S8E1 – Between We and They – Part 1 (Re-Release)

Between We and They - 2022 Re-Release - Part 1

Andrew: Welcome to Integrated Schools Podcast. I'm Andrew, a White dad from Denver.

Val: And I'm Val, a Black mom from North Carolina.

Andrew: And we are back in your feeds even though it's summer vacation.

Val: Yeah, we are!

Andrew: Because, we've got a very special treat coming every week the month of July. We are rerunning our Between We and They series, from back in October of 2019.

Val: All right. So friend, why are we revisiting this this month?

Andrew: Well, so, so for one thing, it is unlike anything else we've ever done, it's narrative, storytelling, there's score. It's a whole different beast from what we usually do here.

And then I think the other reason is that it really kind of captures a whole lot of what feels important to Integrated Schools, and certainly what felt important to Integrated Schools in 2019. And I know our listenership has grown since it came out originally, and we felt like it was great to put it back in front of people.

Val: You know, I was actually reading some bell hooks today, and she talked about the importance of stories and how they are illustrative, also help us understand the human condition. So I think a story is a good thing to do this summer.

Andrew: Yeah. Yeah, it does. It feels a little bit like, you know, like a summer reading project or something. We had this great opportunity, Beth, a woman who lives in a very liberal city in the middle of the country, is really grappling with the choices that she's going to make about where she sends her kids to school.

And, there's this theory of change that we talk about at Integrated Schools. I don't think we've really talked about it much on the podcast, but her story sort of encapsulates it, this idea of contemplate, de-segregate, integrate, and advocate.

So, you know, the idea is, is the contemplation phase is important. You have to kind of come to terms with the problems of segregation, with the promise of integration, with the history. As we see in this first episode, Beth really is grappling with this history and kind of coming to terms with her own understanding of the country that she lives in.

And then you desegregate your kids. So, you know, you show up in a school where maybe the kids are in the minority, where you're pushing back on opportunity hoarding. And it's not enough to just show up, we have to actually integrate our families, we have to actually show up and become part of the community, get to know people, follow the lead of the people who are there and, and really, integrate into a community. And then is the point for advocacy. That's the point where the relationships have been built, where it feels like, okay, now is the time to actually go and speak up and use your voice and, and Beth's journey through this series really kind of tracks that.

Val: Yeah, I'm listening to you, and I'm wondering for families of color, if that theory of change kind of fits the same way. So I think that's something that I'll be listening for throughout the episodes, right.

Andrew: Yeah. I appreciate you bringing that up because this was October of 2019. We were very, very firmly in the kind of White and / or privileged people talking to White and / or privileged people phase of the organization, and of the podcast. So I'm looking forward to, at the end of the fifth episode, we'll have a chance to hear what you heard out of it, because I do think it, it speaks really well to that portion of our audience. And, yeah, I'm curious to hear how it lands with our listeners of color.

Val: I hope they give us some feedback on it throughout the next couple of weeks.

Andrew: Yeah. Hit us up on social media, @IntegratedSchools, or shoot us an email, podcast@integratedschools.org and let us know what you're thinking about it.

And yeah, You'll hear one every week, for the next five weeks, and at the end of the fifth one, Val and I will be back to talk about what we heard.

Val: New listeners, this podcast was originally co-hosted by Courtney Mykytyn, who passed in December 2019. I never had a chance to meet her, but I am glad that I got to know her through the series.

Andrew: Alright. Enjoy Between We and They.

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ANDREW: Welcome to the Integrated Schools podcast. I'm Andrew, a White dad from Denver.

COURTNEY: And I'm Courtney, a White mom from Los Angeles.

ANDREW: And we want you to meet someone...

BETH: Okay, So my name is Beth, and I live in a liberal city in the central US and I'm married . . . to a man. We have two girls. The older one is nine in fourth grade, and the other one is seven in second grade.

ANDREW: Last school year was a big year for Beth and her family - it was a year of transitions, self-reflection and challenge -- though many of the challenges weren’t exactly where Beth expected them to be.

COURTNEY: We are so grateful that Beth allowed us to come along on this journey with her - I recorded conversations with her over the past year, and she was generous to share her thoughts and feelings as she struggled with pity and empathy, race and inequity, privilege and vulnerability… it wasn’t always easy to talk about...

ANDREW: Beth struggles through things that many of us parents are thinking about, -- it is what makes me so excited to share her story. She’s not an expert, not a scholar… just a parent, embarking on a project that baffled many of her friends. She felt like her decision was a step towards living her values, and she knew she wouldn’t “get it right”, but she was committed to the process - to trying.

COURTNEY: So, for the next 5 episodes, we’ll hear from Beth over the course of last year - and then we’ll catch up with her at the start of this school year for an epilogue of sorts. We’ll also hear from her kids. We’ll sit with Beth as she struggles and comes to understand herself, her kids, her neighbors, and her city in a deeper -- and different -- way.

ANDREW: This series is something new for us. This isn’t an interview with an expert, or an investigative journalism project -- it’s just ONE person’s story, and we’ve changed her name and bleeped out identifying information so that she might maintain some anonymity. But it feels worth telling because it highlights many of the challenges of integration--

COURTNEY: The fine line between saviorism and opportunity hoarding - why integration is good for our family, and good for our country, but neither too much.

ANDREW: The line between delusion and defeatism - one family, working within the constraints of a system, making individual choices, is certainly not going to solve racism, but they can still be an important piece of what is clearly generational work.

COURTNEY: And of the fundamental imperative that we can’t return to past models of desegregation - models that maintained a rigidly defined “we” that “they” are allowed access to. This is a story about being part of the radical work to build a new, broader, more inclusive “we”.

ANDREW: We hope you enjoy: “Between We and They: A School Integration Story” . . . .

[MUSIC INTERLUDE]

COURTNEY: Beth is a thoughtful, no-nonsense kind of mom. She's introspective, maybe a little shy.. and -- though she probably wouldn’t describe herself this way, Beth is also pretty fierce. In 2015, Beth’s family moved into a middle to upper-middle class neighborhood in a large, progressive, defiantly blue city in the middle of the country.

ANDREW: The neighborhood they moved to was nice - leafy streets, a neighborhood pool, nice homes, and the schools were highly rated. The elementary school they were assigned to had a good reputation, lots of enrichment, an active parent community, complete with a PTA that raised massive amounts of money for the school. In many ways, it was all of the things we tend to think of when we say “good” school. So, Beth did what her friends and neighbors did and enrolled her kids, and while there was in fact much to like about the school, there was also something about that environment that rubbed Beth the wrong way.

WHITE PARENTING

BETH: There's a lack of humility like my kid is so special. And I wasn't raised like that, you know, I do have parents who were very humble. I was raised in an upper middle class community in Connecticut. But the competitive parenting and how much can we get for our kids? And the indignation that I would hear from parents that there was not one field trip this semester? I mean, my God, I didn't really relate to these parents.

It's like, How could you feel so angry about this? It's not enough to have a fun day of like jumpy slides and Popsicles and you know, these are all fundraisers, but a fall carnival where they have a little Ferris wheel. They have other rides, like rides, like carnival rides on the grounds of the school! And the tickets are $75 per family. Something like that. Do our kids need this? Does my kid need this? And the indignation. You know, our kids deserve it. I can't jive with that.

I just really had a hard time sitting with it, and yet our, you know, wealthy school and also that a town has a sister school, which, by the way, is only four miles away. And we will donate money and we'll shop for Christmas gifts for these kids, not extravagant gifts. But we'll pat ourselves on the back that way. But it just felt very gross.

COURTNEY: This concentration of privilege in her school seemed connected to broader issues of social justice in society, and it bothered her. Her feelings were further complicated by her own family's racial identity.

RACIAL IDENTITY

BETH: My girls look racially ambiguous. We are an Asian mixed family, and my girls are ethnically mixed. I guess they're racially mixed too, their White and Asian. That's what I refer to them and us. I've been very sort of solid in my identity as a bi-racial person. I know that, like I'm not fully accepted by Japanese communities, even the Japanese American community, when I lived in the Bay Area, you know, like I didn't have their experience. I grew up in Connecticut. I don't have the older generation of mine who was interned. And I know I'm not, you know, wholeheartedly, 100% accepted and fit in with White communities as well. So I have identified as bi-racial.

ANDREW: Her school district serves a population that is over 70% students of color and over 50% socioeconomically disadvantaged, yet her school was over 70% White and just over 10% economically disadvantaged. The fact that the demographics of the school didn't really represent her town, or her state, or the country, gnawed at the back of her mind. And then . . .

FERGUSON/TRUMP AUDIO Clips: (Male journalist) “On the streets of Ferguson, MO outrage and anger. (chanting in background “No justice! No peace!) Protesters of different ages and races, demanding answers in the shooting death of 18 year old Michael Brown at the hands of a policeman.” (Woman’s voice) “God bless his soul, the police shot this boy outside my apartment.” (Wolf Blitzer) “We can now project the winner of the presidential race, CNN projects Donald Trump wins the presidency, defeating Hillary Clinton in a campaign unlike anything we've seen in our lifetime.”

COURTNEY: In 2016, the quiet gnawing at the back of her mind, her increasing unease about the choices that her family was making, became more and more difficult to ignore - The election, the events at Ferguson, coming across the writing of Nikole Hannah Jones, all forced Beth to confront the continuing problem of race in our country in a new way. She felt a need for her kids to understand the racial context that they were growing up in. So, she dove in - reading, learning, talking to people. And as she worked to better understand the vast inequities she saw, and the power structures that allow them to continue, the connections to school segregation were inescapable.

RESOURCE HOARDING

BETH: I think I also have been getting very tired of the parenting mentality that's around me, and I know it now, I can put a word to it now, or a phrase, and that is resource hoarding. And so that combined with learning that our public schools are as segregated as they were in the 1960s, and they are that way because White people want it that way. I just thought… It was intolerable to me. I saw it, and I still see it as upholding White supremacy. I know that sounds kind of dramatic as I say it, but that's how it feels. That’s how it felt to me at the time. I'm living it, and I'm supporting it now. I'm supporting this system that is so unjust, and so inequitable.

ANDREW: The hate march in Charlottesville, public KKK rallies, the rise of White nationalism on social media, these are extreme forms of White supremacy… but White supremacy is also baked into the everyday… The ways in which Black and Brown candidates are disproportionately overlooked for jobs and denied bank loans, the ways that Black and Brown patients are expected to tolerate more pain than White patients, the ways children of color are viewed as older and more dangerous … And it is this everyday White supremacy- quieter, and more insidious while ensuring that White people are continually advantaged -- that Beth was seeing in our schools.

COURTNEY: Once she saw that, the little voice in her head couldn't be ignored any longer. Beth was uncomfortable with her participation in this system, and wanted to do something different, be someone different in her city. Her friends, her family, other parents at her school, didn't talk about the connections between our country’s history of racism and the current state of our segregated schools.

ANDREW: So Beth connected with Integrated Schools -- a community of parents who are thinking critically about systems that perpetuate inequity in our schools, and also about how our individual choices are implicated in those systems. Beth attended book clubs, participated in conversations, and ultimately made a radical decision.

COURTNEY: As their kids were finishing first and third grade, Beth and her husband decided that they would leave behind the desirable, highly rated, well resourced enclave of privilege for something else. A new school, in a different part of the city.

[Music Interlude]

HOW SHE CHOSE THE NEW SCHOOL

COURTNEY: The public schools in Beth’s city have an open enrollment policy, which allows families to enroll in any school with space. While this policy is often used by privileged families to opt out of a lower ranked neighborhood school for schools with higher concentrations of privilege, Beth wanted to do the opposite. She had many, many elementary schools to choose from.

BETH: So I just kind of systematically went online at the school district and decided randomly to pick a five mile drive radius from my home. I intentionally wanted to go to the, you know, quote unquote bad side of town.

ANDREW: She also ruled out schools with a disproportionately high percentage of White or privileged kids. It was then that she discovered one school on “that” side of town that scored a 10 out of 10 on a well-known and highly problematic school rating website.

BETH: On paper, it looked integrated. And so that was the first place I toured. And I walked into this school tour not knowing what to expect, and I was blown away by the sheer number of new parents, and by how White they were. There were probably four adults there among about 40 parents who were not White, and the principal shared that the school in the upper grades are Black and Brown, and then the lower grades are mostly White, and this is why the school looks integrated on paper. But really, it's a rapidly gentrifying school.

And I knew immediately standing in the hallway with all these parent White parents. I thought, this is not the school for me. The tour was about two hours long. I left at two hours. I had to excuse myself. It was such a good process for me to observe all the questions from the White parents about every fucking detail. Sorry, I don’t know if I can swear on this. So it just confirmed I didn't want to go there, but it was a good sort of data point for me.

COURTNEY: Beth continued looking at schools, and she continued to find ways in which integration can so easily get sidelined in this process.

BETH: I remember sitting in a school that scored pretty low, but they were also doing a lot to try to get parents like me, I think, to the school. And by that I mean, they had a Mandarin program and a bilingual Spanish program, and I recall the moment, I'm sitting in the classroom with just a handful of parents, and I remember thinking, “Wow, it would be amazing. My girls could learn some Mandarin and my husband speaks Mandarin and we would just be great. It would be so great.” And I just felt myself kind of running with this idea like… And then I had to stop myself like, Wait a minute, What? What am I doing? What is my priority here? My priority, let's step back now, my priority is integration. It's very seductive. And I got seduced for about 30 minutes, lost in this fantasy of like “wow, my kids could learn Mandarin.”

COURTNEY: In this moment, she felt herself slipping back into the smog - the mindset that says a good parent gets all the “best” stuff for their kids. And the lure of the special program was seductive in a way that bothered her. She felt the pressure to think of public education as a consumer good. And while this school was offering something special, many schools- especially schools with the most disadvantage - just offer “school”. If “just school” is good enough for those kids, why shouldn't it be good enough for her kids?

ANDREW: So, while Mandarin would be a nice thing, she knew in her heart that making a choice for this program would be opting in to another opportunity for her kids that other kids didn’t have access to. And even if she could justify that choice because she would be an integrating family and because that school was under-enrolled - Beth knew that her honest intentions would not have been about pushing back on school segregation.

COURTNEY: Like the elementary school with the 10 rating and the influx of White parents in the younger grades, Beth saw that these were schools in transition, schools that might soon “look like” the school in her neighborhood, the school she was wanting to leave. Beth worried that if the school was pandering to privilege, and she felt the pull, others might be seduced as well. The school could quickly become a space that welcomed White and/or privileged families, possibly at the expense of remaining welcoming to families of color. The risk of gentrification loomed large, and so she continued researching.

ANDREW: Throughout her research, she found that in her district (like many across the country), schools with the highest percentage of Black students are also the schools that are the most under-enrolled. An under-enrolled school would mean she didn’t risk taking a spot from another kid, and would allow her to push back on the opportunity hoarding that shows itself simply in enrollment numbers. Schools with higher enrollment often have more funding.

So, after touring eight schools, the one she ultimately chose was one of these -

BETH: So I picked this school mostly because of the demographics. This town is predominantly Latinx. The African American community is being pushed out, so it's a dwindling population. So the idea that it was, you know, 40 something percent African American, 48% Latinx, that's why I picked it. And to be honest, like the principal, I didn't get a tour of the school or anything like that at the time, but the principal, he's like a rock star. He's been at the school for four years. He's a young, African American man, really dynamic, but also seems like he gets shit done, you know, like he cares, you know, the school still scores a 4 out of 10, but he's making an effort. He's connecting with the kids. It's a small school, and I thought, “Okay, if this guy leaves the school, which I know is possible, do I still want to send my girls in the school?” and the answer was yes, again because of the mix. So, while the principal helped, you know, just his sort of character, his persona, it wasn't the reason.

TELLING THE KIDS

ANDREW: And so, having checked the options, having considered the implications of her choice, and having fought against the smog we all breathe that tells us what good parents and what good schools are -- BETH decided that this would be her kid’s new school. But now she had to tell her daughters that they would be changing schools next year.

BETH: So my husband and I did tell them over their Spring break, which was in March. And, um, my younger one was pretty devastated. She just cried, and I mean, as soon as I told her, she just yelled out “Noooooo!”. And then she started crying and crying and crying and the older one was very stoic. So I just kinda held my little one like a baby. I said, I know, baby, I'm sorry.

She eventually stopped crying. It was a while, but she eventually stopped crying. And I was able to show them videos of the school. And, you know, they have a video tour on YouTube. I never got a tour, but I was able to see the video tour, so I showed them that. I think, to be honest at the time, I didn't do any big explaining, and I basically just said, Dad and I want you to go to school with people who are different, not just White rich people. I think that's basically what we said at the time. And, you know, over the course of the weeks and months, we've kind of fleshed it out.

COURTNEY: Going to school with kids who weren’t just wealthy and White was what they told their girls at the time, and while that certainly was the goal - WHY that was the goal was something that would require a bit more nuance - a bit more caution. The challenge became even more clear after Beth posted about her choice on social media

BETH: I wrote that I'm sending my girls to different school and this is why. The first comment I got was “Oh, you know, good, good for you. You know, your girls will stand out.” And that comment really stuck with me.

COURTNEY: Beth’s daughters may stand out as the only Asian-mixed kids, but the problematic assumption baked into the comment is that they would automatically, naturally rank higher, or score higher in comparison to “those” kids.

BETH: And it just kind of struck me because, number one, I felt like, well, that's not the reason why I'm doing it. Number two like, is that part of my motivation? I really didn't think it was.. But I do feel like my kids are benefitting. You know…

COURTNEY: While Beth’s daughters have structural advantages, the very fact of that advantage is not something Beth wants to take more advantage of but rather precisely what she wants to push back against.

ANDREW: Integration as a White and/or privileged parent can be tricky not just to talk about, but to think about… Our kids DO benefit - not because they are more inherently brilliant, but because there is much to be gained as an integrating child. Our families DO get “stuff” from this. It might be different stuff than the stuff at the White-segregated school, but there is benefit nonetheless. However, if our goal is only to get things from experience -- an experience that necessitates Black and Brown bodies - then we are really only seeking out the best for our kids without considering what is best for all kids.

COURTNEY: But the alternative -- choosing an integrating school only because it is the good and just and moral way to be a parent & community member - martyrdom for the cause of social justice- smacks of saviorism, saving the school and the kids there with our White and privileged presence.

The danger in these mindsets - opportunity hoarding and saviorism - is that they don’t lead to integration. They don’t challenge the fundamental structures of educational inequity, of power monopolies, of good/bad school or good/bad parent constructs. They change the details without blowing up the narrative itself.

ANDREW: Opportunity hoarding and saviorism throw open the doors for White or privileged parents to colonize these schools. To use our unearned power and social capital to remake the school in our image of how a good school should “look”, regardless of the existing values and culture of the school… Claiming resources -- from PTA power, to the time of the teachers and the principal, and displacing parents of color from having any voice at all. All this in service to our idea of how the school should serve our kids. Meaningful integration is BOTH good for our kids and our country but neither too much. Finding the balance requires subtlety, self-awareness, and nuance.

COURTNEY: For Beth, juggling these two ideas in her head and with her family felt tricky at times -- but also grounding. And she knew that how they showed up at the new school mattered. Of course, she wants to be a good parent, but she also wants to be a good integrating parent - a positive (or at least not harmful) part of a new school community. And, for that, Beth knew that she needed to understand race and racism better. She needed to understand the difference between being “not racist” and being “antiracist”... what it means to actively push back against the structures of oppression and inequity.

ANDREW: And that requires a deeper understanding of the history of race in America. Beth and her husband -embarked on a project to learn more for themselves and for the girls. One thing they decided to do was to take a family road trip to the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, and the Whitney Plantation in Edgar, Louisiana.

BETH: We took the girls to Alabama to see the museum. And it's been kind of this big sort of lesson or discussion that we've been engaged in. You know, when I heard about the museum opening and the monument opening, it just came to my head. I just felt like we should go, just drive in the car and go. And it just felt like how would we not? This is all part of this big picture that we're trying to teach… discuss with the girls. Like this is related.

You know, school segregation is related to lynching, you know, like racial terror lynching. Here in our county, you know, look at this huge slab that's hanging in the monument, that's where we live, girls, this is where we live. So I want them to see the connections. I know they're super young, but at least I want them to have a language for this, you know, to hear words around what this is. When this part of the museum talked about school segregation, it was a perfect opportunity to talk about XXX. This is why XXX elementary is on the other side of town, and then the city created an interstate to divide. That's why XXX is the way it is... That's what segregation is. Yeah, I feel like it was important for me to try to make some connections for them.

COURTNEY: ...But the learning wasn't just for the kids…

BETH: The trip was so powerful. I, um, I guess I feel a little annoyed with myself, like, why wasn’t I making these connections sooner in my life? I'm 47 you know, like why did it take me this long? I mean, it's incredible.

WHITE NEIGHBORS’ SILENCE

ANDREW: Her family was coming to terms with the decision to change schools - understanding it in the broader context of our country’s history of segregation and racism. She was having powerful and important conversations with her family about how to work against that - how to be more antiracist. However, the conversations about her choice with her friends in her neighborhood and at her old school felt much more challenging.

BETH: I learned… I gotta learn how to talk to White people, you know? Honestly, I'm still trying to figure it out. There's a lot of silence. My best friend, who was born and raised in Wichita and she's Arab, I mentioned this to her about the silence here and how weird it is, and she said, you know, what she's like: Welcome to the Midwest Silence. Like, people just don't talk about this shit here.

COURTNEY: And that silence made it hard for Beth to communicate the reasons why she was making this choice.

BETH: I don't want the White community around me to think that I moved my girls to a Brown and Black school because my oldest daughter has brown skin. That's the last thing I want them to think. I mean, at the time, the way I thought of it was we did not… this did not factor into my decision.

And so I'm still trying to figure out how to talk about this and not alienate people, cause this is not about XXX being dark skinned. This is about how we are responsible for not participating in this system of White supremacy. And then I could so easily get on my soapbox, you know, because, as Nikole Hannah Jones says, our education system is doing exactly what it was designed to do: Educate White people, White kids. It was never designed to educate Black kids. It's these kind of tidbits and facts that I kind of want to just spit out at people just like - think about it.

ANDREW: She knows the soapbox isn’t likely to get her very far, that it will shut down conversations more than open them up. She also struggles to come up with ways to have these discussions without self-righteousness. But the silence made Beth realize that her goals and her neighbors’ goals -- the very beginning point for these conversations -- were worlds apart.

BETH: I'm just, and I have a different agenda, like my agenda is not “what can I get for my kid? How can I benefit my kid and get them more resources?” That's not my agenda. My primary agenda is to stop supporting the system of White supremacy. That's my primary agenda.

ANDREW: That everyday White supremacy - once you see it, it’s hard to ignore.

[Music interlude]

COURTNEY: So last August, Beth bought school supplies, got the uniforms their new school required, and prepared for the first day of school - miles from their home and the school they had spent the last few years in.

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

BETH: So you know, so the morning was a little rough, but my older daughter, who has some sensory sensitivities, and so I knew that the uniform would be so hard for her. And it was. And I just felt with every article of clothing she put on, she just kind of like was crumbling a little bit inside. I was trying to be understanding and sympathetic and in my voice that, in my words, to her, but she was just kind of miserable. And by the time we got to school, I just kind of looked at her and I could see she was kind of on the verge of tears. And, you know, they went to the lunch line, got their breakfast and so that, you know, they sat down. It was very awkward. You don't know anybody first at school in a new school...

ANDREW: She waved goodbye and left them to figure this out - and she spent the day tense and nervous about how this was going to be.

BETH: And I was so worried and preoccupied the whole day, and I went to pick them up. And “How was it, girls?” And I, you know, I didn't want to be, like, overly joyful, or whatever. Like, “how was it?”.......

And they said “good, good it was good.” And it was so nothing. It was so not a thing. I was like oh my God, thank you. You know, I was just very grateful. Like it was fine. It was fine.

COURTNEY: All of her concerns, all of her worries, and the kids said . . . it was fine. And in that moment, as Beth breathed a sigh of relief, she began to let go of some of her apprehensions. Transitions can be so difficult but It really was fine, and it continued to be fine for the first week.

BETH: Somehow my older one pulled through. She was fine. She hates the uniform, but she somehow got used to it or whatever. And ever since then it's been fine and there's nothing really to report. There's no, no protest. I thought that there would be like, “Oh, I don't want to go to school,” you know, the second week on the second day or I'm still kind of waiting for it, but they're fine and they don't talk about how they don't like it. They talk about like, you know, my teacher is strict, but I like her. Or, you know, Mom, now I have five friends. That's what my older one, said that to me, and my younger one has two friends, you know, and they're gonna be just fine. And I think they're gonna be better than fine.

ANDREW: It took Beth a long time to make this decision, a lot of soul-searching around what makes a good parent, a good school, a good neighbor in her city. And after the first week, things were fine. Beth felt a sense of hope… they made it through the awkwardness of the first days and the girls began making friends.

COURTNEY: But as Beth let go of her initial apprehensions about the transition, new concerns started to come up. Concerns that made Beth reckon with her privilege, with ideas of pity, and entitlement. This reckoning pushed Beth further from her old community, as she struggled to become part of the new community.

ANDREW: Join us next time as Beth grapples with actually being at the school - PTA to playdates, academics to behavior issues, and a growing sense that her old community feels increasingly like “they”rather than “we”.

COURTNEY: If you are appreciating this podcast, please share it with your friends, leave us a rating or review to help other people find it, and support this all volunteer effort by donating at IntegratedSchools.org.

ANDREW: Music in the episode by Blue Dot Sessions - huge thanks to Beth for sharing with us.

COURTNEY: And, as always, we are grateful to be in this with you as we try to know better and do better.