(upbeat music) - Hey, y'all, I'm Kiara Butler, and welcome to Generation Rising, where we discuss hard hitting topics that our diverse communities face every day.

And today's topic is equity in education, and what that really means for our students, families, and teachers here in Rhode Island.

I'd like to welcome today's guest, Nkoli Onye.

She is the Chief of Equity and Belonging at the Providence Public School District.

Hey, Nkoli.

- Hello.

How are you?

It's good to see you.

- I'm making it.

I'm making it.

How are you?

- Great, great, great.

- I hear you got a new role and everything.

- I did.

I did.

You know, I started in July and was intrigued by that role.

You know, it's a new role, but it's also a new department.

My predecessor, Dr. Mullen, was the first Chief of Equity for Providence Schools.

And so taking, and, you know, the position was open for a while.

So when I had the opportunity to step in that role, I found it really exciting and also fascinating, you know, building a department from ground up, especially one that's really important, particularly around, particularly today in these times.

- I know, right, and that must be like a heavy task for you.

What does your day-to-day look like?

- Very busy.

- [Kiara] Yeah.

- Very busy.

It's a heavy task, but it's rewarding.

You know, when I got there in July, of course, there was no one in the department.

I now have four full-time people working in the department.

So I've got a great team, very unique individuals, spending a lot of time really making fast moves in a very short amount of time.

My staff came on board in October, and since then we've been rocking and rolling, providing professional development for students, for teachers, for administrators, creating some really cool opportunities, particularly for students, around student leadership and development conferences, developing policies and procedures, systems and structures, which you well know, are very important.

Something that we really have to make sure that we're good at, right?

So that we can sustain the work we're doing.

And really looking at data differently.

Looking at a lot of street data, you know, taking the data we're getting directly from students.

- [Kiara] Yeah.

- And looking more deeply as to who our kids are, our young people are, and what they're telling us about their needs, their desires, and making sure that we're really staying focused on those particular things.

- Thank you so much for sharing, and I'm really happy to hear that you have a team.

I think that's already equitable within itself, that you're not doing this work by yourself.

But how, how would you define education equity?

- Wow.

It's really providing opportunities with results.

And what I mean by that is, you know, we talk about making sure that we meet the diverse needs of our students, which is very important, right?

We have to make sure that in every way, shape or form, we know who our students are and that we can't, it's not a one size fits all for all kids, but we also have to look at results, right?

And as we are providing a better curriculum, much more culturally responsive curriculum for our students, which includes materials, right?

- [Kiara] Yep.

- We're also providing experiences for them, getting them out of their schools, especially our high school and middle school students, getting them on college campuses, getting them internships, getting them out into their community to really understand what it takes to be successful when they graduate from high school.

And also creating really good spaces for them in their schools, you know, in our work with students, these last few months, one of the things we've talked about is really creating opportunities for them to have a voice and structures within their schools, but also spaces within their schools to do that work and also to meet with other adults in the school.

So that idea of collaboration, right?

So it takes a lot, but at the end of the day, what matters most is, what are the results?

Are we graduating more students?

Are they actually becoming gainfully employed right out of high school?

Are they going to college and going on to do well?

So those are some of the things that we're excited about, being able to contribute and support our other departments at the school district to make it happen.

You know, it's not fast work.

It's gonna take some time, but if you have a strong plan and strong commitment and good people that actually know how to do the work and are skilled and want to be better, I'm excited and hopeful that things will get better for our students.

- Thank you, so what would you say that process, or what does equity look like for teachers or district staff?

- Yeah, so I think one of the things is making sure we know who our students are, right?

And so this year we've spent a lot of time providing opportunities for students to learn more about culture responsive education, what that looks like, what does it feel like, what does it mean for me as an educator?

If I'm being culturally responsive, what does a pedagogy look like?

How is it different?

What type of strategies do I need to use to make sure that I'm creating an environment that is culturally responsive?

And also, what does it mean to have implicit bias, right?

We all have biases, right?

And oftentimes when we use that word people get very afraid, because they feel it means so many other things.

But one of the things we've been, I think, successful this year, starting off in a few places, doing some work around implicit bias and really starting with the clinical aspect and historical aspect, we all have biases, right?

And usually those biases come out when you're mostly very stressed.

Well, there's no educator I know in the country or in the world that's not stressed, right?

- Who isn't stressed, right.

- But if we know what triggers our biases, and if we understand that we all have them and we're checking ourselves, right?

And thinking more critically before we make moves, before we make decisions, before we say things, then that's how we get better.

So this idea of equity has to include, not only knowing your students, but also knowing ourselves, right?

As people, as humans.

And then understanding as an educator what it is that needs to happen for me to be able to really produce for my students and then give them this kind of personalized opportunity where you're meeting their needs, right?

- [Kiara] Yep.

- And understanding that they don't all require the same and it's okay.

So I think that's, you know, that's some of it.

- Yeah, I like how at first you talked about data and you said you wanna see results, but when I asked about the teachers, you then went to self.

And I think that's really important for how we're showing up for our students.

- [Nkolika] Absolutely.

- Because students of color are suspended at disproportionate rates.

- [Nkolika] Absolutely.

- [Kiara] Right.

And we know that.

- [Nkolika] Absolutely.

- And why is that happening?

And one of those reasons is the implicit bias that you spoke of.

And so, I'm happy that PPSD is providing training to teachers and it's equipping teachers to do this important work.

How would you say that the equity vision that you all have for the district fits into the turnaround plan or the school takeover?

- Yeah, so, you know, our work fits all of the buckets, engaged communities, excellence in learning, work, class, talent, systems and structures.

I mean, the work of our equity office, one of the things people are slowly and in some cases, quickly starting to realize is that we actually have to collaborate with all of the departments, right?

And so when you look at our work, for example, at Excellence in Learning, we're spending a lot of time, like I shared, working on, we've created some cohorts for teachers, self-paced cohorts, that include online self-learning modules.

So rather than the usual sage on the stage, this person is in front of me talking at me for three hours.

We're really going back to the adult learning research, which shows that adults learn best when they have an opportunity, number one, to engage and they have time to practice.

- [Kiara] Yeah.

- What they're learning, and then come back and reflect with one another.

So we've got that going on, in terms of Excellence in Learning.

For World Class Talent, we have partnered with human resources.

And a couple of things we're working on, we're working conjunct, collaboratively around pipelines for some of our non-teacher staff, some of our TAs, our administrative assistants, and other school culture coordinators.

So many people who are non-teachers who already have degrees or would like to get a degree and come back and teach.

And also starting to talk about what that looks like for students, right?

So if I'm a middle school student, and we really do a good job letting folks know what it means to be an educator and how, you know, how many different opportunities there are, besides just teaching, guidance counseling, administration, there's so many opportunities, really building that pipeline from middle school all the way through college and bringing those folks back.

So while we are excited about all of the new influx of folks from all over the country who've come to Providence, we are also focusing on building our own.

And so one of the things the equity office has done, is to really create a DEI group within the department, to really look at how we're supporting educators of color.

We now have an Empowered Meetup, which meets every month.

We had the first one in January, February got canceled because of the snow.

But that first January meeting was incredible.

We had the, you know, we only had a capacity for 70 and we were at capacity.

- [Kiara] Sold out.

- Yeah and the feedback we got from educators was incredibly positive.

We have speakers who come in from the community or from outside the community to speak on various issues pertaining to educators of color, people of color in general.

So for the next one on March 30th, we have Judge DuBose coming in, Judge Melissa DuBose, and also Hakeem Hill coming in to speak to those lucky ones who will be able to get in before it closes.

And then around systems and structures, you know, we have a racial ethnicity equity policy that was passed in 2018, but it was outdated.

- [Kiara] Yeah.

- So one of the things we've done is, we now have an equity advisory council, which is amazing because, talk about engaging the community.

We have parents, we have educators, we have professors from universities, we have administrators, we have students, just community organization members.

And one of the things they've been helping us with, is this idea of advising on policy.

So we spent time, they spent time looking at the policy and giving us feedback.

So we have a final updated draft that we're gonna be taking to the policy committee of the school board in a couple of weeks.

And then we're looking at other policies we have as well.

And then which new ones we need to create.

We also have new standard operating procedures.

We have a Title IX officer now in my office.

And one of the first things she did, Dr. Diaz, came on board and she developed SOPs for Title IX and has been doing trainings since she hit the ground in October.

And then we also have a gender affirming guidelines now for students who want to change their name in various ways.

Initially we did not have those guidelines in place.

We do now 'cuz we wanna make sure that we're serving the needs of all of our students.

And we have Aarav Sundaresh, is my director of Equity and Belonging, leading that work.

So we are hitting all of the goals, all of the top goals, and we are holding ourselves accountable to those goals to make sure that all of the work we do, number one, connects back to students, period.

That's like number one.

Our core responsibility for the equity office, I think it should be the core responsibility for every district in the country.

- [Kiara] Everybody.

Yep.

- Is students, and one of the things we have to continue to remind ourselves, no matter what we're doing, if it's not serving students and not hitting those goals and functions that we have designated to be important to serve students, then we don't get involved.

- I agree.

So it sounds like y'all have made a lot of changes since the beginning of the pandemic.

When the John Hopkins report came out, it said that PPSD was like the worst school district in the country.

Do you think that that was a fair assessment then?

- I think that everyone has their opinion.

I've been blessed and lucky to have worked in a lot of different places, where I started teaching in South Central, Los Angeles and Los Angeles.

I've taught in Alaska, I've taught in Georgia before coming here.

And most of the time they've been urban districts.

Urban districts have a lot of commonalities in terms of successes and challenges.

And I think what's most important is, how do we work together as a community?

How do we make sure that we see our students as not just the responsibility of a school district, but see students as the responsibility of the community?

- Listen it takes a village.

- Then how do we come together?

Right, how do we come together?

We may not always agree, right?

But how do we come together to make sure we're doing the best job for students?

That's the only conversation I'm interested in.

Comparisons, I mean that's, you know, to me it's a waste of energy, because if you look at every urban district in this country right now, there are some great things happening, and then, but everybody's struggling, especially, particularly since Covid.

- Yeah, so what challenges have you seen because of Covid?

Or did anything in your department get stalled or anything you would wanna implement?

- Well, you know, my department, we just, again, I came on board this past July and had a fully functioning office in October of 2022.

And so one of the things that we did immediately, was we knew we had to focus on some major stakeholders.

Definitely our educators, definitely our community.

'Cuz we had a lot of community organizations who wanted to do work and have been paused because of Covid, right?

And because the department had been closed, but especially students.

So we started this, what we called the Respect Conference in November.

And what I asked all of the schools to do was to send us about four students, four to five students, from each of their schools, middle and high.

And we converged upon the Marriott downtown, for a full day of learning about what equity and belonging means, what diversity means.

And then we spent time in the afternoon giving the students an opportunity to talk about what's important to them.

Like what are the things that, like you just wanna fix?

Like if you could change it today, you would change immediately.

And then we had them create action plans.

And part of this is to really mitigate this idea that students feel oftentimes that they're not heard.

What we found, which I'm sure you know, and we know this, but it's still amazing every time you listen to students and hear what they're saying in terms of the things they're looking for.

And if you're in a room of adults and you hear what they're saying, a lot of times it's the same thing, right?

And so we've had a lot of social emotional concerns heightened since Covid, being shut in for a long period of time.

Not seeing friends, not having that community, coming back to school has been difficult.

But one of the things I firmly believe in, when you look at the research, it supports that we give students the support they need for that social emotional learning.

But we also give them hope and an opportunity to have voice and agency.

And I think that's what the Respect Conference is doing.

We're teaching students to care about others and their community, and in doing so, they're caring about themselves.

And so as we go full fledged next year, we're gonna really be tracking those students' attendance, their grades, right?

Their opportunities that they have.

We'll be looking at their action plans to see how the schools are supporting them to enact those plans.

Because we wanna send a message to the students that we do care about what they have to say, and that we're gonna do everything we can to help support them.

And my hope is that we will, students will start to have a lot more hope and vision as to what they can give to the world.

And we'll be able to start getting back to at least where we were pre-Covid, right?

- [Kiara] Yeah.

- And I think that it's an experiment, but I think it's one that will have great positive effects.

And we're doing some other things too, to galvanize and excite students at the school level.

We'd like to eventually have a racial equity committee of some type, at the schools where students and teachers can get together and really make sure that they're addressing equity in their schools, that they're having the right conversations, those courageous conversations that we tend to run from, to really build that community and sense of worth and self and collaboration within their schools.

- So why is it called the Respect program?

Who chose that name?

- To be frank with you, I did, I did.

Raising expectations for students, perspectives, experiences, consciousness, and traditions.

You know, this is not, you know, when we talk about providing opportunities for students, it's about everything.

It's about race, it's about class, it's about identity.

It's about voice, it's about culture, right?

Recognizing that everyone has culture and everyone has specific traditions.

And the more we understand each other's culture and traditions, the more we can create that bridge to understanding.

But oftentimes we, sometimes we look at our perspective as from our own culture and our own traditions, and we forget that others have them.

And so I really want the adults particularly, to recognize that students have their own culture.

They come from a, you know, even if you're brushed as a Hispanic student, from where, right?

It could be from anywhere, right?

It could be from Bolivia, you could be from Dominican Republic, you could be from so many different places.

We have to recognize that everyone comes with their own culture and traditions and they're valid, right?

And the more we recognize and understand where people are coming from, the better relationships we can make and the better relationships we have, the better space we have for learning, for teaching and learning.

So that's what we came up with.

And then, you know, respect, everybody wants respect, right?

- [Kiara] Yep.

- Adults want respect, but kids want respect too.

And I just, I feel like that's what's really, that's what really drives everything.

If people feel respected, they have better relationships.

And hopefully the spaces are better spaces for people to thrive, for both the adults and the kids to thrive.

- Yeah, I agree.

And as the largest district in Rhode Island, you all are like the poster child that other districts can learn from.

What's one solution that the students have proposed to you within the Respect program?

- So a lot of students are in to peer mediation.

- [Kiara] Peer mediation.

- That's a big one for a lot of students.

They're very concerned about their MLLs, theirs multilingual learners, their peers.

We heard that at the middle school and we heard that at the high school, creating more opportunities for them to learn the language, to learn the English language a lot faster, but also to retain their own language, to provide more supports for them.

And also to help them to bridge this new world, this whole idea of being in America, right?

Providing them with skills.

So that's a major one.

The other thing too is communication.

And collaboration was a really major one for many of our students.

Creating structures in schools for more collaboration and more communication between students and adults was a major one.

And part of the Respect Conference, what we're modeling for them is that collaboration.

So when they come into the conference, they're seated at tables, round tables, there's usually 10 students at a table.

They usually bring one adult from their school with them, and their time is being spent talking and conversing with each other and getting to know each other and supporting each other.

So we're trying to model for them in that conference what we want it to look like at their schools as well.

- Yeah.

And so collaboration, engaged communities, it's one of the indicators of success for the turnaround plan.

How would you say that communities were a part of the decision to close three schools?

- I will say this.

I know that closing schools is always something that's very personal to folks, and I understand, we all understand, that people have very passionate views.

I think what's really important for everyone to understand is that we want to have the types of schools that you see in, you know, I was talking to a student the other day and they had gone to Barrington.

So Barrington Middle School is a school that I'm very familiar with, the new Barrington Middle School.

It's a beautiful structure.

And I don't know what they were out there for.

I think they were doing basketball tournament or something, and they were like, wow, I would love to have a school like that.

And I was like, well, you know, one of these days we're gonna have that.

That's what you deserve.

So I really don't get into the conversations around closing schools, what I'm really having students, we were talking about at the last Respect Conference, in February, around imagining or re-imagining what schools could look like for them.

- Yeah.

- Because as part of that action planning, some of the students talked, like I said, about collaboration and communication, but they also talked about the fact that the way the schools are structured, they're so isolated and siloed, that you don't really have the space for that.

So as we're re-imagining these schools, one of the things they were talking about is creating schools where you have big open spaces, where there's lots of opportunity for collaboration among students.

And where there's lots of collaboration among students and adults.

- Every student, regardless of what community they live in, deserves to be educated in a school that represents the 21st century learning environment.

This is a true collaboration across all fronts.

And it shows that when leaders work together, great things can be achieved.

This will quickly become a brand new state-of-the-art school that students, their teachers, and their family members will be proud of.

And they deserve it.

And will be the crown jewel of Providence School's renovations, right here in this neighborhood.

- I've asked you a lot of questions, right?

And you are doing very important work.

Is there anything that I didn't ask you that you want our viewers to know?

- Well, I think that it's important to have a balanced view.

Schools are not perfect places anywhere.

And one of the things that's really important is to, at least for the Equity Office specifically, we want to hear from, and we want more involvement from the community.

We have an Equity Advisory Council that we just started in December.

And like I said, it's an amazing space where we meet, usually meet from 4:30 to 6:30 at the school department.

The work there is so rich.

And so I think one of the things is, there's different ways to engage with the school district.

One of the ways could be to come and email equity@ppsd.org and join our Equity Advisory Council.

We also have a Parent Advisory Council, and we also have a District-Wide Advisory Council.

So there's several ways for the community to engage.

And I think through that collaboration and engagement, we can get to understanding.

So that's one thing that I would ask folks to consider and particularly consider the council that's part of my department, the Equity Advisory Council.

We would love to have folks from the community to join.

- So the Respect program, the DEI group, the Advisory Council, you gave us an email address, I believe.

- [Nkolika] Yes.

- But how do we stay in touch with you?

- Oh, Nkoli.Onye@ppsd.org.

And every email you get from me has my personal cell phone number.

So if you email me and I email you back, there's my personal cell, and text me, you know, we're open for dialogue, - Well Nkoli, I wanna thank you so much for joining us today.

But guess what?

We are out of time.

- What?

Already?

- Yes.

Yes, we are.

It goes by so quickly.

- Yes, it does.

- And to our viewers, you can catch all of our past episodes anytime, at watch.ripbs.org.

And be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for the latest updates.

Finally, I would like to thank our guest, Dr. Nkoli Onye for her time and wonderful work.

We've started a tradition here, where we have people sign the board, and so we're gonna have you do that.

- All right.

- You leave your mark.

- I will do that.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- It was great to be.

- Likewise.

- All right.

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