Nourishing Caregiver Collaborations

Speaker 1 Hello, and welcome to the latest episode of our podcast. My name is Chris McNutt, and I'm part of progressive education nonprofit, Human Restoration Project. Before we get started, I want to let you know that this is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Kevin Gannon, Anna Wetland, and Daniel Holman. Thank you for your ongoing support. You can learn more about the Human Restoration Project on our website, humanrestorationproject.org, or find us on social media and YouTube. Today, we are joined by Nival Caruni. Nival is an educator, writer, and adjunct professor based in Jersey City who founded and operates NQC Literacy, a consultancy firm serving pre k through eight school leaders and teachers in holistic literacy instruction, equity driven practice, and family engagement. She also serves on several committees, including National Council for Teachers of English Committee Against Racism and Bias, evaluates manuscripts for Reese Witherspoon's Lit Up program, and advises the Library of Congress Literacy Awards Advisory Board. Her recent book, Nourishing Caregiver Collaborations, Elevating Home Experiences and Classroom Practices for Collective Care, is a deep dive into how educators can celebrate and elevate students' families while encouraging shared reflections and connections to what's happening in schools. So thank you for joining us today, Yuval. I am so thankful to be here with you today. Alright. So let's let's dive into this thing. I'm I'm really excited to talk to you about the book, because I think that family collaboration is something that many educators, including myself, when I was teaching, really struggle with. It can be a kind of a difficult process. It's something that a lot of folks aren't trained in. At first, at least for me, it's just very awkward, to have to, like, call home and, like, talk to folks and invite people in and, and learn more about their backgrounds as well. So I really appreciated how this book, is is very reflective and interactive. There's a lot of activities for thinking critically, about students' families and and bring in that that perspective. So I want to open up by talking about Killeen, which is the metaphor that you use throughout the book. It's at the beginning of every single chapter. What is that? How does that relate? How does this just kind of structure the the work?

Speaker 2 Well, when I was thinking when I was thinking about myself and what holds me and what grounds me, I I do often think about objects because my family didn't have much from their past because they're immigrants, and they didn't bring much. They came before the nineteen seventy nine Iranian revolution and then didn't know that they were gonna stay because then the revolution happened, and they never created back. We're not one of those families that has, you know, tons of family heirlooms. But what we do have, especially because my father's side of the family, most of their items were lost in the Iran Iraq war that was subsequent to the revolution in the eighties. And so what we do have are few, but really important to me, gilims. And these gilims are super wonky and irregular and handmade and often vegetable dyed. And each of these gilims tell a story. The person who created those gilims may have looked out of the windows and and seen a cow or might be, you know, telling a love story that they are thinking about while they are doing the weaving. And so you see these random objects or these kind of telltale signs of different storytelling in the rug that holds you and grounds you. And I thought to myself, you know, this is how education should go. It should be grounding and natural and personal and also flexible and nimble and, you know, not packaged and from a factory, but tailored to the person who is creating it and for the people who are right. So and that they're meaningful. And so that is how I kind of anchor my teaching pedagogy anyway.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I think that that makes a lot of sense as the book is very much it's nuanced. Right? There are a lot of different things in this work. Keep reaching for. I was gonna grab it because I I I just have to have something in my hands. So there's just so many different parts of this this work that really dive into, ways that we can think about classroom practice differently when it comes to literacy, but also family engagement. But I really appreciate how in the work, if you're listening on the podcast, I'm holding up. There's a table. There's a bunch of different tables and reflective activities. It's very visual. And something that I was kinda taking away is that the design of the book itself is reflecting that Killeen, kind of aesthetic, I guess, or vibe. I think was it your cousin that designed this? That's right. It's beautiful. I love how, like, colorful it is and easy to read. I hate, like, boring

Speaker 2 looking books, so this is this is exciting. Thank you. That was also important to me. I think so much of how we learn is visual or for some people, and, you know, it is important to digest better. And she did an incredible job of just, you know, mirroring that experience.

Speaker 1 So with that said, let's talk a little bit about just some overall themes and topics that you discussed within the work. So one thing that I noticed is that the framework of each chapter is essentially divided into a bunch of different, I suppose, like, keywords or verbs. So reflecting, honoring, connecting. Mhmm. And as I was reading through those different verbs Mhmm. The one word that really stuck out to me was the word exalting, which is a word I don't typically associate with education, let alone, families,

Speaker 2 at least in this context. So could you provide a little more detail on what it means to exalt a family? I really love that you identified that because it's one of my favorite words, especially to use with families because I I hold families on a pedestal. I I put families higher than anything when it comes to what's the most important for us in terms of how we get to know our students as educators when it comes to why things matter because a family determines that and shapes and crafts that for their child based on their own experiences often with education formally and informally. And so if you have a family that has typically, you know, excelled in formal education, they will operate differently than a family who has felt alienated from the traditional school system. And they will operate differently from a family who had a totally different system in a different country. And they will operate totally differently if they don't feel part of the fabric of the community that their child is in. Right? All of this is determined based on the caregivers, but we don't recognize that nor do we, like, typically think about that when we're approaching and getting to know just the child. Right? So it, makes up so much of the child. And exalting because, you know, all families have been teaching their children strong literacy skills and learning skills regardless of the formal education. So much of this work is around, you know, debunking the myth that education is synonymous with classroom teaching. You know, what is authentic literacy practice versus school literacy practice? But if I think on a continuum, schooled literacy practice being, like, worksheets and or, you know, isolated words on a on a class list weekly versus authentic literacy, like knowing the word to fenestrate because you are a Dungeons and Dragons or a Magic the Gathering fan because that's, like, an authentic practice. And so that comes directly to my son. Right? And so I think, you know, families naturally and authentically do this. And during the pandemic, I really recognized that because I was privy to so many family experiences on Zooms and watching families interact. And I realized that children, know, families were educating their kids the same way that teachers were trying to educate their kids and that we were doing the exact same things. The caregiving and educating is actually synonymous.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. And in terms of debunking those myths too, I think it helps, demystify the idea that sadly it's sorry to take, like, a dark twist with this, but a lot of folks consider families to perhaps not be involved with education at all. Yeah. And as a result, folks don't reach out to families about what's going on in the classroom, and it just creates this almost cyclical doom loop That's right. Where I perhaps was not that involved in the classroom because I feel like I shouldn't be involved because no one was reaching out to me. And then the educator says, well, I'm not gonna reach out to them because they're not involved in the classroom. That's totally true. And we have so many preconceived notions and biases around families and their engagement levels

Speaker 2 when really the truth is that we should redefine what engagement is because it's not what we deem as educators to be involved. If a family is attending something, that doesn't make them an involved and engaged parent. If a family doesn't engage some, you know, doesn't attend a report card pickup, it might be because they have four kids and they travel for work. Or it might be because they're juggling multiple jobs and they have a sick parent at home as well. But we don't know and see every single one of those nuances. Instead, typically, accidentally, inadvertently, we write off families. And we we say, you know, that's really no. That family doesn't. That family right? And so we kind of label them. And so a lot of the beginning of the book, you know, it goes through thinking about your biases and thinking about your own stereotypic, you know, stereotypical kind of, like, thinking frames around family should look sound or act and whether or not you have that in your mind, what you imagine a family who's very engaged looks like. And just, like, break that down completely. Just drop it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It's probably just good advice in general for everything. It reminds me a lot of, like like, Freirean style thinking of, like, what are the like, what's the cultural capital? Who's being policed in the classroom from, like, a student level That's right. Let alone at a a family level. But kind of speaking of, I think it's a pretty good segue to talking about the you describe them as as wars that families engage with, with school. And you talk about it in a variety of different lenses. And I I really liked the labeling of these, fearful, tentative, compliant, transactional, and toxic engagement.

Speaker 2 I don't even know where to really frame this question at, but I just wonder if you could talk more about what that looks like, and what does that mean? Well, in all of my interactions with schools and families across the country, I realized that no like you said, this work is so nuanced because no two populations are the same nor is the teacher body and the population the same. Right? And so this all was determined and based on how that shook out. If the teaching body was super different than the, you know, different than the families. Like, how how their relationships melded together was very based on, you know, whether or not there were similarities, differences, and understanding and empathy around the family situation. And so a toxic, you know, sort of engagement is one where families might demand things and and or families feel that they have oh, they can overstep in agency. Right? They can overstep in a variety of ways because they know best. This might be because they are paying customers in a private school. This might mean because they, you know, know the systems differently than other families, and so they're able to make demands. This could be in the climate of book banning. This can be in a variety of places. But if there's a really kind of toxic back and forth between, you know, some school bodies and and the families. But then think about the families who just don't know. Like, think on the other end of the spectrum. They don't know what kinds of questions to ask. They don't know where they have the agency. They don't even potentially families might not even realize that they can ask, like, what services are my child entitled to, Which is why, like, I give a whole bunch of questions to give to families around agency, around process, around individuality so that they know what kinds of questions to ask other than, like, how's my kid doing? And, you know, we just don't want the transactional kinds of engagement because we know that relationship building is like the core of all good teaching and that that extends to families. And so those labels are meant to have teachers and districts, admin think about all the ways that families might engage and where where you wanna fall on the spectrum. You know, where do you want your families to fall? And I think the heart of it all is constantly remembering that we want the same things for children. Like, we want the same things for like, our goals are the same. But somehow these barriers are up, and the barriers might be up for a variety of reasons, whether that's because they feel the families feel at a deficit or the families feel very entitled. And so how can we bring down the barriers? When I was interviewing in Chicago for the the original point of this project was that I was, you know, piloting this program in Chicago public schools with funding in during the pandemic, there were there were adults, like families who told me, I don't wanna sit in chairs that are too small for me and have the teacher stand above me and talk to me and give me the expectations for my first grader because I'm a big bulking man. I'm not interested in sitting in a very teeny tiny chair. And even that dynamic was, like, it created an environment that changed the way that those families wanted to engage in the schools. You know? And so it's it's just meant to for us to think.

Speaker 1 Yeah. No. It's it's fascinating that you bring that up because it's very similar to the work that we're seeing on the ground. So, HRP, the the way that we conduct a lot of our work is through empathy interviews. And part of that process is going into schools and having community focus groups or community empathy interviews. We'll bring in caregivers, family members, community members, etcetera, and talk to them about the future of education, how they feel about schools, etcetera. And what we find is exactly what you're saying, that first off, everyone wants what's best for their their kid. Like, no one's coming in and saying, you know, that that that they want everything to be the way that it is. Right. They wanna see more engaging classrooms. They wanna see more hands on learning. They wanna see a lot of things that I think a lot of folks consider to be common sense. Yeah. But what's most shocking to me is that we work in a lot of, I suppose, very conservative areas. We work in a lot of very small rural schools. Yeah. And I'm always nervous as I'll get out, both looking the way that I do. I'm a very nerdy, kinda liberal coded guy. Right. But also bringing up things like, social justice work, DEI work because it's part of what we do. Right. And I'm always nervous as I'll get out that I'm gonna mention this, and I'm just gonna be running out of town, and that we're gonna start talking about critical race theory or something random. Right. That's never been the case. Fingers crossed. Right. Every single time, families will tell us, no. That's what I want for my kid. And then they'll get into, like, the nuances of maybe why they harbor some problematic beliefs. Right. But it's nothing that we can't work with Right. In order to help their kids really have a a a worldwide lens, a diverse lens, folks that engage with empathy and kindness

Speaker 2 I love and more. I love that empathy interviews is definitely part of all of this. I I love that. I I think we don't do maybe enough as as educators to just ask, to ask, to ask, to ask, and or and there's not the space. Like, there's often not space across the daytime calendar year. And so it's important to, like, think about when are the times where we can invite families in. I really encourage schools to not have the first parent teacher conference be a parent teacher conference, but more it to be, like, a caregiver collaboration session where we're cocreating something. We're learning about the families. We're because those grades in quotes from the beginning of that session, like, is very snapshot and not useful. Not as useful as knowing the families, knowing what their dreams are for their children, knowing what their, like, cultural background is, and what they can contribute, and what they do as a family, and what literacy practices they already are engaging in as a community. That will teach you and tell you so much more about the child that will then be able to you know? So, yeah, I love that.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, it's it as you said, it it moves away from being transactional, which kind of leads you into writing a a book that almost feels insurmountable, which is about, like, how do we connect with human beings Right. And, like which is, like, one of the most complicated tasks potentially that exists. Right. And that's a task that is partially partially trained. I mean, you can read about it, but also something that you learn by doing, because it does involve a lot of failure,

Speaker 2 I suppose. I'm glad that Yeah. I'm glad that you brought that up because I do I get I do, you know, family lab sites where I'm inviting families into schools and classrooms, and then, you know, the teachers who I work with continue this. And every single time, teachers will say, like, but what if a family says something that, like, breaks my heart, makes me cry, or I feel uncomfortable addressing? You know, we'll do things like draw neighborhood maps with our families or draw, like, you know, special place because, you know, draw a special place with your kid. You fill this page. That then becomes part of the brainstorming so the kids so families know then what the writing brainstorming looks like. No kid has a paper that's, you know, empty because they are sitting there with their family members and or they're, like, going down memory lane. Right? There's always something that's, like, kind of emotional, and there's there's failure in that and or there's, like, discomfort in it. And every time, the answer is just like, okay. Then you sit in it. Like, then you sit in it and you reflect. I mean, there's not there's not much more to do beyond when you connect with humans. There's, like, discomfort in it, and there's going to be. But there you know, if there's, like, a safe place for it and there's a place for families to come and say and do, there the reward will be reaped much bigger than maybe potentially the, like, mini discomforts around. Like, we didn't have a bed. We don't you know? There were there were a lot of things around that that the teachers felt discomfort around, but it it wasn't uncomfortable for the families potentially to share. It was just like sharing the reality. And then you know? So it's just it's eye opening, nuanced, important, emotional, of course. Because when you're dealing with families, it's, like, always emotional,

Speaker 1 I think. Yeah. I would imagine that the cocreation of those activities as well and framing it around kind of learning by doing or experiential learning, whatever you wanna call it, opens up the door for a more caring conversation. Because transactional and, like, for example, you're calling home and saying, you know, so and so has an f in the class, whatever that might be, you're you're really much creating, like, a dichotomy where it's teacher assigning kid label That's right. As opposed to it just being, oh, here, we're engaging in dialogue together. There's no purpose of this beyond just the connection. And I would imagine that would lessen the chances that you would have kind of an adverse or kind of toxic relationship

Speaker 2 that develops early on. It's it's kind of like an evolution of the idea of call home and say something nice about the kid at the first week of school toward let's have an event and actually, like, bring people in and really engage with them. Totally. And they're really low stakes, and they're really kind of they're I say at the beginning, there's no right or wrong answers. This is just joyful. It's just to have fun. You see palpably, like, everybody's shoulders go down because the families think that they're, like, on test for what they're supposed to, like, learn or create or do, and it's, like, not that. It's actually just, like, a joyful creation of something. So I, you know, I brainstorm all these ideas with teachers where, like, what are the what are the family lab site cocreation, like, little opportunities across the calendar year that we can look at your curriculum, look at what you're going to be teaching, and or, you know, craft these little experiences in addition to the other things that we do typically and traditionally. We're not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It really is kind of a collectivist approach of all these different things because you'll catch different families in different ways. You'll meet different families in different ways just like we meet the needs of all of our students in different ways. And the coolest thing to see is people on the Internet running with these family lab sites after well, I work with those teams. I mean, it is so fun. It makes me wanna cry. It really makes me wanna cry.

Speaker 1 I mean, I feel like it really meets people in the moment. I mean, I would imagine just practically that a lot of especially younger families are not using their phone. Like, they're not calling in. I can count, like, on one hand how many phone calls I make in any given, like, three to six month period. Right. We're connecting in, like, online, obviously, but also, like, through text and apps and just a variety of other means. And I would imagine that having those family lab sites helps just really make more transparent what's going on at school. Okay. Because, like, we know that the vast majority of families think that their public school is amazing, but they think that other public schools maybe aren't so great. That's just the the general opinion. But it doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt to have folks come in and see what are the practices of the classroom because you are very much talking a lot about what I would describe as progressive education. Like, you're talking about moving away from one and done grades. You're talking about moving by like, through a process where kids iterate on assignments. A lot of those assignments are more hands on. So it's the the caregiver connection isn't just so parents are involved, which is important, but it's also that we can change some pedagogy

Speaker 2 and invite families along in that process. Yeah. It's like a layered sneak sneak sneaky way to say these are also really important values in education. And those values, by the way, are often lived out in families and family experiences by walking down the street and looking at a mural and noticing lots of different things and asking questions. And if they're not, it's super easy to ramp that up and support our work as progressive and, you know you know, kind of, like, thoughtful educators. Well, you know, someone who has no time, someone who only has, like, the commute to school with their children. What are the things like when I do these part of this has been really interesting because now I do a lot of family facing work that's not educator facing, but now I'm, like, meeting with families and libraries and and different, like, kind of refugee organizations. And, like, I'm I'm working with families in a bunch of different ways. And so families will say things like, but my kid is stuck to their phone. How can I communicate with them then? And how can I build communication during a time when my kid is constantly on TikTok? And so we think about what are the literacy practices that that kid is learning in those moments and what where what are the ways that a family can engage with their kid in that way that is boosting learning still. And so I love to just engage in the practice of of really simple t chart. Like, what do families do all the time with their kids, or what do interactions look like? And on the right hand side, what learning is happening, or what learning could be happening. And you can name it down to, like, the standard for schools and districts that need to go there. But you can also do just like, this is nonfiction learning. This is fiction learning. This is conflict resolution. This is empathy building. Like, families who go to a sporting event with their kid, families who are going to a soccer or a play right. Like, what are the things that happen in those moments that then can translate into really awesome writing in the classroom, really awesome thinking? Right? Like, there are but families need that confidence boost and that validation, and teachers need to know that all families are doing that even if it's, like, dysregulation, even if it's emotional dysregulation or your perceived, you know, family dysfunction. Like, if you because

Speaker 1 I don't want that to get in the way either. And it it seems like, at least in my experience, once you crack that code, you have more family involvement in your classroom than you really know what to do with, which helps from a systemic level when it comes to things like projects. Like, for example, I would all the time have folks come in and talk about, the work that they do. They would help work on projects with kids. They would volunteer many hours of their time, often more than, really, I needed, to come in and and work with us, which was really beneficial to me as a teacher because just pragmatically, you'll never have more well behaved kids, because kids don't mess around with other kids' parents usually. But, also, they they learn a whole lot because it makes it more real world. This is a person who's not an educator, typically. They're someone who just lives in the, quote, unquote, real world, and they're explaining a very similar concept to hopefully what I was talking about the day before. Yep. And it just adds a lot of legitimacy and credibility in addition to having

Speaker 2 that that family connection, which is so important. That I think that so much of it is looking at your calendar across the year, looking at your units, looking at all the things, and then figuring out when you can have families and figuring out when you can invite. And so, like, when you can invite families in a very kind of low level ask that feels like little, like, here's a little invitation or a bigger one. Like, are you gonna have them involved in a project or an activity in the building? Are you gonna, like, think across your year so that there are lots of different opportunities in different levels and, like, amounts to really, like, tap into the expertise of, like, the whole adult community because then every teacher says to me, it's wild. There are more, like, collaborative partners. It's like I have all these other teachers because then that that call that you're making to the parent is not in isolation when you say, like, by the way, this wasn't turned in and or it's been becoming a pattern. Because you know that parent pretty well. You know all the things that are happening with that parent. Right? I always give the example of when we moved from Chicago to Jersey City, we had kids in different schools. So I experienced the transition to a new school in a bunch of different ways. And I had an experience where my daughter was, like, being I had dragged her down the sidewalk to get her to school, and she didn't have the right tights. And she was super upset that she didn't have her uniform, and the teacher did not even know that, like, we were living out bags for several months as we were, like, transitioning between houses and for, like, a place to live with our family of six. Right? And there wasn't even, like, a conversation. It wasn't even, like, what is your living arrangement? How how are you living? What is it? How does that affect this child? Is she, like, an only child? Does she want a four? Oh, she squeezed in the middle. Like, these are all things that, like, you need to know about your kid and or right? Like, versus another school where it was like, there was an entire conversation. There were forms. There were, like, you know, Google forms. There were all these, like, how can we create a sense of belonging? Like, there was a lot of and so this is completely up to you. This is, like, within the locus of control of your classroom. You know? So, yeah, it can look a lot of different ways, and it it makes for a very different experience for the child. Speaking to that, this is probably a very loaded and complicated question. But I would imagine that

Speaker 1 part of what makes this work easier is when it scales into the culture of the building as opposed to it feeling like all of that weight of involving families rests on one teacher's shoulders. Yeah. How do you help schools slash how do you feel like this book

Speaker 2 can assist educators in bringing more people into that conversation so it can be a shared task Yeah. As opposed to it just being like, you're my thing that we're doing. Yeah. It that's a really good question. It's not super loaded because now I've been doing it for long enough to know where it take you know, where it takes off and where traction happens. It happens when there's an excited cohort of teachers with a supportive administration behind them because they need time to think alongside each other about different invitations that can exist, and then they have to try it out. They have to, like, spend some time thinking about the systems that exist and if it's working or not and maybe tweak it. They need to think about the language that they use in the classroom. So, like, caregiver conferences or, like, guest reader, we're not saying anymore. Instead, we're saying, like, guest storyteller Because how might you inadvertently be, like, alienating someone who thinks that the word reading, like, sends up red flags. Right? Which has, like, happened in my spaces. And so and so they need time. So And you need administration to, like, be on board and to say, like, this is a project that we are is part of we're weaving into the fabric of our school. But I have found that year after year, if you have a small cohort of teachers doing it together, potentially, like, reading the book or thinking about it together at least, you know, doing some, then the showcases make it so that their colleagues are interested in joining. Because what we do is, of course, showcase this across the year in so many different ways. There's been, like, really, really cool collaborative projects with families that then lead to, like, little QR coded conversations that you can scan as you're walking by so you can hear the families interacting with their kiddos, and you see the actual, like, you know, labor come come out visually in, like, totally interesting ways that people are excited about latching onto. And so after three years, there tends to be, like, full school shift if you start with a tiny cohort that's dedicated.

Speaker 1 Yeah. The coalition of the willing is a very strong, group, and it it also helps too with the sustainability of of the impact. Right? Because as you invite more people into the fold, if one of those folks retires or leaves to join another school or whatever that might be, all of those practices don't go with them because that is always the fear of any kind of cultural shift, especially I mean, obviously, like, these huge positive systemic shifts Yeah. That because they all rest on one person, it then disappears.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So with that said, I I'm I'm curious about, like, what's the what's the big picture? So you've written the book. You're working with all these different schools. Like, what's your what's your why of doing this? Where do you hope this goes in ten years, twenty years? Like, what's the big picture aspirational question that you're hoping to,

Speaker 2 remedy or solve? Oh my goodness. That's such a good question. Was that That's the loaded question. That on the list? Oh my goodness. I did that. Okay. I what I really hope is just for for schools, like, it would be amazing to me if all pre service teachers read this so that number one, it was part of the way that we learn to teach. You know, my why is very much families should not be disconnected from knowing the children, and they are part of the collective care framework that we need to collectively grow strong critical thinkers and amazing humans. Right? And so families are part of that work. I think that it, you know, it would be a win to me if family engagement was redefined completely so that no school in the country believed that family engagement was attendance, and no school in the country believed that family engagement was picking up, you know, a report card or because when the definition is defined from the school, that is incorrect. I want I want the strength to always be an unapologetic reverence and an unapologetic positive regard for families, recognizing their cultural capital and the funds of knowledge that they're bringing, figuring out how to better teach the students as a result, the children as a result because we know them so deeply, and then it being a cycle of care. Like, that is my hope. I don't know in practical terms, I think at the very minimum, we all need to shift language, and we all need to shift, you know, our invitations. We all need to check our biases around families. We, like, we need to look at our texts to make sure they're representing all kinds of families and family structures. Like, these are all things that feed into the work. But I want it to start from from from pre service. I want all teachers to know this because it's it's harder when we're doing so much already, and then we're also saying, and don't forget families. That it's not an afterthought. It's not something to tack on at the end. It's not a checklist. And that was, like, part of the publication of this book. There were companies that wanted it to be publication companies that wanted it to be publishing houses, a checklist. Like, is how you engage with families, but the it's just not it's just not the work. The work is nuanced. It's very journalistic. It's very it's it's, like, heart driven. And I'm, like, speaking as a mother of four young kids who have, like, experienced so many different school situations. And, like, what do you want for your own children, all children, or our children? And speaking to pre service teachers, I think

Speaker 1 I don't I don't know how far down we wanna go down this path, but what's interesting about what you're saying is that I mean, a really common critique of teacher preparation programs is that they are, not, I guess, realistic enough or grounded in reality. Like, they're all theory based. But at the exact same time, part of my personal fear of that is that the way that you would shift back to a more pragmatic style of teaching and learning in pre service is not typically towards what you're saying. It's toward the more transactional. Like, if a kid, you know, starts speaking too loudly in class, how do you, get them to stop as opposed to how do you learn more about them? Right. Because that it is not a checklist, but yet so much of education is formulated in checklists. Right. And that behaviorist mindset is so intertwined, into how school systems operate, especially pre service, kind of like disciplinary policies. One of the most horrifying things I've ever done is I I went back and got my career technical education certification. So I was teaching for about ten years. I went back and got a digital design certification. And as part of that process, I had to go back to school. And I was in courses with folks who were all transitioning on a more traditional careers to become educators. And the way that those classes were taught made me lose a lot of faith in in how pre service education was working because it was all rooted in how do I control this space. I mean, we were there were I I had to share this one tangent example. We watched, this this YouTube video where this guy, unironically, was saying that you should squirt kids with water bottles while they sleep in your class because it will be funny, and the kids will laugh at them. And, yeah, my eyes were the same way. I was like, I'm sorry. Like like, what are we doing here? And it that, like, kind of, like, adultist style, like, oh, like, we have all the power. They don't. It's funny. It's silly. Let's, like, control kids and find interesting ways to control kids is very, very, very different than this idea of, like, love and care and humanity. I don't know where I'm going with this, but it's just it's there's I mean, I think where you're going with this is,

Speaker 2 you know, the center of all of the work that we do as educators should be caregiving. I mean, even in pre service. Like, that's a shift that needs to happen. It should like, caregiving and educating is the same. Because if you list the things that families do and you list the things that we hope to achieve in the literacy classrooms, they are the same. Like, they are the same. And that is, like, something that I think we are, like, completely missing. If you get this book, if anybody gets this book, it does not need to be it does not need to be read all the way through. Like, you can try the ideas in one chapter. Other than that, I would just say that I have a ton of conversations with kid lit authors whose books I recommend that families have been using with Fidelity, like, just having listening to these conversations. I have had families reach out to me and say it was so interesting for me and my kid to co read a book and then listen to the author. Because I think really thinking about the round reach of all the different individuals who support growth of children's literacy skills is so critically important. And so I don't know. Just I I would just say, like, my last thing is don't disregard any adult in a child's, like, literacy experience. You know, when we think about collective care, it can be the bodega owner. It can be the, like, spiritual community leader. It can be anyone who is there to debrief with the child, to talk through emotional literacy conversations to all of those people contribute to the child and are valuable for then springboarding the same kind of learning that we're doing in the classroom. So I don't know. I really do believe in the collective. There there is an entire chapter in the book on that. And so I thank you for interviewing me because you are part of my collective, and and that's it.

Speaker 1 Thank you again for listening to our podcast at Human Restoration Project. I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to start making change. If you enjoyed listening, please consider leaving us a review on your favorite podcast player. Plus, find a whole host of free resources, writings, and other podcasts all for free at our website, humanrestorationproject.org. Thank you. No.