Build a New Future: Teaching Action and Coalition Building

Speaker 1 Hello, and welcome to episode 82 of our podcast at Human Restoration Project. My name is Chris McNutt, and I'm a high school digital media instructor from Ohio. Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that this is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Paul Kim, Dan Kierney, and Connie Fletcher. Thank you for your ongoing support. You can learn more about the Human Restoration Project and support us on our website, humanrestorationproject.org, or find us on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. Further, you can find many of these podcasts live just by following our social media. Be sure to check it out. I'm joined today by Nick Covington, also from HRP, and doctor Kevin Gannon. Doctor Kevin Gannon is the director of the Center of for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and a professor of history at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, and author of Radical Hope, a Teaching Manifesto. Further, Gannon actively writes and teaches on the science of learning, racism and race in education, and building an inclusivity online and offline. You can learn more on his website, tattooedprofessor.com, and on Twitter at the tattooed professor. Welcome to the podcast, Kevin. Great. Thank you for having me here. Really, it's I'm delighted to be with you all. Of course. Of course. And I I figured our conversation today will center on teaching organization and collective activism. As we find ourselves at this crossroads here, we have an administrative shift to new policies. Teachers will be at the whim of new federal and probably state policies that will have massive ramifications on classrooms, given what's going on with COVID nineteen. And I hope that out of this conversation that we're having today, we'll be able to address what should I be concerned about, what problems might exist, and then what can I actually do to mitigate those problems and demand better, demand a more, equitable education system? So I figure we'll start off with this first question. We'll see where the conversation takes us, and, we'll see where we end up. As the new administration enters the White House, there are plenty of unknowns about the education system. And as we shift from policies like America First, American exceptionalism, like an anti critical race theory, and toward more COVID centric policies,

Speaker 2 what's your hope for the new policies, especially given that in the previous administration, the Obama era, we had test reform, race to the top, etcetera? So my hope is, you know, first of all, I think I'm normally against the idea of, you know, the cliche addition by subtraction, but I do think it's valid in this case. Right? I mean, just the the the sense that there will be educators making education policy who are not actively at war with the idea of public education itself. You know, that that may seem like a fairly low bar, and in normal times, it probably is. But I do think, you know, that's not nothing. Right? I think, you know, the it's it's much harder to do this kind of work when the people who are supposed to be your allies are not just in disagreement with you, but in all out hostility against you. So I do think that that shift alone is gonna matter a a pretty good deal in terms of our bandwidth and our emotional capacity. I'm most excited about the idea that, you know, this executive order that bans things like white privilege and critical race theory that has been seized upon, by folks who are just ready to stop talking about those things anyway. You know, once that goes away, although I'm disappointed to see that no one's challenged that legally because it's imminently challengeable in my opinion. But, again, I share your caution in the sense that we can't let our relief over the end of the sort of most explicit form of suck that's out there. You know, just because that's over, that doesn't mean everything gets better. Right? Because as you allude to, you know, in the Obama era, that was not a sustainable, set of conditions for a lot of folks either. I hope that what we're able to do and I have cautious optimism in the sense that our incoming first lady is a community college educator, and community college educators, I think, are well positioned to understand the ways in which, you know, purely metric, purely quantitative measures don't really get at the process of learning, and I'm hoping that we have a much more complicated and nuanced conversation with people who actually are doing this as their vocation. So cautiously optimistic. I think some of the sharpest edges that that we're seeing right now will be blunted somewhat, but I also think it'll be a more amenable climate for us to collaborate and organize as well and that we should seize that opportunity.

Speaker 1 Right. I mean, that makes perfect sense to me. I mean, we'll get to it in a second here, essentially, how we'll demand that. But I think before we get there, Nick, you had a point you wanna add? Yeah. I I mean, I'm worried a little bit about, you know, where are all those great minds from the 1776

Speaker 3 commission gonna go? I I I just worry about the talent that's gonna be lost as a result of, of changing policies in that direction too. So

Speaker 2 Well, as as we're told, you know, merit rises to the top and nothing else should matter in the I in the marketplace of ideas. So I'm sure that these big brain historical thinkers will not be lacking

Speaker 3 for opportunities to shape the discourse if what they say is true. Absolutely. Yeah. It I can't wait to see what kind of think tanks, you know, they all they all join up with and and how they they get the Hoover Institute behind the next the next big thing. So so, anyway, it is it is I mean, on a on a on a side note, it it just seems like as a as a history educator to to history professor here, it's like it's just a huge relief to sort of have that to feel that that boot off the neck in terms of am I going to get in trouble for teaching real history in my classroom? Like, in actually getting kids to critically analyze primary sources in ways that don't always come to friendly conclusions for The United States Of America and, like, recognize that that's part of that's part of what actual history looks like. It doesn't always portray this this wonderful picture the wonderful picture of progress or or let alone greatness, but grappling with those the tension in the ideals of America and and what it means to be an American and and kind of finding our place in there. I don't know if you wanted to speak at all to, like, anything that you had seen. I know, like, the University of Iowa had they they had actually suspended some of their some of their programs, their training programs as a result of that executive order. And I understand too, you know, Grandview being a private

Speaker 2 school, but but, like, did did you run into anything with that at you at the administration level or in your or in your department? I'll say I'm fortunate to be at a place where I'm well supported by the administration and the public facing things that I do, and and that means a lot. Now that being said, you know, I canceled an engagement to which I was contracted with Iowa Western Community College because the president there said that, you know, they would abide by that executive order, and I was supposed to do workshops on inclusive pedagogy, you know, which you know, I've and I wrote an open letter to the president and the the committee who sympathized, you know, with with my stance. They weren't happy about it either. But, you know, I basically said, you know, first of all, this is, you know, clearly a violation of academic freedom and, you know, the First Amendment, oh, by the way. But, also, you know, trying to do inclusive pedagogy without talking about the insights raised by critical race theory or understanding white privilege is like me trying to teach you to swim in a desert. Right? That's just not gonna happen. So I think what that executive order has done, the damage that it's done is it's been seized upon by people who were looking to get rid of that kind of discourse anyway. And this was a gift that fell into their laps. And they said, oh, wow. You know, we're taking federal money. We certainly can't, you know, disobey this executive order, which, you know, to put it, you know, put it mildly, is a load of crap. Right? I mean, it's it you know, it's there are so many and and I'm not gonna belabor the obvious in terms of how imminently legally challengeable that executive order was, but I did I do think what it revealed is an important point in this larger conversation that we're having. Right? Like, yeah, there's a feeling of relief, and, yeah, there's a feeling that we're gonna have allies in things like the Department of Education again, which is nice. But, you know and, Nick, you and I are both in Iowa. So, you know, we you know, there's not everybody's gonna share that vision of what it means to teach history in a true and genuine sense, for example. There are a lot of folks who were totally down with that the spirit of that executive order. And so as we continue to do the work that we're doing, and as we try to do equity and social justice work in particular in our classrooms, in our buildings, in our institutions, there's still gonna be a fair amount of pushback because a lot that has been activated, over the last several years is not gonna go away. And so you know? And, again, I see some folks in the chat who are talking, you know, we need to watch out for complacency. And, absolutely, you know, enjoy the victory for what it is, but also let that motivate us because now I think we have a much clearer idea of just how much damage there is to be undone. Yeah. I'll that's such a great point too. Just that energy

Speaker 3 has to go somewhere. So where is that gonna get dispersed next? And, you know, I just I just finished reading too Jennifer Berkshire and and Jack Schneider's a wolf at the schoolhouse door, which really is. It just unpacks all of the ways in which, you know, the enemies of public education are are just working to apply and leverage that that market logic onto those things. So I joke about the the Hoover institution or something like that, and that is really the next fight is just to be able to maintain our our public institutions against the forces that would unmake them. I was just gonna ask too about if you could unpack for us at all, like, a quick two parter from your book. So I I was wondering if you could just unpack for for our audience here. Like, how would you explain that pedagogy of radical hope to to people who are listening? And then, like, as a as a related question to that, on the spectrum from in the book, you define the classrooms of death versus the classrooms of life. Where do you think we are, you know, six months on from you know, eight months on from the publication of the book? Great questions, both of those. So I'll tackle the first part first. I think how I would explain the idea of radical hope most concisely is that, you know, we really have to be careful about the way that we talk about hope. Right? And I use a quote from,

Speaker 2 in in the book, from hope in the dark. That's such a great essay, where she talks about, you know, hope is not a lottery ticket. Rebecca Solon's quote that, you know, hope is not a lottery ticket that you just sit on the couch and clutch hoping to get lucky. It's an axe with which you break down the door in an emergency. Right? And that that that image of and, of course, you know, the first thing that comes into my head is that scene from The Shining, right, where Jack Nicholson is going through the door. But I you know, that image of, you know, very, you know, dramatic vivid sort of action. Like, hope is a practice. Hope is not a a sentiment. Right? And it's very easy to get into these very airy kinda hallmark card definitions of hope where you basically say, oh, I have hope in the future. And what that so often becomes is, you know, a claim that the future will be better. You know? But when I say I have hope in the future, that's also an offering for me, and now I'm expecting somebody else to actually do the work to bring that better future about. And I think we need to think of hope as, you know, a pedagogy of hope as a pedagogy that's rooted in praxis. Right? That we're putting, we're acknowledging our own theoretical and pedagogical stances and the and the basic tenants that undergird those, and we're putting them into action. And when we put them into action, it's not the big dramatic gesture. It's not a dead poet society, oh, captain, my captain moment. Right? It's the routine stuff that we're doing every day. What kind of learning spaces am I creating online during the pandemic for my students? How am I teaching the students as full and complicated human beings as opposed to just brains on sticks? Right? Am I adopting surveillance technology in the language of cops and enforcement as of for my assessments, or am I thinking in different ways? Right? That's a pedagogy of radical hope has us undergird all of our sort of routine decisions with a sense that this matters and here's why it matters, that I am claiming my agency and making pathways for a better future than what we see here in the status quo. And so I think, you know, now that we're nine months in or whatever, you know, the book came out right as COVID hit, which was kind of a weird vibe. Right? You know? And and thinking about does this does this still work? You know? Is you know, was it here I am. You know? People are like, hey. You wrote a book on hope, and now everything sucks. So, you know, what do you have to say? Right? It's just like, well, you know but I would say yeah. I mean, you know but one thing that's really important is, again, you know, if you think of hope as something substantial, you know, what Freire called an ontological need, right, to inform everything that we're doing, this suffusing of the nooks and crannies of our practice, hope can't be that airy fantasy. Right? Hope without action is fantasy as the old saying goes. Right? And so I think what we have had to do and what folks around us have had to do is, you know, you cannot hide from what COVID has laid bare in our society. We can't you know, for example, you know, with technology and Internet access, for example, we know and we have known for a long time that there are significant, inequities in the way that students are able to access technology, access high speed Internet, and cultural capital, that's necessary for being a successful learner online. Right? We know we knew that those inequities were there, but it was very easy to sort of brush them under the rug when we were doing mostly face to face learning. Well, now we can't run from that anymore, and, you know, those chickens have come home to roost, and we have had to do some, you know, some really significant work to try to bridge those inequities as much as we can. Though that conversation doesn't go away once there's a vaccine. Right? And the the necessity, I think, of, you know, completely unpacking what we're doing and why we're doing it and then owning that why. Right? Like, this stuff isn't just for pandemic teaching. This stuff is for teaching teaching. Right? So when we talk about I'm recognizing the the contingent situations, very precarious situations that some of my students find themselves in, that they are full and complicated human beings, that I am extending them the grace that I want them to extend me. Like, a lot of that has been really spurred by our shift to emergency remote learning, and that's great, but it can't go away. And so what I would say is that, you know, the first thing that we have to do when we have hope is we have to have an unflinching honesty about where we are because we don't know how to get to where we're going if we don't have an understanding of where we are. And if we ignore the sharp edges there because they make us uncomfortable, they make us sad, or they make us guilty, then, you know, our journey's over before it even starts. That's a fantastic point, Kevin. And to recognize,

Speaker 1 Liz in the chat, she says it best. She says, I feel like the pandemic has forced teachers to look at these issues in a way they wouldn't have had absent COVID. This accelerated the effort. And I I think in terms of speaking about a radical hope and bringing in that action piece, now that we're moving into a new administration, it could be argued. Now we now have the room to do activism. As you were alluding to at the very beginning, it's kind of just been fighting idiocy up until this point, not necessarily, like, an an actual space to grow. However, there is a a neoliberal culture. The the left and right both have it, but the left, especially when it comes to educational policy, been heavily focused on ensuring that everyone gets a job, focusing on, quote, unquote, accountability, rigor, all these different buzzwords that tend to mean some kind of a capital based or dehumanized, type classroom. It is, centered on surveillance. What suggestions would you have for educators building in now to 2021

Speaker 2 that they can do to ensure that their classrooms reflect the space that is humanized and reflects the ideas of the book? So I think, again, own your theory and make sure that it suffuses your practice. Right? Like, so much of what we've been doing since March has been reactive that, you know, we just haven't had the bandwidth to really kind of think about systematically what it is we're doing and why we're doing it necessarily. But, you know, now is the time where we really you know, everything teaching is inherently political. You know, it's it's one of those even if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice like Rush sang in their song. Right? So recognizing that, owning your stance, and then finding the people around you who are doing that similar kind of work. None of us can do this alone. Doesn't mean you have to have a, you know, a faculty march out of school one day or so, although that would be rad if it happened, you know, because we all feel with, you know, administrative pressure, community pushback, things like that. So we have to have solidarity with one another. So this may be a case of finding your people. If you're a newer teacher, for example, are there folks who you can have as mentors who are on the same spectrum you are as trying to do this work? And our students are our allies in this. Right? Because we know that, you know, the the things that we associate with critical pedagogy, with humanizing students, with teaching as opposed to hazing. There's a significant amount of learning science research that backs that stuff up. Right? And so we could actually adopt some of the language of the metrics folks and say, oh, yeah. Well, let me talk about evidence based best practices because I got a whole bunch for you that says, basically, Freyre was right. And so now let's talk about Proctorio and why you wanna use it because now I have some research that says that that is actually damaging. And so, you know, we have to one of the things that I'm really concerned about and have been for a while on the higher ed level is assessment, because it's become such a dirty word, because it's become weaponized against us, because it so often focuses on the quantitative measures, which are hard to to use to describe learning by themselves. Right? But assessment at root is simply the story of learning. And so all data has a story behind it. And if we're not telling that story, somebody else is gonna. And so how do we tell the story? So how do we take assessment, for example, and make it a process to talk about the process of learning rather than outcomes on a standardized test? Yeah. How do we take assessment and say, here is compelling evidence of student learning, you know, as a process as opposed to a deliverable? You know? So student metacognitive reflections, longer term work where students check-in at various sidebills, where the process itself, you know, in the case of history, for example, can I show my students thinking historically? Like, the process itself is the outcome. And so how do we use assessment to tell that story of learning? Like, how do our students know they're learning or if they're learning? Right? And how do they you know, it's not just the students know how much they learned. It's do students know if they learned? And if we can't answer those questions very well, then it's time to start rethinking the ways that we do assessment. And I think there's actually very powerful, very liberating potential in doing assessment as a process oriented, much more individualistic and nuanced way of thinking about the story of learning. And even quantitative data then has that story behind it, And so it can't be weaponized against us so much as it is an argument for the type of educational practice that we're after. And I think that's a real area of opportunity that we need to you know, there need to be more faculty in higher ed, and there need more teachers in in k to 12 that are involved in not just assessment, but framing the conversation about assessment and the ends to which it's being used.

Speaker 3 And one thing that I've loved to see the conversation on social media shift probably now more than ever is exactly on that issue because the the answer to the conversations we're having about Proctorio and plagiarism and the surveillance technology is, well, do assessment better. Make your make your assessments cheat proof, basically. That's that's that's what we're saying. I mean and and to your point earlier about that not just humanizes and is better virtual practice, we'll transfer those practices back in the classroom when all of this is done. It's just better practice, period. So it's it's great to see people working together on resolving those issues and pushing back on that narrative of students as plagiarists. Students, you know, that that that, like, Machiavellian view that students will wanna get ahead at every given moment. Well, what if you give them that opportunity to, like, tell their learning narrative and give them a language to do that? Then the points and the grades and those things don't matter as much as students shoring up their own story.

Speaker 2 So I I just love that as a as a narrative to to jump off to. Right. And if we're telling our students, which we are, we're basically telling our students right now that given any opportunity, you're gonna cheat. So we should not be surprised that we're seeing cheating because we are telling students that will that's what we expect of them. And, you know, if you've ever read Jim Lang's book, Cheating Lessons, a great book where he dives into the kind of, you know, the issue of academic integrity and honesty and what drives students to make the choices they do when they go outside of those areas. And, you know, 95% of this is assignment design. You know? So as you said, Nick, do better assessments. Right? Like, is a timed multiple choice test in a fully online asynchronous class really the best way to do assessment? Because I could think of about 99 reasons that it's not. Right? So, you know, that's that's where it is incumbent on us to take control of that conversation because this is an area in which we have control in many ways. Yeah. That that that point you just made around

Speaker 1 the way that hurts relationships is really powerful. We were actually just having a conversation about this yesterday with Naya, who's part of HRP. He's a college student. And he was talking about how his teacher is super nice. They're very respectful. They have engaging lessons. But at the end of the day, he has to log in at his time, like, 2AM and take an exam one on one with a professor and just be watched. And no matter how great you are as a person, if this underlying system makes you feel like you're doing something wrong, that relationship is going to be permanently damaged. And if we can develop humanizing systems that would make it so you would never even think of doing that, then we can build not only a more friendly future, but also a more equitable one. Because we know that all these different things especially hurt those who are most vulnerable and marginalized.

Speaker 2 And I think that that the research certainly reflects that. Well, Sean Michael Morris put it the best. He has a line where he basically says students don't come to college to cheat. They come to college to learn. And so we have to ask our if they're cheating, what went wrong? Right? Like, where did that where did that decision become the imminently rational one to take? And that's where we have to look. Right?

Speaker 1 Yeah. And as we move into then building these different systems, and we spoke briefly there about teacher organizing. You said it'd be cool if people could walk out. What would community organizing look like for teachers? Like, how could you potentially, as a teacher, push back against what's going on in your school without extreme ramification? So I know that, obviously, there's going to be ramification because you're pushing back against the status quo. But at the same time, I don't think most people wanna get fired either. So what what would that look like? That's a great question. You know, the thing about activism, right, is, you know, we all occupy different spaces and different positionalities,

Speaker 2 and so our activism is gonna look different. You know, I get really leery about, like, litmus tests for, like, are you an activist or are you not? Right? Because if I was an adjunct faculty member and a woman of color earlier in my career, my activism's gonna look a hell of a lot different than it does where I'm a white male full professor with tenure and an administrative post. Right? And so we have to be really cognizant about that, not only what we're expecting from ourselves, but what we're expecting from our colleagues too. And so for those of us who are in more secure positions, how do we lift up and and protect the more vulnerable among us? How do we give institutional cover and maybe say the things or do the things out front that, you know, give some space for our other colleagues to be doing these too, but they don't have to be right at the barricades waving the flag with us because it's simply not safe for them to do so. So I think that's one big part of it is realizing, you know, your own positionality, what that brings, and what you can offer other people, and how that's gonna shape, like, your front facing role in terms of your activism. Right? You know, because one thing about being a white male with a loud voice, for example, is, you know, things when I say things, it hits a little differently with white audiences. And when I've challenged some of the audiences that I'm with before, when I do a lot of work on things like equitable teaching, inclusive pedagogy, you know, I've I've I've stopped in the middle of of the workshop that I'm doing, or we put some pretty challenging, you know, almost confrontational things out there in terms of the what the research shows us about the assumptions that we have about our students. And I'll ask the the participants, all of whom are, you know, mostly or most of whom are white. I'll say, now I want you to be really honest. You know, don't tell me. Don't tell anybody else. I'll write up. But right now, if I was a black male, how would what I'm telling you be hitting different than it is? Right? And what does that mean about the all white spaces that we often that those of us who are white often find ourselves in? Because that's where a lot of that work needs to be done too. So I can do that in a way that maybe others cannot, But there are things that I cannot do and should not do in terms of my own personal experience and positionality where I need to seed that platform, where I need to seed that space, where I need to not be taking up the oxygen in space and instead allow others to be able to do that, and then I support them and show solidarity with them. The other thing too is, you know, students and parents, I think, are our biggest potential allies in a lot of this work. You know, parents want their students to learn. Students want to learn. And what we need to be doing is conveying, you know, these are things that are better learning. This makes school better. You know, this gives your children a better opportunity, a more equitable opportunity. You know, we we are not in the business in my classroom of replicating the obstacles that your children are seeing elsewhere in society. But when I take those obstacles away, that makes it you know, it's a new situation and one that's difficult for folks to process. Right? And so, you know, we need to be patient. We need to be collaborative. And and and I'm gonna be transparent in terms of talking about why I'm doing what I'm doing. You know? And grounding that in, you know, I'm not just some touchy feely hippie. Let's all sit around and sing kumbaya. But, you know, hey. I've got research and evidence that suggests that students, you know, are learning better because of x, y, and z. So that's why I'm doing x, y, and z, and here's my citations. Right? Like, if people you know, a lot of times, I think that that sort of language can go a long way in taking some of the sharper edges off a critique because all of a sudden, it establishes a professionalism and a larger scheme instead of, you know, the sense that, like, you know, this teacher's gone rogue or something like that. But that requires us to be current in our fields, and that requires us to be critically reflective practitioners

Speaker 3 of our own pedagogy. And that's a lot of work. I mean, there's no two ways about that. It is. I I mean, I'm going back to our earlier, conversation about, you know, the attacks on, you know, say, race theory. Because when you talk about as thinking and reflective practitioners, that's one of the tools that we're gonna use to examine our own practice. And and part of the attacks on that being, you know, to bring that out of our toolbox of of reflective practice, gonna sort of fracture us into all of these, like you said, hippies wanting to sing Kumbaya instead of connecting to that critical that critical past. And then thinking about my own practice at the high school level too and thinking about how I teach in a mostly white, wealthy, you know, middle class suburb just just north of where you're at, I when I think of equity and I think of the workshops that I've sat in at a national level beforehand, me and you and Chris, we don't look like the average teacher in America today, to your point. I mean, it's a it's a it's a black woman, you know, almost anywhere you go outside of the Midwest, somewhere else in the country. And it's what's ironic is that those are those kinds of classrooms, and and those are the districts that are that are getting that equity teaching and that inclusion training. And it's the white spaces that I teach in that are really resistant to those ideas and are really upholding the status quo. And you frame a beginning part of that book around that twenty seventeen unite the right rally. And it seems it seems so long ago now, but but just how harrowing and haunting those images were, you bringing that dramatically into our role as educators. And I actually like, I I have a quote here because it it's still something that haunts me. You challenge readers by saying, are these the ends we seek in higher education? To put it bluntly, is it possible for a learner to both successfully move through the academic and intellectual spaces of a college or university and march in support of violent white nationalism? And if it's possible, should it be? So I think about those kids that I look out in my in my classroom every single day. And since since I teach in those the in those white suburbs, those are the target audience for those white nationalist recruiters, not the the diverse communities. So I just I wonder there then what would be your hopes for an equitable education system that then socials on centers on this social justice, but also

Speaker 2 attacks the problem at the source, which which are these white suburban status quo communities? What what does that look like? You know? I'm I'm living in that space. It feels so weird to talk about it. Well, and that's the thing. Right? Like, you know, we are in those spaces, and that shapes the the educational spaces and teaching and learning spaces that we're in. Right? Because, really, what this is a problem of is, you know, it's become a cliche now, but it is white fragility as Robin DiAngelo defined it specifically. Right? And it's white backlash. You know, the you're the real racist for having the temerity to talk about race. You know? And to put it, you know, to put it bluntly, that's a load of bullshit. Right? That's an off ramp to a conversation that needs to happen. And and so many times, folks get to take that off ramp because no one calls them on it. Because if we look at it, right, you know, he the metaphor I use a lot is, you know, if you're talking about even if someone says, oh, well, you know, gotta hear all sides and devil's advocate, you know, well, the devil doesn't need an advocate, first of all. But if you're gonna sort of entertain these arguments about, well, why would white supremacists say that, you know, Western culture is inherently superior, blah blah blah? And it's like, look. You would not hire someone to teach your geography class whose first lesson was, here is why the earth is flat. Right? Like, you would not hire somebody in your chemistry department to teach labs where their first lab module is gonna be here. We shall turn lead into gold. Right? You're not gonna hire people who do that. You're not gonna turn on the TV and watch the local weatherman say, I will tell you the weather next week by sacrificing this live goat and reading its entrails as they did in ancient Mesopotamia. Right? We're we would not take that seriously at all because we know that those things are not true. Right? Well, we know that there's no such thing as race as a biologically determined category and then all of the apparatus that goes with that, yet we entertain that. You know, we know that race exists and race matters because it is a socially and historically constructed phenomenon. Right? But we treat it, or I should say many white people treat it as a biological reality, and more importantly, race for them is something that other people have, you know, not themselves. And so until we push back against that in a in a systematic way, we're never gonna be able to do that kind of work. Because the main thing that's standing in the way of racial equity work is white people, and there's a variety of reasons that's the case ranging from sort of a benign ignorance where that can be engaged in conversation all the way to the unite the right marchers. You know? But that that one man that I talked about in that picture, you know, he was a history major. And, know, as a historian, I'm thinking to myself, like, what is this person taking from their history curriculum that they are now deploying in service of white nationalism? Like, can you do that? Sure. You know, should it be possible? No. Right? And so we as instructors or, you know, me as someone who cares about my discipline of history, to me, that's, you know, an all red flags waving, lights going off warning sign that this is where we are. And so the challenge before us then, you know, in particular as white educators is how do we start untying those knots that whiteness is tied so tight, and how do we get people to understand that, you know, there is a way that we can talk about race and racism? And we have to understand that, you know, when we talk about arguments that come out of a white supremacist framework, intellectuals that have been with us for decades and even centuries, that, you know, objectively speaking, those are the same things as the whole flat earth stuff. That's how seriously we should be taking it. But until we get at that and until we put you know, are able to get people to see that in that stark terms, you know, we're still practicing, you know, what Barbara and Karen Fields called racecraft, right, as opposed to witchcraft. You know? Superstitious assumptions, but that give order and meaning to our world. And that's where we're at. You know? And that's you know, we've been there, but I think the last four years have shown us just how stuck we are as as white Americans in that place, and and that's where the work is right now. I worry all the time that that

Speaker 3 it's that exact problem just looking out at the white faces staring back at me 10 through 12. You know? That's when those things really start. That's when those connections get made for for kids, and they get dragged into dark places of of the Internet. And, you know, it's it's that ironic, you know, sort of meme or part of it that then takes takes a really dark turn. And I've seen I've seen a lot of students who have come back away from that in in really surprising ways, but probably not without a lot of of pushback too. So it's a thing that just, I think, it's gotta fuel that that work is. It's it doesn't matter what a test score says for a student. It doesn't matter what, you know, what their grade might be or what the assessment score says. If if that student could see themselves

Speaker 2 identifying with the unite the right marchers, then we're not we're not doing our jobs. And that's that's really gotta be the framing at the heart of it. Well and so how do we get students to see beyond their own immediate self interest? Right? Because that's so you know, we go back to the idea of, you know, how is neoliberal market logic ordering so much of our society because it's baked into the cake. Like, that's the water in which we're swimming. Everything is so individualistic and atomized. How do we get students to realize that they are fundamentally interconnected and dependent interdependent upon one another? And so some of that, I think, comes, you know, as historians, we can talk about, you know, what stories do students have about the people around them so that they can see classmates who are different from them as actual people as full and complicated human beings as opposed to just a category, an impersonal faceless category. Because then when you get into that place, that's where you can get into, you know, the alt right and white nationalist because when people are not people but something else, you know, a homogenous category that is something different than you, when you've othered them sufficiently, that's when you're in fertile ground to be into those kind of circles. And so how do we get our students out of that and realize that, you know, there are these connections, there are these things that are important? To me, the basis of education should be getting students, getting learners, getting ourselves because this is always a process of becoming. Right? We're never fully there. But to to get us to a place where we realize that we are in interdependence with one another in different ways and in different degrees and with different intensities because we are a complicated and complex society, but no one is in a vacuum, and no one is only affected by solely their own actions. Right? We need to talk about systems. We need to talk about structures. And, again, the barrier there is that people start to feel guilty. When you talk about, oh, they're structural racism. Oh, you're calling me a racist? It's like, no. Not necessarily, but you are in a structure that is. And so what are we gonna do about that? Right? And, you know, that's if if we're not able to to get students to a place where they're able see beyond their own self interest and get over, what one scholar called their possessive investment in whiteness for our white students, right, then we're just gonna keep struggling because these problems that we have are gonna keep reproducing themselves,

Speaker 1 into the next generation. And you talk about the the idea of structures. I think that's so valid to kinda connect the dots here between everything we are talking about in addition to, obviously, like, decolonizing the curriculum and ensuring that students are getting a true full perspective view of every subject, not just history, but also math, like science, etcetera. But then also tying it back to Ferrere, ensuring that our classrooms are cooperative and students have a space to work with each other and teachers are there alongside them and not just telling them everything that they're going to do every single step of the way. Because, of course, if you never learn how to stand up for yourself, how to question authority, how to work with other people, then it's no wonder that when you become a high schooler and people start telling you things that you're you're just not thinking about, you're just listening to what someone tells you to do. You're you're just following orders. Right? And that is the situation that we find many of our classrooms in. Here, I am curious about the other side of things. There is obviously a extreme issue with just, like, being completely against critical race theory, just completely rejection of the notion. Then there's also, in my opinion, a greater number of people that are in, like, the toxic positivity phase of this where it's we're talking about social justice right now, but don't worry. Biden's coming into office, and that's it. That that'll be the end of the conversation. Just be kind and be nice to each other, and racism will miraculously be solved. How do we work with other educators to get them out of this, I guess, idea that it doesn't have to be structural, that I can just work on individual level?

Speaker 2 So I would two thoughts come to mind when you ask that question, which is an excellent question. And I think first, I think, you know, we can push back and say, yeah. How did that work out after 2008, 2009? Because that was supposedly when we got our post racial president and thus our ticket to a post racial society. Right? And, of course, what we saw was the backlash even fiercer. So I think, you know, that was not that long ago. But I think understate you know, the desire to get back to normal, quote, unquote, is a really seductive one. Like, we all kinda want that. Right? Everybody hates teaching and learning online. COVID sucks. Like, we're in this giant whirlwind, this vortex of suck right now. We will but, you know, we had to avoid this the seduction of back to normal because what that normal was was unsustainable and inequitable for so many of us and for our students. Right? And so I think, you know, the the response I would have too is, well, I've still got students who are running into x, y, and z. Like, to me, student stories are the most powerful antidote to this sort of benign liberal misconception that we can fix things individually. Right? Because it doesn't matter how much I'm doing in my classroom. If my students are walking right out into the, you know, out of the the school bubble back into society and experiencing something completely different, then at best, what I'm doing is providing an alternative space, not a solution. And, you know, and the and the thing that unites all of us is we do care about our students. Right? We want our students to do well and to succeed. And I think overcoming this sort of benign but still very insidious kind of, know, is to is to say you know, is is to get back focused on the student experience and our student stories, because, you know, that it's gonna be very evident that there is still so much work to do when we look at what is in you know, where our students are coming from when they come into our teaching and learning spaces. And so modeling that type of awareness for our colleagues and encouraging them, to be that aware and sensitive to what the larger structural things are that are happening because structures don't change overnight. Right? You know, it's we may have a new landlord, but the house still sucks. So, you know, what are we gonna do about that? Right? It's gonna take more than a new coat of paint. So encouraging those conversations that are focusing on our student stories outside maybe of what's happening in classrooms to realize that it's more than just, you know, culturally responsive teaching in six period. I mean, that's important. I don't wanna minimize that. But in and of itself, it's insufficient.

Speaker 1 I I I mean, I think you're hitting the nail on the head, Kevin. I mean, I I pretty much can't add anything to that. That was a, what do they call that? A, hammer drop. It was really well done. Let's let's build into then the final question, which is knowing what we know now in the month since the book's release in February 2020, we have the ongoing pandemic. We have the police murder of George Floyd. We have another summer of protests. And, of course, we have government forces. We have media sources who are just fanning the flames. And it's it's been rough. It's been a rough year, and we're really seeing an amplification of trauma that's existed for arguably since The United States was founded. So what is something that you've addressed in the book in Radical Hope that you think has changed the most or that you would add as an addendum? Like, what's the call to action since the book's publishing? So I thought about this when you when you suggested, you know, before we got together that you might be asking this.

Speaker 2 And I think what I would be more explicit about in the book, and I think I I touch on it, but but I think I would be hammering the point a lot more is that, you know, the only the only pathways to hope in terms of fulfilling a better vision of the future is an unflinching honesty about where we are. Right? And so, you know, I I think I imply that a lot. I think I do say it a little bit in the book, but I think, you know, we what COVID has done has laid bare, again, the raw festering wounds that our society has. And and and we can't hide anymore. We we have to reckon with these things. And as tempting as it is, you know, again, back to this idea of complacency or, like, oh, I'll fix my classroom, and that'll make racism go away. Like, you know, those are very seductive things because they speak to a basic need that we all have. But if we are not honest you know, again, you know, being honest about where we are has been a problem for American society as long as there's been American society, which is why we see periods of the expansion of justice and rights rolled back so fiercely and violently. Right? So we need to have you know, hope is a combination of agency and pathways. Right? I have to see my own role in being able to bring about a better set of conditions, but I also have to know what pathways are available to me to do that. Right? And without agency and pathways and this is true for our students too. You know, if you wanna you know, students want to be able to have hope and a better outcome for themselves, they have to be agents. They have to see their own agency, but they also have to know the pathways that are available for them to pursue in order to bring that vision about. And so with we don't have agency, and we don't have pathways if we're not honest about where we are now. You know, it's like trying to to do a road trip on a map that doesn't get accurate until we're halfway to where we are, which is a very tortured metaphor, but it's the best one I got right now. Right? Like, we have to know where we are in order to get to where we're going. And it sounds like kind of a truism, but so many times, it's easy just to, you know, again, say, oh, we'll get back to normal. As soon as I'm done teaching online, like, things will be back to the way they were. Or now that Joe Biden's gonna be president, things are gonna be better. And then, you know, sure, things probably will be better, but better is relative. Right? Like Malcolm x said, you know, that the knife is nine inches in my back and you pull it out six inches and call it progress, that's not necessarily, you know, the the end point of what we're trying to do here. And I think that's what what I would really emphasize is, you know, more than ever, you know, sitting in this very uncomfortable, very sharp edge place of unflinching honesty about where we are in order to be able to to to articulate the kind of practice we need to get to where we want to go. I don't think I think it's it's always been essential, but I don't think that that there's anything more essential than that right now. Exactly. I mean, Kevin, your your words are powerful. The book is fantastic.

Speaker 1 And and, honestly, it might sound like kind of a pun, I guess, but I I am hopeful, for what's coming up in 2021. I'm hoping that teachers take advantage of the situation and, honestly, that students might lead it, that they might be the ones that demand that change and almost force teachers into,

Speaker 2 doing better because we can all do so. So thanks again for coming on the podcast, man. It's it's been great. It's been a great conversation. Well, thanks for having me. It's a real honor to be here with y'all, and I love the work you do. I'm a big fan, so getting to share the space this afternoon has been awesome.

Speaker 1 Thank you again for listening to the Human Restoration Project podcast. I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to push the progressive envelope of education. You can learn more about our cause, support us, and stay tuned to this podcast and other updates on our website at humanrestorationproject.org.