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In this episode of Conscious Pathways, I sit down with Dr. Donald Grant, a dedicated psychologist, adjunct professor of psychology, and former middle school science teacher, to discuss his transformative journey from aspiring medical doctor to passionate educator and mental health advocate. Dr. Grant shares his unique path, starting with a bachelor’s degree in biology and an internship that reshaped his career aspirations, leading him to discover his love for teaching.
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In this episode, we explore:
⭐ Internships can provide valuable insights and help rule out career paths that may not be a good fit.
⭐ Teaching can be a rewarding profession, even without prior training or education in the field.
⭐ Recognizing the needs of students and the impact one can make can lead to a desire for further education and specialization.
⭐ Staying connected to academia and research can inform and enhance one’s work in any field. Interdisciplinary teams and community-based schools are crucial for providing holistic support to students.
⭐ Existing models of innovative education are often only accessible to those who can afford it, and efforts should be made to make these models more affordable and accessible to all students.
⭐ Funding disparities between school districts contribute to educational inequities and need to be addressed.
⭐ Data-driven decision-making is important in education, but it is crucial to critically analyze the data and consider potential biases.
⭐ The conversation highlights the need to reimagine education by utilizing technology to identify and cater to individual student needs, and by involving parents and caregivers in the learning process.
Join me for this enlightening conversation with Dr. Donald Grant as we explore the intersection of education, social justice, and the arts, and the steps we can take to create a more equitable and inclusive educational system.
Episode Transcript
Brittney (00:00)
Hi and welcome to conscious pathways, the podcast where we explore the intersection of education and social justice through transformative conversations. I’m your host, Brittany, and I am so, so, so happy you are joining me for yet another episode. I actually have a bonus episode for you today. I’m working with a wonderful practitioner, Dr. Donald Grant. but before we get into his bio and get into that interview first, I also want to thank my Patreon subscribers. So thank you so much, Patreon.
who get this episode early and they also get a bunch of other goodies, access to ask an expert where I can answer one of your questions live on the podcast and also just get a lot of background information and just goodies from me, including a newsletter and all that good stuff. So if you’re interested in joining, you can look at the show notes below and join my Patreon subscribers. I also just want to give a.
quick update on what’s going to happen with the podcast over the next couple of months.
I’m actually going to take a little break from new recordings over the next month or so, and I’ll be back with brand new interviews and recordings in September 2024. So look out for that. But over this break over the summer, what I’m going to do is I’m going to be reaching out to new guests. I’m going to be looking at the podcast, looking at some things I want to adjust, things I want to change, some practices, how I can make this podcast better practice for you. And so I’ll be doing lots of updates, lots of reflecting, lots of…
brainstorming, so it’ll be still lots of good work over this summer. So what you can expect from the podcast, I’ll probably run a couple of rewind episodes, so episodes that I came out with earlier in the year. So if you missed any of those, that will be a great time, or if you just want a refresher on some of those topics. And also have a couple of little goodies also still sprinkling out throughout the next couple of months.
If you want to keep up with what I’m doing, you can follow me on Instagram, that’s just Conscious .Pathways. You can follow me on TikTok, which is also Conscious Pathways. Follow my YouTube, I’ll update updates in the community tab there as well. But if you want a deeper dive into what I’ll be actually doing during this time of reflection and growing, you can check out my Patreon. I’ll be giving lots of plenty updates on there as well, so feel free to check that out.
And now I want to introduce you to our guest, Dr. Donald Grant.
Dr. Donald E. Grant Jr. is a trusted thought partner to teams, organizations across the globe. He’s the executive director of Mindful Training Solutions, a boutique training and consulting firm, and the former founding executive of the Center for Community and Social Impact at Pacific Oaks College. He holds a doctoral degree in clinical psychology, a bachelor’s degree in biology,
and a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Practitioner Certificate. Dr. Grant is working on his first publication, Everyday Thoughts by Everyday Black Men, a compilation of 100 articles and essays written by black men across the globe.
and psychosocial foundation
of black men’s voices in modern society.
This was an amazing conversation with Dr. Grant. I can’t wait to share it with you. So let’s hop into it.
Brittney (03:08)
Hi and welcome to Conscious Pathways. Today I am joined by Dr. Grant. Hello.
Donald Grant (03:13)
Hello, good afternoon, good morning.
Brittney (03:16)
I know I never know when people listen to the podcast, whether it’s a morning podcast or if it’s like a, you know, evening driving home from work podcast. So all the above. Yeah. I think I have different times. I listened to different podcasts at different times of the day, you know? So I like to start my day with something a little bit fun. And then like, maybe I’ll end my day with something like very educational. I don’t know. That’s what I do. I think some people might be the opposite. I don’t know.
Donald Grant (03:25)
Yeah, all the above.
Interesting.
Yeah, it varies for me. Mine is more activity based. If I am walking, I may listen to one type of thing if it’s not music. But then when I’m home, sometimes I’ll have something on in the background and it can’t be too technical, something I can just listen to and follow. And then, yeah, so it varies. If I got a long drive, I had a meeting in Malibu and I had to drive 45 minutes. And so, yeah, so it really varies.
Brittney (03:48)
Okay.
Mm -hmm.
Yep.
He really does. That was the one thing I don’t miss about LA. I liked LA a lot more than I thought I did because I moved there for school from San Diego. And the whole time I was like grumbling like, I don’t want to be in LA. LA is going to be too crowded. But I actually really enjoyed living in LA a lot more than I thought I did. But that’s the one thing I don’t miss is that if you want to leave your neighborhood, it’s going to be a it’s going to be a trek.
Donald Grant (04:31)
so I don’t leave the valley unless I have to.
Brittney (04:34)
Basically, yeah, I don’t think I left like the Pasadena Highland Park Echo Park area very much. There is always something to do in that little tiny corner of where I live. And I was like, great. I don’t need to. I think I went to the beach like once and I was like, yeah, I’ll go have a day at the beach. It’s going to be great. And then it took me like two hours just to get there. And I was like, no, I’m good. I’m going to stay home. I don’t need the beach. But yeah, LA is a fun place, but it is it is large. There’s a lot going on there.
Donald Grant (04:55)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, there’s a lot going on.
Brittney (05:04)
Yes, yes. So tell me a little bit about how you got your start in education, who or what inspired you to want to be in education.
Donald Grant (05:14)
Well, my journey towards education was not nontraditional, but certainly not traditional.
My bachelor’s degree is from Hampton University in Virginia, and it’s a bachelor’s degree in biology. I wanted to go to medical school. I had an internship at a hospital during my junior year, the summer after my sophomore year at Hampton, and I hated it. The internship was great, met great people, all the things. Had a great time, made great money as an intern, but realized in that moment that I didn’t want to be a medical doctor.
I didn’t want to work in a hospital. I didn’t want to do that. And so, you know, the first lesson was, hey, internships are not just to get experience for things that you know you want to do. It’s also a rule out. And so I was very happy that at that time I was able to rule that out. Now, given that going into my junior year, I still loved biology as a major and it was too late to change it without extending my time. And so when I finished when I finished undergrad with a bachelor’s degree in biology without a desire to go to medical school,
The only thing you can do at that time frame was really
teach science because the whole country was looking for science teachers. And you could go in, you didn’t have to have a credential, you didn’t have to be trained as an educator, you just had to have a math or science degree. And so I began teaching in the Baltimore public school system, fresh out of undergrad as a middle school science teacher. And I fell in love with it. I knew that I would in some way be in the space of
of teaching and learning, but I didn’t know exactly what that role would be. I didn’t know necessarily be a classroom teacher. There was nothing about kind of my childhood or adolescence or even college career that said, I want to be a teacher. There was nothing there, but I’ve always been into academia as a space of comfort for me. And so it didn’t it wasn’t a far jump when I became a teacher. And yeah, I did that for five or six years.
before learning through teaching what my next step should be.
Brittney (07:31)
Hmm. That is… I love that part of your journey where you kind of got to do an internship and figured out like, this isn’t quite what I wanted to do, which is a beautiful thing. It happens a lot more often than people think. Yeah.
Donald Grant (07:42)
No, it was great. It was great. It was great. And I was grateful to have such a…
kind of clear lesson and message so early on to kind of challenge what I previously thought, you know, going there and thinking, this is gonna be dynamic, this is gonna be exactly what it needs to be. And I will say this, but after that, I had another internship that following year, after my junior year at Virginia Tech in Roanoke, Virginia, and it was in the food sciences lab in their school of food sciences.
Brittney (08:02)
Mm.
Donald Grant (08:21)
And I remember the project I was placed on, it was to increase the…
to increase the shelf life of ice cream without compromising quality or taste. And there were professors doing research on this. They had dairy farms all over the place. And I said, maybe I want to be now a scientist in a lab with pipettes and doing all those things. And so I did apply for graduate school in microbiology. And I didn’t get in. And I got waitlisted at Columbia. And then that’s when,
Brittney (08:39)
Mm -hmm.
Donald Grant (08:57)
the default was teaching. And so again, it wasn’t even a like, I want to go and do this. It was well, this is what you can do with this degree. And they’re seeking you out. They’re seeking men specifically out to teach. And I had a bachelor’s degree in biology. And so yeah, no training, no education on education, just clear knowledge on science and the ability to teach it at many levels. But yeah, thrown into the classroom was probably
22 years old. Yeah. Yeah.
Brittney (09:29)
And what was that experience like being in a classroom and not having the kind of background philosophical knowledge of how do we teach, but knowing the content, what was that experience like?
Donald Grant (09:40)
Yeah.
It was interesting because I didn’t know pedagogy. I didn’t know all the frameworks of education. I wasn’t an education minor. I just had this degree in biology and an interest in science. And so it was a very, very interesting experience being just thrust into the classroom, kind of fresh out of my own academic experience. And now with these kids.
Brittney (09:54)
Mm -hmm.
Donald Grant (10:10)
who are less, really in many ways, less than 10 years younger than me at the time as I began this teaching. So we’re listening to similar music and it was a very, very interesting time. And I think the…
Brittney (10:14)
Mm -hmm.
Donald Grant (10:23)
geo timeframe being in Baltimore, Maryland at that specific time. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with the TV show, The Wire, but The Wire was on at the same time I was teaching and just to see the stories of my kids, you know, being shown to the world in a way that wasn’t pejorative and giving them voice and just watching that go down. It was really interesting. Just all the pieces that fit together at that time were just unique.
Brittney (10:53)
Yes, that is incredibly unique. And it’s something I think about in terms of teaching, because I’ve worked with after school programs where the individuals, whether they’re photographers or they’re artists or things like that, they know a lot about a very specific thing. And then they go in these classrooms and they’re teaching these youth. And kind of like you just mentioned, they’re not that much older than the kids that they’re teaching.
Donald Grant (11:17)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Brittney (11:19)
Because after school programs, usually the people who are working in those are recent high school graduates or they’re in college. So you see a lot of younger people within the field of after school programs. And it is really interesting to see how they don’t have that pedagogical background and understanding of the specific age range and adolescents and things like that. They don’t have that, but they can relate to the students in a very particular way that.
Donald Grant (11:24)
absolutely.
Yeah.
Brittney (11:48)
someone else might not be able to relate with them. Someone who’s like a lot more removed from that age range, right? Even though I know, you know, I know theoretically everything about you, about your age range, about your development, about what’s going on in your brain, right? I might not be able to really relate to you in other ways. Like, I don’t really know what Roblox is. I can’t relate to you with that. I barely know about Minecraft. So like, you know, yeah, yeah.
Donald Grant (11:53)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know. I know none of that.
But it was interesting, I learned a lot from them and to be able to, and it was a great professional confidence builder to be able to go into the classroom so early on without some of the tools that some of my other colleagues had. And it was a very supportive environment, had a great principal and great colleagues. And so that was probably the benefit of it as well. And what made it and made me able to do it more effectively was that. But, yeah.
Brittney (12:25)
Hmm.
Donald Grant (12:44)
you know, just the authenticity of those kids just forced you into a space where you wanted to root for them and you wanted them to win. And you saw the environment and the conditions that impacted them and that made it difficult for them to win. And I grew up in a community that was under resourced, but I was fortunate enough to go to a magnet school that was outside of my neighborhood. That was an honor school and got all the
tools that I needed that would not be available at my neighborhood school. So I also came in with that paradigm that I know these kids are not getting everything they need and I am going to kind of elevate what I do here. So I ran a mentor program and I did other things in addition to teaching.
Brittney (13:35)
Wow. And how did those kind of early experiences with teaching and working with middle school youth, which is a whole other can of worms. Yes.
Donald Grant (13:45)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The most unique group of adolescents or children across the childhood adolescent lifespan. I think they are the most unique.
Brittney (13:52)
Yeah
I couldn’t agree with that more. They are the most unique because they essentially have the mind of children, but their bodies make them look like they’re like teenagers, like they’re older. So you have these expectations that are, they’re like, you look like you should be able to do this, but it’s like not inside of that brain. That’s still a child in there. It is such a wild experience. I just remember the off topic, but I just went to Hershey Park a couple of weeks ago and it was like the end of the school year on the East coast.
Donald Grant (14:10)
Yep. Yep. Yep.
Yep.
Brittney (14:25)
And so there were a lot of middle schools, just, I would say there were probably like 10 middle school schools themselves. Really?
Donald Grant (14:30)
My fifth grade trip was to Hershey Park after we visited the Amish country and then we went to Hershey Park in Erie, Pennsylvania.
Brittney (14:39)
Yep, yep, I was right there. It was a beautiful experience. I’m not a roller coaster person, so I just like to be there for the vibes and the food and the experiences. But I could tell that was definitely a middle school, that was a school trip location because there were so many middle schoolers. And it’s so funny to see these tall, teenage looking kids just full force running, just like a child would, just full force.
running to every location. They’re like, I got to get to this ride and this ride. And you can just, you can just see them. They’re just running. It just smelled like middle schooler everywhere. I went just like, yep. The middle schoolers are here.
Donald Grant (15:11)
Yeah.
Hahaha.
They’re here, they’re in the building.
Brittney (15:22)
They’re in the building. You don’t see them because of the smell. But tell me a little bit more about your journey after that fact. So you worked in the middle school. How did that involve? Yeah.
Donald Grant (15:32)
Yeah, and that took me…
Yeah, that took me. In fact, you know, there’s a very actual specific story and it’s interesting that there are some key inflection points for me and I’m a very data informed, data driven guy and I didn’t have that language back then, obviously, but you know, there are some key inflection points for me like that internship and you know, that gave me information about how the universe wanted to move me, right? And so this one particular time was probably,
Brittney (15:47)
Mm.
Hmm.
Donald Grant (16:04)
Thank you.
the year before my last year, it had to be the year before my last year teaching, I had this kid and two things. So the first thing in this was about three years before I finished. One of the things I did as a new teacher that I didn’t know was a horrible idea was that I would pass out the tests that the students took in my class. The first six of them, the first eight of them, I would have in order of highest grade to lowest grade for the like top five students. Now the rest of them,
would be all mixed up so nobody knew who got the lowest score none of that was happening right so this one kid would consistently be in the top and you know it was a great kid sharp great young man and then suddenly after you know a month or two of this he suddenly was no longer in that top five and I asked him what’s going on I said why is why is this
And he explained to me that it was embarrassing to be seen as smart in that space. Now.
I hadn’t thought of it in that way. I came from a community where I grew up in a housing project early on in my childhood, and like I said, bussed out to a different school. And I did have the experience of people telling me, you talk white. And I’m like, it’s actually you speak white. I never said that. But you talk white, and having this kind of distance and proximity because of education, because of the way that one might speak. And so.
Brittney (17:29)
Mm -hmm.
Donald Grant (17:35)
I understood it, but I’d never seen anybody engage in an activity where they began to diminish themselves. He was literally not doing as well on the test on purpose so that it wouldn’t be seen. I immediately stopped that practice. Once he explained that to me, I immediately stopped that practice. But I also coached him on the importance of being able to show up for who he was and how there was all different types.
Brittney (17:49)
Mm. Mm -hmm.
Donald Grant (17:59)
of people in the world and that your blackness is not predicated upon how you speak blah blah blah blah. So we had that whole conversation. And so that was a really important moment.
Brittney (18:05)
Mm.
Donald Grant (18:10)
in my academic career, in my teaching career, excuse me, that I realized that these kids need more than I’m able to give at my current training and in my current role. I knew that I could make a difference as a teacher. I know what the research said about male teachers in the classroom, all the things, but that particular moment told me.
Brittney (18:22)
Mm -hmm.
Donald Grant (18:34)
there’s something else that I should be doing in this. I don’t know what it is. I don’t yet have the skillset to do what I’m thinking it needs to be, but this is not it, right? And so…
Fast forward a year or two later, a different kid, he comes into class and he’s kind of struggling there in homeroom and, and promiscised, asking what’s wrong. He starts sharing some, some things, not huge traumas, but you know, things that a 13 year old shouldn’t be necessarily exposed to. So I go get the school psychologist and I bring him in and I say, Hey, you know, I want you to sit with me and this kid. I just don’t want to say the wrong thing, but I want to walk him through some things. And so.
Sit with the boy, walk him through some things. School psychologist sits there just kind of quiet. And then we send the boy to class. After we’re done, the school psychologist says to me, have you ever thought about graduate work in psychology?
I say never, not once. He said, you were really good. And he’s like, these are the tools that need to happen. And so he went to the California School of Professional Psychology in San Diego, but he was living in Baltimore. And he began telling me about the world of graduate school in psychology. And as a result, in fact, I literally just found, I took a picture of it. I literally just found his recommendation letter.
that he wrote for me. I was cleaning up and this is, let me see, I was cleaning up my back room and going through some boxes of old stuff. And, you know, I just ran across his recommendation letter. If I find it, I’ll read it to you or send it to you. But it’s just interesting that that is what that was my trajectory into the world of psychology. And this is dated November 8th, November 28th, 2001.
Brittney (20:16)
Wow.
my goodness.
Donald Grant (20:30)
And this first, this letter was to the University of Maryland. So I guess I applied to the University of Maryland as well. But that is the moment that it clicked and I said, that’s what the additional skillset you need to have to remedy.
Brittney (20:38)
Yeah.
Donald Grant (20:52)
what it is that you’re observing, the things that you’re feeling that you can’t quite get a handle on, the needs that you see and you feel, but you can’t name them, you can’t have, you don’t have the intervention, but you see it. And so it was in those moments that I knew I needed to go to graduate school and work on some sort of psychology degree.
Brittney (21:09)
Mm -hmm.
And that is such a beautiful thing because you took that space in between your, you know, your bachelor’s program and your master’s program to really figure out like what it is that was your calling, what it is that made sense for you to continue doing. And I know so oftentimes, especially in the black community, we just kind of want to collect our degrees, you know, or just like, I have to be the most educated person in the room. I have to have to be the most knowledgeable person. I have to do these things so that I can kind of.
improve my humanity, improve my worthiness, which that’s a whole other conversation. But, you know, and that definitely happened to me too as well. I finished my bachelor’s program and I was like, well, the most logical thing makes sense to like just go straight into getting my my master’s. And I didn’t really think about like, why was I getting my master’s? What did I want to do with the master’s? Was it relevant to what I was doing in general? Like, I just didn’t really ask those questions. It was just that’s the thing I have to do now.
Donald Grant (21:49)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brittney (22:16)
I think in retrospect, when I look back on that time, you know, I got my degree and it kind of, it was, it was still a great program. I learned a lot of things. I did good things with it, but it didn’t make sense for what I think I was ultimately trying to do. I think probably majoring in like psychology or majoring in social work or something like that would have made more sense for what I was trying to do. But I love that you just. What’s that?
Donald Grant (22:42)
Yeah.
But I’m not practicing psychology anymore though. So the journey, but I’m using every tool that I gained through that matriculation though.
Brittney (22:49)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah.
Mm -hmm.
Exactly, exactly. Same thing I feel like with, you know, my background in early childhood. For the longest time, I didn’t want to get my bachelor’s in early childhood because I thought, you know, there’s nowhere for me to really utilize this information other than being a preschool teacher, which is flawed thinking when I look back on it now because I utilize everything I’ve learned in my early childhood education programs, everything I’ve learned being a teacher, everything that I’ve learned working with that age range.
Donald Grant (23:17)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Brittney (23:29)
I utilize it in my life every single day. It is so relevant whether I’m in nonprofits, whether I’m in the classroom, whether I’m doing my own business, doing social media, doing my own website. There’s just things that I’m still utilizing and applying from that time of how people learn. I think my most valuable thing I learned about working with two -year -olds was they just want to know that their feelings are heard and be validated, and they just want to know that.
Donald Grant (23:32)
Absolutely.
Brittney (23:55)
those big things that they’re feeling like, yeah, it makes sense that you feel that way, dude. I’m like, OK, thanks. Yeah, like I utilize that. So anyways. Mm hmm. Basically, yeah, they just want to be heard and feel like, OK, yeah, I see what you’re saying. It makes sense that you feel that way. It works basically. But yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I love that you had that.
Donald Grant (23:59)
Yep. Yep. Yep. That’s the same with 50 year olds. Same with 50 year olds in the workplace.
Yeah. Basically. Basically.
Brittney (24:18)
that kind of that time of working in the classroom and seeing directly what the needs of the community were and what they’re actually going through and actually being in it and being a part of that and how that kind of, you know, continued to filter in what you did with yourself later on. That’s amazing.
Donald Grant (24:35)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I must say that, you know, there was a level of privilege that came along with it too, because I did happen to have a specialized degree. Most people, you know, with their bachelor’s degree, they, if you’re trying to get into a specific discipline.
it’s not sufficient. And so for me, with that specialized degree, I was able to just enter this field without doing some of the other things that people have to do. Even today, I wouldn’t be able to just with a bachelor’s degree in biology, nobody would just give me a classroom. They’d be like, no, you have to do all these things. And so, you know, I did kind of get to skip the line, if you will, to get that.
Brittney (25:06)
Mm.
Yeah.
Mm -hmm.
Donald Grant (25:16)
experience and to gain that knowledge. And so that I’m aware that my trajectory also has had a few kind of time warped portals that I’ve been able to move through that some people in with a similar background or with a similar experience, they had to kind of check.
Brittney (25:32)
Mm -hmm.
Donald Grant (25:41)
a few more boxes than I’ve had to check in some of the work that I’ve done that I’ve gotten access on a little bit more easily. And I’ve never not been in academia. Even when I was working as a clinical psychologist, I was always teaching a class at Pepperdine or Loyola or East LA Community College or LA Southwest College. I was always teaching a class or running a program at a university.
Brittney (25:51)
Mm -hmm.
Hmm, they still kind of were in academia and still, you know, working with, yeah.
Donald Grant (26:12)
Always kept one foot in. Yeah, always kept one foot in academia.
Brittney (26:17)
And that makes sense to you. I think you’re still working with either incoming teachers or incoming psychologists or people who are wanting to go into that field. And so kind of keeping one foot in there, I think it makes sense to one, continue to be relevant and continue to see like what’s, you know, what are we researching? What’s going on in terms of, you know, academia? What studies are happening? Yeah.
Donald Grant (26:35)
That yeah, that’s the big piece for me. It kept me forced. It forced me to stay abreast of research, like staying in academia, like even when I wrote my first book, which is a textbook.
Brittney (26:41)
Mm -hmm.
Donald Grant (26:45)
it just being in academia and that’s what I loved about it is that in my current role, I have such a high Rolodex of just research studies that I can just, you know, speak to research at the drop of a dime. And sometimes I’m like, I need to cite that. I need to figure out where I got that from because I know it’s true. I just don’t know. I just don’t remember what study it was. And so for me, you know, one of the biggest benefits of having remained in academia for so long,
Brittney (26:45)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah.
Mm -hmm.
Donald Grant (27:15)
no matter what my full -time role was, that was valuable. Being able to stay on top of the research and continue engaging in those high -level dialogues about world events or social events or whatever it was. Not only having pedestrian discourse about it, but consistently being involved in an elevated discussion about the research and things like that.
Brittney (27:41)
Yes, yes, I agree. I think after my masters, I took a kind of prolonged break from doing school because I feel like I had been in school for most of my young adult life at that point. And so I took a step back. I was like, OK, because I originally was like, OK, get your masters and now you go and get your doctorate. And I was like, I would like a break. So luckily, I did take a break. And during that time, it.
Donald Grant (28:01)
Yeah.
Brittney (28:07)
it did help me to realize, okay, what is it that I, if I do want to continue my education, what do I actually want to do with that? But since I’ve been taking that break, it was like a year or two after, and I was kind of feeling like I missed being, like you said, abreast to all of the research that was happening out there and like, what are we talking about? What are we studying? You know, what’s the data saying? I just wasn’t as in it because I didn’t have to be, I wasn’t writing papers every week, I wasn’t, you know, researching things every week. And so I just felt like I was…
like where’s the research? I want to know like what’s going on in the world. So I’m very, very curious about that. But so you kind of mentioned about staying in tune with research and kind of what’s going on. So I’m kind of curious, in what ways have you seen, you know, research and practice working together hand in hand? In what ways have you seen that kind of working well?
Donald Grant (28:59)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, there’s several different examples across, you know, whether it’s education or healthcare. And for me, I think one of the biggest, I don’t want to call it an innovation, but one of the biggest kind of practice paradigm changes has been over the last 15 years of people really.
paying attention to and modeling the benefits of interdisciplinary teams. Like, you know, historically we’ve had so many silos as it related to all these pieces, but now, you know, when we see public health getting involved with, you know, concerns with crimes and murders, when we see, you know, psychologists being more integrated into academic systems and then not just there for like testing for developmental disorders or testing for anxiety disorders.
where they’re actually partnering with teachers and curating classroom activities that speak to social emotional learning. And so for me, you know, districts and school systems and principals and whomever it may be who are implementing, you know, mental hygiene classes for parents and doing all these things, those are the models that I’m really a fan of. I can’t think of the gentleman down in Atlanta.
He has an academy where the kids and I haven’t been there before, but the kids just seem so happy and they’re seem like they’re thriving. And there’s music in the cafeteria and the teachers engage in different ways. And so for me, those are the types of spaces that are doing the good work there. They’re trying on new activities to see if they work and they’re willing to take the risk to try it on and say, this didn’t work for us. And so, you know, we’re not going to hold on to this. We’ll get rid of it. And a lot of these places are
also collecting data about outcomes and demonstrating that what they’re doing is sound and that they’re able to really affect change. And, you know, 90 % of the kids or whatever the number is, they’re graduating and they’re going away to, for me, the rubric of success is not how many of your high school students go to a four year university. That’s not it. But they’re going on to do what they decided to do, whether that is culinary school, whether that is
whether that’s a traditional four -year university. And so the outcomes are looking really great. And so those for me are the big places that I’d like to be able to pay attention to. Jeffrey Canada in New York had created the Harlem Empowerment Zone, I think it was called. And he integrated healthcare for families, not just the kids, but for everybody to be able to participate in.
Brittney (31:43)
Mm -hmm.
Donald Grant (31:47)
And then a lot of school districts across the country, they’re adopting the community -based schools model where the schools are actually a place where families are welcome and it’s not this huge separation and there are opportunities for parents to learn. So for me, that desiloing of the academic process and the demystifying of academia for under -researched students,
Brittney (31:56)
Yeah.
Donald Grant (32:17)
And so the better we can do at de -siloing these systems, and not just in education, in healthcare, in all these spaces, that to me seems like the winning ticket, the best way to do it. And so I think that’s the key to the success of the pandemic. And I think that’s the key to the success of the pandemic.
thing that research is demonstrating and they look different all over the place depending on where you are but those multidisciplinary teams seem to be the winning the winning way for me.
Brittney (32:48)
Hmm.
And that is something that I’m hearing as well, kind of repeatedly being said is that returning to community school as being a community of things that are all working together. It reminds me of this conversation, another guest, Dr. Eliani Edwards, beautiful conversation. So I’ll link that in the show notes for everyone to check that out if you haven’t heard it. But part of what she was talking about when she was re -imagining education was seeing school.
like your actual school building as a community, whether that’s having laundry, having, you know, community spaces, spaces for families to actually come and be a part of it. And not just, you know, a place where you just drop off your children and then you go away and, you know, you’re not really being authentically engaged. You’re not really, you know, having that sense of like ownership within your community or sense of belonging within your community. It’s, you know, that’s what we want to envision school to be. And that exactly what you’re saying. It’s not siloing it.
Donald Grant (33:37)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Brittney (33:57)
in all these different ways because we can see that that’s just not working overall in terms of how, in certain terms of school safety, in terms of school, you know, how students are feeling about school and how, you know, they’re engaged in school and all those different things. There’s, you know, we’re seeing the data about it and, you know, we’re seeing the practices shifting. Another thing she talked about was that, you know, obviously we know that mental health in schools has been deteriorating pretty steadily over the last couple decades.
And so, you know, part of the problem, part of the way that we’re solving that problem is like more school resource officers. And we’re just basically doing more things to feel like, yeah, we’re going to protect these kids from themselves, but we, it doesn’t work.
Donald Grant (34:37)
Yeah, well for me.
For me, some of those mechanisms are also grounded in the school to prison pipeline when we’re criminalizing social emotional needs in that way. My son is 14. He just finished his freshman year and he’s been in independent and private schools since kindergarten. And, you know, there’s a premium on that because the ticket price is really high, right? But many of these things that we’re describing, they exist. All these models exist, but you have to,
Brittney (34:44)
Yes.
Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm.
Donald Grant (35:10)
you have to pay for them, right? And so now we’re talking socioeconomic disparities, we’re talking race and cultural disparities. I mean, even though we’re in, I’m in Los Angeles where we have over 80 some percent of Latinx community members, but in these independent schools, they’re ranging at like 12%, 8 % Latinx people being in those schools, children and families. And so, when we talk about what I don’t wanna do,
Brittney (35:12)
Mm -hmm.
Donald Grant (35:40)
is speak about these models as if we have to invent them. They exist for people who can afford them and they exist for people who can access them. What we want to do now is how do we scale those models in an affordable way to get them to everybody. It’d be wonderful if every kid could have experienced the progressive project -based education that my son got in elementary school at a small private school here in Los Angeles where he just
Brittney (35:46)
Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm.
Donald Grant (36:10)
you know, had this passion for learning and he just was confident about learning, but we had to write a check every month in order to get that. And so, and there’s there are also some great public schools and charter schools doing the exact same thing. But what I would the reason I bring that up is because I don’t want.
Brittney (36:15)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah.
Donald Grant (36:31)
I don’t want to miss the mark on the conversation that says that educational innovation doesn’t exist already and we have to create some new framework in order to do this. These models exist and wealthy people have had access to them for generations. The questions that we’re asking in this particular conversation from where I see it is not how do we create those models, it’s how do we bring those models to the kids and families who need them most.
Brittney (36:40)
Yeah.
Yes.
I just want to let that simmer for a second because that’s such a beautiful sentiment and it’s so true. These things exist. They even exist in early childhood. We have a lot of voice and choice within early childhood education. So you want Montessori, you want Waldorf, you want Reggio, you want project -based. There’s so many options if you can afford it.
Donald Grant (37:11)
sleep.
Yeah. Yep.
Brittney (37:25)
And there’s that barrier. And I know in California, at least with our California state -funded preschool programs, and I’ve seen some shifts in head starts as well, but it’s very limited on what they can actually do when they’re getting their funding from the government. And so I’ve seen them shift a little bit more to being more play -based and to being a little bit less academically rigid and a little bit less strict and structured and stringent.
But at the end of the day, that’s, you know, your funding from the government. So you got to do what they want you to do for the most part, you know? And so, yes, yes.
Donald Grant (38:00)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The outdoor classroom for me is an example of that. Like, you know, some of these kids, and I know it’s not possible in all geographies, but where it is possible.
Brittney (38:10)
Mm -hmm.
Donald Grant (38:12)
I mean, these kids are still learning to count. They’re still learning their colors. They’re still learning how to interact. They’re still learning all these skills that we need kids to leave elementary school or preschool with, but it’s just a re -imagine. They’re not sitting on a desk with flashcards. There’s a way to do it. There’s a way to do it. It’s being done.
Brittney (38:18)
Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm.
Yeah.
there’s a way to do it. It is, it’s being done. You know, we’re seeing more micro schools popping up. And like you said, the outdoor schools, we’re seeing more of these options popping up and it’s great because it’s, you know, bringing accessibility. Like the more options we have, the more accessible it’s going to eventually become. And so that, that makes me happy to see. And like you said, it’s not, these aren’t, you know, new and novel ideas. These are things that we’ve been doing for…
centuries, you know, you look at Indigenous communities, you know, you look at schools around the world, you look at how they’re approaching education in schools, like it’s been, it’s been out there, it’s been done. And so, like you said, all we have to do is figure out how can we make it affordable, how can we make it accessible, how can we make it relevant to the students that we’re serving, but it’s not, it’s not a crazy idea. People are doing it. It’s out there. Yeah.
Donald Grant (39:00)
Yeah.
No. Whoa. Yeah, it’s not outlandish at all.
Brittney (39:28)
It’s not atlantic at all. Like we can make school accessible and and fun and joyful and includes like there’s all these different great things that we can make school just kind of have to think outside the box just a little bit and look at what’s out there and look at that, you know, that data and that research and really applying it to how we’re practicing it. They think there’s sometimes there’s that divide. We have the research that tells us these things. And then either it takes a long time to implement the research or it takes.
you know, or there’s just a divide between like, okay, well, I know the research says this, but how do I do this in reality? Right? How do I do this with the students I have?
Donald Grant (40:04)
Well, I think this step is even one step before that. I think you’re right that it is about how do I implement this with this particular group. But I also think there’s an infrastructure concern that first has to be determined that a municipality feels like the children who are not getting that deserve that.
Brittney (40:15)
Mm -hmm.
Mm.
Donald Grant (40:29)
And I feel like until we identify the fact that some of the most under -resourced communities need and deserve some of the best innovations we have, I think that’s where the hiccup is. I think we got some of the most young, some of the most innovatively talented young people in classrooms right now. They’re not confused at how to get this done. They can do it if they were given the resources to do it. I feel like the municipalities that kind of govern the school district, whether it’s a unified
Brittney (40:45)
Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm.
Donald Grant (40:59)
school district or whatever it may look like, I feel like those that’s where the problem lies is that we haven’t decided yet in America that all kids deserve top -notch education. And I know that people act like that’s what they’re doing. And so for me, it’s not a classroom teacher. It’s not a classroom teacher’s.
Brittney (41:20)
you
Donald Grant (41:22)
inability to implement or lack of creativity on how they could do it, it’s the fact that they got 34 kids in their classroom and they’re expected to handle every component of who they are. Where in other settings, whether they’re private, charter, micro, whatever, there’s somebody who is responsible for each developmental component of need that that particular child has at that space and time in that moment. There’s somebody paying attention to
to social emotional learning, somebody paying attention to academics, somebody paying attention to this and that. And we just don’t have those resources in public education. And even when we look at the historic funding model for American public education being grounded in many ways in property taxes, and we say, the system is broken. The system is actually functioning in the way that it was created to function. And so what we’re saying that these people, these children,
these families and these under -resourced communities are not getting what they need, it’s not because it can’t be done, it’s because the legislation and the legislators have not yet decided that those communities deserve that. And that’s the problem we’re facing in academia. That’s the problem we’re facing in K -12 and higher ed because the price tag for higher ed remains so high that it remains exclusive and elusive.
Brittney (42:43)
Mm -hmm.
Yes, yes, just big old snaps for that because that was, it’s so true. Like, it’s just like deciding that decision of like, okay, yes, these are the communities that deserve to have high quality education and other communities, you know, don’t, and you can kind of see that in terms of how, you know, the quality that we have within, you know, Head Starts and state funded schools, while they are.
Donald Grant (42:53)
Thank you.
Brittney (43:14)
they’ve gotten a lot better over the years. You can kind of just see the differences in how these students are treated and how these students are kind of policed even in early childhood, rather than when you go to a Reggio Emilia based school. It’s grounded in the sense of community and it’s grounded in the sense of seeing children as whole people and.
Donald Grant (43:17)
course.
Brittney (43:39)
making sure that they have practices that are aimed at making sure that they can be independent. It’s about, it’s kind of inception is around social justice, right? Cause it’s kind of post -war time pedagogy. And to think that there’s communities in the US that could really benefit from a pedagogy that sees their humanity, that sees their individuality, that sees them as contributing members of society and sees their…
Donald Grant (43:52)
Yep.
Absolutely.
Brittney (44:08)
right brilliance and gives them their ability to explore projects and explore their intelligence in this different, different new and novel different ways. But oftentimes in spaces that are geared towards lower income families, they don’t have those types of pedagogies. It’s very academic. It’s very, it’s even the mentality. If you really just think about these differences in mentality, right? Of seeing the child as a whole person with the ability to learn, with the ability to grow, with the ability to be a team member, to be a community member.
as to where we’re seeing this as, this is a poor child who, you know, if we don’t give them, you know, academic knowledge, then they’ll never amount to anything, right? And it’s the ways that we see the children in those two different, two different spaces is very, very telling, very, very telling.
Donald Grant (44:53)
You know, paternalism at its earliest moments.
Brittney (44:57)
Yes, absolutely, absolutely. I have one final question for you, and that is how do you reimagine education?
Donald Grant (45:08)
Hmm. You know, education for me is kind of this really non -linear, non -binary concept. And, you know, I do consider myself a lifelong learner. I still got student loan debt, but I do want to go back and get a master’s in public health on top of my doctoral degree. And I…
I find learning exciting in many ways. And so for me, if I had to reimagine learning, I don’t know what the price tag would be on this, but I’d like to develop some sort of systems program, maybe using AI, that allows us to very early on determine what gets each kid excited about learning.
what kind of inspires them by like literally looking at their brain activity when we’re engaging them in different activities and to be able to build a kind of…
Brittney (46:04)
Hmm.
Donald Grant (46:18)
iterative program that was malleable and that took into account development that was able to follow them throughout the lifespan of their academic career and consistently identify ways of learning and activities that were tailored directly towards them. And obviously it wouldn’t just be so individualized that it would only be one kid. You’d end up with four or five kids in that classroom who had that same bucket of inspiration related to
Brittney (46:29)
Mm.
Yeah.
Donald Grant (46:48)
to their learning and we can use that as a way to make data informed decisions on how we get these kids to reach these academic and socio -emotional learning goals. But I also would like for that to happen with the caregivers, with the parents. Because when we talk about kind of this integration of a community school model, in order for some parents who have been severely
injured by academia throughout their lifespan, they have a real distance from it. And what that results in is their parenting style is very distant from academia. And it’s not about being able to help your fifth grader with their math homework, it’s about being in a space where you see the value of it and you help to translate that value to them, right? And so for me,
I’d love to see engineers and AI professionals come up with some sort of algorithm, that’s the wrong word, but to be able to identify what is the most inspirational thing that we could do for this particular kid. And we track and follow and support them and give them those things. And we train teachers and educators to be able to do that. And we bring, you know, different community
components into schools and we start funding schools in a way that honors the gravity of what they do. It’s the only industry that everybody has to touch at some point in their life, yet it is the most under resourced and ignored space. And so for me, you know, some sort of individualized technological identification program that allows us to see physiologically what motivates and
Brittney (48:19)
Yeah.
Mm -hmm.
Donald Grant (48:40)
inspire somebody to learn and do and get a specific plan for them.
Brittney (48:46)
Yes, you are a very data -driven person because that was a data -driven response. But…
Donald Grant (48:51)
I know, I know, I know, I know, I know.
But in my work, in my work, I have to be that way. You know, you can no longer just talk about the touchy feely stuff. this is the right thing to do when we’re doing this because we want to honor all families. And those things still remain true, but they’re not sufficient enough to garner funding. I have to go in with a whole cadre of evidence to demonstrate why I’m asking a company or an organization to do what they’re doing just because it’s the right thing to do no longer works. And so for me,
Brittney (49:02)
Yeah.
Mm.
Donald Grant (49:24)
I have to be data informed at the very least, data driven sometimes, but yeah, it’s required.
Brittney (49:34)
Yes, yes, yes, yes. And it’s unfortunate, but it is true. That’s how we talked about publicly funded and privately funded education. It’s unfortunate, but yeah, if you’re getting your funding from the government, they get to tell you how you use that money and what you do with it. And they’re constantly collecting data and information, and they’re using that data to then inform their future decisions. So that’s…
Donald Grant (50:00)
Yeah.
Brittney (50:02)
kind of why we see things in education being the way that they are. And so if we were able to shift that and say like, okay, we know that the funding is important and we know that the data is important, how do we utilize this to kind of inform that social good? Right, how do we transform it in a way that makes sense for our society that we have today? Because it has, I don’t know if school funding, that’s something I want to research, but I don’t know if school funding has really shifted or changed over the last couple of years or it’s.
Donald Grant (50:16)
Yep. Yep. Yep.
Brittney (50:31)
kind of maintained mostly the same. Okay, it has.
Donald Grant (50:31)
it has.
It has, I will say the funding structure in most school districts have changed. They’re no longer utilizing the property tax rubric as the demonstrative note for who gets what. But here’s the problem though, Brittany, is that even though that model has changed, the change model was built upon the old model. And as a result, all the pre -existing gaps associated with that previous way of doing business, they still existed.
Brittney (50:45)
Okay.
Donald Grant (51:03)
So it’s kind of like putting a new house on a foundation that wasn’t bolstered. And then you put this new house on it and then the house starts falling apart and starts shifting. And so for me, even though many districts no longer use that antiquated model of public school funding, the gaps that…
were created by that model still exist. And so like, you know, when you look at in Los Angeles County, if you look at, for instance, Compton Unified School District, and you juxtapose that to Manhattan City Beach School District, these school districts are no more than eight miles apart. If that may be like six miles apart, right? The resources in those spaces are vastly different. Vastly different.
two different school districts less than five miles apart in the exact same county. What we’re seeing are the ramifications and the results of decades, probably over a century definitely, of this disenfranchised model.
of education and then yes, you can change the model after that. But if you didn’t do anything to repair the damage done by the previous model, what you do now, it’s consequential, but it’s not game changing.
Brittney (52:27)
Yeah, that is, yeah, that is, that’s fascinating. Because like, someone somewhere saw that there needed to be a change in the funding. I was like, okay, let’s do something about this. But then, yeah, I was like, well, that it’s still happening. That is fascinating.
Donald Grant (52:37)
Right. But we go act like the other stuff ain’t happen.
It’s still happening.
Brittney (52:48)
Again, more reason to just stay abreast to the research happening in education because there’s so much stuff happening behind the scenes that is fascinating and intriguing and there’s so much data that’s coming out that we’re seeing now, but then also makes you question about what data we aren’t collecting and what data we aren’t seeing.
Donald Grant (53:07)
and why we’re collecting the data we are collecting. What is the motivation behind some of the data sets that do exist? And are there ulterior motives? Is it being used to kind of create this catalog of data that we saw in 1995 when the…
Brittney (53:10)
Yeah.
Mm -hmm.
Donald Grant (53:26)
the bell curve came out where they attempted to look at the data surrounding test scores and identify ways that Black and Brown people were genetically inferior academically. And so, you know, not just what data is not being collected, but what is, what’s the source of the data currently being collected and why was that particular data set being used and who’s analyzing the data? Because there’s all sorts of bias in
Brittney (53:35)
Mm.
Yeah.
Donald Grant (53:55)
how we interpret numbers, even though 1 plus 1 equals 2, depending on who’s telling the story, it could not equal 2 sometimes.
Brittney (54:00)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah, that confirmation bias is a real thing. So it’s important that we’re analyzing what is my intention when I’m going into this and knowing kind of where you’re coming from, because it’s important, right? And it will tell you how we’re then interpreting that data, right? The numbers are just numbers, but it’s all about how we’re interpreting this information and what we think that this is telling us about a certain data set or what this is telling us about a certain community. We see that a lot of people will use data.
in all kinds of really interesting and fascinating ways. And you’re like, that doesn’t, that’s not what that means. Yes. It’s like, you’re over here. The data is way over there. Like, I don’t know how you got to there. But, you know, especially now when, you know, information is at, you know, our fingertips at any, any given moment, being able to critically think about the information that we’re reading, the information that we are taking in and…
Donald Grant (54:38)
Literally not what that means. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Thank you.
Brittney (55:01)
It can be really easy to just read something once and be like, well, that’s what that means. It’s like, well, did you really either read it? Because maybe you didn’t read it. Yeah, let’s have a look at that. Because even an article about a research article, if you don’t have access, if it’s a bit behind a paywall and you don’t have access to that research, it’s like, how can I fact check this? How can I make sure that? And that’s in the fact that research is behind a paywall is a whole other.
Donald Grant (55:07)
Yeah, take another look at that. Right, right.
We’ll hold another conversation.
Brittney (55:28)
whole other conversation for me because I’m just like, but why? Anyways, I want to thank you so much for joining me. I feel like I could talk to you for hours about this, about data, about education, just about things. So I want to thank you so much for joining me and engaging me in this really amazing conversation. Hopefully, you’ll be welcome to come back and talk to us more about data.
Donald Grant (55:44)
Thank you.
I look forward to that. Thank you so much for having me.
Brittney (55:54)
Yes, of course and lastly where can my audience find you what are you working on?
Donald Grant (55:59)
Yeah, I am on social at Dr. Grant, Dr. Underscore Grant, excuse me. And you can find me on all my books on Amazon. My most recent book, White on White Crime, is an intergenerational study on white supremacy. And it’s a really interesting read. And so yeah, just search for AuthorPays Dr. Donald E. Grant Jr. on Amazon and all the books will come up.
Brittney (56:25)
Perfect. I’ll put all of that in my show notes. So if you’re interested in any of the other books Dr. Grant has written or where to find them, I’ll put that all there. Again, thank you so much for joining me and engaging us in this really amazing conversation. This was amazing.
Donald Grant (56:38)
Thank you.
Brittney (56:40)
Thank you.
Brittney (56:41)
Thank you so much for tuning in to Conscious Pathways. Don’t forget to follow, like, and subscribe to Conscious Pathways wherever you get your podcasts and…
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