 Good morning everyone. So good to see how many people are on this Zoom today. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for the wonderful introduction and welcome by Highline College. I'm Eileen Yoshina. I use she and her pronouns. You're gonna learn much more about me, so I won't take a whole lot of time introducing myself any further, except to say that I used to work at South Puget Sound Community College. I was the Director of Diversity and Equity there for many years. I am somebody who loves the Students of Color Conference, so maybe in the past have met some of you there. I currently work at a place called Puget Sound Educational Service District, which serves our K-12 educational system. I used to be an elementary school teacher, and so I'm really happy to be back in that space. And I have the amazing privilege and good fortune of working with Tamasha and Erika on one of my favorite projects of all time, which is the Educators of Color Leadership Community, which is a project that we have to increase and retain and support and to just foster the leadership of educators of color with the intention of transforming the educational system to make it to make it valuable and to make it empowering and to make it just and equitable for all students. So one of my favorite roles I've ever had, and I'm so pleased to be able to be here to share with my colleagues the work that we're doing in that space. So what we are doing here today, we just want to let you know up front. This is not a keynote. I don't consider my, I don't, I don't love the whole like keynote. That's not my thing is to like be a keynote or kind of person. I am a teacher. So we are here to create space to do collective wisdom sharing and to do collective envisioning. So this is not going to be so much a presentation, a keynote, as much it is going to be a space where all of us together build the vision together for what is a just and humanizing and empowering and equitable and liberating education system. What does it look like? What does it sound like? What does it feel like? So you're going to hear us do a little modeling from our side and then we're going to give it to you to build that space together in some small groups. So that's just a little bit about me and about a little bit about what to expect today. I'm going to throw it over to my friend Tamasha so that she can take us to the next the next. Hello everybody. I'm grateful to see so many folks's names and great pictures or videos if you have those on. Thank you. For this slide we're going to be talking about our acknowledgement. I want to shout out and say I'm very gracious to hear Highland College acknowledge the land that they're on and we also just want to acknowledge that we are in a virtual space right now and so the lands that we are occupying may be different and so what we would like to share with you all today is our home or ancestral lands and so I would like to start with mine. I was born on Squaxin Island in Nisqually land and I was raised there my whole life. That land gave me shelter and peace and I want to acknowledge that the indigenous communities there were stewards of the land before my family arrived. They are current stewards of the land and the indigenous communities of the Nisqually people and the Squaxin Island will be a part of those lands in the future. I keep forgetting I need to unmute myself. So I am also I what I one of the things I share with Tamasha and with Erica is that I do also currently live in the land of Nisqually people also the line of Squaxin Island people and I've lived here for many many years and I need to acknowledge and honor and thank the indigenous people of this land that I share right now. I also included on the slide that hopefully you can see in front of you some photos of where I grew up which is the the illegally occupied Kingdom of Hawaii. I grew up there from when I was my families lived there for multiple generations and Hawaii is the place that nurtured and raised me. I was really fortunate to go through an educational system during a time when native Hawaiians were really there was really a resurgence in native Hawaiian values and educational styles starting to take place which is really flourished and blossomed right now. And so I was lucky and to be one of the early recipients of many native Hawaiian teachers and education as a young child and so I owe so much of who I am today to the education I received in my community in Hawaii. Hello as Tamasha and Dylane have shared I also am on Nisqually lands. I also threw another picture up there. I was born on Payom Kauhicham lands which are now known as the Lisenia lands on the west coast but home for me is where my mother is Sita my dear mother is and I'm a military brat so really home is where my wherever my mom goes but her home are the are on the land of the Mescalero people and the lands of our people the Chirikawa so that is the bottom left picture that you'll see with the sunbeams coming out that is not too far from my backyard where my mother is. Thank you everybody for acknowledging I hope that in your hearts those of you that are participating with us today if you want to reach back and stay rooted during this time of chaos to the land that feels like home to you like Erika mentioned where you were born isn't necessarily the land that feels the most like home it might be where your place and space is now where you've spent the most time where your family is from um ancestrally but whatever feels grounding and rooted I hope that you can access that in this time of chaos and life on zoom we just wanted to let you know the flow of today as Eileen mentioned we are not going to have a typical sit and get situation which will be really interesting with a large group so stick with us the we all just completed our grounding so great work all of you I'm sure are totally grounded and feeling really great right now up next we're going to be talking about our authentic introductions and we understand that the word authentic can be hyperused especially when we're discussing diversity but for what we're talking about authentic still feels like the most correct use use of the word afterwards we'll be discussing abundance in our communities and bringing that abundance to education and we hope to leave with being able to answer the question what is a liberated education system like like so what we're going to do now is we're going to introduce ourselves in an authentic way typically in spaces like this our introduction sounds a lot like what how Eileen introduced herself in the beginning our names our pronouns and our our resume right and that that can be a really good way to just let people know what's going on but when we are talking in our communities and when we want to really share story with one another we want our introductions to be a bit more authentic and so we are now going to share hours with you all I'm going to go ahead and start with mine my name is Tamasha Amedi and I have a very binary family in that I am the first person on both side my generation is the first one on both sides of my family to be mixed with a person from another continent and that was really difficult for my family and it created a lot of disruption for many people who were supposed to be caring for me and my favorite thing to share about myself is the pronunciation of my last name as you can see next to my face it is spelled E M E D I and I was raised by my white mother whose family had been here for a few generations so she's white American and she told me my last name was immediately like immediately and so growing up that's how I pronounced my name but then I got into more contact with my father's side of the family and I'm now very very tight with them and when I met them and I heard them talking to each other I heard them say Amedi instead and so I realized that I've been saying my name wrong this whole time but also my mom was so important to me and she raised me and took care of me and helped me become the woman that I am today that I didn't want to let go of immediately and so I use both when I'm being super professional I put Amedi first because I want to hold hold on to the ancestral tradition of my father's family but if you just chat with me and I'm just talking I will I will slip into immediately because as a child that's what I learned my name was and so that's my authentic introduction my story of my last name hello can you hear me yes okay I'm sorry I got to remember to unmute um so this is a picture of my family hopefully you can see it I was going to try to put in another picture I do not I'm I'm learning I am in a learning space with technology um so I was not able to put this picture in prior to showing the slide but I do have it on my phone so I hope you can see this those are my grandparents that's my grandma and grandpa who this is about 1930 in Hawaii so I just wanted to show you um from my authentic introduction again a big part of who I am is where I'm from um and as I shared before you know I was fortunate to be able to be part of a generation of people in Hawaii who were who were starting to experience and who were really connected to land and place-based education um in that time period and just a huge part of growing up in Hawaii means connecting to your roots in Hawaii and to your ancestors and what it means to um be part of a community that has lived there for a long time and to honor the people who were there before us and to um really appreciate um what we were what we were taught and given and shared with from the people there before us so um this is the photo you see on your screen now is my my dad and my mom my sister Kathleen and my two children my daughter Emmy and my really really tall son Sam um and they're also a part of who I am um so the other the other big thing about who I am is that I'm a teacher and I know you already know that but um sometimes people talk about teaching as what they do and I think for a lot of us who who really see education as our path forward and who really understand and understand the ways in which education can empower and liberate us and not oppress us um education is is who we are not what we do even if I didn't work in a school or didn't work in a system I would work somehow somewhere in a community and and education would be a part of what I was doing in that space I also believe that all of us are educators so whether we get that's the work we're we're paid or employed to do or not um education is is what we do in communities when we pass wisdom from one generation to the next but it means to be a good person in this world what it means to live well in this world um and those are some of the things I believe in and the picture that Tamasha's now inserted is um from the Students of Color Conference from one of my mentors Dr. Ron Acolds who I love um and some of my students from um from from a past SOCC who love seeing their their faces there that's a little bit about me as well. Um those are just some of the languages of my people um I'm an Indigenous Black Irish Chicana I live in intersectionality um in so many different ways as we all do however my ethnic racial ancestral intersectionality is um something that I have been really trying to reclaim right as my authentic self um I was a military brat and so I moved around a lot as I mentioned before and so um it kind of is a nice analogy of of different intersections as well um I'm a social justice equity lawyer I as a lean I agree with Eileen um I feel like even if I wasn't in education that's just in my nature um I am very curious about so many things all the time uh and so uh that that is just part of of who I am as well anytime I'm doing an authentic introduction I always throw in that I'm a harry potter nerd and I think that's just because the world in which um jaky rolling created is can just be applied to so many different things um it is fantasy but there's so much that comes out of that and you know there are so many different cultures within that I don't want to go on a tangent but um that's definitely a big part of who I am is that and and really just showing up as my nerdy self uh in all spaces and so when I come into a space I try to bring all those intersectionalities with me um and really um oh yeah the I just saw the the picture as you can see um when I traveled to that is the actual um nine and three quarters platform at King's Cross Station in Europe I was lucky to be able to go to the United Kingdom and experience that as something that was very near and dear to my heart so I throw those kinds of pictures in everywhere um I digress um I really wanted to focus on my authentic self and have been for the last few years as I've mentioned because in my family um my family kind of looks and you can see in my picture kind of looked like the United Nations there's so many different um ethnicities in my family but a lot of that was assimilating to survive as many people of color have to go through and so really finding you know the languages of my people that I that I began with in the beginning um were lost to me and were taken from me and so I am really trying to authentically reclaim what has been taken and lost um and that's part of of who I am um so next uh you all are going to get to practice doing authentic introductions and it could be language it could be a birth story a home story your name story where you live who is important to you in your life um so really quickly those of you who need an interpreter if you could please send a chat we're going to do a breakout room and so we need to know who needs to be in a room with an interpreter so if you could send that chat to uh Tamasha that would be great and so uh this first breakout is going to be a little bit longer take us a little bit longer to get to the breakout rooms just because we want to make sure that everyone who needs an interpreter gets into a room with an interpreter after that the next two times that we do a breakout room it'll go a lot smoother so we really appreciate your patience um we're giving you some think time so you can think about what your authentic introduction is going to be while all of this is happening Eileen did you want to share anything else while we're waiting um this is something when we meet as the educators of color leadership community um the group is was set up for specifically for teachers for teachers of color because we know that there is a critical lack of teachers of color um nationwide specifically in our region in this Seattle King County area um and so it's if you're like most people and you went to school around here you didn't have a teacher of color maybe you had one maybe you were lucky and you had more than one um but but really most most of our students who are primarily students of color um in our region don't grow up with the experience of having a teacher of color um and so when we set this group up we knew we needed to do things differently and one thing we always say is about bringing people of color into education is not just about the numbers it's not just about getting more of us in the door about getting us more more of us in front of classrooms but it's about the actual ways in which we do things differently what we bring is different and so when we come together as educators of color part of what we do is we try to practice that so um doing this authentic introduction where it's not just about like my name and um what I'm studying in school or what I do for a living is actually practice sharing who you really are is a way of actually resisting the white supremacy culture of education um and so that's why we we spend time on it and we actually consider it to be a critical practice so keeping that in mind like what would you share with other people if you were sharing a little bit about who who you really are not just what you do but who you really are okay everyone you ready yeah it's going to pop up in a little box and you will also have a chat feature in the room if that's going to be easier for you to share here we go hello everybody and welcome back I heard from many of you that the presenting was too small and I believe I fixed it so thank you for messaging me in the chat and also it's great to share with um any uh co-facilitators that were in your small group that was really helpful so thank you so much I think I should be able to fix that and uh we just want to acknowledge that um what you were doing in your small groups was uh professional development and I interrupted that and so I apologize for interrupting the really critical work that you were doing as a group but I promise you're going to be with that same group soon so if I cut you off in the middle of like a really important way to connect with one another uh I you will be able to finish you might want to jot a note down or if you really wanted to connect with someone in your group we're not done with groups yet so don't worry I do believe I have fixed the share so let me do that for you and make sure that I did that right check this out you're like it's no you didn't hold on okay ooh I gotta head myself okay so you just had an authentic introduction with some folks that maybe you are familiar with or maybe might have been complete strangers so the way in which it was authentic of course um totally depends on uh how you felt like sharing like how deep you went but I just want to let everybody know that you don't have to start with like a sob sorry about how difficult it was to reach out to that uncle or whatever you know you can just be like my name is really beautiful and this is why so don't feel like you have to make people cry to be authentic but also if people cry good job like I love that for you um what we are going to talk about next is um what abundance looks like in our communities I want to acknowledge that when I speak to a group of people my assumption is that the I have to speak in generalities because there's more than one of us in the room and so while I'm speaking in my generalities uh I am I'm speaking as I'm speaking to a group of of people of color and I know there are white folks in this room and of course this is a open and welcome space but know that I'll be centering my experience as a person of color and speaking as though I'm speaking to a group of people of color and so and and black people and indigenous people people of color uh our communities and uh so when we talk about our communities and what abundance looks like a lot of times with the lens of white supremacy our communities are broken there's something wrong with us we're we're marginalized we're or historically marginalized I really like as though the marginalization has since stopped and we are no longer marginalized um and that there's something wrong and that we need to be saved but truly we know that our communities are full of abundance and so what we're going to share now is as um people of color as black people as indigenous people other identities that you have that feel so close to your heart what abundance comes from being a part of that community so uh I'm going to start with the community of folks that are the community of folks that are presenting right now and so I'm going to be sharing how I feel um I was going to share this really smoothly and elegantly oh here we go tada I'd like to share about us uh I am a I'm a young person I just I'm a fresh 29 I'm an Aquarius so maybe not as fresh but just a few astrological seasons ago was my birthday and I have felt like a leader on my whole life I got in trouble in elementary school for talking back all of the time I my teachers never could figure out the right spot for me in a seating chart because I would always want to talk to my neighbor I led kids through um walkouts and sit-ins through high school and college um and oftentimes if people acknowledged my leadership they they saw it as cute uh like oh it's so adorable that this young woman especially and white supremacist culture like oh look this young black woman she wants to speak this is amazing how cute like let's let her and then move her over so we can have our platform and so I felt as I was becoming an adult in my late teens and early 20s that I kept being used for having a voice but people didn't really care about what I was saying um that is until I joined uh our community through the uh Puget Sound Educational Service District and through Educators of Color Leadership Community ECLC when I joined ECLC Eileen who someone who had known me even when I was a teenager allowed me to co-facilitate very very early on in the process and I was nervous because I thought that this would just be like something cute like oh if we let her co-facilitate maybe she'll come back uh but that's not what it was at all I've continued to be allowed to co-facilitate and actually been a huge part of the planning um for ECLC and I was seen my leadership was seen not as something cute or something novel because suddenly a black woman is in charge but as something valuable and I felt the I felt my abundance seen and so when I'm calling out the abundance of my community I'm calling out um specifically like women of color and um our capuna right our living ancestors acknowledging us young people and giving us um authority and giving us opportunity to to feel like our true selves and be be seen not just as those young kids that are so cute but as people that can who can step up into their power and I I notice almost always women of color first who uh bring me into a space authentically and honestly not because they know it is cool or the right thing to do. Okay thanks Tamasha um and I think she Tamasha said so many things that um it's gonna sound like an echo but um I'm just gonna I'm gonna do it I'm gonna say it's an amplification and an echo um of what Tamasha said but one of the major things we talk about in educators of color leadership community in fact I'm surprised she hasn't said this yet but a phrase we often use is we've been knowing so um it's this is not about bringing like some new framing to education it's about saying we are the only ones who have this wisdom we have the the necessary leadership and wisdom that it's going to take to transform our education system if we're talking about there's my beautiful friends Lilan one of my um one of my dear friends also one of my my dear teachers and mentors and major supporters and sisters in this lifetime um but when we talk about the the vision and the the skill and the talent and the experience that it's going to actually take to trans to transform our education system into one where every student's wisdom is honored and valued and in which we have a truly equitable system we're the only ones who can lead this right so this is not about seeing people of color as add-ons or as sort of token represent representatives within the education system the the transformation we are pushing for we need to create is saying we're the only ones who can do this um we need our white allies and we need them to come along alongside us and to and to hear our voices and to honor our leadership not an add-on right i see you in the chat i think we're not add-ons we are we are the only ones who can lead this change um and so for me what abundance looks like is reframing some of those ways we've been pushed out or we've been dishonored and so you know when tamasha talks about um being seen as sort of like cute or being seen as sort of like oh let's let her talk so that she you know doesn't doesn't either disappear or make trouble for us it's like you know some the framing we use some of you are maybe familiar with the the term community cultural wealth which which reframes the the resilience and the wisdom of communities of color as strengths so for for many years ever since educational system was established as a white supremacist institution people of color have been looked at as problems right we've been looked at as like if we can either get them to comply or to assimilate or to exclude them all together from this education system that's going to be typically the way education treats people of color what we're saying is is saying like all the ways in which people of color live and and learn and um know how to be with one another are the things that we need so when when tamasha says i was the first one to speak up when i saw injustice when i saw a problem um rather than being seen as a troublemaker she needs to be seen as a truth teller she needs to be seen as the person who has the wisdom and the experience to push back on systems that are inequitable and unfair um erica is a person who speaks multiple languages you know what what do we call people in in the education world a lot of times what we say is oh that child or that student doesn't speak english you speak about it from a deficit perspective we don't say that child has incredible that student has incredible linguistic abundance incredible linguistic ability um how how does that person show the rest of us how to operate in this world what can we learn from that person so it's the abundance that i see within our students of color is all of those things that a lot of times get seen as deficit by an institutional system that privileges white white supremacy um i see as incredible abundance this is another picture of my family this is generations of resilience um there's my uncle who was um he's sort of on the left hand side standing up he was incarcerated during world war two as a japanese american and um what i what i say about him is that somebody who who survived somebody who was resilient through that experience of great injustice somebody who became a teacher somebody who raised future generations to have a different lens on how we see the united states and how we see law and the constitution and how we look out for other communities that are also impacted by injustice so that's the abundance that we bring um from my perspective yeah again more amplification more echoing um and just to add on a little bit um you know it's something the the abundance that we bring because we strive for back to the the saying we've been knowing right we strive to bring in that wisdom from our elders our ancestors and that rich abundance of resistance and legacy that they're leaving for us right it's also about as tamasha was saying you know bringing in our capuna the collaboration of our colectiva or our collective to make sure that we're learning from generations past and that we're learning from the generations that are coming after us right in that community cultural wealth and so really just making it rich and bringing in all of the the wisdom and all of the you know not only the intergenerational traumas and struggles but the resistance and and wisdom and beauty that comes from all of that um so just to add a little bit of that yeah that's my my grandmother who still guide me right there's there's a saying that you might have heard my grandmother's prayers are still protecting me and that's so true she might not be with me physically here in the physical world um but she is with me she walks with me every day and her and she is protecting me and I think back to her resistance in her life and the legacy that she's left and it's something that as my authentic self I try to bring in every day and I try to share that with my own descendants you know and and my own family and the capuna in my life yeah um I want to acknowledge that we did say we're gonna take a break around 1150 a brief intermission um but we wanted to say that we wanted to kind of tie in that it many of us may be in a space where we can bring our abundance into education and so what we'd love you to like ruminate on and think about uh in the intermission that will start in about four minutes is I'm gonna interrupt quickly Geo says we can we can finish this piece so we can have people do their discussion before we do the intermission okay so your intermission's pushed back a little bit a little bit but we we will keep our piece of this um very quick uh so that's my that's my nod to my co-facilitators um but we wanted to talk about ways in which we've been able to bring our abundance into education and I just uh before I get started with mine I want to reiterate something Eileen said which is that um educators aren't just teachers in front of students I happen to be a classroom teacher and my job is to stand in front of 10 year olds or currently zoom in front of some 10 year olds and deliver education but an educator is anybody who has knowledge to pass on to the future we all are living ancestors and we all are living predecessors and so we are all part of education um that being said I do acknowledge that my um uh my situation is particularly classic uh and so I do bring uh my authentic self into this classic space and here's the picture I'm gonna use for that um this is the fifth grade team I was a part of last school year uh we were the most racially diverse team in our school and my school is uh in the Highland Public Schools District and we are elementary school I think is the most racially diverse teaching staff um building for elementary schools and that was purposeful work of my principal and to be perfectly honest purposeful work of me as well shout out to everybody who has a barber also just my edges been here until what I usually have them look like I am I miss my barber so much but what we did as a collective is we decided a lot of times spirit weeks can be pretty problematic for those of us from communities that aren't uh white and so our our team purposefully created our spirit week in a way that felt really uh grounding uh something that was really beautiful about my team is that um the woman next to me and then the man in front or sorry and the white man in the back they both were connected to Hawaii and then the man on the side his family also felt connection to Hawaii and so we had something like like tourist day or like I don't know something goofy like that and we turned it into um ancestor day and uh the folks that have community in Hawaii brought Hawaiian ships for all of us and then our presentation to our students was about the uh Mauna instead of talking about like look at how cool this print is right when we talk about something that's actually affecting the community that so many of the educators on our staff were a part of and that was really important for me too because a lot of times I feel like I have to step up and say like as the black teacher I want to talk about some black stuff or as the African teacher I want to talk about some African stuff or as the queer teacher whatever but in this situation I got to say like I don't have familial connection to Hawaii but so many fifth grade teachers do that this is something our team is going to be a part of and it we got to bring that collectiveness together um and had had unity through diversity. Nice, nice tie-in to the Highline theme. I will be try to be quick as I can but I'll go back to the story of my uncle again um so my uncle I'm as a Japanese and fourth generation Japanese-American um I I live I grew up with the story of the incarceration of Japanese people during World War II um and that was something I knew from a very young age and one thing when you grow up in a Japanese-American community the message that you get is it is our duty when we see injustice happen to anyone else to stand up against it to say something there's a phrase that actually means let it never happen again which I'm not going to speak Japanese on this maybe you know how to say that but um I was told in English let it never happen again um and so through in my family I want to say like at least half of the people you see picture there are educators our teachers and that was one that was the way my family took that role um of letting it never happen again my um the anti in the back the two anti standing in the back there started they're part of a family that started um an initiative called the Asian-American um literature project and at first it was the Asian-American Japanese Japanese Japanese children's books project and they um you know in the 60s and 70s they made it their their um they were particularly dedicated to getting the stories of Japanese-Americans into schools in California and then that expanded over time um to where it's now the stories of Asian-American communities they want to make sure that schools have access to those to those stories um all over the all over the the community that they live in so that's still running today so that's the way in which I I I have that legacy and that's a legacy that I bring with me into my role as an educator and as for me um I I've spoken about intersectionality and about the loss um and the reclamation that I'm going through now because of loss due to assimilation to survive right but we want to do more than that we want to thrive and so there was a lot that was taken from me a lot of abundance that has been taken from me but uh in working on my authentic self you can see my family again um you know we have ways of being in our families that even if something was taken from us things will edge out things will squeak in right the way that you speak the way that you're together the way that you're in community will come out and so really um to thrive in spaces that are not meant for me right like that's how I bring in in my abundance to education education is not it's not meant for anyone who is not white middle class with two parents right um that are that have means uh it's just not that's not how education was created and so really my existence in that space is part of that resistance um but thriving in that space is also part of the abundance that I bring right and so doing that by telling story right doing doing things that aren't done a particular way in the school system um hablando español speaking Spanish and I speak Spanish to kids that don't speak Spanish kids that that's not part of their heritage but you know what I also do is I learn phrases and I learn how to speak to my kids who speak Korean who speak French who speak to who speak to Grigna um really just if I can show up as my authentic self and speaking Spanish to everyone they can then bring their abundance of their own language and their own cultures right so we talk about their cultures um we talk about what can you teach me that I can also teach you right and everyone who is around gets to listen and we all become more abundant in that space um and so really just playing into that authenticity and intersectionality is how I bring that abundance into education thank you everybody um yeah uh thank you everybody for being a part of this it sounds like what our schedule is and please somebody unmute and tell me if I'm wrong is that we're going to put you back in your same groups and then when we come back that will be the start of an intermission so a bio break if you need to take one uh if you need to go move around to do some stretching also feel free to stretch while we're talking I had a lot of students dancing in the background last time I had a class um but we're going to go into our small group then intermission and then uh we will wrap up does that sound right I'm seeing some nodding yes we can awesome yeah perfect okay so I am going to put you back in the same groups so if I cut you off now's your time to be like I don't want to talk about my authentic uh or I don't want to talk about my abundance in my community I'm going to finish my authentic introduction that's totally fine or if your abundant conversation kind of moves you off track and you start talking about something else that is also fine what you're doing in that group is critical and it can never happen again and so please let that group grow and move in the direction that it is growing and moving we are giving you just a box to think outside of okay I just wanted I think Erica said this earlier but two some of us are in school or live or work in places where we don't feel like it's safe to bring our abundance out um if that's the case for you we know that's real for lots of people of color um then maybe imagine what it would be like like what would it require what kind of space would you require to be able to do that to be able to really um to really be able to thrive okay so also let that be one of the things you can think about talking about all right everybody if you if I click the button and you don't see something pop up you weren't assigned to a room so just remind me wave or something and I'll put you in a room here we go um continue with our discussion just because the flow is just so good I don't want to break that oh thank you I'm honored and I just again I know Geo just said it but I it's so important to say again that we are autonomous human beings and we know our bodies best so you need to go take a bio break get out of here like you need to stretch go stretch you go take a nap this is being recorded watch it later it's okay though the world right now as we're living virtually people do not want to honor boundaries it's wild how much uh how much people above me are assuming that I have free time grow my free time is taken up by animal crossing all right so if you have secretly your switch between the camera and yourself I just did that for my last day of grad school yes I see you don't tell anybody um but also it's fine I trust you I trust that you're getting what you need out of this the point of this um conversation the point of what myself Eileen and Edika always want to say is that us being together in community is um sacred and it is critical this space will never happen again and if you can't be your full vulnerable self that puts your video and audio and mutant heads like brings the camera with you to the bathroom then what are we even doing right so do what you need to do we are going to continue though with my mad screen sharing skills um again thank you everybody for the feedback that was super helpful um honestly okay we are here okay we're here with our last big question for everybody which uh we kind of put in our video hopefully some of you saw that uh very good uh COVID social socially distant uh prequel video for what is a liberated education education system like what is the liberated education system like and so we are going to share our things uh and then we invite you um we'll we'll tell you about what we're going to invite you to do later but uh currently what what we all are going to do is share our answer to what is a liberated education system like and so being super prepared with all that time i definitely had already selected my photo actually i'm gonna go back to this one okay in my video response i had talked about how a liberated education system is free flowing and flexible and that's definitely true for me but i think another thing a liberated education system has to be as patient and uh because even though i haven't had the opportunity to talk to a lot of you a few of you have hit me up in the chat and it just feels virtually like a really good vibe here so i hope that i'm correct in that assumption um but i would like to share a piece of my coming out story and its relationship with the education a liberated education system i grew up in what the united states calls olympia washington and it is a very liberal city uh we have a parade where we shut down the streets and people dress up not as flora or as flora and fauna but they're organized in elements so like fire water earth air and you might be thinking to yourself sorry fire fauna yes it's incredible you've got to come see the procession of the species sometimes but it seems like a really great town for a young gay kid to figure out that she's a young gay kid um and i i didn't i was so so closeted as a child even though my mom was incredibly supportive when i told my mom i was a christian she was so upset because she thought i was sitting her down to come out to her and so uh i knew that she would be open and accepting and uh i had gay friends in high school i had friends with gay parents but even though all of that was true and i grew up in this community that was so accepting of this one specific piece of my identity the oppressive white supremacist culture existed in schools and that is the thing that really kept me closeted because my family was totally open the community i chose to hang out with my friends were all very open people but i i specifically remember being in middle school and looking at who i thought was my best friend and like in a moment being like well i just i think i want to give her a kiss and it scared me it was it was such a scary feeling for me as a middle schooler and it wasn't anything i was explicitly taught it was all things i was implicitly taught and that erasing that implicit bias and creating a space where i don't have to be terrified of something even though my friends and my family in this whole other community would have been okay um that that work is gonna take a lot of patience and um i also think about i think a lot of folks that either have close community that belong to the um queer under the queer umbrella or folks that identify as a queer version of queer themselves can uh feel some empathy towards when i did finally come out to a lot of my friends they were like we love you and we knew already right like so many people already knew um but they didn't push me nobody was like tomas we like just say that you're gay like we know um my community the people that loved me and cared for me and held me and nurtured me they didn't push me into a space i wasn't ready to be in even though it was a totally safe space for me to come out and so that concept of of patience of all of the queer community surrounded me growing up while i was very staunchly a straight ally um those people were patient and loving with me and then when i came out there was no i told you so vibes there was no um like in your face vibes everything was love and uh it was it was incredibly beautiful i'm about to tear up now and so in my in my belief the thing that i reach into and as one of my communities the the chosen family vibe and that looking out for each other vibe that that belongs in a liberated education system um thank you tamasha that was beautiful um and for me you know i'm just i was gonna say something else but now i feel compelled to build on what tamasha said like i so agree like to me when i imagine a liberated education system it's one in which no student no matter how they identify who they are has to feel like they have to hide that part of themselves or feel scared that some part of them is going to be rejected because what if they just show up as who they are and to me it's so important that we have teachers like tamasha because we know those are our students as well right so if i'm a young person and tamasha is my teacher and i'm having some questions about like who i might love or who i might be attracted to or and all those things um that are not represented well in media having tamasha as my teacher and having her show up as her authentic self there's nothing more powerful than that and so to me that's really the power of having this this space um and and having this community and and encouraging um having us have this conversation about what it's going to take for us to have educational systems where we say to people who share tamasha's story we need you and we value you and we we want to create a school in which you can be who you are um and that is what we need you to do not to come here and assimilate into what our idea is but really for you to be who you are um again showing another picture of my family from the big island here they all are family reunion um and i think the last thing i'll just add about when i imagine a liberated education system is that the school is not separate from your community your community is as wise and has as much knowledge in it as anything that happens in a school system and so for you to feel like the things that you learn in your family and in your community and in your home are as valuable are the things that you need to live and thrive in this world and to be a good person and to create a good environment for for future generations to grow up on some those things should be happening in school and in your family and there shouldn't be this this this connection between them it should all be one space um so that's where i think i'll leave that thank you both um as i mentioned in the video in my video um in case you haven't haven't been able to see it check it out um tamasha edited it and it's great um but i spoke about intentionality and consistency and decolonization um and so really for me an and a liberated education system is one in which i'm intentionally doing those things because as i alluded to earlier we have ways of being um that you know uh i i mentioned i speak spanish well i didn't mention that i had a really traumatic um incident happened when i was in school that's that caused me to stop speaking spanish which is the language i spoke more than anything for years um and i'm reclaiming that back now and that you know uh is something that i can now look at as something that i resisted through and that i um pushed through and it it shows a resiliency to me for that um but it's it's allowing me to to just be in the space that i'm in oh that's my beautiful mother um who visited me here for the first time this last year um but you know the um the way that it sounds looks and feels should be one in which we all feel like we belong right um as tamasha was mentioning and as eileen said it should be a place where you know we we all feel like that is our space and that's so true i would agree with that as well you know and and not just in a performative way but truly feels like we really belong there like anything that we are anything that that we bring to the table is going to be okay and not only okay but it's going to be celebrated in that space right we should all be able to do that and that's for me what a liberated education system would look like one that belongs to the collective and everybody is there adds richness and resiliency and wisdom and beauty to it and also you know i think it's important to mention that we all challenge it as well it has to be and tamasha mentioned her part of the video has to be dynamic right it can't be static it's something that we're always going to push each other to be our best selves um but in the way that is compassionate and really just uplifting of each other what a beautiful um what a beautiful way to wrap that up thank you so much uh so as jo had said we uh we were encouraging you to write down questions that come up and we invite you to share them at the end um we will there'll be a q and a um and also we had this really beautiful idea for how to end honoring the fact that we're doing this in a virtual space so typically when the three of us or some combo of the three of us um present we like to end communally with either um a call and response or uh like a an opportunity for us to really like stay and go meet with somebody who we felt really connected to and maybe exchange numbers but uh that's not as possible and would certainly take a very long time over zoom and so we offer you um an idea if you check out the video um that was posted into the chat i would love to extend that video with any of you y'all's answers to the question what does a liberated education system look like so with your permission oh i need to send you with your permission i will throw in a google drive an empty google drive for you to drop videos of yourself answering the question this is totally optional um but we thought it would be a cool way it would take obviously a little bit longer i'd i'd put out the video i'd send it to um gio and he could send it out in the same ways that you heard about this conference but we would love to to close in this way this creative way together in this socially distant um way together uh so i would love to have some other co-hosts unmute to understand the q and a and looking also at the time uh what's what what next um i i think here's my thought we're we're doing this on the flat normally in if we were doing a workshop with you all we'd be like one second we need a little a little co-host huddle we're gonna we're gonna do that with all of you listening in so huddle um i think we can still do the chat and maybe have people just write in the chat what they were thinking and the video is also an option if people feel feel moved to do that so do you want to give direction for that that chat piece because i think well you can save the chat have this incredible thing and i've already had a couple people i'm not going to say names but i've heard some beautiful things that can go in that chat box okay i love it okay unhuddle unhuddle okay all right everybody here's what we would love the if i could ask that the chat be opened so that folks can post to everybody i'd love you to type your answer to what does the liberated education oh thank you mark what does a liberated education system look like right or what should a liberated education system look like and so we would love it if you would type your answer into the chat and then as an extrovert who has been just craving opportunities like this i was wondering if there is another extrovert or someone who loves reading aloud so that um instead of one of us reading people's answers from the chat if i could have uh someone from the group who'd be willing to read answers from the chat you can tell me that you're willing either by unmuting your video and like waving sam did i see you do that no okay sorry uh so you can either do that by unmuting your video and waving uh or doing the reaction wave or hand sign or by typing in the chat if you'd be willing to read aloud um folks answers to the question what does a liberated education system look like like if no one else would do it my friend erin reader is a professional speaker actor former poet i hear you throwing someone into the bus he's also not responding to that um also if you have any questions you know for our presenters feel free to unmute yourself ask that or use the chat features um highly highly encourage it encourage it i do have some questions for our presenters but i'll say that later um because i do want to um respect um our attendees uh our friends here a liberated education system to me looks like bringing the village with you i think liberated education should be mixed color one quote is i am ready to be my abundant black self haha that's my friend idea liberated education system to me would allow me to bring all my identities together and be respected also teaching learning is reciprocal a liberated education system is where POC students are getting support from educators with the same background and to allow everyone to express oneself i think liberated education should represent an environment to share ideas and support one another in the positive way a liberated education looks like including and not omitting the histories and experiences of indigenous people and people of color i feel like a liberated education system is teaching the true history and not history as it is taught now i feel like it is equal and equitable education for all no matter culture race ethnicity orientation or being otherly able to i also believe that every person should be able to bring their village with them liberated education system is encouraging and celebrating everyone's identities a liberated education to me is where it is an environment where i can feel like i can say whatever i think and say without being thought of as weird i'm also someone wanted to include two one of the responses earlier uh no matter one's identity just to kind of add on which i think it's great the higher education system needs to be redesigned to be a liberated system a liberated education system is affirming a student's identity and culture while also teaching a history that liberates all peoples so we can live in truth and freedom a liberated education system looks like a whole shift of values that reflect the collective and most marginalized within communities their voices it naturally accepts a need for continuous reflection and challenges white supremacy without fragility this is shown in resources not just words it supports people collaborating and sharing workloads celebrates and shares power among all there's no tokenization or snuffing out of voices for convenience it's celebratory and responsive to what's happening in the wider world and our communities a liberated education system is one free from judgment and prejudice a place where identities from all walks of life are able to express themselves freely where different and perspective ideas can be comfortably shared and discussed a liberated education system is one that sees no limitation to one's full potential where one's ancestral background is celebrated respected and honored please don't stop putting things in the chat we are going to stop reading them aloud but that does not mean that your idea is not valid because you didn't type fast enough and so for those of you that can handle reading the chat and watching please do it and otherwise just wait and read the chat later because there's power in those words and I'm so so grateful to hear you Erin read those for us thank you Erin I know I totally put you on the spot thank you um also I have been copying copying and pasting all your responses to a word doc so and I can share that with the group that's why I was like okay copy paste copy paste but yeah those are really great responses I'm like getting chills from reading all those I'm like I'm over here like snapping but also like I still want to encourage everyone if you have any questions you know like I know that our time is only until 12 30 but you know time is so fluid it's a social contrast so we can stay here until whenever like I had this Zoom meeting until whenever we can uh you know finish our discussion so I would like to clean up the space for any questions I also just dropped the google drive link if you want to copy and paste that geo with whatever is getting sent out that drive link is now shareable and editable so you can drop any videos you'd like to take and I would love to edit those together and just hear your literal voice or um see your literal voice um while you like say what you said in the chat so that's of option totally optional but it's there for you yeah I will definitely do that because you know why I put my eyebrows on today so make sure that my eyebrows get put to use I think the the maybe in are we about to close up here or kind of say a comment and if people want to have have questions they can is that sound good I just wanted to say thank you so so much to all of you for spending your time with us today to me the the real brilliance of this was the the space that we created together as a community I know in my small group I just loved hearing from people's um different voices and perspective and wisdom and to me that's what we need so my my last message is all those visions that we had all those things created of what a liberated education system can be and should be and is to me it's all doable it's attainable and we're the people who need to do it um so I look at all of you I look at all this range of people here on our zoom today and I'm like we got like we had at one time I think they're like 80 something plus people who who are the leaders we need in this movement and I thank you so much for sharing all your time and wisdom with us and so excited to see what we all create together uh does anyone have question I do have questions for our presenters um for Tomasha Eileen and Erika um higher education uh is traditionally or education you know in general is traditionally not made to celebrate all identities so how are you bringing or what are some ways that you are doing in your spaces um to encourage celebration of those identities especially for your students uh so for me I my education in like this to answer the question my education concept is it's public education I'm a fifth grade teacher and uh so one of the ways I do that is I talk about my historically marginalized um identities often I bring my myself and I talk I talk about my idea and my perception as a black person as a child of immigrants as a queer person uh because it's twofold one I need my students to know that even though I'm the adult in the room I come with these views and so my kids who aren't black or don't have uh immigrant parents or aren't queer or whatever aren't girls or women their experiences are definitely going to be different than mine plus even if we share all those identities their perceptions will be different and so me coloring my idea of perception with my identities helps my students understand that we all come with these uh perceptions and that they can start recognizing there's two like oh I walk through the world as a 10-year-old and the way they experience the world as 10-year-olds is very different than the way I experience the world as an adult Gio can you restate the question one more time? Yeah so higher education in general is not traditionally not made to celebrate all identities so what are some ways that you encourage uh to for your students to show up um 100 or to celebrate the identities? Oh okay thank you um I think I think Erica said this earlier but um you know what one of the things that I have really reflected on a lot in the last couple of years is the is um you taking care of your own thriving is one of the most revolutionary things that you can do and so for me um I ask people the question at what do you go to the educators of color leadership community we spend a lot of time talking about like what does it mean to be your authentic self what would it take for you to thrive and what would it take for you to do that despite the many barriers despite the many obstacles um that stand in our way like what you prioritizing what you need to thrive as a human being I think is one of the most revolutionary things you can do and so um that's something I try to encourage people to do I know it's risky I know it it it can feel scary to a lot of people when they don't have the support one of my roles um where I work now is to also engage with supervisors and for people that work with teachers in classrooms or people that work with educators of color and and to bring this collective voice to that space as well and to really say you know like look at what your educators of color are saying and to really say if we create a school environment a college environment a school environment an educational environment a community where our educators are thriving our students of color will also be thriving right it's not we don't have different needs than our students do and so I do also try to engage with our white allies with our with our supervisors with with and and we can be supervisors of color who have been so used to conforming and and surviving in a system that we forget what it means to thrive ourselves so a lot of I think a lot of the work is internal to always be asking myself and and other colleagues that I have like what are what are we doing today to to really help help myself to thrive and to model that for other people around me especially for my students um because I think students are learning by watching us um and seeing what we're what we're doing and if we show up unapologetically and ready to to bring our full abundance then they're going to feel like they can do it too yeah I would totally agree with the the internal work piece um I have been on this journey of really intentionally finding out what showing up authentically means to me um especially because I was like most people of color told that I had to show up a certain way and show up in this certain box right and so really um and as i lean mentioned earlier too it's not always easy and not and I fully acknowledge that not everyone can do it I got to a point where for me it was almost suffocating trying to fit myself into that box that really there was no other way that I could show up but the way that I myself am and so um I've been very lucky that it's it's mostly received um it's not always received well but really that's the only way that I can show up in the space now because I've done so much work trying to show up authentically that any other way it just doesn't fit so really what I bring in is that authenticity and I'm gonna sound like a broken record right at this point of speaking in my language to anyone and everyone who is there because that's going to show other people that one I'm being my authentic self two they now have that space to be able to do that as well with their own language um or three if even if that's not their own language that this space is a space that I am going to make sure that that's still valid and so really just showing up authentically how however that looks like in my nerdy Spanish speaking self um is really just how I bring that into the space thank you um does anyone else have a question I have one more question I know like I was writing question as you were um presenting um yeah but I do want to give space and time for anyone else who have might have questions but if they don't I might as well ask um so what is very simple but also could be very complicated so what pushed you into doing the work that you do right now and what keeps you going I became a teacher because when I turned 16 my mom said you can get a job or move out and so I said job sounds better and the position that I got was working at the after-school care and the elementary school that shares a property line with the high school that I went to and while I was there I realized I really loved working with the kids and helping them with their homework and so uh when I was as a child I thought I wanted to go into politics and actually become president one day uh but the longer I learned about politics the more I was like oh oh maybe not and so when I realized I loved working with kids I thought why why don't I go into teaching instead and those two things actually went really well together uh political activism and public education and then now I uh working with Eileen and specifically working to do authentic uh work with educators of color specifically and then I was motivated to go get my administrative certification and so I just finished my internship program and hopefully this month or next month OSPI will be sending me my principal certification and that was because I realized that there's so many of us uh that are liberation minded that are justice minded but we're stuck at these certain specific levels they're not letting us loud convicted uh like proud people of color into spaces that actually get to do bigger decision making we have to organize in this collective way like this meeting here right this was brought together in a collective group of folks that aren't necessarily in in charge in charge and so I want to be breaking my way into the in charge in charge spaces so that I can remove barriers because there are a lot of educators of color and uh white allies or accomplices whichever word feels right to you um that don't want to be principals or they don't want to be deans but they do want to do great justice work and there are there are systems in place that stop them from doing the work and so my goal as I rise in the hierarchy is to dismantle the hierarchy so that you don't need to get a boss's permission or you don't need to make over a hundred thousand dollars a year to be able to do incredible work um for the communities that you choose to serve um I became a teacher because I think I talked about this earlier it's like so much a part of who I am um there's my parents are both teachers um I for me there's that real strong connection between education and social justice that we talked about and I think of education not necessarily as school right but education as like passing on of wisdom to me that is social justice when we can do it in the way that we think is is best for our communities that is social justice um I wanted to speak quickly to the work of of retaining and um and encouraging the leadership of people of color in education because um that's always been important to me but I think for a long time I was operating on that idea of um we just need to increase numbers right we'll just keep recruiting like come be a teacher come be a teacher and it became real clear to me after a while that people of color get harmed working in education in the same way students get harmed students of color get harmed by being in education because we think it's just about getting you in the door getting you in front of the classroom and so to me the real work and the real transformation is going to take place when not only do we have people of color whose talents are valued in educational systems but they but others around them then learn from them and start changing their practice reflect what it is that educators of color do because they do something differently we bring a different value we bring a different lens we bring different relationships into the into the educational system that are ultimately what our students of color and our white students need we know right now if the education system right now simply replicates inequities right if we leave it as is all it does is perpetuate inequity time generation after generation so what we what we really need is not just to have people of color come into it bringing their lens and their history and their values and their talents but for them to actually lead the change and to do it in a way that's humanizing that is right for their community and that to me that's where that's where this work is going to be truly transformative and it really starts with all of you right here on the Zoom call yeah for me I went into this really funny I didn't know I've always kind of been like an educator like in my space in my family but I didn't start out like knowing that I wanted to be an educator and so I actually came to it when I was almost done with my my degree and I stopped and changed and went into education because I was first generation going to college and that in experience in and of itself is a whole other beast and if you don't if it's not something that you are familiar with or your family you don't know how to navigate it and I was able to succeed in school even though that wasn't a place for me and so the more and more I thought about it the more I realized like I want to make sure that children who are falling through their cracks don't do that don't fall through the cracks and not only don't fall through the cracks but succeed and are able to navigate the system and so I went into education that way I wanted it to look different for you know like I had cousins and siblings that didn't succeed so to speak in school the way that I did and so I wanted them to be able to do that I wanted no other student to have to go through a system feeling like they didn't belong and feeling like that system wasn't going to help them and they weren't going to get anything out of it so it's kind of a little a little bit different of how I came to it and what keeps me going is the fact that um that that's still happening right that's consistently happening and and um it's it's something that if I don't help change that system then then who is right there's everyone here that's who's going to help right but that's something for me that I said I have to be a part of that system to change it so that this doesn't continually happen it's not perpetuated and it changes all right thank you um again I would like to thank all three of you for blessing us with your knowledge and your experience um you know being the space virtual space with us um I think I will just conclude that our program is over for today um but before we all go I would like to thank everyone for being here in our virtual shared space um definitely shout out to our Unity Week planning committee I don't have everyone's name on top of my head but I'm sure it is somewhere you know but Doris if you have some if you would like to say something to conclude our Unity Week our 23rd annual Unity Week you know um I'm not sure if you can unmute yourself um Tomasha would you be able to unmute um Doris I'll agree oh there you go thank you so much Tomasha okay Doris can I can everyone hear me yes wow um can y'all just like throw some love on the chats just for our amazing incredible presenters um yes I that that was feeding to the soul on so many levels and I could not have thought like as our committee when I think back to our programming um that we've been doing brainstorming planning since February of a better way to end or conclude our week reclaiming education honoring resilience like that was our theme for the week and y'all just really brought your your love your I felt our ancestors of all spaces gathering here today virtually and it's it was just so beautiful so on behalf of the Unity Week planning committee um I see a few folks here I can't begin to thank y'all so much to everyone the 26 people that are still here um show you know sharing space with us even though this has passed over but time is a social construct I feel you Geo um but you know I really do thank y'all so much for being here this was the first time in the 23 year history of Unity Week that we've done it all virtual um and so I want to especially give a shout out to our amazing Unity Week committee um you know this isn't done without the collective as um what Tamasha said earlier and what everyone has said and I'm just so grateful to everyone who has been a part of planning this so um Sean McFessel, Betty Vera, Diego Luna, Geo Marcunello, Shannon Waits, Edwina Fui, Bob Schreiner, Georgia Peary, Marlena Fareti, Saini Vuli, thank y'all so much um I'm yeah I'm I have nothing else to say I'm just full of gratitude and to of course our team um Center for Leadership and Service the Learning Teaching Center of course you know Student Services always supporting us Dr. Mosby our president of the college for sending out a message encouraging folks to come and attend this um this is all done as a village and of course Erika, Tamasha, Eileen um thank y'all so much for closing us out this has truly been an honor and Geo thank you for being such an incredible host and bringing this presentation to us um couldn't have done it without you so that's all I have to say thank y'all so much thank you so much major shout out of Highline College for for adaptation to these circumstances but thank you for having us thank you uh enjoy your lunch everyone uh recording of this uh workshop will be available I don't know when but I'm hoping it'll be available it'll be available in about a week and a half or so we're going to be getting the videos closed captioned and then after that we will go ahead and upload them onto our Highline College Center for Leadership or Center for Cultural Inclusive Excellence um playlist so I'll send that out it'll be on the Facebook it'll be on our Instagram and one more person I wanted to shout out big ups to Mark Lentini yes Mark what you design honorary member of our Unity Week committee if it wasn't for Mark um being here giving us tutorials on how to run the Zoom experience um and a shout out to Access Services our amazing ASL interpreters that have been with us all week um and a special shout out as well to our ITS um department for helping us out with technology without y'all this would not have been possible so thank you thank you thank you me gracias to everybody yes Mark is the MVP so big ups to Mark and Bob Hire blushing over here y'all to our brother Bob Hire as well from Multimedia Services so he'll be working on the closed captioning and getting all of that together so that way our videos are legit nicely edited for everyone