♪ (opening music) ♪ Hello, welcome to Carolina Classrooms .

I'm Dr. Toby Jenkins, Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the Graduate School at the University of South Carolina.

Equity is a term used to describe fairness.

In an education setting, it is making sure that every student has the tools and resources that they need to succeed in the classroom.

Each student has different needs and each district faces different challenges to meet those needs.

On this episode of Carolina Classrooms, we'll hear from South Carolina educators and learn what they're doing to ensure that their students have an equitable education experience.

We've had this long debate for years about equity and equality, and we look at everyone getting everything, the same thing, the same resources, no matter what their needs are, dividing everything equally, and for years we've seen it hasn't worked.

It hasn't benefitted some of populations that are in lower social economic areas, and so equity to me means basing those resources and other things on the needs, dividing proportionately.

There was an example of a conversation I had with with a district where I'm from.

They wanted 150 laptops.

Every school got 150 laptops, but every school didn't need 150 laptops.

We had other schools who were short on laptops, so in cases like that, making sure that we give schools what they need so that we can have a fair outcome for everyone involved, and it's important, probably now more than ever with the coronavirus pandemic, we knew there were equity issues, but now it's really highlighted the equity issues, so it's important.

We want everyone to be successful, that we look at the lens through equity and not necessarily equality.

We, you know, we use the term education equity really to identify fairness.

I think it's the best way to describe it.

You know, we have to be aware especially those of us in leadership roles of policies, procedures, programs, you know, practices, all things that, you know, unintentionally could lead to unfairness or inequality in what we're doing within a school district.

These are all things that can have a positive or a negative impact on student performance and obviously our goal our end state is to try to see each individual child maximize their skills and their abilities so to provide equity in education means that we have to put systems in place that are going to ensure that each individual child has an equal opportunity for success.

Representation, racial inequities, socioeconomic factors, and access to resources affect what students learn and their sense of belonging in the community.

Conspicuous evidence of inequity can make a student feel rejected, forgotten, or overlooked.

I mean, I grew up in Colleton County.

I grew up in Round O, and you know, sometimes just crossing the county line, it could be very striking what the differences between Colleton and Dorchester or Colleton and Beaufort.

That can have a powerful effect on the drive to learn.

One example that our Superintendent, Mr. John Tindal likes to mention a whole lot, It can be very small things that people don't even think about.

One of the things he likes to refer us to is the buses and buildings problem, and what he means by that is let's say that you have a sports team.

They travel outside the county to a neighboring one to play a football game or something like that or a basketball game.

They see better, high quality buses.

They see better, high quality buildings and that sort of thing.

Even regular stuff like that, maybe the average person doesn't think about so much, but seeing that and knowing that that's only thirty minutes away from where they live, but they don't see evidence of that in their own community.

That can be very damaging.

When I came to Williamsburg County in April 2018, April 12, 2018, I was visiting one of the media centers one day at a high school, and when I walked into the media center, it was, I'm gonna be honest with you, I've been in education for close to 40 years, over 40 years and when I walked into this high school media center and I witnessed the condition of the media center, I'm gonna be honest with you, I actually walked out, and I feel this interview is not about me, but I want to share with you how it impacts you as an instructional leader.

I had to actually walk outside of that media center, compose myself before I could call my essential partner at state department.

I walked out of the media center and I called Ms. Latoya Dixon.

She was the, at that time, she was a liaison from the state department to the school district.

And when I attempted to speak with her, I had to actually take several deep breaths to, to be able to ask the question that I was gonna ask her.

And the question that I asked her was, I said Dr. Dixon, have you visited the media center at this, at the school that I'm standing in now?

And she said no, Dr. Wilder, tell me about it.

And at that time, I proceeded to tell that, I said, you know what, we are 18 years into the 21st century.

I walked into a media center today where there was actually, there were banquet tables and banquet chairs as the form of furniture in the media center.

The books were such that 95 percent of them need to be expunged, and it was such a, I just, it was such a devastating experience for me at that age.

I'm thinking Oh my God!

What have the children been experiencing?

And when I came back in the building, I proceeded to speak with the media specialist and she said to me, she said, I'm so glad you are addressing this because sometimes when we have our academic challenges, she said, the other children from the other school districts, actually tease our students about how the media center look.

and in defense of the state department, they immediately forwarded some funds so we could actually change the interior of the media center and purchased new books and so forth.

So when you talk equity with the curriculum, yes all this important because if, if you do not have equity, you will not be able to provide student friendly and student friendly- environments that's conducive for learning.

So it is important that all persons in this state understated that we can no longer continue to allow the zip code to decide the quality of education that our students receive in this state.

I think it affects students differently.

I don't know there's one way that it may impact or affect a student but I think it's important that students have access to those resources.

I think that he can continue to exacerbate this idea or create this narrative that, that students may be unsuccessful in academics because you've given them this kind of one size fits all academic experience particularly students of color, particular students who have been marginalized in their educational experiences up to, up to a certain point and so it's really important for us to kinda rewrite those narratives and put those students in positions where they, where they have an opportunity to be as successful as anyone else.

And so we have to be kinda committed and steadfast in our approach to provide our students with some, with premier educational experiences and it requires for those experiences to be honest, for them to be accurate and for them to be all inclusive.

(Jenkins)In April 2019, six grade students at Simmons-Pinckney Middle School took on a project examining segregation in their school district.

Their teacher and principal believed they should be informed of their history to understand what was happening in their community.

Mostly, in E.L.A.

NCES, you do projects based off our environment and stuff like that and right now, we working on a project that is about segregation.

We're working on collaboration, getting to know each other and understanding more about history.

The documentary that we're working on is to know why are we still in segregation today and give them a reason why we shouldn't be in segregation today.

(Student) Some schools are still divided by race, wealth and test scores.

They're actually starting our initiative for project based learning with a take on social issues and real world issues to see how they could influence change and be the change agents.

A lot of the history of segregation, Plessy V. Ferguson, Fourteenth Amendment, Brown versus Board of Education, trying to bring it into the current, what's going on now so the kids can see, what was, what is, where the differences are and what they can do to change what we believe is, to some degree, still very segregated, segregated Charleston County school district.

I am feeling surprised because there are some things I didn't know about.

There's a lot of things people don't know and if you would find out about it then you would really want to change it.

(Edwards) The name on our building, the Rhett Building, it is named after the son of a Confederate general who didn't believe African Americans needed an education.

He believed that they could be errand boys and cooks and maids and built Burke High School which is just, we share a campus with, with the thought of just training not educating.

And he was the superintendent of Charleston County School District for 35 years.

So, this building was dedicated to him, however, thanks to the Heritage Act, that name can't be removed, even though this is an academic setting, which he did not approve of for African Americans and we have a 98 percent African American student body.

If they don't learn the history, they can't change the present and the future.

We were learning about segregation.

It is important to learn about because it is happening around the world and we need to find a solution to stop it and have many reasons, and learn many reasons why is it happening.

(Student)I think it is important because everyone should learn about their history.

Us sixth graders and young adults, we should know about our schools and what became of the people in our schools.

(Green) We can make people hear our voice, our opportunities and our equalness.

(Baldwin) Be their voice, definitely.

Realize that they do have, they do play a role in their education and I think so many of them feel like they don't but they really are in charge of their education moving forward.

Like, if everyone come together in the community, there will be no problems or anything and everyone would just, the world be more peaceful, they'd be less violence and that's why we learn about history.

(Jenkins) Attempts to treat everyone the same, no matter their differences, can be detrimental to students in the classroom.

Statement such as, I don't see color, disregard rich cultural history.

When we look at African American history, often in schools, people, you know, the curriculum starts with enslavement and you might hear a little bit about enslaved and maybe something about civil rights.

Often those are not told from the perspective of Black people.

They don't highlight the assets.

There's no mention of the rich, thousands of years of history of Black people before even being brought to this country and so, you know, that 400 years of enslavement and colonization are a very small part of Black people's history.

And so that's a kind of attack, you know, that omission of that important history gives Black children and other children the impression that Black people have not done much.

(Jenkins) History that is documented and shared by the people who lived it offers a more accurate representation of these experiences.

Bringing these stories into the classroom helps to capture the students attention and gives them a better understanding of the world around them.

Educators are working to expand the curriculum offered at their schools, offering students more options to choose the way that they learn best.

It really requires you having a great understanding of your population of students and your community and it's really not stepping into this kind of predesigned box that we call an educational experience.

It's really about crafting a new educational experience or new box of educational experiences.

And so it's really being creative and innovative and creating spaces where people find, the reassurance of their value and worth through the different types of programs that you may create in your districts.

So that may be, whether it's magnet programs, it may be your art programs, it may be the programs you have in special, for your special education students, it may be your after school programs, it may be the access to courses in your schools that those acts that everyone has access to high level courses everyone have access to courses with beacon funding interest where they can basically tapped into the things that they're passionate about.

(Robbins) It's not just necessarily access to resources we hired a coordinator of diversity equity inclusion in our district a couple years ago shortly after I got here her team is working with our teachers on a construct called Culturally Responsive Teaching and really, you know, if you if you dig into the research you'll see that many, not all, teachers come from middle class families.

Many of them are second and third generation educators.

And so they don't necessarily have the experience of, you know, the different populations or demographics because that's not, just not where they come from and so we're trying to be intentional about training our teachers on the importance of including a student's cultural background and using those references and all aspects of learning.

(Jenkins) Building these relationships in the classroom can cut down on the number of discipline issues and change the way problems are dealt with.

So it's clear as day and the data that shows that disproportionately starting as early as preschool that Black students, both male and female, are disproportionately being kicked out of classrooms.

And without doubt, when they're kicked out of classrooms, they're missing academic face time where they are able to continue to learn and grow.

But then we have to come back and think about why are they being kicked out of classrooms.

Are they being fairly disciplined?

Are they being fairly reprimanded?

Are they given the same chances that their colleagues that are in there, their peers are being given?

And we know that truthfully they're not.

So we had to rethink discipline from the core of what it means to, kind of like our idea of like misbehavior and we as teachers and educators, we have to find ourselves in our classrooms to be able to look at what things are causing us, are triggers for us, what things are triggers for as students, and working through those so we come up with a classroom community.

So, when we talk about relationships, we think about relationships in the sense of discipline, if we take the time to build a relationship with our students, one, they're a little less likely to misbehave in your classroom.

And two, we have come to a place when if someone doesn't mess up in our class, we can handle it in our class.

We can come to a common consensus.

We can repair the broken pieces in our classroom community when we are one classroom community versus people in the same classroom.

We have additional personnel that we've hired to ensure that we capture kids where they are.

We have within, embedded within the curriculum, we have a Cultural Competency piece with our, within our curriculum to ensure that all of our teachers understand our students.

So for example, with our Cultural Competency piece, if a student, if a teacher sees a student that is not participating or maybe acting out or may be more disruptive on a particular day, we don't punish the student by sending the student necessarily to the office.

The teacher may pull the student to the side, the teacher may, I'm sorry, and the teacher may talk to students to get to root cause.

We use S.E.I.

Social Emotional Involvement with our students to make sure that whatever that issue is that's going on, maybe it is lack of food, maybe it is lack of housing, maybe it is lack of something and that's requested is acting out.

They don't know how to maybe express how they're feeling so they may be disruptive in school or in class and even pre-Covid, we put policies in place particularly to reduce the number of African American students who are being suspended.

(Jenkins) Classrooms and the community need to work together to explore possibilities and create opportunities.

The educational system I feel like especially here should be based on the challenges and the problems that the people face here if we're in a rural community and there are not a lot of industries and resources here for people to take advantage of.

And so we need to produce the type of people that we're going to need in order to revitalize our communities.

And so, housing for example.

If I have someone come to any of my rentals and I need a carpenter or I need a plumber or I need an electrician or if I need an architect, I can't find any of the people that were born and bred here to be able to do that type of work, that have that type of skill.

And so, when students come into educational system, our curriculums need to be designed in such a way that those type of educational experiences can be offered to our students so that not only are they prepared for the workforce they're also prepaired to be entrepreneurs and those who have the skills and the abilities to revitalize their own, their own communities and their own homes.

It's not just based on the standards that the state provides, but also going beyond that and creating a curriculum and educational experience that allows you to develop the type of skills that you'll need in order to be way more successful than what we are.

(Jenkins) Parents and guardians play a major role in their children's education.

We do need the resources within the classroom, but to me, equity needs to start at home.

I think that's where our biggest gap is, is what I'm seeing right now as a classroom teacher.

In terms of relationships with parents in my personal experience starting from a place of non judgment and really curiosity and ending with the place of non judgment and curiosity because every single family is different.

What do we do when families are not showing up in a way that we can be strong partners?

Those are really complicated questions and issues but I'll just give one example.

If a parent is not showing up because they're working two or three jobs and, you know, they're working a night shift and so, you know, it's their time of rest, you know, when a school function is going on, then, you know, how can we be flexible around that.

And then in terms of, you know, stakeholders and elected officials who are watching this, how can we make sure that the minimum wage is actually a living wage so that our families don't have to work two and three jobs and they can give that time and attention, you know, to families?

So that's one small piece of the puzzle in my opinion but, you know, the schools really a microcosm of the entire society.

(Coletrain) Highly encourage school to have that connection where we're working hand in hand where students see that we're in this together.

we're almost like a 24 hour school.

That's what I like to say.

You know, we early bird, lunchtime tutoring, after school tutoring, we try to offer programs sometimes at different times, you know, morning, afternoon.

(McGill) As a child who grew up in a poor, poverty stricken environment, I can tell you it does not take a whole lot for the parents to be involved in that child's learning.

To push that child and to let that child know that he or she is supported and that education is valued within the home life.

(Robbins) You can read about a lot of things but I don't think you can really garner a true understanding without experiencing it and I think the way one of the easiest way, well I shouldn't say easiest.

it's a challenge for some folks but it's really important to establish relationships with those different populations of individuals.

You know from my, from my experience, you know, a lot of those families, when they were kids themselves in school, may not have had a positive experience in the school setting and so that's our first barrier challenge we have to overcome and I think you do that by meeting them where they're comfortable and not always meeting them where you're comfortable which would be in a school building.

What I hope to see is that we don't stop working to identify issues of inequity and removing the barriers, the systemic and systematic barriers that inequity create; that we don't stop addressing issues of anti, we don't stop addressing issues of racism and racist practices that we know exist in society that trickle their way down into schools; that we don't stop identifying issues of poverty and dismissed the issues of poverty and how it impacts the student learning and their learning experiences; that we don't stop fighting for funding for schools; that we, you know, that we don't stop addressing the issues of health disparities within different communities and how those health disparities work their ways into schools; that we don't stop working to recruit the best and brightest teachers for our students and that we ensure that our students can see themselves, see themselves in their teachers that teachers can reflect who they are and as well.

So that's what I hope that we continue that type work in our district and then we start to close those barriers, that we start to close the opportunity gaps that exist for our students so that we can close the knowledge gap that exists and we can work on the learning gaps that may exist so that all of our students can have an opportunity to be, to achieve and achieve at the highest level possible.

(Jenkins) Thanks for joining us.

You can find this episode and other education stories from around the state on our website at carolinaclassrooms.org