The Integrated Schools Podcast

The schools conversation happens everywhere – the playground, work events, even in line at the supermarket. However, it is often focused on K-12 education. The pressures of getting your kid into the “right” school, moving somewhere with “good” schools, and playing the system to gain as much advantage as possible, usually revolve around K-12. However, despite the lack of guaranteed preschool in many places across the country, there are plenty of opportunities for families to make decisions that reflect their values and support their communities even for our youngest learners.

In this episode, we dive into the topic of preschool education and the often overlooked issue of segregation. We are joined by Dr. Casey Stockstill, author of the upcoming book False Starts: The Segregated Lives of Preschoolers, to discuss the prevalence and implications of race and class segregation in preschools. The conversation explores our personal experiences and observations, as well as the challenges faced by both children and teachers navigating this complex landscape.

Dr. Stockstill highlights the importance of choosing inclusive and diverse preschool environments that align with our values and contribute towards community-building efforts. We discuss the role of Head Start programs in providing better opportunities for children and how they impact early childhood education. The conversation also addresses teacher-to-student relationships, the challenge of finding mixed-income and racially mixed preschools, and the necessity of community-driven initiatives in early childhood education. Perhaps most importantly, Dr. Stockstill highlights the implications of segregated preschool environments on future learning thought the K-12 experience.

As parents and educators committed to educational equity, we may not always find easy steps or clear answers. Yet, by engaging in such nuanced conversations and making conscious preschool choices, we can play our part in breaking down racial barriers and creating inclusive environments for all children.

LINKS:

• Preorder Dr. Stockstill’s book – False Starts: The Segregated Lives of Preschoolers
• Culture Study interview where we first learned of Dr. Stockstill’s work
• The “Stuff” of Class: How Property Rules in Preschool Reproduce Class Inequality – article by Dr. Stockstill
• Learn more about Head Start
• Dr. Brittany Murray on our show – PTA So White
• Dr. Jessica Calarco – Negotiating Opportunities: How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School – for more on how the trends we see in preschool show up in future learning environments
• Dr. Susan Faircloth on our show – An Overdue Reckoning on Indigenous Education

ACTION STEPS:

1. Find ways to support local preschools, even if you aren’t directly connected.
2. Support funding increases, universal access, teacher pay increases, etc. for early childhood education.
3. Work with local civil organization to find ways to support enriching educational experiences for all preschool kids.

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 proud members of 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

When you think of school safety, it’s hard not to think of school shootings. And there is no question that gun violence in schools is tragic, harrowing, and gut wrenching. It shatters our vision of schools as a sanctuary. And yet, gun violence, while way too common, is still exceedingly rare, and there are many ways that kids are harmed in our schools on a daily basis that don’t generate the same attention.

Dr. Meg Caven, a passionate educational researcher, focuses on issues of safety and equity in the educational landscape. With particular attention on school discipline and its impact on racial inequity, Dr. Caven’s work highlights the importance of addressing social and emotional safety in addition to physical safety. As a queer-identified individual, she draws from her own experiences of freedom and safety in her educational journey to advocate for a more holistic approach to safety in schools.

In this episode, Dr. Caven pushes us beyond the one-dimensional conversation around gun violence in our schools, to consider a broader and more expansive view of what it means to be safe in school. From mental health to emotional health, from protection from bullying and structural violence, from disrupting the school to prison pipeline, she argues that a nuanced, multi-dimensional view of school safety is what is required if we truly care about equity, and want to see schools live up to the ideal of being incubators of democracy.

LINKS:

• Dr. Caven’s article in Kappan
• The Education Development Center
• Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum‘s quote about the smog of racism is from Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria
• Ani DiFranco – To The Teeth
• News story on a “rapid deploy bullet-proof safe room” for schools

ACTION STEPS:

1. Expand your idea of safety
2. Talk to the young people and other caregivers in your life about what it means to feel safe at school
3. Don’t use “safety” as an excuse to not enroll in a particular school
4. Engage in conversations in your school communities about what I means for kids to feel safe enough to feel free to discover themselves

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 proud members of 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

For a long time, we at Integrated Schools encouraged parents to “Show up, shut up, and stay put”. This was a pushback to the ways that White and/or privileged parents often interact with global majority schools. And yet, simply showing up and shutting up, while an important first step, isn’t enough. We have to speak out against the inequities that plague our schools. However, knowing when to speak up, and what to speak up about can be tricky.

We’re joined by education consultant and Black parent, Dr. Toutoule Ntoya, and political strategist and White parent, Becky Boll, both of whom chose local, neighborhood, public schools for their children. We discuss the challenges of advocating for change within the education system and the need to be in community first. We also grapple with balancing advocacy for one’s own child while also advocating for all kids, while navigating the school system’s differing expectations for parents based on race.

While we don’t land on easy steps or clear answers, hopefully the nuanced conversation is helpful to anyone committed to educational equity.

LINKS:

• Dr. Ntoya’s website
• Integrated Schools theory of change – Contemplate, Desegregate, Integrate, Advocate
• Send us a voicemail
• Matt Barnum in Chalkbeat on the link between school choice and gentrification
• African American Parent Council in Pasadena

ACTION STEPS:

1. Talk to the young people in your life about your own schooling experiences and how that affects the choices you are making for them.
2. Don’t blame global majority schools for the challenges they face. Recognize the role of the system, and view your participation in fixing them as work pushing back on systemic injustice.
3. Find BIPOC led organizations in your community that are doing advocacy work and ask how you can help.

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

Housing and school segregation are closely intertwined, yet the story of how that came to be is rarely taught. The students at EPIC Theatre Ensemble were commissioned to write a play about this topic through the EPIC Next Program. Through extensive research, starting with the Segregated by Design website (an exploration of Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law), and including interviews with over 30 stakeholders in education and housing, the students created Between The Lines, an original play exploring the connections between America’s housing policies and educational segregation. They set out to answer the questions, how have we managed to parcel out privilege in a public school system that’s supposed to be free and open to everyone? Their art serves both as an outlet for the shock they felt in learning this history, and also an invitation to deeper, more productive civic dialog about a topic that can often be fraught.

We are joined by student actor, Dilisima Vickers, and co-artistic director, Jim Wallert, to discuss how the show came to be, and what they learned through making it. We also share excerpts from the show, including an original song called Segregated by Design, Jane Crow Real Estate, and a game show called The Color Code.

LINKS:

• EpicTheaterEnsemble.org
• Trailer for Between The Lines
• S6E2 – EPIC’s “Nothing About Us”: Youth Theater on Integration
• Citizen Artists: A Guide to Helping Young People Make Plays That Change the World
• Segregated by Design website
• The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America– by Richard Rothstein
• All Quiet on the Western Front
• Poverty, Race, and Research Action Council – the organization that commissioned Between the Lines
• Interview from PRRAC’s Journal with Dilisima about Between the Lines

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

For many, the words “civil rights” conjure images of the past, focusing on politicians, lawyers, activists. However, our guests today ask us to consider the civil rights implications we face today in the fight for a quality, 21st century education for all kids. Dr. Kia Darling-Hammond was recently commissioned to write about the importance of civil rights in the fight for educational equity, particularly the importance of the data collected by the Civil Rights Data Collection. Through that work, she enlisted her mother, Dr. Linda-Darling-Hammond, to co-author a new book, The Civil Rights Road to Deeper Learning: Five Essentials for Equity. With a focus on classrooms, as well as many factors outside of classrooms, the book asks us to consider the ongoing fight for civil rights, and how it plays out in our education system every day. While there continue to be important roles for political leaders, lawyers, and activists, the book also highlights the roles we can all play in pushing for an educational system that truly creates the world we want our kids to inherit.

LINKS:

• The Civil Rights Road to Deeper Learning: Five Essentials for Equity
• Civil Rights Data Collection
• Sean Darling-Hammond, Jason Okonofua, Amanda Perez – When policy and psychology meet: Mitigating the consequences of bias in schools
• Lisa Delpit – Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom
• Hewlett Foundation – Deeper Learning Defined
• John Dewey – The Child and the Curriculum Including, the School and Society
• Ep 2 – The Bordon Family

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.

We’re thrilled to share these final thoughts on the episode from Drs. Darling-Hammond:

“White parents aren’t the only parents who are facing challenging decisions about integrated school settings. This is a challenge for everyone, and we detail several considerations in the book, particularly around the importance of using restorative practices and social emotional learning instead of punitivity.

It’s notable how many Black families have chosen to keep their children out of public school all together, even when schools reopened, due to the noticeable reduction in their children’s distress. We’d love to end on a hopeful note, but it is important to bring attention to these challenges. In integrated settings, Black, Indigenous, Latiné, and Asian students can truly suffer as school climate reflects the larger oppressive society.

It’s not enough to just put everyone together in a school building and say, “Done!”

We also need all parents, especially those with financial and political capital, to fight to resource districts and schools. When that happens, all children can receive a high quality, deeper learning education, regardless of where their school is located. We discuss this in the book, as well.

Powerful change happens when people of good conscience run for seats on local boards. It happens when communities that have a lot of privilege amplify, uplift, and create empowering conditions for communities that don’t – Rather than running for that board seat, sponsoring the campaign of a Black mother who is under-resourced, but deeply understands the community’s needs. Sometimes people have to get out of the way while they pave the way.

And at those board meetings and parent meetings and committee meetings, we need everyone to advocate for those restorative, humanizing practices that honor children as whole people with rich emotional lives and needs. Powerful change happens when parents advocate for true inclusion, for belonging. Especially right now, as we see such a push for exclusion, censorship, and privatization, people of good conscience need to come together, build collective understanding, organize, and act. Be in those meetings, schedule time with administrators, write letters, make phone calls, interact on social media… this is how we fight for our rights – our children’s futures – not individually, but together, en masse, with purpose and perseverance.

Civic engagement is effective – often more effective than people realize. People taking time to call and comment – it adds up – and it can, and does, translate into policy. And it allows those of us (policymakers) who want to create humane, inclusive schools to be reinforced in our ability to do so.

All parents of all backgrounds want their child to be in a school environment where they feel welcome and experience belonging. And there’s work to do for even the most “privileged” kids to be at a place where they can feel that they are belonging, and welcome. Depression rates are high all the way around. Pressure is high all the way around. Families can intervene in this together. They don’t even have to make solutions up. Blueprints exist. (And we talk about some of those in the book, as well). These healthy environments require advocating for all kids.

Finally, and this is key, children are the experts on their experiences. They have wisdom and we, adults, need to be guided by it. Together we can build the education that our children need and deserve. The more of us who show up, the lighter the lift.”

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While we’re on break, we wanted to bring you an episode from the Teaching While White podcast that we really enjoyed. We’ve been following Teaching While White for a long time, and have appreciated their focus on the role of White teachers in creating equity driven spaces for students. Three quarters of teachers are White, and they have an important role to play in antiracism. In this episode, they speak with Dr. John Diamond, and Dr. Amanda Lewis about their book Despite the Best Intentions. We had Dr. Lewis on the podcast several years ago on our Brown v. Board series, and we’ve featured the book in our book club. It’s an incredible look at the difference between desegregation and true integration, and highlights the challenges of internal school segregation.

Jenna and Elizabeth, the hosts of the Teaching While White Podcast, just released a book, called Learning and Teaching While White: Antiracist Strategies for School Communities. Follow the podcast wherever you get your podcasts, and buy the book!

Enjoy, and we’ll be back soon with all new episodes!

LINKS

• Teaching While White website
• Teaching While White Podcast
• Learning and Teaching While White: Antiracist Strategies for School Communities
• Drs. Diamond and Lewis – Despite the Best Intentions
• Dr. Lewis’s episode on our show

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

We’re celebrating 100 episodes! Over the past 4.5 years we’ve shared 100 conversations ranging from parent conversations to experts. Today, we reflect on what we’ve learned, we share clips from past episodes, and talk about what we hope for the future. If you’re new here, this is a great place to start, if you’ve been with us since the beginning, you’ll recognize some clips.

We share, hopes and dreams, tears and laughter, and deep gratitude for all of you for listening over these past 100 episodes.

Happy holidays and THANK YOU!!

LINKS:

• The first episode of the podcast – Ep 1 – Intro to The Integrated Schools Podcast
• The story of our founder, Courtney Mykytyn
• Nikole Hannah-Jones on This American Life
• The Problem We All Live With – Part 1
• The Problem We All Live With – Part 2
• #ClearTheAir
• Dr. JPB Gerald on our show
• S5E18 – Checklists and Merit Badges: JPB Gerald on Whiteness
• S9E6 – Language, Power, and Whiteness
• His new book – Antisocial Language Teaching: English and the Pervasive Pathology of Whiteness
• Courtney Martin – Writing for On Being
• Albert’s episode – S5E3 – Gifts We Didn’t Expect: Family, Faith, and Integration
• Active Hope (Revised): How to Face the Mess We’re in with Unexpected Resilience and Creative Power
• S5E4 – All I Want for Christmas is 3.5%
• S7E10 – An Overdue Reckoning on Indigenous Education
• S9E3 – PTA So White with Dr. Brittany Murray
• S7E14 – Unpacking the Racial Hierarchy in School Choices
• S9E5 – Cathryn and the Saviors
• S7E4 – Redrawing the Lines: Undoing the History of Segregation with Tomas Monarez
• S7E2 – Moving and Choosing a School – with Sarah and Anna
• S6E12 – BvB@67- Greg and Carol Revisited – revisiting “I Hope They Hear It In Our Voices”
• S9E2 – Finding Hope in Solidarity with Heather McGhee
• S7E12 – Carol Anderson on White Rage
• Ep 14 – Kirkland on Integration
• Ep 7 – Vicky and The Saviors
• Ep 5 – Interview with a Skeptic
• Ep 19 – Segrenomics, Black Teachers, and Noliwe Rooks (BvB@65)
• Dr. Rooks – Cutting School: The Segrenomics of American Education
• Between We and They: A School Integration Story (Part 1)

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

Back in 2020, we had the opportunity to have writer and linguist JPB Gerald on the podcast to talk about all the things. It was a great conversation and if you haven’t had a chance to listen, we encourage you to go back and check it out!

Well, JPB (now Dr. Gerald) is back with Val and Andrew to talk about his new book, Antisocial Language Teaching: English and the Pervasive Pathology of Whiteness. In addition to expanding on much of what we talked about in his first time on the show, the book, and this conversation highlights his thoughts on the connection between language, power, and Whiteness, as well as the links between our concept of dis/ability, and the creation of the idea of Blackness. Through the prism of “standardized” language, Dr. Gerald helps us see the ways race, language, dis/ability all work together to create a hierarchy of human value that we all have an obligation to push back against.

LINKS:

• Dr. Gerald’s website
• Antisocial Language Teaching: English and the Pervasive Pathology of Whiteness
• Dr. Gerald’s dissertation
• Worth the Risk: Towards Decentring Whiteness in English Language Teaching
• Unstandardized English – JPB Gerald’s Podcast (and you can support his work on Patreon)
• Our first episode with Dr. Gerald
• The Ezel Project – JPB Gerald’s course on whiteness
• JPB on Twitter
• JPB was inspired by Nelson Flores and Jonathan Rosa who have written several pieces together, including Undoing Appropriateness, and Unsettling Race and Language
• Dr. Jasmine Clark on the melting pot vs mosaic from our show
• Dr. Susan Faircloth on the loss of native languages from our show

ACTION STEPS:

• Check your internal responses to different forms of communication
• Work not to force the young people in your life into the box of standardized language
• Work in adult spaces to push on that box to make more space for other forms of communication
• Talk to the young people in your life about standardized language and their relative access to it
• Recognize when your access to language makes you comfortable, and push to hear other ideas in those moments (think PTA meetings . . . )
• Buy Dr. JPB Gerald’s book – Antisocial Language Teaching
• Listen to Unstandardized English

 

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

School integration can be a powerful force for improving schools for all kids, but what is it like to be in a school community when newly arriving parents set out “save” your school? When the “nice White parents” arrive to remake the school in their image of what a “good” school should be? When the “haves” try to take over from the “have nots”?

We’re joined by Cathryn, a low-income parent from Los Angeles, who witnessed the arrival of well meaning and well resourced parents into the school where her 3 kids attended. She shares the harm caused, as well as how folks with privilege can show up as allies in those situations.

Longtime listeners may recall a similar conversation from Season 1, Vicky and the Saviors. In a sequel of sorts, Cathryn shares a similar story from a different perspective.

LINKS:

• S1E7 – Vicky and the Saviors
• Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems . . .

ACTION STEPS:

• Examine your social networks, and invest in relationships with perspectives that are missing.
• Talk to the young people in your life about class – and know that you aren’t going to be perfect in the first conversation, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth starting.
• Ask the young people in your life what they know about and think about money and see where the conversation takes you.

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

Dr. Jasmine Clark is a microbiologist by training, but in the wake of the 2016 election, as she says, she went from a scientist to a mad scientist. She felt called to get involved, first with the Atlanta March for Science, and then to actually run for office. As the first Black woman elected to represent a solidly suburban house district in Georgia, her perspective on the ways the suburbs are changing is invaluable. She joins us to discuss the disconnect between the mostly White vision of the suburbs baked into popular conception, and the reality of our suburbs today.

Plus, we talk about the importance of making your voice heard through voting. While we know that voting alone is rarely sufficient to create change, we deeply believe that it’s a crucial step towards justice. So, if you are reading this and haven’t voted yet, please, go vote!

LINKS:

• Red Wine and Blue
• The Suburban Women Problem Podcast
• Vote.gov – for local registration information as well as polling places

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