Speaker A [00:00:01]:
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 Germán, and Our Classroom is officially in session. Welcome back to Our Classroom. Today I am joined by Jalpa Vaidya Patel, a licensed clinical social worker who is also an adjunct professor. She's passionate about cultural curiosity and belonging. We're going to be talking about that today.
Speaker A [00:00:46]:
She's also the author of the forthcoming children's book the Worldly Tree. You can follow her on Instagram @wizziesways. Thank you for being here, Jalpa.
Speaker B [00:01:00]:
Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to share this space with you.
Speaker A [00:01:05]:
Well, it's a pleasure, and we'll go ahead and just jump in. What sparked the idea of transforming recess into a cultural celebration? Because I read an article that you put out recently, and I'm like, oh, this is interesting. This is bringing me back to my days of being a middle school principal and being an elementary school principal, people. And recess is definitely core in elementary and middle school. And so I'm wondering what. What sparked this idea? It says, I love the idea of cultural celebrations. You know, it's multicultural classroom, right? But also, recess was always somewhere. I'm like, hey, there's.
Speaker A [00:01:45]:
There's a lot of opportunity here to. To do a number of different things. There's certainly opportunity for. For kids to be social, whether in positive or negative ways, and there's opportunities for them to engage their bodies. But there's. There's also opportunities for them to make some poor choices, especially in the absence of good supervision and guidance. So what sparked the idea?
Speaker B [00:02:10]:
Oh, I love this. You know, research shows that kids that interact with culture reduces prejudice. And in this world, we need that. So when they asked me to start the diversity program at my kids elementary school, I was like, like, heck, yeah, I'll do this. So recess is like a fun time. I wanted the celebration to be fun. I wanted this embodied experience for these kids. You know, I want it to be voluntary.
Speaker B [00:02:33]:
I want them to show up and have fun. And, you know, as educators, we know recess is the time where we lack supervision. They want adults on the playground. You know, they need the help. When I was a school social worker, all my calls were like, can you show up at recess? Can your interns come help do an art activity? So this was like a time where the admin also was like, yeah, do what you want to. And I really, really. I think I really just want kids to affiliate culture with fun, you know, diversity with excitement. And that's.
Speaker B [00:03:07]:
I. Recess is the perfect place for that.
Speaker A [00:03:10]:
Absolutely. And I think about the need to create spaces where children feel seen. Why is that an important thing in today's climate? You know, I'm wondering from your lens as a social worker, why do children need to feel seen today?
Speaker B [00:03:31]:
I mean, everything. I think this year started off so stressful for so many families, so many students, they were questioning, do I belong here? Do my family belong here? Like, what is this space really like for us? So. And right now, kids have so much access. They have so much access to the news. They have so much access to the. The tragedies of the world. And it's showing up in school, it's showing up at their home, and they're coming to school stressed. And so they need to know that they belong.
Speaker B [00:04:01]:
And I think schools have that responsibility. We have that privilege to be able to give that space to them when the outside world is not feeling as safe.
Speaker A [00:04:13]:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And we know that it's hard for students to learn if they don't feel safe. Like, that's the baseline. Right. We need to ensure that they have their safe spaces. We need to ensure that they feel that way, but also that they feel seen. And one thing that stood out to me was diversity of education encourages curiosity rather than fear of difference.
Speaker A [00:04:40]:
I like that framing. What does it look like when schools successfully cultivate curiosity in children?
Speaker B [00:04:50]:
I always like to start off by saying, okay, tolerance puts up with people. Awareness respects them. Curiosity says, tell me your story. And that telling me your story leads to interconnectedness, that leads to the feeling that we're all human beings, we all have a story. We're all connected. So that's. That's what I want kids to know and feel. And what that looks up like is pride.
Speaker B [00:05:17]:
Like, I'm proud of who I am. I show up at school, I tell my story. My teacher asked me my story. You know, I'm a brown woman. Ask me about that. You know, acknowledge that that's part of who I am. If you talk to a lot of Indian adults my age, they'll always say, we were juggling as a kid between two worlds. We were one person at home with our Indian culture and at school, we were trying to be something else.
Speaker B [00:05:44]:
I don't want that for my kids. I want them to be proud. Like, my grandmother used to come to my school and wear a sari all the. There was never. I didn't feel that pride, you know, it was always a little. A little bit of uncertainty of whether I can bring her into those spaces. And I want my kids to feel that. I want this generation to feel that.
Speaker B [00:06:03]:
I mean, if you think about it, they say 400 languages are spoken in our schools in America. That's. Our schools are diverse. Like, we should be proud of that. And showing up like that, like our whole selves.
Speaker A [00:06:17]:
I think, yeah, absolutely. And it makes me think about one of our norms. Whenever we're doing professional development or even when we're doing student writing workshops, one of our norms is lead with curiosity. And it's important to maintain that type of mindset, to be inquisitive, right? To ask questions, to find out about others, about their backgrounds, about their languages, about our differences, but also similarities. And as a social worker, what connection do you see between belonging and student well being? Because I think when we're leading with curiosity, it'll reveal some things to us about whether those that we're engaging with feel like they belong or that they don't. We're also leading with curiosity and observing, listening, connecting with others. We should be able to identify if a person well being is stable or not. What connection do you see between belonging and student well being?
Speaker B [00:07:32]:
I think everything. Attendance, showing up, participation, parents showing up. That's a big one. We forget. Parents show up when they feel comfortable, when they feel valued. Like, oh, you see me, you see my family, you see my family doing something different. And it's cultural. So when I was working, working in the Bronx at a high school, I had this student named Rachel.
Speaker B [00:07:54]:
I hope she's listening. She, you know, she was African American. She would always come to my office as a counselor and always talking to me. And I'd always be talking to her about my weekend Indian celebration. I'd show her dresses or my wedding. And we do this all year. And one day she came up to me, ran up to me in the morning. I still remember this.
Speaker B [00:08:15]:
I can feel this in my body. And she said to me, Ms. Patel, Ms. Patel. I said hi to the supermarket guy because he looked like you. And to me, I mean, it's those little moments, like you have these little moments of sharing your story, and it makes such an impact. She would never have done that, you know, and maybe she looks at people that look like me differently now. Like, where she can feel comfort.
Speaker A [00:08:41]:
So important, so important to have that connection and see how those connections translate into other spaces. Your upcoming book, the Worldly Tree, how does that story connect to ideas of belonging, culture, and community? We've been discussing today.
Speaker B [00:09:02]:
Yeah, I'm so excited about this book. It's called Wizzy the Worldly A Tale of Cultural Curiosity. Nobody ever teaches parents, educators, how to talk about culture. So this is the first lesson diversity education is always teaching us. Celebrate difference. Difference is cool, being different, you know. So this is the first lesson that connects us all to the land. And the premise of the book is this little cute little girl who says, where are all my friends from? And this is a question all of us get asked as adults.
Speaker B [00:09:37]:
All kids are asking, where are my friends from? And we don't always have the language. So this book gives you the language. This little girl goes on this journey. She asks Wizzy, this cool wise tree, where are all my friends from? And Wizzy gives her the knowledge that indigenous peoples were the first caretakers of this. This land and still are today. Over time, many families have come with their own stair stories and cult of culture and heritage. So with that foundation, she goes and asks her friends where they're from. And she finds that everybody is connected because of the land.
Speaker A [00:10:14]:
I like that. Like the. Making the connection to the land and. And to one another. Oftentimes we operate in silos and we don't see ourselves as connected, although we're probably more connected than we realize.
Speaker B [00:10:33]:
Totally. And I do this activity with my. So this started because this is how I teach my kids. I was. I grew up just loving diversity. And as a parent, I said, my kids are going to know they belong here. They're not going to question their identity. So from the day they were born, I tell you not.
Speaker B [00:10:52]:
I told them indigenous peoples are the first caretakers of this land. All your friends have stories of how they came here, all of their friends. So we'd play this game, you know, like, oh, where do you think their family came from? Oh, what's their last name? Let's look it up. So there's never a question if they belonged. And I, like, really instilled. So I've been teaching this in my workshops and in my classes, and I'm realizing nobody teaches it this way. So this is the way I would love if anybody is trying to, like, pioneer this or wants to see this shift, like, bring this to your classrooms, bring this to your schools. It's such an easy, joyful way to instill this in our kids.
Speaker A [00:11:35]:
Well, talking about bringing the schools and instilling in the kids, if. If every educator listening could do one thing this year to help students feel more seen, valued and connected, what would you want that one thing to be.
Speaker B [00:11:51]:
I would say two things. One, I would start with the land acknowledgment, Understanding the first caretakers of your land, of where you stand, where your students are learning. That's such an important gift we can give our students, and they hear it. They may not connect all the dots all the time, but they hear it. Then the second thing I would say is, tell your story. You know, you are the role model for your students. Tell your students your family story. Give them that gift, you know, of connection.
Speaker B [00:12:21]:
When I hear whoever it is, especially a white person who tells me, oh, my family originated from Norway or German, that is meaningful to me, I instantly feel connected to them. And then third, I would say, ask your students, what's their family story? Let them share that. Let them see how big the world is, that everybody belongs here.
Speaker A [00:12:44]:
Yeah. And it's important for folks to do that research, right? Learn about yourselves. Learn about your family. Learn about your. Your history, your ancestry. And being informed allows us to be able to reflect on who we are, where we came from, but also to share out and connect with others. And you're right, you know, when. When we're able to hear from folks about, hey, you know, my family's from Poland or my family's from England or my family's from Sweden or whatever the case may be, I'm like, all right, yeah, cool.
Speaker A [00:13:13]:
Because then we break out of the whole, you know, color dynamic, you know, like just seeing each other based on the color of our skin as opposed to understanding our. Our ethnic backgrounds and the people groups that we're connected to and their rich histories.
Speaker B [00:13:32]:
Yeah, and we could do that. This is something actionable we could do for our kids, to raise them differently. It's kind of started. So I've always taught my kids this less. And then we were on vacation. My eldest was five years old, and we bumped into a colleague of mine, blonde hair, blue green eyes, a social worker, you know, and she said, my daughter asked her, she was five. She said, where are you from? And my co worker said, well, I'm from here. And my daughter looked at her and said, oh, cool, you're Native American.
Speaker B [00:14:02]:
Without skipping a beat. She just here meant, you know, you're Native American. So my co worker says, oh, no, no. You know, my family came from Germany, and we immigrated do the east coast and then the west coast. And then that made sense to my daughter, and instantly she went to go play without thinking twice about it, you know, so these things really do make sense to kids. It's an easy conversation to have and helps them understand each other and that they belong.
Speaker A [00:14:32]:
Absolutely.
Speaker B [00:14:33]:
Yeah.
Speaker A [00:14:34]:
So what do schools often underestimate about the power of families and kids, communities and creating belonging?
Speaker B [00:14:43]:
I think they underestimate if you don't show their culture, respect, curiosity, they're not going to show up. Like in. They won't show up. They won't show up to volunteer. They're not showing up to support the education process. They. They want to be seen in the literature, in the bulletin boards, in the food at lunch. I mean, there is this community aspect, and they don't feel empowered to show up if you don't.
Speaker B [00:15:16]:
If you're not curious. And that's what's cool about this recess that we started. You know, 50 parents just showed up and volunteered. I mean, 50 pairs showed up. And we had 10 activities throughout the school year. We had the volley. We had Hispanic Heritage Month. We had Black History Month, which they've never done at our school, which is just.
Speaker B [00:15:38]:
And I moved to this neighborhood because of the diversity. You know, I wanted my kids to be surrounded by different folks. So it was. It's so empowering. We had all these activities. We had Ramadan, and they had, like, a kindness tree, and all the kids wrote something they're kind about. It's like Maya Angelou says, it's not about what you say, it's what you make them feel. And I think recess, having cultural activities at recess does that for kids.
Speaker B [00:16:03]:
They get to feel what it's like. Like, we had little henna tattoos for the volley. You know, they walked away like, cool. I celebrated the volley. You know, they don't know what it means, but they knew what it felt like. And that's like, that's the best thing you could hope for. And I think that's how change happens.
Speaker A [00:16:21]:
Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker B [00:16:22]:
And parents did that. I will say that, like, we didn't have to pretend or research these activities. Parents showed up to support their kids, and some of the kids were like, that's my mama. And then another kid was like, you know, I celebrate Ramadan, too. I celebrate Lunar New Year in my house. You know, there's like, this sense of belonging. And the parents showed up because we were representing them. Parents that may not have volunteered for any other activity.
Speaker A [00:16:50]:
It's an opportunity for parents to share of their culture. Right. And I'm sure that makes them feel proud. It's an opportunity for the kids to share the culture, makes them feel proud, and also to learn of different cultures. As we wrap up here, know you have your book coming out soon enough. Can you give us some details in terms of when we could expect your book? And also for those who are interested in connecting with you, learning more about what you offer, learning more about your content, your articles, different ways to connect with you. How can they do that?
Speaker B [00:17:26]:
Oh, thank you, thank you. I'm very excited about the book. It's coming out August 1st with Soul Sparks Press. This is really a book, I think that could change your classroom and I say that from the deepest of my heart. Like Starting with the Land acknowledgement. This makes this such an easy, digestible story to appreciate and respect and celebrate cultures in your classroom. So I hope you use it. I hope you use an SEL lesson.
Speaker B [00:17:55]:
I hope you start your year with it. Change your schools. I have a website vision with jalpa.com Instagram @wizzysways. I'm on LinkedIn Jalpa Vaidya Patel please find me. Please do this. Make the change.
Speaker A [00:18:12]:
Well, thank you for being here. Looking forward to reading your book, Wizzy, right? And learning from your book and implementing some of the strategies that you are suggesting there. So again folks, Wizzy the Worldly Tree coming out August 1st. Thank you Jalpa for being here with us.
Speaker B [00:18:36]:
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker A [00:18:38]:
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 in society, go to multiculturalclassroom.com. Peace and love from your host, Roberto Germán.
