Episode 124: Empowering Every Child: Strategies for Transformative Schools

\In this episode, Dr. Almitra Berry welcomes guest Eugene Williams, an author, educator, and former child actor. They discuss strategies to increase parental involvement, especially in middle and high school, and the importance of engaging diverse communities and embracing multilingualism. Eugene shares insights on addressing the achievement gap for Black male students and the power of representation in education. The conversation explores creating inclusive school cultures and the challenges of teaching hard history. Listeners are encouraged to take action in their schools and communities to advocate for educational equity.

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

If you're a parent, teacher or school leader and you're sick and tired of the frustration, anger and unfair treatment of children at high risk in our public schools, then perhaps it's time for all of us to do something about it. In this podcast, Dr amitra Berry brings you tips, tools, strategies and tactics to build successful solutions while touching, moving and inspiring all of us to transform our schools so that every child thrives. Here's your host, Dr Bay,

Dr Almitra Berry: 0:37

hey there, Cody warriors, today I welcome a new guest, Mr. Eugene Williams to the 3e podcast as an author, educator, speaker and a former child actor, which he will tell you about. Eugene brings us a wealth of life experiences and practical wisdom. His common sense insights are designed to improve your life, expand your intellect and empower you to achieve success in school work and beyond. So stay tuned with us today for an engaging conversation that promises to both inspire and enlighten. Thank you. Thank you for joining me today. Eugene,

Unknown: 1:12

thank you for having me, doctor. I appreciate you.

Dr Almitra Berry: 1:15

Appreciate you as well. It is a lovely summer day today, but I want us to start with a pivotal moment in your life, something that has shaped who you are today, how it influenced the work that you do. Set us up for our conversation today,

Unknown: 1:31

pivotal moment in my life. Well, as you mentioned in the introduction, I am a former child actor, and I was blessed with the ability to or the opportunity to do, be on stage, screen, TV, soap operas. I've worked with actors like Bill Cosby, Pearl Bailey, just, you know, just the list goes on and on. Stephanie Mills, Ozzy Davis, the list goes on and on. It's been a very interesting youth for me, but around the age of 14, so I've been acting from the ages of, I guess, about four to 14 on. The age of 14, I decided, you know, I think I'm a little tired of the rat race. I want to do something different. I want to be a normal kid again, if you will. And both my parents, the late Dr Eugene Williams Senior and late Helen B Williams, were educators, and I saw the great things that they were doing with their students and the way they were uplifting people and changing lives. Even as a young person, I could see that through their efforts and what they were doing. So I said, Well, maybe it's in my blood. Maybe that's what I should start gearing myself towards. And that's when I decided that, you know, even though I was still young and a lot of options in front of me, I said, you know, teaching wouldn't be such a bad thing. I think I might be good at that.

Dr Almitra Berry: 2:38

You know, I had a similar conversation with myself, not that I felt like I needed to get out of the rat race when I was, you know, still a child, but having a parent, having a parent as an educator. And even though I, you know, I often share, I had no desire to become a teacher. My mother was an educator. I understood what was involved, and that just wasn't for me. That once that happened, once I had that conversation with myself and entered a classroom and fell in love with being in that environment and working with young people and providing opportunity through education, it became more of a calling and something that I felt like I could dedicate my life to in a good way. So it's it's a good thing. Our parents sometimes have more of an influence on us than we would like to believe they could have. Certainly would, yeah, and when we're young, probably more than we want them to have. Yes, yes, yeah, not.

Unknown: 3:33

The older I become, the more I find I'm just like they. Just like them. And my daughter, my daughter's 26 and she'll tell me, gosh, you sound like you know, a gene and grandma Helen so

Dr Almitra Berry: 3:45

well. The one thing I say is my mother is now still blessed to be with us at 87 years old. I lost my father when I was a child, and many times I'll think I'm saying that like my mother says it. But I have also promised my adult children I will never be like your grandmother in a few ways, in the things that are driving me crazy as part of that sandwich generation, right? And still caring for an aging parent, and although my nest is empty, you know, those babies are still babies until, I don't know, I guess, until they're old, until they're old. But let's stay on that topic of parents as an administrator. I know you've had observations and and you know the whole dealing with, shouldn't say dealing with working with engaging with parents,

Unknown: 4:32

working, engaging and dealing. In some cases, yes, keep it 100 sometimes,

Dr Almitra Berry: 4:38

yeah, I you know what. And you're right, because I think of me as a parent, as a parent, as a parent advocate for my child. I'm sure there were, there were a few times when they felt like they were dealing with me as I was dealing with them. But we tend to be much more actively involved in our children's schools when they are at the elementary at the k5 level, and that tends to fall off as they get to middle. School, and even more so in high school, when kids are saying, I don't need you around me anymore. You know, Don't hug me in public. Mom, those things. But I know, and you can share with us, what are some things that you know? One, how important is it for parents to to remain involved with school? And then, what are some things that parents can do to help support their students, their child's academic achievements as they get to those middle and high school years.

Unknown: 5:23

Well, speaking from two, two viewpoints, speaking as a prince, a former principal, who was my daughter's assistant principal in middle school, so at that point, I was a parent and an administrator, yeah. And then, you know, knowing the the importance of parent involvement, I will say this, a lot of parents make the mistake of thinking that once Junior reaches high school, that we don't have any work to do. I maintain that high schools when you have the most work to do, because at that point, you know, of course, you want to get the foundation straight in elementary school, and you want to take them through that those, you know, those changes like puberty and social emotional changes in middle school, but in high school, that's the last step before you got out there in the real world and start hunting with the big dogs, if you will. And so you really need to pay attention to what your child's doing in class, type of information he or she is getting, who their teachers are, what their motivations are, and what the school is willing to do along with you, in terms of in concert with you, to put your child in a position to win, whether it be the world of work after graduation or for your institution after graduation. So yeah, that's the time to be the most involved. I would say. The first thing I'll say to parents is number one, remember, the phone goes both ways. Do not be that parent who at the end of the quarter says, well, nobody called me. Nobody told me Johnny was Yes, ma'am, I understand that. And if the school did not follow through with notifications, with interim reports, with great with with report cards that is on them, but I will say to parents also, I've said to parents before, the phone works both ways. If Johnny comes to you every night and tells you he has no homework and nothing to do, ask questions, because Johnny might not be telling you the truth. We love Johnny. Johnny's our baby, but our children will like we

Dr Almitra Berry: 7:18

need to stop picking on Johnny. I say that to myself all the time. Okay? I remember when I was in, when I was in teachers college, my ed psych teacher, ed psych professor said we tend to use overuse boys whose names start with Jay when we're talking about disciplinary issues. Okay, you know that was, and I remember that he also said there actually had been some research and that disproportionately boys whose first names start with Jay are disciplinary issues. So, you know, I don't know if that's a cart horse thing, if we are set up to believe that it's boys whose names start with Jay, but I had a student one year when I was teaching us history, so 11th grade social studies, and I had a student whose name, and you know, not a black boy. It was a white kid whose name was Dustin. And Dustin was the thorn in my side all year long. And at some point in time, I said, did your parents ever consider naming you Justin instead of instead of Dustin, because I was certain there was supposed to be a j in that child's first name somewhere,

Unknown: 8:26

maybe his middle name. Who knows?

Dr Almitra Berry: 8:28

I did not ask. I did not ask. Yes, um, yeah, parental support. So key all the way through. And you know, one of the things that I think, and you tell me, as an administrator, that we sort of miss is that so many of our parents who are not having the phone work from their direction to the school to ask questions to be engaged, are formerly children who already had failure in our public school system. Right? So we're looking at a second or a third or fourth generation that as part of our system, we did not prepare them for the world, and yet we're asking them to do something that they're not prepared for. So that I you know, I think that we as as educators and our schools as systems, and especially if they want to be a little more community oriented, need to do some educating of the parents and caregivers of their children, and make that information accessible, not just, you know, having offerings during the school day where they might be working, but recognizing they may work two or three jobs, you know, to keep food on the table. So how do we meet them where they are, to help them support us in educating their child. I can tell

Unknown: 9:44

you one of the one of the ways that we use. And I'm a former principal. I finished my last year of principalship in 2023 after 27 years in public education. But bless you. Yeah, hey, look, it was, it was a blessing for 27 years, 10 years in the classroom, 17 years as a building leader. But.

Dr Almitra Berry: 16:35

Right? So

Unknown: 16:36

you look at it all because you have, you have a in certain, you know, systems, or in certain districts, you have a wide variety of, you know, parent ages. So you know, there's, there's there. Sometimes grandmas raising Johnny and so you gotta use Facebook. And sometimes, you know, you know the student's mom is, might be, you know, less than 20 years older than the student themselves. So you gotta use the other social media platforms. Hey, you gotta do it better. Yeah,

Dr Almitra Berry: 17:03

at a sixth grade student, I'll never forget whose mom was 14 years older than him, right? So you know, recognizing that we have some very young parents that are out there, and while we are unfortunately in this, this political space where women being able to care for their own bodies is being challenged, we are we are looking at in another maybe 15 years, 1413, years, having A lot of very young parents who are not prepared for caring for and and you know, just barely finishing well, they'd be in middle school at 1314, years old, right? That that they have a child that that you are working with and staying on social engagement, just for a minute, how we reach our parents and meet them, recognizing that our parents are speaking multiple languages other than English as well. Yes, and I know you have a relationship with foreign language you might want to share with us.

Unknown: 18:07

Well, I can tell you this. I was a Latin teacher for part time when I was in teaching in the classroom, and one of the things I would always tell my students is, you know, learn this romance language, because we want the key to Spanish. You want the key to French with the key to Italian. Latin is got it. It's the root language of all of those things. But when I was an assistant principal years ago in Spain, County Virginia, one of my colleagues and I created a a group, or created a an organization called teal, because our colors were teal and black and the the equation was teal teaming and education and learning. And the goal of that was to reach out to Spanish speaking parents at their at their churches, in their businesses, what have you, and help them to understand the type of things we wanted to do with their children. Because a lot of times a lot of times in certain cultures, the teachers are never questioned. Because I deliver my child to you, and I trust you, Mr. Williams, and you know, you are the teacher. You are the boss, you will handle it. And I always thought that was, you know, it was great for us as teachers in terms of the cooperation with parents, but I also thought it's kind of unfair to Spanish speaking parents, or parents who, you know, who don't speak English fluently, because we want them to be to play an active role, and they advocate for their own kids and to understand what's going on with the children. So we created a program where we would go to these churches and go to these local businesses, and we would do our whole presentation in Spanish, and then we would do the same presentation again in English. So I had to work on, you know, had, I had to glean back from my years growing up in Miami, Florida, but it was a huge, you know, a Cuban element there. And I had to also use my, my Google Translate, and then translate all the presentation documents in the Spanish while I'm talking to the parents. And it was just a wonderful experience, because they got a chance. We got a chance to know each other. They had a chance to laugh at me and my mispronunciation, and they could correct me. But in doing that, we reached a new level of understanding with them and a relationship with them that I think served their kids well. And so whenever you have an opportunity, not only to talk to parents, but talk to parents from disenfranchised communities, marginalized communities, parents who don't speak English as their first language. You've gotta do that, because that's what America is now. That's what's being brought into our schools. Yeah,

Dr Almitra Berry: 20:27

yeah. And in some instances, there are so many languages, not just English and Spanish, right? You know, coming from California, we had a number of Southeast Asian languages and Asian languages, you have the Eastern European languages in some parts of the country where that's prevalent, Middle Eastern languages. I worked during reading first I worked with Detroit Public Schools, and all of the schools I was assigned to work with were schools where the kids were coming from Iraq, so it wasn't a language I was familiar with, but one of the things, and you said it is to understand culturally, what those parents expectations and understandings and relationships are with schools. Because it isn't. It is true that in many countries, teachers are revered. The school is a place that is revered almost the way we revere medicine, and maybe a little bit more than we do here. And so for a parent to hand over their child to you is all that they can do, because it is their understanding that you have that expertise, the knowledge that they should not question. So we have to. To actually provide some some development and learning to our parent caregiver community that here in this country, it is not offensive to us for you to question us. We want you to question us. We want to teach you how to advocate for your child. That's so important. And when we have especially children who may be the translators for their family. It is an unfair burden on that child to you know, and and if you've got some that are a little mischievous, they may mistranslate, and you'll never know, but things like, you know, I've got my phone that that I use in my own personal transferring my life so to speak, or immigrating to the Dominican Republic, where my Spanish is okay, but it's not perfect, and certainly, situationally depends where I can turn that on. You can do a two way conversation with that translator. You just keep speaking English, it'll translate to Spanish. It'll listen to that, that other person speaking in Spanish or whatever language, and translate that to you for English. So the excuses have been removed.

Unknown: 22:39

Yeah, and the and the best thing about Google, I love Google Translate when I used it. The best thing about it was all those same posts I made on social media and English, Yeah, same post on social media in other languages, yep. And so everybody got a chance to see what was going on, and very few people had questions that way.

Dr Almitra Berry: 22:58

Yeah, you know, foreign language, world languages, and respecting World Languages, as well as the multiple Englishes that our children come to school with is is so important. And I think I discussed with you the the book that I'm working on right now on sociocultural Englishes, but making and having educators understand that, that we can do so much more, like you said, with Latin, by the way, I did take high school Latin for three years. I was the only student in third year Latin, yeah, yeah, it is. It is great for our vocabulary, for comprehension, but so is every other language, if our children are multilingual, right? The last thing we should do is be trying to squelch that, and instead bridge that, use that language that they come to school with, because it's good for their reading it's good for their writing skills, comprehension skills and math skills, a lot of times, vocabulary, huge, huge.

Unknown: 23:55

One of the things I tell one of the things I told parents, I said, Listen, I know some of you don't see the importance of foreign languages, okay, but I tell you whether it's like whether it's Latin or any other Romance languages. I'm telling you your child's vocabulary can be advanced if your child knows that the the French word for window is not for natural. And they see a word says same defenestrate, and they know that the prefix de is out of who are waving them. Then they know somebody that fenes race themselves. They jump out the window. I said, these are these are things. I said, So Sats are coming up. We have a test in Virginia called the SOLs. Your vocabulary needs to be broad. You need to be able to look at words you haven't seen before and be able to decipher them and figure them out just from roots and derivatives and things of that nature, and foreign language plays an excellent role in that.

Dr Almitra Berry: 24:47

Yeah, yeah. And we don't need to wait until, you know, middle school to teach World Languages to children. And like I said, as long as we continue to support and really respect and value the language that kids come to school with. There is, I don't usually plug programs, but you reminded me there is a program called spelling through morphographs. I used it as a sixth grade teacher because it teaches roots and affixes and how you can combine words and how you can break words apart based on the different morphographs that are in that word. Morphographic spelling is really one of the best ways our kids can learn how to spell and understand the meaning of words at the same time. Just huge. And then when my daughter, who was the gifted child, scary gifted child, had everything was just always easy for her. And when it came time to prep for the SAT, she came home one day and she said, Mom, they said there's all this stuff on Greek and Latin roots on the SAT. And I said, Yeah. And she said they never taught us any of that. And so I pulled out my little teacher guide from my spelling through morphographs program, and I said, you're going to teach yourself this. And I said, I'm not going to teach it to you. You're smart enough. And I handed it to her, and you know, she did amazingly well on that vocabulary portion, on the SAT, because she built very quickly, built that knowledge of all of those affixes and how to break words apart, something that we should be doing for every single child.

Unknown: 26:11

One of the things I told my foreign language teachers to do, like I kind of demanded. I didn't demand a lot of things, like my teachers, but I demanded this one thing. I said, one part of your instruction should also be English derivatives. It's okay to learn this language. We want them to learn other languages. But if there's any way that you can use these activities to help broaden their vocabulary in terms of. Their native language. Do it, because it's only going to help in the long run with their writing and their reading and their comprehension. It's only

Dr Almitra Berry: 26:42

going to help. Yeah, yeah. I you know, my personal wish has has always been that every single child in America, because it's common in pretty much every other part of the world, but that every single child in America would be immersed in two languages from the time they enter kindergarten. Yes,

Unknown: 26:58

yes. You know, that's, that's part of the old American pride that we have, and we don't, you know, we don't engage in those things as much as other other nations do. Unfortunately, so. And

Dr Almitra Berry: 27:07

I wonder, I wonder, I wonder, why not really say that with a lot of cynicism? Because if you are, if you go to a more affluent private school in the United States. You're going to get those two languages, right? You may even get three. If you are fortunate enough and wealthy enough to go to an elite boarding school, you are most definitely going to be educated in multiple languages.

Unknown: 27:32

You're going to get them tell you from personal experience as a student who went to private school. Shout out to McDonough school in Baltimore and Ransom Everglades School in Miami, Florida Coconut Grove. They put the students there in excellent positions to achieve in advance, especially on the S, A, T, the verbal sections, because of the languages we were taught from middle school all the way through, up until graduation and so I would tell parents out there, you know, advocate for those things that happen in your public school systems, because the kids that your that your students are competing against, potentially, are getting those pieces of knowledge. Yeah,

Dr Almitra Berry: 28:14

yeah. So so critical. You spent some time in schools that had different demographics. Yes, I put it that way, all white schools are predominantly white schools, as well as schools that were predominantly of color. And so I want to ask you, you know, as a black man yourself, we know from just the basic numbers that our black male students are impacted disproportionately in a number of ways and sort of culturally within their own peer groups, more than more than anything else, are received this message that they should not be the high achiever in the schools. So what can we and what can educators do to increase the enrollment of black male students in advanced courses, honors? AP, how do they combat that that more local and peer group influence to not be the high achieving students. Well,

Unknown: 29:22

I can tell you a couple of things that that I've done, and a couple things I want to tell parents and black educators to do. First thing, stop allowing black students, boys and girls, men and women. Stop allowing black students think that intelligence is a inherently a white thing. Stop that. Amen. Stop that. And when you hear that rhetoric from them, nip that in the bud right away and make sure that you then educate them in terms of the the contributions that intelligent, genius black men and women have made to the success of this country. That's the first thing. See, a lot of schools would probably have more African American students in these in these classes, if these students knew what they where they came from, the stock that they came from. And we and we don't do a good job as a nation, we do a better job than we used to, but we don't do a good job as we should in terms of teaching that one of the blessings I had when I worked at river bend High School in Fredericksburg, Virginia. I was not only an English teacher, but my principal, God bless him, allowed me to teach a course called African American Studies. He said, Williams, combine the history with the literature. It's your course. Do whatever you want, assign whatever books you want to, you know, run them by me first, because if it was too wild out to say something about it, he said, But short of that, he said, do your thing. And so as a young teacher, I was blessed with that, the freedom to do that, and a lot of kids, once they learned about themselves, once they learned about the great heroes that contributed to American history, they began to see themselves in a different light. And so, you know, one of my favorite lessons as an English teacher back in when I teach American literature, I would compare and contrast Patrick Henry speech in the Virginia convention to Malcolm X is by any means necessary. Oh, I have the kids write a compare and contrast essay about that. And they began to see, wait, whoa. I I've heard all. I've heard that, you know, even, even the white students, I heard that this guy, Malcolm X, was a rabble rouser and a and a communist. And they. This and the that. But actually, you know, he and the founding fathers were talking the same mess. Okay, so those type of things. But secondly, I can tell you, when I was working in Orange County Public Schools in orange Virginia, I, along with it, was predominantly white rural system. In this particular case, I was working with three other African American male and educators, and we put together a program with the help of Dr Gilman Whiting and Dr Donna Ford of Vanderbilt University, called the academic scholars Institute, where we would sit. We would work with kids every summer, a select group of African American males, those kids who did well in their regular classes, but for whatever reason, were not being referred by their teachers to enroll in the advanced classes, or chose not to, because that thought it was a white thing. And we got together with them every summer in a full week camp, and we exposed them to college professionals. We exposed them to college life. We exposed them to black business leaders and black professionals and and we gave them the concepts of a scholar, what it means to be an African American scholar, and we talked about the history of the images that were put in front of them that made them believe that they could not achieve what white folks could achieve. And we saw all the growth happening. And it was several, several years with this program, and they're still doing this day, and I was so excited, because even after I left that system to take on another job, I found out that some one of the kids that was a part of that system ended up getting a full scholarship, athletically and academically to Harvard University. Wow, as a wrestler, and about 90% of the young men that we worked with all went to some institution, four year institution, for college, and were accepted, and many of them received scholarships. And so it was just that they just needed somebody to tell them how great they were. And it's not that their their white teachers weren't telling them that. It's just that the investment was different. You understand what I'm saying? Yeah. So when they hear, when they see their black English teacher or their black male assistant principal telling them, this is what you can do, this is where you can go, and you have examples in front of you, all around you, that maybe you didn't know about, but let's go and go to places and talk to people who are these people that I'm talking about? So it's not, you know, it's not something strange to you, and you begin to see that there's, there are a lot of African Americans, a lot of people look like you who are doing great things, educationally, politically, scientifically, that you never hear about. And so it's my job as a teacher, not only to teach you about reading and writing arithmetic, but to expose you to people who are great, who look like you.

Dr Almitra Berry: 34:23

Yeah, absolutely, there is nothing more empowering than to see well, representation. Yeah, I have this thing I call the four equity indicators, and one of those is that representation aspect to see in your books, in your classroom, in the the novels you study, the literature that you study, in every aspect, even in the sciences, because we tend to get overlooked our contributions to the science community and engineering. But to see people, and this is for every child of every color and ethnicity, to see themselves in that content, to see the contributions of their people to America, if I'm talking to a US audience, and most of the time, I am Yes, but that fuels a belief that I can do these things, as opposed to What we tend to find in books that are not equitably crafted. I'll put it that way,

Unknown: 35:24

you did that.

Dr Almitra Berry: 35:25

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. But that that there is a white saviorism mentality, and so even in the sciences, the natural sciences, the exemplars that you see will be about white men who are saving communities of color, white men who've made these contributions, ignoring that black and brown bodies created it before, or the materials that they needed have to come from black and brown communities. All of these things are important. And when our children do not see that, their belief becomes you can only do this if you are white, and a lot of times white and male, and so that that sort of overly misogynistic experience, I was trying not to keep it Yeah, but yeah, that's what it is.

Unknown: 36:19

Now. It

Dr Almitra Berry: 36:19

is what it is. Let's just what it is. It is what it is. It's called misogyny, and this idea that only men can do this and only white men can do this. And if this is what our children are hearing from the time they get into school, what else are they supposed to believe?

Unknown: 36:34

But you. What amazed me is the fact that I feel like sometimes as a culture, and as you be careful, I say this, that we're going backwards in terms of the parenting influence and the and the knowledge and the passing out of knowledge to the generations of our particular contributions to America and our particular witness, I was always shocked when I was teaching the number, number of black kids in this country who did not know about Charles Drew, who did not know about Benjamin Banneker, who, the only time they saw Frederick Douglass was, you know, during Black History Month, who, who, who did not know about James Baldwin? I mean, these people that are not, these are these aren't ancient folks. These are, these are, these are modern references. And

Dr Almitra Berry: 37:21

I tell you, if there is, if there is one author that every single child should read, black, white, brown, whatever, before they leave high school, they should be reading some James Baldwin. And if you put that connected to, to to modern American history,

Unknown: 37:39

right? There's no, there's no comparison for what he brings. I remember I could tell teachers. I said, you haven't lived until you are teaching an English class, predominantly white English class with maybe three or four African American children in it, and you are teaching them their eyes. Are Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston as one of the novels for your English class. That is an eye opening experience, because at that point, the kids see themselves, and the white children see, oh, I know that character, or that reminds me of somebody that my daddy and granddad used to talk about, that lived in town, and you begin to see the commonalities and the and the humanity of folks that you that you're not normally. You know, shown that humanity with with regards to so I just think it's so important for us to make sure that in predominantly black inner city, urban, whatever you want to call it, areas that we are exposing our children to this. But it's also equally important that in predominantly white schools, we have a small concentration of black students. We're showing them this because sometimes you can get so ensconced in the other culture you forget about your own. Yeah,

Dr Almitra Berry: 38:54

yeah, I did. Gosh, it's, it's bothering me now, if it was, I build a lot of content, and so sometimes I can't remember, was this a blog post? Was this a white paper I did for a publishing company? Whatever it was, might have been something, actually, I think it's in, in the in my book that is in production right now, but there are a lot of books by authors of color and harder, you know, one of the the challenges I find is finding those books from lesser represented cultures and ethnicities, finding finding literature from the wide variety of Central and South American authors that are written in English or translated to to English for their children of Central and South American ethnicity to read, finding Asian authors little bit easier, but understanding that that if you have a population of children who are Vietnamese, giving them A book written by someone who is Chinese is not the same thing, right? Because that is not their culture. That just because they are globally Asian does not mean that Chinese relates to a Vietnamese experience, and we

Unknown: 40:08

need to be. It's almost an insult in some in some,

Dr Almitra Berry: 40:10

it really is. It really is. And if we are not more cognizant of who our children are. You know, really who they are. We we are not properly addressing their needs. It's just as just as simple as that. I also, you know what you said about Black History Month, right? We always get on Black History Month. One of the things that I always say is, look, when you're doing Black History Month. Stop teaching. I have a dream. Pick up if you want. Martin Luther King, give me a Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

Unknown: 40:41

Hey, but see, that's, see, that's the the the people people want the feel good, and the portions of the kings and the exes of the world that make them comfortable, right? They don't want the they don't want to hear about, when Dr King talked about, I feel I'm integrating my people into a burning house. That's, oh, wait, you know, but all of that

Dr Almitra Berry: 41:06

now we can't, we can't do that, we can't do that, but all of that

Unknown: 41:11

is part of American history. You know, one of them is really crazy. And I know you, you probably deal with these questions too. I would have parents, you know, kind of sideways ask me, Are you teaching CRT over that school? Yeah. And I would say, No, ma'am, we're teaching history. Yes, warts and all and all, and if and if, the actual history. Is too much to take. I don't know what to tell you, but history is what it is, and we can't run away from it just because it's not comfortable for us.

Dr Almitra Berry: 41:45

You know, well, not comfortable for some and some who completely negate the fact that the history they want taught is not comfortable for some of us was,

Unknown: 41:58

not only is it comfortable, though it's dismissive, yeah. I mean, as our contributions did not exist. Well, these things did not happen to people who look like us or our ancestors. So yeah, we gotta be we gotta be honest about these things. Man, teaching

Dr Almitra Berry: 42:14

hard history is hard. It is, right? It's, it's absolutely critical. And I think one of the things I'm sorry, no, oh, okay, just sort of connecting, or another a link in that is it's impossible to do that if you do not have a healthy school environment, right? Absolutely, you gotta teach and safe to learn.

Unknown: 42:41

You gotta be blessed with administration and teachers who get it. You know, in my career, I was blessed with with several administrators who got it. I was, you know, I had to deal with some who didn't. But overall, I, you know, I had those, the ones I worked with, and when I was administered, I tried to be that same administrator, you know, the one who gets it. And so it's also very interesting the conversations that sometimes African American administrator will find himself having, especially in a predominantly white rural space. And you find yourself not only working with parents, but also educating them at the same time. And some, you know, depending on how it was presented to them, were receptive, and others, it was a chore, but you don't let that stop you from doing it anyway, hoping for the best.

Dr Almitra Berry: 43:42

How do you or what are some strategies that that administrators can use to shift that culture in their schools? You have one or two for us. Well,

Unknown: 43:53

one of the things that we can do, number one, is what we've been talking about. Make sure that in your English classes, the curriculum is representative of a wide variety of different ethnicities and cultures, you know, and that way you're exposing the children to that. You also want to make sure that even in your celebrations, I know people talk about what we have too many celebrations. Now, there's this month and that month and the other month, no, when you

Dr Almitra Berry: 44:18

every month is somebody's month, just plan on it. Get a calendar,

Unknown: 44:22

and that's cool. This, this is our country. Why can't we all have a month or a set of weeks or a celebration of some sort, as long as we are not doing anything to hurt another group or to denigrate another group? So, you know, take advantage of those things. You know that there's there's black history, there's Hispanic history, there's women's month. There's a every time you have one, I would say, have some sort of speaker come in. Have some sort of spirit week, if you will. Whatever you want to do about it. Have something, have have art projects related to that month. Do something where kids can take an active and participant and participating role in cultures and experiences that are foreign to them and that are not their own. It helps to bridge the gap between cultures and help us, hopefully, help us be up, you know, help us be a better society in terms of working with one another and understanding the greatness that each of us bring to the table and become a better country. You know, because of it, I would also say, like I said, continue administrators and teachers to have open minds of communication with people whose parents, whose languages are different from yours, and whose ethnicities and racial situations are different than yours, continue to have opportunities for folks to come together. One of the things I loved was homecoming weekend as a principal, because we had the big football game, and everybody was together, and we had a chance to show the entire district that, you know, people from a wide variety of backgrounds and socioeconomic certain circumstances can work together for positive goals. And so sports is also a very big role that people underestimate the role of sports. I know that we cast it off as unserious sometimes. And you know, everybody's not going to be an athlete. And I get all that. As a former high school athlete and a former high school football coach, I get all that. But these things bring community, and so we have, we have to continue to push those things forward, the arts, concerts, huge. Have have your, have your your cultural nights where all the different cultures represented, all different foreign language classes and all different different cultures are represented with either food or or presentations or performances. These are all things you can do.

Dr Almitra Berry: 46:33

Yeah. Um. I don't want to forget you have a book. We didn't talk about your book. Tell us I have a few books. Yes, you do.

Unknown: 46:42

I have a first one. I do. The first one I want to share with you is a book that my father and I wrote some years back called it's a reading thing. Help your child understand now, those of us who are African American back in the 90s and late 80s, we remember saying, Hey, man, it's a black thing. You would understand. Well, it's more than a black thing. It's a reading thing. It's and reading is the great equalizer. One of the things that amazed me, and I Googled this, I suspected this when I googled it to confirm it, it even bothered me more. I mean, almost 50% of our American public, regardless of age, regardless of race, are reading the sixth grade level or lower. Yes,

Dr Almitra Berry: 47:32

yeah, functional. We are a functionally illiterate nation.

Unknown: 47:37

That's crazy to me. And it doesn't have to be that way, because one of the things we talk about in the book is a reading thing. Is the importance number one, parents read to your kids. Read to them when they're in the room, when the womb. Read to them when they're talkers those I can read books, that thing of where the wild things are. That's, hey, that's educational material. Read that. I would also suggest that it's a it's a trick that I used to use, and parents used to laugh at me when you're watching TV. You know the closed caption for hearing and closed captions and on because the kids are reading the text while they're seeing the word out of the mouth and they're listening and they're associating that together. You've gotta do that. Another thing I would suggest is number number three. As your kids get older, it's good to have them read a variety of materials, everything from comic books to graphic novels to novels. But also, don't run away from the classics, because a lot of those classics have strong vocabulary in them that can be used for those standardized tests. And when I would teach the classics, a lot of my students would say, why are we learning this? And I would say, You know what? If for nothing else, if for nothing else, this gives you some Jeopardy. Knowledge, who, yeah, you might be on Jeopardy one day, and Doctor Beck might ask you about the raven and who said Nevermore, and you might be the one to remember Edgar, Allen Poe, yes, you know, sometimes it's pushing the or something, or you might be traveling in circles with this. There's cocktail conversation, and they're going to judge whether or not they want to do business with you by the level of your cocktail conversation. You gotta know something if somebody wants to put money in your pocket. Okay, that's right. All these things are very, very important. Make it, break it down to the kids in in ways they can understand. So that was the first book, another book my father and I wrote was a book called grounded in the Word, ground in the word a guide to mastering standardized test vocabulary and biblical comprehension. Did you know that back in the old days, I would say the old days of 90s and 2000s and even even now, several hundreds of the words that were found in the verbal portion of the SAT are also in the Bible,

Dr Almitra Berry: 49:58

hm. So we know our Bible, and we

Unknown: 50:01

know our Bible, okay, so our goal was to, hey, let's, let's learn the word while learning some more words, words, the words in the Word. And so that ties in to the churches, the Sunday schools. Church is a big part of our of our culture that ties into those groups. Gets the pastors involved, gets the deacons involved, gets the the church mothers involved, but the kids are learning very, very important. Wrote a brief, wrote a novel called I Am a darker brother some years ago. This is loosely a fictional account, which is loosely based on my experiences as a member of Alpha Phi, Alpha fraternity at Emory University back in the late 80s and early 90s. And the other book is reflections of a confused middle class black youth. So you have me, the son of Doctor Eugene Williams Senior and Mrs. Helen D Williams, who are educators and administrators and first generation college students in their family. And they have the they have the the the three bedroom home in the suburbs, and they're raising this young black child actor, and he's going to a predominantly white private school. At the same time, he's discussing his own culture because of his relatives and his parents and his grandparents, and his father is giving him a comic book called Golden legacy, where he's learning about Toussaint Louverture and Matthew Henson and all these great and so you take all these things, all this. Black experience in the midst of beyond the white culture, that's a lot for a young man or young woman to navigate and go through. And so I wrote a collection of short stories, poems, novels, original about that experience. So those are the things that I'm about. I'm about trying to educate folks, all folks, but especially my folks, first and foremost, because I can't, if I can't, if I can't educate me, then I can't educate you. But at the same time, showing our commonalities and giving everybody an opportunity to see what the other side goes through. I don't want to get political right too much, but I want to just say something real quick. Go ahead, you know, we are as educators. We constantly are in a struggle right now with the right and the left and the blue and the red in terms of where they want to take education. And I have, I had the pleasure of working with some liberal teachers and some slightly more conservative teachers, you know, and one of the things that has been amazing to me is my liberal teachers get very angry and don't understand. How can these parents say these things? How can they support this man? How can they and I say to them, because some of them are young, a lot of them are younger than I was. I said you have to understand something about this country when you grew up in a country as a white person, and every commercial, every television show, every piece of history tells you how brilliant you are and how the world is your oyster, and you can do anything because you're an American, and you turn back around 2030, years later, and you're living paycheck to paycheck, or you're on welfare, or you don't have access to certain things that you think you should have, because you were told, if I just worked hard, I would get this. And then you happen to see people of other colors and other racing, advancing and achieving and doing the things that you were told only you should be able to do. That's right. And a man comes along and tells you and tickles your ears on the things that you want to hear to make you feel good about yourself. That's that phenomenon. Don't be surprised by that. Yeah, don't be don't be surprised by that. Don't even be angered by that. Understand that, yes, know where it comes, where that comes from, that you can start combating that. Yes, you have to understand what comes to first, and you can't, you can't, you can't. You can't talk to an accusatory tone or talk down to him that ain't going to Hell NO

Dr Almitra Berry: 54:13

NO. And it, really is just, if you consider it the mirror, what has been the Black and Brown and indigenous experience in this country, constantly being told you can't, you can't, you can't. You only can if you are white, then you can start to understand they think that way, because they receive the opposite message, right? We are. We are dealing with what we are because of the messages we have been receiving, not just through our lives, but our parents and grandparents and great grandparents. And for some of us, I could trace back to a fourth great grandparent in this country, sure, right? So if those are the messages we've received, if that's the programming we've received, if that's everything that's in the textbooks that we have been learning from, it is, I don't want to use the word normal, but normal is subjective, and so in their normal lives, it's normalized. It has been normalized for them to feel and think and believe what they believe. Yeah, and we are, we are fighting for a new normalization.

Unknown: 55:23

But here's the good news, here's the good news. Y'all

Dr Almitra Berry: 55:27

give us some good news. And I got one more question for you.

Unknown: 55:29

We have a whole generation of people coming up now. Their first memory of what a president actually is,

Dr Almitra Berry: 55:36

is a black man, black man? Yes,

Unknown: 55:39

that gives me hope. Yes, it gets me now. And now there's so that that makes it easy for when a black woman comes to the state. Oh, wait, yes, this is, this is possible. This isn't foreign to me. This isn't, this isn't something from Mars. This is doable,

Dr Almitra Berry: 55:52

right, right.

Unknown: 55:54

That's the good news. Good news.

Dr Almitra Berry: 55:55

That is the good news. That is the good news. My last question for you, yes, ma'am, I give it to every guest. Angela Davis said, I am changing the things I cannot accept, changing the things I cannot accept. So what is that something that you cannot accept? And then how can people who are listening to this help support change in that area.

Unknown: 56:19

I cannot accept African American people tearing each other down unnecessarily, and so I. Whether I'm from the students, neighbors, parents, colleagues, whomever, I try to help them understand that the African American experience is a fragmented one, is a diverse one. Even though we're we're one people, there's a lot of different paths and branches to that tree. And in order for us to achieve a goal as a group of people, we're going to have to be more tolerant of each other on an individual basis, and work work work more in terms of educating one another than bringing each other down. If somebody is doing something to you or doing something in your community that you don't like, you don't run to the nearest media outlet and blast them. You call them in you call them on the phone. Hey, bro, look, this is not cool, and this is why I think it's not cool. Now you can have our own feelings, but when we come out of this conversation, we're coming out as colleagues, necessarily friends, coming as people who have mutual respect for each other in our dealings with other folks, because that is what at this point in our development, this just this is Eugene talking. I can't speak for anybody else, but at this point our development as African Americans, that's what it's going to take. When I see black men

Dr Almitra Berry: 58:08

on social right now

Unknown: 58:11

speaking ill of Kamala Harris for silly reasons, for things like because they're not, because they don't think she could stand up to the the difficulties or the pressures of being present, or because she's not, quote, unquote black enough. These are the men that I have to pull aside and say, my brother, you obviously don't know America's history. Mm, if you got a drop in you, you black, yeah, according to the greater United States community, that's what you are,

Dr Almitra Berry: 58:47

yep. And the law in many states still, it's still amazing. Many states still,

Unknown: 58:53

and if you, and if and any of you who don't think that you are you will find out at some point in your life. My favorite comedian, Paul Mooney, has the thing something called the and I won't use the word, but the Negro wake up call, I'll replace the word, yeah. Okay. And we all get it, whether we live in inner city, Baltimore, or whether we live in suburban Prince George's County, Maryland, or whether we live in rural orange, Virginia. At some point in our lives, if you live long enough because of the country you live in, have a history of the country you live in, you will get your Negro wake up.

Dr Almitra Berry: 59:31

Yes, you will. Yes, she will. Yes, you will. That's

Unknown: 59:35

what I cannot tolerate and where I try to combat not in a mean way, but in a caring way and intelligent way, every chance that I get. Well,

Dr Almitra Berry: 59:44

I want to say thank you for doing that as a black woman in America. Thank you for standing up for us

Unknown: 59:53

first. Well, first of all, I have appreciate I listen, where would I be without one that my mama is one, my wife is one, my daughter is one. If I can't stand up for them, what is my usefulness and relevance on this earthly plane?

Dr Almitra Berry: 1:00:11

What did Tupac say

Unknown: 1:00:13

I was I was never a big fan of Tupac. So you go ahead and

Dr Almitra Berry: 1:00:16

that one. No, we all came from a woman. You came from a woman.

Unknown: 1:00:20

What? Yes, okay, yes, I remember that. But just one example of the different paths. You know, a lot of people love Tupac. Never saw it, but, but I appreciate his, his his message to the black community when he was not rapping, but, but the directly, I never really got it, that's

Dr Almitra Berry: 1:00:39

okay. It's okay. You know, it's like I was, I was busy with things like being a single mom at that point in time, so I didn't listen to a lot of it, but I did have a colleague who was using his his music, the literature that was in his music, to teach literature and experience. And so that's, that's where I

Unknown: 1:00:57

had, I had a teacher, young teacher that was doing the same thing when I was an administrator. It works. The kids love it. They get the points of it. Use what you gotta use. Yeah.

Dr Almitra Berry: 1:01:06

Eugene, thank you so much for joining me today. Yes. Wonderful conversation. Equity warriors out there, I want us to commit to something, couple of things. One, I want you to text this episode, text it to a parent, a caregiver, somebody else in your community, a teacher, a principal, somebody, and then commit to taking action in our schools and in our communities. There were many insights shared today, and you can use those. Help advocate for equitable educational opportunities for all students. Engage with your teachers, parents, caregivers, students, we can all work together to create inclusive environments that foster success for every child. So remember, text it, don't just like it. I love it. If you like it, don't just like it. Text it to somebody, spread awareness and help inspire others to join this fight for educational equity and to steal somebody else's line we've been talking about for just a minute here. Because when we fight, we win, right? And then join me again next episode, if you've got a question, a comment, something you'd like to have covered, a special request, a guest that you think should be on this show. There is a link down there to text me directly. I want to hear from you. I want to hear your stories. And remember, don't worry about things you cannot change. Change the things you can no longer accept. I'll see you next time, and that's a wrap for today's episode of The 3d podcast. Now here's how you can make a real difference. First, smash that subscribe button. It's free. It's easy, just do it. Second, share the show with anyone you know who cares about education. And third, consider becoming a supporter of the show. Together, we're not just talking about change. We're making it happen. Make a donation today to be part of that mission and change, and I'll catch you next time.