LA Social Science recently spoke with Dr. Tyrone Howard, Professor of Education, Pritzker Family Endowed Chair in Education to Strengthen Families, and Director of the Black Male Institute, about the state of education during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Howard is seen as one of our country’s leader in multicultural education, social and political context of schools, urban education, social studies education, and educational experience of African American students.

Interview Chapters:

0:24 – Intro of Dr. Howard
1:10 – Is there any music or a book that has help you to get through this pandemic?
1:58 – Talk with us about the state of education?
8:00 – How are teachers dealing with this current moment?
10:23 – Talk with us about some of the projects you are working on which speak to moving the educational space toward a 25th century reality for all students?
14:15 – Any silver lining to what we are currently experiencing?

Whenever and however schools open for in-person instruction — during and after the pandemic — we cannot go back to business as usual.

Many of our students will need something different, something transformative, something deeply rooted in our commitment to provide students a significantly different type of school environment.

This moment calls for radical care.

Radical care is a fundamental belief that students need something different from what schools have typically offered. Many educators offer shallow platitudes about how much they care about students, yet will engage in practices that dehumanize and render them invisible.

Others educators remain indifferent in the face of policies, attitudes and beliefs that are centered on blaming students and families for the effects of structural racism and generational poverty, which has placed many children and families into some of the most untenable situations.

Radical care means:

• Acknowledging and embracing the sheer resilience, brilliance and genius that resides in all students, in particular those on the margins.
• Recognizing that the millions of students who are living in poverty prior to the pandemic have experienced even deeper poverty because of the pandemic.
• Understanding the number of students experiencing homelessness will continue to climb and creating schools that provide a multitude of basic services such as food, shelter, mental health supports and afterschool care, which many students need.
• Imagining schools where teachers are prepared and equipped with tools to support students whose psychological, social and emotional needs are viewed as essential to their academic success.
• Requiring fearless leadership, where school leaders challenge, inspire and support their staffs to do better. Fearless leadership requires not being afraid to engage in courageous conversations about apathy and carelessness that becomes accepted practice in too many schools.
• Creating schools that are equipped with teachers who engage in culturally sustaining pedagogy, are “warm demanders” and engage in their work in a manner that is anti-racist, has no tolerance for anti-black racism, and is inclusive.
• Expecting leaders to support educators in building the knowledge, attitudes and dispositions necessary to identify and respond to students’ trauma, grieving and psychologically strained situations caused during the pandemic.
• Listening and learning from students about their lives outside of school, and trying to place ourselves in their shoes and imagine how we may be angry some days and disengaged on others.

Our students possess a wealth of intellect, wisdom, curiosity and deep desire to do well in schools. They just need caring, consistent and culturally connected adults in schools.

When school personnel recognize that students possess deep funds of knowledge and a tremendous depth and breadth of cultural wealth then they can learn more about the various forces that shape their lives — including not just the challenges they face, but also their values, interests, ambitions, cultural traditions, family histories, out-of-school learning opportunities and more — they are better able to leverage those resources both in and out of the classroom.

Why is radical care needed? A recent report by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research reported that 45% of California youth between 12 and 17 reported having recently struggled with mental health issues during the pandemic.

Nearly a third of them experienced serious psychological distress that interferes with their academic and social functioning. They also found that the rates of depression and anxiety were highest among poor, multiracial, female and gender non-conforming students.

These data tell us that many of our students are emotionally frayed and psychologically distressed due to social isolation, disconnection and Covid fatigue. Student fear and our focus on relationship building matters more now than it has in a long time. Schools that are committed to showing radical care will take necessary steps to ensure they have highly resourced social workers in place, consistent nurses, supportive school staff, and patient, giving and loving educators and administrators.

Many students, like adults, are exhausted from Zoom, frustrated with being disconnected from peers and school personnel, and want something resembling normalcy again. Yet returning to schools cannot be exactly what we had prior to March 2020. It has to feel different, look different and ultimately schools need to be different.

Radical care should be less about what we say, and more about what we do. How can we show up for students when they need us the most? We show up by creating different types of schools where outside recreation, collaborative learning, safety, no standardized testing, discovery learning, teacher supports and holistic learning environments are the norm.

Practices and an ethos that are rooted in hope, love and a radical care that sees all students, but in particular our most vulnerable students must be our aim.

•••

Tyrone C. Howard is a professor at the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies at UCLA. He is also the Pritzker Family Endowed Chair in Education to Strengthen Children & Families and director of the UCLA Black Male Institute.

Source: https://edsource.org/2021/this-moment-calls-for-radical-care-for-all-our-children/650031

• Families have different levels of access to material resources, a reality exacerbated as more and more people are laid off from work. This includes basic learning materials like paper as well as computers. It includes Internet access, so even if we distribute notebooks, some students might not be able to access online platforms easily. Some only have access to low-speed Internet, unconducive to videoconferencing or streaming.

• Many videoconference participation rules we’ve seen posted online—find a quiet space to work or keep your camera on, for example—don’t account for different levels of access to material resources or home circumstances. Some students don’t have a quiet space to work. Many are balancing a variety of stressful situations. These implicitly shaming policies create more distance between students and teachers. Our colleague, Taharee Jackson, wrote a powerful personal essay about this here. Please read and share it.

• Disparities can be exacerbated online for students with learning differences. Students who don’t have learning differences can adjust to platforms that make learning materials accessible to students who do. But those who do have learning differences can’t easily adapt to platforms that fail to consider their access needs.

• White, middle-class-and-wealthier, college-educated workers are most likely to be able to work at home, while economically marginalized people of color without a college degree are least likely. The children of the latter are more likely to have home responsibilities during the day, like taking care of siblings.

• Bullying and inequities that students of color, students experiencing poverty, LGBTQ+ students, and others experience in person are replicated with precision online. The move to online learning could open more avenues for bullying and harassment.

• Many parents and caretakers are coping with significant stressors. On average these are elevated for families of color, families that are economically marginalized, and families coping with other forms of oppression. Be careful not to expect all parents and caretakers to have the time or energy to actively engage in children’s learning.

• Many Internet service providers are offering free service to students. Identify which are doing so in your area and help families connect with them.

• Find ways to distribute other learning supplies to families. They could be distributed along with lunches if your school or district is still providing them.

• Identify a point person to help families with Internet access and other technology challenges. Ensure help can be provided in all languages represented at the school. Don’t expect individual teachers to troubleshoot technology.

• Suspend grading. Some schools are temporarily adopting pass/fail grading. If we give anybody a “fail” right now, we need serious remediation of our equity commitments.

• Eliminate homework.

• Appoint equity specialists to vet curricula to ensure we don’t adopt materials that might marginalize students, normalize dominant narratives, or omit historically silenced voices.

• Make communications regarding everything from district scheduling to student work expectations available in multiple languages.

• Provide teacher guidance on how to respond equitably to online racism, sexism, heterosexism, transphobia, and other forms of bias and oppression.

• Tailor learning materials to the needs of students with learning differences and students who are learning English.

• Assign somebody to coordinate with organizations that support students who are homeless. That person should work directly with these organizations to ensure students have access to the resources they need.

Emerging data on student academic outcomes during the pandemic indicate that Black students (and other underserved groups) suffered academic losses in areas such as reading and math (Dorn et al., 2020). Many teachers struggled to get Black students to consistently engage during the pandemic. But to be clear, this issue didn’t suddenly appear during remote instruction; many teachers struggled to engage Black students prior to the pandemic, and this dynamic was only exacerbated by the impersonal nature of remote learning. As we return to in-person instruction, it’s crucial to ask: How can educators better motivate and engage Black students?

Discussions about this question often pathologize Black students, focusing on their surface actions while paying little attention to conditions in the classroom that inevitably affect student engagement, behavior, and learning. If a student frequently puts her head down in class, she’s often thought of as listless. Less is said about the possibly lackluster instruction or exclusionary environment that may be causing her to disengage. As educators, we must shift the discourse around engagement and motivation for Black students to focus on how teacher actions could create more inclusive, responsive, and stimulating learning environments. We believe creating such classrooms would catalyze Black student engagement.

Student engagement is often described as meaningful student involvement in the learning process, with heightened attention and focus on learning tasks. Engagement typically increases when educators (1) take time to investigate their students’ identities and interests and find ways to incorporate those into meaningful academic tasks, and (2) foster good relationships with students. But for Black students, engagement also requires ensuring that classroom materials, culture, and environment are inclusive and affirming of Black students’ lives, histories, and backgrounds—and uprooting any anti-Blackness.

Student engagement often correlates with student motivation—one reason it has been increasingly viewed as a key to addressing problems like low achievement, student boredom, absenteeism, and high dropout rates. Research specifically links student engagement to favorable learning outcomes for minoritized student groups (Borman & Overman, 2004).

It’s clear how important engaging Black students is. Let’s look at five strategies for making it happen.

1. Offer Students Voice and Choice

Making space for student voice and choice in the classroom gives students a sense of autonomy in the learning process. Student voice and choice means more than letting students select from various assignment options; it means allowing students to develop a sense of ownership of the classroom and their own learning. This is especially important for Black students, who’ve historically been excluded in academic spaces. Traditionally, these students have had little to no input into what content they learn and how they learn it. This power imbalance often leads to disengagement.

Educators should empower students by including them in decisions about what they learn—and how. For instance, while meeting a few key standards, students could learn science content through an inquiry project that lets them explore a scientific phenomenon within their own community that interests them, such as identifying the location of toxic waste sites or researching whether there is a correlation between high asthma rates in Black communities and the locations of landfills. Or students might examine change in climate temperatures by looking at global warming over time, and research the causes for shifts toward warming and what geographical areas are most affected. Offering options for learning activities benefits teachers. There’s less need for redirecting and consequences because students have greater ownership of their work, and more space for building respectful relationships.

2. Use Collaborative Learning

3. Practice “Warm Demanding”

Over the last month, we have witnessed a number of racial incidents in the midst of a global pandemic.

The deaths of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd have resulted in national outrage, reintroduced the troublesome nature of police brutality in our communities, and raised more conversations about the never-ending reality that is racism in our country. Coupled with these inexplicable deaths was the case of Amy Cooper, a White woman in New York City’s Central Park, who threatened to call the police on Christian Cooper, an African-American man, to say he was “threatening” her and her dog, despite video evidence to the contrary.

Sadly, these types of incidents are not new. What is also not new are the widespread protests that have erupted across the nation as people of all races have expressed pain, frustration, and anger over the mistreatment of Black people in America. Black people and other people of color are beyond fatigued in explaining, demonstrating, pleading, recording, and articulating the realities of racism. How it plays out in our lives, how it remains embedded in American culture through our laws, policies, and beliefs; how even “progressive” people engage in problematic racist behavior. But could we be reaching a tipping point?

I have been encouraged to see the number of Whites engaging in peaceful protest, declaring that “Black Lives Matter.” It has long been said that racism will not end until White people feel just as outraged and upset about racism as people of color do. The recent protests seem to be a step in the right direction.

But what does this mean for schools? How should educators respond?

First and foremost, educators, even in this stay-at-home moment, you must address racism in America in your schools and classrooms. You must let students talk about what they feel, encourage them to write about their emotions, and create space for students to emote—even as all of that will have to be done virtually. This is an emotionally fragile time for many Black students and other students of color. For many students, the fear is real, their anger is palpable, anxiety is high, and sadness is running deep. Do not expect that you will have all the answers. Just listen to and affirm your students. Please do not make things business as usual.

We must also name the current crisis as something different. Labels such as “mistreatment,” “discrimination,” or “prejudice” no longer describe the depths and breadth of what we are witnessing. We must identify what we are seeing as “anti-Black racism,” and that should inform our current discussions. Anti-Black racism challenges the idea that there is a one-size-fits-all approach to tackling racism. Yes, racism affects all people of color in a multitude of ways, and Black people are part of that vociferous and untangled web. But anti-Black racism speaks to the specific ways in which Black people are seen, targeted, dehumanized, and often killed in a manner that is unlike any other group of people in the United States.

In recent days, I have received texts, calls, and emails from friends, colleagues, and former students who are White, Latinx, and Asian-American who have apologized to me for the recent events. They’ve asked if I was OK and expressed their remorse for what is going on. They’ve asked me outright: “What can I do?” I appreciate these overtures.

But individual acts must transform into collective action, and educators can be part of that change. Schools are not immune from the perpetuation of anti-Black racism. Many students, parents, and teachers have long argued that schools are rampant with acts of anti-Black racism. Schools can and should be better. And they must be part of the solution in racial reckoning and healing. If deliberate steps are not taken to end anti-Black racism, it will continue to cause irreparable harm to Black students. It will also leave an indelible imprint on the minds and psyches of non-Black students. To that end, there are four steps that educators can take to ensure that anti-Black racism does not persist in their schools:

1. Name anti-Black racism for what it is. Skirting around the excessive mistreatment of Black people in everyday life is only part of the problem. There is a pressing need for educators to develop a propensity, a knowledge, and the courage to discuss, name, and describe the levels of exclusion, oppression, hostility, and racism in the United States that have afflicted Black people for centuries. Educators must discuss examples of anti-Black racism, analyze the institutional and individual ways that it manifests, and not dilute the perniciousness of the unfortunate treatment that Black people have endured.

2. Believe Black students. The important #MeToo movement centered on the oppression, assaults, and abuse of women. The message was clear: Listen and believe women who are survivors of sexual violence. A similar call should be made for Black students. When Black students speak about issues of race, racism, discrimination, exclusion, and prejudice, believe their stories. When they state that they have been subjected to lower expectations, hostile teachers, different standards, and unfair discipline believe them, advocate for them, and challenge your colleagues who are skeptical.

3. Stop challenging “Black Lives Matter.” Efforts to minimize, dismiss, or ignore the pain and suffering of Black people is one of the central tenets of anti-Blackness. To that end, challenging “Black Lives Matter” or stating “All Lives Matter” is an attempt to minimize, ignore, or dismiss the types of structural inequality, political disenfranchisement, police violence, and educational and economic marginalization of Black people. Efforts to conflate Black people’s experiences with other people’s struggles, while appearing benevolent, robs Black people of an unapologetic and intentional spotlight and the crucial analysis of their experiences.

4. Identify and speak about Black excellence. So much of anti-Blackness is steeped in the pathological depiction of and belief in the inferiority of Black people, culture, and history. Often absent in anti-Black sentiment is the unbridled excellence that Black students possess. It is vital for educators to see their brilliance, celebrate their innovation, recognize their unique forms of expression, and promote their irrepressible potential and promise. It is vital for teachers, school staff, and school leaders to identify and discuss Black excellence, brilliant Black parents, and high-achieving Black students.

Anti-Black racism needs to be understood, addressed, and ultimately uprooted in schools and society. The fact that countless people are marching, protesting, and risking their safety in the midst of a global pandemic to end anti-Black racism speaks to the sense of urgency to eliminate it.

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Tyrone C. Howard is a professor of education at the University of California, Los Angeles, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and the director of the university’s Black Male Institute. He is also the director of the UCLA Pritzker Center for Strengthening Children and Families.

Source: https://www.edweek.org/leadership/opinion-how-to-root-out-anti-black-racism-from-your-school/2020/06