SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, math, privilege, students, educational equity, ways, work, justice, talk, education, teacher, classroom, teachers, communities, book, great, recognize, feel, thinking, elevate

SPEAKERS

Amber Cabral, Jose Vilson

Amber Cabral 00:00

Three. Privilege is all around you. It shows up in your clothes, where you live, the places you frequent, your network capital, and even how you spend your money. It’s useless until you recognize it. So it’s time to stop feeling guilty and figure out how to use your privilege to make an impact. Welcome to guilty privilege. Dear Friend Jose, who I’ve known for almost 20 years, which is a long time giving my age away at this point, and I’m excited to have him here, because when you know someone that long, you get to see their career transition. You get to see all of the ways that they grow and evolve and make an impact. And since we are talking a little bit about guilt as well as privilege, I happen to know that he has some juice to share. So let’s jump right into the conversation. I’d love for you to first introduce yourself to the audience.

Jose Vilson 00:56

Thank you for having me. Amber, 20 years. Holy cow. My name is Jose vilson. I am a full time doctoral student at Teachers College, Columbia University, studying sociology and education with a policy concentration. I’m also the executive director of educolor, a co founder as well, an organization that’s dedicated to race and social justice issues. In addition, I have any number of other things that have happened across my lifetime, including being a 15 year veteran math teacher in Washington, Heights, New York City. So all that said, Though I’m just really happy when I get to take naps, for example, because that’s the thing. So thank you for having me and thanks. This is awesome.

Amber Cabral 01:37

It is awesome, and I have so many things I can talk to you about but I remember when you first started as a math teacher first, because I hate math, and you actually made it a little bit interesting, so that was helpful. But in addition to that, I remember us talking about you being a new teacher, and you talking about how you didn’t necessarily speak Spanish as well as you thought you should, and but if you didn’t speak any Spanish at all, you would have struggled as a teacher. So I just want to talk a little bit because I’ve recently learned how important it is to have multilingualism in classrooms and how impactful that is with students. So I would love to talk just a bit about why you thought it was so important to be able to speak Spanish, even though it wasn’t required for you to do your job.

Jose Vilson 02:20

Thank you for that, because it’s interesting. I got hired through the NYC Teaching Fellows Program, and through that program, they told me I can teach in three districts, but one of them specifically required at least some form of Spanish. And I said, Oh, okay, I guess I’ll just jump in there. But really, what came critical for me was that when I went into the classroom, students knew immediately that I was able to connect with them through their languages, but not just through the language, but also through the culture. We know too many people, for example, who speak Spanish, but they don’t want to connect with kids in that way, but I was able to connect with them through the languages and say, Okay, now that you have that part, I can also show you this part as far as the English so that you can become that multilingual, fluent learner, and it was really prominent in terms of the work that I’ve been doing for the last 18 years or so. I keep being surprised by that, but generally it just feels like we in America have a hard time dealing with people who have more than one official language, which is wild, and even more so, that for folks who don’t speak English, it’s like, okay, so who cares? I mean, English is kind of boring anyway, in some ways, like, we might as well just learn how to speak multiple languages so that we can traverse the world in the best ways possible and actually be more fluent, not just with people’s languages, but also people’s cultures. And so like, I would do math lessons, for example, where I would just take advantage take advantage of different things. So I say, oh, like, centavo, right? Like, instead of saying, Oh, here’s what a percent is, it’s something out of 100 No, actually, like, tell me what a penny is. Oh, that’s centavo. What do you notice about scent? It looks like percent. Oh, so like, this one penny is one out of 100 because it’s a sense that you already recognize from your language. And kids were like, oh, like, and I was able to get them in a matter of, like, 10 minutes because I took advantage of what they were doing right across the street at the grocery store when they were going to the convenience store, like, these things that were activated within them already. I never assumed that students didn’t know, yeah, I’d rather activate things that they already had within them.

Amber Cabral 04:22

Yeah, I totally love this scent example, because that’s exactly what I mean when I say, you’re a great teacher. So one of the things I used to hate about math is I never felt like it had a reason. Like I was like, Why do I need these numbers? Like, what are they for? But I think when you connect it to someone’s day to day, or their everyday use or like, what their purpose is. It helps a lot. Now here’s what I want to dig into a little bit with that. So yes, the language is a huge part, and I know it helps you to connect, but also being able to pull math in to people’s day to day lives, like we do know that we use math in some pretty common ways, like money, yeah, but there are lots of other ways. That math is really relevant, and you do a great job of talking about this even now on your Instagram. So I just want to talk a little bit about how you have made it easy to inject math into your day to day, so it doesn’t feel like I’m learning this separate thing, but instead it feels like something useful.

Jose Vilson 05:20

I mean, it’s tough because let’s call it for what it is. Most of what we’re learning may not be used in our day to day, right? Like, no one’s going to be thinking about exponents all the time, but sometimes they’re going to be thinking about what are different patterns that are happening around them that allow them to make predictions about what they see. So perfect example, New York City, when we are looking at traffic and all that other good stuff. Sometimes, when you’re in the corner, you want to determine whether or not you can make it across the street in time. So you start doing for some very quick math to figure out whether you got to be safe, or whether you can jaywalk or not, right? So you start looking at the velocity of like, how the car is coming. You start looking at like, how the patterns are going, the red lights, green light, so on and so forth. And all of a sudden you’ve done about like 1012, different math problems in a matter of a second. If that’s not fluency, then I don’t know what is I mean. Too much of what we see in this country, too is that we’ve recognized that math is important, but we don’t recognize it enough to the point where we say it’s not good for our students to not have enough math within them to be able to know it frequently and fluently. It’s not for me to say, Okay, well, you know, like you should know algebra, you should know trigonometry, you should know you don’t need to know all of that stuff. But I need a, I need to give you access to the material that you could be successful. But then B, and most importantly is you can use some of the same techniques that you use in math to solve everything that’s happening around you. I can’t tell you how many times, for example, like my mom had something that she had to deal with in her in her house. If it was like a sofa being moved in, I actually used the Pythagorean Theorem to try to get that that sofa into the into the elevator and through her door. And she was like, why are you doing all that math? I’m like, you’ll see. And then, sure enough, she had a brand new sofa in her living room. And that was because I use the Pythagorean Theorem. People don’t think that. It’s like, No, I’m just using the things that were already instilled in me, that estimations I was able to make very quickly to be able to do something that was practical in that moment in time. And so these are things that really matter, and I wish that more people were thoughtful about that, because if we did the same thing with reading, for example, we’d say, Oh, well, you know, this kid can’t read, it’d be a crime, yeah, if a student couldn’t read. But for somebody to say they’re not a math person, it’s not your fault. It’s It’s America’s fault, more generally, for not being thoughtful about saying, you know, we want to give every child access to this math, and when we don’t do that, then it’s our problem. It’s not the children’s problem. Yeah,

Amber Cabral 07:43

it’s your passion around math, for me, like so and you know this about me, but when I was in undergrad, I had, we had this math test that we had to take to get out, that’s right? And oh my gosh, I took it five times, like, it was so hard, and then ultimately, witnesses, obviously, before I knew you So, but obviously, like, there was a point where I got a tutor and they changed my life because it was connected to what I needed so that I could connect to Matt. So you’re right, it’s how you teach. And when I think about the work that I do now, my goal is very similar to yours. I’m not necessarily like this. Is this theory here? Is this data? I am more interested in you understanding, how does privilege show up in your life? How do you use that privilege to apply it? How are you being very intentional about the concepts that show up when we’re talking about diversity, equity, inclusion, allyship, et cetera. I am less concerned about you being able to rattle off what it means, and that sounds like that’s kind of the same direction that you take as well. Hey there, if you’re listening and finding value in today’s episode and want to add a couple tools to your toolbox, I’ve written a couple books that you might find useful. My first book, allies and advocates is to help you be able to show up as an ally or an advocate and to help create a more inclusive and equitable culture, whether that’s in your own life or in the workplace. My second book is a little different. It’s called say more about that. What say more about that does is help you to push back advocate and actually challenge. It gives you tips, tools and language to help you navigate difficult discussions, whether that’s in your personal space or your workspaces. So if either of these tools sound like they might be useful for you, you can scroll down into the show notes and click the link and get your own copy of either allies and advocates or say more about that. Back to today’s episode. So I want to talk a little bit about educational privilege. What are your thoughts in terms of and I know you’re in school for some of this, so this is probably going to be exciting for you. So what are your thoughts in terms of, well, let me ask it this way, what does educational privilege look like, particularly in the US,

Jose Vilson 09:53

educational privilege looks like in the United States, saying, Well, we are to mandate. Eight that everybody gets an education up until and perhaps a little past the eighth grade, but no more than that. But then we in America believe ourselves to say, Oh, well, everybody should get, should get an equal education. But those of you who’ve ever read Animal Farm will recognize that we want to equal education, but we want our particular children’s education to be more equal than everybody else’s. And so that is to say, we do all sorts of things to try to, I guess, open that gap between our child and everybody else’s, because we believe there’s a competition. As a stark example, for example, we just went through a whole series of shutdowns throughout the United States, right from 2020 to 22 ish, I guess. And then we did not do the SAT. We made it sat optional. But yet it’s still, when you walk around these campuses, there’s still the same set of situations happening, right? Like you still have the same student body. They’re all doing great in their own respective ways, or they’re acting in ways that they should, and so on and so forth. So this, the notion of college is still persisting, even when you don’t have all these SATs and a CTS and yet, and still, people are paying upwards of 1000s, if not millions, of dollars it’s due to their kid to take the SATs so that they can have a better advantage over their respective counterparts. And it’s like, no actually, if you learn the community, then you wouldn’t have to worry about any of that stuff, right? Like you would just be able to say, I have my own educational goal that I would like to achieve, and I want to be able to do this in communities, so that everybody can thrive in the ways that they can. And so even as well, because people talk about tax properties, for example, I’m like, how do you talk about taxes when, if all you focus on is that? Okay? Great. But there are communities who literally say, I will pay more taxes to ensure that my kid has a great school, and then we’ll also make sure that in the laws that these other schools don’t get funded as well, because I need that gap to persist in my mind so that we can win this, this challenge here. And so that’s where the educational privilege does come. And of course, for folks like us, when we do get into these spaces of higher education, we’re like, what’s going on here? So either we turn up our hood a little bit and we’re like, Yo, you know what? Like, I feel you on that, but now we can’t, I can’t rock with that. Like, I gotta be about my people on the street, or we completely acculturate and assimilate in the ways that we do, and set that aside and say, We’re gonna be full of kadeems and try to separate ourselves from everybody else. And that’s a problem too. So that too is a privilege,

Amber Cabral 12:22

yeah, so educolor? So you run a nonprofit called educolor, and inside of the name, you actually talk about advocating for educational equity. What? What does that mean? What is I mean, you talked a little bit just now about some of the inequity that we experience. But what is, what is advocating for Educational Equity look like through educolor.

Jose Vilson 12:42

I mean, it’s it’s multifaceted, but I’ll start off with the simple stuff. I think, into personally, education equity means that everybody gets what they needs. And so what I noticed with children in the and I love the classroom perspective, because it gives you a lot of what you see as a microcosm for what you want the rest of the society to see. So in my in my classes, there will be students with IEPs, which, those of you don’t know, that’s a individual educational program, right? And so everybody recognizes who has an IEP and who doesn’t amongst the student body, but they have special allowances, and they know that the student needs different ladders and different, I guess, shoots, for that matter, to get what they need from the teacher. And so in the same way, we need to start thinking about not that everybody gets exactly the same thing, but that everybody gets what they need in order for them to survive and thrive in the spaces that they’re in. And so when we fight for educational equity, we are thinking about issues, for example, of multilingualism, and how so many of our children just need to be able to get the nouns that they need from somebody who they can trust, and then build that language within because we have so many spoken languages, right? That’s one element. The second is that, yes, like, there is a big differential as to how resources get doled out across the country. And then, of course, third, like, even thinking about notions of like, just straight up, like, who’s black, who’s not, who’s Indian? Should I say Native American, First Nation, so on and so forth. We have so many students who get pushed out of our schools just for what they look like, yeah, just for who they are. So

Amber Cabral 14:15

just to jump in, you have, it’s educolor, yeah? Just to make sure that the color part matters? Oh, yeah. And so I just want to, like, zoom in on that aspect for a moment, because one of the things I love about educolor is that it prioritizes centering the identities of people of color, not not just the student, but also the teachers. Can you talk a little bit about why it’s important for both the students, but also for the teachers and also for us in the community to be a part of, you know, an educational equity experience, or at least thinking about educational equity. I mean, as you know, I don’t have kids, but I still care a lot about this. But why should we

Jose Vilson 14:52

what we notice over time? And of course, myself being a black Latinx man, but also. Any number of people who I’ve spoken to is that we put race first because we wanted to ensure that that was spoken about. So if we said all other things were equal, then race would still play a large factor into how people actually treated us. So for example, in the disability community, there’s a big conversation as to who gets treated and how so often we noticed that the black students were getting referred to, you know, special ed, so on and so forth, because it was a form of detention. Was a form of confinement, as opposed to those who were white students that were getting the same labels. They were getting longer time to do their tests. They were getting extended treatment. They were treated it in many ways with kid gloves, right and right, that would be that. And so that was happening all across the board. You know, white women versus black women, so on and so forth. And this is just white and black, but yes, like, even when you look at differentials between, like, who makes what monies and who gets to work where black women administrators have struggling in different capacities in the way that their white male counterparts don’t, yeah, and so even when you get to those upper echelons, you still see those racial dynamics happening. And so educolor wanted to focus on that color part, because we recognized that that coalition was powerful, and it was a way for us to elevate a lot of these racial biases, but also racial triumphs and the ways that we can actually win through the cultures and elevate culture in the way that we do. Hey, I hope you’re enjoying

Amber Cabral 16:24

today’s episode of guilty privilege. My name is Amber Cabral and I wanted to share with you that I actually do this for a living. So if you’re interested in coaching or training or workshops or even a conversation like this one, you can reach out to me and my team by going to cabralco.com that website link is in the show notes, and we can work with you to create an experience to bring conversations that are sometimes difficult to have to your workplace or to your team. Now, back to the show. Okay, so you talk a lot about justice, and I love that you use that word, but I will be honest, a lot of people hear justice, not myself, but many people that I work with in a lot of the communities that I support sometimes hear justice and get a little antsy. We think you know about things that can sound maybe a bit assertive or aggressive or angry in classrooms, but I think using the word justice is both deliberate and very useful. Can you talk about why when you’re talking about educolor, or really when you’re talking about the work you do, you often bring it back to the word justice. Yeah,

Jose Vilson 17:27

so it’s interesting because some of the most just filled spaces end up being some of the happiest and ecstatic spaces I’ve ever been in. There was a classroom I visited in Pasadena, California, my man Manuel Rustin teaches ethnic studies for, I think, 10th and 11th grade. And when you walk into his classroom, just joy, like the music that you hear, the levels of like happiness that you kind of see among the students, even if they’re like, super grouch in the morning, but generally, like you see, they seem to be happy. And you ask them, and then, like, yeah, like, this feels like a space where I came to learn about myself and about the way that my people can be elevated. It isn’t just like these crime and gloom stories. It’s really about how we elevate and make right what what was wrong for so many years. And so from a justice perspective, like, the way I think about it, I start from a set of values. And like, here are the things that we value as human beings. And it would be love. It would be lovely for us to get to the part of shared humanity, right. But then when we have that level of like, that foundation of love and care and really respecting each other and dignity for everybody, then we can get to the justice part. Because the Justice part says, Oh, we’re gonna make right what has been wrong. And then when we do it, we could do it individually and personally. That’s great. But then when we do that societally, we can, we can make that even more exponential. We do that for every single body. We can make sure that everybody feels like justice has been done for us. And so it’s interesting, because the folks who are super nervous about that word are some of the folks who also need that word too, because there’s a lot of white people who actually need more justice because they’ve been separated from everybody else and all their other rich cultures too. So when you ask them, oh, what’s your culture, they can’t tell us in so many cases, because, like, they’ve been separated from folks who can actually help them tap in to things that are affirmative about what they do and how they can live and love and learn more more efficiently and perhaps more effectively. So these are things that I’m thinking about. And you know, I love exploring these notions. And when people say, oh, like, I didn’t think you were as angry. I thought you were so angry. And now I don’t think that I’m like, Yeah, I mean, I’m very passionate about what I do, and I get to be angry because of all these institutional harms, but you come into a space I can show you. I can model for you what it means to actually love one another in the ways that we do societally. Yeah,

Amber Cabral 19:47

I love that you paired justice with love. I don’t think that we think about justice and love as things that go together, but if you even look at some of like our history, I mean, just in the US, justice is off. In an act of love, it is often fighting for room to be able to love, right? And so I love the idea that you pulled that in, because it’s a theme that, to me, too often gets lost in what we think of when we are solely focused on justice. We think of like criminal justice, or like lawyers and those. I mean, policy matters a lot. You’re studying policy, right? So that’s obviously a big part of it, but it doesn’t have to be angry. It doesn’t have to be this thing that is causing all of this contention. It is actually something that’s working for the betterment of the people. So with that, I want to just zoom in for just a moment. So you wrote a book before I wrote a book. Y’all, you wrote a book. Okay, I love this book, and by the way, I am quoted in this book. Is the first book I was quoted in. All right, so I’m referencing this book. It’s called this is not a test. Can you tell I think this? Let me say this first. I think that this book is a book that any especially if you are a new teacher, you should read. I think you wrote it as a fairly new teacher, and for that reason, I think it speaks really well to that experience. I also think if you are a parent, this is a great read. So that’s my take on the book. I would like for you to talk a little bit about why folks should hop out and grab and this book has been out for a while, y’all, but it’s a great read, so I would love for you to talk a little bit about it and why people should hop out and pick it up. My

Jose Vilson 21:19

reason for why people should pick up the book changes over time, mainly because it hits people in so many different ways, but the number one reason why people have picked up the book when they told me so is because it helped them decide to stay in education. There were so many books that were coming out at the time. Oh, here’s why I left. Oh, here’s why teachers are leaving. Oh, here’s why we’re miserable, and here’s what’s going on in our country. And so, like, we need to leave. And I was like, no, actually, like, here’s why we decided to stay and do this work with children and with communities and with anybody who wants to do this work with us. It was making an argument twofold. Number one, for any number of educators to continue to stay in education, because we needed people to continue that fight. It’s almost the way that Imani Perry thinks about it. It’s not that we’re doing these things in spite of what’s happening with the pain. It’s through that pain that we still feel, that we need to go through this work. That’s one element, and then the second is for everybody else to see that. Hey, there are teachers who really deeply care about the work that we do, and I want to show you just how much we care about this work. And so there was not enough of that happening. There were not enough stories being told about how much we love this work. And so I put it out there. I said, I’m gonna write that book that I don’t see on the shelf, words of Toni Morrison. So there,

Amber Cabral 22:39

I love that. And I will say this, you convinced me. You helped to convince me that I was a teacher. I never described myself as a teacher, but I remember us having some conversations about some of my goals, and you were like, well, I mean, you’re a teacher so and I was like, I’m not a teacher. I am not in a classroom. And what I love about this book is that you quote a lot of people that you consider to be teachers that are not formal teachers. And so it encouraged me to kind of let go of this idea that teacher has to be this narrow thing. We all have the opportunity to do that. Okay, my next question, last question, love that. What are you working on or have coming out that we can look forward to?

Jose Vilson 23:12

Well, number one, educolor is finally getting to a point when we are going to make this into a full time movement, and that’s the promising space. And so we do need something that can galvanize any number of people from across the country to really believe, not just in public schooling, but the public good, the idea that we can actually inform a democracy is really important, and that’s kind of our work when it comes to educating more generally, second is that, yes, like, there are going to be some works, including some books that we hope to put out there for the general public. Yes, I do need to get to work on writing it, but it’s there, and I hope that people get a sense of that. Of course, during my math work, like, people always ask me, So when are you going to write a math book? I’m like, What do you mean a math book? Like, y’all got textbooks? Like, no, like, you need to give me something. And I’m like, okay, great, I can do that for you. But more importantly, just, you know, continue to do the work and continue to get out there inspire as many people as possible. Wherever you need me, I can be there, and usually, especially when it comes to folks like you, it’s never a matter of if but when. Yeah,

Amber Cabral 24:18

so you’ve never said no to me.

Jose Vilson 24:20

I mean, that’s, that’s big facts I do my best. And so for me, I feel like, if I just keep moving in the ways that I do, and keep with integrity, actively listen in the ways that I know you do, because that’s, that’s a technique that people just do not take advantage of. And that’s why I said, No, actually, she’s a teacher, because, like, active listening is a big part of what we try to do here. But then, generally, yeah, like, what I what I hope to aspire to, is generally to keep moving work in the ways that allows people to keep moving around this world. Because this world, I know it’s truly tough right now, but I think we can do it. I know we can make it, yeah.

Amber Cabral 24:52

So my last question is, you know, kind of, just to give some some perspective, so the show is called guilty privilege, all right? And I call it guilty privilege, because I think that many people have privilege and feel a little guilty about it, or people are not aware of their privilege. But I actually, you know, think privilege has a little bit of a negative connotation. We can use it for lots of things, as we’ve talked about in our conversation. So I would love to know what one privilege Do you have that you refuse to feel guilty about? You

Jose Vilson 25:19

know, I refuse to feel guilty about all the education that I’ve gotten. And I know it’s feels weird, but I mean, there’s one dynamic, which is, you know, WEB DuBois graduating from Harvard and then saying the privilege was all theirs. That’s, that’s always been a phenomenon. I personally don’t aspire to that. But I understand the sentiment, yes, but then also knowing too, that, you know, I’ve done a whole lot in order for me to get this education, and I know that that’s a whole bunch of cultural capital that I’ve accumulated. But then I don’t feel guilty about it, because what I do with that is I flip it over to the communities and the kids who I aspire to point to, and get America to really consider how we can redo all this work that we’re trying to do, whether I’m in academe, in those dusty classrooms, or like, I’m actually working with communities. I’m working with teachers like, so I don’t apologize for that level of privilege, because I understand where it’s come from. I came from really, like, serious poverty, but I was very fortunate to get to where I am now, and I’m hoping that more people can, like, I just want to put a wedge on the door, yeah, so that more people can walk in and bum rush that door.

Amber Cabral 26:26

Yes, that’s for. That’s what it’s for. I appreciate that. Thank you for joining me on our talk today. Thanks for having me all right. You