Teaching Channel Talks Episode 114: Creating Classrooms That Honor Student Identity (w/ Kwame Sarfo-Mensah)

Dr. Wendy Amato 00:00

Welcome to Teaching Channel Talks. I’m your host, Wendy Amato, and as often as I can, I jump into topics about things that really matter in education. My guest today is a leader on the discussion of culturally affirming classrooms. Kwame Sarfo-Mensah, thank you for joining me in this conversation.

Kwame Sarfo-Mensah 00:20

Thank you for having me again, Wendy.

It’s good to be back.

Dr. Wendy Amato 00:24

I’m really happy to have you here. I wanna jump in and talk directly, like why do culturally affirming classrooms matter, and how does your personal experience serve as an illustration?

Kwame Sarfo-Mensah 00:35

Well, culturally affirming classrooms matter because culture is a huge part of our identities.

Culture shapes who we are as people. Culture informs the way that we navigate different spaces that we find ourselves in. Culture is everything. So we can’t have classrooms where we’re not centering or taking into strong consideration the culture of our students. That’s education malpractice if we don’t engage in this work.

So when we talk about culture. There are so many things that encompass it. It’s the food, it’s the language. Um, it is the place of origin for our students, parents and family members. There are so many things that are part of that definition of culture that we have to account for, because if we don’t do that, that’s going to lead to detrimental effects to students’ learning processes.

Dr. Wendy Amato 01:42

When you talk about Learning to Relearn, what are you getting people into? Let’s talk about your new book.

Kwame Sarfo-Mensah 01:48

So Learning to Relearn, what does that mean? It’s a very simple mantra. It means that we must engage and embrace this habit of being, uh, a continuous capacity builder in layman’s terms, a student, a learner.

We need to embrace that role of learning as professionals in this space.

Dr. Wendy Amato 02:15

When we talk about, Learning to Relearn as professionals in this space, there are some really clear messages that you make in your book, let’s talk about them.

Kwame Sarfo-Mensah 02:23

so Learning to Relearn. So anybody who gets a copy of this book, you’ll notice that the four writer is no other than Dr. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz. And anybody who knows Dr. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz work knows that. She is someone who has been talking about racial literacy development for years through her framework and the importance of the archeology of the self. In other words, as you are developing your racial literacy, there are five stages that you have to go through in order to get there, and I had to go through those very stages to write this book.

So on the very bottom of that framework, you have the critical love and the critical humility I need to decenter myself. Be open to listening to folks who have lived experience and are part of those communities where they’re experiencing harm. That’s critical. Humility, that’s empathy, that’s compassion, which then sets up the foundation for the critical love.

Now, there’s a critical reflection piece where, all right, I need to interrogate my own interactions with folks who are from different communities. I need to identify my biases. I need to be aware of the stereotypical notions that I have of these different communities. I need to know that I also need to be willing to be called in by folks who are from those communities so I can be educated about the harm that I’ve imposed, but also learn why that is harmful.

Be in a position where I can respond and restore peace in that situation. So there’s a critical reflection piece that is so essential that also is part of that critical empathy and love. If you care about somebody. Somebody tells you that they feel hurt or you hurt their feelings. It doesn’t matter what your intentions are.

The fact that they’re hurt means that you need to do something to restore the peace.

Dr. Wendy Amato 04:31

Kwame, when we think about the importance of decentering for the teacher to decenter in order to be open to everything else that’s in the classroom, to be open to all of the knowledge that’s out there, to be available to the different perspectives.

Why is decentering scary for so many people?

Kwame Sarfo-Mensah 04:51

Well, in order to decenter, you have to know what privileges you have in that setting. You also have to be aware of your positionality and how people perceive you because of your positionality in this space. So why are people afraid to decenter? I think they’re afraid to decenter because they’re afraid to relinquish control.

Dr. Wendy Amato 05:15

Mm-hmm.

Kwame Sarfo-Mensah 05:16

They’re afraid to lose control over the situation. So I think when people hear the word decenter, it means that they have to deprioritize themselves. That’s what it means. You have to deprioritize themselves. You gotta do that in order to hear and actively listen to other people. And what’s scary about Decentering is the fact that what’s gonna be revealed are very hard truths about these folks who are decentering.

And that’s the discomfort that causes people not to continue to push through this work.

Dr. Wendy Amato 05:54

I worry that when we get into discussions about being culturally affirming as educators, that there’s only a focus on the loss or the potential for loss. Nobody’s thinking about how much we have to gain by exchanging ideas.

But having a variety of perspectives, being able to consider things from a different point of view or from a different background or context. There is so much to be gained. If we could just like relax our shoulders a little bit as a, as humanity and be open to experiencing things the way others may, it’s not about loss, it’s about all that we have to gain. All that enriches us.

Kwame Sarfo-Mensah 06:43

Definitely, uh, a glass half full mentality for sure.

Dr. Wendy Amato 06:47

Mm-hmm. You’ve spent a few weeks recently at a number of educator conferences. Tell me a little bit about your experiences in those spaces.

Kwame Sarfo-Mensah 06:56

Oh, whoa. Oh dear. It’s a mixed bag, but, um, lemme start with the positive. What’s been positive about my experiences in these different conferences is the fact that I’ve had a chance in each of those conferences to see.

Close friends of mine and colleagues present and show off their brilliance in real time, and a lot of these folks are people who I had a chance to connect with on social media and have been connected with for many years. They’ve been on my podcast. Some of these folks I’ve collaborated with on other projects, been on different contracts with, with consulting.

But never had a chance to be in the same physical space. So for many of those folks, I was able to do that for the very first time, and that’s what made it even more special. But once we got, but once we got together, you would never know that it was our first time meeting because that’s how connected, uh, we are.

So that, that brought me a lot of joy, seeing that brilliance in real time. I. So as, uh, you mentioned Wendy, I was in four different cities and attended four different conferences over the course of a month. And these were the main things that I noticed. I was in conferences, at least one conference, where they were platforming presenters and keynote speakers who have a documented history of imposing harm on black women.

And other folks of color. This is what, this is what I saw and I’m thinking to myself, how is it that this is happening? Given the times that we’re in number one, and given the fact that this is an organization like all the other ones I’ve, that have organized these conferences who say that they wanna do equity, you cannot just say it.

I will say this. If you are somebody who’s got an ounce of humanity in them, you gotta call people out on they stuff. You gotta speak up. This is a time where we gotta speak up, right? We gotta say names. We gotta call people out. We gotta hold organizations and folks accountable for the harm that they’re committing onto folks.

That’s one thing. Another thing too, and this is the bigger thing, is that if you are a black and brown educator and you feel like you’re not getting the love and the support that you deserve, why keep coming to these spaces that only are designed to dehumanize you and minimize you and marginalize you?

We gotta create our own spaces. There are way too many brilliant people within the pool where we can do this easily. It’s gonna be about the mindset. It’s gonna be about having a collective mindset and a collective vision on what that’s going to look like. And it’s also going to involve having some call-ins and call outs along the way so that everybody is on code that has, that’s going to have to happen.

So it is gonna be a messy process to start off with, but once we get to a consensus and a collective vision of how we wanna move forward, it’s gonna be the most amazing thing. That’s the kind of love that we need. But guess what? There are so many others, other spaces that do that. I mean, just recently you had Dr.

Go Hamed. You had Dr. Ilan Ruiz, Dr. Dana Simmons and Dr. Bettina Love come together to form the sisterhood, and they created an incredible, um, conference where they’re keynoting, they’re doing panel discussions. They came together and created that. The draw was huge, like it gave so much energy to people.

They centered joy while also educating and providing some inspiration for folks who are in the trenches. That’s the kind of spaces that we need. Those are the spaces we need right now, and we could create more spaces. It’s possible to do that. We’ve gotta come to a consensus on what the vision is and, and what that’s gonna look like.

But the collaboration has to be key. That has to happen. So that’s the part that people can do. Find people within your sphere of influence who are already aligned with you and figure out what that collaboration is gonna look like.

Dr. Wendy Amato 11:48

I think that’s part of what you’re doing. You are sharing messaging and helping people think in fresh ways.

You have chosen to be a person who lives by principle, and you are modeling that. You’ve used the phrase with me, not all money is good money. And there’s some times where you need to think about maybe letting go of some of the less helpful (unclear audio here) so we can all pull together. Not you specifically, but people.

Kwame Sarfo-Mensah 12:19

Yeah. And honestly, Wendy, even just to get to the finish line for this book. Mm-hmm. I had to, I had to ask for a contract release from my original publisher because we weren’t aligned. I had to jump ship. I asked for that release principled living. So I’ve, I’ve had to do that. Also in terms of just collaboration, you’re, you’re looking at somebody who in 2021, organized a virtual conference that included 20 presenters and we did it over a four day period.

That was a stay true to the Teaching Youth Teacher Summit, and I did that as one person. Imagine if we can get multiple people to do something similar to that. It’s possible.

Dr. Wendy Amato 13:10

I attended your conference and I believe that you are the one who is creating the space for good things to happen.

We don’t have to participate in all of the legacy backwards built models. There is a new path forward and you are paving the way.

Kwame Sarfo-Mensah 13:30

And, and if I could share along those lines, right, because. One of the major reasons why so many black and brown folks go to these conferences is because they are big conferences.

Dr. Wendy Amato 13:42

Mm-hmm.

Kwame Sarfo-Mensah 13:43

It’s a place where if you are able to present at this conference, it puts you at a higher status. Right. But these are the same spaces where they don’t love you. Like there’s some, you have some actors who have never had a chance to win an Academy Award. You have some musicians who have never had a chance to win a Grammy.

When you look at their body of work and all the other accolades they’ve won, you can’t sit here and tell me that they don’t have authority in what they do. It’s the same for educators, and we have to come to the realization that if we embrace. The need to amplify and uplift each other. That’s what’s gonna create the buzz.

That’s what’s going to get people to see that these are people who have authority in what they’re saying. We could generate that buzz for each other through simply reposting what people say by buying books, by hyping people up. We can do that.

14:42 Dr. Wendy Amato Kwame, I’d like for you to talk about your journey to get where you are today, how you have established yourself as a leader in this work, how people are flocking to you to understand culturally sustaining pedagogies.

You’ve published three books. How did you get here?

Kwame Sarfo-Mensah 15:00

I got here through Through Therapy, believing in myself and having those times where I had self-doubt. Even during this present moment, I still have self-doubt creep into my soul. That’s just human nature because this is a moment that’s so big right now that it’s surreal, and I never imagine myself in this space.

People who know my story know that my mom played a huge role in me respecting the value of education. I. I was a student who grew up with an IEP, those first four or five years of schooling. My mom was the one who was doing interventions at home. She was the one who was going to the IEP meetings and telling the SPED team, this is what y’all need to do to ensure that my son is able to have the advances that he needs to make.

Dr. Wendy Amato 15:59

Mm-hmm.

Kwame Sarfo-Mensah 16:00

Academically. So seeing how my mom was an educator. Everything that she did, even though she never taught in a classroom a day in her life, she was teaching dance classes, traditional dance classes in our home in Bloomfield, Connecticut, my hometown. She was doing that for years, um, through the, um, as Mount Association, which is an organization that consists of Ghanaian Americans and, and just Ghanaian families who live within the New England area.

So I saw that in real time, the way that she always served other people. She was such a selfless person. She always looked out for people before herself, and I, I like to think that I took that from her. But what’s amazing is I never envisioned about having a career in education. I was all about trying to get into the NFL, the N-B-A-M-L-B for baseball.

That was the vision that I had because. I’m a sports fanatic. Even to this day, I, that’s just who I’ve, I am and have always been. But when I got to college, um, my freshman year, I ended up taking part in a mentoring program that involved middle to high school students. So I was gonna, I was going to this dorm as a freshman at Temple University, 18 years old, and once a week I was mentoring.

A seventh grader and I can remember the feeling that I had doing that. It was such a, an amazing feeling that I wanted to maintain. So after that experience, I then went ahead and got a work study job at the YMCA that’s right near Temple University’s main campus. And I would end up starting there as a.

After school program tutor, I’d eventually become a direct staff member for that YMCA and work at the summer camp and continue on as a counselor for after school program. So I started my sophomore year and did it all the way through to my graduation. And it was during that time where I really started to love working with kids.

That part was solidified for me. Not being a teacher, but working with kids. So then I graduate, I saw my friends getting five to six figure jobs right off the bat. That didn’t happen for me. So I ended up doing a program called Education Works, which is an AmeriCorps, AmeriCorps program that no longer exists.

But at the time it, it was a program that allowed for you to work with different urban school districts and serve as a, a volunteer. Within those districts. So for me, I worked with a, a local school that was not too far from Temple’s campus. That was a K to eight school called Tanner Duckery School. And it was at that time where I started work closely with different teachers.

I was working as an assistant, I was doing recess and lunch duty. I also was working the afterschool program. So I was putting in. 50 plus hour weeks earning a government stipend. And, and at that time my pay was somewhere in the ballpark of $200 biweekly. That’s all I was earning. And I was living in a three bedroom apartment with two other roommates, still struggling to pay for utilities.

I was sleeping on the floor. I didn’t have a bed. I slept on the floor on a sleeping mat, and I’m, I’m in my mid twenties. I was doing this work. So when people say like, why you love it, like, I would do it like I was doing it when I wasn’t getting paid money. So that’s how real it is for me. But as I went through, um, my journey, I really started to see some things that that struck me.

And the biggest thing for me was I was in schools where 90 plus percent of the students were black and Latinx. But conversely, 9% of the staff was white. You saw that there was some disconnect between the white teachers and the black and Latinx students in every class I was in, and I kept thinking to myself, man, they need to have somebody like me in that space who can relate to them, but also provide a different perspective that’s gonna allow them to see that, Hey, it’s cool to be a teacher.

You don’t need to be an entertainer. You don’t need to be a professional athlete. You don’t need to be a musician. You could be a teacher. And have that swag. And that was the angle that I took and that’s what ultimately got me to wanna become an educator. So I went back to school, did my master’s program, got that initial cert and around in 2010, and I’ve been doing it ever since, as people say the rest is history.

Dr. Wendy Amato 21:07

The education community is better because you’re in it.

Kwame Sarfo-Mensah 21:10

I appreciate that.

Dr. Wendy Amato 21:11

Thank you for being my guest today, Kwame, hearing your story, knowing that we’ve got an opportunity to read your new book, knowing that you’re committed to this work and that you’re making the difference that you’re making.

It’s everything. Thank you to fellow educators. Enjoy the book and if you’d like to explore other topics that. Kwame and I have discussed today. Check out the show notes at TeachingChannel.com/podcast and also check out Learning2Relearn.com . That’s a number two in the middle. Learning2Relearn.com.

There’s a lot of information there, including chapter previews and an opportunity to get a little bit more information about what Kwame’s doing and how he is doing it so that we can all participate in the good work. Be sure to subscribe on whatever listening app you use. It will help others to find us, and I’ll see you again soon for the next episode.

Thanks for listening.