 Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the third in our series of keynotes as part of the Illinois State Board of Education's CTE summer speaker series. The theme for this series is CTE for all students and for each student. And we are particularly trying to unpack issues and obstacles around supporting all students, including what the Perkins five act students who the Perkins five act consider special populations, as well as students who would be pursuing non traditional careers. But we want to really connect both theory and practice in this series. And again, this series will pick up again in late July with our educator panels. So with that, today we're very excited. We've had other keynote presenters from other places in the United States. Today we're coming to locally with. Again, we've had a professional organization, someone from a State Department of Education outside of Illinois and now we have someone who both has her own organization as well as works for a post secondary institution and so we're really excited to have Dr. Ayanna Brown. We're going to turn it over to Dr. Brown and let her introduce herself. And we're excited to have you again if you can quickly fill in the sign in form if you haven't already done so if you're joining us that's great if you're watching this later on YouTube we're thrilled to have you and to engage you in the conversation as part of the Illinois State Board of Education's career and technical education. I'm going improvement work. Dr. Brown, thanks so much for being here. We're all yours. Good morning. Thank you so much and welcome everyone. I appreciate your time you could be doing a host of things today. And the fact that you chose to spend your time with us is greatly appreciated. And we look forward to adding to your experiences and knowledge base and sharing with you. So there's I guess there's a couple of housekeeping details in terms of the chat, it is open, and it's absolutely available to you we love for your comments questions thoughts, and we'll have various stopping points during our time to ensure that we are managing that so for my team who's behind the scenes and making this day magnificent in advance. Thank you very much. We are still a part of humanity despite the fact that we're on zoom so we're going to forgive technical errors in advance. And assume that technology doesn't doesn't resolve all things so just in case we do have a snafu. Don't don't run away from us you know that's sort of part of the process so I'm going to share my screen as a means to get started, which will include my my formal, you know introductions, if you will. And again, I'm going to minimize all of my friends are in the corner there and so if there is indeed a stopping point for our chat time, I will be more than honored if our team members would just give me a whistle or you know say something and let me know that we need to So our time today is going to focus on engaging in community responsibility for the learner and learning the 21st century demand for post secondary education. My name is Ayanna F. Brown. I am an associate professor of education and cultural studies at Elmhurst University, which is locally right here in Elmhurst Illinois. However, I am also the founder and chief thought leader for a thought spectrum, LLC, and I have been honored to to have a host of experiences over many years doing professional development and supporting the learning context and I say that, because a lot of times when we think about education and professional development we sort of locate that with teachers and and and working with them in terms of instruction. And when we think about professional development and supporting learner and learning, then we also have to broaden that a bit to think about all of the constituent groups that are part of that that includes community. And that includes the social, the cultural varying spaces that all interface with the learner. And so our time, while my charge initially began with thinking about the needs for post secondary education the value and the importance of post secondary education. And it's important for me that as we do this work, we have to create sort of an ecological model of thinking about post secondary education to include community society and all the things that interface with what it means to learn. So as we talk today, you're going to hear me engage in discussions of how do we see the learner in the context of society, not just solely the learner in the context of the classroom, or strategies for teaching or what I'm going to call quick fixes to how do we help parents become involved. It's important because when we think about the learner, we have to broaden the umbrella because sometimes the learner is the parent. And so when we talk about parent involvement and the learner is 40, you're not going to call their 72 year old parent to engage the 40 year old learner. So we have to think about what the learner needs and who the learner is, in order to be more effective in engaging the demand and the responsibility and the need. So, thank you for jumping on this journey with me, and I hope that if there is additional information that you require resources or support, you can place those questions in the chat and I'll absolutely leave you with my contact section for future correspondences and and we will proceed from there. So, without further ado, let's talk about engaging in community responsibility for the learner and learning the 21st century demand for post secondary education. So let me start with my thank you. Thank you so much to Northern Illinois University in the Center for p 20 engagement. Obviously, you have there's host of partnerships that are a part of making this happen. And there's a whole team of people who are involved and so I'm naming Jason Klein and Debbie Kerman upfront, but I certainly recognize that they are not the only one so thank you so much bill rose Rodriguez Lopez for all of your support and what you're offering today in order to make this event happen and for for all of those of you who are equally involved as well. So, this is going to have small bits of interaction. We are an intimate group and we won't exhaust that but we do want to hear your voices I know that we have a few people that are joining us today. And if you don't mind, if we can enable their mics to be disabled, so that our participants can share with us who you are, and I'd like for you to read this title and think about what it means to you, engaging in community responsibility for the learner and learning the 21st century demand for post secondary education so there's no rubric involved so don't feel as if you have to hit all the boxes but introduce yourself and then offer a small thought about what you think this means for you and the context in which you work is there anyone who would like to to share. I'm Cassie. I'm the director at Valley Education for employment system and this engaging in community responsibility for the learner and learning. My first thought is work based learning and the responsibility we ask our community to have for the learner, while they're physically on site at the workplace learning site and the learning that goes on in work based learning. Thank you so much Cassie and welcome thank thank you that was important way of thinking that it's when you're physically there, and then when you depart because you know we like to say learnings dynamic where lifelong learners. And so that doesn't limit us to the spatial location for where we think the learning is being delivered so thank you so much. Anyone else would like to share. Good morning I can go next. I'm Amy Treadwell and I'm the director of programming at schools that can, which is a post secondary program that works with high schools to support soft skills and communication skills for high schoolers and so when I think of engaging community responsibility, the learner and learning I think of the parents and I think about what parents often assume is the only pathway to success and how we can support parents in broadening their understanding around careers and what's possible for their students. Thank you so much. Thank you very much Amy, and I think you know when we think about this responsibility to the learner and learning that sort of embracing family because they are also learning as well. I can think of many circumstances where in teaching particularly in zoom land. I've had parents pull up a chair and sit down alongside their student and they went to school that day also. I think the intention for why they pulled up a chair we don't know, but when we embrace the model when we're disseminating information, and then engaging in dialogue and building an interactive space with a learner, particularly where the walls of the classroom are falling down in COVID, then we invite it to the table, people who became teachers who weren't necessarily prepared to be teachers or who thought they were the teacher. Learners who became co learners or co adaptive learners were older siblings are helping their younger siblings log in grandparents are monitoring whether or not students submitted their work on time. The idea of who's a part of the conversation absolutely shifted. And if we think about that as a perfect storm. We don't like the tragedy of what COVID brought to us and having to do it, but what did we learn about community. What did we learn about the context for building relationships with the learner and learning because of a situation. That is rooted in what I will call medical scientific environmental social emotional traumas of sort. So, thank you for for offering that that the family base then becomes a part of having to think differently, but also being invited to the table around what it needs to think about the possibilities for their learner and learning. Thank you very much for that. Is there anyone else who'd like to share. This is Jason I'll jump in real quickly. First of all Michelle has has jumped in she's the EFE director and Erica accounting she's a real loud environment right now so she's not going to unmute herself we've had that shared in the chat but thank you Michelle. Second of all, I want to jump in and say you know it's really interesting. One of the plays at places excuse me I think we've historically seen learning benefit from a strong level of community responsibility has been related to co curricular activities, and the more self contained the community is the even stronger that level of community responsibility has been for those activities and you certainly see it with sports but it's not exclusive to sports you see it with music you see it with clubs, including a number of the, the student career and technical student organizations. And so I think that's really important and I think one of the things and Cassie certainly kicked us off with this with the mention of work based learning is across that continuum of work based learning, helping the community have that level of responsibility for all kinds of learning. Throughout the school experience, I think is is really important and you know we sit here having this conversation today on an election day, when there are a handful of of referenda for school districts that are open around the state and that is certainly the community bears responsibility but obviously the direct connection with students is another very significant way so. Yeah, absolutely thank you so much for that contribution. Jason, and we have to remember that when schools in the in the I won't go down on the social cultural context and history of American education, but can't help it. When we think about the inception of this idea of public education, and what does it mean to try to embrace and build a sense of community. The school became the rallying point, the local space by which the community gathered. And so when the school also becomes the voting location. When the school becomes the American Red Cross setup shop if there's a disaster in the neighborhood. When the school becomes the place where there's food distribution, even when students are not at school, right, but it becomes the location site to ensure that children are receiving their breakfast or lunch. During those periods of time so the physical building itself becomes symbolic of what it means to create an embrace community and the more we think about those what we'll call a more centralized location, or in some cases more isolated location locations, the more dependent community becomes upon the school building as a location space, and more profoundly the more we engage with the learner and learning in schools without walls. When we think about the learner and learning with online learning, then we have to think about how do we build community If I can log in to a website if I can log in to a digital platform, and this is where I'm going to engage in my learning. I'm still a learner but who is my community. So we have to begin thinking about the needs of the learner and we saw this with the social emotional challenges that came for students with online learning. While we made it happen and many places have been doing it for years pre COVID there you know COVID didn't create online learning communities. However, what we do find is that there is a need for relationship. So when children who are in the pre K through eight life span of education, when they are disassociated from community, there are consequences for that. We also can't assume that because students are older meaning secondary nine through 12 and post secondary which is absolutely what we saw in the collegiate space. We can't assume that just because those students are older that they don't desire or need community. They don't need to feel connected. They don't need to feel accountable they do. And sometimes those connect those points of connection, those those access points to community is what helps those learners understand their role and how to advance community and then society. So when we think about engaging community responsibility, it seems like it might be temporal for the learner, but really we're modeling for the learner, who they will be, and how they will participate as community for the next set of learners. So really does become a cyclical relationship. So the nuance to this language is post secondary. Because if we think about the demand for the learner and learning, it's for life, not necessarily limited to a degree holding or certificated spaces. We want people to see their relationship to learning as a part of a larger community. And what that means. So here's a small example and then we've only done two slides folks and we're just So here's an example. We think about our seniors and our loved ones who engage in learning because they want to. They've completed formal education. They may have or may have not had access to education. They have worked careers they've participated in economic earning spaces and they're at a season of life where they are no longer required. If they have that privilege to not necessarily work. They are in the season of their life. Some people refer to it as their golden years, but they are at a point where they have the privilege because they have contributed to society in during a time during many, many years of their of their lives. Yet when you go to voting polls overwhelmingly the people who volunteer when you go and look at volunteerism you will find those same people who are in a season of their life where they can relax oftentimes carrying the heaviest weight in terms of volunteerism and civic responsibility. That means in order to be that volunteer poll worker in order since you talked about the elections today in order to be the persons who are assisting at the Red Cross. There were people who volunteered for Kobe relief, who participated in phone banks. They found that many people still had the bigger. They had the vitality. They had the sense of care. They had the belief in the necessity to help in some capacity. And so the learner is without the walls or the borders of the school within and of itself. We're going to move forward because we're going to talk about a lot today. And again just to remind you all that if there is a comment or a thought in the chat, you know, team awesome back there let me know what's happening. All right, so foundational context and consideration that that I've just mentioned, we're going to really be thoughtful about who are the learners. We're going to think about what are their learning demands or needs. What we're going to think is who's responsible, who's responsible for the, the learning demands and the needs. So the context and consideration we have to have is is going to challenge us to think with contextualized specifics, because if we say who are the learners and the learner is 18 years old, that may be different than who's the learner if they're 25, that may be different if the learner is a third career at the age of 40, right. The learning demands and needs what's involved in that, and the sense of accountability, I say responsibility, but if we think about it as accountability, then there's a different kind of skin in the game, if you will as as we suss that out. So, um, for my, I gave you the introduction to who I was my name is IANA f Brown I'm an associate professor and education, you know, but in the end I'm grandma's baby. Right. So, this is this is my grandmother I think I might have been maybe six weeks old here in this photo. And what does it mean in a very maternal grandmotherly sort of way to to feel responsible, right to feel the sense of accountability in those very early moments of life, right for for an infant, right. Here I am at four, you know, dancing around in my parents living room you see the albums in the corner that dates me right, you know, there's no MP4 down there that's a straight up album. From a 78 probably from back in the day, right. Um, but who am I, I'm born of believers and survivors. This is my great, great, great, great grandmother, who was an ex slave, who was also a sharecropper. If you notice in this picture you see a bit of color. She was the oldest living person that I can record that that in our family. She died at the age of 111 in Alabama. So, if I think about who I am, and being born of believers and survivors, I have to contextualize that she did not have access to formal education. But you can't tell here, but in this picture and there's a potbelly stove that's that's right here in this left hand corner, right. But what you can't tell is that this wallpaper are newspapers. So literacy and words literally flank the walls as tools. In order to help provide a sense of access. There's a calendar there's a poster that's over here. And again, what always strikes me when I return to this photo is that while this is, I believe 1976. I have a color photo that features a woman who live through the invention of the camera. Right. The invention of, you know, um, Dr Brown, Dr Brown, can I interrupt real quickly would you would you be willing to share her name. Mary. Thank you. Mary, more. So, here's her home. She lives, lived, and we'll learn a little bit more about her. So, sorry. So when I think about who I am as a learner. Here's me, literally sitting next to what I'm going to call my ancestor. And while I don't remember literally when we took this photo. I know that I'm about three four years old this is my mom with the bottle nose glasses they're very, very vogue in the 70s you can tell that it's like that that 70s show auditions happening here with my sister Lisa and this outfit and my sister Lorraine. Right. This is Mary on her porch. I haven't been into the office and my mouse is just, you know, having a field day here. Right. Um, this isn't something I have to open up a old history book and look at a photo of an image of a person I'm not connected to. Right. Right. This is very present in for my sister if I'm for my sister Lorraine is six years older than me she's 10 years old who can remember when we went to horrible Alabama to see great great great great grandma Mary. Right. Um, these are my grandparents. Okay, on my mother's side. Both of them their first name is both Willie. This is Willie May. This is Willie James. Right. Mary had my mother and their role and growth in this life includes meeting in a strawberry patch picking strawberries. Right. And, and moving from Alabama to Niagara Falls, New York, the great migration is our journey from Alabama to Buffalo, New York, which is where I was born, but my grandparents went on both sides of my family. My father's grandparents were from the horrible Alabama area and moved to Buffalo, New York. My mother's side of the family. From Georgia and Alabama to Niagara Falls, New York, that's a part of a larger narrative of them moving as far to Buffalo to Niagara Falls to our from Canada. So there's a narrative there that I don't have to read in a history book to connect to. Now, within all that there's this thing called work and labor of how do you get there and why are you leaving. I think about my career and my journey and what it means for me as a beneficiary of Mary's labor. I have to situate that socio historical context to be doctor I on a ground in the idea that someone worked a field and survived it enough for me to be me and who I am. Now, our learners all have journeys. They all have stories. There is a narrative by which they have arrived at this moment that they have made whatever educational choice they have. Every story isn't rooted in the same thing, but there is indeed a story. And part of the process for engaging the context and the demands for the learner is inviting them to know what the journey is. Because when we establish potentially a social and community context for learning, we are helping invite people in a sense of purpose. That's absolutely many days at Vanderbilt University where I walked around campus, probably absolutely feeling a bit defeated as a doctoral student. And I had to walk among that space, thinking about how my journey was absolutely difficult, but it certainly wasn't Mary's. So as we engage in thinking about the context for learning and the learning the demands become different as time progresses and the issues become different. Okay. So, I'd like to pause briefly to invite our participants to reflect on your narrative. What is your journey into the context of learning what is your story. And how has the decisions you've made to be effectively engaged in the work that you do, inclusive of a journey that supports a purpose for learning. So I'd like to give you just a moment for that thought. And if you would like to share that thought, I invite you to do so. Jason, can we take that moment. Absolutely. Is there anyone who would like to share. Well, since you started with your grandparents are great great great grandparents I thought of my grandparents. Also, my father's father didn't finish high school he signed up for World War two at the age of 16 by forging his mother's signature on his enlistment card, and my mother's parents both went to school, speaking a language other than English, because they were recent immigrants. So I thought of both of those things. As you shared your family pictures and history. Thank you, Kathy. So anyone else. So sorry, Bill. Oh, go ahead. Thanks. So, yesterday I was actually thinking about this because my grandmother, when I went off to college or was, you know, just enrolling. She shared with me that she had bought the books enrolled in classes and was going to nursing school and then ended up not going. And no one followed up with her and no one cared to do that. And she, you know, told me about how important it was for me to continue no matter what journey I went on but to continue to push my self whether others didn't believe in me whether anyone was holding my hand through it. It was my responsibility to continue this journey that she never got to take. Yeah. And that can be very supportive or it can create a tremendous amount of pressure, right. It absolutely can go both ways, you know, understandably so thank you so much Amy for sharing that. Anyone else Jason were you jumping in there anyone else. Bill you want to go ahead. Yeah, so I was going to share. The experience in my family was that my parents did not finish college and most of my grandparents didn't I had one grandparent who had a degree in biology but very similar to the experience that because they didn't get to finish. And the expectation was that we, we did and so I'm one of seven young people in my family and all of us have degree so it's kind of nice to have that expectation there and and make it to that point. Yeah. It's always interesting when you attend I thought about, you know, when will I do like an ethnography of graduation. And when you watch and observe graduations how frequently you see or hear, you know, the expressions of grandparents and parents, you know, you did this for the family or the graduate articulating like this is for my, you know, other person who encouraged me I give this, I did this on behalf of you know that sense of this isn't just for me it's the community. Right. We hear lots of language around the sacrifices of parents to ensure that their kids were able to, you know, and that maybe maybe I will do that study that ethnography graduation, because it's there Jason looks like you had a wonderful thought. No, okay. You might. All right, so let's decide I think I think we've we've sort of, you know, made the point in terms of this relational so in order to situate this idea I'm going to minimize my little screen there okay in order to to situate how we're going to engage in the learner learning, I'm going to use a theoretical framework that is multifaceted and I'm going to move us through time just a little bit in order to do this so the theoretical framework for today and how I want us to think about this is going to be inclusive of the Tuskegee model Booker T Washington and the Tuskegee Institute or what is Tuskegee University now. The work of Fannie Lou, Lou Hamer, and this idea around food empowerment and and and the and and the absence of information are all the other issues that are involved in in this understanding. So I want to lean into the work of Dr. Jerome Morris who's a professor at the University of Missouri St. Louis on community bonded schools, and and then finally the work of Democratic possibilities with Dr. Patricia hill Collins, who you would know, in terms of her research and black feminist theory and and the politics the social politics of education across race class and gender. I want to first begin with the Tuskegee model. And for those of you who know the history of Tuskegee University or Tuskegee University is in Tuskegee Alabama Tuskegee is about 25 minutes from Montgomery Alabama. It's also about an hour and 45 minutes if you're a college student driving from Atlanta. It is the heart of the many people would argue as the black belt, which we will talk about and describe a little bit more. Tuskegee Institute, or Tuskegee Normal and Agricultural Institute as it began in its inception, invited learners into learning in a context where while they were free in a antebellum sense, access to education was not truly available to them in a way that engaged their funds of knowledge. So when I use the phrase funds of knowledge. I'm talking about what does it mean to have a population of black people in the south, who literally build the nation and the agricultural and industrial industry, but they are never able to go to school and have a normal education. So what does it mean for a community of people to go to school and have access to school but they've already been doing the work. They've already been engaging in the labor of what it means to understand irrigation and agriculture and planting seasons and building and scaffolding and brick making. They already know how to do this, because it literally is the life that they were living by force. So what does what a school mean then. In this context that Booker T Washington as a student at Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia is called upon by General Armstrong to start or build a school in Tuskegee that had been a land grant by the state of Alabama. With there's land but there's literally nothing there charged with the task of building a school. So, in reading the autobiography of Booker T Washington which is called up from slavery. What you learn is that there's this social context and educational environment, where learning and the learner has to be paired together, but it has to be done in the context of what does it mean for it to be the 1800s in Alabama, less than 20 years removed from emancipation and yet the turn of the century. What does it mean in a social political economic context to have a community of learners. Similarly, we have a capital D here that's for a reason of disrupting the legacy of poverty for uneducated and marginalized people. The Washington is working within a socio political context, where he is charged with creating access to private education, right it's a land grant the land was funded or seated if you will, by the state of Alabama, but the resources for the institution are it's private money which means there is none right there's no bucket of money that's existing for enslaved people or newly freed people for their education but it's a private institution. So how do you disrupt this legacy of poverty for an uneducated and marginalized people when there's no bank account waiting for you. How do you build that, and that by far is the history of historically black colleges and universities. There are institutions and people who choose to see that money, but ultimately it's not coming from the people in which they're desiring to serve because there are no resources and had never been any to prepare for them. And at the same time, this context that Washington engages in is also an opposition to the de skilling of adult learners. Washington's text and his socio political approach to building Tuskegee is really in the opposition of de skilling adults and what do I mean by that. When we talk about what historically is called vocational education was basically providing opportunities for people and to continue as laborers in a skills based environment with a wage and in order to maintain a working force of laborers. There were some investments that were never made. And many people would argue that those investments were academic investments. They weren't necessarily being invited into into the table on business management. They weren't being invited into the table of studying finance. They weren't being invited to the table on entrepreneurship. They were being invited to the table to labor, but they were being deskilled as learners. And Washington adamantly opposed the culture of enslavement that led to an entire laboring force that deskilled adult learners. So the story of Tuskegee Normal School which becomes Tuskegee Institute, which is now Tuskegee University, is that its first day of class is July 4 1881. And for many of us who celebrate the birthday of Mother Tuskegee July 4 has a very different meaning, because in this sense it is an opposition to enslavement that says freedom for the laborer must begin on this particular day and it was a conscious decision of how to choose July 4 as the first day of school for these newly freed and emancipated persons. So if you don't get the subtlety of the opposition to the start of school for black people who were slaves just, you know, 15 years ago. It's a symbolic gesture of doing that. These images very much so reflect Tuskegee's campus today. What you see here on the left is Tompkins Hall, which is the cafeteria. This Tompkins Hall is an example of one of the buildings that was made by students, because there were no physical buildings when they got there. They had to begin classes in an old shanty church. And while they were in this church with his initial students, one of the first things they had to do was build the buildings for them to actually go to school. So here you have brick making, being the inception of career and technical education before it was even called that. So in order to go to school, we got to build the building. And we're going to talk about how to do that. What you see on the right hand side is White Hall. White Hall is, I believe, if I get my history correct and my very good friends, my Tuskegee University docents, if you will, will correct me if I am wrong. But White Hall, I believe, is the oldest building on Tuskegee University's campus to date, and it too is a dormitory now, but it too was also built by the students as many of the buildings there. So when you think about what it means for the learner to engage learning, they also have to embrace the labor. Because while they are very much so freed, newly freed or early emancipated people, they're not escaping physical labor. If I want this, if my purpose for learning is being seeded by that sociopolitical context, I'm still working, right, but I'm now working for myself and working for the benefit of the goal that I'm seeking to accomplish. Now, here's what's important when I think about engaging the learner and community context. When Washington gets to Tuskegee, and he is attempting to find resources to build this school, he does not have a home. He's endowed with this responsibility by the state. He's given the charge and he's absolutely heralded in the community, but he's homeless. He doesn't have a place to live. But he's the principal who becomes the founding president, if you will, of Tuskegee, but he's homeless. So here's a quote from the text I ate and slept with the people in their little cabins. I saw their farms, their schools, their churches. Since in the case of the most of these visits, there has been no notice given in advance that there's a stranger that I was expected, excuse me, and I had the advantage of seeing the real everyday life of the people. He could not be the principal or the teacher and not be connected to the real life of his family, community members or students. He continues, the students who came first seem to be fond of memorizing long and complicated rules and grammar and mathematics, but had little thought or knowledge of applying these rules to the everyday affairs of their life. Now this is an important context because the perception for his students was that in order to be a good learner or to be seen as a valuable learner, I need to know all the rules for grammar and mathematics, but there was no place to land that content knowledge. There was no real world application for it because their memorization was not paired with application or the opportunity. So when many people think about Tuskegee, they think about Washington's mission to take the funds of knowledge of what these people know and know how to do and offer them the academic context to make it make sense and for it to have viability so that they would have economic empowerment and stability. So one of the greatest scientists of American history who comes to Tuskegee at the behestine of Booker T. Washington is George Washington Carver. And in coming to Tuskegee, he's regarded as the poor people's scientists, because as he engages in the study of botany and agriculture, he would ride around making county and neighboring counties in a wagon, and he would explain to the farming communities how to work their land in order to create a different type of vitality for it in order to grow. So he became the science instructor for the community in learning without walls. Right. So when we think about this social community context, while George Washington Carver was a teacher at Tuskegee, he doesn't limit his student base to the students enrolled in Tuskegee. He literally is moving about Alabama and working with the people because the community strength and the vitality of the community is what's going to provide and create the exchange for the survival of the institution and their students. So when we think about ingenuity to serve people and power the people and to change their condition, the investment in the learning and learning become really different. So here's an example during the 1900s, Carver conducted extensive research and codified the use of crop rotation in combination with the plant, the planting of nitrogen fixing legumes sweet potatoes. He figured out that if you're only planting cotton, you're going to deplete the resources and the water base within the soil, it's dry, it's Alabama, it's hot. But when the season of cotton is over, if you rotate your crops with nutrient rich plants, you're going to regenerate the biology and the soil biology of the land. So his system was known as regenerative agriculture, and it helped many southern farmers away from the monocultural approach toward diversified horticultural operations. Now, if we put this in academic language today and this very much so is in academic language today. But if you think about the weight of this academic language, I would probably argue that the science and the academic knowledge that goes with agricultural work was not considered valuable in a time where the people were not considered valuable. What we refer to as anti-blackness today is very much so a part of the history that these people were not going to be regarded as intellectuals. But in order to survive and regenerate and create a survival within the economic institution, they were very much so academicians. Because it was their academic understanding that came because of their skill and their experience that allowed them to cultivate an industry that we now discuss very differently when we talk about farm to table. Right, all the language that you see if you're in whole foods and you're walking around and it seems very hip and trendy. I'd like to say how did my grandmother do it. Because there had not been a co-op of informants, there was living and there was surviving that taught you how to make that make sense. How we doing so far. Let me check in with our audience so far. Everybody okay. Awesome. I see there is a let's pause for the chat. I don't know if there's anything we need to attend to team awesome back there is anything that we need to attend to. Oh, I've mostly been throwing my thoughts out loud into the chat so we can continue on. Wonderful. So, if we move up a little bit from Washington and we think about the work of Fannie Lou Hamer now for those of you who, you know, who did not benefit from a phenomenal history teacher I'll say that. And Fannie Lou Hamer wasn't discussed mentioned or put forward when we talk about citizenship citizenry, citizenry, voting rights, etc. Fannie Lou Hamer someone you must know. And Fannie Lou Hamer spans time, because in Mississippi in the context of Mississippi, Fannie Lou Hamer is a sharecropper, right, one of many sharecroppers born into a family of sharecropping. But finds herself at the center of the political stage, because of survival. Right. And so I'm going to let Fannie talk to you a little bit. I want to help you understand what how her emergence of understanding. And I want you to pay attention to the intersectionality, meaning the intersection, the relationship, the undisputable ability to disassociate them. You must keep them connected. I want you to associate and keep contextualize the relationship between labor and freedom. Okay, so here is Fannie Lou. Being one of 20 children, a very poor family, sharecroppers in the state of Mississippi. I know what it's like to be hungry. I know what it's like to be without clothes. I know what it's like to be without food. I live in a three room house with no rock washroom facilities. Just a three room shack. So in my earliest childhood. I remember one day I was playing beside this road and the landowner drove up. And he asked me could I pick cotton. And I told him I didn't know I didn't know it's 60 years old, you know, I just didn't know. So he told me I want you to go out in the field, Fannie. And I want you to pick 30 pounds of cotton. And if you pick 30 pounds of cotton in a week. I'll carry you to my commissary store. And I'll let you get some of the things that you want to eat. So don't you like cracker jack. That was exciting because I'd never had to. I was out in the field. I told my parents. My mother asked me that I want to try. I told her I did. She told me so now we won't let you cheat. If you pick it. We'll say you pick. But if you don't pick it, you don't get it. This made me work very hard. I think I did pick 30 pounds of cotton. That Saturday the landowner did keep his promise. He carried me to this commissary store. He gave me some cracker jacks and cheese and the daddy wide leg saw these. But I didn't realize what he was doing other than that. Next week, I was tasked 60 pounds of cotton. By the time I was 13 years old, I was picking 200 and 300 pounds of cotton. I picked 300 pounds of cotton a day. I have nine years old. I help my mother pick it. I pick 100 by day. I'm 14 years old. Now I have my mother pick it. I pick by 200 a day. Now at first I really couldn't understand what it was that made us never have enough food. We work all the time, but we never had enough to eat. We never had a chance to go to school. So my first reaction to my parent, especially to my mother, was to raise the question to her and asked her how come we wouldn't want this portion with Fannie Lou Hamer to think about this relationship, this intersectionality between labor and freedom. Because in this piece, she makes a quick and almost abrupt dovetail from the labor and almost the quick emergence into cotton picking, being cajoled, if you will, attracted to it because of us, because of food, and this desire to have access to food. And so when we think about our many people today, the invitation into going to work immediately and pursuing post-secondary choices. Many times is of interest. I have a thing for I like doing. I'm really creative. I have a set of interest in. But we also have to recognize that the attraction to skills based career and technical careers for many people is because they're trying to feed a family. They're going to work or they're looking to gain skills or certifications or licensures because of a demand. And why we regard them as careers, we've elevated the discourse, we've created honor for the labor that goes with it. But in the root narrative, being cajoled into early workers is connected to a different type of system. So when we think about this intellectual, this intersectionality between labor and freedom, what Fannie is is offering to us immediately is this idea that if I were white, I wouldn't be hungry. Because the shift is so abrupt, you almost don't expect that to be the conclusion, but she's a child. And all she sees is that I am participating in a backbreaking labor force. And all these children are where they're engaging in work and labor with the expectations or similar expectations of adults. And ultimately the conclusion becomes, I wouldn't have to work this way, if I were not white. Now, why do I offer this when we're trying to think about this notion of career and technical education. Well, Hamer, Hamer's work shifts into an issue of food justice. Because if people have the ability to have access to resources and food and sustainability and not question their health or their wellness, the labor choices might be different if they don't have to negotiate whether or not I'm going to engage in this work. So here's some pieces that that are important to know about Fannie Lou Hamer's work. In 1969, Hamer founded the Freedom Farm Co-operative on 40 acres of prime Delta land. When we talk about the Delta, we're talking about the Mississippi Delta. We're talking about land along the Mississippi River. And for those of us who are in Illinois, yes, the Mississippi is running right through us, right? So when we talk about the Delta land, we're talking about land that this river is absolutely feigning. And so the soil is rich. The agriculture is rich. And we have a million literary narratives. That's my former middle school English language arts teachers background. And there's a million stories that are out there that are connected to the Mississippi River, right? And what this means in terms of the voyage of moving in South. It's almost like talking about the Nile if we were in Egypt, right? Her goal with this prime land with these 40 acres, her goal was to empower black farmers and sharecroppers who had suffered at the mercy of white landowners. How do you do this? If we think about who sharecroppers were, they are borrowing seed money. They are borrowing housing in order to plant crops so that they can harvest the crops, sell the crops, and then pay back the landowners what they borrowed, and usually leading them in poverty and only with enough food to survive winter, if that, for them to go back and repeat the cycle again. They don't become economically emancipated. They become cyclically engaged in a condition of long term poverty. And so Hamer inserts this idea of we have to empower black farmers to disrupt poverty. So the co-op consisted of 1500 families who planted cash crops. What did they do? When they cashed out, they purchased another 640 acres of land. Now think about that. With the money, they go buy more land. Why? Because we learned very early that land is your capital. And with this land, they started a pig bank where they distributed livestock to other black farmers. What do you do with the livestock? You breed it and you feed your family. So that way the farm grew into a multifaceted self-help organization providing scholarships, home-building assistance, and commercial kitchens, among other resources so that they are moving out of the cycle of poverty. But how are they doing it? They're using the skills that they already have, right? Not that they wanted those skills, but the ones that they have to start with what they have, right? What they had was this institution of enslavement, which leads to sharecropping, which leads to this cycle of poverty. Now, the next piece on the theoretical framework, and I'm putting all these pieces here for you, is that Patricia Hill Collins' work, and we very much so move quickly into the 20th century, is when Patricia Hill Collins talks about democratic possibilities. One of the arguments that she makes is that we need another kind of public education because the public education that we have do not engage in the possibilities in understanding the types of literacies that are going to be necessary to critically think. Finally, Lou Hamer critically thought out how to create economic empowerment in a model that was intended to create deprivation and long-term poverty and labor. But she critically thought how to galvanize that. Patricia Hill Collins' argument is that the organization and the structure of public education continues to a certain degree, a cycle where if you don't have the critical thinking skills, and if you don't have the opportunities to think about school for what? You are a part of a cycle that creates a rudimentary set of practice. It becomes standardization. It becomes worksheets. It becomes dummy down tasks that don't create opportunities for people to pursue what it means to not just survive if I borrow from the love's work, not just to survive, but to thrive. And so as long as we have a segregated economically segregated, a racially segregated system that we continue to see recycling, we've not created democratic possibilities. It's easy to see how it reproduces itself. So this is what Hill Collins says in her book, Another Kind of Public Education. One of us who believe that democracy grows stronger when more voices are heard realize that centering our education on issues that matter to us sharpens our critical thinking skills. The better the public's ability to analyze social issues, the better equipped they become to act as first class citizens. And my question is, what are the social issues that we need to be analytical about in the 21st century? Because if we are able to name and willingly, willfully and openly discuss, unpack, and solve the social issues, we will sharpen our critical thinking skills that help us reinvest in the kind of education that our students deserve and so deeply need. So if I go back to Hamer, what was the social issue that she was able to analyze? She analyzed poverty. She analyzed hunger. And as a sharecropper with a minimal to no education, she builds a cooperative that sees a cooperative economic plan to not just resolve the issue, but to oppose the de-skilling of farmers. How are we doing? Okay? Thoughts, questions, comments. There should be moments. Some of you should be going, oh my God! The input is like, what is she doing? So if I were to pause here, what are some of the world-wind of thoughts that are happening for you? So how do we think about these theoretical frameworks? I'm going to come back. I love awkward silence. You didn't get that there. You know, it's going to happen again. Well, with Dr. Jerome Morris, who talks about communally bonded schools. Now, just based on the title alone, when we talk about schooling as being communally bonded, what does that mean to you? It isn't schooling for graduation. It isn't schooling for licensure, schooling for certification, schooling for graduation day, where we put on our regalia and we go do the thing. He said, we must create communally bonded schools. What does that mean? Well, communally bonded schooling views the relationship among schools, families, students, and communities as integral to students' academic success. Students' academic achievement and success cannot happen unless schools, families, students, and communities are working in relationship to one another. As long as they are disparate and functioning in isolation of one another, we are not working to the whole of children. Morris' work unoverwhelmingly examines desegregation, the impact of desegregation, and specifically with the overwhelming closings of black schools. And what happens when with desegregation, you deplete the black teaching workforce who could not be hired or get jobs in predominantly white schools? And so we see the numbers, and we talk about this with ISBE, this is the active conversation at the state level, of increasing the number of diverse teachers. Well, they were actually there. But with desegregation and the closing of black schools because of blessing, right, so here comes one of those unintended consequences, right, of what Derek Bell refers to as the entrance convergence of desegregation. With the closing of black schools, you now have black teachers who are no longer working in their own neighborhoods. So that sense of community, that sense of relationship is disbanded. So the call for communally bonded schools is to say, there must be an intergenerational trust and a cultural bonding between educators and students. The more and more we have populations of teachers who drive to work 40 minutes, teach school and drive back home 40 minutes, they have no relationship to the communities in which their children live. They have very little relationship, not necessarily investment, right, because you can still be invested, even if you don't live there, but you are actively and deliberately pursuing that investment. And so with an intergenerational trust, you're seeing age and rank, you're seeing relationships that are that are built because of a trust of a relationship between educators and students. You're talking about the critical presence of black educators, particularly when we continue to see 80% of our teaching force remaining to be white and female and overwhelming of representation of our students to be overwhelmingly over 90% in public education of students of color. So as long as you have this, what we was referred to as this cultural discontinuity between who's in the classroom and who's, who's, who's teaching and who's in the classroom. There becomes an intentionality of our teachers to really want to pursue a relationship, you don't have to look like the students you teach. That's not a requirement, but it is to recognize that if there is not a critical presence and a trust of bonding with your students, you're not going to create a bonded relationship. Now, why is this important to know. One of the things that Gloria Ladsden Billings talks about with culturally relevant pedagogy, and in her book The Dreamkeepers and all the similar research that she's done is that many of her culturally relevant teachers that she researched, many of them were white. They didn't, they weren't necessarily black teachers, but they were invested in not trying to quote save children, but they were invested in who the children were. And developing their social cultural emotional and economic identity. They were committed to what it meant to support and engage with a critical conscious understanding of empowerment, and that they were equally learners from their students. And so when we talk about this critical presence of educators, it also includes for our administrators, recognizing if you don't have representation in your faculty, and in your staff. That looks like the students you serve. You have to do twice as much work if not more so than discussing the discontinuities that will be present. So yes, there is the need for a critical presence of representation for the people that you are serving. Educators reach out to families and that's not parent teacher school night. That's not report card day. That's aside from that, it's relationship to families and communities that are not inclusive of mandated nights. And quite frankly as a former edge as a former middle school teacher and then working at the high school and doing family community relationships work and as a scholarship coordinator as a mom, as a professor back to school night is pretty useless. 15 minutes. And six of those minutes is where the teacher is talking to you. And you as the parents are not invited at all to inform, share, talk about the funds of knowledge ways of thinking, hobbies, attitudes perspectives trigger buttons to get my kid really motivated where the parent informs the teacher. And that is usually one direction where the school is driving time and the organization of time. Now, similarly, as we we think about the educators reaching out to families, similarly in that parent teacher conference context, you generally don't have the students involved in driving the conversation either. They're saying hey thank you so much mom dad teacher, I want to sit you all down together and tell you about my goals for the year. I want to talk to you about what I'd like to accomplish. I want to talk to you about my weaknesses my fears. So when we think about shifting the narrative of what it means to develop an understanding of the needs for the learner, when does the learner become invited to lead the discussion on what they need as the learner. We've seen all these before you. In order for you to think about within what become the demands for post secondary where we perceive that their chronological age shifts the demand that they may have as learners. So Morris is model for a community bonded schooling looks like this. First school is a pillar in the community. And then to relatedness of school community and family, where sometimes families are bringing the school out. Okay, community is being invited to create the political social and economic forces and resources are not obscured. Right. And there is the recognition that everyone's narrative with schooling isn't rooted in equity and equality. So understanding those structural forces that create a lack of trust between students and schools. So the artistry that exists. When we think about cosmotology. This, this, some people would say, career. Some people would say vocation or trade. Well, you know, for many years, one of the arguments that were had in cosmotology that it was, it was learning a profession or skill set that had nothing to do with black culture. Had nothing to do with black hair. Right. So you go students who go to cosmotology school and you have the dolls that they work with the heads that they wash the hair on and they do all the stuff. And it doesn't model reflect texture look like it doesn't study doesn't think about black women and black hair. Even the learning itself doesn't situate this other context and culture cultural ways of learning when we think about building a community of learners, we have to be inviting going what does this really mean that like what are we really saying if we're trying to teach people about this industry of hair care. We actually have to have a discussion about hair care for whom. And these arguments have been made time and time again, as we think about different forms of services that that oftentimes occur particularly when you're working with humans. Right when you're dealing with human services now it's different than if you're working on a car. Right. There's no cultural responsibility per se. Right it's a machine but when you're talking about people. You know there's a whole industry that's been built on hair care for black women rooted in the idea that generally speaking, they can't help me because they don't even understand me. And so this actually is a picture from from one of my resource texts that talked about during the transatlantic slave trade and not knowing if and how and when your children would be stolen. That you had grandmothers would take grains and seeds, and they would braid their children's hair and they would place the seeds into their hair. So whenever these kids landed wherever they landed, they would be empowered to plant these seeds to never forget and also create access. And so many people talk about how the sweet potato, you know really the yam. Right. I invite you to watch the. Oh my gosh and the documentary just went out of my head if you know which one I'm talking about. Let me know the documentary on African American cooking and food and culinary arts and the culture of color I'm going to remember it in a moment it just escaped my mind that is a study of culinary skills and culinary arts. And that is not in the French cooking school. Right, but it's very much so connected to identity and cultures of people. So, if I synthesize synthesize those theoretical frames, we have testy, we have Fannie Lou Hamer, we have Patricia hill Collins with democratic possibilities. And we have this idea of communal bondedness. Okay, I'm synthesizing these theoretical frames to say something. As we think about the learner and learning in the 21st century, we must understand the socio political climate that our learners are in. Fannie Lou Hamer reminds us that we must awaken a sense of urgency and self help that leads them to economic empowerment. Not the de skilling, but the empowerment of economics which means everybody ought to know finance. Everybody should be able to study and engage and understanding the economics of labor. It is very much so the Tuskegee model. There must be a catalyzation of learning within the critique of national rhetoric. We cannot invest and want an improved education and not invest in early child education. Right, so we have to look at the national rhetoric and be prepared to critique it. Okay, it's very much so what James Baldwin argues in his talk to teachers in 1964. We must establish centering relationships that disarm oppression while we invest in community. Well, how do we do it. You're probably saying, Okay, now you've given us all this history. What are we doing here Ayanna. Well, what then are the demands for the 21st century learner. What are 21st century learners facing and what are we thinking about well who is the 21st 21st century learner. Let's go back to this list. This is my my brain dump. Right. The 21st century learner post secondary. They're learners ages ranging between 18 and 40. Right. These learners are pursuing first and second careers. I would almost even dare say third. Okay. Learners have families. I don't necessarily always mean that they are parents. You have many learners who are siblings, who are leaders in their families. So yes, they are parents, but sometimes they are still children who are functioning like the parental base. These learners are more digitally acculturated than you have ever been. I think there are a lot of them, particularly the ones hovering in the 18 to 20 zone. Their last 10 years of living have been completely coming of age as technology has more and evolved. However, when I think about when my mom decided to go back to school as a well over 60 year old woman. There is concepts with technology that she could not wrap her head around. She would write a class and she would write in shorthand in a snow pad. Right. The discourse of secretaries, if you will. Right. It's like reading beautiful Chinese script. Right. And Trent and take all of her notes in shorthand, because as a secretary, right in the language of very much so the 1970s and 80s. Right. And then learning. Okay, I'll type it up later when I get home. Right. But being in class doing script. Okay. Almost look like sand script. Learners are not necessarily well versed or confident with complex texts texts. This is an important point. Our students have grown with access to different tools and resources. We have found that the demands for teaching reading and content area literacies that the demand has increased because there is an assumption that is made within content areas that because students can read narrative. You can also read complex informational technical language text. And that is not true. And so as our access to literacies have increased meaning different types of texts. So to has our demand for investing in teaching students how to read complexity. So what happens when you have someone who loves novels and will happily read a novel but when they pick up their chemistry book, they literally will get through a paragraph and God have no idea what's talking about. This is not about if they can read. This is about how have they been trained to read complexity and technical language it returns us to what we do in literacy work about vocabulary development. And it's a demand for teachers to not make the assumption that because their students are post secondary. That they have the literacies to read complicated informational technical text and by far that is the discourse of what we find in our technical careers trades vocation training technical language that they must learn how to read. Our learners are multi dimensional. They have greater access to digital tools, but that also means time moves very quickly for them and how they think. And as a result of that, the patients to sit and read long deep detailed informational texts may also be shorter. So, if I use this very mathematical looking grid of input output you know remember doing functions and algebra, you know input functions output for those of you who like math literacy. Okay, well, based on who they are. If learners ages range between 1840. Then that means they they require diverse instructional approaches. Okay, if learners are pursuing first and second careers, they require opportunities to build from what they know. And we talk about activating prior knowledge already in education, but if I've worked a whole second career already and I'm entering another one and I'm already 40, and I'm now coming back to increase my skills. There's a whole career world that I've already know, which means I have to be able to leverage prior knowledge, and that has to be considered valuable. Right, and instructors to know how to use that prior knowledge to usher through that learning. Similarly, when we have learners with families, when we're talking about institutions and structures, there's a need for flexibility and compassion. How do we structure flexibility. How do we structure compassion many people would argue that compassion is a disposition. Well yeah compassion is a disposition but when we structure flexibility. We provide opportunities for compassion to readily become more available. If learners are digitally acculturated. The learning must be paired with digital tools Jason I think some of your work talks about this. Right. If learners are not necessarily well versed or confident with complex tests, then what must we do. We still require direct and supportive instruction with reading. We can't get away from like let's talk about how to scaffold reading how to build our reading skills. If learners are multi dimensional that we must have fluid approaches to communication within standardization, because you know unfortunately and some people will say fun, fortunately, they're still going to take a licensure test. They're still going to take a certification exam. So they must be prepared and supported to do that but there must be fluid approaches so that the critical thinking that Patricia Hill Collins talks about isn't dismissed. Engaging 21st century learners includes some things. Embracing the language and literacies they navigate in everyday life. Discourse practices within and among learners are complex and social and these academic tools they have, they have to be able to move seamlessly and sometimes unbeknownst to them. They know how to code switch and move between these complexities without even thinking about it. Maybe we need to make these things visible so they become accessible tools for them. The demand for literacies. Yes, that is plural. There's more than one way to be literate. Combined with the complexities for everyday life require reading practices that equip students beyond rudimentary notions of literacy. Simultaneously, they too require that we not assume learners chronological age means readiness. Okay, as I would tell my seventh graders as they were changing and growing in life. And once we went off to high school just because you are taller than me. Does not mean you are ready. Right, your chronology, the biology. Has to line up with the social and emotional and we must be prepared to support that. So, I know that our time is down to one minute. And I'd like to leave you with some closing thoughts there definitely other pieces in here there was a little bit more from Fannie Lou. And what happens when she finally speaks in front of the DNC in 1962. Right. That's important. I think these links I can make available to Jason and you can very much so go to YouTube. That's not a promotional for YouTube. I'm not getting any kickback on that. But if you look at Fannie Lou Hamer's powerful testimony during freedom summer. She challenges this idea of what are you doing for community in the social politics so someone who went from pig farming to share cropping is now speaking in front of the DNC. So, I want to leave you with these words of what are our commitments to the learner. And I want to challenge you with three. First, when we think about career and technical education when we think about learners in general we have to dismantle the stereotypes about who they are and their journey. Secondly, we must engage them as academic thinkers. Okay, we have to disassociate this idea that career and technicals over here and colleges over here. And the academic thinkers are the ones who go to college in the very traditional sense and the worker bees are over here. Because if that's the case Fannie Lou Hamer the sharecropper never would be in front of the DNC. Right. Okay, so we have to dismantle that and we have to create connectedness. Okay, community resources relationships a sense of accountability. Okay, we need to build dialogue with students and their families and continually do needs assessments. We need to consider discussing familial context for access to learning. What is their schooling history, both formally and informally. We need to engage the topic of trust. What does this mean and what does this look like an action, because every learner comes with a different story and some learners are vulnerable. We need to examine communication style and ways of thinking. We need to be fully present. So here's my final thought, any intellectual pursuit requires engagement with students and learning that reflects their lives, the times they exist and the futures they seek to dream. Because educators are endowed with the privilege, not the right to collaborate with students to understand how their experiences are opportunities to learn complex material. Without the study of them material alongside you. We remove ourselves from the existence of our futures. Thank you so much to this wonderful community for your leadership and engaging in this conversation. I look forward to the continuing the dialogue and discussing more of the house, and I'll turn it back over to Jason I know we are at time if there's a question about or comment or something that the audience would like to turn over to you but thank you so much, and I look forward to furthering our work. Thank you so much Dr Brown that was a very, very powerful presentation to wrap up the keynote portion of our summer speaker series. If there are comments or questions please do feel free to throw those in the chat, couple of things, we will have the comments available on YouTube later next week and we will share that out a variety of ways, including the Illinois P 20 network newsletter that will go out on July 8, as well as through the Illinois State Board of Education, and then we are gearing up to continue with the presentation. We'll be releasing the full schedule initial schedule more will be added but of professional learning events that include both individual events, as well as a series of series as over the course of next year and those will be coming out next week as well we're very excited, we're going to look at the publication version of that. So look for those as people return from vacations and start gearing up for the start of the 2022 2023 school year. And of course, this this series will continue later in July with our educator panels and so thank you again to everybody for being here. Dr Brown, thank you so very much. I want to give a shout out to Rodrigo who quickly jumped in and saved me was high on phenomenal documentary so you know as students are studying if they're doing culinary arts, you know invite them and to think about culinary arts from the perspectives of the living and that travel and I'm very excited about my my trip to Ghana that is forthcoming my previous trips to Ethiopia and Senegal and Gambia and thinking about how you think about language culture identity and when you talk about a trade. You know fabric and textiles in Africa mean something very different than fabric and textiles in India, and we have to embrace if we're going to do the work, then then we need to think about these borders that we've created to overcomplicate your I'll say that. Thank you so awesome. Thank you everybody.