High Tech High Unboxed

La Junta Collective in South Central LA is Rebecca Rodriguez, German Gallardo, Carlitos Cortez, and Pedro Gomez, four educators who are starting a school that will be a place for an entire community to heal from trauma together.

Rebecca and German came to High Tech High and talked to Alec about what they're doing, why they're doing it, and what's standing in their way.

Table of Contents

1:25 Growing up in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward, and childhood trauma

2:16 College and Hurricane Katrina

2:55 Starting again in North Texas

3:30 Working at Wal Mart

4:07 Returning to college to finish her undergraduate degree

4:33 Brandy starts teaching math

5:22 Brandy becomes an English teacher

5:35 Brandy returns to New Orleans start an “Earn to Learn” program run by Tulane

5:45 Why Brandy decided she had to start a new school: her son

9:30 How Brandy’s son’s experience changed how she looked at other students and

11:20 Brandy joins the 4.0 Schools Essentials program and starts planning her new

11:40 The difference between “customer” and “user” for a school

12:30 Brandy’s first iteration: a school for twice-exceptional learners ONLY

14:10 Brandy’s vision for spread and scale of Generation Success Academy

14:45 Where Generation Success Academy is at in their development process now

15:40 How you pilot a school without actually opening a school

16:15 Which students the Generation Success Academy will serve

17:00 How they’re making this financially sustainable

18:00 Why and how to build a strong network

You can read more about San Antonio Preparatory Charter School here

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Table of Contents:

Who Joe Truss is & why we're talking to him (0:37)

White Supremacy Culture, defined (1:02)

White Fragility, defined (1:44)

Growing up in the Tenderloin (2:24)

Why Joe was academically successful when most of his friends weren't (3:57)

Tracked classes and White Supremacy Culture (5:52)

How writing is taught and White Supremacy Culture (6:29)

Reading: For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education by Chris Emdin, and We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom by Bettina Love (8:16)

Joe's initial approach to teaching: "social justice wrapped in white supremacy culture" (9:41)

Joe's journey to transform his school's practice begins (14:00)

Reading: Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain by Zaretta Hammond (14:31)0

The year of tackling White Supremacy Culture begins with "Brave Norms" (14:54)

Joe describes the staff's first day back from summer break (15:28)

Reading: “Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces: A New Way to Frame Dialogue Around Diversity and Social Justice” by Brian Arao and Kristi Clemens, from "The Art of Effective Facilitation: Reflections from Social Justice Educators" (16:02)

How Joe would prompt first-day discussion differently if he did it today (21:52)

Joe's mentors and how he found them (27:19)

Reading: Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun (29:59)

Joe introduces "White Supremacy Culture" and "White Fragility" to the staff in December (32:36)

Getting into the risks to Joe's own position of tackling this (37:16)

What happened next: January (47:35)

Connecting White Supremacy Culture to School Discipline (49:42)

What Joe's doing with his staff this year to build on last year (52:01)

Joe's long term goals for the school (55:30)

More about Joe Truss

Check out Joe’s website, and follow him on Twitter here: @TrussLeadership.

Joe is leading a full day workshop on Dismantling White Supremacy Culture coming up on Saturday, November 2nd. Details can be found on the site.

And one final shout-out...

The English headteacher who told me the line about “what happens on a wet Wednesday afternoon” is Andy Raymer, now-retired headteacher at Matthew Moss high school in Rochdale.

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The Hechinger Report article about FAFSA completion is here

You can learn more about the CARPE College Access Network (and apply to join) here

Episode image: photo of Calexico High School by Susan Myrland (Flickr)

This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

You can read Stacey Caillier's interview with Ron Berger here

Shelby's project was inspired by the Library of Congress's Voices Remembering Slavery collection. HBO produced a film based on interviews from this collection, called Unchained Memories.

The piece that Madeleine Tsoi wrote for the project, "The Escape", is here.

The "Push-pull protocol" that Shelby used for writing conferences is here.

Our theme music is "Agassi (Into the Spider's Web)" by Brother Hershel

This episode's other music comes from Truxtun Road, which, it's worth mentioning, was made by students and staff members at High Tech High Media Arts.

Alec talks to math teacher Mele Sato about how she appealed to students' sense of fairness in order to teach them about alternative voting methods.

You can find out all about the electioneering project here.

Alec talks to Mele Sato about bringing Gerrymandering home for students, using local maps.

You can find out all about the electioneering project here.