[00:00:00] Speaker A: Sam.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: Hello and welcome to JCELL Jabber. My name is Ian Mehta, I use hehim pronouns and I am an Associate professor of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University at Buffalo.
I'm also one of the board members of the Journal of Cases in In Educational Leadership.
JCEL publishes peer reviewed cases for educational leaders who are in preparation programs as well as for practitioners who want to connect theory to practice as part of professional development efforts.
The journal is available online and the goal of JSAL is to help educational leaders create more equitable learning experiences for communities across the globe.
Each case has a narrative, teaching notes, discussion questions, and learning activities for educational leaders to consider.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: Hello, My name is James Wright. I am an Assistant professor at San Diego State University in the Department of Educational Leadership. JCEL Jabber is a way to help educators consider how one of the cases from JCEL could be used to support learning for leadership.
JCEL Jabber is a quarterly podcast that helps highlight special collections of articles that are temporarily made available for free to increase access around issues of inequities that exist in schools systems. It provides listeners a brief 30 minute podcast to engage more deeply in the case and hear nuanced analysis of the issue. It also connects the listener with the author who provides additional details about the case and provides a discussion with a scholarly practitioner from the field who can discuss how to apply this in practice.
[00:02:19] Speaker B: So in this episode we review Dr. Jasmine Alvarado's case titled A Family School Liaison's Negotiation of Racialized Scripts for Family Engagement Engagement. The case was published in 2022 and critiques the practices and policies of education systems that reify racialized perceptions and reinforce whiteness as the norm. At the heart of this case is the challenge posed by the author for education systems to question and challenge the normalization of whiteness and the ways in which privileged identities contribute to dominant norms and values in school systems that have profound impacts on minoritized groups of students and parents.
[00:02:59] Speaker A: To set the stage, we'll delve into how racialized scripts and institutions shape family school relations and how educators can challenge ingrained norms to foster a more democratic, inclusive environment.
In the US we see examples of white supremacy across all US institutions and further propagated and mainstreamed through popular culture.
White supremacy Eurocentrism is indeed pervasive and aligns with the description that both of our esteemed guests have outlined in their work, and specific to this case, it assumes that Eurocentric norms and values are the universal standard. Historically, we see this throughout the educational system.
Dr. Alvarado draws on critical race theory, particularly the principle of the permanence of racism and the social construct of race that allocates material and social privileges. Accordingly, this case exemplifies the unequal distribution of resources and privileges based on racialized norms affecting community, family, and school dynamics.
Further, the author highlights a case of racialized institutional scripts, racialized norms and routines that determine resource distribution, expounding on our esteemed guest, Dr. Ishimaru and her colleague Takahashi in their 2017 research, which described racial scripts as constraining and shaping.
Dr. Alvarado's case spotlights Claudia, a school secretary navigating racialized institutional scripts.
Claudia's value was identified based on a previous position that she had in the school, and she was offered the secretary position even though she did not pass the clerical exam, one of the job criteria.
Claudia's experience at the intimidating testing center echoes research on students, stress and standardized testing environments, which are often unwelcoming reinforcements of these racialized scripts.
This foundation lays bare the structures Claudia contends with and the personal toll of operating within racialized systems. Ian, I'd like to turn it over to you. What would you like to add to this context?
[00:05:25] Speaker B: Thanks, James.
So when we talk about how white supremacy influences the policies and practices of schools throughout the U.S. we need to critique notions such as meritocracy, colorblindness, and interest conversion, among other ideas and concepts.
Under the failed accountability experiment of the last quarter of a century, public school systems in the US have been guided by reform efforts that at best misapply levers that are intended to address inequities from a predominantly white perspective and at worst use legal institutions as a means to reinforce structural outcomes that privilege people racialized as white.
Dr. Alvarado reviews in her case that there are a variety of policies and practices used in the school in the case that reinforce whiteness as a norm, including but not limited to a variety of material that is mostly or exclusively published in English, human resource requirement for Claudia to pass a state civil service clerical exam, and even by Rachel Hernandez, the principal who often rebuffed Claudia's efforts to deeply engage with the families of the school that they serve.
These policies and practices are played out in a variety of ways, including a lack of engagement from Latinx families, the privileging of the use of English over Spanish, and policies that ended up causing Claudia to take position with less pay and benefits and being replaced by women racialized as white who didn't speak Spanish.
As such, these practices and policies serve to further marginalize Latinx students and families.
[00:07:08] Speaker A: So we want to create an opportunity for the author to engage in a discussion about the article and the topic of racialized scripts influencing family engagement in schools more broadly. And to do that, we not only have the author of the case, Dr. Jasmine Alvarado, who is an assistant professor in Educational Studies at Brandeis University, but we also have Dr. Ann Ishimaru, who is a professor in educational foundations, leadership and Policy at the University of Washington and who helped provide a foundation to the racialized scripts framework that is used in this article.
Jasmine and Ann, welcome to the show. Could you briefly introduce yourselves for the listener?
[00:07:53] Speaker C: So, thank you so much for the lovely introduction.
As you all mentioned, I'm an assistant professor in educational studies and at Brandeis University, and a lot of my work is situated in the intersections of race, class and language. And how those, how are those coalesce and the experiences that families have in K8 schools, particularly in bilingual educational programs. And a lot of my work and inspiration is always stemming from my previous experiences as a former student administrator after school program director of New York City Public Schools and Greater Boston Public Schools.
[00:08:40] Speaker D: And I'm Ann Ishimaru. I'm at the University of Washington in Seattle. And my work is focused on the role of minoritized families and communities as educational leaders and change makers in collaboration with formal leaders and trying to intervene in the kinds of racialized scripts that we see in this case and to transform those systems to foster more just schools and schooling experiences, particularly for young people and their communities.
I just want to shout out Dr. Alvarado for writing such a terrific case. I think it's a really, really helpful and important case to help illuminate many of the complexities that play out in our everyday interact in schools and schooling.
[00:09:33] Speaker A: So thank you both for joining us. And so I'll start off with what should be a fairly easy question.
Why is a case about racialized scripts like Jasmine's so important to unpack and address with school leaders?
[00:09:49] Speaker C: I think that I started off and I kept saying this word normativity. And so what's considered normal and normal routines, normal ways of teaching and learning, continue to not be unpacked and continue to be assumed that everyone operates that way. Everyone wants to identify with those ways of knowledge, those ways of values and being.
And how often educational leaders, across different types of educational leaders, we perpetuate and don't question those norms, values, routines that are operated and ingrained within white supremacy and whiteness.
And unfortunately, we live there's right now, in this current era, we're more globalized, where there's more social networks across the whole, the whole world. And I think there is a lot of conversation while we're more well connected, we're more multicultural. And so it's this.
I do think that all that also perpetuates, oh, let's erase evasiveness. And in this particular program, it's a bilingual educational program, so it's advertised as this multicultural space.
But unfortunately, those spaces can be assumed to be. They're assumed to be very culturally expansive, they address race, issues of race, but under this brand. But as this case shows, there's a lot of work to be done. And these spaces do need time, space and convert and mobilization efforts to address those patterns that I discussed right now about white normativity occurring within the school, but that is broadly situated across K12 schooling and broader society.
[00:11:52] Speaker D: I would also add that I think one of the things that happens, we see these things playing out all the time and it can often be minimized as a kind of individual case.
I think one of the things that Dr. Alvarado makes illuminates through this case is the way that these things that may be read through the normative lens as a kind of individual case specific kind of scenario are actually ways that these broader systems of oppression play out and have very material consequences, not only for the individuals involved, but for all of the young people and families in these contexts. So it becomes really important for us as school leaders and educational leaders to be able to not only notice when these things are playing out and they appear to be individual, but they're actually instantiations of the broader systemic dynamics that are playing out. And then to be able to intervene in those dynamics and to notice when these decisions that are being made, sometimes on, you know, very short notice, they don't seem very consequential at the mo. In the moment or at the time. They seem like short term fixes.
Those in the moment, everyday kinds of decisions are very consequential for the ways that these systemic dynamics play out.
[00:13:26] Speaker A: And if I may, Ian, real quick, to Dr. Ishimaru's point and to Jasmine's point as well, Dr. Alvarado's point as well, the normativity aspect and Anne's highlighting the fact that these aren't individualized cases.
I remember talking with a friend of mine who is a high school Spanish teacher in the Northeast and she, as the department head of her high school, the department head of Spanish, she told me about this was years ago, she told me about a situation where she had a High school teacher who hadn't received her credential, but who was Spanish speaking. She was. I believe she was Puerto Rican. And the kids loved her and the kids excelled under her, and they did everything that they could to get her to pass the exam, the credential, and she couldn't pass.
And so eventually the job was given after a couple of years of doing wonderfully and everyone in the school loving her, the students loving her, and then eventually the job was given to this white woman who hadn't.
Who didn't speak any Spanish but passed the exam. And so when I read this case, I immediately contacted my friend and I shared this case with her. So to the point of the normativity aspect and how we can see how systemic this is, it's not just a one off.
[00:15:05] Speaker C: I just wanted to make that connection because in this district where this case is situated, these patterns permeate other schooling contexts.
So in a middle school where my husband currently works in the district, the same thing is happening, but with a parent who has all the certifications from Costa Rica, has her bachelor's and master's, speaks Spanish, but she cannot pass that test.
She wants to be a Spanish teacher.
I've seen what you were saying, Dr. Wright, about the staffing. And now even when parents want to be so involved to the point they want to be staffed, these standardized forms, the format, but also the content permitting families to not even be technically working for the school.
[00:15:55] Speaker D: Yeah, it raises a lot of questions about how our formal systems evaluate and measure and assess expertise and that we have very narrow ways to do that. And it makes me think of another project I was a part of where there were. There was a parent leader who was amazing, had all these relationships and understandings of the school system and, you know, had spent his college age years in a refugee camp in another country.
And he, part of that, had profound understanding of families that you can't get in college, but because of the assessments and the metrics, wasn't able to get a particular position.
And so one of the things I appreciate in that case, though, is that the district administrator worked with HR in that case to figure out how to reconfigure the metrics and ways that they could assess and was able to figure out a way to acknowledge that as expertise.
[00:17:07] Speaker B: Thank you both for adding that. That was going to play into what I wanted to follow up with next. So we sort of talk about these misapplied metrics of accountability and how that influences HR decisions.
Can you talk about a little bit more what Are some of the other challenges facing educational leaders as we as we consider trying to cultivate greater family school relationships that decenter whiteness, but also then help reimagine policies and practices that help prevent racialized imbalances.
[00:17:38] Speaker C: I've been thinking about this a lot and I think often what I've seen in the work that I do here in this district but with other school settings that it's important to have more racially diverse staffing. That is totally important.
At the same time, we cannot wait until that happens to address these racial inequities. So what do we do with our staffing now?
And I think that we cannot just evade discussions of race and addressing race inequities until we have a more diverse representation of staff. So what I think about educational leaders and this connects with Yolanda Celia Weis work is cultivating racial literacy as a starting point among with among our educational leaders and them also co learning with their staffing. So it's not something where educational leaders are being like oh we know best, we're racially literate. That's it, you all need to learn. But them learning together, especially if the staffing continues to be white English dominant from excuse me, representing those groups in school context where the majority of its students are not that I think that can be one starting point. Cultivating racial literacy, learning about their communities. Often this connects with Terrence Green's work about community audits.
What do we know about the community where we're situated, the inequities, the issues.
And I think that those two starting points can be ways for majority white staff to do this work and not rely on waiting for the diversification of staff.
I think another step. I've been thinking a lot about this. What can families do? Because families have opinions. Families I assume for them to be innate leaders.
I've seen families affiliate themselves with community groups to create counter spaces, advocacy spaces. So as is happening in. In within the school. But how can we still continue foster the leadership of families to not rely on these institutions that are continuing, continuing to silo them, but continue to develop their leadership capacity at the same time. So then when the time comes they can collectively mobilize and have more power to demand to assert their demands irrespective of what the school does currently. That's where I've been thinking about these multi tiered approaches that are all essential to occur at the same time.
[00:20:26] Speaker D: Yeah, I think one of the things that is a real challenge is I think about the principle in this case too is just how she's positioned in that broader system and in. In the district relative to the folks who are, you know, in the central office.
And, you know, the. The kind of press of demands and expectations that she's likely getting from the district, not getting support from other principals, not getting support from the district, and not necessarily getting a lot of press from those folks to engage families or to build relationships.
And many minoritized families, not necessarily for cultural reasons or for structural reasons, not having the opportunities to exert influence in those spaces.
And I think it becomes an issue as well. Of all of the things that Dr. Oliverado is talking about as part of what is the role of the leader in cultivating the understanding and agency of other teachers, the agency and relationship of families in that context of communities and community partners, but also recognizing that she is existing in a particular institutional space that is both racialized and gendered in relation to her leadership.
And so it just sort of reinforces the importance of moving coalitionally, moving with the team and perhaps also identifying others in the district, whether it might be other administrators or other educators. There are likely folks in that system who can play roles of support or allyship and trying to also identify who those folks are to think about how she can navigate within that system. And I think, you know, these policies that are designed to center kind of normativity and are perpetuating these inequities.
And so I think there is a robust tradition, though, of thinking about, given those policies, how might and how can school leaders navigate and still center families and communities and work in coalition with others to navigate those policies and think about how, given those might, we still lead in ways that are centering families and communities.
[00:23:18] Speaker C: I'm so glad you mentioned that aspect about this case, Ann, because this principal in the case is. She identifies as Latina.
And so like, in terms of branding, oh, we have this Latina principal leading this bilingual school. Oh, how great.
But the majority of the staff and the majority of the leadership, all the principals across the school district identify as white, English speaking. And so it's beyond, like you were saying, having one person of color in a leadership position and expecting that person to completely address and tackle whiteness and the structures and the policies.
This principle, unfortunately left the district and went to another district after this because of feeling siloed of having these ideas, of having these wants and desires and feeling, like you were saying, trying to build a coalition, but still feeling very limited in having that collective support from her peers, her principal's peers in the district, but also, like the superintendent et Cetera and within her own leader, within her own staff of those pressures of being like a multi standard, I don't want to call it double, but of being the few teachers of color in the school expecting her to do more, yet she was constrained of her position and her trying to navigate having majority white staff and very vocal white families in her school. So all of that on perpetuating the silo that she was experiencing.
[00:25:10] Speaker A: Okay, so the next aspect is. So if a school leadership team is considering creating a team of intentionally representative people who can develop better family school relations, what steps should be considered in this process?
[00:25:29] Speaker D: I think a lot of the things that Dr. Alvaretta has already spoken about are, are really key to think about, you know, who especially as a, as a school leader. I mean, I think one of the things that, that I see a lot of times is leaders want to sort of jump into things without sort of reflecting about their own spaces and the ways that they're interacting with folks, without reflecting on who the relationships, where the relationships lie, and really doing a kind of assessment of how they are showing up in their own school community.
So asking them question themselves, questions about who already has relationships with families.
How do we move beyond the usual suspects and not just pay attention to whatever the PTA president or the people with, with titles, but folks like the main character in the case who has these relationships actually from a place prior context that she's bringing into the school and then thinking about what are the ways that the leader is actually holding space in the school. So if we're kind of defaulting to these normative practices of doing everything in English, of maybe using Robert's rules of order, all of those kinds of things can be very alienating and marginalizing for families. So thinking about with the folks who have these relationships and their expertise on their own communities, language, cultural practices, designing spaces that are going to be more culturally responsive. So in this case, for instance, in this case the space is going to be in Spanish. And if there are educators in the space who don't speak Spanish, then they're the ones who may need some interpretation.
But it's a space that is honoring and grounded in the cultural practices and language of the folks in the school. That would be a starting point.
[00:27:39] Speaker C: Yes.
Building on what I previously said about, I do think that in many spaces the practice of study and reflection often gets negate, just glossed over and immediately would just want to take action. But I do think that's a critical action in terms of this. The people that we have, the team that we have now understanding their community, where they're situated, the history inequities, asking the people, their staff who live there, like what's going on? What are your concerns?
Because often people don't live in the community, in the community where the school is situated. I think that that's, that's critically important.
Understanding the families they can communicate what their dilemmas and problems are as to take informative action steps. And going back to previous comments about how can we work with hr how can we work kind of maneuver these structures where you have to have these rigid complete these rigid milestones to be hired to be considered having valuable knowledge. I think that would also be a critical part. So we can include many knowledges, especially those that have been excluded and not let red tape like be a big issue. Why of why they're not in these steps.
I do think that in terms of intentionally representative people, it will take time. I think the most important part is to really dig deep into what as you're recruiting, as we're trying to build a base and continually interrogating our bias, our biases and continuing to learn about the community because we can invite all the people and have as a represent a branding. This is a school school, bilingual school. So it would be very easy to fall into the trap. Oh, we have these diverse representation, but whose voices are being heard once you create that group.
So even once you create that group. Thinking about I think Ann was saying about space.
How are we taking whose space? Who's taking up space? So how do we interact with each other? Communication norms, relationship building.
So I would think I would. I'm thinking now to like the now the phase where like we have representative. How do we make sure that going back now I'm like being connected with Rodella and Melanie Catherine Rodella and Melanie Bertrand's work with collective visioning. And so how can we really engage in collective visioning?
Visioning this what we want our school to be in a way where we're sharing space, but also in a way a space that is I would argue a little bit more geared to the voices of minoritized groups. So not equ. Like, not equal, but equitably meaning that those that are from the community that have been siloed that they take the lead in helping re envision a more equitable form of education.
So I would say once that team is formed, trust communication norms and continual reflection, specifically from white English dominant staff members, how am I showing up into that space and am I dominating the conversation, imposing what I think Equity should be and having in this space where maybe the majority is already diverse, but I'm the one who's actually leading it which unfortunately does happen.
[00:31:29] Speaker B: So I think we're sort of towards the end of the podcast unfortunately and it's been amazing conversation and engagement.
So we're, we're going to end with a question. It was going to be what were your biggest concerns? But maybe the better question or what are your biggest hopes as US schools attempt to support families in more culturally and linguistically expansive ways.
[00:31:54] Speaker C: I guess in terms of school and then I'll say out of school for the people that I'm currently. I still work with the school district. So my biggest hopes is for us to take up to have space to like really reflect on how these we're saying perpetuating white normativity. But these norms, how do our. The way we teach, the way we interact with each other, how do they perpetuate inequities and biases and really like in a way that is.
That is vulnerable but also responsive and committed to addressing what we're saying, how we're.
What we're reflecting upon, that we're perpetuating. So I would say I. My hopes is for there to be space at least to like really have those conversations and not wait for especially in white dominant staffing that is does perpetuate K12 education for not to not wait for the leadership of color to come and like save us is for us to like what can we do in the setting that we are to engage in critical study and critical reflection and hopefully take then informed decisions based on that. That would be my starting point of hope in the schools and then outer schools because I don't want families to depend on one school. What schools decide to do in terms to build their leadership base. My hope right now with families that I work with is for them to also acquire the resources they need for their immediate flourishing, but also engage in leadership practices to engage in community organizing and hopefully that connects with education, organizing with education.
So my hopes with them right now is to survive, survive but also flourish and collectively mobilize and in a way have to push schools. It's like hey, we gotta do better and I'm not gonna wait for you to wait around until you feel like addressing these inequities. So both in and out of school. Those are my hopes.
[00:34:06] Speaker D: I would this idea of having space, time and space is really crucial and thinking about what I've just been able to have been so privileged to be able to witness what happens when there is sustained learning on the part of educators, leaders, families, and young people. So I think that the edge of that is to think about what's possible. What kinds of futures might we imagine collectively when we have that kind of sustained intergenerational learning? It can transform the way we approach teaching and learning, not just in the classroom, but thinking more broadly in terms of the broader ecosystem of education. So schooling and schools as a really crucial and important place of learning in theory, but also to recognize that that learning is always happening right in at home and communities and that families are pivotal in that. And so it's, I think that's the hope and the thing that gives me, you know, makes me hopeful for the future, is to see the kinds of transformative possibilities that folks can imagine together and begin to realize when they come together in these kinds of sustained, more equitable efforts to make change in the lives of their children and in their community more broadly.
And that is always going to entail tensions, always, because we don't live in these magical spaces where normative power, normative power is always going to enter back in. And I think of Dakota Irby's work and talking about how our own schools and organizations are the most powerful tests for this kind of learning, about the racialized dynamics and the systems of oppression that operate even as we are working towards realizing thriving futures for young people and families and communities.
[00:36:25] Speaker A: You know, the.
The need for, and I'm paraphrasing for reflection and study gets glossed over and instead people want to take immediate action.
I thought, I thought that was. I thought that was profound because we do live. We live in a microwave society. We want everything yesterday, and that's not the reality. And I think Dr. Alvarado said something that was really profound and I want that to be a highlight.
[00:37:01] Speaker B: James, thank you for that review. And I agree. I think that's critically important as we consider how to contribute to more equitable school systems and ultimately a more equitable society.
So if you would like to access this wonderful article written by Dr. Alvarado, please visit our special collection page linked to the podcast. Every 90 days, we'll post another five to six articles that will be available for everyone.
If you'd like to see our whole body of work, you can visit your local university library or talk with SAGE about a subscription. If you have any questions, you can email me directly.
I'
[email protected]. that's I a N M E T T E at Buffalo.
[00:37:48] Speaker A: Edu, and I am James Wright, and we look forward to joining you next time on JSAL Jabber.
[00:38:07] Speaker D: Yeah.
