Before i introduced the amazing eve ewing. We have to think the organizers of this event they been doing 70 fantastic events like this. Theyre having a 50 off sale on our website. You can actually go to haymarket books. Org this is critical. It required reading in its 50 off right now. And what else i get to do besides read and turn off the netflix. They have other events lined up coming up this week. Check out their website for the full schedule. Haymarket books. Org. At 7 00 p. M. Eastern there will be a special homemade poetry reading. And then next tuesday may 19 at 5 00 p. M. Eastern there is an event about abolish eyes. It is not just a slogan immigrant justice with authors and activists. These are great events such act them out. Im also really excited to plug a new venture that weve been working on. Its a partnership with fax 32 fox 32 and my fox chicago. They help students in chicagoland who do not had access to online digital curriculum. They can tune in and see the occasional content from educators and other partners so please there is something for every age. We have a little bit of housekeeping to do obviously there are many of you joining this call today. There could be technical difficulties. We encourage you to bear with us. And if your street gets choppy at all. We would encourage you to reduce your image quality. This video will be recorded and it will be shared afterwards on the haymarket books youtube channel. Do please pose questions on the live feed from wherever you are watching and we will capture some of those questions. With that out of the way. Im so excited. Through our social media. She doesnt have to be that generous but she really is. Her timely contributions in both academic and Creative Spaces is inspiring in her commitment to Racial Justice is unquestionable. While most of you probably artie know where i will do a quick read of her bio she is a sociologist of education and a writer from chicago. The author most recently of the poetry collection 1919 in the nonfiction work. Her first book the poetry collection received awards from the American Library association and the Poetry Society of america and was named one of the best books by npr. Shes great. We are so excited. Our plan today is to have a sober but engaged conversation about what school means. They know that school is a racialized experience. If youre not in chicago. You should know 90 of Chicago PublicSchool Students our student of color. Nearly half identify. In a city that was this segregated. They could go through an entire career teaching without having teachers of color. I was often the only educator that some of my students ever saw. If her to be using race. We think that is appropriate for that time in that contact. Its a weird time. But were glad to be with you. You wake up and you check the weather. Over the time i got really good at waking up checking the weather. And what is my level of capacity. And moving forward accordingly. It doesnt hurt that the actual weather is not so bad. It brings me joy to see you. I am so glad to be here. Ive been in meetings all day. Lets kick it off for those who do not know ear school a your School Background can you describe your relationship with chicago schools. The first aspect of my relationship is that i grew up in Chicago Public schools. From kindergarten through 12th grade. And i have a pretty early understanding of the ways that schools are unequal and unfair. And then playing basketball at other schools. Noticing differences in the ways that i was they were specifically black and mexican boys. And started to notice those things at a very young age. Before i headed language for them. And then attended high school. It was a selective enrollment school. These are called specialized schools. The Public Schools in name but they are very restrictive in terms of test scores. The little bit of Hunger Strike happened. My brother attended a different high school in chicago where he often felt very unsafe. He was belittled by teachers. The environment was not affirming or inclusive. And i went to a school where we had seven different languages that we could take. Have a very early age i have a selfawareness of the fact that i had access to things that people do not had access too. Particularly when some of those i worked at Chicago Public schools throughout college. And then after college became a Public School teacher. My therapist would have to explain. Now im a professor at the university of chicago. And i studied Chicago Public schools. I try as often as i can two just be in classrooms. Ive have a chance to travel around the country in the world. Im obsessed. Im obsessed with schools in a weird way. I totally get it. What you think it made you attuned to the inequality that you start even at an early age. I think some people can go through a whole schooling experience and not recognize it. As an educator though you sought up close. He recognized you recognize it early on. A lot of people have the experience. What i love about middle school is whether you are that age. The principles that you had been raised with. And your own moral compass. A lot of it you see this. And so i think that is a really come and experience i think a lot of young people start to ask those critical questions but we dont necessarily provide platforms for diving more deeply into them. And i was really blessed to participate in programs as a young person a lot of people are familiar with. A program that i was involved with as a young person as well as mix a challenge. I have adults around me that when i was like this doesnt work. And here is more. You should think about this. I have an undergraduate student come to me last week and asked me if i would be her advisor and she also got to northside. She is fat from the southwest side of chicago i think a lot of us to go to schools like this start to notice and ask critical questions i think there is an unwitting thing that is happening where some intentional and critical consciousness. I also think that the commuting with the facial part of it is also a big thing. When you go to a school thats very far from where you live. I commuted 60 to 90 minutes every day to get to my high school. Why is there anything like this where i live. I have similar students who traveled to ours. One of his initial popular poems was about his trade right to the west side to the school where i taught. When i get out of my community youre able to make that contrast and see. And some of our young people dont get to have that experience. And can apply to your other brook. Im sorry to do this. I have to go show everybody the paperback. Its exciting. This is new it just came out. It just came out is the brandnew paperback edition im really picked about this. Im very excited. Its less expensive. I will let you say what work in essay. I think if people it people havent read this book they really need to i think of it as a elegy to black schools. You go through the history of the struggle for they do it through the voices of actual people who experience the fight. And those of you outside of chicago in 2013 the ceo and then mayor closed about 50 schools impacting and of those it was a hugely traumatic experience. And this massive closing still feels we are in the strange moment now. How would you describe in this moment the impact of the 2013 closing. That we been through multiple schools being closed because there was smaller number of the School Closings leading up. I really appreciate you making it connection. Number one young people across the country are experiencing this disruption. I think its really important that parents and teachers in young people themselves had been uplifting the narrative of exactly how it traumatic this is. In particular how dramatic it is to not be connected with friends and family and how traumatic it is with friends and teachers who feel like family. End of the year. Was such an abrupt way. I think its important to remember that for many young people this is not new as usaid what the Current School closures mean is that we have a generation of young people that had had severe School Disruptions over multiple times. What are we doing to recognize and acknowledge that kind of wall, what are we doing to not just hold them accountable but to hold policymakers accountable for the kind of education that we had denied them. I think Something Else that is pondering a lot is the last chapter in the book is about collective morning i had been thinking about that concept quite a bit as i am speaking with students they are losing moments they could never get back. That is just really sad. And not only that if were honest with we are honest with them as adults we have to face the fact that this is not something we have ever experienced. That breaks my heart that if you are a young person right now that says im not can you get the graduation the way i expected there is not and exalt adult anywhere you love and trust who can tell you what that was like for them. We can make analogies and comparisons but is not the same particularly because its not just about whats happening internally in the school. And this is really sad. I think part of what i try to do in the book a lot of them i did was this is the only way that it makes sense for me to do it. One of the things that i knew was really important to me was trying to make space for feelings. And to say when we assess the impact of these policy decisions we have to include an assessment of how these things make people feel and at that as a legitimate form of knowledge and its a legitimate piece of evidence when we make policy decisions its very different than the kinds of evidence that are usually used. I think in this moment that we make space for feelings both for ourselves and for our students and that we acknowledge the ways in which the grieving is can have a profound impact on their ability to learn but also that there is something to be said about acknowledging collective grief and where is a lesson in that. In not pretending like you know everything. Also saying yes, everyone we know is going through this right now including me as an educator and thats okay. I think there is some potential there to teach some important lessons about acknowledging trauma and harm and sadness and loss in contending with them in an honest way if we choose to take that on. See mac i think thats brilliant. I think it is a challenge to push School Policy in the direction of feelings because it feels like it cut cant be quantified. If you cant quantify it then we cant measure it and we cant value it. Our way of valuing things has to be outside of that set of parameters. It is a much broader thing. For me she talks about and the black mother within me says i feel therefore i can understand. It is in the book sister outsider. It is in the essay poet street. I think it is actually part of what i can teach us is the practice of making space for feelings. And i think the thing as the students are having all of these experiences of whether or not we choose to ask acknowledge them. I believe there is a lot to be gained i think its totally a spot on. In this moment it is exposing the things that we value and the things that we dont with schools. I think there are some things that i already knew are being reinforced in ways that give me petty feelings and then there are couple of things that are new for me. One thing that i feel like i already knew but other people are learning is the first thing that happens if organ a close schools the very first question was how are we can feed children. Because as it turns out for many children in this Country School is the primary source of their nutrition and food literally the most elemental thing that they need to live. Maybe second to water. The most basic element that they need for survival through no decision of their own. They are reliant upon schools for food. The second question that emerges. And i want to give a lot of credit to i think yesterday i heard the figure 12 million meals to millions given away not only to children but to people and communities. Thats amazing. The next question we add the Remote Learning how are we getting it the devices. That is an issue by the way that is not only in k12 schools where we have already known that there was this need and weve been talking about it for years. It reveals a huge amount of inequality at the University Level and that the elite universities in the class differences like to make low income students feel very alienated your people at Ivy League Schools that are struggling in the same weight way with devices. The mcdonalds parking lot trying to get wifi. What this reveals for the first time the title of the talk. The teacher opens the cartridge and then they have received the knowledge and they leave. Thats what a lot of people think a school is. The presumption is per revealed in so many bad ideas and so many misunderstandings of how schools function. If i have a dollar for every time someone told me you could just give all kids ipads than i would actually had enough money to give all kids ipads. Just the provision of technology. When in a just be more efficient if we got rid of the teachers altogether and just allowed more efficient downloading of knowledge. And this moment for many people for whatever reason revealing for some people for the first time that schools are one of the last remaining front lights of any kind of social safety net. Any kind of public engagement. Any institution that tries to have a near universal impact on our failing and broken society what we had decided is a morally morally acceptable to be unspeakably affluent. To have people suffering without the most basic resources. The labor that is happening when their shoes are falling off their feet and they dont haves shoes. Its a teacher that is providing for them. When a kid comes to school and theyre not safe at home its a teacher that is making sure they have a safe place to go at night. When a parent calls im depressed or i dont know how to parent my kids or have a job. It is school that is the frontline of handling all of these things and yet so many people are mostly unaware that the fact that the pandemic is the first time they have to face this reality. They are doing basic reinforced provision. And we have the nerve in the plot twist like the real kicker is that all of those things were already happening in all those problems were already in place. Are still expecting kids to do xy and z. And still shutting down schools when they fail to perform in the way that we want them to you on on the very narrow metrics. Were you hungry, did you have shoes. All the sudden when there is a pandemic all of that is stripped away and it makes national headlines. We literally had to how to feed kids. And i hope for some people as an eyeopener to really stop and think about all of the things schools have been doing all this time and yet what such a narrow idea is and im very proud of myself i just finished a draft of the paper today. Im trying to play with this idea. We refer to this type as the era of accountability. Just before no child left behind. What does it look like for us to hold all of those other people accountables that have made the decisions. They have made the decision to result in that child not having a safe place to sleep at night. Its certainly not the children. Thats something i feel like other people are learning right now and because i am a little bit of a petty person get on board. Better late than never. The thing im learning is just how much im learning anyway helping to reinforce for me, two be asked of kids and how ridiculous it is. I have a conversation with my cousin last week. Shes ten years old. She does not go to school in chicago she lives in massachusetts. She attends a very nice private school and her parents are very educated and she has her father, her mother is a dr. She married into our family. I can help you with your racism cant help you with anything else. We can ring the bell and we can help you. Her mother as a dr. Her father and grandmother our home with her all day. She has wifi and everything you could possibly ask for in the time of a Remote Learning situation and shes really behind on her schoolwork. I said whats up. She said normally when you go to school you get there and they tell you the schedule and in the give you work if you do it and when you get home if he didnt do it work at school you finish it. Now, she logged into her google classroom and she starts clicking around and this is my schedule and i have to do this. I was watching this child that i have held in my arms as an infant whose diapers i have changed. I was watching her the Little Office worker. It was so distressing and inappropriate and that is the thing what we are asking kids to do right now regardless of their circumstance before we even get to the internet stuff. Before we get any of those things all kids right now what were asking them to do as a level of executive function in time management that is horribly developmentally inappropriate what we usually do is we really dont ask people to do it until they ask them to be 18. We kind of note that they are to fail. A lot of people go to college in their first term. We have a lot of supports in place to catch them and to teach them the skill of time management and we have all of these people hovering and checking on them. Were now asking little kids to do that. That is before we get to whether we are providing the supports that arts students with disabilities are supposed to be doing. That is before we get to whether any of our kids have computers. If they have a quiet and safe place to learn. Just the basic developmental tasks that were asking is unreasonable and absurd and yes not doing it is also really costly because i am very worried about what it means for my nieces reading and her math for her to not get instruction. I know a lot of parents said it will come out in the wash. There are a lot of kids where it is going to impact their life potential to not get 36129 those are like two terrible choices. This is a real rock and hard place. And some of it is unavoidable. Some of it would be a lot better if we have done our jobs on all the other stuff. If we have the social safety net in place. So that we could be at home with their child helping them even knowing that its all impossible to do there are things that we could do better so that it wasnt a choice of my going to ea