August 25, 2025 • 62 mins
Principal Toria Avila joins Lisane to talk honestly about what middle school looks like in South LA today — from the pressure of test-driven systems to the emotional work of keeping kids safe and seen. Toria shares the experiences that shaped her, what teachers and parents really need, and small shifts that could make schools work better for kids and communities.
Notable quote
“We could not lower the standard… your struggles were not going to determine the type of education I was going to put in front of you.” — Toria Avila.
Takeaways
Pause: ask your child what they might be carrying emotionally — and actually listen.
Advocate for balanced metrics: push for ways schools recognize creative and social-emotional strengths, not just test scores.
Support teachers and leaders — rest and wellbeing matter for the whole school to thrive.
Learn how to set boundaries without guilt. Join Lisane's next Protect Your Peace Shaping Session today: https://shapingfreedom.com/boundaries-workshop
Notable quote
“We could not lower the standard… your struggles were not going to determine the type of education I was going to put in front of you.” — Toria Avila.
Takeaways
Pause: ask your child what they might be carrying emotionally — and actually listen.
Advocate for balanced metrics: push for ways schools recognize creative and social-emotional strengths, not just test scores.
Support teachers and leaders — rest and wellbeing matter for the whole school to thrive.
Learn how to set boundaries without guilt. Join Lisane's next Protect Your Peace Shaping Session today: https://shapingfreedom.com/boundaries-workshop
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
I never forgot the lessons that I experienced in early
elementary and in middle school. We could not lower the standard,
we could not have low expectations. I could understand where
you were coming from, I could understand your story and
your background, but your struggles were not going to determine
the type of education I was going to put in
front of you. And when you left my classroom and
when you leave our building, what you want to do,
(00:28):
you will be prepared for educationally. And that's what drives me.
That's what pushes me in this work.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Welcome to the Shaping Freedom podcast, where we dive into
conversations that inspire personal growth, transformation and clarity and challenging times.
I'm your host, Lyssan Basquiato. What does it take to
lead with vision and compassion in the heart of a
community that's raising the next generation of leaders during a
(00:57):
time when family, students in education are all being tested
in new, complex and often very difficult ways. In this
episode of Shaping Freedom, I'm joined by Toria Avila, principle
of Alliance Virgil Robert's Leadership Academy in South Los Angeles.
Terria is not just running a middle school, She's shaping
(01:20):
legacy through education. Her work sits at the intersection of
academic leadership, emotional wellness, and generational impact. At a moment
when parents are navigating anxiety, students are facing social and
emotional challenges, and educators are being stretched way beyond the classroom,
(01:40):
Toria brings clarity, groundedness, and a clear commitment to community.
And today, I'd like to talk a little bit about
how your school's responding and why creating emotionally safe learning
environments is now more urgent than ever. This conversation is
a musclessen for anyone who cares about the well being
of our youth and the legacy that we're building through them,
(02:02):
whether you're a parent, an educator, or someone doing the
work of healing your own family patterns. I first want
to welcome you, Toria Avila to the Shaping Freedom with
Lisanbascia podcast. Thank you, sav You're welcome. You're welcome. We
(02:24):
met at the Alliance Event fundraising event last month. I
think it was yeah, before school was out, so a
couple of months. Good. Yeah, oh wow, it's been a
couple of months. It has time, is jelvi? Yeah, so
like maybe May. Yeah, time has been moving so quickly,
and I wanted to chat with you because we were
(02:46):
chatting at the table and talking about your experience as
an educator in twenty twenty five with twenty twenty five
children and stiff students and the community of parents and
the world and all of that, and we had a
(03:09):
very interesting, I thought, conversation about that, about those experiences
and what they look like. And from that conversation, I
started thinking about my Shaping Freedom audience and how so
many of them are parents who are raising children, who
are themselves dealing with managing navigating this crazy world raising
(03:34):
kids in twenty twenty five exactly exactly. So I knew
that you and I would have an opportunity. I knew
that you and I, if given the opportunity, could have
an amazing conversation. And my ultimate intention with this conversation
is for us to first of all, shed some light
(03:56):
on what the experience is like for students from your perspective,
and also to also shed some light on what the
experience is like as an educator who is putting out
so much energy, putting out so many emotional, mental educational fires.
(04:18):
So that's what I want to talk a little bit
about today, and I want to thank you so much
for the work that that you're doing. Thank you. You know,
we we often and I know that there's been a
lot said about the work that educators do and the
(04:40):
ways that you have to show up for so many
people and and manage so many different the complexities of
a family in many ways, and it's one of those
things we've been talking about forever, but we haven't really done. Yeah. Right,
it's you wonder, like, what impact am I having? Right
you stay?
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Generational impact? That's my why, you know, not to sound
cliche or anything, but that is my why. You know,
as a little black girl growing up in Watts, generational
generations in Watts, you recognize like what it means to
have a school system that does write by you or
(05:23):
a school system that does not do right by you,
particularly in communities like Watts or the Hyde Park area
where I am, and yet we're always still trying to
get it right.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
What was it about school for you as a student
in Watts that made you that led you to decide,
I think I want to be in.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
This thing crazy enough. So kindergarten through third grade, my
mom put me in private school, but I was always
a student or a.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Girl who loved school.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
I loved, loved, loved black women who I thought used
big words I would.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
I was just like, this person is so smart.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
I want to be like that, you know, And what
are these words meaning? Like who is she when she
walks away from this building? What is life like for her?
I was enthralled by black educated women, and so when
I had them as teachers, it would just like filled
me up completely, like this is what I could this
is who I could be, right, this is I aspire
(06:31):
to be them. And so when my mom did put
me in public school my first year, at the time,
I was defined as like what you would say is gifted,
and I was penalized by a black female teacher in
the fourth grade for being gifted, meaning I finished her
work quickly and then I wanted to help others or
(06:54):
I was talking, she'd give me something else and then
I'd whent through it. My mom came and had a
conversation with her, like listen, right, she's coming home, she's
doing this homework five ten minutes tops, and she needs
to be challenged more. I think at that time she
took offense to that, and this is a thing that
(07:14):
I push on teachers as well as a school leader.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
What we're not going to do. That's one of my
favorite things to say, just a little interjection. Yeah, what
we're not going to do.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
What we're not going to do is take for granted
or allow our bias to make us believe that every
black kid is coming from a black home that does
not care about education, and that I have the answers
because I'm the degree. Right, So if that mother walks
in and says, this kid needs more, let's explore. Let's
(07:45):
not take it personal, let's not take offense to it.
Let's enter that space the same way you would if
you were in a more affluent community.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
That's because would you push back with curiosity? Yeah, with curiosity, willingness,
with the willingness, right, I have your back, yeah, right.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
So I was penalized. You know, the teacher made a
comment I'll never forget in front of the class. I
finished the work. And she says openly to everyone like, well,
Toria knows everything, and Toria is gonna be able to
get through all the work quickly. And it's like, what
the So that was incident number one?
Speaker 2 (08:22):
What I hear in that is a caddy woman, a
caddy woman. What't happened to her been exactly who happened
to have been in a position of authority. But that
behavior is behave like how do you do one thing?
Is how you do everything? Yeah? You know.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
And what she didn't realize is that she had already
won me over just being a black female teacher, because,
like I said, I already had a love for black
women that I perceived as smart, right, and I didn't
I couldn't prove that they were smart. I'm just like,
if you could hold a conversation, that's it. I linked
in on that. So I was moved out of her
classroom because of course I went and told my mom,
and my mom was that mom like, no, ma'am, you're.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Not going to do that.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
I was placed into a classroom with fifth and sixth graders.
I was one other fourth grader in the classroom because
they couldn't accommodate. So that's something else, like how can
you not accommodate high performing fourth graders in this school
that you have to play them in the classroom with
fifth and sixth graders. Had the most amazing woman black woman,
miss Jones, everything fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade, finished
(09:24):
there at the elementary, my dad is telling my mother
she can't go to school here in the community. She
can't do junior high here. If you put it in
junior high here, she's going to lose interest. She's gonna
withdraw from school because there's no school here.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Right. Did they tell her where you could go to school?
They just said not here.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Not here meant not here in Watts, right, So of
course I get bussed. I'm busted out to like the
mid Wiltshire community. And I had a situation where the
teacher makes an assignment, gives us an assignment, and everyone
does the assignment, they type it and they bring it back.
I did the assignment, I had it written, and it
(10:06):
was a moment of like, wait, I don't recall this
woman ever telling anybody.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
That this needed to be typed.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
And the aha in my brain was that everything that
I was being praised for was simply an expectation in
this other place, whereas in the schools I was before,
we were getting praise and accolades for Wow, it came
to me like, wait, the expectations for us in Watts
are way different than in other school communities. And these
(10:32):
are educators and educational leaders that are doing this, that
are allowing this. So I understood the discrepancy. Then in
seventh grade, my mom kept saying, you're going to be
a teacher, You're gonna be a teacher, gonna be teachers, Like,
absolutely not, No, I'm not normally yes, I never was like,
I'm going to be a teacher.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
What was your other?
Speaker 1 (10:51):
I thought I was going to be a lawyer. Okay, yeah,
because again that seemed just so respectable, respectable.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah, it's so overrating, exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
And so I found my love for education when I
was in college and I was a dance teacher, Okay,
and that's when it came like midway through. But I
never forgot the lessons that I experienced in early elementary
and in middle school of what education needed to look
like for black and brown kids, particularly black and brown
(11:23):
kids from our communities.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Right.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
We could not lower the standard, We could not have
low expectations. I could understand where you were coming from,
I could understand your story and your background, but your
struggles were not going to determine the type of education
I was going to put in front of you. And
when you left my classroom and when you leave our building,
what you want to do, you'll be prepared for educationally.
(11:45):
And that's what drives me, that's what pushes me in
this work.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
You know, I often ask people what they wanted to
be when they were eleven, because I think it gives
us breadcrumbs either back to ourselves or to validate what
we're doing. And when I was eleven, I wanted to
be a social worker or a teacher, and in my mind,
(12:12):
social work was different than what it often is today.
For me, it was I wanted to help help people,
you know, I wanted to help people in mass and
I wanted to teach. And you just mentioned that at
eleven you wanted to be a lawyer. And it's very
interesting that even in the way that you describe and
(12:36):
share your experience as an educator, you're sharing an experience
that seems to have advocacy as the undercurrent. I like that,
And yeah, like it seems like you're fighting for justice
for your children, absolutely for your students. You know, very
(13:00):
interesting that that seems to have been the thing that
you wanted to do. And then teaching is.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
How is how you how I showed up in that space? Yeah,
I like that.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
So you are the principal of a middle school.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Yes, ages eleven or fourteen, twenty twenty five, I bowed
down to you talk about reason your expectations. I raising
expectations and they're like, girl, whatever with their expectations.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Right.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
I think this generation of children are not allowing us
to define for them where they will be and who
they will be. Unlike when I was growing up, they
told us, you know you're gonna go to school, You're
gonna do this, you can do that.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
To this.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Generation pushes us a lot more. They challenge us a
lot more. They have a better sense I think of
what's happening in the world, and they can call bs
at an earlier age and will and will than we did, right,
And it's because, obviously, right, they have access to so
(14:09):
much information, and so what we're trying to do is
teach them how to harness all of that and then
tap into like who they really are, right, because they
are being told through social media and multiple avenues who
they are and it's not necessarily who they really are.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
So we're creating.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Those safe spaces, or trying to create safe spaces, supportive spaces,
and I would say spaces that allow us as adults
to be a little more humble, because, as you said,
they will call you out. And so they're not for
the fluff, they're not for the bus. They are really
asking the type of questions that some of us were
probably thinking, like do I really.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Need that degree? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Is that true that I need a degree? Is it
true that I can't be famous on social media? Because
for everything that we want to feed them, they can
find the hypocrisy in that, or the contradiction or the
anomaly or the outlier and be like, ah, that's true,
that is true. I think on the other side of it,
they do need a lot more nurturing than we did.
(15:21):
We're seeing a lot more students dealing with mental health
issues their emotional well being because overexposure has created There's
a book called The Anxious Generation, and it talks about
how the brain has been reprogrammed by this generation as
(15:44):
a result of social media and technology. And so while
I won't say they are desensitized fully, they have become
desensitized to so many things that we would be like, Oh,
for example, I'm thinking about like the work we're doing
right now pro black, anti racist work, disrupting the use
(16:05):
of the in word and derogatory language through all day.
You know, throughout the day, students are saying hurtful, harmful
things to each other, and when you bring them to
the table to discuss it, it's like huh, right, Like
you have to really teach the harm and call it out.
And I think they've become so desensitized or trying to
(16:29):
even teach empathy, Right, how do you teach empathy to
a group who's become so inundated, Yeah, to so much
that's around them. But what I also say is that
we can't take that for granted because I do know
that many of them will go home at night and
then they replay their school day and there was a
(16:49):
moment in the day where they weren't safe. And so
how do we create spaces where they don't have to
feel that because a lot of them are masking, right,
to push through, but we have to pull through all
those layers and then at the anteaching math lesson right right.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
At the level that the world, because you need that
as an entrepreneur, you need that. As a content creator,
you need you need to know, you need you need
to know certain things, and you know, for the listeners
as you're listening to this conversation because I really believe
that that middle school chapter is such an important one,
(17:32):
you know, And so as you're listening, think about who
showed up for you while you were in middle school,
who didn't show up for you? You know, what do
you wish someone had seen in you during middle school?
Because you also mentioned, Toria, that these children need something
(17:53):
that we didn't need. And I'm going to push back
a little gently on that, because I think we did. Yeah,
I think we did. I went to school. I think
that what we're seeing today is in some ways and
exhale of the truth. Agreed. They're throwing up, well what
(18:14):
we kept in and we would hold it in, and
we are very much of the I know I am.
I'll speak for me. I'm very much of the I'm
fine generation. You know. I was, you know, the daughter
of divorced parents and all kinds of stuff going on.
There were questions that I had about the world. I
(18:35):
was afraid at times, I was confused at times. You know,
it was people were still talking about like the Vietnam
War and all these different things, and no one ever
stopped to give us that space, to give the space
or to acknowledge or even ask how things were going.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
And you know you have high functioning, overperforming, exhausted, trying
to keep it together.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
That's right. And now you have the flip side of it,
the kids, these kids who are like absolutely there, like no,
we're not doing it. Somewhere in the middle of that
absolutely is a sweet spot.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Because to that point, and thank you for naming that,
when I think about my adult staff, yes, let's talk
about that. What you're talking about, you see it, right,
and the supports that they need to show up in
front of the students, right. And I would just say,
(19:38):
in recent years, I'm seeing more adults who also say, hey,
like I was diagnosed with ADHD or I just learned
that I have ADHD, and I'm like trying to navigate
that world of like, wait, I have the eleven year
old over here.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
And I need to gad myself right.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
And then I have like this fresh new twenty something
year old teacher in the classroom who's saying, like, I
have ADHD as well, and I don't know how to
come to this medium and stand in front of this
kid and teach them how to analyze the text.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Right.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Yeah, And so to your point of the adults needed
to and so navigating that space between a teacher who
may need it and a student they who may need it,
It's difficult. It means all day where you have to be.
I have to be intentional right in what I'm doing,
(20:35):
offering grace, reflective and realistic that I can't fix it all.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
You know. Yeah, how are you feeling as a leader
right now? Because of that space? Right?
Speaker 1 (21:04):
But also inspired because even if I can just put
a little drop in the bucket that will fill my cup.
Of course I want bigger than that, but we're challenged
as leaders in this.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Day and age.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
You also have the other component to parents, and sometimes
my parent conference looks just like this minus microphones and cameras,
but talking to parents because there is a lot of
parent guilt, you know, especially with mothers when they're finding
out like well, I've done everything and I've done this, this, this,
they have this, this, this, we do this, this, this,
(21:40):
and the kid is still like misbehaving, you know, or
this kid is still not responding. And the parents say,
this is my favorite line, I want them to have
more than what I had, And I go, yeah, right,
But at the same time, like what was valuable that
(22:02):
you did get because I also think like when people
are on this quest to give kids more than what
they have, unintentionally, they can create entitled kids, or they
forget to pour into the kids things that they actually
really need. And we're talking about character, right, some sort
of value system, and parents really carry that guilt like
(22:25):
I don't want them to experience what I did, So
they're protecting them from everything, defending them against everything, giving
them everything right, and then stand back and go, wow,
she's a monster at home.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Yeah. Yeah, And I think some of that is. Wow,
that's a lot. And I have like fifty thousand questions,
and I think it's important for us as parents, whoever
we are, you know, whoever parents are. I think it's
important to understand your why m hm. Because the problem
(23:10):
with what you just described, Toria, about a parent who's like,
I want this kid to have more than I ad. Yeah,
the problem is that what's missing in that equation is
that individual because you're being driven by your uni experience,
what you needed, what you didn't have, and instead of
(23:34):
pausing for a moment to consider who's the kid in
front of him? To consider before we even get to
the kid, pausing for a moment to consider what did
I need, what's happening with me, what's unresolved for me?
Let me get all that straight, yes, so that you
can look at this person, this individual through the lens
(23:56):
of clarity and being able to see them. And I
get the I want my kids to have more, But
we are we have four bodies, spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical, okay,
And if we're only focused on the physical, right, if
we're only focused on the physical, I'm going to give
(24:16):
you more. I'm going to give you more. I'm doing this,
you know, I'm giving you all these things. Then there
are three other nurturing that are not being nurtured and
that are being neglected. Dare I say? And then they
show up confused, not filled, lacking confidence and trying to
(24:39):
figure out how to maneuver when they have four legs
and one of them only one of them is really
the sea legs are only underneath one of them. And
so I think that and it doesn't mean to not
pay attention to provision because it's important and we all
want to live well and have our family. There's so
(25:01):
much more, but there's so much more, much more, There's
so much more. And I think that if the fruit
of our labor is bruised and seems to need but
we're still throwing more and more and more at it.
(25:24):
Is that not a moment to stop. Yeah, but that
parents are coming as bruised fruit exactly. That's my point.
It's not a judgment, it's not a criticism. It's like,
we are all going through this experience. It's not the parents,
(25:44):
the teachers, the administration, and the children. It's we're all
going through this very challenging time and folks don't know
how to give themselves the permission to That's right, that's
what don't And then if I don't know how to
do that, and now my next charge is to be
(26:05):
a parent, guess what I'm going to prioritize, right, ninety
five percent of the time, they're going to prioritize parenting
whatever that may look like to them. And then put
on top of that, like I need this kid to
be a scholar when they want, I need this kid
to be straight because I have going on and I
need you to just like I'm giving you the things
(26:26):
just yeah. So, and I think that some of it's obvious,
but I still want to ask this question, what's one
thing that you wish more people are understood about what
it takes to lead a school in this era one
thing or two or two whatever this comes said one,
(26:53):
and I think.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
You see school leaders take so many strays and some
that are just directed at them about what the school
leader is doing, what the school leader, what the school
leader is doing.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
And I get it.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
There are bad school leaders, bad teachers. But I can
speak to and we even had like a mutual we
made a connection. I can speak to leaders that I
am friends with, leaders that I work with that they
are genuinely showing up with a genuine I don't know
if it's a blacking the word for it, but a
(27:33):
commitment to doing this work for the students, for parents, teachers,
the community, and the work ain't easy.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
It is not easy. We've named so many.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Pieces to this work and so many layers, and we
haven't even talked about just like what books are they readings?
Or what science are students in school? Because it's school that,
especially in twenty twenty five, we are. And while I
say this, it's also like so remarkable. I get so
(28:07):
excited to be like what's next, what's coming? But we
are in a different time and to be a leader
showing up in these spaces. It is difficult. It is difficult,
and we have so much to face daily. I mean,
even if you think about like recent things that are
happening in the news right and my day to day
(28:28):
looks so different. My day does not look like what
I think most people would think a principle's day look like.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Tell us what does your day look like?
Speaker 1 (28:37):
So I can tell you the day after graduation, I
was meeting one of my students who did not show
up to graduation in an alley tucked away in an apartment,
to give him his diploma and his math achievement ward
because his family was afraid to come to graduation. My
day could look like that. My day could be stepping
in because a teacher has had a complete meltdown in
(28:59):
the class. My day could be looking at data and going, oh, snap,
we've got some work to do. My day could be
looking meeting with a parent and not revealing or ousting
a kid because a kid has gotten into conflict with
their love interests who happens to be the same sex,
(29:22):
and the parent would pray the gay away and check
them out in thirty seconds. So you're navigating that conversation,
trying to take care of the emotional needs of the
parent and the student in front of you. My day
could be as of now in the summer, like, okay,
how soon is a construction going to be done? Because
(29:44):
you get these kids in the room, Yes, my day
is all right. Let's get into these classrooms and observe.
And so the day of a principal in twenty twenty
five in South Los Angeles, it's got so many components
and pace to it. And then at the end, you know,
what am I really assessed on? At the end of
(30:04):
the day, they go, well, how's your data right?
Speaker 2 (30:08):
How well did they read?
Speaker 1 (30:11):
So it takes more than my passion to do this work.
It takes more than a love for kids to do
this work. You have to be strategic, You have to
be aware, socially aware, you have to have some emotional intelligence.
You have to have grace for the people in front
(30:31):
of you and for yourself.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
I go home and I go home tired. I know
you do.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
I go home tired, and then I have life outside
of school. You know, my day as a principal is
like telling myself, Okay, I need to leave and I
need to go and pick up my mom right, and
pick her up and take her home right. So the
day of a principal's life, it is not the bell
rings at eight o'clock. Every clean in their class, every
(30:57):
kid in their class, sitting perfectly, hands at their desks,
taking in the lesson. Teacher teachs a perfect lesson. Everybody rings,
they go outside for a cute little cheese sandwich and
away and go back.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
That ain't it. It's not happening at all.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
If I leave at three thirty, that is very very
like intentional, meaning I have a doctor's appointment, I have
a meeting. I could be in that building. I've been
in that building till seven seven thirty, and not just myself,
my other team members. And so I think if people
understood the work, I think they've offered leaders a little
(31:33):
bit more grace and recognize, like how we are showing
up in this building with so many capacity, like so
many fires, so many hugs. You have to give so
much motivating and cheering, and then hey, you can go
like that for thirty forty fifty days and then get
some data that's like work harder, So work harder, work harder,
(32:00):
And so I am learning to give myself permission to
not feel like I have to work harder, right because
I don't know if I could work any harder.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Yeah, I don't. I don't. I don't know that I could.
How do you care for yourself? I have a great
friend group of school leaders number one who we can
connect with and just say that thing and like, girl, listen,
one more person comes, one more time. You just say
what you have to say that you want to say, yes.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
So you need that and we check in on each other.
So that's one I make very intentional time. When I
go home, I have myself on my personal self and
do not disturb from six in the evening till six
in the morning, so that I don't feel pressured if
(32:54):
I hear it buzz and it's you know, I have
it open for three people, my husband, my dad, and
my mom.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
When I rest, I rest, and I know how to rest,
and I had to learn that. And there are days
where I don't get it right because you can read
all this stuff and then trying to rest becomes a job.
You're like, oh shit, I didn't do this all right.
But when I rest, I rest, and it's like I
gave myself parmission, like, nope, I'm not doing it. I
love a weekend at home with nothing on the calendar
(33:24):
and learning how to do more of that.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Just like, yes, my favorite weekend, let's do this. I'm like, no, nothing,
I want, no agenda? Was your schedule? Nothing you mentioned
a time to me on the weekend, hanging up the
phone on.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Yeh, conversation resting on the weekend with absolutely nothing to do.
I love brunch with my childhood friends, like my best
friends are my two childhood friends that I grew up with.
And then you know, I just you know, let lose.
I am her that girl. We're having our champagne and
we're chopping it up. And the more recent learning how
(34:01):
to have conversations without bringing up work. And it's so
hard to do, right because when I'm with family, my
family's so proud of me, you know, and it's like
the principle, you know, it's the principle which can naturally
just lead into a conversation, but let me tell you
what happened today, right, And so learning how to in
spaces where it's not work, not talk about work, not
(34:24):
bring up work, not defining myself just by the leader
had and learning how to recognize like who Toria is
at the heart of Toria and the core of Toria
outside of being Toria the leader, Toria the principle.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
Yeah, if there are three things that you could magic
wand ooh, magic wand right over, what's happening And let's
let's stick with middle school for okay, right, Yeah, And
I'm saying this because I think it's such a unique time.
It's like hormones are involved. It's just such a unique
(34:58):
and it's like right in the middle, you know, it's
middle school, right, Yes, So if there were three things
that you could magic wand change, yes, shift, or you know,
modify in some way, what would that be involving any
aspect of this experience?
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Okay, So first thing, I'm going to go with first
thing that popped in my mind. Number one, particularly at
the middle school, just shifting this idea. While I understand
student scores have their place, a magic wand where everyone's
brain would recognize that data alone, is not it Number one?
(35:38):
Because I think that would give us a little more
wiggle room, right and relieve the pressure. Number two, every
student being in the present.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Of a fully capable teacher.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
And by that I mean, the teacher's well being is
in good time, the teacher feels healthy mentally, emotionally, spiritually.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
I wish it for.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
The student and the teacher, right, that just complete well
being right when we step into the space, because we
are being charged with something heavy, Right, I'm being charged.
We're being charged with taking care of the kids, right
from seven to seven. You know, my sky opens at
six thirty in the morning and kids go home by
(36:37):
six thirty. So where every kid is in the place
or in front of a healthy teacher, that's right, And
that every teacher is fulfilled by what they do. So
I'm bundling that up into number two. And then my
third thing, leaders who authentic leaders, who are well rested
(36:58):
and still feel charged to do the work.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Yeah. I wonder when the time will come that schools
are transformed, yes, ma'am, and transformed into including other aspects
(37:21):
of intelligence into the ways that schools are graded. Yeah.
So I think the numbers, Yeah, that the test scores,
and what about emotional intelligence, what about mental and emotional wellbeing?
What about those things? Because those are as much a
(37:46):
part of education as anything else. Here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
When I talk with people from all walks of life,
whatever stakeholder there is. You say, hey, your story is
she's a straight A student.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
They go, oh great. If I say here's Billy and
let me show you Billy's artwork, and Billy is self taught.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
The A student nobody, not that they don't care, but
they're just like, so, I think we know we value
these things, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
The kid who can hold your attention in the room.
Oftentimes it's not your perfect data A plus student. That's right.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
When I have student tours and I pick a good
variety of students to be on the tour, the people
are drawn to the kids who you're talking about, the
kids with the emotional intelligence, right, the kids who tell
it like it is, the kids who have a story,
the kids who are like, man, okay, and let me
turn in this essay.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
But did you know right? People are drawn to that.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
And so I would love a school system right where
there was balance, right, or more explicit appreciation for the
intelligences that you're talking about, because they bring it the music.
You know, I had a kid on papers like you know,
okay academically, but we had a piano and he would
(39:17):
go in every nutrition and lunch and just play, play,
play play play. He played at our eighth grade graduation
and the crowd was mesmerized and he was self taught YouTube.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Right.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
I spent one hundred eighty days trying to keep him
in classes, keep him from walking out of classes, on
the phone with his mother, reassuring her that we're going
to take care of it.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
But here was his gift. Yeah, here was his gift.
I was a kid who went through a student who
went through gifted programs as well. Yeah, and as you're
saying that, what I realized is the gift that I
was being acknowledged for was social studies, math, science, language, art.
(40:09):
You know, those are the gifts that go into that
bucket of acknowledgment for schools, which is very interesting. And
I think that that's it, and that's that can be expanded.
It has to be, it has to be.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
I'm grateful, like we do have after school programs where
we get to see our kids shine in different lights
and they shine, you know, and I don't know, that's
the heart of our school. I always say my after
school program is the heart of the school because it's
where the kids get to show it fully and we
see their talents.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
They're more at ease, and they're more.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Likable, you know, because they're doing something that you know
what I mean, and so they're engaging more. And I
wish schools could like transforming schools, reimagining what schools look like.
And I think, you know, we're starting to have those
conversations within the network, but we definitely have to shift
from making everything about the numbers and the data and
(41:10):
how many kids do you have in the building, make
sure you get them there every single day all day.
And I'm like, in the real world, nobody shows up
all day, every single day.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Yeah. Yeah, And it's like making people sit in the
chair all day. I've sat around the table. I sit
around the table all the time with adults, and we
can't sit still absolutely in this chair ten times since
I just right here uncomfortable, and I probably could not
when I was going to school. I think we put
(41:41):
too many expectations and we put too much pressure on
children in an area where adulting children adulting children. What
are you hearing most from parents right now? What are
(42:04):
parents say? Social media? That's it?
Speaker 1 (42:08):
You know, like most of the arguments, most of the
conflict starts on social media, and what are they That's
what they say, I don't know what to do about it, okay,
And so they say they won't give me their cell phone,
they won't give me their code. You know, I'm friends
with them on Instagram, and I'm like, well, do you
(42:29):
have access to their spam gram accounts and all these
other accounts? Because it's so parents are like at a
loss for words as well, because they are literally fighting
against social media technology the cell phone, and how do
I break this habit right now? That it's I mean,
this generation of kids, they had devices in their hands
(42:51):
at one and two. Yeah, I mean that's right, that's
their digital natives. And so how do I as parents
navigate all of this because it's scary, right, Several cases
where kids have connected with strangers online, a couple of
(43:11):
incidents where kids have left home to go and meet
up with someone, and so for parents, the biggest thing
that I'm hearing is that I don't know what to
do when it comes to this device and how to
manage it. And I tell them they can't be friends
with this person, and then they're still friends with them,
(43:34):
and so they go ahead took the phone, but then
the kid has this outburst and parents like, how much
is it worth it to hold this phone from this
kid if they're going to keep acting out like this.
Speaker 2 (43:49):
How do you lost for words? Yeah? How do you
think schools? I'm thinking about collaboration, right, and I'm wondering, like,
what can schools and families do to come together and
collaborate around change because each one of these things are
(44:13):
kind of you know, the air, little pieces of like
you said, pieces of the puzzle, right, But there seems
to be a collective concern for social media and saying no,
it ain't working. That's not the solution. And it's absolutely
not the solution because adults are just as tied to
(44:34):
their phones, absolutely absolutely, you know, And I think we
have to And you mentioned earlier the concern about or
your observation that people, children, our brains are being reprogrammed
to operate differently. We are literally being programmed to spurts
(44:58):
too quick, to you know, get it done in three seconds,
say what you have to say in three seconds, and
it's and it's impossible, and it's creating an ad in
a d D culture. So what what could collaboration look like?
What could collaboration look like? That's such a great question.
And as I'm sitting here thinking about it. In order
(45:22):
for us to come together and collaborate, and you say
it change. When I think about change, there has to
be some change within answer own thinking. That's right. And
so I don't even know yet that the adults that
have been charged with kids, those in the building and
the parents have done the change in themselves. Right.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
If I'm a rope, if I'm robotic, and this is
not like a shot against a parent, I work for,
not a father. I'm not even in a space yet.
I think about families who are forced to change something.
A crisis forces them to take a step back and say,
(46:07):
what am I going to do differently? I think it
takes some healing and some self work, and I might
not just know the answer, but I know that what
it would take for that type of collaboration to demand change,
to create spaces for change, we have to show up
at the table, all of us ready to do that.
And that's a heavy charge on parents, a heavy charge
(46:28):
on our parents. I'm working, I've got multiple kids. I
need you to get to school, I need you to
do this. I gotta help you with the homework. I
gotta put dinner on the table, and so That's how
so many adults are functioning. And this is sad to say.
I have the parent I'm describing who's breathing and ready
to put in the work and ask for change. I
(46:51):
could probably count, and I'm literally like running faces in
my head right now a handful five six parents who
are in that space, ready to do that kind of change,
ready to do it, not that they haven't thought about it,
(47:12):
not that they don't want to do it, but are
in a space where they can take it to the
table and say, let's do this work. The others are
just caught up in life. Life is life in them.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Yes, And a child who is not connected, a child
who is crying out for help, takes a lot of
time and energy as well. And I think that sometimes
that's an extra layer, that's an extra layer to parenting
and confronting what needs to be confronted. The consequence of
(47:48):
that is a freedom from what's holding you bound to that.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
Zauation, letting go of what you think has to look
and letting go of what my kid is supposed to
look like for yourself myself? Am I able if it
means that I have to show up to school. A
couple of am I able to do I have the
type of job that allows me to or am I
in a space to say, you know what? Then I
don't give them. I'm going to do it because it's
(48:13):
my child, right and I'll take the consequence on the end.
It's like we have to give permission as a whole society.
I don't know, like society has to shift.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
That's That's what I'm thinking. Like the more, this is
not just your spirits, and here in Los Angeles, one principle,
this is how do we shift how there's people who
are connected to children. Let's just use that as the
bucket of people. Right, what can we do? We all
(48:48):
know that the world has changed so much, information has
changed so much, the way we communicate has shifted so much,
just from one generation to the next. And until we
see it as a collective not even problem, until we
(49:09):
see it, until we take a moment to step back
and say, what does the world look like today? And
what do we need to do? What do we need
schools to look like, the schools to look like, what
do we need the role of a parent to look like?
What do we need and how do we support the educators,
the administrators, how do we support these children. Until we're
(49:31):
willing to actually have that conversation, we're going to continue
to have the same things that's happened over and over again.
And the problem with that is that there are so
many people who and I'll just say it, are living
in a let's go back because that's what was great
or before we jump all over one thing in this
(49:53):
past time paradise. But guess what, it's different today because
when I was in school and I'm sixty. When I
was in school, first of all, there were no cell phones,
right A long time was when you got home there
was and ring and you say hello, that was it.
(50:16):
And we didn't have TV's in every single room, and
it was it was a different time. I don't know
that that time is the best time. We all I'm
pointing to is today it's different. So we can sit
here and look back as much as we want. We
can talk about how it used to be. We can
talk about what kind of student we were and how
we behaved and what we did. It doesn't matter that
(50:39):
event who we are. That's not today. That's just venting
and it's living in an illusion. Right now. What we
need to do is come together to support educators and
maybe it's not so much about your child in that
(51:01):
school or not. Maybe it's reaching out and saying, what
what are your challenges? How can we help?
Speaker 1 (51:07):
Yeah, and I love that we're what we call a
community school and we receive funding from the state to
have these type of conversations and actually have resources to
bring in community partners, right, And when you said that,
it just made me think about it. So we have
a partnership with the Department of Mental Health and Services
(51:28):
wonderful where we brought them into our school. So parents
don't we eliminated having to make an appointment or having
to find the building somewhere in Los Angeles. They come
to us on our campus and meet with our parents
and taking advantage of that. That's one still pulling down,
(51:48):
you know, the stigma. But I know the very first
session when we just introduced the partner to our parents,
it became emotional. And this was just day one introduction.
There was nothing being done other than saying, this is
who we are, this is what we want to do,
this is why we want to do it, and parents,
you know, just like breathing and understanding, like this is
(52:11):
what I need and so I think in those regards.
This is an outside partner, right, It's more than just
the school, right, it's someone outside saying, yeah, we've got
to step in and support and help. I think of
a family. We kept saying like, hey, just come like,
take advantage of it, take advantage of it. A mother,
(52:32):
mother of four children, raising them on their own right now.
Dad's incarcerated and kids had been acting out since that
had been incarcerated, and mom said she did a check
in on them, like you're good, you're good, y'all think
you need counseling therapy and they're like nope, nope, right,
but one student's misbehaving, misbehaving, misbehaving. Last situation, had to
(52:55):
call mom in talk to her about the behavior. The
student just had a complete emotional breakdown. And mom says
to me, and mind you, her oldest is about fifteen
and mom is like thirty one and a mother of four.
She says, you know what, we do need therapy. That's
(53:16):
when she says to me, did I go? And she's
like she's like, we do, and we are going to
do it. And it was like yes, wonderful And that's
what it took. There were multiple people, right, yeah, and
she realized right that what she and her oldest kid
was saying to like the younger kid. When the younger
(53:37):
kid would show emotion and have those moments, it's kind
of like tough hout, you got this, like we ain't
crying what you're crying for? Or like, okay, what's wrong?
Everybody be quiet, it's made room for it. You okay,
you're good.
Speaker 2 (53:48):
But it was in that moment. Mind you. This took
a whole school year though for us to get to this.
But yeah, that work over the course of that one
school year is going to hermiange.
Speaker 1 (54:01):
Everything will change, everything, change everything, right, And so us
being able to have those resources and make the recommendation
to the mom and say, okay, hey, here you go,
this is where you need to go. You go, you
still need you need another copy of the paper because
I know, you know, toss it somewhere. It tastes that
kind of work, right, and not one time we're we're
talking about the student's academics, but.
Speaker 2 (54:23):
It fuels academics to even get to the academics. All
of that work right here we are now right, I
want to ask you a question as we're closing out
two questions. Okay, question one is, in one sentence, one sentence,
(54:43):
what do our children need most from us right now? Understanding?
Speaker 1 (54:50):
Our students need understanding, And that sounds very much simplifying it,
but they are asking us to understand who they are
and speaking to the point of not who we were
when we were going up, understanding who they are and
the world that they're existing in right now. And I
think if we could offer that, or at least maybe
(55:14):
not understand, but willingness to try to get to know them,
because I might not understand you, but if I can
offer you a willingness, a genuine willingness to get to
know you and hear you, I think that would help.
Speaker 2 (55:28):
Yeah. I think also it's acceptance on some level, and
then that step after that, right acceptance for accept the
person for who they are. What you resist, That's where
the pain comes when you resist. And I guess too like.
Speaker 1 (55:47):
These middle schoolers ain't letting you not because they ain't changing,
then back and down like I am who I am,
this is me period, right, And I love that about
children in the hood as well, right, because they are
like hating toast standing down on that they're unafraid miss
(56:09):
uh uh, not too much to tell you.
Speaker 2 (56:12):
I can't take it.
Speaker 1 (56:13):
I'm nah uh right, And it's like I see you,
I see you, miss ma'am.
Speaker 2 (56:18):
Yes. And then my last question for you, Toria is
how can we support you me? How can you support me?
I think giving us spaces like this to speak authentically
and allowing us to share, and knowing reaffirming that we
(56:39):
do have folks here to support us because this work.
Many leaders will say it, this work could be very lonely. Right.
Speaker 1 (56:46):
I can see when I go into my principal's office
and I have supported and put out fires, you go
back there, you still feel this. But at the end
of the day, this is my problem. That's what you're
telling yourself, right, that's not necessarily true, But knowing that
we have spaces to be heard and share authentically, and
(57:09):
then reaffirming that we're not in this work alone. I
love what you said about, Hey, this isn't just about
like schools like this is everyone Like if everyone had
that mindset, Oh god, you know how much easier this
work could be.
Speaker 2 (57:23):
There are folks, There are folks listening. There are folks
who are out there, and we're kind of sending out
a rally cry right now, there are folks who want
to help, yeah, and I think that there's like the
funding and all of that, But then there's the other
part of it. Yeah, you know, the support for the
(57:45):
shift that's needed, for the shift that's needed, and for
the cocoon that is education. And I think that if
you feel if you're listening, and if you feel so inclined,
let's start to think about ways that we can support
this incredible work that educators are doing because it's an
(58:06):
US problem. It's an US issue.
Speaker 1 (58:08):
Yeah, it doesn't on Monday through Friday. It doesn't feel
like an US problem. Right, I can get I can
see that right when you're in it. Once you can
step back and take a look at it.
Speaker 2 (58:19):
Right.
Speaker 1 (58:19):
And this is where my circle of girls come in
and we say this right, and then they want me
to do this right.
Speaker 2 (58:26):
But it is it is, yeah, it is. We're just
the ones that are going on the front line, that's right.
But it is an US problem. I want to thank
you so much for taking the time to share with me.
I myself have so much to think about from this conversation.
(58:48):
What I'm thinking about is what we can do. Yeah,
you know what we can do because it's not fair again,
and it's an us issue. It is a issue, and
we all need each other and we all need to
support each other. And I think that the days of
pretending that it's about thirty kids sitting at desks with
(59:12):
their hands folded with an apple and a cheese sandwich,
you know, just receiving and not giving back of themselves,
that is just not what's happening. And we have to
live in the truth of the present moment, whether we
like it or not, this is what's happening. And our
(59:34):
children and our teachers and our administrators, our principles are
at the front lines and experiencing this, and it's very
important that we also hold ourselves accountable to being part
of the solution. Those of us who can, those of
us who can.
Speaker 1 (59:53):
Thank you for saying that yeah, and maybe yeah, because
it isn't us problem. That's just resonating like it isn't us.
Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
Yes, Sometimes when you're in something so much, and I
know I do this in my own way, in my
own world, where I start thinking about what am I
going to do to fix this, and then I'm like,
wait a minute. I know people who are experts in
social media and how to manage it. I know people
(01:00:23):
who are mental health, you know, and wellness people like
I know people that can sit down and have conversations
with the students or the teachers or the parents. I know,
we all know people can.
Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
Help and that would help because every people they hear
it from us all the time, and so it's not
that they are not listening to us, but it becomes,
you know, it's the same old Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
So I want to thank you so much. We are
short on time, girl. I could talk to you for hours.
I could move on this was off of work and
talk about other things if you're listening. I just a
couple of things, couple of questions that I want to
throw or offer to you. One is, if you're a
parent or a caregiver of a middle school child or
(01:01:11):
a child at any age, I invite you to pause
for a second and ask yourself, what is your child
or what is my child carrying emotionally that might not
be visible on the surface, And ask yourself, if you're
willing to listen to what that is. I think that's
a very important question. Another question, for those of you
(01:01:32):
who are educators or community leaders, how are you nourishing
your own well being whilst also supporting others. And then, lastly,
what legacy are you shaping through the way that you
show up for the young people in your life, Whether
you're a parent, an auntie, a coach, a neighbor, or
just an adult who sees an opportunity to help and
(01:01:57):
contribute and pour in. What are you willing to do?
Is the question that I'm going to leave this audience with. Toria,
thank you so much. This was beautiful, Thank you, Welcome
I never forgot the lessons that I experienced in early
elementary and in middle school. We could not lower the standard,
we could not have low expectations. I could understand where
you were coming from, I could understand your story and
your background, but your struggles were not going to determine
the type of education I was going to put in
front of you. And when you left my classroom and
when you leave our building, what you want to do,
(00:28):
you will be prepared for educationally. And that's what drives me.
That's what pushes me in this work.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Welcome to the Shaping Freedom podcast, where we dive into
conversations that inspire personal growth, transformation and clarity and challenging times.
I'm your host, Lyssan Basquiato. What does it take to
lead with vision and compassion in the heart of a
community that's raising the next generation of leaders during a
(00:57):
time when family, students in education are all being tested
in new, complex and often very difficult ways. In this
episode of Shaping Freedom, I'm joined by Toria Avila, principle
of Alliance Virgil Robert's Leadership Academy in South Los Angeles.
Terria is not just running a middle school, She's shaping
(01:20):
legacy through education. Her work sits at the intersection of
academic leadership, emotional wellness, and generational impact. At a moment
when parents are navigating anxiety, students are facing social and
emotional challenges, and educators are being stretched way beyond the classroom,
(01:40):
Toria brings clarity, groundedness, and a clear commitment to community.
And today, I'd like to talk a little bit about
how your school's responding and why creating emotionally safe learning
environments is now more urgent than ever. This conversation is
a musclessen for anyone who cares about the well being
of our youth and the legacy that we're building through them,
(02:02):
whether you're a parent, an educator, or someone doing the
work of healing your own family patterns. I first want
to welcome you, Toria Avila to the Shaping Freedom with
Lisanbascia podcast. Thank you, sav You're welcome. You're welcome. We
(02:24):
met at the Alliance Event fundraising event last month. I
think it was yeah, before school was out, so a
couple of months. Good. Yeah, oh wow, it's been a
couple of months. It has time, is jelvi? Yeah, so
like maybe May. Yeah, time has been moving so quickly,
and I wanted to chat with you because we were
(02:46):
chatting at the table and talking about your experience as
an educator in twenty twenty five with twenty twenty five
children and stiff students and the community of parents and
the world and all of that, and we had a
(03:09):
very interesting, I thought, conversation about that, about those experiences
and what they look like. And from that conversation, I
started thinking about my Shaping Freedom audience and how so
many of them are parents who are raising children, who
are themselves dealing with managing navigating this crazy world raising
(03:34):
kids in twenty twenty five exactly exactly. So I knew
that you and I would have an opportunity. I knew
that you and I, if given the opportunity, could have
an amazing conversation. And my ultimate intention with this conversation
is for us to first of all, shed some light
(03:56):
on what the experience is like for students from your perspective,
and also to also shed some light on what the
experience is like as an educator who is putting out
so much energy, putting out so many emotional, mental educational fires.
(04:18):
So that's what I want to talk a little bit
about today, and I want to thank you so much
for the work that that you're doing. Thank you. You know,
we we often and I know that there's been a
lot said about the work that educators do and the
(04:40):
ways that you have to show up for so many
people and and manage so many different the complexities of
a family in many ways, and it's one of those
things we've been talking about forever, but we haven't really done. Yeah. Right,
it's you wonder, like, what impact am I having? Right
you stay?
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Generational impact? That's my why, you know, not to sound
cliche or anything, but that is my why. You know,
as a little black girl growing up in Watts, generational
generations in Watts, you recognize like what it means to
have a school system that does write by you or
(05:23):
a school system that does not do right by you,
particularly in communities like Watts or the Hyde Park area
where I am, and yet we're always still trying to
get it right.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
What was it about school for you as a student
in Watts that made you that led you to decide,
I think I want to be in.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
This thing crazy enough. So kindergarten through third grade, my
mom put me in private school, but I was always
a student or a.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Girl who loved school.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
I loved, loved, loved black women who I thought used
big words I would.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
I was just like, this person is so smart.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
I want to be like that, you know, And what
are these words meaning? Like who is she when she
walks away from this building? What is life like for her?
I was enthralled by black educated women, and so when
I had them as teachers, it would just like filled
me up completely, like this is what I could this
is who I could be, right, this is I aspire
(06:31):
to be them. And so when my mom did put
me in public school my first year, at the time,
I was defined as like what you would say is gifted,
and I was penalized by a black female teacher in
the fourth grade for being gifted, meaning I finished her
work quickly and then I wanted to help others or
(06:54):
I was talking, she'd give me something else and then
I'd whent through it. My mom came and had a
conversation with her, like listen, right, she's coming home, she's
doing this homework five ten minutes tops, and she needs
to be challenged more. I think at that time she
took offense to that, and this is a thing that
(07:14):
I push on teachers as well as a school leader.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
What we're not going to do. That's one of my
favorite things to say, just a little interjection. Yeah, what
we're not going to do.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
What we're not going to do is take for granted
or allow our bias to make us believe that every
black kid is coming from a black home that does
not care about education, and that I have the answers
because I'm the degree. Right, So if that mother walks
in and says, this kid needs more, let's explore. Let's
(07:45):
not take it personal, let's not take offense to it.
Let's enter that space the same way you would if
you were in a more affluent community.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
That's because would you push back with curiosity? Yeah, with curiosity, willingness,
with the willingness, right, I have your back, yeah, right.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
So I was penalized. You know, the teacher made a
comment I'll never forget in front of the class. I
finished the work. And she says openly to everyone like, well,
Toria knows everything, and Toria is gonna be able to
get through all the work quickly. And it's like, what
the So that was incident number one?
Speaker 2 (08:22):
What I hear in that is a caddy woman, a
caddy woman. What't happened to her been exactly who happened
to have been in a position of authority. But that
behavior is behave like how do you do one thing?
Is how you do everything? Yeah? You know.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
And what she didn't realize is that she had already
won me over just being a black female teacher, because,
like I said, I already had a love for black
women that I perceived as smart, right, and I didn't
I couldn't prove that they were smart. I'm just like,
if you could hold a conversation, that's it. I linked
in on that. So I was moved out of her
classroom because of course I went and told my mom,
and my mom was that mom like, no, ma'am, you're.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Not going to do that.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
I was placed into a classroom with fifth and sixth graders.
I was one other fourth grader in the classroom because
they couldn't accommodate. So that's something else, like how can
you not accommodate high performing fourth graders in this school
that you have to play them in the classroom with
fifth and sixth graders. Had the most amazing woman black woman,
miss Jones, everything fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade, finished
(09:24):
there at the elementary, my dad is telling my mother
she can't go to school here in the community. She
can't do junior high here. If you put it in
junior high here, she's going to lose interest. She's gonna
withdraw from school because there's no school here.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Right. Did they tell her where you could go to school?
They just said not here.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Not here meant not here in Watts, right, So of
course I get bussed. I'm busted out to like the
mid Wiltshire community. And I had a situation where the
teacher makes an assignment, gives us an assignment, and everyone
does the assignment, they type it and they bring it back.
I did the assignment, I had it written, and it
(10:06):
was a moment of like, wait, I don't recall this
woman ever telling anybody.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
That this needed to be typed.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
And the aha in my brain was that everything that
I was being praised for was simply an expectation in
this other place, whereas in the schools I was before,
we were getting praise and accolades for Wow, it came
to me like, wait, the expectations for us in Watts
are way different than in other school communities. And these
(10:32):
are educators and educational leaders that are doing this, that
are allowing this. So I understood the discrepancy. Then in
seventh grade, my mom kept saying, you're going to be
a teacher, You're gonna be a teacher, gonna be teachers, Like,
absolutely not, No, I'm not normally yes, I never was like,
I'm going to be a teacher.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
What was your other?
Speaker 1 (10:51):
I thought I was going to be a lawyer. Okay, yeah,
because again that seemed just so respectable, respectable.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah, it's so overrating, exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
And so I found my love for education when I
was in college and I was a dance teacher, Okay,
and that's when it came like midway through. But I
never forgot the lessons that I experienced in early elementary
and in middle school of what education needed to look
like for black and brown kids, particularly black and brown
(11:23):
kids from our communities.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Right.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
We could not lower the standard, We could not have
low expectations. I could understand where you were coming from,
I could understand your story and your background, but your
struggles were not going to determine the type of education
I was going to put in front of you. And
when you left my classroom and when you leave our building,
what you want to do, you'll be prepared for educationally.
(11:45):
And that's what drives me, that's what pushes me in
this work.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
You know, I often ask people what they wanted to
be when they were eleven, because I think it gives
us breadcrumbs either back to ourselves or to validate what
we're doing. And when I was eleven, I wanted to
be a social worker or a teacher, and in my mind,
(12:12):
social work was different than what it often is today.
For me, it was I wanted to help help people,
you know, I wanted to help people in mass and
I wanted to teach. And you just mentioned that at
eleven you wanted to be a lawyer. And it's very
interesting that even in the way that you describe and
(12:36):
share your experience as an educator, you're sharing an experience
that seems to have advocacy as the undercurrent. I like that,
And yeah, like it seems like you're fighting for justice
for your children, absolutely for your students. You know, very
(13:00):
interesting that that seems to have been the thing that
you wanted to do. And then teaching is.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
How is how you how I showed up in that space? Yeah,
I like that.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
So you are the principal of a middle school.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Yes, ages eleven or fourteen, twenty twenty five, I bowed
down to you talk about reason your expectations. I raising
expectations and they're like, girl, whatever with their expectations.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Right.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
I think this generation of children are not allowing us
to define for them where they will be and who
they will be. Unlike when I was growing up, they
told us, you know you're gonna go to school, You're
gonna do this, you can do that.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
To this.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Generation pushes us a lot more. They challenge us a
lot more. They have a better sense I think of
what's happening in the world, and they can call bs
at an earlier age and will and will than we did, right,
And it's because, obviously, right, they have access to so
(14:09):
much information, and so what we're trying to do is
teach them how to harness all of that and then
tap into like who they really are, right, because they
are being told through social media and multiple avenues who
they are and it's not necessarily who they really are.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
So we're creating.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Those safe spaces, or trying to create safe spaces, supportive spaces,
and I would say spaces that allow us as adults
to be a little more humble, because, as you said,
they will call you out. And so they're not for
the fluff, they're not for the bus. They are really
asking the type of questions that some of us were
probably thinking, like do I really.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Need that degree? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Is that true that I need a degree? Is it
true that I can't be famous on social media? Because
for everything that we want to feed them, they can
find the hypocrisy in that, or the contradiction or the
anomaly or the outlier and be like, ah, that's true,
that is true. I think on the other side of it,
they do need a lot more nurturing than we did.
(15:21):
We're seeing a lot more students dealing with mental health
issues their emotional well being because overexposure has created There's
a book called The Anxious Generation, and it talks about
how the brain has been reprogrammed by this generation as
(15:44):
a result of social media and technology. And so while
I won't say they are desensitized fully, they have become
desensitized to so many things that we would be like, Oh,
for example, I'm thinking about like the work we're doing
right now pro black, anti racist work, disrupting the use
(16:05):
of the in word and derogatory language through all day.
You know, throughout the day, students are saying hurtful, harmful
things to each other, and when you bring them to
the table to discuss it, it's like huh, right, Like
you have to really teach the harm and call it out.
And I think they've become so desensitized or trying to
(16:29):
even teach empathy, Right, how do you teach empathy to
a group who's become so inundated, Yeah, to so much
that's around them. But what I also say is that
we can't take that for granted because I do know
that many of them will go home at night and
then they replay their school day and there was a
(16:49):
moment in the day where they weren't safe. And so
how do we create spaces where they don't have to
feel that because a lot of them are masking, right,
to push through, but we have to pull through all
those layers and then at the anteaching math lesson right right.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
At the level that the world, because you need that
as an entrepreneur, you need that. As a content creator,
you need you need to know, you need you need
to know certain things, and you know, for the listeners
as you're listening to this conversation because I really believe
that that middle school chapter is such an important one,
(17:32):
you know, And so as you're listening, think about who
showed up for you while you were in middle school,
who didn't show up for you? You know, what do
you wish someone had seen in you during middle school?
Because you also mentioned, Toria, that these children need something
(17:53):
that we didn't need. And I'm going to push back
a little gently on that, because I think we did. Yeah,
I think we did. I went to school. I think
that what we're seeing today is in some ways and
exhale of the truth. Agreed. They're throwing up, well what
(18:14):
we kept in and we would hold it in, and
we are very much of the I know I am.
I'll speak for me. I'm very much of the I'm
fine generation. You know. I was, you know, the daughter
of divorced parents and all kinds of stuff going on.
There were questions that I had about the world. I
(18:35):
was afraid at times, I was confused at times. You know,
it was people were still talking about like the Vietnam
War and all these different things, and no one ever
stopped to give us that space, to give the space
or to acknowledge or even ask how things were going.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
And you know you have high functioning, overperforming, exhausted, trying
to keep it together.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
That's right. And now you have the flip side of it,
the kids, these kids who are like absolutely there, like no,
we're not doing it. Somewhere in the middle of that
absolutely is a sweet spot.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Because to that point, and thank you for naming that,
when I think about my adult staff, yes, let's talk
about that. What you're talking about, you see it, right,
and the supports that they need to show up in
front of the students, right. And I would just say,
(19:38):
in recent years, I'm seeing more adults who also say, hey,
like I was diagnosed with ADHD or I just learned
that I have ADHD, and I'm like trying to navigate
that world of like, wait, I have the eleven year
old over here.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
And I need to gad myself right.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
And then I have like this fresh new twenty something
year old teacher in the classroom who's saying, like, I
have ADHD as well, and I don't know how to
come to this medium and stand in front of this
kid and teach them how to analyze the text.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Right.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Yeah, And so to your point of the adults needed
to and so navigating that space between a teacher who
may need it and a student they who may need it,
It's difficult. It means all day where you have to be.
I have to be intentional right in what I'm doing,
(20:35):
offering grace, reflective and realistic that I can't fix it all.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
You know. Yeah, how are you feeling as a leader
right now? Because of that space? Right?
Speaker 1 (21:04):
But also inspired because even if I can just put
a little drop in the bucket that will fill my cup.
Of course I want bigger than that, but we're challenged
as leaders in this.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Day and age.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
You also have the other component to parents, and sometimes
my parent conference looks just like this minus microphones and cameras,
but talking to parents because there is a lot of
parent guilt, you know, especially with mothers when they're finding
out like well, I've done everything and I've done this, this, this,
they have this, this, this, we do this, this, this,
(21:40):
and the kid is still like misbehaving, you know, or
this kid is still not responding. And the parents say,
this is my favorite line, I want them to have
more than what I had, And I go, yeah, right,
But at the same time, like what was valuable that
(22:02):
you did get because I also think like when people
are on this quest to give kids more than what
they have, unintentionally, they can create entitled kids, or they
forget to pour into the kids things that they actually
really need. And we're talking about character, right, some sort
of value system, and parents really carry that guilt like
(22:25):
I don't want them to experience what I did, So
they're protecting them from everything, defending them against everything, giving
them everything right, and then stand back and go, wow,
she's a monster at home.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Yeah. Yeah, And I think some of that is. Wow,
that's a lot. And I have like fifty thousand questions,
and I think it's important for us as parents, whoever
we are, you know, whoever parents are. I think it's
important to understand your why m hm. Because the problem
(23:10):
with what you just described, Toria, about a parent who's like,
I want this kid to have more than I ad. Yeah,
the problem is that what's missing in that equation is
that individual because you're being driven by your uni experience,
what you needed, what you didn't have, and instead of
(23:34):
pausing for a moment to consider who's the kid in
front of him? To consider before we even get to
the kid, pausing for a moment to consider what did
I need, what's happening with me, what's unresolved for me?
Let me get all that straight, yes, so that you
can look at this person, this individual through the lens
(23:56):
of clarity and being able to see them. And I
get the I want my kids to have more, But
we are we have four bodies, spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical, okay,
And if we're only focused on the physical, right, if
we're only focused on the physical, I'm going to give
(24:16):
you more. I'm going to give you more. I'm doing this,
you know, I'm giving you all these things. Then there
are three other nurturing that are not being nurtured and
that are being neglected. Dare I say? And then they
show up confused, not filled, lacking confidence and trying to
(24:39):
figure out how to maneuver when they have four legs
and one of them only one of them is really
the sea legs are only underneath one of them. And
so I think that and it doesn't mean to not
pay attention to provision because it's important and we all
want to live well and have our family. There's so
(25:01):
much more, but there's so much more, much more, There's
so much more. And I think that if the fruit
of our labor is bruised and seems to need but
we're still throwing more and more and more at it.
(25:24):
Is that not a moment to stop. Yeah, but that
parents are coming as bruised fruit exactly. That's my point.
It's not a judgment, it's not a criticism. It's like,
we are all going through this experience. It's not the parents,
(25:44):
the teachers, the administration, and the children. It's we're all
going through this very challenging time and folks don't know
how to give themselves the permission to That's right, that's
what don't And then if I don't know how to
do that, and now my next charge is to be
(26:05):
a parent, guess what I'm going to prioritize, right, ninety
five percent of the time, they're going to prioritize parenting
whatever that may look like to them. And then put
on top of that, like I need this kid to
be a scholar when they want, I need this kid
to be straight because I have going on and I
need you to just like I'm giving you the things
(26:26):
just yeah. So, and I think that some of it's obvious,
but I still want to ask this question, what's one
thing that you wish more people are understood about what
it takes to lead a school in this era one
thing or two or two whatever this comes said one,
(26:53):
and I think.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
You see school leaders take so many strays and some
that are just directed at them about what the school
leader is doing, what the school leader, what the school
leader is doing.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
And I get it.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
There are bad school leaders, bad teachers. But I can
speak to and we even had like a mutual we
made a connection. I can speak to leaders that I
am friends with, leaders that I work with that they
are genuinely showing up with a genuine I don't know
if it's a blacking the word for it, but a
(27:33):
commitment to doing this work for the students, for parents, teachers,
the community, and the work ain't easy.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
It is not easy. We've named so many.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Pieces to this work and so many layers, and we
haven't even talked about just like what books are they readings?
Or what science are students in school? Because it's school that,
especially in twenty twenty five, we are. And while I
say this, it's also like so remarkable. I get so
(28:07):
excited to be like what's next, what's coming? But we
are in a different time and to be a leader
showing up in these spaces. It is difficult. It is difficult,
and we have so much to face daily. I mean,
even if you think about like recent things that are
happening in the news right and my day to day
(28:28):
looks so different. My day does not look like what
I think most people would think a principle's day look like.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Tell us what does your day look like?
Speaker 1 (28:37):
So I can tell you the day after graduation, I
was meeting one of my students who did not show
up to graduation in an alley tucked away in an apartment,
to give him his diploma and his math achievement ward
because his family was afraid to come to graduation. My
day could look like that. My day could be stepping
in because a teacher has had a complete meltdown in
(28:59):
the class. My day could be looking at data and going, oh, snap,
we've got some work to do. My day could be
looking meeting with a parent and not revealing or ousting
a kid because a kid has gotten into conflict with
their love interests who happens to be the same sex,
(29:22):
and the parent would pray the gay away and check
them out in thirty seconds. So you're navigating that conversation,
trying to take care of the emotional needs of the
parent and the student in front of you. My day
could be as of now in the summer, like, okay,
how soon is a construction going to be done? Because
(29:44):
you get these kids in the room, Yes, my day
is all right. Let's get into these classrooms and observe.
And so the day of a principal in twenty twenty
five in South Los Angeles, it's got so many components
and pace to it. And then at the end, you know,
what am I really assessed on? At the end of
(30:04):
the day, they go, well, how's your data right?
Speaker 2 (30:08):
How well did they read?
Speaker 1 (30:11):
So it takes more than my passion to do this work.
It takes more than a love for kids to do
this work. You have to be strategic, You have to
be aware, socially aware, you have to have some emotional intelligence.
You have to have grace for the people in front
(30:31):
of you and for yourself.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
I go home and I go home tired. I know
you do.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
I go home tired, and then I have life outside
of school. You know, my day as a principal is
like telling myself, Okay, I need to leave and I
need to go and pick up my mom right, and
pick her up and take her home right. So the
day of a principal's life, it is not the bell
rings at eight o'clock. Every clean in their class, every
(30:57):
kid in their class, sitting perfectly, hands at their desks,
taking in the lesson. Teacher teachs a perfect lesson. Everybody rings,
they go outside for a cute little cheese sandwich and
away and go back.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
That ain't it. It's not happening at all.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
If I leave at three thirty, that is very very
like intentional, meaning I have a doctor's appointment, I have
a meeting. I could be in that building. I've been
in that building till seven seven thirty, and not just myself,
my other team members. And so I think if people
understood the work, I think they've offered leaders a little
(31:33):
bit more grace and recognize, like how we are showing
up in this building with so many capacity, like so
many fires, so many hugs. You have to give so
much motivating and cheering, and then hey, you can go
like that for thirty forty fifty days and then get
some data that's like work harder, So work harder, work harder,
(32:00):
And so I am learning to give myself permission to
not feel like I have to work harder, right because
I don't know if I could work any harder.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Yeah, I don't. I don't. I don't know that I could.
How do you care for yourself? I have a great
friend group of school leaders number one who we can
connect with and just say that thing and like, girl, listen,
one more person comes, one more time. You just say
what you have to say that you want to say, yes.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
So you need that and we check in on each other.
So that's one I make very intentional time. When I
go home, I have myself on my personal self and
do not disturb from six in the evening till six
in the morning, so that I don't feel pressured if
(32:54):
I hear it buzz and it's you know, I have
it open for three people, my husband, my dad, and
my mom.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
When I rest, I rest, and I know how to rest,
and I had to learn that. And there are days
where I don't get it right because you can read
all this stuff and then trying to rest becomes a job.
You're like, oh shit, I didn't do this all right.
But when I rest, I rest, and it's like I
gave myself parmission, like, nope, I'm not doing it. I
love a weekend at home with nothing on the calendar
(33:24):
and learning how to do more of that.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Just like, yes, my favorite weekend, let's do this. I'm like, no, nothing,
I want, no agenda? Was your schedule? Nothing you mentioned
a time to me on the weekend, hanging up the
phone on.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Yeh, conversation resting on the weekend with absolutely nothing to do.
I love brunch with my childhood friends, like my best
friends are my two childhood friends that I grew up with.
And then you know, I just you know, let lose.
I am her that girl. We're having our champagne and
we're chopping it up. And the more recent learning how
(34:01):
to have conversations without bringing up work. And it's so
hard to do, right because when I'm with family, my
family's so proud of me, you know, and it's like
the principle, you know, it's the principle which can naturally
just lead into a conversation, but let me tell you
what happened today, right, And so learning how to in
spaces where it's not work, not talk about work, not
(34:24):
bring up work, not defining myself just by the leader
had and learning how to recognize like who Toria is
at the heart of Toria and the core of Toria
outside of being Toria the leader, Toria the principle.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
Yeah, if there are three things that you could magic
wand ooh, magic wand right over, what's happening And let's
let's stick with middle school for okay, right, Yeah, And
I'm saying this because I think it's such a unique time.
It's like hormones are involved. It's just such a unique
(34:58):
and it's like right in the middle, you know, it's
middle school, right, Yes, So if there were three things
that you could magic wand change, yes, shift, or you know,
modify in some way, what would that be involving any
aspect of this experience?
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Okay, So first thing, I'm going to go with first
thing that popped in my mind. Number one, particularly at
the middle school, just shifting this idea. While I understand
student scores have their place, a magic wand where everyone's
brain would recognize that data alone, is not it Number one?
(35:38):
Because I think that would give us a little more
wiggle room, right and relieve the pressure. Number two, every
student being in the present.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Of a fully capable teacher.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
And by that I mean, the teacher's well being is
in good time, the teacher feels healthy mentally, emotionally, spiritually.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
I wish it for.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
The student and the teacher, right, that just complete well
being right when we step into the space, because we
are being charged with something heavy, Right, I'm being charged.
We're being charged with taking care of the kids, right
from seven to seven. You know, my sky opens at
six thirty in the morning and kids go home by
(36:37):
six thirty. So where every kid is in the place
or in front of a healthy teacher, that's right, And
that every teacher is fulfilled by what they do. So
I'm bundling that up into number two. And then my
third thing, leaders who authentic leaders, who are well rested
(36:58):
and still feel charged to do the work.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Yeah. I wonder when the time will come that schools
are transformed, yes, ma'am, and transformed into including other aspects
(37:21):
of intelligence into the ways that schools are graded. Yeah.
So I think the numbers, Yeah, that the test scores,
and what about emotional intelligence, what about mental and emotional wellbeing?
What about those things? Because those are as much a
(37:46):
part of education as anything else. Here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
When I talk with people from all walks of life,
whatever stakeholder there is. You say, hey, your story is
she's a straight A student.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
They go, oh great. If I say here's Billy and
let me show you Billy's artwork, and Billy is self taught.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
The A student nobody, not that they don't care, but
they're just like, so, I think we know we value
these things, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
The kid who can hold your attention in the room.
Oftentimes it's not your perfect data A plus student. That's right.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
When I have student tours and I pick a good
variety of students to be on the tour, the people
are drawn to the kids who you're talking about, the
kids with the emotional intelligence, right, the kids who tell
it like it is, the kids who have a story,
the kids who are like, man, okay, and let me
turn in this essay.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
But did you know right? People are drawn to that.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
And so I would love a school system right where
there was balance, right, or more explicit appreciation for the
intelligences that you're talking about, because they bring it the music.
You know, I had a kid on papers like you know,
okay academically, but we had a piano and he would
(39:17):
go in every nutrition and lunch and just play, play,
play play play. He played at our eighth grade graduation
and the crowd was mesmerized and he was self taught YouTube.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Right.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
I spent one hundred eighty days trying to keep him
in classes, keep him from walking out of classes, on
the phone with his mother, reassuring her that we're going
to take care of it.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
But here was his gift. Yeah, here was his gift.
I was a kid who went through a student who
went through gifted programs as well. Yeah, and as you're
saying that, what I realized is the gift that I
was being acknowledged for was social studies, math, science, language, art.
(40:09):
You know, those are the gifts that go into that
bucket of acknowledgment for schools, which is very interesting. And
I think that that's it, and that's that can be expanded.
It has to be, it has to be.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
I'm grateful, like we do have after school programs where
we get to see our kids shine in different lights
and they shine, you know, and I don't know, that's
the heart of our school. I always say my after
school program is the heart of the school because it's
where the kids get to show it fully and we
see their talents.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
They're more at ease, and they're more.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Likable, you know, because they're doing something that you know
what I mean, and so they're engaging more. And I
wish schools could like transforming schools, reimagining what schools look like.
And I think, you know, we're starting to have those
conversations within the network, but we definitely have to shift
from making everything about the numbers and the data and
(41:10):
how many kids do you have in the building, make
sure you get them there every single day all day.
And I'm like, in the real world, nobody shows up
all day, every single day.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Yeah. Yeah, And it's like making people sit in the
chair all day. I've sat around the table. I sit
around the table all the time with adults, and we
can't sit still absolutely in this chair ten times since
I just right here uncomfortable, and I probably could not
when I was going to school. I think we put
(41:41):
too many expectations and we put too much pressure on
children in an area where adulting children adulting children. What
are you hearing most from parents right now? What are
(42:04):
parents say? Social media? That's it?
Speaker 1 (42:08):
You know, like most of the arguments, most of the
conflict starts on social media, and what are they That's
what they say, I don't know what to do about it, okay,
And so they say they won't give me their cell phone,
they won't give me their code. You know, I'm friends
with them on Instagram, and I'm like, well, do you
(42:29):
have access to their spam gram accounts and all these
other accounts? Because it's so parents are like at a
loss for words as well, because they are literally fighting
against social media technology the cell phone, and how do
I break this habit right now? That it's I mean,
this generation of kids, they had devices in their hands
(42:51):
at one and two. Yeah, I mean that's right, that's
their digital natives. And so how do I as parents
navigate all of this because it's scary, right, Several cases
where kids have connected with strangers online, a couple of
(43:11):
incidents where kids have left home to go and meet
up with someone, and so for parents, the biggest thing
that I'm hearing is that I don't know what to
do when it comes to this device and how to
manage it. And I tell them they can't be friends
with this person, and then they're still friends with them,
(43:34):
and so they go ahead took the phone, but then
the kid has this outburst and parents like, how much
is it worth it to hold this phone from this
kid if they're going to keep acting out like this.
Speaker 2 (43:49):
How do you lost for words? Yeah? How do you
think schools? I'm thinking about collaboration, right, and I'm wondering, like,
what can schools and families do to come together and
collaborate around change because each one of these things are
(44:13):
kind of you know, the air, little pieces of like
you said, pieces of the puzzle, right, But there seems
to be a collective concern for social media and saying no,
it ain't working. That's not the solution. And it's absolutely
not the solution because adults are just as tied to
(44:34):
their phones, absolutely absolutely, you know, And I think we
have to And you mentioned earlier the concern about or
your observation that people, children, our brains are being reprogrammed
to operate differently. We are literally being programmed to spurts
(44:58):
too quick, to you know, get it done in three seconds,
say what you have to say in three seconds, and
it's and it's impossible, and it's creating an ad in
a d D culture. So what what could collaboration look like?
What could collaboration look like? That's such a great question.
And as I'm sitting here thinking about it. In order
(45:22):
for us to come together and collaborate, and you say
it change. When I think about change, there has to
be some change within answer own thinking. That's right. And
so I don't even know yet that the adults that
have been charged with kids, those in the building and
the parents have done the change in themselves. Right.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
If I'm a rope, if I'm robotic, and this is
not like a shot against a parent, I work for,
not a father. I'm not even in a space yet.
I think about families who are forced to change something.
A crisis forces them to take a step back and say,
(46:07):
what am I going to do differently? I think it
takes some healing and some self work, and I might
not just know the answer, but I know that what
it would take for that type of collaboration to demand change,
to create spaces for change, we have to show up
at the table, all of us ready to do that.
And that's a heavy charge on parents, a heavy charge
(46:28):
on our parents. I'm working, I've got multiple kids. I
need you to get to school, I need you to
do this. I gotta help you with the homework. I
gotta put dinner on the table, and so That's how
so many adults are functioning. And this is sad to say.
I have the parent I'm describing who's breathing and ready
to put in the work and ask for change. I
(46:51):
could probably count, and I'm literally like running faces in
my head right now a handful five six parents who
are in that space, ready to do that kind of change,
ready to do it, not that they haven't thought about it,
(47:12):
not that they don't want to do it, but are
in a space where they can take it to the
table and say, let's do this work. The others are
just caught up in life. Life is life in them.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Yes, And a child who is not connected, a child
who is crying out for help, takes a lot of
time and energy as well. And I think that sometimes
that's an extra layer, that's an extra layer to parenting
and confronting what needs to be confronted. The consequence of
(47:48):
that is a freedom from what's holding you bound to that.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
Zauation, letting go of what you think has to look
and letting go of what my kid is supposed to
look like for yourself myself? Am I able if it
means that I have to show up to school. A
couple of am I able to do I have the
type of job that allows me to or am I
in a space to say, you know what? Then I
don't give them. I'm going to do it because it's
(48:13):
my child, right and I'll take the consequence on the end.
It's like we have to give permission as a whole society.
I don't know, like society has to shift.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
That's That's what I'm thinking. Like the more, this is
not just your spirits, and here in Los Angeles, one principle,
this is how do we shift how there's people who
are connected to children. Let's just use that as the
bucket of people. Right, what can we do? We all
(48:48):
know that the world has changed so much, information has
changed so much, the way we communicate has shifted so much,
just from one generation to the next. And until we
see it as a collective not even problem, until we
(49:09):
see it, until we take a moment to step back
and say, what does the world look like today? And
what do we need to do? What do we need
schools to look like, the schools to look like, what
do we need the role of a parent to look like?
What do we need and how do we support the educators,
the administrators, how do we support these children. Until we're
(49:31):
willing to actually have that conversation, we're going to continue
to have the same things that's happened over and over again.
And the problem with that is that there are so
many people who and I'll just say it, are living
in a let's go back because that's what was great
or before we jump all over one thing in this
(49:53):
past time paradise. But guess what, it's different today because
when I was in school and I'm sixty. When I
was in school, first of all, there were no cell phones,
right A long time was when you got home there
was and ring and you say hello, that was it.
(50:16):
And we didn't have TV's in every single room, and
it was it was a different time. I don't know
that that time is the best time. We all I'm
pointing to is today it's different. So we can sit
here and look back as much as we want. We
can talk about how it used to be. We can
talk about what kind of student we were and how
we behaved and what we did. It doesn't matter that
(50:39):
event who we are. That's not today. That's just venting
and it's living in an illusion. Right now. What we
need to do is come together to support educators and
maybe it's not so much about your child in that
(51:01):
school or not. Maybe it's reaching out and saying, what
what are your challenges? How can we help?
Speaker 1 (51:07):
Yeah, and I love that we're what we call a
community school and we receive funding from the state to
have these type of conversations and actually have resources to
bring in community partners, right, And when you said that,
it just made me think about it. So we have
a partnership with the Department of Mental Health and Services
(51:28):
wonderful where we brought them into our school. So parents
don't we eliminated having to make an appointment or having
to find the building somewhere in Los Angeles. They come
to us on our campus and meet with our parents
and taking advantage of that. That's one still pulling down,
(51:48):
you know, the stigma. But I know the very first
session when we just introduced the partner to our parents,
it became emotional. And this was just day one introduction.
There was nothing being done other than saying, this is
who we are, this is what we want to do,
this is why we want to do it, and parents,
you know, just like breathing and understanding, like this is
(52:11):
what I need and so I think in those regards.
This is an outside partner, right, It's more than just
the school, right, it's someone outside saying, yeah, we've got
to step in and support and help. I think of
a family. We kept saying like, hey, just come like,
take advantage of it, take advantage of it. A mother,
(52:32):
mother of four children, raising them on their own right now.
Dad's incarcerated and kids had been acting out since that
had been incarcerated, and mom said she did a check
in on them, like you're good, you're good, y'all think
you need counseling therapy and they're like nope, nope, right,
but one student's misbehaving, misbehaving, misbehaving. Last situation, had to
(52:55):
call mom in talk to her about the behavior. The
student just had a complete emotional breakdown. And mom says
to me, and mind you, her oldest is about fifteen
and mom is like thirty one and a mother of four.
She says, you know what, we do need therapy. That's
(53:16):
when she says to me, did I go? And she's
like she's like, we do, and we are going to
do it. And it was like yes, wonderful And that's
what it took. There were multiple people, right, yeah, and
she realized right that what she and her oldest kid
was saying to like the younger kid. When the younger
(53:37):
kid would show emotion and have those moments, it's kind
of like tough hout, you got this, like we ain't
crying what you're crying for? Or like, okay, what's wrong?
Everybody be quiet, it's made room for it. You okay,
you're good.
Speaker 2 (53:48):
But it was in that moment. Mind you. This took
a whole school year though for us to get to this.
But yeah, that work over the course of that one
school year is going to hermiange.
Speaker 1 (54:01):
Everything will change, everything, change everything, right, And so us
being able to have those resources and make the recommendation
to the mom and say, okay, hey, here you go,
this is where you need to go. You go, you
still need you need another copy of the paper because
I know, you know, toss it somewhere. It tastes that
kind of work, right, and not one time we're we're
talking about the student's academics, but.
Speaker 2 (54:23):
It fuels academics to even get to the academics. All
of that work right here we are now right, I
want to ask you a question as we're closing out
two questions. Okay, question one is, in one sentence, one sentence,
(54:43):
what do our children need most from us right now? Understanding?
Speaker 1 (54:50):
Our students need understanding, And that sounds very much simplifying it,
but they are asking us to understand who they are
and speaking to the point of not who we were
when we were going up, understanding who they are and
the world that they're existing in right now. And I
think if we could offer that, or at least maybe
(55:14):
not understand, but willingness to try to get to know them,
because I might not understand you, but if I can
offer you a willingness, a genuine willingness to get to
know you and hear you, I think that would help.
Speaker 2 (55:28):
Yeah. I think also it's acceptance on some level, and
then that step after that, right acceptance for accept the
person for who they are. What you resist, That's where
the pain comes when you resist. And I guess too like.
Speaker 1 (55:47):
These middle schoolers ain't letting you not because they ain't changing,
then back and down like I am who I am,
this is me period, right, And I love that about
children in the hood as well, right, because they are
like hating toast standing down on that they're unafraid miss
(56:09):
uh uh, not too much to tell you.
Speaker 2 (56:12):
I can't take it.
Speaker 1 (56:13):
I'm nah uh right, And it's like I see you,
I see you, miss ma'am.
Speaker 2 (56:18):
Yes. And then my last question for you, Toria is
how can we support you me? How can you support me?
I think giving us spaces like this to speak authentically
and allowing us to share, and knowing reaffirming that we
(56:39):
do have folks here to support us because this work.
Many leaders will say it, this work could be very lonely. Right.
Speaker 1 (56:46):
I can see when I go into my principal's office
and I have supported and put out fires, you go
back there, you still feel this. But at the end
of the day, this is my problem. That's what you're
telling yourself, right, that's not necessarily true, But knowing that
we have spaces to be heard and share authentically, and
(57:09):
then reaffirming that we're not in this work alone. I
love what you said about, Hey, this isn't just about
like schools like this is everyone Like if everyone had
that mindset, Oh god, you know how much easier this
work could be.
Speaker 2 (57:23):
There are folks, There are folks listening. There are folks
who are out there, and we're kind of sending out
a rally cry right now, there are folks who want
to help, yeah, and I think that there's like the
funding and all of that, But then there's the other
part of it. Yeah, you know, the support for the
(57:45):
shift that's needed, for the shift that's needed, and for
the cocoon that is education. And I think that if
you feel if you're listening, and if you feel so inclined,
let's start to think about ways that we can support
this incredible work that educators are doing because it's an
(58:06):
US problem. It's an US issue.
Speaker 1 (58:08):
Yeah, it doesn't on Monday through Friday. It doesn't feel
like an US problem. Right, I can get I can
see that right when you're in it. Once you can
step back and take a look at it.
Speaker 2 (58:19):
Right.
Speaker 1 (58:19):
And this is where my circle of girls come in
and we say this right, and then they want me
to do this right.
Speaker 2 (58:26):
But it is it is, yeah, it is. We're just
the ones that are going on the front line, that's right.
But it is an US problem. I want to thank
you so much for taking the time to share with me.
I myself have so much to think about from this conversation.
(58:48):
What I'm thinking about is what we can do. Yeah,
you know what we can do because it's not fair again,
and it's an us issue. It is a issue, and
we all need each other and we all need to
support each other. And I think that the days of
pretending that it's about thirty kids sitting at desks with
(59:12):
their hands folded with an apple and a cheese sandwich,
you know, just receiving and not giving back of themselves,
that is just not what's happening. And we have to
live in the truth of the present moment, whether we
like it or not, this is what's happening. And our
(59:34):
children and our teachers and our administrators, our principles are
at the front lines and experiencing this, and it's very
important that we also hold ourselves accountable to being part
of the solution. Those of us who can, those of
us who can.
Speaker 1 (59:53):
Thank you for saying that yeah, and maybe yeah, because
it isn't us problem. That's just resonating like it isn't us.
Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
Yes, Sometimes when you're in something so much, and I
know I do this in my own way, in my
own world, where I start thinking about what am I
going to do to fix this, and then I'm like,
wait a minute. I know people who are experts in
social media and how to manage it. I know people
(01:00:23):
who are mental health, you know, and wellness people like
I know people that can sit down and have conversations
with the students or the teachers or the parents. I know,
we all know people can.
Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
Help and that would help because every people they hear
it from us all the time, and so it's not
that they are not listening to us, but it becomes,
you know, it's the same old Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
So I want to thank you so much. We are
short on time, girl. I could talk to you for hours.
I could move on this was off of work and
talk about other things if you're listening. I just a
couple of things, couple of questions that I want to
throw or offer to you. One is, if you're a
parent or a caregiver of a middle school child or
(01:01:11):
a child at any age, I invite you to pause
for a second and ask yourself, what is your child
or what is my child carrying emotionally that might not
be visible on the surface, And ask yourself, if you're
willing to listen to what that is. I think that's
a very important question. Another question, for those of you
(01:01:32):
who are educators or community leaders, how are you nourishing
your own well being whilst also supporting others. And then, lastly,
what legacy are you shaping through the way that you
show up for the young people in your life, Whether
you're a parent, an auntie, a coach, a neighbor, or
just an adult who sees an opportunity to help and
(01:01:57):
contribute and pour in. What are you willing to do?
Is the question that I'm going to leave this audience with. Toria,
thank you so much. This was beautiful, Thank you, Welcome
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