 To Crossroads in Learning, I am your host, Keisha King. Thank you so much for joining us today, right here in Honolulu, Hawaii. As always, we like to start our show by thanking our special guests who are coming up in just a little bit. But I want to take a moment to say, I don't know when you are watching this show. I don't know if it's this day, it's live. I don't know if it's going to be two months or two years from now. So I want to put this show in perspective. Number one, we are celebrating African American History Month, Black History Month 2020. But it's February 3rd, 2020. It is exactly one week and one day since the tragic passing of Kobe Bryant. As you may know, Kobe Bryant, the legendary basketball player for 20 years with the Los Angeles Lakers, died in a tragic helicopter crash just one week and one day ago. No one could have been prepared for such a tragedy, such a loss. A loss that happened right here at this present moment when everything seemed to be going so well. He had a wonderful career. He retired after 20 years with the exact same team he started with. Most of us remember, or some of us, perhaps, remember when Kobe came onto the scene. He was an 18-year-old bright-eyed student, that's right. He started going to a prep school at 17 when he was selected as an 18-year-old to play for the Los Angeles Lakers. Now here's the thing, he was fresh out of high school, hadn't spent a day in college at all. He was so good that all of those who were observing him knew immediately that he was going to be someone great. It seemed to be his destiny. His father was an app basketball player and he did a wonderful job in his career. But then Kobe came along and he did what many only dream of, going straight from high school into the NBA. Very few have done it before or since. And we're so proud of the fact that he did do it and he found success. And in fact, success that was just enormous, enough to take care of his own life and that of his family. Sadly, we mourn his passing and that of the other passengers that were on the helicopter with him at that time, including his 13-year-old daughter, who many say was his prodigy. Such a loss for all of us. So it is while it is rather in the context of that, that we're having this discussion today to talk about education, equality, and whether or not education is what it should be to help so many find success. So today we have with us two guests who are going to share with us their experiences in education. First, we have Dr. Atia Nathan, who is a licensed clinical social worker with the United States Air Force. And second, we also have Dr. Rachel Bray, who is joining us from Georgia State College. Is that correct? Ladies? College and State University. College and State University. Thank you so much. Ladies, thank you for joining us on the show today. Welcome to Crossroads in Learning. Thank you for having me. Totally my pleasure. So as you heard during our opening, we are saddened by the loss of Kobe Bryant and the others that were on the flight with him. Very briefly, I'll open it to both of you just to share your thoughts and what it was like for you when you heard the news last week. Atia, Dr. Atia, we'll start with you. Sure, just it was a shot. You know, we initially heard it through a post on Facebook and I thought, this is not real. This is probably some type of spam. My husband looked online and he said, no, I just checked it out. And he's passed. So it was just a shot because this is someone we grew up watching. Now he was not much older than my husband and I. So it was just this belief, especially just knowing his work ethic and everything he achieved, it was it was definitely a hit. I agree. And we'll turn it over to Dr. Rachel Bray as well. If you can share with us your thoughts on what it was like when you heard the news. Actually, a friend of mine lives in Seattle and I actually received a text from him right before the news alert showed up on my phone. So I heard it through a text and I was very shocked just like Dr. Nathan, just a lot of shock. I immediately started trying to find the information online. And like I said, I couldn't initially find anything because he was also on the West Coast, so he heard it before we did. It was difficult because I have two brothers that played basketball in college and they are in that same age group with Kobe. So I grew up with that name. You know, that was their role model and still is because of his work ethic and the fact that, you know, he played so well. He was able to forego playing in college and go straight to the NBA draft right out of high school. So I think they really looked up to him because of that as well. So it was it was a very, very big shock as well for us as well. I agree. You know, I was in the same predicament as everyone else. I heard it online first and you just hope that this is one of those terrible pranks or something that is just an awful untruth, untruth. And then when reality set in immediately, there was shock. And you felt as though you knew Kobe because as you all have stated, many of us are in the same age group. We had that hope for him that he would find success. And he was the next Jordan and he surpassed Jordan. And then he was one of the best to ever play the game. So you felt every success with him and every failure. You've been with him through literal trials and you hoped for the best. And then when you see a person who is living their life in the public eye and they are living the dream, you just don't expect something like this to end it all. And so we feel for the Bryant family, for the Los Angeles Lakers organization and then for all the other passengers and the pilot and their families as they are suffering an enormous loss. What we know about Kobe is that he left high school and immediately went into the NBA draft and walked into millions of dollars. As I stated, that's so rare. That's the dream of every person who's ever touched the basketball and thought one day I'd like to make it big. He lived that dream and he made it big and he made all these shots that set him apart from every other player on the field. But certainly most Americans and most people in the world don't face the type of success that he had. And for him, we cannot say that his success was based upon his education. And in fact, it was based upon his talent and the wisdom he used while playing the game. As educators, I'd love to hear your thoughts, however, on the importance of education. We'll start this time with Dr. Bray, can you share with us your levels of education and what you do and why it was important for you to seek what you have accomplished? Well, first to start off, I did go to school and graduated from high school in a small town in the middle of Georgia. Then I went to a university that was very, very large. It's one of the largest ones in the state. And from there, I started teaching and then I eventually got my master's at a school in Alabama. And then I got my doctorate degree at another school, a small private university here in Georgia. For me, I felt that once I got in the classroom, it was very important to me that I continued my education so that my students could see that even though I was teaching them, they also saw that I was still learning and how to be successful in my own life. I love the research and even in that, a lot of times I would share with them. When I was working on my doctorate, I would share with my students, my middle schoolers that I taught that it was important to understand the world that you lived in. It was important to understand how you can help the world. And one of the ways was by getting more knowledge. And I still think that's very, very important that students see the educators in their classrooms or even their schools continuing their education. And it doesn't matter what field, whether it's in leadership or they get a specialist degree or something. And the adults that are in their lives that are in those schools, they should share their experiences with them so that way they see that they themselves can be successful as well. They can also see that they don't necessarily have to have a particular talent. And that's going to be the only thing that gets them out of the socioeconomic class that they're in, especially here in Georgia is, you know, the poverty level is pretty high in some areas. And so a lot of times, I know that's what I want to mention. Let me interject right here and just mention that a lot of our students are in schools that are title one schools and a title one school is a school that has a lower social economic class, especially a higher percentage of a lower social economic class. And so those students have a tendency to be the ones that are hopeful for that wicked jump shot that will take them to the NBA or they're the fastest runner and they'll get into the NFL when that is not the reality. Kobe was the exception. Dr. Nathan, can you touch base with us a little bit and talk about what the lives of those types of students who come from that lower social economic background, what is their everyday life like, especially when we think about what has happened since Brown versus the Board of Education, where we fought for tirelessly and one for integration in our schools so that we could have some type of equality. Can you touch base with us about that? Absolutely, so prior to working as a civilian social worker, I actually worked in both Virginia and Mississippi where my cousin and I currently reside. He's active duty military, so I worked in the school system in both states and they're different as Dr. Bray was talking about the poverty level in Georgia and it's certainly the same here. We see that here in Mississippi working in a school where in Title I, where you have such a high population of students who are receiving free and reduced lunch. For me as a social worker, not a teacher but someone still in touch with the students on a regular basis, I quickly found particularly for our African-American students and even our Hispanic students said me being there meant something and it wasn't just I just need to be at my post on time, but it was important for the students to know, yes, I'm an African-American female, but also I have my doctorate and I'm not going to tell, oh, I'm Dr. Nathan, but what I quickly learned was when I said my name is Dr. Nathan, quickly students will gravitate towards you because they see someone who looks like them and they want to know, well, how did you do it? And then you're able to open up that conversation. Well, if I was able to do it, trust me, I know that you can do it. I came from Kentucky, I came from a school with a high number of African-American students. I came from that high school, the high school that if you went there, you were not supposed to graduate. So I understand a lot about what that means to come from the school where you're not supposed to graduate, let alone go to college, let alone achieve a bachelor's, a master's after it, but I was able to do that. And so it's important that every day you know that you're coming in contact with students who may not have someone who's at home helping them with their homework. And it's not necessarily because their parents don't want to help, parents have to work. Working in a single one where you have a lot of students who are being raised by single mothers, they're tired, you might have more than one sibling, you get off work, you're trying to feed your children, it's a lie. So understanding that those students are bringing in special needs that maybe other students don't have, our role every day is to encourage those students. And that's when I really found that my role was just getting to know the students and building relationships. And it's important that you mention relationships. We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to talk a bit about relationships and how we are preparing and helping others for the next generation of students that are going to come out. You are watching Crossroads in Learning. I'm your host, Keisha King, and we'll be right back. Aloha, I'm Lillian Cumick, host of Lillian's Vegan World, the show where we talk about veganism and the plant-based diet located in Honolulu, Hawaii. I'm a vegan chef and cooking instructor, and I have lots of information to share with you about how awesome this plant-based diet is. So do tune in every second Thursday from 1 p.m. Aloha. Aloha, y'all. My name is Mitch Ewan. I'm from the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, and I'm the host of Hawaii, the State of Clean Energy. We're on every Wednesday at 4 o'clock, and we hope that we have interesting guests who talk to us about various energy things that are happening in Hawaii all the way from PV to windmills to hydrogen. Most of my heart, electric buses and electric vehicles. So please dial in every Wednesday at 4 o'clock on Hawaii, the State of Clean Energy. Aloha. Aloha, and welcome back to Crossroads in Learning, where we're talking about the Black History Month as it pertains to education. We have two special guests with us today, and we've been having a wonderful conversation about education as it pertains to African Americans and whether or not equality is really happening in our classrooms. And I want to ask both of you ladies, Dr. Nathan, you've touched on this already. How important is it to develop relationships with students in the classroom? So I'll go back to Dr. Nathan and just you can finish that thought. Sure. It's extremely important. There's one study, and forgive me because I cannot think of the researchers on this, but there's a study that states that if a student just has contact with at least one teacher who looks like them, it increases the likelihood that that student will go on to college. And that's just having one teacher who looks like them. I had to think about my own journey, and I thought, wow, I did have African American female teachers. I never had an African American. Well, I'll take that back. I did have one African American male teacher, but I was speaking with my husband who had no African American male teachers and just that connection that you build with a teacher who looks like you. It means a lot because it says to you as a student, again, I can do it. And they have, you know, we have some type of common ground with that teacher and it makes them more real life. You know, I can touch them, I can see them every single day and I can start to see myself in that person. So it's extremely important. And Dr. Bray, I'll ask you the same question. What's it like for you working to develop relationships with your students? Well, it's an interesting concept, and I like what Dr. Nathan said. It is important that students do have someone that looks like them. I have the honor of working with students that look very, very different than I do. The demographic is a very, very high percentage of students that don't look like me. So when there are students, one or two students that do come in in the cohort model and they see me, they seem excited because they see someone that looks like them that's gone through the experience of becoming a teacher and they're excited to talk about their experiences that they're having in the student teaching that they're having right now. And I think I feel like there's more of a connection because they do see someone that looks like them and they feel like they can talk to me perhaps in ways that maybe I will understand maybe a little bit more where they're coming from. So again, I do agree with Dr. Nathan. Students regardless of the age, higher education, middle grades, early childhood, whatever, I think they do need to see someone that looks like them so they can feel some connection and that way the educators can build a relationship with those students. You're exactly right. Representation matters on multiple levels. When we look at our textbooks and we look at our classroom design, we've gone from a very traditional classroom setup to something that has flexible seating and whiteboards and different forms of technology, makerspace, you name it. And it has reshaped the way that we teach our students. Hopefully that's the goal because students today are very different than they were in the 1950s. There was this model of sit and get and we are moving so far away from that as we should. I'm really glad about it as an educator because back then we had to take our textbooks and make it enough. And the entire issue with Brown versus the Board of Education had to do with the fact that our students didn't have up-to-date quality textbooks and that was a very huge disadvantage. Now we have the entire world at our fingertips through our smartphones, through different resources that we find online. How has that format made things equal for our students these days? Either of you can answer that. No one wants to go first. I'll start with you, Dr. Bray, because I understand that in higher education right now, is it true that you are currently working to send students out into the field of teaching? And if so, your teaching teachers talk to us about whether or not that's really working for them. The interesting thing now is the generation of teachers that are going into teaching, this is the group of teachers that are student teachers that grew up with technology. I think this is the very, very little small aspect of it. So when they go into the classrooms though, especially here in this area, and this is what I was saying about the Title I schools, is they're going into classrooms where the technology, the devices have to be there because there's a belief that having all of these iPads or computers, broadband has to be very fast. That makes for a better student in the Title I schools. But what my student teachers are noticing is that it's not really working. And actually, interestingly enough, they kind of want to go back to more of a traditional in the sense of, you know, just working one-to-one with the students and not so much with the technology. And so I find that pretty interesting. I don't know if it's making it more equal. It is an interesting trend, honestly, at this point because a lot of the students also that attend college, at least in the area where I'm from, they come from a higher socioeconomic class. So they have a, there's a gap whenever they're going into the classrooms as well, whenever they're seeing students in Title I classes because they don't really understand some of the challenges that their students, their own middle school students or early childhood students like third or fourth graders are going through. So there's a disconnect there as well. So I think it might be, I don't see as much equal overall. I think they're maybe in different pockets of equality. But I think just as a whole spectrum, I would have a hard time saying that I think it's completely equal. Yeah. And I would think that with the advent of technology, the thought was especially by those of us or those who were the creators of it all, they wanted a computer in every home. I remember him saying that very early on. I remember the commercial where he said that. And so the thought was that everyone would have a computer in their home and therefore would have access to, everyone would have equal access. But that's still not always the case. Even if they have a cell phone, they may not have enough minutes on their phone to get to the technology that is necessary. So I wonder if social status is remaining the same and unequal because they cannot get their hands on the technology that is supposed to make them equal. Dr. Nathan, can you talk to us about that? Absolutely. Now, something I found interesting, as you said, we assume that every child has a computer. We assume that every child has access to a printer. Those are no two assumptions, right? Another assumption that we assume that parents understand the technology that's being used in the school. And we assume that parents not only understand it, but have access to it. So you have little Johnny who comes on when he has a homework assignment that he needs to do through Google Classroom. Little Johnny knows how to work it, but little Johnny's mom doesn't know how to work it. So the next day when the homework is due, he says, oh, I didn't do it. And then the next day the homework is due, he didn't do it. So we call mom and mom says, you know, I ask, every day does he have homework? And he says, no, I don't have homework. And we think that we say, well, Google Classroom has everything. And what do we hear? I don't even know what Google Classroom is. So that assumption that they have access to it, might be true, let's say they do. But if the parents don't understand the technology that's being used in school and that is then expected to be used at home, we're just going to keep hitting the brick wall. It's not going to matter if you can have all the technology in the world, but if the parents don't understand how to use it and understand the importance of it in their child's education, then it's just null and void. So then as we prepare to close, I want to give you both a moment just or not a moment, I should be clear and say 15 seconds or less just to give us your thoughts in closing about the equality of education. Have we come far enough? And how much further do you think we have to go? We'll start with you, Dr. Nathan. Okay. I do believe that we've made leaps and bounds. You know, I'm sitting here as an African-American woman with a doctorate. So I definitely am grateful for that. Coming from parents who went to high school and for me to be a college graduate, I do believe that's true. I do also believe, however, we still have a long way to go. We need to a point where our students are not just seeing basketball players and aspiring to be athletes, which is wonderful. But also we know there's not a lot of representation in the STEM fields. We need it to be where those who have certain degrees are going back into schools to help or having programs on the weekends in the evening time so that they're not just seeing professionals in the classroom, but they're actually able to see professionals who are in different fields and who are saying, hey, I'm going to reach back and I'm going to pull you up. Because if I can, if I do, I can, you can do it too. And so there needs to be that connection between communities and schools. Okay. That was 35 seconds. I'm just kidding. All right. All right. Go right on ahead, Dr. Bray. You know what? I completely agree with Dr. Nathan. I think it takes the village to raise the child. And therefore I think as we become more educated, we do need to give back to our community so that way that our kids can see that if I did it, you can too. If we share our experiences with our students, I think that's what's going to help them in the long run. Terrific. I want to say thank you to both of you for being with us today. I hope that you will continue to light the path for those who are to come behind you. We have a generation of young people who need the representation that you all provide. Thank you for watching at the Crossroads. Actually, thank you for watching Crossroads and Learning. And we hope to see you next time. Aloha.