In their new book, The Sacred Art Of Teaching, Lisa Delpit and Christopher Emdin “converse” on a host of subjects—both personal and professional.

MacArthur Award winner Lisa Delpit is the Felton G. Clark Professor of Education at Southern University and the author of Other People’s Children.

Christopher Emdin is the Maxine Greene Chair for Distinguished Contributions to Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and the director of creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship at the Schupf Family IdeaLab at Skidmore College.

Larry: You write that “Every lesson, every interaction, every moment with young people is a conversation with the future.” As part of that same discussion, you write about how teachers also have to have their own conversations with people from their past. And you talk about resistance from some teachers to do one, the other, or both.

But what about teachers who aren’t resistant but really don’t understand how to have those conversations and how taking the plunge or not impacts what they do in the classroom? Can you make this a little more concrete for them?

Lisa and Christopher:

For teachers who don’t understand how to engage in conversations with the future and past, we want to remind them that they are already doing it. Our pasts speak with and through us all the time. This is why parents tell us, “You sound like your grandmother” or “You move like your uncle.” The work begins with simply recognizing that we are already doing it.

There are the conversations we can have with our pasts that come from previous empowering interactions.

These conversations provide us with the opportunity to engage with those who created the inspiration and space for us to grow. One can ponder questions like: What did they do to spark your personal expansion? What words did they use? How did it make you feel? What were the consequences of their actions that still resonate with who you are now or who you aim to be? How can you bring their presence into your classroom? What questions would you ask them about your current classroom dilemmas? If they’re not still in this world, what do you think they would say to you? What might they suggest about a child you currently struggle with? What advice might they give about handling the issues that come with being a teacher today? It’s important to have these conversations with our past selves because bringing to mind that which has most influenced you will bring a different mindset to your classroom.

It is also essential to engage in conversations with those individuals and circumstances in your past that made learning difficult, that limited your vision of yourself and who you might aspire to become. Contemplating the negatives of your own educational journey may be equally important to explore so as to avoid allowing malevolent ghosts unintentionally shadow your current work.

A reflective educator is much more likely to move with intention than one who simply stumbles through teaching.What we want to encourage is intentionality. Intentionality is what allows for a clearing of whatever may interrupt the teacher from being their best self in the classroom. Sometimes, that means employing a flashlight that can help you find your way. Others, it’s a map to keep you from moving in circles around the same place.

There are conversations we might entertain with those we have never personally encountered but who have the shared legacy of teaching children who look like the ones in our classrooms. If, for example, you are teaching Black students, read up on those teachers, frequently not in mainstream literature, who have masterfully educated Black children but typically not received public accolades, teachers like Carrie Secret, Mary Rhodes Hoover, Augusta Mann, Marva Collins, and the teachers Gloria Ladson-Billings has detailed in several of her books.

Make sure you seek the perspectives and practices of educators who have actually nurtured the brilliance of children and their communities. Not those who have written about but never personally achieved moving the needle toward excellence for Black children (or brown children, or poor children). Not those who view societally marginalized children in our schools within a deficit worldview that dismisses their intellectual acumen. Not those who, with much evidence to the contrary, see themselves as saviors for the disenfranchised. And after reading and internalizing the words of these extraordinary educators, imagine being able to interrogate them about your classroom, your students, the communities the children come from, their parents, their dreams, their potential. What would they advise?

Larry: You make a very critical point about project-based learning by defining it as a “community-based and -focused project that leads to the betterment of the conditions of the students in the community.” I mean, President Donald Trump has spoken about how all schools should be doing it, but I suspect that wouldn’t be his definition. And I also think some PBL proponents might describe it differently and say your definition is for “problem-based” learning.

It seems like PBL, and efforts like SEL, tend to be watered down in fear of political backlash. What advice would you offer to educators in areas where they might have legitimate fear for their jobs if they implement some of your ideas?

Lisa and Christopher:

One reason we are all so confused about education is because educators and educational pundits continue to use catchphrases that become meaningless as each speaker holds in mind a different concept. It’s like we’re all wearing virtual reality headsets, trying to collectively navigate a terrain with each headset depicting a different landscape. When one member goes up a mountain, the other players see him going down a hill or into a lake; turn left, and the co-players see a turn to the right.

We discuss this in The Sacred Art of Teaching in the chapter entitled, “A Culture of Nouns.” To avoid this quagmire, we should all describe what we are actually doing or speaking of in descriptive verbs instead of using “shortcut” nouns that soon become absurdly meaningless.

That said, the fact that Donald Trump’s mental topography has embraced the noun “project-based learning” is actually a gift. Just as the right has redefined DEI, critical race theory, white supremacy, intersectionality, etc., etc., etc., we have the opportunity to redefine whatever is in President Trump’s head when he coughs up educational buzzwords.

Now, to project-based learning and the need to adopt descriptive verbs. Any new “program” we are instituting in classrooms that are occupied by students who have been shortchanged by current educational practices—project-based learning, expeditionary learning, challenge-based learning, problem-based learning, social and emotional learning, and so forth, ad infinitum—will not be successful without intentional focus on the students themselves, their communities, and their lived cultures. Period. Mic dropped.

This is not necessarily teaching a new curriculum; this is teaching the current curriculum well. This is not ignoring academics in order to embrace culture; this is using culture to best teach academics. Everything we suggest for the classroom is to be used in the service of personal and academic excellence. Just as none of us would go to a doctor who shared our political beliefs but couldn’t cure our ills, a good teacher must be judged by his or her ability to help students—all students—embrace their genius and live up to their highest potential. Those who will inherit the Earth must acquire both academic content and an unquenchable desire to continue learning. For teachers, this can only be accomplished by embracing students’ lived lives, as well as the cultural legacies of their communities’ powerful histories.

As for teachers fearing for their jobs, teachers doing right by children who have been societally demonized have always faced risk. The keys to successfully mitigating those risks include bonding with parents through a demonstrated concern for their children and working collectively with other teachers to creatively reinterpret whatever program or curriculum has been implemented (e.g., having students learn “critical reading skills” and “analytic reading” or “deep reading”—whatever the verbiage of their own districts--by comparing documents with multiple perspectives, or comparing the actual words of historical figures to the sanitized versions in textbooks, or conducting any analyses that allow students to explore their and others’ opinions).

Working collaboratively with other teachers, creatively reinterpreting required curricula, getting parents onside, and increasing academic performance are the means by which teachers do what is right and not single themselves out. (Chris used to tell his preservice teachers that the most useful teaching tool in your classroom is the door: Close it!)

Words and terms will always change. Good teaching will always remain the same.

Part Two of this interview will appear next week ...