Ep. 35 - Whose House Is This, Anyway? Independent Schools and Teaching Honestly

Three for the Founders | New Episode — Live Recording Feb. 21, 2026 · 51 min

Three fraternity brothers. One live room. No easy answers.

In this week's episode, Reynaldo Antonio, Jon, and Lybroan gather an audience and go somewhere most institutions won't: an honest reckoning with how history gets taught, who belongs in independent schools, and what DEI actually looks like when the cameras are off.

They talk about the difference between teaching history to do better versus teaching it to feel good. They name the quiet discomfort of being an educator of color in someone else's house. And they make the case — through story, not data — that the people doing the real work are still doing it. Quietly. Authentically. Underground.

Brotherhood built this conversation. Honesty keeps it going.

🎙️ Listen at threeforthefounders.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Like. Subscribe. Share it with someone who needs it.

Here is the playlist of our theme songs . . . What’s Yours? Gimme My Theme Music (A Playlist!)

Thanks for joining us. Still got questions? Other things to say? Hit us up at Three for the Founders on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or TikTok and let us know. Til the next time...left on founders...we out! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 1:37

What are you talking about?

SPEAKER_03 1:38

Oh I paid no attention to this.

SPEAKER_07 1:45

We're brothers.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

All right, go beautiful guys. Welcome to Three for the Founders, where brotherhood meets the breakdown. We've been having these conversations for years, and now you are invited to join us. We'll say the things you are afraid to say and ask the questions you've always wanted to ask. Three brothers, all truth, no filters. Let's go.

SPEAKER_05 2:20

You don't hear the room. There we go. He can be taught. So thank you all for joining us here at Bring Home PLC. Peace. But three for the founders here. We're just going to take a minute to introduce ourselves. I wanted to do a random argument and then couldn't find the actual people that are at school, I would say. The Tong people, that's who we are. So do you have anyone? Yeah. This is Chungu. Oh, so I just wanted to take that moment to say that while we are here together, there are traditional students in this center and give that acknowledgement as we jump right in front. Welcome to the group of the founders. It's a history of untrust educative power and responsibility to teach. Honestly, if you've heard any of the things that we've done before, we have some questions for each other. We have some questions for you. But this is where we started, Free Brothers, All True, No Filters. And the filters, no filters has an asterisk because of the language in the playlist, but also because I tend to go up script and have to delete my ideas. I have noticed that over the course of the season and a half of the season and whatever we've done, I don't have to bleed you too as much. And so that's what is happening in mind. And where are you? Oh, that's me. Currently serving as the Dean for Students in City of Palestine, currently in Santa Monica, after the other wildfires, destroyed after school. And so we are working our way back. So Dean for Student. And I like to call myself a public historian because I like to be out in public talking about history and how it has led to the current moment. How it has led to the current moment and where we are. And it's specific coming out of our affinity spaces and the conversation we had this morning, how we've got in here. Teaching profit schools, working in independent schools, working in other places, and what that means for us.

SPEAKER_03 4:39

So that's who I am. Oh hey, John Augustine. I do not work for or at a school, but I am surrounded by educators. My dad was a piano teacher, and my mom was an English teacher. My sister is a resource specialist in the L Unified School District. And I teach adults communication. And I happen to have a podcast with these two gentlemen. I get educated by them all the time. But one of the reasons why I work like this really appeals to me, and I'll probably come out and I talk here, is that I have a fundamental operating principle, and that is that most of what separates us is misunderstanding. And folks who look like me were not necessarily born into the struggle. And so there's a lot of misunderstanding from folks who look like me. And being in the presence of these two gentlemen for, we'll talk a little bit more of our context, yeah, for more than a couple decades now, more than three decades now, has taught me to be so introspective, and that there's so much that I misunderstand about what it means to be American, period, but what it means to be American and not with my experience for a lot of different reasons. And I am really passionate about communication because when you find the right words, you start building bridges, you start actually understanding, then you start seeing the humanity of one another, and that's kinship, and that's kindness, as we were talking about on our table, too. So that's me. I work for a communications firm that's based out of San Francisco, but this is my real passion is having these kind of conversations.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

And good afternoon, everyone. My name is LeBron James. The original. The original.

SPEAKER_04 6:18

My dad is the original.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

My dad is the part two, and my son is LeBron James III. So we have three in our family, and then there's that other guy that plays basketball. Yeah, so I'm an educator. I'm currently a consultant. I train teachers how to teach math to black and brown kids. That's what I do professionally. Before that, I'm interested to be here because I taught in independent private schools. I taught five years at the Buckley School in Sherman Oaks. I did another five years at New Rose in Santa Monica. And then I did my last five years at Milking Community High School, uh, Jewish school in Beverly Hills. And so growing up in public school, then teaching in independent schools, I see the stark contrast between how our kids are taught, the resource inequalities, but then actually the challenges that go along with being a teacher in an independent school, a teacher of color, as we talk about a little bit in the affinity group. So uh I'm also a futurist, which means I study the future patterns and trends to figure out how to make life better for our to create a collective better future. So thank you all for being here and look forward to having you all engage in this conversation with us.

SPEAKER_05 7:31

Who we are. So this is uh spring 1991. I only know that because everybody's holding up uh three. That means we want the UCLA style uh three years in a while, because yeah, we were those guys.

SPEAKER_03 7:47

I literally didn't know that about the that's why we're throwing the three side. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Yeah, three decades, three figures.

SPEAKER_05 7:55

Um, and so uh we are all members of Five Pacific Attorney Incorporated. Uh John and I pledged together along with our sans David. Uh Ron pledged two lines before us. Yes, spring 88. Yes. Um and so he uh had the privilege.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

I got to hate the privilege of hating them and making them my servants for a nice person.

SPEAKER_03 8:19

Oh, and in haze he did. As as exhibit A. Or we notice how happy we look. This is the look of, oh, I cannot wait to be LeBron's brother. That's LeBron on the far left. Yeah, back when I had hair back in the day. He had a flat top uh courtesy of Kidd and Play, I think. Yes, there you go. Uh to his left, your right in the middle, as Dwayne Hayforth. Not Dwayne, but Dwayne. Uh Dwayne scares me to this day. He's one of the sweetest, kindest, gentlest souls, but he's still a big brother to me. LeBron doesn't scare me as much as he did in this picture. And then City is in the front, right above the ARE. Um, we had lunch with him yesterday. Yesterday. So this was uh June of 1990. Yeah. And you can see that's Antonio. Well, you introduced yourself as Reynaldo Antonio. I'm sorry, Reynaldo Antonio. Yes. And we call him Antonio because that's how we knew him in college. He's had a few different iterations of his name. But that's, we'll say Ray for your purposes. Left and our sans David in the middle, and me on the far right. And uh, this is the pledging process of Five Beta Sigma back in 1990. Step one, shave your head. Step two, wear the white sweatshirt, royal, pure white and royal blue, yeah, sweatshirt sweats pants and boots we're carrying. So there's all kinds of rules I don't want to bore you with, but uh at this point we are not yet initiated to the fraternity, and LeBron was having the time of his life.

SPEAKER_05 9:50

I was like the conversation that we have based about race, racism, the United States, culture, how people grow, and there was a relationship that I didn't know that these two had. Uh LeBron told John, and correct me when I get this wrong. So you want to tell?

SPEAKER_00 10:10

Oh, yeah. So uh our fraternity is a predominantly black fraternity. Historically. Historically. Founded at Howard University. 1914. Thank you. So John, being a white man, was pledged by black fraternity. I'm like, I'm not having that. I need to make sure you are down for the cause. So I told John when he was pledging, every time I see you, you have to tell me 10 black history facts that I don't already know. And if you tell me something if you can't do that, we're gonna have some problems. And so John, amazingly, was able to tell me 10 black history facts every time I ran into him. He knew more black history facts than I did. I was like, John, I think you're gonna take my black cars. I want to go enough with my own history. And so the funny part was then the next line they pledged, John went to the black guy and said, Hey, y'all need to tell me 10 black history facts that I don't know. I'm like, y'all never gonna make it history.

SPEAKER_03 11:05

I didn't tell him to give me 10 white history facts. And you know, one key thing that LeBron said was he used the word that John knew. Because just like when you study for a test and you only retain about what, 12% of it. He's like, if you want to, if you did that to me today, I'd be like, um, yeah. Did you know the Thelonious monk robes that would be all music stuff, that's what I would rely on anyway. Yeah, but that's what he was, he turned me into his personal walkman too. He used to try to impress the women on campus by he would have me stand at attention. So as you can see, I had to do whatever he said. And uh he would he would push a button on my back, pretend like he was pushed on a button on my back, and I meant play, and he would say, What song do you want to hear?

SPEAKER_00 11:46

And he would have a girl shout the song, and I had to sing that song and carry her books up through a wall at the same time.

SPEAKER_03 11:53

Poison was a big, yeah, DVD was big back in the day. Anyway, I think I reinterrupted you thought.

SPEAKER_05 11:58

Oh no, so the reason that that story in particular was important to me is because that is literally the conversation that we've been having for 30 years. Um, and so a year ago, I guess, almost a year ago, uh, John came up with the idea of making podcasts and putting this together and having these conversations in public on a regular basis. Um, and so that's what we've been doing. And this opportunity to join you all came up, and so we decided, yeah, why not? Let's have another one of those conversations in public and see how that goes. Um, and so every time we have one of these conversations, we usually start with a question. And it's usually a question that has nothing to do with the topic, but it does have to do with getting us talking, and since we're asking you all to join the conversation, we're gonna ask you that question as well. The question is what's your theme song? Meaning, what is the song that should play when you walk into the room? Or the song that does play in your head when you walk into the room.

unknown 13:00

I'm gonna give you a second.

SPEAKER_05 13:02

There might ask you the partnership, then I'm asking to share out loud to the group, and that way, you know, everybody gets comfortable. We've been writing our own stories or been doing our own thing. It's been a great session so far. Like everything we've been happening to have been great. Um, so that's the question: what is your theme song? Alright, so turn to the person next to you, or as close to you as possible, and share your theme song. Alright, so wouldn't ask you to do anything that I wouldn't do myself, although I had a little bit more time to think. But it took probably three seconds, literally, when you came up with this flight for me to come up with one. Um, you're familiar with Allo Black? Yeah. His song, The Man? I'm the man, I'm the man. Yeah, anytime I walk into a room, that is the song that is playing in my head, that is what I know, right? Um, and I I so felt when we were talking, when Rodney was talking earlier, where he said, I'm confident, and I walk in with all of this. And some people think that's a lot. I was like, You took my sentence, that's very much so. So I know The Man by Al Black, that's my thing song. John, what what would your words be?

SPEAKER_03 14:06

You all remember Des LaSole? Yeah. Uh me, myself, and I. Yes, so that's my. That's your name's on. That's my thing. And I've struggled with, I think, Lewis, I think you were telling me, I I in our first little exchange this morning, I said something that was self-deprecating, and you're like, you always do that. And so there's a little psychology behind this thing. Like, I had to be like, no, this is my song. Oh, it's a little selfish, though. I don't know if I want to be no, this is my song. So yes, be myself, and I.

SPEAKER_00 14:45

Right, so my theme song is by Too Short, blow the whistle. So yeah, so that's my song because I've been the only one in every situation. I was the only black guy in the math department, you said like. I was the only black guy in my classes at Harvard. I was the only black guy teaching at Buckley in these other schools. So to maintain my blackness, I had to listen to that song because I felt like I was overshadowed in every environment. So I had to go in myself, I had to go hood.

SPEAKER_07 15:20

So I had to go, what's my bad word?

SPEAKER_00 15:23

Yeah, so that's why I had to go too short as my theme song.

SPEAKER_05 15:28

Love it. Um start at the other end, but I thought you know your song. True. What is your main song?

SPEAKER_03 15:35

My theme song is Formation by Beyonce. And it's a slay. Dr. Flay.

SPEAKER_05 15:53

Uh my big song is um still standing by fair mark.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

I love that. Great one, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 16:03

Well, this is a great time.

SPEAKER_02 16:07

We don't even want to be coming. We are the children.

SPEAKER_03 16:12

Great song you see. Did you see the documentary we've got that song on your mind? Oh, the great snake!

SPEAKER_05 16:19

We got the same song. Yes, we've got the great snake map, so yeah, that's an amazing yeah.

SPEAKER_07 16:25

Um my theme song, my walk up song, is um by Eminem.

unknown 16:31

Ooh.

SPEAKER_03 16:33

Um, the Mom's Spaghetti, yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 16:39

Um I actually said that I don't have a particular theme song because I just love music and I listen to it. So what's the face? What's the name? I don't know. Oh, of course. Yeah, I did not wear a brace as a kid, and I didn't want to, and now I'm like, you know what?

SPEAKER_03 16:56

Yes, you should have. It's good. So I'm guessing you didn't watch the alternative Super Bowl has to have. It was great.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

It was American. To Drew's point her out being out saying, I'm also in Beehive, and let's tell you what's buzzing right now, like we're buzzing. Um, but I would say that the Gift, if you have not heard that album from her, it's tied to the Lion King movies that she collaborated on. I think a hidden gem of an album, so I hope you get to check it out. It's called The Gift. And there's a song on that album called Find Your Way Back, and it's beautiful. And I think of Lion King is finding your way back. Like I think that's always a good path to figure out what your future and your forwardness is going to look like. So check out Find Your Way Back. Yeah, don't you unsubscribe from Spotify?

SPEAKER_05 17:46

Unsubscribe from Spotify and ChatGPT. Although now uh Scott Galloway is a professor who was in England, but he's American, he's put together a website called Resist and Unsubscribe. Yeah, and so he has identified all these companies, and as uh conscious as I am, right? Well gets a lot of problems, but as conscious as I am about how I spend my money and voting with my dollars, um, all of a sudden I was like, oh, I have to unsubscribe from Apple Music, I have to change my ATT, I have to like You just switch to ATT. Just switch to ATU. This is what you wanted to know, right? Um but but all of these companies that are financially supporting uh ICE's current operations, um, whether it's Marriott and giving them places to stay, etc., or you know, they in Minneapolis they cut off the there was a Marriott that didn't allow ICE agents to stay there, and the parent company took their franchise, took their franchise away.

SPEAKER_06 18:48

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_05 18:49

So there's actually no retaliation. Anyway, so Scott, Scott Galloway has uh got me unsubscribe all these things because, in my opinion, and this kind of leads into our conversation, but um there are a lot of independent things and individual things that we can do, right? Even though we are here in Los Angeles, even though we are here. And so, yes, I'm I don't even know what that being in that question was, which is not unusual. Yeah, but yeah, yes, go ahead.

SPEAKER_08 19:18

Um, about your business. I have gotten a few gift cards from my school, and I'm like, I thought we were supposed to do better. Do I want a gift card from a place where ICE is in there in the store? I'm like, so it's just sitting on my maple and I'm a little bit. I don't want to be ungrateful, but I don't want to go to the store. Sure. It's not like something more benign, but it's like Home Depot Target where they let the people come and make their shopping experience.

SPEAKER_05 19:55

So that's one of my dilemmas because what to do with those things that they gift you?

SPEAKER_08 20:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 20:02

Yeah, I had a stack of Chick-fil-A gift cards for a year and a half.

SPEAKER_08 20:06

But I would think my school would be conscious enough not to gift card back.

SPEAKER_04 20:13

Why would you think so?

SPEAKER_08 20:16

Well, I do indeed. But there's so many gift cards. You know, there's a Costco like three blocks away from me. Why not then? You know? I'm just saying that's like my little irritation.

SPEAKER_03 20:31

Well, we're looking at alternative resistance and unsubscribe and then subscribe to whom to replace them, right?

SPEAKER_05 20:36

And to your point, I actually went into my business office and said, hey, that's a bad idea. Like to to somebody just said, um uh all of our schools have a mission statement, right? All of our schools have character covenants, all of our schools have these things that we talked about. And so in uh getting the gift card, I did say thank you, right? And that's money I've already spent. Yeah. And so I gave it to somebody else I knew who didn't have that problem because I didn't want to go and facilitate that situation. Um, but I also went back to the people who purchased the gift cards, and I said, hey, just so you know, this isn't mission aligned. This doesn't hit what we say that we're about, and this is why. And they changed where they were buying gift cards. Now, at a certain point, into my frustration with Scott Galloway, right? I was like, oh, so I'm just sitting at home, like, what am I gonna do? Is Ryan Reynolds mobile service? Like, I don't know, I don't know how you need to. Those are all choices to mask, but I had to have that conversation with my family, and we've joked about it together, right? I don't shop at Amazon. And usually that is followed by FCF Bezos. Like, it's all one word for me. I don't shop at Amazon. I can do two. Target in a year and a half. And I mean, how many of us used to live at Target? If you walk into Target, try to buy a pencil and walk out with a couch and three towels and a sheet. Like, like that used to be an opportunity.

SPEAKER_08 22:13

Starbucks used to be my auxiliary office.

SPEAKER_05 22:16

Sure. Right. There you go.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

Right.

SPEAKER_05 22:21

Right. So there are there are ways to navigate that, but to your point, and going back to where we were talking about in independent schools, right? I have that conversation with the person in charge of that purchasing. And hopefully, I would I would hope, and this really does get us into what I wanted to talk about is what are schools doing in this political climate to encourage, support, etc., justice, equity, and diversity, and inclusion, right, in our schools and in our communities. I would hope that my head of school would be having that conversation with the business office. It's one thing for me to make the suggestion. It's another thing for the head of school to say, we as an institution are no longer going to participate in that. Right? Costco is there. Costco jumped up real quick and were like, you can say what you want to, but we're going to do this. Their business went through the roof. They just yesterday, um, if they didn't win the lawsuit, the tariffs were declared unconstitutional, that they don't go into effect, and he's scrambling and do other things, but Costco was like, oh, now give us our money.

SPEAKER_08 23:28

Where's my money?

SPEAKER_05 23:28

Where's my money? They didn't write, they didn't raise prices. Like, there's a way that I can get in trouble with Dr. Carter on this one, but there's a way to be an ethical capitalist. Right? And so, to your point about those gift cards, if they're from kids or they're from families, like I try to get from the school, they shouldn't know better. The school, I was like, we have too much money that we spend, that doesn't need to be how we spend it.

SPEAKER_03 23:54

But I like your reaction, Bob. You're like, you really think they're gonna not do this? Were you saying something like that?

SPEAKER_00 23:59

Yeah, I mean, we work or you work at independent schools. They're independent for a reason. Because they're not a part of the public school system because they wanted to leave the public school system and create independent schools where they can follow their own rules, create their own guidelines. We are visitors in their house. Don't forget. And that's why we feel uncomfortable all the time in that house. While we're disrespected in that house. Because it's not our house. If we built our own house, then we would have these issues about which gift cards, are we following the mission if we built our own house? And that's that was always my struggle in independent schools, is like I'm in someone else's house telling them what to do. Like if someone came to my house and told me what to do, I'd be like, this ain't your house. You go by a house and you can do what you want. So to me, that's just one of the tensions. That's a nice guy to write there. Yeah. But remember, even though we're having this conversation, you're in the conversation, so please feel free to jump in at any time, give a comment, push back, because that's what it would be like to create an open space where we get everyone's points of view. Yeah. So that, you know, it's not about us. We're sharing, facilitating, but the conversations with all of us today.

SPEAKER_03 25:25

For sure, for sure. I was having a conversation with someone at our table, and it connects to, I think, where we might want to go with this. This is how our podcast works, by the way. We always start with an idea and a question, and then we wander into something eventually. But um, as a in my day job as a communication consultant, I'm often going into companies and helping identified leaders become better speakers. That's essentially what I do, either as individuals or groups. And I can say this here AT ⁇ T is a big client of ours, and so I go to Dallas often read training. And you know, they had to come out publicly and say we have no DEI programs. We're canceling all of them for your reason because why is that? Well, because guess we've just canceled theirs. Verizon. And because the FCC and all the, like there's these big contracts coming up and negotiating, they have to have curry fitting with the federal government now. So publicly we have to have the posture of no DEI, right? Because that that the ship is sailed in a lot of corporate environments. However, in truth, what I see day-to-day at ATT is real DEI in practice, and yet they have to be underground with it. Kind of reminds me about Legging back in the day. What do you mean?

SPEAKER_05 26:36

What is real DEI in practice? What is that?

SPEAKER_03 26:38

The reason I'm even showing up to the company is because they are investing a lot of money and time in people becoming leaders in their organization. And the diversity within the people they choose to be part of, I'm talking several thousand people in three different leadership development organizations. I'm always impressed diversity-wise. What I mean by that is every background. I'm talking financial, I'm talking about social, I'm talking about racial, I'm talking about role. I mean, we got people who drive trucks who are like, you know what, that guy's gonna be a leader. You know what she did a good leader? Let's put them through these programs. And so when I see and I get to participate in the training of people, I go, here's a corporation, you talk about that tension that was being talked about today, like where we have to publicly play the game and go, oh yeah, there's no DEI programs going on here, which is terrible, but yet they're putting money and time and resources into leadership development very deliberately towards folks who might not otherwise be considered for those roles. I feel like, man, that's that's that's tension, you know. That's such a tension. It is. But it I feel like the DEI programs in the corporate world were so often a box check, they became a boxing checking exercise for so many. And then when the heat got turned up, that's when they stopped, they started canceling them. But it's interesting now to see who's really in the game. Who's really in the game? And I'm not saying I'm not like yay, ATT, like obviously there's some conflict there with where they're putting their money from the corporate. No, you just told me that I could tell Scott Galloway that I don't have to keep it. That's what I heard you say. Yes, yes, indeed. And I guess where I was coming back with that was that um that the frustration that I feel as an individual person in a in a company works for a firm of what is our public stance on this, which is important to me. Because, like, what are we signaling? What are we telling others who's safe here? Who who is it, who are we for that isn't for? And then you know when I see underneath there is some truth happening, I'm I'm trying to get those two things to meet.

SPEAKER_08 28:43

And I feel like at the independent schools, they have all this crap in their mission statement, but they're not walking on the top.

SPEAKER_00 28:52

There you go. Something like the Constitution?

SPEAKER_03 28:59

It's that's gonna be in Hamilton too.

SPEAKER_06 29:02

I didn't even think that's gonna be their side.

SPEAKER_05 29:06

Um, but no, this is, I mean, it is truly like bringing it all the way back to where we are, right? And talking about it as something mission-aligned, and talking about how do we live out that mission, and talking about are we carrying that out? How do we teach what we know to be American history, right? Um, how do we teach what we know to be character when the examples that we had written large, right? Like, let's be honest, Donald Trump would be expelled from any of our schools. Let's be honest, Stephen Miller went to, and this sounds like a slam on public schools, but it's not a public school, because he would not have lasted in an independent school, right? Whether or not it's my house. That dude was out there a long time ago, right? And so, how do we continue to do things like this? Like, we walked in here today and we've already had the conversation about the hallway logging the ancestors. Like, I stopped, I took pictures, I went, oh, this is something I can take back to my independent school and say, here's something we need to do. We're doing a little something, but the teacher who's in charge of it, and in charge of it because she picked it up, literally has to go find the images and print this stuff out and put this up. So she's the one changing it. It's not institutional. Right? When I walked around that corner, it was institutional. It was this is important. I was like, oh, what is this hallway? Like, what are we doing here? Oh, it goes into what I assume is the meeting room, the assembly room, the cafeteria, where everybody who walks down this hallway is going to see this is what we think is important. These are the ancestors we want you to become when you grow up. Faculty, these are the people that you should be aspiring to without saying a word. Like that was important when I walked in. And I know that it doesn't happen in my school. Right? And we're not, how do we live into those things that we say? So even if it is, right, is it Audrey Lord? You can't rebuild, you can't tear down the you can't, somebody can't, you can't remake the master's house with the master's school dismantle. You can't dismantle. Right? See? Are we trying to build something? Okay. But how do we teach, honestly? I was in an English class teaching the the uh the diary of a young girl by Anne Frank. And in order to teach that, the English teacher was doing a history lesson on fashion, and I was sitting there with 13 and 14-year-olds going, This feels dangerous. And she was just telling the truth. This is what happened, this is the rise, this is the election, these are the laws, these are the changes. And one of the kids said, Oh, that sounds like us. And I was sitting there as a student, so I didn't jump into it, right? I've had conversations since then. But how do they teach honestly in this space?

SPEAKER_04 32:26

But who's honest? You know, you heard the term winners write their write history. Exactly. Okay. Um, and so that's the rub, I think. If your side, US and America, writes their version, if you go to another country, that version is completely different. And so whose whose truth are you trying to tell?

SPEAKER_03 32:53

I'm glad you asked that question because I was gonna ask a question in the three from the founders of you all and you all. What stories do you tell as educators that fight the story we're being told to tell? And why do you think about that? Um that's a small one. I go towards, I go to the Bible a fair amount. Like, I don't care, go for it. There was this Palestinian Jewish man who he didn't show up and just go, hey, listen, I'm your man, follow me. Everybody else is bad, here's some data. What did he do? He told stories, right? He's like, hey man, there was a guy who lost, he had a hundred sheep, he lost one, he left in '99. Oh, there's this widow, she gave a tiny little thing, and she actually, like, he told story after story. And who did he get mad at? The most were the leaders. That's who he was yelling at most of the time when he did yell. And why? Because they were controlling the narrative. And he said, No, you're not, you're not gonna tell this story. I'm I'm gonna tell you the stories. And I'm wondering, do you guys have stories that maybe you've said it 12 times, 18 times, 30 times, like you're tired of telling it, but you know it's true? And I'd love to hear from you because from my background, my communications, what I do is that's what I'm always trying to tell clients. Just tell you, tell me, think about Dr. Glasgow this morning. It was all stories.

SPEAKER_00 34:14

Stories. Stories.

SPEAKER_03 34:15

And you remember it, getting off the bus, taking the left, getting off the bus, taking the late. You don't remember that story. If you came to say 67% of students like me go to remember any of the stuff, stories. So, do either of you guys have stories that you tell that fight the current narrative or that you've told in the past when the government is saying, oh, we're doing this one thing, but you're like, no, you tell you this. Anything like that?

SPEAKER_08 34:39

I tell the story of the fact that my mother and father got married because they weren't allowed to get married to anybody else. Japanese, right? Um, and I also can extrapolate to say back in those days, I would not have been able to marry my husband because he's white and my son is biracial. And the other story I just started telling is what I learned on Rachel Manow's podcast. I didn't know why my father ended up in Denver, Colorado during uh World War II. I really didn't know, and then I just found out. Well, that governor said Japanese are welcome here, unlike all the other Western states. So those are the marriage ones, that's an old one. But why my father ended up in Denver, that is just like new of the last few months.

SPEAKER_03 35:41

You tell that story to your students?

SPEAKER_08 35:43

Oh, the um yes.

SPEAKER_02 35:48

It's a new one. It's a new one right now. I I always talk about, I don't know if it's a story, but it's my hope that the kids will tell a story later about it. Um, is I talk a lot about colorism in the Latino community. And I go into Sylvia Mendes and how she couldn't go to the same school as her cousins, who were also Latinos, because she was darker skin, right? So then it goes into, well, and you know Sylvia Mendes moved into that home. Um it became available because it actually used to belong to Japanese families who were removed from their home and put into German camps, right? And the kids are just like, what, what, like, you know, and it's this lesson that like it intertwines like our realities, um, and then for the white kids, it's just a lesson on this is our history, this is this is US history. Um, and so it's it's a really it's my favorite, it's it's not like my favorite lesson because it's so joyous, it's not, but it's really like important for me to like tell the kids about that, you know, and have them take a little story away, even if it's a snippet of it.

SPEAKER_03 37:01

So yeah. That's awesome. It's subversive. Storytelling is subversive, as well. You guys have stories about that blow my mind, like what do you think once I'm I'm in grad school, and so I've been arguing with my professor from Harvard.

SPEAKER_05 37:18

Uh I've been arguing with her about history versus historiography. History being the facts and things that happened, the events. Historiography being the interpretation of events. Um you can have a side to answer your question, Louie, about which side do you teach? I've been asking kids and families and parents, I love it when I get grandparents on grandparents' day who come in and they start arguing with me about what I'm teaching. It's great. Kids are like, um, but the interpretation is what is the science. The what happened is it. Right? And so do you teach history, do you learn history, do we engage with history in order to do better, or do we learn history and teach history and engage with history in order to feel good? And so that's the question that I'm asking. Which version of history do I teach? I'm gonna teach history. I'll leave the historiography to other people. I actually have my own narrative, right? That I that we just we were having this conversation yesterday because I was learning about African peoples and their participation in the Atlantic slave trade, right? Which doesn't get dismissed, but sort of gets uh historiographically sort of brushed over like, oh, they got guns. And in in the mentality for that is they were savages who had nothing until the Europeans trade them for something, and so they traded their own people in order to get this gift. All of that is packed in that story, as opposed to they were different groups of people who were trading already and had enslavement as a part of their society already. And so they were engaged in this trade and it did eventually eat their kingdom. The kingdom of Congo stopped existing because they started trading the people in the Kingdom of Congo, right? The Asante did it, the Aquamu did it. The question coming up, the history, like how do we teach history in this moment, isn't a science question. And when people say what side are you teaching, I'm not accusing you of anything, obviously, but when people say what side are you teaching, what they're really saying is, are you telling me a story that I like?

unknown 40:11

That's a great point. Are they telling me a story I can relate to? Or affirm your lived experience.

SPEAKER_07 40:17

I I taught fourth grade for a long time, and um years ago at the Natural History Museum in the bottom of the natural history museum, they used to have a diorama, and the diorama was the families or those original people who came to settle Los Angeles. And I would take my fourth graders, mostly Hispanic students, some African American students, and I would stand them in front of that diorama, and I would say, as a scientist, tell me what you see. What are you looking at? What do you see in this diorama? They there's a dog, you know, they would say different things about me that I was trying to get them to understand was that you see you in that diorama. You're there. You were there when the city was started. So when some jerk tells you or your parents you don't belong here, you were there when it began. And I always used to, before they uh took that part away, I always made it a point to take my fourth graders down in the basement of the Natural YouTube Museum, I'm telling you years ago, and show them the diorama and say, I want you to watch this. But they they have all kinds of things. They have a wiki up, they have all kinds of things in the building of Los Angeles, in the basement of the Natural History Museum.

unknown 41:52

Um yeah, but yes.

SPEAKER_07 41:55

But I that was the story that I always taught my fourth graders because I wanted them to see the history, the building, the beginning of Los Angeles, and how there were Hispanic families, how there were white families, how there were black families that were all coming together to start this grand new place. And at the very beginning, you belonged and you had a seat at the table originally, and that's what I wanted my students to take away from that from that story.

SPEAKER_05 42:27

And even that, right? That's because that's true and history and story, obviously, right? Who was there before it was a place? Right. Right. Like we talked about having the landing knowledge and acknowledging the fact that they were that land.

SPEAKER_07 42:46

Okay, and in the same space in the in the in the basement, they had a picture of a drawing and two renderings of the original people who were here on this land. Yeah. And what was interesting about that was I would stare at my kids in front and it was like, what do you see? And it's and they took some and they would go, oh, they kind of look like me. Yeah, no kidding. They look like you, they look like you, and so there's there's and you know, it was the whole history of LA, so we'd get around the public season. Yeah, but they took it away. It's bad. It is? It's bad. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 43:28

Because I took my seven fingers.

SPEAKER_07 43:30

But if it was gone for a while, yeah. Yeah, I used to take my four fingers every year. We took the train. We would go down and yeah, that's what we do.

SPEAKER_05 43:43

I hear you. That's good. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:45

You told the story about Papa James that helped his dad would call his dad Papa James. They're reframing the the Vietnam War to me, as far as him coming back home and

SPEAKER_00 44:00

So, you know, I don't, I don't, you know, when I go to schools as a consultant, I don't stand for the flag school. I don't do the flag school, I don't sing the national anthem. People are like, how can you or but I just I just sit down and I just let them do what they want to do. So it goes back to my father. So my father did two tours in Vietnam. So after he did the two tours, he was coming back on the boat and he was standing up with everyone else, and the commanding officer called him the N-word. So my dad punched him in the nose and broke his nose and then proceeded to do two years in the brig. So he's like, I just fought twice, killing people I ain't got nothing against. They ain't done nothing to me. And the people I'm fighting for, you're gonna call me the N-word. When I respond, like any human being would, now I'm two years in the brig. And so then he's like, that's America. He said, He goes, Do you know I've been through H. Orange and everything else, and I have to fight for the government, even my veteran benefits? Because it's like if I hold you off long enough, you'll die. And when my it's so crazy. So my dad had to be with a psychologist in order to get a dishful experience. And so exactly. So my dad grew up in West Virginia. He was chased by the Klan as a kid. I mean, he's had an unbelievable crazy experience. After he talked to the psychologist after a few months, he says, Mr. James, in my professional opinion, your life was fucked up. I was like, did he say that? He goes, Yes, that's what that was his professional opinion. It's written down post-traumatic stress disorder for FU syndrome.

unknown 45:46

It's fucked up all kinds of things.

SPEAKER_00 45:47

And so having to hear all those stories over time is why I don't celebrate the country the way other people do. Because that was not my family's experience. So if you do stand and salute the flag and sing it, and you know, if you like you said, sometimes you get emotional singing, then that's fine because that's your experience. I'm not mad at you for being super patriotic if that's your experience. Just respect mine as a little bit different than yours.

SPEAKER_04 46:18

So if I can answer your question, I was at school that allowed students not to stand. The only problem is they didn't tell them why. They didn't understand why. So they were like, oh, I don't understand. I'm just gonna say it.

SPEAKER_05 46:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 46:37

Right?

SPEAKER_05 46:38

No context now. Exactly. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 46:40

You mean kids took advantage of an opportunity to I wanted to editorialize briefly how much time do we have? You have three and one half minutes. So coming back to the whole story, then they're written up. I'm sorry, I made you tell that story. But that's okay, I'm telling all the time. But sometimes the problem is, man, I almost got through a day without having to bring up some racist bullshit. And then I end up like, can you tell the story about your dad? Put it in the brig. It's my white privilege at work. But I mean, the reason so I find myself, one of the roles that I've have accepted is I find myself explaining this stuff to people who look like me all the time and who are always defending ourselves, we're defending why we're not racist. No, this guy wasn't racist, and this administration is something it's like that's not our job, okay? Our job is to discover in what ways we're racist and how we can fix it. And when I tell a story, like I've used this story, like, look, I know you're mad when Kat Rank's on his knee. I get it. Like, I'm a white dude. I get like sometimes I'll hear the anthem and I get goosebumps. Like that's my experience. And so the people who don't have that go like, why don't you? And I'm like, you know, my friend LeBron, his dad came back from two tours that he proudly served in Vietnam. I tell them that story. And like, so do you expect him to have those same kind of feelings about the flag? No. How do you like what was a food you don't like? Well, I don't like whatever. Okay, well, what if I force you, you know, you have to like this food? Like, you can't force feelings on people. So, patriotism is one of those things, and we had a patriotism episode, and that's where the story came out. And that's what telling stories actually do our work for us. And like, your story's beautiful. I can see it. And those kids are gonna think about that differently. Your kids are gonna think differently about the state of Colorado now. What was it about Colorado? Yeah. Oh, yeah, they welcome the Japanese. Oh my gosh, but just those stories is what sticks with us. So I appreciate it. I might make you say that again.

SPEAKER_05 48:41

You tell the story about cutting the hands off those figurines, but a lot of our conversations start at A, go to blue, and end at three. It's always a thought process, right? It's always, and I didn't know that about the steady college, I have something else to go, right? I didn't know that, which is a different story. But I do think it's important that we are thinking about this and actively, institutionally, what are the stories that we're telling? What is the history of the teaching? How are we shaping this? Because, truth be told, at least this is my school experience, like these kids are going to go do something. They're going to go be in positions, they're going to go be able to make decisions and choices. And this being formative, me standing up as a black chapter and telling them, hey, maybe we should think about what the Constitution says, right? Um, and somebody in our earlier session, uh, what was the question he asked? What is the proper balance of power between Congress and the presidency? I was like, oh my god, could that be a more relevant conversation? And what is the lead up to that? There's a lot of history and thought and historiography that you have to think about and learn before you can apply it to that question. Right? I ask people all the time, what does it mean to be American? So I'll leave it on that question because we're not going to answer any of the ones that we came up with today. Correct. We have got a couple, we're saying at the end of it, there's no this is how we do it. Right.

SPEAKER_00 50:23

One last thing I do want to say though, is I want to acknowledge how important your presence is in independent schools. I grapple with it, like, how come I'm not teaching black and brown kids in the hood? Why I'm at this independent school? It's because their perceptions of us are created in the media, and most of the time they're negative.

unknown 50:44

You are real human beings that interact with every day.

SPEAKER_00 50:48

It changes their thinking. I had students when I taught the Buckley School, and I'm teaching them pre-calculus, and the kid's like, hey, I want to get on this computer thing and create a website. I didn't know what a website was. I'm like, fine, I'll give you classroom time. I said, I'm your first customer. I'm gonna buy a website from you, and I don't even know what the hell a website is. It's like in 1999 or something. Fast forward, he goes on to college and then comes and creates an AI company, and now he's a billionaire. Then he hired my son to work at his company. So now we're in touch. So now his perception of what a black man is is not a LeBron James, but a LeBron James. And so you don't know who you're impacting, how it's landing, but I want you all to keep doing what you're doing. Keep leading, keep being the example, keep pulling them to the side because we need to educate white kids more than we need to educate our own. I used to think we need to really educate our own, but we ain't causing our problems. Y'all are discussing. See, we can have good conversations because we're probably so we can always give each other a hard time. So I just wanted to say that. Now go on button up.

SPEAKER_03 52:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 52:11

As we always do. Yes, left off pounds. Left on found. Thank you all so much. Thank you for joining us. Still got questions? Other things you want to say? Well, hit us up at three for the founders.com on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or TikTok. Or send us a text through Buzz Sprout. Remember to like and subscribe wherever you get your podcast and share the pod with someone you think can benefit from it, or add to the conversation. Until the next time, Left On Founders. We out.

SPEAKER_03 52:46

Thank you for listening to the three for the founders podcast. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speakers alone. Do not represent the views, thoughts, and opinions of any professional or academic institution. The material information presented here is for general information.