Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:00:00]:
Welcome, advocates, to another episode of the Leading Equity Podcast. A podcast that focuses on supporting educators with the tools and resources necessary to ensure equity at their schools. Today's special guest is Naval Caroni. Without further ado, Naval, thank you so much for joining us today.

Nawal Qarooni [00:00:17]:
I really appreciate you having me.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:00:19]:
Pleasure's mine. I'm excited for today's topic. You are the author of Nourishing Caregiver Collaborations L Home Experiences and Classroom Practices for Collective Care, and that's right here. Folks, I will leave a link in the show notes. So that's a little bit about who you are, but I'd love for you to share with our audience who you are and what you currently do.

Nawal Qarooni [00:00:40]:
Thank you. I've been a longtime educator in middle schools as a literacy, coach after that and as an instructional leader in both Brooklyn and Chicago Public Schools. And for the past 10 years or so, my new baby has been family literacy and working on on engagement in California and across the country. And so now I live back in the East Coast. I have 4 little kids of my own. I do a bunch of other stuff like adjunct at universities. And I'm just I'm super excited about this book because I think that the work is so important and meaningful in shifting the conversation around families and engagement in schools.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:01:16]:
Alright. Well, I'm excited. We're gonna be talking about storytelling. And one of the things that you said before we even hit record that really stuck out to me was that storytelling is the road maps to the future. I'm just curious. What did you mean by that?

Nawal Qarooni [00:01:31]:
I think a lot about what we determine or exalt and validate as literacy in classrooms and in our schools. And often, it is really the worship of the written word, isn't it? And I think about families of all stripes and all kinds from different backgrounds and different, you know, different ethnicities, just all kinds of different families. And what's universal is this really incredible storytelling that happens. It happens authentically. Sometimes it needs kind of a springboard and a nudge. But as classroom teachers and as folks who work with young people in schools, that's what we're trying to encourage, oral storytelling. It's a really easy kind of way that we can include families in the works that we're trying to achieve in the literacy classroom.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:02:12]:
So okay. I was a history teacher. I did social studies, and so I I loved to tell the story. Like, to me, that was the only way I can keep my students' attention was to be able to tell whatever event, historical figure, hero, heroine, those kind of things. I had to keep them engaged by telling these stories. So when you say that it's the road maps to the future, are we saying, like, I need to know my past, or I need to share with my classmates or maybe share with my teacher or what like, I I wanna learn a little bit more as far as kinda what your thoughts are on why storytelling is so important.

Nawal Qarooni [00:02:47]:
I mean, honestly, I don't I don't believe we can move forward if we don't really understand where we came from and who we are. And often, I can't even tell where my thoughts begin and my mom's memories kind of end because of how much she has told me. I think about that a lot, that that our parents or our caregivers and the people who shaped us, the collective being very kind of wide ranging in who our family is, they provide compasses for us to make sense of the world, and they do that for kids. And so one of the ways that we can continue to engage families is by ensuring that those stories are happening. I think about my mom who comes to Jersey City to take care of my 4 young children when I travel, and she was invited to be a guest reader in one of their classrooms. She wouldn't go because reader really turned her off and really, like, scared her. The minute that I explained to her that she could just tell stories from her past or from Iran or for, she could go and just talk. Reader really alienated her.

Nawal Qarooni [00:03:56]:
And so sometimes I think we put up these barriers, which we don't even realize. We think that we're engaging and inviting families into the classroom space, but maybe we're inadvertently making folks feel insecure or uncomfortable with that ask.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:04:11]:
So do you recommend teachers, like, prompt their students, like, kinda like on the journal style, or does it matter what subject that they're teaching? Is it something applicable to the math class versus maybe a p class versus maybe a ELA class? I mean, does that all look differently in those different content areas?

Nawal Qarooni [00:04:29]:
Places. Yes. Of course. It's not relegated to a single curricular area. Storytelling, of course. You said it was for history. I think I think storytelling makes learning stickier. It's the way that we, like, can move forward.

Nawal Qarooni [00:04:41]:
But in in my book, I try to explain and give ideas for a bunch of different ways that we can not only story tell, but also, like, deeply listen. I think that that's part of storytelling is being cognizant that we don't need to rush to solve, like allowing kids to kind of meander. I give examples for story building, so starting a story, adding on to it. I give examples for oral recording so that that can be part of the revision process because often multilingual and multiethnic kids, when they are hearing back how they sounded in their writing, they're able to, like, catch their own mistakes and or catch how they wanted it to sound. And so, yeah, I mean, I think that it works in every curricular area, but often families don't recognize that. Families don't recognize that that is really rich and important storytelling. And so, you know, there are ideas like photo elicitation where we can take photos alongside families and have this kind of shared literacy experience where we ask a bunch of questions. Who's outside the frame? Who wasn't in the frame? Who's taking the photo? What was the context of this photo? How old was I at this time? Were you alive? Were you not? Kind of generating those questions so that families have those to then discuss with their kids.

Nawal Qarooni [00:05:51]:
I talk about all kinds of oral history projects when it comes to kind of, like, who's in your collective, who who are the people who shape you, and then what are the conversations that you could have with those folks that then we can record and keep, like, keep memories around. And I took that into curricular work so that it doesn't feel kind of, like, isolated.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:06:09]:
Okay. So you look at getting families involved with theirs. Okay. I mean, to me, that's a great way to partner with, you know, the schools between the families and also at the school and the teachers and things like that. I like the idea of the photo. I think you said solicitation project. Is is that what did I say it correctly? Solicitation. It was elicitation or solicitation?

Nawal Qarooni [00:06:31]:
Elicitation.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:06:32]:
Okay. Okay.

Nawal Qarooni [00:06:33]:
Elicitation. It's the idea that a photo cannot elicit a ton of conversation.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:06:38]:
Got you.

Nawal Qarooni [00:06:39]:
And a single photo can elicit a ton of conversation. So I can give you an example. Yeah. And during the pandemic, my, like, closest aunt on my mother's side died very quickly of colon cancer. And when she was dying, I flew to go see her in Virginia, and she because my parents lived my parents lived you know, their stuff was all destroyed in the Iran Iraq War in the eighties. I don't have any photos of my family when they were young. And so my aunt happened to have just, like, a few. I was able to, as before she passed away, have a conversation with her around these single photographs.

Nawal Qarooni [00:07:11]:
And so we spent hours pouring over just a handful of photographs. And so I was asking things like down to the detail. Like, it's almost closely looking at a visual. Right? Over and over and over again, closely reading a visual and asking every question under the sun, like, whose shadow is this? Who had a camera? What time of day was this? Where right? Everything that you can possibly generate and how much I then was able to learn as a result and how those stories would not have existed. I would not have known those. They would not have been passed down to me had I not had that opportunity. And so that is the kind of that's the kind of idea. I I literally do it in family lab sites where I invite families to bring old family photographs or community photos being cognizant that families might not have those artifacts into the school building, I model it with the kids in front of them, and then they go off with their family members and they talk, talk, talk, talk, talk wildly.

Nawal Qarooni [00:08:08]:
Those often then can springboard into writing because then what they've done is brainstorm vignettes, small moments, and personal narrative ideas. What then happens? Families now know that that's how brainstorming works, and that's what we're trying to elicit in, like, a literacy classroom. What's also happening is identity work. They're, like, learning about themselves. They're learning about their pasts.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:08:27]:
That's good. Learning about their past, and then I could see how having that knowledge as an educator, if I wanna be culturally responsive, like, I I mean, to me, that's just almost like the blueprint. Like you said, the road map to to what we can do next. Okay. I know about this family. Maybe I had assumptions already because of their last name. Maybe I already had assumptions because of whatever small limited information I have. But I now you have told me this is where where my family come from.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:08:55]:
This is how we thrive. This is what we celebrate at home. These are some of our custom chairs or some of our practices. So how does a teacher take this knowledge that they've learned from such as your photo elicitations?

Nawal Qarooni [00:09:08]:
How do

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:09:08]:
they take that information and utilize that as as teachers?

Nawal Qarooni [00:09:12]:
I mean, I think neuroscience teaches us. Like, this is Zaretta Hammond's work, culturally responsive teaching in the brain, that, like, the brain is more primed to learn when kids feel comfortable with us, and that often happens. Like, the like, the front of the brain literally, like, feels more comfortable and, like, you know, is less on alert when stories are being told and when they then feel comfortable with us. So if not anything, it's like a hospitality mode for, like, setting the nourishing table for how you're gonna teach your children in front of you. And we can't separate knowing the children from knowing their families. Knowing the children and knowing their families to me is, like, one and the same. And so you you better understand who's in front of you when these invitations are happening, when these conversations are happening in your midst, when they can get captured and part of Eakins like the memory keeping in your classroom. And better yet, like, when it's woven into your whole entire year as opposed to a one off literacy night that doesn't actually move the dial in understanding families and understanding family engagement differently.

Nawal Qarooni [00:10:19]:
What usually happens in these moments also is the teacher becomes really human for the families because the teacher is modeling it with their own example.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:10:28]:
That was gonna be my question. Do the teachers do it too? Okay.

Nawal Qarooni [00:10:31]:
Yeah. So the teachers are kind of modeling it like an official I mean, think of it exactly as, like, a little lesson, and the families are sitting on the road, like, literally with their Eakins. And we do it at different times a day so as not to alienate families who have different schedules and to just, like, make sure that you're capturing as many families as possible. And it's kind of low stakes, and there's no right or wrong, and it's really joyful to just, like, share in this literacy experience with your kids. And if that's kind of part of the fabric of the way that you're operating, you have more teachers in the classroom because then families are understanding the languages that we're trying to speak. So when I do this or example, I just did this recently in California. And I did do an example of one of my photographs from my grandparents that I got from my aunt's house. And in that photograph, my grandparents are, like, taking apart a carcass, like an animal carcass.

Nawal Qarooni [00:11:16]:
And I didn't know anything about the ritual around when families would come from the United States to Iran, they would, like, slaughter an animal and serve it to the community to make make sure that the family who was traveling was protected. It's like giving back to the community in order to protect your family, warding off the evil eye. And so I learned all of that and that kind of, like, cultural ritual, but also that, like, my grandfather did that and that they, like, they labored to take apart the meat so that they can serve the serve the people in the community before we would arrive or their children would arrive from the United States back to visit. So when you do that, families then also feel incredibly connected to you because you've now revealed more of L, and as a result, they're more apt to reveal of themselves. It creates and, like, primes the entire kind of kitchen table, if you will, becomes just warm and nourishing. It's like you wanna break bread with folks. You know?

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:12:13]:
I could see, like, so many benefits to this, like, relationship building. You know, one of the things I always find helpful is, like, at my Eakins' school when they were younger, the teachers before COVID, the teachers would do the home visits. You know, that summer, they would reach out to parents. Hey. I'm the teacher for your child this year. I wanna come by and visit your your your home.

Nawal Qarooni [00:12:35]:
Yep.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:12:36]:
Half hour or whatever. They come by, give a nice presentation, and they always took a picture of the children. And when they showed up to the first day of school, there's their picture up on the wall and something comfortable. Maybe they had their stuffed stuffed animal with them, or maybe they were out on a trampoline. I think 1 year, we had the kids take pictures on their trampoline. Like, there's always, like, little things. And like you said, it's so powerful with a child walks into the classroom, 1st day of school. They see pictures of them that the teachers can't they've already met their teacher.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:13:06]:
They've they've already had a chance to explain a little bit about who they are, who their family is, and how much of a relationship you can develop from day 1 as opposed to you Eakins the 1st day of school, haven't had a chance to touch base or any of those kind of things. I kinda wonder, does this is this something that we should do in the first of the year? Is this is there, like, a check-in midway through the year that we can do that's similar cultural L? Like, what what are your thoughts there?

Nawal Qarooni [00:13:32]:
Well, I love that. But what I do for sure for sure is take out your calendar, your school calendar, and make sure that you're you're peppering them across the entire year. Make sure it's not just a single time. Not just cultural storytelling, but then I have all the other invitations. I have, let's draw a map of a special place, and let's remember the memories that happened there. And let's talk about all those memories as we're doing that because that is one of the brainstorming tools again for writing. And so what they've done is engage in the brainstorming process, but then you see kids who never had, you know, a paper so full because they were there brainstorming alongside their family excitedly. You have the power of the shared pen or the shared crayon where both the family, the caregiver, and the kid is working on a single sheet of paper and cocreating something.

Nawal Qarooni [00:14:14]:
There's power in that. You have, like, sad memories bubbling up. And remember when that happened, you have kids learning about their parents. Like, I didn't know that you drew drew graffiti in Mexico, but, like, the dad is, like, real nice with the pen. Right? Yeah. And she's learning about her dad in that moment. And so, yeah, there I have all these, what I call, shared family Eakins of, like, experience ideas that you and believe me, teachers have way better ideas than I do because you know they know their community. Right? And so they they just run with it.

Nawal Qarooni [00:14:42]:
And so you have to plan them across the entire year.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:14:45]:
Okay. Not a one and done. This is something that we do throughout the year.

Nawal Qarooni [00:14:49]:
That's right. Not a one and done. But it's like what you said about the home visit. It's what we're trying to do is break down barriers and knowing each other and break down barriers in understanding the families we serve. And we don't realize or recognize how many there actually are. Like, when I interviewed folks in Chicago, there were people saying, the secretary is mean I'm uninterested in going to the building. They make us sit in these really small chairs and tables, and they talk above us. Like, the power dynamic of even where people were standing intimidated folks.

Nawal Qarooni [00:15:21]:
You have folks who didn't do school well themselves and don't feel comfortable with formal education, so they feel they can't contribute to their child's literacy learning. These are all things that we're trying to break down in those shared experiences. And so, yeah, body language is super important. I usually make sure that you come with if you have little siblings because I always had kids strapped to me and didn't wanna not be able to go if I had, like, little kids. So I'll have kids on my hip while I'm modeling this because it should be, you know, intergenerational. Sometimes siblings from other grade levels come instead or in lieu of family members or, like, L all kinds of different cousins come instead. In a recent one that I did in Chicago, there was a mother who sat there super silently with her daughter, and they filled the page. But then afterwards, she said to me, like, did you notice that we didn't speak?

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:16:05]:
She

Nawal Qarooni [00:16:06]:
doesn't talk to me. Like, sometimes it's the power of sitting there together, but that page was full. She had

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:16:11]:
a ton

Nawal Qarooni [00:16:12]:
of ideas. They had created a special place map, and it was, like, of their house in Puerto Rico. Right? Like, that they had, like, spent a ton of time with tons of details and all these kind of, like, little moments and dots that then could be literacy learning for us in the classroom that educators could use. So it's better knowing the families in order to better know the kids and better serve them in culturally responsive ways while we're teaching them.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:16:35]:
One of the things that I've heard throughout our conversation is you've mentioned oral presentations. You've mentioned visual presentations. I've heard you even talk about writing a page is filled. Is that a cultural responsive practice? So, like, maybe, for example, some people's homes, they preferred it to historically, they tell oral stories. Now there's certain cultures, certain tribes, or whatnot where they just pass down through oral history versus another might be a visual. Maybe they are used to putting stuff on the walls as you mentioned earlier. So I I'm hearing the flexibility. Maybe that's not the best way to say it, but there's there's the approach of families are allowed to present or share what's preferable to them.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:17:18]:
Is that what I'm hearing?

Nawal Qarooni [00:17:19]:
Absolutely. And that's how we should be in the classroom, just equally nimble. Right? Equally nimble and allowing for kids to I like to say, and what artifact are you compelled to create as a result of this learning? And so, like, another example is these constellations of care that families create alongside their kids. You can give it in a variety of ways. You can model it. You can give it as an assignment. You could do it as a family literacy night, whatever. But the idea is who are the people who shape you? Who are the people who who would show up on this neighborhood map or this community map or this constellation of care? How How do you wanna visually represent it? How do you wanna how do you wanna represent a period? Some people create straight up constellations.

Nawal Qarooni [00:17:57]:
Some people record it and and explain examples. Some people make a garden of the people that made them grow. Some people, like literally, the visuals were endless, and the examples were endless. There were, like, there were kids putting the bodega on her because he's where they go after school before their parent picks them up, and that's who they debrief with all their days, woes, and triumphs, and travails. And so that guy shows up on there even though he was not a blood relative because he's meaningful in shaping that kid's literacy life. And so being really, like, wide ranging and saying, like, families can look a lot of different ways. Your artifacts could look a lot of different ways. Your storytelling can look a lot of different ways.

Nawal Qarooni [00:18:34]:
There's no one single right way to be is culturally responsive practice.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:18:40]:
Mic drop.

Nawal Qarooni [00:18:42]:
I I mean so

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:18:44]:
Well, you're bringing the fire today. That's okay. I I have so like, okay. This to me, this is this takes away from the your traditional family tree. You know? Go reach out to grandmother, grandpa, father, or whoever and find out, you know, who you're and and I never liked the family tree activities because I feel like it's very limiting to a lot of people such as your your folks of African descent or your folks that are Native American. Like, a lot of lot of this thing is is not culturally responsive to a lot of folks. So it might majority of your group might be all excited to research their family in Europe and and they're all the different, history, but it doesn't necessarily mean that everybody else is going to feel included. So to me, what I'm hearing is this is way above your traditional maybe we should even throw out.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:19:35]:
Maybe we should throw out your traditional family tree activity.

Nawal Qarooni [00:19:39]:
I have a section in the book talking specifically about that because I believe that we alienate families who have degrees of kinship that are so much richer than potentially your blood relatives alone. And that that could bring anxiety for kids who don't have access to that information and or have people in their lives super significant that do not show up on the traditional mother, father family tree. You think about your same sex households. You think about your think about my aunts and uncles who would not have shown up, though they shaped me as patriarchs in the family. Think about my kids who put my college roommate, Ryan, and his boyfriend, Ryan, on their family collective because they lived in our backyard in Chicago for many Eakins. And we're part of kind of, like, the fabric of my children's growth. And so the questions that I like to ask families instead are, where did language live for you? Where did storytelling live for you? Whose voices have you heard? I like to make sure that we show examples of flawed and nuanced adults. And so a springboard for conversation, another one for shared family experiences is talking about challenges in times where we, like, potentially made mistakes, didn't know the answers, or struggled through a thing.

Nawal Qarooni [00:20:55]:
This is, like, very hard for families to talk about. But, again, I think when we model it, they're more apt to share. And so these kind of low stakes invitations are useful for that to show, like, fam people don't need to be a single way. They don't need to look a certain way. And those constellations of care, the examples are so vast. You show too serious of a model, then it limits their own imagination and innovation and creativity for how they might represent it is what I found.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:21:25]:
So you show them what the example could look like ahead of time?

Nawal Qarooni [00:21:28]:
I create it in front of them.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:21:30]:
Oh, you create it in front of them?

Nawal Qarooni [00:21:31]:
I create it right in front of them. So the teachers recognize how easy and quick it is to try these low stakes family literacy sites and lab sites. I don't ever want it to feel like an extra super huge hard endeavor that they've pre prepped and preplanned for that then families didn't come and then they got upset about. It should be, like, planned on a Post it, ready to go. We're gonna try it out a couple mornings. Once you do it, you see how simple it is. Often, teachers start the next week. They're like, we're doing it.

Nawal Qarooni [00:22:01]:
We're gonna look at the map of our of our calendar year, and we're going to pepper these in across the year. As a result, communication with newsletters, your communication with the Remind app, your communication with pickup report cards becomes softer because you have now engaged with families in this way.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:22:18]:
You know, Alta, we we focus on the academic side, and I know a lot of schools are shifting. Yeah. Because obviously, you have standard benchmarks and all those kind of things. But a lot of schools are also recognizing. Yeah. But these are human beings at the end of the day. Right? And we kind of touched on the importance Eakins feeling comfortable. I'm just thinking from a sense of belonging standpoint because I do a lot of work in that area.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:22:41]:
Me telling my story or my culture story, I would assume that creates some sort of belonging where I feel maybe accepted, supported, and included. I just wanted to see if you had some thoughts in that area.

Nawal Qarooni [00:22:53]:
Well, yeah. I mean, I try to, and everything that I do, of course, use models that then kids can see L, like windows and mirrors and doctor Rudine's bishop. So, like, if I'm doing, for example, reading photos alongside kids with families or reading images. We'll move into then reading picture book images alongside families during the independent work time, and those books are so purposefully selected to also make sure the kids can see themselves. It automatically gives a sense of belonging to kids when you even the playing field. It's not you're a higher reader or a lower reader. It's we're all looking at this image together. Right? We're all looking at this, and all of us are capable of having a conversation about this piece of text being an image or, you know, kind of when you expand the definition of literacy to be more wide ranging than just alphabetic words on a page.

Nawal Qarooni [00:23:42]:
Kids then get a sense of belonging because their confidence is boosted because then you can heterogeneously group them. They're then they feel more confident with their families there anyway. They then have kind of the conversation springboard that they're able to then explain to their families what they did. So families are not just, like, taking the final product and saying, does this look nice? That's what the final product should be. As opposed they, like, know the entire story, I mean, I think that breeds a sense of confidence and as a result, a sense of belonging. Like, you are a 100%. Every child has amazing strengths no matter what, period. Full stop.

Nawal Qarooni [00:24:17]:
And so I think part of it is, like, arming families with the kinds of questions that they can ask so that it's not just like where is my child when it comes to comparison with others, but, like, what inspires a sense of wonder in my child? What motivates my child to smile in the classroom? So the questions that I've organized are around agency and identity and, yes, of course, a sense of belonging. Like, does my child know that you know these things about them? Because what does that do? That makes the child feel so seen.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:24:45]:
Okay. I have a question. I my mind my gears are turning, and and I'm thinking you you're gonna have a diverse spread from maybe social economic status. You might have race and gender. There there's all these different identities. And so I I just I'm thinking if I'm a teacher and I'm facilitating one of these activities, let's say, again, the photo elicitation. I like I just like saying elicitation now. So let's say we're talking about that.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:25:10]:
And let's say this one affluent family, they go all out with their project, and even their story is just like, oh, my gosh, privilege. Then you got another family that they they do what they can.

Nawal Qarooni [00:25:21]:
Right.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:25:21]:
And their story may not be as exciting. Yeah. How do we facilitate these type of activities to where there's celebration between each group?

Nawal Qarooni [00:25:31]:
No. Absolutely. I mean, in every one of these experiences, there has been some level of discomfort with someone somewhere. It might be a teacher who says, gosh. That made me really sad. They didn't even have this kind of experience, or she couldn't think of blank. You know, honestly, I don't do a big kind of, like, gallery presentation of any kind. It's just for the process, and it's just for the moment.

Nawal Qarooni [00:25:57]:
It's a lot of teacher moving around with such hand on heart, like, excitement, over the top enthusiasm for there's no right and wrong. I'm so excited you're here and sharing of yourselves. It's a lot of that. It's not let's put it on display and all of us then have a conversation about right? And so I think that that minimizes things. But, yeah, you have to kind of be okay with some discomfort given the fact that you're, like, experiencing people's lives. When they're opening themselves up to you, you're going to have a lot of variation. And, also, it's, like, very dependent on, like, the teaching body versus the student body or, you know, versus the family. It's like, I've I've experienced a lot of kind of funky moments, but nothing that we can't kind of, like, get around and say, oh, I recognize that, and all families are different.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:26:47]:
K. Okay. I I did it was on my mind. I was like, man, I I this this is great, but I just can imagine, like, you had 30 different families or 30 different stories. You know?

Nawal Qarooni [00:26:58]:
And There's a student in one of my, in one of my recent lab sites that didn't wanna bring out the thing that he had created with his family, just even put up on the wall. And it was because he had a bunch of different siblings from different backgrounds and races, and he didn't want the kids to then, like, ask a bunch of questions. And I only got that out of him afterwards when I was like, show me your project. It's me saying let's add it let's put it up there. You know? It's it's I think it's up to us to navigate those conversations, and they might be funky. You know, Jennifer Eberhardt, a social scientist. You know you know her who are biased. Yeah.

Nawal Qarooni [00:27:29]:
You know, she talks about, like, just the power in pausing, reflecting, and, like, sitting in it that, like, that's where the power lies is just sitting in it. And so I think we we need to get better at sitting in the discomfort of potential potential differences and disparities. Usually, it's the teacher's own Yeah. Discomfort, that percolates to the surface, and they don't know how to they don't know how to, kind of navigate it.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:27:57]:
Yeah. Okay. L, so then so what I'm hearing of all is essentially, if you don't do this, you need to be about that life because there could be some some tough stories or whatnot, and you can't be worried about your own comfort. That's not the goal as educators. It's for for our to assess our our level of comfort when we're learning from our students. I think definitely we can have compassion. I think definitely we can be empathetic. I guess for me, it's it's more of you you need to be prepared that, like you said, there there might be some difficult conversations that will ensue afterwards.

Nawal Qarooni [00:28:30]:
Yeah. And I think that this is, like, what we can end on. My kind of, like, last message is a true, like, unapologetic reverence for all families. And so no matter what their stories are, even if they bring discomfort to us sometimes or we feel that it's not how families should look like, sound like, or act like, are you know, the most important thing is an unapologetic kind of positive regard for the families in our midst and the stories and the trajectories that they bring and a validation that they are contributing in worthy ways to their fam to their children's literacy lives, that every adult is a contributor to this child's kind of literacy growth as a more collective approach as opposed to this top down. This is how schools do it so that we're not separating school literacy from authentic literacy in the world, which includes, of course, oral storytelling.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:29:27]:
Hey. Well, good job. I like that, L. Good job on that. Thank you for your your final thoughts. Again, Naval is the author of Nourishing Caregiver Collaborations, Elevating Home Experiences, and Classroom Practices for collective care. If we have some folks that wanna connect with you, what's the best way to reach you online?

Nawal Qarooni [00:29:48]:
You can reach me at nqcliteracyon twitter/ x and at nkorouni on Instagram. My website is also nqcliteracydot org.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:30:01]:
And we'll leave all the links in the show notes, folks, in case that was hard to remember. All the links will be there. So thank you again, Naval. It has truly been a pleasure. I appreciate your time.

Nawal Qarooni [00:30:10]:
You're so awesome. Thank you for having me and for all the work that you do for education.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:30:15]:
My pleasure.

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