Amy H-L: [00:00:15] Hi, I’m Amy Halpern-Laff.
Jon M: [00:00:16] And I’m Jon Moscow. Welcome to Ethical Schools. Our guest today is Dr. Sherry Deckman, Assistant Professor in the Department of Middle and High School Education at Lehman College. CUNY. Dr. Deckman researches how teachers are formally prepared to work with students of diverse race, gender, and sexuality backgrounds. Welcome, Sherry.
Sherry D: [00:00:35] Thank you.
Amy H-L: [00:00:36] Sherry, in a recent paper, which you co-authored with Dr. Esther Ohito, and I hope I’m pronouncing that correctly, you quote Celia Oyler, who described social justice teacher education as “a field anchored by the notion that classrooms are sites of cultural and social reproduction, and therefore cultural and social hierarchies must be carefully examined for the ways inequality and injustice are produced and perpetuated within the curriculum, the classroom and the school.” What does that look like in a graduate school program?
Sherry D: [00:01:14] That’s a great question. So what does it look like to interrogate these hierarchical systems in a graduate school classroom? And so I can tell you a little bit about the various ways it looks in mine, and I’m thinking specifically about a class I frequently teach, which is social foundations of education. And so in this particular class, it’s one of the first classes that students in our teacher education sequence take, and so we begin by thinking about the historical contexts of schools even. And so the history, surprisingly, is something that many of the students are unfamiliar with. And so we look specifically at how different groups of students have been included and excluded from schools.
And then from there we consider other factors as well that have played into, you know, both social challenging injust and unjust systems, and then also that perpetuate social reproduction. So I can go into into that a little more specifically. I often talk with students about, we begin the class with this quote from Margaret Mead. “If a fish were to be an anthropologist, the last thing that it would see is the water.” And so what that means is that we think about ourselves as being the fish. And so the last thing that we might see is sort of our approaches to schooling. We see them as as natural or normal. And so we want to challenge that a little bit.
One particular lesson that I think has been really interesting for students in terms of thinking about hierarchical systems and also the history of schooling and also the water they’re swimming in has to do with the history of segregation and desegregation in schools. And so, for example, some of the history that with which students are unfamiliar are both the ways that Asian-Americans, for example, have fought for school equality and desegregation with the Tape case in California and also with the case with Mexican-Americans that preceded Brown, the Mendez case. And so we talk about why might they not have been privy to this history and how does it change how they think about school equality?
Within the same lesson, we also talk about what happened to Black teachers’ jobs and the position of Black teachers in schools once desegregation happened in the South, and again, this often surprises students. And then I very intentionally give them the option to read Debois “Does the Negro need separate schools” article for them to really to think about, um, what were the implications of losing Black schools and Black teachers after desegregation.
Jon M: [00:03:57] So how, when teachers are your students, when teachers are learning this and then they take it back to their middle or high school classrooms, and they want to undertake that kind of examination of their classroom and of their school, what are some of the ways that they can do that?
Sherry D: [00:04:19] Right. Well, and I think that there are different levels at which they might do this. I think about Mica Pollock’s book, “Everyday Anti-racism for Educators,” and in that book she has three different levels that teachers can think about. Well, specifically, her book is about anti-racism. And so that anti-racist practice, and so a couple of the ways she’s thinking about it is that teachers can think about big ideas and concepts.
And then she goes, she goes down to thinking about, and then teachers can think about, what can they do in their classroom tomorrow. And so it really depends, I would say on the school context, on the relationship the teacher has with their students, and what the particular issue is, maybe where they’d want to find an entry point in the class that I’ve been talking about specifically. One of the tools conceptually that I work with students on developing is culturally responsive pedagogy, and so thinking about how that looks and how that would look in their practice.
And so they might ask, but I think asking questions is really important. And so they might ask questions of their own practice. They might, for example, if they’re thinking about something they can do tomorrow in their classroom right away, and this concept of culturally responsive pedagogy is they might interrogate their curricular materials. They might say, for example, let’s say it’s a secondary English language arts classroom. They might survey the books in their classroom library and they might ask who is represented. Are there opportunities for students to both, you know, there’s the expression in education, “Have windows and mirrors.” So do they see themselves reflected in the curriculum and do they also have the opportunity to see other life experiences?
Amy H-L: [00:06:06] We speak often about cultural responsiveness. How does that differ from the phrase you often use, which is belonging? So creating a culture of belonging. Is that the same thing as cultural responsiveness?
Sherry D: [00:06:24] I think the two, that’s something I have never thought about before, but I like the idea, and I want to think about this more deeply. And so when we talk about culturally responsive pedagogy, we’re often talking, I think about the ways in which we are crafting or creating an affirming classroom environment, or making affirming choices curricularly.
And also thinking about how we are including maybe the community and who students are in the classroom. And so, in a way, that does get at belonging, but I’m wondering if there’s maybe a mindset or an orientation even where belonging could be perhaps one step even even deeper in terms of thinking about this, and so what would it really mean to create a classroom where students feel they belong, rather than perhaps they’re just being responded to. So that’s a good question. I’m going to continue to think about that one more.
Jon M: [00:07:32] So following up on that, and also what you were saying about fish and the water, you use the phrase, in the article you talk about students whose “lenses center whiteness.” What does that mean? And what can a teacher or anybody else who is white when they realize? Or a person of color, if they are feeling that they are, in fact, centering whiteness, how do they respond to that? What do they do?
Sherry D: [00:08:02] Yeah, and for listeners who may not have had a chance to, or might not have a chance to read the paper, I want to just explain a little bit more. We were talking about, in terms of the fish, seeing the water and the lenses, and so in the paper, my coauthor, Dr. Ohito, and I were thinking about what is the goal of our pedagogy when we’re engaging in anti-racist teacher education? And I think that I raised the point that I want students to see their lenses, so I want them to go back. To go back to the fish seeing the water quote, I want them to see the water they’re swimming in. And I often often tell them explicitly that it’s because I want them to be able to then make choices more purposefully think when we swim in the water without questioning it or see through our lenses, to use that metaphor as well. Without notice, without taking note that we are looking through lenses, in fact, that we may perpetuate systems and ways of being that we don’t actually intend to and don’t want to.
And so with this particular idea of lenses that center whiteness. We’re, In the paper, thinking about, is it enough for my students to come to the realization that maybe the lenses through which they see the world are mired in whiteness? And so, if that’s the case in a class, a student has this aha moment of, “Oh, I’ve been seeing something from this dominant perspective,” then you pose the question, “So what? What do they do next?” And so, you know, perhaps, and that has happened in my classroom, students have had these kinds of aha moments of “My perspective is perhaps a very privileged one.” And so then. I think that there are that that’s an opportunity for them to think about, “Okay, well what do I want to do next? Challenge this? How is this informing, particularly in my case, what I’m doing as a teacher and where do I go from here?” And so I’d suggest, one thing might be to, to read further on a particular topic.
So if a teacher says like, “Okay, so I realize this now,” then I might send them to a text to think further about how this is impacting their pedagogy and perhaps their students. And I’m trying to think of some examples. You know, there are a bunch of great reading groups. This has become more of a phenomenon, where teachers are getting together to read books related to systemic inequality and social justice. So for example, in Philadelphia, there’s a very active group of working teachers, kind of like in New York City the Collective of Radical Educators, And so they have these book groups, and the book groups get together and choose a book that they’re able to delve into a little bit more deeply.
And so I encourage listeners to perhaps take a look into some of those organizations and see what are the books that folks are reading together. I think even just that practice of them coming together to read, to examine more deeply is an opportunity for teachers to interrogate that lens, if it’s one that is prioritizing privilege, and to also think about how they might specifically move forward.
I know it might be frustrating for me to say, but I often hesitate to just say, “this is what you have to do next,” because I think that so often in education, contexts are so specific that it’s important for teachers to actually take a stance where they’re asking questions and they’re thinking about their specific context as opposed to just trying something that somebody else said, “you know, do this, you know, this is the panacea or the magical thing that’s gonna make everything better.” I don’t think that necessarily exists.
Amy H-L: [00:11:45] Could you give an example of that?
Sherry D: [00:11:47] Of what?
Amy H-L: [00:11:48] Of where the context really matters, so you can’t just generalize about what we should all be doing.
Sherry D: [00:11:56] Sure. Well, I think one thing that I always get a little bit nervous about with the culturally responsive or culturally relevant pedagogy is that students are going to think that, and in some, in some classes when I’ve taught about these topics, then we’ve also taken up the idea of culture, and so as a class, we’ve discussed Black culture. What is it? What does it mean? And so I just, I get very nervous sometimes that that my students, so my pre-service teachers are going to then think that all students from X group are going to like Y thing. And so we could pick any number of things we know. And I don’t necessarily want to do that because I think it’s [inaudible] in stereotypes, but I, I do believe that a risk in talking about culturally relevant and culturally responsive pedagogy is the idea of thinking about groups monolithically.
And so thinking, if I have this group of students in my classroom, I’m gonna read, you know, all of these things about this group of students, and I’m going to do this thing because they like it. And we’re all individuals. And I think probably all of us, like the three of us here, and anyone who’s listening, knows that there are ways and which, you know, they have perhaps been stereotyped for the way people have perceived them based on an assumed identity maybe or what have you, and that there are ways we diverge. Yeah. We’re all individuals.
Amy H-L: [00:13:26] You often refer to humanizing spaces. Is that sort of the way we look at the whole person? And how can a teacher create humanizing spaces in the classroom?
Sherry D: [00:13:39] Well, Amy, I think your of line of questioning is all going together so nicely because I think humanizing education is also about belonging and thinking about, yeah, being whole and who is allowed to show up and be their full self in an educational space. And so to me, those things go together. The idea of humanizing education and belonging in a space, and so I can tell you some ways that I try to do it in my own classroom. I try to make the students feel like they are seen.
There are lots of little, little moments in which this can happen, some of which I’m sure you know, most classroom teachers think about or do, starting off at the very beginning of the school year with figuring out how are you going to get to know your students? And so sometimes teachers will give surveys. And this is a great place to also challenge that idea, that monolithic notion of a group. When we think about culturally responsive teaching is asking students about individual things they enjoy or like, you know, you could even ask a question. “What’s something that sometimes surprises people about, about you?” That allows them to, allows the students to directly confront maybe stereotypical ways they’ve been viewed.
One thing I do in my classroom, that sometimes I’m concerned that adults might think is a little corny, but that they actually end up enjoying and sometimes taking to their own classroom, is in one of my classes, they have to do a presentation on their name. And so as part of this, they tell us as much as they, well within a time limit, as much as they want about the origin of their name. So their first name, middle name, last name, you know, whatever. It’s their choice. And they tell us how they got the name. Sometimes it’s also really interesting, which students know the story of how they were named or chose a name versus those who don’t. And sometimes they end up, those who have less of a family history about their name will look up the historical origins. And so then we all learn something new in the classroom and it also becomes an opportunity and they present this to their classmates. It becomes an opportunity for them to tell us a little bit more about who they are, how they want to show up in the space, without others making assumptions about them.
And so. It’s moments like that that begin to build a humanizing space, and that foundation, I would argue, is very necessary. Students, all of us, want to feel seen and known, I would say.
Jon M: [00:16:07] Following up on on that, about humanizing. In your article, you say that you struggle with the possibility of actually creating spaces in which everyone in the class experiences humanization, that what may be humanizing for one student or teacher may be simultaneously dehumanizing for another. Can you talk about this?
Sherry D: [00:16:28] Yes. And so what we’re specifically talking about at that point in the paper is working in a predominantly white higher education, where in teacher education, and in case listeners are unfamiliar, the teacher demographics in the United States are about 80% of teachers identify as white.
And so teacher education largely mimics that where in classrooms in again, predominantly white educational settings, the students, the pre service teachers, by and large, identify as white, but there will typically also be a few students who don’t, and this isn’t my case, my current situation at the City University of New York, but thinking about prior institutions, it very much was the case.
And so what we’re talking about in the paper is wanting to create spaces that are humanizing for all of those students and also thinking about the work that we want to do towards justice and equity with all of those students. And then thinking about the ways that teacher education, we would argue, uh, largely prioritizes the needs and the interests of white students.
And so what we’re grappling with here is when we have a class of predominantly white teacher education students who may teach students of any background, you know, eventually. It’s how to make the space feel affirming and humanizing for those students, many of whom have told us that they hadn’t had prior opportunities to consider issues of race and power necessarily. And how do we make the space humanizing for them and simultaneously for the students of color, when we may be talking about issues, which may sometimes make the students of color feel marginalized.
Amy H-L: [00:18:11] Is there an ethical issue here? Clearly we want all students to feel heard and seen. But Black students clearly need that more than white students who have been heard and seen for the most part.
Sherry D: [00:18:31] So do you look at this from an ethical perspective? Absolutely. And we also take another angle to it, so I definitely agree with what you’re saying. And then this is something that Esther, Dr. Ohito and I think about, and it’s also something that when I’ve been on other panels with teacher educators of color working in predominantly white higher education, that we’ve talked about, which is that we know though, part of this ethical dilemma is that ultimately our white students may be teaching largely minority students of color populations. And so we also feel an ethical commitment to those students. And so we wonder, to the extent that we don’t engage some of the perspectives and needs of the largely white pre-service teacher group, to what extent then are we limiting opportunities for them to develop their practice in terms of justice and equity before they are working with students of color? It’s so difficult. It’s so, it feels very challenging.
Jon M: [00:19:41] That was really one of the things that I really loved about the article was watching both of you go through this process of struggling, because I know so many teachers who do, and yet it so rarely, you know, appears in the literature or, from what I’ve seen, it doesn’t appear that much in professional development. And so I think that, you know, just watching you grappling with these questions. So one question I had was that you wonder in the article about if and how the work of social justice teaching actually just privileges the feelings of white identified people. Can you talk about that?
Sherry D: [00:20:21] Yeah, and I think that that’s a little bit of what I was saying and then I’ll, I’ll add onto that. But just the idea that while I think there are actually a couple of things, but when we’re thinking about social justice education, and a lot of times it’s particularly within the field of teacher education, which is predominantly, primarily white, that then that’s the angle with which we are creating learning experiences and creating classrooms is with that particular demographic in mind. And then I think there are other subtle ways that thinking about social justice, taking up this idea, also privileges whiteness. Esther speaks to this in that particular article where she says, you know, and so this isn’t me, it’s her, but I want to, I want to voice this. I think it’s important. And she says, you know, if it were up to me, I’d be talking about anti-blackness. And so sometimes when we take the language of social justice, this has happened many times in my own teaching. Students will, instead of thinking about issues of race, or maybe not thinking isn’t the right word, but instead of explicitly taking up, there may be, I’ll use the word deflection to talk about other issues, factors, et cetera, that perhaps the students feel more comfortable discussing.
So I’ll give you a brief example from a class I taught a few years ago about which I wrote a book chapter with one of my students from the class who was one of maybe three students who identified as a student of color in a class about of roughly 24 students. And so we were talking about race and we were learning some of the history about segregation and desegregation. We were watching segments from the documentary Eyes on the Prize, and then we were having a whole class discussion, and so it was intentionally meant to be about race. And some of the white students in the class, you know, I don’t know what their motivation was, but for whatever reason, then were looking for entry points into the conversation that were not about race. And so one student said, well, for example, I’m of large stature. And so being of large stature, this isn’t something that’s really depicted in Hollywood very much so. I understand what it means. I understand racial oppression from, you know, I’m oppressed as well. And so students were making these kinds of connections about ways that they have experienced oppression that were not related to race. And so when we talk about social injustice in that way, and it may not be take your race conscious focus, then I see students sometimes, you know, moving on that and shifting focus to, again, things that they might find more relatable and more comfortable.
And I can give you another example of a counter to that then. So I was teaching a class this semester that was not a teacher education class, but it was an education class, and racism was specifically in the title, and I made an explicit choice for this particular class. It was something I hadn’t done before to only assign readings that had been written or co-authored by a person who identifies as a person of color. And so I noticed that, and you know, I didn’t do any research on this, so this is just anecdotally, a real difference in how students were taking up the issue of race. And at the end of the semester, the students also commented on it. And, you know, we had a general opportunity for them to just share any thoughts before the class was closing. And they were saying things like, wow, when you put race explicitly or racism in the title, and then we don’t have to, we don’t have to prove that racism exists. It creates a different, whole different kind of opportunity for them talking about these issues. So those are some ways that I see social justice sometimes prioritizing the needs of whiteness because of just who is in teacher education and then also because social justice, although many of us who take up this stance may want it to be race-conscious, it isn’t necessarily explicitly, and then I sometimes see students make those maneuvers.
Amy H-L: [00:24:43] You said that you recognize that it would be insincere to suggest that you don’t desire certain outcomes from your teaching, and that that’s often led to frustration and disappointment. We’ve actually begun to ask our guests why they teach and how that influences how they teach. What outcomes do you look for now from your teaching?
Sherry D: [00:25:08] I love this question. And so what outcomes do I look for from my teaching? Well, you know, my dream is that my teaching, and I don’t want to say my teaching because all of my classes are really our collective and their collective endeavors. And so maybe I would say from our learning instead of my teaching, is that it’s transformative.
And maybe I’d even, before for it to be transformative. I would say that I want it to feel to the students also that it’s collective. I don’t want them to experience my classes as though they are top down and they’re just receiving, but that we are collectively creating the experience. So that would be one goal for me.
And two, from there that the teaching can then, that the learning can then be transformative. And what I mean by that is that it fundamentally shifts the way that they see something, think about something, do something. And particularly in the case when we’re talking about ethical schools and race and social justice, um, I’d love it if that shift is specifically in terms of how they are thinking about what is possible with their students and what can be achieved. And they have new ways of thinking about how they might go about doing this. Very difficult, but amazing and rewarding work of working with young people.
Amy H-L: [00:26:31] What is duoethnography and how have you found it particularly valuable to, to shift thinking?
Sherry D: [00:26:41] So duoethnography is a relatively new type of research, qualitative research methodology. And in duoethnography, the two researchers together have a conversation about a phenomena or an idea, a topic of interest, So obviously the paper that we’ve been discussing is written in this style. And what I find that it affords and how it shifts the dynamic is that it allows, I’ve talked a lot in this discussion about the need for questioning and using questions to promote deeper thinking. And so it allow that. It makes an entryway for that because the two researchers who are working together are really questioning one another so that they both can dig deeper into, into their thoughts and experiences around the phenomenon of interest. It just decenters, some post-positivistic, to use a fancy research type term. And what I mean by that is this idea of the primacy of science, a scientific approach in a particular way. And I think in that sense, it makes space for voices that may be left out of more traditional types of research conversations like voices of women, women of color in particular, where we can engage more deeply, perhaps, in our ways of knowing that aren’t always prioritized or validated in traditional research methods.
Jon M: [00:28:19] So you talked about, you know, situations where you’ve encouraged students, graduate students, to recall and share their own racialized experiences. Is this something that secondary school teachers can or should do?
Sherry D: [00:28:39] Absolutely. And so another paper that I wrote that I wish I had shared with you and I hadn’t thought of, that I’d love for teachers to think, about is called “Racing Management and Managing Race.” Or perhaps it’s the other way around. And so in this paper, I looked at stories teachers told about race and classroom management. And I looked to see how they were positioning themselves, how they were positioning students, and how they were talking about classroom conflict. And what I found was that teachers who identified primarily as white, or racially different from their students even if they didn’t necessarily identify as white, were talking about and telling stories about race as though it needed to be controlled and managed. And for the teachers who did racially identify with their students coming from, as people of color, they were telling stories more about how we needed to think about how race race plays into classroom management experiences and disciplinary experiences that students have in schools.
And so the teachers were writing these stories as part of a professional development that wasn’t specifically about classroom management, but it was about race, class, and gender equity in schools. And so I found it particularly fascinating how they were in some cases, conflating issues of racial difference with classroom management crises. And in that paper, I encouraged the folks who work with teachers, particularly novice teachers, they were all novice teachers, to have them write their own stories and to analyze them and deconstruct them together. And for this to be helpful though, I think that those of us who work with teachers need to make sure that we assure them that we’re not judging them and that this is an opportunity for growth.
So absolutely. I think that practicing educators should also be looking into their own narratives and the stories they tell themselves and they tell others about race in the world and in their classrooms.
Jon M: [00:30:54] So speaking of papers, we’ll be happy to post the titles of papers. And I know in some cases because they’ve been published in journals and stuff, there may be requirements that people, you know, pay. But if that’s true, then they have access to that. And if not, then they’d be able to have access to the whole articles. But we’d be happy to post on our website, you know, any things that you’ve written and things that you think would be a particular value that other people should read as well.
Thank you.
Amy H-L: [00:31:27] In some of your work, you refer to the concepts of safe spaces and brave spaces, typically in a university setting. What do safe spaces or brave spaces look like in middle schools and high schools?
Sherry D: [00:31:42] Another great question. I would say that safe spaces in middle and high schools look like, and I just want to go back again, Amy, to some of the questions that you asked and they look like spaces where students feel like they belong, where students belong and they’re humanizing spaces. And I would say that those are also foundational for what people like to consider brave spaces. And so, to talk a little bit more about safe spaces specifically, I would say that in middle and high school settings, these are what we might see as evidence of safe spaces, students taking intellectual risks, students participating in conversations. So I observe a lot of classrooms, and one thing I might look for, and this is something that teachers all, I can say a little bit more about this in a moment, could think about doing on their own, as well as I’ll look to see who’s participating, how many students are participating, you know, raising their hands specifically.
And so if teachers want to think about that themselves and they don’t have somebody like me coming into their classrooms, they could videotape a lesson. They could think specifically about “What did I do? How did students respond?” To look for some of the, some of this evidence. But yeah, so safe spaces are those where I’d say students are, you can see students actively, intellectually engaged and willing to try things out. Maybe they are also spaces where students are supporting each other in different ways. So maybe there are peer collaborative learning. Maybe it’s also when there’s whole class instruction. If someone, if a student is struggling to complete an answer or share a thought. It’s one where other students are building on what that student’s saying and supporting them in developing their ideas.
And in terms of brave spaces, and I wonder if folks who are listening are familiar with this idea, which is building on the idea of safe spaces, but saying that brave spaces also acknowledge the risks that are inherent in having what we might call difficult conversations, like sort of related to issues of race or equity or justice. But knowing that those are conversations in which people might feel vulnerable, and so they might not feel safe in terms of, they might not feel comfortable. And so people who take up this idea of brave spaces say that that discomfort is actually necessary for intellectual growth. And so I think that some of the examples I give also would align with brave spaces. So we see students maybe taking up challenging ideas, perhaps we see, although maybe there are never just two sides to any story, just to use this kind of example. We see students taking both perspectives or taking two sides on a topic to interrogate it more deeply. So those are some examples of how I could see that in a middle or high school classroom.
Jon M: [00:34:40] You’ve written the teacher education can be an isolating space, particularly for scholars of color. Why is this and how can the isolation be addressed by the teacher education institutions?
Sherry D: [00:34:53] Yup. And so why I would say that teacher education can be an isolating place for teachers of color is because teacher education, as I’ve been saying, is so predominantly white. And so even in spaces, for example, where I’ve been, you know, I don’t want to suggest that I’ve had colleagues of any background., you know, that can’t be affirming to me, but my white colleagues in a predominantly white school, for example, aren’t necessarily having the same experiences in talking to their students about race that I am. And so if I’m the only, or one of only two, to use an actual a from an institution where I was, people who don’t identify as white in my particular department, I have perhaps fewer opportunities for discussing my particular situation with my particular group of students. And so that can be challenging.
And what does teacher education do about that? This, I would say is a much broader question. It’s how do we change who the teachers are? Because who the teachers are is who become the teacher educators. And so while we still have a predominantly white teaching force, you know, it makes sense that we have predominantly white teacher education faculty. And so the cycle continues. I think it’s self perpetuating in some senses too, because if we have students who are coming into teacher education, students of color, for example, who don’t necessarily feel like they belong to go back to that idea or that their experiences are validated in teacher education, that may turn them off from teaching. And then the cycle continues.
Something that was an amazing opportunity for me within the past few years was I participated in a fellowship where I was able to become part of a research team of teacher educators of color exclusively. I’d never had that opportunity before. And to just have this group that related a little bit more to my experience was, was an amazing, it was an amazing thing.
And so we’re planning to write about that and hopefully one day, well, we have written a paper about the work we’ve done in our own classrooms together, but we plan to write about specifically the work of four teacher educators of color together and how we can support each other and think and use that to think about within teacher education., exactly, to respond to your question, how do we shift these dynamics? So when that’s ready, I’ll let you know.
Amy H-L: [00:37:35] Well, thank you so much, Dr. Sherry Deckman. I’ve learned a lot and I’m sure listeners have as well.
Jon M: [00:37:42] And thank you listeners. If you liked this episode, please consider subscribing and giving us a rating or review. ThIs helps other people to find the show. Check out our website, ethicalschools.org, for more episodes and articles and subscribe to our monthly emails. We post annotated transcripts of our interviews to make them easy to use in workshops and classes. We work with consultants to offer customized social emotional learning programs with a focus on ethics for schools and youth programs in the New York City area. Contact us at [email protected]. We’re on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @ethicalschools. Our editor and social media manager is Amanda Denti. Till next week.