Windows, Mirrors, & Education with Jennessa Burks
Josh chats with Jennessa Burks about her experience as a Worcester Public School Student who, fast forward, became a Worcester Public School teacher and then left the district. We explore identity, shared and differing experiences, and the importance of having educational experiences that are windows and mirrors. The ability to see yourself and reflect on your own identity and experience and the ability to see through into other people’s lives and experiences—histories and stories that are shared by the people who lived them.
Listen to Public Hearing wherever you get your podcasts and on WICN 90.5FM, Worcester’s NPR affiliate station. And, while we celebrate women all year round, our guests for the month of March are all women who live, influence, and/or impact the City of Worcester, MA. Learn more about our show at PublicHearing.co
Transcript for this episode
Joshua Croke (00:00):
Hello Worcester and the world, Josh here, your host of the Public Hearing podcast and radio show airing Wednesdays at 6:00 PM on WICN 90.5 FM Worcester's NPR affiliate station. Also available wherever you get your podcasts. We are going to dive right in today for our show about inclusive and equity centered community building and how we might create compelling futures with systems that work for everyone. You're listening to the Public Hearing podcast. Our guest today is Jennessa Burks. Jennessa is an educator, an artist, and an activist who is a former Worcester public school teacher, who now teaches in the Cambridge public schools. Jennessa was also a Worcester public school student and attended both Quinsig and Worcester State here in our community before receiving her masters in education from Harvard. Jennessa uses art to express her emotion and amplify, not only her voice, but the unheard voices of her communities. So before we dive into discussing Worcester, equitable growth and imagining possible futures for our communities, I'd like to invite you, Jennessa to share some of your story and any parts of your social location. You feel comfortable sharing with our listeners. And thank you so much for being with us today on the show.
Jennessa Burks (01:14):
Thank you. So where to start, I have so many different pieces of me that have played a role in where I am today. I think most importantly, I'm a mom, I'm a single mom. I have a 12 year old, so that's a big part of my life. I also am multiracial. So I identify as a Black woman, but I am African-American, Native American, French and Irish. So I've got a little bit of that mixed identity that plays a role in the way I navigate the world and the way I'm perceived by the world. In Worcester, as you know, we have a huge Latinx population. So if I'm in Worcester, I am perceived as if I am a Latina. Though I am not. But for listeners who are trying to put together what I might look like, I've got like big curly volume hair, it's a little light Brown.
Jennessa Burks (02:14):
I've got a tan complexion, full lips. And I definitely look like I am a woman of color. I also was a first-generation college student in my family and on my mom's side my mom was actually one of the only ones to graduate from high school for awhile. So, I grew up kind of moving around a lot and in like a lower economic status. Currently, I’m a homeowner, I am, as you said, an educator, I'm an elementary educator. And I also have a small art business on the side, so those are different pieces of me.
Joshua Croke (03:13):
Fantastic. Well, thank you so much. And I'm really excited to have this conversation. We had our kind of preparatory call for this and had a lot to discuss, and I'm really excited to kind of dive into some of those issues and areas. So I'd love to start with kind of framing some of your own personal story or experience as a student in the Worcester public schools and what some of that looked like and what kind of led you down a pathway of becoming an educator.
Jennessa Burks (03:48):
Okay. So my experience in the public schools now that I reflect back, I feel like I might've been a kid that slipped through the cracks a little bit. I am a really mathematical logical thinker. So my math skills are really strong and sometimes my problem solving is strong and I can articulate myself well. However, I really did struggle as a reader and as a writer. And I don't think that necessarily got the attention of my teachers or the attention it deserved from my teachers. I went to a really small middle school. I was like the last graduating class. For anybody that isn't even aware of the school, it was held out of part of a Greek church near Elm park, and there are a grand total of 90 students in the middle school. And trying to compete with that was really difficult because it was, you had to get certain grades and then go into a lottery to get into the school.
Jennessa Burks (05:02):
So it was all these high achieving, you know, perfectionist students. And to keep up with the reading and the writing was so difficult. I remember crying and being depressed all the time. I think I asked my mom to switch my school every single day for the entire first year. It was horrible. And I gained a lot of skills from going to that school, but I always felt like I didn't fit in. And now looking back, I realized not only was I struggling because I had slipped through the cracks and didn't get the proper intervention with my reading and my writing, so I was a little bit behind, I also was one of, I don’t want to get the number wrong, I wanna say it was six Black or Latinx students in the school out of the 90.
Jennessa Burks (05:59):
And we kind of just sat together at a table and we're like, I guess we'll be friends. But yeah, that, I think didn't help in feeling like I fit in. And then when it came to my home situation, I was living in an apartment and no one on my mom's side of the family owned a home or anything like that. I actually shared a room with my mom until I was 12. So, there was a big gap in that didn't make it easy to feel like I had these close bonds with the students that I went to school with. And I think I started to notice that the world looked at me differently as a Brown girl in middle school. And it was a very distinct memory of being able to pick our groups and anybody that has been in school.
Jennessa Burks (07:00):
And your teacher let you pick your groups. You were like so excited, like, “yes, I'm going to work with my friends.” And we had picked a group of friends. We were like, “yes! We're going to do the science project together.” And the teacher was actually a woman of color. And she said, “this group can't be together. Does anybody realize why this group can't be together?” And we were like, “because it's four girls and one boy,” and we were just stumped. We could not figure it out for the life of us. And she finally went, “everyone in that group, except for one of you is considered a minority. So you can't be in a group together.” And we were like, what? That's the most insane thing we've ever heard? We were just like furious. So, you know, we're ready to like pull out the picket signs and boy caught the whole project. And she said, “I'm not going to have someone think that I segregate my class. So you each have to go to a different group and you can't work together.” And I remember being like crushed and really having to grapple with what that meant for me as a person and who I was around. And I didn't have the right people to process that with. So it just sat with me for a long time.
Joshua Croke (08:15):
And how did that, how did you feel like hearing that from an educator of color kind of indicating that like you couldn't be together because of that minority status or like…
Jennessa Burks (08:33):
I think that made it more confusing for me, now to reflect back and go, okay, that was, that was some of your own experience coming out in a way that it shouldn't have come out and I can process that now, but at, you know, 13 years old, I was so confused and think that I started to internalize that it meant it wasn't okay for me to be in these like self-segregated spaces because it came from a woman of color. So for a while after that, like years after that, I noticed when it was a majority minority, like we used to say, or majority Black and Brown folks in the room. And I didn't always know how I felt about it, but I noticed it and I had never noticed it before that.
Joshua Croke (09:33):
Wow. So when you continued through your education is this when you started to explore art, when did you kind of make that decision to pursue education? What did that kind of look like as all that began to unfold in your life?
Jennessa Burks (09:55):
Truthfully, it's been really hard for me to figure out when I decided to go into education. The art is easy because I've always drawn. I have been the kid that had an old book under my arm and a mechanical pencil, so I'll never have to sharpen it. And I would just, I was an only child and I would just draw all day, every day. Everything that I picked that I wanted to do for the rest of my life that month, cause it always changed, had to do with some sort of art. It was the fashion designer because I could draw clothes and then it was an architect, I could draw buildings, but it always had some component of art in there. And with education, I really didn't have bonds with my teachers. I didn't have anyone that kind of really like scooped me under their wing in elementary school or middle school or even high school.
Jennessa Burks (10:49):
I didn't have as awful stories as other people, but I just kind of was there, like, I didn't think anybody noticed when I was gone. So I think really what led me to go into education is a, not this pivotal moment with this deep bond, with a teacher, it was the fact that I never had them. And then realizing once I got into college, that those are so important. And when I had my own daughter, I remember thinking like this could have changed my life. There are many, many children out there whose lives could be changed if they had a great teacher. And it was a mix of not having it myself, having my own daughter and wanting more for her. I have younger sisters and one of my sisters had a difficult time in school and it was, you know, being really angry at the way that they were handling her education. And I don't even think I found education. I think education just found me just kind of like where the things in my life steered me down. I've always been great with kids. They kind of gravitate towards me and it just made sense. And now I love it. I really, really, really love it.
Joshua Croke (12:12):
And so you have such an interesting story going from being a young person, educated in the Worcester public schools, then pursuing higher education in Worcester as well through Quinsig and Worcester State and then coming back and becoming an educator. So how have you kind of thought about, or kind of engaged in that experience as an educator in a school system that you went through and kind of, how did you kind of manage what you were hoping to bring to that space based on your own experiences?
Jennessa Burks (12:54):
I think it's made me even more invested than I already naturally would be because I could draw on my own stories. I could draw on, you know, the stories my friends had of some of the messaging we received when we're in the Worcester public schools. And then I was able to do all my student teaching in Worcester and explore well, what does that look like when you go to a different school within the same city? Are we seeing some of these same issues with I don't know, with just equity in general at these other schools and I noticed them there too, and then I had a daughter and it was, do you notice them with your own child? And they came up again and then I was able to, you know, be an educator myself, have my own classroom and say, do I notice these same things in my own class?
Jennessa Burks (13:49):
And I did. And it was, do you still notice them when you're giving it your all, like when you are just giving up, you know, cliche, blood, sweat and tears? Cause yeah, I got hit a couple of times and and I ran around the building chasing kids sometimes. So there's your blood, there's your sweat and your tears for sure. There were so many tears. And it was still seeing some of these same issues. And I think what it felt like was like the door opened a little wider as I progressed. So as a student, it felt like something was off. For example, my guidance counselor told me that she wouldn't be able to, she didn't know if she was going to be able to write me a letter of recommendation the next year when I needed it. And even though I had a 3.7 GPA and was, or 3.75 or something like that, I was in all honors classes and in the National Honor Society, I had worked and volunteered and was in a sport.
Jennessa Burks (14:57):
I had a really good college resume. She said Worcester State was too much of a reach to be my safety school. So that felt off as a 17 year old. You go, that's, you know, I don't have any family in college right now, but that seems off. And then as I moved forward, the door opened a little bit more and a little bit more. And you started seeing that, you know, it's not just my story, many other students that came through Worcester public schools have similar stories. And then I became a teacher and it was, you know, then you're watching it happen with your students, whether it's when they walk out your door or when they go to the next grade or when they travel to the next school, you're seeing more and more of this, these problematic systems and this problematic climate and culture within the Worcester public schools that when you care it hurts, it fires you up. Don't get me wrong. It fired me up and I was running on less sleep and able to do that. But it's frustrating. Frustrating doesn't even capture it correctly because you want to save everyone. And I remember saying that, like, I just want to save every kid from any of the things that we went through and you just can't.
Joshua Croke (16:25):
Right. And I wonder, how do you respond to, one of the things that we try to do on Public Hearing is center the voices and lived experiences and personal stories of folks in our community. And in various respects, we talk about education. We talk about juvenile justice. We talk about community and economic development and the different kind of strategies that different people have and how people in certain positions of power really have an advantage in moving some initiative forward that doesn't necessarily reflect all of the motivations or desires from the majority of residents and people who live in cities and live in communities. And so often we hear these pushback stories to, you know, something like your story of, Oh, well, that was just your experience. Right? And you talk about how, you know and have heard other people who have had similar experiences.
Joshua Croke (17:26):
So how do you respond when someone says, well, that was just like a bad guidance counselor, or that was just your experience, or, you know, I feel like there's also this very strong, falsehood of this meritocratic society, in which so many people are fed of like, Oh, well, if that happened, there was a reason, and it was, you know, somehow we blame young people so much, for so much, in this society and in these communities. And so how do you respond to people when that can sometimes be the talking point of like, well, that might've just been your experiences, a way to dismiss these larger systemic challenges.
Jennessa Burks (18:13):
I would urge those people to reflect and think deeply on how many stories do you think you're going to hear if your immediate response is one that is dismissive, how many folks do you think are going to be willing to open up to you and share their experiences if they're watching or hearing you dismiss their truths? I think it's very easy to dismiss someone else's truth because you didn't experience it yourself. However, you're not learning, you're not listening. If your immediate reaction is to tell me that my story is because of something that I did without knowing the other party or not knowing the situation, you're not ready to listen. You're not. And you're a compliant part of the problem instead of an active part of the solution. I think the more open we are to sitting in uncomfortable conversations, because to find out that your experience in a city is completely different than someone else's is an uncomfortable feeling.
Jennessa Burks (19:11):
The more we're willing to sit in those uncomfortable conversations, the more truths will come out. And the more we'll be able to see that it isn't one story. It isn't a dismissive one case. There are actually a ton, for example, the guidance counselor story. I didn't talk to my own friends when I was in high school, I did go to the office. I did go above her. I did search for help and I was dismissed. So I really did internalize that it was just me, and it was just my story. A few years ago, I opened up because I'm still friends with students. And we realized that those of us that had a last name that landed us with that guidance counselor, every single one of us that was Black or Brown, that came from a family that was not financially well off, were told not to apply to the schools that we chose, every single one of us.
Jennessa Burks (20:04):
And we were a group of friends that were working really hard to do well in school because we saw it as our way out. So you're talking to students that were not in trouble. You're talking to students that were in honors and AP courses. You're talking to students that we're balancing that with working part-time or full-time and getting involved in their community as much as possible because we were trying to get out. And we didn't even know each other's stories until maybe 10 years later, almost 10 years later. So the more we're willing to just be open and really listen to hear and not listen for a chance to speak. The more those truths will come out and we'll be able to kind of dispel that fallacy, that these instances aren't happening at alarming rates when they really are. And I'm just fortunate to have been able to go through school in elementary, middle, high you know, in a two year college and a four year college taking master classes at the university, and then student teaching at different schools and teaching in schools that I was able to kind of like blow that door wide open and say, Oh, okay.
Jennessa Burks (21:22):
I finally know that this was not just me. And I still get that. So I don't know how you can say that is just kind of like an outlier case if I'm telling you that I felt it at different schools that I saw it while I was learning as a student teacher, that I experienced it when I was a teacher that I experienced it with my own child in the schools, and that I experienced it with a younger sister in the schools. I don't know how you can continue to dismiss everything that's happening, unless you're just really not ready to face the truth.
Joshua Croke (22:09):
And so how do we bring the need for people to consider and be open to a diversity of perspectives and lived experiences into the classroom? How do we support young people in feeling prepared and ready to engage in uncomfortable dialogue as they're growing up and they’re, you know, coming into society and now participating in communities. I recently attended a training from an organization that talked about, how do we hold challenging conversations in classrooms with young people? Specifically, the training was in response to the riot at the Capitol. The insurgence that occurred at the Capitol and teachers getting questions from kids obviously about this and how they didn't feel comfortable or prepared to respond. And the organization, Facing History and Ourselves, talked about, difficult conversations aren't really difficult. They're just, unpracticed, right? And so how do we bring that into the classroom and really engage young people in a way that opens their minds to receiving information about experiences that are different from their own?
Jennessa Burks (23:45):
What I will say is I think a lot of the focus for how we get this done gets placed on what do we teach the children or the youth, how do we prepare them? And I don't think they're the ones that need preparation. I think young people are open minded and they're willing to engage in these conversations. I think it's the adults that need the training. I think the adults are what's in the way. And I say that with the utmost respect, because at one point I was the adult in the way. I have been that adult in the way, because I was too scared to answer the question in the wrong way, in an offensive way, in a way that maybe would be frowned upon by the student's family. Because we've got kids from all different types of backgrounds, so that's another part of it.
Jennessa Burks (24:44):
And I really do, now that I have had more professional development, I've sat in on discourse classes around equity, I've sat in those uncomfortable spaces. I realized that it's the adults. It really is. And in order for that to change, that has to be a change that happens within an entire district. So that has to happen from the bottom to the top. You have to be willing, the classroom teacher has to be willing to sit in the uncomfortable conversation, but so does the administration, and so do the people above them. So does the central office, everyone has to be willing to engage in these conversations so that the youth that are in our schools are able to have these conversations year after year, and really further develop that skill. But if they're getting them in isolation, then it just doesn't happen.
Jennessa Burks (25:46):
You can't have a couple of teachers that are doing really well at it. And then a student moves to a different building, a different school, or, you know, goes to a meeting somewhere, where there's administrators, and is shut down for the skills that they worked so hard to build. And we have a very transient population in some of our schools. So this has to be just a shift in the entire culture. And that takes time, but I don't want anyone to think like it takes time and it naturally rolls out on its own because we hear that time and time again, like it takes time when you're all working really hard at it. So imagine how long it takes when you're not.
Joshua Croke (26:31):
That is such a good and resonant point because I have sat at so many tables where people just say, “hey, we're doing our best, you know, this stuff takes time.” While also in, you know, four sentences ago or, you know, their next sentence is also, “but we don't think that this is as big of a problem that our people are like making it out to be or whatever, you know, that might be.” And I think one of the things that is so hard is, you know, when one attends, like I'll speak from my own personal experience, like attending different workshops on trauma informed practices or racial equity in education. So often it's women, Black and Brown folks, queer folks, folks with disabilities, people who experience these systems of oppression, who are the ones in these sessions. And yes, there is absolutely constant learning that everyone can have and kind of take part in. And so one of the challenging discussions that I've found myself in is how do we get folks who are the most in need of considering these things to participate in these ways when it's not being dictated by an administration, or it's an opt in professional development opportunity as opposed to required? And, and is that really what we need, or are there other pathways to get folks to start engaging with this important content?
Jennessa Burks (28:09):
I think that it's difficult to require certain things because you're met with such resistance and if the resistance is high enough, then you're not going to make any headway. If you're sitting in a difficult conversation, you kind of have to be ready to engage in certain parts of that difficult conversation. I can say that the more people engage, the easier that becomes for others, because what starts to happen is you go from a culture of resistance, to change, to more of a culture of acceptance and reflection. And then people feel more comfortable and start to gravitate on their own. And then they start taking advantage of things that are maybe opt-in, but when you still have too many people that are on the resistance point, it's a little bit difficult to make that shift.
Jennessa Burks (29:10):
One of the things I urge folks to do is to step back, I think in Worcester, we're such a prideful city that we forget we're surrounded by many other cities in the state that also have, I don't know, diverse backgrounds. And there are many districts that are already engaging in this work and have been engaging in this work for a long time. So if we're in Massachusetts, and our demographic in Worcester, it looks similar to the demographic in another town or city, It's very easy for us to be able to see, like, are they already doing some of this equity work? And how far behind are we? Because all it takes is a, I don't know, a quick search, and you can see that we are actually a decade or more behind some of these other districts.
Jennessa Burks (30:00):
So it’s really, in Worcester, some of the conversations feel very progressive, but when you put them in comparison with other Massachusetts cities and other schools, they're actually, they're not progressive at all. They're very norm right now. For example, I'm out in Cambridge. Cambridge started off, not this year together, but last year they started off in their assembly with all staff for the whole district. They said, we're fighting white supremacy culture within our schools. That's impacting our students. Our students have said they are impacted by this. And to hear white supremacy culture initially is like a shocking thing for people. And it makes it very defensive. “Like I'm not a white supremacist.” That's not what we're saying. We're actually all impacted by white supremacy culture. Some of that shows up in perfectionism. Some of that shows up in different ways, but that district's always already had the conversation on what white supremacy is, what it looks like, what it feels like and how it shows up for our students and how it shows up for our staff.
Jennessa Burks (31:04):
So, they've already done this work. Now, they're already using white supremacy culture, or race and racism, and anti-racism in discourse regularly. I have fourth graders who this week I had them draw a police officer, a firefighter, and a doctor. My goal was to show them that typically because of our messaging, we draw men and happy women's history month. We're going to start learning about some women in history. And they actually picked up on most of us drew white people and why? Yeah, these are fourth graders. These are nine and 10 year old's. Right. So they're ready to have the conversation. In Worcester, I remember hearing just a couple of years ago that like, I don't want to label things when we were talking about having issues with racial equity. Like I don't want to put a label on things. Well, we're not labeling it.
Jennessa Burks (32:04):
We're just facing what we know is happening. We have disproportionate rates of suspension. We have disproportionate rates of expulsion. We have huge academic gaps when we look at different student populations. Like this is not anything that we have to be afraid to look at. We have to approach it with this Like, so what, now what attitude. We see it, we can back it up with the evidence of what this is called, now what do we do to move forward? We, we can't move forward if we're still in this resistance fighting stage,
Joshua Croke (32:43):
Right. No, absolutely. And it blows my mind to think that you're engaging in these activities with fourth graders. And I think one, you know, one of the things that I have continually been impressed by, and also like, really look internally at my own assumptions is like this notion that like kids are dumb or don't know what they want, or aren't ready to learn at these different levels. And now that I've engaged in youth work and facilitate design thinking exercises with young people, kids are brilliant.
Jennessa Burks (33:24):
They’re incredible. We're in the way.
Joshua Croke (33:28):
Right! Exactly. And it's so fascinating because I've actually spent time with a group of, you know, high school age students, as well as like middle school aged students thinking about what could a system like juvenile justice look like? How would you design it? If we didn't look at anything that exists currently, we get to play creator. What would those systems look like? And they come up with brilliant ideas to the point in which it's also like addressing and talking about like, well, why does juvenile detention even need to exist? Why don't we address change in these like restorative and transformative ways? You know? And you're like, wow, we're really doing a disservice to young people by not centering them in the decision-making in our schools. And I know that on season one of the show, I spoke with two young women who were recent graduates of South High School who are also involved in the Racism-Free Worcester public schools advocacy group, that's very active on Instagram. And the notion that this group of current and former students coming together as a collective to raise issues that they themselves have experienced and have now heard hundreds, if not thousands of stories of people experiencing various forms of marginalization and oppression for that body to still have the ability to be more or less dismissed by various leaders in our community is I think a testament to the change that still very much needs to happen within Worcester more broadly.
Jennessa Burks (35:23):
Absolutely. And I just want to side note that those are the stories we're hearing, and for every story you hear, you know, there's many that you did not. So we know that that's an active group, that's putting out many stories. I will say that I know of students who were working to just gather information on what it feels like to be a student of color in the Worcester public schools. And they were made to feel very uncomfortable within their own school, by their own administration, in a way that felt to them threatening, like we can't have this conversation, we can't gather this. We're worried about what it might do or how it might impact us in our opportunities. So, this is what's getting out and there are efforts actually to make sure that there is less, that we hear and less that we see.
Jennessa Burks (36:22):
And that is very, very concerning. It's extremely concerning. We've got these amazing young people that are doing incredible work and are very passionate about it, and just brave. So brave, so bold, in ways that I wish I was when I was younger. And they are not being allowed to sit at the table and weigh in on the decisions that are impacting them more than they're impacting us. And that's not how it is in every other district. They are gathering data from students. They are asking them how they feel. They do send out surveys so that they can figure out, how do our students feel and how do our families feel? And they are taking that data because it is just the truth. And they're using that to construct different policies or interventions that will help improve the schools, but you can't make anything better if you don't know what's happening.
Jennessa Burks (37:28):
That's like you going to the doctor and the doctor refusing to let you tell him your symptoms or refusing to let you explain how you're feeling. They can't prescribe anything. You can't move forward with the treatment plan if you don't know what the heck is going on. And right now we don't really know what the heck is going on. We don't, and that should kind of be step one, like what is happening, not for the adults, but for the young people that are being impacted every day, and for the families that see their child and are hearing how they're impacted every day. What can we do about it now?
Joshua Croke (38:05):
Yeah, I think the fear of knowing is one of the biggest barriers we have in society. Like the fear of finding out that there are problems, even though we know they exist, but putting them on paper, you know, through data, through surveys like that fear is, and really, I think it connects back to like the fear of accountability, right? And this is something that you and I have talked about in a previous conversation about like competitive versus collaborative, right. And you said, like putting pride aside and really bringing this conversation about collaboration versus competition, like, why are we competing over the impacts on young people's lives? Like that should not be a competitive field. It should absolutely be a collaborative field.
Jennessa Burks (39:07):
100% should be collaborative. I don't know how we expect to get anything done if it's being done in a lens that is anything other than collaborative. And when I say collaborative, I don't just mean that administrators should be collaborating with other administrators or administrators should be collaborating with their staff members. It needs to be a whole approach, a community collaborative approach, because everyone, whether we want to admit it or not, is impacted by the way our young people are treated and the opportunities that they're being given. So if I have a child in the district, I'm impacted and my child's impacted, but if I have neighbors and their kids are in the schools, I'm also impacted because when they're not given opportunities to, I don't know, engage in the community and have different activities involved, then there's a trickle-down effect. If we're not educating our youth in ways that are closing these achievement gaps and meeting the students where they are and giving them entry points, then we don't have, we don't have young people to fill jobs.
Jennessa Burks (40:28):
It's just a ripple. It continues. And it continues. So it should be everyone working together, I know that we love data, but we should be equally looking at stories. And I know we don't like stories because narratives can’t always be captured in ways that are quantifiable, right? So we shy away from that. However, that's the real data. That's what it looks like, feels like, what happens within our community. That should be just as important as the glaringly, just disproportionate rates of suspensions and expulsions and test scores and whatever else that is quantifiable that we're looking at the stories match.
Joshua Croke (41:25):
Right? And this is what we measure currently, which we know and see glaring issues and challenges around. And here are all the things that we haven't measured, which could also help us come to the same and maybe some different conclusions around challenges that we need to address and face in society. And the core aspect of my work, and how I work with organizations is all rooted in community centered design, like thinking about who is impacted by the problem that we're trying to address and how do we get them to the table? How do we give them the agency to lead and make decisions and bring these like collaborative multi-stakeholder groups together? And like, that's where I see truly transformative ideas happen. You know, going back to the reference of like, re-imagining a juvenile justice system, you know, I've been doing this work and facilitating workshops with youth who have been impacted by the juvenile justice system, with probation officers, with people who work in community-based organizations that are supporting young people.
Joshua Croke (42:38):
And like these bodies of, you know, diverse groups of people who are never usually at the same tables are coming together to talk about their own lived experiences, some of the different challenges and all always setting an expectation for how that conversation can occur. Recognizing that people might be sitting at a table with someone else or someone representing a system or a body that has caused harm and really looking at how do we address harm, how do we address like community repair so that we can really think transformatively and how we re-imagined systems that work for everybody.
Jennessa Burks (43:21):
I would love to add in there that we need to create these conversations and be open to hearing about the harm that we may have been a part of, even if it was not intentional. We have to be able to disentangle that intent from impact. And I know that for me, that part of my journey was really difficult that like, “well, I didn't mean it. Like, I didn't mean” and sometimes it has nothing to do with what you meant, right? Like put what you meant aside, get it out, say, this is what I meant. And I'm so sorry that it hit differently. So went in a different direction. What can I do now with that restorative type of mindset? What can I do to make it as right as possible now that I know that I missed my Mark.
Jennessa Burks (44:16):
Right? and then with these community conversations, how do I have these intense, uncomfortable conversations where I'm willing to kind of just like own up to the impact that I've had and how I do it in a way that's actually inviting the people that I want to talk to. Cause let's just, you know, these meetings that we have that are set up in spaces that do not feel welcoming are not going to draw a crowd. And I don't know why we continue to set up these I don't know. I don't know why we continue to set things up the same way and expect a different result. You want to hear from the community, go out into the community. Don't ask the community to come to you, go out into the community, offer snacks, offer a place where their children can be knowing that a lot of our community members have children, make it accessible, but don't create a space to speak and make it not accessible.
Jennessa Burks (45:16):
And then wonder why you're not getting participants or don't make a space to have conversation and then make it feel so restricted or unaccessible that you don't get the full picture of the community. But pretend that it is. If you make something inaccessible to certain people, for example, I was a single mom working full time, going to school full-time, by the time I was able to get somewhere, I don't have childcare anymore. I need to bring my child with me. And we're probably rushing from one place to another. So if you have snacks great, or we're not eating dinner that night, but if you had snacks and you had childcare, I would have gone and I would have given you my experiences and my input. And I would even be able to do it in a way where it is articulated to their liking, which is a whole other story. But I would have been able to do that. It wasn't accessible for me.
Joshua Croke (46:17):
Absolutely. And so in these conversations as well, one of the things that you and I have talked about is like calling people in and when to call people out and wondering if you can share some either an example or kind of how you approach that, you know, inviting people into like consider things in new ways as we work to acknowledge and give space for learning while also having a line of what is tolerated and not.
Jennessa Burks (46:48):
Yeah. My approach to them typically is I'm willing to sit down and have the difficult conversation with anybody that wants to sit down and have the difficult conversation with me. I think that there is a lot of learning that can happen and a lot of progress that can happen when we can put pride aside and really just look at the impact that all of our actions are having on the community. And when that happens and we notice a problem I don't immediately call people out. I highlight it and I call them in and I'm willing to work with them. So I say like, we see this as the problem, what can we do together? How can I be helpful in the work that needs to happen? And I expected the person that I'm sitting with, or the group that I'm sitting with to say, how can we help in this movement forward?
Jennessa Burks (47:52):
What happens all too often is we notice that there's this approach of collaborative and calling someone in to the issues and it's met with resistance and I will call you in again, after the resistance and say like, okay, well, we kind of talked about this. This is a problem when you very clearly are being met with a resistance that is not going to budge when your community or your table has spoken about issues three or more times, and they aren't seeing any action steps being taken in the direction to solve that problem. Then I'm no longer going to call you in and I'm going to call you out because the way that we're willing to collaborate with you seems to be something that you're not willing to engage with. And it's absolutely exhausting to ask people to continue to try to work with someone that doesn't want to work with them.
Joshua Croke (48:54):
Absolutely. One of the other things that we talked about is working hard versus working smart. And I'd love to hear, you know, you kind of raised that in a conversation we were having, and I think that's such an important and potent issue and wanted to give you space to bring some voice to that.
Jennessa Burks (49:17):
Absolutely. I think, especially now that we're in this pandemic and we've been forced to look at things differently and navigate in different ways, you're noticing that so many people are working harder. But they're not necessarily working smarter. And that is something that I was all too used to. We can work harder in silo and exhaust ourselves and burn out and not really get anywhere. And that's continuing to work harder, but not smarter because we're still doing the same thing over and over and again, and expecting this bigger change to happen. When we know that change doesn't happen when people are working in silo, we need to work harder, but we also need to work smarter and to work smarter, we have to be willing to reimagine the approach that we have to problem-solving to creating opportunities. And that's a shift that really needs to take place.
Jennessa Burks (50:19):
And I think with that working smarter, it's really kind of rooted in that collaboration because you have many people working on things in silo and expect it to have a grand impact. However, if those same people are working collaboratively, then you see a larger, faster impact because they're working together and they can kind of divvy up the work instead of burning themselves out and not being able to continue. Well, I won't say that that doesn't mean that you don't still get burnt out a little bit. You do if you're making a big change, but at least you're not getting burnt out without being able to see an impact anywhere. And I know when I was working more alone I was exhausted, but I wasn't seeing the impact very much at all. I mean, there were some days where I was exhausted and I wasn't seeing anything.
Jennessa Burks (51:20):
And then when I was able to start working more collaboratively and what I think is working smarter, and you know, research says it’s working smarter, more progressively then I was able to see change happening that was much more visible in my surrounding and the community that I was a part of. And I was also able to, I dunno, sleep a couple extra hours at night. So, you know, I'm still working hard, but it's not as exhausting and I'm seeing more happen. Which to me feels a little bit like a no brainer. You can have, you know, one person try to pick up a heavy load and they're not going to get very far. And if we all take turns, trying to push that heavy load, it's only going to get a little distance versus if we all come together and work at the same time, we're going to be able to carry it over.
Joshua Croke (52:14):
Absolutely. This is one of the reasons I'm so passionate about coalition building work and think smarter, you know, think about, how do we talk about the fact that we're addressing similar issues, like access to STEM programs for youth, right? How many organizations intersect in that work? And I wanted to make sure to bring up the notion of owned books that you talked about.
Jennessa Burks (52:41):
There are two things that are really important when it comes to the literature that our kids are exposed to and one of them was these own voice books. And the other part is this concept of windows and mirrors. And this concept of windows and mirrors is that students need to be able to see books that are mirrors, a reflection of themselves and they also need to be able to read windows, which is a peek into someone else's life. And that needs to be representative of the class that you have so that students aren't seeing a bunch of mirrors and getting this distorted perception or inflated sense of self, because they're reflected so much in comparison to someone else, or they don't see less of themselves because they're barely seeing any mirrors and only seeing important people that do not look like them.
Jennessa Burks (53:36):
And the other one is, own voice books, which means if I am reading a story about a Black woman, it is written by a Black woman, and that is to lessen the amount of biases that find their way into literature, which we know, find their way into literature, because you don't have that personal experience. So we can only envision or put ourselves in those shoes to a certain extent. If it is a book that's written by a transgender man or a book that the character is a transgender man, it's written by a transgender man again, to lessen the biases that seep into those books so that when we're reading them, if it is a window into someone else's life, it really is a window that's written from a perspective that has a much clearer view. So there are many districts that are working towards not only examining the diversity and the characters within their story, but also to make sure that their are owned voice books that we're pulling from so that when we teach any of those hard histories, they're done in a way that has the least amount of bias as possible.
Joshua Croke (54:43):
Well, I think that's an incredible point to wrap up on. And, Jennessa, thank you so, so much for talking with us today. If people want to connect with you or find your work or find your art how do they do that?
Jennessa Burks (54:56):
They can go to my Instagram and that's @Jennessa_art. They can reach me at jennessaart.com and you can reach out through the website too.
Joshua Croke (55:08):
Thank you for listening to Public Hearing, our podcast and radio show that airs Wednesdays at 6:00 PM on WICN 90.5 FM Worcester's only NPR affiliate station and wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you to our guest, Jennessa Burks, for sharing some of her story and insight with us today. I'm your host, Joshua Croke, and this has been the Public Hearing podcast. You can tune in, live at wicon.org. Public Hearing is created and produced by Action! by Design. You can learn more about us on our website at actionbydesign.co. Our audio producer is Juliana D'Orazio. Thank you to Eric Gratton and Molly Gammon, who also support the production of Public Hearing. And we'd like to welcome a new member to the team, Shaun Chung. You can get in touch with us on our website at publichearing.co and as always, thanks for listening.
