Jon: So the question becomes, how do we make an impact? How do we try to make things better?

Adia: I think that as a teacher, you like owe it to your students to know that you’re going to be there for them, if it means like having these conversations and making sure that marginalized students are like central to these conversations. Like you get the decision to like step away from this like reality, and I can’t, because of like what I look like. And I feel Courageous Conversations are the first thing to start that, you know? I don’t like to be in classrooms where the question is, “Okay, do black lives like really matter?” because you know, that should be a given. You know, I should talk about like what are we going to do to get those black lives to matter to different kinds of people?

Jon: I’m a straight white dude. Like I have a very specific and certain position like in a lot of places. And I think that being able to honestly look at yourself and being like, “I’m white. I probably do racist things sometimes. I should try to be aware of that.” I think that that can be sort of scary to do, especially when there’s such like a stigma around those words.

Adia: Mr. Galanis, who is like he’s the man who happens to be white, whereas, though, he has this privilege, he’s working– he’s actually working on unlearning those sort of ideas. And like he’s trying to change other people’s lives by examining his very thoroughly. And so I feel like those are just like things that he demonstrates in his classroom.

Jon: Yesterday’s conversation kind of made me think like, “Maybe I need to like be a little bit more kind of small scale, microcosm, and think about my own life.” So that’s something that I hope to get better at.

Jon: All of the students see themselves and see me in certain lights, you know? They see where we are in the hierarchy of America, and they might not always want to connect with me, so any time that I can sort of bring my own humanity into it, I feel like is important for modeling for them.

Jon: Out of curiosity, just by a show of hands, how many people had a conversation with somebody in their family about anything we’ve done in the last two weeks? How many people have people in their family they would be kind of uncomfortable having a conversation with about some of the stuff that we’ve talked about the last two weeks? All right. That’s cool.

Jon: When you take that a step further, and you’re letting yourself be vulnerable, and you’re letting yourself have conversations that are hard, or conversations that people don’t typically have, I feel like that changes things. And we had students say that after one of these conversations saying like, “I never talk about this type of stuff with people outside of my culture, or outside of my race.” And I think that when we can cross those divides, that brings a real shift to the kids, a real shift in consciousness.

Jon: Overall, we’re hoping that we can have the courage to take the responsibility to live this, you know, to take the information that we learn in school, and try to apply that into our own lives. So what can I do with my life to try and make the world more equitable?

Adia: People who have marginalized identities, the least that we can do is value them, and I feel like Courageous Conversations should just like not only just be like talking about an issue, but talking about it in like a practical and a productive way.