Month: March 2023

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Music, The Garifuna Collective, Weyu Larigi Weyu

Link to full transcript.

Quote from the Episode

Africana feminist epistemology is a way of knowing and understanding that we can create self-determining spaces, knowledges for ourselves. We do not have to lean on what the corporatized university system or organization that holds on to an EDI value set in name but does not do so in practice. We can live beyond the limitations of those words and inactions and do for ourselves and create for ourselves.

About our Guest

Jasmine Getrouw-Moore

Jasmine Getrouw-Moore is a professional equity leader, consultant, and academic scholar, pursuing a Ph.D. in the Educational Leadership and Cultural Foundations program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Jasmine’s professional background examines the implications of structural inequity on minoritized people. She holds a master’s degree in Public Administration and a bachelor of science in Public Health with a concentration in community health education. Jasmine leverages structural racism as an analytic method for interpreting systemic inequities within the social determinants of health model. The social determinants of health (SDOH)  “are the conditions in the environments where people are born, live, learn, work and play, worship and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality-of-life outcomes (CDC, 2021). Furthermore, Jasmine is the co-founder and Executive Director for RJ Squared, LLC- a reproductive justice technical assistance consulting firm that centers on the Reproductive Justice (RJ) Framework outlined by Sister Song Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective. RJ is the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities. There, she applies an aptly situated intersectional,  root-cause analysis of structural inequities manifest in macro and micro-level institutions. Jasmine’s academic research focuses on two critical sites of shaping within the sociopolitical context: health and education. She is concerned with the long-term implications of structural oppression (inequities) on Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Color life course (birth to death). Jasmine brings herself, her ancestors, and her community into her scholar-activism. As such, she employs a critical reflexivity practice, acting as both subject and object while sharpening her scholar-activist lens.

References from the Episode

• Alexander, M. J. (2005). Pedagogies of crossing : meditations on feminism, sexual politics, memory, and the sacred (Ser. Perverse modernities). Duke University Press.
• Bilge, S. (2013). Intersectionality Undone: Saving intersectionality from Feminist 
• Intersectionality Studies. Du Bois Review, 10:2 (2013) 405–424. 
• Busey, C. L., & Dowie-Chin, T. (2021). The making of global black anti-citizen/citizenship: situating blackcrit in global citizenship research and theory. Theory and Research in Social Education, 49(2), 153–175.
• Butler, T. T. (2018). Black girl cartography: black girlhood and place-making in education research. Review of Research in Education, 42(1), 28–45.
• Collins, P. (2009). Black feminist thought: knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment ([2nd edition], Ser. Routledge classics). Routledge.
• Evans-Winters, V., & Esposito, J. (2010). Other People’s Daughters: Critical Race Feminism and Black Girls’s Education. The Journal of Educational Foundations,24(1),11-24.
• Figueroa-Vásquez Yomaira C, & Project Muse. (2020). Decolonizing diasporas : radical mappings of afro-atlantic literature (Ser. Book collections on project muse). Northwestern University Press.
• hooks, b., & Mesa-Bains, A. (2017). Homegrown: Engaged Cultural Criticism (1st ed.). Routledge.
• Love, B. L., & Evans-Winters, V. E. (2015). Black Feminism in Education: Black Women Speak
• Back, Up, and Out (Black Studies and Critical Thinking) (New ed.). Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers.
• Landreman, L. M. (Ed.). (2013). The art of effective facilitation : reflections from social justice educators (First, Ser. An acpa publication). Stylus Publishing, LLC.
• Tuck, E., & Gaztambide-Fernández, R. A. (2013). Curriculum, replacement, and settler futurity. Jct (Online), 29(1), 72–89.
• Morris, S. M. (2012). Black Girls Are from the Future: Afrofuturist Feminism in Octavia E. Butler’s Fledgling. WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, 40(3–4), 146–166.
• Myers, J (Guest). (2020). Cedric Robinson, the Black Radical Tradition and Racial Regimes with
• Joshua Myers. [Audio podcast episode]. In Millennials are Killing Capitalism.
• Singh, N. P. (2014). The whiteness of police. American Quarterly, 66(4), 1091–1099.
• Smith, L. (2021). Decolonizing methodologies research and indigenous peoples. Bloomsbury.
• Wynter S. and McKittrick K (Ed.). Unparalleled catastrophe for our species? Or, to give humanness a different future:conversations. (2015). Sylvia wynter on being human as praxis.Duke.

Back to Small Steps, Big Impact homepage.

Music, The Garifuna Collective, Weyu Larigi Weyu

Link to full transcript.

Quote from the Episode

1 out of every 25 families in the U.S. includes an adopted child. Despite the fact that we do have a prevalence of children being adopted and families formed through adoption, stories about adoption and adopted children are not regularly a part of our classroom discussions or included in the curriculum.

About our Guest

Melody Zoch

Melody Zoch (she/her/hers) is an Associate Professor of Literacy and TESOL Education in the Teacher Education and Higher Education department at UNCG. She joined the UNCG faculty in 2012 after completing her PhD in Language and Literacy Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to that, she worked for six years as a bilingual Spanish/English elementary school teacher and literacy coach in Texas. She is the lead PI for a multimillion-dollar grant funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Project Ignite, which supports ESL licensure for pre-service and in-service teachers. Her research interests include supporting teachers to develop practices that are inclusive of culturally and linguistically diverse students and communities. This includes families that are formed through adoption and families who have been forced to resettle due to war and other catastrophes in their home countries.

References from the Episode

• Bishop, R.S. (1990). Mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. Perspectives, 6(3), ix–xi.
• Dei, G. J. S. (1996). Anti-racism education: Theory and practice. Fernwood Publishing.
• Dei, G.J.S. (2014). Personal reflections on anti-racism education for a global context. Encounters/Encuentros/Rencontres on Education, 15, 239-249.
• Guida-Richards, M. (2021). What white parents should know about transracial adoption: An adoptee’s perspective on its history, nuances, and practices. North Atlantic Books.
• Kendi, I.X. (2019). How to be an antiracist. One World.
• Lee, E. (2012). Antiracist teaching. In James. A. Banks (Ed.), Encyclopedia of diversity in education, Volume 1 (pp. 114-117). Sage Publications.
• Paris, D. (2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational researcher, 41(3), 93-97.
• Paris, D., &; Alim, H. S. (Eds.). (2017). Culturally sustaining pedagogies: Teaching and learning for justice in a changing world. Teachers College Press.
• Polacco, P. (2009). In our mothers’ house. Philomel Books.
• Ruskai Molina, L. (1998). Raising adopted children: Practical, reassuring advice for every adoptive parent. HarperCollins.
• Troyna, B. (1987). Beyond multiculturalism: Towards the enactment of anti-racist education in policy, provision and pedagogy. Oxford Review of Education, 13(3), 307-320.

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Music, The Garifuna Collective, Weyu Larigi Weyu

Link to full Transcript.

Quote from the Episode

If you’re a community member and also in higher ed and want to do the work of diversity, equity and inclusion, don’t come in as a savior. We don’t need saviors.

About our Guest

Josette Ferguson

Josette Ferguson (who uses they/them pronouns) is a PhD candidate at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where they are earning their degree in Educational Studies with a concentration in Cultural Foundation. While earning their doctorate, Josette works full-time as narrative coordinator for a progressive organization in North Carolina. They partner with community organizations to identify storytellers to share their stories with news outlets. In addition, they collaborate with politically progressive organizations to create a cohesive and authentic statewide narrative, in which all North Carolinians can believe in. Powered by their love of education and community, Josette believes that the most powerful tool in making change is being a bridge builder and a convener of stories. They believe that through storytelling, trust is cultivated, and communal power is built.

As a Queer, non-binary, gender nonconforming, Guyanese African American womxn, Josette uses their identities to connect with Black community members in North Carolina to expand the potential of Black political capital in the state. As they work with Black community members, Josette grounds themselves in the mantra “we have to be the change we want to see in this world”. They use this mantra to push Black community members to actively participate in the United States democratic system to create change. Moreover, Josette uses the words of Bettina Love (2019) who states, “we cannot pursue educational freedom or any type of justice without a model of democracy that empowers all” (p. 68). Josette believes in the power of representation and is motivated to increase the representation of Black and Brown people in positions of power that will create justice. Through this expansion of representation, they believe that the United States democratic system can empower all.

Resources from the Episode

All links go to the UNCG library. You must use your UNCG credentials to access.

• Love trilogy: All About Love: New Visions, Communion: the Female Search for Love,
• Salvation: Black People and Love by bell hooks
• Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom by bell hooks
• Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation through Anger by Lama Rod Owens
• We Want to Do More than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational
• Freedom by Bettina Love
• Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by adrienne maree brown
• Community Building in Social Justice Work: A Critical Approach by Silvia Bettez & Kathy Hytten

Bills to Pay Attention to in the North Carolina General Assembly

• House Bill 187: if passed, this will prevent educators from promoting Critical Race Theory.
• Senate Bill 49: if passed, this will require teachers to tell a student’s parents if they begin to question their gender. This would make it ok for a student to be outed by their teacher.
• House Bill 43: if passed, it would make it illegal for anyone under 18 to receive gender-affirming care and treatment.