Season 2, Episode 6: Advancing Education

Listen in to hear a high school math teacher, Hannaneh Mirmozaffari talk with host Cindy McMillan, CD(DONA), CBPC, CBE, DBD, NCPS, discuss education and how it can impact multiple areas of life. 

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Transcript

Intro [00:02]: Hi everyone, and welcome or welcome back to just us before birth and beyond. We're so glad to have you here with us today. My name is Katlyn , and I am a nurse in Western North Carolina. I've been working as a nurse here for 10 years now, and I'm one of the hosts of this podcast here today to introduce our episode for the day. So, our host, Cindy McMillan, will be interviewing Hannah, who is a current high school math teacher, and former doula, and they're going to be talking about equity in education access. You all, this is such a good episode and such an important discussion around education, which we know is a social determinant of health and one that is not often talked about. It definitely hit a lot, especially in this area on transportation and housing, but education is another pillar of those social determinants of health, and this conversation truly is passionate and energetic and it is so helpful to get these perspectives from someone who is actually in the public school system. We hope you enjoy this episode, and without further ado, let's get into it.

Cindy McMillan [01:18]: Hello, welcome to just us and my name is Cindy McMillan. I'm your host. I am a birth worker, actually a certified birth doula, and I do a lot of birth work and equity in Buncombe County. So, today I wanted to introduce a really good friend of mine, Hannah.

Hannah [01:43]: Hello. Hi, I'm Hannah. I'm so honored to be on this podcast and to be asked to join. I know Cindy through sis King Fortas. I'm currently the secretary of the executive team. This is caring for Sister and it's my honor to be a part of that. The way I got here into this podcast, specifically talking about education inequity, is that I'm an current educator. I'm a high school math teacher in Asheville, North Carolina. I went to Chapel Hill and graduated with a degree in medical anthropology with minors in chemistry and creative writing. But really my focus through all of my college career was health disparities and inequities that all determine these health disparities too, and education has always been something that's been really important to me. I see how I've benefited from a solid education and also from my C, I've seen all the like hurdles that I've had to overcome and also others that other people have not overcome. And so I think education has always been one of the determinants of health that I thought the most about and I'm excited to be here. Have a conversation.

Cindy McMillan [02:47]: Thank you. Thank you.

Hannah [02:49]: And as a disclaimer, I'm not an expert, nor am I representing anyone or my school that I currently work at, but I love talking about this and I think as teachers we often talk about it as well, and so I'm happy to bring our experiences.

Cindy McMillan [03:02]: That's great, and that's why I do this because I want it to be the real deal from community or individuals that sometimes individual is a expert in their own right. Because we are actually the ones out there, you know, we are actually the ones saying it. So, I think when we talking about birth or education equity, because I revert all this back to birth because when I talk about these things, we're born, we're moved forward and boom, we're in the education system. I just want, I'm curious, what does equity in education for, you mean when you think of equity in education, how do you look at, how do you view it?

Hannah [03:42]: Yeah, and also, I forgot to say, but I was a doula for three years and that's really how we connected. So, the birthing world and young and education and health is really important to me too. But I think for me, educational equity is all about opportunity. So, of course like it's important that you have a solid home life you have and you're able to afford a computer or school lunch or you're able to have access to lunch at school and things like that. But for me, equity is opportunity, and so opportunity comes about through a lot of different avenues. Like you can have an opportunity because one person, one individual told you, Hey, this is something that you should check out. This is something I think you'd be interested in. Or it could also be you have this opportunity because you had a scholarship somewhere. So, I think for me, equity is opportunity. It's opportunity to know things and to ask more questions, to have more social support, have more ability to advocate for yourself and others. And I think education is all a part of that.

Cindy McMillan [04:45]: That's a good point. And I'm curious because you can't, the audience can't see us. There's a big age difference between you and I. Not to say nothing about it, but how education, I'm curious from my standpoint, being in my forties and how old are you? And I hope you don't mind me asking. How old are you?

Hannah [05:10]: How do, oh, I'm 23.

Cindy McMillan [05:12]: So, there's a gap. How is education? How has it been for you as far as in your perspective, as far as equity is concerned?

Hannah [05:22]: Yeah. I think I come from a pretty, I think like my perspective currently is unique since I'm only recently out of college. I'm a high school math teacher, but I still remember a lot of what it was like growing up for me. So, give some background. I grew up low income free lunch at school, public schools all of my life. I was really grateful to go to good public schools at different points in my life, and I think that was really the difference for me is that I went to public schools that had more opportunity. But my parents, I'm a child of immigrant, a person of color, they immigrated here from Iran and they have always worked unskilled labor positions like all of their lives. They're still working unskilled labor positions currently, and so their understanding of all the opportunities that exist in education wasn't really there.

But the one thing was I did have a mother who advocated for me and that advocacy put me in situations where I saw other people like, oh, you took this class. I didn't know that was even possible. Oh, you did this thing. I didn't even know that was even possible. That allowed me to like piggyback off of people that had more connections and more networking and more like understanding of what it means to get into college. I was like, you have to study for the SAT didn't know that. Like you should have someone read over your application. Didn't know that. Like there were all these things that I was really lucky enough to, at a pretty like young age. I think a lot about I think a lot about this like librarian that like gave me a book on my fourth birthday and read it with me and how that for me was this access that this opening into the world of reading.

And then that allowed me to have all these other opportunities. But I went to a high school and this is like, I went to a good magnet high school, but it was almost half entirely minority Non-Asian minorities and then almost half like a mixture of white, Asian, south Asian and then like a sprinkling a black or Hispanic.

Cindy McMillan [07:31]: Oh wow.

Hannah [07:31]: And it was like a crazy thing about now like how I would walk down a hallway and one classroom was almost entirely full of like black or Hispanic neighborhood kids and then the other classroom was full of all these really wealthy students from all over Wake County that went there, and so I noticed that a lot, and it's something that is always, I think about it now and it's, I wish I had done more to feel more connected to the other side of the school other than like playing high school basketball. But, but yeah, I don't know if that was getting at your question at all.

Cindy McMillan [08:04]: I mean it actually is because when I look at how education, and I have kids that are in school at the moment, and I think about the equity piece and you're right about that advocacy piece, but what about those individual, those children or those kids that do not have the parents, you know, are bogged down with work and that support system is not really prevalent, and sometimes that's community usually rely on other community members that's gone through this process or that process isn't really clear, especially if your child is a first year college pursuing.

Hannah [08:42]: First generation. Yeah.

Cindy McMillan [08:43]: Yeah. So, I think when I think about this and from your perspective, because I really appreciate that, do you think that educators play a part in the inequities in any way? And I know that's probably not a fair question to you, but as you grew up and you're watching this, do you think that any changes or any suggestions on how systems, especially education, which is key, can help our children thrive? Or the kids that's going to these schools thrive? What things do you see since you're just free fresh out.

Hannah [09:23]: I'm fresh out the room. No, I think educators are a huge role and let's just like quickly talk about like why is education like a social determinant of health? Like it gives you access not only to like higher income levels, but to the social and professional support that is so important to having access to opportunity and the place of an educator. Of course. So, there's both like the individual level and the systemic level that we want where we want more equity, right? On an individual level, there's always going to be one teacher in a super poorly funded school who then makes a huge difference on one student's life, and that could cause an a bunch of different sequence or a bunch of different steps that then change the trajectory of this child's life. An individual can make a huge difference on a child's life then can help with in the end like decreasing the disparities that exist in education, but on a systemic level.

Hannah [10:16]: So, a lot of studies have shown that about like 40% of the cause of these gaps in opportunity. Or you can also say achievement is due to teacher effectiveness and who, and the track that you're put on, which means, well who, and yeah, so it has to do with teacher effectiveness. So, there I remember there were a couple studies that said that even measuring for socioeconomic status for home life, for things like that, and also not even, and this is where it's like, it's not about race. Like it's not about, of course race comes to into play because of the fact of bias depending on where a student is put in which track or into which class, like race comes into play because white people feel like they have more political clout, they're able to advocate more for their students and listen to more.

So, in that way students can, a person with a, depending on, in that way race can come into play for which teacher they're placed with. But on a more systemic level, teacher effectiveness is going to be incredibly different in different districts in different schools. So, if we're thinking about the public school system, public schools are funded based off of property taxes mostly, and of course if we have community wealth disparities, then we're also going to have disparities within our school. I think one statistic that really was shocking to me, so like in other countries, other developed countries it's all equally funded. All the public schools are mostly equally funded, right? Whereas in the United States, the wealthiest 10% of US school districts spends nearly 10 times more than the poorest 10%. So, there is this huge disparity of public in public funding for schools.

And the way that ends up shaking out is not only that you have like worse access to technology or you have a gymnasium that's not working or you don't have heating at your school or cooling or whatever. It's not only just the infrastructure part, but it's like who are you drawing as a teacher, right? So, if you're not able to compensate your teachers fairly or at higher wages, like in some rural county, North Carolina, like Wake County that has more public funding and it has more compensates teachers more than say like Cherokee County or something like that, then of course you're going to have teachers that are going to choose to go live there and teach at schools there. And so you see what I'm saying? Yeah. And also like of course there's teacher shortages, right? And so that, that's where these vacancies come about that cause us to decrease the qualifications that we have for our teachers.

And it doesn't mean that like a teacher that doesn't have any qualifications or certifications or whatever is not going to maybe meet students in exactly the way they need. It doesn't mean that, but when we're talking about on a broader level, there are these, if a school is being funded less, they are disproportionately have less qualified teachers, and in studies have shown that teachers are what's most important for seeing, if we're looking at test scores, they show they are the variable that is most determinant of students success in the classroom. Having that effective teacher is going to just have a much greater in outcomes.

Cindy McMillan [13:35]: I'm saying because I think if I'm listening to you, and I'm hearing you correctly, if looking at our school system, I don't know whether they're set up, I'm not that far behind. Like I said, I have kids, but I can see that under a poorly funded school versus a well-funded school, the access to resources and access to better, maybe it said.

Hannah [14:01]: Curriculum is different too. Yeah, you're right.

Cindy McMillan [14:04]: But the curriculum digs a little bit, it sharpens the mind, it challenges the mind, and I noticed that recently with my boys, with me moving, they move into a school district, they left from a school district that now I obviously can see the difference in how they were teaching, and I now see my boys thriving in a school that these teachers actually are showing them and teaching them and engaging them in a whole different manner that now both my boys are AB honor roll students. I only had one that was a AB honor old student. Now, my youngest now he's just like anxious to go to school, and it was a total different vibe from the previous school system, and these school I thought were really, I was looking at one aspect that they were really good for them to have like social skills and it was very highly recommended because of the location. Because it was, they was going to get that cultural experience and they weren't going to be put in a space where they still had to worry about the color of their skin. Because like I said, my 13 year old, his first time being exposed to any form of racism or bias, he came home and told me and I was like, and it happened in school.

Hannah [15:22]: Yeah. Right.

Cindy McMillan [15:23]: So. I'm like whoa, you know, like this, it hits in a different way.

Hannah [15:29]: Such a difference.

Cindy McMillan [15:30]: Yeah. It really hits in a different way but attracting educators to, or even I'm like, which way do you go here? Do you attract educators to want to be in these schools or advocate for these schools to be on equitable funding? We know that's probably not going to be a easy accomplishment either. Like what will affix to having equity in education. I think that's something that really needs to be discussed on.

Hannah [15:58]: Or because it's really one of the most important parts. Like you're, and I like that makes me what you said about your children, like going to this other school and now like having this different environment. Like that's how I felt when I went to the high school that I went to from where I had come from. Like it was just totally different and I felt, and that what you're telling me right now is that they're able to cause them to think differently and that critical thinking, like higher order thinking is so important for post-secondary education. That's the thing is like all of this is so important because it affects the rest of your life, right? Like early childhood education literacy is so important. I think 75% of our adult male prison population or literate, that doesn't feel like, is that correlation or is that causation.

And I'm thinking about what you said, like I remember when I was in college, I was really lucky to go to an awesome public school for me. It wasn't for the rest of the half, the other half of student went at that school. But for me it worked really well. It got me still to where I needed to be. I was able to go to an awesome school that thankfully fully funded my education as a low income individual. Like not merit, they do it off of income and being in these like 400 person classrooms like with like chemistry and biology 1 0 1. There is such a disparity that exists depending on what high school you came from. So, a student who came from a high school that did not prepare them for higher order thinking or even prepare them well or like basic under understanding of like sciences then goes into that classroom feels incredibly out of place, feels like they don't, aren't smart enough, continues to feel that like that drops out. Then all of a sudden we have less physicians who are people of color. It's like so much harder for us to have researchers who are people of color or any, or in humanities, right? It's like all these different things. Like that's why education is so important from, from when you're like two or three years old, like that early childhood education, like being like pre-K is so important for the way that.

Cindy McMillan [18:08]: When you think about all of it though, we need a diverse, like what you're saying, we need a diverse, culturally appropriate team on any level, and that included in education. That's something that I think we didn't, we touched base on, but we really didn't touch base on because if I go back and I left out a big portion of why my kids are also are thriving is because they came out of an atmosphere that I had them in where the whole school was almost ran by individuals that were not black. It wasn't culturally diverse, it was not.

And the classrooms were not really diverse. When my son can be on hyper vigilant alert that he's going to be targeted because he is pretty much a target because there's not too many that look like him in his class. The school he is in now. The difference is their principal's black. Their educators are a very diverse group of educators. They all have a common goal and the schools teach from an equity lens.

Hannah [19:12]: Representation is so important.

Cindy McMillan [19:14]: It was so important. My kids like they can relate appropriate like culturally they the teacher, they love it, and I was just like.

Hannah [19:23]: You know, so it's like not only that they had access to better teachers, but they had access to having hope for better opportunities. They can see themselves represented in or they can even see like their classmates who are doing all these awesome things like, oh I can do that too. Instead of seeing like, these kids were very different from them who were already targeting them doing something that's not for me.

Cindy McMillan [19:46]: It was such a change for my nine years old. Like, I always do this thing, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I've been doing this with them since they was younger and my nine year old, he, at first like years, he was like, oh, I think I'm going to be a police officer, or I think I'm going to do this year. I asked him the same question, he said, mama want to be a teacher. Oh. And I'm like, huh, where'd this come from? All of a sudden you want to be, but he loves this school. Oh, I just, he has to leave it in a couple years to ago middle school. I see the difference.

Hannah [20:17]: Yeah.

Cindy McMillan [20:18]: And so to comment on that is like, how can we build like the network we do when we're talking about health equity? Do we need some diverse, we need some, is that funding? Do we need to build up more diversity? Do we need to have more presence of the parents? Which is really hard when you say more presence of the parents because we're parents are forced to work. I work a lot. Where does this lie when we're talking about our children?

Hannah [20:48]: Yeah. I mean I think everything you said is right though. It has to come from more than just like your classroom, right? It is Okay. You want more funding because you want to draw in more effective teachers who are, who have really good understanding of the content and also good understanding of learning strategies and how to meet students where they're at. So, it's not only just am I really good at math, but also like, how can I teach math in a way so that students with learning differences can understand, and so yeah, I think that progress is going to require this like attention towards all of the inequities that exist. Which is difficult bringing more the people, the student to teacher ratio. Can we standardize that so that public schools are maybe more equally funded? That would be nice. Like I think that would maybe address the disparity. Can we make it so that, what was I going to say?

Hannah [21:51]: Oh yeah, how can we like raise our standards like that? Say, okay, we want the school to represent the population that we live in. So, if that means that we're going to find other ways to draw in people to the profession of teaching that then maybe that's what we need to do. So, I think there's not really one solution because the solution only comes about if we value education, and currently the issue is that the people who have access to quality education, and this is just my opinion, but I think that the people who have access to quality education are the ones who have the most political clout, and so they're not seeing the effects so much in their children or in their neighbors, and so it's not as important. But if we can as a whole value it and then make that what we invest in because our children are our future is that is that's what we always say. But it's true, and investing in that has to come about from assisted level because only so much. You can't just keep, that's the thing. It's like adding like special programs, like saying, okay, we'll let these kids do this thing on the weekend and like maybe they'll get better, become better students maybe then they'll see like, that's awesome. That's great at an individual level, but it's not addressing the systemic inequalities that exist.

Cindy McMillan [23:18]: Yeah. I mean if you look at it, it's not addressing it, but I think there's like, you, there's so many levels to this, and when we are looking at the levels of it as deep, it's starting in early childhood, it's starting with families, it's starting with resources, starting with access, looking at funding, even I feel like sometimes that they put so much emphasis on the test scores that we didn't even have that type of pressure back in the day, but we took tests but now it's all about meeting a quota and checking off a box instead of actually taking your time and figuring out the students that you're teaching, and like you said, learning styles a big, everybody learning different. So, how you going to group a whole group of kids and expect everybody to function on the same level, every other kid as far as attention span levels of understanding how you may need to reframe something for one and go a different route with another, and I have that I see at my 13 year old, he needs to be challenged. He's so good. And because he's in a classroom, he's in all honored classes. But he had, he, he's actually sometimes teaching the kids with the teacher and I'm like, he's not your teacher. Help him with some more work.

Hannah [24:35]: Yeah. I think your, yeah. But yeah, so your student, your child like needs that challenge. They need to be placed in a different classroom or they need something added to it, and then there's other kids who like didn't maybe like transfer to that school you're at right now and maybe they didn't have a mom who was super serious about education and valued it's important and they came into that classroom without the background knowledge that your son had. Because research shows that we learn by anchoring like new material onto old material. So, if someone is teaching something new to you, but you don't have that old material for you to anchor that new material onto, then that is so overwhelming and you become lost. And so it's, it's not only like how it's like, it's how we teach, right? It's like how do we make sure that the way that we teach is something that can reach all students instead of just like the students who are at the top four students who are at the bottom. Because you don't want to also just go ahead.

Cindy McMillan [25:32]: No, I know I'm hearing you. But I feel like on our defense, because we can hit the system hard. Yeah. But are they preparing these educators for that?

Hannah [25:43]: Wait, say it again? What are you saying?

Cindy McMillan [25:45]: Educators for that? Are they preparing these teachers for these different levels?

Hannah [25:49]: No, they're mostly not. That's the thing that, and I like no hate, so we have teacher vacancies, we don't have enough teachers. So, it's either what you hire a teacher to be their full term or you hire long-term subs for six months and which is better. Like, someone made a decision, to lower standards, and to bring in teachers who might not be as qualified, but you could, like, there's definitely what you can take tests and, and that could be enough to get in for provisional license as a teacher, and then eventually then you need to get your license and to be more certified or whatever it is to meet the standard of the state. But because of our teacher vacancies and our teacher shortages, we can't, or like the system or like our public school system isn't able to with how much they want to pay teachers or with whatever else that they feel like they need. They can they can't afford to draw in teachers who are qualified and so then they have to lower their standards.

Cindy McMillan [26:54]: That's crazy. That's such a barrier on our education system and it's such a, an injustice for our kids.

Hannah [27:03]: Because say what if you had one bad teacher in one year? Like I do remember in middle school I had a long-term sub entirety of my sixth grade or something like that. I never learned grammar. I don't know how I wrote my honor thesis in writing. I kind of came from reading, but it's like, okay, I had one year of no basically English teaching very little, right? But I was able to do other things and make up for it. But say you had three years of that, you had three years of ineffective teachers or you had subs, you had unqualified people who left the next year, right? And then how does that affect the fourth year, you're in such a different place compared to other your peers because of the education that you had, and that's just so unfortunate, but the unfortunate thing about that is that it ends up changing the trajectory of your life unless you were somehow able to make up for the loss that you had in the education that you were given when you were a teenager or in elementary school, middle school.

Cindy McMillan [27:59]: Wow. I appreciate your viewpoint on this and I appreciate you sharing your thoughts. And actually, you gave me some stuff to think about too, because we hear a lot about the inequities and education and as a parent, I live it, I watch it, you know what I'm saying? But I think it's something for to hear it put this way, especially from someone who is now in the education space and you just leaving out of, so for me, you're fresh out, like I said earlier.

Hannah [28:35]: I'm fresh.

Cindy McMillan [28:36]: Fresh out, it's good to hear your perspective and I appreciate you joining us, and if you can give me any final thoughts about any part of this inequity that you think could possibly be a suggestion for those listening, how they can possibly advocate what, even those with the ability to, or the non limited ability. How can we a advocate or support in achieving health education equity?

Hannah [29:12]: I think something I'm just thinking about. Cause it's hard. There's people who are lobbying for increase in pay, there's unions, there's whatever it is that could help with education equity. But something small I think we can all do on the individual level is, and I'm not a parent right now, but if you're a parent and you're able to advocate for your child, look out and see if you can advocate for others who don't have parents who can, I think that that is the community aspect that's so important in supporting each other, and so for me, that would be like my one thought is that, and then when I'm a parent, I hope to be able to do the same. I hope they don't have to. I hope that things are different. But if I know that all, I'll fight to the ends for my child and my mom did the same for me.

And it's like, can we do a little for something else, someone else too. Can we see if we can put one more kid into this, into bringing them up? And that's where one person can make a big difference for one person's life which is important as a doula, that's what we do. You are really able to affect someone on an individual level and cause their life to be different possibly and in what or their like birthing experience or whatever else that it is. But you still want, we still want e equity on a system level, and so I think that the doula in doing this work as a teacher is really important on the individual, but it's also like if we can advocate for each other, it's also advocate for everybody.

Cindy McMillan [30:39]: Appreciate that.

Hannah [30:41]: Thanks For having me on, Cindy. I really appreciate talking to you and hearing your perspective.

Cindy McMillan [30:47]: Thank you, and I appreciate you again joining us today, and thank you everyone for listening, and I see you next time.

Hannah [30:58]: See you next time.

Outro [31:02]: I told you another fantastic episode. Cindy, Hannah, thanks again for having this fantastic conversation. If you are liking what you're hearing, do take a trip to our show notes down below and hit that link to fill out our listener survey. We'd love your feedback. Let us know what we're doing well, things we could improve on, and there's even a section where you can suggest topics for future episodes. We'd love to know what y'all are interested in hearing from us. Give us five stars, share the podcast, subscribe to our channel. Thank you so much for listening, and until next time.