lander is an award winning teacher writer and author who teaches history and civics to recent immigrant students in a massachusetts public high school and has won numerous awards for her teaching, including being named a top 50 finalist for the global teacher prize in 2021, presented by the varsity foundation, jessica writes frequently about education policy and teaching and was coauthor of powerful partnerships, a teacher's guide to engaging families. first, you didn't success and the author of driving backwards, she is joined in conversation tonight by priya tahiliani, the current superintendent of the everett public schools, in an effort to continually advocate for and improve the state's access to high quality, equitable instruction and assessment, priya serves as the president emeritus on the board of directors of the massachusetts associa nation of teachers, of speakers of other languages, and as a member of both the massachusetts country of assessment system standard setting committee and the ncaa bias and sensitivity committee. tonight, jessica is presenting her new book, making americans stories of historic struggles, new ideas and inspiration and immigrant education and making americans. jessica takes the reader on a powerful and urgent journey to understand what it takes for immigrant students to become americans while sharing innovative ideas for educator and policymakers across the country, making americans as an explorer nation of immigrant education across the country, told through key historical moments, current experiments to improve immigrant education and profiles of immigrant students. it is a remarkable book that will reshape how we all think about nurturing one of america's greatest assets the newcomers who enrich this country with their energy and talents and drive. publishers weekly called it an empathetic call for change throughout which lander buttresses her case with stirring profiles of reformers students. the result is an inspiring must read for educators policy makers and parents. and according to martha minow, former dean of harvard law school and author of when should law forgive making americans will captivate and enlighten all readers as well as equip teachers. voters and policymakers to work together to overcome prejudice and help newcomers build on their talents, to strengthen america while pursuing their own dreams. we are so pleased to host this event here at harvard bookstore tonight. please join me in welcoming jessica lander and priya to healing. all right. good evening, everyone. thank you so much for being here tonight to join us as we have this conversation. and i feel very honored to be here with educator, author and also my personal friend jessica lander. i, as was mentioned in the superintendent of the everett public schools, i've been in education, urban education, specifically for 22 years. i started as a teacher for 15 years. so emmett grant education is very near and dear to my heart. i started the boston public schools, which is obviously a very diverse population, and as a teacher of english, as a second language, my students were even more diverse. now, as the superintendent of the everett public schools, we have 7200 students, 30% of whom are immigrants and actually 1000 of those students, or 15% of those students actually arrived in the last three years. and this is actually very typical of urban districts like the one i am an educator in. and the one that jessica is in. jessica is in. so these kinds of stories of not only the struggles, but also the triumphs of our students and also the ideas and inspiration behind immigrant education are certainly what brought me to education in the first place. so i'm very excited to be here to speak with jessica about immigrant education. we first met in the world of immigrant and newcomer education. can you tell us a little bit, not only about yourself, but what led you into this further exploration of the immigrant education and what what made you decide to commit these ideas to writing? absolutely. and it's just so lovely to be in conversation with you as parents and we've known each other for years and i've just learned so much from here as an educator, as a thinker about policy. and so it's just really exciting to be in conversation here and also to be in harvard bookstore, which i think i first came to when i was three months old of ed. so it's it's just really such an honor to be here tonight. so you asked about how i got involved in immigrant education and what led to these ideas. so as was shared, i am a teacher of immigrant origin students. i have taught in lowell public schools since 2015 and before that, both in boston and overseas is in thailand and cambodia. and my students in lowell are truly remarkable. they come from more than 30 different countries from columbia to the democratic republic of the congo to cambodia. and as you know, for the students that you taught and the students you now have in everett, they bring so many strengths and talents to our schools and to our communities. it is such an honor and a joy in an inspiration to work with them every day. i just came down from working with my students this afternoon for this talk and they do remarkable things both in their classroom and out into the community. so it's watching them and our classroom build community together and practice and master or new ideas in history or in language. taking academic risks and seeing those moments where they're growing and stretching. it's also seeing how they're becoming in our classroom and in our community. so we just finished up in the last week a cookbook project that they write as part of our study of immigration. now we study the history of immigrants from 100 years ago, but of course, no study of immigration in our class is complete without studying their stories because of course, my students are experts and so they choose a favorite family recipe and they then go to their mom's and their grandfather's and their aunts and their uncles, and that's usually facetiming folks overseas and they write those recipes and they translate them and then they tell stories of their memories of that food and their memories of that migration and their journeys here. and then they share this out into the the community. so they are teachers in our community and they'll go on to work on community change projects together that are creating systemic change to challenges in our community. and all of this is to say that my students are so just amazingly inspiring and it really got me thinking in the work i saw in my classroom and the conversations i had with you and other educators and how do we reimagine our schools so that they can better support our immigrant work and students and so that they can really thrive and they're coming here. they're creating new homes here. and how do we ensure that we are seeing their strengths and hearing their beautiful and powerful voices, learning from them and we are helping them set down roots, nourishing their sense of belonging here. and so i it led me to think that i actually needed to take a little bit of time outside of the classroom to go learn from others across the country. and that was the inspiration of this book. i love listening to jessica talk about education and anybody who knows. and if you don't, you should get to know her. one of the things that i really found so extraordinary about her the first time i met her is this for her students, this ac asset based perspective that she has of our immigrant origin students. and the first time i spoke to her, she pulled out phone. she's got picture. she did it just tonight. oh, let me show you what my students are doing in class. and i just love that because even the way you speak about it, you were learning from them. i sometimes i'm unsure. i'm like, who is the teacher? who is the student? i feel like our students come to our classrooms with such a wealth knowledge and for you to empower them to tell their stories, to to have that be a part of how they become americans, i think is just so important. one of the way you structured this book is through past. present and personal stories. so every chapter starts with sort of a storycorps lesson in immigrant education and then you talk about some innovative practices that are happening right now. all over the country in education. and then you connect it back to a personal story of one of your former students. what made you come up with that sort of concept or framework for your work? yeah, it was. it's an unusual structure and it means there are just so many rich stories in this book. but i think it was the the way i thought about how we had to reimagine immigrant education. i thought it was essential that we learn from the past, that we, under stand some of those key moments, supreme court cases, federal laws and movements that transformed our schools, many of which i'm embarrassed to say i didn't know before setting out to write this book, but need to be known. and then it was important to learn from the present. there is just really exciting, exhilarating, innovative practices across the country today often. and we can talk more about this often. they are not known outside of their outside of the community, outside of their state. but there is powerful creative work being done. and so we need to learn from them. and so i set out to sit in the classrooms of others across the country. and then finally and for me, this is really the heart of the story we were speaking about this just before we started is the stories of the personal that if we're really serious about immigrant education, thinking about how we change policies, thinking how we change practices, thinking about how we shape our schools, we have to learn from our young people. and so heart for me is these stories of the personal and going to seven of my remarkable former students and sitting down with them. and they were so just deeply generous in sharing their stories with me so that i could share them with all of you learning about their experiences of coming to this country and their experiences of our schools. and i think, at least for me, if we are thinking about reimagining pedagogy, policy practices, community schools, we have to have these three types of stories and hold all three that past, that present and that personal. and i think you're exactly right about these. these landmark cases and some of the history that even i didn't know. and i was really embarrassed as i'm reading these stories i've taught students from these countries, i'm going to a district administrator in a in a district with students from these countries. and i know so little about not only where they've come from, but also about some of the legislation that has led us to where we are in immigrant education. so the book touch on several different landmark court cases. and there are a couple of things that you bring up in the book that. i just wanted to read aloud. so you mentioned a sixties era senator who is quoted as saying untold millions are storming our gates and those gates are cracking under the strain. another promotes the delusion africans did not contribute to the making of america. therefore, or not deserving of the same level of access to our country as people from england, france, germany and holland. and what is sad is that the rhetoric is remarkably unchanged. so what are the stories your book tell us about how to address these challenges and how to change these narratives? yeah, absolutely. and i think i was just thinking about this as you were talking. we're in cambridge, close to the brooklyn with facing history and ourselves, which is really powerful organization. if you're not familiar with it, that really pushes young people to face hard history, to grapple with it and to learn about how we then move forward and create change and i was a student of facing history back in seventh or eighth grade. i'm seeing my seventh, eighth grade teacher over in the corner and so i think there is a lot for us to learn from the past in thinking about how we change the present and the future. that you're right, a lot of the rhetoric is not new. and when i this rhetoric i read about this rhetoric, i think about these stories. and i also think about how many of these stories aren't known. and so how we have to start these stories, teaching these stories to think about shaping different futures for the nation. and these are remarkable stories. so just to give you a few, in 1920, in may of 1920, robert meyer is a teacher in a one room nebraska schoolhouse as parochial teacher and he is teaching an 11 year old boy how to read the bible in german. and for this he is arrested because in about half the states in the country in 1920, it was illegal to teach languages other than english. and yet, robert doesn't back down and he his case up through the courts and in 1923, the supreme court comes back in support of meyer, enshrining the right for to learn languages other than english. there is the story of mendez v westminster, who the mendez family in the early 1940s. they go to enroll their kids in school and they are told, no, you can't go here. you have to go to the segregated mexican school down the road because at the time in the southwestern, particularly in california, in this case, there were segregated mexican and white schools. but the mendez's didn't back down and they organized with other families. they hired a civil civil rights lawyer and they sued the schools and the case went up to the ninth circuit and at the ninth circuit, lots of organizations around the country who are watching this case file, amicus briefs, including the acp and they file an amicus brief written by thurgood marshall and when this case is decided at the ninth circuit, it then leads the governor. it is decided in favor of the families. it leaves the governor of california to endorse segregation of schools in across the state. and then six years later, he steps down and becomes the chief justice of the supreme court. one of the very first cases he hears is brown v board of education. and in thurgood marshall's notes for the case are the case from the notes from the mendez case. and then just two other remarkable stories from this is that the the farm that mendez's are living on is being leased. they've leased the farm, and it's a very prolific asparagus farm, which funds the case. and that farm has been leased from the moon to mat-su family, who has been incarcerated during world war two. and the other story that i just find remarkable from this is that the civil rights lawyer who they hire is the son of european jewish immigrants. he is also the court probably doesn't know this. and the other side know this. he's also married to a mexican immigrant and is raising his three daughters bilingual. so this case is deeply personal to his children and also deeply personal himself, because he has, as his daughter told me, experience dante semitism himself in school so that when he was little and there's this case of when he was playing the violin at a school recital, he was asked to stand behind curtain and play with some other students standing before the curtain, miming the music because he was jewish and there's just all of these strands in this story that are so deeply powerful and so much from for us to learn from and these are stories that i did not know before writing this many people i talk with don't know and need to be known. and there's one more story which i figured i'd read to you just a little. and this story takes place in texas. the sun had yet to surface when lidia and jose lopez gently shook their five children from their slumber, dressed them in their sunday best, and tucked the family into their white dodge. monica, the sedan was piled high with books, clothes, pots, even the family's small tv. but the lopezes were not embarking on a road trip. their destination was a mere two blocks away at the federal district courthouse in tyler, texas. alfredo, nine, and the oldest, remembers little. it was a friday, the week after the start of school, the year 1977, the little black haired boy should have been entering second grade. his sister should have been starting first, but just as classes were set to resume, their parents received a letter informing them that tuition was required if they wished their children to study in the public schools. for the lopez family, the fee was unaffordable just over two years earlier, more than 200 miles south in austin, the legislature had revised the state's education code. but the final vote was cast. the border city of brownsville slipped in a provision that at the time went largely unnoticed. going forward, public schools would no longer be obligated to educate their communities undocumented children and the state would contribute no funds to support those children's academic futures. public schools left with a choice cover the costs themselves. charge tuition or exclude such students altogether. in the blistering summer heat of 1977, the tylers school board arguing that the city was on the precipice of becoming, quote, a haven for undocumented families, voted to charge tuition for every student who could not prove legal residents. $1,000 per child, roughly one fourth of most undocumented texans annual income. the city of tyler in, the eastern corner of texas, was founded in the mid 1800s, built by enslaved black americans and named for u.s. president who initiated the annexation of the lone star state. surrounded by vibrant blooms. it was a city that proudly proclaimed itself the rose capital of america, and it was here in 1969, where jose lopez found work tending rosebuds after crossing the southern border. within a few years, he sent for his wife and then for his children, who left their home in the small mexican city of copper and traveled hundreds of miles north to reunite on arriving in the united states, was enrolled in elementary school and attended dutifully until in the summer of 1977, the school board changed its policy of the city's nearly. 16,000 students, less than 60 were undocumented, and they were suddenly ineligible to study in the city schools growing up in mexico, neither jose nor lydia lopez had been able to stay long in school. their families needed them in the fields, but for their children, they wished for a different future. and so a week later, a little before 6 a.m., the lopez family pulled into the parking lot of the federal district courthouse. the sky just beginning to bloom. pink there. they met three other undocumented families together. they had made the perilous choice to sue the city's schools. it was a decision the parents made knowing what might happen. that was why the night before lydia and jose lopez had packed the dodge monaco to the brim. as lydia would recall years later, in walking into the courthouse, they were prepared to be immediately arrested and deported. but for their children it was a risk they chose to take. and this sparks what we now know as plyler v doe, which is the landmark supreme court case that enshrines and ensures the right for every undocumented child this country to go to public k-12 schools. and it's stories like these that are so powerful that we need to know. you need to be taught, thank you. my goodness, that was so powerful. just to listen to that. and yeah, you're right. that completely shapes how we are are educating these amazing students that come to us or that we are a educating these students. however, i know we can be more innovative in how we are supporting our students. so it's wonderful they're there with us, but i know we can do better for them and i know that seen a lot of innovative practices as you've been around the country. can you tell us about some of those practices that you've seen that you were especially excited about, that we should be emulating here in massachusetts? yeah, absolutely. so i was just really excited to be able to sit in the classrooms of others. i mean, you're a teacher. you probably this feels similar to you is so often teaching is isolating and we don't get to from others we're alone in our classroom. we rarely even get to sit in our colleagues classroom down the hall. and so i just found it really exhibit reading as a teacher to be able to learning from schools across the classroom and really inspiring for us, thinking about how to reimagine and again, education. so a few examples. there is a school in georgia, the global village project, which is a school for refugee girls who have spent a long time outside of school. because if you are 16 years old and maybe you have never had a chance to go to formal schooling, you come to the country, you're put in 10th or 11th grade. good luck and so how do we reimagine schools so that we are setting them up for success? and what the school has done is created a special community that is supported by a cadre of volunteers from the community of older men and women who are volunteering each week to support students one on one as they make tremendous leaps in education. some of these young people have never been in formal schooling this point, and so they might be starting at a kindergarten level and yet at the same time, we've got to balance the fact that they are adults. they're 16, 17, 18 years old and respecting and honoring the fact that they have lived as adults for many years. and so how do we balance and support both of those identities and just creating this beautiful community that allows these young people to grow and flourish and then go on to succeed in high school, there is all these five schools in aurora, colorado. the aurora action zone that re-imagined what schools can be in terms of community hubs. and so often our schools they open at 7 a.m., they close maybe at three, and then they sit empty. these huge buildings in the middle, middle of our cities or towns. and what these five schools did is imagine schools as the center of vibrant community hubs that are open from sunrise to sunset, and they partner with hospitals and businesses and nonprofits and with groups, immigrant families. and they're all called to bring together in an ongoing converse session, where they're also supporting their students in school and out there is a school down in texas for students new to the country who've been in the country less than a year and has done really work in trauma therapy. recognizing that many of our kiddos, whether in home country or perhaps in their migrations here, have experienced trauma and have we're really serious about helping them succeed academically. we also have to make sure that they feel safe and that perhaps they're healing from the trauma they carry or addressing or talking about and having space to talk about that. and so one of the things they do is they've created this garden out in the walkways of their school and this is a place where a student and a counselor or a teacher can come if they're having a bad day and they can start just gardening, or maybe when they replant a bougainvillea plant, they can talk about how hard it is when you transplant a plant and put it somewhere else and need some water and some nutrients and some fertilizer. and that leads to conversations about migration. or they can talk about how this tomato plant that their harvesting reminds them a lot of the tomato plants, their grandparents grew back home. and so this leads to conversations of migration, so powerful ways open up conversations around healing and creating new homes here. and there's so many more. i mean, i spoke to and profile a single teacher isim inorth dako. all the way. and we can talk about it because it's a really cool one. and you and i should talk more about thinking about systems, an entire school district in north carolina, 126 schools and each of them just is filled with so many ideas that i think are powerful for us in reimagining education and also as teacher, just taking down notes, going, well, let me try that in my classroom. but i think we have so much to learn from them. and i feel like what i'm hearing from you is that what's very important is building that sense of community and also i was hearing about community involvement and how important volunteers can be. so for in this room, if you'd like to come volunteer in the public schools, you can contact me. so as you as we think about policy. and some of these policies you were mentioning, like our students who come here and in a year they're there or they're required to test or required to, they only have a few years to catch up before they need to get their diploma. what are and you speak about a lot of these in your in your book as well. but what are some of the policies that you think that we need to change that? i in my role can advocate to change so that we are better serving our immigrant youth. yeah, well, we should talk more after i think it comes down to me of thinking about it and this is sort of the central theme of the book and we've talked about this is belonging is how do we create schools where our students feel a strong sense of belonging? and this is true for all of our students, for our immigrant origin kiddos, for our students who've been here from multiple generations. and there are what i'm suggesting eight elements of belonging from opportunities to dream to having advocates volunteer teachers and others who are thinking about policy like you, there are the need for security and making sure our kids feel safe acceptance. thinking about that story i'm plyler and that students are accepting all of their many identities are one that sticks out to me is about our students strengths and we started the conversation about this and i know this is something we talk a lot about is our students bring trauma under strengths to our communities. they are cultural and linguistic navigators. they have tremendous grit and determination built from navigator in a new country, a new culture. they bring a wealth of perspective, of having lived in different political and systems and cultures and countries and thinking about how our schools can better recognize and identify and invest in our students strengths. i think about just as an example, often this is a little bit of jargon, but i'll explain it often in education we think about our immigrant students still mastering english as english as a second language esl. for some of my books and for some of my students, and i'll read a little bit about one of them, robert, it's 80 l it's english as a 10th language. so when i think about something like esl, it narrows us down to thinking about just their language acquisition and maybe doesn't even capture all of the languages they speak. but i think it makes it easy for our students to forget all of the strengths that they bring because we're focused on they're deficit focused on the thing they don't have yet. and it makes it honestly easier for our schools to possibly forget all those many strengths. and so how do we reframe our classes where we're helping students master english is important, but we're also thinking about the policies in place that lifts up and values. all of those other strengths they bring, because those are the strengths that are enriching our community today, that are so important for our communities going forward. and so there are a series of and i won't go into all of them here, but we'll talk more later in terms of the policies, there are a series of ideas around policy and pedagogy and practices. in chapter eight of the book, drawn from these stories the past, the present and the personal that think about how do we reposition schools to be tapping into those strikes, along with many other strategies for thinking about supporting our immigrant students? yeah, i mean, even just a small example is the fact that statewide and the federal government we mark our students is lip, which stands for limited english proficient and that does just kind of give you an idea of the mindset that we're walking into that with when in fact most of our students are coming in looking at us as the ones with deficits of why do you only know one language i don't understand, you know, so they they are very adept being able to acquire languages quickly, proficiently. and many of and it's us that need to kind of adjust our our viewpoint and and maybe even learn a few languages too along the way. i know my parents who came here from india, i mean, the standard is knowing for languages. my mom spoke seven, my dad spoke six and that was just very typical and it would be great if we lived in you know, we're trying to be more global as a country, but also to be more multicultural, multilingual, even in the way we operate every day. i think to that point, too, and i also think about my my immigrant background. i mean, 98% of us trace their origins elsewhere, whether by choice or by force. so one of my great grandfathers who i talk about in the book, daniel, came over as a seven year old from what is now ukraine as a refugee. and he came to new york city at a time was the height, the americanization movement, where his his language, his culture, his history, his religion, his traditions were not wanted or welcome in schools and i see what he lost in terms of language or religion or quieting those parts of entities of himself. how we want schools to be different today so that they are celebrating. they are investing in all of those identities. i know that we have to transition to questioning an answer. we do want to hear from everyone here, but would you mind just sharing a short excerpt of one of the student experiences? absolutely. so i'll end there. and then we want your questions and also, just as a side note for if you are not subscribed to jessica's newsletter, you really should subscribe. and there are some amazing pictures recently of her grandfather and it tells a lot about her background story, too, that brings you to this work. yeah, thank you for that shadow. so i as i started and explained a little bit earlier that there are seven remarkable young people who known for now many, many years and they just generously, so deeply, generously shared their stories with me sitting with them for many hours so that i could share them with you and so i want to tell you just the opening of robert, who is a remarkable young person and his story actually spans the book. and robert, the one who i mentioned earlier, who speaks ten languages from a quarter of a mile away. robert spotted the bushy mane of the lion up, it's head bobbed and then back down. it went beneath the brush. robert skidded his bicycle to a stop. bags of onions, beans and cassava flour strapped to the bike's back, swayed precariously. savannah stretched out in all directions. scrub brush, gnarled trees, clumps of tall grass, but not a person or house in sight. it was 27. robert was eight or nine. he can't recall what he does remember was the realization that when ricocheting through his mind today i will die. robert had never seen a lion, but he had often heard them. once they had attacked his village, coming for the cows, his family and neighbors herded, he and other children had hidden on the roof of a hut while. their parents lit bonfires and beat drums from the darkness, the deep guttural roars of the pride reverberated. it was a terrifying sound. now, here in the quiet of the open plains of the democratic republic of the congo, with a blazing sun high overhead, it was just robert and a lion. silently, he berated himself. why hadn't he waited to bike home with his neighbors once a week, he and others from his village would wake before the sun to bike 3 hours to the local market. there he would sell a cow or sometimes a goat and purchase staples. his mother didn't grow herself. it was a trip he had been making regularly for two years, since the time he was six. that morning, the men of his village had lingered in the market, sipping beers, impatient. robert had angled his bike towards home and pedaled out alone into the savanna. now, watching intently, the tufts of fur bobbing above the brush, the boy pondered survival home was still many miles off, running would only encourage a chase. slowly, painfully, slowly. robert turned his bike around, forcing his gaze to the horizon. he began to pedal one foot. then the next out, his heart thumping against his chest like the village drums. any minute he was sure he would hear the push of the lion leaping onto his back. it never came. not once did he look back. not until miraculously, he had returned to the market and to safety, giddy with relief, he was happy to wait for his elders before biking home once more. ten years later and close to 7000 miles away. robert now a high school sophomore in massachusetts, would arrive early to our schools library to teach himself how to use a computer. where was the letter l? his finger hovered over the gray keys. there it was. tap it before it got away, glancing up confirmed the correct letter had appeared in google search bar onto i again. his finger floated, then tapped oh find tap confirm then end in the frigid morning of a new england winter the school boilers not yet rumbling. robert came face to face once more with a lion. i love that portion of the book does absolutely beautiful thank you thank you for sharing that with us. and so we'd love to open it up now for any questions that the audience may have. yeah. okay. so, ashton, i love the part, of course, that you said about blog being and helping young people to feel a sense of belonging. but i have i'm supporting a family from afghanistan and the school like when we talk about polish cities, i'm so frustrated because the school is more worried about absenteeism. so i'm after a month of being okay no need. i say more so here i am, the white lady fighting with the school about you know, they're just worried about does the young person come to school. they're not coming to school. we have to talk about the policy. they've been told the policy. why aren't they coming to school? we're going to have to file the court and never have. they said, how are you? what's happening? and, you know, this young person can't even the bus system is so complex. never mind reading, you know how to get off the bus, where to go. so within his first month of school, he had eight absences. and they want to they called a contract meeting to set a contract with this kid so that he would come to school more often. so i guess i'm just frustrated and what to do. it hasn't stopped since that first month, so we're having a meeting where they want to talk about his, you know, what he's going to do about this. and i've asked, well, what have they done? so i'm just wondering if you have any thoughts or besides me handing them a book, which i decided might be a little passive aggressive, but if you have any other thoughts, i'd be open to think about it. but the policy just seems, you know, just, you know, and then they have to write a note. and if they don't write a note, then they don't even care if it's in dari and they can't read it. it's just important to have piece of paper. they're saying, why was absent? well, first, keep fighting for doing and. thank you for remind reminding them asking them you know we're doing great or maybe not doing so great. ask us how are these students are faring here because that you know we all enter into education which that is our ultimate goal and then somewhere along the way we have accountability. we compliance, we have things that definitely jade, you know, our processes and our interactions with students and families every day and it is, it's, it's embarrassing, it's unfortunate and it does take us reminding, you know, our educators of the fact that we're here for kids. we're here for families, we're here to serve. do you do you want to. yeah, i know. thank you. continue doing that. you're also welcome. share a book if you like. but i so i have two points to that. one is my own personal experience and one is from a school that i learned so i think about and then open. i've talked about this a lot of just listening students and creating space for and school leaders to be listening to students and learning from students. we don't typically in traditionally have enough time in our school days to do that. and so that's going to be creating a concerted effort to rethink schedules, to create that, so that we can really get to know and learn learn the stories of students, be there for students when they to come speak to us. they might not want to tell us in the beginning, but creating spaces where they feel safe, where they feel welcome, where they feel seen so that they do start coming to us and sharing. maybe why i not coming to school? there's actually a story in global village project of two young women who have spent a long time out of school, who are missing the bus every day and. it's a the bus driver who is also the math teacher, calling them every single morning my my head of department does the same for some of our students and is good morning time to wake up i've this for students but i think there's one example that we could think about in terms of policy. again, it's going to take some rethinking. there's a school in maryland, an all immigrant high school, and at the very of the year, they do really thoughtful conversation, interviews with students and they get to know a little bit of the student's background, where they come from, what their experience of school is. also what their likes and dislikes are, and they use that to really intentionally place students classes where they can start building community with their peers, and also build community with their teachers. and so a kid is missing a father back home. they put them with a teacher who's really become a father figure for many other students. they're doing it at that like really granular level. now, not necessarily an easy solution at a district level, but that's something that we could be aiming for of. how do we create the systems in place and the supports for, principals and leaders within schools to start to do that, to really get to know students and be thinking thoughtfully about how they build connections. community for students both in the classroom and in the school, and like mentioned, it's not just important for our immigrant origin youth. that is important for all our students. and as we're coming back from covid, talk a lot about social emotional learning for our students and what that recovery looks like. and that's a very clear, practical strategy that we could be in order to support the social emotional wellness of all of our students. so many questions. yeah, you guys are amazing. and i've looked at this field for many years and they're enormous, great ideas that do exist as. a country we spend more per student than think any other country. what prevents these ideas from expanding while another school system say, hey, there's a way i'm going to do? i come from business consulting one company does great 16 other copy them immediately so what i call you when it comes responsibility accountability and i've talked to superintendents one example of what we're at texas and she brought texas she finally said look 50% of the time i'm making austin happy 30% of my time i'm settling fuels between teachers. i got 20% and i got a list of things to do. which would you do? i said, i can't tell you. well, what am i missing here? the money is there the interest is there is in place. the what is missing. well, i want to hear your answer because you're thinking about this every day from a district level. i think just briefly on mine, i think there is you're right. just really amazing innovation. and i think it is often not known outside, as i was speaking about earlier. and so one thing that i think we should be doing is, thinking about how we identify really powerful practice and connect educators, but just educators, also policymakers, also researchers, also members, the community, community organizations. so that we are learning from each other in an ongoing way. because i saw this when i traveled, i would be at one school and they'd be doing something really powerful, but grappling with something else. i'd be like, oh, i just saw this other school, another state doing really great work. can i connect? the two of you and educators are hung very to learn from each other and. so it's thinking about how do we create these communities one that we need but i'd love to hear your thoughts on a district level. well, i think that this amazing, important work and where it is working is oftentimes in the classroom with the teachers and the students. i think the the higher you go up, it goes back to what we talking about, which is accountability over empathy and is certainly something i feel like i struggle with constantly about about that push and pull about what are we supposed to be prioritizing? what is the state telling us? we're supposed to be prioritizing? what is what do i as an educator know we should be prioritizing? and so i think, you know, policy is a huge part of it. pushing legislation that is more culturally responsive, that takes into account the fact that a student who is coming from another country shouldn't be taking a standardized test a year, a half in and having it count towards their accountability. i mean, there are so many things that we just do wrong. and and the teacher i remember this is the one sitting in front of the student who's you know, it's it's it's torture to watch, you know, and yet this is a policy that goes up and it's how do we communicate what our educators are seeing and what students are going through to our not just our district leaders, but to our legislators, to make sure that they are thinking about these the systems we could create that are more supportive for creating successful citizens in our society versus creating accountability systems, which is what i think we get hung up, but i'll give you one exciting story about this because it does work. i've seen it work. so i mentioned earlier there is this district in north carolina, guilford, north carolina, which at the heart of it sits historic. and this is a school of 126 schools that stretch rural schools, urban schools, suburban schools. some one school is all. and another school in the district has five esl students. and myra hayes, yield district leader is a remarkable woman, as is her team and. for years she was working try to innovate to think about bringing best practice and she went around the country trying to pull best practices and scores would go up and she'd see some success. but then they'd go down and she kept trying and trying. and then a couple of years ago she heard about a new way to think about instructional so often esl instruction or yellow instruction, english language instruction for immigrant students, whatever you name it. starts with simplified language like let's teach simplified language first and then later they'll build up to more complex language. this approach throws that idea out the window and says, know from day one, students should be learning complex language, but then provides the support for students to be able to grasp that complex language. and myra was so excited about this idea that she brought it back to her district and her superintendent believed in her, said for it. and she and our team about getting teachers to re literacy instruction across. the entire district of 126 schools and that looked like all sorts of different things that looked like professional development in large groups every week every month looked like a teacher who's struggling mirror showing up in their classroom. i teach with you can i model lesson with you. that meant another teacher struggling to find complex, juicy text to in their class. her team is out at the library trying to photograph and texts and then driving them over to the school. it was all the big things, all the little things and in the course of three years, they get back their scores and they see test scores have gone up. scores and reading, writing, math, science across the yellow department, double the number of students are exiting the yale program than they did three years ago. and teachers who are not yale teachers are coming to the yale department going, what are you doing? i'm seeing the change in our students in all my classroom. are you doing how can i learn from you so it can happen and it happens when a superintendent is deeply supportive of innovation. it happens when a whole is there supporting teachers on the ground every day and it's really powerful when it does. so i'll leave you with that hopeful story. sure. all the way in the back of. so this is more of a maybe a comment. i'm not really sure. but what talking your book reminds me of book that came out recently by a gentleman who is a he's an immigrant. his name is boyah farah. he wrote a book called how america made a black man. he's actually he came here as a refugee to massachusetts to learn how to live over here, find everything very strange, succeed. and then he went back to somalia and he goes back and forth and he even taught over here at bunker hill. so your book of is a good, shall we say, a good foil to his. i just wanted to mention, but i don't if you're aware of him or his books, but i have it on my list. i haven't even had a chance to read it. okay, really nice guy. really nice guy. excellent thank you. and thank you for coming. on both a comment and a question i highly recommend the book i was listening to. it's a great audio read as well and would text jessica after. i'm like, okay, i cried again and that's why i wrote it. that was my goal to make them cry. well, not just you, but it's very, very poignant. and i bought 30 copies and i'm using it as a textbook for a class. i start teaching next month. so very excited. my son was a product of the cambridge public schools and he went to amigos, which is a dual language immersion class. and why isn't that part of this? so that's the thing that i feel like i don't quite get because i'm another i think it's towards more of the superintendent but if we are a global and jessica you do address english only laws and how they are being struck down. why is it that we're trying to foreigners come and learn english when it's a dual? why can't we take all the language expertise that your students bring and make them into teachers, make them spanish tutors for all the ap classes and turn them into an asset and give them more power. you know, my son went to amigos. he speaks spanish and it got him a job this summer when the person looked at his resume. so is it true that you speak in spanish? and he said, see, you know about espanol? and he said, okay, you have a job. and he folded burritos like a doble. you know, but it's a really skill. and so i'd love to know why in this state and other places. and did you come across that when you were looking at your. so it's sort of a i don't know if i explained it well, but how can we make dual language more of an asset and less of a how can we get them to learn english? but how can we make americans more global and use the assets, the people coming in to help us and that a great question and a great strategy for for, you know, making our all of our students more successful. and actually you mentioned north carolina which is interesting because that's also one of the states that surprisingly maybe. yes no has devoted a of time, attention and resources to making many of their public schools dual language schools here in massachusetts you know, we did have sort of the english only laws. another reason it's important to understand legislation from the past. and so now we have with the look act reverted back to support multilingualism and in our schools unfortunate at least because we have gone so long without it it is difficult to start these schools and to have the capacity. all of these amazing immigrants who came here and came through our school system, they lost a lot of their language where they can speak and they can converse with their families. they never learn to read and write. so it's a problem, honestly, too, of our own making and something that i think is a strategy that we need to look at. state and as a country on how we can make our society more successful. yeah, i think exactly to that point and thinking about innovation right now, we are in a really exciting moment and to sort of address just briefly the the laws that you are mentioning and actually texas in chapter. eight is massachusetts place really important role in this story so briefly in the late 1960s there was a nun in the mayor's office in boston who was tasked with doing a census of newcomers in the city. and she's going around and there's a lot of kids at home. she's like, why are your kids at home and not in school? because they're school age. and she gets from parents a whole range of stories of, well, are were told that they don't speak english. so they really shouldn't come or they don't speak enough english and they're sort of old. they should probably start working or my kid went to school, but there are no supports for them and learning english. and so they're just sitting there and this leads to a collaboration in the city to write a report that finds out that 10,000 students are not in school when. they should be, which leads to in 1971, the first transitional bilingual education act of the country in massachusetts, which leads a slew of similar laws across the country, celebrating and investing in multilingualism our schools, which then, of course, as you were mentioning, leads to then a backlash rash and a more xenophobe phobic wave of policies that say no english only in our our cities, in our government and in our schools. and so there were a series of laws specifically targeting our schools to try to end bilingual education. first in california, then in arizona and then in massachusetts. some of you might remember question two in 2002, which ended, for the most part, bilingual education, not completely. we had schools like do a language programs that was a carve out afterwards to, ensure those existed. and so i think the story is powerful because it looks at and reminds us of how it's not always progress, that there are swings in the pendulum. but what's exciting and you mentioned to look at is that in the last five years we've had legislation both in california, massachusetts particular really to look at here in massachusetts that again is saying we want to invest in multilingual ism and multiculturalism and we're right at the start of trying to implement that in schools and a really exciting time of rethinking multilingualism. so one really exciting example that we're thinking about at the high school, i'm sure you're thinking about this too in everett is the seal of bi literacy, which is a seal that students can get on their high school diploma that recognizes them if they are bi literate. that's really powerful. it's not the only solution, but that's a a powerful step in thinking about the strengths of being multilingual. and that's now something that is in almost every single state in the country. and it's something that we're rolling out here in massachusetts right now. so for it's thinking about that progress is not linear and also that it requires advocates at all levels. and so thinking about all of the folks here in, this room, thank you again for coming out then i think there's an important role, everyone, to play in this work, that there's clearly a this is the work that pre and i think about and like live and breathe single day but. this is also the work of policymakers is also the work of those of you are working in nonprofits or in local businesses or thinking about how we support our communities. this is the work of really. every single person in a community and that's really made true to me as i read these stories and see the role of so many different, different people, from lawyers to parents to members of religious communities, to community activists, and just neighbors to us presidents. there's a role for everyone in this. and my hope is that everyone gets involved in this work. jessica, thank you so much for being here this evening or. having this conversation. and yeah, i do think that this is such an important work thank you so much for bringing it into the world and for all the work that you do as an author, but as an educator every single day with all of our students and all of your beautiful students that you can see pictures of afterwards as you're getting your book signed. and thank you all for being here today and for being part of that community that we're talking about that's going to make our our students feel that sense of belonging. thank you. thank you. thank you. just it's such an honor to know you learn from you for so many years. thank you for being in conversation. i love talking and with you with a crowd or without a crowd. so thank you. thank you harvard bookstore for having us here really appreciate and thank you all for coming out tonight really means a lot. and i hope that you find these stories inspiring and powerful and that you come and collaborate with us in reimagining our schools.