[00:00:15] Jon M: I’m Jon Moscow.
[00:00:16] Amy H-L: And I’m Amy Halpern-Laff. Our guest today is Danielle Bryant, Director of Equity at Capital Region Educational Service, District 113, in Washington State. Welcome, Danielle.
[00:00:28] Danielle B: Thank you for having me.
[00:00:30] Jon M: What is an educational service district, and what’s its relationship to the school districts that it serves?
[00:00:35] Danielle B: The ESD is quite a weird pocket. So we’re sort of state and we’re sort of a district. We really are that happy medium. We work with the state guidance to help support the districts. When we say help support, we’re not governing them or keeping track of them. We’re more giving them services based on what their needs are. An example of that would be, let’s say you’re in a rural community and you don’t have a speech language pathologist. You have kids on an IEP, but you don’t actually have the providers in which to give those kids the required services. So what that would look like, they would contact the ESDs in their area, whichever one that is, and then ESD would be able to provide for them an SLP at a fee for service, and that would be able to give them what they need and meet that legal requirement, as well as not forcing them to house that person with funds that they may not have.
[00:01:43] Jon M: Can you describe a little bit about the area that the ESD serves. How much of it’s urban and how much of it’s rural? For folks aren’t familiar with Washington State
[00:01:53] Danielle B: I’ve only been at the ESD 113 for almost six months now, so I’m still learning the geography of the areas we serve. We have majority rural areas. I can’t give you the number as to how many that is compared to our suburbs, but majority is rural. We go all the way down to Oregon and all the way across to the coast. We house 44 districts and there’s quite a range of people there, of city life, of demographics, of socioeconomic standing. So they’re very, very diverse. Lacey and Olympia are crazy busy, lots of activities. They have a downtown. It’s very vibrant. Then you go to places like Lewis County and it’s small, tiny cities. It’ll be an area in which they might only have one school for all levels. So it can get quite tiny in some of our rural areas.
[00:02:57] Amy H-L: And how do the racial and ethnic composition of the students and teachers differ?
[00:03:04] Danielle B: Our student population is much more diverse than our educator population. In one of the cities in Lakewood or Lacey and Olympia, we have quite a diverse populous students, but yet one of our schools only has one educator of color. So you’re thinking with at least a fourth of those students being of color and then only having one teacher that just the ratio itself saying it like that doesn’t make sense. The math is definitely not mapping for how many diverse students we have versus how many diverse educators we have.
[00:03:42] Amy H-L: A lot of your work focuses on recruitment and retention of teachers. What are the key obstacles?
[00:03:48] Danielle B: Yeah, that is a great question, because there are actually a few key obstacles. So we are not only working with teachers, certified teachers of color, but we’re also encompassing substitutes, paraeducators, and anybody in that education ecosystem that might be interested in becoming a certified teacher. What we’re finding is the obstacles that they’re encountering are actually some things that are well out of our purview and out of our range to change.
An example of that would be the ability to count their hours in the classroom as their hours towards their hours to get their certification. Right now you have substitutes and paraeducators that are in the classroom doing hundreds of hours, but those hours aren’t being counted towards their certifications, which for them is debilitating. Because how do you work all day in a classroom and then work in your spare time to get the hours in the same classroom? It just doesn’t make any sense to not allow them to use those hours. That is one variable in which we cannot control, but we are advocating with the universities in our area to allow for those hours to be counted as credit hours. One of the barriers that we’re acknowledging and working towards that.
One of my grants is able to support mentoring. And the mentoring, not just being other educators, but being other people of color. What we have found is that we don’t have enough educators of color to mentor the other educators of color. There’s just not enough people. What we’re working towards is increasing the amount of folks that could be mentors and are interested in mentoring our teachers. We’re not talking about mentoring like Best Mentors, teachers as well, all teachers, but that’s in a very like technical format where they’d be in your school; they’d help you find the printer; they’d help you get your class set up. The mentorships that we’re talking about. specifically for educators of color are going to be more of the peer mentor outside of the classroom. How do I support you as a person? What’s coming up for you? What do you need to talk about? What hardships are you facing? How do you talk to your administrators? Have you tried these certain techniques, but being able to work with them From a very person centered aspect versus the technical of where are the supplies in a classroom. So that’s one of the things in which we are working towards that we can problem solve on and we can have control over versus the schools, the higher ed. That’s something that we’re working on, but we have no control over those things. So we’re balancing the two: things we can control, things we can’t control. And advocating for all of those things.
[00:06:54] Jon M: You mentioned Best. What is Best?
[00:06:57] Danielle B: Best is a mentor program. They serve all educators and they help them find their way through paths in the classroom, through working with their administrators, through curriculum building, and they do a bunch of other stuff, but those are the main components of Best.
[00:07:16] Amy H-L: What are the issues that Black teachers in particular face?
The concerns are coming from a lot of different sides in a lot of different areas. Part of what’s being faced by specifically Blsck educators and Indigenous educators is that they’re experiencing racial slurs, microaggressions, gaslighting. They’re experiencing all of these forms of psychological abuse, really, and they’re experiencing it in multiple areas. It’s not just the administrators, but it’s other teachers. It’s students. It’s parents. So the exhaustion is what is really crippling our educators of color, specifically Blsck and Indigenous. It’s that they’re tired. They’re so tired because it’s so constant and it’s so daily that there is no respite. There is no peace. There is no community come together and find joy in the work that we’re doing. And we do know that having educators of color in classrooms is super impactful for students, not only in being able to see yourself in that position as a young person of color, but also because educators of color bring a vibrancy, different experiences, lived experiences and technical expertise based on those experiences, you live something, you know, that information. And being able to bring it to a classroom really helps build empathy. And so if you’re an educator of color and you’re exhausted, you’re struggling to be able to build empathy in your classroom because you yourself are not given back any of that empathy and any of that compassion. So that’s really what we’re noticing and experiencing. And from an educator of color, having been in a classroom, I can speak to that on a different level as knowing exactly what that feels like and exactly what that means for educators and exactly how we have to show up to make a difference and not receive that same type of love and respect.
[00:09:31] Jon M: How are you able to support Black and Indigenous and other teachers of color who feel isolated and disrespected? What are you able to do?
[00:09:40] Danielle B: Yeah, so quite a few things. We’re able to create spaces for them. We’re able to advocate for them. One of the really amazing things that the ESDs are doing is also supporting their educators by being that line of defense. So if an educator is experiencing a wrong and they’re housed within an ESD, then we have the control and the power to be able to say, if you are not able to respect our educators, if you are not able to give them dignity and respect, then maybe the ESD isn’t the place for you to be using services.
Now, if they’re outside of the ESD, our control is a lot less, but we’re still able to do things like advocate. So let’s say harm was caused in a district and an educator and needed help restoring and rectifying and making changes, then they could ask the ESD come help support them in that, and we would be able to come into the classrooms and come into that district and give them tools and hold them accountable for those tools based on what their need is.
So, sometimes it’s something as simple as we don’t know how to add in curriculum, and sometimes it’s something as impactful as our students are using the N word and our educators don’t know how to address it. They don’t know what to say. They don’t know how to keep their classroom safe of those racial slurs.
So it’s really across the board as to where and what we can support and how that looks because the needs are so different. But we can do quite a few cool things to help support our districts and our educators.
[00:11:31] Jon M: Can you tell us some more in detail about some of your work with Indigenous teachers and Indigenous schools?
[00:11:39] Danielle B: Yeah, so right now Washington State is doing the curriculum that’s coming from OSPI and that is required by every school to teach Indigenous history and the arts and the language and the different aspects of the impacts of Indigenous history, the people on the world in which we live.
Right now, what we’re working to support is housing educators of color and finding ways to bridge the gaps that any Indigenous educators are experiencing. So, let’s say we have some Indigenous educators that are paraeducators even that are like, we can’t afford to do these programs and live than finding some way to do scholarships, finding some way to buy books, finding some way to have emergency funds. Maybe the car breaks down and that’s the way that they’re getting to these classrooms. So really just figuring out creative ways in which to support the nations and what they are wanting to do. Because one of the most disparaging things and some of our schools and compact schools that are on the reservation and within the nations is that a lot of those educators that come in leave every day. They’re not a part of their community. They’re not a part of their tribes. They don’t speak their language. They are normally most often white teachers that come in, teach information, teach the curriculum, and then go home at the end of the day. And that can be really depressing to see and to know that that’s happening because what they deserve is to have educators that look like them can speak their language and understand their struggles and how their world looks and have the experience of being Indigenous and what that means. And yet what they’re given is white educators. That leave at the end of the day and don’t even know any much about their community or what that looks like. So we’re working with the nations in our area to find out ways in which we can support them.
And not just come in and do what we think is best. But ask what do you guys think think is the solution? What do you guys think would solve this problem? Or what ways can we help you amplify your voices and not just take over and try to give solutions to problems that we can’t even comprehend? So that’s some of the ways in which we’re working towards increasing our Indigenous educators.
[00:14:19] Amy H-L: It’s impressive. And just OSPI is Office of Superintendent for Public Instruction?
[00:14:26] Danielle B: Yes. Yes. OSPI. Yep. Yep. And so they house the Native portion of that, and I always forget the name, but their office is in OSPI. So they’re under that umbrella.
[00:14:38] Jon M: And what are some of the reservations and nations in your area?
[00:14:43] Danielle B: That’s there’s quite a few. So some of the ones that are closest, at least to our location, would be the Nisqually tribe. Squaxin over there. Tahola is one of the locations, I’m pretty sure, that houses the compact school. And I won’t even begin to try to tell you the rest of them because there are more than I remember. And I am still meeting folks from the nations and learning about their tribes. And so at six months in, there’s a lot that I do not know and I’m still learning. So, yeah, those are the ones that I can remember off the top of my head.
[00:15:27] Jon M: What are some of the ways that you envision that your work can, can engage in, in depth with, with Native communities?
[00:15:40] Danielle B: So my vision is really starting with the people, I feel like it’s so important to take time to get to know people. And one of the ways in which we often go about making connections is very check the box.
Like, I made the connection, you do this, I do that. Cool, how can we work together? And we can get really rigid in the way that we come together as a community and so part of what I’m doing is contacting Indigenous folks throughout our region and meeting with them in a really low key, intimate setting. We are not talking about work.
We are not talking about how I can help you and you can help me, but we are taking the time to get to know each other, to come together in community, to grab a coffee, to get a lunch, to really find out what that person is about and what drives them and what their passions are and how they have experienced their life and what that looks like and what that means to be Indigenous.
And then coming together in a community of we are two people of color. And our experiences are very different being Blsck and being Indigenous but the one thing that we can understand based on our lived experiences is that we deserve more than what we are getting and that compassion is something that we have for one another and that we have for our communities and a lot of times that same compassion is not given to us and that if we would do more work to become a voice of compassion and a voice of change. Our peoples together would be able to accomplish so much more. So that’s how I’m starting it. The overall vision is to increase the pathways and to have ways in which we actually know are productive and efficient to moving the needle forward for the Indigenous peoples and the educators of color.
And what ways don’t work. We need to figure that out too. We need to know what we tried that didn’t work and what we tried that did work. But really, the vision starts with being person centered and finding out. What makes people tick and that is really important to me and how I’ve gone about doing most of my work.
I am very much a get to know people first and come together in community over trying to get something done. My job is important. Do not get me wrong, but it is a very secondary concern of mine. And so my vision is for us to come together as a community and. And find ways in which to make change as a, as a people that understand the pain of what it’s like to experience racism and experience the hardships that have come with being people of color switching gears.
[00:18:39] Amy H-L: Tell us about your program to help paraeducators gain certification as teachers.
[00:18:46] Danielle B: Yeah, so one of our schools actually, it’s called North Thurston. They are spearheading the program. North Thurston houses a couple educators of color that are also a part of one of the grants that the ESD is housing.
And their program is speaking to paraeducators who are interested in becoming certified teachers. So about 30ish percent of educators who are paras currently are interested in becoming certified teachers. Knowing that information, we are trying to solve the problem of how do they do that and part of what North Thurston is working on. And the gentleman that houses that is Derek, and he works at North Thurston in their HR department. And what he is working toward is that that shortened pathway. So, instead of that pathway being its full length and just weaving and and winding, we want it to be direct. They’re in the classroom. They deserve those hours to count towards the certificate. They are in the classroom. They deserve to have subsidies to help support them while they’re making the amount that they’re making because it’s not a livable wage for many of their circumstances. And because of that, how do they take off time if they already are struggling financially to then go do these hours to then try to become a certified teacher. So, the North Thurston project that Derek is heading is finding out what those gaps are, number one, and then working with the higher ed and the paraeducators to find a better way to get them from paras to certified teachers.
For the grants, we’re more focused on the emotional standing of those paraeducators. What does it look like specifically, again as a para of color to be able to go through that path? What does that feel like? What does that look like? How can we help with that emotional distress that you were experiencing throughout this process? How can we help financially? What does that look like? So, the two separate programs are working really well together to bridge some of those gaps for paraeducators.
[00:21:10] Jon M: Thank you. Danielle Bryant, Director of Equity, Educational Service District 113 in Washington State.
[00:21:18] Danielle B: You’re welcome.
[00:21:19] Amy H-L: And thank you, listeners. Check out our almost 200 podcasts on our website, ethicalschools. org. Our articles and our new video series, What Would YOU Do? If you find this podcast worthwhile, please share it with a friend or five.
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