Rachael Maves: Hi everyone. You're listening to the Rachael Maves podcast and I'm Rachael Maves, your host. This podcast is part of the leading up to the upcoming measure what we value Summit scheduled for February 5th through 6th 2025 in Fresno, California. The summit emphasizes honoring and amplifying student voices, fostering inclusive classrooms and equipping Educators with tools for impactful change. You can find more information at parseceducation.com/summit. Today we are talking to Dr Jamila Lyiscott.

Dr Jamila Lyiscott, also known as Dr J, and how I'll be referring to her through our podcast, is an award-winning scholar, nationally recognized speaker and author of black appetite, white food, issues of race voice and Justice within and Beyond the classroom. She's a tenured professor of social justice education at UMass, amher, Dr Jake cirs, the center for racial Justice and youth engaged research and previously served d as the editor and chief for equity and excellence and education. Her research focuses on black life, racial healing and youth Le activism, and her Ted Talk, three ways to speak English, has over five million views. Dr J has delivered Keynotes at hundreds of Institutions and has been featured in media Outlets like BBC, NPR and Cosmopolitan. Dr J, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me.

Jamila Lyiscott: So we always start out the podcast, whether it's about the summit or just our normal session, wanting to engage and envelop and Elevate the story.

Rachael Maves: So can you tell us just a little bit about your journey and what led you to all of the amazing work that you're doing now? Sure, my activist origin story.

Jamila Lyiscott: There are several, but the one that I will emphasize to just keep us in the scope of what we're talking about, is my time during. Like. When I was about 15 years old, I joined the Youth Organization out of school, Youth Organization that focused on critical pedagogy using hip hop and spoken word in order to engage the inner city youth in New York and it's called Urban W NYC still thriving up until this day, of course and in that space I really felt like I learned for the first time the difference between schooling and education. I came in as a spoken word AR artist and I found. That there were people in the organization, including my peers, who were thriving in this space for writing, intensive performance, intensive workshops, so much so that we was like we were in Broadway, we were in Madison Square Garden, we were at the Apollo Theater, HBO pulled up like this was genius, brilliant. They had bars, it was fire.

And then I would find out, slowly, that a lot of my peers were like in alternative schools or failing Ela, and I'm like not you failing Ela, and your bars are fire. How is it possible, like I can see your linguistic dexterity and your Genius in real time and the way that it moves us and it moves thousands of people? It came, became clear to me there was a disconnect, right like there was something about the genius of my peirs that was not being captured in school and it was a part, a small part, of what led me on this journey of interrogating that disc connect right like what does it mean that we're being assessed, valued, measured in ways that don't even truly access the fullness of who we? Are. I love that.

Rachael Maves: So tell me a little bit more then about like that was from your young age and getting engaged and seeing that disconnect. How did that then launch you forward into the work that you're doing? What was that natural progression for you? So the organization: I started off as a youth post it and then eventually I was on the youth board and then I was on staff there.

Jamila Lyiscott: Like really cultivated youth leadership and voice in a powerful way. Yeah, and three ways to speak English. The Ted Talk That folks are most familiar with actually came from my time in that organization, where I was sitting on a panel and a woman in the room just wanted to stop me to affirm me for being. Articulate. And that moment, within that moment, I had been a part of the organization so long that I learned to question my world in very powerful ways, in ways that school didn't prepare me to do. Yeah, I had been so steeped in my cultural practices at home.

My family is Trinidadian and I'm from Brooklyn, New York, and my parents are Unapologetic about their culture. And so when this woman affirmed me for being articulate, I was like, wait a minute, like what ha? Like I am speaking the queen's English in here. Why? Like I was in, I was on a panel and I knew that there were these the components of me that made me truly articulate: right, the way I speak when I'm in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, with my friends. The way I speak when I'm with my family in Trinidad and I'm trying my best to approximate their Caribbean calized English that is so such a powerful part of my linguistic repertoire and identity.

And none of that was in the room with me. So, because I had already been steeped in this critical Consciousness, I was like why? Where did I learn that there were certain aspects of me that needed to be foregrounded in order for me to be read as intellectual, to be red worthy and to be received in a particular way. And so that actually became the line of inquiry that set me on a path from my dissertation work for my doctoral work, where I decided to ask powerful questions about the intersections of language, race and power, and how it might be used as an analytic tool. Analytical tool to understand educational. Inequities, yeah, and what a lens for you to be able to bring to that too, like having those I mean real three different settings and ways in which you can engage and articulate, and what that means and looks like in the different cultural context.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, such a powerful and, I would say, empowering for others. That is also their experience, right, yeah, but often it's framed as a deficit, right, and so that's the journey I had to go on to be like, wait a minute, like what are the political and social and historical dimensions of why these beautiful aspects of my identity and identities that I witness in my pairs, like, how have they been framed as deficits? Right, yeah, multilingualism you would think that would be set something that is so embraced and celebrated yeah, because you have access Beyond just your yes, your narrow space to be able to engage and relate. It's yeah, it's something that, yeah, it really it should be.

Jamila Lyiscott: [speaker uncertain] Think, rethinking what do we do in K-12 education, not just to celebrate that, but to encourage that and others as well.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, 100.

Jamila Lyiscott: So I mean that's a perfect segue, Dr.

Rachael Maves: J, into a little bit about what you're going to be discussing and joining us for in February, which we're so excited about. Can you tell us a little bit about your keynote? I am more than a test score, reframing achievement and education and really kind of the significance behind this presentation right now for our audience.

Jamila Lyiscott: Yeah, we have. I don't want to spill all the tea right, cuz well, we have done a horrible job and by horrible I mean actually a wonderful job of convincing our students that they ought to be reduced to numbers and letters, you know. So, supporting students with understanding their intrinsic worth, beyond what we have imp opposed on them in terms of what we value, is what I'm going to emphasize. Really, I'm going to begin with the question of what do we value, because I think we have abstract Notions of what we value. But the T, the real T, the real testimony of what we value is in what we institutionalize, it's in what we decide to measure, it's in what we decide to affirm, and so we may say we value diversity, but we don't often truly value diversity. We may value the way that different color people perform a eurocentric standard, yeah, but we do not value diversity.

And I know we don't value diversity because of the language that is in embedded in our curricular and state standards. I can tell because of our budgets. I can tell because of our policies, what we value, and so I want to begin with the question of both personal and professional values. When I'm working in educational context, I really draw on black feminist thought that remind us that the personal is political, and so it's important for me to help people to think through: what are your personal values and, by extension, your professional values? And then next, how are you living in congruence? Or how is your life in congruent with those values?

Because that is sometimes what is painful: we may think we have values, or we may articulate certain values, but then we're so embedded within systems that a ask us to be complicit in being in congruent with those values. Yeah, and so those are the. That's step one. So, step one: what is it that we value? Let's be honest, let's get honest, and I have a framework for us to really illuminate that, demystify that. But then, beyond what we value, how would we living in congruence with those values?

Right, and then this notion of measure is huge, it's loaded. There's a lot of stigma around the word measure, especially for historically marginalized communities. Right, there's been a lot of. Harm in terms of what and how we measure right. You think about Eugenics, you think about a history of trying to determine the inferiority of particular groups and the superiority of others, and the just the groundwork that was laid for right white supremacy to have the hold on this world that we have today. A lot of it is caught up in the word measure, and so when I say I am more than a test score and I have us reframe the notion of achievement, it's about also questioning: what do we mean by?

Measure? What does that look like? So what are we measuring and how is that? Either culturally relevant or not, yeah, in the work.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, well, and I love that. I love that you call it. I am more than a test score, for two reasons. One is because I think we would all agree if we see, year over year, that we are graduating students, especially those underserved that cannot read, that's a huge issue. Like that, like have to do something with, like to make those changes within our schools and systems. And it's not the only way in which we me, we measure value right.

So it. I appreciate you saying I'm more than that, because there's a piece of it, but it's. It is absolutely not the only thing. And how do we look Beyond and pull in exactly what you're talking about? When you think about the audience and school leaders and practitioners that you're going to be engaging with during the summit, what is? If you took one of those strands from the framework?

What is one tangible takeaway that they would be able to apply to their. Context. So the framework itself is going to rely on the four eyes of Oppression that I use to engage people in understanding how, systemically and individually, we have the capacity to perpetuate oppression. And it begin with thinking about our ideologies, like what we value, what we believe, how those are the second eye institutionalized and how those institutionalized values play out in our interpersonal. Dynamics and then how they internalized. And so the tangible takeaway would be for school leaders, for practitioners, to consider: what are the values that we say we have and that exists in the ideological realm?

And if we say we have those values, what is the evidence that we have? Institutionalize those values, right? I say more than a test score in the way that you just name, because we may say we value the literacy development of students. We say that in our ideology, but what we prove by our institutional standards is that we value certain literacy practices, right, so we can't even see or hear the language practices that students do come with, or the cognitive skills or the background knowledge. We don't. We don't see it because institutionally, we have filtered what we value through the lens of our ideologies, right?

Yeah, so to illuminate our ideologies, we need to look at what institutionalized and then to get to the point of seeing I'm going just stop there, because now I'm giving everything stuff here to think that's, that's substance. Like, yeah, that's right, that's what I want y'all to think about. Like look at what you institutionalize as a testimony of what you truly value, because when I say I am more than a test score, I am not. I'm not. I'm saying that we should value teaching and learning, but I'm also not saying that this test score is an accurate depiction of any aspect of who I am, unless we interrogate what the test itself is actually doing. Yeah, what are you, as you think about the summit and this group that you're going to be connecting with and in community with?

What are you most looking forward to at the measure, what we value Summit?

Jamila Lyiscott: Well, I'm going, guess, to be in Fresno, so you know, first and foremost, but what I really am looking forward to is the reality that we are going to be Post January 20th. And we are stepping into another level of a political era that asks us to not forward this kind dialogue. That's asking us to step back and roll back questions of equity and questions that really are meant to address deep concerns that exist in underserved communities, as you sh earlier, and so I'm most excited about the fact that I get to be in community about with people who, about that life, who or like, we're doing the work 10 toes down and we're going to heal, address, transform the inequities that exist in our school. So, to the degree that I could contribute to that on going conversation in a substantive and tangible way, I'm here for it.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, and I really appreciate that. Dr. J, one of the things that I think you'll bring into that conversation and I look forward to you engaging with is the students like. There. I've been in conferences where the students are brought in as performers or you know they're doing some sort of an entertainment. But being able to give them the space to share their really lived experience and the impact that has and what that means and looks like and a lot of the successes that they've had as well, I think it shifts.

Jamila Lyiscott: For educators, the like, that moral imperative that we feel and how are we serving these students and bringing you and your work into that conversation, I think is so powerful. Thank you, I so much of my work is based on youth Le Frameworks, yeah, and so I literally just let a talk at the center I co-direct at UMass about what it means.

Rachael Maves: To really cultivate youth leadership in a way that doesn't fetishize young people right or tokenize them, but truly understands their power to contribute to the conversation of educational change. Yeah, that I with, and so I'm excited that you all exist in a community that's already there. Cuz, for a lot of folks they're just not right there yet. Yeah, and it's powerful. I mean the things that they're bringing forward.

Jamila Lyiscott: [speaker uncertain] When we look at and ask the questions, why have we not seen persistent change, especially in education? Yeah, like I often wonder: well, how much then, are you engaging the students in being a part of that conversation, of what the impact is, how they're thinking about moving forward, what's going to be the most helpful for them and what their needs are? It's, they are very, have lots of great ideas and are ready to engage if there's a willing adults in the room. 100%, we believe in it.

Rachael Maves: At the center, we have a beautiful youth board, and it is a practice that I actually inherited from my time at Irving word, NYC that there must always be a space where youth leadership is being cultivated as a part of the lifeblood of this entity.

Jamila Lyiscott: Yeah, in order for it to have like real Integrity, if we're thinking about serving especially black and brown youth, yeah, tell me, if don't mind and this is a little bit of a tangent tell me about your youth board and what that looks like. Yeah, so, as I shared, I was a part of the youth board at Urban W NYC and that meant that for us we played a huge role in the decision making right because it was a organization and it just meant that in real time our thinking was valued. And so when I was doing my dissertation, I co-created a program called ciphers for justice with a group of Youth researchers and activists and we found that, again, it could not be youth centered or youth L with Integrity unless we created a youth board. So we would have young people come through one iteration of the program and then after that they would have the opportunity to be a, to co- teach, to be a part of the decision making and to peer mentor with an incoming cohort. I took that mind model into the work of the center that I now the serve as a founding co-director for at UMass, where we have the young people come in I we hire grad doctoral students who are doing research in youth leadership and activism and we Apprentice them into models of critical pedagogy with these Youth and they bring their Brilliance and they engage from the Regional Community, a youth board, who come through the program and the work in the life of the center and then in their second year they come on. They like, they move through different tears of leadership.

So they do teaching. They do a teaching for the community and for schools in the region. They do workshops, they make decisions. They just do a lot and what we then do is we also make sure that they have college credit for their experience because they're engaged in labor. They get stipends for this work and our goal is to increase their voices at the College of Education, because there are too many schools of education and College of Education that are. Theorizing and producing research and you know this is people would let us behind their names are making decisions about the lives of these young people, and the young people are not in the conversation.

Rachael Maves: So the youth, they do this work and they're amazing. Yeah, I love that.

Jamila Lyiscott: I love that you're giving them the space of Engagement and it really like it, just as you said, inviting them into the conversation, or their thoughts and their ideas have power and weight to drive change.

Rachael Maves: [speaker uncertain] 100%.

Jamila Lyiscott: So, as we wrap up today, I'd like to give you the final word for our listeners, any Sage advice, thoughts to ponder, wisdom that you'd like to a huge part of this conversation I love that you all use the word value is for us to turn towards what Toni Morrison calls discredited ways of knowing. In Toni Morrison's work, she turns towards spaces that our society. Disregards, and she uses them as the bread and butter and the substance of her work. We are now in a time where that ethos is something that we need to undertake. How do we turn towards the spaces that schools have devalued, that have positioned as delinquent and have, essentially through the lens of eurocentricity, in so many ways decided that they are not worthy of the intellectual Arena? Right, the langages, identities, the cultural practices?

We have to change what we value. First, and then we can have the conversation about measurement and evaluation right with communities, and so that's my wisdom.

Rachael Maves: We need to have a new conversation about what we value. I love it, and what a better place than at the summit. Dr J, I'm ready. Thank you for joining me today. This was a great conversation.

Jamila Lyiscott: I really appreciate it and I can't wait to meet you in person and get to connect in February. Thank you for having me.

Rachael Maves: It was an honor. As a reminder, Parsec education is hosting the measure what we value Summit on February 5th through 6th in Fresno, California. Join us for impactful conversations on empathy and engagement, hard truths and more, alongside leaders like Shaka Booker, Rich sto and Dr J and student speakers like Liliana Sanchez. Early bird pricing ends soon secure your spot. Today, get your tickets at parsecsummit.com.

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This transcript was created from the episode's captions and lightly edited for readability. It may contain small errors; please refer to the audio for exact wording.