but is wonderful, called Lessons in Community by Mari Dean, and it is about reframing behaviors in the classroom. That challenges us, but through an asset-based lens, but also through like, a very practical lens of like. How am I going to respond to this in the moment? And it's a wonderful book and I have so much to learn about that topic and I'm really enjoying it. 35:34 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Amazing. Now I have added to my to be read list, so thank you. I am curious to know where listeners can follow you. Connect with you will, of course, link to the book and the blog post and the show notes and everything will also link to an amazing resource that you guys are going to share with us for free. So thank you so much for that. If anyone you want to speak to that in addition, feel free for free. 35:53 - Christy (Guest) So thank you so much for that. If anyone you want to speak to that in addition, feel free. I think we're planning on sharing a little comparative table of just some of the things that are kind of going back to that what we imagine, you know, a conversation I mean sorry, a classroom that's rooted in conversation might be like. So we'll kind of share a little table comparing what traditional classroom discourse is like compared to one where this kind of conversation takes the stage, and then we're also hoping to share a lesson just for people to try out and get started. 36:34 - Kassia (Guest) And you can find us on our website blog hands down, speakoutwordpresscom, and then also at Cassia Wedekind on Instagram and Blue Sky. 36:59 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Instagram and blue sky and and um. You can find me on Instagram at ch thompson188. Thank you so so much, both of you. This has been an absolute pleasure. I really appreciate you taking the time today. Thank you for having us.
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5/6/2024 162. How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations across K-12 with Matthew R. Kay and Jennifer OrrRead Now
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In this episode Matt and Jen talk about their book, We’re Gonna Keep On Talking: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Elementary Classroom. We discuss the need for ongoing conversations about race, and the role of effective classroom management strategies, and specific things to consider when setting up a class discussion about race. I’ve been excited for this conversation since their book was published. For my initial response to the book, check out this blog post.
Matthew R. Kay is a proud product of Philadelphia’s public schools and a founding teacher at Science Leadership Academy (SLA). He believes that any teacher who is willing to put in the hard work of reflection can, through the practice of discrete skills, lead meaningful race conversations. Driven by this conviction, he is passionate about designing professional development that teachers find valuable. He’s also the author of Not Light, But Fire, a book I loved and also wrote a blog post about in 2020. Jennifer Orr has been an elementary school classroom teacher for more than two and a half decades, teaching kindergartners through fifth graders. She is the author of Demystifying Discussion: How to Teach and Assess Academic Conversation Skills, K-5 and the coauthor of We’re Gonna Keep on Talking: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Elementary Classroom. She is a National Board Certified Teacher and a frequent mentor to new and pre-service teachers. The Big Dream(s) Jen wants teachers to be treated as professionals and be trusted as professionals. Matt adds his dream for kids to be treated as thinking beings again—as people who can make up their own minds about things. Trust We have to trust ourselves as professionals to handle the moments that arise and trust our students to engage in these moments. And…a big part of that comes out of us knowing pedagogical moves and being prepared for whatever those moments might hold. Focusing on pedagogy: What do we do to prepare? Threading: Take the pressure off teachers to solve the world’s probl;ems in one conversation or for students to understand antiracism in one conversation. Thread conversations about race through multiple texts and units throughout the year. Formats: Give kids options at different times to engage in conversations in different group sizes (turn and talk with one partner, talk in a small group, whole class discussion). This way, different kids get the chance to speak where they’re most ready, as some feel more comfortable speaking up in different settings. Administrative Support Be encouraging, visit regularly, set up peer structures of common planning time and peer observation for all teachers (not just the teachers who are struggling, also the ones who are doing well.) Also have teachers’ backs. And teachers…make sure you tell your administrators what’s happening in your classes so they’re not surprised. Biggest Challenge? Educators may face challenges such as student misbehavior during discussions. Kids may start acting goofy when they’re uncomfortable. You can proactively support this by co-creating class agreements and having a plan for helping students deal with feeling uncomfortable—celebrate this as an opportunity for learning! One Step to Get Started Matt says start a consistent community-building activity that becomes a dependable part of the classroom routine (e.g., Good News Mondays or Journal Tuesdays). This sets the stage for trust and open dialogue, laying the groundwork for deeper, more meaningful conversations. Jen seconds this, explaining , “[do] whatever it takes to ensure that you have a really strong, solid classroom community, because conversation about anything doesn't work without it.” Stay Connected You can find this week’s guests online. Jen is on her website, and Matt is on his website and on Twitter. To help you learn more about this pedagogy, Matt has a curated list of great videos on his site, which we’re sharing with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 162 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 00:00:00 Hi, my name is Leon. I'm part of the team that produces this podcast. Our two guests today are Matthew Kay and Jennifer or in this episode, Matthew Kay is a proud part of Philadelphia's public schools and a founding teacher at Science Leadership Academy. He's a graduate of West Chester University and holds a master's in educational leadership with a principal certificate from the University of Pennsylvania. Jennifer. Orr has been an elementary school classroom teacher for more than 2.5 decades, teaching kindergartners through fifth graders. She's the author of demystifying Discussion, how to teach and assess academic conversation skills K through five. And the, the author of we're going to keep on talking how to lead meaningful race conversations in the elementary classroom. She's a National Board certified teacher and a frequent mentor to new and Preser teachers. I hope you enjoyed this episode back to the show, educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for teacher 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. 00:01:11Edit 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 nering out about co-creator curriculum of students. I made this show for you. Here we go, Jennifer or, and Matthew K. Welcome to the Time for Teachers Podcast. Hello. So excited to have you both. I absolutely loved both of your books, Matt and, and Jen your your book with Matt. It has been incredible to think about and use as a resource in instructional coaching conversations for folks who are having discussion, particularly about like meaningful discussion, racial justice discussion, things happening in the world, discussions, books, discussions, social studies discussions, all the discussions. So I think one of the big things that I want to know from you and from all the guests we usually start with is this idea of freedom dreaming, really anchoring our conversation. 00:02:15Edit And so Doctor Bettina Love talks about this beautifully, as she says, dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. And so with that in mind, I'm wondering what are the dreams that you each hold for education, for teachers, the fields? That's a really big question. Um Having just had the chance to listen to Doctor Love recently um which was such a gift. Um I feel so inspired, so motivated um so called to action by her. And I, I think having been in this profession for so long now, this is my 26th year of classroom teaching. Um I, it feels small to dream that teachers be treated as professionals and be trusted as professionals. Um But I, I think that's where I am, sadly, just that idea that we can respect and know that teachers know what they're doing and trust that that's happening on a regular basis. Oh, that's a good one. I second that um I think uh I, my dream would be that kids are treated as thinking beings again. 00:03:28Edit Um And like as people who can make up their own minds about things. It's funny how um paradoxically all of the like anti indoctrination conversation is actually doing the, the, the indoctrinating. Like those are the folks who are kind of cutting off kids access to ideas because we feel like they can't make up their own minds. Um So we feel like we have to, you know, over guide and I think just kind of respecting kids as humans who can make up their mind, I think would be my dream. I love that so much. I was looking back at my initial reflections in 2020 when I read your first book that and I had written down the quote, there is no more effective form of intrinsic motivation than the opportunity to say something new. And I absolutely love that. And I love that this book, you all are gifting teachers with the tools and the ideas to be able to invite students to say something new and to think for themselves and create something new, which I think is, is absolutely part of my dream as well. 00:04:36Edit So I, I really appreciate that as like an anchor to this conversation and Jen to your point that treating teachers like professionals, right? We have to believe that we are, we are capable of making these decisions that are in the best interests of students. I recently had um on the podcast. It may air after this but um Diana and uh Diana hat and Paul mcavoy who talk about the political classroom and they talk about this idea of discussion. Um and, and just along those same lines of when we make decisions as educators about when to step in and when to step back from conversations, which you all talk about in the book quite a bit, they were talking about, it's fine to do whatever you need to do given all the context, but you have to have the student's best interests at heart, right? It's not about what makes me comfortable or uncomfortable or I wanna share my thoughts or not. It's like what is in the best interest of furthering students thinking for the themselves. And I, I think there's a lot of trust for teachers in that and there's a lot of both of your dreams in that. Um There's, there's so many different pieces to this work that I kind of want to name a few and then just see what grabs your attention and we could go down any of those paths. 00:05:41Edit But there's the mindset piece that I hear you all talking about a little bit um in, in your book, right? Like what's that kind of culture of student learning? And what's that um thing that we need to think about as teachers to be able to maybe shift to or, or kind of set the stage for doing this. There's also the pedagogical moves. So there's kind of the uh how do we literally format it? What are, what are the prompts we're offering students to discuss? Um how do we step in, step out? And then there's also like the the content kind of like the prompts that you so beautifully kind of create and, and very intentionally. So I like how you walk through that a lot in the book. And so in all of that kind of the mindset, the pedagogy ps the content, what do you feel like as your heart or the teacher should know about as they're kind of thinking through this stuff? What's important for you? Um I'm always gonna focus on the pedagogical move part. Um because I think um that respectfully, there's a lot of smart people tackling a lot of the other stuff. 00:06:46Edit Um She's trying to help teachers get their minds, right? Trying to help kids. She's trying to help teachers you know, get, you know, the to, to, to be in the right place. Um, uh, and my focus is always going to be like, all right. So you're in the room with 30 kids? What do you do? Like, that's always gonna be my move. Like that's always gonna be my focus because a lot of times those peop those people get ignored. Um, once teachers are at that stage, it's like now go discuss and it's like, well, I don't know, I don't know what that means. Um, and I think, you know, we're very good at being told that we need to discuss something, but sometimes the conversation ends once we're at the point of discussing. And so I'm always gonna be like, how do you make the best prompts? How do you recover from mistakes? How do you, um, those kind of things? So that's always gonna be, you know, with, with deep respect for everyone who's working on other aspects of this work. Um I kind of find it refreshing for myself to stay in my lane about like, what do you do in the classroom? 00:07:50Edit And that's, that's kind of like my thing. J are you in the same thing? I mean, all of those things are things, Matt and I have talked a lot about and spend a lot of time thinking about. Um, but I do think the part that makes, that makes the biggest difference in, in that trust piece whether it's trusting ourselves as professionals to handle these moments, whether it's trusting our students to engage in these moments. Um A big part of that comes out of us, knowing those pedagogical moves and being prepared um for, for whatever those moments might hold. Yeah, that's a, that's a beautiful way to put it, right? So we can't, we can't like trust that everything's gonna work out fine if we don't have the preparation behind it and to know literally, yeah, what does it look like in the moment? So a student says this go like, what, how do you respond? Right. That's it like, and I think the fear of not having that, you know, coaching, idea preparation, whatever is what often times in my coaching relationships with teachers scares teachers away from ever engaging in it in the first place. 00:08:54Edit It's like, well, what if that happens? Right? And so I'm curious to know how, I mean, you talk about a lot of stuff in the book, what are the big pieces that you would name for teachers in terms of um having like the, the strategies, the approach that are really core to every, you know, every discussion that you kind of go in with like, OK, I have this in my head. I've set it up this way, you know, these are the keys. Um If you were talking for example to a, a teacher who's like, I wanna do this and I'm nervous um that was one of the first things that, that I learned from that in working on this was that, that is who we're talking to. Um, and that's a really important thing for, for me to hang on to like I'm not trying to convince you to do this. If you are not sold on, on engaging in these conversations, I don't want you to do it. Um It, it's too, it can be too easily fraught to push someone into it. Um I, I think a big piece of it for me and maybe it's because I work with young Children, maybe it's a general thing is that I don't want to jump into anything too quickly. 00:10:02Edit Um I want to know that I have spent the time thinking about it whether that's because it's a picture book we're gonna read or a novel we're reading together, whether that's because it's a piece of history that we're discussing. Um the deeper my thought process is and the deeper my background knowledge is the better prepared I'm gonna be for the kinds of questions and ideas that will come out from my kids. A great nothing real to add. I think that, yeah, that makes absolute sense. Iii I think also it's really important to distinguish, generate like you, you're talking about like young kids, right? And, and that, and, and myself as well, like high school is our RJ M and so it's a really different space uh in some ways and there are also these kind of core concepts that I think thread through. So Jen, one of the things that I think you were talking about in the book maybe from a space of elementary was this idea of like layering and threading. I, I can't remember if that's what you call a threading. Right. Yeah. Matt actually is probably a better person to speak to that. Oh, ok. Awesome. Because I was thinking, but this resonates so much for high schoolers. 00:11:09Edit Ok. Yeah. Can you talk us through the idea and the concept of writing? And like, I think one of the things that you say is like, if every conversation can't be the conversation that you have about race in the classroom. Yeah. It's kind of like, um, with an, you want to take the pressure off the teachers to have the massive conversation that it changes the world or their community or the school or whatever, right? You wanna make sure that they're just trying to lead a good conversation that intrigues kids and challenges them and makes them think and respects them as thinkers and that's it, like, as far as the goal is concerned. Um, and I think what helps with that is if over a series of conversations, kids see a clear connection. Um and um that's, I think just good pedagogy regardless, but also when it comes to race conversations, I think it takes on another layer of, of importance. Um So it's like, I don't have to like, they don't have to un understand all that comes with privilege from one conversation. 00:12:15Edit They can see uh sequentially developed, understanding begin to emerge. Um And over the course of a unit and then between the units, like even connecting the units to um each other, I think that um that threading just literally tying the conversations together um is an important way to take the pressure off of ourselves to do it all in one go. Like, what if a kid's absent that day? Right. Do they get to do? Did they miss all of the anti racism for the whole year? Like what if they had a, you know, they left for a basketball game. So now, you know, they don't get to talk about race anymore. II I think taking the pressure off of any one moment or they don't like that book, it's like sometimes they don't like that book. And so if all of the conversations are couched in to kill a Mockingbird and they didn't like to kill a Mockingbird, then, you know, we're missing opportunities and I think, but making sure that we take the pressure off of any one conversation to do all the work is good. 00:13:16Edit Hi, this is Leah Popping and to share this episode's Freebie. It's a collection of videos based on Matt's concept, not light but fire. You can find it at the blog post for this episode www dot Lindsay, Beth lines.com/one 62. Check it out. Now, back to the show. I love that perspective too because it's about taking the pressure off. It's about what's helpful for teachers. I entered that conversation or that that point initially thinking well, threading is a way to also communicate to students, you know, that, that this is important and we're gonna kind of, but I love the layer of like this is, this is also really helpful for teachers to be able to not have that pressure or for the students to not have that pressure because I chose to like, you know, be with my basketball team that day. Like I think it does help, you know, I think um in addition uh to making it easier on the teachers, um it helps students if they are, let's say a kid a little bit quieter. Um and um sometimes the kids are quiet just because they're quiet and that's awesome. 00:14:22Edit They can be quiet. I have no problem with that, but sometimes the kids quiet because they're a little bit nervous about participating. Um which means if a conversation is again a one shot deal, then they miss their shot, right? But if you are having the conversation or different versions of it the next day and then the next day as you work your way through a book or as you read multiple um young adult books or children's books or as you like, if they, if there is a connected tissue, then they might have been nervous on Monday, but they might be less nervous on Wednesday and, and by next Monday they might be ready to put their hand up, you know, and I think that's another advantage to it. I love that. You said that because it, it makes me want to ask about the, the formats that a discussion can take, right? So for the quiet kid, I love that you're also saying the threading is kind of the support the scaffold for that student to enter the conversation and feel comfort and for the kid who is just quiet or who communicates best verbally or I mean, non verbally, right? I'm wondering, you, you all talked about this a little bit in the book um of those different formats that it could take um and the different supports that we could offer students particularly like I was thinking of the one example too of like the nuances of young kids because I, I didn't teach young kids. 00:15:37Edit So I was fascinated by your point about um listening patiently and like having the strategies to hold on to a thought for a young kid. And I also was like, I as an adult could use that, right? I think our high schoolers can also use a version of that, right? Because there's those kids who are talking so much because they don't want to forget what they have to say. So they're interrupting someone because they're so excited. So considering all the different styles and learning styles and um engagement styles of students in a room, what are those considerations? Like? What's the consideration for the kid who talks a lot? What's the consideration for the kid who's, you know, more a small group kid or, or a kid who is just a little hesitant to, to share verbally any cops on that? Oh, so many thoughts Lindsay. But I think one of the things that you just got at that is so huge is that while there are differences between having, engaging in these conversations with young kids and with high school kids, so much of it carries through. I mean, when Matt's first book came out in 2018 but not light a fire was out. I read it and it was such a support for me, even though in 2018 I was teaching third graders, maybe, um, maybe for kindergartners. 00:16:45Edit I mean, definitely not older kids. Um, but the kinds of strategies that Matt talked about were things that I could kind of take on too because it, we as teachers are teachers across the ages and kids are kids. And so while there are certain things we have to think carefully about, there's a lot that carries through, um, when it comes to kind of the different kinds of kids in a group, I, I think there's some really easy things to keep in mind. One of which is giving kids options at different times to engage in conversations in different group sizes. So having kids turn and talk with one partner, having kids turned in a small group, having kids talk in the whole class. There's benefits and drawbacks to each kind of group size. But one of the benefits is that different kids get their voices heard or get the chance to speak up or feel more comfortable speaking up um in, in different groups. I'm also curious, I, I'm envisioning, you know, a a leader coming in to see your classes and thinking about all the dynamics of leader observation, leader, support or lack of support. 00:17:49Edit Um I'm curious to know, I think there's a lot of leaders who listen to this podcast, not just teachers. And so for leaders, how can leaders best support teachers who are doing this work? Like what's the, what, what's kind of your dream, whether whether you're experiencing it now or not? Like I, I think it would be really cool to uh tell leaders how they can either advocate support or um observe in a way that's actually really helpful and um supportive when we're doing this work. I mean, I have an excellent administrator who is very supportive. Um And so I think being encouraging is something that is sounds super simple and some people find ways to make that really complicated, like, like saying, thank you. That's another thing that admin like some people like the teacher did something and they didn't have to. So say thank you, like, you would think that that's a, like a, a some people make that way harder than, than it should be. 00:18:51Edit Um But I think beyond the encouraging, there's also um having consistent observation and clear structures. Um um And what I mean by that is like, and I know, look, admins have way too much on their plate. And so I'm not like there's a reason that most admin who's worth any salt would definitely want be love to spend all of their time in classrooms, observing teachers and doing other. So and the reason they're not is not because they're choosing not to. So this actually might even go a level above admins to be honest. Um A lot of this conversation is if you want to support admins, supporting teachers, you have to free up admins so that they can support teachers. Um um because, you know, if you're only being seen twice a year, um you know, or, you know, it's hard for a teacher to feel as supported. Um But also I understand why they can only be seen once or twice a year from someone from the administration team because they're busy, they're doing all sorts of other things. 00:20:01Edit Um But absent that I think setting up peer structures, um common planning time and those kind of things so that if the admin can't, you know, you know, it's not just the admin is doing the observations, the colleagues are doing observations and folks, you know, and they're given time to unpack what they see. Um um But I think just having consistency around that somehow we've got to find a way for teachers to have consistent observations with clear structures. I think that's the part that looks like so many di different things, but there has to be a consistency there. Um um That is often not the case. It makes me think of your threading idea, right? Of just like it can't be the one time that you come in. Like the whole idea is like we're learning and growing. So an admin who comes in in October and then comes back in November is like, oh wow, I can see the, I see that you've gotten better with this thing. Well, here's the thing that also this, this might be a little awkward to say, but like like average developing and good teachers need love too. 00:21:09Edit Like if that makes sense, like a lot of times the folks, the the the teachers who get as much uh to get consistent eyes on their practice are the teachers who are in a moment where they're struggling big time. Like those are the people who get teacher coaches, those are the people who have admins constantly. Those are the people who have all these structures set up to support them. But folks who are like their classroom is not burning down like they're like, cool, keep with the not burning down and it, it's, it's great and your test score, you know what I mean? Your test scores are fine. You're not always sending kiss at office, you know, like you're, um, and I feel like sometimes, you know, the average developing teacher of which we are all that person, like where we're like, we're just trying to get better. Um, they need, you know, they, they also need consistency and the teachers who are like nailing it like the Jens and Mats of the world also need, you know what I mean? Like we have a certain level of confidence and we're veterans at this and stuff like that, but I benefit, you know, I was just at dinner with Jen and I was picking ideas around just say, oh, I could do this like it's cool for us. 00:22:20Edit We benefit from having conversations about what we do and that happens. So rare, structurally with veteran teachers, they're like, you're, you know, you're not just not burning down, you're doing well. So godspeed like, like, and we are kind of left out of the conversation about, you know, how to get better. So, yeah, I think we, we find our own ways to do it because it is, we find our own way. It's not a systemic structural thing happening for us. I think that's a really good point. I would also add in thinking about how leaders can support in this work. I'm gonna totally support everything. Matt just said and add on the idea that in some places, at least doing this work can be risky. And so the more the leaders know what's happening in those classrooms and understand why it's happening and can have those teachers backs. That's gonna be huge. Matt and I are both lucky to be in places where that's not really a problem. Um, but that is not true for many, many teachers and to add off of what Jen said, um um, also not putting our admins in places where having our, where we're having our back is, is, is, is, is it isn't a fair thing to ask. 00:23:36Edit Like, like we, the communication has to go both ways. Hey, Edmund, I'm doing this, you know, this is what's going on, this is what might happen is, do I have any spots that I'm missing things? Do I have anything? I'm gonna need your, like, we have to stop surprising Edmunds too. Um I, that I've had that uncomfortable conversation with my boss a couple of times when I was younger and did that kind of stuff. It was kind of like, and he's like, oh, so I got your back but don't ever do that again. Like, don't ever like you need to, I'm getting parent like you knew parents was about to email me because you're reading that book, like you trying to read like if, if you're trying to read fun home with ninth graders. I need to know about it. Like you're trying to read, like, like you knew better than that. Like, you need to, like, we need to talk this through so we can figure out. And I think, and I, that landed with me, it said don't put me in a position where I have to cover for you and I'll know what I'm talking about because I don't help either one of us. So, um, yeah, that's a really good point. 00:24:40Edit I had, I have never heard someone actually articulate that end of it. That is beautiful. I'm so glad you said that I got fussed at. So I it got clear. He said, don't, don't do that to me again. Well, if we're going to ask our admin to have our backs, then the slightest thing we can do is make sure that they are not blindsided by it. They are ready, they are prepared. I think there, there are, I think this is really a point that you bring about in terms of like, um, I think j you use the word risk and, and just this idea of like parent phone calls or, and like all the things right that are happening in people's heads. I have a lot of thoughts about that, right? Like who's, whose family voices occupy our heads in the first is number one. So that's problematic, right? Who we're planning for on that. But I also think, you know, this idea of challenges is a big one, particularly for leaders who might want to kind of nurture and foster this in their teachers or teachers who are like, really excited about this. Um or the teachers who are like, you know, I'm, I'm um I'm ready and I kind of on the fence. I haven't started yet, but I'm, I'm ready to, to kind of get that, which is your target audience. I think, you know, what, what is the biggest challenge that you've had as educators or you've heard other educators share with you maybe as a result of the book and, and how have you helped like, work through it or help them work through it? 00:25:56Edit I haven't encountered, oh, no, go, go, go. I think just owning my privileged teaching where I teach, like I haven't faced as many, you know, issues from like, you know, racist parents and stuff like that. That's, that's not necessarily the demographic that I'm working with. Um um you know, I had the, the occasional blip but that's not a consistent, you know, thing. So I was gonna own that like, I have, you know, I, I have my ideas but that's not my lived experience. But um I think we don't talk as much as we probably should about student misbehavior. Like I think sometimes during conversations because a lot of times kids are coming from classrooms that are not that dialogic. And so it feels to them, like, free time. Like, they don't have an idea, they don't have the conceptual, like we are still working, we're just working through talking. They're like, we're just talking so I can do whatever I want. And I think that's part of what scares a lot of teachers away from having conversations because when, when you're doing other, you know, other activities, um, e everyone must be writing, everyone's filling out this sheet. 00:27:00Edit Everyone is re, you know what I mean? But when you're having a discussion sometimes, um, frankly, a lot of the biggest things and I don't, we didn't even write about this to be honest, but it's kids acting up. Um, and I think that in, in, in, in high school it's something I've seen, um, how well being dialogic has to connect with someone's basic classroom management, toolkit. Um, it's, it's, it's a, it's actually a really big issue and a lot of times, um, it's one thing that I'm constantly reminded of every year when I'm a student teacher because I have control of my classroom. Like I'm the alpha of my classroom. I do my, like I'm old school with many aspects of my, like, it's mine, y'all are just passing through. That's how I operate. Um, which means I can have all these open loose conversations because with the snap, I feel like I can, like, bring them back and bring like there's no, you know, I don't feel like I'm wrestling because I'm the alpha in the classroom. 00:28:04Edit But sometimes, um, student teachers come into the room and they're on some, like, I get student teachers from Penn and some other place and they're getting like this super progressive, like, like student voice centered, you know, and so they come in and they're like having trouble saying, like, stop talking, like, they have trouble with that. They're like, guys, this guy, they make a lot of, and they're, and I think conversations about leading class discussions have to also include discipline and structures of discipline and like, and having the confidence to assert yourself in the space. Um, and I think that's, most of my problems have been, like, internal, like, around that. Um, and, and I don't, it's not as much of a problem for me anymore. Uh, but seeing young teachers, I see, um, or not young, uh, uh, new, new teachers. It's, it's like that is a big and I think it's probably one of the biggest reasons why teachers don't. 00:29:04Edit They're like, once I start having conversations they, they start acting up and so I don't wanna do that anymore. Yeah, I think that's true at all levels too. Um, although if we did a better job of it earlier, it probably wouldn't be as big a problem by the time they get to you Matt. But I don't know, kids are gonna do it ma, to participate in class conversations more frequently. Um, I think another piece of that same problem. And this, I see more by upper elementary is that when conversations get difficult or uncomfortable, um, kids start to get goofy as a way of dealing with their discomfort. And so similarly, you, as the teacher have to be prepared both to address that in the moment, but also to support those kids in their discomfort because they're not doing it to be difficult, they're doing it because they don't know how to function in that in that moment. Um And so how do you help them while also making sure that that doesn't completely throw the conversation off the rails? I love that. You both just named that I am fascinated by that. So I think, yeah, one just thought for listeners who are like, you know, what if I do have those challenges? 00:30:10Edit One uh I think co creating class agreements is always really helpful for me. So just to be able to have that shared accountability is something I think that you, you guys talk about in the book, just like with this idea of um we are a community, these are community agreements, we are communally agreeing to them. So, you know, me being able to say like we need to stop talking is because we said we would stop talking when one person is talking, right? And so to be able to anchor in that I think is important and it also love this idea of um this idea of like this discomfort and being in discomfort and how do we exist in discomfort as this thing? We need to help students experience to grow. And so I think it's intrinsic to this, to conversations about race. So that what we're talking about today is your book. It's I think also just, you know, this could be extrapolated into many spaces and many growth spaces in education is a place where growth spaces are happening all the time. I think about so many adults who struggle and who make a joke to kind of avoid the conversation, right? Who, who are avoiding in some way where that behavior shows up and you're like this is happening in this second grade class D what is going on like that? 00:31:15Edit We haven't figured it out as adults. So I think that's a huge, huge area of practice and and just kind of like acknowledgment for teachers. But also I'm thinking about leaders who are dealing with staff members who may be feeling the same way about conversations about race or current events or things that are connected to race, right? Like in teacher spaces, like in the the hallway or in the teacher lounge or you know, whatever the space is, I think there's, there's so much um that educators at all levels can do to just address it, bring it up and, and have people feeling like it's good to be in discomfort. It's not, that's where we go my, my husband is a college professor and his, like, go to phrase with his students is I want you to be uncomfortable but not frozen because that's where we learn. Like, if you're too uncomfortable it's over. But if you're too comfortable then you're not growing. I think I wrote down the quote from this latest book. I think Matt, you had written it at your Children are gonna be loved, listened to and developmentally appropriately challenged. It's like, yep, that's, that's it. 00:32:19Edit Right. That's the combo. So in closing, I'm thinking about, you know, the educator who's listening to this, getting ready to maybe enter their school day or prep the lesson for tomorrow. What is like one thing that they could do tomorrow or in the next 24 hours that might be a nice, like starting point or, or refining point to something um, that they could do maybe building on something they already do as typical teacher practice or entering the space fresh if they are in. No, that's fine if they're entering the space fresh. I think the answer is a little bit different. Um My thing would be to find a consistent, um, community building activity that matches their personality and matches the, that meets the kids where they are. Um, and something that they can commit to. Um, like for me, it's like good news, Mondays. We do. We're rocking with that every Monday. It's gotten to the, I'm trying to add journal Tuesdays and I always kind of fall off. 00:33:27Edit I have some classes, I'm, but, but I've decided I'm fighting that fight. Like this is a fight, I'm fighting. I will continue to do that. And, you know, SSR Friday and I mean, and, and, and I'm trying to like, and, um, um, I, I think it's the things that you can when things get crazy and you have all these things to do and it's State Testing Day and it's this, that this, that and there's an assembly and all the things that happen are what, what is the thing that you are going to? I'm even going to sacrifice something else for this. We will do this and I think having one is better than having 10. Um And I think as far as community building, so I think if you're starting off, it would be that and if you're in the middle of a year or something like that, it would be um uh testing something like that while being fair to yourself, knowing that it's the middle of the year, there are systems, the kids are used for something else and not overanalyzing how well it worked because I'm, there's a couple of things like I'm trying out a new way of doing SSR, but I told the kids openly as I'm trying to decide this is about next year for me. 00:34:37Edit You are guinea pigs right now. This is about next year for me. Um but I'm trying to see. I'm testing out some structures um to see if it works. But I think specifically with community building and getting to know your kids or any of that stuff that you see Jen or I wrote about with safe space. Like, hopefully I made it clear that there's nothing special about good news or high grade compliments or, or, or the burning five minutes. Like those are things that, you know, half of them I took from Zach Chase, half of them I took myself and it, it's one of those, those activities aren't special. It's the committing to it every week that's special. And so whatever it is that you do, um, find that thing, um, that would be my biggest. And so the teach, so the kids know you for that thing that in the, like you're known for in this class we gonna do this. Um, and they can depend on it. I think that's the hard part with all of those, like crunchy granola, touchy, feely, emotion stuff is that we don't stick with it. 00:35:39Edit Like, but there's gotta be like something that's kind of like we, we're going to do it every Monday. Yeah, I would definitely second that because I don't care what the conversations you're having are, they don't happen. Well, without that, you could be discussing multiplication strategies and you're not gonna have good classroom conversations unless you have that classroom community. Um, and I think Matt hit on the hardest part of that for many teachers is that you have to carve out the time for it and we all feel crunched on time. And so we feel like, but I don't have time for that yet. You don't have time to not do it. Like not doing it costs you in the long run. But that's a really hard thing to begin to truly understand. Um, but that, yeah, that whatever it takes to ensure that you have a really strong solid classroom community because conversation about anything doesn't work without it. I love those. Those are excellent. I think as a final question, I'm just curious to know where you would want folks to follow up with you if they want to kind of follow you on social media, I'll link to the book in the show notes. Um Other places that you would want to connect with people, all of my socials are some version of Matt RK. 00:36:46Edit So if you look it up, you'll see um and uh uh website, not light.com. Um So check that out. Pick me up. Yeah, Matt and I have both been around long enough to just have our names. So everywhere for me is Gen or um including Gen or.com. Um Yeah, I think it's a sign of how old we are. I'm in the same boat, so we're all, we're all there. Awesome. Thank you both. So, so much. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you today. Thanks Lindsay. Thanks for the invite. If you like this episode. I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane Sapper 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. 00:37:58Edit Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm. Call at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/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 teach better.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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In this episode, I’m sharing ideas for how you might approach conversations about the violence in Gaza within your schools and classrooms. Many adults have told me they do not feel equipped enough to facilitate or engage in this conversation, however world events are happening and impacting adults and youth. At a minimum we should make space for students to share their emotional responses and experiences related to this trauma.
And as Michelle MiJung Kim wrote, “Even if you don’t understand the full history, you can draw on your knowledge of power dynamics, characteristics of white supremacy and colonialism, and the use of dehumanizing narratives to justify ethnic cleansing. Even when emotions are running high, you have the skills to create big enough containers to hold and validate people’s grief and fear, while guiding people to challenge the conditions that create violence. You know how to connect the dots to explain how all of us are implicated in this humanitarian and moral crisis.” Note: This episode was recorded on October 31, 2023. What’s happening? First, some historical context: Between 1947-1949, known as the Nakba, an estimated 15,000 Palestinians were killed, including in dozens of massacres, and an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes in a capturing of historic Palestine to create the state of Israel ("What’s the Israel-Palestine conflict about? A simple guide"). In the last 16 years, Israel’s occupation of Palestine has created the largest “open air prison” in the world, with Palestinians being banned from travel, including to the West Bank, despite it being widely acknowledged they are both part of a “single territorial unit.” This is clearly not the only context. For more details, you can reference the first link in this paragraph. Most recently (as of this episode), on October 7, 2023, the Palestinian armed group Hamas killed 1,400 people in Israel, many of whom were civilians. Since then, more than 8,000 people have died in Gaza—many of whom were women and children—as a result of Israeli attacks. (Note: This is data as of October 29, 2023.) Additionally, Israel has blockaded Gaza, cutting off critical supplies. In the last several days, Israel has cut off cell phone and internet access for residents of Gaza. Access to health care and clean water are concerns for many, including the estimated 50,000 pregnant women and girls in Gaza. Israel has denied visas to UN officials following a comment that Hamas attacks “didn’t happen in a vacuum.” How do we talk about these events with students (and adults)? Step 1: Establish discussion agreements that center the dignity and humanity of ALL people. A specific clarification of agreements for this conversation might be: antisemitism and Islamophobia will not be tolerated. And critiquing actions of a nation, group, or leader are not antisemitic or Islamophobic. We should be able to critically analyze a government's decisions. This is not the same as expressing racism towards a group of people for who they are. Step 2: Invite folx to share their emotions, and if helpful, personal stories and experiences. (Just speaking from the “I” here.) Step 3: Invite inquiry: What do we want to know or learn more about? What specific questions do we have? Step 4: Level-set on researched facts, and analyze sources and context for power dynamics. Step 5: Practice criticality (Muhammad, 2020) with support. I like to use questions adapted from Dr. Muhammad’s HILL Model: What do you think about the power and equity at play here? How are individuals or groups disrupting oppression? How might you/we? If you are a social studies teacher, you may want to pull in a resource you’ve used. For example, the Genocide Education Project’s Stages of Genocide resource is one that could help students think through the relevance of the term genocide in relation to Israel’s attacks on Gaza. It would be particularly helpful to examine the Holocaust genocide case study in relation to the previous idea but also to provide the additional context of the Holocaust to deepen analysis. If you are practiced in using a gendered or feminist lens, for example, you may investigate the interplay of militaristic violence and intimate partner violence. The example in this academic paper by Dr. Simona Sharoni is one that illuminates these parallels. Final Tip We cannot have conversations about challenging, high-emotion topics without the grounding in our collective acknowledgement of each person’s humanity. We don’t need to push particularly traumatized individuals to talk about this in classroom spaces when this could be further traumatizing. We also don’t want to avoid conversations about hard things because we don’t feel equipped. We can build our capacity to talk about hard things. We can seek to learn information we don’t yet have. We can enter conversations humbly, and ready to acknowledge our mistakes, while centering justice and human dignity. As an example of how to set a foundation to build up to harder conversations about current events, I’m sharing my Staff Meeting Agenda series with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 144 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 here. TRANSCRIPT I'm educational justice coach, Lindsay Lyons, and here on the time for teacher 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 nering out about co-creator curriculum of students. I made this show for you. Here we go for this episode. I want to address how we talk about the violence in Gaza in our schools, in our communities. So I'll be sharing ideas for how you might approach conversations about the violence in Gaza within classrooms within your school communities, even as adults. So we're taking both a student and adult lens here. Now, the context is that many adults have told me they do not feel equipped enough to facilitate or engage in this conversation. However, world events are happening and impacting adults and youth and at a minimum, we should make space for students and adults to share their emotional responses and experiences related to this trauma. 00:01:11 I'll give you some more in the episode for reference. This episode was recorded on October 31st 2023. So the specifics of the context, the events happening will be slightly outdated as of the airing, which will be in January 2024. So how do we talk about the violence in Gaza in our schools? I think what's a really important thing to note and the context for I think having this conversation specifically within the realm of the so called DE I World is a, a comment on linkedin which I reposted from Michelle Mizon Kim and she wrote an extended post, but I will just share a clip of it briefly quote. Even if you don't understand the full history, you can draw on your knowledge of power dynamics, characteristics of white supremacy and colonialism and the use of dehumanizing narratives to justify ethnic cleansing. Even when emotions are running high, you have the skills to create big enough containers to hold and validate people's grief and fear while guiding people to challenge the conditions that create violence, you know how to connect the dots to explain how all of us are implicated in this humanitarian and moral crisis. 00:02:17 Again, the quote is far longer. I've linked to it in the blog post which you can access at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 44. I'll be sharing that link again because throughout this episode, there are many references that I have linked within the blog post. It's one of the most heavily linked for a lot of reasons. There are a lot of resources I want to direct you to. There are also a lot of facts that I want to make sure I'm citing. So all of the the links to those are are in here. So let's start with the grounding of what's happening because I think one of the major things that many adults have told me is like, I don't feel comfortable navigating this conversation, even with another adult because I don't feel fully informed. And of course, that means that I don't feel comfortable navigating this conversation with Children and educating and facilitating the conversation with Children where I am responsible for the factual understanding of those kids, right? And so I think part of this work is skill based in, in building the capacity for having the discussions about anything, right? And I talk about that a lot on the podcast. The other piece is for each specific instance, you know, we as educators, as adults, as people, we don't have to have all the answers to everything. 00:03:26 We don't have to be experts in every single content area as current events come up by definition, they're current, right? They're they're ever changing. We don't always have all of the information at hand. And so I think part of that is being able to say I don't have all the answers as an adult, as your teacher, right? So when we're in a context of students, but even as we're adult adult conversing, right, in a staff conversation or something we can say, uh you know, based on what I know, here's the thought. So I just wanna level set again. This is based on a recording of, uh this is the recording date here is October 31st 2023 due to reduction processes and all the things. This will not actually air until the beginning of January of 2024. So I I get that there is, you know, a two month lag here in terms of up to date data. So I'm just gonna share what feels relevant in this moment and what is hopefully still relevant to you in the future? First, the historical context. There's so, so much of it and I've linked to more of it here, but I, I am not an expert on all of the facts. So I will just share what I feel like is relevant to contextualize for our conversation today. 00:04:29 So between 1947 and 1948 during which Israel identified itself as a nation and was created as a nation. Um This period of time to the Palestinian people is known as the nwa of the catastrophe in Arabic. An estimated 15,000 Palestinians were killed, including dozens of massacres and an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes in the capturing of historic Palestine to create the state of Israel. There is a link to a much longer and more in depth guide if you would like more context. Now, in the last 16 years, specifically Israel's occupation of Palestine has created the largest open air prison in the world. With Palestinians being banned from travel, including to the West Bank. Despite it being widely acknowledged, they are part of a single territorial unit by international nations and organizations. Now again, clearly, this is not the only context for more details. Please dive into these links. Um I I do not purport to be a a scholar of um Palestine or Israel most recently as of the airing of this episode or as of the sorry recording of this episode on October 7th 2023 the Palestinian armed group Hamas killed 1400 people in Israel, many of whom were civilians. 00:05:44 Since then, more than 8000 people have died in Gaza, many of whom were women and Children. As a result of Israeli attacks, specifically, I want to name these are attacks by the Israeli military Israel government. So additionally, Israel has blockaded Gaza cutting off critical supplies in the last several days. As of this recording, Israel has cut off cell phone and internet access for residents of Gaza access to health care and clean water are concerns for many many people but including as they often take a feminist lens in these things, an estimated 50,000 women and girls who are currently pregnant and living in Gaza Israel recently in, in the last week or so has denied visas to un officials following a comment that Hamas attacks didn't happen in a vacuum. And that's, that's quotes around, didn't happen in a vacuum. So recognizing the context there. So these are all of the facts that are circulating in my head. These are the things that I am thinking about and of course, this is steeped with emotion, additional context. I don't, I don't have the space or the knowledge to get into. 00:06:50 But what I do know is that students and adults are going to need to process this in some way. So for some of them, they can process this with their families. For some of them, they're processing individually internally um with friend groups, with peers, some are trying to, you know, look to the internet and, and finding people that they follow on social media and what they say and they're repeating that creating, you know, perhaps a container that may not be the most fruitful for generative discussion about emotional events. And so with that understanding, here's what I would suggest and it, it is parallel to many other times I've recorded episodes like this and recorded episodes that are both generic and specific. I know a few years ago I was recording, how do we talk uh with white students about the attacks on the Capitol, right? That that happened in early January as well. So this is kind of reminiscent of of a lot of the structure that I would use in talking about a lot of current events. The first step is to establish discussion agreements that center the dignity and humanity of all people. So this is critical if you don't have this, you can't engage in this discussion, right? 00:07:55 And which is why I think social media is a really challenging place to have discussions like this. We don't have that shared connection. We don't have that co created community. We don't have clear agreements that we all have consented to um enact or, or abide by, right? This is the unique difference that we have in communities of care, communities of educational environments, of friend groups, of, of families, places where we can center the dignity and humanity of all people. And we can specifically agree to that through consensus and we can specifically core how that looks for us. What does it look like in practice? What do we do to call each other to account when that is not happening, we have a unique space in classrooms and school communities to do this work. And so I think if it's not happening in their friend groups and family groups or it's happening, but it's not happening in a way that centers the dignity and humanity of all people, here's even more reason that we do it here, we do it in our spaces in schools and educational communities whose whole point is to learn and to think critically and to have um disc course with folks, right? 00:09:00 And then hopefully, ideally, students and adults take that and bring it into their own spaces of discourse with families and friends and loved ones. Now, I would want to specifically clarify an agreement or create an agreement for this particular conversation about Palestine because we want to say very clearly that anti-semitism and Islamophobia will not be tolerated, right? We are never tolerating racism that violates the inherent centering of dignity and humanity of all people. It just goes against the core principle that we're developing agreements around, right? So obviously, that's not tolerated. And at the same time, we can critique actions of a nation group or leader because that in and of itself is not anti Semitic or Islamophobic. So we should be able to critically analyze a government's decisions, for example. And it is not the same as expressing racism toward a group of people for who they are, right, for their identity and the identity group they belong to, right? So these are not the same step two invite folks to share their emotions and if it's helpful, personal stories and experiences, again, I think really important that it's personal here, that it is speaking from the eye that it is not. 00:10:13 Here's my opinion on this or here is um you know, this like fourth hand account that I saw on social media and I'm completely divorced um from in terms of like my own personal connections, like I just don't think that's the time or place for this. I think there might be a time or place for that at some point. But initially, we want to start again to see the humanity in each of us to see the humanity of the folks in the room in the conversation, what emotions are they experiencing? And again, it can, it can stop at just the emotion at this point, right? You don't have to share stories that's up to you and your facilitation. It's also up to the community in terms of what they're willing to hear, able to hear the next step. I think after we've done this, after we've acknowledged, you know, the agreements, the emotions in the space, potentially personal um stories or, or experiences that resonate with them in that moment. Step three is to invite inquiry. So notice we haven't even like gotten to like a complete factual like, you know, like here is exactly what's going on in all the things. Yeah, I do think there is a degree of factual grounding just to enter the conversation. 00:11:18 But that could literally be like a headline or um a, a still image of like a, a website, a news website or something, right? Like just to say like here's what's going on in the world in like snapshots and like headshots, like maybe a visual like that is not traumatizing. But like, I think we don't need to get to all the granularity of the facts just yet. Because again, all of these first initial layers and steps are to make sure that beyond anything else, we are practicing again and again, that centering of humanity and human dignity across the board across our group. So in step three, inviting inquiry, what we want to do is ask questions like what do we want to know about? What more might we want to learn about as a class or you as an individual? Right? Even again, thinking about doing this as a staff PD two for adults to grapple with this to then maybe go talk to students about it, maybe not, but I think adults need practice with this as well. What specific questions do we have? So we're listing all of those out and then we as a class collective or maybe a group, each, each student group or each adult group chooses a question and kind of like goes on, you know, an academic research journey, right? 00:12:28 We pursue inquiry just like we would pursue inquiry in anything in a historical way, right? And about a historical event, we want step four then to be that we're kind of level setting on the research facts we're sharing out, we're also analyzing sources, we have a critical lens we're specifically thinking about the context, right? Nothing, nothing does exist without context. So every kind of thing we're, we're kind of putting together, right? Some of the questions they overlap and help us contextualize like, oh, this group found that, well, I found this in, in my group. So, you know, let's contextualize it all. Let's look at the specific power dynamics, right? If we're censoring justice, we are looking at power dynamics, we are putting on a critical lens. And I think that's step five, right? We're gonna elevate and and further practice criticality, which is a phrase that Doctor Goldie Muhammad uses in her book Cultivating Genius and her Hill model of curriculum development and pedagogy, right? And I think there are supports that go with this and I've talked about these before, but I'll, I'll just talk a little bit about what I would do in this scenario. I I like to use questions that are adapted from Doctor Mohammed's Hill model. 00:13:31 So she has one on criticality that is mostly for people who are creating curriculum. So as you develop this lesson, how do you center criticality, that kind of thing, specific questions that I would pose to a group of students or adults for conversation around a current event would be adaptations from now. So for example, what do you think about the power and equity at play here? Right? Who holds the power where lies in equity? Those kinds of questions? Also, we don't want to just analyze inequity. We don't want to just sit in the injustice, right? I think I've, I've heard this from like anecdotally from people in my classes. I've heard it from colleagues who know the work that I do. I've, you know, seen it um in, in, in terms of research studies, it is also critically important that we do the second part of Doctor Mohammed's criticality question as well where we're talking about disrupting oppression. So also naming, you know, how are individuals or groups disrupting oppression right now? And how might you as an individual, how might we as a collective group disrupt oppression right now? 00:14:35 So we're not all just steeped in the injustice. Yes, we are. But we also can name agency in what folks are doing, acknowledge that work and then what we can do. So we don't have to um we, we can, right, create the space for the emotion and then we can also create a path forward if you were a social studies teacher. So these next couple of recommendations for step four where we're really like practicing that criticality. Like you might bring in some different resources depending on what your class is familiar with what you've used before. I always like to leverage things that you've used before and be able to use that as a lens. So for example, if you're a social studies teacher, you may want to pull in a resource you've used like the Genocide Education project. I know has a lot of grants. So you might use their stages of genocide resource packet that's helping students think through the relevance of the term genocide in relation to Israel's attack on Gaza. So you might actually go through the stages and be like, do we see these? Right, how do we see these? Um if you're practicing in uh like an el a class or social studies class or some other class using a gendered or feminist lens. 00:15:37 For example, you may investigate the interplay of militaristic violence and intimate partner violence. There's an a powerful example from Doctor Simona Cirone, who was one of my uh feminist teachers in college. She wrote an academic paper that kind of illuminates these parallels really well and I'll link that again in the blog post. Um One more time that blog post for listeners is Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 44. Now, as I'm kind of wrapping up, we've, we've said a lot, there's been a lot. This is an emotionally heavy episode. I do want to name the final kind of takeaways I think for this particular conversation about the violence in Gaza. But also any current event, anytime we're talking about an event or series of events that are unfolding in the world that are impacting us that are carrying with them high emotions and long historical contexts that we as individual educators may or may not fully um be aware of all of those things are, are important to name and consider and, and build around, right? 00:16:40 But II, I wanna say these final things to, to kind of leave us, we cannot have conversations about challenging high emotion topics without the grounding in our collective acknowledgment of each person's humanity. We don't need to push particularly traumatized individuals to talk about this in classroom spaces when this could be further traumatizing. This also includes things like using visuals or videos um or even sounds right that are emotionally traumatizing. We have folks at different, in different emotional spaces. And I think that's another value of inviting folks to share their emotions. Of course, every everything, every share opportunity is an opportunity. And so it's not mandatory, but I think inviting that emotion share out helps us as facilitators of these conversations to know where exactly everyone is. Um And how, how like emotionally raw um some folks are and, and, and I think that makes, helps us make decisions accordingly. Um We also don't want to avoid conversations about hard things because we don't feel equipped, we can build our capacity to talk about hard things. 00:17:45 We can seek to learn information. We don't yet have, we can enter conversations humbly and ready to acknowledge our mistakes while censoring justice and human dignity. And if we can do those things, that is my freedom dream for all classrooms, for all educational spaces, for all staff meetings and team meetings amongst adults, this is my hope for all families. This is my hope for all friend groups, right? This is it, this is the generative dialogue that is at the heart of making sense of our world is at the heart of expressing our humanity and seeing the humanity in others. This is the heart of restorative justice, peace building. This is at the heart of why I went into education, right? Because I wanted to build a better world. And I think youth are the the place and educators who are lifelong learners and committed to the journey of being better, always and creating co creating better futures with our youth. This is where that dream is most possible and most likely to flourish. 00:18:54 If you have these conversations, please reach out to me and let me know how they go. If you have additional recommendations or things that you've tried that have worked well in terms of having this conversation, please reach out if you like this episode. I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane, Sapir 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 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 to brainstorm. Call at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/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 teach better.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I show you how to embark on a policy change:
9/11/2023 132. A Framework for Teaching Structural Racism in US History with Ayo Magwood M.ScRead Now
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
In this podcast episode, Ayo shares her innovative approach to teaching structural racism and fostering civic consciousness in the classroom. Discover how using data inquiries, historical context, and value tensions can empower students to think critically, engage in national conversations, and shape a better future.
Ayo Magwood, M.Sc., (Uprooting Inequity, LLC) specializes in evidence-based, apolitical, and solutionary training on understanding and remediating structural racism. She is passionate about fostering cross-difference cooperation towards realizing equal opportunity for all. Her superpower is her ability to synthesize a wide range of research, data, primary sources, and abstract concepts and weave them into engaging narratives and diagrams. Ayo was recently recognized as a leading expert on social justice education. She has a B.A. from Brown University and a M.Sc. in applied economics from Cornell University. The Big Dream To provide students with the historical context and understanding needed to engage in national conversations about structural racism and policy issues. Ayo’s Election Unit Ayo created an election unit that focused on historical context and understanding rather than candidates. Designed to equip students with the knowledge they need to engage in national conversations and shape a better future, Ayo focused on teaching historical through-lines that explain racial inequality, racial tension, racism, structural racism, income inequality, and political polarization. She encouraged students to think critically, ask questions, and discover the truth for themselves. Ayo’s Framework Ayo uses data inquiries for students to uncover the existence of structural racism on their own. By distinguishing between empirical issues and opinion/policy issues, she ensures that the classroom stays focused on the evidence while promoting civic consciousness that “benefits the common good.” This approach allows for respectful conversations in the classroom and helps students understand and take informed positions on policy issues, working together across ideological differences. Focus on structural racism over bias. Ayo says, “I feel that it's more important as a US history teacher to teach that historical context and about structural racism. They have 100 chances to learn about interpersonal race outside that classroom, but they will have very few chances to learn that history and about structural racism outside the classroom. And…that historical structural racism will set them up to learn about bias.” Framing structural racism as an empirical issue, she minimizes disruptions and parent concerns while creating a learning space where students can think critically and make evidence-based decisions. Challenges, Or Where Things Could Go Wrong Two ways classroom conversations about race are disrupted by students or parents include:
Action Steps Introduce Value Tensions Invite students to identify what’s going on underneath a political disagreement and encourage students to move away from extremes, instead asking students to position themselves on a continuum. Examples: individual rights vs. common good; civil liberties vs. national security. Data Inquiries Give students space to investigate and draw their own conclusions from empirical data. Implicit Practices Model that we all make mistakes and learn from them. Foster an “equity-conscious identity” or a “we” identity. Get Started! Read! You can start with Ayo’s Psychology Today article. Survey your students and ask for feedback on your lessons. Get Ayo’s free lesson on perspectives consciousness and start introducing values tensions in your class. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guest on her website, Uprooting Inequity. To help you introduce value tensions and perspectives consciousness in your classroom, Ayo is sharing a free lesson with you! And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 132 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 Listeners. This is gonna be a great show. Io Magwood MS C, founder of Uprooting inequity. LLC specializes in evidence-based alit and solutionary training and understanding and remediating structural racism. She is passionate about fostering cross different cooperation towards realizing equal opportunity for all her superpower is her ability to synthesize a wide range of research, data, primary sources and abstract concepts and weave them into engaging narratives and diagrams. I was recently recognized as a leading expert on social justice education. She has a B A from Brown University and a Master's in Science and Applied Economics from Cornell You University. Now I have used a lot of what I always has taught me in my own practice and I have to say it is brilliant. I cannot wait for you to hear from her. Here we go. I'm educational justice coach, Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for teacher 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. 00:01:07 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 nerd out about co creating curriculum with students. I made this show for you. Here we go. I welcome to the time for a teacher shift podcast. I'm so glad you're here. Oh, thank you for inviting me. I'm excited. Yes. And so I cannot wait for our conversation. We're just gonna kind of dive in here. We were just talking before we hit record. Normally, the first question I ask is, you know, what do we want able to keep in mind as we jump into our conversation? And you were telling me about an election unit, you taught that was not actually about candidates but about kind of what people needed to know to understand what was going on. And I just thought that was brilliant. Do you mind starting there and just talking to us about that unit? Sure. So I had a, it started because I had a um student debate on affirmative action. And of course, I understand that people have different positions on it, uh uh ideological position. 00:02:14 So I was prepared for that, but I was not prepared for the uh a lot of the reasoning behind uh both arguments. Actually, they were uh very uninformed, they were coming, this repeating sound bites often. Um And reflecting on it, I realized that they were missing uh a lot of historical context and, and, and contemporary uh demographic and, and socioeconomic content. Um, and then I wasn't teaching it and even though I'm a US history teacher, I, I somehow just assumed they knew it and, and, well, I was teaching a more traditional uh curriculum and of course, it, it has, it contains very little uh historical uh uh history on the anti-black racism, you know, a typical um US history class. There's not a lot uh beyond uh the, you know, after the civil rights uh uh movement, then, then you, they jump to Obama's. So and red lining is maybe mentioned very briefly. Um hardly anything on income inequality and political polarization. So the next year um was also the 2016 elections. 00:03:20 Um And I decided that my goal was that they would be able to um participate in the national conversation that was occurring around uh that campaign and that from an important position this time, not just this is the right thing to say for based on my ideology. Um So I basically taught all of the historical concept um for them to be able to understand the, the policy issues so that they could participate in the conversation and discussion. So I moved the 19 fifties to the present or 19 thirties to the present unit to the beginning of the year because of course, that's when they needed to know it in the fall. Um And I revamped my, that, that unit uh uh or units, I just took out the, the foreign uh relations part. And we taught, I mean, uh uh I taught that at the end of the year. Um and we uh I, I just sort of reorganized things and added things. So we're looking at the, the, through the historical, through lines to that explain um racial inequality, racial tension, racism, structural racism today. 00:04:29 Um A second one was in income inequality, which is, you know, also a huge um a factor behind uh many of the policy issues and finally, the political polarization, that was the, the shortest part. Um So I just, you know, taught a lot of the same history but uh you know, and, and concentrating on, on those uh factors. And then at the end of the six week unit, I had um I, I invited parents of family members, uh uh adults uh to a uh a discussion. They, I broke the kids up into groups of mixed groups of, of adults and, and students uh in several different classrooms. Um And I had uh several uh you know, questions but the, the, the, the questions, but again, they were, they weren't like right or wrong questions. They were like um just wondering, right, exploring, analyzing and the parents were, were floored at how well even when they got, were presented with novel issues, they were able to, to connect and, and apply what they had learned. 00:05:32 Well, that was because I intentionally did that because I kept telling them throughout the the unit, I was like, remember the point is that that not just not that you learn these memorize these historical events, but remember the point is is that, you know, 15, 20 years, you hear about something new, a new issue or a new policy that you're able to identify the patterns. Um you know, look below it and see what the tensions are, but between it and be able to make an informed and the historical context and be able to make an informed decision on where you stand on it. Um So I emphasized that I emphasized the pattern, like one of the things I did was um that before we started, uh each unit, then, um I would present uh what I call value tensions. I made them up. But um for example, individual rights versus the common, good, uh civil liberties versus national security and they were on a continuum, they're not right or wrong, but on a continuum, we did a lot of um take a stand activities for example. 00:06:35 And I would, in the beginning of the unit, I would give them start out with very easy, easy, very, you know, something very obvious issues in, in, in their world around them, not national politics where you have that tension. Um And then I would have them stand on a continuum and, you know, for several different ones until they, they they got, they were able to identify, see how all in all these issues we have there the same or similar tension underneath it. Then we would, uh do the history of the unit, the, the historical and again, each time, every time a new, um, uh historical event is I help them see the, the patterns. And then at the end of the unit, we would go back to the present. But this time with a more meaty controversial, you know, issues that are actually in the news. Um And then the same thing based on what you've learned in history and based on your understanding of those tensions, what can you tell me about, you know, what insight does that give you into this issue? 00:07:36 So they had tons of practice each repetitive. Um And so at the end, they, they were able to, to do that. Um So, but that's my emphasis is on teaching historical and structural racism as opposed to interpersonal bias. I almost don't touch um interpersonal bias. I think that's first of all, that can be very ideologically uh laden. Um You, especially without, if you don't have that historical context, then if you're, it becomes very emotional and contentious and very ideological. But also I feel like I would be imposing um a AAA position on them like this is the right thing, you know, this is the correct answer. So this is the right position. This is, this is how you be race that are not racist. You know, and I, II, I do that with myself and my son but, um, it, it's, I think it's inappropriate in, in the classroom but I find that, you know, as long as you, you, you, you know that history and you have the evidence and you're basing your opinion on that evidence. 00:08:42 Um, then I, I found that the positions were, uh, you know, they could be very different uh ideologically liberal and conservative, but you don't have anybody saying something, you know, crazy or, or, or racist, right? You know. Um So one of the ways I did that was a key way that I did that is um in the beginning of the uh of the unit, um I had them, I asked them the question, you know, does structural racism exist? Like just the, the, the start of the section on, on race? Um And I said this is, and I, because I don't, I'm not gonna tell them that structural racism exists. That's um you know, first of all, as a, as a black woman, I'm definitely not gonna say that to um a predominantly white classroom but any, but anyhow, it, it's just not good teaching, right? You know, that that's basic teaching is you don't need the students need to find out for themselves. Um So uh they looked at the data so they, they did what I call a data inquiry instead, you know, instead of using historical um inquiries are based on text, right? 00:09:46 Primary sources, text, sometimes images. This one was based on data, it's all data. Um And, but I did say this is an empirical um inquiry uh like you have in science uh or, but um not in, not in opinion and, and not just in science and in social science, right? So in economics, sociology, you know, the human geography, it's an empirical issue that you're trying to figure out. So look at the data and then uh at the end I say, OK, what you're trying to figure out is the structure exist. What, what did you find? And they're like, oh my God, it not only does it exist, but it is so much worse than we imagined. They, they, I knew structural racism existed because they told me, they taught me that is not good teaching, right? Um But the there and also not, not only should you not be telling, you know, that the students should be looking at the data themselves, but also it was interesting that, you know, once they saw the data, they saw it was so much worse than they imagined because their imagination is, you know, if you just say structural reasons this without that, you know, them seeing the data themselves, they, they imagine it to be much smaller than, than it is. 00:11:06 And, and then, and then they could see also very specifically how some of the ways it plays out, right? So then, um I presented them with a, a framework for the entire unit. Um I said we're going to distinguish between empirical issues and opinion slash policy issues. So, empirical issues are not up to debate. Um You know, we don't debate uh whether the holocaust occurred, we don't debate whether it's um um you know, of what, what temperature water boils or, or freezes or whatever it is. Right. So, um and does stricter racism exist, as we saw, it's an empirical issue, it's very, it's pretty straightforward to measure it, you know, in different ways, it's broken down, you know, how does stricter racism a affect, for instance, racial disparities and asthma, racial, you know, um and, but there's tons, tons and tons of evidence, right on that. Um So we, we don't, it's not appropriate to debate it. We assess the, the, the evidence on it and you should definitely be given the opportunity to assess the evidence on empirical issues before you just make a decision or, you know, based on so what you think. 00:12:18 Um And, but then we're gonna separate that from policy questions because that's opinion and, and that's, that's gonna vary a lot. Uh not just individually, uh not just your identity but also your ideology obviously, right? You know, uh more government intervention, less government intervention that is, we are not uh uh uh suggesting that one is better than the other if you're against affirmative action. I totally respect that. I can, I, you know, that's, that's an ideological opinion but, you know, that's, it, it's not the structure of race that's not up for, for debate. And what that did was, um, it, it greatly minimized, it pretty much cut out most the vast majority of ways that classrooms are disrupted by conversations on race. Um, and the vast majority of, uh, parent concerns because, um, most of the racism is going to enter the classroom when uh a student uh says, um you know, strict racism doesn't exist, you know, not, not based on evidence just because they, they haven't personally observed it in their um 90 a 95% white community. 00:13:34 They have not, never personally observed it. So strict racism doesn't exist but they can see racial disparities. So, oh, but the racial disparities are due to black people just not working hard enough or are due to uh being low income, right? And then that is not gonna go over very well with the black students or Latino students or even, you know, people, other progressives, right? So that's gonna be one source and then the other source of, of the classroom disruption of uh these conversations going wrong. Um Is what if a conservative student says, for example, um you know, I'm against for uh I don't agree with affirmative action which is a completely valid concern, but then, you know, uh they get called racist or you know, they, they get that push back. So if you have that distinction between purple versus policy and uh you look at the evidence and strict racism exists, it, it does impact, it does not determine racial disparities. Clearly, individual effort in there obviously also play a role in not too, but it, it certainly impacts that you have to consider the impact of that on racial disparities. 00:14:44 But then once that's established, um people can have different opinions on what to do about it. That is very different. Um And I would present that very, just transparently to the students. And it would be interesting because, uh you know, first there was an outburst and it was usually on progressive students, progressive students would um shout out what you didn't allow people to say that affirmative action is better. I'm like, yep. You know, that is an opinion, right? And then, oh, it always went the exact same way and then they would, then they'd be silent for like a minute and you could almost see the cogs being, you know, turning in their minds and they're like, wait a second, wait, that, that works. That works. Yeah. Yeah. With that, you know, um and it, it, it allowed for, it really reduced the tension and then allowed for much more respectful conversations, respect for each other. 00:15:49 That also remember combined with those value tensions, right? Because uh you know, I had, I had ordered that was at the same time simultaneously, you know, teaching them that, you know, the, the, those other people aren't stupid. It's not that I'm right. They're, they're wrong. I got it right. They're stupid. But rather that they're valuing a different, you know, that they're, they're on the other, you know, that they're having a different value in that value. Tension. Um, and all of all of us agree that both of those values are important. Both everybody agrees that individual rights and the common good are uh are, are good things and, and, and based on the context, there are also foundational uh you know, part of our constitution, they're foundational um values, same thing, civil liberties, national security, but we disagree on and we are on that continuum, you know, what balance we're on. So that combined with the empirical versus um policy framework plus some other work I did with um uh for example, I do deliberations into the debates also, you know, it's not, I'm right or wrong, but we have to listen to each other, respect each other and come to a um you know, uh a final solution that is that, that benefits the common good. 00:17:10 But again, only policy issues, no, only policy issue, right? Not empirical issues, right? Um And so, and, and I also emphasized, um you know, the, that the co the goal was also the reason why I wanted them to be able to understand and take informed positions on policy was so that they could work together across different racial difference, ideological difference, whatever um worked together. Um and, and uh deliberate together to find um you know, solutions that, that, that benefit the common good that all of us are, are um you know, the benefit of the country because that was also a concern of mine that we're so politically polarized. Um Anyway, I talked a lot. No, this is beautiful. I feel like this was like the majority of like everything we needed to hear. So I'm so glad you went through all of that. I just wanted to highlight a few things that stuck out to me of just like this idea of how it looks in practice because you took us kind of from the, the, you took us through the framework and the vision, but you took us through it through the lens of an actual unit or how you would lay this out for students. 00:18:19 And so some things I'm just thinking if a listener is thinking, OK, how do I coach a history teacher to kind of do some of these things? I love the idea of kind of that. And I talked about it on the podcast here before. And you were the one who introduced me to this theory or this, this concept of kind of the empirical or the policy, right? I think mcavoy and has right to like talk about these things. And so that is fascinating, right? So we can not, we don't debate the empirical, we do debate the policy, we can have a continuum. I love that idea. It's either or you can be on a continuum on policy issues. Right. Yes. Great point. And then also that it benefits the common good. I think that grounding is like really central to the conversation and that's how you get through those two challenges that you raise. Right? If a, if a teacher is just kind of going in and saying, we're gonna have these debates about policy issues, but the the grounding isn't in that it, your answer has to benefit the common good. Then you probably could get a lot of like racism and, and things coming out. But that grounding just makes it so that we eliminate. Like you were saying a lot of those concerns we may have and honestly concerns that teachers often, those concerns are so daunting for teachers that they don't even start the conversations because they're afraid of what might happen and they feel ill equipped. 00:19:31 And I think these are logistical things that you can do in a classroom to have a generative conversation that respects the dignity and honors the dignity of everyone and still enables for disagreement and like an authentic deliberation. So I just wanna say thank you because that is amazing. Yeah, I might even, I came to us history after teaching um civics and, and government for um uh for several years. So I had that background. So, civic discourse um and uh was, was important to me that um that makes sense to me. And I already had um a lot of civic activities, like for instance, the deliberation, you know, the, the take a stand. I had already, I had already done the value tensions. II, I transferred them over. I invented that I came up with that when I was teaching us government and civic. So um I, I sort of adapted it to, to, to the history, the history setting. I love the value tension. So honestly, I, I just was working with the US history team who was developing some new units. 00:20:32 And my favorite one that they developed was or they didn't frame it in that exact way like a value tension. But it basically was like, is it more important to have this value or this value? And that was like the key question and I just envision a world where like us history units are taught where like each unit is a value tension and then we just go back in history to explore like the both sides of those tensions. And then we use it to like you were saying, bring it to the modern deliberation, like what's going on now because I love your goal of like, how do we get students today to understand what's going on today? Using kind of history and that grounding to um really be able to participate in the national discourse. Like I, I love that, I'd love to see that everywhere. Thank you. The value, tensions have several um goals or uh benefits. And one is like you said that the respect on um uh you know, of other positions, ideological positions, but also it, it also encourages them to, to move a little bit towards the, the well off the extremes. 00:21:37 I don't care where they are, you know, they don't, I don't, it's not like I want them all to be exactly in the middle, but the, the extremes are usually not very healthy, right? Um So it, it, and stop thinking it as a binary, but it usually alludes them to have a position that's at least slightly, you know, off of the, the extremes on the continuum because that's what a debate does. A debate encourages you almost forces you to be, you know, 100% this or 100% this, um, the whole package, right? Um, but that allows them to think more critically. It's also encourages more critical thinking, right? Because you're, you're able to weigh it and, and you can say, well, you know, this, but that maybe actually this part can be further on and this part, yeah, it uh it, you break down the components and really weigh the advantages and disadvantages. Um which makes you, which helps you, like I said, it helps your critical thinking skills and also it really helps you have a, a more reform position rather than just, you know, uh the talking points. 00:22:40 And then the other um advantage of the, the value is that's what allowed me, allowed them to draw the historical through lines or not all by itself, but it really helped them to draw the historical through lines. And also again, to, to be able to understand the, the present day issues because they had two, they had two resources or um one was that historical context, right? Um For example, terms that are used in, in politics, right? They're historically la they have the, the they say historical connotation, they have, you know, lots of the terms we use law and order and on and on and on, right? They have deep historical connotations that kids don't know. Right. So they have that historical context and historical connotation. Um And then they have that value test and those two things will allow them to make an informed decision. And I also yet another thing is um to all everything else that I've said so far was explicit, very explicit and very uh that I taught the kids. 00:23:44 One thing I did not um explicitly share with the kids is that I indirectly um uh I modeled well, first of all, I modeled uh uh that, you know, we're, we're, we're learning, right? We're growing, we're constantly making mistakes and if that's OK, you know. Um so I, I would tell them, for example, I'm wearing my teacher hat, right? So, I mean, you can't say something completely, uh uh obnoxious and, but it, but if you, this is your chance to ask all those questions that you are scared to ask because this is a learning space, a learning space. And then once you, uh, so that you don't make those mistakes or you feel more confident when you go out and have these conversations elsewhere. But also I modeled uh in the very beginning when we started that. Um I, I almost, I very don't talk about bias very much. Uh I, I feel that it's more important as a US history teacher to teach that historical context and about structural racism um into teaching about bias and interpersonal racism. 00:24:51 First of all, it's hard to do without being uh teaching uh progressive values, right? Uh which is not inappropriate class when we should be non ideological. And it, it's very much telling kids, you know, how you should the Yeah, what you should do. If you don't believe this, then you are a racist, then this is the right position. It, it, I don't know, it's, it's hard to, yeah. And, and also that the US history, right? That's the historical context is that, that history and that the con contemporary structure, racism, that, that's my job, right? Um And also uh they can learn, it's pretty easy to learn about bias outside the classroom and they, they have 100 chances to learn about in uh inter race outside that classroom. But they will have very few chances to learn that history and about structuralism outside the classroom. And finally, that historical structure of racism will set them up to learning about bias. Because from what I've seen a lot of ways that these conversations and discussions on bias go wrong is like how my my students, you know, when they discussed affirmative action, right? 00:26:01 Uh because they're, they're not aware that that not those, those um positions on bias or interpersonal racism are not informed bias. So I see my role as, you know, setting them up. Um But anyhow, the, so that, but so I would model that uh that the, the 11 of the few times I talked about bias is at the very beginning to, you know, set the tone in the classroom. So the, the one thing, you know, this is, you can't say it in something obnoxious, but you can ask questions that you would be afraid to ask somewhere else. And then the, the, the, the, the second thing is I would um model look, I'm, I'm a, you know, 50 year old African American woman and, and I, and I, you know, step in it all the time mess up, right? Um You know, with other, I say things that are, you know, offensive to other people. And I gave an, an example, actually, I gave an uh an actual example uh that involved a, another staff member. But when we, I didn't name them, I forget. But, um, and I say, I, I'm continue learning, I'm, you know, I, I said, like, hold up, I apologize. 00:27:07 You know, I inform myself so I, I won't do that at least particular thing again. II, I said that's part of, it's just a natural part of living in a diverse uh country and it has tons of benefits. I love living in such a, a, a diverse, uh community. But, um, my responsibility as a resident, a citizen is that I need to educate myself on it and I'm gonna make mistakes along the way, you know, I mean, it's not like you say check. I, I don't have any more biases. I was like, it's, it's like I don't say check. I am a, I learned how to be a good mother, right? So, or, um, you know, you don't take check. I learned how to be good Christian Jew or Muslim. Right? It, it's a, it's a con or check. I am the perfect, uh, partner, spouse, right? It's a constant process and you're going to mess up, you are going to inadvertently offend your, your spouse or your child. 00:28:09 Right. What do you do? You just apologize, inform yourself, keep on going. And so I think that helped a lot. And then the final thing is that I helped, I was, again, I didn't say it but, um, I, I made comments along the way that helped them see themselves as a we, we, I I fostered a we identity, equity con I call it equity conscious. We identity. I told them, you know, like the, the six firemen who touched the elephant in different parts, we're, we're living on different parts of the elephant. We're not just touching different parts of elephant. We live on different parts of elephant. So our Americas look very different. We each see of an experience, a very different America. Um So we gotta talk but so just like this explain, we got to talk to each other so that we can move the elephant forward together because we're, you know, even though we're in different parts of the elephant, we're also on the same elephant and it benefits us all to move it forward. 00:29:11 So you gotta figure out how to, you know, how to look at empirical evidence and how to talk about policy issues and and listen to each other so that you can figure out solutions that benefit the common good, which is the whole elephant to move it forward. So we were constantly, I would, I would say uh you know, you guys have to learn these skills, you have to learn the skills of looking for evidence. I also taught them how to read data graphs. Of course, they've learned that in math class, but it's different for, you know, social science issues. We looked at, you know, learning how to data learning. Uh you learn how to use, go to evidence and then, you know, you learn how to deliberate, learn how civic discord. You learn how you're learning all these things so that when you go out in the world, you know, you can, you can help. Uh I told them us adults messed up, right? We've created this world with, you know, racism and uh um structural poverty, structural uh racism, extreme political polarization. 00:30:17 We can't even pass any laws because Congress is so divided. We adults messed that up. But you, we I I'm I'm counting on you, you guys have the opportunity to use these skills to move the alpha forward to, to pass, to vote on policies that will improve the country and, and bring us back together that will reduce racism for racism, reduce strut for poverty and, and and pass laws that improve the common good. Um So you noticed what I was doing? There is, first of all, I'm fostering that we identity, you know, we identity with many differences but um and you can work together, right? Um But the second thing also is I'm taking away the shame and blame, right? You are not, no, none of you as young people are responsible for what was in the past, but you are collectively responsible for improving the future. 00:31:19 You see that, that difference. Um And then I would say, you know, 30 years from now when I'm in that old age, old people home. Don't let me find out that you guys dropped the ball. I, we are counting on you to work together and move things forward and, and fix a little bit of what we messed up. So I didn't, I didn't tell them what was behind that. That was the only, I didn't tell them what was behind that, but I was fostering that, that um those feelings or a disposition. I should say that is amazing. Thank you for sharing all of that. I think as we move too close, I think people have been listening have probably been like, yes, I wanna do all of these things and I, I'm wondering if there's one thing we can share as a place to start for either a teacher or someone who is kind of coaching teachers, history teachers to kind of do this better. Where what's kind of step one? What's kind of the thing that gets the momentum going if you had to pick one? Hi, it's Lindsay. Just hopping in here quickly to tell you about today this episode. Freebie Io talks about in this episode, her lesson plan where she uses the metaphor of the blind men and the elephant to teach about important structural racism concepts. 00:32:31 That lesson is going to be available to you for free. Thank you. I, and that will be located on our blog post for this episode. That's at Lindsay beli dot com slash blog slash 132 back to the episode. Um That's kind of hard because they definitely worked in. Um I would not do one of those alone. Um That, so I guess you could divide it into, let's see, two parts, right? Two in basic. It's that, you know, same thing, the empirical. So for the, you know, teaching that history teaching that structural racism. So, unfortunately, I had to, um I had to invent that. Um basically, uh I had to teach myself a lot of it too. And then I had to create resources and figure out how to teach it to get because teaching about ST and structural racism, you know, is hard. Um I do have a um uh a short article in psychology today that summarizes um that because I train now, II, I now train teachers uh how to do this, but it's I, I would tell them you cannot do them separate. 00:33:39 So you have to, on one hand, you know, teach that historical structure of racism with tons of data, not just primary sources, but data, et cetera. Um on one hand and, and I, I came up from bad experiences, but what I did is after every time I would try something new or after the unit, I was constantly sending out um Google Monkey Forms anonymous, but they had to specify their race and their ideology and I would pour through those. Um And then say, oh, I need to adjust it, you know, and I adjust it next, the, you know, the next, for the next year or sometimes if I, if I could see it did not go well in the classroom, I come back the next day and say, I'm, I'm sorry, I apologize that that did not go well, I'm gonna restart that. So I, um but anyhow, um yeah, so that, that, that's one set of skills and resources that teach about structural racism and they don't really exist. Um And then the other part um is the more civic part. 00:34:41 So that includes the value, tensions. Um And that uh I, I, the, basically the, the per I call it, it's perspectives, consciousness or being able to take perspectives, taking, they call it. And I use the blind men and the elephant framework. We, I would simulate it um with the students, students would simulate the blind men and the elephant. Um I have that lesson is free on my website, by the way. Um So the, on the very, very first day school, they would, I have them, I would blindfold, you know, three volunteers. And I brought out this old sculpture of a beer that I found in the store, art room storage. Um And then I put a different part into each of their hands. They would, I say, describe the shape, not the text of the field, but the shape, of course they disagreed. Um And then, um I would share the, the parable metaphor to them and they got, they got it right. Everyone has different perspectives on the issue. And I said, OK, I'm gonna take it one step forward and I gave them, um, maps of the racial maps of Washington to see where I was. 00:35:46 And you could see the stark segregation of both. I gave them three maps, racial, um, political ideology or who voted for in the last election and also income. And I said, OK, what does that, how does that connect? And they were working in pairs? And usually you take them a while, but eventually each year one of the kids would say, oh my God, we're not just touching different parts of the elephant. We're actually living on different parts of the elephant and we're experiencing different Americas and, and I said, yes, so the experiencing different Americas, that's the empirical issues, right? Um in, in, in large part, right? Because um because you, you, you, you have students say who look at a graph of national graph and say no, that's not true. You just because it, yeah, you, you see that map right there, you see that, you see that neighbor right there, that's 99% white, you know, and high income. Yeah, you live in that bubble. You don't see the rest of the world. This is national averages, right? 00:36:49 You know. Um so that living on different parts of the elephant is more like that empirical and then the touching is, is more like a policy, you know, the different opinions based on your identity and stuff. And I, I put that, I blew up that poster and have it on the wall all year long and we would refer to it and, and the kids would refer to it. Like if they're having a discussion, not, not even about race about the year and they're having a discussion about whatever. And when the kids gets entrenched in their, in their position, the other kid would point to the wall and say, remember the elephant, you know, um it got to where the English teachers came to me and were like, so what is this elephant that the kids are talking about in English in my class? So, you know, but um so yeah, those two parts, the two, they have to be uh you, you have to do them in Tanda. Um That makes so much sense. 00:37:51 Yeah, because you, because if you just like present the structural racism without first of all giving them that freedom to have different opinions on political issues, you could see how that doesn't go well. Um And also without training them to work together, you know, to respect each other's differences on different parts of the, all that, you know, is they work together and, and then also vice versa. I would not do all any of the civics part unless they had the historical and economic um evidence too. So they worked together. But I do have um so that's what I do now, iii I train teachers um how to do that. And I also um I developed uh I have like huge um huge data uh base of uh not data. I have these huge power point um of just slides of different data points, different historical resources, primary sources. Um And that's part of the package. 00:38:53 If I, if I train um teachers, they get um they, they get that just treasure trove of tons and tons of, of uh yes slides with uh data graphs with the uh the results of of different research, um you know, primary sources, et cetera. Um And then, uh you know, they can pick and choose, of course, you know, based on their curriculum, based on their interests, based on uh whatever they, it, it, it makes it easier for them to, to feed it into their given into their own curriculum, you know, they can take to enhance. Um So, yeah, and I, I was gonna say you're leaning me into my, my final question of just like where people can learn more about you. And of course, we'll link to all these things of psychology today article. Um That, that lesson you were saying will link to your site and the lesson on perspective consciousness. Um where can people who are a lot of people who listen to our leaders and if they're interested in bringing you to their school for training, like how do they get in touch with you and, and where would you want them to go to? 00:39:55 Connect? Yep. Um My uh consult consultancy is named Uprooting Inequity. So the that's intentional, it's uh the Uprooting is uh it is reflective of my um my focus on getting to root causes, right? So when they're looking at policy issues, when you're looking and also on the institutional level, right? So if you have, if you're trying to address, for example, inequity on the institutional level, as school administrators, you know, let's get down to, let's drill down to the root causes and some of them may be historical, some of them may be behavioral science. I'm, I'm a huge nerd. I, I eat, I eat a peer reviewed journal articles for breakfast. Um So I'm always, so, you know, the historical roots, economic roots of behavioral science, um and as in addition to uh evidence based strategies, so I'm always like, let's get to it. So that's essentially the, the same thing with the, the policy issues, right? I'm telling the kids, you know, don't vote on it or take a position because this is the right way. 00:40:57 But, you know, let's get to the root behind the policy issue which is, you know, historical and structural racism or whatever the equivalent is. So that's, that's why I'm Uprooting inequity um instead of addressing uh on the top and I have a website Uprooting inequity dot com. Perfect. I thank you so much for being a guest on this show today. It's been a pleasure learning from you. Thank you for having me. If you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane, SA 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 to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling yourself as you listen right now. Grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm. How I can help you make this big dream of reality? I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Z 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 to brainstorm. 00:42:02 Call it Lindsay by clients dot com 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 teach better dot com. Slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I show you how to create an intellectual ancestors tree:
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AuthorLindsay Lyons is an educational justice coach who helps schools and districts co-create feminist, antiracist civics-based curricula, discussion opportunities, and equitable policies that challenge, affirm, and inspire all students. A former NYC public school teacher, she holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Lindsay believes all students deserve literacy, criticality, and leadership skills. Archives
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