Transcript

Introduction

Michelle (host): Since 2019, a research team composed of students from Duke University and North Carolina Central University has been exploring the various ways that local universities can support public education, including how they can support the emerging community schooling efforts in Durham, North Carolina. Following the lead of both local educators and organizers, our student researchers have investigated ways to better prepare university students for engagement in local public schools.

Following the lead of both local educators and organizers, our student researchers have investigated ways to better prepare university students for engagement in local public schools.

In this podcast, we’ll hear from three of these student researchers about their research content and their reflections from being on this team. We hope you enjoy.

So before diving in, can each of you briefly introduce yourselves for our listeners?

Sabrena: All right, my name is Sabrena Carver-Tchagna, my pronouns are she/her, I’m a junior at North Carolina Central University, political science major. I am from Maryland originally, but I’m here in Durham, North Carolina for school.

Blue: Hi, my name is Blue Miller, and I use they/them pronouns. I graduated from Duke in 2020. And I call Durham home.

Drew: Hey, y’all, my name is Drew Green, I use he/him/his pronouns. I’m a rising junior at Duke, studying public policy with minors in education and inequality studies. And I’m originally from Richmond, Virginia.

Chapter 1: Laying the Foundation for Our Research

Michelle (1:50):  I want to lay a foundation for our conversation by introducing the pieces of this research team, because there were a couple of components. So Blue, as part of the very first year team, can you describe what your role was, and what you looked into.

Blue: So I was a part of the first year of this project, and the biggest goal that we had for that year was to understand how Duke and NCCU partner with Durham Public Schools, and how we can improve these partnerships to better serve Durham Public Schools and also generate meaningful experiences for college students. So there were several tiers to this goal, the first being to understand the community schools model on local and national levels. And then the next tier is to understand the University Assisted Community Schools model that has been undertaken by several universities, and then, with these understandings, conduct an asset and needs assessment with both Duke and NCCU, regarding our partnerships with Durham Public Schools, and with this information from the assets and needs assessment, to begin to improve both schools’ respective Durham Public School-facing initiatives.

Michelle: I know that the work in the first year directly led to what came after. Sabrena, do you want to talk about the curriculum element?

Sabrena: So the anti-racist curriculum is this living document, this living curriculum that was created for university students, and also people who intended to be teachers or interested in working within the educational field, to kind of better understand how to serve the community and their students, even just the history of Durham and why and how the community became the way that it is. So this document is helping university students to be more aware of the history of Durham, and also more aware of bias in school systems. And with these ideas, we came up with 12 modules that are now in a Google Classroom, ready to be used by university students. And then the goal is that university students can have further knowledge on what can help them transition into the school workforce easier, and be better equipped for the task of being educators.

Michelle: Awesome. Drew, do you want to talk about your project?

Drew: Of course. So I worked with the data dashboard that we began creating last summer. I was one of the four original data analysts on that team. What we realized is that a lot of Duke and North Carolina Central students didn’t really have an understanding of Durham at all– many of both of those school populations do not come from Durham or even North Carolina. So what we chose to do was make a dashboard and we want to create an informative and accessible resource that will provide administrators teachers, parents, community members, and university students, which was original scope, with the necessary and beneficial information about Durham Public Schools as well as highlighting the assets that are available to the community. So when you look at the community schools model, we want to show that there are a lot of things in the community, because oftentimes, Durham Public Schools gets a bad rap because it’s a city school district, so oftentimes, it’s very underfunded. Those are things that we take into consideration, and we highlight a lot of qualitative and quantitative data to show that Durham truly is an amazing place, and that there’s a lot of partnerships that can be formed between schools and their surrounding communities.

we highlight a lot of qualitative and quantitative data to show that Durham truly is an amazing place, and that there’s a lot of partnerships that can be formed between schools and their surrounding communities.

Michelle: Yeah, I’m really excited to hear more about that. But for now, I want to go back to Blue. Can you elaborate on some of that initial foundational context-setting that needed to take place in order to kick off this research project about community schools?

Blue: So this process began by learning about the community school model, and learning about its history, its pillars and kind of foundational ideas, and what shape they can take. So we learned about Durham Public Schools’ community schools– there were four at the time– and other community schools around the country. I got to visit Lakewood Elementary, which is a community school in Durham. And they were a few years into adopting the community school model and moving into that. So we– me, myself and a few peers– had the privilege of interviewing the community school coordinator at the time, named Anna Grant. We also got to travel around the country to learn from community schools and universities to study community school partnerships. I was on the team visited United Community Schools in New York City. And we got to tour different community schools, and understand what the community school model looks like in different places, and we met with different community partners that were leveraging their assets to benefit these community schools.

Michelle: And what did you learn from Anna Grant about the current university partnerships?

Blue: Yeah, from Anna Grant and from that interview, I learned that in running a community school and a school in general in Durham, that she was hearing from a bunch of professors, students, heads of clubs, research teams all the time, from all these different schools about wanting to do partnerships and programming, all really well-intended, but that by managing, you know, like 10 different partnerships with different Duke groups and NCCU groups, you know, it ended up being like more work than benefit that they received, because there’s so much administrative and organizational work to create opportunities for students, and then figure out the logistics of coordinating them.

there’s so much administrative and organizational work to create opportunities for students, and then figure out the logistics of coordinating them.

That was just the biggest answer is like, we need to be organized and a little bit less like reinventing the wheel and more directed towards how can we be useful? And how can we be organized together before we come to these schools?

Michelle: Yeah, I guess it is easy to forget about things like logistics, and what goes on behind the scenes for partnerships that are otherwise really exciting. Can you also talk about the research you conducted on the university side of this assets and needs assessment?

Blue: I was working with Dr. David Malone, and we’d already been like, talking about how we could do better at training our students as best as we could, before sending them into schools. We had a conversation about how to continue to move it forward, and what conversations and trainings with our students were necessary. His take, as someone who’d been in at Duke for so long, was that this work does feel worth it, it does feel like there is a lot of meaning to be made, and that we want to be preparing Duke students to be genuine leaders, not just like consultants and bankers and lawyers. We want to be immersing them in community and understanding how rich it can be to be in community, and that a lot of Duke students haven’t had that before.

We want to be immersing them in community and understanding how rich it can be to be in community, and that a lot of Duke students haven’t had that before.

So it’s really important that we’re training people who are going to have a lot of power– whether it’s right that they’re inheriting that power or not– they have a lot of power to do right with it. And also that we have a lot of excess resources and time, so if we could find a way to be useful for these schools– or any community groups– we absolutely should, you know, just because it’s not perfect or sometimes not done totally ethically, we shouldn’t just scrap it, there really is something meaningful, you know, like something like Drew said up there.

Michelle: Yeah, it’s good to have that generative mindset towards this kind of work, as opposed to resorting to feelings of despair or giving up. And actually, so Blue, you and I were on the same team, same year, and I remember from interviews I conducted with staff and faculty and students from Duke that a lot of folks feel the training for students who are about to enter Durham Public Schools wasn’t sufficient, which is why what, Sabrena, you your team worked on is really exciting. And I would love for you to elaborate some more on how your team conducted your research. And maybe if you can describe what some of the discussions that your team had about the curriculum were like.

Sabrena: So we had a pretty small team working on the logistical aspects of the curriculum. We used research from previous Bass Connections years, which provided insights about the needs of the students, the observations that student teachers and university students had when they first interacted with their students. The teachers that they interviewed, you know, they shared their own opinions and observations and also the experiences that they had. And we would sift through them as a group and come up with concepts of issues that we noticed were common patterns within the Durham Public School system. Cultural competency was one of the bigger issues. A lot of students in Durham Public Schools have a lot of needs, and we were looking at the data from the Data+ team and the amount of students who had in-school suspensions and stuff like that, and wondering like, how are there ways for teachers to come in there and to not necessarily see have bias or not necessarily treat students as like people who just need to be punished for anything they do that’s incorrect. So yeah, we have 12 modules, and each one has an objective and a group discussion on it. And a couple of examples of the modules that we have: you have the history of America and institutionalized racism in America, racism and Durham’s history, and understanding how Durham has been shaped through public policy.

we have 12 modules, and each one has an objective and a group discussion on it. And a couple of examples of the modules that we have: you have the history of America and institutionalized racism in America, racism and Durham’s history, and understanding how Durham has been shaped through public policy.

We also talk a little bit about Durham’s demographics and school history, things of that nature that really helped us understand how to integrate ourselves into schools.

Michelle: I mean, it’s really impressive to make any curriculum, just any training, I feel like is very important, but very difficult to do. So I think that’s awesome that that exists. Has the curriculum been used yet? Is it ready?

Sabrena: We actually just recently finished the curriculum like this past semester, spring semester, so it’s still a pilot that’s coming out in the works. But as far as I know, we’re gonna try to bring it into North Carolina Central University, hopefully, by the fall semester of this year. Hopefully, our goal is to have it expand beyond just Central and Duke, but everywhere.

Chapter 2: Developing an Asset-based Orientation

Michelle (13:24):  I think Duke students and university students in general, yeah, like we come in with a savior complex, or we just don’t readily have a sense that, okay, I’m living here even for four years. But this place that I’m living in was a place before I got here, and there’s almost like a humility that is necessary. And when university students don’t realize, or don’t hold that feeling of humility of being in this place, so Durham in this case, then I think it makes it easier for something like viewing Durham Public Schools or viewing Durham with a certain lens of ignorance and, and that ignorance will lead to something like having a deficit-based perspective on the community or on the schools.

And when university students don’t realize, or don’t hold that feeling of humility of being in this place, so Durham in this case, then I think it makes it easier for something like viewing Durham Public Schools or viewing Durham with a certain lens of ignorance and, and that ignorance will lead to something like having a deficit-based perspective on the community or on the schools.

All of that is to say that, in addition to what Sabrena’s team worked on for the curriculum, Drew, what your team did with this dashboard also helps to combat that sort of ignorance or potential for ignorance. So can you talk more about what your team did and what the process of creating that dashboard looked like?

Drew: For sure. Alec Greenwald and the rest of the Bass Connections team had the vision to create this dashboard to spread awareness about the assets that are available to Durham Public Schools communities. We originally had the intention to just educate or inform university students about what the assets are, but we figured that we can use this as a tool for all of the Durham community, not just university students at Duke and North Carolina Central. So our methodology basically is we are making a dashboard using a programming software called R and a package in there called R Shiny, which is used to visualize. And so what we did is we spent about three weeks consolidating data from various sources online, including the Durham Neighborhood Compass, which already has a lot of the data available, as well as Durham Open Data, which is publicly-sourced data from the government, as well as the North Carolina school report cards, which highlight data about every school in the state.

we spent about three weeks consolidating data from various sources online, including the Durham Neighborhood Compass, which already has a lot of the data available, as well as Durham Open Data, which is publicly-sourced data from the government, as well as the North Carolina school report cards, which highlight data about every school in the state.

That was what we did. That was a tedious process, I’m not gonna lie, it took a very long time. But then after that, we actually spent the time to program the dashboard. And with the dashboard, we have two different types of variables– we have three features, but two different types of variables. So we have school specific variables, which highlight just the generic statistics you’d see if you looked up a school online, which doesn’t quite go towards our goal of the asset-based approach but we felt it was necessary to include just because people would find it anyways, and you might as well have it all in one place. We also have geospatial variables, which are places like libraries, parks, community gardens, as well as just general like grocery stores, community centers, just to show that there are a lot of locations that are around the school buildings that you can partner with. We looked to see if like food apartheid, which is, which is a more negative word for the food deserts to kind of highlight that it’s manmade. But we showed that to show that there’s a lot of food insecurity in Durham. So when you look at the dashboard, you can click on a school and see that there’s clearly a lack of grocery stores or food options in the area. So on our dashboard currently, this past year we had 10 schools– eight elementary schools and two high schools that Duke and North Carolina Central most frequently partner with so most of the schools are around the general university areas, but this this summer– I’m not on the team, unfortunately, but they’re continuing to work– and they they’re expanding it, they’re adding new variables. And then we also have a context and resources section so that for those who are visiting the dashboard who aren’t as familiar with the jargon of the education world, they can kind of understand what’s going on, as well as click on additional resources if they’re curious and they want to do further research.

Michelle: So I’m curious, besides the information and the awareness aspect, are there other purposes for this tool? And what are the next steps in this project?

Drew: That’s a great question, and this is something that we’ve debated. One of our long-term goals is to use this as a tool for advocacy. So to advocate for change, because our dashboard– while it does highlight all of the assets that are there– you can’t hide the deficits that are clearly present in some of these school buildings and some of these school communities, but we tried to figure out a way to, for people to use this tool and then kind of get motivated to go and make change.

we tried to figure out a way to, for people to use this tool and then kind of get motivated to go and make change.

And so we can push this towards, you know, the school board, the city council, and I firmly believe that this vision will come to fruition. Once again, it’s a work in progress. The first summer I’m not gonna lie, it was it was quite rough. It was a rough dashboard. But this summer, they’re making it look great, polishing the website, and I’m really excited to see what comes next. And we’re hoping to expand it in the future as well to the other cities. I’ve met with people from Florida State down in Tallahassee, Clemson, Boston College about trying to make this dashboard like a template for them so they can replicate it in their own cities. And I there’s a lot of promise behind this. And I’m really excited to see what comes next.

Michelle: Yeah, thanks for bringing up that last part. I think that is exciting. On that note, I’m hoping if each of you– and we can talk about this just as a group–  your thoughts on why this research matters, why this research project is as important as it is in each of our eyes. I’m curious what some of your reflections on that are.

Drew: With a lot of this research project, we get to interact with the community, we get to interact with people in the school system like teachers, administrators and others, as well as parents. You get to see that there’s so much change that people in Durham would like to have. Durham is an amazing place, and of course, people in Durham know that it’s an amazing place. But there’s also of course, things that they would like to change as well. And we want to listen to the things that they’re saying, the complaints that they have, and use the resources that are available to the universities to go out and make a change. If we’re gonna be here, we might as well be here for good.

Blue: I really resonate with what Drew said, that Duke isn’t going anywhere. I think a really meaningful part of it is really making Duke empower leaders in the way that you ideally want them to. I can speak from direct experience being someone not from Durham, being someone– I was from Chicago– and came to Duke, just intending to be there for four years and leave and didn’t know what Durham was didn’t intend to know what Durham was, or really be in it. And then I was in service-learning classes, and this Bass Connections and a few other like, you know, civic engagement-type things that made me open my eyes and realize what a rich community, Durham was and how much there was to teach me, and then that’s the reason I didn’t leave and still here like learning from Durham, and hopefully, like doing good work here. So I feel like my experience kind of resonates with me as a reason why we need to continue this work, to better the university and our partnerships so that people can continue to learn about Durham, and choose to stay here and hopefully be advocates for social justice in it rather than just coming in and leaving.

Michelle:  Yeah, I think it’s important to combat that sense of transience. Sabrena?

Sabrena: You know, one objective that I had coming into college was trying– and just even in life– just find ways to be involved in my community, find ways to help my community. So like, this opportunity really helped me to kind of like, get my feet wet and get used to this idea of, you know, having a vision for something, and working on a team, having objectives, and really creating this beautiful project that can help people, literally in the community that I’m living in right now. You know, we see Durham shifting, people are being introduced to the community that haven’t been here for generations, and that’s shifting how public schools are looking, and shifting how neighborhoods are looking. And so this anti-racist curriculum is really going to help anyone who’s creating or coming into an educational space, or beyond that, and students who are entering in the universities that are entering into the public schools kind of be aware of how the schools and how the system has been set up, and how they can probably help and understand the students and other teachers as well. I just see this as a great opportunity for people to kind of come together and exercise empathy for each other.

I just see this as a great opportunity for people to kind of come together and exercise empathy for each other.

Michelle: Something I wanted to point out that was exciting to me to hear is this University-Assisted Community Schools topic is, of course, inevitably tied to public schools, right, Durham Public Schools and its relationship to universities. A lot of what has been discussed hasn’t just been about public schools. This broader discussion that y’all were having earlier about the importance of being involved in the community, and it’s about how do you contribute? How do you intentionally try to get to know a space, get to know the people who are living in the space, and the history. And all of that makes this idea of a community school as a model makes so much sense to me, because the point of a community school model is that the school doesn’t just exist as its own little silo, right? Talking about the whole thing, the whole ecosystem that schools exist in is the point in community schools.

this idea of a community school as a model makes so much sense to me, because the point of a community school model is that the school doesn’t just exist as its own little silo, right? Talking about the whole thing, the whole ecosystem that schools exist in is the point in community schools.

So that was something I just wanted to bring up.

Closing Thoughts

Michelle:  Okay, I think it’s time to wrap up our discussion. But I’d love for each of you to share any last thoughts maybe on how this research project has impacted you.

Blue: I learned a lot about ecosystems of change, from getting to learn about community schools, and seeing the way that they bring in a bunch of community resources, from you know, fridges with food, to clothing, and washer dryers and, you know, English language learning for parents, all these different resources. Often there’s like a myriad of community resources out there, but families don’t have the time to be stopping by every single nonprofit and mutual aid and plant stand, to get all these things. And so doing the work of bringing all these resources into one place where our young people are going to be anyway, where the parents are going to be to pick them up, just makes so much sense in making sure that the community resources are actually meeting the needs of families and that this gap of transportation and time, which are scarcities that families have, aren’t lacking.

Sabrena:  Yeah, I just wanted to kind of just touch on like how amazing this opportunity has been just for my personal development and the skills that I’ve learned. We learned so much about how to collaborate and how to be objective-focused, how to plan and manage a team properly, how to conduct ourselves in the community effectively, give interviews, and also just the networking opportunities that we had, being with people who have a similar vision for how they want to help their community as well.

We learned so much about how to collaborate and how to be objective-focused, how to plan and manage a team properly, how to conduct ourselves in the community effectively, give interviews, and also just the networking opportunities that we had, being with people who have a similar vision for how they want to help their community as well.

Like, it just felt like a cool personal development opportunity, but also a way to, in the same environment, you’re still able to help others as well. I feel like I’ve learned a lot and it’s just really cool to have a final project that can actually be useful to others as well not just like, doing schoolwork that I’ve been doing for so long.

Drew: Yeah, Sabrena just said everything I wanted to say, so props to her on that. I’m really appreciative that I can do this work. It’s made me somehow more passionate about educational equity. I know in the last two years, it’s been quite bleak, or I think it’s been quite bleak, the education world, because things have happened politically, but I’m glad to see that we’re making progress, and like Sabrena said, I’m excited to see the tangible outputs that we have.

Michelle: If you’re a university student out there, particularly if you’re interested in education, I encourage you to reflect on a couple of things. In what ways can you learn about and learn from the geographic space of the university you attend? In what ways can you use your skills and interests and your university’s resources to be in solidarity with the families in K-12 schools near you?

In what ways can you learn about and learn from the geographic space of the university you attend? In what ways can you use your skills and interests and your university’s resources to be in solidarity with the families in K-12 schools near you?

For more information about our University-Assisted Community Schools research team efforts, you can visit our team website at sites.duke.edu/UACS. Thanks for listening.