Speaker 1: And my point at the end of the day is
Speaker 1: we be in a better place if people acknowledge for
Speaker 1: privileges that we did have and doubled down on that
Speaker 1: when it came to making things happen towards this tangible
Speaker 1: equity goal. Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today
Speaker 1: we welcome Colin Seal on the show. Colin is the
Speaker 1: founder and CEO of Think Law. Colin was born and
Speaker 1: raised in Brooklyn, New York, where a struggle gave birth
Speaker 1: to his passion for educational equity. Using lessons from his
Speaker 1: experience as a math teacher, attorney, and keynote speaker, he
Speaker 1: helps educators teach critical thinking to all students, regardless of
Speaker 1: race or achievement through his award winning organization Think Law.
Speaker 1: Colin is also the author of Thinking Like a Lawyer,
Speaker 1: and his latest book, which is the topic of our
Speaker 1: chat today, is called Tangible Equity. In this episode, I
Speaker 1: talked to Colin about tangible equity and education. For Colin,
Speaker 1: real equity work should help reduce the predictive power of
Speaker 1: demographics on outcomes. In order to do that, he argues,
Speaker 1: we need to teach kids how to think for themselves
Speaker 1: so that they can learn to question instead of comply
Speaker 1: with unfair systems. Colin shares concrete actions that educators can
Speaker 1: take took a tribute towards tangible equity. We also touch
Speaker 1: on the topics of privilege, race bias, and gifted education.
Speaker 1: It's always a great time chatting with Colin. He's a
Speaker 1: really thoughtful and passionate guy, and I think he's making
Speaker 1: some really important changes in the education system. So, without
Speaker 1: further ado, I bring you Colin Seal. How are you, man,
Speaker 1: I'm great. It's been a while. Yeah, yeah, yeah, man, Man,
Speaker 1: I really I really, really really enjoyed reading through your book. Man.
Speaker 1: I read it back in July, like full thing first,
Speaker 1: I just kind of read a couple of chapters whatever.
Speaker 1: But man, I'm being so inspired after reading that book. Man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: transcend Yeah, it's so good. I mean, what do you
Speaker 1: think about what I think about for my children? Right
Speaker 1: when I think about like for the world and the
Speaker 1: teachers we work with, whatever. It's like, man, who just
Speaker 1: setting a higher bar? Setting a higher bar? I mean,
Speaker 1: I love it so. I mean it's the hugest breath
Speaker 1: of fresh air I've had in a long time. Wow,
Speaker 1: that made my day. Thank you talk about setting a
Speaker 1: higher bar in this discourse. I loved your new book,
Speaker 1: Tangible Equity. Congratulations, congratulations in the publication a lot leading
Speaker 1: up to that book. It brings together lots of your
Speaker 1: prior ideas. I mean, we e've been on this podcast before.
Speaker 1: This is a repeat performer on the podcast. But in
Speaker 1: our last discussion we talk about a lot of these
Speaker 1: issues as well, which are in this book. But this
Speaker 1: book brings together lots more threads and lots more a
Speaker 1: lot more of your thinking since then. The subtitle of
Speaker 1: your book is a guide for leveraging student identity, culture,
Speaker 1: and power to unlock excellence in and beyond the classroom.
Speaker 1: I think like this idea of equity. I'd love to
Speaker 1: get your thoughts on your latest thinking about how you
Speaker 1: define that term, maybe how it differs from how some
Speaker 1: other people define it. I love it. I love it,
Speaker 1: So I think it's important to start by saying, like
Speaker 1: when we first spoke, my first book wasn't even out right,
Speaker 1: This Thinking like a Lawyer book hadn't even come out
Speaker 1: yet before, and a lot of the work that I've
Speaker 1: been leading in the last seven years since I started
Speaker 1: this organization Think law was how do we close the
Speaker 1: critical thinking gap in education? How do we make sure
Speaker 1: that all kids have access to critical thinking? Because of
Speaker 1: my firm belief that when our kids learn how to lead,
Speaker 1: how to innovate, how to break what needs to be broken,
Speaker 1: it's a very different level of consuming education and living
Speaker 1: and not just surviving but thriving in our world. So
Speaker 1: that's the work we've been doing with you know, districts
Speaker 1: and school systems all over the nation. And when it
Speaker 1: comes to equity, I'm so glad that we're starting with
Speaker 1: this question because we are in a really weird space.
Speaker 1: People can say whatever and call it equity. Right, we
Speaker 1: can say, hey, I am going to you. Saw this
Speaker 1: so often during COVID. We got to make sure we
Speaker 1: keep schools closed because equity. Oh don't we have to
Speaker 1: really make sure we reopen schools because of equity. Oh,
Speaker 1: let's make sure we shut down I get to the
Speaker 1: talented program equity. Let's make sure we expand opportunity to
Speaker 1: advance academics equity. So let's be really clear. When I
Speaker 1: say equity work, I think about the work that we
Speaker 1: do that reduces the predictive power that demographics have on outcomes.
Speaker 1: So for doing equity work, we're doing the kinds of
Speaker 1: things that are resulting in reducing the predictive power that
Speaker 1: demographics have on outcomes. This means that no matter where
Speaker 1: you're listening from, if you live in the community where
Speaker 1: you can say things like the other side of the tracks,
Speaker 1: south of the inter state, north of the interstate, if
Speaker 1: you've got this thing where oh there's that trail apart
Speaker 1: community over there is that community where most people speak
Speaker 1: that language, the community where most people are that skin color,
Speaker 1: those kids in your school that have that little thing
Speaker 1: on their record that said that they're this type of student.
Speaker 1: If it's no longer the case that so many of
Speaker 1: those demographic markers can lead to see sorts of predictive outcomes,
Speaker 1: we're doing the type of disruptive equity work that I
Speaker 1: mean when we say equity. So what I like about
Speaker 1: that definition is it is really inclusive. I've never met
Speaker 1: an educator in any community who's felt like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't do that here. Of course you do. We're
Speaker 1: all trying to reduce predictive capacity that demographics tend to
Speaker 1: have on outcomes. No matter where we work. This has
Speaker 1: been your mission for years. I mean, you've said right
Speaker 1: in your mission statement, I remember like what five six
Speaker 1: years ago like, regardless of your zip code, regardless of
Speaker 1: you know what side of the tracks you're on, I
Speaker 1: believe you said that at one point this has been
Speaker 1: in your heart and mind for a really long time.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like the past couple of years it's
Speaker 1: you've gotten even more like passionate about it or more
Speaker 1: real because you're fired up right now. I look at you,
Speaker 1: I love it. You know, are you even more fired
Speaker 1: up right now than you were before? Like other world
Speaker 1: events things that have You're like, this is the time
Speaker 1: for me to really get this message out there. If
Speaker 1: you haven't been in a reflective space in the last
Speaker 1: two years, it's really surprising to me, right, because there's
Speaker 1: so many things about the last two years that that
Speaker 1: kind of forces that reflection. But one of the things
Speaker 1: that I've learned to really really question over the last
Speaker 1: two years is this idea around what success looks like,
Speaker 1: what success actually means Because for me, growing up, how
Speaker 1: I grew up, growing up in a struggle, growing up
Speaker 1: on free of reduced lunch, having a bad and cars
Speaker 1: rate for selling drugs, growing up with some of the
Speaker 1: behavior challenges I had when I was in my primary grades,
Speaker 1: the idea that I'm doing what I do now can
Speaker 1: seem like this miraculous success, right, And I see these
Speaker 1: stories all the time, and I'm like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: we really got to work hard. We really got to
Speaker 1: push towards outcomes, because, as I've argued before, the outcome
Speaker 1: is part of the opportunity. Right when we make sure
Speaker 1: that that destructive work it's focused on those outcomes, those
Speaker 1: outcomes lead to more opportunities for populations whose lives can
Speaker 1: be transformed by those outcomes that lead to those opportunities.
Speaker 1: But then part of what I started to buckle up against,
Speaker 1: and I have a piece that I wrote for the
Speaker 1: seventy four that explained, like why I wrote Tangible equity.
Speaker 1: I started to feel like, there's a cost to this work.
Speaker 1: There's a cost to this model that says, hey, depending
Speaker 1: on where you are in our world, you might have
Speaker 1: to work twice as hard to get half as far
Speaker 1: in certain kinds of constraints. Right, maybe because of gender
Speaker 1: or ability issues, or you know, racial injustice issues. You've
Speaker 1: got this two tiered system that requires extraordinary effort from
Speaker 1: some folks to get what would normally be looked at
Speaker 1: as ordinary results, and honestly, Scott, I started to feel it.
Speaker 1: I started to feel this level of exhaustion. I started
Speaker 1: to question, why did I stop going ball at twenty
Speaker 1: one years old. It doesn't even run in my family.
Speaker 1: Why is my prostate as an almost forty year old
Speaker 1: person where it should be when I'm in my mid sixties.
Speaker 1: Why is my blood pressure spiking up to this level
Speaker 1: of height? And I start looking at this thing. Doctor
Speaker 1: Charles Coal has a book that's called Beyond Grit and Resilience,
Speaker 1: and he talked about this idea of the black achievement
Speaker 1: trauma tacks. And when I read this book and I
Speaker 1: started looking at it, and I heard him speak at
Speaker 1: our conference once. He talked about when he experiences a failure,
Speaker 1: when he has a small setback, he starts to smell
Speaker 1: the homeless shelter. He can still smell it. This man
Speaker 1: has his doctorate, right, and he can still smell it.
Speaker 1: And I think about, what is the cost of creating
Speaker 1: this space, of telling you your answer to the injustice
Speaker 1: in front of you is to just put your head
Speaker 1: down and grit and resilience your way through it. That
Speaker 1: was kind of what I had been on for a
Speaker 1: long time. But if I think about tangible equity, I
Speaker 1: think about my two kids, Roseen Oliver, and I think
Speaker 1: about a world where I don't tell them anymore that
Speaker 1: they've got to work twice as hard. It could happen
Speaker 1: as far because we've created something better, We've created something
Speaker 1: that's more fair, more equitable. They were part of that
Speaker 1: creation as well. So this idea that we don't need
Speaker 1: to just simply settle for navigating a system, what if
Speaker 1: we work to kind of dismantle the parts of this
Speaker 1: And that didn't really work. As an immigrant kid, all
Speaker 1: of my life was about playing the game. But what
Speaker 1: if we transcended the game altogether. What if we said
Speaker 1: we need to slay the game. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: where we really get to a point where our kids
Speaker 1: are part of being part of that just world change
Speaker 1: that we're looking for. Yeah, why has this word equity
Speaker 1: been becomes such a bad word in certain circles? Though,
Speaker 1: I mean it sounds like you're trying to really put
Speaker 1: it on a really rigorous foundation and inclusive, a really
Speaker 1: truly inclusive foundation. Are there instances where you agree with
Speaker 1: some of the criticisms that have been leveraged against the
Speaker 1: use of that word. Yes, And I think part of
Speaker 1: the challenge is whether you want to call it performative
Speaker 1: equity or cosmetic equity. There's a lot of people that
Speaker 1: just talk about equity, and when you talk about equity
Speaker 1: in certain ways that are not actually guided in that disruption, right,
Speaker 1: things that are going to actually make a tangible difference
Speaker 1: in disrupting that pattern between demographics and outcomes. We can
Speaker 1: get into a world where people just start doing pretty
Speaker 1: weird stuff. But if you think about it, what systemic
Speaker 1: change is happening When we decide to take a group
Speaker 1: of third graders, have them stand in line and move
Speaker 1: forward and backwards on that line based off of whether
Speaker 1: or not they have a certain privilege or don't have
Speaker 1: a certain privilege. Right, that's called the privilege walk, right,
Speaker 1: And what I think about a privilege walk is it
Speaker 1: is a showcase. It is the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: can maybe make me feel like I am doing something
Speaker 1: that's equity work. But again, what actual work is happening.
Speaker 1: And sometimes part of what we do is we say, oh,
Speaker 1: but no, we really got to address mindsets, right, We
Speaker 1: got to have like courageous conversations about race because we
Speaker 1: got to have mindsets. But how courageous is your conversation
Speaker 1: if it never leads to actual action? And actually, how
Speaker 1: much can I do with mindset if I never have
Speaker 1: a skill set to go with it? Right? So, a
Speaker 1: lot of times, from a K twelve perspective, what this
Speaker 1: looks like is there's some teachers that look at certain
Speaker 1: types of kids and say these kids can't, these kids can't,
Speaker 1: these kids can't. And a lot of times educators would
Speaker 1: be like, Oh, that's a mindset issue, that's a belief issue.
Speaker 1: But I'm like, well, what if there was a concession
Speaker 1: that when I say these kids can't, I'm saying I
Speaker 1: don't have any idea how to create the learning environments
Speaker 1: such that all kids can. It's not an issue of will,
Speaker 1: but an issue of skill. I can actually do something
Speaker 1: about that. I can work on and change that. I
Speaker 1: get it. Like when you just said that sentence, I'm like, ah,
Speaker 1: that's why you call it tangible equity. I get it.
Speaker 1: I got it now, I get it. No, that's so
Speaker 1: true because so much of it is performative. You're right,
Speaker 1: it doesn't translate into tangible anything. Not only is it
Speaker 1: not even tangible. We've got this massive phrase that's used
Speaker 1: in equity work that it's almost like I don't even
Speaker 1: have control over it. And I think that's where it
Speaker 1: starts to become really funky. I cannot stand the term
Speaker 1: implicit bias. I believe that it exists, right, I get
Speaker 1: cognitively what I could be a thing. But I also
Speaker 1: think it's a very education thing for us to do,
Speaker 1: because in education we love letting folks off the hook,
Speaker 1: Like I'd rather instead of thinking about all these secret
Speaker 1: biases that I may have and may be kind of
Speaker 1: perpetrating on on kids unknowingly, I haven't focused on the
Speaker 1: explicit biases that I do have, because we all have
Speaker 1: explicit bias. Part of why equity is so hard for
Speaker 1: folks to kind of grapple around is because we are
Speaker 1: in the world where it's like bias equals bad, bias
Speaker 1: equals reality. I remember being at a party with you once, Scott,
Speaker 1: and you ended up in a really bad conversation for
Speaker 1: a really long time, and I was biased against being
Speaker 1: in that conversation, right, And I'm like, I don't want
Speaker 1: no parts of this. I'm out right, that's what I do, right,
Speaker 1: I peace out I'm like, I'm not dealing with this, right,
Speaker 1: Like when we talk about bias from a real kind
Speaker 1: of like cognitive level. Any teacher who's ever had an
Speaker 1: opportunity to name a child, right, name a child when
Speaker 1: you start going through those potential names. Left, not David,
Speaker 1: I had David last year. Not going to happen. Oh,
Speaker 1: And we look at these things and we kind of
Speaker 1: joke and smile about it, But clearly bias exists when
Speaker 1: equity has been sort of weaponized to this idea that
Speaker 1: like equity makes people feel bad, it changes things if
Speaker 1: we already presume that bias was present, but we actually
Speaker 1: have to grapple with and deal with it. I want
Speaker 1: to name one last part about why equity has become
Speaker 1: a challenge. I think the way things have always been
Speaker 1: done has an incredible amount of momentum. Right, the status
Speaker 1: quo has an incredible amount of momentum where even after
Speaker 1: the massive disruption of a pandemic, we can still see
Speaker 1: a lot of things reverting back to that as that norm.
Speaker 1: One of the things that are super important to be
Speaker 1: able to preface anytime we're doing equity work. That's reducing
Speaker 1: a predictive power the demographics have on outcomes is that
Speaker 1: it's not always going to feel good. It's sometimes going
Speaker 1: to be a little bit uncomfortable, and in fact, even personally,
Speaker 1: anytime you are personally experiencing something where rare growth is happening,
Speaker 1: it's often growing pains associated with that. We're not honest
Speaker 1: about that. Often enough, if we were honest about it,
Speaker 1: we'd realize, like, this work we're about to embark upon
Speaker 1: is not going to always feel great. There's gonna be
Speaker 1: a lot of personal accountability, a lot of personal responsibility
Speaker 1: involved in this, and it's gonna feel kind of funky,
Speaker 1: not to say that it's bad. We get to acknowledge
Speaker 1: the feeling of stuff. This is not an academic exercise.
Speaker 1: It's a very personal, real growth experience that has to happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah. The trauma, loss, and uncertainty of our world
Speaker 1: have led many of us to ask life's biggest questions,
Speaker 1: such as who are we? What is our highest purpose?
Speaker 1: And how do we not only live through but thrive
Speaker 1: in the wake of tragedy, division, and challenges to a
Speaker 1: fundamental way living. To help us all address these questions,
Speaker 1: process what this unique time in human history has meant
Speaker 1: for us personally and collectively an emerge whole. I've collaborated
Speaker 1: with my colleague and dear friend, doctor Jordan Feingeld, MD
Speaker 1: to bring you our forthcoming book. It's called Choose Growth,
Speaker 1: a workbook for transcending trauma, fear, and self doubt. It's
Speaker 1: a workbook design to guide you in a journey of
Speaker 1: committing to growth and the pursuit of self actualization every day.
Speaker 1: It's chock full of research from humanistic psychology, positive psychology,
Speaker 1: developmental psychology, personality psychology, cognitive science, and neuropsychology. So lots
Speaker 1: of themes that you hear about on this podcast, and
Speaker 1: it's aimed to help us all integrate the many facets
Speaker 1: of ourselves and co crete our new normal with a
Speaker 1: renewed sense of strength, vitality, and hope. Whether you're healing
Speaker 1: from loss, adapting to the new normal, or simply looking
Speaker 1: ahead to life's next chapter, Choose Growth will help steer
Speaker 1: you there too, deeper connection to your values, your life vision,
Speaker 1: and ultimately your most authentic self. Choose Growth will officially
Speaker 1: hit the shelves September thirteenth, and you can pre order
Speaker 1: your copy or the audiobook in the US now on Amazon,
Speaker 1: Barnes and Noble, Indie Bound and all major retailers. If
Speaker 1: you're in the UK and Commonwealth, you can pre order
Speaker 1: now at bookshop dot org dot UK. We truly hope
Speaker 1: this book helps you grow and thrive and become your
Speaker 1: best self. Okay, now back to the show. Well, what
Speaker 1: do you think is the biggest challenge our young people?
Speaker 1: You know, we'll face as adults, and how can this
Speaker 1: notion of tangible equity prepare them for that? It seems
Speaker 1: like a cop out to talk about like pressure, you know,
Speaker 1: like peer pressure, Like, oh, there's so much pressure, there's
Speaker 1: so much pressure. But there's something about the definition of
Speaker 1: success that I start to grapple with a lot. I'll
Speaker 1: go around the country a lot and a lot of
Speaker 1: the uh. We do a lot of parent workshops, and
Speaker 1: oftentimes our parent workshops tend to lean towards parents of
Speaker 1: kids that are and they get then in town to
Speaker 1: programs or whatever throughout the country. And it's interesting because
Speaker 1: when I ask parents and families how do you define
Speaker 1: success for your children? The kind of answers we get
Speaker 1: are the kind of answers Scott that I think you
Speaker 1: really look at when you think about success like want
Speaker 1: them to be like kind. I want them to feel
Speaker 1: like they've got like a good set of friends and
Speaker 1: have positive relationships in their lives, and like are you
Speaker 1: know they've got a job and care about that, they're
Speaker 1: active in their community, all these things, right, But then
Speaker 1: I ask them another question. I'm like, all right, if
Speaker 1: you or your children answering this question, what would your
Speaker 1: kids say? Was your answer? How you define success? And
Speaker 1: they're like all high test scores, really good report card grades,
Speaker 1: really high GPAs, checking up all the boxes for community service,
Speaker 1: getting into the good colleges. Like, so there's a disconnect.
Speaker 1: There's a disconnect where even the energy we spend living
Speaker 1: our lives do not connect with what our actual values are.
Speaker 1: What I worry about for our kids is how much
Speaker 1: will they go about their merried way accepting the unacceptable,
Speaker 1: because that's what you're supposed to do. We're in a
Speaker 1: system that breeds compliance. We're in the system of people
Speaker 1: who like are really good at compliance, who become part
Speaker 1: of these systems. So to what extent are our kids
Speaker 1: going to be the ones that can be like, what
Speaker 1: are there was a better way to do this? What
Speaker 1: if there's a different way to approach this, and my
Speaker 1: biggest worry is that there's not enough happening on a
Speaker 1: day to day basis, and I k the twelve education
Speaker 1: system that's preparing kids to ask these kinds of questions.
Speaker 1: That's really sad. Well, Like just tangibly, you're thinking, are
Speaker 1: some of the biggest problems in education? Like what are
Speaker 1: we concretely getting wrong? Can you enumerate this a little
Speaker 1: bit so one of them I can name for a fact.
Speaker 1: I think this whole conversation we've see nationally around critical
Speaker 1: race theory CRT, anti CRT, critical race theory, whatever you
Speaker 1: want to call it, and it's become this boogey man.
Speaker 1: It's become this thing, and there's a range of concerns
Speaker 1: from the outrageous to the sincere. And when I start
Speaker 1: looking at this, my approach is a little bit different.
Speaker 1: My approach is to say, Okay, let's step back for
Speaker 1: a second. Why are people, particularly the ones that are
Speaker 1: sincerely having a challenge with this? Why are people feeling
Speaker 1: this way? Why are people kind of get into this space?
Speaker 1: And what I've come to realize is we wouldn't have
Speaker 1: anywhere near the challenge around to see RT conversation if
Speaker 1: we felt super confident that we were doing our job
Speaker 1: when it came to our ct raising critical thinkers, and
Speaker 1: our response to that was to say, we actually created
Speaker 1: a platform for families, like an actual thing for families
Speaker 1: that they can kind of purchase directly. That's called raising
Speaker 1: critical thinkers. I've raising Critical Thinkers at us and it's
Speaker 1: an English and Spanish and the idea is, I can
Speaker 1: use this platform to engage my kids, my children and
Speaker 1: critical thinking at home, because maybe, just maybe, if I
Speaker 1: was confident my kids knew how to think, I really
Speaker 1: wouldn't care if they could potentially be kind of indoctionate
Speaker 1: about what to think, because you know how to think,
Speaker 1: you can't be told what to think. Wait, this is
Speaker 1: such a good point. Let me just pause you a second.
Speaker 1: This is such a good point. And sometimes some of
Speaker 1: the ideas coming from critical race theory are actually inversely
Speaker 1: correlated with good critical thinking. I hear some stuff and
Speaker 1: I'm like, well that doesn't make sense, you know, so
Speaker 1: not all of it, not all of critical race theory,
Speaker 1: just because the word criticals in there means that involves
Speaker 1: critical thinking. So I think if you can give people
Speaker 1: the skills, so I'm going to say this critical often
Speaker 1: for the purposes of academia, means like scholarly and pretty deep.
Speaker 1: And what happens when we try to take something that
Speaker 1: scholarly and pretty deep and reduce it to an infographic
Speaker 1: or reduce it to something that I can deliver in
Speaker 1: third grade? Is things sound really weird and terrible? Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll give you a concrete example. That's a good point.
Speaker 1: Literacy is white supremacy. What what are you talking about? Oh? Like, okay,
Speaker 1: Like reading and writing is white supremacy? Like that doesn't
Speaker 1: even make any sense? How do you get there? Right?
Speaker 1: And I can look at this from two ways. I
Speaker 1: can look at it by saying, like, you know, when
Speaker 1: they excavated the Jefferson compound in Montoicello, they found two
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty seven unidentified to lights and all these
Speaker 1: like pencils and things, and it was clear that there
Speaker 1: was a secret school happening with these enslaved people. After
Speaker 1: a day of toiling in these fields, risk life and
Speaker 1: limb to learn how to read and write. So miss
Speaker 1: me on reading and writing is right supremacy? How do
Speaker 1: we get to that point? Though? How does it even happen?
Speaker 1: It happens because of a legal case. There's a case
Speaker 1: here in Arizona about fifty sixty years ago where there
Speaker 1: was a girl teenage mom who had a kid, was
Speaker 1: going to give up the kid for adoption, and in
Speaker 1: the contract it said there was a six month finalization period. Okay,
Speaker 1: six month finalization period. About three weeks later she decided,
Speaker 1: you know what, I changed my mind. I don't want
Speaker 1: to go do the adoption. And the court said, okay,
Speaker 1: change your mind, it's whatever, it's fine. But then what
Speaker 1: they realized was the actual document said six months with
Speaker 1: the finalization period, but she only had two weeks to
Speaker 1: change her mind. She was past that period. It didn't
Speaker 1: matter that she understood it that she had six months
Speaker 1: to change her mind. It mattered that the document said
Speaker 1: that this was the case, a document that she probably
Speaker 1: didn't really know how to read, a document that she
Speaker 1: clearly did not actually understand. So what we say in
Speaker 1: contracts law is is this level of like force right
Speaker 1: where sometimes this law can force people in thro these
Speaker 1: kinds of outcomes where it's like you're saying that what
Speaker 1: it says on paper matters more than what I actually
Speaker 1: believe and understand. So in that way, you can say
Speaker 1: we have an injustice that's called a baked into it,
Speaker 1: where we said that what's on words matters more than
Speaker 1: what's actually in my mind and in my heart. But
Speaker 1: that's a big jump between that and reading and writing
Speaker 1: is white supremacy. So there's a level of nuance and
Speaker 1: understanding that it's hard to translate when you start taking
Speaker 1: really complex ideas and putting them in the classroom, Which
Speaker 1: is why I'd rather use your own curriculum. I'd rather
Speaker 1: use what you're already learning. If you're learning circles in school,
Speaker 1: A circle is a set of all points equidis from
Speaker 1: a single point. That single point is an elementary school
Speaker 1: in your school system. And we got to find how
Speaker 1: far we got to walk in each direction and find
Speaker 1: a healthy grocery store. That's not a circle anymore. But
Speaker 1: that idea of food desert excise me a why of
Speaker 1: why to even care about our radius? Why to care
Speaker 1: about us a coumference, right, So that's kind of the distinction.
Speaker 1: Will give me more examples of what falls within the
Speaker 1: purview of critical thinking, you know what kind of skills?
Speaker 1: Give me some concrete skills that you think should be taught.
Speaker 1: Let's say I'm a history teacher, and my kids are
Speaker 1: learning about the Revolutionary War. Right, the way that I learned,
Speaker 1: the way that you probably learned, was to memorize all
Speaker 1: the fact, states, and figures of the Revolutionary War. But
Speaker 1: what if we were to ask our kids, what was
Speaker 1: the most important date of the Revolutionary War? Who's the
Speaker 1: most significant person in the Revolutionary War, what was the
Speaker 1: most significant event of the Revolutionary War? We can clearly
Speaker 1: see that we've got some kids who can sit there
Speaker 1: and by rote memorization tell you every fact there is
Speaker 1: to know about the Revolutionary War, but struggle to make
Speaker 1: an independent argument as to what the most significant date
Speaker 1: was and why. And what's cool about this idea, the
Speaker 1: tangible equity model is it presumes that your identity is
Speaker 1: a really important part of getting there, but in a
Speaker 1: different way than most of the time we talk about identity.
Speaker 1: When I think about identity from a learning framework, my
Speaker 1: question is, who's the most significant person in your household,
Speaker 1: what is this most significant store in your community? What
Speaker 1: has been the most significant date of your life? Now
Speaker 1: it's about you. Now you're able to read significance from
Speaker 1: a lens that you can relate to because it's literally you, Well,
Speaker 1: I think there's just this very interesting idea of should
Speaker 1: critical thinking be taught in schools? And then the question
Speaker 1: I want to know is like how much do you
Speaker 1: think things should be taught through the lens of race?
Speaker 1: I mean, don't you think there is some valid criticism
Speaker 1: against infusing the curriculum too much, with drawing it into
Speaker 1: drawing people's and children's attention to the racial differences in
Speaker 1: the classroom. I do think that there's a level of
Speaker 1: understanding the world, and definitely understanding the United States of
Speaker 1: America where you can't say that you understand the history,
Speaker 1: you understand the present, or that you will understand the
Speaker 1: future if you don't understand the way that racial injustice
Speaker 1: has actually kind of played in to where we're at.
Speaker 1: The question is always the how, like how do we
Speaker 1: get there? How do we get to the point where
Speaker 1: we understand kind of where we're at and how things
Speaker 1: work and what it means today, what it means today?
Speaker 1: So I think about this and talk about this a lot.
Speaker 1: In the Tangible Equity book, the phrase white privilege is
Speaker 1: a very unfortunate phrase. Okay, if that was a phrase
Speaker 1: that like the concept was being generated by a black person.
Speaker 1: I don't think they would have used the words white
Speaker 1: privilege inherently confrontational. If you tell me white privilege, I'm
Speaker 1: in a fourth generation of a trailer park in Kentucky.
Speaker 1: I'm not necessarily gonna feel like there's a whole lot
Speaker 1: of privileges that come with my whiteness right now, right,
Speaker 1: So what are we even saying that for? Yeah? Was
Speaker 1: that idea created by DiAngelo? Oh? That was Peggy Macintosh
Speaker 1: back in like nineteen eighty nine, right, a white person.
Speaker 1: She's a white woman. That is a woman's studies scholar
Speaker 1: who decided to kind of take the idea of concept
Speaker 1: of male privilege and see how that might be applied
Speaker 1: if we talked about it from a racial issue. I
Speaker 1: didn't even know that, So thanks for that, Thanks for
Speaker 1: that history. Yeah, I didn't know who, like who coined
Speaker 1: that term. Yeah, And my problem with privilege is that,
Speaker 1: like what we ignore, we just talk about white privilege
Speaker 1: or whatever is we ignore the rally that everybody has privileges,
Speaker 1: every single person has youse said of privileges. And in fact,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the most revolutionary things I did
Speaker 1: when I was in undergrad at Syracuse is I took
Speaker 1: a woman's studies course. We had to keep a privileged lodge,
Speaker 1: a privilege log, and what it was was we just
Speaker 1: noted things that were something that we had, that was
Speaker 1: someone at an advantage that we didn't earn. We didn't
Speaker 1: earn this advantage. Like one of the things I realized.
Speaker 1: I was back home one a weekend in New York
Speaker 1: because I'm from Brooklyn, and I'm on a train station
Speaker 1: and I'm realizing there was a man in a wheelchair
Speaker 1: who's really studying the subway map. And I'm an expert
Speaker 1: at subways, right, I know all the things there is
Speaker 1: about the New York subway. And I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: do you need some help geting where you need to go?
Speaker 1: I can give you some advice whatever. He's like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to confirm that this station has an elevator.
Speaker 1: I said, crap, that's a privilege. I never have to
Speaker 1: plan my route along like which station will have an
Speaker 1: elevator that I can get out? And I ended up
Speaker 1: getting off at the same stop list and guess what,
Speaker 1: the elevator didn't work, and now me and one of
Speaker 1: the person had to help bring him up the stairs
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I never have to worry about if
Speaker 1: I go to a place that's not working, they's somebody
Speaker 1: be able to help me up the stairs. So when
Speaker 1: I start thinking about these things, it's like I'm living
Speaker 1: in the world where I have a conscious of where
Speaker 1: I'm at. I have a conscious of like why my
Speaker 1: world and my worldview might be different than others. If
Speaker 1: you do it's instructionally, it could be like I'm in
Speaker 1: the classroom and I'm looking at three blind mice. Three
Speaker 1: blind mice, See how they run? They all right after
Speaker 1: the farmer's wife. She cut off their tails with a
Speaker 1: carving knife. And I'm asking these kids, like, what's hard
Speaker 1: about being a blind mouse? What are some of the
Speaker 1: challenges you might encounter as a blind mouse? Maybe it's
Speaker 1: harder to get to food, Maybe you're more susceptible to pray. Well,
Speaker 1: what are some alternative reasons as to why you might
Speaker 1: have been running after the farmer's wife if you weren't
Speaker 1: trying to scare her. Maybe she's smelt like cheese. It's
Speaker 1: not always about you, lady. These are the kinds of
Speaker 1: things that if our kids start to adopt that kind
Speaker 1: of thinking earlier, it builds the empathy. So when I
Speaker 1: think about the pathway to understanding the way that race
Speaker 1: kind of plays out in different things, it's more about
Speaker 1: building empathetic folks who can relate, understand, be persuaded like, oh, shoot,
Speaker 1: people have different struggles than I have. That's good to know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a really nice definition of privilege. I wrote this
Speaker 1: down advantage you didn't earn. It's simply that, isn't it.
Speaker 1: It's simply that, And sometimes you could say you earned it, right,
Speaker 1: But like it matters that I went to Syracuse and
Speaker 1: then I bleed orange, and if I'm out of barb
Speaker 1: Syracuse people, I'm gonna be able to get some free
Speaker 1: drinks in those folks over there, right, because we've got
Speaker 1: that commonality. Maybe being a part of your community for
Speaker 1: three four generations comes with its own set of advantages.
Speaker 1: Being a part of a particular church or religious practice
Speaker 1: comes with its own set of privileges. So like when
Speaker 1: we start looking at privilege as something that's not just
Speaker 1: exclusive and restrictive, but something that's expansive that can be
Speaker 1: leveraged to help or out of privilege. As a new teacher,
Speaker 1: because new teachers are stupid, New teachers are all about
Speaker 1: hope and optimism, so people let you do dumb stuff
Speaker 1: when you're a new teacher, right, So, like I really
Speaker 1: want to have a much more open understanding of like
Speaker 1: these things that bind us together, I could putey agree.
Speaker 1: Do you ever feel though sometimes people talk about throw
Speaker 1: that word privilege around in cases where it doesn't really
Speaker 1: apply to a person, and that person can rightfully so
Speaker 1: get upset. So for instance, what about someone who let's
Speaker 1: say there's a white person who came from a really
Speaker 1: really poor background and the they really did have to
Speaker 1: work their ass off to earn what they did, so
Speaker 1: that doesn't fit within your definition or privilege, and then
Speaker 1: someone comes up to them and they're like you privileged?
Speaker 1: Full you know, like doesn't that person have a right
Speaker 1: then to say, Well, first of all, they could say like, technically,
Speaker 1: according to Colin's definition, I'm not that wasn't a privilege,
Speaker 1: So you're incorrect in that way. Well, I can get
Speaker 1: the feeling, which is why I don't like the phrasing
Speaker 1: of it. I don't like the way that that's kind
Speaker 1: of determined, right, I don't like the way that that's
Speaker 1: out there. But at his experience, once where I was
Speaker 1: a keynote speaker at a conference and I was like
Speaker 1: at the top of the world, super excited and like
Speaker 1: talking to all these people afterwards of like, oh man,
Speaker 1: that was a great talk. I was really inspired by
Speaker 1: this message. Awesome. And then a guy that came a
Speaker 1: little bit later, you know, he saw my banner for
Speaker 1: Think Law and saw all my stuff to Think Law.
Speaker 1: They're at this boot and he's like, oh man, I
Speaker 1: was running late, but I heard amazing things about the
Speaker 1: keynote this morning. I'm like, yeah, yeah, it was a great,
Speaker 1: great impact whatever. He's like, yeah, so is that Colin
Speaker 1: Seal guy gonna be back here later? And I'm looking
Speaker 1: at him and I'm like, what what do you mean?
Speaker 1: And I went from being top of the world feeling
Speaker 1: super super small and whatever the case is, whatever the
Speaker 1: case is, right. I think that when I talk about
Speaker 1: that exhaustion Scott, when I think about like what it's
Speaker 1: done to my psyche over time, it's like, it would
Speaker 1: be awesome if all the reasons I could think that
Speaker 1: he could look at me and just know I wasn't
Speaker 1: the keynote speaker, that the color of my skin wasn't
Speaker 1: one of them. I wish I had the privilege to
Speaker 1: know that the color of my skin was not the
Speaker 1: reason or a reason that he didn't see that I
Speaker 1: could have been the keynote speaker. You don't know for
Speaker 1: a fact that it was through the lens of race, though.
Speaker 1: I don't know for a fact. But even the idea
Speaker 1: that I can live my life and not have to
Speaker 1: think that that is a part of why this happened
Speaker 1: could really change things. Well, hold on, let me play,
Speaker 1: Let me play Devil's advocate. Let me just because you're
Speaker 1: all about you're all about critical thinking. I mean, what if,
Speaker 1: like someone has a we have stereotypes about everything. What
Speaker 1: if someone has a stereotype about the name of Colin
Speaker 1: and they look at me, you know, like a Jewish
Speaker 1: guy or whatever, and they're like, when's Colin coming back?
Speaker 1: Because I don't look like a Colin either. Now would
Speaker 1: I get upset over that? Probably not? Now, Like, how
Speaker 1: can you give the most charitable interpretation of people while
Speaker 1: also recognizing that racism does truly exist? I guess this
Speaker 1: is my question. So my thing is this, Emotions matter.
Speaker 1: Feelings matter. As much as I care about critical thinking,
Speaker 1: I care about the emotions of people experiencing them, and
Speaker 1: those emotions having power right, so like I can give
Speaker 1: them the most charitable interpretation of what happened and go
Speaker 1: through this right, and it's fine, and I'll live my life.
Speaker 1: But I'll never forget how small I felt in that
Speaker 1: moment when I realized that, like, it's a possibility that
Speaker 1: my race has something to do with this. When I
Speaker 1: was in law school. When I was in law school,
Speaker 1: we had a thing called bar review, which sounds like
Speaker 1: academic but it's not. We just went to different bars
Speaker 1: every week. Okay, And one time I'm at this thing
Speaker 1: and I was at law school in Las Vegas. There
Speaker 1: weren't a whole lot of black students there, and I
Speaker 1: was there and I was asking a question about the
Speaker 1: specials that they had for the drinks, and a law
Speaker 1: student that was there it was like, oh, oh, the
Speaker 1: specials are only for law students. Now. Sure he could
Speaker 1: have just thought that I wasn't in the law school
Speaker 1: because he didn't know me personally, or because I was
Speaker 1: black and in this space, and he was like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Like it was an easy way for him to be like, Oh,
Speaker 1: this guy's probably not with the group. Right. Again, I
Speaker 1: don't know for a fact. But the feeling of it matters.
Speaker 1: And I'm a grown man who's been through some stuff. Right,
Speaker 1: Our kids experienced stuff like this, and it might not
Speaker 1: have the same kind of capacity. My kids went to
Speaker 1: a school where in a Montessori pre K program, a
Speaker 1: girl said, Oh, I didn't invite you to my party
Speaker 1: because we don't have brown people at our house. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: that's explicit racism. That's explicit, right, and that's out there
Speaker 1: a lot of them. You see racism, We see that
Speaker 1: in your face kind of thing. What I'm trying to
Speaker 1: get towards, what I'm trying to push towards, is a
Speaker 1: space where the way we sow to move is to
Speaker 1: understand that, Like I want to be brave enough Scott
Speaker 1: to be in that same moment with that guy that
Speaker 1: conference and say, hey, question though, why why didn't you
Speaker 1: think I was a keynote speaker? Yeah? I would. I
Speaker 1: want to know. I want to know too. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: want to be brave you enough to be able to
Speaker 1: do that. Right, But in that moment, I'm embarrassed for
Speaker 1: both of us, right because it is because of the race.
Speaker 1: Then that's really hurtful. It's really hurtful. That's actually the case.
Speaker 1: There's a really profound point here that I just feel
Speaker 1: like generalizes, and I'm trying to see how I can
Speaker 1: articulate it, because, first of all, I want to completely
Speaker 1: honor your experience in that moment. Nothing I'm saying and
Speaker 1: even just having critical thinking discussion with you about it
Speaker 1: takes away from the fact that you know, I really
Speaker 1: want to honor how that felt and how small you
Speaker 1: felt in that moment. And I felt that too in
Speaker 1: certain aspects of my life, and it's a terrible feeling.
Speaker 1: But I think there's something that just generalizes about this
Speaker 1: idea of privilege. And we raised this earlier. You said
Speaker 1: we all have our privileges, which it means that we
Speaker 1: all lack something that someone else has a privilege for
Speaker 1: you can even think of it. I try to think
Speaker 1: of just examples, like zoom out from race. I just
Speaker 1: want to zoom out from race for a second. Let's
Speaker 1: say you're short and ugly. You know, like you go
Speaker 1: through your whole life, do you maybe you'll think, like
Speaker 1: every time a girl rejects you. Let's say you're a
Speaker 1: short and ugly guy. Every time a girl rejects you,
Speaker 1: you might think it's probably is it because I'm short
Speaker 1: and ugly? You know, Like there's like I'm trying to
Speaker 1: apply the same logical principles you're applying to African Americans,
Speaker 1: which is a very valid point, but just generalizing it
Speaker 1: into something a little bit, a little bit more general
Speaker 1: about how just to have more empathy for our fellow
Speaker 1: humanity in recognizing and we all have our privileges, but
Speaker 1: we also lack something that someone else has as well.
Speaker 1: We all do, right, I think that introspection is really important,
Speaker 1: especially since I talk about like identity is a real
Speaker 1: part of seeing the world, like, because obviously who we
Speaker 1: are informs a lot of how we see the world.
Speaker 1: You know, our values, our expertise, our education in school,
Speaker 1: education out of school, all these things are really credible.
Speaker 1: And if we start to see the assets that we carry,
Speaker 1: it changes the way we move about the universe, Like
Speaker 1: it definitely does when I think about privilege. Just kind
Speaker 1: of one more point on this, It's that sometimes when
Speaker 1: I'm looking to get something done, right, I got this
Speaker 1: whole thing about like what happens we actually want to
Speaker 1: do something about equity? Right, there's this power I know
Speaker 1: I have power even if I feel like I'm just
Speaker 1: a teacher. I'm just a low level employee. Like I
Speaker 1: have power. I've got decisions that I'm trusted with to
Speaker 1: make every single day. I've got things within the scope
Speaker 1: of that power that are in my purview. And then
Speaker 1: I can leverage my relative privileges to increase the likelihood
Speaker 1: that this thing actually happens, to increase the likelihood that
Speaker 1: this thing is going to be successful. Right, Like I
Speaker 1: think I give you the example in the book of
Speaker 1: You know, I was doing this algebra boot camp thing
Speaker 1: when I was in DC, but I had done the
Speaker 1: National Society for Black Engineers when I was a Computer
Speaker 1: science graduate at Syracuse. So that NESVY chapter National Society
Speaker 1: of Black Engineers. I know, they had a big one
Speaker 1: at Howard. My tutors are gonna come from them because
Speaker 1: they've got the privilege of being even younger than I
Speaker 1: am and being kind of cool math kids, cool black
Speaker 1: engineers to work with my I don't do math kids,
Speaker 1: right because some of my kids who said I don't
Speaker 1: do math, now they see really cool, well dressed, super
Speaker 1: cool college kids. They're like, this guy's so much more
Speaker 1: cool than mister Seal. And now they're rocking out and
Speaker 1: getting all this stuff because I realized I had privilege
Speaker 1: and I leveraged it. And my point at the end
Speaker 1: of the day is we be in a better place
Speaker 1: if people acknowledge the privileges that we did have and
Speaker 1: doubled down on that when it came to making things
Speaker 1: happen towards this tangible equity goal. So I completely agree
Speaker 1: with that. And I just got chills. I just got
Speaker 1: drills when you said that. Okay, I love that, and
Speaker 1: this is what I'm trying to grasp for as well.
Speaker 1: And thanks for you know. I get better at articulating
Speaker 1: my point through conversation with you, so thank you. So
Speaker 1: the word privilege is such a loaded word, and in
Speaker 1: a way, it would be better if we deloaded it,
Speaker 1: so we we didn't just view it like oh, you
Speaker 1: can never have you know, so black people can't have
Speaker 1: any privileges. You know, you hear white people saying that
Speaker 1: too sometimes, right like, oh, you're saying no black people
Speaker 1: can have any privileges. It's like, okay, calm down. First
Speaker 1: of all, it's a very loaded word. It's not used
Speaker 1: to divide people. I would love if we could start
Speaker 1: using this word in a way to unite people and
Speaker 1: for us to see we all have our vulnerabilities, and
Speaker 1: we also all have our unearned privilege. We all have
Speaker 1: our unearned advantages, all of us. And there's some way
Speaker 1: that as I'm grasping for something here that's more humanitarian,
Speaker 1: more humanistic than the way that this word is used
Speaker 1: in our public discourse. And I think a way to
Speaker 1: get there is to go all the way back down
Speaker 1: to like the first p that we talk about from
Speaker 1: making change, which is power. We said, we all have power,
Speaker 1: we all have power. What it forces us to do
Speaker 1: is confront the negative relationship we usually have with that
Speaker 1: word power. Most of the time, people that struggle with
Speaker 1: the word so used to power being done against them
Speaker 1: for bad reasons that like power could feel scary, power
Speaker 1: can feel like greed, Power could feel like oppression. But
Speaker 1: if I think just literally, what is power? Ability to
Speaker 1: do stuff, the ability to do something right. So if
Speaker 1: you look at the cover of tangible like where, you'll
Speaker 1: notice that like this a little toolbox and two things
Speaker 1: are in a toolbox in outlet in the mirror. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I need an outlet because you gotta plug in two
Speaker 1: things to access to power that you have already like
Speaker 1: plug it in, plug it in, and the mirror is
Speaker 1: just a reminder like, oh, shoot, yes, yes, I do
Speaker 1: have power. I sometimes forget that I'm not sitting here
Speaker 1: talking about Oh, let's empower our families, let's empower our students,
Speaker 1: let's empower our educators. You already have the power. Will
Speaker 1: I allow you to showcase your power? Will I allow
Speaker 1: you to, like in this meeting with all these people
Speaker 1: on this board, to object, to object, to raise a question, right,
Speaker 1: like if we have a space where that becomes normal?
Speaker 1: Because I think going all the way back to sort
Speaker 1: of like this premise of the intellectual spaces we need
Speaker 1: to create. Where I was wrong in my first book.
Speaker 1: My first book was obsessing over like a critical thinking
Speaker 1: we need to unlock critical thinking. Thinking like the lawyer
Speaker 1: could be a way to unlock critical thinking and brilliant.
Speaker 1: But what I realized over time is there is a
Speaker 1: much more important prerequisite question we have to ask, and
Speaker 1: that question is do our kids even have the psychological
Speaker 1: safety to be brilliant? Yeah? Are we given these learning
Speaker 1: environments set up in such a way where our kids
Speaker 1: have a safety to be brilliant, to be critical thinkers?
Speaker 1: We've all worked in the space that wasn't like that.
Speaker 1: We've all had a set of friends who were not
Speaker 1: those content friends where you can share that with in
Speaker 1: different circles where it wasn't psychological safety to object to
Speaker 1: voice dissent. This conversation we had right now, Scott, we
Speaker 1: probably could even have it in public. What are people
Speaker 1: chrying and be like, I don't like what y'all are
Speaker 1: talking about. I'm offended. We are having some public right now, right,
Speaker 1: But like if it was you and me in a
Speaker 1: public space where people were free to interject, we would
Speaker 1: have people that interject uncomfortable. Oh, we'll hear it, We'll
Speaker 1: hear the comments. We'll still get comments, you know, but
Speaker 1: I hear you. I hear you for sure. Let's apply
Speaker 1: a lot we're talking about today to this sticky wicket
Speaker 1: of gifted education. Some people have some schools have cut
Speaker 1: gifted education programs, and their justification is because of equity. Now,
Speaker 1: what are your thoughts about that? So it's pretty straight lined, right,
Speaker 1: Like I can get this idea that like, okay, all
Speaker 1: kids have gifts and talent without a doubt, And I
Speaker 1: could also say that we need to acknowledge that we
Speaker 1: do have some set of kids where they've got this
Speaker 1: asynchrony between where they're at, you know, intellectually academically, and
Speaker 1: where they're at when it comes to age and social development,
Speaker 1: where if we don't deal with that asynchrony, there's going
Speaker 1: to be some funk that might ensue. Right, There's gonna
Speaker 1: be some some challenges to really set that kid towards
Speaker 1: the chart for excellence that they're sort of meant to
Speaker 1: get to, whatever have you. And let's be clear, education
Speaker 1: has a lot of things we don't get right. We
Speaker 1: have a lot of inequities that are baked into what
Speaker 1: we're doing. It's also clear that, like there's a lot
Speaker 1: of legacies around really bad stuff like eugenics and segregation
Speaker 1: that are associated with the foundations we get to the education.
Speaker 1: That said, if equity means that we're reducing the predictive
Speaker 1: power that demographics have on outcomes, can we just be
Speaker 1: honest about something. We've got some kids, because of resources
Speaker 1: that they have outside of school. No matter what academic
Speaker 1: program you offer in your school or don't offer, they'll
Speaker 1: be good. They're gonna get access to that eighth grade
Speaker 1: algebra one program regardless. So I like to use that
Speaker 1: example often because I could look at school systems that
Speaker 1: are very diverse, and if they have eighth grader to
Speaker 1: take in algebra one, sometimes that class itself does not
Speaker 1: reflect the district demographics. So equity can't be okay, no
Speaker 1: one else is gonna be able to take eighth grade
Speaker 1: algebra one. We're gonna ban it. Equity can never mean
Speaker 1: everybody gets nothing. What would real equity look like? Though?
Speaker 1: What if we say my K through seven model is
Speaker 1: going to be geared so that one hundred percent of
Speaker 1: my kids will have at back at algebra one in
Speaker 1: eighth grade. You want to disrupt stuff? Every kid has
Speaker 1: acts us to ALGEBA one and eighth grade. That would
Speaker 1: put so many more kids on track to take advanced
Speaker 1: level AP math courses once they get into high school.
Speaker 1: It can like break things. Maybe some kids won't be successful, well,
Speaker 1: they'll just try to get a ninth grade beg whooped
Speaker 1: to do right. But that's transformational, that's actually changing something.
Speaker 1: Putting this chart where that demographics to predictive outcomes thing
Speaker 1: isn't so predictive anymore. So are we willing to do
Speaker 1: that kind of work? It's really easy to do the
Speaker 1: performative cosmetic equity that makes us feel good, and we
Speaker 1: can say equity, but if we're not actually changing the
Speaker 1: outcomes and creating these opportunities through changing those outcomes, what
Speaker 1: are we doing? Yeah, it's also kind of like signaling
Speaker 1: the message that you don't think minorities who are underrepresented
Speaker 1: in gifted programs are capable of excellence. Like when you
Speaker 1: cut the program, aren't you kind of saying that, You're
Speaker 1: saying like, oh, well, they're not even cable of excellence,
Speaker 1: so we should just cut the whole excellence program. It
Speaker 1: feels like there's an implicit bias there. Joy again explicit,
Speaker 1: It's right, it's explicit. Well, oh it is. None of
Speaker 1: these kids are gifted anyway, right, Like basically kind of
Speaker 1: joy loss and Davis talks about that a lot. It's
Speaker 1: one of the most stregeous forms of bias that comes
Speaker 1: out there. And again, I want to give an example
Speaker 1: of this disruption. Okay, when I talk about power and
Speaker 1: privilege and all this stuff, one thing that I have
Speaker 1: a privilege about right now is I know a lot
Speaker 1: of folks and they get their education space. Right, have
Speaker 1: a keynote that a lot of national estate conferences and
Speaker 1: work with a lot of districts around this work, and
Speaker 1: this interception of gifted inequity is what I do a
Speaker 1: lot of. So I started realizing that so many districts
Speaker 1: that are doing things like oh I'm gonna do local norms,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna test everybody or screen everybody was still seeing
Speaker 1: these discrepancies where certain kids will underrepresent it. And I
Speaker 1: started realizing, you know what's wild. Teaching force overall is
Speaker 1: not that diverse, but in a gifted education it's even
Speaker 1: less diverse than the overall teaching field, which is already
Speaker 1: much less diverse than the kids were serving. What if
Speaker 1: we got to the space where if we change the
Speaker 1: face of who gets to teach gifted, won't be able
Speaker 1: to change the face and who gets to be gifted.
Speaker 1: Turns out there's research that says that black and brown
Speaker 1: educators are to three times more likely to identify black
Speaker 1: kids as gifted. I started thinking about bees, because there's
Speaker 1: this whole thing where bees were like, they're not supposed
Speaker 1: to fly, they're too fat, the wings are too short,
Speaker 1: but like scientists were comparing their wings to the way
Speaker 1: that birds go up and down, but birds go for
Speaker 1: bees go forward and back with a little bit of
Speaker 1: a backswing. If you know how bees fly, it makes
Speaker 1: sense that they're always supposed to fly. So I started
Speaker 1: thinking about these black and brown educators, like maybe they
Speaker 1: intuitively know that bee was always supposed to fly. So
Speaker 1: I started a nonprofit arm in my work where think
Speaker 1: l'll called the Bee Project, where we just got fourteen
Speaker 1: black and brown educators here in Arizona certified and endorsed
Speaker 1: as gifted educators. Because again, if we change who gets
Speaker 1: to teach gifted, we might be able to change who
Speaker 1: gets to actually be in these gifted programs, because we
Speaker 1: have so many districts where kids actually go through all
Speaker 1: the screening past and they're like, yeah, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: what this program is for me. The teacher there actually
Speaker 1: looks like it. It It was hard to say it's not
Speaker 1: for you. So this is the kind of example of
Speaker 1: the type of thing that you might be uniquely privileged
Speaker 1: to do given your space. But will we do it well?
Speaker 1: We do the kind of thing that's going to create
Speaker 1: more opportunities where they don't currently exist, so we can
Speaker 1: disrupt that pattern. One pattern I don't like is a
Speaker 1: lot of black and mind educators for all we talk
Speaker 1: about with recruiting them don't stay in the classroom long
Speaker 1: as long as their white counterparts. How do we change that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're addressing these from different issues than you normally hear
Speaker 1: and people arguing how to address those issues. For a
Speaker 1: lot of people focus on universal screening. They focus on
Speaker 1: the testing side of things as opposed to you know,
Speaker 1: you're like, well, it actually matters who's doing the teaching
Speaker 1: in the gift of that program. And this is a
Speaker 1: larger point that you're making me think of, and that's
Speaker 1: that you know, people spend so much time in the
Speaker 1: gift education field obsessing over the measurement of INTEL and
Speaker 1: identifying the right kids, and then there's like very little
Speaker 1: discussion about like the quality of the program itself and
Speaker 1: like what are the kids going to do when they're
Speaker 1: actually in there? And so much of the funding goes
Speaker 1: towards the screening as well, and the funding doesn't go
Speaker 1: towards as much as picking high quality gifted education teachers.
Speaker 1: So I really like that you're focusing that side of
Speaker 1: the equation. And it is a who cares factor too, right,
Speaker 1: Like like who really cares? Like why should I be
Speaker 1: concerned about this? Like like, who cares? So I think
Speaker 1: sometimes we like being in our little boxes. We like
Speaker 1: being in our little on the other except child of
Speaker 1: my district, sometimes we like that. And I'm like, but
Speaker 1: what if there was something more powerful than this? Right? Like,
Speaker 1: I know, with all the work you've done with twy
Speaker 1: eceptional children, I consider myself blessed and lucky that I
Speaker 1: was identified gifted at seven and diagnosed with ADHD at
Speaker 1: thirty seven. I fundamentally feel that going up in Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: New York and our school system, had that been reversed,
Speaker 1: I think I would have been screwed. I think that
Speaker 1: instead of me asking questions as being deemed as curious
Speaker 1: and inquisitive, look, god, it's a trouble maker right there.
Speaker 1: That would be true. I am a troublemaker, but I
Speaker 1: would be a bad trouble maker instead of a good
Speaker 1: trouble maker. Yeah, yeah, I hear you. I think you're right.
Speaker 1: I think the unfortunate thing is you're right and also
Speaker 1: allowed yourself to come out as ADHD on your own
Speaker 1: terms and set the narrative how you want to set it.
Speaker 1: I mean, imagine if you were diagnosed all these kids
Speaker 1: that are diagnosed with the orange disabilities. They if they
Speaker 1: have no say and how they want to set the
Speaker 1: narrative or how they want to integrate it into their self,
Speaker 1: they're just forced to just they're branded. That's it. They're branded. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then the thing that's so wild about this is
Speaker 1: the older I get, the more I realize, like, really,
Speaker 1: an ideal world, every kid would have an individualized education plan.
Speaker 1: Like everyone is, like we said, differently privileged, right, Like
Speaker 1: we all kind of see things and learn things. It's
Speaker 1: a little bit differently. And some things we got are easy.
Speaker 1: Some things we need to take a little bit more
Speaker 1: of a struggle. But like, why are we not seeing
Speaker 1: this as a more universal approach to stuff? And my
Speaker 1: whole thing is like, why can't we just shift the
Speaker 1: conversation a together, which is like it can't just be
Speaker 1: about closing the gaps? How could the highlight of education
Speaker 1: be that somehow now black and brown kids are doing
Speaker 1: as well as white kids. What the white kids aren't
Speaker 1: doing that great? What is that? What if instead of
Speaker 1: we upsets with shattering the ceiling, chatter the ceiling and
Speaker 1: no one's doing that great? I love that? Well, maybe
Speaker 1: we should just stand on that point. Let's end on
Speaker 1: the note shatter the ceiling. I kind of liked that idea.
Speaker 1: I think a part of that too, Going back to
Speaker 1: like you ask me, like, what's different about the last
Speaker 1: two years? What happened? I think there's some things we've
Speaker 1: looked at casually as fine but are actually unacceptable. If
Speaker 1: you want to be inspired, follow hashtag black girl magic
Speaker 1: on Twitter. Right you'll see amazing stories of black women
Speaker 1: doing amazing things like oh my god, it's one of
Speaker 1: got our PhD in this and this and this, and
Speaker 1: earn this thing and have the special award, all these
Speaker 1: great things. But what I say is this how we
Speaker 1: created this as a norm. Well, we've got black women
Speaker 1: with unbelievable talent, unbelievable potential. It takes magic for them
Speaker 1: to succeed because we only have a system designed to
Speaker 1: unlock in nurture excellence. That's not our system. We have
Speaker 1: the lowest time of denominator system. What if we didn't
Speaker 1: have that anymore? That's what I want to push us towards,
Speaker 1: an idea of chanceable equity that we can actually be
Speaker 1: excited about. We can have this kind of instruction that
Speaker 1: would make us fundamentally feel in our hearts and minds
Speaker 1: that our world is better because of the work that
Speaker 1: we are doing to contribute to the world being better.
Speaker 1: Great brother, Breach, I love it. I love it. Colin Man,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on the Psychology Podcast again.
Speaker 1: You know I'm a big fan of your work and
Speaker 1: I just love the way you're thinking about these issues
Speaker 1: in a really nuanced and practical fashion. So thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Can't wait to see what the next party.
Speaker 1: I promise to save you this time. I'll save you.
Speaker 1: Got your back next time. That's so funny. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to react in some way to something you heard,
Speaker 1: I encourage you to join in the discussion at thusycology
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Speaker 1: the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.