Project Overview

_{The Education for Liberation Playlist is a lyrical and visual exploration of what education for liberation can look like, feel like, and sound like. Both a personal reflection and an invitation, the project uses song lyrics and collage to explore the ingredients of liberation and how they might manifest in various educational spaces. The goals of the project are to:}

• _{Discuss what it means to be a liberated person along with what factors and experiences contribute to liberation}
• _{Explore these concepts through song and visual arts, specifically the art of collage} 
• _{Invite others to engage with these concepts through reflection, discussion and art-making}

 The Process

_{Choosing the Ingredients}

_{The initial list of ingredients came from personal reflection on how I defined liberation and what factors and experiences contributed to being a liberated person. These initial reflections were expanded through conversations with community members and reading the works of educators, researchers, and activists focused on issues like care, hope, justice, and liberation in educational spaces. I also found that as I went through the process of choosing songs, listening and creating collages, that additional ingredients emerged along the way. The creation process itself revealed new ideas and considerations.}

_{Creating the Visuals}

_{I began work on each ingredient with a vocalization and visualization exercise. I recorded myself speaking the ingredient over and over again, while imagining colors that I associated with the words. Using a soundwave app, these recordings were converted into the soundwaves that you see at the start of each ingredient. I then manipulated the shape, size and color of each one. To create the collages, I listened to each song multiple times for meaning, points of connection and to visualize. I built the visuals along the way, starting with the background and then layering with images, photos and finally a sample of the song lyrics.}

The Components

_{The Playlist- the public Spotify playlist consists of 31 tracks reflecting the 9 ingredients explored in the project}

_{The Flipbook– the flipbook serves a visual playlist and is composed of original collages for songs that were selected for each ingredient.}

_{The Companion Guide– the companion guide provides discussion questions and activities to support engagement with the flipbook and the central questions of the project.}

_{The Instagram Page- the IG page is an additional tool for public engagement. It serves as an additional space to view the collages and a space where folx can tag their own explorations and creations.}

https://www.flipsnack.com/trenee/education-for-liberation-playlist.html

In a nation divided by race and reality, efforts to advance anti-racist, culturally responsive, and equitable approaches to education face great opposition from an emboldened coalition of white militants, conservatives, and conspiracy theorists who perceive race-conscious policies as anti-white, and thus, un-American. White liberals, on the other hand, continue to promote diversity and integration in urban communities—championing visions of equity and inclusion yet to be endorsed by the people of color they claim to support. Under the guise of school improvement and education reform, the 21st-century white architects of urban education have effectively defunded traditional public schools to finance their own top-down vision of how and for what purposes low-income students of color should be educated.

Horsford, 2021

I found this quote from the Horsford piece particularly interesting given a few experiences I had this week. This past weekend, members of local CECs, BLM at School, CEJ, AQE, Teens Take Charge, MORE, parents, students and community members came to together to hold a counterrally in East Harlem in response to a rally being held by the #KeepNYCSchoolsOpen group at a Harlem Jets event at Wagner Playground. The latter, a group of mostly white parents that has consistently advocated for the full reopening of schools, chose to hold their rally in East Harlem in partnership with mayoral candidate Andrew Yang, using a local community event with the Harlem Jets as a photo op and platform to tout the importance of reopening so that kids could have access to activities and team sports. A few issues here:

1. These folx are NOT from Harlem
2. Most of the families that we engaged through the counterrally had no idea that this group was partially hosting or holding a rally at this event. So essentially the families were tricked into being there and then used as props.
3. They largely ignore the data that shows that 60% of families in that district (mostly Black and Latinx) voted to remain remote through the end of the school year.
4. Most of the schools are, in fact, open, just not at full capacity. These moms are arguing for full opening so that their kids can benefit. They are using equity as a smoke screen. They never cared about access to activities or sports in Harlem before, but suddenly have become advocates.
5. This group has aligned with other parent groups in NYC that have pushed back against the fight for anti-bias, anti-racist, and culturally-responsive curriculum and instruction.

This group both clashes with and reinforces Horsford description of the white liberal. On one hand, these groups have gone into Black and Brown communities, decided what they needed and wanted despite evidence to the contrary, failed to partner with any local groups that have been working on the group in these communities since forever, and chose to be the voice of a community they do not belong to. This aligns with Horsfords’ description. On the other hand, they have actively worked against equity, anti-racism and culturally-responsive education rather than pushing for it-a departure from Horsford’s characterization. These are some of the same groups that pushed back on city-wide pooling of PTA funds for equitable redistribution and efforts to undo discriminatory school zoning and testing practices. These are the white liberal parents of NYC.

Another example came from within my own organization as the fight to promote programs that support the mostly Black and Brown children that we work with through joyful, meaningful and developmentally-supportive activities came up against white funders and senior leaders desire to prove “impact”. Impact being growth and achievement on assessments that long since been highlighted as biased and inequitable. Again, others have decided what success looks like for our kids, what kind of programming they need and determined that this needs to be proved through quantifiable measures that produce “compelling” results.

One particular section from the Yasso piece that caught my attention was when they were discussing how epistemic oppression along with white and upper/middle class-centered notions of capital value shaped policy and practice in the education of non-white children. The write:

” The assumption follows that People of Color ‘lack’ the social and cultural capital required for social mobility. As a result, schools most often work from this assumption in structuring ways to help ‘disadvantaged’ students whose race and class background has left them lacking necessary knowledge, social skills, abilities and cultural capital (see Valenzuela, 1999).

These ideas have been embedded in the mission and vision statements of almost every non-profit that I have worked for over the past 10 years. They have served as the basis for theories of change, program models and evaluation tools. They have been reinforced in the messages passed on to board members, funders, staff members, community partners and the communities themselves. I’ve sat in meetings with development teams that couldn’t even imagine ways to attract financial supports for programming without a deficit-based or savior narrative. Even when presenting with counternarratives or viable alternative, they insisted that it wouldn’t be “compelling” enough. It’s like our children are not deserving of meaningful, enriching programming unless it is there to “fix” them in some way. I’ve watched board members talk about how “lucky” our “needy” kids were because of the support of wealthy donors that allows them opportunities “they wouldn’t have otherwise”. It’s pervasive, infuriating and exhausting to fight every day.

One of the ideas from this week’s reading that really stuck with me was that of “armed love”. Freire (2005) notes that there must be a “lovingness” both towards students, but also for the work or practice of teaching. He writes, “It is indeed necessary, however, that this love be an “armed love,” the fighting love of those convinced of the right and the duty to fight, to denounce, and to announce.” (Freire, 2005, pg. 209) This description of armed love reminded me of the markers of critical care uplifted by Wilson including “empathy, compassion, advocacy, systemic critique, perseverance and calculated risk-taking for the sake of justly serving students and improving schools.” (Wilson, 2011) It also reminds me of the Black Lives Matter principle of Loving Engagement. This principle calls on us to embody and practice “ justice, liberation, and peace in our engagements with one another.” (https://blmedu.wordpress.com/guiding-principles)

The descriptions of armed love, critical care, and loving engagement has me thinking about love as a practice in the context of education in the following ways:

• Love through Nurture
  • How are we creating spaces and engaging in interactions with students, educators, school workers and families that are compassionate, empathetic, welcoming, inclusive, supportive and thoughtful?
  • How are we creating spaces and engaging in interactions that affirm and take care of the true selves, hearts, minds, bodies, spirits and talents of every child, educator and family member?
  • How can we build a school culture focused on nurture and wellness?

• Love through Community
  • How are we building spaces that prioritize collaboration, cooperation, and collectivism?
  • How do we ensure that all voices are heard and honored? 

• Love through Curriculum and Instruction
  • What does love look like in the form of curriculum and instructional practice?
  • How can we make students feel loved and cared about through our curriculum and instructional practice?
  • How does culturally-responsive pedagogy and practice manifest as love in classrooms?

• Love through Resistance and Advocacy 
  • How are we pushing back on policies, practices and curriculum that are harmful, both in our respective schools, but also in the larger school systems?
  • How are we organizing and activating towards policies, practices, and curriculum that honor the identities, lived experiences, needs and wants of students, educators and families?
  • How are we addressing oppression and centering the agency of students and families?

A few questions that are lingering for me include:

• How do we get to the educational spaces and experiences that students, families, educators, and other school workers deserve when all of those with a stake cannot agree on what is right,  what to fight for, what to denounce and what to announce? 
• How can expressing “armed love” be sustainable in our current climate given the demands of teaching, ongoing learning and growth, family engagement, organizing and political activism?

The final assertion made by Lomotey(1993) about educating African-American students made me think of Dr. Gholdy Muhammad’s historically responsive equity framework for literacy instruction. They write:

“Although it is critically important that we improve the academic achievement of African-American students, it is equally important that we enable these students to fit into and serve a meaningful role in the African-American community and in the United States. Moreover, African-American students need to be made to feel good about themselves as individuals and African-Americans.” (Lomotey, 1993)

While this quote raises ongoing questions about the difference between “schooling and education” as well as what the function and purpose of education should be, especially for Black and Brown children, the idea of a combined focus on intellectual development, positive sense of self, and community engagement are all uplifted in Dr. Muhammad’s work. The historically responsive equity framework asserts that lessons for Black children should include opportunities for:

• Identity Development
• Skill Development
• Intellectual Development
• Criticality

In an interview discussing the framework, she goes on to discuss how these four areas align with the work of Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings. She notes:

“These four learning standards connect with Gloria Ladson Billings’ definition of culturally relevant education as she pushed for academic success (skills and intellect), cultural competence (identity), and socio-political consciousness (criticality) in classrooms. The Historically Responsive Model or the four learning standards I discuss returns the excellence of black educative spaces and uses this history as a blueprint to improve classrooms today. There is not one child who does not need to advance identity development, skill development, intellectualism, or criticality. Collectively teaching and learning toward these four pursuits helps to teach the whole child to be successful for a full and quality life.” (Ferlazzo, 2020)

As we reflect on the role of school leadership in facilitating care-centered, historically-responsive and culturally-sustaining spaces, I wonder what preparation school leaders, especially those who experiences as students and teachers were not oriented in this way, need in order to lead the school and family community in these ways. What does it look like for an administrator to learn and unlearn alongside their teachers while also leading?

“Possession—the act necessary to lay the basis for rights in property—was defined to include only the cultural practices of Whites. This definition laid the foundation for the idea that whiteness—that which Whites alone possess—is valuable and is property.” (Harris,1993 as cited in Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995, p.59)

Several of the concepts uplifted in the articles by Ladson-Billings & Tate (1995) and by Dixson & Rousseau Anderson (2018)  resonated with my observations working in the education and non-profit sectors over the past 15 years, as well as my own experience as a Black student. One in particular that struck a resounding chord was the discussion of whiteness as property. In both articles,  four different “property functions of whiteness,” as proposed by Harris (1993) are highlighted and explored. I could easily identify examples for each one, but will zoom in on “rights of disposition” and “the absolute right to exclude” for this particular post. 

Rights of Disposition

Ladson-Billings & Tate (1995) note that “When students are rewarded only for conformity to perceived “white norms” or sanctioned for cultural practices (e.g., dress, speech patterns, unauthorized conceptions of knowledge), white property is being rendered alienable.” (Ladson-Billing & Tate, 1995, p.59) Attending an all-black elementary school with an exclusively-white administration and teaching staff, as well as attending a predominately-white middle and high school, the policing of the bodies, behaviors and speech of Black students and families was rampant. I also witnessed (and unfortunately inflicted) some of the same policing as a new classroom teacher working for “no excuses” charter school in Brooklyn. It took years of work (and continued work) to unlearn internalized notions of respectability, education for the sake of competition and success in a capitalist society, and assumed cultural superiority of dominant society. I still see the pervasiveness in how Black and Brown children are policed in our school-based programs. 

An area of my current work where rights of disposition is prominent, is in discussions around Social Emotional Learning. While SEL has been one of the hot topics and education waves for a while now, conversations about SEL through a lens of racial justice and equity are more recently taking off. Critique of the popular standards and models for SEL focuses on the fact that they lack cultural-responsiveness and emphasize white and western notions of behavior as the ideal to be reached. In my own workshops on SEL, I hazard after school staff against using SEL-focused practices and lessons to control and police children’s natural and valid emotional responses and modes of expression This is particularly important for Black and Latinx children whose emotional responses and modes of expression are punished and criminalized. I also challenge them not to confuse developmental-supportive social and emotional learning with behavior management, which is almost exclusively about control and policing vs wellness and well-being.

The Absolute Right to Exclude

According to Ladson-Billings & Tate (1995), “Whiteness is constructed in this society as the absence of the “contaminating” influence of blackness.” (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995, p.60) I have seen this show up in the treatment of Black educators, counselors and families, the absence of accurate and thorough teaching of historical and current events, the exclusion of BIPOC authors and stories from ELA curriculum and schools booklists, and in the current backlash from teachers and parents against the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action programming,  principles and demands.

The “absolute right to exclude” connected naturally to the function of counternarrative for me. Lawrence (1995) notes that, “we must learn to trust our own senses, feelings, and experiences, to give them authority, even (or especially) in the face of dominant accounts of social reality that claim universality”. (Lawrence, 1995 as cited by Dixson & Rousseau Anderson,2018, pg.4)  If possession is a characteristic of whiteness and this manifests as “ideological”, “discursive”, and “representational” racism (Cole, 2019), then it makes sense that emphasis would be placed on owning, controlling and telling our own stories. I see counternarrative at play in my own work in the literature and literacy world through movements like #ownvoices and #disrupttexts movements.