Voices of Neurodiversity: Challenging Racism in Language Education with Dr. JPB Gerald

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In this episode of Conscious Pathways, Dr. Justin Gerald unpacks the critical intersection of race, language, and neurodiversity in education. As an educator, theorist, and author, Dr. Gerald shares insights from his latest book, which explores the unique challenges faced by neurodivergent students of color and the lack of representation and research in this area. Drawing from his personal experiences as a teacher and researcher, he emphasizes the importance of listening to students’ voices and valuing their experiences.

Throughout the conversation, Dr. Gerald discusses the pervasive impact of systemic racism in language education and the urgent need for educators to challenge traditional notions of intelligence and language proficiency. He advocates for a reimagined educational system that prioritizes equity, inclusivity, and a deeper understanding of each student’s personhood. This episode is a must-listen for educators, advocates, and anyone interested in supporting neurodiverse students and dismantling oppressive structures in education. Tune in to learn practical strategies for fostering a more just and compassionate learning environment.

Takeaways

• Dr. Gerald’s book aims to fill this gap and provide strategies for teachers to better support neurodiverse students.
• There is a lack of representation and research on neurodiversity in education, particularly in the intersection of race, language, and abilities.
• Listening to students and their experiences is crucial in understanding their needs and providing effective support.
• Qualitative research is important in capturing the personhood of individuals and their stories in education. Teachers need to respect and value students’ voices and experiences.
• Biases and assumptions about intelligence based on language proficiency need to be challenged and dismantled.
• Education should prioritize equity, inclusivity, and the recognition of students’ individual stories and strengths.
• Teacher preparation programs should include courses that address systemic racism and biases.
• Teachers should continuously engage in professional development to grow and improve their understanding of equity and inclusivity.

Connect with Dr. Gerald:

Website: https://jpbgerald.com/

Transcript

Justin (00:00)
this story hasn’t been told. It hasn’t been told, if it’s been told at all, it’s been told about us, but not by us.

And it certainly hasn’t been told for us.

Brittney Carey (00:19)
Hi and welcome back to Conscious Pathways, the podcast where we explore the intersection of education and social justice through transformative conversations. As always, I am your host, Brittney I am always excited to have you here. Welcome to season two of the podcast. I am so stoked to be here, so stoked to have you. Excited to be back into interviewing and podcasting and doing all of this great stuff. So thank you for listening and thank you for being here.

If you are curious to support the podcast in any way, can join my Patreon that is linked in the show notes below. You can get early access to these podcast episodes, early access to the newsletter, behind the scenes, monthly live streams. You can also have access to Ask the Expert. You can ask questions that I can ask directly on air for the podcast to our guests. So if you want to join, it’s just $5 a month.

I’ll leave that in the show notes below. It really does help support the podcast and support the growth of the podcast I am trying to be able to afford a podcast editor and so your support through there will help me to do that and to free up more of my time to be able to focus on more of the podcast and bringing on more guests and doing more things that’ll free up some of my hands to do those things so if you’d like to support I would love that but as always

just listening to this podcast is so much support and I want to thank you for being here.

and now I want to introduce my first guest of season two, Dr. Justin Gerald, or JP B Gerald. He is an adult educator, theorist, and a 2022 graduate of the Education Doctorate Program in Instructional Leadership from Cooney Hunter College in New York. Through his writing, teaching, podcast, and his public scholarship overall,

He seeks justice for the racially, linguistically, and neurologically minoritized.

Dr. Gerald just published his most recent book, Embracing the Expectations, Meeting the Needs of Neurodivergent Students of Color.

This book is a part of a social justice series. So I’ll link that series also in the show notes if you want to check it out. There are some amazing books within that series. So do check it out and do check out Dr. Gerald’s book.

Brittney (02:33)
Hi and welcome to Conscious Pathways. Today I am joined by Dr. Justin Gerald. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Justin (02:41)
Thanks, Brittney. I’m glad to be here.

Brittney (02:43)
so excited to have you. Today’s a really exciting day. Today is the launch of your book, which I’m so excited. I can’t wait to get a copy of it.

Justin (02:51)
Yeah, yeah, it just happens to be we were actually supposed to record this a week a week ago, and I had some tech issues. So now we’re here now. And it just happens to actually be book release today. I did not choose this because of that. But it kind of worked out well, you know. But I’m in that space, as I was telling you before the recording of being like, it’s out in the world, but nobody’s read it because the physical copies are shipping today, so they don’t have them.

Justin (03:16)
And the e -copies are downloading to people’s devices, but who has read an entire book by it’s 11 in the morning here? So I’m only going to start really getting responses trickle in over time. And then next week I’ll get more because there’s people have physical books. So I’m just sort of pins and needles here, you know?

Brittney (03:16)
Exactly. And I know we were talking a little bit about this last week before, you know, we had some tech issues, but, you know, it’s a topic that I haven’t seen a lot of information on, on like neurodiversity and all these different things about how we’re interacting in the classroom. And I haven’t really seen that. I was doing a little mini research a couple of weeks ago to try to see if I could just find some data or some information. And so I know we both were observing that there’s not a whole lot of books about this or data about this. So I’m really excited to see.

that your book’s out there now. So I can’t wait to get a copy and read it. It’s something I’ve been really interested in and wanting to learn more. So you want to tell me a little bit about how you kind of first became interested in exploring kind of education and being within education?

Justin (04:20)
Well, I mean, the simple reality is I was a teacher, right? So I started teaching English in South Korea when I was like 21, which means I was like three years older than the students, I was, sorry, teaching high school. And I didn’t know what I was doing. Like a lot of first time teachers, but I knew even less of what I was doing because I didn’t even go into school for teaching.

And I got pretty good at the connecting with the students part, but I didn’t know anything about pedagogy, like the actual science of it, right? So I went back and got my master’s, came back to New York, and I taught in the classroom mostly to adults after that for about nine years. I moved into sort of a curriculum development space where I still am, but when I was getting my doctorate in education, because that’s what the doctor’s for, I knew that I wanted to write books.

Brittney (04:53)
Mm -hmm.

Justin (05:15)
I said it in my first semester of my program that my dream was to write books. I wrote one academic book that came out a couple of years ago and that’s fine. I was happy with that. I think it was good, but I wanted to reach a bigger audience. And so this time I approached a writer I knew who knows about like equity and social justice and is an editor of a series and pitched him on some topics and my, and I guess we’ll get there.

recent diagnosis, recent at the time diagnosis of ADHD had led me to try and find things that were telling this story from the perspective, excuse me, a perspective of people of color with neurodivergence and there just wasn’t anything. I found a couple of academic articles, that, you know, nobody reads academic articles. And I say this as someone who’s written academic articles. And just as a book that’s supposed to be for K -12 teachers, obviously others can read it.

Brittney (06:03)
Mm -hmm.

Justin (06:10)
but it’s for a broader audience, right? You don’t have to be Dr. This or Dr. That to read and enjoy it. In fact, I wonder if some people with Dr. This and Dr. That will look up their nose at it. But the point being, I really wanted to gain a larger foothold in this sort of education writing space because as you mentioned, this story hasn’t been told. It hasn’t been told, if it’s been told at all, it’s been told about us, but not by us.

Justin (06:38)
And it certainly hasn’t been told for us.

Brittney (06:42)
Yes.

Yes, yes, yes, all of that. And that was one of the big major reasons I wanted to reach out to you and have you share this really, really big topic with me and the audience and everything is that exactly what we just mentioned. There’s some information out there and a lot of those academic articles, they tend to be locked behind a paywall or it’s not accessible for the general audience in terms of readability. Most people who have access

that are people who have PhDs or education doctorates or all these different things who, you know, either have associations with, you know, universities that, you know, then they have access to this kind of information for free to them. But most people aren’t sitting, you know, around the dining table just casually reading these kind of heavy dense research articles. I mean, I enjoy that, but most people don’t.

And so it’s really great to have a book like this where it’s accessible for K -12 teachers to kind of be able to pick up and read together and really talk about that and deepen their practices of teaching. I know we talked about kind of like the inspiration behind the book, but as you were writing it, what was your ultimate goal at the end of it? What were you hoping people would take away from it?

Justin (08:01)
You know, I’ve had a few different cycles of thought on this, right? This is all came together pretty fast. I pitched this almost exactly a year ago to the editor that I know. And then he, well, he’s a writer and a speaker and he said, I love it. And he pitched it to the editor, right? And then she loved it. And then she sent it to

Brittney (08:14)
That is fast.

Justin (08:30)
I guess they have sort of a coterie of teachers that they send ideas to to see if it would be interesting. And then all this came together and I signed a contract less than a year ago, right? I think it was late September, right? I don’t remember the exact date, but the point is at that point it was like, all right, I just got to do this. And I set up all the interviews for November. I did them. And then I had to force myself to wait because I’m have another book that’s.

Brittney (08:40)
Wow.

Justin (08:57)
I haven’t written yet, then I’m kind of dreading because it’s another academic book, but I have to write it. But anyway, I did the interviews for that book, too. I just did all the interviews at same time. And then I forced myself not to start writing for about a month until I had all of my ducks in a row. And when I really want to write and I force myself not to, then it comes out really fast. So once I started writing, which was, guess, around Christmas, I wrote the whole thing in like three weeks. So frankly, I wasn’t thinking about anything when I wrote it. I was just writing it. But when I…

Brittney (09:17)
Mm.

Wow.

Justin (09:23)
finished it and I started to read through it. That’s when I started to really have thoughts and before I wrote the thing, I just like, I just want to get these stories out there. Then when I did the interviews, because I didn’t know what they were going to say, I felt a camaraderie with them because we’d all had similar experiences, right? And then I felt very hopeful. Then I went back and read it again when I was editing it myself before I sent it to the editor. And I felt sad for the other people in the book.

Brittney (09:36)
Mm.

Justin (09:50)
because they’ve been through all of those things. Then I went through it again and I felt triumphant for the fact that they were able to sit here and be telling me about it. And then I felt sad for myself, all these different cycles of emotion basically. And now I’m just sort of feeling anticipation and I’m feeling hopeful, but I guess I need to hear the impact first to really feel like I’ve done my job. I think that it will happen, but you know.

Justin (10:18)
takes a while for these things to occur. So it’s just a lot of different swirling feelings going on.

Brittney (10:22)
Yeah.

Understandable. Yeah, that’s definitely understandable. It’s, you know, a big topic and it’s, you know, like you said, it’s not a lot of people can write a full book in a year, but that’s like from start to finish. That’s an amazing feat to have done. But also, that’s still a lot of work. A year’s worth of work is a lot and all those interviews and all of that. you know, for it to be coming out today and I think the swirl of emotions makes a whole lot of sense. You know, as an aspiring writer myself, I’m like, wow, I can’t wait to get there.

But I can definitely see how the journey can be a lot, you know, and like that difference between, did you find there’s a big difference between writing, you know, these academic heavy articles and books to kind of writing this one that’s geared towards a different type of audience?

Justin (11:12)
Yeah, this is a lot easier. You know, especially because that was my first book, right? Just my first book of any kind, there was that. So I’ll see when I get to the next one when I’ve already written books that then I don’t because with the first book, right? Like I had no idea if it would be well received or not. You never know. But I mean, I truly had no idea because I never written a book before. So there was a lot more tension. then also.

Mm

Justin (11:39)
There’s just life where I was in my life when I wrote my first book was a worse place. So it was just a lot more stressful. And I was also using the book as kind of a distraction. And I was in a better place when I wrote this book, partially because of the diagnosis and treatment and stuff. And I can tell in the writings that the first book was really angry, even though it’s not like about me or anything. It’s more about the industry, the language teaching industry that I was a part of. But this book,

Justin (12:08)
I think there’s anger in it because we were all let down. But it’s really ultimately a warm hearted book. I’m actually surprised as to how warm hearted it came out. Because I can be flinty and I certainly, if you read the book, have had experiences that make me a little bit more, you know, on edge. But the writing is not that way.

Justin (12:37)
And I’m actually really happy and I’m excited for people to have a chance to read it because it’s like a joyful book ultimately. It’s a triumphant book.

Brittney (12:39)
Hmm.

I love that. I love that description of it. think, you know, especially when we’re writing about things that include race and racism and the systemic issues and the impact of all of that, it is angering and it is enraging and, you know, it’s frustrating because as you said, we have been let down by our education system and by so many things for so long and so I feel like her anger is definitely justified. But I love that there is triumph in it and that there is kind of you can read it and you can feel

anger but also come away with it with some really tangible, you know, ideas and goals and I think that’s really beautiful and amazing. I know in this book and your other work as well you’ve written and explored and researched about racism, language, and education and different abilities so you know what got you interested in these specific topics within education?

Justin (13:38)
I keep giving you boring answers as far as how these things started, but I was a language teacher, right? So that’s why I got interested. However, you know, why was I interested in the intersection of race on it? Not just being black, but like also as I started to do research, the sort of body of work on race and language is not new, but it’s not a huge part of it. However, in the 2010s has become a much bigger thing and I was excited to be part of that.

community. I, you know, I think I wrote some interesting things, but I wasn’t the first person to talk about race and language. And I was sort of becoming a group of people and it was a network and that was interesting. And I think that it was sort of, I wrote one article that was talking about sort of, I forget what it’s even called, but something like the elephant in the room or whatever it is, about how there’s a lot of equity issues in language education, but because so many of the language educators are white, they understand that there’s inequity.

Brittney (14:28)
Mm

Justin (14:37)
but they don’t want to talk about the racism part because it makes them look bad. And so then they are trying to attack equity issues that are tied to racism, but they won’t deal with the racism. And I’m just like, you’re wasting your time. You’re not going to solve this problem. So then I also kind of, my first book is kind of a sort of gauntlet in a way where like, look, I said what I said about the industry and frankly, I don’t think the industry is going to improve unless it does. And I had a list of things.

Brittney (14:48)
Yeah.

Justin (15:03)
and you know, it’s not, the industry has not listened. and that’s too bad. I made my points, but as far as the abilities thing, right? Not only, okay, I got my own diagnosis, but like then once I got diagnosed and I wrote about this in the book, I said, okay, so, now what? Right? Like how do I deal with this? Right? For me, a lot of how I dealt with it was writing the book, but also as you said,

Mm.

Justin (15:30)
I wanted to go read what I should do. And so much of what I should do was written in a supposedly race neutral way, but we all know what race neutral really means. It means white. And so like, it’s the assumption that the reader, you know, here’s advice if you have ADHD to do X, Y, and Z, but so many, so much of the advice is stuff that I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing in public.

Justin (15:58)
or that would be a much bigger hurdle for me to try and do. So I said, well, where’s the story for me? And then I thought, but I’m 35. I was at the time. I’m not now. What about the kids who were like me who are in school? They don’t have a diagnosis and, you know, they are being told they’re acting up.

Justin (16:24)
Right. And I’m not even talking about people with truly severe, severe issues, right. Behavior stuff, which is its own issue of inequity. But there are books about that, unfortunately. I’m talking about kids who are just like a little bit different in one way or another. And they get targeted for it. Right. How can a teacher or a community deal with these kids who

Brittney (16:35)
Mm -hmm.

Hmm.

Justin (16:53)
don’t necessarily have a label because like I said, so many of us are not diagnosed. So like most people diagnosed they have an IEP. IEPs are problematic too, but they are a list of things to do, right? Whereas there is no guidance for kids without these diagnoses. You’re not gonna have an IEP or something like that unless there’s some thing attached to it to get you the IEP. It doesn’t just happen. So I say all of that to say that these are really for the kids who are like me who

Justin (17:22)
did not have the diagnoses and do not have the diagnoses, which is unfortunately, and I’m not saying all diagnosis is good and that’s a whole other conversation, but it’s for the people where assume you have a kid like this in your class because statistically you do, unless you teach in rural Vermont and there’s just no people of color. But otherwise, you probably do. And these.

Brittney (17:45)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. Most likely,

Justin (17:50)
strategies are, and they’re not didactic, they’re just what, they’re sort of what I and the people I was speaking to came up with. And will they automatically work for every kid? No, because every kid is different. But when you’re being taught to teach in, be it special education or otherwise, you are being taught from research anyway, and it’s research that’s not based on us. So you might as well try it.

Brittney (18:00)

Yeah, yeah, you might as well try it. mean, if what we’re doing isn’t working, it’s worth to try something different and to, especially for talking to people in the field and talking to people who have experienced or have worked with people who have experienced this. It’s so important that, you know, I feel like in education sometimes we get kind of stuck in our ways and we’re like, well, this is how we’ve always done it. And this is how, you know, this is how it works for some kids. And it’s like, okay, but it’s not working for all students and not all

kids are experiencing this. you know, I think looking at how our best practices shift and looking at how education shifts over time, I think that can really help us as educators to then, you know, be better in the classroom and to be better with those students and to provide better services. You know, even listening to the students themselves because oftentimes you ask them, they will tell you. They’ll tell you what their needs are in one way or another. They will tell you. And so it’s just how are we listening to them and how are we providing them space.

to kind of advocate for themselves and are we actually listening to them because they’re not going to advocate for themselves if we’re not listening at the same time.

Justin (19:27)
If I could follow up on that, it’s like a catch -22, what I’m about to say, because you go to conferences and people are presenting quote -unquote research -based practices, right? Or evidence -based is probably what I should say. And like, if you don’t have evidence, some people will say, well, it’s not evidence -based, so whatever. But because all the previous research was done

Justin (19:56)
Again, they usually say in a race neutral way, which just means that they didn’t think about the race of the students they’re doing it on. It means there is no evidence. There just isn’t any. So there will be people who read this book and say, well, this is not, you know, there’s no numbers. There’s a few numbers, but there’s mostly stories, right? And they’ll say, well, this is just the stories from these people, right? And it’s like, yeah, okay.

Justin (20:24)
So you go find everybody else and do it then. Please, go do the other research. I did this. I wanted to start the conversation. I wanted people to think about it. I wanted us to be heard. And even though there’s only like 10 of us in the book, I thought it would be better to try and have in -depth conversations with a small number of people than to try to talk to a thousand people and not be able to feature most of what they say and so forth. I mean, I’m a qualitative researcher by training and I…

Justin (20:54)
would rather have a few people in long interviews. think that you get these people’s arcs, instead of just a snapshot. You learn about their lives. Not everything about their lives.

Brittney (20:55)

Yes, yes, I think that’s…

just good snapshots of their lives. I think you bring up such a powerful point within research is that, especially for schools and funding and universities and funding, they want to make sure that what they’re funding is working. And so they’re constantly looking for data. They’re constantly looking for that evidence we’re talking about. And that’s something that I feel like we’re constantly chasing and looking at. But then there are those other elements,

Justin (21:14)
Right.

Brittney (21:41)
person elements, right? So when we’re in schools, we’re looking at, how are their test scores? How is their attendance? Like that’s going to tell us whether things are working. Whereas we’re not looking at the people aspect of it and like the personhood of these individuals and these students especially. So, you know, if our attendance rates are low, you know, we’re looking at all the wrong things. It’s like, well, why is it low? You know, are we actually looking at how are we building a community within this school where people feel safe to be in? How are we looking at our, you know, our community?

outside of the school, know, are people feeling safe there? We’re not looking at the right things, not looking at the person aspect of it and like diving into what are their experiences and actually listening. And that’s when you start getting this information and you start learning this information when we actually look at the people part of it and not just the number part of it. You know, we’re always looking at that quantitative data, which is still important. It’s good to know. But what about the qualitative data? What about the people? What about all these other stories that we’re learning?

It’s, yeah, that’s something I think about all the time. I’m like, well, but what about the people? What are their stories? Who are they? Who are we talking about? They’re not just numbers.

Justin (22:50)
When I started doing research, period, right? Like when I started my doctoral program long before anything about disability, and I didn’t even know I wanted to do anything related to race. just sort of, what I’m about to tell you is why I started doing that is because, so in your first semester and your first few semesters, you’re supposed to like propose a study, but you don’t end up doing it. You’re just learning how to write down what you would be studying, right? And you look up evidence, you look up research, and you cite. You’re just learning, you’re being trained, right?

Brittney (22:54)
Mm

Justin (23:19)
if you would in a degree. And in my very first semester, because you have to write an essay to get in, just like any, you know, just like college, right? And the essay is not just like why you’re great, but like, what do you want to research? Because then they have to know if they have professors who can help you, right? You’re allowed to change it. It’s just what’s in your head at the time, and mine definitely changed. But my original idea was, because I’d spent however many years working in like adult learning programs,

Justin (23:48)
they were all free. I mean, the students didn’t have to pay, I got paid. Not a lot though. the attendance wasn’t great, right? Because they were free, so if you don’t go, what’s gonna happen? What are they gonna do to you? Right? You’re not losing any money and it’s not tied to like a degree. again, even degrees, people drop out of community college, right? So the point I’m making is,

Brittney (23:54)
No, never is.

Mm.

Yeah.

Mm

Mm -hmm.

Justin (24:15)
I said, well, maybe I can find a trigger that will, you know, provably increase attendance in these free programs. Maybe I can figure this out. And almost cynically, I said to myself, well, maybe I’ll be the attendance man. I’ll fix all these problems. I’m gonna do it, right? And so I started looking at the research and there’s very little research on

Brittney (24:28)
Mm.

Mm -hmm.

Justin (24:43)
students and why they leave programs because they’re gone, right? They’re not going to answer your questions if they are not there, which is understandable. I’m not blaming anyone for this lack of information because if a student drops out of a program and it’s not like a child where you can find out what happened, right? Because the child has to go to school so you can find out why they dropped out. But an adult who’s like, I’m not going to go to that class anymore. And what are you going to email them?

Justin (25:11)
they’re gonna respond to your request for an interview, right? But this one study I found, which is now from 2008, which means it’s now very old because the data’s from years earlier, actually put together a team and asked all of the people who had dropped out of the program to respond. And enough of them responded that they could get data. Not numbers, but stories. And what they said was the teachers,

Justin (25:40)
and the administrators had assumed they left for logistical reasons, couldn’t get childcare, transportation, whatever. Frankly, I would always assume that when students would leave my class too, these things happen, right? But then you realize the people with logistical issues tend to communicate, right? The people who like, I’m sorry, I have to take care of my mother, they will just tell you, right? So not all of them.

Brittney (25:52)
Yeah.

That’s true.

That’s true. Yeah, that’s a point.

Justin (26:07)
But that’s what I found out in these stories. And I thought about that in my own classes. I’m like, you’re right, the ones who were, know, everything was fine, but then they had a, just something came up. They would tell me, not all of them, but a lot of them. I’m building up to what it turned out the problem was, is that the teachers didn’t respect these students. And the students, and again, these are adults, were saying they’re treating me like a child. And I tell them, I already know that.

Justin (26:36)
you know, I already know these things, I need help with these things, and they’re being ignored. And I said, and I started to think about that. And I started having these discussions with people, because I remember most of the people I knew as teachers were language teachers, started having these discussions with them, and they would get weird and defensive. And then I started doing research on race and language, because I was like, okay, the story is that these white teachers are defensive about this. That’s the research, right?

Justin (27:05)
not the attendance, which basically seems to come down to not just racism, but just disrespect, right? The sort of, what they said, the soft bigotry of low expectations kind of thing, right? But like, you do that to a kid, they’re just gonna be bored, right? You do that to an adult, they’re just not gonna come.

Justin (27:27)
You know, so, right. And then, so I did all of that and then I, and then all of that, cause that was, I guess six years ago now when I was doing that, eventually led me here where the stories I tell in the book, some about my life and some that are featured by my, people I interviewed, a lot of them are just assuming that they know better than these kids do about themselves. Right? And frankly,

Brittney (27:28)
Makes sense to me? Yeah?

Justin (27:54)
A child may not have perfect communication and insight into themselves. That is true, but they know themselves. They just, may not be able to explain it. Right? And, you know, as a teacher, you have to help them figure out how to explain it, but they do know how they feel. So to assume that you knew better than them is really just not a great way.

Brittney (28:02)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Snaps for that, snaps for that.

Justin (28:21)
to build any relationships and to help people learn.

Brittney (28:24)
And that is…

fascinating like that that perfectly encapsulates really what we were just talking about that we can collect the numbers all day long of okay these students aren’t showing up or these students aren’t showing up you know we just started collecting data for online classes and we were noticing that you know of the enrollment you know African -American students tended to drop out of the online classes a lot more than other students and so when you just look at those numbers we’re like huh I wonder why that’s happening you know

And we could make those same assumptions that you were talking about. maybe it’s child care. Maybe it’s this. Maybe it’s that. But without those actual stories to inform why these things are happening, all we can really do is just make assumptions based on what we’re seeing. And so it’s just, yeah, what are the stories? What are the things that we’re not seeing? And that kind of leads me into that another question that I originally had for you, which you mostly already answered this, but how does language education kind of contribute to systemic race?

and on top of that what could teachers be doing in terms of dismantling this or challenging this?

Justin (29:31)
You know, in Frankenstein, right, you’re like, where is he going with this? wait, the way they describe the monster, they say he’s intelligent. By this they mean he can use language, right? So the way we conflate language with intelligence,

Brittney (29:49)
Mm.

Justin (29:57)
Obviously you can sort of put the lines together to see how we would also conflate it with race or lack of being a person of color and so forth. People don’t need to be told the way we’ve thought of race and intelligence and still do. But then if you realize we’ve always associated language with intelligence, then the little circle is clear. So if you are thinking of people who are

Brittney (30:07)
Mm.

Mmm.

Justin (30:25)
less proficient in a given language and also what does that word even mean? But for lack of a better word, you gotta say something. As being less intelligent and as a teacher you say, well, I would never think that, but like it’s still, know, there’s been so much research and so much demeaning thought to people who don’t use the dominant language, languages that have been imposed upon them or their ancestors anyway, as being less civilized.

Brittney (30:51)
Mm -hmm.

Justin (30:52)
less cultured, less adept, right? The idea that African -American English or something is, you know, lower language or something, right? Even though that’s not necessarily what you would do in a language education class. But, you know, the idea that kids who speak, and when in the United States, kids who speak Spanish are seen often as, you know, an extra hurdle for the school to deal with.

Brittney (31:04)
you

Justin (31:22)
even if they have translations, because they all have translations now, they still think of them as an extra hurdle to deal with. As opposed to being kids who have more language skills than the kids who only speak English but might be better at spelling English. Right? Like those kids know more than I do, or at least depending on the, you get what I’m saying. They know more than I did at the age. You know? And…

Brittney (31:38)
Mm -hmm.

Justin (31:47)
Instead of being celebrated for it, it’s just, well, they fell short on the language test in this language that they don’t speak at home. Right? This language that we, I understand why one should learn these languages in a context where it simply is just going to be too hard to do everything otherwise. And as a child, you know, you can pick it up. But my point being that,

Brittney (32:07)
Mm -hmm.

Hmm?

Justin (32:13)
Yeah, where I started with language intelligence race, right? It’s just, just stop ranking people based on intelligence. I’m not saying you can’t assess. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m not saying there can’t be tests because frankly, sometimes you simply do need to know how much somebody knows about something, right? The problem isn’t the existence of tests, it’s that the tests are biased, right? The problem isn’t the existence of tests, it’s that they’re poorly constructed.

Brittney (32:17)
Mm

Mm.

Yeah.

Yes.

Justin (32:40)
You know, like the fact that there is a test is not bad, right? But also the way we think of test scores as intelligence, right? It is simply a measure of a specific thing. It is a measure. It’s not useless. And when people go too far and say they have no use, that’s no. But what does it mean? It does not mean anything about the person’s character or even intelligence because frankly,

Justin (33:08)
I think the way we even think of intelligence is just wrong. So we’re not gonna be able to push against the way we use language as an intelligence rinker unless we dismantle the way we think of intelligence altogether. One of the reasons, and this is going back to this current book, that I didn’t really get much support at school is because I am really good at tests. So, which is the opposite.

of how a lot of people with ADHD are. A lot of people with ADHD need more time for tests. I do everything really fast, right? In fact, I do things too fast and I have no slowing down speed. But if I know something, I will do it. You saw how quickly I wrote the book, right? It’s called Hyper Focus in the parlance. But I didn’t know that as a kid. I just knew I was good. If I studied at all, like at all, right? And sometimes didn’t. And if I studied at all,

Justin (34:04)
I will ace your test and I’ll do it in like 10 minutes. And because my test scores were always off the charts, the school never felt like I needed any help when I just would not do my homework. Right? Which was a sign of me struggling in other ways. But as long as I did well on the tests, they never felt like they needed to do anything for me. Right?

Brittney (34:09)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Justin (34:31)
And I didn’t, and like when I did struggle socially, it wasn’t in such a visible way that they could tell. Like I wasn’t like being beat up in the corner or something like that. You know, I’m not saying that that doesn’t happen, but it didn’t happen to me. It wasn’t that kind of school. So I was just struggling internally and not doing my homework. But then I would do well on the test at the end and they’d be like, eh, well.

Brittney (34:44)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Justin (34:54)
I mean, I don’t know what they were thinking. just, didn’t say anything to me about it. It was only just like, he doesn’t do his homework. He doesn’t color in between the lines. And then I would do well on the tests and they’d be like, look, he’s going off to a good school. We’re proud of him. I’m like, were you?

Brittney (34:55)
You know that that happens so often to students and I think I couldn’t agree more that you know the presence of the test isn’t the issue, right? I feel like it is important for us to understand where students are and that’s what the tests are designed to do for it. Give us an understanding of what do you know? What do you need to know more of and how can I support you to get there? It’s our intentionality behind it. Are we being intentional? Are we you know really looking into why we’re doing this and really moving in that direction of it?

And it causes a lot of students who I was also pretty good at tests. You know, they didn’t want something that bothered me. Again, if I studied for them, I usually did pretty well.

then a lot of these kids just kind of fall through the cracks because they’re not, you know, they’re not making your job harder as a teacher. They’re doing well on the test and the test is where you kind of get that state funding. And, you know, if the kids are doing well on tests, then, you know, you’re getting a good evaluation as a teacher and all those different things. It just relies on this really important, like we’ve been talking about, this number data. But it doesn’t tell us stories about students and it doesn’t tell us, okay, well, if the students aren’t doing the homework, but they’re doing good on the test, what is that? What does that information tell

And like what is this broader information that we’re actually learning and doing?

and connecting that with that language learning, think that is so imperative. Because I know part of a story that I tell when I do trainings on bias is how I kind of came face to face with my own bias by, you know, when I was working with or when was in school and one of my professors had me work with one of my peers and he was English language learner and we were in English class and he was like, just go to library with them and review his paper and help them out. And I was like, okay, fine. And I did that and I helped him out with his paper. And as we’re walking out of the library,

kind of telling me about his story and he’s telling me how he immigrated here and like you know he had degrees where he came from he had a really successful business but they had to immigrate really quickly you know to kind of keep his family safe and he was telling me all this and it dawned on me that because his English wasn’t perfect I had automatically assumed that he was less intelligent and that that hit my soul I was like

that’s a bias. And you know, as someone who’s going into education and someone who’s like, yeah, like, I don’t have a bias vote in my body. That was a big realization for me. And it’s something that I, you know, continue to work on and grow through and really address my bias and all of those things. But it is something that, you know, people don’t really recognize that when you’re when you speak the dominant language that most other countries speak, you know, it’s a privilege that we have, you know, I’ve traveled to other places and been able to get around, you know,

fairly easily with my knowledge of English, you know, and of course like pointing and learning the language as well. But you know, for the most part, most places I go, there’s gonna be a couple people who speak English, you know, and that’s a big privilege that I think a lot of people don’t recognize that we have. And especially when it comes to bias and our understanding of intelligence and what does that look like and what does intelligence look like for students. It’s a pretty big deal.

Yeah.

Justin (38:20)
Yeah, that whole, what’s the stereotype of like the doctor who’s the cab driver, like all that sort of thing, right? You know, like the woman who’s taking care of my son today, I guess babysitter, but it’s a little bit more than that. She was an actual teacher in her home country, like a licensed teacher, but one presumes that the license did not transfer.

Brittney (38:28)
Mm.

Justin (38:46)
So she does this. Nothing wrong with this. This is a professional thing to do. I’m not, you know, you get what I’m saying. There’s nothing wrong being a cab driver, but I’m just saying like, if you are qualified to do X, you probably would like to do X. And it is, but you know, you have to, the various tests, you know, may exclude you if you, just the language itself, right? And I think about that when I think about, you know,

Justin (39:16)
some of the stories in the book towards the end when I’m talking, because the book isn’t quite chronological, but these stories do tend to go a little bit later in life as it goes. So it’s not quite chronological, but it’s kind of chronological. Like the last few chapters are more about high school because they’re more about emotions and I can better relay my high school emotions than my age six emotions. At age six, I look back and I’m like, I was sad.

Justin (39:42)
But, you know, but anyway, the point being that I talk about, we this test thing and the numbers and all this stuff. And the only thing that seemed to matter was improving the numbers on the test. And not just for the school, but also for like college, right? Getting in. And I remember I had a sort of revelation when that whole college admissions scandal broke a few years ago.

Brittney (39:43)
Yeah.

Justin (40:07)
about, I don’t even care about them spending, the fakeness. It’s not even that. I know people do weird, grifty stuff. I’m saying that they were spending so much money on the try to be a good applicant stuff. Forget about the lying, right? It’s that, you know, they spent so much money, again, even before the fraud.

Brittney (40:09)
Mmm.

Mm.

Justin (40:35)
on trying to make them seem like a good applicant because they weren’t. And I’m just like, why does that child need that? In fact, what would be wrong with that child just going to a regular school, right? Just let them go to school. And I remember thinking back, and then I got thinking back to my own high school years, which is where I’m talking about in the, sorry, talking about in the book and.

Justin (41:00)
you know, all of my classmates had all these tutors for all their SAT and they would go and they would cram and all this all weekend and then they would try to denigrate me because they thought if I got into school, they would be like an affirmative action thing. They only seem to notice I was black when we were in high school because I went to same school for like 14 years and then all of a sudden when it was high school, they start all of a sudden I’m black, right?

But then I really was better than them though. Like I didn’t study for the SAT and just like I said, I walked out of the SAT early. my calculator in the air, skipping down the street because I knew I did well. I didn’t even look at my score. I mean, I found out eventually, but I just like when I know I do well, I don’t even look. I’m like, I did well. And I just think it’s funny that their parents spent that much money on all of that and they still couldn’t get to my level. But

Justin (41:57)
What does it mean? All you see is the different numbers. You don’t see the story of all of the work that their parents put in for this. And you don’t see how I felt. I felt great about the test, but I felt bad about myself when I was around the kids. So that’s the story, right?

Brittney (42:15)
Yeah.

Wow, that’s…

That’s kind of crazy because you think about all this extra effort that people go into to get their kids into these Ivy League colleges and stuff. And recognizing that when you’re in these spaces, you have more access and you have all these different things. But at the same time, what if we actually looked at the merit of it? What if we actually looked at the students themselves and what they needed and all these different things? What if we actually stopped and looked at that? What if we stopped and looked at their stories?

do they actually want to do with themselves and their lives? Which leads me to my final question for you, which is how do you reimagine the future of education?

Justin (43:02)
You know, I say this a lot, what I’m about to say, but a book like this or any other book, right, people need, there’s only so much time in a day, there’s only so much time in a semester, but all these books teachers need to read earlier in their careers. There’s nothing much I can do about this book that didn’t exist until today, so I can’t blame schools for that, but time passes.

This book needs to be, I don’t wanna say day one, I’m gonna say it’s the most important education book ever, but books like this that are about inequity and stuff. I see some of them in the programs and like doctoral programs. I see some of them in master’s programs, but just to be a teacher, to get the certificate, you don’t need to read this, right? Like I just mean by law, like I’m saying like, it’s not like that. And I’m not saying that you necessarily should make this on the certification, but I’m saying that all this work I’m trying to do,

Brittney (43:49)
Mm

Mmm.

Justin (43:59)
that you’re trying to do and fighting inequity and fighting racism and fighting ableism, making people understand how these things are connected. It needs to happen, I don’t know when it’s gonna happen before they’re in the classroom, but it’s gonna be like year one, right? And it has to be part of the centrality. What I mean is instead of it being part of an elective that they have one time, right? Because I adjuncted a class in the spring.

Justin (44:27)
for special education teachers, but the class was about language learners because that was what I used to do. And so I was teaching special education teachers about language teaching, right? They weren’t going to become language teachers, but language learners. And my job in any class I teach is to be like, look at how all these things are connected, right? So I was talking about race, I was talking about language, I was talking about ability, and they were all the stuff I was telling you, but that’s just one class. They don’t have to ever take that again.

Right? So I’m saying the core, the core learnings and whether it’s my book or a similar book, this is a bunch of books, this is like the 11th book in this series, not me, the, so all of these types of books, they need to be at the beginning because otherwise it’s just like in a construction site, it’s backfill. The hole is dug. You’re just trying to put dirt back into it. And I don’t want to say it’s too late. People can learn.

Justin (45:20)
and grow and improve and if you’re, I don’t mean you, but if a teacher is 30 years old, you might teach 30 more years. If it happens when you’re 30, it’s better than if it happens when you’re 50 or 60, but it would be better if it happened when you were just starting teaching because those six or seven years before that, people of different ages, those students did not get the version of you that knew this. And I think about that a lot with the books that I’ve written.

You know, I praise some teachers in the book too, and the ones who mistreated me, I wish that they had this book before they got in front of me. So I just hope that the students that they have now, and not my teachers, they’re all retired or dead or whatever, but these equivalent teachers, you know, can do right by the versions of me and the people in the book going forward.

Brittney (46:08)
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I feel like…

you we need to take a really close look at teacher preparation programs and what are we teaching. There were classes that I deeply enjoyed taking, but they were elective courses, so you didn’t have to take them. You know, it was just like, if you want to add this course on there, like you need X amount of electives, you could choose all these different things. And, you know, there were some of them that really did change the way that I saw education and that I saw things and, you know, brought so many different things up. So, yeah, I think

You know that teacher preparation and looking at you know professional development and how we continue to grow in this realm and in this field It’s it’s so incredibly important And so I want to thank you so much dr. Jeld for joining me and for sharing this and I like I said I can’t wait to get a copy of your book and to really read that along And I can’t wait for everyone else to get a copy of it and just really see it and and really bring this in and I can’t wait for for teacher preparation programs to have your books

as their course curriculum, because I feel like that’s coming that’s on its way. Before we go, where can my audience find you? Where can they find the book? Where can they hear any more updates about any upcoming things from you?

Justin (47:24)
I I have a website which is JPBgerald .com. So it’s all on there. I have a podcast, although I didn’t record for much of the summer because I was putting this sort of marketing for the book together called Unstandardized English, which you can find wherever you podcast, right? It started as a language thing, but now it’s just whatever I want it to be. So still called Unstandardized English though. And then otherwise, you know, on the places, right? You can find me at JPBgerald.

Brittney (47:45)
Love that.

Justin (47:52)
in on the places. Otherwise, yeah, it’s all on my website.

Brittney (48:01)
And if you’re curious to connect with Dr. Gerald, you can look in the shownotes and I’ll have everything linked there. Again, I want to thank you so much for joining me and engaging me in this really beautiful conversation. Congratulations on your launch of the book and I can’t wait to see what else you end up doing. Thank you so much.

Justin (48:18)
Yeah, thanks for having me again, Brittney.

Brittney Carey (48:22)
Thank you so much again for tuning in to Conscious Pathways. Don’t forget to like, follow, and subscribe Conscious Pathways wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to leave a like, a leading, or review. It really does help the podcast to grow. And until next time, I’ll

And until next time, don’t forget to navigate your conscious journey with courage and kindness, and I’ll see you there for more transformative conversations in education. Bye.