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Roma Education: Emma Sisson's Mission From Tennessee to Transylvania
10 Plays1 year ago
The story my guest will tell today is of her experience growing up and teaching in Memphis, Tennessee before finding a purpose-driven career change in - I am not joking - the heart of Transylvania. Emma Sisson is the School Director of The Mission School in Sighisoara, Romania.
The work of The Mission, Romania is deeply rooted in the local community in Sighisoara and, as you’ll hear Emma describe it, homebase is an 80,000 sq ft abandoned Soviet textile mill where staff live, work, house a K-3 school, and provide family wrap-around services to Romani children and families.
Romani, or Roma, are a historically enslaved and oppressed underclass in Europe, in Romania in particular, where they are often slandered as a lazy, thieving, “gypsy” underclass. In 2022 the European Union reported that 80% of Roma live in poverty, compared to the 17% EU average. 1 in 5 live in households with no running water. 1 in 3 have no indoor toilet. And fewer than half of Roma children attend early childhood education. The scathing report prompted the EU director of Fundamental Human Rights to ask, “Why do Roma across Europe still face shocking levels of deprivation, marginalization, and discrimination?”
Overcoming structural discrimination and prejudice against Roma people is a key part of The Mission’s mission. The Mission School also works to preserve Roma values and language in the context of education, expressed as a preference for family apprenticeships, experiential hands-on learning, and a rich oral tradition, that have historically put them at odds with the priorities of institutional school-based literacies.
On the other side of the Atlantic, The Mission international is currently recovering from a devastating fire that destroyed their entire campus headquarters in Tijuana, Mexico that served over 500 at-risk youth, so if you’d like to learn more and donate to help support Emma’s work in Romania and rebuild the Tijuana campus, you can do that at themissioninc - that’s the mission eye-enn-see - dot org
https://www.themissioninc.org/
You can reach Emma @ emma.barbara.sisson@gmail.com
Recommended
Transcript
Vision into Reality
00:00:06
Speaker
2022 was a system reboot.
00:00:09
Speaker
2023 broke the doom loop.
00:00:11
Speaker
This year is all about turning vision into reality.
Reimagining Education
00:00:15
Speaker
Conference to Restore Humanity 2024 is an invitation for K-12 and college educators to build your joyful, reimagined classroom.
00:00:25
Speaker
Our conference is designed around the accessibility and sustainability of virtual learning, while engaging participants in an environment that models the same progressive pedagogy we value with students.
Innovative Conference Format
00:00:37
Speaker
Instead of long Zoom presentations with a brief Q&A, our flipped keynotes let the learning community listen and learn on their own time, then engage in a one-hour Q&A with our speakers.
Keynote Highlights
00:00:49
Speaker
Dr. Mary Helen Immordino Yang makes the neurobiological case for progressive education rooted in her groundbreaking work in affective neuroscience.
00:01:00
Speaker
Dr. Carla Shalabi demonstrates the power of education as the practice of freedom, honoring young people's rights to full human being.
00:01:09
Speaker
Dr. Sausen Jaber elevates the voices of Arab and Muslim students as an advocate for global equity and justice.
00:01:17
Speaker
And Orchard View School's Innovative Learning Center showcases healthy, sustainable community learning spaces for teenagers and adult learners alike.
Interactive Learning Opportunities
00:01:26
Speaker
Beyond our flipped keynotes, participants will be invited to join week-long learning journeys.
00:01:32
Speaker
Join Trevor Elio on a journey to learn interdisciplinary inquiry-based methods to equip students as knowledge producers, communicating with zines, podcasts, and more.
00:01:43
Speaker
and understand the ripple effects of modern imperialism with a focus on Palestinian resilience and classroom tools for fostering global solidarity in our second workshop led by Abir Ramadan Shanawi.
Conference Logistics
00:01:57
Speaker
We're also featuring virtual school tours so you can see progressive practice in action at the Nova Lab, Olintangi STEM Academy, Community Lab School, and more.
00:02:07
Speaker
The mission of reshaping education systems
00:02:10
Speaker
of turning vision into reality is vital for a sustainable and just future.
00:02:16
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Conference to Restore Humanity runs July 22nd through the 25th, and as of recording, early bird tickets are still available.
00:02:24
Speaker
It's $150 for four days with discounts available, group rates, and parity pricing.
00:02:30
Speaker
Plus, we'll award certificates for teacher training and continuing education credits.
00:02:35
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See our website, humanrestorationproject.org, for more information.
00:02:39
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And let's restore humanity together.
00:02:57
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 149 of the Human Restoration Project podcast.
00:03:02
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My name is Nick Covington.
00:03:03
Speaker
Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that this episode is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Daniel Holman, Kevin Gannon, and Sybil Preet.
00:03:12
Speaker
You can learn more about Human Restoration Project on our website, humanrestorationproject.org, and connect with us everywhere on social media.
Emma Sisson's Journey
00:03:22
Speaker
The story my guest tells today is of her experience growing up and teaching in Memphis, Tennessee, before finding a purpose-driven career change in, and I'm not joking, the heart of Transylvania.
00:03:35
Speaker
Emma Sisson is the school director of the Mission School in Sigishwara, Romania.
00:03:40
Speaker
The work of the Mission Romania is deeply rooted in the local community in Sigishwara.
00:03:45
Speaker
And as you'll hear Emma describe it, Homebase is an 80,000 square foot abandoned Soviet textile mill where staff live, work, house a K-3 school, and provide family wraparound services to Romani children and families.
Challenges Facing Roma Communities
00:04:01
Speaker
The Romani people, or Roma, are a historically enslaved and oppressed underclass in Europe, in Romania in particular, where they are often slandered as a lazy, thieving, gypsy underclass.
00:04:13
Speaker
In 2022, the European Union reported that 80% of Roma live in poverty, compared to the 17% EU average.
00:04:21
Speaker
One in five live in households with no running water, one in three have no indoor toilet, and fewer than half of Roma children attend early childhood education.
00:04:32
Speaker
The scathing report prompted the EU Director of Fundamental Human Rights to ask, why do Roma across Europe still face shocking levels of deprivation, marginalization, and discrimination?
00:04:44
Speaker
Overcoming structural discrimination and prejudice against Roma people is a key part of the mission's mission.
00:04:51
Speaker
The mission school also works to preserve Roma values and language in the context of education, expressed as a preference for family apprenticeships, experiential hands-on learning, and a rich oral tradition, things that have historically put them at odds with the priorities of institutional school-based literacies.
Mission International's Recovery
00:05:10
Speaker
And on the other side of the Atlantic, the Mission International is currently recovering from a devastating fire that destroyed their entire campus in Tijuana, Mexico, which served over 500 at-risk youth.
Emma's Teaching Passion
00:05:23
Speaker
So if you'd like to learn more and donate to help support Emma's work in Romania and rebuild the Tijuana campus, you can do that at themissioninc.org.
00:05:32
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Thanks for listening.
00:05:37
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Thanks so much for joining me today.
00:05:39
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Emma Sisson, how are you doing?
00:05:41
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I am doing well.
00:05:42
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I'm really, really excited to be here and just talk about...
Educational Influences
00:05:47
Speaker
I think in another world within the world of education, like listening to y'all's podcasts, I just always come away with a sense of like so many brilliant people are doing so many amazing things.
00:06:00
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And so hopefully this gets to add like, hey, in rural Transylvania, in Eastern Europe, we are also fighting for like equity and justice and progressive education.
00:06:10
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Got to throw in the plug for rural Transylvania.
00:06:12
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It's, you know,
00:06:16
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You know, your journey here is so before we even get started with that work, I think that was a great teaser for what the work is.
00:06:25
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But I don't know.
00:06:25
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Let's just talk about yourself and kind of what it is that you do, how you got to this position.
00:06:31
Speaker
Who are your personal and professional influences or models that you that you look for?
00:06:38
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Yes.
00:06:38
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So I think I was the kid born to be a teacher.
Diverse Teaching Experiences
00:06:43
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Like I remember asking my mom for one of the really old timey projectors, but like, you know, where you write on the plastic sheet for like birthday when I was in third grade, because I wanted to be able to teach the neighbors.
00:06:55
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I was like, this can be a Christmas present, right?
00:06:59
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I'm only eight.
00:07:00
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I need this.
00:07:01
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And a pack of like Visa V markers, you know, that's where you could, you know, print it all.
00:07:05
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I wanted, I had all the neighborhood kids in the garage during the summer.
00:07:10
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So always loved school and learning and reading.
00:07:15
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My mom's a librarian, you know, babysat in high school.
00:07:20
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So like loved being with kids.
00:07:23
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And so I,
00:07:24
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Got to Dartmouth College in 2013, where I did my undergrad and was like, maybe I should do something else.
00:07:30
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I could be a doctor or a computational biologist and work with diseases or, you know, because you get to college and suddenly the whole world is open to you is what it feels like.
00:07:41
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But by my
Belief in Public Education
00:07:42
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freshman spring, I took an education class called The Reading Brain, which was taught by the brilliant professor Donna Koch.
00:07:50
Speaker
And it's all about how we craft a reading brain.
00:07:53
Speaker
So it's the neuroscience, the psychology, it's actually looking at like what is happening in your brain as you learn to read, because our brains are not designed for reading.
00:08:02
Speaker
Like we naturally have evolved for language, the human brain has not naturally evolved for reading.
00:08:08
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And so you got to learn about how we like we pull in all different places and resources in our brain in order to read.
00:08:15
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And it was just the coolest thing in the world to be like, oh, my gosh, teaching someone how to read is one of the most complex things you can do.
00:08:24
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And so the the weight of the work of a teacher, I think it gave some credibility because I came from the South where I think there's a stereotype that.
00:08:35
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probably unfair of like, oh, you go to teach elementary school because you really just want a job that you can do until you get married, especially as a woman.
00:08:43
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Like, you know, it's the easy, you just easy four years, easiest degree you can get.
00:08:50
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And then you'll, you know, teach for a couple of years until you can be a stay at home mom.
00:08:53
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And so it's like, no, I don't want that.
00:08:55
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I wanted something different.
00:08:56
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I wanted the challenge.
00:08:58
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I wanted to be able to bring all parts of myself to whatever the work I did.
00:09:02
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And so I think that class was the first where I was like, oh, I can be philosophical and I can pull from neuroscience and psychology and I can be creative and think about the public policy side of things.
00:09:14
Speaker
And like it showed me, oh, wait, all of the challenge and complexity that we, you know, more stereotypically attribute to
00:09:22
Speaker
law or medicine or stereotypically more successful fields exist in education.
Seeking Impactful Roles
00:09:30
Speaker
And so then from there, just kind of was like, okay, no, education is what I want to do.
00:09:38
Speaker
I was able to spend my quarter of my sophomore year student teaching at a charter school in North Memphis, which that was fascinating where I kind of ended up in a classroom like a month in because a teacher got fired for hitting a child and they needed an adult.
00:09:55
Speaker
And like three teachers had already quit over break, like very much the burnout problematic nature of charter schools, like got to see that on the ground.
00:10:03
Speaker
Did they throw you in that?
00:10:05
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And you were just like, now you're the full time teacher, Emma.
00:10:07
Speaker
Kind of, because it was a school where they use such like scripted curriculum and stuff.
00:10:12
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Like they just would give me the stuff and I would just, I was, you know, the substitute teacher, but it was me, you know, 19 year old me like, okay, I guess.
00:10:22
Speaker
And then my junior year got to do a quarter working at an alternative high school in New Hampshire.
00:10:28
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So rural New Hampshire, which was a really cool insight into like, just if you compare like North Memphis, my students were predominantly black and Latinx to then rural New Hampshire students were predominantly white, but very poor.
00:10:42
Speaker
Most of them were heroin users or children of heroin users or because it was an alternative school.
00:10:48
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been like kicked out of school in the heart of the opioid crisis in a lot of ways, like New Hampshire and Vermont being like second to Ohio in the areas where like the opioid crisis has decimated communities.
00:11:02
Speaker
And so I originally was just going to get certified at Dartmouth.
00:11:07
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But as we know, there's a huge problem with the value of educators and education and higher education.
00:11:14
Speaker
And so my senior year, Dartmouth got rid of that program.
00:11:18
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And so I was kind of left in this like, man, I just want to teach in public school.
Transition to Romania
00:11:23
Speaker
Because one of the things that like when I was reading y'all's website and made me just like want to reach out was the commitment to the value of public education as like a core right that every child should have a chance to learn.
00:11:41
Speaker
in public schools being the way we can provide that.
00:11:43
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I was listening to y'all's episode with Dr. Emma McMain and how it was like,
00:11:49
Speaker
There's so many issues.
00:11:50
Speaker
Like sometimes I can get to that.
00:11:52
Speaker
I want to burn it down as well.
00:11:54
Speaker
Like all we're doing, you know, I remember reading Althusserl, like his social reprodu... What did he talk about?
00:12:01
Speaker
Like how we reproduce social situations and that schools, the social apparatus and how like schools are one way society reproduces itself.
00:12:10
Speaker
And so like all we're doing is reproducing white, you know, supremacy and colonial hegemony and...
00:12:19
Speaker
Burn it down.
00:12:20
Speaker
And then it's like, okay, what would we lose if we actually just burned it down?
00:12:23
Speaker
Because what would come in its place?
00:12:26
Speaker
And the reality is then you'd have these private schools or private companies running quote unquote, you know, scare quote, public schools that are really just for money and for profit.
00:12:37
Speaker
And so...
00:12:38
Speaker
There's definitely a tension in there, right?
00:12:41
Speaker
Like as progressive educators, like living with the tension of like, hey, we value this public education and realize at the same time how historically and in the present, how it has been and is used to uphold, you know, these hierarchies, all of these isms and everything else, you know?
00:12:59
Speaker
Exactly.
00:13:00
Speaker
Yeah, what do we do about that?
00:13:02
Speaker
And I think I have like gone through...
00:13:06
Speaker
I just like different seasons where sometimes it's of like processing that and like, where, how am I an actor in that?
00:13:14
Speaker
Right.
00:13:14
Speaker
I think like, cause I am a historical actor in that I'm a present actor.
00:13:18
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:13:19
Speaker
I'm like a young white woman raised by like middle-class family that access to like, I have tremendous privilege.
00:13:26
Speaker
And then I got to go to school like Dartmouth, which adds on to that privilege.
00:13:29
Speaker
And so there's that element of like harm comes with me.
00:13:34
Speaker
Right.
00:13:34
Speaker
Like the story surrounding my privilege can be harmful.
00:13:37
Speaker
But then the other side of like to use as an excuse to then totally separate myself from trying to find any kind of solution.
00:13:46
Speaker
If I'm going to weigh those harms where I have come to in my career is to step away, I think would be more potentially more harmful.
00:13:55
Speaker
Well, as an actor inside that institution, you can be a force to help bend it towards, you know, a more just way of being and existing than might otherwise be captured.
00:14:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:07
Speaker
Let me go work on Wall Street then.
00:14:08
Speaker
Let me just go make my money and live my happy life.
00:14:11
Speaker
Like maintaining the status quo is maybe a better way to put it.
00:14:14
Speaker
The harm that if we're not trying to do something, the harm of maintaining the status quo.
00:14:20
Speaker
And so I wanted to teach public school.
00:14:23
Speaker
I
00:14:23
Speaker
I knew that my senior year of college, I just wanted to get certified so I could be a part of the public education system.
00:14:31
Speaker
And so taught in Memphis for five years total, including that master's year in first grade for my
Holistic Education Approach
00:14:38
Speaker
student teaching year and then kindergarten, fifth grade, and then ended back in kindergarten.
00:14:43
Speaker
And honestly, there's something about like early childhood, that kindergarten that is...
00:14:47
Speaker
just my absolute favorite.
00:14:49
Speaker
So I loved it.
00:14:51
Speaker
And it ultimately was really hard to say goodbye.
00:14:55
Speaker
But when I applied to this job in Romania, it was in the middle of, I don't know, I would be like fascinated if any of your listeners like have heard of the things happening in Memphis, but this is my like public service announcement to pay attention to what's happening in your school boards, pay attention to the curriculum that like your districts are choosing.
00:15:17
Speaker
Because in Memphis, they implemented by like the last year I left, which would have been like the 2021-2022 school year.
00:15:29
Speaker
Dr. Dickey is educational epiphanies is his company.
00:15:35
Speaker
And so they like bought into his curriculum, which is the idea of if you teach all of the common core standards in order.
00:15:44
Speaker
And the only like uniting factor for all the different texts or subjects you teach is the order of the standards.
00:15:52
Speaker
That's it.
00:15:53
Speaker
There's no cohesive, like all the research we have on knowledge building, all of even just like the human piece of like school should be fun and cohesive.
00:16:04
Speaker
And there should be a sense of like, we're working towards something bigger and meaningful.
00:16:11
Speaker
Right.
00:16:12
Speaker
I know there's lots of different ways of structuring how we like build towards knowledge, but like there should be a bigger goal.
00:16:18
Speaker
That's not just, we're going to ask and answer questions for four weeks.
00:16:22
Speaker
But what they did is they took, we did the wonders curriculum, but they like bastardized the wonders curriculum to where they would do one week from somewhere random and wonders and
00:16:36
Speaker
Which is Wonders is McGraw Hill, maybe.
00:16:39
Speaker
I actually don't know the company behind the Wonders reading.
00:16:42
Speaker
McGraw Hill.
00:16:44
Speaker
And then they would do a week using iReady reading and iReady math, which I know has decent research as an intervention program.
00:16:53
Speaker
I was not at the time was not able to find any research.
00:16:56
Speaker
I'm using it as like the core classroom curriculum.
00:16:59
Speaker
Um, yeah.
00:17:02
Speaker
Aligning to that standard.
00:17:03
Speaker
So it would be RKI1.
00:17:05
Speaker
Or, you know, R, that's not, it's RI1, which is reading informational text one, I guess.
00:17:15
Speaker
And then they would just like do that standard for three weeks, going back and forth between the two curriculum, random texts.
00:17:22
Speaker
And from like
Critique of Standardized Education
00:17:23
Speaker
my knowledge, they did that all the way up to 12th grade where like, except for the picture books you got in kindergarten and first grade, you could have a kid go through without ever getting to read a whole chapter book because they would read the wonders excerpt from the Watsons go to Birmingham, but they never got to read the whole book.
00:17:43
Speaker
So there's no knowledge, like there's no knowledge building.
00:17:46
Speaker
There's no access to like literature is this,
00:17:50
Speaker
gateway, like vehicle for understanding the world beyond your own circumstances and your own perspectives.
00:17:56
Speaker
And like, it just infuriated me.
00:18:00
Speaker
You seem to be ahead of that curve because I think now what I think we're seeing more and more building criticism of is exactly that, is how can these kids get through their K-12 experience and maybe only have read one whole book and have their experience with language and literature just be through testable excerpts about common core curricular ideas, right?
00:18:23
Speaker
Instead of other non-testable factors.
00:18:26
Speaker
I don't know.
00:18:27
Speaker
It's horrific.
00:18:30
Speaker
Like I just, it's like they took the ACT and said, we're actually just going to turn the ACT into a curriculum.
00:18:38
Speaker
Yes, that is going to be your experience of school.
00:18:40
Speaker
It's just ACT prep.
00:18:43
Speaker
It is interesting.
00:18:43
Speaker
I'll add just on the iReady front, you know, we did a ton of focus groups with schools and school districts all around Ohio.
00:18:51
Speaker
And that was one of the biggest criticisms that we heard from students was this over-reliance on iReady as like their sole experience with English curriculum.
00:19:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:01
Speaker
And they hate it.
00:19:03
Speaker
They perceive it as isolating.
00:19:04
Speaker
They're punished for not doing it or doing well on it.
00:19:08
Speaker
And they don't get any other interaction like literature and English is not a space to explore ideas and themes and connect with identities and other perspectives.
00:19:18
Speaker
It's all just about like raising some kind of test scores or kind of getting passing through a curriculum to kind of get to the next stage.
Literature and Critical Thinking
00:19:26
Speaker
Which in some ways makes sense.
00:19:29
Speaker
Like I go back to James Baldwin and talk to teachers where he talks about how like I'll actually read this quote is.
00:19:40
Speaker
So the paradox of education is precisely this, that is one begins to become conscious.
00:19:45
Speaker
One begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.
00:19:49
Speaker
And then he goes on to say, but no society is really anxious to have that kind of person around.
00:19:54
Speaker
So you're like, who knows whether this is conscious or not?
00:19:56
Speaker
You know, can't make that claim, even if I would want to.
00:20:01
Speaker
But even if it's subconscious, what it's still doing is saying we don't want students who can think.
00:20:05
Speaker
We don't want students who have begun to think through their own value systems, to think through their own prejudices, to think through like, you know, their talents and desires and dreams and capabilities.
00:20:18
Speaker
We don't want that because they're going to start to question all these systems we've put in place and they're going to fight back.
00:20:26
Speaker
And the system doesn't want that.
00:20:27
Speaker
And so you're like, yeah, you're not going to think that academia or, you know, other places in the world have a place for you if you've never been allowed to dream, if you've never been allowed to get lost in beautiful literature.
00:20:43
Speaker
Like I remember reading, um,
00:20:45
Speaker
The Invisible Man, my senior year of high school and just like rereading the first couple pages, having never read like prose that was so beautiful.
00:20:58
Speaker
Like just in that moment of like, this is what like a book can do.
00:21:04
Speaker
Like they can describe the world in such a
00:21:10
Speaker
vivid imagery.
00:21:11
Speaker
Like I remember specifically just being like, he's describing like walking through a college campus on a warm night.
00:21:16
Speaker
And you're like, I feel like I'm there.
00:21:20
Speaker
And then the stark with like all the horrors and the rest of the book, that contrast.
00:21:23
Speaker
And you're like, kids don't get that anymore in public schools.
00:21:27
Speaker
A lot of the time.
00:21:28
Speaker
Yeah, they think the purpose of reading is to mine it for all of the potential questions adults may ask you about it in the future, not to make meaning of it or to, again, craft an identity around it or stretch themselves in a direction that might not be available to them otherwise.
00:21:48
Speaker
To commune, right?
00:21:50
Speaker
To have communion with other people is kind of the goal.
00:21:54
Speaker
Now, it's interesting, Emma, because I'm noticing a common theme here, right?
00:21:56
Speaker
Your...
00:21:57
Speaker
your interest in education starting with that reading course that you took at Dartmouth.
00:22:03
Speaker
And now here we are talking about the joys of literature and everywhere else in between, right?
00:22:07
Speaker
Up in Dartmouth, coming back to Memphis.
00:22:10
Speaker
And we're 20 minutes into this conversation and we haven't yet mentioned where you are joining us
Community Engagement in Romania
00:22:17
Speaker
from.
00:22:17
Speaker
And kind of...
00:22:19
Speaker
Which is the ironic part.
00:22:22
Speaker
For the listeners, the last time I talked with Emma, she was in Mexico and she's currently joining us from Romania because this is where she does her work now from Memphis to New Hampshire and to Romania, Mexico.
00:22:38
Speaker
What are you doing in Romania?
00:22:40
Speaker
How did you get there?
00:22:41
Speaker
And what is the work that you do as the school director for this program you run?
00:22:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:46
Speaker
So I, in my anger that last year, randomly was like, I am going to just start refusing to follow along with all these initiatives.
00:22:55
Speaker
And I'm going to let them fire me.
00:22:57
Speaker
You know, like someone needs to stand up and have the realization in November of 2021, like, well, then I should have another job lined up because I, you know, like that's a really unwise just to like choose to be unemployed without having something in place.
00:23:14
Speaker
And so Google searched.
00:23:16
Speaker
missions in Romania, among many other searches of like ways to start teaching in Europe.
00:23:23
Speaker
I would say at the time I was angry, but not committed.
00:23:26
Speaker
You know, I was like, I was passionate.
00:23:27
Speaker
I was angry.
00:23:28
Speaker
I was going to find something.
00:23:30
Speaker
But when it started to come to like, oh, I'm going to have to do all this paperwork to transfer my license.
00:23:35
Speaker
And that started to feel overwhelming.
00:23:37
Speaker
Bureaucracy.
Mission's Expansion and Focus
00:23:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:38
Speaker
Exactly.
00:23:39
Speaker
The bureaucracy does, you know, if, if you're not committed, it can be, it can put a damper on that passion sometimes.
00:23:46
Speaker
And so Googled missions in Romania just as one of the like, okay, what are the other ways I could maybe get in the classroom and found this organization called the mission, um, which began in 1987 as an orphanage in Tijuana, Mexico.
00:24:03
Speaker
And so they've been around now like almost 40 years, which is incredible.
00:24:09
Speaker
They've transitioned now in Mexico, mostly to what they call family care, which is like kids arriving at school around 630 in the morning and staying like through the afternoon and evening for school and like kind of broader wraparound services.
00:24:25
Speaker
They do still have, I think right now it's 27 kiddos living on campus, but that is through the
00:24:32
Speaker
the Mexican government's equivalent of the foster care system.
00:24:36
Speaker
So now it is because they, now it's mostly government, it's only government placed kids who are removed from their homes.
00:24:42
Speaker
But because Mexico doesn't have a foster care system, like in the U S they get placed in these group homes and the mission has one of them.
00:24:50
Speaker
Because the mission realized, and I know this follows along with a lot of like work research and change occurring kind of in the orphanage world in the global South of realizing like most orphans are not orphans by the technicality of the term.
00:25:08
Speaker
Like they have living family members.
00:25:10
Speaker
It is...
00:25:11
Speaker
they are being placed because it doesn't feel like there's other options.
00:25:15
Speaker
And so the mission kind of realized that years ago, oh, wait, most of our kiddos in the orphanage are voluntary placements, which means parents are saying like, I can't care for my kids.
00:25:26
Speaker
So what would it look like if instead of kids having to come and live with us, we provide a place that is still affording parents the opportunity to work and do what they need to do to keep their kids at home?
00:25:37
Speaker
Um,
00:25:39
Speaker
And so that extended to really them focusing on building their school.
00:25:43
Speaker
And in Tijuana now, the mission has one of the, like recognizes one of the best schools in TJ.
00:25:49
Speaker
They have a waiting list for like kids from all over the city wanting to come to their school.
00:25:56
Speaker
Was just talking with my boss, Gina, who runs the mission.
00:26:01
Speaker
She and her husband are senior leaders over kind of the entire mission and talking about one of the boys she was talking to wakes up at 4.30 a.m.
00:26:09
Speaker
to get ready to get on the bus by 5.15, which gets him across Tijuana to where the mission is by 6.30 for breakfast.
00:26:16
Speaker
Like, yeah.
00:26:17
Speaker
like the value of education there and that like family commitment to getting kids to school is really, really cool.
00:26:25
Speaker
And so I've now learned about all that work.
00:26:28
Speaker
What's interesting when I Googled missions in Romania, I didn't know about that.
00:26:31
Speaker
I just found out about their school in Romania and I, Eastern Europe had always intrigued me.
00:26:38
Speaker
Romanian is a romance-based language, so it felt easier to learn than any other Slavic language.
Historical Context of the Roma
00:26:43
Speaker
And so I was kind of like, well, I just want to do this.
00:26:47
Speaker
I had always had a value for like, how can I take all of the privilege and access that I've been given and bring it to places where that is...
00:26:59
Speaker
like less common.
00:27:01
Speaker
And so Romania being one of the poor countries in Europe.
00:27:04
Speaker
And then learning about our base, we call it Missunia, which is the Romanian for the mission.
00:27:09
Speaker
So Missunia, if you see it like on the website, you'll see both the mission, Missunia.
00:27:15
Speaker
We specifically work with the Roma people.
00:27:18
Speaker
They are often like derogatively referred to as the gypsies.
00:27:23
Speaker
You will see in some like scholarship, they're called like the Romani gypsies just because they're
00:27:29
Speaker
There is a global familiarity with the term gypsy, but has no, the background comes only from like stereotypes and an outsider perspective.
00:27:40
Speaker
Within the Roma language, the Romani refer to themselves as the Roms.
00:27:45
Speaker
So that's where Roma comes from.
00:27:47
Speaker
Which becomes especially confusing living in Romania because Romani and Romanian sound similar.
00:27:54
Speaker
Zero connection.
00:27:56
Speaker
Wow.
00:27:56
Speaker
Okay.
00:27:57
Speaker
But so people get confused and it's interesting.
00:28:01
Speaker
It almost adds to Romanians like racism against the Roma.
00:28:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:08
Speaker
And their anger at the Roma, because when Romanians go abroad, they get treated like they're Roma people.
00:28:16
Speaker
And so then Romanians like it because this like I'm making a circle with my hands right now, because the way it feeds into like the poor treatment and the racism and the marginalization feeds itself and it just keeps getting perpetuated.
00:28:32
Speaker
And so the Roma are thought to have come.
00:28:36
Speaker
There's a couple of different theories in Romani scholarship, whether they were slaves of like the ruling class in northern India or they were part of the untouchable caste.
00:28:49
Speaker
There's a couple of different.
00:28:50
Speaker
But linguistic evidence especially points to they came from northern India before 1000 CE.
00:29:00
Speaker
And migrated west.
00:29:03
Speaker
So there's evidence of the Roma in like the Byzantine Empire within like Greece and then kind of spreading.
00:29:12
Speaker
Romania to this day has the largest Romani population in Europe.
00:29:17
Speaker
And there is still rampant racism happening.
00:29:22
Speaker
In Romania, due in part, the parallels, not a one-to-one match at all, but having spent a lot of time and work really wanting to learn and be not the white supremacist teacher teaching in a classroom of majority Black and brown students in Memphis.
00:29:44
Speaker
A lot of work in history around the Black experience in the United States.
00:29:47
Speaker
Just reading and learning and
00:29:50
Speaker
And the more I've learned about the Roma, the more I'm like, okay, there are some similarities in the story where the Roma were also, they were slaves to the Eastern Orthodox Church, like the Romanian Orthodox Church until the late 1800s, until the 1860s.
00:30:06
Speaker
And so like that idea of systemic racism being built in with like being enslaved, being valued as less than human, being made a category that's subhuman is also deeply interwoven into Romanian history and culture.
00:30:23
Speaker
I was just reading an Al Jazeera article on how it's time for reparations for the Roma.
Living Conditions and Discrimination
00:30:28
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:30:29
Speaker
And so some of those through lines definitely exist.
00:30:34
Speaker
And it makes me...
00:30:37
Speaker
Thankful for so much of the work and learning I got to do in the States to be prepared for this job, to come in like ready to be anti-racist and to fight for our kids.
00:30:48
Speaker
And also just to like be ready and open to the fullness of their humanity because my kids live in tremendous poverty.
00:30:58
Speaker
Like it's disgusting because in part, it's like always right across the street from like very mainstream middle-class American houses.
00:31:08
Speaker
Like we use the term villages to describe the little pockets or neighborhoods where our kids live.
00:31:15
Speaker
But if you look at like the academic definition of like ghettoizing and how, if you think even in the Holocaust, like the ghettos that were created with the ideas of we will create
00:31:27
Speaker
streets or pockets of a neighborhood where these, these quote unquote, these people can live with the full intention of marginalizing them and preventing them from being able to integrate in any way, shape or form into society.
00:31:42
Speaker
And so you will be next to a, you know, 2000 square foot, beautiful,
00:31:49
Speaker
mainstream Romanian home and across the street, we have kids living in like shacks made from just like tarps, whatever pieces of metal bricks thrown together, dirt floors, no running water.
00:32:02
Speaker
I mean, you know, their source of water is the stream that is full of trash.
00:32:07
Speaker
where they bathe in and drink cooking water from, but also like where they use the bathroom in.
00:32:14
Speaker
Like it's the conditions are infuriating.
00:32:19
Speaker
The Romani people are essentially like a structural, like systemically created underclass of people that coexist alongside just mainstream society, but perhaps like in invisible ways.
00:32:33
Speaker
So I'm willing to bet that
00:32:35
Speaker
The middle class person across the street at some point just stopped seeing, you know, the, I'll call it a shanty, like, you know, shanty town kind of structure, for lack of a better phrase, right?
00:32:47
Speaker
But created out of necessity and need and like this dire poverty of the people, their neighbors, essentially.
00:32:53
Speaker
Wow.
00:32:53
Speaker
Yes.
00:32:54
Speaker
And the language, like the language used to maintain that in Romanian society is
00:33:01
Speaker
is the racist idea that all Roma are thieves and lazy, that they choose to be this way, that we can't trust them.
00:33:12
Speaker
They don't deserve any better.
00:33:13
Speaker
I was recently reading Bell Hook's Teaching Community, and where she talks about shame, and just going back to how she talks about the pervasive sense of shame of being less than.
00:33:29
Speaker
That is also something that really cements marginalization in a culture.
00:33:38
Speaker
And I will get there to talk about the work we're doing in education, but that's a lot of context.
00:33:43
Speaker
There's a lot of important context.
00:33:45
Speaker
This is all of that context of, so it's also, they look, because I think they've kind of made it a, another version of pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
00:33:54
Speaker
Like, Oh, I don't know.
00:33:55
Speaker
They just, they don't, they don't want any better than this.
00:33:58
Speaker
They're just lazy.
00:33:59
Speaker
And, and so that's how they write it off.
00:34:01
Speaker
And I think how they're able to kind of separate their, their own sense of humanity and consciousness from it.
00:34:07
Speaker
And I do want to name, I work with like a specific population of Roma, even within Sigishwara, that the Roma are a super diverse group of people across the world.
00:34:20
Speaker
So even in Romania, there are different, totally different like groups and families and cultures that all kind of fall under the Roma umbrella.
00:34:30
Speaker
And so there's different dialects spoken, there's different religious beliefs.
00:34:34
Speaker
And so like not all Roma are
00:34:37
Speaker
poor.
00:34:38
Speaker
Not all Roma are living in poverty like this.
00:34:41
Speaker
And that's the other piece that these like specific areas I think get highlighted is, look, they're choosing to live in trash.
00:34:48
Speaker
So all Roma must be X, Y, Z. And it's not true for many reasons, but also one being not all Roma are living in poverty.
00:34:56
Speaker
There's very wealthy Roma.
00:34:58
Speaker
There's, you know, all across the spectrum.
00:35:00
Speaker
And so when I'm talking about this, I am talking about
00:35:04
Speaker
the specific groups of kids.
00:35:06
Speaker
Like we serve the seven or eight villages where we go, which is still only a portion of even in our city, the Roma living there.
Educational Support for Roma Children
00:35:15
Speaker
And so I'm only describing the experience of a small group, but still meaningful and still real.
00:35:22
Speaker
And so I,
00:35:24
Speaker
The program here, Jimmy and Gina, my boss, they kind of were just like given a vision for wanting to expand the work they were doing with like a global view.
00:35:36
Speaker
And they decided on Europe first and originally went to Moldova because it's the poorest country in Europe statistically.
00:35:45
Speaker
And they were like, you know, and they describe it as, oh yeah, there was need.
00:35:49
Speaker
But there was something about when they crossed into Romania, just like for them, they would call it a God thing of like, oh, we just knew.
00:35:58
Speaker
Like we heard that voice of God of like, this is where you need to be.
00:36:02
Speaker
And so they listened.
00:36:04
Speaker
And I think by 2017 had purchased an old Soviet clothing factory.
00:36:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:10
Speaker
which is where I live.
00:36:12
Speaker
It's where the church affiliated with our mission is.
00:36:14
Speaker
It's where the school is.
00:36:16
Speaker
It's where the, like most of the staff lives.
00:36:18
Speaker
It's this big, like 80,000 square foot old factory.
00:36:24
Speaker
Um, it's, and it looks like when you walk and my brother came to visit me and we got off the train and the taxi pulled up at like 3am and you just look up at this behemoth, like of a building concrete, like that Soviet.
00:36:39
Speaker
Brutalist architecture style, you know, just glass and concrete.
00:36:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:44
Speaker
Still has the big speakers on the one top tower.
00:36:48
Speaker
You know, they like did all their propaganda.
00:36:50
Speaker
I have to imagine like wild.
00:36:53
Speaker
And my brother was just like, Emma, what?
00:36:55
Speaker
Like, are you sure this is not an abandoned building?
00:36:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:59
Speaker
Yeah, but it's nice.
00:37:01
Speaker
It's our abandoned building.
00:37:02
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:37:05
Speaker
And on the inside, they've actually done tremendous work.
00:37:08
Speaker
And it's actually really beautiful.
00:37:10
Speaker
The renovations were only two floors in.
00:37:13
Speaker
There's like three floors left with the visions, you know, of going up through high school someday through 12th grade and
00:37:20
Speaker
So there's dreams.
00:37:22
Speaker
But where we're at right now, because we're still pretty new, is just the first two floors.
00:37:28
Speaker
The school originally opened more as like an after school program, but has transitioned to being an official school.
00:37:36
Speaker
We're still working on official accreditation through like Romania, but...
00:37:41
Speaker
we use a homeschool platform to kind of make sure we get the school enrollment right now.
00:37:48
Speaker
So there's some legal proof of kids being enrolled internationally.
00:37:53
Speaker
So they're technically like American homeschool students.
00:37:57
Speaker
Which again, kind of that when you're abroad, you just, you figure it out, you piece things together, but we serve grades pre-K through third grade right near next year or right now, next year we'll add fourth grade, but our kids age from three to 16 because when we started, there were a lot of kids who had just never been to school.
00:38:20
Speaker
Or were enrolled in school, but because of a variety of reasons, whether it was they got sent home because there was so much lice in their hair that they weren't allowed to come to school.
00:38:33
Speaker
That has happened to like a number of our students, you know, so much lice or just like level of hygiene.
00:38:39
Speaker
The teachers would say like, you can't come to school until you're clean.
00:38:42
Speaker
Or it's that they're bullied and marginalized so much that school is not a safe place that has any value for them.
00:38:49
Speaker
There's a fantastic book called I Met Lucky People that is written by a British linguistics professor, but...
00:38:59
Speaker
it's about like the roman the roma culture with an emphasis on linguistics but it gives a pretty good overview of their culture and also talks about how like the romani vision for education is really different than like our our western kind of post enlightenment like european united states view where they think like learning happens in practice
00:39:23
Speaker
So you learn by doing because most Roma history has been passed down orally.
00:39:29
Speaker
They don't have a ton of written history.
00:39:32
Speaker
Their language often isn't written down.
00:39:34
Speaker
It's all oral tradition.
00:39:36
Speaker
There's not a huge value on reading and writing in the way like we have in like ethnically white European United States tradition.
School Day Structure
00:39:45
Speaker
And so that piece isn't super valuable.
00:39:48
Speaker
What is valuable is you come to work with me.
00:39:50
Speaker
You are with your mom all day helping, you know, around the home kitchen or you're doing the metalsmithing or you're like traveling and working on the farm or you're like you learn by doing.
00:40:02
Speaker
The Roma value not protecting kids from the hard things of life.
00:40:09
Speaker
So to them, it's important that kids are learning early on how to process things.
00:40:14
Speaker
death, how to process illness, hardship, conflict.
00:40:19
Speaker
There's value in kids learning that young and being able to grow up in maturity, in communication and openness, which I think a lot of times we don't do a great job of... We have a lot to learn.
00:40:33
Speaker
We, I mean, meaning mainstream United States white culture, there's a lot we have to learn around openness and communication around those things.
00:40:43
Speaker
So in that, going to your local public school, not a super valuable thing.
00:40:47
Speaker
And so there's lots of reasons why, not just kind of what can be attributed as, oh, it's because they're dumb and lazy and don't care about their kids.
00:40:58
Speaker
And so, but for a lot of the parents, it's other aspects that are coming into play.
00:41:03
Speaker
And so we go every morning, we actually drive to pick up our kids.
00:41:09
Speaker
There's no transportation for school in the city we're in at least.
00:41:14
Speaker
And so we also pay for a bus to get kiddos from one of our villages who go to the local public school and like come to our afterschool program.
00:41:22
Speaker
We value them going to school.
00:41:24
Speaker
So yeah.
00:41:25
Speaker
We invest in a bus for them to be able to get to school as well.
00:41:28
Speaker
But we have a couple different vans and buses where we leave between 630 and 730 in the morning and like go to the houses.
00:41:36
Speaker
Sometimes it actually involves waking kids up.
00:41:38
Speaker
Like I've gone inside a house and like literally picked up one of our girls from the bed and, you know, ask her parents to hand me her shoes.
00:41:45
Speaker
You know, and just like carry her back to the van to go to school.
00:41:50
Speaker
There is a tension that I do want to name on that.
00:41:53
Speaker
There's lots of reasons why parents don't value education.
00:41:57
Speaker
But because they don't, there are things where we have to do that because like that particular family, sometimes they make more money with their kids going with them to beg in the city than going to school.
00:42:11
Speaker
So they're not going to go out of their way to send kids to school.
00:42:14
Speaker
So we have to be really invested.
00:42:16
Speaker
So there is that like, we feel the weight of parents not being fully bought into our kids going to school.
00:42:23
Speaker
And it means we have to do a little bit more.
00:42:26
Speaker
It takes more effort to get kids to come to school.
00:42:29
Speaker
And so trying to balance that that is a reality, but also I have no desire to add to kind of the racialized different attributions to that.
00:42:40
Speaker
So trying to hold both as true of like, I can have a lot of compassion for the reasons, but
00:42:47
Speaker
But also the reality is like, yeah, I am sometimes in the home, like myself begging, like, no, come on.
00:42:53
Speaker
If she comes with us, like, it's okay.
00:42:55
Speaker
She doesn't have shoes.
00:42:57
Speaker
I can carry her to the van.
00:42:58
Speaker
Like she's got her uniform at school.
00:43:00
Speaker
If she comes with us, it means she gets breakfast and lunch, you know, trying to convince parents that it's worthwhile, like waking their child up to go to school.
00:43:08
Speaker
What does programming look like then for kids who, you know, on a day to day basis may make it in, maybe with their parents, maybe out again, depending on the value or the thing of the day, maybe doing farm work with their parents.
Student-Centered Curriculum
00:43:23
Speaker
What does that look like in the day to day for those kids in your in your context?
00:43:27
Speaker
So they get picked up from school or for school.
00:43:30
Speaker
And then once they get there, we, our kids, they get to shower and change into uniforms.
00:43:34
Speaker
And then we have- On your facilities?
00:43:36
Speaker
They come to campus and do that?
00:43:37
Speaker
Okay, excellent.
00:43:39
Speaker
Which I, like one of the ways we kind of frame that, especially when new teachers are coming in, it's allowing kids to like take off the armor from home.
00:43:50
Speaker
Because like the trauma they're experiencing.
00:43:52
Speaker
So they're coming, sometimes having not slept in their house the night before, because who knows who was like drunk that night at home, whether mom or dad were there, whether they were fighting, whether it felt safe, like they may or may not have slept in their house.
00:44:07
Speaker
And maybe they did, but there's a family of nine living in one room.
00:44:11
Speaker
So they're sharing beds with baby siblings who are up crying.
00:44:15
Speaker
They come to us like really protected and guarded.
00:44:18
Speaker
Like they have learned to survive.
00:44:21
Speaker
And so that act of like showering and getting to take off clothes from home and put on new clothes,
00:44:27
Speaker
Is I think a way that they are subconsciously like taking off the armor of home and like entering into a new space and physically kind of getting to see that they are in a new space that like we do our darn best to make sure it's like safe for them.
00:44:43
Speaker
There's like a physical and emotional and like social transition that allows that to take place.
00:44:50
Speaker
Yes.
00:44:50
Speaker
And so then they come upstairs and what we do now is like an open breakfast where they just come in and we serve them breakfast.
00:44:57
Speaker
And as they finish breakfast and kids are arriving from all over the city and kind of showering and then eating breakfast in our big dining hall, the front tables is food.
00:45:05
Speaker
And then the back tables is just like different kind of tangible things.
00:45:09
Speaker
blocks and games.
00:45:10
Speaker
So it's the magnet tiles and it's blocks and it's tangrams.
00:45:14
Speaker
And it's just like, so that they just begin to get to kind of, okay, they're starting to get in that problem solving, more academic, they're using their hands, but it's very low stakes.
00:45:28
Speaker
which I remember in my master's program and I don't remember now, but reading an article, like I haven't been able to find it about how, especially in mathematics classrooms, like manipulatives and math centers are really great way for kiddos coming from homes where they experienced a lot of trauma.
00:45:47
Speaker
It's a great way to start their day, the way it allows them to like calm down their nervous system and kind of gradually enter into an academic setting.
00:45:55
Speaker
Um,
00:45:56
Speaker
And so they have like, you know, from eight to nine, they're eating breakfast and just getting to, you know, we put out books to like just kind of ease into the day.
00:46:06
Speaker
And then we have class from nine to one 15.
00:46:11
Speaker
And it has been awesome.
00:46:14
Speaker
One of my favorite parts of the job was getting to choose the curriculum and getting to like empower teachers to set up a day that is truly student centered.
00:46:25
Speaker
And like, based on the knowledge we have right now, what is best for kids?
00:46:30
Speaker
We will never get that perfectly.
00:46:31
Speaker
And every year, you know, there's something changing and I'm always learning.
00:46:35
Speaker
But I got to I spent so many years feeling like, oh, I I am.
00:46:40
Speaker
My hands are tied towards what I can really do.
00:46:42
Speaker
And there's things that are best for kids that I can't fully implement to being in a space where like I'm not the school director.
00:46:51
Speaker
You know, like we get to do things like we get to decide what's best for kids.
00:46:56
Speaker
based on all the resources out there.
00:47:00
Speaker
My prayer is that it's not like, you know, this arbitrary, like what I think, but I've gotten to learn.
00:47:06
Speaker
And so the kids like we're using American curriculum.
00:47:10
Speaker
So like, you know, Eureka math, the free version, the free version of CKLA phonics found this really cool reading program called fish tank.
00:47:19
Speaker
They do alien math, but we just do their ELA, but it's just like really quality books where it's,
00:47:25
Speaker
a lot of the really amazing new books that have been written that are more like diverse and inclusive, but then also like the classics, you know, the, is it like the Gail Gibbons informational books when they're learning about plants or the Pinky and Rex books and Esperanza rising and Charlotte's web and Brown girl dreaming.
00:47:46
Speaker
And, you know, like they get to do the 100 dresses, just the quality, like quality across the board.
00:47:52
Speaker
And so right now,
00:47:54
Speaker
We are in this like place that is teaching me a lot to hold like open hands of we have really high expectations for our kids.
Philosophy of Love and Growth
00:48:05
Speaker
One of the things like I found most powerful in the classroom is like kids rise to the expectations you set for them.
00:48:13
Speaker
You have to equip them.
00:48:15
Speaker
But if you are kind of like, oh, yeah, yeah.
00:48:19
Speaker
you're right, life's tough at home.
00:48:21
Speaker
You're probably never going to be able to like do that math problem or yeah, like you're just not a reader.
00:48:27
Speaker
Kids will believe that.
00:48:29
Speaker
That will shape their entire identity as a learner.
00:48:32
Speaker
And so like, I believe all of our kids,
00:48:35
Speaker
will be just as that they are as capable as any child in the world.
00:48:42
Speaker
And they will get to the point where they are on grade level or above by that metric.
00:48:46
Speaker
I know that's not the best metric, but that idea of like what fourth graders are doing for math in the United States or in Finland or in Germany or, you know, in Singapore, like our kids are going to be doing that too.
00:48:58
Speaker
So I have that like expectation and that belief.
00:49:02
Speaker
Cause I got to see that in reality, which I loved like in teaching in Memphis, I got to see that take place.
00:49:07
Speaker
Then all my kids were math kids or had math brains cause they're human and they're capable.
00:49:12
Speaker
Like that's just, and now did it take different tools and different amounts of time and different ways of doing things for every child?
00:49:20
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:49:21
Speaker
But that expectation isn't going to minimize.
00:49:23
Speaker
And so we have that high expectation of,
00:49:26
Speaker
but also like embracing reality that we're not there yet.
00:49:30
Speaker
And that's just each year we get to keep growing and our kids are going to keep learning.
00:49:35
Speaker
And it's been like in our, cause our philosophy really is like, we want kids to come and be loved.
00:49:42
Speaker
So like the motto of the mission is like rescue, restore love.
00:49:47
Speaker
They came up with, but like
00:49:49
Speaker
especially the hope of like restoring relationship to community, restoring relationship to like themselves, restoring relationship to God and their spirituality, the idea of restoration, and then also love.
00:50:05
Speaker
Like we just want kids to have a place where they get to come and be saved and feel loved.
00:50:10
Speaker
So sometimes with our teachers, we do just like sit around and read fun stories and let kids sleep and have an extra snack.
00:50:18
Speaker
Because sometimes that's actually just what needs to happen.
00:50:21
Speaker
What they need that day.
00:50:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:23
Speaker
And so holding that tension, there's that tension there of like, but I also don't ever want that to become the only thing we do because our kids are capable of so much more.
00:50:32
Speaker
And learning to balance that and just learning to hold dreams for the future.
00:50:37
Speaker
Of like where we will be five years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now.
00:50:43
Speaker
Like one of our students now, I really believe she will be director of the school someday.
00:50:49
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:50:49
Speaker
And like interviewing her for your position, you know?
00:50:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:52
Speaker
And that's one of the things I love about the mission when I, before I signed on, cause I didn't know anything about them.
00:51:00
Speaker
I Google searched, you know, had an awesome interview and was like, I guess I'm moving to Romania.
00:51:04
Speaker
I don't know.
00:51:05
Speaker
I'm single in my twenties.
00:51:07
Speaker
Like, let me, let's take a leap.
00:51:09
Speaker
And yeah,
00:51:10
Speaker
doing it, you know, go on an adventure.
00:51:12
Speaker
But of the senior leaders, like over the whole, you know, I think there's five senior leaders.
00:51:18
Speaker
Two of them actually grew up in the orphanage.
00:51:23
Speaker
And they're now senior leaders.
00:51:25
Speaker
One of them runs the entire base in Mexico.
00:51:30
Speaker
And then even here, two of my teachers grew up in the orphanage and were adopted like into the family in Mexico.
00:51:36
Speaker
And they chose to come and teach here in Romania.
00:51:40
Speaker
And just that like our long-term goal is that it's Romanians and Romani Romanians teaching here.
00:51:47
Speaker
That it's not just like white girls from the U.S. who think they have all the answers, which I try not to be.
00:51:54
Speaker
But that is, you know, right?
00:51:55
Speaker
That is who I am in a lot of ways.
00:51:58
Speaker
And okay, someone needs to build it now.
00:52:00
Speaker
Yes.
00:52:01
Speaker
But like...
00:52:02
Speaker
that I can actually see fruit.
00:52:04
Speaker
Okay.
00:52:04
Speaker
Over 40 years, they actually followed through that commitment to this work should be done by like, yeah, the communities were serving themselves.
Integrating Roma Values
00:52:14
Speaker
It shouldn't be this like outsider's perspective and outsider's work.
00:52:18
Speaker
But it doesn't seem like the school is like a cultural imposition or a cultural displacement of the, you know, replacing one set of values for another and sort of like, you know, this educational imperialist kind of way that I've talked with people in who grew up in schools in the Caribbean that they experienced a
00:52:39
Speaker
very English format of education as a result of this, right?
00:52:44
Speaker
And their whole education system, despite having achieved political independence, is still very like colonially British.
00:52:51
Speaker
But it doesn't seem like what I'm saying is it doesn't seem like that's the culture at the school here because it's constructed alongside, right?
00:52:59
Speaker
The community values and cultural and people and linguistic identities and
00:53:04
Speaker
historical identities, while at the same time, like recognizing that like, you know, there are challenges in this community too.
00:53:11
Speaker
And we're here to, you know, help meet those challenges where you're at, not displace or replace, but really like help fulfill, you know, this need that is there in the community.
00:53:24
Speaker
I don't know if I got that right, but that's kind of the same.
00:53:26
Speaker
No, amen.
00:53:27
Speaker
That is, I mean, that's my dream.
00:53:29
Speaker
And I feel really lucky to like be on a team of people who are on the same page with that.
00:53:35
Speaker
And again, like we are...
00:53:38
Speaker
always learning, but you're exactly right.
00:53:41
Speaker
Like the heart is that this should be by the kids for the kids as much as we can.
00:53:47
Speaker
And even just the language that we just talk about how like we want this to be a safe house.
00:53:51
Speaker
And so we don't even really do rules as much as that we have our values, kind hands, kind touch, listen to instruction, stay in our group.
00:53:58
Speaker
And we talk a lot about how that's how we build our house.
00:54:02
Speaker
And then very much, I
00:54:04
Speaker
Like in the restorative justice, like no punishment.
00:54:08
Speaker
It's been so cool just to get to leave a lot of the like, yeah, the bureaucracy behind of like the PBIS and, you know, having to choose a social emotional curriculum or all of that where it's like we just get to kind of take, I think, what's good and just like live it out in relationship with kids.
00:54:25
Speaker
Familial.
00:54:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:28
Speaker
And so even like our family visits where multiple times during the week, we're like in villages just hanging out with families.
00:54:36
Speaker
And it's been awesome for me, especially as my Romanian has gotten better.
00:54:41
Speaker
We're like, I'll go sit and they'll be like, oh, do you want a coffee, Miss Emma?
00:54:44
Speaker
And then I'll just sit in the house and we'll sit and drink coffee and get to chat and talk.
00:54:49
Speaker
Talk about, you know, where I like, and that was the piece that I think I always wanted even teaching in Memphis that because of the structure of public education, you do also want to respect like healthy boundaries.
00:55:02
Speaker
And that's just part of the beauty of the work we're doing in a different context is what might feel inappropriate in terms of like connecting with kids and families in the States.
00:55:12
Speaker
The culture here is just totally different.
00:55:16
Speaker
And I've loved that.
00:55:17
Speaker
I've loved that I get to connect with kids and whole families in a way that I never learned how to do well in the States.
Pathways for Student Success
00:55:28
Speaker
Well, honestly, it sounds like you wouldn't have anywhere near the level of success that you've had without that piece.
00:55:33
Speaker
Like that is a vital piece, right?
00:55:36
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:55:38
Speaker
And the parents' view of education is also shifting, which is cool.
00:55:44
Speaker
Like we did a meet the teacher night last fall and to see the look of pride on parents' faces as they sat in each classroom and got to hear teachers explain what their kids were learning.
00:55:55
Speaker
And more and more parents being like, well, I don't know how to read.
00:55:57
Speaker
Like, when are you going to teach me?
00:55:58
Speaker
When can I come to school?
00:56:00
Speaker
You know, and kind of that hope of like, we are starting next year.
00:56:04
Speaker
It's called Second Chances in Romania, Doa Shanta, similar to like GED programs in the States.
00:56:11
Speaker
Gotcha, gotcha.
00:56:12
Speaker
For like high schoolers, you know, teenagers who have essentially placed out but never got an education.
00:56:19
Speaker
And to start to be like, how can we build that towards then an adult education program where I have conversations with moms of like, I see how smart you are.
00:56:29
Speaker
You would be an amazing reader and writer.
00:56:31
Speaker
You just didn't get the opportunity.
00:56:34
Speaker
Because I'm super curious to ask, since your program is K-3, if I heard that right, what do the kids do when they age out of the K-3?
00:56:46
Speaker
What awaits them?
00:56:47
Speaker
I know you had said you were hoping that the program expands and grows to accommodate kids as they age through it, but what's kind of the status now?
00:56:56
Speaker
What's waiting for them on the other side of third grade?
00:56:58
Speaker
That's a great question that we're kind of in the middle of coming up with the answer because we're adding a grade every year.
00:57:07
Speaker
So the idea of like, who's in third grade now will go to fourth grade.
Comprehensive Community Support
00:57:12
Speaker
So depending on their age, they would just graduate with us.
00:57:17
Speaker
Now, what is...
00:57:19
Speaker
Tricky.
00:57:19
Speaker
And I think we're going to get to live this out is like in that third grade class, we have some 14, 15, 16 year olds.
00:57:26
Speaker
And so the reality will be, I'm not sure as a 25 year old, they're going to want to be completing grade 12.
00:57:33
Speaker
And so what it might look like is they end up like getting a diploma through the second chance program.
00:57:40
Speaker
Almost they're not actually going to graduate grade 12 because our school, the K through three is in English, but their second chance program is in Romanian just because it will, you know, it just is a separate pathway.
00:57:55
Speaker
And so the goal would be like that they graduate grade 12, a diploma also like certified proficiency level in English.
00:58:03
Speaker
I think what we're probably gonna see is some of our older kids hit the point where either they transition to that second chances program, or they may just decide like we started too late, we're actually ready to enter the workforce.
00:58:19
Speaker
And that's where like our wraparound view of family care would be then like, great, let's help you make your resume.
00:58:25
Speaker
Let's help you find a job.
00:58:27
Speaker
Like let's help you if you want to find an apartment in the city that there will still be that commitment to them that they're part of, like once they're part of the family, they're always part of the family, which I know is much easier to say
Support and Collaboration
00:58:41
Speaker
than do.
00:58:41
Speaker
But again, like the 40 years, almost 40 years in Mexico, that's something that they have been committed to and have figured out how to do.
00:58:49
Speaker
Because it's not just the school-based setting, right?
00:58:52
Speaker
Like the mission provides all these other services.
00:58:55
Speaker
So essentially, the bigger institution can kind of be flexible at providing different pathways, whether it's K3 for younger kids to kind of get those foundational kind of pieces met, and then services and things for older family members who are interested in educational pathways and everywhere in between.
00:59:16
Speaker
So that's incredible.
00:59:17
Speaker
It really is like... Yeah.
00:59:19
Speaker
It's sort of like a vision for community schooling, I think, which is perhaps coming back in vogue in the United States.
00:59:26
Speaker
You're right.
00:59:27
Speaker
And I hadn't really thought of that, but I'm almost like, okay, some of my next research into what has been working and the models of that that exist, because you're right, a lot of it...
00:59:40
Speaker
Is that heart of like education being so much broader than just that like, quote unquote, academic setting in a school building?
00:59:49
Speaker
K-12 and done.
00:59:50
Speaker
Well, it's like, well, my mom was not a reader.
00:59:53
Speaker
My mom never got an education.
00:59:54
Speaker
How can she at the same time, you know, become...
00:59:58
Speaker
be who they see themselves as alongside their kids, right?
01:00:02
Speaker
And providing necessary services at the community level, not like at a state level or at a federal level, but like at the level of community need, being able to both understand and meet in a variety of ways, showers, food, job services, education services, not just K-12, but K through 99 and beyond.
01:00:24
Speaker
There are models of that.
01:00:25
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:27
Speaker
That's what you're living right now is what I'm hearing anyway as I process it.
01:00:32
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:33
Speaker
As you describe it that way, absolutely.
01:00:36
Speaker
We're living it and still building it at the same time, which is really – I'm just really thankful.
01:00:43
Speaker
Sorry the whooping coughs got me.
01:00:45
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:47
Speaker
This was the last recorded interview with Emma before the wedding cough took me away.
01:00:54
Speaker
I was glad
Reflections and Future Aspirations
01:00:55
Speaker
this was virtual.
01:00:55
Speaker
I was like, I probably would have had to cancel this.
01:00:59
Speaker
We'd be shouting at each other from across a room is what we would be doing outside.
01:01:04
Speaker
With COVID.
01:01:05
Speaker
Well, so I'll spare you, but just because I know, you know, is there any way people who want to learn more or be able to support?
01:01:12
Speaker
Because I know it's a charitable organization as well.
01:01:14
Speaker
Perhaps there's people who are interested might be able to.
01:01:17
Speaker
If you have links to resources, feel free to speak them now or I can post them in the link as well.
01:01:23
Speaker
So the mission, like Inc.org is the website.
01:01:27
Speaker
So the way the mission gets most of their funds is through like sponsorship, where you sponsor a child for $30 a month.
01:01:39
Speaker
It doesn't actually, the money doesn't go directly to the child with the idea of,
01:01:45
Speaker
If you were only choosing the kid you thought was cute or when you visited the kid who was the most, you know, loquacious and fun to be around, then like the money wouldn't.
01:01:55
Speaker
So it goes to programs to support all of the kids.
01:01:59
Speaker
But it can be a cool way to stay connected.
01:02:02
Speaker
And like when you if you choose to donate Christmas gifts or birthday gifts, like it can go to a certain child or you can write letters.
01:02:10
Speaker
with our students here too.
01:02:12
Speaker
So that's both in Mexico or here on our base in Romania.
01:02:18
Speaker
You can also just donate to like the general fund.
01:02:22
Speaker
We're saving or trying to raise money right now as an organization because the big church building, high school, administrative offices, dorm rooms, that building burned down in Mexico last August.
01:02:38
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:40
Speaker
which was just really devastating and disappointing.
01:02:44
Speaker
But also as someone who's newer to this community, just like beautiful to see the hope and resilience of like, okay, well, this happened.
01:02:58
Speaker
Like doesn't change what we do.
01:02:59
Speaker
Doesn't change how we're going to show up for kids.
01:03:02
Speaker
We're just going to have to...
01:03:04
Speaker
Pray that we get more support coming in.
01:03:07
Speaker
And so there's a fundraising like 3 million separate from that on it in addition to just like normal annual funds.
01:03:16
Speaker
I might also share with you, I have like Amazon,
01:03:19
Speaker
Germany wish list that folks can even just like buy an item or two.
01:03:24
Speaker
I'm working on building our library.
01:03:28
Speaker
It's been really cool to watch kids transform into readers.
01:03:32
Speaker
My mom recently visited and like brought some books and put them out during breakfast.
01:03:36
Speaker
And I mean, the kids just flocked to them, just like wanting and just building readers.
01:03:42
Speaker
And so trying to make sure we have
01:03:45
Speaker
just like a really divergent rich library for kiddos as well as just other school supplies.
01:03:51
Speaker
And then I can also share my email because we do like summer internships groups also come and visit and can do projects and, um,
01:04:00
Speaker
I am open to like any collaboration opportunities to learn because it can be sometimes isolating in like rural Transylvania.
01:04:09
Speaker
Again, like didn't expect to end up here in this like being reminded.
01:04:15
Speaker
And I think that's why it's so cool to connect with y'all that like there are people that
01:04:20
Speaker
all over the world, like working to find humanity, you know, in education and the things we do that get back to the heart of like kids are humans who should be given the chance to learn and grow and make mistakes and dream and like figure out who they are.
01:04:36
Speaker
So even just connections in that is just always encouraging to know that like, okay, we're not doing this work in a vacuum.
01:04:43
Speaker
We're not, we're not actually isolated.
01:04:47
Speaker
Um, even if it feels that way sometimes.
01:04:48
Speaker
Yeah, no, we're so pumped just to be able to help shine a light on, you know, your work and the work that you're doing.
01:04:55
Speaker
And hopefully, again, just builds connection to listeners, to people who might be engaged, to reach out to you, to, you know, help support the work by buying some books or sponsoring a kid or something.
01:05:07
Speaker
Just, uh,
01:05:08
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:08
Speaker
And there's, I can't imagine a better advocate for the that work than you.
01:05:13
Speaker
It was, it's so great just to be able to be like, hey, I'm just going to hit record and we're going to get going.
01:05:19
Speaker
And we got this, you know, your story from start to finish, never in between.
01:05:23
Speaker
So I'm so thankful for you taking the time out of your busy day to sit down and tell that story to me and to our listeners.
01:05:30
Speaker
Well, it was a joy and I know I rambled.
01:05:32
Speaker
I look forward to see how you kind of make the story make sense.
01:05:37
Speaker
Cause there's just, there's just so much.
01:05:43
Speaker
Thank you again for listening to our podcast at Human Restoration Project.
01:05:46
Speaker
I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to start making change.
01:05:50
Speaker
If you enjoyed listening, please consider leaving us a review on your favorite podcast player.
01:05:54
Speaker
Plus, find a whole host of free resources, writings, and other podcasts all for free on our website, humanrestorationproject.org.
01:06:01
Speaker
Thank you.