Episode 42: Resilience and Equity with Elena Aguilar Sean Tibor: [00:00:21] Hello and welcome to teaching Python. This is a conversation with Elena Aguilar. My name is Sean Tibor. I am a coder who teaches. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:00:28] And my name's Kelly Schuster pres, and I'm a teacher who coats. Sean Tibor: [00:00:31] So Kelly, we have a very special guest with us today. Would you like to introduce her? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:00:36] Absolutely. And it's such an honor. I get to do two things. It get to introduce this guest who I am. I guess a coach crush. He always tells me I have a coding crush, but this is my coach crush. Every time I talk about coaches, I always bring up this person's name. But Alaina, An amazing author. I went to one of her workshops in Oakland about 2016. and she's, she's the person that I've been using as my crutch in order to coach teachers through educational technology, coaching new teachers such as yourself and just coaching other teachers through PBL and everything. She's written four books. And I saw a rumor has it on her website. She's going to have another book releasing in August, and yeah, there's a, Elena lane is here. Yay. Sean Tibor: [00:01:22] sir, welcome Elena. How are you? Elena Aguilar: [00:01:24] I'm doing great. Thank you so much for inviting me to have a conversation with you today. Sean Tibor: [00:01:31] well, we're really excited about it. the topics that you speak about on a regular basis around resilience and around equity are things that we feel are really vital to the things that we do every day. And it's one of the reasons why we're teaching young people how to code because we feel that it helps them build both of those things. And it's an opportunity for us to build equity in our communities as well. By giving young people skills and opportunities that they might not otherwise have had. So we are so excited to have you here and to have this conversation, before we begin, we're going to start the way we always do, which is with the win of the week, and we always make our guests go for. So Alaina, the win of the week is something exciting or positive or when that's happened inside or outside of the classroom or your office or wherever it is, but just something this week that has gone particularly well or that you want to share with our audience. Elena Aguilar: [00:02:21] I would love to share a win of the weekend. That is a strategy for building resilience, identifying what's going well, focusing on the bright spots, and particularly actually taking pride in what we have done that's gone well and naming those things. So thank you for that invitation. My win from this week. Is that I created an online course about how to cultivate resilient communities during a time of crisis. And it is an intersection between the work I've done on resilience and the work I've done around building equity. And so it was, it was actually something that I thought would take me about a week to create, and I was just so on fire and the ideas popped into my head so quickly and it got organized and it took me about two days. And so that was really excited. Took me two days to create the structure, and now I'm going to be recording it this weekend. But that really felt like. I felt like, yes, this is where I've been for years, standing in this intersection between talking about resilience and racial equity, and here I am and this is when we need this content. How can we talk about creating resilient communities through a lens of equity and racial awareness and racial justice, and towards the possibility of creating. Society schools, communities that really, truly are resilient and equitable in a way that we've never seen before. So that, that was a really exciting win for me this week. Sean Tibor: [00:04:07] That sounds great. I mean, I'm, we've seen so many different things going on in the news and, and everyone's kind of glued to what's happening. To have something that gives us some perspective and to your point, focuses on the opportunities that we have to make our communities better through. This is a really important task and I'm, I can't wait to see the course come out. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:04:29] and that's going to be awesome. Do you know a timeframe when that's going to be coming out? Elena Aguilar: [00:04:34] Next week. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:04:36] next week it is going to come out Elena Aguilar: [00:04:37] Well, yes, it's really fast. So it's really exciting cause we're trying a. I so little context. Everything I have done until maybe a year ago in terms of facilitating learning was always in a in-person environment. So Kelly, that's where you and I met. I love being in say, room with people and having people turn and talk to each other and talking about body language and how we are with each other. And for the last year or so, I have been. Tentatively towing into the world of virtual and blended learning. And kind of being like, I'm nervous. This is scary. This is different. It's uncomfortable, but there's some opportunities here and possibilities. I've actually created, I think, five online courses in the last year and gotten really positive response from them and trying different things. And so this is the next step, which is this course will be. Blended in the sense that they'll be at Sam's still. Like, what is the language I use for this? It's new. It's really, no. To me it's a stretch. we will have some sessions that are prerecorded and you can go in at your own pace and engage in the learning and other opportunities where can come together for discussion and Q and a and practice. So I'm playing with these different structures as well as the content that I love. And we're piloting it starting next week, and then we'll open it up to a much broader audience probably in about two weeks. It's really in part, in response to the crisis that we're in and to wanting to offer people tools and strategies and inspiration right now when we really need it. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:06:23] That sounds amazing. I think, even people that have never taken an online course or are thrown into this environment right now where we have to teach online. So I think they can even understand what they're going through. Even teach people, cause we have some people in our listening community who aren't teachers who are becoming teachers to their children. Sean, you want to win a week? Sean Tibor: [00:06:43] So, so the one of the week this week was actually one that I got a lot of help with from the community. So we have this program that we use called mew, which is a Python editor, a coding, program for new users. So it's designed for beginners. It's a fantastic program. We've talked about it a lot on the show, but for people who are new to writing code, this is the program that they use to write the code with. And we have been using a library called arcade that lets us make video games. And it's a great way for beginners to learn coding concepts through this idea of gaming. So kids get to make their own kind of Mario brothers style video game through this. And we were having a lot of trouble. Getting you and arcade to work well together. So I had some help from the community. The people who develop the, the mew editor worked with me from Portugal to get a new copy of this program working that would work on max, that would also work with arcade. And we got it working. And that's, that's part of the win. But the big part of the wind was getting it, working with all the students and getting them moving and seeing how Quickly, they could come up to speed. Once the technical barrier got out of the way that they started making their own games and they started playing with it, and I got a lot of these, Oh, that is so cool. When they got to put in their own pictures and their own sounds and make it their game, that's when it really became a pretty big win for me. So I have a, I have to thank Tiago from Portugal. He's on the Tiago Montez from the AMU development team. He helped me troubleshoot how to do this. And make this new copy of you and it, it worked out really well. So, that was, that was the big win for me this week was getting that going for our students to be able to make their own games. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:08:27] Yeah, that was, it's, it was a bittersweet. Today on our last day of the quarter, the kids are like, Oh, we don't want to leave computer science. We were having so much fun. I was having my Python eat the pencils. Making lots of thinking things Sean Tibor: [00:08:42] Yeah. You are having, I think you're even having more fun than the kids were with this one. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:08:47] It was brand new. Elaina, I have never coded this game before and I had no clue what I was doing. So talk about throwing ourselves into a unknown scenario. brand new for us. So, my win, again, one of our listener, not listeners, one of our friends in our community, Eric Mathis. I was telling him our tweeting that I was getting ready to do dictionaries and coding, and he gave me some ideas to do some, some, dictionary examples. And I put some screencast up there for the kids. And I had a sixth grader, make this amazing screencast herself, showing her code and just watching the. Thought process as she was going through her code and explaining it and what she did, it was amazing. So I tweeted that out and Eric was thrilled and jealous that he's not in the classroom anymore, so that was kind of cool. That's a good one. Sean Tibor: [00:09:39] My favorite part about that was watching and listening to that sixth grader explain her code because, and I think this is where the screencasts where podcasts really help you, there's such an intimate connection with hearing someone's voice and to hear her voice explaining the thing that she made and why it was really interesting to her was such a rewarding thing to, to observe. I like, I want to save that, that screencast forever. It was so great. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:10:02] I know that's going to be on my wall of fame, you know? All right. Let's get on with this. This, let's talk about our topic Sean Tibor: [00:10:09] Okay. Sounds Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:10:09] we need a lot of help with this. Sean Tibor: [00:10:13] so, so Alaina, let's start just by giving us a little bit of history of your, of you and your teaching experience. how did you come to be a coach and a teacher that focuses on these topics of resilience and building equity? Elena Aguilar: [00:10:29] I started teaching in 1994 burst in a rural part of California, and. Then I moved to Oakland, California, where I taught and worked in the open public schools for 19 years, and from my very first year in Oakland, like so many teachers, I faced so many different kinds of stressors, and by the second, third year, I was starting to feel that. Daunting wave of burnout and I felt that on and off for many years. Like that wave coming again of I can't keep doing this. This is so hard. It's so exhausting. There's so many different elements that made it hard. The constant change. The. Just adapting to, okay, what are we doing now? Now? What's happening now? What's happening? And wanting to have a life and to balance life and to integrate, the other things that I was doing in my life. And so at the same time, I saw incredible high rates of turnover in my school, in my district. We. Only retained about 50% of teachers every three years. And so just in my schools, seeing how that impacted staff culture and students and my own morale, really started to get me thinking about. What, what do we need to be doing with teachers so that we can manage these challenges and stressors cause they're just going to keep coming and so that we can stay in our schools and in our communities that we care about so much. the research on teacher burnout and turnover, sorry, the research on teacher turnover. Actually. Over and over and over says the number one reason why teachers leave the classroom is that they're so stressed, they're burnt out. Something along those lines. It's a, a reference to an emotional state that is one of exhaustion, depression, anxiety. And when we look at the top five reasons for why teachers leave, either their schools or education, often. Salary, for example, is number four or five. And the top reasons are about not feeling like teachers have a voice, not feeling like they have autonomy, feeling stressed and overwhelmed and exhausted. And so seeing that year after year, and as I became a coach, I. Just, it forced me to think about, okay, we can do something about this. We, it's harder to do something about salary or about federal mandates or, but we can do something about how we experience the emotional realities of working in a school. And that's where cultivating resilience comes in. So I was a teacher for . About 12 years. Then I became a coach and I was an instructional coach and a leadership coach and a coach of coaches, and. Ever since I started teaching, I always had an equity lens. I came into the world of education through a commitment or because of a commitment to social justice that has been with me since I was born and manifested in my different roles in education. And so what that has meant as a teacher, as a coach, is that whether I'm in the classroom or observing teachers or. Observing anything going on at a school, a team meeting, or visiting a school district. I'm always looking through a lens of power and looking at power dynamics and looking at how those power dynamics replicate the status quo, which is inherently inequitable, or how they interrupt it. And so who is in the room? Who's talking, who has authority here? What does that authority based on how our different experiences invited, validated, encouraged, and which experiences are, are not. My lens has been first and foremost, racial equity. But it's impossible to separate out racial equity from the intersections that that has with other identity markers. And so also looking at socioeconomic class and race, looking at gender. And race, gender, race, and socioeconomics together. So the intersection of our experiences and whether or not those are equitable or inequitable, or how, how much power we have in those intersections is central to what I do and to how I look at the world. Sean Tibor: [00:15:48] Oh, I'm like, I'm, I'm like, I'm just listening and going. Wow. Like I like everything. Everything that you're talking about is. The things that I think Kelly and I relate to, I'm not gonna speak for her, of course, but, but we've had many discussions about these very points, right, about how the power dynamics in classroom settings outside of the classroom settings, the power dynamic changes. As soon as students walk outside of the door of our classroom. . And why is that? And trying to understand it. It's been an interesting journey for me to come into the classroom again, especially as a teacher. after being out of it for so long and having my eyes opened again to how much, equity especially around, you know, identity markers affects the learning experience for students. And the, our reason for being there is to give every student. As much of an opportunity as we can to learn and to define their own equity in the world and the place that they can, can occupy and, and establish for themselves. So I'm totally thrilled to be moving on onto the next part of the conversation with you. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:16:57] Yeah, and it's, it's just an interesting. Reflection for myself. As I'm listening to you and I'm thinking about my road to where I am today and in the school that I am, we have different issues in every school. I went from a title one school with 80% free and reduced lunch to, a private school in England, which was, on a different, racial differences a lot in England, to Peru. Where the social classes were so all over the place to where we are now, where people think that we, because we're in a private school, we don't have issues, but there are issues that are different and each one, takes a different like mindset. Based on the same PR, those same principles, but a different mindset on how we're going to attack that. And it's something that's interesting to also see in Shawn and learning from him on a clean slate from him of how he deals with it. And it's been, it's been a fun road just watching our kids grow in our classroom through that. Sean Tibor: [00:18:02] Kelly. I think this next question is yours because you've been through Elena's workshops before and you've taken some of, you've read her book and we call it along with her career. This one's all you. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:18:13] Oh, the four last four years. She's, she's done a lot. She's done a lot in four years. can you just summarize, cause the last, when I saw you, I had, I think four years ago, you had just written the art of coaching and maybe the art of coaching teams was coming out in 2016. I asked my supervisor. And he was, he was so excited to send me all the way from Peru to, to California. He was like, yeah. And that was a big chunk of money to send their food. So it was a four day workshop, three day workshop or something. Just amazing time of getting to watch you in action. so where have you been? What's been happening in the past four Elena Aguilar: [00:18:48] It has been a Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:18:50] There's a lot, I'm sure. Elena Aguilar: [00:18:51] It's wild now. In the situation we're in where we've been sheltered in place in California and the Bay area for almost two weeks. My family and I stepped out of participating in public life before the official order came, and now I'm like, I don't think I've been this long in one place in six years. So the last four or five years have been an absolute whirlwind as I have. I wrote the art of coaching as my own PD project because I've been coaching for some years and I felt like I wanted to more sharply articulate what coaching was. And so I was like, well, I love writing. I will create my own PD project and I'll just write a book on coaching. And at that point I was still working in the school district and I planned on staying there until I retired. And then there was so much positive response to it. And in the beginning, the first response I got was, do you do workshops on this content? And my thought then I was like, well, I hadn't thought about that, but sure, I could. Sure. Why not. And so it wasn't the plan to do workshops and have the life that I have now really. But I wrote the art of coaching teams and then onward, which is on emotional resilience, and I wrote a huge workbook to go with onward because I knew it needed to have an experiential companion. And then I just finished the manuscript for coaching for equity, which is the book that's in production now. And I have done a lot of traveling and presenting on this work and a lot more writing and building a team and building a business. so it's been a whirlwind. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:20:51] That's great. It's, it's, I've been following you briefly in the background. You know, I'm in Peru. The media specialist just gave your book as the book club. And I'm like, Oh, that's old news. You need to get the new one. And it was the onward book, which I love. And you know, I have right here. I had to pick it up again because there's a lot of things I need right now during this online teaching phase in our life. but yeah, there's been a lot of things going on for you. That's exciting. Sean Tibor: [00:21:18] as we go into our discussion, I think it's important for us to have a common, you know, terminology, common framework, common understanding of the terms that we're going to be using, especially for many of our, our listeners that may not be familiar with us. So how do you, how are you defining equity and resilience in this context? Elena Aguilar: [00:21:36] I appreciate you asking for definitions because that's one of the first things I often start with because when we don't have a shared definition, especially of commonly used terms like these, then we get into trouble. And so I always start off my books or my workshops with this is what I mean when I say equity. And when I say equity, the definition that I use is that every child gets whatever they need in order to be successful and to thrive in school every day. So simplistically, every child, every day period. Every child, regardless of their race or ethnicity or socioeconomic background or gender or sexual orientation or ability or religion or language is spoken at home or socioeconomic status. Every child, every day period. And that they're successful and thrive and so that they're successful academically, but also so that they are successful and thrive. When we think about their associates, about their social, emotional learning needs and experiences, so children need to feel loved and they need to feel that they belong. And that is just as important as literacy and numeracy and science and the arts and everything else. So that's my definition of equity. Every child, every day period. Resilience is our ability to bounce back after adversity. It's our ability to weather the storms in our lives. It's how we respond to stress and challenges, and really resilience allows us to thrive and not just survive. So my. Vision and goal and aspiration is for children and really for all of us to arrive in spite of or because of the challenges and not just like, let's make it out of this and get Sean Tibor: [00:23:52] Hmm. And those seem like they're, they're goals that are very aspirational, right? Like every child, every day is, you know, we're, we're not perfect in terms of what we can do as teachers. So we may not be able to reach every child every day and give them what they need. Right. Nor we may not. You can be capable, they may need something that we can offer. But I think the, it sounds like what you're saying is that these are what we should always be striving for. These are the goals that we should be doing or are focused on as teachers to reach every child every day, to give them that opportunity to practice and build resilience. even if they fail at it, right? That we're not seeking perfection, but we are striving towards it. Is that fair and accurate? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:24:38] Our intentions, our intentions are, are our guiding our guides, right? Our intentions to have every child, every day become successful, feel successful, feel loved, Elena Aguilar: [00:24:52] Yes, I would say yes, and so they are. These aspirations are, can feel daunting, can feel overwhelming, and can make us feel like that's impossible. And I think what we could do it. I actually think that if we reorganize schools and systems and structures, there's no reason why we wouldn't be able to meet every child's needs every day. And I do. I'm fully aware of what that statement means given the crisis that so much of the world is in the trauma in our world, in many communities. And I've worked in public schools, private schools, all over the U S and actually. Outside of the U S in other parts of the world, and I see so many of the same challenges, whether that is in an elite wealthy school or in a school where 100% of students are on free and reduced lunch. And that has to do with some of the, perhaps underlying beliefs from which we operate or don't operate. I've seen schools in. Low income communities under resource schools that are doing an incredible job meeting the needs of students. A really amazing job doing personalized learning, individualized learning, differentiating, providing wraparound services, and no teachers and schools shouldn't be. In the position of bearing the entire responsibility in wait for a whole lot of problems in our country and in our societies. And I am seeing Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:26:46] it's while you're speaking, it's going through my head like I can imagine. Yeah. I can imagine some teachers out there going, but you know, I'm only a teacher and, and this is something that. It's definitely a transition from me coming from an international school where we, everyone's a family because we're in a different country and we know all the kids and we see the parents out at dinners and then coming into back into the United States where it's a different culture again. But you think, what can I do as a teacher? And we could do a lot. We can do a lot. I know. building social emotional skills in our students, even in a, in a wealthy pub. Private school is super important and it's something that Sean and I focus a lot. We feel like with coding. A lot of these people think coding. We're just in there, you know, coding computer. But it's a lot more, it's a lot of social, emotional, teaching that we do. We do a lot of, more of you got this and building up and helping, helping kids find their positives and feeling comfortable and feeling okay with failure and, and knowing that nothing, every, everything doesn't have to be perfect. So, I'm going to throw this one out. There's not on our question list, but any like one little advice you can give to those teachers who might think, wow, that's too much for a teacher to handle. Elena Aguilar: [00:28:13] One of the key habits for cultivating resilience is to acknowledge and accept emotions. And so when teachers say that to me, I actually say, I appreciate that you're aware of. Of those feelings and what are they. And when we look at those feelings and I shared them, I do share them still. When we look at them, there's often fear mixed in with fear of our own abilities, fear of letting down our students and our communities. There is also sometimes some. Sadness at seeing the reality and the experiences for some of our students. Sometimes there's anger, and so one of the core components of the coaching model that I've developed, which is called transformational coaching, one of the core elements of it is too. Explore except surface and talk about emotions. And that is absolutely critical also to doing work around equity because there is just no way that we're going to have the kinds of conversations we need to have about equity if we don't have emotions, like we just can't do it. We are human beings and human beings have emotions, and when we talk about. 500 years of violence and dehumanization of groups of people and about the way that other groups of people have been elevated and how for people who are, you know, what we think about as white people, so much of that identity is about, if we dig down into, it isn't about feeling superior to other people and all of this conversation that we need to have. It's going to raise a lot of strong emotions like. Shame and guilt and fear and anger and sadness and confusion. And so if we're not having conversations that surface emotions, we're not having the right conversations. And if we're having conversations that surface emotions, we need to know how to engage with them. It would be. For so long, emotions have been talked about and thought about and perceived as something that is unprofessional. Something we sort of need to control or manage. That's the language often, like manage your emotions, get them under control that we need to regulate. All of that. Language is actually language that emerges from systems of oppression. That's language of capitalism. Manage control, regulate. Take advantage of, you know, all of that language and all of that language is about exploiting the labor. A certain groups of people, and again, it comes from capitalism or colonialism, comes from white supremacy, which is really an ideology of white superiority. And so as we have these conversations and emotions come up, if we actually start acknowledging and accepting them, just start there, acknowledge and accept. We're. Actually immediately doing something which undermines and dismantle systems of oppression. We're saying, Hey, you know what? We've got a right to talk about emotions. Emotions have also been maligned as something that belongs in the realm of women and children. That is. Emotions are distrusting, distrusting, or we can't trust them. They're unworthy. Their infant tile there, you know, they definitely don't belong in professional spheres. And so again, when we claim our human rights to talk about them and to experience them, we are making a statement about whether or not we're going to uphold and replicate. Systems of oppression. And in that case, I'm referencing a system of oppression, which, which dehumanizes women, which doesn't actually, you know, in which men have suffered tremendously too, because the expression of the emotional expression for men has been restricted. And so part of creating truly equitable schools and equitable societies is for all of us to recognize how we have suffered under these systems of oppression, whether that's patriarchy or white supremacy or capitalism. Everyone has suffered. Everyone has been dehumanized. And for us again, to have those conversations, we're going to have emotions and so building some skill to have those conversations will set us on the path. Sean Tibor: [00:33:07] I think. I think that's a really key point. I. When I first started teaching, it was amazing to me how much classrooms are intended to be regulated, right? Classroom management and classroom control. you know, the, the idea that a picture perfect classroom is one where all the kids are hitting it. Neat little desks and neat little rows with their hands folded in front of them and their books open, ready to write down everything that the teacher says is. You know, I think it's a, it's a pipe dream, right? Like we could achieve that. But then that seems to me that it goes counter to everything that you've talked about in terms of equity. Right? And in terms of delivering what every child needs, not the teacher may want the students to sit in rows, but the, that's not what the students need. if we ignore our emotions as part of who we are, it's like pretending we're missing a part of ourselves that's vital, right? And that then has unintended consequences. We may think we're being rational. We may think we're being professional, but our behavior is affected by this repressed emotion that we're not acknowledging about ourselves. It's fascinating, right? Like it's fascinating to think about how, how so much of that we don't even. Acknowledge or talk about and how much of that's cultural. So even being aware of it as a first step, or being able to put a word to it or name it, or recognize it as being an important, step means that we can do something about it. And we can decide. We have the choice then of how we, how we, relate to our emotions and how we choose to, Let them control us, to control them ourselves, to just let them be. But then we have choices and I love that about, the way that you put it. Elena Aguilar: [00:34:55] one of the ways that I work with schools and teachers and school leaders to create equitable. Schools and classrooms is not by looking at what sometimes is a superficial level of. What's going on in a classroom in terms of equities. So for example, not saying, well, let's start with auditing your curriculum and looking for the representation of diverse, stories or characters or images. Look, diversity in curriculum and in literature is very important, but that's not where I start. I start with guiding people to interrogate the underlying mental models that they're working from. So one of the ways, one of the key ways that power works to perpetuate unjust systems is that it's the people who know who perpetuate it, communicate. And. Subtly instill mental models that we become unaware of. And so we internalize messages of inferiority and superiority and power dynamics. That we actually just operate in without awareness. So Sean, when you were talking about the ideal classroom is one where there's kids sitting in rows in their silence and you know, the teacher might want that, but students don't. I would actually really questioned that. I think the teacher might think that they want that, but when I have conversations with teachers about what they really want, that's not where we end up. And so when we interrogate the underlying mental models from which we are operating, usually without awareness. So we bought into these mental models, which in which we are suffering actually in which in which students are. And when we start to actually surface and interrogate those and say, is that what we really value. And one of the explorations that I often do with people is around their core values. And so often I find that. People all over have similar values around kindness, around respect, and those often don't show up. When we start looking at traditional classroom management systems, for example, Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:37:31] so I was just thinking back to thinking about core values and my core values. And when I took your course and then I was kind of drifting, I do this to myself. I have a lot of conversations in my head as you were going along and I drifted to our first, our first, Sean and I went to pike on this year. And PI con is a huge conference for all the Python people. and I was new to Python and I had this idea. In my head of who these people are going to be. They're all going to be these really intelligent, which they are people from Cornette, Carnegie Mellon or other places where they're coding and, and we actually went into a community that really has strong values. beliefs and understandings of equity. And I'll say resilient because you have to be resilient to code, but resilience to bounce back through a lot of hard times. And, and I was just thinking like maybe it's not necessarily a certain person, but definitely a certain character within that allows you to be more cognizant of these core values of how to make things equitable for people. Do you want to finish up my thought on that, Sean, do you kind of know where I'm going? It's like this, he can finish my thoughts, but it's, it's a community that is unlike any other community that I've ever been involved in. One that ope is very open, very trusting. Allows every, he, she, person to they to, to have their pronouns. And it's, it's just one of these fantasy worlds that I want to live in all the time. Go ahead, Shawn. I get emotional. Sean Tibor: [00:39:10] Well, what I like about it too, and, and I, my career has been in the technology space and in corporate America for many, many years. And one of the things that I always saw was that, you know, building equity or finding equity among people in a corporate setting or in a business environment has usually meant. Sometimes superficial, equity, right? And, and giving people an opportunity to join your company and think the same way that we do and look differently, right? and there's a tolerated amount of difference that's allowed. But what I like about, the Python community, one of the things that I've seen is that. That there's a lot of different ways, a lot of different avenues. It's a very open tent for people to be able to join in and participate. And it's, like many large communities, it's often loud and boisterous and there's lots of disagreement and differing opinions and people get upset with each other and frustrated and people walk away and come back. And they participate. And it's one of those things that I think is unique and special in this community. Something that I don't see in a lot of other technical communities where people use jargon to exclude people. Or they use those mental models that you talk about where, you know, one of the classic computer science, problems that every computer science student seems to solve in college is this idea of the traveling salesman, right? By definition, the traveling salesman problem is kind of a patriarchal, like, Oh, system of oppression, right? It's, it's why does it have to be a traveling salesman? Could we use another example? Could we use something else that works differently and gives more equity? Right. But we don't see as much of that in the Python community. I'm sure there's parts of it that are still there. But we see people that are coming from different backgrounds, with different identities, with different strengths, different values that come together. And it seems that the common value is this idea of I can be accepted here for who I am and what I bring. I don't have to be the best coder out there. I can be a beginner. I can look different than everyone else. I can think different than everyone else. I can feel different things. And. It's okay for me to be just as equal as everyone else in this community, without having to be the same. So I was wondering if you thought about some of the, or if you've seen communities in your experience that have these values or have values that you admire, that build, resilience, celebrate a resilience, and also celebrate equity and each individual's, ability to create their own. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:41:57] before you answer, I think it's C for us, it's like we want to bring that feeling into our school. We try every day to bring it into our classroom and, and I think schools are all struggling with, with this, you know, all over the world. We want to be cognizant of what is capable. And we want to do the right thing by the children. And by, you know, for the, we want to do it for them. And that's kind of like, wow, how do we do that? How do we, how do we make such a beautiful thing happen every day? You know? That's kind of where we're going with it. Elena Aguilar: [00:42:35] the places where I have seen what looks like the most growth and potential in terms of creating equitable spaces are places where the leaders and the adults involved spend a good amount of time. Grappling and in the messiness of it. This is a messy process. It's uncomfortable. It's, there are many different phases of exploring privilege and equity and systemic oppression and places where I think that they're making the most growth and progress are places where there's an a, an allocation of resources, a prioritization of resources in terms of time and money. To grapple and to be in the mess of it. And for people to do the learning they need to do and have the conversations they need to have and to have the meetings that they need to have and to do the kind of deep interrogation of the mental models from which they're operating. And so that is when, when I hear people really talking about exploring their own beliefs and understanding how they are. Replicating or interrupting the institutionalized systems of oppression. That's when I think, okay, kids in this cool, or the employees of this company are going to have a different experience. Sean Tibor: [00:44:05] I guess we have some, some other questions to, to pivot just a little bit, cause we want to make sure that we are talking about this in the, also in the context of coding and technology, have you, ever learned how to code Elena Aguilar: [00:44:16] I have not. Sean Tibor: [00:44:19] all right. So we have some books for you. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:44:22] you ever coached any computer science teachers? Elena Aguilar: [00:44:25] I have not. I've coached Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:44:28] SI, Elena Aguilar: [00:44:28] who. No, I mean, it's, and you know, it's interesting because the initial thing that comes up for me with those questions is anxiety. And that is because I've never felt like. I would ever belong in that community, in those spaces. In those conversations, it immediately raises like, Oh, I'm not the kind of person, not as a woman, not as a Latina, not as somebody who's 50 years old. Like I those, that's not my sphere. That's. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:45:02] No. W that was me last year. I don't know if you know my story. My boss told us and told me two years ago I was going to teach Python and I've never coded before, and I come from the coaching of an ed tech. Of yours. And that was my, I'm not doing this. This is stupid. I don't need this job. I can't do it. Oh, this is wonderful. Now that's all a big joke. So I think the, I think a person gifted with, compassion. The, the desire to have kids appreciate learning to learn and enjoy learning to learn as has helped me. So I know. I was just wondering, just seeing how many, if you had maybe the, maybe the computer teachers are more Zen with the coaching world. I don't know. Sean Tibor: [00:45:51] But you know, I would, I would say though, Alaina, we need you, I mean, we need your perspective. We need your, your thoughts on this also, because, you know, we've, we've said it many times to our teachers and to our parents. We're not really teaching Python. In 10 years, the language may change, the technology may change. But what we're really teaching is how to solve problems and how to think and how to be resilient, how to, you know, how to understand and be comfortable with failure and use that as a stepping stone to the next idea and the next win. So. It feels like what we're really teaching in computer science is not so much the technology that's kind of our vehicle, but the durable skills, the things that the, that really are, we want our students to take away from, from this experience are all the things that you're well equipped to coach, which are about equity and resilience and giving every student an opportunity to learn something about themselves and how they can, how they can offer something. As a, as a person. Elena Aguilar: [00:46:56] Sure. And I, I, I just never have had the opportunity. I would be totally open to it. I think that. Actually the world of coding and technology and computer science is right on the frontier of where we perhaps could most use some conversations about equity, because that is, I mean, we know, I don't have to say any more than that. So you know, this is what one of the key questions I ask around equity and. Sort of a preliminary question about how equitable a classroom is, is around access. Who has access? And so as soon as we start talking about computer science and who has access and who thinks that they have access and who would be comfortable walking through the door and sitting down at a computer or teaching, that opens up all kinds of conversations about. Identity, safety, and, and diversity and acceptance, and how we create spaces where we can have a diverse community. So it's a key place for people to be thinking about equity and coaching and how do we explore the underlying mental models. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:48:12] Yeah, I can hear a couple of our friends in our listening. now when this air is just going, yes, we have a couple of friends who are doing a lot of social good and, and really trying to break down the barriers that exist in, in our world, into places in suburbs, in Chicago. we have a couple of friends. In Peru or trying to get more females in the low socio economic status into coding for free. so yes, I think there's a lot to do. I, I definitely, when I was at PI con, we say it's an open community, but it was funny cause I went out to dinner with 1212 guys and myself. So it's always my question of, you know. Come on girls, we can do this, we can do this. And it's a long road and I think we're pretty good. Do you mind, I'm gonna can I want to read this little blurb from your book on onward? Is it okay? Elena Aguilar: [00:49:09] Yeah, Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:49:10] Yeah, cause I circled this because I'm also, when I was taught, I ain't talking to Sean about inviting you this whole resilience as well, going into teaching online and all that we're going through, It's gotta be hard for a lot of people around the world. And so I pulled out onward and I was reading it, trying to, you know, the two chapters that are really important to me right now are focused on the bright spots and taking care of yourself. So just from the bright spots. in order to build resilience, you must feel that the ability to respond to challenges lies within you. To manage the endless stream of challenges that you'll confront. You'll need to cultivate a disposition of self efficacy and empowerment. Personal experience has taught me this, but educational research on resilient educators validates my belief. And you quoted that, And then you want, sorry, one more paragraph. When we feel empowered, we believe we can influence our surroundings and the outcome of events, which contributes to a sense of competence and confidence. We empower ourselves when we take risks, make mistakes, or even fail and discover our own ability to get up and move on. And that's just like these, this is, this is, this is why we open the book all the time. I just think it's very important to always remember that we're human. Okay. And that we're going to Elena Aguilar: [00:50:28] And to, what would it be like if we embraced, I mean, many people have been talking about this for years, right? A growth mindset and reframing what failure is, but wouldn't it be amazing if we actually celebrated like, what did you fail at this week? Tell me. I mean, if we're not failing all the time, we're not taking enough risks. And we can fail. I mean, we could fail and embrace our vulnerability, and you know, and it would be like, we could brag about how much we failed, you know, B, we'd be building muscle at resilience. Sean Tibor: [00:50:59] So maybe that's, maybe that's our companion piece to the one of the week when we record is the fail of the week, right? So my fail of the week, I, I, overstep my bounds at work and did something that, or was about to do something that I wasn't supposed to. And I got my hand smacked pretty hard. And it was at the end of a very long day, which was coming in at the very end of a very long week, in a very long month, in a very long year. And it was. It was the last straw, right. And so I sat in my car and I cried for about 10 minutes because I just had had enough. And so my fail of the week was making that mistake and having a blow up bigger than I thought it was going to. But then also being able to cry and be okay and know that I was like, I can get up the next day and do it again. So. I think we need to add that to our one of the week. We need to have the fail of the week also. Like, here's my fail, and sometimes it's going to be a a funny fail. Sometimes it'll be an emotional fail, but I think that's a really good point that we, we need to talk about the positives, but we also need to acknowledge acknowledge that the failures are okay too. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:52:12] Yeah, absolutely. Elena Aguilar: [00:52:14] And when you, and when you share that, you're normalizing that experience and you're modeling for others and you're helping people see and remember that we can get through discomfort, that we can survive falling down or failing, that we can experience the emotions of it. And then the next question that sometimes at some point we're ready to ask is, what did I learn from that. And asking ourselves in or after a difficult moment, what did I learn? Or what can I learn? Or even just saying, is there anything I can learn from that can boost our resilience? Now we don't want to, sometimes we're not ready to ask that in the moment or even the next day, but at some point, if we can say, is there any learning that's possible for me from that experience? It can. That's when our resilience is built. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:53:08] I'm just thinking about, we talk about reflection a lot and we do a lot of reflection as teachers and we try to implement it in our classroom and I think that's a good, good thing. What did we learn from that? Can we write that down? Can we, can we sit back after the tears are gone and really and really be honest to ourselves and express that. Sean Tibor: [00:53:27] I think though we should always, whenever we say it's like the fail of the week, brought to you by Elena Aguilar. Like we could always like, just make sure, because it's, it's something like, it's, I can't believe I never thought of it before, but it is definitely something that's important and being able to show that vulnerability and normalization of it matters. Like it makes a difference because I can't, you know, we've, we see sometimes on Twitter we see, you know, things people saying like, Oh wow, you guys must be these amazing teachers. Like, I go from failure to failure. Right? Like, and in between. Sometimes there are really great things that happen, but you know, the failures happen to, nobody is perfect and we need to acknowledge that. Elena Aguilar: [00:54:11] And it's beautiful. It's, it's amazing, wonderful thing about being a human being. And that's why we're in constant growth. And it makes me think about also how in many private schools and in many prestigious colleges, which have drawn from students, from private schools primarily. They are in the last few years, five, 10 years have been facing really steep increase in the amount of depression, anxiety, and suicide of students. And one of the. Things that's been examined or one of the, the possible causes that's being explored is that when students have been performing at extremely high levels for years, perhaps developing tendencies towards perfectionism, and then when they don't have enough opportunities to make mistakes and fail and they get to college, and it's really hard and. They crash and they fail. They don't have the resilience levels built up to be able to respond in an appropriate, healthy way. And it's like, my son is now 16 and when he was in middle school, his school was falling apart and he had a lot of struggles. And one of the things I kept saying to him was, you know, this is great. You're building resilience. And he would. Look at me and roll his eyes and be like, ah, no, this is not But I was like, no, this is resilience. I feel so much more confident about you because you struggled in middle school. You're going to do so much better. And he has done so much better in high school. because he's like, well, it's not as hard as seventh grade. So there's, um, there is also a lot of research on the, the. Validity of struggle and failure and talking about it, building community through talking about what we're struggling through. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:56:07] So I think we're experiencing that and we're in the heart of it. We've implemented the social emotional learning, and we've, we've looked at the signs of suicide. And it is, it's something that people assume because you're in a private school that everything's so easy and wonderful, but Sean and I are constantly, struggling with some kids. And trying to allow them to have failure, but the grades always get in the way. And even today, I said to a student, the end of the quarter, well, you know, does that mean I'm going to a can? I was like, yes. If you do not want to code it, all that matters to you is the a, I will give you the a for me, it's not the a, you, if you want the I, the A's, yours. What I want, what I want is you to realize what you've learned and to see what you could do in order to improve. But if it's, if it's the a that's in your way, you got ne perfect. You know? And I think, I think it's a hard thing because we just sometimes condone the AE, but we also don't want it to get in the way of the learning. And we battle with that constantly trying to get that internal motivation. To do something to feel worthy without, as some sort of extrinsic motivation driving them. And it's, it's hard. It's really hard. But Sean Tibor: [00:57:30] I think we're, we're probably running out of time, but I do want to ask, the final question that we had so the, the question is, if we do this right, so if we, you know, if we've figured this out, if we do this right, what does the future look like for ourselves and for our students? Elena Aguilar: [00:57:46] a beautiful question. I think if we do this right, we're going to see so much more beauty in the world and joy and creativity and real celebration of what each individual brings and has and knows and can do. I think we'll have. More music and more interesting meals and more brilliant ideas about how to respond to climate change and other social economic political challenges we face. I think we'll just have a lot more expression. And self knowledge. I think we'll have stronger communities. I think we'll enjoy being with each other more. We'll have better conversations. We'll have more meaningful connections. This is gonna sound really cheesy, but I think there'll be a lot more love. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:58:36] It's not cheesy. Sean Tibor: [00:58:38] Yeah. There's nothing, there is nothing cheesy about Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:58:40] I think we need the, I think we need this conversation. I know a lot of people that we've been talking to, I, it sounds very, Almost petty and like, and what's really happening around, but a lot of people are struggling with this distancing and not being around. I know Sean and I were used to be an in a classroom for 12 hours a day, always having someone. So we're, my thumbs are starting to hurt from texting him so much. And, and I just think that leaving with that, that beautiful future of love and, and, and greatness and it's just a nice thing to end with. I don't know, Sean, Sean Tibor: [00:59:18] I don't have anything to add to that. So for teaching price on this is Sean Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:59:22] and this is Kelly Sean Tibor: [00:59:23] signing off.