Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to episode 115 of our podcast.
Speaker: My name is Chris McNutt and I'm part of the progressive education nonprofit Human Restoration Project.
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.
Speaker: Thank you for your ongoing support.
Speaker: You can learn more about the Human Restoration Project on our website, humanrestorationproject.org, or find us on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.
Speaker: As a heads up, our inaugural virtual conference is from July 25th to July 28th, 2022.
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.
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.
Speaker: all to talk about building a better system and reimagining the classroom.
Speaker: Plus, there's five fantastic learning tracks to guide your learning and build a sustainable future.
Speaker: Tickets are still on sale.
Speaker: Visit humanrestorationproject.org slash conference to learn more.
Speaker: Today, we're joined by Dr. Sheldon Akins.
Speaker: Dr. Akins is an educator who has taught in elementary, middle and high school settings, as well as an administrator.
Speaker: Currently, he is the director of special education at a school in Idaho.
Speaker: In 2018, Dr. Akins founded the Leading Equity Center, professional development service, podcast and resource hub for spreading cultural awareness,
Speaker: promoting equitable practice, and inspiring change to disrupt inequities in schools.
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.
Speaker: We highly recommend his work and would encourage you to check out Leading Equity on your favorite podcast player and visit leadingequitycenter.com.
Speaker: It's interesting because I never thought I would become a podcaster, content creator, any of those things.
Speaker: I moved to Idaho about six years ago and it definitely was a culture shock.
Speaker: Definitely was a change of pace in what I was used to.
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.
Speaker: And I'm like,
Speaker: I don't know how to help them.
Speaker: Like, I feel bad.
Speaker: You know, they're coming to me.
Speaker: They see another person of color.
Speaker: And so they were confiding in me.
Speaker: And it's like sometimes it was venting.
Speaker: Sometimes it was like, OK, let's take some steps.
Speaker: Let's do something about this.
Speaker: But I didn't have the terminology or the knowledge behind that.
Speaker: what was happening to them.
Speaker: And so I just got my PhD maybe a couple of years before.
Speaker: So I'm used to doing research and interviewing.
Speaker: So I was used to researching articles.
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.
Speaker: I didn't really have to pay much attention and
Speaker: from my previous teaching experience.
Speaker: And so that's how I started this show.
Speaker: And that's the goal is for me to provide the tools and resources necessary for educators to ensure equity at their school.
Speaker: And that's my goal is ultimately helping teachers, which will ultimately impact our students and their families.
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.
Speaker: And
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.
Speaker: I mean, you got to look at the data as well.
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
Speaker: COVID-19.
Speaker: So everybody's at home, sheltered in place.
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.
Speaker: But you see this all over social media.
Speaker: And so you had a lot of people that were like, oh, shoot, these things are happening.
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,
Speaker: losing loved ones to COVID or afraid that they're going to bring it home because they have vulnerable populations in the house.
Speaker: They have all these things happening all at one time.
Speaker: And so as a result, you got a lot of people there.
Speaker: And then, and then I forgot you had how to be anti-racist comes, comes out.
Speaker: You got white fragility book as well.
Speaker: That's out.
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,
Speaker: I think that that was why a lot of people started to get on board with the equity work.
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.
Speaker: That's not, you know, I don't want my child learning about this or this is reverse racism or this is that.
Speaker: And you're teaching our kids to hate America and you're indoctrinating, you know, all these words, buzzwords coming out.
Speaker: And it's funny because with the whole critical race theory, when that started coming out last was that last summer or so.
Speaker: I remember I wasn't as familiar with critical race theory.
Speaker: I was familiar with culturally responsive teaching and which was to me is the official CRT, if you will.
Speaker: But that's a whole nother conversation.
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.
Speaker: What is how does that relate to what critical race theory is?
Speaker: And to me, it's just.
Speaker: I always related to the, to the Candyman.
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.
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.
Speaker: And as a result, this is what's happening in your classrooms.
Speaker: This is what your teachers are teaching.
Speaker: which teachers don't teach critical race theory.
Speaker: It's on a whole nother level.
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.
Speaker: So then maybe I am.
Speaker: starting to be afraid.
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.
Speaker: Why are we talking about change?
Speaker: Why are we talking about this?
Speaker: This is ways to device our our country and all that.
Speaker: It's just just negative stuff.
Speaker: But reality is, I just think it's just bottom bottom line.
Speaker: It's just a way to try to uphold white supremacy.
Speaker: It's so much more transparent than it used to be, which I think is in some ways a good thing.
Speaker: At least it's easier to identify if someone is doing something that's something that you don't want in public ed.
Speaker: I think about the growth of places like PragerU, for example, or other online right-wing places.
Speaker: stations, professional development networks, even.
Speaker: PragerU is now developing educational packets that give out to schools on counteracting CRT, which translates to counteracting talking about race.
Speaker: It's like basic stuff that they interpret this as.
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,
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.
Speaker: And I'm like, no, equity is not critical race theory.
Speaker: But the problem is, again, here's now equity used to be the umbrella of
Speaker: And underneath equity, you used to have social, emotional learning.
Speaker: You have all these different areas, restorative practices, trauma-informed care.
Speaker: All these things kind of fit underneath equity.
Speaker: But then critical race theory is starting to become the new umbrella for a lot of right-wing people.
Speaker: And then they just throw everything in there, buzzwords in there as, oh, yeah, these are – I remember seeing last summer a meme.
Speaker: Was it – no, it was like a –
Speaker: image that had all these different terms and they took it down rather quickly because they got a lot of pushback on that.
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.
Speaker: And the thing I never really understood is like, okay, we're okay with saying differentiated instruction.
Speaker: That never gets attacked.
Speaker: No one ever questions differentiated instruction.
Speaker: But if I say an equitable approach to me, they're very similar, right?
Speaker: Because differentiation is just saying, OK, this child learns this way.
Speaker: This child will benefit from this type of instruction.
Speaker: This child would benefit, you know, IEPs and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker: That's OK.
Speaker: But if I say equity, it's just triggering and it's a problem.
Speaker: So sometimes I feel like are we just really spending too much time on semantics?
Speaker: And that's and that is that taking away from, again, supporting our students who have different needs?
Speaker: I think we can all agree that our kids all don't learn the same way.
Speaker: I mean, we as adults.
Speaker: We learn differently.
Speaker: And the same thing applies to our students.
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.
Speaker: I don't know a teacher that says I want my kids to fail.
Speaker: I assume that all teachers want their kids to be successful.
Speaker: So what are those approaches that we need to take in order for them to be accessible?
Speaker: to be successful.
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.
Speaker: Yeah, that makes me think of, I subjected myself to reading James Lindsay's book.
Speaker: I forget who it's written with.
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?
Speaker: I had a Kindle Unlimited.
Speaker: It came with my Kindle that I bought.
Speaker: And it popped up.
Speaker: It's the top-selling book in education.
Speaker: James Lindsay is one of probably the most alt-right educational speakers.
Speaker: He says...
Speaker: terrible things, both equity, but also just like general public education.
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.
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.
Speaker: Or...
Speaker: I found this kind of funny.
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.
Speaker: with no debate over the policy or the implications of the policy, but more so just the concept of it being left wing.
Speaker: That's what I'm saying.
Speaker: It's the language.
Speaker: That's where we're at.
Speaker: I mean, again, a lot of us can agree we want our kids to be successful in it.
Speaker: And again, we can agree that our kids learn differently.
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
Speaker: And, you know, I do I did a little Q&A at the end.
Speaker: And like the questions I was getting was like, yeah, you're this is like scripted from Fox News.
Speaker: Like this is.
Speaker: It's like the idea of like equity is taken away from one person to give to other people.
Speaker: I'm like, but you're making it.
Speaker: No, that's first of all, that's not what equity is.
Speaker: It's just, again, ensuring individual needs are being met.
Speaker: But when you think about resources, you make it seem like there I only have five bucks, only have this much resources.
Speaker: And so I'm going to take this away from one person.
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.
Speaker: But we had to think of it from a larger scheme as far as resources being plentiful.
Speaker: I have access to Chromebooks.
Speaker: I have access to whatever, you know, these devices or these devices,
Speaker: instructional aids.
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.
Speaker: Yet again, when we start saying certain words, it's an issue.
Speaker: As long as we don't say those words and do the same task, then it's fine.
Speaker: But you say those words, it's such a triggering moment for a lot of people.
Speaker: How do you recommend that educators navigate those waters?
Speaker: So one suggestion would be, I guess, try to stay out of the political terminology.
Speaker: Obviously, you wouldn't write in your syllabus.
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.
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.
Speaker: It's what you do.
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?
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,
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.
Speaker: I think just simple things such as providing real life situations and helping the students just to critically think.
Speaker: I think one of the challenges is teachers, we tend to want to have this level of control.
Speaker: And so we want to really engage in dialogue in these conversations, give our take and give our point of view.
Speaker: And I think that sometimes is where
Speaker: things get a little challenging.
Speaker: My advice is always to say, just let the students talk.
Speaker: Let them share how they view.
Speaker: Okay, you just talked about maybe gentrification.
Speaker: I'm a social studies background as well.
Speaker: So it's like, okay, we're talking about gentrification.
Speaker: The Starbucks wants to be...
Speaker: Buy this building that historically has been in a black neighborhood.
Speaker: They want to take this this building.
Speaker: And here's how much it costs.
Speaker: Students, what are your thoughts?
Speaker: And allow them to dialogue in that.
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.
Speaker: And if a student asks you a question, you know, what is your take teacher?
Speaker: So, you know, I think I have my definitely have my points or my thoughts regarding this.
Speaker: But, you know, I'm really enjoying this.
Speaker: learning from you, I prefer to hear what you have to say.
Speaker: And so you're putting it back there on them.
Speaker: So that way you're not saying anything.
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.
Speaker: But just, again, allowing students to talk about it.
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 think.
Speaker: We're not indoctrinating, just allowing them to think for themselves.
Speaker: I have little kids.
Speaker: I have a 12 year old and a nine year old.
Speaker: And I say, OK, here's the situation.
Speaker: What are your thoughts?
Speaker: You're a smart child.
Speaker: You're a smart individual.
Speaker: I love to get your point of view.
Speaker: What what are what are your thoughts on this situation?
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.
Speaker: Yeah, I think th at's a good way too to just navigate the concept of divisive concepts as well as the laws themselves.
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.
Speaker: And those concepts that are important for students to understand are going to naturally come up whenever you talk about
Speaker: pretty much any current event or issue in someone's community.
Speaker: And as an instructor, you don't have to provide your opinion.
Speaker: You can just complicate scenarios with facts.
Speaker: And over time, it's kind of like your opinion, but the exact same time, the facts are on your side.
Speaker: That knowledge is there.
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.
Speaker: And inevitably, it would come up at some point during our social studies class.
Speaker: And the kids would just talk about things.
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.
Speaker: Not in an aggressive tone, not because I was upset, just like, hey, like, what about this?
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.
Speaker: We're super okay with coming around to that and having those discussions because it wasn't propaganda.
Speaker: It's just learning about stuff.
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.
Speaker: Well, that's why you had to have classroom norms.
Speaker: You had to set up those classroom norms.
Speaker: You know, this is how we're going to engage in conversations.
Speaker: You might have a student that has a difference of opinion than you have, but we're going to be respectful.
Speaker: OK, we're going to allow each person the space to be able to share their thoughts, to share how they feel.
Speaker: And again, it might, you know, differ from what you believe in which.
Speaker: But it's OK.
Speaker: I don't enter.
Speaker: Like when I personally do trainings for people, I tell them, I say, look,
Speaker: We're here together for an hour.
Speaker: We're here for 90 minutes or half day, whatever it is, right?
Speaker: We're here for this time.
Speaker: I don't expect to change your hearts and minds within this timeframe.
Speaker: My goal here is to bring you some awareness, try to provide some perspectives that you may not have considered.
Speaker: You can digest that however you want to digest it, but there's still, you can...
Speaker: I encourage you to further do education on on this topic and learn more going forward.
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.
Speaker: about being in a brave space, about allowing voices to be heard and differences of opinions is totally fine.
Speaker: And I think if we don't do that, that's where we get a lot of challenges.
Speaker: So I always try to make sure that I spend at least five minutes to just kind of go through some simple stuff.
Speaker: All right, now let's talk.
Speaker: And here's what I think.
Speaker: And here's some research that supports what I think.
Speaker: But if you have something different, let's talk about it.
Speaker: I'd love to know where you're coming from.
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.
Speaker: The traditional conference format doesn't work for everyone.
Speaker: It's costly to attend, environmentally unfriendly, and it doesn't allow everyone to engage or have a voice in the learning community.
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.
Speaker: Instead of long Zoom presentations with a brief Q&A, keynotes are flipped.
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.
Speaker: And instead of back-to-back online workshops, we are offering asynchronous learning tracks.
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.
Speaker: The Conference to Restore Humanity runs July 25th through the 28th.
Speaker: And as of recording, early bird tickets are still available.
Speaker: It's $150 for four days with discounts available for individuals from historically marginalized communities as well as group rates.
Speaker: Plus, we'll award certificates for teacher training and continuing education credits.
Speaker: See our website humanrestorationproject.org for more information and let's restore humanity together.
Speaker: Circling back to what we were talking about earlier, these things have always been indicators of strong teaching.
Speaker: You could go to a teacher workshop a decade or two ago and get similar vibes from a discussion-based pedagogical activity.
Speaker: Things have changed, though, a lot in the last couple of years.
Speaker: In multiple ways, you talk about this topic called performative wokeness.
Speaker: I think that that would be an interesting kind of thing to talk about here for a second.
Speaker: Do you just want to describe about what that is?
Speaker: Performative wokeness.
Speaker: And I don't have the definition in front of me, so I'm just going to paraphrase and you'll get different.
Speaker: You know, you hear performative wokeness, you hear performative equity, these type of these type of terms.
Speaker: Again, to me again, semantics.
Speaker: However, in a general sense, it's the idea of saying, you know, I support this, I support that.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: I'll put a Black Lives Matter flag up in my classroom, but that's as far as it goes.
Speaker: So I won't speak up against police brutality.
Speaker: I won't address it.
Speaker: I'll just put, you know, a rainbow flag and say this is a safe space for LGBTQ plus.
Speaker: But I'm not again, I'm not going to speak up.
Speaker: So it's more of look at me.
Speaker: I'm supportive.
Speaker: I'm an ally.
Speaker: I'm this arm that but then there's no actual work behind it.
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.
Speaker: But this is what's on the media right now.
Speaker: I turn my TV on and
Speaker: Roe versus Wade is happening right now.
Speaker: So I'm going to be all about abortions, pro abortion or whatever it is.
Speaker: I'm being about it.
Speaker: And then news cameras go off.
Speaker: We shift to something else that's happening in our country.
Speaker: And now I'm jumping on that.
Speaker: But abortion still is going to be an issue six months from now or a year, two years from now.
Speaker: But if the media is not highlighting it and then I'm not highlighting it.
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.
Speaker: I used to be, you know, very supportive of the word allyship, for example, and I've kind of shifted my thought.
Speaker: And so instead of being an ally, I say I'm a disruptor because to me, an ally can be a safe word.
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.
Speaker: And I'm like, that's the problem.
Speaker: If you're telling me that allyship just seems nicer, seems safer, is
Speaker: It protects me.
Speaker: I can be an ally versus saying I'm a disruptor.
Speaker: That's going to bring a different connotation towards it.
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.
Speaker: And if you can recognize that and that change,
Speaker: And 200 years later, these things are still in place.
Speaker: These are what we're doing still.
Speaker: And we want to make some changes.
Speaker: Yeah, you're going to have to be a little bit more vocal and you're going to have to push back.
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.
Speaker: I don't want to do that.
Speaker: Then that's where that performative piece comes in.
Speaker: It kind of comes down to leveraging power and privilege and taking those mitigated risks.
Speaker: Because there's no denying that it's going to take risks to change these things.
Speaker: And there is always that element of, you probably are going to have an office meeting with a principal at some point.
Speaker: or another if you're doing this kind of work.
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 h ave a lot of administrator meetings.
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,
Speaker: chances are you can at least defend yourself.
Speaker: Or if it still leads to more problems, well, you could do some other.
Speaker: You could go to the media.
Speaker: You could talk to people about it.
Speaker: You could really put up a shit store for people trying to mess with you.
Speaker: What are some of the things that go beyond performative wokeness in the classroom?
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?
Speaker: I have, you know, I've come across, you know, most of us are familiar with cultural responses, culturally relevant, culturally sustaining.
Speaker: A lot of us are familiar, at least with the terminology there.
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: We we talk about Lewis and Clark expedition, for example.
Speaker: We celebrate, you know, expansion of the United States.
Speaker: But how did that impact our indigenous communities?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: We we forced them on.
Speaker: Well, not we, but they were forced on reservations.
Speaker: Their land was taken.
Speaker: And we're excited because we purchased land that wasn't even for sale.
Speaker: And and but but again, we we tell the story one way.
Speaker: You know, Lewis and Clark, we celebrate those type of things.
Speaker: And in Sacagawea is off.
Speaker: Sometimes, you know, I remember my child, my daughter had a you know, they did a whole lesson on this.
Speaker: And it said the key players within the Louisiana Purchase Lewis and Clark.
Speaker: And Napoleon.
Speaker: And I'm like, OK, these are the key players.
Speaker: That's that's it.
Speaker: And so so my daughter, she's she's very militant.
Speaker: I ain't go.
Speaker: I mean, she knows her dad and she listens to the stuff that I say.
Speaker: And we have conversations.
Speaker: And I said, so she came to me about it.
Speaker: It's like, I don't feel right about this because the same key players.
Speaker: But it doesn't say anything about Sacagawea.
Speaker: And I said, OK, we'll talk to your teacher about that.
Speaker: Let her know how you feel.
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.
Speaker: And I have a whole lesson dedicated to Sacagawea.
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.
Speaker: Had it not been, Sacagawea was very, very influential.
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.
Speaker: They would not have been able to map the land without her support, without her help.
Speaker: It would have been a different situation.
Speaker: And to be honest, I mean, the whole Lewis and Clark expedition was really a reconnaissance mission.
Speaker: It was just scoping out the land and finding ways.
Speaker: What are the weak points?
Speaker: How can we take over this land?
Speaker: That's legit what it was.
Speaker: But again, we're not supposed to say that.
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.
Speaker: So I just say try to teach lessons.
Speaker: that provides a holistic approach as opposed to teaching in a European dominant perspective.
Speaker: But we really need to, well, how did this impact other people?
Speaker: I'll give you another example, right?
Speaker: We talk about, um,
Speaker: The stock market, you know, what was the crash and the Great Depression.
Speaker: But who was really impacted the most when it comes to the stock market?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because a lot of people of color didn't own stocks and that wasn't part of our experience.
Speaker: We were already in a Great Depression and arguably you could say we're still trying to get ourselves out of that.
Speaker: But it's highlighted from a European perspective that.
Speaker: So as a result, oh, this is a big moment, a pivotal moment within our country.
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.
Speaker: And because it impacted a lot of people that didn't.
Speaker: because it impacted a lot of people of European descent.
Speaker: Now it's a staple within our social studies as part of our, you know, standards and all that stuff.
Speaker: But again, how were other people of color already being impacted prior to, and still today, we have to teach the whole story.
Speaker: But again, with this whole book banning and with all the censorship these days, they don't want us to share that information.
Speaker: It's not like we're telling lies.
Speaker: We're not making up stories.
Speaker: It's just they literally don't want us to tell the entire story.
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?
Speaker: And they say, oh, you know, Johnny hit me and I didn't do anything.
Speaker: And then you just, OK, all right.
Speaker: So I'm just going to punish Johnny because you told me the story.
Speaker: Thanks for letting me know and keeping me, you know, making me aware of that.
Speaker: But you don't question the other person, you know, the other party involved in this situation.
Speaker: You're only getting one side of the story.
Speaker: Got to get the whole thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's also just like inherently more interesting to get all sides of the story.
Speaker: I remember covering we'd always open up with like the colonial era and we would tell the story of Squanto.
Speaker: And just thinking about the question, like, how did Squanto know English?
Speaker: And the fact that the typical curriculum skips over the entire story of like Squanto was a slave.
Speaker: He was in Europe.
Speaker: He learned how to speak the language, which is why when he came back, he wasn't with his village.
Speaker: It was like the whole reason why he even met up with these people.
Speaker: That's the origin of the story.
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.
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?
Speaker: Well, it's because it was the war that was the most explicitly an aggression by the United States.
Speaker: There was no even, I guess, fake reason for going.
Speaker: We just kind of went and took it over and caused a genocide.
Speaker: Hawaii.
Speaker: We don't talk about Hawaii.
Speaker: We say, you know, we got 50 states.
Speaker: But how did how did we acquire Hawaii?
Speaker: Like that was taken from, you know, again, we.
Speaker: We celebrate these things.
Speaker: And, you know, that's just kind of again, that is kind of how they want us to continue to teach history.
Speaker: But it's nice that America is, you know, 50 states, but some of those again, the land that was acquired,
Speaker: was, you know, taken and dominated and conquered and all these different things.
Speaker: But we just don't want to have those kind of conversations.
Speaker: Oh, there's such an ugly history behind the United States.
Speaker: But they'll love to highlight slavery.
Speaker: They love to highlight our indigenous folks and conquistadors and all these.
Speaker: Like, we'll talk about when we conquered you, but we won't.
Speaker: We don't feel right talking about all the different things.
Speaker: We'll talk about your oppression.
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?
Speaker: We don't want to have that kind of conversation.
Speaker: Interesting, too, that kids are very receptive to these conversations.
Speaker: We would have conversations all the time about like, is this...
Speaker: unpatriotic to talk about these things?
Speaker: Is it okay to critique the country that you live in?
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?
Speaker: And kids would always share things like, I'm just really appreciative that we're learning about these things.
Speaker: I had no idea.
Speaker: I feel like I'm more knowledgeable.
Speaker: At a very surface level, these concepts are incredibly basic.
Speaker: You learn about your history, you learn about everything that happened, and then you try to do better knowing that information today.
Speaker: But with that position... But it doesn't repeat, right?
Speaker: Yeah, this is a core concept in history.
Speaker: And I think, too, it kind of branches out to like in English now we're seeing self-censorship.
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...
Speaker: Oh my goodness.
Speaker: I was just thinking of it.
Speaker: The, the book where, uh, the girl's friend is shot.
Speaker: Oh, uh, uh, hate you give the hate you give.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's, that was a big one.
Speaker: I remember when that first came out, I feel like everyone was teaching that book.
Speaker: Like it was commonplace.
Speaker: Uh, and you saw it everywhere.
Speaker: And then over time, they're slowly slipping away from that syllabus because that book was covered by Fox news.
Speaker: It was covered by, uh, anti-seer he folks.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And people are afraid.
Speaker: They don't want to bring that up.
Speaker: But what's wrong with the book?
Speaker: That's the reality.
Speaker: That happens.
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.
Speaker: I don't.
Speaker: It's crazy how some of the books that are being banned and censored and all that stuff has real life concepts.
Speaker: Like it's a historic, you know, it's a, it's a fictional book.
Speaker: However, it's not like it's unlikely for something like this to happen.
Speaker: It happens.
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.
Speaker: Doesn't mean that I hate police or any of those kinds of things.
Speaker: I just, I don't like police brutality.
Speaker: I don't, you know,
Speaker: my father is in law enforcement.
Speaker: So it's not that I have anything against police officers.
Speaker: Just we have police brutality.
Speaker: It's always been a thing.
Speaker: It is continued.
Speaker: Historically has happened.
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.
Speaker: So it,
Speaker: It's just a matter of trying to keep the status quo, keeping things the same.
Speaker: We don't want change.
Speaker: We don't we wanted to keep it the way it's always been.
Speaker: And I think that that's really a problem.
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.
Speaker: I'm glad to be able to learn from a different perspective.
Speaker: I
Speaker: I think, too, there's a way to extend that beyond just curricular.
Speaker: There's the curriculum element of ensuring that people understand factual information and they understand all sides of the story.
Speaker: Then there's also all of those other things that happen in school, which are also very much racist, target marginalized communities and
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.
Speaker: There's an irony to me.
Speaker: and failing students for not passing an assignment I have on social justice.
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.
Speaker: That's just the way that we've always done things, at least in the mainstream.
Speaker: In terms of your work and equity and leading equity and
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.
Speaker: What do they do now?
Speaker: You know, so it's people will tell me, well, you know, your humanities classes are really easy.
Speaker: Liberal arts are really easy to do social justice and equity, that kind of thing.
Speaker: But I'm a math teacher.
Speaker: So what you know, all I got is formulas and equations.
Speaker: I say, yeah, you can use those formulas and equations to create word problems.
Speaker: Problem is we often just lean on and including myself.
Speaker: I used to be the same way.
Speaker: We get our textbooks.
Speaker: Textbooks gives us, you know, here's the lesson plan.
Speaker: Here's the worksheets.
Speaker: Here's here's the assignments.
Speaker: Here's the assessments or whatever.
Speaker: And we just lean on that.
Speaker: We rely on that.
Speaker: But we know that a lot of those textbooks that we have adopted into our schools and our classrooms and things like that.
Speaker: aren't as diverse when it comes to teaching content.
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,
Speaker: inventors of color or highlight this, uh, mathematicians of color, which I, I went through school.
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.
Speaker: There's so much there that you could bring into your classroom.
Speaker: If you're a geometry teacher, just teaching about like, uh, Egyptian, um,
Speaker: What do you call them?
Speaker: You know, pyramids and things like Sphinx and all that stuff that's out there.
Speaker: Like that's science.
Speaker: That's math.
Speaker: There's there's equations there.
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.
Speaker: But it needs to be embedded within the the curriculum.
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 you have.
Speaker: And it really doesn't.
Speaker: It matters.
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.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: But I'm like, it benefits your white students as well when you teach them, again, multiple perspectives.
Speaker: So just embedding in equitable instructional practices, I think, is really important.
Speaker: You can do that in math.
Speaker: You can do it in science.
Speaker: But if you just say, OK, this is a science class, we're just going to do one class.
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
Speaker: adding in or doing a special lesson here and there.
Speaker: But again, it needs to be all encompassing as part of your curriculum, something that we do every day.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's otherwise it's very tokenistic that, that, that concept.
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
Speaker: That kind of gives away the game of exactly how you think about these
Speaker: I get, but people tell me that they tell me that all.
Speaker: Oh, I live in Idaho, man.
Speaker: So like, I'll get people say, well, you know, I think culture responsiveness.
Speaker: Yeah, that's really cool, but it doesn't apply here.
Speaker: And I'm like, what do you mean?
Speaker: It doesn't apply.
Speaker: So your white students don't have any culture.
Speaker: Like, what does that even mean?
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.
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.
Speaker: Well, what do you speak Gaelic?
Speaker: Do you know anything about like the Irish culture, the food, those kind of things?
Speaker: That's culture.
Speaker: But we say, oh, we can't be culturally responsive because we don't have a student color.
Speaker: But culturally responsiveness does not limit you just to race.
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.
Speaker: But again, if we think that, oh, well, I might, so I don't have much culture.
Speaker: No, you have culture.
Speaker: We do things.
Speaker: A lot of the stuff we celebrate, the Christian holidays, a lot of those type of things that we do is culturally based.
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So does that mean that they don't matter because it wasn't enough?
Speaker: I think everybody can benefit from learning a whole story as opposed to just part of a story.
Speaker: I think it's also a good way to defend it and explain it to students and parents in terms of
Speaker: There's always been this talk recently of the 21st century skills or soft skills, whatever it might be.
Speaker: A key part of that is empathy and caring about other people and these ideas and
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.
Speaker: So that way you're not saying things like,
Speaker: hey, everyone in my class is white, so therefore they don't need to learn it.
Speaker: Because you would recognize that's not, like it's hyper problematic to state that.
Speaker: Yeah, it just makes you a more complete person and it shouldn't be something that needs to be debated.
Speaker: So I realize we're running close to time here.
Speaker: Explain where folks can learn more about you.
Speaker: What should they do next?
Speaker: Where can they go to see a leading equity, et cetera?
Speaker: And then anything else you want to add to the end?
Speaker: Sure, sure.
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.
Speaker: You can definitely go to leadenequitycenter.com.
Speaker: I have a new book coming out in about three weeks.
Speaker: It's called Leading Equity, Becoming an Advocate for All Students.
Speaker: And this book is kind of broken down into 10 different steps that we can take towards towards being an equity minded educator.
Speaker: I provide, you know, talking points, you know, because people always come to me and say, OK, I get the one
Speaker: What?
Speaker: You know, OK, these are some I get what a microaggression is.
Speaker: I get what implicit bias, discrimination, all these things.
Speaker: But I don't know how to approach my teacher or my colleague or my principal about these things.
Speaker: So I have talking points in there.
Speaker: Here's the examples.
Speaker: This is what was said to me.
Speaker: This is how I responded.
Speaker: Here's some ways to create some classroom norms.
Speaker: Here's some ways to talk about race or community.
Speaker: Things are happening in our community.
Speaker: community, the things that happen on a national scale.
Speaker: These are some ways to have some dialogue in your classroom.
Speaker: Here's some lesson plan templates.
Speaker: Here's some journal prompts for you as you're working on your journey.
Speaker: So all of that is built into the book.
Speaker: So again, if you're trying to learn more, you can definitely grab the book.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: The podcast as well.
Speaker: I have two shows these days, man.
Speaker: I don't know what I'm doing, but why I have two shows.
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.
Speaker: So between all of that, the contents there available, a lot of stuff is free.
Speaker: Some of the stuff is paid because, you know, that's how I keep the lights on.
Speaker: But for the most part, I would say 80 percent of the content that I have out is free.
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.
Speaker: I like to give you steps like, OK, here's how we can change.
Speaker: These are some of the things that are that we could look at.
Speaker: And here's how we can approach it as opposed to saying do better as an educator, be an equity minded.
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.
Speaker: I didn't know anything.
Speaker: I just knew I was having experience.
Speaker: I didn't know what it was called.
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.
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.
Speaker: I feel like it's a journey.
Speaker: I'm still on a journey.
Speaker: I just try to stay a chapter ahead of everybody.
Speaker: But I'm constantly reading.
Speaker: I'm constantly trying to learn as much as I can so I can be better.
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.
Speaker: But because I'll never experience, does that mean that I should not care?
Speaker: Does that mean that I should not pay any attention to it?
Speaker: Or can I, like you mentioned earlier, try to develop an empathetic lens and try to understand where someone's coming from?
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.
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.
Speaker: Thank you again for listening to Human Restoration Projects Podcast.
Speaker: I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to push the progressive envelope of education.
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.
