Transcribed by Kanako Suwa

[ Introduction music plays ]

Welcome to the SENIA Happy Hour with your host, Lori Boll. We know you’re busy so we bring you 1 hour of content in under thirty minutes, leaving you with time for a true happy hour. 

Lori: Well, hey everyone. Today I’m so happy to share my conversation with Kwame Sarfo Mensah. Kwame is the founder and CEO of Identity Talk Consulting, which is a global educational consulting firm that specializes in developing K -12 teachers into identity -affirming educators. Throughout his 17 -year career as a classroom teacher, author and consultant, Kwame has earned numerous accolades for his work, which include being honored as the 2019 National Member of the Year by Black Educators Rock, Inc., and being recognized as a Top Education Influencer by Brightbeam, Inc. in 2021 and 2022. Kwame recently wrote and published the book Learning to Relearn, which is a call for unlearning and relearning, encouraging teachers to continually evolve their practice to meet the diverse needs of their students. Today Kwame and I dive into his work, his inspiration behind it, and the importance of understanding the intersections of humans. 

So now on to the show. Well, hello Kwame. Welcome. 

Kwame: Hey, Lori. Great to be here. Thank you for having me. 

Lori: You bet. So where are you coming from today? And what are you drinking for happy hour? Or are you drinking? 

Kwame: Not drinking at the moment because it is two o ‘clock in the afternoon and I’m in my house with my kids. So I’m currently in Freetown, Sierra Leone. 

Lori: Nice. Wow. OK, well, we’ll need to dive into that more. I’m just having coffee at seven in the morning here in Oregon. And that’s how I start every day. So I can’t live without it. I’m really excited to dive into your book, Learning to Relearn. But before I do, can you share with us what inspired you to become an educator in the first place? 

Kwame: I think for me, there are a lot of things that inspire me to go down this path. But I would say, for one, my mother. My mother was never a traditional educator in the sense of teaching in the classroom or in a school, but she was always someone who was in service of others, whether it was running dance classes at our home when I was growing up, whether it was volunteering at clinics, whether it was giving somebody the last coat on her back. She was always somebody that put herself that put others first before herself. And I felt like I took that spirit of service from her and translated that into being an educator. But to be honest, Lori, I didn’t think about becoming an educator until college. All through my K to 12, it was all about sports. 

Lori: Of course. 

Kwame: If wasn’t sports… 

Lori: Gotta love sports. 

Kwame: I didn’t know what I was gonna be doing for a career. But then when I got to college, my freshman year, I bumped into an underclassman on campus and she was telling me about this mentoring program she was running. And I was trying to find something to do. I’m 17, 18 years old, wide eyed. I’m independent for the first time. I’m just lollygagging at all time in my hands. So I gave her a listen. She said, she’s doing this mentoring program. Would you like to volunteer? I said, sure, why not? And it turned out to be the first sign of me eventually becoming an educator because once I got into mentoring, I saw that I had a strong interest in doing that. So in the years following that, in my undergrad, I worked at the YMCA that was near the main campus at Temple University, my alma mater in Philly. And that’s when I was working as a after school tutor. I was helping kids out for an hour, hour and a half a day, and that was my work study job. So you get $40, $50 every couple of weeks, you blow it off on movies and food and then do it all over again. But I loved coming back there after my classes were done for the day because it gave me an opportunity to give back in the way that I knew how at that time. 

As those years developed and I grew more and more interested in it, I went from doing that as a work -study job to eventually becoming a direct staff member at that YMCA. So I was doing summer camp counseling, I was coming back the following years doing the same after school program. I’ll be over there during the weekends helping out with special events. And I would do this all the way up until the year I graduated. And once that was done, I knew at that point that I could be an educator. And that’s what I wanted to do because I had a strong love for children. And I was a math major throughout my time in college. So I figured if I married the two, I could just be a math teacher. And the rest is history. 

Lori: Nice. And you’ve spent some of your teaching career internationally. 

Kwame: Yeah, so I haven’t taught in the classroom internationally, but I’ve served in an administrative role in an international school here in Freetown. So I was working as a instructional coach / teacher coordinator at my last school where I was providing mentoring to the newer teachers and providing feedback sessions, doing some curriculum planning with them to get them on the right foot. And I enjoyed that, but then there were some other things I wanted to get into. So for this school year, I’m doing some freelance consulting, but I’m also working remotely for a couple of organizations back in the States. So I got my hands in a lot of different places right now. 

Lori: Keeps you busy. And you wrote a book. So what inspired you to write your book? 

Kwame: I think having the time to think. When you’re in the classroom, you’re constantly doing something. You’re either lesson planning, you’re calling parents, you’re doing some backward design with some curriculum unit. You are conferring with colleagues during grade level meetings. There’s always something to do. And you never get the time to just be stationary and process what’s happened. So when I finally moved abroad in 2019 with my wife who works with the Peace Corps, that was really the first time in about 13 years where I knew I wasn’t gonna be starting the year in the classroom, where I knew I wasn’t gonna be working from September all the way through to June. I knew that there will be a lot of time for me to do a lot of different things. And initially, we did start in Ethiopia, by the way. So initially when we got there, the goal was to get a job with the international school over there and continue my teaching career. But then I saw how difficult it was to get your foot in the door, particularly if you’re somebody who is new to the international school scene, and you don’t know how those dynamics are. 

Lori: Sure. 

Kwame: You kind of get lost in the shuffle. So that’s that was basically what happened with me. So after a few unsuccessful attempts to get in, I got a little depressed and I said, you know. I think I need to do something else. So it started off with podcasting. So I started my podcast at Identity Talk Educators Live where I’m interviewing different educators across the globe and just delve into their stories of identity. Gain a sense of why they do this work and how their identities inform the work that they do. So this is where it really started. And then over time, I started to learn about people’s cultural backgrounds. I learned about other people’s identities. And you start to realize the intersections that people bring to the table when they talk about their identities. And as I’m growing in all this knowledge, I’m starting to learn more about who I am, not just as an educator, but more importantly, as a human being. So I’m diving into, you know, my areas where I hold privilege based on the intersection of my identity. So I’m learning more about LGBTQ+ issues. I’m learning about how as a cis hetero black male, I do have privileges over my friends who are queer, who are trans and aren’t able to come out or navigate certain places that I’m able to. I’m learning about settler colonialism from my native friends. And I’m learning about water rights and indigenous rights. I’m learning about all these different cultures and all these different historically marginalized communities. 

And the more curious I became, the more I thought I got something here because every time I’m talking to somebody, I’m uncovering something about not just that person, but about myself. So why not put it in a book? And that’s essentially how Learn to Relearn was born. It was born out of this urge to just learn about people, learn about humans, learn about identity, but also reflect back to how I could have applied this knowledge as a classroom teacher when I was doing it. So when you put those two together, that’s what gives you this book, which I’m so proud of because of the communal nature of it. The fact that there are 30 educators who are featured in this book. The fact that this was done over a three -year period where I interviewed close to 50 different educators and was doing heavy research and heavy editing and peer reviews, it really felt like a doctoral study or dissertation. That’s how intense it was. So to be at this stage right now where I can finally talk about it at length to the listening public, I couldn’t be more excited. 

Lori: Yeah, well, you should be excited. What a process. And I’m really happy for you that sometimes those doors just close on us and we don’t know why. And apparently this is why, so I’m thankful that you didn’t get that job in the international school and that you were able to focus so much on this. It’s very powerful work. 

Kwame: Yeah, thank you so much. 

Lori: You’re welcome. So what does a culturally affirming classroom look like in practice? And maybe you have a story or something from the book that would illustrate that. 

Kwame: Well, a culturally affirming classroom could look different. So if we’re looking at it from the standpoint of language, right? That means in a culturally affirming classroom, teachers may be translanguaging. They’re taking their students’ home languages and using it as an asset or a scaffold to help those students who are emerging bilinguals learn or have access to the content. That’s just an example. It’s acknowledging the fact that not everybody celebrates the same faith. So we know that in our schools, we go by the Gregorian calendar, which is very much a Christian calendar. So it’s not a surprise that we get off during Christmas time, that we celebrate Easter. But what about our Muslim students who need to fast during Ramadan? What about those who may be Buddhist or celebrate other faiths? What are we doing in our classrooms? And on a grander scale, our school community, where we’re acknowledging and celebrating those faiths as well and the traditions that come along with that. So those are a couple of things that come to mind when we think about affirming cultures in the classroom. 

It’s about creating that sense of belonging. Getting them to see that regardless of where you come from, regardless of what your cultural background is and all those other intersections of your identity, you are welcome, you are valued, you are honored in this space and we want you to be here. That’s how every student should feel. And that’s the feeling that they should get from their teacher when they come into the classroom. 

Lori: Yes, absolutely. I love that. We want you to be here. We could end the podcast there. 

Kwame: Yeah, I mean. 

Lori: It’s beautiful. There you go. Yeah, and I really like in your book how you did include the intersections of a human. You mentioned cultural, you mentioned religion, you mentioned neurodiversity. Can you expand a bit more on why you included all of that as well. 

Kwame: Because if we are truly going to do DEIJ work, we have to include all of the intersections. And I know so often we talk about race, we talk about language, we definitely talk about sexual orientation and gender identity. Those are some heavy markers there, but I don’t know if we spend nearly as much time on neurodiversity, religion and class and some of the other markers that make up our social identities. So I wanted to include that because they’re very important, especially for me as somebody who grew up with an IEP for my first four years. Neurodiversity is something that hits me in a personal way because I know what it’s like to be in a self -contained classroom. I know what it’s like to be ostracized and isolated from your peers who are in the gen ed track. I know what it’s like when people associate you with other folks who are neurodiverse or have physical disabilities. 

I’ve been that kid that’s been bullied and teased. So to not talk about neurodiversity would be it would be a huge disservice to the teachers who end up getting this book because it’s very much something that has to be a bigger type of a conversation in our schools, particularly our international schools. As you already know, that’s why SENIA is what it is because we tackle these things. So we had to talk about that. 

And then religion is something that’s also huge as well for what I mentioned before. We have students who are being discriminated against and are experiencing harm because of the fact that they’re Muslim, because of the fact that they celebrate a non -Christian faith that’s not acknowledged within their school community. And there’s certain biases and stereotypes that are attached to that, that perpetuate that harm that they experience. 

So it’s important to touch on everything. Race is one thing, but we also have to acknowledge that it’s not a black and white issue. Yes, I’m a black man, but that doesn’t mean that I’m always a victim of oppression or discrimination. And I could tell you stories of where I’ve been oppressed, but when we think about the dominant culture, when we think about what that entails, that framework, if you’re a white, cisgender, heterosexual man who happens to be Christian, who happens to be neurotypical, who happens to be middle -class, and I could throw in a bunch of other markers, if you’re in that mode, you’re pretty much in a protective shell in our society. But if there are parts of your identity that don’t match that framework, that’s where you could experience discrimination or harm or oppression. 

But if there are places where there’s a match, that’s where you hold privilege. So I mentioned the example in the beginning about my cis -hetero privilege. That’s a privilege I hold, even though I do experience racism and colorism as a black man who has very dark skin. Those are things that I see. Two things can be true. And I think for a lot of us, because we don’t understand how intersectionality works, we think of ourselves as always being victims or always being privileged, as opposed to having both things happen at the same time, depending on what settings we’re in and who we’re around within our community. So that’s why it was important to really be global when we talk about identity. 

Lori: Yeah, well, thank you for that. And it just made me think of international schools and where they’re located in the world and those different identities may cause different points of being margin, in somewhat of a marginalized situation where you’re at or who you are in those situations. And it must be so difficult moving from, from your home country as a student and being placed in one of these international schools where… you know you were, you were kind of in the in group in your country and now you’re marginalized in your international school 

Kwame: Yeah, sure Yeah, I’m with you though. I’m with you. Just think about third culture kids Mm -hmm They spend their entire childhood and even their adult lives trying to find home Because they’re constantly moving, maybe their parents are diplomats in this country. Maybe they work for the foreign service for another country that caused them to move so often, which then gives them a chance to experience other cultures and to be exposed to different people. But then you, you don’t really get the chance to live in the country of your parents’ birth because of this constant moving, because of the transient nature of being an international school student or in your parents’ case, being a diplomat or foreign service employee or officer, you’re constantly gonna be moving. So they’re faced with questions such as where you’re from and why do you speak like this? How do your parents speak like this and you speak so differently? 

I mean, these were questions I dealt with, and I wasn’t even somebody who had that Third Culture Kid route. Right. But I experienced a lot of those same questions and the same microaggressions. And then when you go to, in my case, Ghana, which is where both my parents are from, and I am a first -generation Ghanaian -American, you go to Ghana, you have people, usually in the older generation, who look at you. They look at your name, they look at the passport, they look at you, and they’re like, how do you have this name, but you’re not able to speak your home language? 

Lori: Right. 

Kwame: And there’s no rebuttal for that, because even if you try to tell them, I didn’t choose to be born in the States, it just happened to be that way or it doesn’t matter, you get attached as somebody that’s not Ghanaian enough. And there are a lot of Third Culture Kids who deal with this identity crisis, where they’re trying to find ways to legitimize the indigeneity of their identities and attach themselves to their parents’ home countries. And it’s a struggle because there’s nothing to latch on. You’re finding something to latch on and you can’t find it. So a lot of us are in that boat, for sure. 

Lori: Well, your book has some first -person narratives. You mentioned you had 30 different stories in there. How’d you select the stories and how did they convey the message of your book? 

Kwame: I just think it happened organically. When I was figuring out what the chapters would be, I used my interviews mostly from the podcast to inform the direction that the book would go. And as I was looking through the archives of my episodes, I noticed that I had a lot of teachers who are from this community and they’re talking about these common issues. Okay, that could be a chapter. I have this subgroup of teachers who have been guests on my show and they’re talking about this issue. All right, that’s a chapter. So I kind of did it that way. 

And to be honest, it was very difficult to select which stories were the most compelling because there were so many compelling stories that were shared by the interviewees. But you know when you’re publishing a book particularly with a major publisher, there’s word counts. There are certain restrictions and constraints that are in place that you need to follow so I did the best I could to include as many voices as possible, but I also wanted to make sure that for specific communities like for instance if we’re talking about Asian community or Pacific Islander communities, I didn’t want to talk about the ones that we talked about all the time. So when we talk about Asian communities, we usually talk about Koreans. We talk about Japanese. We talk about Chinese, usually East Asian Communities, but we don’t really talk about South Asian communities. We don’t talk about Sri Lankans. We don’t talk about Hmong people, we don’t talk about Cambodians, people from Myanmar. So like, there are all these different countries that don’t get the same type of conversation, but they also should be a part of it. 

So I wanted to make sure that the people who were gonna be featured in these narratives would be people who are coming from the most underrepresented of these marginalized communities. 

So that played a role in who I was putting in there, but I also wanted to make sure that there was a good blend of people that was hitting all the intersections from a racial standpoint, from a linguistic standpoint, even from a LGBTQ+ standpoint, just make sure that we’re getting these different stories and people can see how these narratives merged together to create this beautiful portrait uh that we see in the book. 

Lori: nice uh i also noticed on your website i think it’s so brilliantly done, you have a chapter and then you have a bunch of resources under that chapter as well as some podcasts that go along with that. Can you talk a little bit more about your decision behind your webpage?

Kwame: yeah and this was something that my editor and I were talking about at length during the process. Initially it was going to be okay anybody who buys a book would get a special pass code that they would type in in order to access the site but then I thought There are people who I know are going to get this book and there are people who are on the fence and they’re wondering What’s going to be in the book? So why not give them an appetizer while they’re waiting for the main course? So that’s essentially what this web page is this website is the appetizer. So this is a chance for people to get a head start on building their knowledge on These different topics that are going to be covered in the book but also gives them a chance to learn about the stories of these different people who have had the honor of interviewing Through my podcast it gives them a chance to build some background knowledge before the book even comes. So these same resources that you see on the site. They’re also going to be in the book as well. So, I just felt like it was a way to preview the whole thing. Just like before you, it’s just like if you were to be a, if you were a singer and you have an album coming out, you dropping singles. These are the singles. 

Lori: Yeah. 

Kwame: So, enjoy. 

Lori: It was a great idea and I really enjoyed looking through those resources. I also think it’s a more inclusive way to do things. Perhaps books, your book isn’t, but some books are cost prohibitive and so it’s nice to be able to learn a little bit from the website. And yeah, so thank you for doing that. So, just a few more questions for you. How can teachers continually evolve their practice to meet the increasingly diverse needs of their students? 

Kwame: I think the biggest thing that teachers have to have, and I say this just about everywhere I speak, is critical humility. You have to maintain the humility. You have to remind yourself that this journey as an anti -bias, anti -racist educator is not one that’s going to end anytime soon. This is a lifetime opportunity. This is a lifetime work. You have to do it every single day. You have to continue to grow every single day in your capacity. You have to watch the podcast, listen to the podcast. You have to read the books, listen to subject matter experts who are talking about these very issues, and talk to the people who have the live experience. 

So you can get a full perspective of what it means to be human and really how to treat other humans. So I think in the end, in order for our practices to evolve, you have to continue to learn. You have to continue to be invested in your students, learn about their stories, be open to hearing about their stories, because then you’ll have a better idea of how to interact with them. And this is something that can inform the way that you plan your curriculum, the way that you set up your classroom. And when they know that you’re invested and you accept them for who they are, which is very much a social emotional learning approach, they’re gonna feel good about being in the classroom. They’re gonna be more Interactive within that learning community, which is what you want essentially as a teacher. So I think when we talk about anything DEI related We’re also talking about social emotional learning, we’re also talking about restorative practices We’re also talking about neurodiversity all these things that people say they’re proponents of if you’re a proponent for all those things then you have to be a proponent of DEIJ work. Those things are not separate from that. They are a part of it and that’s what I would say.

Lori: Well, it said brilliantly and it takes me right back to what you said at the beginning of this podcasts if teachers want to evolve their practice, they need to make sure that their students feel that they want them there in that classroom. So Well done Well, we have the link to your book in the show notes and I’ll also link the your podcast there as well for our listeners and why don’t you just briefly tell us about the work you’re doing in your consulting and… 

Kwame: So, the name my consultant is Identity Talk consulting. It’s been an operation for the past five years I started in May 2019 right before I moved abroad and through my consulting. I focus on three main areas so we focus on culture responsive teaching anti bias anti racist practices and identity affirming education. Those are the three buckets. So whenever I work with schools, individual educators, organizations, different communities, whatever we’re talking about is going to be tied to those three things. So currently, I’m looking to partner with more schools and organizations during this new school year. So if you are interested in learning more about day talk consulting, you can reach out to me at Kwame@identitytalkeducators.com. And you can go to our main website at IdentityTalkForEducators.com. So that’s where you’ll get a better sense of what this work is about. And I love to partner with people. 

Lori: Great. Well, we’ll include those in the show notes as well. Kwame, thank you so much for your time today. I’ve really enjoyed speaking with you, but most importantly, I’ve learned so much from you and just wish you luck on your continued work. It’s good stuff. 

Kwame: Thank you, Lori. And thank you to Senia for what you all do to amplify the importance of neurodiversity in our international schools. Appreciate the work you all do. 

Lori: Thank you. 

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Thank you for joining us for today’s show. For more information including how to subscribe and shownotes, please head to our website. That’s SENIAinternational.org/podcasts. Until next time… cheers!