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51: We Got This: Equity and Access in Schools w/ Cornelius Minor
10 Plays5 years ago
In this episode, we discuss We Got This: Equity, Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be with author Cornelius Minor. Cornelius, a former middle school Language Arts educator from Brooklyn, is a leader in equitable literacy reform across the world. We Got This is an incredible work that blends critical pedagogy, equitable community practice, and connections between relationships and research in an easy-to-read and implement fashion.
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Transcript
Introduction and Support Acknowledgments
00:00:11
Speaker
Hello and welcome to season three, episode nine of Things Fall Apart from the Human Restoration Project.
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Speaker
My name is Chris and I'm a digital art and media educator in Springfield, Ohio.
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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.
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Speaker
Thank you for your support.
00:00:31
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.
Introduction to Cornelius Minor and His Work
00:00:44
Speaker
Today, we're with Cornelius Minor.
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Cornelius is author of We Got This, Equity, Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be.
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And he works as a leader in supporting equitable literacy reform across the world.
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Prior to this work, Cornelius was a middle school language arts instructor in Brooklyn.
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And we've recommended We've Got This as our July Book of the Month.
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And I'm really excited to talk about all the important ideas presented in this work.
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Let's just dive right into the questions and we'll just see where our conversation
Inspiration and Observations on Educational Inequality
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Speaker
takes us.
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So what was the inspiration behind writing this book?
00:01:30
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Wow.
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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.
00:01:41
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But the inspiration really, for me, came out of...
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an intense desire to see good things happening for kids.
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I've got one of the best jobs in the world.
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My job is to support teachers all over the country and all over the world.
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One of the things that I started seeing as I went from school to school is I started seeing that the
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no matter what community we're in.
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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.
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And so that started to kind of give me this real kind of professional discomfort.
00:02:27
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And, and, and I would get angry as I would go from school to school to school.
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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.
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And so I just started asking those questions and wanting to approach those in a really constructive way.
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I think that when we have these conversations, sometimes they are fueled with, with,
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intense, not even anger, but rage.
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And I get that.
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And there are, you know, that our profession, we're teachers and that means that we're mostly white women.
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And, you know, one of the things I'm finding is that white women don't really respond well to my rage.
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And so like, how do I communicate these things in ways that feel like really, really productive?
Making Complex Ideas Accessible in 'We Got This'
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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.
00:03:25
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.
00:03:37
Speaker
Like it looks pretty cool.
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I like the comic book aesthetic.
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I like the
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I like the oversized, colorful pages.
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It's way more exciting to read than, let's say, like, Paulo Freire or something.
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It's cool.
00:03:47
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Exactly.
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And that's what I was going for.
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You know, I've got these ideas.
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And again, that's the second inspiration.
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So how do I communicate these really heavy things in ways that people can receive?
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And, you know, and comic books have been my first love for a long, long time.
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You know, when I think about my own connection to literacy, you know, I'm a language arts teacher.
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And when I think about my own connection to literacy, much of it is rooted in comics.
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cover to cover was Dwayne McDuffie's hardware number one in 1992.
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And that book has stuck with me
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terms of graduate school or my own publishing, that that book always resurfaces.
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And so Dwayne McDuffie, what he set out to do with his Milestone Comics imprint is a huge part of my literary DNA.
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And so when I wanted to craft this book, I really turned to what I learned from reading hardware many years ago.
00:04:40
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Yeah.
Education System Critique and Historical Analysis
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And let's talk a little bit about how this fits into the classroom and
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What this looks like.
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So you talk a lot in the book about the fact that this is a very oppressive system.
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And the work that we're doing as educators is inherently political.
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So how do you then balance between knowing that you're trying to push this anti oppressive dogma or narrative?
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when you're still working within the system itself.
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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.
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And that the function of education in empire is actually not to liberate, but it's to homogenize.
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It is to indoctrinate you into the ways of the empire.
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And so when we think about
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place.
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That when you think about capitalism, capitalism needs a loser.
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That you cannot have the uber rich if you do not create a class of the, you know, paycheck to paycheck.
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And so really looking at the function of school historically in the United States has been really important for me.
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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?
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Because, you know, if you
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education was designed to literally divorce you from your culture.
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You know, if you were born a girl, education was not for you.
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If your parents owed money, education was not for you.
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You know, and so when we think of it, we like to say education.
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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.
Teacher's Role and Community Activism
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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
00:06:51
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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.
00:07:04
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And if I refuse to turn, the whole machine breaks.
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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.
00:07:15
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And so, so like, what's up with this cog that refuses to turn.
00:07:18
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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,
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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.
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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.
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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.
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They want to take the cog out.
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This cog isn't turning and I want to replace it with another one.
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And so as a teacher,
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you like one of the things I think about all the time is I've got to make myself irreplaceable.
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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.
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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?
00:08:15
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And so lots of little machines would have to redefine themselves in response to the people that we can reach through this book.
00:08:21
Speaker
I really like that a lot.
00:08:22
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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.
00:08:31
Speaker
It feels like it's heavily inspired by the work of community activism.
00:08:35
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Exactly.
00:08:36
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I mean, I've been an activist all my life, so you know that...
00:08:39
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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.
00:08:51
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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.
00:09:05
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Let's talk a little bit about then what that work is.
Engagement Through Dialogue and Student Voice
00:09:08
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And obviously, someone would need to buy the book in order to dive into all the different portions.
00:09:14
Speaker
But I want to focus in on a few specific things.
00:09:17
Speaker
So at a point during the book, you talk about this distinction between monologue and dialogue, as in...
00:09:23
Speaker
Students have the answers and we're there basically to understand them and inspire them to do other things or deeper things.
00:09:30
Speaker
Could you go into more detail about what that looks like and why that's important?
00:09:35
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:09:36
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.
00:09:44
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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
00:09:53
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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.
00:10:00
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And all those things are really, really beautiful statements
00:10:04
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But I think they undermine our work.
00:10:07
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And so we say things like we believe the children are the future, but then we engage in teaching that is all monologue.
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So I've got an adult at the front of the room pontificating.
00:10:17
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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.
00:10:27
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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.
00:10:37
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.
00:10:43
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And so one of the things that I've been thinking a lot about in a very simple way is how do I design
00:10:52
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intellectual labor in the hands of the children.
00:10:55
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That if I'm standing in front of the room doing all the intellectual labor and people
00:11:00
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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
00:11:36
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I hope you're enjoying the podcast thus far.
00:11:38
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I sincerely appreciate you listening in.
00:11:41
Speaker
And if you enjoy the work, please head over to humanrestorationproject.org to find our free resources and wealth of writings.
00:11:48
Speaker
And then, if you think we should keep going, take a gander at our Patreon page.
00:11:52
Speaker
For a dollar a month, you'll receive a professional, print-ready electronic magazine of our work every two months.
00:11:58
Speaker
But as always, all of that work is available free online.
00:12:03
Speaker
I really like this idea of talking about banal statements in education.
00:12:07
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.
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but that's not really true.
00:12:26
Speaker
I mean, there are plenty of teachers that think they're maybe doing the right thing, or maybe
Education Profession vs. Industry and Genuine Connections
00:12:31
Speaker
they're not at all.
00:12:31
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.
00:12:44
Speaker
And kind of building off that exact point, I want to talk about
00:12:49
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.
00:12:59
Speaker
Basically, what worries do you have about the current education market?
00:13:03
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So hinting at basically maybe a few pirates or something of that nature.
00:13:09
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Yeah, and I love the idea that you use the term market.
00:13:13
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I think it's exactly that.
00:13:14
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That's the problem.
00:13:15
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One of the things that I like to separate in my work is there is education
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the profession and there's education the industry.
00:13:24
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And the profession is what I know and what I love.
00:13:29
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And it's the people that stay up late with me to craft lesson plans.
00:13:32
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It's the people that get up early with me to go to soccer practice with the kids at 7 a.m.
00:13:37
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That's education the profession.
00:13:40
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But then there's education the industry.
00:13:42
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And education the industry is disaster capitalism.
00:13:47
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And then ensure that those problems never go away so that we can profit from, you know, from attempting to solve them.
00:13:53
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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.
00:14:07
Speaker
And when we create a class of people who will fail them, we get to profit off of all the materials.
00:14:12
Speaker
And so it goes back to this idea that there's...
00:14:16
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you know, the money is never in the cure, the money is in treatment.
00:14:21
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You know, that we know how to teach literacy.
00:14:24
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And we know how to teach literacy well.
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And we know that teaching literacy well is relational.
00:14:28
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You know, I studied Dawn Graves, so that we know that
00:14:34
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into their communities, into their needs, into their voices.
00:14:37
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We know that, you know, and we can do that for every kid.
00:14:41
Speaker
You know, we put people on the moon.
00:14:44
Speaker
So we can deliver solid literacy to every kid, but it behooves the industry to not
00:14:56
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sell you conferences that promise to be cure-alls.
00:14:59
Speaker
And so absolutely, I am in love with education.
00:15:04
Speaker
And I have serious, serious, serious misgivings about education industry.
00:15:09
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.
00:15:17
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
00:15:25
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.
00:15:32
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.
00:15:41
Speaker
like captures all this attention, but it's more about the relationships that you build.
00:15:45
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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?
00:15:55
Speaker
And it's really that idea.
00:15:56
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It starts with shifting the conversation again.
00:15:59
Speaker
So that the traditional notions of classroom cool is
00:16:06
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
00:16:33
Speaker
And so if you tell me, I had a conversation with a kid the other day.
00:16:36
Speaker
Actually, I was talking to him about how he's going to spend his summer.
00:16:41
Speaker
And he happened to mention that he was going to be traveling to a Pokemon tournament to play Pokemon cards.
00:16:47
Speaker
And
00:16:48
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And I you know, I thought that was really cool way to spend your summer.
00:16:51
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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
00:17:15
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?
00:17:24
Speaker
No.
00:17:24
Speaker
Do I have to know how to play the card game?
00:17:26
Speaker
No.
00:17:27
Speaker
But do I have to listen to a kid when they talk about what's important to them and what they value?
00:17:30
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:17:31
Speaker
And then when I find little ways to connect what I'm doing every day to what they value, that's the win.
00:17:37
Speaker
And you talk in the book, too, about building spaces to make that happen as well.
00:17:42
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Absolutely.
00:17:43
Speaker
Like you talk about it doesn't have to be formal.
00:17:45
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It could be informal.
00:17:45
Speaker
Could you talk a little bit about this idea of the classroom meeting?
00:17:48
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Certainly.
00:17:49
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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.
00:17:59
Speaker
You know, I'd go to see her, you know, about every year for my annual checkup.
00:18:04
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And she would come get me in the waiting room and we would chat.
00:18:07
Speaker
She was like, oh, what are you doing there?
00:18:08
Speaker
I see you're wearing a soccer jersey.
00:18:09
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Have you played any good games lately?
00:18:11
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And she would talk to me about like, you know, like my shoes and like just, you know, small talk, I thought.
00:18:17
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.
00:18:24
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And I'm like, how did you know that?
00:18:25
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And she was like, well, when you're talking about your jersey, you happen to mention that you were in a game on Thursday.
00:18:29
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And, you know, and so she would have these ways of like,
00:18:32
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getting information from me
00:18:34
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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.
00:18:45
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And I remember being so envious of how much information she was able to collect about me in a short amount of time.
00:18:51
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And so I stole that from her.
00:18:53
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And I was like, I want to be able to do that with kids in my classroom.
00:18:56
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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
00:19:07
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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
00:19:20
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
00:19:41
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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.
00:19:47
Speaker
That informs how I can teach.
00:19:49
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.
Improving Teacher-Student Relationships
00:20:00
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.
00:20:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:09
Speaker
And it is scientific.
00:20:10
Speaker
People have studied relationships.
00:20:12
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.
00:20:21
Speaker
So I draw a lot from
00:20:24
Speaker
people's thinking about this.
00:20:26
Speaker
But you're right.
00:20:27
Speaker
It is common sense that if you listen to people, they respond.
00:20:30
Speaker
And so then how can I be really strategic in my listening is what I wanted the book to do.
00:20:34
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.
00:20:43
Speaker
So how can I demonstrate this in the book?
00:20:45
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You know, so those are really big questions for me.
00:20:47
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And one of the things, again, to resist this idea of market, I wanted to do things in the book that were free.
00:20:53
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you know, so many books are setups for you to buy more stuff.
00:20:56
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.
00:21:03
Speaker
And so it was really important to me that all the resources in the book be free.
00:21:07
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.
00:21:15
Speaker
Because like, you're right, this is the wisdom that our grandparents handed us.
00:21:18
Speaker
Like this doesn't belong to anyone.
00:21:23
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It's what we've always known about children.
00:21:25
Speaker
And so in many ways, for me, it's a return to who we once were as educators in a more inclusive way.
00:21:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:32
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.
00:21:43
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.
00:21:58
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.
00:22:09
Speaker
They're not open to changing in any way.
00:22:13
Speaker
What advice then do you have for bringing those potentially jaded educators –
00:22:18
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
00:22:44
Speaker
And I don't know if you've ever had a knee procedure, but you're awake during the whole thing.
00:22:53
Speaker
down, but you can see everything they're doing.
00:22:55
Speaker
And, and, and I'm a nerd.
00:22:57
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.
00:23:05
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.
00:23:15
Speaker
And so by the time I showed up for my surgery, I had probably seen the procedure 30 times performed already.
00:23:23
Speaker
So I knew what I was in for.
00:23:25
Speaker
And so, you know, they kind of like numb me, they start their work on my knee.
00:23:32
Speaker
And about two minutes into the procedure, I stopped my physician.
00:23:35
Speaker
And I was like, wait, I've seen this procedure and you're not doing what they did in the video.
00:23:40
Speaker
Like, what's up?
00:23:43
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.
00:23:52
Speaker
Like we have much better medical technology now than we had eight months ago.
00:23:57
Speaker
So if I were doing what you saw in that video from eight months ago, that would be malpractice today.
00:24:03
Speaker
And it was just
00:24:05
Speaker
such this clear statement of purpose and understanding.
00:24:08
Speaker
She was just like, yep, everything you saw in the video was correct eight months ago.
00:24:13
Speaker
But like, I know more now.
00:24:15
Speaker
And you would sue me if I did that procedure right now to you.
00:24:19
Speaker
And I think about my teaching in the same way.
00:24:21
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
00:24:31
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.
00:24:40
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.
00:24:50
Speaker
And so the teacher who says that they're set in their ways ain't here for kids.
00:24:54
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.
00:25:07
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.
00:25:18
Speaker
community.
00:25:19
Speaker
And so that being said, anything that abridges opportunity for a child is my enemy.
00:25:27
Speaker
And so if my belief in yesterday's teaching is limiting a kid's opportunity, I got to stop that.
00:25:34
Speaker
And I think that that's been
Political Nature of Teaching and Call to Action
00:25:36
Speaker
really important.
00:25:36
Speaker
And so when we're talking to those teachers, one of the things that often happens in community discourse is we make it
00:25:48
Speaker
work.
00:25:49
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.
00:25:57
Speaker
And I guess actually this builds into the final question.
00:25:59
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.
00:26:08
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
00:26:13
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.
00:26:28
Speaker
So is there a place for teachers to be banding together for political organization?
00:26:35
Speaker
in order to change the systems of inequity that are occurring?
00:26:38
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.
00:26:52
Speaker
That's political.
00:26:55
Speaker
That school districts are made and gerrymandered by city councils.
00:27:01
Speaker
These are political.
00:27:02
Speaker
That budgets are made.
00:27:03
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.
00:27:10
Speaker
And so the belief that teaching is apolitical, we're lying to ourselves.
00:27:15
Speaker
That the city councilman that I elect dictates how much money I take home every month.
00:27:22
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.
00:27:31
Speaker
And so so teaching is inherently political.
00:27:34
Speaker
But I borrow a lot from I have a great mentor, Bob Probst.
00:27:39
Speaker
And one of the things that he has pointed out to me time and time again is, you know, when.
00:27:44
Speaker
we like, you know, kids come to school in kindergarten and we teach them kindness.
00:27:50
Speaker
Right.
00:27:51
Speaker
And so the first lesson you learn, I've got a five-year-old daughter who started kindergarten this fall.
00:27:55
Speaker
And the first lesson that you learn in kindergarten is that you are kind to others.
00:27:59
Speaker
And, and if we teach kids to value kindness, we are implicitly condemning those who promote cruelty and indifference.
00:28:07
Speaker
And so, so, so that I'm teaching kids in class to be kind and
00:28:12
Speaker
of politicians who are unkind.
00:28:15
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.
00:28:23
Speaker
And so even my teaching is political.
00:28:25
Speaker
So like, yeah, kids come to kindergarten, I'm like, yeah, be nice to others.
00:28:28
Speaker
And yep, so that is a statement on those politicians who use their office to not be kind to others.
00:28:35
Speaker
And I think when we really look at what we're teaching, everything is political.
00:28:39
Speaker
You know that I'm a reading teacher.
00:28:41
Speaker
I teach kids to value information.
00:28:43
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.
00:28:51
Speaker
And so I'm teaching you to value evidence in my classroom, and we've got certain politicians who do not value evidence.
00:28:59
Speaker
My lesson that teaches you to value evidence is a condemnation of those people.
00:29:03
Speaker
It's implicit.
00:29:04
Speaker
And so everything that we do is political.
00:29:07
Speaker
I mean, it's obvious that educators have a lot of work to do, especially in certain segments of the country.
00:29:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:14
Speaker
given the fact that, I mean, there's literally concentration camps going on right now.
00:29:18
Speaker
So, I mean, there's a lot of work.
00:29:20
Speaker
Exactly.
00:29:20
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,
00:29:33
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.
00:29:45
Speaker
You know, most of the kids we encountered will not be murdered by the police.
00:29:49
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.
00:30:03
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.
00:30:15
Speaker
And when I talk about violence, I'm not, you know, I don't mean like putting your hands on kids.
00:30:18
Speaker
But when I think about, you know, there are many scholars who have noted that when somebody is powerful as a teacher,
00:30:29
Speaker
and media and experiences, and they construct a world that, and I'm not in it, that's an act of violence.
00:30:37
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.
00:30:49
Speaker
And that's an act of violence.
00:30:51
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.
00:30:58
Speaker
If I'm a teacher and I fail to teach in ways that honor how kids learn, that's an act of violence.
00:31:04
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.
00:31:13
Speaker
And if we're perpetuating these implicit and silent acts of violence,
00:31:17
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.
00:31:33
Speaker
But through school and schooling, people become less curious over time.
00:31:38
Speaker
That's violence.
00:31:39
Speaker
And that's a direct result of the kind of
00:31:45
Speaker
our doors.
00:31:46
Speaker
And so I really wanted to use We Got This as an opportunity to undo that kind of violence.
00:31:51
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.
Conclusion and Call for Support
00:32:12
Speaker
Thank you again for listening to Things Fall Apart from the Human Restoration Project.
00:32:15
Speaker
I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to push the progressive envelope of education.
00:32:20
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.
00:32:26
Speaker
I mention iTunes specifically because the more ratings we have there, the higher we rank on the education podcast list.
00:32:32
Speaker
And the more listeners we have, the better we're going to do.
00:32:35
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.
00:32:41
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.
00:32:50
Speaker
and our website traffic is up 10,000% in the last three months, and our Patreon supporters continue to climb.
00:32:56
Speaker
So let's push forward together and restore humanity.