Ethical Schools

Global Conversations: Nature, Place, and Education, Salon #3

Ethical Schools — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 17:22:41 +0000

We share brief presentations from the third of the “Saturday Salons” that Ethical Schools is sponsoring with three international partners. Kerry Kirk Pflugh is the executive director of the New Jersey School of Conservation. She also comes with extensive background experience at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. Tom Roderick is the author most recently of Teach for Climate Justice: A Vision for Transforming Education. He was also the Founding Executive Director of Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility. Deb L. Morrison is a Learning Designer and Advisor at the University of Washington and a Lead Author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report 7. They talk about how educators can respond to the urgent environmental crises we face. Learn more and join at globalconversations.net

School Choice: Who Does the Choosing?

Ethical Schools — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 14:37:02 +0000

We welcome back Dr. Ujju Aggarwal, assistant professor at The New School, to speak about her book, Unsettling Choice: Race, Rights, and the Partitioning of Public Education. In Unsettling Choice, Dr. Aggarwal focuses on the intersection of public education and gentrification. The book is based on her work with mothers at a Head Start center in NYC. We discuss the race and class discrimination the parents faced and whether exclusion is inherent in school choice programs.

Overview

00:00-00:56 Intros

00:56-07:13 Working with Head Start mothers in Manhattan’s Community School District 3

07:13-09:15 Connection between school choice and austerity

09:15-19:17 Issues mothers faced in choosing schools for their children and their experiences

19:17-24:06 The “post-Brown realignment” following the Brown v Board of Education Supreme Court decisions

24:06-25:30 Parents as “consumers” rather than as “citizens”

25:30-28:01 Can school choice exist without exclusion

28:01-29:03 NYC Schools Chancellor Samuels and citywide integration

29:03-32:21 Radical municipalism

32:21- Outro

Transcript

Click here to listen to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

Book "Unsettling Choice: Race, Rights, and the Partitioning of Public Education" by Dr. Ujju Aggarwal
Listen to our first interview "Ujju Aggarwal on school choice, whiteness as property, and the “right to exclude” published in 2019

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Global Conversations: Nature, Place, and Education, Salon #2

Ethical Schools — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 13:51:44 +0000

We share brief presentations from the second of the “Saturday Salons” that Ethical Schools is sponsoring with three international partners. Sherry Johnson, Tribal Education Director of the Sisseton-Wahpeton-Oyate (South Dakota), Deepak Ramola, Founder of Project FUEL (India), and Charlotte Hankin of Coconut Thinking and the Green School (Bali) talk about the importance of stories in reshaping how we think about our relationship to the natural world.

Learn more and register for the third salon on February 21 at globalconversations.net

Trump cutbacks and policies: stripping minority student protections

Ethical Schools — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 12:13:27 +0000

We speak with Derek Black, Constitutional law professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law, about the impact of Trump administration’s policies on students’ civil rights. Department of Education offices meant to ensure students are not subject to discrimination have been decimated. The Department of Justice has switched from protecting minority students' rights to focusing on so-called “discrimination" against whites and attacking transgender students. Professor Black also says the need for "circuit breakers" on executive power transcends this administration.

Overview

00:00-00:52 Intros

00:52:02:21 Threats to students’ protection from discrimination

02:21-03:53 Status of complaints to Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR)

03:53-05:30 Importance of access to OCR without an attorney

05:30-10:09 OCR procedures and remedies

10:09-13:55 Role Department of Justice is supposed to have in protecting students against discrimination; Trump Administration priorities

13:55-17:01 How the Administration’s approach is schizophrenic

17:01-23:10 Ethical quandaries facing district administrators

23:10-24:43 Supplementing not supplanting: What happens when the Department of Education is no longer monitoring

24:43-27:21 The uncertainty factor—who gets focused on

27:21-30:36 State Departments of Education: How they fit in

30:36-34:11 Theatrics at US Department of Education

34:11-38:00 Problems before the Trump Administration and what would be important afterwards

38:00-40:11 Some specifics of “circuit breakers” that could reduce executive power

40:11- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Our first interview with Derek Black happened in 2021. Click here to listen to "The attack on public education: Will public schools survive?"

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Global Conversations: Nature, Place, and Education

Ethical Schools — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 02:16:50 +0000

We share brief presentations from the first of the “Saturday Salons” that Ethical Schools is sponsoring with three international partners. Juan Mora of the Center for Artistry and Scholarship and Ramji Raghavan of Agastya International Foundation talk about how educators and communities can cultivate awareness of and relationship to the natural world.

Learn more and register for the next salon at globalconversations.net

Overview

00:00-01:36 Introductions by Amy and Jon

01:36-02:45 Introduction of Juan Mora by David Penberg

02:45-12:36 Juan Mora:

Separation of people from nature;

What would you do if you were starting a school from zero?

Experience in Córdoba, Argentina of basing a school on nature;

Integrating the curriculum into nature-centered activities;

And kids never asked, “Why are we doing this (activity)?”

We’ve left nature out of our learning environments;

A shift in learning that will help us understand how to teach and what to teach and where to teach differently.

12:36-14:09 David Penberg:

Reciprocity, centrality of relationships, “nature deficit disorder”;

Introduction of Ramji Raghavan

14:09-23:59 Ramji Raghavan:

Transforming a barren wasteland of 170 acres into an ecological preserve;

Nature-centric learning;

Eco-walk;

Constructing a giant figure showing herbs benefiting different parts of the body;

Constructing a termite hill;

Bandhu—everything is connected;

Distributing learnings throughout India.

23:59-25:15 David Penberg:

How educators can create conditions for people to think the kinds of worlds that they would like to inhabit and live in, whether it’s a school, a community;

Creative learning and what that looks like, creative being;

Being intentional, observant and continuously in relationship to the things around you.

25:15- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this conversation.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Pop culture literacies: Engaging students in critical analysis

Ethical Schools — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 17:08:24 +0000

We speak with Dr. Mia Hood, author of Pop Culture Literacies: Teaching Interpretation, Response, and Composition in a Digital World, about analyzing popular music and films along with more traditional literature. Dr. Hood talks about helping students to think about their ethical perspectives while engaging with "entertainment," and the importance of educators' resisting the temptation to impose their own “expert” interpretations in favor of modeling the process. We also discuss how teachers can resist imposing their views while teaching for democracy and social justice.

Overview

00:00-00:48 Intros

00:48-02:48 Pop culture literacies

02:42-04:22 Schools’ ethical duty to help young people navigate the world as it is

04:22-06:23 Helping students to thin about their ethical perspectives

06:23-11:58 Students’ responses; Intersection of pop culture literacies and schools

11:58-15:01 Critical literacy and text analysis

15:01-19:09 Power operating within and through texts

19:09-21:56 Piercing the veil of “entertainment” to encourage critical analysis

21:56-26:25 Impact of AI

26:25-30:48 Kathy Hytten’s article, “Ethics in teaching for democracy and social justice”

30:48-33:55 Parental pushback?

33:55- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Resources

Book Pop Culture Literacy: Teaching Interpretation, Response, and Composition in a Digital World by Mia Hood

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Join our Global Saturday Salons!

Ethical Schools — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 02:16:00 +0000

Collaborate with teachers and learners worldwide!

LEARN MORE AND REGISTER AT GLOBALCONVERSATIONS.NET

Along with our partner organizations – Agastya International Foundation, Center for Artistry and Scholarship, and Thinking With You – Ethical Schools is bringing together educators, youth workers, and students from around the world to discuss ethical, democratic, and regenerative education strategies. Hear exciting presentations from visionary practitioners and participate in group discussions.

Come with your co-workers! Attend with a cohort from your school or out-of-school program to maximize the benefits for your organization and students.

Series 1: Ethics and the Natural World Saturdays, January 10 and 31; February 21 8:30-10:00 AM EST

Pay what you wish. Suggested donation: $25 per session, $50 for all three sessions Additional participants from your organization: $15 per session, $30 for all three sessions.

LEARN MORE AND REGISTER AT GLOBALCONVERSATIONS.NET

Pragmatism in the classroom: Lessons from Dewey, Maxine Greene, and Eleanor Duckworth

Ethical Schools — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 15:20:29 +0000

We speak with Dr. Susan Jean Mayer about her recent book, "Practicing Pragmatism Through Progressive Pedagogies: A Philosophical Lens for Grounding Classroom Teaching and Research." Dr. Mayer defines pragmatism in today's world and discusses the importance of critical exploration, democratic construction of knowledge, and openness to diversity of perspectives in the classroom. As teachers and learners, we can construct a shared set of values based on our experiential realities and come to understand these realities in coherent terms.

Overview

00:00-00:36 Intros

00:36-02:55 How to define pragmatism in today’s world

02:55-05:34 How to define final truth

05:34-06:53 How to define an ethical classroom

06:53-11:29 Ethical and democratic classrooms: the same or how they may differ

11:29-15:03 Knowledge, experience, and education

15:03-17:55 Critical exploration in the classroom

17:55-21:05 Classroom example of critical exploration

21:05-23:49 How a critical exploration teacher can intervene when students are wrong

23:49-27:25 When inviting different perspectives and belief systems doesn’t come naturally to students

27:25-28:56 Schools aren’t encouraging students to talk to one another; have succumbed to discourse of test scores

28:56-33:20 How teachers can become more comfortable with perspectives they may disagree with

33:20-37:11 How pragmatic teachers can deal with a school system structured to eliminate or minimize cultural diversity

37:11-40:47 Balancing ties to local communities with supporting students who want to break from the consensus of the community

40:47-47:19 How teachers can help create a system of education based on pragmatism

47:19- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

Book Practicing Pragmatism through Progressive PedagogiesA Philosophical Lens for Grounding Classroom Teaching and Research by Susan Jean Mayer
Susan Jean Mayer's website

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

The pioneers: Democracy front and center (Part Two)

Ethical Schools — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 14:23:40 +0000

We speak with Deborah Meier and Jane Andrias, pioneers in the democratic small-school movement. Debbie founded the Central Park East Schools. Jane Andrias was an art teacher and principal at Central Park East I. Debbie and Jane discuss these ground-breaking schools, their ethical foundations, the “habits of mind” they worked to instill, and the challenges they faced.

*This is Part Two of a two part episode. Go back one episode or click here to listen to the first part.

Overview

00:00-00:41 Intros

00:41-07:30 Parent involvement

07:30-12:05 What happened to Mission Hill?

12:05-23:04 Survival of innovative, democratic schools;

What do we have education for? Education and democracy

23:04-24:45 Justice and fairness

24:45-26:37 Community service; connections to the adult world

26:37-29:37 Choices schools make based on what they value

29:37-36:46 Documentary about impact of CPESS on graduates’ lives

36:36-38:39 Human capital

38:39-40:57 Need funding for the documentary

40:57-42:41 Films and TV about the schools

42:41- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Here's a list of all the books written by Deborah Meier.
Click here to know more about the CPESS documentary and other initiatives by Deborah Meier and Jane Andrais.

https://youtu.be/lgehMroRLns

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

The pioneers: Democracy front and center (Part One)

Ethical Schools — Sat, 25 Oct 2025 12:41:55 +0000

*This is Part One of a two part episode.

Overview

00:00-00:43 Intros

00:43-01:52 What would a school fully focused on preparing students for a democraticsociety look like?

01:52-03:08 Impacts of curriculum and school environment

03:08-05:40 Students’ voice in what they are learning

05:40-11:01 Democratic, progressive, ethical schools: are they synonymous?

11:01-18:32 Examples of ethical dilemmas and decisions

18:32-22:07 Negative effects of tracking and what the alternatives look like

22:07-24:19 Building long-term trust

24:19-26:05 Including all school staff members in decision-making and obstacles

26:05-29:57 Including parents and students

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Here's a list of all the books written by Deborah Meier.
Click here to know more about the CPESS documentary and other initiatives by Deborah Meier and Jane Andrais.

https://youtu.be/lgehMroRLns

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Technology and ethics: AI and the classroom

Ethical Schools — Sun, 28 Sep 2025 21:47:33 +0000

Robbie Torney, director of AI Programs at Common Sense Media, analyzes teachers' use of AI. We focus on AI teaching assistants, their uses and abuses, and how teachers' judgment and skills remain central. We discuss the need for school- and district-wide education and policies on using AI in teaching and learning.

Overview

Intros

Common Sense media and its AI work

Evaluation principles for AI risk

What teachers use AI for

What happens with users’ data

AI teacher assistants, risks, and advantages

AI and cultural sensitivity

AI as assistive or adaptive technology

Recognition of AI as enhancements not replacements?

Special risks of AI teacher assistants for IEPs and behavior plans

How teachers can protect against “invisible influence” risks

AI and complex historical events such as California missions or slavery

“Tools,” “functions,” and prompts

Four specific steps teachers should take when using teacher assistants

Purchasing AI: Consultation and training

Role of school boards, administrators, and state departments of education

Legislation to protect students

Importance of discussion of values and ethical questions

Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this conversation.

References

Common Sense Media AI Initiatives: click here

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Climate justice: A transformational education and engagement project

Ethical Schools — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 13:39:59 +0000

We speak with Tom Roderick, founding executive director of the Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility; Jan Zuckerman, Co-founder of Sunnyside Environmental School in Portland, Oregon; and Graham Klag, an alumnus of Sunnyside Environmental School. We discuss Tom's book, Teach for Climate Justice: A Vision for Transforming Education. Tom explains that climate chaos and social justice are inextricably linked, and proposes a program for addressing both. He centers the concept of the beloved community.

Overview

00:00-01:07 Intros

01:07-03:57 Why “Climate Justice?’

03:57-06:00 Connection between climate change and social justice

06:00-07:34 The book’s primary audience

07:34-09:30 Teaching for climate justice and SEL

09:30-11:51 Sunnyside Environmental School

11:51-15:37 Meshing hands-on learning with Oregon’s state testing requirements

15:37-16:43 Storyline

16:43-19:24 Creating a “beloved community”

19:24-21:23 Impact on Graham Klag’s life as an alum

21:23-30:10 Wolf education project with ranchers’ families

30:10-34:37 Encouraging students to be hopeful

34:37-37:22 Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST, Brazil) and “contentious co-governance)

37:22-40:00 Teach for Climate Justice Project

40:00-41:27 Civil resistance

41:27-43:13 SEL in Phoenix Talent schools in Eastern Oregon

43:13- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Book "Teach for Climate Justice: A Vision for Transforming Education" by Tom Roderick
Sunnyside Environmental School in Portland
Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Photo teachforclimatejustice.org

Teachers as Interpreters: Listening to Every Student

Ethical Schools — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 23:54:40 +0000

We speak with Dr. Cynthia Ballenger about her recent book, “Teaching is Inquiry: Observation and Reflection as the Heart of Practice,” in which she explores the role of ethnography in inquiry-based teaching and learning, i.e., cultural practices in terms of speaking, storytelling, and conveying information. Teachers can discern a lot more about students if they listen to them in the context of their ethnic/ cultural styles of communicating. Dr. Ballenger also addresses the children she calls “puzzling.” Each of them has something to offer, she says, even those who seemingly have social-emotional challenges.

Overview

00:00-00:58 Intros

00:58-01:45 “Teaching Is Inquiry”

01:45-08:56 Ethnography of education

08:56-11:12 “Every child has something to offer the class.”

11:12-20:45 The “puzzling child”: more stories

20:45-24:10 Cultural and individual differences

24:10-27:43 Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)

27:43-30:17 “Stopping time.”

30:17-31:17 Importance of stories

31:17-34:41 Strengthening systemic support; ethical implications

34:41-36:45 Testing culture as anti-democratic and unethical

36:45-38:13 More reflections on OCD

38:13-38:37 Jerome Bruner on negotiating meaning

38:37- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Book “Teaching is Inquiry” by Dr. Cynthia Ballenger

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Hip Hop in the classroom: Reaching students where they are

Ethical Schools — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 00:49:38 +0000

We speak with Dr. Dawn Hicks Tafari, Professor of Education and Coordinator of Elementary Education at Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina. Dawn is author of "The Journey of Kamau Miller: Hip Hop Composite Counter Stories for Black Men Teachers." She uses hip hop as a way to communicate with students and composite counter stories to communicate beyond the academy.

Transcript

Cl ick here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

- The Journey of Kamau Miller: Hip Hop Composite Stories for Black Men Teachers, book by Dawn Tafari

- If we treated teachers like Pro Athletes by Key & Peele on YouTube

- Wet Dreams by J. Cole on YouTube

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Challenging credentialism: An alternative vision of education (Encore)

Ethical Schools — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 00:30:07 +0000

We speak with Arlene Goldbard, writer, visual artist, speaker, social activist and consultant, whose most recent book is “In the Camp of Angels of Freedom: What does it mean to be educated?” An autodidact from a working-class background, Arlene challenges “the certainty that academic qualifications are the best measure of ability.” She interweaves the stories and portraits of her “angels,” her personal story, and a critique of standard narratives of education. We talk with her in particular about two of her “angels,” Paulo Freire and Paul Goodman.

Overview

00:00-00:38 Intros

00:38-02:41 What “In the Camp of Angels of Freedom: What It Means to be Educated” is about

02:41: 03:55 Definition of auto-didact

03:55-05:39 Project-based education/Action civics/"What Would YOU Do?”

05:39-07:12 Removing bachelor’s degree requirement from State jobs

07:12-09:03 Advice to high school students about options

09:03-10:34 When is a liberal arts education valuable beyond credentials?

10:34-20:42 Alternative ways to expand horizons beyond/in addition to college

20:42-25:28 K-12 education

25:28-27:31 Paulo Freire

27:31-31:18 Paul Goodman

31:18-32:50 Cultural citizenship

32:50- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Arlene Goldbard's website
Book "In the Camp of Angels of Freedom: What Does It Mean to Be Educated?" by Arlene Goldbard

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Visual artwork by Arlene Goldbard "We Burn" (2019)

Mobile Creativity Labs: Scaling STEAM Across India

Ethical Schools — Wed, 14 May 2025 23:30:44 +0000

We speak with Dr. David Penberg and Adhirath Sethi about Agastya, a unique educational ecosystem serving students and teachers in 22 Indian states. Agastya has a hub-and-spokes design, with an elaborate 172-acre campus outside Bangalore and a fleet of mobile vans and bicycles delivering science and art programming to poor and rural children in far-flung towns and villages.

Overview

00:00-00:43 Intros

00:43-03:26 Agastya’s programs

03:26-04:51 Arts and interdisciplinary learning environment

04:51-07:58 Teacher training

07:58-11:10 Young Instructional Leader program

11:10-11:52 Ages of girls who started the YIL program

11:52-13:33 Where the YIL do their work

13:33-17:02 Teachers learning in the ways that students learn

17:02-18:43 Alignment with Nell Noddings’s “ethic of care”

18:43:21:48 Relationships with animals other than human

21:48-24:09 Common elements with schools like Central Park East in different settings

24:09-26:14 Agastya relationships based on trust

26:14-27:27 Agastya as a source of inspiration

27:27-29:07 Agastya’s vision of reaching more children

29:07-30:33 Relevance to U.S.

30:33-35:49 Measuring success

35:49-38:19 Adhirath’s book about Agastya: The Moving of Mountains

38:19- Outro

Transcript

Click here to listen to the full transcription of this episode.

References

Agastya International Foundation: agastya.org
Book The Moving of Mountains: The Remarkable Story of the Agastya International Foundation by Adhirath Sethi (on Linkedin)

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Resilience: Preparing Children to Weather Traumatic Events

Ethical Schools — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 23:57:15 +0000

We speak with Dr. Tovah P. Klein, professor of psychology at Barnard College and the director of the Center for Toddler Development, about her book, “Raising Resilience: How to Help Our Children Thrive in Times of Uncertainty.” Dr. Klein describes how parents and teachers should build children's resilience BEFORE anything frightening or traumatic occurs. Most importantly, children and teens need to know they will never be alone, that their parents or trusted adults will always be there for them.

Overview

00:00-00:38 Intros

00:38-02:12 Building resilience proactively

02:12-04:22 Responding to traumatic situations at school

04:22-09:18 Five Pillars of Children’s Resilience

09:18-10:51 School environments that support resilience

10:51-12:48 How teachers can prepare to respond calmly to their own triggers

12:48-16:52 Responding to the temptations of screens

16:52-20:56 Secrets, including how to handle necessary secrets

20:56-24:20 Dealing with fears and threatening situations

24:20-27:36 What schools can do

27:36-30:50 Allowing kids to ask

30:50- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Book "Raising Resilience: How to Help Our Children Thrive in Times of Uncertainty" Dr. Tovah P. Klein
Barnard Toddler Center

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Marygrove School: Place- and project-based teaching and learning

Ethical Schools — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 00:48:34 +0000

We speak with Dr. Elizabeth Birr Moje, dean and professor at the Marsal Family School of Education, University of Michigan. Dr. Moje discusses Detroit’s School at Marygrove, a university-school partnership serving children and families from before birth through grade 12. We talk about design-based research, Marygrove’s innovative teacher-residency program, and what being a model means to Marygrove.

Overview

00:00-00:46 Intros

00:46-03:16 How the school at Marygrove came to be

03:16-06:27 Teaching and learning in Detroit

06:27-11:05 Why this neighborhood and community for Marygrove

11:05-12:05 Demographics of the community and the school

12:05-15:20 What an ethical partnership between a university and a school looks like

15:20-18:24 Funding—current and for sustainability

18:24-20:08 Proof of concept, scale, “translatable modules”

20:08-24:17 A model for curriculum and pedagogy

24:17-29:51 Design-based research

29:51-38:36 Selecting teachers and providing professional development and support

38:36-42:13 Promoting social justice

42:13-48:29 Cell phones, distractions, AI

48:29-49:11 Centrality of inquiry

49:11-56:45 Replication

56:45- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

The School at Marygrove website

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Honesty: What it means and how to teach it

Ethical Schools — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 23:36:52 +0000

We talk with Sarah Stitzlein, author of "Teaching honesty in a populist era: Emphasizing truth in the education of citizens." Dr. Stitzlein, a professor of education and affiliate professor of philosophy at the University of Cincinnati, is concerned with how to teach in a political context where truth and honesty seem increasingly at risk. She contrasts the philosophical approaches of populism and the pragmatism of educational philosophers such as John Dewey.

Overview

00:00-00:41 Intros

00:41-02:10 Why the book and the title

02:10-03:15 Defining populism

03:15-04:24 Differences between left and right populism—book is mostly about right populism

O4:24-08:00 Contrasting populist and pragmatic notions of truth and honesty

08:00-09:55 Defining honesty, and what it looks like in a classroom context

09:55-11:59 Honesty as a habit, not just a virtue

11:59-13:13 Is there a difference between truth and reality?

13:13-15:36 A truth claim in an educational context

15:36-16:49 Doing honesty as a verb

16:49-21:15 Seeking truth versus seeking solutions

21:15-23:20 “Alternative facts”

23:20-24:22 Philosophy, ethics, and education

24:22-25:58 From honesty in the classroom to honesty in the wider world

25:58-27:41 Scalability

27:41-29:30 Ethical outlook on civics

29:3o-31:40 Connections between democracy and education

31:40-35:56 Impact of AI

35:56- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

Book "Teaching Honesty in a Populist Era: Emphasizing Truth in the Education of Citizens" By Sarah Stitzlein

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Creating democratic learning environments: Educators in conversation

Ethical Schools — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 02:07:27 +0000

We speak with Dr. Linda F. Nathan and Jonathan Mendonca, two co-editors of the recently published book, "Building Democratic Schools and Learning Environments: A Global Perspective," an anthology of accounts of creating innovative schools around the world. We discuss autonomy vs large-scale uniformity, issues of scaling innovations, and defining success. The book, intentionally available free online, includes both existing schools and concepts of possible schools.

Overview

00:00-00:59 Intros

00:59-02:48 Building democratic schools and learning environments

02:48-07:02 How the book came to be written

07:02-08:00 “Many ways” that schools can prepare students for democracy

08:00-11:32 The four pillars of democratic education

11:32-14:12 The “common good”

14:12-16:13 Barefoot EDU (Unifly Collective) and Shikha Institute of Education

16:13-20:58 Jonathan Mendonca’s vision of scale and reactions to it

20:58-23:32 Resolution of whether to teach in English or mother tongue in school in Madhya Pradesh

23:32-28:10 Managing tensions between autonomy and large-scale administration in U.S. schools, and examples

28:10-29:15 Sharing innovations

29:15-33:34 Building ability to meet students’ needs into systems: equity vs equality

33:34-37:16 Catalyzing large scale professional development for pre-school teachers in Haryana State

37:16-39:08 Looking at success for the next generation

39:08-41:46 Teaching students to nurture the planet

41:46- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

Click here to download the free e-book created by Dr. Nathan and Jonathan Mendonca "Designing Democratic Schools and Learning Environments: A Global Perspective"
Click here to listen to our first interview with Dr. Linda Nathan "Holistic education: Joy, wellness and rigor"

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Teaching from core values: Practical wisdom at the crossroads of philosophy, education, and teacher ed

Ethical Schools — Sat, 01 Feb 2025 17:54:27 +0000

We speak with Cara E. Furman, Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education at Hunter College, about her book "Teaching from an Ethical Center: Practical Wisdom for Daily Instruction." Dr. Furman focuses on teachers ensuring that their practice corresponds with their ethical center. She emphasizes teachers’ knowledge of learning environments, local communities, and the children themselves. We discuss the ethical problems with "fidelity" as applied to teaching.

Overview

00:00-00:43 Intros

00:43-03:15 Crossroads of philosophy, teaching, teacher ed

03:15-04:47 Practical wisdom

04:47-07:02 “The way that teachers know”

07:02-11:33 “Fidelity” as applied to teaching

11:33-13:04 Are fidelity and ethics compatible for teachers?

13:04-16:50 Do philosophers and teachers have difficulty understanding the connections between the fields?

16:50-18:44 Teaching from a “philosophical center”

18:44-20:58 Teaching from an “ethical center”

20:58-26:23 Variations in ethical centers

26:23-27:51 Can a school have an ethical center?

27:51-31:52 When teachers find themselves in schools with highly restrictive practices

31:52-35:24 Lawsuits against Lucy Calkins and Fountas and Pinnell

35:24-36:32 Effects on teachers of demands for fidelity

36:32-38:41 Scripts

38:41-41:35 Podcasts and books—similarities and differences

41:35- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Resources

Book Teaching from an Ethical Center: Practical Wisdom for Daily Instruction by Cara Furman

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Historical accuracy and nuance: Teaching African American studies in Kentucky

Ethical Schools — Thu, 02 Jan 2025 01:32:01 +0000

We speak with Ahenewa El-Amin, who teaches AP African American Studies in Kentucky, a state with a law restricting teaching about the legacy of slavery. Ms. El-Amin discusses the law as well as how she is able to teach the history of Kentucky, a state that is “north and south,” and open students’ minds to new perspectives.

Overview

00:00-00:55 Intros

00:55-02:45 Meaning of Kentucky law on teaching about race

02:45-03:37 Have any teachers been charged with violating the law?

03:37-04:52 Differential impact on long-term and newer teachers

04:52-06:27 Examples of content that might fall under the new law

06:27-08:03 Teaching “both ways” in Kentucky

08:03-10:03 Opening students’ minds to new perspectives

10:03-10:53 Biases re “cultural and racial upbringings”

10:53-15:20 Teaching and learning about Kentucky history; Margaret Garner and “Beloved”

15:20-18:27 West African influences on Southern food and culture

18:27-19:30 Impact of law on districts’ willingness to offer AP African American history

19:30-20:48 Controversy about content of AP course

20:48-24:12 Students’ responses to learning about Kentucky’s racial history

24:12- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Successful Teaching Careers: Empowering Non-Traditional Candidates

Ethical Schools — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 16:07:28 +0000

We speak with Dr. Kathryn Spence, Director of the School of Education at Fairleigh Dickinson University, about actualizing a focus on social justice and equity. She discusses strategies for broadening the pipeline of teachers, especially teachers of color, including career ladders and “Grow Your Own” programs. Dr. Spence describes how FDU makes teacher ed financially feasible for students as well as what makes teachers stay in or leave schools.

Overview

00:00-00:40 Intros

00:40-04:08 How Dr. Spence’s experience shapes her approach to teacher ed

04:08-06:25 How research has shaped her leadership

06:25-07:36 Why teachers stay or leave schools or the field

07:36-09:25 Recruiting pre-service teachers, especially teachers of color

09:25-10:44 Career ladders in NJ

10:44-12:35 Making teacher ed financially feasible for students

12:35-14:20 Providing moral support to teacher ed students

14:20-15:28 Impact on schools of residential segregation in NJ

15:28-18:40 Serving Latine students

18:40-20:48 Pushback to the focus on social justice?

20:48-22:20 Change process at FDU’s program

22:20-25:03 Looking forward to having bilingual courses

25:03- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

FDU’s Peter Sammartino School of Education website

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Photo fdu.edu

“The hate level is unreal”: fighting book bans and protecting librarians

Ethical Schools — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 14:54:25 +0000

We speak with Amanda Jones, a school librarian in Livingston Parish, Louisiana. Ms. Jones is the author of “That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America.” The book recounts how speaking out for race- and gender-related books in libraries led to her being targeted and threatened by book-banning extremists. She describes initial abandonment by friends and colleagues who were afraid to speak up. But nationwide, librarians and their constituents are fighting back. Ms. Jones includes tips for librarians and teachers facing attacks.

Overview

00:00-00:47 Intros

00:47-01:35 What a Library Board of Control is

01:35-02:16 What Amanda Jones said at Board of Control meeting

02:16-02:33 Trevor Project

02:33-03:19 Board of Control members’ responses

03:19-04:48 What happened then

04:48-05:38 Reactions by friends and neighbors to attacks

05:38-06:16 Reactions from school administrators and colleagues

06:16-07:02 Changes over time

07:02-09:09 Impact on children of marginalized communities of books with characters like them

09:09-11:19 How decisions of what books to purchase for school libraries get made

11:19-11:53 Guidelines

11:53-13:58 Processes when there are book challenges

13:58-14:45 Decision process in public libraries

14:45-15:30 Appeal to courts

15:30-18:39 Impetus for book banning campaigns

18:39-20:49 Efforts to ban Palestinian books and informational events at libraries

20:49-21:41 Censorship efforts are everywhere

21:41-24:10 Where librarians can turn for help

24:10-26:01 Organizations of parents who are under attack and other supporters

26:01- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this conversation.

References

A Librarian from Louisiana fights book bans and the “haters” – The New York Times

Put Kids’ Interests First, This Librarian Insists – The New York Times

PAHO Policy on the Prevention and Resolution of Harassment in the Workplace

Get Ready Stay Ready: A Community Guide Toolkit

Amanda Jones’ Linktr.ee

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Photo by © Emily Kask

NYC high school surveys: Disparities in student stress and support

Ethical Schools — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 23:59:05 +0000

The authors of a recent Chalkbeat analysis discuss the Department of education’s 2023 high school survey, which shows girls, especially girls of color, have much higher stress levels, and feel less supported, than boys. Michael Elsen-Rooney, an NYC public school reporter; Kae Petrin, a data and graphics reporter; and Liza Greenberg, a Bronx High School of Science senior, unpack the data, which the DOE has largely disregarded.

Overview

00:00-00:51 Intros

00:51-03:10 Annual NYC Dept. of Education student survey

03:10-03:42 Chalkbeat

03:42-06:13 Takeaways from citywide data

06:13-06:39 Biggest gender gaps: “Stress” and “Worried about Learning”

06:39-08:06 Differential attention in taking the test?

08:06-10:36 Causes of girls’ stress?

10:36-11:33 Reported differences in teacher attention and support

11:33-12:44 Black and multiracial students consistently report most negative experiences

12:44-13:46 Response to Chalkbeat article from NYC Department of Education

13:46-13:46 2024 student survey

13:46-15:57 Using the data to improve academic and social-emotional experiences

15:57-17:16 How the DOE can make the data more accessible to the general public

17:16-18:29 More details on data

18:29-22:27 Why hasn’t the DOE used the data to create guidelines for schools/teachers?

22:27- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Read the article in Chalkbeat NYC girls outperform boys in academics. But they’re unhappier in school.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Middle schoolers as scholars: Critical participatory action research

Ethical Schools — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 13:27:27 +0000

We speak with Dr. Sam Finesurrey, assistant professor of history at Guttman Community College, and three 2024 graduates of School in the Square (S2), a charter middle school in Washington Heights, Manhattan. Dr. Finesurrey worked with 14 students on a research project studying S2 students’ social emotional learning, including reactions to the pandemic and faculty turnover. Dr. Sam and the students talk about the process, what they found, and how the school modified policies in response to the study’s findings.

Overview

00:00-00:50 Intros

00:50-02:22 Critical participatory research

02:22-04:21 Participatory oral history project at School in the Square

04:21-06:12 Meaningful findings

06:12-10:05 Follow up on the results

10:05-11:17 School in the Square’s response to the findings

11:17-13:16 Role and impact of staff member Ms. Lilly

13:16-14:17 Public presentations

14:17-17:31 How the researchers have changed as a result of the project

17:31-18:45 Effects on interviewees

18:45-20:12 Confidentiality

20:12- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

More details about the project CUNY Academic Commons
Article published in the Middle School Journal coauthored by Dr. Sam and the students “Critical socio-emotional inquiry: A longitudinal oral history project led by middle school students on socio-emotional well-being”

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Equity by design: residency-focused teacher education

Ethical Schools — Thu, 12 Sep 2024 00:12:18 +0000

We speak with Dr. Diana Turk, Chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning and Director of Teacher Education at NYU. Students in NYU’s unique teacher residency program work full-time in classrooms, for which they are paid, making it possible for students without a lot of money to attend. By design, the program attracts BIPOC students. Students receive support from NYU faculty, both on location in their schools and online. They attend classes in the evenings, virtually. The program is uncompromisingly justice- and equity-centered.

Overview

00:00-00:34 Intros

00:34-02:28 Educating all students as a subversive activity?

02:28-10:12 What makes NYU Teacher Residency different among teacher ed programs

10:12-12:16 Infusing the curriculum with justice and equity

12:16-15:48 Input from school communities

15:48-17:46 Why teacher demographics are important

17:46-19:50 Recruiting a diverse teaching force

19:50-26:35 Outreach to prospective students

26:35-27:49 Demographic composition of residents

27:49-32:42 Achieving this demographic mix

32:42-35:22 Choosing school locations

35:22-36:44 Teacher mentors

36:44-40:46 Structuring the course load

40:46-43:50 Synchronous virtual classes

43:50-45:23 Graduation rate

45:23-49:21 Danielson and Feet Frameworks

49:21-51:25 AACTE award for Best Practices in Multicultural Education and Diversity

51:25-56:39 School locations

54:06-56:39 Integrating special education into all curriculum modules

56:39- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Click here to see an overview of the NYU Teacher Residency’s 24-25 cohort
Click here to read the article “When Equity and Justice Are Front and Center: Building a Teacher Residency That Walks the Walk on Antiracism, Equity, and Justice”
Click here to see an overview of the NYU Teacher Residency that Dr. Diana and her colleagues wrote for the AACTE Best Practice in Diversity and Multicultural Education Award (2024)

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Photo facebook.com/NYUSteinhardt/

Supporting Black and Indigenous educators: Creatively developing community in Washington state

Ethical Schools — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 23:46:44 +0000

We speak with Danielle Bryant, Director of Equity at Capital Region Educational Service District 113. Ms Bryant helps to break down isolation of Black educators and supports Indigenous educators and schools on reservations. A District program facilitates paraeducators becoming certified teachers.

Overview

00:00-00:30 Intros

00:30-01:43 Educational Service District

01:43-02:57 Areas served in Washington State—urban and rural

02:57-03:42 racial and ethnic composition of students and teachers

03:42-07:16 Recruitment and retention of teachers of color

07:16-09:31 Issues that Black teachers in particular face

09:31-11:31 Support for Black, Indigenous, & other teachers of color

11:31-14:38 Indigenous teachers and Indigenous schools

14:38-15:27 Reservations and Indigenous Nations served

15:27-18:39 Engaging in depth with Native communities

18:39-21:10 Program to help paraeducators become teachers

21:10- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Capital Region ESD 113 website

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Photo esd113.org

Going deep: Student-directed learning in Performance Standards Consortium schools

Ethical Schools — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 00:41:35 +0000

We speak with Adam Grumbach, social studies program coordinator of the New York Performance Standards Consortium, and Naseem Haamid, a law student who attended Fannie Lou Hamer High School. We discuss inquiry based learning, Performance Based Assessment Tests, Habits of Mind, and self-directed, interdisciplinary portfolios, as alternatives to standardized-test driven curricula.

Overview

00:00-00:54 Intros

00:54-02:04 NYS Performance Standards Consortium

02:04-03:54 Potential effect on Consortium of elimination of Regents exams as graduation requirement

03:54-05:09 Inquiry- and literacy-based education

05:09-06:27 Creation of curricula

06:27-07:39 Students’ input into what they focus on

07:39-10:54 Naseem’s transition from a test-oriented school to Fannie Lou Hamer HS (FLH HS)

10:54-10:39 The most valuable things about FLH HS for Naseem

10:39-14:31 Transition from FLH HS to more traditional college and law school classes

14:31-17:21 Performance based assessment tests (PBATs) and other assessments

17:21-19:26 Rubrics

19:26-20:09 Grading of PBATs

20:09-24:45 Portfolios

24:45-28:25 College and career planning

28:25-32:56 Selecting and supporting teachers

32:56-35:35 Lessons for teachers elsewhere from the Consortium

35:35:36:31 “This is what education should be like”

36:31-38:15 Distinctive way Consortium approaches introduction to post-secondary careers

38:15- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

New York Performance Standards Consortium website
Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School website

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Rebuilding the Black teacher pipeline: Advancing justice and academic outcomes

Ethical Schools — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 14:27:42 +0000

Ansharaye Hines and Mimi McKee of the Center for Black Educator Development discuss how the presence of highly qualified Black teachers supports students’ educational success. The Center advocates for educational equity and provides multiple teaching pathways to encourage and support Black high school and university students to become teachers.

Overview

00:00-00:43 Intros
00:43-03:53 The Center for Black Educator Development
03:53-06:53 Education as a justice issue
06:53-12:19 Quality education as a Constitutional right
12:19-14:10 Roles and goals for Black educators in classrooms
14:10-17:40 How Black educators can thrive and hopefully make change
17:40-23:15 Teaching pathways
23:15-27:10 Freedom School Literacy Academy
27:10-29:44 Center plans for the future
29:44-31:09 We Need Black Teachers campaign
31:09- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Center for Black Education Development website

Photo x.com/CenterBlackEd

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

High stakes: Teaching to the tests in K-12

Ethical Schools — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 14:36:29 +0000

We continue our conversation with Harry Feder of FairTest. This time, we discuss high stakes tests in K-12 schools. Harry explains how tests and the prep for them came to dominate education and the consequences for students, teachers, and schools of high or low scores. He also describes how the same companies dominate textbooks and testing, and suggests some alternatives to high-stakes tests.

Overview

00:00-00:50 Intros

00:50-06:35 How testing became such a huge part of the K-12 experience

06:35-09:31 Amount of testing autonomy of districts and schools

09:31-14:23 Consequences and benefits of test scores

14:23-16:32 Impact on teaching as a profession

16:32-19:51 Test score use for middle and high school admissions

19:51-23:42 Relationship between commercial testing companies and textbook companies

23:42-26:36 PISA—Program for International Student Assessment

26:36-30:01 Fairtest’s proposals for alternatives to current testing system

29:45- Outro

References

Click here to listen to Part 1 of our conversation with Harry Feder
Fairtest website

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

SATs and the illusion of fairness

Ethical Schools — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 00:16:30 +0000

We speak with Harry Feder of FairTest, an organization that advocates for fair and open testing, about the reinstitution of standardized test requirements at some “Ivy Plus” colleges, and why it matters. We discuss how testing choices affect inclusion and exclusion in admissions and what most non-“Ivy Plus” schools do. In a follow-up interview with Harry Feder, we will discuss standardized tests in K-12 schools.

Overview

00:00-00:46 Intros
00:46-05:06 History of college admissions tests
05:06-08:33 What the SAT purports to test and what it tests
08:33-10:33 The SAT, admissions, and math
10:33-12:52 Standardized tests and reading
12:52-18:41 When colleges moved toward test-optional and test free
18:41-24:40 Colleges reinstituting test requirements
24:40-30:52 Admissions policies and a more democratic society
30:52-34:50 The issue of grade inflation
34:34- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Mother Jones’ article “Is Florida’s SAT Replacement Exam A) Christian Nationalism or B) Woke Propaganda?”
Fairtest website
Click here to listen to the second part of our interview with Harry Feder

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Early intervention: Model assessment center reduces youth arrests

Ethical Schools — Thu, 30 May 2024 00:06:06 +0000

Steve Evangelista, longtime NYC educator, and Anthony Celestine, director of the Office of Juvenile Justice Services at Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, talk about Calcasieu's Multi-Agency Resource Center. MARC, an assessment center that coordinates services for struggling families, has been extraordinarily successful in reducing young people's involvement with the juvenile justice system.

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Overview

00:00-00:50 Intros

00:50-01:28 How Steve and Anthony met

01:28-03:19 What the MARC is and how it is innovative

03:19-04:51 Families’ fears

04:51-07:59 Educator’s perspective on demystifying assessment centers

07:59-15:16 Matching needed services with referrals

15:16-18:57 Building support from different stakeholders

18:57-25:23 Changes in community attitudes over time

25:23-27:11 Patterns of success and difficulty with assessment centers

27:11-32:43 Environmental conditions for successful assessment centers

32:43-33:21 Schools reaching out for intervention before explosions

33:21-36:26 Suggestions for listeners

36:10- Outro

References

The Casey Foundation’s Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative® - J.D.A.I website
Multi-Agency Resource Center - MARC's website
Check out Steven's new newsletter called "The Bending". It is intended for educators to learn about the juvenile justice system and bring those two worlds together in the name of disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

What Would YOU do? Walling Out or Welcoming In?

Ethical Schools — Tue, 21 May 2024 00:50:51 +0000

What boundaries should a school set on student speech, if any, in order to foster social-emotional learning, civil discourse, and friendship among students? How might they hold themselves and their students accountable for upholding school values, even when they are not reflected on the national political landscape?

We invite you to watch the 3rd episode of our video podcast series “What Would YOU do?”, created in partnership with EdEthics of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

The episode “Walling Out or Welcoming In” explores the challenges posed by divisive political rhetoric for school classrooms and communities. Educators and parents of a School Culture Committee (SCC) at a K-8 school wrestle with a series of events that challenged their ability to maintain inclusive learning environments that are welcoming to all students. The SCC must determine where and how to draw boundaries between free political speech and offensive or harmful speech that qualifies as bullying or harassment.

Each episode in this series includes a dramatization of an ethical dilemma that could be faced by educators along with a discussion of the case facilitated by Harvard professor Meira Levinson. They are free and a great resource for PD.

Watch it here.

Walling Out or Welcoming In?

Discussion led by Meira Levinson of EdEthics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education

Margaret Blachly Assistant Director, PD Facilitator, Psycho-educational Specialist, advisor and instructor in the Early Childhood Special Education and Bilingual Programs at the Bank Street Graduate School of Education

Leslie Boggs 56th President of National PTA

Carolina Brito Principal at the Rafael Hernández Dual Language K-8 School

Jay Greene Senior Research Fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy

A discussion that raises important pedagogical, ethical, democratic, legal, and political considerations, and invites readers to reflect on them both on their own and in dialogue with others.

Click here to learn more about this initiative and to watch other episodes.

Elevating undervalued professionals: Support for substitute teachers

Ethical Schools — Sat, 04 May 2024 00:18:37 +0000

We speak with Megan M. Conklin, who designs and implements professional development for substitutes in Washington state. Substitutes often don’t receive the support and compensation they deserve. Ms. Conklin’s union-backed program teaches subs classroom survival skills and advocates for equity among school staff members.

Overview

00:00-00:37 Intros

00:37-04:44 Why Megan Conklin has chosen to be a substitute

04:44-07:19 Major issues subs face

07:19-11:13 Structure and culture of Megan Conklin’s program

11:13-16:59 What a sub should do if thrown into a situation without support

16:59-17:34 Keeping a light-hearted mindset

17:34-19:47 What students want in a sub

19:47-21:46 What it’s like as a long-term sub

21:46-23:10 Pay scales

23:10-24:39 Effects of using classroom teachers to cover classes

24:39-26:34 Sub support programs in other states?

28:27-30:13 Differences in support among Washington districts

30:13-31:21 Supporting paraprofessionals and other marginalized groups in education

31:21- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

Megan Conklin’s website

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Image: instagram.com/conklineducationalperspectives

Enriching student life: Art for all

Ethical Schools — Sat, 06 Apr 2024 18:15:52 +0000

We speak with Dr. Andrea Siegel and Michelle Vitale of Hudson County Community College about the ways they bring art into students’ everyday lives. They’ve assembled a multi-ethnic art collection which is displayed on rotation in the galleries and hallways. Living with art is new to many of the students, who are often the first generation in their families to go to college. Our guests tell their own stories about their parents’ reactions to their choosing to become artists.

Overview

00:00-00:52 Intros

00:52-01:22 Hudson County Community College

01:22-02:02 HCCC students

02:03-03:29 Michelle Vitale’s work

03:30-04:12 Work with public schools

04:13-05:16 Impact of having been a public school teacher and accomplished artist

05:17-06:07 HCCC’s Foundation Art Collection

06:08-07:11 Building the collection with limited resources

07:12-09:00 Finding art that is relevant to students

09:01-10:38 When art work changes a student’s life

10:39-14:20 Art scene in Jersey City and Hudson County

14:21-16:09 Centre Pompidou

16:09-19:56 Students’ previous experience with arts in schools and in HCCC’s galleries

19:56-23:13 Ways the city, county, and state can support arts education and the arts

23:13-26:34 Parents’ reactions to their children becoming artists

26:34-30:03 Dreams for artists

30:03- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Photo flickr.com/photos/hudsonccc

Solving teacher shortages: It’s not just pay (Encore)

Ethical Schools — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 18:48:30 +0000

Drs. Katherine Norris and Kathryn Wiley, colleagues at Howard University’s School of Education, speak about obstacles to recruiting and retaining teachers and increasing diversity. Money matters, but even more, so does ending discrimination. “Racial battle fatigue” is pervasive among Black teachers.

Overview

00:00-00:58 Intros
00:58-02:44 Factors contributing to teacher shortage
02:44-08:15 American Teacher Act: what’s in it and what’s not
08:15-10:56 Adopting the DC social studies standards; overcoming pushback
10:56-13:06 History of curriculum battles, “Color in the Classroom: How American Schools Taught Race,” by Zoe Berkholder
13:06-17:39 Acute shortage of Black teachers
17:39-21:59 Brian Jones’s criticism of Geoffrey Canada around charter schools
21:59-26:13 Derek Black’s analysis of the attack on public education as such; importance of public schools as a necessity for democracy and as a place students have a right to be
26:13-28:05 What is needed to get bills like American Teacher Act expanded and passed
28:05-28:57 Scarcity of Black administrators and their importance
28:57-29:46 Need to end workplace discrimination and the need to support teachers
29:46-30:22 Teaching Profession Playbook as a resource
30:22- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Book “Color in the Classroom: How American Schools Taught Race, 1900-1954″ by Zoe Burkholder
Teaching Profession Playbook by The Partnership for the Future of Learning

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

What’s real and who/what matters: Sentientism in schools

Ethical Schools — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 01:16:59 +0000

We speak with Jamie Woodhouse, UK educator and thought leader on sentientism. An ethical worldview informed by evidence, reason, and compassion, sentientism prioritizes the well-being of humans and animals other than human. We discuss strategies for introducing sentientism in the classroom, the questions students ask, and ways teachers can incorporate sentientism in the curriculum.

Overview

00:00-00:32 Intros

00:33-02:09 Definition of Sentientism

02:09-05:11 History of Sentientism

05:11-7:59 Do we know who/what are sentient?

7:59-10:39 Are plants sentient?

10:39-11:55 Does sentientism take future generations into account?

11:55-15:23 Sentientism and veganism

15:23-21:00 Relationship of sentientism to hunting and fishing cultures

21:00-22:39 Sentientism and helping sentient beings to thrive

22:39-27:02 Sentientism and climate change

27:02-30:24 What should teachers know about sentientism?

30:24-35:09 Are children naturally compassionate or does that need to be taught?

35:09-39:14 Questions students ask

39:14-41:20 How students can incorporate sentientism into their actions

41:20-43:34 Sentientism as a “movement”

43:34- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

linktr.ee/sentientism

Podcast Sentientism

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Climate change education: Meeting NJ’s mandate hands-on

Ethical Schools — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 01:48:22 +0000

We speak with the New Jersey School of Conservation’s Kerry Kirk Pflugh and Tanya Sulikowski, and Garwood, NJ middle school teacher, K.C. Bree about the SOC and about New Jersey’s first-in-the-nation mandate for climate change education in every grade. The SOC, a newly-reopened 75-year-old center for experiential learning and fieldwork, provides professional development as well as interdisciplinary programming for students including applied science, math, humanities, and arts in an idyllic outdoor setting. Students learn about humans’ responsibility toward other animals and the planet, and are empowered to take action.Working cooperatively, they often develop new respect for their classmates.

Overview

00:00-00:17 Intros

00:17-03:00 NJ School of Conservation (SOC)

03:00-04:31 Professional development

04:31-08:00 NJ climate change education mandate

08:00-08:30 Social emotional learning

08:30-09:39 Correlation with state standards

09:39-11:24 Ethic of care

11:24-14:20 Garwood climate change education in elementary grades

14:20-22:43 Social emotional learning

22:43-24:54 Relationship with animals other than humans and plants

24:54-32:28 Climate change education over the next 5-10 years

32:28-33:41 SOC as a model

33:41-36:07 How do schools reach out to SOC?

36:07- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Resources

The New Jersey School of Conservation’s website

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Celebrating students’ “superpowers”: What tests can’t measure

Ethical Schools — Sat, 20 Jan 2024 20:58:35 +0000

We speak with Dr. Peter Hughes, superintendent of New Jersey’s Cresskill School District, an affluent New York City suburb with large Korean and Israeli communities, about respecting disparate cultures while centering individual students’ interests, talents, and needs. We discuss effective means of communicating with bicultural parents and inclusive strategic planning. How can schools prepare students for joyful futures where they also serve others and are impactful on the world around them?

Overview

00:00-00:16 Intros

00:16-01:47 Cresskill demographics

01:47-03:31 Engaging with parents in a multilingual community

03:31-05:04 Cultural differences in families’ relationships with the schools

05:04-07:32 Special education classification

07:32-12:09 What are parents looking for?

12:09-13:54 Stresses and issues for young people in a wealthy/professional community

13:54-17:51 Project-based learning and assessment

17:51-20:50 Incorporating ethics and “citizenship” in the classroom

20:50-26:09 Should schools instill values?

26:09-28:23 Making a difference

28:23-29:56 Student passions and “more inclusive vision of what students can do and bring to this world”

29:56-32:47 District’s education budget

32:47- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Image twitter.com/CresskillBOE

Cultivating layups, confidence, and community

Ethical Schools — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 20:00:46 +0000

We speak with Dave Crenshaw, founder and coach of Team Dreamers NY in Washington Heights; Blanca Battino, retired principal of PS 128; and Dr. Robert Fullilove, professor and associate dean at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Team Dreamers is a life-changing out-of-school-time program. Deeply embedded in the community, it builds leadership and mutual support among students. Dr. Fullilove’s public health interns serve as mentors and role models while they learn from the youth and their families.

Overview

00:00-01:04 Intros

01:04-02:54 Team Dreamers and its activities

02:54-03:59 Blanca Battino and Coach Dave

03:59-06:49 Dr. Bob Fulllilove and Coach Dave

06:49-08:43 Strategies for working with challenging youth

08:43-11:17 Building trust as a Black man in a Dominican neighborhood

11:17-13:50 Collaboration on public health during the pandemic

13:50-16:17 Broader lessons for public health

16:17-19:20 Impact on public health students

19:20-21:41 Network of support/Alumni and Teammate Association

21:41-25:46 Lessons for educators from collaboration with Coach Dave

25:46-28:23 Field trips

28:23- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Inquiry and interpretation: Learning US history from primary sources (Encore)

Ethical Schools — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 19:29:07 +0000

We speak with Lee Schere, Director of Teaching and Learning at the Office of K-16 Initiatives of CUNY about the Debating U.S. History Program, an inquiry-based curriculum and teacher learning program. Students learn that history is not one set of agreed-upon events and interpretations. Though designed for NYC schools, the curriculum is available free to teachers everywhere.

Overview

00:00-00:37 Intros
00:37-02:42 Debating U.S. History
02:42-04:58 Why CUNY developed a high school course
04:58-06:32 Why this is a more ethical way to teach history
06:32-08:23 Examples of inquiry-based learning
08:23-12:28 Differentiation in working with documents for students at different reading levels
12:28-14:23 Key skills and strategies
14:23-17:41 Historiography and uncertainty
17:41-19:20 Students grappling with ethical questions
19:20-20:53 Program logistics
20:53-23:03 Collaboration with ELA teachers
23:03-24:00 How schools become part of the program
24:00-26:14 Regents exam
26:14- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

CUNY K16 Initiatives: Debating US History (website)

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Creating the conditions: Sustaining “caring for” education

Ethical Schools — Mon, 18 Dec 2023 00:40:36 +0000

We speak with Chris Lehmann, founding principal of Science Leadership Academy, inquiry-driven and project-based schools in Philadelphia. The academic model centers inquiry, research, collaboration, presentation, and reflection. Students take English, science, and history as a cohort, allowing for interdisciplinary understanding. Systems and structures ensure there is time for teachers to build relationships with students, and create the basis for the schools to survive beyond the founders.

Overview

00:00-00:28 Intros

00:32-01:51 Characteristics of Science Leadership Academy

01:51-04:16 Building collaboration among disciplines; looping

04:16-06:55 21st Century citizens

06:55-08:53 Instilling “engagement” as a citizenship quality

08:53-11:37 Integrating employment-related skills into education for citizenship

11:37-14:24 Role of technology

14:24-16:58 “Caring for” vs. “Caring about”

16:58-18:09 Scheduling systemic care

18:09-19:38 Discussing ethics in the classroom

19:38-22:44 Sustainability beyond the founders

22:44-26:01 Recruiting, preparing, supporting teachers

26:01-26:58 Schools should be transformative for teachers as well as students

26:58-30:16 What makes SLA model applicable in both choice and general admission schools

30:16- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Book Building School 2.0: How to Create the Schools We Need by Chris Lehmann and Zac Chase
Book Not Light But Fire: How To Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Classroom by Matthew Kay
Book Authentic Learning in the Digital Age: Engaging Students Through Inquiry by Larissa Pahomov
Book Teaching for a Living Democracy: Project-Based Learning in the English and History Classroom by Joshua Block

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Photo facebook.com/scienceleadershipacademy

Solving chronic absence: A whole-school approach (Encore)

Ethical Schools — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 20:27:52 +0000

We speak with Hedy N. Chang of Attendance Works, who describes the long-term impact on student success of chronic absence in all grades. Framing chronic absence as a truancy issue can increase alienation from school. Distinctions between excused and unexcused absences can unfairly penalize low-income students and students of color. Chronic absence rates may hit 40% this year. Ms. Chang discusses relationship-based strategies for mitigating absenteeism.

Overview

00:00-00:37 Intros
00:37-01:39 Definition of chronic absenteeism
01:39-04:04 How absenteeism has been viewed historically
04:04-06:16 Truancy
06:16-08:57 Reporting and monitoring chronic absences
08:57-14:37 Pandemic absenteeism rates
14:37-19:22 Absenteeism and return to schools in 2021-22
19:22-21:32 Attendance promotion strategies
21:32-25:42 Excused and unexcused absences; biases in classification
25:42-28:33 Impact of chronic absences on graduation
28:33-31:26 Strategies for understanding and overcoming barriers to attendance
31:26-36:41 Team approaches
36:41-40:01 Virtual schools—challenges and possibilities
40:01-42:18 Tiered approach
42:18- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

attendanceworks.org

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Developing public communication skills: Speech and debate team

Ethical Schools — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 18:25:55 +0000

We speak with Denver English teacher and speech/debate coach Anna Steed about the benefits of speech and debate competition. Students acquire critical communication skills and self-confidence; students of color and low-income students can become more comfortable in majority-white, middle-class environments similar to those they may encounter in college. For many students who have challenging home lives, speech and debate opens up worlds of possibility.

Overview

00:00-00:14 Intros

00:14-01:08 Why the speech and debate program started at Anna Steed’s school

01:08-02:17 How Anna Steed became involved

02:17-03:08 How the speech and debate program developed into a team

03:08-04:13 What speech and debate is

04:13-05:06 How students became involved

05:06-14:04 Program Oral Interpretation

14:04-15:20 Impact on measured academic performance

15:20-17:42 Equity; students’ comfort level around more privileged students

17:42-21:40 Speech and debate during the pandemic

21:40-21:53 Impact on students’ ambitions

21:53-26:08 First steps to start a speech and debate program

26:08-28:10 Need for judges

28:10-29:36 Need to give English credit for speech and debate

29:36-30:15 Training for judges

30:15- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Photo by Hart Van Denburg/Colorado Public Radio

Experiential learning: Where human history and nature connect

Ethical Schools — Fri, 13 Oct 2023 16:27:49 +0000

We speak with Jackie Broder, director of the Mamakating Environmental Education Center in New York’s Catskill Mountains. The Center abuts the Basha Kill wetland, a vital self-contained ecosystem. It helps students, families, and community members to connect with the area’s distinct biodiversity and rich history and to develop an emotional connection with nature.

Overview

00:00-00:28 Intros

0028:01:30 Mamakating Environmental Education Center

01:30-02:57 Teaching history

02:57-02:57 Adventure programs

02:57-04:31 Transportation issues with schools

04:31-06:36 Promoting equity and ethics

06:36-07:59 How we talk about history

07:59-09:19 Visit to a Montessori school

09:19-10:31 Children’s impressions and misimpressions about nature

10:31-11:40 Learning about wetlands

11:40-12:49 Developing an emotional connection to nature

12:49-13:33 Connecting with teachers’ curricula

13:33-14:53 Working with teachers; getting buy-in

14:53-16:55 Learning to be “good ancestors”

16:55-18:00 Thinking about/addressing climate change

18:00-18:39 Connections in local communities

18:39-19:33 Nature centers around the country

19:33-20:22 Connection with the Town of Mamakating

20:22-20:48 Family programs at the center

20:48- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

The Mamakating Environmental Education Center (MEEC):

The Basha Kill Area Association (BKAA):

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Photo: mamakating.org

Cultural responsiveness: is music optional? (Encore)

Ethical Schools — Wed, 04 Oct 2023 19:18:21 +0000

We speak with Dr. Anne Smith, longtime music teacher in Northern Virginia, about accommodating cultural differences. Dr. Smith created an alternate curriculum for students whose traditions don’t allow secular music-making. We discuss the extent to which parents should be able to influence what their students learn. We also talk about why music and art are treated as lesser (“special”) subjects.

Overview

00:00-00:35 Intros

00:35-07:57 A parent asks to opt her daughter out of music

07:57-09:48 Finding a balance in a class with culturally and linguistically diverse children and families

09:48-12:02 Importance of conversation between professionals and families

12:02-14:15 Are parental objections to music different from objections to literature and science?

14:15-16:39 Teachers need to articulate why they are teaching what they are teaching; importance of teaching music

16:39-19:03 Music should be part of everyone’s life—a loss if parents opt out

19:03-20:30 Importance of music foundation before children go on specific tracks

20:30-24:30 Teachers’ responses to Va. governor’s push for parents to object to aspects of education he doesn’t like

24:30-27:01 “Old Black Joe”

27:01-29:15 Using the arts to educate and promote equity

29:15-32:22 Why schools treat art and music as dispensable

32:22-36:16 Treating the arts seriously as subjects

36:16- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

*Episode originally published on November 3rd, 2022

The “Name Game”: racialization in a suburban high school (Encore)

Ethical Schools — Fri, 22 Sep 2023 19:06:12 +0000

Drs. Tony de Jesus, Anthony Johnston, and Don Siler of University of St. Joseph recount their intervention in a multiracial high school in crisis. White students had instigated a “game” of addressing Black students as the n-word. We discuss the impact of racialization in the Trump era on white students, students of color, and the school community as well as actual and potential responses by schools.

*Episode originally posted on February 26th, 2020.

Overview

00:00-00:48 Intros

00:49-03:13 “Name game”: the background

03:14-04:58 The “name game”

04:59-05:30 The intervention

05:31-08:41 Student: “Being white means being seen as racist”

08:42-12:13 Racialized identities/racialization of youth

12:14-13:39 Impact of racialization on school community

13:40-16:46 Obstacles to whites grasping the impact of race-related experiences on Black students

16:47-19:03 Administrators’ and faculty members’ responses

19:04-20:37 The blame game

20:38-23:43 White students who wanted to address the issue

23:44-29:35 The “n-word” and language

29:36-34:08 Applying the lens of ethics

34:09-37:00 Bakhtin, carnival, heteroglossia

37:01-46:30 How can schools respond to racism/racist actions?

46:31-48:05 Parents

48:06-49:30 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of the episode.

References

Book Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race by Beverly Tatum.

Credits

Photo by Spencer Pierce / Unsplash

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

What Would YOU Do?

Ethical Schools — Wed, 20 Sep 2023 19:43:46 +0000

Today we’re here to invite you to watch our new video podcast series “What Would YOU do?”. Created in partnership with EdEthics of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, each episode includes a dramatization of an ethical dilemma that could be faced by educators along with a discussion of the case facilitated by Harvard professor Meira Levinson.

We have two episodes available on our website and they are a great resource for PD!

One examines the debate over a form of project-based civics education called Action Civics, in which students research a topic of their choosing and then take action to create change. A parent’s campaign to end the action civics project prompts a high school to examine the purpose of civic education, the rights of young people to influence their community, and the ways that polarized discourse influences schools.

The second episode explores the challenges of teaching about climate change in a community where a large portion of the residents work in the natural gas industry. A new science teacher is surprised when many of her students and their parents object to her lessons on climate change. How far should the beliefs and values of the local community in which a school is embedded inform curricular and other teaching decisions?

To watch, simply go to our website ethicalschools.org and click on VIDEOS. We hope you like it!

Paying it forward: a peer-staffed program for navigating college admissions

Ethical Schools — Sat, 26 Aug 2023 20:01:00 +0000

We speak with Michael Sanchez, executive director of Circle Match (formerly TCAT), a program that helps students in underserved high schools apply to colleges. Circle Match serves low income students, primarily of color, who are the first in their families to apply to college. Participants in turn assist classmates, thus creating a college-going culture and subsequently on-campus support. Circle Match students have been extraordinarily successful in gaining admission to elite colleges and universities.

Overview

00:00-00:43 Intros

00:43-02:14 Michael Sanchez’s own K-12 and college admission experiences

02:14-05:27 How these experiences influenced the concept of Circle Match

05:27-10:34 How Circle Match works

10:34-13:56 The people involved in Circle Match

13:56-15:46 Helping students with culture shock at Ivy league schools

15:46-18:54 Students’ responses to giant differences in wealth, income, expectations

18:54-21:10 Affinity groups of different types

21:10-23:36 Why Circle Match focuses on Ivies and other prestigious schools

23:36-26:21 Working with students who won’t get into Ivies

26:21-28:38 Making connections with other-than-Hispanic communities

28:38-30:22 Next schools to partner with

30:22-33:04 Communication with parents

33:04-34:07 Data on families

34:07-35:45 Admissions success rate

35:45-37:59 Going away to college as an issue for parents

37:59-40:55 Funding

40:55- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Click here to know more about Circle Match.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Solving teacher shortages: It’s not just pay

Ethical Schools — Tue, 15 Aug 2023 00:08:56 +0000

Overview

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Book “Color in the Classroom: How American Schools Taught Race, 1900-1954″ by Zoe Burkholder
Teaching Profession Playbook by The Partnership for the Future of Learning

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Opening up: Recreating schools as a community

Ethical Schools — Fri, 14 Jul 2023 22:43:15 +0000

Drs. Landon Mascareñaz and Doannie Tran, co-authors of “The Open System: Redesigning Education and Reigniting Democracy,” talk about co-creating and co-producing school initiatives with parents and community members. “Openness” is a radical departure from legacy closed systems, and begins with “openers,” those committed to ensuring that all stakeholders, especially those traditionally far from power, are full participants. The opening process can start in one classroom, one school, or one district, and can be adapted in other settings.

Overview

00:00-00:39 Intros
00:39-02:08 Definition of an Open System
02:08-09:02 3 phases of shifting a system towards openness
09:02-06:16 An open system leader
06:16-07:21 Linearity and recursion of phases
07:21-11:10 Examples of groups creating open systems
11:10-15:09 Obstacles groups encountered and overcame
15:09-18:44 Contending with organized groups that want to ban books or are racist or homophobic
18:44-21:59 Consensus decision making
21:59-24:57 Surviving founders or key initial participants
24:57-27:01 Conflicts over money or credit
27:01-29:20 Tensions and differential power between those furthest from opportunity and those with technical or institutional power
29:20-31:33 Issues of bringing initiatives to scale
31:33-33:39 Where can educators start?
33:39-36:48 Training and support
36:48- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

Click here to know more about the book “The Open System: Redesigning Education and Reigniting Democracy”

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Surveillance in school: Invasive technology, junk science

Ethical Schools — Wed, 05 Jul 2023 11:28:07 +0000

We speak with Albert Fox Cahn and Sarah Roth of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, or S.T.O.P., about the increasing use of surveillance technology to track students. Claiming their technology can predict who will be a threat to themselves or the school, companies market programs that report to school officials on students’ keystrokes, words, and behaviors. School officials can provide it to law enforcement or parents.

Overview

00:00-00:41 Intros
00:41-02:27 Who is surveilling K-12 students and why?
02:27-05:49 Who is collecting the data, where it goes, how it impacts students?
05:49-08:03 Implications of students self-identifying as queer in Florida and elsewhere
08:03-10:08 How are risk factors determined?
10:08-12:37 Surveillance technology and School Resource Officers (SROs)
12:37-14:18 Are parents aware of their students’ surveillance?
14:18-16:28 Legal challenges
16:28-18:26 Using FOIA/FOIL to get information about surveillance
18:26-21:16 Facial recognition
21:16-21:40 Gaggle as enhancement to SRO in Minneapolis
21:40-23:51 Biases
23:51-24:45 Federal promotion of surveillance
24:45-27:39 Adoption of technology in classrooms and for measuring “productivity”
27:39- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Surveillance Technology Oversight Project S.T.O.P. website

Soundtrack by Poddington Be...

Inquiry and interpretation: Learning US history from primary sources

Ethical Schools — Sat, 24 Jun 2023 02:09:38 +0000

Overview

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

CUNY K16 Initiatives: Debating US History (website)

School district battles: Protecting education from bans

Ethical Schools — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 00:19:02 +0000

We speak with Mike Gottesman, founder of New Jersey Public Education Coalition (NJPEC), a grassroots organization that educates and activates NJ citizens in school districts to protect the integrity of schools from conservative extremist groups. NJPEC organizes on-the-ground support for community members and provides information for school board candidates. In its first year, the Coalition has grown to 1500 members along with subject matter experts and partner organizations.

Overview

00:00-00:42 Intros

00:42-02:19 Reasons for starting NJ Public Education Coalition

02:19-03:35 Hot button issues

03:35-05:11 Sex ed curriculum issues

05:11-06:19 10 committees/tactics

06:19-09:45 Observing districts, engaging parents

09:45-11:17 Educational road shows

11:17-12:47 Engaging seniors

12:47-13:20 Title IX

13:20-16:16 Examples of engagement in districts: Millstone, Hamilton

16:16-18:24 School board meetings

18:24-19:28 Working with (but not endorsing) school board candidates

19:28-24:22 Contacting legislators, drafting legislation

24:22-26:24 Increasing voter turnout

26:24-27:46 How to contact NJPEC

27:46-28:41 Contacts with groups in other states

28:41- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

New Jersey Public Education Coalition’s (NJPEC) website
NJPEC’s Facebook Group

Photo by NJPEC

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Critiquing the “science of reading” movement: Teaching reading is “both/and”

Ethical Schools — Mon, 22 May 2023 00:19:32 +0000

Lynne Einbender and Susie Rolander, reading and literacy faculty at Bank Street College, talk about supporting children’s learning to read and the components of a full-fledged language arts program. One size does not fit all: children with different strengths and experiences have a spectrum of needs.

Overview

00:00-00:43 Intros

00:43-03:01 What do its advocates mean by the “science of reading?’

03:01-06:44 Effective ways to support children in learning to read and acquiring literacy

06:44-10:30 Balanced literacy

10:30-13:39 Learning to read and learning to write

13:39-15:21 Effects, if any, on “science of reading” laws on student achievement

15:21-20:13 Best ways to help more children become proficient readers

20:13-22:31 Lucy Calkins’s Reading Workshop and Fountas & Pinnell Leveled Literacy Intervention system

22:31-23:41 Recommended resource—“Shifting the Balance” by Jan Burkins and Kari Yates

23:41-27:35 Children with special needs

27:35-30:28 Equity

30:28- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

“Parents’ rights” campaigns: Targeting school books and curricula

Ethical Schools — Mon, 01 May 2023 00:18:47 +0000

Dr. Melissa Deckman, CEO of PRRI, Public Religion Research Institute, analyzes current “parents’ rights” campaigns and their precedents. At a time of demographic change, conservative Christians seek to ban books and curricula that conflict with their educational agenda. Dr. Deckman discusses the use of social media and the importance of where people get their news in shaping these battles. PRRI’s polling data show what parents and the public think about school issues.

Overview

00:00-00:58 Intros

00:58-07:00 Demands of “parental rights” activists

07:00-09:32 Historical “parental rights” campaigns

09:32-11:00 Relationship of campaigns to weakening funding or support for public schools

11:00-12:49 Parents’ opinions about these campaigns

12:49-14:30 Role of Fox News and social media in campaigns

14:30-15:38 Social media use by activists opposing these campaigns

15:38-22:42 Relationship of these campaigns to race and racism

22:42-23:31 Impact of demographic change

23:31-25:22 Are these “winning issues:” for candidates?

25:22-25:56 Why issues will continue

25:56-27:43 PRRI’s work and how people can access it

27:43- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) website

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Towards the school you want to see: Plan, Act, Reflect, Repeat

Ethical Schools — Thu, 06 Apr 2023 18:59:46 +0000

We speak with Justin Cohen, whose work focuses on the intersections of education, race, privilege, and public policy. Cohen’s recent book is Change Agents: Transforming Schools From the Ground Up. He looks at ways a faculty can systematically improve its school. Knowing the community and having honest and difficult conversations about race are critical.

Overview

00:00-00:33 Intros

00:33-01:44 What Change Agents is about

01:44-03:55 Results-Oriented Cycles of Inquiry (ROCI)

03:55-04:31 School Organizing as a form of community organizing

04:31-10:25 Conversations about race

10:25-13:54 A fishbowl exercise about race that went wrong and what happened after that

13:54-16:46 Achieving early wins

16:46-19:39 What accountability can mean

19:39-23:06 Strategies for improving school-parent communication

23:06-24:05 Working on listening as a school

24:05-26:33 Improving existing schools vs. starting new ones

26:33-29:46 Urgent policy changes

29:46-31:11 Relevant Ethical Schools episodes

31:11- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Book Change Agents: Transforming Schools From the Ground Up by Justin Cohen

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Challenging credentialism: An alternative vision of education

Ethical Schools — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 23:59:26 +0000

Overview

00:00-00:38 Intros

00:38-02:41 What “In the Camp of Angels of Freedom: What It Means to be Educated” is about

02:41: 03:55 Definition of auto-didact

03:55-05:39 Project-based education/Action civics/“What Would YOU Do?”

05:39-07:12 Removing bachelor’s degree requirement from State jobs

07:12-09:03 Advice to high school students about options

09:03-10:34 When is a liberal arts education valuable beyond credentials?

10:34-20:42 Alternative ways to expand horizons beyond/in addition to college

20:42-25:28 K-12 education

25:28-27:31 Paulo Freire

27:31-31:18 Paul Goodman

31:18-32:50 Cultural citizenship

32:50- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Arlene Goldbard’s website
Book “In the Camp of Angels of Freedom: What Does It Mean to Be Educated?” by Arlene Goldbard

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Visual artwork by Arlene Goldbard “We Burn” (2019)

Restorative Justice: Cultivating cohesive communities

Ethical Schools — Sat, 04 Mar 2023 14:55:31 +0000

We speak with Sarah Eblen and Reginald Berry Jr., former middle school teachers and now district coordinators for the restorative justice program in the Kansas City Public Schools. Eighty percent of RJ is community building and 20% conflict resolution. When there is a conflict, the RJ process ensures that everyone — students, teachers, and parents — feels heard. Since the program started, classroom behavior problems have decreased, students’ out-of-school relationships have improved, and teacher satisfaction with the disciplinary process has increased.

Overview

00:00-00:41 Intros
00:41-01:04 Journey from teaching to overseeing systemwide restorative justice (RJ) program
01:04-04:07 Program logistics
04:07-05:17 Training
05:17-09:00 Major tools of RJ
09:00-10:28 Where does the community building occur?
10:28-12:57 Impact on student behavior
12:57-14:16 Discipline disparities
14:16-16:36 Effects on teachers’ practice
16:36-19:50 Revised Code of Conduct
19:50-21:04 Coping with teacher or principal turnover
21:04-22:43 Impact beyond the school
22:43-27:52 When students get conflicting messages from home and school
27:52-29:45 Funding
29:45-32:10 Where to get more information n RJ training
32:10- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

National Association of Community and Restorative Justice website
Center for Conflict Resolution website

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Intersections: Supporting Black LGBTQIA+ students

Ethical Schools — Mon, 20 Feb 2023 17:46:21 +0000

We speak with Dr. David Johns, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition, NBJC, about the challenges faced by Black LGBTQIA+ students. Most young people at this intersection live in the South among other Black people, not in secular, gay-friendly cities like San Francisco or Hollywood.These young people face economic and cultural barriers to accessing mental health services, Dr. Johns explains how, rather than telling these students what sorts of support they need, adults should ask them.

Overview

00:00-00:44 Intros

00:44-02:50 Definition of Same Gender Loving (SGL)

02:50-07:58 Black young people’s mental health

07:58-13:28 Suicide rates, trauma, white supremacy

13:28- 19:41 Cultures of mental health and self-care, religious institutions, access to mental health resources

19:41-27:38 LGBTQIA+ youth, Black traditions and religious institutions, supports and challenges

27:38-36:00 Legal protections against bullying and harassment

36:00-39:34 Doing the work that needs to be done in schools

39:34-43:15 National Black Justice Coalition, its work, and policy agenda

43:15-45:27 The Equality Act

45:27-48:13 Where NBJC works, partnerships

48:13-53:12 What school administrators and teachers can do to better support Black LGBTQIA+ students

53:12-55:17 Graduate schools of education

55:17-57:56 LGBTQIA+ and SGL folks who are older

57:56-59:19 Immigrant students

59:19- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC) website
Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) website

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

ChatGTP: Cheating optimizer or force for teaching transformation?

Ethical Schools — Wed, 08 Feb 2023 00:29:02 +0000

We speak with Lev Moscow and Richard Miller, veteran high school teachers, about the panic around the release of chatGPT. The AI tool produces respectable essays that students can pass off as their own. The best teachers already focus on process, and chatGPT could force all schools to change their approach.

Overview

00:00-00:34 Intros

00:34-01:38 First reaction to ChatGBT?

01:38-03:37 Influence on teaching

03:37-05:54 Challenges and opportunities

05:54-14:47 Examples of reimagining education to engage students and avoid pitfalls of chatbots

14:47-17:13 Structuring essays, research skills, JSTOR

17:13-19:30 Kids getting over

19:30-21-23 Some benefits of chatbots for teaching essay writing

21:23-22:58 Cheating before chatbots

22:58-25:50 Impact of technology; Neil Postman, David Graeber , Keynes

25:50-27:06 Financial impacts of chatbots on teachers’ jobs

27:06-28:48 De-skilling,, non-fungible ideas

28:48-31:15 Ways teachers could use chatbots to assist students with essays

31:15-35:31 Role of homework, quizzes, classroom discussion

35:31-36:53 How language classes could use language in community settings

36:53-49:31 Mechanics of detecting cheating with chatbots or otherwise

49:31-44:28 Additional examples of engaging students

44:28- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Previous interviews with Lev and Richard:
Lev Moscow also hosts a podcast. Click here to know more about A Correction Podcast.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear. Photo by DeepMind on Unsplash.

Climate anxiety: a generational plague

Ethical Schools — Sun, 22 Jan 2023 16:33:28 +0000

We speak with Lian Zeitz, co-founder of the Climate Mental Health Network, which promotes wellness in light of the climate crisis. According to a recent survey, 70% of young people are fearful for their future due to climate change. Teachers can foster wellness by interweaving insights into their curricula, and by instilling habits of hope and resilience. The Climate Mental Health Network prioritizes input from students, working with a Gen Z advisory board.

Overview

00:00-00:37 Intros

00:37-02:49 Climate anxiety: what it is and how it is affecting young people

02:49-04:04 “To heal the planet, we have to collectively heal ourselves”

04:04-06:22 When is anxiety about a real threat healthy and when not?

06:22-06:39 Components of wellness

06:39-08:33 How teachers can foster wellness with students

08:33-11:11 Integrating SEL and mental health dimensions, including climate mental health into mainstream curriculum

11:11-13:59 How Climate Mental Health Network supports teachers and administrators

13:59-17:01 K-12 environmental justice curriculum in Califortnia

17:01-19:48 Whole school mental health transformation

19:48-23:04 Gen Z leadership roles

23:04-25:50 Non-medical-centered model

25:50-28:32 Learning from Indigeneous communities without co-optation

28:32-30:47 Individual choices and promotion of wellness

30:47-33:10 How students’ different life experiences have an impact on their degree of climate threat and on ways of supporting them

33:10- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

The Climate Mental Health Network website

Norman Fruchter on the pioneering alternative high school he and colleagues built in Newark in the 1970s (Encore)

Ethical Schools — Sat, 07 Jan 2023 17:33:13 +0000

We speak with Norm Fruchter, long-time educational activist and thought leader, about Independence School, an experimental high school where the ideal was that someone walking into a classroom couldn’t tell the teacher from the students. We discuss lessons learned – and perhaps forgotten – about supporting students whose original schools failed them. Among the school’s strengths were authentic, enduring relationships among teachers and students, teaching strategies that enabled illiterate students to learn to read without embarrassment, month-long internship breaks, and curriculum that referenced students’ life experiences.

Norm Fruchter, leader in NYC and Newark education equity movement, dies at 85

Overview

00:00-00:52 Intro to encore

00:52-02:07 Intros

02:07-05:30 Founding of Independence H.S. in Newark

05:30-07:29 Law Enforcement Assistance Administration grant

07:29-09:11 School’s relationship with Newark police department

09:11-10:24 What students did after graduation

10:24-12:19 Students’ challenges in college

12:19-13:53 Recruiting teachers

13:53-16:27 Stressors on faculty members

16:27-18:26 Internships

18:26-20:53 Conflict resolution

20:52-24:27 Literacy instruction

24:27-26:51 Use of poetry

26:51-28:44 Curricula in math, social studies

28:44-30:58 Influence of Newark experience on Norm’s school policy work

30:58-32:20 Relationships

32:20-33:30 Differences from transfer schools

33:30-35:08 Can programs like this be brought to scale by school districts?

35:08- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Image: steinhardt.nyu.edu

Gender and sexually diverse students: Creating comfortable schools (Encore)

Ethical Schools — Tue, 27 Dec 2022 14:14:47 +0000

We speak with Dr. Elizabeth J. Meyer of the University of Colorado about ensuring that K-12 schools are welcoming and safe for students with non-normative gender identities and expressions. Dr. Meyer found that these students thrive in schools that center student-directed learning and interdisciplinary exploration as opposed to schools that replicate society’s toxic hierarchies. Generally, students are much more comfortable talking about issues related to gender diversity than their teachers or parents.

Overview

00:00-00:40 Intros

00:40-02:23 Title IX coordinators and their challenges

02:23-03:32 Equity directors and their challenges

03:32-05:55 Equity directors: race, class, and gender and sexuality

05:55-07:05 Race as entry point to conversations about other marginalized groups

07:05-08:38 “Gender-creative”—what it means and why use it

08:38:11:01 Impact of school structures on creating comfortable environments

11:01-12:08 Schools as gender-policed spaces

12:08-13:59 Student-led gender audit

13:59-16:29 Transgender students and sports

16:29-17:46 Students are generally more comfortable in conversations about gender and sexual diversity than adults

17:46-19:04 Texas governor’s ban on gender-affirming health care

19:04-22:00 Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill

22:00-23:11 Teacher ed and leadership ed programs

23:11-24:42 How principals can become proactive before a crisis

24:42-26:28 Book banning and “curriculum transparency” bills

26:28-27:04 Life and death situations—“Why aren’t we talking about this in our school?”

27:04-28:05 Comparisons with other countries

28:05- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

Click here to go to Dr. Elizabeth Meyer’s website.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Climate education: not just for science class (Encore)

Ethical Schools — Thu, 15 Dec 2022 11:59:09 +0000

We speak with Dr. Deb L. Morrison, research scientist at the University of Washington School of Education, about centering climate science throughout the K-12 curriculum. Dr. Morrison talks about ClimeTime, a Washington State-funded program that teaches how to engage in climate science and climate justice education across disciplines, and describes nationally-available resources. She emphasizes the importance of integrating society, technology, and science education and says that climate science can be taught even in very conservative areas through place-based education, addressing what matters to kids in their communities.

Overview

00:00-00:35 Intros

00:35-03:32 ClimeTime: What it is, how it is funded

03:32-06:05 Climate change education and climate justice

06:05-07:36 Mentorship, all of us learning

07:36-10:34 Project-based learning; action civics

10:34-13:02 Teaching science as it actually works

13:02-16:54 Engaging conservative communities while teaching climate science

16:54-18:44 Socioecological systems; humans’ relationships with each other and with nature

18:44-19:57 The doughnut economy

19:57-22:05 Society, technology & science (STS) as an interdisciplinary field

22:05-26:28 Examples of teaching STS, place-based learning

26:28-29:13 Collaborations among colleges in Washington and Oregon

29:13-33:32 Resources for teaching climate change, including industrial farming

33:32-37:38 Action for Climate Empowerment at national and international levels

37:38- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Undocumented students: Keeping secrets, navigating obstacles

Ethical Schools — Fri, 02 Dec 2022 21:35:00 +0000

Dr. Gerardo Mancilla, associate professor in the School of Education at Edgewood College and host of Educators and Immigration podcast, reflects on his experiences as an undocumented student in the ‘90s. We discuss what has changed, and what hasn’t.

Overview

00:00-00:40 Intros

00:40-09:15 Experiences as an undocumented student

09:15-12:03 Changes for undocumented students since the 1990s

12:05-14:49 Status of Dreamers (DACA)

15:00-18:24 Key issues for undocumented high school seniors

18:24-20:35 ID issues for entry into school buildings

20:35-24:33 Support for trauma-affected immigrant students

24:33-27:53 School as a center for immigrant support within the community

27:53-33:23 Educators and Immigration podcast

33:23- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

Educators and Immigration Podcast

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Practicing ethics: Case studies (Encore)

Ethical Schools — Mon, 28 Nov 2022 15:30:35 +0000

We speak with Meira Levinson, Professor of Education at Harvard, about her website justiceinschools.org and books of “hard cases,” designed to help educators and youth workers think about the ethical implications of their decisions. Often, there are no perfect solutions, and these decisions can have far-reaching consequences in children’s lives. A former teacher herself, Meira would like teachers to be able to consult with specially trained school ethicists.

We have a new video podcast series with Dr. Levinson where we explore timely discussions and ethical dilemmas in education! Click here to know more about it.

Overview

00:00-00:43 Intros

00:43-3:50 Justice in Schools (justiceinschools.org)—what it is and why Meira Levinson started it

03:50-08:49 Why cases in case studies must be hard

08:49-16:14 Scenarios

16:14-17:32 Writing and researching the cases

17:32-21:05 Variation in cases among regions and countries

21:05-22:44 Who and how people are using the cases

22:44-24:10 No cost to users except for multi-media version

24:10-28:52 Defining success

28:52-30:52 Out-of-school-time cases

30:52-38:43 Involvement of students and parents

38:43-39:15 Unknowns about outreach

39:15-41:00 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Click here to know more about our new video podcast series “What Would You Do?”. An initiative of EdEthics and Ethical Schools Podcast, each episode includes a dramatization of an ethical dilemma that could be faced by educators along with a discussion of the case facilitated by Harvard Graduate School of Education professor Meira Levinson.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Recruiting teachers of color: What works

Ethical Schools — Fri, 11 Nov 2022 13:45:45 +0000

We speak with Elizabeth Steiner, education policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, about diversifying the K-12 teacher workforce. Data consistently shows the benefits, especially to Black and Latiné students, of learning from teachers of color. Ms. Steiner discusses recruitment strategies advocated by teachers of color and other educators and researchers.

Overview

00:-00-00:42 Intros

00:42-01:47 Diversifying the teacher workforce—why it’s important

01:47-04:50 Top recommended recruitment strategies

04:50-06:13 Benefits of diverse workforce

06:13-08:00 Connecticut Higher Education Supplemental Loan Authority Alliance District Teacher Loan Subsidy Program

08:00-11:09 Principal training in recruiting, hiring, retaining a diverse workforce

11:09-13:53 Stress and morale

13:53-16:38 Responses to pandemic environments

16:38-17:25 Positive supports during pandemic

17:25-19:56 Effects of low morale

19:56-22:26 Strategies to improve teacher wellbeing

22:26-26:24 Reducing bias in hiring practices

26:24- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Cultural responsiveness: is music optional?

Ethical Schools — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 17:39:48 +0000

Overview

00:00-00:35 Intros

00:35-07:57 A parent asks to opt her daughter out of music

07:57-09:48 Finding a balance in a class with culturally and linguistically diverse children and families

09:48-12:02 Importance of conversation between professionals and families

12:02-14:15 Are parental objections to music different from objections to literature and science?

14:15-16:39 Teachers need to articulate why they are teaching what they are teaching; importance of teaching music

16:39-19:03 Music should be part of everyone’s life—a loss if parents opt out

19:03-20:30 Importance of music foundation before children go on specific tracks

20:30-24:30 Teachers’ responses to Va. governor’s push for parents to object to aspects of education he doesn’t like

24:30-27:01 “Old Black Joe”

27:01-29:15 Using the arts to educate and promote equity

29:15-32:22 Why schools treat art and music as dispensable

32:22-36:16 Treating the arts seriously as subjects

36:16- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

The purpose of education: Educating for a solutionary future?

Ethical Schools — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 15:02:44 +0000

We welcome back Zoe Weil, president and co-founder of the Institute for Humane Education, to speak about her recent Psychology Today column on the purpose of education. Although the official goal of many school systems is to prepare students for global competition, compassion, cooperation, and creativity are the qualities we should be emphasizing. A generation of solutionaries has a much better chance of creating a sustainable planet where humans and animals other than humans can thrive.

Overview

00:00-00:44 Intros

00:44-02:42 Purpose of education

02:42-07:41 What is a “solutionary?”

07:41-13:04 Teaching and learning in a solutionary classroom

13:04-19:10 Skills incorporated in a solutionary framework

19:10-24:33 How to deal with serious conflicts

24:33-26:59 Encouraging students to be solutionary when their schools aren’t

26:59-29:58 Solutionary education has not hit walls in polarized educational environment

29:58-31:58 Solutionary education and standardized tests, other assessments

31:58- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

More episodes with Zoe:

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Image: humaneeducation.org

Early childhood classes: Crucial (and endangered) developmental support

Ethical Schools — Thu, 22 Sep 2022 18:15:22 +0000

We talk with Lesley Koplow of the Center for Emotionally Responsive Practice at Bank Street College and Allison Demas, an instructional coordinator in the NYC Dept. of Education about the recent struggle in NYC to save social worker and IC positions and why these roles are so important for children’s emotional and academic development.

Overview

00:00-00:42 Intros

00:42-03:12 NYC DOE excesses 360 early childhood social workers and instructional coordinators (ICs) as school year starts; backtracks after intense reaction

03:12-07:35 What early childhood social workers and ICs do

07:35-09:39 An example of social worker and IC collaboration

09:39-12:38 Why these collaborative roles are essential during and after traumatic events such as the pandemic and immigration journeys

12:38-15:08 Why early childhood specialties around the country are always vulnerable to cuts and reassignments

15:08-16:50 Pressures on early childhood teachers from systemic pressures on children

16:50-17:43 Are we being “good ancestors” to our children?

17:43- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Sign On to Support IC and SW Reinstatement

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Reimagining the school system: Centering children, families, and teachers

Ethical Schools — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 22:52:13 +0000

Guest interviewer Lev Moscow joins Jon in conversation with Santiago Taveras, principal of Charter High School for Computer Engineering and Innovation and former deputy chancellor of the NYC Department of Education. Santi talks about false assumptions that school systems make about teachers, students, and parents. He discusses why so much professional development wastes teachers’ time, why college for all is a misguided target, and why so much DOE money gets misspent.

Overview

00:00-01:03 Intros

01:03-02:08 DOE system changes over time

02:08-03:24 Who has benefited from changes?

03:24-05:31 System’s assumptions about teachers

05:31-07:37 Assumptions about students

07:37-10:27 Purpose of school systems—what schools can/could be like

10:27-14:51 College prep and CTE

14:51-16:07 Post-secondary education doesn’t have to be college

16:07-18:47 Assumptions about parents

18:47-24:13 Why does the system fail despite dedicated adults?

24:13-27:49 Why change is so difficult—examples from professional development, scheduling

27:49-30:15 Impact of business interests

30:15-32:50 Budgeting rigidities (and patronage)

32:50-43:37 Overrated, underrated? Charters, tech in classroom, sports & arts, small schools?

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Technology: What’s hype and what helps

Ethical Schools — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 16:57:58 +0000

We speak with Dr. Justin Reich, director of the MIT Teaching Systems Lab, and host of the TeachLab podcast, about education technology. Hailed by some as the great equalizer, the beneficiaries of ed tech tend to be white and affluent. Focused on equity by design, Dr. Reich observes that when teachers learn, they have insufficient opportunities to practice. So he and his colleagues are creating digital clinical simulations, practice spaces for teachers. They’re also helping educators to figure out what they can stop doing, to allow more time for what’s useful.

Overview

00:00-00:43 Intros

00:43-02:55 Examining claims that tech is a vehicle to promote equality in education

02:55-06:33 Tickle down?

06:33-07:41 How tech introduction increases the digital divide

07:41-10:22 Better strategies for improving education

10:22-14:06 What can make a difference in creating more equitable educators

14:06-16:33 Measuring the impact

16:33-18:51 tsl.mit.edu/TeachLab podcast

18:51-19:21 Unfinished learning

19:21- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

Teaching Systems Lab website
Book “Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can’t Transform Education” by Justin Reich
Podcast TechLab with Justin Reich

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Image: twitter.com/mit_tsl

Going public: Education scholars as policy advocates

Ethical Schools — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 21:32:58 +0000

We speak with Dr. Kevin Kumashiro, a founder of Education Deans for Justice and Equity and organizer of the International Conferences on Education and Justice. Dr. Kumashiro describes how education scholars across the country are forming professional communities, both to build their capacity and to speak collectively on issues of public policy, leveraging their research to promote justice and equity. He argues that progressives must cease ceding the framework of education policy to corporate forces.

Overview

00:00-00:47 Intros

00:47-02:15 Importance of scholars collectively addressing policy issues

02:15-05:08 Horizontal organizing

05:08-09:03 Examples of public statements on policy issues

09:03-15:35 Different nature of different stalwarts—intersection of mobilization, public education and advocacy

15:35-20:12 CareEd in California

20:12-24:22 Education Deans for Justice and Equity

24:22-26:18 “Think tank” aspects

26:18-32:02 EDJE Framework for Assessment and Transformation

32:02-40:59 “Surrender”: How progressives are losing some of the biggest battles to the corporate sector

40:59-44:12 12 International Conference on Education and Justice in October 2022

44:12- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

12th Conference on Education and Justice
Book “Surrender: Why Progressives Are Losing the Biggest Battles in Education” by Kevin Kumashiro

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Looping: It’s all about the relationships

Ethical Schools — Sat, 30 Jul 2022 00:26:56 +0000

We speak with Dr. Leigh Wedenoja of the Rockefeller Institute of Government about the benefits to students of having a teacher for more than one year. Test scores improve, behavior problems subside, absenteeism decreases. Very few schools have intentional looping policies, but many students have a teacher more than once, especially in middle and high school.

Overview

00:00-00:41 Intros

00:41-01:43 How students have teachers more than once

01:43-02:11 Data from Tennessee

02:11-03:18 Having repeat teachers, not including holdovers

03:18-04:30 Improved test scores and behavioral outcomes

04:30-05:27 Impact beyond one class; relationship aspects

05:27-06:29 Building sustained relationships

06:29-08:21 Outcomes by gender and race

08:21-09:43 Researching absenteeism

09:43-10:51 Creating positive attachment to school

10:51-12:24 Obstacles to planned looping

12:24-14:22 Areas for further research

14:22-15:30 Spillover academic effects within a classroom

15:30- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Descriptive inquiry: Teachers talking about hard subjects

Ethical Schools — Thu, 14 Jul 2022 20:11:28 +0000

We speak with Dr. Cecelia Traugh and Dr. Cara Furman, co-authors of “Descriptive Inquiry in Teacher Practice: Cultivating Practical Wisdom to Create Democratic Schools.” Descriptive inquiry is a structured, collaborative process in which teachers share and get practical feedback on classroom challenges. Breaking down teachers’ isolation, descriptive inquiry encourages non-confrontational conversations about racial and other biases. Teachers benefit not only from the wisdom of their colleagues but also from the safe space and supportive community.

Overview

00:00-00:44 Intros

00:44-04:18 Descriptive inquiry

04:18-07:32 How descriptive inquiry was developed

07:32-09:17 Phenomenology

09:17-09:48 Summer Institute

09:48-14:37 Developing relationships (with faculty or with parents); talking about race

14:37-19:33 Questions of race within faculty practice; looking at biases

19:33-24:01 Teasing out cultural norms; developing community

24:01-26:29 Descriptive inquiry as being value laden

26:29-31:05 Helping teachers feel comfortable sharing

31:05-36:38 Writing the book: why now and why people should read it

36:38- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Holistic education: Joy, wellness, and rigor (Encore)

Ethical Schools — Fri, 01 Jul 2022 00:39:34 +0000

We speak with Dr. Linda Nathan of the Center for Artistry and Scholarship and the Perrone-Sizer Institute for Creative Leadership about her experience in creating progressive schools. Dr. Nathan says all teachers, no matter their subject areas, should have expertise in teaching reading and students with moderate disabilities. The arts are central to her educational vision. Dr. Nathan talks about how to achieve predictable and collaborative authentic assessment of student work and how to deal with standardized test requirements when necessary. She also describes why “grit” is not enough for student success when students are caught in the insidious web of a racist system.

Overview

00:00-00:37 Intros

00:37-02:35 Changes at the Center for Artistry and Scholarship and Perrone-Sizer Institute

02:35-06:54 Why the outdoors is so important in an educational vision

06:54-08:42 Joy, wellness, and rigor

08:42-13:07 Why grit is not enough

13:07-15:47 School systems pervaded by White supremacy

15:17-18:07 The Boston Arts Academy and Perrone-Sizer vision of education

18:07-21:44 Preparing teachers to work at a school like Boston Arts Academy

21:44-25:08 Measuring student success

25:08-29:12 Markers of success on graduation

29:12-31:15 How colleges need to better support students

31:15-36:39 How a principal can support and sustain faculty and the school’s vision in an unsupportive district

36:39-40:50 Dealing with high-stakes testing

40:50-44:58 Dialoguing with parents who disagree with what the school is doing

44:58-47:19 Steps to avoid teacher/administrator burnout

47:19-50:02 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Linda Nathan’s blog
Linda Nathan’s book When Grit Isn’t Enough: A High School Principal Examines How Poverty and Inequality Thwart the College-For-All Promise
The Perrone-Sizer Institute
The Boston Arts Academy
Our interview with Dr. Steven Cohen of Tuft’s Department of Education (mentioned by Linda): “Creating Antiracist Classrooms: Listening and other essential skills”
Intrepid Academy at Hale

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Image twitter.com/lindanathan

Evolving demographics: Rural schools in transition

Ethical Schools — Sat, 25 Jun 2022 12:34:00 +0000

We speak with Dr. David Fine, school superintendent in Dover, a mostly white small town in rural Dutchess County, NY, where longtime residents have been joined by other families to create a more diverse and integrated demographic base. Dr. Fine emphasizes inclusivity, building close relationships with families, and encouraging student engagement in conversations across divides. As there are few social service or mental health programs nearby, Dover schools fill critical roles in the community.

Overview

00:00-00:35 Intros

00:35-01:33 Dover and its demographics

01:33-02:04 Economy

02:04-02:52 Student body demographics

02:52-03:52 Reacher recruitment challenges

03:52-05:15 Bilingual teacher recruitment

05:15-06:37 Skills needed by teachers working with new immigrants

06:37-07:15 Special ed evaluations for students learning English as a New Language

07:15-08:58 Why immigrant families come to Dover

08:58-10:23 Students with Interrupted Formal Education

10:23-11:10 Inclusivity

11:10-13:03 Schools’ central role in community with limited resources overall

13:03-14:53 Supporting youth mental health

14:53-16:17 Relationships with families

16:17-17:57 Relationships with staff and faculty

17:57-19:39 Impact of pandemic on relationships

19:39-20:27 Social emotional issues this year

20:27-22:36 Working with students and faculty during the return to school

22:36-24:19 Polarization and political discourse

24:19-25:59 Students with different views talking with each other; teachers engaging with r range of discussions as needed

25:59- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Image: ms.doverschools.org

Solving chronic absence: A whole-school approach

Ethical Schools — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 00:07:02 +0000

Overview

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

attendanceworks.org

The attack on public education: Will public schools survive? (Encore)

Ethical Schools — Sun, 05 Jun 2022 00:07:27 +0000

We speak with University of South Carolina law professor Derek Black about the history of education as a core government service and the current wave of voucher laws in red states. Professor Black argues that these will permanently reduce education funding levels and threaten the very existence of public schools. We also talk about the #RedforEd resistance and the need to substantially increase funding for schools with many low-income students.

Overview

00:00-00:48 Intros

00:48-01:38 Why “Schoolhouse Burning” is subtitled “Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy”

01:38-03:38 Importance of Reconstruction for government role in education

03:38-06:13 Commitments to education in state constitutions

06:13-08:25 Tension between schools as reproducing social structures and vehicles for social mobility

08:25-16:35 How to achieve equity in school funding

16:35-18:49 Recent voucher laws around the U.S.

18:49-20:47 Vouchers and parochial schools

20:47-22:54 Impact of proliferation of charter schools

22:54-25:02 Why now for vouchers?

25:02-27:08 Why today’s battles over charters and vouchers are undermining the concept of public education

27:08-29:07 Libertarianism and the idea of removing government from education

29:07-30:19 Privatization and race

30:19-33:29 Reducing taxes on the wealthy and long-term reduction in public funding for education

33:29-36:23 Significance of #RedforEd teachers’ strikes

36:23-37:42 Low income parents and charters/vouchers

37:42-39:57 Building a movement that can fight against charter and voucher movements

39:57-42:27 Beyond funding, need for diverse schools

42:27-45:31 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Translanguaging: Inviting the whole child into the classroom

Ethical Schools — Fri, 27 May 2022 01:09:30 +0000

We speak with Dr. Cecilia Espinosa and Dr. Laura Ascenzi-Moreno, co-authors of “Rooted in Strength: Using Translanguaging to Grow Multilingual Readers and Writers.” Traditionally, teachers have brought language to students rather than accepting and acknowledging children’s entire linguistic repertoires. Communities and families often have fluid language practices; when teachers impose strict separation of languages, they limit students’ creative and critical thought processes.

Overview

00:00-00:45 Intros

00:45-02:00 Translanguaging

02:00-06:58 Why this book now

06:48-10:54 Translanguaging as transformative

10:54-17:48 An equity issue

17:48-23:31 Integrating phonemic awareness and phonics into reading

23:31-28:49 Native “non-standard” English speakers

28:49-33:10 Working with a child who is the only speaker of a language in the class

33:10-40:57 Data-driven and student-driven assessment

40:57- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Book “Rooted in Strength: Using Translanguaging to Grow Multilingual Readers and Writers” by Dr. Cecilia Espinosa and Dr. Laura Ascenzi-Moreno
Dr. Espinosa: ceciliamespinosa.wordpress.com @MCEspinosaCh
Dr. Ascenzi-Moreno: www.lascenzimoreno.com @AscenziMoreno

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Challenging censorship: Student journalists fight back

Ethical Schools — Wed, 11 May 2022 14:53:30 +0000

We speak with Hillary Davis, who runs the New Voices program at the Student Press Law Center, and Sara Fajardo, who experienced censorship firsthand at her high school. School administrators frequently prevent students from publishing articles or posts that might make parents nervous or “damage the school’s reputation.“ New Voices laws, which students shepherd through state legislatures, aim to guarantee freedom for student journalists.

Overview

00:00-00:46 Intros

00:46-02:36 Student Press Law Center

02:36-05:08 Sara’s experience of censorship

05:08-06:10 Self-censorship

06:10-10:03 Pressures on students and advisors

10:03-10:39 Yearbooks

10:39-15:01 Constitutional rights of student journalists

15:01-17:03 New Voices laws

17:03-18:45 Hew SPLC and New Voices Student Leaders work to pass laws

18:45-20:35 Support for and opposition to New Voices laws

20:35-23:51 Divisive content laws and student press freedom

23:51-25:42 How students and advisors find out about New Voices laws

25:42-26:42 New Voices and red states/blue states

26:42-28:33 Resources

28:33-30:34 New Voices laws and types of schools: public, private, colleges

30:34- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

Student Press Freedom website

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

School behind bars: Meeting the needs of traumatized kids

Ethical Schools — Wed, 27 Apr 2022 11:48:24 +0000

We speak with Melissa Svigelj-Smith, graduate fellow at University of California at Santa Cruz, about her experience teaching high school students awaiting case outcomes at the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Detention Center. Meaningful communication with students’ schools about records and students’ social emotional needs was often very difficult. Ms. Svigelj-Smith talks about the ethical dilemma of wanting to advocate for improved resources for students without wanting more money to go into a system that kids should not be in in the first place. And in many cases, in Cleveland and throughout the country, prosecutors charge children as adults depriving them of any access whatsoever to educational resources.

Overview

00:00-00:45 Intros

00:45-04:01 Young people at the juvenile detention center

04:01-05:30 Structure of the educational program

05:30-07:51 School of One

07:51-11:51 Communication with high schools about student needs

11:51-13:40 Offering social emotional support within the detention center

13:40-14:37 Cultural responsiveness; effects of Ohio’s high-stakes testing

14:37-16:24 Interactions with students’ families

16:24-17:02 Transitions back to high schools

17:02-17:47 Mentorship

17:47-22:00 Ethical issues

22:00-25:13 Ending adjudication of young people to adult jails

25:13- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Students speak up: NYC Youth Agenda

Ethical Schools — Fri, 15 Apr 2022 00:57:43 +0000

We speak with students Eugenia Bamfo, Alexandra Rouvinetis, and Mukilan Muthukumar, members of the NYC Youth Agenda. Using citywide student survey data, Youth Agenda teams aggregated young people’s needs to make recommendations to policymakers in five areas — housing security, food justice, mental health support, economic mobility, and leadership and civic engagement. Among the findings: large numbers of students are unaware of existing youth programs, many don’t trust the “trusted adults” in their schools, and Department of Education “student voice” efforts are tremendously understaffed.

Overview

00:00-01:16 Intros

01:16-03:19 NYC Youth Agenda and its key points

03:19-08:19 Leadership and civic opportunity—issues and recommendations

08:19-12:01 Housing

12:01-13:34 Food insecurity

13:34-14:12 Mutual aid societies

14:12-18:34 Mental health

18:34-19:49 Economic mobility

19:49-21:50 Organizational support from adult groups

21:50-22:49 Policies for schools

22:49-27:28 Policy breakfast and meetings with elected officials and policy makers

27:28-30:15 Funding for proposals

30:15-31:06 Coordination with other youth organizations

31:06-32:07 How listeners can be supportive

32:07- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Why Geoffrey Canada is wrong: Defending schools as democratic spaces

Ethical Schools — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 17:09:16 +0000

We speak with Dr. Brian Jones, director of the New York Public Library’s Center for Educators and Schools, which provides all sorts of free resources to teachers and school administrators. Public schools, for all their flaws, are centers of power and potential for teachers and parents. As a historian, Dr. Jones draws parallels between Booker T. Washington and Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children’s Zone. In the aftermath of civil rights struggles, both accommodated the powerful and opposed collective efforts for systemic change.

Overview

00:00-00:47 Intros

00:47-03:55 Corporate school reforms vs. unions

03:55-09:04 Corporate reforms: who wins, who loses; public schools as a place where everyone is entitled to services

09:04-11:57 School choice and neighborhoods; collective vs. individual change

11:57-19:38 Democratic and Republican support for charters and choice

19:38-23:07 Complicated history of schools and neighborhoods

23:07-24:41 Historical Black leadership in fight for public schools

24:41-30:21 Efforts to separate racial justice from economic justice

30:21-41:47 Booker T. Washington and Geoffrey Canada

41:47-45:46 Implementation of progressive steps: keeping the redistributive potential

45:46-50:51 Jean Anyon

50:51- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Image: www.nysna.org

Supporting student civic activism: Social studies on steroids (Encore)

Ethical Schools — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 00:39:10 +0000

Dr. Alan Singer, Dr. Pablo Muriel, and Gates Millennium Scholar Dennis Belen-Morales, three generations of teachers, describe how they center student activism in their project-based social studies and history classes while giving students the tools to pass the NYS Regents exams. Dr. Singer was Dr. Muriel’s professor in college, and Dr. Muriel was Mr. Belen-Morales’ high school teacher and college professor in turn. Now all three are at Hofstra University.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Abolitionist education: Creating liberatory spaces (Encore)

Ethical Schools — Thu, 17 Mar 2022 00:35:45 +0000

We speak with Swarthmore’s Dr. Edwin Mayorga, who explains how abolitionist classrooms and schools create “freedom as a place” in contrast to racial capitalism. Dr. Mayorga encourages educators to center joy and healing. We also discuss the corporatization of schools that reduces students to their test scores. Schools, as “localized nodes of political power,” should adopt democratic processes that cultivate voice, participation, and collaboration.

Overview

00:00-00:50 Intros

00:50-02:30 Abolitionist education

02:30-04:50 “Freedom as a place”

04:50-08:10 Critical racial ethnic studies; the Sankofa bird

08:10-15:30 Decolonizing education; relationships in the process between colonized and colonizer

15:30-22:30 Intersections of race and class

22:30-26:30 Racial capitalism’s impact in the classroom

26:30-33:30 Kensington Health Sciences Academy (KHSA)

33:30-36:25 Teacher as lead inquirer

36:25-38:30 Moving at the speed of trust

38:30-40:20 Modeling trustworthiness for students

40:20-43:00 How did KHSA become a school focused on trust?

43:00-46:15 Making the shift from a more traditional to a more liberatory school

46:15-49:40 Sustainability after school founder(s) leave

49:40-53:05 Relationships of capital to schools: Now and a century ago

53:05-56:15 Education sovereignty

56:15-59:35 Community land trusts as models for schools

59:35-01:03 Balancing autonomy with accountability

01:03-01:06:20 Humans’ relationships with other animals: Moving away from anthropocentrism

01:06:20-01:10:30 Where the joy is

01:10:30-01:15:55 Takeaways: joys, hope, healing, radical possibilities

01:15:55-01:17 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Image: swarthmore.edu

Gender and sexually diverse students: Creating comfortable schools

Ethical Schools — Thu, 10 Mar 2022 21:56:34 +0000

Overview

00:00-00:40 Intros

00:40-02:23 Title IX coordinators and their challenges

02:23-03:32 Equity directors and their challenges

03:32-05:55 Equity directors: race, class, and gender and sexuality

05:55-07:05 Race as entry point to conversations about other marginalized groups

07:05-08:38 “Gender-creative”—what it means and why use it

08:38:11:01 Impact of school structures on creating comfortable environments

11:01-12:08 Schools as gender-policed spaces

12:08-13:59 Student-led gender audit

13:59-16:29 Transgender students and sports

16:29-17:46 Students are generally more comfortable in conversations about gender and sexual diversity than adults

17:46-19:04 Texas governor’s ban on gender-affirming health care

19:04-22:00 Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill

22:00-23:11 Teacher ed and leadership ed programs

23:11-24:42 How principals can become proactive before a crisis

24:42-26:28 Book banning and “curriculum transparency” bills

26:28-27:04 Life and death situations—“Why aren’t we talking about this in our school?”

27:04-28:05 Comparisons with other countries

28:05- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

Click here to go to Dr. Elizabeth Meyer’s website.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Indigenous erasure: The battle for inclusive state standards in South Dakota

Ethical Schools — Wed, 02 Mar 2022 16:50:19 +0000

Sherry Johnson, tribal education director for the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, an Oceti Sakowin treaty tribe, talks about the efforts to have South Dakota’s students learn about Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota history and culture. South Dakota’s right wing governor and her appointees have rejected state standards that include critical thinking and accurate state history, sparking strong resistance.

Overview

00:00-01:57 Intros, Oceti Sakowin

01:57-05:52 South Dakota social studies standards development process

05:52-14:14 What happened during the development process and after the proposed standards were submitted; erasure of Natives from the standards; strong protests

14:14-15:50 Removal of critical thinking; mention of “culture” forbidden

15:50-17:07 Political context

17:07-20:01 Denial of opportunity to teach true history

20:01-21:07 Effects of protests

21:07-22:50 Resistance to mandating Oceti Sakowin Essential Understandings as part of standards

22:50-25:18 Transfer of the Office of Indian Education from Department of Education to Office of Tribal Affairs and its impact

25:18-30:06 Tribal schools and relationships between tribal schools and non-tribal schools

30:06-30:53 How Wounded Knee is taught in public schools

30:53-31:33 Teacher preparation programs and Oceti Sakowin history

31:33-35:34 Significance of what’s happening in South Dakota

35:34-36:03 How people outside of South Dakota can be supportive

36:03- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Students doing original research: Project-based learning in Ohio (Encore)

Ethical Schools — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 13:52:24 +0000

We speak with middle school teachers, Debbie Holecko and Claudia Bestor, and their former student, Rafel Alshakergi, about a student-led research project that led to ethical civic engagement. Rafel explains how the experience emboldened her to ask questions and “speak [her] mind.” The project, which got national attention, cut against Ohio’s high-stakes test orientation; many teachers are afraid to do project-based learning because Ohio doesn’t have tenure and bases 40% of teacher evaluation on student test scores. The teachers discuss how to meet standards through project-based learning. This interview is just a joy to listen to!

Overview

00:00-00:42 Intro

00:42-02:23 Assignment

02:23-07:01 Projects

07:01-08:08 Student reactions to doing original research

08:08-13:47 “Colored graves” cemetery project

13:47-17:44 Project’s impact on students

17:44-19:50 Effect on understanding North Olmstead and its history

19:50-21:18 Students’ realization of their ability to make change

21:18-23:01 George Floyd’s death and BLM demonstrations

23:01-25:14 Relationships among teachers/students

25:14-27:47 Teachers and students learning together

27:47-29:35 Integrating language arts and social studies in practice

29:35-32:06 Meeting the ELA standards

32:06-36:04 Smooth and effective collaborative teaching

36:04-42:12 Inquiry learning and Ohio’s test-driven system

42:12-43:45 Students’ identifying as readers

43:45-50:27 Dewey on schools’ role in preparing students for democratic citizenship

50:27-55:31 Professional networking: Facing History and Ourselves; Landmark workshops/seminars

55:31-55:49 Rafel as immigrant student

55:49-56:47 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Media Coverage of the project: on the NYTimes, on Cleveland 19, and on News 5 Cleveland.
Watch Rafel talking about the project.

National Sex Ed Standards: Equity and expanded comfort zones

Ethical Schools — Fri, 11 Feb 2022 23:48:25 +0000

We speak with Brittany McBride, Associate Director, Sexuality Education at Advocates for Youth, who partners with schools to provide the complete sex education that all students deserve. Though parents, students, and teachers largely agree on sex ed’s importance, few teachers (other than health teachers and PE coaches) have any formal training, and many parents haven’t had sex ed themselves.

Overview

00:00-00:26 Intros

00:26-00:56 Advocates for Youth

00:56-01:57 National Sex Education Standards; why they matter

01:57-02:36 How the Standards were developed

02:36-03:38 Key elements of the Standards

03:38-04:08 Teacher autonomy

04:08-06:00 Range of state standards across the country

06;00-07:47 Relationship between state and national standards

07:47-09:02 Adaptation guide

09:02-10:21 Helping teachers become comfortable teaching sex ed

10:21-13:37 Virtual Professional Development; what it is, how to access it

13:37-14:31 Advocates for Youth’s capacity

14:31-15:59 Pre-service training on sex ed: who gets it and who doesn’t

15:59-18:22 Teachers asked to teach sex ed without advance preparation

18:22-21:46 Resistance to/support for sex ed

21:46-23:49 How parents can support/defend sex ed

23:49-26:03 Many parents say they haven’t had sex ed themselves; resources

26:03-28:42 Facts and values. parent involvement

28:423-30:00 Teaching/learning about consent and impact of actions on others; decision-making

30:00- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Dismantling bias in schools: A multiyear model

Ethical Schools — Sat, 05 Feb 2022 00:34:08 +0000

We speak with Dr. John Pascarella, Chief Academic Officer of K-12 Professional Learning at USC Race and Equity Center. The Center works with schools to identify disparate outcomes for students and strategies to eliminate them. Dr. Pascarella discusses the need for educators to stand up against systemic bias as it occurs in daily school life. He points out that we need to be aware that we are all inevitably involved in differential power relationships and offers suggestions for teachers engaging in ongoing self-reflection.

Overview

00:00-00:37 Intros

00:37-01:39 USC Race and Equity Center

01:39-03:49 What precipitates involvement with a district or school?

03:49-06:48 What happens when people from a school ask the Center for involvement?

06:48-10:53 Conditions for involvement

10:53-15:31 Defining implicit bias

15:31-17:52 Individual and systemic bias

17:52-23:57 Ways of addressing both individual and systemic bias

23:57-29:37 Strategies for working with teachers who are resistant

29:37-33:16 What happens when school leaders leave

33:16-37:02 Racial Equity Leadership Academy and COSAs project in LA Unified School District

37:02-41:41 Parent involvement

41:41- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

USC Race & Equity Center website

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Mentors and passages: The power of teen-centric programs

Ethical Schools — Sat, 29 Jan 2022 00:14:00 +0000

We speak with Al Kurland, longtime leader of out-of-school-time programs in Upper Manhattan’s Washington Heights. Mr. Kurland founded youth programs that help teens to “rewrite their stories” with the support of adult and peer mentors. He collaborated with other local youth organizations, creating a cluster of empowering and horizon-broadening experiences for students, helping many expand “tunnel vision.”

Overview

00:00-00:39 Intros

00:39-04:50 Washington Heights community and its youth

04:50-09:05 What made programs successful

09:05-12:48 The Dreamers

12:48-15:15 Teens changing from fatalism to purpose

15:15-17:47 Teen-centric programming and its impact on young people

17:47-23:01 Increased isolation of teens in “modern” compared to traditional societies

23:01-27:38 Meaningful rites of passage

27:38-33:06 Storytelling, mentors, co-mentors

33:06-35:03 How schools can enhance adolescents’ sense of efficacy; action civics

35:03-39:35 Suggestions for starting a youth program

39:35- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Book “The Soul of Adolescence Aligns with the Heart of Democracy” by Alfred H Kurland
Generation Citizen Vote 16 initiative
CUNY SPS Youth Studies Program – Collaborative for Advancing Youth Development’s

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

From Skinner to computer-based education: Can machines teach?

Ethical Schools — Fri, 21 Jan 2022 19:11:08 +0000

We speak with independent journalist Audrey Watters, author of “Teaching machines: The history of personalized learning,” about the origins of teaching machines and the pedagogies that incorporate mechanical devices for teaching and learning. Ms. Watters explains how BF Skinner’s emphasis on behaviorism, in combination with commercial opportunism, has led in some cases to the supplanting of teachers by computer software.

Overview

00:00-00:37 Intros

00:37-01:33 Significance of the book title

01:33-04:19 What personalized learning is

04:19-05:40 Teaching machines and today’s computers

05:40-09:06 Encouraging students to find their interests: how humans are better than computers

09:06-10:29 How choices are presented in personalized study tools

10:29-12:10 Responsibility of adults to help students experience things they don’t even know they don’t know

12:10-15:35 “Dewey lost and Thorndike won,” “Skinner won and Papert lost”

15:35-17:58 B.F. Skinner

17:58-21:04 Economics of technology in schools

21:04-26:38 “Technology shapes education; education shapes technology and capitalism and white supremacy shape both”

26:38-30:01 Algorithms and their problems

30:01-32:35 Can software be a useful supplement to constructivist or project-based learning; why don’t we invest in humans?

32:35-34:39 Underlying reasons why Dewy and Papert lost to Thorndike and Skinner

34:39-36:51 Education is the “practice of care”

36:51-40:23 Lessons from the pandemic

40:23-44:30 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Book “Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning”
Audrey Watters’ website

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Image: Columbia University (YouTube channel)

Radical care: Leading with love

Ethical Schools — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 21:24:02 +0000

We speak with Dr. Rosa Rivera-McCutchen, associate professor of leadership studies at Lehman College, CUNY, about the importance of school leaders and teachers practicing radical care, including listening with intent and addressing skill gaps with honesty. Dr. Rivera-McCutchen talks about the importance of teachers getting to know the life of the neighborhoods around their schools.

Overview

00:00-00:50 Intros

00:50-02:57 Meaning of the book title, ”Radical Care”

02:57- 04:55 Five components of radical care

04:55-08:00 Creating a culture of radical care

08:00-10:27 Graduate students’ reactions to going on walking tours into the communities of their schools

10:27-12:21 Listening, reflecting, not selling students short

12:21:16:45 How principals can create authentic relationships with staff

16:47-20:07 Working and talking with teachers who are burned out or not interested in change

20:07-23:38 Balancing demands for excellence with realities of skills gaps

23:38-31:16 Talking with graduate school students, teachers, students about gaps in their skills

31:16-34:53 How school leaders can leverage their power strategically for change

34:53-38:09 Hw school leaders can avoid burnout

38:09-43:40 Need for change in teaching and leadership education programs

43:40- Outro

Transcript

Click here to listen to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Book “Radical Care: Leading for Justice in Urban Schools” by Dr. Rosa Rivera

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Efforts to ban books escalate: Tips for resistance

Ethical Schools — Thu, 06 Jan 2022 21:00:00 +0000

We speak with Dr. Richard Price, associate professor of political science at Weber State University, about recent attempts to ban books, especially those about GLBTQIA+ people and people of color, from classrooms and school libraries across the country. (Spoiler alert: it’s not only in red states). Dr. Price offers strategies for teachers, principals, and school districts for responding to book challenges.

Overview

00:00-00:40 Intros

00:40-01:27 Becoming involved in anti-censorship work

01:27-02:36 Anti-diversity activists: who they are and what materials they target

02:36-03:43 Where book challenges are taking place

03:43-06:22 Current censorship efforts compared to past ones

06:22-09-07 Challenges, district responses, and outcomes

09:07-12:17 Steps administrators and teachers can take when there are complaints

12:17-14:10 Mechanics of opt-outs

14:30-16:06 Training and resources for teachers

16:06-18:18 Objections to “white savior” books or books with the N-word

18:18-20:06 Self-censorship

20:06-22:33 Responding to challenges based on N-word

22:33-26:46 Roles of American Library Association and other resource organizations

26:46- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Systemic racism in special education: Parent participation legitimizes inequities (Encore)

Ethical Schools — Fri, 31 Dec 2021 00:37:18 +0000

We continue our conversation with LaToya Baldwin Clark of UCLA School of Law. Dr. Baldwin Clark explains how the special education system advantages White middle class families. Poor families and families of color tend to lack cultural capital to navigate the system and advocate effectively for their children. While resources flow to White children with special needs, Black children tend to be stigmatized and placed in more restrictive settings. Dr. Baldwin Clark offers recommendations.

Overview

00:00-01:00 Intros

01:00-01:54 Racial disparities in special education

01:54-06:41 How White parents/children benefit from social and cultural capital in special education process

06:41-08:59 Parental participation fails to protect Black children from segregation in special education placements

08:59-14:01 Process of mandated parental participation exacerbates/legitimizes racial inequities

14:01-20:22 Racial breakdown of children placed in more or less restrictive special education environments; greater physical segregation of Black children

20:22-21:53 Suspensions and expulsions

21:53-24:13 Recommendations for change

24:13-28:42 Disproportional suspensions of Black youth; biases and stereotypes of Black girls

28:42-29:51 Responsibility of school districts to ensure White middle class students do not get more resources

29:51-32:46 Need to educate White middle-class parents about equitable distribution of resources

32:46-34:15 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Listen to our first conversation with Dr. Baldwin Clark: “Policing attendance boundaries: Education as private property”
Innovations in Equity and Systemic Change (IESC) of NYC Metro Center

Policing attendance boundaries: Education as private property (Encore)

Ethical Schools — Thu, 23 Dec 2021 02:13:08 +0000

We speak with Dr. LaToya Baldwin Clark, assistant professor at UCLA School of Law. Dr. Baldwin Clark explains how school boundaries are used for racial exclusion. In many cases, schools don’t just reflect, but cause, segregated neighborhoods. Dr. Baldwin Clark argues that closing the education gap isn’t just about bringing up the bottom, but bringing down the top as well. Parents, teachers, and administrators need to work together to prevent children from benefiting from unearned privilege. Inequality is intrinsically detrimental.

Overview

00:00-00:57 Intros

00:57-03:12 Schools are not preparing all students to be lifelong learners

03:12-13:16 Education as property; cultural and social capital

13:16-15:28 Schools as community enterprises

15:28-18:20 “Schooling in Capitalist America;” caste; legacies of slavery

18:20-21:32 Enforcement of school district boundaries

21:32-25:28 School segregation and housing segregation

25:28-28:20 “Bringing up the bottom and bringing down the top”; reducing the relative distance between the bottom and the top

28:20-31:30 Making the gap less consequential

31:30-35:10 What Culver City (CA) is doing to address inequality in a relative way

35:10-37:44 Implications for Black students when “good schools” look like “White schools”

37:44-40:50 Aggressions and microaggressions in predominantly White schools

40:50-42:15 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

Book Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life by Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis
Dr. Baldwin Clark’s website
Dr. Baldwin Clark’s medium

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Climate education: not just for science class

Ethical Schools — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 15:54:07 +0000

We speak with Dr. Deb L. Morrison, research scientist at the University of Washington School of Education, about centering climate science throughout the K-12 curriculum. Dr. Morrison talks about ClimeTime, a Washington State-funded program that teaches how to engage in climate science and climate justice education across disciplines, and describes nationally-available resources. She emphasizes the importance of integrating society, technology, and science education and says that climate science can be taught even in very conservative areas through place-based education, addressing what matters to kids in their communities.

Overview

00:00-00:35 Intros

00:35-03:32 ClimeTime: What it is, how it is funded

03:32-06:05 Climate change education and climate justice

06:05-07:36 Mentorship, all of us learning

07:36-10:34 Project-based learning; action civics

10:34-13:02 Teaching science as it actually works

13:02-16:54 Engaging conservative communities while teaching climate science

16:54-18:44 Socioecological systems; humans’ relationships with each other and with nature

18:44-19:57 The doughnut economy

19:57-22:05 Society, technology & science (STS) as an interdisciplinary field

22:05-26:28 Examples of teaching STS, place-based learning

26:28-29:13 Collaborations among colleges in Washington and Oregon

29:13-33:32 Resources for teaching climate change, including industrial farming

33:32-37:38 Action for Climate Empowerment at national and international levels

37:38- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Distortions and fabrications: The state of climate education

Ethical Schools — Thu, 09 Dec 2021 00:19:15 +0000

We speak with Katie Worth, investigative journalist and author of Miseducation: How Climate Change is Taught in America. Ms. Worth explores what children across the country are taught, or not taught, about climate change. In 24 states, oil and gas company representatives teach children about the wonders of fossil fuels, downplaying or denying their climate impacts. With an eye on sales in Texas, textbooks falsely depict a scientific debate over climate science, and often cover it in the last unit of the last chapter.

Overview

00:00-00:46 Intros

00:46-02:33 Patterns in what children are (and aren’t) being taught about climate change

02:33-03:30 Pre-service training about teaching climate change

03:30-04:52 Climetime in Washington state

04:52-05:55 Professional development resources

05:55-08:22 State science standards and climate change

08:22-12:24 Textbooks and climate change

12:24-15:20 Public/private partnerships that provide climate change programming

15:20-18:47 Oklahoma’s Energy Resources Board

18:47-22:08 Pressures teachers face in teaching accurate science

22:08-25:43 Cloaking religion in academic sounding language

25:43-27:44 Discovery Institute

27:44-29:45 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Book Miseducation: How Climate Change Is Taught in America by Katie Worth

Doing democracy: School participatory budgeting

Ethical Schools — Thu, 02 Dec 2021 18:53:42 +0000

We speak with Dr. Daniel Schugurensky and Tara Bartlett of Arizona State University and Madison Rock of the Center for the Future of Arizona about school participatory budgeting in Arizona and worldwide. Students, and sometimes parents and school staff, determine how a pool of money will be spent. By participating in democratic, meaningful decision-making, students become acclimated to civic engagement. Trust and other positive elements of school climate increase as well.

Overview

00:00-01:04 Intros

01:04-04:36 Overview of School Participatory Budgeting (SPB)

04:36-05:17 Arizona State University involvement

05:17-08:58 Roles of teachers and administrators

08:58-10:37 Amounts and allocations of money

10:37-16:20 Models of student participation

16:20-19:29 School day and afterschool activities; registration of students as adult voters

19:29-21:52 Roles of external organizations

21:52-23:00 Timespans of SPB processes

23:00-24:21 Changes in the school

24:21-31:05 Design factors for effectiveness

31:05-36:41 Impacts on student engagement during and after the SPB processes

36:41-38:42 “Mini-public”: involving all students, especially those beyond the “usual suspects”

38:42-42:58 Phoenix Union H.S. District (PUHSD) PB for alternatives to police school resource officers

42:58-45:03 Public response to PUHSD PB project

45:03-47:30 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the transcription of this episode.

References

School Participatory Budgeting: A Toolkit for Inclusive Practice
KASP + SC Indicators (civic knowledge, skills, attitudes, skills, and practices + school climate): link to the survey
The Center for the Future of Arizona is a nonprofit organization bringing Arizonans together to create a stronger and brighter future for our state. CFA understands that we need strong and vibrant civic health to move forward on solving problems and building a bright future for our state. Evidence and experience have shown that the health of our democracy and civic life is linked to our broader individual and community well-being in meaningful ways. We know that more connected communities are more economically resilient, individuals who participate in civic life have greater access to opportunity and well-being, and policies are more responsive when everyone is engaged. Driven by this deep commitment to civic health, CFA’s School Participatory Budgeting (SPB) program is an innovative approach to equipping, engaging, and empowering our rising generation to be active and informed participants in civic life. Learn more about CFA and the SPB program at arizonafuture.org.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Gender Inclusivity: Where Science and Ethics Intersect (Encore)

Ethical Schools — Wed, 24 Nov 2021 23:45:04 +0000

We speak with high school science teachers and trans men, Sam Long and Lewis Maday-Travis, who have developed resources and trainings to help biology teachers develop gender-inclusive curricula. Science tells us that sexual and gender diversity is both normal and positive.

References

To know more about Lewis and Sam’s projects, please go to sam-long.weebly.com, fishyteaching.com and transeducators.com.

Overview

00:00:54 Introductions

00:56-03:19 Experiences as LGBTQ high school students

03:20-06:15 As teachers, coming out as trans men to colleagues and students

06:16-11:13 Key elements of a gender-inclusive biology curriculum

11:14-16:26 Working to help make other teachers’ instruction more accurate and inclusive

16:27-19:38 How teachers respond to trans students’ lied experience

19:39-21:42 Relevance of Dewey’s ethical framework

21:43-29:21 Success stories in demarginalizing students

29:22-30:51 How teachers can develop this work

30:52 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Changing school culture: The Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM)

Ethical Schools — Fri, 19 Nov 2021 19:59:35 +0000

We continue our conversation with Dr. David Osher of the American Institutes for Research, delving deeper into the CBAM approach to school culture change. Dr Osher describes a study he and colleagues conducted, following every student who had been suspended in New York City over ten years. The study confirmed that exclusionary suspension has damaging impacts throughout a student’s academic career and beyond and has damaging impact on other students in the student’s classes as well.

Overview

00:00-00:47 Intro

00:47-10:13 CBAM (Concerns Based Adoption Model)

10:13- 20:34 Impacts of exclusionary discipline on suspended students

20:34-24:17 Need to systematically create alternatives

24:17-29:11 Impact of exclusionary discipline on other students

29:11-30:18 Meaning-making

30:18- Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Listen to the first part of this interview: “The right to thrive: Expanding our definition of equity”

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Image from the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education YouTube channel

The right to thrive: Expanding our definition of equity

Ethical Schools — Sat, 13 Nov 2021 20:52:15 +0000

We speak with Dr. David Osher of the American Institutes for Research. Dr. Osher explains his view of robust equity, that all people deserve to thrive, and that thriving occurs holistically over the course of a lifetime, and even intergenerationally. People thrive in concert with others. We discuss the conditions in a school that foster both individual and group thriving, and those that don’t, in particular, exclusionary discipline. This is Part One of a two part interview.

Overview

00:00-00:48 Intros

00:48-06:00 Thinking about thriving

06:00-14:45 How schools can create conditions where everyone thrives

14:45-17:40 Schools and children’s identities

17:40-24:21 Trauma sensitive schools; distinctions between trauma-sensitive and trauma-informed

24:21-32:21 Strengths and limitations of SEL as practiced in many schools

32:21-42:39 Equity-focused programs in Austin Independent School District; developing alternatives to exclusionary discipline; Concerns Based Adoption Model

42:39 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Photo by Patricia Prudente/Unsplash

Anna Allanbrook on Brooklyn New School: Centering children, marginalizing tests (Encore)

Ethical Schools — Wed, 03 Nov 2021 19:42:32 +0000

We speak with Anna Allanbrook, longtime principal of Brooklyn New School (BNS). Learning at BNS is inquiry-based and cross-disciplinary. As well, BNS is known as the “opt-out school” because 95% of families opt out of standardized testing. The school offers no test preparation.

References

Find more about the Brooklyn New School on bns146.org

Overview

00:05-01:11 Intros

01:12- 01:58 Key principles of Brooklyn New School

01:59-04:05 Relationships

04:06-06:05 Who seeks the school out and why

06:06-07:30 Why the special needs population is relatively high (30%)

07:31-09:15 English Language Learners

09:16-11:29 Making parents comfortable who are used to a more traditional teaching style

11:30-13:28 Differentiating reading instruction

13:29-21:12 Standardized testing and opt-out

21:13-22:38 Performance-based assessment

22:39-25:18 Social emotional learning (SEL)

25:19-27:04 Relationship between SEL and opt-out

27:05-28:52 “Trust is at the heart of everything”

28:53-30:30 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the transcription of the episode.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

The People’s Education: Freire, dialogue, and democracy

Ethical Schools — Sat, 30 Oct 2021 16:17:56 +0000

We continue our conversation with Dr. Carlos Alberto Torres, Distinguished Professor at UCLA and Founding Director of the Paulo Freire Institute. Dr. Torres speaks about Freire’s contention that communities should define the work that goes on in schools. He explains Freire’s emphasis on dialogue as integral to education. Whereas Dewey focused on children and the tools to instill democratic values and critical thinking, Freire was most interested in education as political deliberation. And, at this point, the stakes are not only democracy but sustainability of the planet.

Overview

00:00-00:45 Intros

00:45-10:21 Popular education in public schools—how to resolve contradictions

10:21-16:27 Concepts of community

16-27-26:16 Freire and Dewey

26:16-32:30 “People are not born democrats.”; global citizenship and sustainability

32:30-34:18 Sustainability in daily life

34:18-39:58 Decoloniality

39:58-41:14 Reading recommendations

41:14-43:40 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Listen to the first part of this interview: Global citizenship education: Building on the legacy of Paulo Freire.
Book Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Critical Global Citizenship Education by Carlos Alberto Torres.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Image: globalsocialtheory.com

Global citizenship education: Building on the legacy of Paulo Freire

Ethical Schools — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 22:47:13 +0000

We speak with Carlos Alberto Torres, Distinguished Professor at UCLA. Dr. Torres worked closely with Paulo Freire and now directs the UCLA Paulo Freire Institute. He argues that we need to create a model of ethics education that combines social justice and natural justice, or sustainability. Freire viewed the planet as an oppressed entity. We talk about creating a political culture in our schools that centers peace and the global commons, what in other places is called civic culture. Part one of a two-part interview.

Overview

00:00-00:42 Intros

00:42-04:07 Global citizenship education

04:07-13:41 Principles of global citizenship education; global ethic of the global commons

13:41-17:12 Democracy under threat

17:12-23:44 Integrating the global commons into schools; civic culture

23:44-28:49 What this looks like in classrooms

28:49-30:52 How can public schools become sites of social justice?

30:52-33:00 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Book Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Critical Global Citizenship Education by Carlos Alberto Torres. New York and London, Routledge/Taylor and Francis, 2017.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Image: peoplesworld.org

Engaging young black men in school: What we can learn from art class (Encore)

Ethical Schools — Wed, 13 Oct 2021 22:56:57 +0000

Dr. Don Siler, a researcher and inservice teacher educator, himself a former high school dropout, discusses how art classrooms invite students to be themselves, to explore their lived experiences, and to work on projects that mean something to them. Student engagement in the art classroom can be leveraged across subject areas by incorporating both the arts and art-based pedagogy throughout the curriculum. Student outcomes improve when we broaden the ways in which students get information, process the information, and demonstrate their understanding of the information.

Overview

00:00-00:34 Intros

00:35-9:34 Don Siler’s experiences and their influence on his areas of interest

9:35-11:03 “Game of school”

11:04-18:03 A phenomenological study of several young Black men in an 8th grade art class

18:04-20:24 Kinds of engagement: emotional, cognitive, and behavioral

20:25-23:38 Studio thinking

23:39-32:48 Arts funding/cuts; fundamental value of the arts as “basic expression of human experience”; “upside down to make arts subservient to ELA even though they do improve test scores

32:49-37:36 Arts-based pedagogy across the curriculum

37:37-46:33 Neuro-education; Multiple intelligences; examples; David Sousa; Howard Gardner

46:34-49:13 Experience-based culturally responsive education; Sousa, Ladson-Billings; Paris

49:14-53:06 Teacher training for culturally responsive classrooms

53:07-56:50 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of the episode.

References

Book Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education by by Lois Hetland, Ellen Winner, Shirley Veenema, Kymberly Sheridan, and David Perkins
Book InterViews: An Introduction to Qualitative Research Interviewing by Steinar Kvale
Book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences by Howard Gardner
Authors: David Sousa and Thomas Armstrong

Math literacy: Every student’s right (Part 2)

Ethical Schools — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 13:27:56 +0000

We continue our conversation with Dr. Terri Bucci of the Mathematics Literacy Initiative at OSU’s Mansfield campus. Dr. Bucci observes that we rarely ask children how they learn best. MLI’s implementation of the Algebra Project changes the classroom culture, giving agency to even the youngest students. “We have to get rid of ‘sharecropper education.'” Dr. Bucci talks about the constitutional amendment that Bob Moses envisioned, guaranteeing a quality education to every child.

Overview

00:00-00:25 Intros

00:25-03:56 Preparing students for standardized tests

03:56-06:30 Mathematics Literacy Initiative’ influence in Ohio and elsewhere

06:30-14:10 Ending “sharecropper education”

14:10-17:58 Fighting for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing a quality education

17:58-26:34 “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” and working with teachers in Haiti

26:34-28:45 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Click here to listen to the first part of our conversation with Dr. Terri Bucci.
Mathematics Literacy Initiative (website)

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Image from mansfield.osu.edu/initiatives/math-literacy-initiative

Math literacy: Every student’s right

Ethical Schools — Thu, 30 Sep 2021 16:32:50 +0000

We speak with Dr. Terri Bucci of the Mathematics Literacy Initiative at Ohio State University, Mansfield. Beginning in kindergarten, the MLI builds on Bob Moses’s Algebra Project. Like reading and writing literacies, students need to understand the language of math to succeed in today’s world. Through shared experiences and reflections, the MLI makes math accessible and fun. This is Part One of a two-part interview.

Overview

00:00-00:41 Intros

00:41-05:20 The Math Literacy Initiative (MLI)—what it is

05:20-18:56 The Algebra Project’s 5-Step Curricular Process

18:56-21:42 The MLI’s students

21:42-24:16 “All people should see themselves as mathematicians.”

24:16-27:16 Thinking of “everyone seeing themselves as mathematicians” as an ethical issue

27:16-31:12 Defining what it means to “be good at math?”

31:12-39:14 “Abuse” of students in traditional math classes; power and control in classes and in statewide governance of schools

39:14-41:49 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Mathematics Literacy Initiative (website)

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Malign neglect: School systems fail immigrant students

Ethical Schools — Fri, 24 Sep 2021 13:20:12 +0000

We welcome back Stephanie Carnes, a school social worker who has worked extensively with Central American immigrant students and their families. School systems are designed for homogenous student populations, rather than the diverse reality. Despite new immigrants’ high motivation levels, they often fail for lack of support. School social workers could help design asset-based programs but often aren’t given a seat at the table.

Overview

00:00-00:48 Intros
00:48-02:34 Pandemic magnified structural inequities of American school system
02:34-09:05 Education system fails Central American immigrant students
09:05-13:08 What school districts can do
13:08-16:30 Collaborative system redesign needed
16:30-17:46 Collaborative vs. siloed school environments
17:46-19:31 What individual teachers can do
19:31-21:35 In a survey, BIPOC school social workers reported lower burnout levels than white social workers
21:35-23:00 Monocultural and bicultural identities
23:00-25:40 Confusion and conflict in schools about role of social worker
25:40-27:30 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Click here to listen to our first interview with Stephanie Carnes “Post-traumatic growth and resilience: Creating safe environments for Central American immigrant children”.

Leaving students behind: The tyranny of testing

Ethical Schools — Thu, 16 Sep 2021 22:17:46 +0000

Bob Schaeffer, Executive Director of FairTest, talks about high-stakes standardized tests as barriers to equal opportunity. Fairer college admissions criteria are increasing admissions diversity, but well-funded supporters of high-stakes tests are still resisting replacement of the tests in elementary and secondary schools. Many schools eliminated high-stakes testing during the pandemic, and FairTest supports making high-stakes waivers or repeals permanent.

Overview

00:00-00:46 Intros

00:46-01:31 FairTest’s objectives

01:31-02:22 Most success in higher ed

02:22-03:40 Changes in test use in college admissions

03:40-05:20 Affect on affirmative action

05:20-06:48 Relative costs in time and money of alternative measures for college admissions

06:48-07:33 Admission of foreign students

07:33-08:47 High stakes testing in other countries

08:47-10:48 Changes in high stakes testing in K-12

10:48 13:05 Resistance to changes in K-12 testing

13:05-15:17 Organizations who oppose changes; National PTA changed its position and began to support testing after Gates Foundation funding

15:17-16:59 Black parents’ concerns about wanting an “objective measure” of their child’s knowledge and why standardized tests don’t provide that

16:59-18:45 Alternatives to high stakes testing

18:45-20:09 False promises of improving academic quality and reducing gaps

20:09-21:57 Appropriate role for standardized tests

21:57-23:34 Testing and regulation of charter schools

23:34-24:50 Corporations in testing-industrial complex

24:50-28:39 AP testing and College Board

28:39-30:45 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

fairtest.org

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Theory meets practice: no magic carrots

Ethical Schools — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 15:08:48 +0000

We continue our conversation with Dr. Garrett Broad of Fordham University, talking about high school and college students’ experiences working with non-profits and about what students know/should learn about food and food justice. Students often join non-profits with unrealistic expectations. There are tensions between keeping the organization afloat and pursuing radical change.There are no silver bullets; entrenched problems have complex solutions.

Overview

00:00-00:34 Intros

00:34-06:28 Critique of non-profits

06:28-10:26 High school students’ understanding of food/food justice

10:26-14:12 Gardens, illusions, and social change—no magic carrots

14:12-18:00 Organizations that effectively integrate food into organizing

18:00-22:52 Helping student connect theory and practice

22:52-24:35 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Identity vs branding: The power of messiness

Ethical Schools — Thu, 02 Sep 2021 19:40:27 +0000

Part One of a two-part interview. We speak with Dr. Garrett Broad of Fordham University about social media and how it informs student outlooks. One of Dr. Broad’s key objectives is to help students to be comfortable with the messiness–the fluidity and complexity–of identity and to resist the pressure to be fully formed, branded. High school teachers can help students to understand the factors that shape people’s perspectives.They can encourage students to be open-minded, cultivate intellectual humility, and “show up” for social justice.

Overview

00:00-00:57 Intros

00:57-02:42 Critical thinking by students

02:42-05:39 Branding vs. identity

05:39-09:17 The “messiness” of identity

09:17-12:56 Thinking by students about the ethical implications of their work plans

12:56:-15:06 Networked movements for social justice

15:06-19:31 Social media’s impact on students’ views

19:31-21:21 Social media and intergroup conflict/understanding

21:21-26:17 Things high school teachers can do

26:17-30:30 Town-gown collaborations

30:30-32:15 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Transitions to adulthood: Supporting teens with mental health issues

Ethical Schools — Thu, 26 Aug 2021 02:35:48 +0000

We speak with Dr. Marsha Ellison and Evelyn Frankford about assisting students with serious mental health challenges make transitions from high school. These students often don’t receive the supports they want and need, especially finding work or navigating college disability accommodations. Long-term relationships with a knowledgeable adult and positive youth development strategies can make a difference—but require commitments of time and money.

Overview

00:00-00:52 Intros

00:52-02:45 Numbers of students with serious mental health conditions

02:45-06:47 Schools’ capacity to recognize and serve students with serious mental health conditions

06:47-09:47 Responding to students’ needs and motivations—a positive youth development model

09:47-14:54 Strategies; intensity of relationship building; problems with the Medicaid model

14:54-15:40 Looking at the whole context of where the youth is coming from

15:40-18:23 Transitions from high school—counselors’ limitations; supporting and improving counselors’ capacity

18:23-27:02 Special ed reforms to support successful transitions

27:02-29:55 Moving from punitive to supportive approaches to behavioral issues

29:55-32:22 Participatory action research

32:22-35:08 Ethical issues in psychiatry’s (and social work’s) history and practice

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

”No excuses” charter schools: Teaching to the script

Ethical Schools — Thu, 19 Aug 2021 14:03:07 +0000

We speak with Dr. Joanne Golann of Vanderbilt University, author of “Scripting the Moves: Culture and Control in a No Excuses Charter School.” Corporate-run charter networks instill obedience and conformity above all else, leaving nothing to chance (or creativity). We look at the academic and social outcomes of “no excuses” schools, and the reasons for their lavish funding.

Overview

00:00-00:51 Intros

00:51-03:35 “No excuses” charter schools: what they are; what they do well; what they do poorly or not at all

03:35-05:35 Scripts for students and teachers and why these schools rely on them

05:35-07:05 Impact of scripts on students

07:05- 09:34 Teachers’ reactions; turnover rates

09:34-12:34 How students do after graduation

12:34-14:04 Selection process and its effects

14:04-15:23 Student attrition rates

15:23-17:43 “No excuses” results in schools without selection processes

17:43-18:48 Seen as a niche or solution to the system as a whole?

18:48-20:38 Impact of district public schools in their area

20:38-21:42 Types of citizenship skills that are developed and not developed

21:42-22:54 Individual-focused approach to equity

22:54-24:17 Parents’ roles

24:17-25:57 Relationships with communities

25:57-27:32 Difficulties in attempts to change “no excuses” culture in aftermath of George Floyd’s murder

27:32-30:15 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Scripting the Moves book page at Princeton University Press
Book review from Washington Post
“Why are no-excuses schools moving beyond no excuses?” – Opinion piece from Hechinger Report
“I spent a year and a half at a ‘no-excuses’ charter school – this is what I saw” – Opinion piece from the Conversation
Joanne Gollan’s personal website

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Disrupting power structures: Organizing youth for equity in schools

Ethical Schools — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 11:59:14 +0000

We speak with Keith Catone, executive director of CYCLE, the Center for Youth & Community Leadership in Education at Roger Williams University. CYCLE helps students, those who are most affected by school policies, to destabilize systemic power hierarchies, and encourages teachers to adopt an “organizing disposition.” Through trainings and ongoing support, CYCLE helps community youth organizations to build capacity, alliances, and power to achieve equity-based change.

Overview

00:00-00:43 Intros
00:43-03:16 Keith Catone’s journey as teacher and activist
03:16-07:42 Definitions: Organizer, direct action, activist
07:42-11:40 Center for Youth and Community Leadership in Education (CYCLE);what it is, what it does; and theory of change
11:40-19:59 “Organizing disposition for educators,” with examples
19:59-23:12 What youth organizations want
23:12-26:19 What an ethical school community looks like
26:19-28:15 Scalability of process rather than “product”
28:15-30:53 Teaching processes in graduate schools of education
30:53-35:40 Parents associations
35:40-39:33 “The Pedagogy of Teacher Activism”
39:33-44:38 Education for Liberation Network
44:38-46:45 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

The Center for Youth and Community Leadership in Education (CYCLE) at Roger Williams University website

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Image from cycle-rwu.org

The power of happiness: A Buddhist approach to secular education

Ethical Schools — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 00:48:10 +0000

We speak with Drs. Isabel Nuñez and Jason Goulah, editors of “Hope and Joy in Education: Engaging Daisaku Ikeda across curriculum and context.” According to Ikeda, the internationally-famous Buddhist philosopher, education should first and foremost engender happiness and instill habits of global citizenship. Drs. Nuñez and Goulah talk about implications for teachers’ classroom practice.

Overview

00:00-00:52 Intros
00:52-02:14 Daisaku Ikeda
02:14-05:10 Ikeda’s central ideas on education
05:10-09:30 Relevance of his ideas to non-Buddhists
09:30-14:41 Concept of global citizenship and teachers’ practice
14:41-20:26 Self-love
20:26-25:35 Inner transformation and social change
25:35-29:57 Relationships of humans to other animals and to future generations
29:57-33:35 Ikeda’s Buddhist humanism and John Dewey’s pragmatism
33:35-36:46 Religion and spirituality
36:46-42:50 Bringing hope and joy into classrooms in 2021-2022
42:50-45:31 Teachers working collectively to create hope and joy
45:31-48:30 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

“Hope and Joy in Education” Book page at Teachers College Press
Institute for Daisaku Ikeda Studies in Education at DePaul University
Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue
Seeing and Cultivating: The Way of Hope and Joy – Essay by Mitch Bogen on the main themes
from Hope and Joy in Education
John Dewey, Daisaku Ikeda, and the Quest for a New Humanism
Jason Goulah faculty page
Isabel Nuñez faculty page

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Photo sokaglobal.org

The Algebra Project: Bob Moses on math literacy as a Civil Right (Encore)

Ethical Schools — Wed, 28 Jul 2021 18:28:00 +0000

Bob Moses died this week. In memoriam, we repost our interview with him from February 2020. The Algebra Project founder and president–and lead organizer of the famous 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer voting rights campaign–talked about math literacy as an organizing tool to guarantee quality public school education for all children. He described the Algebra Project’s strategies to connect math to students’ life experiences and everyday language.

Overview

00:00-1:15 Introductions

01:15-15:05 Math literacy as an organizing tool; experiential learning; Willard Van Orman Quill’s “regimented language”

15:05-16:45 Literacy across the curriculum

16:45-20:35 Logistics of working with schools

20:35-25:53 Bottom up movement; involving students and parents

25:49-32:07 Funding as a critical issue: District 13 in Brooklyn, Miami/Broward County; need for direct federal investment

32:07-48:15 Quality education as a Constitutional right; Who are “We, the People?”; Circular 3591; Douglas Blackmon, Slavery by another name; equitable funding

48:15-50:12 STEM funding, National Science Foundation (NSF)

50:12-43:39 Establishing math literacy and educational quality as a Constitutional right

43:39-55:37 Next Gen curriculum; math texts become obsolete as soon as they are printed

55:37-1:02:57 Flagway game/sport

1:02:57-1:10:07 Relationship of Algebra Project to Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Framework; fundamental metaphors and concepts that can anchor math education

1:10:07-1:15:25 Nicholas Lemann’s “Transaction Man”; coming together at the intersection of different interests around a common problem; Math Literacy Institute at University of Ohio, Mansfield

1:15:25-1:17:17 Calling attention to the need for a national approach

1:17:17 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

Bob Moses, Crusader for Civil Rights and Math Education, Dies at 86 (NYTimes)
Book Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project by Robert P. Moses and Charles E. Cobb
Book Slavery by Another Name The Re Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon
About Circular #3591
About United States x Louisiana
About San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez
Ethical Schools: Mark Santow on Suing Rhode Island For Educational Equal Protection
Ethical Schools: Kate Belin on The Algebra Project
The Algebra Project website

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Photo: algebra.org

Savage inequalities: How school funding intentionally privileges white, wealthy communities (Encore)

Ethical Schools — Wed, 21 Jul 2021 23:10:33 +0000

Zahava Stadler, Policy Director of EdBuild, explains how housing discrimination and state funding policies disadvantage Black and low-income districts. EdBuild has reported on funding schemes throughout the country, documenting a $23 billion annual funding gap between White districts and districts of color. Ms. Stadler describes how states could allocate education dollars more equitably, benefitting at least 70% of students.

References

Access EdBuild’s knowledge base and tools on the website: edbuild.org

Overview

00:00-00:48 Intros

00:48-02:26 How schools are funded in most of the country

02:26-05:02 How reliance on property taxes shortchanges Black and other communities of color; impact of housing discrimination

05:02-08:23 Gerrymandering of school districts to advantage affluent communities

08:23-11:14 Examples of Indianapolis and Columbus school districting boundaries

11:14-13:44 Micro districts

13:44-16:23 Shifting school district funding to county or state levels to eliminate some of the inequalities; 70%+ of students would benefit

16:23-20:12 Funds from outside the formulas exacerbate inequalities

20:12-23:42 Problems with funding formulas

23:42-27:41 What EdBuild accomplished before closing and what is left to do

27:41-30:46 EdBuild reports and tools

30:46-32:39 Relationship of school funding issues to Movement for Black Lives; $23 billion annual funding gap between predominantly White districts and districts of color

32:39-34:30 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Teaching differently about being “modern”: Questioning Western mindsets

Ethical Schools — Wed, 14 Jul 2021 23:12:00 +0000

In our guest episode of Lev Moscow’s podcast, A Correction, Professor Walter Mignolo of Duke discusses decoloniality, a radically different way of thinking and teaching which rejects the “naturalness” of racial capitalism and its development. Lev and Dr. Mignolo discuss what this can look like in high school and college classrooms.

Addressing teachers’ trauma; plus, antiracist teaching in a white classroom

Ethical Schools — Thu, 08 Jul 2021 22:42:52 +0000

We speak with Shayla Ewing, English and drama teacher in Pekin, Illinois, about supporting teachers experiencing secondary and primary trauma, which the pandemic intensified. We also talk about the how and why of teaching about white privilege in an all-white classroom.

Overview

00:00-00:44 Intros

00:44-02:23 Becoming a Pekin High School English and drama teacher

02:23-03:40 Teach Plus Illinois

03:40-04:46 “Compassion fatigue Is overwhelming educators”

04:46-06:54 Symptoms and contributing factors of compassion fatigue

06:54-10:46 Recommendations for compassion fatigue healing, including things to do and not to do

10:46-13:19 Healing for teachers’ own trauma

13:19-16:38 Support for teachers and students in crises

16:38-20:29 Rewards for working unsustainable hours

20:29-24:05 Incorporating educator well-being into educational initiatives

24:05-29:04 Talking about white privilege in all-white classes

29:04-32:57 Students’ reactions

32:57-35:21 Parents’ reactions

35:21-40:11 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

The attack on public education: Will public schools survive?

Ethical Schools — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 01:52:09 +0000

Overview

00:00-00:48 Intros

00:48-01:38 Why “Schoolhouse Burning” is subtitled “Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy”

01:38-03:38 Importance of Reconstruction for government role in education

03:38-06:13 Commitments to education in state constitutions

06:13-08:25 Tension between schools as reproducing social structures and vehicles for social mobility

08:25-16:35 How to achieve equity in school funding

16:35-18:49 Recent voucher laws around the U.S.

18:49-20:47 Vouchers and parochial schools

20:47-22:54 Impact of proliferation of charter schools

22:54-25:02 Why now for vouchers?

25:02-27:08 Why today’s battles over charters and vouchers are undermining the concept of public education

27:08-29:07 Libertarianism and the idea of removing government from education

29:07-30:19 Privatization and race

30:19-33:29 Reducing taxes on the wealthy and long-term reduction in public funding for education

33:29-36:23 Significance of #RedforEd teachers’ strikes

36:23-37:42 Low income parents and charters/vouchers

37:42-39:57 Building a movement that can fight against charter and voucher movements

39:57-42:27 Beyond funding, need for diverse schools

42:27-45:31 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Book Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy by Derek W. Black

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Authentic history: Too uncomfortable for white kids?

Ethical Schools — Thu, 24 Jun 2021 12:33:14 +0000

We speak with Betty Collins, eighth grade teacher in Tulsa County, Oklahoma. Ms. Collins speaks about conservatives’ hostility to Critical Race Theory, which looks at the role of systemic racism in US history. We discuss a just-enacted law in Oklahoma that tries to ban teaching history that may make any students “uncomfortable” and how unions and educators are responding.

Overview

00:00-00:46 Intros

00:46-01:10 Union School District, Tulsa County

00:10-02:10 HB 1775

02:10-02:44 Why HB 1775 was passed

02:44-03:59 Critical Race Theory: Misunderstandings and opposition

03:59-05:07 Educators’ responses to HB 1775

05:07-06:11 Range of the law’s impact in different districts

06:11-08:33 Teaching about Blacks and Native Americans through a Critical Race Theory lens

08:33-09:35 Penalties for teaching accurate history?

09:35-10:30 Relationship between HB 1775 and the state educational standards

10:30-11:07 Black and brown students’ discomfort at their true history not being taught

11:07-12:40 Responding to a parent who doesn’t want their child to be “uncomfortable”

12:40-13:05 When Betty Collins learned about the Tulsa Race Massacre

13:05-14:04 Becoming politically engaged through #RedforEd

14:04-16:24 Encouraging students to be civically engaged

16:24-17:13 #RedforEd

17:13-19:00 Oklahoma’s low school funding levels

19:00-21:51 Impact of George Floyd’s murder

21:51-23:00 Anticipated responses of teachers unions and other educators to HB 1775

23:00-25:23 How Oklahoma schools teach about Native Americans in Oklahoma

25:23-27:45 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

How Oklahoma teachers talked about the Capitol riot with students – The Oklahoman
Four States Have Placed Legal Limits on How Teachers Can Discuss Race. More May Follow – EdWeek

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Painting “The Trail of Tears” by Robert Lindneux (1942)

Air quality in schools: At the intersection of technology and equity

Ethical Schools — Wed, 16 Jun 2021 16:55:17 +0000

We speak with Anisa Heming and Corey Metzger of the U.S. Green Building Council and ASHRAE about a new report on schools’ efforts around the country to protect against COVID-19 by improving indoor air quality. Like so much else about schools, air quality comes down to resources, in this case, for infrastructure and maintenance. Also, there has been no central source of reliable information for district administrators. While COVID-19 has drawn our attention to air circulation and ventilation, there are other reasons to be concerned about air quality. Not only are there other airborne pathogens, but studies show that learning improves with better indoor air quality.

Overview

00:00-01:07 Intros

01:07-02:18 Center for Green Schools and ASHRAE Epidemic Task Force Schools Team

02:18-03:39 “Preparation in the pandemic: How schools Implemented air quality measures to protect occupants from COVID-19”

03:39-05:07 Importance of air quality

05:07-08:28 Air quality and student performance; CO2, VOCs

08:28-18:57 ASHRAE’s and Center for Green Schools’ recommendations for air quality

18:57-23:59 Obstacles to improving air quality

23:59-25:58 Standards and code requirements

25:58-27:14 Impacts of building ages and funding

27:14-29:15 Structural inequities in funding—construction, renovation, and maintenance

29:15-32:33 Big cities and rural districts—common funding issues

32:33-35:12 Difficulties in obtaining information and guidance

35:12-36:45 Equity issues in the future

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Report “Preparation in the Pandemic: How Schools Implemented Air Quality Measures to Protect Occupants from COVID-19” by the Center for Green Schools, with technical support from ASHRAE.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Photo by Allison Shelley of images.all4ed.org

Holistic education: Joy, wellness, and rigor

Ethical Schools — Thu, 10 Jun 2021 12:43:09 +0000

Overview

00:00-00:37 Intros

00:37-02:35 Changes at the Center for Artistry and Scholarship and Perrone-Sizer Institute

02:35-06:54 Why the outdoors is so important in an educational vision

06:54-08:42 Joy, wellness, and rigor

08:42-13:07 Why grit is not enough

13:07-15:47 School systems pervaded by White supremacy

15:17-18:07 The Boston Arts Academy and Perrone-Sizer vision of education

18:07-21:44 Preparing teachers to work at a school like Boston Arts Academy

21:44-25:08 Measuring student success

25:08-29:12 Markers of success on graduation

29:12-31:15 How colleges need to better support students

31:15-36:39 How a principal can support and sustain faculty and the school’s vision in an unsupportive district

36:39-40:50 Dealing with high-stakes testing

40:50-44:58 Dialoguing with parents who disagree with what the school is doing

44:58-47:19 Steps to avoid teacher/administrator burnout

47:19-50:02 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Linda Nathan’s blog
Linda Nathan’s book When Grit Isn’t Enough: A High School Principal Examines How Poverty and Inequality Thwart the College-For-All Promise
The Perrone-Sizer Institute
The Boston Arts Academy
Our interview with Dr. Steven Cohen of Tuft’s Department of Education (mentioned by Linda): “Creating Antiracist Classrooms: Listening and other essential skills”
Intrepid Academy at Hale

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Image from lindanathan.com

Black men as teachers: Recruitment, retention, development, empowerment

Ethical Schools — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 12:48:48 +0000

We speak with Dr. Daman Harris and Dr. Inger Swimpson of Building Our Network of Diversity, the BOND Project, in Montgomery County MD, which provides spaces for Black and Latino men to support one another in their teaching and their lives. Although having Black teachers benefits Black and white children alike, U.S. schools have few Black teachers, and even fewer Black men. BOND works to make schools better places for boys of color, making it more likely that they’ll go into teaching, and better for Black men, so they’ll be more likely to stay in teaching. Networks and partnerships, especially with HBCUs, are crucial.

Overview

00:00-00:51 Intros

00:51-06:32 The BOND Project

06:32-08:19 BOND’s relationship with schools

08:19-13:09 How to make schools better for Black boys/young men

13:09-13:49 Untapped potential of men of colors as teachers

13:49-18:36 Recruiting teachers of color

18:36-24:01 Similarities/differences in challenges Black men and women face as teachers

24:01-26:19 Similarities/differences in Black and Latino men’s experiences as teachers

26:19-31:10 Distinction between equity and anti-racism

31:10-34:30 How BOND generates conversations about race in Montgomery County

34:30-36:36 Liberatory consciousness

36:36-42:35 Recognizing students’ strengths and teachers; successes even when test scores are low

42:35-46:04 Teachers with a deficit mindset can change

46:04-49:13 Impact on girls of Black men as teachers

49:13-51:45 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

Creating antiracist classrooms: Listening and other essential skills

Ethical Schools — Thu, 27 May 2021 02:29:21 +0000

We speak with Dr. Steven Cohen of Tuft’s Department of Education about helping teachers to think critically about race and class. He talks about the importance of listening to students over time, even watching the media they watch, to get a better understanding of their life experiences. He describes how to create fair strategies for resolving conflicts and for grading and he explains how to introduce complex subject matter in ways that students find relevant.

Overview

00:00-00:50 Intros

00:50-02:39 Tufts education courses

02:39-05:37 Race and class differences experienced by Tufts student teachers in working class schools

05:37-07:46 Helping students navigate these differences

07:46-11:28 How to diversify teacher ed program student bodies

11:28-13:12 Preparing teachers to create anti-racist classrooms

13:12-16:49 Ethical issues in day-to-day teaching

16:49-23:01 Support for conflict de-escalation and resolution

23:01-31:56 Grading

31:56-35:54 Evaluating/grading in group work

35:54-42:16 Addressing complex issues when students lack basic knowledge or context

42:16-47:35 Advice to new teachers

47:35-49:30 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Critical analysis: not just for students

Ethical Schools — Thu, 20 May 2021 19:36:29 +0000

We speak with Dr. Sam Abrams of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education (NCSPE) at Teachers College, Columbia University. Dr. Abrams describes his analyses of statistics released by local and national education systems and widely disseminated by the media. Sometimes the reports are wrong or misleading, which can have serious consequences for students. We also talk about some of the differences between Finland’s schools and our own.

Overview

00:00-00:41 Intros

00:41-05:39 Misleading narrative about admissions to NYC screened high schools

05:39-08:23 Why Department of Education and principals don’t correct the narrative

08:23-12:05 Sam Abrams’s Columbia Journalism Review article

12:05-13:02 How changes in admissions policies at Beacon and Bard High School and Early College will change the schools

13:02-17:31 What an equitable admissions policy could look like; screening; focusing on reducing large economic consequences for students of tracking

17:31-24:15 “Teaching time” in US and other countries—errors in comparative data and their importance

24:15-26:31 Looking at assessment in Finland and the U.S.

26:31-31:22 Educational option plans—implications for integration and for instruction

31:22-33:30 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Listen to our first conversation with Sam Abrams “Dodging responsibility for our children: Reducing learning to test scores”
The Mismeasure of Teaching Time by Sam Abrams
Columbia Journalism Review: “Getting Education Data Right: The Case of High School Admissions”
Education Week: “Do U.S. Teachers Really Teach More Hours?”
Book Education and the Commercial Mindset by Sam Abrams

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Building communities of trust: transforming family-school relationships

Ethical Schools — Wed, 12 May 2021 16:35:38 +0000

We talk with Dr. Ann Ishimaru of the University of Washington about correcting the power imbalance between schools and low-income families and families of color. We also discuss “learning loss” and why families of color are much more reluctant than white families to return to in-person learning as the pandemic eases.

Overview

00:00-00:42 Intros

00:42-01:47 Disjuncture between theory and practice in school/parent/community relationships

01:47-03:55 How we got here in the disjuncture

03:55-05:20 Why deficit-based narratives persist despite the evidence

05:20-06:49 Narratives based on class and race myths

06:49-10:53 Learning loss—what it is and isn’t; how it is measured

10:53-13:14 How definition of learning loss will impact stimulus money allocations

13:14-14:31 Options for how stimulus money could be spent

14:31-15:34 Overturning deficit-based assumptions about low-income parents and parents of color

15:34-17:18 How the pandemic has changed assumptions about family/school relationships

17:18-20:49 How the pandemic affected students’ social-emotional and mental health

20:49-23:31 How relationship dynamics have influenced groups’ willingness to return to in-person classes

23:31-27:16 Dual Capacity Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships—strengths and areas for further development

27:16-29:55 Communities’ funds of knowledge

29:55-32:48 Making the balance of power between schools and low income families and families of color more equal

32:48-36:08 Conditions for power-sharing

36:08-38:49 Abolitionist movement in education

38:49-41:53 Solidarity-driven co-design

41:53-43:35 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Book “Just Schools: Building Equitable Collaborations with Families and Communities” by Ann Ishimaru

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Creative problem solving: Developing solutionary thinkers

Ethical Schools — Thu, 06 May 2021 21:22:02 +0000

We welcome back Zoe Weil, of the Institute for Humane Education, along with Laura Trongard, Oceanside (NY) High School teacher to discuss how teachers are implementing IHE’s Solutionary program. Laura describes how students adopt habits of solutionary thinking in their schoolwork and their lives. Zoe talks about IHE’s new micro-credential program, an online course that prepares teachers to use the solutionary framework. The new edition of Zoe’s book, “The World Becomes What We Teach,” with new content on pandemics and racial tensions, will be released in June.

Overview

00:00-00:44 Intros

00:44-03:52 IHE’s Solutionary graduate programs

03:52-06:14 Implementing the Solutionary program districtwide in Oceanside NY

06:14-08:16 Looking at root causes and solutions

08:16-09:28 Cross-discipline and cross-age teacher and student collaborations

09:28-15:37 “Responsibility”

15:37-17:17 Student research and investigation

17:17-30:39 Addressing controversial topics, conflicting interests, power dynamics

30-39-32:36 Impact on students

32:36-34:18 Micro-credential program

34:18-36:13 Resources for after-school and community settings

36:13-40:16 “The World Becomes What We Teach”—new edition

40:16-44:03 “A better world is possible.”

44:03-45:45 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

Book The World Becomes What We Teach
Solutionary Micro-Credential Program
Listen to our first conversation with Zoe Weil

Credits

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Photo from Oceanside School District’s Twitter

Research in schools (Part 2): Safeguarding the data

Ethical Schools — Wed, 28 Apr 2021 23:45:44 +0000

We continue our conversation with Marianna Azar, director of NYC Department of Education’s Institutional Review Boards (IRBs). This week, Ms. Azar discusses the potential privacy dangers created by collection and dissemination of research data, strategies to combat them, and the need to strengthen the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

References

Click here to listen to the first part of this conversation “Students as subjects: Ethical considerations of research in schools”.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Students as subjects: Ethical considerations of research in schools

Ethical Schools — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 21:35:47 +0000

We talk with Marianna Azar, Director and Chair of the NYC DOE’s Institutional Review Boards. The IRBs review all research proposals conducted through the schools to make sure they are conducted ethically and that the benefits to the students outweigh any burdens. In Part 1 of a 2-part interview, Ms. Azar describes how the IRBs work and their impact on researchers, schools, students and parents. Next week we’ll continue exploring the ethical issues that confront IRBs, including issues raised by Big Data.

Overview

00:00-00:57 Intros

00:57-02:42 NYC Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

02:42-07:20 Relevance of background in philosophy and ethics

07:20-10:10 Examples of research projects submitted to NYC DOE IRBs

10:10-14:49 Topics researchers ask about

14:49-16:21 Biomedical and psychology studies

16:21-17:56 Why there are two NYC DOE IRBs

17:56-22:19 Recruiting volunteer IRB members

22:19-36:09 Submittal and review process

36:09-37:37 Factors affecting timeline from submittal to approval

37:37-39:47 Post-approval compliance

39:47-41:42 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this interview.

References

Click here to listen to the second part of this conversation “Research in schools (Part 2): Safeguarding the data”.

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Ethical outreach: a parent coordinator anchors immigrant families

Ethical Schools — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 22:36:23 +0000

We speak with Herminia (Ita) Saldana, parent coordinator at MS 328, a middle school in Washington Heights, Manhattan. Every public school in NYC has a parent coordinator. Virtually all of the MS 328 students are current English Language Learners or have tested out of ELL status. As parent coordinator, Ita encourages and facilitates parent engagement as both advocate and navigator. She also helps recent immigrant families to access all kinds of community services as they adapt to life in NYC.

Overview

00:00-02:21 MS 328 demographics

02:21-03:39 Most important aspects of parent coordinator job

03:39-06:44 Job requirements, professional development, career status

06:44-10:01 Issues faced by new immigrant families

10:01-15:29 Tensions between immigrant parents and their children

15:29-19:52 How parent coordinator/school can help

19:52-23:06 Balancing power imbalances between families and the school

23:06-25:46 Culturally responsive support

25:46-29:46 Taking external circumstances into account when evaluating academics

29:46-32:10 Ethical questions

32:10-35:02 How the DOE can provide more support to parent coordinators

35:02-37:00 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

Making antiracist change: A template for educational leaders

Ethical Schools — Thu, 08 Apr 2021 01:20:52 +0000

We speak with Dr. Sarah Diem of University of Missouri and Dr. Anjalé Welton of University of Wisconsin, Madison. They discuss the seemingly neutral “colorevasive” policies that actually reinforce racial inequity. Drs. Diem and Welton present an action protocol for school and district leaders who seek to create antiracist schools.

Overview

00:00-00:51 Intros

00:51-02:38 Educational policies framed by neo-liberalism; market-driven policies

02:38-06:20 Impact of statewide educational policy approaches

06:20-09:03 Color evasiveness

09:03-11:27 RTI and PBIS and “acceptable student norms”—when students of color are viewed through a deficit lens

11:27-18:04 Anti-racist policy decision-making template

18:04-20:13 Anti-racist work is a continuous cycle

20:13-23:52 Protocol implementation in Latino/a and Black districts

23:52-26:57 Circumstances in which schools/districts are willing to undertake policy reviews

26:57-29:43 Dealing with obstacles

29:43-33:46 Risk-taking; planning and acting strategically

33:46-36:00 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

Book Anti-Racist Educational Leadership and Policy By Sarah Diem, Anjalé D. Welton
Policy Equity Analysis Toolkit from the Great Lakes Equity Center
Districts Advancing Racial Equity (DARE) Tool from Learning Policy Institute
Article Using Data to Guide Difficult Conversations around Structural Racism (Myers & Finnigan, 2018)
Article Community-Based Equity Audits: A Practical Approach for Educational Leaders to Support Equitable Community-School Improvements (Green, 2017)
Book Leading Dynamic Schools: How to Create and Implement Ethical Policies (Rallis, Rossman, Cobb, Reagan, & Kuntz, 2008)

Grief and loss: Supporting students, families, and teachers in a pandemic (encore)

Ethical Schools — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 15:23:00 +0000

As of today, March 31st, 2021, over 550,000 Americans have died of COVID-19. We’re reposting our conversation with Cynthia Trapanese former grief counselor, now teacher, who explains that the adults in a school need to grapple with their own losses in order to help children and families.

Cynthia Trapanese, a teacher who spent 17 years as a pediatric chaplain, observes that we are all grieving right now, and that adults need to be aware of their own feelings of loss in order to help children and families effectively. During this period of isolation, children miss not only extended family, especially grandparents, but also their friends, classrooms, and the details of their school days. The impact of prolonged separation from school will be long-lasting. Cynthia is holding webinars for teachers and parents, and shares tips and resources with us.

Overview

00:00-01:27 Intros

01:30-02:28 Defining “loss”

02:29-04:00 Helping children stay connected while in physical isolation

04:01-05:59 Examples of what loss looks like in children’s lives

06:00-07:45 Responding to children’s expressions of how they are feeling

07:46-09:07 The importance of not trying to “fix”

09:10-11:16 Losses layered onto other Adverse Childhood Experiences

11:16-13:49 When adults don’t have answers

13:50-15:39 Being helpful to children when adults themselves are grieving and frightened

15:39-17:59 How the New School of SF is supporting teachers and parents how other schools can support teachers

18:00-20:56 Parents’ concern about students keeping up with academics during this time

21:20-22:30 How this experience can help reflection about the most important aspects of education

22:34-25:16 How teaching at Institute for Humane Education (IHE) impacts thoughts on the pandemic and impact on children

25:20-26:43 Integrating humane education about animals into 1st grade teaching

26:45-28:29 Integrating IHE “solutionaries” program into 1st grade

28:30-29:50 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

Book “Healing Through The Dark Emotions The Wisdom Of Grief Fear & Despair” by Miriam Greenspan
Ethical Schools Podcast Episode with Zoe Weil of the Institute for Humane Education

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Exacerbating inequality: Private money in public schools

Ethical Schools — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 14:09:16 +0000

We speak with Dr. Sue Winton of York University in Toronto about the effects of private money–much of it from parents–that replaces decreased public funding of schools. Fundraisers and fees for special programs benefit affluent schools and the children who already have the most access to opportunities. Low income parents often feel pressure to donate beyond their means for their children’s sake.

Overview

00:00-00:45 Intros

00:45-03:18 How private money comes into public schools

03:18-08:18 Impacts of private money

08:18-10:58 Government funding patterns; fees; waivers

10:58-14:03 Discretionary funds

14:03-15:34 Grants

15:34-19:39 Connections to privatization; book sales; school photos; candy sales

19:39-22:45 Fundraising sales: dilemmas for parents

22:45-26:04 Changes in fundraising as public funding for schools decreases and changes

26:04-28:44 Fundraising as part of competition among schools and districts

28:44-32:13 Creating alternatives to individual school fundraising

32:13-34:34 Schools—public good, private interests

34:34-38:35 Short and long-term approaches

38:35-41:17 Toronto school district—things it’s doing right

41:17-43:31 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

Book Critical Perspectives on Education Policy and Schools, Families, and Communities – Edited by Sue Winton and Gillian Parekh

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Shared visions: Creating an abolitionist school culture

Ethical Schools — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 14:24:20 +0000

We continue our conversation with Grace Alli Brandstein, a school improvement and instructional coach supporting struggling high schools in the Bronx. This week, Ms. Brandstein focuses on humane, antiracist education, and explains Dr. Gholdy Muhammad’s construct of literacy as identity, skills, intellect, criticality, and joy. She also speaks about the conditions for successful adult learning, giving teachers the training they need to lead one another and the space to coalesce around a shared vision, expectations, and protocols.

Overview

00:00-00:58 Intros

00:58:-03:59 Coaching: whom, theory of action, teachers’ feelings

03:59-09:56 Key elements of school improvement

09:56-13:12 Adult learning

13:12-15:04 Self-reflection and culturally-responsive teaching: importance of knowing the “why”

15:04-21:30 Culturally responsive education in practice; Dr. Gholdy Muhammad

21:30-29:36 Examples: a biology lesson on testosterone; Project Soapbox; Facing History; 1619 Project; NY Times writing curriculum

29:36-34:00 Bettina L. Love: We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom

34:00-35:35 Culturally responsive education: Adult learning, classroom level work, systemic change

35:35-37:45 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

The bigger picture: High school improvement in the Bronx

Ethical Schools — Thu, 11 Mar 2021 01:16:17 +0000

We speak with Grace Alli Brandstein, an improvement and instructional coach with the New York City Department of Education. Ms. Brandstein works with Bronx high schools that the State has designated as needing support. This is part one of a two part interview. Today, we discuss challenges teachers and students at these schools face, and their everyday achievements. Ms. Brandstein talks about the impacts, both positive and negative, of being rated as needing improvement, especially the pressure it puts administrators, teachers, and students. Next week, Ms. Brandstein talks about abolitionist education.

Overview

00:00-01:10 Intros

00:10-02:37 State Ed criteria for schools being in need of “Support and Improvement”

02:37-04:03 Ethical issues of categorization

04:03-10:13 The Renewal Program successes and weaknesses

10:13-13:48 Impacts on students and teachers of being on State lists

13:48-17:31 Effects of pandemic freeze on standardized testing

17:31-19:50 Alternatives to high-stakes testing

19:50-24:23 ELA Regents and English Learners

24:23-26:54 Other obstacles students face

26:54-29:54 Teacher turnover

29:54-32:43 Keeping experienced teachers

32:43-35:51 Parking; resources

35:51-38:08 Principal turnover

38:08-40:31 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this interview.

Credits

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Photo from Greenhouse Schools by TNTP (2012)

Toward antiracism: The evolution of an undergraduate teacher ed program

Ethical Schools — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 03:10:01 +0000

We speak with Dr. Marsha Daria of Western Connecticut State University. Dr. Daria teaches undergraduate courses in the Department of Education and Educational Psychology. She explains how in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, the department reconfigured its curriculum to center social justice, equity, and self-reflection. She discusses the department’s recruitment initiatives to increase teacher candidate diversity.

Overview

00:00-00:29 Intros

00:29-02:44 Western Connecticut State College and its community

02:44-05:14 Westconn education department re-evaluation after George Floyd murder and subsequent movement

05:14-07:06 Social justice and equity assessment; self-reflection

07:06-07:53 Biases

07:53-08:25 Balancing academic and practical experience

08:25-09:46 Responding to “I’m not racist.”

09:46-15:27 Outreach and recruitment to Danbury students: 5th graders, and recruitment of high school students to go into education

15:27-16:37 Forthcoming article in The School-University Partnership Journal

16:37-17:00 Pushback?

17:00-18:19 Recruitment of faculty of color

18:19-19:12 Why college undergraduates are less diverse than Danbury schools student body

19:12-20:06 Challenges with teacher candidates

20:06-21:59 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

Credits

Soundtrack by Poddington bear

Photo from wcsu.edu/education/

Teaching the “isms”: Students’ lived experiences in context

Ethical Schools — Thu, 25 Feb 2021 00:59:56 +0000

We speak with Jillian McRae and Sam North, English and history teachers at Ossining (NY) High School, and their student, Alaysha. For 15 years, Sam and Jillian have co-taught a college-level course called “racism, sexism, and classism: a popular approach.” They focus on pervasive systems of power, and encourage students to discuss their own experiences of privilege, disadvantage, and intersectionality.

Overview

00:00-00:46 Intros

00:46-01:54 Ossining’s demographics

01:54-03:35 Latiné as an alternative to Latinx or Latino/a

03:35-06:27 Origin of SUNY Racism, Classism, & Sexism course

06:27-09:16 Why students take the course

09:16-10:37 “Popular approach” in the course title

10:37-14:26 Curriculum

14:26-17:02 Avoiding “losing” students during controversial topics

17:02- 18:47 Student conversations outside of class

18:47-21:15 Impact on other classes

21:15-23:47 Impact on ethical thinking

23:47-25:52 Religion

25:52-28:15 Materials

28:15-28:25 Alaysha: what she values in the course

28:25-31:59 Conversations in class; for example, relationships between Black boys and Black girls

31:59-35:23 Teachers modeling relationships for students

35:23-40:23 Ossining: Increasing equity and implementing culturally responsive education

40:23-43:15 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

SUNY Racism, Classism, Sexism – Book List
Racism, Classism, Sexism: A Popular Approach – University at Albany Fall 2020 – Spring 2021 – Syllabus
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh

Credits

Images taken from “Jillian McRae and Sam North: Race conversations in the classroom”, a video directed by Manauvaskar Kublall (Future for Learning Vimeo)

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Antiracist school leadership: Courage and commitment

Ethical Schools — Wed, 17 Feb 2021 23:02:03 +0000

Dr. Bradley Carpenter, associate professor of educational leadership at Baylor University, speaks about developing and supporting antiracist school principals. Very few leadership prep programs prioritize or embed antiracism principles or practices. A principal committed to centering antiracism needs to have a full equity audit of existing curriculum and practices and to lead faculty members through the emotionally laborious process of examining everyone’s own privileges and biases. The principal also needs to build support from above. Antiracism is an organizing principle, not an end point.

Overview

00:00-00:51 Intros
00:51-04:30 What antiracist school leadership looks like
04:30-10:00 Prioritizing antiracism in leadership preparation programs
10:00-12:26 Support needed by antiracist principals
12:26-15:30 Support networks
15:30-21:55 What making change in the school looks like
21:55-25:25 Professional development
25:25-25:27 Incorporating antiracism into discipline policies and curricula
28:47-34:00 Dealing with structural inequities
34:00-35:46 Antiracism education for “nice white parents”
35:46-37:33 Standing up to overtly racist forces
37:33-39:00 Antiracism and retaining teachers of color
39:00-41:03 Self-care
41:03-42:31 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Book Facilitator’s Guide to Courageous Conversations About Race by Glenn Eric Singleton and Curtis Linton
List of resources provided by UCEA “Preparing Leaders to Support Diverse Learners: Curriculum Modules for Leadership Preparation”
Study by Hawley, W., & James, R. (2010) – UCEA REVIEW
Zoom call every Thursday night “Solidarity 4 Ed Leaders” leaded by Joshua Bornstein – Assistant Professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University
Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum website

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

Early childhood education: It is play, but it is not “babysitting”

Ethical Schools — Thu, 11 Feb 2021 00:50:47 +0000

We speak with Michele Washington, longtime early childhood lecturer at Lehman College, about expertise at the preschool level. Head Start, pre-K, and 3-K teachers can support children and families in myriad ways once parents or guardians trust them. Cultural humility is essential; teachers need to understand and respect their children’s families and communities.

Overview

00:00-00:57 Intros

00:57-02:26 Why are early childhood educators undervalued?

02:26-03:10 Major crises in early childhood

03:10-03:57 UPK and 3-K (NYC)

03:57-05:01 Losing teachers to Department of Education schools

05:01-05:59 Teachers’ relationships with families

05:59-08:08 Knowing students’ communities

08:08-10:20 A deficit lens and overcoming it

10:20-12:04 Transition from working with 3- and 4-year olds to infants and toddlers

12:04-16:16 Early childhood as “women’s work”

16:16-18:30 Culturally responsive education

18:30-20:13 Graduate schools and culturally responsive education

20:13-22:47 Ethical decision-making for early childhood educators

22:47-25:25 Being a second home

25:25-27:43 Responding when there is a serious disagreement between a teacher and a parent or guardian

27:43-29:01 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Student record privacy: Danger looms from police and hackers

Ethical Schools — Thu, 04 Feb 2021 02:34:43 +0000

We speak with Mark Lieberman, Education Week tech reporter. Pasco County FL schools give the sheriff records of students deemed “destined to a life of crime.” NYS Education Department funded facial recognition of school visitors to schools. Hackers hold district data hostage for ransom. We discuss legal and ethical privacy issues in the age of tech, including the dilemmas for teachers if a “D” leads to a police database.

Overview

00:00-00:38 Intros

00:38-05:31 Pasco County schools turn over student list of “at-risk” students “destined to a life of crime” to sheriff’s office

05:31-7:14 Consequences of being on the list

7:14-09:26 Potential racial disparities

09:26-11:59 Federal Education Records and Privacy Act

11:59-14:35 Community response to the list

14:35-16:20 What we don’t know about data use

16:20-18:38 Ethical questions for teachers

18:38-22:08 Impact on trust in school communities

22:08-25:56 Facial recognition

25:56-30:23 Video conferencing platforms

30:23-34:51 Cybersecurity concerns

34:51-39:06 Student directories

39:06-40:30 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Districtwide decisions: Day to day ethical considerations

Ethical Schools — Wed, 27 Jan 2021 23:04:02 +0000

We speak with Dan Callahan, Assistant Superintendent for Secondary Education in Peekskill City School District, 45 minutes north of Manhattan. The low-income district in wealthy Westchester is 70% Latino, including many students from immigrant families. We discuss how the district has adapted to rapid demographic changes and schools’ role in helping students meet challenges. Mr. Callahan reflects on the decisions he and his staff make that impact students’ lives in very concrete ways, and the tension between consistency, applying the same rules for all students, and specificity, looking at the totality of circumstances in each individual case.

Overview

00:00-00:36 Intros

00:36-02:31 Peekskill and its demographics

02:31-03:36 How Peekskill schools have adapted to changing demographics

03:36-08:15 Ethics-infused decisions—balancing competing needs

08:15-08:48 Student data system

08:48-11:11 Addressing inequities systemically

11:11-13:35 Equity in student competitions with wealthy districts

13:35-15:04 BOCES

15:04-17:37 District equity audit

17:37-20:13 Immigrant family/school relationships

20:13-22:47 Helping to ease family tensions between immigrant parents and their U.S.- raised children

22:47-27:21 Culturally responsive education

27:21-30:18 Reducing suspensions and disproportional suspensions of Black boys/young men

30:18-32:17 Advice to a new superintendent or assistant superintendent

32:17-34:01 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Credits

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Photo from twitter.com/PeekskillCSD

UPDATE: Moving toward admissions equity and culture change at Manhattan’s Beacon High School

Ethical Schools — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 00:40:40 +0000

We speak with Beacon PTA members Toni Smith-Thompson and Robin Broshi about NYC’s new requirements and the school’s proposed admission plan. Then we listen back to last June’s interview with activist students from the Beacon Union of Unions.

Overview

00:00-00:53 Intros

00:53-05:37 What has happened with admissions in NYC and at Beacon since last school year

05:37-15:45 Current status at Beacon; plans for admissions for 2021-22 school year

15:45-18:49 Stakeholder consensus

18:48-19:31 School Leadership Team

19:31-23:00 Need for school culture changes beyond admissions

23:00-23:23 TRANSITION TO ENCORE INTERVIEW WITH BUU STUDENTS

23:23-23:56 Intros

23:56-29:03 Students’ experiences at Beacon

29:03-35:52 Student demands

35:52-38:22 Anti-racist curriculum

38:22-39:33 Teens Take Charge

39:33-41:35 What teachers need to do in making change

41:35-44:42 First Beacon demonstration in Fall 2019

44:42-50:35 December incident, response planning, and sit-in

50:35-54:10 Sit-in’s impact on relationships among students and with teachers

54:10-56:31 Sources of support for students’ June demands to administration

56:31-57:14 Administration’s response

57:14-59:23 Talking with students at other schools

59:23-1:00:18 Connections with Movement for Black Lives

1:00:18-1:00:53 Whites must choose between being racist or anti-racist

1:00:53-01:02:23 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

Credits

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Picture from beaconschool.org

Systemic racism in special education: Parent participation legitimizes inequities

Ethical Schools — Thu, 14 Jan 2021 20:52:24 +0000

Overview

00:00-01:00 Intros

01:00-01:54 Racial disparities in special education

01:54-06:41 How White parents/children benefit from social and cultural capital in special education process

06:41-08:59 Parental participation fails to protect Black children from segregation in special education placements

08:59-14:01 Process of mandated parental participation exacerbates/legitimizes racial inequities

14:01-20:22 Racial breakdown of children placed in more or less restrictive special education environments; greater physical segregation of Black children

20:22-21:53 Suspensions and expulsions

21:53-24:13 Recommendations for change

24:13-28:42 Disproportional suspensions of Black youth; biases and stereotypes of Black girls

28:42-29:51 Responsibility of school districts to ensure White middle class students do not get more resources

29:51-32:46 Need to educate White middle-class parents about equitable distribution of resources

32:46-34:15 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Listen to our first conversation with Dr. Baldwin Clark: “Policing attendance boundaries: Education as private property”
Innovations in Equity and Systemic Change (IESC) of NYC Metro Center

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Policing attendance boundaries: Education as private property

Ethical Schools — Wed, 06 Jan 2021 21:46:05 +0000

Overview

00:00-00:57 Intros

00:57-03:12 Schools are not preparing all students to be lifelong learners

03:12-13:16 Education as property; cultural and social capital

13:16-15:28 Schools as community enterprises

15:28-18:20 “Schooling in Capitalist America;” caste; legacies of slavery

18:20-21:32 Enforcement of school district boundaries

21:32-25:28 School segregation and housing segregation

25:28-28:20 “Bringing up the bottom and bringing down the top”; reducing the relative distance between the bottom and the top

28:20-31:30 Making the gap less consequential

31:30-35:10 What Culver City (CA) is doing to address inequality in a relative way

35:10-37:44 Implications for Black students when “good schools” look like “White schools”

37:44-40:50 Aggressions and microaggressions in predominantly White schools

40:50-42:15 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

Book Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life by Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis
Dr. Baldwin Clark’s website
Dr. Baldwin Clark’s medium

Supporting English Learners: pandemic and post-pandemic solutions

Ethical Schools — Wed, 30 Dec 2020 18:32:08 +0000

We speak with Dr. Julie Sugarman of the Migration Policy Institute about meeting the needs of English Learners. We discuss the meaning and implications of ELs “falling behind” during virtual instruction and difficulties administering upcoming English language proficiency tests. Dr. Sugarman talks about a model for incorporating ELs into planning. She also talks about what is lost (and gained) through technology, given the importance of personal relationships to teaching and learning.

Overview

00:00-00:40 Intros

00:40-02:32 English Language Learners (ELs) and how they receive instruction

02:32-03:31 What research shows about language acquisition

03:31-11:46 Legal and ethical aspects of English language instruction; status around the country

11:46-15:00 Challenges facing ELs and ENL teachers during the pandemic and efforts to overcome them

15:00-17:05 Involvement of parents during the pandemic

17:05-17:50 Varying terms/ synonyms for ESL/ESOL/ENL teachers

17:50-18:22 Nashville as an example of a district centering ELs in planning

18:22-21:30 Issues with taking the English language proficiency test during the pandemic

21:30-23:20 English language proficiency tests’ quality

23:20-25:04 Experience with Betsy DeVos’s Education Department

25:04-26:56 Recommendations to Biden Administration

26:56-30:20 Technology and ELs post-pandemic

30:20-31:45 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Credits

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Students as experts: Diversity, equity, and inclusion

Ethical Schools — Wed, 23 Dec 2020 22:21:52 +0000

We speak with Dr. Judith King-Calnek, United Nations International School’s first Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Since UNIS faculty and students come from all over the world, they draw on one another’s backgrounds and lived experience in presenting and analyzing social issues. Faculty, parents, alumni, and, especially, students are involved in new DEI initiatives. Students are actually writing curriculum, providing feedback, and delivering DEI modules to other students.

Overview

00:00-00:52 Intros

00:52-01:41 UNIS

01:41-03:25 Anthropological viewpoint

03:25-08:05 Teaching history: Decentering Europe; globalization

08:05-09:26 Priorities as Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)

09:26-13:33 Restorative mindset and practices

13:33-15:56 Student DEI committee

15:56-19:40 Students writing curriculum

19:40-23:39 Approaching controversial issues

23:39-27:41 Faculty conversations on curriculum and pedagogy

27:41-30:29 Handling microaggressions

30:29-34:04 Students as ethnographers

34:04-37:51 An ethical environment

37:51-39:30 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

Credits

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Photo facebook.com/UNISNY

Dodging responsibility for our children: Reducing learning to test scores

Ethical Schools — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 00:21:33 +0000

We speak with Samuel E. Abrams of Teachers College, Columbia University. The root problems in K12 education — including poverty-related stress and underpaid and underprepared teachers — are pervasive and expensive to fix. So instead, the U.S. has adopted a “commercial mindset,” measuring success through standardized test scores and increasingly outsourcing school management to for-profit and nonprofit corporations. Dr. Abrams explains what we can learn from Finland’s education system.

Overview

00:00-00:42 Intros

00:42-03:01 What “education and the commercial mindset” means

03:01-05:26 Examples of for-profit and non-profit privatization

05:26-13:57 Effects of privatization

13:57-20:01 What can be done to enable public education to better meet student needs

20:01-21:45 Separation of church and state

21:45-28:37 Potential positive lessons from business; W. Edwards Deming; rejecting value-added measurement

28:37-32:13 Comparison of U.S. and Finnish education systems

32:13-35:27 Key changes that can be made in U.S. education system

35:27-36:50 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

Credits

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Students doing original research: Project-based learning in Ohio

Ethical Schools — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 22:41:01 +0000

Overview

00:00-00:42 Intro

00:42-02:23 Assignment

02:23-07:01 Projects

07:01-08:08 Student reactions to doing original research

08:08-13:47 “Colored graves” cemetery project

13:47-17:44 Project’s impact on students

17:44-19:50 Effect on understanding North Olmstead and its history

19:50-21:18 Students’ realization of their ability to make change

21:18-23:01 George Floyd’s death and BLM demonstrations

23:01-25:14 Relationships among teachers/students

25:14-27:47 Teachers and students learning together

27:47-29:35 Integrating language arts and social studies in practice

29:35-32:06 Meeting the ELA standards

32:06-36:04 Smooth and effective collaborative teaching

36:04-42:12 Inquiry learning and Ohio’s test-driven system

42:12-43:45 Students’ identifying as readers

43:45-50:27 Dewey on schools’ role in preparing students for democratic citizenship

50:27-55:31 Professional networking: Facing History and Ourselves; Landmark workshops/seminars

55:31-55:49 Rafel as immigrant student

55:49-56:47 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Media Coverage of the project: on the NYTimes, on Cleveland 19, and on News 5 Cleveland.
Watch Rafel talking about the project.

Credits

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Photo news5cleveland.com

Abolitionist education: Creating liberatory spaces (Part Two)

Ethical Schools — Wed, 02 Dec 2020 23:36:48 +0000

We continue our conversation with Dr. Edwin Mayorga of Swarthmore College. We discuss the corporatization of schools that reduces students to their test scores. Dr. Mayorga encourages educators to center joy and healing. Schools should be liberatory rather than places that are too often focused on punishment and surveillance. Schools, as “localized nodes of political power,” should adopt democratic processes that cultivate voice, participation, and collaboration. As an organizer, he encourages coalitions of people resisting different aspects of racial capitalism, including those fighting destruction of the planet and exploitation of other species.

Overview

00:00-01:34 Intro

01:34-04:55 Making the shift from a more traditional to a more liberatory school

04:55-08:11 Sustainability after school founder(s) leave

08:11-11:37 Relationships of capital to schools: Now and a century ago

11:37-14:47 Education sovereignty

14:47-18:08 Community land trusts as models for schools

18:08-22:20 Balancing autonomy with accountability

22:20-24:41 Humans’ relationships with other animals: Moving away from anthropocentrism

24:41-28:58 Where the joy is

28:58-34:32 Takeaways: joys, hope, healing, radical possibilities

34:32-35:30 Outro

References

Listen to the first part of this conversation here.

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Credits

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Abolitionist education: Creating liberatory spaces (Part One)

Ethical Schools — Thu, 26 Nov 2020 00:46:34 +0000

We speak with Swarthmore’s Dr. Edwin Mayorga, who explains how abolitionist classrooms and schools create “freedom as a place” in contrast to racial capitalism. Teachers are the lead inquirers and try to “move at the speed of trust,” helping to create classrooms full of joy. Edwin describes Philadelphia’s Kensington Health Sciences Academy as a school where teaching and learning are based on establishing relationships of mutual respect.

Overview

00:00-00:42 Intros
00:42-02:20 Abolitionist education
02:20-04:44 “Freedom as a place”
04:44-08:03 Critical racial ethnic studies; the Sankofa bird
08:03-15:27 Decolonizing education; relationships in the process between colonized and colonizer
15:27-22:21 Intersections of race and class
22:21-26:27 Racial capitalism’s impact in the classroom
26:27-33:20 Kensington Health Sciences Academy (KHSA)
33:20-36:16 Teacher as lead inquirer
36:16-38:25 Moving at the speed of trust
38:25-40:13 Modeling trustworthiness for students
40:13-42:55 How did KHSA become a school focused on trust?
42:55-44:30 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Click here to listen to the second part of this conversation.
Bettina Love
Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Decolonization is not a metaphor
Clyde Woods
Book The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
Book Framing Dropouts by Michelle Fine

Credits

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Photo twitter.com/khsaphila

BIPOC and undocumented: A trauma-filled intersection

Ethical Schools — Wed, 18 Nov 2020 21:21:46 +0000

Dr. Christiana Best, who spent thirty years in the New York City child welfare system before becoming a full-time academic, discusses her personal experience of being left behind in Granada while her mother settled in the US. Dr. Best, now an assistant professor of social work at St. Joseph’s, delves into the difficulties of providing holistic support to immigrant children and families, who are (justifiably) hesitant to trust government agencies.

Overview

00:00-00:51 Intros

00:51-02:23 Impact on students of being undocumented

02:23-07:00 How separation affects children and parents

07:00-08:42 Supports for students suffering separation effects and aftereffects

08:42-11:38 Support for parents?

11:38-14:37 Collaboration among schools, agencies, CBOs: obstacles and potentialities

14:37-18:59 Issues of mandated reporting; building trust

18:59-20:34 Cultural competence vs. cultural humility

20:34-22:58 School social workers and school counselors

22:58-23:37 School social workers and immigrant families trust

23:37-25:12 Need for more school social workers

25:12-29:58 Microaggressions: what they are; examples; applying a Deweyan framework for anti-microaggression education

29:58-31:54 What the incoming Biden Administration can do to support vulnerable children

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

The impact of deportation policies on Latinx students’ mental health

Ethical Schools — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 23:04:11 +0000

Dr. Randy Capps, Director of Research for U.S. Programs at the Migration Policy Institute, surveyed Latinx high school students to see how fear of deportation – of their parents, relatives, friends, or themselves – impacts their mental health. The students, roughly half foreign-born and half US-born, suffered anxiety, depression, and PTSD at significantly higher rates than other students their age. Strong bonds immigrant students formed with one another were a source of mutual support. Students who engaged in public policy activism showed improved mental health.

Overview

00:00-00:44 Intros

00:44-03:44 Study of impact of immigration policies on Latinx students’ mental health; demographics; key findings

03:44-05:41 Differences in number of traumatic experiences between foreign-born and U.S. born students and potential reasons

05:41-06:49 Differences by gender

06:49-09:40 Levels of perceived discrimination

09:40-13:18 Sources and forms of student support, including educators, parents, peers

13:18-14:38 Role of school counselors

14:38-18:30 Links between discipline practices and immigration-related fears; restorative justice; roles of school resource officers

18:30-24:17 Obstacles in accessing mental health resources and ways to reduce them

24:17-26:51 Student participation in public policy advocacy and its effect on students’ mental health

26:51-27:28 Thanks to collaborators in the study

27:28-28:45 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Empowering school counselors to support struggling students

Ethical Schools — Wed, 04 Nov 2020 20:37:02 +0000

Dr. Mandy Savitz-Romer of Harvard Graduate School of Education sees counselors as schools’ academic conscience, the hub for providing holistic support to students. To be effective, they need a seat at the leadership table. Respondents in Savitz-Romer’s 1000-counselor survey described obstacles and successes in serving students during the pandemic.

Overview

00:00-00:46 Intros
00:46-03:30 School counselors’ roles and how they’ve changed over time
03:30-05:11 A better model for counseling
05:11-08:18 Contracts, guidelines, protections for counselors; caseloads
08:18-10:54 Equity issues and time for neediest students
10:54-13:48 Counselors as “academic conscience of the school”
13:48-17:29 Counselors’ roles, stress, and evaluation
17:29-19:20 Support resources for counselors
19:20-23:28 Helping students with the “why” of college and career
23:28-27:15 1000-counselor pandemic survey results
27:15-30:30 Helping students with college and careers in context of family expectations and needs, especially during pandemic
30:30-34:59 Lessons learned from experience during pandemic
34:59-36:30 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Report Expanding support beyond the virtual classroom: Lessons and recommendations from school counselors during the COVID-19 crisis
Book Fulfilling the Promise: Reimagining School Counseling to Advance Student Success
Book Ready, Willing and Able
Mandy discusses her book in more detail during this episode of The Harvard EdCast
Op Ed Shocked by the college admissions scandal? School counselors aren’t by Mandy on the Hechinger Report
Watch Personal Statement, an Emmy nominated feature-lenght documentary film about three seniors at Brooklyn high schools struggling to get themselves and their peers to college.

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Holistic history: The African diaspora

Ethical Schools — Wed, 28 Oct 2020 18:30:54 +0000

Dr. Kim Butler, who leads Rutgers’s Africana Studies program, says that while we usually teach history and social studies in discreet, testable units, events are complex and interconnected. Slavery throughout the Americas was central to the development of capitalism. Dr. Butler describes how working class students often can’t choose a liberal arts education because they have to focus on getting jobs.

Overview

00:00-00:50 Intros

00:50-05:23 What Africana Studies is

05:23-07:28 Relationship of slavery and capitalism

07:28-10:47 Why all students should take Africana Studies

10:47-14:21 How high schools could do a better job of teaching about the African diaspora

14:21-18:30 Learning about the Western Hemisphere

18:30-22:22 Importance of learning writing skills

22:22-25:57 Impact of “teaching to the test”

25:57-27:39 “Teaching to the test” v. a freer engagement with new ideas

27:39-34:49 Liberal arts education and workforce development

34:49-36:49 Potential impact of Movement for Black Lives on students

36:49-37:57 Critical importance of educators

37:57-39:45 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcript of this interview.

Credits

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Image from richmond.edu

Students leading change: Inclusiveness at an elite school

Ethical Schools — Thu, 22 Oct 2020 12:08:04 +0000

Stacey Cervellino Thorp and Naima Moffett-Warden teach drama at Manhattan’s famed LaGuardia High School, and Abigail Rivera is a senior in the drama studio. Although all LaGuardia students are extraordinarily talented, their families, neighborhoods, and middle schools have vastly different resources. Students and faculty, led by students of color, have won changes and are demanding more steps to make the school more accessible and the curriculum more culturally responsive.

Overview

00:00-00:44 Intros

00:44-08:26 LaGuardia admissions standards and how they have changed

08:26-11:23 The sit-in and movement for changing the previous principal

11:23-13:40 Pressures to take AP courses; academics prioritized over arts and the efforts to change that

13:40-18:22 Teaching students with diverse arts backgrounds

18:22-21:37 Teaching and learning on-line: impacts on process and equity

21:37-24:19 Changing Eurocentric curriculum; Young Idealists

24:19-30:02 Conversations and actions since George Floyd’s death

30:02-34:46 The school’s responses

34:46-35:42 Students’ interest in using careers for social change

35:42-40:50 Making high quality arts education available to many more students on an equitable basis

40:50-42:09 Students’ talking at their middle schools

42:09-47:43 Broadening visions of arts careers, especially for BIPOC students and their families

47:43-49:12 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Credits

Soundtrack: Podington Bear

Image: laguardiahs.org

Teaching economics as political and ethical choices

Ethical Schools — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 20:10:52 +0000

We welcome back Lev Moscow of the Beacon School to discuss his approach to teaching political economy, which actually applies to any social science. It’s not primarily about the numbers but about the human choices behind them. How do we determine who gets paid what and who gets to spend 80,000 hours in a lifetime engaged in meaningful work? Also, how our mantra of continuous economic growth will end life as we know it.

Overview

00:00-00:39 Intros

00:39-02:25 Why teach economics

02:25-08:55 “What Money Can’t Buy”: When are markets corrupted; ethics of markets

08:55-12:34 “Political economy” as distinguished from “economics”

12:34-18:09 Consequences of using increasing growth as metric of healthy economy

18:09-22:43 Ethical questions of teaching from textbooks that don’t correspond to how things work

22:43-26:20 Education for democracy vs education for workforce preparation

26:20-30:36 “80,000 Hours”: Encouraging students to think of maximizing the potential usefulness of their work lives

30:36-32:43 Grades as part of the economic system

32:43-35:37 Supporting young women to become economists

35:37-37:00 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by David Graeber
“World economic history in one picture” from the book A Farewell to Alms by Gregory Clark:

Listen to our previous podcast episode with Lev: Lev Moscow offers advice for secondary school teachers
Lev also hosts a podcast that aims to make economics accessible. Discover A Correction Podcast

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Photo by Thomas De Luze

Education denied: What should reparations look like?

Ethical Schools — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 19:35:10 +0000

Daarel Burnette II of Education Week delves into the history of Black communities demanding education and school boards conspiring to deprive them of opportunities and resources. We zoom in on Virginia’s reparations to Black citizens, now in their 60’s, who were excluded from schools when Prince Edward County shut its schools to avoid integration. Mr. Burnette, a “military brat,” theorizes about why children of Black military families do so much better academically than their civilian peers.

Overview

00:00-00:50 Intros

00:50-02:06 Prince Edward County and its significance

02:06-03:31 Virginia’s reparations fund

03:31-07:09 Reactions of reparations recipients

07:09-09:44 Lessons from other state reparations programs

09:44-13:28 Essential elements of a reparations program

13:28-17:24 Overtaxing and underfunding

17:24-19:28 Black Lives Matter movement and educational equity

19:28-22:00 Teachers’ beliefs about genetics and achievement

22:00-24:08 Coleman report and assumptions about Black families

24:08-26:05 History of Black demands for public education; Freedmen’s schools; Rosenwald schools; attacks on Black schools by KKK and White Citizens Councils

26:05-29:00 Students from Black military families outperform civilian students; achievement gap almost eliminated in Department of Defense schools

29:00-35:25 Military base interventions to improve schools serving military families

35:25-38:48 Integration blinds us to what happens afterward; not the end of the story

38:48-44:30 Freedmen’s schools and Rosenwald schools

44:30-46:31 Why knowledge of history is so essential

46:31-48:00 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Book The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein

Credits

Photo by the National Trust for Historic Preservation

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Identity-focused classes: Experiments in cultural relevance

Ethical Schools — Wed, 30 Sep 2020 23:10:27 +0000

We speak with Dr. Emily Penner, who studied the impacts of two programs in which students delved into their respective races, ethnicities, and communities. San Francisco’s was designed for academically-struggling students of a range of ethnicities. Oakland’s was designed for young Black men across academic achievement levels, as part of the district’s “targeted universalism” approach. The results, in both cases, were dramatic.

Overview

00:00-00:30 Intros

00:30-01:32 San Francisco ethnic studies curriculum

01:32-03:01 Student selection

03:01-03:41 Students’ ethnicities and classrooms’ composition

03:41-04:19 Student voice and reflection

04:19-05:02 “Critical pedagogy”

05:02-12:40 Effects on student attendance and achievement

12:40-15:11 Teachers exercising their professional judgment

15:11-15:18 Professional development

15:18-18:01 Differentiating between impact of “great teachers” and the curriculum

18:01-19:49 “High fidelity context”

19:49-23:48 Oakland’s African American Male Achievement program

23:48-25:27 Targeted Universalism & working with a range of groups of students

25:27-28:57 Outcomes and effects

28:57-29:21 Spillover effect on young Black women

29:21-30:24 Avoiding deficient orientation

30:24-31:42 Relationship to My Brother’s Keeper

31:42-35:19 Developments in ethnic studies in California

35:19-37:15 Qualitative resources about Oakland program

37:15-38:45 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

Credits

Photo by JD Doyle

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Practicing ethics: Case studies

Ethical Schools — Wed, 23 Sep 2020 23:05:16 +0000

Overview

00:00-00:43 Intros

00:43-3:50 Justice in Schools (justiceinschools.org)—what it is and why Meira Levinson started it

03:50-08:49 Why cases in case studies must be hard

08:49-16:14 Scenarios

16:14-17:32 Writing and researching the cases

17:32-21:05 Variation in cases among regions and countries

21:05-22:44 Who and how people are using the cases

22:44-24:10 No cost to users except for multi-media version

24:10-28:52 Defining success

28:52-30:52 Out-of-school-time cases

30:52-38:43 Involvement of students and parents

38:43-39:15 Unknowns about outreach

39:15-41:00 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Parent voice: Supporting families with special needs

Ethical Schools — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 01:02:38 +0000

Ellen McHugh, long time activist and Public Advocate Williams’s appointee to the NYC Citywide Council on Special Education, delves into the challenges facing parents of students with special education needs. Ethical relationships among educators, parents, and the students themselves are crucial to these students’ success. Too often educators minimize the importance of parental input even though the law requires that they be equal partners in their children’s educational planning. Remote and hybrid learning has added new obstacles to and opportunities for partnerships between parents and educators.

Overview

00:00-00:43 Intros
00:43-02:25 Parent to Parent
02:25-04:08 Deficit model
04:08-06:18 Impact of deficit model on teaching
06:18-09:18 Looking at a child as a whole person
09:18-15:35 Respect for parents
15:35-19:43 Effects of the shift to remote learning
19:43-20:48 Program Adaptation Document (PAD)
20:48-23:26 Integrated Co-Teaching class
23:26-32:30 PAD, continued
32:30-33:55 Issues of support during pandemic
33:55-43:39 Relationships between NYC’s District 75 schools and district schools
43:39-49:26 Ethical relationships
49:26-51:00 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Credits

Photo Parent To Parent NYS

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Antiracism: Lessons for the classroom and faculty lounge

Ethical Schools — Wed, 09 Sep 2020 23:53:42 +0000

We speak with Mica Pollock about US vs Hate and Schooltalk. Student anti-racism messaging in any medium can catalyze youth activism. Comments embedded in teachers’ everyday communication can impact students’ lifetime trajectories.

Overview

00:00-00:45 Intros
00:45-03:07 What US vs. Hate is designed to do
03:07-05:57 Impacts
05:57-09:11 How US vs Hate deepens the conversation
09:11-11:23 Student messages and memes
11:23-14:14 US vs Hate resources for educators
14:14-18:19 On-ramp in high school and college
18:19-20:41 How to become involved in US vs Hate
20:41-23:25 How to approach US vs Hate in unsupportive schools
23:25-27:41 Messages in all media
27:41-29:20 Coordinated mutual support
29:20-33:08 Influence of Movement for Black Lives on anti-racist education
33:08-37:16 Schooltalk—language in schools
37:16-40:53 Anti-racist education and ethics
40:53-43:47 Roles of principals and system leaders
43:47-45:40 Home-school communication
45:40-46:29 Appreciations to colleagues
46:29-48:00 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Discover more about #USvsHate on usvshate.org

Credits

Photo by Alexis, Youth Vote Winner for Poster – #USxsHate Spring 2019

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Consumption as ethics: Talking with students about food

Ethical Schools — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 00:24:49 +0000

We welcome back Monica Chen of Factory Farming Awareness Coalition. She describes the animal-agricultural complex that exploits workers in meatpacking plants and animals in factory farms and devastates communities and the environment. Monica introduces FFAC’s culturally-competent virtual lessons and presentations for students from middle school through university, customized for all subject areas. Students who want to become social justice activists, with food as the hub that connects worker rights, sustainability, and environmental racism can apply to FFAC’s intern program.

Overview

00:00-00:52 Intro

00:52-03:29 Definition and origin of factory farms (FF)

03:29-05:27 Impact of FF on climate change

05:27-06:07 Methane from cows and climate change

06:07-08:17 Depletion and pollution of natural resources

08:17-09:31 Water use and drought (particularly in California)

09:31-12:33 Chickens

12:33-13:52 Pigs

13:52-16:20 Meatpacking plants

16:20-19:16 Factory Farming Awareness Coalition (FFAC) programming for classrooms and distance learning

19:16-22:12 Tailoring content area presentations

22:12-24:05 FFAC’s intern program

24:05-25:52 Relationship of FF to spread of infectious diseases

25:52-27:15 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Listen to our first episode with Monica Chen “Food injustice: The corporatization of school meals”
Factory Farming Awareness Coalition website: ffacoalition.org

Credits

Photos: Canva and FFAC

Soundtrack: Podington Bear

Busting out of the classroom: Connecting local history to everyday life

Ethical Schools — Wed, 26 Aug 2020 22:29:03 +0000

Social studies teacher David Edelman and student Raúl Baez speak about their class’s “Virtual Walking Tour of Slavery in New York City” and other projects in which students become teachers. David’s goal is to instill curiosity and encourage students to connect history to their lived experiences. He shares suggestions for virtual teaching and teacher collaboration.

Overview

00:00-00:47 Intros
00:47-03:34 Why teach history
03:34:06:03 “Cagebusting classrooms” website
06:03-07:28 Student testimony at City Council
07:28-10:20 Objective of Virtual Walking Tour of Slavery
10:20:11:09 Tour’s creation and meaning
11:09-12:03 Impact of going virtual
12:03-14:21 Background of the tour; why it’s exciting
14:21-17:32 How the tour changes ways of seeing the city
17:32-18:06 Students as teachers
18:06-23:40 Connecting with George Floyd’s murder and the Movement for Black Lives
23:40-27:40 Connecting local history to current events
27:40-30:04 Language of ethics
30:04-34:18 Establishing rapport when the semester starts online
34:18-40:25 Suggestions for collaboration among teachers
40:25-41:19 Takeaways for students
41:19-42:11 Why history is interesting to students
42:11-43:30 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

To find more information about David’s projects, go to cagebustingclassrooms.com

Credits

Photo by NYPL Digital Collections

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Food injustice: The corporatization of school meals

Ethical Schools — Thu, 20 Aug 2020 02:00:51 +0000

We speak with Monica Chen, veteran teacher and executive director of Factory Farming Awareness Coalition. Monica tells us how cow’s milk became a staple in school lunches even though most children of color do not have the ability to digest lactose, the main carbohydrate in dairy products. She explains how checkoff programs like Got milk? mislead the American public into thinking these are healthy foods for human children.

References

Factory Farming Awareness Coalition website: ffacoalition.org
Listen to our second episode with Monica Chen “Consumption as ethics: Talking with students about food”
Note: lauren Ornelas, founder and president of Food Empowerment Project, originated the term “lactose-normal.”

Overview

00:00-00:49 Intros

00:49-02:41 Factory farms and why is it important for students to know about them

02:41-04:46 How schools started serving meals

04:46-05:33 Why school food looks the same across the country

05:33-11:06 Why most schools serve milk even though many students, those from especially other-than-European backgrounds are lactose intolerant

11:06-13:10 Reimbursable lunches

13:10-16:01 Factory farm conditions for cows

16:01-18:11 Making connections between choices and impacts

18:11-21:07 Culturally responsive conversations about food

21:07-25:01 Respect/disrespect for Navajo culture in a Bureau of Indian Education school in the Navajo Nation

25:01-33:05 How schools can encourage students to think broadly about impact of choices

33:05-34:30 Impact of industry lobbying campaigns on low-income schools

34:30-35:59 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Credits

Photo: Canva

Soundtrack: Podington Bear

Audit culture: The dehumanization of education

Ethical Schools — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 03:34:23 +0000

World renowned educational consultant Bill Stroud talks about schooling within our capitalist culture and the impact that on-line learning will have on teachers’ autonomy and teacher-student relationships. He discusses similarities and differences among classrooms in different countries, the potential impact of the Movement for Black Lives on schools, and what envisioning a different system of schools would look like.

Overview

00:00-00:45 Intros

00:46-02:52 Individual great schools will be anomalies without larger changes

02:53-05:50 A systemic culture of mistrust

05:51-11:23 Desegregation as a quality assurance step; impacts of segregation

11:24-13:29 Diversity of ideas as well as race/ethnicity

13:30-15:22 Local and national cultures’ impact on schools

15:23-17:04 Teacher dominated classrooms are the norm around the world

17:05-20:34 Different take-aways from education in the U.S. and in Thailand

20:35-23:56 Challenges sustaining schools with values that are different from the dominant culture

23:57-32:31 Impacts of technology and on-line learning

32:32-39:13 Free time, its uses and value; free time. class and race

39:13-43:40 Denmark: changes in daily school experiences during COVID-19

43:41-47:05 Potential effects of Movement for Black Lives on schools as systems and institutions

47:05-49:05 A vision for a movement to organize schools differently

49:66-52:20 Role of public education in creating an intelligent citizenry

52:21-57:35 Getting students invested in schooling; creating community

57:36-58:57 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Supporting student civic activism: Social studies on steroids – Part 2

Ethical Schools — Wed, 05 Aug 2020 17:46:24 +0000

References

Click here to listen to the first part of this interview
The Ethics of the “N-Word” in the Classroom by Dr. Alan Singer

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Supporting student civic activism: Social studies on steroids – Part 1

Ethical Schools — Wed, 29 Jul 2020 21:43:40 +0000

Dr. Alan Singer, Dr. Pablo Muriel, and Gates Millennium Scholar Dennis Belen-Morales, three generations of teachers, describe how they center student activism in their project-based social studies and history classes while giving students the tools to pass the NYS Regents exams. Dr. Singer was Dr. Muriel’s college professor, and Dr. Muriel was Mr. Belen-Morales’ high school teacher. Now all three are at Hofstra University. Part 1 of a two-part series that contains lots of specific strategies for teachers and passion for civics education.

References

Click here to listen to the second part of this interview
Alan Singer has regularly contributed to HuffPost and Daily Kos
It’s possible to pre-order the book “Supporting Civics Education with Student Activism: Citizens for a Democratic Society”, by Alan Singer and Pablo Muriel, on Amazon
The Ethics of the “N-Word” in the Classroom by Dr. Alan Singer

Overview

00:00-01:03 Intros

01:03-07:49 Why teach civic education?

07:49-23:26 Essential elements of “Supporting civics education with student activism”

23:26-32:08 Should social studies/history teachers be open with their students about their political perspectives?

32:08-35:38 How do you handle action projects that you find offensive or unethical?

35:38-43:47 Encountering racism among students; relationships among national/racial groups

43:47-45:00 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Credits

Photo hofstra.edu

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Police and metal detectors in schools: Student perspectives

Ethical Schools — Wed, 22 Jul 2020 20:51:12 +0000

Nia Morgan and Anahi Ortiz Fierros of Urban Youth Collaborative describe how police and metal detectors humiliate and traumatize students. The story of the “fork in the backpack” illustrates the system’s absurdity. And while NYC school arrests are down overall, Black and Latinx students are arrested at much higher rates than white students. NYS legislature considers Solutions Not Suspensions Act. Campaigns for police-free schools are taking place around the country.

Overview

00:00-01:02 Intros

01:02-01:29 The Urban Youth Collaborative

01:29-02:39 90% of school arrests, summons, juvenile reports are of Black and Latinx students

02:39-03:48 UYC’s shift from improved interactions to elimination of police from schools

03:48-06:14 Examples of student experiences with police

06:14-07:40 Differences in how police and school staff treat students

07:40-09:55 NYC’s new budget will not bring necessary change

09:55-13:01 Campaigns around the country for police-free schools; Salem OR school board member wears blackface throughout meeting on BLM

13:01-13:44 Toronto as a model

13:44-16:24 Solutions Not Suspension Act in NYS legislature; opposed by teachers union

16:24-20:05 What’s needed in school culture; staff professional development to create safe schools; NYC commitment to restorative practices expansion but now not in budget

20:05-23:31 Effects of metal detectors in schools; student stories of incidents including a fork in a backpack and art supplies in a bag

23:31-25:42 Traumatic effects of police in schools; policing just doesn’t work

25:42-27:30 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Credits

Photo facebook.com/urbanyouthcollaborative

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

UPDATE Civics education: A Constitutional right?

Ethical Schools — Wed, 15 Jul 2020 23:05:52 +0000

Last year we interviewed Mark Santow, one of the plaintiffs suing the State of Rhode Island under the 14th Amendment for failing to provide some students civics curricula and other components of an adequate education. After we revisit our interview, Dr. Santow updates us on the suit and reflects on the lawsuit’s particular relevance at a time of pandemic and the Mobilization for Black Lives.

Overview

00:00-00:43 Update intro

00:43-02:03 Intros

02:03-06:50 Cook v Raimondo lawsuit background

06:59-08:31 A constitutional right to an education

08:32-10:11 Why Rhode Island and why now

10:12-11:55 Lack of civics and unequal funding

11:56-15:06 A vision of a civics curriculum

15:07-17:44 Role of ethics/ethical decision-making in a civics course

17:45-20:08 Federal courts’ resistance to accepting adequate education as a constitutional right

20:09-21:51 Relationship to slavery/race

21:52-24:47 Can education system compensate for economic inequality

24:48-26:51 Civics as center of entire curriculum could be transformative

26:52-29:29 Public organizing and the lawsuit

29:32-33:17 State of the litigation

33:18-37:05 Relationship to Movement for Black Lives

37:06-38:05 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcript of this episode.

References

Opinion column by Aaron Tang, Ethan Hutt and Daniel Klasik about Gary B. v. Whitmer published on The New York Times
Gary B. v. Whitmer (lawsuit)
Judge William E. Smith’s decision in this case
Original episode: Mark Santow on Ethical Schools Podcast

Credits

Photo by Koshu-Kunii/Unsplash

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Too Late For Reform: Abolishing the Police in Schools

Ethical Schools — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 20:26:14 +0000

Toni Smith-Thompson, Senior Organizer at NY Civil Liberties Union, discusses the importance of replacing police presence in schools with restorative practices. Toni envisions ethical schools, in which all students feel both appreciated by and accountable to school communities, and conflicts are resolved internally. Students returning to school, many of whom will have experienced trauma associated with the pandemic and police violence, will need nurturing, not punitive measures.

Overview

00:00-00:52 Intros

00:52-04:10 It’s disingenuous to say “Black people want more cops”

04:10- 06:15 School safety officers in 2020 NYC budget agreement

06:15-07:25 School safety officers and principals

07:25-08:36 School based arrests: school safety officers and 911 calls

08:36-10:25 Moving past the default to policing

10:25-13:38 Services children will need and will they get them?

13:38-21:39 Where will the help children need come from?

21:39-23:18 Will adults in schools be prepared to respond to social-emotional needs and to academic requirements?

23:18-26:07 The goal is police-free schools

26:07-31:39 What does a restorative school community look like?

31:39-33:15 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Credits

Photo: facebook.com/nyclu

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Savage inequalities: How school funding intentionally privileges white, wealthy communities

Ethical Schools — Wed, 01 Jul 2020 20:50:46 +0000

References

Access EdBuild’s knowledge base and tools on the website: edbuild.org

Overview

00:00-00:48 Intros

00:48-02:26 How schools are funded in most of the country

02:26-05:02 How reliance on property taxes shortchanges Black and other communities of color; impact of housing discrimination

05:02-08:23 Gerrymandering of school districts to advantage affluent communities

08:23-11:14 Examples of Indianapolis and Columbus school districting boundaries

11:14-13:44 Micro districts

13:44-16:23 Shifting school district funding to county or state levels to eliminate some of the inequalities; 70%+ of students would benefit

16:23-20:12 Funds from outside the formulas exacerbate inequalities

20:12-23:42 Problems with funding formulas

23:42-27:41 What EdBuild accomplished before closing and what is left to do

27:41-30:46 EdBuild reports and tools

30:46-32:39 Relationship of school funding issues to Movement for Black Lives; $23 billion annual funding gap between predominantly White districts and districts of color

32:39-34:30 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Credits

Photo: facebook.com/neatoday

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Reimagining college admissions: Performance assessment pilot at CUNY

Ethical Schools — Wed, 24 Jun 2020 18:58:17 +0000

Dr. Michelle Fine speaks about better alternatives to standardized tests for students to demonstrate college-readiness. NYC’s Consortium Schools, which use Performance Based Assessment Tasks, collaborated with CUNY to open CUNY’s 4-year colleges to more low-income Black and Latinx applicants. Students, especially Black males, did better at college than test score-admitted peers. Dr. Fine calls for democratic school cultures based on student initiated work and collaborative revision.

References

Website of the Public Science Project
Book Radical Possibilities Public Policy Urban Education & A New Social Movement by Jean Anyon

Overview

00:00-00:37 Intros

00:37-02:18 Connections between school inequities and Movement for Black Lives

02:18-04:02 Privilege of White supremacy

04:02-14:28 CUNY admissions policies; description of Consortium schools; CUNY/Consortium pilot

14:28-20:42 Comparison of Performance Based Assessment Tasks and standardized tests; Consortium culture based on PBAT

20:42-25:26 Impact on CUNY of change in admissions policies

25:26-30:41 Importance of learning to revise

30:41-32:04 “Doors” to higher ed; PBAT as a “door.”

32:04-33:35 Why opening access to 4-year CUNY schools is so important

33:35-36:34 Varieties of strategies to replace high-stakes tests

36:34-43:31 What’s next

43:31-45:00 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Credits

Photo: facebook.com/urbanacademy

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Students demand equity and inclusion: call for admissions, curriculum, counseling changes

Ethical Schools — Wed, 17 Jun 2020 20:12:45 +0000

Manhattan’s Beacon High School students are fighting for racial equity in NYC’s highly segregated school system. Three student activists talk about their experiences in the elite public school, the student-led demonstrations and teach ins, and the Beacon Union of Unions’ comprehensive list of demands.

References

Beacon’s Union of Unions: click here to see their Policy Demands

Overview

00:00-00:47 Intros

00:47-05:54 Students’ experiences at Beacon

05:54-12:41 Student demands

12:41-15:12 Anti-racist curriculum

15:12-16:24 Teens Take Charge

16:24-18:27 What teachers need to do in making change

18:27-21:34 First Beacon demonstration in Fall 2019

21:34-27:26 December incident, response planning, and sit-in

27:26-31:01 Sit-in’s impact on relationships among students and with teachers

31:01-33:23 Sources of support for students’ June demands to administration

33:23-34:06 Administration’s response

34:06-36:15 Talking with students at other schools

36:15-37:10 Connections with Movement for Black Lives

37:10-37:40 Whites must choose between being racist and anti-racist

37:40-39:14 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of the episode.

Credits

Photo: facebook.com/teenstakechargenyc and NYC Daily News

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Crises and opportunity: A holistic approach to supporting and empowering youth

Ethical Schools — Wed, 10 Jun 2020 20:45:20 +0000

In light of the pandemic, which has disproportionately impacted BIPOC, and BLM uprisings, we’re revisiting Jon’s interview with Jason Warwin of The Brotherhood/Sister Sol. COVID-19 has devastated Bro/Sis’s community of Black and Brown youth and their families. And despite the pandemic, Bro/Sis staff and members are joining protests to demand systemic change. We’ll check in with Jason and then listen to the interview from last June.

Overview

00:00-00:26 Intros

00:27-04:15 COVID-19 impact and response

04:16-06:39 #BLM demonstrations

06:40-07:47 Programming for the next few months

07:47-08:01 Transition to reposted interview

08:02-08:45 Intros

08:46-10:32 Ethics as a core comment of Bro/Sis’s work

10:33-11:12 How young people come in contact with BroSis

11:13-15:46 Rites of Passage program

15:47-18:17 Bro/Sis as a transformative experience

18:18-21:03 Staff selection

21:04-24:01 International Study Program

24:02-26:28 International work—Bermuda and Brazil

26:29-34:03 Core elements for replication

34:04-38:37 Understanding dynamics of oppression and its effects

38:38-41:02 Helping young people develop an ethical compass

41:03-43:08 Young people’s reactions to Trump

43:08-45:37 Relationships with parents/families

45:37-46:50 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of the episode.

Challenging hierarchies: The role of the social justice teacher educator

Ethical Schools — Thu, 04 Jun 2020 00:58:49 +0000

Dr. Sherry Deckman speaks about creating classroom environments that challenge cultural and social hierarchies. Teachers need to be aware of the lenses through which they view the world and their students, especially lenses that center Whiteness. She discusses everyday anti-racism for educators and creating humanizing spaces for all students, as well as the isolation that teacher educators of color often feel.

References

Article Managing Race and Race-ing Management: Teachers’ Stories of Race and Classroom Conflict
More articles by Sherry available here

Overview

00:00-00:36 Intros

00:36-03:57 Social justice teacher education

03:57-06:06 How teachers can think about anti-racism education in their own classrooms

06:06-07:32 Cultural responsiveness and “belonging”

07:32-11:45 “Lenses centering whiteness”: what is means and what to do about it

11:45-13:26 Avoiding thinking of groups as monolithic

13:26-16:07 Humanizing spaces

16:07-19:41 Grappling with creating spaces that are humanizing for everyone in teacher ed classes

19:41-24:43 Does social justice teaching just privilege the feelings of white-identified people

24:43-26:31 Desired outcomes from teaching

26:31-28:19 Duoethnography

28:19-30:54 Recalling and sharing racialized experiences

30:54-31:27 Posting links to Sherry’s articles on Ethical Schools website

31:27-34:40 Safe spaces and brave spaces

34:40-37:35 Addressing the isolation of scholars of color in teacher education

37:35-39:00 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of the episode.

Why teach history? Knowing “why” shapes “how”

Ethical Schools — Wed, 27 May 2020 22:14:27 +0000

Richard Miller, who taught in progressive NYC secondary schools for 28 years, talks about teaching students to think like historians, weighing different sources and drawing their conclusions from evidence. The past gives context to the present, and understanding historiography, or how history is interpreted over time, equips students to view current issues from multiple perspectives.

Overview

00:00-00:33 Intro

00:33-03:18 Why teach history?

03:20-06:04 What do you want students to know when they leave school?

06:04-10:42 Relationship between individual students’ understanding and society

10:42-13:39 How goals for the year affect design of units and activities

13:39-17:02 Advice to a new teacher on goal-setting

17:02-20:27 Historiography and its importance

20:27-22:23 “Hamilton”

22:23-23:24 Historical fiction and films, David Liss’s “The Whiskey Rebellion”

23:24-29:32 Teaching writing as an ethical obligation

29:32-33:17 Reading the NY Times front page

33:17-42:18 Assessment: test, quizzes, project-based assessments

42:18-43:00 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of the episode.

Credits

Painting “The Last Moments of John Brown” by Thomas Hovenden

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Therapeutic crisis intervention: a consultant’s role in creating an ethical school culture

Ethical Schools — Wed, 20 May 2020 21:21:40 +0000

Misha Thomas, longtime consultant with Therapeutic Crisis Intervention for Schools, discusses how schools can develop trauma-informed systems for resolving behavioral conflicts and crises. He explains that schools should prioritize a culture of trust and authenticity, and establish school wide expectations that crises will be explored in context of students’ lived experiences. As an outside consultant, Misha freely shares with clients his observations on systemic issues.

Overview

00:00-00:41 Intros
00:41-01:29 Therapeutic Crisis Intervention for Schools (TCIS) and its objectives
01:29-02:23 Ethics and justice as central to consulting with schools
02:23-07:01 Prophetic/minstrel role of consultant; Misha’s roots in Black Baptist tradition
07:01-12:52 Principles of TCIS; consultant as role model and co-regulator
12:52-15:42 Teaching resilience; connections to race
15:42-17:10 Systemic injustice; role of truth-teller
17:10-12:56 Responding to specific incidents when students or teachers “lose it”
12:56-26:09 Gaining trust and creating a culture of trust
26:09-35:48 TCIS strategies and techniques
35:48-37:21 Integrating academics and social-emotional learning
37:21-41:39 Validating and challenging young people and teachers
41:39-44:51 Consulting and speaking truth to power
44:51-46:00 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of the episode.

The principal as “keeper of the vision”: Fostering and protecting an ethical community

Ethical Schools — Wed, 13 May 2020 23:11:53 +0000

Jill Herman, founding principal of East Side Community H.S, now at Bank Street College, raises essential questions: To whom should a principal be accountable? How can social emotional learning and academics be integrated? What do we mean by an ethical school?

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/3528/the-principal-as-keeper-of-the-vision-fostering-and-protecting-an-ethical-community.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:37:00

Overview

00:00-00:42 Intros

00:43-05:42 How to foster relationships that contribute to an ethical school

05:43-09:57 What is SEL and how can it be incorporated into school culture?

09:58-15:17 Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Framework

15:18-20:52 Defining “culture” and “culturally responsive”

20:53-28:22 Protecting an ethical school within a bureaucracy

28:23-31:57 Principal selection processes

31:58-34:22 Helping principal candidates decide if they really want to be principals

34:23-36:07 Characteristics of good professional development

36:08-37:00 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Credits:

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Photo by Robert Stevens on Foursquare

Student stories: SEL through writing and sharing lived experiences

Ethical Schools — Wed, 06 May 2020 18:43:05 +0000

Keith Hefner and Betsy Cohen of Youth Communication discuss their 40-year-old organization. Professional editors help students develop personal stories, which are shared with their peers. Writers experience self-reflection, readers develop empathy and gain strength from knowing others’ experiences, and teachers acquire better understanding of their students. Youth Communication also offers curricula and materials for teachers to implement.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/3457/student-stories-sel-through-writing-and-sharing-lived-experiences.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:40:30

References

Youth Communication provides free resources based on true stories by NYC teens to support remote learning. They Include:

Story-based lessons for English Language Arts instruction (subscribe here)
Virtual Workshops to support social and emotional learning strategies (register here)
Inside Voices: stories from NYC youth about their experiences in the pandemic (subscribe here)

Information about their professional development and curriculum offerings can be found in this Partnership Brochure.

Overview

00:00-00:41 Intros

00:42-01:40 Why Youth Communication exists and how it works

01:42-03:52 The stories’ effects on peers

03:53-11:27 The writing and editing process

11:28-13:39 How editors work students who want to write something that is bigoted

13:40-18:00 Looking through an ethical lens

18:01-20:31 How teachers use YC programs and materials

20:32-24:28 How teachers gain insight into the lived experiences of their students

24:29-30:06 Challenges teachers face in implementing the program

30:07-32:04 Role of principals/administrators

32:05-39:07 How the program helps teens with grief and isolation during pandemic

39:08-40:30 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of the episode.

Credits

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Photo: Youth Communication (Facebook)

Grief and loss: Supporting students, families, and teachers in a pandemic

Ethical Schools — Wed, 29 Apr 2020 16:55:03 +0000

Cynthia Trapanese, a teacher who spent 17 years as a pediatric chaplain, observes that we are all grieving right now, and that adults need to be aware of their own feelings of loss in order to help children and families effectively. During this period of isolation, children miss not only extended family, especially grandparents, but also their friends, classrooms, and the details of their school days. The impact of prolonged separation from school will be long-lasting. Cynthia is holding webinars for teachers and parents, and shares tips and resources with us.

References

Book “Healing Through The Dark Emotions The Wisdom Of Grief Fear & Despair” by Miriam Greenspan
Ethical Schools Podcast Episode with Zoe Weil of the Institute for Humane Education

Overview

00:00-01:05 Intros

01:06-02:05 Defining “loss”

02:05-03:37 Helping children stay connected while in physical isolation

03:37-05:36 Examples of what loss looks like in children’s lives

05:36-07:21 Responding to children’s expressions of how they are feeling

07:22-08:43 The importance of not trying to “fix”

08:43-10:52 Losses layered onto other Adverse Childhood Experiences

10:52-13:25 When adults don’t have answers

13:26-15:15 Being helpful to children when adults themselves are grieving and frightened

15:15-17:35 How the New School of SF is supporting teachers and parents how other schools can support teachers

17:35-20:32 Parents’ concern about students keeping up with academics during this time

20:32-22:06 How this experience can help reflection about the most important aspects of education

22:07-24:52 How teaching at Institute for Humane Education (IHE) impacts thoughts on the pandemic and impact on children

24:53-26:18 Integrating humane education about animals into 1st grade teaching

26:18-28:08 Integrating IHE “solutionaries” program into 1st grade

28:08-29:30 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of the episode.

Credits

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Photo by Janko Ferlic from Pexels

Culturally responsive practice and SEL: Effective professional development and programs

Ethical Schools — Thu, 23 Apr 2020 10:44:02 +0000

Dr. Heather C. Hill of Harvard Graduate School of Education looks at the research on culturally responsive education and SEL programs. She examines components of successful professional development programs, and how they apply to SEL and CRE. Well-designed curricula give teachers a framework on which to build and perhaps self-reflect. Daily classroom practices that build trust and engagement are important. Even if the professional development is high quality and teachers embrace the strategies, principal leadership and support is critical for learned practices to continue over time.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/3273/culturally-responsive-practice-and-sel-effective-professional-development-and-programs.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:20:00

Overview

00:00-00:34 Intros

00:35-01:43 Research interest in SEL and culturally responsive teaching

01:44-05:33 Literature on CRT programs’ effectiveness

05:34-08:46 Effective professional development (PD) for leading CR classrooms

08:47-10:50 Characteristics of effective PD, especially for STEM

10:51-14:18 Literature on PD for principals

14:19-17:35 Literature on SEL programs, positives and negatives

17:36-18:46 Potential impacts of COVID-19 and shutdowns

18:47-20:00 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Credits

Photo by Antenna CW CJ / Unsplash

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Vulnerable students’ needs and rights in pandemic: Threats and opportunities

Ethical Schools — Wed, 15 Apr 2020 19:52:11 +0000

Diana MTK Autin, parent advocacy leader, describes how distance learning fails to meet the needs of many students and exacerbates inequities. She leads several organizations that help parents advocate effectively for their own families and also for systemic change. The pandemic’s impacts are likely to be felt by students for a long time, and unless students’ rights are defended, long-standing legal protections may be weakened with devastating effects.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/3253/vulnerable-students-needs-and-rights-in-pandemic-threats-and-opportunities.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:35:59

References

Center for Parent Information and Resources: parentcenterhub.org/coronavirus-resources
Multilingual resources on COVID 19: parentcenterhub.org/buzz-march2020-issue1
RAISE National Transition TA Center for youth with disabilities, their families, and the professionals who support them (special newsletter on youth with disabilities and COVID 19): myemail.constantcontact.com/RAISE-The-Standard-Newsletter—March-2020.html?soid=1115638112245&aid=mDii4ExNoJo
National Center for Leadership in Family Professional Partnerships: familyvoices.org/coronavirus
National Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health: ffcmh.org/crisis-hotlines
National Association for Family, School, and Community Engagement: nafsce.org/general/custom.asp?page=coronavirus
National Center for Parent Leadership, Advocacy, and Community Empowerment: www.parentsatthetable.org
Resources for parents and educators: schoolvirtually.org

Overview

00:00-00:42 Intros

00:43-01:45 How parent advocacy groups help vulnerable children and families

01:46-03:33 How the pandemic and distance learning is impacting these children

03:34-06:49 What communities, districts and schools can do to lessen negative impacts

06:50-11:08 What parents and advocates can do; resources

11:09-24:41 How Federal Covid-19-related actions have affected vulnerable children/families positively and negatively; ways to affect the government’s response

24:42-29:32 Specific issues affecting transitions of students with disabilities in last year of school

29:33-34:27 Long-term impacts of crisis and responses

34:28-36:00 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of the episode.

Credits

Photo by Annie Spratt / Unsplash

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

High school sports: Ethical challenges and considerations

Ethical Schools — Wed, 08 Apr 2020 22:43:07 +0000

Master basketball coach Mark Jerome speaks candidly about social emotional complexities in sports culture and how his own ethical sensitivities have evolved over his decades of playing, coaching, and parenting. Mark describes enormous inequities in schools’ sports resources and discusses bullying and abusive parental behavior, as well as what he loves about basketball.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/3239/high-school-sports-ethical-challenges-and-considerations.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:43:00

Overview

00:00-00:41 Intros

00:42-01:33 Why sports help so many students make it through high school

01:34-02:18 Similarities between sports and arts

02:19-05:03 Fostering individualism within a team structure: “like jazz”

05:04-07:11 Coach’s role in creating the team

07:12-10:42 Why parents find team sports compelling

10:43-14:40 Balancing winning and a culture where winning isn’t everything

14:41-24:53 Helping players cope with anxiety and embarrassment

24:54-27:15 Should a player help an opponent get up from a fall?

27:16-32:28 Bullying and abusive parents

32:29-35:28 Teachers v. professionals as high school coaches

35:29-39:20 Funding and facilities disparities for sports among schools

39:21-41:32 Commodification of sports and role of corporations

41:33-43:00 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Credits

Photo by Markus Spiske / Unsplash

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Engaging young black men in school: What we can learn from art class

Ethical Schools — Wed, 01 Apr 2020 23:00:02 +0000

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/3223/engaging-young-black-men-in-school-what-we-can-learn-from-art-class.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:56:50

References

Book Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education by by Lois Hetland, Ellen Winner, Shirley Veenema, Kymberly Sheridan, and David Perkins
Book InterViews: An Introduction to Qualitative Research Interviewing by Steinar Kvale
Book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences by Howard Gardner
Authors: David Sousa and Thomas Armstrong

Overview

00:00-00:34 Intros

00:35-9:34 Don Siler’s experiences and their influence on his areas of interest

9:35-11:03 “Game of school”

11:04-18:03 A phenomenological study of several young Black men in an 8th grade art class

18:04-20:24 Kinds of engagement: emotional, cognitive, and behavioral

20:25-23:38 Studio thinking

23:39-32:48 Arts funding/cuts; fundamental value of the arts as “basic expression of human experience”; “upside down to make arts subservient to ELA even though they do improve test scores

32:49-37:36 Arts-based pedagogy across the curriculum

37:37-46:33 Neuro-education; Multiple intelligences; examples; David Sousa; Howard Gardner

46:34-49:13 Experience-based culturally responsive education; Sousa, Ladson-Billings; Paris

49:14-53:06 Teacher training for culturally responsive classrooms

53:07-56:50 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of the episode.

Text guided literacy: Literature as experience in English class

Ethical Schools — Wed, 25 Mar 2020 18:32:16 +0000

Dr. Anthony Johnston, associate professor of education at University of St. Joseph, explains text guided literacy as a framework for teaching literature. A former English teacher, Dr. Johnston resists the current emphasis on close reading. Text guided literacy encourages readers to extrapolate from the text, to take the perspective of a fictional or historical character, and to make connections between the text and their own lives. As well, empathy is a catalyst for ethical actions.

*Overview and transcription.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/3207/text-guided-literacy-literature-as-experience-in-english-class.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:34:30

References

Book Identity-Focused ELA Teaching: A Curriculum Framework for Diverse Learners and Contexts by Richard Beach, Anthony Johnston, and Amanda Thein
Book Animal Farm by George Orwell
Book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Book Blindness by José Saramago
Book How to Read Literature Like a University Professor: A Lively & Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines by Thomas Foster

Overview

00:00-00:49 Intros

00:50-02:23 Text Guided Literacy

02:24-04:42 Common Core ELA instruction

04:43-05:47 Fiction and non-fiction

05:48-11:51 Defining and assessing achievement in reading

11:52-13:45 Teaching Animal Farm with Text Guided Literacy

13:46-17:07 Approaching non-fiction

17:08-18:55 “Language of literacy is designed to exclude”

18:56-19:53 “Literature as experience”

19:54-23:36 Teaching ELLs in an AP class

23:37-26:03 Works of literature in conversation with each other and other works of art

26:04-29:33 Preparing teachers for effective teaching from Day 1

29:34-32:06 New books to read as approaches to teaching change?

32:07-33:14 Kylene Beers and Margaret Atwood on literacy

33:15-34:30 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Creating a safe haven: Changing lives after school

Ethical Schools — Wed, 18 Mar 2020 20:55:17 +0000

Jason Garcia of SoBro, a South Bronx community-based organization, describes how after school staff members help young people deal with the effects of trauma. Staff members teach content, guide students through transitions, and help students build long term relationships. SoBro’s youth workers wear many hats — guidance counselor, social worker, referral source — filling in where schools and families lack resources.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/3192/creating-a-safe-haven-changing-lives-after-school.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:29:30

Image: SoBro Twitter (@SBOEDC)

References

To know more about Jason and SoBro, go to sobro.org

Overview

00:00-00:44 Intros

00:45-05:16 Helping youths deal with effects of trauma

05:17:09:21 Self-awareness; looking for roots of acting out

09:22-11:39 Supporting staff; Ethics in Education Network (EIEN) staff development

11:40-14:18 Nurturing positive relationships

14:19-15:37 Student advocacy and activism

15:38-18:23 Awareness of electoral politics/voting

18:24-20:11 Sexuality and sexual identity

20:12-23:45 Peer pressure; “acting white”

23:46-25:51 Post-graduation support

25:52-27:33 Dealing with the coronavirus crisis

27:31-28:20 Partnering with EIEN

28:21-29:30 Outro

Overview

Click here to see the fulltranscription of the episode.

Teaching as research: Auto-ethnography of a pioneering bilingual teacher educator

Ethical Schools — Wed, 11 Mar 2020 18:44:04 +0000

Dr. Carmen Mercado, CUNY professor emeritus, talks with us about the importance of self-study, sharing diverse perspectives in class, and reflective writing in her own development and that of her students. She shares her experiences as one of the first bilingual classroom teachers and teacher educators in NYC. Carmen’s book, “Navigating teacher education in complex and uncertain times: connecting communities of practice in a borderless world,” was published in 2019.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/3169/teaching-as-research-auto-ethnography-of-a-pioneering-bilingual-teacher-educator.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:40:30

References

Book “Navigating teacher education in complex and uncertain times: connecting communities of practice in a borderless world” by Carmen Mercado

Overview

00:00-00:51 Intros

00:52-04:31 Teacher self-study

04:32-11:17 Relationships within the teacher ed classroom

11:18-14:10 Students’ reaction to process

14:11-15:09 Children’s involvement; Professional Staff Congress; grants

15:10-19:34 Children’s writing; parents

19:35-23:48 Teachers’ SEL

23:49-27:16 Impact on classroom teaching of children

27:17-30:47 Preparing teachers for diverse classrooms; using children’s literature

30:48-33:53 Stereotyping vs. cultural responsiveness

33:54-37:43 Auto-ethnography

37:44-39:08 Teacher educators’ ethical obligation towards teachers in their classroom

39:09-40:30 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Post-Graduation Planning: Helping students to explore myriad options

Ethical Schools — Wed, 04 Mar 2020 20:11:32 +0000

Lindsey Dixon, Director of Career Readiness at Urban Assembly, talks about helping students make more informed college and career decisions. The current model is restrictive and outdated, leading to suboptimal outcomes for the majority of students. Hands-on experiences and self-reflection programs can help young people better prepare for fulfilling careers and lives.

*Transcript and overview below.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/3152/post-graduation-planning-helping-students-to-explore-myriad-options.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:34:30

References

Overview

00:00-00:54 Intros

00:55-02:28 “Very restricted model” of college and career pathways

02:29-04:10 What should students be thinking about for their future?

04:11-08:11 College completion rates; college as “a risky business”

08:12-10:21 Ethical questions

10:22-11:53 Schools’ responsibilities in helping students think of individual well-being and the common good

11:54-15:11 “the leaky pipeline”; summer melt; impact of finances and familiy responsibilities on college persistence

15:12-17:34 Helping students find career satisfaction; 70% of people “hate” their jobs

17:35-19:22 Multiple jobs in a lifetime; impacts of tech and AI

19:23-22:01 Helping students look at “what do I want my life to look like”

22:02-26:16 College and career exploration tools

26:17-29:14 Post-secondary supports

29:15-30:41 Key role of relationships

30:42-33:04 Ethical issues in assessment and hiring; navigating an automated hiring world; PD Fund for pay-ahead college funding grants

33:05-34:30 Outro

Transcript

Jon M: 00:10 Hi, I’m Jon Moscow.

Amy H-L: 00:17 And I’m Amy Halpern-Laff. Welcome to Ethical Schools.

Jon M: 00:19 Our guest today is Lindsey Dickson, Director of Career Readiness at the Urban Assembly in New York City. Lindsey is also the cofounder of the PD fund, a not-for-profit that uses a pay-it-forward model to help students finance their postsecondary education. Lindsay is currently a doctoral student at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign studying educational leadership and learning design with a focus on educational equity and socioeconomic mobility. She’s an Air Force veteran and a former Bronx high school teacher. Welcome, Lindsey.

Lindsey D: 00:54 Thank you so much for having me.

Amy H-L: 00:55 Lindsay, you’ve said that college and career readiness pathways operate on a very restricted model. What do you mean by that?

Lindsey D: 01:03 Well, I mean all the way through the pipeline of a young person’s experience and education, which then leads to the workforce, they are only exposed to certain avenues. And we talk a lot about college and career opening doors for people and being that engine for social and economic mobility. That can only really happen when people have doors to walk through and that really should imply multiple doors, right. So this was kind of the danger of the vocational education in America 1.0 was when we were really tracking people into you will be a plumber, you will work in HVAC, you will go to a four year degree, you will not, you will do the military. And I think that if we’re not careful now, we are somewhat in the danger of repeating that despite our best intentions because we’re only exposing young people to one thing. Right now, what’s in vogue is this, you know, college for all, especially a four year college for all idea. That has really limited our ability to help young people explore other avenues and then perhaps lead them into that four year degree later. But they are not usually given the same amount of information about amazing technical programs and technology training boot camps or the military or national service. There are many people who have found rewarding lives and careers after doing a year or two in AmeriCorps. And I just think we really should be not restricting our young people and our society into this one kind of homogenous pathway that we know really isn’t working in many ways for very many people.

Jon M: 02:29 So given that, what do you want the students that you work with to be thinking about as they start to look ahead?

Lindsey D: 02:39 I want our students to think about the future and their future and what they can build. I mean, I think the world right now is in a state of multiple different crises from climate to how we are treating animals, people, refugees, the value add of a college education and how much debt people are carrying. There are so many issues and problems in the world. And I want our students to be thinking about what their part could be in solving some of those things and preventing some of these things from happening in the future. And so I think education absolutely is the best tool to help them do that. But it has to be experiential. It just can’t come from a textbook. We’re not going to get back to the moon, let alone Mars, if we aren’t really thinking differently about, you know, 21st century education and we’re already in 2020 and I fear that we’re still going to be talking about 21st century skills in the 22nd century. And so I do think that exposing young people to technology and giving them an experiential education where they can go out into the world and solve big problems and understand that they do belong and they are the leaders that we’ve all been waiting for, I think that’s what the promise of education is and the promise of a real career pathways, which really tap into students’ interests and values and what they see as a need in their local communities and around the world and then just teaches them the skills to translate those problems that they see into ideas and solutions. And that’s what I do every day. And I feel very fortunate to do what I do with Urban Assembly.

Jon M: 04:11 So following up on what students should be thinking about and on this restricted model, you’ve talked about the fact that college completion rates are really low and yet a lot of students end up with a lot of debt, and you’ve argued that this wouldn’t really be acceptable in any other kinds of situation. Could you talk about this a little bit?

Lindsey D: 04:31 I think we have to take a hard look at the value proposition of higher education and compare that to other institutions that people invest time and money into. You know, if only about 20 or 30% of people saw any types of returns on the stock market, I don’t think people would invest. They wouldn’t spend the time and certainly the money if they weren’t going to see a payoff in the form of improved economic mobility, improved economic outcomes. Take housing, another important area of our lives and of society. If only 20 or 30% of people saw a return on their real estate investments, which you know, many people use as a form of a retirement fund, if only 20 or 30% of people were able to turn around and resell their home for a profit, I think everyone would rent, right? Because it just wouldn’t have the value. And so when we see higher education and we have those numbers sometimes in the twenties and thirties and only forties for positive outcomes for people who are actually getting that degree and earning those important credentials, especially when you’re talking about students of color, then I think yeah, we have a right to put that information in front of students and parents and families and help them make the best decision for themselves as far as, you know, investing in the right opportunity for them once they graduate high school. That could be an apprenticeship, that could be national service and all of those things and more can lead right back to college when young person has more experience and a better sense perhaps of what they want that college degree to do for their life and for their career. But I just think it’s important for us to back up, look at the data, look at what other other countries are doing and just ask some of those hard questions because there’s no question to me that higher education has a very, very central role to play in this. I also feel unequivocally that the current model is broken for far too many people and so we can’t just continue doing the same old thing over and over. It’s been many decades now that we’re seeing these results, and I just think they’re unacceptable and I think everyone has to take a look at what they’re doing, that’s K-12 schools, community based organizations and nonprofits, higher ed for sure, industry though, policy makers and government. We all have a part to play in this and I think we just need to be doing a better job of looking at the data. I’m looking at some of the research that’s out there about other models that are working and working for certain students and demographics and then roll up our sleeves and just get it done. One of the folks that I follow is Anthony Carnevale. He is one of the leaders at Georgetown’s Center for the Future of Education and the Workforce. And he was recently testifying in front of Congress for the Higher Education Act and he called higher education a risky business, right. He actually said that, that’s what he said. He said higher education is a risky business that has been risky for a long time now, and when 70% of people say their number one reason for going to college is a successful career, I just think that we have to be doing a better job of building those bridges. First of all, making sure they get into and through college, but then also into a successful career ladder job that’s gonna pay a family sustaining wage. When only one out of three Americans have a bachelor’s degree and only one out of four Black and Brown Americans have a bachelor’s degree by the age of 24, I think we just need to hit the pause button and ask first of all, is that what the end goal should be for every American? If it is, we’re way off the mark. If it’s not, then what do we all need to do to realign so that every young person has the best pathway and the best opportunity placed before them, and then they can choose which door to walk through that’s going to actually lead to success for themselves and for their families and for their community.

Amy H-L: 08:12 Lindsey, do you find the language of ethics useful in talking about college and career readiness, do we have an ethical obligation to ensure that students get the support they need to thrive in college?

Lindsey D: 08:26 Absolutely. I actually think ethics plays a huge role both on the education and the workforce side and then in the nexus between them in which counselors are such an important conduit, in that space. I think there are many opportunities that are not put in front of our young people and often by the best intentions, right. So what if you just have a college counselor who has perhaps no personal experience with the military or maybe does and it was negative. You know, maybe they don’t, out of the best intentions, put that option out there, but that removes choice and agency. So I do think, um, I do think there are ethical implications when we artificially narrow the range of options that young people could and should have to choose from. And again, be that national service. It could be, you know, taking a gap year. There’s so much pressure on high school seniors who are graduating in the United States to go immediately to college, whether or not they know what they want to do, whether or not they have a major even declared so those credits are going to be of worth to them, or whether or not their whole first year of college might be spent in remedial education. I happen to think that’s deeply unethical. If we’re sending a young person and we know their entire first year of college is going to be spent in remedial education, where they’re going to be sitting and if they pass, you know, not counting those credits for graduation and paying the same amount of money as everyone else. I just think there has to be a better way. What if there was a AmeriCorps program, for instance, or in New York City Civic Corps program that they could spend a year tutoring in a middle school and build their own academic skills, and then they could test out of remediation. They would have earned some money and they would have really important signals on their resume and a professional network by the age of 19. And then counsel that young person to go to college. So I do think, um, especially on the education side and the way that we counsel young people, and listen, this isn’t all on counselors because what supports are they given? What training are they given about the new world of work and the information economy? Do they even get training or support to know all the many careers that are out there for young people? I don’t think they do. Not adequately enough.

Amy H-L: 10:22 What responsibility, if any, does the school have to encourage students to think about their individual futures and how they might impact society’s wellbeing or the common good?

Lindsey D: 10:38 Well, I think you just summed up, in a nutshell, what I think the purpose of education at least at the K-12 level should be, and I don’t think this has been getting enough attention at the national level and even the state and city and district level. Um, one of the projects I’m most proud of at the Urban Assembly, at the middle and high school level, we’ve been working with the New York City Department of Education on a new grant called, you know, Middle School CTE: Exploring Futures. And it is all about how do we take a young person and help them design a pathway that really fits their life and will benefit society. So it’s not just this utilitarian go work, make money, usually some for yourself, but a lot more for someone else. How can we help you feel a sense of service? We have another school in our network called the Global Learning Collaborative that requires service learning, a lot of hours of service learning, for students before they graduate. So I do think there are vehicles and mechanisms for this and organizations like the Urban Assembly care very deeply about it. I do think it should be higher on the national radar because it’s just another way to experientially learn skills, connect to networks, and have a sense of purpose, which really is the most important thing to guide people in their career pathways and in life.

Jon M: 11:54 I wanted to go back a little bit because since you said it, it’s been running through my head as we’ve been talking. When you were talking about the college completion rates, could you break down a little bit, sort of where things are happening. So what’s happening in terms of the percentage of students who are graduating from high school and then once students get into college itself, whether it’s a community college, whether it’s CUNY, whether it’s a private school, what is actually happening in the colleges and, and to the extent that there’s a big drop-off there, why do you think that’s happening?

Lindsey D: 12:39 Well, I’ll say a few things. One, I focus a lot more on the career side of college and career. So I don’t have every single stat about, you know, the exact percentages. Some of my colleagues on our post-secondary access side of the world do have those more immediately at their fingertips. But we do know that the leaky pipeline starts really early and of every 100 9th graders, only, and I’ll take New York City as an example, only between 78 and 80% of those will graduate high school. So now that’s your new bucket of students and only around 50 something percent of your original 100 are going to go onto college. And then the persistence rate drops drastically after the first year of college. And there’s a phenomenon called “summer melt” that we have a program at the Urban Assembly called Bridge to College to help. So summer melt is when a high school senior gets accepted to a college, graduates from high school and probably has every intention of going to college. And there are a range of reasons why first generation and non first-generation future college students don’t actually make it, from finishing up their paperwork, not understanding what a bursar is. I don’t even know if I understand what a bursar is, um, just not having that kind of familiarity. So we have coaches that actually spend the entire summer near peer model of recent college grads to help coach through. And even then, not every single student makes it through, but our numbers are certainly far better than the average. And then in the first year, we see a lot of students struggling just to acclimate to the different environment. High school academics and college academics are very different, not just in rigor but in style. And that can be a really hard shift for students if it’s the first time they’re encountering an environment like that. But most of the research shows that the number one reason that students are going to drop out, or the number one and number two, is around family responsibilities and economic need. So if they are raising a family, helping raise siblings or just housing insecure, food insecure, which very many CUNY in New York City college students are, that that becomes such a barrier that they are not able to persist. And one of the other top two or three reasons is poor fit. So maybe they thought they wanted to be an engineer, but nobody really ever gave them a chance to explore that. They never completed an internship and they go off to do this work and they realize, hey, I’m taking this time that I’m not working full time and earning a wage and spending all this money and I actually don’t like this thing. And this is probably the first moment in their life where they actually got to decide for themselves, oh, this is not what I thought it was. So that really comes up fairly often as well. But I do think the top reason is economics.

Amy H-L: 15:12 Lindsey, taking off on that idea of poor fit, I’ve been reading some pretty horrendous statistics lately about millennials who are dissatisfied or actually hate their jobs. How do we prevent some of that? Is there some sort of introspection that students should be doing before they launch their careers?

Lindsey D: 15:34 I think it’s a great question. It’s one of the things that has kept me up at night but kept me motivated for the last several years. I also read a survey recently that about 70% of us hate our jobs and I mean hate, like they use the word hate or low or deeply dissatisfied with. And when I talk to people about this, I say, you know, that affects all of us. If you’re in the 30% like me, who is very lucky to have their dream job or feel at least moderately happy and fulfilled at work, like that’s awesome for you and we want to grow that number, but you’re still affected by angry crossing guards that aren’t paying attention to traffic and disgruntled dentists who, well, you can fill in the blank there. And so I do think this is something we have to pay attention to. And I do think part of the problem comes again from this kind of focus on just purely academics and test preparation in middle and high schools. A high school senior in America, certainly New York State, can graduate literally without ever having spoken a word. They do not have to know themselves. They do not have to know, say, can you list your top five skills Jorge or Annabella, can you tell me three of your values or Steven, how will you contribute to your family and society? They don’t have to answer that question. They have to answer, you know, what was the migrational pattern of the Bantu tribe in the 1700s or you know, some other really content-based thing that most of us can Google or our students are just going to ask their smartwatches. So I do think assessment drives a lot of instruction and there’s a very broken part of what and how we are still assessing young people who, you know, between the hours of eight and four are kind of legally locked into these seats where usually they can’t have their phones out and it’s all about memorize this stuff that someone decided was important. And then they go home and then their interest resurges, they’re on their phones, they are mediating conversations socially. But that’s not what they get from the eight to four so I do think K-12 has a lot of this burden to bear and really needs to be very innovative if we’re going to change this really big phenomenon of people just hating their life, their nine to five, which is what we do most of the time when we’re not asleep.

Jon M: 17:35 Speaking of that, these days, most people will have multiple jobs or may find their jobs eliminated by technology and artificial intelligence. How does that impact the advice you give students?

Lindsey D: 17:47 Well, we tell them that this is probably more urgent for them than any other, at least living generation. Certainly the probably second industrial revolution and the third, you know, have some horror stories that they could share if they were still around. But our young people are growing up in the fourth industrial revolution, and at the Urban Assembly, we tell them that and we tell them what that means to grow up in a completely technology mediated society and that it means, yes, you may work two or three jobs. We talk to them about the gig economy. When I was going through high school, that was not a word, let alone something that anyone taught me, but we tell our students about how to determine if you want to create your own product or service, how to market yourself and digitally brand yourself if that’s something you want to decide to do. One of our schools, the Urban Assembly Gateway School for Technology in Midtown Manhattan actually help students start businesses while they’re still in high school. They can start their own clothing lines, and some of them have, or they can start their own technology support companies and and be consultants while they are still high schoolers, and I do think that more and more, already something like 40% of that age range, are already involved in the gig economy. So we know that is going to increase, but also just we have to get people to have a different mindset and a mental schema for what a career is. It is no longer 40 years as a clerk or a teller or even a doctor necessarily. We’re going to all have to get very flexible with our idea of career and we’re teaching our students how to do that by thinking about skills and not job titles, right, transferable skills that you can layer on and stack and credentials that will follow you for the rest of your life. So it really is not a buzzword. Lifelong learning is everything.

Amy H-L: 19:23 So Lindsey, do you think that there is a role of counselors and institutions to help students look at what a full, rich life might look like to them? Not just a career, but also hobbies, perhaps avocations?

Lindsey D: 19:42 Yes, absolutely. Yes. And I think this is where we need to think about how to scale something like that type of intervention and use technology really smartly. But there are platforms out there that colleges, counselors and guidance counselors could use or even just paper-based methods that really do help young people determine how to develop hobbies, skills, interests. I really do think that is so much of the core of how we determine our identity around career. Because there are really, really strong ties, not just in the United States but around the world, between what we do and who we are. But I think that who we are part has to come first and that it’s somebody’s job to help them explore that. So certainly it’s not all on the shoulders of counselors. I do think we should be spending more time in our classrooms writing about and researching about and digitally sharing these types of things with one another to help create mental models of what is even possible. Like, oh, I’m a young girl. I didn’t even know I could be an astrophysicist. Like that wasn’t even a thing I thought I could be until I saw it. So I do think it is the role of counselors and I do think that this should be much more on the radar of high school requirements than a particular test score, which most employers no longer or never did find relevant. And many colleges are even dropping some of the requirements for these national test scores. But what they do need is to have a really strong sense of self and the social emotional skills like social awareness and self-awareness are going to be what allows them to succeed, whatever pathway they choose. But again, most schools are not spending any time on that. So I do think counselors should have some method, ideally using technology or at least some type of system of making sure every single kid gets to sit down and determine, again, not as you said, not just careers, but what do I want my life to look like? What type of home do I even want to live in? Do I want to have a huge, huge mansion or do I love tiny homes, which I personally do. So I think those should be on more people’s radars and they’re very environmentally conscious. You know, do I want pets? Do I want to have children. And maybe I don’t know that. Do I want to adopt? Do I want to travel? Have I ever traveled? If I haven’t, maybe I can’t even make the decision yet. So let me take a virtual reality tour of another country using Google Cardboard, which is like $10, so I just think all of these experiential things going back to even like the best of our philosophers from Dewey and Vygotsky and Bandura, they’ve been telling us this for hundreds of years. I just think it’s time we listen.

Jon M: 22:02 So what are some of the tools that counselors could be using for some of this? What have you found particularly useful, and are there cautions with any of them, you know, in terms of whether they’re being used in the best possible way or whether they in some cases can end up tracking kids in ways that you don’t want them to? What do you recommend or what do you think people should check out to see if they work for them?

Lindsey D: 22:25 Absolutely. There are some that are pretty high on my radar. Part of my doctoral program recently, I had to do a bit of a competitive analysis from about seven different college and career exploration tools, one that we’re piloting in two schools, the Urban Assembly Unison School in Brooklyn and the Urban Assembly School for Criminal Justice, also in Brooklyn, which is an all girls high school. So we’re doing a middle school and high school pilot. That platform is called Xello, X-E-L-L-O. We’re really liking the results we see so far because, as I was saying before, it starts with, you know, how do you think you learn best? What are some of the things that make up your personality and how are you uniquely individual? What are your interests? What careers, you know, that you’ve ever even heard of are you interested in exploring more? So it is a very personalized learning kind of competency- and knowledge-building platform. And we’re seeing really strong results with students. Maybe saying, oh, I wasn’t considering college before this, but now that I got to explore it, including like a map and understood how cool college is and how different it is from high school. And we got to read these day in a life and watch these videos that they’re really having just a much bigger idea of who they could be in the future. So we’re going to, you know, stand by for more results, which we’ll post on our website, but we are really finding that this is a promising tool and it’s one that the Department of Education has supported us with a grant to deploy and potentially it’ll roll out to more schools in the future. I guess that’ll be based on the results.

Amy H-L: 23:53 That’s fantastic. I wish that these types of tools had existed when I was a kid.

Lindsey D: 23:59 Me too.

Jon M: 24:02 Are there others that you either think would be useful for people to check out? Because our audience is in something like 45 states and 40 other countries, so people are going to be in a wide variety of circumstances. And then if there are any that you think could be good, but that you’d also have cautions about.

Lindsey D: 24:20 Absolutely. So there are some our other schools are using. There’s a platform called Thrively that our school CompSci High or Urban Assembly Computer Science High School is testing. So that’s like the word thrive, Thrively, and it has a lot of overlap with Xello. There’s another, You Science, so Y-O-U science that I think some of our schools and other schools in New York and around the country are considering. We found a lot of things to love about You Science. We want to understand the research a bit better on their work into aptitude. Because your question further, and this is not a knock on You Science, but just in general, one of the caveats or the cautions that we have is like to narrowly telling a student this is what you’re good at and this is what you are not good at, so you should just only consider things in this bucket if things you are good at. Because we know that learning is this lifelong process and it is not linear and it is not an absolute thing. It is a relative concept. So I would be cautious about, you know, too narrowly telling a young person, well you have like a great degree of, you know, visual spatial acuity so you should be, you know, this type of engineer when really maybe they just want to be a dancer or a poet and maybe they have multi skills, right. So I think that one is one to look at for sure if you’re in an international audience, but one to look into some more of the research behind aptitude versus interest. I think there’s strong research around a theory called career decision-making self-efficacy, and that builds on the work of social, cognitive career theory. And even back to the Holland codes and the Holland codes told you, you know, are you realistic or imaginative, are you more social or are you more enterprising and conventional. That theory is still grounding a lot of this work and you know, has had good results with helping people find careers, but it’s much more around interest, personality type learning style. So I think those, the ones that really do that and to our conversation earlier, help a young person just explore more about who they are, not what they are or what skill they are, are the ones that we find more promising.

Amy H-L: 26:17 So these sound like fantastic tools for students considering what their next step is. Once they graduate, what types of supports should we as a society or specifically the school be providing to help students as they move into the next phase of their lives and their careers?

Lindsey D: 26:39 I’m so glad you asked that because this has been a topic that has been deeply on our minds at the Urban Assembly and I know many of our partner organizations and at the Department of Ed in New York City, which is the biggest school district in the country. So sometimes as goes New York City, so goes other districts. And in this way, I hope so because we’ve really been focusing on supporting our alumni and we have a new alumni success team that is led by, you know, a phenomenal, a practitioner with a background in workforce development. And we’ve been building on the work that our amazing college team has already been doing with technology-based intervention. So there’s a lot of, you know, kind of behaviorist theories and science around, you know, the benefit of nudging and just sometimes it’s just a reminder for a young person whose frontal lobe is not finished quite cooking or building or you know, getting all those neurons in place, not by 18 and still not by 21, so sometimes it’s something as simple as sending them a reminder that their FAFSA is due or sometimes it’s sharing a resource, maybe you don’t in your iny our immediate family or, or small circle of community have somebody that could help you, say like, hey, here’s a really great resume template for a recent high school grad or here’s a video to help you build a LinkedIn profile because everything is about who you know. We still get 70 to 80% of the jobs in America by who we know or someone who can open an employment door for us. So here’s this really, you know, phenomenal global tool, but they don’t teach you this in high school. My team does. I’m very proud of my team, the career readiness team, for doing this work in schools. But by and large, most high school students graduate and leave without that strong resume, that LinkedIn and even just some of the skills that I think that we could help them with if we were connected and supported and they felt like they could reach out back out to us. So now we are really leaning hard on not just K-12 but alumni support at the Urban Assembly. So it’s definitely going to be an area to watch.

Jon M: 28:22 And that alumni support includes the students who are going on to college. Do they tend to stay in touch with you?

Lindsey D: 28:27 Absolutely. Both sides of the house stay in touch with us, which we’re really proud of. So most of our students do go on to college right after high school or shortly thereafter. But there’s also many of our students for a variety of reasons that choose not to and they stay in contact with us as well. So we send out surveys to try to figure out what are the barriers for them, whether it’s in college or to find a job. They reach back out and text us through our texting platform to say, hey, I’m looking for a job, or could you give me feedback on this resume and a variety of things, or just like, I’m a little stuck right now, or I’m hungry. I mean sometimes it’s just the basic human needs and they need a place to reach out to and we are not necessarily the ones to feed them. Occasionally we can provide economic support for our alums, but we can connect them to the rich services that the city provides that just this young person may not know how to tap into.

Amy H-L: 29:15 Yeah, that speaks to something that we always emphasize, which is that it’s all about the relationships and if your alumni feel comfortable contacting you, I think that’s, that’s key.

Lindsey D: 29:27 Totally agree. And that’s why the newest program we’ve launched at the Urban Assembly is called the Urban Assembly Career Peer Student Leadership Program. So we’re actually paying high school seniors across every single school that we work with, across, you know, 11,000 students just in New York City. We’re paying at least one or more of them per school to be that kind of peer leader for each other and to create community and to create those tighter bonds that will last after they leave. So we train them how to do resume review for their peers, how to create LinkedIn profiles. Several of them, because this is National Career Month in February, several of them today and tomorrow are leading mock interviews with their peers. Because that’s a terrifying thing. I don’t know if you guys remember your first interview, but sitting down and sweaty palms and you don’t know these people who are older than you and more experienced and maybe this is your first job. That’s just like a very nerve wracking thing to throw a young person into without practice. And so these young people can help each other practice, sometimes a lot better than us old folks can, and they will listen to them and really, you know, create those relationships that we’re hoping will last many years after they leave high school and then they can reach out five years down the road. Not just for a job but maybe a recommendation because they need to go back to grad school. There’s all kinds of ways that we can help one another if we stay, you know, more tightly linked in community and through relationships.

Jon M: 30:42 Is there anything else that you’d like to add that we haven’t talked about?

Lindsey D: 30:46 Just I’m really glad that podcasts and work like yours exists. I do think there are so many ethical implications for the future of work, especially when it comes to, I’m actually writing a paper on artificial intelligence and assessment right now and of course as it intersects with college and high school, but especially with hiring, There’s so many assessments now for hiring. Even the, not just the ones that, you know, everyone is a little bit more familiar with like algorithms that sort based on, you know, more traditional Anglo Saxon names and maybe they are weeding out based on, you know, ethnic bias. But now they have ones that are looking at you on a video and assessing, you know, do they smile and they’re giving you an empathy rating on, you know, do you show concern when someone else, you know, is experiencing some type of hardship in front of you. And these are like, again, artificial measures of someone’s input of this is what it means to be empathetic, this is what it means to be curious. And so I think there’s a lot of potential here if we could get it right to screen out bias. But right now I’m deeply concerned about this area and it’s something that’s just ramping up more and more as everything becomes automated, as we automate tasks, especially, and there’s so many, you know, factories now and Amazon and other companies that are entirely entirely mediated by robots, algorithms and machines. How can we help our young people prepare for that world, not just on the skills base, but to navigate, you know, a system where it may not even be a person answering the phone or looking at your resume? So I think there’s a lot of like ethics work that needs to be done there. And I know that work’s already happening, but that is something that I’m thinking about very deeply. And then I guess I would just say in in conclusion that this very small nonprofit that I launched called the PD fund, we are about to launch another round of funding students. So if you’re a student listening and you want to go back and get your education, but maybe you’re a single parent and you can’t afford childcare or you are a student who got scholarship for tuition but they didn’t give you enough to cover your housing, look us up at pdfund.org, and we’re building a small but growing community of people that want to get their education. Maybe it’s a tech bootcamp, but then once they earn their education and then go on to get a great job, they want to pay back into this community so that more people can benefit. So I’m really excited about it and we’re going to open a another wave of funding in the next month.

Jon M: 33:05 Thank you so much, Lindsay Dixon of Urban Assembly.

Amy H-L: 33:08 And thank you listeners for joining us. Check out our website for more episodes and articles. We’ve begun to post annotated transcripts of our interviews. We offer professional development on social emotional learning, with a focus on ethics, in the New York City area. Contact us at hosts@tethicalschools.org to talk about your school or youth program. We’re on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @ethicalschools. Our editor and social media manager is Amanda Denti. Till next week.

Credits

Photo: twitter.com/urbanassembly

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

The “Name Game”: racialization in a suburban high school

Ethical Schools — Wed, 26 Feb 2020 20:10:33 +0000

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/3129/the-name-game-racialization-in-a-suburban-high-school.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:49:30

References

Book Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race by Beverly Tatum.

Overview

00:00-00:48 Intros

00:49-03:13 “Name game”: the background

03:14-04:58 The “name game”

04:59-05:30 The intervention

05:31-08:41 Student: “Being white means being seen as racist”

08:42-12:13 Racialized identities/racialization of youth

12:14-13:39 Impact of racialization on school community

13:40-16:46 Obstacles to whites grasping the impact of race-related experiences on Black students

16:47-19:03 Administrators’ and faculty members’ responses

19:04-20:37 The blame game

20:38-23:43 White students who wanted to address the issue

23:44-29:35 The “n-word” and language

29:36-34:08 Applying the lens of ethics

34:09-37:00 Bakhtin, carnival, heteroglossia

37:01-46:30 How can schools respond to racism/racist actions?

46:31-48:05 Parents

48:06-49:30 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of the episode.

Credits

Photo by Spencer Pierce / Unsplash

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Centering SEL for social and economic mobility

Ethical Schools — Wed, 19 Feb 2020 18:05:36 +0000

David Adams is Director of Social Emotional Learning at NYC’s Urban Assembly, a network of schools that does not screen students. David focuses on the intersection of academic and technical skills, social-emotional competencies, and career development to create social/economic mobility. Students must have a relationship with the teacher or the content for optimal learning. Perspective-taking is central to ethical development. Schools have to “know their ‘why’” and be able to explain it in plain language.

*Overview and transcript below.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/3114/centering-sel-for-social-and-economic-mobility.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:25:30

Overview

00:00-01:00 Intros

01:01-04:01 Urban Assembly (UA) and its strategies

04:02-04:12 Individual UA schools’ approaches to SEL

04:13-06:25 Design Derby project of Institute for Math and Science for Young Women and Facebook

06:26-14:15 Ethics, SEL, and school values

14:16-16:09 Culturally responsive and sustaining education at UA

16:10-19:38 Single-sex schools

19:39-21:53 School partnerships

21:54-24:09 UA SEL Symposium and International SEL Day

24:10-25:30 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of the episode.

Credits

Photo: facebook.com/theurbanassembly

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

The Algebra Project: Bob Moses on math literacy as a civil right – Part 2

Ethical Schools — Wed, 12 Feb 2020 18:28:21 +0000

The Algebra Project founder and president–and lead organizer of the famous 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer voting rights campaign–talks about math literacy as an organizing tool to guarantee quality public school education for all children. Bob Moses describes the Algebra Project’s strategies to connect math to students’ life experiences and everyday language. The interview is divided into two episodes.

*Overview, transcript, and links below.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/3053/the-algebra-project-bob-moses-on-math-literacy-as-a-civil-right-part-2.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:28:30

References

Part one of this interview with Bob Moses.
Book Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream by Nicholas Lemann.
The Algebra Project website.

Overview

00:00-00:19 Intro

00:20-03:47 Establishing math literacy and educational quality as a Constitutional right

03:48-05:45 Next Gen curriculum; math texts become obsolete as soon as they are printed

05:46-12:23 Flagway game/sport

12:24-20:16 Relationship of Algebra Project to Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Framework; fundamental metaphors and concepts that can anchor math education

20:17-25:33 Nicholas Lemann’s “Transaction Man”; coming together at the intersection of different interests around a common problem; Math Literacy Institute at University of Ohio, Mansfield

25:34-27:24 Calling attention to the need for a national approach

27:25-28:30 Outro

Transcription

Amy H-L: 00:15 Here’s part two of our interview with Bob Moses, civil rights leader and founder of the Algebra Project.

Jon M: 00:20 So the question that I was, was asking, and I think you were starting to answer was, in addition to funding, obviously, what would you, and this is a question of how our listeners can help, what would you like the federal government or the courts to do in terms of establishing the right to math literacy and educational quality as a constitutional right? What would be a marker of success?

Bob M: 00:49 So we would like Congress, in other words, and some future president to really seriously investigate establishing a direct, what we think of as direct federal investment and involvement in this particular dimension of education. You have an opening here just because of the shift from industrial to information age technology. The economy of the 20th century really was based on industrial technologies. The information age technologies open up two things. One, they add a new literacy. So quantitative literacy is now on the table alongside reading and writing. And so there’s got to be some, some level of proficiency for quantitative literacy that’s established in the public school system. What that is is not clear, but you know, the agreement has to be, well, we need all three literacies. People need to graduate with all three literacies, right. So the other is the shift in the nature of work from factory work to this work within the information technology arena, right, our knowledge work. So this shift in the nature of work really requires a fundamental shift in the education system, right? Since the education system we have now is an artifact of the 20th century, except for very few schools and students who are in elite private or public schools, right, and who are getting an education which prepares them for knowledge and for the work of the 21st century, the information age technology. So that’s, that’s an opening, right, because if you think about the civil rights movement, even, that we were part of and the effort to get political voice, that happened in the background of a planet-wide movement, right. So right now there’s a planet-wide movement, shifting from one technology to another. And so within that background, the whole issue of math education is right on the table like it was never been before. So there’s an opening there to try to use that as a pathway into a larger educational issue.

Jon M: 03:48 I have, I just wanted to ask two quick curricular questions, one formal and one less formal. The formal one is in New York State, there has been a lot, I’m not sure where it stands currently in terms of implementation, of the Next Gen math curriculum. Is that something that you’re familiar with and do you have a sense of whether it’s moving in in a direction you’d like to see?

Bob M: 04:11 Yeah, no, I, I’ve heard about it but I haven’t really, and I’m trying to think, at Fannie Lou Hamer, they’re not doing that, are they?

Jon M: 04:24 Not that I know of. My impression of it was that it was sort of seen as a corollary or companion to the Common Core in terms of literacy. And then they were going to introduce, you know, Next Gen in terms of math. And I’m not sure where it stands. I think the Regents may have postponed its implementation, but I was just curious.

Bob M: 04:43 Well I don’t have much. Here’s the thing, actual math textbooks are really obsolete the moment they’re printed. And what’s available now is a technology which allows for on time printing of materials and for teachers to be freed up to do professional development and not just be the recipients of some, you know, codified curriculum, but to actually participate in developing the curriculum for their classroom and their kids. I mean the technology is there to produce whatever they need in terms of curriculum materials. What is not there is the consciousness and the resources and the time, right. So that’s what’s needed for the 21st century.

Jon M: 05:46 And speaking of that, that leads right into my other question was I was watching a video, one of your videos from the Young People’s Project about the Flagway game, which just seemed, you know, very exciting and I wasn’t familiar with it at all. And I wonder if you could just describe it a little bit and whether it’s something that schools and after school programs could be implementing.

Bob M: 06:09 Yes, absolutely. But here’s the thing. We do sports in this country in two venues, right. We have sports that happen in schools and colleges and universities and then we have sports that happen in communities. People organize soccer teams and swim teams and so forth. So we do not have a knowledge-based sport. Flagway offers an opportunity for adults to organize a scenario that kids can participate in, in what I think of as a potential knowledge-based sport. Right now it’s a kind of game, right, that kids can play, but to be a sport it would require organizing into leagues and teams. And adults can do this, they can do this in communities and they do do this right, for certain sports. So I looked at the Mobius function in the 1990s, uh, in a book that was published by two philosophers, Reuben Hersh and I’ve forgotten the other, who were both at Brown at that time. And I came across this function and I thought to myself, well, we can materialize this function. We can actually spin it out within two and three dimensions. And so we did. And then the Young People’s Project was up and running. And basically after we developed, you know, a way to materialize it, we gave it to them and said, well look (I had gotten a patent on it), see what you can do with it, right. This is yours. What it does, it gives you access to something which nobody else has because at the heart of playing this game of very important concepts about numbers, which students don’t really tackle but which are really fundamental, and now they have a way of approaching them. So they’ve been at it for a couple of, almost maybe a couple of decades and have done, and it’s interesting to watch how long it takes for something to actually take hold and to be run by the young people themselves because they are now in their mid forties the, the ones who started it, right?. But they’ve got a whole crew, they’ve got kids in their twenties and you know, school is high school and middle school kids. And that’s one thing the NSF STEM thing did for them because, the Alliance proved to be, as people came, you know, into the Alliance and talked about it, the one thing they thought of concretely that they could do was Flagway. And so the Flagway dimension of YPP has grown and they’re having national tournaments every year. So, and it really goes, you think about, well how are you, how are you going to organize a community around math? So it is possible to organize a community around a math-based sport. What you need is a place to play it. You need transportation to get the kids there. We need some food, right?.You’re not talking big money here, you’re talking about some resources and you need a program which allows people from the community to be trained to be the coaches of the teams and to run with it, right. So that has really been gratifying to watch, but it’s interesting how long it takes for something like this to actually break in. We’ve gotten a lot of help now from MSRI. Do you guys do anything with them? That Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. It’s the nation’s think tank for recent mathematicians. And so they do a national math festival every other year and so the next one is 2021 and YPP has been part of that with the Flagway. So they’ve had teams come in, they do it in DC and they attract a lot of kids. They have maybe 20,000 kids to this program. But the thing about math festivals of course is, well, you’re trying to reach the kids. And that’s the thing about Flagway, because it can reach kids who are not, you know, performing in the top 10% or so forth in their math class, right. So how do you get, and the other thing about Flagway that’s a really important, is that it’s a tool for having kids do entry-level knowledge work. Because the process of organizing a team and talking and explaining about math concepts in the context of organizing the team and the game really is entry-level knowledge work, right? You’ve got to work with other people, you’ve got to deal with some abstract concepts. Uh, you got to learn how to talk to people, so forth. And so that’s, that’s been a big plus getting the idea of knowledge work for the kids.

Amy H-L: 12:24 Bob, going back to what you were saying about freeing up the teachers to do more professional development and curriculum development, I’m thinking about this new framework in New York, the Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Framework. I’m wondering if this ties in, if the Algebra Project and the idea of teachers actually developing curriculum for their classrooms ties in with the Framework. I’m thinking, do you have in mind that curriculum would be more community-focused, that the references would be in context of specific communities?

Bob M: 13:07 Hmm. So I think, in some sense the math curriculum hasn’t changed since we started this work, I was talking with Greg Busby, who is the dean at the University of Illinois at Edwardsville. And before that, he was chair of the math department of the University of Illinois, Carbondale. And at, around a little after the turn of the century, he invited me to come up and give a talk at Carbondale. And when I left, I asked him, well, what are you working on? And he said, well, I’m working on an unfinished problem in research mathematics called the “road coloring problem” and it hasn’t been solved yet and I’m working on trying to solve it. And so I said, well, what’s it about? And so he showed me some things. So I said to myself, well, we can materialize this and we can get the kids to work on it, right. So this was in the spring. They had taken their exams, we still got a month more school to go. And so we spent that month developing materials around this problem. And the basic idea that materialized it is, say you have five circles, hoops, in the classroom. You set them up and you have red roads, red sticks and blue sticks coming and going. One way sticks from each hoop. So each hoop has to have a stick. You can go into, in a stick, you can go out to, and you have red rows and blue rows, right. And you put a kid in each hoop and then somebody starts to say a road color, red or blue. And depending on the color, they move out from the hoop following the road. And the idea is to get everybody in the same hoop at the same time, right. So I called Greg up, I said, we’re working on your problem. He didn’t believe me. He got in his car and drove down to Jackson and we got together in the library and instead of walking around, we had little chips on paper to put in the in the hoops. right. And so at one point he stopped the whole class and said, you know what (and I had all my classes, about three classes; we were all in the library during this), he said, there are more people working on this problem right now in this room than the whole planet. So he was hooked, and he decided he would go in with us on writing some curriculum materials for NSF, for an NSF grant about this. So he did, and we got funded, and there’s a set of curriculum materials around the road cone problem. And he also wrote some other curriculum around another exercise that we did, that we do. And he’s calling me cause he’s leaving, he’s stepping down as dean. And his idea is that, well, nothing has changed. What we were trying to do was say there were some fundamental metaphors and some fundamental concepts that can anchor students’ math education and we need to focus the math education around those and bring them along. But that hasn’t happened. Even with Common Core, that hasn’t happened. So he’s interested in us writing a book about this. We’ll see. But on the question of the community, there is the issue of developing materials around practical issues in communities. And there are people who do that. And of course the pedagogy that I described allows for that. So if you have teachers, right, who are up to it, yes. That could fit right in. And then we have these really very few curricular materials which tackle, basically, I think they tackle the transition from arithmetic to algebra around addition and subtraction. And if you about it, every algebra textbook that you open up, and I remember I went with the mathematician I was telling you about, Dubinsky, because he was doing NSF grants with college mathematicians, right, and we were going through the stuff with them. And so the question was what about this equation, which happens in every algebra textbook, a minus b equals a plus the opposite of b, right. And basically they were saying, well it’s the definition of subtraction, right. To subtract a number, you add the opposite, right. Well, of course that’s a kind of formal procedural process. It operates at a procedural level, right. It doesn’t really get you into what work does subtraction do and why is subtraction at the heart of all these important formulas like slope, like derivative, right. Not addition. So what’s the work that subtraction is doing? And so the trip line really allows students to explore this. And what it turns out is, you know that the work that subtraction does is make a relative comparison of the location of one object relative to another. And as soon as you get that concept in, then you don’t need all the rules that they give in the algebra textbook. You can go with your understanding of what is doing. And this of course is very important when you get to the idea of linear functions, right, or linear equations and you want to need the slope. And so you have these subtraction, you know, x one x two O minus x one over y two minus y one. So, so what’s going on? What’s the work that’s being done? Right? So I think the Algebra Project has really focused in on a way to make those concepts available, but it requires real commitment and time and you know, resources.

Jon M: 20:17 This has been just so exciting listening. Is there anything you’d like to add that we haven’t talked about?

Bob M: 20:23 Well, have you looked at Lemann’s new book Transaction Man? So, you know Nicholas Lemann. He wrote The Big Test and Redemption and The Promised Land and now a book called Transaction Man. And at the end of the book he says, you know, well, we had the organization man and then we had the transaction man. Then we had the effort to have the network man, right. But none of these have worked out. And he suggests that what we need is pluralism and we need insurgents, in some sense, who organize themselves around a very particular issue that they are going to push. So, so that’s where we are in some sense. I think these other initiatives, the corporation and the organization man, and then the whole issue of making transactions is what you do, and you do that as an individual. And then the idea that somehow networks would allow for real communication that those things haven’t, hasn’t worked out. So I think of, when I think back at the work of SNCC and I think, well, what were we doing in Mississippi, because we weren’t an organization, SNCC wasn’t an organization in that sense. And the work wasn’t under an organization in that sense cause you had SNCC, you had CORE, you had the NAACP, right, you had the National Council of Churches, you had COFO, so you had groups that had their own interests but who came together to work on one common problem for a few years, get the vote. But what allowed them to come together was their own interests and the intersection of those interests around this common problem, right. And so, and then SNCC I think ran into a problem when it be tried to become an organization in the sense like a corporation is an organization where you really have allegiance to just SNCC and that didn’t work out, right. And it, if you think about it now, they were trying what was going on at the time, right, which is corporations and organizations, right. So I think now what has allowed us to sort of move forward, even within this very restricted domain that NSF has carved out about STEM, where basically it’s top down, like you get the universities and you try to move from there because well, we have pockets in disparate places around the country. So like there’s a pocket, it would be interesting for you to interview them in Mansfield, Ohio. There’s a math literacy institute at the University of Ohio in Mansfield. And we got there as part of an NSF grant about 10 years ago. And they were successful because they were able to implement this idea of taking eighth graders and working with them through the summer and the same teacher following them into school. And so at the end of the 10th grade, they did so well that the state actually said we need to help fund this, right. And so from there, they set up with elementary schools how to do this curriculum process. And it’s interesting because elementary school teachers are much stronger in language. So approaching the math through the language of the kids, right, they found that very helpful and so they’ve expanded that.They have a website, they have a beautiful little curriculum, a set of materials around fractions where the kids make rulers. So they make their own rulers and they then approach concepts of fractions, right, by using the rulers they made, right. And they’ve worked, they have it on a website and they’ve worked to try to see, well how does this line up with what the state says they should know at that period of time?

Jon M: 25:27 We can definitely follow up with that and talk to them.

Bob M: 25:29 Ben will certainly put you in touch with them.

Jon M: 25:33 Great. We’ll do that.

Bob M: 25:34 So there are these pockets around the country and of course there, you’re not talking about black kids, you’re talking about rural white kids basically, in small, small school districts surrounding Mansfield and a superintendent who decided he was going to put some real energy into this. I mean, he had a Flagway game on the football field. [inaudible] So there’s, that’s where we are, but I think, and our problem is, and people will help, is people can begin to think about, well, what does my congressman think about this, right. And how do I put my congressmen on notice that, you know, this is a real issue here and I want him or her to do something around it. So we’ll be back in DC this summer, it’s not clear, towards the end of July after the Democratic convention, and we’ll try to figure out again another way or another try at calling attention to this issue and beginning a conversation around a national approach. It’s not going to go away and you can do all you want about prison reform, but if the kids don’t have the tools, it’s not gonna happen.

Jon M: 27:14 And we’ll be glad to be posting stuff on our website as this develops, just keeping people with access to what you’re doing.

Amy H-L: 27:25 Thank you so much, Bob Moses, and thank you listeners for joining us. Check out our website, ethicalschools.org for episodes and blogs. We’ve begun to post annotated transcripts of our interviews to make them more user friendly. We also offer professional development on social emotional learning and ethics in the New York City area. Contact us at hosts@ethicalschools.org. We’re on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Our editor and social media manager is Amanda Denti. Till next week.

The Algebra Project: Bob Moses on math literacy as a civil right – Part 1

Ethical Schools — Wed, 05 Feb 2020 20:45:49 +0000

*Overview, transcript, and links below.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/3033/the-algebra-project-bob-moses-on-math-literacy-as-a-civil-right.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:51:00

References

Part two of this interview with Bob Moses.
Book Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project by Robert P. Moses and Charles E. Cobb
Book Slavery by Another Name The Re Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon
About Circular #3591
About United States x Louisiana
About San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez
Ethical Schools: Mark Santow on Suing Rhode Island For Educational Equal Protection
Ethical Schools: Kate Belin on The Algebra Project
The Algebra Project website

Overview

00:00-1:08 Introductions

01:09-14:58 Math literacy as an organizing tool; experiential learning; Willard Van Orman Quill’s “regimented language”

14:59-16:39 Literacy across the curriculum

16:40-20:28 Logistics of working with schools

20:29-25:42 Bottom up movement; involving students and parents

25:43-32:02 Funding as a critical issue: District 13 in Brooklyn, Miami/Broward County; need for direct federal investment

32:03-48:09 Quality education as a Constitutional right; Who are “We, the People?”; Circular 3591; Douglas Blackmon, Slavery by another name; equitable funding

48:10-50:08 STEM funding, National Science Foundation (NSF)

50:09-end Outro

Transcription

Amy H-L: 00:10 Hi, I’m Amy Halpern-Laff.

Jon M: 00:17 And I’m Jon Moscow. Welcome to Ethical Schools. Here’s Part 1 of our interview with Bob Moses.

Amy H-L: 00:24 Our guest today is Bob Moses, Founder and President of The Algebra Project. During the civil rights movement, Bob Moses was field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee or SNCC. He was co-director of the Council of Federated Organizations, COFO, which was the umbrella organization for civil rights organizations in Mississippi and the main organizer of Freedom Summer, dedicated to registering black voters, as well as a key organizer of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. In 1982, Bob was awarded a MacArthur fellowship and used the money to found the Algebra Project. His book Radical Equations connects his voter registration work in the 60s and his focus on math education as a tool for organizing. Welcome, Bob.

Bob M: 01:08 Thank you.

Jon M: 01:09 The Algebra Project website says that the Algebra Project “uses math literacy as an organizing tool to guarantee quality public school education for all children in the United States.” What does that mean? How do you use math literacy as an organizing tool with impact beyond the math classroom itself?

Bob M: 01:29 Right. So the math classroom, of course, is actually an important part of this idea of using math as an organizing tool. The basic idea was born during 1961-62 in Mississippi around monthly meetings where people got up early in the morning to come to Jackson, some as early as 4:00, 4:30, and the discovery that we needed to abandon the traditional mode of having some kind of platform where people spoke and everybody listened. So what we did was when they came in, they had to sign in to a problem and the field secretaries gathered the issues and problems as they were, you know, working around the state with people and everyone had to sign in on a particular problem they want to work on. And so the meeting was in local groups or issue groups focused around a particular problem and they had to figure out what they wanted to do about it and when they came back the next month, report out. So, so that led to a real participation. I think the word was participatory democracy. We didn’t actually call it that. But that’s what we were doing. So the math class is traditionally a class where the students themselves are disempowered and they sit and listen to an expert, who is the teacher or someone. And so what we set about in the Algebra Project was developing a curricular process to flip that around, right. And, I did my work in philosophy of math and I don’t think I would have come across thinking like this if I had done my work just in math. And at Harvard in the 1950s, Willard Van Orman Quine was the star of the Harvard’s philosophy department and he was also a mathematical logician, and he took an interest in the issue of language and mathematics. And what he said was that elementary arithmetic, elementary set theory, and elementary logic get off the ground by what he called the regimentation of ordinary speech. And that this regimented language was really nobody’s spoken language. It was just a form of artificial speak, which was an intermediary between the spoken languages and the actual symbols that are found in the math and science textbooks. So the idea, that idea, kind of grabbed hold of me and it actually came to fruition when I was teaching at the open program in Cambridge in the 1980s and I had a young fellow who wanted to do math, he didn’t know his multiplication tables and he wanted to be with his friends who were in the Algebra Project. When we came to a number line question, I saw that Ari was answering some question, but it wasn’t the question that the author had in mind. So I first figured out what his question was and basically Ari had a “how many” question and that he had started from how many toes and how many fingers, right. So I said to myself, well, Ari needs another question, right. And I thought a lot about it and then finally I said, well, he needs a “which way” question. And as soon as I thought that, I said Ari already has a “which way” question. Ari knows which way home, which way to the mall, which way to the subway, all of that. What he needs is a “how many” question together with his “which way” question around his concept of number. Right? So this turns out to be a huge leap in students’ progress towards algebra, right, that at the beginning of it they have to deal with a different concept of number. And so then the question was, well how do we put those two together? And so then Quine’s insight came. I was looking and thinking about what Quine said about language and the regimentation of it. And one day I was walking down in Cambridge getting into what they call the Red Line and it’s a subway stop, and on the outside was the answer to a “which way” question, which is inbound. On the other side of the street it was outbound. So yeah, I had a vehicle for putting the two questions together, the “which way” question and the “how many” question. And we developed a concept called the trip line, which is not a number line. It’s still a mathematical object. It just doesn’t have certain features that the number line has. But it’s a tool which you can introduce movement numbers. That is numbers which have two features. One is “which way” feature. And the other is a “how many” feature. So you’re going inbound, three stops, or you’re going outbound, two stops, right. So this led to a curricular process in which the student now is put at the center, just like we tried to do in Mississippi with the sharecroppers, right. So we embedded this in what is called “experiential learning.” And that model, you know at 12 o’clock you have an event, and the event in this case, well, the students take a trip and they prepare for the trip and they can sketch objects, they can take their photos, they can write, and when they come back they write about what they observed on the trip and that part belongs to them, right. It doesn’t belong to the teacher . It belongs to them. And then we ask them to identify, well what are some features in what you wrote, right. So typically students will not identify what we think of as mathematical features. And partly the reason is mathematics tries to formalize what’s obvious. And so by definition, you don’t really pay attention to what’s obvious. You just, it’s obvious, so there it is, right? So every trip has a start. Well that’s obvious, so you’re not going to mention that as a feature of the trip, right, as a particularly exciting feature of the trip. But it’s an important mathematical feature, right. Every feature has a finish. I mean, every trip has to finish. You stop someplace and get off, right? That’s obvious, too. So then what we did was once the students are identifying what they think are of important features, they’re open to suggestions about other features, right? And so we then asked them to write what we call the talk, which is an example of Quine’s regimented language. And so feature talk is not anybody’s spoken language, right. An example of might be, how tall are you, Jon?

Jon M: 10:12 Oh, about five six, five seven. And I’ve shrunk.

Bob M: 10:12 Five seven. Okay. And Amy?

Amy H-L: 10:19 I’m about five five.

Bob M: 10:23 Okay. So we can say, well, Jon is taller than Amy.

Jon M: 10:27 For the moment, yes.

Bob M: 10:30 For the moment. And so the question is how do we know we’re talking about height? In other words, what in the sentence “Jon is taller than Amy” clues us into the feature of Jon and Amy that we’re talking about, which is their height?

Jon M: 10:48 Taller?

Bob M: 10:48 Taller. Yes. And if you ask about the syntax of that sentence, you have two names, Jon and Amy. Then you have some words, “is taller than,” right. And however you describe that set of words in terms of your grammatical categories, the feature, the mathematical feature that you’re interested in, resides in those words “is taller than.” Well, math won’t let you have a symbol for “is taller than.” It just doesn’t have a symbol for “is taller than.” So math then writes feature tall, it introduces the feature height and it says the height of Jon, blank, blank, blank, the height of Amy. So what is going in the blank, blank, blank? The height of Jon, blank, blank blank, the height of Amy.

Amy H-L: 11:43 Is greater than.

Bob M: 11:48 Yes, exactly. So there’s nowhere in the logic and the grammar which teaches you to make such a substitution. Nobody ever learns that in the grammar lessons in school. But you acquire that as you acquire, I suppose, sophisticated language, right, cause it’s not just math that’s going on in all disciplines, right. So it involves a shift in where you locate the information. So it’s taken out from a particular part of the syntax and put into the name. So we teach the kids how to do that. And so they write, they can write feature talk. Now the feature talk, the height of Jon is greater than the height of Amy can go right over into symbols. All you need is a symbol for height, a symbol for greater than, a symbol for your names, right. So that symbolization, you are already now into mathematical symbolization. But the crux of the matter is the move from what Quine would call ordinary language to regimented language. And his point was that all of math and all of science really gets off the ground by regimented language. Now the linguist, Quine, was writing in the 1950s. The linguists at the turn of the century began to pay attention to this. And they call this a grammatical metaphor that this is different from just the metaphors which deals with just words, right. So that’s at the heart of this, right. If you think about Mississippi, how do you get the sharecroppers themselves into the conversation about what it is they’re doing, what they want to change, and how to change it on little things. And so if you can get the school system and the teachers and the principals to agree to free up time because this can’t be done, right, just snap, snap, snap like that, then you can begin to get the students into a kind of meta position vis a vis mathematics. They are actually looking at events and figuring out how to talk about those events in their own language. And so here, it doesn’t matter that you don’t speak the King’s English, right. It’s not the King’s English that really underlies the mathematics, right. It’s the regimented language, which is nobody’s.

Jon M: 14:59 I have a question on that. I mean people talk about literacy across the curriculum and when you’re talking about, sort of, the words that exist in the regular language versus in the regimented language, is this something where in schools that are using the Algebra Project that the language teachers, the English teachers, get involved as well so that students are introduced to those concepts in multiple classrooms?

Bob M: 15:25 Yeah. So that’s, that’s a big, big, big question. And I’ve watched different scenarios play themselves out cause it depends on who’s teaching, who’s running the school, what exams that the kids have to take. It just, you know, it just depends on the local circumstances, but it does open up this possibility, right. And I’ve been in some schools. There was a middle school, Brinkley Middle School in Mississippi where for a couple of years both the language and the math teachers worked on the curriculum using, looking at this phenomena, right. So we have, we do have some contact with the Writing Project in different places, but there’s nothing systematic at this point about doing what you just suggested. But it’s there, it’s, it’s available because math, of course, is the place where the whole issue of language and how it operates is really not attended to.

Jon M: 16:40 So let me just follow up with that because obviously a problem that huge numbers of programs have is that they want to go into a school, they want to work with a school. And so some of the questions that come up, but I’m just really curious how, how you’ve dealt with this over the years. I mean, one question is, you know, whether all the teachers in the school have to buy in or whether it can be done or started with those teachers who are most enthusiastic. And then a followup question is how do you cope with these kind of inevitable changes in leadership priorities, all of these kinds of things, as you’re doing this in so many different districts with presumably different philosophies and different environments. Just as a, almost a logistical question.

Bob M: 17:26 Yeah. So I haven’t been in any school where all the ducks have been lined up, in other words, all the teachers, the administrators who oversee the teachers, the principal who oversees the administrators, the downtown people, and then in any situation where they’ve all lined up. So in practice, you’re dealing with trying to set examples, through a few teachers and the principal, you need the principal’s buy-in, right, to do this. So that’s basically how it’s happened. And then, in a district, they will look for principals and then the principals will look for teachers, right. So if the principal says, I want to, yes, we need to do this and then he looks for which teachers he thinks, might begin to do it. So we’ve just been in a lot of different kinds of situations. Basically the strategy being that you’ve got to keep working the problem at the ground zero level where the problem exists with the students. We’ve learned a lot doing that. And then the question is, well, how do we actually get the resources so that this can actually be carried out because you know, just the simple thing of taking a trip, right, or having a summer induction. I mean, we’ve gotten some evidence that if you start with rising ninth graders as they leave middle school and in the summer before, have a six-week induction with them and their teachers, right. And then follow them through their ninth grade and then another summer program between ninth and 10th and then their 10th grade that those coming into high school performing level one, you can get them up to where they need to be by the end of their sophomore year. But you have to be freed up to do this curricular process with curriculum materials like I was talking about.

Jon M: 19:52 And then you find that they can maintain that even if there’s no followup in say 11th and 12th grade, that that there’s a carryover effect?

Bob M: 20:00 Yes. Right, right. As they go into 11th and 12th grade. But also, I mean, so 11th and 12th grade you’re back into more traditional curriculum. But they are able now to make that transition, having gone through this process. So that’s, that’s one little chunk, right, that we have some evidence about.

Amy H-L: 20:29 Bob, going back to what you said about participatory democracy as an impetus for the Algebra Project, the project is by design a bottom up movement, so it would be spearheaded, I suppose, by families and communities, perhaps students as well. Once it’s implemented and essentially institutionalized, how do you maintain that grassroots quality?

Bob M: 20:57 So bottom up is what we aim for. It’s been very difficult to establish, to actually get communities, their parents involved. We went in a Haitian American high school in Miami, Edison, when Rudy Crew was superintendent of Miami and he gave us a high school. We went and talked to him. So we wanted to show, we wanted to follow one class for four years. So they had an algebra teacher and we, myself and a graduate student, the issue was that they had an exam to take. These were ninth graders entering with level one proficiency or whatever you call it. And they put them all in one class. And then one thing we were able to do ,what we decided was, look, there’s no way to go. Just cold turkey in here and you know, [inaudible] around, well we need to do is get to know the students. And so we went every day and sat in on the class and just helped them with whatever the Algebra Project teacher was doing. And he was doing it three days a week and then the other two days they would go to a remedial class to a different teacher. So we suggested that, well, why don’t they have the same teacher every day. And so the school actually did that. They put them through. When we got to know them well enough, we started to going to their homes to visit and talk with their parents. And by the middle of the school year we were able to call a meeting of them and parents in this class, right, and explain to them what we wanted to do, that we wanted to follow your students for four years to high school. And this was mostly mostly Haitian Americans. There were some African Americans. So that summer we were able to offer a six-week induction at Florida International University where they actually came and lived on campus, the whole class. So this made a huge difference both in their understanding of what they were being asked to do and their ability to relate to each other around this work. And so that class, we followed them through for four years. They had three principals in four years. The second principal said that he wanted to shut them down. They were going into their junior year. They organized, the students themselves, organized and won that they should stay together as a class in their junior year. And we had a mathematician who would come in and work with us during this time, Dubinsky and myself. And then the third principal came in and split them up in their senior year. But what kept coming together was an after-school program, the Young People’s Project, which is a spin-off of the Algebra Project. So they had started working with them and they were paying them as math literacy workers and they were running into a couple of the local elementary schools after school and working with them. And they continued to do that during their senior year and all but one of them passed all their classes and graduated on time. So, I mean, if you just think of that, the kind of work that takes and the resources, and the country is not interested basically. It doesn’t have any real source of funds to do this on any, to any scale. But it’s, it’s what needs to be done. It’s part of what needs to be done. So I’m just saying that the community organizing part of the work has been really as tough as going into the schools. You can’t get the parents out, but you again, you know, you need the cooperation. In Brooklyn, we were in Brooklyn in I think it was six, and the superintendent was Young. I think he was related to the jazz musician.

Jon M: 25:43 Oh, Lester Young. Yeah. Yeah. He’s a regent now.

Bob M: 25:46 Yeah. So you said, well.

Jon M: 25:48 District 13, I believe that was, that was it. In fact, one of our board members, Shirley Edwards, worked on the Algebra Project and I believe it was in that district with him.

Bob M: 26:00 So he says to us, well, we want to, we say we want to start in at least one middle school. So he says, well, show us that there’s demand for this, right. So I said, well, help us. We will do parent nights. So he sent out, you know, notices to parents who were coming to this school and we began doing parent nights with them. They came in. As they came in, we had the Young People’s Project and other at workstations, and they would go right away to some workstation and do some things that we had set up, right. And then we would have a discussion about what they did afterwards and we would ask them if they wanted to sign on that this should be introduced into the school. Well that went fine until we got too many people who said they wanted to do it. And so the school system then can’t handle the demand, right. But they don’t go up the ladder and say, look, I’ve got this demand. I need resources so I can meet the demand. No, they shut the demand down. They stopped sending out the notices. So we started but, and we had, you know, a teacher, we got kicked out of there when, what was the Yale psychiatrist, Comer. Yeah, he got 50K from the Rockefeller Foundation, I think. I’m not sure remember that. And a part of what he did was focus on district 13. And then of course he has a whole program that involves all kinds of meetings and workshops and everything. So there’s not time to do both. And so we got pushed aside then. So it’s just saying that the issue of actually reaching the community with the school requires that the school be open to bringing in the parents, not just, you know, for pro forma PTA meetings or something, but to actually sit down with students. So like in Miami now in Broward County, we’re negotiating with them, we have, I think they have four high schools, which are doing the Algebra Project. And we’re negotiating with them around making schools. But one problem is how do you get the students in the middle schools who are going to these high schools to buy into this before they begin because we need them in the summer induction, right. Well, that means money. It means organizing with the school’s parent nights on a regular basis and we come in and show them math and talk to them about what it is we want to do, right. But you need to do that in cooperation with the schools. It won’t work if it’s in opposition to the schools. So one of the things we’ve been looking at is, well, I’ve been rethinking my experience in the 60s with the Justice Department. So if you think of the 1957 civil rights bill. Eisenhower was president and Johnson was the majority leader. So it was the first time since Reconstruction really where there was direct federal investment involvement in this kind of problem. It was focused on the right to vote. But what it opened up was the idea first with a department, civil rights division of the Justice Department, and second with a new assistant attorney general, is that [inaudible] for civil rights. So when John Doar appears at the doorstep of Steptoe in Amite County, who is the head of the NAACP in Amite County, this is a very different situation, right, where you have direct federal investment and involvement in what’s going on. And so, we had our first meeting in DC last summer, trying to work to get an alliance of schools, and the Fannie Hamer school is part of this to figure out, well, how do we actually get attention to and consciousness of and resources for this problem, focused on the math and on the students who aren’t making it through the system. So I think we, we need to keep, we need to relook at the issue of direct federal investment and involvement in at least one corner of the problem, right. I don’t know that it’s even feasible to think about say, well, the whole shebang. But we might be able to actually convince people that we need this for math, for literacy at this level. Students who are not currently making it through. And we have enough kind of anecdotal evidence from around the country over the last almost two and a half decades. So there’s something there to, you know, you’re not doing this on an empty stomach, so to speak.

Amy H-L: 32:03 So it sounds as though you’re talking about quality education as a constitutional right. Can you talk about the campaign for that and what concrete results you’re hoping to achieve?

Bob M: 32:15 Yes. So I think one thing is to focus on the Preamble. I mean, the country is, you know, going through its really issues now, but the Preamble, the idea that “we, the people” really are the people who own this Constitution and it lists a set of common goods that the Constitution and we, the people should address, right. And it raises the issue of, well, who are members of the we, the people class, right. Of the Constitution and how has that evolved over the centuries. So I began with white men who own property. And the real delineation, if you like, comes by comparing the Preamble with Article four, Section two, Paragraph three. So you read Article four, Section two, Paragraph three and what it establishes there is another class of constitutional people, Africans as constitutional property, right. So the Constitution actually elevates kind of abstract objects, right, constitutional people on the one hand, constitutional property on the other hand, and yet these corporations as people, so it elevates kind of abstract objects, right? And what has happened across the centuries is that the abstract object of who the class of we, the people has expanded, not continuously because it’s also contracted, right. So the latest expansion, of course, was in 1965 as part of really what the country went through around the civil rights movement and the idea that now this was a country that was really wanting to pursue equality in some dimensions, right. Different dimensions. And so now you apply that to immigration, right. And so they roll back the laws that were put in place in the 20s, right, the 1920s, and opened up the doors in immigration. But, and what we have now, we have two kinds of deportation going on in the country, one which gets a lot of play, which is external deportation. People who are coming and want to be citizens. The other, which gets not so much play at all, is internal deportation, right, the rounding up of young black men and other ethnicities and sending them to jail, right, mass incarceration. But so, but this raises the question, both those deportations, right, and the struggle around them raise the question of the Preamble, right. The reach of we the people, who was going to be a member of that class. And with respect to education, it’s just been that African Americans, first when they were just Africans and then second when they were second class African American citizens. And then even in this age now which I think of as a kind of a third constitutional age where, so in the first age, they were property and you don’t park it, you put it to work and you insure it and mortgage it, but you don’t park it in jail. So there were no Africans in jail. Then in the second age, African Americans got rounded up. You remember, do you know Circular 3591?

Jon M: 36:31 No, I don’t.

Bob M: 36:34 Yeah, you can google it. Circular 3591. It was Attorney General Biddle, I think is his name, Roosevelt’s attorney general. He passed it in December 12th, 1941, five days after Pearl Harbor. And basically Roosevelt had decided he needed young black men to fight his war now. And so this circular says, stop rounding up young black men for vagrancy and penury and being poor, and treat their cases as involuntary servitude or slavery. So this kind of officially brought an end to the practice of rounding up tens and tens of thousands of black men. Blackmon, I think his name, has a book, Slavery By Another Name. You know that book?

Amy H-L: 37:29 Yes.

Bob M: 37:29 And that’s how I came across this idea, came across this circular cause it’s the foundation. He’s a really interesting person for your broadcast because he himself, uh, was born in the Delta in Mississippi. He was raised in a little town right next to Leland, right next to Greenville and he was born in ’64 and so hit the first grade in 1970 when Mississippi and the South was ordered, you know. “Deliberate speed” now means you’ve got to start to integrate. But his parents had some kind of consciousness and also didn’t have money and they sent him to the regular school. So he went to school with the black kids and when he hit the seventh grade, for some reason he decided to write about Strike City, which was a place where people who were sharecroppers on a local plantation had struck and left and set up a camp, which they called Strike City. So he wrote about it and he got an affirmative action prize. They gave out two prizes, one to the black school and went to the white school. So they thought he was black because he was coming from the black school. But the next year his mother and the teacher said, well, you should give this talk to the Rotary Club. He did. And one of the nightriders who used to ride by and shoot into the camp was then came after him. So he understood that it wasn’t just history, he was looking at this. And then he went and through college worked for the Wall Street Journal. He was in Berlin when the wall came down and he got an idea. What if we look at American corporations in the same way we look at German corporations vis-a-vis the the Holocaust, and look at American corporations vis-a-vis African Americans in the South. And so he wrote his article. It was on the front page of the Wall Street Journal and his whole life changed because he got thousands of letters from people talking about their uncles and grandparents who had been caught up in this system. And so he did his research for his book, not like an academic, you know, not going to libraries and so forth, but actually going into courthouses and rifling through all those papers and everything. So that’s where we were in what I think of as the second constitutional era, the era after the civil war and before the civil rights movement, right.

Jon M: 40:19 I just have a question about Circular 3591 was coming right after Pearl Harbor. Was it then that the idea was to, instead of rounding up young and older men for jail, to push them into the military for the war?

Bob M: 40:38 Right. It was about needing young black men.

Jon M: 40:41 Oh, we’re definitely going to put that link on the website along with the podcast. But please go ahead with what you were saying. You were saying that that was the second and then…

Bob M: 40:51 I mean if you think about it, the first constitutional era, we are operating with constitutional property as a constitutional concept and Africans as constitutional property, right. You have a war about that. And after the war we decide, well, we’re not going to have any more constitutional property, but we can’t quite agree that the African Americans now should be first-class citizens, right. And the question is, will the federal government actually ensure their civil rights and the Supreme Court decisions in 1883, right. You had the civil rights cases and then you had Plessy and then you have the Louisiana case. So the Supreme Court said turn this over to the States. And what’s interesting is that in the first constitutional era, it wasn’t the state that got protected by the federal government. It was the property owners, the we the people class. So if their property decided to own itself and move, they wanted the federal government to help them fetch it and go back, right. So you had those fugitive slave X, right. So that changed once we no longer had constitutional property and now the idea was that the state should regiment the lives of the African Americans. And of course with Plessy, that became actual legislative, constitutional and the civil rights movement upended that. And in some sense as the upending begins with WWII. If you think about what’s going on in the 20th century and the whole effort of colonial people to get some kind of political voice, that after it actually hits this country with the civil rights movement and in some senses is successful, that African Americans, this kind of internal colony, actually began to get a political voice after the civil rights movement and the 1965 voting rights act. Are you familiar with Wisdom’s decision, US vs Louisiana, 1963?

Jon M: 43:20 Yes, but why don’t you describe it?

Bob M: 43:21 Yes. So the thing in that decision, this is the Justice Department now going after states as opposed to just individual registrars, right. I mean, and there’s an analogy with how we do funding for education. So it’s individual cities and towns, right, where the funding resides. And for voting, the decision resided in the individual registrar and so they were going registrar by registrar with their suits and then they decided to do a whole state. They did Mississippi and Louisiana, and Judge Wisdom, who was on the fifth circuit, presided over a three-judge panel for US vs Louisiana, and in it he said, I haven’t seen it any place else, that the Southern wing of the Democratic party was the manifestation of the will to white supremacy and had been operating at such since 1875 right down to 1963 when he was writing his proposal just a month after Kennedy was assassinated. So the idea that within the country, the political force in the country was in line with all these court decisions and everything and the subjugation of African Americans for purposes of both education and, you know, voting. The two were connected when I was on the witness stand in 1963 in the spring, and it was before Medgar was assassinated in June. We had been demonstrating in Greenwood and that we got arrested and Burke Marshall was Assistant Attorney General. He filed suit and we moved our cases to the federal district court in Greenville and Judge Clayton sent John Doar to be our lawyer, and Judge Clayton had only one question for me. He wanted to know why is SNCC taking illiterates down to register to vote? So sharecropper literacy was the subtext of the right to vote, and anyone who came to us and said, well I want to vote, we didn’t ask them whether they could read or write. We just said yes and went down to the courthouse. So the idea of sharecropper education got really embedded in after the, the decision in San Antonio versus Rodriguez, in Texas, where they said, well you really can’t come to the federal courts for equity relief because there’s no substantive constitutional right to an education. And then you have, you go to state by state, you have that case in New York

Jon M: 46:24 Campaign for Fiscal Equity?

Bob M: 46:26 That one.

Jon M: 46:27 And now there’s the federal case. We actually had an interview about the federal case in Rhode Island where they are going to federal court and they’re saying that there is a constitutional right to a civics education because Rhode Island, both through its funding and through its failure to have a serious civics curriculum, specifically Providence, is failing in its constitutional duties. And we interviewed Mark Santow, one of the plaintiffs and his son is involved. He was saying that they hope to win obviously, but even if they don’t, that it will be a major breakthrough because it will be bringing it to the federal courts as opposed to simply, like Campaign for Fiscal Equity, which was saying that under the New York State Constitution they were failing to provide an adequate education. But I have a question that I wanted to ask in terms of the federal role and and the We the People campaign. So what would, and the idea that you were mentioning of beginning by focusing on math in particular as a kind of entryway. So I guess the question is what are the specific things that you’re asking for in terms of both a recognition of it as a constitutional right and then the implementation of it. And I guess a subtext to that is that right now there’s so much focus comparatively on STEM, on science, technology, engineering and math. Does this help as an entryway and are the directions that you see the movements around STEM going in, are they good directions? Do they address central kinds of issues?

Bob M: 48:10 Well, you have a problem. It did help in the sense that when NSF put out this RFP about STEM, we applied and we got a grant and basically, we said we want to form a national alliance, right, and we want to do this kind of bottom up. And then they, of course NSF, it’s had its problems with its funding, but they funded I think five alliances. But you look at them, they are all university-based, and of course NSF is a research organization. And so it, you know, pretty much partners with universities that are research organizations. But we’re going back to them, what we have to do is also mount a campaign which says this needs to be approached also from the level of the schools and the community, right, because there’s no funding currently through that program for any schools, right, indicate who [inaudible] and it’s, it’s all through the universities and they have special things they do to get people into their universities or, you know, into the workforce. But they’re not working in schools, right. So, so we are still working with, with that, right, trying to get NSF to come along with this idea. So that’s one thing.

Speaker 5: 49:54 Bob, I just want to clarify for our listeners, NSF is the national science foundation, and I believe that is the grant giving organization for many of these STEM projects, right? Correct?

Bob M: 50:07 Yeah.

Jon M: 50:09 Thank you listeners for joining us. We’ll be continuing our conversation with Bob Moses next week. Check out our website, ethicalschools.org for more episodes and articles. We’ve begun to post annotated transcripts of our interviews and we offer professional development in New York City area on social emotional learning. Contact us at hosts@ethicalschools.org. We’re on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Our editor and social media manager is Amanda Denti. Till next week.

Navigating college and career pathways: Self-knowledge, preparation, and parameters

Ethical Schools — Wed, 29 Jan 2020 20:53:39 +0000

Maud Abeel, nationally-recognized education consultant, focuses on college and career readiness for middle and high school students, including “match and fit.” The earlier the students begin to think about postsecondary options, the better. There are myriad resources for students and their families, many of them free and online. Maud discusses cohorts, groups of high school classmates who enter college together and support one another, increasing their likelihood of success. She also talks about obstacles and dilemmas counselors face, including overwhelming caseloads.

*Overview and transcript below.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/3020/navigating-college-and-career-pathways-self-knowledge-preparation-and-parameters.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:41:00

Overview

00:00-01:10 Intros

01:11-03:47 “Match and fit”: definition and importance

03:48-07:31 Systematizing and bringing “fit” to scale

07:32-10:13 Resolving tensions on “match and fit” that may arise among counselors, students, and families

10:14-16:48 Issues with poor “matches” and “fits” for Latinx and other students and potential improvements; bridge programs, Miami Dade math initiative; math as a barrier; Algebra Project

16:49-19:27 Applying match and fit to non-college post-secondary options

19:28-21:48 Career and Technical Education (CTE)

21:49-29:39 Interrupting the carceral continuum; parent coordinators; Inside Schools; Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP)

29:40-33:50 Ethical/civic obligations to improve all schools for all students; eliminating “dumping grounds”

33:51-35:46 Raising ethical issues about career choices

35:47-39:59 Biggest obstacles for counselors

40:00-41:00 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of the episode.

Credits

Photo by Gold Free Photos/Unsplash

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Black and Latinx students, institutional racism, and the carceral continuum

Ethical Schools — Wed, 22 Jan 2020 18:07:30 +0000

Dr. Carla Shedd, associate professor of sociology and urban education at The Graduate Center, CUNY, studies the interactions with institutions of low-income Black and Latinx students and how institutional racism impacts children from even before birth. Children who attend integrated schools have sharper awareness of inequities than their counterparts in segregated schools and communities. The “carceral continuum” is more comprehensive than the “school to prison pipeline” and comprises all encounters with institutions. Carla also talks about professionals’ ethical responsibilities and responses and how to create safe spaces.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2992/black-and-latinx-students-institutional-racism-and-the-carceral-continuum.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:38:00

References

Unequal City is the award-winning book by Carla Shedd on how Chicago schools shape the perceptions and experiences of its students.

Overview

00:00-00:55 Intro

00:56-03:22 Carceral continuum—description and why this is more inclusive and accurate than “school to prison pipeline.”

03:23-04:44 Interrupting and disrupting the carceral continuum

04:45-06:53 Experience on a retrospective homicide review committee

06:54-10:31 Ethical implications for professionals

10:32-15:45 Schools and teachers that have created safe spaces; description of Piney Woods School

15:46-17:51 Keeping a school successful over generations

17:52-19:34 Private schools as potential models for public schools

19:35-23:08 Students’ perceptions of injustice

23:09-28:47 How students respond to perceptions of injustice

28:48-32:53 Perceptions of injustice and student activism; The Beacon School in NYC

32:54-35:19 The interrelationships of schools and communities

35:20-37:07 The education continuum; providing resources before students get in trouble rather than only afterward

37:08-end Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of the episode.

Parent-school relationships in early childhood programs: Family engagement is driven by families

Ethical Schools — Wed, 15 Jan 2020 19:37:16 +0000

Yasmin Morales-Alexander of Lehman College dispels the myth that Latinx parents don’t engage in their children’s education. Genuine parent-school engagement is based on schools’ recognition of families’ cultural values and traditions. “Family engagement is a cultural practice.”

*Overview and transcript below.

Overview

00:00-00:49 Intro

00:52-06:51 Mexican immigrant parents’ engagement with their children’s education

06:52-10:41 Family engagement as a cultural practice

10:42-13:02 Cultural tension between home and school; how children create bicultural frameworks

13:03-15:17 Ethical school-family relationships

15:18-20:11 Structuring schools for family engagement

20:12-22:18 Cultural congruence and cultural competence

22:19-25:44 How teacher education programs can better prepare teachers for parent and community engagement

25:45-27:06 Including family engagement across teacher education methods courses

27:07-31:06 Authenticity in building relationships

31:07-33:42 Reconceptualizing school communities around family engagement

33:43-35:41 Negotiating multiple cultures in the school community

35:22-36:20 Supporting teachers in understanding themselves and thinking about themselves in the context of other people

36:21-end Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the transcription of the episode.

Photo by OC Gonzalez

The Algebra Project: Math Literacy and Empowerment

Ethical Schools — Wed, 08 Jan 2020 17:09:42 +0000

Kate Belin teaches math at Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School, a progressive public school in the Bronx, where she implements the Algebra Project, an initiative that connects math to students’ lived experiences. We talk about the synergy between the Algebra Project and Fannie Lou, both of which have their roots in the history of the civil rights movement.

*Overview and transcript below.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2952/the-algebra-project-math-literacy-and-empowerment-part-1.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:37:00

Image: Washington Post

References

Kate refers to these resources:

Book “Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississipi to the Algebra Project” by Robert Moses and Charles E. Cobb
Book “Experiencing Geometry: Euclidean and Non-Euclidean with History” by David Henderson and Daina Taimina
Book “Pounding the Rock: Basketball Dreams and Real Life in a Bronx High School” by Marc Skelton
Documentary “Freedom Summer” by Stanley Nelson Jr.
Program Math for America

And Jon makes a reference to the book “The Making Of Black Revolutionaries” by James Forman.

Overview

00:00-00:53 Introductions

00:54-04:59 Description of Algebra Project

05:00-10:31 Why Kate Belin became a math teacher and became involved with the Algebra Project

10:32-16:01 Background: Fannie Lou Hamer, Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, 1964 Democratic Convention

16:02-20:09 Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom H.S. vision

20:10-22:45 Implementing the Algebra Project at Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom H.S.

22:46-30:55 Ethics and math

30:56-35:22 Math, ethics, and civic education

35:23-end Outro

Transcription of the episode

Click here to see the transcription of the episode.

NYC schools: still separate and unequal

Ethical Schools — Thu, 02 Jan 2020 16:23:09 +0000

Student activists Coco Rhum and Hebh Jamal describe what real integration of NYC schools would look like and how to achieve it. Bringing sharp analysis and insight from their experiences as leaders in IntegrateNYC and Teens Take Charge, they were interviewed by Lev Moscow on our sister podcast, acorrectionpodcast.com.

*Overview and transcript below.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2933/nyc-schools-still-separate-and-unequal.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:35:54

Image: Integrate NYC Facebook page

Overview

0:00-2:27 Episode intro and intro of Coco Rhum

2:28-6:21 Critique of Mayor de Blasio’s and Chancellor Carranza’s integration policies

6:22-6:41 Key integration initiatives—removing school screens

6:42-11:13 Screening, school choice, race and class

11:14-13:05 Funding, Parents Association contributions

13:06-16:38 Ed opt programs, mixed academic levels within classrooms

16:39-20:25 Impact of inequalities in the larger society; community schools

20:26-22:40 Intro of Hebh Jamal

22:41-25:45 Becoming involved in IntegrateNYC

25:46-28:37 IntegrateNYC’s 5 R’s: Race and Enrollment; Resource Allocation; Relationships; Representation; Restorative Justice

28:38-29:41 Integration in Community School District 15 (Brooklyn)

29:42-33:30 Racism and breaking racial barriers down

33:31-end Being Palestinian, commonality of “othering” in Mideast and NYC

Transcription of the episode

Jon M: 00:00 Hi, I’m Jon Moscow. Welcome to Ethical Schools, where we discuss strategies for creating inclusive and equitable schools and youth programs that help students to develop both commitment and capacity to build ethical institutions. We’re delighted today to post an interview from our sister podcast, acorrectionpodcast.com hosted by Lev Moscow. Lev talks with two student activists, Coco Rhum and Hebh Jamal, about campaigns to integrate the New York City school system. We think you’ll enjoy it. And to make it easier to use audio clips from our podcasts as jumping off points in classes and workshops, we’re now providing transcripts and overviews on our website, ethicalschools.org. Good listening and Happy New Year.

Lev M: 01:11 So we have a very exciting show today. We’ve got two guests. I think this is the first time that we’ve done this before. Our first guest is Coco Rhum and the second guest is Hebh Jamal. I think you will all enjoy the show very much today. So Coco, let me do this. Let me just, let me introduce you to the audience and we can get started now. Does that sound good?

Coco R: 01:36 Yeah, that’s great.

Lev M: 01:36 We are here with Coco Rhum, who is a college freshman at Williams and has been working around integration, school integration, in New York City since at least you were a sophomore, is that right, Coco?

Coco R: 01:51 Yeah, actually like late 2016.

Lev M: 01:54 You were a policy leader for Integrate New York City and Teens Take Charge. Do you want to add anything?

Coco R: 02:00 So through Teens Take Charge, I was a pretty active member of the Department of Education’s Teen Voice working group and also was, starting in December of or November, late November of 2018 was a representative for Teens Take Charge on the Mayor’s School Diversity Advisory Group. And yeah, I was the, in my senior year of high school, I was the director of policy for both organizations, which was an interesting place to be.

Lev M: 02:28 What do you make of Carranza and the de Blasio administration. Have they been good around school integration?

Coco R: 02:35 Well, I think that like de Blasio has been a disaster around integration. He has not done anything to make actual policy change. He has an equity and excellence agenda, which is all nice to hear about, but when it comes to tangible policy change, it has been really lackluster, in my opinion. I mean equity is good, but fundamentally we have a really segregated system, and just as not [inaudible] no matter how much equity you introduce. And so he’s been lacking. And Carranza has done a good job of bringing the word segregation into the public sphere. I think he knows that he’s done that in a way that brings us in, but when again, when it comes to real policy change, I am consistently disappointed with the lack and the, the whole, all the people who are important that work at the DOE or who are, you know, consistently given a seat at the table who aren’t from the DOE but doing important policy work might be well intentioned or might really believe that integration is important. But as a student, it seems like there’s absolutely no follow through and commitment. So I would say that they’re doing a pretty bad job.

Lev M: 03:52 Why do you think that is? Why do you think it’s been so difficult for them to take steps with integration policies?

Coco R: 03:57 I mean I think there’s a few reasons. So if we take the like specialized high school debate, the parents who have voice and who have power and who are being listened to are those who are opposing integration. They tend to be either like wealthier white people or low income Asian people and they are making a fuss about it. They’re being loud about it. And when policy changes are proposed, they’re saying no. And so it’s, I think the mayor especially, who was running for president earlier this year, cares about the public opinion a great deal and wants to be electable. And integration is contentious and it means, to really integrate the schools means to fundamentally redistribute power and resources and change how our schools have operated from being a real dual system to being one where all students are getting a more equal education with each other and in schools that are more reflective of the city’s diversity. And I think that is scary for people who have been benefiting from the inequality and the segregation of the system. And those are the people who are loudest. And when I, and I, when I’ve met with the mayor and the chancellor, they say, you know, we need a majority. We need to build a movement. Um, and that’s just not happening right now. Or you know, students are speaking out and saying something, but no one really wants to do something that is gonna make the people who are going to donate to your campaign unhappy.

Lev M: 05:30 But Coco at this point, he’s not running for anything. So what’s holding him back now?

Coco R: 05:36 Quite frankly, like I think that, yeah, it’s so hard for me to know. It really actually blows my mind that we are not able to maintain. But I think honestly like he’s been a benefactor of that system too. His daughter went to Beacon. His son went to Brooklyn Tech. Yeah. He’s not running for president anymore. He can’t be the mayor again. But he’s still, even if he doesn’t have as much, I think he still is hyper aware that to actually do it means to really stir the pot up and to [inaudible] how power and resources have been allocated in the system. And that’s never popular.

Lev M: 06:14 Let’s say he said okay, like tell me, tell me some policy initiatives to implement. What would your say your big three initiatives be?

Coco R: 06:22 I would say remove all screening, so schools like Beacon have students do variety of things. So that could be like submitting a portfolio or taking a special test that a given school is designed or going in for an interview, things like that. Having certain grades and test scores. So I would remove the screen.

Lev M: 06:42 Wait, I have a question though. Say you were going to design a school, what did you want? So I went to, I went to Central Park East when I was a kid, and Central Park East was by all measures a very diverse school. But one of the things that Debbie Meier was looking for, she was the founder, and she was looking for kids, for families who wanted to be there, who knew what Central Park East was doing and they were doing really kind of imaginative things in the classroom 20 years before everyone else was. But they wanted to make sure that there was buy in from the parents. So in that sense, there was a screen. Do you think that that kind of screen also has to go?

Coco R: 07:22 Well, I mean, I might be misunderstanding this question, but I think what that’s about is the idea of school choice and the idea that, you know, there’s like 450 or so public high schools and students can pick up to 12 to rank on a list that they get to have choice in the system. And I think that that’s complicated. Quite frankly, I think that no one’s really talking about whether or not we should have school choice. The conversation is like how do we make the playing field for choice more or less equal? And I mean, that’s something, the idea of whether or not we should have choice is, is a complicated one and something that I’m still wrestling with. Because I think that just removing barriers to access to certain school doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to integrate the school system or have equitable outcomes. And I mean, I think that choice can be valuable because not all schools, you know, one school might focus on science more or one school focus on dance more. And certain students might want to focus on science or dance more and that can potentially be valuable. But I think that by and large, the function of choice is to lead to inequity or at least how it’s existed thus far. I’m not quite sure. But I think we certainly can’t just remove barriers to access and say, you know, and call it a day and say, well now the schools are going to be integrated. There have to be intentional policies that will work to direct students to go to certain schools in a way that integrates those schools and integrates the students.

Lev M: 08:58 So a school that has barriers. Would you say that that kind of school just shouldn’t exist? Because I guess if you got rid of the barriers, it wouldn’t be what it is. Right?

Coco R: 09:07 Well, I mean that’s also another tricky question and something I’ve thought a lot about is like what does it mean for Beacon to be Beacon and I think that some of the associations we have as you know, or as a student at Beacon, something I’ve noticed about the community there (or former student, I guess) I guess is that the ideas that people have about what makes Beacon unique are very much tied to [inaudible] of race and class as opposed to certain educational merit or values. Like Beacon, I would say in large part because we don’t take the Regents, on that lesson more towards, you know, things that are interesting and that could still say the same. Yeah. Or I think that’s one example of something that makes Beacon Beacon, but I don’t think that really students, when they talk about what makes Beacon Beacon or like what a Beacon student is when they’re saying, you know, like I’m a Beacon student. I am so heavily involved with a bajillion extracurriculars and take taxis to school or I get my Lenny’s ice coffee every single day for $3. Those ideas of like who a Beacon student is have much more to do with race and class than they do like the intellectual values of the school.

Lev M: 10:40 So when we say Beacon’s a good school, you’re saying that’s what we’re actually saying. We’re really saying it’s a wealthy school.

Coco R: 10:46 Yeah. And I think that Beacon is a good school for reasons that aren’t associated to its wealth. Like I think that there’s a lot of value to like not taking standardized tests or to having a robust art program. But I don’t think that necessarily, that’s really what people are talking about when they’re talking about what makes a good school good. And I think that’s also really complicated by the idea of resources and funding, which is heavily tied to race.

Lev M: 11:14 Wait, but don’t all school, don’t all students get the same amount of money in New York City or is that not true?

Coco R: 11:20 Well, so I mean actually I think that there are certain schools that got more money that are predominantly black and not, and actually cause I’m going to say the wrong title right now, but they’re, they receive federal funding, but we have a PTA that raises, last year (the New York Times just reported this yesterday) like 600 and something thousand dollars, which is a ridiculous amount of money and totally supersedes the amount of money that we would be allocated if you were just, you know, relying on our per pupil funding from the state or from the city.

Lev M: 11:53 So would that be the second policy that you would tell de Blasio? Like you have to put a limit on how much parents can contribute into the PA?

Coco R: 12:01 I would say that we need more of like a pooling and reallocating of resources because if you just limit it and say, well, you know, Beacon, you can only have $100,000 a year. I mean our schools are just underfunded in general. So I don’t think if people want to donate, though I would say that if you said let’s integrate this school, all the white parents would be less, you know, willing to chip in or they might just not stay in the school system, which is another complication. But I think that the, the idea is that we need to pull all the money and reallocate it cause that’s how you, I would say like maximize the good. So I guess that would be one of the things. But I would also say in addition to removing the screens, we need to have some sort of mechanisms for integrating students. What I’ve worked with or what I’ve worked on with Teens Take Charge is kind of this idea of a universal op ed program. Um, Oh my God. I said op ed. Ed opt. And that has killed me for years and years. Um, universal ed opt program.

Lev M: 13:07 What, for people who are not familiar with New York City or how the admissions process works, what is that?

Coco R: 13:14 So an ed opt program basically functions to take, if you have a given applicant pool, you want a representative population coming out of the applicant pool where 25% are kind of like the bottom of the applicant pool depending on what metrics you’re using using. Usually that’s like state test scores or kind of GPA. 50% are from the middle group of applicants and then 25% are from the top group of applicants. So there are ed opt schools currently. An example of that is Murrow. Murrow is, I would say more representative than a school like Beacon. Though I also think that we don’t really have ed opt schools and the idea of implementing universal ed opt system would have to be about not the applicant pool but about matching city demographics because there are also behavioral changes that need to happen to get schools to match city demographics. And so if you’re looking at a school where you know like 99% of the applicants are Black and Latinx and you do ed opt within that pool, you’re not actually going to integrate the school. So kind of the idea of moving towards the universal ed opt system would certainly be up there. I think that would do a lot to make our schools more representative of the city’s demographics.

Lev M: 14:34 You know, I know that some of the argument against ed opt is that is that it actually doesn’t serve anyone well. So it doesn’t serve the students who are at the bottom because the work is too challenging for them in the class and it doesn’t serve the students who are ready for rigorous work because you have to slow everything down. What do you think about that argument?

Coco R: 14:54 Well, I think that it’s wrong. I actually, yesterday was reading an article about how Estonia ranked quite high on worldwide tasks, above the UK because it was an article on the BBC. And one of the things that Estonia does is it puts all students, regardless of their skill level or their proficiency as determined by whatever testing metrics they’re using in Estonia, in the same classroom. And there are studies that show that for college students that need kind of remedial classes, the best thing for them is to be in or for just for students to be in classes that are at their grade level or where they should be. And then outside of class be getting extra help as they need. It doesn’t really help the assignment of students who are performing what we think is kind of below where they should be. I think according to the studies that I’ve read, I haven’t seen evidence that there’s any harm and putting students in more challenging classrooms as long as they’re getting adequate attention. I think for like high achieving students, one, there’s value in like being in a classroom where you’re challenged, not just because everyone else is performing at necessarily the same level as you, but like people are thinking differently. And I think that a really important piece of making this worthwhile is teaching or training teachers to teach like in a diversified classroom and so that there’s a way to make the content more challenging for certain students if it seems like they’re not being challenged in the classroom. But I think that it can completely be done and done effectively and done in a way that actually leads to better outcomes.

Lev M: 16:39 I’ve been looking at the literature from Integrate NYC and one of the things that you’ve been saying that they make really clear is that some schools have a lot more resources than others. Part of me feels like that’s, well that’s absolutely true. Even if we had a redistribution of resources from wealthier schools to poor schools, and again, you can tell me if you think I’m wrong here, that loan wouldn’t do anything to change outcomes if you don’t also give people good places to live and universal healthcare and fundamentally give people some kind of stability outside of the school. So, and this would be my criticism of if say, Integrate’s platform and then you could tell me why, you know, you could tell me what you think about it. But in some ways it almost doesn’t seem to be talking about the elephant in the room, which is the kind of the inequities that exist in the larger society. What’s the strategy of Integrate? Why don’t they do that? Is it a conversation they don’t want to have? Is a conversation like it’s just too big. What do you think?

Coco R: 17:43 Well, I mean, and I also don’t want to, because I’m no longer an employee of Integrate NYC, I want to be careful about …

Lev M: 17:51 Okay, so then don’t speak for Integrate What do, what do you think about it?

Coco R: 17:56 Okay, well I think a few things. I think you’re right. Like I think that, to certain extent, you’re correct, but I think that once again, like not all hope is lost. I think two things. So one, the community school model is a really great, I would say answer to that and I don’t really know the extent, even though I was involved in a policy capacity, there’s no formal policy about that at Integrate NYC. I know there is a team at Take Charge because at least there I hadn’t, I don’t know, I personally had more agency in shaping that policy, had done that. But I would say that the community school model is a really valuable way of thinking about what schools can be and how they can kind of help deal with that and making school at the center of the community. So if it’s a community where students like might not have enough money to go to the laundromat, then the school could have a washer and dryer or like someone to test eyesight, you know, kind of doctors and nurses that can like be there and staff that works with the family and the parents and not just the students, but also, you know, also the students and having enough guidance counselors and free breakfast, lunch and you know, potentially dinner. Um, and really making the school a center of the community to help provide stability in places where there might not be. I think that’s a really valuable way of imagining schools and thinking about schools and it’s being done in some places in the city that I think helps deal with that in part. But I also think that schools have the power to transform and not to say that we can solve, you know, systemic racism and wealth inequality through schools, but I think that schools are incredibly important and certainly as it stands now, they’re producing unequal outcomes, unequal outcomes. And so while resource redistribution might not solve the problem, not solving resource distribution exacerbates the problems that we see. I think it’s true that we have to be too careful about saying that integrating schools and allocating resources right is going to fix the world, but I think that is going to help. I think that data and research shows that it’s going to help and that it’s powerful and I think that we can imagine schools that can do even more than just reallocating resources and integrating students, but also becoming, you know, centers of the community where they can introduce stability.

Lev M: 20:26 We’re here with Hebh Jamal, who at the age of 15 became a well known advocate in education reform, known for her impact towards tackling injustice and vision for the possibility of a transformed society. Hebh was featured in The New York Times in “Young Muslim Americans Are Feeling the Strain of Suspicion” for her perspective on the impact of Islamophobia on young Muslims and her vision for more conscious, educated, harmonious society. Since then, she’s continued to be a voice for integrated equitable schools for New York City and co-created the first ever citywide youth council on school integration run by Integrate NYC For Me. She also works for American Muslims for Palestine and is a youth policy fellow for Appleseed New York. She is a junior at City College. Is that all right? Tell me, yeah, go ahead. Tell me what’s wrong.

Hebh J: 21:13 Yeah, I’m a junior at City College, but I also, I was formerly a youth policy fellow. That bio is a little old, but yeah.

Lev M: 21:24 Wait, what does that mean? It means you’re no longer at Appleseed?

Hebh J: 21:27 Yeah, no, no. I’m no longer at Appleseed.

Lev M: 21:30 All right. Right now you’re just focusing on your studies at City College.

Hebh J: 21:36 Yeah. So just kind of like focusing on studying, trying to do activism when I can. But yeah, I mostly focus on schoolwork right now.

Lev M: 21:43 Okay. And I, and I should say while you say you’re like you’re mostly focusing on schoolwork, you’re probably doing a million things and you are still doing activism work. So, but Hebh, it’s a real pleasure to have you on. I wanted to have you on now for a long time, so it’s great, but it’s also just great to get to talk to you. Full disclosure, I taught Hebh in 10th grade and in 12th grade, but I think what was most fun was talking to you in 11th grade when I wasn’t your history teacher, but about books like we were, we were exchanging novels on a weekly basis and that was, that was a real highlight of the year. We were also talking a lot about school integration and I think it was your 11th grade year that you really started to do activism work around that topic. And today’s show is all about school integration. So Hebh, can I, let’s start there. What made you get involved in this work?

Hebh J: 22:35 Well, this is a very, this is a story I feel like I tell often.

Lev M: 22:41 Yeah. But our audience probably hasn’t heard it, so don’t say that.

Hebh J: 22:43 Yeah. Well I say that only because even although it’s, I, I’ve told, I’ve told it often, I still think it’s important. It’s something like that totally transformed how I look at activism in general. And it actually all started. So I was featured on the cover of The New York Times. It was just kind of like a, um, a piece on Islamophobia and you know, highlighting specific youth. And after that I was invited to speak at some high schools, totally unrelated to school integration. And I spoke at one particular high school where I totally felt like diversity, inclusion and feeling of, you know, a diverse environment was very present and something that I lacked when I was at Beacon. And I realize like the concept of diversity inclusion was very abnormal to me and I didn’t understand why until it was a conversation I actually had with you, which was understanding like understanding that New York city has one of the most segregated schools, school systems in the country. So all of this honestly like stemmed from me asking the question of like, why is this happening and the following months and years we’re just responding to that initial like curiosity, um, you know, once you like find an injustice, like you kind of tackle it. And so I found the organization Integrate New York City. At first I was really talking about integration as much as I could, you know, talking about school segregation. I was honestly talking to the wall, though. Like I, I did not, you know, students at Beacon, they understood and they empathized, but it was something that they couldn’t really grasp at the time. So I really didn’t feel like I was making any progress when I was doing, you know, student activism at Beacon. There were, you know, murmurs here and there, but nothing really substantial. It was when I found the organization Integrate New York City. I didn’t have found it. Like I, I stumbled upon it. No, no, I stumbled upon it. And it was a very small organization at first. It was honestly just like, you know, an advisory group where they were passionate about school integration but no real policy platforms or advocacy that was taking place. And you know, I met the former executive director Sarah Camiscoli and she really just kind of took me in and had me come up with a lot of different ideas and one of them was establishing a youth diversity council and you know, I had the idea of like, you know, why don’t we have a youth diversity council where we, you know, students meet every month and really talk about the issues that are affecting us. And it was through that where we came up with like, you know, a lot of different educational policies that are actually, you know, being implemented across the city, whether it’s district 15 or now even district nine, that’s like trying to implement our concepts of like racial inclusion and, you know, diversity, diversity platform.

Lev M: 25:46 Just wait for a sec. Can I stop you there? Your platform is built around the five Rs, right? So maybe you could talk a little bit about what those five Rs are.

Hebh J: 25:56 Yeah, sure. So the five Rs as we like to call and they actually started with only three, right, but we understood that integration is much more complicated and in order to do it right, there had to be a more, there had to be, there had to be a more like inclusive concept of what it should be. And so the first R was a Race and Enrollment. We always understood the idea that like there is something specifically wrong about how we admit students into our schools, whether we saw it at Beacon, like the interview process, if it has racial bias and if there’s things that that favor a certain type of student over another. Or even like if we look at like specialized high school tests, how the merit of the test itself can actually further and deepen racial disparities and segregation. The second one is Resource Allocation. So understanding that it’s not just the, you know, it’s not just who gets admitted to the school, but it’s also the resources that are allocated within every school. Every school should have the same amount of resources and opportunities. You know, it’s not just, it shouldn’t just be the elite schools that have those. The third R is Relationships. So having culturally responsive curriculums, building bridges between different identity groups throughout the school, you know, understanding that there is such a thing as self segregation. And at the end of the day, the whole point of this is to try to build bridges between students’ identities and cultural backgrounds. The fourth R is Representation, so focusing also not just on the diversity of students, but also on faculty and staff. Oftentimes students can’t really connect or understand sometimes the experiences of their teacher and if they had teachers with similar backgrounds, similar experiences. it’s proven that students learn better. And the last one is Restorative Justice, so understanding that there is a hyper militarization of our schools where you have so many security guards, metal detectors, like you know, students feel like they’re in a prison, and that’s where the idea of a school to prison pipeline even comes from. That if you’re treated like you’re a prisoner and you’re treated like you’re a criminal, that cycle is really hard to break after high school. So understanding that all of this stuff is really systemic and if this, all of this has to be tackled simultaneously, it can’t be, you know, one or the other. All of this should be happening at the same time in order for a sustainable integrated high school to form.

Lev M: 28:38 So maybe you can talk a little about what is happening in district 15 here in New York.

Hebh J: 28:43 A lot of really dedicated teachers, parents, students even, came together to try to create an honest effort at integration. I’m specifically tackling middle schools, though, like trying to remove screens from middle schools, having the intention of diversity. And there was actually a report done like cause this, this happened over like a year and a half ago and there was, there’s been a lot of different news articles that actually showed that white students didn’t leave when more diversity came in. Like that was the major argument, like if you had more diverse students, there will be white flight, like this major thing that gets thrown around often, but that wasn’t the case, so it’s showing like a real success of having different people together and not affecting, those were already in the school.

Lev M: 29:36 So the sky hasn’t, hasn’t fallen basically.

Hebh J: 29:42 Yeah. Basically.

Lev M: 29:42 Do you think that it was basically that lots of white families just have these unfounded fears that they think that if you allow students of color in this school or if you allow students who are lower income in the school that suddenly there’ll be chaos in the stairways? I mean, what is going on here? What’s behind this resistance?

Hebh J: 30:03 I may have part of it. You just kind of have to call her for what it is. What it really is, is racism. Honestly, like I, you know, a lot of people do tend to throw around the word, but I do think that beneath all of the excuses and all of the fears, it really is having a strong, uncomfortable feeling towards people that are different from you. They’ll just give you an example. Like I had a family member who went to a very under-resourced, segregated high school and it was mostly, it was majority black high school and she didn’t even have science classes. No Spanish clauses, nothing substantial. And she got it, too. She didn’t get into any good colleges in America. Right. It’s crazy to actually, what she did was not only did she like pass a lot of expectations that people had of her, she went to Europe, applied to medical school in Poland, and is actually doing a phenomenal job in medical school right now at 19 years old. So people underestimate students of color, people from low income communities. It’s, it’s ridiculous. Like it’s just not, it’s, yeah.

Lev M: 31:15 Do you find that when you talk about this stuff publicly that you shy away from saying it’s racism or do you feel like it’s helpful to call it what it is? Or do you feel like saying it’s racism, it makes, makes white people feel super uncomfortable?

Hebh J: 31:28 Well, I mean, my role honestly isn’t to make white people feel comfortable. It’s mostly to advocate policies to powerful people that can make it happen, right? So I always had this concept that like, you know, segregation that it happened naturally. It happened by force. Right? And so I honestly felt I own it sometimes, you know, and, and a lot of people don’t necessarily agree with this tactic, but sometimes they feel like integration should also happen by force. Like why should we have the permission of white parents for black kids to have good, you know, equitable opportunities on for education, right? Like I, I don’t know, I find that notion of just like almost asking them for permission is ridiculous to me, but at the same time, I know that’s not how the world works, right? Like I know that there has to be a level of convincing as well and breaking down barriers in order for some sort of, you know, sustainable method of integration to occur. And also there is a really negative interpretation of integration in this country because of the busing crisis and the history that that played when it was, when desegregation was happening. A lot of, a lot of families, a lot of families are not really, you know, at first they don’t, they don’t buy integration. They don’t buy that they have to have…,

Lev M: 32:45 Are you talking about white families, or are you talking about everybody?

Hebh J: 32:45 No, I mean like, I mean I’m actually talking about, I like at first I’m just giving you like experience. Like at first a lot of minority communities felt almost offended at the idea of why should we have, you know, integration with white schools in order for children to have a good education? So that’s the idea. Like that’s why our, our integration platform at integrate New York city to not just tackle racial, you know, racial enrollment, right. It tackles more than that and it’s, and that’s has to be a more comprehensive look at integration that people before us just didn’t understand and did it like terribly wrong. So making it like learning from the mistakes of the past and making sure we don’t repeat them.

Lev M: 33:31 You’re also a committed activist around the issues of Palestinian justice, Palestinian independence. Do you see any connection between the work you do around school integration and the work you’ve done and continue to do around Palestinian rights?

Hebh J: 33:49 Yeah, I just came back from a rally actually at school and yeah, I think about it a lot and the connection that, like for me, I always look at the similarities between why I’m passionate. I mean I am Palestinian, that’s why I’m passionate. But more than that, it’s this idea of the separation of people, right? So when you separate people, you, there’s oppression, there’s injustice that occurs. Similarly in Palestine, you have apartheid, occupation and the physical separation of different types of people. And honestly it’s, it’s the same idea. Like you, there is an othering that’s occurring in the New York city public education system and that in itself is unjust and oppressive. So I like to tie in a lot of my activism with this idea that like if you separate people and if you participate in like the othering of people who aren’t as I like to, I like to think of it as power. Like people that aren’t as powerful as you, they’re again, like there’s injustice and oppression. I try to dedicate a lot of my time to combating those. Like that same logic.

Advice for Secondary School Teachers

Ethical Schools — Thu, 26 Dec 2019 12:11:25 +0000

This is an encore. We interview Lev Moscow who, for the last 14 years, has taught history and economics at The Beacon School in New York City. Lev reflects that advisory, done well, can serve as a venue for students to explore questions of ethics, purpose and happiness. He talks about balancing the history curriculum to include non-European perspectives. Getting students to read more than a few sentences is perhaps today’s teachers’ greatest challenge and Lev explains his approach.

Lev refers to John Dewey, Tony Judt, and these resources:

Book “Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials” by Malcolm Harris;
Book “The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School” by Neil Postman.

*Overview and transcript below.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2922/advice-for-secondary-school-teachers.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:41:41

Lev also hosts a podcast that aims to make economics accessible. It is called A Correction Podcast and you can listen to it on acorrectionpodcast.com.

Overview

00:00-01:38 Intros

01:39-08:05 Advisories

08:06-11:28 Electronic technology in classrooms

11:29-12:41 Relationships in advisories

12:42-18:14 Technology as changing the ecology of a situation; getting students to read deeply in a technological age

18:15-19:56 Students’ experiences in college as compared to high school

19:57-22:12 Homework: overwork, stress and teen suicides; two school systems– high pressure and low pressure

22:13-24:44 Homework and writing projects: historiographies/argumentative essays;

24:45-28:39 Nightly homework and deep questions: SRQ (summarize, respond/reflect; question); differentiating between superficial and quality questions

28:40-36:18 Ethics and morality

36:19-40:55 Decentering Europe in teaching history

40:56 Outro

Transcription of the episode

Click here to see the full transcription of the episode.

Multicultural Education: Challenges and Aspirations

Ethical Schools — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 21:33:07 +0000

We speak with New York State Regent Luis O. Reyes on the evolution of multilingual education in New York, beginning with the ASPIRA Consent Decree that in 1974 established bilingual education as an entitlement for Puerto Rican and other Latinx students. NY is gradually transitioning to bicultural and bi-literate education. The Regents’ Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework represents the way forward.

*Overview and transcript below.

[ss_player]

Image: hostos.cuny.edu

Overview

00:00-01:04 Intro

1:06-04:09 Relevance of John Dewey, Paolo Freire, Eugenio Maria de Hostos

5:00-26:37 ASPIRA Consent Decree 45 years later

26:38-37:10 Regents’ “Social Emotional Learning: Essential for Learning, Essential for Life”; culturally responsive-sustaining education

37:11-41:35 Resources and resource needs for implementing Regents’ Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework

41:36-48:56 Recruiting and supporting Latinx and other culturally-competent teachers; creating teacher-development pipelines; increasing early childhood teacher salaries

48:57-52:57 Need for more state funding; Campaign for Fiscal Equity decision; equitable access to funds for all schools

Transcription of the episode

Amy H-L: 00:15 Hi, I'm Amy Halpern-Laff.

Jon M: 00:17 And I'm Jon Moscow. Welcome to ethical schools, where we discuss strategies creating inclusive and equitable schools and youth programs that help students to develop both commitment and capacity to build ethical institutions.

Amy H-L: 00:33 Our guest today is Dr. Luis O. Reyes. Dr. Reyes is member of the New York state Board of Regents, the body that oversees all educational activities in the state, including the New York State Education Department. Regent Reyes is the Director of Education at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College. He was a member of the New York city Board of Education from 1990 through 1998 and has been an educator for more than 48 years. Welcome Luis.

Luis R: 01:04 Thank you. Amy.

Jon M: 01:06 John Dewey wrote about schools modeling democracy and preparing students for democratic citizenship. You have talked about the influence on your work of Eugenio María de Hostos and Paolo Freire, who talked about education in the context of liberation. What's the relevance of these perspectives for schools today?

Luis R: 01:25 I think the relevance of John Dewey and Paulo Freire and Eugenio María de Hostos is that these were all men who were educators, leaders of movements to ensure that education was not just about rote memory or about testing, but education in pursuit of living in a democratic society and living a fully participating, using one's mind, one's will and one's understanding of the social realities of our times to ensure that education becomes an instrument, not of dictating to people who they are, what they know or what they must do, but giving them the tools to help be co-creators of their own reality. Eugenio María de Hostos, a Puerto Rican educator after whom Hostos Community College in the South Bronx is named, was one of the preeminent leaders in education in Puerto Rico and in the Caribbean as part of the Confederación Antillana. He's actually buried in the Dominican Republic and is revered there as he is in Puerto Rico.

Jon M: 03:10 And didn't he say that he didn't want his body to be returned to Puerto Rico until it was independent?

Luis R: 03:15 He did say that and that has been respected all these years. There's no element of any part of Puerto Rican society trying to recover his remains irregardless of Puerto Rico's status. So that's Hostos. John Dewey obviously is a very famous and noted progressive educator leader in the United States affecting education throughout the world, not just the United States. And Paolo Freire was an educator leader in Latin America who pushed for education as part of a view of the world that says education has to be part of liberating individuals to participate fully in their life in this society. And so critical pedagogy or Freirean pedagogy is very much tied to the concept that we go to school, we get, we become educated, we work with other students, with teachers, our parents and others to liberate our mind, to liberate our bodies and ourselves from oppression, from ignorance, and to use that education and knowledge to make change and to make democratic change (small r, small d) in the societies in which we live.

Amy H-L: 05:00 Luis, a big part of that is language. Of course, in 1974 the ASPIRA consent decree established bilingual instruction as a legally enforceable entitlement for New York City's Puerto Rican and other Latinex students. In the 80s, as ASPIRA's director of research and advocacy, you monitored the Board of Ed's compliance with the decree. 45 years later, what are your thoughts on the consent decree in New York City?

Luis R: 05:28 And understanding that, uh, we went to court in 1972, not I, but the leaders of ASPIRA, other educators, parents, went to a federal court, I believe in the Eastern district, basically arguing that the rights that children have to education was being taken away from them because the students whose first language was Spanish, Puerto Rican and other Latino students in New York City, were unable to participate and to profit from a monolingual English education in the New York City public schools despite the fact that federal law indicated that children of whatever background have a right to public education and in 1974, in a case brought by Chinese-American parents in San Francisco, Lau vs the Board of Ed, had won a lawsuit. The Supreme Court declared that they had a right to special language assistance and the nature of that assistance was determined to be English as a second language classes. In fact, the judge in the case that ASPIRA took in 1972 and had not been resolved over two years, indicated to the ASPIRA plaintiffs and to the Board of Education defendants that they needed to come back to court and actually he did this from one day to the next. He said, I need for you to come to meet tomorrow with an agreement, a consent decree that would be signed by both sides, agreed to by both sides and have the imprimatur of the court and that's what happened. The consent decree, however, was based on a compromise, the compromise between the ASPIRA plaintiffs, their educational advocates, the lawyers of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund that was founded precisely in 1972 to accompany and be the lawyers for the ASPIRA plaintiffs. The lawyers argued from the perspective of that legally at that time students were being described as limited in English proficiency, having something that was missing in terms of their skills, their language, English language arts skills, listening, speaking, reading and writing. And therefore the Lau case said English as a second language. The plaintiffs, ASPIRA, came with a vision that was founded in the Puerto Rican community and ASPIRA's vision of education to prepare students to graduate from school with full skills in all subject areas, be able to get a high school diploma, go on to college. ASPIRA was founded as a student leadership organization with clubs in high schools throughout New York City. And the, the goals of ASPIRA and of the education that we were supporting is that not only that they graduate from school and that they be prepared and able to apply and get into college and graduate from college, but also have a career, have the skills to have a career. And the third point, which today is as important as it was in their original vision, that students would become active citizens and participate in the, not just economic and academic sphere, but in the civics sphere. So the founder of ASPIRA, Dr. Antonia Pantoja, was a social worker and had a master's degree from Hunter College School of Social Work and later had a doctorate. The vision was that education and leadership development of youth was for students to create community organizations and institutions to serve youth, to serve their families, to serve the community. So we had the Puerto Rican Forum, we had PRACA, we had a number of organizations that were founded by Dr. Pantoja and people in her time to meet the needs, the various needs of the Puerto Rican community. And in fact, the purpose for her of ASPIRA and of an education was to develop the community. So if we have aging people, we have people who are on welfare, we have children who, in foster care that we create. If the city and governmental agencies are not serving those children, we should create the agencies to serve them ourselves. Today, there is something called the Hispanic Federation throughout the state and New Jersey and Connecticut. And there are hundreds of organizations that serve our community at all levels. And so what we saw, which a developmental bilingual program that would build on the first language, the home language, Spanish , of the Puerto Rican Latino students in 1972, but that students would be able to participate in learning content and they could do it by learning through Spanish. So Spanish, as a native language was a subject area, language, Spanish language arts. In addition, math, science and social studies classes would be taught in Spanish and students would also get English as a second language class in which they learn the four elements of language arts - listening, speaking, reading and writing. The Consent Decree saw that the goal would be that the end of the process was children and the students graduating from the schools would be biliterate, a word that probably wasn't even used back in 1974. Bilingual, bicultural, meaning they knew about their own history and culture, and the ASPIRA Clubs were part of that process, teaching students about the history of Puerto Rico, the great migration from Puerto Rico to New York and to other states in the United States. The goal was that they would build on and develop both skills. The court said that a transitional bilingual program was sufficient because that's what we agreed to with the Board of Ed. The Board of Education at the time was not supportive of bilingual instruction and they supported what they saw as an English-as-quickly-as-possible alternative, transitional bilingual, which is to say when taking a English language proficiency test, it was called the LAB, the battery of tests. When you reach the 10th percentile, you would be actually the 20th percent, excuse me, that you would be able to do well in English only classroom. In 1972, 1982, Dr. Frank Macchiarola went back to court and tried to argue that that should be brought down to the 10th percentile. So ASPIRA eight years after the consent decree had to go back to court. What we originally got in 1974, by 1984, 40% of kids who were identified as Limited English Proficient, now most recently called English Language Learners and today described as Multilingual Learners. 40% of the kids who were eligible for any kind of service were getting nothing, which is why we had to go back to court and say they are not living up to the letter of the Consent Decree and the judge in the case in 1984 threw out the arguments that Chancellor Macchiarola was making and in fact they had to reinstate and ensure that the 40% of children who were getting nothing, not ESL, not transitional bilingual instruction to two languages, that they had to then become, to correct their actions and you had to be able to verify it by visiting the schools, by looking at the data that was being received. The Consent Decree and Lau were joined in New York such that in later time, if there were enough children speaking other languages, other than Spanish, what covered by the ASPIRA consent decree, meaning that the right to instruction in two languages, including English as a second language, was available to all students. If there were enough students in a grade level to form at least at least 20 students at a grade, first grade, fifth grade, ninth grade to form a class in one language. So if you had a community where there were Haitian Creole or Chinese Mandarin speakers and there were enough, they had a right to ESL and they could opt if they wanted, out of a bilingual program, but they also had the right to have bilingual instruction in Mandarin Chinese and English. And so over the years we have seen bilingual programs in the various languages being implemented and in some cases well, in other cases poorly. The history of the Consent Decree has to be seen in the context of the law, but also has to be seen in the context of the financial bankruptcy of New York City in 1974 so that the Consent Decree was implemented in ‘75, at the same time that New York City was declared bankrupt fiscally. And a Control Board like there is in Puerto Rico because of the deficits in Puerto Rico, the bankruptcy in Puerto Rico, the Control Board had control over the finances. And the New York City and monolingual teachers, mostly white, mostly women in large part Jewish, but Italian, Irish, German Americans. Many of those teachers had to be fired. Guidance counselors, school psychologists and nurses who were part of the professional staff in schools had to be fired in many cases because of the budget cuts that were imposed on the City. And the United Federation of Teachers, the UFT, under the leadership of Albert Shanker, was very opposed to the ASPIRA consent decree and bilingual education. And in fact, Shanker in his New York Times columns, wrote about bilingual education as very un-American and divisive and it was just a job programs for Hispanics because he saw that bilingual teachers had to be hired by the school system to teach in these newly formed bilingual programs and the ESL teachers, if there was only ESL, while the monolingual teachers were being not hired and many of them being excessed. And so it took all the way till 1984 when Macchiarola was trying to cut back on the requirements for the bilingual educators, ASPIRA. And this is where I came in in 1982 at the request of Dr. Pantoja to support ASPIRA and to support the school system's implementation of bilingual programs that we were able to have a dialogue with the second president of the United Federation of Teachers, Sandra Feldman, who became president after Albert Shanker retired or passed away. It was under her leadership with now AFT president Randi Weingarten head counsel to the president and counsel of the United Federation of Teachers that we came to an understanding and agreement to work together to implement the decree and to get beyond the us vs them. And so we went to Albany and through the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus and the Puerto Rican Hispanic Legislative Task Force under Angelo Del Toro and others were able to get funding for what was then called LEP Aid, Limited English Proficient Aid, so that people couldn't say, well, there's no money to form these classes. So we got state funding along with funding from the city and slowly built back so that the percent of students not getting anything came to what it is today, in the single digit percentages. Yes, there are still children not being served, but the vast majority are getting some sort of English as a Second Language or bilingual transitional bilingual services or in schools that have been created over the last number of years, dual language programs where 50% of the class are English speakers and 50% of students who speak a language other than English. So you could have a Spanish dual language program in an elementary school, let's say in East Harlem whereas in Queens or in some other part where there's large Chinese populations as in Chinatown, Lower East Side, you might have a dual language program that was Mandarin-English. The English speakers get the benefit of learning content as well as Mandarin Chinese in their classrooms with the EL students, the Mandarin EL students becoming part of the resources that it's not just the teacher of the children who can speak the language and so the students are models for each other of the two languages and that creates an environment that's closer to what Paolo Freire, I'm not sure about John Dewey, but certainly Eugenio Maria de Hostos, what they had in mind, that students learn together both languages and they learn content. And this is one of the biggest problems today, the lack even in 2019 for curriculum content that tells the story of African American, Caribbean, Latino, Native American, Asian. The content of the syllabus is not determined by the state. What needs to be taught is decided locally. And we have yet to, unlike other cities and states in the United States that have mandated an inclusion of African American history and culture. And today. that's something that I think is part of the work that has to be done by all educators, not just to have teachers who reflect all the students, which is another issue. Language issues, culture issues, race issues among the students and the teachers and the educators and leaders and the parents. All of these issues are intertwined because we live in a world where we can't put language in a compartment and separate it. A child who was homeless, a child who's in a foster care home, a child who comes from China, comes from Dominican Republic or from some other nation migrates or emigrates and comes to New York. Even from Puerto Rico being citizens, they know one reality or a different reality. Oftentimes, it may be they're coming because of economic need. It could be because of other reasons. We have children who came because of Hurricane Maria and there are more Puerto Rican children in Buffalo and in Rochester, displaced by Maria, attending and enrolled in public schools. than there are in New York city. Why? We're eight million people. Well, the cost of living in Buffalo and Rochester is much lower. And so if you have relatives there, you can send your child or maybe accompany your child. It doesn't mean you have a residence, your own apartment or any other things, but you can stay with relatives. But you then become eligible. as It turns out. And this is something that the courts and the state have determined. You have a right to resources from the federal government and McKinney Vento legislation law, which is funds that are provided to children who are homeless. That's a long answer to a complicated question.

Jon M: 26:38 Thank you. Thank you very much. So one of the questions we definitely want to, you know, dig into some of the questions around culturally responsive and sustaining education. But I wanted to ask you, last year in 2018, in its document "SEL, Essential For Learning, Essential For Life," the State Ed Department, the Regents called for organizing schools around the importance of social emotional learning, including teaching students to make ethical decisions. And I was struck in reading it, that the Department acknowledged that this would require a huge cultural shift for many schools and districts, and that implementation would require lots of institutional obstacles. How has the State Department been implementing these changes and how has the, how have the decisions in the document been reflected in budget priorities, staffing priorities, things like that? How does, how do the Regents see helping schools and districts make this kind of really fundamental alteration in many cases and how it views what goes on in schools?

Luis R: 27:52 In many ways, the decision that you saw in 2018 is aspirational, meaning that we are in the process at the level of the Regents, the State Education Department, its own leadership of, we're in a process of transition, we hope a process of transformation. We've had a number of changes in leadership. Just this August, the commissioner, Mary Ellen Elia, resigned. The deputy commissioner for student support, Angélica Infante-Green, became commissioner in Rhode Island. She had been in charge of the office of bilingual ed and when she moved up to deputy commissioner, her assistant and colleague, Lisette Colon-Collins, stepped into that Office of Bilingual Ed and World Languages. She went to Yonkers several months ago as an associate commissioner. So we've had changes and loss of a number of very important people, Lissette and Angélica in particular, when it comes to bilingual education. But we're also in a transition from a focus on high stakes testing and standard core curriculum under Obama, President Obama, Secretary Arne Dunkin, the No Child Left Behind apparatus and structure, followed by the Race to the Top and now the elementary, no, educational success, ESSA, the new mandate from the federal government where still we're very much tied to a focus on math and English language arts, oftentimes social studies, science and other areas getting short shrift. What we said in that document is that education is not just about math and language arts test scores and high stakes tests on which not just students are being measured and evaluated and rewarded or not, but teachers as well. And so the whole infrastructure around high stakes testing and Common Core has distorted the goal of education, which includes socio-emotional learning or as the recently passed regent, Judith Johnson, who was a deputy assistant secretary under Richard Riley when he was in Washington under I believe, Clinton, President Clinton. She says, “how are the children doing? Are they well?” And so she was making the point that wellness was the goal that children be well-educated, well housed, well supported, well counseled, well cared for. Children come to us whether it's in the ninth grade from another country or they come to us in pre- kindergarten in what are now UPK4 and UPK3 programs that New York City has implemented over the last three years under Mayor de Blasio with funding from the state. But pre-K is not about testing little three year olds and four year olds on some types of tests, but is meeting them where they are and what is appropriate in terms of educating a child. They need to be socialized to work and play and learn with other children and behave and respect the rights of everybody around them. And that means socio-emotional learning, play based learning, storytelling, listening to stories, being able to speak up, listen to others. And so we are trying to transform the nature of education to be beyond test prep where you become judged by whether you, uh, you have an 800 on the SAT or some other, some other tests. So ethical questions become important because teachers have to be ethical in how they treat the children. We don't accept that parents abuse their children physically, sexually, or let anybody else do it and we certainly don't expect teachers to be involved in any way allowing students to be abused. And so I would say that we are, there's a long history going back to Dewey, Freire, Hostos and others, and even further. We don't want schools to be factories either in preparing products or in how they treat the workers as just punching out products. And it's a long way to go. We are talking about a culturally renewing, sustaining education. That means the teachers themselves have to be knowledgeable. And diverse. And we have to ensure that there are more people of color, more people from both male and female backgrounds. We have to ensure that they are competent, not only in subject matter in all of the subjects that are possible, that are taught, but that they be competent in understanding how to bridge their culture, the culture of children from different backgrounds in the same classroom, the families, how do they engage the parents as partners and ensure that the teaching materials also reflect the diversity of the community, the diversity of the United States and New York City, New York State. And that's a problem we don't see in even out of some of the major institutions, higher ed institutions. We don't see necessarily content and books that reflect authors from across the racial, ethnic sexuality spectrum. And that's something where I work at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, we are just beginning to look at our own curriculum materials. We've developed a Cultural Ambassadors training program that uses all of our resources: oral history documents, books that have been written, research books, children's books. But we realized that Puerto Ricans, like, Italians like Jews or any other group have a variety of diversity of sexual orientation and gender identification and what materials do we have available to them. And so the materials by themselves are not going to teach. The teachers have to work with the student, with the parents and with others to read those stories, to discuss them, to understand them, to learn how to write your own stories about your own experiences. And that means being open to accepting and respecting the diversity that's in the school, in the daycare center, in the nursery, in the college.

Amy H-L: 37:11 How does the State Education Department allocate resources for the Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework that the Regents adopted earlier this year?

Luis R: 37:20 That's a good question. We don't mint our own money. We get funds from the federal government and so issues of cultural competence can be embedded as they are in Head Start for federal dollars for Head Start are years ahead of New York City and New York State. And when it comes to educating children and, and acknowledging and building on the linguistic cultural background of the children, the families, the materials, we don't dictate what textbooks people use. So the school system, New York City, makes decisions at various levels locally. The school district, now they have regional superintendents or executive superintendents who are responsible for districts and release funds from the City to the schools. We have a long ways to go to be able to fund these these efforts. Teacher education, professional development. We just put into our budgetary requests on Tuesday at the Rregents meeting, funding for workforce development, of programs, starting with infants and toddlers all the way through age five, meaning there are daycare centers, there are Head Start, Early Head Start, three year old pre-K and four year old pre-K programs and we have staff that need to be trained to understand issues of language, culture, ethnicity, race, economic diversity and be competent. And so we're asking for funds over a three, five year period going forward, starting next year's budget to train the workforce in this area of nursery through pre-K. Anything that's covered under kindergarten to 12th grade has much more funding available for professional development and it's built into the budget. And so we're saying not only do we need to fund UPK programs throughout beyond New York City because in many rural and other municipal areas in the state that don't have UPK programs, which have depended on funding from the state, from the governor and the legislature over the last three years. But not all of the kids are, by far, are in programs who are eligible. So there's a lot, there's a lot of work at that level. And the culturally and sustaining is P-20, so think about how many thousands and thousands of teachers, teacher aides, guidance counselors, school board. If you weren't a bilingual teacher who went through a bilingual certification, but you're the principal of the school that has 30-40% of your kids are in a bilingual ESL program, how is the principal trained? What kind of requirements are there? Have there been in the certification of and licensing of teachers? And so we were talking about making changes in those areas, the licensing and certification course content. At the same time we're talking about getting funding for professional development and getting funding for curriculum and instruction materials.

Jon M: 41:36 So picking up on one specific aspect of that, in addition to the funding and this kind of training and pre-service and inservice education, what are you seeing as the most effective strategies specifically for recruiting and supporting Latinx teachers and teachers who may not be Latinx but are culturally sensitive and culturally competent to recruit and support teachers to, to overcome the shortages of culturally competent teachers for Latinx and other groups of students?

Luis R: 42:12 I think we have to understand that it's about creating or building a new or renewing and expanding an education pipeline and pathways to the teaching profession and the other educational professions that are associated with guidance counselors, et cetera. And that means in some ways going back to the middle schools and encouraging students to start thinking about what they should be studying now and what they want to study when they go to high school and what high school they want to apply. So we have to create a pipeline that in many ways is similar to, maybe earlier than, the pipeline that ASPIRA created in 1961 through the ASPIRA organization and youth leadership clubs. ASPIRA at one point had 200 ASPIRA Clubs in high schools - public high schools, Catholic high schools, private schools throughout the city, and the purpose of those schools were to create leaders. One of the areas of leadership was teaching and so today we have a colleague, Professor Tatiana Kleyn, who just presented a series of videos that were created about how to support immigrant students at all levels of the school system. This was done with state funding, a small amount of funding, and that was presented to the Regents and the State Education Department this week along with a resource guide. All of that needs to get into the hands of teachers and school administrators so that they can support students. One of the things that Tatiana and her colleagues have done has been to support Dreamer clubs. We're talking about clubs at the high school level of students who are themselves immigrants. They may be documented, undocumented. It doesn't matter. The clubs are the idea of students who are immigrants who can have the potential and funding. We hope soon that the New York State Dream Act that was signed, that that Dream Act, which allows for eligibility for Dreamers to continue their education, that we now need funding so that the dreamers who were in high school can stay in school, graduate, apply for college and be, even if they are not citizens, be able to participate in higher education programming that could lead to a teaching degree. You know that lawyers, there was a decision a year or two ago that you don't have to be a US citizen to get a law degree in the state of New York. So I would say that we need to create at the high school level at least if not before, that opportunities for students to participate in clubs that honor that or show interest in education and having college students become mentors. If you had Dreamers who are in college, DACA recipients who are in college, for them to go back to the high school or to the middle schools that they come from and support other students. We have to also make teaching an area that gets support and funding. The United Federation of Teachers, the AFT, are very much able to gain the credentials and the salaries over the many years. But there are people in Head Start and daycare centers in nonpublic school settings that are in community based organizations who have to get food stamps because they are not paid enough and many of them are able to work in these nurseries or daycare centers with a high school diploma. So we have to create a pipeline for people who are in early childhood to be able to get certification and licensing and get a BA and an MA. That means you have to start recruiting among this very poor class of teachers. Or if you get a master's degree from Hunter College in early childhood education and you're working in a daycare center, tomorrow, if you left, if you resigned, you would be getting paid at least $15,000 more in a New York City public school pre-K program because you're covered by the contract that was negotiated between the United Federation of Teachers and New York City. And the good news is, I think in the last few days, we saw that Mayor De Blasio made a commitment to start paying more to the people working in these daycare centers and community based. But I don't know if it's one or two years down the line that it will be implemented. There's an understanding that you can't have quality education, P-20, if you don't have a contractual system, a salary system, of parity so that teachers, educators, like parents and others, move from one part of town to another part, from one city to another and move from one job to another and we have to make sure that they're able to make a living that's appropriate.

Jon M: 48:57 Absolutely. Is there anything that you'd like to add that we haven't talked about?

Luis R: 49:02 I'd like to say that my sense is that we are at a very critical time, uh, on all levels of our government when it comes to funding for education. We're talking about being owed still three, four billion dollars from the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit and the settlement and the agreement at the end of that, Judge Leland DeGrasse, who indicated seven elements of a sound basic education that's guaranteed by the state constitution. And the class size is one of them. ELL model ELL and services for students with special needs, professional development. All of those things are needed and yet we still are short in the funding that had been agreed to under the court's mandate because of the last recession in 2008, Governor Spitzer stopped adding funds and then he left. And subsequently the governor has not added beyond whatever gets agreed to from year to year. So we have a long ways to go and we can talk, the Board of Regents, we pass resolutions, we have a Commissioner and a State Education Department that can develop guidelines and all kinds of other regulations. But we depend on the other branches of government. And when I say the branches of government, I'm not just talking the legislative, executive and judicial in New York State, but at the federal level as well. We depend on the federal government, the state government and the local government, knowing that we are living in a society where we are economically, racially and culturally oftentimes segregated, the schools themselves. And so I could live in one part of my district on the Upper West Side and go to a school that has the resources that well off middle class, well educated parents are able to add and yet there are other schools where the working class parents do not have the ability to make up for what's missing. So we've got to insist that government does everything it can to ensure equal education opportunity, to ensure the resources and the professional development needed for equal educational outcomes. And we can try to close the various gaps in achievement, whether by level or by subject. And that while we're doing all of that, we're not just being reactive, but we are being creative, ensuring that the students are learning the skills that are needed in a world in which you and I can communicate by radio, by electronics, and are able to communicate with thousands of people and hopefully more in the future so that ethics in education is not a course or a weekend workshop, a webinar that you attend.

Amy H-L: 52:58 Thank you so much, Regent Luis O. Reyes.

Jon M: 52:58 And thank you listeners for joining us. We'd like to hear how you've incorporated ideas you've heard on our podcast or read on the blog. Are there topics you'd like to hear more about? Please email us at hosts@ethicalschools.org. We also offer professional development for schools and afterschool programs in New York City area. Contact us for details. Check out prior episodes and articles on our site. We've recently begun posting transcripts of episodes as well. We're on Facebook, Twitter @ethicalschools and Instagram. Our editor and social media manager is Amanda Denti. Till next week.

Gender Inclusivity: Where Science and Ethics Intersect

Ethical Schools — Wed, 11 Dec 2019 21:18:30 +0000

*Overview and transcript below.

[ss_player]

References

To know more about Lewis and Sam's projects, please go to sam-long.weebly.com, fishyteaching.com and transeducators.com.

Overview

00:00:54 Introductions

00:56-03:19 Experiences as LGBTQ high school students

03:20-06:15 As teachers, coming out as trans men to colleagues and students

06:16-11:13 Key elements of a gender-inclusive biology curriculum

11:14-16:26 Working to help make other teachers’ instruction more accurate and inclusive

16:27-19:38 How teachers respond to trans students’ lied experience

19:39-21:42 Relevance of Dewey’s ethical framework

21:43-29:21 Success stories in demarginalizing students

29:22-30:51 How teachers can develop this work

30:52 Outro

Transcription of the episode

Jon M: 00:15 Hi, I'm Jon Moscow.

Amy H-L: 00:17 And I'm Amy Halpern-Laff. Welcome to Ethical Schools, where we discuss strategies for creating inclusive and equitable schools and youth programs and help students to develop commitment and capacity to build ethical institutions.

Jon M: 00:30 Our guests today are Sam Long and Lewis Maday-Travis. Sam and Lewis are both high school science teachers, Sam in Denver and Lewis in Seattle. Both are trans men. Since the start of this year, the two have been creating resources and providing training to help teachers develop accurate and inclusive biology curriculum. Welcome Sam and Lewis.

Sam L: 00:53 Thank you.

Lewis M-T: 00:54 Thank you.

Amy H-L: 00:56 So what were your own experiences as trans high school students?

Sam L: 01:01 Well, I could start on that one. My experience as a high school student was that I was starting to transition while I was in high school and not pertaining to science class, but in general most of the adults around me didn't know what to do. It wasn't something they had heard of. It wasn't something they had had any training or experience in. And what that led to was some kind of poor decisions on their part and trying to figure out, well, uh, where should I use the restroom? How should I participate in overnight trips? And so that was only 10 years ago, but now we're starting to see policies crop up and model policies be made available online for helping school districts to include trans students in kind of a standardized way or at least to have a guideline to follow in accommodating students. And then in the science classroom I learned nothing about it in health class they learned nothing about sexuality and gender identity. And one of my goals as a science teacher is to make sure that our students that are coming out now and identifying as LGBTQ see themselves represented in some way at school.

Jon M: 02:23 Lewis, did you want to add to that in terms of your experience?

Lewis M-T: 02:27 Absolutely. So my experiences were slightly different. For one, I didn't come out as trans or I didn't actually realize that I was trans until after leaving high school. And so most of my experiences around inclusion in high school were around identifying as queer. And I actually went to a high school where I was very well supported as a queer and gender nonconforming young person. And I think that the teachers that I had who really supported me have really been a model for me as a teacher about what inclusion and really knowing your students and really accepting them can look like. I will say that in terms of trans content or thinking about like trans issues or intersex traits or other kinds of gender diversity, I know that my school worked really hard to try to be as inclusive as possible and I know that folks made mistakes, which, you know, I think it's also a good lesson for me as an educator bLewiecause heavens knows I make mistakes all the time.

Jon M: 03:20 So as teachers, how, and when did you introduce yourself to your students and your colleagues as trans men?

Lewis M-T: 03:30 I, um, I talked about this a little bit before with some people. So when I started teaching, I was not out as trans during the interview except that when I came in they thought that they were interviewing a female candidate. So it was kind of this funny thing where I did my whole interview day and like it seemed to go really well and it was like a lovely experience but was kind of weird around pronouns and things like that. And at the end of the day someone called me and was like, by the way, I just want you to know that I'm a man. I came out to colleagues right away at my previous school and folks were generally fairly accepting. I was the first out trans faculty or staff member as far as I know at that school and I didn't come out to my students for a couple of years after that. And I think that a large part of that was both. I was working with young students, I was working with sixth graders at the time, but also just general attitudes and awareness around trans issues were significantly different. That was over seven years ago now. And I chose to come out to my students during a unit where I was leading them in thinking about identity in STEM so you know, who does science, why is it that some groups are over underrepresented in science, um, and told some of my own story as a trans person in science and my experiences and the response was overwhelmingly positive and I found that it allowed me to be much more myself as a teacher and also talk more about the justification for why I talk so much and work with identity so much in the science classroom.

Jon M: 05:04 Sam, did you want to add to that?

Sam L: 05:06 Yeah. My experience with introducing myself as transgender in my school has also been positive. I've come out to students and staff every year that I've been teaching, which is, I'm in my fifth year now and I've been very fortunate to have a supportive my school leaders and uh, have positive responses from students. I see my had an annually coming out as serving two functions. One, it's how I'm most comfortable interacting with my students. Having them know that part of me and knowing that I am willing to support that part of them or any differences or identities that they may hold. And then the other function is as a form of setting the culture, the classroom setting a culture of inclusion and showing, uh, from the first day now, when I tell them about my identities, that we're not tolerating any prejudice and we are all here to learn together and we respect diverse identities in our classroom.

Amy H-L: 06:16 What are the key elements of a gender inclusive biology curriculum?

Sam L: 06:21 So to me the key elements of a gender inclusive biology curriculum are approaches to teaching. And so it's not teaching something new or separate. But in everything that I teach, I try to make sure that there is authenticity and what I teach. So everything is based on research, everything is accurate and modern science, everything is continuous. So we're not talking about gender once or doing one big project and leaving it at that. The messages are consistent from lesson to lesson. And so students can feel a sense after the semester, after the year that well, you really touched on that and we developed these ideas in a continuous way. Another element is there needs to be affirmation of student identities. So we need to not just teach that there is diversity and living things, but that it's a positive thing and not a disorder the way that it's often talked about in genetics, not just an exception, but really the rule in biology is that there is diversity in the way that living things reproduce. And another key element of it is student agency. Students need to have a voice in what they learn about. And I've generally found that all students are interested in learning about ways in which biology represents gender diversity and sexual diversity. Um, but some students may have an interest in learning specific topics and so I try to start with gathering a lot of questions. What would students want to learn about before we start on a new unit where I know there's going to be these opportunities to talk about gender diversity.

Lewis M-T: 08:14 I love that framework. I think it really fits the work that we're doing and it's also something that we're trying to share with other science teachers as they are considering creating a gender inclusive biology curriculum. Um, I think for me the big thing it boils down to is they, would you mean to say and don't lie. Like I'm really trying to create a space where science reflects the diversity that exists because in a lot of ways the biology that, that most of us are taught in middle school and high school is oversimplified and excludes a number of experiences including Sam and my experiences as a trans, as trans people.

Sam L: 08:55 Yeah. I think we could kind of, um, should I really put in an example when teachers are teaching about when one biology teachers are teaching about genetics, sex chromosomes, reproduction, there might be a tendency to start with what, what is canonical, what we already know. We're going to talk about the XX and the X, Y chromosomes. We're going to talk about the egg and the sperm and then to leave mentions of any exceptions to that, so called exceptions or differences to the end or of just to be mentioned. But as Lewis is saying that it is oversimplifying reproduction and not all species have two kinds of gametes, one bigger than the other, also known as the egg and the sperm. And not all organisms have this X, X, X, Y, sex termination system. For some organisms, sex determination is not based on chromosomes at all. It might be based on environment, like the temperature or the place in which life is occurring. And so to us, not oversimplifying, not only avoids referring to these stereotyped human gender binaries, but also pushes the rigor of what we're teaching. So for example, when we're talking about reproductive strategies in evolution, how do you pass down your genes to the next generation? It might be tempting to go with these very common examples. Um, birds, they're monogamous, they mate for life, and it's always usually always the case that the males are bigger and flashier in color. Then the females so that they can compete for a mate and then the females choose a mate and that's something that you can teach. Everyone's going to understand it. It kind of follows these human gender stereotypes of men have to compete for a date and then women choose, but it doesn't do a lot to help students understand the core idea, which is that no matter how you're passing down your genes, whether it's through that female mate choice strategy or some totally different strategy, the functional thing here is passing down your genes.

Jon M: 11:14 How do you work with your colleagues in other fields to enable their teaching to become more accurate and inclusive of trans individuals?

Lewis Maday-Tra: 11:23 That's an interesting question. There's evidence that actually students explain encounter trans and queer inclusive content more often in the humanities than they do in science classes at a national level, and so Sam and my work has primarily focused on working with other science teachers and thinking about biology, science, health. I will say that I have collaborated with colleagues in other departments before to think about approaches to talking about gender, trying to include examples of people from history or characters in books, things like that that reflects diverse identities. But that's more, that's like, yeah, more in sort of a roll around equity in general at my school and less sort of the thrust of the work that we've been doing. Would you say that, Sam?

Sam L: 12:14 Um, yeah, the GLSEN survey in 2017 found that

Jon M: 12:18 I'm sorry. GLSEN for our listeners?

Sam L: 12:21 Um, so the GLSEN youth climate survey is, I believe it's the largest national survey of LGBTQ youth and asks them about their experiences in school and outside of school. And one of, uh, things they ask about is, are you seeing positive representations of LGBTQ identities in any of your classes? And if so, what classes? And what comes up in the data is that most students, if they say yes, they're reporting that it's happening in English or social studies class and science among the lowest, I believe it's 2% that are recording they're seeing positive representations of LGBTQ identities in science class. And so that's why we feel that our work is important, although it certainly can be integrated in other fields. And as well. Louis, when you were talking about working with other colleagues and other subject areas, ah, one thing I'd like to add is that any teacher can learn some approaches to working with diverse students such as asking them what name and pronouns they want to be referred to that make a really big difference in the lives of our students. And it doesn't really have to do with any content area. There are a few ways to do that. You can do kind of a a paper survey or a Google form or just orally when talking to students join that you're not going to assume something about their identity based on how they look or what it says their name is on the roster, but caring about what they want to be called.

Jon M: 14:03 So given what you're saying about science being one of the lagging areas, what kind of work are you doing with other science teachers to try to get them to be more inclusive?

Sam L: 14:16 So since the start of this year, early 2019, the core work that we've been doing to work with other science teachers has been to give presentations at conferences and to publish essays about this work, about creating gender inclusive biology curriculum because we feel that that's a core area where it's like there's underutilized potential in there. There's so many topics in biology that you're teaching anyway and it'd be very high leverage and high impact to rethink some of the language or rethink the way that something is taught in a way that will include your trans students, your gender diverse students, while also furthering their understanding of the topic. So we've put together basically, in line with our framework are five key elements of a gender inclusive biology curriculum. We've put together some, I'd say example lessons and non-example lessons that we have teachers in these workshops look over in small groups and think about them through the lens of this framework. Is this lesson authentic? Is there student agency in here? Is this using precise language? Is it affirmative of student identities? And we have students, I mean we have teachers. I think of where the lessons can be improved and they always naturally do a pretty good job with that, but identify things that can be improved about these lessons and that way we've been able to reach a lot of teachers. It seems that this work is kind of making the rounds, um, on the internet as well. And we've been really lucky to have it shared on Facebook and Twitter and we now have a listserv called the gender inclusive biology education listserv and we send out a newsletter once a month to teach us that or in the group with resources.

Amy H-L: 16:27 That's fantastic. A question that comes up a lot in all sorts of sort of groundbreaking types of professional development, which is the teachers who come to your trainings and who are interested in this sort of thing are obviously the ones who are going to be open to modifying their curriculum and accepting of, uh, a spectrum of identities. So putting aside your, your own curriculum and trainings, do you find that most teachers in 2019 respond competently and compassionately to the lived experiences of trans students or does it still vary a lot?

Lewis M-T: 17:14 I think it's been clear based on the conversations we've had with teachers at our workshops, that there is a really wide range of where folks are at. At a recent conference presentation that Sam and I did together, there were a number of teachers there who spoke about being first year teachers and being worried about losing their contracts if they bring up trans issues in the classroom because of parent backlash or because of administration being hostile towards those identities. Um, there are also a wide range of laws either supporting or not supporting educators doing this work. That varies state by state and sometimes district by district. So it is true that the folks that we are currently reaching out to are folks who are very receptive and excited about this work and that's exciting for us. I think I, I know that for me, I hope that these conversations start getting boosted to the state and national levels because it's really, really crucial that trans students receive more support than they're getting because there's a lot of evidence that trans students have a really, really hard time at school.

Sam L: 18:17 Yeah, I agree. And the teachers that tend to be interested in our work and come to our workshops, yes, they, there are teachers that already want to do the work whether or not they may feel supported in their schools or districts for that. Um, somebody pointed out at the previous conference that the audience tends to skew young, younger teachers, but I work in a big public high school where I'm by far the youngest science teacher. Folks who have been teaching here a long time and they've been receptive not only to my personal story and identity, but to my mission in changing the biology curriculum. Not that they've implemented it yet this year, but I tried to kind of drop it into the conversation anytime I'm doing something that I know that they're probably not doing and say, well, this is research space. This is accurate, modern biology, this, you have no idea what great things this will do for your LGBTQ students. Just to hear you mentioning that because they notice, you think your students aren't listening. They're going to hear that and they won't forget it, that you said something that affirms their identity or you said that chromosomes are not the only thing that make you a man or a woman. They need to hear that from their teachers.

Jon M: 19:39 The patron saint in a secular sense of Ethical Schools is John Dewey. Um, in what ways, if any, do you consider Dewey and his ethical framework relevant to your work? Is this something that you've thought about?

Lewis M-T: 19:55 It's something I've thought about a little bit. Um, I don't know Dewey's work super well, but it's my understanding that Dewey really believes that classrooms are not just a place where students receive information but also a place where they learn to become citizens in a community and really engage in a democracy in a really like participatory way. I would say that for me, trying to create a inclusive biology classroom and inclusive science classrooms, not just of gender identities and diversity but of many forms of diversity is a really crucial part of creating students who are ready to engage in the like beauty and mess that is American democracy.

Amy H-L: 20:42 Did you have something to add to that, Sam?

Sam L: 20:44 Just a little thing. I know that Dewey wrote about experiential education and that you need to, before you take something to be true and correct, it needs to be empirically proven. And I think that relates to some of the emphasis of our work because there are these accepted truths, um, in society that you're either a boy or you're a girl that's immutable, gender is immutable, that don't really turn out to be supported by the research in biology. And it's quite a discovery for students to see that and to be faced with the research and to be faced with real diversity, the 10, 20 plus possible combinations of sex chromosomes you can have and still be a human when they haven't learned that before.

Amy H-L: 21:43 So what are some examples of success stories you've seen where either through curriculum or academic discussions or through intentional relationships, teachers have been able to successfully demarginalize trans students?

Lewis M-T: 22:02 It's so interesting that term, the marginalized I'm very uncomfortable with because I feel like there are so many ways, like I want to bring trans kids into the center. And also I think that the trans experience is it inherently marginalized in our society. So I'm like, Hmm. Um, I will say that I have had many students come up to me, not just trans students, grateful for the ways that conversations have been held and sometimes providing feedback about how to create more inclusive spaces. But I think that the relief and the sense of kind of being on the same team that I have had with some students who have marginalized identities, including trans students, has been really powerful. And those students have even come to me later and be like, "Hey, like I'm having this issue in my science class. Like I want to talk to you about it and I want to like work through it with you." I'm not being very specific here. Sam, you might have some better specific examples.

Sam L: 23:03 Yeah, I could give an example. When I teach about genetics, one of the first lessons and conversations that we have is about the language that we're going to use and whether that includes everybody. So we look at a couple of sentences, very common sentences like, "We get, we each get half our DNA from our mom and from our dad" or "Men produce sperm cells and women produce egg cells." And these are things that they've learned in middle school, if not before that, somewhere in their lives. But I ask them to take a minute before answering and think "Does this include everybody?" And they are always able to come up with a huge list of people that it doesn't include. People who are adopted. The people they call their mom and their dad don't share much of their DNA. People with same sex parents, trans parents, people who are infertile. They don't produce sperm or egg. Um, people who transition. And naming those things and specifically talking about how gay, lesbian, trans people fit into this, that they are still humans despite not following these rules, I think is really impactful to students. And what I generally see that to me is a big early indicator that, that this is affirming for them or at least starting to help them is they kind of perk up in class. They raise a hand more when they wouldn't normally participate much in my class. And sometimes they breathe a sigh of relief like, okay, we're gonna, we're gonna learn about this genetics topic and it's not going to be like it's been before. It's not going to be only about heterosexual, cisgender people and it might've been like that in their middle school science classes or their middle school health classes. And students talk to me after and say that, that made sense that I appreciate the way that you talked about that. Um, in my first year I had one student stay way late and wanted to talk to me about the way that theories for how primates can have homosexual behavior and how it could may contribute to the fitness of species in primates and I could just feel that he had never gotten to talk about this before in any other class and that's something that was of interest to him. He identified as part of the LGBTQ community and the students will want to talk about this and they'll want to learn about this if you allow them to learn about it in a safe way and a way that feels it is a part of the curriculum, it's what we need to learn in order to understand the complex world around us. Lewis, did you have another example?

Lewis M-T: 26:05 Oh you just, you, I mean you did such a good job there. I would say that the thing that came to mind for me actually, especially related to how these conversations changed student perspectives and try to do that work of demarginalization is last year I was teaching a unit where we had a lesson about intersex traits and we talked about the prevalence of intersex traits, which you know the numbers vary between 0.5 to maybe 2% of the population and a student who does not identify as in the LGBTQ umbrella as far as I know, was like "If it's that few people, like why does it matter?" And like having that conversation with students because I think that's something that sometimes comes up for people where when talking about folks in the LGBTQ umbrella, like because we are not a majority group, they're like, well but does it really matter? Like we can just, you know, meet the needs of the majority. And I was able to talk about my experiences as a trans person in science classes and also wanting to see myself represented and knowing that there are many different forms of diversity that may not be that common but are really important to understand. And I think that that conversation was a way of like doing that work of centering what is considered other and actually just treating it as a part of the natural diversity of what exists out there.

Sam L: 27:30 I would love to quickly add onto that. Yes, it's a common comment that I hear, that this is a small number of students we're talking about, we're talking about a really small group of people, but things that are uncommon, that has nothing to do with how they're regarded in society. There are genetic traits that much less common than intersex traits. Something that's kind of been over YouTube lately is this super color vision gene for types of cone cells. And there's all these tests to see if you can have it. It's really rare. It's regarded as something good. You can see more colors than everybody else. And one conversation that I have with students when we're talking about genetic traits is that we need to be reflective about what we're calling a disorder, a disease, a variation, a difference. For example, why students are, they have a lot of thinking to do when I present them with this idea that well, a red hair is caused by a genetic variation, a genetic mutation. So are some of these intersex traits. What's the difference? Why was one called a disease or disorder for so long? And they're quite surprised to learn that red hair, that gene is actually associated with some statistically significant, worse health outcomes due to a resistance to anesthetic that apparently it makes you 20 times more likely to die under general anesthesia due to resistance to that general anesthetic. So what we're treating as a disadvantage or merely a difference or a positive difference, there is no gold standard for that. That is completely determined by society, what we're calling a difference versus a disorder.

Jon M: 29:22 Is there anything you'd like to add that we haven't covered?

Lewis M-T: 29:24 I think one thing that was really powerful for me in a conversation that Sam and I had with Ashes Amenic, another person doing this work but at the undergraduate level, um, is that there can be this idea that if you don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of LGBTQ issues or if you aren't an expert or if you are going to make a mistake, that it's better to not try. And I would say that there are very small moves that you can make as an educator that can really make a difference in the lives of transgender, nonconforming and intersex students, including just being like, Hey, like we have this textbook. The textbook is not perfect. Let's learn about this together. But like my apologies, but we're going to go with it because you know heaven's knows that us teachers don't have months and months of paid leave to write beautiful gender inclusive curricula and materials that are going to reflect exactly the identities of our students and so you know it's messy dive in but also don't feel like you have to do it all at once.

Sam L: 30:28 Definitely. This is a, an emerging topic really. There is no textbook that it's going to help you do this work right now and it's so, so individual relative to the class and the teacher that I can only encourage teachers to dive into the messiness of it and to be a part of the development of this work. Right.

Amy H-L: 30:52 Well listeners, you can find links to Sams' and Lewis's inclusive biology curriculum resources on our website. Thank you so much Sam Long and Lewis Maday-Travis,

Jon M: 31:04 And thank you listeners for joining us. We'd like to hear how you've incorporated ideas you've heard on our podcast or read on the ethical school's blog. Also, if there are topics you'd like to hear more about, let us know. Please email us at hosts#ethicalschools.org. Actually, I'm pleased to say that that's how we met Sam and Lewis. You were the first people to email us at that particular email, so thank you. We also offer professional development for schools and afterschool programs in the New York City area, and you can contact us for details. Check out prior episodes and articles on our site. We're on Facebook and Twitter @ethicalschools and Instagram Our editor and social media manager is Amanda Denti. Till next week.

Emotionally Responsive Education: "inviting and containing"

Ethical Schools — Wed, 04 Dec 2019 21:02:21 +0000

Margaret Blachly of Bank Street’s Center for Emotionally Responsive Practice describes how to fit materials, curriculum, and relationships together to create an emotionally safe classroom. Emphasizing the importance of a deep understanding of child development, she tells how important it is to know each child’s "story." Margaret shares what she’s learned as a dual-language and special ed teacher and gives advice to new kindergarten teachers. Reflecting on Dewey's Education and Experience, she talks about the ethical dimensions of teaching and the connections between the classroom and the larger society.

*Overview and transcript below.

[ss_player]

References

During the interview, Margaret refers to the book "Creating Schools that Heal: Real-Life Solutions" by Lesley Koplow. You can find it here.
Margaret also co-wrote an article with Noelle Dean for EIEN titled "Feeling charts instead of behavior charts: radical love instead of shame". Click here to read it.
To know more about Bank Street’s Center for Emotionally Responsive Practice, click here.

Overview

0:00-1:46 Introduction

1:46-5:02 Center for Emotionally Responsive Practice; importance of deep understanding of child development

how each child’s life experience affects who they are, act, think, connect

5:03-11:59 Components of emotionally responsive classroom; “inviting and “containing”

11:59-16:06 Influence of John Dewey

16:06-22:00 “Aha” moments; growth and change in teachers

22:00-35:33 Immigrant experience; using reflective techniques; loss; inviting stories in that are hard

35:33-39:46 Changing school culture; teachers bringing their whole lives into the classroom; reflecting on their

experiences; feeling valued

39:46-48:33 Dual language, translanguaging; Ofelia Garcia

48:33-54:09 Advice for beginning kindergarten teachers

54:09-1:01:35 Connections between special education, bilingual education, and dual-language education;

decentralizing white experience as the first or only experience

Transcription of the episode

Amy H-L: 00:00:15 I'm Amy Halpern-Laff.

Jon M: 00:00:18 And I'm Jon Moscow.

Amy H-L: 00:00:18 Welcome to ethical schools where we discuss strategies for creating inclusive equitable schools and youth programs that help students to develop both commitment and capacity to building ethical institutions.

Jon M: 00:00:34 Our guest today is Margaret Blachly. Margaret is a psycho-educational specialist at the Center for Emotionally Responsive Practice at Bank Street College. She's also an advisor and instructor in the early childhood special education and bilingual programs at the Bank Street Graduate School of Education and a learning specialist at the children's learning center of Morningside Heights. She has been a teacher for two decades. Welcome Margaret.

Margaret B: 00:00:57 Thank you.

Amy H-L: 00:00:59 Margaret, how would you define the term psycho-educational?

Margaret B: 00:01:03 That is a wonderful question and it's funny you ask because when I first saw my contract for taking on the job at emotionally responsive practice, I said, "Is that what I am?" And my, my director Leslie Koplow said, well, that is what you are. So I had to do a little thinking about it. Um, psycho-educational specialist to me means somebody who knows about and thinks about and can advise and teach about the impact of emotional health and wellbeing in the educational setting.

Amy H-L: 00:01:40 And what is Bank Street Center for Emotionally Responsive Practice? What does it do?

Margaret B: 00:01:46 So the Center for Emotionally Responsive Practice is 20 years old and it's a professional development branch of Bank Street College. It's a staff at this moment of six people with our director and founder, Leslie Koplow, and we work with teachers, we work with administrators and we sometimes also work with children. We work with paraprofessionals and we sometimes also work with parents. We work with individual schools. We sometimes work with districts and we come to the schools or they come to us to learn about children's emotional health and how it impacts their learning and their behavior in schools. We do seminars and we do coaching. We do support groups and we do parent support groups and parent workshops. We have an annual conference and each of these events or each of these different ways in which we work, operates on a similar premise that people who are in contact with children in an educational setting need to understand child development and they need to not only understand the development of the age of the children that they work with. They need to understand child development starting with birth and they need to especially understand child development over the first three years, four years and five years of life. We also operate on the premise that people that work with children and families need to honor and value that each child has a story and that that child's story, aka their life experience, affects who they are and how they act and how they think and how they connect and that sometimes their story impacts how school feels for them. In fact, it always does. So whenever, whenever grownups come to us saying, we're having so much trouble with child X, can you help us? The first thing we say is how old is child X? And tell us about who they are. And then the other is what do you know about this child's story? Let's make this child more of a whole human then, uh, this behavior that you're seeing in your classrooms setting. And it's usually through beginning of the conversation that way that we are able to offer a space for the grownups to consider that child in a fuller way and thus to find a way to respond to them in a fuller way and in a way that's more that, that values them more, that honors why they're doing what they're doing and who these grownups are. Who is this teacher to this child? Who is this principal and who do they want to be? So we think a lot about development, a lot about experience and a lot about relationship.

Jon M: 00:05:03 So building on that, can you give some examples of what emotionally responsive practice looks like in the classroom?

Margaret B: 00:05:12 Okay. There's some very basic components to an emotionally responsive classroom. However, it can look different from classroom to classroom. So I want to, I want to lay that premise out from the beginning that with the same idea in mind, two classrooms can look and sound pretty different but the effect can be the same, that children feel safe, secure, known, and able to engage. So one example is having a space like a cozy corner. Some classroom teachers call it a peace corner, some teachers call it a peace nook. But here's the physical environment that says sometimes living in a group feels like too much. Sometimes a child, sometimes a person. Needs to retreat. Sometimes a person needs to regroup and have some space to be on the edge looking in and get ready to rejoin. So the presence of a peace corner or a cozy corner and then the way that it's used is one really clear component of an emotionally responsive classroom. We talk about a framework of inviting and containing. And this has been very helpful to me to think about and it's one of the things that we challenge ourselves to explain to teachers and to get them to be thinking about. So inviting and containing. is a balance that a classroom that it teacher wants to create an a classroom and I think that a school leader wants to create an a school that a coach wants to create in a coaching session that a graduate instructor wants to create in the graduate classroom. There needs to be invitation for who's in the room to be welcomed and heard in the room. There need to be structures that contain the activity and the way things work within the classroom. So a classroom that's overly inviting can feel really chaotic and I'm the first to say that my very first kindergarten classroom was overly inviting and it wasn't containing enough and I needed a Bank Street advisor to tell me that actually many years ago. When she told me, you can't open so many areas for your project time at once, I was very resistant and I said project time is the most important time in my classroom.This is when these children are going to get to engage with materials on their own terms. This is what I come from in Bank Street pedagogy. This is experience. So learning, if I don't open blocks today, that's one day less that the children in this room will have to play with blocks and their life because I knew that they wouldn't have blocks first grade. and this was really it. I felt the stakes were really high, but my advisor said it's too chaotic. You're not able to. um, you know, the kids are throwing blocks, they're throwing sand and over on the other corner they're throwing baby dolls. And it took me a while to, to admit that she was right and scale back and look at the goal of having all of these open for children, but realizing that I needed to be more containing and more structured in the way that I open them one by one, set out clear expectations and shared knowledge of how the things were going to be used and got the room full of kids, used to working in a lot, a lot of different centers at once. So I think that that's one of my personal stories of inviting and containing before I even knew these terms. I'll share another from my own personal experience because this is one that I often share with teachers who I'm supporting, and it's interesting because it just came up recently with a parent who I ran into who was telling me about a classroom where the teacher just wasn't progressive and made the kids sit in assigned seats when they were having meetings together and I, I thought about it and decided to just tell her that personally I have come to really value assigned seats, particularly for new teachers. And this was another thing that happened for me early on in my career where I felt very tied to value of choice and I really wanted children to be able to choose seats that they knew were going to be good for them, where they want it to be. I wanted to honor them. I didn't want to tell them where I thought they had to be, but I found that every time we came to the carpet together to have a conversation, there was so much anxiety about where kids sat. There was so much arguing, there was so much getting in each other's spaces that when I made the hard decision to give them assigned seats, it actually really relieved that anxiety and allowed our conversations to go on. And so it's an example that I don't think, you know, I'm not saying every single teacher must assign seats because there are teachers who have really figured out how to make, not having assigned seats work, but for teachers who are having a tough time managing that, I say assign the seats, relieve the anxiety so that you can get to the content of the conversations you want to have, the community that you want to create. And it's a way of saying to kids, there's a space for you. You can depend on it. You don't need to worry. You don't need to wonder. You don't need to think my friend's not near me, does she like me anymore. You can kind of relax into that space. And the funny thing is I've found that when I teach grownups, once they've figured out their seat, they always come back to the same seat in the graduate classroom or in the ERP [emotionally responsive practice] seminars and it's very comfortable to feel like you've got a spot, you belong there and you can join the group. So there are a couple of real life examples of inviting and containing.

Amy H-L: 00:11:59 Thank you. As you know, our podcasts and blog are strongly influenced by John Dewey's approach to ethics in education. Do you see connections between Dewey's ethical framework and the work that you do?

Margaret B: 00:12:13 So I think a lot about Dewey. When I did teach the courses at bank street in early childhood curriculum, Dewey's experience in education, which is one of his later works in which he reconsiders and re States many of the things he said in his other books about pedagogy and the educational approach was one of the main texts that we needed to ask graduate students to read and think about and apply to their work. I'm not currently teaching these courses in the graduate school. But for me, going back to that Dewey text, which I had read long ago in the same course myself many years ago, was extremely helpful to think about the experiences that we offer children and to honor the fact that for every child coming into our spaces is part of their experience and is itself an experience. So we make choices as educators about the kinds of experiences children can have and as an extension, the kind of experiences their parents can have, their families can have. Um, I think about engaging with materials and Bank Street's developmental interaction approach, uh, which asks educators to think about the materials, the curriculum, and then also the relationships that are in the room. All of these things fit together more and more. The more I repeat my reading of them and Dewey to me says that the educational experience can be and should be a parallel to the larger social experience and the very hopeful view that experiencing democracy in a classroom setting in a school setting prepares kids to grow up and engage in a democracy. In the very idealistic view of what a democracy can be, a social and political construct where people have voice, where people consider others, where people have choice and where they also have responsibility. Then in terms of thinking about the ethical framework, I understand this as the macro level of what our teaching means, and perhaps this is just another way of saying what I just said before, but our, our work as teachers and educators exist within a much bigger framework, a social, a political framework. And when we take the time to consistently reflect on ourselves at the macro level, thinking, what does my work with these children mean as a part of a larger institution of education in this country? And then on a micro level, what does my relationship and my, my educational offering to these particular children and these families this year, this day, this month, how to use my creation of a learning space that honors and welcomes and esteems children and their families and considers a developmental moment and how does it affect them personally? So I think there's an ethical responsibility to see our role in kids' experience and in their development of self within our spaces.

Jon M: 00:16:06 So Dewey of course talks a lot about change and how people make decisions and dramatic rehearsals is his phrase. And you were talking about how you changed in your practice, how you grew as you saw that some things seem to work better than others. And you of course were also coming out of, for example, a Bank Street background where you, you came to teaching from this. Um, what's the change process that you see as you're working with teachers who may not have come out of these backgrounds as they move towards sort of a more emotionally responsive practice? Do teachers, and I'm sure it's different for every teacher, but do teachers describe aha moments? What are sort of getting at is we have so many traditional schools, you know, for all the people who study him in graduate schools, Dewey was never the dominant impact on American schools. It was always much more hierarchical and top down and so forth. And as you're working with teachers in classrooms and also in schools that may not be progressive as such, um, how do you see this process of change and how do you see lasting change taking place? I don't know if that's, that may be a whole bunch of questions all bundled into one, but take whichever pieces of it you like.

Margaret B: 00:17:34 Okay. Yes, that's a bunch of questions. Um, the first thing that came to my mind as you started to ask that question or those questions was it's not always an aha moment and that has been something that I've needed to make peace with and that my colleagues at ERP whose training is in social work rather than pedagogy have really helped me to understand the process of growth and change over time in relationship with people. So I actually, I could tell you a couple of stories with aha moments in them and I've got one in mind and I can also tell you some stories of change over time. And I think both of them offer something for teachers to think about and maybe self-reflect, whether you're thinking about your own practice or thinking about how to support other people who you would like to see grow. So there was an aha moment that happened several years ago when I was working at a school way out on the edge of Queens near the ocean. And our work at that time was responding to hurricane Sandy. And we had in that work more than we usually have. We had a curriculum planned out where we would come in and actually offer some lessons to the children and teachers and some invitations to share and express their stories. And one of the stories was about feeling scared in a storm. One of the books that we read was about a bear that feels scared in a storm and how this bear and their friends figure out feeling safe. And the thinking behind this lesson was that children needed to have an invitation to talk about the hurricane being a scary experience being a storm that was very scary. And then thinking about how they stayed safe or how they could stay safe in the future. Not on the practical level, not on making an emergency plan or anything, but really on the idea that after a scary moment there can be safety. And it's important to know both of those feelings that hopefully the classroom can be that safe place. Now that was the idea. The story had these pictures of a dark woods in the night with rain and the minute I opened this book, now this was in a classroom with a lot of children who, who were themselves recent immigrants into the country or were the children of recent immigrants into the country. And interestingly, this work post hurricane Sandy was actually maybe a year and a half after the storm because of the amount of time that it took for funding to come to come through. So that our proposal for supporting these schools post-Sandy happened a year and a half later. However, it felt very impactful because a year and a half later people who had experienced the storm still were processing and still really responded to the opportunity to process together, to make sense of and to find comfort. However, some of these children were not even in this country when the storm happened, but here we were bringing this curriculum. And the minute I opened this story book, a six year old boy looked at it and spoke in Spanish, and I speak Spanish because of my year abroad during college and because it was something that I really wanted to learn to do and I became a dual language and bilingual educator. So I felt very fortunate to be understanding of what the child was saying because what he said to nobody in particular was that dark woods looks like when I was coming here with my mom and we had to hide in the dark scary woods and I was really scared.

Jon M: 00:21:59 Wow.

Margaret B: 00:22:00 And all of a sudden his teacher looked at me with this sort of aghast and shocked look on her face. Um, the teacher herself was an immigrant from a central American country and was a very experienced educator, but she had been worried about working with this boy who had been running out of the classroom. And when the school security guards approached him, he screamed and ran further. And so she had just been asking me what I thought about this boy and then he offered this, um, quite amazing statement in the middle of this story. And, uh, we got to write about this story in an article that I co-authored with two of my ERP colleagues, uh, because it was, um, it was sort of like an ERP moment that, so you can, you can read that story if you're interested to hear more about our thinking about work with kids for whom an immigration story is part of their own experience. But the reason I'm bringing it up right now was really about what happened when the teacher looked at me and when I said to her, after I read this book, I'd like to work with him. And so I used emotionally responsive practice technique of being reflective and simply said to the boy in Spanish, that sounds like a scary story. Maybe after I read this book, you can tell me more about it if you want. And the reflective technique is offering a mirror to the child. I heard what you just said. It sounds scary and you can, you know, it's, it's invited here. So I read the story to the class and I set them off on their writing and drawing activity. And I said to this little boy, would you like to tell me more about your, about your story of coming here with your mom? And another little boy joined in and, and I actually felt a little overwhelmed by having both of them, but the teacher looked at me and said, well, he, he just arrived here, too. And we, I ended up having this conversation in which the two boys told their stories and the teacher listened. And then they both drew pictures about their stories and the teacher listened. And she said to me, as I was getting ready to leave the classroom, I had no idea that they had an experience like that. And she was visibly moved, shocked. Um, and really clearly thinking about this. Well, when I came back two weeks later, she said, after hearing that story, I decided to make a curriculum about our heritage countries. So all of the kids have made little presentations and little diorama's and little posters about their heritage countries. And it was quite lovely and it was, you know, you might even say it was traditional, but the place it had come from was this teacher realizing the need for these children's stories and experiences to be part of what was happening in her classroom. And the fact that she heard the child tell his story changed the way that she acted with him. She became more nurturing and more comforting and that helped him not feel the need to run out of the classroom. So there's a story of an aha moment. Um, then there's a story of a teacher who used her relationship with the ERP coach to help herself grow and to push herself to offer something to the kids in her class. This is a story that took place at a school out of state where we've been working for several years and this was a fourth grade teacher and it was only her second year as a teacher. Um, she was young and she was a white teacher and most of the kids in her class were not white children. They were African American, African immigrants, Latino, Latina, Latinx, um, how they define themselves. And she was really grappling, I think, with how she could offer these children a space to share their stories. She was not yet saying things like, I'm a white teacher teaching kids who aren't white yet. She was clearly trying to think about it. She had read some books over the summer that she was considering reading to her class and one of them she felt like was maybe a little too old for them, a little too scary. And it was the book Ghost Boys by Jewel Rhodes, Jewel Parker Rhodes. And I was not familiar with this book. It is quite an amazing book in which that that addresses police shooting of unarmed black boys and brings Emmett Till in as a character from beyond the grave. And she couldn't decide whether to read this book to her class or not. But she listened to them and the kids told her some stories that made her think this might be a good book to read. And she decided to take a risk and read this book. And the risk was really that the material was going to be too sophisticated or too complicated for her to explain to the kids or for them to process. There was a lot of loss in this particular group. And when she started reading the story, some of the kids' experiences of loss came up. And it was loss across the spectrum of loss, - death, separation, immigration stories, moving and some, some tragedy. There was somebody who had experienced a shooting in their family. And so she decided to read this book and then she wrote to me saying, I started reading this book and everybody started crying and I don't know what to do. Can you help me? And so I consulted with Leslie, my director, and we talked about how inviting hard stories into the room, it can be scary and can be overwhelming, but giving them a place to live can be therapeutic, can be comforting. And so I told the teacher that when I came back we would do an activity.

Jon M: 00:29:15 When you say giving them a place to live, could you elaborate what you mean by that sentence?

Margaret B: 00:29:20 Yeah, I think my story will give the example,

Jon M: 00:29:25 Go ahead.

Margaret B: 00:29:25 So, um, we thought, what if the kids make, what if we give them an invitation to make a page of a class book where they can tell the story of somebody that they're missing and we're going to keep it open ended because we don't want to pressure anybody to tell a story they're not ready to tell. But we want to open the space for kids who want to tell whatever story they want to tell. And so I did bring that invitation and I said, I heard from your teacher that you started reading this book, Ghost Boys, and that some of you started thinking about people that you miss and that it was sad and it can feel really sad to miss people. And so today I'm going to invite you, if you want to make a picture or write a letter or write a story about a person you're missing, we're going to put them all together in a class book. And so it turned out that this group of kids was very, very responsive to this invitation and created these pages for a book that ran the full spectrum of, you know, people who had died, people who had stayed home in another country or had moved away. And it felt very connective. But I didn't, I didn't want to say, this is so perfect, this is so connective. So I asked the kids, what was it like, what was it like to make this book? And these, this group was very sophisticated and very thoughtful and a whole bunch of the kids wanted to participate all the time. And said things like this felt really good. It felt like I wasn't the only one who had a loss. This felt really special. It felt like it was okay to be sad. And they were saying things that reinforced my hunch and Leslie's theory that inviting stories in that are hard can be helpful, can diminish isolation if you give them a place to live. And so this book was a place that the stories could live. We didn't need to walk around talking about this loss all day long, but if we, if we wanted to check in with it, we could look at the book and kids didn't have to be thinking and be distracted by this idea that they'd experienced loss because it had been acknowledged that loss is a part of human experience and that community sharing can can make you feel less alone with your loss. So this is a long-winded story and I think has a lot of other layers that I don't know if there's time in this podcast to go into. It's one I'm still thinking about. I'm thinking about the questions that the children had about prejudice and about racism and about how this teacher and I encountered their questions and offered them answers, but we were both white women offering them these answers or these ways to think. And it's made me think a lot about how much kids need a variety of voices, helping them understand the complexities of their own experience of the world, of this moment in the country too. From the emotionally responsive practice perspective, I felt that the teacher taking the risk to open a topic and to really invite reflection on this topic was an aha moment for her. And this group of children took the journey with her and they ended up making posters at the end of the book. And she did the entire book as a read aloud, leaving as much time for conversation as the kids wanted, which was a lot. And one of the things she was worried about was that she didn't want the children to feel a complete sense of hopelessness about history and about racism. So we talked about the children being able to express both their understanding of racism and prejudice in this book and to be able to share if they had any experiences of racism and prejudice in their own lives. And then also to think about the word empowerment and to think about ways to find empowerment. This was also a theme that the book ended with. And so she had small groups of kids make this project where they depicted prejudice and racism in the book, prejudice and racism in our world, and ways that people find empowerment to work towards repair and change. And it was, it was very, very powerful. Then it's hard to go away and not work with that teacher anymore and to think, where did she take this experience? What's she going to do next? Where's she going to grow? And that's part of, I think, any ERP, we think about planting seeds for people and often not knowing when or where they're going going to grow. And I think that what my coaching offered her at that time was partnership and thinking about something and thoughtfulness about how to care for children's feelings while also having more of a macro picture of wanting to give them access to understanding about the forces of history, race and racism, and activism and collectivism, which all, which all stemmed from this book. Perfect.

Amy H-L: 00:35:33 Margaret, this seems to me to go to school culture and the idea that inviting children to bring their entire experiences, their life experiences into a classroom and feel safe about it does in a sense change the culture.

Margaret B: 00:35:57 It does. And in our different experiences with schools, depending on how many people in the school we work with and depending on whether we really work with the administrators, um, this kind of work can exist in the small bubble behind the closed doors of the classroom or can begin to have bigger effects on a school. I think some of the most important and most successful models we've had are when we're able to have explicit time with administrators. And a lot of our work with grownups is giving them experiences. And I was thinking about this when I talked about Dewey and the importance of experience. We feel very deeply both in ERP and at Bank Street that in order to teach something, a grownup has to be able to have experienced something akin to it, to know what they want to try to provide, to try to create. And so we offer experiences for grownups to delve into their own memories and to try things like using a feelings chart to tell about how they're feeling, using, uh, a journal to write about what's happening for them that day. Before we get started on the content, I'm doing a go-around doing a check-in, a quick exercise about what color comes to your mind today, what's .a landscape that you're feeling like, and these beginnings are so important because the grownups connect to themselves first, then they connect to each other and then they're able to listen to ideas that we might bring from a place of having experienced it themselves. We do have some aha moments for teachers in our seminars where we've heard things repeatedly. Like it felt so good to be able to just sit and write about what I was feeling. I'm going to make space for kids to do that in my classroom. And it's pretty simple. It doesn't mean that every teacher that comes in and has that experience goes back and the next day starts a routine. But I would say if we work with 30 teachers one day in a seminar, maybe two of them do go back and begin that particular practice right away. Maybe 10 of them carry the experience of having a space to talk about themselves and find another place to weave this in. Maybe 20 of them just sit with the experience of feeling valued and it's not such a direct shift in practice, but as they come back to us over time, they are more open to thinking about different ways of interpreting kids because they've felt held and they've felt seen and known and respected and esteemed in a space that we made for them. I think I went down a long path and I can't really remember where I began. You asked about school culture, right?

Amy H-L: 00:39:23 Thank you. That was very relevant to framework, the idea of inviting as in your words and inviting both teachers and students to bring their whole lives, their life experiences into the classroom.

Jon M: 00:39:46 Margaret, you started your, you began your teaching career in English-Spanish dual language schools. As you reflect on, on those experiences, what are your thoughts about dual language education? How do dual language classrooms differ from other classrooms and what are the ingredients of a successful dual language program?

Margaret B: 00:40:09 So I'll start by just saying that even before I went into dual language, I worked in inclusion and I worked at IEPs [Individualized Education Plans], with identified special needs, into a setting that everyone was part of. Um, I brought that into my work as a dual language teacher and over time my, my understanding of the depth of the value of a dual language space has only increased. When I first began. I thought about things like what a, what a gift for children and what, what an asset for children to be bilingual, to be able to read, write and speak and communicate in more than one language. It's a gift for children who are bringing a language other than English. It's a gift for children who are learning a language other than English and it's a space in which children can share their backgrounds with each other, learn from each other, and end up with this wonderful asset of being bilingual and of having more opportunities because of that. I still believe that all of those things are true. Emotionally responsive practice has helped me think about the emotional space of a dual language classroom. The vulnerability of being a second language learner and the idea that on any given day, half of the class, you know, ideally half of the class is operating in their second language and is, or in their new language, we don't say second language anymore. We say new language because many children come with more than one home language and English is a new language, not a second language. So I think about the emotional safety of somebody in the room who does speak your language and your language being the operative language in the space, a feeling of home, home being valued in the space you're in. And I think about the equity component that not only children who are native English speakers feel that connection and feel that value but children who are other language speakers feel that connection and feel that value. And then recently, and this is post my graduate work at Bank Street, Ofelia Garcia's theory of translanguaging has become more and more widely recognized as an incredibly important way to view what children bring into the classroom. So when I was educated as a dual language instructor, we thought a lot about the English world and the Spanish world and the importance of getting children to operate in the language of the day and the separation of the languages. And it made a lot of sense at the time. It made a lot of sense in terms of not mixing up languages, of making sure that kids were completely fluent in both languages, that they weren't what people said at the time was code switching as if it were a negative thing to do. And so if a child came in and said "hola" to me on an English day, I would say, hello, can you say hello? And I'd encourage them to, to say hello to me in English. And over the past, I'd say five or six years, coming back into Bank Street as faculty and having my colleagues working closely with Ofelia Garcia, who is one of main scholars who brought the idea of translanguaging into the, into our, into our thinking, um, I've really transitioned my way of understanding the English space, the Spanish space, and the idea that while a dual language classroom does provide both languages with clarity, that what the children bring in needs to be valued in whatever language or mix of languages that it comes out in because children use all of their language resources to, uh, to let you know what they know and to learn. We've had some wonderful professional development at Bank Street. Recently at the language series we had a keynote who spoke very practically and gave us this wonderful example where we needed to decode something that was completely unfamiliar. And she said, and we had to work with a partner. And she said, how many of you spoke to your partner in a different language? How many of you spoke to your partner in English? We all spoke in English as we tried to decode something unfamiliar. and in a classroom where you said, you've got to operate in Spanish today, those children wouldn't be able to use their cognitive resources if they weren't fully fluent in Spanish yet. So there's many, many important examples of where translanguaging fits into a classroom, but I think it's, it's really important that anybody coming into a dual language setting learns about studies and tries to bring into their, their worldview this idea that, um, if a child goes back and forth between two languages as they speak, it's not the moment for the teacher to correct them. It's a moment for the teacher to embrace the knowledge that they bring and embrace the stories that they bring with, of course, the ultimate goal being children becoming fully fluent in both languages, becoming fully literate in both languages, that the pathway to that fluency is not by restricting their, their output or their input. Mmm. Along the way.

Jon M: 00:46:59 Could you, I think you've been describing it in practice, but could you translanguaging for people who aren't familiar with the term?

Margaret B: 00:47:07 I'm not, I'm afraid I'm not going to do it justice because I was, I didn't prepare myself to say this ahead of time, so I'll give you my operative definition, which is that children who are learning more than one language as they learn and grow in school, bring all of their language resources into play as they learn and make relationships and have experiences. This often entails going back and forth between two languages, substituting a known word from the other language within a full sentence in the other language in order to express yourself. Um, translanguaging means that language is one thing that we do. There isn't a Spanish section of my brain and an English section of my brain, although we thought there was. There's a language center in which both of those things, um, when I'm using English, all of that language center is operating when I'm using Spanish, all of that language center is operating. So translanguaging is the idea that on the route to fluency there is a need to go in between the languages that, you know,.

Jon M: 00:48:33 Thanks.

Amy H-L: 00:48:33 Margaret, you've been a kindergarten teacher and you've taught many kindergarten teachers. What's the most important advice that you would give a beginning kindergarten teacher?

New Speaker: 00:48:45 Ah, well there's so many different pieces of advice. I am going to share that when I was a kindergarten teacher, every single year I would read a chapter in this book, which this was long before I worked for Leslie Koplow's program. It's called "Creating Schools That Heal: Real Life Solutions." And chapter three is called Saving Kindergarten. And this is a chapter that talks about the development that happens during kindergarten. And I think one of my biggest pieces of advice is learn about child development and kindergarten. Consider the fact that some of the children coming into your kindergarten, if you're a public school teacher, will be four and a half while others are five and a half. And remember that four and a half and five and a half or developmentally very different places and then meet them where they are. Part of that, meeting them where they are is inviting their families in. And this is something that I practiced over my years, which was an intake interview in which I considered the parent, the expert in which I had nothing to tell the parent about their child yet, that it was all what they could tell me. And I think that this is an essential tool of a kindergarten teacher and really it's a wonderful practice I think at any grade level, but particularly as children enter into school, into formal school for the first time. And many kindergartens are so academically oriented that it really feels like school, that knowing what they, their parents, know about them and uh, offering partnership to parents is an essential piece of the success you're going to have with any given child. And I think the third piece of advice along the lines of development, and this is really something that Leslie articulates beautifully in the chapter I mentioned, is that on the road to what we call independence, there needs to be a dependent partner. There needs to be a grownup who is what Leslie Koplow calls your psychological home base. You as a grownup need to make yourself a safe grownup, someone who the children can turn to in need, someone who's going to honor them even when they're doing things that surprise you, like running around the room or throwing things on the floor or pushing other kids. That, knowing that being able to come back and depend on you is how they're going to get more and more independent over the years. And this is a place where I think it's a nice example of how emotionally responsive practice brings in early development. And we often remind people about toddlers and how toddlers will as they learn to walk and crawl, will go off from their grownup and explore something and then all of a sudden get a sort of feeling and look back and need to scurry back or run back to their grownup for a hug or for a connect or to show them something and they do this dance of go away and come back, go and come back. And that this is something that if kindergarten teachers can understand, they can offer to kids in the different ways that particular kids need it. Um, so when kindergarten teachers demand full independence in October, it's really not, it's not going to work for some kids. But when they have an idea that kids are going to gain independence over the year through feeling like they can depend on their teacher, then it really is going to work. And that those kids are going to feel prepared emotionally to step into the world of school as they become first graders. And then go back to the concept of inviting and containing and make sure your classroom has a routine that's dependable. Make sure you're always reading kids the schedule. If I have a magic wand, I would wish that every kindergarten teacher, never preschool teacher and really every teacher, because I did this with my grownups too, would read through the schedule every day and if there were going to be any changes, they would talk about it. And as one activity ended and another began, they'd look back at that schedule, that visual, that place that holds the expected, that holds the, what you can depend on in place. And that teachers would never say to me, "Oh, they know the schedule by now. So I don't read it anymore to save time." Um, I would say read the schedule every single day. You won't regret it.

Jon M: 00:54:09 Is there anything else you'd like to add that we haven't talked about?

Margaret B: 00:54:11 I think there's probably hundreds of things I'd like to add and I'm looking back at the notes I wrote before we spoke and I don't, I don't think there's anything, anything that was really burning in my mind that I needed to say that I didn't say. Uh, well I think there is one, there was a question that I don't think you asked, which was about the connection between special education and bilingual and dual language education.

Jon M: 00:54:46 So please, yes.

Margaret B: 00:54:48 Yeah. And that's something that I have thought about a lot and it plays into what I talked about during the section where I was talking about dual language and translanguaging. And because I came from a an inclusion setting, I had a lot of techniques that I used to make language comprehensible and to invite children to join in using the language that they had even though the inclusion setting that I worked in was all was an English classroom. And so because the children worked with speech therapists and occupational therapists and physical therapists, we would often incorporate some of the things that they did in their sessions with their therapists into our classroom practice. So for example, if therapists were using American sign language as a bridge to oral language, uh, we would use that in the classroom, too. So all the children recognized and used simple terms like stand up, sit down, more family, I won, thank you, bathroom, water. And when I came to dual language, I thought this is an important component of dual language too. If I say the word bathroom today and teach the children the sign and I say the word "banyon" tomorrow and show the children the same sign and then I continue that sign over the days, the children who are in their new language that day will have a much higher chance of comprehending what I'm talking about because they've got this visual, this gesture clue. So the use of the schedule, the use of the visuals, the use of real objects as you talk, the idea of making your language comprehensible. And it's funny to be talking about this on a podcast where nobody can see me and they can't see if I'm moving my hands or if I'm pointing to anything. And it's a very, it's a very language based form of learning and form of taking in. And you know, I, I wouldn't use a podcast to educate kindergarten children in dual language or in inclusion settings or even a non inclusion and non dual language settings because we understand a lot better when we have multiple sources of input for the content that's being shared and when we have multiple ways to express ourselves. So I'd really like to invite teachers to consider, um, whether you're in a dual language inclusion special education or, or a general ed monolingual classroom, consider adding even more visuals, gestures, sign language and actual objects into the way that you present information in language and consider allowing children to use those options as well as they let you know what they know even when their language is not yet caught up with their knowledge. And I think the other, I think the note I'd like to end on, we were talking about this in our emotionally responsive practice staff meeting just yesterday, in fact. And one thing we are really grappling with as more and more information comes our way about how to decentralize the white experience as the first or the only experience. We're talking about this a lot because at this point in time the six staff members that are at ERP are all white women. And while this has not always been the case, and I hope will not always be the case, due to a lot of different circumstances and a lot of components, it is the case right now. So we've been intentionally opening a space to reflect on this as we think about the different schools we work with, different teachers we work with and we've been thinking about how do we make sure that what we're bringing in as emotionally responsive practice, uh, feels connective, feels right, feels like it, it works within any school culture, within any teacher's personal culture, within any group of kids' culture. And there is not an easy answer to this. I think, um, maybe we could talk more about it with you in a year or two as we embark on really intentionally thinking, think about this question. But what did come up is what do we, what do we really believe universally? And one of those things that my colleague no well articulated was that human beings, there are some universals that we believe about the human experience that human beings make attachments and that those attachments nurture our development, that human beings need comfort. And that comfort might come in a lot of different forms and that human beings thrive when they are seen, when they're validated, when they're heard, when they're understood, when they're known, when they're valued. And I wanted to say that it's a journey for all of us to consider whether we are authentically doing this with every grownup we work with as we ask them to do this with all the children they work with. And I'm very excited to be able to collaborate and think together with [inaudible] really thoughtful, reflective people both in ERP and in the larger educational world. But it is a a long journey that we have to take together and it feels like a real honor to be able to come into spaces of teachers and spaces of families and spaces of children and offer them something and also adjust my offering to be what is right for them, what's relevant to them. And I look forward to continuing this journey with intention..

Amy H-L: 01:01:35 Thank you so much, Margaret.

Jon M: 01:01:38 And thank you listeners for joining us. We'd like to hear how you've incorporated ideas you've heard on our podcast or read on the blog. Please email us at posts at hosts@ethicalschools.org. Check out prior episodes and articles on our site and we'll also host some of the things that MArgaret was talking about today. We also offer professional development for schools and youth programs in the New York city area. Contact us for details. Again, it's hosts@ethicalschools.org. We're on Facebook and Twitter @ethicalschools, and Instagram. Our editor and social media manager is Amanda Denti. Till next week.

Post-traumatic growth and resilience: Creating safe environments for Central American immigrant children

Ethical Schools — Wed, 27 Nov 2019 18:06:20 +0000

This is an encore. Our conversation with Stephanie Carnes about Central American immigrant youth was one of our most popular. Enjoy it with our wishes for a safe and happy holiday.

Stephanie Carnes is a trauma-focused bilingual school social worker in a large public high school in New York’s Hudson Valley. Stephanie worked as the lead clinician in a federally-funded shelter program for unaccompanied children from Central America and as a consultant she challenges the districts and agencies with whom she works to re-envision the meaning of an inclusive community. We talk about the necessity to normalize mental health care, how to create safe environments for immigrant children in American schools, and the power of their resilience.

*For transcript and overview, go to the original episode here.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2783/post-traumatic-growth-and-resilience-cultural-competence-and-creating-safe-environments-for-central-american-immigrant-children-in-todays-u-s.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:34:30

Special education: How students and their teachers are shortchanged

Ethical Schools — Wed, 20 Nov 2019 18:19:37 +0000

Jia Lee, NYC special education teacher and union activist, talks about the unfairness of the Fair Funding Formula, the school-to-prison pipeline, and the tendency of schools to re-traumatize vulnerable students. She also highlights the contrast between NYC Chancellor Carranza’s call for more culturally responsive classrooms and the City’s newly-mandated MAP tests, and the gap between what the United Federation of Teachers does and what it could do.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2747/special-education-how-students-and-their-teachers-are-shortchanged.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:30:00

Reframing masculinity: Stopping violence against women and girls

Ethical Schools — Wed, 13 Nov 2019 17:59:04 +0000

Quentin Walcott (“Q”), a leading NYC and international anti-violence educator and activist, creates programs that help transform men and boys — even batterers — into activists against violence. He focuses on the intersections of violence — race, class, and gender — and its impact on marginalized communities. Q is Co-Executive Director of CONNECT, a nonprofit that approaches domestic violence systemically and holistically, including in school- and after-school programs. CONNECT helps males reassess their perceptions of masculinity and fatherhood. While perpetrators need to be held accountable, so do institutions and public leaders.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2703/reframing-masculinity-stopping-violence-against-women-and-girls.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:42:09

To know more about Q and his work at CONNECT, visit connectnyc.or

Ed schools as allies to new teachers of color

Ethical Schools — Wed, 06 Nov 2019 18:56:54 +0000

Dr. Harriet (“Niki”) Fayne of Lehman College School of Education describes strategies to support new teachers and “second stage” teacher-leaders. She discusses ways to attract teacher candidates, reduce early-years attrition, and help teachers grow while staying in the classroom. Lehman builds ethics into leadership training and maintains long-term relationships with its graduates and the schools they teach in.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2666/ed-schools-as-allies-to-new-teachers-of-color.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:41:30

Photo: Facebook Lehman College

Paula Rogovin: Creating a social justice early childhood classroom

Ethical Schools — Wed, 30 Oct 2019 11:18:05 +0000

We speak with Paula Rogovin, who taught kindergarten and first grade in NYC public schools for 44 years. Paula empowered the youngest students to become researchers and activists. She encourages students to ask questions (“anything goes”) and research is interdisciplinary, comprising literature, social studies, art, music, and science. Cultural relevance evolves organically from the research. When students discover injustices, Paula encourages them to channel their anger to become agents of change. Paula’s advice for new teachers, “Teach what you are required to teach, and stretch it.”

Overview

00:00-01:06 Intros

01:06-14:18 Kindergarteners’ fight to ban glyphosate

14:18-15:45 Parent forum; the play at City Hall

15:45-19:09 Linking to the standards; students’ excitement about learning through research

19:09-23:38 Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education Framework

23:38-32:04 Encouraging students to think about the ethical implications of actions

32:04-34:01 Promoting peace education

34:01-37:40 Advice to new teachers on surviving the NYC school system

37:40-40:36 How to help social action evolve

40:36-43:32 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Paula’s article for Ethical Schools: click here to read “Inquiry Going Virtual! Focus on Interviews”.

A message from Paula (sent on April 9th, 2021): “Hello to My Former Students and Your Families. We’re hoping for some good news very soon about our bill, Intro 1524 (formerly Intro 0800). Many of you were among the students who first asked Councilmember Ben Kallos to introduce a bill to ban toxic pesticides in New York City parks and public spaces. More than 60 of you testified in the form of a skit at the City Council Committee on Health in 2017. Some of you testified in the form of a skit at the Health Committee in January, 2020. A committee of environmental activists has continued to push for the bill to get passed. Recently, the City Council Speaker’s office gutted the bill and we had to fight to get the most important parts of the bill restored. It has been non-stop negotiations, but we think there will be a vote really soon. Here’s a news story (video and article) about this effort. https://www.ny1.com/share/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2021/04/07/nyc-council-set-to-ban-chemical-pesticides-like-roundup?cid=share_clip YOU are in it! There’s a brief mention in the video. But, if you click on the word chanted in the article, you will see yourselves! I am so totally proud of all of my students and so thankful to all of the families for all that we did together to fight for this bill. This legislation will help protect millions of people! That’s awesome! It’s really huge! Feel free to share the article and the video that was made by Charles Olson from Environment TV. https://theenvironmenttv.com/2017/10/23/no-way-dont-spray-ban-toxic-pesticides/. For even more information, go to www.parksforkidsnyc.org. If you have a moment today or early next week, call Speaker Corey Johnson’s office and ask him to call Intro 1524 for a vote by the City Council. 212-788-7210. Be on the lookout for news when the bill passes. We hope it will pass before Earth Day along with several other bills that would protect the environment. Please keep in touch. I miss you. All my love, Paula”

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear

José Jiménez on gender diversity and sexual identity in elementary schools

Ethical Schools — Wed, 23 Oct 2019 18:59:33 +0000

We speak with José Luis Jiménez, principal of A.C.E. Academy for Scholars, PS 290, in Queens. A queer educator of color, he came out to his students during Pride Month in 2017. If a community is truly welcoming to all, he thought, “you don’t “check a part of yourself at the door.” José encourages his teachers to design cohesive and culturally-responsive project-based curricula. He is a Deeper Learning Equity Fellow.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2631/jose-jimenez-on-gender-diversity-and-sexual-identity-in-elementary-schools.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:34:15

Kiersten Greene on technology in schools: “Are we doing our homework?”

Ethical Schools — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 16:39:04 +0000

We speak with Dr. Kiersten Greene, Associate Professor of Literacy Education at SUNY New Paltz, about classroom internet use. Electronic tech’s transformational possibilities can go unfulfilled as schools buy and use tools and materials without evaluating whether they are effective or meet teachers’ needs. Huge funding sources like New York’s Smart Schools bond issue fund purchases but not professional development. Often hailed as a great equalizer, technology can reinforce economic and racial inequality while opening the door to corporatization and intensive social control.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2617/kiersten-greene-on-technology-in-schools-are-we-doing-our-homework.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:36:02

Ujju Aggarwal on school choice, whiteness as property, and the “right to exclude”

Ethical Schools — Thu, 10 Oct 2019 12:54:50 +0000

We speak with Dr. Ujju Aggarwal, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Experiential Learning at the New School’s Schools of Public Engagement. Dr. Aggarwal explains how neoliberalism, with its emphasis on individual choice, includes a “right to exclude” and perpetuates discriminatory school admissions, not only to some charter schools but also to district schools and programs, describing in particular the experiences of parents in Manhattan’s District 3. Dr. Aggarwal also discusses the participatory action research model, combining data collection and community organizing, which she has helped to develop.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2605/ujju-aggarwal-on-school-choice-whiteness-as-property-and-the-right-to-exclude.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:40:15

During the interview, Ujju refers to:

Adina Back (2003). Exposing the “whole segregation myth”: The Harlem Nine and New York City’s school desegregation battles.” In J. Theoharis & K. Woodard (Eds.), Freedom north: Black freedom struggles outside the South, 1940–1980. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Donna Nevel and PARCEO

Jesse Hagopian on bringing Black Lives Matter into schools

Ethical Schools — Wed, 02 Oct 2019 21:12:11 +0000

We speak with Jesse Hagopian, an editor for ReThinking Schools and a long-time teacher in the Seattle Public Schools. He is a co-editor of the book Teaching for Black Lives. Jesse discusses the groundbreaking annual National Week of Action in February that makes four demands of schools: replace zero tolerance discipline with restorative justice, implement ethnic studies in all schools, hire more black teachers, and fund counselors (rather than police) in all schools. About teachers who “don’t want to get involved” in social justice issues, Jesse quotes Howard Zinn, “You can’t be neutral on a moving train.” NYC’s UFT is one of the few unions that hasn’t endorsed the Week of Action.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2585/jesse-hagopian-on-bringing-black-lives-matter-into-schools.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:34:00

Find more about Jesse and his work on blacklivesmatteratschool.com, iamaneducator.com and rethinkingschools.org

Credit: Kuow Photo/Joshua McNichols

Adjoa Jones de Almeida of the Brooklyn Museum on art as experience

Ethical Schools — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 17:56:09 +0000

We speak with Adjoa Jones de Almeida, Director of Education at the Brooklyn Museum. We discuss the significance of “art as experience.” Ms. Jones de Almeida describes art’s transformational power to educate and empower students of all ages, both personally and politically. The Museum partners with teachers across the academic spectrum and works to include diverse families and communities.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2572/adjoa-jones-de-almeida-on-art-as-experience.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:38:45

References

To know more about the Education programs at the Brooklyn Museum, visit brooklynmuseum.org/education

Overview

00:00-01:20 Intros

01:21-04:47 Significance of art to John Dewey and Dewey’s influence on Adjoa’s work

04:47-10:01 Paolo Freire’s influence

10:01-17:34 Art as an aesthetic experience; art everywhere, not only in museums

17:34-21:56 Everyday experiences as aesthetic experiences; class and art education

21:56-27:42 Brooklyn Museum and redefining concepts of high art

27:42-30:20 Role of museums in arts education

30:20-36:56 Brooklyn Museum’s work with public school teachers

36:56-38:45 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of the episode.

Melissa Rivers on Community-Based Education in Rural Alaska

Ethical Schools — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 17:25:19 +0000

We speak with Melissa Rivers, Principal of the Scammon Bay School in Alaska’s Lower Yukon, a mile from the Bering Sea. The isolated, tight-knit Yupik Eskimo community is subsistence-based, harvesting moose and salmon. Students are artistic and learn by making things, but also must prepare for standardized tests designed for very different environments. For the past several years, Scammon Bay has participated in a cross-cultural exchange program run by the Alaska Humanities Forum to promote understanding among Alaska’s urban and rural communities.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2559/melissa-rivers-on-community-based-education-in-rural-alaska.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:35:30

Mark Santow on Suing Rhode Island for Educational Equal Protection

Ethical Schools — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 19:39:59 +0000

We speak with Dr. Mark Santow, Chair of the Department of History at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. Dr. Santow and his middle school son, along with 12 other plaintiffs, are suing the state of Rhode Island in federal court under the 14^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution for failing to provide civics curricula and other components of an adequate education to some Rhode Island students. The suit is especially notable because most education equity cases are brought in state courts. We discuss the racial, socioeconomic, and political underpinnings of educational inequality.

Overview

00:00-01:29 Intros

01:30-06:21 Cook v Raimondo lawsuit background

06:22-08:02 A constitutional right to an education

08:03-09:44 Why Rhode Island and why now

09:45-11:27 Lack of civics and unequal funding

11:28-14:37 A vision of a civics curriculum

14:38-17:16 Rose of ethics/ethical decision-making in a civics course

17:17-19:40 Federal courts’ resistance to accepting adequate education as a constitutional right

19:41-21:23 Relationship to slavery/race

21:24-24:19 Can education system compensate for economic inequality

24:20-26:23 Civics as center of entire curriculum could be transformative

26:24-29:02 Public organizing and the lawsuit

29:03-29:45 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

References

Click here to listen to Mark Santow giving us an update on this case.
Click here to read Judge William E. Smith’s decision in this case.

Credits

Photo: Unsplash

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Lev Moscow offers advice for secondary school teachers

Ethical Schools — Wed, 04 Sep 2019 19:24:16 +0000

We interview Lev Moscow who, for the last 14 years, has taught history and economics at The Beacon School in New York City. Lev reflects that advisory, done well, can serve as a venue for students to explore questions of ethics, purpose and happiness. He talks about balancing the history curriculum to include non-European perspectives. Getting students to read more than a few sentences is perhaps today’s teachers’ greatest challenge and Lev explains his approach.

*References, overview and transcript below.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2494/lev-moscow-offers-advice-for-secondary-school-teachers.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:41:00

References

Lev refers to John Dewey, Tony Judt, and these resources:

Book “Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials” by Malcolm Harris;
Book “The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School” by Neil Postman.

Lev also hosts a podcast that aims to make economics accessible. It is called A Correction Podcast and you can listen to it on acorrectionpodcast.com

Overview

00:00-00:57 Intros

00:58-07:24 Advice to new teachers; advisory; Consortium schools (NYC)

07:25-10:47 Electronic technology in the classroom

10:48-12:00 Advisory and relationships

12:01:17:33 Print/reading and digital tech cultures

17:34-19:15 HS versus college cultures

19:16-21:31 Homework

21:32-27:58 Homework (continued): writing, historiography, SQR, short and long-term assignments

27:59-37:37 Language of ethics; ethics and morality; “truth” and skepticism; Dewey; existentialism

37:38-40:14 De-centering Europe in teaching modern Global History

40:15-41:00 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of the episode.

Leo Ackley on teaching in Finland’s consistently superior schools

Ethical Schools — Wed, 28 Aug 2019 18:37:23 +0000

Amy interviews Leo Ackley, who emigrated to Finland in the 1972. He taught art, history of architecture, design, and engineering in Finnish schools for 37 years. We discuss the Finnish system. Teachers have autonomy to develop their own curricula. Finnish administrators are answerable to teachers rather than the other way around. Homework is rare and standardized testing limited to a single exam towards the end of senior year. Finland is consistently in the top five in PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) rankings.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2485/leo-ackley-on-teaching-in-finlands-consistently-superior-schools.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:25:00

Photo by Baptiste Valthier

Kym Vanderbilt on ethical early childhood teacher preparation

Ethical Schools — Wed, 21 Aug 2019 13:31:48 +0000

We interview Kym Vanderbilt, Lecturer and Professional Development Liaison in the Early Childhood/Childhood Department at CUNY/Lehman College. Kym describes her students’ concerns about meeting the needs of teacher assistants and parents as well as children. She talks about the test-heavy teacher certification process, which is both intimidating and expensive for aspiring teachers of limited means, and how she tries to create a more welcoming and supportive environment for her students, staying in touch with them long after they become teachers themselves. To give us context, Kym gives us a fascinating overview of the complicated history of early childhood education.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2470/kym-vanderbilt-on-ethical-early-childhood-teacher-preparation.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:38:00

Photo by Christina Morillo

References

During our conversation, Kym mentions the episode with David Kirkland about the Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework. Click here to listen to it!

Overview

00:00-00:59 Intros

01:00-06:06 “What do you mean by ‘ethics’ and why is it important?”

06:07-09:42 Age of “We’re not sure we want you in the classroom”

09:43-11:59 Attrition rates among early childhood teachers

12:00-15:12 edTPA

15:13-18:03 Pearson Education

18:04-18:51 Cultural assets

18:52-19:26 Culturally responsive-sustaining education

19:27- 25:38 History of early childhood education and how it has changed

25:39-29:51 Universal preK (UPK)—possibilities and cautions

29:52-32:52 Current state of SEL and culturally responsive education, critical care in early childhood education; Chancellor Carranza’s impact

32:53-34:51 Transition from preK to elementary school

34:52-37:10 “Early childhood educators should be high school principals”; early childhood educators as leaders

37:11-38:00 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of the episode.

Anna Allanbrook on Brooklyn New School: Centering children, marginalizing tests

Ethical Schools — Wed, 14 Aug 2019 17:10:39 +0000

References

Find more about the Brooklyn New School on bns146.org

Overview

00:05-01:11 Intros

01:12- 01:58 Key principles of Brooklyn New School

01:59-04:05 Relationships

04:06-06:05 Who seeks the school out and why

06:06-07:30 Why the special needs population is relatively high (30%)

07:31-09:15 English Language Learners

09:16-11:29 Making parents comfortable who are used to a more traditional teaching style

11:30-13:28 Differentiating reading instruction

13:29-21:12 Standardized testing and opt-out

21:13-22:38 Performance-based assessment

22:39-25:18 Social emotional learning (SEL)

25:19-27:04 Relationship between SEL and opt-out

27:05-28:52 “Trust is at the heart of everything”

28:53-30:30 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the transcription of the episode.

David Kirkland on New York’s State’s Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework

Ethical Schools — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 17:38:37 +0000

We speak with Dr. David E. Kirkland, Executive Director of NYU’s Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools. A leading voice in culturally responsive and sustaining education, the Metro Center helped write New York State Education Department’s new Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework. The Framework is founded on a view of education that regards culture as a critical component of learning. Multiple expressions of diversity, including race, ethnicity, gender, language, and sexual orientation, are regarded as assets to be recognized and cultivated.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2444/david-kirkland-on-new-yorks-states-culturally-responsive-sustaining-education-framework.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:24:30

References

Click here to learn more about the Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework.

Overview

00:00-01:08 Intros

01:09-05:36 Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework and its importance

05:37-07:30 Role of Metro Center in developing the Framework

07:31-10:42 4 principles of the Framework

10:43-14:07 Critical lens toward inequitable systems of access, power and privilege; Dewey; civics

14:08-16:23 Framework as a transformative view of education

16:24-19:38 How will NY State Ed implement the Framework?

19:39-22:00 What Ethical Schools listeners can do

22:01-23:01 Publicizing the Framework

23:02-23:41 Transforming schools

23:42-24:30 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the transcription of the episode.

Norman Fruchter on the pioneering alternative high school he and colleagues built in Newark in the 1970s

Ethical Schools — Wed, 31 Jul 2019 17:36:24 +0000

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2428/norman-fruchter-on-the-pioneering-alternative-high-school-he-and-colleagues-built-in-newark-in-the-1970s.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:37:45

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

Soledad Hiciano on nurturing and educating immigrant children in an age of deportation and deprivation

Ethical Schools — Wed, 24 Jul 2019 18:21:40 +0000

We speak with Soledad Hiciano, executive director of Community Association of Progressive Dominicans (ACDP), a multi-service community organization in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx. She describes the challenges of supporting children who may have experienced multiple traumas, including homelessness and the deportation of close relatives.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2408/soledad-hiciano-on-nurturing-and-educating-immigrant-children-in-an-age-of-deportation-and-deprivation.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:54:45

Photo by Bruce Warrington

References

For more information about Soledad Hiciano and Acacia Network, go to acacianetwork.org.

Overview

00:00-01:18 Introductions

01:19-06:16 Impact of immigration and deportation policies on young people and families

06:17-07:45 Capacity of schools and after-school programs to deal with trauma’s effects

07:46-15:11 ACDP programs

15:12-20:17 Segregation in NYC schools and its impact on students

20:18-27:45 Teachers and communities; charter schools and public schools; collaborations between charters and Dept of Ed (DOE) schools

27:46-31:13 English language learners and their needs

31:14-35:59 UPK, salary differences between DOE and community-based programs

36:00-39:53 Department of Youth and Community Development—NYC out-of-school-time programs

39:54-48:06 Professionalizing after-school youth work

48:07-51:26 ACDP and Acacia Network

51:27-53:54 Immigrant communities responding to the current challenges

53:55-54:45 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the transcription of the episode.

David C. Bloomfield on why we need a revolution in attitude to see education as a social good rather than an individual property right

Ethical Schools — Wed, 17 Jul 2019 17:33:36 +0000

We speak with Dr. David C. Bloomfield, Professor of Education Leadership. Law & Policy at Brooklyn College. David Bloomfield condemns the social Darwinism and “hoarding” mentality of our education systems. He explains how school resource allocation exacerbates segregation and inequality, a process deliberately abetted by the proliferation of school districts around the country. Education policy and financing reinforce an us against them view of schools. Until we start thinking of the nation’s children as our collective responsibility, we will continue to seek todeprive “other people’s” children in order to benefit “ours,” thereby impoverishing all of us.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2396/david-c-bloomfield-on-why-we-need-a-revolution-in-attitude-to-see-education-as-a-social-good-rather-than-an-individual-property-right.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:25:00

References

Find more about David on davidcbloomfield.com

Overview

00:00-01:03 Intros

01:04-02:41 Education as private property or as social good

02:42-03:51 “Educationism”: are failing schools the cause of inequality?

03:52-04:27 Charters and traditional schools fight; “our children” and “other people’s children”

04:28-04:57 Racism and racialization of poverty

04:58-07:10 Race, class; nationalization of education not a solution

07:11-09:08 Teacher unionism; valuing education?

09:09-09:58 Mass education movement?

09:59-13:30 NYC school segregation; “good schools/bad schools” are code for racialized systems; social Darwinism in school admissions;

13:31-15:59 NYC selective high schools; screened schools

16:00-20:34 Restorative justice

20:34-21:33 View of schooling as encompassing all children

21:34-24:06 Class size; concentrations of low-income students—need schools where everyone has a chance

24:07-25:00 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the transcrption of the episode.

Silvia Canales on Relationship-Based College Counseling

Ethical Schools — Wed, 10 Jul 2019 17:14:51 +0000

We speak with Silvia Canales, who coordinates the college advisory program at Brotherhood/Sister Sol, an organization that provides comprehensive and holistic support services to underserved youth. Silvia talks about fully integrating college counseling into a program environment in which adults know young people well and students engage in systematic self-reflection.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2382/silvia-canales-on-relationship-based-college-counseling.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:21:45

Find more about Silvia and The Brotherhood/Sister Sol on brotherhood-sistersol.org

Scarlett Lewis on the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement: A Sandy Hook parent’s SEL program

Ethical Schools — Wed, 03 Jul 2019 19:38:50 +0000

“Nurturing, Healing Love” was the message that Scarlett Lewis found on her kitchen chalkboard shortly before her son, Jesse, was murdered in his first-grade classroom at Sandy Hook Elementary School. In order to become part of the solution to the violence, Scarlett founded The Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement with a mission to ensure that all children have access to Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) in their classrooms. We talk about post-traumatic growth and how the program educates and encourages students to choose love over anger.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2361/scarlett-lewis-on-the-jesse-lewis-choose-love-movement-a-sandy-hook-parents-sel-program.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:33:30

Find more about Scarlett and the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Program on jesselewischooselove.org

Adán Vásquez on The Washington Heights Community Conservatory of Fine Arts: “I could be the one playing the cello!”

Ethical Schools — Wed, 26 Jun 2019 17:54:22 +0000

We talk with Adán Vásquez, executive and artistic director of the Association of Dominican Classical Artists and the Washington Heights Community Conservatory of Fine Arts, a unique free classical and folk music education program for the youth of Upper Manhattan. Adán Vásquez, a harpist, is an educator, an acclaimed classical musician, and a community activist. He talks about making Latin American and European classical music and Latin American folk music accessible to low-income young people of color, and the role of performing arts in transforming children’s lives and community building. We listen to excerpts of students playing Carabine by Julio Alberto Hernández and the Conservatory faculty (“La Camerata Washington Heights”) performing Migraciones by Servio R. Reyes.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2341/adan-vasquez-on-the-washington-heights-community-conservatory-of-fine-arts-i-could-be-the-one-playing-the-cello.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:31:33

References

Find more about Adán Vásquez, ADCA and WHCCFA on clasicosdominicanos.com

Overview

00:00-01:25 Intros

01:26-05:13 Association of Dominican Classical Artists

05:14-08:56 Latin American classical music

08:57-11:55 Conservatory: Why children come and stay

11:56-14:07 Conservatory curriculum

14:08-16:08 Julio Roberto Hernandez and Carabiner

16:09-18:14 Conservatory goals

18:15-20:16 Paulos; African musical roots

20:17-21:41 Performing arts and social change

21:42-31:33 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of the episode.

Kids learn through relationships: A conversation with Pedro Noguera about building a culture conducive to teaching and learning

Ethical Schools — Wed, 19 Jun 2019 17:16:03 +0000

We talk with Dr. Pedro Noguera about public school models that work for students, parents and teachers, and how to build a social movement for a progressive education agenda. He talks about the social dimensions to learning and the mismatch between students’ needs and teachers’ skills. He argues that an obstacle to making change in schools is that we deal with education as individuals rather than collectively. Pedro Noguera is a Distinguished Professor of Education at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and Faculty Director for the Center for the Transformation of Schools at UCLA. He is a critically acclaimed scholar, a dynamic speaker and a committed activist. His work focuses on a broad range of issues related to education, social justice and public policy. He is the author of several best-selling books and is a highly sought-after public speaker and international consultant.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2279/kids-learn-through-relationships-a-conversation-with-pedro-noguera-about-building-a-culture-conducive-to-teaching-and-learning.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:24:00

References

Find more about Pedro Noguera on pedronoguera.com and transformschools.ucla.edu.

Overview

00:00-00:23 Intro

00:29-02:46 Changing hierarchical relationships in schools

02:47-05:16 Closing the gap between staff members’ knowledge and skills and students’ needs

05:17-07:11 Social dimension to learning

07:12-12:16 Building (and maintaining) capacity—mutual accountability as the key: Toronto; Humanitas HS, Los Angeles; Brockton HS, Brockton, MA

12:17-13:52 Accountability to parents—rooting parent-school partnerships in respect and empathy

13:53-15:53 Education as a civil and human right and a public good; organizing around education as a collective interest

15:54-23:15 Returning to organizing to build a mass movement for a progressive education agenda

23:16-end Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.

Jason Warwin on The Brotherhood/Sister Sol: Building strong Black and Latinx youth leaders for social change

Ethical Schools — Wed, 12 Jun 2019 19:13:05 +0000

Jason Warwin is the Co-Founder and Associate Executive Director of The Brotherhood/Sister Sol, an organization that provides comprehensive, holistic and long-term support services to youth who range in age from eight to twenty-two. Located in Harlem (NYC), Bro/Sis also has programs dedicated to developing Black and Latinx youth in Africa, Latin America and The Caribbean. Jason is a specialist in the design of transformative experiences and we talked about how the Bro/Sis model leads young people to ethical leadership and educational achievement, and makes them an essential part of a solid community that has been fighting oppression for almost 25 years.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2269/jason-warwin-on-the-brotherhood-sister-sol-building-strong-black-and-latinx-youth-leaders-for-social-change.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:39:00

References

Find more about Jason and The Brotherhood/Sister Sol on brotherhood-sistersol.org

Overview

00:00-00:54 Intros

00:55-02:40 Ethics as a core comment of Bro/Sis’s work

02:41-03:21 How young people come in contact with BroSis

03:22-07:54 Rites of Passage program

07:55-10:26 Bro/Sis as a transformative experience

10:27-13:14 Staff selection

13:15-16:10 International Study Program

16:11-18:38 International work—Bermuda and Brazil

18:39-26:15 Core elements for replication

26:16-30:46 Understanding dynamics of oppression and its effects

30:47-33:11 Helping young people develop an ethical compass

33:12-35:17 Young people’s reactions to Trump

35:18-37:33 Relationships with parents/families

37:14-39:00 Outro

Transcription

Click here to read the full transcription of the episode.

Stephanie Carnes on post-traumatic growth and resilience: Cultural competence and creating safe environments for Central American immigrant children in today’s U.S.

Ethical Schools — Wed, 05 Jun 2019 15:36:00 +0000

We talk with Stephanie Carnes, a trauma-focused bilingual school social worker in a large public high school in New York’s Hudson Valley. Stephanie worked as the lead clinician in a federally-funded shelter program for unaccompanied children from Central America and as a consultant she challenges the districts and agencies with whom she works to re-envision the meaning of an inclusive community. We talk about the necessity to normalize mental health care, how to create safe environments for immigrant children in American schools, and the power of their resilience.

References

Find more about Stephanie on createculturalcompetence.com

Overview

00:00-01:45 Intros

01:46-03:35 How Stephanie began working with immigrants

03:36-06:04 Central American immigrant children’s trauma—in country of origin and through the U.S. border

06:05-08:48 Continued trauma in the U.S.

08:49-12:04 Need for interventions in schools

12:05-16:49 Desahogarse (Unburdening) trauma treatment

16:50-19:10 Post-traumatic growth

19:11-24:37 What schools and communities can do to reduce students’ trauma

24:38-27:41 Working as a consultant to a school

27:42-29:59 Helping educators to cope with secondary trauma

30:00-31:15 “This is doable work.”

31:16-34:00 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of the episode.

Mark Gordon on the Friends and Relationships Course: Teaching and learning from people with intellectual disabilities about sexuality, interdependence, and inclusion

Ethical Schools — Wed, 29 May 2019 15:01:01 +0000

We talk with Mark Gordon, founder of the Friends and Relationships Course, a program in New Mexico that provides classes for adults with intellectual disabilities who want to learn how to form intimate and other relationships. He talks about what he’s learned over 15 years of teaching sexuality classes, learning along with his son about the ongoing necessity for interdependence. We also discuss society’s failure to welcome and accommodate people with developmental disabilities.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2187/mark-gordon-on-the-friends-and-relationships-course-teaching-and-learning-from-people-with-intellectual-disabilities-about-sexuality-interdependence-and-inclusion.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:27:30

Overview

00:00-01:20 Intros

01:21-03:45 Friends and Relationships course

03:46-05:27 Extraordinary and ordinary needs

05:28-10:03 Interdependency rather than dependency or independence

10:04-18:04 Roles and relationships; curriculum development

18:05-19:41 Roles of agencies

19:42-21:57 Financing systems

21:58-23:09 Advocacy and social change

23:10-26:50 Ethical community

26:51-27:30 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of the episode.

Zoe Weil on humane education: The world becomes what we teach

Ethical Schools — Wed, 22 May 2019 15:04:45 +0000

We talk with Zoe Weil, the co-founder and president of the Institute for Humane Education. She talks about providing young people with the knowledge, tools, and motivation to address our pressing challenges in order to transform unsustainable and unjust systems into ones that are humane, healthy, and peaceful.

References

Find more about Zoe and the Institute for Humane Education on humaneeducation.org

Overview

00:00-01:02 Intros

01:03-02:23 What is humane education? What are “solutionaries?’

02:24-09:57 Avoiding false dichotomies; avoiding polarization; looking at who is harmed and who benefits from a problem; finding areas of mutual benefit to overcome harm

09:58-17:18 Creating a classroom environment that encourages solutionary thinking

17:19-22:26 Educating young people to think like solutionaries in whatever field they are interested

22:27-22:38 “What are the issues I care most about?” “What am I good at?” “And what do I love to do?

22:39-25:09 Making the connections to analyze solutions on a solutionary scale

25:10-29:27 MOGO: most good, least harm; applying it to complex systems

29:28-30:30 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of the episode.

References

Listen to our second conversation with Zoe Weil “Creative problem solving: Developing solutionary thinkers”

Deborah Meier on Public Education and Democracy: What makes an ethical school

Ethical Schools — Wed, 15 May 2019 15:39:30 +0000

We talk with MacArthur “genius” award winner Deborah Meier, a founder of the small schools movement, about what makes a good school. She talks about how to build and maintain trust and mutual respect among students, teachers, and families.

*Overview and transcript below.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2145/deborah-meier-on-public-education-and-democracy-what-makes-an-ethical-school.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:19:31

Find more about Deborah on deborahmeier.com

Overview

00:00-02:09 Intros

02:10-03:24 What is an ethical school?

03:25-04:48 Transparency

04:49-06:31 Centering families in secondary school

06:32-09:54 School as an intergenerational community

09:55-12:39 Advisory

12:40-16:11 Advisories and a democratic community

16:12-16:20 Connections between teaching early childhood and high school

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of the episode.

Eva Lopez on Act4Change: Applying Theatre of the Oppressed to building social justice in The Bronx

Ethical Schools — Wed, 08 May 2019 20:49:29 +0000

We talk with Eva Lopez about Act4Change, a Theatre of the Oppressed project in the Bronx. Eva Lopez uses theater techniques to invite children and youth to envision liberation and to empower them to resist oppression. Audiences become spect-actors to examine root causes of bullying, domestic violence and other personal/societal crises.

Overview

00:00-01:42 Intros

01:43-04:42 Act4Change, Theater of the Oppressed; Augusto Boal; ethical decision-making

04:41-09:29 What an Act4Change program & session look like

09:30-13:36 Act4Change impact on spect-actors; actions beyond the performance

13:37-14:03 Middle- and elementary-school students’ involvement

14:04-15:07 Act4Change in a school?

15:08-16:48 Importance of exposure to the arts

16:49-17:23 Act4Change contact info

17:24-20:00 Outro

Transcription

Click here to see the full transcription of the episode.

References

BronxTimes “Nonprofit launches community arts COVID-19 relief initiative”

Soundtrack by Podington Bear

Shirley Edwards on EBC High School: Building an educational community in Bushwick

Ethical Schools — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 20:20:13 +0000

We talk with Shirley Edwards about EBC High School for Public Service and the creation of an intentional educational community of students, teachers, parents, and East Brooklyn Congregations. Shirley Edwards was the founding principal. She came with a background as a teacher and a parent coordinator, and responded to parents’ desperation for a high school that would lead their children to success.

https://ethicalschools.org/podcast-player/2022/shirley-edwards-on-ebc-high-school-building-an-educational-community-in-bushwick.mp3

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:42:47

Shirley also wrote an article for Ethical Schools! Click here to read “The school that Bushwick built: the story of EBC High School for Public Service”.

Overview

00:00-04:56 Intros

04:57-07:07 Why and how EBC High School for Public Service was created; the role of East Brooklyn Congregations

07:08-10:38 EBC HS as an ethical community

10:39-22:09 Advisories, strategy teams, relationships with the community

22:10-25:09 Recruiting and retaining teachers; building staff-student relationships

25:10-27:51 Teacher retention

27:52-36:17 Parent engagement

36:18-40:52 Community engagement, role of the churches

40:53-42:47 Outro

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of the episode.