Episode 94: Racial & Educational Equity & Advocacy with Sonia Lewis
/In this episode, I am joined by my friend and colleague Sonia Lewis. She is a California native, wife and mother, former high school history teacher, turned entrepreneur. She is the visionary and founder behind ASCRIBE Educational Consulting, where they lift and center equity, humanity, and belonging. Long story short, Sonia is an Anti-Racism Impact Strategist, ready to face challenging topic without blame and shame. Here is a summary of our conversation:
Family life and how to be balanced and give children agency
Blended families and being the BONUS in someone's life (child and parent)
Raising Anti-Racist children
Educational Equity
To learn more about this topic, follow Sonia on social media and visit her website:
Instagram: @ASCRIBEsuccess
Facebook: ASCRIBE Educational Consulting
Twitter: @AscribeEd
Website: www.ascribesuccess.com
TRANSCRIPT
Parenting is often lived in the extremes. It's either great joy or chaotic overwhelm. In one moment, you're nailing it and the next you're losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle, to a place of balance. You see balance is a verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you do. Not a thing you are. It is an action, a process, a series of micro corrections that you make each and every day to keep yourself feeling centered. We are never truly balanced. We are engaged in the process of balancing.
Hello, I'm Dr. Laura Froyen and this is The Balanced Parent Podcast where overwhelmed, stressed out and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts, and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting on a deeper level. All delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion. Join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, your life with openhearted authenticity and balance. Let's go!
Laura: Hello everybody, this is Dr. Laura Froyen and on this episode of The Balanced Parent Podcast, we're going to be talking about a topic that is near and dear to my heart and so important. We're gonna be talking about educational equity, how to advocate for our kids and everyone else's kids, and how to raise kids that know how to stand up for themselves and advocate for themselves and others.
And to help me with this broad and important conversation, I am so excited to welcome in a new friend and colleague as my guest, Sonia Lewis. And I'm gonna let her introduce herself. So she's a mom to multiple kiddos as a big extended bonus family and I'm so excited to have her on the show Sonia, welcome to the balanced parents. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do?
Sonia: Fabulous, thank you so much for this opportunity and to share with you all today. I am Sonia Lewis as Dr. Froyen mentioned and I am the owner and creator of Ascribed Educational Consulting, but more important, the reason I got into this work is because I have Children of my own and I spent many years in the education system doing work around equity and as a high school teacher, you get to see lots of things. And one of the things that's super important to me is the fact that when we see that they're broken things in our system, we as educators and parents and all stakeholders involved can really and truly lean in together and try to find solutions to those problems.
Laura: Which direction would you like to go next into this?
Sonia: So let's go into, you know, like family life and how to just be balanced and give them agency and stuff.
Laura: Yeah, okay, So Sonia, I know that you've just written a book and I'm really intrigued by this book, not just because it's the topic, but because you kind of wrote it for your 7 year old self. Can you tell us a little bit about the story and what you're hoping to accomplish with your book?
Sonia: You know, my seven year old self, she teaches me a lot. I've just embarked on my 50th birthday recently and I still lean on lessons that I can learn from my seven year old self. So at seven, I realized after experiencing a lesson on the statue of liberty that the last line in the pledge of allegiance just in my opinion didn't apply to myself in my community and I recognize that at seven. And I don't know you know where it came from or how I made the connection, but I just felt like liberty and justice for all wasn't really for all.
I was, I've always been that person who was very super literal about things and so I went to school one day, second grade in the bay area of California And I sat during the pledge of allegiance and this is in the 70s. And so that was almost like a no no.
And I was punished really heavily because of that decision, but I was steadfast and why I made the decision and it took probably a good three or four months for my teacher to accept the fact that I wasn't going to say the pledge of allegiance and then she, you know, she was known on our school campus as the meanest teacher, you know, ever to walk the campus and eventually she retired that year.
And the principal that you know, dealt with the situation, she was very kind, she was very progressive and she wanted to understand why I had come to that decision and she helped me shape the words and articulate what it was I was trying to express. And so seven year old Sonia oftentimes is my beacon of courage. And so when I just need a little bit of courage juice, I think about myself at seven and how I stood up to the quote unquote, meanest teacher, you know, that I had ever had and you know, who previous students who had warned us, you know, a little second graders like she is so mean.
But writing this book, I wanted to inspire young people that you too can recognize things in the world because what we do know scientifically speaking is that young children know right from wrong between the ages of three and five and they begin to start to see how they fit in the world at around, you know, 5 to 7.
And so it makes sense to me now, looking back that, okay, I was seven and it seems like a very young age, but it's very appropriate when we're talking about, you know, mentally and developmentally wise, what young people aren't capable of. And so that's why I wrote the book is to inspire young people that you have a voice. It's important and to lean on those people who are around you to help you center your agency and voice because it's important.
Laura: It is, it's so important. I think I so agree with you that kids have such a keen sense of justice, they have such a keen sense of fairness, they're very good at noticing differences, noticing discrepancies when our words don't align with our actions are very good at noticing those things. And I don't know if you know this about me and our podcast, but we talk a lot about reparenting and inner child work.
So really using our reconnecting with our inner children, healing old wounds, but also using them for good in our life, letting them inspire us and you're just you're modeling that beautifully for my community right now. I appreciate it so much.
Sonia: Absolutely. Especially important when we look at just the studies when, you know, young people are approaching that those years of transition from childhood to adulthood, right, and what are we leaving them with to like figure out?
And so one of the things that I've been, you know, thinking in my mind and just posing like, wouldn't it be amazing if young people didn't have to heal from trauma? Right, just that sure ideation and thought all in in and of itself is like how do we prepare young people so that they can understand and be as healthy as possible when they're dealing with any kind of relationship, be it friend or romantic or at work or in community, right?
So that they don't have to heal from in those wounds that they've experienced don't show up based on triggers are faced with on a daily basis. And so I'm very interested in that those kind of works and conversations because it's important that we give them more than what we were given.
Laura: Absolutely. And this is true at home and our families with our kids, but also in school and educational settings too, right?
Sonia: Absolutely.
Laura: Can you tell me a little bit about your educational advocacy and equity work?
Sonia: I spent 20 years teaching high school history, a couple of those years in middle school and I realized middle school, it's just the whole ball of wax that is just like, yeah, no, I can't do this, this is a lot. But what I loved about young people in general is that one, they keep me young, right? But two, they are so inquisitive and if you give them just a little bit of, you know, something that is a spark, they will run with it.
They are just amazing when it comes to thinking outside of the box. And so in teaching high school history, I've always been approached that history is so boring and history is not my, you know, funny subject and when students left my classroom best believe they had a better understanding and a better appreciation for why history is important.
And so when we think about just that experience in and of itself and being able to be a conduit for young people. Being able to be an advocate for young people, I like to sit back and let young people share, you know, the things that are on their mind so that they feel like they are part of the equation and it's not just adults regurgitating and throwing information at them. It's important when we're talking about advocacy that we recognize who in the room is has the least amount of resources or are suffering the most based on the system the way that it's designed.
And unfortunately we've lived for so many years in a country where by design, some kids are going to have the resources and other kids are not going to have the resources. And so part of my expertise and my experience has been to recognize those demographics that are lacking in resources.
And to provide pathways and by creating programs or writing curriculum, whatever it is to make sure that those resources are allocated to those who are most disenfranchised by the system. So that kind of speaks to the advocacy work that I've done as a teacher as far as profession is concerned, I left the classroom probably about 10 years ago and I started in the educational consulting business and it really and truly was about the things that parents were calling me about that were outside of the scope of me being a teacher in the classroom. Can you help my kid fill out this college application?
Can you help them be ready for a job interview? Right? And then that translated to administrator saying Sonia, can you come in and write a program for this group of students because you're doing, You know, that work on transition, there have been so many pivots in my business over the past 10 years, but that then led to me doing a lot of culture and climate work on campuses when I see, you know, some things that are maybe not going so well coming in and giving some fresh eyes to solutions.
And then now because of the time that we're living in, I call it the collide of two pandemics, the pandemic of covid and the pandemic of racism. I'm able to go into school settings and say, look, let's create an anti racist framework so that all students, regardless of where they come from who they are as individuals, humanity is centered around how they are belonging into the equation.
Laura: Oh my gosh to humanity centered approach to education that just like makes my soul ring. You know, we were talking before we started recording about how we are in this unique period of time where we have the opportunity because schools have been closed, they've been shut down and we're in this place where we have a chance to do things differently to really look at the systemic inequalities that are baked and not accidentally but intentionally baked into our systems and do things differently.
And so if a family is looking to advocate for that, some of those structural and systemic changes to take place in their school environments where they're sending their kids, how can we go about as parents with power differentials, right? We don't have a lot of influence often as parents like how can we go in to start working for change in our own school systems.
Sonia: I really have appreciated this moment of being able to re imagine, you know, the structure of the educational system. So when this just learning first started, it was very like disorganized and not to the advantage of students or parents right? And so we have to figure out how do we do this and how do we manage?
And so one of my first things that I did, I put back on, my teacher had for the first time in a long time and I started a virtual classroom where students from all over the country can log in and we really, it was a very inclusive environment, but we we focused on the things that I was never able to teach in the traditional classroom. So even though it was black and brown centered and marginalized student centered, it was those things that were allowed students to connect the dots about, you know, the struggles.
And while we did not lift the and I hate this ideation of the oppression olympics, we talked about what struggles we have in common as communities. And I think that when we see those commonalities that people can then show up in spaces and say I'm going to fight on behalf of someone who is not necessarily mine, but because I want better for all of our children and when our children show up in spaces and they know how to recognize that they have voice and agency, then they will feel more comfortable coming home telling mom and dad, grandma grandpa, whoever their caretaker is, I witnessed this, I experienced this and I need your help.
And so ways that parents can show up, in my opinion, it's still the same thing. Show up in the classroom as a volunteer, right? And just be those eyes and ears if it's a kid that you're seeing that is you know, alone or a loner or is quiet and more reserved, you know, give that friendly high in that high five or that fist bump or you know that smile but make sure that they feel welcome and invited in those spaces.
And then the other thing that I would say is even though some parents don't feel like they are part of the equation when it comes to things like school site councils or PTAs and things of that nature in those organized spaces, make sure that you have a relationship with, I say, the key people on campus, of course your principal, right? But like the secretary and the janitor or like the people on campus who know everything, everything,
Laura: There's some plugged in.
Sonia: Right? And so get to know those people because not only will they give you insight about how your child is matriculating through their school life, but they'll give you insight about you know certain teachers and and certain dynamics as they show up on school campuses. And then finally when we're talking about ways to think reimagining about how the school system is just has had historically some inequities embedded in it, is that we can fight for things like but not limited to ethnic studies being a thing around campus is right?
And I say from K. to 12 and beyond because like me teaching this teaching that I you know designed when the pandemic hit, I realized that I love elementary and I never taught elementary before and I it was the younger kids that made me fall in love with teaching again. And so we're like entering into our second iteration of the teaching this summer and we're going to be teaching like financial literacy components.
And so they're motivated by knowing where their dollar is spent, how to make money and so we're going to talk about how to grow a home garden to fight a food desert depending on the neighborhood you live in. They're going to learn about entrepreneurialship, but from the sense of what are the problems in your community and how can you turn that into a business or nonprofit?
And then finally they're going to learn about the stock market and at the end of the program they're going to get $100 So that they can invest in one of those three so that they can build their own generational wealth; they can experience what it means to be in control of something. And so I just say parents think outside the box, like get with some other parents. I don't care if it's two or three or five or 20 parents that you know, think outside of the box and really think about ways where you can leverage your skills and expertise and bring them into the classroom
Laura: Oh, I love that. I hope that you will send me the links for those programs. So listeners can either join or support you in those amazing endeavors. Okay, so can I ask another question too. Okay, so from an educational consultants standpoint, a lot of my listeners have kids who are kind of out of the box.
Maybe they identify as being neurodiverse on the spectrum or just have some behavioral challenges, some delays in emotional and social development and parents who listen to this often have to advocate within school systems for their kids. Do you have any tips or advice for how to show up for your kids? A lot of them are afraid of being the squeaky wheel in the system.
Sonia: Yeah, unfortunately it does require a lot of showing up and and being on top of things, I always say introduce yourself at the beginning of every school year, as you know, being very upfront and transparent about this is my child, I am here at any time, make sure that you keep me in the loop of what's going on with my child because it's important. I would send, you know, I don't have children that are on the spectrum.
I have a couple who have been diagnosed with A. D. H. D. and things of that nature. And so but my kid that was A. D. H. D. was also tested gifted and talented. So there was this huge, like how do we serve this kid who may have these behavioral issues and challenges focusing, but it's so like brilliant and artistic, how do we serve a kid like that? And a lot of times teachers are not prepared for the nuances of what that looks like in the classroom. And so like my fifth grader right now he slightly has a little bit of A. D. D.
He's not quite on the spectrum of A. D. H. D. but just a little bit of A. D. D. where he has challenges staying on task, but I would say, you know, as a parent, your voice and your place as a stakeholder is super important to your child's experience in the classroom. And so from the beginning, laying out the importance of who you are in your child's life is supercritical. And so from that first day, like sending an email or a letter or a phone call saying these are the things that are my expectations, like list them out.
If there are things that you've experienced in the past, you know, be honest about, I don't want to see this happening with my child because we have this experience and this was what the outcome was, but be very transparent about those things, you know, also be very transparent about your capacity to show up in spaces like IEPs and 504 is right because in those spaces, these are the opportunities to shape the next year's educational plan for your child.
And be honest, if you don't know something and ask for help, like really and truly it is the education system job to provide resources. Unless we say, Hey, this is a problem, or this is a thing that I don't necessarily understand. Lots of kids fall through the cracks and they don't receive the resources that they deserve.
And I think that all kids deserve the opportunity to excel and there's a way to push him without being forceful and being that thorn in the side, but I am also not against being a thorn in the side, you know. Unfortunately we live in a time where folks are stereotyped by the way that they show up in spaces.
So I am a darker skinned black woman and you know, we have stereotypes, you know, that when you show up in spaces, you know, people might perceive me to be one way and it is those opportunities where I'm able to use my privilege, my proximities to whiteness, or my proximities to power to advocate on behalf of maybe a parent who is black or latinx, or you know, indigenous, and they don't have the words to articulate what their child might need.
Laura: Yeah, I think that's so important to that, especially for those of us who are in privileged positions or positions of powers to understand that when we are advocating, you know, and making changes for our children, you know, advocating for for example, reducing policies of removing recess privileges, you know, getting rid of that policy that when we advocate for a policy wide change versus just for my child, then we're supporting all of the kids in the classroom. There's no child benefits from having recess taken away, you know? Yeah, yeah. Thinking about those things, that's really important.
Sonia, I really appreciate you bringing this perspective to our podcast and helping us think through some of these changes that are happening. And I think it's really important to remember that like as we, you know, we started out talking about how we can help children learn to advocate for themselves, and now we're talking about how we can advocate for children, and they go hand in hand, right? They we have to practice what we preach and model the advocacy that we want to see them stepping into and not squash them as they start advocating for themselves.
Sonia: Absolutely. You know, one of the tenets of my teaching is that I want to give you the tools to make sure that you can lift your voice yourself. And so teaching kids, young people to really just look at a situation, develop, you know, an idea with their peers themselves around what possible solutions are is so much more powerful than someone coming in and say, okay, you've got this problem, here's what you need to do.
Like as an advocate, one of the things that I am very steadfast on making sure that when I'm organizing and I'm doing, for example, social justice work, right? That it's not a matter of me being an experienced social justice advocate to show up in spaces to shake up the norm, that we've been all accustomed to, right?
It's a matter of seeing who is most disenfranchised by the system and allowing, not, not necessarily even allowing, but having the privilege to center those people who are most disenfranchised because when they see the thing that they are most disenfranchised by and how it impacts their life when they see their voice and hear what that experience does for everyone else, oh my God, it's powerful right? It's powerful to see that revelation as it takes hold of their body and it just gives them courage in a different kind of way to make it out of a situation that maybe at one time or another they felt like there was no way out of.
Laura: Oh yeah, I think that's so beautiful. It's so and thank you for sharing that that decentering of your own experience and looking around to whose experience needs to be actually centered. Yeah and I mean then that applies to parenting too, because the little ones are you know within the power structure of a family, the little ones are the most disenfranchised. You know they are.
Sonia: Absolutely and not only are they the most disenfranchised, they're watching and absorbing those things and then they become adults and they take on either the role of, you know, what they witnessed or they become the victim of what they experienced, right? So the cycle continues. And so it's a huge thing in all families where you begin to say, okay what am I leaving that child with?
What am I leaving with them with? And then you look up 20 years later as they're an adult and you say oh I left them with that. Oh I'm so sorry I can remember my mom and I having this cantankerous relationship, especially in my teen years I considered myself a black sheep and I love my mom to death. She is like the most beautiful soul and has been my biggest cheerleader and fan, but at the same time she was for a lack of better words--she wanted to make sure that I was stronger than her.
And so she didn't necessarily know how to go about doing that. And so it was you do this, you do what I say, but not what I do. It was one of those kind of scenarios. And so often times I would look and I would say, but that didn't work for you. And so why are we doing this again? And my outspokenness, she would tell you that I knew that I had trouble on my hands when you know, seven year old Sonia showed up with a note from school saying that she refuses to say the pledge of allegiance.
And so she had to put on her learn her advocacy had on behalf of her child at a very early time in her parenting. And so you know, I can remember being 18 and writing her this long letter. I think it was like about 15 pages and I was like, this is what I liked about my childhood and this is what I hated and I hated this and I hated this. And I hated this.
And I need when my children to grow up and be your grandchildren for those not to be the experiences that you leave them behind with. And she recognized like, yeah, I did that, I left you behind. So that goes back into what I said at the beginning, like imagine when young people don't have to, you know, seek therapy when they're adults because of the things that the adults in their life left them with.
But that was therapy for us. You know, I was quickly able to forgive her and and we've had a very beautiful adult relationship. She's like one of my biggest cheerleader. She's one of my employees with my business. I couldn't do what I do on a regular basis without her. So, but get to those points where we can have those kind of relationships and boundaries with our parents.
Laura: It was a beautiful modeling for all of our listeners who are many are looking to do that exact same thing with their parents and perhaps you know to your mom who was able to take that on. That's not an easy thing.
I know you're a grandma now and so your phase two where you're starting to look at, you know, you've got older kids and you're starting to take a look at those new boundaries, navigating those new waters. That's not an easy thing to do. So, wow, congrats to your mom for being able to handle that well.
Sonia: Yeah, I appreciate her. I mean she has taught me. I used to as a kid, I would be like, I am not going to be the parent that you were and then when I became a parent, I was like dang it, I'm doing some things that my mom was doing.
Alright. I said I wasn't gonna do that. And as a grandparent it really gives me a complete different, you know, lens and scope to look from and my three granddaughters, they will say, you know, Nana is the strongest woman I know because Nana is doing, you know, this and Nana makes sure that we are all taken care of.
And so when my oldest grandchild, when she comes to see me and she's an adult now she's 20 and she says, Nana, I miss you so much. I'm like, all I am is a phone call away and you just don't use your phone, you know so?
Laura: What a beautiful life and experience you've had, thank you for sharing it with us. I really appreciate your time and expertise.
Sonia: Absolutely. It has definitely been a pleasure.
Okay, so thanks for listening today. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and if it was helpful, leave me a review that really helps others find the podcast and join us in this really important work of creating a parenthood that we don't have to escape from and creating a childhood for our kids that they don't have to recover from.
And if you're listening, grab a screenshot and tag me on instagram so that I can give you a shout out and definitely go follow me on instagram. I'm @laurafroyenphd. That's where you can get behind the scenes. Look at what balanced, conscious parenting looks like in action with my family and plus I share a lot of other, really great resources there too.
All right. That's it for me today. I hope that you keep taking really good care of your kids and your family and each other and most importantly of yourself. And just to remember, balance is a verb and you're already doing it. You've got this