The Integrated Schools Podcast

Listeners regularly reach out with questions – things that they are seeing in their own neighborhoods, things that we haven’t addressed, but should, etc. For the final episode of 2021, we thought we’d answer as many as we could. Thank you to everyone who sent in questions. If we didn’t get to your question, or if there is something else on your mind, let us know so we can include it in a future “mailbag” episode – [email protected].

As we enter the holiday season and folks are thinking about year-end giving, we’d like to ask for your support of this work. If this podcast brought value to your life, made you think in a new way, helped you have conversations in a different way, or just brought you some joy, we’d be grateful for your support. You can join our Patreon – Patreon.com/integratedschools. Thank you for your support and we look forward to more great conversations in 2022. LINKS:

• Teaching Hard History Podcast
• Learning For Justice
• White Awake’s – Before We Were White course

Let us know what you think of this episode, suggest future topics, or share your story with us. @integratedschls on twitter, IntegratedSchools on Facebook, or email us [email protected].

We are a proud member of The Connectd Podcast Network.

The Integrated Schools Podcast was created by Courtney Mykytyn and Andrew Lefkowits.

This episode was produced by Andrew Lefkowits and Val Brown. It was edited, and mixed by Andrew Lefkowits.

Music by Kevin Casey.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Back in April of 2020 we had a conversation with two teachers, Kara in the Minneapolis area, and Zoe in Philadelphia. They shared their struggles with shifting to remote school, trying to reach their students to provide devices, hot spots, and food, and the challenge of supporting the students with the greatest needs through the early days of the COVID crisis.

Today, it’s easy for parents to feel like things are almost back to normal in schools. However, in many ways, teachers are feeling the cost of the crisis more acutely now than at any point in the past two years. From staffing shortages to second hand trauma, teachers are under increasing stress and pressure to the point that many are considering leaving the profession.

We revisit some of the conversation from back in April, and then talk about the current realities and what parents and caregivers might do to support public education in these trying times.

LINKS:

• The original episode with Kara and Zoe
• National Education Association survey of teachers
• Guest Column in the Atlanta Journal Constitution about the crisis in teaching
• Gadfly On The Wall blog post about Vicarious Trauma

Special thanks to Erin Pier for helping open Andrew’s eyes to the crisis in teaching.

Join our Patreon to support this work, and connect with us and other listeners to discuss these issues even further.

Let us know what you think of this episode, suggest future topics, or share your story with us – @integratedschls on twitter, IntegratedSchools on Facebook, or email us [email protected].

We are a proud member of The Connectd Podcast Network.

The Integrated Schools Podcast was created by Courtney Mykytyn and Andrew Lefkowits.

This episode was produced by Andrew Lefkowits and Val Brown. It was edited, and mixed by Andrew Lefkowits.

Music by Kevin Casey.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Dr. Sarah-Soonling Blackburn is an educator, speaker, and professional development specialist. Growing up in a mixed race, Asian and White family, and spending most of her childhood in various countries in Asia, ideas of belonging have always had salience for her. From the classroom to Learning for Justice, her work has focused on the things that help students feel seen and included. She joins us to discuss the myth of the Model Minority and helps contextualize the role of Asian American identities in our collective understanding and education about race and America.

With a bit of a history lesson, Dr. Blackburn gives us a greater understanding of how this myth is not only harmful to Asian Americans, but to all people of color, and how it is directly tied to anti-Black racism in our country. She also offers deep reflection about what solidarity building can really mean and what we all have to offer in the fight to dismantle White supremacy culture.

LINKS:

• Time cover – “Those Asian-American Whiz Kids“
• Learning for Justice
• Paula Yoo – From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial that Galvanized the Asian American Movement
• Cathy Park Hong – Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning
• Erika Lee – The Making of Asian American
• Elizabeth McRea – Mothers of Massive Resistance
• Dr. McRea on our podcast – White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy
• Jeff Chan – We Gon’ Be Alright
• Other resources that have shaped our learning:
• The Asian American Justice and Innovation Lab
• See Us Unite 
• The PBS Series – Asian Americans
• Code Switch Post – The Model Minority Myth 
• Angry Asian Man 
• Bianca Mabute-Louie
• Dr. Connie Wun

Use these links or start at our Bookshop.org storefront to support local bookstores, and send a portion of the proceeds back to us.

Register for our upcoming bookclub in early December. We’re reading Mia Birdsong’s How We Show Up.

Join our Patreon to support this work, and connect with us and other listeners to discuss these issues even further.

Let us know what you think of this episode, suggest future topics, or share your story with us – @integratedschls on twitter, IntegratedSchools on Facebook, or email us [email protected].

We are a proud member of The Connectd Podcast Network.

The Integrated Schools Podcast was created by Courtney Mykytyn and Andrew Lefkowits.

This episode was produced by Andrew Lefkowits and Val Brown. It was edited, and mixed by Andrew Lefkowits.

Music by Kevin Casey.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

If you think about a “segregated school”, what image comes to mind? Quite often, the cultural narrative says that that is a school with almost exclusively students of color. What about a school with 98% White students? Is that a “segregated school”? While we don’t often think of it that way, it is clearly segregated. Tomás Monarrez is an economist by training. As he was studying the question of school and housing segregation at the Urban Institute, he was struck by the ways that the field of economics falls into the same traps that we fall into as a culture – segregation means concentrations of Black, Brown and Indigenous students. This seemed wrong to Tomás, and he and his colleagues set out to define segregation, using the tools of economics. Their definition takes the district average demographics and holds that as the baseline to which other schools should be compared. In this framing, in a district with 70% students of color, a school with 90% students of color is segregating, but so is a school with 50% students of color. What he quickly found was that the schools that often contribute the most to segregation within a district are not the schools we often focus on – are not the schools with 95% students of color, but rather, the schools with 75%, 85%, even 90% White students. His hope is that this shift in framing can focus the efforts of local policy makers who care about decreasing segregation.

He joins to talk about his work, why he does it, and what sort of social good he hopes his economics focus can achieve.

LINKS:

• Segregation Contribution Index
• Dividing Lines: How School Districts Draw Attendance Boundaries to Perpetuate School Segregation
• A Vox explainer highlighting the work of Tomàs Monarrez and the Urban Institute on school boundaries
• Home Owners Loan Corporation – 1930s entity that drew redlining maps
• Look up redlining maps for your city
• Michelle Adams on our podcast – traces the history of desegregation law in this country
• The Parents Involved Case
• Harry Belafonte on King saying “I fear we are integrating into a burning house”
• Dr. Elizabeth McRae on our podcast – White Woman and the Politics of White Supremacy
• Dr. McRae’s Mother’s of Massive Resistance
• Richard Rothstein Color of Law
• SFUSD’s new student assignment policy
• Tree Equity

Use these links or start at our Bookshop.org storefront to support local bookstores, and send a portion of the proceeds back to us.

Join our Patreon to support this work, and connect with us and other listeners to discuss these issues even further.

Let us know what you think of this episode, suggest future topics, or share your story with us – @integratedschls on twitter, IntegratedSchools on Facebook, or email us [email protected].

We are a proud member of The Connectd Podcast Network.

The Integrated Schools Podcast was created by Courtney Mykytyn and Andrew Lefkowits.

This episode was produced by Andrew Lefkowits and Val Brown. It was edited, and mixed by Andrew Lefkowits.

Music by Kevin Casey.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In 1954, Louis Redding, Delaware’s first Black attorney, joined the legal team at the NAACP to argue the Brown v Board case. Having agued two of the lower court cases that were incorporated into the Brown case, he was a key member of the team, along with Thurgood Marshall, who won perhaps the mostly widely known and celebrated court case ever. Sixty years later, his grandson, Stefan Lallinger, found himself teaching at school in New Orleans with over 90% students of color. This segregation wasn’t caused by explicit, legal requirements for segregated schools, and yet it still happened. Lallinger’s curiosity led him to get a doctorate and eventually to leading The Bridges Collaborative, a hub for school and housing practitioners to work together to advance the cause of integration.

Lallinger joins us to discuss his family legacy, how it shapes his current work, and what legacy he hopes to leave for his kids.

LINKS:

• Lallinger on the importance of the Bridges Collaborative work
• Martin Luther King, Jr on the difference between desegregation and integration
• A Vox explainer highlighting the work of Tomàs Monarrez and the Urban Institute on school boundaries
• The Bridges Collaborative
• IntegrateNYC, the 5 Rs of Real Integration
• The National Coalition of School Diversity
• Maya Angelou Still I Rise
• Langston Hughes Mother to Son
• Dr. Vanessa Siddle Walker – The Lost Education of Horace Tate
• Dr. Siddle Walker on our podcast
• MLK – Where Do We Go From Here
• MLK – A Testament of Hope
• W.E.B. DuBois on the fear of integrating Black students into hostile spaces

Use these links or start at our Bookshop.org storefront to support local bookstores, and send a portion of the proceeds back to us.

Join our Patreon to support this work, and connect with us and other listeners to discuss these issues even further.

Let us know what you think of this episode, suggest future topics, or share your story with us – @integratedschls on twitter, IntegratedSchools on Facebook, or email us [email protected].

We’re thrilled to be joining Connectd Podcasts, a network dedicated to helping shows like ours grow and thrive. For more info, or to check out their other amazing shows, head over to their website.

The Integrated Schools Podcast was created by Courtney Mykytyn and Andrew Lefkowits.

This episode was produced by Andrew Lefkowits and Val Brown. It was edited, and mixed by Andrew Lefkowits.

Music by Kevin Casey.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The very first episode of the Integrated Schools Podcast featured a conversation between our late founder, Courtney Mykytyn, and two mothers who were early in their journeys toward anti-racist school integration. Since then, Anna and Sarah have continued to be influential members of the Integrated Schools community, and both found themselves moving over the past 18 months. While both of their families had moved in the past, this was the first time they engaged in that process with a deep commitment to anti-racist school integration.

They share their process, and the challenges they faced, as they grappled with what it means to be White, and what it means to have racial and economic privilege in a world where they want to show up better and create a more just place.

LINKS:

• Maggie Hagerman –White Kids: Growing Up with Privilege in a Racially Divided America 
• Richard Rothstein – Color of Law
• The Intro to the Integrated Schools Podcast

Use these links or start at our Bookshop.org storefront to support local bookstores, and send a portion of the proceeds back to us.

Join our Patreon to support this work, and connect with us and other listeners to discuss these issues even further.

Let us know what you think of this episode, suggest future topics, or share your story with us – @integratedschls on twitter, IntegratedSchools on Facebook, or email us [email protected].

The Integrated Schools Podcast was created by Courtney Mykytyn and Andrew Lefkowits.

This episode was produced by Andrew Lefkowits and Val Brown. It was edited, and mixed by Andrew Lefkowits.

Music by Kevin Casey.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In 2016, Val Brown recognized a silence in the education community regarding issues of race, and a gap in learning opportunities for educators. In response she founded #ClearTheAir, a platform for educators to learn about the intersections of history, racism, and education.

In 2019, she reached out to Integrated Schools to see if we might walk this road towards anti-racist school integration together. However, she had a question – as a Black mom, she asked, “do I belong at Integrated Schools? Is there a place for me?”

This is a question we have been wrestling with internally for some time. Leadership team member, Ali Takata recently published a blog post highlighting the gap she has felt in our ability to address a multiracial audience and announcing our intentions to grow from a primarily White organization into a truly multiracial organization.

While we know that this process needs to be slow and deliberate, we are also deeply committed to seeing it through. With that in mind, and given that the podcast has been lacking a regular co-host, we felt it was time to bring someone new on board, and we are so grateful that Val agreed. She will be with us at least though May of 2022 to co-host, lend her insights, and help model what a truly multiracial coalition could be.

In this first episode, we get to know her backstory, why she cares, and what we hope this season will achieve.

LINKS:

• Val Brown on Twitter
• Ali’s Blog Post
• White Lips to White Ears by IS Advisory Board Member, Matt Gonzales
• #ClearTheAir
• Dr. Mica Pollock

Join our Patreon to support this work, and connect with us and other listeners to discuss these issues even further.

Let us know what you think of this episode, suggest future topics, or share your story with us – @integratedschls on twitter, IntegratedSchools on Facebook, or email us [email protected].

The Integrated Schools Podcast was created by Courtney Mykytyn and Andrew Lefkowits.

This episode was produced by Andrew Lefkowits and Val Brown. It was edited, and mixed by Andrew Lefkowits.

Music by Kevin Casey.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

From the time Courtney Martin strapped her daughter, Maya, to her chest for walks around her neighborhood, she was curious about Emerson Elementary, a public school down the street from her Oakland home. She learned that White families in their gentrifying neighborhood largely avoided the majority-Black, poorly-rated school. As she began asking why, a journey of a thousand moral miles began.

Courtney journey led her to Integrated Schools and our founder, Courtney Everts Mykytyn, who told her: “people like you do things like this.” Integrated Schools, and a friendship between the two Courtneys, became a support system as Martin decided to enroll her daughter at Emerson – and discovered that her public school, the foundation of our fragile democracy, is a powerful place to dig deeper – to go beyond hashtags and yard signs to be a part of transforming herself, her community, and ultimately, the country.

She chronicled this choice and then the complexities of living into it in her new book, Learning in Public. More than a memoir, Learning in Public is an exercise in doing the best you can, owning your mistakes, and committing to knowing better and doing better.

She joins us to talk about the book along with one of the key characters from the book, Mrs. Minor. After teaching Courtney’s daughter, Mrs. Minor left the public school system to start her own private preschool, The Learning Forest. Courtney and Amha (as Mrs. Minor’s new students call her) developed a friendship over the course of monthly conversations about integration, public education, race and more. Ahma brings a critical eye and nuanced perspective to the topic of integration, and pushes us to constantly reconsider if we are doing the right thing.

To support The Learning Forest, you can sponsor a family through GoFundMe, or donate directly CashApp $TheLearningForest.

LINKS:

• The Learning Forest Preschool
• Courtney’s new book – Learning In Public 
• On Being Column by Courtney
• Mansa Musa
• Courtney’s last appearance on the podcast

Use these links or start at our Bookshop.org storefront to support local bookstores, and send a portion of the proceeds back to us.

Join our Patreon to support this work, and connect with us and other listeners to discuss these issues even further.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

One hundred and twenty five years ago this week, The Supreme Court announced its decision in the case of Plessy v Ferguson. The case infamously declared that separate but equal was constitutional. The setting for the case was a train car, but the ramifications on society were profound. And while the Brown v Board decision 63 years later did away with some of those ramifications, in many ways, Plessy remains with us today.

Coming in the wake of the civil war, the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments make up what are known as the Reconstruction Amendments, the Amendments intended to guarantee the freedom of formerly enslaved people. In many ways, the promise of these Amendments remains unfulfilled. In their immediate aftermath, many state legislatures took steps to undermine them, often upheld by federal courts. The Plessy case came in response to just such a law.

In 1890 Louisiana State Legislature passed the Separate Car Act requiring equal, but separate train cars for White and Black passengers. Two years later, Homer Plessy agreed to participate in a challenge to the law, by boarding a train and refusing to ride in the Black car. He was arrested and challenged his case all the way to The Supreme Court.

This decision, regularly making top 10 lists of worst Supreme Court decisions of all time, enshrined segregation in law, allowing for Jim Crow, Black codes, and undoing much of the gains made for Black people during the short-lived years of Reconstruction.

However, the decision wasn’t unanimous, there was one lone dissenting opinion by Justice John Marshall Harlan. Justice Harlan earned the nickname, The Great Dissenter, for a number of dissenting opinions in favor of civil rights during his tenure on the Court at the end of the 19th century. And his dissent in the Plessy case served as a statement of what our values as a country could and should be. It was also a prescient warning of where the social caste system, enshrined by the majority opinion, would lead us.

Paula Forbes has been at the intersection of law and education for many years. As the first in-house counsel for the Minneapolis Public School district, she saw the ways that the caste system enshrined by the Plessy decision, and never fully repaired, continues to act as a barrier to educational justice.

She joins us to discuss the importance of reckoning with and repairing our past in order to create the future we desire.

LINKS:

• Paula Forbes website
• The Chaordic Path
• Plessy v Ferguson
• NYTimes Guest Essay on Justice Harlan by Peter Canellos
• Pre-order Mr. Canellos’s forthcoming book The Great Dissenter
• The Reconstruction Amendments
• Justice John Marshall Harlan
• Malvina Harlan (Justice Harlan’s Wife)
• A story about Justice Harlan and his half-brother

Register for the Integrated Schools Book Club in July. We’ll be reading Heather McGhee’s The Sum of Us

Use these links or start at our Bookshop.org storefront to support local bookstores, and send a portion of the proceeds back to us.

Join our Patreon to support this work, and connect with us and other listeners to discuss these issues even further.

Let us know what you think of this episode, suggest future topics, or share your story with us – @integratedschls on twitter, IntegratedSchools on Facebook, or email us [email protected].

We are a proud member of The Connectd Podcast Network.

The Integrated Schools Podcast was created by Courtney Mykytyn and Andrew Lefkowits.

This episode was produced by Andrew Lefkowits and Val Brown. It was edited, and mixed by Andrew Lefkowits.

Music by Kevin Casey.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In the fifth episode in our Brown v. Board at 67: The Stories We Tell Ourselves series, we step away from scholarship to take a moment to listen. I Hope They Hear it in Our Voices is a conversation with two Black parents who live in different parts of the U.S. and who have had very different — yet very similar — school experiences. Greg and Carol tell us a lot about how far we have come since Brown v. Board, about how much work we still have to do, and the very real costs of “access to resources”. With deep gratitude for their willingness to share their stories, we listen.

Email your appreciation to Greg and Carol at [email protected], suggest future topics, or share your story with us – @integratedschls on twitter, or IntegratedSchools on Facebook.

Join our Patreon to support this work, and connect with us and other listeners to discuss these issues even further.

Let us know what you think of this episode, suggest future topics, or share your story with us – @integratedschls on twitter, IntegratedSchools on Facebook, or email us [email protected].

The Integrated Schools Podcast was created by Courtney Mykytyn and Andrew Lefkowits.

This episode was produced by Andrew Lefkowits and Courtney Mykytyn. It was edited, and mixed by Andrew Lefkowits.

Music by Kevin Casey.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy