Lee Shainis: All right. Welcome, everybody. Thank you for being here. Thanks for being interested in this topic, sparking Conversations About Race and Equity with English Learners. We got a good presentation, and even better tools, that you can walk away with, which is most important. Because one of the challenges with this topic is, so what do I do with this? How do I start these conversations? And our team has put together some really good resources around this.

So I am going to start the presentation, and then I'm going to put you in breakout rooms pretty quickly so you can start to discuss this. And I'm just going to share my screen right here. So let's get into this.

So real quick. I'm going to start with the desired results from this session. And I'm going to put some links in the chat later on, where you can access the slides here and some of the resources that we have available that I'm going to talk about. So two big desired results from this session are to build your excitement and confidence to try this or to expand on it if you have already been having conversations about race and equity in your programs, and to give you some ready-to-use tools and resources to make these conversations effective.

We'll talk about why this is important to have these conversations, who benefits, and how, how do we create a brave environment so that we can have these conversations-- because it's easier to avoid conversations about race and equity than to have them-- and we're going to share some specific curriculum and resources, and leave some time at the end for questions.

We're not going to take the full 90 minutes here. It's probably going to be 60 to 75, depending on how much interaction and questions there are.

So first, I want to start with a little poem, called Invitation to Brave Space. This is from facinghistory.org.

"There is no such thing as a safe space. We exist in the real world. We all carry scars and have caused wounds.

"This space seeks to turn down the volume of the world outside and amplify voices that have to fight to be heard elsewhere.

"This space will not be perfect. It will not always be what we wish it to be. But it will be our space together, and we will work on it side by side."

So that is a poem that we use a lot of times when we're having conversations about race, whether it's with our staff or some other kind of community gathering, just to set the stage. And it's this idea that there is not a true safe space when we're talking about difficult topics. But we want it to be as safe as possible and we want it to be brave.

So I'm going to have you do a little warm-up conversation here and get to know each other real quick with these three questions. So we're going to have just two small groups here. This is a nice, small group. So what brought you to this presentation? Why is this important to you? And what do you hope to take away from this workshop?

So I want you really to focus on those first two. Why did you come to this presentation? And why is this topic important to you? And I encourage you to be open with people in your groups. Try to avoid any judging. Everyone's here because they want to learn something. So let's respect that. We're all coming in at different places here. So I'm going to stop my screen-share, and we're going to do some quick small groups.

And if you have the ability to put yourself on camera, that makes the groups even better. So I'm just going to do two groups here. You can get ready and put your cameras on. All right. I see Veronica. Let's see if other people are here. I see Carolyn, Sue, Erin, Portia, and Maureen. Let's see if you can take your cameras off. You know what? Maybe we'll just do a group conversation here, actually, instead of the risk of small groups. This is a nice, small group.

So what are some things that brought you here? Would anyone like to share? You don't have to share, but I would love to hear from a few people what interested you in this topic, in this workshop. Why is this important to you? Any of those questions. Who would like to share?

Carolyn?

Carolyn Zachry: I can go first, yes. So I'm the state director for California for Adult Ed. And our office is looking at racial equity through the lens of how we can help promote more equity in the teaching force and administration so that our teachers across the state, our administrators across the state, are more reflective of the demographic in their communities so that students can see themselves in those types of leadership positions.

So we're actually starting first with our own office and working with racial equity first there. And then, the hope is to do an outward-facing contract to the state to bring someone in to have this conversation statewide with adult educators. So that's what drew me to your session.

Lee Shainis: OK, great. So you're looking at representation among teachers and administrators. Great, awesome. Thank you.

Yeah, Sue?

Sue Pon: Yeah, thank you. I've been in the ESL field a long time. And I know that, for many of our learners, this is their first experience with other kinds of people. And I have to say, I have not heard a lot about how to address this in an ESL classroom. And that's what brought me today. Thank you.

Lee Shainis: Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, we talk about how, for many of our students, this is their first experience with a room full of other people from different races and nationalities and academic backgrounds and religions. And that is both an amazing opportunity and a potential challenge. So we want to make it more of an opportunity than a challenge. And yeah, great. Thank you for sharing that, Sue.

Veronica?

Veronica Parker: Yes. Thank you. I actually want to echo what Sue said. As someone who considers themselves a lifelong learner, that's part of the reason why I'm here. Because I want to learn and be able to grow in this area. I also present on topics of racial equity. And so this topic, as it relates to ESL students, is very important as I currently am not well versed in this area. So I want to learn a little more.

Lee Shainis: OK. Awesome. Cool. Thank you for sharing that. Anyone else like to share what brought them here? Portia?

Portia La Ferla: Well, I will echo everything that's been said. And then, also, I'm a program specialist for CASAS. I work with Lori Howard on EL civics and immigrant integration metrics. And so we're interested in how those areas can be enhanced.

Lee Shainis: Awesome. So how to enhance the immigrant integration and civics metrics. Excellent. Cool. Anyone else you like to share? Erin, Maureen? You don't have to.

OK. Great. All right. Thank you all for sharing. I'm going to go back to the presentation, and then we'll have another conversation very soon.

So a little bit about our organization. So I am the co-founder of Intercambio, and I was the director for 21 years. We're based in Boulder, Colorado. That's where I am right now. I'm now contracting with Intercambio and doing conferences and fun projects, and started my own language business, called Simplified Language, recently.

Intercambio launched its first curriculum and the Immigrant Guide and Pronunciation Fun about 14 years ago. We launched a new curriculum in 2019. And we have a national network of organizations around the country that we partner with that use some of our resources and that share ideas and challenges with each other.

A lot of our program is focused on what we call mutual learning, where the idea is everyone is sharing experiences and perspectives and everyone is learning, including teachers. So it's not a top-down-- I'm the teacher, and let me tell you all these things you need to know about English and living in the US and our culture, and dah, dah, dah-- but really creating this mutual learning, which we believe leads to a sense of greater belonging and better retention and lots of other good results.

So Intercambio has programs in Boulder County, group classes, one-on-one classes. We've had about 15,000 participants. And then we have our national programs. We also have citizenship classes, and some great tools that we can provide for free for anyone. I lead cultural humility trainings for organizations. And I'll talk about cultural humility a little bit and how that ties to conversations about race and equity. And then we have a program called Community Conversations, where we pair up community volunteers with our students for speed dating conversation. And we also have a free toolkit for that for anyone interested.

And this is what the network looks like. You can see more on our website about that. It's intercambio.org.

So what are some reasons why teachers might not talk about race and equity in their classes? So Sue mentioned that she hasn't seen a lot of these kinds of topics in the adult ESL world. Why not? Any ideas? You can share in the chat or take yourself off mute.

Carolyn Zachry: I think there's just a sense of comfort. It's an uncomfortable conversation to have. And if you don't feel prepared to facilitate that conversation, then I think, to me, that's why it's not discussed.

Lee Shainis: Yeah. Yeah, good point. It's easier to not have conversations about race and equity than it is to have conversations about race and equity. And how many people out there are like, I'm an expert on this-- I feel completely prepared to answer any questions that come up about this topic? No, very few people, especially Adult Ed teachers-- not that many are confident in that way.

Yeah, Veronica, not knowing where to start. Yeah, there's so much to cover. Where do I even start with this topic? Do I start in the 1600s or do I start with Martin Luther King? Or do I start with the Indian boarding schools? I don't even know. There's so much to cover. Yeah.

And then somebody said, afraid where the conversation might go. Yeah. A lot of our students come from countries and areas where they haven't had these conversations before. And the racism and the generalizations and the stereotypes are a little bit more accepted in certain immigrant communities. So yeah, we can be afraid of what might be said. Good.

Other ideas why we might not talk about these things? Those are some big ones.

All right. Well, those are some good ones. So some other things, just fear of saying offensive or triggering things. Which kind of is the last comment, about fear of where the discussion might go. I've heard friends of mine from a lot of different countries say things. And I'm like, you can't say that. That's very offensive. And then, ideally, turning it into a conversation about it.

Yeah, maybe we think that learners don't have the language to talk about it. Somebody mentioned people don't know where to start and how to do it safely. And then, yeah, the perception might be that the level is too advanced. Which in some cases that is the case.

You don't need to be fluent in English to have a conversation about race and equity. In our program, we say, level 3 and above, we can get into these conversations. Before level 3, it's tough because there's just certain vocabulary and ways to talk about it that's challenging. But it all depends. Experienced teachers who've worked with low-level students and know how to simplify conversations can potentially even bring up these conversations in low-level classes. But the higher the level, the easier it is to have the conversation. But I wouldn't count out intermediate/low intermediate students.

What about, why is it important to have these conversations, especially in adult English language classes? Why is it important? A couple of ideas-- you can write it in the chat or take yourself off mute-- either one.

Someone said students feel seen and heard. Yeah. What else? Why else is it important to have conversations about race and equity with our English learners?

Sue Pon: For some of our students, they may be experiencing things done to them because of race. And for them, to understand where is this coming from.

Lee Shainis: Yeah. So some of them have had experiences-- negative experiences-- around race and equity, and to better understand, why is this happening to me. Good.

Another person said to understand how best to meet their needs. Excellent. Good. All right.

So a couple of other ideas. There's a movement happening right now. And we can help move the movement forward by having these conversations or we can sit on the sideline and avoid them-- which is easier. So that's the big picture thing. And somebody mentioned this-- it's similar to feeling seen and heard, but our students can also defend themselves more if they know the facts, if they know the history. If they know what's happened to other cultural and ethnic and racial groups in the past, that knowledge is power.

They can share their experiences and perspectives about topics that matter to them. They speak more and they acquire the language faster. So this is way more interesting for a lot of our students than, let's role-play about returning this item at the store. Do you need to have those conversations? Yeah. Is it going to spark language acquisition the same way a conversation about race and equity will? Probably not.

Students are going to stretch for words more. They're going to want to share experiences more. And there's also important language to learn around topics of race and equity. So little things with language can make a big difference-- "colored person" versus "person of color," that's an important distinction. And a lot of our students don't know that. So they want to know the right words to use because words are important.

Teachers can learn from their students' experiences. So this deepens the sense of community in a class when a teacher can learn about, oh, my students have experienced in this way, and they were able to share that. They felt trust to share that. So it really increases the sense of belonging and community in our classes.

We've had classes where conversations about race were just one of the many conversations. And we've had classes where it was a series on conversations on race and equity. And some of those classes got very deep-- lots of tears, lots of sharing, and lots of comments from the teacher about, oh, my god, this was amazing and it was really tough for me, and it was great that we had these conversations.

So this is different than having a role-play conversation about returning items at a store. It's taking a risk, but the potential reward is a lot bigger.

So we talked about we're not going to create a purely safe space, but we can make spaces safer. So how do we do that?

One is to set expectations and revisit those expectations often. I often talk about creating a mantra for your class-- just a couple of words that you say at the beginning and end of every class. And you can create a mantra that has to do with these types of conversations. Like, be open and kind. Don't judge. Value everyone's ideas. Whatever it is-- practice, practice, practice. Ask questions. Something that reminds your students that, OK, this is a brave space. This is a safer space, where I can share.

And mistakes are great. I always like saying that. Because people are, again, afraid to say the wrong thing. So especially with this, encourage-- create that environment where, if someone says a word that can be offensive, it's a good environment to gently correct it. So like I'll share a couple of words that I hear a lot that I gently correct people on.

One is assimilation. Like, oh, Intercambio, you're teaching people to assimilate. I'm like, well, respectfully, the word assimilation has a lot of negative connotation and history. That's what we used to talk about the Indian boarding schools and a lot of negative stuff with African-Americans and trying to assimilate them into the white dominant culture. And so we use terms like "participate" or "integrate" instead of the word "assimilate."

Or people say, oh, you work with undocumented immigrants. And if they're not a raging Tucker Carlson anti-immigrant, I will gently correct them and say, actually, at Intercambio, we prefer to use the term "undocumented immigrants" instead of "illegal." And people say, oh, I forgot. Thanks for reminding me about that. So other things.

And then another one I use a lot, which is an interesting conversation, is around the word "American." Which a lot of people use to describe US-born Americans. And say, actually, people from Central America and South America, many of them consider themselves American as well. So I prefer to use the term US American when we're talking about people born in the US or US American, traditional values, or US American history, just to specify that. Because, again, those other continents are America as well.

So little things like that. So you want to create an environment where, when you hear a word that might be offensive to people outside of your class, you can talk about it in a way that students aren't like, oh, I just got shamed for that. Because they're not going to come back if they feel like they've been shamed at all. For most students, it's optional to show up at adult English classes.

And establish connection before diving into intense topics. So I always say you can talk about food first and then get into topics of race. Establish a little bit of connection on some easier topics before you just jump right into, what kind of racism have you experienced in the US? Or how is it different where you grew up? Get into those topics, but try to establish some trust first.

Always give people an opportunity to pass. If you don't want to share experiences you've had, you don't have to. Remain neutral. Listen and paraphrase. So you're really a facilitator of these conversations. Try to reflect back what you hear people say-- not in their exact words, but paraphrasing. And it's very important to remain neutral so that you're not taking sides. We really want to present facts more than our opinions.

And we've got that feedback from some of the students. They say, I felt like there was too many opinions being brought up. Whereas, with race and equity, there's a lot of facts that can start conversations. You don't need to use opinions. There's plenty of things you can share that are very neutral to start these conversations.

Model cultural humility. So I'll talk about that a little bit. I'm leading a session just on that tomorrow if you're interested. It's a very powerful concept that's different from cultural competence, but really puts a lot of emphasis on self-reflection, around how you view different cultural behaviors, being aware of your own biases, being aware of how you form your conclusions and your beliefs about certain things, and a lot of other stuff.

And then little things-- like learn how to pronounce your students' names. I've heard a lot of teachers say, oh, I've taught my students the American way of saying their name. I'm like, don't do that. Make the effort. Step out of your comfort zone and learn how to pronounce their names correctly. So little things like that are also really important when you're creating this environment.

And finally, especially around these topics, you're going to have some conversations where the conversation could go on for days, and others where it's like people don't want to talk about it more. So know when to dig deeper. Try to read body language. And know those questions to continue conversations when it is interesting and students are talking and sharing.

So these are just some sample ground rules that you can use. You can choose a couple of these. You can choose all of them. These are in the PDF that we'll share with you if you fill out that brief form. So I won't go over all these, except for a couple here. So, one, respect confidentiality.

So one thing we talk about with that is, when we put people into small groups, they have their conversation. And then, when they come back into a larger group, we encourage what we call a harvest instead of a report-out. Report-outs are boring. Like, what did you talk-- group one, share!

Instead, a harvest is, what emerged for you? What was the theme you heard in your group? What did you hear that was really new for you? So those lead to better conversations. And if you share something you heard, don't say the person's name. So you can say, in my group, I heard somebody share an experience that they experienced-- when they were growing up, they experienced this.

Instead of, I heard Martha share this. Because then you've kind of ousted Martha. Maybe she didn't want to share that with the whole group. Maybe she felt comfortable in the small group, but not the large group. So that's one of the pieces of confidentiality is not to name who said what. And you also have the risk of misrepresenting, like, oh, Martha said this. And Martha is like, no, I didn't say that. You're totally messing this up. So by just not saying people's names is a way to respect confidentiality.

And then "I" statements-- avoid generalizing groups of people as much as possible-- even about your own group of people. So a lot of our students will be like, well, us Mexicans do it this way. It's like, well, Mexico is a big country. There's lots of different cultures within Mexico. There's rural. There's big city. People come from high education backgrounds. People have zero education. And there's lots of differences. So we encourage them to say, like, my experience is this, but not like, my country's experience is this. So that's a big one.

And allow others the opportunity to speak. This is an expectation, especially if you have some big talkers in the group and other people who don't talk as much. Having the expectation actually doesn't really help. Because people who talk too much usually aren't aware of it. But it never hurts to have that expectation.

And then, finally, expect to feel uncomfortable. If they don't feel uncomfortable, that's OK. But if they're expecting it and anticipating it, and, like, this is normal when we're talking about race and equity, it's OK. So good.

Actually, I forgot to introduce how I got into this. So I'll share briefly about how this came about. So during COVID, I was leading some online conversation classes. We were rotating who was leading the conversation classes. It was just a random group of students. And one day I said, I wonder if they want to have a conversation about race. And so I brought a conversation, and we talked about Jim Crow segregation. I showed a little video, and we had a great conversation about it. And they were like, we want to have more conversations about this because no where else are we having these conversations.

And so we formed a partnership with a group called the Common Good Collective. And together, we hosted a few large gatherings, where there was a speaker-- and you'll see one of her videos later-- and we put people into small groups. And from that, we ended up creating a curriculum, lesson plans with videos and vocabulary and all kinds of stuff that I'll share later. But that was the brief way that I got involved with this was just like, hey, I wonder if students are going to enjoy this. And they said, yes, we want we want more of this.

Because I think it was around the time of George Floyd. They were seeing stuff in the news, Black Lives Matter, and they're like, I have no idea what this is. I don't know about the history here. I don't know what's going on. And they felt left out. So that's a little bit of the history of how this started.

So what is cultural humility? Have any of you been exposed to this term-- a lot, a little, not at all? Give me a little thing in the chat. Like, 1 if it's new, 2 if you had a little exposure, and 3 if you've had a lot. All right, I see one No. Who else? What else have people experienced here?

None. You can give me a 1, 2, a 3, a None, or A Lot, or Some. I see a 1 here. All right. Well, good. This is a 1.5. Nice. I like that.

So I love cultural differences and conversations about cultural differences. And I've led a lot-- like, hundreds of trainings over the years. And before, the training was really cultural competence. And a few years ago, I was introduced to the term "cultural humility," and now that's the focus of the training. So the difference between humility and competency-- one is competency is a goal.

Cultural competency is a good thing. It's about like tools in our toolkit that allow us to interact better with people from different cultural and ethnic groups. It's things like knowing what might be offensive for a certain group of people that's not for another group of people. So those are good things to know and to have in our toolkit.

Cultural humility is a mindset. It's this ongoing learning. It's continuously reflecting on biases and how you treat and understand others. It is being aware of power imbalances. So we talk about that a lot in the world of adult education. There's a power imbalance in every classroom. There's a teacher and a student. So we can do things that expand that power imbalance or we can do things that shrink the power imbalance.

It's recognizing that no culture, no behavior, no cultural group is superior or inferior. And it's curiosity and ongoing learning. So cultural humility is hard to define with a single sentence, but these are a few things that make it up. And it's being open about what we haven't learned yet. And again, we're not teaching assimilation. We're teaching participation. We're teaching people to share.

And, again, I've got a training on this tomorrow, so I'm not going to get into it too much. But I'll allude to how we can model this when having conversations about race and equity. And then, this is a page from the Immigrant Guide, which I wrote, about inclusive language. Because, again, our students want to know, what is it? Is it Native American? Is it Indigenous? Is it Indian? Is it Asian? Is it OK to say Asian? Should I say "older person" or "senior"?

So these are some things that can spark those conversations about words. This is always evolving and changing. But, again, it can start the conversation.

So opportunities to start conversations on race-- how do we do that? One is we can integrate into existing classes or they can happen organically. So one case study that we share in the cultural humility training is something like a student says to their teacher, teacher, I've noticed that African-Americans in the US use bad grammar. Why? And a teacher can respond to that in a variety of ways.

They can say, oh, you can't say that. That's offensive. Or I've heard people say, I actually got that question last week. And I was like, well, what did you do? And they said, we turned it into a conversation about some history stuff and civil rights.

And I've heard other people who turned it into a conversation about, there's lots of different types of English, and there are many beautiful Englishes out there. And it's not better or worse. But, traditionally, our country has rewarded a certain style of speaking, which tends to be the white middle to upper-class way of speaking. So you can turn it into a conversation about power, about history, and things like that. So that's an example of how it could happen organically.

Formally is if you have, we're doing a course on this, or today, we're going to talk about segregation or Indian boarding schools or whatever it is. So it can happen in a couple of different ways.

It can be separate conversation classes. So that's, again, how it started in our program. And there's other ways that you can integrate these into your classes. So what are some ways to structure and lead the conversations? So before I go on, any questions that people have? You can raise your hand. I'm going to keep going and then demonstrate some of the lesson plans in a quick video that we have. Any questions yet?

All right. I will keep going. So first is, if you're using this in English programs, we encourage you to start with some vocabulary and pronunciation. So in the lessons that we've developed for these topics, we pick out 5 to 10 vocabulary words that have to do with the topic. So we're going to talk about abolition. This is what abolition is. This is what segregation is. This is the definition of discrimination is. This is the definition of race or the definition of racism. And get into it and give some background before you just jump into the conversation.

And again, people want to know how to pronounce these important words. So you can practice the pronunciation. And then we encourage a sample video-- a simple video. Maybe you can send it before class, if possible, so students can watch and prepare. It's very hard to find simple videos about these topics that aren't for children. So we want simple videos that are for adults. Which are very hard to find. I did a lot of searching on YouTube on my own to search for videos that an intermediate to advanced English learner would understand. And it was hard.

So we ended up developing our own series of videos in collaboration with the Common Good Collective. And I'll share just a little snippet of one of those and practice one of the conversations it gets into.

Again, present facts, not opinions, as much as possible. Which will, again, create that safe environment and not alienate certain people in the class. And then, ideally, groups of three to discuss questions. I really like groups of three. It just allows everyone to participate. And it's not too many, it's not too few, especially if you're in person.

If you're on Zoom and everyone is on camera, three people is great. If not everyone is on camera, I recommend groups of four, in case someone is off camera-- like cooking while they're doing class or something. And then, get students sharing their personal experiences, their hopes, their dreams as much as possible. So really, ask them questions that get them talking and sharing to create that sense of belonging.

And then, a very common question we ask is, how is this similar where you grew up? How is this different where you grew up? Was your community where you grew up segregated formally or informally? Were there protests where you grew up? Were they every day? Were they never? All these different things-- like, how is this different or how is this similar-- makes for very interesting conversations.

So again, these are some sample discussion questions. What have you experienced? This last one is an interesting one-- in your native country, do you have a special week, a month, to honor specific groups? We have Hispanic Heritage Month and Black History Month and other things like that. Do you have those in your native country? And so all these things that can start to create this mutual learning and spark interesting conversations.

So how to decide on topics and resources. So what topics have worked in your experiences? Has anyone had these kinds of conversations yet? And I would love to hear, if you have, what were the topics? And how did it go? I think that's one thing we need to learn. Because not a lot of people are doing this, we need to learn from people who are doing it, or have done it a little bit at least, to know what topics have really been interesting and spark great conversations and which ones have fallen flat and produce nothing.

So have any of you had conversations and done any of these topics, or something I haven't mentioned, in your programs? Anyone? Anyone? I'll give you a second in case you're.

Audience: Hi. Yeah. I don't know how related this is, but I know, when I do college applications with some of the refugees or newcomers, it's always the, what do you identify as? So I have to go back to explaining you can be gay, you can be-- so those pronouns as well. So I do get that a lot.

And I want to be in an environment that they're safe, that I can speak about it, and just be planting that seed where you can start hearing this a lot more.

Lee Shainis: Yeah, great. Thank you for sharing. Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. Actually, the first lesson is about the terms "race" and "racism," and forms, like the Census, where you have to check, what race are you, and talking through that. Because a lot of our students are confused by that, as are just a lot of people even who were born here are confused about that.

So yes, going through forms and how do you identify. And also asking the teachers-- how do you identify, how do you think about your race-- can be an interesting question as well. So yeah, thanks for sharing that, Daisy.

Other topics that have come up, either formally or informally in your classes or in your programs, around this broader topic?

I'll do my eyebrow raise for just a couple of seconds and see if anyone else would like to share.

All right. OK. Well, if you think of another one.

These are some resources. These are some short videos, some short articles, some books. If you're doing a book, it has to be a book club, where everyone is reading a chapter at a time and discussing it. There are some cool calendars and websites and stuff. So this, again, will be in the PDF that we're going to share. I'll actually share that right now in the forum here, in the chat.

So there's two things I just put in the chat. One is to access the conversations on race and equity curriculum that we have. And then the second is to get a copy of this presentation here. So you can do that at any time.

Some other videos and resources that we've used, or other programs have used, are these. So a lot of this is personal preference. Some people love certain videos for their class and other people are like, I would never use this in my class. This is terrible. So a lot of it is up to the teacher to decide what they think will work for their specific class-- knowing that.

So I wanted to show a sample from the CORE video series. So we created a series of videos here. And it's ideal for high intermediate or advanced English learners. It could be intermediate, depending. It's got 17 lessons of content, with background information, vocabulary, videos, discussion questions, online quizzes, and bonus stuff. We've also heard people say this is great for pre-GED, for civic stuff, for people transitioning to adult basic education. And that's it.

So I'm going to go to that real quick and share a video. So I'm going to share my screen. OK, let's get out of there. Let's go here.

So first, I just want to share what this looks like here. So can everyone see my screen now? Someone give me a thumbs up or a verbal Yes.

Audience: It'd be great if you could make it a little bigger.

Lee Shainis: OK. Great. Let's see if I can do that. Oh, that's making it smaller. What's going on?

Audience: Yeah, there we go. That's better.

Lee Shainis: There we go. Let's do that.

So these are some of the teaching slides here. So you'll see there's a bunch of days here. And if you click on each of those days, here are some of the videos here. So the first one is Race and Racism. The second video is about Abolition. The third is about Segregation. The fourth is about Protest. The fifth is about Intersectionality. And so all of these are really about African-American history. But we'd like to eventually expand it and include other stuff about Native Americans and Hispanic history and lots of other things-- Asian-Americans, and things like that. This was our first round of what we did.

So I can click on Day 1 here, and you can see that this will go to some slides here, some intro notes. So it's got the agendas here, some little conversation questions to start the conversations before you watch-- here's one of the videos. I'm not going to show this video right now-- some of the vocab and so on. We'll define race. We'll define racism.

Here's an example of the Census and what would you check and why, and what questions do you have about this, and so on. So it will get into that. And then it'll do some more vocabulary and some activities, where you go through and see what the vocab words mean, and so on. So it's a full-on lesson plan for these.

And then-- let's see-- there's little timelines here, which are very helpful. Sometimes it's important for people to see some of the history just through simple visuals. Some more stuff. And let's see where we get to.

So here's a sample of just one of the first videos. I might need to share video.

[video playback]

- Language is power. Words are like signs that point to the meaning in our lives. My name is Courtney Napier. And as a journalist, I've discovered that certain words are extremely important because they point us to stories of people throughout history and all around us.

Over the next several videos, we'll be spending time with these words-- race, racism, abolition, segregation, intersectionality, activism, justice, and protest. Don't worry-- we'll be talking about these words a lot. So you don't have to remember them all now.

We'll see these words that are signs that point to the powerful stories and ideas of notable Black leaders, past and present. I'm hoping that each of us can use these words, with their inspiration and courage, so that we can have more meaningful, helpful, and healing experiences in our lives. I believe everyone wants that.

So tell me if this sounds familiar. You're sitting in the waiting room at a doctor's office. There are piles of magazines. Maybe there's a medical video playing on a screen in the corner. You're filling out a form on a clipboard. You stop.

The form is asking you to circle your race. Hmm? Are you Black, Asian, Pacific Islander, white? There's such a long list. You think, I'm here for a headache or a sore throat. Why do I have to circle my race? How do people even define race? And why does it matter?

These are very important questions. And in fact, for hundreds of years, those questions have affected the health and vitality of this country, the United States.

Today, we're going to look at the following words-- race and racism. We'll meet W.E.B. Du Bois, a person who helped this country find better ways to think about racism, like the idea he created called double consciousness.

We're hoping that if we have better ways to talk about the story and the place we're living in, we can help heal the wounds of the past and make life better in the present.

Let's start with a definition of race.

[end playback]

Lee Shainis: OK. So that's just a brief example. So the way it works is there's an introduction, there's some vocabulary, there's some explanation, and then we get to discussion questions. So Courtney will pose a couple of questions for people to discuss in small groups.

This is another video.

[video playback]

- Welcome back, everyone. The Montgomery bus boycott wasn't just a powerful protest. It was also the start of the work of one of the most famous preachers and activists in the whole world.

Martin Luther King was born on January 15, 1929. My grandmother was just four years old when he was born. He was raised in a wealthy neighborhood in Atlanta, Georgia. His father was a college-educated minister and his mother was a teacher.

[end playback]

Lee Shainis: So there's a little background and then it will get into-- there's a discussion question. What would you like to see change in the United States or in the world? So you break people up into small groups and have a question, have a discussion around a topic like that.

So that is a quick example of that. And I was going to have you all discuss that, but I think we'll just go back to the presentation here.

Yeah. So that's just a quick sample of that. And I think this is a small group, so what are people's thoughts or questions at this point, if anything?

I was thinking of putting us in small groups and discussing that question, but I think I'd rather just kind of open it up to questions and thoughts about if anyone has anything they want to share. And again, I will put those two links in the chat here.

So if you want access to that curriculum-- that's honestly, by far, the most important part of this presentation-- is, if you want access to the curriculum, that's right there. And then, if you want a copy of this presentation, you can fill out the chat form there.

So does anybody have any questions? Or we can jump to the end here-- which is one thing that you want to implement from this workshop or something else you need in order to make this happen. And then there's also a QR code, too, there if you want.

So I'd love to hear from a couple of people-- any thoughts, questions, something you want to take back and try at your organization? Anybody? Anybody? Anybody?

Carolyn Zachry: So I'll jump in real fast. I just think that, from the state perspective, what I appreciate so much is that there is curriculum to help guide this discussion for English learners. And I think that's an important piece. And it's certainly something I'll share in my office. Because I don't know that all of my state office staff know that there is opportunities at the instructor level for this to happen for English learners. So I appreciate that.

Lee Shainis: Great. Yeah, thank you. Like we said at the beginning, a lot of people don't do this because they don't know where to start. They don't know what to cover. They don't know if they're providing accurate information. So any time we're approaching any difficult conversation about race or culture, or anything, if it's in a book, if it's in a lesson plan, it's easier for the teacher to bring it up. It's easier for the students to think, well, this is just part of my language learning process. This is the topic. And we're going to talk about it. So that's why we really wanted to put it into lesson plans that folks could use.

Oh, I forgot to point out-- in the video-- I don't know if you noticed that I turned on the closed captioning because, for students, a lot of times it's helpful for them to hear it and see it. And I also tell the students, it's OK if you don't understand everything. Because some of the language is advanced. So just really try to understand as much as possible. It's OK if it's 70% or even less. You could still get the main topics and understand the main points.

Great. Thanks for sharing that, Carolyn. Other thoughts about things you want to try, something you learned, something you still need, something you've done that's worked? Anyone else-- Daisy, Sue, Veronica, Portia, Maureen? You can write in the chat or take yourself off mute. Are you still thinking? Are the wheels turning? Portia?

Portia La Ferla: Well, yes, it's a starting point, for sure. So I think it's hard to talk about when you're just at a starting point. But you have to start somewhere. And the idea of cultural humility is a really important mindset. I do agree with that. And the ability to remain curious and to participate and to not think one needs to be an expert, but to be open minded and participatory, I think all of that's a really important beginning.

Lee Shainis: Yeah. Nice. Awesome. So really, beginning with cultural humility and not feeling like you have to be the expert in order to have these conversations, yeah. So at the cultural humility training tomorrow, I give a whole series of examples of cultural differences and how we approach those, either with a curious lens or a judgmental lens. Because oftentimes our instinct is to judge behaviors that were different from what we were taught growing up. So we'll get into more examples of that. Good.

Veronica?

Veronica Parker: For me, it's the resources that were provided. Some of them I am aware of. Some of them are new to me. And so, as I'm continuing to learn, but then also on the CAP website, we post links to different resources that are available for people to further engage in learning and being able to utilize this information. So being able to have access to those resources and be able to share them with others is important.

Lee Shainis: Yeah. Awesome. Cool. There's so many great resources out there, I think it can be overwhelming for people. But yeah, to make them available completely and have a place that's vetted some and can recommend a few key ones is helpful. So yeah, thank you for sharing that.