Welcome to Cultural Connections Lab. I'm your host Dr. Kelly Forbes. We are here to talk with educational professionals around the world to impact and influence the education system as we focus on cultural connections and the education of multilingual, diverse students.
We're excited to have you join us today. We sincerely hope that you enjoy the show.
Hi Kelly. Hey, I am so excited to be with both of you doing this and so thank you for volunteering to come by and chat for a little bit.
So we are here as board members. Today's my final day, so I'm excited about that.
It's exciting though. It is sad but I mean, I'll still be at Oave. It'll be fantastic. But I mean this, you two are absolutely wonderful human beings. I've been able to work with you in another district and discuss all the things that we could do in the field of education.
We've laughed, we've cried, we've gone through a lot of the emotions throughout the years. But I'm really honored and I really mean this. I'm so honored to serve with you on the board and I'm really glad to see you, Ms. Savannah Payne right here as the new president.
Not president-elect anymore, president of Oave and to see what this looks like with your leadership and I just am so excited for you. And then of course we have Jamie here and so it's just wonderful to get to like
hear from you all and so I want to step back for a minute and just listen to what you all have to say. We're here to promote culture, we're here to promote language, we're here to promote all of that.
But then we're also here to promote Oave. So if anyone wants to come to Oave. You know that too. But what does all that mean to you? What has that been like in your life and what are things within the short time that we have before everything's over?
What do you want to share and have listeners around the world be able to know about either you, your exposure to culture, your experiences and what role that plays in our education system and beyond?
Well, I think Jamie and I have some serious life experiences that overlap a lot. So we're both military brats. So we grew up moving. We actually were stationed in the same town at one point in time.
I did not know that.
We did not know each other at all until...
Yeah, and so we discovered it was just a coincidence. And so I think both of our passion from culture came from the experience of moving when we were younger. You know, I moved a lot on the East Coast and then I ended up in Oklahoma and got Oklahoma Promise.
So I went to university in Edmond and stayed here and kind of learned a little bit. But that really taught me like there's so much out there to experience in me and learning about other people's culture even within the United States.
Like that could be eye opening. We both had like the same kind of shock moving to more of a rural area.
It's a little different.
Well, we both lived in Pensacola, Florida. So talk about melting pot where everyone kind of felt a sense of belonging in some place there.
So yeah, then the rural areas has just, I mean, for me personally, growing up to Latino or half Filipino, I can blend in in many different cultures, but moving from Florida to a small town in Arkansas to a small town in Oklahoma, everywhere I lived, people kind of categorize me as something else.
So really having to find that identity as I went and being comfortable in who I was now in my adult life, I think has really put me in the position I am now.
Wow, I can imagine. So like whenever you were in Pensacola, it wasn't necessarily that same vibe and feel. But then whenever you were here, what I'm hearing is like you felt distinguished apart from or othered perhaps.
Yes, I think I had the same experience because I'm half Mexican. And so I'm half white half Mexican and moving to Oklahoma. It was a lot of questions of what are you.
And that was the first time I felt like I had like a cultural identity crisis. Yeah, because I didn't grow up learning the language. So I did not learn Spanish and you didn't learn.
Same.
So, you know, we didn't have that shared experience of learning another language, but we came from different cultures. So I think that gave a huge impact for me, especially working with long term English language learners who are struggling with that cultural identity because they might have receptive bilingualism, right?
They can understand, they can get the chisme. They kind of know what's going on, but they don't have the academic language to participate even in Spanish. Right. And so I really connected with students like that and how they really needed to value their cultural importance and their cultural identity did matter, even if they weren't fluent speakers of another language.
Yeah, and for me, in the role I play now, I see my mom a lot in the students. My mom came straight from the Philippines in her 30s, where, you know, she knew English, but Tagalog is her first language.
And so kind of what Sabina was saying, we didn't grow up learning the language. When I was little, she started and then stopped because she kind of went and thinking English is what my kids need to know. So I lost that, but I see so many of our kids now in her and in myself because of that experience.
I mean, I always talk to my mom about how I wish, you know, we would have done that and when I have kids, I hope that you can help them really learn that language. And I see that same thing too because my mom was like really assimilated.
So she lost all of her language, but kept so many of the cultural aspects of the community, but then doesn't speak Spanish. And so it just really, I could see how hard that was on her family later in life when they were trying to reconnect back to their roots, realizing like how much did we miss.
And so for us, like that's what made us really passionate about showing students like your culture is important, your identity matters, and you need to be valued.
Denise Solercox had an episode on here and you might remember her from La Inye, or from Inye, Project Inye.
Anyhow, and she, you know, had a similar experience as she was saying like, ni de aquí, ni de allá. Like I'm not from here or from there, right? But it was really interesting like, you know, I've known both of you and I feel like we've had these conversations, but like really never like this necessarily.
This was fun for me also. But so maybe you two didn't go through an experience of learning or being bilingual, right? But you went through an experience that was similar in the aspect that was something was taken away.
And so I want to hear from you, my grandmother, Kiki, I love her. Shout out to my Kiki. Kiki and Papa. But Kiki grew up, you know, praying in German and reading the German Bible with her grandmother.
And then as she continued forward, you know, the education system didn't support that. So then she ended up therefore losing it, which means then I did too. Now I don't have that first degree connection to losing it, but I wish I had that, right?
But that seems like a much more personal experience and a one degree off situation with you all, with your parents. Do you want to, anything you feel comfortable sharing about that our listeners might be able to like, you know, take away from these experiences?
I mean, I think for me, it was hearing people tell my mom that she wasn't Mexican. And so, and you know, her having a Mexican last name, she's like one of 11, like grew up in Colorado and a really predominantly Hispanic neighborhood and then being told several times like, well, you're not Mexican, you don't speak Spanish.
And then for her family to take that on as identity and then saying like, well, we're not Mexican, you know, we're not Mexican. And so for me, that was heartbreaking. And then actually I saw Project Aguabe did it.
And that's where I saw it. And that was the first time I really felt connected to something that I explained like how I felt about it. And then also learning about like Chicano movement, Chicano art, like really taught me a lot about like the passion people have of being Mexican American.
And even that's kind of controversy right now. But like it was shocking to me to see that and then to tell my relatives like, oh, yeah, I'm a bilingual, like I'm an ESL teacher and they're like, what? You know, like, they couldn't believe it. My grandma who speaks Spanish, you know, she was just shocked.
She was like, but how do you do it? And I was like, what do you mean? How do I do it? And so, you know, that really showed my family like there's somebody out there passionately connecting back to their culture in our own family circle.
And I think that was so important for my family to see. And through you, like you revived that. Yeah. And so that was part, you know, and then like my cousins, you know, they're very passionate and connecting back to our culture and, you know, like doing those things that are connecting us back.
But it's something that I see a lot of young Mexican Americans going through and a lot of bicultural people going through. Right. So when you're in that like in between, right, like you really are learning how to fit both worlds. Yeah. And that gives you such a like positive experience on life as well.
Yeah. What about with you? Yeah. For me, growing up, moving around a lot, my mom being Filipino, I mean, full Filipino from the Philippines, she is really hard because being involved in a lot of athletic communities, going on soccer trips, my dad was in the army.
And a lot of times he'd have to leave for drill or he'd be gone for multiple times. My mom would have to be using her English that she knows to communicate. But sometimes that didn't come through to people. And I know that she's opened up to me about feeling like she's been misheard, misunderstood.
They're just kind of feeling less than what she was because when she moved from the Philippines, she had her she had her degree. She actually moved to Germany first, where then she ran like this college on base. So she was like this high and mighty profession.
And then when she moved here, none of that transferred right and being having to move and pick up all the time. She just had to find like daycare jobs, things that she could get when we moved to the next place. And so for her, it just became really difficult with keeping up with the language when my dad was away, really trying to fit in for us.
But then a little bit later in life, when she started opening up about it, we kind of reflected on you know no matter where we lived, even though she came from somewhere else we always found that pocket of Filipinos. She has always been the glue to the Filipino communities in New York and, you know, Florida, Arkansas, Oklahoma.
They actually recently just moved to Oklahoma City and she was here for like a month and already was going to parties. And so just seeing my mom being resilient with her culture has really gave me and my brother appreciation and knowing like our community is really strong, and we want to know more about it.
And so that's been a big part of like finding out who we are in our adult lives. That is, that's, it's really important to bring to the forefront with other people that we've been talking to.
And so it's just so good to be vulnerable and be like, you know, like there are things that I have experienced that gone through in my life that are not the same things that you have. That's where we try to find some sympathy and some empathy and some understanding and things like that. But then to also you know be the person that says like I have no idea what that feels like at that level.
And so, you know, to be able to be a child and many of the children that we serve every single day, they do watch their families come into this, you know, environment where we say like anything's possible. Yeah, but yet you're coming with these degrees, but you can't do this and you can't do that and you can't do that and like that has to be daunting for the whole family unit but especially for the children.
And so I like sharing that in a whole different way. Yeah, so expand upon that but I also know because of time stakes I would love to hear anything but I also want to say that you to really share these stories through a whole different lens from the stories in the books that you all author right and publish, which I think is a really important part of all this and I have one I've read it I have chills right now just thinking about it, and then your stories as well so I want to give you space to share about that because I think this helps us overall.
It's a very deep level and connects to take some of your experiences perhaps as well. I think for Jamie and I, when we started working with students, knowing our own stories weren't really being told either about the experiences our families have had experiences that affected us as you know as children that we saw our parents going
to school with my grandma you know watching these things happen, my aunts and uncles. We realized that a lot of teachers just don't know, you know, like no fault to their own, their experiences, they just hadn't lived in a world where they had to assimilate or be part of two cultures that was just something
that was done like my dad is from rural Missouri and my mom's from like a predominantly Hispanic area in Colorado like those are very two different cultural places that I learned how to navigate because of my mom and dad being from two different like cultural backgrounds.
And Jamie and I realized you know people just don't have those experiences. It's true, like a lot of people don't. I think Savannah was probably the first person I met along my journey that we shared something so similar in that I've always just had to overcome and adapt and I think we're both very outgoing because of having to find new places for ourselves and having to find those new communities.
And so when we kind of had those experiences ourselves and then we worked with teachers who hadn't had those, we were really shocked. And so, how the project really started.
One of my teammates, Christina Dix, she worked as a EL teacher with me at a school site. And she was like hey you know a lot of these teachers just don't understand like what our kids have been through like she went to a conference picked up the idea from somebody else and then we brought it back to our school.
And we had them write stories about their life. Yeah. And we told them, you know, we didn't tell them. I think back when we started it this was like 2015 ish. We said, just write about a moment in your life.
We didn't even have a lot of parameters like just write about it. And we were blown away with the type of stories we started receiving students were readily sharing things about their journeys to the United States.
Family things that had happened. Exciting transitions in their lives. And so then Jamie joined the team after I had left, and then her experience was really building up the curriculum Jamie's like a star at curriculum building.
She's a former LA teacher. But I'll let you talk a little bit after I left what that looked like. Yeah, so then we took it up a notch and did get parameters.
And she was like, well, okay, let's talk more about theme. Let's talk about a moment that impacted your life and kind of take it from there and that's just, I mean it expanded every year and when I entered the role that I'm in now.
We were on the same team where we were able to develop an actual curriculum that is tied to ELA standards to try to build that bridge. And now we went from our one little middle school to 12 schools in our district, doing this writing project called project voice
and we have you know we talked about our personal stories and how we've come together because we shared something similar. Well now we're seeing our kids across the district come together, where our students who are classified more as long terms are reading stories
from other students saying, wow, that's what my mom went through. And they're building these cultural connections through the stories from one middle school to another middle school to a high school. We had one high school even partner with a middle school where they were kind of
pin pals through this writing process and so it's just been really cool to see how this writing project has just started evolving and more and more people are connecting through it.
And I remember that whenever I was over at Taft Middle School as a newcomer teacher, we had, I think it's like treasure books dot something com or I don't know you can look it up and see, but they would be able to like write their own book and publish it
and anyhow, but that was like that was my first exposure to that and I said you can write about anything because I knew some people had certain stories that I don't want you to have to share right.
So for the ones that we're willing to share and you know, first of all, you want to be more culturally relevant and what you're doing and not responsive and I'm saying relevant.
That's an awesome way to be very relevant because you really get to know but then the next step that you all took so people want to take this and make something more out of it than just having that cultural connection, but you can tie it to language
and you can tie it to everything else. I think the best part about all of it though is that it really helps us stop and reflect upon our own cultural journeys, where we have been.
And I think you to have learned so much more about yourselves through your shared experiences.
Maybe you know together but also sharing about your experiences before you had met and I think if we could do that overall and more often, it would really create a different sense of compassion understanding grace sympathy and empathy.
Yeah, I think for us empathy was the biggest thing we were looking for. It's just you can't explicitly teach empathy right you can't teach a teacher here the three things you need to do to be empathetic.
But what we did find is that using the stories to show teachers like read the story like this is a kid that may be sitting in your classroom.
That showed them the avenues to become empathetic is what we started to see, or it might even be a teacher that you're working with that have that experience that you don't know yet.
Even have that. Yeah, we actually have had a lot of teachers start opening up about their stories and I think we would like to maybe in the next volume have teachers and option for them to share their stories in the book as well so the students can kind of see a little bit, both of them.
And we do encourage the teachers doing the project to share their story or a story of vulnerability, because that helps build that relationship and opens vulnerability and their students.
Especially now we get to learn from each other. Now where do we find these books if someone wants to, like how do we, how do I get a copy.
I was like, I think there's a couple of ways the easiest way would just be to email me. Okay. It would be SL pain at okay CPS dot org. Okay. Email me and then we'll go from there.
And that would be the quickest way we want to make sure we're protecting our students so everything is anonymous. And we make sure like we keep a record of everything and then the profits from the book, go to just print the book for the next year, and then we give every
student a copy for free.
And that is, it's SL p a y n e at okay CPS dot org. Correct. And we will have that in the link below in the description so you'll have that. And then, if for any reason that email bounces back or whatever, just continue emailing cultural connections lab will make sure
that they can also just reach out to a Wabes Facebook page.
I was going to say, because, uh huh, so we have some in closing because we have president right now starting and then we also have no longer newsletter editor as we used to call it but you're going to be everything with, you know, PR, basically, so I was going to ask you so can they also
contact what you just said can they also contact a Wabes so yes you can, but then to how do you contact a Wabes. You can follow the Facebook page would probably be the easiest message us through. Is it just a Wabes.
It's the Oklahoma Association for Bilingual Education, O A B E. Right here if you're seeing on the on the video but yeah and then I would just encourage everyone to reach out get the book, read it do it, because it does change it changes lives in the classroom but I think it changes your
life as an educator also.
Well thank you Kelly for having us. Thank you so much. Thanks for being my friends. First and foremost, and thank you for just all of your all of your, your service that you really give, not just an education but I think specifically in a field that we're very passionate about
multicultural multi-lingual education, and I'm excited for a Wabes in the future especially with you guys on the board so it's gonna be fantastic. Thank you so much. Alright, hasta proximo que entra, see you guys in 2024 for a little bit more.
Have a place in my heart. I'm trying to fill it with the stars. So let it stay in my head.