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In this episode, Dr. Marcus Croom talks to us about relationships between racialization and literacies, and ecology of mastery, and having real talk around race and education. Marcus is known for his work utilizing research and experiences to help individuals and groups develop racial literacies in order to advance the justice, anti racism, diversity, equity and inclusion efforts of schools, universities, businesses, organizations, and communities. He is the author of real talk, how to discuss race, racism, and politics and 21st century American schools and will be a featured speaker at the upcoming literacy Research Association Annual Conference. For more information about our guest, stay tuned to the end of this episode.
So pour a cup of your favorite drink. And join me your host, Lindsay Persohn. For classroom caffeine research to energize your teaching practice. Marcus, thank you for joining me. Welcome to the show.
Thrilled to be here. Thanks for inviting,
Thank you. So from your own experiences and education, will you share with us one or two moments that inform your thinking now?
Yeah, so for me, I'll start with my own childhood. Specifically, the kinds of things that my mother did for me as a young child. So as in thinking about this interview, I kind of just went back and say, Ah, what, what kind of stuff that I have I've been thinking about before have I written about before. And it turns out, I actually have stuff I forgot that I wrote an auto ethnography that I did also an action research project that I did at the masters level. So it just, it just took me back to stuff that I had forgotten about. I didn't publish that stuff. But it was absolutely informative, and has shaped my thinking. And one of those is the connections that I made in that auto ethnography about the kinds of experiences that I had in my home with books. The giant jam sandwich is one book that comes to mind, Harry, the dirty dog is another one that comes to mind highlights magazines, which is something that my children, especially my son, he has a subscription to to this day. But highlights magazine goes back to my own childhood, my mother had a subscription of it for me. So just thinking about the ways that my mother, in her own way, was a literacy teacher, if you will, of course, you know, I didn't think of it like that as a kid. And I'm not even sure if she thought of it that way. But that's exactly what she was, and how that connects to a whole chain of adults, experiences, supports, you know, in terms of the literature, right, we can talk about the kinds of teaching and learning experiences that African American students generally get, or specifically African American males or African American boys and the younger areas. And so my thoughts go back to, and this is what I termed it at the time trying to think about how to model it. I talked about it as an ecology of mastery, which I think is pretty interesting. When I when I think about what I was trying to argue and the points I was trying to make, that I look back on my own life and saw an ecology of mastery that helped to explain who I am what I've accomplished, that is an absolutely black world filled with black language with black cultural experiences of a particular socio economic sort, in my case working class, not too far from, you know, experiences with if not poverty, not having enough sometimes wishing, wishing that there were more. The old statement trying to make $1 out of 15 cents is how you might hear it in some in some ways. So yeah, I mean, that world that that ecology of mastery begins with my mother, my family, my my home, my community in Goldsboro, North Carolina. The schooling experiences the teachers that I had, all the way through into my college experiences at historically black colleges and universities, how they set my intellectual pathway. They set my academic lens, my critical perspective of what's important, what counts? How do you teach students well? from a teacher education program, I was a music educator, a teacher education program that absolutely every day thought about black communities, black students, black places, right. And, you know, the so called gaps that have been attributed to educational spaces that involve black children specifically, but not from a deficit, a deficit perspective, but from a resistance, resilience, refusal to let the lie live kind of a perspective, you know, absolutely a sense of personal accountability, but not absent of a structural analysis, right. It's both, it's not either, or it's both. So having that as, again, the ecology of mastery, that I turned it at the time, that explain my own life, and explain my own accomplishments, personally, and then moving into what I did as a teacher as a music educator. So I taught K 12, before I moved over into higher ed. So started out as a middle school band director, then went to high school as a band director, and then became an elementary music teacher, K five. And that transition, especially moving from the higher grades to the elementary grades, that was a major, major shift and a major major and opportunity to make major improvements to my teaching. Because in that period of teaching kindergarten through fifth grade, it became really clear to me that whatever it is that I've been doing as their teacher, right, I'm your kindergarten music teacher, but I'm also your fifth grade music teacher. So whatever it is that they don't know, guess whose fault it is.
So that wasn't necessarily something that I always thought about. And then when I had that insight and realize that it, of course, apply to other areas, right? Because typically what happens in schools is, for example, I'll just start higher ed higher ed, people say you should have learned it in high school, high school, people say you should learn it in junior high or middle school. Middle school, people say you should have learned in elementary school and elementary, people say you should have learned it in home. Right? So everybody's kind of throwing it back to the previous level. Well, you know, if you're in the teaching situation that I was in as a K five music educator, there's nobody to blame. I'm the reason why they do or don't know, understand, are able to do whatever it is I'm expecting from them as young musicians and future musicians. And so that in that particular area, as a music educator, moved with me into these other places, you know, in terms of understanding literacy development, right? How much is being blamed on previous years in, for example, a high school English class or in terms of reading achievement, and you know, that supposed gap that we keep talking about, right, that's not usually historically, structurally, economically and racially situated and accounting for all these things that help to create what Dr. Ladson billings talks about, as the educational debt. Right. So yeah, so thinking about what I learned through those years, as an elementary grades, music teacher, and then specifically, this is another piece that was really, really informative and shaped where I am now is the opportunity to design and direct an after school experience called being black boys, for b cubed. And in going, just kind of going back down memory lane, recognize a remembered and saw I actually did a presentation in 2011, at a statewide conference in North Carolina, about what we did in that after school experience for African American boys in the fourth grade, what the results were, what kind of data are used in terms of, you know, collecting quantitative and qualitative data? This is all before the PhD, by the way. So teachers, little nugget for you, you probably know more about research and about how to answer research questions than you think you do. Because before I didn't start my PhD until the fall of 2011, that conference experience that I that I did and presented and I got, I got invited to be at that conference. It was a statewide conference on collaborative. I think it was a collaborative conference for student achievement, something to that effect, at the state level in North Carolina. Anyway, I was invited to that conference, prepare the data, you know, laid it all out. And you know, had the example the audio from the interviews, all that kind of stuff. That was all before I stepped foot into a Ph. D program. So all that to say that work and that experience also really, really shaped who I am today and the kind of work that I do in terms of what is the what is the relationship between racialization and literacies? How does race matter in teaching? That's, that's where that ultimately we go. But at the time, it started with trying to understand what are we seeing with our fourth grade boys in our school, and this was at ino Valley. Elementary School in Durham, North Carolina. What are we seeing what our fourth grade boys? And what are we going to do about what we're seeing in terms of specifically their literacy development. And at that time, we're thinking about it very narrowly in terms of test scores, something called an integrated test and report cards. So admittedly, a limited kind of view, but still taking what was, you know, at least emphasized in our teaching world and trying to do something about it. So that period, and that work? Absolutely is, is the reason why I'm here now as a race critical literacy researcher, because that experience helped me to come to the later realization that it's not that we don't know, per se, how to teach, for example, reading or we don't know, what sorts of good things are supposed to happen that feed and form and shape literacy development for children. It's really tied to logics of racialization. It's tied to whether or not even the stuff we know do we actually do it? In situations where it would make sense to do it, right? One point that Dr. Alfred Tatum brought to my mind, as a doc student at the University of Illinois, Chicago, he was my advisor, he taught at the time about the experience of a teacher saying to him, I know how to teach reading, I just don't know how to teach black boys.
Okay, let's unpack that. How is it that you claim to know how to teach reading, but you're also saying at the same time, I don't know how to teach Black boys, right. So clearly, there's some other things that at least in your mind, are prohibitive, or blocks or barriers, or of some sort that are keeping you from doing what even you claimed you already know how to do. And so those kinds of things, again, just kind of watching how this kind of unfold unfolded. When I look back on it, I didn't have it all together, then. But it was that it was those kinds of moments of getting clued in that wait a minute, this is not merely a methodological issue. This is not the right kind of book or the not, you know, not the right kind of book, although that matters. Don't get me wrong. This is not as you know, the reading wars talked about phonics versus whole language. Although that that's, that's in there, don't get me wrong, it's important. But that's not all that's going on here. There's some other stuff going on here that's explaining why we're getting the results we're getting or not getting, and why things are happening in classrooms. And so to kind of jump back now to that experience as a as an elementary music teacher, who also designed and directed a literacy experience after school for fourth grade black boys, I came to the end of that action research study and program, it was a grant funded program, realizing that I couldn't actually claim that we had in terms of teaching or scores or grades, I couldn't claim that we had done some magical miracle things like that just I didn't see that when I looked back at all the data. But it was pretty clear to me that people knowing that we were looking people knowing that we were watching people knowing that we were paying attention to these boys, that seemed to be really important, because they were, you know, there was one day a week, where they were all wear a tie a long tie was a certain colors of the blue and gold tie that had a dress shirt. I would check in with the teachers. If there were any discipline data, in terms of, you know, referrals to the office grades, you know, I was talking with their parents connecting with, what are they hearing? What are they seeing at home? And how does that begin to shape what we're doing with them after school and vice versa. So like just a lot of attention. And noting and noticing what's happening with these boys seemed in itself, to have an important effect wasn't a particular method, per se, or it wasn't a particular single experience. Although we had literacy instruction, paired with martial arts on one day, literacy instruction paired with a creative experience of some sort, whether it was African drumming or you know, something else, and literacy connected with what we call identity formation. So how do we help to shape and form your identity as a black male while we're also thinking about your literacy development, right? So again, this is before I got to the Ph. D. program. So I'm already thinking about literacy in a very complex way, and not merely in terms of print literacy. So I'm thinking about literacies. In relationship to identity. I'm thinking about literacy in relationship to other kinds of practices that are important, including creative and artistic kinds of things. So anyway, my point is saying Oh, that is to say those realizations that kind of begin to accrue, and then hitting the research literature and then reading about the history of literacy in the US and in the world. And it all started to just to shape a picture that wait a minute, we have not fully accounted for the ways that race and racialization is having a role in what's happening with literacy development with children, specially, especially black children. And we're not necessarily accounting for it in terms of what's happening and what matters, but teaching practice. And so that's where you, you know, kind of fast forward, that's where you land with my dissertation. And other publications that have happened since then, where, for example, from a practice race theory perspective, we can look at, for example, in an article published in 2020, you can look at how the teachers actual thinking and language practices, the the text itself, and the student, you can look across all three of those sources, and start to see what's important, and what's, what matters, and what's playing out in terms of how race is being thought and how race is being done. And what's important about that. And so that's how I got there it was, it wasn't necessarily at all that I was an English teacher, at a high school or anything like that I was a music educator, but as an educator, who had commitments to black children, and had commitments to excellence, and what I would later call an ecology of mastery, I wanted to see an ecology of mastery around those children in my school. And so that is, that's how I ended up getting to where I am, in terms of the work that I do the commitments and the mission that I have. And, you know, how do we theorize race, and how we develop racial literacies, so that we can make sure that what these human beings deserve, they actually receive, there is no justification for not allowing these human beings to not experience the kinds of teaching and learning experiences that they deserve. And so how do we interrupt that? How do we do that publicly, privately, with funding with programming, if need be, whatever it is, how do we do that in a conserted way?
Marcus, you've said so many things that really got me thinking. But I think that one of the first things I want to say is that it is a little bit shocking to me that these kinds of conversations can be seen as controversial, right? And this sort of work that you do can be seen as controversial? Because absolutely, I think as teachers, we want every child who comes through our classroom door to be honored for who they are for what they're already bringing, for what for who they want to become. And to think that any part of that would involve controversy. To me, it's just kind of mind blowing. Yeah, it does, though. It does. Absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, speaking from where I sit in Florida, I can tell you that that it's become a really hot topic. And and I think there are a lot of teachers who aren't quite sure how to navigate the political tensions, while still doing right by the children and the families that are right in front of them. So I just wanted to kind of acknowledge that for our listeners. But I also keep thinking about how you situate the science of reading within broader context, which I think is sorely needed in the science of reading conversation, we have to acknowledge that we have human beings in front of us who have a variety of circumstances, variety of background knowledge they bring. And so knowing the science of reading doesn't necessarily mean that we know how to apply that science to every human in our classroom. So I think that's a really important point to acknowledge as well. And I really appreciate you tracing what I might think of as the ecology of your thinking and how you came to the work that you do now. And this idea of the ecology of mastery, I think really helps me to think about how we support students with a long view, right, rather than getting hung up on standardized test scores, or the you know, the data points of the moment, really thinking about how we support our students to become masters in their own right, right and masters of things that they care about, or that are going to serve them well in their world. So I appreciate that term, that ecology of mastery and, and how we might be able to think about situating, that within kind of the day to day of teaching practice. I think that really just helps me to maybe remove myself from sometimes like that the panic of the immediacy, right in order to think about what is this mean for the long view? So I appreciate those things.
Yeah. And, I just want to add that in this is something that I came to, eventually Ladson-Billings, and I actually published about this to make the connection to the permission to fail kinda on approach to teaching as compared to the demand to succeed. And there I'm drawing all Ladson-Billings work to make the point that we we can choose as educators with students of whatever racial classification that we're working with, and of course, I'm referring specifically to black students, but we can choose to either give our students permission to fail, or we can make the demand to succeed. And that that is a part of what I'm what I'm getting at when I say, I've had an ecology of mastery, and I want an ecology of mastery around black students. And that's not limited to one subject area that's not limited to just reading or just writing. It's about this human being and how they're going to live their lives in ways that they deserve, and that are filled with dignity, joy, and all these other things that we all want.
Absolutely. Well, on that note, what do you want listeners to know about your work?
Yeah, I hope that they take away from whatever they read from me that our racial, past and present need not be our racial future. That's important, because there is the tendency to feel that aspects of what we're dealing with and contending with our inevitable that it's, it's unchangeable, it's, it's unlikely to change or maybe even impossible, it's not unreasonable, that one would feel some degree of inevitability, given our history, given the realities on the ground giving structures, you know, ongoing, you know, forms of demonstrations of capitalism, racial capitalism, and all of that. So I'm not denying or minimizing in any degree, all those realities. But I do think that it doesn't serve us well, to slip into inevitability, and not recognize the extent to which, whatever we're doing now, we practiced our way there, we thought and did our way to whatever it is that we have now. And therefore, by those very same processes, and by those very same meanings, we can think and do otherwise. So we are not inevitably stuck with whatever we have done in the past with regard to human racialization. And what we're doing now with regard to human racialization, and big and small ways we can do otherwise. And so I hope that, you know, beyond the technical language beyond the theorization, beyond the evidence and the arguments, and you know, whether you agree or disagree with any one particular publication, or any of them for that matter, I hope that you take away that there is the real possibility, through human practice over time, to make the world something other than, than what it's been, it's not impossible, it's not inevitable, doesn't mean it's going to be easy, doesn't mean that it's guaranteed, does not mean that it's guaranteed. But I'm pushing us to hang on to the possibility and do in small ways, even the stuff that moves us into a different world. And we we've had so far, especially in terms of the field of education, especially in terms of the field of literacy. So
that's such a powerful message when I think it's become very easy to fall into kind of a default position of apathy, right to think, Well, I'm one person, there's nothing I can do about this, I'll just sort of quietly keep marching along doing the same things I've done. But that, for me is really inspiring to think about how we can in our own big and small ways work to reshape a future that you're right is not inevitable, we do have the power to change that. So I'm hoping that you will talk to us a little bit more about how we might actually be able to make those ideas actionable, and to mobilize them in our own lives.
Yeah. So one example of how I've put it together as a text is my first book called Real talk? And that's a question mark. And the question is important, real talk, how to discuss race, racism and politics and 21st century American schools. The reason why I emphasize the question is I open close the book asking, are we going to have a real talk?
I don't know. Maybe you will, maybe you won't. But it's an invitation. It's a possibility that you can make a choice about. And what I mean by real talk, is, are we going to honestly, critically and with confidence, engage the realities of our times, engage the world in which we live, engage the schooling that we have designed and created up to this point, through a critical conversation that not only informs the students, but before that informs and transitions and shifts the teacher. So the real talk does two things. The Real Talk process is about making a shift and a change with regard to the teacher, her or himself, but it's also about the students with whom they are working, and that they're teaching in schools and in classrooms. And so in order to guide educators, administrators, community people, even policymakers who are wondering what what this might look like. I've outlined something called The Real Talk protocol, and it's a five area process and there's not a formula, it is not a checklist. It is a protocol. It has, you know, these five different elements that say everyone should plan for and include and guides about questions that you want to raise, how do you set it up? What are literally the lines that I might say, to know how to actually have the conversation. So to open, you might want to say this to transition, you might want to say this so that you really have a laid out plan for how to think through having conversations that are really unavoidable. And this is, this is now where I want to get to something we were thinking about before we started. So I talked about the reality imperative in the book. And the reason why that's important is because it allows educators to have an informed and critical way of explaining why it is and how it is that I need to have a real talk. So there is the possibility that people would think that educators are just out here, meddling and stuff, they have no business meddling in, right, you know, some some sort of extreme conspiracy kind of thinking that you want to indoctrinate the minds of these little poor, sweet, innocent babies, right? There's that worldview. But what that doesn't account for and what that doesn't include is the fact that society, schools and human beings are interrelated. So you can't say that whatever educators are doing, or whatever educators have to do in response to what it means to be human, at this point in human history, we have made our society you can't leave those out. And so the real talk protocol is a response to the reality imperative, the relationship between what it means to be a human being, what society is, and then as a result, and as a connected outcome, what schooling has to be, or what schooling has been, or what schooling might be, it's up to us. So educators are not just out here making up stuff to to in terms of these political issues, or dealing with how to select books to read, or that's not what's going on educators, in some really, really important ways are having to respond to something that they themselves did not create, that they themselves can't be blamed for. They're responding to the reality imperative. They're responding to these forces and factors that have always had to do with whatever we think we mean by schooling or whatever we think we mean by teaching and learning hasn't always been acknowledged, has it always been accounted for? Likely not. But that's a part of what I'm trying to do in the book in terms of explaining. So why do I need to have a real talk, you have to have a real talk because the world is already in progress. This is already happening, your kids are already being exposed to these kinds of things or raising questions about it or having experiences related to it. You're already engaged to some degree in whatever these political or economic or other kinds of facts, you're already engrossed in it as well. So to pretend like it's not there, is absolutely damaging, and absolutely not helpful. And you're absolutely not helping our young people through the schooling process. Be prepared for what we call the real world, right? Like one of the things that makes school worthwhile is the extent to which it does or does not help you later to deal with the real world as an adult, for example, right? That's one of the main justifications of school, not the only one. But that's one of the main justifications that school has to help you with real life. Okay, so then, to the extent that we're stopping teachers, discouraging teachers, discrediting teachers, who are trying to help our young people to grapple with the complex, difficult, again, through no fault of their own kinds of realities, you are not being one consistent with what you claim, you say you want schools to be. So that's you're being inconsistent. The other thing, you're undermining the very best possibilities of what schooling can be whatever the subject matter might be, and certainly literacy, you know, research and literacy, teaching, and learning has to do with that. But it's not just limited to that. So that's, that's the other part is just trying to get people to understand, again, if you're not an educator, we tend to think we know everything about school because we ourselves experienced school, like in the United States anyway. We all have experienced some form of of a schooling kind of process, whether it's public, private charter, whatever it is, right. So we think we know what school is all about. But that was not the whole picture. There are other things going on there school boards, right. There's textbook adoptions, there's you know, faculty meetings, there's, I mean, there's all sorts of things that goes into what schooling is that doesn't necessarily come to your mind or come to your awareness as a student in the process, or even as a parent of students who are in the process as I am, and you may be as well. So it's important that people who are not in the field of education and specifically literacy begin to honestly and realistically factor in things that they may not have been factoring in, in terms of trying to explain why educators aren't doing what they're doing, or why educators who are trying to do a good job, are trying to address these really, really tough issues because they have to you can't, you can't give a good teacher learning experience that ignores the realities of a child's life or ignores the realities of what's happening and in a community that ignores the way that culture and society have shaped what you're doing, what the children are doing what the family is doing. You can't give a good teaching and learning experience if you pretend like none of that stuff matters because it does, yeah, there's no getting around it. So in a very practical way, you know, to wrap this up, I'm trying to kind of pull out the complexity. Without it being overwhelmingly so complex, I can't get my head around it. So that's why I have the image there of the reality imperative, and how to kind of take all that complexity, but bring it into a form that you can kind of get your head around and start to put your hands around in terms of what I can do with it. How do I practice in light of these realities?
Marcus? Is that real talk protocol? Is that something we might be able to post to your guest page for this episode?
It's actually in the book. But the oh, I take that back. Let me let me back up. I do. Because I actually did some work with the Indiana State Teachers Association, they invited me to offer a session specifically for their members. And I actually created a handout for them. So I take that back, I may be able to try to pull something together as kind of a different or similar kind of handout for educators in this forum, in light of what I did for the Indiana State Teachers Association and marketing.
Yeah, that would be great. I think that would be a great tool for folks. And it would certainly give them a preview of what your book is all about as well. So yeah, if you have any resources we can share with our listeners, we'd be happy to post those on your guest page.
Absolutely. Yeah, it's exciting. I didn't even I didn't even think of that when we were preparing. So yeah, you got my wheels going
great. Well, and you've got my wheels going also, and really thinking about setting the stage of our current problems with race and literacy in schools. You know, I guess I hadn't really thought of it the way you just shared that with us that this is not a problem that teachers of today created. It's something that they've sort of been thrown into, based on historic structures in schools and historic ways of doing school, you know, the whole industrialization model of schooling. And in some ways, I think that that, at least for me, makes the problem a little bit more accessible, because I think you can become more objective about it at that point. But I that also certainly informs kind of the political undertones to the conversation that we're having. Because, you know, again, it's not something that was just made in this moment, this isn't something that people just dreamt up in order to have something extra to work on at school, because we all know, we don't need that. But But yeah, but understanding that this is this is a long standing problem. This has existed in our educational systems for generations. And we are finally getting to a point where it seems as though enough folks have a vested interest in doing something about it, right? Because we have for a long time just ignored it and pretended like, well, we'll just do the same kinds of interventions or you know, the same kind of curriculum for everyone. And we'll, we'll standardize it. But whenever we think about the individualized kind of world that we live in, it just doesn't work. And like I said, it hasn't worked for a long time. This isn't a new problem. It's just something that we're beginning to try to tackle.
And you know, what's important about what you're saying is, because one of the things that you do in the real talk protocol, is you kind of set the context or set the stage for what it is that we're going to discuss like that whatever topic topic you've picked, you're going to set the stage and put it in context. That's what that step is called. Put it in context. Well, the way that I explained that you put it in context, or begin to put it in context, is to go back at least 20 years. So if you go back at least 20 years, you've covered the birthdays, probably even all the way up to high school, you've covered the birthdays of everybody you're talking to. So you can say this is where the line comes in, before you were born. Here's the issue and how it has been processed. assessing and progressing since then up to now. Now that's a whole different orientation and think about this thing. Is that Wait a minute. You mean, before I was born? This was a thing like, how do you, right? because we typically think about the world and life and experiences and problems from the reference point of our own birthdays within our own lifetimes. Well, when you get beyond my lifetime, that gives me a whole different sense of what we're talking about. And that relates to the last step, which is the pin up and return. Because it is unlikely it's possible in certain topics you might pick, but for talking about race, racism in politics, you're not going to resolve that in a conversation. So pin up and return is beginning with the understanding before you even launch that we're not done with this. But we do have to conclude the conversation, we have to end the conversation, the bell rang, the school year is over, whatever it is, we've got to end the conversation. But we're not done. We haven't resolved it. That's a very big distinction. And so we walk into it knowing we're talking about big stuff I've already laid out to you this was happening before you were even born, I've walked you through the iterations that it's been up to now. And then okay, here's what we understand about it, here are the questions that we're going to engage etc. And then all right. Remember, we're not done with this. But we do have to end it's time to go to lunch or whatever the reality is that we got to close it out. But we're not done, we're going to pin this up. And at the at the appropriate or the next time we've planned to do this, we're going to return to it and we're going to return to it and really spiral if you will, a little higher in some way than we did, we're going to come back and take it further and really add something new to it. And not just simply rehash what we've already done. So that's that's what you're talking about. Those are the kinds of practical moves that I'm trying to lay out for educators to think about. And some of it, some of us and I'm talking about all of us. Of course, some of you are saying, well, I already do that. We all say that as educators that I'm already doing that, and you may be, but I hope that at least the real talk protocol systematizes makes explicit lays out a game plan, well thought through well considered well prepared to make whatever it is, you might already be doing work a little bit better, and go a little bit deeper than you might be doing already.
I think that's so helpful. And I know in my own experience, I found that having those kinds of structures can help you get to that right can help you to do more than just scratch the surface and to get to real conversations where there are layers of considerations, right and potential action steps and points to come back to. So I really appreciate that. I appreciate having a tool to approach those conversations. So thank you so much for that Marcus,
you're welcome. And I want to add one other thing because I want to, I want to respond to the literacy teachers out there specifically, if this works for any grade level, and it works for any subject area, but I want to speak specifically to English teachers, or at least language arts teachers. This includes a focus or a consideration of the kinds of sources that you might use in your real talk process. So you can, for example, use a picture book, within that process of the Real Talk protocol, you may use a nonfiction text, you may use film, you may include a poem, the point is you can use all sorts of sources. And absolutely if you need to focus on a particular kind of thing because of the subject area because of the content area. Absolutely. But you could also and account of a broader sense think of fiction or nonfiction, in written form, or film, etc. as ways to help you either get informed set up or engage currently that of course can turn into written products, if you want to, on the other end in terms of what is it that I hope my students can get out of this conversation? Or come out of this conversation able to know or do absolutely now you're into writing, or now you're into sort of a research project. So the possibilities are all built in. What's limiting is not the protocol. It's your own imagination, and it's your own sense of what's possible. This is not at all to promote a particular kind of, you know, whether it's a basal reader approach, or this or that or the other, no, all of these possibilities are on the table. Hopefully the rules or protocol opens up some possibilities that you might not be seeing already with the materials you have.
And what an important consideration because it is always I think, very helpful to have a common text to sort of hang a conversation on so that way you have some starting points. So that Yeah, that's really helpful to be able to think about it in a flexible kind of way and also think about how we could potentially have students respond to that conversation and meaningful and authentic ways. Yes. So Marcus, given the challenges of today's educational climate, and I know we've touched on a few of them. What message do you want teachers to hear?
I hope that that teachers hear that your work is far more important, and far more valued than sometimes you're being signaled. The signal you might be getting is a deceptive one. It isn't telling you the whole truth, it isn't telling you what your worth really is. Does that mean that every teacher is doing an amazing job? No, it doesn't mean that. Does it mean that every school in every school system and every superintendent and every school board is doing an amazing job? No, it doesn't. But there is incredible value. There is incredible power and transformation in the work of teaching and learning. And sometimes, whether it's a political campaign, or whether it's a corporate or commercial kind of thing, or wherever it's coming from, sometimes it's higher ed sometimes higher ed isn't isn't all right, you're not being given a fair representation of what your worth and your value is. And so if that's the case, and I do believe that it is, I hope that you will find your own why. Deepen your own commitment, find the the value and the jewel in what you're doing, and not let it be all about these externals. That there's something internal something core to you something core to your work to your mission that sustains you, that helps you connect with other people and community and all these other things that we need, I hope something in that will move you forward. Regardless of these other kinds of things. I hope that my book and anything else you read from me, helps you to do that against specifically literacy, specifically with black children, teaching and learning. But really, it's it's true for all students. And it's true for all teachers across racial categories, because that's the other thing I talk about in my work is that racial literacies is something that we all need to develop. We all benefit from a practice theory of race, and not a common sense, understanding of race, right? across racial groups, we benefit and we're better off. So yeah, I just hope that you will find within your yourself and within your work and within the place you are what you need to withstand these forces that are referred to earlier years, you are indeed responding to the reality imperative, whether you have thought of it that way or not. And what you're doing is incredibly valuable. Society needs you more than it admits sometimes. And if you haven't heard it, I hope you heard it today.
Thank you so much for that, I think that's just really a critical message. Because I've, I've recently heard it described as noise. And I think there is a lot of noise in education right now and refocusing our our energy on what is most important. The kids right in front of us, you know, the futures they have in front of them. I think if we can get back to that. And again, with an eye for every child in every classroom, I think a lot of that noise becomes a lot quieter whenever we can keep that in focus.
Yeah, don't don't get into the methodological fights and battles. We're being invited as a society in the United States anyway, wherever you are across the world here and this may not apply. But in the United States at this moment, in the field of literacy, we're being invited to have a methodological battle. We've already done that. So like, Okay, so let's Okay, so let's go back, let's go back 20 years. Right, like, here's how we can begin to apply the real talk protocol. Right, right. Right. Right. Yeah. Like, we can see that we've done stuff like this before, it's not new. So before you were born, young people, there was something called the reading wars. A lot of stuff was written about it, you know, people agree, disagree, published all sorts of stuff. This is not new, right? Here it is, again, what what are we? What are we going to do about this iteration? And pin up and return? Because this conversation, this podcast today is not gonna resolve that? Right? Your school of education across the country is not gonna resolve it, right, your local school board? And it's like, how do we really, you know, just dig into it and chunk away at it really thinking through where do we want to be? What kind of world do we want? What kind of schooling that we want? And are we doing big and small things to get us there? It's not inevitable. It's not guaranteed either. But it's not inevitable that we can't teach and learn and specifically develop multiple literacies but especially racial literacy, because I think that sometimes, and this is what I say to my undergraduate students, is easy to see developing racial literacies as a second task, or a separate task, from Developing, for example, print literacies. Well, actually helping young people to develop racial literacies will move them forward with regard to comprehension, for example, right, or other kinds of things related to print literacies, it will move them forward in terms of understanding themselves, and identity work, especially in a racialized society. Right? And on and on, and on, and on and on. Right. So the thing that I try to emphasize with my undergraduate students, and really any of my students, but I'm thinking about my undergrad class now, is that we're about developing multiple, multiple literacies. And as a particular need, given where we are at this point in human history, we all need to develop racial literacies. And we also can help our young people to develop racial literacies as well, while we're developing all the literacy that we care about and that we need at this point in human history at this point in a 21st century.
Marcus, I thank you so much for sharing your ideas with us today, sharing your time with us today, and I thank you so much for your contributions to the field of education.
Thrilled to be here.
Thank you.
Dr. Marcus. Croom is known for his work utilizing research and experiences to help individuals and groups develop racial literacies in order to advance the justice, anti racism, diversity, equity and inclusion efforts of schools, universities, businesses, organizations and communities. He is the author of real talk how to discuss race, racism and politics and 21st century American schools. His work has also appeared in The Journal of literacy research literacy, research theory, method and practice, Journal of Negro education, leadership and policy in schools, writers craft and context, language learning, urban education and Black History bulletin. Marcus is a member of the literacy research Association's scholars of color transitioning into academic research institutions or star mentoring program, and will be a featured speaker at the upcoming LRA annual conference and 2021. Marcus won the Dr. James E. Mumford excellence in extraordinary Teaching Award at Indiana University Bloomington. Dr. Croom is a graduate of the literacy Language and Culture Program Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he investigated teachers conceptualizations of race and literacy instruction with black children. He is currently an assistant professor of Curriculum and Instruction and an adjunct assistant professor in African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University Bloomington. For the good of all students classroom caffeine aims to energize education research and practice. If this show provides you with things to think about, don't keep it a secret. Subscribe, like and review this podcast through your preferred podcast provider. I also invite you to connect with the show through our website at WWW dot classroom caffeine.com where you can learn more about each guest. Find transcripts for many episodes, explore episode topics using our tagging feature, support podcast, research through our survey, request an episode topic or a potential guest or share your own questions that we might respond to through the show. You could also leave us a voice message or a text message at 1-941-212-0949. We would love to hear from you. As always, I raised my mug to you teachers. Thanks for joining me
