[Music]
Welcome to this episode of the podcast Nursing EDge Unscripted the Scholarship track. I'm your host Dr. Steven Palazzo, a member of the editorial board of Nursing Education Perspectives. Nursing EDge Unscripted and our track entitled Scholarship celebrates the published work of select nurse educators from the NLN's official journal Nursing Education Perspectives and the NLN Nursing EDge
blog. The conversations embrace the author's unique perspectives on teaching and learning innovations and the implications for nursing program development and enhancement. In this episode we will discuss effective teaching and learning strategies for teaching about racism.
We will discuss the perspectives of my guest today, Dr. Danica Sumpter who is a clinical associate professor at the University of Texas Austin School of Nursing and authored ART Praxis: Evidence-Based Strategies for Antiracist Teaching in Nursing. The article can be found in our current September-October special issue of Nursing Education Perspectives. Dr. Sumpter, welcome. Thank you Steven. I'm happy to be here.
We are very happy to have you here and I want to start off by first asking you to just describe the process of anti-racist teaching and learning and why it's imperative to dismantle the structures and systems that support a white narrative in nursing education and very specifically I guess for the audience that have no experience in this area and are very hesitant or unsure of how to move forward. Yeah that's a great question and I'm going to take a page from Simon Sinek and
start with the why first. I think even within the question this idea of the white narrative or some authors have labeled it kind of the white racial frame is so normative within society in general but nursing as sort of this microcosm of society and it is so normative that it's invisible and so unless we are very intentional about making the invisible visible the status quo is never going to change because we can't change what we can't
see. And so this idea of white dominance or the centrality or the supremacy of whiteness within nursing that's what keeps us from being able to diversify the workforce, which we know is required
to be able to eliminate health inequities. And so when whiteness is the standard for everything that's considered good and right and beautiful and you name it, why would it be surprising if those of us who are racialized as Black would feel like we don't belong, would feel like our experiences or our ways of knowing, our ways of being within the world don't count as real knowledge, that don't
count as real experiences? And so to experience this constant state of feeling like you don't belong and you don't matter, that takes a lot of emotional energy, a lot of intellectual energy. That's energy that our our white counterparts don't have to expend and that they can apply towards the rigors of nursing school if you're you know a nursing student or within the promotion and tenure if you're a faculty and
even within the staff realm. So for us to be able to acknowledge and to see that that's got to be kind of our starting or the why and then I'll kind of transition to the first part of the question, the how. The how we do that, and I borrow a metaphor from Emily Style with the SEED Project. She uses it the window and the mirror. She uses it to refer to curriculum but I like to just use it
as I think about this work. And so she talks about the need for us to look in the mirror first, so this introspection. I heard a great quote that revolution begins with the self, in the self. so this idea of examining ourselves, reflecting on these everyday moments when thoughts, words, actions manifest that are reflective of these narratives about dominant culture the way that
I've been socialized to believe. When those things pop up, like, I've got to become more aware of them in my everyday life and so anti-racism is not this checklist but it's this transformation process. It's about my becoming and so with me, like it's a daily battle to resist anti-Blackness within myself and so I gave myself grace, but meanwhile I also continue to do the hard, uncomfortable introspection that's necessary when I see it
pop up within myself. So when I can begin to see it within myself more readily then I can see it outside. So I've looked in that mirror, I've gained some insight, and that has improved my quote unquote eyesight if you will so that I can see it outside of me more readily. So I can then be more open and solicit feedback from others during those times when maybe I don't see it and so that's kind of the why and a little
bit about the how. Wow, that's great and there's a lot there to analyze, right, or to think about from a perspective of an educator in nursing. I think all of us, depending on our frame of reference, our upbringing, our where we're at in our process of education, whether we're a novice or experienced, all fall along this continuum of self-reflection, self-analysis, understanding, you know your place in the world and how it came to be and how your experience is different, so
different than many other people's experiences. But we tend to view it through a certain lens like you mentioned, right, this kind of normalized lens of white culture and how that affects everything we do in the classroom and subconsciously for many people, unless you learn how to to recognize it, which kind of brings me to the next question, and how does a nurse educator and I've had experiences as in the past as a novice educator where I did it very
poorly and an experienced educator where I did it better of course not you know in a perfect way, but I've done it better, but how does the nurse educator start this process of examining their own, let's say you have a course that you've taken on or you've been teaching for a while, you know opportunities to implement and strategies of encountering, reflecting, discussing, and taking action which was the framework you used in your article when discussing
anti-racist teaching in the context of their course. Yeah, I think so it sort of dovetails into the first question. So when I start that process of introspecting and reflecting I'm going to see my world differently, so my frame starts to shift and change and so I start to view my curricula, I start to view my teaching strategies, I start to even view my interactions within the classroom differently. I would also say that students are
a great repository of ideas. I think they are so ready for this and are waiting on us as faculty to hop on board so soliciting and talking with them, how can you even like relinquishing some of that power is an anti-racist strategy, dismantling that hierarchy within the classroom space that I talk about, we talk about in the article. So co-creating some assignments like they are often aware and they're doing community work, community activism.
What are they aware of? What are those local issues that maybe they're aware of that you're not? Who can we partner with within the community? What are the needs that are there that the students can galvanize around to take action? I mean there's so like that is the role of the university to improve the health, the wellness, the well-being of the communities within which we find ourselves.
It's not just about knowledge generation for the sake of, but in the service of, and so how do we truly partner with? But there are some taken for granted assumptions that have to be addressed when we're working with community members. So how do we help our students privilege the knowledge and the experience that the community members are bringing
to the table? It's not just me, I've read all this stuff in an article or in a book and so I know what's best, but understanding from the get-go that communities typically already know what they need and so they don't need us to swoop in and tell them. A matter of access to power and resources - that's the issue, not access to knowledge and experience. And so how do we again come alongside communities as co-learners
and co-laborers? So we're role modeling that for our students within the classroom space and then taking them out into the community and then often in nursing we're good about teaching the what, kind of the statistics, the stats, but we neglect the how and the why. So how did this certain inequity come to be? What's the historic policy or law that might have been the initial historical insult that led us here?
One of the classes I taught, a graduate elective, it was called Race, Power, Privilege and Health and we had an assignment it was called throughline and I got it from the NPR Podcast Throughline, where they take a contemporary issue and sort of trace it back through time like how do we get here? And so thinking about that like how did we come to these disproportionate rates of asthma within the Black area of town. I love that idea. Within the
city where you are well. Let's trace it back. So you know, in 1928, 1929 Austin had a city plan and they intentionally placed all of the Black and brown folks on a certain part of the city. So how do we how do we trace that? Thinking about the why this happened and the how it continues and so that kind of it takes, it gives some more context to it and then also thinking about the biases, the assumptions, the stereotypes about this population. Where do those come from? Why
do I have them? Why do they persist and what are the consequences of that? You mentioned we go into to health care because we want to care and we have this caring ethos and this identity and so realizing that we can care and we can also perpetuate harm like those two things can coexist.
So helping our learners kind of become okay with the complexity of that, we've got to incorporate more personal introspection and reflection and I think the shift to CBE there is a huge emphasis on self-reflection and the metacognition piece. So I think that will help facilitate
this as well. I talk with my colleagues in social work and they are big about sort of situating the practitioner as a part of the therapeutic equation and I think often times in nursing we sort of pretend that we're just a part of the wall, we're just kind part of the backdrop and we're not really impacting the encounter in substantial ways, but like we're bringing our own stuff, you know, our own baggage of course, right
into this own bias our own perspectives. Exactly and I think Christine Tanner's kind of revision of her clinical judgment model takes that into account too and so I think we're shifting, we're heading in these good directions but thinking about encounters that we already have within our classes and how do we then pull and tease out the systems and structures of oppression, racism being one. Reflect on those intentionally, bring those into discussion and then how can we
take action around them? That's great. I've been using the framework of Raymond Wlodkowski and Margery Ginsburg for probably 15 to 20 years now, which is about really about adult motivation through cultural responsiveness and they always start with you have to create this safe and inclusive environment before any learning can take place and I've used that as part of my strategies always going forward so thinking about that how do we create
this kind of space for students and faculty to feel, I mean you know you can't make everybody feel safe and not vulnerable, right? But you can create an atmosphere where safety and and vulnerability are recognized in a way that can make people feel more comfortable coming forward and having these type of discussions. Yeah I'll have to look into that framework. It's really, yeah, I would recommend it. It's really
great. They do great work. I think when we think about safe space so it depends like largely on how we define and consider safety like safe for
whom? So often when conversations about classroom safety especially as it relates to conversations about race oftentimes the safety of the white students is what centered and so we have to be mindful and intentional about centering the margins so sometimes safety and comfort are conflated and learning new things is inherently uncomfortable so it upsets something that we held to be true and sometimes it refutes or negates things that we thought to be so and
turns them on their head. And so I'm thinking about this book that I bought for my son, Lies My Teacher told Me. It just is unsettling and so I have to think about that, how the things that maybe I think I should have known, especially as a Black person like when I learned things about racism. It's like, why didn't
I know that? And so that can be unsettling and uncomfortable but I think about the article by Clemens and Arai that talk about brave spaces rather than safe spaces and so our organizations and hence our classrooms are not race neutral.
So we should not presume that they're safe for all learners or really all faculty for that matter who are racialized as Black or brown or really lots of marginalized identities and so I think when we talk about centering the margins, if you're not sure like to ask so creating
anonymous polling. Stephen Brookfield has this critical questionnaire is a good way to think about asking those questions to make sure again, because I'm coming in with my view, my frame, my thinking and I'm thinking everything is good, but I've got students who are coming in with lots of different identities and it may not be so good and so unless I ask, I may not know and so
anonymous polling is a good way to do that. Again, that critical questionnaire to ask at the end of each class but it doesn't even have to be super formalized. I've done check-ins as a way of building community. I think that's another huge tenant of anti-racist practice is building
community. We within our capitalist society or competition and it's about that piece and sometimes students come into nursing school with that competitive sort of nature within them so unless we are intentional about building community and helping us see that we are stronger together and so that is checking in with each other at the beginning of class. How are folks doing is just simple, easy way to do
that. That time that you have when we are face to face at the lectern at the end so letting students know I'm here for you during break, kind of just checking in and asking them how they're doing with life outside of class is a good way that they know that you care
about them. Again, this is not the default so being intentional, ice breakers, introductory discussion boards where you have a video of yourself as the instructor sharing yourself, role modeling, transparency, vulnerability. As vulnerable as I'm willing to be is generally the tone that the students will take. They'll match me, so I think about bell hooks like us not expecting students to do and to go where we're
not willing to go ourselves. So, so much of what I do as a faculty it reminds me of parenting and I had this moment when I was a clinical instructor. I would just grab a bag of salad because it was easy and quick on my way out the door and I would eat salad with my students for lunch and I remember the students remarking about, oh you eat so healthy and I'm thinking I didn't even know y'all were looking at what I was eating,
right? But the power of just our actions and role modeling what is that what message does that send to students and so we are teaching by what we say we're teaching by what we don't say when we ignore and kind of go over conversations like a bump in the road and don't address issues when they come up in the moment. We're role modeling by what we do and what we don't do and so again I think creating a community agreement at the beginning of class is a good way to sort of have
these conversations and to be explicit. What do students perceive as respectful, disrespectful? It may be very different from what I as a faculty think and so let's put that out there. What do we hope gets accomplished within our time together? What are we afraid of happening? How do we create a community agreement so that we ensure that our hopes are actualized and our fears are minimized and then holding each other accountable
to that each time we meet is a good way. That's something I've done in in classes as well as with faculty within book clubs. Another sort of way of building community is social annotation. I've used Hypothesis, but there are lots of different platforms out there but just ways to help students to get inside of each other. Curiosity I think is this...I keep coming back to in all of my readings it is this lost kind of dying art within our society at large but just
becoming curious about one another's thinking. Not trying to prove a point, not try trying to win an argument, but truly trying to understand and become curious about what one another is thinking and so social annotation can help with that as well. I'm not sure if I even answered the question. I think you answered it. I think you gave us a lot to think about, right, and I hear we do a lot of thinking or talk about doing a lot of thinking but we really need to start moving
to action. These discussions have been around a long time and are we moving the needle forward it seems, but I think the action piece is where people get stuck. The discussion piece is the easier part amongst each other, but then moving forward and what do you actually do is what becomes difficult for most educators. And I also add to that.
So Glenn Singleton in his creative conversations about race he uses this compass to sort of locate yourself within conversations about race and so it's divided into four quadrants and on the left side there is kind of the moral or the beliefs that you have and on the left bottom it is the affective or the feeling then on the right side it's the thinking or the head quadrant and then on the right at the bottom it's the do and so I think within the academic space we spend
a lot of time thinking and then doing within conversations about racism there is often a like oh, this is a problem, this is really bad. Okay, what can I do? And there is a rush to action which it needs to happen, however, I think we don't necessarily spend enough time on the left side of that quadrant examining our feelings, the affect, the emotion especially as these conversations can generate. And
that's data. We have emotions for a reason. Often time I think they're seen as pejorative within the academic space but that is our compass, that is what kind of guides us in terms of ethics and what is right, what is wrong. So how do we teach students? How do we teach ourselves to be in tune like when my heartbeat starts to elevate. Why did that happen? Why did I flush? Why did my breathing just get shallow? What's happening here? Why am I experiencing this way right now?
And then leaning into that. What does that tell me about my morals and my beliefs about a certain group of people, a certain population? Where did that come from? And so I think spending some time interrogating that intentionally, the pedagogy of just the affective is huge and then helping sit with that, those uncomfortable emotions can inform our actions a little bit so that we don't rush and then end up causing more harm than good because I've seen that from
well-intended people. Well, I want to thank you for joining us this is a great important conversation. I appreciate your time and the expertise you brought to the conversation and broadening our understanding of this work and how we can even just think about more intentionally introducing this into our specific classroom our course and at the very least, for those who may not have any experience, start getting them thinking about how we can do this in the classroom. So
for that, we really appreciate it. To our listeners, if you have not had the opportunity to read about this work, you will find the manuscript published in Nursing Education Perspectives and you'll find it in our current special issue, this September October issue and I want to thank you again for joining us. Absolutely. It was my pleasure.