PIE in 2020: Facing Change

The transition from one year to the next is always a time of reflection, and 2020 is incredibly ripe for such a practice. As we look back on the last twelve months of relentless change, it's mind boggling to think of where we have been and with so much loss, what we have created.

January 2020, PIE Board Retreat

While navigating the uncertainty and grief of COVID-19, we answered what felt like an intuitive call to tap into our resilience and innate aliveness. As a team, we moved with each other in new ways, both interpersonally and programmatically. We produced new resources and media that met the needs of the moment for both ourselves and our community. 

We are grateful to be in relationship with people and spaces with whom we can create and change together.

Even at distance, we tried on new types partnerships: We worked with Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute to write a Guide to Emergent Strategy Immersions and with Urban Neighborhood Initiatives to support their youth development programs.  

In 2020, we’ve seen PIE change as an organization as well. We invested time and energy to effectively transition our programming online. Our mission both broadened and sharpened from humanizing schooling to humanizing learning. We set yet a new standard for putting out our media projects. With all of this pivoting, we wrap up this year reflecting on what guided us through:  

COMMUNITY AS CARE

In 2020, community care has been our north star. We felt this as a team, relying on weekly meetings to check-in and be together despite our [social] distance. Our journey with Rida Institute educators exemplified this over the year as well, as we created a slack community and moved to gathering online. Leaning on our relationships -- old and new -- we remembered that we were in this together. 

“I believe art is an important part of social justice because its a way to communicate a message without saying a word”

— Ely Vasquez, 482Forward Youth

IMAGINING ANEW

The past 9 months have required us to examine and rethink our work. We must be the change needed to humanize learning, but we must see the change first. We must dream possibilities into reality. Art and media making are key to inspiring the creative imagination needed to do so. Our work with 482Forward Youth Collective and Alternatives for Girls are prime examples of what imagining police-free, student-centered schools with nourishing resources for humans could look like. Return to some of our 2020 media below:

POSSIBILITY THROUGH COLLABORATION

2020 has reiterated our inherent need for connection and our sacred interdependence. It was through collaboration between PIE team members and with community partners that we experienced a profound sense of possibility in this moment of uncertainty. From working with our committed Artist-in-Residence partners to planting seeds at the Allied Media Conference, we found that our work was not only still possible, but vital to managing all that 2020 has brought to our lives. Without our partners reminding us that we are our own greatest resource, we could never evolve as we have thus far.  See some of our favorite (r)evolutionary moments from 2020 below:

TEAM CHANGES AND CELEBRATIONS

Our team continues to change and evolve in beautiful ways. This year, we welcomed Kiarra Ambrose as our first ever Rida Institute Facilitation Fellow. Kiarra supports Rida programming and participants in a role we hope will evolve and multiply as we seek to train and mentor more compassionate, purpose-driven educators. Cyrah Dardas, a teaching artist of 2 years at PIE, was promoted to Lead Teaching Artist with our Artist in Residence program. Check out some of the media projects she has led here. We also had the pleasure of sending PIE media intern, Tulani Pryor, off to begin a Master’s program in the University of Michigan School of Information! And it is with congratulations and sorrow that we say bye for now to Erin Allen, who will depart from her role as PIE Communications and Fundraising Coordinator at the end of the year. She will remain a close friend to PIE, as she continues to forge her way in the world of radio and podcasting as the producer of Stateside with Michigan Radio. We are overjoyed for Erin and can't wait to hear her creations on the radio waves.

forging ahead to 2021

This year has been unpredictable and flat out difficult. We’ve been reminded to stay human and tender, to lean into what makes us feel alive in order to stay alive, to create and evolve and to rest. As we look ahead to 2021, PIE’s 10-year anniversary, strangely it feels right that 2020 has been so packed. It’s set us up for reaching even further back to 2011, when Detroit Future Schools first began imagining the radical future of learning. 

Onward with love, 

People of PIE

What are you planting? What are you harvesting? A Recap on Allied Media Conference 2020

PIE Special Advisor Nate Mullen supporting the Visionary Organizing for Education Justice network gathering.

Last month, PIE participated in the long anticipated, 21st Allied Media Conference (AMC). And we are still swooning over the profound connections we made with people in education from across the globe.  Like so many 2020 gatherings, AMC was virtual this year and admission was available at no cost. This changed the accessibility and security practices of the conference, but it also created space for dozens more session participants than PIE has ever seen at AMC.

GATHERING FOR EDUCATION JUSTICE

“I thought I was already fighting for language justice in my classroom. But I’m realizing I have a long way to go with that.”

— Reflection from a network gathering educator

We were honored to join the Visionary Organizing for Education Justice network gathering, including helping to co-facilitate a discussion on school abolition. Over the three-day gathering, we connected with over 100 conference goers, listening and sharing our work of humanizing learning. 

We are grateful to Julia Cuneo, Matt Homrich-Knieling, Savannah Gale, Kaitlin Popielarz and N’Kenge Robertson for organizing the gathering space. We were in awe of the dynamic speakers, including David Stovall and Bettina Love -- it was great to see them again after Free Minds Free People last year.  They were joined by Dr. Aja Reynolds from Wayne State University who reminded us how the  dehumanizing conditions in schools affect not only youth, but teachers and other adults in and adjacent to schools.

And we joined many others in being transformed by Dr. April Baker Bell’s presentation on racial and linguistic justice. One attendee commented, “I thought I was already fighting for language justice in my classroom. But I’m realizing I have a long way to go.” Sharing space - albeit virtual - with educators of all stripes can show us so much about ourselves. 

TOWARD SCHOOL ABOLITION

On Saturday, after the network gathering, we co-facilitated a conversation with Detroit Area Youth Uniting Michigan (DAYUM). The session was called New Approaches to School Abolition, and Nate opened by reminding us that humanizing learning will not happen quickly, and is worth the journey.

“This is a journey - urgency is what gets in the way of us doing this work effectively.”

- Nate Mullen, PIE Special Advisor

Next up was Dr. David Stovall, who introduced the concept of school abolition as a tool for prioritizing youth- and human-centered learning.  

Dr. David Stovall during the New Approaches to School Abolition session

“Schooling is the orderly compliance that you are falsely rewarded for. The logics of the school are the logics of the prison. Are we prepared to abolish school as a concept that is rooted in the marginalization of youth?”

— Dr. David Stovall

And the varied experiences of DAYUM youth contextualized school abolition. Brooke Solomon echoed much of what PIE Teaching Artist Cyrah Dardas expressed in her interview about centering youth voice. 

“A world of school abolition looks like actually being able to be a kid […] School abolition is centered around the distinction between school and education. ”

— Jaanaki Radhakrishnan, DAYUM Youth

Brooke spoke about being seen as a model student by educators and administrators because of her leadership and good grades -- that is until she became a DAYUM activist for school and education reform. Then, her school leadership began to target her with criticism and sometimes punishment, revealing to her the punitive practices that permeate many schools:

In school, there's always a target on your back because school is prison.

- Brooke Solomon, DAYUM youth

And when asked what a world of school abolition would look like, DAYUM youth Jaanaki Radhakrishnan said it plain: “actually being able to be a kid.”

PLANTING AND HARVESTING

As we look back on this year’s AMC, we are so grateful for these guiding questions and how they framed our week and weekend. We sowed seeds of relationship and connection with educators from all over at the Visionary Organizing for Education Justice network gathering. And simultaneously, we harvested the fruit of relationships we’ve built over the years with DAYUM and session organizers.  

And we were affirmed by the beautiful offerings throughout the conference, showing us that the answer to Stovall’s question is yes.

He asked, Are we prepared to abolish school as a concept that is rooted in the marginalization of youth? 

Yes, we are all bringing the future through by the planting and harvesting we do every day -- on the micro and macro levels -- to humanize education. Thank you for sharing space with us at AMC 2020. We can’t wait for 2022!

A Place to Practice: The Heart & Human Element of Learning

Some of my favorite questions from What makes Me ME?

It's almost impossible to wrap my head around the fact that it's been a year since I joined People in Education as the Director. The pandemic is challenging our social constructs in new ways, and for me, my relationship to the construct of time has been turned upside down. 

For those I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting, my name is Siobhán (sha-VON). Lately, I’ve been inspired by our latest media project What makes Me Me? when expressing parts of my identity. I'm a Libra -- always in search of finding balance and justice in the world. I'm excited by the power of young people to make social change and inspire new ways of being. I'm drawn to the process of learning and unlearning in the name of liberation and social change.  Outside of PIE, you can find me enjoying life as an aunt, finding respite in the woods or near water, cooking up a storm in my kitchen and enjoying finding pockets of purple in nature. 

Flowers from my backyard garden giving me joy!

When joining the PIE team, I set an intention to lead from the truth that “change is the only constant,” as we started to reshape as an organization. Little did I know how much change was on the horizon and how difficult it would be navigating new levels of uncertainty. Since our initial pause to adapt and grieve over COVID-19 in March, I've been truly enamored with the PIE team and our greater community. We continue to hold each other through waves of emotions, create moments of joy and laughter and also find possibility and opportunity in what often feels like a swirl of constant chaos. We continue to do so with grace, patience, care and love.  I've been reminded of why I took the jump to come to PIE,  a space to embrace humanizing practices even in the darkest moments.

All of this change is demanding us to be vulnerable and brave in order to imagine anew. PIE’s journey is not unique. It is a reflection of what we -- particularly people in schools and education spaces -- are all experiencing as we navigate a foggy horizon. However, it is clear we are in a moment that will not allow us to go back to school as normal. Although that is an overwhelming consideration, I see this as an invitation to shed the practices and mindsets that don’t serve us and embrace change through humanizing practices. As such, we must ask deeper questions and be open to learning. We must be vulnerable, tender and human. 

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change.”

— Brene Brown

As a person who struggled to learn to read, I’ve reflected on the classroom as a place where I became motivated by avoiding shame and rewarded for perfection; praise rarely came from being vulnerable. This created less space for curiosity and more space for anxiety, hiding and lots of sweaty palms. My own personal journey around this has led me to reflect on how schools don’t always enable vulnerable-positive environments in the name of learning and transformation.

For me, this has meant unlearning and rewiring myself in order to embrace the power of vulnerability. I am still on the journey of unlearning the conditioned anxiety, fear of failure and shame around disability and differences (even as I write this!). As adults, how are we practicing the vulnerability that is necessary in this moment? 

This point in time is like a portal, inviting us to more deeply name, reflect and dismantle oppressive constructs. It invites us to rethink the conditions that dictate schooling and our ideas of learning. This includes confronting  the truth of white supremacy and racism that is in our water and soil as a country in order to embrace transformation. 

“Participating with the system of white supremacy is far from a privileged existence. It is a dehumanizing existence.”

— Tawanna Petty

What does it look like when we embrace transforming values?

In particular, we must name and actively dismantle the root of white supremacy culture in our schools. As a  white person who was mainly educated in suburban public schools -- considered “quality education” --  it's taken me years to see that by being  built on white traditional values, my schooling was steeped in a culture that normalized inequity and dehumanization. These values are at odds with the transformation we seek for our young people. We want to support creativity and collaboration yet our structures urge competition, scarcity and fear of failure. 

Our current context begs us to move forth with intention and care. We must be radically open to recognizing all of us as learners in order to imagine and create anew. If we choose to pay attention to humanizing practices, it will grow within us as individuals and collectively in our institutions. How are we focusing on well-being, growth, and joy instead of the punitive culture that dictates so much of our schooling?  How are we learning to humanize in our schools and learning spaces, in us and with our young people? 

These are the questions that guide me as I continue to learn and grow. As I continue to help shape the next chapter at PIE, I am committed to embracing transformation with vulnerability and care, and to creating a place to practice the heart and human elements of learning. 

With love and care,

Siobhan