Education for Liberation with Martin Urbach

In this interview with Martin Urbach, we discuss the importance of intentionality in education, exploring the social/political/historical contexts that can be explored in an educational experience, student choice and agency in the design of a space or experience, how to fight oppressive systems in education from the inside, committing to continuing to learn and grow on a daily basis, and much more.

Welcome back to another episode of the
CSK8 podcast
my name is jared o'leary in this week's
episode i'm interviewing martine erbach
martine and i met several years ago at a
conference in new york
where i was honestly blown away by his
level of understanding on things related
to critical pedagogy activism
education for liberation etc in this
particular episode
we talk about the importance of
intentionality in education
we discuss exploring the social
political historical
context that can be explored in an
educational experience we also discuss
student choice and agency in the design
of a space or experience and in
particular martine shares some of the
struggles
around when is a too much agency which i
really appreciate his vulnerability in
that particular conversation and
throughout this interview as a whole we
also discuss how to fight oppressive
systems in education from the inside
for example through small access
subversion as well as committing to
continuing to learn and grow on a daily
basis
and many other topics now at one point
in the interview martine describes a
video by dr
bettina love and i unknowingly gave a
summary of that video because i forgot
who it was i was presenting on it i'm
just really bad at remembering names
after watching videos and whatnot it's a
fantastic video that i highly recommend
people watch
and i've linked to that as well as
several other resources
and books and courses etc that are
relevant to this episode those are all
found in the show notes so simply click
on the link that's in the description or
visit my website which has nothing for
sale
nothing like that my website is just
simply jaredlery.com
anyways enough plugs all right so i'd
like to now begin with the interview
with martine introducing himself my name
is martine erbach
i am originally from bolivia right in
the heart of latin america
i moved to the united states in the year
i'm a musician i'm a drummer i'm a
composer i'm a ranger
i teach music in a public school in new
york city
and i'm also a youth organizer and a
restorative justice practitioner
so can you tell me the story of how you
got into educated related activism
so i think it's one of those stories
that it goes in and out and left and
right
and through is like i moved to the
united states to study drumming
specifically jazz drumming and through
that you know like i lived in new
orleans and
back in new orleans like you're doing as
many gigs as you can i think that's kind
of how you measure
success it's like i had 39 gigs this
week
i am successful the next week i have 42
gigs and then
through my time at the university of new
orleans i started doing a little bit of
teaching outreach and then doing like
private lessons here and there
to be honest like i always like the
private lessons but to me always they
feel like a chore they feel like okay
this is going to work
and once i started doing like classroom
lessons
or bigger like say like drumming
ensemble lessons that to me felt more
like liberatory they
felt a lot more fun so i've always kind
of like
done education in one way or another and
then when i moved to new york city for
my master's degree at the manhattan
school of music
i joined the the community outreach
office
for the manhattan school of music and
through them i started doing quite a bit
of
education in public schools and that
felt really good to me
and as soon as i started doing it i
became overwhelmed with like
lesson planning and what it is that i
want to teach and
i've never felt like it was my space in
education to be like
i'm going to be the drumming teacher
that teach you the rudiments or i'm
going to teach you
how to sit correctly in the technique
and
right i love all that for myself but
i've never really
felt like i want to do that part myself
so in the past
to discover what kind of educator i am
and like what's my
passion but also what's my
service like i began realizing that one
of the things that i was
most attracted to in education
is the idea of like social consciousness
and
like even before social justice like
i think maybe this was 2007
this idea of like what it means to be a
socially conscious individual
what it means to like use education for
liberation and what it means to use
specifically music education for
liberation
whether it is like instrumental music or
music technology
and also for togetherness right like how
can we use
education as a way to foster
togetherness
you know i'm a jazz musician so
everything is around relationships
everything is about
trust everything is about improvising
together
everything is about taking unknown risks
and so what felt natural to me is to
develop a curriculum and also to
learn about social accountability and
social justice and activism
and then through that you know it's like
one of those things that
the more you learn about it the more you
realize that you don't know much about
it so you want to
learn more something and reading books
and mainly like critical pedagogy
but also like learning about racism in
the united states as a white
latino immigrant you know i was
socialized to never really think about
racism
specifically like anti-blackness i was
always socialized to be like i don't see
color we're all the same
one love you know but teaching in the
public schools in new york city
taught me that that's actually not the
way it is right so
the more i did teaching and the more i
would develop this
what i now see as like non-transactional
relationships with students
the more i would learn about stuff like
stop and frisk we would choose the
nypd in your police department's policy
of just like
racially profiling mainly black but also
black and brown
young men and frisking them and roughing
them up for no reason
yeah basically harassment oh yeah i mean
fully harassment like state sanctions
harassment
you know like less than like i think
three percent
of the people ended up having like a
weapon on them or drugs on them
you know the more aware and the more i
built relationships with students
the more i would find that oh that
student that just came to class and is
all
pissed off or upset or crying
or just like with their head down
it may not be because they're bored you
know it's like right they just got
harassed by
three police officers or you know and
the more
just learning how to navigate the system
of being a white educator
in a system of schooling in new york
city
where i was teaching mostly students of
color
led me to do deeper work in my own
positionality
and so long story short it like teaching
like a c
major scale to me felt like just like
not enough
and so like i begin doing i mean i don't
want to negate
the value of learning about music theory
because that's what saved me right like
i am who i
am because i know music and because i
love music
but to bring an intentionality for like
why do we play music what do we play
music for
so it's not just like hey go learn mary
had a little lamb or go learn
like chopsticks and that's how you learn
the piano
yeah definitely and what's interesting
from like a computer science
perspective is a lot of the discourse is
around
you are learning this thing so that way
you can get a future job
like that's all people talk about but
several of the guests that i've had on
have talked about well there are other
purposes of education
besides a career like self-development
or just understanding or social
emotional learning things like that like
even computer science for healing and so
i'm wondering if you could kind of
give an example of what does it look
like
to teach like a lesson that focuses on
social consciousness
or anti-racist racist practices or
things like that
reflecting i always like to
start lessons with this idea of like a
design challenge you know
even just from like from the design like
thinking process right like
like what is the need what human need am
i solving
like i like to think of education as
like we're solving a human need
not solving in the sense of like by the
end of this unit
racism is going to be solved or but like
we're
yearning towards a world that doesn't
yet exist
but that we can see right so like for
example
i've done a lot of work with makey makey
and
recyclable materials right and so
one of the things that in talking to
eric rosenbaum one of the creators of
makeymakey
in talking to him a lot of the
conversations were
around this idea of human connection
about this idea that like
it can take two students or two kids or
two people
to trigger a note right so like yes
go ahead and learn that c major scale
but really focusing on what it might
feel like to practice consent
between two people to hand clap and
close that circuit
in order to play a song like lean on me
which is based
on the c major skill so you go like
clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap
clap
[Music]
how you can build a lesson around
teaching the c major scale
which i as a music teacher want to do
because i see the value in it
but then you're also you're using this
piece of technology that
wasn't really created to teach a c major
scale
it was created to create connection
right like
jay and eric talk a lot about like this
human connection
and this like this idea of looking at
things for what they can be
instead of just like assuming that
everybody wants to high-five each other
or hug each other
or set up a kissing booth let's practice
consent
like hey would you like to play this
song would you like to try
how does it feel like to say hey would
you like to give me a hand clap so we
can play the song
and for somebody to say like no i'm good
actually i don't want that
or say yes that would be great or you
know what i don't want a hand clap but
how about a handshake
well you can't really do a handshake
because when you're doing the hang shake
the maki making the computer like
software doesn't know that you're
just wanting to do one hit is gonna keep
on
like retriggering it yeah oh yeah but i
really want to do
a handshake oh let me go on scratch and
let me figure out how i can do that
right and so like then you have students
taking accountability of their own
education
and actually doing what you want a
computer programmer to do right and also
a jazz musician
yeah to like engage in path that you
don't know what you're looking for but
you
from the outside you're just clicking
and clacking
trial and error but you're going through
a process of
discovering the world and that can be
for that or that can be for like
you know like i am not a fan of using
bananas for
making makey stuff like i'm using makey
makey because i have a lot of experience
what does it mean like to make a piano
out of
bananas and that's like really fun and
really great
but what does it mean to be in a
positionality in which you can
waste five bananas you don't live in a
country like the united states of
america where we waste
a banana because it's a little bit
bruised when you have people
that are really dying of starvation i
mean bananas are very racialized
in this country right like the chiquita
banana company
especially with like us intervention in
latin america in the 60s and 70s
you can trace the migrant caravan
from 18 months ago directly to
you know us imperialistic military
intervention
in latin america you know like what does
it mean to like
use five bananas to create a little
keyboard
but also what does the mean to study
around the labor movement
in the fruit pickers of california and
cesar chavez
you know so it's like trying to tie
music education
and music technology in a social
political and historical context because
they're not set apart
the way you describe that reminds me of
janet barrett's discussions on like the
multi-faceted nature
of looking at a lesson or even a piece
of music in terms of like if it's a gem
like there's many angles that you can
look at the sides from
and so you might look at it from music
related performance concepts and
practices you might look at it from a
historical
practice you might look at it from an
imperialistic side etc so
yeah i really like that what are some of
the surprises that have like come up
when you've
introduced some of these uh lessons and
pedagogies in your class so like i can't
remember who's a researcher that talks
about things
seen things unseen and things unforeseen
i've been thinking a lot about like it's
impossible to not be biased you know
like
and it's also impossible to like predict
everything
which is one of the beauties of teaching
a lesson but like for example
for two years in a row i taught a course
at a high school level for
juniors and seniors around using design
thinking
and also using like wiper youth
participatory action research
to create musical instruments
i call them musical instruments to
change the world around using makey
makey
and using recyclable and found objects
to create music instruments now this was
a stem
class that high school students were
half put in as a parking lot for
kids that already had all their credits
and then half
of the students picked being there one
of the things that i didn't realize is
that
a bunch of kids were like yo i i'm not
passionate about music
in this way i don't want to make a music
instrument like i don't care about
making a piano
out of like cardboard and tin foil
but i would love to make like an mpc
i would like to make a sampler that i
can
use to explore like mental health some
students were like
you know what i don't really want to do
any of the projects that you're talking
about
but it'd be really nice to create like a
sound board
my sister is a marine and i haven't seen
her in two years
and we used to connect around bts
around like k-pop and so i want to make
a sound board
in tribute to my sister in which every
button
was a picture of her sister and he
played like a specific example of a
k-pop song
so one of the surprises were how
if you design the space to be
open and you don't police it youth will
meet it
for sure there will be some kids that
will be like whatever man i'm not doing
anything
and they won't do anything but that's
fine i mean that's like
you know whatever then at the end of the
class then you'll that's the great that
you'll have like we all make choices
yeah but that's very very seldom
the majority of people want to be
creative they want to do something
and so one of the things that i didn't
realize where
how me teaching a music technology class
but being open to other things would
make it so that
we could actually engage in what music
technology even is
right and also do projects that i myself
didn't know how to do like i
right you know one student figured out
how to put a couple of different videos
together
by using makey makey in scratch another
student figure out how to make
a bucket that every time that you put
compost in it it
talked to you and like i don't know how
they did it i can go back and look at
the code
and kind of understand but i don't
understand how they learn how to do it
you know so that was something that sort
of like that surprised me and another
thing that surprised me
in teaching stuff like this isn't just
my own
ability to gatekeep you know like
what something is like i got into a huge
argument with a student that actually
had to be mediated and parents came
and it got really ugly because his whole
idea was like
i don't want to make an instrument i
want to make beats that
help people study and you know and like
this is also like a 17 year old you know
who is like
thinking like a 17 year old and me being
like
no my dude like we this is like you have
to iterate you have to like
you have to do some kind of coding and
he was like well but why
i want to make i want to solve the world
but like you know i want to figure out
and i want to research how
what kind of music can mimic ritalin or
adderall in the brain
and i'm like that's dope you should do
it but i need to see the iterations
or i need to see so one thing that
surprised me about me is like
how i walk the line between you know
being an educator and holding kids
accountable
and saying like if we are engaging in a
design thinking process you really need
to collect data
but also being a little bit hands off
and being like if you're that passionate
about something go ahead and do it
and then if you fail you fail which was
something that in the time
i wasn't willing to do because in the
time i was like no you're doing it how
i'm saying because
you're gonna end up just like going on
soundtrap and
making like a boom boom boom bop you
know
sampling like a lo-fi keyboard sound off
of youtube
and that's gonna be your semester
project and that's gonna be
disrespectful
which is it's funny because which is in
a way what he ended up doing
more or less but it surprised me that i
was like
in the interest of holding the line i
perhaps didn't let him do what he wanted
to do to begin which
would have been brilliant yeah walking
that line
of like i'm totally a fan of open
ended projects and whatnot so whenever i
gave like
here are three example projects that you
can pick from the fourth option was
always
propose your own like every single time
in the class because i wanted kids that
opportunity
but sometimes they propose something
where i'm like okay you already know how
to do that thing
what are you going to learn that's new
and trying to get them to dive deeper
into that it was it was tricky
navigating that at times because like i
always was striving for continuous
learning so whenever a kid would turn in
a project i'd be like okay
now what are you gonna learn next like
it was never okay now you get a game day
no like okay you learned something you
showed your understanding of it you
completed it
and in your own timeline cool now what
do you want to continue to learn
and like continue to just dive into that
it's it's sometimes difficult
like as an educator whether it's music
education or
music technology it's something that we
have to fight with like
this like need to hold the line you
don't need to be like but the project
says this is what the project is
right and even in open-ended projects
like you know when you're working in a
system
of like formal education if a project
doesn't have a rubric and if i'm not
grading it by the rubric i'll lose my
job
anytime that we're part of a system we
can't just be like
screw it i'm not part of the system i'm
just gonna do whatever i want
right but actually like naming what the
system is and
and seeing how we can fight against the
system
from the inside but also naming that
like
i can't just like i'm part of a science
teaching team all of a sudden i can't
just be like
oh whatever you know like you don't want
to iterate three times whatever
so in those cases like you need to have
a really good reason for why you don't
want to iterate three times
so i know we've kind of unpacked this
more in the past so i'm hoping that you
can
share some of it with the listeners so
you mentioned systems and in education
in particular i know that there
and you know that there are systems of
violence and oppression that are going
on
and i'm wondering like if you all of a
sudden had a magical wand
and could change some things what are
some of the first things that you would
change
and why do those kind of come to mind
every time that we talk about like the
systems of oppression i think it's
important to name like our
positionalities because like
i look at these systems of oppression
from the outside and also from the
oppressor side
and also from the defender's side it's
not like
you're either or we're both you know
like i'm both like a racist and an
anti-racist
as a white dude like i'm both like i've
been socialized
in a system that is racist imperialist
patriarchal
you know bill hux talks a lot about that
i like to think of it
more of like this one thing like think
of it as a hydra
you know you like chop off one head and
then three more up here
and then you chop two more and seven
more appear behind you
yeah it's like something that you have
to kind of do every day
i was just talking with co-workers today
it's like i think this ability to
commit to doing anti-racist work
day in and day out and like the kind of
anti-racism that is
actually like anti-patriarchal and
anti-colon
you know like you know there's a lot of
conversations around decolonizing
species
but like you know anti-colonizing some
folks talk about like
indigenizing spaces so i like to think
about the kind of anti-racism that
encompasses
race gender homophobia right like
sexual orientation ableism like schools
are some of the most
ableist places one of my colleagues and
good friends like jesse rather ever
talks a lot about
how ableism is baked in the pie
like a school is an abled place just
from
the design so how we can be antis right
like
all of the antis in knowing that that
work is
messy and also knowing that that work is
day in and day out like
i could have been an anti-racist
yesterday
but i can be racist today today
very well i could stand to defend the
rights of my female students
to not being sexualized by the system
and tomorrow
i can police their wardrobe right
it's not like an on and off switch is
like i think angela davis also talks a
lot about how
you have to do anti-racist work every
day
so i think that the one thing that i
would talk about whether it is in music
education or in computer science
education
is a commitment to become
an anti-racist educator every day
and also dr bettina love talks a lot
about abolitionist teaching
all of these antis function on power
right so like
at some point we have to own that and
how much power are we willing to
give up you know like in order to
interrupt racism in your place of work
are you willing to jeopardize your job
right you know are you willing to
become a co-conspirator as opposed to
just an ally
you know dr bettina love talks a lot
about how i can ally is like
hey i'm sorry that somebody was racist
to you
or you know hey like the races or the
cops are coming or
the races are coming but this idea of
like a kokon spirit or like putting
their body on the line
yeah how much are we willing to put our
bodies and our jobs on the line
in order to interrupt oppression and i
think that that's really
what is needed i mean i'm not saying
like burn it all down i mean i
in a way i am saying burn it all down
but i'm not saying like
you know get rid of your job and quit
your job and settle on fire and burn the
bridges
what i'm saying is like it's so urgent
that we especially
we the people that hold the most power
in this system
which in schools and in societies in the
united states
is like white folks able-bodied white
folks able-bodied
male large extroverted folks right
christian catholic all of the identities
how can we
use that as part of the piece that
informs
our transition from allyship to [ __ ]
entrepreneurship
in lesson design in our teaching if we
are doing this work
in the streets and if we're doing it out
with students on one-on-one but our
lessons are still like
all readings of white men and we're only
amplifying the work
of like white folks and we're erasing
the works of people of color
that also falls short right there's one
example that i recently heard that was
saying if a police officer was
going to tase somebody else like a black
male
and that black male was not resisting
arrest was just kind of standing there
just like hey i don't know why you're
going to tase me an
ally might be like hey you shouldn't be
tasing that person
but a co-conspirator would go up to that
black male hold his hand
and basically say like look if you're
going to tase this person who's not
resisting
arrest you're also tasing me in the
process as well because
we're completing a circuit and whatnot
so like that is kind of like a
an example of a co-conspirator that
example sounds really
close to the example of that dr bettina
love that gave in her
talk in c-span which was around
the activist brain use them with a
flagpole and this dude who like nobody
knows whose name is
his name is james tyson went and touched
the pole right
and that actually saved bray newton's
life but like what a wonderful lesson
that would be for any kind of curriculum
that involves electricity
whether it's in third grade whether it
is in first grade
whether it is in college you know like
if you can teach
how to be a co-conspirator by the way an
electric circuit works
and you could do it through makey makey
we have a lot more co-conspirators that
allies
what can educators do to learn more
about it so like
personally i didn't learn about and read
about ableism until
a few years ago and like there are all
these different
things that like whether it's
anti-racist practice or ableism or
unpacking and challenging sexism etc
like
how do you continue to learn more and
how do you recommend other
educators learn more and then actually
act upon that
it's funny because like as a i hold
these two identities like as a jazz
musician or
just a musician everything is relational
right like you call your boys you call
your people
to do a jam session they come to your
house you like break bread you go to the
deli you
eat lunch play some more music the art
of teaching is a very lonely thing right
you're like staying up until three in
the morning
creating lesson plans and you're all
alone and
you teach music teachers are usually one
teacher in the whole campus so number
one i think that for me
the most important thing has been
creating and fostering and honing
relationships
it wasn't really until i had like a
beautiful relationship with somebody
who wasn't able-bodied for me to be able
to be like oh shoot
like this is something it was unseen
right yep
so like i did not know that this
happened and also in that commitment to
become
more anti-racist every day i think it's
the commitment to educate yourself
to like seek you know that never-ending
seek of knowledge
there are lots of organizations the
people's institute for survival and
beyond
has been doing this kind of anti-racist
work for a long time
in social media like you can tweet
something and within a few minutes
you'll have
more information that you need you can
write a description on it
but it's the commitment to do it it's
also but it's so much relational right
like i belong to networks of people that
are doing this work
and that have been doing it for 30 40 50
years and i belong to networks of people
that just began doing this work
yesterday
right and so like saying like hey i like
check out this youtube video hey like
look at this there's a training coming
up you know like
and in doing the internal work of like
of figuring out who one is and what made
us be this way right
i recently shared this quote that was
like people think that racism is the
shark in the water
but actually racism is the water once we
can stop thinking that like
we are these individuals in like a
system that works well
actually looking at the system and being
like i'm gonna
commit to read authors of color i mean
that's like a wonderful thing
not because white authors don't have
anything to say as a way to undo this
system
in which still to this day black
scholars
and black writers are only expected to
write about race and racism
right you i guess you do it the same way
that you would do it
like as a musician just started singing
in guitar lessons i
found a singer who i love who's a great
singer
and i'm paying him and like he's my
singing coach and we meet every week
over zoom and he sucks because singing
over zoom suck
but we still do it and whenever there's
a vaccine we're gonna meet
in person and so the same thing like i
hate teaching drum lessons
over facetime resume i just heard about
jam track
which is like a open-ended software that
i think lets you jam
in virtually real time with people that
are i don't have 300 or 3 000 feet of
you
you know like you make it work like if
you're committed to something
you ask people there recently was a
really beautiful it's called like a
scaffolded anti-racist resources
which is like meets people where they're
at like if you've never thought about
these
like okay here it is do you disagree
with reparations okay
here you can read you can watch you can
check out what other people saying
you get stuck on looping around like all
live matter
okay so like read this that's accounting
that people want to do the work right
like people have to want to do the work
but also i think that's the power when
relationships come in like
i have plenty of friends that do it with
me where they're like
call me and say hey like i've noticed
you post something that
seemed problematic let's chat about it
yeah and i do that for certain people
but those people are folks that i like a
super trust
right like they're not just messing with
me and also they trust that i'm going to
engage so i think the power of creating
relationships are intentional
i think is pretty liberatory so what
about the educators
who have kind of been silent whether it
be fear of
repercussions with jobs or fear of
accidentally
saying something that's problematic or
taken in the way that was not intended
etc do you have
advice for any educators who want to
speak up or learn how to speak up
janelle monae says it's best like
general money has this quote that says
silence is our enemy
music is our weapon i think that a
certain point it goes back to being a
co-conspirator and ally like
are you willing to put your body on the
line i'm also speaking from a privileged
position
of being like a white person a man i
work
in the public school systems in new york
city i have a union that
you know as flawed as they are they will
back me up you know like
yeah i can't just get fired for whatever
reason i mean
although i could they could always find
a way but the status school has always
used not just in education
but especially in education this idea of
a pink slip
or like a firing papers to keep people
silent right
to keep upholding the status cool right
so i think at some point we have to
decide like
are you going to be the kind of educator
who lives in fear
or are you going to stand up for
defending the human rights of your
students
and of their families and also your own
because we're all connected right
i'm noticing my own privilege in that
like i know there's a lot of people that
cannot have those privileges
but i think that it's really important
to plant little seeds of activism
i've had a lot of luck framing things
around
human rights i used to teach at a school
that was
mainly conservative it's actually a
school for students on the autism
spectrum
lots of students and lots of teachers
and lots of staff
and administrators kind of used the
students disabilities
as a shield to not talk about racism
because they were like
oh they don't understand they don't
understand or they don't
focus on teaching them how to match
colors
or focusing on teaching them like how to
whatever like
play the drum on the ipad not knowing
that race and disability is a huge
intersection
so planting little seeds i think is
really wonderful and then tending to the
seeds and watering the soil
and taking care of them i begin the year
being reprimanded for printing out
the black panther party 10 point program
in which we talked about
where this idea of free breakfast like
free school lunches came from
and who was doing it and gotten
reprimanded and i finished the year
with a whole like black lives matter
protest scene
because we were doing the musical
hairspray and
we turned the scene of like the i know
where i've been
which is a black lives matter protest
scene anyways
turning it with full-on blm signs
students marching up and down the school
but
we did little by little like the
trusting the process of like
slow change and planting seeds
and creating allyships between teachers
that was very powerful that that that
changed
the vibe that changed the culture in the
school
in some schools they might take a month
in some schools they might take five
years
yeah i like that the idea of planting
seeds and just
small incremental changes building up
compounding over time and whatnot
one of my like scratch like a computer
programming units that i did with like
kindergarten first graders
all we did was just look at climate
change and then students
made little play-doh buttons that played
sounds
that related to climate change also i
think
re-empowering educators to knowing that
in the end nobody can make you be a kind
of teacher that you don't want to
right so we are able to teach any lesson
that we want
we just might have to play around with
it how it looks like
we might have to frame it differently
you know like we all have developed
coping strategies for like you know what
to do when your administrator comes to
watch you
and observe you you know like i don't
have to teach you how to like do that
it's all a game right
well there are many thousands millions
of interactions
that you can have with your students
that can flip a switch
you don't have to call it like i'm going
to do a unit on racism
right i mean you should we should but
that unit on racism
can start by just having small
interactions that plant those seeds yeah
i think that's important
having been in some districts where
there have been very conservative
principles not necessarily
like from like a conservative party
standpoint but just like
hesitant to engage in anything that
might be controversial
or considered that way i think it's
important to find little ways
who is a john kratis that called it
small access subversion
so that way you can kind of plant those
seeds like you're saying i'm curious
what
are some of the questions around social
justice that you're learning more about
and diving into and how are you
learning more about those right now i
recently began identifying with that
being an abolitionist teaching
you know for many years i stand on
prison and police abolition
and that's very central to the work that
i do as a restorative justice
coordinator
at my school i don't really know what
defunding the police means
i mean i know that defunding the police
means defending it to less than zero
right that's what defunding means the
funding means zero but actually
police departments are using our tax
dollars
to pay for lawsuits from when they kill
an unarmed black person so in my opinion
the funding should be like no you owe us
money but
i don't know what it means to replace
the system
so right now i'm doing work on learning
what does it mean
i'm part of a coalition of teachers
administrators
students and parents that are calling
for police free schools
i know what police-free schools mean but
i'm learning more around
actually like taking police out of
schools and not addressing
the reason why violence happens outside
in neighborhoods it won't do that much
so right now i'm learning about that
and i'm trying to like be more conscious
about it undercoved like
i'm really scared of going back to the
classroom yep i'm super healthy i live
alone
but i don't live in a bubble one of my
favorite
shops this dude is like 75 years old
he's like the shopkeeper
i live in a building with at least a
thousand people
many of them who are older caribbean
folks so i'm really afraid
for what it looks like as a teacher to
go back into the classroom i'm hoping
i'm working towards
remote learning even though remote
learning is not the best
it is the safest so right now i'm
learning around what does that look like
what it would look like to be in a
school where i know that
my black and brown and queer and
disabled students
are going to be criminalized in the name
of quote-unquote public health
for not wearing masks all the time who i
don't even know any adults other than
doctors
that wear a mask and don't complain
about it for seven hours a day
or they're gonna be criminalized for
wanting to give each other hugs or
eating lunch with a kid that is not in
their cohort so
those are questions that i have right
now that are like and how may we
use like technology as a music educator
i'm like man i'm like
how can i use like how can i set up like
a bunch of like ipads around the schools
where like
a kid can like video chat with another
kid in another cohort or
right can we use something like free
like makey makey and some scratch
free programming to like i don't know do
some kind of interactive
something i don't have the idea fully
functioned yet but like
how can we lean in on what we have
especially as music educators as opposed
to like
everybody's dying and buying a casket
for like oh i can't teach band anymore
or i i can't teach choir anymore
yeah i get it sad like it's really sad
we should mourn it
and what are we gonna do like music is
not going to stop
right it's just gonna look different and
sound different
yeah like is there a way that we can
lean on to whatever technologies we
already have
that are open and like free and
accessible
rather than like focusing on what we
can't do anymore
like how can we just continue living in
a way that is meaningful
i like that and i appreciate you sharing
like the questions that you're exploring
like personally just kind of
also reciprocate that i'm really trying
hard to learn how to
listen and communicate with people that
i strongly disagree with
and to try and just understand where
they're coming from so that way we can
at least engage in some kind of a
productive dialogue not to change their
thought but just to
better understand each other so that way
it's like not any of this
one side yelling at the other side and
like as an example of that like
so both my parents worked at a police
station my dad was a police officer
and yet i support defunding the police
stations
and the system and so when people hear
that they're very confused and so i want
to be able to communicate that in a way
that's like well look
instead of spending all this money on
this like new york spends what
several billions of dollars on it and
instead of
spending all the money on reactionary
measures why aren't we spending more
money on preventative measures like more
social
workers or free mental health care or
community programs or things like that
so
when i bring that up then it makes
defunding police sound less
scary at least for some people i think
that one thing that people don't know is
again it's like we need to talk about
system theory like in systems
because when we focus on individuals
like individuals
can't create policy i mean sure like
policy is created by some individuals
but it's not the individual is the
system
some of the people that i love the most
in my school are school safety officers
the two people that i'm thinking about
they're super kind
they're wonderful they're two black
women they're funny
they have good relationship with our
students
they are ethical they treat our students
right
and i still don't want them there
why because they are a part of a system
that brings up violence upon my students
yes i would love to retrain them as
peace officers and
whatever there's a talk they don't
deserve losing their jobs
as a matter of fact i want them in my
school i don't want police officers in
my school so
when you shy away from talking about
individuals so
i'm not talking about your dad and i am
talking about your
like you know like it's like people are
like whoa but my uncle is not a racist
and he's a cop like that i'm not talking
about your races or on race's uncle
but it's the same thing in teaching you
know it's like teachers we are also a
system
like one of my intersections is that i'm
an anti-racist
music educator i have in the classroom
been and don racist things
and i am a part of a system of people
that do that right
and the system itself is racist and
misogynist there's this podcast
it's called left right and center they
call it civilized discussions
i don't like the word civilized because
it's been used to like
tone police people especially like black
people and indigenous people like
like genocide with the carlisle schools
like
a whole bunch of people in the name of
civilized
but it's people it's like somebody on
the left somebody on the right and then
i'm
a mediator that it's like in the center
having conversations and
i'm not necessarily interested in myself
in having those conversations
because my energy is spent elsewhere
yeah but
somebody has to do it and i think it's
important so i've learned a lot from
listening to that
and i learned a lot from listening to
democracy now and i learned a lot for
the part so i think that
again like go back to relationships like
if you can have
a conversation that is based on
relationships where you can hear one
another
i think that's the main way people are
going to change their minds or even
begin to try to understand one another
what do you wish there was more research
on that could either inform your
practices in terms of what you do as an
anti-racist music educator or help
others better understand the practices
that you are doing and why you're doing
them
i mean to be honest i wish that there
was more research published
by non-white non-able-bodied
i mean to be honest i wish there was
more research published by
folks on the autism spectrum by autistic
people
or people who are on the autism spectrum
depending on how they identify
i get really tired of reading research
around music and in autism from like
folks who like
are not on the autism spectrum or at
least don't disclose like which i guess
you know nobody owes me closure there's
so
much research around like white folks
talking about critical race pedagogy
man there's a whole lot of black folks
who are being gay kept
who are doing this work you know like
same thing with like
technology and computer science i have
loved mitch resnick's book
like that's an amazing book i want to
see where the other
like indigenous computer programmers or
queer
or trans i mean like you know where it's
like the research
so much research on trans music
education is by like cis music educators
like cis white women
right and it's like why is that
the fight that you're fighting that's
always like a question that i ask like
so many white folks are doing research
on like racism
but like where's the research on
whiteness i would love to see more
research on
technologies that are either free or
easily accessible to people
i mean making make is amazing but it's
still fifty dollars and not that those
guys don't deserve
selling it for how much they sell
because it's brilliant but like we are
the things that everybody can access
and how can we develop a system where
you have folks who are monetizing like
how much is mit monetizing
off of technology and where is a place
like mit's
role in funding things that are open
software
i guess they do it with scratch and with
plenty other things that i may not know
about
yeah they do have some open courseware
stuff which is nice like you can learn
like entire courses or like units of
study
with some of their online like moocs and
not but yeah i totally understand where
you're coming from
i mean i also think that education
should be free yeah i need more time to
think about how i feel about this but
part of me is like
i know like for example like a small
private school like sarah lawrence
like upstate new york they're having a
really hard time right
with covet and enrollment and you know
they actually might go bankrupt
because it's a tiny school i don't feel
too terrible
that people are like yo i'm not gonna
pay fifty thousand dollars
a year to sit in my house on
zoom and i kind of wish like harvard has
what like a 40 billion dollar
like endowment something like that like
you know
i don't feel bad for harvard like i
don't like
if it's gonna break may it break you
know like what is the social
justice part in being like hey we have
all this money that we were planning on
using for building a new stadium
or a new gym and instead until there's a
vaccine everybody takes classes for free
right and our instructors get paid right
because teachers salaries come from
student enrollment
which is like well how about you just
write policies so that they don't so
that your professors and your adjuncts
are still getting paid
your students are still getting their
education
and in a year you go back to charging 60
a year yeah i totally hear you on that
one i'm totally biased because like
being
working in education who's married to
somebody who's a music therapist
studying social work like i think both
education and
mental health services should all be
free so that's my own
biases on that and they are in other
countries
right i mean they're not free like
people pay through taxes or
but it's not like what we value right we
value einsteins and we value like
dr fauci's or i guess maybe now we don't
but
but we don't value like what the process
of getting there
right when dr fauci got all his degrees
like how much did it cost to go to
school
i mean i have public school teacher
friends who are getting their doctorate
degrees and i'm getting in like
a quarter of a million dollars in debt
yep they're never gonna make that much
money
as a public school teacher yeah it's not
gonna happen
how do you prevent the burnout related
to that so
in education you're not making a lot of
money you're working a lot especially
now with kovid
and you in particular are engaging with
heavy issues
that can be i guess for lack of a better
word very draining emotionally because
it's just it's that weight
of knowing there's all these problems
and being
yet only one person trying to enact
change like how do you prevent that
burnout
i don't prevent it some days i'm burnt
out and some days i'm not again that
goes through the power of relationships
i am not just one person
i think like whiteness thrives in the
culture of like isolation or like i'm
one person i'm the only person fighting
for this like
i'm part of like coalitions of like
hundreds of people doing this work
i remind myself that i don't have to
finish the work
and that i'm not here to solve racism or
solve
education but also i can't abandon it
right yeah
i feel energized by going to a protest
and like playing my bucket drums and
trying to find like i'm trying to like
gamify
like i have this like three buckets that
are together
and like i'm drilling holes in it and
like attaching a cowbell to it
figuring out like how to best wear it so
that it doesn't like
bruise my legs so that to me is actually
like healing
but also you know i'm going to the beach
a lot i like
you know i am a pretty social person
like before kobe you know like i like
go on dates with people i like focus on
my friendships
i love cooking i love eating like bougie
sushi and like
i love love love overpriced
expensive silly like nitro
cold brew coffee served with like you
know
kyoto cold brew 18 hour style
like those things are kind of silly but
it like i love sitting at a coffee shop
and like drinking a coffee but it's like
i cannot
do this myself and like like that is
really dope for me
i like unplug my unplug from like the
world by watching like
maddie matheson like cooking videos in
which he's like
you know this dude he's like a huge dude
that is fully tattooed canadian
he makes delicious food but he's also
like super crass
and like you know and it's like dope
it's like it's fun
you know i'm like making beets i
recently began exploring ableton like
i never had the time before and so some
days i mean i'm in therapy you know i do
therapy every week
some days i am pretty burnt out yeah and
some days that i don't do the work and
then others i'm like
i'm gonna go to the be like after
talking to you i'm gonna like
talk to somebody else and i'm going to
take the subway
for 18 minutes and go to the beach and
hang out and like
eat fruit i have pretty destructive ways
of like you know like i will eat a pint
of ice cream
right which like sometimes i'm like yeah
i'm not burnt out anymore but i'm also
just ate like 1200 calories of milk
fat and sugar so i have to catch myself
like ooh like
that's not a good coping mechanism but i
guess the the main thing to me has
always been like relationships
yeah that's a good point you know like
this idea of self-care
like is really good but actually
community care
is best you know i like i have a pretty
small and great group of friends and
that's really helped i have really close
relationships with students
and sometimes students like will text me
or email me or call me or
if we're in the same room they'll be
like martine you gotta like you're not
looking good like
oh they'll like literally bring me my
water bottle and be like i'm not leaving
until you drank your water
i teach high school students i do
restorative justice work so we have a
group called circle keepers
but also i do like music with students
like the musicians in my after school
clubs and my
rj kids have my cell phone number right
and so it's very
very common for me to get a text at like
four in the morning
because teens are up all night being
like
make sure you didn't eat a whole pint of
ice cream
but they know because we have the kinds
of relationships
that we we know one another right like
paulo freitas talks a lot about like we
cannot teach
without revealing who we are yeah so i
know what
my students triggers are and they know
like what my coping mechanisms are
and so yeah that and also just sometimes
it's okay to
be burnt out yeah no that's a good point
one of the reasons why i ask this
question of guests is just because i
want
other educators to know that this is a
very real thing and that their
feelings are valid and there are
potential ways to like work through it
and whatnot
you're in you're teaching your classroom
and you're burnt out and you have to be
there
because whatever you can't take a sick
day or a mental health day for whatever
reason
like what's the harm in sitting there
and just
telling your students like yo y'all i'm
having a pretty terrible day
like i'm not with it i'm burnt out what
do you all think
we can do can you take the day to like
review can we do something fun
can y'all like be extra kind and loving
and can you like
can we do this stupid or sorry i'm
trying to use
that word you know like can we just get
through this because
if i don't teach this 20 minute lesson
i'm gonna get fired or written up
y'all give me like throw me a bone let's
get through this 20 minute lesson
together
and then you guys have 40 minutes or you
folks have 40 minutes
to just like study hall and any time
that i've done that
youth have been like oh man how can we
help you you know
and it's created a beautiful like sense
of vulnerability
and again it's better the relationship
yeah i really
appreciate you sharing that where might
people go to connect with you
i'm on like social media at liberation
drums i have two websites
one which is that's my personal which is
martine erbach m-a-r-t-i-n-u-r-b-a-c-h
com and then i have my website which is
the liberationdrumcircles.com
which is the youth participatory action
research
and youth music activism that i do with
teens
and with that that concludes this week's
episode of the csk8 podcast
i really hope you enjoyed this
conversation with martin i know i
certainly did
i always learn a lot when i communicate
with him and a friendly reminder many of
the resources that were mentioned in
this are directly linked to in the show
notes just go to this through the app
that you're listening to is on or by
visiting jaredoleary.com
stay tuned next week for another
unpacking scholarship episode
which by the way i'm going to be
unpacking pedagogy of the oppressed
which was mentioned in this interview
and in other interviews but that's going
to release sometime in
september or october still figuring out
the dates for that so stay tuned for
that and also stay tuned for two weeks
from now which will be another interview
i hope you're all having a wonderful
week and are staying safe

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