We speak with Justin Cohen, whose work focuses on the intersections of education, race, privilege, and public policy. Cohen’s recent book is Change Agents: Transforming Schools From the Ground Up. He looks at ways a faculty can systematically improve its school. Knowing the community and having honest and difficult conversations about race are critical.
Overview
00:00-00:33 Intros
00:33-01:44 What Change Agents is about
01:44-03:55 Results-Oriented Cycles of Inquiry (ROCI)
03:55-04:31 School Organizing as a form of community organizing
04:31-10:25 Conversations about race
10:25-13:54 A fishbowl exercise about race that went wrong and what happened after that
13:54-16:46 Achieving early wins
16:46-19:39 What accountability can mean
19:39-23:06 Strategies for improving school-parent communication
23:06-24:05 Working on listening as a school
24:05-26:33 Improving existing schools vs. starting new ones
26:33-29:46 Urgent policy changes
29:46-31:11 Relevant Ethical Schools episodes
31:11- Outro
Transcript
Click here to see the full transcription of this episode.
References
Book Change Agents: Transforming Schools From the Ground Up by Justin Cohen
Soundtrack by Poddington Bear
We speak with Dr. Mark Santow, Chair of the Department of History at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. Dr. Santow and his middle school son,...
We share brief presentations from the third of the “Saturday Salons” that Ethical Schools is sponsoring with three international partners. Kerry Kirk Pflugh is...
We continue our conversation with Harry Feder of FairTest. This time, we discuss high stakes tests in K-12 schools. Harry explains how tests and...
