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72: Revolutionizing Equitable College Admissions w/ ACCEPT Group (Marie Bigham)
15 Plays5 years ago
Today I'm joined by Marie Bigham, founder and co-leader of ACCEPT Group, or Admissions Community Cultivating Equity & Peace Today. Marie has spent over 20 years in college admissions, most recently at an independent school in New Orleans, and serves full-time as ACCEPT Group's leader. ACCEPT coordinates support for equitable college admissions, such as staging walkouts and organizing like-minded voices for change.
In this podcast, Marie and I discuss the actions we can take to radicalize the college admissions process in an era of uncertainty. The horrific actions of the past few months, from the growth of a global pandemic to yet another murder of a person of color by the police, George Floyd, has led way to some glimmers of hope in organizing, protest, and growth as a society. What actions can K-college educators take to build an equitable higher education experience, when revolution seems more and more tangible?
GUESTS
Marie Bigham, former college admissions counselor and co-leader and founder of the ACCEPT Group (Admissions Community Cultivating Equity & Peace Today.)
RESOURCES
- ACCEPT Group (Website)
- ACCEPT Group (Facebook)
- ACCEPT Group (Twitter)
- DEFINING ACCESS: How Test-Optional Works
- "We are witnessing America as a failed social experiment" - Dr Cornell West Full CNN Segment
- The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students by Anthony Abraham Jack
FURTHER LISTENING (UPCOMING)
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Sponsorship
00:00:04
Speaker
Hello.
00:00:04
Speaker
Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that this podcast is brought to you by Human Restoration Project's fantastic patrons.
00:00:10
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All of our work, which includes free resources, materials, and this podcast are available for free due to our Patreon supporters, three of whom are Aaron Dowd, Ray O'Brien, and Paul Kim.
00:00:21
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Thank you for your ongoing support.
00:00:23
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You can learn more about the Human Restoration Project on our website, humanrestorationproject.org, or find us on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.
00:00:46
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Hello and welcome to Episode 72 of our podcast at Human Restoration Project.
Founder Introduction: Marie Figum
00:00:50
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My name is Chris McNutt and I'm a high school digital media instructor from Ohio.
00:00:54
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Today I am joined by Marie Figum, founder and co-leader of Accept Group or Admissions Community Cultivating Equity and Peace Today.
00:01:03
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Marie has spent over 20 years in college admissions, most recently at an independent school in New Orleans, and serves full-time as Accept Group's leader.
00:01:12
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Accept coordinates support for equitable college admissions, such as staging walkouts or organizing like-minded voices for change.
Recent Crises and Higher Education
00:01:19
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In this podcast, Marie and I discuss the actions that we can take to radicalize the college admissions process in an era of uncertainty.
00:01:26
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The horrific actions of the past few months, from the growth of a global pandemic to yet another murder of a person of color by the police, George Floyd, has led its way to some glimmers of hope in organizing protests and growth as a society.
00:01:39
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What actions can K-through college educators take to build an equitable higher education experience when revolution seems more and more tangible?
00:01:51
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Maria, I've invited you on at a time that in many ways is quite dismal.
00:01:55
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There's a global pandemic, there's yet another murder, an innocent person of color who was murdered by police.
00:02:01
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However, there is this like radical and revolutionary hope.
00:02:05
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And it does feel a little bit different.
00:02:06
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People are banding together.
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There are changes being made, at least initial inklings of change.
00:02:12
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And I think that we have an opportunity to make change as educators, even though I am a little bit held back by this idea that maybe we're not pushing hard enough.
00:02:21
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I was listening to Dr. Cornel West.
00:02:23
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I think he was on CNN, I want to say.
00:02:25
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And he was talking about how our system can't adjust to change.
00:02:29
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In many ways, it seems like despite all these protests, despite all these things going on, the system isn't really changing as quickly as you think it would with how many people are out there demanding change.
Accept Group's Mission and Origin
00:02:39
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But with that being said, I do want to talk about college admissions and equity, about what your organization does, how it's shaped by what's happening with COVID and with Black Lives Matter.
00:02:48
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and how your organization is advancing equity.
00:02:50
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So let's start off with just talking about what Accept does, who you are, and just kind of give us some context to your organization.
00:02:58
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Thanks for having me.
00:02:58
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I really appreciate this.
00:02:59
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I love it.
00:03:00
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We got to meet together on Twitter and the information you share is so aligned with ours, but so thoughtful and again that radical hopeful.
00:03:08
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So I really appreciate that.
00:03:10
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Accept is a Facebook based social justice group that's focused on college admissions reform.
00:03:17
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Our mission statement is that accept centers, admissions professionals who seek to
00:03:22
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focus on anti-racism in our work and our personal lives in our community.
00:03:26
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And we started almost four years ago in response, like truly, it was my angry, sad, I don't know what to do response to the shootings at El Centro Community College in Dallas.
00:03:39
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To back that up just a touch, I am from St.
00:03:42
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Louis.
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I live in New Orleans now.
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I'm very privileged to be able to live here, but I'm from St.
00:03:46
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Louis and watched Michael Brown's murder unfold in real time.
00:03:52
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on Twitter and that completely changed my life and how I view, how I walk the world.
00:03:58
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I've worked in college admissions in one way or another since 1997, so a long time.
Rapid Growth and Initiatives of Accept Group
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And I always believed in my heart and the work that I did that one of the noble things about college admissions is that more people of color, more women who get the opportunity to go to college
00:04:14
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leads to greater opportunity.
00:04:15
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I didn't really have focus.
00:04:16
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I mean, that was a goal, but I didn't understand that really until my friend's murder and I became close with the protesters, you know, via social media.
00:04:23
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And I found myself as a person in my 40s, working with these protesters who were the age of the students I was working with.
00:04:30
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And I found that the skill set that I used with my students to help them find college were the same skills that I could use to be helpful for protesters because they were the same age.
00:04:40
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And
00:04:41
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became close with them that way, but that really just shifted how I wanted to live and how I wanted to view my work.
00:04:46
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Started in 2016, the night of the shootings in Dallas, and it hit me in the gut because for two years, we'd been really battling just this outrageous public space of these police killings that were becoming noticed.
00:05:01
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You know, the summers of 14 and 15, 16 were just dreadful that way.
00:05:05
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This happened though at a community college.
00:05:07
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This happened on our territory as college admissions people.
00:05:10
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Those were ours.
00:05:11
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And having lived in Dallas, I knew that that campus where that all occurred, it was a community college.
00:05:16
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Its location was where all of the public transportation in the city came to a complement.
00:05:21
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So people who didn't have transportation could go there easily.
00:05:24
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The average age was much higher.
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Many ESLs, many students who were trying to gain citizenship.
00:05:30
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And so for them to have college taken away from them for five, six months because it was an FBI scene,
00:05:36
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seems to be really, really problematic with the, just growing inequity.
00:05:39
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And so I started in the middle of the night, this Facebook group that, pardon my language, was originally called Admissions People Sick of the Shit.
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I really, truly thought that Accept was going to be a little corner of the internet where maybe 40 or 50 friends could get together and lament and support when the world went back.
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And we are now about 6,400 members.
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Facebook says we have some of the highest active engagement of any of the
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15 million groups out there.
00:06:08
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Even when times are really hard like this, our engagement stays very, very high.
Advocating Change in College Admissions
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Our members want to dive in and talk about these things and try to find action and hold each other accountable.
00:06:19
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So the last four years, we've done things like hand out almost 35,000 Black Lives Matter wristbands to high school students and college students around the country.
00:06:29
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We have pushed for actionable changes in this process, that process of admissions to start to remove some of the inequities in it.
00:06:37
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We've held our different professional associations accountable by saying, you need to hear the voices of people of color.
00:06:42
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We need more professional, we need more conversation, we need more space.
00:06:47
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In college admissions, sadly, not unreflective of many industries, the further you climb up the ladder in admissions, the wider and mailer it gets.
00:06:57
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We know in the space of college admissions, most people leave at three years.
00:07:01
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And if you make it past three years, you last 30 is our joy.
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But the people who leave at two and three years are people of color because they feel so slighted, they unheard, mistreated, passed over.
00:07:14
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So kind of tackling a whole lot of things.
00:07:16
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But really the goal is how do we fix things?
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how do we reform this system?
00:07:21
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How do we burn to the ground and rebuild it?
00:07:23
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Kind of, I think like, I was thinking about this in terms of watching criminal justice conversations right now, the question of do we reform or do we seek abolition with criminal justice right now?
00:07:34
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And I think about that with college admissions.
00:07:36
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We created a system.
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We built this system.
00:07:39
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It's not like it popped out of Zeus's forehead, right?
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Like, you know, like we built this.
00:07:44
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And so we have to acknowledge that
00:07:47
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College admissions, like many things in this country, was built on anti-Blackness, was built on keeping people out, people like me, people of color, women.
00:07:56
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And so when do we reform what's poisoned?
00:07:59
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How do we tear it down and rebuild?
00:08:01
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No, I really like that perspective and analogy to police reform because it makes me think of that study that was
Debating Standardized Tests and COVID's Impact
00:08:09
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relatively recent.
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I can put it in the show notes where
00:08:12
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Students who didn't take the SAT and ACT, they went to college, there were more students of color that were admitted, and they all graduated at greater rates than before the, I guess, the abolition of the testing industry in the college board.
00:08:29
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And now we're seeing with COVID that there are hundreds of schools going test optional, and
00:08:36
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I think to myself, if all these kids end up graduating college, why did we put so many barriers in place for them to get there if it ultimately didn't matter in the first place?
00:08:47
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A million percent with you.
00:08:48
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I think that's one of the things that COVID has done structurally and societally, you know, worldwide, is it's stripped away what is necessary and shown us like what is what we used to call necessary and what's actually necessary now.
00:09:02
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And I think we say a lot in education, especially in college admissions.
00:09:05
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You know, first it was, hey, we're going to be flexible with your grades because we know that the times are weird right now.
00:09:11
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And then it was, hey, we're going to be really flexible with what you're doing with extracurriculars.
00:09:16
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All this is real.
00:09:16
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It's good, right?
00:09:17
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And then, hey, we're going to be flexible testing because, you know, college board and ACT are such a disaster right now.
00:09:21
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But it does beg the question, if you can be flexible with all of those things, what was necessary?
00:09:28
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What barriers were we placing just for the joy of it?
00:09:31
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Like, what's the purpose?
00:09:33
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And we know, we know that a lot of those pieces in college admissions are, are barriers again to keep marginalized people out.
00:09:41
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I always use the college interview as an example of this, you know, interviews started getting added when the IVs were being pushed to admit more Jewish people.
00:09:53
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And so,
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essays and interviews were added because it was the way of gauging character and people like us and that coded language, right?
00:10:02
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So, okay, in theory, colleges have gotten over that and worked past their anti-Semitism, maybe not, I'd say maybe not, but why are those pieces still in place then?
Critique of College Board and Systemic Issues
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Why are those pieces still in place?
00:10:14
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I think about the most obnoxious essay question I've seen.
00:10:19
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I don't know if you remember the book, it came out like a business book a couple of years ago, Who Moved My Cheese?
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you know, and it was right.
00:10:26
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There was a college that the essay question was, oh, this famous book, Who Moved My Cheese?
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What's your favorite cheese and why and how does that cheese describe you?
00:10:34
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And I remember working with a young woman who said, and I love this line, she said, I only know of two types of cheese, yellow and government, and I'm pretty sure that that's not what they're looking for.
00:10:43
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What were they expecting people to say?
00:10:46
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And what was that?
00:10:46
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So yeah, I think that's one of the positive things that have come with COVID.
00:10:50
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It's stripped away these systems and
00:10:53
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broken it down to what is necessary.
00:10:55
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And I think we're there with college admissions, what exactly is necessary.
00:10:58
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Yeah.
00:10:58
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And it's also exposing the corporatism of it.
00:11:02
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I mean, I keep railing against the college board because I don't understand why it exists.
00:11:07
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But it's a billion dollar company, which is absurd to me to think that the entire... Yes, a non-profit, quote unquote, that...
00:11:17
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basically is dictating a vast majority of students' admittance to higher education, despite not being, they're not a government program.
00:11:28
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Like there's no one, there's no oversight.
00:11:31
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They are their own oversight.
00:11:33
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I would push it even further.
00:11:34
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Not only do they set the bar for college admissions, but because of the AP curriculum, because of AP credits and the contract,
00:11:42
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that College Board and ACT has with states to use their test as the graduating test, they control seven through 12 education as well.
00:11:52
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It's horrifying.
00:11:53
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Because who are they?
00:11:55
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And they have a track record of not just now.
00:11:59
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I mean, there's a lot being brought to light right now with SAT, ACT, and AP testing being online, which is a joke.
00:12:06
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But
00:12:07
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Anyone who has ever taught an AP class knows how regulated it is, how stringent it is, how white it is, the curriculum, especially in history.
00:12:16
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I taught AP history.
00:12:18
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is a nightmare because you can't there's no way to get away from that curriculum in an AP class without sacrificing test scores sadly to the point where many schools are just ditching AP altogether and rather just do things like dual enrollment classes or just not offering college credit which I think that there should be an option for you but if your option is only AP testing well
00:12:40
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And there's a track record of decades of issues with the College Board doing inequitable actions.
00:12:45
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So what is Accept Group's long-term goal when it comes to college admissions and ensuring that there is an equitable future for all learners?
00:12:54
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I mean, my long-term goal, I think for us, sounds lofty, but it's truly tearing down the system and rebuilding it so that we act to higher ed as a public good.
00:13:05
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But I think a part of that recommitment to higher ed as public good is the acknowledgement that higher ed has been a public bad.
00:13:14
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That's not a very thing.
00:13:15
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It has hurt the public in many ways because of our practices.
00:13:17
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And I think, as I shouted at a conference about a year ago, we need educational reparations right now, especially in higher ed.
00:13:25
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And so as we rebuild this, not only am I a supporter of affirmative action, I think that we actually need
00:13:31
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to be far more intentional with affirmative action and say, hey, you've been stripped of educational opportunities all these years.
00:13:37
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We're going to give you a different opportunity now and fund it.
00:13:41
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I think we should dismantle this system and really rebuild it.
00:13:45
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I mean, that's a radical one, but I mean that really sincerely.
00:13:49
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I would love to see personally a system where the student and the college worked immediately together.
Educators' Role in Equitable Admissions
00:13:56
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They didn't need
00:13:57
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a mediator college counselor, like I used to be right.
00:14:00
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Cause that is a privilege that these steps that we require.
00:14:03
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Won't matter anymore.
00:14:06
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That, that, that we get back to the idea that if college admissions is about recognizing your potential and helping you live up to it, then we act to do this completely differently.
00:14:17
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I mean, I'm with you.
00:14:18
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So you, you have these beliefs and as a college admissions counselor yourself, as well as the people that are in your Facebook group and within your organization,
00:14:27
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How do you then work with students to relay that information?
00:14:31
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So to kind of preface that, I talk to students all the time about progressive alternatives to school, the fact that you don't need to go to the public state school.
00:14:39
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But in my view, at least 80% of students that go to school in Central Ohio are like, I'm going to go to OSU.
00:14:44
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And if they don't go to OSU, I'll go to one of the other schools.
00:14:47
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So how do you kind of coach students through this process?
00:14:49
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Because I don't think many are familiar with what it is that we're talking about.
00:14:52
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For sure, for sure.
00:14:53
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And I have to acknowledge to you that I come from a workplace that is extremely privileged.
00:14:58
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I worked, when I worked in college admissions at a college, I worked for Washington Union St.
00:15:02
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Louis, my alma mater, which is extremely wealthy and can do pretty much whatever they want.
00:15:06
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And we did that.
00:15:08
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There were no restrictions to what we could do to recruit.
00:15:11
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We didn't do a great job all the time, especially with students of color, but we didn't have to hustle as hard.
00:15:16
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And the four high schools that I worked in after I left college admissions have all been independent schools.
00:15:22
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I left that by the way, a year ago to only focus on running Accept full time and to get us launched as a nonprofit.
00:15:28
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I've only worked in independent schools.
00:15:30
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It is deeply frustrating to me when I see all of the advantages that students I worked with had.
00:15:36
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It's probably the reason I had to leave it.
00:15:38
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Right.
00:15:38
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In most public schools, students have a school counselor, and I know specifically a college counselor, a school counselor ratio, you know, four or 500 to one.
00:15:47
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In independent schools, it's one to 50, one to 40.
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So.
00:15:51
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I tried as often as I could to take advantage of that privileged space and the students with whom I would work and just slide in like real talk.
00:15:59
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For example, a lot of the students here in New Orleans at my school were very interested in University of Mississippi and would refer to it as Ole Miss.
00:16:08
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And every time I would reply right back with University of Mississippi and students or parents were like, why aren't you calling it?
00:16:14
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I'm like, well, let's talk about plantation language.
00:16:17
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Let's talk about how Ole Miss became nicknamed that way and what that means and how that fits into their history.
00:16:24
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And if someone would do something with that information, cool.
00:16:27
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But I would want them to know that about that, right?
00:16:32
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Just pick apart those things.
00:16:35
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Whenever I would talk with families, you know, big presentations about standardized testing at my school, I would always slide in the tremendous privilege they had because of their access to test prep, curriculum,
00:16:47
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all of those things that their scores did not mean they were better.
00:16:50
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It meant they had more opportunities and privilege.
00:16:53
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So I would try as much as I could in those personal interactions to move the needle that way.
00:16:57
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Cause I think those, like you were saying with your classes, those things are as important as saying to college board, fix your tests, right?
00:17:04
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Like I think, and I think this, this age cohort, especially as we're seeing with these protests, they're so much more interested in engaging and caring and taking these things apart that,
00:17:14
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For a lot of those students, when I would talk with them about, you know, this is why this university is named this way, they would pull back and be like, oh, oh, no, I don't want to be a part of that.
00:17:22
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I don't want to do that anymore.
00:17:23
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And they just need someone to nudge them in that direction.
00:17:27
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You know, so those are the little things I would always try and still try.
00:17:30
Speaker
I think there's too that the obligation of the teacher, the educator in the classroom, being familiar with all these different things, because sadly, as you just said, guidance counselors can't always be there for students.
00:17:42
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I love our school's guidance counselor.
00:17:43
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She's amazing.
00:17:45
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But she is in charge of 400 students.
00:17:48
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She is the guidance counselor, college admissions counselor, and test prep coordinator, getting back to the SAT, ACT issue, which in most public schools, that's the case.
00:17:57
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And that's almost a full-time job on its own.
00:18:00
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I don't think the majority of students are getting the coaching that they need in order to understand and navigate the college landscape.
00:18:07
Speaker
Um, when I was in school, um,
00:18:09
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I didn't have any coaching.
00:18:10
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I just went to OSU because that's where everyone else went.
00:18:13
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And I never questioned it until I was at OSU, which OSU is an okay school, but I don't know if it would have been the best option.
00:18:21
Speaker
Are there suggestions that you have then for educators to help nudge students in a direction where they start thinking about college beyond just, I'm going to go to college for four years and that's kind of the end of it?
00:18:31
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Absolutely.
00:18:32
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I think there are some individual things that educators can do, and I want to acknowledge this as well.
00:18:39
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Public school counselors are really far too overloaded with the amount of work.
00:18:43
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Like they are miracle workers.
00:18:46
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I've, whenever I've gone and spoken at conferences and hear, you know, they 15% of their time is spent on college.
00:18:51
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Knowing how intense and hard that work is for a small number, like, holy God, you have so much other stuff.
00:18:55
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Like they have so much.
00:18:57
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I don't ever want to disparage any.
00:18:59
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any of my colleagues in that space because they are asked to do the impossible and they do it.
00:19:02
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They do it really, really well too.
00:19:04
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And I want to acknowledge how many really awesome teachers all over fill in that space too, informally.
00:19:11
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I hear those stories all the time and get lots of questions from classroom teachers who are like, I just want to know more about this, right?
00:19:18
Speaker
So I just want to acknowledge that y'all have been filling in for us for a long time.
00:19:24
Speaker
I think there's some really excellent resources that you can go to, you know, as much as I dislike College Board, their website, Big Future is really helpful.
00:19:32
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Resources like that are really good.
00:19:33
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There are great websites like unigo.com, which does online tours that are really thoughtful and engaging.
00:19:41
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I think those are really good resources.
00:19:43
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Anytime a teacher can have a conversation with a student to say, what do you want your future to look like?
00:19:48
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Like, what do you hope it looks like?
00:19:49
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And I actually think high school teachers
00:19:51
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might even be in a better position to ask those questions than counselors.
00:19:54
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One of the first questions I ask students when I work with them is, tell me about your favorite classroom experience and what made it so good.
00:20:02
Speaker
And so if a student said to me, oh, it was small, it was intimate, we had a lot of one-on-one conversations, then I would say, well, I don't know if a place like OSU is going to work for you.
00:20:10
Speaker
Because you thrive in that.
00:20:11
Speaker
Or if a student says, oh, my gosh, I hate all this one-on-one.
00:20:14
Speaker
I just want to sit in the back room quietly and have no one bother me.
00:20:16
Speaker
Just do my work.
00:20:17
Speaker
Cool.
00:20:17
Speaker
Then maybe that setting is better for you.
00:20:19
Speaker
So I think you all are actually in a better position in many ways to talk with your students about that.
00:20:23
Speaker
And I think just engaging in the conversation and asking, what do you want your future to look like?
00:20:28
Speaker
in your imperfect world, what problems do you like to solve?
00:20:32
Speaker
When you, when your mind is wandering and you think about something you want to fix, what's that thing you want to fix?
00:20:38
Speaker
I think those questions are more tangible to high school students than what do you want to major in?
00:20:41
Speaker
What do you want to do?
00:20:41
Speaker
Where do you want to go?
Challenges and Support for Marginalized Students
00:20:43
Speaker
You know, so I think for teachers, just engaging in those conversations and having resources on hand about the nitty gritty of it, right?
00:20:50
Speaker
But I think students just need to be told and understand like the opportunities out there are way different than just what's in front of you.
00:20:57
Speaker
And that's the opportunity in front of you or back, right?
00:21:00
Speaker
Like for some students, their public in-states will be the most affordable option.
00:21:07
Speaker
Or if they want to say, it's like, that's okay.
00:21:09
Speaker
You can find really great things.
00:21:10
Speaker
Brand name of college doesn't equate better.
00:21:13
Speaker
And frankly, in some cases, I would stay away from because of that.
00:21:18
Speaker
So I think they're actually in a really fantastic position to engage with students in this and engage with them critically, right?
00:21:24
Speaker
Like,
00:21:25
Speaker
I'm one of my very favorite history teachers when I worked at a school in California.
00:21:27
Speaker
I said, all right, let's talk about the name of the college, Washington and Lee.
00:21:30
Speaker
What does that mean to have an institution called Washington and Lee?
00:21:33
Speaker
What is that message?
00:21:34
Speaker
Does that send?
00:21:35
Speaker
And teachers can ask those questions and they should.
00:21:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:38
Speaker
And to build off that point and you're kind of hinting at it.
00:21:43
Speaker
This is a big ask for teachers as well, but I think it's something that's needed.
00:21:46
Speaker
How do you then communicate the issues of equity when it comes to college admissions in terms of, I mean, many of us are teaching students, maybe the majority of our students who can't afford to go to college.
00:21:59
Speaker
And they're being told at many points, you need to go to college.
00:22:02
Speaker
That is the prevailing narrative in order to be successful.
00:22:05
Speaker
And then there's also this narrative, and this might be too big of a question, but there's also this narrative of you go to college to escape your community, which to me is very harmful language because what is that saying about where you live and what your goals are?
00:22:17
Speaker
So how do you communicate to students that either are in a position where it's difficult for them to go to college or even students that it is easy for them to go, but then they look at their peers in a way that it's like diminishing?
00:22:29
Speaker
For sure.
00:22:30
Speaker
You know, a
00:22:31
Speaker
My biggest pie in the sky dream of fixing education in this country is if we actually had policies set up to support the idea that learning is lifelong, that we got policies that psychologists had to have a graduation rate at this X number of years, things like that, because in theory, one should be learning their whole lives, right?
00:22:55
Speaker
But also those very issues that you're talking about, I can't afford it right now.
00:22:58
Speaker
I don't know what I wanna do.
00:23:00
Speaker
opportunity isn't there.
00:23:02
Speaker
My husband, who is a very well-paid computer tech, has flunked out of three colleges.
00:23:07
Speaker
And if he went at a later point in his life, he would have been far better prepared and more mature for it.
00:23:14
Speaker
He was lucky he didn't have student loans or anything.
00:23:16
Speaker
But for students who do, you drop out like that, you're suddenly paying it back and you really can't get back in.
00:23:20
Speaker
So I think so much of what you're saying is, how do we affirm students?
00:23:25
Speaker
How do we tell them the choices you make now
00:23:30
Speaker
the only choice you will make about your education, that there are other opportunities that come along, that your choices are valid, that having the bumper sticker isn't the most important thing.
00:23:38
Speaker
And those things are really, really important to do.
00:23:42
Speaker
And how do we, those are, and that's a big question, right?
00:23:45
Speaker
How do we chip away at that, right?
00:23:46
Speaker
When everything in society, including pay, is telling you, you have to have this credential.
00:23:52
Speaker
How do you have that credential if it's so hard to attain and so expensive to attain?
00:23:56
Speaker
Or frankly, if it's not designed for you.
00:23:59
Speaker
I think just reminding students that it's okay to feel that way, that those feelings are valid, that they will still have opportunities.
00:24:05
Speaker
If you don't step into this higher ed space at 18, it will actually be there at 30.
00:24:11
Speaker
College isn't just you go from 18 to 22 and go to a football game and join a Greek organization.
00:24:16
Speaker
It's not what it is for the vast majority of people in this country.
00:24:19
Speaker
So I think a lot of what teachers can do is just to chip away at their stereotypes and affirm students and say, you don't have to do that.
00:24:27
Speaker
I also say this, and this is a point where I'm going to acknowledge the privilege from which I've typically come in this.
00:24:33
Speaker
I get really annoyed when I see schools celebrate where the kids are going, the Ivies, the this, like, ooh, this is the biggest of deal.
00:24:43
Speaker
And then students who don't have those brand names aren't as celebrate and fed as much.
00:24:47
Speaker
And it's the messages that is what's important.
00:24:50
Speaker
That is the sign of your ability or your potential or what your future is going to be.
00:24:55
Speaker
And we know that
00:24:56
Speaker
getting to those places is not about that.
00:24:58
Speaker
So I would love it if schools would quit focusing on celebrating the where of students were going and just that they are making choices about their future.
00:25:14
Speaker
I hope you're enjoying our podcast so far.
00:25:16
Speaker
If you like what you hear and want to dive deeper into progressive education, I highly encourage you to visit us at humanrestorationproject.org.
00:25:23
Speaker
There you'll find a range of free materials, research, writings, and more to help transform schools towards human-centered practices.
00:25:30
Speaker
Plus, you'll find ways to support us through donations, a Patreon subscription, and merchandise.
00:25:35
Speaker
We appreciate your support.
00:25:36
Speaker
Now back to the podcast.
00:25:39
Speaker
Thank you again for listening to Human Restoration Project's podcast.
00:25:46
Speaker
I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to push the progressive envelope of education.
00:25:50
Speaker
You can learn more about progressive education, support our cause, and stay tuned to this podcast and other updates on our website at humanrestorationproject.org.
00:26:02
Speaker
For this next question, this might be opening like a giant can of worms.
00:26:05
Speaker
And in a second, I want to get into what Accept Group is doing right now to assist students.
00:26:10
Speaker
But in the work of college admissions, I mean, the majority of students that are going to college are sadly not successful in college either.
00:26:17
Speaker
And I was just reading about, I was reading The Privileged Poor, which I can't think of the name of the author right now.
00:26:23
Speaker
Anthony Jack.
00:26:23
Speaker
Anthony Jack.
00:26:24
Speaker
And that book, if someone listening is not familiar, is about students who grow up in environments that typically students are not going to college within.
00:26:33
Speaker
They get to college and they recognize just how different perspectives are at the college level about people that grow up poor or go to different schools, all these different things.
00:26:42
Speaker
And sadly, many students that
00:26:44
Speaker
end up going to college and are kind of pushed into that college environment from poorer communities are not successful at alarming rates in comparison to students that sadly overall aren't very successful at the college rates.
00:26:55
Speaker
How does a college admissions counselor or just teachers, how do they, I'm trying to think of a good way to word this, but how do they kind of like coach students through recognizing that like it's not just enough just to get into college.
00:27:07
Speaker
There's a lot more to it.
00:27:09
Speaker
Yeah, that it's staying, right?
00:27:11
Speaker
And I think for students of privilege, white kids who come from college-going culture, it's far harder to get into a place than just to stay in, right?
00:27:21
Speaker
Like you go through the gauntlet of getting in and then you get to college.
00:27:24
Speaker
And for the most part, like, you know, if you're a kid of wealth, often we see parents only care what their grades are.
00:27:31
Speaker
They just see that, you know, if you walk across the stage in five or six years, it's okay.
00:27:36
Speaker
It's the kids who have high need where those grades matter far more because funding is tied to it, right?
00:27:42
Speaker
And then also those are kids who are, did not grow up on a college campus like I did, for example.
00:27:48
Speaker
Like you don't know the culture of that.
00:27:50
Speaker
And so I think this is actually a two-way street.
00:27:52
Speaker
On one hand, we, we college counselors, we educators need to do a better job at preparing students to say, when you get to college, you're the things that change, right?
Redefining Success in Higher Education
00:28:03
Speaker
And I had a former colleague describe it this way.
00:28:05
Speaker
I thought it was fantastic, where she said, when you're in high school, you're there to be taught.
00:28:09
Speaker
But when you go to college, you are there to learn.
00:28:13
Speaker
And it's just the shift of responsibility, right?
00:28:15
Speaker
And I don't know if I agree with that philosophy and how that shifts when you get to higher ed.
00:28:20
Speaker
I think it's actually made me a little more touch.
00:28:22
Speaker
But I think that we don't prepare students for that shift of responsibility in any way, like in any level of secondary school and college.
00:28:31
Speaker
I think that's something that we need to do a better job of doing.
00:28:33
Speaker
And things like, hey, office hours mean that you just go by and say hi, or you ask questions or...
00:28:40
Speaker
sit in the front so the faculty knows you or what are those you know what are those culture of higher ed things that those of us who are in it all the time just take for granted as the language we speak like we need to do a better job of teaching students actually think of the onus as much more on the colleges they need to fix their cultures of who belongs and what that is that it's on them and we hear this from faculty of color we hear this from alumni of color and
00:29:04
Speaker
that those graduation rates aren't great because of their funding models of how they fund students and how inequitable that is.
00:29:13
Speaker
The gaps that they give to kids with high need, the assumption that you can work 20 hours work study a week.
00:29:20
Speaker
Okay, no one else is being asked to work, you know, a part-time job and maintain a three-five for your scholarship, right?
00:29:28
Speaker
We've got to make those kids not feel comfortable in the culture, but fix the culture so that anyone feels comfortable in it.
00:29:35
Speaker
Not just demand that people change who they are to fit in, but for the institutions to change their culture of what it is to fit in.
00:29:43
Speaker
I think that's really important.
00:29:45
Speaker
But that to me is on the colleges.
00:29:46
Speaker
That's them.
00:29:49
Speaker
They opened their doors for us, but barely.
00:29:53
Speaker
And so it's up to them to become the places that are more welcoming.
00:29:58
Speaker
My last point with this is I would strongly encourage all of us to rethink the definition of success in higher ed.
00:30:07
Speaker
And this goes back to my idea that I think, you know, let's change policy so that education really is lifelong, right?
00:30:13
Speaker
We think of success as graduation rate in a short amount of time, but we don't take for granted that life happens.
00:30:19
Speaker
You don't take for granted that most students aren't 18 to 21 or 22.
00:30:24
Speaker
And so we have these structures that say students have to graduate in this time.
00:30:27
Speaker
If not, that's not successful.
00:30:28
Speaker
But what if you just need to take some time off?
00:30:31
Speaker
What if you change your mind?
00:30:33
Speaker
What if you don't win in school at that moment?
00:30:35
Speaker
I think changing that lens of success, but without taking accountability away could be one of those ways that we could change this conversation.
00:30:42
Speaker
Right.
00:30:43
Speaker
kind of building into then our final question, which is then how does your organization fit into all of this?
00:30:49
Speaker
We've kind of gotten into like some theoreticals.
00:30:51
Speaker
So what is Accept Group doing right now in order to further your cause?
00:30:55
Speaker
Sure.
00:30:57
Speaker
And the thing is with Accept, as an organization that's based in this profession and to join our group or anything like that, you have to be someone who is professionally engaged with college admissions, someone who might be in a high school or college, but also test prep or advising or any of the other
00:31:13
Speaker
I was going to say seats at the table, which is what I typically use, but to go back to familiar point of yours, anyone in the college admissions industrial complex, because it's a gazillion dollar business, right?
Support Initiatives and Professional Development
00:31:24
Speaker
Because we are focused on us, a lot of times our work is not specifically student facing, but rather professional facing.
00:31:30
Speaker
And then the idea is that professionals take that to their students.
00:31:33
Speaker
So we don't do as much directly with students.
00:31:36
Speaker
That said, because of COVID, we're shifting a lot.
00:31:39
Speaker
And things that we would do a lot of times in person with our members, like meetups and things like that, it's all shifting to online.
00:31:45
Speaker
So we are currently preparing a series of webinars that are going to be specifically focused on Black students and Black families.
00:31:54
Speaker
And what are the special considerations as a family of color going through this process and going through it right now?
00:32:02
Speaker
We think that's a really important conversation to have.
00:32:05
Speaker
And one I think many of our members have always kind of had along the sidelines, right?
00:32:09
Speaker
But we need to like form that language and get it better.
00:32:11
Speaker
So we're starting that series of student facing conversations of how to go through this search and process while maintaining your safety and your identity, being those things intact, because there's some places that don't, don't do a good job with that.
00:32:25
Speaker
Others that do.
00:32:27
Speaker
But a lot of our work is really about developing the profession.
00:32:30
Speaker
And our model of change has always been if you change the hearts and minds of an individual, they go to their offices, they spread that, right?
00:32:39
Speaker
You change the minds of office and then you get different institutions, like enough institutions, we're all going to make systematic change.
00:32:45
Speaker
That's kind of the model.
00:32:46
Speaker
So one of the things that we are doing now, I'm looking at my giant wall calendars,
00:32:50
Speaker
Again, webinars, who doesn't love them?
00:32:52
Speaker
We're starting a bunch of webinars that first is going to be about personal identity.
00:32:56
Speaker
We're calling those time for the hard work.
00:32:59
Speaker
We do a lot with an except where we talk about the big systems and the structures, but we haven't done as good of a job at saying, what are my biases?
00:33:08
Speaker
What do I bring to the table?
00:33:10
Speaker
We talk, but we haven't really done the hard work.
00:33:12
Speaker
So we're going to start a series of webinars for folks who are going to do the hard work, starting another series after that that's called, it's a terrible name, but I'm trying to think of something better, Admissions-ing While POC.
00:33:23
Speaker
It started as we wanted to do a conversation of driving while black and what happens when you are out there on the road as an admissions person and something happens.
00:33:31
Speaker
But that has expanded as the group has, the planning committee for that has talked, and we're going to do a series that's
00:33:37
Speaker
Three or four of them will be, so you're a person of color working in college admissions in one of these roles, and here's how it's different.
00:33:42
Speaker
And here's how you advocate for yourself, for your colleagues, and here's how we mentor each other.
00:33:47
Speaker
So we're doing that series, but we're finishing that series with white supervisors.
00:33:51
Speaker
This one's for you.
00:33:52
Speaker
And again, we know in admissions that once you get to the top in that supervisory role, the chances that you are white and male are dramatically higher.
00:34:00
Speaker
So we're doing those.
00:34:02
Speaker
I'm looking again at my wall.
00:34:06
Speaker
One project that we engaged with this year that was new for us is called Hack the Gates.
00:34:11
Speaker
And Hack the Gates is a research to practice partnership with Colorado State.
00:34:16
Speaker
So the idea for Hack the Gates is if we're going to dismantle this, we need to get all these different voices who never talk, researchers, public policy people, practitioners, supervisors, things like that.
00:34:25
Speaker
So we had a convening, we've had a lot of conversations.
00:34:28
Speaker
And in August, early August, we're releasing eight position papers.
00:34:33
Speaker
written by some of the best, brightest young scholars out there, all people of color, all pre-tenure, all brilliant.
Partnerships and Achievements of Accept Group
00:34:41
Speaker
And we're releasing eight different position papers that say, here's what we see as inequity in the system.
00:34:47
Speaker
Here's some radical ways to chop it apart.
00:34:49
Speaker
And then we as accept come in and say, and here's how you put that into practice.
00:34:53
Speaker
So over the next couple of months, we're taking that model.
00:34:55
Speaker
If you change the individual, you change your office, then you change the system and putting that into place through some professional development and learning online.
00:35:02
Speaker
trying to continue to maintain the conversation that way.
00:35:06
Speaker
But yeah, not as much of the student facing stuff, but I'm excited about what we're going to start doing with students that way.
00:35:12
Speaker
The work is fantastic, Maureen.
00:35:13
Speaker
I really appreciate you coming on and talking about it because it's really cool.
00:35:17
Speaker
And I see a lot of what we do and what you do.
00:35:19
Speaker
So it's cool to have like this, this cool conversation.
00:35:22
Speaker
And I appreciate you coming on the podcast and talking about it.
00:35:24
Speaker
This work and doing this has been by far the most fulfilling thing I've done personally, professionally, anything.
00:35:32
Speaker
And I,
00:35:33
Speaker
You know, worked in Democrat politics and worked in PR before.
00:35:37
Speaker
And so I saw like the power of movement in organizing.
00:35:39
Speaker
But when I see what we have done as an organization and the structural changes that have occurred in the admissions process because of our advocacy and screaming sometimes, but the real changes that have occurred in our process and in the profession because of it, I am so heartened and so excited.
00:36:00
Speaker
And what I want to put out there to the podcast is,
00:36:02
Speaker
We were just random people who needed a place to hug in the middle of the night, right?
00:36:08
Speaker
People can make change.
00:36:09
Speaker
We see this on the streets
Encouraging Individual Advocacy
00:36:10
Speaker
happening right now.
00:36:10
Speaker
We're in that point of flex, right?
00:36:12
Speaker
Like we're at that tipping point.
00:36:13
Speaker
And so I don't want anyone out there to feel like they're stuck in a silo that, oh, I am a teacher.
00:36:20
Speaker
And so this is what I do.
00:36:21
Speaker
And someone else has to do that stuff and I can't step out of my box.
00:36:24
Speaker
Like you and I, we're successful at this, Chris, because we stepped out of our box and we took that risk and said,
00:36:31
Speaker
I know my space and I know this enough to be able to make a change and so I just want to encourage anyone right now if you're feeling compelled You don't have to be an expert.
00:36:40
Speaker
You don't have to start a small business or you should learn People you can you can step outside of your space and make a real change You can use your sphere of influence to make even bigger changes even faster and I'm gonna encourage absolutely everybody to do that
00:36:59
Speaker
Thank you again for listening to Human Restoration Project's podcast.
00:37:02
Speaker
I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to push the progressive envelope of education.
00:37:06
Speaker
You can learn more about progressive education, support our cause, and stay tuned to this podcast and other updates on our website at humanrestorationproject.org.