Dr. Anthony Craig is a member of the Yakama Nation and has spent his career living in and serving the Tulalip Tribal community with his wife, their four children, and their grandson. Anthony shares about his experience as a principal bringing elders as cultural guides into his school to support inclusivity and a deeper understanding of connections between students' roles in school and their tribal community.
Dr. Craig's Published Writing:
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Dr. Anthony Craig is a member of the Yakama Nation and has spent his career living in and serving the Tulalip Tribal community with his wife, their four children, and their grandson. Anthony shares about his experience as a principal bringing elders as cultural guides into his school to support inclusivity and a deeper understanding of connections between students' roles in school and their tribal community.
Dr. Craig's Published Writing:
Get solutions from Schoolutions!
#solutionsfromschoolutions #schoolutionsinspires #schoolutionspodcast
Schoolutions –S1 E5: Accessing the Wisdom of Tulalip Tribes' Elders as Cultural Guides in Public Schools with Dr. Anthony Craig
[00:00:00] Olivia: Welcome toSchoolutions, where listening will leave you inspired by solutions to issues you or others you know may be struggling with in the public education system today. I am Olivia Wahl and I am thrilled to introduce you to my good friend and colleague, Dr. Anthony Craig. Anthony is a member of the Yakima Nation and has spent his career living in and serving the Tulalip Tribal Community with his wife and their four children.
[00:00:29] Olivia: Anthony and I met 16 years ago when I was consulting with his school district through the Center for Educational Leadership at the University of Washington[OW1] . Along that journey as an elementary school teacher, instructional coach, principal, and district-level administrator, Anthony has worked to make meaningful contributions toward the development of school systems that truly meet the needs of each student and help heal and overcome injustices in education. He earned his doctorate in education from the University of Washington, studying educational leadership and policy, and is now on faculty.
[00:01:01] Anthony: Thank you, Olivia. Happy to be here.
[00:01:03] Olivia: The question I love to ask guests right off the bat for our listeners is, who has been one of your most inspiring educators that you've come across in your path?
[00:01:14] Anthony: I love the question. I'm actually from a family of educators and we're all serving in different roles, so I'll say that it's my grandmother who wasn't an actual classroom teacher. She was a school secretary, and we know that school secretaries have a ton of knowledge and power. And just learning from her.
[00:01:33] Anthony: She helped raise me in my home. I've been inspired to serve my community, to see children as such an important resource and to make the schoolhouse central to a community.
[00:01:44] Olivia: Beautiful. And that's a main reason I wanted to invite you to be a guest because you have taught me over the years that it is critical that we welcome the school community into the outside community, and we talk a lot about who's inside and who is outside and who belongs and who doesn't.
[00:02:05] Olivia: I've learned so much from you over our conversations. I think an issue that we are facing, in education, and we have been for a very long time, is that there's a big mismatch between the community's culture at large and the culture of the school system. I think that in general causes a lack of success in schooling for students that don't feel that they're inside, um, or part of the club. Specifically for native students. So talk to me about what you see as a solution to that.
[00:02:36] Anthony: Yeah, I think that there is necessary understanding of history in a given place. Some scholars will refer to it as a critical historicity of a place.
[00:02:46] Anthony: It, you know, it's not my idea, but it's something that really feeds the work that I'm up to. So the tribal community where I grew up and the tribal community where I ended up teaching and living, both communities have long histories with schools. I'm not talking about learning because of course, as a cultural group we have, um, long histories of learning as well.
[00:03:08] Anthony: But schools were a place to assimilate into White American culture, lifeways economy, family structure. To understand the mismatch was part of the origins of our schooling as native people really propels me to try to decide when to refuse and resist the notions of that schooling that continue, and also to discover what's possible in that place because our people are still thriving and powerful.
[00:03:38] Anthony: And now when I think about a place like Washington, there are many tribal communities. But we're also really diverse and to think about critical historicity of lots of communities. Helps educators understand both what's necessary and what's possible in a place.
[00:03:56] Olivia: I know, I think it was at the beginning of the pandemic and you were sharing with me your thinking around how do we welcome the, the lessons, the history, the the teachings, ancient and contemporary, and help teachers that are non-native understand, because that will only support the children in feeling like their histories are heard and understood.
[00:04:18] Olivia: And you shared with me about the process of welcoming cultural guides into your school community as a principal. I'd love for you to share with listeners about cultural guides and supporting non-native teachers.
[00:04:30] Anthony: Yes. I love talking about this. It is one of the key approaches to not just resisting and refusing, which you might hear me talk about quite a bit today, and always.
[00:04:43] Anthony: Because a refusal is not just a no. Uh, a refusal is actually, we're not going to just accept teaching certification or the role of teacher as the only place where teaching and learning emerges. Instead of that, in saying, well, who holds knowledge? Yes, teachers absolutely hold knowledge. And that knowledge is often limited and constrained and framed around ideas that are part of the movement of schools as assimilated forces, to put it bluntly.
[00:05:17] Anthony: Whereas cultural carriers, the teachers of ceremony and lifeways, both ancient and contemporary are constantly teaching in our communities, but almost never in the schoolhouse. So I decided to try to develop an approach, a program, a moment in time where these cultural carriers, who I called cultural guides, joined forces with certificated teachers in our classrooms and out in the community to exchange ideas about pedagogy and about knowledge and about a shared love for the very same children we were all serving.
[00:05:55] Anthony: So, it was a project to break down the walls of a school and not keep community members as outsiders of the school, not keep teachers as the only insiders, but also have that go both ways where teachers are now learners when they're out in the community. So, you know, a, a long, complicated way to say I was trying to build community around children and around tribal knowledges.
[00:06:21] Olivia: In what better way to model for our children in that we are all learners and we all have ways to grow and that there's nothing wrong in saying that I don't know, or I, I need to better understand that. There's a lot wrong saying I'm not willing because if we're not in this, for our children to make sure that they feel successful, whatever that means to them and what meeting their perceived needs we're in trouble.
[00:06:47] Olivia: And moving forward, I know the cultural guides and the teachers were collaborating, you were nurturing that work specifically through a lesson study.
[00:06:56] Anthony: These relationships that were built, we were trying to build in authentic ways, just spending time together and teachers understanding that approaches to learning about community, family, culture really often require different modes of learning than, uh, many westernized people are used to spending time sitting and listening.
[00:07:15] Anthony: So through that, teachers got really curious and started to make space for these other ways of being in relationship with children around, I guess what we would call content or learning objectives or intended outcomes. And we decided to say, okay, teachers have thoughts about what's not going well in their classroom.
[00:07:36] Anthony: We had a school community that was really interested in ongoing improvement. So that was a necessary precursor to any of this as teachers who were interested in leading their own learning, getting better at their craft and serving their children well, their students well. It started with teachers and trusted cultural guides sitting down and saying: What's going well in your classroom?
[00:07:58] Anthony: Why do you think so? Well, what's not going so well, and how can we spend time with you to think about adjustments and your own pedagogical learning? There were examples from a first-grade classroom that I'll never forget. A beautiful, lovely, powerful teacher who would also say, there are these four boys who don't seem to like anything we're doing.
[00:08:19] Anthony: That is a pretty common, uh, thing that we recognize in schools that often there are groups of kids, especially boys who get really…
[00:08:28] Olivia: Disengaged, can we say?
[00:08:29] Anthony: Either disengaged and and molded into better ways of being a student by these Western standards…
[00:08:35] Olivia: Yes.
[00:08:36] Anthony: Or they find ways to get out of the learning completely. So act up or don't show up or find ways to disengage. The cultural guides came in and had ideas about the clarity of, well, what's their role here in this space? And for the, the classroom teacher, she thought, well, their role is to sit in their square on the carpet like everybody else. The cultural guides were able to say, that's not really how our communities work.
[00:09:02] Anthony: It's a collective and people have different jobs based on their strengths, and we learn to turn to those people for different aspects of what needs to be done. So the teacher started to imagine, well, what is that student good at? He loves to talk. We're going to do a lot of talking about the book. I don't have to be the facilitator as the teacher.
[00:09:21] Anthony: What happens if he helps me facilitate? Now he had a job. He became engaged in everything that he was doing, and it was genuine and authentic to what the teacher was trying to accomplish in that space.
[00:09:33] Olivia: You're walking in my mind. I was actually going to ask for an example. The other conversation we've had in the past is around, uh, when someone's struggling, and I see it too often in schools, that child is removed from the classroom.
[00:09:49] Olivia: I know that is absolutely the opposite of what happens in tribal communities.
[00:09:55] Anthony: I think for me it was needing to do my own, reflecting as a native person. I was a kindergarten teacher and I thought that the default of removing kids from the learning space was the right default, but it, I had all this inner turmoil and I realized that once I would call the principal and have a kid removed as a young kindergarten teacher, there was also turmoil amongst my kids.
[00:10:18] Anthony: They were really not used to it as native people. Like, well, what happened to my cousin and why did you kick him out? And so it became much more communicating again, inclusiveness or inclusivity inside, outside. So once the kid is out, uh, yeah, I can keep teaching and I can accomplish my lesson plan. But is there learning happening?
[00:10:38] Anthony: We talked to our cultural guides, several of them who would say, yeah, removing people from the community really isn't an option when you think about it. And we are conditioned as, uh, tribal people, and I think it's beyond our community to care for one another, to be empathetic, to worry and make sure everyone is successful.
[00:11:00] Anthony: So instead of kicking people out, this first grade teacher and the cultural guides work to develop, how do we keep people in and how do we literally circle around a kid, not maybe in the moment of the highest stress or disruption to the class, but at some point to move around each other in a way that reminded us everyone's important.
[00:11:21] Anthony: The cultural guides would give stories, like if we're in this setting and we're traveling on a canoe across these waterways, you can't kick someone out of the canoe. Instead, you, you necessarily have approaches to bring people back in. It's not perfect, but it, it's much better than the automatic kickout that we're so used to in schools.
[00:11:42] Olivia: And that vision of circling up around someone that's struggling yet also giving them space to be ready to be embraced in that circle up, I think it's a really fine balance and certain children are better at monitoring and letting folks know where they are in that.
[00:11:59] Anthony: Olivia, I do have to say, before we move from this, example, it is so nuanced and complex.
[00:12:05] Olivia: Yes.
[00:12:05] Anthony: So, it's not like you can take this as a strategy and enact it right away. There is necessary buildup to understand that space that you're talking about. Uh, time for a kid to relax and in these Western school settings that probably all of our listeners are conditioned by. It's time on task. It's completion of, of an assignment.
[00:12:28] Anthony: It's not about well-being of the kid across a day, across a week, across a school year. There is necessary trading in of approaches that we've been taught and conditioned by and experienced ourselves to say, you don't need to be in that kid's face constantly to resolve something in this moment. And maybe it's actually another kid or another adult from across the school that will come resolved with that kid over time.
[00:12:54] Anthony: So what I'm, what I'm saying is it's not like a one-to-one replacement of strategies for behavior or class community, but instead pushing pause on what we've taught to be the way. And saying what other ways are possible? So that's what the cultural guides were helping us explore.
[00:13:12] Olivia: And I know you shared with me too that it was critical for the educators in the building to leave and to experience an event within the tribal community. Yet there was a lot of planning that went into it to make it a smooth transition. Could you share for listeners about that experience?
[00:13:33] Anthony: Yeah, people may be familiar with Luis C. Moll's funds of knowledge idea, and that largely came out of Luis Moll and some students in an anthropological sense, visiting homes and really looking for the power, the strength, the knowledges that were there.
[00:13:48] Anthony: And um, being that we’re really a collective people, it, I started to think, well, you wouldn't visit each kid's home. You'd probably go to the matriarch of the family and visit grandma's house. And then I started to think, well, actually, this particular community is from a tradition of long houses, which are multi-generational, extended family homes.
[00:14:10] Anthony: And there is a long house here at Tulalip where people gather for key moments. And we decided that is the home. That is the house, the, the place where all the learning uh, really is generated here in this community. What would it look like for us as educators to go spend time in that long house? Summer ceremonies are often open to visitors and guests in these territories.
[00:14:34] Anthony: We decided, okay, come mid-June, we're going to attend that ceremony. But also it gave us this opportunity to explore how do young people get ready for that ceremony? What's the teaching and learning and sort of enactment of outcomes that leads up to that? So, we started to visit those gatherings there every Thursday night leading up to the ceremony.
[00:14:56] Anthony: It's for all ages. It could be for tribal members who are adults but don't know the ceremony or tribal members who were removed from the tribal community through government processes. That is a whole other conversation, and now are returning. So we have this like active reclamation of our life ways.
[00:15:16] Anthony: So to see that intergenerational learning, I asked educators, will you please just pay attention to the same kids that we serve? You know, maybe even find one that we've put a label on, struggling, disruptive, non-compliant. We have all these ways of labeling kids that really foreclose on their futures, whether we admit it or not, and pay attention to the ways the people who are responsible for the teaching in this space are interacting with those children.
[00:15:47] Anthony: And it, it was a really powerful series of moments that allowed us to see the same kids who we might say are struggling or disruptive, were leading in that space. They were responding to the teachers. Teachers in that space, you know, and I'm talking elders all had a different approach.
[00:16:05] Anthony: Some were very stern and you had to listen to them in the first, uh, direction. Some were just very quiet and would use proximity or call in other people. So, it was this way of imagining other approaches that we would call pedagogies, but it was really eye-opening to realize the things we had been convinced were the finite set of approaches for teaching and learning were actually just the tip of the iceberg and probably not the right ones for this community.
[00:16:36] Olivia: I, I think we can learn so much from connecting tribal histories and practices with the education system today, and it would benefit all children, all teachers. I know you did copious amounts of doctoral research. To wrap our interview, what research do you think would be the most important to leave our listeners with?
[00:17:00] Anthony: Yeah. What I learned after conducting research in my doctoral studies is that I was really focused on ancient and contemporary life ways, so around teaching and learning, but I hadn't yet expanded my view of what was possible by looking at futures. So when I think about, uh, what's possible for communities, for tribal communities and communities everywhere is we're not dreaming enough about the possible futures and then tying that to what we're doing day-to-day in the classroom.
[00:17:34] Anthony: Our day-to-day work, whether we're aware of it or not, is making some futures more possible and some futures less possible. So, if we have a sense for what we want for our children, and that involves tribal culture, strengthening knowledge, encouraging innovation because our cultures like everyone else are not static and set in the 1800s, the way our curriculum will lead us to believe.
[00:17:59] Anthony: We're about innovation and thriving and ongoing, uh, thrivance. You know, there are these ideas of thrivance and survivance in, um, indigenous life ways and political advocacy. We, we will thrive. We need classroom teachers to recognize that and participate in us thriving rather than even by default, sort of foreclosing on those possible futures.
[00:18:27] Anthony: So the research gem that I carry with me, is that if we pay attention to elders, children, people who are teaching and leading learning in the community and are open to figuring out what does that mean for my classroom? How does that take into account history and future, then we're much more likely to develop a school that's for that community rather than maintaining those histories of schools as assimilated forces.
[00:18:59] Olivia: Anthony, I can't thank you enough for being a guest and sharing your brilliance with the world. I, I feel grateful to have you and my collective circle of folks that are always teaching me best practices and, uh, I'm grateful for you.
[00:19:16] Olivia: I feel inspired, and I'm sure the listeners will as well. Thank you so much.
[00:19:20] Anthony: Thank you, Olivia.