Reboot: Affirming Strengths and Identities with Dr. Frank Harris

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

educators, talk, teachers, students, work, schools, conversations, ways, learning, color, experience, education, people, learner, microaggression, question, educator preparation, black

SPEAKERS

Frank Harris, Joi Patterson, Amy Vujaklija

Frank Harris: 00:03

We have to help educators recognize that they need to communicate in a way that lets learners know there is trust. There is mutual respect, there is authentic care.

Amy Vujaklija: 00:14

This episode was originally released under the podcast titled teaching and learning theory versus practice. This rebooted episode has been migrated to teaching and leading with Dr. Amy and Dr. Joi. I am Dr. Amy Vujaklija, Director of educator preparation.

Joi Patterson: 00:35

And I am Dr. Joi Patterson, Chief Diversity Officer. Our podcast addresses issues through the lens of diversity, equity and inclusion, along with solutions for us to grow as educators.

Amy Vujaklija: 00:51

So join us on our journey to become better teachers and leaders. So let's get into it. Good morning Dr. Joi.

Joi Patterson: 00:59

Good morning, Dr. Amy, I'm feeling tired. I don't I'm probably not looking my normal, happy self. Because I'm feeling tired. And I'm feeling I'm tired about talking about like equity and education, we always go there. And we're going to talk about equity and education today. And I don't mean tired in the sense. Like, it's really important that we're having these conversations, Amy and we have them often we're going to continue to have these conversations until there's no need to talk about it anymore. And that says I'm not tired. I like having the conversations is these are important conversations, but I'm exhausted that we have to have these conversations. So maybe it's just me, I'm a little emotional this morning, that we have to have these conversations. Let me tell you kind of where are those resonates from and I'll try not to be emotional. So on Sunday, my daughter and her family, they came over for breakfast. And this is something that they often do. And you know my daughter, she's a third grade teacher. She's married to a police officer. And they have three beautiful, bright children. And so we were having a conversation about my grandson, he's nine years old, his hairstyle, which I get really, really crazy about. So every time it's time to go to the barber, I know I even have their barbers telephone number because I text a barber to tell him how I want him to cut my grandson's hair, which they totally disregard anything that I have to say. In short, in my opinion, his hair is just out of control. It's too long. It's not grown well enough for me, my daughter think it just needs to be really, she likes to lined up and neatness. But I think it's just too long and out of control. And their opinion. They think it's just the hairstyle of black man today. But here's my concern, Amy, and this dates me and it goes back. We talked about my husband, he used to work in the Pullman School District in Chicago, the school district itself very poor, like all the students 100%, free reduced lunch. And on Fridays, he used to cut hair, you would take 10 to 12 Boys every Friday and cut their hair. And then he would bring their uniform shirts home, and we would wash them over the weekend. So that they would have clean shirts for that next week. Because appearance makes a big difference in learning. And people treat you accordingly. Whether they know it or not, people do treat you differently. And so my fear is, is that my grandpa who was extremely, extremely bright. He will be treated differently by his teachers, he goes to a school where there's 100% white teachers, all white females, which is not uncommon, right. So that's pretty common school population is maybe 75% white students. 25% are made up of black and Latino. I want him to be non threatening, and that's bad on me. So this is bad on me that when I look at his hairstyle, and I want him to change his hairstyle, because I want him to pick up here to be as non threatening as possible, and as appealing as possible. So he can benefit from the same things as his white counterparts. Now this is bad on me. But I guess this comes out of my personal racial trauma, and things that I've experienced things that I've seen. And when you start getting personal and talking about your children, it feels different when you're talking about everyone else. So

Amy Vujaklija: 04:44

being an advocate for children for our children, often positions us to make specific decisions. When my children were in that same grade level that I was teaching I could See the class through their eyes. But otherwise, I didn't know what my students were experiencing. But when we're advocating for our own children, it gives us a different passion. When we see our children or grandchildren coming through the ranks, and we, we know best practices, you and I try to teach best practices. And if we don't know them, we bring people on the show that can help us. Or we learn, we watch we observe, so that we can then pass along that knowledge to our candidates who are going to be teaching. We don't know if we don't ask and have these conversations, we can make change with what we're seeing in our own children, neurone grandchildren, if we don't talk about it. Right.

Joi Patterson: 05:51

And you know, and that's time I look forward to having these conversations. But this morning was a little tough for me. And because it really hit home. And so we'll continue to have these conversations again until we don't need to have them anymore. So I'm looking forward to today's discussion.

Amy Vujaklija: 06:08

And I want to welcome Dr. Frank Harris to our show. Today. He is a professor of post secondary education and co director of the community college equity assessment lab at San Diego State University. He is best known for his expertise in racial inequity in post secondary education, and has made important contributions to knowledge about college student development and social construction of gender and race in college context. And I see a lot of application to all grade levels with our conversation, his work prioritizes populations that have been historically under represented and underserved in Education. Welcome, Dr. Harris.

Frank Harris: 06:59

Thank you, Dr. Amy,

Joi Patterson: 07:00

I'm just wanting to hear your perspective. And maybe you can tell us about your personal K 12 experience and how it's influenced your thinking, what were you thinking when we were having this conversation?

Frank Harris: 07:12

While I was listening and learning and that's, that's, that's the wonderful thing about having opportunities dialogue like this is that it's not the same as reading a book, it's not necessarily the same as reading a research article, or a research report. But there's a lot of learning that that can emerge from our own lived experiences, especially when we can be in dialogue with another colleague, who can help bring some perspective and so forth. And so I appreciate it that way. I know it's a difficult conversation for you, Dr. Joi, because whenever we're talking about our babies, it does get personal. But what I really, really appreciated this is a point that Dr. Amy made in response is that it really starts with how we prepare educators to work with students. So we know we all we all have to work on, we all have implicit bias. We all have unconscious bias. We know that our children of color, particularly our our black boys, really feel the brunt of that, from our educators, especially in our white educators who made maybe less enlightened, less understanding, or less affirming when it comes to black identities. So I think just just watching the dialogue, watching you, Dr. Joi, talk about something that was very personal. And then having Dr. Amy talk about kind of the larger practical implications of that was, it was good to see and observe. With regard to my experience, Dr. Joi, my K 12 experience was very different than your grandsons. My I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and the Ninth Ward in particular, which is a very community that was very under resourced, with schools that were very under resource, but the schools were were like 100%, black, both the students and the teachers. And so even though we didn't have a lot in terms of resources, the one thing that we had was we knew that every teacher who was there, believed in us and poured everything that they could into us, right. So it was there was a real personal investment. I think the benefit of that is that you didn't question what they were about. You didn't question what their motivations were, you didn't question what they thought of you. Right? Now, you may have questions, some other things. But it was never the connection, the cultural connection and a personal connection was never there. Because sometimes your teacher was the same person who went to middle school, but you're on or what your mom or what your dad is. So there were all these real close ties, right? You weren't just a teacher who came from across town and became the teacher the night before, you know more often than not you live there, you grew up there, you You did your grocery shopping there, your church was there. And so there was a real there were all these connections that I think really impacted the teaching and learning experience for both students. And for educators in those schools. I do believe that it made a difference and continues to make a difference. Like it can build your confidence. As a young learner, it can affirm your identity as a young learner, it can help you in some ways avoid deficit narratives, although I'm sure there were deficit narratives. But I didn't necessarily feel that in the way that I often hear about it and read about it today.

Amy Vujaklija: 10:41

You said, affirming, and that's such a powerful word. I think it's so different from the word tolerance, or even acceptance. Those are more passive terms, I think, but affirmation of one's identity is becoming an ally. And those that's another word that I think is really important and has a very different feel to it. What are some experiences that you or your children had that were affirming? of maybe there are some specific things that you can reference that we can then take away and realize that we can put those practices at work?

Frank Harris: 11:31

Yeah, good question. Dr. Amy affirming it's, I mean, it's, it kind of requires two things, right? First, you have to see whatever it is you're trying to affirm, you have to recognize it as a strength. Right. So that's, that's step one. And step two, you also have to recognize that it's a strength that needs to be leveraged and cultivated. And then once that happens, it's like, it's like a snowball that rose from from the top of the mountain, right? You continue to get build momentum, and it becomes bigger, it becomes more powerful, it becomes more salient in your experience. So even the things we talk about having an educator, say to a student, I believe in you, I believe you can be successful, I'm here for you. Right, you are smart, right? You're brilliant. I really love the way that you unpack this concept. But I really love this essay you wrote, I really love the ways in which you recited that poem or that speech. It's these, these seemingly small interactions may be small for us as adults as educators. But for a learner, they can be very powerful. Because whether we realize it or not, as educators, what we say, and how we communicate with students, and the relationships that we have with them mean a lot for students. And far too often, for our children of color, our children who have been historically marginalized in education, or who've experienced education is trauma, the interactions that that often happen are ones that, that lets the learner know that this educator doesn't believe in me or doesn't think I'm smarter doesn't think I'm successful, the effects of that can be pretty powerful. I go back to my early education experiences, and having teachers who look like me, having teachers who, who recognize that I did have something to contribute, that I was smart, and actually actively communicated those things, was really important. And they would also think that does as you grow as a learner, right, so as you transition, say, from elementary school, to middle school, and from middle school, to high school, and so forth, it gives you a certain sense of confidence that in some ways, it kind of becomes a little bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. But when you have that confidence, and you're able to engage in these learning spaces with the confidence, then it makes it easier, I think, for the educator, to recognize your strength to see it as something that could be leveraged. And then you sort of get that that feedback that makes you more confident, if that makes sense. And so, but we don't, we don't talk about it enough. We tend to really think about teaching. And I should broaden that to even educating students because it's not just what happens in the classroom. We think about these as very transactional experiences, and very technical experiences. And part of that is the training. Right? All three of us were professors and colleges of education. So I think we have a role to play in how we prepare educators. But we really have to think about it as a relational experience a relationship between the learner and between the educator if we really want to shift the way in which you know, shift some of the trends and concerns that we have, and

Joi Patterson: 14:50

my upbringing was very different than yours. I didn't see my first minority teacher until I was in grad school. And so When you talk about that experience, and being affirmed, and the teachers and my husband is really good at that, it's giving just so many accolades to his students and his beautiful queens and his beautiful kings, and all of those things, and how important that is, I talked about the fact that I didn't have that growing up, you can't be what you can't see, I didn't know that I could even be a teacher, because I didn't know that blacks could be teachers. That's not something that I saw. But to hear you talk about it from that different angle. It really impacts learning, and people that believe in you. And it's so very important. So I know, we're not going to talk about teacher shortage today. But it does just hit on the fact of how very important it is that we get minority teachers in the classroom. Right now, there's about almost 20% of our student population is black and 7% of teachers are black. And there's this huge disparity. And when we talk about teachers that are leaving the classroom, most of them that leave the classroom are black teachers. So we have a huge problem there. And that's a whole nother conversation that we can have, because it's important, it gets us to where we need to be if we can increase the number of teachers that look like the students, but you made a statement. And something that you wrote, We must change the ways we approach African American youth. And the ways we teach them. What is the short answer about what's wrong with the approach and how we should approach this differently?

Frank Harris: 16:45

I think we started talking about one aspect of it is really seeing them through an asset base affirming lens, right. So, so much of the narrative about black kids, is through this deficit perspective of what they like, what they don't have, what they're not capable of, or so forth, right. And we got to shift the narrative to be in it to be more strengths. I keep saying strength base, some scholars talk about cultural and community wealth. And they talk about all of the assets that emerged from communities of color that are often unrecognized and not acknowledged within the sphere of education. So we got it, we have to do a better job of that. The second thing I think we have to do, where we have a lot of work to do. And this is across the entire pipeline, whether we're talking about pre K, through elementary school, even through post secondary education, is we have a curriculum that doesn't acknowledge the contributions of black authors, black scholars, black researchers, black contributors, our kids don't really see positive representations of themselves, in what they're learning. A lot of what they're learning is not connected to their lived experiences, either, right? So I think we have a lot of work to do there. The three of us, we know changing curriculum is both political and bureaucratic. It's just challenging for so many ways. And a lot of that is because the narrative about what is important and what's valuable, and what students need to know, a lot of that is rooted in a white supremacist perspective. And so when you're talking about changing it, by default, you're challenging white supremacy, which is always difficult, right. But those are two ways where I think we can really, really focus our efforts and some attention to ways we can really see some positive positive trends both in success, but also in how our kids experience and feel about their educational experiences.

Joi Patterson: 19:05

So I want to follow up on that, because we are in the process of adding culturally responsive teaching and leading standards to our educator programs, all 18 of them. And this was a fight, actually, we thought it was a done deal at the state level, that the standards and there's a lot of standards are going to be implemented. And we now have to revise our curriculum. And we think that it's going to have some value and preparing teachers, and then it was under fire. And there was all of this discussion about trying to take away our whiteness by adding these culturally responsive teaching and leading standards. So in your opinion, do you think that adding the standards, is it a good start to make educators more conscious? And then what should we be doing as a A educator preparation program to go further.

Frank Harris: 20:03

Yeah, good question. By the way, I'm not surprised that it was a fight whenever you're trying to change something, particularly something that's been around for a long time, it always seems to be. But to your question, Dr. Joy, is it a good start? Yes, of course. Right, I think it's probably one of several things we need to do. And we do need to talk about educator preparation and training programs, both pre service programs, and the training that happens once a teacher has been certified as a teacher as an educator. But in addition to that, I think we have to start thinking about the criteria we use to screen candidates who want to go into the education profession, what information can we get? What are some ways in which we can assess hearts and minds and dispositions before someone who is admitted into a program, and they're making their way through it, they're passing the classes, they complete their thesis, and they're confirmed as an educator, I think we have to start asking candidates to demonstrate provide some evidence that they have the type of dispositions that we might

Joi Patterson: 21:14

say assess their position prior to. Yeah,

Frank Harris: 21:18

you know, so. And it's provide some evidence of that. So talk to us about what was your undergraduate experience? What were some of the things you were involved in from a student leadership perspective? If that's what you do? Or if you're coming from the workforce? What were some things you were involved in, in your prior profession? That tells us you have both the willingness and the interest and the disposition to work with students right to work with diverse students, asking folks for concrete examples? Right? Of course, we're not saying you have to be you have to have it all figured out before, right. That's not what we're asking. But we do want to know that there's some level of commitment.

Joi Patterson: 22:01

Right? And they have a propensity to. Yes, right.

Frank Harris: 22:05

I think we have to start there. I also think we have to continue to do this type of assessment while the candidate is enrolled. And letting them know that just because you're in doesn't mean that you're automatically going to get through right, there's still some, we still need to see some growth, we still need to see some commitment to build further building your capacity. while you're a student. Once we credential someone, or once someone has a degree, it's kind of too late at that point, we can hope that something happens in their professional experience that motivates them to continue to grow or motivates them to grow and change. But we have no control once they've crossed the stage.

Amy Vujaklija: 22:48

With this level of quality you want to bring quality candidates in. But we still see a disparity and a different quality shift when we're talking about urban suburban rural schools, or is that imaginary? Is there a difference in where people are seeking jobs? Who's being hired in the different types of schools, urban, suburban, rural? Are the students in those schools, getting teachers who affirm their learning experiences, and affirm them as individuals?

Frank Harris: 23:29

Wow, big question. Dr. Amy, I think there's some assumptions that are often that often make that are unstated, but like the assumption is that for urban schools, right, like CPS, Chicago Public Schools, right, big urban district serves primarily kids of color. There's an assumption that that's where all the minority teachers go. And that's where all the new teachers go. And the minority teachers is supposed to stay there and a new teachers, new teachers who are not minority minoritized teachers are supposed to kind of go and get their get some experience there. And they may go on to a white suburban better resource district. That's, that's kind of what happens across our country. Right. And do I think that's the way it should be? Absolutely not. I, I think we have to have a better way of just like we talked about screening candidates as they come in, we have to also have a better way of placing folks and so much of what happens with regard to hiring at the district level and at the school level, a lot of that, depending on the size of the district. Some of it could be controlled at the school sites, by the principal's by the leadership at the school sites. So oftentimes is the case. You know, in many contexts, the idea is that you end up hiring people who look like you who share your values, and who simply just who aren't going to disrupt the culture, who aren't going to Change what we've already been doing. And we know whether we're talking about large urban districts, or suburban districts, that there's a lot that has to change for, you know, minoritized kids, if there's not a recognition that they're changing, we don't sort of talk about how does hiring and staffing come into play, we tend to continue to get a lot of what we've gotten, what

Amy Vujaklija: 25:24

you're saying about disrupting culture, I think we all need a shake up. refining our ideas. And what's always been doesn't have to be always been. And whenever you spoke at Governor State University, and you've since returned to webinar and featured speaker series, or keynote speaker, you talked about distrust, disdain, and disregard and how we need to shake that up disrupt that culture. Could you speak a little bit about the three Ds?

Frank Harris: 26:08

Yeah, the 3d effect is a framework that my colleague, Dr. J. Luke Wood, and I develop, and it really emerged out of our work on racial microaggressions. So a couple of years ago, we really started to look a little bit more closely and intentionally at racial microaggressions. And how they impact the the experiences of children and educators of color in schools and colleges and universities and so forth. And so we talk about distrust, disdain, and disregard. The first deep distrust relates to a common microaggression that's experienced by people of color, caught an assumption of criminality, and the idea that people of color come or are associated with being thugs, we're being deviance and we're being criminals. And sometimes it's about the they're perceived through this criminalized, threatening lens. That's one aspect of it. But another aspect of it is that these folks are always looking to cheat, steal, or game the system, right. So when you have an educator, who is afraid to engage a black boy, right, because of the inherent fear, right, there's this this, this sort of a physical aspect of it. But there's also the same educator who might look a little more closely and more intensely, at the kids of color during an exam that makes sure they don't cheat on the exam, right? Because they're more like, so that's, that's where that comes from. The second one, this Dane relates to what we call pathologizing culture. And pathologizing culture is the racial microaggression. That says that people of color come from families and communities that don't value education, or they have a cultural orientation, that's not aligned with and it's completely disconnected with what's necessary to be successful in education. Right, so talk about this, this cultural mismatch, or this disconnect, or when we talk about educators of color that educators of color are not value added to an educational enterprise. And then you have disregard, which is about the third microaggression, which we call a description of intelligence. And that's based on the assumption that people of color are less less capable, not as smart, not as intelligent as others. And so the 3d effect often comes into play. And obviously, you can talk about how each of these are somehow connected or related to each other. But they really aligned with the three most common microaggressions racial microaggressions that are experienced by people of color in educational spaces. And

Joi Patterson: 28:53

we are talking to Dr. Frank Harris, the third about education equity, and these important three B's distrust, disdain and disregard. And I have a question for you. So we talked about it, Governor State University, we're implementing these culturally responsive teaching and leading standards. And so I'm just wondering how we get to that next phase that you talk about, for that next generation of teachers, which is our hope that we can have trust, mutual respect and care. Can you talk about that?

Frank Harris: 29:32

Yeah, of course, trust, mutual respect and authentic care. So we say that those three conditions are necessary in a relationship between the student and an educator, right? So the student has to believe that the educators if you're working with this mutual trust, I can trust you but you can also trust me. You can see me as as a learner, I'm primarily a learner, but you can also see me as someone who You can learn from as well. So we don't. That's I think one of the best kept secret in education is that as educators, we are if we're open to it, we can learn as much from our students as they can from us.

Amy Vujaklija: 30:12

Absolutely. Yeah. Every semester

Frank Harris: 30:16

apps, right, yeah, if we create the conditions for it to happen, right. So trust, mutual respect, again, is that I have to respect you, I have to respect your lived experiences, I have to have some appreciation for who you are, as an individual trust, and authentic care, authentic care is that I have to, I have to not just care about you in a casual sense. But I have to really be personally invested in you and in your success. As a student, I'm

Joi Patterson: 30:44

just really interested in how we get to that next level, because we find ourselves in these three these, right? We're trying to get ourselves to this level that we're talking about of trust, mutual respect, and care, because that's where the connection takes place. And that's where actually learning takes place. You know, when we talk even about Maslow and that hierarchy, this gets into that I have to feel like I'm in my safe place, I have to feel like you care about me, I have to feel like you love me, in order to break down some barriers in order to to be open enough to learn. I really think students have to be ready to learn, there's a readiness to learn. And readiness to learn takes a lot of different forms, not just cognitive. But it also takes form and safety and security, of being ready to learn so that that teacher can reach you. And I'm just really interested in how we logistically get to that next step of trust, mutual respect and care.

Frank Harris: 31:48

When you talk about readiness to learn, Dr. Joi, what I was thinking was yes, that that is absolutely true. But educators have to create the conditions for students, correct, we all have to be ready, at least that classroom, that program, whatever it isn't, that educator has some control over it. So much of it is about what we've talked about earlier, is that there needs to be a recognition that those things are important. There first needs to be a recognition that the 3D effect is real, and that whether we recognize it or not, as educators that it happens, a part of why it happens is because it's it relates to how we are socialized as people, and how we're socialized as educators, that's part of it. But also is the recognition that trust, mutual respect, that authentic care, in some ways, allows us or builds our capacity to counter 3d effect. Right? I actually, I've been talking about these these things for a long time. And I never it till you mentioned it Dr. Joy talked about how they related intersect with each other in very, some very clear ways, right, which is why I love conversations about this, I always come away learning something new. But then it's we have to help educators recognize that they need to communicate in a way that lets learners know there is trust, there is mutual respect, there is authentic care. So you have to think about what are the things that you can do as an educator, that let your students know that. So we, we started this conversation, talking about affirming learners identities and affirming their strengths. But I think those same those same ideas, also speak to trust, mutual respect, and authentic care. Because when you affirm someone, and when you really take the time to identify and leverage their strengths, it does speak to a level of caring, it does speak to a level of wanting to build a relationship with the learner that is grounded in mutual respect. So I think it's it's again, it's like so much of what we've talked about, is helping educators recognize the importance of these concepts, and these practices that are completely disconnected from anything that they learned formally, and giving them some tools and resources and models for how to do it. So I think sometimes we don't we don't talk about this enough, right? We don't do this enough. We don't identify the educators in our schools or in our colleges, institutions, wherever it may be that are already doing some of these things, and that that are very good at it and that are getting good success outcomes. And so that bringing them into the conversation to talk about okay, well, how do you how do you do this? Give us some examples. What are some things you've developed on your own, which we know there's a lot of innovation that happens in these spaces that can be shared and scale with other with your colleagues? Right,

Joi Patterson: 34:47

right. And I want to give accolades to Amy because this is one of the things that she does in her program. We intentionally work with Title One schools and urban schools because the majority We have our teachers, our white female, we had to really logistic way of putting it in our program intentionally where you would have these experiences of working with people with different needs abilities, and people that don't look like you and didn't grow up like you. And we have to be real intentional about giving educators these types of experiences.

Amy Vujaklija: 35:28

And it's not just being in a space, being in a classroom or having proximity to students. It's about intentionally placing candidates with mentor teachers, like Dr. Harris is saying there are people in the college people in K 12 schools who are doing great work, who know how to make meaningful connections with students. It's in their nature, they are naturally authentic individuals who demonstrate care to their students. Those are the mentor teachers that we need for our candidates. Because just placing in a school isn't enough, you have to have those models as well. And also recognizing that there are people in the school who can be those leaders who can step forward and help other teachers have a team or professional development and ongoing workshops. It what would you say to how people can become those leaders in either their college divisions, departments or in a K 12? School? How can they step forward? Or what can administrators do to tap on some people to bring them to the forefront in their work with equity?

Frank Harris: 36:56

Yeah, good question, Dr. Amy, because oftentimes, I find that these are the folks who they would rather not strike, they don't want to be the person on stage, they don't want to be the person that's sort of leading the conversation, they would rather be in their program in their classrooms, kind of just working with the students. And so sometimes it can be very difficult to get them to sort of come out of that space. Like, you're gonna have to spend less time with my kids who really need me and who I who I learned from as well and attend more meetings and do all these other stuff, right? So I think we have to think about how do we reduce their low in some other ways, that allows them to still continue to be where they ultimately feel a sense of purpose. And that is, by and large, you know, we're talking about a K 12 school, in the classroom, with their kids, but also incentivize it in some ways, right? And thinking about are there some you know, is it reduced course load? Can we can we provide some stipends? Are there some ways in which we can compensate folks for their labor, right for the cause? This is additional work. It's, as you all know, yeah. When you take on a mentee, or when you take on pre service teacher, it's more work. And it takes away from other things. And so I think we, a lot of one thing we do pretty well in education, is that we just sort of we just sort of rely on people's heart and just to do more without any real compensation for that. And that's where that's that's how we ended up with Bernie being burnt out.

Joi Patterson: 38:37

Yeah, no accountability and things fall through the cracks. That's a whole nother conversation that we have to have you back for and invite you back to Governor state. I know time is going but I do we want to talk about something important. Can you talk more about race lighting, as a framework for understanding the process by which interpersonal racism leads black indigenous people of color? to question their realities and sanity? I want to hear more about race lighting. This isn't Yeah, this is new.

Frank Harris: 39:07

This is Yeah, another new concept that Luke and I develop. So we've all heard of the concept of gaslighting, which I think is becoming much more prominent in our popular discourse. So for those who may be unfamiliar, gaslighting is this idea that we're you, you identify that there's a problem or someone steps up and speaks up and says, Hey, there's an issue, there's a problem here. And in response to the problem, someone directs and calls attention to something else that has nothing to do with the original problem to begin with, right? So there it is a sense of misdirection, or, you know, not focusing on the core of what the issue is. And so when we put gaslighting in a racial context, we often talk about it through the lens of of professionals and educators of color. So let's talk about A teacher, for example. And let's say that a teacher is micro aggressed by one of her colleagues. And that teacher brings it to the, you know, say, hey, you know what, what you said to me was not that was racially insensitive, that was a racial microaggression, you do realize that what you said was wrong and inappropriate. And a response instead of that colleague saying, hey, well, you know, I didn't realize that's, that's what I was doing. You're right, I apologize, you know, I need to, I need to do a better job of that. They accuse that person of There you go again, right, you're being overly sensitive, or you're mischaracterizing me, or you're mischaracterizing my words, or you bring in this race thing to my attention. It's only further sowing, sowing racial division, when that is often the response, especially if it comes from someone who may have more status or who may be in a position of authority, then what often happens is it leaves you to question yourself, or wow, maybe maybe I was the problem. Maybe I didn't think I heard what I heard. Maybe I am being overly sensitive. Or maybe I am not that I'm not that good of a good of a teachers I thought I was. And when you deal with that over and over and over again, you really do start to question Did I experience what I thought I would expect, you really start to question things that you know, you experienced, right, you really start to question authentic feelings that you have. And then we say the consequence of that is that ultimately, it erodes your sense of a sense of self, your sense of worth in that space, and ultimately has an impact on your performance as an educator. So

Amy Vujaklija: 41:39

not only do we need to be affirming with our students, and build trust, and mutual respect, and care with our students, we need to be developing those same relationships with our colleagues. We can't move forward, and we can't address issues and educate our students without having our team. Right. And we are a team. And we need to treat each other as such, we are on the same team.

Joi Patterson: 42:10

Well, this was helpful. I mean, if you think about where we started this conversation today, this was helpful. See, I'm in a much better place than I was at the beginning, because these are really important conversations that again, I can't wait till we don't have to have these conversations again, and we can switch to something else. But these are important conversations to have. I'm really happy about the work that you're doing, Dr. Harris, because it's really important. I can't thank Governor State University enough for bringing you to us to enlighten us. And you know, I'm really encouraged about adding these standards to our curriculum, and the opportunity, not only just to shape educators, but some of our faculty. We have faculty, they've been in the mix for a very, very long time. And so hoping that the results will also impact faculty in the way we think about our students and how we're training the teachers. I'm really looking forward to implementing your framework, your concepts, and other things that you've shared with us.

Frank Harris: 43:25

Thank you, that you, Dr. Joi.

Amy Vujaklija: 43:27

Thank you so much for being with us today. It's been like Joyce said, very enlightening, and I hope our listeners have a lot of information that they can take away. And I want everyone to think about trust and mutual respect and care in the classroom and out. I appreciate you taking the time. It's early, where you are a pleasure having you with us today. Yeah,

Frank Harris: 43:54

thank you. Thank you, Dr. Amy. It's been a pleasure. I couldn't think of a better way to start my day. I really enjoyed this. And I just appreciate the work that the two of you are doing and the leadership you're exhibiting and providing this, this is an important resource for all of us. So I thank you and thank you for it. I hope the listeners find it value added in one way or another. And I look forward to hearing more.

Joi Patterson: 44:19

Yeah, we got a couple more conversations.

Frank Harris: 44:24

Anytime.

Amy Vujaklija: 44:26

Thank you for listening to teaching and leading let's Dr. Amy and Dr. Joy. Visit our website at govst.edu/teaching and leading podcast to see the show notes from this episode.

Joi Patterson: 44:43

We appreciate Governor State University's work behind the things to make publishing possible. Stay tuned for more episodes with Dr. Amy and Dr. Joi