- So hello, everyone.
Just like to welcome you guys to our third
race and educational equity...
Third Social Justice Forum,
and today is race and
educational inequity.
Over the last several months
as you guys have seen,
we have put ourselves in position...
We have put ourselves in position
to run these separate forums
that really talk about
specific injustices in America.
And so we've created this,
we've started doing this.
We started doing this
immediately after the
George Floyd incident.
So our first
was June 4th,
where we had a
Social Justice Forum
that had nearly 200 people to attend.
While those individuals
attended the forum,
we spoke about our experiences
as black and brown people in America,
as minority groups in America,
and what we've had faced
over periods of time,
whether it be in work or
whether that be in education,
whether that be, you know,
in, you know, police
harassment or brutality.
So we shared our experience
and that was a powerful,
powerful, powerful forum.
And then on July 2nd, a
month later, we had a forum
that we did policing criminal
justice and race in America,
which was extremely
powerful there as well.
But we had police chiefs
from various departments
come to speak to us
about what they're doing
in their particular areas.
And how are they looking
to kind of be a little
bit more transparent
and also be able to look at ways
that we can kind of
solve some of the issues
that they may be having
within their departments.
So that was extreme, it was
extreme, it was powerful.
There was a lot of tough conversations
and questions that we had,
but it really brought
us to where we are now.
Now our third justice series here
is on educational inequity.
And what's great about this particular one
is we're bringing a lot of our
educators to the floor here
to really speak about our
classroom experiences,
our administration experiences,
and how we can really
look to create better
and safer spaces for our students.
But we have to kind of really chime in
and break down what that
really means as educators
and as administrators in our areas.
So today we're gonna talk about...
Today we're gonna look at K-16.
So we're gonna have educators
and special guests from elementary school,
all the way up to higher
ed, four year colleges.
The purpose and the reason
why I wanted to do this
was to really connect the community
with our different leaders,
who understand social justice
within their classrooms,
and really have a bunch
of tactics and solutions
and actionable items
that you as the viewer
may be able to use in your circle,
not just in your classroom,
but also in your areas
of work professionally,
that this stuff does cross over.
So, although today our focus
is really educational inequity
and how that looks in
our classroom settings
and our K-16 system.
However, a lot of this stuff, as we,
as you attended our other forums,
you'd realize that
influencing your circles
can also take in other areas
just as a lot of our police
chiefs and therapists did.
In our last episode,
we were doing that now
for this particular one.
So where do we begin
and how do we do this?
So please note, alright, all trainings
in multicultural affairs, social justice
is happening to summer and fall.
And our introductory,
this means that we will
familiarize the audience
with specific topics.
So you're not, we're not in two hours,
we're not going to be
able to solve everything,
but it's going to be a series
where we're gonna be able
to give you guys more and more
information as we move along.
Additionally, on having an
understanding that workshops
and trainings will be offered
as we continue and moving forward.
Next slide, please.
Order of events today.
Obviously I'm doing a welcoming right now,
and I'll go over a brief
history of education and equity,
and then show you a short video.
Then I will have our analyst,
which is more like an open
forum today, town hall kind of.
It's a little different
because we are virtual
and we're not live,
so I will be calling out at
panelists, going over their bio,
and then I'll ask them questions
that I have prepared for them to answer.
And so that really pertains
to the areas of expertise,
so they can really speak
on their experiences.
Then from there we will
talk to our audiences
and our audience will
be able to give a quest,
a Q&A for panelists.
And, you know, wherever
that may be, doesn't matter,
you know, what jobs you're in
or where you are as a student,
or maybe if you are an educator yourself,
you may be able to ask some
questions to our panelists.
And then we'll end up with
next steps, actionable items.
So our panelists have
prepared some of those for us
that we can take and use
on our everyday professional experience,
and then we'll have our closing remarks.
A couple of rules just to
kind of give a heads up.
As our panelists are speaking,
I'm gonna go through all
of our panelists first.
We do have a robust
group of panelists here,
so I won't be able to, you know,
go over every little line
that we have in the bio.
So I will share their
bio in our group chat.
So look into a group chat
and you can follow along.
We also will have our
timeline in our group chat.
So we'll follow that along.
I believe most of me
email that to you already,
so you have an agenda.
And so you did sign up,
you did have an agenda
and it should be there.
Once we go into the...
Once we go into the panelists section
and they start to speak,
if you have a question that is okay,
but I will not go to your questions
until every analyst has spoke first,
and when we get to that Q&A section.
So just be aware of that.
So I'm not ignoring you,
if you do have a question,
just please do that.
Also, if you do have a question privately
and you don't wanna speak,
you can send me a question
and I will repeat that question
to the group as a whole.
If you don't mind speaking,
just put comment or question,
and then we will call you or
call upon you in order, okay?
Other than that, let's get going.
So, the history and timeline of race
and education and equity,
we can go back into the 1800s.
And I'm not gonna read
all of this to you guys,
but I'm just kind of, you know,
you'll be shared to you in the chat.
So take a look for it,
but understanding of where it's come from,
so we've looking at it in
the 1800s where it began,
next slide, please.
One of the major cases
that we understand here
is Roberts vs the City of Boston in 1849,
where the Mass Supreme Court ruled that,
local officials had authority
to control local schools.
So it also said that they
ruled that separate schools
did not violate the
rights of black students.
And from that, you then ended
up seeing black parents,
first organization of black parents
that were doing boycotts and protests,
and it started way back in 1849.
Next slide please.
Plessy versus Ferguson is another case
that you look at a Supreme Court,
struck down civil rights act of 1875,
finding that discrimination by individuals
and private businesses was constitutional,
which became a huge
major issue in America.
Next slide.
And again, I'm not
reading through all this,
you'll have this 'cause we have a lot
to get through with our panelists.
And then here you can
see there's several more.
One of the most popular
ones that we know was
Brown versus the Board
of Higher Education,
was unanimous decision
was overturned by Plessy
declaring that the separate
schools are inherently unequal.
Next one.
Also I'm the Little Rock Nine in 1957,
over a 100,000 paratroopers
from the a hundred and
1st Airborne Division
and Federalize Arkansas National Guard
sent to protect nine
black high school students
integrating into Central
High School in Little Rock.
And if some of you remember
these imaging of the students
who are anywhere from ages 14 to 16 or 17,
friends who walk into a school
and exercise their rights to do that.
Because the military on line side by side
with a bunch of
individuals who were white,
yelling, screaming,
spitting, throwing things
as these students were just
trying to walk into the school
and the military was there for assistance.
Next slide please.
And then again, in the 1970s
and 80s, there was some,
as you guys will get
the slides in a second,
you can kind of look through it,
but there's a lot of the different cases
that were carried on
and the civil rights
and educational rights,
next please.
And then timeline here
and I kind of want to
just go into 2003 again.
So in nineties and in 2000,
these things have continued
and it still continues today.
But in 2003, a study by
Harvard civil rights project
find that schools were
more segregated in 2000,
than in 1970 when busing
segregation began.
So that was pretty, pretty major.
So what I'm gonna do from here,
and I know some of you are saying
that you're not able to see the...
You're not able to see the slides.
You will get it in the...
You will get it in the comment section,
but we'll play you this video hopefully.
Let me know the video does work
and that's embedded that we can see it
and then we'll go from there.
- [Narrator] This is Jamal.
Jamal is a boy who lives
in a poor neighborhood.
He has a friend named Kevin,
who lives in a wealthy neighborhood.
All of Jamal's neighbors
are African American
and all of Kevin's neighbors are white.
Because Jamal's school district
is mostly funded by property taxes,
his school is not very well funded.
His classrooms are overcrowded,
his teachers are under paid
and he doesn't have access
to high quality tutors
or extra curricular activities.
Kevin's school district is
also funded by property taxes.
So his school is very well funded.
His classrooms are never crowded.
His teachers are very well paid
and he has access to high quality tutors
and lots of extracurricular activities.
Kevin and Jamal live
only a few streets away
from each other.
So how come they're growing
up in such different worlds
with such different
opportunities for success?
The answer has to do
with America's history
of systemic racism.
To understand it better,
let's look at what life was like
for Kevin and Jamal's grandparents.
Decades after the civil war,
many government agencies
started to draw maps,
dividing cities into sections
that were either desirable or
undesirable for investment.
This practice was called red lining
and it usually blocked off
entire black neighborhoods
from access to private
and public investments.
Banks and insurance companies
used these maps for decades
to deny black people
loans and other services
based purely on race.
Historically speaking,
owning a home and getting
a college education
is the easiest way for an
American family to build wealth.
But when Jamal's grandparents
wanted to buy a house,
the banks refused because
they lived in a neighborhood
that was red line.
So Jamal's grandparents
were not able to buy a home,
and because colleges could
prevent them from attending
through legal segregation,
their options for higher
education were really scarce.
Kevin's grandparents on the other hand,
had a low interest loan
to buy their first house
and get accepted into a
handful of top universities,
which traditionally only
accepted white students.
This opened up a wealth of opportunities
that they were able to pass on
to their kids and grandkids.
Even as late as the 1980s,
an investigation into the
Atlanta real estate market
showed that banks were
more willing to lend
to low income white families
than to middle or upper income
African American families.
As a result today for every
hundred dollars of wealth
held by a white family, black
families have $5 and 4 cents.
A 2017 study confirms that red lining
is still affecting home values
in major cities like Chicago today.
This explains how Kevin and Jamal
inherited vastly different circumstances.
Unfortunately, the
story doesn't end there,
the big part of systemic
racism is implicit bias.
These are prejudices in society
that people are not aware that they have.
Let's go back to Kevin and Jamal.
Against all odds,
Jamal manages to be the only
student from his high school
to get accepted into a great university.
The same one that Kevin
and his high school friends are attending.
But after Kevin and Jamal, both graduate,
Jamal notices that his resume
isn't drawing as much interest as Kevin's
even though they graduated
from the same program
with the exact same GPA.
Unfortunately for Jamal,
studies show that resumes
with white sounding names
get twice as many callbacks
as identical resumes with
black sounding names.
Implicit bias is one of the reasons why
the black unemployment rate
is twice the rate of white unemployment.
Even among college graduates today,
you can see evidence of systemic racism
in every area of life.
The disparities and family
wealth, incarceration rates,
political representation and education
are all examples of systemic racism.
Unfortunately, the biggest
challenge is systemic racism
is that there's no single person
or entity responsible for it,
which makes it very hard to solve.
So what can you do?
The first thing you can do
is work towards becoming more aware
of your own implicit biases.
What are some prejudices
that you might hold
that you're not aware of?
Second let's acknowledge that
the consequences of
slavery and Jim Crow law
are still affecting access
to opportunity today.
As a result, we should
support systemic changes
that create more equal
opportunities for everyone,
increasing public school funding
and making it independent
from property taxes,
would be a great start
so the poor and wealthy districts
can receive equal access to resources.
Systemic problems require
systemic solutions.
Luckily we're all part of the system,
which means that we
all have a role to play
in making it better.
Peace.
- Awesome.
So that video there, again,
I think it ends up us
all having a role to play
and part of us creating these forums
and having these uncomfortable discussion
is for us to kind of really
see where our roles are,
no matter where we are.
I think there's a lot
of times in education,
we put ourselves in a position
where that's not really me,
it's up to administration
or it's up to the director
of multicultural center
or the director of the women's center
or whatever center it may
be to handle something
with the director of multicultural
affairs or diversity,
chief diversity officer,
you know, those are things
that we kind of assume
and not realizing that it
really affects who we are.
I don't care if we are a
teacher or coach, frontline,
if we, you know, we're an administrator,
it all affects who we are
and it affects our students
and how they progress
and how they see us at
the elementary level,
all the way up to the college
level as well and beyond.
So that was a short little video
that I hope you guys like it.
We will share that as well with you.
I apologize for really rushing
through the beginning part of that,
'cause I really wanted to kind of
just have a see the timeline.
So I know it wasn't as clear,
but you guys will also have
this for your use as well.
So I do apologize if I kind
of blasted right through that,
as I'm reflecting, I kind
of apologize for that.
So let's begin with our panelists
and the reason why I kind of
want to rush through everything
is because I wanted to hear our panelists
more so than hearing me.
I think the last few forums
you heard a lot of me
and I want these
professionals to really speak
and we're doing this
work day to day as well.
And today we have a special guest
that I wanted to introduce to you guys.
First is Kevin Gannon.
And Kevin Gannon is the Director of the
Center for Excellence
in Teaching and Learning
and professor of history
at Grand View University
in Des Moines, Iowa.
He is, when I say we had a great
conversation the other day,
if you guys have not known him,
he's was called the tattooed...
He's called the tattoo professor.
And he was in a great documentary,
which the 13th documentary
directed by Ava DuVernay.
And he also wrote the book
that just got released
the "Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto"
published by West Virginia
University Press in 2020,
spring of 2020 as part of
their teaching and learning
and higher educational series.
So, again, I would like to welcome Kevin,
and Kevin I have a question
for you as we, you know,
you just wrote your book.
So since the release of your book,
"Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto"
released this past spring.
How do you define hope in education now
with everything happening in America?
- [Kevin] Yeah, that's kind of
the million dollar question,
isn't it?
And you know, first let me just say,
thanks for inviting me here
and for letting me share a
space with you all today,
it's an honor and a
privilege to be with you.
Yeah, it's, you know,
I think we need to really
think about and be careful
when we conceive of hope is something like
just this vague sense that
everything will get better
because what we do is if we
just sort of blindly believe
everything will get better just over time,
then that takes away our own role
in making the change, right.
That we assume someone else
will make everything better
and that we just have to sit back.
And so for me, when I think
about the idea of hope,
what hope demands, or it has
two important elements to it,
you can't have hope if
you don't have agency,
that is the belief that you can help
bring about the circumstances
that you're hoping for
and pathways.
That is what are the ways in
which I can actually take to
as an agent to bring about this
change that I'm looking for.
So when we ask students
to be hopeful, you know,
we want students to know
what their agency is,
and know what their pathways are, right?
And so part of that,
I think involves a really honest reckoning
with the circumstances we
find ourselves in today.
It does no good for any of us
to ignore any of the
systemic inequalities,
the corrosive effects of racism
that have suffused the structures
that we live in today,
you know, from everything,
from, you know, access to
resources, to, you know,
which students are seen as important
and which students aren't
and whose knowledge counts
and whose knowledge doesn't, you know,
we need to have a clear eyed
honest unflinching assessment
of where we are today.
A realistic understanding of
it and hear what I say we,
I'm mostly talking to
white people, you know,
fellow white people,
it is very easy for us
to take the off ramp
on this conversation.
You know, we can be in spaces
where everybody looks like us
and everybody's experiences
are similar to us.
And if we don't do the work to
do this realistic assessment
and get a critical understanding
of where we are now,
then we don't have hope
to take a positive approach
to change in the future.
So the agency to build that understanding
brings us an understanding of the pathways
that we need to take.
And that may look different
depending on your role,
whether you teach in the K-12 system,
whether you teach in a
college or a university,
whether you're a student
in one of those areas,
whether you're a citizen
who wants to, you know,
work for more equitable education funding,
wherever you are, realistically,
and unflinchingly looking at
our situation and then say,
where is my pathway?
How am I an agent for change?
Those to me are the critical
ingredients of hope.
Hope to be realistic, right?
And I'm not saying we can't dream big,
and I'm not saying we
should limit our vision,
but we need to have ways
to get to the type of change we want.
We shouldn't be afraid to dream big,
but we also shouldn't be afraid,
you know, we shouldn't be dreaming big
and then assuming it's somebody else's job
to do the actual work.
So if you remember anything
out of that, you know,
hope and agency, you know, or
agency and pathways make hope.
So where what's your
agency, what's your role?
What pathways do you work for for change?
And then, you know, how do
you get about doing that work?
How do you make it part of
your responsibility as well?
- Awesome, thank you so much, Kevin,
that's a great way to open,
'cause that kinda really
has to start thinking
in our professions.
Especially a lot of us
do identify as white
and if you do identify like how can you...
How can you be that,
how can you critically think
and follow some of the guidelines
that Kevin just unspoken about?
So thank you, Kevin,
and we'll get that to you shortly as well.
Amy is our next...
Amy Dos Santos is our next presenter.
And Amy received a bachelor's
degree in psychology
from Bridgewater State University
and master's degree in
elementary and special education
from UMass Boston.
Amy worked as a child
development specialist
at the Thom Boston Metro
Early Intervention program
for four years and currently
works in Randall public schools
as a kindergarten teacher.
Before a position as a
kindergarten teacher,
Amy taught second grade, third grade
and special education and
kindergarten special education.
So welcome Amy.
I appreciate you being here.
And I have, my first question
for you today is Amy,
how should race be addressed
with young children in your...
- Well, first I'd like to just
say thank you for having me
and hello to everybody.
You know, race being
discussed in early education
with children is often not happening
because children are often
told not to talk about race.
It's perceived as rude or racist,
just the adult who's
advising them, but it's not.
You know, children are
not colorblind students
or actually children are
as early as six months old
when I start to see color.
So acknowledging that my skin
is brown is no more racist
or rude than saying that
Rob has bought a blue shirt.
After the age of nine
children have a tendency to,
they have racial attitudes
that remain the same.
But before age nine,
we have a real chance to
affect teens in that area.
We can help children to
develop positive attitudes
about race and cultural identity.
You know, talking about
color is only problematic
when we start to assign
a value to the color.
So for example, if someone was to say,
"Oh, that's a really nice house,
a white person might sleep there,"
or, "Oh, you know, you're so
well spoken for a black way."
You're then assigning a value to the color
and that's when it becomes
problems for the children.
Even myself, I have a
three year old daughter
and the other day we were in our garden
and there was a zucchini
that was starting to rot
and it was brown.
And I caught myself starting to say,
"Oh, it's brown and Yucca",
but I was assigning a
value to the color brown.
And then I had to think in that moment,
well, what is that
gonna say to my daughter
and her brown skin,
that brown skin is Yucca.
And I don't want to do that
so what's more appropriate
for me to say, you know,
zucchinis are supposed
to be green and hard
and this one getting
mushy and turning color,
so we don't want to eat it that way.
And I eliminated the assignment
of value to the color.
We can talk very clearly
with young children
and break things down for them.
And if someone says,
why is his skin so dark?
It's perfectly acceptable to say,
you know, people,
all people have something
in their skin called melanin
and some people have more than others
and that's what makes their skin darker.
And for young children,
it's like the science lesson
and it's exciting and new
and interesting to them.
You know, I had students
in my own classroom say
that another child was ugly
because their skin was brown
and that's the color of poop.
And that's what happens in
elementary and early childhood,
they associate
poop and things that are
brown with skin tone.
And so I had to redefine their thinking
and help them to see that,
well we liked chocolate and brownies
and cookies and teddy bears,
and those are all brown
and brown is in fact a beautiful thing.
And just try to reframe
their thinking for that.
And there are gonna be times
that children are gonna
surprise you with a question.
And if you don't have
a great answer for it,
or you don't know how to address it,
it's perfectly acceptable
to say, you know,
that's a great question, I
wanna figure it out with you.
Let's see if there's a book about that,
or let's go to the library
and that's accessible for young children.
- Thank you so much for that
and we'll get back to you.
And that's an extremely
important, as you know,
as we're going through some of the things
that are identifier as we
don't realize the effect
that it can have with our
children as we move on.
So our next panelist is Dr. Sarah Madhuri.
And Sarah is a graduate of
Johnson and Wales University
with a doctorate in
educational leadership.
She has 10 years of experience
working as special education,
mostly in urban settings.
Her research interests
include educational equity
in the areas of race, disability,
and special education.
So welcome Dr. Madhuri
and my question for you Dr. Madhuri is
how does racism present
itself in special education?
- Thank you for having me.
First of all, I think this
is a really good opportunity
to discuss this topic,
because I think that
when equity is discussed,
we often forget...
I always say that like special education
and disability rights are
the forgotten social justice.
And like what Dr. Gannon has said,
I feel like people have this hope,
like everything will get better,
everything will get better.
And so often without
taking action, it doesn't.
So something important that I
think needs to be recognized
is the connectivity and
the intersectionality
between race and disability.
The idea of ability itself is racialized
because the disability in itself
means a deviation from the norm.
So if somebody perceives
something to be different,
that means it's a disability, right?
So this goes back like
hundreds and hundreds of years
through the times of slavery.
But back in like the 1900s, you know,
there was scientific racism
where they would try to prove
the mental inferiority
of black people and people of color
by using like falsify data
or post-mortem brain studies,
where they didn't actually
account for, you know,
age and all those different factors
that's all been debunked.
There plenty of research to prove that
there's no intelligent
differences between races.
Race intelligence is not biological.
There's no, again, there's
no differences between races,
but unfortunately fast forward to today,
we have many inequities
in special education
that affect race.
And often we placed this, you know,
like we see disability and special ed
that we recognize there's an equity,
but it goes further than that
because people black
indigenous people of color
experience the inequities, you know,
much worse than a white person.
So I'll give you an example,
every year for the past 40 years,
since the individuals with
disabilities Act was passed,
Congress reports the data on, you know,
representation of kids
in special education.
And every single year
for the past 40 years,
black students have been over-represented
in special education.
White students have never, ever,
ever been over-represented.
So this is 40 years going
on every single year
there's been very little improvements.
And when I say they're over-represented
in special education, I mean that
they're overrepresented in
disabilities that are considered
they're called high
incidents disabilities.
And these disabilities
are not medicalized.
So you can't perceive them, right?
But if somebody has an orthopedic
disability or, you know,
blindness, deafness, stats,
you can perceive that as
a medicalized disability,
those are called low incidents.
Black indigenous and people
of color are over-represented
in high incidence disabilities.
And these are diagnosed or
labeled by school professionals.
So people like me, a
school psych, a counselor,
we all get together on a team.
We evaluate the student and
we are the ones who decide
if the child has a disability.
The problem with this is that as we know,
the teaching force is
overwhelmingly white, right?
More so even like school sites,
it's even more white there's
less and less diversity
in those kinds of specialized areas.
So again, like one back to
what I said about disability,
being the absence of normal,
if everyone who's evaluating
the student is white,
then their beliefs on what is normal
is rooted in white culture, right?
And I know that sometimes
it's hard to hear,
'cause you know, people get defensive.
If I talk about this,
this is my dissertation topic actually.
And sometimes people get
defensive when we talk about it
and they're like,
"I would never diagnose a
person with the disability,"
but we need to understand
it's often done unconsciously,
it's an unconscious bias.
You know, if a child
who's, you know, a black,
it says a black girl
who's perceived to be,
you're perceived to be
a threat or whatever,
that is your implicit
bias towards black girls.
And going back to what Kevin said,
if you just think it'll get
better, it'll get better,
it won't 'cause you need to
intentionally undo those biases
that we have towards black
indigenous people of color
that we can kind of undo it.
So that's, it's kinda there's like...
I could talk for hours
about the inequities
in special education, but you know,
special education is intention, right?
Is to help to give
people with disabilities,
a fair shot at life, right?
But it's kind of turned into this thing
where it's just yet
another source of inequity.
And again I can go back
to what I said before
black people are feeling it the most
and it's kind of become
like this other avenue that,
you know, people of color are
experiencing more inequities.
- Thank you so much for that
definitely resonates with me
and some of my family members
and, you know, I can
have stories upon stories
of students that I've worked with as well.
So it's very, really important.
So thank you for that.
And we'll definitely get
back to you soon as well.
Our next panelists
today is Melissa Dowart.
Melissa Dowart holds a
bachelor of arts in Spanish.
Spanish and master's in arts
and teaching Spanish from UMass Dartmouth.
Melissa taught Spanish
at Hastings Middle School
and for Fairhaven for 11 years
and spent the last seven
years teaching Spanish
and ESL at Fairhaven High School.
Melissa has taught the ESL in Bedford
through The Massachusetts
Migrant Education Program
and volunteered as an
interpreter for medical,
for a medical mission
in Honduras last summer.
This summer, Melissa will
begin teaching Spanish,
which I believe she already
has for upward brown program
at Bristol Community College.
So welcome, Missy.
I appreciate you being here.
And this is my question for you,
in order to earn a high school diploma,
a student must pass a set of English,
math, science, and cast tests.
Are these tests equitable
for all students?
- Sorry(giggles)
Thank you for having me.
And they definitely are not
equitable for all students.
I deal predominantly
with the ESL students.
So they're usually
newcomers to our school,
usually newcomers to our country.
And the school that I work
in is predominantly white.
So we have about 88% white students.
These kids come to our high school,
they're thrown into classes.
We don't have the resources
to handle volumes of speakers
of other languages because
it's never happened before.
We're a very low incidence school.
So I'm the one ESL teacher.
And I kind of got thrown into it
in a sense that I took the test and said,
okay, sure, I'll try it.
And Oh really?
We have a couple of students, great.
And then before you know it,
my program started to
grow and grow and grow,
and then I was only teaching ESL.
So you're in this school
that has no resources
and you're looking at these kids
and they're, Oh, what are you here for?
Well, I wanna graduate with a diploma.
Well, you can't do that unless
you pass these three tests.
So how do we get these kids to pass tests
when it's a test of kids
who have been in the
Massachusetts school system
from K-10, that's where
you take it to pass.
And these kids are coming
from rural Guatemala where,
you know, they have
very limited education.
They're trying to survive,
they're out working at 13, 10.
So it's very different for them.
They're trying to adjust to this new life
and school's just being thrown at them.
They're not getting
things in their language.
Nobody's really helping them.
So I look at this and say,
geez, I got to do something about this.
I need to help these students
because they're not
going to pass this test.
This test is biased without a doubt.
This test is...
You're testing English, okay, that's fine.
That should be in English,
but the math and science,
why does that have to be in English only?
Why couldn't it be offered in the language
of it's dominant of the student?
Well, if you speak Spanish,
you're lucky because math is,
but forget it if you speak anything else.
And that seems like it's not really fair.
That's not equitable for those students.
So they're already behind
the eight ball with that.
They're behind the eight
ball with the language.
We're trying to catch them up.
We're trying to teach them basic math
because they're not really
learning those things.
And they're constantly like
feeling that they're behind.
And their teachers, you know,
not the teachers are bad,
but they don't know how to deal with this
because in a low incidence school,
you don't know what to do.
So, you know, I'm trying to get in there
and be the everything for them
and contact the teachers
and be in touch with them
and give these kids extra work
and try to figure out how
we're gonna get them to pass,
and they just feel like they're
being set up for failure.
So, you know, we have to
push to get rid of this test.
It doesn't seem fair.
It's not only in my case, it
would be Latin X students.
But you know, this is
unfair to black students.
The lowest test scores
are usually low income
students, black and Latino.
So I don't know how we
can fix this problem,
but we need to policy change.
If we don't try to change these policies,
this is systemic racism.
This is an example of it.
We're not going to get these kids to pass,
one in three English language learners,
they don't graduate on time.
And one in seven drop out,
mostly because they get into
this pipeline of testing
that they have to keep retaking the test.
Sure, you can retake it as
many times as you need to.
But while you're doing that,
you're missing sometimes 15
days of classes in a year,
you're already behind.
So if we don't start to
stand up for these students
and say, hey, we need to change.
We need to make this stop.
Let's teach them something
that they can use.
Let's teach them something...
Instead of teaching to a test,
let's teach them skills
that make them employable,
that allow them to go
on to higher education.
If you don't pass and you
don't get that diploma,
all you get is a
certificate of attendance,
which does you basically nothing.
So you cannot go to
Bristol Community College
and take classes and go
onto higher education
until you pass this test.
So until we can fix this
system that is rigged,
we're really leaving behind
our most vulnerable students.
- Thank you so much, Missy, for that.
And lot of the students that I work with,
or I have worked with in the past as well
have had issues on passing their tests
and a lot of them are on the ESL spectrum.
So that is something that we
must take a further look on
moving forward in our...
Moving forward in this battle
that we are facing daily
and that you see daily.
So we're gonna move on to the next person.
Thank you, Missy, we'll
get back to you as well.
It was some follow up
questions that I wrote down,
but our next panelist
is gonna be Serge Muniz.
Serge is a technical teacher
at a Graded NOV Vocational High School.
And he runs the diesel shop
as an instructor there.
Serge as a father four, a
form of basketball coach,
current basketball coach
at Graydon Bedford,
but former basketball coach at Bristol.
And he is also the co
president of the Bedford
Great New Bedford Education union sorry.
So Serge my question
for you and welcome is,
what is the value of
career technical education
and how can it benefit minoritized groups?
- Alright, well, thanks
for having me, Rob.
Let me start by saying I'm
so happy and proud for you
because as someone who's
one of my closest friends
getting to see how our
conversations have changed
and to just talk.
And we're really seeing
you put things together
to help make change, it's it's incredible.
And then to listen to you
say nice things about me
is a balance of the bromance, you know.
But as far as career
and technical education,
it's so valuable because
as Missy had just said,
what skills are we teaching our students?
We focus so much sometimes on the areas
where they are weakened,
but we're not really paying attention
to the things that they're great at.
And how can we expose them
to those opportunities
where career and technical
education is valuable to them.
Now, I know we're in a forum
with tons of college educators,
but college isn't for everyone, right?
And that's a reality.
And we all know plumbers,
electricians, carpenters
who have phenomenal careers,
who build great lives for
themselves and their families,
and so that pathway is something
that has to share equal value
because it's an education
in itself, right?
So if you're a master carpenter,
you spent just as much time in your trade
as someone in the world of academia.
So the work that you
put in is no different.
And so it needs that same
value for these students
because it gives them an opportunity
to really build something
special for themselves.
And of course, every kid learns
a little different as well.
So having opportunities
for different career
and technical areas where you
might be in IT related program
that really focuses
and like some IT programs
are so math heavy, right?
And some students are
incredibly good at math.
So it suits them well.
Maybe a student that would come
into the diesel shop with me
is someone who really likes
to see, touch and feel
what they're working on
and so it fits them well.
Again, vocational technical
education is so valuable
because it can create
opportunities for our young adults.
- I hear you here, thank you
so much I appreciate that.
And again, yeah,
I think opportunities
in special ed is major
and something that we
need to kind of, you know,
we have a workforce development side
here at Bristol as well,
and we're looking to create programming
and more and more trainings,
especially so that we
can help specific groups
that aren't gonna go to college
because we know that,
that's not realistic for
everyone to go to college,
but can we provide
resources for our students
who are looking to go
into the technical field
and then also look into maybe increase
our admissions policies at some
of these technical schools,
because I know that
there's been some barriers
that really have prevented
some of our minority groups
gaining, getting
attendance to those schools
and why is that
especially when it's needed.
So our next panelist is thank you, sir,
we'll get back to you.
So our next panel is Heather Clemento.
Heather is a graduate of Bristol
Community College in 1989
and UMass Dartmouth in 91.
Heather graduated from
Fitchburg State University
in 2012, with a master's degree
in educational leadership in management,
earning an additional
license certifying her
as an assistant principal and principal
for grades seven through 12,
Heather is a history teacher
at Greater New Bedford Regional
Vocational-Technical High School.
That's such a long name
and most recently been
elected as co president
with us search here as
their first for their union.
So again, Heather,
I have a question here for you and welcome
and how does...
how do you enhance your curriculum,
which is defined by state frameworks
to address the needs of
diverse population of students.
- This is a good question.
I wanna start by saying
thanks for having me.
I'm a little bit honored
and humbled to be here
with these amazing panelists
that you have chosen.
I came here thinking I'm not
an expert on anything, right.
I've taught for a really long time.
My craft has always been
one that has evolved
over 27 plus years.
So I really came with the mindset that
I wanna listen to what the
other panelists have to say,
learn, share, and apply.
And I think Kevin alluded
to affecting change
within my school.
And I, for me, that transcends
the classroom, right?
I want to affect the lives of my students,
but I also wanna bring these
changes back to my faculty
because there's always
room for improvement.
And so as a history teacher,
curriculum is obviously important.
But most important are the connections
that we make with the individuals
sitting in our classrooms
of all colors, walks of
life backgrounds, et cetera.
And this can be really, really challenging
when you teach at the high school level,
because a person like me,
I teach supportive classes,
which would be students
with disabilities and IEPs,
but I also teach honors classes.
And in an honors class,
the numbers are astronomically high
because they have to be low for the kids
who have greater needs.
So when you have a class
of 28, 29, 30 kids,
it's very, very difficult
to make a connection
to their individual story,
which is very important.
And then you have the issue
of the textbook that we use
traditionally in all of our classes,
they are predominantly
written by white people
telling the white story of
America for our white students.
And so to diversify that curriculum,
I'm gonna borrow a line from somebody,
I can't quote the name of the
person isn't coming to me,
but she said something like,
"teaching beyond the textbook
is like deejaying your own playlist.
Except what you're doing is
deejaying your own primary sources
to fit the faces of the
students in your classroom."
And it is absolutely unequivocal
that we need to do better.
We need more equity,
we need more inclusion.
So I'm a white woman
middle-aged advantaged
just because of those things, right?
Teaching brown, black, Hispanic students,
I've got to be able to
draw connections to them.
So it's really pulling resources
from a variety of places
and right out of the gate,
what I try to get them to do is challenge
what they already know about history.
So we do this immediate project,
it's from the DBQ project,
which is available online,
anybody can look it up.
And the question that I ask my
14 year old freshmen students
is how revolutionary was
the revolutionary war
with the idea that the war
was meant to bring about great change
that would affect all of the people
living in the 13 colonies at the time.
So we look at a whole host
of different documents.
We look at a document,
it's a piece of artwork,
slaves pulling down the statue of the King
while the white men who owned them,
stood in the background and watched
and try to get them to
draw on those images
all the way up through the
19th amendment in 1920,
giving women the right to vote.
If it was a revolution,
and all it did was take power
from wealthy white men in England
and transfer power to
wealthy white men in America,
was it truly revolutionary?
So it's really about
getting them to dig deep
and to find themself in the story
and be able to make a
connection to their life today
because of the struggle is real.
It's still ever present
everything everybody has said
here today, speaks to that.
So finding stories of
the minorities in history
and getting kids to delve in, investigate,
examine, question and wanna know more
because that story somehow speaks to them.
- Absolutely thank you for that.
And that's extremely important.
You don't even realize it.
And sometimes I think
when we're talking about
advantage and privilege,
we don't recognize that
what we are taught kind
of puts us into this,
this mode or this thought
process that we think that,
you know, what we are taught
is all that that's there.
And we don't have that other
side of the black history
that should be in taught in school.
- We have one more,
another project that comes
to mind really quickly,
the kids investigate how free,
free black men were in Northern states
prior to the civil war.
And we use the word black in the question,
and I have white kids who say,
Mrs. Pimento, you can't say that.
And this goes back to what
the first, I forget her name.
I'm sorry, the kindergarten
teacher said that
about the color brown.
And I said, why can't we say
a person is brown or black.
That's not offensive, it's fact.
And it celebrates the
individuality in all of us.
So just creating spaces
for those conversations
beyond the textbook,
which I don't really even use very often
because it's in a textbook,
a snippet about black people,
a snippet about women,
a snippet about immigrants, et cetera.
- Thank you so much for that.
- Thank you.
So our next panelist is Dr. Shanna Hallow
Dr. Shannon Howell is earned
her bachelor's of science
and sociology at the
university of West Georgia.
Her master's in science and adult learning
and organizational performance
from Drake University
and her doctor of philosophy
in education leadership
and policy studies
for our community college
leadership program
from Iowa State University.
Following positions at the
University of West Georgia,
Drake University in Des Moines
Iowa area Community College,
China Joint Grand View University,
where she'd left Kevin
several years ago in 2018
as the institutional director
for a student success,
Shannon was named Dean of
Bristol Community College,
New Bedford campus this
past August on 2019.
So welcome Dr. Howell.
I appreciate you being here with us today
and spending time with us.
Dr. Howell,
how could you talk about your
experience in higher education
and about the challenges
you may have had to overcome
while furthering your
education as a black woman?
- First of all, Rob,
thank you for having me
and welcome to everyone.
Its great to see so
many people here today.
First of all, I just
wanna just say thank you
for taking the time out this evening
to talk about this subject.
I think, you know, for a lot of us,
this is sometimes it gets a little touchy
and we get a little bit uncomfortable
when we talk about these subjects.
So I just want to thank
all of you for being here.
My educational career in undergrad,
I was a first generation college student.
My mother passed away
when I was 13 years old
and my sister raised me.
And so when I went off to college,
I had no idea what I was doing.
You know, I don't know,
somehow we have in our heads
that once a person turns 18,
they're ready to go to college
and to be able to make decisions.
And I was on academic probation,
my freshman year in college
because I hadn't no idea
really what I was doing.
And eventually it took me seven years
just to get my bachelor's degree.
And I say all that to say
that a lot of times, you know,
I tell people all the time,
I'm an advocate for community college.
I think I would have benefited
if I had attended community college first,
smaller classrooms.
My first sociology class
had 200 students in it.
And that ended up being my major.
So it's interesting
because I ended up
getting a C in that class
and that ended up being my major,
but I just was not prepared
for the environment
that I was stepping into.
The college I attended
was a predominantly
white state institution
that didn't have many
people that look like me.
Though there were a lot
of black student unions,
a lot of student programming.
I didn't see that in my classroom.
I didn't see that a lot
of times with my peers,
a lot of times what my
professors, grad assistants
or anything like that.
So I think in some ways
that kind of hindered me
because I really didn't have anyone
that I felt comfortable
going to and talking to
about what I was struggling with
during my undergraduate career.
I wanna skip over and go
to my doctorial program.
I was in a program of 13 individuals
who are all professionals
in higher education.
And I was the only person
that looked like me.
And so many times, not
because as a practitioner,
I knew the work, but I felt
like I wasn't intelligent.
We have philosophers and individuals
with all these great
degrees who spoke very well.
I was not very confident
in the way that I spoke,
but I knew I was a hard worker.
And so out of the 13,
I ended up being the
second person to defend.
So I actually was the second
person to finish our program.
And I stayed at the say that sometimes,
and I tell people all the time,
the way I got through my program
was a white male in my program.
He was the first one to finish.
And I say that because
when we talk about allies,
sometimes I think we forget
that we're all allies
and we all need to support
students and support one another.
But I got through my program,
in a way this my white friend, Michael,
who would literally contact me once a week
and say, Shannon, how are you doing?
What's going on?
What can I do to support you?
Where are you at?
Have you done this?
Have you done that?
And so I just want to say
that to all of you that
just because you're white
doesn't mean that you can't still advocate
and be an ally for more
of our students of color.
A lot of times I think people
say, well, what can I do?
I don't know what to do.
I'm not black, I don't know what to say.
It's an encouraging word.
It say, you know, follow
up on the conversation
that you might've had with a student.
It says just telling the
student, you know what?
You did a really good
job, I'm so proud of you.
If a student pulled a
grade from a D to a C,
tell them that's great, that's awesome.
Next time we're gonna
try to get a B or an A.
So I think when I think
about my college experience
and sometimes feeling alone,
I think about our students
that I work with every day
and I wonder, you know,
what did they think
and how are they feeling that
they don't see a lot of people
that look like them?
That's why people,
I tell people all the time,
I didn't really like school.
I was pretty decent at it,
but I pursued a doctorate
because I wanted to put
myself in a position
where students could see
somebody that looked like them.
That I can share my story with them
about how I struggled in college
and I was on academic probation.
So I tell how I went
from probation to PhD.
So if I can do it a person
who probably should,
I don't even know if I should
have gone to college sometimes
when I think about it, but here I am now.
So if I can do it that they can do it.
And that that I'm there to support them.
So I just wanna encourage all of you
to be that person for
those that you work with.
Even if you don't work
with students every day,
there's still things you can do.
If you see a student in
the hallway, speak to them
and say, Hey, how you doing?
Whatever it may be, just give your...
Make those opportunities available.
Don't expect those
opportunities to come to you.
You have to make those opportunities.
- Thank you so much for that.
It's really powerful and
relationship building,
and we'll have some questions
on relationship building
it's extremely powerful.
And I think we don't
realize that where we are
and our touch points
of how just having a simple
conversation or encourage,
or just a little sense of encouragement
can go a long way with a student,
because a lot of students, you know,
it doesn't necessarily have
to be a student of color,
but a lot of students lack confidence
when they're going to school.
But just imagine if,
you know, we're there,
wherever we are elementary
to middle school,
to high school, to college.
And if you can encourage someone,
and I know that I have
a fifth grade teacher
and I have someone
freshman year in college
that I remember to this day
that really influenced
helping me get through
when I felt like it was
pretty much done with school.
So thank you for that,
it's extremely powerful.
So our last panelists,
before we get into our
Q&A's with everything
is Dr. Angan Atasay,
and thank you, professor
and doctor Atasay from being here.
He's a good friend of mine as well.
Professor Atasay is a
professor in education
at Bristol Community College
and program coordinator for
elementary and he holds a PhD
in social and philosophical
foundations of education
from the Department of Education.
He's a culture and a culture and society
from the university of
Utah, I apologize there.
Apart from teaching
philosophy and humanities
and education courses as a
full time faculty member.
Angan has an interdisciplinary
research agenda
invested in mapping,
Neal, liberal educational
discourses, and subjectivity.
So welcome Dr Atansy
I appreciate you being here.
My question for you is how can faculty
and universities and
colleges begin to cultivate
equity pedagogy in the classroom?
- In the classroom, well, hi, everybody.
I'll start with the example,
which I think speaks to something
that we can all do in our
classrooms in college,
in higher education there's
this perception that, you know,
higher ed is more of a grown up place.
You know, where the
social, emotional pieces
left behind the board, you know,
the moment you stepped into the classroom,
you just have to focus on the objective
to the sterilize knowledge, right?
Knowledge comes first and
the person comes maybe never,
it never comes.
Maybe we can start by changing that.
And I wanna give you the example of
ask all of you to refer to me as Angan
as opposed to Dr Atasay
(laughs) it sounds weird, man.
But yeah, I have a PhD, I'm a doctor,
but I try not to put that in
front of my students' faces.
You know, Hey, look, I am the professor,
here is my PhD, call me Dr. Atasay side.
And I understand I have a lot
of privilege walking in there
and making fun of my
own name and my titles.
It's not always so easy for folks
who are not as privileged as I am.
I come from Turkey, I have
this ambivalent identities,
like can easily make fun of my identity.
So what I'm trying to
get to is the idea that
In the classroom perhaps
we can start off with
trying to build those relationships,
by being a little more open and vulnerable
and not really getting co-opted
by this academic environment
that often asks us to become
the so called experts,
the highly untouchable professor.
And I know a lot of my colleagues
are not stepping into those shoes.
They're very approachable,
very accessible.
And I think that's the
best strategy to begin,
to create an equitable
pedagogical approach to knowledge.
We have to prioritize the student first.
We have to empower their
identities, their experiences,
their funds of knowledge,
before we move on to
the academic knowledge
that we wanna teach them.
So I would argue that the first step
is the relational approach,
but the idea that we have
to place the person first.
And I do that by exemplifying
myself as this person first,
and then secondary is
the professor, right?
I'm first Angan and
then I'm the professor.
That opens up a lot of good conversations,
it opens up a completely
whole different venue
for students to begin
to relate to who I am.
We become buddies and
I don't like, you know,
go out and have drinks with them,
but it's just a friendlier
and more relaxing
and comforting environment
for them to be in.
And when you consider
a lot of our students
who are maybe first on college students,
the first member of their
family who goes to college,
but the institution I read the institution
is a very scary place.
It could be intimidating.
So to find that relational person
that they could really hold on to,
it gives them a fair chance
to begin to acquire knowledge.
And I would echo a lot
of the other strategies
that the panelists have emphasized.
The idea that, you know, the
content has to be meaningful.
It cannot be whitewashed.
You can definitely draw on again
students' funds of
knowledge, their experiences,
make relevance to
contemporary current issues
that they're really passionate about.
Bring in local media,
bring in local issues.
Those things will give students
the chance to hold onto
the other sort of knowledge
that you want to scaffold and build on.
So don't present knowledge
as this highly objective
sterilized thing that
you put into their head.
Have them claim it, have
students claim their knowledge,
make sure that they're passionate
about what they're investigating.
And that only happens when you
create opportunities for them
to bring in their own funds
of knowledge and experiences.
Like I'm kind of echoing
a lot of the panelists.
I think I would also add, you
know, accessibility, you know,
the technicality of having
things that are accessible,
like open educational resources,
creating materials that are sensitive
to diversity and inclusion.
One strategy, quick strategy
that I have in my syllabus
for instance, when I started
these classes this semester is
I usually include my preferred pronoun
as a way to give students
the opportunity to see that
this is a safe space for all identities.
So I use my pronouns and I tell them,
these are my pronouns.
And if you have preferred
names or pronouns,
please let me know and I will honor it.
I will definitely use those
pieces of identification.
So little strategies.
It doesn't have to be a grand strategy,
but looking at our assessment,
looking at our resources
and what sort of access
we provide to students goes a long way.
And I'll finish up with another
little piece of example,
assignments, you know,
assignments should not
necessarily be too rigid.
I try to give many different
options of assignments
'cause not everybody learns the same way.
And that is true with
a lot of our students
who come from very different backgrounds.
So I try to give them
as many options as I can
so that they can find the
most meaningful assignment
that will allow them to
express their knowledge.
So in that sense, I am more
of a flexible pedagogue
as opposed to rigid one.
Maybe you can even refer to it
some talent with teaching
about how we should all be more cool
and like water rather than rigid.
'Cause the rigidity is
often coupled with a lot of
institutional frameworks
of white privilege
and other sorts of privilege
that are work well for students
who come from a highly
affluent backgrounds.
And I don't wanna take up too much time,
but I can just keep on going and going,
but I'll leave room for dialogue later on
we'll talk more.
- Absolutely, thank you so much for that.
Isn't this panel great?
This is like so powerful
am hearing from different perspectives.
So I appreciate you
Angan for that, you know,
before we get into the
Q and a with everyone,
I have like this random question
for any of the panelists
and maybe Kevin, if you
would wanna start here,
but how, you know,
so a lot of the teachers
may not have an understanding
whether, what level you are,
how can teachers on unconscious bias
unknowingly contribute
to racism in our schools.
And then maybe a lot of us
can maybe kind of contribute
from our areas of where,
where we stand and whatever level we are.
- So yeah, I saw that question
in the chat too, about,
you know, there are a
lot of ways in which we,
as educators can perpetuate
racism and the effects of racism
and there are two
that I'll point out sort
of very specifically.
One is you look at all the research
and I'm most familiar with
the higher ed research,
but I think it echoes what we see on K-12
is who to teachers call upon
the most in class discussions
or in an interactive
collaborative activities,
males more than females
and whites, more than any
other students of color.
And this is true
across various demographic
groups of instructors,
not just white instructors.
And so to me,
this is something that's kind
of baked into the cake, right?
The socialization process that we have
about who gets to talk
and who gets to talk first
and who participates
in all of those things.
So being very mindful,
very intentional when I'm
working with students about,
you know, who is getting a voice right now
and is there a pattern there?
And if there is, what do
I need to do about that?
So my own practice in terms
of acknowledging students,
inviting students into a conversation
and making sure that a discussion
doesn't just acknowledge
who's the first to raise their hand
or jump in or interrupt
because men like me tend to interrupt
very more than any other group as well.
And then seeing if we can create space
for all of our student
voice is not just the ones
that are first and loudest.
And then the second thing is
we need to look at the course that we use.
So I come out of the discipline of history
and as other is Missy pointed out,
I think that, you know, it
is a whitewash curriculum.
Who writes the books?
Who writes the textbooks?
Who writes the curricular
standards that are used?
Who designs the courses
on the higher ed level?
And so if I tell my
students who, you know,
for Iowa standards in particular
are a pretty diverse group,
that all of them can be historians,
that I want all of them
to engage in the scholarly conversation,
to be knowledge producers,
to take part in these
scholarly conversations
about the discipline of history.
And then every bit of
their course materials
are authored by people
who do not look like them,
who do not come from similar
experiences like them,
what I'm telling them I want them to do
and what I'm showing them are
completely different things.
And so representation does matter.
And you know, so some critics might say,
Oh, that's just a checklist.
That's, you know,
affirmative action for
textbooks or whatever.
But I would argue,
we know there are teaching
and learning benefits.
We know there are direct
pedagogical benefits for students
seeing themselves in the material,
some personal connection,
some personal relevance.
And then a lot of disciplines
where students have some anxiety,
history is one of them,
mathematics is another,
having that personal connection right away
can really work wonders.
It's one of those seemingly minor choices
that actually has major consequences.
But if we don't think about that,
then we do perpetuate racism
because structures of
inequality that are present now,
structures of inequality will
always reproduce themselves.
That's the default action.
What stops that process
as an active intervention.
And so I see my job is
to actively intervene
in that process of reproduction.
And even something as seemingly routine
and boring as a choice of
textbooks or course materials
or who I call on first in
class or who, you know,
who I listened to in class first,
those choices matter a lot
because that's an intervention.
- Absolutely, thank you so much.
Anybody else want to...
- I can speak on that a little bit.
So I think when we're
talking about implicit bias,
I think it's important to look at
like the numbers in education, right?
So the demographics of our
population is changing.
In the last 20 years,
the white student population has declined.
I think it's like 15% and
diversity is increasing.
But over the last 20 years,
we haven't seen really much of a change
in the teaching force as far as diversity,
which is a whole other
conversation we could have.
But you know, when this racial rep,
when there's this cultural
mismatch, this has an impact.
And the problem is that so often teachers,
they like to say that they're colorblind,
which we've already touched
upon of how it's harmful.
So if you're not intentionally
changing something,
you're perpetuating it,
it's gonna keep happening.
So I include this in my literature review
for my dissertation,
but there's a lot of ways
that that cultural
mismatch impacts teachers.
And there's so many specific ways,
so for example, teacher
perceptions of students.
Teachers will...
They've done studies on, you know,
they just give kind of like
a little, like a picture
and a little blurb of a student.
And they'll say,
where do you think this
child will be in 20 years?
And the way that white teachers
perceive black students,
indigenous students, students of color,
they'll perceive them
to have a lower educational attainment,
a lower, you know, just
career attainment in general.
And we know that, you know,
the way we perceive our students
and what we believe our students to be
it often happens, you know.
Our perceptions of students
has a huge impact on them.
Also, it impacts our expectations.
So like, so, you know,
a lot of times I'm
actually reading the book
"Push Out" by Dr. Morrison
and it's about the
criminalization of black girls.
And it talks a lot about
how the expectations for black girls
and black children in general is so low.
And there's been studies on
this as well to show that,
you know, white teachers
will often have such high expectations
for their white students,
but when it comes to their black students,
they'll kind of accept the bare minimum.
So if they don't feel like
doing something that day,
they kind of won't go
there with that student,
but they'll push their white
students a little bit more.
And, you know, also like the interaction.
So like the relationship building,
like we talked about earlier,
that cultural difference
also has an impact.
And going back to what I
originally spoke about,
I think to me, the biggest
implicit bias in education
that's huge is disability.
Even though this is not for me to say,
I'm not saying that there's
no black sense of disability,
There's no, we'll call it a disability,
the way that we...
There's no denying the numbers,
there's no denying the research.
There's a huge, huge problem.
And the over representation
of students of color in special ed,
and that is due to implicit bias.
The way that we view
our students, you know,
the way that we're judging them,
the way that we're evaluating them
is all rooted in our white
culture and white ideologies.
And that has a huge
impact on when we evaluate
and refer to the special ed.
- Thank you very much.
Anybody else want to chime in?
I have another question
for the panel if we don't.
Alright, cool.
So here's a question before
we open up to everyone.
So what have we, you
know, you've been doing,
so this is a lot of questions I get a lot
from different professors at the college,
and also secondary educators.
What have you been doing
through these challenging times
to better prepare for
difficult conversations
that may occur about the
death of George Floyd,
black lives matter movement,
police brutality, et cetera,
in your classroom and areas.
And anybody of the panel
can start with that.
- I'll start if that's okay.
You know, so I teach in early
education with kindergartners.
I think that we as adults,
not only teachers are often uncomfortable
talking with that age group about race,
but I feel like that's a privilege
that we can no longer afford to have,
and there are going to be questions
and we have to be prepared to
how we wanna talk about that.
Just really briefly,
I'll talk a little bit about
where kids in early education
fall developmentally
and how they can be part
of those conversations.
So even as early as
kindergarten or early school,
I'll go back to preschoolers,
you know, preschoolers notice differences.
They notice differences in hair texture
in skin tone, and, you know,
they may not have a full understanding
of the concept of race,
but they understand that
there are children who are in different.
Preschoolers, want to
know more information.
They wanna understand why
things are the way they are.
And their thinking is really limited.
And unfortunately, as
early as four years old,
kids can start to prefer
one race over another one.
They're also really
likely to, or, you know,
the likelihood of them
believing stereotypes
and falling into the pre prejudices
are
developmentally appropriate
because they're thinking is so limited.
So really making sure that the activities
that you're doing within the classrooms,
playing games that come
from other cultures,
doing art projects that
include other races,
allowing for their free play time
to include other cultures
and the books that you read,
that's really appropriate for them.
Because, you know, I always,
I strongly believe that early education
is the foundation for a person's life.
And oftentimes people don't
think about early education
as time to really have
these conversations,
but kids are home and they're
hearing their parents,
they're hearing what's
happening on the news
and they may have questions
and it's okay to talk about it,
even for kindergartens.
Kindergarten is have questions
about physical differences and race
but they can understand
really basic explanations.
And by the age of six,
they understand what's
fair and what's not.
So that really lends itself
well into conversations
about race and racial injustice.
What's most exciting I think
is that by seven and eight
children have developed empathy
and they're better able to empathize.
And they also wanna know more about
what's going on in the world, right?
So that's the perfect time
to start having conversation
and giving them accurate information.
Because the earlier that
we talk to these children,
it increases the likelihood
that they're gonna grow into
adults who are affirming
and accepting of different
cultures and differences.
So, you know, to be more
specific to your question about,
you know, how would we address things
that have gone on in the media,
particularly George Floyd,
you have to consider
where these students are
developmentally and play on that,
but don't avoid it.
You know, there's questions
that are gonna be had,
there's ways to incorporate
different things in the classroom.
As far as, you know, different
read alouds, as I mentioned,
different games, different activities,
and just showing them by
example, that other races,
that were other people
that don't look like you,
other cultures, they're not negatives,
let's celebrate that.
Let's talk about it.
Let's, you know, have show and tell,
and you can show me that your family does,
or let's talk about the different meals
and just really being
more diverse and inclusive
of different cultures
and not allowing them
to get to a point, as I
said earlier, you know,
by age eight and they
often have already decided
how they feel about our races.
And so it's really our job as
early educators to intervene
and to create positive
associations with race and culture,
and to not be scared to
have those conversations.
Oftentimes adults don't wanna talk
about that with young kids,
because they think it's
such an adult issue,
but if you break it down
and think about where these
kids fall developmentally,
it's more than appropriate.
- Can I speak?
- Yeah go ahead.
- So I would add to what you just said.
It's not just a adults,
not wanting to have those
conversations with small children,
it's adults not wanting to have
those conversations period.
And so for me, it's really
been a summer of reading,
listening, and trying to learn.
I don't know what it was
like to grow up black
or brown in America.
I can't pretend to know that.
And, you know, engaging in
conversations in my own family,
my parents, my husband's parents,
who come with their own set of biases
and trying to get them to see
beyond their colorblindness.
And I'm like faced with the
idea of going back to school
and having students 14
year olds coming in hearing
what the things that their
parents have said, right?
Having these biases brought into the room.
And at the same time,
being able to open up conversations
that are healthy and not combative,
where students are able to
listen and share and learn.
Super challenging, I don't how
we'll be doing it remotely,
but I look forward to the challenge.
I think it's a worthy one.
I think we have to begin
to have these difficult conversations,
even if people are uncomfortable.
- Absolutely.
- I have one strategy, Ron, if
you don't mind real quickly,
I think a good approach
that I'm hoping to implement moving on
is to create opportunities
for collaborative dialogue,
as opposed to keeping discussions
just in the classroom.
My goal next semester, even
though it will be virtual,
is to try to find collaborative events
between different centers,
different programs,
or perhaps with other
faculty where as a group,
as a big community,
we can engage these discussions
as opposed to just keeping
it in the classroom
or just as an exchange
between me and the student.
I think if we could create a dialogue,
abroad dialogue with a
lot of community members,
there's more value and
more impact in that.
So that is one suggestion and one strategy
that I'm hoping to try
to implement moving on.
- Thank you so much for that as well.
So let's get to the open questions
for our Q&A for our audience.
Then we can kind of do that
for the remainder here.
I've seen our chat room
is really exciting,
a lot of good information there.
And I see that, you know,
one thing that we were
talking about in the chat room
is COVID and how, you know,
and what's happening now.
So you have the racial
divide that's going on
and you also have COVID
and have online or remote learning.
So I see some questions there.
And I didn't know if
somebody wanted to jump in
and ask a question,
or I can kind of just read
from the chat as well.
There's a lot here so I am
trying to balance everything.
So just to kind of give a heads up
that I'll eventually hopefully
be at the right place marker.
- I have a question.
- Yeah sure, go ahead.
- Hi, I'm a first grade teacher
in the Denver public schools,
and I teach in a very diverse school.
I teach first grade and just
like the kindergarten teacher,
I think teacher Randell,
I do believe that children
should know about history
and should be told in
a way that is truthful
and not sugar coat it for them.
But I do get criticized a lot
with my teachers, my peers,
because they think that
sometimes I tell children things
that happen in history that are too cool,
for first graders to know.
Now 90% of my kids are
Hispanic and African American
and my minority happens to be white.
I feel that I need to
say that to my students
because they come from homes
where they talk about it.
So when we talk about Martin Luther King,
when we talked about civil rights.
When we talk about
all the African American
people in history,
I tell them the way I learn,
I joined when I was in high
school, got history classes.
So I have a lot of knowledge on that,
but my teachers don't feel comfortable
having their classes coming into my class
when I teach that topic.
Do you think I'm out
of line when I do that?
- I think that it's appropriate
to wanna share the truth with children.
And I think I don't know
what your message exactly sounds like.
And so I won't criticize whether
or not you're out of line.
I would just offer that
in cases like that,
when you're talking about
such important topics,
filter it through the lens
of your audience, right?
So if you're teaching first graders,
it's okay to look at the bigger
picture of what happened,
but maybe some of the details
they can get it later when
they're in middle high school.
But if we wanna just teach them
about the injustices that have happened,
it's okay to talk about it
and also talk about the
progress that is made
so that children are less fearful
because I think first graders,
oftentimes they hear that.
If they are hearing that,
you know, black students were
treated poorly by, you know,
white people in the Edison,
in the back of the bus
and, you know, whatever it is
that you wanna address
with them, it's okay.
But for them, they don't always know
how to process it fully.
So make it a goal for a full circle
and say, well, you know, look now
I've often talked to my
students about Ruby Bridges
and about what school
looked like a long time ago.
And I said, you know, a long time ago,
I wouldn't be able to be your teacher
and you too wouldn't be able
to sit next to each other
and be friends, but look at
the progress that we've made
and it make it encouraging for them.
And also just pointing out
that there are people in
the world that, you know,
do and do not look like them
that are working really
hard to make sure that
we don't go back to those ways
and that we're gonna
continue to go forward
and just think about your audience,
but I don't think you're
wrong for wanting to do it.
And I don't know how you approach it,
but just always filter it
through the lens of who you're talking to.
- Thank you.
- Yeah, you're welcome.
- I can add to that too.
I think that it's awesome
that teachers are having
these conversations
and, you know, speaking the
truth to their students,
whether it has to be filtered
through a lens of early childhood
or whether they're in
high school or college.
But I think that's something
that often gets forgotten
is the children who are in
the mostly white schools.
Those are the ones who
absolutely need to hear the truth
of things that happen.
I went to Dartmouth High
and I didn't learn any of black...
I feel like I didn't
learn any black history.
Maybe I did a little bit,
but I feel like I didn't learn the truth,
like the horrible things that happened.
I remember when I was in college
and I learned about Emmett Till,
and I learned about all these things.
I was so mad that it
took until I was an adult
to learn about these awful
things that white people did.
We got a very, like sugar-coated
one side, version of it.
We need to be talking
to our white students
about this is the horrible
thing that happened.
And this is what white
people have been doing
for all these years.
And it's up to you as
white people to undo it
because without white people
being allies to black people,
indigenous people, people of
color, nothing is gonna change.
- Thank you so much for that.
Anybody else wanna chime
in on that question?
- I can chime in a little bit.
- Yeah.
- So I also teach at a
predominantly white high school.
And this year I've been asked
to start a social justice course
that's gonna be for incoming freshmen.
So I'm happy to say that
we're making some progress
so that we can get this stuff out there,
have these difficult
conversations with kids
so that they in turn
can learn to be allies.
They come in with this set of ideas.
They don't even really
know what they're saying.
They don't understand
what's happening in
this world around them.
So I wanna be able to
learn a lot this summer.
I'm also doing a lot of reading, you know,
watching documentaries,
participating in forums and
trying to educate myself
so that I can turn this over to the kids
and let them have these conversations.
Let them ask questions and
have that open dialogue,
which it's gonna be tough.
I'm sure we're gonna
have some difficult days,
but I think they're going
to get a lot out of it.
And I think that's going
to be that agent of change.
Let's move this forward.
Let's start breaking down these walls.
- Can I also, sorry, may I add something?
Is that okay, yeah, sorry.
I also was just thinking about,
we've been talking about actionable steps
and ways that we can go forward.
And I've also mentioned in
my talking that, you know,
it's really important to intervene early,
to talk to kids young.
I told you seven and eight
is that really magical number
where they can empathize
and they're interested in the world.
And so one of the things
that I did this summer
is I did reach out to the
superintendent of Randolph
and my principal at the time
and asked if I could start
a multicultural club,
which is traditionally happens
in middle and high school,
but for it to happen in elementary school,
gives children that opportunity
to have these conversations earlier,
when I personally feel
it's more important.
And you know, I'm not sure
how many other teachers
here are in elementary,
but I think it's often
thought of as something
that's for older children,
but the superintendent was
really excited about it.
I'm really excited about it
and not sure what it's
gonna look like with COVID,
but I'm gonna proceed anyway.
And if it has to be via Zoom
and we have to figure it out that way,
but I just feel like it's
thought of for older kids,
but it's really appropriate
and probably more important now
than ever to do it in
the elementary schools.
- Absolutely.
I think having these conversation
as early as possible,
it will help, but also what, you know,
Missy, Amy and Sarah's spoke about
is you don't have to be an expert either.
I'm the director of multicultural affairs
and I'm not an expert in all this.
There's so much information
that's out there.
So you try to learn as much as you can
and then be able to influence
your little circle of change.
And by doing that and
learning on that daily basis,
I think sometimes a lot of people
that may be in here either
once you'd create change
or they are part of that circle of change,
or maybe their role is
everyone's looking at,
you know, Amy, I'm not
sure if your school,
if you're one of how many black
teachers they may look at,
well Amy has to be the
ones that lead this to Z.
So, and if that's
happening, then why is that?
Or the special ed, you know,
educator, that means, you know,
that person must leave.
No, it's all of our jobs
and how we can influence
in our little areas.
And we don't have to be an expert in.
So I really appreciate those comments.
One question-
- Can I just
jump in real quick, Rob?
Yes 'cause what you just said resonated
with something that Sarah just said,
that really kind of hit me too,
is that, you know, for
those of us who are white
and, you know, chances are, you know,
it's white people who are
the majority of the faculty
and staff at your institution,
you know, this is our work to do,
you know, we can't ask our
black and brown colleagues
to be doing that sort
of extra emotional labor
of being the diversity people, right.
And, you know, and even
if we need to be working
on the spaces that we're
in and the self work
and education that's necessary,
it's also not our black
and brown colleagues job
to educate us, right.
Like we have to be willing to do that work
and not take the off
ramps, the easy off-ramps,
where the conversation
gets a little difficult.
And one of the other things
that sometimes happens in these spaces
that I've seen is that, you know,
it'll be a diverse group
of folks around the table
talking about, you know,
issues of equity and inclusion.
And oftentimes students
success gets said there.
And, you know, we talk about an incident
that might've happened to a student,
to a black student, for example.
And then there's a white colleague
who wants to talk about like,
Oh, well, this happened to me.
And so I feel excluded
when this, you know,
and one of the things that we do,
and I say, we, as in white people,
oftentimes subconsciously
without meaning to,
is we make it about us and
we take other experiences
and try to center them in ourselves.
And there are times,
and I have learned this
the hard way, believe me,
that we just need to listen
and that we need to get
ourselves out of our own ways
to do this work.
And, you know, and to really, you know,
to be willing to show up,
but showing up, doesn't
always mean out in front,
banging the drum either.
And that's a hard, you know, and again,
I don't do this well all the time at all.
And I have learned this the hard way,
I have done some things very unskillfully,
but I think we all, all
of us who are white,
especially on majority
white faculty and staff,
we really need to take
a hard look at the labor
and oftentimes the extra
labor, the emotional,
the uncompensated labor
that we're asking our
colleagues of color to do,
because that's a really
significant equity issue.
And it's less bad with that
our colleagues will have
left for their students.
- No, absolutely.
And Dr. Charlotte Butts
from TA in public schools,
also exhausting having to
talk to white colleagues
all the time about race
and that having an
understanding that as educators,
and one thing that I've always looked at
as you're teaching the
student, not just a subject.
And I have an understand
that when your student is,
is there, or your colleagues are there,
that we're supposed to be the ones
who are consistently educating ourselves
in order to learn more
about what we're doing.
And I think sometimes
we just don't take that responsibility.
And it's easy to push that
on our black colleagues
or colleagues of different
race or ethnicities
or identities, special
ed, wherever it may be.
And then we're just like,
well, they handle it and not
really take that responsibility
to get to better, to know our
students a little bit better.
So that's extremely
powerful what you're saying.
And trust me, I hear you, Dr. Butts,
as that is something that
many black educators feel
sometimes they're kind of
cornered in doing that.
And again, Kevin, I
think you're saying that
in being stand up is,
again, these are difficult
conversations to have,
but it's absolutely powerful to do so.
And we definitely
appreciate the help(laughs)
So there was a comment here with Julia
and I kind of wanted to talk about this
because I think some of our panelists can,
and Julie is the director
of disability services
here at Bristol Community College.
And I'm not sure if she's still in,
but she did make a mention here.
Many students in special education
are still labeled as behavioral problems,
as opposed to being diagnosed properly
with true learning and
other disability issues.
These labels are loaded
with cultural bias.
So how do we work with
this and, and dispel this?
- I can answer that if you want.
So she's right.
A lot of times there's
actually a lot of research on
so black students are four times
more likely to be labeled
with a behavioral disability
than white students,
native American students
it's like five or six times more likely,
the numbers are huge.
And a lot of times this
happens because ADHD
and those kinds of executive
functioning disorders
are actually like referred to as like,
like kind of like a
higher class disability,
if that makes any sense, but it is true.
White students are more
likely to have that diagnosis
and, you know, kind of be
treated with a little bit more,
'cause, you know, if you
see an ADHD diagnosis,
you're like, okay, I have to be patient,
I have to put in these accommodations.
When it's a behavioral disability,
oftentimes it doesn't get
the kind of, you know,
love and compassion.
And often it's missed,
it's obviously mislabeled
because there's such
an over representation,
but oftentimes it's mislabeled.
So the problem is, and the way you fix it,
and again, this is not something
that can be fixed like overnight.
This is like work that everybody has to do
and not just the special ed population,
special ed staff, but everybody.
It's really working together
to
find ways
to truly, you know,
educate the staff on
what disability truly is.
My dissertation was on this exact topic
and I interviewed teachers,
multi disciplinary teams who
were labeling students with disabilities.
And I went around the table,
didn't even talk about race.
I just said, what are the
things that, you know,
contribute to you positively
identifying a student with a disability,
whether it's intellectual behavioral,
or a learning disability.
And almost all of the people who answered
it was always due to factors
that had nothing to do
with disability, right?
A disability is a dis
disabled learning, right?
Same thing with behavioral.
There's, an emotional piece to that,
intellectual, there's a
cognitive piece to that.
As we talked about before IQ testing
and I wrote it in the chat,
I don't know if I said before,
but they're testing IQ
testing is based in eugenics.
So we can't take those standardized
testing as Bible, right?
And we can't take that to
mean the end all be all
because we know that our black students
are gonna score lower on that
because it's a test that's
based on racism and eugenics.
So it's really finding a way to balance
and not so much because
people often want to give a number, right?
They wanna be like, okay,
this is the cutoff number,
and this means he has a disability.
We can't do that.
We have to all take
our areas of expertise,
the school psych, the special ed teacher.
We need to all educate ourselves
on what disability truly is
because disability is not
a lack of opportunity for instruction.
Disability is not poverty.
Disability is not an EL issue.
Disability is disabled learning.
So if the child is behind,
I hear so often was,
and this is not to demonize
general education teachers.
I think that you guys are phenomenal
and you guys do so much,
but they come in with this assumption
that a disability is okay,
that student's behind.
He needs to go on an IEP.
The IEP is not gonna solve the fact that
he did not have the
opportunity in whatever
and whatever area.
There's so many different factors.
But again, this is a such a huge,
it's a huge problem that
has not been addressed.
No mandate in the IBA or our
federal government has ever,
you know, found a way
to deal with this issue.
And I think this is why I believe that
the IBA needs reauthorized, again,
to include more of a
problem solving approach,
that's not just using numerical values
because right now the only
consequences like they, you know,
it's all based on numbers.
This is not a numbers issue.
This is such a structural issue
that we really, really
need to dive deep into.
I'm sorry, I'm talking so much,
but you can tell I'm very
passionate about this.
- Absolutely.
And that your passion is
the reason why I asked you
and the panelists to be here.
'Cause I know all of you
and you guys that passion is needed.
Quick thing here, and I'm
kinda want to talk about this.
'Cause I saw this early on,
and I'm going through it.
'Cause again, my chat rooms
and probably there's a lot going on here.
So I apologize anyone if I
missed anything or comment,
but I'm trying to keep balance.
But there was a statement here
that the acceptance of vocational schools
has changed so much over the years,
limiting access for a lot of students.
And I think access for students, period,
especially students of color
have changed in many ways
where structures are built,
whether it be into vocational schools,
whether that be into nursing programs
after vocational schools,
whether it be into specific
programs in higher ed as well.
Could we speak a little bit to that?
And what is happening
right now and these areas
and where some of this access
is denying our students opportunity.
- You wanna start Heather?
- No you go ahead.
- Alright Heather?
- No you go.
- My thoughts on it Rob are
that it hasn't really
changed all that much.
So I can remember watching a documentary
about the new best riots in the seventies.
And there was a group of
brothers standing outside
talking about how they
couldn't get into vote
because they were black.
And some of the Cape
Verdeans were getting in
because they were light skinned
and they weren't getting their
chances to learn a trade.
Even though they were promised
that they would be given opportunities.
So the system behind it,
although it may have changed
a bit over the years,
the results haven't really changed
the way that they should anyway.
I can think of two occasions
where one was someone that
you had spoke to me about,
and you said, "hey,
can you look into this?
This young lady is a good
kid, she didn't get accepted."
And we found out that
her attendance was awful.
Well, her attendance was awful
because of home circumstances, right?
Mom, wouldn't, wouldn't
let her walk to school,
but mom also wouldn't get up
on time to bring her to school.
So here's a kid who's not gonna get in
because of horrible attendance,
but when we spoke to the
director of guidance at the time,
they were able to help
this young lady out.
And she became a contributor to our school
where she wasn't just a kid
who came into a classroom every day,
she was involved in athletics.
She became a member of the student body.
And that's a student that otherwise
would not have had the opportunity
because of circumstances
outside of their control.
And so kind of like Missy
was talking about M tasks.
The system is flawed,
although like it had the
best of intentions probably,
the system doesn't benefit our students
the way that it should.
And we can think of another student
who was a great contributor
to our school as well,
and a great basketball player.
He didn't get in because
of attendance as well.
We come to find out they
didn't give him some,
they didn't give him those excuse absences
because he had a medical issue.
Mom turned in that paperwork,
but its not before for mom advocating
and asking why, why, why,
this student would have lost out
on that opportunity as well.
So the other piece too is
if a kid doesn't have someone
who's gonna advocate for
them when there's an issue,
or they just find out what the problem is,
then that student is just left behind.
And again, vocational
education isn't for everyone,
just like the world of
academia isn't for everyone.
So we have to find and
put systems in place
that really put our children
in the best positions to succeed.
- Is it possible that you can also speak
to how the closing down of fashion design
is a disservice to our female
and minority community?
- Oh, absolutely(laugh)
We can touch on that.
So at our specific school,
they're closing down two shops
and one of them is the
fashion design shop.
And through some community engagement,
there's been a save our
shops campaign put together
and the fashion design shop here.
We have an industry that in my opinion,
more than a lot of other industries
that we teach at our school,
gives our students an
opportunity to be entrepreneurs.
And so we have a shop that
has a high female population
and included in that female population
is a high minority population.
And we're closing a shop
that gives them opportunities
to be entrepreneurs.
You know, how are we benefiting our kids
by making some of these decisions?
- I'll add to that,
that the shop closing is
largely a real estate move
to open predominantly shops
that will predominantly
service white males.
So it's putting our numbers,
our minority populations in jeopardy
for more opportunities for
white young men to go to vote.
So the only thing I would say
about vocational admissions,
in addition to what sir said,
and some of the people in the chat said,
it's very competitive.
They are blinded missions.
That means we don't know who has IEP,
who has 504s coming in the door.
We looked at attendance,
discipline and grades
and the problem is the number of seats.
If you have an institution
that houses only 500,
but services three communities
or five communities or six communities,
there has to be some sort of system.
Even if we were to go to a lottery system,
which many of our state legislatures
are arguing in favor of,
that's not gonna guarantee
the right kids get into the building.
So I think the answer is to
look at the sending districts
and for the state to offer
those districts the funding,
to open those programs for the students
that are going to those schools.
All schools should offer
all of these opportunities
that service their students
is in the best possible ways
would be my only 2 cents on that.
- Thank you guys.
This is such a great thing.
I have a general private
question it just came on
and this could go to any
of the panels as well
as I'm trying to follow this, the order,
can you think of innovative approaches
in all levels of education to equity
and how we can come
together as a community
to foster transformative change?
- Can I say something?
- Can I chime I?
- Yeah.
- There's a twit that's
going on with Twitter.
Everybody knows about black Twitter.
And it says,
white people, how many of you
have been the only white
person in the room?
And so it's talking about
professional white people
when in your professional life,
have you been the only
white person in the room?
And there were a lot of
comments saying, you know,
there probably never happens.
When does it happen?
Maybe they work at an HBCU.
Maybe they work in a certain community.
then that might be
something that can say true.
And then it said black
people and Latino people.
How many times have
you been the only black
or brown person in the room?
And it went crazy because every time,
all the time, this has
always happened to me.
And so I think we really need
to begin from leadership.
We need to have people at the table
who are able to speak to the experiences
that a lot of our students,
no matter where K-16,
we have to have individuals who can speak
to the experiences of
a lot of our students.
You know, there are a lot
of resources out there
for people to go work in low incomes,
lower social economic areas.
You know, maybe if you don't
have a teaching degree,
you can go do a program
and work for five years.
You can get your student loans waived
if you go work in certain areas
and things of that nature.
But the problem is that we still
have to encourage our black
and brown individuals to step
up and to get into positions
where they can make the change
and that they can be the voice.
As Kevin said, and Kevin
and I used to work together
and we were on a committee once
and myself and another
person say, you know,
I'm tired of being the
black voice all the time,
like that becomes draining sometimes.
But I knew I had to do it.
I had to do it for the students.
I had to do it from the, you know,
I only had a few colleagues
that looked like me,
unfortunately at that institution.
But I had to do it.
I had to master up the
strength to go ahead and do it.
And I said, so I think the
first thing we have to do Rob
to your question is that we
have to make sure that people
are at the table who can
speak to their experiences.
And that if we don't
have people at the table
who can speak to experiences,
we need to interact more with the people
that we're serving, our
students, our families,
and so forth and figure
out what their needs are
and what we need to do
to address those needs.
And they don't know what they don't know.
A lot of times we have,
and especially a lot of
our immigrant populations
that are coming in.
They don't understand what
they need or don't need.
And so we need to be able
to educate them as a family
and not just sometimes the student,
we need to educate everyone
in order to see any type of change.
- Can I chime in right after Shauna,
it kind of speaks to what
Shauna was trying to say
with the familiar uploads, right?
As a family,
I think
we sometimes get
a little bit too caught up with the idea
that addressing equity
has to be a methodological
established institutional norm.
And maybe it doesn't have to be,
maybe it is a lot more basic
and primal than that,
it's rooted in family.
It's rooted in love.
And I'm gonna echo Martin
Luther King and Cornell West
in how they emphasized the
idea that "social justice
is what love looks like in public."
So again, they go back to this idea of
an emotional engagement
with equity, right?
So I think there is a lot of room
and there's a lot of opportunity
in the arts, in humanities,
in performance arts, in
theater, in literature,
where we can begin to create conditions
where everyone can begin
to relate to an emotion
where they could hold on to this idea of
looking at equity and
justice, not just as a norm,
but as a force that is like desire
that is rooted in love
and community and family.
I think that is, it's not innovative,
it's very elementary and basic.
It's who we are as living beings, right?
We hold on to emotions, you know,
things that really matter to us,
they're not just logical
things that make sense.
They're things that are illogical
and don't make sense at all.
And yet that's what makes
them really powerful.
And that really drives
people for accomplishing it.
You know, when you're in love,
you do anything for that person, right?
So I think maybe we could
begin to create opportunities
for folks to see this cause,
this
equity
as a desire, something to love,
rather than something to just understand
and accomplish as a norm
or a method or the policy.
It is a bit more than that.
It is an emotion, it is a desire.
That's my piece.
- Can I add something?
I think it's also
important to recognize that
equity work is intersectional.
So, it's important to recognize that
like all these things intertwined.
So there's LGBTQ issues,
there is disability issues,
there's feminism issues
there's all different
issues that, and races,
and obviously race is at the center of it,
but they also branch off to other areas.
And I often see people
who are kind of doing
work in a certain area,
then kind of be hateful in another area.
And it's like, well,
if you're not embracing equity as a whole,
and kind of acknowledging
the intersectionality of it,
then you're not really
doing the work, right.
I think that it, you have to encompass
all areas of equity for all people.
- That's powerful.
Anybody else want to chime in on that?
Any other innovative ways.
Okay.
So I just wanna tell you how powerful,
and I've used the word
powerful a hundred times a day,
because that's what it feels.
And if you look at the
chat it's exploding,
my private chats is exploding
and still is at this moment,
but I have to be cautious
of time for everyone.
What's great about these series
and what we're looking to do right now
I'm just gonna kind of
really kind of get us
into that wrapping, wrapping up.
And if people want to stay after,
we can stay a couple of
minutes after the fact
that I wanted to kind
of really get through
just to be aware of people's time,
its summertime, dinner
time, we got small children,
we got all types of things going on.
So I just wanted to be
caught conscious of that.
Most of you might just kind
of putting up a power point.
So next thing here is what
we're gonna talk about
is our actionable items.
And these are from our forum participants.
So I'm gonna go, doing
a little bit different.
Usually I just kind of repeat things
and I want us to kind of really
have a brief conversation.
So when I go to your slide
of some of the items you did,
if you can just do a brief, you know,
run through of your items there,
it's a good way to kind
of plug some of your work.
One thing that we do in these forums
is we really, really, really
want people to understand
that we are looking for change.
We're not just here to
have a conversation.
We're looking at how you
can influence your areas
and influence your circles of
change and how do we do that.
So each one of our forms, you'll see
we're sending you guys newsletters.
And in those newsletters
where you having books that you can read
different templates you
can use in your classrooms,
different, you know, motivational videos,
that we were sending, all different areas,
things that kind of really help you
with whatever subject that we're on.
This is the first of the
educational inequity.
As you can see, we were
talking very holistic
and very broad today,
but in the future, we're gonna get,
we're gonna be very, very, very intent.
So we're gonna really look
at some of the intent pieces
and that can be, you know,
one of these social forms
will be within just maybe one structure
or one culture or whatever it may be,
when we're talking about
educational inequities, right?
Because sometimes, you
know, as an educator,
you sit back and you don't
really, you don't understand,
like how can I help this
particular demographic of student?
And we wanna really kind of get to that.
And some of our forms
will help us set us up
for doing that in the future
'cause these will be ongoing.
One thing that we will
be doing in the future.
And as you see that a lot of these
will be led by different groups
and different professionals
so that we are not just
only hearing it from me,
but you're hearing it from the people
who do the work on a day to day basis.
So unless I...
Could go to the next slide, please.
So this is, it was shared
to us by Amy dos Santos.
So Amy, would you kind of
just briefly just go over
some of the stuff that you
have here for the audience?
- Yeah, so I, those are lists of books.
You know, I think oftentimes
teachers will say to me that,
you know, had discussions
with over the year
that they don't have the
time to talk about diversity
and promote race in their classroom
because they have a
curriculum they have to follow
and they have all this other items
that need to be taken care of.
But to that, I kind of
pushed back and say,
you can incorporate it.
So I found a lot of different
multicultural read allows that,
you know, as a teacher,
I know that I have to
work on comprehension.
I know that I have to be
reading books to the students.
So what's wrong with reading a book
that has diversity promotion.
And if that can act as a...
It can cover both bases, right?
So I can both be doing
my job as a teacher,
making sure I'm covering standards,
but I can also then double on that
and be able to promote diversity there.
So this is a list of books that I've read
that I have, that I own, they're great.
I don't know if it's on this slide,
but I know that I've also sent to Melissa
a list of different games and
activities and lesson plans.
There's just a lot of
resource, Oh, here it is.
These are lots of different games
that are appropriate for
all ages of elementary,
there's websites that have passages
for different grade levels,
lesson plans, activities
to try to take some of the work of it.
I've had colleagues say, I
don't have time to plan this.
I don't have time to do that.
And so here it is.
You know, here's some
things that you can do
that eliminates that work for you.
- Now, thank you....
- Welcome.
So a little feedback there.
Is anybody saying something?
No.
So again, thank you for that.
And again, I think that
is one of the things
we don't have time.
People say, you know, how can I have time?
So we're providing that for you
and Amy I appreciate you giving
us some of those resources
for some of the elementary time teachers
that are going that are in this forum
and we'll see it recorded as well.
So next we have Dr. Sarah Modaris
and some of the resources that she has.
Could you talk a little
bit about that Sarah?
- Yep.
So the first resource I listed
is actually a shameless plug
is my podcast I have
with my friend, Stephanie
who's also has her doctorate
in education, leadership and policy.
And it's kind of more of like
a laid back way that
we talk about exactly.
I mean, we talk about all the issues
that we've talked about
in this forum today,
we dive pretty deep.
We've done about like
seven episodes so far.
And it was just kind of a way
to kind of like the forum,
was it to kind of get
the information out there
and to kind of like reach people.
I know that I like Amy just
said, I often hear teachers say,
well, I don't have time
to read about this,
well I don't have time
to learn about this.
So, you know, Stephanie and
I had had talked last summer
and we were like, I'm
so tired of hearing that
teachers don't have time,
they don't have time.
So we be like, let's package this up
and put it on a podcast for them
so they could just
throw their earphones in
and they can learn something.
We put a ton of research
into every single episode.
You know, we usually take a
few weeks before we record.
And we really it's not just our opinions,
it's a lot of facts.
We provide resources and stuff.
'Cause I listed a Facebook
group that I moderate,
it's called Culturally
Conscious Action Educators.
And it's just a, it's
a group that, you know,
its all over the country.
And it just, you know, we
often will have like few weeks
for like one week only
black people can post
and they kind of educate other people
and white people are only there to listen.
Like for example,
next week we're doing like
disability awareness where myself
and other people from
the disability community
or special educators will be posting.
So it's kind of just, you're
already on social media.
You're already gonna be on your phone.
You're already gonna be on
Facebook or Instagram, whatever.
And I think it's important to just kinda,
it's another way to
kind of help, you know,
make your spaces more, more informative.
And then I just included it.
You know, these are just books
that I usually recommend.
My colleagues may ask where to start.
I think these are great starting points.
The guide for white women
who teach black boys.
And probably my favorite one.
I read like maybe like a year or two ago.
And it's big but my advice to you though,
is when you read any book
that has to do with education
or anything like this,
I think it's good to read
it with another person.
So I actually have a
book club on Facebook.
It's called South Post Math
Book Club for Action Educators.
Or you can email me if you
want me to like add you
and I can give you the Zoom link,
but you don't even have to do that.
If you find like, you know,
if you find a colleague that's
like-minded and you're like,
or if you just wanna engage,
you know, a group of educators
that you think could use this knowledge,
it's good to read it together
because when you read a book alone,
you're not really diving
deep, I feel like.
I feel like when you
read with somebody else
and you just stuff that
you can really dive deep
and create a plan of how to move forward.
- Thank you so much and again,
this is extremely helpful.
Kevin, will you do with the
honor and talk about your book
and some of the things
that you're doing as well?
- Sorry, it probably help
if I on mute myself there.
Yeah, so I wrote this book
basically to try to answer my own
and other questions about given
everything that's going on.
And this was even pre pandemic.
Like how do we say that what we're doing
is ultimately a practice grounded in hope.
And so I tried to talk about
this idea of radical hope
you know, radical in the root
level, fundamental sense.
And it's written, you know,
out of my own experiences
of higher education,
but I, you know,
it might have things to say
that resonate with folks,
you know, who are doing
this work, you know, K-12
or other educational settings too.
And, you know, mostly it's, you know,
it's kind of a manifesto,
what kind of a love
letter to teaching as well
and to students.
And so if folks read it and it resonates,
I'd be super honored, but yeah, it just,
and what I said in the beginning
of this session kind of,
you know, comes out of the thinking
I was doing for that book.
- Yeah, no, absolutely.
I know we appreciate it
where we're going to use it
as we're starting a
social justice book club
and it's definitely on our list.
And so we'll get to that
at some point this year
with our Social Justice Book Club group.
So thank you for that.
And we'll do our best
to promote it as that.
So if anyone wants to
go get it, go get it.
Where can they get the book?
Is it on Amazon?
- It's on Amazon,
West Virginia university presses website
has a page for the teaching
and learning and higher ed series.
So yeah, my editor, thanks
you for the shout outs.
- No, absolutely.
Next slide there Melissa.
So Anga, we wanna talk a little bit
about pedagogical
references that you have.
- Yeah, sure.
Well, some of the stuff that
I've tried to convey today,
the idea of building relationships,
diversifying the curriculum,
looking at assessment and other
artifacts in the classroom
that are more inclusive
and opens up discussions of
diversity and social justice
and how to empower student identities.
I'm not making it all up,
so this is the research.
These are the icon,
the canons of the so
called critical pedagogy
and culturally relevant teaching.
I'm surprised you put (laughs)
all that reference up there.
I've done my dissertation
on multiculturalism.
I've actually critiqued it,
which is another side topic.
If you guys are interested
in looking at the critique
of social justice education,
but these are the icons
of critical pedagogy
and culturally relevant teaching.
And there's a lot of good stuff out there
that gives you lots of
tools to think about
and try to implement in the classroom
on fostering inclusion
and creating dialogues
that are much needed.
- Thank you so much for that.
- Thank you.
- So just let me know some
of our final thoughts.
Again, I saw this quote
if you guys can read it
on the New York Times today.
And it was, it was
shared by Connie Cabello
who is the vice president from diversity
from Framingham University.
And it was actually
from the New York times
and it's very, very relevant.
And it says, "you must also study
to learn the lessons of history
because humanity has been involved
in this soul wrenching
existential struggle
for a very long time.
People on every continent
have stood in your shoes
through decades and centuries before you,
the truth does not change.
And that is why the answers
worked out so long ago
can help you find solutions
to the challenges of our time.
Continue to build union between movements,
stretching across the globe,
because we must pay our
willingness to profit
from the exploitation of others."
And I think again,
that's from the New York times
and that's something
that I saw earlier today.
As we move along and we're
continuing to do this work
is you just start some of the materials
that you can utilize.
Obviously we don't want to
drown you in information
that you can't, it's hard to keep up with.
So part of our mission is to make sure
that we are doing it
intentionally and an on time.
So every few weeks and every so often
we will send you out reminders.
So that way this work is
purposeful and it's not forgotten
because I think a lot of times
we sit down in these conversations
and we sit and we feel
great and empowered.
And in a couple of weeks later,
it's really where are we in,
then we be forget about it.
So it's my job
and the people here at Bristol
to really, you know, we
preach the equity agenda
and these are things that
we really truly believe in.
This is where we're going
to help our community,
which was powerful to see so many people
from New Bedford and out of Alaborough.
I said, New Bedford, Fall River,
in our Fair Haven, Dartmouth,
all our local areas really representing
here are Bristol County areas.
And it's important for us to continue
and carry this conversation,
moving forward,
next slide there.
So as we all know, our
we've now checked...
This is our third checkbox
of social justice forums.
And today our next one will
be on August 27th, which is,
I believe I have my thing in front of me.
Of course I did women's rights,
race and women's rights,
and forgive me, we have so
many different things that are,
and we're gonna have our
director of the women's center
leading this particular one.
As we start getting into the
different modalities here
and at different parts of social justice,
I want to really have those leaders
within our college community
also leading these programs.
We're also gonna have some of our work
also done with our unions and our schools,
so that we're going to
see a union stepping up
and working with them as we are right now,
looking at different trainings
and opportunities for social justice.
And this is really important work
because I think as we spoke,
we don't wanna be the only
individual who's doing it.
We want our college
community to really buy in
and accept what we're doing.
And that's what I'm looking to do.
And that's how I'm gonna
influence my change
is to really, you know, partner and work,
not just throw it on someone's
lap, but partner and work.
And so that way we can create these forums
and have it become sustainable
and ongoing as we move as we move forward.
The next slide.
So again, if you have to contact us,
in our newsletters, you know,
you have our contact information,
but a lot of our panelists
will have like email addresses
and other opportunities
where you can communicate
with them as well,
especially whatever level
of teaching you are.
Or if they know someone
out in the community
who can benefit from this video,
please share it with them.
We probably will have this
done within the next two weeks
because we do have to get captioned.
And once that is done,
we will send it out and whenever
our upcoming newsletters,
and then when you do that,
it will really help
benefit another individual
who's looking to maybe
help their classroom.
And then that's how
you can their classroom
or even their workspace.
And this is how you can influence change,
because maybe we're
preaching to the choir here.
Maybe everybody here really gets it,
but we know we all work
with people who just,
they're a little naive to what
we were speaking about today.
And we wanna have that opportunity
in order for us to help influence change
and not be implicit by our silence.
Let's really complicit by our sounds.
Let's really have an opportunity
to really impact change for our
students cause they need it.
They look to us as they
look to us as you know,
people that they look up
to us plain and simple.
And because they look up to us,
we wanna make sure that
we're able to influence
as much as we can and show them the way
so that way they can have
the same opportunities
that we may have had
in our educational journeys and beyond.
So again, I wanna thank
every single person for this.
I really, truly appreciates you.
And if anybody has any
comments we can stay on,
but we will sign off.
And panelists I appreciate
every single one of you.
Thank you again,
Angan, I won't call you doctor.
I'll say Angan.
Thank you, Sarah.
Thank you Shanna, Kevin,
Amy, Sarah, Missy, Heather,
and Serge for your work and
doing this and meeting with me.
I know it was pain in the
butt having these meetings.
And then I also would like to thank
professor Robin Worthington
for helping them with some of the slides
and making sure that we have
some factual information there.
And especially I wanna thank Melissa
who keeps me organized and on track
because that is hard to do.
And thank you,
communications and John Forerunner
for helping me with a lot of the art
and things that we have as well.
So again, it's a huge collection of people
that are contributing here
and that's how we create change
is by creating a community
and moving forward.
So thank you guys.
God bless.
And I'll see you on August 27th.
