The Landscape of Public Education with Jennifer Davis Carey
On our first episode of Public Hearing, we spoke with Jennifer Davis Carey, Executive Director of the Worcester Education Collaborative, about the landscape of public education and how it serves (or doesn’t serve) the needs of young people and their families here in the U.S. We also hear from Savonne Pickett, a Worcester-based artist who participated in the Black Lives Matter street mural. Savonne talks to Josh about her experiences with Public Education, Art, and how important it is to have mentors who care.
Public Hearing is a podcast by Action! by Design. Hosted and Produced by Joshua Croke. Our Creative Producer is Myka Papetti. Our Audio Rock Star is Giuliano D'Orazio. Special thanks to Wyle Schumacher, our Summer intern from Babson College!
Transcript for this episode
JENNIFER DAVIS CAREY: I think that this moment, this crisis, that we're in has the potential to be transformational in terms of education. It is a crisis that will force us to change how we consider education, how we consider the kids that we are working with both inside and outside of the classroom.
JOSHUA CROKE: Hey there! And welcome to episode one of Public Hearing, a podcast that listens to voices impacted by systems and people using community-centered design to reimagine our structures so that they work for everyone. I’m Joshua Croke, and I will be your guide as we hear stories of people overcoming adversity, channeling their passions into youth work as well experiencing racial bias in art class.
I’m also going to share some tools and tactics for how you can take action in your communities to support changing systems so that they are inclusive, equitable, and prosperous. A long winded, technical way of saying, we need to make shit serve the actual needs of people.
Now, if you look up “system” in the dictionary, the first definition in Mirriam Webster’s is this: “a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole.” Meh, technically, yes. But I’m going to create a hybrid from the 14 different permutations of the definition to make this, well.. more human-centered? How’s this;
A system is a harmonious arrangement of solutions that address intersecting needs of each individual and form a network that serves a common purpose.
In Public Hearing, we’re highlighting the needs of each individual and talking to people working to create that network that serves a common purpose.
In Season 1, we’re diving into the landscape of systems that impact youth; public education, juvenile justice, child welfare, public health, transportation, and more.
To get us started, I spoke with Jennifer Davis Carey, Executive Director of the Worcester Education Collaborative, to give us a broader look at how public education serves (or doesn’t serve) the needs of young people and their families here in the U.S.
JEN DAVIS CAREY:
The Worcester Education Collaborative, or WEC as we call it, was the brainchild of John Bassett when he was the President of Clark University. And one of his goals when he was at Clark was for—to find a way for the community to have a more substantial voice in education, and to be able to harness the community around issues related to education in the belief that if there was a shared voice shared action, this sense of common purpose that we would be able to move the system more rapidly and more deeply than it had been.
JOSHUA CROKE:
Great. And so what got you connected to your work in, in WEC or even rewind further in education in general?
JEN DAVIS CAREY:
One of my first positions was director of minority recruitment. It was called minority recruitment back then when I first started in 1982, working in the Harvard College Admissions Office. And as an admissions officer, you travel around the country, visiting high schools, doing presentations, meeting with college counselors, and so forth. And the job of minority recruitment was to bring information about Harvard and about higher education in general, to kids who might not all ordinarily think of that type of education for themselves. And we focused on first generation college students, whatever their ethnicity or race was; um, Asian students, African American, Latino students and Native American students. And one of the things that became clear to me in the 10 years that I did that work was that every issue that you read about in the paper, whether it is issues of transportation, whether it is issues related to health care, issues related to race and ethnicity—all of those played out on the ground of the public schools. And that was a real eye opener for me; to see the extent to which every social issue that we have has an effect on the kids and has an effect on the system of education.
JOSHUA CROKE:
So as it relates to the system of, of education, can you paint a brief portrait for us as to how our system works? And specifically I know one of the things that constantly comes up in these conversations is how schools are funded and how there are barriers and limitations to, you know, equitable access to education because of the funding structure. So for our listeners, if you could just paint kind of a brief portrait, which I know is a complex question for a brief kind of overview, but how our public education system works and how it, how it is funded.
JEN DAVIS CAREY:
Sure. historically really going back to the early days of public education, the role of the common schools in Massachusetts and elsewhere education has always been funded locally and funded by local property taxes, which immediately causes disparities in access in access to quality materials in the amount that teachers can be paid in. All of the things that that impact student learning. And the reason for that is property taxes. So if you were in a high wealth district, a high wealth community, your district can put more money into education. If you were in a low wealth district; obviously the community can't put as much money into education, which creates disparities in terms of instructional materials, the ability of kids to go on field trips, the opportunity for a robust sports program, robust arts programs, those sorts of things. And so those disparities because of our funding are foundational.
Now in the early nineties, there was a lawsuit here in Massachusetts where districts came together and sued the Commonwealth because of that funding mechanism. On the day that the lawsuit was settled, was found in favor of the plaintiffs. Massachusetts passed the first education reform act, MERA, the Massachusetts Education Reform Act. And one of the major features of that was a change in the funding of education to create what's called a foundation formula. And that foundation formula sought to equalize the amount of funding that was provided to the schools. One of the reasons that was able to happen is that the Massachusetts Constitution provides for education for all students. And the purpose of that is to provide an educated citizenry that can participate to the best extent in a sound active, meaningful democracy, and having those kinds of disparities is an obstacle to that. So the funding formula when it was first created, had it's a very complex formula. It still is a complex formula that considers the property wealth of the district that considers the number of kids who have to be educated with special education services. The number of low income students, a host of other things high need students as defined by a variety of measures; that was funded and worked well. And we began to see the disparities in outcomes begin to shrink and shrink dramatically until the early two thousands. When funding was for that was not as consistent. And the formula in many ways became outdated because of changes in the demographics of the Commonwealth, changes in the number of kids requiring special education. And one of the major things was the dramatic increase in the cost of healthcare for anyone who was on the school payroll. And that was something that was not specific to education, but that we see in a variety of areas, but nevertheless, the funding formula did not keep pace with that.
Review commission was con commission was charged by the Commonwealth to look at the funding formula. And they came out with a report in 2016 that recommended changes to the funding formula. And those changes were put into place in something called the Student Opportunity Act, which was signed and passed by the legislature, signed by the governor, passed by the legislature and went into effect. There are a set number of priorities that the Commissioner has put into place. Things like technology, things like reducing the achievement gap those, sorts of things. So that was a significant piece of legislation. The first major update to funding of education in the Commonwealth since 1993. So a full generation of students had passed by before that formula was updated. Unfortunately with the impact of the pandemic the funding in the Commonwealth, tax receipts in the Commonwealth, are down dramatically, which calls the ability to implement this in the way it was intended into question. And so there's right now is a big question Mark, in terms of school funding.
JOSHUA CROKE:
So let's zoom into Worcester and some of the impacts that that has, you know, here locally you know, we have a very diverse school district. I think there's a hundred languages spoken in the public schools. So could you talk a bit about the diversity of schools and how that may vary even between student and family populations and the, you know, the educators and the staffing within the school. And I'd like to talk about some of the challenges that we face, you know, in our own community that are echoed in or mirrored in a lot of other communities across the country, and even here in Massachusetts,
JEN DAVIS CAREY:
Like our sister gateway cities, the school population in Worcester is largely students of color. Here in Worcester, the students of color are mostly Latino students. The next largest group is African-American or black students and the teaching force, however, and the administrators are largely white. So there is a big discrepancy between who was in the classroom and who's in front of the classroom. And that does lead to some issues. Studies have shown that all students, not just students of color, benefit when they are taught by teachers from a variety of backgrounds who bring a variety of perspectives to their work and to their approach to teaching and learning. And so it is important over that, that we make that a priority of diversifying the teaching force.
JOSHUA CROKE:
So what do we see as some of the impacts that may be related to that discrepancy, as well as, you know, some of the challenges related to funding, but also like district priorities on student achievement in, in our community here in Worcester?
JEN DAVIS CAREY:
I think one of the things that we all have to keep in mind is that we all live in, in the backdrop of the perspectives on race, on class, and on the intersection between those. Our district over the last years, like, again, like many of the Gateway City Districts and the Commonwealth overall has become increasingly poor. We see a higher level of poverty in the state overall. Just like we see a higher level of poverty in the country overall. Wages have not kept up. One of the, you know, and this is a little bit of a digression, but our economy over the last, how many ever years has begun to privilege the accumulation of wealth, as opposed to providing jobs that can provide sound employment with good wages for people. And so we see that play out once again, you see that that trend play out in the schools. And so, as a result of that, it's important for teachers to be, to be aware of that and to be able to support the kids in ways that they might not have been able to expect.
One of the things that WEC does, we run a program that is supported by the Abbvie Foundation called reading together that targets seven elementary schools in our city. And we bring books in, do a guest reader, provide an activity in the classroom. The kids are able to take the books home so that they can, as young children begin—and it runs for kids in grades K through three—begin to have a small library at home. And one of the reasons we chose to do that is we looked at what the classroom libraries were, the fact that in many of our schools, there are not libraries available, and if you looked at the usage of the downtown library, there were certain zip codes and certain schools where you did not see very many kids. And if we want kids to be able to access the curriculum and to be able to take charge of their own learning, they have to be sound learners. You know, from my perspective, one of the goals of education is not just to shove information into kids' heads, but to provide them with the tools and skills so that they can take charge and go in their own direction of what they need to know for themselves to develop their own skills and their own gifts. And reading is the fundamental part of that.
JOSHUA CROKE:
Absolutely. Yeah. One of the like phrases that's always stood out to me is the learn to read, read, to learn kind of continuum of, of education and how the, if you have challenges with, you know, that foundational component of education, the future of all the classes and things that you're going to go into are, you know, exacerbated and more challenging. And and that also hits on, you know, the accessibility piece. And one of the things that we're going to be talking about over the course of this show is a lot of these different systems that play a role in impacting youth’s access to education, you know, from public transportation, access to food security, to you know, the, the criminal justice system that's built up and then school to prison pipeline. And when we talk about reading, I had a conversation with a young woman the other day, who's now a college student here in Worcester, but grew up in this community and went to public school, and she recalls a time when her science textbook or whatever was so old that at the end of the year, the, the teacher asked if anyone wanted to take a handful of the books home because the curriculum was so outdated it couldn't be used anymore. And she also remembered the fact that not every student was able to take home one of the textbooks, because there just simply wasn't the number for that. And so these, these challenges are very present. And, you know, sitting here in 2020, we can't not talk about virtual learning and how that was so rapidly introduced to so many districts because of the pandemic and the school closures. And so how has Worcester been handling the response to this pandemic and to virtual learning?
JEN DAVIS CAREY:
Well, I think one of the issues is that Worcester, like the other districts, has had to make the change to virtual learning and remote learning and online lessons and more effective use of technology, a change that would have been evolutionary and happened over a period of years, they've been asked to do what over a period of months and actually a period of weeks. We were building the, the district was building the airplane while they were flying it that doesn't always work. And it, you know, there are clearly issues here in Worcester.
The district was tardy in getting the Chromebooks out to kids. There's also a more significant issue or companion issue I should say, which is access to broadband in general, which is a huge issue in our city with significant swaths of our city population not able to access consistent, robust broadband. We've all been those of us who have the, the privilege of being able to work at home, have all been on Zoom calls with folks where there's buffering or the volume goes up and down, the speech goes in and out. Imagine trying to learn in that environment or teach in that environment. The other is that for many, many teachers are used to teaching face to face and that's particularly important with some of the younger kids and to be able to, there's more to online teaching than just taking what your face to face curriculum was and projecting it on screen. It's a different way of teaching and for kids, it's a different way of learning. So this is something that we are not going to be able to fix in a moment, we are going to have to work at this intentionally over the long haul.
JEN DAVIS CAREY:
One of the things that work is working on is through our Worcester Education Equity Roundtable is working with our community organizations like the EcoTarium, the art museum, the youth development organizations, like the YMCA and YWCA and Boys & Girls Club and others to think of ways that we can use those resources in a different way to be able to compliment what the schools are doing in the classroom, or doing virtually with other types of activities, either delivered virtually or delivered to small groups of kids. We're looking at some models out of Boston, out of Providence to think about. We're also looking at some of the models that a place called the Greenfield Virtual School use as they've been doing virtual and online education for years, and really have that down to a science. So I think there really are some models out there that we can draw on, but it will take a different type of relationship of the community with the schools and the schools with the community, so that there is more of an openness and a sense that we are all in the same boat and all need to be rowing in the same direction and to keep the needs of the kids at the fore.
JOSHUA CROKE:
Do you think that the landscape of education even past the pandemic once things hopefully kind of settle and normalize to some level of whatever that might mean? Do you think that the landscape of education is forever changed because of this? And I know that there are so many conversations about the classroom learning environment, being a very antiquated system of learning that hasn't grown with, or, or progressed with a lot of the technology innovations and, and, you know yeah, a lot of the innovation that's happened in, in our community classrooms has pretty much stayed the same in many senses. Do you think the landscape of education is going to be forever different because of this?
JEN DAVIS CAREY:
I actually do. And I'm very optimistic about that, you know, not to use a hackneyed expression, but we've all heard the expression there is opportunity in crisis. I think the opportunity here is that we, as I mentioned, are having to ramp up very quickly changes that were coming in education. We're going to see them more quickly and we will have to front end front load them and do the refinement as we go on. I think one of a couple of those changes will be an increased focused on project based learning and also a student driven learning where students can pick a particular project, pick a particular area of interest and go with it. You can learn the skills of analysis of critical thinking, whether you are studying the, the Egyptian empire or studying how the water cycle you can use critical, the critical thinking skills that you will learn are the same, regardless of what the specific type of subject matter is. Now that said, I do think that there clearly are common things that we all need to know if we are all living in the same society and living in the same democracy, there are certainly shared learning, shared understanding that we have to have, but how we acquire that, I think can be different from one kid to another.
JOSHUA CROKE:
Yeah, it's so having done so many workshops and listening sessions with youth, through my work with Action! by Design, I hear so many young people express the desire to do more hands-on project type experiences, and it's kind of where they thrive and what they kind of appreciate. And, you know, one of the things that so many kids say that I talked to is like, well, everyone learns differently. You know, my friend loves reading. I love listening to podcasts. I love watching YouTube videos, right? There's different, you know, levels of engagement. And a lot of it does revolve around technology. And you mentioned kind of the broadband internet access challenges that are being faced right now here locally. And this is also a, a national conversation. And I think, you know, I'm a proponent of the internet as a human right conversation because there is so many obvious and you know, research founded in people's ability to access internet directly correlating to their ability to be successful in career and have economic mobility access and things like that.
Do you think that there needs to be a shift and maybe a drastic shift in the priorities of school districts, as well as cities who help support and fund districts, to address the glaring needs of access and what might some of that look like? Obviously it's always a funding issue, but there are, I'm sure things that one could do now based on just making a decision to act in certain capacities. And I'm wondering if you have thoughts on what some of those priorities and resource alignment might look like.
JEN DAVIS CAREY:
Yeah. And, you know, I certainly am not a specialist in broadband access and in how that business model works, but from a consumer, it does not work. It may work as a business model, but for a consumer's perspective, particularly given the needs that we have, where broadband access in a society that's increasingly knowledge-based and technology-based, the access to that has to be opened up. And we need to figure out a way to do that. It is a public utility, the same way that energy is a public utility or that water is a, is a public utility. We need to figure out a way to manage that so that there is a core level of, basic level of access that everyone has, that allows them to function more remotely as work transitions to less central office kinds of approaches. And as education, the sites that we use for education become more varied. It is vital that we figure out that we figure this out. And as I said, it affects more than just education. It affects a host of other sectors.
JOSHUA CROKE:
Right. Of course. Yeah. I mean, I think of family members looking for job opportunities, you know, and the difficulty of doing that without being able to just jump on a job search website. And if one has to travel to the library to get on an internet-accessed computer to do that work like there, we're putting up more and more barriers to our young people being successful, their families being successful and it, it creates this, you know much more difficult pathway for so many of our, of our young people and families.
One of the other things that I'm looking to talk about, and, you know, we're going to get into this more in our episode, our second episode, but is the school to prison pipeline and issues with, you know, equity. And that's something that I know from the numbers Worcester struggles with. So I'm wondering if you could paint a portrait for us on what that looks like in the schools relative to the out of school suspensions that we're seeing and who that really impacts at a, you know, an alarmingly unequal rate.
JEN DAVIS CAREY:
There are a number of different edges to this. It's a complex issue. We began looking at this back in 2013 when we noticed an extraordinarily high suspension rate here in the City of Worcester. And if you looked at it more closely the kids impacted by that were largely students of color, largely Latino students, largely low income students and largely kids receiving special education services. And if you looked at kids that had any combination of more than one of those, their likelihood of being suspended went up. Also stunning was the fact that kids in the lower grades, kids in grades kindergarten through grade three were also being suspended at very high rates. And if you look at kids who are, and involved in the juvenile justice system or the criminal justice system, and you look at their school record, you can see a history of suspension or a history of disciplinary action from a very young age. And so that is how the school to prison pipeline manifested itself. We've looked at a number of things. One is one of the first things we looked at was the relationship to trauma and kids who had been exposed to trauma. And it's my theory that given the world that we live in, everyone at some point is going to be exposed to trauma. There was a study done decades ago by Kaiser Permanente and they are the major health insurer for California. Yeah. Particularly for Silicon Valley. Right. And they did a study of their insured and found that folks who had had been exposed to violence in the home substance abuse or mental illness in the home, parental divorce or separation and so forth, right. We're more likely to have significant health issues later in life.
As studies have flowed from that original study, it's clear that things like a family deploy a deployment of a family member in the military, incarceration, exposure to violence in the community, illness of a family member or death of a beloved caregiver; can all impact both social and emotional health, but also impact physical health over the long haul. So given that it's our belief, as I said, that everyone will experience this, whether it's the, the death of a grandparent or an illness in the family, everyone will experience this at some point. And so we believe that it is vitally important that there be core, social and emotional support in the schools for every child. And that we also begin to think about creating an early warning system so that if you know that a grandparent has passed away or that a parent has a chronic illness we do what we used to, we used to do when I was working at the college, and if you knew a child, a student came from a stressful home life, that kid would be “teacupped” as we call it; regarded as someone that needed special handling. And we need to have that kind of foundation for all of the kids. So that is the social and emotional piece of it. The other piece of it is that we all live, and it's very difficult for people to hear and to accept, but we all live in a society that is racialized. And all of us have grown up in this. Some people use the analogy of the fishbowl. You can't tell a fish that's in that it's in water. You know, that it's in water, you can see that it's in water, but that's the only thing that the fish knows. And so helping people to see that this is not an indictment of who they are as a person, it's just a reality that we live with and that we have to be aware of and pay attention to.
I raise this because there was a study that came out way back in the 1930s by Kenneth Clark. And it's the, the doll study it's called where kids were presented with a black doll and a white doll and asked, which is the good doll, which is the pretty doll, which doll do you want to play with? And so forth and kids, regardless, regardless of race, all said that the, the white doll was the better doll on that they wanted to play with the, and all of that, that was in the 1930s. That study has been replicated multiple times most recently two or three years ago, and the results are exactly the same. So there's an internalization of the, the racialized beliefs that we all hold.
Another study came out just last year that had teachers looking at, and these were preschool teachers, were asked to look at a group of kids and indicate when they were misbehaving. And it was a white girl, a black girl, a black boy, a white boy. And so the teachers were asked to do this, complete this rubric. What they didn't know was that there was no difference in the kids' behavior. None of the kids were misbehaving, but it was a study of where the teacher's eyes were following and to a person, regardless of the race, ethnicity, age, gender of the teacher, they were all following the actions of the little black boy. And so if you are constantly being scrutinized, being monitored, then of course something is going to come up. And it's that sort of thing that we all have to keep in our conscious mind so that we can retrain our brains to perceive things differently and to regard kids with more latitude and more compassion.
JOSHUA CROKE:
It makes me think of a conversation I had with a professor at Columbia University in New York last year. Their work revolves around using virtual well, they're a social worker in this working in the School of Social Work and they created a virtual reality experience called the 1000 Cut Journey that puts the user into quote unquote, the shoes of a young black boy growing up in America. And that story you were just telling was so resonant with one of the experiences that you have as like a young five, six year old boy in a classroom and being you know, playing with your friends, just as everyone else's playing in, and you're called out for rough housing. And, and, you know because of exactly what you're talking about there. The other thing that then the professor's name is Dr. Courtney Cogburn. And one of the things they said that really resonated with me was—by caring whether people or do not do or do not perceive you as racist is a narcissistic look at the broader societal systemic and structural issues that we face in this country. They said, I don't care if you think I am racist or not. We all have work to do to dismantle the structures that exist. And we see how strongly that's impacted in our, in our students, in our communities.
JEN DAVIS CAREY:
Yeah. And related to that, you know, when maybe you know, I guess one of the things I feel—The older I get the less I'm interested in changing people's hearts and minds. I'm interested in changing people's behaviors because it's people's behavior that impacts other people. And that's what I, that's what I am most in. And that's something that we all have to be aware of. So,
JOSHUA CROKE — Okay, so we’re going to finish up our conversation with Jen in a few minutes. But I want to zoom in to a more personal story of a young woman I had the pleasure of meeting during the painting of the Black Live Matter mural in Worcester—she was one of the lead artists who designed and painted a letter in the work.
Oh, and first; like I have to bring up the importance of figuring out a way to get all of our families access to technology and reliable internet in this time as well as point out that we need to be in a new era of trusting students and families in the time when Zoom does stuff like this, alot..
...
Yea.. my internet, which is usually very reliable (and I’m in a privileged group there—check out the Worcester Regional Research Bureau’s “Broadening Broadband” report for more on that), but the first time I tried to connect with our next guest, a lot internet and Zoom failing occurred. But anyway—back to the story.
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Savonne
JOSHUA CROKE:
So take two, this goes better than last time and sorry for the technical difficulty. It seems like there's no delay on my end this time. Is it sound better on yours?
SAVONNE PICKETT:
Yeah.
SAVONNE PICKETT:
My name is Savonne Pickett. I am 18, I'm born and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts, and I attend LaSalle university and major in fashion design. I got introduced to the BLM mural, thanks to my parents. I was actually telling them a lot that I've been wanting to do in mural in Worcester, and they came across the Black Lives Matter mural and they were telling me about it and they were helping me reach out to Che and em, who were the people who kind of like put it together and everything. So once they got in touch with them, they were able to get them in touch with me. And I was talking back and forth with them and they were asking me if I would be interested in doing it. And of course I would say yes, because I've been looking for something like that to do so ever since then, that was the opportunity that helped me start that, that project with them.
JOSHUA CROKE:
So what was it like to be a part of that?
SAVONNE PICKETT:
At first it was very what is the word? It was very, I was very nervous because it was kind of out of my comfort zone to go and meet, to talk to a lot of people and everything. It did take some time to get that, get that comfort level. But once I met a few people, including you, I felt that I was more comfortable and I was like, this is, this is exactly what I'm supposed to be doing as an artist, like communicating with other artists and just getting out and meeting new people. And it was just honestly a turning point in my life. And it made me feel like there is more to come like this wasn't the only thing that I could participate in. And it gave me an opportunity to feel like I could do more with my life.
My letter was the S. This snake comes around like an infinity symbol to represent that oneness and together as a whole. There is a red arrow that goes through the snake and that represents the energy, like directing the energy flow towards both of the snakes together. And like it represents the movement of the snakes and the direction that they're going in. So in like in like the fictional state or if you're like thinking about it a certain type of way, they would soon meet together as one, like they'd become one, but I feel like that was a, that was the best way I could represent that idea as a whole.
JOSHUA CROKE — If you haven’t seen the BLM mural in Worcester, check it out—its right in front of the DCU Center on Major Taylor Boulevard. Okay, now back to Savonne—I asked her about her passion for and background in art.
SAVONNE PICKETT:
I've always been into art ever since I was little, my family, I grew up with like both sides of my family, kind of do art. Mostly my dad's side is very like talented with the arts and everything, but I kinda just grew up like seeing my uncles draw pictures of like superheroes and like very strong characters. My dad would show me some of his drawings that he used to draw when he was younger. My cousins drew a lot and I was like, I wanna, I wanna do this too. Like everyone draws, I got a notebook when I was about like six, like little lined paper notebook. I would always draw on it. I didn't know what a sketchbook was. That was kinda the first, the first thing that I had to express myself as a younger kid. I think I still have that, that notebook, but yeah, that's what I started off with.
When I started to go to school, I went to a magnet school, so that school focused on like the arts. So we had drama class, dance class, art class, and music class. I was always drawn to the music and the art class, specifically. There was points where even though I loved art so much, there was just times where I felt like I, something just wasn't right within the classroom. I knew that I could do do more than what was given to me from my teachers. I just felt like I was being treated differently than other, other students at a young age.
There was this one time in kindergarten where I was sitting at a table with another classmate and a crayon rolled off the table and broke. She, the girl that was sitting next to me, raised her hand, told the teacher that I broke the crayon and the teacher moved me to a whole different table. Didn't even let me, like, explain or anything—completely separated me from everyone else. And I remember like never being talked to during that class at that, at that certain point in time, I, I was looking back at all the other students, having conversations and talking and stuff. And I was just at a table by myself finishing my work. Even at that, that elementary school, there was just a lot of things that I felt like I was singled out. A lot of the time, I felt like I was getting in trouble more than anybody else getting yelled at, mostly in like kindergarten and stuff.
JOSH — Okay, Josh interjecting here in the present. I had a heated conversation recently about bias and racism and it lead to something I’m finding to be a frequent disconnect in these discussions; one person leading with data and stats and the other leading with personal stories based on their own experiences, which often leads to the latter person saying, “but where do you get your data?” I caution people from just focusing on personal stories because of the emotional response they’re intended to create—and how easy these can be tooled to validate someone’s already held beliefs that they’ve not had to challenge before, most likely because they’re a part of a dominant culture. “Affirmative action means you’re not getting the job, Ken, because you’re white.”
So, for every personal story you hear, I’d like you to consider the following:
How does this story make me feel? Great first question; did you just feel personally attacked? Did you just eye roll? Were you really uncomfortable through it and hoping it would end? I’d go inward on that for a minute.
and
How does this story fit into a local, state, and national context.. by the numbers. So consider Savonne’s story where she says, “I just felt like I was being treated differently than other students at a young age” — that’s one personal story, yes? But now, compare that to other people who have said the same thing and then look for similar factors. Okay, studies find that a very high percentage of youth of color experience these feelings in school. Now, one could argue that it’s really hard to take feelings and use them as a basis for action. However, I would challenge that and say, if we look at the numbers—a lot of youth of color experience this in their classrooms where almost 80% of public school teachers, nationally, are white.
Now, Public Hearing is not going to do too much work trying to convince people that systemic racism is real, but if you are in the questioning camp, I do hope you’ll keep listening to the show. Part of our M.O. moving forward is: Systemic racism is real and impacts the lives of folks of color every day in this country. Also, this show isn’t about trying to make you feel sorry for people. Folks experiencing oppression can’t really do anything with our feelings, but we can get behind people taking action.
That being said, I am going to create a bit of space in our first episode for those still considering what systemic racism is and looks like. Think about some of what Savonne said, “I just felt like I was treated differently” “I felt like I was singled out” and “I was getting in trouble more than anyone else” while I read some stats;
A Harvard University study found that, when applying for jobs, 25% of Black candidates were called back if they changed their names to sound more white vs. 10% who got called back when they left ethnic details on that same resume.
In 2019, a study of CEOs in Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies found that only 8.7% had CEOs of color.
In 2018, the average Black worker earned just 62% of what the average white worker made.
Frustratingly, I could continue with statistics about how folks of color are more negatively impacted in many other verticals, but, again, this show isn’t trying to make people feel bad—it’s making the not-so-bold statement that we, as a society, need to do better. And in Public Hearing, we’re focusing on the action steps and the work of people making equity and equality more of a reality.
And also, people who do amazing things and overcome incredible obstacles despite oppression should be a powerful display of human resilience.
SAVONNE PICKETT:
But I was always interested in doing the, the art projects and creating the things for my family and came to a point where I was bringing home a whole bunch of projects. And my mom was like, we have to, we have to calm down on all these projects cause you have nowhere to put them. I have a, I have a little book bag filled with all my school projects that I used to do when I was little.
And when I went to middle school, I also did the, the art program that they assigned there. And I, through the span of seventh and eighth grade, I had two different art teachers. And like once again, they just did not, they weren't really, we weren't really getting along for some reason, like. This is like a constant trend that I found within like having art teachers. They just didn't really like have good communication with their students. And that's where I felt like that's kind of what disappointed me is because as an art teacher, I feel like you should, you should be inspiring and uplifting your students and not always yelling at them. And like, I don't know, it was just, it was just a lot.
High school came, I got another art teacher. She, I met her kind of the end of freshman year cause she had like medical problems and stuff. So I met her, I ended up liking her a lot, but she, she ended up liking my work too, but there was just like that disconnect kind of within the classroom. Then the rest of my three years of high school, I had one art, one art teacher and I thought he was pretty cool beginning of the year, beginning of sophomore year when I was there. But then like as I started to express my ideas within the classroom and say like, this is, this is how I see things. And this is what my art means. It began to like, everything began to turn around and like, I felt like he was against me and going against everything that I had to say and the relationship between me and my teacher and also some of him and his students were just like, there was people coming up to me and saying like, I don't even want to do art anymore because of those. And it was just like a really bad experience. And
JOSHUA CROKE:
Did you ever meet other students who kind of talked about feeling the same and have you ever been able to chat with people about kind of why you feel that that may have happened as you were, as you were growing up through school?
SAVONNE PICKETT:
Not really. Most, most of all the schools that I've, I went to, especially Worcester Arts Magnet School is predominantly white, a white, like there's a lot of white kids who attend that school. So like the teachers kind of, there wasn't that many black children, there was only, I would say one other black child in my class from when I was in kindergarten from to sixth grade. So there was definitely bias towards some students and just, like, behavior things happening. I don't really recall any of the other students having similar issues as I did. I never really asked anybody about like, issues that they had at that school. But I do remember, like I did remember seeing a lot of kids who look like me getting in trouble a lot.
JOSHUA CROKE:
Talking about your experiences in school and how you kind of push through and still did art. Even though you had some challenges with, with your teachers, what, what do you think helped you kind of stay committed to art, even though you didn't feel particularly supported by your teachers who should be there, you know, supporting you as, as a student, as well as an artist?
SAVONNE PICKETT:
I think about this question a lot. Definitely I would say my family supported me through everything, especially with art. They knew that right off the bat, that art was my passion and I took it very seriously at a young age and everything. So definitely with them always saying that I could, I can do anything that I dream of and seeing, like, seeing is believing, like I can do anything that I would want to do only if I put my mind to it, like them constantly being there and recognizing what I can do and just like influencing me to inspiring me to do more, definitely had an impact on this creative journey in my life. And, yeah.
JOSHUA CROKE:
Remember that resilience thing I mentioned earlier? This is an example of that. It’s also an example of the power encouragement and support for young people can have in their lives. Savonne goes on to talk about the Racism Free WPS Instagram account that posts stories of folks, both students and teachers, who have experienced bias in the schools.
SAVONNE PICKETT:
And I think that for this to be coming out now is very saddening and it's, it's not only happening to students. It's happening to teachers as well within this community in Worcester. Like that's, that's terrifying to me. So I would say that the Worcester Public Schools would have to do way better with just choosing who they want to work for them and making sure that these people have an open mind and an understanding for every race of people, like just coming into their job. Like they have respect for each and every child because even through schools like kids, kids in schools, this is like the end of the time of their life. These are the times that they're going to remember the most when they're adults like this is supposed to be a fun childhood. They're not supposed to be reminiscing on when they got sent to the principal's office for throwing a paper ball in the trash, or just like things that happened for no reason. Like that's not, that's not what childhood is for. Like, you're supposed to have a good experience in school. You're supposed to be learning, not getting bullied by grown people or even like students. Like that's not, that's not normal to me.
__________________________________________
Back to Jen
JOSHUA CROKE (37:28):
So what's on the horizon for public education. And what do you hope happens in the next months and years?
JEN DAVIS CAREY (37:35):
I hope that we just, that we don't continue to careen from crisis to crisis, drama to drama. And I think that this moment, this crisis, that we're in has the potential to be transformational in terms of education. It is a crisis that will force us to change how we consider education, how we consider the kids that we are working with both inside and outside of the classroom. If we think about what our own reaction and how disorienting this whole, these whole last six months have been; imagine them through the eyes of a child who does not have that perspective, this may very well be the defining event of their lives. And so it's important that we think about what that experience is for them, what it means for their own development, what it means for how we consider teaching and learning. One of the things we are going to clearly have to think about how we deliver education.
I think we also have to think about what the meaning and the purpose of education is. That, as I mentioned before, it's not just about stuffing information into kids' heads. It's about helping them to develop the skills and tools so that they can have agency in their own learning. And I guess more philosophically given how dramatic this moment has been. I think it's also important for us to think about education as a way to help kids see themselves in the context of a story that is greater than their own individual story, that their story, yes, is a vital and critical part of it, but it is linked to and a part of other stories and to a greater, more encompassing narrative that we have the opportunity to shape. And it is shaping that narrative that I think is one of the goals of education, giving kids the tools to see, understand, and shape that narrative.
End Credits
Thanks for listening to Public Hearing. I’m Joshua Croke. Our Creative Producer is Myka Papetti, our Audio Producer is Giuliano D’Orazio who also did our awesome show music. Special thanks to Wyle Schumaker, our awesome intern from Babson College this summer! Public Hearing is created by Action! by Design. Action! by Design is a community design and innovation studio that helps organizations tackle systems change through facilitation, community design sprints, and coalition building. Learn more at actionbydesign.co and follow @ActionDesignCo on Instagram and Twitter to follow Public Hearing and for more community-centered projects.
Thank you for listening to our first episode! If you liked the show, the best way to support its existence is to share it with your friends and coworkers and rate and leave a review where you can. You’re the best, thank you. If you have a question for the show or want to share ideas, send us an audio note to publichearing@actionbydesign.co!
