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Culturally Relevant and Culturally Responsive Pedagogy
106 Plays6 months ago
In Episode 2 of Season 3, we're talking about culturally relevant and culturally responsive pedagogy!
In this episode we hear from...
- Laurence Tan, who reflects on his experiences as an educator in bridging culture gaps to develop trust and relationships between himself and his students
- Youth Expert Leandro, who shares about his experiences with educators helping him to navigate a violent society
- Professor Patrick Camangian who sits down for our Mic Check..1,2,3! round table segment alongside educators Kenjus T. Watson and Jewell Bachelor to talk about the culturally relevant pedagogies that saved his life and informed his trajectory as a critical educator
Drawing From The Well is hosted by Tiffani Marie.
The podcast is co-produced by Tiffani Marie and Jon Reyes with music by Jansen V.
DFTW is supported by Community Responsive Education. Continue the conversation at youthwellness.com
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Drawing from the Well' Podcast Series
00:00:01
Speaker
Drawing from the Well is a podcast series from the youth wellness movement. We are educators, researchers, healers, parents, and community members striving to repurpose schools to address the critical wellness gaps in our youth's development.
Founding and Hosting of the Podcast by LT
00:00:19
Speaker
Founded by Community Responsive Education.
00:00:24
Speaker
My name is Lawrence Tan, but most people refer to me as LT.
LT's Early Teaching Experiences and Cultural Pedagogy
00:00:28
Speaker
I have been a fourth and fifth grade teacher for most of my 21 years of teaching in both districts and at a charter school.
00:00:37
Speaker
When I think about culturally sustaining pedagogies, the first thing that comes to mind was my first year of teaching in a district where the buzzword was culturally relevant.
00:00:49
Speaker
And everything was around getting things and materials that had faces and voices of those you taught. And by default, if you did so, and if you invested money in these libraries and these artifacts, then kids' test scores would soar.
00:01:07
Speaker
So for example, we were given money and you had the new Will Smith book and it was supposed to engage our students like nothing ever before. And to be honest, it did not.
00:01:20
Speaker
The district's plan ultimately did not work in the fact that there was no connection, direct connection from the students. And so even when you have great resources and material, like a book where Mufaro's beautiful daughter depicts story in Africa, the students didn't feel it. They weren't feeling it and they weren't trying to pick it up and read and all of a sudden, you know, spark that love of learning with that.
00:01:47
Speaker
Even the most well-intentioned culturally responsive, well-planned lesson can fail.
Engaging Students through Music and Interests
00:01:54
Speaker
For example, I was going to use hip hop in my classroom to do some literary teaching, ELA teaching.
00:02:01
Speaker
And at the time, this was a while ago, 50 was popping. Because I had this idea of like, well, we want to bring more consciousness to those lessons, I'm going to use Talib Kweli. So I was going use the Talib Kweli Get By song, which has a dope hook and a beat. So I figured that was going to be enough to get them feeling it.
00:02:21
Speaker
And then I was going to go to 50 Cent and make those comparisons and connections.
00:02:29
Speaker
get by and students were not feeling it they had no connection to the artist they had no connection to the song and it was floundering in that moment that teachable moment where I feel like man I'm struggling I said what you uh rather us do 50 cent up in the club and the class went bonkers
00:02:55
Speaker
Even my language learners who didn't speak very much English were reciting the lyrics to the song. Okay, push pause, we're gonna come back to it. And so what ended up happening was now I started the next day and we started with 50.
00:03:14
Speaker
And we did 50 Cent up in the club and we did our lesson, we were analyzing the lyrics, we were talking about how things, you know made them feel when they heard the song and this, that and the other. And then After we analyzed 50 and after we went to where they were at, then I introduced Talib Kweli's Get By. And as soon as they were already making the connections and they were like, OK, you started with what we were into and now you're introducing something new to us.
00:03:44
Speaker
And they started feeling Talib Kweli as if I'd never, ever exposed that to him. Right. Like it had such a night and day effect where when I started with where they were at, then made the connection.
Co-constructing Cultural Knowledge with Students
00:03:56
Speaker
It took a whole lot well or more or better than when I started with it. And so then Talib Kweli went to connecting to Nina Simone and other things. And so my point is, when we're talking about culturally sustaining pedagogies and practices, we need to co-construct some of these ideas of what is culture and then make the bridges, right?
00:04:19
Speaker
That's what I've been carrying with me ever since my Second year of teaching was to start with where my students are at and then let's see where I can bridge some gaps and then co-create and co-construct knowledge of culture, ancestry and so forth and so on.
00:04:35
Speaker
There's a level of building trust and respect. when doing this work and we need to meet on the ground level and build that trust respect to be able to make the connections to everything because a lot of times culture is constructed based on our perspectives as adults and teachers and I think we miss the mark when we don't acknowledge let alone start out with the youth.
00:04:58
Speaker
How do I genuinely invest in what they're into? How
Wellness-Centered Approach in Education
00:05:02
Speaker
do I co-create things and then make connections to things that I want to open up opportunities for to share and, you know, give them a taste of something that they might not be used to?
00:05:13
Speaker
all the while opening myself up to learning. And that makes for good practice. That makes for a wellness-centered approach to learning. and students love it, or they like it better than what they're given, and eventually they look forward to it. So there was one time where we kind of had a sit-in where students wanted to participate in rallies that were going on this past year. And instead, because you know we weren't organizing at that moment, but people were interested enough to do something about us So we had like a sit in a teaching and we decided not to do any district mandated curriculum and practice. And so we were doing things that were engaging and
00:05:58
Speaker
culturally sustaining and students loved it and as a matter of fact they the next time they were like when are we going to boycott the district again when are we going to you know and so these are the kind of things that we as educators who are navigating through systems need to find ways to be able to do this kind of work on top of or in place of some of the things that are literally killing the minds of students and the energies and the spirits, right? And so it's a risk and it takes time and effort. This is not something that you can just do on the fly, but it's so much more meaningful.
00:06:35
Speaker
And students, they need that in this day and age. They need
Guest Segment: Leandro and Cam on Cultural Pedagogies
00:06:38
Speaker
to be having this humanizing approach to education.
00:06:49
Speaker
Welcome to Drawing From The Well. I'm your host, Tiffany Marie. This episode focuses on culturally relevant and culturally responsive pedagogy.
00:07:01
Speaker
You just heard from ah phenomenal educator, LT, who centered his experiences with the babies who use their integrity to implicate districts on the impact of testing on their wellness. It was so amazing and powerful to hear about the ways in which they in ways that maybe adults couldn't, could articulate the violences of schooling and invited LT and other adults into active listening and learning from them.
00:07:28
Speaker
Next up, you'll hear from youth expert Leandro, who shares his experiences with educators who helped him to navigate a violent society. And finally, for our Mic Check 1-2-3 segment, we hear from the one and only Cam, or others call him Patrick Camagnon, university professor, community activist, and high school educator from Los Angeles, California.
00:07:53
Speaker
Cam
Leandro's Cultural Connection and Educational Journey
00:07:54
Speaker
spends a little bit of time with us centering the types of culturally relevant pedagogies that saved his life and ultimately informed his trajectory as a critical educator.
00:08:08
Speaker
My name is Leandro Rojas. I'm currently a first year at San Francisco State University and how it was like experiencing my own culture throughout high school was very healing for myself and helping me figure out who I am and where my people came from.
00:08:26
Speaker
And honestly, it's one of the best things that's happened to me because like not only I got more in touch with my culture, like I got to know more about myself and my family, um where they're from.
00:08:40
Speaker
I learned not a lot about my family's native tribes, specifically in Mexico. And learning the language even is a blessing. It's a blessing, honestly.
00:08:52
Speaker
During my graduation at Leadership High School, H2O gave me a necklace of a tribal head. What it signified to me to have the pendant was to feel connected in my roots.
00:09:08
Speaker
and to feel connected at home and to also feel um with my family roots and to have a better understanding of who I am and what I aspire to be.
00:09:20
Speaker
It's helped me develop what I enjoy studying and what kind of history that I want to learn on my own.
Symbolism and Inspiration in Leandro's Graduation
00:09:28
Speaker
And I'm forever grateful that I was given the opportunity to learn about my people and my culture.
00:09:52
Speaker
What's up y'all?
Cam on Education and Financial Literacy
00:09:53
Speaker
Mike check, Mike check. One, two, three. Hey, hey, hey. It's Juul, Tiffany Marie. We got a very, very special guest with us today. I'm super excited knowing this dude for a hella long, as we would say in the Bay Area.
00:10:07
Speaker
We want to welcome Patrick Camignon with us. So what's up, man? Welcome. Hey, hey. Thank you all for having me. Really appreciate even just seeing your faces, hearing your voices, connecting.
00:10:20
Speaker
Y'all, you know, people have deep respect for. So, you know, to start my weekend off this way is real special. That's what's up. We appreciate you. And like i said, I've known you, known about you, studied you for a while now, but our listeners might not. So, I mean, they probably will. But for those who don't know, tell us about yourself.
00:10:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I'm older now, so I'm about to be 48 in March. And so I was born and raised in l LA. I moved to the Bay in 2008, Oakland. I work in, you know, at the University of San Francisco.
00:10:52
Speaker
So I could probably never really comfortably claim the Bay. But whenever I go to LA, it just feels like a different place. So it's just hard to say I'm from l LA, even though I got a lot of LA love and pride. But wherever I go, I gotta, you know,
00:11:04
Speaker
do the work I believe in. Hopefully it's aligned with the ancestors and my elders and what I perceive to be the needs of our people, multiply marginalized people, historically brilliant.
00:11:15
Speaker
though dominated people. So that's kind of where I commit my life to on weekends to sort of slow down from a lot of that. I'll take things slowly. I hit a hike, you know walk around, walk Heaton Miller, try to eat some delicious food. Although it's getting a lot more expensive these days, cook, spend time with my loved ones and get a lot of affirmation from my dog.
00:11:39
Speaker
That's what's up. That's what's up. Yeah, you've come a long way because ah feel like a few years ago, you used to deep fry everything. So that's great to hear that ah you didn't add some vegetables into your diet and hikes, nature.
00:11:55
Speaker
It's still pretty discreet with what a lot of that means. And going to say something and I'd be thinking I know what he's talking about, but he was talking about some other stuff. He's good with his words. Yeah. He's smart.
00:12:06
Speaker
I was watching the interview years ago when your students was like, you s smart, you smart. Oh, yeah. Appreciate you. So you talked a little bit about being at USF and tell us a little bit more about like how you spend the majority of your days. Like, how's life for you? Like, what do you do during the week and how's that going for you?
00:12:27
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it kind of varies in what I do today as in what I did in the past. I typically wake up around 6.15. fifteen I don't get out of bed until like 6.45.
00:12:38
Speaker
Just kind of read different, like current events a lot lately around the sort of just the economy from the macro to a micro context. Get a sense of this money, you know, just...
00:12:51
Speaker
not to be a capitalist or to you know seek to profit off of people's pain or that isn't my purpose. But I think now that I'm getting older and realizing that I'm at private university, different than you know working in LA Unified or if I were at a public university where they take care of your pension, you know,
00:13:13
Speaker
And just realizing that, you know, i have to be a little more financially literate. So I spend a lot of my mornings just reading about, you know, what's taking place in the world with, you know, nowadays around like what's happening in the Ukraine with Russian occupation.
00:13:29
Speaker
what's happening with all these different corporations in the Bay Area leading. you know Stuff like that's what I do today, right? And I think that might tie into you know what I think about you know my future work later, but right now I'm just trying to learn the landscape of how financial literacy, macroeconomics and microeconomics work, because that's been an area that I don't think I accounted for in my struggles for activism or education in the past.
00:13:57
Speaker
And then, you know, after that, you know, the around 12, I kind of get out of that mode and start getting into, you know, I'm teaching four classes. So have to start preparing for classes, making sure my agenda is right, making sure that I know what my talking points are, you know, how I'm to set people up for activities and make sure that my slides are right.
00:14:17
Speaker
Seven something comes around, you know, that's after lunch, of course. And then teach. After that, I walk my dog, you know, whether it's at Mills College or Emeryville, Alameda, Bay Shore, take her on a good two mile walk, eat dinner, get ready for the next day.
00:14:36
Speaker
And then the weekend comes, I do more of more relaxing, you know, after whatever. nuts and bolts need to take place, like emails and you know letters of
Integrating Financial Literacy into Activism
00:14:45
Speaker
recommendations and stuff like that.
00:14:48
Speaker
I really resonated with that, the part where you were talking about learning money, creating your own money language without also like feeding too much into capitalism. And what I'm really interested in is a lot of us who went into education and ethnic studies into some way of trying to liberate our minds and our community and our people.
00:15:09
Speaker
maybe we didn't have certain conversations around money. And maybe the conversations that we did have around money were very much rooted in capitalism. So I'm interested in that part of your story. like It's one thing to teach critical race theory, but it's also another thing to be like, but when I'm 66 years old, am I going have a pension?
00:15:32
Speaker
I spent all this time making sure my folks got this knowledge. But when I am older and maybe it's not as many people around me, Do I have the things and the resources and the land and the experience and the connection that I need to survive and still live good?
00:15:49
Speaker
So I'm really interested in us going in that direction as we talk about critical race theory. and but Yeah. I mean, you know, if we're talking about critical race theory or a critical race method, in a sense, and we think about how race is central to, you know, our society.
00:16:04
Speaker
epistemological and ontological beings. What's that? What's that? What talking about? What that Ways of knowing. Oh. Ways of being. you know We got to think about how just as racialized people of color, and in my context, Philippine X, Filipino.
00:16:21
Speaker
you know My father died in 2008, and I didn't realize I had to pay for his funeral, right? So I walk into this cemetery, mortuary, or whatever, and my mom's telling me, And she doesn't have much resources. I'm helping her out a lot. And she tells me have to pay for a Catholic funeral.
00:16:37
Speaker
I'm like, okay, whatever that means. That means a burial. That means a burial plot. That means church. When I went in, I got quoted. I was like, it was almost like the first time someone broke up with me.
00:16:50
Speaker
You know, it was like that devastating to hear what they said I had to pay. And I was crushed and you know I had to find a way, I put everything on credit card, bought a plot of land, you know buried him. you know And know it was cool that you know at the end of the funeral, my mother, who wasn't very affirming, loving, but in a different way, she didn't get along with my father's side.
00:17:11
Speaker
They always had this sort of deficit perspective of her. and to invite my father's family to the funeral and then like, you know, be able to pay for food. When she said something like, your father would be proud or something like we held a good funeral or they know that, you know, your father was loved or something like that gave me that like bit of,
00:17:30
Speaker
pride that I had been hoping for it but didn't get. But then my mother died five years later I had to do the same thing. Good thing I buried them on top of each other, but I had to pay for other expenses. And that put me in super credit card debt.
00:17:44
Speaker
And I didn't realize how much debt that put me in and until like later on because I was making payments, but my debt wasn't decreasing. The interest rate was far outpacing my monthly payments.
00:17:55
Speaker
you know I was digging a hole, digging a hole, and I was dealing with all my stress in other parts of my life by indulging. And then I didn't have homies who could indulge with me because I didn't kick it with the big homies. I kicked it with other homies.
00:18:08
Speaker
you know A lot of times I was paying for it, you know what i mean? it just kept adding up. And um it wasn't until something kicked in that I realized that um this so it wasn't sustainable.
00:18:20
Speaker
And I think that's when I sort of made a move towards a different direction and knew that I needed to spend less than I made and invest the difference. And I think I'm in a much better place and far from where I need to be if when I do finally decide to stop working, that I can sustain you know my life to some level of degree that has the quality I hope to have.
00:18:44
Speaker
And I didn't learn that from my family. There was nothing about our income that people said we needed to save. It was just about whatever, right?
00:18:55
Speaker
Whatever. It was spend what you had, spend more. You have credit
Cam's Path to Education and Transformation
00:19:00
Speaker
cards, use it. That was just part of the hegemony that we thought was the American dream.
00:19:07
Speaker
I mean, I appreciate those witnessing, Cam. And it's honestly, brother, it's tough to hear. the ways that the structural realities interrupt our rituals, our processes, our transitions of our loved ones and having to cultivate a relationship with something that we know is not of us and not for us, right? Like the overall movement of money, which is really just our, that's just the energy of our people, right? In paper and digital form, they're suffering commodified.
00:19:41
Speaker
And I guess I'm wondering, because you're really talking about ways to survive and then survive the shifts and transitions that are going to come for all of us. How do we sustain ourselves outside of exchanging our labor for these places, right?
00:19:55
Speaker
When I think of survival, I think of culture and what's passed on to us, right? Those sort of practices and ways of being that allow us to survive. And I'm wondering, as you were coming up and just sort of going through life, when were your some of your lessons or survivances, practices, rituals that have helped you survive that you now are implementing in your life?
00:20:19
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, Tiffany mentioned a group of us the other day that what our survival mechanisms of the past are something that we might want to rethink in the present.
00:20:33
Speaker
But for me, the initial inspiration was coming into critical consciousness about the history of the radical Philippine resistance to Spanish colonization and U.S. occupation in the homeland.
00:20:52
Speaker
You know, at the at the time i was really engaged in a lot of reactionary behavior and self-defeating resistance. And I found life in the destruction, in my participation in the destruction of people who experience life just like me. I really,
00:21:09
Speaker
There was nothing more exhilarating to me from age 11 to age 23. There was nothing more exhilarating to me than inflicting pain on my people.
00:21:22
Speaker
Like I would come back like I scored a touchdown. It would be like going to the locker room after winning a game after, you know, I participated in some horizontal violence. Right.
00:21:34
Speaker
And then like the love. that my homeboys would give and the laughter that it would create, the pride that we would feel and celebrate after you know inflicting pain and sometimes high levels of pain.
00:21:48
Speaker
There was nothing like it until I realized I was doing exactly what the system wanted me to do. And then just like coming to the process of understanding what that meant was cathartic.
00:22:02
Speaker
And then committing myself to being you know the type of teacher I wish I had prior to hating school, which I thought was high school when I got pushed out in the 10th grade. But after, you know, later reflection, I realized I had a school from the beginning. You know, I was getting bad grades, earning or whatever, assigned bad grades as early as first and even second grade.
00:22:21
Speaker
And as a second grader, I had under a 2.0. We don't measure GPAs for second graders, but my GPA, you like if you look at the grade distribution, was like a 1.48 as a seven-year-old, as a second grader.
00:22:34
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
Cultural Narratives in Cam's Teaching Methodology
00:22:35
Speaker
And so I didn't think I earned poor grades because I was unintelligent. I think reflecting back that I earned poor grades because I would watch my teachers teach and ask myself, you know, what does this have to do with me? Because at home, you know, what parents migrated here in search of a better life.
00:22:50
Speaker
And then I think they found out Shortly after that, whether they were in denial or not, that they were being alienated from this so-called American dream, right? Malcolm would say is the American nightmare and experienced differently, of course, by different racialized communities, right? So what Malcolm meant probably was a little bit more intense anti-blackness than what my parents felt and through the institutionalized white supremacy.
00:23:11
Speaker
but it still impacted the family. And that sadness, I think, evolved into anger and then morphed into rage, which I had witnessed as early as six years old. And it didn't make sense. You know what i mean? And like what would be crying and sadness and apathy at one stage would then be physical violence as a kindergartener, as a first grader, as a second grader, and then this disengagement, right? I guess Herb would call that will not learning.
00:23:40
Speaker
And so I hated school as early as kindergarten, first grade, second grade, but it didn't lead to me being pushed out until the 10th grade. you know So part of my you know radical healing, if you will, came when I decided to be the type of educator I wish I had prior to being pushed out, but now trying to help people provide the type of education that I wish I had even before hating school as early as kindergarten.
00:24:04
Speaker
And so the ways that I, i don't know if you said survive or what language you use, but was to one, work on myself, right? i wanted to unlearn a lot of that stuff internally.
00:24:14
Speaker
And so I ended up, you know, one of the homies, Art Nelson Concordia, who was a teacher and of ethnic studies in San Francisco, now in Santa Barbara, under attacks by Fox News. And, you know, I think he introduced me to some books that gave me the knowledge that supported feelings I had of anti-imperialism.
00:24:34
Speaker
And so now I understood historically how colonization and imperialism had damaged the Philippines and you know how that impacted our people and then how that was present with me in the moment. And so I think I started unlearning as much of that as I could.
00:24:47
Speaker
And then when I became a teacher, I tried to practice that instructionally and inter-culturally or inter-personally with the students I taught, predominantly black students at Crenshaw High School. And as much as I had like black friends and black neighbors and black homeboys growing up, you know I didn't have a familiarity with you know blackness or black people or black culture, black students, you know outside of like playing on the streets or playing sports together or uniting against a common enemy, perceived common enemy.
00:25:18
Speaker
But I knew that my anti-imperial sensibility would unite me with other people negatively impacted by colonization and imperialism.
00:25:29
Speaker
But over time, I created curriculum based on the process I went through for self and social transformation so that students could apply those types of readings, analysis, and praxis to their own lives so that they could unlearn some of the colonial, you know, hegemonic ideologies that they may have been introduced to, internalized, and reproduced on their own terms and in the ways that they chose to.
00:26:00
Speaker
And I think, you know, that was also healing all that time in the classroom. And then I just kind of like extended that out into spaces that I found myself in moving forward. community organizations, you know teacher education, the field of education through my scholarship, through my organizing, through my institutional change, through now more policy and systemic change.
From Street Life to Educational Empowerment
00:26:24
Speaker
if I was watching this as your lifetime story, right? It shifted. it was I don't know if it happened during a commercial break or not, but it went from this guy in the streets inflicting harm and pain on folks. You gave us the like vignette of what was happening at home.
00:26:41
Speaker
And then it was this guy who didn't like school, who got pushed out of school. And then it was this guy who was doing transformative work in classrooms with young people. It feels like There was a chunk that's missing that I think intimately connects with this idea of cultural relevancy that I'm interested in. like What was in between that time that we left out? What led to the shift in consciousness? There's these books that you talk about that art gave you.
00:27:05
Speaker
i think books had the power to do that. But I also think that living texts also are a little bit more influential. and So is there something there we're missing? Yeah, I was just feeling like my five-minute window to answer a question was coming up. So I was like, let me get to this part.
00:27:19
Speaker
I think an under-narrated part when I do share this with people is the role that exposure to anti-imperial organizing in the Filipino community has contributed to my capacity as an educator.
00:27:35
Speaker
This began with reading, but Reading for me was only as useful as the dialogue it provided me access to. and I was like, just now entering this sort of critical conscious stage. And i went to this Dodgers at San Diego Padres game in San Diego. It's different than Dodgers Stadium. I mean, even though Dodgers Stadium still has all these contradictions, but it's different in San Diego. And maybe it was the seats I bought.
00:27:59
Speaker
But the national anthem came on. This is 97, I think, 96. I was like, I'm going to sit. you know What did Gras Kass say? you know um Jewish people do not pledge ah allegiance to the swastika, but you know he used a different word, but people the color will pledge allegiance or something like that to the flag that accosted you, something like that.
00:28:21
Speaker
And so I'm going to sit down. you know I took so much pride that I sat down during the national anthem in San Diego, military city, with all these, you know, what I perceive to be conservative, sort of looking at me strangely and power to the people.
00:28:35
Speaker
And so I'm driving back and I hear on the radio, homeboy Kiwi, who, you know, I grew up with. her In fact, we didn't get along at one point. And his old homeboy, he said, shot at me once.
00:28:46
Speaker
And we sorted that issue out and we we had a truce and we united against another perceived common enemy. But, you know, a few years prior, an enemy, like, The head came inches from inflicting pain, if not death, among me and my homeboys.
00:29:00
Speaker
And now um he's on the radio, some kind of radio show, on 92.3 The Beat, after the wake-up show, some kind of critically conscious cat. And he's talking about something anti-imperial.
00:29:12
Speaker
So I decided I'm going to call up you know the radio show and I'm, hey, my analysis was off. you know I was like, Illuminati's fucked up, whatever, the trilateral commission and JFK is part of this, secret and all this sort of stuff, right? Not the trilateral commission. Yeah, I was like- Them fools. Right, exactly. so And so he invites me. He says like, man, you're a different person now. you know So he invites me into the space and it's, you know,
00:29:41
Speaker
more anti-imperial cats. And, you know, one dude who eventually became this director or whatever that position is called for the Filipino Community Center in San Francisco. But we were just kind of like youth at the time, 20-year-olds,
00:29:54
Speaker
And they brought me into this space called the Balak Tasan Collective. And there were artists, there were poets, there were visual artists, Filipino who wanted to use the art to, you know, whatever. What I would say today is disrupt dehumanization, you know, overturn U.S. imperialism in the Philippines and to align their art with the national democratic movement in the Philippines.
00:30:16
Speaker
And so I wasn't an artist. I said, I'll join and I'll play other roles. And you know I hosted events and, but just watching their organizing, watching how they brought people in who weren't quite at the level of critical consciousness that we were at so that we could organize them, mobilize them into a larger collective so that they can be then play a role in this larger, or larger web of a movement.
00:30:37
Speaker
It really helped me understand how to organize like classroom sessions, units and stuff like that. And then at the university, I had a professor named b Brian Alexander, who was a professor Cal State LA. You know, I got into Cal State LA through the Gang Violence Bridging Project, which was like short-lived two-year program.
00:30:56
Speaker
Then I transferred into this thing called EOP, Educational Opportunities Program. But there I met Professor Brian Alexander, gay black man, who really introduced me to what a humanizing education looked like.
00:31:12
Speaker
You know, he had us do performance as part of our assessment. We had to do that academic writing stuff too, and that's not where I performed all, but I understood that we could embody some of the knowledge that we were learning, right? And some simple things like, can you perform what oppression looks like? Can you show us what your reality is? How would you go from your reality to...
00:31:32
Speaker
your ideal and just like the movements of our body narrating it, you know, telling stories and all these sort of things showed me it was like the model for what I wanted and what I eventually used in the classroom.
00:31:45
Speaker
And so that was that period of 96 to 99 was immersing myself in the Filipino arts organizing space that was connected.
The Role of Storytelling in Building Classroom Connections
00:31:53
Speaker
i Even though i wasn't part of this space, they were connected to the Bayan organization, sort of like this pro-people space.
00:31:59
Speaker
And then at the university, my professor, Brian Alexander, was showing me what an education to recover from the dehumanization of colonial miseducation looked like.
00:32:12
Speaker
It's that kind of like commitment to study, commitment to watching theory applied into social practice brought me to my first year as a teacher. And the trippy thing was I didn't apply it at first.
00:32:26
Speaker
So I was the cool teacher who wore slacks, but students appreciated me still. They could see something because they say things like, Cam, you're the only teacher we know who wears slacks and sags.
00:32:40
Speaker
And even when I got hired at Crenshaw, because I got hired at a school that I was pushed out of, right? I took the job at Crenshaw High School because I used to go there to watch basketball games because they were always one of the best in the city.
00:32:52
Speaker
But then I took the job there because after my interview, the assistant principal, a woman named Cassandra Roy, told me, look, and I wore a suit. I had bought a suit from men's warehouse. I thought I was like conformist.
00:33:04
Speaker
After the interview, she said, look, we want to hire you because we think your history as a gang member. I didn't tell him I was gang related. But she said, I think your history as a gang member, you can serve as a positive role model to the Black gangs at Crenshaw.
00:33:20
Speaker
I was like, oh man, this is it. you know So I ended up there. But a theory didn't show up to me when I started to teach. And I would try to teach my students how to conform to the miseducation in the textbooks because I didn't get trained.
00:33:32
Speaker
I saw it in my university class. I saw it in the community organizing. But in my teaching credential program, they didn't teach us how to translate that. In fact, they were like, that kind of stuff is not really teaching. That's activism. So I would sit here and try to follow these you know, text was guiding questions, answer the questions and then it's great people based on the sort of standardized text that I was assigning them that was, you know, written by the state that was approved by, you know, central government.
00:34:00
Speaker
And then when students resisted it, I would try to bang on them. I was banging for the system. I was like, you better fucking conform, homie. i'm a You know, you don't want none of this. Trust.
00:34:11
Speaker
You know, kind of like that, right? And then that summer, summer of 2000, I reflected, I was like, man, I was really the type of teacher hated. You know, I was cool. But after my communication style that resonated with a lot of the students, after the nonverbal communication that students appreciated wore off, they were over it.
00:34:34
Speaker
And luckily it didn't kick in until March, but from March to June, you know, I might as well have been a Republican white man who hated black students and brown children.
00:34:46
Speaker
But that summer i was like, you know, what do I do? And so I went back to what did i learn to unlearn the hegemony I was reproducing as a youth.
00:35:00
Speaker
So I told you, sided Kiwi and Kiwi and his homeboys, we were lived in the same neighborhood of Koreatown. you know I had to go back and forth between Echo Park and Koreatown. My mother was in Mid-City, they called Mid-City Koreatown. My father, Echo Park, right? They were divorced.
00:35:12
Speaker
But we were all together in Koreatown. was like fighting for a limited set of resources. So they, at a party, shot at us. And it was gonna get bad, because we were so close. We lived so close to each other.
00:35:23
Speaker
And you know this was sort of the time we started getting enough money to have accumulate weapons and stuff. And somebody, one of my homeboys, he's actually an actor now. I don't know if I just named his name, and I won't. But he mediated this conversation with one of their leaders, right one of their shot callers, if you will.
00:35:39
Speaker
And we decided to meet at the top of a mountain. You know, there were like 20 of them and like five of us. Because my generation only had five. This next generation, there were more. So we're still trying to recruit our base.
00:35:51
Speaker
But we went and we talked about what our issues were, you know, why we were beefing. Turns out we were beefing. A lot of it had to do with like, girls, popularity, like who was the doper writer, who's more notoriously known for fighting, who was getting credited for the best attacks on others. And, you know we realized that we in fact had a common experiences,
00:36:21
Speaker
And in fact, common enemy. And so we decided we were going to have a truce. And so, you know, this isn't transformative, but we started to move together against perceived common enemies.
00:36:32
Speaker
And that brought a bond. We were bonding over this, right? And that was probably our displaced anger uniting us against something together. But it was stories that connected us, that united us against a perceived common enemy together that then I said, I am going to use this ah assignment that Brian Alexander gave me as a university student called cultural narratives.
00:37:00
Speaker
I connected that and then I then evolved that into autoethnography. And my first unit, my second year teaching was having students write and then perform autoethnographies.
00:37:12
Speaker
You know, who are you? What experiences shaped who you are today? What does that mean for your community? How does that make you feel? Who does a come community need you to be based on that? And what pathway do you need to go to be who your community needs to be?
00:37:27
Speaker
And i saw the class shift from ah bunch of students who had internalized all these deficit perspectives about one another. We are projecting that onto classmates in the class. And because of the stereotype they were projecting onto their peers would justify their dehumanization that they would impose on one another. They would rationalize the dehumanization by using the language of our oppressor to define their peers.
00:37:55
Speaker
But then
Success Stories in Unity and Engagement through Culture
00:37:56
Speaker
after all this sort of storytelling, you can see that some students' perception of another student as someone worth dehumanizing began to start recognizing parts of their humanity that they understood about themselves.
00:38:11
Speaker
And so they would see now, see onto their peers parts of themselves that they would want others to be empathetic towards. And all of a sudden, the whole classroom felt connected when prior to the unit, you had young people who were competing for a limited set of resources, right?
00:38:29
Speaker
i want to be the baddest motherfucker in here. I want to be the cutest person in here. I want to be the smartest. I want to have the freshest gear, whatever that sort of hierarchical competition for status was.
00:38:41
Speaker
And now we are connected. Students were engaged. And you know it's a lot harder to disengage engaged students than it is to disengage students. But that's all I had. That's all I came out that summer with.
00:38:53
Speaker
So you know second unit, they still trusted me. So they weren't disengaging. So they were doing the conformist stuff just because they had love for me and love for each other based on what we did in the first unit. But then after you know third unit, less trust, fourth unit, eventually you know disengaged this class. So y'all, this is whack. And then I had to go back to other parts of my life that had taught me how to unlearn hegemony,
00:39:12
Speaker
to practice counter hegemony, to engage in my own process of humanization, right? To disrupt the dehumanization of imposed self-hate, divide and conquer, and sub-oppression and conformity, to develop in myself newer levels of knowledge of and love of self, newer levels of solidarity, newer levels of self-determination.
00:39:32
Speaker
i had to revisit what helped me be more humanize in that way and how can I create learning opportunities for students to go through their own process to do the same on their own terms, in their own image, in their own voice and in their own interest.
00:39:46
Speaker
So I started developing more units, more units and it it wasn't until like you know enough summers passed that I had enough for two semesters to not even worry about ever disengaging students.
00:39:56
Speaker
Hmm. And now that's the case. And it's even the case at the university. Right. So, you know, I have to keep developing practices from beginning of a teacher till now where I don't even really have to worry too much about planning or even knowing if what I plan is going to be.
00:40:11
Speaker
fun or effective or meaningful because I've already practiced it. I implemented it. I tested I've seen the results. And I know that pretty much everything that I've used in the past and improved on is going to be meaningful to the learners, whether in high school that I taught or the university where I'm at now.
Impact of Transformative Pedagogy in California
00:40:28
Speaker
e i don't think a lot of people acknowledge this, but I learned about you. i was transcribing your interviews with Jeff. And at that time you was like teacher the year. You had been teacher a year already.
00:40:39
Speaker
You was a big man and and i was in the Bay Area. You was still in LA doing your thing. and learned about you transcribing these interviews. I was like, who is this dude? Like the way you were just describing it, I was, oh my God.
00:40:52
Speaker
And I feel like ah not enough people, i don't know, maybe you lived it up, but I feel like at the time, you were doing things in Southern California that was setting the stage largely for a culture in the Bay Area too.
00:41:07
Speaker
It's not to say folks weren't doing intense work, but your name years after that was a big deal. And it was a lot of folks in the Bay Area, particularly walking around trying to sound like you, trying to dress like you, trying to talk like you.
00:41:22
Speaker
i can't tell you the number of people I know who did autoethnographies. I did autoethnographies I think in music we do it, in film we do it, but in teaching it's kind of this subconscious thing where we don't acknowledge people who set the culture largely for the discourse that drastically improves young people's lives.
00:41:39
Speaker
And I do want to stop and say that you're one of those people who, as a person from the Bay Area, you set dominant culture in the Bay Area around transformative discourse and largely what we would call culturally responsive,
00:41:56
Speaker
and relevant pedagogy. I think it's safe to say that you are one of the game changers in that respect, but we talk about it loosely. I want to know how would you define that though?
00:42:09
Speaker
Like what you did was It has no small feat in terms of the ah folks you were working with, the context that you were working within, and then it's reach.
00:42:21
Speaker
Like it had reach. So how would you define, people use the terms loosely, I think now it's a buzzword. It was not super popular in universities at the time.
00:42:34
Speaker
It was something that was really counter to it. A lot of teacher ed programs, as you said, And folks in higher ed were pushing. But now, it's a buzzword that it actually scares me, but everybody feel like they're doing they're culturally relevant. Everybody feel like they are today. That sound bites in people's interviews now. You know you got to say that in the Bay Area. And I do attribute a lot of that to you, to Jeff, to other groundbreaking folks who are doing that work.
00:42:58
Speaker
But how would you define it? Everybody thinks they're doing it, but how would you define it? Yeah. When I first heard it, i was definitely just like,
00:43:07
Speaker
You know, i still get goosebumps when I hear it and I'm embarrassed. I'm shy when I hear it and I try to pretend I don't hear it. I try to act cool. But, you know, i appreciate you so much for verbalizing it.
00:43:18
Speaker
To know that somebody was positively impacted by your anything is very humbling. And I'm honored that you would share that with me. I know that a lot of the, you know, give the roses to people while they're here emerged around the time when Nipsey Hussle was...
00:43:35
Speaker
killed So this is like the culturally irrelevant teaching drink champs where Nori and the DJ sort of like show love to all these MCs while they're over. We're going to do it. We're going to do it. We're going to do it. Give it up for Ken. We're going to do it. Yeah, give it up.
00:43:55
Speaker
And so thank you so much, Tiffany, because you're actually a person I turn to now to find inspiration. And all of the work that you all do, Candice, your research, and Julia, your humanity, is makes me feel like a dinosaur overnight.
00:44:09
Speaker
But I feel I find youth when I see you, see your humanity and see your work. So thank you all as well. If people started to talk like me, dress like me, Eunice is fine.
00:44:20
Speaker
I want people to find their own authenticity. I think that's the most effective way of being a person, teacher, activist is to you know exist as themselves so that we learn what democracy looks like in other forms.
00:44:33
Speaker
because I learned a lot of who I am now is people being themselves in my presence as, you know, gender expansive, intersectionally critical, you know, multiply marginalized people that in the past I had a very narrow understanding of.
00:44:52
Speaker
You don't need to have rage. You don't need to, be rude, to be ah an effective educator of others, right? You don't have to, right?
00:45:05
Speaker
Use what you have to your advantage. Don't pretend to be something you're not. If it's privilege you are trying to disguise, I, as a you know who has male privilege, it's just our responsibility to use our privilege to benefit those who are silenced.
00:45:24
Speaker
right So how do we do that? like I hear a lot of rappers will mimic someone until they find their own voice. If that's the case with teaching, people want to mimic Tiffany or whoever until they do it their own way, then cool.
00:45:39
Speaker
If that's the case with what happened with me.
Evolving towards a Humanizing Pedagogy
00:45:41
Speaker
You know, I'll just say that my work is culturally relevant pedagogy or culturally responsive or, you know, even community responsive or even critical pedagogy.
00:45:51
Speaker
You know, maybe because I don't quite have the language skills to name something anew. and know in academia, people get credit for naming something anew. And Stovall told me that one of my greatest strengths is connecting my ideas to, you know, established ideas of the past.
00:46:07
Speaker
o All credit to people who have the brilliance to name something new. I am just doing this work and then finding stuff that I can say that I am either building on or you know inform my work or whatever.
00:46:21
Speaker
How I define culturally relevant pedagogy today, I think I'm committing to. the word of like humanizing pedagogy. And somebody had told me, well, you know, you might not have cache because you aren't first to market. I have to look that up, which is kind of in line with my desire to study macroeconomics. and I was like, first to market. So I guess if you're mer like the marathon, right? Or like Wu-Tang, forever, 36 chambers of death and whatever like new concept,
00:46:53
Speaker
you know, AT aliens, right? I guess if you're first to market, like you'll always kind of be remembered as someone with a concept, but I'm still committing to humanizing pedagogy because, you know, I've heard criticisms of it, but the text that first changed my life was Pedagogy the Oppressed, and the concept of humanization and dehumanization, important concepts in my life.
00:47:20
Speaker
And then, you know, bell hooks, you know, talking about, yes, as a phenotypically white appearing Brazilian, Freire is racially privileged. However, the abstract concepts in his writing help affirm Bell Hooks' is education in humanity in these ways. And so that's what I took from him.
00:47:38
Speaker
yeah But then the same time, later on, I saw Grace Lee Boggs, James Boggs talked about you know this concept of a new human. Zeus Leonardo and Ronald Porter talked about humanizing violence.
00:47:50
Speaker
Gwen Jango Pares talked about humanizing research. Sadia Hartman and all of this tradition of people who talk about humanization or humanizing because they understand the dehumanization for some anti-blackness, for other state-sanctioned violence, for Stolvold engineered conflict, for me, vertical violence, for you know whoever, they understand the impact that that dehumanization had on a people.
00:48:18
Speaker
And so when I say humanization, It's me really projecting my own past growth onto the pedagogy I try to implement in my teaching. For me, in the 2015 Teach Like Lives Depend on it, I said humanizing pedagogy was culturally relevant, critical, and led to critical literacy.
00:48:41
Speaker
After
Defining Humanizing Pedagogy
00:48:42
Speaker
growing since then, and everything I've learned from queer, transnational feminist, from people with disabilities or so-called disability, don't know how we, so I apologize for that.
00:48:58
Speaker
People who are from working class and surviving poor communities, people who are having to navigate xenophobic policies. Everything I've learned since that time has me rethinking the notion of a humanizing pedagogy.
00:49:13
Speaker
It has to be start with, you know, critically caring relationships. what we all know Angela Valenzuela had called authentically caring relationships and Tyrone Howard. And I cite those two because that's who helped me think about this stuff conceptually and theoretically early on.
00:49:30
Speaker
Tyrone Howard wrote an article, an empirical study, both empirical studies, hearing footsteps in the dark around the most effective teachers of black children, elementary school age children. He talked about culturally connected caring relationships.
00:49:43
Speaker
And so I think for me, any kind of critically caring relationships has to be culturally connected and authentic political relationships where students understand that we are seeking first to understand their humanity before we try to get them to understand what we're teaching them.
00:50:03
Speaker
And so I think once they understand that we're not going to silence them based on our projection of you know respectability politics or Eurocentric notions of people of color so that they can more easily conform to a system that despises their humanity. Once they know that our relationship to them is not to help them conform to that dehumanization, once they understand that, look, we're on the right side of history and i see you, i feel you, i understand you, i love you, and here's what I have to say.
00:50:37
Speaker
And if you're down with it, Go at it at your own pace on your own terms. Cool. I love you regardless. And I think once that happens, I think that is the foundation for what comes next. right So the first, for me, humanizing pedagogy is what I would say culturally relevant pedagogy, teaching, responsiveness is for me. Mm-hmm.
00:51:00
Speaker
critically caring relationships. Seek first to understand, then be understood. Second is it has to be intersectionally relevant. We talk about culturally relevant, and but then a lot of times it's a culture is a proxy for race.
00:51:12
Speaker
It might like an implicit allusion to a class, depending on how we illustrate that from our examples. But for me, just my growth, right? So what I appreciate about Tiffany, Castro,
00:51:28
Speaker
Cristio Castillo, all these students I had at USF who were gender expansive, Savannah Shange as a colleague and friend, I'm sorry of all these people I'm not even remembering right now, who didn't shame me for my limited understandings of gender.
00:51:52
Speaker
Jewel, I think you might even have been at that Shange talk she did at USF, I believe. Yes. Yeah, right? And so they didn't shame me. like These are people who, I guess in the language of today, would say they called me in. They didn't just call me out, they called me in.
00:52:07
Speaker
so you know I think there was something mutually respectable about our relationship where they felt like they wanted to call me in versus call me out. They introduced me to new ideas.
00:52:19
Speaker
which then I internalize as high expectations in ways that I felt loved and supported. So I guess that's critically caring relationships. It helped me understand that there are different prisms of people's identities that I needed to account for. And not as ah like an an identity politics, right?
00:52:40
Speaker
About who we are and the importance of who we are. But while people dismiss the sort of trivial value of identity politics, As far as I'm concerned, that is the basis upon which we will build on. Once people understand who they are, develop a love of self, then we could tie that into, so I guess, the more valued transformation of material conditions in people's lives.
00:53:02
Speaker
It helped me understand that, right? And so it helped me understand that there are cognitive differences, that we have to account for hearing and not hearing, seeing and not seeing, different physical abilities. You know, the spectrum of gender, politics, and identity, and other multiple marginal identities,
00:53:26
Speaker
I have to understand that sometimes we as cis hetero, oftentimes hyper masculine performing young men, we are part of a legacy of privilege that center our voices and privilege what we have to say while silencing all the non-criminalizing centered voices, often time people who are ascribed female identities at birth, who do not credit them for their work, oftentimes taking on more labor so that this message, mostly coming from men, get credit for. And so like, we have to understand relevance beyond culture as a proxy for race and class.
00:54:13
Speaker
Because sometimes people identify more with their gender, non-binary uniqueness their physical abilities, their hearing or seeing experiences more than they do their ethnic and racial identities.
00:54:34
Speaker
And we have to have an education that allow people, you multiply marginalized people, an entry point into learning that has been historically alienating to them, even in the name of justice that we say is culturally relevant,
00:54:52
Speaker
But it's really ah narrow notion of what different people's cultural realities are when it doesn't account for the intersectional lenses and identities and humanities that they bring into the classroom. So what it has to be critically caring, right?
00:55:11
Speaker
Then it has to be intersectionally relevant. Then it has to lead towards socially transformative learning. So it can't just be getting good grades, learning how to take tests, how to write essays so that they can access the highest levels of American schooling in order to Hopefully move more fluidly between the different levels of social mobility and therefore, you know, get a good job, save enough for a down payment for a car and then a home and then live comfortably away from a community that groomed you oh as a notion of success. Right. That's sub oppression.
00:55:52
Speaker
conformity and sometimes leads to deculturalization. The learning has to be about preparing students to use math, to use science, to use literacy, to use social science, to use physical education, to use gardening or farming, to use any knowledge we're teaching them in school to transform unjust social conditions, not to conform to a system that despises their humanity, but to use their education to disrupt the dehumanization of a social system that is at odds with the history and dignity of their people.
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy and Social Change
00:56:25
Speaker
And so we have to rethink assessment. We have to assess, right? Social transformative learning has to assess young people on the type of learning that can disrupt unjust dehumanizing social conditions.
00:56:40
Speaker
Assess them on that. You're gonna get graded on your ability to use what you know to disrupt dehumanization. We need to teach young people to develop the social compassion necessary for people to unify ah across perceived differences.
00:57:00
Speaker
We don't have to kick it. We don't party. We don't have to build all the time. That's cool too. I mean, of course, right? We all have pockets of people we build with, but we have to unite across perceived differences.
00:57:13
Speaker
You know, there's that book, right? Why are all the black children sitting together in the cafeteria? I don't have a problem with all the black children sitting together in the cafeteria. I have a problem with the concept that you can't sit with us.
00:57:24
Speaker
right? And then taking pride on, you can't sit with us because we're like, whatever, cooler than you. In the classroom, in the community, you know, we have to be able to unite on the right side of justice.
00:57:35
Speaker
And so we have to teach young people the critical compassion that can unite people empathetically across difference. And then the third thing is we need to teach young people that critically think.
00:57:46
Speaker
QEP Newton has said that power is the ability to define phenomenon and make it act in an according manner. Karl Marx said that when theory grips the masses, it becomes a material force, right? So thinking and doing, we have to teach them there's a relationship between what they learn and what they do, right? Between theory and practice, between words and action.
00:58:08
Speaker
And I think that's for me, how I would define culturally relevant pedagogy to me as a humanizing pedagogy, which is built on critically caring relationships, intersectional relevance and socially transformative learning.
00:58:21
Speaker
I know we're wrapping up and I just want to offer you know offer Brother Cam, how I came into relation with you and that part about what we're learning from these models. I think I was assigned paper. We had to look at, like as Tiff said, who are the people that we should be looking to for the future of the work?
00:58:40
Speaker
And i was assigned you and reached out. It was actually a work on critically caring pedagogies. You responded to me because I was you know playing with different things at the time. i think I said, peace, Uhuru, or Ubuntu.
00:58:53
Speaker
And you responded to me in your language, right, in a collective way. And you had the tagline. One thing that you always say, which is like, stay dangerous. you know And so I'm thinking about what it means to do this work that we know is inherently because all things you mentioned about the state dangerous. And I just want to offer appreciation for you for inviting us to to be in relationship to the struggle, which we know inherently brings conflict and possible antagonism and to move in ways that are collective.
Conclusion and Gratitude
00:59:23
Speaker
Thank you for that memory. You know, my appreciation for you is mutual. We've built a relationship over the recent years through our connection at UCLA. But even beyond that, I appreciate all that you've taught me and all that I learned from you know our relationship.
00:59:40
Speaker
And then Jewel, of course, you know, you show a love to me in the Bay and, you know, being an outsider from the Bay, being accepted with somebody of your, you know, status and is affirming to me to know that as someone from l LA, I can also contribute to spaces of people who got hella, you know love for the Bay.
00:59:57
Speaker
Thank you both for that. asha We appreciate you, Cam, for coming out and blessing us. Give it up one more time, y'all, for the webinar. a
01:00:28
Speaker
So much from today's episode, whether it's from that meeting that Cam and some of his mentors had on the Hill to the testimonies that LT shared about the elementary school children.
01:00:44
Speaker
I think back to Leandro's necklace as a symbol of who and where he comes from. But I also think of it as protection.
01:00:57
Speaker
and the type of symbolism necessary to help us make sense of culturally relevant or culturally sustaining pedagogy. It pushes us think about the types of resources and tools that we are giving young people that protect them.
01:01:15
Speaker
in this world that often is made up against them, that protects them in a world that is not invested always in their well-being, that reminds them of the power of who they come from the power of who they can become as they work toward self-determined futures.
01:01:34
Speaker
I'm so grateful in that regard for the young people who come to us every day, refusing to conform to our fears, and are ready to stand in their power.
01:02:02
Speaker
Thank you for listening to this episode of Drawing From The Well, brought to you by the Youth Wellness Movement. I'm your host, Tiffany Marie. This podcast is co-produced by yours truly and John Reyes, with music by my boy Jansen V. Drawing From The Well is supported by Community Response of Education.
01:02:23
Speaker
Continue the conversation at youthwellness.com.