PODCAST EPISODES

For over 20 years, Zakyah Ansari has been a champion for Black and Brown voices. As Advocacy Director with the New York State Alliance for Quality Education, the leading organization working to fight for educational equity in New York State, Zakiyah knows that organizing is a long-term game. We chat about how Zakiyah built a career in organizing, how she drives and sustains momentum, and how she has secured a seat at the table for herself and other Black and Brown parents in state politics.   

Topics Covered: 

• How Zakiyah started organizing
• Key factors in successful organizing and momentum building
• Defining culturally responsive education and understanding its importance
• Suggestions for increasing teacher diversity
• Defining school choice and why Zakiyah supports a moratorium on charter schools 
• The impact of school privatization on communities of color
• Reasons Zakiyah started Journey for Justice Alliance and its mission to give Black and Brown voices a platform to be heard
• How we can amplify Black and brown voices in education
• How Zakiyah raises her daughters to #breakconcrete
• How Zakiyah has created a seat at the table amongst politicians, policymakers, and educators

Highlights:

• “How powerful is it when you see someone that has that huge afro that you have, that has the accent that you have, that challenges you, not because they think that you’re at a deficit, but because they see the potential in you and can relate to you?” 
• “School choice means that I choose to have a high quality public school education in my neighborhood, that’s equitably funded where educators look like my kids, where culturally responsive education is happening, where suspension is not where we go when it comes to discipline, where there are no police in schools. That’s the choice that I want to make.“
• “The best way for systems of oppression to work, is to keep us isolated.”
• “Public school is the last bastion of democracy.

Other References:

• Laura Fay, Philly Hero, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Talks About How Race, Class, & Privilege Plays Out in Our Schools & Classrooms, Philly’s 7th Ward, Sept. 3, 2019.
• Laura Fay, The State of America’s Student-Teacher Racial Gap: Our Public School System Has Been Majority-Minority for Years, but 80 Percent of Teachers Are Still White, The 74, Aug. 14, 2018.
• Claire Cain Miller, Does Teacher Diversity Matter in Student Learning?, The New York Times, Sept. 10, 2018. 

Connect with Zakiyah: 

On the website for Alliance for Quality Education: https://www.aqeny.org/

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zakiyah.ansari

On Twitter: @zansari8

On Instagram: @zansari8

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