Inquiry Oasis Season 2: Renae Mayes

Join Dean Berry and Dr. Renae Mayes as they explore Dr. Mayes's work as a researcher and counselor. This episode of Inquiry Oasis explores themes of Black joy, community, and educational spaces through a compelling conversation between Dean Robert Berry and Dr. Renae Mayes, a professor and school counselor educator at the University of Arizona's College of Education. Dr. Mayes discusses her research focused on Black youth and families, emphasizing a strengths-based approach that celebrates the richness and resilience of Black identity.

Key topics include the concept of Black joy as a source of peace, community, and freedom to fully embrace one's humanity, as well as the notion of "home place," inspired by bell hooks, as a protected space where joy and resistance coexist. The discussion extends to how educators can create environments that foster these spaces, allowing students to feel safe, valued, and able to thrive.

This thought-provoking episode underscores the importance of intentionality in education, highlighting the transformative impact of embracing joy, diversity, and inclusivity in schools and communities.

For more information on Dr. Renae Mayes's research, click here. To read bell hooks's work Homeplace (A Site of Resistance), click here.

Transcript

Jeffrey Anthony:

Welcome to the Inquiry Oasis, the University of Arizona College of Education's podcast here in the heart of the Sonoran Desert. We bring you conversations with our esteemed faculty members and staff, whose research impacts lives from southern Arizona to the far reaches of the globe. We explore the transformative power of education in this border town, where diverse cultures and ideas converge, weaving a tapestry of innovation with compassion and a sense of wonder.

So, join us as we journey through the sands of curiosity, unearthing insights that enrich and inspire. Sit back and relax as we invite you to dive into the inquiry oasis. 

Dean Berry:

Welcome to this session of the Inquiry Oasis. I'm Robert Berry. I'm the Dean of the College of Education and I have the pleasure of talking with Dr. Renae Mayes. Dr. Mayes is a professor in our educational psychology department. She is a school counselor educator and today we're going to be talking about black joy, black resistance, home place, and freedom training. You know, this is the work that Dr. Mayes has engaged in envisioning what does Black joy look like in spaces, particularly in schools and community and, and as a school counselor and how that plays forward.

And so, I'm excited to have this conversation with Dr. Mayes and engaging around the space of home place, Black joy and the intersection thereof. Dr. Mayes, welcome to the Inquiry Oasis. It's good to be here. So, I just want to kind of jump right into it if that's okay with you. 

Dr. Renae Mayes:

Let's do it. All right. 

Dean Berry:

So, let's just start off with something like, you know, think about three words that, uh, represents you and your passion for the work that you do.

Dr. Renae Mayes:

Joy, strength, power.

Dean Berry:

Joy, strength, and power. You know, as I was reading your work, I developed some words for myself as well. 

Dr. Renae Mayes:

Oh, what words did you have? 

Dean Berry:

And so, well, actually, and these words come from your work, right? So, I had joy, resistance, home place, and freedom dreaming. 

Dr. Renae Mayes:

Yeah, those are all good. 

Dean Berry:

And so, with that being said, talk a little bit about who you are and your work here at the College of Education before we jump right into your research.

Dr. Renae Mayes:

Yeah, so I have been at the U of A since 2020, the fall, and right in the middle of the panini. So that transition, I still feel like I'm transitioning, but that's, that's quite all right. So, I've been working here and bringing with me just research that's focused on black youth and black families coming from a strengths-based lens, coming from a joy lens, because racism is awful, but being black is amazing, and we don't have enough conversations about that, right?

It's an asset. It's a privilege to be black. Racism isn't. Again, so in my work, I am looking at how are black children doing in spite of how are they finding ways to experience joy to experience the wonderfulness of their identities to, to grow and to learn to heal and to be well because there's  a million other things that tell us that black children aren't okay. And there are opportunities, I think, for black children, black family, black youth, the black community to grow.

But it's not all bad, right? Like, my story or our story, black folk story, it isn't one that’s of pain It is one that is of joy, of celebration, of knowing how to pivot and move and be creative in spaces that didn't even think about you. Like we make nothing out of, we make something out of nothing all the time and I want us to highlight that in my work, but then also think about how school counselors, how educators, how administrators can, can cultivate that right and protect that, right? Like, I don't think that we have enough intentional conversations in training about the wonderfulness that is black. In addition to how can I as an educator, as someone who's in schools, how can I protect that?

There are so many ways that we say, oh, we should love all children. Well, here's specifically, how we can do that for black children in particular.

Dean Berry:

So, you mentioned the word joy and I know in your reading, in your readings I've read of your work, you used the term black joy. Can you just define that for us?

Dr. Mayes:

Yeah. It's so funny. I did a, I'll say a workshop, well not a workshop, but I had a conversation with black families in Tucson on Wednesday about this, and we just had an open conversation of what it meant for them and how they experienced like the top words that they had, and they said peace. Right? Yeah. Peace. The, the, the freedom to be me, meaning, right, like I'm not having to worry about racism or oppression.

I just get to experience the full humanity of myself. And I love that. How many times or how many spaces do we feel like we can just breathe, right? And with that, right, like in a very, so if we want to get really nerdy. Those are spaces we have a resting heart rate that means that we have the ability and capacity to learn because our sympathetic nervous system isn't, you know, going off the charts trying to figure out, are we fighting?

Are we fighting? Are we freezing? Are we doing this or that? No, I can just be. And be in the totality of me, be in the totality of my history and my ancestors. So, it's, it's that peace to be. And then I also think specifically that peace to be, it's defining the expansiveness of blackness. There's not just one way to be black.

It is, we are a part of a collective, not only in the now, but the, the histories that we have. Black joy isn't something that we just created today. We're grafted into a history of it. Even in the enslavement of Africans, there were hush harbors, right? Where enslaved people would walk out into the fields in the middle of the night and scream into pots and pans and dance and joy. All of that. But we don't talk about that in school, right? Like, we don't know our histories outside of pain and oppression. But when we think about what is Black joy, it's connection to that. It's knowing that some of these things that we're experiencing, one, Racism and oppression, they're actually not about us.

So we can just let that roll off and embrace the wonderfulness that is our history, our culture. As we're also talking about black joy, it's not something that I go in the corner and experience by myself. It is about relationships. It is about community, right? So, we are among us, celebrating us. 

Dean Berry:

I appreciate that, you know, the idea of Black joy.

Dr. Renae Mayes:

I'm geeking out. 

Dean Berry:

No, no, you're doing just fine because I, you know, you're making me think about this, that Black joy is about community. Black joy is about relationships. 

Dr. Renae Mayes:

Right. 

Dean Berry:

And I know in your work you talk about this, this, concept with this notion of home, home place. 

Dr. Renae Mayes:

Yep. 

Dean Berry:

And so can you talk a little bit more about how that community and relationships are connected to home place and how does that envision itself in counseling education or in education broadly?

Dr. Renae Mayes:

Sure. So home place is a term that bell hooks, the redoubtable, um, developed and she was initially talking about it as that space that exists for black women when they gather in the kitchen. And the freedom that they experience when they gather in the kitchen, it's a joyful resistance, right? Of, I know that there's racism and sexism, misogyny, all that stuff out there.

But in here, I get to be with my sisters. I get to be with my family and laugh and have joy. And talk about hard things and know that they are there to help me, that they are holding space for me to heal and grow while also just experiencing happiness, right? Peacefulness. So as we talk about black joy, for me, those things go hand in hand.

We cannot have black joy unless we have home place, right? Unless we have those protected spaces that allow us. To be right so I can go out, you know, probably into a classroom in this building and decide I'm going to have black joy here and I can do my best to have that. But there are conditions right in which allow me to rest which allow me to take part fully to embrace fully my humanity that it's not just like me deciding it is us making that space. And that's that space is home place.

So as I think about education, we're talking, we often talk about it's so important for you to have relationships with your students. It's so important for you to love all Children. Well, what does that mean? It's more than having a picture of crayons on the wall that say diversity is great. It is great. But what do you do to make that classroom, to make that counseling area, something so special that people can let down their guard and have the freedom to just be. So that's home place, right? That then allows us to not only engage in black joy or brown joy, right? Or black disabled joy, right?

There's disabled joy. I believe in that, but it also allows us to engage in the joy of learning. How do we learn if I can't feel like I can be myself? It's really special. 

Dean Berry:

So, you, you reminded me of my, you know, I'll bring in my own work into this conversation. 

Dr. Renae Mayes:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Dean Berry:

Because, you know, some of my work I do focus on this, this space of, I'm a math educator. And so, we want the math classroom to be so safe that students are willing to participate. Right. And what does being participatory in the classroom place look like? And so I'm making this connection to is this home place or not, you know? Is it, is it, is it the willingness to be vulnerable that I'm willing to share my mathematical solution pathways?

Dr. Renae Mayes:

Right. 

Dean Berry:

In ways that where I may have the right answer, I may not have the right, right answer, but I'm, I feel safe enough that I can share that and fully be a part of, and not experience any negative feedback in a way that even if I'm sharing a wrong solution pathway, I'm still revealing my thinking and there's learning that's happening in this space and we're in community with one another.

So thank you for that. You're making me reflect on my own work in these ways. 

Dr. Renae Mayes:

Well, and knowing that as you're engaging in those things to make mistakes, to learn, to grow, to try. Like those are strengths. Those are assets of your identity that those aren't failures, right? So if I miss a problem, it's not because I'm black or I'm a woman or because I have a disability.

No, like it's because I'm learning and to learn means that I'm going to engage in something and get a little frustrated because I'm learning. And I'm working that way into growing and becoming better. And that isn't something that is disconnected from who I am. It is a part of who I am. I'm a part of a history of people who were learning and figuring it out on their own or within community with other people like that.

I, I just, again, like, I think sometimes as we think about the math classroom or I think about STEM, it's like, oh no, we don't have to think about diversity. We don't have to think about identity that, no, we absolutely do. If we didn't need to, then why is there a STEM problem with the pipeline? And there aren't a lot of black and brown people because we're not thinking about it.

We're not creating spaces in which, uh, people of color, especially black and brown people, especially women, especially people with disabilities feel like it's safe for them to learn. They feel like it's not, it's not a place for me to be. 

Dean Berry:

Yeah, so I was just at a summit last week, and one of the things, a STEM summit as a matter of fact, and one of the things I ask my colleagues, okay, you desire diversity in this space. Show me your receipts. What work have you done? 

Dr. Renae Mayes:

Right, what that mean? 

Dean Berry:

So what work have you done? I mean, you know, and so your work is making me think, okay, you know, have you done the work? To prepare for the diversity that you desire, and if you haven't, you're not going to get the outcome that you desire, or do you really want that outcome because you haven't done the work, right?

Dr. Renae Mayes:

This isn't a wish dragon, right? Like you just don't wish it and it happens. No, you actually have to commit

Dean Berry:

Right? 

Dr. Renae Mayes:

And then what wherever you're at, you resource what's important. So if that's important to you, that's important to your school or in higher ed, if that's important to your university. There's money, there's resources that come behind that saying we value this.

Dean Berry:

Right. So I'm gonna throw a couple more words at you, if that is okay, all right? So I, you've mentioned these words, but I'm gonna say love, protect, dismantle, and build. 

Dr. Renae Mayes:

Yes. 

Dean Berry:

Can you talk about those words for me? 

Dr. Renae Mayes:

Yes. So you're pulling that from work that I did with Janice Byrd at Penn State, and we're talking about a framework to engage in anti-racist practice. Particularly for school counseling, and It was, for me, like that, that piece in particular was about developing a model, a way that someone might enter into it.

I think that there's a desire for something to be prescriptive. Like if I do this, this, and this, I've done it. And for us, it's like, actually, it's messier than that. Because if we're talking, if we get back to Black Joy, if we get back to Homeplace, the key thing that is a part of that is relationships. So in our model, our framework, those are the words that we're like, this is about relationships and understanding systems.

So how can I engage in work that loves you? Well, love is not like, hey, I love you. It's an action word. So what am I doing to specifically create the space that you not only hear me say it, but you feel it by my actions, by what you see me doing. And then the protect part is how am I protecting you? from the flaws of the system.

So I know as an educator, as someone in K through 12 schools, while, while we may be trying our best, there are systems at work and policies at work that still harm our students. I cannot change those overnight. But I can work to protect students while I'm working to change those things. Because changing systems and policies take time.

But I can work on trying to make sure it doesn't harm you while I'm changing it. And that while I'm changing it is that dismantle piece. So, right, we have access to, right, schools collect so much data, so much data. What do we do with it?

Dean Berry:

Right, right. 

Dr. Renae Mayes:

How do we use it? How are we looking at it to understand, well, this policy or this system isn't working and here's the data that tells us that because, again, I don't believe that students by, students by any measure.

But definitely black and brown students don't wake up and say, I'm going to go to school and be a nuisance. I'm going to go to school and not do well. No, they don't. What we're seeing are symptoms of a system that is harming them. So how do I engage in the system to protect them and to change that data?

We don't have a discipline problem. We have a culture problem with a school. Not with black and brown children, not with students with disabilities. No, they're not the problem. Our structures are because they were created not for students who look like them. If we think about all of education, right? So originally education was a colonial endeavor.

It was for white men who didn't have disabilities. And yet we're still in that same structure in 2024, doing many of the same things, despite legislation saying, Hey, do this more, do this less. Like, they're putting band aids on a system that wasn't meant to be serving the students it is serving. So we have to, again, engage in ways that we protect students from that, our vulnerable students, but also how are we working to change that?

We can't reform our way out of that. How are we going to make a new? And as we're doing all of that, it's again about relationships. So often school is a thing that's done to students, right? It's done to black children. It's done to, you know, Latinas, it's done to students with disabilities.

It's never done with them. So how do we co create the school, the environment that we want with our students and families? That's what that whole piece is about of like relationships. It's not only about hey, I want you to be here I'm gonna be really cool with you and be your best friend. No, let's create the place that we want, meaning that we're engaging in freedom dreaming.

So here's what is, but freedom dreaming is saying what could be. And then how can we work towards that? How can we move towards that vision where this school is inclusive? You get everything that you need out of this environment. You get to participate in things and learn about things that you never even thought of. And you get embraced fully as a human. 

Dean Berry:

Wow. Can you talk about, you know, your work as it's connected to communities, you know, and you've touched on it a little bit, but you know, I, I, I'm going to ask you to freedom dream a little bit, right? And so when I say, when I, what I'm asking is, so help me in my imagination in terms of how, how, what would this look like if I'm a I'm a black boy, I'm walking into a classroom, walking into a school, and I can be the person, the human that I want to be in the ways I want to engage.

How would that look? 

Dr. Renae Mayes:

So I think about that as you not only are walking into a school that has representation, and I mean that in terms of who's there. And not just in terms of students, but also in terms of staff. So often, right, we can think about schools and demographically it tends to be white women.

So how do schools look if they actually look representative of the students that they serve? But also, how is that a part of the curriculum? If we're in this class, how does it connect to me? How does it connect to my community? If I'm learning about phonics, couldn’t we read anything and learn about phonics?

Does it have to be this particular book that doesn't have anyone who looks like me in it? No, it could be anything, right? Like we can, we can embrace that. I also, I, I think about schools. I'm going to draw some strength from schools prior to desegregation. If you looked at the black school, they were community schools, right?

It wasn't just that you came to school and the teacher maybe high fived your parents and then let you go. No, parents were there. It was a space they felt welcomed. Parents aren't welcome in schools now. Communities aren't welcome in schools now, right? And I understand that the context is a bit different.

There are different kinds of concerns, but what would it mean that we had relationships with the community that we not only saw schooling as something that happened in this one room schoolhouse, but something that's happening in the community, too? There's a wealth of expertise and knowledge that exists in our community.

How do we value that as people who work inside the school? How are we Even pushing out into the community to create those learning spaces, right? We don't always have to learn inside, again, the one room schoolhouse. And I know I'm, that's not what schools look like now, but we don't have to engage in a battle of, you need to learn this way or learn that way.

We can be learning expansively because again, that shows. students that there's so much value in their community, that there's so much value in the creation of knowledge and the sharing of knowledge that happens outside of school. 

Dean Berry:

Yeah. It reminds me of, of, and I'm going to date myself.

Dr. Renae Mayes:

It’s hard not to, right?

Dean Berry:

So, so it reminds me of, you know, when I was doing work with black boys, uh, earlier in my career and, you know, there was, uh, I guess Nintendo games that had these cartages and things of that nature. So I had one in my classroom and so occasionally it wouldn't work and I couldn't figure out how, you know, and they, You know, some of the boys would pick it up, blow it off, and this, that, and the other.

It's like, how do you know to do that? And how do they share? I mean, so this idea of this informal sharing, this idea of collectivism that happens, this idea of, you know, even when the controllers didn't work, how they jimmied the controllers, that creativity. So for me, it made me think about, you know, I have to fix this for them.

Dr. Renae Mayes:

No.

Dean Berry:

Let them be, they'll work it out, they'll fix it for, you know, if it needs to be fixed, they'll fix it. If they figure something out, their creativity come up and, and, and the source of just kind of being connected to one another with, you know, I'm gonna use the term high stakes, but this idea of just. Being, just being and being in community with one another and how they talk with each other 

Dr. Renae Mayes:

Yeah, yeah.

Dean Berry:

With all of the swagger, the slang and the body language that goes with it.

Dr. Renae Mayes:

I love it. I love it. Again, being fully yourself, being a part of that community. I am sure. That in that space, you had lots of different kinds of kids who felt connected, who weren't aspiring to be carbon copies of each other, but were just figuring out who, who they are, but that they knew that they were a part of a community and they could work together to figure stuff out.

Dean Berry:

Absolutely, absolutely.

Dr. Renae Mayes:

And you valued that, right? Like it didn't have to be done a certain way, which that's why I love math. I wanted to be a math teacher, truth be told, because it was like, well, I'm learning another language, but also there's so many different ways to do it right.

Dean Berry:

Right.

Dr. Renae Mayes:

To figure it out,

Dean Berry:

Right.

Dr. Renae Mayes: 

And, and as long as you could show your work, which that was a problem I had, cause I did a lot in my head, but it's like, there, there are ways that we can figure this out together. We do not need to be prescriptive. We are a community. 

Dean Berry:

Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. 

Dr. Renae Mayes:

How do we, how do we do this? 

Dean Berry:

Yeah, and even showing your work, you know, even if doing it in your head, that is okay. One of the things, because access to showing your work, showing your work can be about how you engage in dialogue around it.

Dr. Renae Mayes:

Yup.

Dean Berry:

And sometimes I think we undervalue that in mathematics. 

Dr. Renae Mayes:

Yup.

Dean Berry:

So your work has to always be on paper. It can be in the way I communicate it, in the way that I explain it and talk my way through it. Right. You know, oftentimes I tell students to talk to yourself first, then let's talk to, let's talk to each other.

Because I think sometimes we need some of that rehearsal to talk to ourself that we can then figure out how we're going to talk with one another and that is okay. 

We touched on a lot here, let me back up a little bit. What has been most surprising about your work, when you first engaged in this work and now you've been on this pathway? Anything that's surprising that's come out about the work you've been doing? 

Dr. Renae Mayes:

I don't know that this is maybe necessarily, I don't know that surprise or surprising is the word that I would use for this. I mean one, I would say I didn't know that I was going to end up here, meaning in higher ed. I'm a kid that I thought I made it because I went to undergrad, didn't know that grad school existed.

And then someone told me, hey, you can go to grad school. And I thought that meant I was going to be doing titrations because that's what I understood, um, research to be. So maybe a surprising thing is that there's this kind of work that needs to be done and that I feel a lot of energy when I do this work because the conversations and what we're learning together with people who are participating, specifically Black people. They're excited to talk about joy. They're excited to talk about strengths. They're excited to talk about more than the awfulness, the traumas, the pain, the oppression that they've experienced, because that's the narrative that exists. So there is, I think, one, an excitement in particular to talk about these, these topics, but I also think that there is excitement because they're talking to someone who looks like them.

There aren't enough people of color in higher ed, certainly, generally, but also doing this kind of work, that there can be tension, right, between a researcher and a community because you aren't a part of community. And I don't mean that in the sense of like town and gown. I also just mean you haven't made yourself a community member, why should I trust you? 

So there's I think a different approach that I engage in that I have found that a lot of black and brown scholars engage, which is I'm a community member. I'm trying to figure this out with you. Even if I'm not doing this study, I'm actually here at this place with you because I live here.

I'm among you, like, I am, I am with you, I am one of you. Like, there's, there's just a different, a different feeling about it. 

Dean Berry:

Wow, it reminds me in my work when I was at Virginia, you know, I engaged with some community members and one community member said, I know who you are, but whose you are? You know, the idea of, of, of, you know, you represent that.

Dr. Renae Maybes:

Right.

Dean Berry:

Well, you know, what are, what do you bring? 

Dr. Renae Mayes:

Right. 

Dean Berry:

And I need to know, I need to know that before I engage fully with you. And that is some, some of the tension I think that comes up. Because I do think as, as scholars of color, it is that communal aspect that comes out, that comes through, and being co constructors of, of the work that we engage.

So I know I've asked you several questions. Are there any questions that you wish I would have asked you that you want to answer? 

Dr. Renae Mayes:

I don't know. Maybe future me. What? I, so I just, I just had it. So I had this. Spark of energy. So I'm currently, I'm doing too much. I am currently working or finishing out a federal grant that's focused on black youth mental health and in Virginia, you know this, which is really exciting. And we just got the MOU signed. So we're about to get all the data. I'm so excited. But I think this this grant for me has been one that is amazing. I think giving me a different kind of motivation and a different kind of excitement at this particular stage in my career. So, I am what, 11 years in now and have decided to get my clinical license.

So now I'm officially a licensed associate counselor and I'm working, I'm working with Talk It Out. So, it's a partnership between U of A and TUSD to provide free counseling. And for me, I'm like, It's, it's an opportunity to not only provide free counseling, but I can target and work with black youth and black families in the community in a way that's so accessible because counseling often isn't accessible.

I'm excited to do that as a clinician, right, as someone who's just committed to seeing positive outcomes for black youth and black families in terms of mental health and wellness, because it's connected to everything, right? It's connected to all aspects of life. So, I'm truly excited to be able to do that.

To do that and push myself in another kind of direction that isn't necessarily research driven. Well, also it connects for me, right, in terms of understanding Black joy and mental health and knowing that, that Black joy builds strength, builds, uh, I hate the word, but resilience. Like it, it builds. It builds oneself confidence such that when an adversity happens it doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, but we're able to pick ourselves up and keep going because we know that that's not our story. That's not who we are.  So, I'm excited to be able, on a practitioner level, support people in growing in that way. 

Dean Berry:

Wow. Well. Thank you for joining us on the Inquiry Oasis, and, you know, again, this is Dr. Renee Mayes, and I'm going to say all the words. I hear black joy, I hear black resistance, home place, freedom, freedom dreaming, love.

Thank you for those words. As I reflect on your work, I think about the, the, the impact, the impact that it has on reminding us of who we are, where we come from, and where we, who we can be. And those are not lost and, and to me it is how we're going to work towards those things to who we can be, not only as individuals, but as a community and how we grow together in this space.

So I want to give you the last word, any last word. 

Dr. Renae Mayes:

I'm, I'm just appreciative to be here and to share in this space. This was a black joy moment for me and getting able, being able to one, talk about this work, but I think also share it with another human being who understands and has a commitment to it, not only from a researcher perspective, but also from a more systemic perspective too. So, this is joyful for me. And I hope that, uh, for folks listening, it's a joyful experience for you to, to, to take part in this moment with us. 

Dean Berry:

Well, thank you so much, Dr. Mayes. And we really appreciate you again. This is Inquiry Oasis. I'm Robert Berry, thanks so much.