School shootings are the most obvious manifestation of an un-safe school, and while they are tragic, they are rare compared to the daily harms our school structures can inflict on students. Dr. Meg Caven joins us to encourage a broader, more holistic view of school safety.

Showing up in global majority schools and then listening and becoming part of the community are crucial first steps for integrating parents, but the time comes when you have to speak up. However, knowing what to speak up about can be tricky. Dr. Toutoule NToya and Becky Boll join us to grapple with the challenges of knowing when to advocate and what to advocate for, and the importance of building community in that work.

Housing and school segregation are closely intertwined, yet the story of how that came to be is rarely taught. The students at EPIC Theatre Ensemble studied the issue and created a play to explore it. Their art serves both as an outlet for the shock they felt in learning this history, and also an invitation to deeper, more productive civic dialog about a topic that can often be fraught. We share a conversation about the piece as well as excerpts from the play.

For many, the words “civil rights” conjure images of the past, focusing on politicians, lawyers, activists. However, our guests today, Drs. Linda and Kia Darling-Hammond, ask us to consider the civil rights implications we face today in the fight for a quality, 21st century education for all kids.

We’ve been big fans of the Teaching While White podcast for a long time. While we’re preparing episodes for the new year, we wanted to bring you a great conversation from their show with Drs. John Diamond and Amanda Lewis about their book, Despite the Best Intentions.

We’re celebrating 100 episodes! Over the past 4.5 years we’ve shared 100 conversations ranging from parent conversations to experts. Today, we reflect on what we’ve learned, we share clips from past episodes, and talk about what we hope for the future.

Dr. JPB Gerald is back! In addition to arguing that what we prize in standard language aligns with a constructed White identity, he also makes the link between our concept of dis/ability, and the creation of the idea of Blackness that emerged from emancipation.

What happens when a group of well meaning, and well resourced, parents enter an under resourced school in order to “save” it? For Cathryn, a low-income parent, she felt like she was being robbed of the culture and history of her school community.

The mostly White vision of the suburbs baked into our popular conception doesn’t match the reality of today. The impacts of this are being felt in elections around the country, and the implications for education, and particularly the possibility of integrated schools, is huge. Dr. Jasmine Clark was the first Black woman elected to a suburban district in Georgia. She joins us to discuss.

PTAs are often where kids are first exposed to civic engagement. They see caregivers organizing to advocate for resources and policies. And yet, there is a massive representation problem, leading to inequities. Dr. Brittany Murray joins us to discuss.

Heather McGhee’s book, The Sum of Us, called attention to the idea of “solidarity dividends”, the gains that are made when people come together across race to fight for justice. She joins us to talk about her new podcast, also called The Sum of Us, which features a different story of cross racial solidarity in each episode.

We’re back!! Val and Andrew discuss transitions – back to school, middle school, high school, new forms of parent engagement, autonomy for our kids, and your transitions!

Intensive Parenting – helicopter, lawnmower, snowplow, free-range – is often pursued by White and privileged parents as a way to protect kids from failure and to ensure that they end up on the “winning” side of the vast economic inequality in our country.  However, the ways that White and privileged parenting norms impact entire school communities often end up perpetuating existing disparities.

FROM 2019: As Beth’s district contemplates school closures, she is finding that being part of the new school community gives her a different perspective on these issues.

FROM 2019: Transitions aren’t always easy, but both Beth and her daughters reflect on the ways they’ve grown.

FROM 2019: Being in between can be lonely, but it can also be liberating. Beth reflects on the past year.

FROM 2019: Two months into the school year finds Beth grappling with the differences between schools, trying to make sense of how she and her family fit into these two communities.

FROM 2019: Race, parenting, and privilege. This 5-part series will explore how our choices about school shape where we belong, who we call “We.” Part 1 – Something feels wrong at the “good” school.

Season 2 of The School Colors podcast features a deep dive into housing and school segregation in Queens. We’re joined by hosts, Mark Winston Griffith and Max Freedman, to discuss race, class, and power in our schools and cities. While focused on one district in Queens, the stories are universal.

Val and Andrew reflect on a whole season worth of episodes together as co-hosts, share some of their favorite moments, and answer some listener questions in our final episode of season 7.

We are joined by James Haslam (he/him/his), who serves as Senior Fellow at Race Forward leading the H.E.A.L Together Initiative, providing organizing models and trainings for caregivers, teachers, and students to advocate for high quality public education as an essential building block of multiracial democracy. James shares about his organizing work, and what caregivers can do to push back against bad-faith narratives and act to support a fully funded, honest, accurate public education for all kids.

Val and Andrew sit down with two parents, one Latina and one Asian American, to reflect on what it means to address anti-Blackness, their own racial identity, their own educational experiences, and the impact it all has on their parenting choices.

A professor of sociology at UT Austin, Dr Chantal Hailey studies how micro decision-making contributes to larger macro segregation patterns and how racism creates, sustains, and exacerbates racial, educational, and socioeconomic inequality. Her study complicates and expands the Black/White binary, and it is essential for the conversations we need to be having in order to dismantle anti-Black racism.

Last episode, Carol Anderson on White Rage, was a lot, so we’re taking today’s episode to discuss.

“Since the days of enslavement, African Americans have fought to gain access to quality education. Education can be transformative. Education strengthens a democracy.” – Dr. Carol Anderson, author of White Rage joins us to discuss the White rage backlash to the Brown v. Board decision, and how we are still living with its impacts.

The Center for Antiracist Education (CARE) has released a framework to support educators with the will and knowledge to end racism’s destructive legacy. Val’s day job is as their academic director. We’re joined by her colleague, Brittany Brazzel to discuss the framework and how we can all take steps towards antiracism.

Dr. Susan Faircloth, an enrolled member of the Coharie Tribe, and a professor of education at Colorado State University joins us for a long overdue conversation on Indigenous education. Going deep into history, Dr. Faircloth ties past struggles to the current realities for the more than 650,000 Native students in our public schools today.

The idea of a zero-sum version of prosperity that assumes advances for some must come at the cost of others, is based on the lie of racial hierarchy upon which our country was founded. Heather McGhee’s book, The Sum of Us, illuminates this issue, and calls us to imagine something better. The paperback version was released today, so we are revisiting the episode with new commentary from Andrew and Val.

Chrissy Colón Bradt is an Afro-Latina mother of 2, married to a White man. She has thought a lot about how to support her kids in their own racial identity development. She is the co-author of the Parenting for Racial Justice chapter in the new book, Parenting for Social Justice. She joins us to discuss.

As we come to the end of 2021, Val and Andrew answer listener questions.