29. The DEI Mess Part I: Exclusive Inclusivity? Bad Ideas Abound in K-12 Educational DEI Frameworks

In this episode of the DEI Mess series, the hosts explore the complexities and confusions surrounding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), particularly in the context of K-12 education. They discuss the broad definitions of DEI, its narrow and often exclusive application in schools, and the resistance from different societal groups. The episode features Trina English, who shares her extensive experience in DEI work, from identifying marginalized identities in schools to creating student unions that address a variety of intersections. They also touch upon innovative solutions like civic engagement and the urgent need for a national organization of teachers to lead educational reforms. The conversation wraps up with insights on how educators at all levels can begin to implement DEI initiatives in their schools, emphasizing the necessity of creative problem-solving and inclusive practices.

00:00 Introduction to DEI Mess
00:44 Understanding DEI in K-12
01:58 Interview with Trina English
04:58 Defining DEI and Its Challenges
08:10 DEI in Practice: K-12 Focus
12:52 The Role of Teachers in DEI
16:23 Systemic Issues and Solutions
26:14 The Petition for Teacher Leadership
32:31 The Unending Role of a Teacher
33:54 Teachers as Leaders: A Solution to Educational Issues
35:25 The Deep-Rooted Problems in K-12 Governance
36:44 Advice for Rebel Teachers
37:24 Implementing DEI: A Practical Approach
40:05 Creating Inclusive Student Unions
46:36 Addressing Specific Issues: Dress Code and Period Equity
49:42 Elementary School Perspective on Student Agency
01:01:24 Final Thoughts on DEI and Education Reform

www.rebelteachersrising.com
Petition to Save K-12 Schooling and our Precious Democracy!

Transcript

Trina: [00:00:00] Welcome to the DEI mess episodes. Diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's a hot button issue. Donald Trump is talking a lot of game about getting rid of DEI. But what is it? Do you know? Do you have an idea of what it is and then sort of see it in practice and wonder is that what it is? It's confusing, and it's even more confusing and strange in K 12.

Does it cover just racial and ethnic minorities? Does it include women? Do conversations of DEI matters also include people with disabilities, LGBTQIA students? Like who is in this conversation? Well, there's a really big difference between what DEI work should be and what it actually is on the ground floor of K 12.

So get ready, we have a lot of episodes on this theme. To begin with, we have a few introductory episodes. This one you're about to hear is just [00:01:00] interviewing me. 

We know you sense it. You see that there is something terribly wrong in our world. Are you confused about how we got here? We have a huge missing piece of the puzzle that's been kept from you.

We're rebel teachers who are shining a light on the mess in K 12 schooling that is eroding our democracy from within. No one wants our job anymore. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. We're creating a space for fellow rebels to speak truth to power and offer love and hope for the world. We are Rebel Teachers Rising.

Jess: Hello, rebel teachers. Oh my gosh. Have you been paying attention to the news lately? Everyone is talking about D. E. I. I don't even know fully what it is. I mean, I know a little bit about it, but I don't know a lot about it. So today [00:02:00] one of our co hosts is here, Trina English. She is very. Immersed in the world of DEI, I don't know if it's safe to call her an expert in DEI, but she knows so much about it, and I'm going to pick her brain about these three letters that seem to be tormenting half of the population and worrying the other half of the population, so I want a Trina Will you please, please, please explain what, like, first of all, what is your background DEI and what is it even?

Like, I really don't, I don't 

Trina: know. I mean, I think it's really awesome that you're admitting that and it's, I, you know, not surprising because DEI is so poorly defined. In our society, and it's even worse with the lack of clarity in K 12. And I'm, I would not call myself an expert. I wouldn't, because I don't have a PhD in this stuff, [00:03:00] right?

I do have a master's degree in this stuff, and I've been working in this field since the late, well, I've been learning about this field since the late 90s, working on, in it since about 2002. So, that's a lot of years. Um, and I have been toiling away trying to fix things, trying to sort things out. And it's cringy that I'm a white woman in this field.

I get it. I get it. But I think. The fact that it's cringy that because I'm a white woman has been an interesting thing for me to unpack and how our society sort of perceives women in general. But I'm here to help. I'm here to help. Yay, Xena! 

Jess: I'm so glad you're here. So, can you, can you tell me, like, what it is?

Since I'm totally, like, I, I do know. What each letter stands for. And I understand each of those words, but I don't quite understand, [00:04:00] you know, one, why people are freaking out about it. And two, you know, how they all fit together in K 12. Or it's just, it's a lot. It's, I mean, I understand. And I, and I, I have been very passionate about social justice issues, you know, since I was a little kid, since I was a little kid learning about the civil rights movement, I've been so passionate about it, but I know that you've taken it so many steps further getting involved with different organizations.

And working on different projects and you've been asked to, like, be on committees, I'm assuming. 

Trina: Well, I've started my own committee. 

Jess: You did. You did. You did. So, like, you've done so much. And so, I don't know where, I don't know where you want to start with this. Like, maybe, like, a basic introduction or just to, like, like, like, just talk to me like I'm a five year old.

Trina: Okay, so the [00:05:00] reason why we're confused about what DEI is, is because we all have our own subjective ideas about who deserves and who deserves to be talked about in this conversation and what topics are important enough to bring to the table and nobody Uh, clarifies their perspectives or their biases.

Nobody has a full on conversation about what the work should really be, and it's a lot of coded language, right? It's really confusing. It's sort of like SEL. You ask 10 teachers what SEL is, you're going to get 10 different answers. So the reason why people are confused is because the broad definition of DEI, which is diversity, equity, and inclusion work.

Is to look at a context in society, an organization, a place of business, just a place where people are and identify all the historically marginalized [00:06:00] groups in that setting and come up with strategies to help them be their best selves, right? And then also. How do you recruit and include diverse people in space?

In the first place, it winds up being really heterogeneous. Good work happens when you include lots of people, diversity of voice rather than sycophants surrounding you coming up with what I like to call inbred conversations. When you have people around you who are just like you and agree with you all the time, the stuff you come up with doesn't really work.

And we are in a society that has been intentionally Inclusive and heterogeneous full of lots of different kind of people. So we want to thrive. We need to include all those people in the work we do, right? And so if you look at like what are historically marginalized populations, it's so many things, right?

It's so many identities. It is. People with different [00:07:00] abilities, right? It is gender based conversations. It's LGBTQIA considerations. It's race based considerations. It is, you know, income inequality. It is so much, so much mental health disorders, people who are unhoused. It's a lot. Okay. Um, but in our society, the DEI work, Is, you know, people are, people are threatened by it because people who have privilege and power are threatened by anything that looks like they're, they're not accustomed to sharing their privilege and power.

And so it starts to look like oppression when equality starts to happen. And that is normal. That's a growing pain. But that's like the main reason why we're having pushback against DEI is people with privilege and power. Are nervous and they don't know what it really is. They're scared to share that privilege and power.

And I understand that it's a growing pain. We're going through as a society, [00:08:00] but not dealing with it. Not having D. I work is costing our society more money than you realize it really is. It's very expensive to not have D. I work. Um, but in K 12. DEI work is really strange, uh, because it's been very, very, very narrowly defined.

And I know this because I have worked in four organizational settings, four different organizational settings, in my master's program and three different School districts and with a consultancy group that one of my districts hired to help them start a DEI framework. So, and then I've done a ton of reading and scholarship on this problem.

And so all of these people, all of these experiences I've had with people who were boasting and bragging this huge DEI framework and focus, was really. They all consistently in the K 12 world were very [00:09:00] narrowly defining who gets the benefit of this work and ironically, DEI work is highly exclusive, which is the least, least expected outcome there.

So, um, when we look at K 12 DEI frameworks, they'll say their equity, equity outcomes for all students. Um, but in actuality, they're only narrowly defining it to be, um, racial equity. And then within that, only certain racial identities are being privileged, and to the exclusion of all the other historically marginalized identities, those students even also hold, right?

They'll call it equity work, but it's really just racial equity work. And, and I say this over and over and over again, that's great. If you're only going to talk about racial equity work. That's important and it's compelling and it's necessary, but don't call it all things when it's really only one thing.

[00:10:00] Because it winds up offending and alienating so many other potential allies in the work. So, the reason why people are confused, especially in K 12, is, Oh, they hear DEI initiatives are going to be unraveled, and they think, Oh, students with disabilities aren't going to get their needs met. Oh, Title IX is, is going to go away.

Well, I'm here to tell you right now, Title IX never got implemented in the first place. So this whole conversation about including trans students in the work is irrelevant because Title IX was never implemented in the first place for anyone. Gender is not a conversation in DEI at all in K 12. Forget about it.

They've been, they've managed to not implement 50 year old federal law. Um, but we have SPED laws that are already in effect that the Department of Ed enforces, right? That are, when you talk to K 12 leaders about Sped laws, special education laws, they're ahead. It does not [00:11:00] trigger a conversation of DEI at all.

When you say DEI, you're only talking really about African American and to a lesser extent, Latinx students. And that's really it. And then particularly only a few kinds of problems that they have, specifically behavioral interventions and the plans they Um, come up with to mitigate their high suspension expulsion and office referral rates.

And sometimes they're reading achievement there and what I would call their reading opportunity gaps. So that's really it. That's pretty much all we're doing in the name of DEI work in K 12. And I also need to point out here that regardless of the focus that is placed in some districts across the nation on racial equity work, on DEI work for African American students, Latinx students, it's not equating to better outcomes.

Like, they're not succeeding [00:12:00] and thriving because of DEI work that's been, tried out in these districts. The school to prison pipeline is still alive and well. There are people making money off of providing services at schools, but we're not using our best, most creative ideas here to actually take a DEI initiative and have it actually equate to better student outcomes.

And again, why? Because you're not asking the teachers. You're not asking us. You're missing a big part of the conversation. And I'm also going to have, um, in different episodes on this theme, I'm gonna have other people come on who know a lot more about racial equity work in K 12 to talk about why some of the things we're trying are not working.

So there's more information coming on that too. 

Jess: That's one of my burning questions is like, what, like, what do you wish that like rebel teachers out there listening, like, [00:13:00] what do you wish that they would, they would know about the conversations being held right now about D I like, I mean, and they're like, I guess one of my burning questions for you is like, this is something that happens.

On a district level, is it school based? Are there just these like, I mean, you mentioned you started your own organization, right? So, like, I mean, what, like, how do we get this? We've been bombarded. With the acronym, but like, like, if you're just sitting there thinking, well, this is something I feel like I want to defend or protect or get involved with or learn more about now that I'm hearing this, right?

Like, what? How do you even start? How do you even like as a rebel teacher listening? Like, how, like, what, what do you have to say about that? 

Trina: Well, so DEI and K 12 is necessary for a couple of reasons. One, we have a horrible lack of representation amongst the teaching [00:14:00] staff, and It's it's a problem that we've had from the beginning.

Our profession was intentionally created for women and and later we get into a gender equity episode on this theme. I'll talk more about how the structural sexism that was big into our profession at the beginning is affecting student learning today, but so we we do need to be recruiting and we do need to be actively pursuing and wooing it.

More diverse faces and people in our profession. Why because we need solutions to learning problems. We need solutions to behavioral mitigation planning. We need better ways to teach that mirror the cultural realities of our students. And so as a society. Like, we all have to get around and get behind the idea of we need to be teaching our children as best we can so that we are, uh, a literate society [00:15:00] that votes in its own best interests.

Everybody wants that. Everybody wants our democracy to maintain itself. Everybody wants for there to be trained doctors, politicians. We need. Everyone working at their highest capacity. So we need those teachers in those spaces to help us. We have a very narrow perspective as white people. We need diversity in our profession, right?

But then inside of the schools. We, our job is to help mitigate the oppression that our students are experiencing in the world and on our campus because of their historically marginalized identities. We want them to feel safe. We don't want their central nervous systems triggered by anything going on in our schools.

And we want to get the best learning outcomes. Every teacher would agree with that statement. If you're Republican, if you're a Democrat. If you're liberal, if you're conservative, if you're [00:16:00] Christian, if you're atheist, everybody can get behind the idea that we want the kids to feel calm and safe and learn and succeed.

And the only way to do that is to understand what's getting in the way of their learning opportunities and come up with creative plans. To mitigate them. And that's what DEI work is in K 12 for students. It's mitigating the harms, the historically marginalized oppression, and getting them to the best learning outcomes possible.

That's it. That's all we're doing here. 

Jess: I love that. I love how you said, like, creating these creative plans. Because I think teachers as a whole, especially rebel teachers, Rising are are specifically excited about brain creativity and like looking at this from like an outsider perspective looking in now, I see it as there's a bunch of these problems that need to be solved.

And I [00:17:00] too would agree. I mean, there's, there's a great need to attract diverse people to the profession of all different You know of all different backgrounds there. We really need we really really need that because together like you're right Like we're just so much better with with that kind of diversity in in k 12 But yeah, I just love how you how you're equating it to like this creative problem to solve I think that's so much like that's so That's so much deeper than, like, what you hear about, like, on the news.

You hear about it, like, it's this, uh, this battle, this, this, this either, either, whichever news you're listening to, it's either this evil entity that needs to be destroyed, or it's this weak entity that's getting attacked, right? Like, you don't ever hear it being called, like, a set of a creative problem solving framework.

Yeah. To, to, to help with the, [00:18:00] to help with the problems that we see as teachers. And of course, if you're a teacher, I mean, if you're a teacher anywhere, you can see that a lot of the teachers do not represent the student populations of the people that they're serving, regardless of where you're a teacher at.

I mean, I used to teach in a very tiny rural community, uh, but there was a lot of diversity there, believe it or not. I mean, it was, and it was the middle, uh, I'm just going to say it out loud. It was the middle of Trump country. All of my students, uh, regardless of their backgrounds, um, or racial identities, they were Republican, right?

Their parents were Republicans and, and, uh, but there was like, such a lack of, like, there were still diversity in that community, but a lack of educators. To meet the needs of those students, and we had to be kind of again, a creative problem solver, trying to [00:19:00] find guest speakers, trying to find people with other points of view to constantly bring those into the classroom all the time.

I mean, it is like, it would definitely be a little easier. To just have a different, like, like a different set of educators, like, willing to do the work, willing to do the job, but it is such a difficult job. So those are some of my thoughts as I was really excited when you said creative, because I feel like that is something that people can relate to if they're listening right now.

And they're thinking, uh, D I daggers, but then they creative. They might be like. Oh, well, I do like to be creative. I am a problem solver. 

Trina: Well, I think a lot of people conflate DEI with affirmative action. Yeah, and I think a lot of people think that what we're doing with DEI is we are lowering the standard somehow to get [00:20:00] at a better representation of our population in all of these different settings, collegiate settings, workplace settings, this idea that we're going to lower the bar for your firefighters so that we have more diverse firefighters.

Like, that's not the work, that's just some idea that people who are threatened by DEI are espousing all over the internet. That's not what this is, like, at all. We already have these people in our population. We're already very, very diverse. And so if we're going to serve everyone, Adequately and not have our social safety net just breaking from people who are using our emergency rooms who don't have a college degree who are unhoused like if we want to thrive together, right and save a lot of money as a society, we need to be a bridge between the people who have the power and privilege to the people who live here [00:21:00] and share this nation with us.

I mean, that's just all there is to this is not affirmative action, you know, um, so the, but the problem is the pushback is coming from people of power and privilege. I get that. But what, and I think a lot of people on the left understand that too. But the other thing, the other sort of nail in the coffin of DEI in K 12, Especially, but in the broader society, too, is its exclusivity.

Right? So you are instantly alienating all these other potential allies. Like, if we were really clear in DEI about income inequality, if we could get behind what it means to be a person in the middle class. Lower middle class or the underclass in our society, you would bring on board the lion's share of Americans into the DEI conversation.

If they could see themselves and their struggles in the work, that would instantly bring everyone on board. Cause we're really [00:22:00] only talking about 1 percent of the population here. Um, having 99 percent of the wealth, right? So but they have intentionally excluded income inequality conversations. It doesn't come up in society, not since the Occupy Wall Street movement, um, which is a shame because that was an attempt at trying to get at how come.

Banks and corporations got bailed out during the Great Recession, but not people. Um, but anyways, the, in K 12, there is no conversation about income inequality, but Title I, um, is actually giving extra money for low income students, and it's defined by, we talked about this in another episode, it's defined by the number of students who are getting free and reduced lunch.

Right. So we are already acknowledging that students who have low income are getting extra funding. Now, the problem is, is that we don't get any bang for [00:23:00] our buck. We're not seeing any greater student learning outcomes because of that money being spent. Because it's not being invested properly. Why?

Because the people who know how to spend that money don't get to make those decisions. the veteran teachers. And you've got a bunch of school leaders running around being lobbied by corporations, um, talking, whispering in their ear to spend our taxpayer dollars, especially our title one extra monies from the Fed on this, that, and the other crap that we, we can't really use.

Um, that doesn't that doesn't get invested into the kids wisely at all. It's money misspent really. So if the teachers were making those decisions, you would see so much greater return on our investment. Yeah. So are we dealing with DEI already in K 12 through the feds? Yes, we, we have the IDA. laws that provide for special education from the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

We are getting extra money for low income students. [00:24:00] So when you talk to school leaders about DEI, they're not thinking about that. They're only thinking about racial equity work. And they're being very narrow and exclusive about that focus because that is what is being sort of like sold to them at. The collegiate level where you go to get your master's degree in ed leadership or your PhD and you want a social justice focus, um, institution of higher learning.

They are establishing very narrow, exclusive frameworks at that level. And so then you're seeing that mirrored by the nation's top. K 12 social justice warrior types. They're being very narrow and exclusive. And then the, um, consultants that some school districts are hiring, their entire focus is narrow and exclusive, even though if you go to their websites, they say We are here to provide equity based solutions so all your students can succeed, but yet, if you go down further in their website, the rhetoric is only about [00:25:00] African American students, and so those are really tough conversations to have, like, I don't know, like, what do you think, Jess?

Do you think it's obvious, like, what I'm saying, like, teachers, Would agree with that statement that, that, that's what they've noticed too? 

Jess: Well, what I'm, what I'm hearing from you is that one, you know, DEI benefits everyone, but nobody really knows that. Nobody really knows it. And two, you know, teachers, if teachers We're involved in the decision making and that's, that's the whole goal of our podcast, right?

It's the whole goal of our podcast. We have a petition on rebelteachersrising. com that you can go check out to just give teachers. A voice in what's happening. I think if teachers knew one, you know that this is benefiting everyone, including themselves and to like, but if something benefits [00:26:00] everyone, um, except the 1 percent like you mentioned, right?

Like, why is it so hard to get that message out? That's these are some of the things that I'm thinking right now, but do you want to do you want to kind of talk about. Like our petition just a little bit in this episode, so we can kind of, because I mean, we do have, we talk about these giant problems in K 12, and we do have kind of this solution framework that would get rid of a lot of these problems, or at least help to solve them, make them better, and there, I don't think it's just a band aid.

I mean, I think it's a real solution that makes sense. 

Trina: Well, okay, so before and I'll talk about the framework because I think it's a good idea to mention it here, but like if you share up some of the problems with teaching, like, for example, when we talk about teacher pay and teacher preparation, the huge mess that that is like we can't effectively recruit [00:27:00] ethnic and racial minorities.

People of people of ethnic and racial minorities into our profession if it's a very unattractive low paying gig, like the what's perpetuating the the lion's share of teachers being white and female is because it was set up with the structural problem from the beginning of teachers need supplemental income from a spouse to float all of this mess, and they need generational wealth in order to manage this and make it work like we've you brought one of your listeners in, um, Was it Janice?

Janice who came on, who was talking about how she didn't have access to generational wealth, even though she was white, not all white people do, but of the people who have generational wealth, it's mostly white people, right? But if you don't have access to generational wealth, You can't get, rise out of poverty, you can't pay off your loans, like you can't make this thing work because it's so expensive and the pay is so crappy because of step and column.

So that's like a [00:28:00] major barrier that we need to deal with if we want to have like a really effective, uh, teaching staff that reflects the kids that we are teaching. But the framework is really, it starts with a very simple premise. Why do we have to leave our profession as teachers in order to lead it?

That's my quote right on the website because I got my master's of ed leadership in a social justice driven Institution of higher learning. I have my administrator credential, but if I take an administrator's job I lose tenure and I am now tethered to To the superintendent's vision of the district who isn't able to develop and execute a plan that is most effective for the kids.

Right. It has to mirror the populist wishes of the school board and the school board. They don't have expert knowledge and education. Most of them have never even [00:29:00] been teachers, which is insane to me. We've set up this really bizarre system. And so. If you want people who have the best knowledge of what needs to happen and, um, can act in accordance with what is morally and ethically correct for the kids, you need to let teachers lead it.

And really, we're the only credentialed profession in America where we don't sit on our own governing boards. Think about real estate agents, medical doctors. Lawyers, like, they all get to sit on boards where they establish what is the standards of practice. What do we need to do to be fully credentialed?

What happens if one of us steps out of line and they need a disciplinary action? Like, that's all done by the board itself. Teachers don't have this. And that is at the heart of everything that's going on wrong in K 12 schooling today. So The petition really takes this problem back to the drawing board [00:30:00] back to the K 12 subcommittee in Congress, because Congress established our profession in the 1830s and says, we need a national organization of teachers, call it whatever the heck you want to call it.

That isn't, I'm not talking about the NEA. I'm not talking about the AFT. Those are lobbying groups. I love them. They do good work. They don't actually get to pull the levers and make the decisions. All they can do is cajole and lobby other people who actually have the power. So what I'm saying is, teachers, current teachers, who have the right credential, who have the right experience, Um, and they're going to be able to use that experience are released part of their day to do the work of leading this profession.

I mean, teacher evaluations, writing curriculum, stop buying it from textbook companies run by people who never taught or haven't taught in a bazillion years and never taught that content area, you know, um, you can release us to do a lot of the stuff that administrators are currently doing today. And even serve at [00:31:00] county, state and federal levels of organizations.

So imagine if you're. You're our national board representative from the state of California, the state of Nevada, the state of Massachusetts. You're representing the whole state and you go serve in D. C. at the U. S. Department of Ed, you're released for maybe a two year span. But you are always still a teacher at the same time.

So, designation inside of K 12. Right. That is teacher leader sits toe to toe with admin. I'm not saying we do away with school boards. I'm not saying we do away with superintendents. I'm not saying that although it would be rad if we could have a profession and have a system that more closely mirrors the American Medical Association.

But what I am saying is, for the love of God, the only people who know how to do this are us and we have no say at all. It's, it's ludicrous. 

Jess: I agree, and I love it when you go off [00:32:00] about the framework, the solution framework. It is like my favorite thing. That's why I'm going to start. I'm going to start prodding you to talk about it in every episode because I just think it's it's we're talking about these huge issues that are kind of hard to understand.

We all see the problems as teachers. We're on the. I mean, we are the ones on the ground. We have our feet on the floor worth on the ground, right? We are the ones seeing the problems. We're seeing the problems and the problems are soul crushing to us, right? Like it's it's it's dimming a lot of our lights and it's it's so it's just it's I mean, I know I don't know a single teacher that doesn't go home and think about their job all night long.

Like, I don't know a single teacher who can just turn off a switch and just say, okay, okay. I'm done being a teacher now. Now I'm going to go do this thing, right? Like the wearing the hat of the teacher is like, it never goes away. Really. It just like, like when you're a teacher, you're always, you're always [00:33:00] thinking like a teacher.

And unfortunately you're thinking of the problems of a teacher. And so I think this is just one way, like, why wouldn't you ask the person dealing with all of the problems? You know, it's like asking the doctor, you know, what disease do you think this person has? Like, why aren't you asking the teacher?

Like, what is the problem in this classroom with these kids? I mean, but like, we're totally being ignored all the time. So that's why I love this. And I love that. You know, our podcast goes over so many interesting issues, I mean, and they're all so topical right now because of everything going on in the news, I think people are like, they forget about these things for for a while and then they come back up and they're like, whoa.

Okay, so we need, we do need to care about this again, right? But we should always be caring about it. And if we had teachers as leaders in leadership positions, I don't think we [00:34:00] would ever just kind of like, you know, brush these things under the rug. Like it would always be in the forefront of people's minds, because this is always in the forefront of teachers minds.

A lot of these problems with inequities and, um, learning gaps and, You know, the low reading rates, I mean, we're constantly seeing these issues and they come up again year after year. We're going home with them every day. So anyway, I just, I appreciate you going over that. 

Trina: I think a lot of people, um, struggle to imagine how that could actually happen.

And of course, this is a huge undertaking. Like I've said to you before, I, I don't believe I'm going to see this change in my lifetime. But it's important that we start talking about what it's going to take to fix K 12 schooling. Because the problems are so deeply entrenched that we are really under threat of losing our democracy.

We truly are. And if we want to create well educated, [00:35:00] thoughtful citizens that can rise to the occasion of running the strongest democracy in the world and really maintaining America's standing in the world, right? I think that a lot of people on the right agree, you know. Conservatives want America to be the number one nation in the world.

Right? So if we are going to maintain that we have got to produce better educated students. And the reason why we're spending all this money and not getting any return for our investment is because of the corruption, apathy and ignorance of K 12 governance. They don't answer to anyone like everybody wants to talk about shutting down the U.

S. Department of Ed. Mhm. They have very little power over what happens inside of school districts. They ensure that we do the federal laws of, like, Title I schooling, extra funding, but the money isn't being well spent. It's just being allocated. It's not being well spent well, properly. And they also require the special education [00:36:00] laws.

Well, the only reason why we have any implementation of those laws that This point is because of all the lawyers and law firms that have rose up to litigate cases to win money for their firms. Like, we still don't have any Title IX implementation. Like, I don't want to shut down the U. S. Department of Ed.

I want to embolden it and strengthen it. I want to provide a standardized kind of education across the board for all of our kids, um, but that is tweaked at the micro local level because teachers inside of each school inside of each district know how to best deliver the education to their kids. So I'm not saying that we're all doing exactly the same thing.

Not at all. You know. 

Jess: What is your, what is your advice to a rebel teacher listening out there who's just like, Oh my gosh, what do I even do right now? How do I even start? Like, I mean, and I know a lot of the rebels teachers [00:37:00] rising, listening out there already involved in like their unions and they're involved in, you know, different things going on at school.

But like, do you have any advice as someone with So many years of experience working in this world, like, what is your advice for people right now? Like, what can they do? 

Trina: You mean for DEI work specifically? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I can talk about the pilot program I developed recently at my site, but really what you do is you start by looking at who are your kids.

And being really tenacious and creative and driven to look through your, your, your data to really understand who do you have and who do you, who are your kids and who are your staff. And just like you said, bringing in people from the outside to help you see things you're missing is, is absolutely critical.

So for me, I came into contact with a theoretical framework known as civic engagement. Civic [00:38:00] engagement is a type of student engagement. Um, it's like a tier 1 behavioral intervention for students. So it, it's sort of like the response and reaction to, um, a lot of like the PBIS, character strong, you know, a lot of that canned, uh, character education curriculums, right?

So it says instead of talking down to kids and incentivizing them. With, you know, immediate individualized incentive plans or any culturally irrelevant practices, you bring them in and help give them self possession and agency to run things with you in an age appropriate way. Mindfully, it's tough to know what is appropriate level of involvement for a child in a middle school, an elementary school, a high school.

And so you're constantly trying to figure out what should be adult led and where should the kids, where they fit into this. And as long as you're continuously thinking about it. [00:39:00] And, and engaging with people around that conversation, you're doing, you know, you're doing right by the kids. But civic engagement was where I started, because I could not stand the canned character education we were getting.

And so I looked at my school population, and this was in a, um, high achieving district, okay? I've, I've taught in a number of settings, um, where that was not the case. But this was a high achieving district. And they had no student organizations for any of the marginalized identities. And they were mostly students from the Indian subcontinent or East Asia.

A little, little tiny bit of white students, African American students, and Latinx students. But mostly it was students from the Indian subcontinent and East Asia. And there were, and the staff was mostly white. Right? So you have a huge divide between the staff and the kids. And the only student organization around identity that we [00:40:00] had was a Christian club.

Yeah, that was all we had. So I went, huh, okay. So I started to dig and dig and dig. And when I was doing my master's of leadership degree and writing my thesis and doing the work for my administrative services credential. I came across, um, the idea of intersectionality, right? So in intersectionality, you understand that people can hold more than one marginalized identity at a time.

So you don't just privilege one racial identity and ignore all the other identities that they have, right? And so I then developed it into this inclusive intersectional framework, developing and growing on really the ideas of Paolo Fieri, um, Kimberly Crenshaw, who writes a lot about, um, critical race theory, but she also was the very first person to coin and use the term intersectional.

And then there's [00:41:00] another sociologist whose framework I. Delve deeply into her name is Dr. Lisa Boleg and really what it what it turned into this hybrid patchwork theoretical approach is let's identify all of our historically marginalized identities on our campus. Let's find an adult that represents each of those identities to run a student union, right?

And then create a practice inside of the union to do a few different things. One, raise awareness and celebrate cultural identities. Um, but two, allow the students to lean into their experiences on our campus to really, uh, Describe and document what they are experiencing on our campuses. So when I started this work at my site, we didn't even know how many Muslim students we had at all.

We didn't know because we don't we didn't collect that data. And so I asked when we were starting up all of the unions, I had to get really creative to get the black student [00:42:00] union started. For example, like we had very few African American teachers on our campus. And so You know, you don't go to them and say, well, you're black.

You should run this union. That's like not cool at all. You advertise it to the school community. We have a need for this. Are you interested? And if nobody responds, you got to keep looking. So I looked outside of our school community and I found at our high school, we had a black student union being run by this really awesome school counselor.

And so he then came in and started doing it. For us at our middle school. And once people could see it happening, then they started to get excited to want to do it. So I had another teacher who once she saw it happening, stepped in and took over it because you can't if you don't see yourself represented on a campus or even in culture, like you can't imagine being in that position, right?

And so then I with the Muslim student union, like there is a really complicated and nuanced, um, [00:43:00] long history about marginalization and oppression of oppression of Muslim students in India. Like it's a complicated, very nuanced history that is just completely lost on white people. I mean, Muslims in America are oppressed already.

But then in this context, if you've got this large majority of students from India. And you don't understand that cultural reality of their caste based system, you know, that they still adhere to in this country, then you couldn't possibly understand how Muslim students are kind of getting it from all sides, right?

So, um, I couldn't find anyone to run that student union, and I took it out to the larger district community, couldn't get anyone to start that. Union from there. So I contacted them. Um, Muslim Student Association. It's an internet. Sorry, a national organization that helps startups doing unions at the collegiate level.

They put me in touch with my local mosque and [00:44:00] then people at my local mosque. Found Shazia Khan, who is now a really close friend of mine, who I adore, who's going to come on the podcast and talk about what we went through together to get the Muslim Student Union started. Um, and so anyways, we eventually got an AAPI union.

Um, started, uh, we got a black student union started, a Latinx student union started. We got the feminist student union started, which is what I run because I had been doing that in my previous district. And then the idea was we all come together as advisors and maybe a couple of student officers once a month and start reporting to this organizational body.

What's. Actually going on here. So you have got to be very intentional around creating a student council experience that allows your kids to really talk about their experiences so you can start addressing it. And when we did that, we found out about all the sexual harassment that girls are facing at school every day about period stigma [00:45:00] and shame.

How bad the Islamophobia problem was on our campus, we had no idea. Like, we didn't even know because of a lack of institutional memory, um, amongst us, that a Muslim student union had attempted to start a number of years ago, and the students in that organization did not have any, um, support, and so it fell apart.

So what, as adults in these spaces, we make sure that they don't go away. They're not beholden to the whims of a kid who wants to start it up every year. It's not like, you know, a special interest club, like a gardening club or a chess club. These unions, they exist because the adults in them make sure that they exist.

And when I was in a previous district, we had like a stipend the teachers could get if they were willing to run the GSA, the Gay Straight Alliance, um, or the BSU, the Black Student Union, but that's all we had. We didn't have any other positions for, [00:46:00] um, for females, for other racial identities. So again, super exclusive.

Um, and I forgot to mention too, we also have an LGBTQIA union as well. Um, so that's what you could do. You, this is a long answer to your question. What can I do? Sit down, identify your students, create safe, brave spaces to find out how they're actually experiencing your culture. Come up with a way to creatively address it and continuously lean in with love and curiosity to know more about what's going on on your campus that is hurting the kids.

And when you resolve these issues like we found out, we found out that one of the number one, um, reasons why students at our school were being, um, Sent to the office and I'm getting office referrals and discipline was the dress code. It was girls violating the dress code and it wasn't being applied. Um, it wasn't being applied equally amongst all of the girls.

It [00:47:00] was curvier. Girls were getting coded. They call it getting coded more and the shame of having to work or P. E. Clothes, you know, The rest of the day, and it was clogging up the office, and the administrators were having to deal with it. You had teachers doing this gross thing of sort of looking up and down on a girl's body.

It's just icky all around. So we adopted a non sexist dress code. We actually used the model dress code by Oregon National Organization for Women, and now we don't have that problem anymore. Like, boom, bang, boom, it's done, right? The other problem we had, period equity. We passed a law in California a couple years ago, well, more than a couple now, and it's called AB 367, so it requires, now it requires that 3rd through 12th grade campuses provide free period care products in the bathrooms, um, for all female bathrooms, staff and students.

All, um, gender neutral bathrooms, and one male restroom even, and that one male restroom piece has been really hard for us to [00:48:00] implement. But, um, because It's like you have to confront your transphobia, too. It's like, here we are doing two very hard things at the same time, talking about periods and dealing with transphobia.

But I mean, once we started doing that work, we formed the Period Equity Task Force. We started asking the students and surveying them. So many absences were happening as a result of lack of period care products, access, and period pain, lack of education. Um, and so we, and we also found out our students were being harassed about their periods too.

And we addressed that. I mean, it took time, but you don't know the problems until you ask. And I had administrators say, Oh, we don't have a problem here. Students aren't reporting that. That's such a wild theory that you have just because you're not hearing doesn't mean there isn't a problem. The kids aren't telling you because of shame.

They're not going to come and tell you that so and so has called me the n word. They're [00:49:00] feeling embarrassed and shameful about it. Like you have to ask the kids and it has to be someone from their community asking them in a very Safe place. So create those safe places. Find the people to come in that represent those communities and listen with your whole heart and not get defensive because it's so hard for us.

We're all trying so hard here that when we hear we're messing up. The first knee jerk response is to start to feel angry and defensive. And you just can't. You just can't with this work. But if you go through all of this stuff, what emerges on the other end are just happier kids who are learning better.

And doesn't, isn't that what we all want? 

Jess: I love all that and I wanted, I wanted to chime in a little bit as an elementary school teacher, because I feel like a lot of like, what you're saying, I'm like, looking at it from an elementary school lens and I'm like, oh, student unions in elementary school. That doesn't really exist because of the structure of elementary school, right?

Like, [00:50:00] it's, it's kind of a difficult, it's a different kind of environment, but I was like, having ideas for like, elementary school teachers, Listening out there, like what they could do, and I think definitely like knowing the students, you know, serving the parents, because that's how you get to know the students better and definitely using like children's literature and biographies to, like, bring in those, those culturally relevant voices to your classroom can be something like that.

You do that isn't really talked a lot about. Um, in elementary school, and I'm, like, a really big fan of, like, using stories to try to get kids to open up more and also see themselves in those stories. So, I wanted to, that was my 1st thought, is I just wanted to bring in, like, an elementary teacher's perspective, because a lot of people out there, like.

This is like very secondary world, what you're talking about right now. I'm just like, wow. Like every time you guys talk about student unions and I, when I say you guys, as our [00:51:00] other cohost, Amanda, uh, she works at a high school setting and you guys are always talking about student unions and I'm just like, that's like something that doesn't really exist in the elementary school world, you know?

And so, but we have had people come in from the community and start like after school programs. We've had guest speakers. It's just all about reaching out to the resources you have, but like continually doing that. And that's what's kind of hard in elementary school. I think is, uh, and what and you need to have a system where you can reach people.

That's our biggest problem in elementary school. So, like, my school uses classroom dojo. That's the way. Every single parent at school is connected through that program, so they can all receive a survey. They can all receive messages. They can communicate back and forth with admin and all the teachers, but they're all on the same page and they can download it on their phones.

So they're constantly getting messages. I think, and I'm trying to remember in [00:52:00] middle school, I think we used an app called Remind, but it's just a way, like, how do you get the word out? When there's so many different ways to communicate, you need to have everyone agree to use the same communication system to get these kind of like surveys and stuff out there.

Um, and that. That was, that was my first thought. And then my second was, it was really interesting what you were saying, like how you're creating student agency through these student unions and stuff. Because when I went to New Zealand, I got to visit a bunch of elementary schools and they were run on the concept of student agency.

They were self running classrooms, meaning it was very different than what you see in America. When you go into a classroom in New Zealand, many of them, not saying all of them, but many of them, you walk in and the students are guiding their own learning. They're kind of choosing what they're going to learn about that day and the teachers.

Can leave and go get a cup of coffee [00:53:00] for like 10 or 15 minutes and totally leave the students alone. And there aren't any problems, incidents, any kind of bad behaviors. Um, but it's like to think about that. And I was just like this. I was in this teacher's classroom and he's like, come on, let's go get a cup of tea.

And I was thinking, like, it was a second grade classroom. It was eight year olds. And I'm like, you want to leave them alone? Like what? I felt very uncomfortable. And he's like, yeah, that's like totally normal. Look at what they're doing right now. And yeah, we just leave and go get this and that. But the kids are so excited about learning.

And it's because their civics education revolves around student agency. Everything they do is a choice. And how they want to learn certain things, and they would have like these, um, lesson boards, right? With all these topics on them, and then they would choose a topic that they wanted to go learn about, [00:54:00] and it would tell them a classroom in the school to go learn about that topic, and they would just go off and learn about that topic in that classroom, and it would be, they would be teaching each other the subjects.

It was, it was a little Montessori, Um, it was a little like alternative school ish, but this was like their regular public school. And what I wanted to bring up with these ideas of student agency and bringing in civics education like this, like very strong civics education, is New Zealand has a 99 percent literacy rate.

So like you think, Oh my gosh, this is so crazy. This is willy nilly. They're like in all these different rooms, learning all these different things are being left alone. And, but you know what they actually are is they have ownership over their learning in a way that like, I feel like we just don't really understand here.

Like we don't really. We talk about them having ownership as like, Oh, you do your work. So you have ownership over it. But like, if you don't have a choice in what your work [00:55:00] is or, or like a choice of what you're learning about, that's not ownership. That's like a demand that someone's placing on you. And so anyway, as you were talking, I was just like, Oh my gosh, the back of my head was just screaming, New Zealand, 99 percent literacy rate.

Students being left alone and excited to learn about school and their whole system, and I took pictures of it while I was there as they had their character education system on the wall and every single thing were levels of student agency, and it was really, really cool. And so, like, I think that's cool that you're able using your education and background, you're able to implement a tiny piece of that.

In at your school with the student ends and getting people excited about these things. So. 

Trina: Well, I mean, it wasn't easy, and it still isn't easy. It's still a battle. Like, they had to come up against a lot of weird, old ideas people had about children. Like, for example, uh, they would say, [00:56:00] Trina, you can't start the Feminist Student Union.

You have to wait for a kid to ask for it. Like, this weird idea was, it has to be student led, student led, student led. And, of course, uh, I would say to them, they can't imagine this because they don't see it. And it's not a child's job to fix broken systems. It's not a child's job to implement absent systems.

They have a role in this work, but It is complicated. For example, when we're talking about Title IX advocacy work, like, or even just period equity work, how much of a role should a child have? There is harm associated with this advocacy work. Like, how do you get informed consent, even? Um, it's very, very, very tricky, but these ideas that we have about children are really Getting in the way because they can do more than than we think, Um, but they also deserve to be kids and stay kids and not get burnt out.

But, um, this idea of student [00:57:00] agency is like critical piece of, you know, not seeing them as empty vessels that we pour our knowledge into. They arrive at school every day with a lot of wisdom to share. They have experiences. Um, And they have, there are developmentally appropriate ways to involve children in the governance of the schools at every level.

You just have to figure out what that is. And when we talk about like adapting the civic engagement model that I've implemented at my site, at the elementary level, it's just going to take elementary school teachers to decide what that looks like. And what you've described in New Zealand sounds perfect.

But also, you know, one of the things we did at our site is we had courageous conversations with our Muslim parents. Because once the Muslim Student Union started, then we started to hear whispers here and there of concerns that parents were having about some of our practices. And if we didn't create a space for them, they were going to continue to talk about it amongst [00:58:00] themselves and get angrier and feel alienated.

So I created a brave space and we brought them all in and we listened to them and we found out what some of their concerns were. And now, you know, we create, um, we bridge. We create a bridge during Ramadan when the kids are fasting. We had no awareness of what the kids were going through when they were fasting before we listened to the parents.

They had concerns about a number of things that they thought it was just their job to grin and bear and they had no idea. That we would be listening and then, um, to their concerns and be willing to try to change. And from all of this beautiful work, we have a Muslim cultural center. The parents who got involved in my school just kept going.

They created a Muslim cultural center. We have a vibrant Muslim, um, student union that we celebrate Eid now every year, like it grew and grew and grew. So involving the parents, I think is a great way to deal with the issue [00:59:00] in elementary, but also what you're talking about of giving the kids agency and choice.

Um, and I think there's still a way to listen to, to have courageous conversations that are age appropriate. Um, with elementary school students and you've got to be inclusive and intersectional like I remember teaching a former principal the word ableist once he was like, wait, what? I mean, yeah, you're what you just said is ableist.

He was like, how do you spell that? I'm like, you're you're Creating, um, we were doing this work on our LCAP and he was, he said something, I can't even remember what, that was leaving out like students with a specific kind of disability. And the only way you can imagine what that is, is if you're having conversations with people with different abilities.

Like you have to just be very humble all the time. I do too, like I'm, I'm constantly, the more I learn, the more, the more I realize I don't know very much. 

Jess: I totally agree and this chat is an example of that is like, sometimes you [01:00:00] think like, oh, boy, I mean, I've been a teacher now for 14 years and a lot of different settings and I still didn't really know what D.

I look like in K12. so this is, uh. You have to humble yourself and be willing to learn more if you're going to make this, make it in this profession, you know, and I think that's, it's kind of hard pill to swallow sometimes, because I think teachers kind of value their knowledge and we value, you know, being, um, you know, being an authority figure in the room.

Right? But like, sometimes you do have to humble yourself in order to make things better. And all the examples you've given today, I think are just really incredible. Um, incredible, you know, pieces of work that you've done that that are making things better at your school site and in your community. So I applaud you for those things.

Those are so that's so incredible what you've done. And I hope that people listening. made me feel a little inspired on like [01:01:00] where to begin and what to think about all this DEI stuff and just kind of like made me like look at things in a different perspective. I'm hoping listeners out there are like us that they're rebel teachers that want to shake things up and make things better for kids.

And I think that they are. And you've given us like so many things to think about today. So thank you, Trina. 

Trina: You're welcome. Can I end on a couple of final thought? 

Jess: Yes. 

Trina: Um, the pushback. In DEI. Okay, so I've said a lot of things here today that could easily be construed as an attack against K 12 DEI frameworks, and I am very critical, and so what I want to say to you is that, like, especially people at my master's program, like, I love you guys.

You're doing amazing work. I learned so much in my program, and I also appreciate I want to tell you that you need to open up your [01:02:00] mind about who is involved in DEI, social justice based reforms in K 12. Like you have blind spots and I humbly submit to you that you need to open up your definition and be more expansive, um, because you're leaving a lot of kids out and you're ignoring a lot of problems.

And also for the other people who are resistant against DEI at all. I'm just going to say to you this, like, you can support it for the truly selfish reason that if we, if we are a more equitable, fair, inclusive society, we're going to be spending a lot less money on hospital bills, on public works projects, our society will be safer, and we'll be able to compete more, more and more.

Competently on the world stage. Like, do it for yourself, , because leaving people out and, and, and letting them languish on the sidelines is just hurting everyone. That's it for today. [01:03:00] Thanks for listening. Everyone. Please let us know if you want to join in this or any conversation on the podcast 'cause we have only begun to delve into each topic and we need your voice to do.

Don't forget to go to rebelteachersrising. com to sign the petition and join the movement to save K 12 schooling and our democracy. And remember, we may just be teachers, but we're the only ones who can fix this mess.