When Your Teacher Sees You: One Student's Turning Point

In Part One of my S5E20  @schoolutionspodcast conversation, Dr. Michelle Chanda Singh shares how inclusive teaching can profoundly impact the student experience and foster a sense of belonging for all students, emphasizing that education for all hinges on deeply connected learning. She discusses how a Spanish teacher's innovative language learning approach helped her overcome feelings of invisibility in the classroom.

In this part one deeply personal conversation, Michelle reveals:
✨ Why 54% of students feel culturally unseen in classrooms
✨ How invisibility shows up as "silence in the curriculum"
✨ The difference between learning for compliance vs. connection
✨ Gloria Ladson-Billings's culturally responsive pedagogy framework
✨ Why humanizing ourselves as teachers unlocks classroom belonging

Stay tuned for Part Two (on Friday), where Michelle offers digital storytelling tools.

Some resources mentioned:
➡️Storytelling Can Bridge Cultural Gaps
🎤How Cultural Representation Improves Education
➡️ Gloria Ladson-Billings 
➡️ StoryCorps
➡️ Smithsonian Learning Resources
➡️ Zinn Education Project
➡️ PBS LearningMedia

Chapters: 
0:00 Introduction: What Does Invisibility in the Classroom Look Like?
1:00 Meet Dr. Michelle Chanda Singh: A Year in the Making
1:46 Today's Focus: Storytelling Can Bridge Cultural Gaps
2:13The Research Foundation: Gloria Ladson-Billings & Culturally Responsive Pedagogy
2:53 Taking Us Back: 9 Years Old, Newly Arrived from Jamaica
3:14 Education as Priority: Coming to America for Better Opportunities
4:00 The Adult Lens: Looking Back as an Educator and Researcher
4:44 Invisibility Wasn't Loud—It Was Silence in the Curriculum
5:31 Learning for Compliance, Not Connection
6:04 Succeeding Without Being Fully Seen
6:42 The Shock: When Friends Met Her Indian Family
7:00 The Statistics: 54% Students of Color, 82% White Teachers
7:24 The Representation Gap in Education Today
8:00 Enter Ms. Fernandez: Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Grade Spanish Teacher
8:51 Education Beyond Performance and Perfection
9:17 Prioritizing Connection Over Transaction
9:42 The Learning That Stuck: Songs, Café con Leche, and Las Tiendas
10:34 Standing Up Out of Respect: A Cultural Moment
11:42 Permission to Be Different While Honoring Culture
12:17 Reflecting on Teaching Refugees in California
13:00 The Equal Playing Field: Learning Spanish Together
13:42 Lightning Round Begins!
14:00 Top Resource for Storytelling: Start with Listening
15:00 Storytelling Requirement: Beyond Textbooks and into Lives
16:00 "When You Share Your Story, You Become Human"
16:42 What Would Ms. Fernandez Say? A Look of Pride
17:00 Wrapping Part I: The Spanish Spelling Bee Memory
17:33 Preview of Part II: Getting Practical with Digital Tools
18:00 Closing: Your Homework—Share

When coaches, teachers, administrators, and families work hand in hand, it fosters a school atmosphere where everyone is inspired and every student is fully engaged in their learning journey.

Transcript

Olivia: [00:00:00] What does it feel like to be physically present in a classroom, but completely invisible? Dr. Michelle Chanda Singh, founder of The Restful Teacher, takes us back to her experience as a nine-year-old Jamaican immigrant, succeeding academically, but disconnected from the learning. Then she introduces us to Ms. Fernandez, the Spanish teacher, who changed everything by making education, human, relational, and joyful. This conversation will inspire you and may shift how you think about belonging in your classroom. 

This is Schoolutions Teaching Strategies, the podcast that extends education beyond the classroom. A show that isn't just theory, but practical try-it-tomorrow approaches for educators and caregivers to ensure every student finds their spark and receives the support they need to thrive. [00:01:00] I am Olivia Wahl and I am so happy to be here today with Dr. Michelle Chanda Singh. And Michelle this conversation has been almost, my gosh, I think a year in the making of us going back and forth coordinating calendars. So I'm so happy to have you here. Um, if it's okay with you, I'm gonna tell listeners a little bit about you. 

Michelle: Absolutely. 

Olivia: Alright, Dr. Michelle Chanda Singh is a nationally board-certified teacher and founder of the Restful Teacher and LCTE Learning Solutions. Our conversation today will focus on her ASCD article. Storytelling Can Bridge Cultural Gaps and Her TED Talk. How cultural representation Improves Education. Michelle, these topics are needed now more than ever. Our stories matter, our children's stories matter, and I cannot wait to have you speak to this, uh, for listeners today. Thank you. 

Michelle: Absolutely. I'm so happy to finally, finally be together with you to [00:02:00] record this. Yes. 

Olivia: Yes. Yes. Same. Um, I am playing with a different structure, uh, moving forward into the new year, and I've shared this with you, so we're going to record part one as well as part two. And, um, release both in one week. So this is part one of our conversation, and it's really for listeners to better know your story and the ripple effects of how that, um, impacted the way you lived as an educator in the classroom, but also an advocate for storytelling. So take us back. Um, what is a piece of research that you lean on or a researcher that we can also look into to have our backs when it comes to storytelling? 

Michelle: I will say that a researcher that, that, that is just the foundation of all of my work is, um, culturally responsive pedagogy, uh, with Gloria Ladson-Billings because her [00:03:00] work focuses on bringing in the cultural experiences of students and making them just aware and making them feel seen, and I think the story is just a natural part of that. So, although she may not specifically, uh, have story as one of her tenants, it's embedded in there. 

Olivia: Yeah. So we, I want listeners to better know your story, and I want to go all the way back to when you were nine years old, newly arrived in the States, and what it felt like for you to not be seen in the way you needed to be and yet expected to learn and be fully engaged in the classroom.

Michelle: Yeah, so I came to the United States at nine years old. I'm originally from Jamaica. My family decided to move to America for a better life for, for more access to education. So education has, has always been a [00:04:00] priority and a foundation in, in my family and in my upbringing. But what I've learned from that 9-year-old girl to me in 40 plus as an educator - as an educator and researcher, because I really don't remember my age. My daughter has to remind me, once you get past 40, like everything's a blur. 

Olivia: It's a blur. I agree. I'm with you. 

Michelle: But what I've learned, uh, just, you know, from my adult lens, looking back and, and, and going back to those experiences and being an, you know, being, like I said, being an educator and being a, a researcher - invisibility, that invisibility that I, I felt in, uh, the, the classroom and the school setting and the environment being just so new to this country, that invisibility that I felt it didn't show up as, uh, as conflict. 

Sure there were times [00:05:00] where people made fun of me because of my accent and because of how I looked and because of my hair and, you know, because I just sometimes look different from some of the kids. Sure that was there. But when I, when it came to the actual learning, that invisibility, it, it wasn't loud. For me it was subtle. Uh, for me it showed up, you know, as silence in the curriculum. It, it showed up as me not necessarily like feeling connected. Seeing the relevance, feeling like what I was learning was relatable.

Uh, the learning. Did not stick to where I remembered it now. Right. It, I learned it to be compliant. Learning just was not joyful in that way, and so I realized that yeah, I was physically present and, and sure I did well academically, but it was out of what I realized it was out of [00:06:00] compliance because Yeah, the curriculum, the traditional curriculum, especially back then, it really just did not reflect my lived reality as someone who was an immigrant who just came here from this country, uh, who is multicultural because my mom is Indian, my father is Black, and so I'm, I am, I have all of these things that are a part of my identity, but I can't find them anywhere else.

Right? And I just learned to succeed without being fully seen and without being able to fully express my true and real identity. I'll tell you this, in school, friends would see me and then if they were good friends and they would come to my house and they would meet my family and they would see all these Indian people, they would be shocked. 

Olivia: Yeah. This is also making me think of, uh, Moll's work with [00:07:00] Funds of Knowledge. And…

Michelle: Oh, yes, yes, yes. 

Olivia: Right? 

Michelle: Mm-hmm. 

Olivia: And so I, I am, I think you know our stories, who we are, it's so important to feel seen in these environments. And then just some statistics because it was also fascinating to me to learn. That you didn't actually feel seen until much later in your academic career. Mm-hmm. So for listeners to better understand, right now, 54% of students are of color in our schools, 82% of teachers are not. 7% of teachers are Black and only 2% of teachers are black males. Those are current statistics, and that to me. Then if you fast forward in your educational career, you did not really crack open the idea of being seen and heard as student until Ms. Fernandez came into your life. Um, and you had said it was an explosion of [00:08:00] cultural community and that humanizing ourselves is what made you finally say, whoa, this, there's something here. So can you speak to that? Like why do we have to humanize ourselves as teachers? 

Michelle: Well, so Ms. Fernandez came in early. Luckily, luckily Ms. Fernandez was earlier on. I had Ms. Fernandez fourth grade, fifth grade, and sixth grade because she was my Spanish teacher. And back then in elementary school, Ms. Fernandez taught me for like one hour out of the day. Uh, not every day, but it was just one hour. And the Spanish teachers would come to the classrooms where our general education teachers were and you know, they would do what they do.

And, um. So with Ms. Fernandez, I talk about her a lot because that she was the one that made me realize that education is not just about performing, it's not just about perfecting. [00:09:00] Um, it's not just about people-pleasing. And, and she, she's the one that made me see how important it is to prioritize connection. To prioritize relationship and to also make learning, not feel transactional, but relational. So just a few things that I can remember, like again, I'm talking about the little 9-year-old me and I remember these things. So remember I talked about learning, not being joyful and learning, not sticking. That was the majority of what I experienced, but Ms. Fernandez stands out because that learning for me was joyful. 

Like, I remember her teaching us these songs in Spanish and learning the language. I remember her teaching me how to make Cafe Con Leche, and I felt so grown, because I'm drinking, you know, [00:10:00] granted, we do drink, you know, coffee in Jamaica, um, and we're known for the Blue Mountain Coffee. But, but still, we're, we're here – we’re there in class making Cafe Con Leche. She would have her laas every Friday and we would earn like, you know, like fake money and tickets and we would get to go and visit the store and purchase and we would have to speak in Spanish. She took us on field trips to Spanish restaurants where we had to order in Spanish.

She took us to this one time, like this magic shop, like I remember these things from like the fourth and fifth and sixth grade. I was learning the language, I was immersed in the culture and I was learning. That's the point. The learning was relational. The learning was it was connected. Um, and you know, Ms. Fernandez, she, she, she, she was only around, like I said, for part of the day, like one hour in the day. But my [00:11:00] experience with her showed me how important her culture was to her. And then, you know, for me it also made me kind of feel like, okay, my, my culture is, important to me too. 

So there was this one in, not an incident, but one situation I remember when I first came, uh, from Jamaica. In Jamaica, when we, uh, speak to our teachers, we stand up out of respect. So I'm sitting in class. They would call on me to answer questions and I would stand up every single time to answer a question and the kids would laugh at me like, why is this little child standing up? Right? And Ms., you know, this happened for a while, but then it was Ms. Fernandez who kind of told me like, Michelle, I know what you're doing. You know, this is obviously not these words 'cause it was so long ago, but this is the gist of what I got from it. It is okay to not stand up and you can [00:12:00] still respect your teachers. Because for me, the respect was the, the act of standing because that's what we were taught in Jamaica. But she was giving me permission to do something different and still honoring, you know, what I did in my culture. 

Olivia: I think something that that makes me just reflect on is when I first started teaching, I was teaching in California and San Diego, and I had many, many different children from, um, countries that had moved to this school district as refugees. And they, uh, uh, I went from teaching fifth grade down to kindergarten, and it was such a difference because in fifth grade there was a lot of tradition and a lot of inborn culture that the kids had as patterns, but once the kids were, I was teaching kindergarten, it was fascinating to see that they were trying to see how they fit within the overall, um, culture.

But thinking [00:13:00] of Ms. Fernandez and the common equal playing field of learning a language together. I'm inferring that your classmates did not know Spanish either, and she was coming in and it almost gave you that fertile ground to come in and be a part of something new and fresh with a class. And so I, I just, I think there's so much to be said about her. Um, I'd love to end part one with a lightning round and I have a Ms. Fernandez question tucked in there. Are you ready for lightning round? 

Michelle: I'm ready. 

Olivia: Here we go. 

Michelle: Let's do it. 

Olivia: Alright, so one of my favorite things about you, you offer really amazing resources for us to lean on. So you've recommended Story Corps, Smithsonian, Zinn Education Project, PBS LearningMedia. What is the top resource like tomorrow that we could go to to learn more about storytelling? 

Michelle: To learn more about storytelling, I think [00:14:00] that I would go with, of those resources that are listed, I would go with Zinn Education or PBS LearningMedia. It's so, they're so rich. But I would, I, because there's so much in them, I would offer this start with listening, because listening for me is always where, um belonging begins 'cause we are listening to understand. Right. So find the resources that will allow you to listen, to understand the other perspective, the other experiences, the other cultures, whatever that looks like. 

Olivia: Beautiful. Beautiful. All right. What's a storytelling requirement that you think would be really helpful for teachers to have in place in classrooms?

Michelle: Storytelling is not just limited to what's in our textbooks and what they tell us to teach. Um, I would, I would recommend [00:15:00] that they can incorporate their own stories. They can incorporate their student stories. They can make room for the stories of their, their parents and families and community members. Because these are the stories that won't show up in the textbook. These are the stories that won't show up online.

The, you know, there are, uh, and I talk about this in my TED Talk um, because these are the stories that the students will just, they will feel, they will feel, you know, just feel, and when you feel you're in it, so you can create these inclusive spaces where students belong by incorporating these stories from places that you wouldn't normally, um, you wouldn't normally look for them. But it starts with your story. I'll say that because when you share your story, you become human. And when students see that you're human, it gives them [00:16:00] now permission to be human too. 

Olivia: Oh, that's beautiful. Uh, last lightning round question was we wrap part one. What would Ms. Fernandez, uh, say if she heard how you are advocating for story and um, just to be seen in the way she saw you?

Michelle: But she would definitely smile. And, um, she, I, I think she would say that she was proud of me for sure, because she, she, she often told me that. Like, I remember I would, I was in the spa, I made it to the Spanish spelling bee on at the district level, and she was the, um, she was like the chaperone, so she was there like every step of the way. So I would definitely like, see her, her look of, of, of, of pride for sure. 

Olivia: Beautiful. Well, I can't wait for part two because we're going to get into kind of the nitty gritty and on the ground [00:17:00] suggestions for classroom teachers of how to get this going in their spaces. So I, I look forward to that part of our conversation as well. Thanks, Michelle. 

Michelle: Absolutely. Thank you. 

Olivia: Okay, so that's where we'll pause part one for today. On Friday, we're continuing this conversation with part two. We're getting practical. Michelle will share specific tools for digital storytelling, why your guest speakers need to reflect your students' lived experiences and what it means to raise classrooms - not just support them. Take a moment this week to think about your own story. What's one experience from your life, your culture, your family, your journey that you could share with your students? Start small. Share one story that humanizes you. And watch what happens when your students see you're human too. Notice how it shifts the energy in your classroom. Make sure to tune in every [00:18:00] Monday and Friday for part one and two of my guest conversations with the best research-backed coaching and teaching strategies, you can apply right away to better the lives of the children lives in your care. And look for your 60-secomd bite-sized piece of learning on Wednesdays from our conversation to share with a colleague. Take care and thank you for forever getting better with me. Have a great week ahead.