Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to season three, episode nine of Things Fall Apart from the Human Restoration Project.
Speaker: My name is Chris and I'm a digital art and media educator in Springfield, Ohio.
Speaker: Before we dive in, I'd like to give a shout out to three of our Patreon supporters, Paul Wan, Lisa Biber and Jenny Lucas.
Speaker: Thank you for your support.
Speaker: If you want to learn more about the Human Restoration Project, as well as view our free resources and research compilation, please visit us at humanrestorationproject.org and follow us on Twitter at HumeResPro.
Speaker: Today, we're with Cornelius Minor.
Speaker: Cornelius is author of We Got This, Equity, Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be.
Speaker: And he works as a leader in supporting equitable literacy reform across the world.
Speaker: Prior to this work, Cornelius was a middle school language arts instructor in Brooklyn.
Speaker: And we've recommended We've Got This as our July Book of the Month.
Speaker: And I'm really excited to talk about all the important ideas presented in this work.
Speaker: Let's just dive right into the questions and we'll just see where our conversation takes us.
Speaker: So what was the inspiration behind writing this book?
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Well, there were several, actually, you know, and I think I've got to give just like big love to my editor, Holly, who is perhaps one of the most brilliant people on the planet.
Speaker: But the inspiration really, for me, came out of...
Speaker: an intense desire to see good things happening for kids.
Speaker: I've got one of the best jobs in the world.
Speaker: My job is to support teachers all over the country and all over the world.
Speaker: One of the things that I started seeing as I went from school to school is I started seeing that the
Speaker: no matter what community we're in.
Speaker: So if you are born black or a girl or gay or, you know, to poor parents, it seems like, you know, you always catch the worst end of school, no matter what community I went to.
Speaker: And so that started to kind of give me this real kind of professional discomfort.
Speaker: And, and, and I would get angry as I would go from school to school to school.
Speaker: And I'm like, yep, the same kids are in the basement or the same kids are in, you know, a specific track or the same kids are not getting a chance to do enrichment or the same kids are always an intervention.
Speaker: And so I just started asking those questions and wanting to approach those in a really constructive way.
Speaker: I think that when we have these conversations, sometimes they are fueled with, with,
Speaker: intense, not even anger, but rage.
Speaker: And I get that.
Speaker: And there are, you know, that our profession, we're teachers and that means that we're mostly white women.
Speaker: And, you know, one of the things I'm finding is that white women don't really respond well to my rage.
Speaker: And so like, how do I communicate these things in ways that feel like really, really productive?
Speaker: And so the book is a conversation I've been having with myself for a really long time that I wanted to have with the rest of the educational world.
Speaker: Yeah, that's really interesting and I appreciate the fact that you shared those measures in this book and I really like the way it's written both from like an author's standpoint but also just the way it looks.
Speaker: Like it looks pretty cool.
Speaker: I like the comic book aesthetic.
Speaker: I like the
Speaker: I like the oversized, colorful pages.
Speaker: It's way more exciting to read than, let's say, like, Paulo Freire or something.
Speaker: It's cool.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And that's what I was going for.
Speaker: You know, I've got these ideas.
Speaker: And again, that's the second inspiration.
Speaker: So how do I communicate these really heavy things in ways that people can receive?
Speaker: And, you know, and comic books have been my first love for a long, long time.
Speaker: You know, when I think about my own connection to literacy, you know, I'm a language arts teacher.
Speaker: And when I think about my own connection to literacy, much of it is rooted in comics.
Speaker: cover to cover was Dwayne McDuffie's hardware number one in 1992.
Speaker: And that book has stuck with me
Speaker: terms of graduate school or my own publishing, that that book always resurfaces.
Speaker: And so Dwayne McDuffie, what he set out to do with his Milestone Comics imprint is a huge part of my literary DNA.
Speaker: And so when I wanted to craft this book, I really turned to what I learned from reading hardware many years ago.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And let's talk a little bit about how this fits into the classroom and
Speaker: What this looks like.
Speaker: So you talk a lot in the book about the fact that this is a very oppressive system.
Speaker: And the work that we're doing as educators is inherently political.
Speaker: So how do you then balance between knowing that you're trying to push this anti oppressive dogma or narrative?
Speaker: when you're still working within the system itself.
Speaker: You know, and that's a really huge, huge thing that I think about all the time, that the United States is empire, when you think about it in many ways.
Speaker: And that the function of education in empire is actually not to liberate, but it's to homogenize.
Speaker: It is to indoctrinate you into the ways of the empire.
Speaker: And so when we think about
Speaker: place.
Speaker: That when you think about capitalism, capitalism needs a loser.
Speaker: That you cannot have the uber rich if you do not create a class of the, you know, paycheck to paycheck.
Speaker: And so really looking at the function of school historically in the United States has been really important for me.
Speaker: You know, even when we think about, you know, we use the term education, but one question that I often ask is education for who?
Speaker: Because, you know, if you
Speaker: education was designed to literally divorce you from your culture.
Speaker: You know, if you were born a girl, education was not for you.
Speaker: If your parents owed money, education was not for you.
Speaker: You know, and so when we think of it, we like to say education.
Speaker: And so when you look at what school does in a contemporary sense, much of what we call school or a set of customs and habits and traditions that we inherited from our days where school wasn't designed for people like me.
Speaker: And so I think one of the things that I realize is that when you are in a system, you can either choose to operate as
Speaker: And so I use the kind of metaphor of a cog that if you've got a machine that continues to work in one way, and I recognize that, yeah, in many ways, I am a cog in this machine, but I can refuse to turn.
Speaker: And if I refuse to turn, the whole machine breaks.
Speaker: And, um, and now, now one of the things that we know that happens is when the machine breaks, they're going to call a repairman and that repairman is going to shine a flashlight on me.
Speaker: And so, so like, what's up with this cog that refuses to turn.
Speaker: And so to be in the machine and to know one's role in one's place, but then refuse to perform it, um, I think is a really, um,
Speaker: It's a bold thing and that's what I want this book to do in many ways is I want this book to help people to design ways to refuse to turn.
Speaker: And again, we know that the repair person is going to show up and the repair person is going to have this flashlight shine on you.
Speaker: And I wanted to write the book that says when that repair person shines that flashlight on you for refusing to be the cog that turns, you know, one of the things that happens is that repair person wants to replace the cog.
Speaker: They want to take the cog out.
Speaker: This cog isn't turning and I want to replace it with another one.
Speaker: And so as a teacher,
Speaker: you like one of the things I think about all the time is I've got to make myself irreplaceable.
Speaker: So if that repair person comes to remove the cog that won't turn, I've got to be so great at what I do that I can't be replaced and the whole machine has to redefine itself.
Speaker: And so I just kind of asked the question and I was just like, wow, what if I could encourage lots of teachers to do this?
Speaker: And so lots of little machines would have to redefine themselves in response to the people that we can reach through this book.
Speaker: I really like that a lot.
Speaker: It reminds me of Jonathan Kozal's work with building a coalition and having the parent and community backing and no one can mess with you.
Speaker: It feels like it's heavily inspired by the work of community activism.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: I mean, I've been an activist all my life, so you know that...
Speaker: So this, this book is simply an extension of that, you know, and, you know, I read, you know, Kozal 20 years ago, and, or, and just like that idea that, yeah, here's a thing that we can do.
Speaker: And so I think it's no accident that, that, you know, that I've leaned on all of these people who have been doing the work, my own family, my own community, my own ancestors, in addition to all of the ideological ancestors that I have through the literature.
Speaker: Let's talk a little bit about then what that work is.
Speaker: And obviously, someone would need to buy the book in order to dive into all the different portions.
Speaker: But I want to focus in on a few specific things.
Speaker: So at a point during the book, you talk about this distinction between monologue and dialogue, as in...
Speaker: Students have the answers and we're there basically to understand them and inspire them to do other things or deeper things.
Speaker: Could you go into more detail about what that looks like and why that's important?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: You know, so much of what I call Hallmark branded teaching, you know, that there's a kind of the real gritty work of teaching.
Speaker: And then there's what they show you on the Hallmark channel or what they show you, you know, in Michelle Pfeiffer movies or, you know, Hillary
Speaker: as a profession have really subscribed to this hallmark brand of teaching where we say things like, oh, I believe the children of the future and, you know, love the kids.
Speaker: And all those things are really, really beautiful statements
Speaker: But I think they undermine our work.
Speaker: And so we say things like we believe the children are the future, but then we engage in teaching that is all monologue.
Speaker: So I've got an adult at the front of the room pontificating.
Speaker: And if we truly believe the kids are the future, then we believe that they have the answers and it's our job to help them to really amplify those.
Speaker: And so one of the things that I've been thinking about is my pedagogy itself, that how much of the teaching and learning that happens in the classroom is my voice and how much of it is kid voice.
Speaker: And one of the things that we know that is often said in education is the person doing the most talking is doing the most learning.
Speaker: And so one of the things that I've been thinking a lot about in a very simple way is how do I design
Speaker: intellectual labor in the hands of the children.
Speaker: That if I'm standing in front of the room doing all the intellectual labor and people
Speaker: learning is occurring that's indoctrination um but i think you know when we hand power to kids in this way one of the things that that means that for me is i've got to de-center myself um that that's so much of teaching has become this kind of cult of personality about the teacher and really it has to be about the community of kids that i'm serving and so i'm really interested in again to answer the question really specific ways of moving from this like teacher monologue to authentic dialogue where we are engaging with children about crafting sustainable futures for them
Speaker: I hope you're enjoying the podcast thus far.
Speaker: I sincerely appreciate you listening in.
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Speaker: I really like this idea of talking about banal statements in education.
Speaker: I've spoken about it in the past on this podcast as well, through blogging, just talking about the idea at a conference or something or in a teacher workroom, after there's even a hint of disagreement amongst people, there's this idea like, oh, well, we're all doing what's best for kids because we all love and care about kids.
Speaker: but that's not really true.
Speaker: I mean, there are plenty of teachers that think they're maybe doing the right thing, or maybe they're not at all.
Speaker: I mean, I think that these kind of conversations are important that we get a little bit uncomfortable every now and then and really examining our own practice, because obviously there are a lot of serious problems in education that are going unaddressed.
Speaker: And kind of building off that exact point, I want to talk about
Speaker: because this is kind of a happening topic right now with all the different ed conferences going on, as well as kind of how education is shifting towards a certain type of PD model.
Speaker: Basically, what worries do you have about the current education market?
Speaker: So hinting at basically maybe a few pirates or something of that nature.
Speaker: Yeah, and I love the idea that you use the term market.
Speaker: I think it's exactly that.
Speaker: That's the problem.
Speaker: One of the things that I like to separate in my work is there is education
Speaker: the profession and there's education the industry.
Speaker: And the profession is what I know and what I love.
Speaker: And it's the people that stay up late with me to craft lesson plans.
Speaker: It's the people that get up early with me to go to soccer practice with the kids at 7 a.m.
Speaker: That's education the profession.
Speaker: But then there's education the industry.
Speaker: And education the industry is disaster capitalism.
Speaker: And then ensure that those problems never go away so that we can profit from, you know, from attempting to solve them.
Speaker: You know, so it's this idea that when we create standardized tests that are culturally biased and ill-suited to measuring a kid's true worth as a human, when we create these tests, we are creating a class of people who will fail them.
Speaker: And when we create a class of people who will fail them, we get to profit off of all the materials.
Speaker: And so it goes back to this idea that there's...
Speaker: you know, the money is never in the cure, the money is in treatment.
Speaker: You know, that we know how to teach literacy.
Speaker: And we know how to teach literacy well.
Speaker: And we know that teaching literacy well is relational.
Speaker: You know, I studied Dawn Graves, so that we know that
Speaker: into their communities, into their needs, into their voices.
Speaker: We know that, you know, and we can do that for every kid.
Speaker: You know, we put people on the moon.
Speaker: So we can deliver solid literacy to every kid, but it behooves the industry to not
Speaker: sell you conferences that promise to be cure-alls.
Speaker: And so absolutely, I am in love with education.
Speaker: And I have serious, serious, serious misgivings about education industry.
Speaker: Going right off of that too, my favorite line probably in the entire book is when you start talking about this idea of classroom cool.
Speaker: It reminds me of, I wish I'll probably link it in the show notes, but there was a blog I read that was someone who's a teacher talking about how
Speaker: The number one feedback that they get from kids was the fact that they were quote unquote laid back or like a cool teacher.
Speaker: And I like how you lay it out in the book on what exactly that means as in it's not this performative person that goes up and is super zany and weird and.
Speaker: like captures all this attention, but it's more about the relationships that you build.
Speaker: So how do you go about kind of shifting the focus from classroom control or putting on a show to making more connective moments with your students?
Speaker: And it's really that idea.
Speaker: It starts with shifting the conversation again.
Speaker: So that the traditional notions of classroom cool is
Speaker: You know, which we can all do but but to really think about cool in the sense of kids trust me kids believe in me and one of the things that we know about basic relationship building is you trust people who listen to you and you trust people who act on what they hear and and so if I make a demonstrative effort to hear kids and then to craft the kinds of classroom experiences that reflect what I've heard kids trust me more
Speaker: And so if you tell me, I had a conversation with a kid the other day.
Speaker: Actually, I was talking to him about how he's going to spend his summer.
Speaker: And he happened to mention that he was going to be traveling to a Pokemon tournament to play Pokemon cards.
Speaker: And
Speaker: And I you know, I thought that was really cool way to spend your summer.
Speaker: So I asked him a few questions about it And then the next day I was wrapping up some things in science and when I use the term evolution I just kind of happened to drop in the positive phrase like Pokemon and that kid sat up straight because and so I'm talking about evolution I make a reference to Pokemon just because he told me the day before and I
Speaker: And like in that moment in his eyes, what I could see is like this guy hears me, you know, and so do I have to know how to name all 150 original Pokemon?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Do I have to know how to play the card game?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: But do I have to listen to a kid when they talk about what's important to them and what they value?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And then when I find little ways to connect what I'm doing every day to what they value, that's the win.
Speaker: And you talk in the book, too, about building spaces to make that happen as well.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Like you talk about it doesn't have to be formal.
Speaker: It could be informal.
Speaker: Could you talk a little bit about this idea of the classroom meeting?
Speaker: Certainly.
Speaker: Like I am always meeting with kids, you know, in the way that, you know, I learned this from I had a physician that would she would talk to me.
Speaker: You know, I'd go to see her, you know, about every year for my annual checkup.
Speaker: And she would come get me in the waiting room and we would chat.
Speaker: She was like, oh, what are you doing there?
Speaker: I see you're wearing a soccer jersey.
Speaker: Have you played any good games lately?
Speaker: And she would talk to me about like, you know, like my shoes and like just, you know, small talk, I thought.
Speaker: But then we would go back to the exam room and she would say things like, okay, so you played three soccer games in the last week.
Speaker: And I'm like, how did you know that?
Speaker: And she was like, well, when you're talking about your jersey, you happen to mention that you were in a game on Thursday.
Speaker: And, you know, and so she would have these ways of like,
Speaker: getting information from me
Speaker: but in these really kind of, to use the term laid back in cool ways where I had no idea she was assessing, you know, my physical health by making small talk.
Speaker: And I remember being so envious of how much information she was able to collect about me in a short amount of time.
Speaker: And so I stole that from her.
Speaker: And I was like, I want to be able to do that with kids in my classroom.
Speaker: Like, I want to be able to make small talk that teaches me about kids and their lives and that I could use and I could act on it that, you know, that
Speaker: life because everything I said like mattered to her and she used it to her advantage in terms of my physical care and so I would just
Speaker: a way where everything they say like becomes part of how I take good intellectual care of them and so so meetings the classroom meetings are just a really informal way to do that that I'll bring up topics just because I want to hear kids responses to them and I want to hear kind of their disposition and I want to see if they get excited when they talk about
Speaker: I want to see if they get scared or angry when they talk about that thing because that informs what I can bring into the classroom.
Speaker: That informs how I can teach.
Speaker: I really like all the ideas because most of them are – I mean, a lot of this stuff is common sense to an extent, but it's laid out in a way where it feels very scientific.
Speaker: So what I mean by that is you have a lot of flow charts and things where you're organizing your thoughts in a way that makes sense without necessarily reinventing the wheel.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it is scientific.
Speaker: People have studied relationships.
Speaker: I draw a lot from the neuroscientist David Rock, and I draw a lot from what we know about behavioral science, Piaget and development.
Speaker: So I draw a lot from
Speaker: people's thinking about this.
Speaker: But you're right.
Speaker: It is common sense that if you listen to people, they respond.
Speaker: And so then how can I be really strategic in my listening is what I wanted the book to do.
Speaker: You know, if I, you know, show people that I heard them through my teaching and through my being, then they're more likely to work hard for me.
Speaker: So how can I demonstrate this in the book?
Speaker: You know, so those are really big questions for me.
Speaker: And one of the things, again, to resist this idea of market, I wanted to do things in the book that were free.
Speaker: you know, so many books are setups for you to buy more stuff.
Speaker: And so I'm going to write about this thing in the book, but then you're going to have to buy like the companion workbook and then you're going to have to pay for the other thing.
Speaker: And so it was really important to me that all the resources in the book be free.
Speaker: And so if you go online, like all the stuff associated with this book is free from podcasts to videos to like printable materials.
Speaker: Because like, you're right, this is the wisdom that our grandparents handed us.
Speaker: Like this doesn't belong to anyone.
Speaker: It's what we've always known about children.
Speaker: And so in many ways, for me, it's a return to who we once were as educators in a more inclusive way.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So let's kind of shift conversation then to talking more about the system itself and how you go about changing things within said system beyond just your classroom or beyond yourself as just as an individual.
Speaker: And there's a segment in the book where you talk about colonialism and how oppressors tend to fall into that role after failing to fight oppression for a lot of time, drawing from like Frere or like Bala or something.
Speaker: So could you talk a little bit about the connection that – there's veterans that say – veteran teachers that say something like, well, I'm set in my ways, which is usually not the thing that you want to hear because that's followed by something that's really bad.
Speaker: They're not open to changing in any way.
Speaker: What advice then do you have for bringing those potentially jaded educators –
Speaker: back into that radical change that they they might have felt before yeah you know one of the things and again this goes back to my physician i should probably credit her in much of my research um there was a like i i'm a skateboarder and i banged my knee up pretty bad um one year and and i had to go have a procedure and and it was
Speaker: And I don't know if you've ever had a knee procedure, but you're awake during the whole thing.
Speaker: down, but you can see everything they're doing.
Speaker: And, and, and I'm a nerd.
Speaker: And so before the procedure, like two nights before the procedure, I went online and I watched every video of that procedure that I could find.
Speaker: Like, you know, and so I watched the procedure being done on the left knee, on the right knee, I watched the procedure in old people and younger people, you know, and so I just wanted to be like, I wanted to know what they were going to do to me.
Speaker: And so by the time I showed up for my surgery, I had probably seen the procedure 30 times performed already.
Speaker: So I knew what I was in for.
Speaker: And so, you know, they kind of like numb me, they start their work on my knee.
Speaker: And about two minutes into the procedure, I stopped my physician.
Speaker: And I was like, wait, I've seen this procedure and you're not doing what they did in the video.
Speaker: Like, what's up?
Speaker: And she kind of looked at me and she put her tools down and really calmly she said to me, she's like, Cornelius, the video that you watched was eight months old.
Speaker: Like we have much better medical technology now than we had eight months ago.
Speaker: So if I were doing what you saw in that video from eight months ago, that would be malpractice today.
Speaker: And it was just
Speaker: such this clear statement of purpose and understanding.
Speaker: She was just like, yep, everything you saw in the video was correct eight months ago.
Speaker: But like, I know more now.
Speaker: And you would sue me if I did that procedure right now to you.
Speaker: And I think about my teaching in the same way.
Speaker: It really caused me to reflect on my teaching, that the thing I did eight months or eight years ago, like we know a lot more about kids and we know a lot more about reading and math and science and
Speaker: And so that we're still teaching like we taught eight years ago, that we're still teaching like we taught 80 years ago is highly problematic to me.
Speaker: And that if we truly, you know, and I think so much of teaching, we say we want the best for kids with our mouths, but then we do what's best for us with our efforts.
Speaker: And so the teacher who says that they're set in their ways ain't here for kids.
Speaker: You know, and I've been really clear about that in public, that when people ask me about my politics all the time, I say that I'm radically pro-kid, that it is our job to create opportunities for children.
Speaker: I think that no teacher would argue that, that we are ultimately teachers because we want to create opportunities for kids, and really because we want to eventually teach them how to create opportunities for the kids.
Speaker: community.
Speaker: And so that being said, anything that abridges opportunity for a child is my enemy.
Speaker: And so if my belief in yesterday's teaching is limiting a kid's opportunity, I got to stop that.
Speaker: And I think that that's been really important.
Speaker: And so when we're talking to those teachers, one of the things that often happens in community discourse is we make it
Speaker: work.
Speaker: And so often when I talk to those people, yeah, like you're here because you love kids, but let's work in smarter or more efficient ways.
Speaker: And I guess actually this builds into the final question.
Speaker: I'm really curious about your thoughts on this, because it's something that it's like a really awkward thing to talk about because teachers don't usually like getting too political.
Speaker: But at the same exact time, if we're going to be radically pro kid, I mean, there's no denying that there is
Speaker: systemic racism, systemic classism, serious issues where kids come into our rooms that it's very difficult to give them a satisfactory education because they don't have food or they don't have basic human needs.
Speaker: So is there a place for teachers to be banding together for political organization?
Speaker: in order to change the systems of inequity that are occurring?
Speaker: First of all, and I think it's really important to name that teaching is political, that the greatest lie that hegemony ever told was that our work is apolitical, that our salaries are decided in some communities by vote.
Speaker: That's political.
Speaker: That school districts are made and gerrymandered by city councils.
Speaker: These are political.
Speaker: That budgets are made.
Speaker: And so literally the food that I put in my mouth that I draw from a paycheck that I get from New York City, that's political.
Speaker: And so the belief that teaching is apolitical, we're lying to ourselves.
Speaker: That the city councilman that I elect dictates how much money I take home every month.
Speaker: You know, and and the city council people that I elect dictate like the curriculum that we adopt, the textbooks that we buy, the resources that we're allowed to share.
Speaker: And so so teaching is inherently political.
Speaker: But I borrow a lot from I have a great mentor, Bob Probst.
Speaker: And one of the things that he has pointed out to me time and time again is, you know, when.
Speaker: we like, you know, kids come to school in kindergarten and we teach them kindness.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so the first lesson you learn, I've got a five-year-old daughter who started kindergarten this fall.
Speaker: And the first lesson that you learn in kindergarten is that you are kind to others.
Speaker: And, and if we teach kids to value kindness, we are implicitly condemning those who promote cruelty and indifference.
Speaker: And so, so, so that I'm teaching kids in class to be kind and
Speaker: of politicians who are unkind.
Speaker: You know, that if I teach kids to judge individuals on their merits, that's an implicit condemnation on those who judge based on stereotypes.
Speaker: And so even my teaching is political.
Speaker: So like, yeah, kids come to kindergarten, I'm like, yeah, be nice to others.
Speaker: And yep, so that is a statement on those politicians who use their office to not be kind to others.
Speaker: And I think when we really look at what we're teaching, everything is political.
Speaker: You know that I'm a reading teacher.
Speaker: I teach kids to value information.
Speaker: And one of the things that Bob Probst has taught me is that when I teach kids to value information, that's an implicit condemnation of those who create misinformation.
Speaker: And so I'm teaching you to value evidence in my classroom, and we've got certain politicians who do not value evidence.
Speaker: My lesson that teaches you to value evidence is a condemnation of those people.
Speaker: It's implicit.
Speaker: And so everything that we do is political.
Speaker: I mean, it's obvious that educators have a lot of work to do, especially in certain segments of the country.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: given the fact that, I mean, there's literally concentration camps going on right now.
Speaker: So, I mean, there's a lot of work.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: You know, and that's, yeah, you know, and that's been, you know, it's when we think about oppressive systems, and this is why school, like,
Speaker: work in school that, that, that for the most part, most of the kids that we encounter will, you know, hopefully never be in a, in a camp, a state sanctioned camp.
Speaker: You know, most of the kids we encountered will not be murdered by the police.
Speaker: Most of the kids that we encounter will not be, you know, you know, victims of some, you know, voter, you know, disenfranchisement, but all of the kids that we meet will encounter a teacher.
Speaker: And so when I think about state sanctioned violence, much of the state sanctioned violence that is suffered by children happens at the hands of school and teachers who work in them.
Speaker: And when I talk about violence, I'm not, you know, I don't mean like putting your hands on kids.
Speaker: But when I think about, you know, there are many scholars who have noted that when somebody is powerful as a teacher,
Speaker: and media and experiences, and they construct a world that, and I'm not in it, that's an act of violence.
Speaker: And so if I'm a teacher and I've got books that don't reflect the true diversity of the community that I serve, and kids don't see themselves or there are vast silences in the curriculum, kids go home feeling less than human.
Speaker: And that's an act of violence.
Speaker: If I'm a teacher and I fail to see the full humanity of my children with disabilities, that's an act of violence.
Speaker: If I'm a teacher and I fail to teach in ways that honor how kids learn, that's an act of violence.
Speaker: And so again, we live in a world where not every kid is going to encounter a bad cop or not every kid is going to encounter a state sanctioned camp, but every kid encounters a teacher.
Speaker: And if we're perpetuating these implicit and silent acts of violence,
Speaker: then it's just as bad as the other things, you know, and, you know, that when we think about just like the human condition, one of the things that we know from Piaget is that people are born with like infinite capacity to learn and to grow and to care about things and to be curious.
Speaker: But through school and schooling, people become less curious over time.
Speaker: That's violence.
Speaker: And that's a direct result of the kind of
Speaker: our doors.
Speaker: And so I really wanted to use We Got This as an opportunity to undo that kind of violence.
Speaker: You know, because if we can undo that really benign violence that happens in classrooms, that will give us the practice to undo the more vicious forms of violence that we're seeing in our headlines today.
Speaker: Thank you again for listening to Things Fall Apart from the Human Restoration Project.
Speaker: I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to push the progressive envelope of education.
Speaker: If you have time, I'd love for you to leave us a review on iTunes, social media, or anywhere that you see fit.
Speaker: I mention iTunes specifically because the more ratings we have there, the higher we rank on the education podcast list.
Speaker: And the more listeners we have, the better we're going to do.
Speaker: We can't do this without you, and I'm humbled by the opportunity to help broadcast this message to as many people as we possibly can.
Speaker: And we've grown so much, our average unique podcast listener number has jumped from maybe 200 to 300 an episode to over 2,000 in the last year.
Speaker: and our website traffic is up 10,000% in the last three months, and our Patreon supporters continue to climb.
Speaker: So let's push forward together and restore humanity.
