Episode Transcript
[00:00:41] Speaker B: Hello and welcome to JCELL Jabber. For this episode we are recording live from the annual meeting for UCEA in sunny San Juan, Puerto Rico and we are excited to be here and make this part of the conference experience.
My name is James Wright, I am an Associate professor at Temple University and I am a board member of the Journal of Cases and 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 JCEL 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.
[00:01:41] Speaker C: Hello, My name is Ian Mehta. I use he him pronouns. I am an Associate professor of Educational Administration and a Program Coordinator at the University at Buffalo and I'm an Associate Editor of jcel.
A few years ago, four years ago, I was counting it up. The other day we started JCELL Jabber as a way to help unpack what we think are some of the best cases that are published in jcell and we have a few updates to share with you. So JCELL Jabber is a podcast that typically publishes about three podcasts a year.
It's intended to help highlight special collections of articles that are temporarily made available for free free to increase access around issues of inequities that exist in school systems, and it provides listeners a brief 30 to 40 minute podcast to engage more deeply in the case and hear nuanced analysis of the issue.
It also connects the listener with the author or authors who provide additional details about the case and typically provides a discussion with a scholarly practitioner from the field who can discuss how to apply this in practice.
This podcast is special in that it's our 10th podcast that we have published which is a major milestone as we move into double digit episodes, but also it marks a transition for us as this is my last episode as a co host before I transition to the production side. And while this is bittersweet for me, it's also a celebration because we are welcoming in the voice of Dr. Shannon Waite who will co host with Manny moving forward.
And so in the next couple of episodes you can expect to hear our podcast episodes to continue with our approach that we've had up to this point to highlight some of the best of the best in JCEL, but with the expertise of Dr. Wright and Dr. Waite.
[00:03:33] Speaker B: In this episode we review culturally responsive teaching CRT in Critical Race Theory when is CR Small T Not Critical Race Theory?
It was published online in 2024 in Volume 28, Issue 1. The case explores personal, political and systemic beliefs about how educators can make sure all students are well served and have a chance to be academically successful.
In particular, this case illustrates the ways in which educators do or do not acknowledge how racial and cultural identities of students influence the teaching and learning process.
[00:04:21] Speaker C: So to set the stage for this case and for the listener to hear from the authors, we wanted to unpack the more recent attempts to prevent historically accurate conversations about the racialized US society.
Currently, as noted in this case, there are 18 states, maybe even more at this point, that actively prevent the discussion or the use of critical race theory CR capital T in PK12 schools.
For those math teachers at heart out there, that's 36% of all states that have enacted anti CRT legislation and the ban of the use of CRT in public schools and actually makes it punishable by law to require DEIB training and in some cases with fines upwards of $10,000 for each infraction.
Culturally responsive teaching CR lowercase T is often denoted with that lowercase and is sometimes conflated with Critical Race Theory. Culturally Responsive teaching developed by one of the greats, one of my heroes, Dr. Geneva Gay, attorney attempts to highlight the sociocultural gaps that exist between teachers and students and contribute to so called achievement gaps.
By acknowledging and incorporating cultural and racial identities as well as other lived experiences, teachers can help close those socio cultural gaps and help improve learning outcomes for all students.
In this case, which is based in Florida, a high school and a school district are thrust into the political spotlight as the district reemerges from COVID in the fall, the state DOE pushed out a newsfeed that said it would no longer offer AP African American Studies courses for credit because it lacked, quote, educational value and historical accuracy, end quote, and for allegedly violating Florida law.
At the heart of the case is not so much what was enacted at the state level, but what but the political turmoil that this would cause at the local level and how school board politics would impact the local community.
With various political pressures from different players, both for and against the decree, the superintendent of this Florida school district has to decide how to proceed as well as how critical race theory and culturally responsive teaching are increasingly conflated.
[00:06:46] Speaker B: So we want to create an opportunity for the authors to discuss this case.
To do that, we'd like to welcome Dr. LaSonja Roberts and Dr. Mary Ebejer to the JCEL Jabber Podcast. Lasagna Mary, welcome to the show. Would you like to introduce yourselves?
[00:07:06] Speaker A: So I am LaSonja Roberts. I'm currently an associate professor at Western Michigan University.
I am in our Educational Leadership Take what Educational Leadership Program.
[00:07:21] Speaker D: And I am Mary Ebejer I am a senior research associate at Western Michigan University, also in the College of Education and Human Development.
And I'm on the Promise Neighborhood Grant.
[00:07:34] Speaker B: Welcome again. And I'd just like to start and ask you, why is a case like this so important to unpack and address with school leaders?
[00:07:44] Speaker A: So I think the background that we were able to bring to this case actually is in our familiarity with jcel. So I think it's just as important as all JCEL cases in that in your intro, you talk about the need to prepare for educators.
So whether we're talking about superintendents, principals, teachers, what we thought to be sufficient preparation, maybe even five years ago, definitely 10 years ago, has changed greatly due to the current social, political context.
You will see that our superintendent, he is for many things, but he is not educated about all of the things that he is for in order to be able to advocate for them successfully.
So this thought process that as educators, I shared earlier, who knew education was so political, that's what I learned as a teacher. Education is political.
Now we're learning that there is also a public relations responsibility that comes with leadership and being an educator as well.
And there are nuances. There is language that is being leveraged. So if I'm a leader, an educator in any context, I need practice in understanding what the challenges will be and what the frameworks are that I can use to help me to navigate and advocate for what my district, my stakeholders have said is important.
[00:09:47] Speaker D: And I would add to that that we are at an inflection point, that what is happening in the country is happening in a way that needs to be addressed.
It's not something that we all can ignore. We've reached a point where we need to, as LaSonja has said, have the tools to understand the strategies to understand how to respond. We can't work from our hip pockets anymore. We need to have intentional knowledge in ways to do this. It's not going away anytime soon. And we need to have those ways of working with our families, with our students, with our communities.
[00:10:32] Speaker C: So can you unpack this a little bit more for us and for the listener?
How can school systems like the one in your case, how do they live within the political reality of navigating anti CRT legislation or even just historically accurate conversations? Right. That there's legislation that prevents historically Accurate conversations about race and other identities. What does that mean for educators attempting to promote inclusive curriculum and instruction for racially and culturally diverse students?
[00:11:07] Speaker D: So I would say the conflation of these two CRTs is very real.
Actually, we were talking the other day how quaint it was when we wrote this. Originally DEI was not involved in the laws, yet they were going after crt.
[00:11:25] Speaker A: Right.
[00:11:26] Speaker D: So now DEI is also included. So the completion of all of these concepts around diversity and inclusion is creating an even more challenging environment.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: Right.
[00:11:38] Speaker D: So I think stepping back and thinking about co creating priorities rather than being from the top down, going to the community, whether that's in the school community or the extended community, and getting away from the buzzwords about whether it's diversity, equity, inclusion or CRTs, the variety of CRTs, and talking about values and outcomes.
And so what is it in your community you would like to see?
You have students, you have families that bring gifts, that bring opportunities.
Knowing one another, like truly knowing one another, enhances and strengthens the community.
And what's good education?
Good teaching is good teaching for all students.
So we want to be thinking about how can we co create this good education for all students.
[00:12:37] Speaker A: We were in a session earlier, some different work we do and we talked about language, framing our reality.
So back to the opening statement.
The power of your leadership team, the conversations that you have with team teachers that are going to prepare them and that are going to allow your school to decide how do we do business under these particular circumstances.
I think we are used to that in education in that one year we have this initiative, the next year we have another initiative. And so the leader has role of saying how do we continue our important work and understand how it fits into this new frame.
So if I am working with my community, because I think that's a huge part of this case is that. And you'll later ask us a question about social political context. So we know that's a part of how we educate leaders. Do you know your social political context? Right.
So a huge part of this case is that the school has a vision and they have a thought process about what they think is in the best interest of the people. But they haven't necessarily had deep, rich conversations with the people to make sure that that aligns with what the people they're hoping to serve well want.
And so this idea, as Mary was saying, the communication piece of do I understand where I am and what they value and am I making sure that that aligns with the work that my school is doing, I'm going to be able to continue my work if I understand the context of my school, my district, the local atmosphere that's going to shelter me from some of what's happening at a federal level, if that makes sense.
And so what we're hoping, some of the conversations we're asking people to engage in is the surface level says here is the work that I would like to do.
The deeper work is what do the people I hope to do this work for value and want me to do?
And so I think that's a part of continuing to do the work, is knowing that the people you hope to do it for, you're doing it with them so that you know they're going to support you in the end when it all possibly blows up. Right.
[00:15:37] Speaker D: I think part of that too is good teaching is about meeting students where they are, meeting the community where they are. And creating a sense of belonging through culturally, culturally responsive teaching practices has been shown to increase student success.
So by understanding, rather than again, back to the idea of buzzwords understanding really where your community is and what they value.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: So when we read this case, why is it important to think about how culturally responsive teaching can be continued and expanded not to exclude those from socio culturally privileged identities, but to ensure the history and contributions of all students are important in our pluralistic US society.
[00:16:28] Speaker A: So this makes me think about the goal of the journal.
I don't know if I said that earlier. So we had to study the goal of the journal because we did a special issue with the journal earlier. And so what's really cool and powerful about one of the goals of the journal is that we have to create various entry points, right? All of the different perspectives have to be there on the table. We're not saying in the same way that it's kind of like we modeled what we hope will be modeled in schools when they're having this thought process, right? So we put the issues on the table and we're hoping to engage people in rich conversation.
We're not telling them what the outcome might be, what might be the answer for their particular environment.
So I think similarly, when you're talking about how to include without excluding, that's kind of like my summary of that is I'll go to, when we talk about some of the tenants, about this being empowering and transformative. Right? So how do I create a setting for students that is going to be about developing habits of lifelong learners and a social consciousness? We're not telling you what to be socially conscious about.
We are introducing you to a process of democratic thought, I would say. Right. And so that is something that every.
I'm not sure that any parent would say. I don't want my child to be an active participant in life, in the systems that govern their lives.
And so what we're talking about is how do you create an environment where all students can engage in curriculum and understanding of people, all people, even beyond their current context?
Because that's a question we sometimes ask parents. Do you want us to prepare your students for what they're experiencing now or any possible scenario that they could experience in their lives? And so to do that means that we are going to thoughtfully teach them how to engage with difference, respectfully engage with difference.
And so that's a part of the discussion that you're having in this. I need to know, back to Mary's point. What do they value and how do I align what they value with the tenets of being culturally responsive? I need to show them how it fits what they feel is important for their child's present and future, and whether
[00:19:24] Speaker D: or not they like it or are aware of it.
Educators are the cultural organizers, the cultural mediators and orchestrators of social context for learning.
So either you can explicitly accept and embrace that opportunity to be cultural mediator and the orchestrator of the social context for learning, whether you do it intentionally or not, it's still going to happen.
So if you embrace it, bring in conversation, bring in priorities, bring in values from your community or not, it's still going to happen, if that makes sense.
[00:20:02] Speaker A: Right.
And do we.
So we did get to talk to Lok-Sze before coming in.
And so part of her work is about the preparation of superintendents.
And so she recently published an article,
[00:20:22] Speaker D: I have it here.
[00:20:23] Speaker A: Okay. Because I can't remember the year. But for those interested in this topic, it aligns. Because she's talking about how am I. How do I have intentional micro political strategies?
Because she's very much about policies and how we teach people to navigate these policies. And so she has some strategies that she and her co authors discuss that talk about how this is in any.
Whenever we talk about supporting students, we're going to talk about how we layer that.
[00:20:58] Speaker C: Right.
[00:20:59] Speaker A: Like it's not just one approach, it's multiple. So she talks about that with regards to the work at the superintendent level. And it's a fit for our superintendent. Again, because this is bigger, greater than being well intentioned. Right. There has to be intentionality about what I'm doing as well.
[00:21:19] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:21:19] Speaker D: Her article is published this year. Year Superintendent's Strategic Leadership for just and equitable systemic change.
She goes over five strategies and if I may, quickly being strategic about communication, involving multiple constituents, understanding different constituents, centering students and ensuring equitable resources.
[00:21:43] Speaker A: Right.
[00:21:44] Speaker D: And so as a superintendent, thinking about what are the micro political strategies inherent in each of these, what are the skills that they can bring to make those strategies?
[00:21:57] Speaker A: And how am I going to overlap that? Because it's not like I'm just using one in a particular instance. There's going to be an interplay.
So we thought that, you know, you write in one moment and then other learning occurs, but again, to go back to what we hope people are getting from this constant change.
And so again, we are just being asked to be. And it shouldn't be the role of one person because one person can't acquire the level of knowledge that it takes at this point in time to be able to respond to all the different interactions that are happening with policy and with practice and community.
[00:22:42] Speaker C: I so appreciate you thinking about how educational leadership preparation students might need to learn how to play more in the political arena. I think that often we have great theoretical ideas, but we don't sometimes know how to help people translate them into practical. So this isn't a home run question, but do you have any thoughts on if somebody is engaging in this work, let's say it's a principal or a superintendent, and they discover that they're in a community with substantial pushback, what would you suggest some of their actions be to engage in more culturally responsive education instruction?
What would that look like?
[00:23:31] Speaker A: So my first answer may not be the one that you want to hear.
And I say this because when I'm working with leaders, aspiring ed leaders, we talk about fit, and there are going to be certain communities who values are not going to align with yours as a leader or an educator.
So I want to throw that out there first.
It may be, and I've had this, I get to watch my students who are very grown, experienced people, their assistant superintendents.
There has been a lot of. That would be interesting. There has been a lot of movement because of what people are experiencing, seeing surface in their spaces that maybe at one time they were comfortable in, but now are seeing some things that are making them uncomfortable. So they're having to go to different spaces where there is a greater alignment with their values. So I think that's the first statement is it could be that there is not the opportunity to shift.
It may not be the space for you to do that work. That is a possibility.
I think the other would be the Next, what is a possible step is what we talk about with the critical mass. Right? We've all heard that, right? You got it. You got to have your core group.
You need to know who your influencers are.
And so there are step by step processes for that for me to know. Okay, Usually it's not about changing the minds of hundreds of people. It's about identifying who those key individuals or groups are that you need to connect with. And again go through the process of more conversation about what do we have in common as opposed to what is different.
And so now how do we build towards that.
But it can't be a conversation where one group feels like they are going to have to lose something in order for another to gain something. So that's what I mean by like when we talk about how we educate our leaders.
Some of these are different conversations than we would be used to having with them. So again, lots of articles stressing communication.
It's how we communicate, how we collaborate, build coalitions.
That's the kind of work that we're talking about that we don't always see in our ed leadership.
[00:26:33] Speaker D: And to build on that, building trust in the community through conversations that it can be very uncomfortable to question traditional canon of education or to question my way of thinking, my world experience.
And so through conversation that is non threatening and that is building what is working well.
There's always something working well. There's always something we can agree on. So starting there and building on what is working well, finding those opportunities, finding toeholds to build.
And as LaSonja said to you don't need to convince everyone at once. You find those influencers who can then and influencers that have a variety of experiences, not everyone has to agree. But influences who are willing to model openness, trust so that they're posse, so they're compatriots, so that they're those that agree with them can see this is a safe place to have these conversations, the bigger conversations about the values.
[00:27:54] Speaker A: What do we want in the end of the day?
[00:27:56] Speaker D: What do we want for our children to be successful?
[00:27:59] Speaker A: And I will follow up. I'm sorry, this is really fast.
We noticed this in some of our other work. Why is it that. And we know there are multiple reasons.
Schools sometimes are afraid to let the community in, to let parents in and to sit down and have those conversations with them. And we're in a time where that's no longer an option.
So I did. I just want to add that.
[00:28:29] Speaker C: Yeah, just really quick. I love what you're sharing and I think that there's such a need as we think about leadership preparation moving forward that they're, we have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. And what do those conversations look like? And a key word for me was the idea of coalitions, like how, how do we engage in coalition building? Because for me that that has to be one of the steps forward. Right. As we think about developing more equitable schools. So thank you for sharing that.
[00:29:00] Speaker B: So just to wrap up just hearing this conversation, it made me want to emphasize something that I have been thinking about lately and I think it was just sort of re spark with this conversation today and that is specifically the newness of culturally responsive teaching and the newness of critical race theory, even the relative newness. And specifically when you think of the relatively long standing institutions and organizations such as this one, UCEA as well as eaq, considered one of the flagship journals of leadership, having been around since the mid-1960s, the mid to late 1960s.
Right.
Which is basically in the heart of the civil rights movement. But what we find is we don't have any of these kinds of conversations in UCEA or EAQ until around 1990, somewhere about 30 years after the development of these institutions. And so you see like this rapid increase in acknowledging the importance of these conversations as well as a counter movement, a countering of these conversations that's stronger than almost ever because it didn't exist for the first 30 years of these institutions. So the political fallout is very interesting and I think it's very important to highlight that.
So just in review of some of the things that I wanted to highlight about, you know what, what you all spoke about was one thing was the political nature of education. I think is very important to highlight that education has always been political.
It will always be political.
Right. And we're fooling ourselves when we tell each other, teach it or any, any kind, any version of information that suggests that education isn't political. Because if it wasn't, I mean, there's a, there's a mountain of examples that show us the political nature of it.
So I think that's very, that was very important. And I think the conversation around conflating culturally responsive teaching with critical race theory. Right, because they're not the same. We know that. We know that critical race theory is something that initially showed up as a legal conversation specific to the laws. Legal is a critique of the discipline of law and legal studies.
And critical race theory in education is looking at the ways in which policy or the ways in which the law informs education has nothing to do with teaching students about the history of the United States or their culture and who they are and the things going on around them socially and politically. This has nothing to do with that. But because we don't, because we don't value the idea, or because we don't center the reality of politics in education, we can almost get away with conflating Crt and CRT as outlined in this case.
[00:32:44] Speaker A: Well, and think about the strategy in forcing someone to have to.
You forced me to craft a defense. You forced me think, first of all, how long do we hold people's attention?
And you forced me to spell out this was. We use these terms in academic spaces. Many of us do not go home and have these conversations with, with our families. Right? And now you bring a parent into the space or you bring a student into this space, and I'm forced to explain in one to two minutes, that's about how long we hold people's attention. Here's what critical race theory is, here's what culturally responsive teaching is, and this is why they are not the same. So very clever that you put the burden of proof on the educators to dispel the myth about the two.
I think there's some great strategy in that.
But yes, what we're trying to do is be clear.
I love that these cases always have the teacher notes and we're always able to give people links to other, other references.
Because how many of us were even introduced to crt, critical race theory as education scholars in our programs, it really depended on what you were studying. So that's why we know this is not a legitimate argument, because many teachers, leaders, this is not something they're using, this a term they're using or even as familiar with on a daily basis. So now you're saying it's something we're teaching K12 students about.
So, yes, it. Yes, there is.
Factually, they are different.
But all is clever in political warfare. So you must. That's. That's why the cases matter. We have to practice. We have to be able to unpack these things and quickly for our, for
[00:34:53] Speaker B: our stakeholders that what you described is a fundamental example of politics in education.
[00:35:01] Speaker C: So I'm going to ask one more question. Maybe you feel like you've already answered it. What's one hope that you have that might come out of your case? And we think about educational leadership development or just even professional development for people already in the field.
You know, essentially, what's the message that you would like practitioners to hear as they navigate this sociopolitical reality?
[00:35:26] Speaker A: I don't know if this is a hope so much as a message, but you gotta have a plan and you must know your context before you build that plan.
And so our ability, as far as how do we prepare would be, how do we make sure that we are ensuring, as you said, that our educators understand that there are always politics in education and are we building a new space? We used to say that our curriculum leaders.
There was a time when our study showed that curriculum leaders were some of the most effective leaders because they were able to. To. Right? So we can go on and on. Relational leadership. We can go on and do all these different categories.
So now we're in a space where your political savviness is also a factor in your success as a leader. And so I think that's something that we want people to walk away with and reflect on.
[00:36:30] Speaker D: My hope is that we just get back to the basics of understanding what is best for you children as best we can. I know it will be a while before the tone and tenor of the current environment slows down, but eventually, through coalition building, through trust building, that we get back to the idea of conversations about what is best for children, whatever that looks like from the community's perspective. Not from somewhere far away, right? Not from power brokers, but from the community. So community up. And so that would be my hope.
[00:37:06] Speaker C: I think that's spot on. I think educational leaders have always had to navigate the political arena, but now it's critical. Right. We have to prepare people for this work. So thank you. Thanks for being here with us today.
If you'd like to access this article, please visit our special collections page. Link to this podcast every 90 days or so will post five to six articles that will be available for everyone. They'll be open access and if you'd like to see our whole body of work, you can visit your local university library. If you belong to ucea, you can have access or you can talk to Sage about a subscription. And as always, if you have any questions, you can send me an email.
[00:37:58] Speaker B: and I'm James Wright. You can check out my new book, Critical Ethnic Studies in the Global Pursuit of Justice at Teachers College Press. And we look forward to joining you next time on JCEL Jabber.
