Sights and Sounds of Learning Excursions

We are pleased to share with you today a piece from our storytelling series of reflections and noticings coming out of our convening in Tucson!

Please stay tuned for more writings from our team of storytellers and revisit the blog here to see them all in the coming months.

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A number of storytellers captured their thoughts in images and short pieces. We'll be sharing those as well as the longer writing.

Mission Gardens - The Land We Are On

By Rickyana Estrada

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Feeling & Knowing: Bringing a Sense of Belonging to Assessment

By Shannon King

When it comes to assessment, do we honor that? The humanness of learning? The humans we are learning with and from? Here is a Quilt of Quotes woven from some of the humans I learned from in Tucson.'

Please click on the image below to enlarge!

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About the Storytellers

Rickyana Estrada is a master teacher in the Tucson Unified School District. Rickyana has over twenty years of experience in education as a middle school teacher, culturally responsive mentor/coach, district-wide professional development presenter and curriculum writer with expertise on middle school Language Arts and Social Studies. Rickyana is also the President of the Arizona Council for the Social Studies.

Dr. Shannon King leads the Battelle for Kids research and innovation in 21st century learning and assessment design, as well as helping school leaders intentionally align their systems to take their vision to scale.

Shannon has more than 25 years of experience in education roles, including classroom teacher, gifted

education resource teacher, instructional coach, and as an administrator supporting professional development and instructional best practices. Shannon also works with graduate students as an Adjunct Professor at George Mason University and the University of Virginia, teaching master’s level courses in educational leadership, curriculum and instruction, assessment, differentiation, gifted education, and educational research. Shannon frequently shares her expertise as a presenter at state, regional, and national conferences on topics such as deeper learning, assessment design, instructional coaching, educational leadership and school transformation.

On the Ground in Tucson

We are pleased to share with you today a piece from our storytelling series of reflections and noticings coming out of our convening in Tucson!

Please stay tuned for more writings from our team of storytellers and revisit the blog here to see them all in the coming months.

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A number of storytellers captured their thoughts in images and short pieces. We'll be sharing those as well as the longer writing.

"I ain't here for no reason."

By Jessica Bernal-Mejia

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Difficult Conversations and Cultural Awareness Matters

By Dr. Dwight E. Rhodes

Have you attended a conference, reflected on it, and wondered why in the heck did you waste your time? Maybe like some of you, I've attended many conferences that didn't leave a lasting positive impact on my career/life. Thankfully, that was not my experience at the ALP conference.

As a former teacher, principal, district, and state educational leader, my inaugural attendance at the ALP conference and my experience as a neophyte crew facilitator allowed me to leave the conference with many thought-provoking and soul-filling experiences. I'd like to share two of them with you now.

Difficult Conversations

As a black, gay, agnostic, southern male who is married to an immigrant, I deeply understand what it feels like to be an outsider; not seen, not heard, and not valued. So I wondered what depth of diversity I would encounter at the conference. For example, would the conference be diverse enough to have varied perspectives from multiple races and experiences that could lead to meaningful learning conversations and learning opportunities?

Little did I know my ride from the airport to the conference center would be the gateway to exploring some of those questions.

Instead of waiting for the conference shuttle sprinter vans to take us to the center, three other conference attendees and I grabbed an Uber. During the 40-minute Uber ride, I quickly realized I didn't have to wonder if I would experience varied perspectives and conversations.

The Uber driver proudly proclaimed he supported using public school funds to support private schools (aka universal school vouchers). He did not support having a more comprehensive teaching of this nation's history of slavery and discrimination (aka Critical Race Theory). He did not understand why schools needed to be a space for students to discuss and better understand their feelings (aka Social Emotional Learning) instead of focusing entirely on reading, writing, and arithmetic. The Uber driver's perspective was the very antithesis of the issues I most valued.

As others along for the ride challenged the driver's perspective on those hot-button topics, it was apparent no one else in this car shared his viewpoints. When the driver exclaimed that America was not founded and built on the backs of enslaved people, it took the collective learning from years of therapy, professional learning experiences, and my father's voice in my head not to lose my temper and fall into the angry black man stereotype.

Yes, I was triggered, but as I sat in the front passenger seat, I surprised myself, kept my cool, and listened.

Interestingly, the driver became somewhat agitated when I, and my fellow allies, pushed back by asking him why he felt that way. His trite, nonfactual, and conspiratorial answers reminded me of the importance of students developing critical thinking skills in our public schools and having the structure to demonstrate that skill through equitable learning assessments.

Although the ride seemed interminable, we eventually reached the conference center, exited the Uber, parted ways with the driver, and collectively sighed a breath of relief.

I share that quick vignette to illustrate three reasons why engaging in difficult conversations can be powerful learning lessons for all of us as we develop new habits of working together:

1. It allowed me to push my growth edge by listening with curiosity to drastically opposing points of view without my amygdala being hijacked.

2. It reminded me that sitting in a place of inquiry to understand another person's perspective better, regardless of how challenging, is an opportunity to listen and learn.

3. Those challenging exchanges are opportunities for all of us to seek understanding to build more empathetic communities.

Cultural Awareness

Before attending the conference, I eagerly anticipated gaining new insights and knowledge to help me grow as a school transformational leader and LGBTQIA+ Leadership Advocate. I looked forward to exploring innovative assessment practices and strategies that would support dismantling the historical racists and oppressive ways of "schooling" in this country.

However, Chucho Ruiz Vai Sevoi's (aka barrio intellectual) session allowed me to think differently about my approach to attending the conference and what I might experience.

For me, Chucho skillfully modeled building community as a powerful tool to liberate our public schools. How? He set the tone for the conference by passionately recognizing and honoring the original inhabitants of the land on which the conference center stands. He engaged the entire audience as a community by asking us to stand with our arms extended, palm hands facing up, as he chanted a sacred prayer as the audience rotated west, north, east, and south.

This sacred ritual, which I had never experienced, reminded me of the importance of cultural awareness that intentionally honors the diverse traditions of Indigenous Peoples. That cultural understanding recognizes and acknowledges the contributions and sacrifices of the land's original inhabitants, where many of us strive to improve student learning outcomes. Every school in this country stands on the land once occupied, revered, and protected by Indigenous Peoples.

Chucho's boldness to open our conference by engaging all of us as a community rooted in Native American culture still resonates with me. Being reminded of the importance of cultural awareness and diversity fuels my desire to continue unapologetically advocating for liberated learning outcomes and equitable assessment practices for the students now inhabiting the land where their school buildings sit and the innumerable places we all live, work, and play.

By honoring, acknowledging, and advocating for that type of cultural awareness in our public schools, aren't we, in a way, dismantling some of the long-established oppressive teaching, learning, and assessment practices in our schools?

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About the Storytellers

Jessica Bernal-Mejia is a teacher in the Culturally Responsive Pedagogy and Instruction department at Tucson Unified School District.

Dr. Rhodes is an educational thought leader, author, and C.E.O./Founder of Rhodes2Equity Consulting (R2E), which represents the intersection of his learning as a 2017 Harvard doctoral graduate of educational leadership and a twenty-plus-year educator.

R2E is an educational consulting firm specializing in equity-focused school initiatives to dramatically improve the learning outcomes for all students, particularly those from historically marginalized communities.

His organization also helps BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ Leaders embrace their identity markers as an asset, not a liability, and boldly push back against the "Don't Say Gay" legislation spreading across our country. He welcomes thought-provoking conversations, so feel free to connect with him via Linkedin.

Finding their own truth: Humanizing History through Dialectic Teaching

By Kaimana Chock

We are pleased to share with you today a piece from our storytelling series of reflections and noticings coming out of our convening in Tucson!

Please stay tuned for more writings from our team of storytellers and revisit the blog here to see them all in the coming months.

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Gift of the Obsidian Butterfly

Song of the Obsidian Butterfly

A gift generously bestowed through

Generations of storykeepers,

Two spirits who embody revolution,

Women who heal communities,

And a man wise enough to listen.

Image via Wix

I didn’t know what to expect. It had been years since I had stepped foot in a high school classroom, and I was curious to see how the students would operate in a post-COVID setting. I was stepping into an “American Government” classroom, and wasn’t sure what I would find on the other side of the door.

During our prep session, Dr. José Gonzalez had touched on the importance of the “Pedagogy of Love” in his classroom, and the use of humanizing language as core to the dialectic method of learning and discovery of one’s own truth based on evidence. He spoke of how he taught history in a way that allowed multiple perspectives to be discussed and investigated. I was curious to see how these concepts would manifest.

Posters highlighting ethnic pride for black, indigenous, and Mexican heritage covered the walls alongside symbols of social justice movements. Interwoven with them were standards for academic writing, frameworks to formulate a cogent argument, and drawings and doodles showcasing student creativity. I immediately sensed that this was a classroom in which one could see oneself wholly and feel wholly seen.

As class was underway and I listened to the students’ conversations, I was struck by their engagement and their eagerness to learn. Their discussions within the dialectic circles allowed space to be curious about what they were reading, to compare the reading to their lived experience, and to deepen their own learning. Even those students who had self-admitted that they had not completed their reading before the start of class were actively contributing to the dialogue and learning in the moment. No students were preoccupied with their phones or talking about what they were going to be doing in the upcoming weekend.

To see students so hungry to learn contrasted starkly with my own memories of high school history class. My memory of my own experience as a high school senior is of the memorization of names and dates and forced use of the Cornell note taking style—there was no discussion to determine whether or not the history being presented to me may have been reflective of the real lived experiences of enslaved people in a post “emancipation” America. How differently I may have been prepared for the world outside of high school had my experience focused on finding my truth.

After the class was over, we were treated to a panel of students who shared about their experience in Dr. Gonzalez’s class, and what effects it had on their lives. One student shared how he had always been interested in history, but his interests had been limited to classical accounts of Greek soldiers and European knights; through the class, he had found pride for his own identity as a Mexican American. Another student shared how in all of her previous schooling experiences, she had felt othered and excluded; through the class, she began to see herself and her features as beautiful for the first time. The students spoke about the importance of the Pedagogy of Love, and the way that humanizing language helped them to see themselves more clearly, to understand their own cultures and heritages, and to feel pride for who they are. Many of them spoke to the fact that the class was inspiring them to think of ways to serve their own communities through their future careers, that they hoped to return to their own neighborhoods as lawyers and politicians, to fight for their families and friends.

As I left the class, I couldn't help but feel grateful for the opportunity to visit and share this time with the students. It was a humbling reminder of just how much we can learn from one another, and I left the school feeling inspired and energized.

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About the Storyteller

Kaimana Chock is the ʻāina accountability pathways manager for The Kohala Center. His work seeks answers to the question: “how might we hold ourselves accountable to the places, communities, and individuals that feed us physically, mentally, and spiritually?”