Helping School Leaders Understand Implicit Bias with Mark Anthony Gooden
Equity and developing a school culture that fosters equity can be a difficult topic (or a difficult collection of topics) for school leaders to navigate. In this episode Scott Lee shares the first of two conversations with Mark Anthony Gooden co-author of the book Five Practices for Equity-Focused School Leadership. This conversation includes a deep dive into the issues including creating a culture of equity in schools, the reasons why many schools avoid creating a culture of equity and why some school leaders may fail to provide a culture of equity.
Episode Notes
Episode Outline
How we see and understand inequalities
Problem with striving to be colorblind
Equity work is change work “on steroids”
Dealing with white privilege
Problems with “heroic leadership”
Links
Publisher page for Five Practices of Equity-Focused Leadership
Martin Luther King Jr “I Have a Dream” speech transcript at NPR-referred to by Dr. Gooden
Transcript
Scott Lee 0:21
Greetings friends and colleagues. Welcome to the Thoughtful Teacher Podcast, the professional educators thought partner, a service of Oncourse Education Solutions. I am Scott Lee. As we begin the fall semester of the 2023 season, I will share the first of two episodes featuring my conversation with Mark Anthony Gooden. Dr. Gooden is the Christian Johnson Endeavour Professor of Education Leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University, where he researches school level leadership, anti racist leadership, culturally responsive school leadership and legal issues in education. He has published studies and papers in a wide variety of journals, including Teachers College Record, the Peabody Journal of Education and Urban Education, among others. He recently published a book Five Practices for Equity Focused School Leadership, along with co-authors, Sharon Radd, Gretchen Givens Generett and George Theoharis. Much of our conversation will focus on the book, but we start discussing marks early teaching career. welcome Mark Anthony Gooden to the Thoughtful Teacher Podcast.
Mark A Gooden 1:51
Thank you. Thank you for the welcome, Scott.
Scott Lee 1:53
So before we start discussing how to drive equity focused change in schools. Could you share with us a little bit about your current role? And how you became involved in working with K 12? Schools?
Mark A Gooden 2:07
Absolutely. So currently, I am a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, I am the author of Five Practices for Equity Focused School Leadership, and and also do some some work around giving keynotes to leaders across the country. I got involved in this work, originally as a K 12 teacher, started as a secondary mathematics teacher in Columbus, Ohio, some years ago, I'll say it that way. And, and I had questions then just about how how equity impacted the work I was doing, I did not have the language then. So so in that I've learned over the years, as a as a student, and as a, as a leader in these spaces. And, and I've worked with a range of leaders in different areas. For instance, I've keynoted at places like Eanes Independent School District, talk to folks as diverse as, like the people in the US Customs and Border Patrol Protection Agency, which was a different group to talk to. But I've also keynoted at the Brit- British Education, Leadership, Management and Administration Society, in the UK, which was interested in just to name a few. So usually, my keynotes really are on the information I've learned over the years through research and experience centering, most often on topics like antiracist leadership, I have this thing called "JEDI", I say, which is that justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. And then last but not least, cultural responsive approaches, which which really help leaders understand how do I grapple with things like unconscious bias, as I've tried to work on doing my job and the most impactful ineffective way possible?
Scott Lee 3:58
Yeah, and you mentioned, starting out and not even knowing the language of the problem. And I think that's a common thing. I had a similar issue, similar issues when I started teaching some years ago as well. How would you describe the problem or problems with equity in schools today? Beyond just knowing or not necessarily knowing the the language of the issue?
Mark A Gooden 4:25
Yes, yes. Yes. Thank you for that. So. So first, I always say it's important to start with the language of the term equity, for instance, and I say to people, I can give you a long form of definition, but as more straightforward one was like equity is really ensuring that each child gets what they need to reach their potential. And then I say if I'm going to go a little bit further, I'm glad we have a little time to do that today. I said another way of saying educational equity happens when each student learns and flourishes in a welcoming, caring and inclusive environment. requires something of us, obviously, we want to be committed to a fair and just treatment of each student, and a willingness to address structural barriers to their success. And the delivery of resources aimed at providing equity outcomes. And I say aimed at providing equity outcomes we want to aim for that we want to aspire to that. We won't always get there. And in many, many cases we won't. But we certainly want to be in a space where we're aspiring to support students in that way, is the best one I'll be thinking about when when I'm saying equity and talking about inequities. I want to I want the listeners to get a feel for what I'm thinking when I when I speak that way.
Scott Lee 5:36
Many educators know their issues with equity. And again, it comes down to the language and discussing it. And sometimes we in schools or as educators, and also the there's a cultural problem in general with American culture, we tend to not prioritize equity, even if we do talk about it. Why do you think that is? And what what could what could or should be done about it?
Speaker 2 6:05
Yes, yes. Yes. So So, so again, wonderful questions. So, um, there's a quote that I've modified a little bit, and I'm gonna, you know, take some creative liberties there today and do that, and people will probably recognize it, but I'm gonna say it this way. "We see and understand inequities, not as they are, but as we are, and how we've been taught." So when we come to a conversation about inequities, we're often looking through a lens of privilege. And then we looking through our own lives, if we haven't really lived through the inequity, we tend to think everybody's lives is kind of like mine. So what that means is, we tend to miss the conversations around equity, and we're not doing anything wrong. We're just entering them from who we are. And so that's why I say we see inequities from the standpoint and understand them from you know, not as they truly are, but but how we are okay. And so, another way to think about that is the real definition around inequities and how they are really interwoven in the history of this country. So that means we have to start with, and I'm gonna sound a little intellectual, so I apologize for that. But I think it's necessary. That means we have to start with this idea that there are historical, structural, and institutional ways in which society has been built. And those tend to elude us because we've been taught that to focus solely that we should focus solely on part work of the individual. And another idea that we have, we've understood that there's this conflict. And there's a tension, I'll admit, but we tend to think there's this conflict between embracing the meritocracy, and then fighting for inequity. And I want to be clear, we want people to understand that in this country, we've always embraced these ideas about working hard and doing well. But while that happens, on an equal basis, in the minds of some people, there are inequities built into that that we don't talk about. So while it's important to think about these different pieces, working hard, it's not wrong. It's just incomplete. Because it doesn't deal with issues like unequal access to educational goods and services, which oftentimes in our country, are organized by people's zip code, their property rights, you know, most of us agree that there's a strong correlation between where you live, and the quality of educational resources that you get. So we want people to be curious about that. Why is that? And why has that particular way of being sustained been sustained for so very long? And we brace questions about it, we raise questions about it. And as I'm not mistaken, every state, every state has some funding question where we say the state presented right of to an education is in some cases, not thorough and efficient or equal, and from district to district is just a that we've not been able to get rid of that we've not been able to get rid of those inequities, because once again, they're baked into our historical, structural, and institutional ways of being. And so many educators know that they'll admit that there are those equity problems in schools, but they just don't know how to really grapple with those, as you say, Scott, they we know that they're there. But we just don't know how to really get into them. So if I could deal with the second part of your question, and I think it was why don't we "Why don't we prioritize these?" Why don't we tend not to? The short answer answer is that says these are sophisticated systems of inequity, and they're rarely disturbed by us just having conversations alone like a lot of many folks have have start started to have conversations. They require us to to really move into a space where we need to know how to do it. And many leaders continue to say I'm about in a you know, fighting for equity and and I get to the point where I want to do something about it, but I keep asking myself, what steps should I take what's the right order? What should I be doing? And I believe that five practices for equity focused school leadership is a great way a great place to start on what those steps are. So that's the other part of that the how to how do we how do we do it, even if we believe it, or we want to carefully step into it, we need a concrete way and approach to doing and I think that's what the book does.
Scott Lee 10:20
Okay. Well, and I want to talk about the book in just a minute, specifically about those Five Equity Leadership Practices shortly. But before we do that, you know, one thing that that I hear or have heard a lot over the years is this concept of colorblindness. You know, I don't have to worry about, you know, these issues of inequality, because it doesn't affect me, I am colorblind, I don't care about the racial background of any of my students. Why is that a problem? Or why is that? Or do you see that as sidestepping the issue?
Mark A Gooden 11:06
I do. And I need educators to really work on here to me, because I feel like folks are coming from a good place. And I'm sure you have, I've even heard people, quote, Dr. King, you know, that famous quote about we should be judged by the content of our character, not by the color of our skin. And I want folks to read Dr. King, Dr. King a little bit closer, if as a professor, I can give personal homework assignment I want, I want you to read that whole speech a little bit closer. And I think what we will understand is, he wasn't saying that we should just ignore color, and, and the experiences of people who have those experiences defined by the color of their skin, maybe not by you, as an individual, maybe individually, you're doing your best to interact and engage with people. But the problem is, we probably are failing at that, because there's a lot of unconscious bias in the work that we do. So striving for colorblind while is a noble goal. And it's a great gesture, and it's something that we want to strive for. Doing so tends to miss the miss people's experiences that are impacted by inequities every day. So take for instance, if you're saying to me, I'm going to look at you Mark, as a human being and not as a black man, and I'm gonna say you listen, coming from a good place, I appreciate that. But you may not recognize or realize that because of racial inequities, there are certain things that are going to happen for me that you're going to miss individually. And that you're definitely going to miss on a structural and historical level. So so for instance, you may say, "Oh, we have the same opportunity to compete for, let's just say the same position." And then you may say, "Well, why don't they always have that little statement in there about we're going to be an equal access opportunity?" Well, we have that because historically, research tells us that even though we're competing, and we may have similar qualifications, we may both have PhDs somewhere in the system, somewhere with ways in which things have been structured and have not been removed. There are going to be inequities, racial inequities in particular. And those contend to disadvantage me and by you saying that I'm going to be colorblind means that if you're going to be an ally, to me, you're not really seeing that experience. And if I were talking about it in the classroom, for students, it would be the same way people could say we're colorblind at our school. But if I would go in and see that there are disparities around who gets access to particular parts of the curriculum. And I would say, could you explain to me, for instance, if you have 30%, African American and Latinx students, but when I look at your calculus class, I only see one student who is African American, and one student who identifies as Latinx, with something happening here with something going on? Should we be asking questions about that we absolutely should be asking questions about about that kind of thing, because it's our kind of unconscious bias, and our aim to be colorblind, that is a good and noble gesture. But the actual impact ends up turning out something different than what we were aiming for. So So hopefully, that all makes sense. And that's kind of the succinct answer as as succinct as I can get it actually.
Scott Lee 14:30
Now, that that that's great. And I you I think that one of the problems sometimes is that we don't go deep enough into into that discussion. And you know, what are the good examples? You know, because I'm sure you could go on and on and on looking at office referrals, suspension rates, which continue to show that generally in this country, students of color are disciplined at higher rates and more severely compared to white students. So Right. Right, no. So don't worry about going too long. With that. That's, that's part of what we're doing here is. So let's talk a little bit about your book. In your book, you and your co authors describe Five Equity Leadership Practices. First off, what are those? And is it a problem? Or would it be a problem? If a school leader did not want to implement all five?
Mark A Gooden 15:37
Yes, yes, great question. So let me start by just giving a kind of a brief overview of these five practices. So first off, we've been really talking about this indirectly, we need leaders to prioritize equity, they need to have a division around this, they need to understand what it means later, we may get into this, but they need to understand what those those levels in doing a little try. No, your listeners can't see me, but their levels of inequity. And in the first part of the book, we talk about this idea of coming up with an equity vision, which really asks leaders to go into some understanding about the history of how these inequities have come about in this country. And then think about a vision. So that first one, again, is prioritize equity make making it first is, is certainly something that's important, especially if you're going to integrate it throughout your systems. And then the second one is a big step. And we spend a lot of time in the book on this one. We want leaders to prepare themselves, intellectually and emotionally to reflect actions and repeat for equity every single day. So I'll say that again, reflect, act and repeat all in service or equity every day. So so the intellectual work is the kind of thing like going through a racial reflection, going through a through a reflection about your socio-economic status, becoming more familiar with how those inequities play out in your life is really, really important. The third one is I want folks to kind of think about the Avengers hear the music of the Avengers in the background, we want you to assemble a team for equity. But we want you to lead from the top of the circle. I mean, I always say this word, assembling a team for equity is important. But leading differently is also important. Leaders must remember that. Fourth is to recognize that equity work is changed work on steroids. So get ready, it is change work is very important to change work. And you have to have in mind what you're going to do and how you're going to approach that in ways that support the development of people and yourself as a process. And just going back to that assembling a team, it's important that leaders recognize that they're not trying to do this work alone, me they you just be one us so very quickly. Without that equity definitely is not for the faint of heart. And so don't go there alone. It's just it's really not worth it. Sustaining equity requires you to collaborate with others, and work on it every day. That's the fifth step. We want you to create systems where equity, equity is something that you do and you work on every day. And all the ways that you can think of and trying to distribute all the skills around this work. And the raise the interest and the excitement about how we're going to show up for kids to do really important work to push against things that have been around sofa for so very long. So it has to be created and done in ways that are sustainable.
Scott Lee 18:37
I'm not going to assume you always get pushback, but I'm guessing that you probably do. What kind of pushback do you get when you're talking with teachers or administrators or whomever could be members of the public? I know, depending on the situation, how do you respond to the types of pushback that you have run into?
Mark A Gooden 19:03
Yes. So yes, we do get pushback. And as you might imagine, it comes in a variety of forms. Some of the common ways, common things we hear is we deal with this concept of white privilege. You can't really address these issues if you don't deal with white privilege. And you can't really talk about white privilege if we don't talk about our fascination with whiteness in this country and white and which comes from this notion that white is superior in which people may say white supremacy into oh my god, they people hear that and all of a sudden, they get this view that we're talking about people running around with hoods on that's like the KKK and so folks are automatic, and that's not me. And so to talk about equity is set up in this conflictual space because people get that as one view of it, which once again, not necessarily incorrect and different from the history this country, but it's it's incomplete. What I've said is there are levels of inequity that I focus on in sessions that are present. And the thing that's not socially acceptable is the KKK approach. I'm sorry, that's socially unacceptable. But what is socially acceptable is then approach to historical, structural and institutional inequities. And these are the things that we do not see. So to try to have a conversation with folks means that they're thinking you're calling me, somebody who's bad or associated with that kind of person. And that's not me. And so we can't really have that conversation. That's one issue. That I think, folks that we have to really get over. A second issue is, when you say things like being privileged. There's pushback, people say, I wasn't privileged, for instance, I grew up poor. Okay, we've said that there are tensions in the world. And there are things that both can be true, you could have gone up grown up poor, and still promote a system of inequity. It is also true, that may be true that just because your privilege, it does not mean that you did not work hard. That's not what we're saying. So I think, as a field, that that's how it's been presented. And as I present thoughts throughout the book, and in workshops, that's exactly what I'm saying in my work, that yes, you can be privileged, but you can also still promote these systems. And we have to remember that we're socialized to believe that the person who brings up racial inequity, or any kind of inequity is the person who was rude, insensitive, and that person may even be the racist themselves that they're trying to push back against. And I believe, so why do we have that as a country? Because if you look at it, we're not accustomed to have any conversations about inequities, particularly racial inequity. In multiracial spaces, it's kind of become that thing that we know is there. As you were saying earlier, educators know equity is there. But it's the thing that educators are also taught, we can't talk about that, or we can't say that because if we do, we may say something, something may spill out of our mouth. And then we might be once again going back to where like that person in that bad person in the hood, which we have all said in suicide. No, that's not socially acceptable. And so many fears of engaging around that, and having that privilege is really an issue. And to be frank, a lot of my white students over the years have come to terms with their privilege around inequities, and have been less reluctant to talk about racial inequities, which is a major starting point for us and foreword for the book. But they have admitted to using their privilege to either shut down the conversation, or just not participate and be very, very quiet, even though they may have been engaged on in other aspects of the conversation. So it's very important that in the book, there's a push to interrogate those multiple levels of inequities, starting with the self, the personal narrative, and moving the conversation forward. But we just have to make space to deal with all those issues. And there are a lot of pieces in there. If there's a follow up question I totally understand. But hopefully, that is all making sense as I get it up in, again, this condensed version,
Scott Lee 23:21
what I was wondering is if you could use an example maybe of something you've done or situation when you've been talking about implicit bias or white privilege, when you're working with a faculty kind of just an example of one of the things that maybe you've done, that's been helpful when you're working with a group, especially a diverse group, a diverse faculty altogether, there are so many different dynamics that I'm sure are going on? Well, I know I've been a part of that, that I know we're going on, within a group within a faculty when you're when you're starting these discussions.
Mark A Gooden 24:04
Absolutely, absolutely. So a great example that took place about 14 years ago. So I would engage leaders in these exercises around racial reflections. As a part of that. I would ask leaders to define race, because it was very important for me to get an understanding of their personal definition of race before we move into another part of it. And so every time I work with work with adult learners, back then I knew this and I've learned this even more over the years, you have to have a set of agreements. And we talked about the agreements in the book on page talking about there was on page 175. And agreements are important because adult learners have to have ways of interacting with each other to maximize their learning, but also know that this is going to be a level of respect in dealing with really difficult content. So there was a gentleman, a white gentleman where we'd started to talk about race. And the question was to define race. And he fully knew what the session was about. He decided the way that he would define race. And to be kind of cute to keep them out of the conversation with, he would write down like 10k Indy 500. So wrote all these things about, you know, different kinds of races. No, very well, that's not what we'll be talking about. But he also had an intention to sort of suck the air out of the room. And, and there were people in the room, some folks across the room, a group of teachers who particularly vocal when they wanted to, like go out, they knew him personally, they wanted to go at him, no, you can't do it. And as we're in a developmental process, we're going to keep it moving. And I didn't break it. And I think that was the expectation. I think he wanted me to really say something that could show that I was the person who was going to embarrass white people. And I've been doing this long enough that they were like, No, that's not what, and we circle back to we talked and I explained to him, "no, that's not what we were really thinking about." And the teacher, the teachers were really angry, they're like, "aren't you gonna do something to it," because he, I said, "We're gonna move on." And remember, I pointed to the agreements, you know, one of which is we don't freeze people in time. Perhaps that's what he believes that he's, I don't think that's what but I can't sit, because we're developmentally moving the conversation forward. Anything else would have taken the air out of the room and had that whole session derailed, because it would have been now more about him, versus the learning about everybody else who was in the room. And we still came back to it. And I explained to those who because they had something to say to be, so you, you're free to talk to your colleagues one on one about what they write and what they're thinking. And you should, and I encourage you to do that. But I would still say to you have some guidelines for that conversation, and really be really try to prioritize equity, going back to the group's first prioritize that person's learning, assume good intentions, it might not be there, but at least our colleague is trying to walk them into a place because I've seen it happen out of the ways. It's a it's a, it's what they think is a sophisticated way of avoiding the conversations around this top difficult topic. And we have so many ways of doing that, that we sometimes don't even realize it. So that's just that's just one way. There are others, because many of them are unconscious, many of them are unconscious, and they're tied to the history of this country around what we believe about people who we perceive to be and I'm using air quotes different from us.
Scott Lee 27:39
Sure, it is insidious, the way that the different ways, culturally, that that all of these structures have fit together and for people sometimes to realize how many different ways and how many different things that that have happened, that are not noticed. always hard to deal with and to work through, even with the best intentions. So let's talk a little bit about leadership teams. First off, you mentioned, a leader is not going to be effective when they try to be the superhero. Why is that? Right? Or what is that fallacy?
Mark A Gooden 28:23
Okay, yes, of course, a longer answer to this is in leadership, there's, there's this belief, and sometimes in the broader literature, we can't get away from that heroic leadership notion that one person who sort of comes through the doors pushes the doors up and says everybody and said, You know, it's all on me, and I'm going to take care of everyone. And while there are some parts in leadership, where I think that can be useful. In cases like this, it becomes increasingly difficult because to engage in things like racial reflection, require the leader upfront, to share their racial reflection. So if they're doing a racial autobiography, The leader is required to share that with people will say, Well, why would you want to do that? Isn't that like opening up your, your, your causes at home and letting everybody look in? Yes, it is. But by doing that, the leader is showing strength and vulnerability. And the leader is modeling what I would like for you to do in support of building community. Because ultimately, these issues are so complex. They're so deeply entrenched, and they're difficult, as you've heard in early and they're heavy lifts. So for a leader to not check in and build a team of folks to check in with, it's going to make it even much more much more difficult to find that the common inequity focus leader actually intersects with good leadership. I've seen that Over the many years equity focus has components in it, that really going to make the organization stronger. We have sides in the book, relationships, I have found over time, relationships, building is very important. Relationship Building becomes increasingly more important when you talk about equity focused leadership. Because recall that I said, folks are going to be reluctant to talk about this, they're going to feel uncomfortable, and they're going to feel conflictual, even when they don't recognize it. So having a relationship ahead of time is really going to support and facilitate engaging in really deep discussion around how we can move forward, and we are going to make mistakes. So the heroic leader model tends to paint the picture of a person who is if not perfect, leaning toward perfect and leadership and knows all in some ways. But we need folks to say, "I don't even have the answer to that one." And there's some outside pressure that is going to require us to be ethical in how we do this. But I don't have quite the answer right now. But I'm being honest. Because I don't have the answer. It doesn't mean I should just walk away from this, it means that I need your help. I need your many perspectives. And it also means that we can share the experiences of people who are much closer to some of these challenges, and who are working through them, especially if the leader happens to be white. And you know, the majority of our leaders in this country still are white and white men, particularly but but definitely while it is changing, the majority of principals are still white,
Scott Lee 31:41
my first position as a, as a principal, having to understand we're in a profession that is primarily female. Men were well over represented in the in the leadership. And so just want to mention, in the book, you talk not strictly about racial background, you also talk about disability, socio economic status, language, gender and sexual identity and religion as part of that as well. Yes. How do those those other identities interplay?
Mark A Gooden 32:16
Absolutely, and I should correct the point. I believe we are now in terms of leaders think we have a majority of women. We have majority, white women, I think, you know, it's so it's so they, they've eclipsed men in that sense. But we have a disproportionate representation speak about that in terms of gender, because because of dynamics around how we, how we really select folks for leadership positions, we still have the majority of position that women have in principalships, as you know, on elementary schools, right. So again, why is that the case? We should be curious about that, because it doesn't mean that women are not aspiring to that men, there are some women who say, "No, I don't want to do the secondary principalship." Maybe I have some family obligations. And maybe there's something else going what, but but there are women who aspire to that, who have a harder time breaking into into those positions. So to your question, yes, we talk about different aspects of identity. And as you have seen, every we have a section on each one. And we want leaders to understand that we all have spaces where we don't see around corners when it comes to these different kinds of different types of identities. For example, when we think about religion, we know in this country, and there's a lot to back this up, that we tend to move toward Christianity, we don't have a national religion, we honestly have separation of church and state, but we tend to push out these monotheistic ideas, right, we still say the Pledge [of Allegiance], and we know the place is one nation under God and so oh if you are an atheist, you can just not do it. But then there, there are pockets when people don't do it. I know that I've seen a couple of cases in Texas who said, "Well, if there's people are no okay, and people don't do the pledge," this was some years ago, "then just send their names down to the office to the principal" like why, right? Because we have that tendency that there's something different about people who are not exercising religion in the same way. And so it's that lens that we have all even students who come to us and they practice Islam, and they say, can you create a space for me to pray something? So educators feel like oh my god, what, what do we do? So if we are going to say the students have first amendment rights in school, and to exercise their religion? If they do, then how do we perceive that what are those biases in our mind that causes us not to see it? Or to have blind spots when it comes to somebody Raise religious equity. And so what we do is we found that if we don't examine that, if we don't ask those kinds of questions of ourselves, we promote religious inequity every single day without even thinking about it. We also find that there are some pretty troubling comments that happen in school districts, as well. And educators who are not aware of this enough, don't address them. For instance, it was not too long ago that I worked with a school district where some of the South Asian students were being being called terrorists, right? Being said that, you know, you're probably going to, you know, blow up the school. And teachers and leaders heard that. And they just simply say, Oh, you, you shouldn't say that. But that goes deeper, you got to really address what is what is, what is our culture? Are we building a welcoming community for folks? Who, again, maybe this was South Asian students, so so kind of even have things lined up, like what are people saying? And so how would those students feel to be in a space when you're allowing? It wasn't all white students who were saying this, but it was predominately white students who were making a joke. And then when the students made a statement about that said that, look, you shouldn't say that that's appreciated. And there was always the refrain from some of these students, these students were "Oh, that's just a joke. You just you being too sensitive." You said, "No, this is where we start planting the seeds of hate crimes. If we don't, if we allow those things that happen in school, were supposed to be this multicultural space we're learning together and how to be more democratic system." We don't address that, then we have some issues, we have some inequities that are being allowed to go on that we are calling harmless.
Scott Lee 36:44
Yeah, one of the things that I think goes along with this is we need to explicitly teach students to be kind. And it sounds like that is a part of being equity focused as well, even though that we would consider that more social emotional learning, as opposed to equity, but I think they go along, but very tightly, and very close together.
Mark A Gooden 37:15
Yes, I agree. I'm actually working on a project with the with the principal now who was doing some work in, in her school, in Harlem, around social emotional learning, one of the things she recognized as a deficiency in some of the social emotional learning work, it didn't have a bridge to addressing these kinds of issues that we're talking about. And I think that if it does not have a bridge to these conversations, if it doesn't have a bridge to racial inequity, for instance, then big being kind becomes this thing by itself. And in that situation, folks want attached to being unkind and won't make the jump as you as you just have Scott, they'll just be that that's something different. And so, the principal, and I appreciate that she was a former principal, I should be clear, she's actually a superintendent now. But we are really looking at an approach that reminds folks through my work around cultural responsive school leadership, being attached to a social and emotional learning framework, to say, as we bring those together, people who are going to be doing social emotional learning have to have gone through some of these steps. Otherwise, they're just going to have a social emotional learning framework. And I've seen it that doesn't go a level deeper, it helps us understand that this is absolutely the most important work when it comes to being kind. Because it was not just happenstance, for me to make that jump to it. We allow certain kinds of unkind language, right to remain in schools, implicitly teaches kids that certain folks deserve kindness and certain folks don't. Yeah, yeah.
Scott Lee 39:06
Yeah. Yeah. Because people think, oh, teaching kids to be kind is easy. And, and the example that that you gave about South Asian students being called terrorists, that really needs a lot of restorative work, there's a lot of work that's going to go into teaching the students who did this thing who were calling this other group of students terrorists, because of the end doing it just because of the way they look. Teaching that kindness and teaching why that is, is is a restorative process that that is that is hard work.
Mark A Gooden 39:50
Absolutely.
Scott Lee 39:53
Please tune in to Episode Nine of the 2023 season to hear the rest of my conversation with Dr. Mark Gooden. The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is brought to you as a service of Oncourse Education Solutions. If you'd like to learn more about how we help schools and youth organizations, strengthen learning cultures, and implement restorative interventions, please visit our website, www.oncoursesolutions.net. This has been episode eight of the 2023 season. If you enjoy this podcast, please tell your friends and colleagues about it in person or using social media. We also greatly appreciate positive reviews on the podcast app you use. The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is hosted and produced by R. Scott Lee and is a copyright of Oncourse Education Solutions, LLC. We encourage diverse opinions however, opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of producer, partners, or underwriters. Guest was not compensated for appearance, nor did the guest pay to appear. Episode notes links and transcripts are available at our website, thoughtfulteacherpodcast.com, where you can also sign up to receive notices when new episodes are released. Theme music is composed and performed by Audiocoffee. Please follow me on social media. My handle on Twitter and Instagram is @drrscottlee and on Mastodon @drrscottlee@universedon.com
