Vrain Waves: Teaching Conversations with Minds Shaping Education
We Got This with Cornelius Minor
Episode Summary
We hope you’re sitting down. With a notebook. And that you’re ready to hit the pause button a bunch of times, because you’re going to need some reflection time for this one! This episode has so much insight we had a hard time uploading the audio. Join us for an interview with Cornelius Minor, the author of We Got This: Equity, Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be (https://www.heinemann.com/products/e09814.aspx). Enjoy, and please tweet or share your takeaways so we can keep this conversation going! #makesomevrainwaves
Episode Notes
Connect with Cornelius Minor
Website: kassandcorn.com | Twitter: @MisterMinor | Book: We Got This
Connect with Vrain Waves
Twitter: @VrainWaves | Becky Twitter: @BeckyEPeters | Ben Twitter: @mrkalb
Links & Show Notes
- Cornelius’ Introduction & Background (02:05)
- Working through and reflecting on failure; teacher imagination (03:45)
- We Got This, the book, and the Teacher-as-Hero Narrative (05:59)
- Why is the Teacher-as-hero narrative problematic? (07:40)
- We all want better (09:52)
- Teaching in the contemporary political moment
- We are pro-kid - to help them create opportunities for themselves
- “Anything that abridges opportunity is my enemy.”
- Challenge: How do we actualize ‘better’
- How do we navigate the contemporary political moment? (12:05)
- Everything is iterative
- Story about Cornelius & his soccer team
- Bringing it back to the classroom - what it means to be a member of a community - advocacy & activism (16:10)
- The world hands you a curriculum - if you’re observant & you listen, you can do really powerful things
- How can we all help surface and solve those stories? (17:55)
- Racism, ableism, classism - Who should be working to solve it?
- Empathy is a really powerful tool
- Decolonize school by trying to understand each other
- Get to know our students better by listening - “Where is the poetry in this person?” (21:04)
- Spend our time observing (22:35)
- Labels are necessary shorthand but we have to avoid getting trapped in those (23:08)
- Disability spread - the spread effect (23:57)
- Hip Hop Ed (24:31)
- #hiphoped
- Art vs. product (25:08)
- At the heart of hip hop is innovation / engineering / iterative design
- Fearless around the act of creation
- Hip hop came out of the Bronx
- Can’t teach without the crowd
- How can we be more fearless in our creation? (28:36)
- What is school?
- True creation is messy & noisy - where are we leaving space for that during the school day?
- Embrace approximation (instead of perfection) (30:12)
- How do we create space for learning from each other? (31:45)
- Be deliberate about it
- Ms. Disbrow as Cornelius’ mentor
- Watching specific teaching moves, going into each other’s classrooms at least once a week - specific, scheduled time to watch, then specific, scheduled time to practice the learning
- Practices in literacy instruction (35:49)
- Students and book selection - craft independence
- “We’re here to create book culture.”
- Independent reading time in class (37:51)
- Agency for students (39:05)
- Modeling in writing (39:52)
- Letting go of power without letting go of control (44:27)
- Physics of human relationships
- Create multiple points of investment / sharing power
- “How can I raise a kid’s status in front of their peers?”
- How to teach with deep community engagement (48:18)
- Parents & teachers need to see each other as experts
- How can I labor to understand each student in order to give them the best possible experience?
- To learn more from Cornelius Minor:
- Wrap Ups & Take Aways (52:21)