Speaker A [00:00:00]:

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 Brandon White. So without further ado, brandon, thank you so much for joining us today.

Speaker B [00:00:17]:

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here and have the conversation.

Speaker A [00:00:22]:

Pleasure, as always, mine. You and I have spoken a few times. I was on your show, and now we're returning a favor, and I'm really excited about our topic today. But before we get into that, I'd love for you to share a little bit about yourself and what you currently do.

Speaker B [00:00:36]:

Sure. Well, so I am an educator first and foremost, and what that has looked like is there's a focus on English Language arts and literacy historically in middle to high school, but in recent years, there's been more of an emphasis in learning on early grades, and it's been quite a revelation. And currently I host the podcast for the nonprofit Unbounded called the LP Literature in Practice, which Dr. Aikens is going to be on in a couple of episodes. And I also work as a consultant for curricular services, and the name of that consultancy is called Maya Claude Teaching and Learning, LLC.

Speaker A [00:01:26]:

All right, let's do it. So here's the thing. I'm a history teacher. That was my bread and butter.

Speaker B [00:01:33]:

That was where I was at.

Speaker A [00:01:34]:

History was my thing. And I love middle school because I'm only five foot eight. I could say I'm five foot eight, but I'm really five foot seven and change middle schoolers, they're normally not tall to me. That was my spot, that was my area. And so I was really excited about today's topic because not only are we going to discuss making sure that the content and the curriculum that we're utilizing, and not just for history, but also for English Language arts as well, but it goes beyond the college ready mantra. A few years ago, that was a big deal. Everybody college bound. And everybody you would see on social media, you would see all these different this school and everybody got accepted into college and all that stuff. All right, they got accepted into college. I'm excited. That's awesome. That's great. But the question is, how do we make sure that what is happening in school in middle or high school, or even if we're talking about the elementary level, it honors and affirms the identities of our students beyond college ready. So I'd love to kind of start there and get your thoughts.

Speaker B [00:02:42]:

No, for sure. So to your point, start with college ready. College ready. College ready. And then we reached a point as a profession where, well, what if a student doesn't want to or is not meant for them to go to college? Everybody should get the opportunity to get the kind of education that will prepare them for college. But what if that's not what they want. So it became college and career. Right. But however, students lives and all of our lives are not two dimensional, right? It wasn't one dimensional with college. It's not two dimensional with college and career. There's multiple dimensions. And I've regularly said that our students need to leave with more C's than college and career. They need to be college ready. They need to be career ready, they need to be commerce ready, they need to be consciousness ready, and they need to be creatively ready. Right? Because if you're just college and career and in fact, quite transparently, we know that colleges are kind of struggling right now in terms of folks buying into the belief that going through 4610 years of school will allow for them to live like a psychologically, professionally, and economically prosperous life, right? So what other elements need to be present in order for a student to leave twelveTH grade prepared to be their best selves, not their most degreed selves, not their most career fulfilled selves, but their best selves, right? And I think that those three other C's like commerce, consciousness, and creativity are things that I'm assuming not probably it's not just limited to those extra three C's, but adding those, I think, would be really important to the on ramping that K through twelve is supposed to provide.

Speaker A [00:04:52]:

You bring up a good point about the gainful employment, right? Because nowadays folks are entering or exiting out of college. Let's not even talk about graduate school and doctorates and masters and JDS and all those things, but just from the bachelor's level folks leaving out with all kind of debts. And I was excited when I was getting my student loans paid back with the government, the whole plan that was coming out. And then I just saw a news article that said they're going to stop it. And it's like all these different things that are out there. So, I mean, you bring up a good point. What about students who aren't considering going to college? I'm glad that you added those additional C's. Now let's talk about how do we honor and affirm our students. What are some of the things that you're doing when it comes to your reviewing of curriculum? What are some things that you're identifying when you're doing those reviews?

Speaker B [00:05:50]:

I think there's a difference, knowing the difference between what may be best for students as opposed to what generic vision that we may have as a society of what a successful American is. Because, you know what? What's often talked about is the assembly line approach to education, right? Like how our model is built out of the Industrial Revolution. That whole narrative is very common when we talk and we reflect on the things that need to be repaired in our education profession. But I think while well intended, saying college and career sometimes is a depersonalized way of approaching it from the assembly line approach, right. We're going to make sure you have this grade level instruction or excuse me, we're requiring this grade level instruction to take place at this grade. Ramping it up intentionally in a staircase of a complexity, as is often said, up through twelveTH grade, and if that roadmap is followed, then the students should be able to be college and career ready. But again, when we only have it from those two dimensions, we only provide curriculum and instruction from those two dimensions. There are missed opportunities for buy in and fulfillment on behalf of the teachers to be enriched and for the students to be enriched. So I think that really working to make sure that all aspects of assembly line based kind of instruction are just questioned first. Right. And from there, after questioning that, really thinking about what are the specific needs for your students and not necessarily the needs for you're going to have to think about the needs for your teachers, obviously. Right. You're going to have to think about the needs for your school building and your system. But too often we think about it or excuse me, we operate from like, okay, what does this system or district need? All right, how do we get this to teachers? Okay, how do teachers teach it as opposed to the reverse? Right. What do our students need? Who are they? Right. How can we pick something like a curriculum or how do we build something like a curriculum that expands who they are and strengthens who they are? Not necessarily replace who they are, not have them assimilate who they are, but build and strengthen who they are? And how do we prepare teachers to do that and how do we prepare our systems to prepare teachers to do that? Right. I think reversing the order that we frequently get caught up in is very important and I try to work from that angle whenever I have to revise or build or coordinate the building of curriculum.

Speaker A [00:09:14]:

So shifting things more centered students, so shifting more on a student centered aspect as opposed to the teacher centered, which is typically how things have often been as teachers are the content experts. There the knowledge driven folks, and they know what a student needs to learn. But we're saying shifting it to a different the opposite direction is what I'm hearing.

Speaker B [00:09:40]:

Yeah. I don't want to discredit what teachers know, obviously. Right. Like there are skills that teachers need to impart on students. Right. I'll say this, the job of a learner is not, like, on the student's part is not complete without an effective teacher and the job of a teacher is not complete without the identity of considering a student. There needs to be more of an intentional marriage between what the teacher has to offer. So there are several marriages. Right. There are several forms of integration. Like, first the teacher has to integrate with the curriculum and then that integration has to integrate with the students. Right. And the dynamics between those integrations are really important, but we often don't think about the student piece enough to inform the integration of those other pieces. Right. Like teacher to curriculum, curriculum selection to teacher to curriculum, teacher and curriculum to horizontal team within a school building. Right. School building operations with curriculum to a system and broader professional development. Right. That order of thinking is not frequent enough because students need to be in order for them to be expanded and strengthened for who they are, but also have their world and their identity expanded. Not replaced, not assimilated, but expanded. They need mirrors and windows, right. So they need things that they don't have or haven't been exposed to and the teacher can provide those things. But the teacher also has to be mindful of the children's mirrors and providing mirrors and instruct not just what the instruction is, but how the instruction is provided. So it will look like providing content and materials that can relate to several layers of identity because we've talked about that in our conversations where it's not just like race and ethnicity but other elements of identity that are reflected, but also the pedagogy, not just the content, but how you teach. The content needs to reflect some of these identities as well. So there just needs to be like a reverse order of it all. But everybody has something that needs to be learned and everybody has something that needs to be given.

Speaker A [00:12:15]:

So I would imagine that just listening to how you're saying, this is how I review the curriculum and I identify, well, who's in the classroom. So to me it sounds hard to just have a set audit. Like here's, checkbox, checkbox, checkbox, checkbox. This lesson hits these things. It sounds like a lot more in depth when it comes to that work because how else are you going to identify students in the classroom? And of course, each classroom looks different. So let's get a little bit more specific. Let's just say I have a classroom full of 30 kids and they're predominantly, let's say predominantly of color. And would your process look the same as it would be if it was a classroom that was predominantly white?

Speaker B [00:13:12]:

That's a good question and I'll pull from your book a bit Leading Equity. And before I even answer that, I'll use another parallel. I'm a big fan of a nonprofit called English Learner Success Forum. They basically provide a lot of tools for people to help English learners become more proficient in the English language. And I peruse through all their tools and their activities and their scaffolds and there's nothing in there, literally nothing in there that wouldn't benefit students who were born speaking English and were speaking English through their entire life. Every single tool would benefit anybody of any language, but happens to be most helpful for students who are learning the English language. I would say the same thing is true with a lot of best practices that we would often call culturally responsive, relevant, or sustaining. Right. If there are approaches that are often called culturally responsive, whether it's making sure that there's diverse perspectives in text or there's regular collaboration and cooperation on text, or making sure the assessments are authentic and can apply to life as is or how life could be, that would work for predominantly White students as well. Just 1 may need it more, right, in a system that often removes or disregards student need and identity for different types of students of color in different ways, right. Because we even talked about this, too, where let's say I have like, 30 black kids in a classroom, but five of them are into heavy metal, the way we talked about before, right? And then another ten are from the Caribbean, right. First generation United States arrivals. Right? And then another Ten are African American. And then I forget how many students that is now. It's like 20.

Speaker A [00:15:40]:

It's 25. I think I ran out of fingers. I think it's 25, yeah.

Speaker B [00:15:46]:

So how do you cater to that nuance? A lot of times is a lot of times it is knowing the students and being able to make on time scaffolds. There's a lot of prep scaffolds and then on time scaffolds and honestly, culture, responsive, relevant and sustaining. Pedagogies often are on time because when you're talking about the nuances of who students are as individuals, there are things that are generally that can be pardon me, generally true about different ethnic groups, but no ethnic group is a monolith in terms of how they operate. And they also work in tandem with other identities. Right. So how do you cater to that oftentimes about knowing your students and not only just knowing, but honoring, appreciating, and interacting with who they are to leverage it best in real time instruction? Now, if you have a curriculum company, right, you may not know who is going to be in your classrooms, right. You've taught on Native American reservations. I've taught in Rochester, where my kids were basically half identified as, like, 50% were, like, Black, 50% were Latino. The cultural layers are different, right. But there may be very general things or more general things that still lend to a degree of specificity that would still benefit both. Right. Especially because in my first podcast series, the Complexion of Teaching and Learning, I got to see a lot of general teaching and learning approaches in the indigenous community. And a lot of those frameworks are very similar to African American cultural frameworks around teaching and learning. Right. They often have to deal with community. They often have to deal with environment. So if there's something that's general but still tailored enough, that'd be very powerful, and then it would be on the teacher's part to be like, how can I further hone in the specificity for my kids needs? And so, yeah, there's a lot of interconnected things that you try to consider when building curriculum. The work I do doesn't always connect to the professional learning that's involved with making sure that curriculum is exercised with integrity. I'm not a big fan of saying with curious.

Speaker A [00:18:27]:

Why?

Speaker B [00:18:29]:

Because imagine if Denzel treated the script for Training Day with fidelity. Right? You probably wouldn't be able to get little things like my man. Right? You probably wouldn't be able to get little nuances here and there because it's just too dogmatic. Right. But integrity allows you to value this artifact. You know what? I think another good example might be trying to think one of my favorite jazz artists is John Coltrane. Right. And one of my favorite songs that he's done is my Favorite things from was it The Sound of Music?

Speaker A [00:19:17]:

Sound of Music? Yeah.

Speaker B [00:19:19]:

If he played that song with fidelity, it just would have sounded like a remake of The Sound of Music. Right. And may not have resonated with me for a variety of reasons because that's just not my cultural that cultural output doesn't all the way resonate with me. It's a beautiful song as it was, but it just doesn't resonate with me. Right, but he did it with an integrity where he heard it, saw it through his own lens, cultural lens and the lens of people who appreciate jazz and which involves, like, a deeply African American lens and played it his way with integrity, but through his lens. And it's a beautiful song that I still appreciate to this day. Right. So that's what I mean by integrity versus fidelity. You want to make sure that you keep the good and the constructive in the curriculum, but you still need to interpret it right. In a way where in a responsible way, in a selfless way that allows for your students to be able to be enriched by what it has to offer.

Speaker A [00:20:38]:

I never looked at it that way because I hear that a lot. Let's do such and such with fidelity. And I can see where you're coming from. It sounds like your interpretation is more of like, if I say fidelity, it's more of very rigid, very this is black and white versus the integrity piece gives me a little bit more flexibility to put a little flair into it. That's what I'm hearing. Is that correct?

Speaker B [00:21:04]:

Yes. And I want to support that in terms of being like, I understand why people do say fidelity because they are worried that people will miss the important elements and they will water it down. Right. They're worried that people will water down the curriculum. So they say, do it with fidelity. Right. But I feel like there's got to be some version of messaging where you in training and education, where you're saying, here are the most important parts of this curriculum. These are non negotiables. You need to make sure that they are experiencing grade level instruction, and you got to make sure your scaffolds, no matter where they are, bring them up to that as close as possible and as consistently as possible, and this will be a great tool for you to be able to do that. With that being said, you know your kids or you have to know your kids in order to be able to do this in a way that matters the most to them. Yeah. Like, you got to break in the curriculum. You got to break in the curriculum. You got to make it yours. But then some teachers may not want to make it theirs because they may not want the responsibility of learning something new, challenging their own presuppositions and biases around what kids can and can't do and what kids should and shouldn't be exposed to. So I get, like, holding the line about that, but I'm in pursuit of trying to figure out the both and, right. Like, how do you train teachers and or expose teachers that can't or don't want to? Because you can't be in the business of trying to further expand and strengthen students, but you won't further expand and strengthen yourself right. That shouldn't exist in this. So on one hand, trying to find the both and should surface up those folks who are really stubborn and then also surface up those folks who really need support and want support and want to figure things out. So that way, because what ends up happening, what I've seen happen is the fidelity message will be given and given and given and they know they have to teach grade level, but they're also teaching like it's a script, right? And there's a resentment toward the fidelity message, and they're not even diving into everything the curriculum has to offer. And so they may not even be getting all not only the rigor that comes with the curriculum, but also the scaffolds, because when they hear fidelity, they'll just read the lesson plan day by day and follow the script, but not dig into the other elements of the curriculum that provide scaffolds and supports for students. In particular, in my mind right now, english learners, a lot of greenlit, high quality curriculum now has better scaffolds for english learners. But if you feel resentful because you're following a script, you're just going to go by whatever the first page of the lesson plan or the lesson plan pages are going to tell you and not dive into all the other gold that may exist and rich resources that may exist in a curriculum that meets your needs. But because you're upset about the fidelity message and maybe you just never wanted to be about that life from the beginning, you don't dig into it. It's a messy waltz, but I think it's possible.

Speaker A [00:24:32]:

Okay, here's a question that I have because you obviously know what you're talking about and you've been doing this work. I'm curious. What are some of the common things that you notice when you're reviewing curriculum, reviewing lesson plans, what are some of the common things that you come across? And how are you communicating those challenges to publishers or curriculum folks? So that way they have some tools. I want folks that are listening to this episode to come out with some strategies as well.

Speaker B [00:25:05]:

Yeah, a couple of things I notice is one, grade level standards aligned is like the golden goose, for lack of better terms. Right. That's the priority. And a lot of times other things are distant second and third. You know how we talked about like, having all things have it be rigorous with grade level. Right. Relational and relevant. Relational and relevant are like distant second and third. Right. I do feel like there is an intentional catching up with some curriculum in the been. I'm thinking like big companies like Savvis, which used to be, I think, pearson they do something like with and call my perspective and companies like Expeditionary learning these folks are intentionally over the past several years, been catching up. Like making sure that those second and third place things aren't like trailing. But I do see that I also see sometimes whatever the flavor of the month is, of the educational month is, the stamp will be there, but the practice won't always be. So if they says preparing for college and career readiness, they may put that stamp there, but when you dive into the weeds, it may not be. And this is where I think teachers teachers have to this is where the shift of teachers preparing for lessons as opposed to creating them is like most valuable. That's where your expertise can still take be active. Like, your expertise doesn't necessarily have to be active in creating everything. There's no time. Like the race car driver can't be the race car driver and the pit crew at the same time. You know what I'm saying? There's no time not to say you can't create anything, but reviewing the materials, being able to internalize them and see what they actually are in terms of what they're actually saying they do is key because sometimes it doesn't. And then I also will say that another thing I kind of discover is that a lot of especially if it's a high quality, like truly high quality, there are materials in there that are, like I was saying before, that are rich. There's one curriculum that I'm thinking of that has, like, if you signed up to buy this curriculum for your district, there are PDS, like Asynchronous PDS that it offers. And it has examples of student work, and it has examples of how to integrate Web 2.0 technology like podcasting and blogging and things like that into curricular materials. And it has a lot of rich banks around English learner scaffolds, right? And it also has digital integration tools between curricular supplements and core curriculum. But a lot of teachers don't know this, right, and aren't encouraged to know it through their systems. So that's another thing I recognize, like, wow, this curriculum has a lot and I'm not a corporate champion, by the way, but I got to keep it real when I see it. If I see a tool that has a lot of things and I have to begrudgingly acknowledge, like, yeah, this big publishing company got it right, I guess, right? Or trying to. Right. That's another thing I would say I noticed. And then another thing that I noticed, too, is that if a curriculum company is trying to be more culturally inclusive, they may have more, like, black and brown faces, but the content of those stories is very important. And what do I mean by like there was a report actually done by NYU School of Education that showed with a couple of core curriculum that are popular by very big curricular publishing companies, they included more black and brown faces, but the narrative of the main characters only primarily reinforced stereotypes. Right. I've seen that a decent amount, too, where you include black and brown faces, but the stories still reinforce negative images and stereotypes and false inferiority claims for black and brown people. So those are a couple of things I noticed.

Speaker A [00:30:09]:

So the story about Jamal's single parent mother whose father is incarcerated. Yes. That's a popular sort of theme that you're seeing in some of the and.

Speaker B [00:30:22]:

Um, dr. Tangy Reed Marshall does a lot of good work with this in terms of analyzing common thematics in young adult literature and elementary literature that students are frequently exposed to in the to. I don't want to make it seem like there's no space for those kind of right. Like, because if a story is a story, right. And one of the anti racist tenets that I heard Kendi talk about is caring less about the stories that are out, like, you're going to tell the good, bad, and ugly. But however, when it gets too heavy on one, like if I'm reading four of those types of stories you just named in a year. But I'm not reading anything that represents anything that represents a character being innovative, a character being not having to deal with some of those things and is in a culture and setting where they're not fighting poverty or violence. If I'm never encountering those things and there isn't a diversity within that particular identity, then we run into problems. Right? But yes, 100%. Dr.

Speaker A [00:31:53]:

James A. Banks talks about the prejudice reduction in regards to that narrative. Like, if only images or curriculum that's being presented to our students has some sort of negative stereotypical, the struggle, if you will, of certain groups of people, certain identities, and how that implicitly creates that bias in a lot of our students. Like you said, if I read four stories like that, it reinforces a lot of stereotypes. And as a 7th grader or an 8th grader, looking at my classmates who might share some of those identities and then how that impacts them and their view of their peers. So, I mean, what you bring up is very pivotal. Here's the thing. I definitely consider you, Brandon, as providing a voice in Leading Equity. I'd love for you to maybe share with us your final thoughts from today's conversation.

Speaker B [00:32:51]:

I feel like Curriculum is a we're in the age where AI is being very questioned, heavily used, right. And I feel like it's largely comprised of language models that people dump into the coding and software and provides these really realistic, super timely, super intelligent responses. The generative AI. I feel like Curriculum is almost like a program in that way, right. It's loaded with educator language models reflected in this program. Other educators download it and then push out what they downloaded to students. Now one has to ask, how did you download it? Was it worth downloading and what is the impact and what did you clean out when you decided to push out the programming yourself that will impact students, right. So I think that's a question that everybody deserves to have the answer to because our children are downloading what we've downloaded from this source, which is Curriculum. So that's what I would like to leave it at.

Speaker A [00:34:21]:

There it is. Brennan, it's truly been a pleasure. Let me ask you this. If we got some folks that want to connect with you, what's the best way to reach you online so they.

Speaker B [00:34:31]:

Can reach me online through Twitter. If you look up the LP literature and practice, I'm on there. The same is true with LinkedIn and the same is true with Instagram. Type in the LP literature and practice. That's a podcast that I do through Unbounded. Sheldon Aikens is going to be in one of the next upcoming episodes for his book Leading Equity. I don't know if he's going to plug it right now, but I'm going to plug it right now. Great book. Definitely worth downloading for teachers so they can appropriately sift through and execute a curriculum. And I'm trying to think where else. Also [email protected] for any consultancy inquiries as well.

Speaker A [00:35:18]:

It is. Thank you so much. I appreciate the plug, by the way. You are appreciated. Thank you so much for providing, getting some knowledge, dropping those gems for us today. Take care.

Speaker B [00:35:29]:

Yeah, take care, everybody.

Key Words:

students, society's vision of success, education, assembly line approach, repair, depersonalized approach, questioning, reevaluating, instruction, individual students, system, district, curriculum, student identities, expanding identities, replacing identities, teachers, support, reversing order, students' needs, fidelity, prioritizing, curriculum implementation, grade-level instruction, scaffolding, knowing students, understanding students, biases, balance, negative effects, following the script, exploring resources, English learners, finding a solution, catering to students' needs, scaffolding, culturally responsive pedagogies, relevant pedagogies, sustaining pedagogies, cultural backgrounds, leveraging strengths, general approaches, specificity, cultural frameworks, community factors, interconnected factors, professional learning, college readiness, multiple dimensions, commerce, consciousness, creativity, traditional belief, elements, K-12 education system, remake of The Sound of Music, cultural differences, integrity, responsible interpretation, selflessness, teacher, student, integration, dynamics, expansion of world and identity, mirrors and windows, content, materials, instruction, student needs first, everyone has something to learn, something to give, grade level standards, relational aspects, relevant aspects, curriculum companies, catching up, stamps, quality, rich resources, examples of student work, technology integration, culturally inclusive, black and brown faces, reinforcing stereotypes, inferiority claims, English Learner Success Forum, nonprofit organization, tools, diverse perspectives, collaboration, cooperation, authentic assessments, different students of color, black students, heavy metal, first-generation U.S. arrivals, African American, history, comfort, middle school, English Language Arts, identity affirmation, representation, storytelling diversity

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