YouSaid · the spoken record

Elisa Villanueva Beard

lines on the record: 20
first: 2021-01-21
most recent: 2021-01-21
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Have. And so I just think parents need to really be asking kids more than anything how are they doing and getting them access to content that is relevant, that gets them excited about learning, that gets them curious. And so that's what we were focused on. And there are so many great programs out there right now, Khan Academy. I mean, there's access to tutoring programs that are rigorous, they're accessible, they're easy to get access to. And so, you know, try to lower the pressure for everybody a bit and just focus on the things that matter the most and more than anything we're watching. Orientation first and meeting our kids where they are to figure out how to get into the learning and the academics of this all.”
2021-01-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Elisa Villanueva Beard of Teach For America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, there's nothing easy about this, as you said. We had to do that in the spring, and thankfully my kids have been back in school physically since September. One of the things that I think has been really great is that parents are really getting proximate to what it means to be a teacher. And so the level of just empathy and compassion to what it takes to do this well is a topic of conversation. So we're literally having this conversation all across the country, which I think should then help us lead to questions of, you know, the role of the teacher and what is required of them and all the policies that might become discussable around what it takes to ensure that we are fielding great teachers, supporting them, ensuring that they are retained. But as for the parent, I think it just depends on the situation. My husband and I are both former educators. And it was very hard for us to meet the needs of our kids given the roles that we also.”
2021-01-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Elisa Villanueva Beard of Teach For America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The role of the teacher changes right too many times still, it's the teacher giving information. Well, the kids have access to all the information. And so it allows you to then start to think about how can we be creative and think about learning differently? How do we involve the community in learning? And how do we personalize our children's experience so that we're really stoking their interest and their passions? We're allowing that to really take hold and fostering things like collaboration and teamwork, all these things that we know are really important. And so my hope is that as we go back to this, I mean, I think technology will play a role. I think there's a need for that, but it's a way that allows us to more effectively meet the needs of our kids, give them access to the world, and foster some of these 21st century skills that we all talk about that I think we have a real opportunity to maximize in this moment.”
2021-01-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Elisa Villanueva Beard of Teach For America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, Guy, my hope is that teaching looks very different as a norm than it did before, that this is a chance for us to really lean into what a reinvention. I think it would be just such a massive missed opportunity if we just try to go back to how it was. We really don't want to do that, right? And when we center on a 21st century global society and what our kids need, our kids need to learn critical thinking skills. Our kids need to know the difference between facts and opinion. Our kids need to be compassionate and empathize. They need to learn how to work with, you know, people who are very different than them. And so these are all skills. And they have to be adaptive. They have to be prepared to do jobs that we don't even know what they're going to be in the next 10 years. And so when you think about that, we think, gosh, the learning has to be relevant. And if a kid has access to a device.”
2021-01-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Elisa Villanueva Beard of Teach For America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of reading to how to approach the classroom in a trauma informed ways to ensuring there is a clear approach to racial equity and cultural relevance and how we approach our classrooms. And after that training, we support our teachers. So every core member, who's what we call our teachers, will get supports in the region. There will be national supports. There's regional supports that ensure that our teachers are successful with their kids, are learning from other teachers who are teaching in their content area, and really just have the emotional support and the inspiration of an entire network who's getting up every morning to pursue educational equity and excellence for their kids.”
2021-01-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Elisa Villanueva Beard of Teach For America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure. So you can go on www.teach for America.org, click to apply. We have a process by which we will do a virtual interview. That's a few hours long. And the process is pretty rigorous. You know, one of the big parts of our entire model is, you know, being really rigorous on the front end because where we're placing our teachers and our first promise is to ensure that our kids get the education they deserve, we really want to make sure that we are recruiting and accepting someone that is going to be successful. And we have now lots of data and evidence when it comes to skills and mindsets, orientations. Excuse me that are really critical. And we study our best teachers that continue to refine our model. So that's step number one, recruit. And then we have a training where we will train our teachers on the fundamentals of great teaching, things that include the science.”
2021-01-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Elisa Villanueva Beard of Teach For America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's just so much to manage, and our folks have just continue to show up, and we continue to figure out how do we really hold our educators in this moment, the safety of them and our students at the same time. In terms of the recruitment, we're in the middle of the season. We are watching that we're having to recruit virtually, which is completely new and different for us. And we're watching timelines get pushed into the spring as employers are trying to figure out who to recruit. And so we're seeing timelines delayed. We do expect to have a smaller core this year because we are managing all of these realities of COVID-19. But we're optimistic about folks stepping up and wanting to be part of the solution and realizing if you want to have an impact, there is no greater impact than teaching in classrooms and really coming to understand all the inequities. I call teaching the ground zero where you get to see all the inequities playing out for our kids.”
2021-01-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Elisa Villanueva Beard of Teach For America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We are in the middle of our recruitment season right now. To answer your first question about people dropping out, I mean the answer to that is no. I mean, again, the resilience of the educators who just know. And in the midst of a lot of chaos, as you can imagine, Guy, and for us, we're in 37 states in Washington, D.C. with very different policies and very different rules. So some of our core members are facing realities where they are having to report to schools where there is no requirement of a mask. There are no safety precautions to then other extremes that are not in person.”
2021-01-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Elisa Villanueva Beard of Teach For America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's such an important question. Guy, and I appreciate you raising it. So, I mean, I'm happy to say that over the last six years, we have fielded a core that is at least 50% people of color. This last year was just over 50% people of color. And because we understand the importance of this and have worked really hard to put forward the resources to ensure that we are able to attract a strong racially, ethnically and socioeconomically diverse core. And so I would say we are now amongst the largest and actually most ethnically indiverse and racially diverse group of educators going into low-income communities and further about a third of our new core members are first generation college graduates. So this is something that we have taken on, believe it's so important and have it as a top priority. And it's a commitment that we will continue to carry forward.”
2021-01-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Elisa Villanueva Beard of Teach For America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Figure out how do we meet our kids' needs in the moment. And so there's lots of cool things like that that we can just be learning from. And the biggest thing I would say is, gosh, if we could just center our students in this moment to really figure out how to move forward, we would, I think we'd have major breakthroughs.”
2021-01-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Elisa Villanueva Beard of Teach For America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is when schools are really centering their content, you know, what the kids are engaging in in the world, when they're engaging community members into the actual lessons. And it's real, it's relevant. Kids are able to even engage in problem solving in their local context. So there's lots of cool things happening like that. I was listening to a school leader talk about their school who they had good technology infrastructure when this all happened. Every kid had a device. And so that wasn't the issue. They really focused on building the infrastructure with relationships. And so they quickly said every adult is going to be assigned a pot of kids at our school, about 10 kids, and you are responsible for building a relationship. There's mutual accountability for what the school's doing well, connection with the family and the students. And so you're able to constantly adapt and”
2021-01-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Elisa Villanueva Beard of Teach For America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So much good creativity guy that is happening. I'm watching some schools, you know, once I see most effective educators, they center students. Like they're really empathetic in trying to figure out, okay, what is the reality of where kids are? Our kids are having to work. They're watching their parents, grandparents lose their jobs. They have to go work. They can't be engaging in the virtual learning, don't always have the supports to do it. And so schools are saying, hey, you go work. We're going to offer different times for engagement in learning. And so when you fast forward and you think the status quo wasn't working for many of our kids already, they were bored. They were disengaged. You know, it wasn't really helping them learn, lead, and thrive. How can we continue to build on that and take that forward where you have schooling that allows kids to work, that allow kids to engage in various ways based on their own individual needs and interests? Another thing that I'm watching.”
2021-01-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Elisa Villanueva Beard of Teach For America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All the crises, we're talking about the pandemic, there's an economic crisis, there is an environmental disasters happening, there's a racial reckoning. All of these things, you know, who they're impacting the most, they're impacting our kids in urban and rural America.”
2021-01-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Elisa Villanueva Beard of Teach For America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. So, what I'm observing from our network is we're just watching heroes play out everywhere and communities come together. So in some places, you know, folks start like, it's just not okay. And so they themselves are figuring out how do they raise the money? How do they partner with the right people to get our kids the devices and the connectivity? But it's a true systemic problem. And so what we're seeing instead in some districts is, I mean, folks are handing out worksheets, you know, like, and there's no engagement with the child. And so what we are looking at, and we have to be so clear-eyed about is the fact that we are on track to leaving a whole generation behind when we think about academics. And this is not even dealing with the social and emotional wellness of our kids. I mean, we've got to get centered and grounded in the fact that there is so much loss, so much trauma, so much fear when we think about”
2021-01-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Elisa Villanueva Beard of Teach For America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not okay. You know, we've been talking about the digital divide for decades now. And this has been the moment. I mean, you know, having access to a device, having access to broadband is like having pencil and paper. We used to say, what are the basics?”
2021-01-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Elisa Villanueva Beard of Teach For America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In order to support them through this, I mean, the big, very practical decision we had to pivot to is the way we train our teachers, as we talked about earlier, we go out and recruit these folks and then beyond our rigorous recruitment process, we train them and we support them. And so our whole model requires in person. And so we have to quickly figure out how to do that virtually. So designed a new curriculum in nine weeks. And, you know, really our organization came together to really step up and meet the moment for our kids because we wanted to be able to obviously provide a cohort of educators into classrooms this fall. One of the biggest needs that still exists today, there's so many of our kids didn't have access to hotspots and broadband and still today, 10 months into this thing, like 15 to 16 million kids still do not have access to learning. And that is one of the biggest injustices that is just”
2021-01-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Elisa Villanueva Beard of Teach For America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“These inequities that there's a bright light being shown on them now have existed pre-COVID, right? And so I think people started to realize all that schools hold. You know, I was watching suddenly our own teachers scrambling saying, how are my kids going to eat? I mean, they rely on school to eat. They rely on all these social services at schools in order to get their social emotional and learning needs met all at the same time. And then the realization that most districts, most schools don't have that infrastructure to just pivot. And then how do you take care of the teachers throughout all of this? And boy, if we talk about resilience, let's talk about our educators in this moment. And so it's been remarkable. So right away, we pivot to offering virtual spaces, our school leaders, our teachers.”
2021-01-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Elisa Villanueva Beard of Teach For America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Through it, and I ended up thriving. So I had a very hard first year, and then I was thriving competitive with every other kid. And I was going to be a lawyer. That was the path I was on. But then I started to get curious about how was it so that I struggled so much and that no one, like the system shouldn't exist, that you do everything right and yet you almost, you know, don't make it. And that's when I got introduced to the systemic inequities that exist in our country, how it plays out for kids growing up in my community. And that's what drew me to teach for America. I got hooked and I joined the Corps in 1998 and I've been on staff now for nearly 20 years.”
2021-01-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Elisa Villanueva Beard of Teach For America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Anyway, I was the kid that did everything right in high school. I ended up in college in the Midwest at his liberal arts, small college de Paul University in Greencastle, Indiana. And the short story is that when I got there, I thought, gosh, the hardest part of this is going to be adapting to a very different place at the time. DePaul was 3% Latino, 5% black. But I quickly realized that was not the hard part. The hard part was coming to understand I was underprepared for the rigors of college, which is shocking because I was an A plus student. I was student body president. I was a student athlete. I did everything right. I didn't think I was going to make it. I called my mom a few months in and said, mom, I may not be cut out for this. Maybe I'm not college material. She told me that was ridiculous and that I wasn't welcome home with the support of my dad until I completed my degree from Depau University. And so the only way to get to the other side was to go.”
2021-01-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Elisa Villanueva Beard of Teach For America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, Gallo, my story is quite personal. I grew up in South Texas in the Rio Grande Valley right on the Texas Mexico border. That's where my story and interest begins. My mom came to the United States from Mexico at the age of seventeen with a formal eighth grade education. She quickly figured out the pathway to opportunity in this country as education. So she'll often tell us, you know, my first most important decision as a young adult was deciding I was going to marry a man with a college degree because I knew my kids' lives would be different, which is quite literally how she chose my father. It's a true story. They're still together 48 years later. Dad's a first generation college graduate.”
2021-01-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Elisa Villanueva Beard of Teach For America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT