Blah, blah, blah. Welcome everyone. We're going to go ahead and get started. Thank you so much for being here today. My name is Liz rebel. I'm the Director of the Partnership for Public Education, which is one of three knowledge partnerships Under the community engagement initiative. It's my pleasure to facilitate our conversation about racial justice and collaborative projects in education. I'm joined here today by some of my amazing colleagues who the College of Education and Human Development, as well as the College of Arts and Sciences. And I'm going to ask them to introduce themselves and share a little bit about their work. And just a moment. When we organize this panel, we were thrilled to be invited to be part of this series which has started or actually it has been happening over there entire school year. Conclude next month on May 13th event. Boom. But I felt especially proud to be part of this because of the partnership over the last few years. And for those of you who aren't familiar with it, the Partnership for Public Education is a group of individuals, community engaged with it. Engagement initiative that represents the universe. University's commitment to our public education system. And we are organized on principles that center equity and partnership and all of our efforts. So we have C and we seek to mobilize the university is knowledge and human resources to be a better partner. To support our public education stakeholders, to engage families and communities in our school system in providing equitable, an excellent education opportunities and outcomes for all students. The folks on this call have all been roped into working our organization past few years in various ways. And we're really, we're really honored to have had their expertise and their knowledge and their experience as we have learned from them. And hopefully we have created opportunities for them to have a positive impact on our our schools and with our children here in Delaware. So in today's conversation, we're going to talk a bit about schools as sites for racial justice. How the collaborative work that our panelists have engaged in have facilitated or advanced racial justice in the state of Delaware as well. And it's sort of where we see this work, our own individual work, but our collective work in university and as a state moving forward. So I'm going to actually ask my folks to introduce themselves and tell them, and tell our amazing audience a little bit about their work just on a couple sentences because I'm sure we'll dig into it later in our conversation. Joke. I think with my name is Julian clan. I'm a former secondary teacher and I'm a Professor in the English Department. I primarily work in English education program. I would say most of my anti-racism work is done with my students and our teacher education class, both individually and in partnership with other colleague that you d like Elizabeth engineer who are on the call. But I've also participated in to PPE project. One was with Schumer, DO little pool, and they're beginning work with identity and equity, work with their faculty as well as one with the State Department of Education extending that equity work and at that larger Delaware level. So thanks for having me here today. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for inviting me. It's such an honor to be here to build with you all. My name is Rod or a carrier and I'm an Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Delaware. That's a long title. Well, that's where I live. That's my intellectual home. I've been involved in quite a few projects that really touch on this. But I think that the most robust than I have going on now is do too generous funding from the University of Delaware Partnership for Public Education. I'm the founder of what's called the Black Boy nattering project, which is a unique school university partnership which seeks to understand the ways that black boys highschool adolescent black boys articulate the ways that they perceived that they feel like they, they value their significance are other ways that they feel like they just simply matter to their peers, their teachers, and their schools, but also in their families and communities generally. Through this unique partnership project, we are working with a local high school. We're going to expand our work to to other schools. The first year it was funded by the Partnership for Public Education, the second year for the Spencer Foundation. We're going to continue this work, hopefully, working with a group of adolescent boys to really talk with them about not only how they feel and the better presently, but how we can build school contexts that help them feel like they matter. And if you could, if you would've told me that I'd be working kind of during the second wave of black Lives Matter protest movement projects around issues of mattering. I would've told you that you're lying when I conceptualize this. But this topic is very important to the, to the boys that I worked with. And I've been able to build a lot of partnerships across with grad students. I have two other grad students who work on this, and I'm also a researcher WHO ratio crest. So it's an awesome project and I'm just honored to be here if you have any questions about I'm looking forward to talking. Thank you. Hi, I'm Jeanine than advised. I am an Assistant Professor at that long plate, long-winded name place that rod brought a Google evasion at the College of Education and Human Development. My work is primarily around hoping educators and then thought leaders in general, educators inside schools, inside universities, but also in cultural education. Broadly, anyone who's leading learning, anyone who's leading mindset change to, to have an approach that I call brave community that helps us kind of leverage Folks sense of bravery and interpersonal Empathy around this work. Life. Jail. I've worked with PPE before in a project that we did with the Department of Education around equity and we had an equity group of schools that we were supporting. And then I'm honored to be one of their current PB fellows. And so they're supporting this brave community work. And I think that there's probably people here, given the number of educators in Delaware that have seen my face, talk about these in the last six months or so. There's probably folks who are like not her again, but yes, me again, I am back in. It's a pleasure to be with you. Hi everyone. My name is Elizabeth. I'll even in the School of Education, obviously colleagues on this call and incredibly happy to be here as well. So my PPE wasn't a partnership with a non-profit organization that works with homeschool teacher if you want to, your long vertical service learning projects and their students. And it's really built around kinda this three-part model where a teacher to teach their students how to create a social change orientation. Teacher where I distribute power, asked her to students. And students and teachers build relationships with each other at EBI from all for community members. So I'm happy to talk about today. I will turn it over to Carol. Everyone, My name is Diana be less. I'm an Associate Professor in Human Development and Family Sciences. Oscillate UD, migrate mainly focuses around housing instability, social justice, youth development, youth participatory action research methods and critical race theory. And so that is similar to mean I'm currently very honored to be a fellow with the Partnership for Public Education. Of course, like everyone else, COVID has put a little bit of a wrinkle in the plan or a big wrinkled dependent, or you think about it. We are currently we started working with some young people who live in Wilmington who are experiencing either some housing challenges and are about to, their neighborhoods are about to undergo transformation or justification. And they gotta be speak to. So we're using the project to explore housing and to also think about how they too become change agents in their own community. So thank you all for having me. Thank you all for being here and thank you for all of the the work that you're doing. You flatter PPE, bye. Thank you for coming, but it's really you that are doing the work. And so, so this conversation is a great place for us to, to learn, continue to learn from you. So one of the reasons that we collected this group for the panel is because these issues of racial justice are critically important for our youth, right? There are critically important in courts, all such pairs, but we're talking about youth. The youth, it will be the future country. And so schools and the other sites in which youth are active participants become really important sites than racial justice. So I was wondering if you guys could speak a little bit more to what aspects of schooling or their engagement in the larger community can really contribute to racial justice based on your current projects or your general experience. I'm going to just be pointed and pick someone to start and assume that the conversational flow from there. So Jeanine, I'm going to pick on you if you don't mind kicking off with that question. I'm sure schools as sites of racial justice. I'm going to, I'm going to be broad so we can all kinda build this out together. But if I had to pick two immediate things, I would say that the reason why schools are a place that are, that are particularly, they're particularly advantageous to tackle racism is that I think of it as both a matter of knowledge and practice. So if you think of a racist society as having two in part, teach racism to people living in it. We're not, we're not born having this thought, these thoughts, we have to sort of be socialize and acclimated to these thoughts. Then schools are places where unfortunately, that kind of racialized thinking is enforced. It can be counteracted, but it is also enforce. So that's what I mean about knowledge, right? So here I want us to be thinking about schools are places where we determined how we learn about history, how we learn about the history of racism in this country and the contemporary impacts of it on the one hand. So think knowledge and then I also think about practice. Because again, institutions including schools, but all our institutions are also imbued with racist practices and structures. What do we mean for them to be there or not? And so there's ways that aspects of schooling become entrenched with racialized meaning and racialized outcomes. So in schools you have this kind of like perfect storm. And you know, it could be a good storm for change. And you could be a bad storm for, for retracting us where you can both attack, how we know and what we know about the world and change our minds. And you can also start to attack how we treat each other. Teaching people to speak one another. How can think about difference? How we think about culture, how we think about how many progress, mobility on this thing. So knowledge and practice. Someone take a guess, I guess I could jump in. I think that, you know what Janine and really touches on really couches so much of what schools can do. And I think this notion of knowledge and practices, but I'm also going to add in just a little bit more about what schools do to the body, what schools do to that student. And I think that we have for the longest time, I will say that probably says, you know, people would say No Child Left Behind. But I would actually argue it starts really kinda earlier with a Nation at Risk and kind of where we are now and this neoliberal moment that has worked to commodify the Barney of children. We focus so much on the present. We put so much more on these present outcomes. And the ways that race kind of can prove difference among and within, within student populations. And what we have forgotten about, and I would say, we don't spend enough time on this is how race and racism show up in the ways that adolescence in particular, because that's the population that I study, build their self-concept, their self esteem, their self-hood, the ways that they can see themselves in the world as being good at this are bad at this are worthy of love or, or, and I think that's such a much more robust thing to think about, not just learning outcomes that can be counted. I'm talking about self-learning. And I think that that's something that, you know, acid-based pedagogues had been arguing for since, well before, culturally relevant pedagogy, way before that. But definitely at the articulation, of course, the relevant pedagogy. But let me at this notion of how can we think about schools as sites of racial justice? The lens of building a self concepts of the racialized, of the racialized child, right? And I think that what, well, we need to think about what that means for the president. And like lists talking about how does, how does the work that we do now influence how these kids think about themselves and how that moves into the future in adulthood, right? And I think that what we see is a lot of kids leave high school, used about who they are and what, what they're good at. Because a lot of that has been tied to these outcomes. And I think that would need to think about what it means for their, for their own identities. So that's some of the work that I've been doing is thinking about my urgency. Other people, their disease around math or science. And that's important too, that I do think that kids need to learn content. But my work is literally want, how do you feel like this school makes you feel important? Does this school reify the fact that you are worthy, that you matter just for being and not just because you are an athlete or because you're tall, they can move the ball down the court or even, or even that you're black and you can get high scores on tests and make our school but better than another school, you know? So I think that we really need to return to schools as sites that really affirm the self concepts of children. And I think that, that is a racial justice project in and of itself. The second part of the question, which aspects of Slayton continuous racial justice? I think nasa exploring that can contribute to racial justice in a curriculum materials. It's in a curriculum that physical spaces, policies isn't the way we discipline. It's not instructional approaches. Leadership model that governs how the adults in our organizing themselves. So it's how we teach, what we teach, how students demonstrate their understanding, your assessments. It's all encompassing. So my Fourier series possibilities. I'll, I'll add, I guess another dimension, focusing more on communities as spaces of learning and education. The project I'm working on, we are not in a school space. And so it's been really interesting that the young people feel like they're in school. And so we've really been trying to make it do delineation around schools, often with these right, racialized and classed aspects of how do you learn. And so we've been talking to them about education versus schooling and how schooling often time is really rooted in discipline and control and in particular, black and brown young people. And so how do you all think about your own agency, right? How do you take control of learning? And so that's something that we are. So mostly we have to help them learn the schooling practices. Because unfortunately I agree completely with lists, but they're oftentimes schools don't serve us the sites of learning. They serve as sites of discipline and control into how can we also think about community space as a place where we can really educate young people around being critical of systems and structures that are often don't work in their favor. So just that other dimension that the school building is not the only place that these kind of robust ways of knowing and being can happen. But we can really draw on community collaborations, community organizations to serve as the sites as well. Nat jail, I know you started off by sharing that your work. A lot of your work occurs within teacher preparation, right? So that's different aspect of the sites of schooling. Could you speak to a little bit about how teacher preparation might be also part of this conversation around sites for me, yes. Sure. And I think it relates likely to what and was just talking about with community involvement. One of the most powerful thing we do with our candidate. They have them investigate the community that are served by the school. But there'll be student teaching in and try to think about ways that they can better connect and what strength are there, what the Hebrew there. We all know that there's a lot of story told about certain 12 and Delaware, certain areas of Delaware, certain communities and Delaware. And we want them to really unpack those and think about it in the effort-based way that we've talked about before by Rod. I think although, you know, considering the ways that teachers have experienced pulled them and then move into the peaking force is really important. Not all, but many of our candidates have had very positive and affirming experience with people. And that's not the case for all. Obviously, they need to be critical about that. Think carefully about why it is that they hadn't bounced will be a welcoming place and if a habit, why that is as well and what they can do too, both problematic than all the things that Elizabeth was talking about from curriculum to be material to strategy. Really examine all of that with a critical lens in the handle to start out with in the profession. I think that's really important to us to keep in mind is 2k. This problem isn't about, isn't bounded by schools, right? It starts in all different parts of bins lives, parts of educators lives, and in the larger system. So as we think about the idea of racial justice and addressing racism through education, this is obviously complex. To Elizabeth's point. There isn't a piece of education that isn't relevant to this conversation. And so when I think about the scale of this challenge, it, it certainly takes a village. And so one of the guiding principles for the Partnership for Public Educations work has been to promote partnerships and collaborations that that enable folks like yourselves to work alongside equals our practice partners in addressing some of these challenges. And in that we tried to promote equity within the partnerships as well. So I'm interested to learn how your work how your collaborations with the folks that you're working with have addressed racial justice or what you've learned about collaborating to address some of these issues in, in, in the lives of youth, whether in schools or in community settings. I'm going to ask Elizabeth to take this 1 first. I'm just picking on people randomly. Picking on me. I enjoy. Now he's 24, 7 raised to star. Collaboration. Collaboration. Our PPE. Ppe was between an organization has in Philadelphia and now every single instituted in university. So the reason why partnership you will be Bill, was because of longstanding established relationships. I really worry that building relationships comes first before the ask, where collaboration from the floor. Now the partnership happens. There's trust, there's open communication. There's, in my situation, there's love, there's care, there's real deep understanding of each other. And when you have that kind of relationship, you can then move into our spaces together. I know the organization that I work with trains all their people to think about the program that offers to think about this concept of toxic cherry and this idea that you could go in and help others do things to others, that they may not be any. I, E, and C, they don't. The first place. A very toxic situation or a troubling situation. So real authentic partnership. There's an elevation of MIT students. Also, my case, the community, the wisdom of the community and students and their parents above and beyond, you know, it hadn't, things like that. So I would say starting off with the relationships are often trust and love, avoiding Catholic charity, avoiding drop-ins. And I had a doctoral student who worked with me, sarah. Oh, I'm getting ready to better education. Very excited. Shout out to Sarah. To me, other than just, hey, it's a dream team here. Sarah does on-site and weekly to support the partnership. And I was on site every other week and an available through phone calls and things like that. And then we did peer sharing meetings routinely throughout the entire year. These are kinds of activities that are necessarily valued in the academy in terms of things like promotion and tenure. Big golf always result in a publication with a peer-reviewed journal or a lush critics by a keynote at international, I'm saying. But it's the work. And if you're committed to do the work and do the partnership, that should be something that is really well understood by everybody who's going to be in that partnership. That it's about the work and not necessarily, you know, what the benefits are on the university side. I'll stop there. I was a lot of talking for me. One thing that I'll build on, I have I have more limited the probably the, the most limited experience out of my colleagues. I do want to say that, right? I mean to be doing the work, but I kinda just guy here. So this is, I'm a limited view, but what I do see a lot of difference in, in the most effective ways that at least I'm, I partner and I find that my work has relevance is when folks are not under the impression that I am some kind of like anti-racism booster shot. That's just going to be given to you on Tuesday from three to five PM. And then I'm going to go away and the racism just going to leave with me because I'm just going to take it out by being amazing. And that doesn't actually work. And then the number one way that people think there's, there's, Okay, Let's not do that. Let's just have them keep coming back. Well, that's why I say booster shot. That doesn't work either. What works? The difference that I see is between that model. In a model where, for example, I'm invited to talk to the leadership at the school before they tell me what's actually concretely going on at that particular site beforehand. They're honest and they're like, This is how much we've done. This is like my core group that's really into it, but here's some resistance. Here's what I'm really struggling with, but it'll have me meet with their equity team or something like that and we will customize something meaningful for them. And then when I'm actually doing it, and of course, the model has been zooms, but it could be meetings when I'm their leadership as president. Leadership introduces me, I say this because that's not always the case. I've shown are places where I'm the one being like, Is this on we're doing this. Hello. And again, i'm, I'm delivering the same goods. But the likelihood that your t, your school, your community is going to be as committed as this is what we're doing. This is how this connects with our other initiatives. This is how this this talk by Dr to the device fits with whatever else we're doing. I see a huge difference in the situations where it's a meaningful engagement. I hear from folks after the fact. I continue to talk to them about what what else they thing I think they might do. We think we might do together. And that has nothing to do with me, right? To L, is it to Elizabeth's point? I, you know, academia, it's kind of a little bit hostile to partnerships anyway. So for me, I can just be lining up all these talks and it checks off a box in my CV, but I know it's not going to help. If it's not contextual, if it's not true to the community. And because there's no such thing as last thing I'll say, we're tackling systemic racism. No, you're not. Tell me what you're doing at your school. Tell me what are you doing this year, this semester, this month? What is the thing we're trying to get out? Let's talk about that. And that's how you at your school tackle systemic racism. I think I'll jump in here. Rosabeth and Janine. I've already really hit on a lot of the points and I think I'm just going to build on their brilliance by just talking a little bit more about this. Practically what I was doing in the building and what I continue to do when we don't have the building during the COVID time is, you know, what I really hear from what my colleagues are saying is this notion of kind of resisting this colonizing urge that happens. And research, practice, partnerships going and taking out, coming in. You know, I like this notion of banking like you're lacking, let me come in deposits some knowledge in your head. So we're trying to resist all of that when I think like there are three, there are three ideas that come to mind when I think about my own work with the black way mattering project. The first is flexibility, the second is responsiveness, and then the third is modeling. And let me talk about those three things very quickly. The first is that in response to with this question is that I came in with ideas. I had ideas about what I wanted to do, what I thought, like Joe Flynn, I am a former high school teacher. I get schools, I love schools. Kids that look sound Walton's rest come from the same neighborhoods like the kids I used to teach in DC by those. And that's one of the reason why I got into this whole doctoral program, going into being a professor anyway. So I have passion around it. But each building is unique. Each school is struggling with its own sets of challenges, many of which are not even the result of anybody in the building insist, you know, the drama that life's structural and economic inequalities I've created for the school to grapple with. So you need to be flexible as I got my own ideas with, you know, the principles. I yeah, you can do all that but you didn't give them a field trip. And I say, Well, I was like No, that wasn't a part of my grant. He's like, Yeah, but you need to take them on a field trip to Udi. And I say, Well, I hadn't planned on doing that. I don't have that. And he said you have a field trip. And I was like, Okay, cool. So so I heard from the principal and then I heard from another kid. He's like, you know, like I really matter if you went on a field trip and how they are, you know, where it will go on a field trip. So the school planned it. But I pay for it out of my grant money for PPE that we went to an art museum. These kids had somebody from my boys had never even been in a museum before. And we went there and we spent the entire day and we had pizza and we weren't, we weren't what a teaching artist and we created images that showed two different ways. They felt like they mattered, right? So I had to be flexible rate and that's also being responsive to what the kids needed, what they want it. And I think that that's a really important thing to do. Good partnership work is be flexible. I can't imagine like what does it mean to to had to move my entire school based project. We were going in there every single week to work with the kids, too. On March 11th, I had changed my whole plan of 2020. We have we can't be in the building anymore. So now we are, we're virtual. And I think the third one is modeling what I study. So a lot of a study, equity. So how can we can't go into these places and be inequitable? Or we can go in there as an anti-racist and reproduce crowd of racist. So taking, marginalizing our participants. So I, me and my research team, we work hard to make the boys feel like they matter on the black boy battering project. And the way that we do that is by showing up for them. You know, I've I focus group schedule for weeks and my wonderful might show up. And I'm like, Where's everyone off? And they're like, Well, he's asleep or whatever. And I'm like, Well, if nothing else, you know that we are always going to be here for you because we said we went the second way we do that, we incentivize them. You know, if you come, we're going to give you a little something, a little token, gift cards, something of value your time. The other thing is that we change ideas based off of what they need. After the Black Lives Matter protests in some or a change the whole research project, because I said, you know what, you all do not have a space to to understand and talk through what you just went through the summer when you watch the City of Wilmington burn. I'm not talking about Philly, I'm really talking about New York. I'm talking about in Wilmington off ship, we should be off market where a lot of these kids are from. They were like, Why are people like burning down like the sneaker store, you know, they had no body in school to talk to you about that, right? So I think that being like, so being flexible, modeling the project and also being responsive are really key ideas that really come up with the racial justice partnering work. So. I'll stop there. If I could just add because Roderick, You just made me think of so many things. So thank you for that because building on it, I'm in that process now where we're having to pivot, right. I came in with like, here's what we're gonna do. And the kids are like, yeah, Now when I feel bad, so we're like, okay. So we're going to go ahead and make some shifts and some changes, right, based on what the needs are of the young people in the group. Not only some of the content, but even the pedagogical approach, right, until coming from academic space. And we're working with kids ranging from eighth grade through like junior year in high school. We're also having to even rethink how we present the material, what kind of material that we bring into the presentation. I mean, it is not, I want to be clear. This is not dumbing down curriculum. This is not saying that they are not capable. It's recognizing that the manner in which most of us have been schooled, right? It's not the same as education. And so how do we make those shifts to meet the needs of the young people? How do we make sure it's we should be beneficial, right? The young people are learning because we all know, right? That we can have a field project and bend it, can be a great writer, right? And so, um, in terms of like our academic careers, we have to think about, I always use the Eve Tuck suspending damage, right? How are we not reproducing the systems of inequity? How are we not walking away and just saying like, Well, they didn't get much out of it. But I have a few good articles here, right? That is a form of colonization, right? And so how do we resist that? How do we rethink our partnerships? And then the one, the last thing I'll point out is also why community is so important, right? So having the partnership I'm working with is with a non-profit. And if it was not for my community partner, one, I wouldn't even have the kids in the group who hate. She is really the one who identify like here's some young people that I think would be good. So we're always in communication. The organization where we are holding group were actually live in space together, which has also been interesting. We have a small group of about eight young people which helps mass and distancing and all that fun stuff. But just knowing what's happening in the community and really having consistent communication and really building genuine relationships, right? We're not coming in just as Roger said, just to excavate and pull information. But we're really thinking about how does our crescents here up lift the needs, right? Support, supplement whatever you wanna call it, the needs of the young people in the communities who are struggling with the violence, right? With the racism, all those kinds of things. And so I think it's so important that we cannot diminished the importance of the actual community members. Especially, I'll say especially for me as an as an outsider, I'm not originally from Wilmington. And so if it were not for these relationships. I would be able to even write work on this project. So just for the panelists, a few really interesting questions and ideas have come up in the chat, which I think are sort of nice segue into. My next question was for you on the ideas that come up in the chat include the fact that many educators, both in traditional and non traditional educational settings are white women and the challenges associated with them leading or facilitating racial justice initiatives. Um, another one came up around segregation and Policy and the re-segregation of schools in Delaware. And these aren't really obviously important policy contexts in which your work is happening and surely shape it. So I say that to sort of offer potential directions for comments or unresponsive this question, don't do that. You have to take it directly and you can directly in the chat as well. But I wanted to follow up with a question with as, as you engage in this work, as you collaborate, as you do all these important things in the various organizations with which you're partnering. What is some of the challenges and opportunities we have through your work and more broadly to continue to advance racial justice initiatives in education, policy, and practice. And so that's a two parter challenges and let's sort of opportunities. So feel free to latch on to either one. But in the spirit of everyone leaving with ideas and motivation. That's not only did the challenge, because I know there are many. I'll I'll go and do my OH. Ending. Well, I was just picking on her. So it has the the question of a challenge and an opportunity, combined with what you frame for us about the chat, made me want to offer something. And in my work, I've noticed something really interesting from white teachers and white educators. And I think that that's a way to talk about a challenge and an opportunity. And what I've noticed is that oftentimes when folks are asking me about how my day teach about racism in a accurate, rigorous way. When I dig deep, What's hap so no presented as how do I do this and not screw it up for the kids. But when I'm really dig deep, the adults are afraid. They're projecting their own discomfort with the subject matter onto children or young people, right? And so recently someone asked me this, but this happens all the time. Someone asked me this that was going to teach like little kids, like third graders and I asked them. So you're telling me that your concerns that black and brown third graders know more than you do. As an adult person. And they were like What? And I was like, Well, you said you're concerned, you're going to say the wrong thing or teach them the wrong thing. But their third graders, here's the thing. In my work. I'm not asking anybody to teach someone how to be black or Latinx or Asian or anything, right? In my work, I'm asking someone to teach young people the truth about their country, right? That is a form of expertise like literacy, like math, like social studies and also studies. Is that but you know what I'm saying? And so the fact is you can acquire this expertise same as I have it. And the question is, can you deliver it to young people in a humane way, edifying way, in a way that invites them to learn whoever they are as opposed to not. So I would say most of us here, I'll 60 some odd of us would say yes. Okay. All right. So then we know that the fear is yours. And the thing that we said at the beginning lists frame that so well, which is that in the schools we have the future. When we project the future, we project our fear into the future. You make the Feed, the Future fearful. You create the condition where just like we didn't handle racism properly, they want. So that's the challenge. The opportunity is, if we create, in the case of Joe and myself and Elizabeth, those versus the School of Ed, for example, programs that teach all pre-service teachers regardless of their race, regardless of their politics. I'm say, to teach race, the way that we teach other things would a standard of rigor and accuracy rate. Then we diminish the that fear because I'm not afraid people think I'm not afraid because I'm black and I'm I'll say whatever I want. That's not why I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid because I know my stuff. I'm not afraid to call a spade a stay because I know what I'm saying is true. It might make you uncomfortable, but it's not a lot that what I call academic grounding, that knowing of which you're talking about is what reduces the fear. Not some magical quality of my blackness though that is a thing. But that's not what's going on. What's going on is I'm not worried about telling you something that's going to make you uncomfortable because I'm not telling it to you to hurt your feelings. I'm not telling it to you because I'm not sure it's true. I know it's true. And I'm telling it to you or I'm teaching it to you adults. Because I, I hope I have every expectation until you show me different than if you know better, you're going to do better. So that's, that's it. The resistances, the challenge. And the opportunity is that if these educators and these families, because somebody dropped the question about what about the family's same answer? So let's get this content into our own consciousness. Let's get it to the babies as soon as possible so that when they come to Judy, I'm not the first person telling them what had happened in 1492. It's not it's not helpful when I'm the first person under 18 is hard. If you start to do it early, we start to build that resilience to the truth. You know, who start to be together in this anti-racist work. So that was my piece on this question. Beautiful. I say out jumping because they know since Lizzy had originally called On the so the the challenge and the opportunity that I thought of or that I'm currently thinking about is power, right? Like who has it? How did they get it? How do they maintain it? And I think that's huge. In particular for young black and brown youth who are struggling, right? Brush say, whose families are often struggling with issues of race, of class, of economic instability, of housing instability is the challenges. One, Identifying, right, that there are some real power dynamic dynamics at play, right? Uh, multiple levels, institutional level, community level, individual level, right? Recognizing as adults, we have power. How do we use that power? How do we unveil that power? How do we share power, right, in particularly with young people who are often marginalized and left out and made to feel powerless, often by the institutions who claim right to care for them. So I think that's the challenge, is recognizing that power because it's so insidious and it's so hidden. Because it's so natural that people don't think about in particular the young people, right? And this was one of our first conversations we had around school and education was around my discipline. And most of the young people were like, Yes, if you don't follow the rules, you should be suspended or you shouldn't be expelled. And we were like, so you should lose your right to an education because you didn't follow a rule. And they're like, yeah, I'm really know, even spoke were they they don't even write. And again, not to minimize, but they've been indoctrinated with like, these are the rules of the school. This is what you do, right? And we know in education that, that is the main function of school is discipline and control. And so you want docile people so that they will follow the rules and be good workers, right? You don't want change agents. Not all schools. Let me not say all schools, but overall in particular in poor communities. So I think it's also though, the opportunity, right is like what does it mean for young people to understand these dynamics into Janine point? Not at 18 and for some people, not until grad school 2428 reheat, but that at 14, 15, 16, you're calling out the power, right? You you're calling it out in your school, where you're calling it out in your community. But then you also become you recognize your agency, but you also hold, right, because if it wasn't for the young people, being in the schools or being in these spaces like we wouldn't have jobs. And so to help them see, like you all have power and how do you organize collectively around that power and demand, the respect and the care, and all the other things, right, that schools and other institutions should be doing to really help young people thrive. And so I think that's the piece that we often don't talk about. And for many of us, we, we know those power dynamics exist, but we don't often take the time to make it explicit to the young people and direct buried, you can say the teachers that we work with. Any takers on opportunities and challenges? I have to wait time, then trained. I'm looking over that. What's happening in the chat thumbs a little bit. But I just wanted to add a little bit. That's the challenge and the opportunity of white teachers like myself engaging in anti-racist work and trying to meet it. I actually wrote a piece literately, Ron Dow and then world and about the possibility white teachers and teacher educators to do this work. Because they can't fall to others, right though. It easy to be resistant as something that while white people don't want to talk about wraith and they don't think it's a problem and batting this a 100 percent. But there's also that level of what was brought up in the chat of why people are afraid of doing the wrong thing. They don't want to do harm. They feel I've just mentioned that they don't have they can't have an understanding by 2030, spoken about that. But I think looking at identity work more broadly and intersectionality can help assuage some of that concern. And there's many resources online that are free that can help you do that if you don't have a great painter like to interwork, work through it with you. I've been gathering resources for another project that we're working on, a PPE and I can't believe how much good stuff out there. Equity Literacy Institute, teaching per change, rethinking pool. Like you can Google it and find them really powerful thing to do on your own or in your faculty room to work. I'm going to stop yourself. I think that question, can white people who do that work is a challenge and an opportunity? And I argue it is our responsibility to do it. Yeah. Joe was saying, I think that what Jesus does. So how can I, in both components of this academic grounding is essential. And it needs to ask these teachers and leaders to get to the point where they say, This policy is hurting myself. This curriculum is her hair. The way this teacher is instructing is for children. And teachers where I witness with white teachers. Is there. It's very about the confessional or about the, you know, I have implicit bias and here they are. And it's poor the mindset shift. But it's not about the action and ending. Wip, teacher can take an action if they're academically grabbed and they understand the way that policy has been generated, the way it was intended to oppress than our students, the way the curriculum was written and intended to a craftsman harm students and families and communities. So it's the action component moving beyond confessional. And I would argue. Teacher trainings at schools. She be about this confessional, that's your affinity group work. That's your private work, That's your work with your therapist. That's your work at places like the lion story with Howard Stevenson. That the emotional, psychological keys, but the grounding in the academics and the movement where action is what teachers and school leaders should focus time. You can't wait for the mindset to ****. Because cancer being hard, That's not a thing. And you can change policy without everyone agree to it. Because it's rooted in real data and it's rooted in real FAQ and his days. So I just wanted to add an all white teachers can do that. I'm inspired by the message and I've been reflecting on some of the, the comments today and thinking about some of the words we've chosen to use. And I just want to reflect back on them as we sort of wrap up here. And for those of you in the audience, please feel free to continue to post questions are there in the Q&A or the chat? I know Q and a has gotten some comments. Chat has gotten some comments, but we welcome them throughout. So i'm, I'm thinking about some of the words we heard. Responsibility, community, knowledge, density, toxic help, responsiveness, trust, agency, control, change agent, power, and love, right? All of these seem there. They really reflect the complexity of the work that we talked about today. The work that very likely our audiences engaging in or in the throws him of right now. And, and it's both positive and negative, right? So we're surrounded by some of these challenges, but we have real opportunities, um, to, to partner, to collaborate together to address this incredibly complex challenge. We have put a few minutes left, so I want to give our panelists just, you can take a second, do this. Just one last final message to our audience. And you can reflect on your own work. You can reflect on something you heard from a colleague or take a whole new idea. I will very slowly pick someone to go first and less so on turns off there, Mike and goes, I'll go up until dinner for Yea. I really appreciate what a thing and I think that a takeaway that I would share it that you can't wait. Like we're going to make MCDA thing, we're going to go wrong. It's not all going to work. But BED DO didn't or are bearing the brunt of the problem in All right now and route it being repaired and it being in her research study, be that once you're working with so don't make it. But go out and do the work. I'm going to take away something from what Jesus said. Because we both work with pre-service teachers who are afraid of my base. And I think that helping the TPP, that pre-service teacher or an in-service teacher see that the fear is theirs and that there is a relief from that, then you can feel confident in this work. If you do the work of understanding the history of the policy, the practice, the school dynamic, the system, all things. And we can help him do that. And so you don't have to be afraid. All the other feelings again, you can process that we are feeling, the feeling that I'm feeling. But this idea that Jane is talking about, I'm going to say any academic browning is so powerful, it's such a nice and relief that this is a skill and a client that everywhere. That's amazing. So that's my big takeaway for that. Okay. I feel I feel called out by that. So I'll just go next. There's I have look, I'll leave her name is Crystal Fleming and she wrote above, that is amazing called How to be less stupid about. There's a lot of books that are amazing. The book, the title is irreverent, but she's like a brilliant sociologist of race. And what she does in that book is kinda distill sociological understanding of racism in ways that you can connect. And she speaks not in her like academic voice in that book, but in her like every day. This is a giant Twitter thread kind of voice. So I recommend that book more than other things that are in bestseller lists all the time. Because it just targets that feeling of, I know that's a charged word and I don't mean it. I don't think she means and respectfully, but the way that we can feel stupid about race, we can feel stupid and humiliated by how much we don't understand something that is actually the most, probably one of the most constitutive aspects of our own society. And we don't get it right aside from the judgment of who we are and why we don't get it. Just that feeling of like I'm an adult and I I'm not really good at this. So get that book. The other thing that I wanted to say is about a kind of moral and ethical obligation that you have in a democracy to participate in what your fellow persons are doing. And here's the thing, spoiler alert. We're people of color intend to get free. That is a consistent pattern. From the moment that someone designed to make us unfree. We have been brilliant, brilliantly, relentlessly, almost unprecedentedly brilliant at getting free and staying as free as possible, however we can do it. That's happening, that's going to happen forever. The question before us as a country is, are we going to do it by ourselves because we are going to be doing it. Or are white people going though? The white people who mean to have a democratic experience with us, join in that work. That's it. It's not a question what we're going to get free or not, because we've been doing that. That's why this conversation as possible. That's why I'm here talking to you. That's why 2020. 2021 exists. That's why this country exists. But we've been doing it. So we will continue to do that. Ideally, we want to be integrated into the society in that work. That's also part of what our traditions as liberatory people. It involves, it's actually lucky for all of us when black people and people of color get free, we bring folks along, right? But the, but the, but the point is we're going to do it. And do you want to, do we want to live in a world where young people who don't get to choose our cast away from that trajectory towards freedom and equality and democracy. Because remember, young people are not choosing their sides. So we cannot have institutions that are educating them to pick sides. To be against freedom and justice. And schools that are not achieving racial justice within their four walls, That's what you're doing. You're taking away from these current and future citizens. And I don't mean citizens because you have papers. I mean citizen six-year here. You're taking away their right to participate in the grandest, most important work of their own democracy. I don't think they're going to appreciate it. I don't think that's what the young people one. I don't and I think we need to stop making that decision for them because it suits us because it's comfortable for us. Because it's not scary. Because, because, because we, we have a moral and ethical obligation to stop pretending, we don't know any better because we do not punish others. Say one. I know we're out of time, but I'll just say the last thing. I'll say. Just like the Lake Geneva saying brilliantly, like your fear doesn't help me. As a matter of fact, I can think of few things more devastating to the black boy and black man, white people's fear because of all the people who have all the, all the policies that have been put in place. You've got the white people's fear of black bodies and Y equals B or I, you know, immigrants in and the threats to waitlist that come with all types of difference and all types of things. But I, but I will say this, that your fear awesome makes you comfortable. You can live in your fear and be like, I don't want to offend anybody, I can be comfortable. That is also unhelpful. So I think that, you know, what I would encourage you to do is realize this. This is, this is my gift. Is that those of you who care about equity, just like you know, Ella Baker said, We who believe in freedom cannot rest those of you believe in equity. You have to keep moving and you're never live and stay at equity. You have to keep walking toward it. It's, it's a, it's a constant. It's a constant. It's a commitment. Keep to keep engaged in the work. So please don't be fearful. Get engaged with the work and stay there. By getting to you that you will, you will, you will still you will help me now. So that's my last little point. I know time. I'll just say action and flexibility. Like we can't sit and wait. Like take action and in your action, your original plan will very likely change. So be flexible and make sure that you are everything to everybody just said like you're always taking input from your students, your colleagues, from, from their families, from the community in your action. Friends. I can't thank you enough for your time, for your wisdom, for the collaboration and partnership you have offered are our schools and our communities here in Delaware. And to our audience. Thank you for being here in the spirit of action. If you would like to connect with any of the folks or learn more about any of their projects. I have posted the PPE website into the chat that will at least get you started. It is not a the end of the journey to connect with their friends on our call or the resources that they have mentioned. But I hope it's a good starting point. I would like to acknowledge the community engagement initiatives. Final webinar for this series on racial justice will be held on May 13th, and it features a number of student presentations from our engagement Scholars Program. Well, there'll be sharing their social justice work, which is really exciting way to sort of end of the year and selber contributions that the next generation of leaders in our community and our state have been, have been working on for the past year. Thank you, everyone and have a wonderful day. Thank you.
Partnership for Public Education: Antiracism and Social Justice
From Liza MacFadyen April 15, 2021
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