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. Today, I have two special guests with me, Ms. Kasey Jennings and Ali Nagle is here with me today. So without further ado, Kasey and Ali, thank you so much for joining us.

Kasey:

Thank you for having us.

Ali:

Excited to be here.

Speaker 1:

Pleasure is always mine. Kasey, I'm going to start with you. Share a little bit about yourself, your organization, and then we'll move over to Ali to kind of learn a little bit more about her as well.

Kasey:

Sure. I'm a journalist by trade and sort of by accident have begun working with an organization that I helped found called Girl Rising. We're a global nonprofit that uses storytelling to change the way the world values girls and their education, and really also about the way girls value themselves. And we started with a film and the stories we tell in the film, which are about girls who confront the challenges and the barriers to their education. But our story is really about hope and about resilience and about determination... Are the core of all the work we do. And I run our US program which really is focused on bringing these stories to young people across this country, by working with educators to do that.

               And our aim, our goal is to reach young people in this country with a message about the value of education, of course, about the value of girls' education. Expand their view of the world to see beyond their borders, but also understand the power of their own voices and the power of their own agency. And really, really important to us is for kids to understand that they can affect change, and they can affect change in their own lives and in their communities and yes, even the world. So that's why we try and do these stories that are really sort of inspirational, and the girls from across the globe, but kids, young people everywhere and adults for that matter too really seem to connect quite profoundly with them. And so the impact we see is really pretty cool.

Speaker 1:

I love this. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. Now, as far as age groups, what grade level do you serve?

Kasey:

Most of our resources are aimed at upper elementary through high school, but I know one teacher who used it in preschool, so go figure. Really, we have a very, very wide range of resources, almost all of which are free. And we find that educators can either take our curriculum and use it as such or a variation, but a lot of them incorporate it into the work they're already doing. And our aim is to support educators so they can do what they want to do and what they need to do. So to give them additional tools and resources that are especially, we hope, we think, engaging for them and a new way to approach the issues that they want to get at anyway. So in other words, not bring something new that they don't have time to deal with, but to bring something that helps them do what they already need to do and want to do.

Speaker 1:

I'm glad you said that, right? Because when I do shows and I bring on someone that is curriculum-based organizational program, I know some of the teachers automatically think, "Oh, see, they're promoting something more that I have to do. I'm already stressed with everything that I have going on. And then here's something else that's added on that should be beneficial to my classroom. However, it means I'm going to have to learn something else." What do you say to someone in those types of situations? As a teacher that's interested, but they're maybe a little fearful that this is going to tack on more work for them.

Kasey:

Well, what we've tried to do over the years, we started with a pretty robust curriculum that people could pick and choose from, but even doing that takes work, right? Because you have to absorb it. So we've tried to in ensuing years, add new resources that are much more turnkey for educators who don't have time to do it. So for example, with COVID we created a new web based module that can be used remotely or hybrid or in-person, but the idea is it's self-contained. So an educator doesn't have to do a lot, they just have to decide they're interesting and it also can be student phasing. And then there's additional stuff they can do if they want to do more. We have also joined the platform called Flipgrid, where we have 30 some odd new topics, which makes it super easy for educators to go. And they are both tied to the stories... They're all tied to the stories, but some are specific topics about a specific story, but they're also about broader issues. Gender equity, resilience, using poetry when times are hard. So a whole range of very broad issues. And that is something that is really easy to do.

               Other times they can just take the stories and incorporate them into the work they're always doing. So we have teachers who use Girl Rising in a single class, or we have them use it over a month, a semester, a year, even two years. And there's one afterschool program that has a three-year program based on Girl Rising. So it's super malleable, super flexible. The other thing that's crazy is it's used in virtually every subject from the obvious ones, you know, ELA, social studies, human geography, but we've also had teachers use it in physics, in math, in art, a couple of tech teachers we just met who are using it. So it's just another resource that's really super engaging and we're trying to make it as easy possible for educators to incorporate it so it helps them.

Speaker 1:

So it helps them and not stresses them, right?

Kasey:

Exactly. Exactly.

Speaker 1:

Good. All right. So Ali, I'm going to switch over to you because I want you to get an opportunity to share a little bit about yourself and what you currently do and how you're connected to Girl Rising.

Ali:

Sure. I'm a classroom teacher. For the majority of my 17 years in the classroom, I've taught fifth grade reading or fifth grade reading and writing, both in New York city and Newark, New Jersey for the large portion of that in a public charter school. And I met Kasey and was introduced to Girl Rising probably almost 10 years ago now at this point. I have always kind of been that teacher that when an idea comes to the school, they say like, "Oh, go talk to Ms. Nagle. She'll do it." And so I was introduced to Girl Rising, and one of the things from a teacher's point of view that I think Kasey didn't mention that makes it really accessible is the film itself is in these little kind of like 12 minute chunks stories. So you can of course watch the film and learn about all nine girls and all of the stats and the information in between in one sitting and we've held family viewings.

               And we have definitely in some years spent two or three days watching the film over the course of those days. But the majority of the time I have been able to pick and choose the stories that fit the current unit. I know what it's like to have to go to an assistant principal or a supervisor or a department chair and say, "Hey, I want to do something different." And the answer to be like, "Well, you got to stay on this scope and sequence. You have to stay with what we're doing." And the beauty of it is if you are able to squeak in a day or two in one unit and a day or two in the other unit, most of the stories like Kasey said can be pretty much connected, at least to the work I do with my fifth grade readers, to any kind of character we have met in a fictional model that we're reading.

               You know? If you want to look at the stories through simply the lens of what kind of people are these girls? Well, we can find some that are persistent, like this character that we read about in this book. We can find someone who's bold or brave. And I mean some of the most rewarding stuff is as Girl Rising... The clips and the stories have... The materials have blossomed on the internet. We'll watch one story, usually Wadley, who I find is like super accessible to all kids of all ages, as a very joyful girl from Haiti. We'll watch it one day in class and without fail the next morning, I have students of all interest levels, of all grade levels, of all genders come up to me and say, "Ms. Nagle, did you know, there are more stories like Wadley's on the internet?" Like, yeah, yeah, there's more Girl Rising stories. "Well, I watched one from Nepal last night" and "I watched one from Sierra Leone last night". Just the way that this documentary itself is built, it just naturally captures kids' curiosity.

Speaker 1:

I'm glad you said all kids because that was going to be my next question, Ali, was as far as the audience goes. Because if this is Girl Rising, kind of what Kasey was mentioning in the beginning about kind of the movement and the mission of the movement. Could you just clarify, or maybe Kasey can jump in as well, as far as who benefits from the program, from the curriculum involved with Girl Rising?

Kasey:

Yeah. I'll start, and then I want Ali to pick up because she's got the kids in her classroom, half of whom are boys. But it's really... And I'm actually super glad you asked that, because it is so important for us to make it absolutely clear, it's not only about girls. It's not only for girls. It's for all of us. First of all, girls education pays off for all of us and you can go into all the reasons, but I don't want to do that here. I mean, I will, if you want. But more importantly, what we find is you see boys sort of roll their eyes at first, when you say Girl Rising, but they... As soon as the stories start, they're every bit as engaged. And there are also some really important male characters in the stories. Fathers, brothers, tutors, boys and men who support their sisters and their daughters and things like that.

               So it's really, really important. This is about all of us. And the inspiration from these stories I think, and Ali can speak to this, translates just as well to boys. They get inspired just as well. And it's not only inspired to help girls, though certainly I hope that it is and support girls, it's also inspired to use their own voices for whatever. And while we started this project around girls' education and girls' empowerment, my goal, our goal is to get kids to feel empowered about whatever's important to them. And this may just be what kicks it up, but whatever's important. Equity of any kind, right? Is really important. And so we hope this gets people thinking about equity at home, in their own lives, in their own schools, in their own educational systems as well, and hopefully inspires them to change, and that includes boys.

Ali:

Yeah, we have kind of... I mean very much to what Kasey said, I am lucky that this year, because of the pandemic and remote teaching and hybrid teaching, and now some in-person teaching, those same people who sometimes are saying, "Stay on this sequence, make sure you're working on this", have now kind of released a little bit of kind of that watchful eye, and so I was able to build out a five week Girl Rising unit. We used four different stories; Wadley, Suma, Ruksana, and Mariama, to kind of kick off to start our week. But then that was just kind of our grounding... The story to ground us at the beginning. We talked about persistence. We talked about when in your life have you been determined and had to be persistent? With Summa, we talked about change and you know, how does change happen and who can be a change maker?

               What changes do you want to see in your community? What changes... Today we wrote our life story, if it were 2071 and how have we changed the world between today and 50 years from now. And then when we get to the part... When we get to Ruksana's story, particularly like Kasey said, her father is such... I mean, we phrased that week of experiences as who's your biggest champion and who's your supporter. And then we talked a lot about what it means to be an ally and kind of the idea that stuck with kids was an ally is someone who stands next to you, not in front of you. And I think for fifth grade minds, that just made sense that like, if I'm helping and I'm supporting someone, I'm not stepping up and saying, "You need to do this". But I'm instead of... The kids were saying if someone had to go talk to the principal and I was their ally, I would whisper the reminders in their ears and stand there for comfort.

               And then we talked about who are you already a great ally to, or what people and causes and situations do you want to be a better ally? And I think we actually spent a day or two talking about, there is no book called Boy Rising. There is no documentary called Boy Rising. How do we feel about that? And they're very slowly, but in their own kind of way, these ten-year-olds were saying, "Well, I've come to realize that the world is kind of made for men" and they're... Girl Rising did this really wonderful campaign, I think maybe about a year ago, maybe year and a half ago called My Story. And we read some of those entries and some of the winners online. And there was this really wonderful poem written by a young woman in Nigeria.

               When you are born as a girl, your father might just see you as a dowery later on... Sees the cattle he's going to get for you later on. Or when you are born as a girl, you hear the sighs in the community of like, "Ugh, another girl". You watch your brother go off to school while you can't. And kids were just kind of like, "Wait, really?" We did this kind of thinking protocol with it where we thought about what's the untold story. And we kind of came to the realization that the untold story is that in a lot of cases, we assume men are the ones who get to make decisions. And we talked about what that looks like in politics. We talked about even what it looks like in schools and administrations and what it looks like at home.

               We weren't trying to dive into everybody's business, but what job do the boys or the men in your home do? What are the girls? And there were very few kids who even said "I don't think I've ever seen my dad cook". And so it was just kind of like... You could almost just tell it's this bubbling up of ideas. And I think one of the great things at this point in this... With Girl Rising is just... I just want those ideas to bubble up. And whether it's an epiphany in this moment, great, you've had this total worldly realization. Amazing. But if it's just something that simmers with you for the next three years, five years, 10 years then I also think that's a win as well.

Speaker 1:

I swear you guys are answering the questions right before I ask the questions. Like we're on the same plane, because that was going to be my next thing. So we're talking about a lot of things that are happening outside of the United States, and you're able to help the students relate that information, those stories, what's happening in various countries, various continents. And they can say, "Oh, these kinds of things are similar to what's happening at home". And I think that that's very important to the work that you're doing is how we can relate what's happening on a global scale and let them know that it's not just happening out there, but it happens here, but maybe it looks a little different, but it's still happening too.

Kasey:

And it's interesting because I think sometimes it's easier to open the conversation over there. Makes it easier to talk about what's happening here. We heard early on, for example, that it was... I'm picking these countries a little randomly, cause I'm not sure exactly which country it was, but kids in India were able to deal with child marriage in Ethiopia much more easily, and then come back and bring it back to a discussion at home. Because it wasn't... Like they weren't embarrassed. It wasn't only India. They saw that these are issues all over the place. And I think that's one of the things we're increasingly focused on now, because we're consistently looking for ways to develop new resources and make them better and make them more pointed and make them more helpful. And one of the things we're really, really focused on now is building a unit explicitly designed to bring it home.

               Right now there are educators like Ali and teachers everywhere who do that, both instinctively and intentionally. And that's wonderful, but we think we can do a better job of actually being more explicit about it and using it almost as a prompt as a first phase in starting to look inward at the issues of equity or inequity in our country. Right? Cause some of that stuff... It's pretty easy to look at [Comlari 00:18:34] It's literally... It's pretty easy to look at a 13 year old girl being married off, right? And looking at that and saying that's really, really, really unequal. And so we wanted it to say, okay, so now we've seen why, what stops people from going to school in some other places. Well, what stops people from getting a good education here? And they may still go to school, but we know education isn't equal. So what is stopping it from being equal here? And start looking at it internally as well as externally so that we not only do what I think is incredibly important, which is to expand a worldview, right? To see a world beyond your borders and the rest of that, but also to look internally as deeply as possible. That's where I'm hoping to go even further with where we've been so far.

Speaker 1:

I got a question for you, Ali. You go through a lesson, you go through a unit. You've been able to relate what's happening globally to what's happening locally. What are the next steps? What do you teach the students after you have gone through a unit? Is there a project based learning? Is there something that the students can now take some sort of an action approach to what they've learned? What do you normally do after you've gone through a unit?

Ali:

Well, so we're actually on the last week of our Girl Rising unit right now. And so... We've done a number of activities where they've kind of... They have all of these ideas about the world and all of these issues and thoughts. And one of the activities we do is something I call a mind map where we just literally... Kind of looks like a web. We just start building the connections and all of a sudden what seemed, like Kasey said, so foreign of like, whoa, there was... They didn't have money to pay for school fees. Okay, well, I sometimes don't have money to do X, Y, and Z, you know? So what is that... Has there been a situation like that? So one, it builds the empathy and I think I would... I think I would be... Almost like that's the ground level.

               I would be happy enough if every kid just walked away from this learning experience with more empathy. I even noticed, I can't remember exactly what we were... We must've been watching something about change makers and we watched this little clip of, I don't know, the kid was maybe like eight or nine and he was recycling. And he talked about how recycling not only allowed him to get money when he turned the cans in or whatever, but he also talks about the importance of recycling, just for conservation and protecting our planet. And somebody said... A kid said, "Oh yeah, I see people sometimes... Homeless people who are picking up cans and things like that". And I said, okay, do you think that they have that same mindset of I'm going to be doing this for conservation?

               I'm doing this to make a donation to the... The kid donated to a Marine Wildlife organization. And they were like, well, no, they're probably doing it for money. So they have money to pay for things. And I mean, it probably isn't coming across perfectly, but just watching the kids face of like... There was definitely some judgment when like, "Oh, well I've seen homeless people do that before". And as we kind of walked through well, you now know these people that you think are so great through film that needed to do something kind of drastic to change their lives. And it's like, "Oh, well, maybe I could do something to help". And so our hope at the end of this week, and then for moving forward is that kids find something, anything. We do examples of like cleaning up a park.

               We do examples of in like Wadley's story, when she finally can come back to school, it's one small moment at the end, but when she sits down, she holds the hand of her little best friend in school. They're reunited, they're in school together, and even if it's just being friendly and welcoming someone back in... And then part of our work in this last unit is when we're imagining ourselves 50 years from now, kids are saying like... We had one kid today say, "Well, I want to be a pilot when I grow up". Okay. Like that's, I mean, awesome. And then our challenge was to find how us achieving our dreams can also help other people in the process. And she said... Her family is from Haiti, and she said, "Well, sometimes my grandma, she puts together these care packages and like blankets and socks and things.

               And I have to take them to the mailbox and we mail them to Haiti." And she said, "And if I were a pilot, I could just fly it there." And I said, "But you could fly your grandma's and a hundred other grandma's from around the country. You could fly all their care packages." And then she was like, "And I guess like I could fly things like the COVID vaccine to people who don't have it." And so, here's this thing that she's wanted to do, she's always wanted to be a pilot, and now she's seeing it as not just a professional goal, but also a goal to change the world. There was another little boy who says he wants to be a therapist. And I said, "Well, do you want to work in a school? Or do you want to work in an office?"

               And he said, "Well, I think I want to work with adults who are just having a hard time and they are in an office or something." I said, "Great. How can you use all of the skills you will have to know for therapy to help change the world?" And he said, he happens to be in the same class where we have the discussion and about people who are not housed. And he said, "Well, I bet people who are living on the street probably also would want a therapist too. I could be their therapist for free." And then another little girl who's an artist was like, "Sometimes when I go to therapy, we draw" and she was like, "I could teach art to your therapy people." And it was just like, yeah.

               And so even that alone was just... They're seeing the interconnectedness, they're seeing... And I think they're visualizing their contributions. They're visualizing what is totally capable. What they're totally capable of adding to the world. And I don't know if before we went through this unit, I don't know if they all were doing that. I'm sure some of them were, but I think we have come to see that there are so many different ways to contribute and some could be really big. Some of them were like, they're going to be famous video gamers and they're going to just donate to charity. Somebody was like, "I could design a video game that's based on Girl Rising, and you learn facts along the way". Yes.

               I always think of when I see former students, there's always one or two experiences from my year with them that they're like, "Ms Nagle, remember when we did dadadadada?" And I think... And I know that Girl Rising for many kids is that, "Hey, remember when we watched that video?", or "Remember how I kept saying calamari instead of [Comlari 00:26:34]?". Yeah. There's a lot of those little connections. So I don't know if it's like tomorrow, we're all writing a petition and we're outside protesting or doing something like that. But I think the seeds have been planted and they can really truly see themselves as change-makers at age 10.

Speaker 1:

And at the end of the day, that's what we want, right? At age 10, because we are... In our classrooms, we do have future public service folks. We have future... Who knows, politicians. And it's great that we're creating those change makers early on, so that we're sparking that idea. We obviously want that to sustain, right? So we don't want them to go into sixth grade, get a new teacher who doesn't maybe have the same mindset that you might have with Girl Rising, and then they get a different perspective. But at least you're planting that seed early on, and I think that's really good. I want to know, as far as the curriculum goes, is this something that is a supplement to maybe the main curriculum or a standards-based or is this something that could essentially replace a curriculum that's offered at schools?

Kasey:

Well, let me start with that. When I talk, I tend not to talk about the Girl Rising curriculum, even though we have a curriculum. I talk about the Girl Rising resources, because we do have an upper elementary, middle and high school curriculum, but we also have the Flipgrid stuff. You can borrow from all of that. You can take the issue fact sheets, you can take the country fact sheets, you can take the teacher's guides and use them however you want. So it is core aligned. It is common core aligned, all our materials are, and that includes our Flipgrid topics. We've aligned them to the core as well, as well as our web-based module. So it is, again, it's completely dependent on the educator. With the curriculum, there are, I don't know, six or seven project based lessons as part of it. So you could just take it and use it as it is. I don't find that happens that often because educators tend to be more creative than that and also want to use it for whatever subject they're teaching, so they take the parts that work for them.

Ali:

I have used it most frequently as a supplement to existing curriculum. That being said, it has been really lovely these past five weeks to just kind of live in the Girl Rising kind of inspired world. I think one thing that over the past few years has made it a little bit more easy to sell to admin is that there's not just now the documentary, that there's also a book. So as a reading teacher, it was kind of like, "Hey, can I just stop everything and we work with this documentary for four weeks?" And now it's like, oh, well there's this book. And it honestly in all... Most of my years has been the most authentic work we have done with a non-fiction text that didn't feel, for lack of a better term, kind of like a test prep type situation or a textbook. The kids really learned the value of how non-fiction texts can work for you. And that it's not necessarily like you need to start at the first page and go to the last page. And it's a really... There are also parts that are like, they're really wonderful compliments to each other in the book to the documentary.

               But, I understand from the real world and teachers point of view, that you don't always have the luxury in whatever content you're teaching to kind of just substitute in and out a four week unit or five week unit. But like Kasey... I mean, there are more resources provided by Girl Rising than you would know what to do with. Everything from like fact sheets... When I get ready to talk about Summa, I can just pull up the fact sheet about Nepal, and I know everything that I would ever need to know about Nepal to talk to a ten-year-old about it. So the resources, like Casey said are super helpful and allow you to do just about anything. There's some that you can just print and go. And then there's some that, like for me, I just use as resources for my own background knowledge.

Kasey:

We've attached all of those to the Flipgrid topics, for example. You know, we have those things, but we have... It really ranges. For example, in Quincy, Massachusetts, Girl Rising is now a permanent part of their eighth grade curriculum. It started with one teacher, then it moved to three schools, now five schools. This year is a little different, of course. And in Houston, there's a school charter system that it's part of that a thousand kids use it as part of their introduction to composition and rhetoric. And then as you say, you have teachers who insert it in something they're doing for maybe a week as part of their human geography unit. Because the key, I think, is just these stories. These stories are really accessible and they're really engaging, and they're not like anything else you'll see most likely in the classroom.

               They're all told very differently. Some use animation, some the girl acts as herself. Some the girl is herself. There's one that's virtually an epic poem. A couple have actors in it because it wasn't safe for the girl to be in it. So they're really very, very different, certainly than anything I saw in school. And I think that's also why the connection is so powerful and why kids remember two, three, four, five years later because they remember that kid. They remember that moment. They can remember lines and quotes or an image. And so I think that's why I always say it's the heart and soul and the power, and the rest of the stuff supports it.

Speaker 1:

Love it. This is great. I definitely consider the two of you as providing a voice in leading the equity. Ali, I'm going to start with you. What is one word of advice that you could provide to our listeners?

Ali:

I think for teachers maybe to talk less, as much as I talk, and listen to our students more. I was reading in a book the other day, it says there's a reason we have two ears and one mouth. And I just think... I, particularly with Girl Rising, I go into all of these lessons with big, grand plans and what I want the aha moment to be, and the days that are the best and I think the most successful and the most impactful is where I have kind of just sunk into the background and let the kids kind of take it from there. That's my one piece of advice. Talk less and listen more.

Speaker 1:

Thank you. What about you, Kasey?

Kasey:

I would be hesitant to give advice to teachers not being one, but I will say that for me, the most exciting part of being part of Girl Rising, and I think what I see in the excitement of young people is the realization that being part of change is fun. That being part of change is exciting and it is fun. It is fun to want to make a difference, and it's fun to be able to make a difference on whatever level it is. Like Ali says, holding the hand of your friends and making him or her feel better, you know, whatever it is. And I love this... You see this spark in kids when they realize they can be part of something big. And so for me, that's the exciting thing. And that's why I... That's what I love about this project is, I think, and I hope, that we can really not only inspire kids to do that, but make them feel confident in their ability to do that. And to find that voice, to find that agency and to find that thrill that comes along with being part of change.

Speaker 1:

Nice. Well, again, it is truly a pleasure and I want folks to be able to know where they can connect with you. So Ali, if we have some folks that want to reach out to you, if they have some questions, what's the best way to connect with you online?

Ali:

I'm unfortunately not super savvy on like Twitter, which I will work on, but they can just email me. It's A L I, period, N A G L E @ gmail.com. And I'm happy to help and support and provide any information or resources.

Speaker 1:

Thank you. And Kasey, how do folks connect with you, how to folks connect with Girl Rising? What are some ways to reach out?

Kasey:

Absolutely. So our website is easy. It's girlrising.org. And if you go there, there's an educator tab and you can find all our resources, which are available and their links there. You can always email at [email protected] or email me directly at Kasey, K A Y C E @ girlrising.org. And we love to hear from people. We love to engage with teachers who are interested, so reach out to us and we'll be happy to help and support teachers however we can.

Speaker 1:

All right. Well, once again, I have Ali and Kasey here with me today. It has truly been a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time.

Kasey:

Thank You. Thanks for having us. This was great. Nice conversation.

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