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.

Despite a feeling of normalcy around schools this year, teachers are screaming that the crisis is not over. For many, this school year is the hardest yet in the COVID era. We revisit a conversation with teachers from April of 2020 and provide some updated perspectives.

We’re joined by educator, speaker, and professional development specialist Dr. Sarah-Soonling Blackburn to discuss the myth of the “Model Minority.” Dr. Blackburn talks about the personal and societal trauma of our racial hierarchy and what may be gained from unpacking and disassembling these old narratives in a way that gets us closer to collective solidarity.

Tomás Monarrez’s work at The Urban Institute focuses on school segregation. As an economist, he brings quantitative skills and a deep respect for data. We discuss the ways we have thought about segregation are problematic, and where the low-hanging fruit is to try to improve desegregation through the country.

Stefan Lallinger’s grandfather argued the Brown v Board case at the Supreme Court. He has stepped into that legacy in his own work as a teacher, a school leader, and now leading The Bridge Collaborative at The Century Foundation. We discuss how his family history has shaped his approach to integration, and what gives him hope for future generations.

We’re joined by two White mothers who recently moved. Anna and Sarah have been part of the Integrated Schools community for some time and had the opportunity to really think about their values as they chose new cities, new neighborhoods, new houses, and new schools.

We kick off Season 7 with some big changes for the podcast! Val, a Black mom from North Carolina, joins Andrew to co-host this season. We discuss why she cares about school integration, and what we hope to accomplish through our multiracial discussions.

Mother, journalist, and author Courtney Martin’s new book, Learning in Public, is at once a deeply personal memoir of the “journey of a thousand moral miles” that led her to enroll her daughter in their neighborhood “failing” school, as well as a full-hearted endorsement of public schools as the foundation of our fragile democracy, in all of their nuance and complexity. She joins us to discuss the book, and integration more broadly, with one of the key characters in the book, Mrs. Minor, a Black teacher who left the public schools to start her own private preschool, and brings a healthy degree of skepticism of the value of desegregation.

In our season 6 finale, we’re looking back at the infamous “separate but equal” case – Plessy v Ferguson, and how we continue to live with many of the ramifications of that decision today. Attorney Paula Forbes joins us to discuss the importance of reckoning with our past and repairing in order to create the future we desire.

Greg and Carol, two Black parents from different parts of the county, share their experiences in mostly White schools. Through them, we can see how far we have to go to created truly integrated schools.

Part 4 of our Brown v Board at 67 series pushes back on the narrative that desegregation is solely about Black and White kids. David Hinojosa helps us better understand Latinx perspectives on integration from before Brown through today.