Building a Culture of Equity Through SEL

2019 SEL Exchange: Building a Culture of Equity Through SEL

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Summary

In the 2019 SEL Exchange, experts from CASEL and other leaders discussed the importance of social-emotional learning (SEL) in advancing equity and creating a culture of engaged citizenship. Key topics included the integration of academic and SEL instruction and the need for transformative SEL that addresses inequities in education. The panel highlighted the vital role of relationships, student voice, and the necessity of addressing racial and social justice within schools. Various experts shared insights and personal stories, emphasizing the need to redefine success and foster environments that support learning and social transformation.

Highlights

Integrating SEL with academics can lead to more equitable educational environments 🎓.
The concept of engaged citizenship can guide SEL practices and literature 📚.
Transformative SEL is vital for addressing issues of equity and social justice 🚀.
Highlighting the importance of relationships and student voice in education 💬.
The need for educational systems to rethink and redefine success for broader inclusion 🌟.

Key Takeaways

SEL plays a crucial role in building equitable educational environments 🌍.
Engaged citizenship can be a powerful outcome of successful SEL integration 🌟.
Transformative SEL should address racial and social justice within education ✊.
Student voice and agency are essential in creating meaningful educational change 🎤.
We need to redefine educational success to include social and emotional competencies 🏆.

Overview

The event kicked off with discussions on the integration of academic and SEL instruction to promote equity in education. These discussions emphasized the importance of systemic strategic planning and collaborative efforts with districts and organizations already engaged in this work.

Speakers highlighted the necessity of transformative SEL, which focuses on addressing inequities in education. They argued for recognizing the role of social-emotional learning in fostering social change and challenged the current education system to integrate these values.

The panel concluded with personal stories and calls to action, urging educators to embrace SEL's potential to redefine success and promote social transformation. Experts stressed the importance of fostering environments that support student empowerment and voiced the need for collective action and redefining educational goals to create equitable opportunities for all students.

Chapters

00:00 - 00:30: Introduction - Strategic Planning The chapter titled 'Introduction - Strategic Planning' discusses the initial phase of the speaker's involvement in a strategic planning process at a place called Castle. During this process, a strategic plan for the years 2019 to 2021 was established, which highlighted three interlocking priorities.
00:30 - 01:00: Priorities in the Strategic Plan The chapter focuses on the strategic plan's priorities, which include equity, adult social-emotional learning (SEL), and the integration of academic and social-emotional learning instructions. The aim is to acknowledge and celebrate the good work done by various stakeholders, including colleagues, researchers, and scholars. The initial step was conducting a landscape scan.
01:00 - 02:00: Landscape Scan and Literature Review This chapter embarks on a landscape scan and literature review aimed at understanding the broader intersections of social-emotional learning literature and other related fields. The objective is to develop a comprehensive understanding of both basic and applied research efforts in these areas. The aim is to leverage this understanding to further the research task at hand.
02:00 - 03:30: Revisting the CASL Framework The chapter titled 'Revisiting the CASL Framework' dives into the considerations made for revising existing frameworks and tools for research progression. It discusses the importance of forming partnerships with collaborators and districts already engaged in relevant work. A critical step mentioned is to carefully review and assess the existing CASL framework to ensure it meets the needs of upcoming research phases.
03:30 - 05:00: Engaged Citizenship as an Organizing Concept The chapter discusses the framework for systemic Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), highlighting its widespread adoption in schools. It acknowledges the significant contributions by Roger and his colleagues through various publications, including chapters and journal articles. The chapter notes that the existing framework serves as a starting point for current efforts, emphasizing the extensive existing literature on the subject.
05:00 - 06:30: Forms of Social-Emotional Learning and Social Justice The chapter discusses the breadth of research in social-emotional learning and social justice, spanning various fields including neuroscience, brain science, public health, and economics. It highlights the task of organizing this wide-ranging literature in a way that is comprehensible and useful for professionals working in the field.
06:30 - 08:00: Transformative Social-Emotional Learning This chapter focuses on the concept of 'Transformative Social-Emotional Learning' and how it can be aligned with the development of engaged citizenship. The discussion begins with the importance of building skills and understanding within Castle, highlighting 'engaged citizenship' as a long-term outcome of social-emotional learning. The chapter suggests that this concept can help in organizing and planning educational programs.
08:00 - 09:30: Programmatic Insights: Core Features of Transformative SEL The literature review examined how the roles young people mature into, such as work, life, and family, are encapsulated within the concept of citizenship. This investigation also helped understand the relevance of current academic activities to their development as engaged citizens.
09:30 - 11:00: Next Steps in Transformative SEL The chapter explores the integration of Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) with civic socialization, highlighting the frameworks designed by Westheimer and Khan. Their work involves categorizing citizenship into personally responsible, participatory, and justice-oriented models. The chapter argues that if SEL is essential for fostering engaged citizenship, literature and frameworks should be organized to reflect this integration.
11:00 - 12:00: Introducing Young Leaders and Panelists The chapter titled "Introducing Young Leaders and Panelists" discusses various methods of engaging in citizenship and their implications on Social-Emotional Learning (SEL). It suggests different organizing schemes for citizenship activities and proposes that these forms can encompass diverse SEL practices. The aim is to create an inclusive framework that encourages broader participation and integration of people into SEL-focused activities.
12:00 - 18:00: Dina Simmons on Ensuring SEL Does Not Cause Harm The chapter discusses the importance of ensuring Social Emotional Learning (SEL) does not inadvertently cause harm, particularly in the context of social justice. It highlights the multiple dimensions of social justice within social psychological literature and aligns various types of SEL with these dimensions. For instance, personally responsible SEL aligns with interpersonal justice, which involves being kind to one another, while participatory SEL is linked to procedures and processes in social contexts.
18:00 - 25:00: Meena Sri Srinivasan on Interdependence Meena Sri Srinivasan discusses the importance of transformative and justice-oriented social-emotional learning (SEL) within educational environments. She highlights the concepts of procedural and restorative justice, emphasizing the role of distributive justice in addressing educational equity. This includes the fair distribution of valued goods, services, knowledge, power, money, and resources to ensure justice and equity in educational settings. The conversation revolves around creating educational practices that are focused on justice and equity to benefit all students.
25:00 - 31:00: Taryn Ishida on Equity and Student Voice The chapter discusses transformative social-emotional learning (SEL), emphasizing the role of young people and adults as co-learners. It highlights the importance of critically examining inequities and focuses on a solutions-oriented educational process that addresses personal, community, and societal concerns.
31:00 - 38:00: Roberto Rivera on Beloved Community This chapter explores the concept of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) as discussed by Roberto Rivera, focusing on its transformative potential by integrating intrapersonal, interpersonal, and institutional elements. Rivera emphasizes the significance of linking these components to foster equity and transformation within SEL. The chapter touches on the previous work and competencies developed in relation to this expanded view of SEL.
38:00 - 41:00: Panel Discussion: Importance of Socio-Political Context in SEL The chapter discusses the early intentions of Roger and colleagues to design five competencies as categories to accommodate various constructs. These categories are used to address specific aspects; such as identity under self-awareness, agency under self-management, and belonging under social awareness. This forms part of the broader discussion on the socio-political context in Social and Emotional Learning (SEL).
41:00 - 45:45: Panel Discussion: Calling In vs. Calling Out The chapter discusses the need to refine and understand core competencies across all age groups, from young people to adults. It highlights the idea that social-emotional learning (SEL) is part of a developmental continuum. The importance of adult SEL is emphasized, particularly for educators and community workers, as these skills are crucial for their professional and personal lives.
45:45 - 50:00: Panel Discussion: Operationalizing Equity Elaborated Competencies The chapter discusses the key elements involved in operationalizing equity through transformative Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). It highlights the importance of developing appropriate competences by integrating specific programs and practices. A core feature emphasized is power-sharing among adults, students, families, and other stakeholders, which is crucial for effective implementation.
50:00 - 56:00: Panel Discussion: White Privilege and Change Agency The chapter titled "Panel Discussion: White Privilege and Change Agency" emphasizes the interconnectedness of equity and excellence. It mentions the important role of community stakeholders in ensuring that these elements are incorporated rigorously and relevantly into the processes. The discussion also hints at future steps which include defining and further elaborating on the previously conducted work. Moreover, it notes the publication of a recent paper as part of these ongoing efforts.
56:00 - 61:00: Panel Discussion: Empowering Young People through Structural Changes The chapter focuses on transformative Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) discussed in the Educational Psychologist's edition. The idea is to explore developmental trajectories in context and consider research-practice partnerships. This approach emphasizes leveraging practical wisdom from the field to empower young people through structural changes.
61:00 - 64:00: Panel Discussion: Building Pipeline for Leaders of Color The chapter titled 'Panel Discussion: Building Pipeline for Leaders of Color' discusses the importance of creating opportunities and learning spaces from practitioners to understand and iterate on best practices. It mentions collaborations with districts and the ongoing involvement in a long-term initiative by CASEL to support leaders of color.
64:00 - 75:00: Concluding Remarks and Audience Q&A Cathleen Austin and Camille Farrington represent the national equity project and the Chicago consortium, respectively. They are committed to providing resources and materials to determine what's best for young people and enhance frameworks and tools. Although the session ran a bit over time, it's acknowledged that key funders are now supporting these efforts.

2019 SEL Exchange: Building a Culture of Equity Through SEL Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 as I was coming into castle one of the first I was able to be involved in as a strategic planning process we laid out a 20-19 to 2021 a strategic plan that surfaced three inter locking priorities
00:30 - 01:00 those priorities as you see on the slide are equity adult SEL and integration of academic and and social-emotional learning instruction in order to move in order to acknowledge and celebrate all of the good work that you all have been doing as well as other colleagues researchers scholars and the like we first engaged in a landscape scan and we
01:00 - 01:30 decided that a landscape scan it would make sense to to scan the literature broadly of areas of fairly narrow social emotional learning literature that intersects with other literature's that are related the task here was to try to create as rich an understanding of what people were doing both basic and applied research and then leverage that as we
01:30 - 02:00 began to think about the revisions of our frameworks and our tools and in thought of but thought about the ways in which we would move forward in the next phase of research which includes partnerships with collaborators as well as partnerships with districts people that are already doing the work so as engaging in that work meant first looking closely and carefully at the existing CASL framework this is the
02:00 - 02:30 framework for systemic SEL it's fairly ubiquitous in the field it's up in many schools you know there is voluminous work Roger and colleagues over time have been very productive in sharing out both chapters and journals and think journal articles and the like and so we wanted to start from the great progress that the organization has already made and so this framework was a point of departure for the work now the literature is is now fairly
02:30 - 03:00 broad it ranges from neuroscience brain science and the like there's a lot of work that's been done in that area but it also includes Public Health work in economics etc etc so so the task was really to find a way to find a way to think about the organization of the literature that would make sense both for ourselves as well as for those who are working in the field again field
03:00 - 03:30 building being an important undertaking for Castle as always so we settled on the notion of as you see in the last slide down at the bottom engage citizenship which allowed us then to begin to backwards plan if a long term outcome of engagement in social-emotional learning was indeed engaged citizenship then that could serve as an organizing concept for for
03:30 - 04:00 the literature review that we were engaged in it allowed us to envelop inside of citizenship all of the adult roles that we know young people are maturing into so work life family it also allowed us to understand the ways in which the current academic activity that they're engaged in is relevant to who they become as engaged citizens so in looking at that literature can we
04:00 - 04:30 simply leveraged existing frameworks this is Westheimer and Khan's work where they utilize personally responsible participatory and they call justice oriented citizenship and for us if if social-emotional learning is indeed part of a civic socialization process that leads to engage citizenship then we ought to be able to organize the literature based on this literature as
04:30 - 05:00 well as activities based on this kind of organizing scheme each of these ways of doing citizenship have implications for ways of doing SEL so we would propose that there at this point there are forms of social-emotional learning that people are engaged in this allows us to be cast a broad umbrella and bring people in
05:00 - 05:30 under that umbrella and recognize all the very good work that's being done now of course SEL has implications for social justice and many of times when you talk about equity people immediately see that as a social justice issue but social justice in the social psychological literature has multiple dimensions to it so we were able to align for example personally responsible SEL with interpersonal justice it is about being nice to one another participatory SEL is about procedures and processes that use inside of a
05:30 - 06:00 classroom for example that's procedural and restorative justice we hit upon the notion of transformative SEL or justice oriented SEL as being most essential to issues of Edwyn equity which in the literature implies distributive justice and distributive justice around valued goods and services knowledge power money resources and the like so we came up
06:00 - 06:30 with a working definition of transformative SEL and you'll see here it positions young people and adults as co-learners critical examination of inequities as part of that definition with a focus on solutions oriented educational process that addresses personal community and societal concerns
06:30 - 07:00 this this form of SEL links intrapersonal interpersonal and institutional considerations which is foundational in our view to transformative SEL so we've done some work on competencies you know earlier work in earlier work we offered up what we were calling equity elaborations at the time here essentially we understand and I think
07:00 - 07:30 the intention of Roger and colleagues early on was to create the five competencies as buckets into which multiple constructs can be placed and for our purposes we simply went into those went into those buckets and pulled out for example under self-awareness issues of identity under self management issues of agency under social awareness issues of belonging and so we are about the
07:30 - 08:00 business of trying to further refine and understand core competencies and also understand them both as issues of development for young people children and adolescents but also issues for adults we would imagine that these things on a developmental continuum and as we begin to talk about adult SEL these are the kinds of things that are also germane to working with educators or community people we also laid out
08:00 - 08:30 some programmatic insights realizing that in the literature these are the kinds of programs and practices that were most germane to the kind of competence development that we believe is appropriate under the under transformative SEL you see here the court one of some of the core features are both power-sharing adults and students and families and other
08:30 - 09:00 community stakeholders but also rigor and relevance because equity and excellence are intimately connected so next steps our next step is in our work thank you very much next steps on the next step in our work are clearly you know more definition of work for further elaboration on the work that we've done we had a recent paper published in recent
09:00 - 09:30 edition of Educational Psychologist that kind of begins to lay out transformative SEL and so I would encourage you to take a look at that as a little dense but I'm an academic so there you go so in that in the work we're going to look at developmental trajectories and then processing these across context we also are moving pivoting towards research practice partnerships as an approach that allows us to leverage the practice wisdom that exists out in the field because in many
09:30 - 10:00 respects what my job is to create space and to learn from practitioners and base that in in in the evidence that exists or generate the evidence to better understand and iterate on the very good practices that are already occurring we have partners in this work certainly the collaborating to districts and this is a is a castle initiative that has been going on for a number of years but we are now involved with colleagues
10:00 - 10:30 Cathleen Austin and Camille Farrington Cathleen from the national equity project Camille from the Chicago consortium and intimately involved in trying to put our resources materials on the table to figure out what's in the best interest of young people and refined frameworks tools etc and thank you all ran a little over but these are key funders who are now supporting this
10:30 - 11:00 work and we look forward to partnership with you thought partnership as well as applied work in the in the service of our young people thank you so I'd like to invite to the stage my my colleagues we consider them the part of the next generation of young leaders this work is nothing without trying to prepare other young people to assume
11:00 - 11:30 leadership roles birth through through old age and so I'd like to invite to the stage Dina Simmons Meena Meena Sri Sri Srinivasan sorry Taryn ashada and Roberto Rivera Dena is assistant director of the Yale center of for emotional intelligence she writes and
11:30 - 12:00 speak nationally about social justice and culturally responsive pedagogy education reform emotional intelligence bullying how to create emotionally intelligent and safe classrooms within the context of equity Meena is executive director of transformative educational leadership or te L prior to this role she spent five and a half years as a program manager in Oakland Unified School District Office of social-emotional learning
12:00 - 12:30 she's an author of SEL every day and teach breathe learn Tarun is executive director of Californians for justice where she leads the organization in its mission to advance racial equity by building the power of youth communities of color immigrants low-income and LGBTQ q non gender conforming communities and Tarin's background is in philanthropy and who's organizing and last but not
12:30 - 13:00 least Roberto Rivera artist researcher practitioner specializing in the practice of engaging empirical research in SEL and equity and making it practical for transforming educational systems community and communities internationally his research currently focuses on how ecosystems can be created so traumatized youth can survive and thrive he is a husband and proud father of two amazing boys and justice alright how is everyone
13:00 - 13:30 feeling I'm a little I'm a little under the weather but I'm so excited to be here to talk about how we think about SEL 25 years from now and I'm gonna speak from my heart today I don't have anything prepared but two slides so bear with me this is Dina from the heart Dina from the Bronx and when I think about the future I I cannot think about the
13:30 - 14:00 past I think about myself a little black girl in the Bronx and my experience and my journey to get to be standing right here right now and all the pedigree and social capital that I acquired and how damaged I am now and how every single day I pick up pieces of myself so when I think about the future of SEL and I think about schooling and education in general I have to ask this question how can we practice and implement SEL to
14:00 - 14:30 ensure that it doesn't cause harm and I think it's important for us to know that most of the time where we do our education or schooling initiatives it has happened within a broken system of Education with a history of exclusion and inequity our schooling system is inequity by design so when we think about what we implement and what we do we have to think about the larger system
14:30 - 15:00 and the larger context to ensure that we're not perpetuating the damage and the harm that has done to too many students like me too many students who look like me and so I can't help asking this second question what is our Y what is our Y so some of us who've been here in these past two days have been thinking about why are we doing this work and I was at my pre-session school
15:00 - 15:30 climate came up academic achievement came up we know what the research tells us but in my travels and the work that I've done with schools and districts throughout the nation I have seen that that why changes depending on the students so that when we're speaking about black and brown students that SEL is about remediation it is about saving black and brown children from themselves it is about compliance and following
15:30 - 16:00 rules but when I speak to other districts with privileged kids it's about college and career readiness it's about enhancement so when we think about this work and if iy is different depending on who we're speaking about we have to ask ourselves how are we complicit in injustice how weak implicit in the harm and the damage that happens to our young people Betina love talks about she's from the
16:00 - 16:30 University of Georgia some of y'all know her she talks about the spirit murdering of our young people we have to ensure that this work that we do is not spirit murdering our children but I will add to that many of the teachers and educators in the room are also have also been spirit murdered every single day like I said I'm picking myself up it is important for us to know to good intentions don't equal good outcomes
16:30 - 17:00 just because you mean well does not mean that the outcome is gonna be good I can't tell you how often when I was growing up going to boarding school in Connecticut and how often people came to me and said Oh Tina you're so articulate and I would say and I would and and and that was the intention was good but the way I received it was as if you they didn't believe that I could be or how often people think my hair was awesome thank you all I know
17:00 - 17:30 and how often folks would you know put their hand in my hair and how often I felt dehumanize or like a spectacle don't touch my hair good intentions don't you equal good outcomes and my second point is that anything can be used as a weapon I sleep with a bat near my bed because growing up I felt very unsafe when it got dark a bat is for baseball but I can
17:30 - 18:00 use it as a weapon so we have to be very careful and really critical about how we think about the work that we do and ensure that we're we have a broken system and if we don't think widely and strategically and deliberately about this system that is broken anything can be used as a weapon so this work of equity of achieving equity requires
18:00 - 18:30 courage and discomfort I know that some of the things I said today may make people feel a little uncomfortable but it's through that discomfort that we grow it is through that discomfort that we try to do better and be better and I'll also just since I'm speaking from the heart every single day when I walk into this world I feel uncomfortable because when I walk into the room the first assumption that people have about me is not a positive one so every single
18:30 - 19:00 day I feel uncomfortable how do we create and change the system so that the two gentlemen who spoke up here earlier today have different options that is our work and it's hard and it takes courage and it's going to be uncomfortable how many you're about that life I want to hear from you how many are about that life
19:00 - 19:30 so in closing I would say for this work to happen we have to in apply an equity lens actually know what we just have to start seeing what it is we don't like to say what it is because we don't like to talk about race in this country we cannot heal our wounds if we don't tend to them so we need to apply an equity and an anti-racist lens so I leave you with one question which is how can we
19:30 - 20:00 leverage SEL to create the social change that we need that is not a question for you to not just a ponder but this is an action plan for you what is your action plan to ensure that we leverage SEL to create the social change we so desperately need thank you when I was 28
20:00 - 20:30 I was teaching and my ancestral homeland of India my adopted city of New Delhi had been the site of numerous bomb blasts fueled by tension between Hindus and Muslims over the course of one month there were five deadly attacks our school was under lockdown and I was desperate for guidance on how to support
20:30 - 21:00 my students during this tumultuous time after a long school day I tended to talk honoring the anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi's birth the talk was held at the site of his martyrdom and it lauded his commitment to nonviolent societal transformation that evening changed my life the speaker was the Vietnamese renowned global leader chick not Han who
21:00 - 21:30 had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by dr. Martin Luther King jr. and in a profound weaving of birth and death challenged us all to be Gandhi's continuation and he introduced a term that's foundational to creating a Beloved Community inter being inter being means to interdependently co-exist inter being honors the interdependence
21:30 - 22:00 of every person to all other persons and aspects of our planet we are all connected to each other in our beloved community extends to our relationship with this planet in a beautiful illustration of interbeing tech not han writes that if you were a poet you would see clearly that there is a cloud floating in the sheet of paper without the cloud there would be no rain without the rain there would be no trees and
22:00 - 22:30 without the trees there'd be no paper the cloud is essential for the paper to exist he goes on to write that if you look deeply enough you can even see the logger who cut down the tree and the loggers ancestors as well in that sheet of paper interbeing helps us see that we are all interconnected in a complex web knowing that we are in each other the
22:30 - 23:00 non-violence Gandhi and MLK practice is born from interbeing dr. King wrote in a real sense all life is interrelated whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly this is the interrelated structure of reality in the SEL world we talk about needing to connect but the truth is we are already
23:00 - 23:30 connected we just don't often recognize this if we could shift our sense of self from a strongly individuated separate identity to a connected collective identity then we will view our world our nation and the work we do in school with fresh eyes this vision is what transformative SEL is all about but it
23:30 - 24:00 requires a major paradigm shift this ship means that we attuned to the intelligence of interbeing and we acknowledge that the wounding of historic racism is our collective responsibility we all must build bridges together so we can as John a Powell says advance a world built on belonging and we're starting as early as we can with our son so how do we do this
24:00 - 24:30 Audrey Lorde reminds us that the Masters tools will never dismantle the Masters house transformative SEL centered and justice grounded in interbeing will not only dismantle the Masters house but build a new house that night in Delhi on the anniversary of Gandhi's birth at the
24:30 - 25:00 site of his death Tecna Hahn led us through an exercise where we looked deeply into our hands to see our ancestors and our descendants I touched my great-great-grandfather in me he was a freedom fighter in the Indian independence movement and he died at the hands of the colonizers I felt how his struggle continues to live on inside of me and in the many forms colonization takes today my father is a bridge
25:00 - 25:30 engineer and that night I decided to follow in his footsteps but build bridges that create a more compassionate and equitable world rooted in intervening I'm inviting all of us here today to be bridge builders SEL is the how of bridging we are living the legacy of our ancestors those who chose to bridge
25:30 - 26:00 those who chose to break and those who had no choice like my great-great-grandfather and his fellow freedom fighters pictured here my call to action for all of us is to hold in our hearts a question inspired by the work of one of my dear teachers Larry Ward what kind of ancestor am I willing to be knowing that in each moment
26:00 - 26:30 there's an opportunity to bridge or break I've learned that to make things come alive we need to breathe em in so as we silently ask ourselves this question and hold it in our hearts let us take one collective breath together what kind of ancestor am I willing to be
26:30 - 27:00 the answers are within us and they are waiting to be heard [Applause] down wow this is hard coming after all of that that was beautiful I'm Taryn Ishida I'm from an organization that does youth organizing
27:00 - 27:30 so I'm gonna ask you all to participate a little bit with me because that's what we do with young people we don't tend to sit in lunch rooms young people for three-hour sessions but I appreciate all of you because you are sticking it out for this equity panel and that really does mean a lot so I'm gonna talk a lot about growth today how many of you remember what it felt like when you were younger to go through a growth spurt raise your hand raise your hand alright that's participation thank you
27:30 - 28:00 so in seventh grade I remember my growth spurt I was lying in bed my legs were aching I felt these pains in my body and unfortunately for me I don't know if you can tell I'm 5 foot 2 that was the first and last time I grew I've also had another growth spurt this year this is a baby it's also the cookies I ate on the table but I'm also
28:00 - 28:30 going through a growth spurt not just in my belly but in my own equity consciousness my own woke nest then given what's happening in our country right now all of the things our panelists have spoken to it's not so matched so it's not a matter of should we do better it's a matter of how fast how hard and how well are we gonna do better together in this room so I want to share with you today what I've been learning on the ground doing education
28:30 - 29:00 justice organizing for over a decade with young people specifically black Latin X Asian Pacific Islander indigenous queer and transgender foster youth and a term I learned yesterday emerging multilingual students I've learned that there are four key ingredients to doing equity work to be on an equity growth
29:00 - 29:30 the first is relationships how many of you in this room raise your hand feel like relationships are key to equity alright thank you thank you you've heard folks talk about it all conference long it's not only relationships as key to equity in SDL relationships are key to building an equitable just and sustainable society but we're on the right track I really do feel that from this conference the second ingredient student voice and agency I also heard
29:30 - 30:00 that a lot too at this conference so I want to hear some claps I wanna hear some noise if you're about student voice in your work so I want people to realize student voice is not separate from equity if you're serious about equity that means you have to be serious about putting the people most impacted by in equity at the center of this work and
30:00 - 30:30 the people most impacted are not the superintendent not the principal even though those are the folks who tend to have the most say it's actually our students who has you heard from folks have been thrown into a system that was not designed for them to succeed it was designed to sort privilege it was designed to to narrow opportunity for for a few so equity required work requires that students are actually co-creators in advancing SDL with with
30:30 - 31:00 adults not cutesy decision making as we heard from our superintendent yesterday but real substantive change from the classroom to the state capitol maybe even today Washington DC so lastly well actually thirdly sorry I'm losing track third a lot of what folks talked about today is that equity is not enough we need to Center race in a in equity even though I come from California and we're a liberal state it is so much easier
31:00 - 31:30 more comfortable to talk about gender equity to say homeless students than it is to really talk and really learn and deeply reflect on the legacy of racism historically and today so I want to read a letter from one of our students she's a leader in Oakland she says dear racism in schools you've been around for a long time poisoning us all but today I want you to know that you will no longer infect helpless
31:30 - 32:00 students and teachers of color we notice when you discourage us to dream and work hard by telling us we aren't good enough or that we aren't worthy we notice when you make our educator hostile toward us because they feel scared or disconnected we notice when we are passed over and award ceremonies and are presented the most improved award you make us feel irrelevant you make us feel guilty you make me feel out of place
32:00 - 32:30 broken hopeless and worthless you make us feel not human racism I want you to end sincerely Raquel Richardson for us to grow as an SEL equity movement we all need to do better about centering race in our words and our actions and in our policies so the last point I want to
32:30 - 33:00 make is we need to take action my only goal of flying across the country to talk to y'all today is not to do the head nodding we all do at conferences but to really take action when you go back home we need to leverage the collective power and privilege we all have in this room and that we need to bring all of our friends long our students along our bosses along our auntie's and our cousins like let's bring them all in and we need to do two
33:00 - 33:30 things we need to do the work at an institutional level at Californians for justice our students are leading a campaign called relationship centered schools that are asking people to invest in our school staff asking them to value student voice and create spaces for relationship building we're also pushing the state to reinvest 11 billion dollars in school funding because we can't do this work without resources who's feelin that yes and I think most
33:30 - 34:00 importantly we need to commit to doing the individual actions and I'm saying this to you with a lot of humility because I've been on my own growth journey as I've said this past year I've been called in by my students by our organizers to wrestle with my own privilege and power to accept that I personally have furthered white supremacy and anti blackness and it's uncomfortable but I'm actively building
34:00 - 34:30 the muscle to be comfortable being uncomfortable so why put all of ourselves through these uncomfortable growing pains right seriously why because on the other side of that work on the other side of those individual and institutional actions is the kind of energizing and purposeful growth that is going to lead to our collective prosperity and liberation thank you all right good afternoon how's
34:30 - 35:00 everybody doing y'all don't I I am very honored and privileged to share the stage with these amazing folks can we give them another round of applause please so I want to start off my piece by sharing a story about my best friend
35:00 - 35:30 named Carlos and Carlos this story fits the story of a lot of young people that fall in the cracks of our education system nationally and internationally when he was in elementary school he was given the label of being LD learning deficient in middle school his misdirected entrepreneurship skills got him kicked out so we all caught that he later ran away from home got arrested
35:30 - 36:00 went through drug rehab and even tried to take his own life anybody know of Carlos maybe they go by a different name struggling to survive far away not even thinking about thriving fortunately this is not the end of God elusive story he later told me big bro I realized I wasn't LD learning deficient I was LD I just learned different so let's practice that real quick I want you to say you're not learning deficient you just learn
36:00 - 36:30 different and when he got that he realized that he could approach schooling differently he started emphasizing and education in the midst of schooling start doing really well eventually created his own major at some Big Ten university redirected his entrepreneurship skills named one of the top young change agents in America and
36:30 - 37:00 now my best friend who was told he was LD is publishing peer-reviewed journal articles and wrapping up this PhD now as some of you already know and some of you maybe have guessed I'm very close to this Carlos and this is very personal because this is the story of Roberto Carlos Rivera this is my store
37:00 - 37:30 and folks wonder how I went from being helpless and hopeless to being helpful and offal how I went from being a dope dealer to what I call myself today family I'm a hope dealer and I see some OG hope dealers in the house today if you're a hope dealer make some noise this transformation has been a journey one that helped me learn how to think
37:30 - 38:00 critically to be more creative and to use these things maybe you heard of called social emotional competencies to really take the trauma and the pain in my life and flip it into a propane to become a fuel that could empower me to want to make a difference in this world but in all truth in actuality I could have never learned these things on my own I needed people in my life like
38:00 - 38:30 David be said on the first night who could actually see me who could see the sculpture inside of the stone some of these people are here tonight people who welcomed me into community people who welcomed me into the Beloved Community and some of these folks are here in the physical form and some of these folks are here with the great cloud of witnesses that surround us give yourselves a round of applause if you know that you have someone who could see
38:30 - 39:00 you could see the sculpture inside of so let's give them a round of applause so the last 20 years of my research and my practice and communities and districts and schools has helped me to understand that this notion of Beloved Community can be cultivated in all these various spaces so I wanted to share a quick story on how we cultivated Beloved Community right here in Chicago on the
39:00 - 39:30 west side and the neighborhood called Lawndale a neighborhood that King moved to one summer not too long ago so there was a school that was utilizing some SEL curriculum and doing some service-learning but they couldn't get the kids to engage they weren't doing the service projects and they weren't on the track to graduate so they called us in and we did something very radical I mean you need to have an EDD and a PhD and some XYZ to do this and that is we
39:30 - 40:00 listen to the students I know this is very sophisticated and the students told us they were angry they were frustrated they were upset because they were believing the master narrative that their community was one of the worst communities in the city the Chicago Tribune said that Lawndale was the millstone around the neck of the city and they said why are we gonna go do
40:00 - 40:30 service projects if you know we can't make any difference here in this community and they had been divorced by the story that a generation earlier some grandparents went on a hunger strike CPS said they were going to build a school and then they built all the schools in the more affluent communities first and they said they ran out of money so they went on a hunger strike and they got this school built the very school these youth were in and these elders are still around so we got them to interview in a
40:30 - 41:00 build relationship with the elders a lot of these youth would tell us nah man I'm not smart but they were prolific poets and artists and musicians and so we helped them to ask the question not am i smart but how am i smart to connect those passions to multiple intelligences and we brought an artist from the community to take these sparks of passion and the phantom in the flame to help these young people to flex in the
41:00 - 41:30 future not just on a stage but also on a page right to share their social and emotional realities in the form of blues story telling and pretty soon these youth we're like man that we got some content so we connected the youth from South Lawndale which is predominantly 99% la fenix with the youth we were working with the North Lawndale which is 99% african-american they organized an open mic at a church this was supposed
41:30 - 42:00 to last an hour you think this lasted only an hour this lasted for five hours and the youth started bonding they started imagining and realizing man we got some power here what if we could change the narrative about this community in the face and in the eyes of the city so they said we want to do a block party we want to do some MC battles talking about issues going on in the community we want positive performances we would do some
42:00 - 42:30 dancing right in between both neighborhoods right so they did a press release and they got invited by KISS 103.5 popular radio station on Friday at 6 p.m. raise your hand if you think some people may be listening to the radio at 6 p.m. on a Friday they had over a million listeners and they got to talk about the beauty and the attitudes the assets in the community that get overlooked we had just heard the Kurtis Blow legendary hip-hop artists had agreed to
42:30 - 43:00 come perform people are calling in and say hey we you know one more information one guy called names I'll be honest I want to come see Curtis but I'm a little scared to come to Lawndale and the you say you don't need to worry we got double security I said we do okay so the day of the event everybody showing up from all over the city and you know Chicago's a very segregated City so there's some tensions there right and the security we have on there looking a
43:00 - 43:30 little nervous and we thinking oh Lord pretty soon a bus shows up in the grandparents the elders that I would lead to us start coming out and they have yellow shirts to save security but it's missing the eye so it just says to Kirti security shows up they start hugging people they bought this hug life you know we've a time of that Big Mama giving folks the eye whoo looking kind of rough you got chocolates that are coming out like boomerangs coming around corners hitting people in the back of
43:30 - 44:00 the head who hello mama raise your hand if you think there's any violence that day but the core of this piece is not what didn't happen but what did happen and Kurtis Blow was not the highlight the highlight is the youth got the children to share their dreams of the community on the stage there's a full-length documentary film that the youth created about this event which you can find at the hashtag SEO Beloved Community you can check it out
44:00 - 44:30 and what you see happening family at the end is something so powerful Sean generai talks about that the travesty of oppression is that people lose the capacity to dream and what you see happening in this film particularly at the end is the defibrillator coming out between the youth and the adults stand back clear boom awakening this community muscle to gain the capacity to dream again and in the background you see a fire station it's abandoned at
44:30 - 45:00 this moment in time and the community starts dreaming about using this there's a fire station for the Arts so they come together they raise a couple million dollars Chicago cred now is running programs out of the firehouse Community Arts Center the school sees the agency of the youth so they engaged the youth to involve themselves in the hiring and firing processes of staff raise your hand if you think this may be impacted the culture and climate of the school
45:00 - 45:30 needless to say all the youth involved with this graduated many matriculated into college and a few recently graduated with their master's degree raise your hand if you see any competencies taking place in this case study any self-awareness any self management social awareness you got any positive relationship what about responsible decision may you see all five put all five up in the air
45:30 - 46:00 what about any intergenerational collaboration multicultural collaboration what about any shared agency and voice I believe that SEO and equity at its best is expressed through beloved community because it's in community that we go from surviving to thriving thank you [Applause]
46:00 - 46:30 so we want to engage in a little question and answer before we open it up more broadly for questions so I'm gonna start it off I'm gonna ask my colleague Dina a question and then she will proceed and we'll move on down the line so dr. Simmons Dina you've spoken and written about the need to teach SEL in
46:30 - 47:00 the context of social political realities can you talk a little bit more about that clarify and elaborate on why you think that's important so I all I have to do is think about Roberto and the story of so many children if when they're seen and when we're seeing and our stories and our histories and our realities are part of our instruction what how that changes the outcomes I think too often we we think that we can
47:00 - 47:30 just implement something without understanding the reality and the groundedness and the context the context that sometimes those gonna be damaging if we don't know I think we have to really reflect on especially in our education system whiteness we have to understand what we have to understand all of the dominant narratives and how damaging that can be for our young people so it's true I think it's crucially important to have the socio-political context and to think about how we can use social emotional
47:30 - 48:00 learning to have those courageous conversations those important conversations that we really like to shy away from I always tell people you can't SEL away oppression mm-hmm SEL inequity is not the same thing I think we tend to conflate the two because it's easier to talk about SEL and to do the SEL work and sometimes when we put equity under SEL we don't do the equity work I think we have to be willing to do the equity work and
48:00 - 48:30 understand that is different but important and that they can help each other and so we have to understand how they interconnect how that how they can we can leverage either to do the work but we cannot lose this equity work because I wouldn't be here if it weren't for someone helping me but like I said already on my journey here I have lost so many pieces of myself because my schooling was in a schooling that constantly told me that I was not enough so everyday I'm trying to
48:30 - 49:00 find my enoughness and so many of our students and so many people in this room today can share their own stories where they were erased and that erasure is traumatizing so we have to understand how we can leverage social motional learning skills to have these very difficult conversations that we like to avoid because we rather be comfortable
49:00 - 49:30 [Applause] so my know Roberta sister oh all right we family up here by the way so you know we're gonna have fun yes so I first met you and is it Austin Texas yeah yes yeah so shout out to Austin homies all right anybody from the Bronx here you got to keep Austin weird one person from the Bronx that's okay we're mighty small and mighty so Roberta we've been talking about and I think you know sister here brought up
49:30 - 50:00 this idea of like calling in and calling out and we've been seeing a lot more calling out happening against injustice and problematic and oppressive institutions and sort of behaviors now how do you think we can begin to call folks in and those who are in how we call them more in it's a good question I'm a quote guy I love quotes and the first quote that comes to mind is a
50:00 - 50:30 quote from Paulo Freire a ya know who Paulo Friday is Brazilian educator the godfather of critical education if you see pictures of him he looks like Santa Claus but you know this guy's og man he's nothing to mess with he talks about the purpose of education is to become fully human and he says when were born in this world because of oppression we are broken and were were dehumanized right and he says it's not
50:30 - 51:00 just the oppressed that are dehumanized in the act of oppression but the oppressed are also dehumanized in this process he says that the oppressed regained their humanity through education but get this he says the oppressed sore can never regain their humanity without the help of the oppressed Tim shared a quote an hour had to write it down think it was the Lila Watson she says you know and I think
51:00 - 51:30 about this coming from our youth if you've come to help me you're wasting your time but if you've come because your liberation is bound up with mine let's journey together so what we're talking about you know and what Rob and Melissa so wonderfully laid out is this notion of interconnectedness Meena talks about this inner being but there's an a reciprocity transformative process that's waiting to happen in these relationships right and so as we kind of
51:30 - 52:00 overflow and we start thinking about how do we transform you know equity and and and and inequitable racist spaces we got to remember that there's three different layers to racial inequity we got the institutional piece which khumba links let's give them another round of applause they touched on very powerfully and we know that there's a disproportionate number of students of color who are being disciplined and how
52:00 - 52:30 this relates to them dropping out a young folks being more likely to end up incarcerated there's the interpersonal acts of bigotry right police brutality these tiki torches and even sometimes more subtle these microaggressions that happen in the classroom then there's the interpersonal aspect where folks legitimately feel like they're less than when I was in elementary school and told that I was LD my family moved eventually to Texas and my transcripts didn't follow right away
52:30 - 53:00 because it's before you know we had Google Docs and all that and I advocated as an elementary school student to be in the slow and remedial classes because I felt this was my level and so when we think about transformation on the institutional interpersonal and intrapersonal level this is something as too much it's too overwhelming to do on our own and this is why we need Beloved Community we need what folks were talking about you know to cross these bridges that are
53:00 - 53:30 generational cultural these bridges of of power right and I think the purpose of Beloved Community is best captured in the sense that this term that one of my mentors shared with me Baba Rogers out of Milwaukee he said that they're creating this Beloved Community and they're involved in the work he introduced this term communitas and I was like well what's communitas he says communitas is when a diverse group of people embarks in a dangerous journey to
53:30 - 54:00 change the world but they know they will be transformed in the process and so this requires us coming in being invited in having proximity because proximity allows for the cultivation of empathy if you're not close you can't cultivate empathy and from empathy we can achieve the fruit of equity so in agreement with you sister there is no equity without empathy and there's no true empathy without the overflow and the work towards equity
54:00 - 54:30 alright sister Tara got a question for you so your organization California's for justice is a key leader in advancing a campaign for relationship centered schools through building conditions and coalitions of marginalized young people how can we best be allies and partners
54:30 - 55:00 to young people in this work yeah I mean I think everyone here feels they work with students for students and I think we all need to move to working with students it's a small word we're change but it's really powerful I know everyone who comes into education or working with young people whatever you do you came into this work because you cared about their futures you cared about their
55:00 - 55:30 success but I think too often adults adult ISM is a thing you know we think we know best right or we come in we come in with like a savior a superhero mentality and I think the first thing I've learned is just no capes right when you work with young people if you're an adult you can't look at this as if you are going in to save them that they are fragile that they don't know enough right you really have to see the
55:30 - 56:00 fullness of their wisdom maybe different than yours but it's there I think a couple of practical things what I've seen be the most effective youth and adult partnerships to do that co-creation I talked about earlier is exactly what you said you have to be willing to stick through for the long term to work through the messiness student voice Student Leadership if you're doing it right it gets messy that's how you know you're doing it right that there is conflict like the
56:00 - 56:30 young people yesterday if that made some people in the audience uncomfortable our young speakers we had yesterday from Chicago that's actually right on that means they are challenging us that we've created the space for them to speak there tonight and my second practical tip is not as sexy as that it's creating structures that last so too often we have a great champion at a school or at a district who's all about student voice and then they leave right as is the nature of our
56:30 - 57:00 schools and those structures don't stick around and that process for like meaningful student voice doesn't stick and it isn't accountable to the people with the most power so that's the second thing and last thing I just want to say something that I've been challenged with lately is a lot of the folks who are allies to our young people you know folks that we really do count among our friends there's a there's a degree to which they're comfortable and a lot of it comes down to tone policing have you
57:00 - 57:30 ever heard that term tone policing so it's like I didn't mind what they were saying but the way they said it made it and Kabini uncomfortable or the fact that she said it at your school board meeting and my trustees heard it but that's where we have to cut off student voice and I think if we start to police where student voice what tone student voice is acceptable and not that's when we have created inequity once again that we are creating harm so I get a question
57:30 - 58:00 for Mina Mina you actually lead an organization with transformative in its name and you it was formed to support education leaders right to advance transformation towards equity through SEO so what are the most important reasons you're working on building a pipeline of leaders particularly leaders
58:00 - 58:30 of color to be the champions of SEO Thanks Taryn I just wanted to acknowledge it so wonderful to finally meet you in person because when I was working in Oakland I had the opportunity to work with some amazing youth from Californians for justice so thank you for the powerful work that you're doing so the organization that I lead transformative educational leadership or tell for short is centered on the integration of leadership equity SEL and mindfulness or
58:30 - 59:00 inner work in service of systems transformation and our participants are are not just school leaders we have central office leaders school leaders but also CBO nonprofit leaders teacher leaders we're really trying to expand who we see as having power and I think that's really important if we want to affect change brand recently came out with a report I'm sure many of you are
59:00 - 59:30 familiar with it it just came out in the past month or so that 80% of our school principals are white and 40% about 40% of those leaders said that their pre-service programs left them completely or mostly unprepared to serve diverse populations and that's extremely problematic if more than 50% of our student population or kids of color so our organization is really trying to fill a gap in the field and really
59:30 - 60:00 trying to support not just building a pipeline for leaders of color our first cohort we're 40 percent leaders of color our next cohort hopefully would be 50 percent leaders of color or majority leaders of color but also creating a space for white leaders to do powerful work around their privilege and their white identity you know I think it's something important that we need to talk about I had a mentor who who told me
60:00 - 60:30 that she realized she was white 11 years ago so she has an 11 year old white identity but you know it's a powerful way of thinking about her identity process and so the leaders in our program you know to get to transformation we have to move through pain we have to move through discomfort that's the only way we're gonna be the leaders that are implementing anti-racist policies procedures and practices in our schools so you know a
60:30 - 61:00 focus of our work is also on mindfulness and mindfulness isn't solely about self-care it's about you know coming from a foundation of understanding and practicing with the sense of interbeing that I spoke about earlier and it also helps with embodiment I was in Oakland Unified for five years on the SEL team and probably the most important lesson that I learned was that leadership is key to be a
61:00 - 61:30 leader for and of SEL you need to embody these skills and competencies and one of the most powerful ways we can do that is attending to our inner lives right our behavior is based on our beliefs so we need to really do that inner work and check the beliefs and really examine what our beliefs are you know the teacher I mentioned before Larry Ward he has a beautiful saying he talks about
61:30 - 62:00 how if you're revolutionary at heart and if you're in this room here today you are you can either appear like a comet and be a brilliant light that vanishes quickly or you can be like the Sun always returning so attending to our inner work is how we can be like the Sun and transforming our educational system is it gonna happen with comments we must all be like the Sun first of all I want
62:00 - 62:30 to thank you for all the powerful work you're doing at Castle and the equity elaborated competency it's been a long time coming so thank you brother Rob and I'm just curious as a researcher how do you see this being operationalized in the field I think so
62:30 - 63:00 thank you for the question and thank you for the kind words it's an honor and a responsibility to try to advance the work and document and reinforce some of the things that you all have been sharing as a researcher and someone that works in an organization that's really concerned about evidence-based right we have to interrogate you know what is evidence and whose evidence and those kinds of things being able to
63:00 - 63:30 systematically put in place and iterate on continuously improve the work I think is germane to all forms of SEL especially transformative forms of SEL because the work is so difficult and we do need self care and support and so it's important to be able to gauge the
63:30 - 64:00 types of progress or the challenges that we face or we can get the requisite support so we can do what's in the best service of young people to create the next generation of informed and engaged citizens and so I think they for our side it's it's identifying bright spots and you know I mentioned earlier the work with colleagues so both inside of the collaborating districts and collaborating States work that we do at castle but also in collaboration with
64:00 - 64:30 Camille and Kathleen and the Belle and in EP networks we're looking really looking for bright spots where we can begin to better understand how to how to how to do what's in the best interest of educators so that they can then do what's in the best interest of young people that project equitable learning and development project is really grounded in our shared assumptions about what is healthy development for adults and for young people it is framed with
64:30 - 65:00 regard to issues of equity that I think we is always underappreciated you know most most of the time you say when one uses the term equity people immediately think of black and brown kids or people that you know under-resourced but their class issues their gender issues etc you know I was fortunate enough to be in a similar kind of meeting where a colleague who works in rural communities said well the things that you describe as being problematic in urban meetings are
65:00 - 65:30 actually manifesting themselves in our communities as well so there are a lot of dispossessed underserved young people and communities where issues of equity and you know anytime you walk into a room it could be racially homogeneous but there's a lot of variability within that norm based on issues of identity and so for example and so I think that really documenting and laying out and looking at changes over time in those things that we value most I
65:30 - 66:00 think is part of our work and it's a way of celebrating documenting and then broader dissemination of the very good work that's already going on all right thank you all for submitting your questions the first one how do you respond to someone who says anti-racist work is not inclusive of conservative students and Families do you know you want to take that one oh all right okay
66:00 - 66:30 so thank you for asking that question here's a question that I think many of us who do this work receive often and I don't like to see I don't think that that kata me is preservative versus radical then we have the ground ourselves in the Beloved Community and understand that racism or anti is actually dehumanizing and that the work is actually the economy is dehumanizing versus humanizing and so if we can begin
66:30 - 67:00 to shift the clang guaa Genta racist work on this anti-bias work is allowing people to be to thrive and to be their full selves and to be authentic and to be safe in there true miss that's the work and so I would just say we're just humanizing we're creating the could the greater humanity and the work and allowing people to see each other that's seeing that belonging and that humanity thank you that was a hard one
67:00 - 67:30 another question how can white people of privilege be change agents without reinforcing a savior mentality versus breaking barriers to the empowerment of the oppressed who wants to take that one I'll jump in all right Rob I think that [Music] what what this ultimately is about as Dena has pointed out and has been
67:30 - 68:00 reiterated over and over again is about humanization like humanizing of ourselves now certainly you know power privilege disenfranchise those are real those are real they're real and they're felt very deeply by an increasing number of American citizens regardless of their complexion and so people who have resources who have access can be helpful
68:00 - 68:30 simply by a doing that inner work and recognizing the privilege but then also figuring out ways of providing access and sharing those resources in ways that allow those furthest from opportunity to experience some opportunity such that they realize their talents and interests yeah when we when we talk about the work of equity we're talking about redistributing resources so that there's greater fairness and so I think the reason why we're still talking about
68:30 - 69:00 equity and not about liberation is gonna be having gone we haven't gotten equity yet because in order for equity happen we all of us need to be willing to give something up we need to be willing to give up our comfort we need to be willing to give up our seat at that Ivy League school we need to be willing to get out the way and too often we're so focused on hoarding and that's mine and I worked for it and they're from not sharing it equity is about redistributing resources so that the outcomes are different and seeing the common humanity in each
69:00 - 69:30 other so again I always ask folks what are you willing to give up I can chime in real quick - yeah you know I think it's important to kind of reference some of the positive psychology literature that looks at you know a few different approaches to happiness you know there's one definition of happiness centered around pleasure you know folks who like to feel good no matter the cost you know drink the drink be the center of attention maybe spend a little bit too much money if you look at
69:30 - 70:00 the construct of fulfillment it's pretty low for people who define happiness in this way and then there's the path that's more centered on achievement right folks who know how to set in achieve positive goals and you know maybe they graduate high school in college and get married and had 2.5 kids with a house with a white picket fence I don't know how you have 2.5 kids but evidently you can't and that fulfillment level is just a little higher than folks on the track to you know pleasure then
70:00 - 70:30 there's this other track which is the track of people who define happiness as far as living for something larger than yourself trying to leave a legacy trying to have an impact and when you look at the level of fulfillment for people on this track it's the highest right and so when we talk about this inner being when we talk about what's happening with equity right now nationally and internationally this is a huge opportunity for people who have
70:30 - 71:00 privilege to experience a significant amount of fulfillment their liberation and empowerment is bound up with the liberation and empowerment of people who are on the other side of this quote-unquote achievement gap and we got to remember as we talk about the achievement gap we oftentimes frame and talk about the black and brown youth but if we look for a second at the youth that we want to compare the black and brown brown folks to some of these youth
71:00 - 71:30 have gone off to Ivy League colleges some of these youth have gotten jobs at blue chip corporations on Wall Street some of these people have had in their minds that they're now gonna you know make money for their stakeholders no matter what the cost is even if they have to come up with balloon interest rates and subprime mortgages and bankrupt the whole world and so I think what Roger and others you know we're talking about in the future of SEL is we have to redefine success we
71:30 - 72:00 have to redefine happiness we have to redefine the purpose of what education is in the 21st century and this is about all of us getting free I mean the truth is the majority of our education system continues to be led and taught by white folks and so we really need our white folks to step up and really take responsibility for their own inner work
72:00 - 72:30 and journey I think too often what I've experienced is like folks of color end up being responsible for educating right why why was that n-word I said bad like he explained more you know why did this thing I did like harm those students and I think we all need to take our own personal responsibility for doing that I put up a white a book called bright fragility how many of you have read it looked at it okay well we need everybody 100% of you to raise your hand next year
72:30 - 73:00 it's a great it's a great book I think especially speaks to folks in education because we we are good folks and being racist and naming your own racism and privilege doesn't make you bad right that's just a reality of the of the world we swim in so I think that's a great resource every day feminism if you're not into books you like shorter articles like myself everyday feminism is a great way to see the intersectionality of race and identity of gender etc so I'd recommend that and I saw a lot of really great trainers at
73:00 - 73:30 this conference around the topic of racial equity for those who are trainers for for this topic I really push you all to work hand in hand with folks of color who've been doing racial justice and racial equity for a long time so that you can make sure you aren't causing further harm in this field okay we have time for just one more question and I'm gonna direct it to you so maybe you can do a two-part answer okay
73:30 - 74:00 Mina I'm gonna direct this one to you given your experience in the Oakland School District how do you leverage support for the importance of SEL and equity in a school district where it isn't seen as a priority from the top all right well I'm gonna answer that question first I just wanted to say that you know in our program we actually had racial affinity groups and we had white affinity groups and it's very very important white folks to come together and talk with each other and have a safe
74:00 - 74:30 space for them to talk with each other that being said you know we talk a lot about safe spaces we need to be able to come back together and use our SEL skills in a brave space to move through that discomfort so we can actually build a Beloved Community and with respect to this question one of the first things that come to mind for me is I think so often we have this sense of like well the superintendent isn't bought in so there's no way what
74:30 - 75:00 about the Union there are more teachers in school districts than there are you know leaders and so I think really looking at the importance of that we all have power throughout the system so often we think it's just the superintendent or central office and so the Union and students you know students ultimately mean to be driving the direction that we're going in right thank you
75:00 - 75:30 [Applause]