Dancing on Desks

In this episode we talk with Alex Bailey, co-founder of San Antonio-based Black Outside, and Aven, a youth participant in Black Outside’s Bloom Project. They discuss how simply stepping outside and tasting the outdoors has been an exercise in courage, love, and intergenerational exchange. We also hear stories of learning with Abenaki elders Sherry Gould, Madeleine Wright, and Rob Wright of the Abenaki Trails Project in N’dakinna, what is now called New Hampshire. Poet Jennifer Huang leaves us with their poem “Departure,” which begins in the most exquisite way. Erin and monét reflect together about what the outside means to them as humans and educators, thinking about opportunities for coalition building, and drawing from their wells of memories in the Northeastern and Southern parts of the U.S. Finally, we offer you our lingering questions: How do we learn from the outside? How can educators take their cues from Black and Indigenous placemakers, elders, ancestors, and youth in undoing our consumptive relationship with the outside? Send us your responses to [email protected] or slide in our DMs on IG @dancingondesks. Let’s get free, y’all!

Intellectual Inheritance

Music

We invite you to our conversation with queer Chicanx educator Ale, who teaches English to 9th graders in LA. She shares about the pandemic as a portal to creativity, letting go of perfectionism, co-creating space with her LGBTQ+ students, and what it means to explore her queer identity from a place of joy and ease. We also reflect with J, a college senior on the cusp of graduation, about her exploration of selfhood and sexuality in school. Brooklyn high school teacher and poet Meghan Dunn shares a poem about girlhood and the body from Curriculum, her beautiful book of poems. Finally, we ask: What are the ties to heteronormativity that you must break in order to do your self-work? What do you have to relinquish as a return to loving yourself and to loving? How will you move into deeper connection with yourself?

Intellectual Inheritance

Music

In this episode we talk about what happens when grown folks get out of the way of young people organizing their own learning. In our conversation with Maria Cedillo, Jay Gillen, and Jon Gray of the Baltimore Algebra Project (BAP), we learn about ways youth in Baltimore have organized fugitive spaces of learning, organizing, and loving each other. BAP is a youth-led and organized space, meaning that while adults support the space, no one over the age of 25 is making decisions or organizing the work. Cesarina Santana Pierre, a DC-based elementary educator,  joins us again for Resource Room Part II with a story of how conversations about her students’ identities helped them to better know their community and themselves and Kabelo Sandile Motsoeneng shares a story of a queer South African boy’s coming of age. We invite you to think about the questions: What are you willing to risk in order for education to be the practice of freedom in your classroom? What must you unlearn in order to do this work? Send us your thoughts to: [email protected], dancingondesks.org, or on Instagram @dancingondesks.

Our guests would love to be in community with you! Deets are below.

INTELLECTUAL INHERITANCE

Texts

Music

In this episode we talk about self-care—how we do it, why we don’t—and the ways grief, caregiving, and rest are all forms of self-care. First, we speak with Massachusetts-based social worker Adya Lindo, whose primary work during COVID has become supporting school-age youth in their grieving journeys and educators who work with grieving students—even as they’re grieving loss themselves. We also speak with high school English educator Christa Calkins and her newborn Wilder in rural New York during a time of parental leave. She discusses how her journey as a new parent has made her re-examine her relationship with care, capitalism, and whiteness. Our first Resource Room of the new year is with Cesarina Pierre Santana, an elementary educator in Washington, DC, who talks about being in her 26th year of teaching and what she’s unlearning in order to listen to her students. The convo with Cesarina was so delicious we will share part two in March. We also hear from fifth grader Sabreena, who comes to us from Singapore to share an essay she wrote about her faith, Islam. In this new year of learning, what are you refusing and unlearning? What commitments are you making to your self-care? Send us your responses at [email protected], on instagram @dancingondesks, or at dancingondesks.org!

Intellectual Inheritance

Music

“Backseat” @remdolla

“Believer” Silent Partner

“Hot Coffee” Ghostrifter

“J Dilla Type Beat” Lute

"Like Dat" Ackah Dan

“Regimented Instinct” @TeknoAXE

“Green Tea” and “Slowly” Smith The Mister https://smiththemister.bandcamp.com

“Watercolors” John Deley & the Players

Original Theme Music by Mara Johnson and Elliott Wilkes

After a month of rest, we’ll be back with Episode 5 next Friday, February 4! We'll be speaking with educators about how they care for themselves and their communities in a time where educational institutions are doing just the opposite. We’ll also hear about how making space for grief is a form of self-care. We have a full semester of conversations with educators, organizers, and students ahead! Catch you next week! monét & Erin

Music

We're signing off to freedom dream, rest, take walks, play spades, ice skate, spend time with beloveds, read, make art, and nap. We'll be back with episode 5 on Friday, February 4, 2022! Until then, wishing you rest and refusal. With love, monét & Erin.

Intellectual Inheritance

Music

Chill Jazzy Lofi Hip Hop, Chill Out Records, [email protected]

Original Music by Mara Johnson, Elliott Wilkes, monét cooper

In this final episode of our three-part series on the carceral curriculum, we engage educators with what manifesting freedom dreaming might look like in classrooms and curriculum. Our guests this episode are Ebony and Zani, two early childhood educators who are spending this year designing a small Montessori preschool in Washington, D.C. by engaging community members, families, and students as they create their curriculum. They insist that abolitionist and liberatory education must be done in community and with accountability to our students, their families, and their communities. In our Resource Room, elementary administrator Leensa Fufa returns to the classroom and shares how she uses self-portraits to facilitate conversation around identity with young learners. Michigan poet Carlina Duan shares her poem “Alien Miss Confronts Her Past,” from her newest book of poetry Alien Miss (University of Wisconsin Press). And monét and Erin sign off for a long winter’s nap of freedom dreaming and rest. We’ll be back February 5, 2022, with our next episode. Take care of yourselves. We love y’all.

Intellectual Inheritance

Other Books We Like for Conversations about Identity and Self-Portraits

Early Childhood and Elementary

Middle/High School

All

Music

Original music by Mara Johnson, monét cooper, and Elliott Wilkes

During our three-part series on the carceral curriculum in our schools, we ask, “How do we abolish carcerality in our schools (and beyond)?” In this second episode, we ask Dr. Rahsaan Mahadeo: “How are schools designed for carcerality?” Rahsaan challenges us to consider how schools become places of racialized disablement for Black and Brown students through curriculum and discipline policies. Mahadeo implores us to consider how educators can refuse to consent to participate in school-based carcerality and to understand our complicity in upholding carcerality in our schools. Special education expert, LeShone Jai, adds complexity to our discussion of IEPs. In “What I Don’t Get Paid For,” Kishanna Laurie gets us to delete the email app from our phones and #ReclaimOurTime. Poet Kweku John moves us with a poem about dance inspired by Adinkra symbols. Thank you for listening. Love, us.

Intellectual Inheritance:

Thank you to Rahsaan Mahadeo for recommending many of these texts in our conversation with him. And the ones he did not recommend were inspired by his words.

Music:

Original theme music by Mara Johnson, Elliott Wilkes, and monét cooper

This episode is about knowing. We introduce ourselves, the podcast, and how we define teaching and learning for justice, liberation, and abolition through conversations with two teachers from our own schooling experiences: Ms. Brenda Fleming and Michelle Cotnoir. In this episode's Resource Room, we hear from Chase-Mitchell about a book that keeps her grounded in her teaching practice and Zoe, a high school student from Virginia, shares a poem about language, identity, and the power to become. Who are your podcast hosts? (monét and Erin) Why this podcast, why now, and why should we join together on this journey toward liberation in our schools? Well, you'll just have to listen. Thank you for coming with us.

This Episode's Intellectual Inheritance

During our three-part series on the carceral curriculum in our schools, we’ll be asking, “How do we abolish carcerality in our schools (and beyond)?” In this first episode, we learn about curriculum violence, a manifestation of carcerality, through a conversation with Dr. Stephanie Jones, Assistant Professor of Education at Grinnell College. Dr. Jones defines curriculum violence as “planned activities, planned assessments within the classroom space that are particularly harmful to Black and Brown students and their knowledges,” whether it is intended to be or not. We also discuss how educators enact racial trauma via the carceral curriculum in their classrooms and ways we can be accountable to ending curriculum violence in our schools. In our Resource Room, Kishanna Laurie shares about her Reiki practice of self-care. Erin’s former student, Lissa, shares her poem, “Where I’m From,” celebrating the many parts of her identity. And throughout, Erin and monét invite you to sit with the violence we have enacted as educators and how we can repair and transform our classroom communities through our practices. Thank you for walking with us.

This Episode's Intellectual Inheritance:

News Clips