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115: Equity, Systemic Change, and Performative Wokeness w/ Dr. Sheldon Eakins
5 Plays2 years ago
Today we’re joined by Dr. Sheldon Eakins. Dr. Eakins is an educator who has taught in elementary, middle, and high school settings, as well as an administrator. Currently, he is the Director of Special Education at a school in Idaho. In 2018, Dr. Eakins founded the Leading Equity Center, a professional development service, podcast, and resource hub for spreading cultural awareness, promoting equitable practice, and inspiring change to disrupt inequities in schools.
Each week, Dr. Eakins hosts a livestream and podcast that tackles a disruptive concept, from recruiting diverse applicant pools, to examining critical childhood studies, to being vulnerable with students. We highly recommend his work and would encourage you to check out Leading Equity on your favorite podcast player and visit https://www.leadingequitycenter.com/.
GUESTS
Sheldon Eakins Ph.D., Director of the Leading Equity Center, host of the Leading Equity podcast, K-12 educator, principal, and director of special education
RESOURCES
Recommended
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Transcript
Introduction and Acknowledgments
00:00:03
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 115 of our podcast.
00:00:06
Speaker
My name is Chris McNutt and I'm part of the progressive education nonprofit Human Restoration Project.
00:00:12
Speaker
Before we get started, I want to let you know that this is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Corinne Greenblatt, Dina Lowe, and Abigail French.
00:00:20
Speaker
Thank you for your ongoing support.
About the Human Restoration Project
00:00:22
Speaker
You can learn more about the Human Restoration Project on our website, humanrestorationproject.org, or find us on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.
Virtual Conference Announcement
00:00:30
Speaker
As a heads up, our inaugural virtual conference is from July 25th to July 28th, 2022.
00:00:37
Speaker
If you're interested in exploring a human-centered progressive pedagogy, giving you the tools to change systems in your classroom, then this is for you.
00:00:45
Speaker
We've invited Dr. Henry Giroux, the founding theorist of critical pedagogy, Dr. Denisha Jones, the co-editor of Black Lives Matter at School, and the Harvest Collegiate Circle Keepers, a student transformative justice organization.
00:00:57
Speaker
all to talk about building a better system and reimagining the classroom.
00:01:01
Speaker
Plus, there's five fantastic learning tracks to guide your learning and build a sustainable future.
00:01:06
Speaker
Tickets are still on sale.
00:01:07
Speaker
Visit humanrestorationproject.org slash conference to learn more.
Introduction to Dr. Sheldon Akins
00:01:25
Speaker
Today, we're joined by Dr. Sheldon Akins.
00:01:28
Speaker
Dr. Akins is an educator who has taught in elementary, middle and high school settings, as well as an administrator.
00:01:34
Speaker
Currently, he is the director of special education at a school in Idaho.
00:01:38
Speaker
In 2018, Dr. Akins founded the Leading Equity Center, professional development service, podcast and resource hub for spreading cultural awareness,
00:01:46
Speaker
promoting equitable practice, and inspiring change to disrupt inequities in schools.
00:01:50
Speaker
Each week, Dr. Akins hosts a podcast and live stream that tackles a disruptive concept, from recruiting diverse applicant pools, to examining critical childhood studies, to being vulnerable with students.
00:02:01
Speaker
We highly recommend his work and would encourage you to check out Leading Equity on your favorite podcast player and visit leadingequitycenter.com.
Culture Shock and Research Initiation
00:02:12
Speaker
It's interesting because I never thought I would become a podcaster, content creator, any of those things.
00:02:18
Speaker
I moved to Idaho about six years ago and it definitely was a culture shock.
00:02:23
Speaker
Definitely was a change of pace in what I was used to.
00:02:26
Speaker
And what I found was I had a lot of students that were coming up to me and telling me, students of color specifically, that were coming up to me and telling me all these different things about their experiences in the classroom and the hallways from their peers, teachers, principals, those kind of things.
00:02:41
Speaker
And I'm like,
00:02:42
Speaker
I don't know how to help them.
00:02:43
Speaker
Like, I feel bad.
00:02:44
Speaker
You know, they're coming to me.
00:02:45
Speaker
They see another person of color.
00:02:47
Speaker
And so they were confiding in me.
00:02:49
Speaker
And it's like sometimes it was venting.
00:02:51
Speaker
Sometimes it was like, OK, let's take some steps.
00:02:53
Speaker
Let's do something about this.
00:02:55
Speaker
But I didn't have the terminology or the knowledge behind that.
00:02:58
Speaker
what was happening to them.
00:02:59
Speaker
And so I just got my PhD maybe a couple of years before.
00:03:04
Speaker
So I'm used to doing research and interviewing.
00:03:07
Speaker
So I was used to researching articles.
00:03:09
Speaker
So I started just pulling up articles and Googling and Google Scholar, pulling up stuff, you know, microaggressions, implicit bias, cultural responsiveness, because I didn't really know much about these things.
00:03:20
Speaker
I didn't really have to pay much attention and
00:03:22
Speaker
from my previous teaching experience.
00:03:25
Speaker
And so that's how I started this show.
00:03:27
Speaker
And that's the goal is for me to provide the tools and resources necessary for educators to ensure equity at their school.
00:03:35
Speaker
And that's my goal is ultimately helping teachers, which will ultimately impact our students and their families.
Impact of George Floyd and COVID-19 on Equity Work
00:03:43
Speaker
The topics of your podcast range everywhere from, I would say, the very basic equality versus equity to more modern culture war issues like critical race theory, divisive concept bills, ongoing forms of censorship, both of educators and young people.
00:04:03
Speaker
And
00:04:04
Speaker
I'm curious just about your thoughts about the landscape today of professional development, teacher training, and teachers just having to teach in an environment that feels way more surveilled and controlled than it ever has before.
00:04:21
Speaker
I mean, you got to look at the data as well.
00:04:23
Speaker
I mean, we got a lot of teachers leaving, unfortunately, because we got folks that want to do this work that are just now kind of I think George Floyd was kind of a turning point for a lot of people because you had George Floyd coupled with
00:04:36
Speaker
COVID-19.
00:04:37
Speaker
So everybody's at home, sheltered in place.
00:04:40
Speaker
So a lot of people that never had experiences with such as police brutality or issues like that, issues with race, that wasn't just part of their background.
00:04:49
Speaker
But you see this all over social media.
00:04:51
Speaker
And so you had a lot of people that were like, oh, shoot, these things are happening.
00:04:55
Speaker
And then with COVID, it's like on the education side, it's like, man, we got a lot of kids that are dealing with trauma at home, that are dealing with, you know,
00:05:03
Speaker
losing loved ones to COVID or afraid that they're going to bring it home because they have vulnerable populations in the
Resistance to Equity and CRT Misrepresentation
00:05:10
Speaker
house.
00:05:10
Speaker
They have all these things happening all at one time.
00:05:13
Speaker
And so as a result, you got a lot of people there.
00:05:15
Speaker
And then, and then I forgot you had how to be anti-racist comes, comes out.
00:05:20
Speaker
You got white fragility book as well.
00:05:23
Speaker
That's out.
00:05:24
Speaker
And so with all of these things happening and the way the media has kind of like shifts our eyes and our place, you know, where we pay our attention to,
00:05:32
Speaker
I think that that was why a lot of people started to get on board with the equity work.
00:05:37
Speaker
But then, of course, as a result, you got the pushback on the other side where people are like, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
00:05:44
Speaker
That's not, you know, I don't want my child learning about this or this is reverse racism or this is that.
00:05:50
Speaker
And you're teaching our kids to hate America and you're indoctrinating, you know, all these words, buzzwords coming out.
00:05:56
Speaker
And it's funny because with the whole critical race theory, when that started coming out last was that last summer or so.
00:06:02
Speaker
I remember I wasn't as familiar with critical race theory.
00:06:06
Speaker
I was familiar with culturally responsive teaching and which was to me is the official CRT, if you will.
00:06:12
Speaker
But that's a whole nother conversation.
00:06:14
Speaker
But it's with I had started doing research and thinking about what the work that I do and the trainings that I do.
00:06:22
Speaker
What is how does that relate to what critical race theory is?
00:06:25
Speaker
And to me, it's just.
00:06:27
Speaker
I always related to the, to the Candyman.
00:06:29
Speaker
You know, if you ever watched that movie Candyman, you say it five times and, and then Candyman shows up and he does his thing.
00:06:35
Speaker
And I think that that is kind of the, the, the pushback that we get is we'll just say that this critical race theory, just so terrible.
00:06:43
Speaker
And as a result, this is what's happening in your classrooms.
00:06:46
Speaker
This is what your teachers are teaching.
00:06:47
Speaker
which teachers don't teach critical race theory.
00:06:50
Speaker
It's on a whole nother level.
00:06:51
Speaker
But again, if I'm not an educator, if I don't have an education background, if I don't know these things and I'm hearing this on my favorite news station and this is the stuff that they're telling me, oh, I should be afraid that I should be afraid.
00:07:02
Speaker
So then maybe I am.
00:07:03
Speaker
starting to be afraid.
00:07:04
Speaker
And I think a lot of this is just a way to deflect and to uphold white supremacy, to uphold the status quo, the way things have always been.
00:07:13
Speaker
Why are we talking about change?
00:07:15
Speaker
Why are we talking about this?
00:07:16
Speaker
This is ways to device our our country and all that.
00:07:21
Speaker
It's just just negative stuff.
00:07:22
Speaker
But reality is, I just think it's just bottom bottom line.
00:07:26
Speaker
It's just a way to try to uphold white supremacy.
00:07:29
Speaker
It's so much more transparent than it used to be, which I think is in some ways a good thing.
00:07:36
Speaker
At least it's easier to identify if someone is doing something that's something that you don't want in public
Semantics and Societal Pushback
00:07:41
Speaker
ed.
00:07:41
Speaker
I think about the growth of places like PragerU, for example, or other online right-wing places.
00:07:50
Speaker
stations, professional development networks, even.
00:07:52
Speaker
PragerU is now developing educational packets that give out to schools on counteracting CRT, which translates to counteracting talking about race.
00:08:02
Speaker
It's like basic stuff that they interpret this as.
00:08:05
Speaker
And in your own practice and doing PD, but also hosting your podcast, if there isn't a silver lining of more folks tuning into this work as a result of just more media coverage,
00:08:19
Speaker
It's an interesting question because, yeah, I honestly I lost contracts, especially I had a few groups I was working with in Texas and I lost some of those contracts because, you know, there's this fear that he's a critical race theory and he's teaching this stuff.
00:08:33
Speaker
And I'm like, no, equity is not critical race theory.
00:08:36
Speaker
But the problem is, again, here's now equity used to be the umbrella of
00:08:41
Speaker
And underneath equity, you used to have social, emotional learning.
00:08:44
Speaker
You have all these different areas, restorative practices, trauma-informed care.
00:08:49
Speaker
All these things kind of fit underneath equity.
00:08:52
Speaker
But then critical race theory is starting to become the new umbrella for a lot of right-wing people.
00:08:59
Speaker
And then they just throw everything in there, buzzwords in there as, oh, yeah, these are – I remember seeing last summer a meme.
00:09:09
Speaker
Was it – no, it was like a –
00:09:11
Speaker
image that had all these different terms and they took it down rather quickly because they got a lot of pushback on that.
00:09:18
Speaker
But it was just like all the words you could think of equity, privilege, cultural responsiveness, all these different inclusive, like just social, most like things that are just to me, basic stuff.
00:09:30
Speaker
And the thing I never really understood is like, okay, we're okay with saying differentiated instruction.
00:09:38
Speaker
That never gets attacked.
00:09:39
Speaker
No one ever questions differentiated instruction.
00:09:42
Speaker
But if I say an equitable approach to me, they're very similar, right?
00:09:47
Speaker
Because differentiation is just saying, OK, this child learns this way.
00:09:51
Speaker
This child will benefit from this type of instruction.
00:09:54
Speaker
This child would benefit, you know, IEPs and all that kind of stuff.
00:09:57
Speaker
That's OK.
00:09:58
Speaker
But if I say equity, it's just triggering and it's a problem.
00:10:03
Speaker
So sometimes I feel like are we just really spending too much time on semantics?
00:10:08
Speaker
And that's and that is that taking away from, again, supporting our students who have different needs?
00:10:14
Speaker
I think we can all agree that our kids all don't learn the same way.
00:10:17
Speaker
I mean, we as adults.
00:10:19
Speaker
We learn differently.
00:10:20
Speaker
And the same thing applies to our students.
00:10:23
Speaker
And so if I have a student that prefers to be more auditory, if I have a student that's more visual, these type of things, I want them.
00:10:32
Speaker
I don't know a teacher that says I want my kids to fail.
00:10:34
Speaker
I assume that all teachers want their kids to be successful.
00:10:38
Speaker
So what are those approaches that we need to take in order for them to be accessible?
00:10:42
Speaker
to be successful.
00:10:43
Speaker
And then again, that's where all these buzzwords really kind of muddy the water and takes away from the experience of a student.
Pushback Influenced by Media
00:10:51
Speaker
Yeah, that makes me think of, I subjected myself to reading James Lindsay's book.
00:10:57
Speaker
I forget who it's written with.
00:10:59
Speaker
It's called, it's something like the guide to counter woke craft, which is a book that is actually, where do you find it?
00:11:10
Speaker
I had a Kindle Unlimited.
00:11:12
Speaker
It came with my Kindle that I bought.
00:11:14
Speaker
And it popped up.
00:11:15
Speaker
It's the top-selling book in education.
00:11:17
Speaker
James Lindsay is one of probably the most alt-right educational speakers.
00:11:25
Speaker
He says...
00:11:27
Speaker
terrible things, both equity, but also just like general public education.
00:11:31
Speaker
But the book is referenced by a lot of different organizations that are pushing for school choice, a lot of different organizations that are involved in the anti-CRT movement.
00:11:40
Speaker
And it just flat out says, like, these are the words that you should be looking for, kind of similar to that image that you just described.
00:11:47
Speaker
Or...
00:11:49
Speaker
I found this kind of funny.
00:11:50
Speaker
It will say things like, if they say words that you don't understand or that sound made up or that just sound left wing, like it's in the book, that you should come in and they give you advice for basically to troll it, to come in and say things that intentionally make the argument sound either absurd or just to frustrate the person who's saying it.
00:12:12
Speaker
with no debate over the policy or the implications of the policy, but more so just the concept of it being left wing.
00:12:20
Speaker
That's what I'm saying.
00:12:20
Speaker
It's the language.
00:12:21
Speaker
That's where we're at.
00:12:22
Speaker
I mean, again, a lot of us can agree we want our kids to be successful in it.
00:12:27
Speaker
And again, we can agree that our kids learn differently.
00:12:30
Speaker
But the approach to help them out in their individual needs, again, it's really just to me, it comes down to a bunch of semantics.
00:12:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:39
Speaker
And because I remember I did I did a Dr. King speech this past January at a in a school or for in Iowa, actually.
00:12:49
Speaker
And, you know, I do I did a little Q&A at the end.
00:12:52
Speaker
And like the questions I was getting was like, yeah, you're this is like scripted from Fox News.
00:12:58
Speaker
Like this is.
00:12:59
Speaker
It's like the idea of like equity is taken away from one person to give to other people.
00:13:04
Speaker
I'm like, but you're making it.
00:13:06
Speaker
No, that's first of all, that's not what equity is.
00:13:08
Speaker
It's just, again, ensuring individual needs are being met.
00:13:11
Speaker
But when you think about resources, you make it seem like there I only have five bucks, only have this much resources.
00:13:17
Speaker
And so I'm going to take this away from one person.
00:13:20
Speaker
by the way, who may not even have needed it, but I'm going to take this away from somebody and give it to someone else.
00:13:26
Speaker
But we had to think of it from a larger scheme as far as resources being plentiful.
00:13:32
Speaker
I have access to Chromebooks.
00:13:34
Speaker
I have access to whatever, you know, these devices or these devices,
00:13:39
Speaker
instructional aids.
00:13:40
Speaker
And so I'm going to provide these instructional aids to the students that need this help who have an IEP that says these are the supports that they will benefit from.
00:13:50
Speaker
Yet again, when we start saying certain words, it's an issue.
00:13:54
Speaker
As long as we don't say those words and do the same task, then it's fine.
00:13:59
Speaker
But you say those words, it's such a triggering moment for a lot of people.
00:14:03
Speaker
How do you recommend that educators navigate those waters?
Advising on Critical Thinking in Education
00:14:07
Speaker
So one suggestion would be, I guess, try to stay out of the political terminology.
00:14:12
Speaker
Obviously, you wouldn't write in your syllabus.
00:14:17
Speaker
I think that everyone kind of has an unwritten rule that they're not going to put some of these things in their syllabus, even if they might talk about them in the class because they know that.
00:14:25
Speaker
what the ramifications might be, not because they're trying to be like sneaky about it, but because they care about the kids in the room and they're just doing their jobs.
00:14:33
Speaker
It's what you do.
00:14:34
Speaker
How do educators talk about these things and act on these things when they know that there's this almost looming threat of someone willing to call them out?
00:14:43
Speaker
From my experience, the main thing, whatever advice I would give to teachers that are wanting to do equity work, but they're in districts or they're in schools or situations where, again, these words are deterring them or their confidence or they're wanting to do this stuff, but they just feel like,
00:15:02
Speaker
If I say the wrong thing, then it's going to, you know, I could lose my job or I can get disciplined or whatever it is.
00:15:07
Speaker
I think just simple things such as providing real life situations and helping the students just to critically think.
00:15:15
Speaker
I think one of the challenges is teachers, we tend to want to have this level of control.
00:15:21
Speaker
And so we want to really engage in dialogue in these conversations, give our take and give our point of view.
00:15:28
Speaker
And I think that sometimes is where
00:15:30
Speaker
things get a little challenging.
00:15:34
Speaker
My advice is always to say, just let the students talk.
00:15:39
Speaker
Let them share how they view.
00:15:42
Speaker
Okay, you just talked about maybe gentrification.
00:15:45
Speaker
I'm a social studies background as well.
00:15:47
Speaker
So it's like, okay, we're talking about gentrification.
00:15:49
Speaker
The Starbucks wants to be...
00:15:53
Speaker
Buy this building that historically has been in a black neighborhood.
00:15:56
Speaker
They want to take this this building.
00:15:58
Speaker
And here's how much it costs.
00:15:59
Speaker
Students, what are your thoughts?
00:16:01
Speaker
And allow them to dialogue in that.
00:16:04
Speaker
You don't have to necessarily be the the main person speaking on it, but just listening to your students and hearing what they think.
00:16:10
Speaker
And if a student asks you a question, you know, what is your take teacher?
00:16:13
Speaker
So, you know, I think I have my definitely have my points or my thoughts regarding this.
00:16:18
Speaker
But, you know, I'm really enjoying this.
00:16:20
Speaker
learning from you, I prefer to hear what you have to say.
00:16:24
Speaker
And so you're putting it back there on them.
00:16:26
Speaker
So that way you're not saying anything.
00:16:28
Speaker
You're you're not putting yourself in a position where you could, again, potentially lose your job or any of those kind of things.
00:16:37
Speaker
But just, again, allowing students to talk about it.
00:16:39
Speaker
And honestly, if you can always tell people, if you can find a school where your administrator supports you, where you you you can engage in these conversations, we can subtly instill this information to our students and help them, again, critically
Ground Rules for Discussions
00:16:55
Speaker
think.
00:16:55
Speaker
We're not indoctrinating, just allowing them to think for themselves.
00:16:58
Speaker
I have little kids.
00:17:00
Speaker
I have a 12 year old and a nine year old.
00:17:02
Speaker
And I say, OK, here's the situation.
00:17:04
Speaker
What are your thoughts?
00:17:05
Speaker
You're a smart child.
00:17:06
Speaker
You're a smart individual.
00:17:08
Speaker
I love to get your point of view.
00:17:09
Speaker
What what are what are your thoughts on this situation?
00:17:12
Speaker
And then allow allow them to engage in that conversation as opposed to you just trying to facilitate everything and be the main one speaking.
00:17:20
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a good way too to just navigate the concept of divisive concepts as well as the laws themselves.
00:17:28
Speaker
It's interesting to note that almost all of those laws, to my knowledge, as long as students are the ones that bring up the concepts, it's perfectly fine to talk about them.
00:17:39
Speaker
And those concepts that are important for students to understand are going to naturally come up whenever you talk about
00:17:45
Speaker
pretty much any current event or issue in someone's community.
00:17:49
Speaker
And as an instructor, you don't have to provide your opinion.
00:17:52
Speaker
You can just complicate scenarios with facts.
00:17:55
Speaker
And over time, it's kind of like your opinion, but the exact same time, the facts are on your side.
00:18:02
Speaker
That knowledge is there.
00:18:03
Speaker
For years, we talked about, speaking of gentrification, that exact concept, I taught in a community as the second highest opioid overdose rate in the country.
00:18:14
Speaker
And inevitably, it would come up at some point during our social studies class.
00:18:18
Speaker
And the kids would just talk about things.
00:18:21
Speaker
And as soon as someone said something that was like, that's a little problematic, we just pull up like a graph or a diagram and talk about that.
00:18:29
Speaker
Not in an aggressive tone, not because I was upset, just like, hey, like, what about this?
00:18:34
Speaker
And I was always surprised by students who maybe had more, I guess, like right wing leanings or libertarian range, whatever it might be.
00:18:43
Speaker
We're super okay with coming around to that and having those discussions because it wasn't propaganda.
00:18:49
Speaker
It's just learning about stuff.
00:18:51
Speaker
And the exact same way too for students that form a little bit more left-wing that maybe had some non-appropriate things to say about other people.
00:18:58
Speaker
Well, that's why you had to have classroom norms.
00:19:00
Speaker
You had to set up those classroom norms.
00:19:02
Speaker
You know, this is how we're going to engage in conversations.
00:19:06
Speaker
You might have a student that has a difference of opinion than you have, but we're going to be respectful.
00:19:11
Speaker
OK, we're going to allow each person the space to be able to share their thoughts, to share how they feel.
00:19:17
Speaker
And again, it might, you know, differ from what you believe in which.
00:19:20
Speaker
But it's OK.
00:19:22
Speaker
I don't enter.
00:19:23
Speaker
Like when I personally do trainings for people, I tell them, I say, look,
00:19:26
Speaker
We're here together for an hour.
00:19:27
Speaker
We're here for 90 minutes or half day, whatever it is, right?
00:19:30
Speaker
We're here for this time.
00:19:31
Speaker
I don't expect to change your hearts and minds within this timeframe.
00:19:36
Speaker
My goal here is to bring you some awareness, try to provide some perspectives that you may not have considered.
00:19:41
Speaker
You can digest that however you want to digest it, but there's still, you can...
00:19:46
Speaker
I encourage you to further do education on on this topic and learn more going forward.
00:19:54
Speaker
But if we don't set those ground rules from the beginning, like we just jump right into dialogue, we jump right into these conversations, we jump right into these trains without providing some, you know, just some basic protocols about respect.
00:20:08
Speaker
about being in a brave space, about allowing voices to be heard and differences of opinions is totally fine.
Details on HRP's Virtual Conference
00:20:16
Speaker
And I think if we don't do that, that's where we get a lot of challenges.
00:20:20
Speaker
So I always try to make sure that I spend at least five minutes to just kind of go through some simple stuff.
00:20:27
Speaker
All right, now let's talk.
00:20:28
Speaker
And here's what I think.
00:20:29
Speaker
And here's some research that supports what I think.
00:20:32
Speaker
But if you have something different, let's talk about it.
00:20:34
Speaker
I'd love to know where you're coming from.
00:20:39
Speaker
The Conference to Restore Humanity is an invitation for K-12 and college educators to engage in a human-centered system reboot, centering the needs of students and educators toward a praxis of social justice.
00:20:52
Speaker
The traditional conference format doesn't work for everyone.
00:20:55
Speaker
It's costly to attend, environmentally unfriendly, and it doesn't allow everyone to engage or have a voice in the learning community.
00:21:03
Speaker
Our conference is designed around the accessibility and sustainability of virtual learning, while engaging participants in a classroom environment that models the same progressive pedagogy we value with students.
00:21:14
Speaker
Instead of long Zoom presentations with a brief Q&A, keynotes are flipped.
00:21:19
Speaker
And attendees will have the opportunity for extended conversation with our speakers, Dr. Henry Giroux, the founding theorist of critical pedagogy, Dr. Denisha Jones, educator, activist, and co-editor of Black Lives Matter at School, and the Circle Keepers from Harvest Collegiate High School in New York City, a student collective focused on social justice.
00:21:40
Speaker
And instead of back-to-back online workshops, we are offering asynchronous learning tracks.
00:21:45
Speaker
You can engage with the content and the community at any time on topics like anti-carceral pedagogy, disrupting linguistic discrimination, designing for neurodivergence, promoting childism in the classroom, and supporting feedback over grades.
00:22:00
Speaker
The Conference to Restore Humanity runs July 25th through the 28th.
00:22:04
Speaker
And as of recording, early bird tickets are still available.
00:22:08
Speaker
It's $150 for four days with discounts available for individuals from historically marginalized communities as well as group rates.
00:22:16
Speaker
Plus, we'll award certificates for teacher training and continuing education credits.
00:22:21
Speaker
See our website humanrestorationproject.org for more information and let's restore humanity together.
00:22:33
Speaker
Circling back to what we were talking about earlier, these things have always been indicators of strong teaching.
Performative Wokeness Explained
00:22:41
Speaker
You could go to a teacher workshop a decade or two ago and get similar vibes from a discussion-based pedagogical activity.
00:22:49
Speaker
Things have changed, though, a lot in the last couple of years.
00:22:53
Speaker
In multiple ways, you talk about this topic called performative wokeness.
00:22:57
Speaker
I think that that would be an interesting kind of thing to talk about here for a second.
00:23:01
Speaker
Do you just want to describe about what that is?
00:23:03
Speaker
Performative wokeness.
00:23:05
Speaker
And I don't have the definition in front of me, so I'm just going to paraphrase and you'll get different.
00:23:11
Speaker
You know, you hear performative wokeness, you hear performative equity, these type of these type of terms.
00:23:16
Speaker
Again, to me again, semantics.
00:23:18
Speaker
However, in a general sense, it's the idea of saying, you know, I support this, I support that.
00:23:25
Speaker
Um,
00:23:26
Speaker
I'll put a Black Lives Matter flag up in my classroom, but that's as far as it goes.
00:23:32
Speaker
So I won't speak up against police brutality.
00:23:35
Speaker
I won't address it.
00:23:37
Speaker
I'll just put, you know, a rainbow flag and say this is a safe space for LGBTQ plus.
00:23:42
Speaker
But I'm not again, I'm not going to speak up.
00:23:45
Speaker
So it's more of look at me.
00:23:48
Speaker
I'm supportive.
00:23:50
Speaker
I'm an ally.
00:23:50
Speaker
I'm this arm that but then there's no actual work behind it.
00:23:55
Speaker
People that don't have these personal identities tend to like those are the ones that usually are the ones with the performer wokeness because it's like, oh, it doesn't personally impact me.
00:24:06
Speaker
But this is what's on the media right now.
00:24:09
Speaker
I turn my TV on and
00:24:11
Speaker
Roe versus Wade is happening right now.
00:24:12
Speaker
So I'm going to be all about abortions, pro abortion or whatever it is.
00:24:16
Speaker
I'm being about it.
00:24:17
Speaker
And then news cameras go off.
00:24:19
Speaker
We shift to something else that's happening in our country.
00:24:21
Speaker
And now I'm jumping on that.
00:24:23
Speaker
But abortion still is going to be an issue six months from now or a year, two years from now.
00:24:29
Speaker
But if the media is not highlighting it and then I'm not highlighting it.
00:24:32
Speaker
So sometimes people just kind of jump on the bandwagon and say, oh, yeah, I'm all about this or I'm all about that, but not really wanting to do any work behind it.
00:24:41
Speaker
I used to be, you know, very supportive of the word allyship, for example, and I've kind of shifted my thought.
00:24:48
Speaker
And so instead of being an ally, I say I'm a disruptor because to me, an ally can be a
Difference Between Ally and Disruptor
00:24:54
Speaker
safe word.
00:24:54
Speaker
I've heard people say, well, you know, disrupting just kind of seems a little bit more combative versus, you know, ally just seems nicer, seems safer.
00:25:02
Speaker
And I'm like, that's the problem.
00:25:04
Speaker
If you're telling me that allyship just seems nicer, seems safer, is
00:25:09
Speaker
It protects me.
00:25:10
Speaker
I can be an ally versus saying I'm a disruptor.
00:25:12
Speaker
That's going to bring a different connotation towards it.
00:25:15
Speaker
But OK, but if you want change, if you really want, if you recognize that our systems that we have in place historically, the way our educational system is set up wasn't set up for everybody.
00:25:27
Speaker
And if you can recognize that and that change,
00:25:30
Speaker
And 200 years later, these things are still in place.
00:25:33
Speaker
These are what we're doing still.
00:25:34
Speaker
And we want to make some changes.
00:25:36
Speaker
Yeah, you're going to have to be a little bit more vocal and you're going to have to push back.
00:25:40
Speaker
But if you're saying, well, I don't really want to push back because, you know, I don't want to call anybody out or I don't want to do this.
00:25:47
Speaker
I don't want to do that.
00:25:48
Speaker
Then that's where that performative piece comes in.
00:25:51
Speaker
It kind of comes down to leveraging power and privilege and taking those mitigated risks.
00:25:56
Speaker
Because there's no denying that it's going to take risks to change these things.
00:26:01
Speaker
And there is always that element of, you probably are going to have an office meeting with a principal at some point.
00:26:09
Speaker
or another if you're doing this kind of work.
00:26:11
Speaker
And I have a strong feeling that if you were doing this kind of work a lot, and depending on the school you're at, you're going to have a lot of administrator meetings.
00:26:18
Speaker
But if you navigate that in the way that you were talking about before, and you present the facts, run a classroom, how classrooms are run, you have that pedagogy behind you,
00:26:28
Speaker
chances are you can at least defend yourself.
00:26:30
Speaker
Or if it still leads to more problems, well, you could do some other.
00:26:33
Speaker
You could go to the media.
00:26:34
Speaker
You could talk to people about it.
00:26:36
Speaker
You could really put up a shit store for people trying to mess with you.
Holistic History Lessons
00:26:43
Speaker
What are some of the things that go beyond performative wokeness in the classroom?
00:26:48
Speaker
What are things that you would encourage educators to explicitly do with their students to actually fight for change beyond just the putting up the flag or the sticker or whatever?
00:27:00
Speaker
I have, you know, I've come across, you know, most of us are familiar with cultural responses, culturally relevant, culturally sustaining.
00:27:08
Speaker
A lot of us are familiar, at least with the terminology there.
00:27:12
Speaker
But before all of that, there is multicultural education by Dr. James A. Banks, and he talks about some approaches that we can take.
00:27:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:22
Speaker
when it comes to learning about again, I'm a history person, so I'm I'm going to talk from a historical standpoint, but just kind of telling multiple sides of the story.
00:27:32
Speaker
Right.
00:27:32
Speaker
We we talk about Lewis and Clark expedition, for example.
00:27:36
Speaker
We celebrate, you know, expansion of the United States.
00:27:39
Speaker
But how did that impact our indigenous communities?
00:27:43
Speaker
Right.
00:27:43
Speaker
We we forced them on.
00:27:44
Speaker
Well, not we, but they were forced on reservations.
00:27:49
Speaker
Their land was taken.
00:27:50
Speaker
And we're excited because we purchased land that wasn't even for sale.
00:27:55
Speaker
And and but but again, we we tell the story one way.
00:27:58
Speaker
You know, Lewis and Clark, we celebrate those type of things.
00:28:01
Speaker
And in Sacagawea is off.
00:28:04
Speaker
Sometimes, you know, I remember my child, my daughter had a you know, they did a whole lesson on this.
00:28:10
Speaker
And it said the key players within the Louisiana Purchase Lewis and Clark.
00:28:16
Speaker
And Napoleon.
00:28:17
Speaker
And I'm like, OK, these are the key players.
00:28:20
Speaker
That's that's it.
00:28:21
Speaker
And so so my daughter, she's she's very militant.
00:28:25
Speaker
I ain't go.
00:28:25
Speaker
I mean, she knows her dad and she listens to the stuff that I say.
00:28:29
Speaker
And we have conversations.
00:28:30
Speaker
And I said, so she came to me about it.
00:28:32
Speaker
It's like, I don't feel right about this because the same key players.
00:28:36
Speaker
But it doesn't say anything about Sacagawea.
00:28:38
Speaker
And I said, OK, we'll talk to your teacher about that.
00:28:41
Speaker
Let her know how you feel.
00:28:43
Speaker
And so she communicated with her teacher and basically the responses she got from her teacher was, well, yeah, they're the key players.
00:28:50
Speaker
And I have a whole lesson dedicated to Sacagawea.
00:28:55
Speaker
I'm like, OK, so we're going to do this, by the way, or contribution type of approach, but let's keep it real.
00:29:03
Speaker
Had it not been, Sacagawea was very, very influential.
00:29:07
Speaker
I mean, those those gentlemen were not would not have been able to communicate with the indigenous communities that they met and that they encountered.
00:29:16
Speaker
They would not have been able to map the land without her support, without her help.
00:29:21
Speaker
It would have been a different situation.
00:29:23
Speaker
And to be honest, I mean, the whole Lewis and Clark expedition was really a reconnaissance mission.
00:29:29
Speaker
It was just scoping out the land and finding ways.
00:29:31
Speaker
What are the weak points?
00:29:32
Speaker
How can we take over this land?
00:29:34
Speaker
That's legit what it was.
00:29:35
Speaker
But again, we're not supposed to say that.
00:29:38
Speaker
We're not supposed to talk about the terrible things that the United States and a lot of people within the United States have done to get to where the United States is now.
00:29:46
Speaker
So I just say try to teach lessons.
Non-European Perspectives in History
00:29:50
Speaker
that provides a holistic approach as opposed to teaching in a European dominant perspective.
00:29:58
Speaker
But we really need to, well, how did this impact other people?
00:30:01
Speaker
I'll give you another example, right?
00:30:02
Speaker
We talk about, um,
00:30:05
Speaker
The stock market, you know, what was the crash and the Great Depression.
00:30:10
Speaker
But who was really impacted the most when it comes to the stock market?
00:30:15
Speaker
Right.
00:30:15
Speaker
Because a lot of people of color didn't own stocks and that wasn't part of our experience.
00:30:19
Speaker
We were already in a Great Depression and arguably you could say we're still trying to get ourselves out of that.
00:30:25
Speaker
But it's highlighted from a European perspective that.
00:30:28
Speaker
So as a result, oh, this is a big moment, a pivotal moment within our country.
00:30:33
Speaker
But you had groups of colored who have who are already in these situations historically from before, I don't know, 1930s, all before that.
00:30:44
Speaker
And because it impacted a lot of people that didn't.
00:30:49
Speaker
because it impacted a lot of people of European descent.
00:30:52
Speaker
Now it's a staple within our social studies as part of our, you know, standards and all that stuff.
00:30:59
Speaker
But again, how were other people of color already being impacted prior to, and still today, we have to teach the whole story.
00:31:07
Speaker
But again, with this whole book banning and with all the censorship these days, they don't want us to share that information.
00:31:15
Speaker
It's not like we're telling lies.
00:31:17
Speaker
We're not making up stories.
00:31:21
Speaker
It's just they literally don't want us to tell the entire story.
00:31:24
Speaker
It's like if you have two kids that get into a fight and you only talk to one of those kids and say, what happened?
00:31:33
Speaker
And they say, oh, you know, Johnny hit me and I didn't do anything.
00:31:37
Speaker
And then you just, OK, all right.
00:31:39
Speaker
So I'm just going to punish Johnny because you told me the story.
00:31:43
Speaker
Thanks for letting me know and keeping me, you know, making me aware of that.
00:31:46
Speaker
But you don't question the other person, you know, the other party involved in this situation.
00:31:50
Speaker
You're only getting one side of the story.
00:31:53
Speaker
Got to get the whole thing.
00:31:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:55
Speaker
It's also just like inherently more interesting to get all sides of the story.
00:32:01
Speaker
I remember covering we'd always open up with like the colonial era and we would tell the story of Squanto.
00:32:08
Speaker
And just thinking about the question, like, how did Squanto know English?
00:32:13
Speaker
And the fact that the typical curriculum skips over the entire story of like Squanto was a slave.
00:32:17
Speaker
He was in Europe.
00:32:19
Speaker
He learned how to speak the language, which is why when he came back, he wasn't with his village.
00:32:25
Speaker
It was like the whole reason why he even met up with these people.
00:32:27
Speaker
That's the origin of the story.
00:32:29
Speaker
I remember covering, it was super dark, but the Philippines-American War, which is a war that I think that if you asked most Americans, like, what is that, they wouldn't have any clue that that even occurred.
00:32:42
Speaker
And talking about that with kids and saying, like, you know, why do you think it is that this is a war we don't typically talk about?
00:32:48
Speaker
Well, it's because it was the war that was the most explicitly an aggression by the United States.
00:32:53
Speaker
There was no even, I guess, fake reason for going.
00:32:57
Speaker
We just kind of went and took it over and caused a genocide.
00:33:01
Speaker
Hawaii.
00:33:02
Speaker
We don't talk about Hawaii.
00:33:04
Speaker
We say, you know, we got 50 states.
00:33:06
Speaker
But how did how did we acquire Hawaii?
00:33:09
Speaker
Like that was taken from, you know, again, we.
00:33:12
Speaker
We celebrate these things.
00:33:14
Speaker
And, you know, that's just kind of again, that is kind of how they want us to continue to teach history.
00:33:22
Speaker
But it's nice that America is, you know, 50 states, but some of those again, the land that was acquired,
00:33:29
Speaker
was, you know, taken and dominated and conquered and all these different things.
00:33:35
Speaker
But we just don't want to have those kind of conversations.
Appreciation for Comprehensive History
00:33:38
Speaker
Oh, there's such an ugly history behind the United States.
00:33:41
Speaker
But they'll love to highlight slavery.
00:33:43
Speaker
They love to highlight our indigenous folks and conquistadors and all these.
00:33:48
Speaker
Like, we'll talk about when we conquered you, but we won't.
00:33:52
Speaker
We don't feel right talking about all the different things.
00:33:56
Speaker
We'll talk about your oppression.
00:33:58
Speaker
But we don't want to talk about, yeah, but what is our role within that oppression and why folks were being oppressed and those type of things?
00:34:05
Speaker
We don't want to have that kind of conversation.
00:34:07
Speaker
Interesting, too, that kids are very receptive to these conversations.
00:34:11
Speaker
We would have conversations all the time about like, is this...
00:34:15
Speaker
unpatriotic to talk about these things?
00:34:17
Speaker
Is it okay to critique the country that you live in?
00:34:21
Speaker
Does this mean that we're any less proud to be Americans or that we should revolt against the entire government or whatever it might be?
00:34:29
Speaker
And kids would always share things like, I'm just really appreciative that we're learning about these things.
00:34:34
Speaker
I had no idea.
00:34:35
Speaker
I feel like I'm more knowledgeable.
00:34:37
Speaker
At a very surface level, these concepts are incredibly basic.
00:34:41
Speaker
You learn about your history, you learn about everything that happened, and then you try to do better knowing that information today.
00:34:48
Speaker
But with that position... But it doesn't repeat, right?
00:34:52
Speaker
Yeah, this is a core concept in history.
00:34:54
Speaker
And I think, too, it kind of branches out to like in English now we're seeing self-censorship.
00:35:01
Speaker
There might not be explicit censorship of what books you pick, but I might intentionally not pick certain books knowing that there might be a debate around me picking...
00:35:11
Speaker
Oh my goodness.
00:35:12
Speaker
I was just thinking of it.
00:35:13
Speaker
The, the book where, uh, the girl's friend is shot.
00:35:17
Speaker
Oh, uh, uh, hate you give the hate you give.
00:35:19
Speaker
Thank you.
00:35:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:20
Speaker
That's, that was a big one.
00:35:21
Speaker
I remember when that first came out, I feel like everyone was teaching that book.
00:35:24
Speaker
Like it was commonplace.
00:35:25
Speaker
Uh, and you saw it everywhere.
00:35:27
Speaker
And then over time, they're slowly slipping away from that syllabus because that book was covered by Fox news.
00:35:33
Speaker
It was covered by, uh, anti-seer he folks.
00:35:37
Speaker
Um,
00:35:37
Speaker
And people are afraid.
00:35:38
Speaker
They don't want to bring that up.
00:35:39
Speaker
But what's wrong with the book?
00:35:41
Speaker
That's the reality.
00:35:42
Speaker
That happens.
00:35:44
Speaker
I don't know if it's because it's written by a black woman or, again, we don't want folks to feel bad.
00:35:51
Speaker
I don't.
00:35:53
Speaker
It's crazy how some of the books that are being banned and censored and all that stuff has real life concepts.
00:35:59
Speaker
Like it's a historic, you know, it's a, it's a fictional book.
00:36:02
Speaker
However, it's not like it's unlikely for something like this to happen.
00:36:06
Speaker
It happens.
00:36:07
Speaker
We literally have seen, uh, every now and then I'll see a list of all the unarmed black people that were, were killed at the hands of the police.
00:36:15
Speaker
Doesn't mean that I hate police or any of those kinds of things.
00:36:17
Speaker
I just, I don't like police brutality.
00:36:19
Speaker
I don't, you know,
00:36:20
Speaker
my father is in law enforcement.
00:36:22
Speaker
So it's not that I have anything against police officers.
00:36:24
Speaker
Just we have police brutality.
00:36:26
Speaker
It's always been a thing.
00:36:27
Speaker
It is continued.
00:36:28
Speaker
Historically has happened.
00:36:30
Speaker
And then we, we see stuff happen on camera and still we see a lot of police officers get acquitted for, for their actions and things like that.
00:36:37
Speaker
So it,
00:36:40
Speaker
It's just a matter of trying to keep the status quo, keeping things the same.
00:36:44
Speaker
We don't want change.
00:36:45
Speaker
We don't we wanted to keep it the way it's always been.
00:36:49
Speaker
And I think that that's really a problem.
00:36:50
Speaker
So I like when students are like, thank you for sharing this information, because I didn't know this is not something conversation that we have at home or this wasn't a conversation that I've had in my community.
00:36:59
Speaker
I'm glad to be able to learn from a different perspective.
00:37:02
Speaker
I
00:37:02
Speaker
I think, too, there's a way to extend that beyond just curricular.
00:37:07
Speaker
There's the curriculum element of ensuring that people understand factual information and they understand all sides of
Systemic Issues in Education
00:37:13
Speaker
the story.
00:37:13
Speaker
Then there's also all of those other things that happen in school, which are also very much racist, target marginalized communities and
00:37:23
Speaker
I think about things like how grades rank and file students, tracking policies, discipline policies, all these things that even before all of these conversations, including now, they aren't necessarily as spoken about because it's something that most people do without a second thought.
00:37:46
Speaker
There's an irony to me.
00:37:47
Speaker
and failing students for not passing an assignment I have on social justice.
00:37:54
Speaker
The disconnect there of you just basically told this kid that now they are worse off than someone else, and it could have lasting implications for them.
00:38:03
Speaker
That's just the way that we've always done things, at least in the mainstream.
00:38:07
Speaker
In terms of your work and equity and leading equity and
00:38:11
Speaker
the advice that you're spreading to teachers beyond just changing up curriculum for someone who's not a history teacher and English teacher humanities, that kind of stuff.
00:38:21
Speaker
What do they do now?
00:38:22
Speaker
You know, so it's people will tell me, well, you know, your humanities classes are really easy.
00:38:29
Speaker
Liberal arts are really easy to do social justice and equity, that kind of thing.
00:38:34
Speaker
But I'm a math teacher.
00:38:35
Speaker
So what you know, all I got is formulas and equations.
00:38:38
Speaker
I say, yeah, you can use those formulas and equations to create word problems.
00:38:42
Speaker
Problem is we often just lean on and including myself.
00:38:47
Speaker
I used to be the same way.
00:38:48
Speaker
We get our textbooks.
00:38:49
Speaker
Textbooks gives us, you know, here's the lesson plan.
00:38:52
Speaker
Here's the worksheets.
00:38:53
Speaker
Here's here's the assignments.
00:38:55
Speaker
Here's the assessments or whatever.
00:38:57
Speaker
And we just lean on that.
00:38:59
Speaker
We rely on that.
00:39:00
Speaker
But we know that a lot of those textbooks that we have adopted into our schools and our classrooms and things like that.
00:39:07
Speaker
aren't as diverse when it comes to teaching content.
00:39:13
Speaker
So if I am a math teacher and I'm like, okay, I want to do more than just put a flag up or I want to do more than have, you know, highlight, highlight,
00:39:21
Speaker
inventors of color or highlight this, uh, mathematicians of color, which I, I went through school.
00:39:28
Speaker
I don't think I remember learning anything about mathematics of color, but our Egyptian history, uh, when you think about, um, pyramids and we think about like a lot of stuff, there's, there's angles.
00:39:40
Speaker
There's so much there that you could bring into your classroom.
00:39:43
Speaker
If you're a geometry teacher, just teaching about like, uh, Egyptian, um,
00:39:50
Speaker
What do you call them?
00:39:51
Speaker
You know, pyramids and things like Sphinx and all that stuff that's out there.
00:39:55
Speaker
Like that's science.
00:39:55
Speaker
That's math.
00:39:56
Speaker
There's there's equations there.
00:39:58
Speaker
But rather than I say this with a caveat, rather than just saying, OK, we're going to teach the lessons and we'll just do one lesson this month on Egyptian culture or Egyptian mathematics or whatever.
00:40:11
Speaker
But it needs to be embedded within the the curriculum.
00:40:15
Speaker
So sometimes we just have to go a little bit beyond and what our textbook gives us, but really doing a little bit of extra work to create a better experience, especially when
Cultural Responsiveness in Education
00:40:25
Speaker
you have.
00:40:25
Speaker
And it really doesn't.
00:40:26
Speaker
It matters.
00:40:27
Speaker
But I go back and forth with this because people will say, well, that's great if you got a classroom full of black or brown kids, but we only have white students in our classroom.
00:40:35
Speaker
So.
00:40:36
Speaker
But I'm like, it benefits your white students as well when you teach them, again, multiple perspectives.
00:40:41
Speaker
So just embedding in equitable instructional practices, I think, is really important.
00:40:47
Speaker
You can do that in math.
00:40:49
Speaker
You can do it in science.
00:40:50
Speaker
But if you just say, OK, this is a science class, we're just going to do one class.
00:40:54
Speaker
one special lesson or even one unit on adventures of color or one on contributions from people of color, whatever it is, you're still teaching from one side, you know, European perspective, and then you're
00:41:10
Speaker
adding in or doing a special lesson here and there.
00:41:13
Speaker
But again, it needs to be all encompassing as part of your curriculum, something that we do every day.
00:41:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:18
Speaker
It's otherwise it's very tokenistic that, that, that concept.
00:41:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:23
Speaker
And also just like the idea of like, it makes me cringe, but the idea of saying like, you know, I don't, I don't have any black students, so I'm not going to teach these things.
00:41:31
Speaker
That kind of gives away the game of exactly how you think about these
00:41:34
Speaker
I get, but people tell me that they tell me that all.
00:41:38
Speaker
Oh, I live in Idaho, man.
00:41:40
Speaker
So like, I'll get people say, well, you know, I think culture responsiveness.
00:41:44
Speaker
Yeah, that's really cool, but it doesn't apply here.
00:41:46
Speaker
And I'm like, what do you mean?
00:41:47
Speaker
It doesn't apply.
00:41:48
Speaker
So your white students don't have any culture.
00:41:49
Speaker
Like, what does that even mean?
00:41:51
Speaker
Like there is like you got folks from Europe, Europe, you know, there's Italy, you got England, you got all Russia, you got all these different countries.
00:42:00
Speaker
But what happens over time is a lot of those students don't necessarily know all their origin or they, you know, I think I have some Irish in my family.
00:42:08
Speaker
Well, what do you speak Gaelic?
00:42:09
Speaker
Do you know anything about like the Irish culture, the food, those kind of things?
00:42:13
Speaker
That's culture.
00:42:15
Speaker
But we say, oh, we can't be culturally responsive because we don't have a student color.
00:42:18
Speaker
But culturally responsiveness does not limit you just to race.
00:42:21
Speaker
There are so much that happens within the things that we do, the things that we like, our traditions at home, the holidays that we celebrate.
00:42:30
Speaker
But again, if we think that, oh, well, I might, so I don't have much culture.
00:42:34
Speaker
No, you have culture.
00:42:35
Speaker
We do things.
00:42:36
Speaker
A lot of the stuff we celebrate, the Christian holidays, a lot of those type of things that we do is culturally based.
00:42:43
Speaker
So you're doing your kids, your white students a disservice if you say, well, I only had one or two blacks, you know, students of color.
00:42:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:51
Speaker
So does that mean that they don't matter because it wasn't enough?
00:42:55
Speaker
I think everybody can benefit from learning a whole story as opposed to just part of a story.
00:43:01
Speaker
I think it's also a good way to defend it and explain it to students and parents in terms of
00:43:06
Speaker
There's always been this talk recently of the 21st century skills or soft skills, whatever it might be.
00:43:11
Speaker
A key part of that is empathy and caring about other people and these ideas and
00:43:18
Speaker
even in a hypothetical world where for some reason every student at your school is white, you still would want to know these things so that when you come across someone who is not white, you understand things.
00:43:35
Speaker
So that way you're not saying things like,
00:43:37
Speaker
hey, everyone in my class is white, so therefore they don't need to learn it.
00:43:40
Speaker
Because you would recognize that's not, like it's hyper problematic to state that.
00:43:45
Speaker
Yeah, it just makes you a more complete person and it shouldn't be something that needs to be debated.
Resources from Leading Equity Center
00:43:51
Speaker
So I realize we're running close to time here.
00:43:54
Speaker
Explain where folks can learn more about you.
00:43:56
Speaker
What should they do next?
00:43:58
Speaker
Where can they go to see a leading equity, et cetera?
00:44:01
Speaker
And then anything else you want to add to the end?
00:44:04
Speaker
Sure, sure.
00:44:06
Speaker
You know, if you listen to this conversation, you're like, OK, Sheldon, you know, you give me kind of like some sound bites, a couple of tips here and there and you want to learn more.
00:44:14
Speaker
You can definitely go to leadenequitycenter.com.
00:44:17
Speaker
I have a new book coming out in about three weeks.
00:44:20
Speaker
It's called Leading Equity, Becoming an Advocate for All Students.
00:44:24
Speaker
And this book is kind of broken down into 10 different steps that we can take towards towards being an equity minded educator.
00:44:31
Speaker
I provide, you know, talking points, you know, because people always come to me and say, OK, I get the one
00:44:36
Speaker
What?
00:44:37
Speaker
You know, OK, these are some I get what a microaggression is.
00:44:40
Speaker
I get what implicit bias, discrimination, all these things.
00:44:42
Speaker
But I don't know how to approach my teacher or my colleague or my principal about these things.
00:44:47
Speaker
So I have talking points in there.
00:44:48
Speaker
Here's the examples.
00:44:49
Speaker
This is what was said to me.
00:44:51
Speaker
This is how I responded.
00:44:53
Speaker
Here's some ways to create some classroom norms.
00:44:56
Speaker
Here's some ways to talk about race or community.
00:44:59
Speaker
Things are happening in our community.
00:45:00
Speaker
community, the things that happen on a national scale.
00:45:02
Speaker
These are some ways to have some dialogue in your classroom.
00:45:05
Speaker
Here's some lesson plan templates.
00:45:07
Speaker
Here's some journal prompts for you as you're working on your journey.
00:45:12
Speaker
So all of that is built into the book.
00:45:13
Speaker
So again, if you're trying to learn more, you can definitely grab the book.
00:45:17
Speaker
Um,
00:45:18
Speaker
The podcast as well.
00:45:19
Speaker
I have two shows these days, man.
00:45:21
Speaker
I don't know what I'm doing, but why I have two shows.
00:45:23
Speaker
But I have the Lead in Equity podcast and then I have a live stream every Thursday called The Art of Advocacy, which comes out at 630 Eastern every Thursday.
00:45:32
Speaker
So between all of that, the contents there available, a lot of stuff is free.
00:45:36
Speaker
Some of the stuff is paid because, you know, that's how I keep the lights on.
00:45:39
Speaker
But for the most part, I would say 80 percent of the content that I have out is free.
00:45:44
Speaker
I don't want to be one of those people that just preaches, preaches, preaches about, you know, this is wrong or, you know, the world needs to change or education needs to change.
00:45:54
Speaker
I like to give you steps like, OK, here's how we can change.
00:45:57
Speaker
These are some of the things that are that we could look at.
00:46:00
Speaker
And here's how we can approach it as opposed to saying do better as an educator, be an equity minded.
00:46:05
Speaker
Like, no, it needs to be a little bit more because I recognize that there's I mean, I was there four years ago.
00:46:10
Speaker
I didn't know anything.
00:46:12
Speaker
I just knew I was having experience.
00:46:13
Speaker
I didn't know what it was called.
00:46:14
Speaker
But now I want to be able to help people who are just starting on their journey and give them those steps to help them.
00:46:21
Speaker
I'm not a checklist person, so I don't believe that you can, OK, do these 10 things and you'll be officially equity certified because I don't find myself as a certified person.
00:46:32
Speaker
I feel like it's a journey.
00:46:33
Speaker
I'm still on a journey.
00:46:34
Speaker
I just try to stay a chapter ahead of everybody.
00:46:37
Speaker
But I'm constantly reading.
00:46:38
Speaker
I'm constantly trying to learn as much as I can so I can be better.
00:46:41
Speaker
The reality is there's going to be experiences that my friends are having, my colleagues are having, students are having that I will never experience.
00:46:51
Speaker
But because I'll never experience, does that mean that I should not care?
00:46:54
Speaker
Does that mean that I should not pay any attention to it?
00:46:58
Speaker
Or can I, like you mentioned earlier, try to develop an empathetic lens and try to understand where someone's coming from?
00:47:04
Speaker
And if there's something I can do to support them, if I have some level of privilege that could benefit them and I can utilize my voice or my professionalism or my personality.
00:47:14
Speaker
position as an educator or a leader, whatever role I have, if I can utilize that to support people, even if things don't personally impact me, those are the steps that I need to take.
00:47:25
Speaker
Thank you again for listening to Human Restoration Projects Podcast.
00:47:33
Speaker
I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to push the progressive envelope of education.
00:47:37
Speaker
You can learn more about progressive education, support our cause, and stay tuned to this podcast and other updates on our website at humanrestorationproject.org.