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's special guest is Dr. Carissa McCray. So, without further ado, Carissa, thank you so much for joining us today.

Dr. Carissa McCray:

Thank you very much for having me.

Speaker 1:

Pleasure is mine. I'm ready to get into this topic. We're basically going to be discussing altering our language to create a safe environment for our students. And you have prepared five ways that we can do that, or at least five examples. And so I want to get into that, but before we start that topic, could you share a little bit about yourself and what you currently do?

Dr. Carissa McCray:

I'm a secondary English instructor, so right now I teach seventh grade English. I've taught sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade, ninth grade, 11th grade, 12th grade, AP language, AP literature, and intensive reading in middle and high school. I've been teaching for 11 years. So, this is the start of my 12th year. I have my Bachelor's in English, my Master's in leadership and my doctorate in curriculum instruction and assessment, and my ongoing scholarship and research and work is looking at creating equitable learning opportunities through inclusion of multicultural literature and media to transform curriculum.

Speaker 1:

So, it sounds like you're the right person for this topic. I mean, you got all these accolades and scholarship, so that's what's up. And I love that you are in the classroom still and you're still practicing this work. So, that leads me to my first question. I'm curious what got you into the whole idea or at what point did you start recognizing maybe some of the terms that we were utilizing as educators, that there needed to be a shift?

Dr. Carissa McCray:

So, one of the basic requirements of a school is to provide a safe learning environment. And with that safe learning environment, students are more likely to engage in learning. They're more likely to take educational risks. They're more likely to reflect on their own learning. And we began looking at Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. And in that hierarchy, safety is a basic need to ensure that our students feel love and belonging in order for them to develop a positive self-esteem, have self-actualization and for them to engage in further knowledge and comprehension that we see in Bloom's Taxonomy. So, there is a phrase in education that discusses that they need Maslow before they are able to Bloom. And that's what got me started in looking at our language choices.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So, I heard safety and definitely we've heard Maslow before Bloom and I think that's important. Okay. So, let's get into some examples. Let's dig there. Give me one example of something that we utilize as far as our terminology that we should probably shift our language?

Dr. Carissa McCray:

One is the learning loss. So, as we start school, especially with COVID-19 and technology and trying to teach through distant learning, student absenteeism, learning loss is a big, big concept right now. And that phrase can be destructive to our students because we seem to neglect what they have already learned or what they're doing when they're not with us. Students, especially in secondary school, have hundreds of standards that they have to learn between history, English, math, science, and their other classes. And I feel that sometimes as educators, we may rush through those standards in order to cover what we need to cover before standardized testing. And learning loss can be either that we did not teach our students well, or we didn't cover the material well enough to sustain them through the summer. Because we're with them for over half of the year. They are with us for a majority of the year.

               And as we are working with them, we should be able to instill at least some of those strategies that can continue when they're not with us. And I think we just maybe need to reshape what learning looks like. So, if you have, for example, a student over the summer who argues to spend more time with their friends. They're arguing with their parents. They want to spend more time outside with their friends. They're working on a standard. They're working on tracing and argument. They're working on evaluating their claims to find out which one would be more effective. They may not be writing, but when it does come time to writing, they're creating elaboration. They're looking at evidence. They are using those strategies that they've been taught in school in order to get what they want.

               From a math perspective, if they're out grocery shopping with a parent and it's a budget, they have to weigh the pros and cons of what to get, which won't be more budget-friendly. They'll have to use the math to determine how much money they have left, what they're able to spend and so on and so forth. So, the learning does occur and we need to, I don't want to say capitalize, but use that learning that does happen in our classrooms so that way it's even more meaningful and applicable outside of the classroom.

Speaker 1:

Well, how do we do that? Because obviously a teacher's not out there grocery shopping with the kids, so-

Dr. Carissa McCray:

But teachers grocery shop.

Speaker 1:

The teachers grocery shop. Okay. So, give me some more=.

Dr. Carissa McCray:

[crosstalk 00:05:47].

Speaker 1:

So, give me some examples. So, how do we take, let's say... Because I know there was a big term we used to use, summer slide. And we used to say these types of things before the pandemic, because we know that the kids, two, three months or whatever, however many weeks it is that they're between one school year to the next school year. So, give me some tangible examples as far as what a teacher can do for students that they're out of school for whatever reason, and then they're coming back and transitioning. How can we actually implement that into the classrooms?

Dr. Carissa McCray:

For me as an English teacher, one strategy is to have students journal. What did they do? Allow them the opportunity to share what they've done, and then use that as a learning opportunity, as that aha moment that they can have in the classroom. So, if a student has told you or you investigate into a student's life and find out that they convinced their parents to take them to Disneyland or Disney World or wherever, you can use that to offer them strategies for improving their writing, improving their argument. So, with English language arts, just simply asking. The journaling process will open up a lot of doors to find out what students are doing and then using that to comply with standards expectations.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So, that sounds like a really great example and I like that you said, "Here. Have the kids journal." So, for those who are utilizing the term learning loss... And I'm with you, I don't like the term learning loss. You know what? I shared this with someone the other day. Last year in March, I had some learning loss. My kids were at home and I was stuck trying to teach my daughter fourth grade math and best believe I couldn't remember probability and all kinds of stuff, and I'm a grown man. I didn't remember half of the stuff, nor did I have teacher supplies or school supplies because they were all at the school.

               And so I was like, "We talk about the learning loss and we say, 'Well, the kids were behind before they left school and the pandemic, and now they're even further behind,' or 'This and that happening is happening at home or at school and so now there's this learning loss." But we forget sometimes as educators and as parents, we had our own learning loss. So, what is the alternative? So, if I don't want to utilize that term, right? If I want to provide an asset-based approach to my language, what would you suggest to use instead?

Dr. Carissa McCray:

I would say learning opportunity. Because it's an opportunity to learn. In almost everything that we do there's an opportunity to learn. So, I think we need to look at the time spent away from the classroom or the time spent away from books as still a learning opportunity and we just need to use that to improve the learning.

Speaker 1:

Got it. I love that. Learning opportunity. Okay. Let's move to the next word. What is another term that we utilize that we need to change?

Dr. Carissa McCray:

Of course, achievement gap. I'm sure you hear that quite frequently. And Dr. Ladson-Billings has done a lot of work in regards to the achievement gap. And she states that it places the blame on students and neglects the disparities in education. She also states that it's the lack of opportunity and the educational debt from the injustices that include lack of access, denied opportunity and racial and ethnic discrimination. I think if we use opportunity gap and educational debt, then we can begin to transform what's happening in our classroom. If we look at it from an opportunity gap, then we will begin to provide. We will look at the gaps that we have created in our lesson plans, in our instruction, in our assessment practices in order to provide students multiple opportunities to demonstrate mastery or leading up to mastery without a focus on achievement gap, where they are competing with biased, standardized testing.

Speaker 1:

So, okay, let's clarify something real quick because we hear the term achievement gap. We hear the term opportunity gap a lot. What is the difference between the two terms? Help the listeners out there understand that.

Dr. Carissa McCray:

So, the achievement gap is when you look at standardized testing, and standardized testing actually has a eugenics background. So, it's biased. It is a biased form of assessment that puts students with certain qualities and opportunities against students who don't have those same opportunities. So, when you look at the opportunity gap, it's what resources are available and what resources can I use that will allow me to succeed holistically as a student? So, the ability to engage in extracurricular classes, classes outside of core classes. Being able to participate in Cambridge or AP courses. Being able to be in other gifted programs that may not be available to certain types of students because they don't fit the achievement standardized testing mode.

Speaker 1:

And having access to highly qualified teachers, having access to technology, science labs these days.

Dr. Carissa McCray:

Tutoring.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Tutoring. Yeah. Those learning pods. Those learning pods were a big thing last year with how you had a lot of parents who was like, "You know what? I'm not able to help my child at home. However, I can hire this tutor and be able to provide that service for them as well."

Dr. Carissa McCray:

And then the hiring of a tutor also goes into that educational debt and the opportunity gap because people don't have resources, especially during a pandemic, to hire, to outsource for someone. So, it does start to exacerbate the disparities that we see in education.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Yeah. Good point. So, all right. So, rather than saying achievement gap, we can utilize the term opportunity gap. Now, I've come across some research that basically says that they're two different things. The achievement gap and opportunity gap aren't terms that are opposites. They're just totally two different things. What is your take on that?

Dr. Carissa McCray:

I can agree with that if you're looking at the final data. So, the summative assessments where you're looking at what students have learned at the end, I guess. However, when we have those formative assessments in place, we do need to look at the opportunities that we're providing for students to demonstrate what they know. So, at least it can be a portfolio-based learning. So, you can look at achievement that way based on the different opportunities that were provided.

Speaker 1:

I got you. Okay. So, let's move to the next term. What is something else that we need to be shifting as far as our language goes?

Dr. Carissa McCray:

I would say resilience and grit. I'm just going to give a little history about my own family. So, my maternal grandfather was born in 1912. He was a sharecropper. He farmed tobacco. He owned land. My maternal grandmother was born in 1938. She was a nanny. She worked in [Amuck 00:13:29] in Lake County, Florida, and she was a chef at one point in her life. My mother did literal backbreaking work as a CNA, and now she's a stay-at-home grandmother. So, our family histories are rooted in resilience. We have constantly had to overcome challenges. We have grit. We have that perseverance to accomplish a goal. And I don't really think those skills need to be taught.

               I think our students need to be able to rest and we should be providing them multiple scaffolds in order to get to a particular goal. Because if I'm constantly trying to be gritty to get something, then at some point that something isn't for me. I'm going to come to the realization that this is not for me. So, if students in third grade are taught to be resilient, are taught to have grit, by the time they get to 10th grade, they're done. They're done with education because I'm constantly trying to fight to get something that I deserve and I'm just trying to survive. And Dr. Bettina Love says that we want to do more than survive. So, if our students are just trying to survive, then they're not going to make it.

Speaker 1:

So, what I've heard from what you're saying is, when you started with your personal example, we've been surviving and we want to do more than survive. And we've had this grit. We didn't need research to support that. We've been maintaining, we've been holding it down since I can remember way back. Some might argue, "Well, then that is the grit, right? That is that grit part that we should be doing. We need to keep doing that." But then there's others that says, "Well, who are you to tell me how hard I need to work in order to survive?" So, I have people that are in favor of grit, and then I have people that are against grit. So, I guess obviously you're on the opposite side. So, what would be the opposite side of grit? Is that the resilience piece or is there something else that I'm missing?

Dr. Carissa McCray:

I think there's something else. I think it will be, instead of asking students to have resilience and grit, I think we should be asking teachers to scaffold, to support. So, the language will shift from what students need to do to what teachers need to do. Because if I'm constantly struggling, if I'm constantly having to fight to get an education that I deserve just automatically, then I don't want it. I don't want it anymore. And even as an adult, I don't want it. In a lot of our schools, the parents had to fight for an education and now their children. It's a cycle that's continuing that's only detrimental to our future generations because I should not have to fight in school. I should not have to constantly demonstrate that I'm worthy of an education. Teachers, educators, myself, should be scaffolding the learning where, maybe if I don't get it the first time I get that it's going to be challenging, but I don't always have to feel like it's a challenge, that at some point I have it.

               And not necessarily a growth mindset, because we want to make sure that those successes happen. The idea of yet can also inhibit students because if it hasn't happened yet, and then yet again, and then yet again, then we're still re-establishing that cycle of grit and resilience. So, I think at some point there should be successes embedded where students are able to demonstrate that they understand, demonstrate mastery and demonstrate that success.

Speaker 1:

Okay. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. Like I said, I remember I did a training a few months ago with a district and the principal in the training said, "We just went through recreating our mission and where we wanted to go for the next year." Their theme was an acronym of grit. And so I don't know what G-R-I-T stood for, but it was basically centered around the whole idea of grit. And he was like, "Well, you know what? I think we need to go back to the drawing board and maybe change some things. We spend a lot of money. We spend a lot of time and resources in order to create this theme for our next school year. However, I think that we do need to revisit that idea." So, we talked about learning loss. We talked about achievement gap, resilience and grit. I believe we have another one, right?

Dr. Carissa McCray:

Yes. And this is one that I've used regularly that I'm really working towards not using. And that's the phrase that parents don't care. Of course, they care. That's their children. So, they care. And I think what that phrase does is that it just dismiss parent concerns and it takes the responsibility away from schools to create activities and events that are accessible to parents. And I think we also have to understand the history of that parent. Because if the child is coming to school feeling neglected in an unsafe environment, then that may have also been the environment that the parent faced. I also think that we use a lot of jargon, a lot of language, high academic language that keep parents away because they don't feel comfortable in that environment.

               We don't create parent-friendly languages and opportunities for those parents to communicate with us. So, when we have certain types of events, the parents may show up but the language we use doesn't communicate effectively. So, now they're like, "Okay, I'll try it again." And they may come to another event, but they're still left without clear understanding, and shyness or not wanting to feel unknowledgeable makes them silent. So, we have silenced our parents when they really should be an ally in how we educate their children.

Speaker 1:

So, then how do we change that experience for families? If I'm a school leader or if I'm someone that's deals with the community/school relationship, what are some areas that I could work on to better support our families in that sense?

Dr. Carissa McCray:

I think a parent student advisory council would be great. And something that's virtual. It can be via text message. Your parents don't have to be there for them to be involved. So, if we create those opportunities, so a text message based parent student council or just a parent council where you text parents, you get their phone numbers, you text them with ideas or strategies, and then you can have those sent to, what? A Google doc. And those can compile the different opinions that parents have, the different strategies or events that parents want for them. And also realizing that many of us are also parents. So, we also need to assess how, if we enter a school, how do we want school leaders to talk to us about our children? I don't want to have to receive a phone call from a parent or a school that my child is getting written up for going to the bathroom four times in a day. You're wasting my time at work.

               I'm at work. Why are you calling me about this? They have to go to the bathroom. What do you want me to do, tell them not to go? And even for me in the classroom, if my daughter's school will call me and I'm like, "Hey, you guys. I have to take this call," and have someone come and cover my class to take a call about the restroom breaks that my child is taking, I'm done with the school. It might not be the first straw, but that will be the last straw, because this is not conducive to me or my child. And it creates a, I'm going to say petty. It's petty. And it causes our parents to stray from building those relationships with us.

Speaker 1:

Hmm. Okay. I like that. I mean, I don't like that, but I like what you're saying. Okay. That makes sense. All right. So, I believe we have one last term that we need to shift as far as our language.

Dr. Carissa McCray:

Yes. And this is also one that I've given up recently, I would say about two years ago, and that's the phrase giving voice to our students. And it was after I read, I hope I get the title right, Black Appetite White Food, I believe it is, by Dr. Lyiscott. And she said that that language is problematic for two reasons. Students already have a voice, first off. They already have a voice and we decide whether or not we're going to listen to the voice they have. And that we're not giving them anything. They already have it. And number two is that she says that giving voice serves to continue the dynamic of paternalism. And it's giving our students this privileged idea that they are privileged to speak. And it creates a charity-based perspective. When educators say they're giving voice to students, it may also discredit what they have to say. So, their voice is only powerful when we allow them to speak, when we give them that privilege, and it further creates a divisive environment.

Speaker 1:

So, when we say we're giving students voice, we're giving them the permission to speak, and that perpetuates the patriarchy. What do you call it? A paternal-

Dr. Carissa McCray:

Paternalistic.

Speaker 1:

Paternalist approach. Okay. That makes sense. Okay. So, what would be the alternative? So, if we're saying, "You know what? We want our kids to speak up and we want them to feel empowered." What would be some alternative language that we can utilize?

Dr. Carissa McCray:

I think the alternative language would be student leadership. So, instead of giving voice, our students are leaders. They are creating their opportunities to speak. They are affirming other students. They're affirming their own peers. They're welcoming their peers to engage in conversation. And it takes us out of the stager role. The students are working collaboratively to allow each other multiple opportunities for discussion and dialogue and engagement, to feel more validated in the classroom. Because of course my teacher is going to listen to me. That's her job. That's his job. But if the students are engaging and listening to each other, talking to each other, then they can assist in validating, affirming and encouraging one another. So, I think student leadership would be the approach that we would use instead of giving voice.

Speaker 1:

So, if I wanted to argue that, I was thinking maybe not all students are wanting to be in a leadership role, but they would be willing to speak up. I guess my question would be is that as inclusive then if... Because when I hear leadership and let's say I'm a very introverted person or I'm just really shy, something like that, and I am not interested in being in a leadership role. However, I do want to say something, how do I reach students that are sitting in that box, if you will?

Dr. Carissa McCray:

I think that's where the collaborative nature comes in. So, the student leader is not necessarily giving voice, but the student leader is asking, soliciting information from a multitude of students in order to create that atmosphere where they are valued. And are listening. They're listening to those students who don't necessarily want to be in that leadership position, which I understand completely because I'm an introvert myself. So, they're able to be, I'll say, the voice between. The voice between the teacher, the adult and students who are introverts. Because they are able to connect with their peers on a different level than a teacher may be, and they're also able to communicate those ideas that another student may not want to communicate.

Speaker 1:

Okay. That makes sense. Okay. So, we've always covered five. So, we discussed learning loss, the achievement gap, resilience and grit, parents don't care, and then giving voice. I definitely consider you as providing a voice in leading equity, Carissa. Are there any last second, maybe even a bonus or something like that, that you want to add to the conversation?

Dr. Carissa McCray:

I will say I think one step that we can do as educators, no matter race, religion, gender, is to understand our own biases and privileges. We all come to our classrooms with privilege and sometimes our privilege can manifest in ways that hurt our students and stop them from communicating with us, and it fails to create a safe learning environment for them. I will also say, I guess my final word of advice, it comes from church. I grew up Church of God in Christ. So, the tongue has the power of life and death. So, we do need to be mindful of how we use our language with our students.

Speaker 1:

Amen.

Dr. Carissa McCray:

Amen.

Speaker 1:

I like that. Okay. There we go. Okay. If we got some folks that want to connect with you, what's the best way to reach you online?

Dr. Carissa McCray:

I am on Twitter, booked_wellread.

Speaker 1:

Okay. That sounds good. Once again, I'm with Dr. Carissa McCray. Thank you so much for your time.

Dr. Carissa McCray:

Thank you very much.

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