Listen in and learn as Dr. Charles Barrett breaks down how addressing systemic racism and implicit bias in our schools can positively inform how educators and school communities better teach and serve students and families from a social justice lens.  While Dr. Barrett shares his experience from a school psychologist's perspective, these practices are easily translated to various societal systems that continue to overlook the value of understanding the whole person.  

Full transcription and references available here

Dr.  Barrett: There's some research that I recently stumbled upon maybe this summer. It's a Pediatrician in California at Stanford, Dr. Rhea Boyd looks at almost exclusively the intersection of police violence, equity and child health outcomes through a lens of pediatrics and it's fascinating that the different types of exposure to police violence, be it being racially profiled as an individual, exposure to it in the media or in your community, or even watching vicariously through family members or caregivers, being exposed to it has, you know, significant effects on child functioning. So it could be PTSD symptoms, anxieties, poor school performance, attentional impairment, so I think, again, that broader framing of systems that ultimately impact how students perform.

Noelle: And it makes sense, right? Like, when we think about it, you know, you need to have these equitable opportunities to be able to perform right? To be able to gain the skills  and eventually function within these systems. And when I think of our schools, and like you said, you know, that sort of ecological systems approach, I think, particularly in education, when students come in, we expect them to just adapt to our system that we've created. And, you know, we've talked in previous episodes, and you touched on sort of the systemic racism and how societal factors have played into how just even education has played out in our country. 

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When equitable outcomes aren't a priority there can never be access and opportunity for all.

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Dr. Barrett: So I like to see equity work that involves the broad spectrum of human diversity, whatever that is-race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, all of those perspectives are valuable and need to be included to inform, you know, what socially just practices need to happen in the school system. Racism is often you know, the big one that we talked about, but there are other types of modularization. So I think having perspectives of people who can speak that is going to be really important. But the common barriers, I think, is that sometimes we think that system change is a grand kind of big deal, and it is, but it oftentimes doesn't start that way. It starts kind of small and it bubbles up to a larger thing. So start in areas that you know you can influence by, again, building coalitions.

Join us for season one as we explore bias, systemic racism, the roots of oppression and barriers found within education and the criminal "justice" system.

The Unpacked Project is produced by Vicky Lee with Branding and Marketing by Raquel Avalos.

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