Diversity and Identity

�� education scholars launch new academic journal focused on Black life, language, and culture

Carrie Spector — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 17:46:20 +0000

�� education scholars launch new academic journal focused on Black life, language, and culture

Carrie Spector Tue, 10/21/2025 - 10:46

A new academic journal based at �� explores Black language and culture through a multitude of disciplines. (Illustration: Mary Long / iStock)

Announcements | Diversity and Identity | Language and Literacy

The journal, a project of the GSE’s Black Academic Development Lab, crosses disciplines to advance research and conversation on Black identity and cultural practices.

October 22, 2025

By Carrie Spector

A new scholarly journal with a home base at �� is making its debut this fall, taking a unique approach to the study of Black life, language, and culture.

The Journal of Black Language and Culture (JBLAC) is the first publication of its kind to approach its theme through a multitude of disciplines, bridging research areas that are typically siloed in academia, the editors said.

“We’re challenging the traditional boundaries of language and culture research, with a focus that just isn’t found in other journals,” said Anne Charity Hudley, a professor and associate dean of educational affairs at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE), who serves as the journal’s lead editor. “There are journals that focus on linguistics or culture separately, but we’re offering a space where they’re fully interconnected – where language practices are centered as both a product and shaper of Black cultural life.”

The open-access, peer-reviewed journal will begin publishing in early 2026, with articles including an analysis of teacher survey data on African American language in STEM, an exploration of Black community identification at a historically white university, and a study of how Black linguistic and cultural practices can support communities affected by diabetes.

The journal will host a series of webinars beginning on Nov. 7, including guidance for submissions, applying to join the editorial board, and introductions to special themes for upcoming issues.

JBLAC is a project of the GSE’s Black Academic Development (BAD) Lab, a collective of scholars from universities across the country, led by Charity Hudley. The journal is published by Cambridge University Press in partnership with the Linguistic Society of America (LSA), making it one of four major journals sponsored by the LSA.

Anne Charity Hudley

Building on decades of research

�� is a fitting home for the journal, the editors said, given decades of scholarship on Black language and culture from faculty at the university such as Arnetha Ball, John Baugh, and John Rickford.

“So much research has come out of �� from these scholars and all the students they’ve worked with over the years,” Charity Hudley said. “But there wasn’t a journal specifically designed to address it. Early on we didn’t think there was enough work to necessarily sustain a journal, but we’ve had so many more people in this generation doing research in this area that it seemed like it was time.”

The launch of JBLAC also builds on last year’s departmentalization of the African and African American Studies program at ��.

“The journal is an enterprise that’s aligned with the goals of the institution to grow that space, and it gives our new department an anchor,” Charity Hudley said.

JBLAC fills a gap in the current landscape of academic journals, the editors said, by explicitly connecting the study of Black language practices with cultural life and identity. Other journals that publish work on African linguistics, for example, don’t often include the cultural specificities of Black life, they said, and those focused on Black culture and social structures frequently overlook the role that language plays.

The motivation to develop JBLAC grew largely out of experiences Charity Hudley and other scholars shared in submitting papers to journals focused on a discipline such as linguistics or anthropology, and being told the work was outside the scope of that publication. With JBLAC, the editors aim to mitigate those disciplinary boundaries and lift barriers that scholars of Black language and culture often face in publishing their work.

In addition to an editorial board providing primary oversight for the journal’s direction and focus, JBLAC has a board of senior advisors and reviewers representing a range of disciplines, including education, sociology, communication, and disability studies.

To help demystify the process of academic publishing for undergraduate and graduate students, the editors also established fellowship programs that get students involved in soliciting, reviewing, and editing submissions.

“A big theme of the BAD Lab is collaboration, and this project is collaborative in a way that’s not commonly done at academic journals,” said Mia Harris, social science researcher at the BAD Lab and managing editor of JBLAC. “These spaces have historically been closed to marginalized folks, and when it comes to how to navigate these frameworks of finding a journal that suits your work and getting published, we’ve been really intentional about educating as we go.”

Expanding the perception of linguistics

The editors plan to publish 20-24 articles a year on an ongoing basis as pieces are accepted. In addition to empirical studies and more theoretical articles considering existing research, the editorial team is interested in pieces written by and for students for classroom use (both K-12 and college level), and “how did you do that?” articles that share practical, behind-the-scenes insights into conducting Black language and culture research.

They identified a set of rubrics for evaluating submissions, including whether the ideas involve a scholarly area concerning both Black language and culture, how comprehensively the author considers the implications of the work for the lived experiences of Black people, and whether the work would be of interest to readers across disciplines.

Upcoming issues are slated to take on special themes, such as Black media, academic freedom, and the language and literacies of Africana spirituality.

The editors said they hope to expand the public understanding of what the field of linguistics can involve, and to encourage dialogue among scholars in linguistics and other fields that contribute to the study of Black language and culture.

“A lot of people are doing language and culture work without realizing it – they might be looking at rap music, or the way Black language is informing social and digital media, like Black Twitter,” said Harris. “Our hope is that JBLAC can be a space for folks who are doing this work in different corners to come together and have more of a community.”

In celebration of its launch, the journal will host a series of webinars beginning on Nov. 7, when the JBLAC editorial team will share an overview of the journal’s mission, scope, and goals. Learn more and register.

JBLAC managing editor Mia Harris, pictured here fourth from left, with (l-r) GSE doctoral student Kevin Anderson, a graduate fellow with JBLAC; Lionnell Smith, assistant editor of JBLAC; and Ericka Cannon and Jaylen PIttman, both GSE doctoral students and JBLAC graduate fellows. The editors established fellowship programs to build undergraduate and graduate students' involvement and help demystify the process of academic publishing.

Research Stories

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Anne Harper Charity Hudley

Student absences increased under threat of deportation efforts, �� study finds

Carrie Spector — Sun, 15 Jun 2025 21:27:16 +0000

Student absences increased under threat of deportation efforts, �� study finds

Carrie Spector Sun, 06/15/2025 - 14:27

New �� research shows a sharp rise in student absences at school districts in California's Central Valley, coinciding with the escalation of immigration enforcement actions. (Photo: iStock)

Diversity and Identity | K-12 | Students

New research finds a 22% increase in student absences in California school districts subject to intensified immigration enforcement in recent months.

June 16, 2025

By Carrie Spector

Amid a recent surge of federal immigration enforcement activity, educators across the country are reporting growing concerns that immigrant families fearing deportation have started keeping their kids home from school.

New �� research substantiates their suspicions, showing a sharp increase in student absences starting in January at schools in California’s Central Valley, a region with a high population of Latin American immigrants.

Analyzing three years of daily attendance data from five school districts in the Central Valley, the study found on average a 22% increase in student absences in January and February 2025, compared with the same months in previous years.

Considerable jumps were seen in all age groups but particularly for younger students, with the increase among K-5 students more than triple the effect among high schoolers.

“The findings indicate lost learning opportunities, but this isn’t just about kids missing out on instructional time,” said Thomas S. Dee, the Barnett Family Professor at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE), who conducted the study with support from Big Local News, a project of the �� Computational Journalism Lab. “The stress that’s being put on these young children and their families is serious, and the increased absences are a leading indicator of broader developmental harm.”

The study, released as a working paper on June 16, evaluated absences day by day in each of the districts during the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years, as well as the current 2024-25 school year through the end of February. With a daily time series of data over the three years, Dee could observe seasonal patterns typically associated with student absences, such as the days before major school breaks or community holidays like Day of the Dead.

“That allowed us to credibly answer the question of whether the patterns from this school year differ significantly from prior years,” said Dee, who is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the �� Institute for Economic Policy Research, and faculty director of the GSE’s John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities.

GSE Professor Thomas Dee

In the months prior to the intensification of immigration enforcement in the Central Valley that began on Jan. 7, absence data for the current school year was indistinguishable from previous years.

“But in January, we saw a sharp and unusual increase in absences that was coincident with the raids,” said Dee. “And the fact that the increase was similarly high in February indicates that these effects were not transitory.”

The effects were grouped into four different grade spans: pre-kindergarten, grades K-5, grades 6-8, and grades 9-12. The impact was significant at all levels, with an approximate increase of 30% in pre-K, 27% in grades K-5, 17% for middle school, and 8% among high schoolers.

The study cites two factors likely contributing to the higher rates among the youngest students: first, that children living with undocumented immigrants are more concentrated at younger ages; and second, that undocumented individuals might be especially concerned about being separated by an immigration raid when the family includes young children.

Beyond learning loss

More than 5 million children under age 18 live with a parent who is an unauthorized immigrant in the United States, and the vast majority of these children are U.S. citizens, according to a 2024 Pew Research Center report.

Dee pointed to past research that has documented the effects of immigration enforcement activity on children’s academic achievement as well as emotional well-being, including increased levels of anxiety and depression.

In addition to educational and developmental harms to the affected students, the increased absences can impose negative impacts on schools more broadly, Dee noted. Teachers may need to backtrack instruction to help students who missed earlier lessons, slowing the pace of learning overall. Meanwhile, increased absenteeism could deepen the challenges facing school districts that were already confronting the financial implications of enrollment losses from the pandemic.

For educators, the findings suggest strategies to address or offset potential harm, such as offering virtual instruction or adopting trauma-informed teaching practices to support affected students.

“Teachers can be more effective when they’re aware of what’s going on in their students’ lives, and when they better understand the learning challenges and barriers students are bringing with them into the classroom,” said Dee.

Research Stories

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Thomas S. Dee

Lessons for the future: How past practices help reimagine education

Olivia Peterkin — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 01:59:19 +0000

Lessons for the future: How past practices help reimagine education Olivia Peterkin Tue, 02/04/2025 - 17:59

Civics and History | Diversity and Identity | Race and Equity

In this episode of School’s In, GSE Professor Maisha Winn discusses how positive insights from the history of education can be used to shape its future.

February 6, 2025

By Olivia Peterkin

Often when people think of why we study history in any form, it’s to remember and reflect on past mistakes to avoid repeating them in the future.

However, Maisha Winn, a professor at �� Graduate School of Education, believes that there are lessons in the history of education that are not only positive, but important to apply to create a better future.

“I think about history as an opportunity to learn about the actions and activities of people that we may want to tap into, especially in the case of education,” said Winn, who is also the faculty director of the Equity in Learning Initiative at �� Accelerator for Learning.

“I think that a lot of times we think about innovation as something that is ahead of us, something that has yet to be discovered, something that is inherently futuristic,” she said. “However, there have been people, especially in non-dominant communities, Indigenous communities, who have been engaged in ways of teaching and learning for a very long time that we can learn from and learn with.”

In her role in the Accelerator, Winn spearheads projects that address disparities in educational outcomes, and in her research as a professor, she studies how under-resourced communities create practices, processes, and institutions of their own. Most recently, she has been looking into the work of Black institution builders, who were central to the Black Arts Movement between 1965 and 1975, and their perspectives on how to support student success.

“Many of these institution builders’ minds were about three pillars: identity, purpose, and direction,” Winn said. “And that if young people had those three pillars as anchors in their lives, that would help launch them as civic actors in our country.”

Winn joins hosts GSE Dean Dan Schwartz and Senior Lecturer Denise Pope on School’s In as they discuss historical insights into education, the importance of establishing identity to student success, and how parents can help children connect to themselves and their communities.

“I think that it’s important to think about supporting our young people in developing really solid narratives about their lineage, about who they are, about what their goals are now and where they see themselves going,” she said. I cannot express enough how important I think it is for young people to have this strong sense of identity that allows them to connect with other people in really powerful ways.”

Never miss an episode! Subscribe to School’s In on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

Maisha Winn (00:00):

History matters, race matters, justice matters, language matters, and futures matter.

Denise Pope (00:12):

Welcome to School's In, your go-to podcast for cutting-edge insights and learning. From early education to lifelong development, we dive into trends, innovations, and challenges facing learners of all ages. I'm Denise Pope, Senior Lecturer at ��'s Graduate School of Education and Co-Founder of Challenge Success.

Dan Schwartz (00:35):

And I'm Dan Schwartz, I'm the Dean of the Graduate School of Education and the Faculty Director of the �� Accelerator for Learning.

Denise Pope (00:45):

Together, we bring you expert perspectives and conversations to help you stay curious, inspired, and informed. Well, hello Dan.

Dan Schwartz (00:56):

Well, hello Denise. So I have a question for you. Surprise.

Denise Pope (01:02):

Okay.

Dan Schwartz (01:03):

So I'm going to see if I can channel my 11-year-old voice.

Denise Pope (01:08):

Oh.

Dan Schwartz (01:08):

You ready?

Denise Pope (01:09):

This is an eleven-year-old question?

Dan Schwartz (01:11):

Yeah, maybe 12.

Denise Pope (01:11):

Okay.

Dan Schwartz (01:12):

So why do we study history?

Denise Pope (01:15):

Why do we study history? Okay. What a lovely question, Daniel. Why do we study history? I believe that it is really important to study the past, a lot of people say so that we don't repeat the mistakes of the past. I think it's really important to look back at the history of countries, the world, et cetera, and figure out why we are in the state we're in, for better or for worse, right? It's a sense of kind of looking back so that you don't screw up the next generation. That's what I would say to little Danny. What do you think?

Dan Schwartz (01:59):

Little Danny stopped listening about halfway through because... No.

Denise Pope (02:04):

Cause it was boring?

Dan Schwartz (02:05):

I thought that was interesting. It's a very instrumental response. Rather than following that, I thought we'd just introduce our guest who actually does it.

Denise Pope (02:13):

Okay, good.

Dan Schwartz (02:14):

It's my pleasure to introduce Professor Maisha Winn at the Graduate School of Education. She's also a Director of Initiative on Equity and Learning at the �� Accelerator. So Maisha studies the Black student experience in and out of schools, and like many of our guests, she was a teacher before becoming a professor. So welcome, Maisha.

Maisha Winn (02:34):

Thank you for having me, Denise and Dan.

Dan Schwartz (02:37):

So here's the question, you are maybe a historian of the future or maybe you study history and the future, why do we study history?

Maisha Winn (02:47):

I love that you started with that question, Dan. And Denise, I love that you offered a response that I think many of us are familiar with. You hear this over and over again, that we look at history because we don't want to repeat mistakes. However, I might bring a different perspective in thinking about why we look at history. I think about history as an opportunity to learn about actions and activities of people that we may want to tap into, especially in the case of education. I think that a lot of times we think about innovation as something that is ahead of us, something that has yet to be discovered, something that is inherently futuristic. However, there have been people, especially in non-dominant communities, Indigenous communities, who have been engaged in ways of teaching and learning for a very long time that we can learn from and learn with. And so I might offer to that traditional story about why we teach history and think about history this other avenue of exploration about how we might find innovation in the past.

Denise Pope (03:53):

I love that. And so what does that mean exactly?

Maisha Winn (03:58):

Yeah.

Denise Pope (03:58):

What have you found?

Dan Schwartz (04:02):

You particularly specifically looked at people who changed education, isn't that right?

Maisha Winn (04:07):

Yeah. So my most recent work has been looking into the work of Black institution builders who were a part of the Black arts movement, which is typically situated between 1965 and 1975. These institution builders were poets, writers, they were parents, they were everyday people who were concerned about the conditions of their schools, particularly public schools. The group that I write about is a group that was located in Chicago, they started the Institute of Positive Education in 1969. Two years before that, one of the co-founders founded a Black publishing house. And they were very concerned about math scores and reading scores. And even though we didn't use the language of achievement gap or educational debt, as Gloria Ladson-Billings often says, we weren't using that language, but that was in existence. And so this was a time period where many Black Americans were deeply disappointed that after civil rights legislature, that things still had not improved in their communities and in their schools, so they took it upon themselves to start their own preschools and elementary schools and even high schools. And this was happening throughout the country.

Dan Schwartz (05:22):

It's amazing how important local action has been for minoritized communities. But so I got to bring it back, Maisha, so what have you learned that's going to help me borrow that into the future?

Maisha Winn (05:35):

Yeah, well, one of the things that I have learned and really think is important to share is this idea that education and many of these institution builders' minds was about three pillars, identity, purpose, and direction. And that if young people had those three pillars as anchors in their lives, that would help launch them as civic actors in our country.

(06:03):

And I want to really hone in on that because I think that sometimes people miss some of the sort of underlying foundation of the Black power and Black arts movement, people think it was just about the liberation of Black people. But if you ask institution builders about this time, they would argue that it was not just about the liberation of Black people, but the liberation of all communities that had experienced some sort of oppression or had been overlooked in some ways. So those movements really launched Brown Pride, the Chicano movement, LGBTQ movements in places like San Francisco and Northern California, Asian solidarity work.

(06:43):

And so this notion of identity, purpose, and direction, I map that onto thinking about our past, our present, and our future. Because when you think about identity, that takes us back to what are our different individual histories? How do we show up? What are the stories that our families tell about us, about our community, about our lineage? And then when you think about purpose, that's the now, that's why are we doing any of the things we're doing now? And then direction is where are we headed into the future? And so I think a key piece of this work is around civic engagement, civic literacy, civic discourses, and how to show up as a full participant in the country.

Denise Pope (07:25):

So I love that. And I think identity, purpose and direction speaks volumes to what, if you just think of every kid, think about who am I, how do I show up, how am I in relation to others, what is my purpose, why am I here and where are we going?

Maisha Winn (07:44):

Yeah. So when I was on faculty at Emory early in my career, there's a psychologist there whose work was very influential to me, her name is Robyn Fivush, she runs the Family Narratives Lab. And she found that young people who are able to articulate a narrative of their family lineage and sort of who their people are, if you will, had better success academically and socially in school settings. And I thought that was always so powerful and it always sort of stayed with me, I would even say dare haunted me a little bit, I thought about it a lot throughout my work, what does it mean to support young people in developing a really strong narrative about who they are?

(08:29):

And one of the things that she found was that the narrative was not supposed to just be some ascending narrative like, "Our family is great. Everything we've done is wonderful, we're fabulous people." And it certainly didn't help when the narrative was, “Wow, we've just always had bad luck and we're just a downtrodden group and community of people." She found that what she called the oscillating family narrative was one that helped anchor kids. So the oscillating family narrative would be, "We've had these really amazing times in our family and we've had some times that have been challenging, and this is how we dealt with those challenging times," so that young people would then know that when they are struggling, there are ways in which they can change things, they can use their own agency to turn things around for themselves, but everything is not just upward and onward, which can feel very isolating, I think, for young people.

Denise Pope (09:26):

And is there something about having it be from your family even more powerful? Because I know Jeffrey Cohen, one of our colleagues, looks at when people come and tell stories and, "Hey, you know what? It was hard for me and it's okay if it's hard for you," we see that that's been very influential. But there's something more here that you're saying, which is it's intergenerational. What piece is that?

Maisha Winn (09:50):

Yeah, I think it's the intergenerational piece. And I think what's exciting is we have breakthrough work, even our colleague Tom Dee and colleagues do some really beautiful work around the power of ethnic studies and young people learning about the contributions that their people made and how that made them want to engage even more in school to, one, show up, to be there. It improved things like truancy and it improved things like being present, and improved their academic participation. So those kinds of findings are really powerful and compelling.

Dan Schwartz (10:22):

So do you think this sort of discovering my history and where I sit in it is particularly important for minoritized communities?

Maisha Winn (10:30):

Absolutely, absolutely.

Dan Schwartz (10:32):

As opposed to the dominant where everything around me tells me where I am?

Maisha Winn (10:37):

Yeah. And I think that's why part of these schools, they had an African-centered or Pan-African education, but in addition to that, they taught hardcore math, science, all of the foundational disciplines. And so what they did that I think might be different, because I interviewed one of the math specialists at the Institute of Positive Education, and I asked her, I said, "Is there a difference between African-centered mathematics and regular math?" And I asked her this because I learned that she was actually headed to �� to do one of Jo Boaler's trainings and I thought, "Wow." And she said she loved Jo Boaler's work, and she was still active tutoring young people, primarily African-American young people.

(11:20):

And so one of the things that we sort of drilled down to was it wasn't that the math was different, it was the orientation toward math. It was lifting up the fact that Black people, people of African descent have had a long relationship to mathematics and making sure that children are anchored in that so it doesn't feel like it's somebody else's discipline, but it really is something that is a core part of who you are, is part of your identity.

Dan Schwartz (11:54):

So Denise, I have kind of an academic question for you that in the last maybe decade, the amount of research on identity in the psychological space has really increased. And so I'm trying to decide, is it because we've discovered how important this is and people have figured out how to study it, or is it that issues of identity have become more important for people and therefore people are moving towards studying it? So has like the role of identity in people's lives changed, is that what's driving the increase in identity research? Or is it that we just figured it out that this is really important?

Denise Pope (12:33):

I think we are slow to roll in this world, and I think identity has always been important.. particularly if you feel like you're othered in some way, you feel it, you live it, you don't have to be told it. It's like the fish in the water thing, right? Anyone who is not benefiting from the majority culture has been feeling this all along. I think we are finally understanding the connection between that and having a positive learning experience, right? I think it's often been split, "That's a home thing, that's an identity thing, that's a person thing, that's a culture thing," and then you learn math, right? And it took a while for us to figure out, oh wait, it's a system. And cognitively, our processes are all intertwined neurologically that if you feel like you don't belong, you're not going to learn. If you feel like you're being bullied, you're different, you don't see yourself reflected in the curriculum, you're not going to learn. So I think it's the former.

Dan Schwartz (13:35):

The former meaning it's always been there and we're just finally discovering how important it is?

Denise Pope (13:40):

Yes.

Dan Schwartz (13:46):

So I want to go back, people may not know how strong the assimilationist view was of education.

Denise Pope (13:54):

Do you want to explain what that word means?

Dan Schwartz (13:56):

It was that everybody needs to be assimilated to kind of whatever the vision of the American way was. And so the idea is you replace some values with American values. This was extremely strong, right? This was how to make America. So I think the group that you study, for them to find a way to stand up to that and kind of say, "No, you don't want to do that. You want to hang on to the culture, here the argument is educational, it's good for the kids," I'm sure there are other arguments as well. So how did they manage to pull it off, right? I mean, there was so much push towards assimilation.

Maisha Winn (14:39):

Yeah, that's a wonderful question. Thank you, Dan, for that. And I would say that potentially many of these institution builders would say that what they were doing was fundamentally American. It was developing and cultivating a new generation of young people who would be active participants, who would stand up for themselves and for other people, who would notice when things were not right, not just for themselves, but for others, and would feel compelled to hold people accountable to do right by other people. That was part of the value system. And so I would say that this community of people would say that that's fundamentally what it means to be American.

Denise Pope (15:26):

And live in a democracy where you have to be educated and community-oriented in order for it to work.

Dan Schwartz (15:36):

Absolutely.

Denise Pope (15:38):

That kind of gives me hope.

Dan Schwartz (15:40):

So Maisha, there's a lot of wisdom. And so how are you turning this into action? I know you have Institute for the Future, I think it's called, tell us about this.

Maisha Winn (15:52):

Yeah, so my research team, the Futuring for Equity Lab, has been partnering with the Institute for the Future, which is actually based here in Palo Alto. I started working with the Institute for the Future in 2019 before the pandemic, and I'm really glad we launched that relationship prior to the pandemic. I attended their Foresight Essentials training, which is basically a training that is used for corporations and people who are trying to forecast what they need to do for their businesses, they're trying to-

Dan Schwartz (16:25):

Oh my God, how many Post-it notes did it involve?

Denise Pope (16:29):

Are you poo-pooing this, Dan? Are you being cynical here?

Maisha Winn (16:33):

They don't use just any old Post-it notes at Institute for the Futures, they actually use something, I don't have any around here, but they use something called Idea catchers, and they're really big Post-it notes, basically.

Denise Pope (16:43):

Big, big idea catchers.

Maisha Winn (16:45):

Big idea catchers, they're fabulous, lots of those. And one of my grad students at the time at UC Davis pointed me in their direction and I was really working on conceptualizing what I call five pedagogical stances for engaging in justice and equity work in schools. And those stances are history matters, race matters, justice matters, language matters, and futures matter. And when I was working on the futures matter stance, I was finding some of the ed literature a little bit limiting, but I also didn't find what I was looking for in sort of the speculative futures literature because I wanted to drill down on things that we could actually do. And so that led me to the Foresight training at Institute for the Future.

(17:32):

And what I learned were some really powerful activities and steps that people can take to think about, to plan for what we call preferred futures. Part of that are collecting signals, signals are like innovations, data, current trends maybe even about what's happening in education. So foundational work was collecting these signals. And I have to tell you that when we found ourselves in the pandemic, I had this historical work covering my dining table, analyzing all of these primary source materials, and I remember moving them over to collect signals for the future of education because I just thought, "I don't know what else to do right now, and I feel like this historical work, I'm not sure if this is what I'm supposed to be doing right now so let me collect these signals."

(18:24):

And as I was collecting these signals, some of them were about how parents were putting together these co-ops, they were figuring out who on the street in the building and the neighborhood were like the humanities/social science parents, and who were the math/science families and how they could cover the kids' school day so that somebody could get some work done. And I just started to look at all of these different ways in which parents were putting their children's education together.

(18:53):

And then after the murder of George Floyd, I started seeing signals around how many Black and Latina families were saying, "Well, we're not really afraid of COVID, we're afraid of racism and racial terror and violence, and we might just want to keep our kids home longer until we can see how other things play out in this arena." So then I started collecting those signals. And all of this ended up leading me back to this historical work around why these parents had started these schools in the first place. A lot of their concerns were very similar to some of the concerns of parents who were deciding not to send their kids back once things were sort of cleared for children to go back to school in the pandemic.

(19:39):

So the Institute for the Future has talked a lot about democratizing the future, and I thought, you know, these skills that these business people are getting are amazing and they're really expensive and they're pretty much inaccessible to everyday folks, and what if we thought about how to adapt some of these tools and make them user-friendly for parents? And then what we decided to do was not just have parents involved in learning the activities and learning the steps and learning the processes, but have them do work with their children.

(20:16):

So we had a pilot, and we have more workshops coming up, where we bring parents in with their children to actually go through different processes where they're planning and thinking about their education futures 10, 15, 20 years out. And it's not just an exercise of, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" But more like what kind of person do you want to be? How do you think you can get there? What are the kinds of things that you do now to prepare for that? And some of those things are in the arena of your academic intellectual work, some of those are in the financial arena, some of them are in the health arena, the mental health arena especially. So we really think about what this looks like across domains.

Dan Schwartz (20:56):

It sounds incredibly useful. Denise, I asked the wrong question. It should have been “How do I think about my future?”

Denise Pope (21:03):

Yeah, for sure.

Dan Schwartz (21:04):

“While honoring my past.”

Denise Pope (21:06):

While honoring my past. I mean, I think that's absolutely right. Here's a question, and I hope I'm not watering it down too much, is there something that you could teach some of our listeners who are parents, just maybe a little baby tool, a little baby way to get started with this, with their own kids are in their own communities?

Maisha Winn (21:22):

Absolutely. My husband laughs at me all the time because when I came back from my Foresight Essentials training, I came back and did all this stuff with our kids at the dining table and he said, "What is going on here?" So I will shout out Lyn Jeffrey at Institute for the Future for helping me think about some of these activities. But she takes you through this activity called Finding Future Me, where basically you're imagining we are 10 years out from now. So it is now the year 2035. First of all, how old will you be?

Dan Schwartz (21:51):

Old.

Denise Pope (21:54):

Old. Dan says old, but yes, okay.

Maisha Winn (21:57):

Where do you think you will be physically? For my kids at that age, I think they were going to be later on in high school thinking about college. What ways will your body be different? How might it change? One of my kids said they were going to have more muscles, one of my kids say they were going to be taller. I wanted to say I was going to be taller too but that probably is not going to happen.

Denise Pope (22:20):

Probably not a good futurist speculation there.

Maisha Winn (22:22):

And Dan, it's funny that you said old because-

Dan Schwartz (22:25):

I said older. No, I said older.

Maisha Winn (22:27):

Older.

Denise Pope (22:27):

I think you said old, my friend.

Maisha Winn (22:29):

I thought you said old, but okay, we'll give it to you.

Denise Pope (22:31):

Okay, all right, okay, all right. You're nicer than me, Maisha.

Maisha Winn (22:35):

But I will say that it's important at this stage in the exercise to also offer up the fact that maybe we can think about how we're going to get better, so not just older but better at something. I want to be one of those women who's swimming laps in the pool. I'm not that person yet, but I hope 10 years from now I'm one of those people who's doing that in the morning when it's freezing cold. I'm not there yet. So what ways will your life improve? What kinds of skills will you have in 10 years that you don't have now? And so finding your future me is a way to just start putting yourself in the head space of thinking about 10 years from now where you would be.

(23:14):

And then we do some exercises, some thinking around if we're feeling optimistic, hopeful, somewhere in between, because I think it's really important for people to talk about how they're feeling about this current moment and what they think is possible 5, 10 years from now, and then what role will they play in creating that kind of future that they want? And children can talk about that. I think my youngest was in first grade when we were doing this, my oldest was in third grade, and they had a vision for themselves. And I think the sooner you start talking and processing about that vision can be very powerful. And it's more than, "What do you want to be when you grow up? What college do you want to go to?”

Denise Pope (24:01):

Or, "What's your passion?" Which gets thrown around a lot too to kids.

Maisha Winn (24:04):

Yes.

Dan Schwartz (24:05):

No, I think people will be surprised at how good kids are at this. So I was doing a study once and I was asking this kid, "Let's say you took a math test and you thought you did well, and then the score comes back and you did badly, you got a D," I said, "What would you do?" And he said, "Well, it's over. I'll do better on the next test."

(24:26):

So then I said to him, "What sport do you play?" He said, "Basketball." And I said, "Well, imagine you're in a game in basketball and you only make three out of 10 free throws. What are you going to do about it?" And suddenly he laid out these plans where “I would work this many hours a day, and if I stick with it, I'll be able to get on a basketball team when I go to college. And then from there I'll get support to get stronger.” He had it all laid out, but I don't think he'd ever thought about it until I asked him, but he could generate it right there. And so if you go into a space that they think about, you'll be surprised at how good they are at this.

Maisha Winn (25:03):

Yeah. And I love this idea that in something that this young person, this example that you're sharing, something that they cared deeply about, they could imagine the steps. And so I think one of the tangible things that we can do right now in schools is we actually need to support our young people with the steps that it takes to get to wherever they want academically.

(25:26):

And we talk about that in terms of executive functions. I remember when I was in this magnet program in my high school, and I didn't realize that most of the students in my school were not getting the same kind of learning experience that I was getting, we were just a small select group, but we actually had human study skills classes that helped us plan and map out how we were going to write a paper, how we were going to attack this math exam. So we had that kind of thing, and a lot of students in the school did not have that. So we were sort of ushered along that kind of pipeline.

(26:03):

And I think about in hindsight how powerful that would've been for so many of my peers who were not in that kind of program. And you see the same thing now. In a lot of our independent schools, we have classes, we have support systems around human skills, around study skills, around just trying to get your ducks in order and have a plan, and we don't necessarily have that for all of our public schools.

Denise Pope (26:30):

It's something I know we're working on at Challenge Success where just even building time in the schedule to have that is one big piece and then you have to find teachers who feel comfortable teaching it and all of that, but it makes such a difference.

Maisha Winn (26:43):

It really does.

Denise Pope (26:44):

First of all, thank you, Maisha, because we've learned so much and we can go on forever. But I do want to just put to you kind of to have a sense of if you were going to sum up, which is hard, some key points that you want our listeners to walk away with, what would those be?

Maisha Winn (27:00):

Well, let's start asking young people about their futures, how they're imagining their futures. And let's not always have that be embedded in what college you're going to or what you want to do when you grow up, but what kinds of things you care about, what kinds of things that you're interested in, in and beyond school and academics, I think that that's very important.

(27:26):

I think that it's important to think about this notion of identity, purpose, and direction and supporting our young people in developing really solid narratives about their lineage, about who they are, about what their goals are now and kind of where they see themselves going. I cannot express enough how important I think it is for young people to have this strong sense of identity that allows them then to connect with other people in really powerful ways. Because when you have a sense of who you are, it's really easy to connect and build with other people. And I think some of the social pressures and complications in schools with young people, and quite frankly even with our adults, are around people sort of searching and trying to measure themselves against someone else's measuring stick. And I think that we have to invite our young people to be agentive in telling their own stories.

Denise Pope (28:28):

I love it. Maisha, thank you so much. It's such important work that you're doing, it's really caused me and the listeners, I'm sure, to think so much so this was great. So thank you and thank all of you for joining this episode of School's In. Be sure to subscribe to the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you tune in. I'm Denise Pope.

Dan Schwartz (28:50):

Oh, I'm the same guy as always, I'm Dan.

Maisha Winn (29:00):

That was so fun.

Denise Pope (29:03):

I'm glad. You see what I go through here? Yeah.

Maisha Winn (29:06):

I'm just afraid that I was laughing at Dan half the time.

Denise Pope (29:10):

No, you were perfect.

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Faculty and Research

Faculty mentioned in this article: Dan Schwartz , Denise Pope , Maisha Winn

Youth mental health: Racial trauma and stress

Olivia Peterkin — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 22:25:28 +0000

Youth mental health: Racial trauma and stress Olivia Peterkin Wed, 10/09/2024 - 15:25

Diversity and Identity | Race and Equity | Research and Practice

On this episode of School’s In, Assistant Professor Farzana (Saleem) Adjah discusses racial trauma and its effects on student mental health.

October 10, 2024

By Olivia Peterkin

In 2021, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention declared racism a serious public health threat due to its deleterious effects on the mental and physical health of people of color. This includes school-age students, who may not have the tools to identify what they’re experiencing and navigate their experiences in a healthy way.

Assistant Professor Farzana (Saleem) Adjah at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE) says equipping students with strategies to process and heal from racial trauma is one of the best ways to support their success.

“We want young folks to be able to name it, be able to resist, be able to respond, and then ultimately be able to thrive,” she said on the latest episode of GSE’s School’s In podcast.

Adjah joins hosts GSE Dean Dan Schwartz and Senior Lecturer Denise Pope as they discuss how racial bias can show up in schools and how educators can adopt a culturally-responsive, trauma-informed lens when interacting with students. Adjah also shares research-based strategies to help young people thrive amid adversity.

Her research focuses on the impact of racial stressors on health, wellbeing, and academic success, and she has experience providing therapy to children and adolescents, delivering treatment, and consulting and coaching others in trauma-informed, evidence-based intervention in schools.

“We know that having a healthy sense of ethnic racial identity for young people of color is a buffer against race-related stressors,” Adjah said. “We tend to see that having that sense of cultural pride, knowing about your heritage, knowing the strengths of your cultural group, knowing how your cultural group has overcome, or even how they’ve used strategies around resistance or empowerment, can also reduce the impact.”

In addition to community-based interventions, Adjah and her colleagues are using technological tools like virtual classrooms to study how educators respond to students’ questions about race-related topics race-related distress.

“Eventually our goal is to figure out how we can help teachers be able to increase their self-efficacy and confidence and skills to respond to student race-related topics and distress within the classroom,” she said.

If you or someone you know is struggling with their emotional health, the National Institute of Mental Health lists resources on their webpage.

Never miss an episode! Subscribe to School’s In on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

Farzana (Saleem) Adjah (00:00):

So we want young folks to be able to name it, be able to resist, be able to respond, and then ultimately be able to thrive.

Denise Pope (00:12):

Today, once again, we're looking at the mental health of our students, a subject you all know is near and dear to my heart. In fact, we're going to spend several episodes this season on mental health issues. It's that important. In this show, we'll be focusing on racial trauma and stress and the effect that it has on all of us.

Dan Schwartz (00:33):

It's an important conversation. Are you feeling ready for it?

Denise Pope (00:36):

Definitely. Let's get into it.

(00:41):

Welcome to School's In, your go-to podcast for cutting-edge insights in learning. Each episode we dive into the latest trends, innovations, and challenges facing learners. I'm Denise Pope, Senior Lecturer at �� Graduate School of Education and co-founder of Challenge Success. And I'm with my co-host, Dan Schwartz, Dean of �� GSE and the Faculty Director of the �� Accelerator for Learning.

Dan Schwartz (01:10):

When I think about mental health and things that create a threat to mental health, I think of things like unstable housing, poverty, a fractious home. In 2021, the Center for Disease Control, the CDC, declared racism as a mental health threat. And in some ways it surprised me because it was just a category I wouldn't have put there. But then when I heard it made complete sense...

Denise Pope (01:37):

Oh, yeah.

Dan Schwartz (01:39):

... that racism would be a tremendous threat to mental health.

Denise Pope (01:42):

Yeah, unbelievable. I mean, we've known this for years, right? If you think about structural racism built into the system and someone's trying to buy a house in a neighborhood that's been redlined or try to get healthcare, there's so many examples that this should not be a surprise to anyone, that it's a huge toll on your mental health.

(02:07):

I think what's even scarier is you've got two things happening. You have structural systemic racism, and that's really hard to wrap your head around, like, "What can I do as an individual to change that?" But then you also have just the day-to-day unrelenting attacks on your identity. But this is why we are really lucky to have an expert with us today.

(02:27):

So I'm very excited to introduce a leading expert in trauma and racial bias in schools. Dr. Farzana Adjah is a professor at �� Graduate School of Education. Her research focuses on the impact racial stressors have on health, wellbeing, and academic success. So right up my alley, right? Farzana has experience providing therapy to children and adolescents, and beyond delivering treatment, she's consulted and coached others in trauma-informed evidence-based intervention in schools. So we are so glad you're here. Yay. Welcome.

Dan Schwartz (03:04):

Welcome, Farzana.

Farzana (Saleem) Adjah (03:05):

Thank you all. Thank you for having me.

Denise Pope (03:08):

We were just opening this up, but you're the expert here, so give us some definitions, maybe help us define racial bias and trauma in particular.

Farzana (Saleem) Adjah (03:18):

Yeah. We were talking earlier when you all started too about this idea of structural racism versus interpersonal racism. And so I think that just making sure folks are on the same page about that too, thinking about systems, policies, and practices that are biased based on race and that cause different disparities over time versus the interpersonal piece, we think about that day-to-day interaction, and that's maybe one-to-one, whether that's racial bullying or teasing or racial slurs that you might hear. And so thinking about the different forms of racism or race-related stress that might happen.

(03:56):

And then I think you also asked about thinking about the definition of trauma or trying to understand the definition of trauma. And so what folks might say is there is some really stressful, life-threatening event that happens to an individual that poses a threat to physical or psychological integrity. So there's something that poses this threat to safety, and then that can have consequences on different outcomes. So for example, people might have intrusive thoughts. So maybe you're having thoughts about the situation that happened or nightmares. You might feel more like hypervigilant or overstimulated or aroused. You might have different cues or reminders maybe when you're visiting that place that trigger that trauma response, as well as just psychological symptoms, so maybe worry, stress, sadness. So it can result in these different types of symptoms as well as impact focus in other areas too.

Denise Pope (04:57):

So I think when people think of schools, and I'm going to generalize, I think when people think of schools, you tend to think of safer places, places where adults care about kids. How does this play into then kids in schools? Because we know that there's structural racism built into schools, but tell us more.

Farzana (Saleem) Adjah (05:15):

Yeah, so I think the one thing that I consider a lot is there are kids coming into the school context with a whole life outside of school, which we know. And so the experiences that they have both outside of school that they're bringing in show up in the classroom. And so for example, sometimes trauma experiences or trauma symptoms even can show up and be conflated with other types of challenges that youth might have, for example, ADHD. So difficulty sitting still or being fidgety, having outbursts or being triggered. So sometimes we're thinking about how children are showing up in the classroom context. I think a lot about how trauma is important for teachers to have this trauma-informed lens and culturally-responsive trauma-informed lens when trying to interact and understand student behavior and make sense of what might be going on.

(06:06):

And then I also think about, to your point too, of thinking about the perpetuation of things that might happen within the school context that could also be stressful or traumatic for young people. And so we know that youth spend a lot of time in schools, particularly in K-12. And so that time that they're spending in schools, things might happen in the school context that they're trying to make sense of, that they're trying to even process. So that could be things like racial teasing, racial bullying, could be experiencing something traumatic that happens within the larger school context. And so students are coming in with these experiences, but then it's also possible that they're having encounters that are stressful or traumatic actually within the school context too.

Dan Schwartz (06:47):

Before we consider the things you might do about this to ameliorate it, I'm a teacher, am I going to be able to tell if a kid's coming in with trauma, like they act out and they didn't use to or a change of behavior? What are the kinds of things I should look for where I might then go get some help?

Farzana (Saleem) Adjah (07:08):

I think that it's not going to possible to necessarily give a diagnosis, so to say, "This child is definitely dealing with trauma," unless they report, and maybe you know of something directly where, "Okay, this family just had a parent maybe get removed from the household or experienced a car crash," or whatever it might be. So it's possible you might have that information and then you might notice changes in behaviors. And also to just acknowledge too, not everyone responds the same to something. So there could be one child that experiences the same type of adverse event, but they might have a different reaction to it. And so I appreciate that young folks are able to develop strategies around these kind of skills or coping when difficult things happen, although it's unfortunate that these things even happen in the first place, but just recognizing that each child will react differently.

(08:00):

So I think you could be able to identify some things that might inform, "Hey, I wonder if there might be something going on related to mental health or trauma here." So if you do see changes in behavior, if you've known a student for a while and you've noticed maybe they're more fidgety, they're more restless, they're having more difficulty concentrating, maybe they do have outbursts, so it could look more like outbursts. It could also look like withdrawal. So going from that more externalizing and/or internalizing, depending what might be going on with them or how they might be processing it. Sometimes they might be more disengaged within the classroom context. So again, that difficulty with focusing or maybe even having intrusive symptoms or just being really consumed with what might be going on with them. So it could look like disengagement within the classroom context as well.

(08:50):

I think looking out for some of those changes, or if you are newer to learning a student and you notice a pattern of these behavioral markers, I think it should put up an antenna to say, "Okay, I wonder what might be going on." And then hopefully there are other resources too where maybe you could talk to a school counselor or figure out if there are other resources or information about what might be going on with the student if you don't talk directly with them. So those are a couple of suggestions.

Dan Schwartz (09:24):

I've heard the assistant who works the front desk at the school is probably the best at being able to see changes coming in the door.

Denise Pope (09:34):

Okay. Why do you think that, Dan?

Dan Schwartz (09:34):

The parents come in with a child, and I think the parent's behavior is more transparent at revealing that something's going on, that there's been a change. The kids coming into school late with the parents, things like that.

Denise Pope (09:48):

I was going to say, I mean it's not surprising because I would say they also know all the absentee rates, and often they're the ones that call home. I don't know if people know this, but in some schools, when your kid doesn't show up, there is a call home to see if everything's okay. But also with adolescents, it's to make sure that they're not ditching or doing things that they shouldn't. So they have a lot of the knowledge.

Dan Schwartz (10:17):

Farzana, I hate to put the burden on the kid. So there's a child who's going into situations where their racial identity is being threatened, they're getting some self-doubt about with their positioning, ideally the school would be able to create supportive environments. But are there things you can do to help children? I know you work on this, to try and get children a good framing for interpreting what's happening. How do you do this?

Farzana (Saleem) Adjah (10:50):

My colleagues and I co-developed a group-based intervention that's helping youth essentially be able to gain strategies for understanding what might be going on as youth might be making sense of different race-related stressors, navigating identity or challenges around just racial identity development, and then trying to heal from the consequences. So I think the beginning of the podcast we had talked about racism as a public health threat or concern and the consequences of race-related stressors. And so the intervention is also designed to help think about strategies to promote healing and resistance.

(11:27):

A few things that we've found that we're examining and we're looking at based on both theory and some of the research within the literature is sometimes it's having vocabulary. A lot of times when you can name what's happening to you, you can make more sense of it. So it's like, "Okay, I am having chills and I'm having a fever and I can't breathe. Okay, maybe I have the flu. Oh, there's something going on. Now let me figure out how to resolve the issue." And so similarly, I think when youth are experiencing these things, sometimes they already have the language because maybe they have parents or they have even peers in the adolescent developmental period or family members or other folks in the community who talk to them about this stressor that could happen. But that language is really important, I think the recognition, the critical consciousness, the ability to name and analyze and recognize systems of oppression. So that's one piece, so having the language around understanding and awareness,.

Dan Schwartz (12:24):

I think I'd have a hard time talking to kids giving them definitions. Some of them are experiencing this, so it's a dangerous situation. So how do you do it?

Farzana (Saleem) Adjah (12:34):

Yeah, we have different strategies within the content. So it's group-based, so very community-based setting, and we do different things. One strategy that I think has been helpful is we actually have animated content. So when we created the intervention, we had a community advisory board of young people and then adults who are in different child serving settings, so juvenile justice schools and different roles, for example and so they provided feedback. Members of the community advisory board and the development team actually shared their experiences, and we have those as animated videos that accompany each of the gatherings that we have within the intervention. And so, one way to do it is they're seeing an animated video of a real person's experience and it's narrated by us. And then again, it's an experience from our young adulthood or childhood. And so they can even see the symptoms or hear what's going on and see what's going on in the video.

(13:33):

And then sometimes they might be able to relate to it, sometimes they might not be able to. But I think having, especially as a young person, and even as adults, sometimes it's easier for us to see things in other folks and then say like, "Huh, okay, I can make sense of that. I can grapple with that," and then be able to grapple with the fact that this might be happening with me or it might be a personal experience I'm having. So we've used experiences. I think narratives and testimony is a big part of the process of thinking about healing, so having this collective space and folks sharing experiences is one way.

(14:07):

There are some practical definition pieces where we have youth go through and ask, "Have you heard of discrimination? What does that mean to you? How do you define that?" Because also the terms that we use as adults, these terms are very often not how youth are going to define them or talk about them. And so we also give a lot of autonomy and space for them to be able to define, and then we provide scaffolding around helping them understand these different terms and experiences. So there's different modes that we use to try to get them engaged and facilitate discussion and awareness of the topics.

Denise Pope (14:42):

So awesome, so important. You have to name what's going on in order to really understand it and work it out. I've heard that as a general strategy for all youth and adults even. So maybe walk us through what some of the specific strategies are that really are race specific in this case.

Farzana (Saleem) Adjah (15:03):

Three other strategies that we implement and we teach within the TRANSFORM intervention beyond naming is then resisting. So how do I, for example, not internalize? When these things are happening to me, we don't want young people to internalize and think there's something wrong with them. We want them to be able to say, "Okay, there's something wrong with this system. There's something wrong with this individual's beliefs that they have. There's nothing wrong with me." And so part of that is thinking about the connection even between understanding what's happening in your environment and then how you're interpreting in that information, connecting thoughts, feelings, and actions, which are also a general strategy, but naming, "Do I think this is based on historical things that have happened or something that is specific to race within the context of this situation?"

(15:54):

So if I'm being followed around in the store and if I notice that me and my friends every time we go into the store we're being followed around, how do I make sense of that? And then how do I make meaning of that? So there are strategies that they can do in terms of deciding to say, "This isn't something that I've done. I know I came in, I intended to pay. I won't be patronizing the store anymore, so I won't be coming back in. And this is nothing that I've done wrong." So being able to say, "I think that person has a racial bias, because every time a group of my friends maybe come in and we're Black, we look different, or we're of a different racial group, I notice that this pattern continues to happen." So the resistance strategies both around how to respond and then how they're making sense of it.

(16:37):

And then in part of the response piece too is we do practical strategies of even within respond or response acronyms. So what do I do in the situation? Because oftentimes young people say, "I feel frozen" or "I feel really angry and I maybe want to punch someone in the face when these things happen." So how do we utilize a safe strategy for what to do? And so thinking about, okay, maybe I report, maybe I tell a trusted adult. I document the incident. So thinking about different ways to teach them to respond, and then also thinking about things like critical action. So a part of critical consciousness too is the ability to think about, "Okay, what are things that I can do? Again, I'm not going to fix the system." There are policies and practices that also are happening, and so we're not putting it on the child to say, "Fix this issue." But at the end of the day, we also know that young people need strategies on how to manage these things in their lives and not internalize it, again, because this is a characteristic that they were born with, thinking about the color of your skin or your culture or your heritage, of having people treat you differently because of these situations or not feeling represented within your curriculum or course content, whatever the level of race-related stressor or racism might be.

(17:52):

And so we want young folks to be able to name it, be able to resist, be able to respond, and then ultimately be able to thrive. What does it look like to build a healthy sense of ethnic racial identity? We know that having a healthy sense of ethnic racial identity for young people of color, that is a buffer against race-related stressors. So we tend to see that having that sense of cultural pride, knowing about your heritage, knowing the strengths of your cultural group, knowing how your cultural group has overcome or even use strategies around resistance or empowerment. So these different strategies can reduce the impact of race-related stressors. And so thinking about that thriving piece is also very important, and we embed that through the critical action as well as building a sense of cultural pride and cultural assets.

Denise Pope (18:41):

It's awesome, and I think a lot of adults forget that asking a child to do something about it is putting a lot on the kid. So I love that you have these options of very concrete things that you can do, right? This happens to you, there's very concrete things you could do. The onus is not on you to change the system. But there's also that sense of working with the adults to help them understand this. You mentioned even just the example of if you don't see yourself represented in the curriculum what that might do for a child. I know that there's this notion of culturally sustaining pedagogy, culturally sustaining curriculum, culturally responsive curriculum. So what are some of the things that you tell adults to help take the onus off of those kids having to make all of that changes themselves?

Farzana (Saleem) Adjah (19:40):

Within TRANSFORM in particular, so we actually try to train folks embedded within the child serving context. And so we work with adults within the child serving context to deliver the intervention. So the idea is that the skills and the strategies will stay within that context, or maybe even they'll spread it to other folks. They'll also be able to be disruptors of racism. So that's an example of thinking about... They participate in a training.

(20:04):

A lot of the initial work is doing some self-reflection, like thinking about your own perception of your racialized identity. When did you first learn about your racialized identity? What does that look like? What type of privileges and power do you hold? How do you think about the intersections of your identity? Because there are certain aspects of our identity where we hold more privilege and power. We can think about race, we can think about education, we can think about gender.

(20:32):

So really the processing at the individual level and the reflection at the individual level, and then thinking about, "Okay, what are strategies that I can do?" They're walking through the curriculum themselves, they're learning the strategies that they're teaching young people, but they're also learning what it means to be disruptors. So when they see something happening within the school context, whether that's peer to peer, whether that's adult to peer, how can they intervene? And so, one of the things that we measure essentially is an aspect of racial socialization competency, essentially it's a self-efficacy to be able to respond to racism that happens or race-related stressors. So how confident do I feel to name or call out a student or a colleague that makes a racist joke or comment? How confident do I feel to correct some sort of microaggression that I see perpetuated within this context? So assessing their self-efficacy and being able to respond. And so that's one thing that we hope that both young people and adults who participate gain that self-efficacy to be able to respond and disrupt when that happens.

Dan Schwartz (21:40):

So Farzana, I'm going to switch for a second or maybe for the rest of the show. This is ��. We are in Silicon Valley. It means you must be using technology somehow.

Denise Pope (21:52):

Oh my God.

Dan Schwartz (21:54):

So tell us about what you're doing with technology to see how you can advance this work.

Farzana (Saleem) Adjah (21:59):

Yes. Another line of the work that's related to this too, I think a lot about practical strategies to help adults and young people. And so one project that we're working on is a virtual classroom study and we are recruiting teachers and we're trying to understand how they respond to students' questions about race-related topics and even student race-related distress within the virtual classroom environment. And so teachers are instructed to read a book that primes them for conversations about race-related topics. The first part of the study, it's kind of unstructured, they're coming in with a lesson plan, and then the second part is more structured, so the virtual students actually ask specific questions.

Dan Schwartz (22:46):

Hang on, I have a headset on and I see three cartoon character-ish kids in a classroom, and I am in the front of the classroom teaching. The kids are nodding slowly because that's what happens in those. And then eventually the kid says something and I, as the teacher, need to respond to this synthetic character who's playing out a role. Do I have it right?

Farzana (Saleem) Adjah (23:16):

Exactly. There's no headset. So it's technically mixed reality, which I had to get schooled on quickly. It's different from virtual reality.

Denise Pope (23:25):

Okay. What does that mean?

Farzana (Saleem) Adjah (23:27):

So they're logging into essentially a Zoom platform. You can think about it as a virtual Zoom platform. And so they're coming in and then they see within the Zoom screen a virtual classroom of students, and each student has a name tag in front of them, and then there is a person that's controlling what the students can say. So there is a script to what the students say, but then there's a little bit of free flowing. So we have the teachers, again, at the beginning, they're teaching, and then the second part, they're responding to student questions.

Dan Schwartz (23:58):

Does it work? Does it work?

Denise Pope (24:00):

Yeah, that was my question too.

Farzana (Saleem) Adjah (24:03):

Yeah, we've been asking teachers post their engagement in the virtual classroom, we ask them, "How did it feel? What was it like?" I think they said that it felt like a good space for doing training. Of course, it feels different from being with real students, but it feels like a safe space. Also thinking about mitigating harm, because I think when teachers are trying to practice what does it look like to be affirming when a student discloses... I think one of our virtual students discloses being called a racial slur. And so figuring out how the teacher navigates that and trying to code and look for patterns of how are teachers responding to these different questions that students ask, and then also how are they engaging in these conversations? We also know that conversations about race or DEI in general around different parts of the country have been shut down.

(24:51):

And so we need to think about how important this topic is in terms of having conversations about race within the classroom, about equity and inclusion also within the classroom. So for example, at the beginning part of the simulation, we noticed that there are fewer race-related words that teachers are using unprompted when they're teaching compared to when prompted by student-specific questions. So we're even doing a deep dive right now, it's looking at trying to understand the patterns that are coming up in the unprompted teaching compared to when they're responding to these specific questions that are being asked by the students to the teachers. Eventually our goal is to figure out how do we help teachers be able to increase their self-efficacy and confidence and skills to respond to student race-related topics and distress within the classroom.

Denise Pope (25:51):

It is so important the work that you are doing. As a teacher or educator, you want to know how to show up as much as you can for the kids. It's really great that you've provided a space where they can learn how to better respond to these race-related stressors, which we know are just so difficult and you don't get a lot of training around. So thank you so much for the work with the adults and with the kids too.

Dan Schwartz (26:16):

Agreed. Thank you, Farzana, for sharing all this with us today. You mentioned, and it's so important to remember, that every kid can respond to a stressful and traumatic situation differently. There's no right answer, but there are ways to help kids navigate those moments to protect them from further harm.

Denise Pope (26:32):

Exactly, Dan. I love the strategies where you teach them how to name it and resist it and how to respond to it, and then ultimately really to get beyond it and to carry on and thrive. I think at the end of the day, all of us just have to do our best as educators to really listen to the kids and look for any changes in their behavior that's concerning, anything that worries us, and obviously to always speak up when you see something of concern.

(26:59):

Well, thank you again to Farzana, and thank you all for tuning into this episode of School's In. Remember to subscribe to our show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you tune in. I'm Denise Pope.

Dan Schwartz (27:10):

And I'm Dan Schwartz.

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Farzana Tabitha Adjah , Dan Schwartz , Denise Pope

When cultural norms conflict in college advising

Carrie Spector — Fri, 29 Mar 2024 12:07:34 +0000

When cultural norms conflict in college advising

Carrie Spector Fri, 03/29/2024 - 05:07

Culturally mismatched behaviors can thwart the relationship between student and advisor. Research by �� scholar Emily Schell uncovers subtle modifications to better support students’ sense of belonging. (Photo: VH-Studio)

Diversity and Identity | Higher Education

�� scholar Emily Schell identified “culturally mismatched” behaviors between undergraduates and advisors, along with more supportive approaches.

March 29, 2024

By Carrie Spector

For many college students, academic advising is about more than navigating course requirements. It can be a critical connection to campus resources and help cultivate a sense of belonging, especially for international, immigrant, and first-generation students.

But institutional norms sometimes conflict with students’ expectations and ways of being — a “cultural mismatch” that can thwart the relationship between student and advisor, impeding students’ access to support and resources for academic success.

In a recent study, Emily Schell, a doctoral candidate at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE), investigated the role of culturally mismatched advising in higher education, identifying areas of possible conflict between institutional norms and students’ expectations. Through interviews with 41 Chinese American and Chinese international students and 33 of their academic advisors at four U.S. public and private universities, Schell found that cultural mismatches can occur on several fronts, such as the level of student voice and self-advocacy expected in advising, the value advisors and students placed on exploration, and the emphasis on “passion” to motivate academic decisions.

In a subsequent study, which Schell will present at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association on April 13, she analyzed student journals, interviews, and academic transcripts to explore the role of culturally responsive advising in 20 Chinese diaspora students’ first-year college experience.

From both studies, Schell identified advising behaviors that can create cultural mismatches for some students — as well as subtle tweaks that can better support a sense of belonging and well-being, especially for international and immigrant students, alleviating some of the need for institutions to develop separate programs to address these concerns.

“Cultural mismatches are often unintentional and hiding in plain sight, because European American norms are so deeply embedded in the structure and functioning of much of U.S. higher education,” she said. “By surfacing some of these mismatches and making some simple modifications, we can do more to support our students during their first-year transition and journeys through college.”

Emily Schell

Shifting assumptions

Schell, whose dissertation focuses on culturally responsive advising to support international and immigrant students, said her interest was ignited by her own background in East Asian studies and experience teaching elementary schoolers in China and Taiwan.

“I would ask my students what made them choose a particular extracurricular activity, and they would say, ‘My mom or dad wanted me to,’ or ‘My teacher recommended it,’ or ‘Because I’m good at it,’ ” said Schell. “I’d ask, ‘Do you like it?’ And they’d say, ‘That’s a weird question.’ ”

As a teacher, she realized she had to shift her assumptions about the role of enjoyment or passion in her students’ pursuits in order to affirm and support what actually motivated them. “I was able to be nimble enough to do that, but what about institutions?” she said. “I thought particularly about higher education and what would happen if some of my students went on to U.S. institutions.”

Students from China make up the largest proportion of international students at four-year colleges in the United States, according to the U.S. State Department, and the plurality of Asian American students are Chinese. Despite the “model minority” stereotype of Asian American students achieving high levels of academic success, Schell pointed to research indicating that Chinese diaspora students experience significant challenges navigating U.S. colleges, including xenophobia and linguistic barriers.

“Even if the students [in my research] are academically successful, many of them would say that they're not thriving yet,” she said. “They're struggling to build domestic friendships or they don't have an adult who’s in their corner, who sees and knows them. They might be moving through, getting great grades, but they're not really able to engage with the experience.”

What culturally mismatched advising looks like

Academic advisors are in a unique position to support students’ experiences, Schell said, but her research identified potential cultural mismatches on several fronts that could impact the advising relationship. For example, in addition to the role of “passion” in motivation, she found differences in the expectations of student voice: Advisors tended to expect students to lead advising conversations, which was daunting for some of the students Schell studied.

Another mismatch involved expectations of exploration, which Schell attributed partly to different cultural perceptions of students during this period of “emerging adulthood.” In a Chinese cultural context, 18- to 24-year-olds are often viewed (and see themselves) as adults whose undergraduate experience is predominantly intended for career preparation. But advisors, and U.S. higher education more broadly, tends to encourage students to use these years to explore a range of paths.

Schell also observed differences in the need for socioemotional support students sought from their advisors. For instance, in response to a question asking students to rank forms of support — including academic, career, social/cultural, and emotional — from most to least important, 73 percent of Chinese international students listed emotional or social/cultural support among their top two, compared with 53 percent of Chinese American and 36 percent of their European American peers.

Although advisors who shared a racial or ethnic background with students sometimes found it easier to connect to their Chinese diaspora students’ experiences, Schell found that some advisors across racial groups were able to successfully provide culturally responsive advising. In fact, some Chinese international interviewees expressed a preference for having an advisor from a different racial or ethnic background, as they came to study in the United States for exposure to different cultural perspectives.

Cultural mismatches in advising had consequences, Schell found. Some students reported disengaging from their advising relationships, turning instead to other sources such as professors or peers, who aren’t necessarily familiar with a wide range of campus resources — or, more concerningly, to no one at all. In interviews and journal entries, many indicated lower expectations of support from their advisors and lower satisfaction with their broader experience of support at their university.

Making knowledge gaps visible

Schell’s research surfaced advising behaviors that could address mismatched norms and expectations, meeting students where they are and taking it from there.

Advisors could take a few minutes to have an expectation-setting conversation at the beginning of the advising relationship, she said, to iron out questions that both sides have: Students might be unclear about an advisor’s role or the types of questions they can ask, or an advisor may not realize their student isn’t used to having a choice of courses and might not know how to navigate a course catalog.

“It’s all about that first conversation,” said Schell, “making potential knowledge gaps visible.”

One simple approach, she said, was for advisors to open with a menu of options for discussion, so that a student who isn’t clear about the type of questions the advisor can address can still shape the direction of the conversation. “It’s just a small tweak: Instead of ‘What do you want to talk about today,’ saying ‘Here are some of the things we could talk about.’ ”

Some students in Schell’s research who experienced culturally matched advising reported greater connections to campus resources and programs, such as one Chinese American student who credited his advisor with helping him access an opportunity to conduct medical research as a first-year undergrad. Recognizing that advisors might not be able to provide guidance on all of the extracurricular programs available at their institution, Schell said that communicating the boundaries of their advising role clearly and being prepared to refer students to people who can offer support in other areas was a more manageable way to ensure more holistic advising.

While her research focused on Chinese American and international students, these advising strategies apply broadly, Schell said.

“There’s a lot of conversation in higher ed, understandably, around issues with belonging for many different student groups, including international and first-generation students,” said Schell. “Institutions are investing a lot of money in new programs to address this, but here’s a powerful resource we already have that we can maximize to better support all of our students.”

Emily Schell’s research was supported by a research grant from NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising.

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The ‘BAD Lab’ creates a community bound by research

Olivia Peterkin — Wed, 12 Jul 2023 18:59:34 +0000

The ‘BAD Lab’ creates a community bound by research

Olivia Peterkin Wed, 07/12/2023 - 11:59

Members of the BAD Lab's 2023 summer internship cohort met virtually for orientation on June 19.

Diversity and Identity | Faculty and Programs | Students

A GSE summer internship pairs students across the country pursuing research in Black language and culture.

July 12, 2023

By Olivia Peterkin

When Tilly Brooks applied for an internship with the Black Academic Development (BAD) Lab at �� last summer, she was looking for a place where she didn’t have to choose between community and her research interests.

“I was coming from a linguistics program where I was the only Black undergraduate student, and there were no Black faculty,” said Brooks, who graduated from Yale in May. “At that point, I had never really encountered a Black woman in my field who was a senior scholar.”

Then she learned about the BAD Lab at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE), a collective of students and faculty whose research, teaching, and activism centers around the lives of Black educators. Led by Anne Charity Hudley, a professor and associate dean of educational affairs at the GSE, the BAD Lab runs a summer internship that pairs undergraduate students with doctoral scholars to pursue advanced research in linguistics and education.

Brooks was looking to gain more experience in sociolinguistics, and to work on her personal ethics and identity as a scholar. She said that she ended up getting more than she expected.

“It was a transformative experience that gave me a perspective of my field that I hadn’t really seen before,” said Brooks, who devoted her time during the internship to researching educational gag orders, to better understand the types of works that are commonly banned, the rationale behind the bans, and the enforcement and penalties imposed for violating them.

As a result of the internship, she decided to pursue a doctoral degree from ��’s department of linguistics while working on a law degree from Yale.

“I knew I was interested in doing both degrees, but believed I had to choose between the two until I had the chance to talk through the details of doing both with [GSE doctoral student] Kia Turner, a mentor in the program,” Brooks said. “She was kind enough to share her experiences with me and give me tailored advice about the process based on her knowledge of me as a student and researcher. It wasn't until I met Kia that my plans for the future began to take shape.”

Building collaborations and community

An eight-week program that runs from June 19 to Aug. 11, the BAD Lab summer internship provides a way for students to collaborate across universities to share research and build community within the realm of Black language and culture.

Charity Hudley started the program in 2018 when she was a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB), before bringing it to �� two years ago.

“A major highlight of the program for me is the opportunity to give our graduate and undergraduate students the experience of being collaborators in research,” Charity Hudley said. “It’s been amazing seeing students writing, researching, and working on projects together during the summer, and even after the internship is done.”

The 2023 cohort includes postdoctoral and graduate mentors from linguistics and education programs at ��, the University of Pennsylvania, and UCSB. The interns are undergraduate students from Howard University, the University of Florida, William and Mary College, California State University, Knox College in Illinois, the University of Michigan, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, and Tougaloo College in Mississippi.

To increase access and equity among participants throughout the country, the program will be entirely virtual this summer, according to Charity Hudley.

“It’s really important for me to help students see how they can build community in their field,” she said. “As a researcher, you need to learn how to work with scholars from a large range of experiences. Making it virtual opens it up to students who may not be able to spend a full summer at ��.”

A broader lens for Black language research

Funded in part by a National Science Foundation grant that aims to increase diversity in the linguistic sciences through undergraduate research, the program provides paid research opportunities to both interns and mentors. Participants go on to create Black language-based research projects, some of which are later published and presented at conferences.

“These students showed us in their applications that they have the training, interest, and desire to pursue research careers, and that they’re motivated to fully take advantage of the research opportunities that we provide,” said Kahdeidra Martin, a GSE postdoctoral scholar who runs the program with Charity Hudley.

Previous iterations of the Summer BAD Lab Internship Program have contributed to Talking College: Making Space for Black Language Practices in Higher Education, a book authored by Charity Hudley and professors from the University of Maryland at Baltimore County and UCSB.

“The purpose of the NSF grant is to support undergraduate research over the summer, so that’s a big part of our work,” Charity Hudley said. “With more diverse researchers, we get the nuance that comes from learning about language when you have the lived experience of being in that community.”

The mentorship piece

Program mentors — there are five this year — are active members of the BAD Lab who are selected based on a demonstrated commitment to train students in culture-related research. Mentors and interns are paired based on mutual interest, an intern’s needs, and academic goals.

In previous years, pairs have worked on project topics that ranged from linguistic racism and bias in grammar to the language behind educational gag orders.

For the duration of the internship participants attend two courses per week, engage in one-on-one meetings with mentors, conduct independent research, and complete homework and weekly reflections outside of class.

“It’s been so great to see the program’s sustainability through the work being done,” Charity Hudley said. “I see this not just as an individual program, but as a structural program where people are creating this amazing network of Black scholars, mentors, and academic leaders.”

For Brooks, the program’s mentorship piece is what brought her back for a second round, this time as a mentor.

“One of the most important experiences for me last summer was that I saw how effective strong mentorship can be,” Brooks said. “I really want to try and emulate the people I learned the most from through the program and pass it on.”

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Anne Harper Charity Hudley

After the Supreme Court rulings, what’s next for affirmative action?

Carrie Spector — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 18:20:26 +0000

After the Supreme Court rulings, what’s next for affirmative action?

Carrie Spector Fri, 06/09/2023 - 11:20

Students rallied outside the Supreme Court during oral arguments for two cases that could decide the future of affirmative action in college admissions. (Photo: Associated Press)

Diversity and Identity | Higher Education | Race and Equity

�� professors Anthony Lising Antonio and Eujin Park explore what’s at stake in challenges to the consideration of race in college admissions.

June 12, 2023

By Carrie Spector

Sometime in the next few weeks, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on two cases challenging affirmative action in college admissions. With its conservative majority, the court is widely expected to ban colleges and universities nationwide from considering race as one factor in reviewing and admitting applicants.

One of the cases argues that Harvard University violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars institutions that receive federal funding from discriminating based on race. The other alleges that the University of North Carolina violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, which bars racial discrimination by government entities. The plaintiff in both cases is an organization called Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), created by the conservative legal strategist Edward Blum, who has been campaigning against affirmative action for decades.

Given the anticipated rulings putting an end to the practice, how can colleges and universities work to build a diverse student population? Could a ban on race-conscious admissions have a chilling effect on other efforts to support diversity on campus?

Anthony Lising Antonio is an associate professor at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE) whose research focuses on equity issues in American higher education; his work has been cited in amicus briefs submitted to the Supreme Court for a number of affirmative action cases over the past two decades. Eujin Park is an assistant professor at the GSE whose research examines how Asian Americans negotiate with race in educational institutions.

Here, they talk about what’s at stake for students and universities, and why race in particular has become a legal target in campaigns to promote “fairness” in college admissions.

Nine states, including California, already ban affirmative action at public universities, and institutions in these states have tried various alternatives to promote racial diversity. What effects have we seen?

GSE Associate Professor Anthony Lising Antonio

Anthony Lising Antonio: For Black, Latinx, and Native American students, there were initial precipitous drops in both applications and acceptances in these states. We’ve seen some rebound in Texas and California in numbers for the Latinx populations, but that appears largely due to their growth in those states. As representation grows in the general population, you’d expect it to grow among college applicants and admissions, which seems to be happening. But the racial gaps remain. Underrepresentation of Black, Latinx, and Native American students continues to be a serious problem at universities across the nation.

In terms of alternative policies, we’ve seen expanded recruitment efforts, class-based affirmative action (giving preferences to low-income applicants), and “top X percent” plans that grant admission based on class rank in high school. But research shows that none provide the same kind of equitable access that race-based affirmative action provides.

GSE Assistant Professor Eujin Park

Do you expect a ban on race-conscious admissions could affect other university programs supporting diversity?

Eujin Park: I wouldn’t be surprised if the uncertainty and concern about being able to work to increase diversity and inclusion on campus has a dampening effect. Students and families will be at the mercy of individual institutions’ commitments, and I think we’re going to see very disparate experiences from one institution to the next.

Antonio: Whether or not other programs directly come under fire, the threat of litigation can certainly change institutional behavior. In the 1990s, when challenges to affirmative action were making their way through courts around the country, scholarships and programs that used to be labeled “minority” became “multicultural.” Universities were afraid that any programs targeted to benefit racial minorities were invitations to get sued.

But we’re at a point now where diversity is part of the set of ideas around which we understand as good university practice. If you’re a college or university with some prestige, or just aiming to up your status, you can’t disavow valuing difference. Bold institutions will talk about race in all areas except admissions. The more litigious-averse could wipe race out of everything they say but still talk about diversity. Might the exclusion of the term “race” throughout higher education water down or curb racial equity initiatives? It already has.

Colleges take so many aspects of an applicant’s life and identity into consideration during the admissions process. Why is only race being challenged at this level?

Antonio: I would have to say it’s part of our country’s history of white supremacy and a long backlash to the civil rights movement. The explicit effort to address societal racism, especially against African Americans, was flipped a long time ago to focus on white citizens’ rights being infringed upon as a form of “reverse racism.”

In higher education, [the 1978 Supreme Court case] Regents of the University of California v. Bakke crystallized this flipped legal perspective and zeroed in on race in college admissions. The court surfaced the idea of levels of scrutiny in enacting policies that target groups of people, with the strictest level of scrutiny applying to policies that focus on race. Other preferences may be challenged, but their legality – under lower levels of scrutiny – can be more easily defended.

Park: Another reason that legal challenges focus so much on race-based affirmative action is that people don’t understand what it actually looks like in college admissions. We’re not talking about quotas, or giving applicants a points bump if they’re of a certain racial background. Past Supreme Court cases have already banned those measures. Now we’re just talking about holistic review – considering race as one factor of many, including geography and grades. Because of the lack of clarity around what affirmative action means, it becomes this nebulous threat to what people might consider fair or equal opportunity, which is easy to manipulate.

Historically, legal challenges to affirmative action have had white plaintiffs, but these two cases were filed on behalf of Asian Americans. Why is that significant?

Park: There are recordings of [SFFA founder] Edward Blum saying that he was looking for Asian American plaintiffs, so it was clearly intentional. The “model minority” trope supports the story we tell about ourselves as a nation that if you just work hard enough, you can move up the social ladder. There’s this idea that our educational system is an egalitarian one based on merit, with Asian Americans held up as proof that the system works.

That narrative has always been weaponized to delegitimize critiques of the U.S. as a white supremacist and anti-Black society. We see that pattern holding in these legal cases, with SFFA arguing that these Asian American students worked hard for these spots at Harvard and UNC, but they’re not getting them because of affirmative action. The plaintiff is using the model minority stereotype to say this is unfair, it’s not American, it goes against our values of equal opportunity and hard work and fair play. It’s a strategy that allows opponents of affirmative action not only to evade the critique of racism, since Asian Americans are also people of color, but also to draw on racial stereotypes for their arguments.

I think it’s important to note that the vast majority of Asian Americans do support affirmative action. There’s a lot of organizing in the Asian American community to support affirmative action, and it far outweighs the number of activists on the other side.

In 2003, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in the majority opinion for Grutter v. Bollinger that “25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” What would you say about that idea that we might achieve this goal in higher education?

Antonio: Communities now are more segregated than they were in the 1970s. Since we started integrating schools after Brown v. Board of Education, we’ve had white flight to the suburbs and continued socioeconomic segregation. That’s the groundwork for kids who end up applying to college. Some racial gaps have narrowed, but we’re a more segregated and economically stratified society than we were decades ago.

Park: The effort toward racial equity has to address centuries of disenfranchisement. The time Justice O’Connor imagined isn’t going to come that quickly, and it’s not going to come passively. And with these attacks on affirmative action, attacks on critical race theory, attacks on the books that are allowed in libraries – for those of us who care about equity in education, we’re being forced to carry the fight on the opposition’s terms. We’re being boxed into a corner, fighting for scraps. I think this is a time for us to reimagine the struggle and think about what comes next, beyond getting affirmative action back.

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Faculty mentioned in this article: anthony lising antonio , Eujin Park

‘A responsibility to make schools better’: �� GSE research seminar focuses on translating research to actionable change

Olivia Peterkin — Mon, 05 Jun 2023 19:16:55 +0000

‘A responsibility to make schools better’: �� GSE research seminar focuses on translating research to actionable change

Olivia Peterkin Mon, 06/05/2023 - 12:16

Participants (including Professor Bryan A. Brown, in foreground, and Professor Emeritus John Baugh, center background) look on and listen during the third annual Ball Lecture, a research seminar that focuses on inequality in modern education. (Photo: Marc Franklin)

Diversity and Identity | Education Policy | Race and Equity

The third annual Ball Lecture centered on research and its real-life applications.

June 5, 2023

By Olivia Peterkin

Na'ilah Suad Nasir, prominent education scholar and president of the Spencer Foundation, a leading funder of education research, says that a conversation with her daughter a few years ago caused her to reexamine her entire career.

She was packing for a meeting of the American Educational Research Association when her then-teenage daughter asked a question that stopped Nasir short: “If you and your researcher friends have been studying schools and presenting at conferences for more than 20 years, why is it that schools are getting worse?”

It was at this moment, Nasir said, that she realized it was all too common for those in the field of education research to have “an illustrious career with little to no impact.” Her daughter’s challenge, she saw, should lead her and others in the field to lean into higher expectations for tangible change, especially by collaborating with changemakers outside of the academic sphere to create a better future.

Nasir reflected on that realization during her keynote speech on May 25 at the GSE’s third annual Ball Lecture, an event organized by the Race, Inequality, and Language in Education (RILE) program at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE).

“We, as educational researchers, need to take seriously the responsibility that we have to make schools better, to foster education systems that serve to develop the full potential of our young people, and undo the harmful impacts of education’s legacy of racist systems and thinking,” said Nasir, who served on the GSE faculty from 2000 to 2008.

The Ball Lecture, launched in 2021, is a year-end research seminar on race and inequality in modern education. The event is named in honor of Arnetha Ball, the Charles E. Ducommun Endowed Professor of Education, Emerita, and former RILE chair.

Bryan A. Brown, a GSE professor and current chair of the RILE program, opened the event this year with a speech written by ChatGPT in the style of the late African American politician Shirley Chisholm, citing the growing presence of artificial intelligence in educational spaces. “We want to ensure that every child, regardless of race, gender or socioeconomic backgrounds, has access to quality learning opportunities,” he read. “By leveraging innovation, by nurturing diverse voices, and by fostering collaboration, we can shape an educational landscape that empowers and uplifts everyone.”

Brown’s opening preceded research presentations by Jarita Greyeyes, a fifth-year PhD student at the GSE who spoke about indigenization in university settings, and Danielle Greene, PhD ’23, who addressed anti-Blackness and the closing of majority Black schools in the 21st century.

“How can we reposition Black children as children, and not as producers?” Greene asked, presenting research that found Black and poor students are disproportionately affected by permanent school closures. “Because when it comes to the decision to close schools, children draw empathy, but producers do not.”

A GSE alumni panel followed the research presentations, featuring Tina Cheuk, PhD ’19, an assistant professor of education at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo; and Amanda Frye, PhD ’17, an assistant professor of liberal studies at Cal Poly SLO. The panel, which covered networking and what brought the panelists to pursue their studies at the GSE, was moderated by GSE PhD student CoCo Massengale.

“I was motivated by this question of who gets to decide who gets to be smart,” Frye said of her decision to go back for her doctoral degree. “I spent a long time in the nonprofit sector before diving back into academia, working at the intersection of academia and psychology, and I realized that I kept coming up against these barriers where people who I thought should know better seemed to have these persistent ideas about the limits, intellectual capacity, and personal possibility of Black and Brown children.”

“ ‘How did you get to be so sure?’ was the question that I came to,” she said. “And that question is the thing that motivated me.”

In her keynote, which followed the alumni panel, Nasir said that topics like those broached by Frye, Greene, and other speakers at the event are powerful starting points in the education equity space.

“At the center of all we do, we are working to create education systems that are loving systems that nurture, care for, and develop young people,” Nasir said. “By doing that, we can cultivate the learners, thinkers, leaders, and community members that we need in a true multicultural democracy.”

Na'ilah Suad Nasir, president of the Spencer Foundation and a former GSE professor, delivers the keynote at the Ball Lecture. (Photo: Marc Franklin)

Bryan A. Brown, GSE professor and current chair of the RILE program. (Photo: Marc Franklin)

Danielle Greene, PhD ’23, who addressed anti-Blackness and the closing of majority Black schools in the 21st century.

The audience looks on during the third annual Ball Lecture. (Photo: Marc Franklin)

An alumni panel featured Amanda Frye, PhD ’17 (left), and Tina Cheuk, PhD ’19 (center).

Audience members watch intently during the annual Ball Lecture. (Photo: March Franklin)

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Bryan Brown , Arnetha F. Ball

�� scholar explores the impact of racial stress on Black youth

Carrie Spector — Thu, 23 Feb 2023 22:19:43 +0000

�� scholar explores the impact of racial stress on Black youth

Carrie Spector Thu, 02/23/2023 - 14:19

Strategies to help Black youth understand and respond to racism can reduce the impact of racial stress and trauma, says �� education scholar Farzana Saleem. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Diversity and Identity | Social and Emotional Learning

Assistant Professor Farzana Saleem discusses her work to help young people of color manage racial stressors and heal from trauma.

February 24, 2023

By Carrie Spector

For many Black youth, contemporary life in the United States involves a regular barrage of racial stressors – from hearing racist comments and slurs to witnessing horrific video footage of police violence against Black men and women, often compounded by seeing those responsible subsequently held unaccountable.

What toll do these experiences take on young people’s mental health? And how can the adults in their lives, especially parents and teachers, address both the impact and the persistence of this type of trauma?

Farzana Saleem is an assistant professor at �� Graduate School of Education whose research lies at the intersection of race, culture, and mental health. A clinical-community psychologist by training, she explores the influence of racial stressors on psychological health and well-being, as well as family and community factors that can disrupt the consequences of racial stress and trauma. She teaches courses on African American child and adolescent mental health and has published extensively on ethnic-racial socialization, the process by which children come to understand race and manage experiences of discrimination.

This month Saleem launched an 11-week intervention in four Bay Area schools, designed to help middle and high school students address and heal from racial stress and trauma. She is also the co-author of Healing Racial Stress Workbook for Black Teens: Skills to Help You Manage Emotions, Resist Racism, and Feel Empowered, scheduled for publication this summer, which includes activities to support youth in processing stressors and making sense of the emotions that arise.

Here, Saleem discusses the impact of racial stress on Black youth, different types of messages that can influence how young people understand and respond to racism, and other strategies for families and communities to help address racial trauma.

Farzana Saleem

What kind of experiences typically characterize racial stressors?

People often think about interpersonal encounters, like being called a racial slur, but stressors can be direct or vicarious. You might overhear someone else being called a racial slur. You might see yourself in a group of folks that are repeatedly being targeted because of racial biases or stereotypes. You might be witnessing the killing of people who look like or share an identity with you. A racial stressor can be a single incident, or it could be the accumulation of multiple incidents over time. It can also be systemic, such as witnessing a lack of justice at the systemic level. All of these experiences can trigger stress and symptoms similar to what we might see in post-traumatic stress disorder.

What are some of the signs that a young person is experiencing racial trauma?

There are several different clusters of symptoms that people tend to identify. One common one is avoidance – avoiding an area where you saw or experienced that trauma, or if it was something that you witnessed online, avoiding social media. Another would be intrusive thoughts, remembering and replaying what happened over and over again in your mind. Hypervigiliance is another. Or there could be a numbness, a desensitization to these experiences that is actually a response we see to ongoing exposure to traumatic and stressful events.

In young people especially, trauma symptoms can be mislabeled or misunderstood. They can look like behavioral or attention problems, if kids are triggered and have an outburst in the classroom. While it can manifest in the classroom and be disruptive, it’s sometimes hard for schools to unpack, especially with a shortage of mental health professionals in schools.

How prevalent are these types of stressors among young people?

There’s a study I often cite, involving African American teenagers, that assessed their experiences with race-related stressors over a ten-day period. That could be hearing racist jokes or comments, being mistaken for someone else of their race, being treated like a criminal, and so on.

The teenagers reported, on average, five experiences with racial discrimination per day – directly or vicariously, in person or online. Evidence like that really highlights the importance of talking about this with young people and equipping them with skills to resist this type of stressor.

Your work has explored the role of ethnic-racial socialization, or messages about race and ethnicity and racism, in helping young people of color process and manage these stressors. What sort of messages are common and can be helpful?

Parents and families are often the first to initiate these conversations, which typically fit into several different categories. For parents of color, one category involves messages around pride: learning about your history and building a sense of pride in your race. That’s generally known to be a protective factor, to mitigate the negative consequences of racial discrimination on youth.

Another category involves preparation for bias. Those messages tend to come with strategies that youth can use to respond to race-related stressors when they happen. For example: When a police officer pulls you over, make sure your hands are visible on the wheel. Or if you feel that you’re being treated unfairly by a teacher, document it and bring it home to me so we can discuss it and decide how to respond. These are also shown to be helpful in helping kids develop skills on responding to racial stressors.

Color-evasive messages are another category, or what some call color-blind messages, telling kids that race doesn’t matter. Parents may also avoid racial topics altogether. These messages tend not to be associated with positive adjustment outcomes for youth. We’ve found that it’s most helpful for youth of color to acknowledge differences and build skills around how to respond when racial stressors happen.

Of course we need systemic-level changes as well, to change discriminatory practices and policies. But as a clinical-community psychologist, I know that we also need to think about how to help individuals in the moment if they’re experiencing something stressful or traumatic. Because the reality is that for youth of color, particularly Black youth, these kinds of stressful and traumatic experiences are going to happen.

You’ve just launched a program in Bay Area schools to support young people in healing from racial stress and trauma. What does the program involve?

It’s a group intervention for middle and high school students, called TRANSFORM, which I co-developed with psychologists Won-Fong Lau Johnson, Isaiah Pickens, and Audra Langley. There was a clear need for holistic and culturally responsive interventions to address and heal racial stress and trauma. Youth and adults who participated in a spring 2022 pilot study of TRANSFORM in Washington State echoed the same pressing need.

We created TRANSFORM as an entire curriculum to address trauma and race-related stress for youth using evidence-based strategies from a decolonized framework. The program is designed to help youth build resistance to racism, strategies on how to respond and manage stress, and a healthy sense of self.

Notably, the program can be implemented by non-clinicians as well as licensed mental health professionals. Since the availability of clinicians is often limited in school settings, we’re able to train people who are embedded in the school system to facilitate the groups. In the process, these staff are learning to understand issues around racial stress and trauma, so they can also be more prepared to intervene in that setting when something happens – and to modify their own behavior to reduce harm. Our hope is to roll the program out nationally, to provide more accessible support in child-serving settings.

The Bay Area TRANSFORM pilot study is supported by a grant from the ��-Sequoia K-12 Research Collaborative.

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Farzana Tabitha Adjah

Tallying the invisible costs of living undocumented in the United States

Carrie Spector — Wed, 11 Jan 2023 21:32:20 +0000

Tallying the invisible costs of living undocumented in the United States

Carrie Spector Wed, 01/11/2023 - 13:32

A ��-based research project aims to show the costs, financial and otherwise, of living undocumented in the United States. (Photo: Molly Adams / Wikimedia Commons)

Civics and History | Diversity and Identity

A research collaboration led by Associate Professor Antero Garcia provides a platform for immigrants’ stories about the costs of undocumented life.

January 12, 2023

By Carrie Spector

There are an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, each with their own experience of adversity and loss. Financial, psychological, medical, familial — individuals labeled undocumented amass a multitude of damages, many of which are overlooked in the public conversation about immigration.

A new ��-based research collaboration is working to bring those costs to light. The project — led by Antero Garcia, an associate professor at �� Graduate School of Education, and Alix Dick, a storyteller and filmmaker from Mexico who now lives in Los Angeles — provides a platform for first-person accounts of undocumented life, and an opportunity to tally the costs incurred.

“Immigrants are often treated and talked about as a cost, a burden on the United States,” said Garcia. “But for people who’ve immigrated to this country, voluntarily or involuntarily — what are the costs to them and their lives? What’s been taken? And how and why do they continue to pay these costs for living in America?”

Together, Garcia and Dick are working to reframe the predominant narrative about undocumented life in the United States, using a participatory research approach that puts immigrants' stories and experiences front and center.

Research that centers the subjects’ voices

�� education professor Antero Garcia, whose research topics range from civic identity and literacy practices to technology and gaming, has long centered his subjects’ voices in his work. (Photo: Jim Gensheimer)

Garcia, an education scholar who began his career as a high school English teacher in South Central Los Angeles, has authored or edited more than a dozen books about transforming schooling in the United States. As a researcher exploring topics from civic identity and literacy practices to technology and gaming, Garcia has long centered his subjects’ voices in his work, often employing a research approach known as autoethnography.

“Autoethnography is about individuals naming their own experiences and relating them to the world around us,” Garcia said. “So instead of embedding myself in an immigrant community, for example, and then telling that story, the idea is for people who’ve been part of that community for a long time to share that expertise themselves.” He likens it to pláticas research, a Chicanx/Latinx feminist methodology in which subjects share their lived experience through one-on-one conversations.

Garcia also holds a longtime commitment to making his research accessible, frequently seeking out publicly available channels for his work over academic journals with a prohibitive paywall.

To that end, Garcia and Dick recently launched a weekly online newsletter, La Cuenta, to provide a venue for the stories of undocumented Americans. The newsletter, whose name is derived from a Spanish word referring to a bill or receipt, explores the many costs of living undocumented in the United States, financial and otherwise.

One anonymous contribution in a recent issue offered a list of dos and don’ts in learning to be undocumented, including: “Don’t get your hopes up about going to college, [because] you won’t get financial aid and we can’t afford it”; “Do drive very cautiously,” to avoid getting pulled over — and even, simply, “Don’t try to stand out.”

Another issue featured a conversation between Dick and newly elected Los Angeles City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez about the cost of undocumented labor. Dick also conducted a two-part interview with Jorge Xolalpa, an award-winning movie director from Mexico who recently learned that his latest film will screen at the Cannes Film Festival next spring but shared that, even with DACA protection, he can’t safely leave the country to attend his own premiere.

A blank postcard prompts senders to itemize the costs they've incurred living as an undocumented immigrant in the United States.

Tallying the costs of undocumented life

In addition to launching La Cuenta online, Garcia and Dick are using a more tangible, old-school device — postcards — to solicit stories about the costs of undocumented American life.

For this they reached out to Hope Amico, an artist and educator based in Portland, Ore., who has been running a postcard-based art project called “Keep Writing” since 2008.

Every month, Amico designs a letter-pressed postcard with an introspective prompt on a theme and sends the cards to her list of subscribers, who mail in their responses (which Amico sometimes includes in her art shows).

For Garcia and Dick’s research, Amico designed a postcard elegantly modeled after an old-fashioned invoice, with empty fields for respondents to itemize the costs they’ve incurred as an undocumented immigrant, give a rationale for payment, and add up the total amount due. (Along with sending it to her own subscribers, she had a supply printed for Garcia and Dick to distribute, available by request at no charge.)

Dick shares an experience of her own on the postcard template as an example, accounting for her loss of hearing in one ear. She writes:

I was an immigrant working at a restaurant in Atlanta when my tooth became infected. Unable to afford $1,500 of medical care, I ignored it. For eight months, the pain increased, sometimes leaving me unable to sleep. One night, I woke with blood pooling on my neck. The infection had spread to my ear, affecting my hearing, which I never regained. I often apologize for this: I’m sorry, what did you say? I’m apologizing for the cost of American living for someone like me.

The anonymity of the postcard not only protects respondents’ identity but establishes limits that are hard to come by in contemporary communication, the collaborators noted.

“We don’t know anything other than what’s on the postcard we receive,” Garcia said. “We don’t have a way of communicating with that person, asking them for more details. You don’t get anything more than what they offer.”

Soliciting stories by postcard might be an unconventional research tactic, but “people are writing back and sharing their stories,” said Dick. “It was an unusual idea, but it’s working.”

The research team is seeking out stories from people of all ages, and while they didn’t specifically target educators to partner in the effort, they’ve already gotten interest from teachers in developing a curriculum around it. “A couple of teachers who happened to receive the postcard reached out and said, ‘I’ve got large communities that I teach every day who are undocumented, or their families are, and I’d love to think about how I could bring this work into the classroom,’ ” Garcia said.

Ultimately Garcia and Dick plan to develop their material from this project into a book, built around the voices and experiences shared through La Cuenta and the postcards they receive.

“Our biggest desire is for people to know that they have expertise through their experience, and that they get to tell their stories,” said Dick. “Nobody else gets to tell their stories for them.”

La Cuenta publishes weekly on Thursdays. Visit the site to subscribe or request a postcard.

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Antero Garcia

Diversity and Identity

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Tallying the invisible costs of living undocumented in the United States

�� education scholars launch new academic journal focused on Black life, language, and culture

Student absences increased under threat of deportation efforts, �� study finds

‘A responsibility to make schools better’: �� GSE research seminar focuses on translating research to actionable change

�� scholar explores the impact of racial stress on Black youth