Cottrell-Williams:           Education, to me, must inherently be driven by responsiveness, student  

centeredness, and therefore equity. If I am responding to the kids that I have in front of me, then I am working intentionally to provide them what they need, regardless of their identity. Having a larger awareness of historical and socio-political context and how that impacts their experience as they walk into my classroom only adds to my ability to be intentional about being responsive to them and to be generous with them and their motives. When a kid is pushing against me, because I've done so much work around understanding the socio-political context, I can recognize that it doesn't have anything to do with me. It’s got to do with what they are experiencing. I may have contributed to what they are experiencing right now, even if it's not my fault. When a man requests a woman to smile and when the woman responds in what feels like, to the man, an over-the-top way, it's not about that one thing that he said. It's not his fault, even though he triggered it. It's her whole lifetime of being told to smile and how to be desirable and acceptable in the presence of men. So, this reaction is not an overreaction, even though it feels like it at that moment. It's based on all of this history; what she's carrying. It’s the same thing with kids. This is how I view the work of education. I don't see any of it as separate. I can't simply do equity today, and tomorrow it’s something else. It’s the same with SEL. You can't just “kindness” your way out of racism. There's more to it. And if we try to, we just continue to harm people.  

 

Pagnotta:           What would you say to a teacher who was trying to “kindness” out  

of racism, how would you help them move from that space? 

 

Cottrell- Williams:           A lot of my work with educators is in holding up a mirror to their practice  and helping them to consider an alternative perspective that hasn't been considered yet. I will encourage people to add two words, “for whom”, to the end of their description of how they are promoting kindness. I want them to consider whose comfort they are centering. Who gets to experience kindness and in what ways might just “being kind” not actually be getting to the root of a child's experience in the classroom? How might just “being kind” not actually change anything, in the same way that if there's something on fire, and I just spray the flame, the fire is not going to go out, because I haven't figured out what's actually burning. There are those in the class that may experience kindness differently. Doing that kind of reflective questioning is a helpful place to start.  

 

Teaching is so much a core piece of one's identity. Almost every teacher goes into it for the love of the children or the content. It's a heart job. And so, whenever I am coaching a teacher, I have to be really aware of that aspect and how quickly their defenses can go up because it may feel as if I have accused them of harming children. They love their children and they're good teachers, so they wouldn't do that. So, this is where it’s helpful for me to use an analogy: I imagine that when my kid is an infant, she's getting a diaper rash and I'm putting Butt Paste (diaper rash cream) on her and the diaper rash isn't getting any better. And so finally I take her to the doctor and the doctor discovers that she's allergic to some ingredient in the Butt Paste and that's why the diaper rash isn't going away. Certainly, I feel like I'm a bad mom, but my response is never, “That's impossible, I'm a good mom. I would never harm my child. You're accusing me of harming her on purpose, of giving her the diaper rash. I'm a good mom, so that’s impossible. I'm going to go home and I'm going to keep putting Butt Paste on because you're wrong about me.” That sounds ridiculous. Of course, I would feel terrible. I would feel guilty, “Oh my, I was hurting my baby and I didn't even know it.” But I would immediately switch the diaper cream because I found out I was causing harm.  

 

Pagnotta:          That makes it so concrete. As Maya Angelou said, “When we know  

better, we do better.” 

 

Cottrell-Williams:           When I give feedback, it's not an attack on you as a person. In fact, I  

actually believe you are a good person and you want to do the right thing. Without looking in the mirror, without exploring, “How have I been inadvertently causing harm?” we may continue to do so without realizing it. This reflection opportunity will allow you to think about what ways you might be inadvertently doing things that you didn't mean to. I'm not telling you that you're bad. I'm not calling you to task for all these terrible things you've been doing. I also find it helpful to give examples to teachers of things that I did. That when I reflect, I'm like, “Wow, I should not have done it that way!”  

 

Pagnotta:           It can be so hard for us as humans who want to help to admit that we may  

have been doing something that was harmful. Using an understanding of what it means to be human, inclusive of our imperfections and our learning journeys, along with self-compassionate practices, can help bring defenses down as well.  

 

In your experience, what are some common missteps that teachers take  

that may lead to inequity practices?  

 

Cottrell-Williams:          Avoiding any conversations that make someone, particularly the adult,  

feel a little bit uncomfortable. There exists this idea that in order to create a safe space, we can't ever feel any discomfort or we can't ever feel unsure. I think that is the misstep because then our kids become adults who never learned how to feel uncomfortable and how to have civil conversations about things that they disagree on. I think a lot of the things that people fight about in our world today may be a result of not having had the opportunities for these kinds of conversations. Standardized testing has been around now for a little more than 20 years nationally. Many adults grew up within this system where the focus shifted towards success on these tests. And perhaps we lost some of those opportunities to learn how to grapple in the presence of others. And so now we are adults who don't know how to do that and it can lead to, “If you think differently than me, you must be an idiot, or you hate people, or you're ‘fill in the blank.’” because we don't know how to feel uncomfortable in the presence of people who think differently than us. And so, we don't know how to teach our kids how to do that either, because we never learned ourselves. That's one of those things that is not any one person's fault. We're all cogs in the system.  

 

At the hint of any discomfort, we shut it down in the name of kindness. Floyd Cobb and John Krownapple, in their book, Belonging Through a Culture of Dignity, put forth the idea that instead of seeking to create safe spaces, we need to be seeking to create brave spaces, because we don't all mean the same thing when we say “safe”. Whose comfort do we continue to cater to? It’s often the voices of the loudest families. Then we try to just pretend like it doesn't exist. If we ignore it, it will just go away.  

 

Pagnotta:           I see teacher self-awareness, in general, and, specifically, as it relates to  

implicit bias, a precursor to creating inclusive and equitable classrooms that serve as brave spaces and that build, what Brene Brown calls, container”. In your interview with Brene, you describe a four week process that you have created that helps to build the container. How does a teacher begin the precursor work of self-awareness in order to then create the container that allows for the facilitation of conversations that may be uncomfortable? 

 

Cottrell-Williams:           Engaging in the regular practice of case study analysis can be really  

beneficial to building the capacity of teachers to feel like, even if they don't have the right answer, they've practiced grappling in advance so that they feel more equipped. Learning more about how to ask naive questions and also how to ask questions that keep the kids doing the talking is important. One of my favorite questions to ask in a potentially heated conversation, when somebody says something that I’m like “eek” is, “Tell me more”.  

 

I did a PD with principals just last week and we looked at video online of a class having a “debate”. It wasn't really a debate, but they were engaged in conversation surrounding the question, “Was Colin Kaepernick's form of protest wrong?” At one point in the conversation, a student said, “Well, if he doesn't like it here. He could just leave.” That would be the kind of place where I would insert, “Tell me more. What do you mean by that?” because when I hear that, I have all sorts of interpretations of what he means by that, based on my own experiences, based on my knowledge of the history of that kind of phrase, nativism and xenophobia and all of these things. It's very likely that a high schooler is parroting back something they've heard somewhere else and they don't even know what they mean by that. But that statement causes harm to kids in the room. So, we don't want to just ignore it. In order to create a space that's brave, we don't want to just shut him down and say, “Don't say that in the class,” because then he just internalizes it and keeps having those views and that doesn't change anything. The opportunity to say, “Tell me more about that. What do you mean? Are you referring to him specifically, or a group of protesters in general? How might somebody's identity shape the way they receive that statement?” This gives them the opportunity to think about what they just said, and gives you the opportunity, as an educator, to step back and not just project meaning onto why he said it and jump to, “Oh, my God, that kid's racist. I need to deal with this.” Maybe that kid is just taking things that they hear and spitting them back out to see what that's like. This is an opportunity that a teacher has to teach kids, in the moment, how to be critical about the stuff they hear and how to be clear about what they mean when they say something.  

 

Some other examples of naive questions that can be helpful are, “I don't understand. What does that mean?” or “Can you explain that to me?” Some advice I got once about how to respond to a man who told a sexist joke is; “Oh, I don't get it. Can you explain the joke to me? Why is it funny?” This gets them to either realize that it wasn't funny or just to name their sexism. In that same way, we can support kids through thinking critically about what they say: “Who do you mean, when you say that?”, “What do you mean?”, “What makes you say that?”, “Where have you heard things like this before?”, “How might that impact other people?”, “How might that affect the way people view you?”  

 

I had a conversation with a kid recently who had been suspended because he had used some anti-semitic terms against a classmate. I was working with him on his re-entry to the school and he talked about how he had heard these things on Tik Tok. We talked about how the algorithm works and you cannot see these things when you don't engage in those types of videos and when you actively engage in other types of videos. Then I asked him “Do you believe what you said?” and he responded, “No, I don't believe it.” Then I asked, “Why did you say it?” and he said, “I thought it was funny. I was trying to be funny.” So, we talked more and he recognized the impact he had on his classmate. But that's not good enough for a 12 year old to change their behavior. And so then we talked about the kinds of people that end up as fundamentalists and in some kind of extremist group. You don't just wake up one day and decide to get there. I went on to say, “I think your parents and everyone just kind of worries that if this is what you're saying now, where might you end up?” He said, “Well, I'm not like that, that's not me. I'm not going to end up there.” And I said, “Yet, when people hear you saying these things, that's what they're thinking about you. This is the perception you are giving off to others when you are using this kind of language and thinking it's funny. You know yourself, but all they know is what you're saying.”  

 

Being able to have those conversations is important. You might mess up. No, not you “might”, you will mess up. I grew up never seeing adults making mistakes. I had this idea that when I grew up, that's when I would have my life together. That's when I would know what I was doing. And I haven't gotten there yet. And so, there was a while in my 20s, where I thought I was broken. There is power that comes in adults modeling for kids that we're never going to know it all. We're never going to have it all together. When we mess up, being able to say, "I messed up on this thing. I'm trying to be better and learn. I'm sorry.” models an important skill and message.   

 

Pagnotta:           The importance of modeling that as humans, regardless of our age, we  

mess up and that when we do, we come back and we can repair it is  

critically important. 

 

Cottrell-Williams:           That emphasis on repair and not pushing it aside is critical. We can’t  

pretend it didn't happen. We have to acknowledge that I might have actually caused harm, “I did that and I want to repair it.”. The kids don't ever hate you for that.  

 

Pagnotta:           Absolutely. That's what builds and increases that connection. That also 

models for students who may say something that has a negative impact on others that they can come back and repair it. 

 

How would you coach a teacher through a situation where you ask, “What do you mean by that?” and the student continues to say things that you worry are causing harm to others in the classroom? 

 

Cottrell-Williams:           I would say, “Okay, we are working on a classroom community in which  

we all feel like we're allowed to be here as we are. I want you to feel like you belong here. I want everyone else to feel that they belong here too. What you're saying right now is not contributing to that environment for everyone else in the room, so I need you to take a break.”  

 

Then I would certainly loop in the kids’ counselor. There's often a whole lot more underlying what’s going on and by involving the counselor and partnering with the parents and other teachers, we can get a better understanding of what is going on and how we can support. Kids don’t just wake up one day and say things like this.  

 

Another thing that I wish I had known in the beginning of my teaching career was it's okay to not know what the answer is. At 24 I was teaching high school kids and I wasn't that much older than them. The older teachers in the building mistook me for a student all the time. I had Imposter Syndrome so I felt like I needed to maintain control and prove myself. I thought, “What  kind of history teacher would I be if I didn't know the answer to a kid's question about history?” So I would  make stuff up! Instead I wish I had said, “I feel really bad that I don't know right now because I feel like I should, but I don't. So let's find out together.” 

 

Pagnotta:           What would you say to a high school history teacher who wants to teach  

from a factual perspective and is worried about the political atmosphere surrounding how history is being taught. 

  

Cottrell-Williams:           Inquiry questions, inquiry questions, inquiry questions. Never tell them,  

only ask them. However, I think that in our efforts, especially in social studies, to be neutral in the classroom, this has contributed to a lot of the inequities and the rise in incidence of things like, bigoted speech among kids. I'm wondering if, in our attempts to remain completely neutral about things that have happened in history, what we have done is we have offered the facts to kids and then hoped they would come to the same conclusions that we have about it. And many do. Let’s take the Holocaust, for example. Many look at what Hitler and the Nazis did and think that that is atrocious. But not everyone gets there. When we are completely neutral about it, we run the risk of kids thinking this isn't a thing anymore. This is all in the past. And so kids may think Hitler kind of looks funny. And they may think speaking with a German accent sounds funny and the hand thing feels funny, and so they may say, “I'm going to go out in the hall and I'm going to do the hand thing because I think it's funny. And maybe I’m uncomfortable with it as well. I don't believe in Nazism, but I think all this is funny and it's not that big of a deal. It's not going to hurt anyone now because that was years ago.” I think that that is a potential outcome of trying to remain completely neutral. There are things in history that we should take more of a stance on, like the Holocaust, like slavery, things that are oppressive to others. Obviously, we need to do it in a developmentally appropriate way 

 

Pagnotta:           Can you explain how you would do that?  

 

Cottrell-Williams:           Through inquiry . I ran a very student-centered classroom. I  

gave kids opportunities to ask the questions. I supported them in how to  

find reliable sources and how to learn the context of an article or an image but it was their questions they wanted to find the answer to. I was really intentional and careful about the essential understandings, the guiding questions that I create for students. For example, “Was Colin Kaepernicks’ form of protests wrong?” is a terrible question because there are only two ways to respond and you're really only going to respond with what you've heard. You don't learn anything and it doesn't teach you anything. A better question might be, “How does understanding the history of protest in this country help you better understand a person's reason for choosing a form of protest?” or  “How does my identity shape the way in which I respond to a protest like Colin Kaepernick’s during the national anthem?” 

 

Changing the questions to be bigger, but also to be compelling, to be something I do want to know the answer to, is important. So, back to the Holocaust, we don't want to ask how many people were murdered in the Holocaust. Some people care about that and some people don't. When we ask, “What made it possible for ordinary Germans to look away when their neighbors were being gathered up and shipped off in trucks?”, that feels relevant. I want to know that. So how do I introduce that particular lesson? With that particular question, for example, I show a picture. There are a couple different ones that I have used but the pictures are Jewish people being taken by the SS and bystanders watching. I show portions of the image at first, using the crop tool. I ask, “What do you notice?”, “What do you wonder ?” Then they're asking the questions. Brain science tells us that if my brain asks the question, I’m driven to find out the answer. If someone else asked me the question, I might not care. But by looking at the picture and having them ask the questions, their brain is doing the work. I can zoom in on the bystanders, on the witnesses, the people that are watching and then, so often, they will come up with questions like, “Why weren't they doing anything?” That leads us well into that question of what allowed society to get to a point where people just watched. They didn't look upset at all. It was just a regular day. They want to know and so then they find out. They ask more questions. For this particular lesson we look at the Pyramid of Hate from the Anti-Defamation League which explains how society gets to genocide. It starts with biased beliefs, and moves on from there. In an effort to make it relevant today, I then asked, “Could something like this happen in the United States today?” They are required to understand this progression. They're required to take a look at current events. They have to understand the Constitution as well and learn about what fail safes might be in place in this country that weren't there in Germany that would prevent us from actually going into genocide. We have to compel the kids to want to find the answers and then give them the tools to explore. 

 

Pagnotta:           By asking inquiry questions and helping to make topics in history  

relevant to kids today, it can allow them to make meaning that has the potential to impact their own behaviors. I'm thinking about that kid who may have had the potential to go out into the hallway and mimic the hand motion related to Hitler because they think it’s funny. With this type of teaching, now that kid has the opportunity to think, “What behaviors can I do or not do that could contribute to that pyramid?” 

 

Cottrell-Williams: Yes. And even if they don't make that leap to themselves immediately,  

they do make the connection, at least, that this kind of behavior led to the Holocaust. It wasn't just a funny thing. That's the whole point of the follow up assignment, “Is this relevant to the modern day?”  ADL has a pyramid of allyship as well. As part of the lesson we talk about, “At which point is it easiest to step in and say something and intervene and stop it?”. Obviously, at the bottom of the pyramid. So hopefully I've supported them in making that connection to themselves, “When I do these stereotyped things, when I perpetuate them, it might feel really little, but it has to exist before we can get to the next level. Somebody needs to stomp it out now.” Then they may think, “You know what, I'm not going to repeat that offensive thing.” I hope that as a nation, in our system of education, we can say acts of violence against people are a “no, no” and we don't want to support that. 

 

Pagnotta: Exactly. Just to clarify, would you explicitly ask that question, “Are there  

behaviors you can think of that people can do that can contribute to the escalation on the pyramid towards genocide?” 

 

Cottrell-Williams: It would be better for me to ask that question than to tell them, “Right here  

are the behaviors that could contribute to it.” because it always needs to be made relevant. So, I would absolutely ask that question. And then that becomes another opportunity to create that brave space. Because if there's a kid in the class that says, “No, no, I can't think of anything.” Hopefully we're far enough in the year that other classmates feel confident to say, “But wait, what about …” I can facilitate that conversation and I can step in and say, “We're not here to hurt each other or to put each other down. We engage in these conversations in order to understand each other. I think so and so brought this up because they were seeking to understand your perspective. Can you help explain what evidence, what experiences you have had that led you to this perspective, that led you to this conclusion? And does that mean that their experience is wrong because it's different from yours?” 

 

Pagnotta: How would you help a White teacher grapple with their Whiteness in order  

to have these conversations? 

  

Cottrell-Williams: Sometimes White teachers with a class with all White students may think,  

“I don't need to have these conversations because my kids are all White.” When teachers think like this, I like to use the example of what it would be like if there was a male teacher teaching an all-male classroom. I ask, “Do you think he doesn't need to teach them about the history of women or that they don’t need to know how to treat women? Do you think they don't need to understand a woman's perspective, because they're all men?” Of course not.  

 

Pagnotta: That is a concrete way to help teachers see the importance of  

students understanding various perspectives that are different from their  

own.  

 

Cottrell-Williams: Yeah, that's a ridiculous concept to think only women should be talking  

about women's things. And so then, I shift to, “Okay, so as a White adult in a room of White children, if we're talking about issues of systemic oppression or racism or other forms of discrimination that exist in our society, is it not our problem because it's a room full of White kids?” And so of course, they can make that immediate connection and that opens them up to, “How do I do that?” We have to be aware of the ways in which we talk about privilege and guilt with those students. I  lean into bell hooks’ Center/Margin Theory, in which she talks about how in any social group there's a center and from this center perspective most things are normed. And then there's people that are on the margins. That's the reality. So, when you are a White teacher with White students, it's really easy to fall into this little bubble of experiences that only reflect your own, and never even notice the people on the margins. And sometimes there's this fear, from the White community, that if we start addressing these issues, that you are going to move me out of the center and swap someone else in and privilege other people instead of me. I think that’s a very underlying fear. I don't think people are really aware of that. But that's not the point. The point is not to move the spotlight to a different group. The point is to expand our circle and expand what gets to count as normal. When we do that, we realize that there are more people out there that we weren't even aware of before. For example, when I started learning about Black history, all of a sudden, I realized, “Look at all this Indigenous history that I had no idea about before!” So, you keep getting bigger and you haven't taken anyone out of the middle. You've just made normal, more expansive.  

 

Now let’s talk about a White teacher with a classroom full of racially and linguistically and culturally diverse students. Let’s use the example of a man teaching women. What do you hope he's going to rely on as your instructor because he cannot rely on his own experiences? He doesn't need to teach you about women's oppression because you live it, you already know it. You don't need to spend time learning about it. What you really need are examples of women who experience joy; powerful women and resistors- things that make you proudly say, ”Yep. I'm a woman!” The male teacher needs to make sure that when he's teaching, he is offering you this rich, wonderful history of women, that he's using women historians and women writers and women poets because they are speaking to a point of view that he cannot himself provide.  

 

Students of color have a very narrow knowledge of their history because that's all they've been told. They don't know about joy and excellence and beauty, unless we teach them. We need to teach the White students as well, so they're not leaving high school with all of these people of color who recognize their power and their strength and their beauty and we still have White kids that only know Black history as just slavery. 

 

Pagnotta: In my next questions I’m going to use what you just talked about with 

asking clarifying questions to avoid making my own assumptions about you. You identify yourself as a “disruptor”. Can you expand on what you mean by that?  

 

Cottrell-Williams: It’s really, outside of the box thinking, but in a more revolutionary  

way. Often, in all organizations and all systems, but especially in one that's a behemoth, like education, we can get caught in not realizing there's something different we could do because we're inside the box and the box is really big. We don't even know we're in the box because the edges are so far away and so we end up polishing the machine. We don't like the output that’s being produced and so we try to do the things we've always been doing, but better. And we still get the same output. So, when I talk about disruption, what I mean is that if we want different outputs, we have to change the thing that's producing the outputs. Desmond Tutu talks about when you're standing on the river and people keep floating down the river and you keep pulling people out of the river, you need to go upstream and you need to find out what is throwing them in the river in the first place. So often, if a kid doesn't pass a test, we just give them the same study guide again. Then they'll pass the test, right? The outputs continue to be the same because we didn't actually change anything. It feels really overwhelming to educators to think about doing anything different because we're constantly on the spin cycle. In a washing machine, when big things get thrown in, it gets a little off balance. And then it gets straightened back out so we feel like it's normal, but it's still on the spin cycle. It is just so overwhelming to think about doing something differently that we just keep doing what we've done and hoping that, magically, the outputs will be different. And so, when I talk about disruption, I talk about being intentional about thinking outside of the box, about examining what may be causing the outputs and how do we change it so that we get to what we actually want. 

 

Pagnotta: It's that concept of working smarter, not harder. If it's not working, instead 

of digging in and working harder in the same way, it's pausing and looking at how I can approach this differently.  

 

Chapter 1: Introduction 

 

Cottrell-Williams: A lot of times, teachers are asked, “Why did you become a teacher?” We  

all have our stories like, “I was teaching my brother in the basement with a stuffed animal since I was five.” It's really easy to answer that question. And I think there's a lot of value in occasionally checking in and asking yourself and each other, “Why am I still a teacher?” because I think that that can reignite your purpose. And then from there, “What is the goal?”. “What kind of adults do I want my students to become and in what ways are my current practices contributing to that goal, or not?” Right? That's the mindset that I realized I hadn't had before my daughter was born. I'm not just managing her behavior, I'm growing a person who is already a member of society and who is going to eventually be out there making decisions by herself and engaging in the community in which we exist. What kind of person do I hope she becomes and is the way that I am teaching her and raising her and modeling for her helping her to become that person? So, I think that, as teachers, we need to stop and ask ourselves, “What kind of adults do I want my students to become?” Yes, we still have to learn how to read. That’s an important part of being an adult who can contribute in society. But if we get stuck on that compliance piece, on the management piece, and on the assessment piece, we lose that human piece.