Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I am your host Roberta. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. By the end of this episode, please remember to subscribe, give a rating and a review. We live in a global world and it's becoming more and more inclusive and diverse. And my guest today, Erica J. Glover. She is an educator, has a PhD in urban education, and is a diversity, equity, and inclusion specialist. Today, she's going to share with us how these principles apply in the education space and how, no matter where you are, and you find yourself as an educator, you'll be able to apply these based on the research that she did when she was pursuing her PhD studies. And before I go any further, please help me to welcome Erica to the show. Hi, Erika. Morning, Roberta. How are you today? I'm doing fantastic. It's a good morning indeed. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here. In which part of the U.S. are you based? I'm actually in Cleveland, Ohio. Oh, I'm right next door to Chicago, Illinois. Yes, the Windy City. Tell me a little bit about yourself. Yeah, absolutely. So raising a two parent household with my parents were married when I was born with the church eight days a week and was actually right. It was actually a part of a lot of youth organizations. So I share that because that's actually where I began to understand my potential and leadership. My son is going to 12 years old. And so obviously, you know, my parents noticed something in myself. I went on to college. I played basketball in college, went on to college. graduated as an intervention specialist with a degree in special education, worked with students who were categorized as having any emotional disturbances. And I say categorized strongly because for me, after understanding and learning about my students, looking at their files, when I had to, I realized that it was really relationships that weren't built. This is my humble opinion as the bad kids ended up in a bad class where we did a lot of work around empowerment to help them understand who they are and who they're supposed to be and so that they don't have to. dwell in the space of what people have played, the identities that folks have placed on them. So I moved from that space of the classroom into administration. I was in administration for about seven years. Went into HR, did HR. So I was the recruitment manager for a school district for about three, two years. And then as a result of my goals of recruiting more black and brown people, I started to understand policy systems differently. So then I pivoted into the space of diversity, equity and inclusion. where I sit proudly and firmly now, right? I started an organization called Disrupting University based off my research of black teachers. I was really trying to understand what was it that black teachers experienced as adolescents when they were in school and as professionals that helps to speak to how they support young people who are situated in urban settings. And so Disrupting University is really a holistic approach of supporting scholars, educators, and leaders. all at the same time in the best case scenario so that the learning, the co-constructing of knowledge and understanding experiences are all happening together. Right. Speaking of tying in the emotional intelligence of the teachers now versus when they were in school and whether they were put in those behavioral problematic groups, so to speak, what did you find was the connection there? So one thing I think is important to understand is how we are socialized. Oftentimes people will ask questions around an educator and I will always go back to the entry point of when you learn how to be an educator is when you're a scholar, right? So when I was becoming an educator as a scholar, we didn't really talk about social emotional learning a lot, right? So now this generation during this time period, SEL is very, very stressed, although very evaluating is stressed, right? And so now at a point where the gap is, okay, well, we can't leave the adults behind in this conversation, right? How do we ensure that adults, the leaders, the staff are also understanding emotional intelligence and how that affects who they show up at when they're at work, right? Understanding how to appropriately respond to differences, a lot of times as a former educator and administrator is the root of the problem, right? If there's a difference between what a scholar believes should happen and the educator believes should happen versus what an educator believes should happen or how they responded. Same thing with the administrator, right? It's all about how we behave, how we respond and how we begin to understand. That is a foundational level of emotional intelligence. Understand others, relationship skills, management and regulation skills, and how does that all present itself in real time. We kind of skipped that in the space of education. I don't recall going to- I don't remember it. Right, right. In my teacher prep classes, we might've talked about a lot of psychology or theory, but never in terms of what that looks like for me and my experience in my space. And now we are moving a little bit to that space because we're talking a lot about self care now for educators, but we have really taken the time to dive deep into, all right, if I am working across differences, I need to understand who I am and how I came to believe what I believe so I can begin to think that way about others. That's when you actually begin to leverage commonalities and differences. That's why emotional intelligence is so important. So important that I'm spending time writing a book about emotional intelligence and culturally responsive classrooms because at the center of that is student voice. My voice should matter, not to the extent that I'm being heard, but you're actualizing based upon what you hear me say. This is how you begin to empower. scholars differently. So now they're engaged in your classroom. Now they're holding themselves accountable because you're acting on what they're saying. This is interesting because in this podcast we talk about leadership, we talk about EQ, emotional quotient, and how leaders should have this emotional intelligence because they lead people. But it looks like we start addressing that problem once people are in the working space and they are full-on grown-ups with graduate That's an interesting question. Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, one of the founders or early researchers of Raw Cultural Response in Teaching and Learning. And when you look into the different research around this theory, this concept, you'll hear a lot of folks talking about bringing in or embedding social emotional learning. Some may describe it as social emotional learning. There's another research who talks about, be careful about the values that you are pushing on people. where you're talking about social emotional learning as well, right? When you think about the cultural mismatch between educators and between scholars, you have to be careful around that. But ultimately, when you're talking about sustaining cultural responsive teaching and learning, you have to look at critical consciousness. You have to understand the social political context that students are coming from. Scholars are bringing it to your classroom in order to truly understand them, right? And so by default, classroom teachers, administrators, they kind of get to inherit relationships, right? You'll hear people talk about teacher suit relationships, administrators do relationships all the time. That's by default. That's because I have to come to your school. That's because I have to get into your class, right? But when you get to authentic relationships, it's, oh, I know more about the experiences that you have at home in your culture and community. I know how systemic racism and systemic inequities influences. your outcomes at home that you are bringing into this school space. For example, I understand during COVID, what the demographics of those who had COVID. Who had access to computers. I remember in Chicago there was a program about households that didn't have computers. Yeah. Access to technology, the fear of getting the shot because of what we know as black Americans, what has happened to black Americans in medicine, out history, right? And so... understanding those things, understanding that there is no poverty of a culture of poverty. I don't want to be in poverty, right? But understanding what happens as a result of me being in poverty, all these things that young people experience will influence how they show up. And if you aren't intentional with understanding the different ways that young people show up, then you're not being the cultural responsive educator that they may need. And I say may because some young people hold back and just do out of compliance what is asked, but some young people want who they are to be honored. And as a human being, they deserve that. That's what we all look for. But then to look at it from the teacher's side, do they get that level of training as part of their teacher training? That's a great question. So remember, I tend to go back to the scholar. So the question really is when they were a scholar, were they really taught to be Or did they understand how to be culturally aware? What that means? How do you become more culturally aware? Most likely, no. I'll say that because that's not how I learned, right? Right. Get into this mold and learn. This is why the imposter syndrome can come to pass for people later as adults, because I'm always comparing myself to other people instead of trying to be the person that I am. So when you think about how that looks for the educator, they have had to have been socialized that way too. they didn't get it when they were going through elementary, middle, high school, then the hope is that they get it in teacher prep. But from my experiences, that didn't happen. And so, in the district where I was working as an HR director, we were reaching out to our local university partners saying, hey, we need cultural responsive educators. What's going on in your curriculum? Like how to virtualize it, what experiences, what things are you doing so that before they even step in the classroom, they've been able to have more than a surface level understanding of cultural differences. There is one point in time, my colleague and I, through Disrupting University, will work with pre-service teachers intentionally over the summer. We will have, invite them to the community center. We would do PBLs, like project-based learning units, where like our most recent one, we wanted, we had Black boys working with us, and we say with, because they are experts of their experiences. Of course. To understand. how the media can influence perceptions and perspectives. And so we invited all of the pre-service teachers that we invited were all white males or females into spaces in the community with black and brown educators and scholars. And the feedback that we received back from them was just incredible, right? Like one of the female participants said, you know what, I don't even understand why I felt nervous driving into the parking lot. She admits, she said it, I don't even know. And these are the experiences that we want folks to have before they get into the classroom. Cause remember emotional intelligence, how do I respond to that feeling? Cause a better understanding from the other person's side. There it is. Cause here's the thing, when you talk about cultural awareness, since you were a scholar, a white student growing up in a white neighborhood and then becoming a teacher one day and then assigned to an inner city school. And like you said, the universities and the colleges don't offer their training. Where would they have had that? And so I wanna also acknowledge that there are some universities that do intentionally like focus in urban. Okay. Research, but where, that's a tough question to ask. It depends upon what they're experiencing with their family. You'll have individuals who are able to. experience summer vacations in different countries, in different settings. Create open-mindedness, yes. So you have opportunities, but the question I think really that is at the center of where I think you're trying to understand is what are we intentionally trying to do? What are we doing on purpose? And this is why, regardless of where you're at, and I'll speak for America because I'm American, right? Regardless of where you're at. there should be some intentionality around becoming more culturally aware. And let me tell you why. Technology has influenced, not just education, but society in this world in such a way that everything is global. And so if we are trying to prepare global citizens, why would we not want to prepare everyone to become more culturally aware? When you think about the opportunities for our young people to work on the international level, cultural awareness is everything. It actually benefits them, yes, because they can adapt no matter which space they find themselves in. Absolutely. Usually, when we talk about leadership and the work place on this podcast, we talk about not only emotional intelligence, but the fact that I've had so many guests say it makes business sense to be culturally aware, to apply the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion. in your company because you're going to have so many different perspectives because you're not just going to get them from one group. Absolutely. And so I acknowledge that diversity matters. I also pushed back on ensuring that it is not very interest convergence heavy. Businesses need people when people need businesses, right? So there is some type of reciprocal relationship that's happening. But when you're thinking and coming from the space of HR about retainment, like how do I retain? I can get people in the door. I can get into the first bodies there, right? But how do I get you to stay? That's a sense of belonging, which is very different. So a lot of people will leave with the bottom business line or push businesses and organizations to push beyond that to the space of, how do I show that I value and honor your difference? So much that you feel as if you belong and you don't want to leave this organization. That's the inclusion, the sense of belonging area of the DEI. And then the equity comes in, well, what is the data telling us about the experiences that we're seeing? If I'm saying that there are more of this group of people who are leaving, why? What am I trying to do to understand that? What are their experiences that they're having? I think that's going to push us beyond the bottom business line of just looking for diversity in numbers. We have to understand what the experience is in order to value people differently. The bottom business line a lot of times works very well for many organizations. But when you're thinking about equities and you're thinking about your data and you think about what your data is telling you in terms of the gaps and the reasons why you don't have representation in so many spaces, you have to be able to understand the experience and push beyond the bottom business line. That is so interesting because so I grew up during apartheid, it changed when I was 18. So you had these corporates who never had diverse employees before. And what they did was they gave them incentives for just pump money into the problem. Just get these graduates who are black, colored, different terminology in South Africa, by the way. I don't mean it in the American context. And Indian into this formerly white only companies and just pump money and equity into them. And unfortunately, money does not solve that problem. People still left, even though they were getting paid salaries and bonuses that they were missing before. If you are not treated right, like you say, if you cannot get them to stay, then no, we're going to stay. Right, right. And I think that that's where, intentionally or unintentionally, I believe many organizations drop the ball. You can't have these vision and mission statements. around diversity, equity, and inclusion and only hit diversity. Folks who are often marginalized understands what it means to be marginalized. And so in order for a person who has never or may say, oh, that hasn't happened to me, or they might say, well, I know what's happened to some. When you start speaking that language, it's definitely time for you to learn more about other experiences. And a lot of times organizations have a hard time looking themselves in the mirror that way. Because when you know something isn't right, that's what you have to do. You have to fix it. You have to start healing the layers and doing something about it. Systems are designed to do exactly what they're doing. When you are that committed to your vision or your mission statement, what people experience within your organization will matter. How they communicate that to you will matter. If they are worried about completing a survey, when you don't have good survey results, that's telling you something. Behavior is a method of communication, and just as much as verbal words are. And so I think it's important for organizations. I know we're talking about organizations, but even in the educational space, right? Why are black and brown teachers not there? Why are they leaving? Or what are the experience of folks who have disabilities? Are we doing everything that we can to support them that way? We spend a lot of time unpacking what diversity means for folks to understand that we all are diverse. period, certain areas, depending on the room you're in, the time, the context, you will experience oppression. You might feel depressed, you might feel disadvantaged, you might also experience privilege. It's how do I, going back to emotional intelligence, how do I make myself more aware of the experiences I don't understand? How do I appropriately respond in ways that shows that I'm thinking about the perspective of others and I'm operating not just out of empathy and compassion, but there's action behind what I'm doing. Let me try and play Devil's After Kid for a second. Remember the movie Dangerous Minds? I think it starred Michelle Pfeiffer? Yes. She was teaching at an inner city school. Coolio made the soundtrack. I remember growing up, first of all, I wanted to be a teacher. And the first thing I was told was, you're too smart, you must never. They are the least paid professional. You're gonna prove for the rest of your life. Don't even think about it. That's why I never started teaching. So one, it's the least paid job. It sounds like a thankless job. And the work... In addition to just teaching your math, your sociology, whatever it is, it sounds like it's just a lot. It just keeps being a lot and the pay does not match, which means there's no motivator with the pay as well. When I think of that Michelle Pfeiffer movie, which by the way was based on a true story, the extent to which she had to go to go to these kids' homes and find out their problems. If you are a white teacher in an inner city school, Is that really what it takes? So one of the things that I will say, and I wanna be careful to not generalize across inner city schools, but what I will say is that there are some things about education that has evolved. One of those things is that educational systems are starting to realize the importance of different roles outside of the space of an educator is needed. Okay. So, for example, the I Promise School is more of a wraparound approach of teaching and learning. where you have folks who may not necessarily be educators supporting the scholars in that space. Like there's some schools who have social workers in that space. You have some school who had success coaches in those spaces. You have some schools who have family resource coordinators who to your point might be the cultural bridge between the community because of who they know. And so education is definitely pivoting in some ways. in terms of who we are, bring it to the table to support our scholars outside of just the educator. It did it really. Sounds like a lot if as an educator, that's going to be your entire assignment. Yes, yes. You have folks in many spaces. I will probably say more urban than not because of funding that where you are, folks are being creative with bringing in different types of supports and services and programs. COVID has terms of the dollars that. folks have access to their folks are able to be a little more creative with how they're using those dollars to support student mastery and learning to push back against any of those statistics that I have that they speak about in terms of learning loss, if you will. But there's also one thing I want to point out that you actually mentioned, Roberta, is this notion of pay and thankless job. What hasn't happened in the space of education is it hasn't caught up with the demand that is placed upon educators. historically speaking is not to dismiss with the work of educators, but now we're in a place where we should be honoring the different has to educators need to wear in the classroom. And that should equate to pay that should equate to different way of even looking at what school is right now. We've been socialized to believe that school has to happen from this time to this time, but every other organization and business has adapted to flex time. Well, that is true. When will education do that? When will we see that? I know we are one point of time talking about merit pay, but when will we notice that being able to personalize education that folks want? It's to be means that I have to be a more complex educator, which means I have to spend just as much time studying and understanding self and content and your culture than just throwing it out there based upon a pacing guide or this curriculum that doesn't understand the experiences of my scholars. And so things of that nature, like those are things that are very telling. That helps me understand that education is definitely still behind. It is because just like when we talk about organizations, we say, just remember you work with humans, they operate the machines. The humans are the priority. So it's the same with the teachers. There's got to be a way to motivate them. And just so they can remember that the kids are the humans that they are bringing up. And then the math, the science, the biology is what they're learning. Because, and we talk about it even here, we say, oh, why don't schools teach yoga? Why don't schools teach meditation? And now we're adding emotional intelligence and we're gonna add something else tomorrow in addition to their specialty subjects, yeah. Absolutely, well, there's a lot of folks who will say, at some point in time, there's certain things in the space of education that is not needed to have, that students don't need to learn. There are some people who push back and say, why do we have to, why do scholars have to do four years of math? Just because we've always done it, or is it something that scholars will need later on in life? And so questions like that are very difficult to answer because of this thing of we've always done it this way. Yeah. Until we're able to pivot and think more innovatively, which is what's not happening with scholars. We still aren't being innovative with how we teach. And so guess what we bring out? We bring out the same type of machine, if you will, with our scholars because we are killing creativity. And so to your point, all of that is important. I think ultimately the bottom line is you have to be the person who is willing to do what is best for kids. When you get to the space that you can't do that over anything else, then that might be the time that you need to leave. Yes, because like I said, when we talk about leadership coaching and all the... aspects that go into that to make you a better leader. It sounds to me, that's the stuff you are talking about with the scholars. So we basically just studied in adulthood. We basically did. We're a little behind. We live in an economy where two incomes in every household are now becoming more imperative. It's no longer an option. So the mom and the dad are not home at work so they can pay bills and feed you. Who's gonna have time to teach you emotional intelligence at home? That's a loaded question. And what I don't want to do is make assumptions about all of our scholars, what they go home to. But I also want to ensure that I make the point that most scholars spend most of their time at school. Okay. In America, most scholars spend most of their time at school. When it comes to home, yes, there are definitely some things that we want to see our parents and or our caregivers doing outside of the school, right? It works both ways. There are expectations of the family. their expectations of the educator. But there's also some scholars whose family dynamics were very different. They might be raised by a grandparent. They might be in a foster home. They might be, there's so many experiences that we have to think about and understand that many of our scholars are bringing assets and strengths to the table. Yes. We also want to use those assets and those strengths. to help build upon and nurture in those spaces where they need other additional support. And so one of the things that was my rule of thumb was, I'm always going to involve parents, family, I'm communicating, over communicating quite honestly, but at the same time, I'm never taking for granted what has happened or I'm never living and operating off of what's not happening at home. Once you get to my classroom, You're my son, you're my daughter, you're my niece, you're my nephew, you're my cousin, you're my best friend's friend. You belong to someone else, but you are now a relationship, authentic relationship with me. And so I am going to do my best to do what is best for you. This has been not only so eye-opening, but I think that when it comes to cultural awareness as well, it works from all angles. All of us need to be culturally aware, especially in the education space. With all the diverse teachers and diverse students, there's just so much with this topic that we can continue to cover. But before I take any more of your time, Erica, what are your last words of wisdom? Remain a lifelong learner and committed to what that means. And oftentimes folks will espouse, oh yeah, I'm a lifelong learner, but get a little nervous when you hit this space of discomfort or cognitive dissonance because it doesn't feel good or because I'm uncomfortable. Lifelong learning says I'm diving deep and I'm giving myself grace. Grace to, you know, make a mistake, grace to not understand, but also grace to always improve. And so I think that if we're all committed to that and that theory into action of lifelong learning, then that cultural awareness ultimately will happen. Words of wisdom from Dr. Erica J. Glover, the educator and a DE&I specialist. Erica, thank you so much for your time today. Absolutely. Thank you for your time, Roberta. I appreciate it. Truly a pleasure. And most of all, I just want us to take a moment to thank the teachers for the amazing work that they do, the impact that they have on the young ones. It doesn't go unnoticed. I don't know how many stories you've heard. So many grownups will go on TV and say, I still remember my fourth grade teacher encouraged me to do that. Their impact is lifelong. Yes, it is. It is. So thank you so much teachers for the wonderful work that you do. Erica, do you have any social media handles we can reach you on after today? Yes, both on Instagram and Twitter as Dr. Erica Glover, Facebook Erica Glover, and please visit me at www.disruptoruniversity.com. Check out some of the work that we're doing. And Erica is E-R-I-C-A-G-L-O-V-E-R. And finally, last shameless plug, if you don't mind, Roberta. Please, go ahead. I'll be dropping our book late January, February, called, Centering Suit and Voice, A Guide for Cultivating Emotion and Intelligence in Educators and Culturally Responsive Classroom. We'll be looking out for it, yes. Please make sure you hit me up on any of those social media handles. I will write it on the show notes, both your social media handles and the upcoming book and the date for which you should look out for it. Thank you very much, Erica. It's been a pleasure having you with us today. Take care. Thank you. Bye-bye. Don't forget to subscribe, give a rating and a review. That was Dr. Erica J Glover.