Critical Ethnic Studies in STEM ItAG (Episode 2)
Welcome back to the Coloniality, Western Science, and Critical Ethnic Studies in STEM Education dissertation!
In this episode, I give an overview of the research setting, which took place in an Inquiry to Action Group hosted by the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE). I interviewed Dr. Natalia Ortiz, a long-time member of NYCoRE, to get the history of NYCoRE and ItAGs.
Transcript
[eerie music begins]
Good afternoon. On my orders, the United States military has begun strikes against the al Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. These carefully targeted actions are designed to disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations, and to attack the military capability of the Taliban regime.
We are joined in this operation by our staunch friend, Great Britain. Other close friends, including Canada, Australia, Germany and France, have pledged forces as the operation unfolds. More than 40 countries in the Middle East, Africa, Europe and across Asia have granted air transit or landing rights. Many more have shared intelligence. We are supported by the collective will of the world. (Bush, 2001)
[eerie music ends]
[1:38]
That was part of the speech that President George W. Bush gave on October 7, 2001 to announce the US invasion of Afghanistan. An act that was aided and abetted by many countries across the globe, and has had violent, traumatic, and ongoing consequences.
This moment was also a catalyst for the beginnings of what would become the New York Collective of Radical Educators.
[2:00]
Natalia
NYCoRE is a collective of educators. Basically in 2002, in terms of the history of NYCoRE, a bunch of New York City public school teachers would gather, especially at the anti-war protests when the United States started the war with Afghanistan, right after 9/11. And so educators kept bumping into each other and began to organize together, especially around the militarization of young people, right? And so it was definitely a part of the anti-war movement, but within the education world, if you will. So that's how it was founded in 2002, so we're technically in our 20th anniversary now in 2022, which is kind of cool.
[2: 48]
LaToya
No Child Left Behind was signed into Law by Bush on January 8, 2002 and there was a provision in Title IX of this law that had huge implications for the military. This provision required public schools receiving federal money to provide the name, address, and phone numbers of students if the military requested the information. And it required that schools give the same access to students as other post secondary institutions and prospective employers (Feder, 2009). Schools that did not comply risked losing funding.
[3:20]
Recruiters targeted schools in areas with high unemployment, a high percentage of folks that were poor, and areas with a large immigrant population. It gets worse y'all. There was a huge decline in military enrollment between 2002 and 2005 so military recruiters got desperate and made promises to young folks they knew they could not keep like lucrative careers and citizenship (Benedict, 2009). They also helped students pass drug tests and forge grades among other very unethical things (Benedict, 2009).
This was the jump off for NYCoRE as many NYC teachers were witnessing the recruitment of their students.
[3:50]
[ music fade in]
Hey listeners! I’m LaToya Strong and I’m a doctoral candidate at The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York.
I’m in the Urban Education program focusing on STEM education.
You are listening to my dissertation!
[music fade out]
LaToya
My dissertation research took place in an Inquiry to Action Group, or ItAG hosted by the New York Collective of Radical Educators, or NYCoRE. NYCoRE hosts ItAGs every year. The ItAG for this project was titled Critical Ethnic Studies: Disrupting the Histories of Colonialism in STEM.
[4:43]
I’m going to use this episode to discuss who NYCoRE is, what they do, and what ItAGs are to give more context to the research setting.
I spoke with Dr. Natalia Ortiz. Nati is a former classroom teacher, but is now a professor in the education department at Barnard College. Nati has been organizing with NYCoRE New York for 13 years and has been a core member since 2009. Again, NYCoRE stands for the New York Collective of Radical Educators.
Natalia
It is completely run grassroots and that no one gets paid. So it's educators giving their time to just building this collective, right? And being in partnership with other organizations, but also building the relationships between teachers across New York City. So if I had to say, "Okay, what is NYCoRE?" NYCoRE is a group of current and former public school educators and their allies committed to fighting social justice in our school system and society at large. We organize and mobilize teachers, although we've been doing a lot more focusing most of our energy more recently around political education, right, and supporting teachers in their curriculum development. So yeah, that's who we are.
[5:53]
LaToya
One of the many things that NYCoRE does is political education. I like to think of political education as a collective process where people come together over a shared interest, topic, or issue to develop common language or a shared framework to better understand the specific topic that brought them together in the first place.
In my organizing experience that is just one component of political education because there can be other elements depending on what the purpose of the political education is. For some, it might end there at shared language and understanding so that folks are always operating on the same page. For others, the next step might be to develop a theory of change and actions to enact that change. Political education can be done in many different ways but let's listen to Nati to see how NYCoRE does it.
[6:49]
Nati
We've had and held book groups and conversations, like a study group. So we choose a book that we want toread together. So we've done like Adrienne Maree Brown. Emergent Strategies was one of the books that we read together. Bettina Love's book is another book that we read together, and that would be, basically, educators sign up and they come for three sessions, I think, it was like April, May and June, where we had folks be in dialogue around those books and what we're learning from those books, and then how are we thinking about its implementation in our classrooms, right, and the larger educational justice movement.
So the conference is another way that we offer political education and community to our educators, New York City educators, but we've also actually brought in many educators from across the country. And in the past, that conference has happened in March and it would happen every two years. And that conference this year, we decided—because of the pandemic, it was paused. But this year, because of our 20th anniversary, we made it so that it was like a full year kind of conference thing where folks could join us for our learning sessions. We would offer learning sessions every month, so folks could join.
[8:00]
So in the past, NYCoRE has had membership meetings where we used to have membership meetings every Friday, once a month, not every Friday, one Friday a month. And I think it's been what, four years now, five maybe, where we've paused on the membership meetings, right? So we don't have those anymore for different reasons. But part of what's important to name is that we were kind of studying and we did some research and we would have people sign in to see who's coming to these meetings, right. And how often are people coming back? So do we have a core group of people coming back and building that relationship? Is it new people coming to these meetings every time?
[8:39]
And part of that thinking and reflecting was a lot around capacity and the energy and time that went into planning these membership meetings. And we were also in dialogue and reflection around thinking about attracting or working with teachers of color in particular and who was showing up in our spaces, which were mostly white spaces, right? And so that was also something we were thinking about and reflecting on, which is why—even educators of color, that working group, why that got started, right, as an intentional kind of space to think about and develop the relationships for teachers of color in that space is separate. But then folks would prefer to go to that space,
So we do in Inquiry to Action Groups, which essentially is educators and teachers coming together to engage in a topic of inquiry. And so when we say political education, they're developing their education in conversation with others, right, other educators in New York city, and then developing action or implementation.
[9:36]
So again, I mentioned NYCoRE started in 2002. By 2005, so three years in at this point, Inquiry to Action Groups started to run, right? And I think that came out of how do we meet the needs of teachers in learning and thinking about working on something, and it was inspired from my anecdotal remembrance. It's never been written down, but some of the core members that were part of NYCoRE at that point had learned about inquiry groups and just study groups that teachers were developing, maybe on the West Coast. And so they were interested in thinking about, well, what that would look like for New York educators to study something to then think about implementation, right?
[10:27]
LaToya
In addition to political education, NYCoRE also builds and bridges communities through partnerships with other organizations and among its members. But let’s zoom into ItAGS a bit more.
Natalia
So what is an Inquiry to Action Group? Really, it's a study group where there are connections made by teachers around social justice issues in the classroom, so how are they thinking about social justice, learning about systems of oppression and then either by both texts and greetings, but engaging in discussion and exchanging ideas, and then ultimately developing a plan of action, right? So that plan of action has manifested in different ways.
[11:15]
So one ItAG was looking at the African diaspora and thinking about its implementation in curriculum. And so each participant basically took their area of study, whether it was elementary, third grade, whether— I think, at that time, when I was in the ItAG, I was a high school history teacher. And then we took a component and then we developed the lesson plan, right? Whether it's like storytelling or bringing in some drums and elementary education and learning about the history of this kind of drum, right? And then we made it into almost like a resource for folks if they were interested in possibly using some of that lesson plan into their classroom, so that's an action.
Another action that has come out of an Inquiry to Action Group, there was an Inquiry to Action Group around interrupting Islamophobia. So Wazina who was one of the facilitators in partnership with some of the participants developed a play, essentially, around this topic, and so that play went and traveled [chuckle] to different universities.
[12:23]
There's been resource guides like Beyond Tolerance, which was one that came out of an ItAG around supporting LGBTQIA folks. And first, that was an Inquiry to Action Group, ItAG, which later became a working group NYQueer and developed a Beyond Tolerance resource guide, which is still actually being downloaded and used in many ways.
[12:48]
So that's an ItAG and really it's inspired by Freire, right? So this idea of praxis, which is the importance of being in continual study and reflection and action, right? So the importance of study as part of action because if we change in the way that we think and view the world and assess relationships, then that impacts how we be in classrooms, in schools, with people.
LaToya
Nati mentioned Wazina so I want to give a little more context so that name just isn’t hanging in the air. The ItAG was called Interrupting Islamophobia and Wazina was a co-facilitator. The other facilitator is named Terna. Wazina and Terna developed a play, which evolved out of that ItAG. The play is absolutely beautiful and it is called Coming Out Muslim: Radical Acts of Love.
ItAGs are organized in a specific way in regards to how long the ItAG season is.
Natalia
Now, the intricacies of how they run, so typically they've always been... We say six weeks, but it's technically eight weeks, and that there's a kickoff. ItAG kickoff brings all of the members together, typically on a Friday. Before the pandemic, it was in person with food. We'd start off with some community building and then get folks talking into their Inquiry to Action Groups. And then they would go off and talk about their own schedules and calendaring, so that's the kickoff.
[14:18]
Then you have the six weeks of participants, they would meet either Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. Fridays, typically folks did not meet. And it would happen between the hours of four and eight, right? So we would typically tell facilitators like, "You may not want to start at four because some folks need to commute from their schools to make it to the meeting." So typically, they run between 5:00, 5:30 to 7:30 and so on, right?
And then you have the closing. And that also has looked differently depending on the year, whether it's been a year of conference or whether it's not a year of conference. So ItAGs come together at the end of the six week journey and share, right, with other ItAG participants and anyone who wants to come and hear what ItAGs are doing, and what they're sharing is, one, their experience, their takeaways, but also that action and whatever that action is get shared in that closing space.
[15:21]
During the year that it's a conference, ItAGs had the option to actually run a workshop at the conference to share with a larger audience, the work that they have done, right? And sometimes even included the larger audience as part of their action, whatever action they were developing.
LaToya
Our ItAG, The Critical Ethnic Studies in STEM ItAG met on Tuesdays from 6-8PM.
But, now that we understand the structure of ItAGs, let’s talk logistics. So how does the topic of an ItAG get chosen?
Natalia
There are topics that are responsive to the time. So I don't know, really unpacking or learning more about abolitionist teaching, right, is something that I think currently is something of interest, right? And so what does it mean? Not just currently, but in the last two to three years, right? So ItAG topics typically are twofold and that sometimes they're responsive to the time or the climate or the educational justice movement and landscape, and sometimes there are just ideas or topics that people that are connected, organizers that are connected to NYCoRE are interested in sharing or holding space for.
If you had the capacity to hold a space in partnership with someone else, then we would say, "Hey, hold that space, right, for six weeks." And so it's a both end, it's both like, "Can you give up that time, that volunteer, and have the capacity to facilitate a space, a shared learning experience?" And also we should probably hold an ItAG on this and who can we tap as facilitators to help support or help run that topic or idea?
[17:26]
LaToya
NYCoRE has a co-facilitation model that they use.
Natalia
So in the spirit of really thinking about being actively anti-racist and the importance of representation, ItAGs have been a space where we've set some parameters, if you will, around who can facilitate a space and a conversation. So there's a few, one, as NYCoRE believes, it's important to have a co-facilitation model, not just one person holding the space, but two people in partnership. And in some cases, it's been three people. When it's more than three, it becomes a little bit too much and cumbersome. So two to three people holding and facilitating a space, typically, two people. Of those two people, one of those people should identify as a Black, Indigenous, person of color.So a person of color, right? A BIPOC person, and the other person can also be, but we always just said, at least one of the two in the pairing.
[18:40]
Also, one of the two should be someone who is actively in a school building Monday through Friday from 8:00 to 4:00. And when we say actively in a school building—we say it that way because it doesn't have to just be a teacher, right? So there are many school workers that are not teachers, social workers, right, admin and other staff, restorative justice coordinators. So we just need someone to be still in the reality and understanding the reality of the Monday through Friday grind, especially because our audience really is supporting teachers, right? So those are the parameters.
[19:20]
LaToya
Within these parameters of their co-facilitation model how do they find people to co-facilitate?
Natalia
How do we get these folks? What we've done is we email past facilitators to see if there's interest to hold space again, so that's one way. Sometimes it's tapping. It's almost like the folks who are not on core per se, but folks who are connected to NYCoRE part of our membership and allies, right? So it's asking them as well, if they would want to facilitate ItAGs.
And then we do ask that when you are facilitating that all of the facilitators have at least experienced an ItAG, right? So before becoming an ItAG facilitator, there's the importance of understanding the history and what the ItAG stands for and having experience in ItAG in the past, right? So that is also part of the parameter that we've set, yeah.
[20:18]
LaToya
I have co-facilitated three ItAGs, including the one that this dissertation took place in. The first one, also on STEM, Core members tapped me in and was like hey do you wanna do this. I said yes. The second ItAG on racial capitalism was proposed by me and a friend, and the third one I proposed and asked if it would be okay to do my dissertation research in it.
We’ve talked about the history of ItAGs, the co-facilitation model, the co-facilitators, and how topics are chosen. Now let’s talk about who participates in ItAGs.
[20:56]
Natalia
So who participates in ItAGs? It's interesting. Educators participate in ItAGs, but not just educators. I think we've also gotten a lot of social workers and I think it's because a lot of social workers on our Listserv, and so—well, educators are social workers. I'm just saying social workers that work in schools are also part of the folks who participate in ItAGs.
Also, a lot of—more and more undergrad students or grad students who are in education, whose professors have asked them, sometimes as part of their syllabus even, to engage in an ItAG. Those are folks that are joining our ItAGs as well.
We had two professors, faculty members joined an ItAG just this past year. Yeah. And then general, I guess, K through 12 teachers are the folks in the ItAGs. Trying to think if I'm forgetting. Some of the educators in our spaces are also folks who are in the youth development field, so a lot of after school folks, so programs that run after school programs or organizations that run after school programs. So those are also folks who have taken ItAGs.
[22:05]
LaToya
How have ItAGS been received by those that participate?
Natalia
People are appreciative of the space, thankful and in gratitude to the facilitators for giving their time and energy. I think sometimes there's a tension around wanting more facilitation, almost like [chuckles] a class or a professor to really do more guiding. But what we almost try to preface is like, these are volunteers who are facilitating a process, and so it's not like a syllabus and it isn't like we're going to, “By the end of this, we're going to develop a five-page situation, it's like, "Well, what do we think?" And things will only get done if the folks in the space are really trying to get that done.
[22:51]
LaToya
The ItAGs that I’ve co-facilitated or participated in all had this loose structure. For this critical ethnics studies in STEM ItAG we had our grounding readings. The first 3 weeks had some structure. Week one was a guest speaker. Weeks two and three were used to discuss the readings as a group in relation to our practice. We had some guiding questions, but there was no specific formula of how things were going to go, not even how we were going to go through the readings as a group. Weeks four, five, and six were left open for what emerged based on weeks one through three.
[23:30]
Our ItAG was titled Critical Ethnic Studies: Disrupting the Histories of Colonialism in STEM. I say our because ItAGs are a very collaborative process.
This was the blurb for our ItAG blurb, which is what participants read before they sign up to get an idea of what the ItAG is about.
How do the sciences contribute to social injustices? How are we as science educators
complicit? How can we unpack the problems to make changes in the sciences and in our
teaching practices? This ItAG will use critical ethnic studies to interrogate the STEM
fields. We will use the guiding question of critical ethnic studies, “how do the histories of
colonialism and conquest, racial chattel slavery, and white supremacist patriarchies and heteronormativities affect, inspire, and unsettle scholarship and activism in the present?”
(Marquez & Rana, 2015) to help us delve into these questions in order to make changes
in our practice. We welcome all teaching levels, from kindergarten to higher education,
and all science and math disciplines to join us as we explore these issues.
The co-facilitator for the ItAG is a friend and colleague. We met as students in the Urban Education Program and we were one cohort apart. I approached her to be the co-facilitator of the ItAG because of her knowledge in ethnic studies and also because of our previous conversations about her desire to learn how to provide feedback to science teachers at her school on how to incorporate criticality in their lessons. Fun fact we actually co-taught together the following school year.
[25:17]
14 People signed up for the ItAG, but 16 including myself and the co-facilitator. The group had three students (two of those three were doing their student teaching), two high school special education teachers who were both the special education coordinators at their school, 2 folks from two different arts program, one third grade teacher, one elementary science teacher for grades one through four, and five high school science teachers.
Collectively, the subjects covered by all participants were Chemistry, Earth Science, Living Environment, Biology, Physics, ethnic studies, ELA, Art and Digital Learning & Technology.
The age range of the group was 19 - 37.
The racial makeup of the group, and these are self identification so I am using the terms that the participants used. There was one Caucausion, eight white folk, two Latinas, one White and part Chinese person, one white and Filipino, and 1 Asian person. I did not ask these demographic questions, these are questions on the registration form. The purpose of me sharing this demographic information is because what we created in the ItAG is context dependent. Would we have developed something different with a different group of people? Most likely.
[26:43]
Food was provided at each session. Each session we had an opening to bring the group together and a closing to seal in the practice. Participants signed up to lead these.
I will share more about our specific ItAG in episode seven and eight
But for now, I wanted to give the context of NYCoRE and ItAGs as well as a brief overview of the ItAG because we are about to start that journey that I mentioned in episode one about why I wanted to use critical ethnic studies in STEM.
[27:11]
Thank you to Nati for giving her time and energy so this episode could be created.
[jazzy music fades in]
And thank you for tuning into this episode!
For coherency and flow of narrative, I did not always name who I was citing or drawing from so please visit the transcript to see all citations and references.
[jazzy music fades out]
Click here for works cited/references