Dancing on Desks

For our final episode, we’re joined by prison abolitionists Comrade BIM, from the Vaughn 17, and Fariha and Bee, organizers with DCIWOC, DC Incarcerated Workers Organizing Coalition. BIM is a member of the Vaughn 17, a group of 17 activists charged in the 2017 prison uprising inside the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center. They share about abolitionist ethics of care, showing up as co-conspirators, rupture in community, and moving in accountability. Laquesha Sanders closes our series with her final segment on mental health and student debt, sharing how she freed herself from six-figure debt. Canadian-Ugandan poet and culture worker, Elizabeth Mudenyo, author of the poetry chapbook With Both Hands, shares her poem “Nothing Owed”. We offer you these questions: What are lessons prison abolitionists teach us in school abolition? How do we move beyond allyship and sit in co-conspiracy? What does it mean to center accountability as liberatory praxis? What do we own when we’re called in or out? Send your thoughts to us at [email protected] or slide into our DMs on IG @dancingondesks.

Transcript (Finalized Friday, July 7, 2023)

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Learn more + be in solidarity with DCIWOC

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Black queer parents Kristianna and Rose share lessons and blessings from the frontlines of caregiving, discussing parenting as freedom work, unlearning unfreedom, letting their children teach them about liberation, and finding space to seek pleasure. Kweku Abimbola “fabrics the music” in his debut poetry collection Saltwater Demands a Psalm and shares about the beauty of grief. Laquesha Sanders returns to reflect on her mental health journey in part two of our three-part series of her very personal story about student debt. And, as always we leave you with questions. This episode asks: How do we allow children to remain free? What do our children teach us about freedom? How do we as adults heal from the harm we have experienced as children? Send us your thoughts to [email protected] or slide into our DMs on IG @dancingondesks.

Transcript (Finalized Friday, June 2, 2023)

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We’re giving away a copy of Lessons in Liberation: An Abolitionist Toolkit for Educators, which was compiled, edited, and dreamed of by folks in the Education for Liberation Network & Critical Resistance Editorial Collective. And Carla Shalaby, one of the editors and creators and storyteller from our fifth episode of this season, “We Keep Us Safe,” will sign it! Shout out to AK Press for donating a copy of the book. 

We’re also giving away gorgeous posters from Just Seeds, created by different artists for their People’s History collection!

Enter by Friday, March 31 at 11:59 pm ET!

-First Prize: A signed copy of Lessons in Liberation: An Abolitionist Toolkit for Educators and a poster from Just Seeds

-Second Prize: 3 posters from Just Seeds

-Third Prize: 2 posters from Just Seeds

-Fourth Prize: 1 poster from Just Seeds!

To enter:

Read our Retraction & Care Note regarding our removal of the Jenny Sazama reference in the original posting of this episode. LINK

In this episode, the second in our series on Undoing Settler Colonialism, we listen with love to Carla Shalaby, author of Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School, a book we discuss often on the podcast. Her current role is one that works with pre-service and inservice teachers in school to ground their work in liberatory teaching and learning. Then, we welcome our high school birders Natasha, Nelly, and Niya to share a favorite bird. Laquesha Sanders has schooled us in the history of student debt this season and now shares her personal story about how she has navigated a mental health journey informed by the weight of school debt. We leave you with our questions: How do the grown folks in the building refuse the internalization of school discipline and compliance-driven relationships in order to instead co-create a community through loving engagement and accountability? What could school community look, feel, and sound like when people are in deep relationship with themselves and each other? Dialogue with us! Send your notes to [email protected] or slide into our DMs on IG @dancingondesks. We look forward to hearing your stories!

Transcript (Finalized Friday, April 7, 2023)

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In this episode, a first in our series on Undoing Settler-Colonialism, we speak with Hi’ilani Shibata and Kiliona, educators at Ka Waihona o ka Na’auao in Nānākuli on the Leeward Coast of O’ahu, Hawai’i. They talk story about their practices of teaching with Indigenous pedagogies, teaching history through multiple perspectives, and learning through story in relationship with the land and each other. Laquesha Sanders shares Part 3 of our student debt series, this time on HBCUs. Capital City PCS’s now graduated seniors Natasha, Nelly, and Niya talk with each other about their birding experiences. And, of course, we’re asking: How are you disrupting settler colonial practices in yourself, in your classroom, in your schools?

Transcription (Finalized Friday, Mar. 3, 2023)

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Questions? Ideas? Responses? Send your notes to [email protected] or slide into our DMs on IG @dancingondesks.

Audre Lorde’s “The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” shapes our reflections on practicing refusal in community with our colleagues. We speak with Natalia Foreman and Pam Segura of the NYC-based Curriculum Kweens collective, who share stories of disobedience to systems of power and oppression, of loving accountability, and of the fullness felt when, in the words of “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” Audre Lorde, “we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling that sense of satisfaction and completion.” Tiffany Mason, a mother and elementary educator teaching in Brooklyn, shares her Saturday freedom dreams and the obstacles to getting there. We leave with the questions: How do we move beyond the mediocrity expected of us and become accountable to our erotic? What acts of disobedience do we engage in and commit to?

Transcription (Finalized Friday, Jan. 6, 2023)

Questions? Ideas? Responses? Wanna practice disability justice and help with transcription? Send your notes to [email protected] or slide into our DMs on IG @dancingondesks.

Intellectual Inheritance

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What can happen when we invite youth to imagine and create community and learning spaces in their own vision? This summer, Amara and Madison, our inaugural Beyond the Ban youth fellows created Annotation Archives, a Detroit-based pop-up book giveaway and community annotation project. They join monét and Erin to share about their reading lives, the ways they find affirmation in books, their dreams for liberated reading in schools, and their learnings from their summer of creating the Annotation Archives. Poet and Brooklyn high school student, Adedoyin, shares her poem, “This Side of Town,” reminding us that we have whatever we need. Then, LaQuesha Sanders is back with part two of our miniseries on student debt. We leave with the questions: What are we building? What possibility does youth imagination offer school abolition and liberatory teaching and learning?

Transcript (finalized 11/30/22) If you’re interested in helping us with transcription, please give us a shout at [email protected] or (313) 314-1678‬. We’d love to steward this with you.

Get in Touch with Us!

IG: @dancingondesks Email: [email protected] URL: https://dancingondesks.org

Intellectual Inheritance

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After a summer of walking with our dogs, listening to the leadership of youth, and saying yes to ourselves, we're back with Season 2 of Dancing on Desks! The season begins with a conversation with Detroit youth organizers Hafiza Khalique, Brittyn Benjamin-Kelley, and adult organizer Julia Cueno. We also chat with Brooklyn elementary school teacher Emily Stutts and three of her former students—Kaide, Greyson, and Kyndle—about their bike to school day. We close with LaQuesha Sanders, a lawyer and historian, who shares the origin story of student debt, why student loans are trash, and why the U.S. government has more than enough money to cancel all of the debt student owes. Our storytellers offer us an opportunity to think about the questions: How do youth and adults co-build spaces of accountability, listening, dreaming, and freedom in and outside of school? What allows relationships between adults and youth in schools to exist in what activist, freedom dreamer, and writer adrienne maree brown calls liberated relationship? 

Transcript (finalized 10/10/22) If you’re interested in helping us with transcription, please send us an email at [email protected] or call ‪(313) 314-1678‬. We’d love to steward this with you. 

Get in Touch with Us! 

IG: @dancingondesks | https://instagram.com/dancingondesks 

Email: [email protected] 

Website: https://dancingondesks.org 

Intellectual Inheritance 

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Season 2 of Dancing on Desks begins with a conversation with youth organizers in Detroit, the origin story of student debt, and stories of biking to school. Episode 1 drops Friday, September 30 at 1:00 p.m. ET. Find a desk to dance on with us then!

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“Funky Joint,” Royalty Free Music Produced by Danya Vodovoz

Original Theme Music by Mara Johnson, Elliott Wilkes, monét cooper

Episode Description

As educators and young folks reflect and engage in end-of-school rituals, we’re closing Season One of Dancing on Desks with our Love Letter to Education. We hear from storytellers, poets, students, and educators who joined us this season to check back and hear about their summer dreams. We have collective dreams of reading books, taking naps, swimming in lakes, oceans, and pools, gardening, swimming, hugging our families and friends, and resting. Erin and monét share their love letter to education, discussing the ways in which abolition is an invitation to living by a love ethic (shout out to bell hooks) and centering practices of care and accountability and R-E-S-T. High school teacher Jessica Rucker shares her abecedarian, “A Love Letter to Education and Unlearning” as she leaves the classroom to pursue her dreams. Poet and graduating high school senior Zoe Bredesen protects her peace in her poem “If the Roles Were Reversed”. Finally, we offer our questions: If we love education, what does this love sound like, feel like, look like, smell like? How might we live there? Send us your responses to [email protected] or slide in our DMs on IG @dancingondesks. Let’s get free, y’all!

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