COVER ART

The photos in this collage were taken by Erin's partner Elliott Wilkes during their protests and direct actions in London, with the permission of Parents for Palestine.

Support & connect with Parents for Palestine!

Instagram @parentsforpalestine

https://linktr.ee/parentsforpalestine

https://www.parentsforpalestine.org

INTELLECTUAL INHERITANCE

• Ghassan Kanafani, The Land of Sad Oranges (1962)

• adrienne maree brown, Pleasure Activism (2019)

• Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Abolition Geography: Essays Toward Liberation (2022)

• June Jordan, “Some of Us Did Not Die” (2001)

• The Combahee River Collective Statement (1977)

• ”50 Years of Combahee”, Black Women Radicals (2024) — A special thank you to Jaimee Smith, founder and executive director of Black Women Radicals, for allowing us to use an excerpt from her May 22, conversation with Combahee River Collective co-founders Barbara Smith and Demita Frazier. 

• bell hooks, Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope (2003)

• “Lineages of Deviant Caretaking”, Dancing on Desks (2024)

 MUSIC

• Our Dancing on Desks Theme Song is composed and arranged by Mara Johnson and Elliott Wilkes

• “Arabic Oud” prod. @aldisjaminii

• “Jamila” prod. @montymusic311

• "I’ll Be Free" prod. @Rhamzandays

• “Joyful & Upbeat Background Nasheed” vocal only prod. Quran Lofi

• "Calming Background Nasheed" vocal only prod. Quran Lofi

• “Soulful Nasheed” without music promoted by @ncnasheeds

• “Small Talk” prod. yogic beats

• “Relaxing & Calming Nasheed” vocals only provided by NoCopyrightNasheeds

• “Haven” prod. rémdolla

• “Stunt” prod. rémdolla

• “Burst” prod. rémdolla

• “Don't Save Me” prod. sadcg

• "Mystic Lady" prod. Fred Irie

This is the first of our two-part finale to our Season of Pleasure, a season throughout which we have sought to understand our relationship with pleasure while simultaneously witnessing and confronting genocide across our world. With poet and activist June Jordan’s words, “What shall we do, we who did not die?” in our minds and spirits, we hear from Zeina and Fatma, two mothers living in London who organize with Parents for Palestine, a group of parents who organize marches, actions, and teach-ins that include young children calling for the end of the genocide and occupation in Palestine. How do we talk about genocide with our youngest children? How do our personal rest and pleasure principles sustain collective liberation and education as the practice of freedom?  

Share your thoughts with us at us@dancingondesks.org, leave an audio message, or slide into our DMs on IG @dancingondesks.

Transcript Available Aug. 2

COVER ART

The cover art for this episode’s title card is a collage created by collagist Anna Almore. Anna is also a Dancing on Desks Hivemind member.

Support & connect with shea and their work!

Twitter: @sheathescholar

Instagram @sheathescholar

https://www.sheawesleymartin.com/

INTELLECTUAL INHERITANCE

• Elizabeth Alexander, The Black Interior: Essays

• Kevin Quashie, The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond Resistance in Black Culture

• Bettina Love, Punished for Dreaming

• Kimberly C. Ransom, “A Conceptual Falsetto: Re-Imagining Black Childhood via One Girl’s Exploration of Prince”, Journal of African American Studies (2017) 

• Zinn Education Project

• Teaching for Change

• Social Justice Books

• Woke Kindergarten

 MUSIC

• Our Dancing on Desks Theme Song is composed and arranged by Mara Johnson and Elliott Wilkes

• vibraphone, original music prod. Elliott Wilkes 

• Victoria Monét “On My Mama” (monét clipped wings Remix)

• “Mortal” prod. rémdolla

• "Jazzaddicts" prod. Cosimo Fogg

• Go-go instrumental prod Marci Jay

• Noire #1 prod. Pedro

• “Raio de Sol” prod. Wonderlust Beats

• "Reprise / Those Eyes" prod. yogic beats

• "Marry Me" prod. Fred Irie

• "Seus Olhos" prod. Fred Irie

• "Soul Searcher" prod. yogic beats

What pleasure becomes possible when we commune with nature, our bodies, and each other? Educator, activist and organizer, researcher, writer, scholar, Zumba dancer, a very reluctant high school sax player and first-chair, only chair vibraphonist shea wesley martin joins us in this episode where they think with us about all things community. shea contemplates how we story community, learn and write in community, and how we find pleasure in community. 

Also, they have another special educator workshop Yours, Truly coming up and would like to welcome you to the space! Find more details by following them on Twitter and on Instagram @sheathescholar. 

INTELLECTUAL INHERITANCE

• bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress

• Cathy Cohen, “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?” GLQ (1997)

• Cathy Cohen, “Deviance As Resistance: A New Research Agenda for the Study of Black Politics” Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race (2004)

• Hoodrat to Headwrap Podcast with Ericka Hart and Ebony Donnley: "Resting My Eyes (with a pistol in my apron): Tricia Hersey's Ministry is About More than Naps"

• Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic As Power”

• Kimberly C. Ransom, “A Conceptual Falsetto: Re-Imagining Black Childhood via One Girl’s Exploration of Prince”, Journal of African American Studies (2017) 

• Keffrelyn D. Brown

• Christina Sharpe, Ordinary Notes

MUSIC

• “Godspeed” prod Jovian 

• “Warm Brandy” prod kitxnx

• "5AM In Ibiza" prod ossy

• “Stagnant” prod rémdolla

• “Levitate” prod Bailey Daniel

• “Another Day” prod Jovian

• “Marigold” prod by Qué Soul

• “Island Girl” prod by JayRewind/@RMLUR

• “Wham” prod by Slappy Boy

We call this episode, lovingly, the auntie auntie auntie episode (or the niece niece nibling episode) shouted at the top of our lungs. We scream their names in the key of care, of reclaiming our bodies, lives, and pleasure(s) for ourselves (and our time). In this episode we talk with Anna Almore and Erica or ET, two friends and educators, about their moments of what Anna calls deviant caretaking, the act of choosing pleasure, accountability to one’s deepest self over what work as teachers, teacher-educators, and students demands of one’s self. Anna and Erica share about lessons learned one night at a strip club and releasing themselves from the disciplining of settler colonialism’s projects of school, capitalism, misogynoir, and respectability—led by a long inheritance of aunties who showed them how to do thee things. And as nieces and aunties themselves, they reflect on what they now teach another generation, finding that the lessons and blessings their nieces and relatives give them to be the most urgent ones of all. Share your thoughts with us at us@dancingondesks.org, leave an audio message, or slide into our DMs on IG @dancingondesks.

Transcript Finalized May 3

INTELLECTUAL INHERITANCE

• ⁠“Apologies to All the People in Lebanon,”⁠ June Jordan, The Poetry Foundation

• ⁠A Palestinian is killed while with a group waving a white flag. Israel says it will look into it⁠, Associated Press 

• ⁠Reading at the Kelly Writers House, University of Pennsylvania⁠, PennSound (April 23, 2001)

• ⁠History of the Question of Palestine⁠, United Nations

• ⁠Israel-Hamas War,⁠ Associated Press

• ⁠The Walt Disney Company Donates To Support Humanitarian Relief Following Terrorist Attacks In Israel⁠, Walt Disney Company 

• ⁠U.S. Aid to Israel in Four Charts,⁠ Council on Foreign Relations

• ⁠What’s BDS, the movement to boycott Israel with a new social media following?⁠, The Washington Post

MUSIC

• ⁠“Tone” prod. by rémdolla ⁠

• ⁠“Memorial” prod. by rémdolla⁠

• Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.

In a follow-up to our fourth episode, “⁠Gimme My High School Experience,⁠” we share about our process and the way we make decisions about what we include--and what we don’t--when we’re creating our podcast. We’re⁠ boycotting companies ⁠that are supporting the US-backed genocide in Palestine by Israel. We share ways that you can join us in calling for a free Palestine and we close with a poem by the indomitable Black feminist poet, writer, and scholar-activist June Jordan. 

Call U.S. Elected Officials

⁠⁠U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights⁠

Fund Palestine Survival 

⁠Islamic Relief USA⁠

⁠Doctors Without Borders⁠

To Learn More

Going Home: A Walk Through Fifty Years of Occupation, by Raja Shehadeh

Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine, by Noura Erakat

The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017, by Rashid Khalidi

Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement, by Angela Y. Davis

INTELLECTUAL INHERITANCE

• bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress

• Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

• Zaretta Hammond, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain

• Gloria Ladson-Billings, Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: Asking a Different Question

• Peter Liljedahl, Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics

• Saul Wiilliams at NuBlu NYC, @trishesmusic (TikTok)

• Meet the Robinsons, Walt Disney Pictures (2007)

• My School DC - Coolidge HS

• “Israel kills dozens of academics, destroys every university in the Gaza Strip,” via Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

• Myleik Teele’s Podcast, #174: Let It Be Easy: Reducing the Addiction to Struggle

MUSIC

• “Can’t Go Back” prod by rémdolla (Yebba x Sampha type beat)

• “Change the World” prod. Bailey Daniel (Outkast type beat)

• “Soul Cry” prod by  Kulture Kat

• “Loving You Mine” prod by Jonah Bru

• “Tone” prod by rémdolla

• “Sanctuary”  prod by rémdolla jazz slow

• “Opal” prod by rémdolla 

• ”110” prod by roku beats

• “Evenings in Cali” prod by loopy

• “Nineteen” prod by marvin

• “Tea” prod. by Metz Music

We continue our Season of Pleasure with this conversation with high school students Aleya, Kyree and their college instructors Beylul and Jill, who learn and teach at the Early College Academy Program with Coolidge High School and Trinity University in Washington, D.C. They share about the abundant pleasure that emerges when we learn in community, seek to see ourselves and each other in our teaching, and root ourselves in education as the practice of freedom. If pleasure can happen in the classroom, what does this look and sound like? We invite you to share your reflections. What can pleasure look and feel like in spaces of education? What is bringing you pleasure and rest this month? Send your thoughts to us at us@dancingondesks.org, leave an audio message, or slide into our DMs on IG @dancingondesks.

Participate in Black Lives Matter Week of Action this Feb. 5-8, 2024. Find out what’s happening in your area at: https://www.blacklivesmatteratschool.com/woa.html

Transcript Finalized March 1, 2024

INTELLECTUAL INHERITANCE

• Tricia Hersey, ⁠AMC 2022 Opening Ceremony⁠, Allied Media Projects 

• Rafael Santandreu, Sin miedo

MUSIC

• Dancing on Desks theme song composed and arranged by Mara Johnson and Elliott Wilkes 

• “Blessings-Koffee Remix" produced by Salis Lyrics 

• “Talk About It”, “Jungle”, “Hope You Do” produced by SOLI

• “Street Lights” produced by Yogic Beats

• “Happy” produced by OY Productions

Our third episode in our season of pleasure is a conversation between elementary educators and parents, Cesarina Santana Pierre and Tiffany Green. Cesarina and Tiffany share about the learning and unlearning they’ve engaged in as educators, parents, and people—moving from results-oriented classrooms to those that center rest and relationality. Their relationship with pleasure has been a journey of disrupting their relationship with productivity, a relationship that they inherited from their families but are wary of passing onto their own children and students. 

We invite you to share your reflections. How are you refusing productivity and collusion with capitalism and white supremacy? What is bringing you pleasure and rest this month? Send your thoughts to us at ⁠us@dancingondesks.org⁠, leave an audio message, or slide into our DMs on IG ⁠@dancingondesks⁠.

⁠Transcript⁠ (Finalized January 26, 2024)

BRITTNEY’S SUNDAY SWEETNESS

• Instagram: ⁠@brittneyelyseyoga

INTELLECTUAL INHERITANCE

• bell hooks, All About Love

• Toni Cade Bambara, The Salt Eaters

• Tricia Hersey, Rest is Resistance

• A Word on Words with John Seigenthaler, featuring bell hooks, who discusses her newest book All About Love, PBS, 1999

MUSIC

• Dancing on Desks theme song composed and arranged by Mara Johnson and Elliott Wilkes 

• ⁠“Cruise”⁠ and ⁠“Memories”⁠ Prod by Yogic Beats

• “⁠In Dreamland⁠” Prod by Chill Peach

• “⁠Biscuit⁠” Prod. by Lukrembo

• ⁠“Wine”⁠ Prod. by Lukrembo

• ⁠“Lighta”⁠ Prod. by rémdolla

• ⁠“Homme”⁠ Prod. by rémdolla

This episode takes its name from the first pages of Toni Cade Bambara’s novel The Salt Eaters, where healer Minnie Ransom tells activist Velma Henry, “wholeness is no trifling matter.” We join mama, yoga instructor, lover, and Kindergarten teacher Brittney Elyse to talk about what it means to find pleasure in what Bambara calls “the weight of wellness,” when she leaves and then returns as her full(er) self to teaching. Brittney shares her migration story from North Carolina to Massachusetts and back, reflecting on how she began to unlearn unpleasure, uncare, and working to capacity (which Audre Lorde tells us are not the ways of the erotic). 

We invite you to share your reflections. What is bringing you pleasure and rest this month? Send your thoughts to us at ⁠us@dancingondesks.org⁠, leave an audio message, or slide into our DMs on IG ⁠@dancingondesks⁠.

⁠Transcript⁠ (Finalized Monday, Dec. 4, 2023)

The clips from the protest at the end of this episode were recorded by Erin on October 28, 2023 in London, UK, when she and so many others protested for a ceasefire in Palestine in solidarity with freedom and protection for Palestinians. 

NICOLE YOUNG’S WRITING

• Nicole Young on Book Riot

• “Disaster capitalism, climate change, and the campaign to sell Black New Orleans”

• “Magical Realism is For Us By Us and Toni Morrison Was The Queen”

• Instagram: @ittybittyng

• Twitter: @ittybittyny

INTELLECTUAL INHERITANCE

• adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy

• bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress

• B. B. Alston, Amari and the Night Brothers 

• Conra D. Gist, Travis J. Bristol, Desiree Carver-Thomas, Maria E. Hyler, Linda Darling-Hammond, “Motivating Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers to stay in the field”

• Dean Spade, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis

• Desiree Carver-Thomas and Linda-Darling Hammond, “Why Black Women Teachers Leave and What Can be Done About It”

• Kari Smith and Marit Ulvik, “Leaving teaching: lack of resilience or sign of agency?”

• Kalynn Bayron, This Poison Heart 

• Paolo Freire, Education, The Practice of Freedom

• Rena Barron, Maya and the Rising Dark 

• Tim Walker, “Survey: Alarming Number of Educators May Soon Leave the Profession,” NEA Today

• Tomi Adeyemi, Children of Blood and Bone 

• Toni Morrison, “No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear”, The Nation, 2015

• Tracy Deonn, Legendborn

MUSIC

• Dancing on Desks theme song composed and arranged by Mara Johson and Elliott Wilkes 

• "Chocolate" Jaydot OR "Only You" Marabe

• “Falling”, YoungSick Beat

• “Get to Know Me”, Jackson Homer x Murabe jackhomer1212@icloud.com and blutopbeats@gmail.com 

• “Johny”, The44thFloorBeats

• “Nascarr Still Loves You”, Nascarr 

• “Solar” and “The Ride”, Yogic Beats

In our third season of Dancing on Desks, we are exploring pleasure. We are guided by two questions: How might our personal rest and pleasure practices sustain our collective liberation? And how are our rest and pleasure connected to education as the practice of freedom? In this first episode, Philadelphia-based writer and creator Nicole Young joins us to share her story of what became possible when she quit her job as the executive director of a school in New Orleans to write full-time and to create fantasy worlds for Black girls in middle grades novels. 

Transcript (Finalized Friday, October 27, 2023)

INTELLECTUAL INHERITANCE

Elizabeth Mudenyo’s website

Rebellious Hearts, Dwayne Staats

We Do This Til We Free Us, Mariame Kaba

We Will Not Cancel Us, adrienne maree brown 

Brick by Brick: How We Build a World Without Prisons, Cradle Community 

Learn More + Be in solidarity with DCIWOC

Instagram: @dciwoc

Facebook: DC IWOC

Email: dciwoc@gmail.com

Patreon: patreon.com/dciwoc

Venmo: @dciwoc

Ca$hApp: $dmviwoc

MUSIC

• “Hey You”, Qué Soul 

• Yogic Beats: “Body and Soul;” “Meditate;” “Mangos” 

• Dancing on Desks theme song composed and arranged by Mara Johson and Elliott Wilkes

For our final episode, we’re joined by prison abolitionists Comrade BIM, from the Vaughn 17, and Fariha and Bee, organizers with DCIWOC, DC Incarcerated Workers Organizing Coalition. BIM is a member of the Vaughn 17, a group of 17 activists charged in the 2017 prison uprising inside the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center. They share about abolitionist ethics of care, showing up as co-conspirators, rupture in community, and moving in accountability. Laquesha Sanders closes our series with her final segment on mental health and student debt, sharing how she freed herself from six-figure debt. Canadian-Ugandan poet and culture worker, Elizabeth Mudenyo, author of the poetry chapbook With Both Hands, shares her poem “Nothing Owed”. We offer you these questions: What are lessons prison abolitionists teach us in school abolition? How do we move beyond allyship and sit in co-conspiracy? What does it mean to center accountability as liberatory praxis? What do we own when we’re called in or out? 

Transcript (Finalized Friday, July 7, 2023)

INTELLECTUAL INHERITANCE 

• A is for Activist, Innosanto Nagara

• Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm's Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land, SoulFire Farm, Leah Penniman

• Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown

• From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea, Kai Cheng Thom

• “History Is A Weapon: They Can't Turn Back,” Mademoiselle (February 1, 1960), James Baldwin

• The Memory Librarian, Janelle Monáe

• Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work, Akilah S. Richards

• Saltwater Demands a Psalm, Kweku Abimbola

• Sulwe, Lupita Nyong'o

• The Wedding Portrait, Innosanto Nagara

MUSIC

• Yogic Beats: “IDK”; “Memories”; “Sentiment”;  “The Decision”; “Twin Flame”

• “Machala” Beatz Vampire

• Dancing on Desks Theme Song composed and arranged by Mara Johnson and Elliott Wilkes

Black queer parents Kristianna and Rose share lessons and blessings from the frontlines of caregiving, discussing parenting as freedom work, unlearning unfreedom, letting their children teach them about liberation, and finding space to seek pleasure. Kweku Abimbola “fabrics the music” in his debut poetry collection Saltwater Demands a Psalm and shares about the beauty of grief. Laquesha Sanders returns to reflect on her mental health journey in part two of our three-part series of her very personal story about student debt. And, as always we leave you with questions. This episode asks: How do we allow children to remain free? What do our children teach us about freedom? How do we as adults heal from the harm we have experienced as children? 

Transcript (Finalized Friday, June 2, 2023) 

Intellectual Inheritance

• Troublemakers, Carla Shalaby

• We Will Not Cancel Us and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice, adrienne maree brown

• Lessons in Liberation, Education for Liberation Network & Critical Resistance Editorial Collective

• Planning to Change the World: A Plan Book for Social Justice Educators, edited by Awo Okaikor Aryee-Price, Margaret Kavanagh, Carla Shalaby, and Ursula Wolfe-Rocca

• The Light of the World, Elizabeth Alexander

• Matilda, the Musical, directed by Matthew Warchus, Netflix

• “Uses for the Erotic” (n.d.), an earlier draft “Uses for the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” (1978), Audre Lorde, Audre Lorde Papers, Spelman College Archives 

Music

• “New Revolution”, ZXTO

• “Push It Along” prod. B. Young

• “Tea” prod. Metz Music

• “Easily” prod. yogic beats

• “Dust” prod. Mokart Beats

• "What You Need" prod. JVD

• crows caw free copyright sound, Copyright Free Music

Original Dancing on Desks theme music by Mara Johnson and Elliott Wilkes

Read our Retraction & Care Note regarding our removal of the Jenny Sazama reference in the original posting of this episode. 

In this episode, the second in our series on Undoing Settler Colonialism, we listen with love to  Carla Shalaby, author of Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School, a book we discuss often on the podcast. Her current role is one that works with pre-service and inservice teachers in school to ground their work in liberatory teaching and learning. Then, we welcome our high school birders Natasha, Nelly, and Niya to share a favorite bird. Laquesha Sanders has schooled us in the history of student debt this season and now shares her personal story about how she has navigated a mental health journey informed by the weight of school debt. We leave you with our questions: How do the grown folks in the building refuse the internalization of school discipline and compliance-driven relationships in order to instead co-create a community through loving engagement and accountability? What could school community look, feel, and sound like when people are in deep relationship with themselves and each other? We love y'all.

Transcription (Finalized Friday, Apr. 7, 2023)

Questions? Ideas? Responses? Wanna practice disability justice and help with transcription? Send your notes to us@dancingondesks.org or slide into our DMs on IG @dancingondesks.

Intellectual Inheritance

• An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

• Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Gloria Anzaldúa

• Rest is Resistance, Tricia Hersey

• "Indigenous knowledges and the Story of the Bean", Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy and Emma Maughan 

• Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks

• "Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power", Audre Lorde

• Progressive Dystopia: Abolition, Antiblackness, and Schooling in San Francisco, Savannah Shange

• “Praise Song for Oceania”, Craig Santos Perez

• Why super-strict classrooms are in vogue in Britain, The Economist 

Music

• “Hanalei Moon” and “Kaulana na pua”, Kiliona

• “Belong”  prod. Riddiman 

• “Escape” prod. Aki

• “Groove Theory” prod. ae beats

Original Dancing on Desks theme music by Mara Johnson and Elliott Wilkes

In this episode, a first in our series on Undoing Settler-Colonialism, we speak with Hi’ilani Shibata and Kiliona, educators at Ka Waihona o ka Na’auao in Nānākuli on the Leeward Coast of O’ahu, Hawai’i. They talk story about their practices of teaching with Indigenous pedagogies, teaching history through multiple perspectives, and learning through story in with relationship with the land and each other. Laquesha Sanders shares Part 3 of our student debt series, this time on HBCUs. Capital City PCS’s now graduated seniors Natasha, Nelly, and Niya talk with each other about their birding experiences. And, of course, we’re asking: How are you disrupting settler colonial practices in yourself, in your classroom, in your schools? We love y'all.

Transcription (Finalized Friday, Mar. 3, 2023)

Questions? Ideas? Responses? Wanna practice disability justice and help with transcription? Send your notes to us@dancingondesks.org or slide into our DMs on IG @dancingondesks.

Intellectual Inheritance

• Curriculum Kweens 

• "Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power", Audre Lorde

• “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House”, Audre Lorde

• Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activism, adrienne maree brown

• We Do This ‘Til We Free Us, Mariame Kaba

• Decade of Fire, Vivian Vásquez Irizarry and Gretchen Hildebran (documentary)

Music

• “Unnerved”; “Peace Is Hitting”; “Tears of My City” (feat. JonMicol) The Honorable Krys X

• “Easily” and “Time Flies” prod. yogic beats

• “Queen” prod. Timeless Era Beats

• “Sinner” prod. JustDan x Falak

• “Sweet Love” prod. Mejah Productions

Original Dancing on Desks theme music by Mara Johnson and Elliott Wilkes

Audre Lorde’s “The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” shapes our reflections on practicing refusal in community with our colleagues. We speak with Natalia Foreman and Pam Segura of the NYC-based Curriculum Kweens collective, who share stories of disobedience to systems of power and oppression, loving accountability, and the fullness felt when, in the words of “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” Audre Lorde, “we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling that sense of satisfaction and completion.” Tiffany Mason, a mother and elementary educator teaching in Brooklyn, shares her Saturday freedom dreams and the obstacles to getting there. We leave with the questions: How do we move beyond the mediocrity expected of us and become accountable to our erotic? What acts of disobedience do we engage in and commit to? We love y'all.

Transcription (Finalized Friday, Jan. 6, 2023)

Questions? Ideas? Responses? Wanna practice disability justice and help with transcription? Send your notes to us@dancingondesks.org or slide into our DMs on IG @dancingondesks.

Intellectual Inheritance 

• “A small bookstore was scammed. The local community stepped in to save it.” by Sydney Page, Washington Post

• Crier’s War (duology) by Nina Varela

Community

• Annotation Archives, @annotation.archives 

• 27th Letter Books

Music

• Turn Me Up prod. Jwayne Cross jwdent91@gmail.com 

• Vibe to the Rhythm prod. Grezzo IG: @truegregmusic 

• Temptations prod. DutchRevz

• In the End prod. Nabil Sioty nabilsioty@yahoo.com 

• groove theory prod. ae beats IG: @aebeats_/

• AfroDrill prod. Bigmousebeat

Original Dancing on Desks theme music by Mara Johnson and Elliott Wilkes

What can happen when we invite youth to imagine and create community and learning spaces in their own vision? This summer, Amara and Madison, our inaugural Beyond the Ban youth fellows created Annotation Archives, a Detroit-based pop-up book giveaway and community annotation project. They join monét and Erin to share about their reading lives, the ways they find affirmation in books, their dreams for liberated reading in schools, and their learnings from their summer of creating the Annotation Archives. Poet and Brooklyn high school student, Adedoyin, shares her poem, “This Side of Town,” reminding us that we have whatever we need. Then, LaQuesha Sanders is back with part two of our miniseries on student debt. We leave with the questions: What are we building? What possibility does youth imagination offer school abolition and liberatory teaching and learning? Come with us!

Transcription  (Finalized Friday, Dec. 2, 2023) 

If you’re interested in helping us with transcription, please send us an email at us@dancingondesks.org or call ‪(313) 314-1678‬. We’d love to steward this with you.

Intellectual Inheritance

• Hafiza Khalique speaks at Detroit Community Public Schools School Board Meeting, September 15, 2020 (3:34:00-3:38:00)

• adrienne maree brown writes about  liberated relationships in her book, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good 

• Our cover art features an excerpt from James Baldwin’s “A Talk To Teachers”

• Student Debt

  • Bankrate Student Loan History

  • Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

  • College Scholarships: Pell Grant

  • Congressional Research Service

  • Lumina Foundation: Grown of Federal Student Loans

  • Lumina Foundation: Pell Grants

  • National Consumer Law Center

  • New America Federal Student Loan History

  • Pell Grants

  • Student loans

  • Student Loan Hero

  • Trump tax cuts

Music

• “City Lights”, Jee Juh Beats

•  “Pink Cadillac”, “Say Grace”, “Suzie” prod. Yogic Beats yogicbeats@gmail.com 

• “Turn Me Up”, Jwayne Cross

Original Dancing on Desks theme music by Mara Johnson and Elliott Wilkes

After a summer of walking with our dogs, listening to the leadership of youth, and saying yes to ourselves, we're back with Season 2 of Dancing on Desks! The season begins with a conversation with Detroit youth organizers Hafiza Khalique, Brittyn Benjamin-Kelley, and adult organizer Julia Cueno. We also chat with Brooklyn elementary school teacher Emily Stutts and three of her former students—Kaide, Greyson, and Kyndle—about their bike to school day. We close with LaQuesha Sanders, a lawyer and historian, who shares the origin story of student debt, why student loans are trash, and why the U.S. government has more than enough money to cancel all of the debt student owes. Our storytellers offer us an opportunity to think about the questions: How do youth and adults co-build spaces of accountability, listening, dreaming, and freedom in and outside of school? What allows relationships between adults and youth in schools to exist in what activist, freedom dreamer, and writer adrienne maree brown calls liberated relationship? We love, y'all.

Transcript (finalized Oct. 10, 2022) 

If you’re interested in helping us with transcription, please send us an email at us@dancingondesks.org or call ‪(313) 314-1678‬. We’d love to steward this with you.

Intellectual Inheritance

• Teaching to Transgress and All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks

• Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire

• “On Knowing: Willingness, Fugitivity and Abolition in Precarious Times,” Dr. David Stovall, Journal of Language and Literacy Education, Spring 2020

• Where Do We Go From Here?  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

• Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown

• Piecing Me Together, Renée Watson 

• Wonder, R.J. Palacio

• Nnedi Okorafor (Read all of her books!)

Music

• “Blessed”, “Holy Water”,  “Los Angeles”, “Pink Cadillac”, “Say Grace”, “Suzie” prod. Yogic Beats yogicbeats@gmail.com 

• “DC GoGo Beat 2018, Pocket Beat” prod. Slick City Beatz  slickdc202@gmail.com  

Original Dancing on Desks theme music by Mara Johnson and Elliott Wilkes

As educators and young folks reflect and engage in end-of-school rituals, we’re closing Season One of Dancing on Desks with our Love Letter to Education. We hear from storytellers, poets, students, and educators who joined us this season to check back and hear about their summer dreams. We have collective dreams of reading books, taking naps, swimming in lakes, oceans, and pools, gardening, swimming, hugging our families and friends, and resting. Erin and monét share their love letter to education, discussing the ways in which abolition is an invitation to living by a love ethic (shout out to bell hooks) and centering practices of care and accountability and R-E-S-T. High school teacher Jessica Rucker shares her abecedarian, “A Love Letter to Education and Unlearning” as she leaves the classroom to pursue her dreams. Poet and graduating high school senior Zoe Bredesen protects her peace in her poem “If the Roles Were Reversed”. Finally, we offer our questions: If we love education, what does this love sound like, feel like, look like, smell like? How might we live there? We love y'all.

Send us your responses to dancingondesks@gmail.com or slide in our DMs on IG @dancingondesks. Let’s get free, y’all!

Intellectual Inheritance

• “Every Swamp is a Castle”: Navigating Native Spaces in the Connecticut River Valley, Winter 1675-1677 and 2005-2015, Lisa Brooks, Northeastern Naturalist, March 2017

• Historic Indian Trails of New Hampshire, Chester Price, The New Hampshire Archaeologist, 1967 

Music

• Free, IG: prod.mxrio

• Summer Walker x Bryson Tiller prod. Sejji Bonz

• Dust prod. Mokart Beats

• Riding Downtown prod. Alchemy Beats

• Tobacco prod. Beatowski

• Abenaki Greeting Song, Marge Bruchac and her husband Justin perform at Focus the Nation at Mount Holyoke College. Marge sings traditional and contemporary Abenaki greeting songs, friendship songs, dance tunes and original ballads, accompanied by drum and rattle, both solo and with her husband, Justin Kennick. As a storyteller, she brings the northeastern Native past to life with trickster tales, lesson stories, and historical anecdotes to intrigue, teach, and entertain listeners of all ages. She also performs with both the Dawnland Singers and W'Abenaki Dancers. Contact: maligeet@earthlink.net 

Original Dancing on Desks theme music by Mara Johnson and Elliott Wilkes

In this episode we talk with Alex Bailey, co-founder of San Antonio-based Black Outside, and Aven, a youth participant in Black Outside’s Bloom Project. They discuss how simply stepping outside and tasting the outdoors has been an exercise in courage, love, and intergenerational exchange. We also hear stories of learning with Abenaki elders Sherry Gould, Madeleine Wright, and Rob Wright of the Abenaki Trails Project in N’dakinna, what is now called New Hampshire. Poet Jennifer Huang leaves us with their poem “Departure,” which begins in the most exquisite way. Erin and monét reflect together about what the outside means to them as humans and educators, thinking about opportunities for coalition building, and drawing from their wells of memories in the Northeastern and Southern parts of the U.S. Finally, we offer you our lingering questions: How do we learn from the outside? How can educators take their cues from Black and Indigenous placemakers, elders, ancestors, and youth in undoing our consumptive relationship with the outside? We love y'all.

Send us your thoughts to dancingondesks@gmail.com  or slide in our DMs on IG @dancingondesks. Let’s get free, y’all!

Intellectual Inheritance

• “Seven Stages of Conocimiento,” Gloria E. Anzaldúa

• How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community, Mia Birdsong

• All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks

• Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, bell hooks 

• Yearning, bell hooks

• We Are the Ants, Shaun David Hutchinson

• “The Summer Day,” Mary Oliver

• “The Known Unknown: Persona, Empathy, and the Limits of Imagination,” The Poetry Foundation,  Camille Rankine

Music

• “Floating” prod. Smith The Mister

• “Fluffy” prod. Smith The Mister

• “Joy Ride” prod. Art List 

• “CenterPeace”, Deyuel 

Original Dancing on Desks theme music produced by Mara Johnson and Elliott Wilkes

We invite you to our conversation with queer Chicanx educator Ale, who teaches English to 9th graders in Los Angeles. She shares about the pandemic as a portal to creativity, letting go of perfectionism in and outside of her classroom, co-creating space with her LGBTQ+ students, and what it means to explore her queer identity from a place of joy and ease. We also reflect with J, a college senior on the cusp of graduation, about her exploration of selfhood and sexuality in school. Brooklyn high school teacher and poet Meghan Dunn shares a poem about girlhood and the body from Curriculum, her beautiful book of poems. Finally, we ask: What are the ties to heteronormativity that you must break in order to do your self-work? What do you have to relinquish as a return to loving yourself and to loving? How will you move into deeper connection with yourself? Join us, then share your thoughts with us!

Intellectual Inheritance

Texts 

• Borderlands/La Frontera, The New Mestiza, Gloria Anzaldúa

• Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks

• Troublemakers, Carla Shalaby

• Nikole Hannah-Jones Twitter post

• “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors”, Rudine Sims Bishop 

• Teaching Central America from Teaching for Change 

• Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action Guiding Principles 

Music

• “​Tobacco” prod, BEATOWSKI

• “Coffee” prod. FYKSEN

• “Restore” prod. Jay 808 Beats

• “Dust” prod. Mokart

• “Suzie” prod. yogic beats

• “Maple Gold” prod. 808 verb

Original Dancing on Desks theme music by Mara Johnson and Elliott Wilkes

In this episode we talk about what happens when grown folks get out of the way of young people organizing their own learning. In our conversation with Maria Cedillo, Jay Gillen, and Jon Gray of the Baltimore Algebra Project (BAP), we learn about ways youth in Baltimore have organized fugitive spaces of learning, organizing, and loving each other. BAP is a youth-led and organized space, meaning that while adults support the space, no one over the age of 25 is making decisions or organizing the work. Cesarina Santana Pierre, a DC-based elementary educator,  joins us again for Resource Room Part II  with a story of how conversations about her students’ identities helped them to better know their community and themselves and Kabelo Sandile Motsoeneng shares a story of a queer South African boy’s coming of age. We invite you to think about the questions: What are you willing to risk in order for education to be the practice of freedom in your classroom? What must you unlearn in order to do this work? Send us your thoughts!

Our storytellers would love to be in community with you! Deets are below.

• Maria, Casa de Maryland’s Baltimore Rapid Response Services Coordinator and BAP alum, mcedilllo@wearecasa.org

• Jay, BAP co-founder,  gillen.jay@gmail.com and 443-248-9032 

• Jon, BAP lead organizer, jgray@410ap.org,  443-226-9444, 

ig @410_fsujon

Intellectual Inheritance

• A Burst of Light and Other Essays ​​Audre Lorde (look at the epilogue)

• Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond Resistance in Black Culture, Kevin Quashie

• We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching, Bettina Love 

• Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy, Gholdy Muhammad

• Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, Zaretta Hammond 

• Not Light, But Fire: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Classroom, Matthew R. Kay

• We Got This. Equity, Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be, Cornelius Minor

• GrantEd, Grants for Teachers (Sadly, GrantEd is closing its doors.)

Music

• “Backseat” @remdolla 

• “Believer” Silent Partner

• “Hot Coffee” Ghostrifter

• “J Dilla Type Beat” Lute

• "Like Dat" Ackah Dan

• “Regimented Instinct” @TeknoAXE

• “Green Tea” and “Slowly” Smith The Mister https://smiththemister.bandcamp.com 

• Smith The Mister https://bit.ly/Smith-The-Mister-YT 

• Free Download Stream: https://bit.ly/s-t-mr-slowly 

• Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/b4p9TiftgJY 

“Watercolors” John Deley & the Players

Original Dancing on Desks theme music by Mara Johnson and Elliott Wilkes 

In this episode we talk about self-care—how we do it, why we don’t—and the ways grief, caregiving, and rest are all forms of self-care. First, we speak with Massachusetts-based social worker Adya Lindo, whose primary work during COVID has become supporting school-age youth in their grieving journeys and educators who work with grieving students—even as they’re grieving loss themselves. We also speak with high school English educator Christa Calkins and her newborn Wilder in rural New York during a time of parental leave. She discusses how her journey as a new parent has made her reexamine her relationship with care, capitalism, and whiteness. Our first Resource Room of the new year is with Cesarina Pierre Santana, an elementary educator in Washington, DC, who talks about being in her 26th year of teaching and what she’s unlearning in order to listen to her students. The convo with Cesarina was so delicious we will share part two in March. We also hear from fifth grader Sabreena, who comes to us from Singapore to share an essay she wrote about her faith, Islam. In this new year of learning, what are you refusing and unlearning? What commitments are you making to your self-care? Come with us!

Send us your responses at dancingondesks@gmail.com, on instagram @dancingondesks, or at dancingondesks.org! 

Intellectual Inheritance

• Ebony and Zani are opening a Montessori school with Wildflower Schools

• All About Love, bell hooks

• “Homeplace,” Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics, bell hooks 

• Black Lives Matter Week of Action at School

• Alien Miss, Carlina Duan

• All The Colors We Are / Todos los colores de nuestra piel: The Story of How We Get Our Skin Color/ La historia de por que tenemos diferentes colores de piel, Katie Kissenger

• The Story of Austin’s Butterfly, Ron Berger 

• #DISRUPTTEXTS: https://disrupttexts.org/

Other Books We Like for Conversations about Identity and Self-Portraits

Early Childhood and Elementary

• Eyes that Kiss in the Corners, by Joanna Ho, Illustrated by Dung Ho

• Skin Again, by bell hooks, Illustrated by Chris Raschka

• The Proudest Blue by Ibtihaj Muhammad, Illustrated by S.K. Ali

• The Name Jar by Yangsook Choi

• Where Are You From?  By Yamile Saied Méndez, Illustrated by Jaime Kim

Middle/High School

• American Born Chinese, Gene Luen Yang

• American Street, Ibi Zoboi

• The Poet X, Elizabeth Acevedo 

• El Color de mis Palabras/The Color of My Words, Lynn Joseph & Alberto Jimenez Rioja (Middle)

• Mama's Girl, Veronica Chambers

All

• Don't Be Afraid, Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart: The Story of Elvia Alvarado, Medea Benjamin 

• Hair Love, Matthew A. Cherry (also an Oscar-winning short film) 

• Making Meaning of Whiteness: Exploring Racial Identity with White Teachers, Alice McIntyre

• Poetry Like Bread, Martín Espada

Music

• Chill Soul Rap Instrumental, Nkato nkato888@gmail.com and @aI-instagram 

• Coffee, FYKSEN prodfyksen@gmail.com and @fmfyksen   

• Just Cool, unminus (WowaMusik) info@unminus.com 

• Real, nat (BeatStars) natbeats123@gmail.com 

• Slowly, Smith the Master and @aI-instagram 

Original Dancing on Desks theme music by Mara Johnson and Elliott Wilkes

In this final episode of our three-part series on the carceral curriculum, we engage educators with what manifesting freedom dreaming might look like in classrooms and curriculum. Our guests this episode are Ebony and Zani, two early childhood educators who are spending this year designing a small Montessori preschool in Washington, D.C. by engaging community members, families, and students as they create their curriculum. They insist that abolitionist and liberatory education must be done in community and with accountability to our students, their families, and their communities. In our Resource Room, elementary administrator Leensa Fufa returns to the classroom and shares how she uses self-portraits to facilitate conversation around identity with young learners. Michigan poet Carlina Duan shares her poem “Alien Miss Confronts Her Past,” from her newest book of poetry Alien Miss (University of Wisconsin Press). And monét and Erin sign off for a long winter’s nap of freedom dreaming and rest. We’ll be back February 5, 2022, with our next episode. Take care of yourselves. We love y’all.

Intellectual Inheritance

Thank you to Rahsaan Mahadeo for recommending many of these texts in our conversation with him. And the ones he did not recommend were inspired by his words. 

• W.E.B. DuBois, The Negro Criminal and Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 (open rebellion) 

• Saidiyah Hartman, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments

• Jina B. Kim, Toward a Crip-of-Color Critique: Thinking with Minich’s “Enabling Whom?” (racialized disablement)

• Oscar Lewis, The Children of Sanchez, coined the problematic term “culture of poverty”

• Mary Oliver, Upstream

• Dylan Rodríguez, White Reconstruction: Domestic Warfare and the Logics of Genocide

• Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (creative destruction)

• Carla Shalaby, Troublemakers

• Damien Sojoyner, First Strike: Educational Enclosures in Black Los Angeles

Music

• O. Y Productions, Afrobeat x Amapiano Instrumental | Afrobeat Type Beat 2021 - Happy

• Smith the Master, Green Tea

Original Dancing on Desks theme music by Mara Johnson and Elliott Wilkes

Intellectual Inheritance

Dr. Stephanie Jones

• Ending Curriculum Violence, Learning for Justice magazine

• Mapping Racial Trauma in Schools

adrienne maree brown, We Will Not Cancel Us and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice, AK Press 

Camille Rankine, “The Known Unknown: The Known Unknown: Persona, Empathy, and the Limits of Imagination,” Poetry Foundation

Phyllis Jordan, Victor Novell Massage & Wellness

News Clips

• Teacher on leave after classroom slavery discussion goes viral, FOX 4 

• Twin Rivers Unified apologizes after teacher makes derogatory gesture toward east Asians, KCRA News

• NJ Teacher Gives Profane Rant During Zoom Lesson, Calls George Floyd a ‘Criminal', NBC New York

• Teacher disciplined for using racist term in lesson plan, ABC 13 Houston

• Teacher Sparks Outrage Over Slavery Assignment, CBS New York

• Slavery Scenarios Infect U.S. Schools, The Daily Show

Music

Original Dancing on Desks theme music by Mara Johnson and Elliott Wilkes

Intellectual Inheritance

• Dr. Bettina Love’s abolitionist clip is from Education For Liberation Network's Repurposing Our Pedagogies discussion, YouTube, June 3, 2020

• “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action”, The Cancer Journals, Audre Lorde

• Fleming Day School, (678) 429-0312

• Organic World Language

• Thank you to Ron Berger at EL Schools who encouraged us, connected us to two amazing podcasters — Erica and Katie — and still reminds us to make beautiful work.

Music

Original Dancing on Desks theme music by Mara Johnson and Elliott Wilkes