A Conversation with Robert Petrone

Dr. Robert Petrone talks to us about reconsidering structures of schools, valuing the expertise of young people, and how he learned about these ideas in a seemingly unlikely place, the skatepark. Dr. Petrone is known for his interdisciplinary work, particularly as he examines the cultural production of ideas of “age,” “youth” and “adolescence,” explores youth cultural, learning, and literacy practices beyond school contexts, and collaborates with educators to build curricula that repositions youth as educational experts. Dr. Robert Petrone is Associate Professor in the Department of Learning, Teaching, and Curriculum at the University of Missouri. For more information about our guest, stay tuned to the end of this episode.

To cite this episode: Persohn, L. (Host). (2023, Aug 8). A conversation with Robert Petone (Season 4, No. 2) [Audio podcast episode]. In Classroom Caffeine Podcast series. https://www.classroomcaffeine.com/guests. DOI: 10.5240/767A-06CA-FC45-6FB5-20E8-N

Connect with Classroom Caffeine at www.classroomcaffeine.com or on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Transcript

Lindsay Persohn: 0:00

In education research has a problem. The work of brilliant education researchers often doesn't reach the practice of brilliant teachers. Classroom caffeine is here to help. In each episode, I talk with the top education researcher or expert educator about what they have learned from their research and experiences. In this episode, Dr. Robert Petrone talks to us about reconsidering structures of schools, valuing the expertise of young people and how he learned about these ideas in a seemingly unlikely place. The skatepark Dr. Petrone is known for his interdisciplinary work, particularly as he examines the cultural production of ideas of age, youth and adolescence, explores youth cultural learning and literacy practices beyond school contexts and collaborates with educators to build curricula that repositions youth as educational experts, Dr. Robert Petrone, is an associate professor in the Department of learning, teaching and curriculum at the University of Missouri. 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. Robert, thank you for joining me. Welcome to the show.

Robert Petrone: 1:41

Thank you, Lindsay, for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Lindsay Persohn: 1:43

We're excited to have you. So from your own experiences and education, will you share with us one or two moments that inform your thinking now,

Robert Petrone: 1:53

actually really hard. Because there's so many moments, but there are two that really stuck out to me. So a lot of my research takes place in schools with teachers and students, but also out of schools with youth, particularly youth who are marginalized by schools kicked out of schools dropping out of schools labeled at risk, what have you. And my book that's coming out is about skateboarders and a skateboard park that I studied and really spent a lot of time with. And one of the things that happened there that really changed me as a researcher and an educator, was paying attention to how learning was structured at the skate park. And one of the things that really opened me up is the way that age function that the skatepark, right, so I came into that space coming from schooling. And I never thought about the fact that in schools, we segregate kids by age. You know, when we think of segregation, we often think about it in terms of race, and gender. And of course, there's class segregation, that sort of de facto, but it's rare that we talk about the ways that schools segregate kids by age. And so I wasn't thinking of that, you know, when I went to the park, but as soon as I stepped into the park, I started seeing 14 year olds side by side with seven year olds, side by side with 21 year olds and 30 year olds. And this was normal practice. So the first thing I had was I had this surprise, like, oh, wait a minute, age operates differently here. And so I really started to pay attention to that. And what I started to notice is that because there were different ages, and because there were different ability groups, you know, oftentimes associated with those ages, but not always, there were different opportunities for the skateboarders to be different kinds of people in that space, sometimes simultaneously, right. So at once a 14 year old could be a learner, he could be watching the 21 year old, right, the more advanced skater and could be a teacher to the seven year old that sort of became something that not only that I start paying attention to, but the skateboarders themselves talked about as one of the most important parts of their experience, right? So on the one hand, it opened up opportunities to be simultaneously mentor and mentee, right. But it really opened up a sense of contribution that these kids who are studying, they didn't feel like they had anything to contribute in schools, that schools just weren't structured in a way that they're sort of funds of knowledge, they're sort of skills, their areas of expertise had space for, in fact, they were told quite the opposite. And there had labels to sort of prove that so to speak. But at the park, they felt like they had something of real value to contribute to the betterment of others. And this was really powerful, powerful on an emotional level. And suddenly that sort of developed into a sense of responsibility that I have to show up to the park because I'm important there. It's not just about my own learning and edification, this isn't about helping others equal. And one of the things I chart in the book are these emotional connections that get developed because of the cross age grouping. So I sort of frame this as mostly young men who I study. And I frame this around this notion of little and big brothers. That's the language that they use to describe the way that age affords new opportunities to be in relationship with each other both as learners, but also as just, you know, humans who are in connection with each other. So that was a watershed moment. For me, it flew in the face of everything I had learned about adolescence, adolescent development, it was all about these intergenerational dynamics. It was all about just being peers, not by age, but by participation in a cultural practice. And so it just that sort of opened me up. And then what I did with that, and this is the second moment, I know, I'm already talking a lot here. But the second moment was, I was working with pre service teachers. And they were coming to me with all these questions about classroom management, about building curriculum. And at the same time, I'm working with the skateboarders seeing all this stuff that's happening. And these are the kids like the guys in the skate park with the kids. My pre service teachers were like, what do we do with these kids? Right? And I kept on noting how these kids were such experts, they had expertise, right. And so what I did is I started bringing those kids and ivinting them, I should say, to go into the teacher ed space to teach future teachers, right. And this literally started with a future teacher saying, how do we do classroom management? And I was like, well, let's bring in the experts, right? And so I brought in a panel of the skateboarders to talk to the teachers about how do you do classroom management, right. And of course, it was all the things that we know, it's about relationship. It's about respect. It's about trust. It's all those kinds of relational moves that teachers can make, to build rapport with students to build security with students. And so I started doing this thing. Of course, this isn't, this is built on the work of people like Ernest Morel, and lots of other folks who've inspired my own thinking. And so I started doing this thing I call a repositioning pedagogy, right, where I bring youth into teacher education, as consultants, paid consultants, and experts to teach future teachers about any number of things. That was my second moment. And I could get into specifics on that. But But the second moment, is really just watching this process unfold this, this sort of exchange between pre service teachers and, and the young people themselves. And because it's shifted notion of who's expert, who has expertise, who has contributions to make, and it broke down categories of representation, and who gets authorized as expert and those kinds of things. And there's lots of iterations I've done in the past. And that one, too, is sort of linked to the first one. But that's a second moment where I'm like, wow, there's some magic in here, if we just break down these, these sort of barriers between teachers and students, and allow them to talk, and to sort of think through these hierarchies of relating to one another, and who has expertise and authority.

Lindsay Persohn: 8:13

Thank you so much for sharing that, Robert. And as I'm listening, so many thoughts go through my mind, but maybe one of the loudest is, why does this seem so? Groundbreaking? Right? Right. Why does this seem to just sort of blow our minds when what you're really talking about? is asking kids, right? Like, what, why in the world of education, would that be such an impactful moment, but I can tell everything that you've said, you know, watching the relationships between, you know, skateboarders of different ages, bringing them in to talk with your pre service teachers, all of this stuff seems it just seems to be so impactful, and so incredibly useful. Why aren't we doing these things?

Robert Petrone: 8:57

Yeah, I mean, in some ways, it feels so basic, right? Oh, common sensical, right.

Lindsay Persohn: 9:02

It really lets what I said I just wrapping your head around it. Like, why is this a groundbreaking moment when it seems like it's what we should be doing all along?

Robert Petrone: 9:11

I had the same experience when I read Louis smalls Funds of Knowledge piece, where I'm like, Okay, we should we should learn what students cultural funds of knowledge are. It's like, My mind is blown by this. And I'm like, how is that? Like, how did we get here where I'm sort of blown away that we should pay attention to students, cultural expertise, and whatnot. And for me, I think it I think one of the main contributing factors as to why that's the case, is because we're so steeped in developmentalist ideology, and there's a lot of sort of positive things that can be emergent from that. But I think on the negative side of that is developmentalism, castes, children and youth as not yet adults. It's a residual understanding of of young people that is there not yet complete, and so it establishes immediately a high hierarchy of authority of expertise of knowledge holders. I mean, in its worst iteration adolescence gets pathologized. It gets seen as this disability, it gets seen as disease. You know, there's this New Yorker cartoon I reference all the time where you have this medical doctor sitting with with a mom, and then that moms adolescent child, and that the tagline says, We're really sorry, but so far, medical science hasn't come up with a cure yet for adolescents. Right? So these are our dominant cultural scripts. How and why would a schooling system think, to imagine that that demographic has anything to offer? If these are the ways that we're making sense of those people, and I don't mean to, like, throw developmentalism under the bus in this way. But I just am saying that we need to complexify the discourse and the theoretical ways reframing children and youth.

Lindsay Persohn: 10:55

Right, right, because we're so locked into that thinking that, you know, it's like we can't see around it, we can't see another way. And the other thing that I was thinking, as you were talking, Robert, is just the industrialization and that model of schooling, and how, you know, we have to standardize things, because that makes it easy to measure. And that makes it easy to put in, you know, spreadsheets and templates. And when you're talking about, particularly the way you're speaking about multi age learning, and the sort of near peer kind of learning, it's not cut and dry, right? It's not simple. It's not grade level progressions that we are so used to working within in schools. It's almost like our systems don't know how to handle this kind of thinking. And so I think that's another reason why we've, in some ways, kind of missed the forest for the tree, so to speak, because we're so locked into, well, it's the way we've always done things, you know, I mean, how many times do you hear that in school? So it's just yeah, I think you've pointed out some really fundamental ways that we can shift our thinking around what young people have to offer.

Robert Petrone: 11:57

Yeah, can I just add to little to please. So there's some research, Barbara Rogoff is a cultural psychologist, she talks about it, but she's drawing on some other folks in the book that I got this from his cultural nature of human development. But she references this research that looks at children and youth in same age groupings, and cross age groupings. And what they came to realize is that same age groupings, that youth are more competitive with each other, and cross age groupings, youth are more more cooperative with each other. And so I just think I just want to put that out there, right, that there's, so you can start to think of the contradictions that start to happen in schooling spaces, where we segregate kids by age, which we know breeds competition, and then we ask them to get into working groups and work with each other and collaborate with each other. Like, it's almost like these two things are in tension with each other. It's a setup. Exactly, exactly. And it's important to recognize, too, that this sort of same age grouping is not normal. This is not like universally, like a normative experience, particularly if you think about indigenous communities. If you think about, you know, this is this is a colonial construct at the at a global level, and a settler colonial construct here in the United States. And we could go deep into that as to why that's the case and how that's the case. But you know, it severs into an intergenerational reality. It severs knowledge systems, it severs educational systems, when you start at this sort of age segregation. And again, that's like a whole nother podcast, right? The second thing I want you to say is some other research. And I just love this study. One of the things is that I think, when we start talking about cross age potentials, right, some pushback I always get is something like, Well, what do you want to just go back to the one room schoolhouse or something like that? And I'm like, well, not necessarily, but you know, how can we think imaginatively about, about this. And the other thing that the concern that gets raised is that well, the younger kids are going to benefit, the older kids aren't. And so I always want to point to this one study that I love where, and I could get this for you for your notes or whatever, but like, but it was a it was a group of it was teachers who worked with ninth graders who were struggling readers, right. So think about ninth graders who are labeled struggling readers. And I'm doing that in air quotes. I know our audience won't see that. But I'm deliberately making that an artifice. And so you think about how they feel about themselves. You know, they've been through school for 910 years as struggling readers, right? And instead of them kind of being framed as deficit, or, you know, in all the ways that we know at risk, struggling readers can be framed, the teacher said, you're going to be a reading tutor. For third graders, who were similarly labeled as use struggling. What kinds of assets and experiences and knowledge do ninth grade, quote unquote, struggling readers have, that can be shared with third graders is a totally different intervention point, then what's wrong with struggling readers who are ninth graders, right? So so this study paired up these ninth graders as to tutors for the third grade where the ninth graders had to build curriculum. They had to get in there and work with the third graders. Well, lo and behold, the third graders, quantitative scores went up, their qualitative measures of self efficacy went up. But so did the ninth graders. And they far surpassed this, this sort of measures, both qualitatively and quantitatively, they are typical for intervention for ninth grade readers. Right. So just, I'll say simple, but just a basic pairing like that could have massive implications.

Lindsay Persohn: 15:29

Yeah, if we could just again, see something different, you know, and then I'm also struck by the pushback that you get what a one room schoolhouse, when I think what you're talking about is something we have actually yet to envision. It's not necessarily moving backwards in time, right. But instead, it sounds a lot like a flexible pairings about really meeting kids where they are as individuals, not necessarily harkening back to an old model. I think we're talking about something pretty innovative here. pretty new. Yeah. So Robert, what do you want listeners to know about your work?

Robert Petrone: 16:06

So I think it connects, I think all of these things connect, it's historically been problematic and still can be very problematic. But I really love ethnography, you know, as a research or critical ethnography, I should say that's really attending to power dynamics and representation. But what I love about ethnography more than a methodology is for me, ethnography is a sort of way of being in the world. And ethnographers, you know, typically go out and study culture, they study groups of people, and they try to make sense. So how are these people making meaning in their lives? And again, it's it's can be a very fraught process. But I think for me, the, the real takeaway of of ethnography is, how do I become an ethnographer? In my day to day life, right? How do I, how do I become curious about the logic people are operating from from the means and motivations as Jabari Mahiri, he's has one of his articles that young people are utilizing in their lives. Right? So how do I sort of take that on and get curious and ask a lot of questions? What's an ethnographic pedagogy? Like, how do I take on this sensibility of being really inquisitive and suspending judgment and trying to get to know students and sort of logic of their lives? And I think it's twofold. I think it's paying attention to the students and, and youth and children and things like that. But it's also paying attention to ourselves, and the ways that, that we can make better sense of the filters that we're using to make sense of our students, or the assumptions that we have. So I think, I think really good ethnography kind of works both ways, where the first is to sort of make sense of folks in your sphere. And the other is to become more aware of yourself. So I'll just give a concrete example, for me. And in the skate park. With age, let's say I was I found myself surprised that I found myself surprised that this was a cross age grouping, I found myself surprised that all these young men who I had known in the schooling context, were acting with such care and sense of responsibility, right? So I had to start asking myself, why was I surprised? Why was I surprised that a group of young men might be acting really cooperatively with each other? Why was I surprised that age variation really facilitates learning, right? Those get at my assumptions, those surprises are sort of entry. So So I think for me, one of the takeaways is okay, let's better pay attention to the meaning making that our students are doing in their lives, outside and inside of schools. And let's make better sense of the sort of assumptions and filters that we're using as adults, right, our own adult ism, as teachers, how are we making? Meaning? What are the filters we're using to see and to make sense of our students? Right? So those would be sort of some key takeaways. And then I want to say one or two. One other thing. I think, for me, the skatepark, and the guys at the skate park really helped me to understand that this discourse, you know, I worked a lot with pre service teachers at the time, and still, and there's a real discourse around lifelong learners, right? Like, I want my students to be lifelong learners. And what I came to understand is, the guys at the park are already lifelong learners. Right? They they existed as lifelong learners long before they stepped foot into my class. And in some ways, I felt like what was happening for these guys, and this is not to blame teachers, right? This is we're talking about structures of schooling. The schools were interfering in their lifelong learning, right? And so, so I want to shift that discourse around Lifelong Learning specifically, like I want to imagine students as already lifelong learners. My really close colleague, Vaughn Watson has this concept. He talks about the already present, right how How can we become aware of what's already present from a literacy perspective in our students lives? And so I want, like, what would it be like if we started curriculum from the assumption that our students are already lifelong learners? Right? And then the second, I just needed my sort of bones to pick. The second one is this concept of gifted and talented, right, I really saw that, like, I would frame the guys at the park is gifted and talented, right there gifted and talented-ness was context specific, right? So we have to be thinking in schooling context of what counts is gifted and talented. What counts is at risk, like these labels, these categories have real impact on kids, for better and worse, and, and so it's a recalibration of how we're making sense of these kinds of concepts. And so it's really paying attention to our language, our discourse is that the sort of assumptions we're bringing to bear stuff like that, and assumptions of school, not just us as individuals, but assumptions of schooling process of assessment, right, we can start to ask those same questions about all these levels that impact what can happen in classroom,

Lindsay Persohn: 21:06

these are such great questions that I hope we can keep close to us. You know, as as we think about the young people we interact with, whether they are elementary age students, or adolescents or young adults, you know, whoever we may be teaching, I think that it is so important to approach those structures with a really critical lens to ask, what are the affordances potential affordances that we're missing here, because of the way that we've always done things or, you know, the colored glasses we might be wearing, that just really, really, I think, critical things for us to ask ourselves. And I think sometimes the, the nuance of those questions is a little bit different for each of us, right, depending upon who we're working with, and sort of where we come from, and our own personal backgrounds. And I'd also say they're the structures we work within, I think that also might change the questions a bit, too. Yeah.

Robert Petrone: 21:55

Can I just I just want to say so, it's not quite a disclaimer, but it's, I always want to be really mindful that this sort of critiques that I'm levying, are at the structural level, not at the individual teacher level, because I'm worried that the sort of in there's so much teacher bashing, there's so much beating up on teachers, there's, you know, oftentimes, we're scapegoats, you know, former high school English teacher, and I think that this, what I'm talking about here, isn't levied at like, you know, the, I mean, yes, individual teachers, we need to be paying attention to the artist, but like, where they come from is really important, and how are the structures of schooling, and policies and whatnot, shaping these kinds of assumptions? You know, what assumptions are those structures making, and my hope is that it can empower teachers, yes, to do some introspection, but also to do some, like, externalizing of the systems that are helping to produce these very, you know, deficit discourses of youth, let's say,

Lindsay Persohn: 22:56

well, and I think I think, for me, along that I really appreciate that clarification, because you're absolutely right, you know, teachers, they get an awful lot of critique and, and pushback as it is. But I think, for me, one way that I'm thinking about that is questioning the school structures that I grew up within. So you know, what was it like, whenever I was a kid, and has anything changed? How has anything changed? Or, you know, how do we better support every individual, you know, through those structures? So I think that's a that's a great clarification. I appreciate that. And I another question I had for you, as you were telling us your story, Robert, is the skate park a new place for you? Or is this someplace that you've always spent time?

Robert Petrone: 23:39

Yeah, that's usually the first question I get. Yeah. No, it was a new place. For me. It was. I mean, I write about this in the book. I mean, I my cousin was a big skateboarder when I was in middle school. And he got me to try and I was flipped on my back. And I was like, you know, what I got to just try harder to get make the basketball team is what I need to do. You know, I mean, the skate park emerged briefly with no prior interest in skateboarding, it wasn't like I was drawn to skateboarding. What I was interested in is, I was interested in young men at the secondary level, who were being pushed out, dropping out of school, who, who were having a hard time in school, we kind of and who were listed a label that risk and what I was interested in, is this sort of normal intervention point for, quote, unquote, at risk youth is, what's what are they doing wrong? How do we support them? And you know, like, and what I wanted to do is I want to have a different starting point, I want them to start with what are they doing right? Where are they really succeeding? Where are they thriving and excelling? And I had this great well, there's a several quotes you know, in the book from participants and from others, like musicians now who talk about the ways that music or cultural practice youth culture, sort of open them up to expertise. And so what I wanted to do is I had this group of guys you know, from the study I had done in the classroom, and they were all hanging out at the park. And so I was really informed at the time by scholarship that was talking about that literacy exists in lots of places, not just school. And so I was like, Hey, can I hang out here with you guys? And and then I got turned on to learning specifically because I was so taken, by the way that learning was structured in the social arrangements, because these is a rural community, these are working class, young man, Latino, and white. So there was this race class, you know, gender dynamics, place dynamics. And I was like, How is this all like, what's happening here? And how are you all really developing identity and cultural capital and all that kind of stuff. So that that's how I got to the point and then had to start skateboarding as part of that. And so I was like, Man, I, if I break, if I break my wrist, I'm going to write this thing. And I was like, so no, I didn't go there with any inherent interest in skateboarding. But I came out with this sort of sense of madness, the gifted and talented group of kids, and an impressive learning ecology that has been generated that in that space that we can learn a lot from in schools, frankly.

Lindsay Persohn: 26:04

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that question you just gave us what are they doing? Right? I think that that is a great question for reframing, you know, and for working to get closer to an asset based mindset, because you're right, I think so often in schools, we are looking to do some sort of diagnosis, right? Like, what is wrong here? And how can we then fix it, rather than really approaching young people by saying, what are they already doing really? Well? What are they experts in? Because you're right, I mean, we do have the sort of cultural situatedness of young people where, you know, they're all a little, you know, they're kind of half baked, they don't really know what's going on yet. But in my experience, I think it's actually, you know, we're telling the wrong story, right, we're telling the wrong story about them, young people have so much to offer, I think there's so much more observant in the world than we give them credit for I think they have ways and ideas about how we can really change some of the biggest problems in the world. But unfortunately, so many of our structures do silence their voices, rather than giving them a real platform to to inform change, and to make changes themselves.

Robert Petrone: 27:12

So I think about, you know, curriculum, for example, like how would curriculum be different? If that was our orienting start, right? Like, what are the kids in my class already doing really well? How do I help them do that better? Right? And all the standards and stuff out all gets sort of woven into that? And not only what would the curriculum look like differently, but what would the student experience of the curriculum be different? How would the teachers experience of that curriculum? What if the measure of a successful curriculum was how much the teacher learned? You know, I mean, think about that as a as a different way to start the development of a curriculum. How can I learn from these students? As part of it like that, it's just totally different way of approaching

Lindsay Persohn: 27:56

it sounds like a very interesting world to potentially live in, right? You know, were the teacher becomes the student in so many instances, and, and I think that's when we arrive at something that looks like true facilitation of learning, rather than the sort of top down approach of, you know, I know all the things and I'm going to impart knowledge, we are going to impart knowledge on you collectively. Yeah, it sounds like a world I'd love to live in.

Robert Petrone: 28:21

I think I think the students would, too, or more and more. So you

Lindsay Persohn: 28:25

know, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So given the challenges of today's educational climate, what message do you want teachers to hear?

Robert Petrone: 28:32

And I think this ties back to the disclaimer kind of moment, just a few minutes ago. And an age is a tough moment right now, to be a teacher. I mean, I don't think it's ever been easy, but it's never felt this challenging and fraught before in my career. And I started in 95, you know, and so I just want to acknowledge that, like, I mean, I was reading an article today about a teacher in Florida, who is on like, suspended or maybe gotten fired, I can't recall that detail for showing a Disney film with a gay character. And I just, it's just, you know, through surveillance, the sort of the censorship, the self censorship that I'm certain is going on, and I don't blame some teachers for it right. It's just it's a it's a real panicked and parent paranoid, you know, kind of culture we're in right now. And so it's really just want to say that and, you know, the first thing, the message I want to share is actually not for teachers, but for administrators. Right, and, and maybe policymakers though, I hold out more that maybe administrators can be a lever of change in a more direct sense right now immediately, but I have a collaborative relationship with a community and native community. And I work with an alternative school and have been in relationship for seven years and the school is doing amazing things there. And one of the main reasons why the school has been able to do so many amazing things is because the administrator has really done an amazing job of being an intermediary between sort of policy legislation In and the teachers and students, and it's an alternative school. So there's maybe a little bit more leeway. But I really put the put a charge out to administrators to think of ways to support teachers to be able to do all the, you know, and to be the kinds of teachers who we know from research that that make the most effective learning environment for students autonomy, right? Collaboration, sense of that their trusted. sense of agency, right? Like, how can how can administrators really support teachers create space for them? And I don't know exactly what that looks like, I'm not an administrator. Right? But but that's the charge or How can teachers maybe get in the ear their administrative, maybe it's too dangerous to do that. But But, but I think that's the first message is just like, we have to think about this structurally, right, we have to move away from from like, you know, the individual teachers gonna bring down the system. And this has to be a systemic structural approach here. And I think administrators are way more poised to do some of that than teachers. And then, of course, policymakers and stuff like, you know, the folks in those, those places. And then for teachers, you know, I, when I moved from, I'm from New York, right? So I grew up in and around New York City. And I moved to Montana, and I lived there for eight years, which is a very rural place. And, and so I have a book on rural if there's any rural listen to English teachers out there, I've got a book with my colleague, Allison Wynhoff Olson, on teaching English and rural communities, that's the title of it. And, and we spent a lot of time driving around Montana, interviewing English teachers, and also writing with English teachers in the books, a lot of curricular ideas and things like that. But my point in all of that is our last chapter in that book is all about how to support rural teachers. And we talk a lot about coalition building, we talk right, like the field, that teaching is so siloed, right? We're in our own classrooms. And for rural teachers in particular, you know, oftentimes, the one of only that, you know, we have former students who become rural to English and be like me, like, do you have curriculum coordinator? So like, I'm the only English teacher within a 50 mile radius, you know, I'm like, what? And so and so are there ways that that we can really, that teachers can think and we could support teachers to be in coalition building, right? Because individual teachers will get singled out, right, a teacher shows a film with a gay character and is fired to How can teachers come together to sort of support each other in that structurally infrastructurally. And then the second thing, and we talked about this in the in the book, as well as self care, right, and this, but this is unilaterally for teachers, this is a, you know, coming out of COVID. And then all this legislation, that's, that's really dehumanizing for students, and, and teachers, and quite frankly, violence, you know, What can teachers do and help students do to take care of themselves, right? psychologically, emotionally, physically? And How can teachers come together to create support networks, that both are sort of maybe more agentive and sort of activist oriented, but also just think in terms of self care and sort of healing and, and that stuff,

Lindsay Persohn: 33:10

I think you point out something that in my mind is really important about self care, we hear a lot of you know, about teachers taking care of themselves and those sorts of things. In my mind, you know, that looks like what taking a break from life, you know, is it? Is it going to a salon, is it sitting by a pool, like what is that, actually, but I think that you hit on something, to me that is so much deeper that yes, all those things I very much enjoy. But I think that there's this emotional self care, it's not just about taking a pause. But I think when you ask professionals to do things they don't believe in, they have no say and, and they feel are harmful to others. I mean, that is a really, that is a deep, deep problem that I think is so hard to navigate, it's hard to navigate individually, it's certainly hard to even navigate as a group. But you know, like I said, I think that whenever we hear self care, you know, our mind might go to these sorts of Pat examples of what relaxation might look like. But what I think you're talking about is so much deeper than that. You know, it's not just taking a break. But it's understanding that we can feel pretty traumatized being asked to do things that we absolutely don't believe in, or that we believe are harmful to the young people and the families who are right in front of us. And so I think that this idea of building coalitions and being together in order to try to navigate some of those really deep issues, I think it's a place that we've we've got to be if we aren't already there.

Robert Petrone: 34:39

Yeah. And I think that you know, I'm in Missouri right now, where there's a lot of anti LGBTQ policies and whatnot. And I feel like, you know, it's especially important to build the support structures for youth, children and teachers who these policies are specifically targeting. Right and like, like, who is anti CRT A policy really targeting right? And so it's just when you start layering in gender, sexuality race, it becomes even more imperative that support self care, administer administrative protection. To the extent that that's possible, is really taking into consideration.

Lindsay Persohn: 35:21

Yeah, yeah. I really appreciate that. Like I said, I think we've got to move beyond sort of Pat ideas of what self care is and move into things that are, you know, that have the potential to impact these really deeply rooted challenges that I think yeah, exactly. systemic issues in our, in our society. So I really appreciate that. Well, Robert, I thank you so very much for your time today. I thank you for your contributions to the field of education. I think the work you're doing is like you said it, it shouldn't be revelatory. It shouldn't be groundbreaking, but it certainly is. And so I thank you so much for sharing that with us today.

Robert Petrone: 35:54

Yeah, thank you so much. I've really enjoyed the conversation and I hope people get something out of it. Thank

Lindsay Persohn: 35:59

you. As an interdisciplinary scholar, Dr. Robert PETRONAS, research moves across many domains, including examination of the cultural production of ideas of age, youth and adolescence, particularly as they are manifested by and through discourse, literary and media text and policies, exploration of youth cultural learning and literacy practices in contexts beyond schools, specifically skateboarding, and collaboration with educators to build curricula that critiques deficit renderings of youth centers, youth epistemologies, and repositions youth as educational experts methodologically, he employs critical discourse analysis, literary analysis, critical ethnography, and participatory approaches. Demographically, his work has primarily been in relation with indigenous Latin X and white working class and low SES male youth in rural contexts. Recently, his work has consisted of a long term participatory research collaboration with students and staff of an alternative high school on a Native American reservation. Dr. Patrone scholarship has been published in venues such as Harvard educational review, educational researcher, Journal of Adolescent research, Journal of literacy research, Journal of adolescent and adult literacy, English education and teaching and teacher education. In addition, Dr. PETRONAS co authored two books rethinking the adolescent and adolescent literacy with Sophia Sargent ETUs and mark a Lewis and teaching English and rural communities with Dr. Allison wine, Hoff Olson. He also has a solo authored monograph that will be published this summer by University of Massachusetts press entitled, dropping in what skateboarders can teach us about learning, schooling and youth development, which is a long term ethnographic study that explores the learning literacy and cultural practices of a group of working class, Latino and white rural skateboarders. Dr. patroon serves as CO editor for the international academic journal English teaching, practice and critique co director of the Missouri Language and Literacy Center, and coordinator for the language and literacies for social transformation doctoral program. Prior to joining University of Missouri, Dr. patroon was a faculty member at Montana State University and the University of Nebraska Lincoln. He earned graduate degrees at Northern Arizona University and Michigan State University and taught middle school and high school English and reading in New York and Colorado. Dr. Robert patroon is an associate professor in the Department of learning teaching and curriculum at the University of Missouri. 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, help us spread the word. Talk to your colleagues and educate our friends about what you hear. You can support the show by subscribing liking and reviewing this podcast through your podcast provider. Connect with us on social media through Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, on our website at classroom caffeine.com You can learn more about each guest find transcripts of our episodes, explore topics using our drop down menu of tags, request an episode topic or potential guest support our research through a listener survey, or learn more about the research we are doing on our publications page. We would love to hear from you. As always, I raised my mug to you teachers. Thanks for joining me