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Building Bridges: A Conversation with Jennifer Mayer-Glenn · Partnership Work

0:13
Paul: Welcome to Partnership Work, where
0:15
Paul: we explore the art and science of collaboration. My name is Paul Kuttner.
0:21
Paul: On this podcast, I speak with connectors, conveners, and bridge builders.
0:26
Paul: These folks have dedicated themselves to breaking down the walls that divide
0:30
Paul: us and getting people working together to improve our world.
0:34
Paul: On this inaugural episode of Partnership Work, you'll get to listen in on my
0:39
Paul: conversation with Jennifer Mayer-Glenn.
0:42
Paul: Jenny is a longtime activist and educator who directs a center at the University
0:46
Paul: of Utah called University Neighborhood Partners.
0:50
Paul: Jenny is a consummate bridge builder, always looking for ways to bring folks
0:54
Paul: together, whether at work or, as we'll hear, around her dining room table.
0:59
Paul: In this interview, she opens up about her personal history, how her family and
1:04
Paul: early experiences influenced why and how she does what she does.
1:08
Paul: We discuss two different kinds of partnership work that Jenny's been involved in.
1:13
Paul: First, we talk about her years in the K-12 public school system and how she
1:17
Paul: became a champion for getting educators and families working together to improve schools.
1:22
Paul: Then she discusses her transition to higher education, where she's been helping
1:27
Paul: to lead a community-university partnership to build a brand new hospital.
1:32
Paul: Along the way, Jenny shares some real insight into what it takes to bridge between
1:37
Paul: marginalized communities and systems, whether that's the health system or the education system.
1:43
Paul: We discuss the importance of place, that where people come together matters.
1:48
Paul: And she talks about the fine balance between structuring the process of collaboration
1:53
Paul: and letting the unexpected emerge.
1:56
Paul: As Jenny says, there is a method to this partnership madness,
2:00
Paul: and we'll get a glimpse of that method in action.
2:04
Paul: Before we get to the interview, I want to say that I really appreciate each
2:09
Paul: and every one of you for listening.
2:11
Paul: Partnership work is my first foray into the podcast world, and there are definitely
2:16
Paul: some rough edges around these first few episodes.
2:19
Paul: But I'm sure the knowledge that my guests are dropping will more than make up
2:23
Paul: for it. So I won't keep you any longer.
2:26
Paul: Let's go to my interview with Jenny.
2:40
Paul: I am so excited to introduce my guest today.
2:44
Paul: She is a longtime colleague of mine and a friend who has definitely shaped how
2:48
Paul: I think about partnership work.
2:51
Paul: Jennifer Amador Mayer-Glenn is the director of University Neighborhood Partners
2:56
Paul: at the University of Utah and special assistant to the president for campus
3:00
Paul: community partnerships.
3:02
Paul: Before that, she spent over two decades in Salt Lake City public schools,
3:05
Paul: where she led the charge to invest in family engagement.
3:09
Paul: In fact, Jenny launched the district's first Office of Family School Collaboration.
3:14
Paul: Beyond her professional work, Jenny is an activist for local education issues.
3:18
Paul: She is also a former president of the Utah Coalition of La Raza.
3:23
Paul: One thing that has always impressed me about Jenny is that she manages to be
3:27
Paul: both a strong advocate and a bridge builder.
3:31
Paul: Jenny, as always, it is so great to see you. Thank you for joining me.
3:35
Jenny: Thank you, Paul. It is just an honor to be here with you.
3:39
Jenny: And as you said, being longtime colleagues has been a gift to me.
3:45
Jenny: And so I appreciate the time that we get to spend together today. Thank you.
3:50
Paul: So I want to start off when you're at Christmas dinner or a family reunion and
3:56
Paul: one of your relatives asks, what do you do? What is your answer?
4:01
Jenny: Oh gosh, that is a hard one.
4:04
Jenny: You know, I think I typically start out by just acknowledging
4:08
Jenny: how beautiful it is that I get paid to work with community members and that
4:16
Jenny: my goal is to bridge between people and institutions that have power with people who have,
4:28
Jenny: I'll just say the most marginalized.
4:31
Jenny: I like to use the term marginalized because I was a school teacher.
4:34
Jenny: And in the curriculum, like you get a book and in that, it has in the literal
4:42
Jenny: margin, it will say this is what you do for English learners or this is what
4:47
Jenny: you do for special ed kids.
4:48
Jenny: So for me, the term marginalized has a lot of meaning.
4:52
Jenny: And so I think about people that have been pushed out into margins that don't
4:59
Jenny: have access to decision-making spaces or resources or so on and so forth.
5:04
Jenny: But I'll also add to this, Paul, that for me, this goes back to my ancestry.
5:12
Jenny: So I had ancestors on the Mayflower, and eventually those folks became Mormons
5:19
Jenny: and came across the plains to Mexican territory in 1846.
5:25
Jenny: And my Mexican ancestors came in the early 1900s to Utah.
5:34
Jenny: And so I grew up in a space where I really had this knowledge, this understanding of,
5:46
Jenny: people that had access and people who didn't have access.
5:50
Jenny: And for me, it really created like this idea of fairness.
5:55
Jenny: And I would even say like even within my own immediate family feeling that same
5:59
Jenny: way, I was the peacemaker in the family.
6:02
Jenny: I'm the third child of six. And over the years, I've extrapolated.
6:07
Jenny: I've grown that identity to a space where, you know,
6:13
Jenny: hearing stories from my father about not getting access to a scholarship because
6:22
Jenny: his father wasn't ever told about it because why would the Mexican kid need
6:28
Jenny: a scholarship to higher ed?
6:29
Jenny: And so he joined the military in order to get the GI Bill and just recognizing
6:35
Jenny: that these disconnects that exist throughout our society.
6:40
Jenny: And so I've positioned myself to try to bridge between those that are more marginalized
6:49
Jenny: and those that have power.
6:50
Paul: Tell me a little more about how your parent, what your parents specifically
6:54
Paul: did and how that shaped the work that you do today.
6:57
Jenny: Interesting. So my father was a professor at the University of Utah,
7:05
Jenny: and so his father worked on the railroad, and he had my father in the summers work on the railroad.
7:14
Jenny: So my father, his brother, the cousins, they would all work on the railroad,
7:18
Jenny: and my grandfather would walk up and down the railroad and say to them,
7:21
Jenny: Do you want to do this for the rest of your life?
7:24
Jenny: If you don't want to do this for the rest of your life, get an education.
7:27
Jenny: And so from a very young age he was taught like education is a way is access
7:32
Jenny: right it's access to power is access to a better life.
7:36
Jenny: Um, and he went with that.
7:39
Jenny: He, uh, went into higher ed, got a PhD, um, and then was teaching ethnic studies
7:47
Jenny: at the university of Utah. He helped start the ethnic studies department.
7:51
Jenny: He started the Chicano scholarship program at the university of Utah.
7:55
Jenny: And I remember as a child going to the Knox conference,
8:00
Jenny: the national association of Chicano studies that had, They had one in Salt Lake
8:04
Jenny: and going to Teatro Campesino, which at the time I didn't know much about,
8:11
Jenny: but I got to experience that.
8:13
Jenny: And as I got in and it left an impression on me.
8:16
Jenny: And as I got older and learned more about it, I just realized that I was exposed
8:21
Jenny: to some really important moments and experience as a kid.
8:25
Jenny: My mother, she was the president of the League of Women Voters for Davis County,
8:31
Jenny: which is kind of a bedroom community of Salt Lake City.
8:34
Jenny: And I remember going to meetings with her.
8:41
Jenny: She would host a lot of Meet the Candidates nights. But it was always very like,
8:49
Jenny: we need to be involved in the process, in the political process.
8:53
Jenny: And so I grew up being aware of that as well.
8:57
Jenny: So I did get a lot of examples from both of my parents.
9:09
Paul: Well, we'll move forward a bit. So you started working in schools as a paraeducator,
9:15
Paul: and then you moved into full-time teaching before becoming an administrator.
9:21
Paul: At what point did you recognize that there was an issue around the relationship
9:26
Paul: between families and educators in the schools?
9:29
Paul: Like, was there a specific experience or person you remember that helped you
9:33
Paul: see that that was something that needed to be worked on?
9:36
Jenny: When I, so I graduated with a bachelor's of arts in Spanish,
9:40
Jenny: and I didn't know what I was going to do with that.
9:43
Jenny: And so I, I went to the school district and I got hired immediately as a parent
9:48
Jenny: educator to teach English as a second language.
9:51
Jenny: And one of the things that happened early on to me is that here I was,
9:55
Jenny: I, you know, I did have a college degree.
9:58
Jenny: I had background in language learning and teaching, but then I would have special
10:04
Jenny: education teachers come to me and say, does this child have a disability?
10:07
Jenny: And that made me furious. And so again, I thought it was this point of like,
10:11
Jenny: okay, there is something not right here. There is something unjust going on.
10:17
Jenny: And that was when I decided to get licensed as a special ed teacher,
10:20
Jenny: because I wanted to try to pack this thing that I could see that was a problem.
10:26
Jenny: It was the fact that English learners were being referred to special education
10:31
Jenny: at higher rates than other students.
10:32
Jenny: And so I was trying to unpack that. And so.
10:36
Jenny: Through that process, recognizing that the only kind of interaction that was
10:43
Jenny: coming from parents in this context was so minimal.
10:47
Jenny: It was, you know, it was three questions on a registration form asking them
10:51
Jenny: about, you know, their children's language and their primary home language. And that would be it.
10:57
Jenny: And then there would be a requirement to do a parent interview,
11:00
Jenny: but it was always done in a very, like, check the box kind of way.
11:05
Jenny: I think that was one of the beginning points for me,
11:09
Jenny: was that level of engagement, knowing that because the family spoke a different
11:16
Jenny: language and it made it a little harder for a teacher to be able to have a conversation with them,
11:24
Jenny: that they were being excluded from this bigger conversation about their child.
11:30
Paul: What were some of the first things you tried to do to address that issue?
11:37
Jenny: Gosh, it was so basic. It was just like, you know, let's make sure that we have
11:43
Jenny: good interpreters who are able to just like give that minimal kind of access to parents.
11:51
Jenny: And then once I was in the role, it was more it was more about making sure that
11:57
Jenny: I was doing the best job that I could do within that space.
12:01
Jenny: So I would do the interviews with parents and try to be more thoughtful and
12:09
Jenny: really try to develop a relationship with them.
12:14
Paul: Can I dig in here? I'm curious, what does it look like for Jennifer Mayer Glenn
12:20
Paul: to build relationships and trust with someone?
12:25
Jenny: All right. Well, in the context of a school...
12:29
Jenny: It's about inviting people to the space and making it a comfortable,
12:35
Jenny: welcoming space for them and also visiting them at home and going to their home.
12:42
Jenny: And I know that for teachers that can be really uncomfortable,
12:46
Jenny: but it's about that acknowledgement of what you are and who you are is also important.
12:55
Jenny: It's about like listening is it's being in spaces together breaking bread together
13:03
Jenny: if you can and listening and being curious about each other how.
13:10
Paul: Did you start to transition from that kind of individual engagement and relationship
13:15
Paul: building to this idea of partnership
13:16
Jenny: I um became a teacher coach and I was in the equity department at the district office.
13:25
Jenny: And one of the things that we were doing was having courageous conversations
13:30
Jenny: about race and education with teams of teachers at school.
13:34
Jenny: And in these conversations, we were really examining the kinds of assumptions
13:44
Jenny: that we make about families.
13:47
Jenny: And so I would hear a lot from teachers in those settings about assumptions that they were making.
13:54
Jenny: Teachers were starting to make assumptions about whether or not a parent cared
13:59
Jenny: about their child's education.
14:01
Jenny: And I know from being,
14:06
Jenny: you know, back to my dad's story, right, about the importance of education or
14:10
Jenny: his father's belief about the importance of education, that education is important
14:15
Jenny: to families that are coming from Mexico.
14:18
Jenny: And on the other hand, I'm hearing
14:21
Jenny: from teachers, those parents don't care about their kids' education.
14:25
Jenny: And so for me, that was a moment of like, okay, there's a disconnect here. So how can I be a bridge?
14:32
Jenny: Because I know that those assumptions are having a negative impact on a child's education.
14:41
Jenny: Um and so how can i how can i help be that bridge.
14:45
Paul: So what did you do
14:46
Jenny: So what i what i did and this actually was
14:49
Jenny: when i became an administrator at a middle school i we literally had dialogues
14:55
Jenny: together so we brought parents and teachers together around a round table and
15:02
Jenny: we had them answer the same question and you know at first they were questions
15:07
Jenny: about identifying common values,
15:10
Jenny: and then getting into some of the issues that I knew that were popping up.
15:15
Jenny: Like, let's talk about how we discipline kids. So I wanted...
15:20
Jenny: Teachers to be able to hear how parents discipline kids and parents to be able
15:24
Jenny: to hear how teachers discipline kids because that was a disconnect that was
15:28
Jenny: happening in the school.
15:31
Jenny: And what we found or what the teachers heard or what everyone heard was that
15:35
Jenny: everybody does it the same way.
15:38
Jenny: There are a lot of commonalities and within those commonalities,
15:43
Jenny: we can find those spaces to work together to become partners.
15:49
Paul: Well, that sounds really powerful. I'm curious about what happened next.
15:54
Paul: But first, I want to ask you how you brought that group together.
15:57
Paul: For various reasons, teachers and parents don't often have a lot of opportunities
16:03
Paul: to just sit down and dialogue.
16:04
Paul: So how did you kind of pitch that as a leader? And how did you invite folks to the table?
16:11
Jenny: Yeah, so, you know, I decided that we needed to go with the willing.
16:16
Jenny: Let's start with the willing.
16:18
Jenny: And there are definitely always teachers who are open and want to learn more
16:23
Jenny: and want to improve what they're doing we had a panel because we were a highly diverse school,
16:30
Jenny: And teachers wanted to learn more about specific ethnicities or specific cultural groups.
16:35
Jenny: And so we would create a panel, let's say, of the Somali community, for example.
16:41
Jenny: And it would be a safe space for a teacher to come because they were just listening, right?
16:47
Jenny: And then they could ask some questions and they were listening. So we started there.
16:52
Jenny: And then the next thing was to move that into that around the round table and
16:58
Jenny: bring people together in conversation.
17:00
Jenny: And it was building the kind of the excitement or the passion of the teachers
17:07
Jenny: by seeing this, like, oh, I'm learning something new.
17:13
Jenny: This is something that's going to help me.
17:15
Jenny: And so I guess in that case, I was building trust with them, right?
17:21
Jenny: Like they were beginning to trust me more, that the things that we were going
17:25
Jenny: to try together would be something that they could learn from and something
17:30
Jenny: that would be useful to them.
17:31
Jenny: So it was about the trust built between me and teachers and me and parents and
17:38
Jenny: then bringing teachers together.
17:41
Paul: So what was the outcome of that set of dialogue?
17:45
Jenny: What happened was that teachers started to see the students as more human and
17:53
Jenny: their families as more human.
17:55
Jenny: They started to ask more questions of the students and they started to increase
18:01
Jenny: their expectations of the students.
18:03
Jenny: Once they met the parents and once they had an interaction with parents that
18:10
Jenny: completely shifted how they worked with the kids in their in their classrooms
18:16
Jenny: and so that the end of that two-year story or three-year story is that,
18:24
Jenny: The school where I was working had an F grade.
18:28
Jenny: This was the state of Utah grading system, right?
18:33
Jenny: The school had an F grade. And after two years of not only the family engagement
18:40
Jenny: work that we did, but other things that we did in the school,
18:44
Jenny: we became a B plus school.
18:48
Jenny: And those grades were based on student achievement, right? So it was growth.
18:55
Jenny: It was growth on student achievement, on tests that students were taking.
18:59
Jenny: So it had a significant impact.
19:09
Paul: What was one of the first lessons you had to learn on how to do this work well?
19:15
Jenny: One of the biggest lessons I think that I had to learn was to trust the process.
19:22
Jenny: That I didn't have to have the answers.
19:26
Jenny: That by bringing people together, that they learn from each other and that it's hugely impactful.
19:34
Jenny: Like there isn't and you can't predict what
19:38
Jenny: the learning is going to be and really it doesn't
19:41
Jenny: matter what what matters is that
19:44
Jenny: you that this space has been created this process this um opportunity for uh
19:54
Jenny: trust building and partnership building is the most important piece.
20:02
Paul: Do you remember times when maybe you feel like you didn't trust the process
20:05
Paul: enough, maybe tried to move, tried to force things or tried to overdetermine things?
20:10
Jenny: Yeah, for sure. This one actually is more kind of within, not between parents
20:15
Jenny: and the school, but within the school.
20:18
Jenny: And as a teacher, you're taught that you have the answers, right?
20:24
Jenny: That's what you're supposed to do is to teach other people to know what you know.
20:31
Jenny: I was working with teachers,
20:35
Jenny: these teacher teams, and I was trying to control the agenda because I wanted
20:43
Jenny: to relieve the burden from them of having to come to another meeting and do another thing.
20:48
Jenny: And what that did was actually just like, it fell flat every time because it
20:54
Jenny: wasn't about them. It was about me.
20:56
Jenny: It was about what I needed. It wasn't about what they needed.
21:00
Jenny: And that was a huge lesson for me. That was like, get out of the way.
21:05
Jenny: Like, you don't need to be in the way. You don't need to be controlling what's going on.
21:10
Jenny: Like, step out of the way, give the space to other people, and they are going
21:16
Jenny: to utilize the space in the way that best fits their needs.
21:23
Jenny: And yeah, just get out of the way.
21:25
Paul: I love that.
21:26
Jenny: And I'll just add that I've also noticed when I've gone too far,
21:31
Jenny: like when there does need to be some structure, when there does need to be some
21:36
Jenny: amount of like, okay, I'm going to, you know,
21:40
Jenny: there was a moment in a staff meeting not too long ago and I said,
21:44
Jenny: all right, everybody, Jesus is going to come take the wheel.
21:47
Jenny: I am not Jesus and somebody's got to take this wheel right now.
21:51
Jenny: I'm going to take the wheel. Right. And so it's like.
21:55
Jenny: You've got to find that sweet area, the screen space where it's like the process
22:01
Jenny: is happening, the productivity.
22:03
Jenny: I don't love the word productivity, but where the knowledge is being created,
22:09
Jenny: the relationships are being built.
22:12
Jenny: And you can't overprescribe how that happens, but you also need to create some
22:19
Jenny: amount of structure to create the space for it.
22:28
Paul: Let's come back to that as we talk about the next step in
22:30
Paul: your journey so you were you had the opportunity to
22:34
Paul: launch your district's first what they
22:37
Paul: called it the office of family school collaboration right so they'd never had
22:42
Paul: one before you became its first director all of a sudden you were working at
22:46
Paul: a district-wide level so what was your vision for what needed to happen and
22:52
Paul: could you share maybe an example of one of the initiatives that you put in
22:56
Jenny: Place when you were.
22:57
Paul: The director yeah
22:59
Jenny: Um gosh there was so much so again it was about um,
23:04
Jenny: helping to build knowledge of
23:09
Jenny: school staff and educators on the
23:12
Jenny: importance of family engagement and so you know bringing research in
23:16
Jenny: and so on and so forth so that they could learn about that
23:19
Jenny: that was important but also helping families
23:22
Jenny: understand how the system works it was very clear to me that it's really hard
23:27
Jenny: again to bring those two groups together and have them be able to talk about
23:32
Jenny: this thing called education when
23:34
Jenny: teachers speak jargon and parents don't understand how the system works.
23:41
Jenny: And for me, like having a ton of respect for educators and a ton of respect
23:46
Jenny: for families as well, knowing that there's just so much that could be shared across.
23:55
Jenny: So how to do that? Like, how do you create those spaces? So one of the spaces
24:01
Jenny: that I was really intentional about was called the Parent Advisory Council.
24:05
Jenny: The purpose of the Parent Advisory Council was to be a space where leaders in
24:14
Jenny: the district and parents could have trusted conversations about important things
24:21
Jenny: to the parents and to the educators.
24:25
Jenny: And then to learn from each other in that space. And so I wanted to make sure
24:31
Jenny: that the council was representative of the parents in the district.
24:35
Jenny: So I like literally went through and made sure it demographically represented
24:39
Jenny: the district as a whole and asked them what they would like to know more about the district.
24:47
Jenny: And then I lined up district staff to come in and be able to share information.
24:54
Jenny: So I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit because what I had to do first was
24:58
Jenny: to build the trust in the in the group.
25:01
Jenny: So the first time we got together, we did a community building circle.
25:06
Jenny: And there was there's a book called Circle Forward that's used for restorative
25:11
Jenny: justice kinds of circles in schools.
25:14
Jenny: And I use that to help guide that process. But what we did was we did a circle
25:19
Jenny: on values and that was the first time we met.
25:23
Jenny: And then the next time we met, I had an educator come in to talk about standards
25:29
Jenny: and curriculum and what's the difference between standards and curriculum.
25:33
Jenny: And I said to her, I want you to think about, like, if you could ask parents
25:39
Jenny: any question that you wanted to about the work you're doing,
25:42
Jenny: what would you want to ask them?
25:44
Jenny: And so she had thought ahead of time about what she might want to learn from
25:49
Jenny: parents in the context of her work. And I set that up ahead of time.
25:53
Jenny: And so then we all came together again for that second meeting.
25:57
Jenny: And we sat in a circle. we did some
26:00
Jenny: um you know a community building um question
26:04
Jenny: that everybody answered the same and we
26:07
Jenny: were in the district office so it's a space of
26:10
Jenny: power and so trying to figure
26:13
Jenny: out how to to reduce that um so
26:17
Jenny: the educator did a presentation um here's
26:21
Jenny: some knowledge i said keep it short like 10 minutes of information
26:24
Jenny: this is what standards are
26:27
Jenny: this is what a curriculum looks like and this is
26:30
Jenny: a book that you're you know that may be
26:32
Jenny: used in a classroom um and then
26:36
Jenny: her questions uh i wish i could remember exactly what they were but they were
26:41
Jenny: good questions and i helped her um kind of create them but i can remember what
26:46
Jenny: the answers were and this was so important because the superintendent was in
26:52
Jenny: the room at the same time.
26:53
Jenny: So the top leader of the district is in the room when the questions are asked of the parents.
26:59
Jenny: And what we heard loud and clear was that there were some parents who didn't
27:05
Jenny: feel like the kids were learning about their own history in the classroom and
27:11
Jenny: that they were having a hard time connecting to what they were learning because
27:16
Jenny: they don't get to learn about themselves.
27:19
Jenny: And that moment for me was so important because it wasn't about me saying what
27:30
Jenny: I thought might be the case about a certain group of parents or whatever.
27:36
Jenny: It was the parent saying it directly to the person who was making decisions about it.
27:41
Jenny: And that is far more powerful than it coming from me.
27:47
Paul: And that's another example, like you said earlier, of getting out of the way.
27:52
Jenny: Yeah, absolutely. Getting out of the way is so important.
28:03
Paul: I also just want to note, this is the second time you've talked about how the
28:08
Paul: space or the place that you're doing this work in matters.
28:13
Paul: You know, like when you're bridging between families and schools,
28:16
Paul: what does it mean to do work in the school or even in the district versus outside
28:21
Paul: of the school or even in someone's home?
28:23
Paul: And they seem to be tied up with power.
28:25
Paul: Can you talk about how you think about place when you're building partnerships?
28:31
Jenny: Oh, gosh. I love this question. I feel like that there are very formal kinds
28:40
Jenny: of places that decisions are being made and you can't remove the,
28:48
Jenny: I mean, it's going to happen in that space. A school is a good example.
28:52
Jenny: A city council meeting room is a good example.
28:56
Jenny: Those spaces are going to exist. And we can do our best to try to make them
29:02
Jenny: welcoming spaces for people, but they are intimidating spaces.
29:07
Jenny: And so I feel like that one of the important things about doing this kind of
29:11
Jenny: bridging work is that you do have to do things in those spaces.
29:17
Jenny: You have to help people become more comfortable in those spaces because decisions
29:23
Jenny: are going to continue to be made in those spaces.
29:25
Jenny: And at the same time, I think there's so much value in more informal spaces,
29:33
Jenny: in spaces where people feel like they have like that they have more either ownership
29:39
Jenny: of or it's just safe. It's just a safe space.
29:43
Jenny: And that can be in somebody's home or, you know, at University Neighborhood Partners.
29:49
Jenny: We have our partnership center that, you know, the wall color was selected by
29:55
Jenny: community members. And there's a lot of ownership, community ownership of the space.
30:00
Jenny: And therefore, it's a safe space where certain things can happen.
30:04
Jenny: It feels like home. So I have my own space.
30:08
Jenny: I've utilized my dining room table for a lot of years and it just sort of happened.
30:16
Jenny: You know, I think it was because I could afford it.
30:19
Jenny: It was like, I don't have to rent whatever space. I have my dining room table.
30:25
Jenny: I'm going to invite people to it. So come on over people. And it's been a space
30:30
Jenny: where there've been lots of entertainment or parties or, you know, things like that.
30:35
Jenny: But it's also been a more kind of formal space where I've invited people to
30:42
Jenny: talk about, for example, the achievement gap back in the day when we used the
30:47
Jenny: terminology achievement gap.
30:49
Jenny: I remember like putting it out there and inviting a school board member and a teacher and a.
30:55
Jenny: An administrator and then, you know, activists from the community and parents
31:02
Jenny: for everyone to come together around this, you know, to have a conversation.
31:07
Jenny: And I made food and we ate together. And there wasn't a goal so much with some
31:16
Jenny: kind of action to come at the end,
31:19
Jenny: but it was about bringing people together to just be in the conversation.
31:23
Jenny: It was about trusting that process. do I know what happened from that?
31:28
Jenny: Like if there was some kind of long-term impact or short-term or whatever,
31:32
Jenny: any impact, I don't know.
31:35
Jenny: But my guess is that yes, that the school board member may have made a different
31:43
Jenny: kind of decision because of that conversation.
31:47
Jenny: Or the parent may have had built some confidence to be able to go in and talk
31:55
Jenny: to somebody in the school about an issue around their child.
31:58
Jenny: This is me just guessing about what can happen, but I do think that it has an impact.
32:05
Jenny: And that is a different kind of space altogether, right?
32:09
Paul: So I can go back. Please finish your story. So you put together the advisory
32:13
Paul: board and you brought in the teacher.
32:14
Paul: You were just about to talk about kind of what you saw as the ripples or the results of that work?
32:21
Jenny: So after that particular time, I took lots of notes.
32:27
Jenny: And so I had this big list of quotes that I was able to go and start sharing
32:32
Jenny: with other educators, with other decision makers at the district level.
32:37
Jenny: And what I discovered through that process was that at the time,
32:43
Jenny: the leaders in the district weren't very interested in being responsive to it and,
32:49
Jenny: Because I had taken all of this time to build trusting relationships with this
32:54
Jenny: group of humans that I cared about and,
32:57
Jenny: I had to protect that, which meant that I had to basically say,
33:05
Jenny: this isn't going to work.
33:06
Jenny: And maybe this is where place comes into it.
33:09
Jenny: This was the district office. This was a place where the decisions are made.
33:17
Jenny: And I couldn't be assured that things were going to happen for this group of
33:23
Jenny: parents that were trusting me.
33:26
Jenny: And that was when I was just like, I can't keep asking them to come and trust
33:29
Jenny: me when nothing is going to change.
33:33
Jenny: And it was not long after that that I put out into the universe that my vision
33:40
Jenny: for family engagement did not align with the leaders in the district and that
33:45
Jenny: I was actually willing to walk away from the district.
33:55
Paul: You left the district. You took a role as the director of University Neighborhood Partners,
34:00
Paul: which is a part of the University of Utah, but it's located in the Westside
34:05
Paul: communities that it's focused on and centered around in order to build partnerships
34:11
Paul: between the communities and higher ed.
34:13
Paul: So what was that transition like and what did you have to learn or struggle
34:19
Paul: with along the way? Yeah.
34:22
Jenny: Oh my gosh. It was so liberating.
34:27
Jenny: Right off. It was just incredibly liberating because the K-12 system is very
34:33
Jenny: rigid and there's just not a lot of creativity in which priorities that you get to focus on.
34:43
Jenny: Or you're boxed into standards and education and reading and math and so on and so forth.
34:50
Jenny: So to be able to step out of that kind of space into a, well, guess what?
34:58
Jenny: There's a lot of unfairness across our entire society.
35:02
Jenny: There's so many things to work on and to focus on.
35:05
Jenny: So in some ways, it was liberating and overwhelming,
35:10
Jenny: but also just knowing how systems and institutions are so entrenched without
35:22
Jenny: the knowledge from the people that they are wanting to serve.
35:28
Jenny: But I think that we have gotten so lockstep in our institutions and there's
35:34
Jenny: so much policy that has been created in the name of efficiency or in the name of education.
35:40
Jenny: Bylaws and robert's rules of order and
35:43
Jenny: i don't mean to like throw out all of the rules
35:46
Jenny: that that is not what i'm saying but
35:49
Jenny: i think that our systems and our institutions have just have
35:52
Jenny: um been designed by and for a certain group of people and as um more you know
36:01
Jenny: and and we you know i talked earlier about people that are marginalized like
36:06
Jenny: literally um in the curriculum,
36:10
Jenny: that that happens in our community as well.
36:13
Jenny: And so as those systems and institutions are designed to support one group of
36:20
Jenny: people more, there's lots of opportunity to try to bring those voices into those spaces.
36:27
Paul: So could you give me an example of one partnership you've been involved in that
36:33
Paul: did this bridging between systems and community over the past five years at UMP?
36:39
Jenny: Yes, I can. One thing that was very new for me in coming into this work was around health care.
36:52
Jenny: The University of Utah, by looking at their data, saw that there are health
36:57
Jenny: disparities in the west side of Salt Lake County.
37:01
Jenny: And so there were a group of people that said we should build a hospital on
37:06
Jenny: the west side of Salt Lake County so that we can help to try to have a positive
37:11
Jenny: impact on the health disparities,
37:14
Jenny: such a beautiful lovely noble thing to do and and I'm really appreciative of
37:21
Jenny: the people in those spaces that were you know making that decision and as things
37:27
Jenny: went on and as you know COVID came and suddenly the price of, you know,
37:32
Jenny: building materials and humans building things just skyrocketed.
37:37
Jenny: And there was this moment of whether or not the university could really afford to build a hospital.
37:46
Jenny: At the same time that all of that was going on,
37:49
Jenny: we also were intentionally doing a lot of community engagement work to help
37:58
Jenny: inform the health care system or the hospitals and clinics about how the community
38:06
Jenny: might want to see this hospital designed.
38:08
Jenny: And in that conversation, one of the tools that UMP has is what's called a resident committee.
38:16
Jenny: And it's essentially a group of individuals from the community who come together
38:22
Jenny: and are kind of a leadership group.
38:24
Jenny: And within that work, there's capacity building of the people in that space
38:30
Jenny: to understand better how, in this case.
38:33
Jenny: Healthcare systems work and so on and so forth, but also giving them access
38:38
Jenny: to decision makers so that they can speak to the decision makers.
38:44
Jenny: And so leaders from the health care system and other places at the university
38:51
Jenny: were coming together regularly for lunch with the community members and they built relationships.
38:58
Jenny: This is like such an important piece to this story.
39:01
Jenny: They built these important relationships. and when
39:06
Jenny: it came down to the decision of whether or not
39:09
Jenny: the university was going to be able to afford to
39:12
Jenny: build a hospital that group of
39:15
Jenny: leaders and community members came together and
39:18
Jenny: it was in that moment when community members felt like that they could speak
39:23
Jenny: their truth and say we need this please like please do this and those decision
39:32
Jenny: makers at that time said okay, we're going to do a hard thing.
39:36
Jenny: And it became a priority for the university at that point to identify the funds
39:44
Jenny: that would be needed to invest in this hospital.
39:47
Jenny: That wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for those relationships and that
39:51
Jenny: trust that was built within that group of people. Wow.
39:56
Paul: I love that.
39:57
Jenny: It's a beautiful story and it's very unusual.
40:01
Paul: Right. Well, it's almost the opposite of the story you told about your advisory
40:04
Paul: board that you built in the district where you built it and it wasn't listened
40:08
Paul: to. And then you were on the hook.
40:17
Paul: What would surprise someone who's unfamiliar with the kind
40:22
Jenny: Of work you do? I think what would surprise someone is that there actually is a method.
40:29
Jenny: I think that a lot of times people hear community engagement and they're like,
40:37
Jenny: oh, there's some fluffy people coming together, whatever, whatever.
40:42
Jenny: But that there actually is a method.
40:47
Jenny: And while the process, bringing people together and having them talk to each
40:52
Jenny: other is really impactful, like I said before, there does need to be structure.
40:59
Jenny: And so it's that there is a method that you can utilize to do this work. that's.
41:08
Paul: Great all right i think that's all of my questions is there anything else you'd
41:12
Paul: like to share before we close our conversation
41:17
Jenny: Yeah i would just say that um that the solutions to the things that are you
41:28
Jenny: know problematic in our community the solutions are in the community They know,
41:33
Jenny: community members know what needs to happen.
41:36
Jenny: Systems are intending, want to be solutions.
41:41
Jenny: And if we can just bring the people together with people in those systems to
41:48
Jenny: start examining the systems, solutions will emerge and we can fix things. Perfect.
41:56
Paul: That's great. Thank you so much.
41:57
Jenny: That was a lot of fun. Thank you so much. I love to talk about this stuff.
42:12
Paul: Thank you all for joining me today. To see the episode transcript and show notes,
42:17
Paul: head over to partnershipwork.podbean.com.
42:20
Paul: I've included some links to places where you can learn more about today's guest
42:24
Paul: and the topics we discussed.
42:26
Paul: Partnership work is an independent podcast created with the incredible support
42:30
Paul: of the non-profit organization Urban Media Arts here in my hometown of Malden, Massachusetts.
42:36
Paul: Check them out at urbanmediaarts.org. I'll see you next time. Take care.