Uncommon Voices, Uncommon Visions

Centering Vulnerability and Heart in Teaching and Learning

What draws you and keeps you in the classroom?  Many days teachers  ask themselves this exact question.  Dr. Becky Thompson [https://beckythompsonyoga.com/]’s vision for teaching is clear: she’s in the classroom to experience those moments of “amazing intellectual work that also [have] some heart in it.”  It keeps her coming back, year after year. Join scholar, poet, and activist Becky Thompson and I as we discuss teaching and learning broadly and the role of contemplative practice [https://contemplativepedagogynetwork.com/what-is-contemplative-pedagogy/#:~:text=Contemplative%20pedagogy%20shifts%20the%20focus,experience%20of%20their%20own%20learning.] as a means of fostering deep connections between teachers and students within the classroom.  Important to this conversation is the consideration that not all classrooms are within the four walls of the institution.  Dr. Thompson shares her experiences she’s had within a refugee center in Greece, witnessing the resilience and fortitude of people fleeing everything they knew in order to start a new life in a foreign land.   This is a truly special conversation about the important role that teaching can play to open conversations, shape our humanity, and ultimately change our own lives and the lives of those we are fortunate to encounter.  In a time when students are increasingly reliant upon artificial intelligence as a source of “safe” supportive information, we need to consider how we change our interactions in the classroom to foster increased sense of safety and belonging?  In what ways can we allow students to express their tension and frustrations, leaving them freer to be who they are?  What is intellectual work without full expression with access and opportunity to explore, wonder, and be? Becky’s work that you may  consider: Teaching with Tenderness: Toward an Embodied Practice by Becky Thompson [https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p082702] Beyond a Dream Deferred: Multicultural Education and the Politics of Excellence Becky Thompson and Sangeeta Tyagi [https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/beyond-a-dream-deferred] Making Mirrors: Writing/Righting by Refugees by Becky Thompson and Jahen Bseiso [https://beckythompsonyoga.com/books-by-becky-thompson/making-mirrors/] To Speak in Salt by Becky Thompson [https://www.exophidiapress.org/books/to-speak-in-salt/] Other Texts: Dignity-Affirming Education: Cultivating The Somebodiness of Students and Educators [https://www.tcpress.com/dignity-affirming-education-9780807766521] Justice Seekers: Pursuing Equity in the Details of Teaching & Learning by Lacey Robinson [https://www.unbounded.org/justice-seekers-book]

New Career-College Charter School Features Class that Centers Student Agency

This fall I had the opportunity to sit down with John Pellman, Director of Curriculum and Instruction at Capital College and Career Academy (CCCA), a new charter school that opened in August 2023 in North Sacramento.  CCCA’s mission is to ensure that all students graduate having experience taking both dual enrollment courses and internships so they have a clear understanding of their college and career options in order to make more informed choices.  Within that, John teaches a class called Innovation, Design, and Implementation, which uses Makers Education as a means to center student agency to help them take an idea and bring it to fruition.  In doing so, students practice socio-emotional skills such as wellbeing, mindfulness, as well as critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and grit while working with a partner, researching, and putting their project together.  Rather than rely on standardized tests, in John’s class, students complete self-assessments on these various skills and participate in design challenges where they operate in real world situations.  Drawing upon a diverse student population, located in a historically disenfranchised area of Sacramento, CCCA’s goal is to help nudge education in the direction toward helping students access opportunities and situations that help them realize their potential, one student at a time.  Join our conversation as we talk about CCCA, education as a business, and Makers Education specifically in this episode of Uncommon Voices, Uncommon Visions. John, working in partnership with the Sacramento County Office of Education is offering three more classes for local educators on using Maker Education in the classroom: February 20, March 19 and April 16, 2024 [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RlrBgCDuYiS3b7zPuLUJWRnZFhSkzByw/view?usp=share_link]. Suggested Materials: The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children [https://www.amazon.com/Gardener-Carpenter-Development-Relationship-Children-ebook/dp/B01ARRWPUS] by Alison Gopnick Stuck in the Shallow End [https://www.amazon.com/Stuck-Shallow-End-Education-Computing/dp/0262514044] by Jane Margolis

#28--MLK Message--Legacy on My Leadership & How to Embody The Dream

How does Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. impact your leadership?  How can businesses, schools, and individuals seek to embody his dream today?  These were two questions asked during a fireside chat at a breakfast I attended this morning.  Two local African American leaders/business owners were asked to respond.  From their responses, I don't believe that either of them were raised in Sacramento.  Interestingly, I found my own experiences fell between theirs.  As a person who came from a poor single-parent household, yet, who did have the privilege of having a mother who'd grown up in the north (Detroit, Michigan) attending all White schools and was the great-granddaughter of an educator, I had the advantage of knowing how to navigate predominately white environments and feel at home in them.    As we consider The Dream and how we are still working to achieve it in all aspects of our society, we need to consider a variety of voices and experiences of people to answer these questions because as the new movie American Fiction demonstrates, the Black experience, like any other human experience, is multifaceted.  When we can begin to wrestle with and be okay with the complexity of this fact, we can begin to build the kind of lasting coalitions that can create the reality that so many of us desperately desire.

Relaunch

Hi there!  It's been a while since I've been on the air, so I wanted to reintroduce myself. I'm Dr. Valerie Nyberg, former HS administrator, teacher, and single-parent to three accomplished young men.   In this episode, I share my recent experiences traveling and gaining clarity in my work and with my business.  My purpose is two-fold, to make a difference in the lives of others, but also to change and heal myself. Join me as I explain what I've been up to in order to achieve that purpose and what it means for the future of my podcast.  Don't miss out an insightful glimpse into becoming what I'm meant to be.

Mother-Son Convo: Race & Identity, Part II

Jacob and I get together again to continue our conversation, this time after watching the documentary 1000% Me: Growing Up Mixed [https://www.hbo.com/movies/1000-me-growing-up-mixed] on HBOMax (newly renamed Max) to further discussion about race and identity.  Jacob and his brothers are Swedish, Irish, Eskimo, Native American (just a smidge), and Black.  It’s clear that during our conversation, despite my efforts to ensure that my children can correctly identify themselves racially/ethnically, Jacob is confused about the name of his grandmother’s tribe, Inupiaq, and his grandfather’s country of origin, Finland.  Though, interestingly enough, he’s intrigued to think of himself as a second generation immigrant, though he doesn’t think it counts.  Should I be alarmed, or is this just a result of the assimilation process? We discussed my efforts to help my sons be successful by listening to them when they expressed interests in activities, even when it was outside of my own comfort zone.  The unintended consequence of which meant my sons had far more in common with their White peers than their Black peers.  This led to a conversation about access and opportunity.  How do kids’ programs recruit diverse participants in an equitable manner? It’s important to emphasize this is not a scripted conversation. In fact, unlike my typical episode preparations, we didn’t even use a discussion guide.  Instead, it’s simply a mother and son having a conversation about a difficult topic, sometimes discovering for the first time, what we think and how we feel about the complexity of an issue that impacts both of us.