Welcome to another episode of Speaking with Confidence, the podcast where I help you become a powerful communicator. I’m your host, Tim Newman, and in each episode, we explore the art of effective communication, sharing strategies, insights, and expert conversations designed to unlock your potential. Don’t forget to check out our resources at TimNewmanSpeaks.com to take your communication skills to the next level. Today’s episode is especially meaningful as we explore the power of advocacy, authenticity, and finding your voice to drive meaningful change.
In this enlightening episode of Speaking With Confidence, host Tim Newman is joined by Dr. Almitra Berry, a nationally recognized expert in educational equity. Together, they explore the systemic inequities in K-12 education and discuss actionable ways to empower culturally and linguistically diverse learners. Dr. Berry shares her deep insights into building trust in the classroom, teaching critical life skills like self-advocacy, and embracing linguistic diversity to create an equitable educational landscape. Whether you’re an educator, parent, or advocate, this episode will leave you inspired to drive change.
Key Takeaways
- Advocating for Marginalized Learners: Dr. Berry highlights the crucial need for educators and communities to champion the needs of historically underserved students.
- Systemic Inequities in Education: The public education system often falls short in addressing the diverse needs of students, especially those from marginalized communities.
- Building Psychological Safety: Fostering trust and relationships in classrooms creates an environment where students can thrive academically and personally.
- The Role of Soft Skills: Public schools often neglect teaching essential skills like communication, self-advocacy, and collaboration.
- Linguistic Diversity Matters: Recognizing and valuing all forms of communication, including regional dialects and multilingualism, bridges the gap between home and school languages.
- Empowering Future Generations: By supporting students in finding their voice and passion, we set the stage for societal change.
- AI in Education: If leveraged effectively, artificial intelligence has the potential to transform education for the better.
- Social Media’s Impact: The conversation addresses the challenges posed by social media on youth mental health.
- Finding Your Voice: Dr. Berry emphasizes the importance of authenticity and passion in public speaking to connect meaningfully with any audience.
About Dr. Almitra Berry
Dr Almitra L Berry is a nationally recognized speaker, author, and consultant focused on the education of culturally and linguistically diverse learners in America’s K12 education system. Her research focuses on equity and academic achievement for marginalized learners – particularly in majority-of-color, low-wealth, large, urban school districts. She hosts the podcast, Educational Equity Emancipation; is the author of the book, Effecting Change for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Learners, now in its second edition. Her upcoming book to be released this spring is on equitable classroom practices for culturally & linguistically diverse learners, and numerous other articles focus on educational equity and instructional practices for classroom educators. She is also the content expert for multilingual development in Perfection Learnings Connections Literature and equity consultant for Savvas Learning’s Experience Science.
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Transcript
Tim Newman:
Welcome to Speaking with Confidence. The podcast is here to help you unlock the power of effective public speaking. I’m your host, tim Newman, and I’m excited to take you on a journey to become a better public speaker. I really appreciate each and every one of our listeners and thank you for your support. If each of you could do one thing for me, that would be to give us a five-star review and share the podcast with someone close to you who would benefit from listening.
Tim Newman:
Today’s guest, dr Almitra Berry, is a nationally recognized speaker, author and consultant focused on the education of culturally and linguistically diverse learners in America’s K-12 education system. Her research focuses on equity and academic achievement for marginalized learners, particularly in majority of color, low wealth, large urban school districts. She hosts the podcast Educational Equity Emancipation, is the author of the book Affecting Change for Culturally and Linguistically and linguistically diverse learners, now in its second edition. Her upcoming book, to be released this spring, is on equitable classroom practices for culturally and linguistically diverse learners and numerous other articles focused on educational equity and instructional practices classroom educators. She’s also the content expert for Multilingual Development and Perfect Learning Connections Literature and equity consultant for Savas Learning Experience Science. Dr Berry, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
Thanks for having me, Tim.
Tim Newman:
You know, you have been. Your career has virtually taken you all over the country. Have been. Your career has virtually taken you all over the country. You’ve worked with educational systems, from you know, top to bottom, large to small, well-funded, poorly funded. You know, and you’re still hanging in there fighting a good fight. How do you manage to do that fight?
Dr. Almitra Berry:
in a good fight. How do you manage to do that? You know, every time I think I’m done, something else happens, usually in the education policy, the political sphere about education. That just really ticks me off and says to me it’s not time to stop yet. So I always say that all I need is 15 minutes in the classroom full of kids, seeing that they are still showing up, they’re eager to learn, and looking at data. Knowing we’re not meeting their needs just tells me my work is not done.
Tim Newman:
Yeah, and it’s. It’s a shame. You know I come from public education. Obviously, I worked in education most of my adult life and it seems to me that you know, the further we get down the road, the more we’re failing our kids on a number of levels. I think we’ve lost our way in educating them in what’s really important. And you know, as I’m teaching now, you know you and I talked about I’m teaching a brand new class I’ve never taught before is for freshmen students in college. It’s called Perspectives on Education and you know we’re talking about the public education system and how it works and what are the ways it’s supposed to work and what people should be getting out of it. And you know, these students who have just completed that system really have no idea how it works or how it should work.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
And that’s a shame. Yeah, yeah, it really is. I mean, every single child in the country is mandated. It’s either mandatory or compulsory, depending on the grade and what state you’re in, but they all have to go to school. 12, 13 years. Kindergarten sometimes is optional, but one to 12, you’re supposed to be in school. And so we have forced every single child, every family with children, into a system that no one seems to completely understand, right? And they don’t have a choice as to whether or not to participate. Sure, they could do homeschooling. There are different types of you know, you could do regular public, you could do a public charter school, you could opt to pay for private school, but you have to go to something and they all have the same, essentially the same standards of when you’re eligible to leave, saying that you completed it, and yet we still most.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
If you ask most people, even those with children, they don’t know how the system works Right.
Tim Newman:
Or how to get the most out of it.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
Yeah, yeah, I was going to say or you said it two ways how it’s supposed to work and how it does work. It does work Different things, yeah.
Tim Newman:
You know my, my kids now, and I’ve got three grandkids and they’re not of school age yet. The oldest one is supposed to get into school age. And you know, when my kids were younger, I told them you know, if you have a problem in class, you need to deal with the teacher. Don’t come to me, you go talk to the teacher. You need to deal with the teacher. Don’t come to me, you go talk to the teacher. And if at that point you don’t feel like you’re not being treated fairly or you weren’t heard, then you come to me.
Tim Newman:
And you know my whole purpose in that was number one to get them to learn how to communicate, to get them to learn how to advocate for themselves, to get them to learn that you know, sometimes it’s best that it comes from them and they’re going to learn more if it comes from them. And my wife, who’s also an educator she’s a retired educator she about hit the roof when I said that. I said, no, we have to start teaching them these things, that they have to start advocating for themselves, because eventually, you know, we can’t advocate for them and they’ve got to learn how to do it. And they have to learn how to deal with different people and different personalities, and that’s something-.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
You know the challenge with that, as I hear you say that, and good for you that you taught your children to do that is for kids who look like you, it’s okay for them to challenge the teacher. But when our children have black and brown skin when they challenge the teacher, it’s often overwhelmingly. It’s a very different outcome because those kids get suspended.
Tim Newman:
They get sent to the office because they’re defiant or they’re disruptive. That’s like a glaring example of one of the biggest inequities in our system is the lack of voice and agency for children with black and brown skin, and I’m glad that you said that, because you know I teach at Georgia State University right now, which is one of the most diverse institutions in the country. You know we’re graduating more African-American students than any other institution in the country and I tell each, each, each class I teach, come talk to me. And they look at me like I’m nuts. I’m like no, you, I’m different. I mean, you come talk to me, please come talk to me.
Tim Newman:
You know we’re we’re going to, we’re going to have some conversations where we’re going to talk and if we don’t agree, it’s okay. There’s, you know you have to. And I say you have to and I step back and say I’m not going to tell you what you have to do. I’m suggesting that you do this because it’s I’m trying to help, I’m trying to get you out of what you’ve been taught your entire lives. You know we’ve been taught our entire lives that you know. If you get an A, that’s great, but what did you learn?
Tim Newman:
I need to know what you’ve learned Um and and and and, trying to change mindset. And I see it, I see it on their faces and it takes a full semester, you know, to get them to, to, to open up and come to me and say, okay, I have an issue with this, I have an issue with that. Can you explain this a little bit better? Whatever it is, and you know when, when they see that I’ve been true to my word, that’s when now we start really having conversations, and that’s a problem.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
Yeah, Building the trust, especially for a population of learners who’ve never had trust before.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
I say we have trust issues I personally have trust issues but also to build a culture in the classroom, whether it’s K-12 or higher ed where there is psychological safety for children, and I mean, even though they’re in college, they’re still, you know, in the grand scheme of things, they’re still kids, right? Even though they’re in college, they’re still, you know, in the grand scheme of things, they’re still kids, right, they’re just older, bigger kids. Um, but not having that, not knowing that there is safety, not feeling psychological safety or even understanding what that thing is Right, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
Because they’ve not been taught what that thing is and what they should feel in a space um, in order to be able to be able to give voice to what they’re feeling and what you’re asking them to talk about to share.
Tim Newman:
Yeah, and you know so. I’ve been there for eight years and when I first arrived there, that was a culture shock for me, you know, because before that I was, I taught. Well, my first job was at a high school just outside of Baltimore, maryland, predominantly African-American as well. But my first college teaching job was at York College of Pennsylvania, small private school, not very diverse, you know, it is what it is and didn’t really have some of those things. I mean, there was a lot of dialogue, a lot of back and forth, and then so I go to Georgia State and it smacked me right in the face because that wasn’t what I was expecting at all.
Tim Newman:
You know, I could kind of get it teaching in high school okay, that’s one thing, but I was not expecting it when I went to Georgia State and not that I had to really change the way I was doing things. I had to really have a more open process in getting them to understand and actually showing them and proving to them that it’s okay to advocate, it’s okay to say I don’t agree with this or ask question. Why are you doing it like that? I don’t understand your, your thinking, your methodology, what would happen, and so that that’s you know. For me that was very Iowa.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
Yeah.
Tim Newman:
I bet. So you know you. You know back to to the public school system. You know back to to the public school system. You know there are a few things that we, we do not teach our kids, which to me is, um, unfathomable. We don’t teach them soft skills, communication skills very well, um, we don’t teach them critical thinking skills very well. And you know, financial literacy is huge. And without those three things, I don’t, I don’t care what you do, you’re just not going to be successful because you’re going to get in trouble.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
Yeah, well, it begs the question we know these things as adults, right?
Dr. Almitra Berry:
If you work anywhere in court, in the corporate world, you have to have soft skills. There are things that were evaluated on Um. If you work anywhere in the corporate world, or even not in corporate world you could be checking groceries at the store or working in an auto repair shop you have to have those communication skills. To run a business, even a small business, even if it’s a lawn care business or a housekeeping business, you have to have the financial literacy and you have to have those soft skills.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
So it sort of begs the question if we know this as educated adults, why is it that we refuse to provide that instruction in public schools?
Dr. Almitra Berry:
Why is it that we refuse to put those things into the state standards and frameworks of all 50 states in this country, when we know and we know our politicians know, and we know our politicians know and we know our Department of Education, people know that these are critical things and the only answer I can come up with and you can say I’m a conspiracy theorist if you want to is that there is a design to keep certain people in a caste system where they have to rely on a caste system where they have to rely on either social welfare.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
You know, essentially that they have to be, that they will remain oppressed, that they will remain in low skilled jobs because they don’t have the skills. But if you can put your kid in private school, if you can pay the 20, 30, 40, $50,000 a year tuition for your child to be in a private school system, those things are all going to be taught and the people who can afford that are the ones who can continue to oppress and marginalize our technically or mostly immigrant population and our people of color, who’ve been here for multiple generations, who are stuck in a system that is governed by people who do not see them as being worthy of having every opportunity in the world to advance themselves.
Tim Newman:
And you know what, I pretty much 90% agree with you there. I think that the one piece where I would maybe differ a little bit is, even if I think some of the at those private schools, that they, I don’t know that they’re truly, they’re being taught better than the people in public schools for sure, but even still I don’t know that they’re being, they’re giving, they’ve been given the real tools that they need either.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
You know but what do they get? Tim, think about what do you get coming out of a high-end private school? That they don’t out of a public.
Tim Newman:
Oh, you get a lot of things. You get the connections, you get the networking, you get some of those other things that are going to move you forward. That’s I definitely. I’m 100% with you there.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
Yeah, so even if you don’t have all the skills, if you’ve got the network, you’ve got the connections you’ve got the label you can get into where you need to and someone’s going to my husband always talks about this and he’s in the investments world where there were people who were wholly underqualified.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
but there was always a connection and so they would take them. We’re just going to take you under our wing and nurture you through where people who are highly qualified, who have the knowledge, who have the skills but don’t have that that Ivy league education or or even if it’s a K-12 private system they come in. They are not taken under anyone’s weight. Yeah Right, you’re right. So it allows you.
Tim Newman:
those connections allow you to navigate a system where people who are equally or more qualified are not allowed to do so yeah, and you’re absolutely right, and and and I tell my, my students and people that I coach on this a lot over and over again. Number one I, and, and you know the the gods are watching us. I don’t trust any of our politicians at all, not not as far as I can throw Um I re. I really don’t. It’s.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
I have a friend who, uh, is a well former school board member and she said politics is made up of two, two Greek words poly, meaning mini, and ticks, meaning bloodsuckers.
Tim Newman:
Yeah, Well, there you go, that’s it. You know, I know I, I think some of them get, I think some people get into it for the right reasons and they get into it and they, they lose their way and I, I don’t think they’re looking out for for us, they’re not looking out for the, the, the regular people.
Tim Newman:
they’re definitely not looking out for it for the disadvantaged people, um, and you know it’s disadvantaged people, Um, and you know, it’s the best, the best honestly, what I tell them the best we can do is we can only affect the people that are around us and and it’s I try and affect, you know, these people and if, and you should try and affect these people, and that’s where the ripple effect starts. And you know, educate yourself, ask for help, advocate for yourself and and and those types of things you know, if we teach them that, that, that that’s all all we can really do. I mean, you know, look at, yeah, let’s move on to, to, to some other things you know, because you know for me, we can complain about it, but that’s not who I am or what I do. So we we see a problem and so what are the solutions? How can we fix it right?
Dr. Almitra Berry:
right, right, um, and that’s why I keep doing what I’m doing. There are problems, I mean I could complain about it, but you know? So what? Um, I’m doing everything that I can do. Where I have input and I have access, I continue to do what I can do in speaking truth to power or in educating others so that they can do the same where they have some influence.
Tim Newman:
Yeah, and you know, again, that’s why we talked to you know, this is my last semester teaching full time and I really think that I can. I can be more effective and help more people outside of the current system. And yeah, and hopefully, that’s hopefully that bears truth. But anyway, let’s talk about you. You know, can you share your current mission and your thoughts on the current state of public education in terms of the communication, critical thinking skills and what you’re doing in those areas?
Dr. Almitra Berry:
Sure, well, most of what I would say, 99% of the work that I engage in is really aimed at AK-12. And you know, as is in my bio, it’s in those majority of color districts, whether they are large urban or small rural. But those are the systems that are often overlooked, underfunded um, where the kids come out and if they, if they do go to college, even if it’s a state school, wherever they go, or a community college, they’re often having to take mandatory not mandatory but um prerequisite, not even prerequisite um.
Tim Newman:
They’ve got to do the catch-up coursework because they have the basic skills, so they’re taking remedial. Thank you.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
I hate to use that word, I guess that’s why it didn’t want to come to mind. But they’re having to take those remedial reading, remedial math classes because they don’t have the skills yet to perform in a general higher ed classroom. So I focus on those systems. That’s where we have the greatest shortage of teachers coming in. We have, you know, underfunded systems and we have greater teacher churn. We have kids that are highly mobile. So I stay in that space and focus on working with the teachers that are there and within the systems that exist, because really the bottom line is when a teacher walks in a classroom and she’s got, or he’s got, 20, 30, 35 in some places 40 kids in front of them, when that door closes, they can move mountains if they have the tools to do so, and sometimes those tools are the soft skills, the strategies, the methodologies. It may not be the textbooks that they give you, not the what, but it’s the how you teach, and so I’m focused very much on teaching teachers how to establish a culture in their classroom.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
We just got a title for the book that’s coming out this spring. It’ll be published by Corwin. It’s going to be called the Culturally Connected Educator. Right, and that’s the big thing. If, as an educator, you are connected to your kids and you understand who they are and what they bring to the classroom, you can reach them and teach them, and it doesn’t matter what books they say you can or cannot use, what methods you can or cannot use, because you will have that connection and they will want to learn from you. So there’s a lot more to it than just that piece, but that, to me, has always been the greatest foundational piece for an educator in a classroom is to be able to be connected to your kids.
Tim Newman:
And it’s no different than really anything else. It’s all about relationships with people, how you treat people. Yeah, I had a. I’ve got a friend who I’m also coaching and he’s he’s selling his business and you know we were talking about some things about there. There were some issues with a, with a, with an adjacent business and and he was talking about problems there and I said, look, mike, it comes down to people and if you treat people right, everything else will take care of itself. And I said that’s the messaging that you need to be sharing. You know, build good relationships. If there’s issues, find out what the issue is, fix it, take your ego and put it aside and build relationships. And if you treat people right, everything else takes care of itself. It’s no different than being in the classroom. You know cause you, like you said you, you’re gonna have you. You go into a classroom. You’re gonna have 30 35 students, which means you’re gonna have 31 to 36 different personalities in there, right, yeah?
Tim Newman:
sometimes even time sometimes more right and on any given day, right, yeah, because we all bring come to every day, in every situation, with a different perspective, a different attitude. Some days are good, some days are not. Sometimes you feel great, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you’re happy, sometimes you’re sad, and we don’t know what these kids are coming with. Yes, with our kids.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
Sometimes they’re coming hungry, Hungry Right. They’re coming from a home where they don’t have electricity, they’re cold, they’re underfed, there’s all sorts of stuff going on. I remember I had a student, sweet kid sixth grader is very quiet and shy, typically, but not withdrawn, and one day he just he seemed off, and so I asked what was wrong, because he didn’t want to do his work and he wasn’t like a stellar student, but he always tried, he always worked hard, and I asked him what was going on and he showed me his hands. He literally just opened up his palms and put them out in front of me.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
Him what happened? His hands were just raw and he said that it makes me want to tear up again. He told me that he had to because of something that happened in the family. He had to go out and work in the fields with his family that weekend and so his hands, because he didn’t have gloves, were literally raw. This is a 12-year-old child whose hands were raw from picking crops, and yet he shows up for school, right, and had I not taken the time to find out what was going on? Or he’d been in a classroom with a teacher who didn’t care what was going on, but just that he refused to do his work. It had a very different outcome. So if we don’t take that time to know who these kids are and what’s happening to them we can’t reach them.
Tim Newman:
So, you know, build relationships, get to know your, get to know your students, get and I say it all the time get to know the people you work, get to know. I mean, you can’t relate to somebody if you don’t know them. And you know that that that student didn’t refuse to do his work. He physically couldn’t do it, he wanted to do his work. He physically couldn’t do his work, he wanted to do his work, he couldn’t do his work. Yeah, right, and you know, it’s those types of things where you know what he needed somebody, but he didn’t know who to trust. Right, you know, didn’t know who to trust, or didn’t know how to say didn’t know how to ask for help.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
That again is a different skillset and either didn’t know how or feared what would happen if he asked for help, right, what happens to my parents if a teacher sees this and they get reported for child abuse, that kind of thing. That was the last thing I wanted to happen to him, you know, because I knew the child’s story, not just that weekend, but his life story, um, last thing I’m going to do is report his parents. They were kind of trying to keep food on the table, um, and yet some people had they reported the parents for for that abuse. He’d ended up in foster care, care, and when you look at the data on the foster care system it’s horrible.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
It’s horrible for many kids. It’s a. It’s a. It’s either a pathway to prison or a pathway to the streets, um, and some other things that I really just don’t want to think about. Uh, what happens to our kids that literally get thrown away?
Tim Newman:
Yeah, and then so again it comes. It comes back to to building relationships and community. And you know, let’s take it to a, to a different extreme. Right, so you talk about Stockton, which is where you grew up. Yep, not not a fun place. Right, you worked in South Dakota. I mean, you worked with a district in South Dakota, north Dakota, no, those are the two states, two of the states I haven’t been to yet.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
I’ve worked in 40. Yeah, I’ve worked in 45 states, but North and South Dakota are two that I have not made it to yet.
Tim Newman:
So if you’re in North or South Dakota. I’m sorry, maybe I have them wrong. The indigenous populations, school districts arizona, mostly arizona and mexico yeah, my fault. I apologize for that.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
That’s good, no worries they have different.
Tim Newman:
They have a lot of other different issues. Yeah, alcoholism on on the reservations, um, women disappearing, sexual assaults I mean all the crazy, crazy things that most people or normal people don’t know about. That terrorizes these communities and we brush them under the rug. And yet students come to school.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
Every day, every day, yeah, yeah, yeah under the rug, and yet students come to school every day, every day.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, there are multiple americas within america, and our children, for the, the majority of our children in the k-12 system, um. Keep in mind that um is it 60, roughly 63 percent of children in American public schools are children of color Right. So when we talk about the norm, the norm has been set on a very white, middle-class Christian society, but that is not necessarily who’s in attendance in our public schools. The majority, it’s the majority of the people who are teaching in our schools.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
Hence, a huge cultural disconnect. But our kids very often are coming from worlds that we don’t know, don’t understand, don’t want to know, don’t care to know, care to know, and it’s whether it’s in it’s, it’s in one of the schools on the reservation or inner city Detroit, chicago, atlanta, la, it doesn’t matter.
Tim Newman:
There are whole worlds that are not looked at as we consider what our children need and where they’re coming from at, as we consider what our children need and where they’re coming from Exactly. Yeah, so when you talk about you know, I think most people understand the term culturally diverse, but when you talk about linguistically diverse learners, what does that mean to you so our audience understands as we move into this next phase of the conversation?
Dr. Almitra Berry:
Sure, Sure Light topic. So linguistic diversity. When I’m talking about that is any English other than school English, or what we think of as business. English, a lot of people will say standard English. So for a Chicano kid living in East LA who speaks Chicano English, that is a different language. African-american English is a different language.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
African American English is a different language. If you’re down in Louisiana, southeastern Texas, where kids will speak a Cajun or Creole, english is a different English. If you’re up in I’ve worked in West Virginia where they speak Appalachian English. They’re all white, they speak English but it’s not the English of school and so we consider linguistic diversity. It’s all of those Creole languages, different types of English. Some people say dialects. There’s a little, even in academia a little. Is it a dialect or is it something else? Is it a Creole? But in English that is not the English that their textbooks are written in.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
And so understanding that, as educators which is actually the focus of my book that will not be out for another year and a half at least is having the knowledge and understanding to bridge their home language, and it doesn’t matter if the home language is Spanish or French or Ukrainian or some other what we think of as a world language or if it’s a regional Creole even Hawaiian Creole is another one but that we use that language as their bridge to school English, without denigrating or denying them access and usage of that home language when it’s needed.
Tim Newman:
You know. Thank you for the explanation because you know I learned something there. I was thinking more. You know, strict languages like Spanish, vietnamese, french. I do have some Far Eastern students, some Hispanic students, so that’s kind of where I was thinking. I wasn’t even thinking about the different regional, what I would call dialects, but you’re absolutely right, that does become a a a challenge. So how do we how has educators and how is as these students, do we connect with them to get them to be able to tell their stories so that they can be heard? You know again, because when I talk about public speaking, it’s not just being on a stage, it’s everything, it’s interpersonal communication, it’s job interviews, it’s any time that you’re communicating with another individual, and one of the ways to build relationships and connections is to be able to tell your story and students and young professionals be able to tell your story. And students and young professionals, they don’t like doing that. So how do we get them to do that, especially being linguistically diverse?
Dr. Almitra Berry:
Yeah, so not just diversity. I think the first layer is that we recognize multilingualism as meaning more than just speaking English and another identified world language. I’m multilingual. I’ll say I personally am multilingual. I do speak standard English, school English, business English. That’s the voice that you’re hearing coming over your podcast and I’m an adventurer guest that if there are people on the audio podcast who just tuned in and started listening to our conversation, unless I said now that I’m a black woman, you would not know that I was black, or that I can also speak African American English when I’m in a setting where it’s appropriate, when I’m with my family or a group of friends playing dominoes, in a cultural setting where that language is the accepted language. But I can also transition to a formal Spanish or, because I also live in the Dominican Republic, a Dominican Spanish that is more accepted in the community, right, not in business, but just out in a restaurant, in a store, just out doing everyday things.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
That multilingualism is not as respected as in America as just straight school English.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
And so that first layer is recognizing and respecting that there are many different types of language and that they are all valid systems for communication, for writing.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
Second piece of that is granting learners permission to use those different languages in the classroom in different contexts. If you want me to tell my story, I can tell it in standard English, but some of it won’t make sense to other people who look like me unless I tell it also, or in certain parts, in an African-American English or in Spanish. So when we’re talking about our children opening up and telling their stories, first, we have to if we’re talking K-12, we have to grant them permission to tell their story in the language that works for them and the part of the story that they’re telling. And when it comes to the business world and getting out to higher ed and being placed into business or into jobs, what they have to understand is there is a place for your home language and there is a place to use business English. And if we give them those tools and those skill sets when they’re younger they can flip that language and use it whenever it’s necessary. That is true multilingualism.
Tim Newman:
That’s a lot to think about there. I’m somebody who I tell people to lean into yourself, lean into who you are, especially when you’re, especially when you’re dealing with me. I mean to me I don’t care, I mean, just be you, you be you, you be you. But on the other hand, I get the whole idea of some social norms. On the other hand, I also get that we also have to accept people for who they are in society and not be so judgmental. We should accept Right.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
We should accept people for who they are.
Tim Newman:
Right.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
But the challenge, Tim, is if you’ve lived in different skin, so I can only speak about living in my skin.
Tim Newman:
Right.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
But living in my skin, I could not always be my authentic self. Right in my skin, I could not always be my authentic self. If I wanted that promotion, I had to behave within the set of norms that they had established for that position. And so our kids coming from same places, when they have learned from their own experiences that if they express themselves authentically they won’t get that job, they won’t get that promotion, they won’t get that promotion, they’re not felt welcome, then it’s difficult to say you know, for them to expect that they can be their authentic self, no matter where they are.
Tim Newman:
Yeah, yeah, that’s that. That’s a tough one for me to I get it yeah I get it, it’s, it’s. It’s a tough one for me to to really wrap my head around to um, because for the, for the most part, I mean I’ve never had that like, like, like other people have had. I mean I get it. When I was younger, yeah, I had to play role, but not like a lot of roles that you know minorities have to play every day. I’m at a point in my career now is I really don’t care.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
That happens sometimes somewhere around 50, where you get to the point where it’s like, so what, who cares?
Tim Newman:
Yeah, this is me, this is. This is what you’re going to get. Yeah.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
Yeah, but at this point we’ve made our mark Right. We’ve done what we’ve needed to do and you know you and I are trying to get that next generation or younger generations to, to get to that point of where they can say who cares anymore? I’ve done what I’ve needed to do and I can keep going and I’ll be okay when you’re 18, 20, 22, either just coming out of high school or just coming out of college and you need to get a job. You can’t do that. You can’t do that. You just can’t do that.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
So it would be wonderful if we lived in a world where people would just accept everyone for who they are, authentically Right. But we don’t.
Tim Newman:
We’re a very judgmental society politically right, um, but we don’t. We’re a very judgmental society, um, you know so. And you throw social media on top of that, because to me that that that’s the real kicker, where young people put so much weight and emphasis on what somebody on social media said about them. So now they’re, they’re trying to cover a base that there’s no way that they can cover that because you’re, you can’t somebody on social media is going to say something bad about you. They don’t like the way your hair looks, I mean your eyebrows out of place, I mean whatever it is. And at some point, you know, we didn’t have when we were growing up, we didn’t have that at all. I mean, we had the regular bullying, which is a different story, but you could go home.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
Yeah, you had regular bullying You’d get in a fight, you know you’d have your little fist fight, you’d shake hands and go home. Nobody came back and shot you, right, right, yeah. So it’s a very different world that our children and I say our children, but the Gen Xers, millennials, and no wait, yeah, no, not Gen X.
Tim Newman:
Millennials Gen Z yeah.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
Millennials, gen Z, and what are they? The new ones, generation Alpha the next Gen yeah, I know I’m a boomer, I’m just trying to keep up.
Tim Newman:
See, I’m an ex and I tell people I said that’s why you don’t put Gen X people in charge, because we just don’t care anymore, we’re just going to. We’re just going to, we’re just going to wipe it, clean it up. This way is going to be, and you know. But you know, I do tell my, my, my students, I said it’s’s gonna be your generations that that changed this. Yeah, because our generation couldn’t do it right. We I mean we, we couldn’t do it. Um, it’s gonna. If it’s gonna change, it’s gonna have to come from you. All has to.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
Yeah, yeah, change starts with with, you know, and, like I said, I’m a baby boomer, so you know we did our thing and maybe there was quite a bit of change that came out of the baby boomers, but there’s still more that needs to happen, and so it’s always that generation of young people that really, really impacts societal change, and so we have to count on them. And you know, I would just say that there’s this whole big conversation that them having the ability and the skills to communicate and to speak their passion and to speak truth to power in a way that will be listened to, paid attention to, understood and absorbed is like a critical skill for change, and so we’ve got to teach them how to do that.
Tim Newman:
Yeah, and it’s last night I watched a video on LinkedIn. It was a gentleman from United Kingdom who runs a car sales business and they had went to a networking event and one of his top salesmen is a young female. And at the networking event, somebody of the top salesmen is a young female and at the networking event, somebody from a manufacturer something was talking to her and was telling her well, you shouldn’t even be in the in the automobile business, you’re a woman, this, that and the other thing. And this gentleman came on and and he said you know what off that thinking is? He had some choice words on it.
Tim Newman:
But what he said was why aren’t we at the point yet where we respect talent, doesn’t matter who it is male or female, whatever gender it is, whatever color it is, whatever race, whatever religion. Why are we still at this point where we’re judging people? Judging female can’t be in the car industry. This doesn’t make any sense.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
A female can’t be president of the United.
Tim Newman:
States, right? I don’t understand this at all and I come from the sport industry and was in the military, and you know we both those have have their own issues. But from my perspective, I was brought up. I don’t care who it is, I want the best person. I want the best person sitting next to me, I want the best person in the huddle, I want the best person on the sideline. I want the best person in the huddle. I want the best person on the sideline. I want the best person in the foxhole. I don’t care, you really don’t care. Yeah, I don’t care. And until we get to that point, I don’t know that a lot of these educational issues are going to change either. Somebody says enough is enough. It’s frustrating.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
It is. It is. It’s hugely frustrating.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
I think, until we get to a place where everybody understands the power of their vote, not just for the president but all the way down for city council and school boards, people don’t realize how important and how much power a school board has when it comes to impacting education.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
And school board elections are often chosen by. You know, it’s like less than 5% of the vote voting public that actually votes for and chooses school boards we’re just abdicating our power. And until we change that and become, you know, a commit to voting Odd tidbit you know the United States of all democracies in the world, the United States has one of the lowest voting rates. We don’t vote in this country and we consider ourselves the world’s greatest democracy, but we don’t use our power and they’re still trying to suppress the power of the vote. But it’s, you know, that all of these things and and getting that, that developing that understanding or desire to have, just have the best people do things A lot of that comes from the way we choose to use our voice, our power and our vote. And until we do that, this is what we get.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
This is what we get. What’s that? Insanity is Doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. Yeah yeah, we keep doing the same thing.
Tim Newman:
I’m happy that we have people like you that are continuing the good fight, continuing to continue to affect change. Even if it’s one person at a time, you know it’s one’s better than none, two’s better than one, and you know we need people like you to continue the good fight. I’ve got two other topics. I just wanted to. One just kind of popped in my head what are your thoughts on AI in the educational system?
Dr. Almitra Berry:
AI can be your friend and it can be your foe? I don’t have any. I think there are some things you know. If I put an old classroom educator hat, on. I wish I had AI where I could have taken my students’ papers, scanned them and put them into AI and say grade this paper based on this rubric. That would that would have been really, really nice to have as a tool, um, as as a writer.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
Sometimes I tool as a writer. Sometimes it’s like I’m trying to say this but I can’t get it out right, and so I can put my sort of garbled, messed up thoughts into a very well-programmed not, you know, I don’t want people to think you can just dump this into anything, but I have a very well-programmed AI platform that I use, where I’ve uploaded all of my content. So it’s reading my past work, right, and understanding my voice, and I can say fix this statement for me and it’ll spit something out that’s like, okay, that’s what I’m trying to say, but then I take that and I put it into my own words, right, not just spitting it out.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
I think the big fear is that, you know, especially from an educator perspective is that kids are going to have AI bots just writing all their papers and not learning, and that could happen. But there are ways to put some checks and balances around that. But there is a place for it and I think that if we you know, if we as educators, fear that technology, we are hindering progress, because our kids are going to graduate into that technology and they’re going to need to know how to use it. So, rather than say we don’t want the AI in our schools, it would be better to say how do we use this technology to further our children’s educations and prepare them for the world of work and technology that they’re going to exit into in, you know, one to 12 years, depending on where they are.
Tim Newman:
Exactly the second one. I’ll ask you. Offline is probably not appropriate for this, but but you know, I I kind of use AI exactly how you use. It Helps me generate ideas or clean, clean something up and then put it in my own words and and and Again. If we don’t use it and if we don’t learn how to use it and our students and their kids are using it, it’s a problem. I mean it’s you know, when social media came out and when Twitter came out, I went to my daughter and I said you know, tell me about this Twitter thing. And she looked at me and shook her head and said Dad, you don’t want anything part of it. And I said OK, she was right.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
She was right.
Tim Newman:
And I said, said you know what I? I better learn this thing really quick. Yeah, because yeah, and and eventually. So you know, I wrote a, a textbook on social media and sport marketing and social media eventually kind of took over my life. Yeah, and I had to, I had to quit, I had to say you know no more, because it no more, because I was spending 12 hours a day on all these sites and kind of getting lost. It can suck you.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
I always talk about going down a rabbit hole. That’s more like a black hole and you can get in there and lose hours in a day, in a day. And while I use social media to market my podcast, my books, my speaking engagements, I don’t engage in the back and forth that goes on in social media. I very rarely will read comments. I have someone else that can do that and if it’s something that I need to attend to, can bring it to my attention. Um, that that platform you mentioned formerly under twitter, um, I don’t ever go there, I don’t post there, I don’t look there, I don’t have logins for that, because it became such a a vile environment. Um, for someone like me who works in that, that sort of that bigger dei.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
It just was not a healthy place to be and I’m a psychologically very healthy person but I worry about people who are not psychologically healthy and the damage that it can do to their wellness by being in those platforms and for our children and looking at that and and unrealistic expectations about body image or or appearance, um, dress and and you know, possessions even uh what we have that.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
It’s just it’s. It’s unhealthy. You know, while I wouldn’t say we need to regulate it all, um, I think, uh, as, as parents and caregivers who have children should be very, very wary about where their children are spending their time on devices, especially on social media.
Tim Newman:
Yeah, yeah. I look at another one of our institutions in the country that’s broken. Our mental health care system is is completely broken and you know, if you look at at what, I don’t all the blame of social media, but I do put a a big piece of that. You know, because we’ve as a society we have, we have allowed ourselves to live in that world and put so much emphasis on on that, like I brought up a little bit ago and you know, look at depression rates, look at suicide rates, look at eating disorders.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
It’s interesting that when we look at those numbers and the connection to social media here in the United States, it’s very different in other countries because the algorithms are set differently. It’s very different in other countries because the algorithms are set differently. What our kids are getting pushed on TikTok, the dances and the eating things, challenges and all this other crazy nonsense. If you go to other countries, what their kids are, the content being pushed to their kids is how to do math, how to do science. We have it’s not. So it’s like I cannot completely blame those platforms. You know and everybody’s picking on tiktok. You can’t blame tiktok.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
It’s the algorithms that have been set and what we are allowing and encouraging our children to look at and what even we as adults are looking at, because if you you know that goes back to the whole ai thing, right? If you use it for good, it can be a very good tool. I don’t get nonsense stuff pushed to me on TikTok because I don’t engage in that piece.
Tim Newman:
Right. So yeah, you see, I’m not on TikTok, I’m heading there. I’ve got a good audience there. I’ve got a good audience for short information.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
Yeah, short information yeah, short information about education that people will attend to. Um, I can reach a broad audience that everybody’s going to tune in for my 25 minute podcast. So like you know, I get them wherever I can, and that’s one place where I’m getting them.
Tim Newman:
So so is there anything else that we didn’t talk about that our listeners should, should think about or about?
Dr. Almitra Berry:
You know it’s funny. When we first connected I was thinking, because of the topic of your podcast, that I was going to talk about how I used to throw up every time I had to give a speech.
Tim Newman:
But you know I try not to bring that up, you that up, but you know you know too much. You know there was no, there was no cameras or cell phones back then. So so there’s, there’s. I think it was rhetoric one or rhetoric 100, whatever it was and I literally would.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
I just I was physically ill anytime I was going to have to stand up and talk and that, you know, went all the way down to elementary school. I was afraid to stand up and talk, and now you know sort of the joke that I make a living by speaking, but it’s because. And so when people say people say I can’t imagine, you used to be shy it’s like, yeah, I was terrified to speak, but what I found was my passion and when, I found my passion, I found my voice, and you cannot stop me from talking about what I’m passionate about.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
So you know, just if you find that, and I think you’ll be okay, but you know, if you’re still puking at the thought of having to stand up in front of people and talk, you know it’s, it’s perfectly normal.
Tim Newman:
And you haven’t found your passion yet, like you said. That’s. That’s a very good point that I hope our listeners just got you know when, when you find something that you love and that you’re passionate about. A lot of these issues did not necessarily go away because even still, when I get up and talk, sometimes I’m nervous I mean that’s depending on the audience, depending on the actual topic and what’s going on still nervous, but once you get going, if you, if you prepare the way you’re supposed to prepare, if you do the things you’re supposed to do, it’s just like anything else. Once you get going, just yeah, after the bachelor yeah, it may take me.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
It may take me five minutes to get warmed up, but once I’m on a roll, baby watch out well, that’s awesome.
Tim Newman:
Dr barry, where can people find you and buy your?
Dr. Almitra Berry:
books. Well, I am at almitra barry on every social media platform except Twitter X Not there, don’t look for me there. So I always tell people the best place to look for me is LinkedIn, linkedin and TikTok. Actually, those get attended to a little bit more. My books can be purchased on Amazon or any bookstore almost internationally, definitely nationwide. So you know your Barnes and Noble and whatever, even local independent bookstores. I’m there. But if you have trouble finding it, just hit me up. My podcast is the Educational Equity Emancipation Podcast and it’s on every podcast channel that there is. So you know I’m not hard. It’s hard for me to hide with that name Almitra. So start typing it as a search engine. I’m going hard, it’s hard for me to hide with that name.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
Almitra. So start typing it as a search engine I’m going to pop up.
Tim Newman:
And they will find you. Yes, it’s hard to hide when you’re as well known as you are. That’s for sure. Dr Berry, thank you so much for joining us. You gave us some really good information. Keep up the good fight. I’m going to do it as long as I can and we’ll see what happens. But thanks so much and we’ll talk to you soon.
Dr. Almitra Berry:
Thanks for having me, Tim.
Tim Newman:
Be sure to visit speakingwithconfidencepodcastcom to join our growing community and register for the Formula for Public Speaking course. Always, always, remember your voice has the power to change the world. We’ll talk to you next time, take care.