I'm Priya Volci. I'm Winona Guo. We're the
co founders of Choose and co authors of
Tell Me Who You Are. And this is
Two Dope Teachers at a Mic. Yeah.
Yo. What's going on, two Dope Nation? Welcome
back to two Dope Teachers
and, Mike. We are the most dangerous podcast
in the schoolhouse, y'all.
Thanks for joining us on this summer day.
I think by the time this episode comes
out, it'll still be summer.
Hopefully. We'll find out.
But welcome back to the show.
If you are a new listener, which I
suspect
we may have some new listeners on this
episode that we're about to do right now,
welcome to Tudoep Nation.
I think our guests will appreciate when I
say Tudoep Nation is a nation without borders.
We have very lax citizenship
requirements. If you just wanna, like, bring your
dopeness to shine in the world, you are
welcome.
No caveats,
no limitations. You don't gotta prove nothing. Just
just express a desire
to be dope. But if you are a
new listener,
welcome to the two Dope Teachers and I'm
Mike podcast. This is where
we remix the conversation on race, power, and
education,
where we try to connect people's stories to
the things that really matter in education, and
we always try to give voice to the
voiceless. My name is Eduardo Munoz, your 2021
Colorado Teacher of the Year and
your host for this
episode.
If you do the social media thing, you
can follow us on Instagram
and on x and on
blue sky,
at TudoTeachers. You can also follow us,
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or your grandma can follow us on Facebook
because that's probably,
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are facebook.com/2dopeteachers
and, Mike.
We are on TikTok. You will be disappointed
if you try to find us on TikTok
because you will find us, and you will
find that there's no content because we don't
know how to TikTok yet.
But we're gonna get there because I love
music and I love silliness, and, I think
we can do it.
I think my kid will probably have me
assassinated if I get on TikTok,
because that will be the most embarrassing thing
ever. If you wanna reach out to the
show, you can also hop on our website,
2dopeteachers.com.
You can email us 2dopeteachers@gmail.com.
A couple of quick plugs before we get
into the show today.
The first one is I hope everybody
had a chance to check out the Teachers
Caucus podcast. My guy,
John Arthur, Sunshine,
2021
Utah teacher of the year, had me and
Juliano Urtubey,
our 2021 national teacher of the year on
to talk a little bit about immigration
and, some of the issues that schools may
be seeing as we go into this 2526
school year. Our guest today is really gonna
have a lot to contribute to that dialogue.
There are webinars coming up, y'all. There's just
amazing things happening on social media to raise
consciousness, to give you a toolbox,
and to give you ways to think about
how we navigate this extremely difficult time for
all Americans, but in particular, Americans who come
from,
marginalized
and minoritized
backgrounds. So, last thing I'll say, if you
wanna support,
if you wanna support some of our storytelling
work and the stories we amplify
here on two Dope Teachers and a Mic,
feel free to head over to patreon.com/2dopeteachers,
where for as little
as $5 a month, you can support this
work and help us keep the lights on.
If you don't if you, support us,
I think
at the $15 level I feel like we're
gonna change that, Brian. I think we're gonna
change that level.
You will get a two Dope Nation sticker
that, was designed by our guy Sham, who
at the time that it was designed, he
was a high school student,
who's a very, very skilled,
street artist. So
so I wanna
I wanna open this up,
right before I introduce my guest to just
talk about
where the topic of immigration lives with me
in this time and in the past. So
a lot of you, if you've known me
for a little bit, if you've been listening,
you know that I was born in The
United States right right here in the city
that I podcast from.
My dad was born in Mexico City and
became a citizen through marriage in 1974.
And a lot of my family,
has moved here from Mexico over the years.
It's that it's that Mexican life where you
meet new cousins every time you go to
a a family gathering. So we're a really
big family.
And the first time,
I remember
my students
taking action
to address
concerns about,
what's gonna happen to immigrant students in our
community,
was back in 2004
when,
the beginning of the undocumented and unafraid movement
started to emerge,
where we had students who had been brought
here as children and
who essentially had no agency of their own
to come to The United States. Even if
we're gonna say
that this is an illegal act, a baby
cannot make that decision to engage in an
illegal act, and we all know that that's
a very fraught way to describe it.
But I just remember seeing hundreds of kids
marching
down Spear Boulevard outside of the window I
was teaching
in and really, really hoping
that the level of engagement in student led
activism would continue.
It's a double edged sword because,
in order for it to continue, there has
to continue to be a problem, and that's
definitely not what we wanted.
DACA happened, and a lot of my students
benefited from receiving deferred action,
for childhood arrivals.
And I remember
being very happy about it, but also realizing
that it wasn't a long term solution,
that any administration
could come in
and
impose their will and simply revoke that status.
And now we're hearing
noises about that, and we're seeing actions being
tape taken
where,
anyone
who appears to be a foreigner is is
targeted for deportation, and we've just seen that
happen over and over again.
What I'm bringing to you is an incredible
story
and
brought to you with
an incredible guest that I've had the opportunity
to meet and to read a little bit
of his book that is coming out.
I want you to welcome Brian Christopher.
Brian teaches English and journalism at Riverside High
School in Durham, North Carolina. I know. And
some of y'all are gonna be like,
North Carolina?
What? Oh, man. Y'all don't even know. We're
gonna touch on that. He also advises Riverside's
bilingual student newspaper, The Pirate's Hook. That is
such a dope name. I love it. And
writes about teaching education policy and the power
of student voices for local and national publications
like The Washington Post, Raleigh News and Observer,
Learning for Justice, and Ed Week.
Author, veteran English teacher,
amplifier of student voice, Brian Christopher. Welcome to
two dope teachers and a mic.
Thank you for having me. It's great to
be here tonight.
Yeah, man. I just really,
I really enjoyed our conversation when we got
a chance to meet. I think,
I think that meeting this moment
is a challenge for a lot of educators.
We're all worried about our jobs. We're all
worried about, you know, if a certain noise
is made from a certain quarters
that we could find ourselves on the defensive.
I did a lot of
work on how we elevate teacher voice and
protect teachers' right to amplify student voice and
to teach truth.
And so learning about this work that you're
doing,
has just been really gratifying for me.
Well, thank you. Yeah. It is you know,
I wish I wish it wasn't,
so timely,
but, it's been
it's it's been it's been amazing for me
to watch, you know, student voices and just
how they carry.
And, I'm excited to to talk more about
sort of some of the things that have
happened in Durham. Yeah. Absolutely.
So y'all, at the time that this episode
drops, hopefully, we're able to coincide it with
the release of Brian's book. The book is
titled
stopping the deportation machine, one immigrant student's arrest,
and the kids who took on Washington to
get him back.
This is a
this is an incredible story
of what I would kinda character characterize as
accidental activism. Right? That it didn't happen because
people wanted to be activists.
It happened because action needed to be taken
to address
the particular situation that this student was in.
Is it accurate to describe it that way?
It is accurate.
Many of the kids and and many of
the adults
that are in the story hadn't been,
I would say, politically active before this happened.
You know, it was
because it was a student that happened that
was arrested that went to our school. It
was a a hyper local issue,
and it kind of grew from there. And
so as the need for activism
kept growing,
so did the student and teacher effort to
try to meet that.
Yeah. So we're gonna really do our best
not to give spoilers on the book because
y'all y'all need to read this book. I've
had an opportunity to to read some of
it at this point, and, it is well
worth it. Let's, start at the beginning.
Right? So we know kind of what the
topic of the book is, and,
we'll we'll kind of
start with the beginning. And for us, the
beginning is gonna be tell us a little
bit about yourself.
Tell us about where you teach. Tell us
about kind of what your classroom looks like.
So I'm starting year 19
at Riverside High School in Durham, and,
it is a large, comprehensive, traditional high school
with a very diverse student body.
Our our demographics are roughly 40%
Latinx,
30% black, 20%
white.
And so
we have we have a really
sort of good cross section of students that's
pretty representative of Durham as a whole, the
city as a whole.
You know, we are home to Duke University,
and the way our districts are drawn, they
kind of look like pizza slices. And so
our student population has students that live in
a very urban setting, in a somewhat suburban
setting, and we get the fringes of some
rural communities as well. And so so we
really we we have a really
vibrant, diverse,
group of students that come to the building
every day. Yeah. That's awesome. And that's something
that wasn't always the case. Right?
I think I think you and I are
around the same age. And so I think
when you looked at some of these areas
back in the day, it didn't reflect that
kind of diversity. I do remember,
so one thing that really,
resonated with me when when you first reached
out about,
about sort of sharing this story
is I connected back to an article I
read in Newsweek about fifteen years ago,
stating that the Raleigh Durham area had the
fastest growing Latine population in The United States.
And I just remember
I remember just being really surprised,
you know, shocked as a person who's never
really left Colorado for a meaningful amount of
time,
that there were places in the Midwest and
in the and on the East East Coast
even that were not like New York
and Philadelphia
and, you know, Florida
that had a lot of Latinos. So you
talked a little bit about the demographics of
the district. Tell us a little bit about
the city and just
what the cultural profile of the city looks
like. What can somebody
expect
when
they if they take a walk down,
a main street in Durham?
So Durham is a tobacco town historically. Okay.
The Duke family made their money in tobacco.
And around the night around,
1900,
they got hit with an antitrust
suit, and they had to they did diversify
their assets. And so one way they did
that was they bought a college
and they eventually moved it to Durham where
they owned land and built it out to
become this, you know, elite institution. And,
and so
the city's full of tobacco warehouses. So you'll
see a lot of large red brick buildings
that Oh, interesting. Of that over the span
of the twentieth century
didn't need to be used to store tobacco
anymore.
And so when I first moved down here
in the early two thousands,
the city,
the downtown especially, was fairly dilapidated.
It was starting to turn, but through the
'80s and '90s,
a lot of the buildings were unused or
were sort of in transition. And
the city has since really kind of reinvented
itself. They turned a lot of those old
warehouses
spike in the workforce. And that
a spike in the workforce. And that was
one of the things
that drew
immigrants. I think originally it was a lot
of immigrant males
to the city, and housing was still somewhat
affordable
then.
The job opportunities were there. Cost of living
was not high.
So a lot of a lot of folks
who came in to work through that transition
ended up staying
and raising families.
The children of those families started entering the
public schools, and we saw a really
fast,
increase in our Latino student population through the
nineties and the early two thousands. Yeah. And
what's to what extent do you feel
the school system was able to keep up
with this demographic shift
and this,
this kind of gradual
increase in
Latina students in in schools?
I know it's difficult.
And,
you know, I mean, it's still happening. You
know, our population our student population Latino student
population is still increasing,
not quite at the rates it was, but
it's,
I I think it took a lot of
really good ESL teachers and program directors. And,
you know, I know when I
first got hired at Riverside in 02/2007,
you know, we had a strong ESL team,
and we have continued to have a strong
team of ESL teachers
that
that are just really good at
serving students' needs, but then also adapting
as as numbers change, as circumstances change.
And so I think a lot of that,
at least from my vantage point, happened, you
know, on the ground with with really good
people in classrooms.
Yeah. No doubt. Yeah. It's it is interesting.
You know, we've had a similar phenomenon happen
in Eastern Colorado.
I have a sense that a lot of
states are like this where you have
a handful of pretty big urban centers where
you have all of the things of an
urban area,
and then you have
areas where so for us, Eastern Colorado
is very much farming country. And as and
this goes back to about the mid to
late nineties.
As you saw,
immigration policies tighten under the Clinton administration. So
you had operation gatekeeper, which closed off the
main ports of entry at the border and
then forced people across the Sonoran Desert, you
know, across the Growler Mountains and places like
that.
They end up in other places. And so
Eastern Colorado
had been,
frankly, a dying community.
People were aging out. The they there weren't
kids being born. And then as farm workers
were unable to return home,
because of immigration
restrictions,
They started to raise families there and it
kinda revitalized. And I remember the reading in
the Newsweek article, and, of course, it's national
media, so hard to know,
what the reality is. But the way they
they really frame this
was that
what Durham what what Raleigh Durham had seen
was a
a real
jump
in, like, a revitalization,
an economic revitalization,
a demographic
revitalization.
All of a sudden, the population got a
little bit younger, and so you had more
people in the workforce. You had more people
bill like,
you know, creating jobs and that kind of
thing. Was that kind of how that turned?
I think so. I think Raleigh hit it
first, and that allowed housing to stay more
affordable in Durham.
And then, you know, Durham has since sort
of shifted the same way.
And then our downtown has a lot of
sort of like city living now. And
we have in the last, like, ten years,
we started to see
this this group of folks who choose to
live in Durham and work in Raleigh, and
that felt that felt like
a kind of a turning point for the
city.
Yeah.
I just love getting this kind of perspective
because
what one thing I've learned in
the three years since I left my own
classroom
is how
every educational space is its own universe. Right?
Like, your classroom
is its own universe
among many, many stars. Right? And so I
just love learning this stuff and and seeing
what what dynamics are at work, what history
is at work at different communities even when
they may seem
as different
as Denver and Durham.
I have a question. Are you wearing a
Durham Bulls T shirt?
I am wearing a Durham Bulls T shirt.
I love that. So I saw Bull Durham
back in the day. It's when I was
just telling one of my friends how great
of a movie it was, and and he
had no idea what I was talking about.
He's a Dominican Haitian dude from
Brooklyn. He he's got no
reference for Bull Durham, but I just love
that you're rocking that shirt tonight.
So the film's a good example of what
what Durham was like before that revitalization.
The Bulls Okay.
The Bulls were a single a team back
then. And one of the biggest
sort of kickstarters to the downtown revitalization
was they they shifted to a triple a
level team, and they built a a newer,
bigger stadium
downtown next to a huge set of of
tobacco warehouses. Oh, no way. And now, you
know, from that, they really just, like, they
built it out from the stadium,
and and they have you'd never recognize
the No way. The footage now if they
were to go back to those places. Yeah.
Man, they need a sequel. Anyway, so it
was just a little piece that I just
noticed and,
super dope.
Okay. Well, let's get to the story,
and
let's talk a little bit about this thing
that happened in your school community.
So I the first thing so take us
through it just kind of
step by step.
Like,
what was the first thing that sort of
occurred, and then what was the succession of
events that followed?
So I think I think we should probably
start at 2014.
Okay? And that's when
Riverside, like a lot of schools, we noticed
an influx
of
of kids entering our ESL program that that
looked like a direct result of,
sort of an increase in border crossings of
unaccompanied
minors
due to gang violence in El Salvador and
Honduras, particularly Honduras in 2014.
Wilden, the main character in my story, was
one of those kids. Okay.
So he was 16 years old
when when he was he was at a
soccer field in his hometown in Honduras. And,
a leader of the local gang
basically
threatened to threaten to kill him.
And so so he was faced with this
impossible decision of staying home or, you know,
risking his life or leaving.
And so his parents quickly arranged for him
to leave. And and he took the journey.
You know, he he made his journey from
from Honduras to North Carolina that summer.
He,
he enrolled it at Riverside
and
he,
he kind of dove right in and
he was a very willing and eager student.
He,
he worked really hard to learn English. He
joined he joined soccer teams in the area,
made a lot of friends. And then,
you know, I was teaching English at the
time, and the journalism teacher who ran this
awesome newspaper program was retiring in 2015.
And,
you know, I have you know, I was
a communications major. I thought I wanted to
do to student journalism. I had taught a
couple of his, like, intro prerequisite
classes.
And,
and so
he he helped transition me to the position
as he was on his way out. And,
and so he retired, and I took over
his newspaper program in 2015, 'sixteen.
And it was 01/28/2016,
when, you know, we we started class like
we always do. And I had the agenda
on the board. We had all these story
deadlines we were working on.
I gave my announcements, and then I kind
of said, like, alright. Everybody get to work.
And then I usually at that moment, I
would go find my editors. And in 2016,
when I was brand new to to running
this program,
I did that to check-in with them, and
then I also did that so that they
could remind me whatever I forgot to tell
the rest of the kids. And
the the mood was a little different that
day because
because they said, like, we're we're getting like,
we're getting word that that a student was
arrested on his way to school this morning
by ICE.
And, I don't think any of us knew
exactly what to make of it on that
Thursday morning.
It felt really big. And as that day
went on and then kind of word started
to travel,
and by the next day, we met again
and said, like, well, you know, we have
a plan in place for our upcoming print
edition, but we cannot cover this.
And so we pivoted
and we put some assignments in place. And,
you know, we just said, let's let's go
see what we can find and
let's run with it because clearly people were
talking about it. And and as the days
went on from there, it was part of
a larger effort. There were some raids happening
in our community
that had gotten so significant that there was
a noticeable difference in attendance
in classrooms with large concentrations of Latino students.
We knew that that this was something we
couldn't ignore.
Yeah. But we also knew that it was
something we couldn't get wrong.
Yeah. And so you talked a little bit
about your perspective
and sort of your lived experiences with immigration.
And, you know, mine are very different in
that
I was I was born and raised in,
in the Midwest. You know, I went to
a small high school in a very affluent,
very white suburb of Cleveland,
and immigration was not something that directly touched
my life. And as a result, I knew
very little about immigration policy.
So as the kids were were covering the
story,
I had to start reading up on
on the issue as well,
you know, mostly to know if if they
were doing it right. You know, as a
as a journalism teacher,
you've got to read and edit all their
stuff, then you got to check it accuracy
too. And and I had to I had
to start doing homework to know that that
we were being accurate because,
you know, the the topic was high stakes.
And
and, you know, this this student who was
arrested, like, this is a story we had
we had to get right. Yeah. And I
wanna name really quickly
listeners.
Brian Brian, this didn't happen
this year.
Right?
This didn't happen
two years
ago. This is so
as a lot of us as a lot
of educators
and
school systems have been
scrambling to figure out how to keep kids
safe in this era,
I think there's
a lot of discussion that makes it seem
like a kid getting
arrested
and marked for deportation
is like this new thing that is unique
to the current administration.
What you're sharing with us is that
in some communities, this has been a threat
for many, many years.
Wilden was arrested during the Obama administration
during,
an effort called Operation Border Guardian. And And
the reason he was arrested was he met
the criteria,
and some of which were he had crossed
the border and had since turned 18.
So he had missed a court date,
under the advice of an attorney that turned
out to be, you know, maybe not the
best thing.
And he he had an active deportation order
that triggered when he missed his court date.
And so so he met the criteria
and
as a result was arrested sort of as
he walked out his door on his way
to school one morning.
This has been a thing that's been a
threat to communities for a while.
The other thing I wanna put a pin
in and just, like, point out to people
is that
you were teaching
this moment. Right?
Like, as,
you know, sort of as a journalism teacher,
and it just makes me think of
the challenge
of engaging in authentic
student centered instruction in schools these days.
Sometimes the curriculum is the world.
And,
sometimes the skills that you need
are those that you're actually putting to work
immediately. And I just gotta take a moment
and shout out miss Griggs, who is my
journalism one teacher,
my first year in high school, who taught
me a lot of the things that you
are thinking about right now and who I
think is actually partially responsible
for this podcast.
But I think that I think that taking
this moment to really teach is really powerful.
I think the next thing I wanna ask
you so the students probably had this you
know, so you sensed a shift
in mood, and you started to get kind
of these whisperings that that this had happened.
You start covering this. You make the decision
that the students and you make the decision
to cover this story.
So how did
how did the
work on sharing the story
become
how do we
respond
to this issue? How do we act? So
when we decided our coverage plan,
we knew we needed to to cover it
from a news perspective.
And so so we assigned a couple kids,
one of whom was bilingual,
to to cover the arrest and sort of
the ripple effects of that arrest. And
then my editors also, you know, they had
some bigger questions.
Their biggest question was, well, why can't
this student graduate?
He was a second semester senior who was
a good student. He was on pace to
graduate,
and he very much, I think, surprised
the kids because he he never came across
as what anybody would view a problem. And
so their very, very simple question was why
can't Wilden graduate
regardless of his immigration status?
You know, we we we were all going
to a public school where
it's pretty widely accepted that, you know, we
teach whoever comes through our door. They are
entitled to an education.
And
that even though he was undocumented and even
though there was an active deportation order, he
was still entitled to that
education. Yeah. So while some of their classmates
were
doing the interviews and gathering information,
they started asking
that other question of why can't he graduate?
And nobody could give them a good answer.
We had these very
interesting,
somewhat contradictory policies at work between immigration and
education
where, you know, students were being
arrested and set to be deported.
But
the Department of Education had had a long
standing
precedent
through the Plyler case that
any student
is entitled to a fair and appropriate public
education.
And so so it was it was very
contradictory.
And that simple, simple question that they were
asking,
I think, really put their finger on that.
We'll find, some information on this case and,
drop it in the episode notes, and we'll
share that with you because this is a
time where
knowing precedent would really be,
would really be important.
So
I always shift over to this. So I
came into teaching. And, again, I think you
and I, probably entered teaching within the same
few years. There was always a lot of
caution and concern about about controversy and student
activism and those kinds of things.
As you watch students
ask these questions
and find
this contradictory
information in response,
what started to happen for you as a
teacher? Was there anything that started
to shift or rumble in the back of
your mind about what this could lead to?
It did.
You know, I was not
one of the teachers who sort of led
this advocacy effort. Yeah. There were other teachers
who knew Willdan more personally.
There were community members and and organizations in
town that really took up this cause.
And, you know, I I should be clear
that I had very little to do with
with what they accomplished. Yeah. I was I
was very much working behind my students.
And as I helped them gather information,
learned enough to
to eventually start taking action myself.
And so from from my position in, you
know, in the whole system,
I was pretty safeguarded
by by talking with colleagues and and by
messaging what I was doing saying, like, we're
trying we're trying to accurately
get accurate information, and we're trying to share
this with our community because because we know
it's an important and sensitive topic. Yeah. And
so the,
so I think the unbiased
journalism teacher shtick really,
really safeguarded me Yeah.
Especially early on. Yeah. And I think this
really points
to
how necessary it is that we have truth
tellers,
in in our society.
So for you navigating this, I really appreciate
what you said about,
how others were really, you know, at the
forefront of this work, and you were in
a position to really
support your students in doing this kind of
thing. Was there a blowback
with towards teachers
in the community
who were supporting
this this young person and the students who
were advocating on his behalf?
Durham is a very progressive community.
I think
the the political affiliation of most of our
residents
made this
I think it helped
it helped the advocacy take off in a
way that it probably wouldn't have in in
other places. Yep. You know, one of the
one of the things that really stood out
to me about this particular
moment was it unified our our student body
and our community in a way that that
not a lot of things can.
Yeah. You know, one of the tricky things
about working in a really diverse or really
diverse school
is
it's hard to find those sort of quintessential
unifying
experiences that every kid wants to be a
part of. Yep. You know, like, lots of
kids wanna go to the homecoming football game,
but lots of them don't too. It's just
not their it's not their scene. Not everybody
plays sports.
Right.
And and this was one where,
you know, we had we had students of
all races and ethnicities. We had freshmen through
senior. All of them seem to care about
this on some level. And, you know, some
were more vocal than others, but
but I think I think that strength in
numbers really started to resonate come come March.
Esther, you know, it had been about eight
weeks, and
and things
things started to take off.
Yeah.
Yeah. And, you know, one of the things
I wanted to ask you is kind of
the impact on students on you and the
community. I think that really what you just
shared really speaks volumes around that, around how
particularly
now,
where
social media tends to be our civic center.
But, unfortunately,
we we can find our own spaces there
and not have to deal with difference.
School is one of those places where we
have the opportunity
to transcend difference
and find common cause, particularly when it comes
to students in the community. Like, I I
I'm not surprised that students came together regardless
of their own backgrounds to support this person.
How was
this
deportation
challenged?
You mentioned that
looking at the conflicting policies
around,
immigration and education,
that that was kind of where the question
started asking. How is it challenged, and how
is it ultimately stopped? So the title actually
comes from a conversation I had with with
a congressman's assistant in Washington. And and I
think
I think a lot of that the the
groundwork for that conversation
sort of came about in March. You know,
I mentioned it had been about eight weeks,
and the advocacy efforts really started to take
off. And then, the weekend of March 18,
news broke that he was set to be
deported that weekend, that he was going to
board a flight and he was gonna leave.
And
there was a lot of what felt like
last ditch movement
to to organize
downtown,
to to
to to gather around our local conquer our
our US representatives
offices in Durham, and to really apply as
much pressure as organizers and advocates and students
and all of us, you know, knew how
to do. And so it was that it
was that Friday night. Folks stayed
late Friday night demanding answers from representative GK
Butterfield
in Washington.
And
I wanna say it was after it was
late.
And one of his staff members came out
and read a statement that mister Butterfield had
issued that he was working tirelessly, hoping to
find a solution,
didn't have conclusive information
at that moment. And so so we we
thought it was gonna end. And, you know,
I was devastated for the kids, and I
didn't know what I was gonna tell them
afterwards.
Twenty four hours later,
news broke that GK Butterfield had worked through
the night
with the,
assistant secretary of Homeland Security at the time,
Sarah Saldanha.
And they had they had managed to halt
his to pause his deportation.
And so so there was a scramble
in Durham that made its way all the
all the way to Washington,
you know, with the help of our with
our of our Congressman GK Butterfield.
And and they they got that particular deportation
halted.
It didn't get him released from detention.
So he remained
in a Georgia detention facility
indefinitely.
Wow.
And in Georgia.
In Georgia.
Yeah. It was at Stewart Detention Center in
Lumpkin.
And so
so we knew we knew what had happened
was big. What had happened was big.
But then we also knew that he wasn't
out.
And and so we, you know, there were
additional measures taken and
additional pressure provided, you know, some pressure applied
to two different parts of the system. And
then I I had a sort of a
coincidental
invitation to go to Washington
to attend President Obama's final teacher appreciation event.
Oh, wow. At the White House. Oh, wow.
I used to do it every year. And
I was not a state teacher of the
year Mhmm. But I was doing a fellowship
with the Hope Street group at the time,
doing some work on amplifying teacher voice in
the policy making process. And
Hope Street
happened to get a couple of invitations that
they offered up to some of their teacher
fellows. And so
I had an invitation to go up to
spend the day in Washington. The event wasn't
gonna be till the late afternoon. And so,
you know, I told my students about it.
I said, is there anything that I can
do, you know, on your behalf for the
advocacy efforts?
And, you know, about five minutes later, they
handed me a long list
of people and places I was to. I
was to go. Well, I took Christopher since
you asked.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
So so I took a flight flight in
that morning. I had a a bunch of
copies of our newspapers in in my backpack,
and and I delivered them,
you know, in in the various offices of
of senators and representatives.
And, mister Butterfield's
assistant, you know, sat and talked with me
for a while.
And Butterfield wasn't available at the time. And
so I met with his assistant, and,
we talked a little bit about what the
kids had accomplished.
You know, keep in mind, you know, Wheldon
hadn't been released.
But but he said at the time,
America has designed its government
to be a very large
cumbersome machine that is slow moving by design.
Yeah. He said, but what what your kids
have done,
like, it stopped the machine
if only for a minute.
It was one student in one school,
but it was also
quickly becoming sort of the face of a
very,
tricky immigration policy for the Obama administration.
Yeah. And and it really did make people
in in some pretty high places hot.
That's amazing.
I'm getting chills, like, just imagining
the students engaging in this. And then you're
in there. You get one victory, but you're
not where,
you need to be for Wheldon and,
how that kinda works.
How so you talked a little bit about
where some of the students who had been
involved in this. One thing I'm curious to
know and then and then I'll ask you
a little bit about the book. What was
the impact on students on you
on the community, both in the school and
outside of the community
of
this entire
incident?
Well, I mentioned that it it it had
a unifying effect that I haven't seen happen
very often. That's right. You know, I think
that was the foremost thing that was it's
probably hard to notice in the moment, but
looking back
now, you know, it it really it really
unified our community in a way I haven't
seen a lot of things do. One One
of the other impacts was it was, it
was exhausting.
We all had our regular lives and then
we had this other really enormous thing
happening over the top of it.
And, and it was, it was true. It
was hard to juggle all of it. Like
I said, I wasn't even one of them
really out on the front lines, you know,
every
day applying the pressure. And I still felt
sort of the juggling act that was trying
to do this in addition to your responsibilities
as a student, as an educator. We were
dealing with some pretty heavy stuff, and then
the bell would ring. Those kids would leave,
and my ninth graders would come in. Know,
and I had to get ready to teach
Shakespeare.
And so it was great to have a
lot of people working on it so that
if if you couldn't get to it that
day, there were other people that that could
continue to apply pressure. I think the the
strength in numbers really helped keep it moving.
And I think it's I think it's also
exhibit a in
how when we work collectively and collaboratively
that it doesn't have to be one person
carrying
the the entire burden themselves that we distribute
that and people step in and out as
they can. And I would actually say that
I would offer that perhaps the role you
played maybe is a little bit larger
than than you feel
because
the importance of bearing witness and teaching people
how to bear witness to things that are
happening is just like
it's so precious. Did it shift anything in
you as a teacher or change any you'd
you you were already a pretty experienced teacher
by the time this happened. But
was there anything
that you thought shifted
in your identity as a teacher at this
time? I think it opened my eyes to
some experiences that I wasn't fully aware of
before, you know, things that my students and
their families had navigated their whole lives that
I just couldn't couldn't comprehend. You know, when
I was doing all this, somebody recommended I
read a book called Enrique's Journey by Sonia
Nazario. And, you know, in the introduction to
her book, she says something along the lines
of, you know, perhaps perhaps learning one child's
experience
will open readers' eyes to to a much
larger issue.
And her book was amazing, number one. And
then I I saw a lot of those
same parallels as I watched and learned of
one
Riverside student's journey in and out of of
our immigration system as well. It's so powerful.
And, folks, like, one of the things that
it just felt so appropriate
to
share this story
is that,
you know, I think the humility
that you're expressing right now, it's it's really
powerful because it's it's that I just need
to know more, and I just need to
open my eyes to things that are happening
and always be receptive to learning. I think
we never know everything. We always have an
opportunity to have our
perspectives broadened, and I think that's kind of
what you're,
what you're showing us today.
Alright. Let's talk a little bit about the
book. How did the book come about? You
had mentioned when we first met
that
I did not set out to write a
book,
did not set out to do this. Although
you're an English teacher, so I I feel
like the writing bug was somewhere rattling around
there. Right?
What was it
that kind of led you
to agree to document the story? And then
what is it that you hope
will come of this effort by you and
your community?
Yeah. I think my students very much led
me to this story when we were covering
it. And then I think
their refusal to write the book themselves
led me back to it.
I I I wrote a little bit about
You should write this, mister. Mister, you should
write this. Yes. Quite quite the opposite, actually.
But, you know, I I had written a
little bit about
I'd written some things about what happened for
some different teacher outlets. You know, I did
a I did a series of blog posts
for the National Council of Teachers of English,
you know, about
about the the student advocacy. It was called
when learning gets personal. And, and then I
wrote a p I wrote a feature for
learning for justice. It was teaching tolerance back
then,
titled Walking Undocumented
when,
you know,
after things had played out. And, I had
done some writing about it. And,
through doing those pieces, I really felt like
there's a book. There's a book here. You
know, local and national media covered things as
they happened. And, you know, Wheldon had done
some media appearances, but nobody had told the
story in one place.
And, you know, I felt like my students
were the people that that could do it.
So I was bugging I bugged them saying,
like, you need to write like, you need
to write it all. Like, tell the whole
story.
And they were starting college. They they had
their lives had moved to different places. And
I think eventually they got tired of telling
me, we're not gonna do a miss C.
Like, we're just we're not gonna do it.
And then I happened to be at a
conference,
journalism, like a scholastic journalism conference in January.
It was March 2018.
I was presenting
about how to run, how to advise a
bilingual student
publication, even if you're not bilingual, because I'm
not.
And so it was, you know, it was
a classroom full of
students and some journalism educators.
And a former student and I were co
presenting it, and we were talking about sort
of like the mechanics of what it looks
like. And then we were sharing some of
our, like, impactful stories or when when it
felt impactful to to have bilingual coverage. And
Wilden's arrest was one of those examples. You
know, it was it was one slide of
probably 15 in our, you know, thirty five
minute presentation.
And we had a lot more we wanted
to say with the remaining time. But when
we got to that slide and then when
we moved on, hands started shooting up around
the room. And kids wanted to know, like,
what happened to this guy? And so we
started answering questions, and just more questions kept
coming. And
but it it kinda derailed our presentation,
but it also validated to me that idea
of, like, okay. Like, there's a story to
tell here to an audience wider than than
our local community.
So it was around that time when,
you know, I kinda told the kids. I
said, I think I think I wanna take
it on if you're not going to. And
then I reached out to Wilden, and he
was supportive of the idea. And then we
we started meeting for a lot of coffees,
and he started, you know, telling me a
lot of things. I'm just looking at some
of the pictures you shared, and one of
them is, in fact, the two of you
sitting having coffee. That's awesome. And,
I hope that later in life, students will
center
the fact that they have stories to tell.
But, you know, I I just really have
so much appreciation for you,
you know, saying that, no. This story should
be told. You should tell it. But then
if you don't tell it, how are we
gonna get this story out here? What is
it that you
hope? What's the brightest timeline for this book,
and its impact? I I think a lot
about where I'm from and
just how far removed it's it feels sometimes
to,
just how far removed this issue
can feel from from some communities.
And I don't think it means that people
don't care.
Sure. I think that they just I think
there's more to be learned. And I would
really love for for this story to
to just
elevate the conversations
we're having about immigration
and
to make them a little bit more informed.
I don't know if it's going to change
minds. People seem to be pretty set.
But I do think that they could have
a more informed and nuanced conversation
if if they really learn what happened
to this kid,
you know, at at this moment.
Yeah. And I would really
I I love that takeaway, and I would
really
encourage that to be the mindset
of anybody
as they pick up this book and and
share it with others.
So we are not in 2016
anymore. We're in 2025.
And
I think a person would have to be
under a rock to not realize that what
Willdan experienced
was being experienced continuously
even before, during, and after his arrest. But
now
it does feel like there's a renewed determination
and fewer of the checks and balances
that that were activated,
on Wilden's behalf.
What did you learn from this event and
from telling this story, and how do you
think they might be able to inform
our actions as educators going forward in a
challenging time?
I think the first thing I learned was
that
whether it was 2016 or whether it's now,
like people still have rights. The more you
know and understand those rights, the better equipped
you are to navigate things that that may
come up. A lot of what I learned
is, is, is starts with education
And, you know, peep people need to know
what's true and what's not. People don't know
need to know, you know, what the rights
are. And I think that that that's number
one.
The other thing I really learned from this
as it and I think it applies to
advocacy work in general is, I think, you
need to
know the whole system.
And then maybe even more importantly, you need
to know your place within that system.
You need to know what's above and below
you, and you need to know
where to go next
so that so that that it can work
its way.
The book's about immigration, but I think that
could be anything. You know, if if a
student needs something and and you wanna try
to meet that need, but you can't do
it yourself
Yeah. Then
you can always just make a phone call
and and get it done.
But you can make a phone call to
someone who then can make a phone call,
and it, you know, it it can play
its way out that way.
You know, I I couldn't call president Obama,
but, you know, we learned who to contact
that eventually
could perhaps
get in his ear.
And and so I think knowing where we
were at in a very complex system allowed
us to to move through the system
and,
you know, eventually get to the people
that we needed to get to.
You know, my students ended up briefing Congress
on the issue.
And so
over the course of many weeks, you know,
I got to see that happen in real
time. And
that's a blueprint that I have I have
used
again and again to try to to try
to help kids out, you know, with whatever
they need. That's that's so spot on. And
when you talk about understanding where you are
within a system, it's also a like, and
I think I this is what I hear
you saying, is is recognizing who the people
are, right, that you have access to
that can start to move the needle. And
then the other piece of it I hear
is, and
wherever you are, it's also about identifying what
tools you have at your disposal.
So
I would like to think that my high
school drama teacher,
if something like this happened, would have said,
you know, we're not lobbyists and we're not
elected officials, but we can put on a
play that tells a story. Right? And we
have these tools at our disposal. I think
it's just so spot on for your students
and for you to to recognize
a moment and saying,
we have a tool and we have a
mechanism by which to
act,
and why don't we start there? And I
love hearing that this has become
a template
for your work kinda going forward. And I
think that'd be my takeaway, y'all, is how
it's easy to feel like we're really powerless
in the midst of a lot of things
that are happening right now. But wherever we
are, we've got tools. They may not be
the best tools. They may be a little
rusty. We may not even we may be
like, mister Christopher
and feel like maybe we're not even the
best people be wielding these tools.
But here we are. We have them, and
how do we do something together? And the
power of students, man, just like
anything
student voice and student leadership
related just makes my heart sing.
And,
you know, you didn't really mention anything like
this in in the conversation,
but one thing that I would also say
is that trusting student voice and trusting students
to process through
difficult
situations and following the students,
that's an act of bravery that there are
some educators that don't don't engage in that.
And I say that without judgment.
But I think that also is a really
important part that you played,
in the big picture of the story. Sometimes
it takes a little leap of faith. But
when I do try to relinquish control, you
know, more often than not, the students really
surpass my expectations.
And, it's amazing
the answer they get to questions from adults
that adults wouldn't give other adults.
I don't know if it is the lack
of context or the lack of background, but,
you know, there were moments where elected officials
would tell me, you know, well,
immigration is a very complicated,
you know, system and it's,
we have a, we have a long history
of trying to best serve, you know, undocumented
students and, you know, yeah, this and that,
like a little bit of company line, I
understand it. You know, like I, as an
adult,
I understand where he's coming from. But a
17 year old doesn't. And so they'll just
ask the question again. They're saying, Yeah, but
why can't he graduate? And and it's amazing
how quickly that exposes some of some of
some of these injustices.
I think sometimes that unfiltered,
you know, reactive approach can sometimes really spur
action. And if they have an adult to
kind of guide them and,
and sort of provide resources and context and
support, like, I think it can be really
powerful.
Dang, Brian. You make me miss teaching.
So where are people gonna be able to
find the book?
And then how do people engage
with your work? I did find the blog
post in question, When the Learning Gets Personal.
So I'm gonna link that in, the show
notes. Y'all gotta really read this and, also
stumble across some other writings that you've done.
But how do people support your work? So
the book's available at all major booksellers online.
Direct to the publisher, Bloomsbury.
It's available on Amazon. It's available at your
local bookstore.
Indie Bound is a great online resource that
you can order it online and and your
you can you can link your local bookstore
and they'll, you know, they'll get proceeds from
that sale. It's a great way to support
your local shop. The, the journalism program that
I advise, The Pirate's Book, you can check
us out at thepirate'sbook.com
or at the pirate's book on social media.
My own writing is at brianchristopher.com.
It's Brian with a Y.
And then, I'm on social media
briancristo
and then the number four. On, BlueskyIndex.
Oh, I see what you did there. Yeah.
That's it. It's too long, right? It's 11
letters in my last name. Christopher. And then
on Instagram, it's
bchristo and the number four. I can send
all those to you if you wanna add
it to the notes. Yep. And we will
also put that in there. I just pulled
up, the pirates. So wow. School newspaper has
changed since I was on the school newspaper
staff. It looks great.
Brian, Chris, for When I was doing school
newspaper, we were
we were still getting pages back individually, and
we'd have to stack and fold before we
deliver.
Oh, wow. So we had the wax machine.
Like, you remember the I don't maybe I'm
older that much older than you, but there's
that wax machine where you had to print
things, cut them, run them through the machine,
and then paste them down. Did you do
that? I think our school was a little
fancier, and so they had them that they
paid extra to just to get the to
get them precut, and we just fold it.
That's so funny. No. We had to, like,
we had to do all the layout, and
then we would take it to a printer,
and then would they, like, print it. But
that's amazing. Okay. I think we got like,
we were really excited when we got PageMaker.
Like, that was really cool. And we're, like
Yes. Wait.
PageMaker was there when I when I started.
So I must've I must've missed it. It
was on one or two of the computers
that happened to exist in my school at
that point. So
that's amazing.
Well, Brian Christopher, thank you so much for
joining me on the show tonight. This is
an incredible story, and,
let's have you back on when,
you know, when we start getting feedback on
the book and stuff like that. I'm even
sort of reflecting on the possibility of doing,
a Tudo book club around this one. And,
you know, we tried to do that years
ago, but I was teaching. I did not
have the bandwidth to manage that. But folks,
get the book.
Follow Brian's work. We'll have it in the
show notes. And, Brian, just thank you for
joining us on two Dope Teachers and a
Mic.
It's a pleasure to be here. I really
like the show. I love the conversations you
have and and the perspectives you bring to
the to the different topics, and, I just,
I'm glad I could contribute. Well, welcome to
two Dope Nation, sir. And, and folks, everyone
out there,
it's hard times right now. We're going through
it. We're struggling. We're experiencing
barrier after barrier,
high levels of discouragement in in communities and
in schools and with kids. But
always know that you always have the opportunity
to stay healthy. So stay healthy out.