Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
EP. 122 Nawal Qarooni talks being a Momma and the lit world she lives in
9 Plays1 year ago
Nawal Qarooni is an educator, writer, and adjunct professor who supports a holistic approach to literacy instruction and family experiences in schools across the country. Drawing on her work as an inquiry-based leader, mother, and proud daughter of immigrants, Nawal's pedagogy is centered on the rich and authentic learning all families gift their children every day.
Upcoming book: Nourishing Caregiver Collaborations: Elevating Home Experiences and Classroom Practices for Collective Care (Stenhouse, end of '23 or early '24).
Website: https://www.nqcliteracy.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/NQCLiteracy
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nqarooni
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to 'It's Personal' and Special Guest
00:00:00
Speaker
Kind of trippy talking to you, though, because honestly, it feels like I've talked to you before. And I mean, I have, but I feel like we've been like, you know, you know where I'm going. There's a word for that in Farsi. It's called Hooden One of Us. It feels like very fantastic. Yes, I love that. That's a beautiful word. I love that. All right. All set. Hey, what's up, everyone? Welcome to It's Personal, a podcast about creators and their stories.
00:00:35
Speaker
Welcome back everyone to another episode of It's Personal. Today I have, I mean, I always say this, but today I have a very, very, very, very special guest with me. Someone that I usually don't do introductions at all. And I'm not going to do an introduction, but I'm just going to tell the audience how much I enjoy this person. We met online a long time ago. We've been in contact and I just enjoy the work that she does so much. And beyond that, she's just a beautiful, such a beautiful soul.
00:01:03
Speaker
Um, can you introduce yourself,
Meet Naval Karuni: Mother, Coach, Author
00:01:06
Speaker
please? Hi everyone. I'm so excited to be here. I'm Naval Karuni. We've been trying to, we've been trying to talk for a long time. Here I am about to say all the things I do, Gary.
00:01:18
Speaker
And you wear many hats. Can you share just a few of them? I mean, go for it. Share some of the things that you, I know you can't listen, but share as many as you can. Cause you are, you're a phenomenal human and I want people to know a lot of the things that you do for children, for families, for adults, et cetera. What are some of the hats that you wear?
00:01:36
Speaker
You're so sweet. I'm going to say that I'm a mom of four. I am a literacy coach. My first book is coming out on families upcoming soon with Stenhouse. I have dreams of writing a children's book. I have one in the works with someone who's been on this podcast before, but let's not reveal that yet. And I just, I.
00:01:57
Speaker
Yeah, I love literacy and I think that families are already doing amazing literacy work with their young people. It's amazing. And speaking of families, just before we came on, I got to meet your beautiful daughter and you talk so much about just like watching your family grow and you are a mama of four, I think you said, right. What are some of the highlights that you've had of being a mama and just like going through that process of watching them grow?
00:02:22
Speaker
Really funny is that you have them and you think that just the babyhood is like the most delicious and sweet time. It's like this physical, like you're exhausted when you fall into bed. But then they become these little people that do good things or do embarrassing things or do things that you need to help them navigate. And that is super, I mean, that's kind of like emotional labor. And also the idea of like letting them go. You know, we're letting our oldest, our oldest is going to like a sleep away camp for the first time this week.
00:02:52
Speaker
And I can't, I'm like so excited for her. I can barely tolerate it, but I'm also wondering if she's going to like, no, do things behind the canteen.
00:02:59
Speaker
as you know, as you're getting older, you explore, you know, you get into some mischief, which is normal. And it's just, I always look at those things, especially the unknown. I mean, I don't have kids, but I've spent my entire professional life around kids. And one of my messages to parents are always like, you can't expect them to be perfect. And them knowing that you trust them is that's
00:03:25
Speaker
That's it, right? Them knowing that you trust them and believe that they're going to at least try to do the right thing means so much in this world today because this world is wild. It's a wild world. I guess my second question to go with that is where did the love for education come from and being around kids and working with kids and specifically literature?
Career Transition: From Reporter to Teacher
00:03:49
Speaker
Well, you know, I was a newspaper reporter before I was a teacher. And so I worked in Newark, New Jersey. There was, I was a beat reporter. Um, and there was a whole lot of sadness and a whole lot of just like trauma. Um, so I would write the news stories, the breaking news stories about kids in a really sad situation. Wow.
00:04:09
Speaker
of my first career. And so then I really just I thought I wasn't able to do anything, but just say what happened. And I felt totally like my hands were tied, I couldn't make any change. And so I said, you know, I want to help on the other side, like I want to do something more than just recording the thing that happened. And so I went back to school and I did New York City Teaching Fellows. And I, I went to and I taught in Brooklyn.
00:04:31
Speaker
but it was more like the social work I feel like that called me. It was more like just connecting with kids. I think like mothering and parenting, caregiving and education and social work really is the same for me and that it's all about listening. It's all about just asking questions, listening, you know, for my daughter potentially, you know, doing whatever she's going to do at camp.
00:04:51
Speaker
All I really want is to listen and ask questions and let her know that I'm there helping her navigate. And that's the same for our students, I think. Yeah, I agree. I agree. And I think it's so important that they don't feel scared. Like they should be able to live a life of joy and freedom, knowing that I can make mistakes, obviously like not on purpose, but like I can make mistakes.
00:05:14
Speaker
and my parents or friends or whoever it is that they have in their lives will trust that those mistakes can be talked about through conversation as learning tools because that's life, like, you know, revising ourselves all the time. And the only way we can revise ourselves is through making mistakes. So I love, I love hearing that. What, what was little, this is a question I always ask. So what was little Noelle like when she was growing up?
00:05:40
Speaker
I had like big red glasses. I had red glasses of course I do. I will share them with you. And I was obsessed with reading and my mom says the reason why my eyesight was so bad is because I would like read in the dark far past when I was supposed to stay awake. And I was like,
00:05:57
Speaker
I think was very, very like compliant, and I just was like a little mother because my parents were immigrants from Iran and because they were navigating a new country themselves and they were so young when they had me in college when they had me, they
00:06:13
Speaker
I think like I was I was like learning alongside them and filling out paperwork aside them, you know, and then when they had my siblings 10 years later, 15 years later, I was so much a little mother for them. So I was always that I was always obsessed with kids and kind of like co raising. I mean, the joke now is that me and my parents like co raised my son like they don't treat me like a sibling.
00:06:35
Speaker
How many, how many are there? I have two younger, um, and, and we grew up in the same house as my cousin. So I say that there are four of us.
Literacy Coaching in Chicago Schools
00:06:42
Speaker
And so my cousin who's older than me, she designed my book cover. She lives here beside me in Brooklyn. Um, so she's, she's like, you know, the fourth of us. Wow. So has New York always been home?
00:06:52
Speaker
It was until we had to move to Chicago in 2010 for my husband's job. It was supposed to be a one year, turned into 12, joke that we swam up like the salmon. And then we just returned.
00:07:08
Speaker
um we returned because the pandemic truly truly broke us um and you know i you're not a stranger to this it's different being around people who know you know you and our people are here and so you know vacations for visiting and so now you know we couldn't do anything except come see our people we were so stuck and so now that we're back we just came back it's really you love it so happy to be here and so my work
00:07:31
Speaker
is predominantly in Chicago Public Schools still because I definitely built my career and my literacy coaching life in Chicago. I do a lot of work in Chicago Public Schools. And now that I've moved back here, I do a lot of work nationally with LA back here in Tracy City where my kids go to school. Wow. So how do you navigate all that? Because that's I mean, I'm not sure because I haven't been to all of them and I don't know what their school systems look like. But my I know about curriculum because I'm a teacher and I almost did.
00:08:00
Speaker
a master's in and I didn't do it so my first thought is that like curriculum stuff is hard work it's like numbing and well different schools want different things and all the stuff so my first thought is like how do you do that when there are different places and I want to assume but you can correct me if I'm wrong and they also may want different things how does that work
00:08:22
Speaker
So it depends if I'm doing family literacy work or if I'm doing straight up holistic literacy, like K through eight, like what lens I'm looking through. And it doesn't mean that these things are compartmentalized, but it's the entry point for when I start working with a school or a district assessment to see where they are, to see kind of like how authentic their literacy work is, what kind of curricular resources they're using and where the gaps or the holes are. Right.
00:08:48
Speaker
If the gap or the hole is in something connected to, I don't know, let's say joy. Let's say joy in the curriculum you see.
00:08:57
Speaker
that in the low engagement of the families, low engagement of the students, maybe everybody's compliant. Maybe it's a lot of paper being pushed around. Maybe it's a fill in the blank mentality. Like what are the ways that we can ramp up the joy and ramp up the authenticity so that like the literacy work that we're doing falls outside of classroom walls so that it's more inquiry based. And you think of it like on a continuum. You know, you're gonna like think of school literacy as like not the only kind of literacy we wanna teach kids.
00:09:23
Speaker
like, what does the real world do for reading, writing, thinking, speaking? That's such a good answer. And I knew you're gonna answer well. I knew you're gonna answer well, just because I know you. That's such a good answer. Ding ding ding! You win! That was such a good answer. That was such a good answer. What are you reading? Are you reading anything right now? Oh, how did I know you were gonna ask me? You know what I'm rereading?
00:09:46
Speaker
I love, love, love. Do you know Carla Shalaby? She wrote Troublemakers. Yes, yes, yes. Because because my Essie, my daughter, she has a hard time in schools. I don't know if I told you about this, but my Essie has gotten kicked out of a couple of schools.
00:10:02
Speaker
So yes, I'm rereading Troublemaker's Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School by Carla Shalaby. So Lucky is also blurbing my book. Because she writes a lot about like deviance not being anything except a cry for either.
00:10:20
Speaker
help or like a cry to say there is something toxic in the air here. There is something that doesn't work here with the system. And Cornelius talks about this a lot too. Cornelius minor that like systems are broken, not the children. There's nothing wrong with the kids. There's something wrong with the way that we've created the system. And I have this,
Rereading 'Troublemakers' and Systemic Issues
00:10:37
Speaker
my third child has a really hard time in when maybe the routine is like way too structured.
00:10:45
Speaker
rote it's very rote right it's like it's like so kind of just like busy work that she cannot stay occupied and so yeah there's like all kinds of cries that she all kinds of alarms that go off for her and so i thought i would reread it maybe make my partner read some of it because he comes from a system he comes from just like well she has to figure out how to function within this he works at a bank now and so he functions within a system that he does not love that he doesn't
00:11:12
Speaker
I wanted him to read it and I wanted to like pull out parts to say to him, you know, we can think about changing the system. It's not our kid. There's nothing wrong with every make that would make it like that would make it easier for her to be like flexible and or to support her teachers to say like here's what she could be doing also about it. You know, I don't know.
00:11:31
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's so I think that's so powerful. Like, I think as even I teach younger kids, but I think when I speak to families about having kids advocate for themselves, sometimes that's like foreign to them, like to ask them to
00:11:47
Speaker
ask their kids to tell the teacher what they need or what they want versus what the teacher wants because I've also grown up in systems where, you know, you do what you're told. And if you don't or you question, even if you wonder,
00:12:03
Speaker
you get in trouble for. So that's a skill that needs to be intentionally taught and practiced because, I mean, often kids want to please. And if they don't please, that's when teachers, administrators, et cetera, sometimes feel like students need to either get in trouble or be taken out of their school or they're not following the rules or whatever the case may be.
00:12:27
Speaker
Um, but I love that you said that because that's something that I often talk about with as well. Um, and parents, this is how they can help kids advocate for what they need based on how they're feeling based on where they are in their learning journey. Cause it's all, you know, it's their journey. It's not our journey. It's their journey that they're going through. Yeah. So frustrated. If there's anything that makes me really fatigued that we need to kind of like, here's a teacher teaching us this as educators.
00:12:56
Speaker
So like, not only do we have to change the minds potentially or grow our fellow colleagues, but we also have to grow the caregivers to also share with them, like the systems that we were raised in, the school systems that we went to, maybe were not accurate or did not, you know? And I think that's really hard to vote.
00:13:15
Speaker
And is that kind of like, I'm thinking about the title of your book and is that let's talk about the book. Let's talk about the book. What's the title of
Upcoming Book on Family Literacy
00:13:25
Speaker
your book? The book is called Nourishing Caregiver Collaborations Exalting Home Experiences and Classroom Practices for
00:13:32
Speaker
So I go to that because I feel like that's kind of what we're talking about. But can you give me just like a brief idea of why you're writing this book and what are some of the things we will be able to find within this book? Because I love, I think it's so telling. I think it's so like now. I think that's exactly what we need right now. And without even seeing it, I mean, I guess I'm a little biased because I like you. I know it's going to be amazing. But can you tell us a little bit about it?
00:14:00
Speaker
So it stemmed from, it stemmed from just my observations during the pandemic and noticing that caregiving and education were one of the same, that families at home were already doing amazing literacy work, authentically and naturally, and that all families, every single family was contributing somehow to their kids' literacy lives, whether that was like in the kitchen attire, paying bills, and literally anything in life that you could observe and see as a text, problem solving, process oriented.
00:14:30
Speaker
grieving rituals, literally every form of kind of like family interaction was something we could tap into as literacy teachers as a way to further teach. So it came from that. It does a twofold job, I hope, of talking about how the strength is in the families and we can use what we know about our families and what we learn about our families through like a compassionate empathetic stance to understand our kids better.
00:14:55
Speaker
And that that will lead to better classroom instruction. And then like, so it's more of like a circle as opposed to a top down approach of like, Hey, families do this. It's more of like, we're already doing this. And then each chapter kind of focuses on what I call a holistic literacy tenant. Learning is a journey, process oriented work, observational literacy, looking at the whole world as text, all the different ways to analyze art, analyze TV shows alongside our parents, analyze our neighborhoods and change.
00:15:24
Speaker
kind of like re-envisioning the family map. So it's not just like free, but like we're thinking more about a collective nature of the people who shape us. So like wide representation about family. Your book is in there. There's a little shout out. Thank you for the presentation about like all the, you know, the myriad ways that we share texts. And so hopefully the whole book will serve to like, what can we say to families and also how we can like more authentically shape our classroom
00:15:53
Speaker
And so it is, I hope, a book for caregivers and a book for districts. It's of course teachers, first and foremost, but I also was thinking about all my food. I really want to know what's happening in the literacy. I love that. And I think families are so, they are such a crucial part of a child's journey. It starts with them, right? Like, right?
00:16:15
Speaker
with them really, of course, there could have been a teacher that shapes and all the ways that we meet, right? Of course, of course. I'm excited for you and whatever you do put in it. So I know it's going to be amazing. I'm super excited for you. What does Noelle like to do? I mean, you're very busy. You're very, very busy. But what do you like to do for fun? What are some things that you like to do for joy?
Photography and Personal Passions
00:16:40
Speaker
And you can't say reading.
00:16:42
Speaker
So I do read a lot. I love to take photos. Do you know this about me? I didn't know that. I love to take photos. I take really beautiful portraits. I specifically chase light and shadows. Why am I not surprised by that? I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised that you take photos.
00:16:59
Speaker
Really, I actually every time I realized that I'm like kind of depressed because I'm not in a good story and or haven't been with my camera. And I'm also realizing now that I'm like 40. And, you know, just people are reaching out to me asking, like, do you have a photo of us from 12th grade when we blank or do you have because you know, I was always the person taking photos. Okay.
00:17:19
Speaker
I always had a camera, even back in the day. So I always just, the only thing that I do is when I'm feeling kind of down, I do two things outside and I look up and I look down because usually I look up because the sky is so vast. Kind of like a lift. So are you, so you're into cameras too then. So you have a specific camera, you know, lenses and you're not, I don't believe you.
00:17:47
Speaker
I mean, I will say I so I have like a nice Sony that I got, I don't know, like one of my milestone birthdays. But I also kind of like punted like a football, I take it everywhere with me and just like bang it around. I was like the mom who didn't have diapers for her kid but had this camera with her.
00:18:04
Speaker
Right. People would be like, okay, you brought that SLR camera with you, but you don't have a wipe. That's amazing. After, do you have, do you post your pictures? Yeah, I used to post them. They're really gorgeous on Instagram. And then I kind of stopped, um, when I made my Instagram public for work, too, too much of my kids like portrait faces anymore. Okay. Um, especially as they're getting older and just like, I think
00:18:28
Speaker
they should give me a little bit of consent. You know, I know like my Eliana who's 12, she definitely is like, mother, don't put, you know, and I don't want to put her whole life on. I totally, I totally get that. I totally get that. And what about fun with family? What are some things you like to do with family for fun? I love that. I don't think what were you going to say? No, let's say go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. I didn't, I was going to give you examples, but I'm sure you already, like you already have them in mind. So
00:18:54
Speaker
Oh, I like visiting different library branches that I've never been to. When we go different places, like we'll road trip somewhere and I'll be like, let's find the library and let's go see what the library here is like. I like visiting new libraries, like newly built ones. They're gorgeous everywhere that we go.
Family Time and Hobbies
00:19:10
Speaker
I do that with my family. I love to cook with intergenerational. I was like, so I love to cook.
00:19:16
Speaker
an aunt, an uncle, a cousin, a brother, somebody who's gonna tell me the story of that meal. I love to like kind of record and tell the story of it. And I like to break bread over like a very long meal. I really love a long meal with like a board of all kinds of things that you can snack on for a very long time. The longer the meal, the better. Yeah. My wife is the same way. She loves a long drawn out meal and just like sitting. You guys would get along very well.
00:19:47
Speaker
to take a really cheap boat like the Staten Island ferry that you can use for like you know like just a train car 275 or whatever I used to walk from Brooklyn all the way across the Brooklyn Bridge all the way down to Wall Street like Manhattan Lower Manhattan Battery Park to like get on the boat just because I love these boat rides and I would take the sunset boat ride and it's just so I mean and so now that I live on the water I do those kinds of things like I take the water taxi because I feel like I'm in a boat and it's like kind
00:20:12
Speaker
fancy. That's so fun. That's so fun. That's so fun. No doubt. Where can people find you online? I know you're well, you're all over the phone. And QC literacy on Twitter. And I am in and on my last man Karuni. And this was so lovely. I enjoy you. Thank you. Great for you and your time. Thank you for having me. No, this is so fun. So fun. What I normally do is I'll