Alec and Jean talk to Ayo Magwood, founder of Uprooting Inequity, about the importance of explicitly teaching the history of race in America, why deliberation is a more valuable skill than debate, and how she used a sculpture of a bear to teach perspectives-taking.
You can download Ayo’s lesson plan and slides for The Blind Man and the Elephant here
You can download a slideshow of maps showing racial and economic segregation across the USA here
A collection of statistical evidence about systemic racism is here
You can find out more about Ayo’s workshops and online courses here
Send Ayo an email: ayo.magwood [at] gmail.com
Ayo Magwood:
These implicit biases are timeless and universal. They date back to the prehistoric times because those people who were suspicious of other tribes and stuck to their own tribe, you’re more likely to survive and pass on their genes. And those who said “Heeeey!!!! Hey stranger!” They were less likely to survive and pass on those genes. So implicit biases are vestigial tendencies, and we all have them its no big deal. So we just constantly have to seek out perspective of others. And I say it’s a lifelong endeavor. I’m 53, I’m still making mistakes and I’m still seeking out to learn more about others.
Alec Patton:
This is High Tech High Unboxed. I’m Alec Patton.
Jean Catubay:
And I’m Jean Catubay.
Alec Patton:
And this episode feels… timely?
Jean Catubay:
Oh yeah. Big time. I felt like it fell, I don’t want to say into our lap, but just at a time when I was like “I don’t know what else to do” sort of thing. So I’m really glad that we got to spend some time with Ayo for sure.
Alec Patton:
That’s Ayo Magwood, and you already heard her talking about implicit bias at the start of the episode. Ayo taught social studies for 10 years, first at Cesar Chavez Public Charter School, and next at the Maret School, both in Washington, DC. She left to start her own non-profit consultancy, Uprooting Inequity, and she did so for a reason that will make sense to any teacher who’s ever tried to tackle the history of race in America with their students.
Ayo Magwood:
That information wasn’t readily available. I had to read books and books and books and journal articles and I totally burned out, which is why I’m not a classroom teacher. So I would not recommend that to anybody else, but that is why I became an educational consultant and that’s why I used the Robin Hood method so other institutions pay market price, but non-profits and teachers, I would not want anybody to have to repeat the tens and thousands of hours that I did. This didn’t happen overnight, it took me seven years!
Alec Patton:
As you may have noticed, the audio quality on this interview is a little rough, but the stuff Ayo says is SO GOOD. So if you’re having trouble understanding anything, there’s a link to a full transcript In the show notes. In our interview, Ayo talked a lot about perspective taking and understanding where people are coming from. And understand where Ayo was coming from you need to go back to her parents.
Ayo Magwood:
So I was born in New York city, my mother’s black and my father’s white, and they met in the civil rights movement. And interracial marriages were pretty rare at that time. And also my parents became disaffected with race relations in the United States. They had spent the years in Brooklyn Core, which is a Congress for Racial Equality. And they ran the Brooklyn chapter, which is a more radical branch of it. And after years of spending all their time on that, they saw almost zero progress.
The local politicians would find ways of detours and avoiding things so nothing changed and they became disaffected and they moved to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. They went back to Africa as a lot of black activists In that time period did. Both my sisters were born there. My first language was Kiswahili. So we lived there for six years and then from there they moved to Monrovia, Liberia. We lived there for six years and then moved to Saudi Arabia, I lived there for two years and then they sent me to boarding school here in the United States: Phillips Academy, Andover. I went to college and then as soon as I graduated, I moved to rural Mexico where I worked for a Maoist peasant cooperative. I was there for about five years, and then I returned to the United States. And when I returned to the United States, I moved to Washington. Been here ever since pretty much, except for, I worked for two years in Belgium.
Alec Patton:
Wow. That is wild.
Ayo Magwood:
Well, actually all of that affects my approaches about racism. I spend a lot of my life crossing borders. So when I went into the classroom, that’s how I taught students to approach the world and to approach teaching across races. I said, “Well, you may see racism in this way,” but I taught them the allegory of the blind men and the elephant, the old Indian parable. So I said, “It’s like that, we’re all living on different parts of the elephant and in fact, not only do we have different cultural perspectives, but we’re geographically separated on different parts of the elephant too because the United States is extremely segregated, both racially and economically. So the only way we’re going to be able to get a picture of the entire elephant and therefore address our country’s problems is to listen to the perspectives of the other major stakeholders on the other parts of the elephant, because the police may act one way in your part of the elephant but then they act very differently in another part of the Elephant or whatever the case may be.”
We did the very first day of my US history class, I would have my students simulate that activity. I blindfolded three volunteers with scarves and had this old bear that I found in the art department and they would touch different parts of it. And then after that, I would show them a map of Washington DC. Maps of racial segregation and stark economic segregation. And then they would put it all together after discussing it and talking about, after a while they’re like, “Oh my God, we’re living on different parts of the elephant.” It was a very powerful way of helping them understand that. And I put a poster of that elephant on the wall and they would refer to it throughout the entire year. They would catch each other, they would say, “Ah, but remember the elephant.” They would say to each other and point to the wall.
Alec Patton:
Just to clarify. So blind man and the elephant that happens on the first day?
Ayo Magwood:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Alec Patton:
When you said, it takes a day, what’s a day? How long do you see your students for? Or how long DID you see your students for?
Ayo Magwood:
Its been several years, but I think it was 50 minutes, something like that. Even if it was longer, I would probably transition to something else, that exercise doesn’t take more than 30, 40 minutes. 45 minutes depending on how much discussion you have. That’s the hook. I use them like the overall picture and it makes them want to seek perspectives and realize the importance of it and why they should. Then the rest of the year you’re teaching them how to do it.
Alec Patton:
If we can go through that sort of forensically play by play, because I know teachers listening to this will be thinking, “Oh, I want to try doing that.” Describe the sculpture.
Ayo Magwood:
I mean, I was just looking for anything where I would place one part in the hands of the volunteer. So I looked around in my house for something that had different parts to it. I didn’t see anything appropriate. So I went to the art department and fumbled around and found this old sculpture of a bear. Of course it doesn’t have to be a bear, anything where one part of it is maybe flat and the other part is thick and the other part is round, that was the only point. In my case it happened to be bear, but you just could use any object like that, that they can find.
Alec Patton:
You never cut up the statue? I was wondering about this when you said different pieces of it.
Ayo Magwood:
No, I lined up the volunteers at the front of the class, I had the bear hidden. I blindfolded them with some scarves and give instructions to the class that when I took out the object they couldn’t blurt out what it was. And I told the volunteers I would be placing something in their hands, I wanted them to feel and assess the shape. They were going to be asked to describe the shape. That they should ignore the texture and that they should not let their hands wander. And so I silently placed different parts of the bear into their hands. Like a foot, a head and the side, that have very obviously different shapes. Then I put away the object, unfolded them and ask them to describe the object to the class. Then I think I pulled out the bear. But even then I wanted to push it a little further. We discussed it a little bit at that point, but I wanted to discuss it a little bit further. Because the idea of the blind man and the elephant is that people have different cultural perspectives, or worldview or ideologies. Then that’s when I pulled out, I paired them up and then gave them some questions to think harder. And I gave them some maps that showed economic segregation in Washington, DC, racial segregation in DC and DC is mostly liberal. So political segregation in the United States and we discussed it and they realized, okay, so not only do we have different perspectives because we come in with different social identities, experiences, religions, ideologies, et cetera, but we’re actually also geographically, physically segregated, which adds to what we can be actually viewing completely different realities.
I heard that other teachers sort of tell the students about the allegory and they read it and then they discuss it. But I find that it’s so much more powerful when you actually simulate it. And somehow it has a much bigger difference than just telling or reading about it. Just going through that simulation. It takes a day, but I find that it reaps some serious dividends. And of course I follow up on that, I weave it through, we bring it up and I tie things to it and stuff so that we keep going back to it. And it also helps in a history classroom reinforce the idea of history being not just one factual narrative, but of course, conflicting and contrasting accounts by primary sources. But history teachers teach that all the time. We can’t just take the point of view or the perspective of one of those primary sources. We have to look at several and see how they contrast and compliment each other.
And students get that really quick. But all of a sudden when it’s a current issue and they are simultaneously essentially the historian and one of the primary sources, that’s when things fall apart. All of a sudden they lose their objectivity as a historian and they can only see the perspective of their primary source. So as a historian that’s looking at the present, we are both a historian and one of those primary sources. So you have to work a little harder for that to really sink in and get the kids in the habit of saying, “okay I’m only one of the primary [sources]. So I got to pull myself out and be the historian.” So the blind man and the elephant is only the kickoff but then I pull it through the course in different ways. So for example, I say, the first steps understanding is a realization that we’re only one part of the elephant, one part of the perspective, but then you have to do something about it.
So one way is perspective-taking, and there’s lots of research on this. If you look it up in the literature on implicit bias on how to combat implicit bias and it fits in perfectly. They don’t mention elephants, but social scientists have found that one of the best ways of combating implicit bias is perspectives giving and taking where you take on the perspective of other people. So I organize opportunities for the kids over the year. So I have a parent, student discussion about these issues so the generational aspects comes in on my set up. When I was at Maret, I set up a school exchange with my former school, Chavez, which was mostly low income black and Brown kids and they exchanged perspectives across over the years the whole time, and then had a big meet up at the end of the year. Even through literature, of course, you’re familiar with reading memoirs of others, but I just teach the kids that you can do this intentionally. Again, it’s the responsibility of benefiting from this amazing diversity is we each have the responsibility to be constantly educating ourselves and learning about others and if you make a mistake, no big deal. Everybody makes mistakes. We have these implicit biases are timeless and universal. They date back to the prehistoric times because those people who were suspicious of other tribes and stuck to their own tribe, you’re more likely to survive and pass on their genes. And those who said “Heeeey!!!! Hey stranger!” they were less likely to survive and pass on those genes. So implicit biases are vestigial tendencies, and we all have them in no big deal. So we can just constantly have to seek out perspective of others. And I say it’s a lifelong endeavor. I’m 53, I’m still making mistakes and I’m still seeking out to learn more about others.
It’s just like we work on being a better human being and a better parent and a better daughter or a sister or a better member of our faith community, so I encourage them to seek out other perspectives and I provide opportunities for that. And then another thing that we do is we don’t do debates in the class. We deliberate. So debate is when you’re trying to convince others that you’re right, they’re wrong. We can debate all right, all day long, you can win and convince others that quote-unquote “you’re right.” But where’s that taking our country and our society? We’re training future citizens. So our goal is to make a better future society and to prepare students to participate in that. And one of those things is to be able to solve societal problems. And the only way you get to that is to listen to the perspective of people on other parts of the elephant.
So I’m constantly driving that in. And so that when we deliberate and in deliberation, you’re trying to understand, not win, but understand everyone’s perspectives so that you can come up with solution. And this is great practice for becoming a citizen. So at the end of whatever unit I’ll say “Okay, we understand perspectives-taking, we understand the elephant. So you might recall that we’re not going to do debates, but there’s something a little bit [inaudible] deliberations,” and then explain it. I’m getting a little pushback from a few kids that really love debating, often male, I find, but most kids really got into it. And because I had already sort of set the stage, right? We’d already been talking about elephant or about perspectives taking, about implicit bias, so here’s another opportunity. This is another way we’re going to practice perspective taking an understanding about the rest of the elephant.
And again, I also couch it the same terms that I explained to you as, you are citizens and we live in a society together, we have to learn how to find solutions to our problems. And by this convincing everybody else that you’re right and they’re wrong, it’s not really helping. We have to learn how to learn about other perspectives so that we can figure out some policies and solutions that go towards addressing, our greater societal problems and then we can advocate for those on the local state and national level. So also when you couch it like that, it also helps students say, “Oh, I want to do that.” Right? Actually in independent schools, independent schools are very good at teaching wealthy white kids to be in charge, to convince everybody that they’re right and others are wrong. They spend tons of time developing leadership skills, presenting skills and debating skills. Nobody teaches them – or rarely – how to listen, to cooperate, to work together, to problem solve. Those skills aren’t as emphasized. But once you start, they start bringing it to the other classrooms. And the teachers start asking me, “What is this blind man and the elephant?” the kids keep bringing in? They start spreading it to other places. They get into it. Because they start to see our country falling apart and they’re seeing what we’re doing now is not working, right? And they’re saying, “Tthis is a different way, maybe this will help in trying to move our country forward.” Right? And by the way, deliberations – there are various methods of doing that. More specifically there’s Paideia seminars and Socratic seminars and SDC: Structured Academic Controversy. So it’s not like you have to reinvent the wheel, it already exists. That’s the way you should do it. You should not reinvent the wheel.
Jean Catubay:
What are the norms that you put up before you even start that work with the kids? Or how much do you elicit their feedback about what they think safe conversation should look and feel like?
Ayo Magwood:
Actually I don’t. I don’t that much. It’s more on my end, I just set it up that way. I set up a culture of perspectives taking, so then it’s ingrained in the students. They’re looking for the perspectives in all issues, not just racism. Every day in their lives. I remember at the end of my first six week unit, they discuss issues related to the elections with the parents in the evening. And always one or more of the parents will go off on a rant on one of the candidates…
Jean Catubay:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ayo Magwood:
And every single time one of the students will come around and look at them and say, “Oh, we don’t do that here. We are looking at the data and the evidence and the underlying conditions. We’re not worried about rhetoric and some candidates, we want to address the underlying issues and we want to make sure that we understand all of the perspectives.” It’s not like discussion RULES, it’s an entire approach to life. Again, it’s how I got through life, remember?
Jean Catubay:
They’re walking the walk.
Ayo Magwood:
Yes. So it’s not just a rule for that discussion. Many of the kids tell me that they go on and they approach life that way and they just automatically do that. Does that make any sense? I set it up as a way of approaching life and issues and seeing the world.
But I do put safety guardrails specifically on connotations about racism. And I use a framework from Diana Hess and Paula McAvoy’s The Political Classroom. They have the classic book, The Political Classroom. They talk about how to have discussions about controversial issues. They say, you need to distinguish between empirical questions and policy questions. So empirical questions are those that can be answered with evidence. They have right or wrong answers that are discoverable. And if scientists in social science haven’t figured them out yet, then it’s open. If they have come to a conclusion, if the majority of social scientists or scientists have come to a conclusion with evidence, then we consider them settled. Oh, and we don’t discuss settled empirical questions in the classroom. Why would you discuss at what degrees water boils? Something like that. Right? Whereas we do discuss open policy questions.
So a policy question is an opinion question. There’s no right or wrong answer. These are true ideological questions. So for example, some settled empirical questions are considered controversial by the non-expert public. So for instance, some people might find the question, did the Holocaust occur? Or do vaccines cause autism? Or is climate change occurring? Some people may disagree with that, non experts, but the social scientists and scientists are very clear on that. There is a preponderance of evidence and data and social scientists and scientists consider those questions settled. They have a right or wrong answer and everybody agreed on that and there’s tons of data. So you can’t beat those in the classroom. “Does systemic racism exist?” Is one of those questions. And so we’ve talked about this in the classroom, I explain the difference between empirical and policy questions. And then I tell them “Does systemic racism exist?” is closed and empirical and we’re not going to discuss it, we’re going to find out what the answer is. I’ll give them an opportunity to answer what it is, and we spend an entire classroom period looking at the data. We look at research studies, from journal articles, we look at the data and then at the end of the period, I asked the kids, “So what’s the answer?” And they’re like, “Oh my God, not only does it exist, but it is so much worse than we assumed.” And it turns out that even kids who understood that it exists, they had been told it exists. They never saw the evidence themselves while they might see anecdotal, but they never seen data on it. So once they systematically looked at all the data, almost all of them said, “Oh my God, it is so much worse than we even imagined.” They couldn’t even imagine that it was this bad.
So I said, “Okay, so systemic racism exists. It’s a settled, empirical question. However, what, if anything, should the government do systemic racism? including for example, affirmative action.” That is a policy question. There is no right or wrong answer to that. And that question is an opinion that is going to vary based on whether you’re liberal or conservative, because liberals and conservative differ on what they think is the proper role of government. I give the kids an example. I said, I actually sat down and talked to a bunch of black conservatives and all the ones I spoke to, at least, I know there was some that differ on this, but from what I could see, the majority of black conservatives would say, “Of course systemic racism exists, have you seen the data? But as a conservative I do not want the government messing around with that and I against affirmative action. We definitely need to work on it. But the government is not the proper actor to be doing that. We should be working on that through civil society, social organizations, faith organizations, et cetera.”
So when I set it up that way, I don’t get a lot of pushback. In fact oftentimes I get more pushback from liberal students who say, ” What? You’re going to say that affirmative action, that that’s an opinion question?” I’m like, “Yup, it is.” But then at that point I’m welcoming in the conservative viewpoint. See I’m saying, we want to hear the conservative viewpoint. But basically what I’m doing is I’m stripping the racism off of the conservative viewpoint. Because a lot of kids will try to claim that their position that does systemic racism exist or not, they also claim that that’s ideological. There’s nothing inherently ideological about that, It’s common among conservatives, but there’s nothing specifically about the conservative ideology that would say that. it’s only about the role of government – THAT’S conservative.
So in that way, I’m inviting conservative viewpoints in but I’ve stripped out the racism because the vast majority of times that racism enters the classroom or any discussion about race is when kids say there is no systemic racism, but obviously there’s racial disparities. Therefore racial disparities must be a product of black inferiority. That’s where you’re most likely to see the racism coming into the classroom. So if you eliminate that cuts off the vast majority of potentially racist remarks, because most of them stem from that. Plus you get kids less defensive. Conservatives don’t feel boxed into a corner so they don’t feel you have to lash out. No one’s saying anything racist, no one’s calling somebody a racist. So it’s like you’re setting up safety guardrails. And then you can have a productive conversation about race that is still extremely challenging. And you can sit down and have challenging conversations, but that are not going to go off the guardrails and just descend into chaos and name calling and defensiveness
Alec Patton:
So day one was the blind man and the elephant simulation. When do you look at this data on systemic racism in the school year?
Ayo Magwood:
Whenever racism first comes up in the classroom. With me it comes up pretty soon. And I want to add, everything I’ve discussed so far would be useless without the first pillar of my approach, which we haven’t actually talked about. Because the kids need significantly more knowledge and understanding about the history of racism in our country. That’s a big part of why they end up reaching towards opinions and myths and misconceptions is because they don’t have evidence-based understanding of knowledge about the history of racism. Our US history classes don’t teach it today. I teach a series of workshops on the history of racism and the reasons why I created them because of this. I have classes that I teach adults and I have classes that I teach teachers. Even, I find that US history teachers don’t know a lot of this stuff. They don’t know basic facts about the history of racism, so they don’t teach the kids.
And so a lot of discussions about race are based on a bunch of myths and misconceptions and there’s very little understanding of roots, the history and development structure of racism. Basic, basic information. In fact, I originally taught the educator version faster because I assumed they were vaguely familiar with the knowledge, but I realized I had to slow down and teach it just as slowly as I taught the non-educators because I found out that It appears the vast majority of US history teachers are unfamiliar with this. It’s not taught. Even in college level. It’s really sad. And I was no exception. I had these civil rights activist parents, I’m African-American, and I had to spend weekends and weekends and weekends and weekends and hours and hours and hours teaching myself about the history of racism so that I could teach it in the classroom. which is reason why I started my educational consultancy because many years later I said, “Well, let me teach teachers everything that I learned.”
I can distill everything I’ve learnt in several workshops and I can give them the classroom materials I use because I also had to spend years figuring out how to teach that, right? First I had to learn it and then I had to figure out how to teach it, and again, there was very little available on how to teach about racism. About pedagogy and strategies. I had to figure it out. And so now I want to share that because there’s no use in everybody else reinventing the wheel, right? But that was the game changer, the perspective taking and the discussions, that’s really icing on the cake, but that’s not gonna go very far unless you actually teach the facts and history of the history of racism. I see all the time, people having discussions based on very extremely partial understanding of racism so they resort to opinions, feelings, myths. So, I have to figure out how to weave in the history of racism into my course. And one of the things that I did that turned out to be extremely successful is, in 2016, with the elections, with Trump and Clinton, I wanted to do that first because I wanted my kids, my 10th graders, to be able to participate in the national conversation about these important issues.
I didn’t really care that much about the candidates, but I wanted them to be able to have conversations about the rising economic inequity, systemic racism, rising political ideological polarization, the issues that underlined the elections. Sort of like the tip of the iceberg are the candidates and the things going on. But the bottom of the iceberg are these bigger issues that have been building since the 1950s, they didn’t just appear yesterday. So I got permission from my supervisor to flip the script and the first unit out was a six week unit that traced the historical development of economic inequity, systemic racism, and political polarization from the 1950s to the present. So that they can participate in conversations with their parents, they were able to understand the news, they could participate meaningfully in discussion. And we ended that six week unit with a discussion in the evening with parents. I divided up the kids in about five different classrooms with half parents and half students in each classroom and they discussed the underlying issues of today. Again, we’re preparing our students to address the problems of our society. And at the end of that unit, then I scrolled back and started again with colonial era and we proceeded chronologically as usual.
It was supposed to be just for that one year because its elections but it went so well that both the head of department and I said, “Oh, this is going to be permanent.” Because what I found was when we look back in history, there were so many able to make all these connections. They were like, “So that’s the origin.” Or they would say, “Oh my God, that’s the exact same debate we’re having today.” For example, the debate between economic freedom and economic equity, all of a sudden history became so much more relevant to them, so they could make connections so much better. That really prepared students with basic facts and knowledge so they no longer have to resort to emotions and myths and misconceptions. And that really is the bread and butter. That’s the foundation, that’s the bottom of the iceberg. And then all that perspectives taking stuff is sort of the tip of the iceberg or the icing on the cake.
Alec Patton:
I’d really love to get into the nitty gritty of those first six weeks.
Ayo Magwood:
Its divided up basically into three weeks in three weeks. We looked at economic and equity first and then systemic racism. Deliberately, because as controversial as economic inequity is it’s not quite as controversial as racism. And so I want it to build up a little bit of trust with the kids before I touch that. So back in 2016, there was still that debate going on was that, was the rise of Trumpism because of economic anxiety or because of racial resentment. So I posed it like that. That was the question. And at that point the jury was still out. Later, of course you probably know most social scientists have decided that it’s mostly because of racial resentment. But at that point in 2016, there’s lots of evidence on both sides still. So we’re not worried about Trump, but rather Trumpism, which is a rise of people who are interested in voting for somebody like him. There’s no major a judgment on that.
So first we traced rising economic inequity from the 1950s to the present, we looked at the de-industrialization, the rise of the service industry and the bottoming out of industrial manufacturing jobs. So we were looking chronologically. Then we looked at the decline of unions. We looked at globalization and the loss of jobs and free trade agreements. We looked at the role of campaign finance and then moving along chronologically the great recession. We traced the rise of economic inequity since the 1950s, we went through all the major factors leading to current day, historically high levels of economic inequity. And then we went back and we traced systemic racism from the 1950s to the present. First, we looked at systemic racism in education. Then we had two days I think on systemic racism in housing. Then we looked at one day for systemic racism in the justice system, including police brutality.
Then we had another day on systemic racism in employment and poverty. And then we had a day when we put it all together and did something called a causation puzzle. Put them into pairs and gave them a stack of parts that said things like redlining and the 1967 riots, different elements. And I gave him a big poster and put them in pairs and at the bottom they put the part that said the “Baltimore riots” (the most recent ones). And they had to arrange their index cards on the poster with arrows in order to show how we got to the Baltimore riots, they had to show both chronology plus they had to understand how they led to and exacerbated each other. So they can understand that the Baltimore riots just didn’t happen. People didn’t just decide to uprise one moment, rather that it was all these historical elements that were exacerbating each other and leading to each other that eventually ended up exploding in the Baltimore riots. That helped them put everything together.
Okay, so now we know we understand how systemic racism works. What to do about it? And we had a deliberation on affirmative action. Trying to understand each other’s perspectives. And then finally I wrapped it up with the data, pull it all together, influenced by Julie Harris’s teaching on concept based education. So we tried to pull together the big concepts of everything we had learned and then we had the parents student discussion in the evening.
Alec Patton:
And was the parent-student discussion about, was the rise of Trumpism caused by economic inequality or racial resentment?
Ayo Magwood:
Let me see. I don’t think so. Let me see if I can pull them up, its been a long time. Okay, here’s an example. “Last year during the presidential election season, economic inequality became a topic of considerable media attention and debate. Is the wealth gap a new phenomenon and what, if anything, can or should the government do to decrease this gap?”
Alec Patton:
That’s an empirical question followed by policy question.
Ayo Magwood:
Yes. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Alec Patton:
Got it.
Ayo Magwood:
Here’s another one. “Disenfranchised peoples, such as women, people of color, LGBT community, the poor and other minority groups have categorically and systematically been excluded from participation in the dominant culture throughout American history. In what ways has the government attempted to protect these individuals? What extent has the government directly discriminated against minority groups or been complicit in societal discrimination against them?” So they’re all over the place, but they’re big, big questions. Just to get them talking across generations. You know how with education, if the kids are just thinking they’re just memorizing things for the test, they may not engage as equally.
But when they know that they have this seminar at the end, and when they get a chance to speak their views and to be able to participate in these national discussions, it makes them feel really good. It makes them feel like what they’re learning is relevant. And the kids were always apprehensive but afterwards, Oh my God, they were so, so, so proud of themselves. “I talked about big issues of our country and tried to problem solve about them shoulder to shoulder with adults.” So that seminar at the end was very important. I sent the parents ahead of time, I sent them the dae on the very first day so that they could pencil it in their schedule. And I also sent them the pack of readings, which many parents skim through just to get an idea of what kids were learning and what they knew. And also the questions ahead of time.
And the students, the day of, I fed them pizza and juice boxes. During that day, they spent the day in pairs or trios brainstorming answers to the questions. Because they were scared, so it was helpful for them to go on and make notes, things that you could say and things that could bring up, an insight. They helped each other so that when they went into the rooms, they could feel more confident.
Alec Patton:
As you may have gathered. I’m very preoccupied with disaster as a teacher and one thing that I noticed with this is that you have three weeks where you’re talking about economic inequality from 1950 to the present and you haven’t inoculated the racism. So that seems like you have sort of three weeks where kids might be saying anything. What do you do? I assume it happens that a kid says something pretty racially charged kind of in that time.
Ayo Magwood:
It never has happened.
Alec Patton:
Really?
Ayo Magwood:
No, I hate to say this, but especially white kids, if they see data or texts that does not mention race, they assume it’s white.
Alec Patton:
Yeah, that makes sense. But you never had somebody say, “Well of course the immigrants.” Or something when they’re looking at economic… I could just imagine immigration coming up when you’re looking at economic inequality, talk about things like immigrants taking jobs, I would just imagine would come up. But but I also take your point.
Ayo Magwood:
I have this wonderful meme that I show in class. Its a photo of a inside of a car manufacturing shop and it’s all mechanical. There’s not a single person in it. There’s tons of these huge machines, all orange color that are assembling the cars instead of people. And the meme says “I don’t mean to be racist or anything, but all these immigrants taking our jobs all look alike.” Because all the machines are all exactly the same. I mean, we do a very good job and I’m a teacher, so we go through industrialization, the switch to the mechanization of jobs and what was happening with pre-trade and offshore investments, et cetera, et cetera. So when we break down and see exactly where the jobs went.
Once I think I had one kid on his test, he said, “Oh, immigrants had taken the jobs” or something that, but that was one kid in four years. So again, it’s day-to-day data, evidence, evidence, evidence. And then if you break it down, kids are not going to resort to the myths and misconceptions because they don’t have to because they have the actual history and economics and data. But I do want to address one thing you said about preventing the oopsys, controversial things being said and offensive things being said. I am not very good at that, but I am very good at thinking about why kids say things like that, when they say it, what sort of situations, and I just set up the classroom to prevent that so that it doesn’t.
So for example, from what I’ve seen and observed and research, I can see why kids resort to these emotions and myths, because nobody ever told them the history of the data behind it. So you solve the problem upstream instead of downstream, because I’m not very good at that. So it took me a couple years to finesse and really develop the strategies, but by the time I finished, I essentially had zero problems. You have to have a kid that’s really set on saying something and that’s a different situation. You’re not going to have kids saying things out of ignorance because you’ve educated for them. That’s what I’m here for.
Alec Patton:
I think that’s I hope really empowering for people. Because I certainly had this sense that I had to be like a battle rapper or a lawyer as a teacher. That stuff was a going to come at me and I was going to have to have the exact right response instantly, nicer than a battle rapper obviously. That I need to have that quick reflex and I think to hear that there’s other ways of doing it. If someone had told me that a lot earlier I think I would’ve been able to relax a lot.
Ayo Magwood:
You gotta play to your strengths, right? Not just as a teacher, but as a professional, as a person, the important thing is that you know. know your strengths and know your weaknesses and use your strengths to try to minimize situations in your weaknesses.
Alec Patton:
For teachers who do want to get the benefit of all your work. What are the best ways to find and use your resources?
Ayo Magwood:
I’m trying to think. I have a Facebook page of Uprooting Inequity, but I haven’t updated it in awhile. And I have a website, uprootinginequity.com or you could email me. And I also offer classes on the history of racism. Like I said, I have two versions, one for non teachers and one for specifically US history teachers. The one for US history teachers also teaches you all the tips and strategies and lessons you can use. For example, I teach one called the origins of race and racism and which go back to early colonial period, when the concepts of race and racism were first developed. A lot of people, ” Yeah, I didn’t know that.” Most people assume that race and racism always existed. But I go through how they were created using primary sources and also have some secondary sources from historians, from journal articles. I’ve cut out paragraphs at the end, do close readings in the classroom, et cetera. And then I have the history of racism in different workshops.
Alec Patton:
And what’s the best way to find out when those are happening?
Ayo Magwood:
Just email me. Sometimes I’ll advertise them, but oftentimes if I see this interest and I’ll just send everybody a doodle poll, find out when’s a good time for everybody and work it around people as opposed to advertising random dates. You can email me at uprootinginequity [at] gmail.com.
Alec Patton:
Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us.
Ayo Magwood:
No problem.
Jean Catubay:
Yes. Thank you Ayo.
Alec Patton:
High Tech High Unboxed is written and edited by me, Alec Patton. My co-host on this episode is Jean Catubay and our theme music is by Brother Hershel. We’ve included links to lots of Ayo Magwood’s resources in the show notes, along with the link to the transcript. So check all that out and check out Ayo’s website, uprootinginequity.com. And while your browser’s open, check out our brand new website, hthunboxed.org. And you can follow us on Instagram at HTHunboxed. Thanks for listening.
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