Jeanie:  In this episode, I sit down with educational phenoms Christie Nold and Jess Lifshitz.  And we’re joined by Brendan Kiely, Author of The Other Talk: Reckoning with Our White Privilege.

Now, you might be wondering what The Other Talk actually is.  As many of you know, black people and other people of the global majority frequently have to have “The Talk” with their children about how to survive when they’re stopped by police in America.  That’s right, when they’re stopped by police.  It’s the talk about how to survive that experience.  Parents often draw the meat of it from their own experiences of brutality and loss.  But what talk do white people have with their children?  Lovely listeners, this episode goes out to everyone who believes in young people, as Jess Lifshitz puts it, more than they believe in adults.  Don’t get us wrong, adults, you are salvageable.  But boy, there is work to be done.  I’m Jeanie Phillips, and this is #vted Reads; a podcast about books by, for and with Vermont educators.  Let’s talk.

The 21st Century Classroom · TheOtherTalk Thank you so much for joining me, Brendan, Christie, and Jess.  Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Brendan:  Well, I’m honored to have been chosen to go first.  So well, it’s great to be here.  Thank you.  I’m Brendan Kiely, the Author of The Other Talk: Reckoning with Our White Privilege and other novels, including Co-Authoring, All American Boys with Jason Reynolds.  It’s really great to have an opportunity to talk about issues and ideas and heartfelt feelings that I care deeply about. I hope to ground this conversation as often as possible in the notion of lived experience as opposed to an intellectual exercise about the damage that racism causes in our country. And I say that, because I’ve been thinking a lot about how often I didn’t think about my own lived experience when I was thinking about conversations about race and racism in America.  So that’s why I’m sharing that.

I also just have to share, since we’re also talking about books that I’m currently reading is The 1619 Project and I’m just taking it in chunks at a time and I’m not trying to read it all at once.  I’m going in between other reading, as well.  But it feels like maybe the single most important book to read right now as a grounding point and as a as an effort to say, we all should be reading this.  This should be canon in our educational experience.  And when I’m taking a break from that, I’m reading Love and Other Poems by Alex Dimitrov which is just beautiful.

Jeanie:  Well, thank you so much for that.  How about you, Christie?

Christie:  Everyone, it is so great to be here and be here with all of you.  My name is Christie Nold.  I use she/her pronouns and I am zooming in today from Abenaki Land here in Vermont.  I am a white educator in a predominantly white school that is less than five miles from my childhood home, which is by intention and design.  And so, I’m excited to be part of this conversation and talk about one of the things that I read in the wonderful book, The Other Talk about what it means to have my whiteness show up with me every day at school.

And what I’m reading right now is from the wonderful Mr. Tom Rad from Twitter, Raising Ollie: How My Nonbinary Art-Nerd Kid Changed Nearly Everything I Know.  And one of the things that I love so much about this book is that on the face of it, it is the story of this one incredible kid, but in the depth of it really is truly a story about education and who it serves and who it doesn’t and why.  I’m really challenged to think differently and deeply by Tom in this text.  And it’s pulling at some of my heartstrings around public education, which I so deeply believe in, but what happens when that public education isn’t serving every kid.  So, it’s a great book to challenge my thinking and I certainly recommend it.

Jeanie:  Thank you so much, Christie.  Jess?

Jess:  Hi.  I’m Jess Lifshitz.