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Harm reduction v. Getting to the Root : Stories of distress and a better future
20 Plays1 year ago
Join Rafa and Emily in this particularly passionate episode. some F bombs thrown here and there. We talk about how anger can be helpful and the implications for anti-oppressive work.
In this episode, we explore When is harm reduction getting in the way of more upstream, at the root work? And why is this the case?
As always, e-mail us at pedagogyofthedistressed@gmail.com with any comments, questions, or other ideas.
Link to Krista Tippett interviewing Ruth WIlson Gilmore here
Abrazos,
Rafa and Emily
Recommended
Transcript
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello.
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello.
Soda Choice and Humor
00:00:04
Speaker
Let's get right into it today.
00:00:08
Speaker
We're ready.
00:00:08
Speaker
We're fired up.
00:00:09
Speaker
We're fired up.
00:00:10
Speaker
I have my diet coke.
00:00:11
Speaker
I'm getting my diet coke buzz.
00:00:13
Speaker
Oh my gosh, you can't support the Coca-Cola company.
00:00:18
Speaker
I have a diet cola of non-preferential.
00:00:21
Speaker
Hosmer Mountain.
00:00:22
Speaker
I have a local diet soda that I'm drinking.
Teaching During Pandemic Challenges
00:00:29
Speaker
Anyway, so today we're going to go right into an anecdote, Emily, that I remember you told me last year.
00:00:35
Speaker
I was in the last year.
00:00:37
Speaker
And that's the stress to you.
00:00:39
Speaker
And so let's start there.
00:00:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:43
Speaker
Well, it's this time of year.
00:00:44
Speaker
This is March or I guess April now.
00:00:47
Speaker
But, you know, around this time.
00:00:50
Speaker
The birds start tweeting, the daffodils come up, and kids start taking standardized tests.
00:00:56
Speaker
And so I'm always kind of reminded of this season.
00:00:58
Speaker
I also teach in-service teachers.
00:01:01
Speaker
So I work at a local college teaching teachers that are in schools.
00:01:05
Speaker
And right now they're all bogged down with the season of standardized testing, right?
00:01:10
Speaker
And it just...
00:01:12
Speaker
I flashback to this experience I had a couple years ago, whenever this time kind of comes up of teaching through that real, it wasn't the first time, it wasn't the first March in 2020, but that 2020 to 2021 school year had so many just amazing
00:01:33
Speaker
I'm trying to think of a way not to say fucked up, but I'm just going to say fucked up things happening that were just so bananas.
00:01:39
Speaker
And this experience with our standardized testing in that year really, I think, tells so much.
00:01:43
Speaker
And so I really wanted to share that today.
00:01:47
Speaker
So I'm going to take us back at the time machine to that 20 to 21 school year.
00:01:49
Speaker
It was the first kind of...
00:01:56
Speaker
I know a lot of us are preferring to block that out in our memory.
00:02:00
Speaker
It was the fall.
00:02:02
Speaker
So it was the fall after kind of the first lockdowns, right?
00:02:05
Speaker
And so people were, a lot of districts were taking a different approach.
00:02:10
Speaker
Some schools remained locked down, like they didn't have kids in school.
00:02:13
Speaker
They were remote all year.
00:02:15
Speaker
Some were doing like a hybrid, having smaller groups to keep social distancing in school.
00:02:20
Speaker
And I was teaching in a school district.
00:02:23
Speaker
Rhode Island emerged thanks to our governor at the time, who was very big on keeping Rhode Island schools open.
00:02:33
Speaker
And so we had a straight up...
00:02:36
Speaker
The whole year we had kids in our building, which is not the case of a lot of schools.
Remote Teaching Without Support
00:02:40
Speaker
We had a hybrid situation where we had kids in like A to B days to keep the capacity at half.
00:02:47
Speaker
And you taught middle school, right?
00:02:49
Speaker
Sorry, yes, I taught middle school.
00:02:50
Speaker
So when you're a middle school teacher, if you're not familiar with that format in the US, you teach one subject or two and you have different sections.
00:02:59
Speaker
So it's not like you have one group of kids all day.
00:03:01
Speaker
So I had six sections of language arts and ESL.
00:03:06
Speaker
And so the way it broke down was the district did give an option.
00:03:11
Speaker
You could opt to have your kid come in for this hybrid model where they were home half the time and in school half the time, or they could do a fully remote option if they weren't feeling comfortable sending their kids to school.
00:03:22
Speaker
And so I happened to get assigned mostly sections that were remote.
00:03:27
Speaker
And so it was a very trippy experience.
00:03:29
Speaker
All the school district was gearing up.
00:03:30
Speaker
There were so many protocols put in place for the hybrid kids because they were in the building.
00:03:36
Speaker
But the remote kids were kind of forgotten about.
00:03:39
Speaker
It's the majority, I would say, but not like vast majority, like two-thirds probably were in school and two-thirds were doing fully remote.
00:03:47
Speaker
And I happened to have most of my day schedule except for one period a day was remote students.
00:03:52
Speaker
So I would say without much support from my district, I was going forth and I was also new to that district.
00:03:59
Speaker
So it was my first year teaching in that district.
00:04:02
Speaker
So it's like I was new, didn't know the systems, didn't know the people, and also was teaching in this format that wasn't really supported by my district because they were so hung up on how to deal with kids in school.
00:04:13
Speaker
which made sense because it was like a dangerous time too, like scary, kind of like uncharted territory, right?
00:04:21
Speaker
Of figuring out how to educate kids in school without vaccines, right?
00:04:25
Speaker
And still with COVID raging, right?
00:04:28
Speaker
And in a community that was also very, had been very vulnerable and affected by COVID, right?
00:04:34
Speaker
Many of my students had people that died.
00:04:36
Speaker
I was teaching in
00:04:38
Speaker
a majority Latinx district, a majority kind of low-income district as well.
00:04:44
Speaker
And so it was just, there was so much vulnerability already there.
00:04:48
Speaker
And I happened to just teach all remote students, which was nice because I didn't worry for my physical safety as much as some of my colleagues did every day.
00:04:56
Speaker
But I also didn't have any of the
00:04:59
Speaker
I just didn't know
Impact of Standardized Testing During Pandemic
00:05:00
Speaker
what I was doing.
00:05:00
Speaker
And it was really hard to teach, obviously, remote.
00:05:03
Speaker
I think we all know that remote schooling is not preferable to in-person for a lot of reasons.
00:05:10
Speaker
But I worked really hard to build community.
00:05:13
Speaker
I tried to do what I could.
00:05:14
Speaker
I reached out to families.
00:05:16
Speaker
And I spent my whole year really figuring things out on my own because there, again, was no institutional support, really, for remote learning.
00:05:23
Speaker
And so I...
00:05:27
Speaker
it didn't even cross my mind to think of preparing for standardized testing because I would think of any year out of all of the years of schooling where we've had standardized testing, the year of a global pandemic would be the year to not, you know, worry about the tests, but, Oh no.
00:05:44
Speaker
Oh no, no, no.
00:05:45
Speaker
The, that was not the case.
00:05:48
Speaker
And in fact, most districts went forth with, um,
00:05:53
Speaker
the steadfast commitment to keeping things normal and having data.
00:05:59
Speaker
I don't know of any districts that opted out of standardized testing.
00:06:03
Speaker
I mostly heard people that continue to do it.
00:06:05
Speaker
And our district was one of those that really got into it.
00:06:08
Speaker
There's a little context for this.
00:06:10
Speaker
Our district was in state takeover because there'd been a really damaging report about the quality of schools in our district.
00:06:18
Speaker
And so
00:06:18
Speaker
The state took it over to because it was in such a state of emergency.
00:06:22
Speaker
The quality of education was so poor.
00:06:24
Speaker
They said that the only solution is to have the state have control over this district.
00:06:29
Speaker
So there was a lot of eyes on Providence in the district I was teaching.
00:06:33
Speaker
There was a lot of focus.
00:06:37
Speaker
And so there was even more pressure.
00:06:39
Speaker
It was like the second year of the takeover, maybe.
00:06:41
Speaker
I can't remember if it was the first or the second year, but it was like very early in the takeover.
00:06:45
Speaker
And so there needed to be data, right?
00:06:47
Speaker
Even though nobody thought about or seemed to, maybe people thought about it, but it wasn't talked about.
00:06:52
Speaker
Like, is this data going to be good?
00:06:54
Speaker
Are we going to get anything relevant out of this?
00:06:55
Speaker
Because it's such a freakish year.
00:06:57
Speaker
It's like already standardized tests are
00:07:01
Speaker
not giving us really awesome data because you're testing kids on one day, you know, out of their whole lives on their knowledge they have.
00:07:08
Speaker
Right.
00:07:08
Speaker
But it's also added in that like, it's a disrupted school year.
00:07:15
Speaker
Kids are, the way we administer the test is going to have to be really different, right.
00:07:19
Speaker
Because of the COVID restrictions, kids have been, even if they've been coming to school, they've been coming half the days and like learning quote unquote at home the other days.
00:07:27
Speaker
So there was just so many reasons.
00:07:28
Speaker
It didn't cross my mind leading up until March that we would try and do standardized testing.
00:07:34
Speaker
And lo and behold, come January, they started doing access testing, which is the testing that ESL students get.
00:07:41
Speaker
If you speak another language, you have to get this standardized test and access test to measure your English language proficiency.
00:07:47
Speaker
So that started.
00:07:49
Speaker
And then we moved into the state test for everyone in language arts and math.
00:07:53
Speaker
And all of a sudden, we shifted from how do we make schools safe during COVID?
00:07:58
Speaker
How do we teach in a hybrid setting?
00:08:01
Speaker
In January, a switch flipped and we became hyper-focused on testing.
00:08:07
Speaker
And that extended not just to the kids in school, it extended to the kids at home who had been learning remotely, had not stepped foot inside of a school building,
00:08:16
Speaker
since March of 2020.
00:08:18
Speaker
Can you tell us a little bit about how long were kids sitting the test?
00:08:23
Speaker
How did that look and feel like to give us a sense of environment?
00:08:25
Speaker
And I'm going to give some lead up to it because it wasn't just about the day of the test.
00:08:29
Speaker
It was truly starting January 1st.
00:08:31
Speaker
It's like, we're going to come in and all of our energy as teachers, administrators, all of the energy was put into how do we get kids to come in to take this test?
00:08:42
Speaker
Right.
00:08:43
Speaker
And already our district struggled with things like absenteeism, like having kids come consistently to school.
00:08:49
Speaker
Like that wasn't necessarily new, like doing a family outreach to get kids to come to school.
00:08:53
Speaker
That had been a problem or the district had identified that as a problem, you know, before COVID even started really.
00:09:00
Speaker
So there was already this hyper focus on getting kids in to come in to school, but it just shifted to getting kids to come in for, you know,
00:09:07
Speaker
So it started with access testing for ESL students.
00:09:10
Speaker
And that was, I can't remember how many hours it was, but it was basically a half
Emotional and Academic Effects on Students
00:09:15
Speaker
school day for each part of the test.
00:09:17
Speaker
And there were two kind of big chunks they broke it into.
00:09:20
Speaker
So we had to get our kids to come in to spend several hours to take a test.
00:09:27
Speaker
And we put all of our energy...
00:09:31
Speaker
into doing so.
00:09:32
Speaker
And I should, I say that all of our energy, I didn't.
00:09:36
Speaker
I decided to take the, the, what do you call it?
00:09:39
Speaker
Like silent quitting.
00:09:40
Speaker
I was just like silent.
00:09:42
Speaker
I got notes from my administrators that were like, make sure all remote teachers, people who work with remote classes, we need to do
00:09:49
Speaker
outreach to families and make sure that they bring the kids in for these tests that they need to be in.
00:09:54
Speaker
If you have ESL students, they need to come in on these days.
00:09:57
Speaker
And we literally, what they ended up doing was shutting the school down.
00:10:00
Speaker
So kids that had been coming in, stayed home.
00:10:03
Speaker
They were like, we're going to make families who have been remote all year feel as safe as possible.
00:10:07
Speaker
So we're going to stop school for a day and have the kids who are remote come in and do these tests they need to do.
00:10:14
Speaker
And that's what they did.
00:10:15
Speaker
And that was their solution.
00:10:16
Speaker
They put in all of their creative efforts to figure out
00:10:20
Speaker
Everything they could do to bring kids in from remote school to take these motherfucking tests.
00:10:25
Speaker
And that was what literally January, February, March into April, that was the energy of the – that was the thrust.
00:10:33
Speaker
That was the project that we were focusing on was getting kids in to get tested.
00:10:36
Speaker
Didn't matter.
00:10:37
Speaker
Like when it came time for projects or like, you know, actually measuring what they learned in seventh grade, because I was a seventh grade teacher, there was no effort.
00:10:46
Speaker
I would say like very little concerted effort to make sure remote students got that attention.
00:10:50
Speaker
It was literally, they got focused on only when it came time to test them.
00:10:56
Speaker
If you're not familiar with the way standardized tests work, I know we've broken it down into other in other sessions.
00:11:01
Speaker
But when a kid takes a standardized test, like a math test, let's say, like you have to take math tests in our district.
00:11:09
Speaker
You had to take them every year in middle school, sixth, seventh and eighth grade.
00:11:12
Speaker
You had to take a standardized math and a standardized ELA test in March.
00:11:16
Speaker
Those tests don't affect a student's grade in school.
00:11:18
Speaker
In fact, you don't even get the results on how they did on those tests until the summer.
00:11:22
Speaker
And so once they've graduated from their grade.
00:11:25
Speaker
So it doesn't affect their... Kids are always like, that's always their question.
00:11:29
Speaker
Like, what's this going to do to my grade?
00:11:31
Speaker
It does nothing to your grade.
00:11:32
Speaker
You won't even get the feedback in a timely enough manner to affect your learning trajectory.
00:11:38
Speaker
The reason we have standardized tests is to measure how a school district is teaching their children.
00:11:42
Speaker
It's to see, are all kids in the state on the same test getting the same score?
00:11:48
Speaker
And if not, what are the discrepancies?
00:11:50
Speaker
And it's supposed to be used as a tool to measure equity, right?
00:11:53
Speaker
Are kids across districts getting the same access?
00:11:57
Speaker
Are they performing the same?
00:11:59
Speaker
That's like the generous framework for a standardized test.
00:12:01
Speaker
That's how it's theoretically supposed to be used.
00:12:03
Speaker
It's not supposed to be used to identify deficits.
00:12:06
Speaker
It's supposed to be in students.
00:12:08
Speaker
It's supposed to be used to identify deficits in a district, right?
00:12:12
Speaker
But of course, that isn't how it works.
00:12:15
Speaker
It's like it gets mapped onto the students.
00:12:17
Speaker
And students are facing the brunt of this, the negative feelings, right?
00:12:24
Speaker
Of feeling like they're failing, right?
00:12:25
Speaker
When we tell students, you know, we did so poorly on our tests last year, we need to get our scores up, you know,
00:12:31
Speaker
Even if we don't mention it, it's like those scores get published.
00:12:34
Speaker
They see them.
00:12:35
Speaker
They know their districts are, quote unquote, failing in relation to other districts around them.
00:12:40
Speaker
And it's because of how they do on their tests.
00:12:42
Speaker
And we don't unpack like, well, why does this wealthy white suburb, majority white suburb, do better on these tests than kids in our district?
00:12:53
Speaker
That's majority black and brown.
Testing vs Meaningful Learning and Equity
00:12:55
Speaker
Or opt out.
00:12:56
Speaker
A lot of them opted out during the pandemic.
00:12:58
Speaker
Exactly.
00:12:59
Speaker
And it's like, why?
00:13:01
Speaker
And nobody... What disturbed me so much about that push in the 20 to 21 school year of getting my remote kids in, and I'm sorry, I'm just so pissed off still about it.
00:13:11
Speaker
It pisses me off.
00:13:13
Speaker
And I wish I had been braver and had done more to fucking orchestrate a walkout because it was...
00:13:18
Speaker
I was like trying to organize with teachers and I was sharing, you know, in Seattle, there was like a big uprising of teachers against like the standardized testing regime.
00:13:25
Speaker
And I was like, you can tell kids like they do not have to take this test.
00:13:29
Speaker
Like tell your students they don't have to take this.
00:13:31
Speaker
But we got so much pushback from administrators.
00:13:34
Speaker
We were made to think that like we, our jobs would be in jeopardy if we didn't, if we shared that information.
00:13:40
Speaker
Like I did have colleagues get called in and like called out for like
00:13:46
Speaker
saying that they didn't need to take this test, right?
00:13:48
Speaker
It's like, I can't think of specific incidences, but I know it happened.
00:13:52
Speaker
Like the energy in the school, the message in the school was that this was mandatory.
00:13:56
Speaker
It wasn't something you could opt out of.
00:13:58
Speaker
And we as teachers couldn't tell them.
00:14:00
Speaker
And they made it an equity issue.
00:14:02
Speaker
They said, like, if you don't, sorry, I keep tapping my mic.
00:14:04
Speaker
I'm so articulating so wildly.
00:14:07
Speaker
And they made it feel like if you don't tell kids to come in, it affects our
00:14:12
Speaker
our district right if we don't get enough kids to show up to take this test we won't get the funding we need that was how it was framed it had to happen and we had to have the data and they were like oh it was always like well even if the data even if they do poorly it shows us like learning loss happened over covid and i'm like i don't think we need a fucking test to tell us that it's like if i bake a cake and i forget the flour i'm gonna have a shitty cake
00:14:36
Speaker
I don't need to eat it to know, oh, fuck, I forgot the flour instead of sugar.
00:14:41
Speaker
It's like the recipe isn't there.
00:14:43
Speaker
Can I interrupt you a moment?
00:14:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:45
Speaker
Because I think it's very, what strikes me a lot is how upset you are about it still.
00:14:53
Speaker
And it's been two years maybe.
00:14:56
Speaker
And so that was, that just says a lot about how intense it was.
00:14:59
Speaker
And so.
00:15:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:00
Speaker
What about it?
00:15:02
Speaker
What about it you think under that?
00:15:04
Speaker
What about it you think distressed you about?
00:15:07
Speaker
There's two things.
00:15:09
Speaker
It's like, I knew this baby.
00:15:11
Speaker
It was, it was effectually their first day of school.
00:15:14
Speaker
Like the first day they're coming into school and they're coming into school to take a test that is,
00:15:23
Speaker
under the best of circumstances, very anxiety producing, really it's nerve wracking, right?
00:15:31
Speaker
And they're coming in, imagine yourself in middle school, right?
00:15:34
Speaker
Like you and I went to middle school.
00:15:35
Speaker
I can imagine you in middle school.
00:15:36
Speaker
I can imagine me in middle school.
00:15:37
Speaker
It's like what matters to you in middle school?
00:15:39
Speaker
It's in any human at any stage of life is their connection to other humans.
00:15:45
Speaker
They're coming in for the first time seeing other humans and having to sit silently in a room, not talk to each other,
00:15:52
Speaker
And just like sit in their little squares for public health reasons and for fidelity to this test reasons.
00:16:02
Speaker
They just like go in.
00:16:04
Speaker
They had like 10 or 15 minutes maybe to chat and actually like
00:16:09
Speaker
make eye contact with people they'd only seen, like heard because none of them had their cameras on, heard over video calls for six months.
00:16:16
Speaker
You know, it's like they'd come in and sit and be silent and take this high stakes test.
00:16:21
Speaker
And that was the only interface I had with them face to face all year was this time where they were sitting silently.
00:16:27
Speaker
I had to fucking
00:16:28
Speaker
monitor them.
00:16:28
Speaker
I felt like a fucking warden, you know, in like a prison.
00:16:31
Speaker
And it was just like, I had to, I didn't, I tried not to, I tried not to do that.
00:16:36
Speaker
But like your job when you're administering a standardized test is to keep conditions that,
00:16:42
Speaker
controlled.
00:16:43
Speaker
And that means no talking.
00:16:44
Speaker
They cannot have any electronics.
00:16:46
Speaker
They can't have paper material that isn't from the test administrator.
00:16:51
Speaker
They have to have like sanctioned pencils.
00:16:54
Speaker
Like everything has to be controlled.
00:16:56
Speaker
And it's from a place of wanting to have good data, right?
00:16:59
Speaker
It's from a place of wanting to have good information about how kids are doing in school so that we can have this
00:17:06
Speaker
Vision of equity, right?
00:17:08
Speaker
But we know if you've ever fucking administered a standardized test, especially, and it was just heightened because all of the kids were coming in with so much feeling, fear, you know, anxiety, excitement.
00:17:20
Speaker
They were so excited to see each other.
00:17:21
Speaker
It was so cute.
00:17:22
Speaker
I bought a bunch of food.
00:17:24
Speaker
I don't tell my nurse.
00:17:25
Speaker
I wasn't supposed to bring in snacks, but I brought in like, you know,
00:17:28
Speaker
all the chips they liked, like the gushers.
00:17:31
Speaker
I went nuts at Target and just brought in like tons of snacks to make it at least kind of fun.
00:17:35
Speaker
Right.
00:17:35
Speaker
And I bought a bunch of crafts that they could do after.
00:17:37
Speaker
And there was some moments of joy that we had.
00:17:40
Speaker
Like they had like so much, there was so much gossip.
00:17:43
Speaker
And at the end I had to be like, can we not gossip this way?
00:17:46
Speaker
I was like, can we not have like the second time you see each other?
00:17:48
Speaker
Because by the second time we had, I saw them twice, once for math, once for ELA, I think is how it worked.
00:17:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:54
Speaker
And the second time they were like, they came in, they had established like their relationships in the time after the test.
00:17:59
Speaker
Cause there was some time that we had while we waited for everyone to finish.
00:18:03
Speaker
We did have some time to have social interaction, but they moved right to gossip.
00:18:08
Speaker
And I was like, we're not like talk shit about each other.
00:18:09
Speaker
Like I was like, I was like, you guys are really like, let's not do this anyway.
00:18:15
Speaker
But, um,
00:18:16
Speaker
that was built in around like that, that, that happened because like I, I tried, you make the best out of, you know, in, in these systems, you try to find these moments of joy and you can, but it, it was just like so disturbing to me that we had put all of our efforts in to, to,
00:18:35
Speaker
It's just such a, like, the worst part of school.
00:18:37
Speaker
It's, like, literally what makes school so shitty is, like, this approach to learning, to thinking that you could measure.
00:18:45
Speaker
It just, like, made no sense to me.
Harm Reduction vs Systemic Change
00:18:47
Speaker
And none of the teachers wanted to give it.
00:18:49
Speaker
We all – it was this, like, this whole thing of, like, none of us wanted to do this.
00:18:52
Speaker
We all hate standardized tests.
00:18:54
Speaker
But we're doing it because –
00:18:56
Speaker
it felt like we needed to get through to fucking like keep our jobs to make it through.
00:19:01
Speaker
And then the administrators felt like we were in state takeover.
00:19:04
Speaker
They're going to shut our district down and turn us into a charter network.
00:19:08
Speaker
If we don't do well on these tests or at least have data to, um,
00:19:13
Speaker
We don't follow the rules.
00:19:14
Speaker
We had to follow the rules of giving everyone a step.
00:19:18
Speaker
It sounds like from listening to you and from describing how everyone is responding to a higher power.
00:19:26
Speaker
I know my administration was under it.
00:19:28
Speaker
They felt pressured and make sure we didn't shut down as a school.
00:19:32
Speaker
We have to do this.
00:19:33
Speaker
Something else that strikes me is that you mentioned how you find your moments of joy.
00:19:39
Speaker
That brings me into...
00:19:40
Speaker
you know, why we're sharing this anecdote, it brings up this question of harm reduction versus more upstream at the root type of work.
00:19:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:52
Speaker
And maybe we talk a bit about what we mean by harm reduction.
00:19:56
Speaker
So it's kind of like this idea of things we do to get to the next week, the next year, just to survive.
00:20:02
Speaker
And I guess the question for me in all of this is how do we hold that tension between, because we need to do that.
00:20:08
Speaker
We can't not do that.
00:20:10
Speaker
And I wonder if there's a certain level of harm reduction just gets in the way of upstream foundational work.
00:20:18
Speaker
Another example of harm reduction that people might be more familiar with is representation in colleges, right?
00:20:23
Speaker
And so you get people of color, Black people,
00:20:29
Speaker
into higher education but there's a lot of data showing that um many struggle to finish right so the harm reduction part is the increase in representation and then the the upstream work of allowing them to thrive is not really happening or not having to the extent it needs to right and also like we don't think about what it's like
00:20:54
Speaker
we're not making the pie big enough.
00:20:56
Speaker
We don't have enough universities to send everyone to school at affordable prices.
00:21:00
Speaker
You know, we don't have enough public universities.
00:21:03
Speaker
Right.
00:21:03
Speaker
You know, so it's like, we might have, we might be striving for more representation in the limited like schools we have, but we don't, we haven't thought of like how to make the pie bigger or like how to reallocate resources to give everyone access to something instead of just like a diverse, like slice of you.
00:21:21
Speaker
Right.
00:21:22
Speaker
And it's, um,
00:21:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:25
Speaker
And I think that like, I'm also like reminded, I heard Angela Davis speak a couple of weeks ago and it was really powerful.
00:21:32
Speaker
And she talked about her journey of activism and how she's like very hopeful for the future, even in this moment of what feels like a lot of like kind of blows to progressive causes, like the overturn of Roe v. Wade, what seems like imminent overthrow of affirmative action.
00:21:51
Speaker
Right.
00:21:51
Speaker
And she's like,
00:21:52
Speaker
we knew those things were going to be challenged.
00:21:55
Speaker
And we also knew that like, this wasn't like, we did attain what we were fighting for in certain ways, but we didn't realize we were not attending to other things that we needed to be attending to.
00:22:08
Speaker
Right.
00:22:08
Speaker
She's like, I,
00:22:10
Speaker
She marked some things as successes that had happened.
00:22:13
Speaker
She's like, things have gotten better since I was a child, but there are other things that have not.
00:22:18
Speaker
And some things have gotten worse.
00:22:20
Speaker
And we need to think about, we achieved what we were fighting for, for certain goals, but we didn't realize there were other goals we should have had at the same time.
00:22:31
Speaker
You brought up Angela Davis.
00:22:32
Speaker
It just reminds me of this quote.
00:22:34
Speaker
I might be paraphrasing a bit, but she says something that radical simply means grasping at the root.
00:22:41
Speaker
And that just reminds me of what she's saying.
00:22:43
Speaker
I wonder how much she would think about that now.
00:22:45
Speaker
It sounds like the things that have yet to be grasped at the root.
00:22:48
Speaker
Right.
00:22:50
Speaker
Right.
00:22:51
Speaker
Yeah, and I think of that so much of just like, you know, it's not that like activists, it's like we need to be fighting for things like for greater representation of people of color, black people, and wide socioeconomic, you know, representation for sure in our institutions.
00:23:10
Speaker
But we also need to be thinking, okay, well, how do we not have this inequality in the first place?
00:23:14
Speaker
How do we not have the need like,
00:23:16
Speaker
The more fundamental at the root work.
00:23:18
Speaker
Disgusting inequality, right, in the first place, right?
00:23:21
Speaker
It's like, it's not enough just to see representation in the institutions we have existing.
00:23:24
Speaker
It's like, what are we doing to make it so this inequality doesn't exist, period, right?
00:23:28
Speaker
Because it's not going to be solved just by fitting people into the systems that made the inequity in the first place, right?
00:23:36
Speaker
I mean, it reminds me, this idea of harm reduction versus more upstream work reminds me of this anecdote I heard on Krista Tippett's podcast on Being with Ruth Wilson Gilmore, who, as people in the audience may know, is one of the OG abolitionists people and theorizes.
00:23:58
Speaker
She's a geographer, which I just love how she frames her work like that.
00:24:03
Speaker
And
00:24:04
Speaker
She shared about this group of East LA Mexican-American moms in the 80s, I believe, who noticed that the city was building a new prison for the first time in years or decades even.
00:24:17
Speaker
And they would assign to build it in their neighborhood and they didn't quite understand
00:24:21
Speaker
And if I'm remembering correctly, like they found that it was because that's related to the education level and the likelihood of people in the neighborhood going sent to prison, right?
00:24:29
Speaker
They wanted to counteract that.
00:24:31
Speaker
And honestly, I forget if you remember from listening, but if they were successful or not, were they successful in staving off the prison?
00:24:36
Speaker
Yeah, I think they did stave off the prison.
00:24:38
Speaker
I think they did.
00:24:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:40
Speaker
But then they shifted their focus to why then are their children not doing well in school?
00:24:47
Speaker
And then they found there was a high level of absenteeism.
00:24:51
Speaker
And then they asked, why is there a high level of absenteeism?
00:24:55
Speaker
Oh, there's a lot of absenteeism in relation to asthma.
00:24:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:59
Speaker
which had to do with the quality of air in the area.
00:25:04
Speaker
So Ruth Wilson Gilmore points out how they became like in a way climate justice activists and really focus on public health more than anything.
00:25:12
Speaker
And I thought that was such a beautiful, powerful way of people coming together and thinking about at the root, more at the root of things.
00:25:23
Speaker
And I just, I just contrasted so much in education, how things happen where, um,
00:25:27
Speaker
we stop at, oh, like Teach for America, at least when I joined, would say a lot, it shouldn't matter the zip code that children are born in.
00:25:35
Speaker
So the antidote is helping them get the get higher test scores.
00:25:39
Speaker
But there was never really the question asked or addressed really of, okay, so why, why does the zip code matter in the first place?
00:25:47
Speaker
And how are we going to address that?
00:25:48
Speaker
And it's not that the type of work and helping kids to read, write, or read, I didn't mean write, but like read, um,
00:25:58
Speaker
According to a standardized definition.
00:26:01
Speaker
Well, I was going to say right, and so I was like, you get what I mean.
00:26:03
Speaker
But anyway, it's in and of itself problematic.
00:26:06
Speaker
But for me, it was all the resources that was put toward that.
00:26:11
Speaker
And going back to the question I made earlier, it's like, when is harm reduction getting in the way of radical, at the root work, or another way to think about it, of going upstream to the source of issues in the system?
00:26:24
Speaker
So...
00:26:26
Speaker
that just really spoke to me of how we can learn from abolitionists in the sense of people who are world builders, right?
00:26:34
Speaker
That's another thing that Ruth Walsing Gilmore really makes clear.
00:26:37
Speaker
That's about re-imagining a new world much more than erasing another.
00:26:40
Speaker
Even though we wanted to replace another, right?
00:26:42
Speaker
But it's more how do we set the conditions in such a way that we can be in that world.
00:26:47
Speaker
So you're a story around me of that story.
00:26:51
Speaker
And so I wanted to ask you a little bit more about...
00:26:56
Speaker
where is the harm reduction and where is the opportunity perhaps for more upstream work or radical change in the example of standardized testing that you shared that was distressing?
00:27:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think like if we think of harm reduction as like just doing things to survive, right, to get through from day to day and to make the way things are people the most safe, right, in the systems as they are.
00:27:21
Speaker
I think that the idea was we need to get these test scores, right,
00:27:25
Speaker
So that we are checking a box because we have this agreement under state takeover and also as a public school in general that we need to have a certain percentage of our kids participate in standardized testing, right, to provide information.
00:27:41
Speaker
accountability on our teaching.
00:27:43
Speaker
And it's part of this movement, right, to hold schools, quote unquote, accountable, right, and teachers and districts.
00:27:52
Speaker
And the harm reduction, I guess, was to do what they needed to do to get those test scores in so that we didn't get further sanctioned as a district and then have our district broken up into charters.
00:28:04
Speaker
So I think that was definitely the reasoning behind a lot of this push.
00:28:08
Speaker
And it felt like
00:28:10
Speaker
we need to do this just right now.
00:28:12
Speaker
We need to do this so that we can get through state takeover.
Racism and Standardized Testing
00:28:15
Speaker
We need to do this so that we don't get shut down and we need to do this so that we, yeah, I just, instead of prompting, instead of like what, I think what disturbed me the most about it was also like, if we think of that framework of like abolition is about building something new, not just taking away.
00:28:35
Speaker
I think they were trying to avoid that, right?
00:28:38
Speaker
They were trying to avoid,
00:28:41
Speaker
blowing up the system totally and having something they knew wouldn't be better, which is a charter system.
00:28:49
Speaker
It truly would not be better.
00:28:51
Speaker
I would not want our public school district to be made into a charterized, basically like they were like people in Providence who are deep in this school reform quote unquote movement, look to New Orleans and say, we want Providence to be like New Orleans, which is a total charter district instead of a central public district.
00:29:09
Speaker
There's like a network of charters.
00:29:11
Speaker
People say that?
00:29:13
Speaker
Yes.
00:29:14
Speaker
So they want something that emerged from utter disaster and the ultimate form of just surviving to be their standard?
00:29:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:24
Speaker
There are people, not that I know, but there are people who have loud voices in Rhode Island who would love...
00:29:30
Speaker
for Providence to become a charter district because they think that- Just to get hit by a hurricane, you know, and be destroyed completely, you know?
00:29:36
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:29:37
Speaker
And I'm like, we're going to look to like, and also it's like, I don't think it's working.
00:29:41
Speaker
I don't think that they're having good results from this charter, total charter takeover.
00:29:46
Speaker
But I, so I get like the impulse of these administrators in our district to like say, we need to like do what we need to.
00:29:52
Speaker
Instead of saying like, what if we mobilized our power right now
00:29:57
Speaker
And rose up – this was also in a district where they assigned for our district-wide reading.
00:30:03
Speaker
We read Bettina Love's book, We Want to Do More Than Survive.
00:30:05
Speaker
And a central tenet of her thesis is that standardized system is racist.
00:30:10
Speaker
And standardized testing, sorry, is like a racist regime, right?
00:30:14
Speaker
It was part of like –
00:30:16
Speaker
Can I just interject?
00:30:17
Speaker
It just reminds me, Bettina Love also recently wrote an article about, related to harm reduction versus, again, he said the RU is, before you try hiring more Black teachers, work on being sure you keep the ones you have.
00:30:33
Speaker
It's just that disconnect.
00:30:35
Speaker
Why do you think...
00:30:40
Speaker
I'm sure people saw the disconnect or do you think people did not see the disconnect between reading Bettina Love's book and what was happening in the district?
00:30:46
Speaker
Or what do you think that's about?
00:30:48
Speaker
That's just, that really, that really confuses me or strikes me too.
00:30:52
Speaker
I know, I know.
00:30:54
Speaker
Well, it was such a, it was such a particular time where, um,
00:31:01
Speaker
I mean, there was a lot of interesting, cool things happening in our district where like I, when I got hired, I was trained in how to support trans students and like explicitly told, I don't need to, you don't need to disclose a student if a student is, you know, socially transitioning at school, but not at home because they don't feel safe or comfortable telling their families.
00:31:22
Speaker
It's like, that's not your responsibility as a teacher to like call home and say, oh, so-and-so changed their pronouns or their name.
00:31:27
Speaker
Did you know that?
00:31:28
Speaker
Like, that's not part of like what you had to do.
00:31:30
Speaker
So at the same time, and then we were also like encouraged, like we had a Black Lives Matter week of action in our school, like organized by school staff members, you know, in February.
00:31:40
Speaker
And this was all also definitely tied in around the racial uprisings of the summer of 2020 around the murder of George Floyd.
00:31:48
Speaker
And I think that there was like a really...
00:31:51
Speaker
I don't know if it's the same, but a lot of doors were open and there was this awareness.
00:31:56
Speaker
There was this influx of interest in talking about anti-racism.
00:32:00
Speaker
And I think some people just took a lot of things in and disseminated things without really thinking, without processing through, what is this person saying?
00:32:09
Speaker
What does this mean about how I have to change?
00:32:11
Speaker
It was like, there's a lot of both ends happening.
00:32:13
Speaker
It's like we were reading
00:32:14
Speaker
And like doing some pretty radical things while also like still keeping within the system.
00:32:22
Speaker
It's like people were really jazzed up and excited about things that she was saying, but also like not translate.
00:32:29
Speaker
Like we didn't have the space to actually say, well, what does that mean?
00:32:32
Speaker
Not – it was translated into how do I –
00:32:35
Speaker
how do what are my interpersonal relationships with my kids every day which we need to talk about of course because there were some racist explicitly racist teachers in our district that needed to fucking be checked and removed and that needed to happen but there were also like things like systemic racism we talked about but i don't think we understood how this like even though we didn't have racist like you know we didn't
00:32:58
Speaker
consider ourselves to like be explicitly racist.
00:33:02
Speaker
It's like we were participating in a system that was racist.
00:33:04
Speaker
And that was the whole point of her book.
00:33:06
Speaker
It's like, she talked about, she had, she did talk about like explicit racism, but also like systemic racism.
00:33:11
Speaker
I mean, I'm not using the right term, but like, I know it's not explicit, but it's like when people, it's like, she was talking about how it's like baked into the school system.
00:33:19
Speaker
Like, and part of it is standardized testing.
00:33:22
Speaker
And, um,
00:33:23
Speaker
that connection wasn't happening.
00:33:25
Speaker
It was almost like too much.
00:33:27
Speaker
And I don't think we had enough time to actually talk about that.
00:33:31
Speaker
You know, it's, and it wasn't, it wasn't like every teacher is mandated to read it.
00:33:35
Speaker
It was given out as like a book club book.
00:33:38
Speaker
No, it wasn't like everybody read it and we talked about it.
00:33:41
Speaker
It was like, this is what we're reading and discussing if you want to opt in.
00:33:45
Speaker
But still it was like disseminated pretty widely, you know, or like, it was paid for by the district.
00:33:49
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:33:50
Speaker
You could get like a copy.
00:33:51
Speaker
It wasn't, I don't know if it was like a certain number.
00:33:54
Speaker
I think it was like a certain number of people could get it, but they had like district-wide reads of it, you know, like where we had like Zoom meetings where you could talk about it.
00:34:02
Speaker
And I was adjuncting.
00:34:04
Speaker
And so I was like crazy.
00:34:05
Speaker
So I was adjuncting at night at the same time I was teaching in the day all day, which is crazy.
00:34:10
Speaker
So I didn't have any bandwidth to do that.
00:34:12
Speaker
But yeah.
00:34:13
Speaker
I know people who did participate in those book clubs and it was just kind of like, and we read sections of it.
00:34:17
Speaker
We had like an equity committee in our school that met, you know, sometimes during school professional development hours that I would participate in.
00:34:25
Speaker
And we read excerpts from it.
00:34:26
Speaker
And it was just like, I would bring up, I was like,
00:34:30
Speaker
fired up about standardized testing.
00:34:31
Speaker
And there was talk about like, you know, and some of us talked about how could we tell families that they don't need to do this, you know?
00:34:40
Speaker
And I think some did and they felt, we felt brave to a certain extent because of all of that reading and like the support.
00:34:45
Speaker
And then immediately we're extinguished by certain administrators who didn't want us to be sending that message, you know,
00:34:54
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think any critical eye to any anti-oppressive work does need to grapple with the history of standardized testing rapists.
00:35:02
Speaker
We're saying it's racist, and so I just wanna explain in brief the brief version.
00:35:06
Speaker
And I mean, standardized tests are really rooted in eugenics, right?
00:35:12
Speaker
In terms of who's fit and not fit.
00:35:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:16
Speaker
And who's who.
00:35:16
Speaker
They're historically very much centered around white supremacist ideas of what people should know, right?
00:35:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:23
Speaker
Someone chooses the type of questions that get asked and the content that is covered.
00:35:28
Speaker
And also just a source of control.
00:35:32
Speaker
If you believe in objectivity to the extent that you can't really challenge it, if it says this, it says this, right?
00:35:39
Speaker
And so standardized tests enable all of those things and come from that history.
00:35:44
Speaker
So that's, I just wanted to say in brief, that's another podcast episode, I guess, but in brief why standardized tests is so rooted, is so intertwined with racism in this country.
00:35:59
Speaker
Yeah, and white supremacy, you're right, with this idea of even just the anecdote of control that I shared from what it was like to administer these tests.
00:36:09
Speaker
The panopticon, focal.
00:36:10
Speaker
Yeah, and it's one thing.
00:36:12
Speaker
I mean, I think people think of standardized testing as one thing in a year, and you kind of have to suck it up and lock down, and everyone just kind of knows that that's how it is.
00:36:22
Speaker
Like going to the dentist for me?
00:36:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:25
Speaker
But going to the dentist actually does extend your years of life.
00:36:29
Speaker
does it taking a standard well if you have your teeth cleaned yet it's true correlation when your gums and standardized tests yeah just to say like i feel like i feel like people kind of just accept it as like it's good for you but you need to do it and it's like no it's actually not i know all of these reasons totally and it's actually doesn't yeah it doesn't and like
00:36:53
Speaker
I remember in our well-resourced suburban district we grew up in, you and I grew up in, it's like the testing...
00:37:04
Speaker
We did some prep because we were coming of age, like no child left behind became a thing when we were in middle school.
00:37:10
Speaker
I didn't feel it that hard.
00:37:11
Speaker
No, because our teachers, I remember our teachers talking about it because they were really upset at the push.
00:37:17
Speaker
Like there was a major increase in the testing, but there was a lot of talk with us about like how this doesn't measure our intelligence.
00:37:24
Speaker
It's like, it's not about.
00:37:25
Speaker
See, that's like, and you weren't, it didn't seem like there was space for you and all of you to have that conversation with your students.
00:37:31
Speaker
And I tried.
00:37:32
Speaker
I tried.
00:37:34
Speaker
I don't know if people can really – it's not every kid is going to be deeply affected by it.
00:37:39
Speaker
Some of them will just goof off and be okay with being like, I'm not doing my – I don't care about this, whatever.
00:37:48
Speaker
But there are a good number of kids that are really anxious about it and that feeling of the affective experience.
00:37:56
Speaker
Ooh, affective.
00:37:57
Speaker
Like the emotional.
00:37:59
Speaker
experience yeah like the new body i don't know if i'm using that that's a new word for me yeah it's in your word it's a magic means that like you're it's what you feel and making sense of what you yeah oh my god i'm like going uh it could be the diet coke or sorry the diet beverage or it could be like going back to that place but it's like very nerve-wracking and it's like in the instruction it's like hard to describe how
Teacher Frustrations and Need for Change
00:38:25
Speaker
stressful it's stressful how stressful it is to feel like form of exhaustion i see it with my partner too who he has told me how he didn't fully understand the exhaustion i felt at the end of the day until he taught and he taught in like a college level right uh and he also it was just a unique level of exhaustion
00:38:47
Speaker
And also this like idea that we measure our intelligence solely by what we can produce in a lock, like a vacuum sealed amount of time.
00:38:56
Speaker
It's like, and it's like kids have you as a human kids, especially have a natural instinct to turn to a friend and be like, you know, and like, just say something that crosses their mind or like, you know,
00:39:10
Speaker
ask for help on something they don't know because we ask for help all the time.
00:39:14
Speaker
Whenever in our lives do we have to complete a task without asking for help?
00:39:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:20
Speaker
That narrative of separation from each other is very much persistent in standard assisting in our schools.
00:39:28
Speaker
And so if we think of it like that, and if we had had space as teachers to just air our grievances about why do we not want to send our kids to school to take this test?
00:39:39
Speaker
And it's not because we're shirking our duty.
00:39:42
Speaker
And it always turned into this guilt trip of you're not in favor of equity.
00:39:46
Speaker
You don't want- It's a gaslighting on it.
00:39:49
Speaker
It feels like a gaslighting to me.
00:39:51
Speaker
No, no, no.
00:39:52
Speaker
My primary goal, the fucking reason I'm here is to struggle against inequity.
00:39:57
Speaker
That's like... This is the F-bomb episode.
00:40:01
Speaker
I'm sorry.
00:40:03
Speaker
My mom's going to listen to this and say it's unprofessional.
00:40:05
Speaker
But I just can't.
00:40:07
Speaker
But it's interesting.
00:40:09
Speaker
I do want to touch on this point because...
00:40:12
Speaker
Even the idea of professionalism, right?
00:40:14
Speaker
And like, I think for people listening, it's like, what is it about being angry that's uncomfortable?
00:40:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:22
Speaker
And what can be generated from?
00:40:24
Speaker
Like, it's a real core emotion.
00:40:25
Speaker
We have it for a reason, right?
00:40:27
Speaker
And we're openly airing it more than lots of people would be comfortable with, I guess.
00:40:31
Speaker
But part of the work here is like,
00:40:33
Speaker
Like, okay, maybe some people would be less likely to hear us if we sound angry.
00:40:38
Speaker
But I wish that people realized more consciously that in not sounding angry, there's either a lot of processing or a lot of suppression.
00:40:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:45
Speaker
And just the effect.
00:40:47
Speaker
And how that expectation in and of itself structurally leads to oppression.
00:40:53
Speaker
Right.
00:40:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:54
Speaker
So like, I have to admit, like when you were like really going, I was like, woo, this is, this is spicy.
00:40:59
Speaker
I feel a little uncomfortable in my body, but, but like, I'm very used to being with that.
00:41:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:03
Speaker
And my body was telling me like, it was like my old conditioning, if you will.
00:41:08
Speaker
And so in the day, I'm really happy you went the route you went.
00:41:11
Speaker
Like, I don't think people hear this level of deep, like you clearly care.
00:41:16
Speaker
Like, like you were saying, people think you're shirking your response.
00:41:19
Speaker
Like, no, like you wouldn't talk like this or feel like this two years after the fact.
00:41:24
Speaker
It's a trauma.
00:41:25
Speaker
Thank you.
00:41:25
Speaker
It's a small T trauma perhaps, but it's a trauma.
00:41:27
Speaker
Like it's, and so, yeah, yes.
00:41:32
Speaker
It's not surprising that you feel it, but that's why I asked you earlier a little bit about like, tell me more what's under that because it's,
00:41:39
Speaker
I want people to really sit with that and with themselves and their own reaction to that, right?
00:41:43
Speaker
And how that affects change in their context and outside of their context.
00:41:46
Speaker
So if you're ready to do that work, you can email us.
00:41:50
Speaker
get to that later yeah yeah anyway i just wanted to i just wanted to make that more explicit the experience explicit i also really want to be i'm so grateful that you put that lens on my anger and like also that like i didn't realize i mean i think i got a reputation among my colleagues about being like kind of angry i was worried i was like too angry and
00:42:11
Speaker
Because you do have to put your head down and do what you need to do to get paid because we're paid so little.
00:42:16
Speaker
So we're living paycheck to paycheck.
00:42:18
Speaker
We have to keep our jobs.
00:42:19
Speaker
And we also have to come into work every day and not be crazy because sustaining this level of anger is...
00:42:28
Speaker
exhausting exhausting exhausting and it's also like it isn't productive always in the way that you want it to be if it's not being received and then like done something with um and that's ultimately why i left it just like for many reasons other than it's like beyond beyond this conversation like it only got worse from there and
00:42:50
Speaker
But I'm really grateful.
00:42:51
Speaker
Thank you for hearing my anger and taking it and helping me and validating it because it feels like, yeah, it's like we're supposed to be okay.
00:43:02
Speaker
And it's like with, I don't know.
00:43:04
Speaker
I don't know how you don't, I also don't know how you don't get angry about this.
00:43:07
Speaker
It's just like so clearly illogical.
00:43:10
Speaker
It's just like- So for me, what gets me angry is that going back to that question of harm reduction being relied on to-
00:43:18
Speaker
I think in many ways systematically on purpose to stop wider changes.
00:43:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:22
Speaker
It's an example of violence.
00:43:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:25
Speaker
And the sense of like, it allows a continual opening of vulnerability to a whole group of people, to all types of,
00:43:35
Speaker
ways to premature death to continue trauma,
Invitation for Continued Conversation
00:43:39
Speaker
right?
00:43:39
Speaker
And I know there's lots of criticism of the word of violence with things that are not physical at times, but it is like, if we look at what it opens up people to from a vulnerability perspective, which we won't get into too deep now, but
00:43:54
Speaker
And Ruth Wilson-Gilmore in that podcast I mentioned earlier talks about this group vulnerability and how most of the time the vulnerability is not the fault of the individual, it's the fault of the system.
00:44:07
Speaker
And she goes into this idea of organized abandonment of how the banking system, for example, and companies and other aspects of society just abandon groups of people and let them be in...
00:44:20
Speaker
in situations or in environments that just lend themselves to more of unsafety, violence, and trauma.
00:44:29
Speaker
So I bring that up to say that there's a lot there that we can keep exploring.
00:44:37
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:44:41
Speaker
Well, thank you so much.
00:44:42
Speaker
I'm excited for our next conversation.
00:44:45
Speaker
I know you're just as fired up, although you dropped some F-bombs, not as much as me.
00:44:52
Speaker
Do I drop F-bombs?
00:44:53
Speaker
I just don't realize that, I guess.
00:44:56
Speaker
But when you do, it's rare, but it's like, oh, it lands.
00:45:01
Speaker
It's not as angry as mine, I feel like.
00:45:05
Speaker
And that's, that's cool.
00:45:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:08
Speaker
I'm actually going, I'm actually with, I'll just say in my therapy, I'm learning to be more with my anger and have it come out more.
00:45:15
Speaker
I'm into it.
00:45:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:17
Speaker
So anyway, so there's a lot, there's a lot there.
00:45:24
Speaker
So I think for now, I am comfortable stopping here.
00:45:31
Speaker
I really want to continue to explore this idea of harm reduction versus upstream work.
00:45:38
Speaker
And maybe not versus, it can be in tandem, right?
00:45:41
Speaker
But I do think there's a lot to dig deep into.
00:45:44
Speaker
Why is it so hard to get into the upstream work?
00:45:47
Speaker
Because it's a source of problems, right?
00:45:51
Speaker
It's just such important work to be done.
00:45:54
Speaker
So if you're interested or have any more thoughts, you can email us at pedagogyofthedistressed at gmail.com.
00:46:00
Speaker
That is also in the description.
00:46:01
Speaker
Anything else you'd want to add, Emily, before we sign off?
00:46:05
Speaker
No, just thank you so much, Rafa, for hearing me and encouraging me to share my thoughts.
00:46:13
Speaker
And sorry, mom, for all the swears.
00:46:17
Speaker
I'm sure she still loves you.
00:46:21
Speaker
I'm a mom now, so I guess I'm okay.
00:46:24
Speaker
I'm giving the mom seal of approval on that.
00:46:29
Speaker
I love you all.
00:46:30
Speaker
I love you lots.
00:46:31
Speaker
I love you, and I love you all.
00:46:32
Speaker
I love you too.
00:46:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:35
Speaker
Let's make it clear.
00:46:36
Speaker
Okay.
00:46:36
Speaker
Okay.
00:46:37
Speaker
Hasta la próxima.
00:46:38
Speaker
Ciao.
00:46:39
Speaker
Bye.
00:46:39
Speaker
Bye-bye.