Creating Safe and Empowering Spaces for Students with Dr. Elianny Edwards

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“What does it even mean for [students] to feel safe in school in a place that from the inception was created to actively harm?” – Dr. Edwards

In this episode, Dr. Elianny C. Edwards, an educational and community psychologist, delves into the critical importance of addressing racism and structural issues within education to foster a safe and inclusive school climate. Dr. Edwards advocates for moving beyond interpersonal experiences of racism to confront systemic and historical aspects embedded within educational institutions.

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Takeaways

• Addressing racism and structural issues is crucial for creating a safe and inclusive school climate.
• School safety should be viewed as more than just interpersonal experiences and should consider the systemic and historical aspects of education.
• Defining and measuring school safety is challenging and requires a comprehensive approach that addresses all aspects of school culture and curriculum.
• More research and collaboration are needed to create systemic change in education. Safety is context-specific and culturally specific, and it is important to honor different experiences of safety.
• Creating safe and empowering spaces for students involves inviting and empowering them, protecting and providing for their needs, and preparing and promoting their growth.
• Safety is intersectional and connected to systemic issues such as poverty and housing.
• Reimagining education involves building community-centered schools that foster belonging, ownership, and support.

Transcript

Brittney Carey (00:00)
Hi, 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 as always, I am so, so, so happy that you are joining me for yet another episode. Today, I am joined by quite an amazing figure, Dr. Elianny Edwards.

Dr. Edwards is an educational and community psychologist. Her research and scholarly expertise includes school safety at the intersections of race, class, and gender, the critical wellness and academic outcomes of students of color, and culturally relevant and sustaining teaching pedagogy. She is a certified K -6 teacher with over 10 years of experience teaching, mentoring, and directing out -of -school time programming for youth from underserved communities across the country.

Dr. Edwards has led workshops on increasing school safety, addressing student trauma, and employing a racial equity lens within institutions. Her research has been featured in media outlets like the LA Times, NPR, Ed Week, and Ed Source.

and she is an award recipient of the American Educational Research Association.

In Afro Latina, born and raised in New York City, Dr. Edwards is the first generation alumna who has committed her life to bridging research and practice to improve educational equity, access, and outcomes for students of color and low -income youth.

Starting this fall, Dr. Edwards will be an assistant professor of critical and decolonial psychology at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.

There were so many beautiful things about this conversation with Dr. Edwards.

it really opened my eyes and my mind to a whole world of possibilities within education that I hadn’t even considered before. We talked a lot about school safety and what does that mean? Really, what is the heart of school safety and how are we ensuring that students feel safe in schools? So this conversation really took me to places again that I hadn’t even thought about. So I’m really excited to share it with you. So let’s hop into that interview.

Brittney Carey (01:55)
Hello and hello! Welcome to Conscious Pathways. I am joined by Dr. Edwards. Thank you so much for joining me.

Elianny Edwards (02:03)
Thank you for having me.

Brittney Carey (02:05)
Yes, I know that you are on the East Coast, right?

Elianny Edwards (02:10)
Mm-hmm. Yes, I’m in the New England area right now. We’re still struggling with some cold out here

Brittney Carey (02:16)
I was just thinking about that because it’s spring here and you know, we’ve been getting some rain, like a little bit more rain these past couple years in California, in Southern California. Usually it’s pretty dry, so we’ve been dealing with just lots of flooding and lots of rain. So I was wondering how the East Coast was very, if everyone’s having like a weird spring or…

Elianny Edwards (02:39)
We’re still cold. We’re still cold. Rainy some days, but still cold. Yeah, so, you know, hopefully, you know, May will be looking better for us in a couple days. So we’ll see.

Brittney Carey (02:41)
No. Ha ha ha.

Yes, yes. Fingers crossed for May. We have the May gray here. We have May gray and then we have like, June gloom. And then we have summer and then we’re fine. That’s about as much weather as we’ll get down here. So I’ll take it. I’ll take a couple months of like, you know.

Elianny Edwards (03:06)
Mm-hmm. That’s all you really need. We have too much weather going on.

Brittney Carey (03:11)
Exactly, you know, just a couple of cloudy days, a little rain here and there, and then sunshine. That’s it. You don’t need the snow. Who needs snow? We’re fine. Yes, yes, yes. Is it still snowing out there or is it just cold?

Elianny Edwards (03:17)
That’s all you need. That’s really all you need.

No, it’s just cold. There was like, um, yeah, it’s just been raining here since so a little cold a little rain

Brittney Carey (03:25)
Okay.

Nice. That was always the worst when I lived on the East Coast is like, it’s springtime and then it’s like April and all of a sudden it’s snowing and you’re like, no.

Elianny Edwards (03:39)
There’s no such thing as spring is what I learned. So it’s just kind of like, you get a little bit of fall, you get extended winter, and then it just rains, and then it’s summertime. So, no such thing as spring.

Brittney Carey (03:42)
Mmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. That sounds about right. That’s like how we don’t really have fall out here. It’s just kind of summer and then it’s like winter. Nothing really changes in between there. But yeah, thank you so much for joining me. I’m so excited to speak with you. Tell me a little bit about how you got your start in education.

Elianny Edwards (03:58)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so my career started teaching elementary school. So I was a K through six, I am a K through six teacher. I’m a certified K through six teacher. My first time in the classroom was teaching first graders. And that’s kind of where I learned that first grade really is in my opinion, where the magic happens. That is where they bring you a class full of babies that leave being.

Brittney Carey (04:29)
Hmm.

Elianny Edwards (04:42)
little big kids who are now reading. It was in college, I was a clinical psych and child development double major. And then that kind of ushered me into a teaching career. So I was teaching K through six. And it was through my experiences in the classroom, honestly, that I started to become interested in research. There were a lot of things that we did in school that made me question like, why are we doing this?

Brittney Carey (04:43)
Yeah.

Mm.

Hmm.

Mm.

Elianny Edwards (05:12)
And a lot of the answers that I would get was like, oh, well, we’ve always done blah, blah. And I was like, okay, there’s like a gap here that I need to fill that there’s something I’m not getting. There has to be a better way for some of the things, right? And so that is kind of what propelled me to kind of pursue higher education. And now I’ve been in education psychology since.

Brittney Carey (05:18)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Wow. And what I love about that is your ability to just recognize when the math isn’t math-ing, right? Like things aren’t connecting, things aren’t making sense. And, you know, I’ve had this conversation with one of my closest friends, like we talked about this all the time, because one of the first schools that we worked with, it just did not.

Elianny Edwards (05:43)
Right.

Brittney Carey (05:53)
jives with how we saw education and people looked at us as like, oh, you guys are just young, like you’re just you’re just young and you’re green thumbed or whatever and you just don’t know about education. It’s like, no, I think I know that these practices aren’t developmentally appropriate. You know, I think I know that this doesn’t sit right in my soul. Like this isn’t this isn’t feel good for this age range that we’re working with. And we both gone on to work at other schools and we just were able to see the other side of it. It wasn’t, you know,

Elianny Edwards (06:08)
Mm-hmm.

Brittney Carey (06:22)
us as educators are trusted, that our background, our experience, our education is trusted, and we’re able to try new things and kind of think outside the box and not do things the exact same way that we’ve always done them or this is just the way it is. And it’s like, no, we’re learning so much about children. We’re learning so much about child development and just what best practices are consistently within education. So why not try new things?

Elianny Edwards (06:49)
Yeah, and I mean, for me, my career really started when, like the No Excuses charter school movement was like really kind of like front and center, and a lot of people were like championing it. And I remember working at a school where that really was like the ethos of the school. It was like No Excuses, it was a predominantly like black and brown school in a low income area, title one funding.

Brittney Carey (06:55)
Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Elianny Edwards (07:18)
And I just remember feeling like, I don’t want to do this. This is just not what I do. I don’t care how they are sitting in their chair, as long as they’re sitting in their chair. They don’t need to have their hands folded. It’s okay for them to chat while setting up for the next lesson. And it just felt so rigid. And I really had a hard time as a teacher in that environment. And I found myself…

Brittney Carey (07:21)
Yeah.

Mm. Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Elianny Edwards (07:45)
having the most positive experiences with my students because I kind of created a counterculture in my classroom to like what the ethos of the school was. And that honestly creating that counterculture is where I found my success. Like I’m just more warm and fuzzy than that. I’m a little bit more personable than that. I think it’s okay to color outside the lines. And so that was.

Brittney Carey (07:53)
Mm. Yeah.

Mmm.

Ciao!

Because…

Elianny Edwards (08:13)
Yeah, honestly, that experience is really what kind of opened my eyes to like education and Or to disparities in education in a different way than I had actually experienced them myself. So like um in my own educational journey um I was able to understand this dark kind of differences in education And access to education and quality of education through my own journey and then being able to see it as a teacher

Brittney Carey (08:22)
Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Elianny Edwards (08:42)
for me it was like, yo, why do these kids have to learn like this? Like I know that not all students learn like this because I’ve seen it in other places. So why are you telling me that this is how we have to do it here? Why do we have to, why is this how it has to happen for these children? And then moving forward, yeah, after that, it was kind of like that, that was my mission, to talk about what is happening in schools that serve black youth, that serve.

Brittney Carey (08:42)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Mm.

Elianny Edwards (09:11)
immigrant youth that serve a wide range of the diversity that we know our public schools serve. And what the ethos is around why they need to learn a certain way or why they should not learn a certain way or have access to certain things. That was really my motivator.

Brittney Carey (09:11)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

That is absolutely phenomenal because that’s something, you know, I come from that early childhood background and there’s something I’m constantly thinking about, especially when it comes to families, is like their voice and their choice, right? So in early childhood, we have so many philosophies. There’s so many, you know, you can go to Montessori, you can go to Reggio, you can, you know, find a school philosophy that works for you.

Elianny Edwards (09:42)
Mm-hmm.

Brittney Carey (09:52)
If you have the money, big caveat there. If you have the money, if you live in an area that has access to these amount of resources and has a lot of opportunities, right? Whereas if you’re a lower income family, you often don’t get a lot of choice, right? So it’s like, if you wanna do early childhood education, you can do Head Start, you can do state funded, you can find family care, right? And so your options tend to be extremely limited and-

Elianny Edwards (09:56)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Brittney Carey (10:21)
you know, your voice doesn’t necessarily go as far in these spaces either. And so thinking about, you know, when we do have these very, you know, you know, you know, head starts a great thing that exists, right. But they do tend to be very rigid and they do tend to serve lots of low income families and they tend to serve, you know, families of color, immigrant families, right. That’s kind of the general base that they’re serving for the most part. And so we’re thinking about there’s all these kind of things that are very, very rigid that have to happen in these kind of.

Elianny Edwards (10:26)
Mm-hmm.

Brittney Carey (10:49)
federally funded or state funded programs. And so, it does beg the question of, well, why do we have to do all these like very, strigid and strict things for these populations? It’s very no excuse. And like, I was also talking to another friend about, attendance policies and how that has a negative impact on, families and students, just like you’re saying, these kind of no excuse policies is very strict, it’s very rigid. And it’s like, well, why are we?

treating our students like this. And why is it only in these spaces that our students aren’t given the same opportunities to do project-based learning, aren’t given the same opportunities to explore other ways of learning and explore other avenues and things that they can explore. Why are they not given those same opportunities that other students are just because they’re low-income, just because they’re coming from these different backgrounds? And so really thinking about that voice and choice is something that’s always on the top of my mind in education, because it’s like…

Elianny Edwards (11:21)
and

Thank you.

Mm-hmm.

Brittney Carey (11:48)
Why? What are we doing?

Elianny Edwards (11:51)
Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

Brittney Carey (11:52)
Yes. And so you do a lot of research in education, really looking at these very traditional models and looking at school climate and safety and things like that. What have you found so far in this research?

Elianny Edwards (12:08)
Yeah, so I always like by starting kind of giving a little bit of a background on what we know about school climate and safety. So there is no universal definition for school safety to date. And a lot of times school climate and safety sometimes they used interchangeably. It’s not uncommon for them to be used interchangeably. But I think more and more we’re starting to kind of develop a structure.

Brittney Carey (12:13)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Elianny Edwards (12:36)
for kind of how they relate to one another. And there’s self-consensus that when we talk about school climate, that’s kind of like the bigger, broader term for which school safety is like one important dimension of school climate. And then when we say what school climate refers to, we’re usually, it’s personified as like the personality of a school, how it looks, how it feels. And then school safety.

Brittney Carey (12:39)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Elianny Edwards (13:02)
is defined as the physical protection of students’ bodies, right? And how that happens through things like crisis management drills, you know, fire alarms, et cetera, et cetera, right? And then also their psychological and kind of like emotional sense of safety. And a lot of times when we talk about that, when you look at what that research is, it has to do with, well, how do they relate to their peers? Is there bullying? What are some of their…

Brittney Carey (13:06)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm. Yeah.

Elianny Edwards (13:32)
experiences and relation experiences with other people at the school and the relationships that they form at school So that’s kind of where the research is at in terms of talking about School climate and safety and there have been kind of pockets of folks who have brought up other issues like oh well What’s the racial climate? What is that tolerance for diversity look like? Well, what are those things? and What my research

Brittney Carey (13:37)
Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Elianny Edwards (14:01)
What I’ve found in my research is, you know, when we talk about diversity and when we talk about issues of race and racism in school, it’s always kind of talked about as an interpersonal experience or happening. So it’s like, it still kind of falls onto that how we’re peers relating to one another. What we’re missing.

Brittney Carey (14:10)
Hmm.

Elianny Edwards (14:26)
when we’re talking about the ways that we assess school climate and the ways that we assess school safety and the ways that we measure it and talk about it is the fact that racism is not only interpersonal. And when we talk about public education in the United States, it’s very much structural, it’s very much systemic, and it has been throughout time, throughout its inception. And so when we talk about the safety of youth of color,

Brittney Carey (14:42)
Mm-hmm.

Elianny Edwards (14:55)
Black youth, indigenous youth in particular, right? It’s like, what does it even mean for them to feel safe in school? What does that even mean for them to feel safe in school in a place that from the inception was created to actively harm, right? Not only is it not safe, it brings actual harm. And so we have this kind of colorblind notion today of school safety that’s very ahistorical.

Brittney Carey (14:59)
Mm-hmm.

Ciao.

Mmm.

Mm.

Elianny Edwards (15:24)
And that assumes school to be this like race neutral place, which we know it’s not. And so what my research is looking to do is really just push this narrative of talking about school safety as if it is separate from issues of racism. And as if it is just one dimension of what happens at school. It’s like, no, that harm.

Brittney Carey (15:24)
Mmm.

Mm.

Mmm.

Elianny Edwards (15:50)
is grounded in every aspect of school. And so when we’re talking about creating safety, we need to be addressing it in every system, structure, policy, practice, piece of curriculum, in every single aspect of school, we need to be thinking about how do we create safety for Black youth.

Brittney Carey (15:59)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Yes, yes, yes. And I love that you mentioned, right, that it’s not just interpersonal. I think sometimes when we think about racism, we just go to like, oh, it’s a person to person. Like if we all just loved each other, then all racism would be over. And it’s like, well, that’s not actually the case. There’s a lot that goes into it. You know, you think about those four I’s of oppression, you know, there’s the ideologies, there’s the institution. Yes, there’s interpersonal. There’s also, you know, just the way I feel about it too. So it’s, there’s so many different, you know,

Elianny Edwards (16:22)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Brittney Carey (16:41)
that racism is filtered through and it’s not just our interactions. Our interactions are fueled by the way that the institutions interact with us. It’s fueled by the ideologies of, you know, our culture and our society. And without really addressing those historical and systemic issues, right, that are perpetuating these issues, it’s not really going to go away. It’s just going to find a new, a different way to pop up and exist.

Elianny Edwards (17:03)
Yeah.

Yeah, and I think sometimes, you know, you kind of get like very opposing views when you bring these kinds of things up, right? So you get people who get really defensive about it and they perceive it as like, oh, you’re like anti-teacher or you’re anti-schooling. And it’s like, that’s not the issue, right? Because I am very pro-teacher and I know that teachers are some of the hardest working people. And I know that they’re also some of the most.

Brittney Carey (17:14)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Elianny Edwards (17:35)
well-intentioned people, but I also know that when you don’t acknowledge these issues, when you’re not trained to have a critical perspective on kind of the dynamics of your school and how they play out in education and how they play out in your classroom, you then become an agent of the institutional racism, even unbeknownst to you sometimes. And so you get that kind of end of folks and then you get the other end of folks which is like, oh, we’re so excited.

Brittney Carey (17:43)
Hmm

Hmm.

Yeah.

Elianny Edwards (18:06)
to do this work and we’re so well-meaning, but they don’t understand the depth of the problem yet. So they don’t actually have the tools to be able to do the work that it requires to address these issues. And they also, and even if they want to and they’re ready, there’s so many barriers to being able to do. I mean, look at our political climate right now. Like these CRT ban, C.I. rollback.

Brittney Carey (18:07)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah.

Elianny Edwards (18:33)
Like all these things where people feel like, they’re actively being like silenced.

Brittney Carey (18:39)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, we have so many beautiful and amazing voices out there that are advocating for change and really illuminating these issues and how we can move forward through these issues. And when we see those voices being silenced, there was that DEI office with the White House that they just closed down. That.

That was a major blow to progress, to seeing it, and how that impacts everyone, right? Because all of our liberation is tied up together, right? And so when we’re silencing voices and when we’re pushing forward policies that are actively harming communities, right? No one wins in that. We all get hurt in that at the end of the day. And so…

Elianny Edwards (18:59)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Thank you.

Brittney Carey (19:28)
In what ways have you seen, you know, either communities or schools or, you know, institutions, you know, doing this kind of work well? Like who’s doing this work and who’s doing it well, if they’re doing it at all?

Elianny Edwards (19:42)
You know, I think that’s always a really hard question. Folks ask me for like models and I’m like, I personally don’t know of anyone who’s like been able to stand the test of time. And I think that is really the marker of someone doing this work well. That’s not to say that folks aren’t. I know you had Dr. Tanette Powell on your show and she’s amazing and she has personal experiences with some principals who are doing amazing work.

Brittney Carey (19:44)
Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

That’s hard.

Mm.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Elianny Edwards (20:11)
And I think on a ground level, there are folks who are doing really amazing work. But when you kind of take a step back and look at on a research level, like who is showing us, okay, these are the frameworks that everyone needs to have and that everyone is doing. I think there are a lot of people who are doing amazing work in research. And it’s a matter of bringing these voices together and having it kind of construct one narrative that informs our policies.

Brittney Carey (20:15)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Mmm.

Mm.

Hmm.

Elianny Edwards (20:41)
differently and that informs our measurement differently, right? So we live in a day and age where people really want to see like, how do you know that it works? What is the assessment? What is the measure? And when we don’t have measures that are informed by the experiences of folks in schools who are doing this work and doing it well, that makes it really difficult. And so that is that is a goal of mine as a researcher to kind of bring to life.

Brittney Carey (20:46)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Elianny Edwards (21:11)
the experiences that teachers who are doing well in this arena are experiencing, students who are having great experiences in school. I think those counter narratives are really important, but I think it’s also important to be able to critique the measures themselves and figure out where the gaps are. Like these are the stories they’ll never gonna be able to get, we’re never gonna be able to kind of capture this. But I think a lot of folks are starting to…

Brittney Carey (21:13)
Mm. Yep.

Yes.

Yeah.

Elianny Edwards (21:38)
have a more amplified kind of voice in terms of how we think about safety. And I’ve been seeing it, like I’ve been seeing it kind of in the scholarship. Folks are like, you know, especially after the murder of George Floyd, I think the conversation about how that’s impacting youth, it just became like inescapable.

Brittney Carey (21:40)
Hmm.

is.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Elianny Edwards (22:01)
And so I think we’re making strides towards kind of coming together around this issue. And I think there are individual folks again who are having great experiences on the ground and in practice and great folks who are doing this work and research. But I think we’re just kind of getting to a point where all those, all that work and all those narratives are coming together to try and create some systematized change.

Brittney Carey (22:11)
Mm-hmm.

Yes, yes, yes. And, you know, I think, and obviously, I think that’s the research question, but it’s so intriguing to think about, like, what are the measures and how are we defining success? And as you mentioned, like, it’s surprising, but not surprising to know that we don’t have a solid definition on what school safety actually, like, what is that solid definition? Like, we can all agree on a couple sentences of like, this is what this means. And, you know, that’s going to take time. And that’s going to take time for us to really…

you know, get clear on like, what are we measuring? What are the questions that we’re asking? How are we getting to the bottom of those questions? And, you know, research is fascinating. Ha ha ha.

Elianny Edwards (23:08)
You know, one thing that I feel like when I first started doing this work, I was really like hung up on that. Like what? There’s no definition. Like we need a definition. And like through my time, kind of really diving into this work, I’m starting to feel like, should that even be the goal? Um, because safety is a subjective experience and it is very context and culturally specific. Um, and so if we were to have this one kind of universal definition of what safety is,

Brittney Carey (23:12)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Mm.

Yes.

Elianny Edwards (23:35)
which arguably you could say that we have had, even though it hasn’t been named as such, right? We’ve for a long time been talking about school safety as the absence of physical violence. So even though that isn’t necessarily like a Webster stamped or whatever, that is largely how we’ve been talking about it. And we’ve seen how it’s been a disservice and how it has kind of rendered invisible the experiences of youth who were not necessarily victims of physical violence.

Brittney Carey (23:40)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Yes.

Elianny Edwards (24:06)
So I think, you know, I’m like, I don’t even know that that’s what we should be aiming for a universal definition. I actually think, you know, we need to be aiming for an understanding of safety as something that changes over time. You know, after COVID, now the way we talk about safety is different, right? I think it’s something that changes over time. I think it’s something that is context specific, culturally specific.

Brittney Carey (24:12)
Hmm.

Mmm, yes. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Elianny Edwards (24:33)
And we need to honor that. And when we seek to assess it, we need to honor that and have that be reflected in how we talk about those experiences, as opposed to someone outside of those cultural and contextual norms saying, this is unsafe, right?

Brittney Carey (24:37)
Mm.

Mm, yes, yes. I feel like every time I learn something that I feel like just changes the way my brain will work for from this moment on, I just imagine the little neurons like making a new connection. It’s like, oh, there it is. My brain chemistry changed a little bit. That was that moment. So we all just witnessed my brain just changing. But that is…

Elianny Edwards (24:59)
Right.

I’m going to go.

is real.

Brittney Carey (25:14)
That is so beautiful. Yes, that safety can be a dynamic thing. And you were so right that it shifted, it changed over time, right? Now, within schools, we’re seeing more violence happening in schools, whether that is physical violence, whether that is the threat of violence, right? Whether that is systemic violence. There’s so many different things that are happening within schools that can change the way that we view safety even.

I remember when it clicked kind of to me that our safety feels different was that when I would walk around, you know, in our downtown area, that’s relatively a safe space. But like, I’m, you know, as a black woman, I am constantly having my head on a swivel. What’s going on around me? You know, there’s a man yelling down that street, I’m gonna go this way, you know. And just like my I’m constantly concerned about that when I’m, you know, walking around with my friends. And if I have like a white male friend, he’s just like, it’s fine. Like, we’ll just, he’s fine. He’s not bothering anyone. We’ll just walk past him.

Elianny Edwards (25:53)
Mm-hmm.

Thank you.

Brittney Carey (26:08)
Thank you. I’m not walking past that man. I don’t know what his intentions are. I don’t know what he’s yelling about. I’m good. And then that’s when it started to click on me that, oh, okay, my version of safety is gonna be way different than someone who’s a man or someone who’s a white male who could just walk around and feel like they’re safe at most moments of their day. Whereas for me, pretty much everywhere I’m going, I’m checking my surroundings, I’m watching for who’s around me, what’s going on.

Elianny Edwards (26:11)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Brittney Carey (26:34)
And so that’s just, it’s a different experience that I have and that’s gonna be coded by my background and what I’ve been through and all these different things that kind of lead up to what safety is gonna mean to me. And that’s gonna look different than to what that looks like to any of my other friends. And so that’s such a great point to think about when we’re considering school safety that is it’s gonna change from person to person, especially student to student. And we don’t know, you don’t have data and we don’t know what’s going on in students’ lives kind of outside of school oftentimes. So like.

There’s just so much information that we just don’t know. And so making sure that as we’re trying to create spaces that do feel safe, you know, how are we considering, you know, the students and how are we considering just the multitude of things that could just be going on.

Elianny Edwards (27:19)
Yeah, I think even just on the examples that you gave, it speaks to the fact that, and I talk about this in some of my work, is that safety is intersectional, experiences of safety are intersectional, and they’re ecological, right? So they have to do with what is going on around us and who we are and how we experience the world, right? And when you talk to practitioners and…

Brittney Carey (27:31)
Mm. Mm-hmm. Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Elianny Edwards (27:46)
teachers in school, they’re like, okay, but like, what do I do with that? Like, what does that mean? I break it down into like three buckets, right? So when I think about what it means to keep our students safe, it’s like inviting and empowering, protecting and providing, and preparing and promoting, right? So those are kind of like my three. And if I were to dive into them, like when I think about…

Brittney Carey (27:50)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Hmm. Yep.

Mm.

Yeah.

Elianny Edwards (28:14)
inviting and empowering is how are you creating spaces that make room for youths different ways and their families of being of knowing of participating of speaking in schools, how are you a reflection of Who they are and where they’re from? How are you building their confidence

Brittney Carey (28:16)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Elianny Edwards (28:42)
allowing them to engage and kind of helping them to develop a healthy sense of identity and a healthy sense of communal identity, right? I think that is a huge part of what creating safety is So that you can prepare them For what their life will be beyond and what their life is beyond school. Like how are we giving them tools to be? And then for the second one when I think of protecting and providing

Brittney Carey (28:51)
Mm. Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Mm.

Elianny Edwards (29:12)
How are we buffering the effects of trauma and toxic stress and making sure that school is not a place where that is being exacerbated for them, right? How are we creating an environment where we’re promoting and helping make possible building positive relationships with peers and adults and different community members? And then also like, how is school serving to be a place that meets material need?

Brittney Carey (29:16)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Elianny Edwards (29:38)
We have students who are hungry, students who are experiencing homelessness, students who are in need of very physical, just physiological things. And so how are we, how are schools catering to those needs, as well as serving as a source of healing and inspiration and love and connection. And then the third I think is really important because I think sometimes folks focus so much on trying to create social justice that they forget.

Brittney Carey (29:41)
Yeah.

Yes.

Mm-mm.

Mmm.

Elianny Edwards (30:08)
that you’re never gonna create social justice without teaching kids how to read. That preparation, and like how are you preparing and promoting these students? Like they need to be able to learn how to read, they need to be able to critically think. How are you helping to bring them to a place where they now have skills to be able to do what they want?

Brittney Carey (30:12)
Yes!

Mm.

Mm.

Yes.

Elianny Edwards (30:36)
How are we creating opportunity for them and preparing them to be able to step up to whatever occasion and whatever kind of comes their way? And I think that is a huge part of creating equity in schools. And we tend to kind of focus on one aspect over the other. I feel like as a field, we’re really struggling to figure out what that looks like, doing it all at the same time.

Brittney Carey (30:39)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. I feel like that’s something that we have historically struggled with in education, because it’s… I mean, humans in general aren’t great at multitasking, but there are so many competing things that we’re constantly having to deal with in education, and then you add on, you know, the district wants these certain types of things, and then the district’s like, oh, this is the curriculum we’re losing, and that’s kind of constantly changing and shifting over time as well.

Elianny Edwards (31:05)
Mm-hmm.

Brittney Carey (31:26)
And so there’s just so many competing factors. And so it’s hard to know what to focus on at one time. But if we go down to the very, very basics of theory, Maslow’s hierarchy of need, you can’t reach any other level if you don’t feel safe, right? That physiological safety is our most basic of means.

Elianny Edwards (31:34)
Mm-hmm.

Thank you.

Brittney Carey (31:49)
I cannot learn if I don’t feel safe in my environment. I cannot learn if I am hungry. I cannot learn if there’s just all these other competing factors for my attention. And so at the end of the day, if we take a second to pause and think about, OK, what’s the most important thing that we need to be focusing on for students? And it would be that safety component. There’s so much that goes into that. And like you said, there’s always different buckets and all different components to that. But we can’t just focus on one without the other. We need all of them kind of.

Elianny Edwards (31:49)
Thank you.

Brittney Carey (32:19)
working together in tandem in order for students to really get the full impact of, you know, feeling like, you know, genuine, unauthentic belonging, feeling like, you know, safe, feeling empowered. And like you said, that literacy component, I can’t tell you how many stories I’m hearing from even high school teachers saying that their students, like they, they’re supposed to be asking them to write these praises and they’re supposed to be asking them to, you know, do these papers and like this is part of their district curriculum.

but the kids cannot do it. Like their literacy, their English language and writing, it’s just not there.

Elianny Edwards (32:50)
Mm-hmm.

I mean, you’re even in higher ed, right? You know, you hear all the time like, oh, my students are not being, they can’t get through the reading. So it’s really like a P through 20 issue is literacy.

Brittney Carey (32:56)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yes, yeah. And literacy goes hand in hand with social justice. It is a social justice issue. If you can’t, you know, if you’re a functionally illiterate, it’s going to make your life a lot more difficult. And obviously you’re not gonna be able to be as engaged in, you know, politics. You’re not gonna be able to be engaged in, you know, everyday activities if you’re functionally illiterate. So it’s like, it is a social justice issue at the end of the day. And…

Elianny Edwards (33:12)
And you know, I think…

Brittney Carey (33:33)
you know, people are kind of pointing all the fingers and then we have, you know, the science of reading coming up and there’s just all these different things that are, that are coming up. But I’m like, okay, but at the end of the day, we need to be focusing on making sure these babies know how to read.

Elianny Edwards (33:46)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and you know, I think for me also, it just comes down to like, what is your philosophy about like what learning is? And for me, like learning in itself, learning is resilience. Like it’s not an actor, like learning is resilience. And when you think about what it takes for someone to learn, like it takes like admitting ignorance, right? You have to be, you have to like really sit in the fact that there’s something that you don’t know and the discomfort of not knowing and having someone

Brittney Carey (33:54)
Yes.

Mm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm.

Elianny Edwards (34:16)
bestow upon you skill like you know support and skills and strategies to help you know something so there has to be so much Truc there. There’s so much resilience in learning You have to you have to make mistakes to learn and All the things that are required for you to be able to successfully master a new skill or master a new task

Brittney Carey (34:24)
Mm. Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Elianny Edwards (34:44)
they’re never lost on me, which is why I always think so much about safety because if you feel like you’re gonna get laughed at, if you feel like you’re gonna be belittled, if you feel like whoever’s trying to teach you something is not understanding you or doesn’t care about you, then you’re not willing to engage in the vulnerability that it requires to really learn something. And I’m a whole grown adult with a frontal lobe that works really well, right? And my executive functioning is there. I am able…

Brittney Carey (34:46)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Elianny Edwards (35:13)
to focus on wanting to focus on. And there are times that as an adult, I’m like, okay, cool, but I don’t wanna learn from you. Like, for whatever reason, right? For whatever reason, right? And now we’re asking this of children and young people who don’t have the same like ability to kind of keep their composure against certain odds, right? So yeah, I think safety is just something that we talk about almost as like a…

Brittney Carey (35:18)
Yep.

Yeah.

Yep.

Elianny Edwards (35:43)
like a privilege.

Brittney Carey (35:44)
Mmm.

Elianny Edwards (35:46)
Like the safety, like if it’s not your physical safety, then anything else is like, oh my gosh, this is too much. And I just disagree. I just disagree. And I think we need to really center safety more and broaden our definitions of safety. Because, you know, I think another question that comes up, especially when we’re talking about

Brittney Carey (35:50)
Yeah.

Yep.

The whole heart.

Mm-hmm.

Elianny Edwards (36:12)
low income, urban youth of color, right? And I say urban, I mean, who live in inner cities, right? And the ways that has kind of been racialized as well. It’s a, who are we keeping them safe from?

Brittney Carey (36:15)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Mmm.

Elianny Edwards (36:28)
Like what is the harm that we’re talking about? And that is also something that is not often spoken about because the implicit communication is, oh, we’re keeping them safe from themselves.

Brittney Carey (36:31)
Yeah.

Good night.

I just.

Elianny Edwards (36:46)
And it is just, there’s a lot of disconnect between what the policies are promoting and what the actual threats to safety are.

Brittney Carey (36:52)
Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Elianny Edwards (37:00)
and how intervention happens, right? We don’t see mass school shootings in predominantly black and brown inner city schools. Like we don’t.

Brittney Carey (37:15)
No, not really.

Elianny Edwards (37:19)
Right, but we see a lot of school policing and disproportionate suspensions and the impacts of the school to prison nexus in those schools. I just did a study that looked at seven years worth of school district incident reports. And it was showing like, okay, across the school district, seven years is one of the largest, most diverse school districts in the country. What are some of the-

Brittney Carey (37:19)
No.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Elianny Edwards (37:47)
primary problems happening at this school. And between elementary and high school, the top three issues are declining youth health, whether that be suicidal behavior and ideation, which is the top issue in middle and high school, or whether it’s injury, and not injury that was brought about by some type of physical violence, but like injuries that happen in school that would require medical attention.

Brittney Carey (37:50)
Hmm.

Mmm, yep.

Yeah.

Elianny Edwards (38:17)
But when we look at the funding data, we’re seeing that over a 10-year period, the school police budget was over $740 million. And these are schools that have budget cuts for counselors, budget cuts for school nurses, budget cuts for mental health support. So the number one issue is declining youth health and physical health. But the number one most funded intervention

Brittney Carey (38:33)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Elianny Edwards (38:47)
school policing. These folks are not even, they literally cannot address the number one threat. They’re not qualified to.

Brittney Carey (38:49)
Yeah.

Yeah. And that’s just the most heartbreaking thing, you know, because I’ve seen this data too, and it’s, yeah, we’re putting all this money into, you know, school resource officers, we’re putting all this money into the metal detectors going into these schools to, like you said, try to keep them safe from themselves when the actual threat is just within the actual fiber of the school itself, right? And, you know, it’s heartbreaking to know

Elianny Edwards (39:18)
Mm-hmm.

Brittney Carey (39:23)
you know, mental health in these young people and, you know, suicidal thoughts and ideation and just it’s heartbreaking to see because they’re suffering at the hands of this and looking at their suffering, we’re like, you know what you need? You need more order. You need more authoritarian, you know, just cops on your side, like just watching you at every moment. And it’s like, but that doesn’t address the root issue here. There’s a lot going on inside of this school that we’re not actually exactly what you’re saying, that we’re not actually

Elianny Edwards (39:39)
Thank you.

Brittney Carey (39:53)
solving and we’re not actually, you know, addressing the issues in the room. If anything, we’re actually

perpetuating more harm and we’re actually harming them more and we’re actually pushing them deeper into these depressive cycles and we’re pushing them deeper into the school to prison pipeline and deeper into juvenile justice and criminal justice. And then we use that as this confirmation bias like, see, we told you, we told you they were more violent, we told you they were more likely to commit crime, like we told you, like we’re just trying to protect them from these things. And it’s like…

Yeah, but if that was actually the case, then we would see crime decreasing, wouldn’t we? Like, but we don’t, we actually don’t see, we don’t see that punitive practices, they actually don’t stop crime, they actually don’t stop disruptions in the classroom. If anything, it causes more disruptions in the classroom. We actually don’t see that exclusionary discipline practices, you know, make students graduate college or graduate high school. We don’t see those impacts that…

Elianny Edwards (40:30)
Yeah.

Brittney Carey (40:54)
we’re totally supposed to be seeing. And it’s really disheartening. And, you know, but that does lead me to my last question for you, which is how do you reimagine education?

Elianny Edwards (41:07)
That’s a good question.

I think that we need to get back to really investing in public education in a real way. And I think when I think about what would make the most impact, I think we need to think about education as really like connected to some of the other systems where we’re seeing similar disparities. I think when I think about when schools were like most successful, it’s when

Brittney Carey (41:21)
Mm.

Hmm.

Elianny Edwards (41:43)
youth were able to go to their local community schools and they had teachers who were their neighbors and teachers who lived down the street from them and whose children they played with at the YMCA and things like that. So I don’t see the issues that we have in education being separate from the issues that we’re having with housing, issues that we’re having related to issues of poverty. And so when I reimagine education, I reimagine like just rebuilding of communities, honestly, and affordable living for people.

Brittney Carey (41:47)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Elianny Edwards (42:13)
and being able to serve, like schools being able to serve as a community resource and not as just like a place that is open between eight and 3 p.m. So when I reimagine education, I imagine education as being the center of communities. I

Brittney Carey (42:23)
Yeah.

Mm.

Elianny Edwards (42:34)
feel like that is revolutionary. And I think there are a lot of folks.

Brittney Carey (42:39)
It is.

Elianny Edwards (42:42)
individual school leaders who, and you can look some of these folks up, I don’t know them off the top of my head, but who started laundry mats in the basements of their schools for families, right? Who have started their own pantries, who have partnered with local community organizations to create safe passageways for students to be able to kind of navigate their communities and not have to face.

Brittney Carey (42:54)
Mmm.

Elianny Edwards (43:10)
some of the real violence that’s happening outside of school, right? And so when I reimagine education, I think about it as a transformation of community, the transformation of community. And I see schools as being at the very center of that.

Brittney Carey (43:14)
Yeah.

Mm.

I adore everything about that. You know, I’ve asked this question to numerous guests and I always love it because every answer is different. And I love the idea of schools being that kind of just.

Elianny Edwards (43:39)
Mm-hmm.

Brittney Carey (43:43)
the nexus of community. It’s just like where we all kind of come together and it’s about building that community, that school community and building, you know, making sure that everyone feels like they have a both that they belong there, that they authentically belong. I always say in my trainings that it’s like, it’s not about like, oh yeah, you can come here. I guess you can join us. It’s no, like you actually belong here. This is a part of your space too. Like let’s make this your space. Let’s make this all of our space. Yeah.

Elianny Edwards (44:07)
And yeah, I was gonna say even more than just belong, right? So when you say, oh, I belong here, like the meta communication is that, oh, it’s someone else’s, but I can be here. Like, I want, there needs to be a sense of ownership. Like, I don’t belong here, this is mine, right? Like, I own this, like, I helped create this. This is mine as well. There’s ownership in it. It’s not just like, I belong in someone else’s space. They’re making room for me. It’s like, no, this is ours.

Brittney Carey (44:18)
Mm-hmm.

Yes. Yes! Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that’s a beautiful thing. And that’s what happens when we really connect with that idea of community and how we as human beings, we need other people to live and thrive and succeed, right? We can’t really do that very well in a vacuum. And so thinking about schools as communities, as places where people can be and exist and get resources and get help and lean on each other and support each other, thinking of it in that way, that’s the space that I wanna be in, right?

Elianny Edwards (44:48)
Mm-hmm.

Right, right.

Brittney Carey (45:07)
I want to be there. We want to make schools places where people want to be, you know. Yes, they legally have to be there, but like you don’t have to make it miserable. You know, like we can make it a fun place to exist. Yeah. Welcome families in. Like have them be actually like…

Elianny Edwards (45:16)
Yeah, and places that welcome family. Absolutely.

Brittney Carey (45:24)
a part of the community and a part of the school, right? But we want them to be there. Most teachers I talk to, they want families to be involved in our program. We want families to feel like they are a part of our programs and be present in our systems. So finding ways that we can do that in authentic and holistic ways. I love that. I love the idea of just school as a community. That makes my heart happy.

Thank you so much for joining me. Where can my audience find you?

Elianny Edwards (45:58)
Yeah, absolutely. So I am on social media at Eliani Edwards. You can find me on LinkedIn at Eliani Edwards or my website www.

Brittney Carey (46:11)
Thank you so much for joining me. Like I said, I feel like my brain chemistry has just changed throughout this conversation. So thank you. Yes, yes.

Elianny Edwards (46:19)
Thank you for having me. This is all.

Brittney Carey (46:24)
Thank you so much for tuning into Conscious Pathways. Don’t forget to like, share, and follow Conscious Pathways wherever you get your podcasts. And please leave a rating or review. It really does help the podcast to grow and find more listeners just like you. If you’re looking for more ways to connect with me, you can follow Conscious Pathways at conscious .pathways on Instagram. I also have a TikTok that I’m trying to post more on.

If you want to see more about what I talk about in depth, you can look at my LinkedIn at just Brittany Carey. And also if you just want to keep in touch with the Conscious Pathways newsletter, if you want to have a little bit more interaction with me or you want to ask questions specifically that I can ask to my guests on the podcast, you can join our Patreon community. I’ll be releasing a monthly newsletter with resources and a little deeper dive on some of the topics that we’ve talked about on the podcast for that month.

You’ll be able to ask questions, so either ask the expert so I can ask the question to a guest or I can answer it live on the podcast. And then you could also just keep up to what I’m doing in terms of writing my book and just putting more resources and things out there. So it’s a great way to just connect with other community, other like -minded individuals. So you can find the links to all of that in our description box. And until then, don’t forget to navigate your conscious journey with courage and kindness. And I’ll see you there for more transformative conversations.

Bye!