001we were going to be applying a final word protocol so one of the things that we had um emailed out was for everyone to choose a significant passage from chapter three of the courageous conversation book was everyone able to do that all the board members um so we will just be rolling with that um just as a general overview of how i'm approaching this i'm doing work with the board simultaneously doing work with our district leadership team and with the cabinet team and really focused on um a few central uh questions the first question which we talked about previously was how are we defining equity in the yakima school district so that when we're using that word we're meaning the same thing right now since i have equity in my title i get to be
002the definer and we're going to work on the um policy together language that will define it as a district right now we're kind of running with the definition that i've been using additionally why do we lead and center race in our equity conversations and work race is going to be a significant emphasis um very early on it's going to get to the point that people are like does this guy talk about anything other than race but really i'm trying to help um folks to understand why it's important for us to lead and center that in our equity conversations and that's why this chapter was really important and this work is particularly important for our board as um the community starts to become more invested in this topic um to have a strong firm foundation and
003grounding in why it is that we are leading and centering race although we're not ending there it's a starting point and not a how to finish um then also thinking about what are some of the things that gets in the way of productive dialogue about issues of race and equity what trips us up we're trying to have these conversations how can we create the conditions for meaningful cross-racial dialogue about race and equity and once we have kind of really immersed ourselves and have a good understanding of how to have these conversations and are are ready and confident in leading and centering race then what does it look like as we move from conversation to action so um for this protocol it's looking for each person to share a significant idea from the text where you
004found it what was significant to you about it maybe three minutes for the first person to share their passage and then one minute for each other person to comment on what the original presenter said either expanding on the idea pushing back on the idea if you have a different perspective on the passage that they shared or to um identify a question or wondering that you have about what the original speaker said and then after everyone has had the opportunity to respond the original person will have the final word and then once we've gone through all five board members if there's something really important from the text that i think we didn't look at then i'll bring that up and then we will just call that end of our um protocol so how much time do
005we have for this i thought i just heard four what what was the ending time 420 okay so we should have plenty of time to go through um the protocol with all people so who would be interested in sharing your passage first i will thank you okay okay mike my favorite passage came on page 57 and it was a quote from oprah winfrey and the first part of the quote says that racism is the day-to-day wearing down of the spirit and my favorite part of the quote is the second line which is anti-racism is the day-to-day going after the little things and i think that um one of the terms that's used in the explaining paragraph talks about microaggressions and that we often aren't aware of those kinds of things and when they occur in
006the educational setting or in any setting and so that one of our responsibilities as educators is to be listening for and hearing them when they emerge out of our mouths but also when they come out of the mouths of students and staff and finding gentle but firm ways to confront microaggressions and eliminate them from our interactions with folks thank you so we want to take have each board member take one minute and respond to the passage that he shared and or or what he had to say about it so how about raymond sure i i know that just talking from you know from personal experience past in the past that you know when a person does experience racism that it does wear on you right it your motivate kind of sucks out your motivation you're
007not encouraged you know you just kind of don't see any hope for uh for our future why try right if if the system is stacked against you and so forth so that's what comes to mind and i and in terms of what she's saying there that that it wears on you you know on a daily basis and and if you're not able to overcome that then uh the consequences are often yeah thank you martha i recalled um a conversation that i was a part of over the weekend where a person of color came to speak to a group that i was zooming with and this is this person is um has a pretty strong will and is pretty fierce and one of the caucasians in the group after this person left um mentioned that she
008was a tiger because she was so fierce and another person of color in the group called her out on that because the connotation um calling calling an asian woman a tiger um is not a nice connotation and you know the caucasian woman wasn't aware of that and immediately apologized and said she didn't mean didn't mean any harm by it but it when i read this paragraph again this weekend that that passage stuck with me and i recalled that conversation thank you um don yeah uh i i think uh known for picking that passage because this is something that me as a african-american male have had to deal with all my life is uh the day-to-day wearing down trying to explain who i am and what i'm about and you know not putting me in a
009in in a box of what they see versus who i am and it wears you down and i i can understand what martha's talking about how when you get in a group of white caucasians and you may be one or two minorities and they say something out of character to describe something and it sometimes comes from ignorance and not knowing or not realizing what they're saying and wonder why we get on a defensive you know because we had to go through this so much and uh it's it's just important to to be conscious of of what you're saying and think about what you're going to say before you say it and uh that's that's part of that microaggression knowing it can weigh you down it can it can be a burden but you know who
010you are and and you want to have your truth spoken and you speak your truth and it's it's not about sympathy it's about empathy for me you know norm i thank you for picking that because that was like my fourth one i mean i love the whole book you know but that whole chapter but that's i understand and you know it's it's good to hear that we are having this conversation and it's bringing us out out of our comfort zone and to understand who we are as as human beings and and this is one that they can work for us i feel yeah well then there's there's another side to the micro aggression thing whoa whoa whoa oh yeah i'm sorry i'll i'll cut back in i'll comment again later just don't spark to thought
011in me that's why you get the final word gracious thanks yeah um you know the the term terms wearing down really um struck me with that and you know like everyone has said it's you know little microaggressions do wear on you and it's um i'm still sir i don't know why i'm surprised but i'm still surprised at how common uh this wearing down process is just day-to-day little micro aggressions they just kind of terrier spirit every day and i had a meal with a couple of co-workers there were new young professional people of color and they have already had so many little experiences at work um different places they they've worked that were just little micro aggressions and it's just that little you know it just tears away at your spirit little by little and
012it just made me really sad that as as new as they are in in their professional world they they already have so many little examples to share and so the terms wearing down is it's it's it's very very true and accurate thanks okay norm you got the final word okay did everybody get their turn sorry i didn't mean to cut you off now the the thing that that sometimes happens with microaggressions too that is sometimes they're intended as compliments in a way but they they put people on the spot in an example don and marcus might even have experienced this if you're an african-american student and you're sitting in a classroom of white students and they're having a discussion maybe about racism or slavery and so the teacher immediately focuses on you and says what
013are your thoughts about that as though you have all the expertise on that and nobody else can speak to that and it puts kids on the spot sometimes and so i think it's important and it happens in corporations too so for example uh the african-american vice president of the corporation gets to do while you get assigned to do the diversity work and so they're like it's not the work for all of us to be become experts in diversity and to work in it yeah one of the interesting things that i did when um i was an administrator in bellevue was they would take us on equity walks to different schools and it might be something cool that we could do with the board but we would do an equity walk and they would give us
014the pictures and names of four or five kids in a classroom that we were going to be focusing on we went in the classroom but the teacher and nobody else would know who we were there to watch and we would see kind of the experience and that thing around slavery we happened to go in and it was a conversation on slavery and that exact thing happened to where the kids who were being focused on were kids just because the of the color of their skin it seemed like and the teacher was actually offering a justification for slavery as an economic we were totally mortified looking at the experience of these specific kids in class at that specific time um it was a really interesting experience so thank you for that we're gonna go to now
015so raymond will share his passage and then we'll do the same thing and each person will have thank you yes there's a passage on it's on on page 49 and i've been struggling with this all weekend so it says quote recognizing that race is a significant factor impacting achievement requires that educators establish common understanding around racial issues too often however it seems that educators are reluctant to develop such understanding and instead blame the students themselves for the racial achievement gaps so if you read i mean just on the surface surface of that and it's blaming educators right really for the racial disparities in academic achievement and so i i take that little further and i think well i'm on the board i've been on the board for 12 13 14 years right and i guess
016you can classify me as an educator and so and as an edu as a board member we i've been part of that process of um blaming the external factors right poverty socioeconomic status you know trauma you know limited access you know social services that type of stuff living in poor neighborhoods you know we talk about we advocate for funding at state level federal level you know we talk about levies and bonds and property taxes and all those type of things you know local state and federal policies is all contributing to this this these disparities in academic achievement so you know i go back and forth do we are we blaming the teachers is the author blaming the teachers or the the educators if so i i'm to blame as well um you know but i
017don't know on the other side i don't know if there's one person or group of individuals yet can be assigned to blame for the disparities so i kind of go back and forth and so has the board perpetuated uh racism in the district over the last 12 years that's my question to myself i guess and i'll i'll leave it there thank you martha i know that we've had these discussions about factors and how things factor into addressing the issues of the whole child i don't i don't necessarily see them as assigning blame but i see them as factors that address elements of what the what the students might be or how these students might be doing in school so i guess um i guess i i guess i wouldn't see it as blame and maybe
018maybe that's a failure on my part but i have heard not recently but i have heard educators say well these kids can't learn to their potential and that bothers me a lot it bothers me a lot because i think that truly is a signing blame um when you just say these kids and you just automatic someone automatically makes the assumption that that there's that these students are somehow less than because of the the color of their skin or their socioeconomic status or any other factor that might be influencing their lives and so they end up blaming the child rather than the factor thank you god you know martha that's a very good um insight on this because a lot of times uh you hear students of color say well this teacher is saying this to
019me but they don't really know me they don't understand me and majority of the time is is it's true that the teacher does not understand the kid and it's not the kids uh uh uh just because they come that just because they are living in poverty doesn't mean that they can't learn is is it that you're trying to what are you trying to do to teach them what do you what tools are you using to give them to be uh productive to close that that that achievement gap uh raymond and i had a discussion earlier today about about this very thing that where he was stuck and i and i gave him some analogies of how i grew up in louisiana from a middle class family my father was fortunate to put me and my
020sister through private school but i had cousins that went to public school and even in a public school at that in the 60s it was segregation and they had teachers look like them but when it integrated that's when the problem started and they start using that that piece oh you you can't learn because because of your skin color because of where you come from the area city you live in but it was not true because some of them who was told that they could never achieve that they could never learn or doctors or professionals you know and and that's you know that's something sometimes it is the educator's fault because they are stereotyping the kid or judging the kid because of what the economic social background is and and this is this is one of
021and i have something that i want to talk about that goes with no i'm in what raymond just picked but that's my piece on it yeah thank you graciela yeah so my in initial thoughts you know is not to um um spend time thinking about blame and and where that lies i think my immediate thought is how do we get you know however many employees we have to 2000 i think maybe employees um to um to to recognize i guess that race is a you know significant impact has a significant impact on students uh on on on achievement gaps so it's a huge you know it's like moving that i guess i don't want to say that titanic because that's in a negative conversation but how how do you get a ship that's moving in
022one direction too and it maybe it is and maybe it's not but i think just it's important to recognize that race is a huge impact it is a huge factor in how how do you get 2000 people to say you know we acknowledge that that that is an impact and i think just that acknowledgement is a starting point and we can figure out how to you know where where to go from there so my might immediately goes to how do we get you know 2 000 people to kind of move in that direction to make that that acknowledgement thank you norman i didn't have my mic on oh marcus call me norm please oh no okay anyway only my mother calls me norman she's not with us anymore only if you break protocol then i'll
023call you anyway i when i was thinking about the that passage in the comments you know it's really easy to latch on to what deficiencies might occur in a kid's life in terms of their experiences or their parents education or parent attitudes or the attitudes kids bring and just write them off because of that and my approach as a most of my career has been a counselor in my most of my theory after years has been what's called solution focused and so i think really we have to look at what's working and what is it and find that it's it's the imperative of all of us as educators in working with kids is to find out if it's working or not and if it's not working then we need to keep looking for something that
024does or if it works a little bit then we need to expand that strategy or that technique or build on that relationship and don hit that too it's about relationships and learning how to make relationships with kids and and never writing them off and never allowing a kid's past experience to help us create limitations for that kid and it's the same old stereotype you you know you see always in the in movies i hate the way movies treat school counselors and school vice principals because they're always painted as idiots that just put kids in boxes and and and never really relate well and and of course that's a stereotype and and i really think it's important to to knock down assumptions about kids and really work at building relationships and find strengths thank you again
025raymond you got the final word sure um so this is this is what i kind of heard i kind of heard race and culture being kind of major factors um from my brother board members i and so the author here is saying that race is a significant factor so that's where i'm i'm kind of dealing with that as well so you know as human beings we tend to look at the outer appearance people of color do we all do that and and if we're able to get past that and not develop stereotypes and get to know that individual their culture then i think that's what we can be better educators and so forth so i'm going to continue to struggle with this one and hopefully after our study sessions i can have a better answer
026thank you dr pitcher thank you martha you got a passage to share with us i do um my passage is on page 50. and it's the first paragraph in establishing common language around race says developing and using common language in conversation about race helps establish critical understanding around how racial issues impact schooling it is not to suggest that a single definition is available or even that one must be embraced the author says i do however believe it is important that i provide a clear understanding of the meaning i intend when i use racial terminology and i think it's important for all of us as we start into this process and for district staff as they start into this process to have a common understanding of terms we all have our own understanding of what it
027a term might mean to us but um what what my understanding of a term might be may be completely different than graciela's or norman's or norms or raymond's or dawns we all we may have five different understandings of terms but we can't come to a common agreement about things if we're working from five different perspectives so i think it's important to establish a common definition or common understanding of what we mean when we say so use certain terms thank you don uh i like i like the way martha put that is that we do need a common language when we talk about race because each individual may have a different understanding of what race means to them and once we get that out and get to know one another build that relationship then we can
028come and say okay this is the terminology terminology we want to use and it's the same thing with the teachers we got to have the same message for them as well as for ourselves and then once we get that terminology down then when you hear it enough and you repeat it enough then it can open you can stretch your tent open and then you can receive the information that you need and learn how to work with the various uh cultures within the school system and uh that's a that's a real good one um i like that one thank you uh graciela i think that passage makes a lot of sense i think you know races is a a difficult subject for a lot of people to talk about and if you don't have a common
029understanding common um agreement on you know terminology that you're using and and what it means i think that just can make that discussion even more difficult and it's kind of it's um having misunderstandings or kind of when you don't have those common definitions it's it's unnecessary noise in that discussion whereas you just clarify it up front you don't have to worry about that you know everyone's on the same page and you can just move forward in the conversation norm i pretty much agree with what's been said and i also think that it comes back to that concept of assumptions and avoid making assumptions about what people mean when they use a certain word and to be sure to clarify that so that we are talking the same language raymond uh yes so i agree with
030that we need to have a common language so we can be able to address those issues related to racism um you know within a latino community we tend to mix race and nationality and so you know that so that's i mean we got to have some common um terminology within the district and then out to the community as well right what's interesting is that latinos are people of uh latin american descent mexican hispanic whatever if you use the the current categorization of race then latinos would be white which a lot of people don't actually realize or claim right so it's just interesting that a person uh people who are white or discriminating or prejudice or racist against other people who are categorized as white so just a kind of ironic to me thank you and
031martha you have the final word i'm gonna try to talk between security alerts here um i don't know i don't know that i have anything to add i just i'm appreciative of the rest of the board recognizing that we do have a need to to reach a common understanding on on on terms and definitions of words and i expect that that's that that may also be the case um with staff it may be difficult to reach a common understanding amongst 2 000 people but um i think it's worth the conversation thank you okay don all right thank you uh you know i listening to norm raymond and martha they were they went deep into the book but something that still sticks with me is on page 37 where it talks about education for all students
032and it says to achieve this aim educators families and community leaders must embrace the motto that is included in the pledge as we ask our students to repeat each morning with liberty and justice for all if we truly want liberty and justice for everyone we all must work towards obtaining equity people of color must continue to draw individual and institutional attention to racial inequities and demand racial equity as recipients of range a racial advantage white people must embrace their responsibility to challenge the awarding and accepting of privilege and that goes with what we would what we've been talking about and uh for me that means that we have to come and look at each individual at each person as who they are as a human being and respect that and and receive that with how
033they are feeling and what they are thinking and grow from there and i think martha that's how we get to that that that word the words that we need what what we're gonna put out there how we're gonna bring this together and and how we as a board are willing to come outside of our comfort zones and to get uncomfortable me and raymond had a conversation today and we were talking about he shared with me his his ancestry history and i shared with him mine and we have so much similarities right and and it worked in in in hearing this conversation is opening my eyes to to to to norm to martha in to rafaela about where we are and how we can come together and wanting to do that that's you know that's where
034we are now we want to do this and we mean we want to do it and we're going to come up with those words and we're going to use you know that aggression in a positive way to reveal to the 2000 workers uh teachers and administrators that this is possible to achieve and and and we talked about the kids did it today when they did the pledge of allegiance and that's why i went back to this one and and i think if we look at it like that it'll work graciela you know when i um heard don read that um passage it kind it kind of makes me sad and frustrated because this country has all of the laws it needs right there's equity laws there i mean there's you know uh civil rights act
035of 1964 there's there's all of these things in place um already like we should not have to be fighting these things still and just you know this country continually doesn't do the right thing and it's you know then we need you know more laws to try and control you know the process because people just aren't doing the right thing or if they did we wouldn't be here talking about this because the laws are all there um just so it's just frustrating that it's you know all these years later and we're you know and you go backwards so much too you know and it's just it gets frustrating and it makes me sad thank you norm i don't i don't have a lot to add here i just i kind of just want to agree with
036with what's been said so far and that that it is it's i think i think graciela hit on that is it's no matter what we put in place it's a continuous effort and laws alone don't make it keep happening it's a continual self-examination and examination of our systems and continue working toward that ideal and we can see how quickly some of that can be stripped away if the wrong people get into positions of power and in a sense in a little local sense we're in a position of power and so i think it's important for us to use the power we do have to continue to work on these issues raymond yes what comes to mind for me is i think we just need to develop that thought that we all belong to the human
037race right and that's what i think the the that statement was referring to and even the declaration of independence that we were all created equal right and we have we have the right to what with an annual rights to pursue our happiness liberty right life liberty and pursuit of happiness so i think if we all can understand that and i think we can make some great strides however i do say you know i can compare when i grew up back in the in the 70s 80s racism was was was worse back then and i think we've made some tribes that we're not all the way there but we've made some great strides my my sons my nephews and nieces haven't had to endure what some of us have had to endure and i think we've
038gotten better we've made some progress but there's still a lot more to that martha um that was one of my passages as well i had several because i didn't want to duplicate anybody else's so i picked several as i went through the book um but when i read that i thought well that's why we're here that's why we volunteer our time as school directors to make sure that our community provides the best education possible for its students and norm norm's right we are local leaders we are the ones who can make can affect change at the local level we can also affect change at the state level and if we all work together with some of the rest of our colleagues we can affect change at the national level but um you have to start
039locally in order to to in order to accomplish anything and that's one of the reasons why i'm on the school board is to make sure that we have the strongest education system possible for the students in yakima and i think that's why we're all here that's why we tend to work so well together because we have common goals thank you don you got the final word if you can do it quick so we can get the last round through man you know you don't give a preacher to mike get the final word i know you should say hold on now don't dig into my time i agree with what what all my colleagues said and what graciela said is so riveting and so true in this present day and age and like i shared with
040raymond earlier today i'm more scared now than i was in the 60s but there is hope and when you look at it as human beings we all have the thing this is why we serve because we want to give our students a better chance at life and to achieve the the educational goals and that's where it starts with us first martha you right now you're right it starts with us as a board and and coming together and making sure that we have the policies and and everything in place that these kids and they found this can achieve greatness and that's what it's about and uh i thank you guys because y'all have me crying if y'all notice i was wiping my eyes because to hear that it made my heart glad and joy full of
041joy to know that we're on the same page although we come from different backgrounds but we on the same page we have the same goals for not only our district but for our students in our community thank you guys okay graciela what's your passage so i had a hard time picking one package at the very end of the chapter the auto racial autobiography part one um that whole autobiography was just really um meaningful to me and i identified with so many of the experiences that the writer wrote about um it's the the one that i'll talk about is is uh uh his his teacher his first white teacher uh mrs finnegan and you know she was moved to that school and um along with a bunch of other white teachers and all the other teachers
042left and she hung in there and um did the hard work even though it was really uncomfortable for her and you know the kids were maybe not super nice to her and you know she you know cried and you know but but she stuck in there and and learned and um became a a really good teacher and you know um thought it was neat when the author's mother you know refers to her as sister finnegan because she had made such an impact on their family and and the other students there and so you know kudos to mrs finnegan that's really hard work to do to just hang in there and and put the work in and learn and know that you have some limitations and that you know you want to do better and you
043want to you know do right by the students that was just really impactful to me thank you so i'm not going to do the round on that i'm just going to wrap this up so i can honor the time commitment but um i want to thank you all for what you shared i'm happy that this session was you talking and not me the thing that i would just add on to this is um we need you to keep this commitment to centering a conversation about race and we need you to have it as an expectation that we are having conversations about race because um when we need that cover as leaders in the system especially the superintendent who's saying this in expectation if we look through the chapter we see that there are examples of
044the achievement gap being a racial gap even within different um within the same level of economics we see racial disparities in the same inc income level and we use that term social economic it talks about that but we oftentimes when we say social economic we leave the socio out of our conversation and so we have to be willing to discuss race because that's the conversation that we most want to avoid even today on this indigenous people's day that the president wrote a proclamation saying that we should not be talking about the negative aspects of the columbus legacy and as school as a school systems and school teachers right when we leave out those stories and we leave out that perspective we're we're writing perspectives and narratives out of our curriculum and leaving voices of people
045who see things through a different lens out i started comparing trump's proclamation of columbus day to obama's proclamation of columbus day and i would encourage you to look at them and compare the way that they talk about they both declared a holiday for columbus but they talk about it very different ways and as school leaders we have to hold the line and say it's important that all of our students perspectives are represented that all of them are are valued and that we're having this and we have to be willing to look in a real way at how are we serving or not serving all of our students and that includes through through a lens of race and so um i thank you for the discussion that you've had today i hope that you'll keep this
046because we definitely will need that commitment from the top all the way down and you're at the top um and so uh thank you for this time and we will um skip over chapter four before our next session if you can be in chapter five that would be most um excellent because that's where where we want to be is the chapter five is that first condition thank you marcus um director navarro did you have any uh comments i know we left you out of the conversation i want to give you just a few seconds yeah i have a lot of comments but i'll condense and how uh how pleased i am with the example the modeling of our school board uh just pretty much what mark has shared about starting at the top and really
047setting the tone for leadership for the community and for the entire district so thank you to each of you as board members for engaging in this conversation thank you and thank you dr uh pickleton appreciate your facilitating this and it's a great conversation great start and we'll look i'm i'm sure i speak the after board that we're looking forward to our next next session with you guys so thank you so much you