BRENT SPIRNAK: I got to learn a little bit about that. And then–

 

RACHEL ANGELES: Yeah.

 

BRENT SPIRNAK: And then like, oh, that’s so awesome. And it just keeps going back and forth. It’s like– it’s like tennis.

 

RACHEL ANGELES: Yeah. That’s it. Yeah, it’s just a rally. It’s a good– that’s a good point. It’s just a rally of good ideas, conversations, getting to know students. You know what I mean? And the idea, hopefully, is to do that for every student, if not, at least the teachers. At least, us. At least, we can offer that to our students.

 

We are– I’m hoping that what I do as a teacher as I push students to realize they have agency in their learning. And they always will. It’s not just in these walls of High Tech High. It’s not even in college, just in college because college also is not forever. You just have agency on what you want to do and what you want to learn. Hopefully, that’s something that sticks with them forever.

 

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ALEC PATTON: This is High Tech High Unboxed. I’m Alec Patton. Today’s episode is reported by my colleague, Brent Spirnak who’s the High Tech High Graduate School of Education’s multimedia ethnographer. Brent, who’d you talk to?

 

BRENT SPIRNAK: I spoke with Rachel Angeles from High Tech High Media Arts.

 

ALEC PATTON: Brent, why’d you want talk to Rachel?

 

BRENT SPIRNAK: Rachel is in the graduate school cohort with myself. And every time I talk to her, we have an individual conversation. I feel like she has awesome things to say. So I asked her if she wanted to be a part of the podcast. And I was not let down. She had amazing things to say.

 

ALEC PATTON: What were the big takeaways from the conversation?

 

BRENT SPIRNAK: Rachel had a way of just talking about her practice and her craft and how she communicates with students and the relationships and the trust that she tries to build in order to just make them better critical thinkers.

 

ALEC PATTON: All right. Let’s roll it.

 

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BRENT SPIRNAK: Rachel teaches 11th grade humanities. And this is her fifth year in the classroom. She started out at the same school as an academic coach before transitioning to teaching. She had many impactful observations of ed specialists and teachers the year before she taught, which pushed her to become a teacher. Her then director believed in her to grow into a dynamic teacher. But another characteristic of the school is what ultimately attracted her.

 

RACHEL ANGELES: The sense of belonging is especially with those people runs deep. And it’s really strong. And that’s one of the main reasons why I don’t want to work anywhere else right now. The teacher autonomy piece is another strong piece because I, for one, don’t like being– I, for one, don’t like being told what to do. And I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be told what to do in terms of curriculum and content and projects. Right?

 

BRENT SPIRNAK: What page to be on.

 

RACHEL ANGELES: Yeah.

 

BRENT SPIRNAK: We’ve got to be this page today.

 

RACHEL ANGELES: I would hate that. And I would also hate just showing off whatever– every single lesson I’m doing just to prove that I’m a [? bit ?] over the teacher, right? And so the teacher autonomy piece where we’re, ideally, are leaders, trust us and what we’re doing with students, and students trust us too, is a big piece for me, that [? stage. ?]

 

Because I can adapt and adjust the curriculum and the content, especially in such a, for example, in such a year right now. In distance learning, obviously you’ve got to adapt and in such a– like what we just experienced, the election, right, which is supposedly almost over. But you know, I’ve adapted the curriculum, the content, the reading, the resources to that, to my juniors, to what they wanted to talk about, to the current events.

 

And so I love that I’m able to do that. I’m not– I’m sure that people student, or excuse me, teachers can do that in other spaces too. But what High Tech High has proven to me, or at least what the teacher autonomy is, I can do what I want. And I think I do that pretty well.

 

BRENT SPIRNAK: There. You touched on something right there that I guess I don’t think about a lot is autonomy with your students. We always talk about teachers can do what they want. They can teach what they want, teach to their passions. But yeah. Talk more about that responsiveness to student feedback. And then you can be flexible and adjust. Right?

 

RACHEL ANGELES: Students, if they’re not engaged with the project and assignment, I’m not sure how authentic the work is there. Right? And that, ideally, in a space like High Tech High, in what we’ve got in terms of teacher autonomy, the work is supposed to be authentic. Right? And so it’s authentic when there’s a buy in. It’s authentic when there’s connection. It gives them agency.

 

And it empowers students to really feel like, oh, wait a minute. Oh, my opinion matters. My story matters. My experiences matter. Right? My history, my family history, matters. And I think that that’s so important because I can’t just throw this curriculum together or choose a book to where I think that every student is going to engage.

 

Or if I’m going to force them to engage with it, right, that’s a disservice. That’s hard. It’s hard on students. Right? It would be even harder on the teachers because we’re not even– and by doing that, I’m not getting to know students. I’m not amplifying their voices, their experiences. And so by allowing students to be essentially co-creators almost, right?

 

Listening to them about what they want to listen to, or what they want to learn, what they want to do, is important for my classroom and for them. Because they’re engaged. Then teaching actually becomes so enjoyable when they’re engaged. And they’re the ones who have agency.

 

BRENT SPIRNAK: Yeah. Because then it’s like– it’s like you’re pushing each other. Like, I want to do this. OK. You’re like, I gotta– I gotta learn a little bit about that. And then–

 

RACHEL ANGELES: Yeah.

 

BRENT SPIRNAK: And then like, oh, that’s so awesome. And it just keeps going back and forth. It’s like– it’s like tennis.

 

RACHEL ANGELES: Yeah. That’s it. Yeah. It’s just a rally. It’s a good– that’s a good point. It’s just a rally of good ideas, conversations, getting to know students. You know what I mean? And the idea hopefully is to do that for every student, if not, at least the teachers, at least us. At least, we can offer that to our students.

 

We are– I’m hoping that what I do as a teacher is I push students to realize they have agency in their learning. And they always will. It’s not just in these walls of High Tech High. It’s not even in college, just in college because college also is not forever. Just have agency on what you want to do and what you want to learn. Hopefully, that’s something that sticks with them forever.

 

BRENT SPIRNAK: Next, after Rachel understands students’ stories and interests, she structures conversations by providing prompts or frames and then she steps back.

 

RACHEL ANGELES: And the way that those conversations happen in my class are just by introducing them. Right? So there’s some– in terms of my autonomy, in terms of what I’m hoping for students to learn, I’m hoping them to understand– I use a lot of current events in the class, right, to hopefully teach history, to teach what matters, to teach what’s going on, and how they’re making sense of it.

 

Obviously, just given the election, students understood and learned and revisited perhaps the electoral college, the differences between leaders. Why do we elect narcissistic leaders? Right? Why does somebody like Kanye West get to say, hey, I’m going to run for president right. And then all of a sudden, his name’s on the ballot. Right?

 

Why is it that it’s only two white men who’s up– the position of President is up for grabs by these two white men? Right? And so those are the conversations I like having in the classroom. And I push for juniors to have those conversations because there’s never going to be a moment in time– in what I’ve noticed in history for sure– but there’s never going to be a moment in time where we’re like, oh, we did it. We made it. We’re good. That’s done. Right?

 

Same thing with this election. While yes, it’s going to be a new administration, that’s not it. There’s more work to be done. And that’s what I want students to recognize. It’s like, who’s really represented here? What more work needs to be done? And who’s in charge of that work? Is it the administration, or is it the students? Is it their families? Is it their communities?

 

So in terms of just how conversations are facilitated, I’d like to drop it like an ounce of– like a prompt to initiate a conversation, some sort of framework, right? And they go from there. I love Socratic seminars.

 

That’s difficult to do in distance learning. But when we were in class, physically in class, that was really great. Some students love, love listening to their own voice, and dominating conversations, while others really want– they want to talk to their friends.

 

And so how I would facilitate classroom conversations or discussions is we would have small Socratic seminars where we’d be three or four people. And then we would work our way up to having large classroom Socratic seminars. Or we wouldn’t even have to call it a Socratic seminar, which is be back and forth, back and forth to where I’m not even leading the discussion. I’m just asking questions. Right?

 

So I’ve really tried to put it in the hands and in the minds of the students. Like, you’re in charge of this conversation. I can steer it in different ways by asking different questions. But really, the students are the ones in charge of the conversation.

 

And I think that’s the best thing. That’s the one thing I really miss about being physically in the classroom, is just watching body language, watching students react. But I still get– I get a really good chunk of powerful and meaningful classroom discussion still via Zoom.

 

BRENT SPIRNAK: So how do you as a teacher, talk about difficult stuff? I assume in your class, there may be diverse voices especially with the election. But for example, how do you just discuss race per se? How do you– how do you facilitate that?

 

RACHEL ANGELES: Those conversations– I look forward to those kinds of conversations so much. And the reason why is because there is a part of me that doesn’t have to do so much. Because this generation of students, like, this young generation who are just fired up, who noticed that, yes we live in a diver– like ideally, people think we live in a diverse world. And that doesn’t apply to everybody. And that equality and equity and diversity and inclusion doesn’t apply to everybody.

 

I am very lucky to be a teacher with this generation because they already know that. And they know that not only because they’re on social media, or the things that they’re consuming such as text or, excuse me, like books, videos, whatever art resources. But they know that because so many of them experience it, so I like to push that students’ experiences are primary sources.

 

It’s not only just what we’re reading and what we’re watching and things like that. But students’ experiences I think are such beautiful primary sources to which a lot of them have experience and still experience [INAUDIBLE] racism. Right? A lot of them still experience sexism. A lot of them– all the isms. Right?

 

And so on one hand, I’m so lucky that they are confident and empowered to speak on those issues. Because they can connect it to the short story. It’s like I just told you, the short stories that we’re talking about. They can connect it to the projects, to the assignments, to the classroom discussions.

 

I definitely frame conversations, hard conversations, difficult ones, whether it’s about race, gender, or whatever hard topic that is. I definitely frame it to where the purpose of the conversation is to think critically. It’s not necessary to think that one is right or wrong unless it’s completely– if it’s just hate speech and all that. But the battle between somebody’s life. That’s different. Right?

 

But in terms of debating– I’m going to use a short story that I used today in class. Little Things are Big, by Jesus Colon. To summarize the story, it’s about a black and Puerto Rican man in the 1950s having this internal dilemma of whether or not he wants to help a white woman on the subway. And ultimately, he doesn’t.

 

But he has this internal conflict. And he’s thinking about his external identity, his internal identity, his ethnic identity. He’s thinking about all of that stuff. And so I posed those question– I posed these kinds of topics to students to where there is a level of open-endedness. Right? It’s not like, oh, no. He’s wrong. He should have helped. Or he’s right. He shouldn’t have helped because he was of darker skin. And it was late at night, or whatever.

 

I pose these questions to where I want students to think of the layered answers and that there’s not just one answer. I posed these questions to where, OK, so what next? And how come? How are you summarizing the main facts from a controversial story or topic? How are we analyzing that? And how are we reflect– how are we reflecting on how that applies to our lives, to our communities lives, our families’ lives or even our peers’ lives?

 

So I just can’t speak enough about this generation and how they’re just so empowered to get their voices out. And I’m so lucky to use that as almost leverage to power the classroom discussions and also as a major, major, major learning point for me.

 

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BRENT SPIRNAK: A continuing theme that is happening throughout Rachel’s class simply put is–

 

RACHEL ANGELES: How are we making sense of everything that’s thrown at us? I really loved how one of my students who– she identifies as somebody who is progressive, who supports black and brown communities, supports the– she identifies as being a part of the LGBTQIA community. And she grew up very Catholic. She’s just recently opened up to me that she’s trying to make sense of that at age 16. Right?

 

And how are you supposed to navigate your existence with that? I don’t have– I sure as hell don’t have an answer. I don’t have an answer for that. I want students to get used to being in those spaces of like, oh, crap. How am I going to make sense of this?

 

How am I going to make sense of my privilege versus one of my best friends who doesn’t have as much privilege as I do? Or the color of my skin versus my best friend’s color, how am I making sense of all of this? And I want students to get into that space. Because you’re going to try to make sense of so much as you get older. Right?

 

BRENT SPIRNAK: You’re just– sounds like you’re just making them into– they’re not passive anymore. Right? They’re actively thinking. And they’re like, OK. Let’s get your feet on the ground and get moving, get making sense of it.

 

RACHEL ANGELES: Yeah. That’s exactly– Yeah. Thanks for saying it like that. Because that’s exactly what I want them to do, especially as upperclassmen. Right? I want them just to– how are you making sense of it? Push back on me too if you need to. How are you– just what are we making sense out of here?

 

It’s not to say– it’s not to say one is right, one is wrong. It’s just how are you making sense of this? Right? Because we’ve been told that it is– it’s only, it’s black or white. Or we’ve been told it’s only two sides of the story. But that’s– we know that that’s not true.

 

How are you making sense of this? How are you using your voice to then make sense of it and also share that? How are you using your mind and all that stuff? So I just want to know how they’re doing that.

 

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ALEC PATTON: High Tech High Unboxed is normally written and edited by me, Alec Patton. But today’s episode was all Brent Spirnak Our theme music is by Brother Hershel And today’s additional music was also by Brent Spirnak. You can find a link to the short story that Rachel talked about, Little Things are Big, by Jesus Colón in our show notes. Thanks for listening.

 

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