Speaker 1: Greetings and welcome to wokaf with me Danielle Moody. As
Speaker 1: we settle into life under the Biden Harris administration, I've
Speaker 1: been having thoughtful conversations with expert guests about what the
Speaker 1: new Democratic administration can do to not only repair our
Speaker 1: country but set it on a better path forward. Every
Speaker 1: week I invite thought leaders to share their knowledge and
Speaker 1: expertise with the wokaf community, and I invite you to
Speaker 1: join us over on Patreon for just five dollars a
Speaker 1: month at patreon dot com slash wokeaf to hear five
Speaker 1: new shows every single week featuring these stimulating discussions as
Speaker 1: well as my own perspective. This week, I wanted to
Speaker 1: share with everyone the beginning of my interview with doctor
Speaker 1: Mark Rank, co author of Poorly Understood What America Gets
Speaker 1: Wrong about Poverty. I asked Mark to bust open some
Speaker 1: common myths about poverty, and what he told me is
Speaker 1: important to share with everyone. What are some of the
Speaker 1: common misconceptions and myths that we share as a country
Speaker 1: around poverty. There are obviously a lot of different myths
Speaker 1: out there, but I think one to start with is
Speaker 1: this idea that well, poverty is going to affect somebody
Speaker 1: else but not me, that it's an issue of them
Speaker 1: rather than an issue of us. And one of the
Speaker 1: ways we start out in the book is to say, actually,
Speaker 1: if you look across people's lifetimes, majority of Americans at
Speaker 1: some point will experience a year below the official poverty line.
Speaker 1: So between the ages of twenty and seventy five, sixty
Speaker 1: percent of folks will find themselves in poverty, and three
Speaker 1: quarters of Americans will find themselves either in poverty or
Speaker 1: near poverty for at least a year. And this really
Speaker 1: puts a different perspective on it because it says, you know, actually,
Speaker 1: poverty is an issue that affects most of us in
Speaker 1: one way or another. So that's that's one sort of
Speaker 1: variation on this idea that the myth of poverty being
Speaker 1: an issue of them rather than an issue of us.
Speaker 1: There are many others as well. For example, we often
Speaker 1: our image of poverty is often that of folks of
Speaker 1: color in inner city areas that have been in poverty
Speaker 1: for long periods of time and that are using social
Speaker 1: safety net programs. It turns out, it turns out that
Speaker 1: that's that image is not correct. Actually, most people in
Speaker 1: poverty do not live in high poverty inner city neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: They live in a variety of places. They live in suburbs,
Speaker 1: they live in rural America. So I guess the point
Speaker 1: of this is to say that the reach of poverty
Speaker 1: is very wide, and it affects a lot of folks
Speaker 1: at some point in their lives. Why do you think
Speaker 1: that we, I mean, from your research and the work
Speaker 1: that you've done throughout your career. Is it just the
Speaker 1: storytelling aspect that needs to shift because we've perpetuated the
Speaker 1: lie the media And when I say we, I mean
Speaker 1: the media has perpetuated the lie with regard to poverty
Speaker 1: and what we're seeing. You know, but while we have
Speaker 1: this image right of black and brown people in the
Speaker 1: inner city, in these dilapidated communities as being impoverished, what
Speaker 1: we know to be true is that if a four
Speaker 1: hundred dollars bill were to come due in most American household,
Speaker 1: seventy five percent of those households would be unable to
Speaker 1: pay that bill. Right, we know that healthcare continues to
Speaker 1: bankrupt families, which is why we had the push for
Speaker 1: the Affordable Care Acts so that you're regardless of your
Speaker 1: economic situation, you could still get healthcare outside of an
Speaker 1: emergency room. So we hold those facts while we still
Speaker 1: perpetuate the lie. And so how do you think that
Speaker 1: we disrupt that? Well, I think you know, one thing
Speaker 1: is is addressing that and addressing that with you know,
Speaker 1: good solid evidence and facts and research, which is what
Speaker 1: I've tried to do throughout my career. But I think
Speaker 1: you know, an interesting question here is to step back
Speaker 1: and to say, look, so we go in the book,
Speaker 1: we go through all kinds of miss and basically show
Speaker 1: that those myths are not true. So the question is,
Speaker 1: if that's the case, how come we continue to hold
Speaker 1: those myths, which I think one of the things you're
Speaker 1: asking here. And we can step back and say, well,
Speaker 1: who's benefiting from these myths? Who's benefits from the perpetuation
Speaker 1: of these myths? And I think we can point to
Speaker 1: several different groups. One would be political actors and politicians.
Speaker 1: Politicians have used the issue of the undeserving for the
Speaker 1: lazy person on welfare to score political points over and
Speaker 1: over and over again. So Ronald Reagan was infamous in
Speaker 1: terms of his use of the welfare Queen Bill Clinton
Speaker 1: talked about we want to end welfare as we know it.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump railed against welfare recipients, and what that's done
Speaker 1: is it's scored them political points in the American population,
Speaker 1: and so they've had a vested interests. But there's also
Speaker 1: we could step back and say, you know, actually, these
Speaker 1: myths that the poor are deserving of their situation really
Speaker 1: benefits those on the top, because what it says is
Speaker 1: that I don't have any responsibility. It's not my problem
Speaker 1: if you're poor. Whereas if we say, actually, these problems
Speaker 1: are structural. It has to do with our economic policies,
Speaker 1: it has to do with our political and policy programs.
Speaker 1: If we do that, then we have to say, you
Speaker 1: know what, we all have a responsibility in terms of this.
Speaker 1: So I think that's a really important question to ask.
Speaker 1: You know, who's benefiting from these myths? And I would
Speaker 1: argue that the folks that have benefited have been basically
Speaker 1: the folks in power who are content with the status
Speaker 1: quo of widening inequality and more of the gains going
Speaker 1: to those at the top. This week on woke f Daily,
Speaker 1: I also spoke with Evan Stone, co founder and CEO
Speaker 1: of Educators for Excellence. His organization survey teachers working through
Speaker 1: an unanticipated year of remote learning and staggering reopenings, and
Speaker 1: he joined me to share his results. The full conversation
Speaker 1: was so extensive and informative, so to hear the full
Speaker 1: half hour interview, head over to patreon dot com slash
Speaker 1: woke a F and subscribe. But for now, here's Evan
Speaker 1: Stone telling us how teachers have been working through educating
Speaker 1: in a pandemic and what he thinks the Biden Harris
Speaker 1: administration can do to pave the road ahead. As folks
Speaker 1: that listen to Woke a F No, they know that
Speaker 1: I'm a former educator. My sister is currently an international
Speaker 1: school teacher. She's in Bangladesh teaching there remotely from her apartment.
Speaker 1: And I have always had a deep affinity for educators.
Speaker 1: I think that it is the most important job. It
Speaker 1: is why I went to get my master's degree in
Speaker 1: early childhood education. It's why I wanted to work on
Speaker 1: the hill in education policy because I felt that if
Speaker 1: we could create a global citizenship, if we could create
Speaker 1: critical thinkers, if we could create young people who believed
Speaker 1: in their power and responsibility, then we could change this country.
Speaker 1: And that's what I've always been about, is how do
Speaker 1: we change this country? How do we make it more equitable?
Speaker 1: And so teachers have been going through. I can't even imagine. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I can't even imagine what it would be like, because
Speaker 1: I know how I feel just having my life turned around,
Speaker 1: as everybody else's life has been turned upside down. But
Speaker 1: I have largely been able to take my profession into
Speaker 1: my home and do it and interview adults all day
Speaker 1: who know how to sit in front of a zoom.
Speaker 1: Whether or not we want to we do. How have
Speaker 1: teachers been, evan like, how are the teachers that you
Speaker 1: talk to the administrators? How are they faring? Because if
Speaker 1: you don't have kids, I don't think that you have
Speaker 1: a deep window into what the educator's experience has been
Speaker 1: over the past year. Yeah, I mean, like many of us,
Speaker 1: teachers are grappling with this change, but they had, as
Speaker 1: you mentioned, both their personal lives and their professional lives
Speaker 1: completely upended. One of the things we know is over
Speaker 1: three quarters of teachers are caretakers, either they have children
Speaker 1: or elderly family members or others that they are taken
Speaker 1: care of. And so in the spring of last year,
Speaker 1: we did the right thing by saying we don't understand
Speaker 1: this virus, we don't know what it could mean. We
Speaker 1: need to close schools because it could have been a
Speaker 1: massive threat to teachers and to students. But in doing that,
Speaker 1: teachers had never taught online. For the most part, they
Speaker 1: school systems didn't have the structures set up to support
Speaker 1: educators to move their lessons online. Their curriculum wasn't adaptable
Speaker 1: to an online environment, and their students, particularly historically marginalized
Speaker 1: populations of kids, didn't have the technology and the access,
Speaker 1: and so there was no guidance, There was very little support,
Speaker 1: and we were waiting for teachers to solve this problem.
Speaker 1: Then I think over the course of the summer, there
Speaker 1: was an expectation of we're going to solve the virus,
Speaker 1: and so let's plan on what reopening could look like.
Speaker 1: And it seems like we all wasted time that could
Speaker 1: have been spent on thinking about how we support teachers
Speaker 1: to prepare for a year that was going to be
Speaker 1: mostly virtual. And so teachers are grappling with this. They
Speaker 1: are feeling like they aren't as successful as they want
Speaker 1: to be, and they're feeling very guilty about that. They
Speaker 1: are feeling totally overwhelmed with trying to manage their lives
Speaker 1: during this pandemic and an entirely new profession that looks
Speaker 1: entirely different, and they're grappling with how disconnected they feel
Speaker 1: from their colleagues and from their students. So they are
Speaker 1: looking for solutions to this. They really want to get
Speaker 1: back into the classroom, and they want to get back
Speaker 1: in front of their kids, but they want to do
Speaker 1: that in a safe way, and they're feeling right now
Speaker 1: like there is a narrative that is pitting teachers against
Speaker 1: students that I don't think is representative of where most
Speaker 1: educators are. And it's really unfortunate that that's sort of
Speaker 1: the conversations turned into, like opening schools for kids or
Speaker 1: you keep schools closed to keep teachers safe. Is I
Speaker 1: think a far too simple narrative that doesn't represent where
Speaker 1: educators actually are on these issues. And is I think
Speaker 1: penny blame on them for things that they're not fully
Speaker 1: responsible for or don't have complete control over. What kind
Speaker 1: of faith do you have, Evan in the new administration
Speaker 1: to be able to create some type of continuity in
Speaker 1: our public education system. We know that the last administration
Speaker 1: did a gut job, and that there was a let's
Speaker 1: just say, a detracting of money going into public schools
Speaker 1: and a rerouting into religious entities and private schools and
Speaker 1: charter schools and what have you. How do you feel
Speaker 1: your level of hopefulness about this new administration and the
Speaker 1: desperate rehabbing that our K through twelve system needs. I
Speaker 1: am hopeful, but I have been hopeful in past and
Speaker 1: have been disappointed. So this time I want my hope
Speaker 1: to be complimented with some real strategy and a greater
Speaker 1: level of advocacy from across the country. And I'm hopeful
Speaker 1: for a couple of reasons. One, President Biden has made
Speaker 1: clear he wants to triple funding for Title One. There's
Speaker 1: probably nothing more important that the federal government could do
Speaker 1: than to get more dollars directed towards our most disadvantaged
Speaker 1: populations of students like that would be a huge win
Speaker 1: if they can actually execute on that. To his current plan,
Speaker 1: his current stimulus or Recovery bill would drive dollars to
Speaker 1: prevent massive layoffs of teachers from across the country and
Speaker 1: disproportionately protect teachers of color and teachers in low income schools.
Speaker 1: So we can't go through the same thing that we
Speaker 1: went through in the last recession and see ourselves lose
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of teachers at a time when we're
Speaker 1: already struggling to recruit and retain teachers. Three. Doctor Cardona,
Speaker 1: who's the Secretary designate but flew through his initial confirmation hearing,
Speaker 1: is somebody we have worked closely with in Connecticut, and
Speaker 1: I believe both his life experience and his leadership in
Speaker 1: Connecticut have demonstrated that he is committed to the real
Speaker 1: role of the federal Department, which is about increasing equity
Speaker 1: in our education system. It was created the Federal Department
Speaker 1: of Education was created to drive equity in a system
Speaker 1: that we knew was inequitable, and so I do think
Speaker 1: that will be his primary focus. We've worked closely with
Speaker 1: him on teacher diversity in Connecticut, and so I think
Speaker 1: that will be a key focus of his And so
Speaker 1: I'm optimistic about the team that they've built, the priorities
Speaker 1: that they put out to start, But there is a
Speaker 1: lot of work to do, and it can't be done
Speaker 1: just by the administration. Congress needs to play a role,
Speaker 1: and we've continued to see Congress do as little as
Speaker 1: possible to help drive change across the country. Folks, if
Speaker 1: you've been following me for a while, you know that
Speaker 1: I often say that you need to take a break
Speaker 1: before you have a breakdown. Well, this week, I am
Speaker 1: practicing what I preach and we'll be taking a break
Speaker 1: to myself all week to wind down and decompress. But
Speaker 1: if you are a Patriot subscriber or thinking about subscribing,
Speaker 1: don't worry. I still have five full prerecorded shows Monday
Speaker 1: through Friday. If you haven't subscribed yet, It's always a
Speaker 1: great opportunity to hear so much more of the conversations
Speaker 1: I share here every week, so head over to patreon
Speaker 1: dot com slash woke f and check it out. It
Speaker 1: really does take a lot of work to put out
Speaker 1: five fresh, hour long shows every single week, so I
Speaker 1: appreciate everyone who listens and supports me and trying to
Speaker 1: make the world a woker place. Until next week or
Speaker 1: when I see you on Patreon, Power to the people
Speaker 1: and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay
Speaker 1: woke as fuck.