290: A Liberated Education with Dr. Crystal Menzies
Description
“Out of the mouths of babes.” A familiar saying that’s used by adults to express surprise when a child articulates something wise and sensible. Kids have a remarkable intuition that sometimes gets dulled as they age by society and grownups who encourage them to push it down.
“Always be nice and polite.”
“Don’t say that or talk back.”
“Listen to your history teacher/gymnastics coach/Boy Scout leader.”
“It’s rude to ask so many questions.”
Yet more and more child experts indicate that difficult topics should never be off-limits. Of course, there’s a need to adjust the delivery to make a subject age-appropriate. Sample questions for a little one could look like asking: “What does this mural mean to you? How does this image make you feel?”
Welcome to our Untold Stories Bean Pod. This week, it’s my pleasure to welcome Dr. Crystal Menzies to discuss how we can use education to foster a greater sense of togetherness. A former teacher in urban schools, Crystal drew on her personal experience, and her Guyanese and African American roots to create EmancipatED.
There, Crystal’s mission is to cultivate communities of radical dreamers, thinkers, and doers through educational resources, collaborative learning experiences, and storytelling.
An enthusiastic historian, Crystal recounts events of free rebel Black communities throughout her work. And today, it’s my honor to have Crystal join us to share a few gripping stories with a side of expert advice on how we can pave a better path forward.
What You’ll Learn in this Episode:
- Fictive Kinship
- Maroon Communities
- Expanding how you see yourself, your community, your power
- When children & parents are on an equivalent learning plane
- Black Liberatory Pedagogy
Listen to the Full Episode
Featured on the Show:
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- Sundae’s Website
- Sundae’s Facebook Business Page – Sundae Schneider-Bean LLC
- Sundae Bean – YouTube
- Wisdom Fusion Project
- Emancipated – WebsitedIn
- emancipate_ed – Instagram
- Dr. Crystal Menzies – LinkedIn
We’re delighted to be in the Top 5 of the global Best 30 Expat Podcasts!
Full Episode Transcript:
Hello, It is 11:00 pm in New York, 5:00 pm in Johannesburg, and 10:00 pm in Bangkok. Welcome to IN TRANSIT with Sundae Bean. I am an intercultural strategist, transformation facilitator, and solution-oriented coach, and I am on a mission to help you adapt & succeed through ANY life transition.
I’ve been saying this for about a year now, that we need old solutions to new problems. Yes, you heard that right, our existing strategies are not working and we need to do things differently and often times the answer is not in inventing something new but returning to something old, something tested, something that is deeply embedded in cultural wisdom.
And our guest today is doing such innovative work where she takes on a massive topic: How to navigate as liberated beings within oppressive systems. Our guest today is Dr. Crystal Menzies. And she is a former educator in urban schools, who drew on her personal experience, African diaspora and history, and her Guyanese and African-American roots to fund an organization called; emancipatED. Today, she develops research-based educational experiences that center Black communities. I’ve seen her flagship product, it is amazing, and she draws on the stories of Maroon communities. Maybe you’ve never heard of them, Africans who freed themselves from slavery and created hidden societies to offer Black and Brown families a model for how to navigate as liberated beings within oppressive systems.
What I’ve learned about Dr. Menzies is she is an educator and academic at heart but also has a spirit of openness and playfulness. She lives in the Bay Area in California, enjoys reading, Marvel movies, and daydreaming of Black futures. It is my heartfelt pleasure to welcome you to IN TRANSIT Dr. Menzies.
Crystal: Thank you. I’m honored to be here and excited for this conversation.
Sundae: Yeah. Me too. Thank you. So let’s dive right In. You have this background in education, you were doing it for years and urban schools, and I’m guessing that you loved it. But something happened when you decide to make a big move of your own, and your life and your work also went in transit. From what I’ve learned about your background, you branched out and went to find solutions to systemic racism elsewhere. Can you tell us a little bit more about that journey? And what inspired you to make the move?
Crystal: Yeah, so, when I was a teacher, I was what was considered a, “culturally responsive teacher,” but I didn’t know the term. I just knew I cared about my kids, and I had high expectations for them and two things happened.
- I remember teaching about enslavement in like the Black stories that we often learn centered in the United States. And one of my students said, “Why do we talk about Black folks all the time?” And this was a Black student and I’m like, “What do you mean?” But after doing some digging, I realized he was tired of hearing about the traumatic narratives. He knew nothing else about Black history. And I realize
United States
