Sheldon:

Welcome advocates to another episode of The Leading Equity Podcast, a podcast that focuses on supporting educators with the tools and resources necessary to ensure equity at their schools. I've got two special guests with me, two friends that I have quickly made... I have been communicating with via social media and also I've had a chance to be on their show as well. So I want to bring on Mr. Brad Weinstein and also Mr. Nathan [Maynard 00:00:27] with us today. So without further ado, thank you so much, Brad and Nathan, for joining us.

Brad:

Thanks for having us.

Nathan:

Thank you.

Sheldon:

So before we get into today's conversation, we're going to be talking about inclusive school environments. I would love for the two of you to share a little bit about you and what you do. So let's start with Brad first.

Brad:

Hi, I'm Brad Weinstein and I am the co-author of Hack in School Discipline and I also am the co-founder of Behavior Flip. And generally, what we do right now is we're very into how do we handle discipline in schools differently than the traditional model, which has traditionally marginalized our students, especially our students of color. So Nathan and I do a lot of consulting around discipline. Our software is the first restorative practices behavior management system that we can do as well.

Sheldon:

Nathan?

Nathan:

Yeah, so a little bit about my background. I studied behavioral neuroscience at Purdue University and it really got me a passion to start working with adolescents. So I started out in my first eight years, I worked in the juvenile justice field, I worked in a residential treatment care center. Those first three years, I ran the violent and sex offender program. And it really gave me some of these skills that I learned back in 2008 with learning restorative practices, how to really meet every kid's needs and seeking to understand that, driving some of the social emotional learning, when you see a deficit area and what that looks like.

Nathan:

From there, I went into the clinical team in that juvenile justice side, which also got me into some of the different area schools in Lafayette, Indiana. At that time, there was not a lot of restorative practices being done. So I was blessed enough that a lot of the probation officers started having good relationships with me. They would contact me and say, "Hey, my kid's struggling at this high school," or, "I have a couple of kids over here that are just about to get suspended," and I would start facilitating these conversations with the school administrators and talk about what can we do restorative? What does this look like? And try to keep some of these kids from getting some of these expulsions or suspensions and meeting the needs of their school at that same time.

Nathan:

During that time, we started to notice that it was being effective for some of those probationers that I was sort of supporting at that time. So I got support from our local [inaudible 00:02:41] court judge and we were able to hire restorative justice coordinators at all those different locations around Lafayette, Indiana. It was about four or five different schools and they were facilitating restorative practices and we thought that was great. It was a really good thing. Then I was contacted for a education program just for high school dropouts, ran by Goodwill of Central and Southern Indiana. So I went to transition into education at that time, started supporting that school district and that school specifically as a school administrator.

Nathan:

I did a lot of social, emotional learning work and really started supporting and seeing what restorative practices looks like more than just one facilitator at a school location like what I was doing [inaudible 00:03:23] juvenile justice field. I started noticing that the implementation of it and the good science behind it was all about this relationship stuff. And what I was doing when I was in that juvenile justice side was that reactive side. And we look at now from the International Institute of Restorative Practices, it's 80% proactive, 20% reactive. So then I started doing some proactive stuff and building up these relationships and facilitating that around our culture and what that looked like, started seeing some success.

Nathan:

So then Purdue University contacted me and said, "Hey, we want to open up a high school, our first high school for Inner City Indianapolis for underserved and underprivileged youth. Would you come down and move down here to Indianapolis, help open up that school?" So I moved down to Indianapolis and I was on the founding administration team. I came up with the title Dean of Culture because I felt like I didn't want to just be the discipline guy. I wanted to be someone that really established that culture is inclusivity and what that looks like on all different levels.

Nathan:

The first year in there, we were able to hire Mr. Weinstein there and I was able to meet him. He started talking to me about some of the stuff that he was doing on social media and he's like, "Man, you should jump on social media. You should go on Twitter, do this stuff." So I got on Twitter and then he talked about this book deal that he already had in motion for a book that I think he was writing around science or something like this and said, "Hey, what can we do to do some of this stuff?" Because Brad's been a teacher for 11 plus years, he's been a principal, he's had that route. So I jumped on there with him and we pitched it to TimesTen and then I had hacking school discipline come out of that.

Nathan:

At the same time, what Brad was saying with Behavior Flip, we had this Google spreadsheet that we thought was the best spreadsheet in the world trying to track behavior, support kids and go around this and had restorative interventions built throughout, allowed kids to repair the harm when they would do [inaudible 00:05:13] and then some of the different other area schools here in Indianapolis started contacting us and saying, "Hey, can we get a copy of that? What's that looking like?" So we started doing them. And then we found out that we wanted to make this a little bit more secure. So I got lucky enough to talk to one of my other friends that actually was a software engineer and he helped put that together for us. So right now, like Brad was saying, our current journey is supporting schools around restorative practices, social, emotional learning and doing what we can to support schools.

Sheldon:

Well, that's awesome. And thank you for sharing your journey and I'm glad that the two of you have been able to connect. I want to jump into our conversation because I think it's important, especially during these times where we're socially distancing ourselves and we're looking at what that looks like going forward. Some of us are still trying to debate whether or not we're going to be open, or if we're going to be quote unquote closed and still doing online or packets or whatever that looks like. So before we get into what does online learning look like and inclusivity, in general, what does inclusive schools environments look like?

Brad:

Inclusive environment in general, no matter whether they're in the room or online, is where students are seen, heard, have voice and choice, feel a sense of belonging, feel a sense of comfort, feel like you actually see their identity and who they are and they don't have to hide behind it. The teachers are well versed and well trained on what that looks like and how it might look different from student to student or class to class. In an inclusive environment, students would be seeing themselves in the curriculum, students would be seeing themselves on the walls, students would be seeing themselves in the staff, in the building. And unfortunately that doesn't always happen in all these measures and that's a big reason why the social change going on right now also impacts our schools as well. So true inclusivity is when all students feel welcome, heard, valued and feel a sense of belonging in the school. And there's a whole lot of things that need to happen for that to go as needed.

Sheldon:

How do we measure that? Because one thing that I've seen is a lot of teachers or school principals, they'll say, "Oh yeah, our kids, they belong and they have that strong sense of belonging." And then when you actually ask the students, "How do you feel? Do you feel like you belong?" especially our students that are not part of the dominant culture, they're just a handful in their classroom sometimes and you ask them those same questions and you get a different response. In your experience maybe, how do you measure that? Or how do we know whether or not what we're doing is effective?

Brad:

That's a good question. And you hit the nail on the head. We need to ask. We need to do more than just assume. We need to do more than, "I treat everyone the same. Everyone feels good. Everyone's participating in class." We need to actually ask the students in our building. We need to ask the staff members in our building. We need to actually ask the people and the students that are experiencing school and how we can help them. We need to ask the parents, do they feel welcome there? Do they feel like they have a voice there? And you can also look at your discipline data. You can also look at your achievement data and see if students are being marginalized. You can look at your recognition system and your PBIS, are all students being recognized for the things that they're doing well? So when you talk about measuring it, it's not just quantitative, it's not just test scores, it's not just discipline data. It is climate and culture information that you need to get from the students and from the families at your school.

Sheldon:

Yeah. I totally agreed. Nathan, did you have anything that you want to add to that as well?

Nathan:

Yeah. I think that when you're looking at metrics of success around changing up some of this dispositions, almost, in school, some of the mindset questions I like to ask is, because Brad and I do a lot of this restorative practices. So when a student acts out, how do we perceive this starting out? What do we look at? Do we look at this in the lens of seeking to understand, do we look at this in the lens as quickly labeling a behavior, labeling a situation, because all that goes into this equity. It goes into what this looks like with this culture. Do students feel a sense of belonging as the core. And I feel like when students feel sense of belonging and we as educators give them that sense of belonging and focus on that instead of achievement, that's where the focus is. Focus on those relationships and bringing that to what happens.

Nathan:

And then after a situation occurs too, do we have a time to self reflect about that situation as a school unit, as a student in an educator relationship, what are we doing to get better every single time something occurs and continue to build from that? It's also taking a deeper dive into policies and what comes about from them.

Nathan:

There's a school that Brad and I were supporting near Memphis, Tennessee and we went through a year of consulting with the school and supporting them and going through their practices, their policies, this type of stuff. And we were making some good changes with it. We were getting staff feedback, we were getting student feedback, hearing those voices out and feeling good about it. And then we went into the in school suspension room. We walked around the in school suspension room and we noticed that there were several students of color that were in that suspension room. And we were going through and saying like, "What brings them in here today?" And what was the number one reason why there was 15 plus kids in that in school suspension room was they were wearing black pants.

Nathan:

We looked back at the policies, seeking to understand where that came from, no one knows. It was a policy that was established in the late nineties they believe by the school board. It's something that no one really knows where this comes from. They didn't have a strict policy around that uniform stuff. So no one really knows why there was this black pants thing. But if you wear it three times in a row, you can get a day of in school suspension. You do it again it's three days, you do it again it's five days.

Nathan:

And we started realizing, "Man, you've got to look at these structural things that are going in there and saying, "What is this?" and, "Is this making students better? Is this aiming for this belonging? Or is this aiming for this climate of control, this climate of rules and established power dynamics? And if it's not, take that stuff out because it's not going to do good for the students and the students aren't going to feel a sense of belonging as hard as we try with icebreakers, circles, this type of stuff if we have policies that are in place that aren't supporting those structures of that relationship and their sense of belonging.""

Sheldon:

I'm glad that you shared that example because sometimes we don't always necessarily think about how dress code policies can oppress folks and how they can target certain groups. I've seen a lot of dress code policies that talk about you can't wear dreads and your hair can't be a quote, unquote, a distraction. And I'm like, "How do you define distraction? What does that even mean? And whose gaze is it that we're looking at to say, "You know what? Yeah, your hair is distracting. You have a Mohawk or you have these long braids or you have an Afro and that's just distracting to other people,"" and those kinds of things can definitely target certain groups. So I'm glad that you brought that up as far as the black pants.

Sheldon:

And that's crazy! Just the fact that folks are in ISS because of wearing black pants. Oh my gosh. Anyway. So let's transition because with COVID-19 and a lot of our schools have shut down. Most of us are finishing up rather shortly as far as completing the school year, making it through barely these days. And when we start thinking about what school looks like coming up and whether or not we're going to be open, what are maybe some things that you might have come across when it comes to being inclusive in an online space?

Brad:

Being inclusive online is something that I feel really brought about a lot of issues with equity, inclusivity. We knew it had existed before, but I feel like it was really, really staring us in the face when it came to students not getting the resources they would typically get at school and it grossly pointed out, wow, there's such a disparity in equality in general, but when it comes to resources at home, and some of the things that we can do, and it's really tough as teachers, is we need to check in with our students regularly. So we can't just do a zoom class and everyone comes to that zoom class and things like that. We need to personally reach out to them. We need to get on the phone. We need to email. We need to text. We need to find out, what is the best way to get a hold of our families with our students?

Brad:

The students are missing that relationship with you, they're missing that relationship with their peers. They need to hear your voice. They need to see you and not just you, the families as well. One of the things that I saw you post about at some point was about just giving the students access is bare minimum when it comes to inclusivity and equity, but it is an important components. We do need to figure out what students don't have internet access, what students don't have the materials that they need to learn. There's some cases where you have one smartphone for a family with multiple students and that's how they do the work. And that's not acceptable and that's not equitable when it comes to distance learning. So you do need to make sure you need to partner with your local community, you need to partner with your cable company, you need to partner with everyone you know to make sure that students actually have mobile devices and internet.

Brad:

But another important component is to keep your lessons asynchronous instead of synchronous. So a lot of parents, for instance, might go to work from one o'clock until five o'clock in the evening. Some parents might be at work all day and some students might have to watch their siblings. You never know what a student's day is going to look like when they're learning online. So you want your learning to be as asynchronous as possible, meaning they can do it at their own pace at their own time when it's convenient for them and not have required, "We all have to meet at one o'clock on Tuesday" when that's just not doable for some families who are working or who have other responsibilities.

Brad:

Another big thing that I am an advocate for is project based learning. Students take in some of their own things that they want to learn about, students completing projects on their own time, students working together virtually because a lot of what I saw with distance learning, and it's not anybody's fault, they weren't trying to do learning that didn't work, but just having students do check boxes, go through things, basically do busy work so that they can say that they had assignments and they completed assignments, that's not learning. That didn't necessarily achieve the goal of getting students interested and engaged in what they were doing.

Brad:

Another thing that I like to talk about is extracurricular activities. So you still have the opportunity to do some sort of club, but just virtually. Some sort of thing where students feel a sense of belonging because some students, the only time they might feel like they belong is in their club after school where they're working with other students that have similar interests to them, or it might be a sport that they're all talking about and you might with your sports team still be talking about your sport or your event. And the biggest thing I think that I've really liked seeing, but a big gap was community based organizations. It shouldn't just be how much money the school has and what resources does the school have? Why are the big companies in the neighborhood, in the area, not also working to provide students with clothing, with wraparound services, with healthcare services, all of the services that they might need to be successful at school virtually or in person?

Sheldon:

Thank you for providing those tools because yeah, like you said, just because we gave them internet, got them some internet going and got them a device, we can't leave it there. There's so much more that we have to do [inaudible 00:17:27], have to go beyond those worksheets. My friend [inaudible 00:17:31] talks about, let's go beyond the worksheets. And I think that's important because especially with our younger ones, I know sometimes that's kind of the way to go, that's how a lot of folks ended up doing [inaudible 00:00:17:42]. You know what? Let's just print out these worksheets and send them over to the kids and that's your online learning.

Sheldon:

But I think now that we have more time to really plan ahead and start thinking about what school looks like, I've always been advocating for at least your first semester, just plan a go online because the CDC recommendations nowadays, they seem like they get worse and worse as far as what we should be doing and it's six feet apart. I mean, if I've got 30 kids in my classroom, there's no way we're doing six feet, in addition to the other social isolations at a school, how does that work? So I think we should start thinking about maybe we should continue on online and how do we make it as equitable as possible, which that could be a whole nother podcast but I think that's the way that we should be going.

Brad:

Yeah. And with discipline, I'm thinking the first time a student goes into that classroom and pretend coughs and then they have to clear the room and de-sanitize everything, then what? It's just not going to work. It's not feasible. The students aren't going to do that. It's not feasible. The students are going to be working in a room together and not interact together and students are not just going to be sitting at their desk six feet apart the entire school day. They have to move. I mean, part of school is moving and collaborating and working together and socializing. So if you're not going to socialize or communicate or be together, what's the point of being in the building?

Sheldon:

Exactly. Yeah. That's why I say, if you're at a place where you're wondering, "Should we put a dress code policy on the type of masks that our students are wearing that they come in on and how do we police that?", that's a conversation and maybe we should start school a little later. That's just my 2 cents.

Sheldon:

Let's get a little bit more specific because we've provided a broad paintbrush of what inclusivity looks like, but I want to address certain groups that are often targeted or have various challenges that have impacted their lives. We could go all the way back to challenges that maybe our LGBTQ community students have faced, or even most recently with COVID-19 and how there was a lot of xenophobia with our Asian American students, those communities. And then of course with black lives matters recently with George Floyd and all the police brutality.

Sheldon:

When we say as part of our policy, especially on the walls, we have those little slogans and "We believe in all students" and "We support all kids" and we have these messages and in our leadership, we talk about these things and it's in our handbooks and on our websites. But when these things start to come up, when Islamophobia starts to come up, when xenophobia starts to come up, all these obias and brutality and things that are quote unquote political, they start to come up and yet they're silent. What is your take on that? Is that supporting an inclusive environment or are we just kind of lip service at this point?

Nathan:

Yeah. And I think not taking a stance is obviously taking a stance. And I think a lot of times people lean on feeling uncomfortable and especially white people as well and you're saying like, "I'm not comfortable talking about this, or I'm not comfortable taking a stand," but that's no longer an excuse in this situation. This is something we need to examine ourselves, our perspectives, how we have perpetuated this problem or working to solve it, but being silent isn't an option and racism shouldn't be political ever. This is human's rights. This should have happened 400 years ago. We all need to take steps. We all need to work on this together.

Nathan:

So I think that any time that I hear people being silent or I hear a lot of times, "Well, I don't feel comfortable talking about this or what this looks like," then get comfortable. Because we all need to come up there and you can't be an inclusive school and say, "We focus on all students and we focus on this type of stuff," if we're not taking the steps towards being part of this movement to get this stuff changed now. And I think if schools aren't taking chances, admin aren't taking chances and just putting out their perspectives, kids aren't going to feel like this is an inclusive environment. And when we go back to school without COVID-19, without this type of stuff, how are we going to focus on this? What are we going to focus on to make sure that everyone feels that sense of belonging?

Nathan:

But I know I'm not going to feel a sense of belonging if I follow a teacher on social media and I see them posting all lives matter or something like that on there, it's going to put me in an uncomfortable situation if I'm a black or a student of color in that classroom. So we have to take a stance, there's no exceptions at this point.

Brad:

Yeah. And just looking at social media comment threads, it's very scary honestly when you start to see things, when we talk about inclusivity with our students and we start to see a lot of people talking about, "Well, I don't see color. Well, I treat all my students the same. Well, I grew up in a diverse neighborhood and this is how we did it," kind of mindset and we're not actually seeing the students and we're not actually normalizing that they're different from each other and things like that.

Brad:

And I've even seen instances where, "I'm okay with all of this black lives matters [inaudible 00:23:08], it's all cool. But where I draw the line is normalizing LGBTQ." So when it comes to inclusivity in those things it's really tough for the students if the educators in the building or the people in the building are not reinforcing that inclusivity themselves because even if they don't say anything about it, they might have microaggressions towards students that look different than them, that talk different than them, that have different backgrounds than them that they don't even realize are happening because of their mindset. So when I'm thinking about interviewing teachers, I'm thinking about interviewing administrators, I can definitely think of some questions that should be asked now that people didn't think about before.

Sheldon:

Let's touch on it because I actually had someone ask me that question as far as like, "What can I do as a school leader to ensure that my teachers that are coming in are practicing or support our vision as far as being inclusive?" And I said, "Why don't you ask social justice related questions? Just ask them, "What is your take on social justice?" and let them go." Often we ask a lot of those general questions. "How would you handle this situation in discipline? And how do you do your lesson plans?" We use those kinds of questions that are pretty general, but can we not get to the place where we're not talking about what does social justice look like in your classroom and could you give us an example of a time when you supported your students or something like that, is that not appropriate? Is that quote unquote too political?

Sheldon:

I think we need to engage in these conversations because really, a lot of teachers have, whether you're a quote unquote veteran or not, a lot of us have enough common sense to kind of answer some questions in a way that we can say what we think you need to hear, but let's put some folks on the spot and ask them some questions that's going to really make them consider, is this the place for me in my end, would I be entering into a culture that I'm comfortable with or I'm okay with not being comfortable at times? Or is this going to be a place where I know that I can thrive and I can really support my students beyond just being called or feeling like this is some work that I want to do to benefit me as a charity or a missionary mindset that some folks have.

Brad:

Sure. And one of the questions I thought of, whenever I have somebody talking on social media, I'll say, "Why might achievement gaps exist or why might disproportionality exist in our discipline data?" Just that simple. People will argue with me all day long about all lives matter. But then when I ask them that question, they won't answer it because they're not looking at systematic oppression. They're not looking at... They're not seeing themselves, or students of color are not seeing themselves in the curriculum, I'm not feeling welcome or sense of belonging at school and all those other variables.

Brad:

So I would just ask those questions in an interview. Why might those things happen in schools? And I think you're going to get people either saying... You might drive out the worst in people. I've seen people say, "Well, it's the parents." So then I say, "So are you saying that parents of color are not good parents?" Things like that. So I feel like that drives out a lot of that discussion with teachers and I can get a very quick feel for whether or not they belong in my building or not based on that answer.

Sheldon:

Love it. Nathan, did you have anything you wanted to add?

Nathan:

Yeah. I really liked how you put that. We need to put these social justice questions at the forefront because it's really easy to spit off, "If a kid acts up, I'm going to pull them out into the hallway and talk to them and do this type of stuff." But when it comes down to what we know is discipline practices, what we know is supporting kids, it's that proactive nature like what I was saying earlier. So what are we doing to create that sense of belonging for all of our students in our classroom? What does this look like if a student doesn't feel belonging in your classroom? What's that interaction look like? What does equity and inclusivity look like in your classroom specifically?

Nathan:

And asking them these driving questions where it puts people in this situation where they have to actionable items and strategies, especially white people that are coming into this profession and wanting to be equity warriors and being a part of this and what can they do specifically in these situations? And if they don't know, where can they get resources to read, to learn, to get from this and then use those strategies to build this sense of belonging with all those students? I think it's so important.

Sheldon:

And let's touch on that because you are two white men and you're doing equity work and I definitely appreciate the work that you're doing. Could you share with us, in your perspective, in your identity, what have you learned throughout your own journey?

Nathan:

Yeah, and I think that getting started early on in the juvenile justice field, I thought that the way that I was raised for a long time was my perspective of I understand everything. I understand what's going on out there. I grew up, my grandfather was an immigrant, he raised me, I grew up in poverty, bounced around a lot. I had this journey that I thought made me be able to sort of relate to kids better, especially in that juvenile justice field when I'd see a lot of myself in these kids. But then the more that I got into it, the more that I started to realize that what this sense of privilege gives you being white and how to make sure that you're not perpetuating issues or looking at something with a stigma or an implicit bias that you may not feel like you had because of growing up.

Nathan:

I feel like I thought that the way that I was raised made me better to relate to more different students and the more that I started realizing it is you have to understand your own privilege, you have to understand what you bring to the table, you have to understand your perspectives. When I was talking to students of poverty depending on what ethnicity they were, I felt like I could relate to some capacity, but again, if I didn't look and check my privilege when I was having that conversation if it was a student of color, I'm not going to reach that situation as well as I could have. So I think the older and the more that I've done this sort of work, the more that I've been able to check that [inaudible 00:29:38] and see what that looks like.

Nathan:

I know early on, I found out about the school to prison pipeline. I was probably 21 years old, fresh out of school and there was a young man that got arrested and I went to court for the situation. He was a black student at a local high school there in Lafayette. He shook a vending machine, about 15 snicker bars fell out. He loaded up his backpack, which anybody would, grabbed a bunch of snickers bars and handed them out to his friends. He was an all AB student. He was on a starting football team of a very well known high school in the area. He had his stuff together. He ended up getting, it was just a misdemeanor charge.

Nathan:

He went to court a couple of weeks later, that's where I showed up as representative of the juvenile justice field and I just sort of sat back and they ended up doing a drug screen on the mom, she failed for marijuana. At the time he had no other family. They said they couldn't place him in the home with someone that was a drug user and the rest of the family lived out of the state. They didn't want to recommend that he moves out of state because he was doing so well in school. So they ended up placing him in the residential treatment cares center with no background, no criminal charges, nothing other than he loaded up about 10 snicker bars after he a vending machine when his got stuck and it sort of went on and on and on. His journey ended up with him at the Department of Corrections.

Nathan:

This kid didn't deserve this. He didn't deserve this situation. And I think at that time it really gave me this passion of, man, there's injustices out there and depending on my perspectives, what I have to do, there's got to be different ways to handle this type of stuff and offset this implicit bias that goes into these referrals, that goes into these conversations and it just gave me such a passion to want to do this restorative practices work throughout my career. And that's why I went from juvenile justice into education because of that story about that student with the snickers. It's just [inaudible 00:31:31] and there's hundreds of other stories that I've heard, that I've seen and thinking about all those stories are impacting lives to such degree that that offsets so much later on. And if we don't take actionable steps and look at, especially our discipline, because that's my lane, I understand how to do these restorative practices, understanding what that looks like and focus on that proactive stuff and those relationships, how many more kids are going to be affected by this? And we can't have this happen for our culture.

Sheldon:

Thank you for sharing that story. Brad, what about you? Did you have something that you wanted to add?

Brad:

Sure. In my teaching career, I taught for a while at a pretty affluent school district in Indiana. And I didn't see a whole lot of students that looked a whole lot different than me for a while. So I went straight from being a middle school science teacher to a high school principal on the east side of Indianapolis. And I'll tell you, I got majorly shocked about just the vast differences in how I interact with students. On the third day of being a high school principal, I saw a young lady in the hallway and I said, "Hey, why are you late to class? You need to get to class." And she told me to go F myself and, "Who are you to talk to me like that?" And I just sat back for a minute and I didn't know how to respond or what to say and I said, and all I can mutter was, "But I'm the principal."

Brad:

And I realized, "Holy cow, I am not prepared for this. I can't just go in and talk down to the students or be an authority figure to the students. I need to be somebody that is someone they connect to, someone they relate and I need to gain their trust. So when it comes to being in a white educator talking about these things, I think it's very important that it's not just some black educators or some other educators of color saying there's injustices in schools and we need to do things differently.

Brad:

I think we also need white educators to be saying these things as well because the majority of teaching staffs nationwide are Caucasian or white and they need to see that people that are Caucasian or white are advocating for change, advocating for seeing things differently and Nathan or I don't have all the answers and we didn't live as a person of color. So Nathan and I do a lot of work around restorative practices, but we also have a lot of learning to do ourselves and we also seek help and we also want to work with people that are actual experts in those kinds of things.

Sheldon:

Yeah. And again, I appreciate the two of you on the show. I appreciate your perspective and the work that you're doing. And I definitely consider both of you as providing a voice in leading equity. What is one final word of advice that you can provide to our listeners? Let's start with Nathan.

Nathan:

Yeah, that's a good question. I think that we need to personally examine ourselves, our interactions, what impacts we are doing around equity. We have got to understand that every interaction we have has an impact and we've got to make those interactions meaningful. We've got to focus on, what does relationships look like? This culture of belonging and giving everyone this dignity, as well as just making sure that we realize how we interact, play a role in all of this. It's very easy to see a student act out or see a situation and quickly say, "Man, this is what took place. I'm going to try to do something restorative. I'm going to try to do this stuff." But only being facing of that situation, we've got to realize, what are we doing to impact situations? What are we doing to impact overall good or this belonging or whatever we're doing? And if we're not doing these good interactions, let's change it.

Sheldon:

Brad?

Brad:

I would say that we need to look at what our plans are for next year and if our schools are not safe and inclusive where students feel a sense of belonging for all, then I would say you need to readjust your priorities for what you're planning for next year. If we keep on doing things the way that we've been doing things for all of this time, we're going to continue to see the results we've seen from all of this time. So I think it's time to make a big change in how [inaudible 00:36:02] and what we prioritize. We first learned a whole lot from the pandemic as far as what was important in schools, but now we're saying, "Oh yeah, we also need to include the social justice component in our staff. Staff need training, admin need training, everyone needs training in these areas." So I think we just need to look at our policies. We need to bring people of color to the table. We need representation in our schools and we need to get diverse perspectives in everything that we do.

Sheldon:

This has been fun. I have thoroughly enjoyed our conversation today and again, I appreciate your time. If we have some folks that want to reach out and connect with you online, Brad, what's the best way to reach out to you?

Brad:

On Twitter. You can reach out to me on Twitter and my handle or username is @weinsteinedu. W-E-I-N-S-T-E-I-N-E-D-U. You can find me there on Twitter and on Facebook and on Instagram as well.

Sheldon:

Okay. And Nathan, what about you?

Nathan:

Yeah, I would say Twitter as well. My handle is just nmaynardedu and then also we're pretty active on our Facebook group called hacking school discipline. We really believe iron sharpens iron. Brad and I have had our unique experiences, we've done a lot to support kids through education, juvenile justice, but we love hearing from other educators, love getting perspectives, love having deep conversations and if you do join that group, and Sheldon, I know you're a part of it, it's not just a sounding wall of voices. You get pushback and you get good conversations, that's what we want. We want to really drive conversations to get better and to push people out of this comfort zone, especially around discipline, around restorative practices, around equity, anything that that looks like. So I think that the Facebook group or Twitter is probably the best ways.

Sheldon:

All right. Well again, thank you for your time, Brad and Nathan, it's been awesome. Thanks for being on the show.

Brad:

Thank you.

Nathan:

Thank you.

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