Empathy without Action? That's the Real Problem!

In Part One of our S5E27 ⁨ @schoolutionspodcast conversation, Dr. Chris Hass challenges our understanding of empathy, suggesting that simply feeling emotions might not lead to substantive change. This conversation delves into emotional intelligence, highlighting how moving beyond mere feelings to tangible actions is vital for social justice in childhood.

Chris is an assistant professor at James Madison University and co-author of From Empathy to Action with Katie Kelly and Lester Laminack. He asks us to consider whether teaching kids to feel empathy is actually getting in the way of real change. 

Dr. Hass also introduces the three forms of empathy: emotional, cognitive, and compassionate, and explains why compassionate empathy is the one that actually moves students from caring to doing. You'll hear the remarkable true story of second and third graders who researched gender representation in street signs, presented to their city mayor and city council, and helped get a street renamed after Columbia's first Black female doctor.

This episode is for anyone who believes students are capable of more than we give them credit for — and wants the tools to prove it.

🎧 Part Two drops Friday, where we tackle the skeptics, scripted curricula, and nervous caregivers head-on.

From Chris: Using Literacy Instruction to Develop Student Activists & Empathy thru Education

Some episode mentions & resources:
📚 Book mentioned: From Empathy to Action by Chris Hass, Katie Kelly, & Lester Laminack
👩‍🏫 Researcher mentioned: Vivian Vasquez (critical literacy in early childhood)
📖 Books mentioned: Text, Lies & Videotape by Patrick Shannon

Chapters:
0:00 — Introduction: The empathy paradox
1:00 — About Schoolutions Podcast & Dr. Chris Hass
2:00 — Vivian Vasquez & what education could be
4:30 — Why feeling bad isn't the same as taking action
7:00 — Three forms of empathy explained
9:00 — What holds students (and adults) back from action
11:30 — Teaching into fear and discomfort
13:00 — The street sign project: second graders before city council
18:00 — How to structure inquiry-based action projects
21:00 — The fairytale study: when outcomes surprise you
24:00 — Lightning round: mistakes, literacy, and advice for new teachers
28:00 — The power of mentor texts & critical text sets
30:30 — Preview of Part Two

🎧 New episodes every Monday & Friday with bite-sized Wednesday reel bonus content.
📧 Connect: schoolutionspodcast@gmail.com
🎵 Music: Benjamin Wahl

Don't forget to🔔SUBSCRIBE for more teaching tips, and 💬SHARE with fellow educators! 

#Schoolutions #SchoolutionsPodcast #ForeverGettingBetter #EmpathyToAction 

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 if the way we teach empathy is actually getting in the way of change? What if feeling bad has become a substitute for doing something in our classrooms, in our communities, and even in ourselves? Today's guest is Dr. Chris Hass, he is the co-author of From Empathy to Action with Katie Kelly and Lester Laminack.

Chris is here to challenge everything you think you know about social justice work with young children. This conversation will make you think it will inspire you and it will send you back to your classroom and your families ready to do something different starting tomorrow. Alright, here's part one of my conversation with Dr. Chris Hass.

This is Schoolutions Podcast, the podcast that extends education beyond the classroom. A show that isn't just [00:01:00] 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. I am Olivia Wahl and I'm so happy to welcome Dr.Chris Hass to the podcast today. Let me tell you a little bit about Chris. Dr. Chris Hass is an assistant professor at James Madison University, and he believes that young children are capable of creating real change. Our conversation today will focus on Chris's book, co-written with Katie Kelly and Lester Laminack I have it right here, Chri it's magnificent, I've been using it everywhere, carrying multiple copies. From Empathy to Action: Empowering K-6 Students to Create Change Through Reading, Writing, and Research. This is a book that challenges educators to stop teaching kids just to care and to start teaching kids to act. Chris, I've been dying to interview you since I [00:02:00] attended your presentation at NCTE with Katie and Lester, and I am just so grateful for you giving time, um, to speak to the book today. 

Chris: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited. 

Olivia: Yeah. We're gonna break the conversation into part one, part two. Part one I am, I'm asking you to speak more to the idea of taking action and the difference between just caring and then putting that care into moves in the classroom, especially with young kids. Part two of the conversation's going to focus a lot on challenges and skeptics, and we're going to speak right to the skeptics and, um, offer solutions on how to get this work going in our classrooms. So, um, I love to start every conversation with a piece of research or a researcher you lean on with this work. Would you share that with listeners? 

Chris: Yeah, I would love to. Sometimes I feel it's a little more challenging with this work because there's, when we think about students taking action and how we support them [00:03:00] with the action and what the action will look like. I feel like we have lots of examples of what that might look like in adult education or even in secondary education but because people make all these wrong assumptions about young children that they just don't know, they don't care, they're not capable, all these sorts of things, we don't see a lot focused down on younger children and all the incredible, um, change that they can create. And I have so many classroom stories of young kids doing really incredible things.

So. I can name one though. I can actually name a few, but I'm gonna name one that's been seminal that I hope people are aware of, um, which is the work Vivian Vasquez has done over a number of decades to really show what critical literacy looks like in the early childhood classroom, not just elementary, but early childhood classroom to show what happens when we engage in a liberatory education that is really focused on democracy.

It's focusing on fear of play. It's giving children an opportunity to take credit for the incredible intelligence they have and to use that intelligence to try to create a better world [00:04:00] around them. So I couldn't be more thankful to the work that Vivian has done across all this time to show what she did in her own teaching, but how she supported other teachers to do the same.

But really, it gave all of us a vision for what education could be. I think I probably came into this career like many people do like, oh, you're preparing them for this content. They're gonna take these tests and they're gonna get a job one day. And somewhere along the way, there's people like Vivian Vasquez in the world who show you the education could be something different. We can have a different purpose than just preparation for a job force. 

Olivia: Yeah, it, it's that idea of the collective, um. I was in conversation with Kris Nystrom yesterday. He's in Africa, and we were talking a lot about the difference in systems all over the world and the need for action and looking at the whole human when it comes to education. So as I was reading your book, I've read it now actually three to four times. Each time I dip back in, I take something else from it that's beautiful. [00:05:00] And. It was fascinating to me because it feels like there's an empathy paradox where just caring isn't enough and feeling bad isn't, it's not really what we're going for. It's actually counterproductive. Can you illuminate that empathy paradox for listeners? 

Chris: Yeah. I, I think there's this problem where feeling bad can look like it's engagement, but really it's just getting in the way of taking action. I feel like a lot of getting caught up in how we feel about something is very inward looking. And in some ways it might be performative. Maybe we're performing for ourselves or we're performing for others. But look at me, Olivia. Look how much I care about what's happening around these ICE raids. I've been losing sleep and, but now the focus is on me and it's how I'm processing this information and the effects it's having on me, but it's not attached to what can I do about it?

And there's things that all of us can do about it. And when I think about adults, and I very much thought about adults when thinking about what this might look like with younger children. A lot of times they just get caught up by this notions like, I don't know what to do about it. Or who am I to do something about it or who's gonna listen to me?

And all those sorts of things. But that's where we have to move [00:06:00] because having an emotional response isn't the same thing as being useful. And our goal should always be to be useful. Right. So we need to do something. We have an exchange do at living with us this year from Tokyo, and I was talking to her about our con upcoming conversation last night at dinner. And her high school is getting ready to have a walkout on Friday against the ICE raids that are happening in our community, and we are a refugee haven. We have so much diversity in this community that's so wonderful. But she was questioning like, but what's that going to accomplish now? I was trying to explain to her, it helps to not normalize things.

It keeps pushing back and letting people know, we're not gonna stand for this. We know these aren't normal behaviors. We know these aren't normal acts, and they're harmful. Because as soon as we all grow quiet, it becomes easier to move that needle into what's acceptable. So we have to push back. People will listen to you as a high school student who walks outta your classroom and stands out there with a sign. Um, but we have to be able to do something. I think the other piece of this and how we feel about things sometimes how we feel about things is too [00:07:00] wrapped up in maybe a notion of sympathy instead of empathy. Where we're feeling sorry for someone. We're pittying them, which there's all sorts of issues with that. But what we want to grow is an into, is an empathy. So I think about the work that I do with my students or my former students. I work with college students now, so I do, but it looks a little different now. 

Olivia: Yeah. 

Chris: Um, and this is in the book, three forms of empathy I think is really important for everyone to understand. So, you know, what is it that you're shooting for

Olivia: Please! Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris: So the first is emotional empathy. Emotional empathy is what allows me to look at you and say, Olivia's feeling bad right now. She's feeling sad. She's feeling let out, whatever it might be. So emotional empathy is just recognizing that emotion in someone else. Cognitive empathy is for me to look at you and say, Olivia's feeling this way because, and I know what the root cause is. This thing is going on that's causing her to feel this way. Both of those are important, but I think what we want to happen in our classrooms is we want our kids to grow into compassionate empathy, which sees that Olivia's feeling bad. This is why she's feeling bad, but I have a responsibility to her. I need to do something. It's [00:08:00] not to sit here and try to solve all your problems for you or tell you how you're supposed to feel. 'cause those are the opposite. 

Olivia: Yeah. 

Chris: But it's to say, maybe I just need to be a listening ear, or maybe I need to give her a warm hug.or maybe I need to make sure I check in with her from time to time. Like, there's always things that we can do, but that's where empathy moves us into action versus just feeling sorry for someone. 

Olivia: Oh, that's beautiful. And so then I'm thinking you, you just highlighted the shift that we can make between I care and I act. I'd love for you to go a little bit deeper with that. Like what holds us back as students and adults to just jump in and take action outside of fear? I think fear is a huge element right now. 

Chris: Yeah. So one of my first forays into all this work was during my PhD program, I had read this book by Patrick Shannon called Text, Lies, and Videotape, and somewhere in this text he talks about the notion of normalcy and how it was getting at marginalization, about how we normalize certain things. I remember sitting in that doctoral class thinking, oh my gosh, my [00:09:00] second graders need to know about this. These are really rich discussions we can have. So we built like this two or three week inquiry around this idea of normalcy and how we normalize certain things and we marginalize others. Because I had noticed in the classroom sometimes when they say they were opening a book, they would see a picture of say, Aboriginal Australians and someone would go ooooo or something like that. Um. Rather than telling someone don't do that, let's help them understand where that's coming from, the effect that it has on other people, but also the effect it has on us when we say things like that. 

Olivia: Yeah. 

Chris: So we had this whole study around, um, normalizing things and the effects it has in marginalizing, but part of that, as we watched a clip from the popular US series, um, what would you do where they have actors come in and they enact a situation. You say, what do bystanders do in this situation? And the one that we watched had an actor come in to, when you're watching it, the people around it, you think this is a real customer. He comes in, he very badly mistreats a young Muslim girl just to see what the bystanders will do. And as you might expect, a couple of them stand up for her. A couple of them give him a thumbs up 'cause they think he'd done exactly what Americans would do in this [00:10:00] situation. But the bulk of people stand there and do absolutely nothing. They just let this thing happen, which becomes a discussion for seven and eight year olds: Why would they do that? 

Olivia: Yeah. 

Chris: Why would they not stand up for someone who so much needed someone to stand up for them in that moment? Um, and how does this relate to our experience at school? Have we ever found ourself in that same situation where we see someone being mistreated but maybe we're not sure what to do? And you're right, part of that's fear. People are fear, fearful to get involved because they don't wanna become the target of a behavior.

They don't wanna be seen as someone who's, oh, they always have to be so serious and so heavy, and they just can't let things go. Um, but I will say when I asked my students and I used to make the mistake, I used to go around telling people. That adults get hung up on these things and that kids don't, because kids just see things in their own view, whether it's right or wrong, and they wanna try to make it better, and that's wrong.

That was an assumption I made because I wanted it to be true, because when I got around to actually asking kids, how are you engaging with these discussions that we have around race or around gender, around religion, I found out there were a number of times when kids were uncomfortable [00:11:00] engaging in discussion or taking action because they were afraid they might do the wrong thing, or they were afraid that they didn't have the knowledge or the information they needed to do it right.

Or they were afraid that other people might judge them for trying to get involved in a certain way, and it all came back to how they were being viewed within that room, and that kept them from doing that. Whether it's engaging in the discussion or it's standing up for another person. We have a lot at stake to care about something. There's no stake in that, but to actually act, there's quite a bit and there's a lot of unknowns that people are fearful of, of taking that step and doing it. I think the beauty for us as teachers is when we come to realize this and we know what the tensions are, then we can teach into those tensions and we can help kids become more comfortable taking those sorts of risks. Because life is about taking risks. This isn't the only area, right? If we're gonna grow into anything, we have to be willing to take risks, and this is just the same. 

Olivia: Yeah. It's making me think too a lot about kids needing to, not role play, but to have a space where they can [00:12:00] have these conversations. Almost go dark to the worst case scenario, like, well, what if this happened? What would, what would be the result? Because I think in life when we are scared or fearful of taking action or a a bad result. If we can map out, okay, if this happens, I may react this way. If this happens, I may…and it's not going to necessarily be a roadmap, but at least it helps our youngest children kind of prepare themselves for responses and reactions. So I could see that being just invaluable. 

Chris: I think it's important that we, that failure's important in all this. Our kids need to have opportunities to try to take action on things and not have it work out. 

Olivia: Yeah. 

Chris: Because honestly, if you're gonna be an activist or someone who takes action in this world, you better get used to failing. Because you might see failures, you don't get the outcome you want, or you only get a small piece, or it's not on the timeline that you want, and that's just the reality. That's what happens. But we had to be prepared for that mental load of that happening because that's part of that process of moving [00:13:00] forward.

Olivia: So let's talk about, I'd love for you to share a project that you've done with students that worked out exactly how you hoped with very little bumps in the road. And then I'd also love for you to share a project that didn't work out as though you anticipated, but as you just said, it wasn't a failure because you acted and you tried. So a project that worked out well and then another that was different than you anticipated. 

Chris: Okay. Yeah, so I, I'll, I'll go back to maybe one of the first projects I did alongside children where we were taking action. And part of the structure of our morning meeting was the kids - we had a set of journals where the kids could write questions about things that just didn't feel right to them, didn't seem to make sense, didn't have logic, and they just wanted to invite the rest of us into trying to figure these things out with them.

And some of them were very mundane, like, why does my shirt look darker when it's wet? Sort of stuff. But sometimes it's like, why are all the people who are in the cafeteria Black? Like they're noticing a lot of things, which goes to how we underestimate kids so often they notice a lot of things. We just haven't given them [00:14:00] outlets for asking those questions so we can have discussions around it.

Olivia: Yeah. 

Chris: But another piece was to bring in news articles and share some things that are going on. So one day a group of girls came in and they had an article (I lived in Columbia, South Carolina at the time) there was an article about the street signs in the city. There were a hundred and something street signs that were named after people, and only one of 'em was named after woman. And it was Lady Street, which I'm not even sure that should count. Um, which is supposed to be for Martha Washington. So they went through this, all the stats of the article, and they shared it with it and the class talked about it together. 

Then I put out the question, wow, this seems like a real problem, would you like to try to do something about it? And I'll be honest, I had no idea what a group of seven or eight year olds could do about this problem. But I was willing to figure it out alongside them. So, you know, most of them said yes, maybe all of 'em said yes just with social pressure. But a large number of people said, yeah, let's do it. So I looped with my kids for two years, so I had them for second grade and third grade. So over a course of about 11 months, we had the, the reporter [00:15:00] come in and share more notes that didn't make it into the article. She helped us understand which organizations were already involved in this that she had leaned on so we could also learn from them.

Over the course of those 11 months, we invited probably 20 different women into our classroom to talk about other women who inspire them, and some were national, some were international, and some were very local. So at the end of all this and spending all this time thinking about this issue, we also looked at our textbook to see where women were being represented there. Not shockingly, we found out that within the social studies textbook, when they mentioned the accomplishments of women, it was either a sidebar or it was the last two pages of the chapter, which was kind of like an add-on versus being the central story at any point. So we saw it happening in other places too.

We started looking at advertising and what some advertisements communicate about gendered roles and gendered expectations. So, so throughout all of this, for 11 months when we reached the end, they had a depth of knowledge, like they really knew this in a lot of different ways that sounded like second third graders talking about it, which is exactly [00:16:00] what they should sound like when they do it. But honestly they probably sound more like fifth or sixth graders. 'cause they did know a lot. We really worked hard at this. So anyway, at the end of all of that, we put together a presentation and we invited the mayor in and they gave a presentation to the mayor. And we talked about we don't want, well I should say, I talked about we don't want people to pat you on the head and tell you you're cute.

We don't want people to tell you, you did a good job. We want people to take you seriously 'cause you have very serious things to share. So they shared with the mayor. He was very impressed by their passion, but also their depth of knowledge. So he invited them to go to the city council meeting and give a formal presentation there for the full city council, and they did it, and they did such a fabulous job. Um. It's, it was, I still have video that I shared with some people around here from the WIS news in Columbia. It was so inspiring, like the depth of knowledge and the passion they had when they talked about it and it wound up getting changed. They wound up getting a new street name named after Dr. Matilda Evans, who is one of the three that they had recommended. She was the first female black doctor in Columbia. Um, it didn't get changed because of them. It [00:17:00] got changed because of them and a number of people who are working collaboratively towards this thing together, which is an important piece of it.

Um. But I was prepared if it didn't happen, like if it didn't have worked out, what were we gonna do? We were gonna have the discussion of, so what happens next? Where do we go after this? And it was also important, I think, for us to discuss afterwards, great, now there are two. How do we feel about that? Right? Because that could still be seen as tokenism, like what needs to happen next? You can't stop because you make a minor gain. You have to keep pushing, pushing, pushing. So it was a wonderful experience for all of us and for me as a teacher who really didn't even know what we were gonna be doing, um, I trusted that we would figure out together, and they very much were part, an important part of that process.

Olivia: So let me process is, I'm sure listeners, I have a lot of listeners that even though I offer a transcript, they like to take a lot of notes. I also have people reach out to say, they'll listen to an episode on a walk, but then they go back and listen again to take notes or to watch because they can see it too. And [00:18:00] so what I hear you saying is you start with questions from the kids. Things they're curious about, things they're wondering about, things they're noticing, and then you take almost a consensus or a question that you think has some legs under it that could be an investigation or an inquiry. Um, and then they do research together.

Uh, what I appreciate so much is that you are learning alongside them. The teacher doesn't have to be an expert in this topic. Instead you reached out to experts at the national scale, experts at the local community to speak to this topic, and also people that are being impacted by this in a number of ways. Um, and then the idea that they had a clear audience that was almost evolving and growing with the research that they were doing. And there still [00:19:00] wasn't the necessary, like fail safe that they were going, what their action was going to do was going to guarantee the outcome that they were hoping for. And I want to just point out, I think this is a reality that would make people feel more comfortable to take action or want to take action. It's, it's a, a mindset shift. Um, and so with that idea of it's, there's not really failure because if you act, that's the first step toward whatever you're trying to, uh, make change with. Do you have a story of a situation where you were like, whoa, I didn't see that coming um, and went a different direction? 

Chris: So, this notion of let's just jump in and, and I don't want anyone to get the, the idea that I'm an under planned teacher. 'cause believe me, I am not an under planned teacher whatsoever. I'm constantly thinking about my teaching. I'm constantly thinking about all those sorts of [00:20:00] things, but it was freeing. And you mentioned a little bit ago not having all the answers. It was really freeing when I realized I didn't have to have all the answers. I just had a willingness to figure them out alongside kids because I was modeling for them what it meant to be a lifelong learner and what it meant to try to figure out questions.

So at that time I was at a school of inquiry. Everything was, you were just naming all those inquiry based things, right? Like that's how we approached all of learning because we wanted our kids to be adjunctive. We wanted everything that we do to be relatable to, no, this is how you learn outside of school. You don't have to wait for me to tell you things. We can always, so if you think of work around like writing instruction and Katie Wood Ray and Lucy Calkins and all those folks, it's like, no, let me show you how to read like a writer because you're teaching yourself as much as I'm teaching you probably more, right?

These authors are doing it. I feel like this work was the same way. When you teach them to ask questions, when you teach them to seek out answers of those and to collaboratively try to make sense of this together in a classroom where we did not all agree on things whatsoever, but also learn how to have those discussions in a productive way so that we were learning as much as we could from each other, but still comparing it to our own life experiences and things of that nature.

I would [00:21:00] argue that you can't fail because everything that you do is another piece of research to make you a better teacher. If I had to name a failure for many of these, I would say the outcome wasn't what we wanted. 

So one example of that, and this is gonna be another gender-based one, but please don't think that's all we ever did. Um, one year we did a study of fairytales to try to figure out what they were communicating to us about gendered roles and gendered expectations. And we read a number of 'em together and we had a couple of questions like, who is the main character? What are their main attributes? What are the, who are the secondary people? What are the problems in the story? How do they get solved? That sort of thing. Because I knew a lot of 'em were gonna have male swoop in save the day. Not all of them, but a lot of them. 

So we did a couple books together and then the kids each took one fairytale home so they could do the same thing with their parents, and they did the same analysis with their fairytale. Then they brought it back in, and then we looked across all of them, say, what patterns are we noticing? Then we took our books and we started putting them my publication date into like, like a big bar graph on the floor so we could see the ones that we tagged as problematic. Are they happening [00:22:00] mostly back here? Are they still happening now? 

When we got to the end of it all, we wrote letters to everyone that we thought we. I'm sorry. Everyone they thought needed to know, they wrote to Scholastic, they wrote to the newspaper, they wrote to teachers who read these books, they wrote to parents who read these books. And one child wrote to Fox News, Fox and Friends, because that's the news agency that they got their news from and they felt like they would wanna know this too. And I thought, great, I'm gonna go viral. So they wrote to all of these people and we got a letter back from Scholastic, uh, maybe I shouldn't say it's from Scholastic, but I'm gonna go and say it from Scholastic and it was offensive. So it was so defensive and belittling all the work they'd put in it gave examples for why that's not a problem anymore. These are problems from 200 years ago. But women have made all these gains, and yes, they've made gains, but we still aren't where we need to be. 

It said, look at Katniss and the Hunger Games, or look at Hermione and Harry Potter, neither of which are fairtales, by the way. So it's not what we were talking about. They let go of the fact that we had looked at it by era and we noticed that it got better, but it still didn't get perfect and we should still be aware of it. The other part was we [00:23:00] weren't trying to tell people not to read fairytales. We weren't trying to tell people not to enjoy them. We were just saying, have a critical lens when you read them, because you might be consuming something that you didn't even know was there and you should be aware of it. So they were offended by the letter they got back 'cause they felt like it belittled everything they knew to be true and everything that they wanted to change.

But that was an important. Experience because that's the reality of this work. Sometimes you just need to be prepared for it, and you ask yourself, so where do we go next? Do we continue to get into a, an argument with this person? Does that get us anywhere or do we shift our focus somewhere where we can make a difference? And that's ultimately what we did.

Olivia: Yeah. I'm gonna, the idea of where do we go next? It's this one foot in front of the other. When you feel like you've been knocked down, get back up and keep going. Find another resource, find another ear that will listen or, and what's fascinating is it's so critical for kids to understand that they can have all of the research, and yet someone still may look at that research and walk away with a different [00:24:00] interpretation that suits marketing, that suits their needs.

And so it's this shift in dance we're doing between I feel to the collective whole and that that's fascinating to me. Um. I'm going to pause part one conversation and wrap it with a lightning round, and I, I think you are an incredible person, Chris, just with the work you do and your belief in kids, that children truly can create change if we empower them to do that work. So the questions don't all go with change, but I really, I wanted listeners to get a better picture of who you are as a person. So first question, um, what is the biggest mistake you feel like you made as a young teacher? 

Chris: All of them. I think, um, I'm working with preservice teachers now. I'm like, believe me, you all are so much more informed than I was. My, my, my, [00:25:00] my journey of growth was a slow one, but it was an important one because it got me to where I needed to be. A number, but I wanna go back to something I said earlier because it's one I I kept making even in year 20 before I moved to higher education. It's constantly underestimating kids than what they're capable of.

Olivia: Okay. 

Chris: It's constantly underestimating what kids are, are noticing and what they're feeling and thinking, oh, I should avoid that, or we should, whatever. It's like, no, they're thinking about those things. And even small things, like I remember when I moved to second grade and I, I just loved doing literature discussions with older kids. I thought they can't do that in second grade. And then it occured to me. No, they can, they just need a different type of scaffolding to get there and it's gonna look a little bit different anyway, but it's okay because we don't tell kids they can't start talking until they get all the words. 

Olivia: Right. 

Chris: Right?

Olivia: Right. 

Chris: We give them that space to grow. I think that's a, that's a mistake I've made over and over and over, but I always love those moments where I realized that I made it again because it means I was also watching for it and I was also think self-critical. 

Olivia: What would you change with literacy instruction if you could tomorrow? 

Chris: Um, everything right now, [00:26:00] but I, I would say that like the biggest things is like engagement with quality text engagement as a whole class, engagement with small groups, but engagement independently. Kids are given little to absolutely no time to sit with a book that they feel passionate about. That they wanna learn from, that they want to feel from and to have that experience. Um, I was thinking like, our youngest son was not much of a reader for a long time, but then he had this wonderful teacher, Tim O'Keefe in second grade and they wrote this really powerful book together.

I remember once fixing dinner in the kitchen and looking at him in the living room and he's reading the last chapter of Stone Fox and tears were just streaming down his face and I thought, he's a reader. Like in this moment he's a reader. I worry that kids don't have those experiences anymore.

Olivia: Yeah. I'm worried about the same. What is the best piece of advice you would give a teacher that wants to start this work tomorrow? 

Chris: To start this work? Um, be comfortable with the idea, and it's not failure, but we call it failure. Be comfortable with the idea that you're making mistakes. My very [00:27:00] first administrators, one of his mantras for us was make new mistakes and that you're not repeating the same one, but that you're always pushing yourself to do something new so that you are always making mistakes.

Because making mistakes is a really, really, really important part of learning. It's certainly an important part of growth as a teacher. Um, I think the other piece of advice for this is, is to build a community. And this is a harder topic to build a community with. I'll be honest with you. Because there aren't a lot of people who have the vision that this is what we should be doing in schools. There aren't people, enough people who are brave enough to this work in schools. But it's hard when you don't have anyone to go to when things are feeling like a little bit of a struggle. Who can relate, who can empathize with you? So I think building community is so important. I think I've never had it for the longest time.

I didn't have it within my school. I could find it in other places. Certainly professional organizations were a great outlet for that. Like you've mentioned, go to sessions who, where they're talking about the things that are important to you and connect to those people 

Olivia: You meet with - and that's exactly what happened even in your session. I remember the end, a teacher spoke out and said, we as adults have to help our kids. We have [00:28:00] to be brave. And that's the hardest thing I think for teachers right now. If you don't have a shored up community in your school, it's finding others that are doing this work. I'd like to end with the idea of the power of a mentor text, because I think another aspect of your book that is phenomenal is that you offer beautiful text sets that can empower and that teachers can use to harness activism in a way. So how can we use a mentor text to shift and put movement into action? 

Chris: I think an important part of selecting texts for our classroom is to pick text - we can always, I can find almost any text and teach the standard that you want me to teach like that. That's just there and people need to recognize that. The first thing we need to do is at, at certain points within our teaching, say, let me bring in a text that allows me to teach these standards. But it also allows the kids to start thinking about understanding that some people experience the world differently than they do.

And to think about what that means to them and their own [00:29:00] experiences. And then think about what does this mean to me as a person? Is there a way I should live my life differently? Maybe I speak differently, maybe I view people differently. Maybe I take action in some other way. Bringing those texts in. I will say one big mistake that oftentimes people might make when they bring these text in, and I know because I made the same mistake myself.

We have to be careful to never reduce an entire group of people down to only the struggles that they face. And you say, oh, but I really want them to see these stories of struggle 'cause I want them to empathize and I want them to care. We're doing harm to communities of people when we reduce them to only the struggles they face. So in the book we talk about building, um, critical text sets that if you want to talk about racial discrimination, let's start with three or four books that are just celebrating people for who they are and their everyday life that they live. And then at the end, let's bring in a texture too, that show, but not everyone is celebrating it in the way that we are.

And let's think about what that means to us. By bringing these books in and, and teaching the things that we're already teaching, but also making space to have these other conversations and then thinking mindfully about how we're doing that so that we're not doing any harm [00:30:00] beyond that, I feel like my experience is just as long as we're making more space for kids to talk and less time for them just to listen, they're gonna ask questions, they're gonna make connections, they're gonna guide us in the ways that we want them to guide us. Once they learn that our classroom truly is a, as a space for them to speak, and honestly, they're not used to that, so sometimes it takes 'em a while to grow into it. 

Olivia: Yeah. 

Chris: But some room to talk. 

Olivia: It's a perfect spot to stop part one and to go into part two um, listeners, what I'm excited to think through with you, Chris, is, you know, there are challenges to this work. It is not easy work. Um, and so you're going to offer some ideas of how we can troubleshoot, how we can find our communities. And I even have some skeptic questions or responses that I'm going to ask you, like what do you say when you hear this from a teacher or a student or a caregiver? So stay tuned, listeners. Thanks Chris.[00:31:00] That's a wrap on part one and I hope you are already thinking about your kids differently. Chris has given us a framework, three forms of empathy, the courage it takes to act, and the proof that second graders can stand before city council and change a street name. Stay with us. Part two is where we get into the hard stuff, the skeptics, the scripted curricula, the nervous caregivers, and how to find your way through all of it, Chris has answers and you are not going to want to miss them. See you on Friday.