Towards Liberation - A Conversation with Jamilah Pitts

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

Education can either be used as a tool for oppression or it can be used as a tool for liberation. But ultimately, I believe that healing uniquely allows us to get back to that place. And without that really key component, I actually do not think that it's possible for us to get to collective liberation.

Hi everyone, thanks for joining me for another episode of the podcast. My name is Tim Logan and the podcast is brought to you in partnership with Notosh. This week I'm so happy to be joined by the amazing Jamila Pitts, whose incredible work is asking us how we might root our educational practices in activism, healing, and love. This is so that we can really tell the truths about the deep biases and harms that continue to persist within our societies and many of our educational institutions. As bell hooks said, we won't be successful in challenging the ethic of domination, and I quote, "if we refuse to address fully the place of love in struggles for liberation." Jamila's work follows strongly in this incredible tradition of hooks, Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, and others, as she advances the work of social and intersectional justice through an emphasis on wellness and educator training. Jamila is an educator, writer, social entrepreneur, and yoga teacher whose work centers the liberation, healing, and holistic development of communities of the global majority. Jamila's book Towards Liberation Educational Practices Rooted in Activism, Healing, and Love was published in November.

You can find out more about Jamila in the show notes and at jamilapitts.com. Well, thank you, Jamila. It's an absolute pleasure to be able to talk to you. Thank you for agreeing to this conversation. I'm super excited about all of the amazing things that you've been doing, and thank you for joining the podcast.

Yes, yes, thank you for having me. I'm, I'm super excited. Your questions were really phenomenal and, and I'm, I'm always excited to be able to just talk about the work and expand the work in this way.

Yeah, amazing. So what I thought we could do, and this is what we shared previously, was personally I love the titles of books and yours just leapt off the page at me. I mean, it's just such an incredible title of a book, Towards Liberation: Educational Practices Rooted in Activism, Healing, and Love, right? I mean, It's like every single word in that title is just, it packs a serious punch. So, so if we can, I would love to talk about some of those amazing concepts, if that's all right with you.

Absolutely.

So if we start with that idea of liberation, so, you know, as I understand there's kind of many different facets to your work and as you've kind of framed liberation being this thing that we are hopefully moving towards in this work educationally, in, in other ways, perhaps you can kind of set the scene for people in terms of what does the idea of liberation mean for you?

Yeah, I think— I know that schools are such powerful places. I know that the work that we engage in as educators, as practitioners, is incredibly powerful. It's incredibly hopeful work and practices that we really have at our disposal, um, that we engage in. Those of us who work directly with students, it's, uh, being in the trenches, almost standing in the front lines. And, you know, I have long believed that education can either be used as a tool for oppression or it can be used as a tool for liberation. And when I sit and think about my work as a classroom teacher, the work that I was able to do as a school leader, and even now consulting with many schools and working with educators in, in various spaces, is really just the belief and the understanding that we can do incredibly great work for humanity through teaching. It is essentially human beings that are working with human beings who were go forth and become, you know, the leaders within respective societies within our, our global community. And there are ways that we can teach, there are ways that we can approach our educational practices that really account for and understand that there are folks who are relegated to the margins of society. There are people who are harmed by systems, by forms of oppression, by many things that we as human beings create and uphold and find ways to perpetuate and sustain. And the beautiful and powerful work of education is that we can undo, we can mitigate, we can educate in ways that truly do center love. And for me, when I think about love, I, I don't like to think about it in a way that is passive or in a way that is romanticized. I often think that love and liberation are synonymous, and there are so many ways that we can engage in our practices and use the tools within our toolbox as educators to be able to center this really powerful work. And I think that we are the best equipped to do it. And so when I reflect not only on my own practices, but when I think about how we have been able to use education and teaching specifically historically, there are ways that we can do this really incredible work that ultimately leads to liberation.

Yeah, no, I completely agree. And the thing that you're speaking to there, I think that, but that also struck me as I was reading the book was it's kind of this idea of liberation from certain, as oppression as you're talking about, but also a liberation towards, like, and the word towards in your title is like, there's a vision of something else, like an another way of being that is also, that includes, you know, obviously includes all of us in that vision. So there's the, yes, there's the, the idea of liberating from the power structures and the oppression that have been built into the systems, but also then thinking about where are we going to together in this kind of, in this way, as we respond to some of the, the major complex world challenges that are out there right now facing us as a species almost, right? It felt, it felt very hopeful in that way.

Mm-hmm. It is. You know, people ask me all the time in this climate, how do I manage to maintain hope? And I remember years ago writing an article for Learning for Justice around teaching as activism. And I, I shared, you know, in that article, and I share with others who ask the question, you know, I believe that teaching and education is such a hopeful practice because we work with young people, because it centers, you know, those within our society, within our global community. That I believe pull on and require the most hope. I really do believe that engaging and teaching and engaging in educational practices and ways that really see human beings, especially human beings that have been historically resilient and historically and presently systematically oppressed, there are ways that we really can make our world a better place. And I know that sometimes that we can feel really removed from that idea. That idea can can feel really like it is a cliché, but I really do believe in the power of education to really transform, to heal, and really to make sure that love is actualized. And with that belief, it's really difficult not to be hopeful.

Yeah. Yeah. No, definitely. I said to you in our previous exchanges that one of the sentences that really jumped out at me in the book was, there exists deeply performative measures rooted in capitalism and ego and movements to work against truth-telling and the liberation most needed in schools. And that, that really jumped out at me because I think there's the historic oppression and kind of the power structures, but there's also this thing now where with the market and the— it's as a very interesting way of turning things into performative measures, right? And I think that really struck me. And therefore, and in the word in there, truth-telling, like what, what does that mean when you think about the role of an educator as a truth teller, that again was a really powerful concept to me. Could you say a bit about what, what that means? What does that look like?

Yeah, there are a number of ways that I think about truth telling. So one, one idea that comes to mind is I really do see teaching as an art form. And I know that there are many artists I call on, James Baldwin's work pretty frequently within Towards Liberation. You know, it is the role of an artist, it is the responsibility of an artist to tell the truth, to peel back the layers, that really keep us from understanding and from seeing in a way that is, that is really truthful. And so I think about our work and our role as artists and the responsibility that we have to telling the truth in that way. But I also understand that when I think about the ways that lies have been perpetuated and sustained, particularly within the United States, when I think about our history, I think about the lies by omission, many of the stories and aspects of the history that are hidden or not told or even right now under attack. When I think about the ways that history is often told to silence or to erase diverse voices or really incredible voices and experiences of the global majority, I think that that is a form of lying. There are some places, some states where there are textbooks, where there are forms and approaches to teaching that not only omit and conceal, but that teach things that are not true. And so when I think about the responsibility of an educator, it is to tell the truth. It is to reveal those lies. It is to teach history and our subjects in ways that pay homage to and really pay respect to people of the global majority. To pay respect to the ways that enslaved people were really used as labor and have built so many important and fundamental and foundational aspects of this country. It is important that we tell the truths. When I think about different movements of resistance that tend to focus just on male leaders and male voices and hide or erase the experiences of women in those roles and the leadership of women, you know, within those respective movements. I consider that a form of truth-telling. I think that ultimately we cannot get to a place of liberation if we do not understand the full story. And truth-telling is one way. It is one vehicle. It is one tenet that we can use to get to that place. I think that it is— it's impossible to truly heal, to repair, to reconcile if we are not accounting for the various ways that people have been harmed by other people. And we cannot get to that place of healing. We ultimately cannot get to that place of love and of liberation if we are unwilling to tell those truths and to grapple with those truths. And understanding that certainly, you know, a lot of this work for many people is really uncomfortable. It is really difficult. For some of us, it requires us to look at ourselves in a way that is more deep and more truthful. And for some of us, that can be incredibly painful, which is why ultimately I think that people shy away from it and why we see so much of this work being attacked now. But ultimately, we do not get to the places of humanity that we need to without doing that really important work of truth-telling.

You know, amazing. And I mean, it strikes me that you say in the book about teachers must center their own truths as well. So there's the kind of, there's that deeply personal work of thinking about who we are individually, but then also this kind of the sense in the book that it's like, it's, this is bigger than all of us. This is a really almost a sacred thing that we're participating in, that there, there's a kind of a, the combination between the deeply personal thing and that, that kind of bigger story as well. But back to your previous statement about the performative thing that capitalism does, you know, there's, it feels like there is a danger as well in that we end up saying all the right things because there's a new DEI policy or, you know, we, we end up in this kind of performative mode. But actually, are we really connecting with those, as you say, those quite uncomfortable truths about ourselves or about our own implications in that story, in our, the way that we show up and tell truth? I don't know. It's, it is, it feels a very complex knotty kind of problem because it's very authentic if it's done well, right?

Absolutely. And I think specifically about post-summer 2020, in particular thinking about the United States after the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, what we saw in this place that we were in, this, this kind of forced pause that we were in as humanity during the pandemic. I think that it really created this, this opportunity for human beings to see things more clearly in a way that, that busyness and working and grinding keeps us from being able to see and notice and pay attention to. And so what happened with that was this really long overdue racial awakening and understanding what many people have understood as just the ways that racism manifests and shows up in this country, specifically through police brutality. And so what we saw as a response was this long long overdue racial awakening through protests. And not that protesting necessarily has been long overdue or necessarily a part of this racial awakening. That's something that has been historical.

Yeah, sure.

For a really long time. But when I think about just kind of the performative responses to racism, to inequity, to disparities, particularly within the US, and understanding that racism and capitalism have long been intertwined, and I like to say have long walked hand in hand, within this country specifically and in many countries across the African diaspora or any place that enslaved Africans were brought to. I think that that connection is really important to draw. But what we saw post-2020 is really, really performative actions to do what looks good and what sounds good, as opposed to really committing to the heart of racial justice work, really committing to the heart and the longevity that is required to ensure collective liberation, to the longevity and the commitment and the shift in lifestyles and in mindsets that is required to ensure social justice. And I think that that is dangerous. So when we are saying things, particularly within a capitalist society or within capitalist communities, when we are saying things and we are doing things because we are able to monetize it or able to capitalize off of it or benefit in some ways financially, we really move away from the power of this work of these practices, of the shifts in policy and legislation that are ultimately needed to make sure that our world is a better, a more just, a more loving, a more healed, a more kind place that we need as human beings.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Because I mean, otherwise it's just non-change, isn't it? It's like it pretends to look like change, but it's, as you say, it's performative. And it actually makes me think of a quote that you give from Audre Lorde about the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house, right? It's like when the capitalist and, you know, I mean, it's everywhere, but it's that certainly in education, right? That, that kind of marketized packaged up offerings of the things that, you know, that feels very much like just a different version of the master's tools, right? In that sense of, and so I was super interested in what you were saying about your experience at Spelman College, cuz so if we, if we think about activism. And then we think about like, what is a way of doing that work that is not this performative thing that we are trying to avoid? I wondered whether your experience at Spelman kind of gave, and, and actually, I mean, you talk a lot about your own family background as well and your mother and like, I wonder whether that foundation gave you some of those ways of being, or I don't know how, even know how you would necessarily describe them, but that enable some of that activist power and stance and approach. That is not this kind of performative thing that we're talking about, right? So I don't know, feel free to pick up on any of that if there's anything there that you would like to reflect on.

Yeah, I think that's such a powerful connection to make there. Certainly there exists within my lived experience a wide variety of learning experiences. Yes, from my first teacher being my mother all the way to Spelman College. And when I was thinking about the Teaching is Love chapter, I really paused for a moment because, you know, I said to myself, well, Jamila, what examples do you you have that you can write an entire chapter on in terms of what it looks like to embody love through the teaching practice or through educational practices. And I remember going to sleep when many of my ideas come to mind, Spelman popped up. When I think about, you know, a place that really nourishes and nurtures and does this really critical work of making sure that, you know, truth telling is happening and righting the wrongs of educational systems is happening for Black women, I think about a place like Spelman College. And so certainly, I knew for a really long time that I wanted to be a teacher, going all the way back to third grade. I knew that I wanted to work with young people. I knew that I wanted to work in education. And because I love school so much and I had such great examples, I knew that I wanted to be a teacher. And I remember as I got older, and particularly once I got to Spelman, the understanding of the ways that teaching can be and often is quite political. That understanding really came to me and became more refined when I was at Spelman, certainly engaging in courses that deepened my understanding of Black history and the African diaspora and what it really meant to engage in activism in a number of ways and really pointing to different examples and people who have engaged in activism is something that really opened my heart and my mind at Spelman for sure. And so I I do owe a great deal of my understanding and my development of both what it means to educate and teach in a way that centers all of the tenets that I talk about falling under what it means to be a liberatory educator. And when I think about an experience within my own life that really cemented just the work that I wanted to do and why I wanted to engage in this work in this way, certainly Spelman College was a part of that. And stands as a beacon and an embodiment, certainly, of what it means to center liberation, what it means to center activism, and certainly what it means to center love within the educational space, for sure.

Amazing. Can I ask you what, I mean, what specifically was it about? Was it the relationality of the faculty and the students? Was it like, I'm sure it was all of it in a way, but I'm just, I'd be interested to hear like, like practically, because there's a really interesting question for me about like, is this work of love and healing and all the things we're talking about possible in these kind of institutions, right? These kind of rigid educational institutions. And there's something else that goes on in certain institutions, I think, which is deeply human and deeply relational. So yeah, I don't know. I wonder what some of the practical experiences were that made that so powerful.

Yeah, I think that that's a fantastic question because I think that as practitioners, we often need the examples of what does that look like and can it exist? And certainly I would say, you know, when I talk about liberation, I think about it in a way it has to be holistic. And there were not many examples that I could point to and think about. But there are many aspects of Spelman that I can definitely share that really lends itself to being liberatory. One, it is, it is nourishing. It's a space that the mission and the practices align. And that's something that I don't often see in schools. And so this understanding that this is this learning community that has been built specifically for Black women and a part of that And part of that is requiring understanding what Black women need to feel nourished, to thrive, to go forth and do well within any community. The practices align both in terms of the availability of our faculty members, the rigor of what it is that we are learning and expected to demonstrate that we've learned. So there are really high expectations there. There is this understanding of just the beauty and the power of Black excellence and of excellence in general because of the understanding of where we come from. From as Black women and the history and the lineage of excellence that we come from. And so we see that everywhere. We hear it in the different convocations that we attend or the assemblies or the meetings. We see it through various forms of student leadership where it is not so much the faculty that is leading. It is often students that are leading a great deal of the work on campus. We see it in the history and the examples of the alumni of Spelman College when we look out into the world. And we pay attention to, you know, after women leave a place like Spelman College, what is it that they go on to do? When I think about as an English major or within the different classes that I was able to take, as it is a liberal arts college, the ways that our professor, the diligence and the care that they take in making sure that we not only understand what it is that we're learning, but that we're able to do something that is really powerful and impactful with it. The ways that women's history, Black women's history is embedded into everything that we learn is a part of that. And this understanding that the approaches to education are both warm and nourishing, but they're also critical. And that can be a really difficult balance to strike. Certainly the emphasis on sisterhood and making sure that there is this really beautiful, robust community where we are all taken care of by each other and that we have that example to look to is a part of that. And when I even think about physically what the community looks like, and I talk about this in some of the chapters. I think the chapter on TEEF, the learning community that we ask students to walk into. Spelman College is a really beautiful campus. And so when we're walking into that space, you understand just aesthetically that learning space where you are cared for, where you are loved, where you are seen, just based on what it looks like and how the lawn is tended to. And so it lives in every single aspect. It is not just one particular thing. It doesn't just live in the curriculum. It doesn't just live within student affairs. It lives holistically. And I would say that those are, you know, practically some of the things, but, you know, like you were asking in your question, it really live in everything.

Yeah, no, I'm so glad I asked because, I mean, you just painted an incredibly rich picture. Like you say, it's just in everything, it's in all these different aspects. And I think sometimes we imagine that a lot of this work can be done in the kind of just in the curriculum documents or the way that we show up in, you and do our pedagogy, right? It's like in these visible acts of teaching, in inverted commas, but actually there's so much in this kind of whole process of education, a holistic education, which is like you say, it's about how you mow the lawn, right? It's about all these different aspects of what it means to be in community actually. Yeah. So interesting. And what you're saying there about the alumni and the impact that Spelman had, I mean, has it been a, a really important factor in you, like with the SHE Imprints and your work now of supporting women and girls in the global majority? It feels like that probably was quite an influence on you.

Absolutely. So she imprints when I was— actually, the title within itself, when I was a junior at college, I had the opportunity, the privilege really, to compete and to be selected to compete in the Miss Spelman Pageant. And it's this really great opportunity to represent the college and the ideals and the practices of a college, to really embody that. And it was such a privilege. And a part of what we were required to do as candidates was to create a platform And my platform at the time was entitled N-Prints, and the work was similar, though it has evolved as I have evolved. But I would say my commitment to girls and Black girls specifically, girls of the global majority, really did stem from my own experiences that I struggled as a Black girl and understanding what would have been helpful for me as I worked as an educator, particularly as a teacher, really seeing my girls and understanding that there were gaps that I could fill and and certainly having an experience like the one that I did at Spelman College, one really positions us to understand that if there is a gap that you recognize within your community, you have the tools and you have been equipped to be able to fill those gaps. And that is something that Spelman really placed into me. The belief and the confidence to be able to lead is something that I certainly was able to live out. And just the understanding the power, the impact, the necessity of pouring into women and girls, and particularly women and girls the global majority because we are often unseen. And when I think about historically, even presently, our experiences and what pains us tends to be erased. And so there is work that is happening to end that, and not just within one respective community, but I understand the ways— and this is work that I was able to do, you know, throughout India and through many of my travels throughout our global community and really understanding the impact and the role of women and girls. And so, yes, there is such a beautiful bridge and connection between my Spelman experience and the work of Sheet and Prince.

Amazing. Yeah, no, that's great. And I think it's worth maybe just briefly coming back to your mother and, and the kind of the family connection, because I, I think it's important in the sense that, you know, yes, there is a college there and a community there that has been incredibly influential, but also there's a broader context. And I think that's important to me personally because I feel that education often gets institutionalized, and actually the work of education in the I feel about it is much broader, is, is kind of spiritual and religious and it's family and it's friends and it's all those things. So I just kind of wanted to round that out a little bit in terms of just if there's anything you wanted to reflect on there, I don't know, but just that there's all these other things going on as we think about how do we support and heal and, and help young people and community.

Absolutely. So much of our education as human beings exists outside of the institutions or the the four walls of a school community or space. And certainly, you know, I think about this in two ways. I often say when I'm asked about, you know, why I have such a belief in such a commitment to this work in this way in terms of bettering humanity and healing humanity through education, and a part of what I often go back to is, you know, there is no human being that's born with hatred in their heart. There is no human being who is born racist. Racist or sexist or homophobic or transphobic. These are things that as human beings we learn. And the power of education broadly, holistically, is that it can be unlearned. And, you know, the other part of that is yes. And understanding that education for me and for all of us exists before we even get to the doors of a school community. You know, it happens within our home. It happens within our families. It happens within what we're seeing, what we're hearing, what we're developing as young people. And I certainly do, you know, I dedicate Toward Liberation to my mother as my first teacher. And not that she was trained as a professional teacher, but I think about her teachings in terms of just her wisdom and what she continues to say and what she said, you know, as a little girl, the example that she set as a woman and that she sets as a woman, how we were encouraged to love reading and to love going to the library, the music that we listened to. What I remember watching with her in terms of TV shows and movies and listening to her reflection in terms of just her viewpoint on the world. And children pick those things up.

Yeah, absolutely.

Happens to be a really beautiful example and a really beautiful reflection and wisdom in terms of the power and the beauty of where I come from as a Black woman that has really framed and sustained me in the work that I do. And so absolutely, I owe so much of that to her.

Amazing. And, and then, so I suppose there is already a beginning of a connection. So we've kind of— there's liberation and there's activism, and there's already this kind of beginnings of the healing that's in the title of your book. Because I think a lot of your work, as I understand, is with Xi'an Prince, and the work that you do in all aspects has this healing part of it and well-being. Wellbeing and self-care are some of these kind of slightly commodified performative words and categories that we've already kind of referenced that, you know, they're well-intentioned, but they get quickly marketized, right? In the space. But I think there's, there's something about, I mean, the word healing itself is rather different to wellbeing or self-care. So I, I don't know, perhaps we could start with that in terms of where that idea of healing comes from, but then also where do you see the role for that in for example, in relation to the toxic kind of cultures, like the work culture in schools and those kinds of things where clearly there's a need for that self-care and healing?

I could not write a book about liberation without including healing. And thank you for naming, you know, yes, the ways that self-care and well-being are very much being commodified right now and what tends to happen when we overuse words Yeah. We tend to move away from their power. And so healing for me is integral to liberation, similar to the way that love is. We cannot get to this place of liberation if we are not all well. But I also— when I talk about healing, and particularly in the chapter on teaching is healing, at least for me, my approach to healing and understanding that everyone approaches it differently. And the more that I learn about my own history, just understanding that— and I didn't know this for a really long time— that I come from a really long lineage lineage of healers who have engaged in a number of ways. And it's been really beautiful to unpack that and to uncover that and to understand where does my passion and my drive come from and understanding that it is inside of me and it has been inside of me for a really long time. But in terms of healing, there is this responsibility and this requirement that we deal with the harm. And so when we think about even just the body, when the body is going through this process of healing, it is because some type of discord, some type dis-ease, some type of harm has happened to the body. And so certainly when I think about education, when I think about our world, there has been a great deal of harm. There has been a great deal of trauma that exists within humanity, and certainly schools, which mirror society, a lot of that harm shows up in educational spaces. And so a part of healing, which I think is important to name and to start with, is we have to go back to, well, what has happened here? Here? Where has there been a breakdown? Where has harm been inflicted? What has caused this wound? And healing sets us up to have that conversation differently, but it also is a hopeful conversation. We talked about hope before, terms of— when we're talking about healing, we ultimately want to get to this place of repair. We want to get to this place of restoration. And in that regard, we don't remain stuck in the pain. We don't remain stuck in what has just happened. We are really forced to be in this place of moving towards making sure that things are better, that things look better, that they are better than they found it. And a lot of times when we heal what is broken, often things become stronger. And so I think that that is, you know, one reason why I wanted to focus on healing. But I also wanted to— when we talk about liberation, I want it to account for the harm. I talk about in the book how racism literally hurts, right? Sexism literally hurts. And I think that sometimes we get caught up in the idea when we're talking about oppression, we talk about it as systems and structures and policies and practices. And we tend to move away from the fact that people have created these systems. People have created these practices and these policies and these procedures that cause harm. And therefore, it's people who are harmed and people who can undo, people who can mitigate. And healing, again, sets us up to be able to do that really impactful and important work. Work, that's one aspect. The other aspect is liberation work. Activist work requires that we are well. One of the biggest obstacles or hindrances to keeping a movement going is burnout and people feeling so exhausted that we are not able to continue to move, continue to give, to continue to go. And so we have to be well. I often use this mantra by Audre Lorde where she says she says that self-care is not self-indulgence. She says that self-care is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare. And so this understanding, especially for folks of the global majority who are engaging in this work as activists, making sure that we are well as we work to mitigate and undo the very practices that we are living, we have to prioritize our well-being. We have to prioritize the well-being of the community. And one of the really harmful results, I would say, of capitalism, of grind culture, and certainly this is something that we see within schools, is this commitment to overwork, this commitment to uphold just cultures in schools and within society that are toxic, that are all about grinding and at the expense of human beings. It really keeps us from being able to do the work that is necessary because we can't focus on it because we don't have time, we're too exhausted, and it feels like an additional thing to do as opposed to the fundamental thing that we should be doing to make sure that our young people are well and ultimately to making sure that humanity has what it needs. And so I cannot talk about liberation without talking about healing.

I love that because I think there's so much of what you said there that exists in schools. So the toxic grind culture, the overwork, there's almost a selflessness built into being a teacher in any way, like for people that really take that job seriously. But then in addition to that, layer on this kind of, this subversive work of truth-telling and the activism that you're talking about, it kind of, you get this, I guess, even more of a kind of an expense of emotional energy as you are kind of trying to do that work as well, right? Because you're in almost, there's almost a resistance happening which takes energy. And so it kind of resonates with me just on a very kind of practical level broadly in education. But then I think there's this deeper thing happening that you're talking about and that your work really powerfully points to, which requires even more of that healing, right?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think some of the work that I'm able to do with She Imprints— and now schools are starting to gravitate more towards this. I think when I initially was offering wellness practices and my wellness services to schools, it took a little bit of time, you know, for schools to really understand the importance of that. But certainly when you are engaging in work, particularly around activism and around liberation, work that has been historically pushed against, work that has historically been attacked, even presently, it does take this additional toll on our psyche, on our bodies. There is this additional exertion of energy that is required, even if we're not always thinking about it or cognizant of it, that in order for us to be sustained, because just by nature of many societies within our global community being set up to prioritize and perpetuate those who are within power, and it tends to be this really small minority at the expense of the global majority, right? Many of the laws, the practices, the policies, all of the different ways that isms show up and manifest within within a society have been designed to really harm and work against those of us who seek to dismantle this type of power hoarding. And so it is important that we have that recognition that the work that we are doing by the very nature of how our systems have been designed and set up, that this work is going to be hard, that it is going to require so much of us.

And with that understanding, we have to make sure that we are Yeah, I had a recent conversation with Professor Jonathan Jansen from University of Stellenbosch in South Africa, and he was reflecting on, we were talking about decolonizing institutions and it was fascinating because he was reflecting on how do you keep a radical, it's incredibly hard work to keep a radical idea alive in a bureaucratic institution. And so it really is connecting with what you're saying there, just this, this additional layer of work just to keep that radical idea alive because the systems are set up to effectively to neutralize it and to temper that idea, right? This is what he was, his words, right? It, so there's a lot of, a lot of connection there, that, and that additional work. But if I can, the, the other thing I wanted to ask you about from what you were saying previously about healing is the embodied aspect. 'Cause I know as like, I know you're a yoga practitioner and a, and a Reiki healer, I think as well. And, and a dancer, I think previously. I think there's something very disembodied about the way we've done education over the last few hundred years. Years, right? And I, I keep coming back to this and it's like you were saying about all the policies and the practices and all these kind of, they're almost conceptual things living up there, but actually we're living in our bodies in these institutions and it's the humans and the bodies that are together but are also harming each other. And so there's something really interesting there about how embodied practice comes back into some of this work. Cuz for some people it feels disconnected. I think it feels unrelated, right? It's like, oh, that, that stuff over there seems, you know, just kind of feeling good at the weekends or whatever. But there's something else happening, I think, that's interesting about how we re-embody somehow. I don't know.

Yeah, thank you so much for asking that. I don't often get asked about— okay, you know, writing about and being able to share about the disembodiment piece is probably, you know, one of my favorite aspects that I was able to include, and particularly about healing. And I think about disembodiment in two ways that I think it's important for, for us as human beings. I have a lot of folks and leaders and activists who also use this text in addition to educators, and the disembodiment is really important to understand. And so I want to share about it in two ways. One is a part of exactly what you're speaking to in terms of what is actually happening to our bodies in schools and what is happening to the bodies of young people that we're working dealing with within schools and within educational systems that really uphold this toxic grind culture. And a lot of what we're seeing is a lot of young people acting out in a number of ways. We see the exhaustion of their bodies, and maybe we don't necessarily want to name that, but our bodies were not designed to just hold so much stress, to hold so much pain. And so the body is going to respond, you know, and its intelligence is going to respond to that. And so, you know, a lot of the issues that we're seeing within schools, even with educators and adults choosing to leave working in schools or to choose, you know, not to even go into the education field, a part of that is what it is physically and the toll the body takes, right, in engaging in this work. And so that is a part of it. And I want us to be able to pay a bit more attention to just the knowledge of the body and understanding that there are ways that we can engage in educational practices that really honor the totality of the body that will truly lead to more productive— because we are often concerned with productivity. But when the body is rested, when it's nourished, when it's cared for, when we're able to move it in ways that allow the body to have what it needs, we're actually able to be more productive and to give more. So that is one. One way. But the other piece, and this is connected to you brought up earlier, which I think is so important, and we don't often have this conversation within the education space, is this kind of the spiritual aspect of just really thinking about education in a way that is holistic. When I talk about isms—racism, sexism, forms of phobia—I identify them as ills that exist in our society. I see them as a form of dis-ease, of discord, of arm. And it is my belief, certainly as someone that is a student of yoga, someone that is a yoga guide, someone who has spent a lot of my own life as a dancer being embodied— and I'm also an introverted person, I'm an empath. And so, and this is the heart of the work for me, what Baldwin talks about is like the crux of the matter— I do not believe that it is possible to be fully embodied with yourself, right? To be fully embodied, to be fully connected with yourself, to truly love yourself, to truly be connected to your spirit or the divinity or whatever it is that you recognize within the world, the universe, as being source, or that which is bigger than you, or the life force. For some of us, it is breath, you know, whatever that is. I do not believe that it is possible possible to be deeply connected to yourself and to see another human being, no matter what they look like, what they sound like, what they have on, all of these things that we ascribe to people and that we use to judge people, and to be okay with harming them, or to be okay knowing that they are harmed and to do nothing about it. I just don't think that it's possible when we are in this healed held and whole place and in this loving place as human beings, I just don't think it's possible. And so a large part of why I center healing and liberation work is because that healing aspect— I believe that all human beings are whole. I do not believe that we are broken. I believe that we learn ideas and practices that cause us to engage in a way that really breaks things and causes us to engage in a way that causes wounding. But ultimately, I believe that healing uniquely allows us to get back to that place. And without that really key component, I actually do not think that it's possible for us to get to collective liberation.

Amazing. Yeah, wow. I mean, that brings me back to what we were saying earlier about the personal work and then this thing that's bigger than you that you're part of. It's like there's this— the deep interconnection between between that how you are within yourself and then how you connect with the world, you know, spirit, all those things. Yeah. And, and I think that's, that's where the hope is, right? Back to the beginning. I think that's where your idea of, yes, liberating from structures of oppression, etc., but also liberating towards— it's something very hopeful in the title of your book, of like, yes, we are moving towards this thing, which it's hard, like, it feels really hard hard, right? Because as you were saying, there are so many things, so many structures in place that, like, if I talk for myself, have separated me, have like kind of educated me to separate myself from myself in a way, right? Or separated aspects of myself, right? Here's my academic self, or here's my professional self, here's my me as a dad, or a, you know, there's a lot of separating work that has kind of done some of that harm that I think you were referring to, that I think not everybody necessarily recognizes it even as harm, right? But there's, there's a whole lot of work of like, how do we reconnect in all sorts of ways there? Yeah. Interesting.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think some of us are so inundated. Some of us are so tired. Some of us don't have the opportunities or the access. Some of us don't want to see, or you don't, don't point, well, you know, I have conversations with, particularly in my work, is in the healing work that I do. You can— you cannot work with people in a way that accentuates healing if they do not think that there's anything wrong. That's right, exactly. Yeah, you think that needs to be repaired in the first place. And I think one of the, the dangers of what, you know, we're talking about here is if I'm bleeding, right, and I have a cut, I can see that owned. I can see that harm. But a lot of the things that we're talking about, they're internal. A lot of it is what we have learned and what we've been ingrained to believe. When I think about people who do live their life rooted in ideas that are prejudiced, ideas that are harmful, that are racist, that are sexist, and sometimes, you know, I have— I often have conversations with these people, and we all have biases. We all have things that we have to unlearn. We all have ways that we can become better as human beings. But that requires a willingness, right? That requires an understanding to explore the ways that I can be better, a willingness, a humility to explore the ways that I can be vulnerable and understand that there are always ways that we can be better. And that doesn't mean that we're not whole, but it means that there are ways that we can be better as human beings. And so what can make this type of healing work particularly challenging is sometimes we're not even— we don't even understand where the wound is, or we don't understand that there is a wound, or we don't understand that there are maybe ways of our being or ways of thinking that may cause us to do harm or that may cause us to not be well. And so without that understanding, without that recognition, and without that willingness, we certainly don't get to this place of healing.

Yeah. And I suppose I would also reflect on some people— I can hear some people's responses that this is not the work of education. Education, right? This isn't— this is a podcast about education, right? Some— there will be, you know, this is therapy that you're talking about here, or this is like some psychological work, or whatever. It's not the role of an educator to take on that. And I think personally, I think we've moved beyond that kind of separation, or we need to move beyond that kind of separation, because there's something else that is required of us now, which is in relation to the moment we are as a global species, but I mean, that's a bigger topic, I guess. But yeah, how would you respond to those people who would say this is not educational work?

I think that's a fantastic question. I know that in some of the chapters, both truth-telling and healing, you know, I do pause and respond to, you know, I know that there are going to be people who ask this question because there may have been a point, you know, in my career, I wasn't always at the place that I'm in and actually start the book with offering apologies for, you know, times when I was not at this place that I am at now and understanding that there will be people who come before me and perhaps disagree with aspects of the work because we've evolved. Um, and so, yeah, you know, I pause in a few chapters and I, and I really, you know, begin to address, so what does this have to do with education? What does this have to do with teaching? And you said something really important earlier in terms of a lot of this work, a lot of the work that I'm sharing, and much of it is work that I've actually done in the classroom with young people. But, you know, the work of healing is absolutely a part of our work as educators, our work as practitioners. You know, we, we are teachers and educators, and so our work doesn't necessarily have to look like therapists because we're not trained therapists, unless we are, right? It's not going to look like a medical doctor or an Eastern practitioner because that's not the way that we are trained. But there are ways that we have to and we must center healing within our work because there is so much harm that is happening. And I know that for many educators there is the pause and the wondering of how in the world can I add on more work to this already full load? Yeah. And this full plate of work that I'm already having to do. And so what I'm asking in, in Toward Liberation, or what I'm putting forward, is not so much that we add on but that we shift. There's some things that we need to leave behind, there's some things that we need to eradicate. Absolutely. There are some places that where we need to shift. And so really being able to honor and prioritize our own healing and the healing of the youth who are in front of us, it really should not be necessarily this radical idea or this idea that seems extreme. It really should be the heart of what we're doing because we're working with young people. And so in addition to that, I do share practices. There are ways uniquely within our work as educators where we can center healing and how we teach and in what we teach through the ways that we engage with inquiry, through the types of assignments or demonstrations of learning that we ask students to do, and the ways that we facilitate or hold space within our classroom. There's so many different types of ways that we can do that within the realm of what we hold and what we do as educators that don't necessarily require us to step fully into a different profession or a line of work. Yeah.

No, thank you. So I would love to, if we can just finish on love. I mean, love has kind of been with us all the way through, but I feel like if we don't, we need to finish there, right? It's the last word in the title of the book and it's the, like the most, it feels like the, the thing that's holding it all together. And you say in the book, love captures the necessity of freedom dreaming in schools, which I just think like that's a pretty good phrase, right? So one of the things I was reflecting on as you were talking there was that we over complicate things. So often we just like add more. And actually the thing that we're talking about in a way is there's a real simplicity to showing up in community, being just kind of being human with being vulnerable with other humans in love. And it, I don't know, in a way there's something very simple about that, right?

I do believe that love ought to be simple. I do believe that. And I think it's, it's at the core of who we are. But I, you know, I think in a world where there has been so much harm, where there has been so much— and I talk about, you know, when I started to write the chapter on teaching is love, I knew that I had to write it and I knew that I had to end there. But it was actually the most difficult chapter for me to write. Interesting. Because I really had to sit with and understand I can identify all of the ways that there are love less practices, and there is the lack of love in education and in schools. But it took me a while to really think about what does love look like and how do we center that. I think that so many people are in pain. I think that so many people are disconnected from love. I think so many people, as much as we talk about it and as much as it is romanticized, I think that so many people don't actually know what love is or what it looks like. And I think that, you know, a part of the reason why love is often romanticized and often looked at as something that is really passive is because perhaps we don't understand and we do not see the way that love really requires action, and it requires commitment, and it requires showing up, and it requires truth-telling, and it requires wholeness. And I think that for a lot of people, that is really difficult, that is really challenging. Changing, and maybe many of us have not really seen what that looks like. And for me, it was the understanding that love and liberation are synonymous. I believe that liberation is love in action. The other piece is many educators, we talk about love, right? We, we talk about that is the guiding force. Yeah. For why we do our work and for what sustains us. But what I caution us to consider is if we We know that there are students, right, young people that we are serving who are in some way are being harmed and are being educated in spaces that are full of loveless practices. A part of our duty to love is acknowledging and understanding those loveless practices and ensuring that we're engaging in our work in ways that centers love, that anchors love, that is synonymous with liberation, that is synonymous with justice, that is synonymous with truth-telling, that is synonymous with activism and of healing. Because we cannot say that we love people and are okay with them being armed in any kind of way.

Yeah, no, I really appreciate that, because I was— I suppose the way I framed it in the simplicity, it could come across as therefore that's a bit passive and you're showing up and just somehow a romanticized idea that everybody's okay. But actually, I really appreciate what you're saying there. There's, you need to be willing to do the hard thing of standing up for the loveless practice that you're talking about there, which is maybe simple, but not easy. Right. I mean, oftentimes it's actually not very simple. It takes, takes strength and work and courage and all those things, which you can't just assume everybody's okay. Right. Yeah.

And I think that that's a part of it too, that, you know, I'm a, I'm a very loving person. I'm about love and the ways that we talk about it and we see it and we see it in movies. And I think that that form of love is great and it's wonderful and it's beautiful. But I think that too often we get stuck in the romanticism. We don't focus on the aspects of love that require great courage, require great risk. I'm even thinking about in the yoga practice when we're teaching just how to open the heart heart, to keep the heart open. There's so many things that have to happen in the body. And a part of that is if you want to leave the heart open and truly have it exposed, is like there's this engagement of the core and this strength that has to happen. And so courage and love stand together. And that's not easy. It's not easy for us to engage or to be courageous, because to be courageous means that there's those rocket recognition of fear and that we have to move forward even though there is fear present. Yeah. And so it's not always easy, but it is so incredibly worth it. And I think, you know, once there is the understanding of when we are operating in love, it does become really simple. It does become really beautiful because we're all taken care of and we all have what we need.

I love that embodied example. I'd never thought about that. Yeah, I love that. Amazing. Thank you, Joanna. I know we've gone over time, but I so appreciate your time and like giving this and your incredible work. I mean, the book is amazing. I would so recommend it. As you say, there's lots of practices in there. It's not, you know, we've talked about a lot of the big ideas, but it's also important to recognize just how much practical advice and support there is from your, as you said, your experience as a teacher and as a leader in schools. And yeah, thank you so much.

And thank you. You know, this is, people ask me all the time, you know, what my hope is for the book. Book. And the hope is that it will be impactful, that it lands where it needs to. And so I'm— I am always and ever grateful for opportunities to be able to share, you know, what I've seen in my practice. And a lot of my lived experience has been in the U.S., but I have been privileged to explore and be a part of an understanding that this work is global. It is universal. There are so many ways that we can all embed this and implement this, and not just to make a respective community better and more human, but it's— this is something that the world can benefit from.

Absolutely amazing. Thank you so much.

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