Social Emotional Learning Topic: Standing Up
/STANDING UP: 5 Key Lesson Takeaways
Standing up means to defend something that is being attacked because you believe in it.
Standing up for what you believe in is an essential life skill. Parents can help their children reflect on the things that they agree and disagree with and why.
All students have a voice, and this gives them a sense of agency.
When standing up, we must also acknowledge differences.
Parents can foster a safe space for children to feel comfortable vocalizing their opinions.
Children’s Book Recommendations:
This book tells the story of Ruby Bridges, an African American girl who is sent to an all-white school in Louisiana. For many months, she bravely walks into her classroom despite passing through a crowd of angry parents.This book captures Ruby’s courage and perseverance.
This book tells the story of Sally McCabe, a girl who decides it is time to stand up for what she believes in after witnessing several bullying incidents at her school. At first, few listen to Sally, but her bravery encourages other students to speak out against these injustices.
“Danny is a real-life superhero in training, learning about his most important superpower of all: ‘the power to choose.’ In this boo, you decide how Danny’s school day will end by making choices for him.”
In this book, Lotty Raccoon is bullied by Grant Grizzly when no adult is around. Despite following the advice given to her by her parents, Grant Grizzly, does not stop bothering her. As a result, Lotty Raccoon decides to form the Bully Blockers Club, which intends to encourage other children who are also being bullied by Grant Grizzly to speak up.
The story of one girl who inspires a community to stand up to bullying. Inspired by real events, this book explores the feelings of helplessness and anger that arise in the wake of seeing a classmate treated badly, and shows how a single act of kindness can lead to an entire community joining in to help.
Transcript for Podcast Lesson on Standing Up with Tony DelaRosa
Jenny Woo [00:00:51] I'm sitting next to Tony DelaRosa. Hello, hello. And today we will be talking about the topic of standing up. Tony is California by chance and Cambridge by choice. He is a proud Filipino-American educator, writer, entrepreneur, spoken word poet, and budding sriracha chef. He is a co-founder of Indy Pulse, a citywide youth spoken word organization in Indianapolis, and founder and executive director of Boston Pulse Poetry, which is located in Greater Boston, Massachusetts. His work has been featured well, in so many places. But just to name a few, most recently, in the Harvard Ed. magazine, the Asian American Policy Review, CNN, and NPR. Welcome, Tony. Hello. I'm glad to be here. So tell us, what did standing up mean to you?
Tony DelaRosa [00:01:57] Standing up means one, to speak your truth in moments where you can be challenged by it when you feel like the truth is being compromised. Those are moments where I feel like standing up is very important and vital. When I work with youth, I always tell them that one of my core values, every time I teach, every year I teach, is speaking your truth, and standing up because we need more people to do that. It’s difficult, extremely difficult, especially in a time and an era such as this era, in this reductionist era.
Jenny Woo [00:02:31] How do you encourage children to speak the truth and even a step back to recognize what is the truth?
Tony DelaRosa [00:02:43] Yeah, so as an educator for the last six years, informally, and formally, I try to expose different perspectives on one fact and one event. That way they didn't comprise their own truths because there are many different truths depending on the angle and that's the difficult part because when I work with youth that kids will say, well, my parents said blank and blank and blank. So that's true. And then my pastor or my or the priest said, blank, blank, and blank. So they're combining all these truths and I'm telling them a different truth. And then the principal saw it and then their friends were telling them different truths. So they're balancing, juggling all of these truths in their daily lives any given day. And how can they decide which truth they decide? They decide based on how things play out in their lives, how things affect them. So that's one thing I noticed, that truth is very complex.
Jenny Woo [00:03:44] How do you help them to reconcile the complexities of truth, especially when it's sort of juxtaposing or contradictory to each other?
Tony DelaRosa [00:03:56] So with truth, what I try to do is I try to provide my own angle on it as well. Teachers, educators are told not to be biased or give their own opinion in the classroom. That is a train of thought. That's a notion in education. But I am against that. I think that there's a false truth of not being political in the classroom, right. I’m in the train of thought that politics is everywhere, between the things you eat, especially as a Filipino-American. Like when I grew up, I understood politics right away when I brought in Filipino food
Tony DelaRosa [00:04:39] and the kids did not hang out with me because of the vinegar smell or the funky smells that they thought were funky, but I thought they were beautiful and delicious. So politics are everywhere from the minuscule to the macro-level as well. So I just try to give them my own version. I can't control their truths, but I can give them my own perspective on my own truth and just modeling my own truth and getting to that point. And, you know, the truth can show a little bit of suffering. So I showed my own suffering. I tell them like, well, in this situation, the truth behind this situation with my Filipino experience when I was younger, that it sucked. When I was eating, the kids did not approach me. I lost friends for doing that. And that's a certain type of truth as well that they need to hear. I'm a different person now. I feel like more people think of me as a happy-go-lucky person, a person that people go to all the time. But I wasn't that person when I was younger because I had to unpack truths. I had to sit with them and understand them and be able to just confront them myself and say, like, you know what, that is a part of me, whether I like it or not.
Jenny Woo [00:05:51] Yeah, that's such a great point. I think as parents, it reminds me that we tend to overemphasize this type of conformation, conforming to the truth with our children, the social norms, right. If our children ask us certain questions that it's actually a really good teachable moment of why is this the truth, why is this the norm? But yet we just sweep it aside and say this is the way it is. So I really love that you're really sharing this journey of transformation of thought process. And I think we could do that more as parents. I am also curious, for example, for the children who haven't quite been given the opportunity to stand up for themselves and to have that voice, how do they show up behaviorally in the classrooms that you've taught?
TonyDelaRosa [00:06:45] This is specifically when I think about not having a voice or having a voice, right. Students all have a voice in some form. So I just want to be clear in terms of adults not giving them a voice. We don't give them a voice, but we give them platforms for that, right. So then the spaces write for this voice to flourish. And that's what I try to do. As a spoken word educator, I try to bring in as many in any space that I am running for spoken word. I try to create a space where even the most silenced can say a little bit, like one word. They can speak up so they can feel comfortable and feel safe, as safe as it can be. Because, you know, I can't promise safety in any space. But I can encourage their courage. I can encourage us to be as safe as possible based on norms that we set, community agreements that we set together, and trying to make it as inclusive as possible.
Jenny Woo [00:07:44] What can parents do at home to foster this brave space?
Tony DelaRosa [00:07:49] I would say one, is letting the students create and co-create community agreements within the family, right. So I grew up in an Asian-American family and I'm stereotyping here, I’m generalizing, but there's a notion that Asian-American families are very strict and I lived in that strict environment. It doesn't go to say that your parents would not have listened to you if you would have spoken up, right? If I would've spoken up, I wish I would've spoken up, and had that space to say, hey, you know what? What you're saying, what we're saying, I don't agree with. Just having that conversation and having that space, that norm that you set with your child, I think that's important. And then, as Jenny was saying earlier, being able to reflect on why you don't agree on things. I think that's a simple system that you can create in the household and in a classroom, anywhere you go just to unpack what they're thinking because there's so much that is living in the body, in the mind, the soul that we don't see all the time, right? Like the iceberg. You see that iceberg on the surface, but underneath, there are so many bugaboos living there, whether they're positive or negative, we want to hear them both, right? So just being able to get that space and say, hey, let's check-in real quick. Do you agree with what I just told you about anything? Yes or no? Why? Right.
Jenny Woo [00:09:20] Yeah, and it also reminds me of the theme of identity, building your identity, finding out the identities around you, and then how you connect with others. Tell me more about how that ties into having a voice, the courage of that, and courage of standing up.
Tony DelaRosa [00:09:40] Yes! So I feel like being able to stand up is like one of the destinations right? That it's tough because I know there's so many different rocks and barriers and loops to jump over before you even get to a point where you can feel like you're comfortable and standing up or just be where you can do that. And I think that one helps when you look and examine your own identity and are a master of your own identity to a certain extent, right? With the program that I run, Boston Pulse, which is the youth organization that I run here in Boston, my first part of the curriculum is all based on identity. What is your identity? Where I'm from, place, name, the roots of your heritage, right. And being able to dissect your identity, understand the truths in your identity helps you. One, navigate the world in a better space that helps you process things that are happening that are difficult, right. When events come up, for example, if you're having a fight with your parents, for example, you know what is your truth, how you can deal with it, right, as a student now. And it's not just using poetry, right? You're able to articulate. The kids are able to articulate what they need. And a problem is that youth sometimes don't even know how to articulate what they want or need because they don't have opportunities to do so. So, yeah, I think that's one way to help out. To really just ask. Like, start with identity, start fostering, start learning about your history, right. There's a phrase that I love and that I learned here from one of my Harvard teachers/mentors. No history, no self, no history, no self. When you know your history, you really know yourself, right? If you don't know your history, you don't know yourself. And that's really important. That's a phrase I will stick with me forever.
Jenny Woo [00:11:40] You basically ran the Indy Pulse, co-founded that, and now at Boston Pulse.
What is your vision for the next steps and accomplishments that you've had?
Tony DelaRosa [00:11:51] Yeah. Yeah. So right now from Indy Pulse and Boston Pulse, what we have been doing is like citywide slams for middle school mostly because that is a gap in the cities. There's a lot of programming for high school students so I feel like they're there on that cusp to graduate. There are actual programs for high schools to get scholarships, one being the First Wave in Madison, Wisconsin, a one of a kind program. But we focus primarily on middle schools here in Boston. And we have been doing a number of things, getting students on stages, right. That's one thing because one part of our program is public speaking. Spoken word poetry, if you dissect it, too, if you dissect the words, spoken and then the word and it would teach poetry and analyze poetry, to write poetry, to perform it. And part of the performance is public speaking. So that helps with the standing up aspect and speaking the truth. So first, the process goes as we expose students to spoken word poets, either live performances here in Boston because there are amazing poets in Boston and in the region and we want students to know that so they have mentors and there are a number of resources online which we'll get to.
Tony DelaRosa [00:13:09] But yeah, we expose them to the poetry. Then I model my own poetry, and of course, I have to model my own poetry because they don't get to hear from a Filipino-American poet and their story very often, right? I teach mostly black and brown students from the Caribbean. So when they hear a Filipino poet, it's interesting. They can see the intersection between me and theirs, but also feel like, oh, wow, this is different, and I like learning about this difference. So that's a good way to also teach it to honor the differences that we have in every shared space.
Jenny Woo [00:13:43] I love the aspects of vulnerability and relatability through Boston Pulse and Indy Pulse. I was just thinking, as you're talking, I really wish I had this. I think this is the new speech and debate. That's what I'm saying. Right! I mean, I did speech and debate and I can tell you, I think I did cross-examination.
Jenny Woo [00:14:06] I was literally reciting reading over pages and pages of evidence, not knowing exactly what they mean. And more importantly, how does that impact me? So, I love it. What's the website?
Tony DelaRosa [00:14:21] So right now we are founded on our umbrella organization Indy Pulse. So if you go to Indy Pulse dot org, you'll see a tab that says Boston Pulse there. And we're going to be creating our own web site very soon. In the future, you'll see it as Boston Pulse poetry dot org. But for now, you can go to Indy Pulse dot org so you can see where we started off and where we're going.
Jenny Woo [00:14:43] Love it! Are there additional programs and resources you’d like to provide to us?
Tony DelaRosa [00:14:50] Yeah, yeah, there's plenty. So I want to honor, I don't want to leave this podcast without honoring the people who helped us build our own community here in Boston. So one, first being MassLEAP Massachusetts. I'm going to bludgeon this one, Massachusetts Literacy Education, Arts Performance Collective. Yes, they have been like the older sister of our organization here and they work with mostly high school and they run the Louder than a Bomb spoken word poetry festival. There's anywhere you can go. There's also Get Lit poetry, which is in L.A., tons of resources online and featured on the Oprah show, right. There's also SlamFind, which is on YouTube. SlamFind is a video of where they have spoken word videos. And there are newer forms, right? And we want youth to see that they're more culturally relevant, I believe, at least in my experience, watching SlamFind, I see more poets that are coming from my background. For example, in terms of cultural relevance, like low income, first-gen, black and brown POC backgrounds, right. SlamFind is a good place for that. Be More in Baltimore. There are Young Chicago Authors and they're also like the founders of Louder than a Bomb. Shout out to Kevin Coval out there. And yeah, if you just type in spoken word, you'll find a number of resources. We’re a new topic, a new study that's happening. And I know we’re the first wave in Madison, Wisconsin. But as an educator, I want to start more programs like that because I know that youth need a space for that and they can really flourish and make even a career out of this, telling the truth and standing up, right. And it will help their society.
Jenny Woo [00:16:41] Yeah. What a great career. Thank you so much, Tony, for being here. And thank you for tuning in to 52 Essential Conversations.