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CTRH2023: Building Our Shared Humanity with José Luis Vilson
7 Plays1 year ago
This keynote address was part of Conference to Restore Humanity! 2023: Breaking the Doom-Loop, sponsored by Holistic Think Tank, Cortico & Local Voices Network, Antioch University, Education Evolving & Teacher-Powered Schools, and Unrulr. You can also find a video of the keynote and community Q&A on our YouTube page by searching for Human Restoration Project.
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Transcript
Introduction and Support Acknowledgment
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 137 of the Human Restoration Project podcast.
00:00:04
Speaker
As always, this episode is brought to you by our supporters, and I'd like to thank Leah Kelly, Ryan Bourne, and Julia Valenti for their support.
Keynote Introduction: Jose Luis Wilson
00:00:12
Speaker
Today's episode is another keynote from our Conference to Restore Humanity 2023.
00:00:17
Speaker
This one from EduColor leader, educator, and author Jose Luis Wilson titled Building Our Shared Humanity.
00:00:23
Speaker
Because of our incredible sponsors, attendees, and supporters, we've been able to release 16 keynotes, Q&As, and events on our YouTube channel.
00:00:31
Speaker
And all of our track resources covering A Green Education to Change the World, A New Perspective Using Game Design, and Rebellion by Design, Anti-Racism and UDL on our website under our conference collection.
Funding Drive and Contributions
00:00:44
Speaker
We do have a funding drive underway, so if you find our resources useful, consider donating at humanrestorationproject.org.
00:00:52
Speaker
Thanks so much again for listening, and enjoy the wisdom of Jose Luis Bilson.
00:01:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to our third video keynote for Conference to Restore Humanity 2023.
00:01:05
Speaker
As always, this is a flipped keynote address with a video recording of the keynote itself, followed by a live Q&A discussion on Wednesday, July 26th at 11am Eastern.
00:01:15
Speaker
I want to take a moment and thank the sponsors of this event, Holistic Think Tank, Cortico, Antioch University, Education Evolving with Teacher-Powered Schools, UnRuler, and our gracious Donors at Human Restoration Project.
00:01:27
Speaker
These sponsorships ensure that we can continually host successful events like this, as well as release much of each conference's resources as Creative Commons licensed materials for years to come.
00:01:37
Speaker
More information about our partners can be found in the links below.
Profile of Jose Luis Vilson
00:01:40
Speaker
Today, we are joined by Jose Luis Vilcun.
00:01:42
Speaker
Jose is a veteran educator, writer, speaker, and activist in New York City.
00:01:47
Speaker
He is the author of This Is Not A Test, a new narrative on race, class, and education.
00:01:51
Speaker
He has spoken about education, math, and race for a number of organizations and publications including the New York Times, The Guardian, TED, El Diario, La Prensa, and The Atlantic.
00:02:01
Speaker
He's a national board-certified teacher, a Math for America master teacher, and the executive director of EduColor, an organization dedicated to race and social justice issues in education.
00:02:11
Speaker
He is currently a doctoral student studying sociology and education at Teachers College, Columbia University.
00:02:17
Speaker
It's genuinely so incredible to introduce Jose Luis Vilson today, and thank you again for joining in on the conversation.
Keynote: Transforming the Teaching Profession
00:02:24
Speaker
Hello everyone, my name is Jose Vilson and welcome to the Human Restoration Project where I'm giving you a keynote about the teaching profession and the profession that we all deserve.
00:02:34
Speaker
And something that we need to start thinking about specifically is how are we going to transform the profession, especially in moments of conflict,
00:02:44
Speaker
of turmoil, of different things that are happening around us and the context in which we are all situated.
00:02:51
Speaker
But first, I'd like for us to think about how so much of our work is really focused not just on students, but also parents and community, our peers and admin and the world more generally.
00:03:04
Speaker
And this is tough because so many of us are just really focused on students and we think, oh, students, students, students.
00:03:09
Speaker
but it's a little deeper than that because our teacher identity is so focused um on maybe students that you know we forget all the things that end up actually coming in as we're teaching but also things that we're pushing out as folks who are doing this work and so i'd like for us to think a little bit about how we could be more critical about all this how we could be more thoughtful about all this how we can uh possibly engage something a little bit deeper
00:03:39
Speaker
and go into the future thinking more extensively about how this teaching thing works.
00:03:44
Speaker
But first, I like to engage with a little bit of a story.
00:03:47
Speaker
I think to so many of the spaces that I've been, places I've traveled and the ways that I've had to navigate what happens around me.
00:03:57
Speaker
And so more recently, I was able to take a trip around Harlem.
00:04:02
Speaker
Actually, this happened just a couple of hours ago.
00:04:05
Speaker
And
00:04:06
Speaker
We're walking around Harlem and something starts happening where, you know, I know that I'm one of the facilitators and we're all adults, but I started going walking from the back and letting people walk in front of me.
00:04:20
Speaker
It was weird because it was just like an automatic instinct for me to do.
Teachers' Expanding Roles and Responsibilities
00:04:24
Speaker
Not because I'm so used to being in the back because of my last name, but because
00:04:29
Speaker
That's usually what my role was over the course of 15 years teaching students math.
00:04:33
Speaker
Whenever we went on trips, I was usually the person in the back trying to push people forward.
00:04:40
Speaker
And all along the way, like as even as I'm navigating through life, I'm finding myself in situations where like even though I don't need to do the teacher thing.
00:04:50
Speaker
I still end up doing the teacher thing.
00:04:52
Speaker
It's wild.
00:04:53
Speaker
And it becomes automatic.
00:04:55
Speaker
But it also speaks to how so many of the behaviors that we take on as teachers and to become part of our daily ritual, that is to say that we are truly about this life.
00:05:08
Speaker
And so...
00:05:10
Speaker
there's a few things i want to navigate here the first is that as teachers you know we can center ourselves a little bit this is called my process for thinking about the development of teacher identity so we start from the middle and it's about us as teachers doing some inner reflection doing some uh internal work thinking about how we as ourselves are teachers but of course within that it's worth
00:05:37
Speaker
inspecting that, right?
00:05:38
Speaker
Because not only are we just teachers, we're actually a bunch of different roles at the same time.
00:05:44
Speaker
On one level, we may be called to become healthcare workers or people who are psychologists and psychiatrists.
00:05:51
Speaker
We may be people who are asked to be, I guess, pseudo-parents for lack of a better word, though some of us are teachers and parents at the same time.
00:06:00
Speaker
That's still not a part of the dialogue and unfortunately it ought to be.
00:06:04
Speaker
I would also say, too, though, we are also agents of the state because once we've been able to get that contract, get those salaries, we've inevitably said we are going to sign off on this idea that we are representing these institutions.
00:06:19
Speaker
And that doesn't just include our schools.
00:06:23
Speaker
That usually also includes institutions.
00:06:25
Speaker
whatever school system it is, whether we are public schools, charter schools, private schools, so on and so forth.
00:06:33
Speaker
When we signed that contract, we are inevitably given a certain set of powers and responsibilities as per the state.
Navigating Political and Relational Dynamics
00:06:41
Speaker
So teachers at any given moment are political.
00:06:45
Speaker
There's no separating the politics that allows us to be teachers from the role that we take on as teachers more generally, right?
00:06:53
Speaker
So that's just the internal stuff, right?
00:06:55
Speaker
And it's wild because what we also recognize in our own work is that
00:07:00
Speaker
Even as we say, you know, we're so-called just teachers, we are also sometimes creating a policy right within our classroom.
00:07:09
Speaker
So how many times, for example, have you told people, well, I'm just a teacher, but then I don't get to create policy.
00:07:15
Speaker
But then within your own classrooms, you have 30 students who could literally start a revolution tomorrow if they really wanted to.
00:07:24
Speaker
They could literally just band together and say, we are going to revolt against this one person who he may be twice our size individually, but he is no match for the rest of us collectively.
00:07:35
Speaker
What stops students from actually doing that?
00:07:38
Speaker
Because it's not just the authority or it's not just expectations set from society.
00:07:43
Speaker
It's also the ways that teachers and educators more generally ingratiate themselves in the best ways possible and try to build strong relationships with students so that they don't revolt.
00:07:55
Speaker
because so many of us may have actually had that relationship and we said, oh my goodness, how am I gonna teach tomorrow?
00:08:01
Speaker
But then the better we get at this craft, the less likely those revolts actually happen.
00:08:07
Speaker
And so for me, I feel like that ought to speak to how we are also endowed, not just with a political and a professional responsibility, but also a moral and a spiritual responsibility to get this teaching thing together.
00:08:24
Speaker
And of course, there's also that little part that is in Latin that says that we are a parentis loci, which basically means like there are moments and times when we find ourselves in positions of substituting for what the parent or community member might do.
00:08:41
Speaker
And, you know, of course, like I think to so many communities that it's not just about being a parent, right?
00:08:46
Speaker
It's also about like actually just making really good decisions for everybody involved.
00:08:51
Speaker
So.
00:08:51
Speaker
That's one.
00:08:52
Speaker
The second is that we also have to think about what it would mean to just go a little bit beyond that and recognize that the teaching profession right now feels like it's under a lot of duress.
00:09:05
Speaker
I think back to Linda Darling-Hammond.
00:09:08
Speaker
1985, she writes that, you know, we're not trying to strive for teachers to have standardized practice.
00:09:14
Speaker
We're striving for them to have appropriate practice, which is a whole different matter.
00:09:18
Speaker
She was saying this in 1985.
00:09:21
Speaker
And four decades later, we're still dealing with the same issues because too often we have this
00:09:28
Speaker
guess one directional situation where the researchers make all the research and they make best practices from wherever it is that they do it from.
00:09:38
Speaker
And then you have the policymakers who write the policy based on the recommendations of the researchers and then the teachers are supposed to implement that policy.
00:09:48
Speaker
We don't really get the sense that there's a real feedback loop, even for those of us who've been unionized over the course of the last 40, 50 years.
00:09:58
Speaker
Now, all that said, though, there's also spaces where we need to think about
Educational Challenges and Activism
00:10:03
Speaker
how we can be active agents in the ways that we work.
00:10:06
Speaker
and that specifically includes the classrooms.
00:10:09
Speaker
Over the last year or so, I've been to a plethora of classrooms, and if you go to any number of different news outlets, I won't mention which, but if you ask them,
00:10:21
Speaker
These classrooms are supposed to be red and scary and socialist and we're not supposed to feel any sort of anything and we're just going to get angry and cancel everybody around us.
00:10:32
Speaker
I mean, yes, there may be some people who deserve to be canceled, but that's a whole other conversation.
00:10:37
Speaker
Just kidding.
00:10:38
Speaker
But when I walk into these classrooms, I think about the joy, the mirth, the enthusiasm, and the ebullience.
00:10:49
Speaker
I love using that word, ebullience.
00:10:51
Speaker
The way that teachers in their own personalities from their own selves have decided to take students on the learning journey with them
00:11:00
Speaker
and really build a rapport that suggests that A, the teacher does not have to be perfect, but then B, even within that imperfection, they can grow together and learn together in the best ways possible so that they can actually share humanity.
00:11:14
Speaker
Share it.
00:11:15
Speaker
Because too often when we use words like dehumanize, we forget that the people who are dehumanized are already human.
00:11:24
Speaker
And so our children, particularly our black children, Latinx children, indigenous First Nation children, even our Asian students and our white students who people say, well, if they get good test scores, then we don't have to worry about them.
00:11:37
Speaker
No, we ought to worry about every single child.
00:11:39
Speaker
But the way that society represents
00:11:43
Speaker
that caring and that love is often through whether or not they are academically successful through standardized achievement scores.
00:11:51
Speaker
And that's a problem.
00:11:52
Speaker
And so for us, we have to be able to consistently rethink what that looks like, make sure that the outcomes are good and fine, but also how are we going to engender some form of shared humanity and how do we model that
00:12:08
Speaker
for each and every student that we have in front of us.
00:12:11
Speaker
Because as I'm looking at so many of our works, for example, we see policies now to try to diversify the teaching profession.
00:12:20
Speaker
But when you look at black teachers, Latinx teachers, teachers of all stripes, the classrooms that I've been to,
00:12:29
Speaker
Whether the students were predominantly white, were predominantly Latinx, were predominantly black, so on and so forth.
00:12:35
Speaker
The teacher decided upon themselves to share with them how it is to be a good human being and then continues to model that and demonstrate for them how to carve that road out for themselves.
00:12:50
Speaker
Right.
00:12:50
Speaker
And so within that, it's interesting because you think about what our world is trying to ask teachers to be.
00:12:58
Speaker
They ask them to be fearful, to be afraid.
00:13:00
Speaker
And fear is a valid emotion.
00:13:03
Speaker
But unfortunately, it often allows us to go against our minds and our hearts and the ways that we can approach this work in a really deep level.
00:13:10
Speaker
And fear, like any emotion, right?
00:13:13
Speaker
Any emotion could do this, but fear is particularly pernicious for us.
00:13:17
Speaker
And it often channels our greatest aspirations or our worst instincts, right?
00:13:23
Speaker
And so many of you have been called all these different names.
00:13:25
Speaker
You've been called a snowflake, a reverse racist, a groomer, anti-American.
00:13:30
Speaker
You've been called lazy just for wanting safety protocols for your kids and for your communities.
00:13:35
Speaker
That's wild.
00:13:36
Speaker
And to think about all the different tragedies that we witnessed, the mass shootings all across the world, especially in this country, all the ways that we've had to navigate climate change.
00:13:47
Speaker
And even as we're looking at
00:13:51
Speaker
I won't even call it transphobia because it's not fear, it's trans aggression.
00:13:58
Speaker
So many of our LGBTQIA plus students and the ways that people are legislating their very existence out of our schools.
00:14:05
Speaker
That's wild.
00:14:07
Speaker
And we need to speak to that thoroughly and without fear.
00:14:11
Speaker
And this is what really sucks about so much of this is that once we use the energy of the fear to combat something, then we have to give ourselves a chance to also be vulnerable because that's the way the balance works.
00:14:26
Speaker
Right.
00:14:27
Speaker
And so we need a society that generally cares.
00:14:30
Speaker
And the way that we can model that is through teaching, because teachers are the vanguard for society.
00:14:36
Speaker
We are often the first adult outside of students' households that shows what society is supposed to do and the way that we're supposed to be.
00:14:45
Speaker
That also means that for so many of our white teachers who are in front of white students, the work is also for you because you must also demonstrate that everybody around you, regardless and because of who they are, deserves a great education, deserves to be a full-on citizen, deserves all the humanity that they have already come into the world with and that this world often tries to strip them of.
00:15:11
Speaker
But if you ask me, any given moment, you see so many students of color, particularly our Black students, particularly our Indigenous students, who are consistently seeking ways for us to share that humanity and do it together.
00:15:25
Speaker
You should be so fortunate that we've decided to go that route.
Teacher Retention and Professional Value
00:15:30
Speaker
So something else about the profession too.
00:15:33
Speaker
We recognize that teachers are leaving in mass and that hasn't been remedied too much.
00:15:40
Speaker
And even though we do have a little uptick in college students choosing education as a field of choice, we also see that it's only been a small uptick as opposed to the hundreds of thousands of teachers who left the profession
00:15:54
Speaker
since March of 2020.
00:15:56
Speaker
And people estimated between anywhere between 300,000 to 570,000 and probably even more since then.
00:16:05
Speaker
And they've gone to any number of professions that have built up the skills that teachers already have, being able to be a good time manager, a good project manager, a good person who can relate to other people, just
00:16:20
Speaker
folks who actually have really dope skills and put them all together and become teachers, maybe you only wanna get paid for one of those sets of skills and get paid better than you would as a teacher.
00:16:32
Speaker
But those of us who stayed in the profession see something bigger.
00:16:36
Speaker
But of course, it also means that because we've stayed, we also have to fight.
00:16:40
Speaker
And even those of us who've left and myself included, that also means that I have to fight alongside you and listen to you and ensure that also you can be held accountable for ensuring that our kids deserve better.
00:16:53
Speaker
Because the pandemic is wild because, for one, we are not post-pandemic.
00:16:58
Speaker
I'll start from there.
00:17:00
Speaker
The second part...
00:17:01
Speaker
is that we saw, especially education activists who were alarmist the whole time, we had often said that the pandemic only exacerbated the inequities.
00:17:14
Speaker
It didn't actually do anything to do it.
00:17:19
Speaker
I guess it didn't really remedy or create those inequities that were already there.
00:17:27
Speaker
So if anything, those elements that we kept seeing, whether it be students feeling depressed or mental health situations more generally with our teachers or extreme poverty,
00:17:39
Speaker
those were exacerbated by the pandemic.
00:17:41
Speaker
And even as we're so-called coming back to normal, this is a new, this truly is a new normal, but it's not the normal that we really wanted after we had revolted so often in 2020.
The Impact of Teacher-Student Relationships
00:17:53
Speaker
What does educational hope look like with all the things that I've said?
00:17:58
Speaker
And of course, I always think to students because as I've always said, most of my work when I was a math teacher for 15 years wasn't even actually about the math.
00:18:06
Speaker
It was believing that students could do it.
00:18:08
Speaker
And within that belief, it wasn't just that I said, well, I believe you.
00:18:12
Speaker
It's like, no, I showed it and I modeled it every single day that I believe my kids could do it, not just despite who they were, but because of who they were.
00:18:23
Speaker
That's different.
00:18:24
Speaker
And when you look at the research, any number of teachers of color, you recognize that one of the first reasons and initial reasons why teachers of color want to stay in the profession is for their students.
00:18:37
Speaker
And the reason why they leave is never actually the student.
00:18:41
Speaker
It doesn't make a difference.
00:18:43
Speaker
Now, the other element too that's worth naming is that maybe the students can't read the way that you want them to, but they can read you.
00:18:51
Speaker
They can read how you make them feel.
00:18:53
Speaker
They can read how you make them think.
00:18:55
Speaker
They can read whether you actually want to see them that day or not.
00:19:00
Speaker
They can read you.
00:19:01
Speaker
And so there's so many wars right now happening about the science of reading versus balanced literacy and
00:19:08
Speaker
all these different conversations.
00:19:09
Speaker
But for me, it all comes back to whether or not students feel like they're going to learn in your classroom, because how can they trust you with their brains if they don't trust you with their hearts?
00:19:20
Speaker
That's a big deal.
00:19:21
Speaker
Now, the other part too is that we need to be able to spread this out to so many of our peers because squad is critical, y'all.
00:19:29
Speaker
We can't do this by ourselves.
00:19:31
Speaker
And even when we see the four walls around us and how they're often closed sometimes, when we open those doors and we look across, we look down the hallway,
00:19:41
Speaker
we hear our peers, we see our peers, we acknowledge them, but then we should take the extra step and build with our peers and try to find values that we can share in common about the way that we're going to work with our students.
00:19:55
Speaker
Even if we have different personality traits.
00:19:58
Speaker
As an introvert, it was often hard for me to extend that handout to other teachers.
00:20:03
Speaker
But then I also found myself saying,
00:20:05
Speaker
Well, my students are getting this experience in this classroom, so I should at least try to ensure that they get the same experience in other classrooms where the teacher would actually build community with me.
Collaboration and Shared Values
00:20:18
Speaker
That's hard, but it's good work and it's necessary work.
00:20:23
Speaker
And this is the way that we hold each other accountable and we build with each other.
00:20:28
Speaker
The other element, too, is that we have to make sure that our school leaders and our men can be involved in that values-driven perspective because so many of our principals either A, have found themselves shut out of the conversation or B, want to be shut out.
00:20:44
Speaker
But the ones who actually want to be involved and actually want to see that, it often means that they want to get into this work knowing that they're going to be teachers who have their back, folks who they can actually build with.
00:20:59
Speaker
as opposed to admin who on the other hand, only focus on numbers, only focus on discipline and rarely wanna build community with us.
00:21:08
Speaker
And so being able to differentiate in that way, when you have admin who actually wanna like build in the ways that they do, it becomes even more powerful.
00:21:17
Speaker
It's almost exponential the way that admin and principals can actually build together when they have teachers who are also aligned in the same values.
00:21:27
Speaker
That's huge.
00:21:29
Speaker
Now, what that also means, too, is, by the way, that our communities can also get involved as well.
00:21:34
Speaker
One of the biggest tricks I used when I was in the classroom was trying to get my kids to get a good experience because I knew that my kids were the biggest gossipers.
00:21:43
Speaker
And when they gossip, they often told their parents, they often told the community, oh, that's Mr. Wilson.
00:21:49
Speaker
And you want to be in this class.
00:21:51
Speaker
And so my first time that I ever had a parent's teacher conference, I had 90 students.
00:21:57
Speaker
Out of those 90, I had 60.
00:22:00
Speaker
Contrary to all those memes that talk about Jordans versus PTAs, my parents showed up.
00:22:07
Speaker
My community folks showed up.
00:22:09
Speaker
And why?
00:22:09
Speaker
Because I.
00:22:10
Speaker
I didn't do anything too special.
00:22:12
Speaker
I mean, yes, I called them in September.
00:22:14
Speaker
I called each and every one.
00:22:15
Speaker
I let them know what my name is.
00:22:17
Speaker
I introduced myself, so on and so forth.
00:22:20
Speaker
But then also I tried my best to engender favor with my students through authentic.
00:22:27
Speaker
underline authentic teacher relationships, student relationships, so on and so forth.
00:22:34
Speaker
Once I built those relationships, I also was able to say, what does my content knowledge add to your content knowledge?
00:22:41
Speaker
Because I never assumed that students didn't know anything.
00:22:44
Speaker
If anything, I ensured that I knew what my students knew so that I could build off that in my lessons.
00:22:51
Speaker
I left my lesson plan is just open enough so that I was able to learn from them and then say, okay, now that I know you know this, let me figure out what I can fill in with so I can actually build with you.
00:23:03
Speaker
That's the way that we should be thinking about our relationships in schools, especially from a content and academic standpoint, because content knowledge is dope, but it gets even more magnified.
00:23:14
Speaker
when we actually have strong relationships with our students as people.
00:23:18
Speaker
Right.
00:23:19
Speaker
But unfortunately, too many of our politics don't want that.
00:23:22
Speaker
Now, I know there's a plethora of you who are in communities right now where everyone's only talking about the anti-truth movement.
00:23:29
Speaker
I don't even call it CRT.
00:23:32
Speaker
I refuse to call it critical race theory because I know what critical race theory is.
00:23:36
Speaker
Critical race theory is a legal body of work that talks about how institutional racism is baked into our very structures in society.
00:23:47
Speaker
And so in the way that we can combat that is through different works and the ways that we do things.
00:23:53
Speaker
Fine, that's what critical race theory is, but the way that it's been used, unfortunately, diverts us from the actual work that we need to do because critical race theory, for example, is not wokeness.
00:24:07
Speaker
Those of us who grew up on 90s hip hop know exactly what wokeness is.
00:24:11
Speaker
It is not that.
00:24:12
Speaker
Critical race theory is not social-emotional learning.
00:24:16
Speaker
Getting kids to actually feel things and let them feel things and then teach yourself to feel things, that is not critical race theory.
00:24:23
Speaker
Anything related to diversity, equity, blackness, even Black History Month, Latinx, Hispanic History Month, Asian History Month, no, none of that is critical race theory.
00:24:36
Speaker
But unfortunately, it's all been baked in because people want to assault public education, and we can't allow that.
Call for Educational Justice
00:24:43
Speaker
That keeps us further and further away from the thing that we've been trying to do all along, and that is to build a shared humanity.
00:24:51
Speaker
I would allow us to think about how schools are sites for social reproduction, which I think so many conservatives actually know and know well.
00:25:00
Speaker
That's why they're able to take away so many of our rights, because they know they know they can't do anything without us if we don't allow them.
00:25:10
Speaker
And so when we think about schools, I would challenge us to think about the word urgency, because even though people say, well, it's not urgent.
00:25:21
Speaker
Yes, there's a certain structural urgency that I want us to apply because we can't waste generations waiting for the pendulum to swing back on the side of justice.
00:25:31
Speaker
We have to force justice.
00:25:32
Speaker
We have to bend the arc ourselves.
00:25:35
Speaker
And that includes for so many of our students who are LGBTQIA+, our students who are Black and consistently under harassment and attack by any number of social structures, including our Muslim, our Buddhist, our Jewish, our Bengali students, any number of students.
00:25:53
Speaker
That also includes our
00:25:55
Speaker
predominantly Spanish-speaking students, are predominantly French-speaking students, whether they're coming from Latin America, Central America, they're coming from West Africa, from any number of parts of Asia, not just East Asia, but Southern Asia as well.
00:26:09
Speaker
I'm thinking too much Tamil, Pakistani, Indian students, our students who are poor all across the board and all across the world, our Eastern European students as well, our Yemeni students.
00:26:20
Speaker
All of them, they all deserve the shared humanity.
Teaching with Compassion and Equity
00:26:23
Speaker
And if we kept a level of compassion and equity about ourselves, then we can address all these harms.
00:26:32
Speaker
It doesn't take much.
00:26:34
Speaker
It just takes a really big heart and a really thoughtful mind.
00:26:38
Speaker
And then being able to align those things in the ways that we talk to students and about students and then with students.
00:26:45
Speaker
Because something that I recognized too when I was a math teacher is that, yes, I came into the profession specifically thinking about how social justice can inform how I teach and then use that mathematics to be able to craft a new world for my students so they have more opportunities built out for them.
00:27:05
Speaker
At first, it was all about the high school dropout rates, and that was good.
00:27:08
Speaker
But then I built it out even further for me to think, well, it's not just about the rates.
00:27:15
Speaker
It has to be about something deeper.
00:27:17
Speaker
It has to be about them being able to charter their own dreams, go for their own goals, and me just opening alternatives for them to be able to do that.
00:27:27
Speaker
And so as I leave you, I think to all the teachers who I've taught because then they became teachers.
00:27:35
Speaker
I think to so many of the kids who looked at me and said, I could do that too.
00:27:41
Speaker
And then me looking back at them and said, I think you can do it better than I can.
00:27:46
Speaker
And I challenge you to do that.
00:27:49
Speaker
This is the way we build legacy little by little, bit by bit.
00:27:52
Speaker
And even though it feels really hard right now because you have so many things around you, I'm also going to challenge you to keep building, keep striving, keep doing something that pours into you so that you can come back again.
00:28:05
Speaker
Yes, rest is cool, and I want you to rest where you need to.
00:28:09
Speaker
But at some point, you may be tired, but inevitably, you will get tired of being tired.
00:28:16
Speaker
And that's the way that goes.
00:28:18
Speaker
So continue to build on, continue to move up.
00:28:21
Speaker
And of course, I would implore everybody, of course, feel free to check us out over here at EduColor because we're really putting things out there for the world to see.
00:28:31
Speaker
And we hope to keep building community, not just with this organization that's put this on.
00:28:36
Speaker
And I want to thank Human Restoration Project for having me on.
00:28:41
Speaker
But then also for us to continue to look at each and every school across America, across the world and say, how can I build a better and a bigger influence so that we can ensure that all of our kids get the justice and peace that they deserve and the education they deserve.
00:28:58
Speaker
because I'm fortunate to have the best pedagogue that I know live right next to me.
00:29:03
Speaker
Oh, why?
00:29:04
Speaker
Because she lives with me.
00:29:06
Speaker
That would be my wife, Luz Maria Rojas Wilson.
00:29:09
Speaker
But then I also look at the future too, Alejandro Wilson, being somebody who is a deep intellect who continually challenges me to be a better person.
00:29:19
Speaker
I couldn't do it without them.
00:29:21
Speaker
And if I had that in my household, I can only imagine what your household looked like and the ways that you continue to learn.
00:29:27
Speaker
This stuff is real personal to me.
The Role of Hope in Education
00:29:29
Speaker
And so I think about my students who I've seen them.
00:29:34
Speaker
They've come to school tired.
00:29:36
Speaker
They've come to school hungry.
00:29:38
Speaker
They've come to school sick.
00:29:40
Speaker
And I think back to my own childhood and how I just needed that teacher to say, welcome.
00:29:47
Speaker
Come through my class.
00:29:49
Speaker
I will teach you something from wherever you are.
00:29:51
Speaker
I will meet you where you are.
00:29:52
Speaker
And then I will pull you and push you to go further than you could possibly have imagined.
00:29:58
Speaker
Because I can't do this without hope.
00:30:01
Speaker
We must do this with hope.
00:30:03
Speaker
Hope is always going to be on the passenger side while I drive.
00:30:08
Speaker
And as we're hoping, as we're building, as we're restoring humanity together, I want everyone to really think about what it means to be hopeful in times of peril, what it means to be human and actually have that shared humanity, not to re-humanize because we never lost that humanity that first time.
00:30:28
Speaker
It's just that there are those of us who've decided that there are people who are less human than others,
00:30:34
Speaker
But the folks who have been subjected to that have always seen themselves as human beings and simply want everybody else to be challenged and thoughtful enough to see that humanity and then create policies around that.
Q&A Invitation and Conclusion
00:30:48
Speaker
And I think the classroom is one of the best scenes for us to share that humanity together.
00:30:54
Speaker
I want to say thank you to everyone.
00:30:56
Speaker
I hope to see you at the Q&A.
00:30:57
Speaker
Take care.
00:31:00
Speaker
Thank you again for listening to our podcast at Human Restoration Project.
00:31:04
Speaker
I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to start making change.
00:31:07
Speaker
If you enjoyed listening, please consider leaving us a review on your favorite podcast player.
00:31:12
Speaker
Plus, find a whole host of free resources, writings, and other podcasts all for free on our website, humanrestorationproject.org.
00:31:18
Speaker
Thank you.