Episode 17 - School Leadership, Student Belonging & Culture Change with Dr. Whitney Hegseth
New Podcast Episode: School Leadership, Student Belonging & Culture Change with Dr. Whitney Hegseth
What would it look like if our schools were built around the belief that children are capable, inherently good, and worthy of meaningful agency?
In a powerful new episode of the Build a Better World Podcast, Ashlieya sits down with Dr. Whitney Hegseth, assistant professor of educational leadership at the University of La Verne and author of the forthcoming book, Just Talk to Us Normally: A Leader’s Guide to Organizing Schools That Elevate Students.
This conversation explores the systems, assumptions, and daily practices that shape how young people experience school—and what educational leaders can do to create more equitable, respectful, and humanizing environments.
Meet Dr. Whitney Hegseth
Dr. Hegseth’s work centers on educational policy, systems-level change, and educational leadership. At the University of La Verne, she supports practicing educational leaders—from teacher leaders to school and district administrators—as they conduct action research in their own communities.
That work can take many forms. Some leaders are exploring how to strengthen parent belonging and engagement. Others are supporting teacher confidence, examining harmful bias, or building more culturally responsive learning environments where students feel recognized, included, and valued.
As Dr. Hegseth explains, meaningful educational change is not limited to test scores or academic outcomes. It also includes the conditions surrounding students: whether they feel safe, represented, listened to, challenged, and welcomed in the communities where they learn.
A Conversation About School Culture
Throughout the episode, Ashlieya and Dr. Hegseth consider how school culture is created—and how it can be changed.
Dr. Hegseth shares that effective change requires leaders to look beyond individual behavior and consider the systems around it. Rather than assuming a student, parent, or teacher is simply “the problem,” school leaders can ask larger questions:
What patterns keep repeating in this environment?
What policies, practices, routines, or expectations may be reinforcing those patterns?
Whose perspectives are being centered?
Which students have meaningful autonomy, and which students experience greater control or compliance demands?
How can leadership teams align their daily systems with their stated values?
This systems-level perspective is at the heart of Dr. Hegseth’s work. It encourages leaders to move from reacting to isolated challenges toward intentionally shaping the culture of a school or organization.
Children Are Capable and Good
A central premise of Dr. Hegseth’s book is simple but profound: children are capable and good.
Too often, young people are underestimated simply because they are young. Those assumptions can be compounded by race, gender, socioeconomic status, disability, and other aspects of identity. When adults begin from a deficit-based view of children, the structures they create may focus too heavily on compliance, control, and correction.
But when educators begin with the belief that children have insight, ability, and a desire to contribute, different possibilities emerge.
That does not mean children do not need adult guidance, protection, boundaries, or instruction. Instead, it asks adults to thoughtfully balance those responsibilities with opportunities for student voice, autonomy, and participation.
Dr. Hegseth describes this balance through the framework of mutual respect. In a healthy educational environment, respect is not merely obedience or deference to authority. It also involves examining power differences between adults and young people, creating space for student agency, and ensuring that every learner can see a path toward belonging and success.
Equality, Equity, and Student Agency
The conversation also distinguishes among equality, equity, and autonomy—three priorities that are all important, but do not always align perfectly in practice.
Equality may mean that all students have access to an important shared learning experience, such as studying a major historical event. Autonomy may mean students have meaningful choice in how they learn, what books they read, how they demonstrate understanding, or who they collaborate with. Equity recognizes that different students may need different supports in order to fully participate and thrive.
For educators, the challenge is not choosing one of these values forever. It is recognizing which value needs to be foregrounded in a particular moment.
Creating equitable learning environments requires intentional decisions. It may involve expanding the voices, histories, and perspectives represented in the curriculum. It may involve making sure students receive the individual support they need. It may also mean helping students see themselves as contributors—not merely as recipients of instruction.
Classroom Management or Compliance?
One of the episode’s most important questions asks: At what point does classroom management become more than coordination and structure? When does it become training for compliance?
Classrooms need routines, boundaries, and organization. Students benefit from predictable expectations and adults who can create calm, safe environments. At the same time, Dr. Hegseth encourages listeners to think critically about what forms of “respect” and obedience are being taught, to whom, and under what conditions.
Historically, different groups of students have often been offered very different school experiences. Some students are encouraged to be curious, independent, and outspoken, while others—particularly students from marginalized backgrounds—may encounter educational settings that emphasize obedience and control more heavily.
The goal is not to eliminate guidance or dismiss the importance of navigating the real world. Rather, it is to ensure that young people also learn how to question systems, advocate for themselves and others, and participate in improving the communities around them.
Learning Through Comparison
Dr. Hegseth brings an international comparative education perspective to her work. Having taught in France, San Francisco, and Singapore, and conducted research in classrooms in the United States and Canada, she understands that there is no single model for teaching and learning.
Her invitation is not to compare schools or countries merely to declare a winner. Instead, comparison can help us see our own assumptions more clearly.
When we encounter a different approach to classroom structure, school leadership, student autonomy, parent engagement, or teacher support, we can ask ourselves:
Why do we assume school has to work this way? What other possibilities are available to us?
This is especially important in the United States, where educational experiences can vary dramatically among public, charter, private, Montessori, International Baccalaureate, Catholic, rural, suburban, and urban schools.
Looking across these systems can help leaders identify what is not working in their own setting and consider how existing supports—curriculum, coaching, professional development, leadership structures, and schoolwide routines—could be adjusted to better reflect their values.
About the Book
Dr. Hegseth’s new book, Just Talk to Us Normally: A Leader’s Guide to Organizing Schools That Elevate Students, offers a reflection tool for current and aspiring educational leaders.
Written for those working at the teacher, school, and district levels, the book explores how leaders can assess the systems they already manage and strategically align those systems with the outcomes they hope to create for young people.
The book is especially relevant for leadership teams, schools looking for meaningful professional learning conversations, and educators who want to build environments where students experience dignity, agency, belonging, and genuine opportunity.
Listen to the Episode
In this episode, you’ll hear Ashlieya and Dr. Hegseth discuss:
The journey from classroom teaching to educational research and leadership.
Quantitative and qualitative research in education.
Why student outcomes include more than academic performance.
How educational leaders can use action research to address real challenges in their communities.
The importance of parent belonging, teacher confidence, and culturally responsive spaces.
How schools can support student agency while still providing guidance, boundaries, and safety.
The difference between equality, equity, and autonomy in the classroom.
Why mutual respect matters in relationships between adults and young people.
How comparison across school systems can lead to more thoughtful educational change.
What leaders can do to identify and shift systems that perpetuate inequity.
Listen to the episode
Listen now to “School Leadership, Student Belonging & Culture Change with Dr. Whitney Hegseth” on the Build a Better World Podcast. Listen on your favorite podcast player or ad-free below.
And be sure to subscribe, share this episode with an educator or leader in your life, and join us for part two of this important conversation.
To connect with Dr. Whitney Hegseth or purchase her book:
Dr. Whitney Hegseth website: https://www.whegseth.com/
Just Talk to Us Normally: A Leader's Guide to Organizing Schools That Elevate Students on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Just-talk-normally-organizing-students/dp/0197833012/
Just Talk to Us Normally: A Leader's Guide to Organizing Schools That Elevate Students on VitalSource: https://www.vitalsource.com/products/just-talk-to-us-normally-whitney-m-hegseth-v9780197833025
Just Talk to Us Normally: A Leader's Guide to Organizing Schools That Elevate Students on Oxford University Press: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/just-talk-to-us-normally-9780197833018
Transcript:
Welcome to Builders of a Better World Podcast, a space for depth, clarity, and honest conversation, where presence matters more than performance. Let’s begin.
Ashlieya: Welcome back to the Build a Better World podcast, here to discuss all things building a better world. I am super excited because I feel like I just made a new friend, and I have an excellent guest for you today.
Her name is Dr. Whitney Hegseth, and I just absolutely adore her, and I hope you will too. Today, we have a brilliant episode for you that caters to and speaks to the devotion of an educator turned researcher who now works for a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant university, helping doctoral students, which is going to be me in a couple of months, and I’m so excited.
We’re going to discuss all things research-based pertaining to environmental culture, systems, and all the things that can help our kids learn most optimally—and what may be hindering that optimal learning. So stay tuned.
I’m so glad to have you with us, Dr. Whitney Hegseth. You are an assistant professor of educational leadership at the University of La Verne. Your work centers on educational policy, system-level change, and educational leadership.
Whitney: That’s correct.
Ashlieya: I’m so, so, so thrilled to have you. You are also a new author. Congratulations. I should say, she’s published many articles, all of which I really have enjoyed reading, and we are going to discuss those because I have so many questions about them, and I’m so excited.
Today, we’re going to focus on the book, and the book is titled Just Talk to Us Normally: A Leader’s Guide to Organizing Schools That Elevate Students. It is published by Oxford University Press and comes out next month.
Whitney: Yes.
Ashlieya: Congratulations.
Whitney: Thank you.
Ashlieya: Writing a book is no small feat, and this is your first full, published book, yes?
Whitney: Yes. I like to say it’s my first and last, but my husband would argue that he knows me better, and he thinks I have more in me. So we’ll see. The jury’s out.
Ashlieya: That’s beautiful. It’s beautiful to have the support as well. So your current role at the University of La Verne is assisting with educating doctoral students.
Whitney: That’s right.
Ashlieya: Do you want to tell us anything more specific about that?
Whitney: Sure. First of all, let me just say I’m so happy to be here. I’m so honored, so thank you. Thank you for this airspace.
At the University of La Verne, I teach current—and, in the past, I taught current and aspiring—educational leaders. At La Verne, they are all current practicing educational leaders. Some of them are teacher-level leaders, some of them are school-level leaders, and some of them are district-level leaders.
They’re all doing amazing work, and I am one of the lucky few who gets to support them in doing their own action research. Which is to say, in their respective settings, they’re identifying a problem that needs fixing, and they’re figuring out how best to address that problem. They’re thinking about how to systemically investigate that and make sure that they’re affecting the change and improvement they hoped they would.
Ashlieya: When you say problems, you’re specifically emphasizing, again, the measurable academic productivity of students, or can problems be something even beyond that?
Whitney: The problems really run the gamut. It’s much more expansive than that, which is wonderful.
Ashlieya: Yeah, sure. That makes it much more interesting. Can you give us a couple of other examples of what some might be?
Whitney: Oh, yeah. I mean, some of them—they’re just doing—I’m their biggest fan. Some of them are thinking about how to bring in parents and help parents feel a real sense of belonging in schools and parent-level leadership.
Some of them are thinking about ways to bolster teachers’ confidence in implementing a curriculum, managing their classroom, or what have you. Some of them are tackling really pervasive biases in schools and how to change those biases.
Many of them are tackling how to build more culturally responsive spaces where students feel a real sense of belonging—like they are represented and included, and we’re happy to have them there.
Ashlieya: Oh, that’s amazing. That’s so beautiful. Yes. Oh my gosh, we need more change systematically, culturally, environmentally—the conditions, settings, circumstances, all of that. It affects the way we are able to best show up for our students, execute our jobs. You know, I mean, it’s a whole thing from top down. Important.
So that’s fantastic. I adore you. I cannot tell you that enough.
Whitney: Oh, thank you. You know what’s funny is, I’m so honored to be on this podcast, and I know that it is for changemakers. I feel like I really am a supporter of the changemakers. The changemakers are my students, and I just feel lucky to be their biggest fan and support.
Ashlieya: That’s incredible. Thank you. I mean, yes. Like, yes, go. Yes. How can I support you in what you do?
Whitney: You’re giving me coffee, that’s great. That’s what we need.
Ashlieya: Yes! Oh, so good. Okay, amazing.
Of course, a very typical question—forgive however trite it may seem—but coming into doing what you do was quite the journey, right? I mean, to get to a doctoral program in and of itself and pursue that degree of education alone is something that requires quite a journey, self-discovery, and commitment.
One’s career as a student can be—I don’t want to say an uphill battle—but it can feel like that at times. How did you come to want to pursue a doctoral program yourself? Not many people do it.
You have a whole history around this research. You have this international perspective of culture in these different academic and educational environments. If you can—and you do not need to put this in a nutshell—can you give us somewhat of an understanding of what that pursuit was for you? You know, post-undergrad, what was that like stepping into all those different areas of expertise and commitment?
Whitney: Yeah. No, I appreciate the question. It was done with a lot of intention.
Ashlieya: Okay. And that’s my favorite word. I love that word.
Whitney: I love that. I could sense that.
And it really was. It was very intentional, even as I had no idea what I was doing. I’ll say more about that.
I am first-gen, and so I arrived at my undergrad, which was UC Berkeley, and had no clue what to major in. But eventually I bumbled my way into sociocultural anthropology and absolutely loved it.
Very quickly, I realized that within anthropology—which is studying how things are done around the world—I was most interested in schooling and children, and how that looks different in different places.
I grew up doing a lot of jobs to kind of pay my way through school and through life, and a lot of them were in the educational realm. I knew I loved it. It was just combining my academic interests with my professional interests. It was like, I want to keep gravitating toward children.
So I studied anthropology of education within undergrad. When I was an undergrad student, there was a professor—I was sitting in on Intro to Anthropology—and I was like, “Wow, this guy is really blowing my mind right now. I want to do what he does for other people. I want to be a professor.”
Because there’s not a lot of experience with higher ed in my family, I thought that to be a professor, you had to want to teach. It was all about teaching.
Ashlieya: Sure, sure.
Whitney: And so I finished school loving anthropology and education. I very intentionally wanted to try out being a teacher in a couple of different places with that in mind. So I taught in France for a while, and then I taught in San Francisco for a while.
Then I applied to PhD programs. I applied to two. I got rejected from one, but admitted into the master’s program, and then admitted to another one that, again, was anthropology of education.
But what I learned in having conversations around which one to go to was that you don’t get into a PhD because you love teaching. You have to love research.
Ashlieya: Right.
Whitney: I was like, “Why? I have no idea. I have no idea whether I like research.” So I was like, “I better do the master’s first.”
I did a master’s in international comparative education. Then I was like, “Okay, well, now I need to figure out if I love research.” So I spent a couple of years doing professional research, which brought me to different states and educational contexts all across the country. I was based in the Bay Area when I was doing that.
I really enjoyed it, and so I was like, “Okay, I do want to do the PhD.” But I missed the classroom because there’s this constant tug between supporting within the classroom and supporting around the classroom.
So I did another teaching gig before I went back to school. I taught in Singapore, and then I started graduate study.
Ashlieya: Oh my gosh.
Whitney: I did that, and as part of my dissertation—which eventually led to the book—I did participant observation, which I can explain. But I was basically a teacher’s assistant in classrooms in both the U.S. and Canada as well.
So, all sorts of experiences. But I did confirm at the end of it that I love both research and teaching. I’ve realized with time that I’m a teacher first and foremost. Part of me always wants to be teaching in a third-grade classroom. In a perfect world, I would be half in a third-grade classroom and half doing exactly what I’m doing at the University of La Verne.
Ashlieya: Oh my gosh, that’s so beautiful and very eloquently stated.
Whitney: Oh gosh, thank you.
Ashlieya: That was excellent. You’re a pro.
Whitney: It was not that eloquent when I was living it, but in retrospect, I got clearer.
Ashlieya: Very good. I mean, you know, hindsight can be an advantage. Reflection.
Whitney: Yeah.
Ashlieya: Reflection, reflection, introspection.
I would really like to highlight how research works in higher education, especially because there’s quite a difference between research-based and how that gets conducted in a PhD program versus a doctoral program. I would really love for you to speak about that, and also the particular type of research that you did when you were first getting into it.
What’s the process like in establishing measurable outcomes in education? It’s a very specific subject, and it’s very important for a lot of things. Can you speak to expanding on a bit of that?
Whitney: I should be able to, because in theory I teach this.
Ashlieya: Right? Very good.
Whitney: There are a lot of different types of research. Briefly, you could categorize them in a lot of different ways. One way to break it down is more quantitative studies, which is dealing with numbers.
A lot of times, when we see that in education, we think about, if we do this thing in schools, will that bolster student outcomes? Whether it’s students’ scores on standardized tests, students’ ability to enroll in college, or what have you.
Ashlieya: Right, student participation, parent participation—like, these things that make sense.
Whitney: Yeah, yeah.
Ashlieya: Okay.
Whitney: Absolutely. I predominantly have done qualitative research, which is more about the lived experiences that are happening in and around schools. If you’re thinking about educational change and improvement, it’s asking more questions of, “Well, how, and under what conditions, and for whom?”
Through talking to people, interviewing people, observing people, and showing up to their spaces for a long time, you begin to tease out the nuance of that.
Ashlieya: Sure, sure. Have you been able to—listen, it’s all fine, here we go. I’m going off, I can feel it. No.
Because you have your education in anthropology, and you have that sort of passion, and you have this international view of different aspects of educational environments and systems, I’m not going to ask where the U.S. falls in the realm of—right, like that’s not where I’m going with this.
But are there specific programs that you’ve been a part of in France or Singapore that are doing things really well for a very particular reason, or due to a very particular systematic thing? Is there something that they’re just excelling at that maybe we could ideally kind of emulate in some way?
Whitney: Yeah. Well, there’s a lot to be said there. It’s a great question.
I studied international comparative education, and so it depends on the metric that you’re focused on, right? You could look at where students are achieving the highest. Where are students the happiest? In which countries is there a smaller gap between the students who are faring the best and the students who are faring the worst—which is to say, they’re more equitable?
Ashlieya: Sure.
Whitney: And so, there are a lot of different things that you could look at, and it kind of depends on the person who’s doing that comparing and what their interest is.
Ashlieya: Yes, yes.
Whitney: A drum that I beat in my book and elsewhere is that, regardless of your own personal focus, I think it’s very important to compare. For me, we compare not to compete or to say who’s the best or who’s the worst.
Rather—and this is the anthropology side of me—when you are looking at teaching and learning in a different setting than you’re used to, it really helps you hold a mirror up to your own assumptions around what teaching and learning should look like and how we should teach children.
I walked into my graduate program already being an international comparative researcher and educator. I had taught and researched in a couple of country contexts at that point. I had some very helpful mentors who were like, “That’s wonderful, Whitney, and also, you are in a country, the United States, that prides itself on local control of schooling. There’s a lot of variety within this country too.”
So my research now is not only comparing across different national contexts, but also there are a lot of different systems within the United States and elsewhere. You have traditional public schools, and they could be very different based on if they’re urban, suburban, or rural, for example.
You have a whole smattering of charter schools, which run the gamut. You have Catholic schools, Montessori schools, and International Baccalaureate schools.
What I like to say is, I certainly am not a person who could tell you which one is the “best.” It depends on what you’re looking for.
Ashlieya: Absolutely.
Whitney: But it is useful to look across them to get more clear-eyed on your own assumptions and values that you bring to the table in schools.
Ashlieya: Are you also then speaking from the perspective of what you project onto a child, or how your school systems are in some way labeling a child, or making assumptions about a child? Is that also a part of what you’re saying?
Whitney: Well, something that is a premise for my book—my book is called Just Talk to Us Normally.
Ashlieya: Yes, yes, yes.
Whitney: This actually relates perfectly to that, because a premise that this book rests upon is that children are capable and good.
Ashlieya: Yeah.
Whitney: It is my own bias and observation that we are in a society that chronically underestimates children just because they’re young. That’s even worse if their youth intersects with other aspects of their identity—based on race, based on sex…
Ashlieya: …socioeconomic…
Whitney: Right, all of those things.
I believe, and have seen, have witnessed, that children are very capable and very inherently good. What this book is showing is how leaders can change culture.
When I’m talking about culture change, I’m talking about how leaders can use their instructional supports—things like curricula, coaches, or professional development—how they can use all of those together to systemically improve the way we teach young people, but also how we perceive them.
Ashlieya: Beautiful. So it’s not necessarily exclusively for academically focused individuals. This is for any leader looking to expand, improve, or instill some type of guidance or information they’re trying to make an influence over a specific group of people. This book is for them.
Whitney: Yes, and I’m glad we’re talking about that, because actually, speaking of the journey to becoming a professor, it’s very hard to become a professor. I tried and failed a lot.
Within higher ed, you are incentivized to not write books, actually. You’re supposed to write quickly, again and again and again, and you’re primarily writing for other folks in universities.
Ashlieya: Right. Peer-reviewed articles.
Whitney: Yes. For several years, I was doing that writing, and I was also trying to get a job. Finally, before I actually got the job, I was like, “You know what? This book needs to be written. I’ve been wanting to write it for a while, and I don’t care if it’s incentivized.”
This book is for educational leaders. I’m not writing for folks in higher ed. They could stand to read it, but my audience is for leaders—whether they are a current leader or an aspiring leader, whether they are at the teacher, school, or district level, and whether they are in a public school or some other type of school…
Ashlieya: Homeschool programs…
Whitney: …of which there are many. Exactly.
Ashlieya: Yeah. I mean, this could be—yes, sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you—
Whitney: No, yeah.
Ashlieya: I mean, homeschooling is becoming very popular around this area anyway. I think it’s having more and more positive connotations with its outcomes. I think there’s a lot of area that’s being studied right now pertaining to the psychology aspect. Kids are quite happy in homeschool programs, speaking to a measurable metric that has specificity.
It’s been determined now that kids who are in these smaller groups—because, just to define for those who are listening, homeschool does not necessarily mean Mom and Dad teach the children. There are a variety of tutors or programs or systems that can help you find extracurricular activities that are a bit more recreational-focused, as well as all your standard, deemingly necessary academic curriculum focuses.
You can find these organizations that will give you a variety of offerings, and for a certain amount of money, which is really quite reasonable from my perspective, you can enroll your child in this program and someone else teaches your kid. It’s not you homeschooling your kid. Contrary to popular belief, that’s not necessarily what it is.
I don’t need to get into why kids in public school aren’t seeming as happy. My emphasis, however—and those listening to this podcast already know, if you have listened to previous episodes—I care very much about teachers modeling social-emotional literacy skills.
That’s important to me.
Whitney: It’s a great priority and value.
Ashlieya: Modeling, and that requires, at a systematic as well as cultural level, per each school or institution, that it is a policy and applied practice, with everyone on board, able to understand, articulate, and then model emotional literacy.
I personally witnessed that not happening. It’s something that I would really love to see change. Teachers happier doing what they’re doing, having all the necessary self-regulating, thriving in the environments in which they are leading and educating, and those that they report to are modeling the same. That’s something super, super, super important to me, which is a big reason why I have you on the show. It’s because it’s another opportunity for me to talk about it for whoever wants to listen.
Whitney: That’s great.
Ashlieya: I think it’s super important for us to love what we do and for us to perpetuate a healthy way of navigating culture, no matter where we are. What you do at home is your business, but I think vocationally, when we show up to work, we have an obligation to put our best foot forward.
As I talk about constantly, building the best world is building the best you. I would really, really love for things in public school systems around here to be more reflective of that kind of a value system and just a mindfulness of it.
Thank you for enjoying my tangent. Back to you and your—
Whitney: Oh, I love them. I love them.
Ashlieya: I’m like, this is it, it means a lot to me.
So, I want to talk more about your book, and I have some more questions. Prior to doing that, you did mention the sentiment that kids are capable of more.
It can be a fine line between walking the boundary—establishing a boundary, rather—because children require both a degree of protection, guidance, as well as agency, speaking to your point. Where would that boundary be between ethical adult authority and being an influence versus having a semblance of what could be called domination?
That’s hard to—I mean, I haven’t read your book. I really look forward to doing so. Do you speak about how to do that, how to really walk the line between not being overly dominant and the how to allowing the child agency? Like, what’s the…
Whitney: No, it’s a great question. I will say, this book is based on research that I conducted back in 2017 and 2018. I’ve written about that research in a lot of different ways—articles, policy reports, creative nonfiction pieces, op-eds. I’ve written a lot.
One iteration has been something that I care very much about: this idea of mutual respect.
Ashlieya: Yes, yes, yes.
Whitney: Which I define—and it’s not just me; it’s based on my research and everything I read—this work of disrupting power asymmetries, so imbalances between adults and young people, but also among young people.
Ashlieya: Sure.
Whitney: Right? Because in our society, there are a lot of different hierarchies and asymmetries. But this work is challenging exactly for what you’re pointing out here, which is that children don’t have as much lived experience as adults.
So how do we protect them and teach them, and also give them ample opportunities for freedom and autonomy?
Ashlieya: Yes.
Whitney: In previous writing, I’ve talked about different dimensions of mutual respect. For example, I talk about autonomy, equality, and equity. Those are all really important priorities in a classroom.
For example, what equality could look like is, “I want all of my students to learn about the Holocaust. That’s an important thing for them to learn about. We’re going to have an equal experience learning about this historical event.”
Autonomy is, “I want my students to have some choice and voice over their projects that they’re completing.” Maybe they can pick the book that they’re reading, the way that they present that book, or who they work with around that project.
Then equity is, I want to make sure—equity means a lot of things—but it could mean different people need different things, and “I want everyone to get the supports that they need and deserve.”
It also could mean there have been dominant voices and perspectives in our schools, and we want to make sure that other voices are also represented, and that every student in this classroom sees themselves and sees a path for success.
Ashlieya: As a contributor, yes.
Whitney: Right. You can imagine that, as the teacher, if you’re trying to prioritize that equity—which is really important—that might mean that you have to withhold some opportunities for autonomy or freedom for the students.
Ashlieya: That’s so well said.
Whitney: All this to say is that the work of educators is so challenging for so many reasons, and this is just adding onto the pile: there are these very real priorities, and sometimes they conflict with one another.
We need the time and space to be able to think about which priority we are foregrounding right now, and when it is time to change to a different priority.
To circle back to your question, which I promised I was going to answer, in the book itself, I’m not talking about mutual respect per se, but one case that I talk about at length is the Montessori school system.
It’s not trademarked, so anyone can call themselves Montessori, and that’s important to know. I’m talking about the accredited Montessori.
Ashlieya: Okay.
Whitney: A key priority within Montessori is respecting and fostering independence in young people and autonomy. I do show in detail all the ways that they scaffold and support that so that children can do it while also being safe, while also being humanizing community members, and while also learning everything they need to learn to be successful in their next steps.
Ashlieya: Brilliant.
Whitney: So yes, is the short answer.
Ashlieya: That’s brilliant. No, that’s so excellent. That leads me to—especially for girls, because you’re speaking some about classroom management. There are aspects of this in making these decisions that will influence how you structure your lessons and how you, in some way, instill a semblance of practices for raising hands, how things get navigated, right?
There’s a structure that prevents a semblance of chaos. It’s organized. Classroom management, right? At what point does classroom management cease to be more about that type of coordination and more about training in compliance?
My question is, what might habitual obedience prepare a child to tolerate later in life, especially as a female?
Whitney: That’s such a great question. There are so many soapboxes I could get on.
Ashlieya: Pick one, and we’ll let it fly.
Whitney: Right. Actually, in the reading I’ve done around respect, previous scholars from a long, long time ago have talked about respect as deference and respect as obedience. I intentionally gravitated toward respect as symmetry and challenging that.
That said, we do need to be mindful of this, right? Different forms of respect are needed across different contexts. If you are a Black or Brown youth and you have been in a school setting where you’ve been taught to challenge authority figures, and then you are on the street and there’s a police officer on the street, in this era of police brutality, that’s really complicated, right?
There’s a lot of nuance to all of this. But I will say that many great researchers who came before me have observed that there are lots of different types of schooling, and the schooling that really tries to instill obedience tends to be for Black and Brown and otherwise marginalized youth who are in those types of schools, whereas schools with white and otherwise privileged children get more autonomy.
It’s not created equally in our system, and different students are getting different experiences. It’s really important to compare and to pay attention to that and think critically around our—yes, in some spaces, we need to teach obedience and teach how to live in society. We also need to teach how to change that society for the better and how to critically question and examine it.
Ashlieya: Correct. You’ve done a fair amount of work on being able to identify anti-racist systems. Can you speak to giving advice if there’s someone—a leader in a community—that is struggling to establish that sense of equity? How would you advise them to proceed? Do you have a nugget of wisdom that you could bestow?
Whitney: You know, the longer you dwell in higher ed, the less certain you become. I’ve been trained to not have any opinions.
But actually, I think something that you advocate for in your podcast is really important, which is the ability to reflect and focus on yourself and your own wellness, and pause and think, “I need to be well so that I can come to this space with eyes wide open.”
Start talking to people about their lived experience and really listening to a lot of different types of people—especially young people, especially their families—and really recognize that… this is a blanket statement I’ll make: we tend to blame individuals in our society and in our schools, and it’s not the individual’s fault; it’s the systems built around.
Figuring out systemically how some of these things keep happening and how we can change those systems.
Ashlieya: Right. The perpetuation through the systems, identifying what is perpetuating this—that’s beautiful.
Is there a suggestion you have for how to do that? How to identify a system that perpetuates that which you’re trying to remedy or reframe? Or have a discontinuation of something being produced? Do you have recommendations for how to identify that without hiring a professional to come into your workplace and go over affirmative action-based practices? Apart from that, do you have advice?
Whitney: Well, this is back to what I was saying earlier. I do really see the power of comparison, and you see that across all of my work. You see that in the book.
Ashlieya: Very much.
Whitney: If we compare across different types of schools and different school settings, different systems within the U.S., and different national contexts, we become more clear-eyed around things that maybe are and are not working in our own setting.
With that, we then can think about… you know, the whole book talks about our systems that we have in a given educational context. We already are doing the work of managing that system, but with that clarity, how can we tweak it, align it, and think really strategically about system-level supports to work towards a desired change?
Ashlieya: Sure. Do you have an interest—is it a goal of yours, upon publishing, to consult in that kind of a way? Is that an aspiration for you? Because it sounds like you’d be really good at it.
Whitney: Oh, that is so nice. I really hope—like I say, I was kind of defying the incentive structures that I’m faced with in higher ed by writing this book for leaders versus writing it for scholars. My biggest hope is that this book is a useful reflection tool for them.
I know that a lot of schools that I’ve worked with in the past always have a summer reading book, and they sit and they think and dwell on how they could apply that book and its lessons to their own practice.
That is the hope: that this book—and me, if I’m along for the ride—can help coach leadership teams in examining their own supports, examining their own values, and figure out how to align those supports to work towards those values for young people.
Ashlieya: I love that. Oh my gosh, it’s amazing. So once again, the book is called Just Talk to Us Normally: A Leader’s Guide to Organizing Schools That Elevate Students, written by Dr. Whitney Hegseth, and it comes out in a month. NOTE: Release date is September 23.
Whitney: It does.
Ashlieya: That is so exciting. Do you have any idea, distribution-wise, where it will be accessible—how someone may procure their own copy?
Whitney: Yeah, thank you for asking. It is available for preorder on Amazon now. So it’s out there. Right now, as both a paperback and a hardback—go for the paperback. The hardback is for libraries; it’s too pricey.
And then also on VitalSource, you can access it as an e-book.
Ashlieya: Very good.
Whitney: Yep. And then you also can order it through the Oxford website. I should make a plug for that, but it’s somewhat of an archaic website. It’s pretty hard to order it on that one.
Ashlieya: Well, understood. Nonetheless, we’ll have all the links for you in the comments. So, if you’re interested in purchasing and securing your preorder, please do that now, as well as like, comment, and subscribe to this podcast.
We’re not finished yet, because I already warned you, we’re going to have a part two. So we’re going to go in a little bit longer, and we’re going to divide this into two episodes.
Thank you for joining us here at the Builders of a Better World podcast. Please share, subscribe, comment, and be sure to pass this episode along for anyone who may need it. See you next time.
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