The Integrated Schools Podcast

As Season 11 comes to a close, we wanted to spend some time reflecting on the lessons we've learned from this season and what we hope for in Season 12. We'll be off for the summer with a few possible bonus episodes, and back for real in the fall. In the mean time, we want to express our deepest appreciation for a number of people who make this podcast run. 

Firstly, to all of our guests, thank you for joining us, for sharing your stories and your wisdom with us. Being in conversation with each of you is a true gift that we do not take likely. 

To the podcast team - Darci, Jennifer, Jenna, Anna, Susan, Courtney - thank you for your work on transcripts and promotional material, but more importantly for your thought partnership on each episode and the entire season. The conversations you share, the insights you bring are what keeps the podcast relevant and topical and helps us dive into nuanced topics knowing you're listening and thinking about these things along side of us. 

To our Patreon supporters and Integrated Schools donors, your belief in this work and your willingness to support it with your financial resources isn't something we take for granted. Your belief in us keeps us invested in the work and motivates us to always make the best episodes we can. 

And finally, to all of you, our listeners, it is truly and honor to be in this with each and every one of you as we try to know better and do better. 

Until next season!

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Finding a school where your children can thrive, while avoiding contributing to the ongoing segregation we see today, can feel like a tough issue for socially conscious parents.

Check out our FREE guide on how you can start engaging with the education system to achieve just that: Click here to download the guide now!

________________

Visit 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 – 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

“Having my children in public school was something that I wanted to do with people in my community. It was a commitment that we were making together. And then when I saw folks leaving, it felt like a betrayal.” – Stephanie Forman.

Where we send our kids to school is, for many, a complicated decision. We struggle to weigh multiple factors- curriculum and teachers, diversity of the student body, the commute and hours, not to mention what role we want to play in supporting the institutions where our kids spend 8 hours a day. 

Drs. Stephanie Forman and Lisa Sibbett are educational researchers in the Pacific Northwest and both decided to send their kids to public schools after weighing many factors. However, they saw many of their colleagues, who were also working to support education, and also expressed a belief in the importance of public schools, opting out, and instead sending their kids to private schools. 

Rather than write these people off, they decided to use their educational research skills to better understand the choice these families were making, what the impact was for them, and their families, and what tools might be best suited to reconnect those families to public schools, whether by bringing their kids back, or, at a minimum, advocating on behalf of public education.

They join us to share what they learned, and help us keep an open mind as we think about the choices people make for schooling. 

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Finding a school where your children can thrive, while avoiding contributing to the ongoing segregation we see today, can feel like a tough issue for socially conscious parents.

Check out our FREE guide on how you can start engaging with the education system to achieve just that: Click here to download the guide now!

________________

LINKS:

• Robin DiAngelo's Rules of Engagement for White Fragility
• Lisa's Substack - The Auntie Bulletin 
• S11E16 - Advocating for Black Educator Wellness with Asia Lyons

 

Visit 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 – 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

“I hope that you know that I believe you, the community of listeners believes you, and that's good enough.” Dr. Asia Lyons

 

Dr. Asia Lyons is the host of 'The Exit Interview: A Podcast for Black Educators' where she practices archival justice by sharing the stories of Black educators who have left the classroom. Her own journey to education and then out of the classroom led her work both on the podcast, and in creating intentional spaces of healing for Black educators. Dr. Lyons's work focuses on the less sexy, but often more important work of retaining Black educators. Recruitment is a crucial starting point, but if we can't create spaces of wellness for Black educators, retention will always be a challenge. Dr. Lyons encourages all of us to speak up on behalf of Black educators, to create spaces of healing, and to advocate for justice at least as loudly as the voices who aren't. 

________________

Finding a school where your children can thrive, while avoiding contributing to the ongoing segregation we see today, can feel like a tough issue for socially conscious parents.

Check out our FREE guide on how you can start engaging with the education system to achieve just that: Click here to download the guide now!

________________

LINKS:

• The Exit Interview: A Podcast for Black Educators
• William A Smith - who coined the term Racial Battle Fatigue
• Taking Care and Moving Forward with Dr. LaShaune Stitt
• Boundaries, Burnout and Black educator Wellness with Josephine Ampaw-Greene
• S11E14 – What Was Lost: Noliwe Rooks on the Failures of Integration
• S10E15 – Rebuilding The Black Educator Pipeline with Sharif El-Mekki
• S10E14 – Jim Crow’s Pink Slip with Dr. Leslie Fenwick
• S11E8 – Gratitude and Validation: One Family’s Journey Through Integrated Schools
• S11E15 – Unearthing Joy: Gholdy Muhammad on Teaching with Love

Visit 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 – 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

"If we're not centering children’s humanity through love, there's no strategy, no professional book or instructional method in the world that can prepare the teacher to elevate the child." - Dr. Gholdy Muhammad

Identity, skills, intellectualism, criticality, and joy. These are the five pursuits that Dr. Gholdy Muhammad argues are key to education. Our educational system focuses most of its attention on skills while often overlooking the other pursuits to the detriment of all kids. All people need to know who they are and whose they are, need to put the knowledge they gain into action, need to learn to distinguish between truth and lies, and to critically examine the stories we are told, and everyone needs joy. An education system, not to mention a society, that focuses on all five pursuits has the possibility of bringing out the genius in all of us. Underlying all of these pursuits is love. 

Dr. Muhammad joins us to discuss what teaching, parenting, and being part of community can look like with a focus on these pursuits. 

________________

Finding a school where your children can thrive, while avoiding contributing to the ongoing segregation we see today, can feel like a tough issue for socially conscious parents.

Check out our FREE guide on how you can start engaging with the education system to achieve just that: Click here to download the guide now!

________________

LINKS:

• Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy
• Unearthing Joy: A Guide to Culturally and Historically Responsive Curriculum and Instruction
• The Secret Life of Plants

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 – 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

“At its inception, in the courts, and as a project, integration was deeply contested and Black people were deeply divided about it. ” – Dr. Noliwe Rooks

The common narrative about integration often frames it as a clear victory—a moment when American education finally confronted injustice. But Dr. Noliwe Rooks argues the reality is far more complicated. In her new book, Integrated: How American Schools Failed Black Children, she traces the history of Black education, showing how the pursuit of desegregation sometimes led to profound losses for Black communities.

In this conversation, Dr. Rooks discusses the overlooked sacrifices Black communities made as schools integrated, from the closure of vibrant Black-led schools to the erasure of Black educators' roles and perspectives. Through the story of 4 generations of her own family, she reveals how integration initiatives frequently dismissed Black voices and visions for education, leaving systemic inequities intact.

This episode challenges us to rethink what integration truly means, and what’s required if education is to fulfill its promise of justice and liberation for all students.

________________

Finding a school where your children can thrive, while avoiding contributing to the ongoing segregation we see today, can feel like a tough issue for socially conscious parents.

Check out our FREE guide on how you can start engaging with the education system to achieve just that: Click here to download the guide now!

________________

LINKS:

• Integrated: How American Schools Failed Black Children
• A Passionate Mind in Relentless Pursuit: The Vision of Mary McLeod Bethune
• Cutting School: The Segrenomics of American Education
• S6E9 - BvB@67 - Noliwe Rooks Revisited - Dr. Rooks from our Brown v Board anniversary series
• S11E9: The Containment: Michelle Adams on Northern Jim Crow
• No Choice Is the “Right” Choice: Black Parents’ Educational Decision-Making in Their Search for a “Good” School - Dr. Linn Posey-Maddox
• S10E14 – Jim Crow’s Pink Slip with Dr. Leslie Fenwick
• Ep 11 – White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy

 

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 – 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

Last month, integration advocates from around the country gathered for the National Coalition on School Diversity's National Conference to discuss where we find ourselves in this difficult moment.

From policy makers to researchers, school leaders to equity advocates, the conference featured many of the brightest minds focusing on how we build up and support an education system that serves all children well. Despite the challenges to education, especially public education, not to mention multiracial public education, attending the conference was inspiring and sustaining. To see several hundred people gather in the face of pushback to reaffirm our commitment to the project of integration provided much needed hope in troubling times.

Today we share some conversations with folks from the conference who are committed to a better world and finding hope where they can.

LINKS:

• The National Coalition on School Diversity
• S10E18 – The 70th Anniversary of Brown v Board – Do It Live!
• S11E9: The Containment: Michelle Adams on Northern Jim Crow
• NAACP LDF on The Dept of Ed's Dear Colleague Letter

Visit 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.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel for video versions of our episodes.

Let us know what you think of this episode, suggest future topics, or share your story with us – 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

Public education is touted as the bedrock of democracy, a leveler of playing fields, and our best tool to create active, engaged citizens. And while that vision is powerful, Dr. Eve L. Ewing argues that it was never intended to be those things for Black or Native students. In fact, her new book, Original Sins: The (MIs)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism, maintains that schooling in America was created to prepare White kids for leadership, Black kids for subjugation, and Native kids for erasure. 

She joins us to discuss these three separate strands of education and the tools of discipline and punishment, implied intellectual inferiority, and preparation for economic subjugation used to support them.  She leaves us with love, justice and a focus on flourishing as possible antidotes to help us imagine something better. 

LINKS:

• Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side
• Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of AmericanRacism
• Bughouse Square - Eve Ewing's Podcast with co-ghost, Studs Terkel
• Faith Ringgold - United States of Attica, 1971
• Gwendolyn Brooks - We Real Cool
• How Watermelons Became a Racist Trope - William R. Black in The Atlantic
• The Abigail Fisher case
• Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica - currently at the Art Institute Chicago
• Braiding Sweetgrass - Robin Wall Kimmerer
• S7E9 – Revisiting Heather McGhee on How Racism Hurts Us All

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.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel for video versions of our episodes.

Let us know what you think of this episode, suggest future topics, or share your story with us – 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

"To be White is, is to be raised on lies. Lies that are passed down, generationally that a lot of White folks don't always know that they're passing down." - Greg Jarrell 

Our guest today, Greg Jarrell is an ordained minister, a cultural organizer and the author of Our Trespasses: White Churches and the Taking of American Neighborhoods. Through many years of building community while engaging in anti-racist learning, he has come to realize that he also has a stake in ending White supremacy, advancing racial justice, and building loving, multi-racial communities. He joins us to discuss the ongoing moral and intellectual deficiencies that come from Whiteness, the importance of intentional anti-racist education, and the need for material and cultural reparations. Jarrell emphasizes the necessity of developing multiracial coalitions and using one's advantages to dismantle systemic inequities, in order to face historical scars and work towards a more just society.

LINKS:

• Our Trespasses: White Churches and the Taking of American Neighborhoods
• QC Family Tree in Charlotte, NC
• The Redress Movement
• ICYMI: Seeing White - Our episode sharing clips from the Seeing White season from Scene on Radio
• S5E3 – Gifts We Didn’t Expect: Family, Faith, and Integration - our conversation with Albert
• Charles Mills - The Racial Contract

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.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel for video versions of our episodes.

Let us know what you think of this episode, suggest future topics, or share your story with us – 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

 Omkari Williams believes deeply in the power of people to change their environments - that through the power of the human spirit, and small, concrete actions, anything is possible, and that true changes requires all types of people. 

Her recent book, Micro Activism: How You Can Make a Difference in the World Without A Bullhorn, is a testament to this idea. In it, she lays out four activist archetypes - The Headliner, The Producer, The Organizer, and The Indispensable. All movements need all four types of activists, and everyone can find themselves in one or more of the archetypes. This view opens the door to anyone to participate, and the book gives concrete steps to take to figure out how to get involved in a way that leans in to each person's individual strengths.

In a dark time, where hope can be hard to find, Ms. Williams brings a grounded sense of hope and possibility, along with actionable steps to changing our environments for the better.

________________

Finding a school where your children can thrive, while avoiding contributing to the ongoing segregation we see today, can feel like a tough issue for socially conscious parents.

Check out our FREE guide on how you can start engaging with the education system to achieve just that: Click here to download the guide now!

________________

LINKS:

• Micro Activism: How You Can Make a Difference in the World Without A Bullhorn
• Ms. Williams Podcast - Stepping Into Truth: Conversations on Social Justice and How We Get Free
• Register for an Integrated Schools Book Club session!
• S10E2 – The Demands and Promises of Integration with John Blake
• S11E9: The Containment: Michelle Adams on Northern Jim Crow

 

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.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel for video versions of our episodes.

Let us know what you think of this episode, suggest future topics, or share your story with us – 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.

 

 

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 The 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas declared that separate is inherently unequal. The Supreme Court declared that it was in the national interest for kids to learn together. And while progress towards that goal was slow, and often met with resistance, there was an opportunity in the decision to try to heal our nation from the extraordinary wounds caused by slavery, Jim Crow, and persistent separate and unequal opportunities for Black people. In many ways, 1974's Milliken v Bradley decision put an end to that potential. A tragic Supreme Court decision, that led Thurgood Marshall to write a powerful dissent, in which he says, "unless our children learn together, there is little hope that our nation will learn to live together and understand each other."

Professor Michelle Adams has been studying the Milliken decision for many years, and just released a book about the case, called The Containment: Detroit, The Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North.  It's an easily digestible, incredibly compelling story about the power of ordinary people in Detroit who came together to fight for equal opportunity for all kids, and who came up against a court that codified White flight as tool to avoid integration into law. We are still dealing with the ripples of that decision today.

Professor Adams joins us to discuss her life, the book, and why she cares so deeply about this decision. While the decision caused great harm, Professor Adams also provides us with hope. The book gives a more complete understanding of the history of the civil rights movement so we can start from a shared set of facts. This understanding can help us all demand that our children learn together, in high quality, fully funded, integrated public schools, because, as Professor Adams says, it's very hard to have a multiracial democracy without that.

________________

Finding a school where your children can thrive, while avoiding contributing to the ongoing segregation we see today, can feel like a tough issue for socially conscious parents.

Check out our FREE guide on how you can start engaging with the education system to achieve just that: Click here to download the guide now!

________________

LINKS:

• The Containment: Detroit, The Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North
• A review of The Containment by Jeffry Toobin at the New York Times (gift link)
• Complete audio from the Milliken v Bradley opinion, including the entirety of Justice Marshall’s dissent.
• Professor Adams first appearance on our show - S5E16 – Revisiting Not In My Suburbs: Milliken v Bradley @46
• Justice Marshall's dissenting opinion in Milliken
• Part 1 of our 3 part series on Keyes v Denver Public Schools

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 – 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