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Redefining School Leadership with Ann Ishimaru · Partnership Work

• 0:14
  Paul Kuttner: Welcome to Partnership Work, where we explore the art and science of collaboration. I'm Paul Kuttner.
• 0:21
  Paul Kuttner: When we think of school leaders, we usually picture principals,
• 0:25
  Paul Kuttner: superintendents, maybe the school board.
• 0:28
  Paul Kuttner: My guest today says that that idea of leadership is far too narrow.
• 0:33
  Paul Kuttner: The leaders we need, if we're going to make schools work for all students,
• 0:37
  Paul Kuttner: are not just the ones with formal titles and degrees.
• 0:40
  Paul Kuttner: They're also parents and students, teachers and community members.
• 0:44
  Paul Kuttner: In this vision of leadership, the role of a school principal or district leader
• 0:49
  Paul Kuttner: is not to figure things out by themselves, but instead to work with folks from
• 0:54
  Paul Kuttner: all these groups to create solutions together.
• 0:57
  Paul Kuttner: In other words, educational leadership is a kind of partnership work.
• 1:02
  Paul Kuttner: Today, I'm sharing my interview with Ann Ishimaru. Anne is a professor at the
• 1:07
  Paul Kuttner: University of Washington College of Education, where she runs the Just Ed Leadership Institute.
• 1:12
  Paul Kuttner: I've known Ann for many years. As she talks about in the interview,
• 1:16
  Paul Kuttner: we were part of a research project during graduate school, looking at how parents,
• 1:21
  Paul Kuttner: students, teachers, and other leaders across the country were organizing to
• 1:25
  Paul Kuttner: improve education for young people.
• 1:27
  Paul Kuttner: Ann did her dissertation research with one of those organizing groups and has
• 1:31
  Paul Kuttner: since gone on to become a prominent scholar of educational leadership.
• 1:35
  Paul Kuttner: But she is definitely not your typical professor.
• 1:38
  Paul Kuttner: She spends a lot of her time out in the schools, partnering with principals,
• 1:43
  Paul Kuttner: collaborating with families.
• 1:44
  Paul Kuttner: She's a former science teacher herself, as well as an organizer,
• 1:48
  Paul Kuttner: a mother, and co-founder of a cultural organization based around the art of
• 1:53
  Paul Kuttner: traditional Japanese drumming, or taiko.
• 1:56
  Paul Kuttner: In the interview you'll hear in a moment, Ann offers a vision of leadership as a collective effort.
• 2:03
  Paul Kuttner: She describes what it looks like when families and educators become co-designers
• 2:07
  Paul Kuttner: of education initiatives.
• 2:09
  Paul Kuttner: And she dives into her most recent book, which explores how a new crop of district
• 2:14
  Paul Kuttner: leaders across the country have been working to build equity into our school systems.
• 2:19
  Paul Kuttner: Well, I won't take any more of your time. Here's my conversation with Ann Ishimaru.
• 2:38
  Paul Kuttner: Ann it is so good to see you.
• 2:40
  Ann Ishimaru: It's terrific to see you, Paul. I'm excited to be with you today.
• 2:44
  Paul Kuttner: You've spent a big part of your career working on improving education systems here in the U.S.
• 2:50
  Paul Kuttner: What was your own experience like as a student and how did that shape the work that you do now?
• 2:57
  Ann Ishimaru: Yeah, that's a great question. So if you'd asked me right after I got out of
• 3:02
  Ann Ishimaru: school, I had a really, I would have said I had a peak education experience.
• 3:05
  Ann Ishimaru: You know, I was able to, you know, kind of put my head down, work hard, assimilate.
• 3:11
  Ann Ishimaru: I had really kind of internalized this model minority myth.
• 3:14
  Ann Ishimaru: And I think it's through doing the work that I've done and the research that
• 3:19
  Ann Ishimaru: I've done and also in many being involved in education outside of formal school
• 3:24
  Ann Ishimaru: systems that I began to think a little bit differently about,
• 3:28
  Ann Ishimaru: like Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot always talks about, the difference between schooling and education.
• 3:32
  Ann Ishimaru: And so I had this kind of crystallizing moment during my dissertation research.
• 3:37
  Ann Ishimaru: I was working in a predominantly Latinx community. We were speaking in Spanish.
• 3:41
  Ann Ishimaru: Spanish, most of the parent leaders were from Mexico or Central American countries.
• 3:47
  Ann Ishimaru: And one of the parent leaders asked me, why are you doing this work?
• 3:51
  Ann Ishimaru: Why are you studying us and the work that we're trying to do?
• 3:56
  Ann Ishimaru: And I had to really think hard, partly because my Spanish is not very good,
• 4:01
  Ann Ishimaru: but also to really think deeply about who I am and why was I trying to do that?
• 4:08
  Ann Ishimaru: And I explained to them that what I wanted to know was, how do we improve schools
• 4:12
  Ann Ishimaru: and enable children to succeed in education without forcing them to sacrifice
• 4:17
  Ann Ishimaru: who they are, their language, their culture, their heritage,
• 4:20
  Ann Ishimaru: their sense of being whole human beings and part of communities?
• 4:26
  Ann Ishimaru: And so that was a really crystallizing moment for me because I do think that
• 4:32
  Ann Ishimaru: our school systems are premised on a whole bunch of assumptions that work great
• 4:38
  Ann Ishimaru: for a small group of students.
• 4:41
  Ann Ishimaru: And for many, many students, they aren't, I'll say yet,
• 4:47
  Ann Ishimaru: created or realized in ways that enable the flourishing and thriving of all young people.
• 4:56
  Paul Kuttner: I love that. You study leadership in education. When you say leadership,
• 5:01
  Paul Kuttner: you're not talking only about principals or superintendents.
• 5:05
  Paul Kuttner: You're taking a much broader view.
• 5:06
  Paul Kuttner: What does leadership mean in your work?
• 5:10
  Ann Ishimaru: Well, as you know, we first met studying organizing. And before I got to grad
• 5:15
  Ann Ishimaru: school, in addition to being a teacher, I was also part of environmental justice
• 5:20
  Ann Ishimaru: organizing and at the lead of a community cultural arts organization.
• 5:25
  Ann Ishimaru: And so when I got to grad school, I came with this notion that leadership was
• 5:30
  Ann Ishimaru: not something that required a title or a job or a degree.
• 5:33
  Ann Ishimaru: So I was very puzzled at first when I encountered the study of educational leadership,
• 5:39
  Ann Ishimaru: because they were using this word that had this big,
• 5:43
  Ann Ishimaru: you know, a much bigger, more powerful meaning in a very narrow,
• 5:46
  Ann Ishimaru: constrained way that was only about titles, only about org charts,
• 5:50
  Ann Ishimaru: and missed all this other aspects of what I came to think of as leadership.
• 5:58
  Ann Ishimaru: And then I started reading the research and the literature and realizing,
• 6:03
  Ann Ishimaru: oh, wait a minute, that's the dominant notion of leadership,
• 6:05
  Ann Ishimaru: that it corresponds to the person with, you know, the title of boss.
• 6:09
  Ann Ishimaru: And I remember wondering, like, can I even study leadership?
• 6:14
  Ann Ishimaru: Not only because the kind of approaches to leadership that I had come in with
• 6:19
  Ann Ishimaru: weren't what the literature was conceptualizing, but also because there weren't
• 6:25
  Ann Ishimaru: Asian American women in that literature at all.
• 6:28
  Ann Ishimaru: So it was like, can I study something I don't even exist in?
• 6:32
  Ann Ishimaru: And so the opportunity to be part of a study on education organizing changed all that.
• 6:38
  Ann Ishimaru: It was an opportunity for me to sort of reclaim a much more expansive notion
• 6:43
  Ann Ishimaru: of leadership. The group that I studied was in California, and their definition
• 6:48
  Ann Ishimaru: of leadership is taking responsibility for what matters to you.
• 6:52
  Ann Ishimaru: And I was like, oh, yes, that's the conception of leadership that I came into this with.
• 6:59
  Paul Kuttner: And so that led you to the idea that leadership is coming in addition to from
• 7:04
  Paul Kuttner: educators, from principals and superintendents, also coming from families,
• 7:08
  Paul Kuttner: from students, from community groups.
• 7:12
  Paul Kuttner: When did you first start to get the idea that families and communities and students
• 7:18
  Paul Kuttner: needed to have a role in making schools better?
• 7:22
  Ann Ishimaru: That started in the outside of schooling experiences that I had as a young person.
• 7:28
  Ann Ishimaru: I am I'm Yonsei or
• 7:31
  Ann Ishimaru: fourth generation Japanese American So my father was born in one of the incarceration
• 7:35
  Ann Ishimaru: camps and all of my grandparents and you know extended family were incarcerated
• 7:39
  Ann Ishimaru: during World War II And so when I was a kid that seemed like very distant abstract
• 7:45
  Ann Ishimaru: history. But I knew it was important because when it would come up, you know, at school.
• 7:51
  Ann Ishimaru: I was the one who would teach my classmates about some of those histories and then as I got older
• 7:58
  Ann Ishimaru: I began to realize, you know, I began to realize how few people, not just young people,
• 8:03
  Ann Ishimaru: but adults knew about those histories that were American histories and knew
• 8:09
  Ann Ishimaru: not only so little about the history of Japanese Americans and incarceration,
• 8:13
  Ann Ishimaru: but also the ways that that history intersects with racialized oppression in
• 8:20
  Ann Ishimaru: other communities, land theft,
• 8:21
  Ann Ishimaru: genocide, all of those things that have shaped our country's history.
• 8:24
  Ann Ishimaru: So from early on, I started to notice that the things that I was learning from
• 8:30
  Ann Ishimaru: my own family and in the context of my community,
• 8:32
  Ann Ishimaru: I also was learning about the redress movement and the kind of forms of resistance,
• 8:38
  Ann Ishimaru: both in terms of the legal struggle for reparations, but also the kind of cultural
• 8:44
  Ann Ishimaru: work that was happening.
• 8:45
  Ann Ishimaru: And that's where American Taiko comes out of, the Japanese word for drum,
• 8:49
  Ann Ishimaru: the importance of Asian American voice.
• 8:52
  Ann Ishimaru: And so then I started to think, wow, you know, like there's really potent things
• 8:55
  Ann Ishimaru: that I have learned from my own family and community that I never would have learned in school.
• 9:01
  Ann Ishimaru: And so that's when I started to really think about the ways that those folks
• 9:07
  Ann Ishimaru: might have some really crucial insights and expertise that could be useful and
• 9:13
  Ann Ishimaru: maybe even essential for improving what happens inside schools.
• 9:20
  Ann Ishimaru: I think that's one of the things about thinking about leadership,
• 9:23
  Ann Ishimaru: we know it's crucial in improving schools – or transforming them is that the way
• 9:28
  Ann Ishimaru: I like to really think about it now –
• 9:29
  Ann Ishimaru: But educators alone, the professionals alone, don't have all of the insights,
• 9:37
  Ann Ishimaru: cultural practices, ancestral knowledges, and imagination alone to be able to do that.
• 9:44
  Ann Ishimaru: We really need the young people, families, and communities to be part of that process.
• 9:49
  Paul Kuttner: In terms of schools, you started out as a science teacher. Is that something
• 9:53
  Paul Kuttner: that you were trying to do as a science teacher?
• 9:55
  Paul Kuttner: Are these ideas that came later for you?
• 9:59
  Ann Ishimaru: You know, some of them were happening while I was a science teacher,
• 10:04
  Ann Ishimaru: but frankly, it was, I was really just trying to figure out what was what.
• 10:10
  Ann Ishimaru: There were things that weren't sitting right with me that I couldn't figure
• 10:13
  Ann Ishimaru: out within the bounds of the curriculum how to address. Yes,
• 10:18
  Ann Ishimaru: I was teaching in a very white school. It was an alternative school.
• 10:23
  Ann Ishimaru: But we did have a handful of kids of color.
• 10:27
  Ann Ishimaru: And one black mom in particular had spoken with the leadership of the school
• 10:32
  Ann Ishimaru: about more multicultural curriculum. So this is, you know, like in the 90s.
• 10:37
  Ann Ishimaru: And I was like, oh, gosh, you know, what would that look like in science? How could I do that?
• 10:41
  Ann Ishimaru: And I was getting all excited about it. And then I was sitting in this faculty
• 10:45
  Ann Ishimaru: meeting, and the teachers started ridiculing and making fun of this mom.
• 10:51
  Ann Ishimaru: There was some kind of event that was going to happen, and they were going to
• 10:55
  Ann Ishimaru: get parents to sit at different tables to talk about, I don't know,
• 11:00
  Ann Ishimaru: like their interests or things they wanted to contribute or something.
• 11:02
  Ann Ishimaru: And they started laughing about how she could sit at the table by herself.
• 11:06
  Ann Ishimaru: And it was this horrible feeling. I was a very young, you know,
• 11:10
  Ann Ishimaru: I was very young and I just, you know, it just made me feel really awful.
• 11:17
  Ann Ishimaru: I didn't have, you know, I'm kind of ashamed to say I didn't say anything at the
• 11:20
  Ann Ishimaru: time. I was just like crumbling inside.
• 11:23
  Ann Ishimaru: And that was when I was like, all right, I have to get out. I have to get out
• 11:27
  Ann Ishimaru: of this place. And went from there into environmental justice organizing.
• 11:39
  Paul Kuttner: So, you mentioned the research that we were both involved in on community organizing.
• 11:44
  Paul Kuttner: You specifically were studying organizing in California.
• 11:49
  Paul Kuttner: And as one piece of that work, I remember you interviewed school principals
• 11:54
  Paul Kuttner: who had been trained in community organizing. And it transformed how they thought
• 11:58
  Paul Kuttner: about their roles in schools.
• 12:00
  Paul Kuttner: You wrote an article about how they shifted, quote, from heroes to organizers.
• 12:04
  Paul Kuttner: I was hoping you could talk a bit about what those principles taught you and
• 12:08
  Paul Kuttner: what really stood out to you from those conversations.
• 12:12
  Ann Ishimaru: Yeah.
• 12:13
  Ann Ishimaru: So these were small schools that were being designed, and this was my first
• 12:20
  Ann Ishimaru: experience and exposure to kind of the power of design work together.
• 12:25
  Ann Ishimaru: And they were being supported by this community organizing group.
• 12:28
  Ann Ishimaru: These were teacher leaders at the time, and they were in, you know,
• 12:32
  Ann Ishimaru: university-based leadership programs.
• 12:34
  Ann Ishimaru: And part of what I started to realize is their preparation to become leaders
• 12:40
  Ann Ishimaru: had a parallel with the sort of in-service leadership supports and professional
• 12:48
  Ann Ishimaru: development as part of this process of designing schools with families and other teachers.
• 12:54
  Ann Ishimaru: And so they, you know, they kind of shifted from this idea that their role was
• 13:00
  Ann Ishimaru: the person to be out front calling the shots and making the decisions and
• 13:05
  Ann Ishimaru: kind of shifting from that idea of the principal as the hero or the, you know,
• 13:10
  Ann Ishimaru: the decider to the idea of the principal as the organizer.
• 13:13
  Ann Ishimaru: Meaning that they're the ones, it's their job to facilitate the conversation,
• 13:19
  Ann Ishimaru: to help cultivate the leadership of others.
• 13:22
  Ann Ishimaru: And just a really simple practice as an example of shared leadership is when
• 13:27
  Ann Ishimaru: they were doing the, when they were planning for the schools and they were trying
• 13:31
  Ann Ishimaru: to design them, they were rotating who was chairing the meeting.
• 13:36
  Ann Ishimaru: And then those principals ended up taking that practice into their meetings
• 13:41
  Ann Ishimaru: with parents later, and they would meet ahead of time with different parent leaders.
• 13:47
  Ann Ishimaru: The parent leaders would be the ones setting the agenda with the,
• 13:49
  Ann Ishimaru: you know, the support and input of the principal.
• 13:52
  Ann Ishimaru: And then those parent leaders would be the ones facilitating the meeting with other parents.
• 13:58
  Ann Ishimaru: Another example that I was really struck by is they were trying to write a grant
• 14:02
  Ann Ishimaru: application or not, I think it was a award application.
• 14:06
  Ann Ishimaru: And instead of just holing up in her office by herself, this one principal,
• 14:11
  Ann Ishimaru: you know, to write, to pound out this application, she actually called together
• 14:16
  Ann Ishimaru: all of the parents and a bunch of teachers.
• 14:19
  Ann Ishimaru: And they put up these sessions around the gym and they had the questions from
• 14:25
  Ann Ishimaru: the application and they were rotating around to brainstorm and talk about what
• 14:31
  Ann Ishimaru: they should write in each of the sections.
• 14:34
  Ann Ishimaru: And so I was sitting in on that. And one of the things that struck me,
• 14:37
  Ann Ishimaru: one, that you would even try to write a grant like that, but two,
• 14:40
  Ann Ishimaru: that I was in this group with other parents and I'm just listening and they're
• 14:43
  Ann Ishimaru: like, okay, it's your turn to write.
• 14:44
  Ann Ishimaru: I was like, oh no, no, no, I'm just listening. I'm just here.
• 14:48
  Ann Ishimaru: And I tried to resist, you know, because I was trying to be like the researcher, right?
• 14:51
  Ann Ishimaru: And one of the parent leaders just drops the pen in my hand and he's like, we all contribute.
• 14:57
  Ann Ishimaru: And so I got up there and, you know, like I wrote down some of the things they
• 15:01
  Ann Ishimaru: were saying and I realized, okay,
• 15:03
  Ann Ishimaru: this is the culture here it's so ingrained that now the principal with these other
• 15:11
  Ann Ishimaru: parent leaders have made it a kind of routine that everybody contributes,
• 15:16
  Ann Ishimaru: even the folks who didn't know anything yet.
• 15:20
  Ann Ishimaru: But we all had a role to play.
• 15:22
  Ann Ishimaru: Other things that I remember one of them talking to me about was the challenge
• 15:26
  Ann Ishimaru: of working with teachers and introducing teachers into a context.
• 15:32
  Ann Ishimaru: Another example is like at the beginning of the year, there's a parent panel,
• 15:37
  Ann Ishimaru: you know, like the, you know, there'll be like professional development days
• 15:42
  Ann Ishimaru: right before school starts.
• 15:43
  Ann Ishimaru: And the principals would have parents introduce the school and kind of provide
• 15:50
  Ann Ishimaru: guidance about their expectations to the teachers.
• 15:55
  Ann Ishimaru: And that's over time
• 15:58
  Ann Ishimaru: I think they developed more expertise in terms of, you know
• 16:01
  Ann Ishimaru: the parents were part of hiring teachers so that
• 16:04
  Ann Ishimaru: evolved across time but still even teachers who
• 16:07
  Ann Ishimaru: said they were very committed to partnering with
• 16:11
  Ann Ishimaru: parents had never done it in the kinds of ways that that they were doing it
• 16:17
  Ann Ishimaru: in these schools and the kinds of expectations that they had and so I think
• 16:21
  Ann Ishimaru: that was sometimes challenging for the leaders to navigate between the expectations
• 16:26
  Ann Ishimaru: that the district had of them,
• 16:28
  Ann Ishimaru: like they would get in trouble because sometimes they were told,
• 16:32
  Ann Ishimaru: like, you know, get your parents under control, you know, that kind of thing.
• 16:36
  Ann Ishimaru: And they're like, we don't control them.
• 16:38
  Ann Ishimaru: And then also being able to think about their role in relation to teachers,
• 16:43
  Ann Ishimaru: supporting teachers to do their best work,
• 16:47
  Ann Ishimaru: but also having to navigate the very complex power dynamics that can play out
• 16:54
  Ann Ishimaru: as they are entering into a school context where partnership with families is
• 17:00
  Ann Ishimaru: not just call home when the kid's in trouble and, you know,
• 17:05
  Ann Ishimaru: talk to them for 20 minutes at the parent-teacher conference.
• 17:09
  Ann Ishimaru: Right.
• 17:10
  Paul Kuttner: Yeah, so I'm starting to get a picture of kind of the complexity here.
• 17:13
  Paul Kuttner: We have taking on a role of a school leader that not only involves all the traditional
• 17:19
  Paul Kuttner: things that a leader has to do, but you're talking about
• 17:22
  Paul Kuttner: Building different relationships and building trust with families.
• 17:25
  Paul Kuttner: You're talking about building trust and connection between teachers and families,
• 17:29
  Paul Kuttner: supporting teachers, and then doing this all while navigating this larger power
• 17:33
  Paul Kuttner: structure in the district that's not built for this.
• 17:36
  Paul Kuttner: That sounds like a bit of a setup for these leaders.
• 17:41
  Ann Ishimaru: Yes. And I think one of the other complexity, of course, is the community organizing
• 17:45
  Ann Ishimaru: group itself and the role that they played in relation to the district.
• 17:49
  Ann Ishimaru: They were definitely putting pressure on the district at the time.
• 17:53
  Ann Ishimaru: You know, I think this happens a lot to folks in the principal role,
• 17:57
  Ann Ishimaru: that they get kind of squeezed in between.
• 18:00
  Ann Ishimaru: At the same time, though, one of the things that they shared,
• 18:05
  Ann Ishimaru: they all shared, though, is that the parents,
• 18:07
  Ann Ishimaru: the organizing group, the organized parents, the community organizers were an
• 18:11
  Ann Ishimaru: amazing source of support and sustenance as they went about their work.
• 18:21
  Ann Ishimaru: That without them, they wouldn't have been able to create the kind of school
• 18:26
  Ann Ishimaru: and the kinds of amazing, I mean, they ended up winning these statewide awards.
• 18:34
  Ann Ishimaru: They wouldn't have been able to produce the kinds of successes that they had.
• 18:39
  Ann Ishimaru: And one of them, the principal was there. I was really kind of surprised.
• 18:43
  Ann Ishimaru: She was at that school for, I think, 11 or 12 years, which is not the typical
• 18:48
  Ann Ishimaru: thing in many school systems.
• 18:51
  Ann Ishimaru: So she really talked about both the complexities and of getting kind of squeezed
• 18:55
  Ann Ishimaru: in that way, but also that those relationships enabled her to sustain in a way
• 19:00
  Ann Ishimaru: that she wouldn't have otherwise been able to.
• 19:10
  Ann Ishimaru: I'll let you off
• 19:12
  Paul Kuttner: the old project and shift you up to something a little more recent.
• 19:15
  Paul Kuttner: So for the past eight to 10 years, you've been helping to run the Lead for Equity project.
• 19:23
  Paul Kuttner: Could you give us a really quick overview of what that project is?
• 19:27
  Ann Ishimaru: Yeah.
• 19:28
  Ann Ishimaru: So Decoteau Irby and Terrance Green and I started talking.
• 19:33
  Ann Ishimaru: We were having lunch, actually. And we started talking about how many of our
• 19:35
  Ann Ishimaru: friends and colleagues and students were getting into this role of Equity Director.
• 19:41
  Ann Ishimaru: And starting to realize, oh, you know, there's something happening nationally here.
• 19:46
  Ann Ishimaru: You know, we had all actually individually started casting around trying to
• 19:51
  Ann Ishimaru: figure out what was the research literature out there on it.
• 19:53
  Ann Ishimaru: And there really wasn't any.
• 19:55
  Ann Ishimaru: So we're like, hey, let's try to find out what's going on.
• 19:59
  Ann Ishimaru: So that was the beginning. And the first part of our work was really trying
• 20:04
  Ann Ishimaru: to understand what is the work of the folks who are stepping into these roles.
• 20:08
  Ann Ishimaru: And they came under many different titles.
• 20:12
  Ann Ishimaru: And it turns out they were doing all kinds of different things.
• 20:15
  Ann Ishimaru: But we moved on from there and realized, okay, once we got a sense of the huge
• 20:20
  Ann Ishimaru: range of what they took up,
• 20:24
  Ann Ishimaru: that we need to understand more about the broader ecosystems of equity work
• 20:28
  Ann Ishimaru: in the vein of the kind of expansive notion of leadership that I was just talking about,
• 20:34
  Ann Ishimaru: that we can focus on the principals or we can focus on the equity directors
• 20:38
  Ann Ishimaru: or the superintendents.
• 20:39
  Ann Ishimaru: And we're not saying that they don't matter. They matter hugely.
• 20:43
  Ann Ishimaru: And in order for them to realize change, there are a huge number of other folks
• 20:50
  Ann Ishimaru: who are leading for equity in these systems.
• 20:54
  Ann Ishimaru: So that then we embarked on a, it ended up being more like three or four year
• 20:59
  Ann Ishimaru: study, longitudinal study of three school systems and the equity leadership
• 21:04
  Ann Ishimaru: that was playing out within those systems.
• 21:06
  Ann Ishimaru: And in each of those, it looked very different as well.
• 21:09
  Ann Ishimaru: But they had each as systems committed to equitable leadership and change-making.
• 21:15
  Ann Ishimaru: They defined it a little bit differently in each case, but it was ultimately
• 21:20
  Ann Ishimaru: about addressing the racialized disparities and improving educational experiences and outcomes,
• 21:28
  Ann Ishimaru: especially of students of color and other students who've been marginalized in the systems.
• 21:33
  Ann Ishimaru: So that's the kind of bigger picture. It's come to be a network,
• 21:37
  Ann Ishimaru: a kind of loose network of other scholars of other practitioners as well.
• 21:43
  Ann Ishimaru: And a subset of them came together and put this new book together that will be coming out this fall.
• 21:52
  Paul Kuttner: Excellent. Congratulations.
• 21:54
  Ann Ishimaru: Thank you.
• 21:55
  Paul Kuttner: It's called Doing the Work of Equity Leadership for Justice and Systems Change.
• 22:01
  Paul Kuttner: So it's an edited volume.
• 22:02
  Paul Kuttner: There's a lot of authors. There's a lot of different work in there.
• 22:05
  Ann Ishimaru: I think one of the things that we have this kind of edited book idea in the
• 22:15
  Ann Ishimaru: field where it's sort of like a couple people get together, they put a call
• 22:18
  Ann Ishimaru: together and they're like, hey, speak about this,
• 22:20
  Ann Ishimaru: uh, topic. And then they get all these, um,
• 22:24
  Ann Ishimaru: chapters in lots of different chapters and they, like, they try to kind of,
• 22:29
  Ann Ishimaru: um, you know, make it fit together, but they're usually like from all these
• 22:34
  Ann Ishimaru: different, um, you know, just different research projects or different contexts.
• 22:38
  Ann Ishimaru: And so ours is a little different in that sense. Um, it's a little bit more
• 22:42
  Ann Ishimaru: like the project that you and I were a part of in the sense that all of the
• 22:47
  Ann Ishimaru: chapters are folks that we worked with through this nearly 10-year journey.
• 22:54
  Ann Ishimaru: And some of them were grad students when we first started working with them.
• 22:57
  Ann Ishimaru: And then now they're faculty members.
• 22:59
  Ann Ishimaru: Many of them were equity directors at the time, but maybe now they're superintendents
• 23:04
  Ann Ishimaru: or they are in other kinds of roles.
• 23:06
  Ann Ishimaru: So they're all sort of connected in one way or another,
• 23:10
  Ann Ishimaru: and we've kind of woven them together across time in a way that speaks to the
• 23:15
  Ann Ishimaru: cycles of equity work, doing the work, that the context, I mean,
• 23:20
  Ann Ishimaru: we started with this idea that context matters. We all say that, right?
• 23:23
  Ann Ishimaru: But really thinking about how there are, over the course of education,
• 23:28
  Ann Ishimaru: educational change making and reform, that there are awakenings,
• 23:32
  Ann Ishimaru: that there's kind of morning work where people are seeding and starting things,
• 23:38
  Ann Ishimaru: putting things in motion, creating policies and structures.
• 23:42
  Ann Ishimaru: There's what we ended up calling midday work where all the lights are on,
• 23:48
  Ann Ishimaru: the folks're doing the work,
• 23:50
  Ann Ishimaru: there's lots of support. There's resources that happened in the wake of
• 23:53
  Ann Ishimaru: the murder of George Floyd after 2020. And then all too quickly,
• 23:59
  Ann Ishimaru: we move into evening work.
• 24:02
  Ann Ishimaru: And now we're arguing that we're really seeing is night falling,
• 24:05
  Ann Ishimaru: where there's the pushback, the anti-DEI work,
• 24:09
  Ann Ishimaru: more subtle retrenchment and budget impacts to the much more explicit attacks
• 24:16
  Ann Ishimaru: on public education at large,
• 24:20
  Ann Ishimaru: but also any of the sort of equity-focused endeavors that folks have been working on across years.
• 24:29
  Ann Ishimaru: So our argument is that there are things that we learn across those times.
• 24:34
  Ann Ishimaru: And as we move in night, it's a time to reflect.
• 24:38
  Ann Ishimaru: It's a time to rest.
• 24:41
  Ann Ishimaru: And it's a time to keep going and keep moving, but that we might need to change
• 24:46
  Ann Ishimaru: the kinds of strategies that we're taking up to do that. And a new day is ahead.
• 24:51
  Ann Ishimaru: It may be a while, but doing the work, as the folks in the field say, it continues on.
• 25:01
  Ann Ishimaru: So that's kind of the overview of how we approach that.
• 25:05
  Paul Kuttner: That's great. So the work, as you mentioned, is complex.
• 25:10
  Paul Kuttner: There's a lot of different pieces, a lot of strategies. I want to focus in on one piece.
• 25:14
  Paul Kuttner: You mentioned just a moment ago about, you know, looking beyond principals and
• 25:21
  Paul Kuttner: superintendents, this larger ecosystem of leadership.
• 25:24
  Paul Kuttner: And you write in the conclusion of the book, and I quote, leadership for systems
• 25:29
  Paul Kuttner: equity work requires multiple people in a variety of roles with a broad range of expertise.
• 25:35
  Paul Kuttner: So I was hoping you could talk a little about in your research.
• 25:41
  Paul Kuttner: What are some of the different roles and expertise that are needed?
• 25:45
  Paul Kuttner: And who and how are those people coming together to build the coalitions or
• 25:52
  Paul Kuttner: networks or collaborations they need?
• 25:54
  Ann Ishimaru: Yeah, I think I'll try to, I'm going to speak to, hopefully I can keep it succinct,
• 25:59
  Ann Ishimaru: two different examples.
• 26:01
  Ann Ishimaru: One is in the book and one is work that I've been doing locally that is not yet in a book.
• 26:08
  Ann Ishimaru: So one is in a district, we have pseudonyms for all the districts,
• 26:12
  Ann Ishimaru: but one of the districts that we studied over time was one we ended up calling Sky Mountain.
• 26:18
  Ann Ishimaru: And so there was a kind of group of Black women principals who were connected
• 26:24
  Ann Ishimaru: to each other and were supporting each other.
• 26:27
  Ann Ishimaru: There was some district support, but it was really coming from them.
• 26:30
  Ann Ishimaru: And in one of the schools, the leader there partnered with families and then
• 26:37
  Ann Ishimaru: a community-based organization.
• 26:38
  Ann Ishimaru: They ended up creating this series of films that the kids created.
• 26:44
  Ann Ishimaru: So this is elementary school.
• 26:47
  Ann Ishimaru: And so all the kids in the school, it was part of a literacy effort.
• 26:51
  Ann Ishimaru: And they all created films. Each class created different films with a focus
• 26:58
  Ann Ishimaru: on either Indigenous sovereignty or or Black Liberation.
• 27:02
  Ann Ishimaru: And then there was also sort of food justice and water protection in the mix.
• 27:05
  Ann Ishimaru: And they created these amazing, beautiful films through this partnership.
• 27:10
  Ann Ishimaru: So you had, I kind of share this one because I know that you do a lot of work around the arts.
• 27:16
  Ann Ishimaru: So they, you know, they had this whole curriculum that they developed,
• 27:19
  Ann Ishimaru: and it was really key that the teachers were able to be thinking about both
• 27:24
  Ann Ishimaru: literacies, but also communities and histories.
• 27:26
  Ann Ishimaru: And then they had community-based organization who really brought in the expertise
• 27:32
  Ann Ishimaru: both around community histories and organizing, but also had the film expertise.
• 27:41
  Ann Ishimaru: And then families brought their own, you know, the support of their own young
• 27:46
  Ann Ishimaru: people, but also their hopes and dreams for their children more broadly.
• 27:50
  Ann Ishimaru: Man, they were amazing little films. They ended up putting them together.
• 27:54
  Ann Ishimaru: They had a community film festival.
• 27:57
  Ann Ishimaru: And what I remember in particular was this idea of, they redid Ruby Bridges' first day of school.
• 28:04
  Ann Ishimaru: Like if they could reimagine what it would have been like.
• 28:08
  Ann Ishimaru: And it was really beautiful. And one of my colleagues was like,
• 28:11
  Ann Ishimaru: you know, I think, you know, like probably there were no dry eyes in the room after that.
• 28:16
  Ann Ishimaru: It was this very short film, but it was so powerful.
• 28:19
  Ann Ishimaru: And, you know, one of my colleagues was like, you know, that was healing that I needed.
• 28:24
  Ann Ishimaru: Um, so there are,
• 28:26
  Ann Ishimaru: There's technical expertise in terms of the film production and,
• 28:30
  Ann Ishimaru: and script writing and all of those kinds of things.
• 28:34
  Ann Ishimaru: And then there's like this collective imagination that I think we don't often
• 28:40
  Ann Ishimaru: name, um, as a capacity, but it's something that young people have already.
• 28:46
  Ann Ishimaru: Um, it's just that we, especially in schooling contexts, don't often think about
• 28:52
  Ann Ishimaru: how do we cultivate that in tandem with these other aspects,
• 28:57
  Ann Ishimaru: some of them which are technical, some of them are cultural.
• 29:00
  Ann Ishimaru: Others are coming out of historical context.
• 29:04
  Ann Ishimaru: But all of those things together kind of harnessed with the cultivation of imagination
• 29:11
  Ann Ishimaru: made for this really powerful production and learning.
• 29:16
  Ann Ishimaru: And yes, they actually did really dramatically improve the literacy scores.
• 29:22
  Ann Ishimaru: People always want to know that part.
• 29:24
  Ann Ishimaru: But to me, that was only one, again, kind of like one small part of a much bigger
• 29:32
  Ann Ishimaru: and more expansive effort.
• 29:34
  Paul Kuttner: That's beautiful.
• 29:42
  Paul Kuttner: So as you describe in the Lead for Equity project, you're an engaged, participatory researcher.
• 29:50
  Paul Kuttner: You work alongside schools and communities, families, and educators to do research
• 29:57
  Paul Kuttner: together using what you call co-design methods.
• 30:02
  Paul Kuttner: And so I was hoping you could talk a little bit before we're done about what
• 30:06
  Paul Kuttner: it means to co-design in education.
• 30:09
  Paul Kuttner: And maybe you could walk us through the Kings of Literacy project.
• 30:13
  Ann Ishimaru: So actually, that was the second example I was going to give. That works great.
• 30:16
  Ann Ishimaru: So, you know, we I think a lot of folks use the word co-design very loosely
• 30:22
  Ann Ishimaru: these days in the way that folks probably continue to use the word engagement very loosely.
• 30:27
  Ann Ishimaru: But the particular flavor or brand of co-design that I do comes out of,
• 30:34
  Ann Ishimaru: particularly out of the learning sciences.
• 30:38
  Ann Ishimaru: And participatory design research. And the folks who study race,
• 30:44
  Ann Ishimaru: culture, and learning, so Dr.
• 30:46
  Ann Ishimaru: Megan Bang is one of the folks that I had the opportunity to work with early on in my career.
• 30:52
  Ann Ishimaru: I really learned a profound amount from her, not only about the learning sciences
• 30:59
  Ann Ishimaru: and the theories and methodologies of participatory design-based research, but also,
• 31:09
  Ann Ishimaru: the ways that that particular flavor or brand of co-design really builds from
• 31:16
  Ann Ishimaru: indigenous and decolonizing methodologies.
• 31:18
  Ann Ishimaru: So we came to call the work Solidarity-Driven Co-Design, and that,
• 31:24
  Ann Ishimaru: of course, as you know, came out of the Family Leadership Design Collaborative.
• 31:27
  Ann Ishimaru: And so the work, we actually, it came out of this effort called the Early Literacy Collaborative.
• 31:33
  Ann Ishimaru: And, you know, it's funny because now that I think about these two examples,
• 31:36
  Ann Ishimaru: it's going to make it sound like I'm a literacy person. I'm not at all.
• 31:40
  Ann Ishimaru: But when you partner with folks in the field, you go where they need you to go.
• 31:47
  Ann Ishimaru: So that's been some deeper learning for me.
• 31:51
  Ann Ishimaru: I've been immersed in more of the early literacy literatures and trying to learn
• 31:57
  Ann Ishimaru: about how do we leverage that as a kind of entry point or apertura,
• 32:03
  Ann Ishimaru: as we've said, to co-design with families, and in this case with Black families in particular,
• 32:09
  Ann Ishimaru: and Black boys in second to fourth grade.
• 32:13
  Ann Ishimaru: So this all came out of a long-term partnership with a school district,
• 32:17
  Ann Ishimaru: with our local urban school district, and they had developed strategic plan
• 32:23
  Ann Ishimaru: goals focused on the third grade reading levels, based on a
• 32:29
  Ann Ishimaru: standardized assessments, of Black boys.
• 32:32
  Ann Ishimaru: And they had developed this African-American Male Achievement Initiative.
• 32:37
  Ann Ishimaru: And it was an opportunity for us to come alongside them and say,
• 32:40
  Ann Ishimaru: well, what would it look like if we were to take seriously the idea of families being at,
• 32:47
  Ann Ishimaru: Black families being at the table to work on this goal and to improve literacy
• 32:53
  Ann Ishimaru: for all children, for all young people,
• 32:56
  Ann Ishimaru: but especially think about how could we do better with and for Black boys.
• 33:03
  Ann Ishimaru: And so we brought their families together. This is a collaboration with the
• 33:08
  Ann Ishimaru: school district, with this initiative, with three elementary schools,
• 33:12
  Ann Ishimaru: and with a couple of community partners as well.
• 33:15
  Ann Ishimaru: And we brought them together and we said, well, if we think more expansively
• 33:19
  Ann Ishimaru: about literacy and take a kind of critical literacy approach,
• 33:25
  Ann Ishimaru: then we realized that reading in books at school is only one kind of literacy.
• 33:30
  Ann Ishimaru: There are all kinds of literacies that are happening at home and in communities.
• 33:35
  Ann Ishimaru: And those literacies, and this was African-American and African immigrant families,
• 33:40
  Ann Ishimaru: often reside in storytelling.
• 33:43
  Ann Ishimaru: So we started from storytelling as a way to tap those ancestral um knowledges
• 33:50
  Ann Ishimaru: practices and wisdom and um.
• 33:53
  Ann Ishimaru: Then co-designed, it ended up being the young people themselves,
• 33:58
  Ann Ishimaru: the kings, we call them, were really at the helm.
• 34:02
  Ann Ishimaru: And so it was an intergenerational co-design. We didn't start that way,
• 34:06
  Ann Ishimaru: but that's where it ended.
• 34:07
  Ann Ishimaru: And we co-designed this story about a little crow, his name is Pixie,
• 34:12
  Ann Ishimaru: and he was a little curious crow.
• 34:15
  Ann Ishimaru: And it's this really profound story about a crow who's across the waters with
• 34:20
  Ann Ishimaru: a fruit that is beautiful, like the teachings of his ancestors.
• 34:25
  Ann Ishimaru: And then he sees something shiny in the water and is attracted to it and tries
• 34:30
  Ann Ishimaru: to go and pick it up, but it's very heavy. He can't carry both of them.
• 34:32
  Ann Ishimaru: And then a storm comes and it threatens to wash him out to sea.
• 34:38
  Ann Ishimaru: And so then we came up with different endings to the story and realized that
• 34:44
  Ann Ishimaru: we actually really struggled.
• 34:46
  Ann Ishimaru: We were trying to figure out what's the one right ending. And then we finally
• 34:49
  Ann Ishimaru: realized, wait a minute, actually the power of this is that Kings getting to
• 34:54
  Ann Ishimaru: decide the ending themselves. So we turned it into a choose-your-own-adventure.
• 35:01
  Ann Ishimaru: And all of the stories, the one thing they all had in common is the crow's not
• 35:05
  Ann Ishimaru: alone in trying to figure it out.
• 35:07
  Ann Ishimaru: So his family comes, his friends come, his ancestors come, and he continues on this journey.
• 35:12
  Ann Ishimaru: And there are multiple different endings, but the power of it is that the Kings
• 35:18
  Ann Ishimaru: have a sense of agency about how they get to navigate that journey.
• 35:22
  Ann Ishimaru: So that has been this really profound journey over the past three years in co-creating that.
• 35:29
  Ann Ishimaru: And now the families are continuing on.
• 35:33
  Ann Ishimaru: They've gone into co-design at their own schools. So one of the schools,
• 35:38
  Ann Ishimaru: for example, has continued on and they're making a cookbook that is rooted in
• 35:42
  Ann Ishimaru: the different recipes and cultures and family histories that the kids themselves are in.
• 35:50
  Ann Ishimaru: So there's so much more to say. It's really hard for me to stop talking about
• 35:53
  Ann Ishimaru: it because it's such cool stuff.
• 35:58
  Ann Ishimaru: But ultimately, the idea of co-design is, you know, we're trying to,
• 36:03
  Ann Ishimaru: there is an, we are trying to improve schooling and outcomes and the experience of learning.
• 36:11
  Ann Ishimaru: But ultimately, one of the things that we're kind of after is shifting the relationships
• 36:16
  Ann Ishimaru: between parents, young people, teachers,
• 36:20
  Ann Ishimaru: other educators, and really fostering what in the literature we call transformative agency.
• 36:28
  Ann Ishimaru: Because that's the thing that's going to sustain across time.
• 36:31
  Paul Kuttner: So one of the things we try to do on this podcast is really get into the how.
• 36:36
  Paul Kuttner: And so my question here, you know, that is a beautiful story.
• 36:39
  Paul Kuttner: You've told us a number of stories about how you or other leaders have brought families,
• 36:46
  Paul Kuttner: schools, organizations, folks together to create something new,
• 36:49
  Paul Kuttner: to co-design, to imagine and bring to reality new learning opportunities,
• 36:56
  Paul Kuttner: new products, new experiences.
• 36:58
  Paul Kuttner: If someone else wanted to get involved in this kind of work,
• 37:03
  Paul Kuttner: what would be like one or two pieces of advice that you would give them?
• 37:08
  Paul Kuttner: Maybe things that you wish you had known when you first started but had to learn along the way
• 37:14
  Ann Ishimaru: Hmm.
• 37:15
  Ann Ishimaru: I think one is if you are in a position, you know, if you have a role in a formal
• 37:22
  Ann Ishimaru: institution, your first job is to learn.
• 37:25
  Ann Ishimaru: Before you start creating anything, to learn, to inquire, to understand where
• 37:33
  Ann Ishimaru: creation, where knowledge and wisdom already resides.
• 37:38
  Ann Ishimaru: So you start with the assumption that's there, because I think we sometimes
• 37:43
  Ann Ishimaru: can think like we're going to drop in and we're going to create something new from scratch.
• 37:47
  Ann Ishimaru: And often it's, where are these things already happening? How do they already exist?
• 37:53
  Ann Ishimaru: And so an example that I gave, it was like trying to figure out how do we do
• 37:57
  Ann Ishimaru: some story work because it already lives in the ways that families are teaching
• 38:02
  Ann Ishimaru: their young people about their culture, their language,
• 38:05
  Ann Ishimaru: their history, their values, and figuring out that stories and proverbs were
• 38:10
  Ann Ishimaru: one of the places that that lived and figuring out how to tap that.
• 38:14
  Ann Ishimaru: So the starting with learning as a first move always.
• 38:19
  Ann Ishimaru: I think the other one is not being afraid of the messiness.
• 38:24
  Ann Ishimaru: And I'm still learning this. I freak out every time.
• 38:27
  Ann Ishimaru: I feel like, oh, this isn't what I expected, or this isn't going where I thought
• 38:33
  Ann Ishimaru: it would go, or people are confused about what's going on, or tensions emerge.
• 38:39
  Ann Ishimaru: But just expecting that that's part of the process, and it's disorienting.
• 38:45
  Ann Ishimaru: And I think what happens, especially in schooling context, when you invite families
• 38:49
  Ann Ishimaru: who have never experienced something different to,
• 38:55
  Ann Ishimaru: you know, share their expertise,
• 38:57
  Ann Ishimaru: it's very disorienting and can be confusing. So I've come to recognize that
• 39:02
  Ann Ishimaru: that's part of the, to expect that.
• 39:05
  Ann Ishimaru: So what happens is when I'm coaching other educators and families are like,
• 39:09
  Ann Ishimaru: What are we doing?
• 39:10
  Ann Ishimaru: What, you know, basically they won't say this in so many words,
• 39:12
  Ann Ishimaru: but like, I came here, thought you were going to tell me something I needed to know.
• 39:17
  Ann Ishimaru: When are you going to tell me all the things or give me all the materials or whatever it is.
• 39:23
  Ann Ishimaru: And we're not, and we have to keep saying to them, actually,
• 39:26
  Ann Ishimaru: this is about your expertise, learning from your expertise, and then we're going
• 39:30
  Ann Ishimaru: to co-create something together.
• 39:34
  Ann Ishimaru: Many times educators want to be like, oh, we're not doing this right.
• 39:38
  Ann Ishimaru: We're not, we need to, we need to give parents what they expect.
• 39:43
  Ann Ishimaru: And I think that's one of the things it's like, It's messy in there. There will be tensions.
• 39:47
  Ann Ishimaru: It's disorienting for everyone.
• 39:51
  Ann Ishimaru: And trying to not slip back into the, it's our job to tell parents what to do
• 39:58
  Ann Ishimaru: or tell parents what they need to know.
• 40:00
  Ann Ishimaru: Really trying to hold on to, actually, we're trying to do something different here.
• 40:05
  Ann Ishimaru: We're trying to partner in real and different ways. We're trying to build relationships,
• 40:12
  Ann Ishimaru: and we're trying to learn together and not being afraid when it gets messy or
• 40:18
  Ann Ishimaru: confusing or disorienting.
• 40:26
  Paul Kuttner: You mentioned that in the framework of your book, the people doing equity work
• 40:33
  Paul Kuttner: in schools are entering a nighttime phase.
• 40:37
  Paul Kuttner: During this nighttime phase what is giving you hope? Yeah i think what's giving me
• 40:46
  Ann Ishimaru: hope during this nighttime phase is also the same kind of thing you
• 40:49
  Ann Ishimaru: know even during the midday was giving me hope was
• 40:52
  Ann Ishimaru: just young people themselves who are
• 40:55
  Ann Ishimaru: they're not afraid to take
• 40:59
  Ann Ishimaru: take the stands to push back
• 41:03
  Ann Ishimaru: to organize um to be
• 41:05
  Ann Ishimaru: part of um really continuing to
• 41:09
  Ann Ishimaru: make change i just like there's so many
• 41:12
  Ann Ishimaru: you know there's folks in universities there's folks in K-12 um and communities
• 41:20
  Ann Ishimaru: like it's real real out there right now like people are being attacked they're
• 41:25
  Ann Ishimaru: being taken you know like the consequences are dire.
• 41:32
  Ann Ishimaru: And even so, it gives me hope that young people are not deterred. They're not gonna
• 41:41
  Ann Ishimaru: Take it laying down and that they are their
• 41:45
  Ann Ishimaru: creativity and ability to imagine the
• 41:49
  Ann Ishimaru: worlds that they they and we want um
• 41:53
  Ann Ishimaru: is as strong as it's always been i think the you know like there's an added
• 41:59
  Ann Ishimaru: layer also like in the wake of the pandemic i was really struck by this we were
• 42:03
  Ann Ishimaru: another one of my current projects is called aunties and uncles in the schools
• 42:06
  Ann Ishimaru: and it came out of work with families who were,
• 42:10
  Ann Ishimaru: families of color, who were really thinking about how when they were growing up,
• 42:15
  Ann Ishimaru: community aunties and uncles or aunties and family of the heart were crucial
• 42:20
  Ann Ishimaru: in their, you know, being well.
• 42:24
  Ann Ishimaru: And one of the things that I've been struck with is I'm partnering with a group
• 42:28
  Ann Ishimaru: that's really centers youth,
• 42:30
  Ann Ishimaru: how the youth, when they're sharing
• 42:33
  Ann Ishimaru: what they want are really explicitly talking
• 42:36
  Ann Ishimaru: about their own emotional social and
• 42:39
  Ann Ishimaru: emotional well-being and the need for um
• 42:42
  Ann Ishimaru: adults to support them to
• 42:46
  Ann Ishimaru: enable them to process and they're just
• 42:49
  Ann Ishimaru: um like uh able to articulate that
• 42:52
  Ann Ishimaru: in a way that at their age I definitely could not do um so I think you know
• 42:58
  Ann Ishimaru: the thing that gives me hope continues to be young people and their visions
• 43:01
  Ann Ishimaru: and this particular generation of young people is able to narrate and be explicit
• 43:09
  Ann Ishimaru: about some of the things that they need,
• 43:12
  Ann Ishimaru: both individually and collectively,
• 43:14
  Ann Ishimaru: in ways that I think prior generations haven't had the language or the capacities
• 43:21
  Ann Ishimaru: or the experiences to be able to do.
• 43:26
  Ann Ishimaru: So I find that really powerful. Yeah.
• 43:29
  Paul Kuttner: Thank you.
• 43:29
  Paul Kuttner: So that's the end of my questions. Do you want to let people know when the book
• 43:33
  Paul Kuttner: is coming out and where they can find it?
• 43:36
  Ann Ishimaru: Yeah, it's coming out September 26th, and it's going to be published by Teachers College Press.
• 43:45
  Ann Ishimaru: And we will be doing a number of different book events across the country.
• 43:51
  Ann Ishimaru: We'll also be sharing at some of the education conferences.
• 43:57
  Ann Ishimaru: So we'll be having a series of events and activities to celebrate the release.
• 44:04
  Paul Kuttner: Excellent. Well, let me know and I'll share them out on the Partnership Work Networks.
• 44:09
  Paul Kuttner: And thank you, Anne, so much for taking the time to talk to me today.
• 44:13
  Ann Ishimaru: Thank you. It's been a pleasure.
• 44:19
  Paul Kuttner: Thank you all for joining me today. To see the episode transcript and show notes,
• 44:24
  Paul Kuttner: head over to partnershipwork.org.
• 44:28
  Paul Kuttner: While you're there, you can sign up for our free Substack newsletter,
• 44:31
  Paul Kuttner: where we'll be sharing updates, essays, book reviews, and more.
• 44:35
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• 44:40
  Paul Kuttner: That's one of the best ways for us to find our audience.
• 44:43
  Paul Kuttner: Partnership Work is an independent podcast produced with the support of the
• 44:47
  Paul Kuttner: wonderful organization Urban Media Arts here in my hometown of Malden, Massachusetts.
• 44:53
  Paul Kuttner: Check them out at urbanmediaarts.org. I'll see you next time. Take care.