Speaker 1:

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 been talking to someone for almost an hour. We haven't even recorded yet. So I'm really excited for this conversation. So without further ado, I do want to welcome on Ms. Khadija Smith is here with us today. So without further ado, thank you so much for joining us.

Khadija Smith:

Thank you so much for having me. This is amazing. I think there needs to be more open spaces where we discuss equity especially when having to do with our children. Especially in this climate. So thank you for having me.

Speaker 1:

My pleasure. And before we get into today's topic, why don't you share a little bit about yourself and what you currently do?

Khadija Smith:

Sure. I am a K-8 school leader in the Maryland metropolitan area. I have been in this role for the past five years. It's a private school. I've spent my 15 years in education in the public and charter sector. This is my first private school appointment and I chose this one in particular because I get to leave my children. And if you've ever been in a public and charter school setting, and you have a family, you understand the long hours that you leave your children to be educated with someone else. And this was a great opportunity. It just so happened that it was like, this is open and my kids needed a school transition. This was perfect. So I had the opportunity to watch my children grow for the past five years. So this has been amazing.

Speaker 1:

And tuition free. I'm assuming as well.

Khadija Smith:

It's pennies, but it's not tuition free.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So, all right, here's the question I want to start us off with? Because we were talking before we started recording about how things were when we were kids, school, being able to go outside, all those different things and 2021, this new generation of students that we're raising, even our own kids or the students in our classrooms. What are some of the changes? Or some of the things that you're seeing that are different now?

Khadija Smith:

Well, I start with my children first, right? So I'm an educator. So I see how my students are in the classroom. And then I look at my own students, I mean my own children. And I'm like, ugh, but what I've noticed is that our children are losing their like grit. They're losing just this ability to push through difficult tasks and just enjoy this healthy struggle. Right? Because I think whether that is us moving towards more pushing through social economic statuses or just this whole 21st century microwave generation.

               Where I can Google what I want, all the information is at my fingertips, it's at my smartphone, it's at my iPad, it's at my computer, my desktop, everything that I need is within my reach. So when I have to be put in a classroom where these, devices are pretty much not at my disposal, traditionally pre COVID, I now had to use what I'm taught. I have to use context clues. I have to use critical thinking skills, previous events that I've been, conversations that I've heard and try to use all of this information to figure out the task that is ahead of me, right? That my teacher has given me.

               Which shows me two things. It shows me that the schools haven't caught up to what our children are doing and what they're able to do outside of school. And the second is that our children don't have concrete, just like strategic learning skills. Right? So what are those things, if I don't have a device, is my mind able, and my mind, my body able to do device-free right? Have we developed those skills, right? Outside of, "Oh, I put them in sports" or "I put them in dance" or "I put them in gymnastics." What is your child able to navigate in the world? Can I leave my children in the middle of like on the way to school? Not somewhere different. Like, I'm not saying, just leave your children, drop them off into a desert place. But if I was on my route to school, dropping them off and I left them in a space that it wasn't school. Could they navigate getting to school or getting home? I'm not sure I'm not confident. But I know-

Speaker 1:

Do they know your cell phone number? Do they know your number?

Khadija Smith:

I had this discussion with somebody else too, like I still know my home number from when I was a child, my grandmother's number, my aunt's number. I know all these numbers. Right. And I knew everybody's address. My nurse or my school secretary, the office manager didn't need to look up nothing. So if a child comes to school and they're sick, I'm like, what's your child's number, honey. I don't know. And so I'm looking it up. These things are so simple. And have we lost sight of that within our own adults, right? Because children don't raise themselves. Have we lost sight of teaching our children the concrete skills, just to maneuver life? So, that's what I'm noticing. Like I've had to open up ketchup packets. And if you don't understand, there's a specific skill to open up catch-up packets, there's a certain amount of pressure you need.

               And a couple of times it needs to spill on you. So you know that you applied too much pressure. So those are those simple skills are we withholding because we can do so much and provide for so much? Are we withholding their own growth within those skills? I've never seen so many children that don't know how to tie their shoe in school. I've never seen that. I spent the whole summer when I was like five or six, just tying my shoe. Like somebody teaching me how to tie my shoe. Now you can get shoes without shoelaces if you really don't care. There's so many options and people think, well, why do you need to do that if you have technology? You need to do that because there's a muscle in your brain that needs to be worked. That is not being worked because I can do anything without even thinking about it.

               So these muscles need to work. So when I get in front of ... they're transferable skills, you think tying a shoe is just tying a shoe and they don't need to do that I can just get Velcro. But that tying a shoe, that loosening, that knot that certain type of looping, that kind of pattern recognition, that kind of understanding how the knot needs to be tightened. Or if I don't do it a certain way it loosens, that kind of muscle memory not only works for shoelaces. It works for math. It works for reading. It works for all academic skills because now I know how to do, okay so it didn't work this time so I'm going to try it again. It's that kind of exercise, it's not about academics and real life. They're not separate. The mind knows how to cross those skills together and use them for everything that they need.

               But if we keep on withholding these natural gifts, these natural things that we had thinking, Oh, we have money now, we're in a different place now. We're losing what we, how I got to my job came from everything that I've learned about pushing through and just perseverance that I had developed since childhood. I didn't get these things. And people are saying more importantly, people are saying, what gets a student through college is not academics anymore. That's what everybody says. It's not academics anymore.

Speaker 1:

Tell me more, tell me more.

Khadija Smith:

They're saying it's not the smart kid that necessarily finishes school. It's the child that's able to understand how to navigate, if I'm in trouble, if I'm stuck, who do I talk to? Do I get a tutor? Right? Do I break down? There's always an answer, right? That whole, okay, this is the problem at hand, this is the problem I'm confronted with. There is a solution. I need to figure that out. That whole thing doesn't develop when you get to college, that is an ongoing skill that you need.

               And now that we're knowing ... I teach a college course, right? I teach a college math course. It's not about getting the skill. It's being able to ask the question, because they'll be like, can you do number two again? And I'll say, well, what part of number two didn't you understand? Because you need to be able to articulate where your misconception is for you to go back and do it again. But I'm saying all of number two, that's not true. So being able to understand it, even articulate what your problem is, and you know our children don't even talk to each other.

Speaker 1:

No.

Khadija Smith:

I know this is going to sound terrible, but I have to scheduled time in my schedule where we're just sitting down and having a conversation that is uninterrupted. Not like, Oh, how's your day, your normal conversation, but I want to sit down and you talk to me and you understand how to discuss and look at my eye and converse with adults, because even their grandparents will allow them to be like, okay, well, I guess they're distracted. They're playing games. I'm like, no, your grandmother is on the phone. You need to have a conversation with them because everything will distract us. Right? Social media, just technology is a distracting tool. Having a conversation is a skill. So, that is also something that I manufacture. I manufactured things in my house, situations and circumstances in my house that might not necessarily play out because I can do everything, but I make sure my children get the skill.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so here's a question then? Do you feel like this generation, if you will, has coddled their kids too much? Are we coddling our kids so much that they aren't able to think on their own? They're just basically used to things being handed to them, "not understanding the value of hard work." You feel like that's kind of the direction things have been going.

Khadija Smith:

Yes. And I mean that not in a negative way, right? Because I think every parent wants the best for their children. Right? So I say that like, when I meet with parents, I can tell that they want the best for their children. And the best to them sometimes is, I didn't have this, so you are going to have it. Right? For example, when I got home from school, no one was there to greet me. Right? So you are not ever going to have to do that. Somebody's going to be there for you. If you need something to eat, if you want something to drink, somebody is going to be there for you. It wasn't negative. The coddling was a way of either carrying on the tradition that you had, that you felt like you had a great childhood or pretty much embracing something like I can have it now and I wish I had it, so now my children can have it. Right?

               So it's, I'm moving up. I know more, I want to do more. And sometimes you forget what it took for you to even get to the space where you are as successful. How are you making this happen? This income, this new level of this title that you were able to get? How did you get that? Because you grew up in a certain environment where you had to create skills and get skills and acquire skills, for you to be able to go into a boardroom, to go into your job and be able to be confident enough to say, I own this space. I'm intelligent enough to be in this space, I can be here. Now, are our children getting the same and receiving the same experiences? So yeah, I think it is a little bit of coddling, but I think it's unconscious.

               Like I work in a private school. So we do car mom. I drop a kid off in the car, immediately has their tablet there, something to drink, a snack. And mom is just off. That's not a necessarily bad thing, if there's a conversation happening, maybe the tablet is not the first go-to, maybe me checking in with you with your day is the first go-to. And even if I am on the phone, maybe like, that's not the time to have the conversation. I think we have disconnected even us. I go into my children's favorite restaurant, don't judge me, it's Applebee's right.

Speaker 1:

I didn't judge.

Khadija Smith:

Right, because they got this two for $20.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Khadija Smith:

I'm looking at them like, okay, even though, you know you pushed their favorite restaurant on them. Now they have this thing where you can have the iPad at the table. They'll ask you how many iPads do you want? And you can have it at the table. And when I was young, I had to play games and converse with my parents. And we had to find a way to buy the time. Right? So the time we're waiting for our food, we had to engage. Now, you don't even have to engage. We have opted our children out of engagement with us. We've said, Oh, you don't have to talk to us. Here's the iPad. Here's the tablet. And this is not a judgment because I do understand that sometimes you need some time away and some space and they should have some kind of enjoyment. And our children should be able to have a conversation with us. Right. The teacher should be able to ask a kid like what's wrong and them not look away and look around, unless there is some reason for that, right?

               Because they are children because of their learning disabilities that do that. But our children shouldn't be like afraid to talk to adults, engage with adults and really tell them what is happening and what's going on with them because they're not used to even having a conversation. Right. So I think that is where I feel like we have missed. And my work with Ed Gap Closers and 10 things educators really picks up. It's just, how do we engage our children in a way that we don't coddle, but there's a healthy struggle because that's a thing, right? Your children need a certain amount of healthy struggle. My children cook, our children do their own laundry. My children, well, my oldest son does his own laundry. Right. And he's 11, right? So he does breakfast, both of them do breakfast because I put my kitchen and a lot of times it's this thing. Well, this is my home. And you know, when we were growing up, like that was your mother's kitchen. You didn't play in your mothers kitchen.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Khadija Smith:

I don't do that. Right. So, that's one thing I did take away. Everything is their level and something that they can control. They don't use an oven, but I bought a toaster oven. They don't necessarily use the stove top, but they have an air fryer. Right? Those are things that are less likely to cause harm that I allow them to use to gain their independence. Right. So everything that they need, their juice is at that level, they don't have to reach, they, don't have to do anything. We create a menu together where we're like, okay, so what are we having for breakfast? So it's very clear. They understand, not only does the menu say what we're having and whose input it was, they have input and buy into what we're eating.

               But when we go to the grocery store, it is very clear what we're not getting right. Is that on the menu? Is that what we're doing? Right. So what does that also teach them budgeting, right? Controlling your cravings and not being, just enamored with everything that you see. And definitely that is natural, but you need to be able to be like, well, that's not what we said, and that's not what you decided that we were going to eat. So is that necessary? Is that something that we need? So that's also a budgeting issue. So those kinds of skills and involving children in our everyday lives is necessary for them to start thinking on a level of independence and providing those skills. Even though I could do it all myself, right. I have enough help. I have enough time that my kids don't even have to be a part of the process, but what am I opting them out of?

Speaker 1:

You're doing them a disservice.

Khadija Smith:

Necessary skills that have to do with life. No, you don't have an option. Though I have that, that my mother didn't have, you don't get to opt out. So they are at homeschool. So, they all have Alexa's, right? Well, are those Siri's or is it Alexa? They're Siri's. What are those little?

Speaker 1:

Alexa's. It could be the Google one.

Khadija Smith:

Alexa's, I don't have one.

Speaker 1:

They got the Google ones too.

Khadija Smith:

Yes. They have the Alexa dots. Right? The little dots.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Echos.

Khadija Smith:

Echos. The echo dots, which is Alexa. Right?

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Khadija Smith:

So, they both have one. So they have to set their alarms in their Alexa. When they go to bed, they could play music if they want. I like these so much because you can't serf the internet, right. It's a way for them to access internet without doing anything other than what Alexa can provide. You can ask Alexa questions, but I can't serf social media on this. I can't go to YouTube on this. Because that's another hotspot for my kids YouTube.

Speaker 1:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Khadija Smith:

And those things are important to me. So when they are home, they have an alarm that wakes them up. If they don't get up, it's your time to cook breakfast, school still starts at 8:30. That is a consequence that you need to understand and I'm up and I'm not waking you up.

               I'm not because at this point, at 11 years old, I was taking the train. I was taking the train to school. I was going from Queens to Brooklyn every single day, with my mother not waking me up. Now, you don't have to go from Queens to Brooklyn, but you can go from upstairs to downstairs in this kitchen and make yourself some breakfast. So that's the thing that, if you could put something away. If you can give a child something, if you can take something off your plate, what would it be? And what lesson do you want your children to receive from that? Right? Because it's also intentional. So I'm not just giving things because I don't feel like it, it's intentional. You should know how to feed yourself. Right? If we're saying breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but I'm doing your most important meal of the day.

               Every single day. You're not internalizing the importance of that. I'm internalizing the importance of that because it's always ready for you. So that in those kinds of spaces, we have to make sure that our words and our actions and what we are doing for our children are meaningful. And it's not just in school. It translates to school. So now you're teaching your students when they don't have something they're asking like, Hey, I don't have my paper. Or where can I get an extra pencil? These things are translate in schools. These skills are necessary.

Speaker 1:

And not only are they necessary, but I love how you talked about how you could do these things for them, just like teachers, right? Teachers could do a lot of these things for them. They could go down the hall and grab a pencil for someone, or they could grab the paper or whatever. And go to their locker, and run these errands for the students. But what is that teaching the child?

Khadija Smith:

I have this ... Oh, sorry.

Speaker 1:

Is that really giving them the skill set that they need? Go ahead.

Khadija Smith:

I have this famous saying that I say, right? Because, if you're a school teacher, if you're an educator, you understand this, right? Your child can not have a school job, a classroom job and be unemployed at home. That's the teacher's job. Right? They have over 10, 15, 20 kids. They can't do that. So what you're actually teaching your child is something that they can't get at school. And the teacher's job is to free themselves up so to make their children independent. That's why there's stations for things. That's why they have labels for things, to ensure they're able to navigate the environment of the classroom, independent of them. And one thing that you could tell teachers, they're like this child is asking me for everything and it's right there because that is a transferable skill that they're used to people giving things to them.

               And that's something. And another thing you notice is that your children will be so independent at school and turn into different children when they get home. People say all the time, like my school goes to pre-K too. So the preschool will be like, they'll be putting their students in cars and they'd be like such and such has a bottle. How about, yeah, but they're two, three years old and she goes, but they drink from a cup in class. Why would you give them a bottle? And it's what they're able to do because with you, your standard as a parent has been to do that, their standard as teachers, I can't give you no bottle because I know you're able and you're capable of more. So why can't we transfer those skills at home? So their first introduction isn't so tragic because a lot of the students, when they first get to school in kindergarten, they're in a huge reality check.

               Like I'm not the only person, why don't you care about me? And it's like, well, I can't navigate that. So why have that traumatic transition into school when there are certain things that you can do at home that is necessary. That's necessary. So, and the teacher doesn't have to start from like baseline zero. Right? And the last thing I would say on this particular topic, in terms of providing and coddling our children, is that we need to begin to, especially for our black and brown babies really start discussing with them the need for their independence. Right. I know. And it's not to say I'm taking their innocence, right? So this independence doesn't mean lack of innocence, right? It's at their level. My daughter doesn't do her own laundry, but my son does. Right. So I'm not going to take that joy, like you enjoy this, that I'm doing your laundry and enjoy that part of your innocence.

               But at some point we have to say, they're going to learn their life skills from home first. I'm going to be their first teacher. Right. Because home is your first there's learning. It's your first place of character, it's your first place of just like who you are right. And that should come from me. And then that can be nuanced in other places, it can be molded in other places, but that first lesson should come from you. That shouldn't be the school's thing. Right. How you develop who you are in terms of how you do things and your grit and your fortitude, your perseverance should come from something that you've seen at home. And it's just pushed and molded and like further cultivated at school. So I do have to acknowledge, I'm speaking from a place of privilege too. Right.

Speaker 1:

That was going to be my next question as far as privilege.

Khadija Smith:

So I'm speaking from a place of privilege in the sense that I'm saying that I can afford certain experiences for my children. And there are other people who don't have a choice, right? They have to fortify this grit and perseverance, in absence of. Like, when I was growing up, I was in absence of, so it was by default that a lot of these things were taking place. So if that is your space, right? So the grits there, the reality is there, there is a level of love and patience and other skills that you can also give, not in consequence, but in congruence, in a long with, and along with their level of independence, right? Because if the independence is there, because your mother's not home or because your reality is different where somebody is not there.

               So you had to develop these experiences early on. We, as educators need to be able to understand that and foster something else, right? The privileged space might need your being coddled and that's your space. So I need to foster this independence. Your space might be, I need to foster more loving, more community environments. So you get the other piece that might be missing and not to assume that it's missing though, but maybe that's after the communication of you understanding and building relationships with your students. That's something that you might get.

               So it's not assuming what people need. I just understand who my kids are and where they come from and how that coddling behavior has taken place. But some people need to be coddled, right? There's a group of students that still need the coddling because they've had to fortify the grit on their own. So there's a certain amount of coddling that you need. So understanding and what space you're in, what is necessary and what needs to happen. So I'm speaking as a parent, in a place of checking my privilege. So in other spaces, understanding, based on the relationships, I indulge in with students where I need to be at what part of the spectrum and what part of the independence that needs to happen.

Speaker 1:

That's what equity is all about, right? Because, we're trying to make sure that our students get their individual needs met. So like you said, there might be some privilege there with some of the families, but then there's going to be some families where that same level of privilege is different. And so we have to make sure that we make those correct adjustments. I want to ask you a question, as far as your leadership goals and how you teach your teachers, ways they need to make sure that the kids are being independent and learning those skill sets. What are some of the things that you do maybe in your staff meetings, or just when you're working with teachers individually, that just kind of helps them reiterate that, you know what, I don't need to do everything for my students.

Khadija Smith:

Luckily, a lot of teachers learn that early on. but what I try to do, we have problem solving books. And what that does is, it gives children ... and I've seen it in grown PDs too. So you give a student a set of listening instructions. Like, you'll say there might be things that you say verbally, just to see how they respond. So it'll go, I want you to write your name and put a box around it. And I'm like, why would you put a ... but it's not about what I'm doing. I need you to follow the direction that I'm giving you. Right. So I need you to write your name and put a box around it, and then we're going to go on to the task. So she's looking around to see who put a box around it. I need to understand that you're following directions.

               So that's just like a quick check of whether you're following directions. I also want in the class, in my math classes. I told the teachers, I said, don't write the date, write a math problem at their level, whatever that is. So if you're in elementary school and it's the third, I'm writing three triangles, right. If you're in first grade, I'm writing two plus one, right. Or if you're in second grade, I'm doing a subtraction problem, five minus two, or something like that. If you're in algebra, I'm doing a whole algebraic equation. so I'm not giving it to you. Like you got to just stop giving things to kids. A lot of it is putting that extra, wait, what's happening? What did they ask me to do? We do projects where my English teacher reads a story and she describes a house and they have to create the house based on her description.

               Right. And she gives them the words of the house of what the house looks like. Right? Oh, when you walk in the living room is to the left and then the right side has a big hallway. And then through the hallway is the kitchen. Those kind of exercises causes a different level of awareness and a different level of critical thinking that I now need to analyze, like, okay, what does this look like? So now they're creating maps of what it looked like. Right. For my older kids. It's the reading that you're engaged in. Right. So am I really going to talk about when we're doing Socratic seminars, about what we're discussing and how we're going to create a whole courtroom about who needs to be prosecuted based on what we're reading and based on that, be the enemy.

               How do you be the enemy? Put yourself in the enemy's shoes, right? What is their thinking? Whatever that is, because a lot of times we want our children to be good. Right. And we understand that, but we understand that the world works in many different ways. What could I be thinking as the enemy? Right? What could be my lifestyle? What could have been what I went through growing up, right. And it's journaling and reflecting. Like a lot of our kids do not write. Our PDs are like, I'm heavily, especially now on this whole writing thing. So we sent out mailings because we have pickup days. So stamps and envelopes, so our children can write one another. Right. We can write an email. Absolutely, we can write an email, but there's something to be said about writing a letter.

               There is something to be said about addressing a letter. Like my children don't know how to address a letter to someone. And how do you address a letter? And you start with pen pals, then you start with your family member. And then you start with a business that you want to thank that provided for your community during the pandemic. Right? It's all of those things that we want and we continue to figure out ways to engage our students in just not the ... Oh, and now everybody's talking about investments. I now started taking this real estate class and I realized that you can get your real estate license at 18. So now I'm trying to work with my middle school students on how to prepare them in a way. And do I need to connect them with a mentor that eventually when they get 18, if they want to be a realtor, at least they'll be ready for or prepared for it.

               Like those kinds of things, where they have options. Our kids need to have options. I've also found out when I'm getting my real estate license. If you just want your real estate license, but don't want to sell homes, Redfin Long and Forster will pay you $50 an hour just to show a house. Money.

Speaker 1:

They don't know that stuff. Okay. All right. So as we wrap things up, I'd love to kind of get your final thoughts because I definitely consider you as providing a voice in Leading Equity. If you were to leave one final word to our listeners out there, what would that be?

Khadija Smith:

Wow. One word? I think a year ago, I would say liberate. Right? And I think we've now started to coin this word. So I'm not going to say liberate. So I will say self-reflect because I realized that liberation is all about where you are in your own self work. Right. We can say liberate, but my level of liberation can still be inequitable to other people. Right. And still be pushing my privilege off on other people based on where I feel like my liberation is. But if I'm continually self reflecting on where I am and what I'm doing and why am I doing it? And what is my intention? And I don't know that, let me figure it out. I don't know that, let me read this book. I'm questioning this, let me ask a colleague. In a posture of self-reflecting it's always seeking out the answer or how to get the knowledge to get the answer.

               And that's the posture we all need to be in. Right. And that's what educating is. So if I don't know if I'm doing something right, I'm, self-reflecting on the day's lesson because there's always a place for you to grow. I'm self-reflecting on that relationship that I have with that student to figure out where do I go from here? Why am I not connecting? Why is it not working? So I'm, self-reflecting not just for me, but then to seek out the knowledge, right? So self-reflect to seek, right? I think you become a better educator. When you yourself are in a posture of self reflection. So you can then liberate, right? And not assuming, because you have a little bit of knowledge, a little bit that your time in the space of, Oh, now I can liberate.

               You're still in a posture and you're still going to get a student that throws your curve ball. You're always going to get a family member or a parent that you're like, wait, I'm like I taught for like 15 years. Like this can't be new. They're always going to be some nuance. And if I come in the self-righteous place because of my experience, because of what I know, then I'll never grow. I'll never reach anyone. I'll never get that one that I've lost and that fell behind, that fell through the cracks because I always need to be in a posture of what can I learn from this experience from today, from my work day, always journaling, always reading. Read. I think that's a lost art, but I think self-reflecting, because I'm nowhere near where I need to be.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Yeah. There's always room for growth.

Khadija Smith:

And also on my way, at the same time.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I always say there's always room for growth. I mean, even with the work that I do. I don't claim to know every single thing when it comes to equity. So there's always, always room for growth. I'm always trying to read more. What I can do to learn and better understand the different things that are impacting our educational system, what is happening in our families, in our communities, and things like that. So I totally agree with the self-reflection. If we've got some folks that want to connect with you, what's the best way to reach you online?

Khadija Smith:

My Instagram is Khadija Smith. I'm also at edgapclosers.com or 10 Things Educators, which is off of my Instagram page. So if you want to connect, that's where I am, would love to. I love this conversation. This was great.

Speaker 1:

Thank you. Thank you. And it's been a pleasure. I appreciate your time. And for joining us today.

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