{"id":25818,"date":"2020-06-08T13:15:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-08T17:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/?p=25818"},"modified":"2024-08-31T10:45:10","modified_gmt":"2024-08-31T14:45:10","slug":"vted-reads-hemingway-with-elijah-hawkes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/vted-reads-hemingway-with-elijah-hawkes\/","title":{"rendered":"#vted Reads: Hemingway, with Elijah Hawkes"},"content":{"rendered":"<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-25818-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Elijah_Hawkes_Indian_Camp.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Elijah_Hawkes_Indian_Camp.mp3\">https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Elijah_Hawkes_Indian_Camp.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<p>Listeners: our hearts are breaking. Our hearts are breaking for all of Vermont\u2019s Black students, Black educators, and Black families.<\/p>\n<p>But frankly, our broken hearts are not nearly enough.<\/p>\n<p>Right now, we need to talk about what this all means for Vermont. What it means to interrogate in schools, and in classrooms, and in ourselves.<\/p>\n<p>On this episode of the podcast, we grapple with a challenging short story by Hemingway (yes, that Hemingway), called &#8220;Indian Camp&#8221;. Now, a content note: this story contains language and attitudes that we as a society no longer find acceptable, and in fact, one of the terms that Hemingway&#8217;s characters bandy about, a derogatory term for Native and Indigenous women, we just won&#8217;t be saying on this show.<\/p>\n<p>But.<\/p>\n<p>Given that this is a story that&#8217;s primarily about the experiences of a young white boy, and how the death and injury of Native people reaffirms his view of himself as entitled, why does Vermont principal Elijah Hawkes use it every year in welcoming new educators to his school?<\/p>\n<p>Because that young white boy, and the people he injures with his entitlement? They&#8217;re in your classrooms, your communities, and your homes.<\/p>\n<p>This remains #vted Reads. Black Lives Matter. Now let&#8217;s chat.<\/p>\n<div class=\"epyt-video-wrapper\">\n<div  style=\"display: block; margin: 0px auto;\"  id=\"_ytid_47629\"  width=\"525\" height=\"295\"  data-origwidth=\"525\" data-origheight=\"295\" data-facadesrc=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/yTuAMWOasrU?enablejsapi=1&#038;autoplay=0&#038;cc_load_policy=1&#038;cc_lang_pref=&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;loop=0&#038;modestbranding=1&#038;rel=0&#038;fs=1&#038;playsinline=1&#038;autohide=2&#038;theme=dark&#038;color=red&#038;controls=1&#038;\" class=\"__youtube_prefs__ epyt-facade epyt-is-override  no-lazyload\" data-epautoplay=\"1\" ><img decoding=\"async\" data-spai-excluded=\"true\" class=\"epyt-facade-poster skip-lazy\" loading=\"lazy\"  alt=\"Elijah Hawkes reads: &quot;Indian Camp&quot; by Ernest Hemingway\"  src=\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/yTuAMWOasrU\/maxresdefault.jpg\"  \/><button class=\"epyt-facade-play\" aria-label=\"Play\"><svg data-no-lazy=\"1\" height=\"100%\" version=\"1.1\" viewBox=\"0 0 68 48\" width=\"100%\"><path class=\"ytp-large-play-button-bg\" d=\"M66.52,7.74c-0.78-2.93-2.49-5.41-5.42-6.19C55.79,.13,34,0,34,0S12.21,.13,6.9,1.55 C3.97,2.33,2.27,4.81,1.48,7.74C0.06,13.05,0,24,0,24s0.06,10.95,1.48,16.26c0.78,2.93,2.49,5.41,5.42,6.19 C12.21,47.87,34,48,34,48s21.79-0.13,27.1-1.55c2.93-0.78,4.64-3.26,5.42-6.19C67.94,34.95,68,24,68,24S67.94,13.05,66.52,7.74z\" fill=\"#f00\"><\/path><path d=\"M 45,24 27,14 27,34\" fill=\"#fff\"><\/path><\/svg><\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:<\/strong> \u00a0Thanks for joining me, Elijah.\u00a0 Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:<\/strong>\u00a0 Hi Jeanie! Thanks for having me, for this conversation. I\u2019m currently principal at <a href=\"http:\/\/orangesouthwest.org\/RUHS\">Randolph Union<\/a>, a 7-12 school in Central Vermont. It serves three towns and a bunch of others in the surrounding county: Randolph, Brookfield and Braintree. About 400 students at the school. We&#8217;re adjacent to the <a href=\"http:\/\/orangesouthwest.org\/rtcc\">Randolph Technical Career Center<\/a> and all the benefits that come with that neighborhood.<\/p>\n<p>I live in Middlesex Vermont; I grew in Moretown Vermont, about 20 minutes away. Began my career as an educator though in New York City and was an English teacher and then founding principal of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thejamesbaldwinschool.org\">The James Baldwin School<\/a>, a small alternative public school.<\/p>\n<p>And then moved to Vermont about 9 or 10 years ago and I\u2019ve been here and in this role in this place ever since.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:\u00a0<\/strong> Thank you for that. You are also a writer.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:\u00a0<\/strong>Yes, I\u2019m also a writer.\u00a0Like conversations like these, writing is a conversation with myself and with other people and with ideas. And it\u2019s one of the ways that I digest the work of being an educator. The work of being an educator in public schools, the work of being a public school educator in a democracy, the work of being an educator with adolescents. The work of being an educator as a father who has children. I pour that into my writing and try to make sense of the world that I\u2019m in. And then when I can try to share that with others and have further dialogue about it.<\/p>\n<p>I just got a book out actually this past month. The book launch parties have been few since social distancing, but I\u2019m excited to share that with people as well. It\u2019s called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/48815675-school-for-the-age-of-upheaval?ac=1&amp;from_search=true&amp;qid=biXNUTkTIe&amp;rank=1\"><em>Schools for The Age of Upheaval<\/em><\/a> and the subtitle is <em>Classrooms That Get Personal, Get Political, and Get to Work.<\/em>\u00a0And perhaps there\u2019ll be some intersections with those ideas in our conversation today.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:\u00a0<\/strong> I\u2019m ready to get to work! Let\u2019s see, well, one of the things I always like to ask books because I\u2019m a librarian and an avid reader and I\u2019m always interested in what other people are reading, do you have something on your nightstand right now, that you\u2019re working on?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:\u00a0<\/strong> I do yes. I\u2019m just 20 or 30 pages away from the end of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/43982054-the-water-dancer?ac=1&amp;from_search=true&amp;qid=NJ0IBMd5tJ&amp;rank=1\"><em>The Water Dancer <\/em><\/a>by Ta-Nehisi Coates. My brother&#8217;s reading it at the same time; we\u2019ve been having some correspondence about it. So we\u2019ve been enjoying that novel by Coates, whose essays, of course, I\u2019ve read in other publications. But this is his first long work of fiction.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:<\/strong>\u00a0 I loved that book, so much. Yeah. It\u2019d be interesting to pair that with &#8212; \u00a0I don\u2019t know if you saw the announcement yesterday but Coates Whitehead won\u00a0the Pulitzer for fiction for<a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/42270835-the-nickel-boys?from_search=true&amp;from_srp=true&amp;qid=fnfTR5DBJ4&amp;rank=1\"><em> The\u00a0Nickel Boys<\/em><\/a> which is another just phenomenal sort of historical fiction take.<\/p>\n<p>But I really love <em>The Water Dancer<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Actually it\u2019s come up a lot with people who\u2019ve I\u2019ve had on the podcast! They\u2019re either reading it hoping to read it, suggesting it to me, suggesting it to others. Great. So, I want to start with: why did you choose this text? Why choose <a href=\"http:\/\/briancroxall.pbworks.com\/f\/Hemingway%2C+Indian+Camp.pdf\">&#8220;Indian Camp&#8221;<\/a>? (.pdf)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:<\/strong> \u00a0It\u2019s actually a text that I\u2019ve used as a jumping off point for professional development discussions about our purpose of our work, and how we do our work. And it\u2019s a short story.\u00a0I thought: why don\u2019t we talk about that and see where it takes us in terms of conversations about our work as educators.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not about school but it\u2019s about a child. It\u2019s about children and the families that they live in. And they live in a divided society. They live in the United States at the turn of the last century somewhere in upper northern Michigan. And it\u2019s a Native American family and it&#8217;s aAnglo-American family and they cross paths in a fairly traumatic way. And the question that I ask my colleagues and I ask myself is:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Consider the protagonist of the story, the boy Nick, who\u2019s the son of a doctor, and ask yourself: if he was in your classroom, what would he need from you as an educator? What he would need from your school? And then ask yourself the same question of the Native American child that we meet in the story. What if he was in your classroom? \u00a0And how\u2019s that similar or different to what the son of the doctor needs?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Then the other question is more about the purpose of schools in our society and the question is:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What does the society need the children to get from their schooling?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:<\/strong>\u00a0Let\u2019s set the stage for our listeners. Nick is on vacation; he\u2019s fishing with his uncle and his father. His father is a doctor. And they\u2019re called in the middle of the night, I think, or the wee hours of the morning to this Indian camp. They have to get there by canoe. And when they arrive; as they\u2019re arriving, as they\u2019re traveling there, Nick\u2019s father is telling him that this woman has been in labor for a couple of hours and\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:\u00a0<\/strong> Or longer.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:<\/strong> Sorry a couple of days, you\u2019re right. Not a couple of hours. As they arrive&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s Hemingway, so it&#8217;s sparse, but there\u2019s a bit of commentary on this on the homestead, if you will that really jumped out at me about the descriptions of place, and of people.<\/p>\n<p>Uncle George is not very kind. He uses a racial slur against the young Indian woman and so it sort of sets this stage of these two separate worlds. Is there anything you would add to that? Or what you took from it?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:\u00a0<\/strong> Well you\u2019re right. It\u2019s Hemingway. So you know: short, staccato sentences &#8212; very observational.\u00a0You have to do some work as a reader to try to intuit what people might be feeling or thinking beyond their surface phrases.<\/p>\n<p>You might even say the first page or two of the story are boring.\u00a0And part of the why I choose this story is for that reason actually.<\/p>\n<p>And I\u2019ve been using this story mostly in the last 5 or 10 years in my work with predominantly white educators. like myself.\u00a0So one, choosing Hemingway, and two, choosing a story that starts off the way that it does, you know, kind of from the perspective of a child: very slowly moving across the lake, in a deliberate and sort of banal fashion. No one is going to really have their defenses up.<\/p>\n<p>So we\u2019re about to have a conversation about race and class and violence in the country we live in and I don\u2019t want people to be defensive, as we enter into that conversation. And Hemingway actually allows them to do that, with a diverse audience or with an audience that includes mostly white educators. Mostly white people.<\/p>\n<p>Part of the reason why I like this story is that slow entry into content that is very important and troubling.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:\u00a0<\/strong>You know, that makes me think of the slow way in which we are acculturated around race too. Like that Nick is this five or six-year-old kid, maybe seven, and he\u2019s picking up all these quiet messages about difference, right? Who matters. And what\u2019s important.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:\u00a0<\/strong>Absolutely.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:<\/strong> And I think about that\u2019s how experience in the United States, living in this highly racialized society that doesn\u2019t really talk about race, right? We slowly accumulate as children all these ideas.<\/p>\n<p>And for me, I\u2019ve been doing a lot of reading around decolonizing methodologies.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not just about the people, and the places, and who matters, and who\u2019s important, but like which ways of being and knowing we value.<\/p>\n<p>And in this case it\u2019s Nick\u2019s father&#8217;s very Western medicine way of knowing that\u2019s valued. Right, like he gets to be the savior, he gets to come in and rescue! And his scientific knowledge is what\u2019s important. While all the other quiet ways of knowing that belong to the Indigenous folks in the story, are completely unvalued.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:<\/strong> Yes, you\u2019re absolutely right. You know: again, it\u2019s not told in the first person, but you more or less are seeing things through the eyes of the child. Nick who I think is probably 5, 6, 7 years-old just based on how he talks and thinks (and I also have two boys, and so I remember them at that age and it does remind me of 5, 6, 7 year-old boys), and he sees his father conduct a Caesarian section in the most impoverished of conditions.<\/p>\n<p>These are bark peelers; this is a bark-peeling camp, is how I understand it. So the logs are drying out of the forest. There\u2019s dense and very rough and dangerous work of peeling the bark off of the log, before I assume there then sent by some floatation across the bay or down a river.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s the hardest work of logging that\u2019s done by the Native people here.<\/p>\n<p>Nick and his father enter this what\u2019s called a shanty, and most of the men of the village have moved away because the woman\u2019s distress is so troubling. It\u2019s a breech birth so she\u2019s not able to have the child. And my assumption is that she is going to die unless some kind of intervention happens. Which probably is why somebody went for help from this doctor.<\/p>\n<p>Because you\u2019re right there\u2019s a woman who\u2019s there attending to the young woman who\u2019s pregnant. \u00a0She\u2019s exhausted; her head is on its side. She\u2019s been in labor for days. Her husband is also in a state of destitution because he\u2019s wounded himself through his work. His foot is cut, and he\u2019s now disabled lying in the bunk above her, and so he can\u2019t escape her pain. He\u2019s trapped in his world of violence in so many different ways so he\u2019s there and the doctor doesn\u2019t bring any anesthetic\u2026<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re not really sure if he had any anesthetic and could have brought it, but he doesn\u2019t bring it. And he conducts a Caesarean section with a jack-knife and some rough thread&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s more that happens, but Nick witnesses this all.<\/p>\n<p>And on the other side of it, he&#8217;s heard his uncle use a racial slur towards the young woman who bites him &#8212; which is a very interesting moment in the story, a moment of resistance you might say. \u00a0It\u2019s one of the few times that a woman in the story speaks or does something. And she bites this man who\u2019s holding her down.<\/p>\n<p>But Nick hears the uncle use a racial slur. He hears his father say that the woman&#8217;s screams are not important &#8212; &#8220;I just need to focus on my task&#8221; &#8212; and so the father\u2019s bias and racism and insensitivity to the pains of the people he\u2019s working with, are clear.<\/p>\n<p>And on the other side of this Nick is going back across the lake with his father. At the end of the story they\u2019re going back across the lake.<\/p>\n<p>The man in the bunk above &#8212; the father of this child, the husband of this woman &#8212; takes his own life over the course of this story.<\/p>\n<p>And Nick&#8217;s father by then is completely deflated. When he sees the trauma &#8212; to a degree through the eyes of his child &#8212; he\u2019s deflated. And he wishes that he hadn\u2019t brought his son. \u00a0But the last thought that child has as he&#8217;s crossing the lake is, or it\u2019s a thought that he doesn\u2019t have\u2026 He has a sense that he would never die.\u00a0 There\u2019s a sense of you are in power.\u00a0 You are in a place of power from people with power, of strength and invisibility and you\u2019ve just\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Nick has just experienced extraordinary violence and he\u2019s experienced death, and he&#8217;s experienced pain&#8230; and on the other side of it he understands death as something that happens to other people.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s all of that that comes with this story about a young white boy and his rite of passage into what? Into power. It\u2019s a rite of passage into power and privilege. It\u2019s a solidification of that. Again, I think the question that to ask of ourselves as educators is: what does that kid need? He\u2019s in our school right now he\u2019s in your classrooms.<\/p>\n<p>That person with that power and that privilege is in our classrooms &#8212; or is in your own home.\u00a0 What is it, that person needs from our school?<\/p>\n<p>And then also what does the other child need?<\/p>\n<p>Because the other child lives.<\/p>\n<p>And if it\u2019s a public school in Vermont we also have that child in our school, too. The child is living in a camper.\u00a0 The child who\u2019s homeless, the child who\u2019s coming from great systemic poverty and the violence that comes with it. Both of those children are in our schools. What do they both need?\u00a0 Unless the doctor son is actually left to school because that happens. That\u2019s happened several times since I joined Randolph Union, actually.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:\u00a0<\/strong> Already left your school for private school, is sort of what you\u2019re saying?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:\u00a0<\/strong> That\u2019s what I\u2019m saying is that the doctor\u2019s son and the doctor\u2019s family may have the choice, of not being in your classroom.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:<\/strong> So, you\u2019re reminding me: I teach collaborative practices and facilitative leadership and we just focused on equity using protocols and structures to have hard conversations. Because these are hard conversations. About equity, about bias, about the way assumptions color our teaching practice, and how we see kids.<\/p>\n<p>And many times in Vermont I will encounter teachers, educators, principals, administrators who will say,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cWell our school is all white so we don\u2019t need to deal with race.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And then I encourage them to read <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/0Bw9KsmPAhGwfWGNKS0xnTWJ3OUU\/view\">What White Children Need To Know About Race<\/a> (.pdf). Because I think the question you\u2019re asking is related to that. Which is:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What kind of white children do we want our kids to be?<\/li>\n<li>What kind of white folks do we want our graduates to be in the world?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If we never talk about race, if we don\u2019t equip students with conversations about race they can\u2019t develop a positive white social identity.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:\u00a0<\/strong> Totally agree with you there. And I\u2019ve tried to train myself to not ever say anymore, that we\u2019re not a diverse school community. To say, &#8220;We&#8217;re not diverse,&#8221; erases&#8230; five, 10, 15, 20 individual students. Even though Randolph Union is 95% students who identity as white. I can say that we\u2019re mostly a white school, but I can\u2019t say we\u2019re not a diverse school.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:\u00a0<\/strong>Yes. I think we fall into a trap when we minimize or erase those students who may be biracial, or presenting as white or may have more complicated ethnic backgrounds.<\/p>\n<p>But we also fall into a trap by thinking that white kids don\u2019t have a race.<\/p>\n<p>So:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What do we need to focus on?<\/li>\n<li>What are some of the things that come up?<\/li>\n<li>And what does schooling need to provide for this sort of entitled young man who thinks he\u2019s never going to die?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Elijah:\u00a0<\/strong> Well I think Nick need to have a personal and historical understanding of himself. And he needs to have a personal and historical understanding of others.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m fond of saying, as we approach complex topics in the school community, that we need personal stories and historical facts. Personal stories and historical facts, personal stories and historical facts. And if we have both of those in our classroom, at our assemblies, in our professional development work, we have what it needs to have truthful conversations.<\/p>\n<p>Now I know we can certainly debate what counts as historical fact, but look: we\u2019re educators and so we\u2019re academics to degree, so we\u2019re going to default to what academia legitimizes as historical facts. And we should.<\/p>\n<p>But Nick needs to be in a classroom where he\u2019s enabled to reflect on his own personal story.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Where he\u2019s been invited reflected on this trip that he had as a five-year-old.<\/li>\n<li>Where\u2019s he\u2019s asked questions.<\/li>\n<li>And where he has to reflect on the society that he lives in.<\/li>\n<li>And where he\u2019s asked questions where he has to consider the perspective of other people.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Hopefully it\u2019s a classroom that\u2019s diverse by class ,and it may also be diverse by race to a degree. The teacher needs to carefully create a trusting and bonded classroom community &#8212; and the teacher may need help to do that. But a bonded classroom community where personal stories can be shared.<\/p>\n<p>So that\u2019s the classroom that gets personal.<\/p>\n<p>Nick needs to be able to hear other people tell their stories. And he needs to also be able to reflect on his own, and to share it.\u00a0 That\u2019s one thing that he needs.<\/p>\n<p>And then he also needs a politicaland \u00a0historical understanding of where he comes from, and the society that he lives in.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:\u00a0<\/strong> Can I poke at this notion of historical fact a little bit?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:\u00a0<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:<\/strong>\u00a0 I think you\u2019re right. I think history &#8212; or inaccurate history &#8212; is a huge part of our problem in this country.\u00a0 That we tell the stories that we wish were true about what our American society. And not just the like, &#8220;chopping down of cherry trees, never tell a lie&#8221; kind of stories.<\/p>\n<p>So yesterday, Nicole Hannah Jones won a Pulitzer <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2019\/08\/14\/magazine\/1619-america-slavery.html\">for work on The 1619 Project<\/a>. Which is wonderful. Because The 1619 Project really disrupted all of the history I learned as a student, right? By centering the experiences &#8212; and not just the experiences but the work &#8212; of Black people, and the way that Black and brown people have really built this country. Not just buildings, not through slavery but like: *built* our democracy. And moved it forward.<\/p>\n<p>And so I think this idea of historical facts means we need to trample the historical fictions we\u2019ve been telling ourselves as if there are facts.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:<\/strong>\u00a0 I totally agree. And we\u2019re fortunate to have, you know, unending resources at our disposal to access those stories that are going to trouble our fictions.<\/p>\n<p>You know:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zinnedproject.org\">The Zinn Education Project<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2019\/08\/14\/magazine\/1619-america-slavery.html?mtrref=undefined&amp;gwh=3B8B9DEC7BF757D0BCCD86F058646564&amp;gwt=pay&amp;assetType=REGIWALL\">The 1619 Project<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Facing History in Ourselves<\/li>\n<li>Rethinking Schools<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/teachingtolerance.org\">Teaching Tolerance<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These are organizations that offer educators off-the-shelf resources and daily reminders, about this day in history, 200 years ago: What was the experience of working class people, and people of color, and immigrants? They do center those stories and so the resources are there, there\u2019s no excuse for not considering them as we plan our lessons, and using them as we teach.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:<\/strong>\u00a0 What I hear from you is that we to do the work as educators. And that we have to disrupt or challenge our own indoctrination into a certain kind of history. And ask ourselves:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Whose story is being told?<\/li>\n<li>Whose story isn\u2019t?<\/li>\n<li>What does power have to do with that?<\/li>\n<li>And where do I go find those that haven\u2019t been told?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The work is for all of us at all levels, right? Like it\u2019s just not for young people. In many ways, we\u2019re Nick, too.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:\u00a0<\/strong> We are Nick, too. Absolutely.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:<\/strong> And so there\u2019s a quote. It\u2019s before the Caesarian section, when Nick\u2019s father the doctor is getting ready to perform surgery. He\u2019s just explained that the birth is breech, and he says to his son, \u201cBut her screams are not important.\u00a0 I don\u2019t hear them because they are not important.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And thinking about the context of this conversation with you, the question I wanted to sort of interrogate my own practice with, is:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What are the things that I as an educator sometimes was not able to hear because I consider them unimportant?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Elijah:\u00a0<\/strong> That\u2019s a great question, Jeanie. \u00a0I\u2019m wishing I would ask that kind of question when reading the story.\u00a0 You have here a doctor who feels like his primary task is to get the child out of the belly of this woman. And to do his best to save both of those lives in the process. So if he\u2019s preoccupied by her emotional distress, then he\u2019s not going to get his task done. That\u2019s one interpretation, right.<\/p>\n<p>In the broader context of this story there\u2019s huge insensitivities, and there\u2019s huge settler colonial racism that\u2019s playing out here? But the narrow view is you have a professional who\u2019s trying to get his job done.<\/p>\n<p>What are the corrollaries there to our work as educators?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve got to get these grades done! So I think it\u2019s important for us to ask: what are we not listening to?\u00a0 What pains and cries of distress do we not listen to, or do we shut out, in our efforts in the institution that is school, in our efforts to stick to the routine to get the task done, to tend to what we feel is urgent?<\/p>\n<p>I think that\u2019s a really important question.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:\u00a0<\/strong> Well and in this current moment here we are in the middle of COVID-19. And we know that this illness, which some people are falsely calling &#8216;The Great Equalizer&#8217; in it impacts everyone &#8212; is really impacting people of color way more than it is white folks.<\/p>\n<p>And I\u2019ve been you know not trying to read too many of those stories because then I end up not able to function for the day. But. This is also true of childbirth, this true of all medical problems actually, for people of color.\u00a0 How often doctors are <a href=\"https:\/\/news.berkeley.edu\/2019\/01\/18\/invisiblevisits\/\">not able to count their pain as real,<\/a> right. And I don\u2019t think doctors are evil people, just like I don\u2019t think teachers get into the business of teaching to hurt kids.<\/p>\n<p>I think what happens in these moments like with Nick\u2019s dad, is that we have work to be done, and we fall back on implicit bias in way that actually has huge impacts on our students, on patients of color who are dying.<\/p>\n<p>A hugely disproportionate rate of COVID-19 or not being admitted to hospitals because their symptoms aren\u2019t being take seriously. And I can\u2019t help but see these as intertwined.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:\u00a0<\/strong>Yes, absolutely. I think we need professionals in every institution who look like, represent and are from the same places that the people that are \u201cbeing served\u201d.\u00a0We need a kind of diversity in our positions of power so that we can better listen and better understand the work that we\u2019re doing through different lenses.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:<\/strong>\u00a0 I think it\u2019s not just diversity, because I don\u2019t think we can just rely on people of color to do the work here. But when we hold power and privilege? We need to personally do the work of disrupting our own biases and drawing attention to them and noticing them.<\/p>\n<p>Because I think that our biases do show up in what we think is important and what we think is not important. I can think of countless actually white students, but white students who\u2019d experienced some sort of trauma in their lives, or who were coming from a family of abuse or poverty, who we couldn\u2019t see, we couldn\u2019t hear them, because we didn\u2019t consider what they were going through important.<\/p>\n<p>And by that we I meant me and the teachers I was working with in my last school.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:<\/strong>\u00a0 I agree with you there. \u00a0But what I mean to say is for instance, right now if it was only white men in leadership positions at my school I would not be doing &#8212; *we* would not be doing as good a job as leaders right now, meeting the needs of our teachers who are young mothers or who are about to go and give childbirth.<\/p>\n<p>Because I have an associate principal who\u2019s a woman &#8212; so a woman in position of power at my school &#8212; the school is doing a better job of working with women who have had children, or are going to have children. And that is part of my learning; as in listening to my colleague.<\/p>\n<p>And because we have a person in power at my school who is born and raised in the towns where we work,\u00a0and whose family is been there for six, seven, eight, nine, ten generations? She\u2019s at the table when we\u2019re deciding how to allocate resources. Her voice matters because she understands the needs of the community in a different way than I do for all of my good intentions about putting myself in someone else\u2019s shoes.<\/p>\n<p>I agree with you that there is work to be done by me as an individual.\u00a0 And I think part of the work to be done is in listening to my colleagues who have different perspectives as well and ensuring that my colleagues do represent different perspectives.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t think it\u2019s an either or I think both of those things are important.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:\u00a0<\/strong> I agree: it\u2019s a &#8220;both and&#8221; for sure!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:<\/strong> \u00a0So the children born into the most desperate of circumstances seem to be more and more in number. How can I support my colleague?\u00a0 How can I support myself?\u00a0 Hence all of the conversations we\u2019re having across the state about trauma informed practice and secondary trauma, vicarious trauma.<\/p>\n<p>How do we ensure that the teacher core is strong in this work, working with a Nick and working with many other children from different and more challenging circumstances?<\/p>\n<p>And I guess what I\u2019ve come to think, Jeanie, is that it\u2019s less about victories and thinking about each child as potential victory. You know each child has a chance. Like: help that kid beat the odds. We need to continue with that kind of energy and activist educator effort, to get every child to have the most fulfilling experience they can have in our school.<\/p>\n<p>But at the same time? The goal may not be the individual victories; the goal is solidarity in the struggle.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:\u00a0<\/strong>That reminds me I love everything you just said and it reminds me of a story. There are these folks on the side on the bank of a river and these babies start coming down the river.<\/p>\n<p>And so they do what you do: they start grabbing babies out of the river, right?<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019re pulling one baby after another out of the river.<\/p>\n<p>And then one of them, like, takes off!<\/p>\n<p>And they\u2019re like, \u201cWait where are you going? There are all these babies! Come back! Help us? Why are you like giving up on these babies?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And they\u2019re like: \u201cI\u2019m going up river to see where all these babies are coming from!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Right? So it\u2019s moving from triage to systems-level change.<\/p>\n<p>And I think in schools I think it could be really easy.\u00a0 I know it was really easy for me to think of myself as somebody who could help save kids right one at a time, relationship by relationship and I think relationships are so crucial and important.\u00a0 And work with kid s is really important but I think I had some blinders on.\u00a0 I\u2019m thinking that I could save anybody that my work was somehow will somehow to save these kids.<\/p>\n<p>My boss, John Downes,\u00a0often asks me to think with the systems-level lens, and it does not come naturally to me.\u00a0 I have to work really hard to think about the systems change in that. I\u2019ve been thinking about I went and saw Ibram X Kendi when he came to UVM this past winter, and it was so profound. He\u2019s really asking us to think about racism at the systems level .<\/p>\n<p>A racist idea leads to racist outcomes. And that&#8217;s really thinking about policies and procedures. That\u2019s really helped me think about this, too. But like, if we\u2019re dealing with one baby at a time, we\u2019re not upending the system at all that creates that puts all these babies in the river.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:\u00a0<\/strong> It\u2019s very easy to focus year after year on the small number of kids who beat the odds and think that that\u2019s actually what schools can do. Whereas, really we\u2019re best at recreating inequities of the wider society.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:\u00a0<\/strong> I just feel really the need to say: I so admire the work schools do and that educators play.\u00a0 Like I think educators are working their tails off and that the society has given them way too much to do and I sometimes wonder if that\u2019s a huge part of the problem. If you\u2019re just trying to keep up, you\u2019re not going to look around and say,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cHey what\u2019s going on in the greater world that our student are showing up like this?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Like, it makes it really hard to like sort of see the big picture if you\u2019re just wallowing in the work we have to do day-to-day and we\u2019re expecting schools to feed kids and provide medical attention for, and to like. There are so many things that schools are doing and so I don\u2019t want to lose sight of the fact but I think educators not only are their intentions good but they\u2019re working so hard and they\u2019re hearts are in this work.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:\u00a0<\/strong> Yes. (I\u2019m nodding; I agree.)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:\u00a0<\/strong> Yeah, you can\u2019t hear a nod on a podcast! *laughs*. \u00a0I really appreciate this.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:\u00a0<\/strong> No that\u2019s fine.\u00a0 I also want to say just in terms of giving credit where credit is due that that when I hear myself say that that solidarity in the struggle and maintaining the struggle is the essence of the work? That I\u2019m hearing James Baldwin, and I\u2019m hearing Ta-Nehisi Coats in <em>Between Me and The World.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>You know I\u2019m hearing a man who\u2019s named his child after the word for the struggle and give that message to his child.\u00a0 And so I want to credit those authors for educating me and helping me see the world in so many different ways and giving me some of the language to describe my world.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:<\/strong> Thank you for that. I really appreciate that.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:<\/strong> In terms of the work at Randolph my mantra when we try to think about how to write curriculum that has relevance and is engaging to students and the wider community is: don\u2019t start with the notion of interest.<\/p>\n<p>A lot of us as educators will think, \u201cI want to engage the kids in what they\u2019re interested in?\u00a0 Joey what are you interested in, what do you like?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I think that\u2019s a reasonable question. It\u2019s an important question. We need to engage and know our children in terms of their interests but I think the more important question is:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What do you need?<\/li>\n<li>What does your family need?<\/li>\n<li>And what does our community need?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And if we can ask ourselves that question then and design our curriculum around those questions personal needs and societal needs, community needs we will be doing the work. We will be much more likely to do work that engages people in personal reflection and knowing yourself. A<\/p>\n<p>nd also we\u2019ll be positioned to do the systems change work and enabling kids to take action in their communities in those ways.<\/p>\n<p>The past couple of years we\u2019ve had what we call The Project-Based Learning Lab at Randolph Union which we staff with an administrator who supports teachers in designing courses that are project based in that they\u2019re oriented towards addressing some need in the community.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve had courses that are focused on racial justice and restorative justice, climate change and economic injustice, food insecurity and food systems.<\/p>\n<p>This is something schools can do: like, plan for it for next year. Do this next year: take something that\u2019s in the extracurricular realm, and it gets maybe an hour every couple of weeks, and make it a class.<\/p>\n<p>If you have a service club at your school &#8212; we\u2019ve had an Interact Club at Randolph Union for years. And so when the Project-Based Learning Lab opened up, we talked to Scott the teacher who\u2019s helped do that work &#8212; whether it\u2019s blood drives, or whether its supporting the education of girls in Asia, whether it\u2019s work with veterans who are homeless, lots of different local and international initiatives connected with the Rotary Club in town &#8212; \u00a0we&#8217;ll make that a class. So instead of an hour every couple of weeks with the kids who can make it after school, give it 220 minutes a week. And see how deep we can go in terms of understanding the work that we\u2019re asking kids to do.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:\u00a0<\/strong> Yes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:<\/strong>\u00a0We partner with an organization in\u00a0Montpelier that works with kids and educators in schools in Nicaragua. And just your understanding of the world we live in can go so much deeper.\u00a0 So instead of just being a tourist you\u2019re actually doing home-stays and you\u2019re learning in much different ways about the culture that you\u2019re visiting.<\/p>\n<p>So. Those are some things that we can do. Take initiatives that people are passionate about in terms of working with their local and international community, make it a course and provide some resources to help teachers to pull that off.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:\u00a0<\/strong> It sounds to me like what that also does is make space for both the needs of Nick and for the baby in our story. Right, like that it\u2019s making space for Nick to question&#8230; the truths, the learning that he\u2019s had, that\u2019s lead to some entitlement in the sense that what he\u2019s bringing. And also for this child who maybe couldn\u2019t afford an international trip. Or maybe couldn\u2019t stay after school because they have to help out at home. They both can engage together in the dialogue and the learning but also in the travel, or the experience of service.<\/p>\n<p>Like oftentimes we limit who gets to be a volunteer and serve? To kids with privilege. And yet everybody feels the need to serve and have an impact.\u00a0 And so I\u2019m just thinking about that.<\/p>\n<p>It seems like it\u2019s coming back to our original question of how do you create curriculum that meets the need of kids whose experience spans a broad continuum.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:\u00a0<\/strong> It&#8217;s key also that Nick is in a classroom with people who have different life experiences.<\/p>\n<p>And again the classroom community is developed intentionally enough so that Nick feels vulnerable enough to say something and then be questioned. And that the people who can question him feel like they have the support to question him, or the teacher can. We need those classroom community with the norms for personal discussion and political discussion and debate to be established.\u00a0 And that\u2019s hard to do, you know? If you\u2019re talking about personal things in the right way you\u2019re going to be having political discussions.<\/p>\n<p>Once a story that\u2019s personal and maybe shame0laden comes out of the closet and is shared you start to see that you\u2019re not alone in your struggle, right?<\/p>\n<p>James Baldwin writes that literature can also do that. You can start to see that you\u2019re not alone with your pain. In fact the pain you\u2019re struggling with is the only thing that really makes you human in the first place &#8212; that we share that experience with other people.<\/p>\n<p>And so what that means is that we have common stories and our common stories are shaped by common circumstance and our common circumstances social, economic, political, historical are shaped by public policy.<\/p>\n<p>So all of a sudden your personal story about your mom, who\u2019s struggling with several generations of poverty, who\u2019s not making a living wage, who can\u2019t pay the rent and who maybe is tending towards struggles with addiction &#8212; all of that has a public policy context.<\/p>\n<p>There are regulations about opioids that influence how many opioids are in our community. You know like on and on and on. You all of a sudden can see a personal struggle in a political context.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s something that often and I think our teacher core is not supported enough to do, and is not supported in their training to do? And that there is a lot of work to be done by educators and by the educators of educators? To help us be able to approach this work carefully and intentionally.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:<\/strong> I was going to ask you and then you sort of went there is like how do we prepare teachers?\u00a0 How do we prepare ourselves as educators to hold space for brave and hard conversations? That feels really important and I don\u2019t think that we should expect teachers do that without focusing on that in our professional development and giving them space to learn. Even to be in spaces like that in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>And I think that\u2019s a lot of the work I do with collaborate practices. Creating and \u00a0building relationships in communities that can allow us to poke at in a very public way our own biases and assumptions that we\u2019re bringing so that we can better serve all our students.<\/p>\n<p>The other thing I\u2019m hearing from you &#8212; and I thought a lot about this as I was reading the story is that this story describes the &#8220;shanty&#8221; I think is the language it uses, and the lives of native people completely out of context of colonization and genocide.<\/p>\n<p>I think that as teacher in my past I have also seen students without the context of the way policy has shaped their lived experience, right? And I see this in the news and I see this in our political setting. And I see this in the way policies are shaped all the time? In the way in which we want to think that slavery is over and doesn\u2019t matter anymore. Or that a people &#8212; any people &#8212; have done this to themselves, right?<\/p>\n<p>And so whether it\u2019s when we want to donate to Africa for poverty and we\u2019re not able to see how colonization has led to the very poverty we think we can fix with a concert and some dollars.<\/p>\n<p>Or whether it\u2019s in our own communities in the way,\u00a0that some folks are judged for choices they make. I think about that a lot. I think a lot about and it comes back to what you talked about earlier about historical facts. <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/247006629\">Ruha Benjamin talks a lot about this<\/a>\u00a0and about the importance of getting past history and talking about things like red-lining.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/247006629\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-25844\" src=\"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Ruha_Benjamin.jpg\" alt=\"Elijah Hawkes and Ruha Benjamin\" width=\"964\" height=\"537\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Ruha_Benjamin.jpg 964w, https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Ruha_Benjamin-300x167.jpg 300w, https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Ruha_Benjamin-768x428.jpg 768w, https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Ruha_Benjamin-800x445.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 767px) 89vw, (max-width: 1000px) 54vw, (max-width: 1071px) 543px, 580px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:<\/strong> So, what professional development, what PD should I be designing or should I be engaging in myself, to begin to hold, to help teachers do these two things that I\u2019ve heard you say. One is to be able to have these brave conversations. And not just to hold them but to facilitate them in their classrooms. And two, to sort of learn about and then teach about, the historical context, and the political context that shape our experience of the world.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0We need to understand that if we want people to understand how to create spaces for courageous conversations in their classrooms they\u2019re going to need modeling and experience of that. Because they may not have gotten it.<\/p>\n<p>They probably didn\u2019t get that in some of their own high school experience or in their own teacher training experience, so they going to need to get it in your faculty meeting experience.<\/p>\n<p>So part of it is about allocating resources so that we have time and space in our school year, in our months of school year to have those conversations, to have them modeled and so that people can become strong facilitators themselves.<\/p>\n<p>We learn by modeling.<\/p>\n<p>So it\u2019s important that there be a strong core of facilitators in the school. Not just administrators &#8212; especially not just administrators &#8212; but teacher leaders and others who can \u201chold the space\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>And then there need to be conversations about that are personal and political at the level of faculty. And then we\u2019ll learn how to do those in the classroom.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 That\u2019s important!<\/p>\n<p>And I think we could share the models that work.\u00a0 Every school has teachers who are doing this work already.<\/p>\n<p>You know a pretty firm believer that most communities have the resources they need to solve their own problems. And those resources are usually human resources. And so if we can help you know there\u2019s that classroom over here where there\u2019s a fabulous Socratic seminar that&#8217;s\u00a0happening and the kids are speaking from the heart about complex topics that are both personal and have public policy implications &#8212; let\u2019s figure out how to get that teacher\u2019s works read across the school.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/building-discussion-skills-through-socratic-seminar\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-25845\" src=\"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/socratic_seminar2.jpg\" alt=\"Elijah Hawkes Socratic Seminar\" width=\"866\" height=\"635\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/socratic_seminar2.jpg 866w, https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/socratic_seminar2-300x220.jpg 300w, https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/socratic_seminar2-768x563.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 767px) 89vw, (max-width: 1000px) 54vw, (max-width: 1071px) 543px, 580px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Looking internally for the resources that are there is also a really important strategy.<\/p>\n<p>And then modeling it, of course.<\/p>\n<p>We never have *this* much time, you know, that you and I have here today to talk about this story and the implications for our work in the way that we are. But one of the reasons why I choose to read this with administrators, or teachers in training, or teachers who are new to my school no matter where they are in their professional career? \u00a0Is I just want to model that we can have conversations about these topics and I want to model my own vulnerabilities and my own mistakes.<\/p>\n<p>And the risks that\u2019s I\u2019m taking. And how I think you know in some ways it\u2019s a bad idea for me to read this story with you, because I don\u2019t know you very well.<\/p>\n<p>Yet here I am, a white man reading this story by another white man about people who are very different from me and I want to be able to talk about that with my colleagues to make a first impression. We do this with our new teachers every year. So there\u2019s modeling as well as creating the space for people to have the conversations.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:\u00a0<\/strong> Well I appreciate that you read this story or had me read this story and have a conversation about it because I would not have chosen this story! *chuckles* \u00a0I would not. And even the name when you sent it I was like, \u201cHuh. Do I want to read this?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And then reading it and I\u2019m currently rereading one of my very favorite books in the whole wide world. \u00a0I\u2019m rereading it because I just turned in all my work for the semester and I have this opportunity to like sink into a book I love and it\u2019s called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/34649348-the-marrow-thieves?ac=1&amp;from_search=true&amp;qid=Y3Qx9W82bU&amp;rank=1\"><em>The Marrow Thieves.<\/em><\/a>\u00a0Have you heard of it?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:<\/strong>\u00a0No I haven\u2019t heard of it, Jeanie.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:<\/strong>\u00a0It\u2019s by Cherie Dimaline. And she\u2019s a First Nations woman; Canadian. Oh gosh. I wish I could just send you a copy right now.<\/p>\n<p>It just like, speaks to my heart. And I\u2019m rereading it with this new eyes from a semester focussing on reading decoloniozing methodologies.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s dystopic &#8211;which does not sound like a fun thing to read right now but actually is very relevant in this current moment.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s post-climate change. California has fallen into the ocean and white people have stopped being able to dream.\u00a0But what they&#8217;ve found is that that Indigenous folks don\u2019t stop dreaming. So [the white people] look back at history. And they start using the modes of residential schooling as a way to round up Native people and extract their bone marrow. So that [the white people] can dream.<\/p>\n<p>That all sounds wretched &#8212; and it truly is &#8212; but what happens in the story is our main character, Frenchie, gets separated from his family and is on his own. He runs into this rag-tag group of other Native folks &#8212; all generations, different backgrounds, different tribes, I guess, if you will.<\/p>\n<p>And they sort of exist on foot: traveling, hunting. Just surviving. But the book is really about community and healing and other ways of knowing, and ancestral wisdom.<\/p>\n<p>And it\u2019s so beautiful, I just can\u2019t say enough about it.\u00a0 But I thought about it a lot in relation to this.<\/p>\n<p>I think they would have an interesting conversation.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, one of the conversations we didn\u2019t get into that I\u2019m really interested in, is the ways in which we can find, ways of knowing and being brilliant and smart and extraordinary into such narrow categories.<\/p>\n<p>What would it look like if schools really allowed a diversity of ways of knowing and being and flourishing and being brilliant?\u00a0 Because every kid I\u2019ve known has been brilliant in some way. It\u2019s just that we only count a few kinds&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:\u00a0<\/strong> Right.\u00a0Yes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:<\/strong>\u00a0I know you have to go take care of your puppy, but if there\u2019s anything you want to add.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:\u00a0<\/strong> No, I just think that\u2019s someplace where I think this story can and should take is: if Nick is only knowing the world in the way his father is knowing the world, what is he missing?<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s missing the universes. And so the story needs to take us in that direction. It needs to take us to <em>The Marrow Thieves <\/em>and to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/20588662-an-indigenous-peoples-history-of-the-united-states?from_search=true&amp;from_srp=true&amp;qid=LAM6eYyWm9&amp;rank=1\"><em>An Indigenous People\u2019s History of the United States<\/em><\/a>. \u00a0It needs to take us in other directions.<\/p>\n<p>We can\u2019t just think, \u201cOh yes Nick is going to be okay because\u2026 yes he\u2019ll be fine.\u201d\u00a0 Let\u2019s focus on like, how we can save someone else in the story.<\/p>\n<p>Like, if Nick leaves your school only knowing what he knows now and only understanding his father\u2019s perspective on the world? We haven\u2019t done our job as a public school in this country.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:<\/strong>\u00a0 Well because Nick\u2019s likely to become or congress person right or our president, or the CEO of our company and reproduce the same systems that lead to very narrow ways of knowing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:\u00a0<\/strong> Yes. Or your school principal.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:\u00a0<\/strong> *chuckles* Or your professional development coordinator.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah<\/strong>:\u00a0 Yes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0Or your school librarian. Thank you so much for this conversation.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:\u00a0<\/strong>I feel like [this story is] not a *back door* into discussions about whiteness and race and privilege. But it\u2019s a *convenient* door into those discussions. Especially I think with white educators.\u00a0But we\u2019re really lucky to have had this long conversation with you it\u2019s not like\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeanie:\u00a0<\/strong> Yes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elijah:\u00a0<\/strong> It&#8217;s not like we\u2019re standing in line for food at a conference, it\u2019s like a real conversation! So I thank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Listeners: our hearts are breaking. Our hearts are breaking for all of Vermont\u2019s Black students, Black educators, and Black families. But frankly, our broken hearts are not nearly enough. Right now, we need to talk about what this all means for Vermont. What it means to interrogate in schools, and in classrooms, and in ourselves. &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/vted-reads-hemingway-with-elijah-hawkes\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;#vted Reads: Hemingway, with Elijah Hawkes&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25843,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1004],"tags":[1293,120,1292,1290,1291,71,1294],"class_list":["post-25818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vted-reads","tag-cherie-dimaline","tag-equity","tag-ernest-hemingway","tag-racial-justice","tag-ruha-benjamin","tag-social-justice","tag-the-marrow-thieves"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25818"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40986,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25818\/revisions\/40986"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}