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82: Build a New Future: Teaching Action and Coalition Building w/ Dr. Kevin Gannon
15 Plays4 years ago
Transcripts can be found via our website, humanrestorationproject.org.
Our conversation today will center on teaching organization and collective activism. Essentially, we find ourselves at an important crossroads, as the administration shifts to new policies - teachers will be at the whim of new federal (and likely, state) policies that will have massive ramifications on classrooms, especially during COVID-19. And I hope out of this conversation, we’ll be able to address - what should I be concerned about? What problems may exist? And then, okay...what can I do to actually mitigate these problems and demand an equitable education system?
GUESTS
Dr. Kevin Gannon, the Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and a Professor of History at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, and author of Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto. Further, Gannon actively writes and teaches on the science of learning, racism and race in education, and building inclusivity online and offline. You can learn more on his website, TheTattooedProf.com and on Twitter @TheTattooedProf.
RESOURCES
- The Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door by Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire
- Pedagogy of Hope by Paulo Freire
- Radical Hope by Kevin Gannon
- HRP Book Review: Radical Hope
FURTHER LISTENING
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Acknowledgements
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 82 of our podcast at Human Restoration Project.
00:00:07
Speaker
My name is Chris McNutt and I'm a high school digital media instructor from Ohio.
00:00:11
Speaker
Before we get started, I want to let you know that this is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Paul Kim, Dan Kearney and Connie Fletcher.
00:00:18
Speaker
Thank you for your ongoing support.
00:00:20
Speaker
You can learn more about the Human Restoration Project and support us on our website, humanrestorationproject.org, or find us on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.
00:00:28
Speaker
Further, you can find many of these podcasts live just by following our social media.
00:00:32
Speaker
Be sure to check it out.
Introducing the Guests: Nick Covington and Dr. Kevin Gannon
00:00:46
Speaker
joined today by Nick Covington, also from HRP, and Dr. Kevin Gannon.
00:00:50
Speaker
Dr. Kevin Gannon is the director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and a professor of history at Grandview University in Des Moines, Iowa, and author of Radical Hope, A Teaching Manifesto.
00:01:01
Speaker
Further, Gannon actively writes and teaches on the science of learning, racism and race in education, and building inclusivity online and offline.
00:01:08
Speaker
You can learn more on his website at tattooedprof.com.
00:01:12
Speaker
and on Twitter at TheTattooProf.
00:01:14
Speaker
Welcome to the podcast, Kevin.
00:01:15
Speaker
Great.
00:01:16
Speaker
Thank you for having me here.
00:01:17
Speaker
Really, I'm delighted to be with you all.
00:01:19
Speaker
Of course, of
Changes in Education Policy and COVID-19 Impacts
00:01:20
Speaker
course.
00:01:20
Speaker
And I figure our conversation today will center on teaching organization and collective activism.
00:01:26
Speaker
As we find ourselves at this crossroads here, we have an administrative shift to new policies.
00:01:30
Speaker
Teachers will be at the whim of new federal and probably state policies.
00:01:34
Speaker
that will have massive ramifications on classrooms, especially given what's going on with COVID-19.
00:01:40
Speaker
And I hope that out of this conversation that we're having today, we'll be able to address what should I be concerned about, what problems might exist, and then what can I actually do to mitigate those problems and demand better, demand a more equitable education system.
00:01:54
Speaker
So I figure we'll start off with this first
Optimism for Policy Changes and Ending Controversial Orders
00:01:56
Speaker
question.
00:01:56
Speaker
We'll see where the conversation takes us and we'll see where we end up.
00:02:00
Speaker
As the new administration enters the White House, there are plenty of unknowns about the education system.
00:02:06
Speaker
And as we shift from policies like America first, American exceptionalism, like an anti-critical race theory and toward more COVID-centric policies, what's your hope for the new policies, especially given that in the previous administration, the Obama era, we had test reform, race to the top, et cetera?
00:02:24
Speaker
So my hope is, you know, first of all, I think I'm normally against the idea of, you know, the cliche addition by subtraction, but I do think it's valid in this case, right?
00:02:33
Speaker
I mean, just the sense that there will be educators making education policy who are not actively at war with the idea of public education itself.
00:02:45
Speaker
You know, that may seem like a fairly low bar, and in normal times it probably is, but I do think, you know, that's not nothing, right?
00:02:51
Speaker
I think
00:02:53
Speaker
You know, it's much harder to do this kind of work when the people who are supposed to be your allies are not just in disagreement with you, but in all out hostility against you.
00:03:05
Speaker
So I do think that that shift alone is going to matter a pretty good deal in terms of our bandwidth and our emotional capacity.
00:03:13
Speaker
I'm most excited about
00:03:15
Speaker
The idea that this executive order that bans things like white privilege and critical race theory that has been seized upon by folks who are just ready to stop talking about those things anyway, once that goes away, although I'm disappointed to see that no one's challenged that legally because it's imminently challengeable in my opinion.
Activism and Avoiding Complacency
00:03:36
Speaker
But again, I share your caution in the sense that we can't let our relief over the end of the sort of most explicit form of suck that's out there
00:03:45
Speaker
You know, just because that's over, that doesn't mean everything gets better.
00:03:48
Speaker
Right.
00:03:48
Speaker
Because as you allude to, you know, in the Obama era, that was not a sustainable set of conditions for a lot of folks either.
00:03:57
Speaker
I hope that what we're able to do and I have cautious optimism in the sense that our incoming first lady is a community college educator and community college educators, I think.
00:04:07
Speaker
are well positioned to understand the ways in which purely metric, purely quantitative measures don't really get at the process of learning.
00:04:16
Speaker
And I'm hoping that we have a much more complicated and nuanced conversation with people who actually are doing this as their vocation.
00:04:24
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So cautiously optimistic.
00:04:26
Speaker
I think some of the sharpest edges that we're seeing right now will be blunted somewhat.
00:04:31
Speaker
But I also think it'll be a more amenable climate for us to collaborate and organize as well, and that we should seize that opportunity.
00:04:37
Speaker
Right.
00:04:38
Speaker
I mean, that makes perfect sense to me.
00:04:39
Speaker
I mean,
00:04:40
Speaker
We'll get to it in a second here, essentially how we'll demand that.
00:04:43
Speaker
But I think before we get there, Nick, you had a point you wanted
Policy Shifts and Talent Loss
00:04:46
Speaker
to add.
00:04:46
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I'm worried a little bit about, you know, where are all those great minds from the 1776 commission going to go?
00:04:53
Speaker
I just worry about the talent that's going to be lost as a result of changing policies in that direction, too.
00:04:58
Speaker
Well, as we're told, you know, merit rises to the top and nothing else should matter in the marketplace of ideas.
00:05:06
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So I'm sure that these big brain historical thinkers will not be lacking knowledge.
00:05:11
Speaker
for opportunities to shape the discourse if what they say is true.
00:05:15
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Absolutely.
00:05:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:16
Speaker
I can't wait to see what kind of think tanks, you know, they all join up with and how they get the Hoover Institute behind the next big thing.
Teaching Critical History Amidst Political Pressures
00:05:25
Speaker
So anyway, it is, I mean, on a side note, it just seems like as a history educator to history professor here, it's like,
00:05:34
Speaker
It's just a huge relief to sort of have that, to feel that boot off the neck in terms of, am I going to get in trouble for teaching real history in my classroom?
00:05:46
Speaker
Like in actually getting kids to critically analyze primary sources in ways that don't always come to friendly conclusions for the United States of America.
00:05:56
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And like recognize that that's part of, that's part of what actual history looks like.
00:06:00
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It doesn't always portray this, this wonderful picture, the wonderful picture of progress or, or let alone greatness.
00:06:08
Speaker
But grappling with those, the tension in the ideals of America and, and what it means to be an American and kind of finding our place in there.
00:06:17
Speaker
I don't know if you wanted to speak at all to like anything that you had seen.
00:06:21
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I know like the university of Iowa had, had, had,
00:06:25
Speaker
They had actually suspended some of their some of their programs, their training programs as a result of that executive order.
00:06:31
Speaker
And I understand, too, you know, Grandview being a private school.
00:06:34
Speaker
But but like, did you run into anything with that at the administration level or in your or in your department?
Executive Orders and Inclusive Pedagogy Challenges
00:06:40
Speaker
I'll say I'm fortunate to be in a place where I'm well supported by the administration and the public facing things that I do.
00:06:46
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And that means a lot.
00:06:48
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Now, that being said, you know, I canceled an engagement to which I was contracted with Iowa Western Community College because the president there said that, you know, they would abide by that executive order.
00:07:01
Speaker
And I was supposed to do workshops on inclusive pedagogy, you know, which, you know, and I wrote an open letter to the president and the committee committee.
00:07:11
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who sympathize, you know, with with my stance, they weren't happy about it either.
00:07:14
Speaker
But, you know, I basically said, you know, first of all, this is, you know, clearly a violation of academic freedom and, you know, the First Amendment.
00:07:23
Speaker
Oh, by the way, but also, you know, trying to do inclusive pedagogy without talking about the insights raised by critical race theory or understanding white privilege is like me trying to teach you to swim in a desert, right?
00:07:33
Speaker
That's just not going to happen.
00:07:35
Speaker
So I think what that executive order has done, the damage that it's done is it's been seized upon by people who are looking to get rid of that kind of discourse anyway.
00:07:45
Speaker
And this was a gift that fell into their laps.
00:07:47
Speaker
And they said, oh, wow, you know, we're taking federal money.
00:07:49
Speaker
We certainly can't, you know, disobey this executive order, which, you know, to put it mildly is a load of crap.
00:07:57
Speaker
Right.
00:07:57
Speaker
I mean, it's, you know, it's
00:08:00
Speaker
There are so many, and I'm not going to belabor the obvious in terms of how imminently legally challengeable that executive order was, but I do think what it revealed is an important point in this larger conversation that
Need for Activism and Addressing Policy Damage
00:08:12
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we're having, right?
00:08:12
Speaker
Like, yeah, there's a feeling of relief, and yeah, there's a feeling that we're going to have allies in things like the Department of Education again, which is nice, but
00:08:20
Speaker
But, you know, and Nick, you and I are both in Iowa.
00:08:23
Speaker
So, you know, we, you know, there's not everybody's going to share that vision of what it means to teach history in a true and genuine sense.
00:08:28
Speaker
For example, there are a lot of folks who were totally down with that, the spirit of that executive order.
00:08:35
Speaker
And so as we continue to do the work that we're doing, and as we try to do equity and social justice work in particular in our classrooms, in our buildings, in our institutions,
00:08:46
Speaker
there's still going to be a fair amount of pushback because a lot that has been activated over the last several years is not going to go away.
00:08:53
Speaker
And so, you know, and again, I see some folks in the chat who are talking, you know, we need to watch out for complacency.
00:08:58
Speaker
And absolutely, you know, enjoy the victory for what it is, but also let that motivate us because now I think we have a much clearer idea of just how much damage there is to be undone.
00:09:10
Speaker
Yeah, that's such a great point, too.
00:09:12
Speaker
Just that energy has to go somewhere.
00:09:14
Speaker
So where is that going to get dispersed
Radical Hope in Education
00:09:16
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next?
00:09:16
Speaker
And, you know, I just I just finished reading to Jennifer Berkshire and and Jack Schneider's A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, which really is it just unpacks all of the ways in which
00:09:27
Speaker
You know, the enemies of public education are just working to apply and leverage that that market logic onto those things.
00:09:34
Speaker
So I joke about the Hoover Institution or something like that.
00:09:36
Speaker
And that is really the next fight is just to be able to maintain our public institutions against the forces that would unmake them.
00:09:44
Speaker
I was just going to ask too about if you could unpack for us at all, like a quick two-parter from your book.
00:09:49
Speaker
So I was wondering if you could just unpack for our audience here, like how would you explain that pedagogy of radical hope to people who are listening?
00:09:58
Speaker
And then like as a related question to that, on the spectrum from in the book, you define the classrooms of death versus the classrooms of life.
00:10:07
Speaker
Where do you think we are, you know, six months on from, you know, eight months on from the publication of the book?
00:10:12
Speaker
Great questions, both of those.
00:10:14
Speaker
So I'll tackle the first part first.
00:10:16
Speaker
I think how I would explain the idea of radical hope most concisely is that, you know, we really have to be careful about the way that we talk about hope, right?
Action-Oriented Hope and Daily Practices
00:10:25
Speaker
And I use a quote from, in the book, from Hope in the Dark, such a great essay, where
00:10:33
Speaker
she talks about, you know, hope is not a lottery ticket.
00:10:36
Speaker
Rebecca Sullivan's quote that, you know, hope is not a lottery ticket that you just sit on the couch and clutch hoping to get lucky.
00:10:42
Speaker
It's an ax with which you break down the door in an emergency, right?
00:10:46
Speaker
And that image of,
00:10:49
Speaker
And of course, you know, the first thing that comes into my head is that scene from The Shining, right, where Jack Nicholson is going through the door.
00:10:55
Speaker
But, you know, that image of, you know, very, you know, dramatic, vivid sort of action, like hope is a practice.
00:11:00
Speaker
Hope is not a sentiment, right?
00:11:02
Speaker
And it's very easy to get into these very airy kind of Hallmark card definitions of hope where you basically say, oh, I have hope in the future.
00:11:09
Speaker
And what that so often becomes is, you know, a claim that the future will be better.
00:11:14
Speaker
But when I say I have hope in the future, that's also an off ramp for me.
00:11:19
Speaker
And now I'm expecting somebody else to actually do the work to bring that better future about.
00:11:23
Speaker
And I think we need to think of hope as, you know, a pedagogy of hope is a pedagogy that's rooted in praxis, right?
00:11:28
Speaker
That we're putting, we're acknowledging our own theoretical and pedagogical stances and the basic tenets that undergird those.
00:11:36
Speaker
And we're putting them into action.
00:11:37
Speaker
And when we put them into action, it's not the big dramatic gesture.
00:11:41
Speaker
It's not a dead poet society.
00:11:43
Speaker
Oh, captain, my captain moment, right?
00:11:44
Speaker
It's the routine stuff that we're doing every day.
00:11:47
Speaker
What kind of learning spaces am I creating online during a pandemic for my students?
00:11:52
Speaker
How am I teaching the students as full and complicated human beings as opposed to just brains on sticks, right?
00:11:57
Speaker
Am I adopting surveillance technology in the language of cops and enforcement for my assessments or am I thinking in different ways, right?
Complex Conversations and Continuous Reflection
00:12:05
Speaker
That's
00:12:05
Speaker
A Pedagogy of Radical Hope has us undergird all of our sort of quotidian routine decisions with a sense that this matters and here's why it matters, that I am claiming my agency and making pathways for a better future than what we see here in the status quo.
00:12:23
Speaker
And so I think, you know, now that we're nine months in or whatever, you know, the book came out right as COVID hit.
00:12:30
Speaker
which was kind of a weird vibe, right?
00:12:32
Speaker
You know, and thinking about does this still work?
00:12:36
Speaker
You know, was it, here I am, you know, people are like, hey, you wrote a book on hope and now everything sucks.
00:12:41
Speaker
So, you know, what do you have to say, right?
00:12:43
Speaker
It's just like, well, you know.
00:12:45
Speaker
But I would say, yeah, I mean, you know, but one thing that's really important is, again, you know, if you think of hope as something substantial, you know, what Freire called an ontological need, right, to inform everything that we're doing, the suffusion of the nooks and crannies of our practice.
00:13:01
Speaker
hope can't be that airy fantasy, right?
00:13:04
Speaker
Hope without action is fantasy, as the old saying goes, right?
00:13:07
Speaker
And so I think what we have had to do and what folks around us have had to do is, you know, you cannot hide from what COVID has laid bare in our society.
00:13:16
Speaker
We can't, you know, for example, you know, with technology and internet access, for example, we know, and we have known for a long time,
00:13:25
Speaker
that there are significant inequities in the way that students are able to access technology, access high speed Internet and cultural capital that's necessary for being a successful learner online.
00:13:37
Speaker
Right.
00:13:37
Speaker
We know we knew that those inequities were there, but it was very easy to sort of brush them under the rug when we were doing mostly face to face learning.
00:13:45
Speaker
Well, now we can't run from that anymore.
00:13:46
Speaker
And, you know, those chickens have come home to roost and we have had to do some, you know, some really significant work to try to bridge those inequities as much as we can.
00:13:55
Speaker
That conversation doesn't go away once there's a vaccine.
00:13:59
Speaker
Right.
00:14:00
Speaker
And the necessity, I think, of, you know, completely unpacking what we're doing and why we're doing it and then owning that why.
00:14:08
Speaker
Right.
00:14:08
Speaker
Like this stuff isn't just for pandemic teaching.
00:14:10
Speaker
This stuff is for teaching, teaching.
00:14:13
Speaker
So when we talk about I'm recognizing the contingent situations, very precarious situations that some of my students find themselves in, that they are full and complicated human beings, that I am extending them the grace that I want them to extend me.
00:14:26
Speaker
Like a lot of that has been really spurred by our shift to emergency remote learning.
00:14:31
Speaker
And that's great, but it can't go away.
00:14:34
Speaker
And so what I would say is that, you know, the first thing that we have to do when we have hope is we have to have an unflinching honesty about where we are, because we don't know how to get to where we're going.
Transforming Assessment to Reflect Processes
00:14:44
Speaker
if we don't have an understanding of where we are.
00:14:46
Speaker
And if we ignore the sharp edges there because they make us uncomfortable, they make us sad, or they make us guilty, then our journey's over before it even starts.
00:14:55
Speaker
That's a fantastic point, Kevin.
00:14:56
Speaker
And to recognize Liz in the chat, she says it best.
00:15:00
Speaker
She says, I feel like the pandemic has forced teachers to look at these issues in a way they wouldn't have had absent COVID.
00:15:06
Speaker
This accelerated the effort.
00:15:08
Speaker
And I think in terms of speaking about a radical hope and bringing in that action piece,
00:15:14
Speaker
Now that we're moving into a new administration, it can be argued that we now have the room to do activism.
00:15:19
Speaker
As you were alluding to at the very beginning, it's kind of just been fighting idiocy up until this point, not necessarily like an actual space to grow.
00:15:27
Speaker
However, there is...
00:15:29
Speaker
a neo-liberal culture.
00:15:31
Speaker
The left and right both have it, but the left especially when it comes to educational policy have been heavily focused on ensuring that everyone gets a job, focusing on quote-unquote accountability, rigor, all these different buzzwords that tend to mean some kind of a capital-based or dehumanized type classroom.
00:15:49
Speaker
It is centered on surveillance.
00:15:51
Speaker
What suggestions would you have for educators building in now to 2021 that they can do to ensure that their classrooms reflect the space that is humanized and reflects the ideas of the book?
00:16:02
Speaker
So I think, again, own your theory and make sure that it suffuses your practice, right?
00:16:07
Speaker
Like so much of what we've been doing since March has been reactive that, you know, we just haven't had the bandwidth to really kind of think about systematically what it is we're doing and why we're doing it necessarily.
00:16:17
Speaker
But, you know, now's the time where we really, you know, everything teaching is inherently political.
00:16:23
Speaker
You know, it's one of those, even if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice like Rush sang in their song, right?
00:16:29
Speaker
So recognizing that, owning your stance, and then finding the people around you who are doing that similar kind of work.
00:16:36
Speaker
None of us can do this alone.
00:16:38
Speaker
It doesn't mean you have to have a, you know, a faculty march out of school one day or so, although that would be rad if it happened.
00:16:43
Speaker
You know, because we all feel with, you know, administrative pressure, community pushback, things like that.
00:16:48
Speaker
So we have to have solidarity with one another.
00:16:51
Speaker
So this may be a case of finding your people.
00:16:53
Speaker
If you're a newer teacher, for example, are there folks who you can have as mentors who are on the same spectrum you are as trying to do this work?
00:17:00
Speaker
And our students are our allies in this, right?
00:17:02
Speaker
Because we know that, you know, the things that we associate with critical pedagogy,
00:17:07
Speaker
with humanizing students, with teaching as opposed to hazing, there's a significant amount of learning science research that backs that stuff up, right?
00:17:16
Speaker
And so we could actually adopt some of the language of the metrics folks and say, oh yeah, well, let me talk about evidence-based best practices because I got a whole bunch for you that says basically Freire was right.
00:17:26
Speaker
And so now let's talk about Proctorio and why you want to use it because now I have some research that says that that is actually damaging.
00:17:32
Speaker
And so, you know, we have to
00:17:35
Speaker
One of the things that I'm really concerned about and have been for a while on the higher ed level is assessment, because it's become such a dirty word, because it's become weaponized against us, because it so often focuses on the quantitative measures, which are hard to use to describe learning by themselves.
00:17:50
Speaker
Right.
00:17:50
Speaker
But assessment at root is simply the story of learning.
00:17:54
Speaker
And so all data has a story behind it.
00:17:57
Speaker
And if we're not telling that story, somebody else is going to.
00:18:01
Speaker
And so how do we tell the story?
Role of Educators in Shaping Assessments
00:18:03
Speaker
So how do we take assessment, for example, and make it a process to talk about the process of learning rather than outcomes on a standardized test?
00:18:11
Speaker
How do we take assessment and say, here is compelling evidence of student learning as a process as opposed to a deliverable?
00:18:19
Speaker
So student metacognitive reflections, longer term work where students check in at various signposts, where the process itself, in the case of history, for example, can I show my students thinking historically?
00:18:30
Speaker
Like the process itself is the outcome.
00:18:33
Speaker
And so how do we use assessment to tell that story of learning?
00:18:36
Speaker
Like how do our students know they're learning or if they're learning?
00:18:39
Speaker
Right.
00:18:40
Speaker
And how do they you know, it's not just the students know how much they learned.
00:18:42
Speaker
It's the students know if they learned.
00:18:45
Speaker
And if we can't answer those questions very well, then it's time to start rethinking the ways that we do assessment.
00:18:49
Speaker
And I think there's actually very powerful, very liberating potential in doing assessment as a process oriented, much more individualistic and nuanced way of thinking about the story of learning.
00:19:01
Speaker
And even quantitative data then has that story behind it.
00:19:05
Speaker
And so it can't be weaponized against us so much as it is an argument for the type of educational practice that we're after.
00:19:13
Speaker
And I think that's a real area of opportunity that we need to, you know, there need to be more faculty in higher ed and there need more teachers in K-12.
00:19:20
Speaker
that are involved in not just assessment, but framing the conversation about assessment and the ends to which it's being used.
00:19:27
Speaker
And one thing that I've loved to see the conversation on social media shift probably now more than ever is exactly on that issue, because the answer to the conversations we're having about proctorio and plagiarism and the surveillance technology is, well, do assessment
Creating Narrative-Based Assessments
00:19:42
Speaker
better.
00:19:42
Speaker
Make your assessments cheat-proof, basically.
00:19:46
Speaker
That's what we're saying.
00:19:47
Speaker
I mean, and to your point earlier about
00:19:49
Speaker
That not just humanizes and is better virtual practice.
00:19:52
Speaker
We'll transfer those practices back in the classroom when all this is done.
00:19:55
Speaker
It's just better practice, period.
00:19:58
Speaker
So it's great to see people working together on resolving those issues and pushing back on that narrative of students as plagiarists.
00:20:08
Speaker
students, you know, that like Machiavellian view that students will want to get ahead at every given moment.
00:20:13
Speaker
Well, what if you give them that opportunity to like tell their learning narrative and give them a language to do that?
00:20:19
Speaker
Then the points and the grades and those things don't matter as much as students shoring up their own story.
00:20:25
Speaker
So I just love that as a narrative to jump off to.
00:20:29
Speaker
Right.
00:20:29
Speaker
And if we're telling our students, which we are, we're basically telling our students right now that given any opportunity, you're going to cheat.
00:20:35
Speaker
So we should not be surprised that we're seeing cheating.
00:20:37
Speaker
Because we are telling students that that's what we expect of them.
00:20:41
Speaker
And, you know, if you've ever read Jim Lang's book, Cheating Lessons, a great book where he dives into the kind of, you know, the issue of academic integrity and honesty and what drives students to make the choices they do when they go outside of those areas.
00:20:53
Speaker
And, you know, 95 percent of this is assignment design.
00:20:56
Speaker
You know, so as you said, do better assessments.
00:20:58
Speaker
Right.
00:20:58
Speaker
Like as a timed multiple choice test in a fully online asynchronous class, really the best way to do assessment, because I can think of about 99 reasons that it's not.
00:21:07
Speaker
Right.
00:21:08
Speaker
So, you know, that's that's where it is incumbent on us to take control of that conversation, because this is an area in which we have control in many ways.
00:21:15
Speaker
Yeah, that point you just made around the way that hurts relationships is really powerful.
00:21:20
Speaker
We were actually just having a conversation about this yesterday with Nalia, who's part of HRP.
00:21:24
Speaker
He's a college student.
00:21:26
Speaker
And he was talking about how his teacher is super nice.
00:21:30
Speaker
They're very respectful.
00:21:32
Speaker
They have engaging lessons.
00:21:33
Speaker
But at the end of the day, he has to log in at his time, like 2 a.m., and take an exam one-on-one with a professor and just be watched.
00:21:43
Speaker
And no matter how great you are as a person, if this underlying system makes you feel like you're doing something wrong, that relationship is going to be permanently damaged.
00:21:53
Speaker
And if we can develop humanizing systems that would make it so you would never even think of doing that, then we can build not only a more friendly future, but also a more equitable one.
00:22:04
Speaker
Because we know that all these different things especially hurt those who are most vulnerable and marginalized.
00:22:10
Speaker
And I think that the research certainly reflects that.
00:22:12
Speaker
Well, and Sean Michael Morris put it the best.
00:22:14
Speaker
He has a line where he basically says students don't come to college to cheat.
00:22:18
Speaker
They come to college to learn.
00:22:21
Speaker
And so we have to ask if they're cheating, what went wrong?
00:22:24
Speaker
Right.
00:22:24
Speaker
Like, where did that where did that decision become the eminently rational one to take?
00:22:29
Speaker
And that's where we have to look.
00:22:30
Speaker
Right.
00:22:32
Speaker
Yeah, and as we move into then building these different systems, and we spoke briefly there about teacher organizing, you said it'd be cool if people could walk out.
Teacher Activism and Risk Management
00:22:41
Speaker
What would community organizing look like for teachers?
00:22:45
Speaker
Like, how could you potentially as a teacher push back against community
00:22:50
Speaker
what's going on in your school without extreme ramification.
00:22:56
Speaker
So I know that obviously there's going to be ramification because you're pushing back against the status quo.
00:23:00
Speaker
But at the same time, I don't think most people want to get fired either.
00:23:03
Speaker
So what would that look like?
00:23:05
Speaker
That's a great question.
00:23:06
Speaker
You know, the thing about activism, right, is, you know, we all occupy different spaces and different positionalities.
00:23:12
Speaker
And so our activism is going to look different.
00:23:14
Speaker
You know, I get really leery of
00:23:16
Speaker
about like litmus tests for like, are you an activist or are you not, right?
00:23:20
Speaker
Because if I was an adjunct faculty member and a woman of color earlier in my career, my activism is going to look a hell of a lot different than it does where I'm a white male full professor with tenure and an administrative post, right?
00:23:33
Speaker
And so we have to be really cognizant about that, not only what we're expecting from ourselves, but what we're expecting from our colleagues too.
00:23:39
Speaker
And so for those of us who are in more secure positions, how do we lift up and protect the more vulnerable among us?
00:23:44
Speaker
How do we give institutional cover and maybe say the things or do the things out front that, you know, give some space for our other colleagues to be doing these too, but they don't have to be right at the barricades waving the flag with us because it's simply not safe for them to do so.
00:24:00
Speaker
So I think that's one big part of it is realizing, you know, your own positionality and
00:24:04
Speaker
what that brings and what you can offer other people and how that's going to shape like your front facing role in terms of your activism.
00:24:12
Speaker
Right.
00:24:13
Speaker
You know, because one thing about being a white male with a loud voice, for example, is, you know, things when I say things, it hits a little differently with white audiences.
00:24:23
Speaker
And while I've challenged some of the audiences that I'm with before,
00:24:26
Speaker
when I do a lot of work on things like equitable teaching, inclusive pedagogy, you know, I've stopped in the middle of the workshop that I'm doing where we put some pretty challenging, you know, almost confrontational things out there in terms of what the research shows us about the assumptions that we have about our students.
00:24:43
Speaker
And I'll ask the participants, all of whom are, you know, mostly or most of whom are white.
00:24:48
Speaker
I'll say, now, I want you to be really honest.
00:24:51
Speaker
You know, don't tell me, don't tell anybody else.
00:24:54
Speaker
But right now, if I was a black male,
00:24:56
Speaker
How would what I'm telling you be hitting different than it is?
00:25:00
Speaker
Right.
00:25:00
Speaker
And what does that mean about the all white spaces that we often that those of us who are white often find ourselves in?
00:25:06
Speaker
Because that's where a lot of that work needs to be done, too.
00:25:08
Speaker
So I can do that in a way that maybe others cannot.
00:25:11
Speaker
But there are things that I cannot do and should not do in terms of my own personal experience and positionality where I need to see that platform, where I need to see that space, where I need to not be taking up the oxygen and space and instead allow others to be able to do that.
00:25:26
Speaker
And then I support them and show solidarity with them.
00:25:29
Speaker
The other thing, too, is, you know, students and parents, I think, are our biggest potential allies in a lot of this
Teaching Equity and Addressing Racism
00:25:37
Speaker
work.
00:25:37
Speaker
You know, parents want their students to learn.
00:25:39
Speaker
Students want to learn.
00:25:40
Speaker
And what we need to be doing is conveying, you know, these are things that are better learning.
00:25:44
Speaker
This makes school better.
00:25:45
Speaker
You know, this gives your children a better opportunity, a more equitable opportunity.
00:25:51
Speaker
You know, we we are not in the business in my classroom of replicating the obstacles that your children are seeing elsewhere in society.
00:25:58
Speaker
But when I take those obstacles away, that makes it, you know, it's a new situation and one that's difficult for folks to process.
00:26:05
Speaker
Right.
00:26:05
Speaker
And so, you know, we need to be patient.
00:26:07
Speaker
We need to be collaborative.
00:26:08
Speaker
And I'm going to be transparent in terms of talking about why I'm doing what I'm doing.
00:26:14
Speaker
You know, I'm grounding that in, you know, I'm not just some touchy feely hippie.
00:26:18
Speaker
Let's all sit around and sing Kumbaya.
00:26:20
Speaker
But, you know, hey, I've got research and evidence that suggests that students are learning better because of X, Y and Z. So that's why I'm doing X, Y and Z. And here's my citations.
00:26:29
Speaker
Right.
00:26:29
Speaker
Like if people, you know, a lot of times I think that.
00:26:34
Speaker
that sort of language can go a long way in taking some of the sharper edges off of critique because all of a sudden it establishes a professionalism and a larger scheme instead of, you know, the sense that like, you know, this teacher's gone rogue or something like that.
00:26:49
Speaker
But that requires us to be current in our fields.
00:26:51
Speaker
And that requires us to be critically reflective practitioners of our own pedagogy.
00:26:56
Speaker
And that's a lot of work.
00:26:57
Speaker
I mean, there's no two ways about that.
00:26:59
Speaker
It is.
00:27:00
Speaker
I mean, I'm going back to our earlier conversation about, you know, the attacks on, you know, say critical race theory, because when you talk about as thinking and reflective practitioners, that's one of the tools that we're going to use to examine our own practice and, and part of the attacks on that being.
00:27:15
Speaker
you know, to bring that out of our toolbox of, of refractive practice, could sort of fracture us into all of these, like you said, hippies wanting to sing Kumbaya instead of connecting to that critical, that critical past.
00:27:27
Speaker
And then thinking about my own practice at the high school level too, and thinking about how I teach in a mostly white, wealthy, you know, middle-class suburb, just, just north of where you're at.
00:27:39
Speaker
I, when I think of equity and I think of the workshops that I've sat in at a national level beforehand, me and you and Chris, we don't look like the average teacher in America today, to your point.
00:27:50
Speaker
I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a black woman, you know, almost anywhere you go outside of the Midwest, somewhere else in the country.
00:27:58
Speaker
And it's, what's ironic is that those are the kinds of classrooms and those are the districts that are
00:28:04
Speaker
that are getting that equity teaching and that inclusion training.
00:28:08
Speaker
And it's the white spaces that I teach in that are really resistant to those ideas and are really upholding the status quo.
00:28:16
Speaker
And you frame a beginning part of that book around that 2017 Unite the Right rally.
00:28:21
Speaker
And it seems so long ago now, but just how harrowing and haunting those images were
00:28:28
Speaker
you bringing that dramatically into our role as
Impact of Structural Racism in Education
00:28:32
Speaker
educators.
00:28:32
Speaker
And I actually, like, I have a quote here because it's still something that haunts me.
00:28:36
Speaker
You challenge readers by saying, are these the ends we seek in higher education?
00:28:41
Speaker
To put it bluntly, is it possible for a learner to both successfully move through the academic and intellectual spaces of a college or university,
00:28:50
Speaker
And march in support of violent white nationalism.
00:28:53
Speaker
And if it's possible, should it be?
00:28:56
Speaker
So I think about those kids that I look out in my classroom every single day.
00:29:02
Speaker
And since I teach in those white suburbs, those are the target audience for
00:29:07
Speaker
those white nationalist recruiters, not the diverse communities.
00:29:11
Speaker
So I just, I wonder there then, what would be your hopes for an equitable education system that then centers on this social justice, but also attacks the problem at the source, which are these white suburban status quo communities?
00:29:29
Speaker
What does that look like?
00:29:31
Speaker
I'm living in that space.
00:29:32
Speaker
It feels so weird to talk about it.
00:29:34
Speaker
Well, and that's the thing, right?
00:29:35
Speaker
Like, you know, we are in those spaces and that shapes the educational spaces and teaching and learning spaces that we're in.
00:29:40
Speaker
Right.
00:29:40
Speaker
Because really what this is a problem of is, you know, it's become a cliche now, but it is white fragility, as Robin DiAngelo defined it specifically.
00:29:48
Speaker
Right.
00:29:48
Speaker
And it's white backlash.
00:29:49
Speaker
You know, the you're the real racist for having the temerity to talk about race.
00:29:54
Speaker
And to put it bluntly, that's a load of bullshit, right?
00:29:57
Speaker
That's an off ramp to a conversation that needs to happen.
00:29:59
Speaker
And so many times white folks get to take that off ramp because no one calls them on it.
00:30:04
Speaker
Because if we look at it, right?
00:30:06
Speaker
You know, the metaphor I use a lot is, you know, if you're talking about even if someone says, oh, well, you know, got to hear all sides and devil's advocate, you know, the devil doesn't need an advocate, first of all.
00:30:16
Speaker
But if you're going to sort of entertain these arguments about, well, why would white supremacists say that, you know, Western culture is inherently superior, blah, blah, blah.
00:30:23
Speaker
And it's like, look, you would not hire someone to teach your geography class whose first lesson was here is why the earth is flat.
00:30:31
Speaker
Right.
00:30:31
Speaker
Like you would not hire somebody in your chemistry department to teach labs where their first lab module is going to be here.
00:30:37
Speaker
We shall turn lead into gold.
00:30:39
Speaker
Right.
00:30:40
Speaker
You're not going to hire people who do that.
00:30:42
Speaker
You're not going to turn on the TV and watch the local weatherman say, I will tell you the weather next week by sacrificing this live goat and reading its entrails as they did in ancient Mesopotamia.
00:30:51
Speaker
Right.
00:30:52
Speaker
We're we would not take that seriously at all because we know that those things are not true.
00:30:58
Speaker
Right.
00:30:59
Speaker
Well, we know that there's no such thing as race as a biologically determined category and then all of the apparatus that goes with that.
00:31:05
Speaker
Yet we entertain that.
00:31:08
Speaker
You know, we know that race exists and race matters because it is a socially and historically constructed phenomenon, right?
00:31:13
Speaker
But we treat it, or I should say many white people treat it as a biological reality.
00:31:18
Speaker
And more importantly, race for them is something that other people have, you know, not themselves.
00:31:23
Speaker
And so until we push back against that in a systematic way, we're never going to be able to do that kind of work.
00:31:30
Speaker
Because the main thing that's standing in the way of racial equity work is white people.
00:31:35
Speaker
And there's a variety of reasons that's the case, ranging from sort of a benign ignorance, where that can be engaged in conversation, all the way to the Unite the Right marchers.
00:31:44
Speaker
But that one man that I talk about in that picture, he was a history major.
00:31:49
Speaker
As a historian, I'm thinking to myself, what is this person taking from their history curriculum that they are now deploying in service of white nationalism?
Interdependence to Combat Individualism and Racism
00:31:59
Speaker
Can you do that?
00:32:00
Speaker
Sure.
00:32:01
Speaker
Should it be possible?
00:32:02
Speaker
No.
00:32:03
Speaker
Right?
00:32:03
Speaker
And so...
00:32:05
Speaker
we as instructors or, you know, me as someone who cares about my discipline of history, to me, that's, you know, an all red flags, waving lights going off warning sign that this is where we are.
00:32:15
Speaker
And so the challenge before us then, you know, in particular as white educators is how do we start untying those knots that whiteness has tied so tight?
00:32:23
Speaker
And how do we get people to understand that, you know, there is a way that we can talk about race and racism and we have to understand that,
00:32:33
Speaker
You know, when we talk about arguments that come out of a white supremacist framework, intellectual that have been with us for decades and even centuries, that, you know, objectively speaking, those are the same things as the whole flat earth stuff.
00:32:47
Speaker
That's how seriously we should be taking it.
00:32:49
Speaker
But until we get at that and until we put, you know, are able to get people to see that in that stark terms, you know, we're still practicing, you know, what Barbara and Karen Fields called racecraft, right?
00:32:59
Speaker
As opposed to witchcraft, you know, superstitious assumptions, but that give order and meaning to our world.
00:33:06
Speaker
And that's where we're at, you know, and that's, you know, we've been there, but I think the last four years have shown us just how stuck we are as white Americans in that place.
00:33:15
Speaker
And that's where the work is right now.
00:33:16
Speaker
I worry all the time that that it's that exact problem.
00:33:20
Speaker
Just looking out at the white faces, staring back at me 10 through 12, you know, that's when those things really start.
00:33:26
Speaker
That's when those connections get made for kids and they get dragged into dark places.
00:33:31
Speaker
of the internet.
00:33:33
Speaker
And it's that ironic sort of memer part of it that then takes a really dark turn.
00:33:39
Speaker
And I've seen a lot of students who have come back away from that in really surprising ways, but probably not without a lot of pushback too.
00:33:47
Speaker
So it's a thing that just, I think it's got to fuel that work is, it doesn't matter what a test score
Superficial Solutions vs. Structural Change
00:33:54
Speaker
says for a student.
00:33:54
Speaker
It doesn't matter what
00:33:56
Speaker
you know what their grade might be or what the assessment score says if if that student could see themselves identifying with the unite the right marchers then we're not we're not doing our jobs and that's that's really got to be the framing at the heart of it well and so how do we get students to see beyond their own immediate self-interest right because that's so you know we go back to the idea of you know how is neoliberal market logic ordering so much of our society because it's baked into the cake like
00:34:22
Speaker
That's the water in which we're swimming.
00:34:24
Speaker
Everything is so individualistic and atomized that how do we get students to realize that they are fundamentally interconnected and dependent, interdependent upon one another?
00:34:33
Speaker
And so some of that, I think, comes, you know, as historians, we can talk about, you know, what stories do students have about the people around them?
00:34:40
Speaker
so that they can see classmates who are different from them as actual people, as full and complicated human beings, as opposed to just a category, an impersonal faceless category.
00:34:50
Speaker
Because then when you get into that place, that's where you can get into, you know, the alt-right and white nationalists, because when people are not people, but something else, you know, a homogenous category that is something different than you, when you've othered them sufficiently, you know,
00:35:04
Speaker
That's when you're in fertile ground to be into those kind of circles.
00:35:07
Speaker
And so how do we get our students out of that and realize that, you know, there are these connections, there are these things that are important to me.
00:35:14
Speaker
The basis of education should be getting students, getting learners, getting ourselves, because this is always a process of becoming right.
00:35:22
Speaker
We're never fully there.
00:35:24
Speaker
But to get us to a place where we realize that we are in interdependence with one another.
00:35:29
Speaker
in different ways and in different degrees and with different intensities, because we are a complicated and complex society, but no one is in a vacuum and no one is only affected by solely their own actions, right?
00:35:43
Speaker
We need to talk about systems.
00:35:44
Speaker
We need to talk about structures.
00:35:45
Speaker
And again, the barrier there is that people start to feel guilty.
00:35:48
Speaker
And when you talk about, oh, there's structural racism, oh, you're calling me a racist?
00:35:51
Speaker
It's like, no, not necessarily, but you are in a structure that is.
00:35:55
Speaker
And so what are we going to do about that, right?
00:35:57
Speaker
And, you know, that's,
00:35:59
Speaker
If we're not able to get students to a place where they're able to see beyond their own self-interest and get over what one scholar called their possessive investment and whiteness for our white students, right?
00:36:11
Speaker
Then we're just going to keep struggling because these problems that we have are going to keep reproducing themselves into the next generation.
00:36:18
Speaker
And you talk about that idea of structures.
00:36:19
Speaker
I think that's so valid to kind of connect the dots here between everything we were talking about, in addition to obviously like decolonizing the curriculum and ensuring that students are getting a true full perspective view of every subject, not just history, but also math, science, etc.
00:36:35
Speaker
But then also tying it back to Ferre, ensuring that our classrooms are cooperative and students have a space to work with each other and teachers are there alongside them and not just telling them everything that they're going to do every single step of the way.
00:36:49
Speaker
Because of course, if you never learn how to stand up
00:36:51
Speaker
for yourself, how to question authority, how to work with other people, then it's no wonder that when you become a high schooler and people start telling you things that you're just not thinking about it, you're just listening to what someone tells you to do, you're just following orders, right?
00:37:05
Speaker
And that is the situation that we find many of our classrooms in.
00:37:09
Speaker
I am curious about the other side of things.
00:37:12
Speaker
There is obviously a extreme issue with just like being completely against critical race theory, just completely rejection of the notion.
00:37:20
Speaker
And there's also
00:37:22
Speaker
in my opinion, a greater number of people that are in like the toxic positivity phase of this, where it's, we're talking about social justice right now, but don't worry, Biden's coming into office and that's it.
00:37:33
Speaker
That'll be the end of the conversation.
00:37:35
Speaker
Just be kind to be nice to each other and racism will miraculously be solved.
00:37:39
Speaker
How do we work with other educators to get them out of this, I guess, idea that it doesn't have to be structural, that I can just work on individual level?
Honesty in Education for Real Change
00:37:50
Speaker
So I would two thoughts come to mind when you ask that question, which is an excellent question.
00:37:54
Speaker
And I think first, I think, you know, we can push back and say, yeah, how did that work out after 2008, 2009?
00:38:00
Speaker
Because that was supposedly when we got our post racial president and thus our ticket to a post racial society.
00:38:07
Speaker
Right.
00:38:07
Speaker
And of course, what we saw was the backlash even fiercer.
00:38:11
Speaker
So I think, you know, that was not that long ago.
00:38:13
Speaker
But I think, you know, the desire to get back to normal, quote unquote, is a really seductive one.
00:38:18
Speaker
Like we all kind of want that, right?
00:38:20
Speaker
Everybody hates teaching and learning online.
00:38:21
Speaker
COVID sucks.
00:38:22
Speaker
Like we're in this giant whirlwind, this vortex of suck right now.
00:38:27
Speaker
But, you know, we had to avoid this seduction of back to normal because what that normal was, was unsustainable and inequitable for so many of us and for our students, right?
00:38:40
Speaker
And so I think, you know, the response I would have too is, well, I've still got students who are running into X, Y, and Z. Like to me, student stories are the most powerful antidote to this sort of benign liberal misconception that we can fix things individually, right?
00:38:54
Speaker
Because it doesn't matter how much I'm doing in my classroom.
00:38:57
Speaker
If my students are walking right out into the, you know, out of the school bubble back into society and experiencing something completely different,
00:39:06
Speaker
then at best, what I'm doing is providing an alternative space, not a solution.
00:39:11
Speaker
And, you know, and the thing that unites all of it is we do care about our students, right?
00:39:15
Speaker
We want our students to do well and to succeed.
00:39:17
Speaker
And I think overcoming this sort of benign, but still very insidious kind of, you know, is to say, you know, is to get back focused on the student experience and our student stories.
00:39:29
Speaker
Because, you know,
00:39:31
Speaker
that it's going to be very evident that there is still so much work to do when we look at what is, you know, where our students are coming from when they come into our teaching and learning spaces.
00:39:39
Speaker
And so modeling that type of awareness for our colleagues and encouraging them to be that aware and sensitive to what the larger structural things are that are happening, because structures don't change overnight, right?
00:39:52
Speaker
You know, we may have a new landlord, but the house still sucks.
00:39:56
Speaker
So, you know, what are we going to do about that, right?
00:39:58
Speaker
It's going to take more than a new coat of paint.
00:40:00
Speaker
So encouraging those conversations that are focusing on our students' stories outside maybe of what's happening in classrooms to realize that it's more than just, you know, culturally responsive teaching in sixth period.
00:40:12
Speaker
I mean, that's important.
00:40:13
Speaker
I don't want to minimize that.
00:40:14
Speaker
But in and of itself, it's insufficient.
00:40:17
Speaker
I mean, I think you're hitting the nail on the head, Kevin.
00:40:19
Speaker
I mean, I pretty much can't add anything to that.
00:40:22
Speaker
That was a, what do they call that?
00:40:24
Speaker
A hammer drop.
00:40:25
Speaker
It was really well done.
00:40:27
Speaker
Let's build into then the final question, which is knowing what we know now in the month since the book's release in February, 2020, we have the ongoing pandemic.
00:40:36
Speaker
We have the police murder of George Floyd.
00:40:37
Speaker
We have another summer of protests.
00:40:40
Speaker
And of course we have government forces.
00:40:41
Speaker
We have media sources who are just fanning the flames and it's,
00:40:45
Speaker
it's been rough it's been a rough year and we're really seeing an amplification of trauma that's existed for arguably since the united states was founded so what is something that you've addressed in the book in radical hope that you think has changed the most or that you would add as an addendum like what's the call to action since the book's publishing so i've thought about this when you when you suggested you know before we got together that you might be asking this um
00:41:11
Speaker
And I think what I would be more explicit about in the book, and I think I touch on it, but I think I would be hammering the point a lot more, is that the only pathways to hope in terms of fulfilling a better vision of the future is an unflinching honesty about where we are.
Honest Dialogue and Actionable Change
00:41:30
Speaker
And so I think I imply that a lot.
00:41:33
Speaker
I think I do say it a little bit in the book.
00:41:35
Speaker
But I think, you know, we, what COVID has done has laid bare again, the raw festering wounds that our society has.
00:41:43
Speaker
And we can't hide anymore.
00:41:46
Speaker
We have to reckon with these things.
00:41:49
Speaker
And as tempting as it is, you know, again, back to this idea of complacency or like, oh, I'll fix my classroom and that'll make racism go away.
00:41:55
Speaker
Like, you know, those are very seductive things because they speak to a basic need that we all have.
00:42:01
Speaker
But if we are not honest, you know, again,
00:42:04
Speaker
And being honest about where we are
00:42:07
Speaker
has been a problem for American society as long as there's been American society, which is why we see periods of the expansion of justice and rights rolled back so fiercely and violently, right?
00:42:18
Speaker
So we need to have, you know, hope is a combination of agency and pathways, right?
00:42:22
Speaker
I have to see my own role in being able to bring about a better set of conditions, but I also have to know what pathways are available to me to do that, right?
00:42:30
Speaker
And without agency and pathways, and this is true for our students too,
00:42:34
Speaker
You know, if you want to, you know, students want to be able to have hope and a better outcome for themselves, they have to be agents, they have to see their own agency, but they also have to know the pathways that are available for them to pursue in order to bring that vision about.
00:42:47
Speaker
And so we don't have agency and we don't have pathways if we're not honest about where we are now.
00:42:54
Speaker
You know, it's like trying to do a road trip on a map that doesn't get accurate until we're halfway to where we are.
00:43:00
Speaker
which is a very tortured metaphor, but it's the best one I got right now.
00:43:04
Speaker
Right.
00:43:04
Speaker
Like we have to know where we are in order to get to where we're going.
00:43:07
Speaker
And it sounds like kind of a truism, but so many times it's easy just to, you know, again, say, oh, we'll get back to normal.
00:43:13
Speaker
As soon as I'm done teaching online, like things will be back to the way they were.
00:43:17
Speaker
Or now that Joe Biden's going to be president, things are going to be better.
00:43:19
Speaker
And that, you know, sure, things probably will be better, but better is relative.
00:43:23
Speaker
Right.
00:43:23
Speaker
Like Malcolm X said, you know, if the knife is nine inches in my back and you pull it out six inches and call it progress, that's not necessarily, you know, the end point of what we're trying to do here.
00:43:32
Speaker
And I think that's what what I would really emphasize is, you know, more than ever, you know, sitting in this very uncomfortable, very sharp edged place of unflinching honesty about where we are.
00:43:46
Speaker
in order to be able to articulate the kind of practice we need to get to where we want to go.
00:43:52
Speaker
I don't think, I think it's always been essential, but I don't think that there's anything more essential than that right now.
Hope for Reform through Activism and Collaboration
00:43:59
Speaker
Exactly.
00:43:59
Speaker
I mean, Kevin, your words are powerful.
00:44:02
Speaker
The book is fantastic.
00:44:04
Speaker
And honestly, it might sound like kind of a pun, I guess, but I am hopeful for what's coming up in 2021.
00:44:10
Speaker
I'm hoping that teachers take advantage of the situation.
00:44:13
Speaker
And honestly, that students might lead it, that they might be the ones that demand that change and almost force teachers into doing better because we can all do so.
00:44:21
Speaker
So thanks again for coming on the podcast, man.
00:44:23
Speaker
It's been great.
00:44:24
Speaker
It's been a great conversation.
00:44:25
Speaker
Well, thanks for having me.
00:44:26
Speaker
It's a real honor to be here with you all.
00:44:28
Speaker
And I love the work you do.
00:44:29
Speaker
I'm a big fan.
00:44:30
Speaker
So getting to share the space this afternoon has been awesome.
00:44:37
Speaker
Thank you again for listening to the Human Restoration Project podcast.
00:44:40
Speaker
I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to push the progressive envelope of education.
00:44:44
Speaker
You can learn more about our cause, support us, and stay tuned to this podcast and other updates on our website at humanrestorationproject.org.