Public Education Matters

Various student voices 0:08
Public education matters. Public education matters. Public education matters.

Scott DiMauro 0:15
This is Public Education Matters, brought to you by the Ohio Education Association.

Katie Olmsted 0:26
Thanks for joining us for this episode of Public Education Matters. I'm your host, Katie Olmsted, and I'm part of the communications team for the Ohio Education Association's nearly 120,000 members around the state, in every community around the state, these public school educators are dedicated to lifting up their students, to creating welcoming learning environments and to giving everyone in their school community what they need to learn, grow and thrive together. A lot of those educators are furthering that mission through books in just a few weeks, on May 22nd the Lima Education Association is teaming up with the Ohio Education Association to give away thousands of free books with diverse characters written by diverse authors at this year's big summer celebration of diverse readers on the Lima Town Square. We'll talk a lot more about that and how you can enjoy the day with your family if you're in the Lima area, just a little later on this podcast, but first, I want to take us across the state, to Northeast Ohio, where Twinsburg Education Association members have been holding a number of events for their students and the community to celebrate the diversity in their schools and to spark the important conversations about students diverse experiences and lives, to create the better sense of community all students need. I had a chance to sit down with a Twinsburg educator who was really a driving force behind all of this important work. Let's listen to our conversation.

Kristie Lewis 2:04
I am Kristie Lewis. I am a school counselor at Twinsburg High School in Twinsburg, Ohio, and this past school year for the 2425 school year, I have hosted several diversity readings activities within our school community in Twinsburg to support increasing the knowledge and understanding of differences within our school community and our student population.

Katie Olmsted 2:31
So what does that look like when you have a diversity read in?

Kristie Lewis 2:36
So, in that, what that looks like is we get, we received grant money from Twinsburg Education Association, excuse me and NEOEA, which is Northeast Ohio Education Association, in collaboration with Ohio Education Association who supported us with a lot of materials. So I attended last year in Philadelphia, I was able to attend the racial and social justice training, and through that training, I met an individual who gave me some resources from NEA National Education Association. So all of these people were part of what we did here in Twinsburg, in either giving us materials, donating materials, or I wrote a grant and received money to purchase books. And so what we what I did was, is I partnered with a teacher here in our building, Denae Pinckney, who happened to be Ohio Teacher of the Year. And

Katie Olmsted 3:29
And she was one of our earlier podcast guests, if anyone wants to go back and listen.

Kristie Lewis 3:33
Okay, and she's also a colleague of mine here at Twinsburg High School. Because we create awesome teachers here, we cultivate awesomeness here, I must say, in our students and within our staff. And so Denae helped me come up with a list of books, as well as looking at what NEA suggested, National Education Association suggested as diverse books. And so we partnered with in those partnerships, we also went to the library, so it will be a community effort. So we allowed anybody from the community in Twinsburg or surrounding areas to come in, and we had readers, so actual adults from the community came in, and they read these diverse books to students, and we had conversations around differences and understanding and accepting those people and their differences, and understanding why people are different and that it's not so much that they're not as different as you think they are, just we don't know what they are, and we don't understand them. And so, you know, understand having that conversation, so students coming in and listening and having conversations. We did that, then we also had a fair so I said, we set up a table, and we gave out books to students and families, and we also had readers, retired teacher Nora Suder-Riley came in from Twinsburg, and other teachers came down, and they had the opportunity to read to students the books. One of the books that we had, I'm going to pull it out. It is actually all, All Aboard the School Train, and this is what Denae read by Glenda Armon, she read that at the library, and it teaches you about the migration. It teaches you about working hard for a black family, different things that you may not have understand, the struggle from there to now and asking those difficult questions. We had a plethora of books for students, and that opened up conversations, and then our last and final thing that we did for our student community was we had high school students go over to our Intermediate School, which is Dodd,Dodge Intermediate Elementary School here in Twinsburg, and it services fourth, fifth and sixth grade students, high school students read to those homeroom students, and then those students were able to answer questions or ask trivia. If they answered correct correctly, they were given a book, a bookmark, a pen or whatever, and those were the supplies that was given to me by NEA. And so having these conversations, the ideology behind that is that we improve our community, and so that people are accepted and they feel welcome and they feel a part of this community. We do not want students coming into a school, a community, any environment that we provide that's supposed to be safe and they not feel accepted. So this was a task that I took upon myself after experiencing the social justice, racial social justice training in Philadelphia to expose my students and my community to accepting and understanding people with other differences and other backgrounds than ourselves.

Katie Olmsted 6:32
Why are these conversations so important to have with students? Why can't you just tell them, hey, accept, accept everybody no matter what. Why, why have this sort of interactive experience and discussion with them and prompt these questions?

Kristie Lewis 6:47
Because living in a space where you're comfortable is important for you to thrive, for you to survive, for you to do well, for you to grow, for you to learn feeling different is is not it's not a good feeling when you when you walk into a space and you don't feel welcomed, or you feel like people are looking at you because you are different, or you walk through a space and not everyone is like you and looks like you. For a lot of my students who who are Indian or Asian, you don't find too many teachers, staff members in the space that look like them. So we embrace cultures. We embrace their we have cultural we have multicultural day. We have fairs where they can bring food, they can wear their cultural garb, so that we can show people what it is to be in this of this culture, of this diversity, of this race. It's important to feel welcome. It's important to feel a part of and it's important to feel accepted just merely saying, Hey, I am an Asian American, or I am a black American, or I am a Latino American, that's not enough to say who you are. It's we have to go a little further, a little deeper, so we have a better sense of understanding and acceptance. Acceptance is important. And I think when we start talking about diverse communities, and we I think that's a big thing in our in our state of Ohio, is it's actually on our report card, or it's like a something we check off on a box and said, Oh, our community is diverse, but the question is, within that community, are those people accepted? Do they feel welcome? So that's why we're having these conversations, because it's one thing to check a box. It's another thing to embrace people and their differences.

Katie Olmsted 8:32
And Kristie, I want to go back to something you said a little earlier. You said, we cultivate awesomeness here, and I love that, but it truly does say something about Twinsburg and about the community and your school community, that it feels like they have really embraced this opportunity. What were those early conversations like?

Kristie Lewis 8:55
Well, those early conversations were tough. Let me say this, I have not always been in Twinsburg, and neither has Denae. We both came here from other districts. I myself came from Cleveland Metropolitan School District, and it was a culture shock coming here and feeling a sense of unfamiliarity caused a little tension, anxiety, if you will, for myself as an adult with a master's degree and a toolbox full of skills that I could function in this space, when I looked at my own experience, I said, wow, I can only imagine how students feel. And so at the time, my principal and I sat down and we had a town hall, and we started having these conversations with some of the teachers about accepting people and not judging. So when I came here, you know things were, you know, different, and so I said, let's start embracing the differences. I start having these conversations, and I don't think people realize when they say things, what they're saying. So for example, I come from Cleveland Metropolitan School District an inner city school, someone would say to me, oh, I know you're happy to be here. I know you're glad to have gotten out of Cleveland. Whoa, whoa, whoa, that's not, that's not cool, because that's, that's hurting Cleveland. And I don't want to do that because I didn't leave Cleveland because it was a terrible place. I left Cleveland because I wanted to be closer to home, which is where I liveover here in the school I was working in was closing. If my school didn't close, I would not have been looking for another place to call home if my building had stayed open. We know education schools closed. Funding happens. Things happen in communities, but when we make judgments, we pass judgments upon people based off of our own biases, whether they be microaggressions or just lack of understanding. It affects people, and for someone like me, it was offensive to hear I know you're glad to get out of there. I wasn't, I wasn't happy my building closed. I wasn't happy to be coming here. So imagine a student whose parents get a pay raise or a new job, and they have to move from their current comfortable space and move into a community of an unknown and they come here and it's not very welcome, and people start making comments like, oh, I know you're glad to get out of such and such. I know you're happy to be here. This is a much better place, but you're not making me feel that way, especially with these comments. So we started having these conversations and saying, instead of saying, I know you're better off here, I know you're happier here, simply say, welcome, we're happy to have you. That's all we'd like to get to know you welcome them, give them a sense of acceptance and a sense of belonging. Belonging in a space is very it's very important, especially for young people who are trying to transition into a new environment. Because those young people didn't get a choice. They didn't get to say, I made a choice and moved here and took upon my position here as a school counselor in this in this community, these young people's parents buy a home, rental, rent a facility. They do, they make the transition for them, their family. They have no idea when they come, when their children come in the door, whether they're going to be accepted or not. They just assume that this is a school everyone's going to be nice and friendly and accept my child, and so that's why we're cultivating a space that is going to be empathic and accepting and welcoming and embracing all people when they come into this community.

Katie Olmsted 12:36
And that's not important just for the students who are coming into the community. It's important for this. It's for important for everyone. Everyone, I think, does better when we embrace our differences and when we're celebrating what makes us unique. What are you seeing from your students in that regard?

Kristie Lewis 12:56
Wow. I see such amazing things for my students. My students are having conversations and relationships, and they're building, we just recently had a multicultural fair, which we didn't do a diversity reading, but the students came in and cultural guard and shared food and different things, and the conversations that students are having, the sense of community pride that these students now have. I am, I am the type of educator, and there are a lot of us in this space, don't get me wrong, it's not just me. I cannot do this alone. I am standing shoulder to shoulder and arm and arm with some amazing educators, as I said, but we are putting forth the the charge to our students to be open, to be welcoming, to be accepting, and they're taking that challenge, and they are running with it. So you're seeing conversations happening. You're seeing them planning things like the multicultural fair that we have done this year, where we had the opportunity for students not only to wear their guard, but to do their cultural dances, if they have it. Or we had a young man play a ukulele, an accordion, like they came in and they did things that were of their culture and of their race and their diversity and their background. And it gets an opportunity for students to see who you are outside of just being this person who comes to school here and sits in class, and I think that that level of acceptance, that level of school pride, went beyond what we could have imagined for our students. And it's important for our students to be the leaders in this space. We can sit and have lessons. We can sit and talk as adults, but when the students take the lead and they take that charge, it's amazing. It's it's, it's a level of of excellence that I cannot even explain to see the students lead in this space.

Katie Olmsted 14:48
Is this something that we could bring to other students? Is it just Twinsburg that can do this? Or can anybody?

Kristie Lewis 14:55
Oh my goodness, we can do this anywhere and everywhere. I'm telling you, this is something that I hope that other school districts will get an opportunity to see that this is not something that is only for Twinsburg even it's not. It's not only just for people who think they have a diverse community. It's for a school community in general. You want your students to be leaders. You want your students to cultivate change. You have to let the students do the work. You have to give them the charge and then step back as the educator and allow the students to do the work. We have to trust these young people and that they know what they're doing and they know what they want. This is their school community. I am not a student here, so I don't experience what they experience in the classroom, in the setting in which they are educated, I help to cultivate a safe space, empathy, diversity, acceptance. I help. I'm a helper in this space. The leaders are the students, and so as long as there are students in a school district, you have an opportunity to cultivate leaders in your schools.

Katie Olmsted 16:00
Well Kristie Lewis, thank you for being, thank you for cultivating awesomeness in Twinsburg and thank you for sharing your story.

Kristie Lewis 16:08
Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you for taking the time to spotlight the amazing things that my staff and my students and my union is doing here between Te, Twinsburg Education Association, Ohio Education Association, Northeast Ohio Education Association and the National Education Association. I could not have done any of this without my union supporting me, giving me the resources to provide our students with the ability to cultivate change and leadership in our community.

Katie Olmsted 16:45
When students have these conversations, when they learn from others lives and experiences, when they read diverse books, we know they learn to see themselves and the world around them in big, new ways. And as we mentioned at the top of this episode, educators around the state know just how important it is to provide their students access to diverse voices in the books they read. That's why the Lima Education Association has picked up the baton to host this year's Summer Celebration of Diverse Readers with OEA on Thursday, May 22nd 2025 from two to 6pm on the Lima Town Square. Lima area students and their families can all come out to pick out age appropriate books and enjoy all sorts of fun, food and entertainment. I mean, we've got everything from free hot dogs to a touch it truck experience with the Lima Fire Department to a chance to meet some animals up close with the members of the Lima High School's future farmers in America club. And honestly, that's just the tip of the iceberg for the activities that are planned. And it's not to mention the readers corner, where lots of local authors and community leaders are sharing diverse books out loud, plus all of the other community resources that everyone can connect with while they're there, it is going to be an amazing event, and OEA is so, so grateful to the Lima Education Association, OEA Retired and all of the sponsors and partners who are making this year's event possible. You can find a link to learn more about this year's event in the show notes for this episode. And while you're there, make sure you subscribe to Public Education Matters wherever you get your podcasts, so you don't miss an episode in the future. New episodes continue to drop every Thursday for the rest of this school year, and plans are already in the works for the start of the new season in the fall. So keep your ideas coming. Just send me an email at educationmatters@oea.org, your voice matters through this podcast, and the work you do matters every single day for your students and your community. We want to keep lifting it up and digging into the issues that impact your profession and your life, because in Ohio, public education matters.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai