Transcripts For CSPAN2 Author Discussion On Education 202407

Joining us today from around the country and around the world. For those of you that dont know me i am jen johnson, currently chief of staff at Chicago Teachers Union and also a history teacher, missing my classroom but grateful for the work im doing today and ill be moderating our conversation but before i introduce the amazing eve ewing we have to thank the organizers of this event, haymarket books. Theyre amazing, theyve been doing so many fantastic events and something really exciting going on right now is there having a 50 percent off sale on their website so you can go to haymarket books. Org and purchase eaves poetry books collective arches and 1819, this is critical reading and its 50 percent off right now and what else are you going to do but be at home, read, turn off the netflix and read these books. Haymarket has other events lined up coming up this week and next week so check out the website for the full schedule, haymarket books. Org. And this friday so tomorrow at 7 pm eastern, there will be a special free homemade Poetry Reading posted by jean monet and then next tuesday, may 19 at 5 pm eastern theres an event about abolish ice, abolish ice is not just a slogan, immigrant justice in the age of coronavirus authors and activist John Washington and justineggers. These are great events so check them out and im also excited to be able to plug today a new venture that weve been working on at the ctu which is a partnership with fox 32 and my fox chicago and were doing a Daily Television Show on fox 32 and fox 50 to help students in chicago who do not have access to online digital curriculum but every day at 11 am students and tune in and see educational content from sea to educators and other partners so please, turn your dial at 11 am, if you have kids, check it out read theres something for every age and its really fun. Finally we have a little bit of housekeeping to do. Obviously there are many of you joining this call today and as weve all been experiencing on some of these online programs, there will be technical difficulties so we just encourage you to bear with us and if youre green gets choppy at all we would encourage you to reduce your image qualitybecause that will hopefully resolve the problem. Additionally this video will be recorded and it will be shared afterwards on the haymarket books Youtube Channel so you will be to watch it later and we are going to do q a at the end of the event so do please post questions on the live feed from wherever youre watching and we will capture some of those questions for the end of the conversation. So with that out of the way i think were ready to get this conversation started. Im so excited to be joined by doctor e viewing to talk about what makes a school. I first became aware of eve through her creative projects and social media and then became really blessed to finally move into more operating circles and she had been generous enough to even work with some of our cpu educators and policy fellowship and help teachers do their research projects. She doesnt have to be that generous but she is. Her timely contributions to shuffle justice in both the academic and creative spaces. Its inspiring and her commitment to Racial Justice is unquestionable so while most of you probably already know your i will do a quick read of herbio. Sorry. E viewing is a sociologist of education and a writer from chicago, author most recently of the poetry collection 1919 and the nonfiction work those in the schoolyard, racism and School Closings on the south side. Her first book the going poetry collection electric arches received awards from the American Library association and poetrysociety of america and named one of the best books by npr and Chicago Tribune. Were so excited. Our plan today is to have a sober but also hopefully engaging conversation about schools and what schools mean and we are in chicago so chicagoans know that school is a racialized experience and if youre not in chicago you should know 90 percent of Chicago Public School Students arts students of color and half identify as latin and 50 percent of our educators are white so in a city that this segregated students go through an entire career teaching without having teachers of color or without being in a Diverse School setting. I often andthe only black educator , my students ever saw so were going to be using race to have this conversation and we think thats appropriate for this time and for thiscontext. So he, its great to see you too. Its a weird time but we are glad to be with you. I hope youre doing well,how are you doing . Im okay. Everyday i wake up and you check the weather and i feel like over the period of this pandemic i got good at waking up and checking the weather myself and figuring out what is my level of capacity for the day just accepting it and moving forward accordingly so im pretty decent. It doesnt hurt at theactual weather is not so bad. Im good and im happy to see you. Im so glad to be here and at some point im going to get to go out on my back porch, ive been on meetings all day but thats our new life. So lets kick it off. For those of the folks joining us who dont knowyour kind of school background, can you describe your relationship to Chicago Schools . The first aspect of my relationship to schools in chicago is i grew up in Chicago Public schools. I attended cps kindergarten through 12th grade and had a pretty early understanding of the ways or pretty early observations of the ways schools are unequal and unfair. As a student, noticing differences between what kind of resources were available in my school and playing basketball at other schools and seeing differences there. Noticing differences in the way i was treated at school versus how my brother was treated or other classmates who were black and mexican boys were treated. Starting to notice those things at a young age before i had light which for them and i would say even before the field at as much language for them and i attended Enrollment School so for those outside chicago in new york these are specialized schools, their Public Schools in name but they restricted elite in terms of the test scores and grades you need to attend and the louisville Hunger Strike happened which was a Hunger Strike and mexican neighborhoods in a Little Village in chicago who had been promised this school and hadnt gotten one and went on a Hunger Strike and that was happening at the same time as i was about to begin high school and a great brandnew building that cost 24 million and at the same time my brother attended a different high school in chicago where he often felt very unsafe and disengaged, where he was berated by teachers and where the environment wasnt affirming or inclusive and i went to a school where they had seven different languages we could take. So at a very early age i was like, and i think i had a selfawareness of the fact that i had access to things other people didnt have access to and also i was nota better person or a more worthy person , particularly when some of these inequalities were manifest in my own family so i started to question early on kind of meritocratic myths about school and then i became a chicago, i worked in Chicago Public schoolsthroughout college. And again witnessed huge disparities with what was happening at different schools in our district and our same cities through taxpayer dollars and after college became a Chicago Public schools teacher and because i dont know, my parents would have to explain why i was unable to leave school and now im a professor at the university of chicago and i study Chicago Public schools and try as often as i can to just be in classrooms and show up for young peoplein the city. And ive also been really privileged especially since i had come out and had a chance to travel around the country and around the world and talk to folks, really come to realize how similar our troubles are in communities across the country so yes, im obsessed with schools in a weird way. I can relate. It was the only job i ever wanted and its the Family Business inmy family so i get it. What do you think made you attuned to the inequality that you saw even at an early age because some people can go through a hole cooling experience and not recognize it. As an educator though yousaw it up close and as a student you recognized it early on. What would you say cause you to be able to recognize the inequality early on . Guest i used to teach middle school and what i love about middle school is when youre that age are starting to reconcile the principles that perhaps youve been raised with. The idea that youre getting from teachers, from parents andadults and then your own kind of moral compass. And thats why middle School Students are so good and adolescents are so good at pointing out hypocrisy which is a lot of adults get fed up with them. You said this but you did this, i dont like that. So i think thats a really common experience. A lot of young people start to ask those critical questions but we dont necessarily provide platforms for them to dive more deeply into them. And i was really blessed to participate in programs as a young person, young chicago authors which a lot of people are familiar with was a program i was involved with as a young person as well as mixer challenge which is of organization that focuses on Public Participation so i had adults around me when i was like, this doesnt fit right there like yes and heres more. You should read this, you should think about this by having undergraduate students come to me and asked me if i would be her advisor on her ba thesis and she had also gone to northside and shes from the southwest side of chicago and she said i think a lot of us go to schools like this start to notice and ask critical questions so i think maybe theres an unwitting thing thats happening. Where some intentional or unintentional critical consciousness raising when young people see their such a disparity and i also think that the commuting, the gestational part of it is also a big thing because when you go to a school that is very far from where you live, i commuted 60 to 90 minutes every day to my high school. Then youre like what . This isnt fun. Why isnt there anything like thisaround where i live . I had similar students to ours. Malcolm london who is in the young travel offers program one of his popular poems was about his train ride from the west side to the school where i taught so i think thats important. When you get out of your community youre able to make that contrast. The some of our youngpeople dont get to have that experience. About while others do so i think thats a good segue. Im going to plug yourother book. Do i have the paperback andy . Im sorry to do this, ivegot to show everybody paperback. This is new, this justcame out. This just came out. This is a brandnew paperback edition of those in the schoolyard andim deep about this so sorry if im doing the whole thing of running tonight. Im very excited and is less expensive, its 16 blocks so i would say what you were going to say. I think if people havent read this book, they really need to. Its kind of. I agree. I think of it as a elegy to black schools. You go through the history of struggle for schools like that high school but you do it through the voices of actual people who experience the fight and for those of you outside chicago in 2013, the ceo and then mayor closed basically the schools in packing and of those schools and of the children who went to those schools 80 percent of the studentsimpacted by the closings were black. That was a hugely traumatic experience. Cpu would lead marches against it and individual School Communities fought valiantly try to keep their schools open this past School Closings will heal reverberations today so in the book talk about now were in this strange cool closing moment now how would you describe in this moment the impact of the 2013 closings, knowing that many children through multiple schools being close because they were smaller numbers of School Closings eating up to 2013. I think that i appreciate you making that connection. I think there are a couple of things. Number one is so some, young people across the country are experiencing unprecedented disruption. And i think its important that parents and teachers of young people themselves have been uplifting the narrative of exactly how traumatic this is. And in particular how traumatic it is to not be connected withfriends and family. How traumatic is with friends and with teachers who feel like family. And how traumatic it is to not have some of those key milestones. Graduations, luncheon, end of the year. And its in such an abrupt way but i think its important to remember that for many youngpeople , this is not new. And as youre saying, what the Current School closures me is that we are going to have a generation of young people that have experience this kind of severe disruption multiple times over the course of their lives and over their short childhood. So what are we doing to recognize and acknowledge that kind of law. What are we doing to not just hold them accountable to hold ourselves and to hold policymakers accountable for the kind of education that we have denied them. And this ability that we have denied them and i think Something Else ive been pondering a lot is the last chapter in the book is about collective mourning and collective grief. And ive been thinking about that concept quite a bit. As i am speaking with students who are moving, trying to not in case some of those young people are watching i dont want to be discouraging. And im trying to think about how to frame this but they are losing moments that they can never get back. And that is just really sad. Not only that but theres really, if were honest with them as adults, we have to face the fact that this is also notsomething we have ever experienced. Thats breaks my heart. It breaks my heart that if you are a young person right now was saying im not going to get this graduation the way i expected or not going to get x, y, and z, theres not an adult anywhere who you love and who you trust who can tell you what that was like for them. Or we can make analogies, we can make comparisons but its not the same, particularly because its not just about whats happening internally at the school but its about the broader context of not being able toconvene or gather. And thats just really sad and i think part of what i try to do in the book, a lot of things i did in his book i did because i was like this is the only way this makes sense for me to do it and people are surprised byit. One of the things i do thats important is try to make space for feelings and affect and emotion and to say when we assess the impact of these policy decisions we have to include an action of how these things make people feel and that is a legitimate form of knowledge. Thats a legitimate piece of edisons evidence thats to be weighed when we make policy decisions and thats very different than the kinds of evidence that are usually used in schools to make these kinds of choices so similarly in this moment its important that we make base or feelings and we make space for grief. We make affect, both for ourselves and also for our students and that we acknowledge the ways in which that kind of grieving is going to have a profound impact on their ability to learn but also that there is something to be said about honestly acknowledging collective grief. And where is the lesson in that . And in not pretending like you know everything and you have all the answers. Being reassuring but also saying yes, everybody we know is going through this right nowincluding me as an educator. Thats okay read i think that there am potential there to teach him important questions about acknowledging trauma, harm, sadness, loss and contending with them in an honest way. If we choose to take that on you. I think thats brilliant and i think its a challenge to push policies, School Policy in the direction i think feelings because it feels like it cant be quantified. In a system where , its yeah, if you cant quantify it and we cant measure it and we can evaluate in our way of valuing things have to be outside of that set of parameters. Its okay if we cant quantify. Its a much broader thing like Audrey Morris talks about this. For me i think that she talks about like, im hurting badly but she says Something Like the father tells me i think this, therefore i am the black mother in me says i feel therefore i can understand. Please go google that and its in the book sister outsider. Google it before you go by my bad paraphrasing it a bit if you want to learn more and its in the essay poetry is not a luxury which is very important to me and i think that part of what lacked feminism can teach us. Is this practice of making space for feelings. Whereas my millennial process, making space for feelings is out here and i think that the thing is that ourstudents are having all the affected experiences whether or not we choose to acknowledge them. So i believe theres a lot to gain through candor in that regard. I think thats totally spot on and so in this moment, this closure, exposing the things that we value the things that wedont with schools. What would you say this closure is teaching you, the role that schools serve and what we value about schools. I think that there are some things that i already knew that are being reinforced in ways that give me petty feelings and then thereare a couple of things that are new for me. So one thing that i feel like i already knew but i feel like other people are learning is okay, the first thing that happened was that we need to figure out how kids were going to eat. The first thing. For going to close schools so thefirst question was how are we going to be children. So because as it turned out for many children in this country, who is a primary source of their nutritio