Noble Schools is jumping into the podcasting game to tell the story of our anti-racism work in education through authentic interviews with staff, students, alumni, and families.
We’re introducing “Changing the Course: Building An Antiracist Education”, a monthly video podcast series hosted by Nicholas Jones, our Manager of Student Culture & Support here at Noble. Every month, Jones will be talking with a guest, each coming from different places and roles in our school network, to shed light on our journey of anti-racism from different perspectives.
“I’m excited for our audience to hear authentic dialogue about our journey to create an antiracist educational experience for Chicago students and families.”
– Nicholas Jones, Manager of Student Culture & Support, Noble Schools
WHY WE ARE TELLING THE STORY ABOUT OUR ANTI-RACISM WORK
In the last two years, we have seen a major outcry in our nation for racial equity and justice after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and many more. Organizations across the country are now navigating what it means to be antiracist and create racial equity in their spaces. Educational institutions are no exception.
In June of 2020, as the country grieved these deaths, our CEO Constance Jones challenged Noble to accelerate our work to create antiracist schools.
While Noble had embarked on a study of the student experience at our schools in 2018-2019 and had begun to address the inequities we found in that study — especially as it related to Black male students — Jones’ call to accelerate our work led to several more actions. We started with creating and implementing a comprehensive strategy to get feedback from all the stakeholders in our community. Then, we developed a road map for long-term organizational change – our Anti-Racism Commitment.
>> Learn more about how we went about this feedback process here.
Noble held several meetings composed of staff, parents, and students to go through our policies and practices to identify what exactly was creating these inequitable experiences. From those meetings, we changed how our schools operate to create a more antiracist experience for our community. We reimagined what our old student code of conduct could be and ultimately replaced it with the Noble Community Pact.
Now, we’re telling our story about how we’re navigating these changes with “Changing the Course: Building An Antiracist Education”. Our hope with this video podcast is that teachers, school staff, and everyone with an investment in education in our country can learn from our successes, our failures, our reflections; and the expertise, knowledge, and life experience of the people in our community.
“I’m excited for our audience to hear authentic dialogue about our journey to create an antiracist educational experience for Chicago students and families,” Jones says.
ABOUT THE FIRST EPISODE
In this premiere episode, we talk to Dr. Janine Franklin, our Senior Director of Student Culture & Support.
Dr. Franklin talks about how we made the Noble Community Pact and what policies and practices we changed. She also talks about her role in managing student behavior at our schools and how Noble has shifted discipline policies to provide a more equitable and antiracist experience for our students. She highlights many different strategies educators are using to do this work, such as restorative practices, social-emotional learning, and tracking behavioral data.
The first episode (and future episodes) also features music made by a Noble student. The music was created by Angel Mancilla, a junior at Muchin College Prep, and it was mixed and edited by his music teacher, David Redick.
ABOUT THIS EPISODE’S GUEST
Dr. Janine Franklin, affectionately called Dr. J, is a passionate education leader committed to equity in education for Black and Brown youth in the city of Chicago. Currently, Dr. J is the Senior Director of Student Culture and Support for Noble Schools and has served in various professional and civic capacities within education for almost a decade.
Prior to joining Noble, she served at the University of Chicago as a Director on the diversity and inclusion team in the Office of the Provost, supporting DEI initiatives for the campus in addition to managing campus pipeline programs. Her research foci are grounded in social and cultural studies of education as well as sociology of education with a focus on the school to prison nexus, discipline disparities, and Black students.
Dr. Franklin is a proud Badger and alumna of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She also holds a Masters of Social Work from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a Doctor of Philosophy from the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has the distinct honor of being named a 2018 Surge Institute Fellow and a 2018 Chicago Scholars Foundation 35 under 35 honoree.
WATCH PARTS 1-4 OF EPISODE ONE RIGHT NOW:
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