Roberto German 00:00
Welcome to our classroom. In this space, we talk about education, which is inclusive of, but not limited to what happens in schools. Education is taking place whenever and wherever we are willing to learn. I am your host, Roberto German, and our classroom is officially in session. Welcome back to our classroom. I was hopeful that Lorena would join me once again, however, she's a little bit under the weather, so it's me and you. All good though. Part two of What's Going on in Florida? And last time we talked about the fact that Florida approved the controversial standards for teaching African-American history and at the public schools. We talked about some of the issues with that. The fact that there's claims about how this was beneficial to folks that was enslaved, the undertones, but also the obvious things that are being done in terms of this push and approval from DeSantis team to essentially whitewash the curriculum. Look, that's what it comes down to. All right? So I'm not sugarcoating it. We're going straight there. More has happened since the last time you tuned in. And, of course, because this is Florida, there's always something happening here. And he did try to walk it back a little bit and put it on those in the Department of Education. However, an interesting development is that Florida approved conservative PragerU lessons. I think I'm saying it right, Prager University, PragerU. They approved their curriculum recently and that is extremely interesting. And this is a big deal because this group, this entity, they are the anti-woke. This is funny. This is crazy. So they look at stuff like critical race theory and other topics that have been hot topics and say, Hey, this is wrong and we're sick and tired of this and this is what we need to be teaching, right? And when I say this, I'm referring to things such as anti-immigration theories, downplaying systemic racism. This is the stuff that they're pushing. Fascinating.
So who's indoctrinating who? I wanna know! Somebody answer. Somebody tell me. Who is indoctrinating who? PragerU. I got questions. I got questions about them. I got questions about their approach. I got questions about what they're pushing. I got question about their intentions and I got questions about why Florida would approve this. Some of my questions are rhetorical. So I'm just letting you know straight up. Some of them are rhetorical and I don't wanna spend all our time talking about this. This will probably have to be another episode 'cause we're talking about a super conservative group that is unaccredited. Let me reiterate that. They are unaccredited and so, oh man, this is wild. This is wild stuff. When we're thinking about the notion of standards, right? Again, I don't wanna spend all of our time here because what I had shared when we wrapped up the previous episode, when we wrapped up part one is that we wanna offer some assistance to teachers. We wanna offer some tools, we want to offer some guidance in terms of how to navigate some of this. And keep in mind with that, we don't have all the answers. I don't have all the answers. I only have some ideas and have things that I try out. We here at Multicultural Classroom have things that we try out. Works for some people and for others it does not completely get it. But I did not wanna overlook this development, which is why I started here. 'Cause this is gonna impact things for sure. This is definitely gonna impact things. So on the one hand, you have denial of certain things that happen, particularly to black folks in this country. And then you have whitewashing of the curriculum. And then on the other hand, you have an introduction and approval of an unaccredited super conservative group that is pushing anti-immigration and those type of notions. A lot for us to unpack. Well folks, look who decided to show up after all, it's Lorena.
Lorena German 05:25
Thanks for letting me show up.
Roberto German 05:28
I suppose. Well, earlier you mentioned that you came across a video, a PragerU video about--
Lorena German 05:40
There was two of them.
Roberto German 05:42
Alright, well, you showed me one, it had to do with some type of reconciliation. Maybe you could share a little bit about what you witnessed in this video and what your concerns are.
Lorena German 05:52
Yeah, so the issue is that these videos and access to this curriculum is now granted throughout the state of Florida. It is not necessarily approved in the sense that schools are not required to use it. So that's what I mean, mandated. But it is approved. That's what I mean. It is not mandated, but it is approved as an option for schools to use. Now there are two videos that I've seen thus far, and I'm trying hard not to watch a lot of them because it's a lot and it's kind of unnerving and frustrating. And it is a little tempting though, and I also don't wanna watch them. But the two that I saw, one was about apparently someone during the civil rights movement. So what you have is like these two little kids who are modern day kids talking to historic figures about things that happened. And so the one that I showed you was someone from the civil rights, I don't know exactly who they were talking to. And they were like, "Oh, you know, it's so terrible that you went through that during the civil rights movement and that, you know, segregation and all that stuff." He was like, "Yeah." And it's just, I mean, the indoctrination and the heavy handedness of it is really wild. And he says, "Yeah, but you know what, don't worry little girl because it's not your fault and you don't have to feel guilty about what happened then." And she's like, "Oh, phew, great. You know, but I'll still do my best today." And so--
Roberto German 07:28
Isn't there truth to that? Isn't it true that it's not her fault?
Lorena German 07:32
Oh my goodness. I'm gonna get to your question. And then the other video was, I mean, just like, wow, it was Frederick Douglas and he was, I kid you not, celebrating and glorifying the founding fathers saying that they hated slavery and they fought hard to end it, which is literally a lie. And so, that's bad. 'Cause one thing is to whitewash, right? And one thing is to insert your message, like, in the first one that I shared about during the civil rights movement. And another one is to actually share inaccurate information.
Roberto German 08:23
Sounds like indoctrination to me.
Lorena German 08:24
I was just about to say. And that's what indoctrination is, right? Indoctrination is to have a doctrine, a set of beliefs that you use to communicate a message. And so what they're doing is, is manipulating information changing-- and they're very open. Like if you go to their website, they're all about "changing minds." Like, that's their whole thing. Is that they wanna change the minds of what left wing education and media has done. They're fully, openly, unapologetically, like, that's their position. And so, you know, I could see why it's on brand for Florida because they're all about, supposedly right now, both sides and everybody gets a voice, right? And so, because so many organizations our teachers have access to all of these organizations in their curriculum and their material, I could see why they'd say, "Oh, well then PragerU should be available, right? But that's the issue is that it's super, super harsh, heavy handed indoctrination, manipulation of history and just lying in some cases. It's okay to have a conservative opinion about things. It's okay to be a Republican and have different beliefs around economics and how governments should run. Like, that's perfectly fine.
And it's another for us to look at moments in history and to look at current situations and want to change them because they make us feel uncomfortable and because they create a sense of responsibility. That's the "guilt" that people are talking about. It's not guilt. It's that they feel a conviction because they have a responsibility to take an action and they don't want to sense that discomfort to have to take some kind of action. You know? And so, back to your question about, well, isn't that true? It's not her fault. Yeah. Technically, it's not this little girl's fault as it isn't technically the fault of any individual here alive right now. But we know that people have benefited, right? Generations have benefited of the work of their ancestors. If we can claim, if white folks can claim the goodness of their ancestors, they're gonna have to deal with the debts of their ancestors too. Can be one and not the other, right? So, no, it isn't an individual's fault who is alive right now, but it is all of our work to try to address this and to make it better and to find solutions because saying and throwing our hands up in the air, oh, well, I don't have anything to do about this. This isn't my fault. Leaves us right where we are and we'll continue to be coming back to this same conversation for decades and decades and decades.
Roberto German 11:16
Yes. The reality of the situation, right? There's tension that we need to deal with. Some people are okay with taking on that tension head on. Other people would rather act like none of this ever happened And that there were benefits to slavery and all that sorts of ridiculousness. And we need to be able to have honest conversations. We need to be able to come to the table. We need to be able to identify the challenges, not just from the past, but also from the present. And then hopefully work towards not just reconciliation, but reconstruction. You know, we need to rebuild.
Lorena German 11:55
Like actual justice, right.
Roberto German 11:58
Absolutely. Absolutely. So that we're leveling the playing field. And all people groups, all people groups in this country have an opportunity to succeed on equal levels, right?
Lorena German 12:15
Yeah. And as it stands in Florida right now, we're not able to do that in classrooms. We can't have honest dialogue.
Roberto German 12:23
However, I want educators, particularly in Florida, but I think at this point, while Florida is unique, there are a lot of places that are not far behind. Let's tell the truth. Let's tell the truth. Florida's an easy target, but some of y'all are in places that are not far behind. And so some of what we're doing might be beneficial to you also. I wanna start with talking about My Classroom. This is something that we started here at Multicultural Classroom. We started a group called Our Classroom. It's a safe space for educators to meet online, to build community, to lesson plan together, to talk about some of the challenges that you may be experiencing and to support one another. And this is a community of multicultural classrooms, people, educators, friends and followers, whatever you call yourself. Yeah, welcome. Together in this space, we can be ourselves, meaning we can share, learn, grow, make mistakes, and build, right? Because that's what it's all about. Going through that process of learning, growing together, giving ourselves space and grace to make mistakes and building. We gotta come together, especially during these times. And so in My Classroom, it's a private protected space for anti-racist and anti-biased educators to get help, answers and dream. Yes, I know that term, anti-bias, anti-racist. I know that term ABAR offends some people, but hopefully for most of my listeners, it doesn't offend you it affirms you. Right? We wanna be a people that are consistently challenging racism, challenging bias and checking ourselves, right? 'Cause we all bring some of that with us. We all have these tapes that are playing in our head.
And there are also systems that are in place that we need to dismantle. People don't like to talk about these systems, but they're real and we talk about it here. And so again, My Classroom is a space for people who wanna get their hands dirty and do this work while also building. If you're interested in following and joining and supporting what we're doing and growing together in community, and again, this is not for everybody. That's cool. Don't come if it's not for you. But for those who are interested, who are looking to build, who need that support, who wanna connect with educators across the country and beyond, then check us out. All right? You could go through our website, multiculturalclassroom.com. Or you could go to any of our social media platforms. It's Multicultural Classroom across your social media platforms, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn. Find us there. Go to the link in our bio page and that will direct you to My Classroom where you could sign up. Hey, this could completely for free. If you are like me, then free is also for you. Free is for me, free is for you. All right? And we're doing it for free because this is our way that we could give back. This is our way that we could support educators. This is our way that we stay connected to others. So check it out. If you have questions, feel free to hit us up. While Lorena is not in this episode, I did find a way to work her in. So here's a quick excerpt talking about what we're doing with My Classroom.
Lorena German 16:44
I'm launching My Classroom. It is gonna be a space, a digital space where we can do three specific things. First, we're gonna be able to share resources. We're gonna be able to celebrate the work that we've been doing. We're gonna be able to say, "Hey, I'm gonna teach this book, or I wanna talk about this subject in my science class, and I wanna make sure that justice is present. I wanna make sure that I'm talking about it from an anti-biased through an anti-racist lens. Can we collaborate? Can somebody workshop this with me?" That for sure. Two, we are going to be able to ask questions. We're going to be able to say, "Hey, am I the right person to teach this?" Right? That vulnerability, like, we're gonna really be able to practice that. I want to create a space where we can value that vulnerability and that we can really practice keeping each other in check, holding each other accountable and encouraging one another. And number three, we're going to be able to actually have community. We are actually gonna be able to network and partner and collaborate and all of that. All of that will be held for you for free.
Roberto German 17:43
Now, we're also involved in a really cool project, and this is Florida specific through Zen Education, and it's called Teaching for Black Lives. So if you're a Florida educator, this one's for you. We are gathering virtually in a safe and protected space to plan and learn how to teach truth. We're doing a group book study on Teaching for Black Lives by Zen Education. It's gonna be moderated by Lorena German and Tamara Russell. Both do excellent work. This is gonna begin in September, and it will go through June. Yes, indeed. It will be flexible and self-paced while still engaging and powerful. So if you're interested, again, you can email us or you could go to our social media platforms and DM us directly if you're interested. And we wanna support you. Come through for that. It's gonna be powerful. And I'm taking time to talk about these initiatives, because again, this is part of how we can support folks.
But additionally, these are some things that I think you should be aware of. You're in a classroom in Florida or places like that. One, you wanna be educated. So you wanna stay up. I know for some people I'm stating the obvious, I get it. But sometimes it's necessary to state the obvious and sometimes it's necessary to reiterate things. And so you wanna be up on game, you wanna be up on what's going on. You wanna be clear about what legislature, what's happening in terms of legislature. You wanna be clear about what's included in the curriculum, right? A lot of people say a lot of different things. So you want to make sure you're fact checking so that when you're speaking on these things, you're speaking on them with accuracy. You want to understand how it is or what the expectations are at your particular school. Alright? What's your school leadership saying about what you're teaching, what you're not teaching? I've heard stories already happening in different counties in which folks who have taught a particular subject have been told like, "Hey, I'm not sure if you're gonna be teaching that subject this year." Or they've been told, "You're not teaching that subject. You're teaching something completely different." Or they've been told, "Hey, you cannot specifically teach this." Insert the thing that offends people these days. I don't know. It's crazy. And so make sure there's clarity in regards to that. And then a second encouragement is you wanna consider how it is that you can strategically plan so that you're still teaching the truth, right? You're still teaching the truth and maybe you're not able to do it with the same content. Maybe you have to be a little more creative, drawing different resources. But one thing that comes to mind for me, besides drawing in different resources, is just maintaining an approach with the students in which we are leading with curiosity. Our students are smart and they see through a lot of the smoke screens. And so we should be asking them a lot of questions in terms of what they're seeing, what they're hearing, and what they are understanding. And then the follow up is, how does that impact them? How does it impact others? And so leading with curiosity would be a strategy that I encourage all educators really to utilize. But particularly the ones who are places like Florida where they are outlawing your liberty to teach certain content, to use certain words. And so, hey, we gotta be wise in how we approach things.
A third encouragement is to ensure that you have support, that you have community, that you're reinforcing your community, that you're building your community, that you have individuals that you could share your experience with, but that you also have individuals that you could plan with, right? We don't have to be lone soldiers in this. Let's be collaborative. Let's be resourceful. Let's be a team. And so I understand that sometimes you may feel lonely and maybe you are lonely in the particular institution in which you're serving. If that's the case for you, I hope that's not the case. But if that is the case for you, then identify opportunities to collaborate with others who are outside of your school. Maybe they're in your district, maybe they're elsewhere. Maybe it's through spaces, online spaces like my community, which I mentioned earlier, or Teaching for Black Lives. There's plenty other groups also. So if it's not those two groups that you join, trust me, we're not gonna be offended over here. It's all good. We're just offering that as opportunities. But we know there are plenty of great resources and plenty of great groups doing wonderful work. Identify one of them and commit yourself. See it through. Be open to learning from others and be vulnerable enough to share of yourself. That's a mouthful. I had to take a deep breath there 'cause I'm just-- you know my heart is heavy for the stress and anxiety that a lot of educators are feeling these days. You know, we engage in conversations with many individuals, and it's interesting to hear from them. You know, a lot of our work is supporting teachers. And so we're not on the front lines in the same way we were before when I was leading schools and working in classrooms when Lorena was working in classrooms. But now our role's different. We do a lot to support the teachers. And so I know they're carrying a lot and feeling the weight. I know a lot of y'all are carrying a lot and feeling the weight. Know that I'm thinking about you. You're loved for your work, for your service. And so I'm hopeful that some of what I shared today will be of support to you. All right?
Wanted to keep this short to the point, let you know what we're doing, offer you some resources, give you a quick update on what's happening here in Florida, and just maintain that sense of encouragement for y'all. School year is right around the corner. We understand that it's about to go down, so hopefully you're coming into it with enthusiasm albeit the things that are happening around you. I'm encouraged by so many folks we were serving at Foster Elementary today here in Tampa, Florida. Just helping the teachers set up today and offering them free lunch and serving them lunch. And just got love for what folks are doing and enthused that a new school year is upon us. I try not to get too high or too low. It's nothing that's going to break my spirit. And so hopefully you feel the same way. And so what are three action steps that you would offer educators in Florida and places like Florida that are dealing with these type of legislatures, dealing with this type of political agenda?
Lorena German 26:49
Yeah.
Roberto German 26:49
What are three action steps that you would offer educators? I shared some of my own what are three that you have in mind?
Lorena German 26:58
Yeah, I mean, that's a really good question. And it sounds simple, but I think it's complicated. But here's in short what I'll say. First, it's gonna be so important for this school year that teachers are grounded in their truths. Right? Like, you're gonna have to be really clear on what you stand for. You're gonna have to be super strong in what it is that you believe because of the manipulation of all of this information. Because you might find yourself in a situation where you're gonna have to teach, you know, maybe, right? Like the question is, do I teach this thing that I know is wrong or do, do I fight against that? Right? So there's that. You're gonna have to be really clear. And the second thing is too, it's gonna be so important to be wise in discerning your battles. Like, don't fight every battle. Every battle is not it. Right? Like you are gonna have to figure out what are some of the "little things" that you might have to just live with and let go. Because this profession, the work that we're doing in those classrooms with those kids matter more. You know, it matters more than these politics. And so, you know, you'll have to be wise and figure out like, okay, this thing is worth fighting for. And these two things, I'm just gonna have to let that just go. And then lastly, man, community is gonna be so important. It's always been important, but even more so now because we're dealing with real fear. Fear of like, is this the parent that's gonna cause me problems? Is this the kid that's gonna go home saying a thing? You know, is this the year where I end up on social media? And so having community that you can turn to that can offer you advice and support and love, and a, you know, shoulder to cry on that's gonna be really important this year.
Roberto German 28:54
All right. Well, thanks for sharing. You could cry on my shoulder.
Lorena German 28:58
Okay.
Roberto German 29:00
Appreciate you. As always, your engagement in our classroom is greatly appreciated. Be sure to subscribe, rate the show and write a review. Finally, for resources to help you understand the intersection of race bias, education, and society, go to multiculturalclassroom.com. Peace and love from your host, Roberto German.
