73: School and the Carceral Network w/ Dr. Connie Wun

What this episode covers

Our podcast today features Dr. Connie Wun, the founder and director of Transformative Research: An Institute for Social Transformation and AAPI Women Lead. Connie is an educator, activist, and researcher whose work centers on race and gender equity, community-centered research, women's empowerment, school discipline and punishment, and anti-Blackness in education.  Connie and I talk about school and its relation to the carceral network, or how school is intertwined in producing delinquency, inequity, and power structures in the United States. Our discussion talks not only about the issues facing US schools, but how we can utilize the "winds of change" of the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as the COVID crisis, to revolutionize the education system to best serve Students of Color and marginalized students. Briefly, to provide some context to the carceral network and schools - we're referring to not only the "school to prison pipeline", but the commonplace day-to-day discrimination that Students of Color face, including but not limited to a white-centric curriculum, dress codes, the tardy system, and racial stereotyping/discrimination (for example, sending a student out of class for "laughing too loud" or "chewing gum", which effectively hurts a students' education as well as simply their humanity.) Dr. Connie Wun provides an incredibly clear overview to the carceral state and continuum between schooling and carceral pedagogies. GUESTS Dr. Connie Wun, researcher, speaker, and educator, and founder/director of Transformative Research: An Institute for Social Transformation and co-founder/director of AAPI Women Lead. RESOURCES * #ImReady Solidarity Work (AAPI Women Lead) [https://www.imreadymovement.org/] * The Abusable Past: A Reading List on Policing, Rebellion, and the Criminalization of Blackness [https://www.radicalhistoryreview.org/abusablepast/reading-towards-abolition-a-reading-list-on-policing-rebellion-and-the-criminalization-of-blackness/?fbclid=IwAR2uIRH37EyEILfH4VsxTytcSsxOPOu29wQ9JU-StnsJkXthgF8_mAHg1qA] * Asian American Justice Toolkit [https://www.apalanet.org/uploads/8/3/2/0/83203568/asian_american_racial_justice_toolkit.pdf] * TransformHarm Resource Hub [https://transformharm.org/] * Truthout.org: We Are Witnessing an Uprising Against a World Built on Anti-Blackness by Dr. Connie Wun [https://truthout.org/articles/we-are-witnessing-an-uprising-against-a-world-built-on-anti-blackness/] * Teachers for Social Justice [http://www.teachersforjustice.org/] * Education for Liberation Network [https://www.edliberation.org/] * Teaching Tolerance Black Lives Matter Resources [https://www.tolerance.org/moment/racism-and-police-violence] * Movement for Black Lives [https://m4bl.org/] * Black Visions Collective [https://www.blackvisionsmn.org/] FURTHER LISTENING * Beyond the School to Prison Pipeline by Dr. Connie Wun [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcX3KXTCLQg] * The Tao of Self-Confidence: 712: You Are Gifted With Dr. Connie Wun [https://poddtoppen.se/podcast/1035011998/the-tao-of-self-confidence/712-you-are-gifted-with-dr-connie-wun]