Episode 4

Sarah Gerth:
Okay, we're standing on the corner of Carlton and Willoughby.

Jacqueline Simmons:
In Brooklyn.

Sarah Gerth:
It's about 5:00 PM on a Saturday, and we are just soaking in the sun as it hits the street perfectly before it gets too low.

Jacqueline Simmons:
And chilly, which you can feel the promise of the chill just underneath the surface.

Sarah Gerth:
This is a really nice pedestrian-zoned street. We've got bikes whizzing by on one side. We'll have to keep an eye on that as we walk.

Jacqueline Simmons:
Yeah. Then space for pedestrians and no cars, which is really rare in this city and in this neighborhood, but it's a relic, an old relic of pandemic times.

Sarah Gerth:
Yeah.
Welcome to Curriculum Encounters, a podcast about exploring knowledge wherever you find it.

Jacqueline Simmons:
And thinking about what kind of knowledge matters for teaching and designing curriculum. I'm Jackie Simmons, an associate professor at Columbia University's Teachers College.

Sarah Gerth:
And my name is Sarah Gerth. I am a research fellow at the Teachers College Digital Futures Institute. We are both educators and curriculum designers who care a lot about teaching and learning. In this podcast, we really want to encourage everyone to think deeply about knowledge and understand that you can have rich and varied learning experiences almost anywhere you find yourself.

Jacqueline Simmons:
In this episode, join us on a walk through Brooklyn where we end up on a sidewalk stoop. As we participate in the choreography of the sidewalk, we open ourselves up to unexpected conversations and ways of thinking about where we belong.

Sarah Gerth:
So we came to Fort Greene to have some curriculum encounters and we sat down on a stoop.

Jacqueline Simmons:
Yeah. We sat down on the stoop of a building that I lived in about nine years ago, and it was one of the best homes I've ever had. It was really sad to leave there. Of course, now I'm really grateful that I'm no longer there because I'm in a wonderful home now, but lots of memories. And then as we were sitting on the stoop, this young man comes up and I said, "Wait, I know you." And it was the child of the couple who owned the building who is now nine years older, which makes him basically an adult.

Sarah Gerth:
He was no longer an eight-year-old.

Jacqueline Simmons:
No.

Sarah Gerth:
And he wasn't sure if he knew you at first.

Jacqueline Simmons:
Right.

Sarah Gerth:
But then that look of recognition.

Jacqueline Simmons:
Yeah. It was really fun to play the memory game with him, to see what he recalled and share some of my recollections that he doesn't remember because he was a child.

Sarah Gerth:
You were catching up on neighborhood gossip, checking in on all the family members, and he carried on as if it was totally normal that this woman who lived in the building nine years ago plopped down on the stoop with her colleague.

Jacqueline Simmons:
Yeah.

Sarah Gerth:
He was very gracious.

Jacqueline Simmons:
Yeah, I mean, it's funny, we joked about how well-disciplined he and his brother were as children, and it shows. He had the impeccable manners and really knew how to carry on a conversation for as long as we wanted to and then graciously exited when it was time.

Sarah Gerth:
Yes.

Jacqueline Simmons:
So it was a kind of curriculum encounter in some ways, partly, right, because of the memory, the memories that were activated.

Sarah Gerth:
And it was funny because we had just spoken moments before this young man walked up his own stoop that we were sitting on about how this episode or the curriculum encounters at this particular park could so quickly become about memory because you had lived right across from that park and referred to it as your front yard. And how could all of those memories not come up in that space? But trying to be hospitable to listeners too who may or may not share those memories and are making their own connections and bridges to spaces and the kinds of knowledge that they can access in different places with so much personal meaning.

Jacqueline Simmons:
Yeah, I guess this is an opportunity to say that invitation is available in every single encounter that we share with you on this podcast, that we may be really explicit about what we see in the moment and what it evokes for us. But there's always that invitation for it to seep into your skin, seep into your bones, and prompt something, a memory, a query, a question for the listener.

Sarah Gerth:
And one way of getting into that question might just be to ask, what is that stoop spot in your life where if you were to sit there, you might pass somebody from another period or era of your life? What would that conversation look like? What memories come up about the neighbors, the families, the drama, the gossip, the relationships?

Jacqueline Simmons:
Yeah, I love that prompt, Sarah. I mean, even the little material things. I remember pointing out, oh, there used to be a street sign there where I parked my bike and the street sign's gone and we could see the remnant of the pole, right?

Sarah Gerth:
Yeah. Filled in with concrete.

Jacqueline Simmons:
... poured in. So even that little tickle of a memory could be an interesting prompt, right? What's not here anymore? What's missing? What do you remember that used to be there?

Sarah Gerth:
It's making me think of those activities in kind of children's coloring books or something like that where there'd be two pictures almost identical, and you have to spot what's missing.

Jacqueline Simmons:
I still love that game.

Sarah Gerth:
We literally played it right there.

Jacqueline Simmons:
We just played it right there. I think part of why we think this is important, because it goes back to this theme that we have for Curriculum Encounters, which is slowing down and recognizing that when you slow down, there are observations, there's new knowledge to be found, and that can lead to just other things. It could lead to a whole line of thinking. It could lead to learning new information. It could lead to back to the past and trying to figure something out in a new way. It's just like a possibility for knowledge.
Can you think of any spaces in your past that have served as sort of a front stoop, a stoop of sorts?

Sarah Gerth:
I grew up along the Jersey Shore and we were members of the sort of public beach club, and you'd have to pass through a lady on her beach chair who would check your badges or your bracelets or whatever. That was the equivalent of the neighborhood stoop where everybody knew everybody who was passing by and saw the kids grow up. And to this day, if I go back to that same beach club with my mother, it's just like that strong sense of deja vu. And it's all of that recognition of someone you haven't seen in 20 years or 10 years and they've grown up. And it's like, "How are all the kids doing? How's your mom? Who has babies?" This whole thing. That I think is my closest equivalent of the neighborhood stoop was that entry to the beach.

Jacqueline Simmons:
So we're back in the studio after a lovely walk where so many memories were shared. And, Sarah, a really fun phrase came out of some of our reflection, what's your stoop? What do you make of that great question?

Sarah Gerth:
In that experience on a literal stoop in front of the building you used to live in, the stoop was something you had a sense of belonging to, and there's spaces of recognition and familiarity, a way of belonging to a community or a space or a neighborhood or a family.

Jacqueline Simmons:
It's interesting to have had this experience, a very personal experience around our own memories that reflects what actually happens in the making of knowledge, in the making of curriculum. I think we really got into something interesting about belonging and memory and how those two things can sometimes support each other and sometimes be at odds. Right? My memory of our walk in this neighborhood was one of belonging and ownership. And at times living there, I know that I felt a little, some experiences of disconnect, maybe even exclusion. And so it's funny how looking back on an experience can impact the way you think about who belongs and do I belong? And how do my stories, my memories, support this version that I want to take up right now? And I think that is a part of knowledge too. It's a part of how we come up with our ideas about the world. What's fact, what's not fact, what curricular knowledge should be taught now, and what is passé?

Sarah Gerth:
Yeah. I think you're getting to a really important point that belonging rests on exclusion, and that can be really problematic and complex, and it's part of how belonging is constructed, who's a member of your family, who lives in your building, who's on your neighborhood, and the ways in which we try to make the boundaries of that belonging more inclusive. And that's something that, you're right, it does happen in curriculum. And curriculum is a lot about deciding what kind of knowledge is included or belongs in the curriculum and what's excluded. And as curriculum designers, we know we're always making really hard choices about what knowledge needs to be excluded because there's not enough space, there's not enough time and how we make those decisions about what is important.

Jacqueline Simmons:
And there's a line in this conversation that we should make explicit because we are talking about place, we're talking about spaces that are sometimes public, sometimes private. The notion of space containing these kinds of analyses is so valuable. And we were talking about a neighborhood, but I think anybody could think about the contested knowledge in their space and how that knowledge, how the ideas about that space, about who belongs, who's excluded, props up an idea about what happens here. Who is it for? What do we know about it? What do we want to tell other people about it?
I have to bring up Columbia University and Columbia University's campus, which is one of those contested spaces right now that's no longer open to the public. It used to be a public walkthrough between Broadway and Amsterdam, but after a year or so of intense protests and conflicts about what kind of activities, what kinds of protests can happen on a college campus, it's now closed off and also policed by security guards, sometimes NYPD. And that has really changed for me, this sense of belonging. I've been on this campus my whole adult life as a college student and then as a professor, and I no longer have the same kind of connection. And so therefore, my memories are really impacted, sometimes tainted, sometimes filled with grief and sadness, but it does end up shaping, I think, what Columbia is and what it has become. And of course, that changes over time. History, time has an impact on that as well.

Sarah Gerth:
Yeah, I really love how you're bringing that notion of as stoop to a college campus. There's even, I think, some tiered steps leading up to the library to give that stoop imagery. But these spaces to our bigger communities, a college campus versus a brownstone building also can function as stoops for the people who are a part of that community and the people who are outside of it or have different relationships of belonging, and how those kinds of lines of exclusion are drawn, where they can be redrawn. And even within that circle of belonging, the conflicts and contestations of that space that happen.

Jacqueline Simmons:
Right. So we're talking about space or we're talking about knowledge, and the same questions apply. Who gets to decide whose decisions about what is valuable here or who can enter? Whose knowledge is most important to teach or frame? Those questions about decision making are core to curriculum making, to determining what we teach and learn. And then also the ideas that there are benefits and losses. People benefit from certain decisions that get made, others lose. We know that they're very real costs and the costs to belonging and exclusion have real material consequences in people's futures and people's opportunities or not.
I want to summarize a couple of questions that I heard you say there when confronting your curriculum. Who made the decisions that this knowledge belongs or this knowledge does not? What are the consequences? Who benefits from these inclusions and exclusions of people or knowledge or facts or books or materials or space design? And how do you feel about it? What are the emotions surrounding that? And does it implore you to make other kinds of decisions or ask any particular questions that might change or shift the decisions that have been made? The people that are there, the things that are there, the curriculum that's there, the knowledge that's included, and so that all leads us to a kind of activation of curricular work where we might be able to see new opportunities, those new possibilities for knowledge.

Sarah Gerth:
Curriculum Encounters is part of the DFI Podcast Network at Teachers College, Columbia University. It was edited by Jackie Simmons and Sarah Gerth. Studio recordings are engineered by Billy Collins and Abu Abdelbagi. Website and social media support is by Abu Abdelbagi and Madeline McGee-Stillman. Our theme music is designed by Noah Teachey. Listen to episodes of this podcast on our website or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you have comments, email us at curriculumencounters@tc.edu. For more great podcasts, check out the DFI Podcast Network where you can find Groovin' Griot, a podcast about how we use dance to tell stories by our colleagues OreOluwa Badaki and Azsaneé Truss.