This April 21 Zoom event marked the launch of a set of more than two dozen curriculum and resources on teaching for racial equity and housing justice, designed in collaboration with Bay Area teachers. Coming out of a two year-long project in collaboration with Bay Area teachers, these materials are designed to make more accessible the Bay Area's histories of racial dispossession in housing as well as its histories of resistance and housing justice organizing. You can find these resources here.
Transcript
Daniele Fogel:
We're going to go ahead and get started. If you haven't introduced yourselves in the chat yet, go ahead and write your name, your pronouns, where you're located, and how you're connected to this work. Thank you so much for joining us on this Thursday afternoon. We're really excited that you're here and we're really excited for this curriculum launch event.Daniele Fogel:
My name is Danielle Fogel and I'm the teacher fellowship coordinator at the Othering & Belonging Institute. I've been working on this teacher partnership project with the Othering & Belonging Institute for the past two years. I was a high school English teacher for about eight years and also an instructional coach, and I'm really excited to be here. We have quite a line for you today.Daniele Fogel:
We're going to start with a land acknowledgement. We would like to first acknowledge that we are on unseated Ohlone land, the territory of Huchiun on Lisjan Ohlone land, more specifically for the San Francisco East Bay. If you're not in the San Francisco East Bay, or if you're in another place, go ahead and drop in the chat whose land you're on. You can find that info via native-land.ca if... or yeah. It's the link at the bottom of this as well.Daniele Fogel:
We recognize and acknowledge that the Ohlone people are a federally unrecognized tribe, partly because of the value of the land in the Bay Area, which relates to our topic today. The fact that the Ohlone are federally unrecognized tribe continues to have serious consequences for the Ohlone people today. So we'd like to recognize and bring attention to the ongoing struggles by Ohlone people for federal recognition, as well as to local struggles, including the fight to save the west Berkeley shell mound and others.Daniele Fogel:
We'd like to urge folks to go beyond land recognition and move towards action, steps for which are outlined in the Beyond Acknowledgement guide through native.org, also at the bottom of the slide. One action that we can take today is paying the Shuumi Land Tax to the Sogorea Te' Land Trust, which is a land rematriation project led by urban Indigenous women. You can learn more on Sogorea Te's website as well as on the native.org Beyond Recognition guide to find ways to engage in action based solidarity with your local Indigenous communities.Daniele Fogel:
Take a moment to look at today's flow. This is what we're going to be talking about today. So just take a minute to look at it for yourself, to see where we're going to be going. Okay. So I want to start by giving a little bit of background on OBI, sorry, the Othering & Belonging Institute, which is also known as OBI. And also specifically the teacher partnership work that we're going to be talking about today.Daniele Fogel:
The Othering & Belonging Institute, AKA OBI is located on UC Berkeley's campus. And it's an interdisciplinary institute that takes a multidisciplinary approach to developing forward looking solutions to our world's greatest challenges, including Islamophobia, housing, policing, race, LGBTQ issues, and more. And OBI does this by advancing research, policy, and ideas. They examine and remediate the processes of exclusion, marginalization, and structural inequity. What they call othering in order to build a world based on inclusion, fairness, justice, and care for the earth, what they call belonging.Daniele Fogel:
And so, one of OBI's areas of work is housing. And we'll hear a little bit more later about why, but this curriculum launch and these curriculum and resources that we'll be talking about today is really a culmination of two years worth of work, in partnership with Bay Area teachers. And so this came out of OBI's desire to connect with Bay Area teachers, specifically around their work, around housing, and race and housing in the Bay Area.Daniele Fogel:
And so, this teacher partnership work started in the summer of 2020, where we convened a cohort of about 20 Bay Area teachers for a week long summer institute. And during the summer institute, teachers did a deep dive into histories of racial exclusion, and histories of racial dispossession and housing, as well as examining resistance to these histories, and current housing justice organizing work.Daniele Fogel:
We continued this program last summer, summer of 2021, sorry, we convened our second cohort of teachers and we added a little bit to it. So there was the same deep dive within the first week where teachers were learning about history as a racial disposition of housing and housing organizing work. And we added a second week where teachers could develop curriculum and did develop curriculum for other teachers to teach about this issue.Daniele Fogel:
This is the information from our second cohort. You can find the link up here, the Bitly link, or you can simply type in, I think it's a teacher fellowship, Othering & Belonging Institute, and you'll find that as well. So I'm going to stop sharing my screen and kick it over to Nicole to talk a bit about OBI's work on housing.Nicole Montojo:
Thanks, Daniela. I mean, Daniele, sorry. Let me see if I can pull up my screen share. Sorry, everyone. My name is Nicole Montojo and I'm a housing research analyst at the Othering & Belonging Institute. Thanks for joining us today. Can you see the slide, Daniele maybe? Let me know if it's showing up right. Okay. I'm just going to talk very briefly about OBI's focus on housing, and why race and housing was the topic that we brought into this teacher fellowship.Nicole Montojo:
Housing is a basic need and it's really essential to belonging. It determines so much about our lives, our health and wellbeing, life expectancy, and access to opportunity in our connection to community. And due to the long history of racial exclusion and discrimination in housing, and also land dispossession, that has shaped who has access to stable, affordable housing and who doesn't today. And so with that, housing justice is also about racial and social justice.Nicole Montojo:
For some, the history of housing, exclusion and racialized exclusion through housing policy is not something that's widely known, and often housing policy discussions we've seen, don't always acknowledge this history. While there's a wide understanding that we're in a housing crisis and in many ways we all feel the pain of the housing crisis. We're still struggling to move forward and figure out what it means to really take steps toward achieving housing justice.Nicole Montojo:
As we have been engaging in these issues, we've come to realize that when it comes to understanding what it takes to undo the legacy of housing exclusion, we have to start with understanding the history. And so that's part of the work that we've been doing over the last couple of years and the work that we dove into with the teacher fellowship. And so this is just one slide, summarizing the history that we have examined in some of our research, looking at the different ways that housing exclusion has been perpetuated through things like state violence, and dispossession, and extra judicial, and militia violence, but also specific policies around racially restrictive covenants, zoning in different forms, racialized public housing policies, urban renewal, and practices perpetuated by the real estate industry. Like racial steering and block busting, and more toward the 1970s white flight and municipal fragmentation.Nicole Montojo:
It's really key in looking at the history to understand how that connects to what is happening today, and how disparities exist in impacts of the housing crisis, particularly when it comes to these areas, concentration of wealth and poverty, and how that shows up in terms of segregation and access to opportunity. Various forms of contemporary expressions of racial exclusion, as well as gentrification and displacement, and then finally, racial and spatial disparities.Nicole Montojo:
In our conversations at the Institute about what it takes to move toward housing justice, we like to think about a framework of 5Ps, which includes policies in these areas, protection, preservation, production, placement, and power. And part of what is important to acknowledge as well is as we look at the history exclusion over time, the flip side of that is the long history of resistance and movements for housing justice in the Bay Area that have moved and moved the needle over time.Nicole Montojo:
Today, there's a ton of work happening in all of these different areas and that continues to happen, and that we encourage you all to get involved in some way. And in case you're interested in connecting with some organizations that are out there in the Bay, here are a few that we wanted to lift up and suggest as resources for you all. So I will pause there and pass it back to Daniele.Daniele Fogel:
Thanks, Nicole. I'm going to share my screen. All right. I'm going to walk us through the curriculum and resources page that is sort of why we're doing the curriculum launch today. I'm really excited to share it. It's been a collaborative effort and teachers from both cohorts have contributed to it, OBI staff, and I'm just really excited to share it with you. I think the link is being dropped in the chat and, or you can get at the Bitly link, but I'm going to stop this, and I'm going to actually go to the page.Daniele Fogel:
I'm going to walk you through the page and then show you three different ways to access the curriculum. So here's the page, oops, with its title. If you scroll down, you'll see two introductory paragraphs giving background about the issue that this curriculum examines, as well as a second paragraph that tells you what types of things we have on this page. So there's two types of resources as the second paragraph says.Daniele Fogel:
First, there's K-12 curriculum that you'll be hearing about from the teachers themselves, who developed it a bit later today. And second are presentations on race and housing developed by OBI staff. And that really... These presentations comprised of the content of the teacher summer institute. So you can use these for self education, or you can use these as you're delving into this issue with your students.Daniele Fogel:
The first way that you can look for the curriculum is just by scrolling down, we have 26 resources. So if you look down over here, and so for example, okay, I can click here on one of them. This catches my eye, I'm going to click on it. And so it brings you to a page with its title, a little... some paragraph summary and the actual resource itself. And so if you click on this, it'll take you to Google Drive to the actual resource itself.Daniele Fogel:
And so, you'll see, here there are slides as well as... this one doesn't have many speaker notes, but for a lot of the resources, there are a lot of speaker notes that can... tells you teacher moves, or different facilitator moves, or links to useful information. That's the first way you can look for resources, is by actually scrolling down and just clicking on something.Daniele Fogel:
The second way to look for resources is to actually use our keywords, search here. And if you take a look, there's, I think about 39 keywords, but so let's see. I'm interested in zoning, and so I'm going to click zoning, I'm going to click apply, and then that narrows it down to 1, 2, 3, 4 pieces that are about zoning, right? So I could go to this unit right here, I know that it mentioned zoning. It has the title, a little summary paragraph, and this is actually one of the K-12 units that you'll be hearing about in a moment.Daniele Fogel:
I can just click on the actual unit itself. It'll take me to Google Drive with all of the pieces, and then I could click... All of the K-12 units have a unit overview with also all of the links and associated documents inside this unit overview. So, there's just different ways to access the links. Okay. So, you go, it's loading, give me a moment, see if I can go back. Nope. Okay. Let's see. Okay. All right.Daniele Fogel:
If I go back to the page, let's say I was interested in zoning, but I'm also interested in, I don't know, K-12 curriculum and also something that has to do with belonging. And I can click multiple keywords and click apply, and then it'll give me... it'll narrow it down. This one, I guess, has a lot that corresponds to these tags, but that's a third way of looking. And to get back to the main page, you just have to un-click these and click apply again. And you can get back to this.Daniele Fogel:
One last thing I wanted to show you is, there is a Padlet on here which is for teaching and learning about this, and it's just a discussion forum. And it's open for anyone to add posts, to troubleshoot, or share experiences, or ask questions, as you're using the curriculum. So that's really just a free and open thing, there are pad instructions on this side.Daniele Fogel:
With that, I am going to go back to my PowerPoints and I'm going to introduce today's speakers. We're lucky to have four teachers from our programs with us today, and I'm really honored to introduce them. So I'm going to introduce all of them and then they're just going to take it away and pass it accordingly. I'll introduce them in the order in which they're going to be speaking with us.Daniele Fogel:
Rafael Velazquez-Cardenas and his family migrated to California from Mexico when he was four. He is a 12th year ELA and ELL specialist teacher in his hometown of Hayward, California. His interests include economic and racial justice work. Rafael is a proud volunteer for his local and state union, having done work with human rights, bargaining, and site rep. And he was a recent participant of OBI's Institute on race and housing. He was one of our cohort one member. So, welcome Rafa, and we'll hear from you in a moment.Daniele Fogel:
Let me introduce our three other teachers as well, who are part of cohort two. Danielle Martin, AKA Ms. D is a career technical ed engineering and makerspace teacher, now co-leading the Dream Lab Makerspace in East Palo Alto Academy High School in EPA, California, which is part of the Sequoia Union High School District. She's originally from Boston Somerville, Massachusetts, but now resides in Redwood City, after 20 plus years of information, education, media production, and community organizing. As a teacher, D is driven to make digital fabrication more accessible as a tool for creating, listening, and communicating. So, let's welcome Miss D.Daniele Fogel:
Shannon Deloso was an ethnic studies history educator teaching at Pittsburgh High School. She has taught middle and high school from L.A. to the Bay or from the Bay to L.A. rather, for the past five years and has a strong commitment to defending and advancing ethnic studies within our school systems. Being a child of immigrants and a first generation college graduate, Shannon believes that having a community-grounded classroom cultivates leaders with agency to change the future for their communities and abroad. She currently serves as the student success coordinator for the Asian-American and Pacific Islander Student Services at San Francisco State University. So let's welcome Shannon. If we were in person, we would be clapping in the room. I see a couple virtual claps.Daniele Fogel:
Finally, Cory Jong was born in Oakland Huchiun territory of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, and grew up in Richmond, Berkeley and the East Bay. As a Chinese-American, her family has been in the Bay Area for over a hundred years. With a background in community organizing, she currently teaches eighth grade U.S. history with an ethnic studies lens at Urban Promise Academy in the Fruitvale District of East Oakland, where her mother grew up.Daniele Fogel:
She believes in centering student voice in the classroom and in bringing in community voice and experience to draw meaningful connections to history and literacy, cultivate their historical thinking and literacy skills, develop their capacity to analyze and think critically, and build student agency and power. So let's welcome Cory, and let's welcome all of our guest speakers teachers today. We're so happy to have you with us and I'll pass it over to Rafa. I'm going to stop sharing my screen.Rafael Velazquez-Cardenas:
Thank you, and welcome everyone. Let me get my screen set up here. All right, can you all see that? Okay, so yeah. Hi, Rafael Velazquez-Cardenas, it's an honor to be here. I rushed home from teaching, but today I'm going to briefly make the connection of the importance of our role as educators and the agency we have when addressing race and housing in our curriculum. So why race and housing, and teaching and education. And I think I'll start by grounding the reason why I participated in the summer institute in the OBI.Rafael Velazquez-Cardenas:
I was born in Mexico, raised in Hayward for most of my life. And as we were growing up, my friends, family, and now my students were being impacted by housing and security, which I think exponentially increased about 10, 15 years ago. I started losing friends who would have to move, my parents ended up moving despite us trying to chip in as siblings, my students constantly having to move or living in crowded spaces. And so I just felt like something was happening and I could see the impact on not just the physical wellbeing of folks like my parents, my family, my friends, but also the psyche of being someone like my father who worked overtime every day of his life, but then had to move.Rafael Velazquez-Cardenas:
And the way he would explain it was, it was a bit heartbreaking because he said, "Oh, I couldn't do it. I couldn't make it." And I just thought there was something really sick about that. And so I felt that as a society, that was something happening where there was kind of a segregation and less opportunity for some, but then we were... In the media, the way we even think about it ourselves, we'd blame those with the less opportunity for those conditions, like having to move, or living in crowded spaces, or in quote unquote bad neighborhood.Rafael Velazquez-Cardenas:
As a teacher, it was really hard to see that cycle continue and see my students go through that, and not be able to really explain what was happening. I just knew something was off. And so I joined the Institute, my mind was blown, I learned that it wasn't an accident, that there was a lot of history, previous policy, current policy, that has contributing to our status quo. And so I wanted to be part of fighting for a positive change and supporting the students.Rafael Velazquez-Cardenas:
And what I asked myself as I tried to excitingly collaborate and get people to join me is that, what is our role as educators in the face of racial disparities of housing, and security, and displacement? Because it doesn't happen to every community, right? And it happens more in communities of color, so what is our role? How do we explain that? What's our role when there's an increasing, unaffordable rent? You see students having to leave. "Today's my last day, Mr. V." Or, "Oh, my mom says we have to move back to Texas," or "Now, we're going to Tracy. Oh, we're back."Rafael Velazquez-Cardenas:
The commuting distance, gentrification, homelessness that we see, overcrowded, unhealthy living. And I just couldn't help but make that connection that all of these things were impacting my classroom. They were impacting my students' motivation, they were impacting the stability of my community here in Hayward. And so I think I had a really hard time getting colleagues to join me because it was such a complex thing to explain. And so, I think my vision and goal was to gather what I learned from Institute, and create a resource and tool to then help my colleagues have a foundation. So we can then build and together, try to answer that question, what is our role as educators in the face of all of this?Rafael Velazquez-Cardenas:
And what opportunities are there as educators to humanize the experience our students are facing around housing so that they don't question in silence or blame themselves? How do we help them understand the patterns that are happening around displacement? How do we help them connect to others? Because they're not the only students maybe going through similar experiences. And I think there's a lot of power in just basic connection, the opportunity to have the students that understand their rights because, oftentimes, the kids would never tell me when something was happening. They just would show up, it seemed like they weren't really with me, and then the next day they'd say, "Oh, it's my last day, we're leaving Mr. V."Rafael Velazquez-Cardenas:
Or, I tried to call families and learn that some of them were being harassed by their corporate landlord so I then asked if I had just taught them their rights, could that have made a difference? What is that for opportunity for us to build a greater awareness of these systems so maybe in the future, our students can see systems and not just the individual fault? And then empower the community and our students to fight for a better future. So it was ambitious, it was a lot, and I decided to create a teacher workshop to try to build those foundations and then to highlight the resistance. Because I do think it's very difficult, not just for youth, but for the adults to face the reality of what's happening.Rafael Velazquez-Cardenas:
And so, my workshop, and I'm going to just briefly outline and then reconnect to the, why the classroom, why we are very important. But I built a workshop that outlined the basics, and then presented it one year when we were in COVID virtually to about 80 teachers through the CTA Human Rights Conference. And then about a month ago, I did it again and this time in person. And every single person who was in my workshop had no clue, but they all had the same inkling that I did, that something was wrong, something was happening.Rafael Velazquez-Cardenas:
Here's a couple slides as an example, just to highlight. Part of my presentation and my project was also to create a resource bank so that teachers can find different places to plug it in because it's very ambitious to try to learn all this and then teach it immediately. But if there's all these student-friendly resources, I imagine I'd be able to find more educators to collaborate because our work is extremely important in this fight for justice.Rafael Velazquez-Cardenas:
My hopes moving forward, I hope to build curriculum with other justice oriented educators, to help the students develop their critical lens. I want to join fights for racial and housing justice, although this year, just to be honest, has been quite a year and a lot of us are in survival mode. But when we do have a little more, that's something I look forward to. And then, even though it feels small, I think it's important for us to continue to pitch in and build up that groundswell of connections and understanding, of race and housing, so that we can fight for justice.Rafael Velazquez-Cardenas:
In short, why teachers, why the classroom? Your contributions are extremely important in helping shape the way our students look at themselves, patterns, community, and the way they can imagine their future and our future so we and the community can fight for better opportunities. Thank you for being here, and we hope that you find something in these presentations or the website, and you're able to contribute in your own way to our fight for a better future. Do I hand it off to you, Daniele?Daniele Fogel:
Thank you so much, Rafa. Yes, I'm going to hand it off to the other Danielle.Rafael Velazquez-Cardenas:
Oh, and I didn't mention, but if you want to find that teacher presentation, it is on the website that Daniele walked through, so it's there.Danielle Martin:
All right. Hi everybody. My name is Danielle Martin, as Daniele was only one L mentioned. This is my fourth year teaching, third year teaching high school in East Palo Alto. When Daniele set us all up and I'm kind of wordy. But I actually, before that, those 20 plus years was, I worked a long time in informal education with both adults and younger folks. And then I went to grad school for urban planning, which is a lot of times people are like, "What?" And I'm really excited to go after Rafa, thank you, because very much, I was the same way as an educator in Boston area, I worked and I did not grow up in Boston and I was considered a yappy and an outsider.Danielle Martin:
But as a new educator, in the Boys & Girls Club environment, I resorted to the same thing, that things were going wrong and I didn't know why. And that was why I went to grad school for urban planning, and did a lot of my guess and research on how to use this knowledge around housing and inequities, and put that in the hand of the students so they can change that. And my lens is, I'm a technologist/media person. So back in the day I was doing audio, video, and most recently been doing digital fabrication and making.Danielle Martin:
For me, when I joined as the second year, it was really an exciting opportunity to bring my questions, and my observations, and my background in urban planning to a group of folks that have been trying to translate that. And I have to admit, I wasn't that great at that. And I forgot to mention as I started, but as a good educator, I'm going to try to stick to my time and keep everybody engaged as much as possible, but what we are going to do after this, after the next meet and two other educators go through, and showing you specifically some of our resources.Danielle Martin:
We thought it'd be better for y'all to put those questions down as we're talking, and we're going to break out into breakout rooms and you'll get to interact with us and ask those questions one on one. So, I'm not super keeping an eye on the chat right now, but I guess I could. But know that those questions, we want to keep those and hold those, and you'll be able to filter around and go to all the different workshops. So keep that in mind, I think yeah, the documents are there, get dropped in.Danielle Martin:
Back to Afrofuturism, because the next question you're going to ask is, Ms. D, why Afrofuturism, how did this come about? And so I think the way that... as Danielle described, the first week was mostly like, sometimes like depression, about some of these facts that I had, especially about very local to our community. So I focused a lot on East Palo Alto and I obviously did not grow up there either, but since some stuff was going on and there was something missing, literally a downtown is missing.Danielle Martin:
And so, it was a week of getting all these really great folks from the Institute to come in and talk about their work, and all this information. But there was definitely a moment where we were like, "My gosh, how am I going to not present this to a teenager in a way that's going to make them completely feel unempowered, and broken down, and they don't have any way to change that? And so, luckily there was somebody in the group that was really excited and the Oakland Museum was like they... I hope everybody got to go to this, but pitching this Afrofuturism as a lens.Danielle Martin:
And so, we got really excited about that as a way to take this information and present it to the students in a creative way, that they could interact with it in a way that was empowering and got them thinking about visioning, as opposed to that's depressing, that's going to hold me down, right? And so, what we ended up doing is spending as much time geeking out of Afrofuturism and science fiction, as well as thinking about the three folks in my group were from different age groups, and different experience levels.Danielle Martin:
And I focused, I taught middle school for a year, so I said, "Okay, I'll think about middle school." And so we tried to develop, this is a summary of what we tried to do, and not everything. And you clicked on it, you'll look at it, it's completely crystallized. And at the end of this, I'm definitely going to go through the way I was able to apply it once this year. But here basically, all these things we geeked out about and we resourced, we put up there, we put it there, you can access those. You can see how we thought about how to do a whole unit plan. We were thinking real big.Danielle Martin:
And then, a few of us broke it down how we could do one lesson, thinking about that through a lens. And so basically, we asked ourselves the question, how can we envision a community thriving through equity and belonging? And by the end of this unit, we could work with the students to define what thriving means, and then co-design one seed that would nourish and cultivate belonging, okay?Danielle Martin:
Again, because we are geeking out, we're getting really complicated, but we said, "We're going to have the students define it, and then ask the past and use some of the tools of Afrofuturism, both in media and in literature, and then analyze the present and then envision the future." So the whole unit went that way and we did a lot of references, and we tried to find references that were age appropriate as much as possible. And so we had three lesson flows, three kinds of media and project based learning, and three different kinds of age groups.Danielle Martin:
So yes, my group, we were thinking about Lovecraft Country and then, I had never actually watched it and I made the decision like, "I don't think I want to do that." So I picked some other things and I'll walk you through, what I did for that. But yeah, okay. And so we said, "Okay, first question was about taking all this stuff that we... stuff. All this really interesting data and proof, and putting it in the minds of the students but in a way that it was a tool to really analyze what was happening in their local communities, in the past, and right now, and then think about what they see forward as the future.Danielle Martin:
Afrofuturism, if you don't know what it is, is this really cool movement inside of sci-fi that is led by African Americans, a few of which, like Octavia Butler, sometimes don't even say that they're part of this movement because they're just like, "I am who I am and I write what I write." But I think this, for me, the thing that really stuck out and actually it comes out better in the slides that I did with the kiddos where I said, "You know what, why in the world are we talking about Afrofuturism?Danielle Martin:
And I pulled up this quote. Quickly, quickly, where, quickly, I'm going to get there. And all this stuff is up. Okay, how? Here we go. Okay, I showed Black Panther, okay, yes, and I put this slide up. And I said, "Okay." I pulled off this quote by somebody that said, "In Afrofuturism, we imagine ourselves and create whole worlds where we not only achieve greatness, but we are thriving in our own culture." And so for me, that was super powerful. So we took these 4PS and we said, we want to focus on just one of them. And so we thought about, okay, if we're going to think about example of the future, we think about community mapping. How do those power things need to shift to make that happen? And what systems need to be dismantled, changed, or newly established?Danielle Martin:
And there's so many powerful examples in Afrofuturism media about what that means. So, let me walk you through how I implemented it at the high school level back here in... I'm going do, [inaudible 00:38:07] going all the way back to see, oh, I guess I could have jumped. This is me going back in the future, ooh. So just to give you a tiny bit of background, if you don't know about East Palo Alto, it's an interesting place. Sometimes I did most of my work in Charlestown in Boston, and sometimes it feels very similar in that it's a little island, sometimes people don't leave, but you've got all these different folks that identify with it in different ways, and are coming in and out in that space.Danielle Martin:
And so, our school is a tiny charter school inside of that, so about 350 students total. And we really try to emphasize the students making a goal to graduate and to go into at least a two or four-year program after high school. But we really also spend a lot of time trying to build that community around that learning and supporting each other. So, we usually do a... Pre-pandemic, we were doing in person freshman orientation for a week, and we didn't do it for a year during 2020. And so, when we came back, we said, "Okay, we're going to go back and get the rising sophomores to also do it again. And we're going to do it with the freshmen too."Danielle Martin:
I got a chance to get a day and lead at a design challenge, very much design thinking based with that group. And so it looked like a little bit of trying to get hands on and think about, okay, how... Giving people the design thinking framework, and then getting them thinking like a maker because that's where I identify about how they could rapid prototype, now that they've absorbed some information. How could they reenvision that by doing a hands-on project?Danielle Martin:
In this case, we just, well, not just, but we did modeling using recycled materials. So both groups went, we had a little bit more time with the younger folks, the rising freshmen. So that's our class of 25, but this gives you a sense of what that flow looked like. And we did a lot of the background things, I'm going to skip through this stuff, but you can see how we try to build the culture over the course of these two weeks with these students. But we usually do some sort of community service project. And we couldn't this past year because of COVID restrictions, so they said, "Can we do a design challenge?" And I said, "Oh, yes." Okay?Danielle Martin:
But I did try to get back and here's that power coming out again, about thinking about taking this information and using it as a tool to feel empowered. And so, as a maker, I had them think about how they could quickly design something, and make it user-friendly. And then we did... so we do a lot of reflection as part of that. And this is me going through the design cycle, but here's where I really brought in the work that we did with OBI. And the research that we did, was that we started giving them information or trying to get them to define thriving community in sense of who they were, and where they were at. So we played four corners which was interesting in a gym full of kids, trying to get them to stand in these four corners and then have discussions about things like, I believe people in my community are physically healthy. Look at me with my bed.Danielle Martin:
We did that for a while, and then we defined right here we go, we step as out leaders, this is part of our mantra that they actually do as part of their advisory. And then, I started bringing in some of the facts, and then we said, "Okay, how might we design the spaces for community power?" And-Daniele Fogel:
30 seconds.Danielle Martin:
Okay, let me get to the good parts then. We did a lot of them defining what thriving is and giving them some of the cold hard facts. And then we gave them time to brainstorm about what that was defined as, and then had them... Go quickly, okay, actually make something. And I presented their lens in here as this African artist that takes recycled materials and reenvisioned cities based on what's thriving about them.Danielle Martin:
I played some video of him speaking, and explaining what's happening, and then gave him this prompt, said, "Rapidly build a 3D model of a thriving community space." And here's some pictures of what happened, it was messy in a good way. And then they built things like... and they identified things like this is them defining what affordable housing might look like for them, them identifying that recreation is a big part of a thriving community and what that means for them. So there was a lot of sports. They want a community swimming pool.Danielle Martin:
This is them envisioning that as a group, this is a green space, you got to turn your head a little bit, a donation center, so that was one place that they identified that is not in their space right now, but could bring people together to donate things and create that, and that was about it. So I think, the last thing I'll say about Afrofuturism is that it gives it a framework that makes it, especially for students, I think for the younger students, that it makes it about the information and about telling a story, and they can put themselves in it as much as they want, but they can also reenvision who they are. And so I think for a lot of my students, giving them that lens really was a helpful way to interact with the content. So thank you for your time. I'm going to pass it off to Shannon, who's going to talk about racial capitalism.Shannon Deloso:
Hi everyone. Let me go ahead and share my screen. Oh, actually I don't have sharing access, but as I get that, I did want to just... Oh, got it.Daniele Fogel:
Cool.Shannon Deloso:
Just start out with saying, I am not in the classroom anymore. I actually left the classroom in December after five and a half years to move towards supporting students, first generation students in college. And so, it was really hard decision to make, but my heart will always be in the classroom. So I'm really happy to have been invited to present on racial capitalism. So to give a little understanding of the context that I was working in is, I live in Pittsburgh, California. I was not born and raised here, I was lucky enough for my partner and his family to have a home here for us to live in. And so, because of that, I decided to work at Pittsburgh High School.Shannon Deloso:
Now, every time I say Pittsburgh, I always hear people say, "Oh, Pittsburgh? Like so, where is that?" And I'm like, "Oh, it's not the one in the East Coast. It's in the Bay Area." "Well, where is that?" And so I'm like, "Okay, do you know where San Francisco is? Do you know where Antioch is?" They're like, "Oh yeah, yeah, but I've never heard Pittsburgh." So it's a common narrative that people don't know where Pittsburgh is. But in reality, it is a suburban city that is quite diverse than many other suburban areas that we've seen before.Shannon Deloso:
Historically, Pittsburgh had been called Suburban Oakland. And so, we start to see how that narrative comes into play because although it's 45 minutes from San Francisco and Oakland, because of the housing crisis that is happening within San Francisco, and Oakland, and the Bay Area in general, my students and the community that is built within Pittsburgh had been people who were pushed out.Shannon Deloso:
So, I start to see, and through this fellowship, I was able to understand that just because housing crises are happening in the Bay Area, or like, that's not really happening in Pittsburgh, is still being very much affected by everything that's happening in San Francisco and Oakland. And so for this fellowship, my great... the people that I had worked with creating this lesson, we all decided to focus on the racial capitalism. And so we are all really moved by EJ Toppin's presentation.Shannon Deloso:
The reason why we chose it is, he very much emphasized that we can't talk about capitalism without talking about race. And being a social studies teacher, teaching capitalism in 10th grade, and I'm talking about the history of the United States in 11th, having that lens of talking about race would be extremely important, especially when we talk about capitalism.Shannon Deloso:
We were overly ambitious as well, they asked for us to make a lesson and we ended up making a unit, but that's just how it is. And so, the heart of our planning was, although we want to talk about the history of racial capitalism, we want to make sure that these students have the agency to respond to this history, right? If we're learning about this history, how does that show up today? And if it's showing up today, what are we going to do about it?Shannon Deloso:
Each of these lessons can all also function on its own, and I'll talk about it towards the end, or even during Q&A of how I was able to do that. But each lesson can be broken up and be brought into however lessons and units that you have in your own class. So the first one that we wanted to focus on is going to be talking about what is racial capitalism and being able to just identify these words in the most simplest forms.Shannon Deloso:
One of the things that we did was we wanted to make a WordWeb and where students are able to work with groups and just break down the word, what is race? What is capitalism? What is power? And how do these words... How are these words connected to each other? From here, we wanted to use those words and just have a bigger discussion of like, how does that relate to us? And so in each of these lessons, we have a teaching where we are able to pull lessons and information from what we learned in the fellowship to teach our students too.Shannon Deloso:
In this case, when we're talking about race, capitalism, and power, we wanted to talk about the case study of native Americans. From there, we also wanted to talk about, well with racial capitalism, how is it able to be facilitated with racial inequity? Lesson two is looking at the laws and policies in place.Shannon Deloso:
From here, we use our warmup as a way, for this diagram, of being able to differentiate exclusions, segregation, integration, and belonging. And so, if we're able to identify what it feels like and look like to be excluded, or what it feels like and look like to belong somewhere, then students are able to identify it within history as well.Shannon Deloso:
In the context of teaching this in U.S. history, we really wanted to look at what were the principles our country is built on? They talk about democracy, they talk about freedom, liberty, justice, rights, all these different things, but then it becomes a framework for us to actually critique. Well, if capitalism and the U.S. Government, or like, if democracy and all these words we associate with our country, then how does capitalism and the U.S. Government thrive? Especially in the context of our foundation of history with enslavement and race.Shannon Deloso:
And so through here, we are also teaching them how throughout our timeline within U.S. history, how tactics for racialized housing continue to carry on and exclude communities of color. So, one of the activities that we had them do is a source examination, where they would look at different policies, and they would break down and try to answer well, who are they talking about? What does this policy even say? Again, still building their understanding of how race and housing and laws are all connected.Shannon Deloso:
Lesson three looks more at how our social system is impacted by racial capitalism. And as we're looking larger picture, and as we're moving to talking more about these concepts with laws, we're getting closer and closer to a localized level. So, with lesson three, we wanted to look at the outcomes of racial capitalism. If these laws are being passed, and these people are being excluded, then how does it affect our communities? So just like D used within her presentation and her lessons, we wanted to look at how the 5PS, right? Where is it? Of housing policies, right?Shannon Deloso:
We are able to bring the fellowship diagram of the 5Ps of housing policy into our class. So again, it's using these policies, and looking at these policies, and then how can our community put it into action? Here is where we're looking at local organizations and how they were able to preserve and protect, and use their power as a way to protect their communities. Although we're teaching them about the 5Ps, it's also a framework that would help them build their assessment.Shannon Deloso:
And so, we wanted them to learn the skills, so then for their assessment, they can create their own policy as a way to respond to making disenfranchised communities and communities that have been excluded feel more justified, be able to fight for what they want. And so, if students have the skills to build their own policies, then they can bring that with them in the future.Shannon Deloso:
Moving on to this summative assessment, we wanted them to reimagine racial capitalism and housing policy. So, they're either going to make a resolution, or a poster, or brochure, looking at an issue that they see in their community, and using those different 5Ps of policy, how can we respond back to it? I can definitely get into more detail during Q&A, but some of the things that I had learned is that many students will feed off the idea that, oh, there's nothing that we can do, if you let them.Shannon Deloso:
But teaching racial capitalism, we always have to remember, there's something that we can do about it. And I had noticed when I framed it in the way of, well, this is what our community is doing. Then it made it more realistic for students to do something about it for themselves. Aside from that, of course, there's going to be a lot of things that we can say, but that's where I'm going to go ahead and end it. So thank you for letting me present.Daniele Fogel:
Thanks, Shannon. Cory, we're going to go directly to you.Cory Jong:
All right. Yeah, thank you to everyone that has already shared. I really enjoyed those presentations. I wanted to just give some context in terms of place and identity as a unit, and where I am in my year. So I'm going to go ahead and share screen. Here's the link, if you want to take a look. Awesome. Okay. My name is Cory and I teach eighth grade U.S. history and ethnic studies. And so I just wanted to give some background, oh, this is the link for questions, if you have questions as I'm sharing. And in the chat, should I... is someone able to maybe just drop that? Okay, cool. Thanks. And sorry, let me put this over.Cory Jong:
In terms of the course context, and one of the reasons why I was interested in participating in OBI, the race and housing institute, and I really encourage anyone who's interested, I think it's such an excellent program, is that I was designing a new course for this year. I was teaching sixth grade, and so I was looking at what my course was going to look like. And so, so far this year, I started with a conversation on what is colonialism, and then we're working with Stamped Remix: Racism, Antiracism, and You.Cory Jong:
We then worked on a unit, Find Your Voice, Tell Your Story in collaboration with SFJAZZ. And so I had really built this unit in looking at how to close out the year and look at also stories connected to Oakland. So in terms of implementation and student samples, at this point, we're really just getting into it. But I don't know who else right now is in the middle of state testing, but I just felt like this was really well suited for something that I could be doing with them that is hands on, that can help to culminate and wrap up the year, that would be engaging during a time that can be dysregulating and stressful. And so, that's where we're at.Cory Jong:
I just wanted to share what the conversations have been leading up to this unit, oh, and why it is also that I got involved in the Institute. My background is in organizing, and looking at climate justice as a racial justice issue, looking at how do we address disproportionate impacts of environmental racism. And then also being involved with AF3IRM, Transnational Feminist Women of Color organizing.Cory Jong:
Monse who was in cohort one had presented at this event, the School of Women's Activism, and the presentation was powerful, excellent, inspiring, and I was scheduled to be in one of the other series for the workshops. And I thought, "Wow, this is something that I think I really might need as a teacher right now, especially in looking at what do I want to do with my course."Cory Jong:
Here's an example of what students produced in the beginning of the year around colonialism. And so we were looking at these different aspects, and we've been building on that from there. This is an example of just different artwork that my students have generated across the year, and was the Open House Expo, where they were sharing storytelling. So you can see, there are a lot of different social justice themes that have come up in their work. This was specific to a film that we discussed around sex trafficking in the Fruitvale area, through a film called International Boulevard, and also March being women's month.Cory Jong:
These are examples of projects that the students have developed in relation to storytelling, which ties in really well right now with what we're talking about with the mapping. So these are just some examples. You can see how they have been exploring this idea of story in place, as well as the intersections with identity and culture. So I'm going to just flip through, so you get some ideas of what was going on with their class.Cory Jong:
This is a project that a student did actually, because they had different options where you can see how she's looking at... Really I think, definitely, we're connecting to gentrification as well. Because she's talking about a lot of the different places that she's lived in the Bay Area, as well as dealing with needing to have a home.Cory Jong:
This was another example of a story that a student had worked on about moving from an apartment into a house and the impact that has had on him. This is an example of looking at the story of our school and how it's changed over time. And then this is connected to the OUSD ethnic studies, the website launch. So this is in relation to climate justice and the unit that I'm currently working on.Cory Jong:
And so, we've also been really involved in looking at how to, oh, sorry, because I know I'm going through time, but I have the link that I put in the chat. Sorry, going too fast. And so, this is an example of the climate strikes that the youth have been working on. So there was one in March and then there's one actually that is scheduled for tomorrow. And so this is also really connected to environment in place as well.Cory Jong:
This is a photo of students at the climate strike in March. This is the contingent for my school. We had about 120 students from Urban Promise Academy attend. And then this is more of an aerial photo of some of the march, the front of the march. Currently, I've been working on SB1173, a bill that was written by youth around fossil fuel divestment. And so, oops, sorry, if you go to those links, it'll bring you to articles.Cory Jong:
This first one is written as an op ed in The Educator. And this next one is about the work that youth have been doing around fossil fuel divestment. This is a photo at the California Teachers Association State Council, where they were looking at the impacts of advocating for SB1173 and fossil fuel divestment of CalPERS and CalSTRS.Cory Jong:
And so, this week actually on Tuesday, there was a victory in the California State Senate. And so through Youth Organizing, youth have been fighting to protect the environment and fight for divestment, and we're able to move the State Senate from a vote of five to passing. And so if you'd like to learn more, it's definitely really important for people to continue to be involved because this is an on ongoing in campaign.Cory Jong:
If you go to the Bitly, it'll give you a link right there. And if anyone is in District 10, Senator Bobowski, we really, really need support in lobbying him right now, too. These are photos from Tuesday, of students going to Sacramento. This one is about the earth and which side are you on, was the drawing that my student did.Cory Jong:
Some of the other things that we've talked about this year in OUSD are also around cuts and closures. And so if you click on the link here, I haven't updated the presentation recently because we have been working on divestment, but that'll give you some information and resources as well on privatization. And so going into place and identity, so that's been our year. Going into place and identity, we've been discussing systems thinking, using three films by Peter Nicks.Cory Jong:
One is Homeroom, where we were looking at schools as system, and then come connecting it to the work around OUSD and the campaign around cuts and closures. We just recently finished discussing the film, The Force, which was a great way to ease back from spring break by using that film, and building community. But looking at also another example of a system, and then the next film that we're going to be using Waiting Room on healthcare. And so as, we go into the work and place and identity, the students are going to be creating maps. And the maps will also be highlighting some of these examples of systems in their lives. But these three films were a great resource also for helping them to understand what that might mean.Cory Jong:
And so, these are the links here. The link on the top brings you to the OBI website where you can find all these presentations, but I also hyperlinked them on here. And so if you go into this one, this is the general introduction. And probably with more time, in the future, maybe I would jazz it up a little bit more, but it's been great to start rolling out with, with the students. And they definitely were impressed when I was like, "Well, this is with UC Berkeley." So they were taking it seriously.Cory Jong:
The question of, what does home mean to you? So that's why I wanted to give the background on how this fits in within the context of a year, because it's really woven into this aspect of storytelling and a sense of belonging. And so then we were looking at these social systems, what systems are we part of and how do these systems impact us? And what impact can we have on these systems as well as the role of economic changes and economics?Cory Jong:
This is just background for teachers, right? That you can develop and adapt this. It was designed for middle school students and I'm teaching eighth grade. I was teaching sixth grade though, and I could definitely see that you could use this with sixth graders as well as adapting it to different age groups. Currently, the ethnic studies cohort in OUSD, we're looking at early childhood elementary all the way through high school. So I think you could take this and build it out in different ways.Cory Jong:
And so, this is for ethnic studies in ELA, but I definitely think I could see ways that you could approach this with data and connect it in terms of interdisciplinary with math and science as well. So specifically though for the standards that are designed in terms of my approach, is looking at using maps to identify physical and cultural features of your neighborhood and connect that as well to migration.Cory Jong:
From here, the five paragraph SAPs, I'm still thinking on, but definitely I could see that that's... This time of the year though, I'm not sure if that's something I would push. I might want to think about it in another format possibly, and maybe something a little bit more multimedia. And we also have the Padlet option, which is digital. And so in terms of color coding for teachers, green background represents start of new lesson. And it depends on what your school schedule is.Cory Jong:
Currently, my schedule is designed in blocks of like 50 minutes, four days a week, and then one session that's a shorter session. And so that day we do art and activism activities. But if you have longer blocks, then you would want to probably adjust it. And then slides with a salmon background are identifying key concepts.Cory Jong:
Lesson one, what are our stories of home and how can we exercise our radical imagination? This was taken directly from something that was shared at... Yes, the link to the place and identity unit, this is also... Let me make sure to share this for you as well. So again, I'm building from here and then there are a lot of the links that way. Yeah, thanks.Cory Jong:
This has taken directly from what was shared with us over the summer. And so far, it's been very successful with my students around mapping. So when you sketch out the personal maps, I've been encouraging my students to think about take... They were asking, "Can we do it as a collage? Can we use magazines and cut things out? Can we take pictures, put them onto like a Google Doc or Google Slide, print those, and then use those as images of things related to culture, things related to stories, personal photos from home as well, or photos of their family growing up, and then using that as well to be mapping.?"Cory Jong:
This piece is on radical imagination as an exercise. And so for lesson two, what does it feel like? What is it like to feel home and belonging and how does othering get in the way? So this is building on the vocabulary that was shared at the Institute. Musical intro connecting to home and belonging for warmups. I always love using music. And again, I mentioned the collaboration with SFJAZZ. I might probably use like Tony, Tony, Tony, an Oakland stroke or something. Yeah.Cory Jong:
Here are some opening quotes to just think about this idea of home. And again, this is built straight from some of the resources that were shared with us. So this idea you have home and belonging, the idea of othering. And I know like for adolescents, especially, these are really strong kinds of feelings that youth can really relate to.Cory Jong:
Lesson two is around housing, and so this gets into some of the basics as well. And this visual, it really stood out to me and so I had thought about this idea of building it out as a Jamboard and doing a See, Think, Wonder, which is a thinking routine that I was introduced to through Project Zero through Harvard, as well as Agency by Design Oakland.Cory Jong:
This is going over some basic concepts around housing, single family, multifamily, market rate, below market rate. Okay. And then you'll notice then that the color codes are reflecting different pins. So one step then in the project would be for them to map home. And so those examples that you saw from my student stories even are kind of... they can be pulling from some of these things around just different places that they've lived, and what that has look like for them.Cory Jong:
Next, we have, what is segregation and what does segregation have to do with opportunity? And what role did zoning play in this? And I know that for my own family, they have shared stories with me about where we lived in Oakland when they were growing up, and why it is that they were only able to really live in certain parts of Oakland.Cory Jong:
Again, these resources are all pulled from OBI. And so, that's how you can see that there's just such a wealth of information that's being offered through the program. So I'm pretty excited about being able to get into more of this with my students, and I'm sorry that I just don't have any specific samples or photos of what's been generated, maybe next year, by next year I will.Cory Jong:
Why do neighborhoods change and to what or whose expense? Here we have conversations around gentrification, displacement, redlining, disinvestment, dislocation, reinvestment, and there was a great film that I came across called Displaced, which is created by youth that I really recommend as well. So I think that's my time, but that gives you a little bit of an idea of what is available through some of these resources. I also have a small model of what that could look like for Fruitvale where I teach, with some specific examples and links and stuff. So, thank you everyone.
