Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to the Adaptive Edge of Education.
Speaker: My name is Miranda Shorty and I'll be your host today.
Speaker: Today on the episode we have the incredible privilege of the esteemed Miss Abigail Ortiz who will be joining us to talk about a topic that she feels is an adaptive challenge in education.
Speaker: Mrs. Ortiz is a high school social studies teacher.
Speaker: She's also an Interact Club advisor, and I also have the incredible privilege of having her be my right-hand man at school.
Speaker: And without her, I would never find any sense of organization or timeliness.
Speaker: So I'm very happy and proud and excited to have her here today.
Speaker: And if you would, Abby, take it away and let us know what topic you're going to be talking about today.
Speaker: Thank you for that introduction.
Speaker: I do appreciate it.
Speaker: Today I will be talking about the topic of globalization as an adaptive challenge, globalization in education specifically,
Speaker: Globalization is usually talked about in the sense of economics originally because it sprung up after unprecedented trees across the globe, which led to this interconnectedness and interdependence in multiple things, economics, politics, cultural stuff, environmental.
Speaker: technological, and now of course education.
Speaker: So globalization of education is just this idea that students are more connected with others across the globe, with materials, resources across the globe than ever before.
Speaker: And the reason I chose this topic to talk
Speaker: is because it brings, as a social studies teacher, it brings us fascinating conversation around cultural competency, international competitiveness.
Speaker: That's really important to talk about.
Speaker: As a social studies teacher, I do talk about World War II frequently in classes.
Speaker: I think what inspired me to choose it as a topic today
Speaker: goes back to a class that I was teaching this year.
Speaker: And when we were working on our World War II unit, we were talking about Japanese internment in America.
Speaker: And I teach social studies in a way that like students are always just looking at primary and secondary sources and drawing understanding from those, not exactly from me, guiding them with the skills to pull out their own understanding and interpretations of history.
Speaker: based on how it's been interpreted before in primary sources and all of that stuff.
Speaker: And the students, having never heard about Japanese internment, were shocked about what their own country was willing to do out of the fear and the hate and the ethnocentrism and the xenophobia that came from that time period.
Speaker: And in an increasingly globalized world in education, I think it's really important to talk about.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So where I see globalization and education or how I see globalization and education for me as a big equity advocate for everyone is this idea of cultural competence and proficiency.
Speaker: And I find it really concerning frequently how, like you said, how many students are unaware of
Speaker: of our own, the darker parts of our own history as a country that should be used as navigational tools for understanding how to behave in the future.
Speaker: And not even just students, I mean, frequently how often even some adults are unaware of like our darker times, like the eugenics movement, Jim Crow laws and what those look like and segregation in general.
Speaker: for people of color, lack of access to voting rights, Japanese internment, the treatment of indigenous peoples and continuously through the entirety of our history as a country.
Speaker: So I often feel like surprised when people don't know what I'm talking about or they
Speaker: don't believe that that could be true of their country.
Speaker: Like there's an ethnocentrism to this idea that like we would never, that's something other countries do.
Speaker: That's something other people do, but we wouldn't behave that way.
Speaker: Layered with like a thinly veiled justification for that event.
Speaker: Does that make sense?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: I think when I think of globalization and education, I think the push to find cultural proficiency is the most critical aspect of that, especially as we keep advancing as a globe in terms of our ability to connect, to be interconnected and global commerce, the global economy, global communication and
Speaker: the global culture.
Speaker: But when I say that, I don't want that to be perceived as like cultural blindness.
Speaker: Does that make sense?
Speaker: Because I think that's sometimes what happens.
Speaker: And I want to get your thoughts on some legislation in our state currently that's being pushed.
Speaker: And I will tell you the bills that I'm going to talk about have all been found to be ought not to pass and accepted as ought not to pass.
Speaker: So they're dead in the water.
Speaker: However, there's an ideology to these bills that is absolutely not dead in the water.
Speaker: And that even states near us have seen a push in this direction that has passed.
Speaker: And it concerns me because it feels like the language in some of these bills is
Speaker: could very easily be just reissued in a new legislative draft and tweaked enough, if you will, that it will pass, which is super concerning.
Speaker: So I'll tell you what the bills are first before we get into it.
Speaker: But the first is the legislative draft 618, which is an act to eliminate critical race theory, socioemotional learning,
Speaker: and diversity, equity, and inclusion in education in its entirety.
Speaker: So not, and not only just those terms, but anything related to those terms.
Speaker: However, when you read the legislative draft, it becomes pretty clear pretty quickly that the person that wrote the draft has no idea what those things are.
Speaker: Or they're just twisting the words so intensely that it's not that they don't know what it is.
Speaker: It's just like an absolute bastardization of the original intention.
Speaker: Does that make sense?
Speaker: And when I think of removing critical race theory, socio-emotional learning, diversity, equity, inclusion, I think of
Speaker: reducing cultural proficiency to the negative end of the spectrum.
Speaker: And just for the listeners at home today, or in your car or wherever you happen to be, when we talk about cultural proficiency, we're talking specifically about a framework of understanding cultural proficiency from Nori Robbins, Lindsay, Lindsay and Terrell.
Speaker: And this framework was developed, I think it began development like in 2009, and then it's gone through a lot of different revisions, but the main core six areas of cultural proficiency, the rubric for cultural proficiency have remained the same.
Speaker: So the goal being at the most positive end of the spectrum, the most beneficial cultural proficiency is
Speaker: Then right before that you have cultural competence and before that pre-competence.
Speaker: And those are all more on the positive, like the, the positive end in that they are a selection or an election for transformation and change in cultural awareness and proficiency, appreciation development.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then there's a negative end of the spectrum, the worst being cultural destructiveness, the second to worst being incapacity and then blindness.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: When I think of removing critical race theory, socio-emotional learning, DEI, that to me looks like not only cultural blindness, right, but also incapacity in that
Speaker: it's this idea that we're not going to talk about how there are different cultures because our current culture that we have here is the best one, it's the most superior, so it's the only one we need to talk about.
Speaker: Right, and then there's this piece that the culture gets to choose which one to talk about, so that kind of shows this idea of superiority on its own when it's the one that's choosing which culture is dominant.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that's such a removal from cultural appreciation or acceptance or diversity acceptance and appreciation that it's really kind of, it's a little terrifying.
Speaker: The further you go down this rubric, this spectrum, if you will, or I think they call it a continuum, the closer you get to destruction.
Speaker: And at society's worst is where we see
Speaker: cultural destruction.
Speaker: And that subsequently at its most heightened state looks like Holocaust and genocides and internments and violence and discrimination against people based on their, their cultural identity.
Speaker: So it's super scary and it's scary.
Speaker: We're still talking about it because we're, we're it's 2023.
Speaker: So yeah,
Speaker: 60 years ago, we already established that we were going to work on, as a country, civil rights protections that would remove our ability to be culturally destructive, right?
Speaker: Or even culturally incapacitated.
Speaker: And that's the next level up from destructive, which is a sense that you can still...
Speaker: not with legal sanctions discriminate, but still maintain bias and prejudice, stereotyping, just, you know, verbal harassment and that kind of thing because of an inherent belief in a superiority that exists.
Speaker: Without trying to destroy the theoretically inferior cultures, you can still maintain the belief in a superiority.
Speaker: Does that make sense?
Speaker: So that is super concerning to me because how do we usher students into a globalized world where they believe that we, or we've created a border around our culture that limits it to being the best, the most superior in a vacuum?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's very concerning.
Speaker: I think that reflects back on the anecdote that I shared about my students being alarmed in their senior year of their education, mind you, that the American government would put people in camps based on sometimes looks, sometimes that cultural identity.
Speaker: I think what really scares me as well about these
Speaker: the legislative act 618 that you mentioned, in order to build any type of cultural proficiency, it has to start first with a strong social emotional learning.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: Because if you don't have that social emotional intelligence to be able to acknowledge how you feel about something, right?
Speaker: So maybe you learn something about another culture and it makes you feel uncomfortable.
Speaker: So if you can't, if you don't even have the emotional knowledge,
Speaker: intelligence to be able to reflect on that, not judge it, just sit with it and be like, why do I feel this way?
Speaker: maybe how do other people feel about my culture?
Speaker: Like what is this two way existence and like developing that empathy for understanding how your culture is perceived or how you perceive other cultures and just being able to sit there and understand that, which kind of comes from a social emotional learning.
Speaker: We can't even start with the DEI or like the cultural proficiency piece of it.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I think that's really true.
Speaker: Empathy is inherently built into this skill.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Flexibility.
Speaker: Flexibility.
Speaker: is inherently built into this skill.
Speaker: And we can't practice cultural proficiency unless we've already developed those skills and the ability to reflect and self-moderate, which are all socio-emotional learning skills.
Speaker: So that's...
Speaker: with that trifecta of elimination, CRT, SEL, DEI, it really eliminates any ability to make progress in that area.
Speaker: I mean, even if it was just, I have to be honest with you, this is anecdotal, but when people even,
Speaker: remotely mention critical race theory.
Speaker: I think I just twinge at the notion because I'm like, oh God, they're going to try to explain it to me.
Speaker: They have no idea what it is.
Speaker: And this is going to be horrendous.
Speaker: I think that we can teach critical race theory in school and no one will even notice because that's how little people know of what critical race theory is.
Speaker: But to remove socio-emotional learning,
Speaker: that's dark, right?
Speaker: Like, that's like, I don't want my child to be emotionally developed or socially developed.
Speaker: I don't want them to relate to other people and treat other people.
Speaker: Well, I don't want them to have a solid foundation of expectations for how, um, you know, they should be treated by others.
Speaker: Like I'm not interested in that.
Speaker: And it's fascinating at a time when we acknowledge as a society that education and educators are taking on more and more roles.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: So like there's a lot of kids that maybe just get most of their SEL stuff.
Speaker: At school.
Speaker: At school.
Speaker: And then, yeah.
Speaker: And then we're saying, but we don't want any of it there.
Speaker: And I understand the notion of, well, we rather teach socio-emotional learning at home.
Speaker: I appreciate that.
Speaker: However, I think that negates the socio-emotional learning, right?
Speaker: Like, how are we going to say, I'd like to teach you SEL in the vacuum of our home where there's just a few people you know really well.
Speaker: And we all probably generally practice similar cultural, ideological, philosophical values.
Speaker: So I just want to practice it here.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That doesn't really seem effective or efficient in any kind of way.
Speaker: So yeah, that part, that was really shocking to me.
Speaker: That bill was concerning to me.
Speaker: And I know that it's dead in the water right now as it stood, but that doesn't mean that there isn't still this drive, this external motivator.
Speaker: that kind of thing coming from somewhere.
Speaker: And we see it in other places too.
Speaker: Legislative draft 1196 is in our state the parent opt-out legislative draft, which is the idea that parents can at any point opt their child out of any part of the curriculum.
Speaker: And by that I don't mean they don't want their student to read this particular novel and so they need to be switched to a different
Speaker: novel that's equivalent in a topic or motif or theme, but not content.
Speaker: I'm talking about just, they call and say, we're opting them out of this curriculum and that's it.
Speaker: They don't learn that.
Speaker: And, and,
Speaker: So then I guess they just get to continue on excused from that whole portion of the curriculum and we'll just move on.
Speaker: And they'll get their grade at the end, which blows my mind, but also makes me feel like some of that is kind of driven by the same kind of people who want to eliminate whole portions of what we're trying to do in education when modernly as we see a holistic child.
Speaker: I think that that's interesting and very scary.
Speaker: Um, there's been multiple instances in my career, um, where people are most concerned about teaching about other cultures.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Um, I've had people ask me, well, why aren't you just teaching American history?
Speaker: I actually teach two different world histories.
Speaker: American history happens in between what I do.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: So the idea that they could just opt them out of any unit that maybe explores a culture that they're not interested in is scary.
Speaker: And it's actually really fascinating because when we're talking about an increasingly globalized world, both in education and all of the other ways that globalization presents itself, that doesn't leave those students with a competitive edge.
Speaker: So by trying to avoid this globalization, they are making them...
Speaker: not global citizens, which is not going to work out if globalization continues around the course it's on.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's a huge disadvantage to be like, here you graduated high school, time to go to college.
Speaker: You didn't learn about all of these things, which higher ed is going to assume was canon to your education.
Speaker: in public school and that you've come in with a foundation of understanding some of these sociological, psychological, ideological concepts, historical events.
Speaker: We assume that you have a basic, at least foundational understanding of these things before you hit the ground running in higher ed.
Speaker: You don't, too bad, so sad, we don't do that here.
Speaker: Like you should have got that there.
Speaker: So it's a huge disadvantage.
Speaker: And I think it's a disadvantage even more logistically in how it prepares students to talk about different topics when they're applying or in their letters for their application, their personal letters, or in interviews or whatever.
Speaker: How are they going to compete with other students who have a more cosmopolitan understanding of modern issues?
Speaker: especially modern social issues.
Speaker: Does that make sense?
Speaker: Yeah, it does.
Speaker: There's also the legislative draft 1199, which is requesting 100% transparency or which it was an act to
Speaker: require 100% transparency in curriculum and content.
Speaker: So by October 1st, every educator would need to have posted not only the required texts for their course and all of the things they'd be reading and viewing, but also all of their lesson plans, their assessments, like literally every single thing about their unit start to finish.
Speaker: And
Speaker: I think that's, I think it's fishing.
Speaker: I think it's, I'm going to scroll through this and look for things that I think I'll be offended by or frustrated with or feel misrepresents my interpretation of history or literature or whatever.
Speaker: Does that, what do you think about that?
Speaker: I think it's not realistic.
Speaker: First of all, we talked about how like,
Speaker: with globalization and education, like flexibility is required.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And any teacher knows flexibility is required.
Speaker: Always required.
Speaker: Like if students say you publish these materials, right.
Speaker: But students aren't understanding.
Speaker: So we do what we do.
Speaker: We pivot, we differentiate further, whatever we have to do to get students to understand.
Speaker: If I published everything I intended to use within a year, that would probably only be 50% of it because you just constantly have to supplement.
Speaker: You're always pivoting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's responsive teaching.
Speaker: That's good teaching.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: If you were, I'm doing this exact curriculum start to finish and I'm not deviating whatsoever.
Speaker: That's very poor.
Speaker: In my mind, that's very poor teaching.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And rigid teaching, which again is not.
Speaker: you know, those embedded practices that we use to help encourage those skills and students embedded practices like flexibility and differentiation and that kind of thing.
Speaker: We're saying, nope, we don't do that.
Speaker: So don't worry, you don't have to do that either, I guess.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So, yeah, I think that's really concerning as well.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: for a lot of higher, not higher ed teachers, but high school public education teachers and even middle school teachers, this idea of divisive concepts and we can't talk about this and we shouldn't talk about that and that's not appropriate for school being determined by the entirety of the constituency of a district is so wild because I think at some point it will become we can't
Speaker: Like, what can we teach about?
Speaker: What is something no one has a problem with?
Speaker: Which is a fascinating problem in a globalized world because what is true is that most students have access to more knowledge and content than I've ever given in my classroom.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: You have students seeing things...
Speaker: that adults who weren't able to access that at a young age, first of all, don't even understand, and we don't understand psychologically the impacts at this point fully, right?
Speaker: Of kids being immersed in such a globalized technological world that they get to see things happening across the world all the time, instantaneously.
Speaker: So it's fascinating that we're trying to... Dilute that?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So much when like what kids are really seeing isn't,
Speaker: nobody's seeing anything new in my class.
Speaker: We're learning about it in a different way, but we're definitely not seeing anything concerning that they haven't seen on the internet.
Speaker: On TikTok?
Speaker: Yeah, TikTok.
Speaker: I don't remember exactly where I was going.
Speaker: No, I hear what you're saying.
Speaker: I think what you're trying to say is I cannot prepare you for everything that I'm going to talk about in my classroom because I have no idea what everything I'm going to talk about in my classroom is going to be because
Speaker: how they're going to interpret even historical events that have already occurred that we're just going to keep talking about the same stuff because that's history.
Speaker: They're going to relate to modern issues or they should relate to modern issues.
Speaker: That's the hope is that they use that knowledge about this aspect of history and the events that occurred and the consequences of
Speaker: people's decisions in human history before and they apply that to what's happening right now.
Speaker: That's the goal, right?
Speaker: But if we can't talk about certain parts of human history and they want to talk about certain parts of modern issues, there's no bridge.
Speaker: So I totally get what you're saying and I absolutely think you're right.
Speaker: With the access to the global information being
Speaker: more advanced, more efficient, more ubiquitous now than it's ever been, we should be pushing.
Speaker: the globalization of education.
Speaker: We should be pushing more concepts.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: More SEL, right?
Speaker: More SEL.
Speaker: Like if students are experiencing things that are maybe more mature than would traditionally be in the classroom because of their access to world knowledge.
Speaker: And we know they are.
Speaker: We know they are.
Speaker: Then we need more SEL in order to help support them and understand what that means and their place in the world and develop coping mechanisms when they learn something shocking that they weren't prepared to learn yet.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So Abby teaches social studies and I teach English, but I do teach a humanities course with a social studies co-teacher.
Speaker: And in my humanities course, we begin every class period asking about, all right, what has happened in the news?
Speaker: Tell us what's going on in the news.
Speaker: What did you see?
Speaker: What did you hear?
Speaker: What are your thoughts?
Speaker: And it's incredible the amount of information they're able to pull out, first of all,
Speaker: It's secondly incredible how much of it comes from social media.
Speaker: I would argue probably 90% of the things I bring up in class when I say, where did you hear that?
Speaker: Or where did you find that out?
Speaker: I think I saw a TikTok video, right?
Speaker: Or I think I saw it on Twitter, or I think I saw whatever, Instagram, saw it on someone's story.
Speaker: And then thirdly, it's incredible how
Speaker: challenging it is for them to differentiate between, okay, if you saw that on the CNN 10 during your advisory period today, or if you saw that on Bob's TikTok, which is more likely to hold bias or unreliability, and they
Speaker: But Bob said it.
Speaker: Like, I get that.
Speaker: And we might like Bob.
Speaker: We might think Bob's a great guy.
Speaker: I don't know if that means that we can trust his personal opinion on, you know, this global event that's occurring.
Speaker: Let's backtrack a little bit about what Bob said and try to find some other sources to triangulate what Bob said and get to the heart of the truth of it.
Speaker: But if I wasn't doing that, you know what I mean?
Speaker: Like constantly with them, like rehashing out these major topics and what they've heard and what they think to be true because they saw it on Bob's TikTok and bringing them back to like, let's find something semi-reliable or like a little lower in bias to really hash out that concept.
Speaker: If I wasn't doing that, they would just be walking around with that in their head all day.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So, and there's been some crazy stuff.
Speaker: They've said some, they've believed some really crazy things.
Speaker: So I'm always, I always find that really interesting that if we aren't allowed to do that, right.
Speaker: So for me to be able to talk about some of those things, when Roe v. Wade popped up again this year, the argument over whether or not we should overturn Roe v. Wade, they wanted to talk about it every day, especially the girls in my class came up constantly.
Speaker: If I wasn't able to talk about the history of divisive decisions and events regarding the women's movement, how would I give them a framework to understand that?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: If I wasn't able to talk in front of everyone in that classroom from a socio-emotional perspective or from an equity perspective or from an inclusivity perspective, how do I break that concept down for them and say, here's the threat, here's the concern, here's that side, and then here's the side in support, here's how they feel?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: So that's really scary and frustrating, I think, too.
Speaker: And I didn't know that was that would not be in my curriculum map for parents to read by October 1.
Speaker: I didn't know that was going to be a thing.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Like that popped up out of nowhere.
Speaker: I would not have had that in my curriculum map.
Speaker: So what should have I said?
Speaker: No, we can't talk about that.
Speaker: That didn't go in my curriculum map loaded online for parents to view.
Speaker: So we can't talk about that or, you know, go over that at all.
Speaker: I can't do that.
Speaker: And I think that's the part of the transparency that is, I understand it.
Speaker: I understand it conceptually, the idea that parents want to know what their kids are learning about in school.
Speaker: And I'm not necessarily saying that that's not good.
Speaker: That's not a good idea.
Speaker: I'm saying the rigidity of
Speaker: is what makes it very challenging.
Speaker: It's a weird way to do it.
Speaker: Because if at any moment a parent reached out in an email or a phone call or whatever it was and they said, hey, what's my kid learning this week?
Speaker: What are you guys working on?
Speaker: I would tell them everything I've done.
Speaker: Even those random pop-up videos that I didn't think I was going to show or articles I didn't plan to pull out, I would share all of that with them and let them know what their kids are learning.
Speaker: So there's just got to be like a different way to go about it.
Speaker: Let me ask you this also.
Speaker: Do you think this is a little off topic, but we're going to do it anyway because it relates back eventually.
Speaker: Do you think when they say, I want to see your lesson plans, I want to see your assessments, to me, that feels like a commodity that I produce.
Speaker: based off of my education, the work that I've done, the research that I've done, that's a skill that I have to put together a lesson plan and assessments that align with standards that include vocabulary and enduring understandings and that differentiation and content that I know applies well to those standards.
Speaker: That's a skill that I have.
Speaker: It's such a skill that I happen to know it's marketable online.
Speaker: There's a couple of websites about it, but you're telling me you want me to put it on the internet for you for free.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Am I gatekeeping?
Speaker: If I feel like, no, sorry, there are people that will pay me for that.
Speaker: No, I don't know why.
Speaker: Like there's not a value of that type of intellectual property because that's what it is.
Speaker: That's what I think too.
Speaker: It's intangible intellectual property.
Speaker: Well, some of it's tangible.
Speaker: I mean, my assessments, my lesson plans are tangible, but the knowledge, the content, the curriculum that I create, that's intangible.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But I...
Speaker: I don't, sometimes I feel like I'm being a gatekeeper and saying I don't want to hand out all of the things that I do and all of my ideas all of the time to random people throughout the community.
Speaker: And sometimes who can then go over to those websites and put them on there now, you know what I mean?
Speaker: And then sometimes I feel like
Speaker: Sometimes I feel like it's gatekeeping and sometimes I feel like it's fair for me to say, I just put hours and hours and hours and hours of work into this unit, which I think is beautiful and structured really well.
Speaker: And now you have all of my assessments and
Speaker: which are just published online, freewheeling, students can take a look at them, whatever, right?
Speaker: I guess that completely negates the idea of the traditional style teachers that are doing assessments, tests that are, you know, the same.
Speaker: They've had them for like 10 years and we're going to sit in a room and everybody's going to take their pencil out or whatever, those kinds of standardized tests.
Speaker: They can forget it now.
Speaker: That's over.
Speaker: But, and I don't really like that style of testing myself.
Speaker: And if I found out that we were getting rid of that entirely in education, I would be thrilled.
Speaker: We're not.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so I don't think, I think it's unfair if we were to try in public education to get rid of that style of testing, I think we would be setting kids up unfairly for the further standardized testing they would have to do for their career fields.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I think it's fascinating that you bring that up because when we think about standardized testing and we think about those big tests that give students more merit or whatever, those are locked down, right?
Speaker: Like you can get in a lot of trouble for sharing knowledge about those tests.
Speaker: So it's fascinating that when we value a test, that's kind of the culture we place around it.
Speaker: But then in these everyday assessments that are
Speaker: are the important parts of their education, right?
Speaker: Those are just open to the public.
Speaker: I guess everybody can use them and take them and just run wild with them.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: But that's not the way we perceive assessing when it's on a bigger level.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: If it's the SATs or ACTs or, you know, praxis exams, AP exams, like that's not how we take it.
Speaker: So I think that's really interesting.
Speaker: And I think that's part of a bigger argument that ideologically,
Speaker: society doesn't view teaching as a profession or career, a long-term profession or career.
Speaker: I think they view teachers as stepping stone careers, but that's besides the point.
Speaker: I think that all of that, all of those legislative drafts, all of those goals are still geared towards one thing.
Speaker: And that is to eliminate things that we aren't comfortable with or we don't like without a conversation, without a discussion, just eliminate them, not just for education,
Speaker: My child, because I don't want it for my child, but for everyone.
Speaker: I don't want this taught to anyone.
Speaker: And that's culturally destructive.
Speaker: Yes, absolutely.
Speaker: That falls under the culturally destructive part of that cultural proficiency continuum.
Speaker: That's the worst you can get.
Speaker: That's the step at which we justify genocide and Holocaust and violence and discrimination.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: That's really scary to me.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: And I don't like any of that.
Speaker: I think too.
Speaker: So I know I've talked to you a little bit about young Zao and his book, learners without borders.
Speaker: And he's also written some other public, well, not some, he's written a ton of publications on globalization and education.
Speaker: I will tell, I want to be honest and upfront.
Speaker: When I first read young Zao, I was mad.
Speaker: I didn't like him at all.
Speaker: And the reason I didn't like his writing was because I felt like it was attacking teachers.
Speaker: I felt like it was saying that we're the problem.
Speaker: But then I realized that's really not what he was saying.
Speaker: What he was saying was we've only been given a sandbox that's so big to play in.
Speaker: And so we can only hand that amount of space to students.
Speaker: And that's what creates the barriers for them.
Speaker: There's a barrier when we have
Speaker: a pre-designed curriculum.
Speaker: There's a barrier when we have a test that we're teaching to.
Speaker: There's a barrier.
Speaker: I, myself, as a teacher, I'm a barrier for them.
Speaker: My classroom's a barrier.
Speaker: My school's a barrier.
Speaker: My district, my state, my country, barriers for children.
Speaker: And when I think of globalization, I think of those barriers.
Speaker: What are the barriers to getting students proficient at globalization and cultural proficiency
Speaker: I think part of those barriers are restricting them or showing rigidity in what they have access to.
Speaker: I think Yang Zhao would agree with that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This is a really difficult conversation to have from a country with so much privilege in this conversation, right?
Speaker: Like most of the people in the world, students here have...
Speaker: significantly less barriers sometimes.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: In terms of globalization in education, because as globalization increases, what tends to happen is countries or places that are poorer, more rural, have less and less access to education.
Speaker: So as globalization provides incredible opportunities around the world for education,
Speaker: the divide where it was already almost inaccessible is just broadened, right?
Speaker: So in terms of how the barriers it would create for the students that we work with, I think the biggest barrier is the types
Speaker: of legislative drafts that we just discussed?
Speaker: Oh, I think there are huge barriers.
Speaker: I think they restrict what we're able to do in the classroom and how flexible we can be.
Speaker: I think money is a gigantic barrier.
Speaker: I think the idea that I think traditionalism, perennialism, informational processing, essentialism, that's all a barrier.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: From those educational, those eight educational philosophies.
Speaker: I think that it's almost making our culture itself a barrier in cultural proficiency.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Not just like the tangible things that we're like able to do or not do based on whether or not we're publishing.
Speaker: Well, specifically pulling people out of it, but just like the culture it's creating itself is a barrier and becoming global success.
Speaker: Well, specifically, our ethnocentrism as a culture, our belief in our hierarchical position amongst cultures, right?
Speaker: I don't want to say patriotism is a barrier.
Speaker: Nationalism.
Speaker: nationalism.
Speaker: I want to be very specific about this because while I think it's, it's wonderful to be proud of where you're from and to support the country that you're from and, and show appreciation for your national origin when you do so with the belief that that place that you're from or that country that you belong to is subsequently the best one.
Speaker: And the rest of them aren't as good.
Speaker: That's where it gets really dangerous.
Speaker: And I think that sometimes in our nation, patriotism and nationalism are sold in tandem.
Speaker: And they're not.
Speaker: They shouldn't be.
Speaker: And that becomes a barrier.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Does that make sense?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And also exploitive.
Speaker: So when we show students, we talk to students about things that have happened to people exclusively from our own culture, people they'll recognize.
Speaker: What we're telling them is only things that happen to people from this culture matter.
Speaker: And things that happen to people from other cultures aren't as important.
Speaker: We're not going to discuss them or talk about them.
Speaker: And I think that's like the real threat to globalization.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And effective culture.
Speaker: equitable globalization.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Doing it with like, yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I think we're going to see globalization no matter what.
Speaker: But globalizing in education effectively, equitably, inclusively.
Speaker: Which brings me to a conversation that we can't not have if we're talking about globalization, which is international competitiveness, right?
Speaker: Because globalization springs from a competitiveness to go out in
Speaker: explore the world and be the first country to do it and clean colonies.
Speaker: Man the space race.
Speaker: So I think what's concerning about globalization in education was first the gap that we talked about just a few moments ago.
Speaker: And then how do we create global citizen
Speaker: that are aware of the impacts of their moment.
Speaker: Because some people will say globalization goes back to the 1400s when they went out and explored.
Speaker: That's pretty ethnocentric, right?
Speaker: It started with us?
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: So some people will say it goes back to the 1400s, others like 1800s, and it was adopted by the Industrial Revolution.
Speaker: There's different waves of globalization.
Speaker: The Vikings are going to be mad.
Speaker: They don't want to hear any part of that.
Speaker: For...
Speaker: students to like understand the moment of globalization that they're in and that the world they're living in with the technological globalization and the internet is relatively new yes and to be able to understand this type of globalization is new it's faster paced and then we're talking about cultures economies and cultures so like
Speaker: students experiencing the economy firsthand, like what that looks like for us is very different than other places as a result of globalization.
Speaker: Because one of the biggest parts of global, like not one of the, everything's big with globalization is the whole world.
Speaker: But one part of globalization is what we see companies really profiting off of is like being able to extract raw materials from specific places or being able to like outsource labor.
Speaker: at cheaper rates in other countries, which creates these economies that are not stable at all.
Speaker: And they're national economies because they're based on just like one thing.
Speaker: And we know that's not a stable economy.
Speaker: So how do we create global citizens with this globalization that are aware of their position?
Speaker: And their privilege.
Speaker: Well, according to...
Speaker: legislative draft 20 you can't talk about meritocracy i apologize my bad um but i see what you're saying how do we create them how do we create an understanding of globalization in them and of their position globally um their ability to influence their level of influence and um
Speaker: I'm not going to say the P word, it's not nice.
Speaker: And how do we make that such that it encourages empathy in them?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And ethics?
Speaker: A value for other cultures and differences?
Speaker: At the very least, an understanding.
Speaker: At the very least, human decency.
Speaker: Just being aware of the very interconnectedness of globalization at the different levels.
Speaker: Both the
Speaker: in regards to like the opportunities they can access as students in an increasingly globalized world where education is becoming globalized and as people who are living in a world that has been thoroughly economically globalized for a long time.
Speaker: I will tell you, globally, competitively, we're already struggling.
Speaker: We are.
Speaker: We've been struggling for a while.
Speaker: Do you want to hear some sad, upsetting data?
Speaker: So...
Speaker: the OECD has determined using pizza, which is pizza, which is their international standardized testing survey.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That while we're slightly higher than the average, the average is 1465.
Speaker: We are only 1485.
Speaker: And there are countries that we have better wealth, GDP or comparable wealth and GDP that are
Speaker: much higher in the mid to high 1500s.
Speaker: So we're struggling competitively in the sense that from our perspective, we think we have great education.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But from the global perspective, we're barely, we're barely running at the top of that league.
Speaker: Does that make sense?
Speaker: That does make sense.
Speaker: And yeah,
Speaker: we do very little to modify our industrial era, traditional style education to become competitive with places like Japan or the UK or Sweden.
Speaker: Like we do Finland.
Speaker: We do very little to change our structure, our mission or vision, uh, in an attempt to be more competitive in that arena.
Speaker: We've done very little.
Speaker: But it makes me wonder when we're talking about being competitive in education, what are we even competing for?
Speaker: Historically, it's what country makes the most money, most advancements, right?
Speaker: But we can't do that forever.
Speaker: I think what we're competing for right now is a seat at the table, a seat at the global table.
Speaker: But if we don't show reason for that, if we don't show a level of expertise or value or effectiveness, you
Speaker: globally, then our seat will be given away.
Speaker: So we have to maintain that.
Speaker: Does that make sense?
Speaker: It does.
Speaker: And it should be given away.
Speaker: So I think...
Speaker: Unless we recognize the rest of the world is moving on.
Speaker: The rest of the world is thinking about education from an adaptive challenge perspective.
Speaker: They're changing their mindsets.
Speaker: They're overhauling.
Speaker: They're restructuring, reframing.
Speaker: Unless we accept that they're doing that and we have to do that too, like in terms of our competitive edge, we're going to, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker: We're going to lose it.
Speaker: And we should, right.
Speaker: We're going to lose it and we should lose it.
Speaker: Because we didn't adapt.
Speaker: We were not flexible.
Speaker: I know that's tough to hear.
Speaker: But I do think that.
Speaker: I'm just struggling with the idea that it just still comes down to the most money and power.
Speaker: I don't want to say that I think our position of power should be given away.
Speaker: I think our position as influential should be given away.
Speaker: If we aren't willing to be flexible, we aren't willing to adapt and learn and grow and change.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because a fixed mindset like that shouldn't have influential position.
Speaker: It's not helpful, right?
Speaker: It leaves a level of stagnancy.
Speaker: That's probably not stagnation.
Speaker: Thank you so much.
Speaker: It leaves a level of stagnation.
Speaker: And I don't, I don't think that that's valuable or worthy of a position of influence, influence globally.
Speaker: So I don't,
Speaker: But even to maintain that influence, right?
Speaker: When we become more and more globalized, what's that ultimate goal that we're trying to influence?
Speaker: What are we in all of our schools teaching our kids to be educationally or just competitive on a global level?
Speaker: I think that we're teaching our students that just like in the microcosm of our school, of our state, of our nation,
Speaker: There are going to be people vying for the ability to present ideas and be taken seriously and be given credence and vetted, right?
Speaker: That's also gonna happen globally.
Speaker: And that you have to have a competitive edge to get in there.
Speaker: And I'm not saying that's right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I'm not saying that I wish that's the I wish that we all lived in a lovely utopia that was democratic, completely, truly, honestly democratic, where every single voice was heard.
Speaker: That's why I have a student voice program in school, because I would really like that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I don't think we're anywhere close to that.
Speaker: globalization is gonna come much faster than our ideological shift to perfect democratic practice, right?
Speaker: I would love perfect democratic practice.
Speaker: If we wanna throw the whole thing out and say everyone, regardless of their testing scores, regardless of their GDP, regardless of their commerce and economy and development technologically or whatever, everyone gets the same voice at the table.
Speaker: I'm on board.
Speaker: I'm not the firsthand, I'll switch over immediately.
Speaker: I don't think we're going there yet.
Speaker: And I think our need to be competitive globally is going to come much faster.
Speaker: And subsequently, that should be our focus, even if ultimately we'd like to see a complete overhaul of the way we think about influence and global community, national community, state community, district community, whatever.
Speaker: Is that interesting?
Speaker: Yeah, no, it's interesting.
Speaker: Are you surprised that I said that?
Speaker: Because I know you know me very well.
Speaker: And so for me to say, I think that we need to be concerned about our global competitive edge and our ability to have influence globally.
Speaker: I know you're probably surprised to hear that.
Speaker: I just I want to make it very clear.
Speaker: It's not because I think that's the best way to do things.
Speaker: No, I understand.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: I have a different vision.
Speaker: And where these questions come from is because even in my education, whenever that occurred in high school, I remember watching films like sophomore year, they drilled it into our heads that you need to be economically competitive on a global level with a select few countries, right?
Speaker: Like countries, they would lift a stop and they would be like, what do you think their test scores are?
Speaker: How many nights a week do you think those students are doing homework?
Speaker: And it was just this like push that
Speaker: in my high school career to always be competing on a global level with students from this country.
Speaker: And that's what it meant to be successful.
Speaker: But you also are born from the children that are born from the space race.
Speaker: So let me tell you, and I'll show you this after we're done our episode and everyone listening should go watch this effective immediately, but there's a hilarious clip of what would happen if the,
Speaker: the global space race, it's this video essentially of what would happen if education had been impacted by the space race such that
Speaker: we continue to push exclusively competitive edge in education.
Speaker: And it's from a late night show and there it's basically an NFL draft, but it's for kids going to schools.
Speaker: And it's, they're just like, it has all of the same hype and sensationalism of a sports draft at NBA or an NFL draft, but they're just like pulling kids for getting good grades and getting high SAT scores.
Speaker: And I think that,
Speaker: You are a product of the people who grew up during that time when that was really the goal was to be the best, have the best scorers, be the fastest, the brightest, the smartest.
Speaker: And all of those competitions were born, educational competitions, and that was a part of my experience.
Speaker: educational upbringing as well.
Speaker: And so there is like kind of a natural desire or competitiveness built into like how I feel about education sometimes.
Speaker: But logically, I also know that's not really what education should be about, or that's not that important.
Speaker: So, and I think that probably that was the case when you were in school for your teachers too, is that they were all
Speaker: left over from this push to be the smartest, the brightest, the fastest, the most innovative, the most ingenuitive.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's a really good clip, though.
Speaker: If I can find it, I will send it to you and you should see it.
Speaker: It's from a late night show.
Speaker: And they just set up the actors from the late night show as NFL, not reporters, but
Speaker: commentators or whatever at the desk and they're just like, and now coming in from LSU first draft of the year.
Speaker: It's like some kid's name scored a 1570 on his SATs.
Speaker: And people are watching and betting on it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's a moment I thought it would look like that on a global scale.
Speaker: I think there's a moment we all thought that.
Speaker: And I don't mean that when I say that I think we should keep our global competitive edge now.
Speaker: What I mean is that I think if we don't, if we aren't flexible, we don't adapt, we don't change, we will lose our global competitive edge and we deserve it.
Speaker: because we are not aligning this idea that globalization needs to include some of these foundational skills of cultural competency.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So here's my big question for you.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: When we talk about organizational theory and education is a gigantic organization, we talk about several different frames based on Buhlmann and Diehl's theoretical framework for understanding organizational structures.
Speaker: The four frames are the structural frame.
Speaker: That's the first.
Speaker: It's the factory of an organization.
Speaker: It's how they do what they do and what they produce, right?
Speaker: So all the logistical stuff, policies, protocols, the tools, the thing that's manufactured, the time it takes to do it, all of that is structural.
Speaker: And so for that, we use the symbol of the factory, right?
Speaker: There's also a human resources frame and the symbol for that is the family.
Speaker: It's the interdynamics of relationships, interrelationship challenges between the people that comprise the constituency of the organization.
Speaker: There's also the political frame and for that we use the symbol of the jungle.
Speaker: And the jungle is this idea that there's a hierarchical structure of power and influence within every organization.
Speaker: There are people who are in charge, there are people who do not have voice.
Speaker: And who do you need to prove your idea to to get it to a place of influence?
Speaker: And then there's the symbolic frame, which is like the temple of the organization.
Speaker: It's essentially the mission and vision statement.
Speaker: It's the big why are we doing this?
Speaker: Why are we here?
Speaker: And the why is not
Speaker: to make a product or provide a service or whatever.
Speaker: The why has to be bigger than that.
Speaker: It's the entirety of the vision of that being a service or a product to begin with, right?
Speaker: So those are the four frames from Bowman and Deal.
Speaker: My cohort and I wrote an article about proposing a fifth frame, which would be called the eudaimonia frame.
Speaker: And the symbol for that is the tuning fork.
Speaker: It's this idea that every organization has like a synergy.
Speaker: There's like an active palpable level of congruent work being done that's meant to amplify or enhance other work and every lens, every frame.
Speaker: So that things are working with synergy to the fidelity of the intention of the entire organization.
Speaker: It's working together.
Speaker: It's working well.
Speaker: It's working efficiently, positively, that kind of idea, right?
Speaker: So when I think of globalization and education, I'd like to know from what frame, and these frames, the reason I bring them up is because they are really fantastic for talking about adaptive challenges and any challenge where mindsets have to change, the way we think about things has to change.
Speaker: what framework do you see globalization falling inside of as an adaptive challenge?
Speaker: This is a really hard question to answer.
Speaker: And the thing that I'm stuck on right now is this, the political frame, right?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Because obviously that's a piece of it,
Speaker: But with this idea of cultural competency being such a huge part of globalization in education, the symbolic comes from the political as I'm understanding it, right?
Speaker: Well, the symbolic is defined by...
Speaker: the organization.
Speaker: So the organization decides what is their mission?
Speaker: What is their vision?
Speaker: The symbolic only works if everyone has is a part of the organization has bought into that mission and vision pieces on the political would come from that.
Speaker: I think that what I'm concerned about is when we're talking about cultural competency, time and time again, throughout history, there's always people left out.
Speaker: So if the topic of this, it would be a symbolic, um,
Speaker: problem, I suppose, would be finding the values.
Speaker: But once again, who determines that?
Speaker: Because when we're talking culture... Yeah.
Speaker: I totally agree with you.
Speaker: I actually think that this problem falls under every frame.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think that there's aspects of every frame inside of this scenario or this adaptive challenge.
Speaker: I think structurally, well, I'll start with the idea that symbolically, the mission and vision has to include some level of global consideration.
Speaker: Like the mission and vision has to be that our why is
Speaker: is to produce students that are competent and proficient on a global level.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: So it has to be a part of the mission and vision.
Speaker: It's not always.
Speaker: Like when you look at different schools, missions, and visions, they don't always include that aspect.
Speaker: Sometimes they'll say something about...
Speaker: being a state learner or national learner, but they don't always talk about the global perspective.
Speaker: I think also it's political in the sense that there is a hierarchy to understanding what the focus will be and who will get to decide what the content and curriculum is.
Speaker: And unless all of the key players in that
Speaker: hierarchy are on board, your political lens is out of whack.
Speaker: It's just not going to work.
Speaker: I think from the human resources lens, that one's obvious.
Speaker: This is an issue that means equity and inclusion for everyone.
Speaker: And that's always an important part of interpersonal relationships.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That builds trust that fosters trust in students.
Speaker: It fosters trust in the community.
Speaker: It fosters trust in educators and administrators.
Speaker: And so that's and trust is critical for effectiveness in interpersonal relationships.
Speaker: So it's huge there also.
Speaker: And then with no shortage of critical theory discussed today, there's a structural problem.
Speaker: There's definitely a structural problem.
Speaker: So we have to get, if we want everyone to play in the global sandbox, that sandbox has to be built.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: If it doesn't exist, if we don't have the tools and the resources to build a sandbox, we can't play in it.
Speaker: So if education doesn't allow us the space, the voice, the audience, the autonomy, the agency to develop curriculum and content that supports a global learner.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We'll never get there.
Speaker: And that means restructuring curriculum, content,
Speaker: Sometimes it means restructuring how we teach, when we teach, where we teach, what we teach.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I think that it's definitely, but I, a part of that, but I also think, um, this hits the nail on the head for the eudaimonia frame, because unless there's a synergy between all of the, the players within these different frames, all of the different aspects of all of these different frames that views learning,
Speaker: as something that an education in the U S is something that falls under the global umbrella, we might as well forget it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I think every piece has to be working together.
Speaker: And if there are pieces that are not working together, that's where we're going to see legislative drafts that are asking us to do things that compromise all of the other frames.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that synergy is part of what is most challenging.
Speaker: Not every lens is working together effectively to promote, um, uh, efficiency and efficacy in the other lenses.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I really think as an adaptive challenge, this issue hits every single lens.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: Uh, you did an excellent job.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: vocalizing what I was trying to come to.
Speaker: I talk about this a lot.
Speaker: Like you mentioned, there are tons of schools that have built in this global idea so far.
Speaker: I believe that where I work, it's built in.
Speaker: But then in practice, which is why I was stuck on that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So practice, it's not so who determines that.
Speaker: But you're right.
Speaker: It is all of those pieces.
Speaker: They're something to come together.
Speaker: All the pieces have to come together.
Speaker: There can be something in the mission and vision lens that doesn't appear anywhere in the structural lens.
Speaker: It's completely forgotten by the time you get there or completely forgotten when you get to the human resources lens or completely forgotten when you get to the political lens.
Speaker: When that happens, you end up on the news.
Speaker: But there's something...
Speaker: That happens all the time, right?
Speaker: And when there's not that synergy rotating throughout the entirety of the organization, each lens, each person, each protocol, each particle, then that's when things get frustrating and confusing.
Speaker: And people start talking about
Speaker: actually, I haven't said this yet, but when people start saying it's a bad vibe, the vibe is bad, right?
Speaker: There's a tonality to what's going on that feels bad.
Speaker: It feels insidious.
Speaker: It feels snarky.
Speaker: It feels underhanded or seedy or whatever.
Speaker: When that occurs, and they can't really put their finger on why it feels that way.
Speaker: Is it a human resources thing?
Speaker: Is it a structural thing?
Speaker: And they can't figure out why.
Speaker: It's usually...
Speaker: the eudaimonia lens.
Speaker: It's usually the synergy that all things are not working in tandem.
Speaker: There's no congruency.
Speaker: We have separate things moving and maybe moving all with the same mission and vision, maybe thinking they've all set up the same structural human resources, political lenses on their particular piece.
Speaker: with the same intention, but they're not, it's not all, it's not all together.
Speaker: So I think that does happen sometimes.
Speaker: And that's why sometimes you get a school that will say, this is a really important global being a global learner is a really important part of our mission or vision.
Speaker: But then you go to look at what we're doing to promote that.
Speaker: And you think, I'm not seeing it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: All right, Abby Ortiz, I really appreciate you for being on today and talking to me and spending some time talking about globalization, education.
Speaker: I think it's really important.
Speaker: And I think a lot of people are really interested in this topic and how do we get past this as an adaptive challenge, which it very clearly is.
Speaker: So thank you.
Speaker: And yeah, anything else?
Speaker: Anything else you want to add?
Speaker: I think that's all for me.
Speaker: Thank you so much for the space today.
Speaker: You're welcome.
Speaker: And I'll talk to you later.
Speaker: This was the adaptive edge of education with Abby Ortiz.
