[no audio] [program starts at 0:18] [no audio] [program starts at 0:18] - Well, this is wonderful.

Thank you so much for joining us.

And I see you are seated in pairs, so just a heads up, I will ask you to turn to your neighbor and talk in a few minutes, so make sure you have a friend sitting next to you.

But welcome, I am so excited to be here with you all today.

My name is Zamantha Granados and I am the partnerships manager at LatinxEd, which I can't wait to tell you all about.

I am also chair of the Hispanic Latino Action Coalition, which is an emerging coalition statewide.

So if you're interested in learning more, please find me after the session.

But, all right, I am so excited that you're here.

You are understanding that things in North Carolina are changing.

We have a lot of Latino students and families who need our support.

And so, let's talk about what we can do, every one of us in this room, to help advance LatinX student success.

Over this hour, we're gonna learn about the shifting demographics in North Carolina public schools.

We're gonna explore how the North Carolina education system and leaders within it can truly meet the diverse needs of Latino and immigrant families.

We're also gonna reflect on the challenges and the opportunities across North Carolina.

And take home a commitment statement.

We want each of you to commit to how you will transform your areas of influence.

My three asks for you today as you're thinking about these challenging issues and talking to your partner, would be to use your voice, ask questions, share from your lived experiences, your brain loves your voice more than it loves mine, and strive for progress over perfection.

We treat that as a mantra at LatinxEd, and that just means, make your best guess.

It's all good, uncooked thoughts are welcome.

And last but not least, be present, graceful and truthful, both with yourself and with others.

So before we dive in, I wanna let you know a little bit more about me.

So who am I?

I am a 2.5 generation immigrant, but what does that mean?

[Zamantha chuckling] That means my mother was born in LA, in California, and my dad was born in Guerrero, Mexico.

He fell in love with my mom very early on and immigrated to California to start a family with her.

Los Angeles, of course, is a very special place, far from here, and it is only one of two homes for me.

The other is Cutzamala de Pinzón, Mexico.

That's where my parents are from and where a huge chunk of my heart is.

And I'm curious, do any of you have a similar experience where some of your family is here in the United States and some family is in Mexico or another country?

That's right, so you might understand this feeling of [Zamantha speaking in foreign language] very well.

Another thing I am incredibly proud of is that I'm the oldest sister of four girls.

Any older siblings in the room?

Oh my gosh.

[audience chuckling] That is not a surprise.

We have so many older siblings at our nonprofit organization, and I just see it all throughout the state.

So keep killing it out there.

And here's another one that I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of us share.

Any first generation college students, college grads?

That's right, you are trailblazing.

Excellent.

So I am so blessed to have attended both Duke and UNC Chapel Hill.

I got a bachelor's and a master's in public health, and that has informed a lot of my work and community building strategies across the state.

I was also so incredibly, incredibly blessed to have joined the LatinxEd team right before we kicked off our SomosNC Statewide Listening Tour, which I cannot wait to tell you more about.

[audience member cheering] And, let's underscore this last bullet here.

I am a leader.

- [Audience Member] Yeah, you are.

[Zamantha chuckling] And each one of us in this room is.

And I want you to sit with that for a minute because it's really at the core of what we do, and you'll see just how much it means to our work and to our community to recognize we are leaders.

So, throughout this presentation, think about this overarching question.

What leader are you?

How are you leading intentionally to deepen our impact?

And when you think of, our, you can think about your team, your organization, your department, your school, your county, or now this community that we're creating as you're meeting new people here.

So keep this in mind and think about the aspects you are most proud of in your leadership, the things that make you special.

What are you grateful for?

And no one person should have the same answer, right.

Those strengths, those bright spots in combination with one another is just incredible and we need to acknowledge that diversity in minds, diversity in experiences.

So, now to learn more about LatinxEd.

We are turning five years old later this year and we have this vision to co create and sustain education systems that recognize, meet and honor the diverse needs of LatinX immigrant and families.

We want both students, educators, families, and communities to truly feel seen, respected, and valued.

So we go deep into what that means and do our best to make sure that, you know, we're practicing what needs to be done to ensure that.

The two main ways we do it is, first, we focus on LatinX leadership development, developing Latina leaders, starting from a very young age, and increasing opportunity through post-secondary access supports, all in efforts of increasing education and equity for all.

What we do to help our Latino families to help immigrant families can actually help transform schools and communities for everyone.

I'm sure you can see that.

So now to tell you a little bit more about the impact we want to have, and specifically, how we want to achieve that change that change that we wanna see, is through a theory of impact.

We seek to reimagine and innovate systems that intentionally meet the unique needs of LatinX families.

To do so, we collectively invest in the growth and well-being of diverse LatinX education leaders in order to improve the educational outcomes.

Now, we have a star there with education leader and hope you all take the definition to heart.

An education leader is anyone who chooses to use their power and voice to advance educational equity and opportunity.

So it doesn't have to be in the traditional school system.

It's outside of school systems, anywhere in community if you're choosing to be that person speaking up, right, and improving the environment for everyone to learn.

So why do we do this work?

I'm gonna share with you a few statistics from across North Carolina to tell you just how important and urgent this work is.

You may have seen this data from the US census back in 2020.

We have more than 1 million people that identify as Hispanic or Latina, and I will use those interchangeably.

And this slide here shows how younger and younger generations are actually more and more Latino.

So in your classrooms, one in six children can be expected to be Latino, and the trends just show that that's gonna increase rapidly.

Another thing about our population, right, is that compared to most other race and ethnicities, we tend to have parents who have not attained a post-secondary degree.

Some have not attended high school.

This can be both parents and students, right, that are born in the US or have immigrated here.

There's a lot of things that play into it.

And part of what we do at LatinxEd is actually debunk some associations or myths related to who our population is.

One of those things, right, is that perhaps immigrants do come here with a post-secondary degree from another country, but can't align those credentials here.

So it gets tricky.

We wish we had data that disaggregates everything and tells a better story so that we could all work around it.

But, in essence, this shows there's a lot of work to be done.

The challenge is here, the population is here, we need to pay attention.

And there's a lot of opportunity there too and you are positioned to be those counselors, to be those coaches, to really help families understand the value of an education and how to make it happen.

And to increase accessibility, right, and help make sure that your institutions are opening doors to people regardless of their race, ethnicity, or documentation status.

Is this familiar to anybody in the room, 2 million by 2030?

All right, well, I'm super excited to share, this comes from my future NC and they're a partner that you have to jot down and learn more about.

But essentially, this is their call to action for all of us across the state to help North Carolina meet their educational attainment goal, which is to have 2 million people within the ages of 25 and 40 years old with a high quality credential.

Right now, we are facing an incredible workforce shortage that if we don't make moves on, we're gonna see gaps that might just be too drastic to try to fill.

So, we need those people to attend higher education, trade schools, community college, you name it, to be able to get those degrees that can then lead them to high-paying wages and fulfilling careers.

So, this is their call to action.

We all need to get in, get in and do what we can to make sure that young students coming out of high school see themselves as one of that 2 million, and even parents who may be interested in returning to school.

So at LatinxEd, we wanted to get closer to community and understand why is this sometimes difficult?

Why is this not always happening for everyone you know?

And so, we embarked on a year of listening and learning, our SomosNC Statewide Listening Tour.

It was super special to first make the statement that SomosNC, which translates to, We Are NC, that was our claim to say, we are here, we're not going anywhere, and we need to be, you know, included and uplifted in all, all places across the state.

We also were welcomed by so many who hosted us in person.

This was during the pandemic, so when we needed to, we also did a lot of interviews, focus groups, community round tables, online.

But when we got the chance to go out in community, boy, was it great to do that in partnerships.

We weren't too far from here.

We went to Blue Ridge Community College and Watauga County Schools, and you name it.

We traveled everywhere.

We spent maybe a month or two in each of these regions and really got close to the people who are doing the work and who are in need of these services.

Altogether, we had 36 of a hundred counties represented, and we truly learned so much, things that are not going as well as they could be and we saw so many bright spots.

And we were able to connect people who maybe are just down the street from each other, didn't know about the work or, you know, that they could work together.

And it was beautiful to start planting those seeds and making those connections so that they can then have more tools to better serve their students.

Another great result of this tour was a 30-page report, which I will be sure you all know where to find.

But, we essentially took all those transcripts, recordings, and boiled it down to four themes.

And as you see them on the screen, they may not be surprising, they may cause a little heartbreak, but it is what all of these voices said.

And that was that there is a chronic disinvestment in LatinX education.

There is cultural bias and social isolation in schools.

There's a felt absence of LatinX educators and leaders.

And, many real tangible barriers to post-secondary education.

[no audio] What does that look like?

I like to show this graph.

And if you look at the bars in red, it shows that only 3% of teachers across North Carolina identify as Hispanic or Latina, while 18% of the student body does.

So that's just an incredible disparity, and we hope that you understand and believe alongside us that those numbers need to match up.

Our educators, our administrators need to be representative of the students they serve.

I also have a few different notes here, but rather than you hear from me, I want you to get a taste of what this listening tour was like and I want you to talk to each other.

So, I'm gonna pull that slide back up, so you can use it as inspiration.

But my question for you is, please pair with your neighbor and share your reflections as you look at the state of education and think about your own journey, what connections do you see?

In the words of a SomosNC participant, right, perhaps you also wish debt was out of the question, and not necessary to go to school.

Perhaps you also want teachers and counselors that have a similar background as you.

Perhaps you need more tools that fit your learning style to be the best student, learner you can be.

So think about what connections you see to the stories of these Latina and immigrant families.

You may find that there are some commonalities.

I will give you five minutes to share, does this resonate with you?

Do you disagree with some of this?

What's missing?

[no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] You have one more minute and then I might ask somebody to share.

[no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] Awesome, let's bring it back.

I hate to be the one to stop juicy conversations.

It really means a lot to see you all engaged, thank you.

Is there a brave soul or someone who's just dying to say something?

Any aha moments, heartfelt moments when you met your partner, something that you bonded around, something that you see you share in common with, the voices of SomosNC participants?

[audience member commenting] [audience member commenting continues] [audience member commenting continues] [audience member commenting continues] [audience member commenting continues] In the whole county we're seeing, - I work with Latin families, but I'm seeing Arabic big families and African families that speak French.

And it's sort like, well, where do we find resources for them, right?

So where she's needing help with Latin resources, I'm over here, like, well, I can't speak French so what do I need to start doing to try to help these families that come in?

So yeah, it's a lack of resources.

- Thank you so much for naming that.

And you're exactly right, you're getting to the point where, while we are approaching this through the lens of Latino families, this really goes way wider.

I don't know how many languages are spoken in North Carolina.

You know, at most, some school districts may have information translated to maybe seven or a dozen of them, but we have a long ways to go to make sure everyone has access to this information, everyone feels welcome, represented, right.

And that just has so many impacts down the line.

Does anyone else wanna share?

I don't wanna cut anyone off.

[audience member commenting] - There is a mic up here.

[audience member commenting] - And the language access piece is huge.

That's why you may see in our slides, sprinkled in there some Spanish.

We also are very mindful, intentional of having fully Spanish presentations and communications for anyone who might need it.

But yes, it goes beyond language too, right.

There's things on this slide about having a curriculum that is reflective of that.

Are you bringing in storytellers, researchers of all different backgrounds, right?

Are you helping people also think about different careers, careers where there aren't a lot of Latina or black people represented, right?

Are you pushing young women to try things outside of the box?

It all is wrapped up in this vision and the mission that we have, to really transform educational spaces for all.

[no audio] And to sum up the portion of the listening tour, I want you to hear from Augusto Peña at UNCG.

And in his words, while there might be a lot of challenges going on, the answers might be staring at us.

You are the answer, right.

To him, "The answers are not difficult to find or out of reach.

The people who have been doing this labor, caring for and supporting our LatinX community, have been worrying about their children for generations.

They have been telling us the answers, we just have to listen."

[audience applauding] Right.

And that applies to everyone, people that are doing direct services, people that are in an office, you know, administrators, everyone has to lean in and listen and open those doors, so that they can understand what's going on, so that you're able to do something about it.

So, now I wanna walk you through what LatinxEd has done, how all of this informs our work, and this can serve as a model for what you can do with your teams.

So, how do we develop a collective impact strategy?

Well, at LatinxEd, we took all the challenges we saw, absence, isolation, disinvestment, barriers, and we had our From Dreams to Action moment.

So we thought about, what can we put into practice to improve these issues?

And so, we really now are focusing on these four key areas and expanding this in our work, starting with leadership development.

We need to expand recruitment, retention, and impact of current and future LatinX education leaders.

Post-secondary access.

We need to be sharing culturally relevant educational resources for LatinX families, education leaders, and institutions.

Storytelling and advocacy.

We are in the business of highlighting promising practices and leaders, advancing student success and the state of LatinX education.

And last but definitely not least, community impact.

How does this work, look in collaboration with others?

Well, that's when it's the strongest.

[Zamantha chuckling] And to do that, right, we work with people, provide expertise, advise, support, so that they can better connect with others in their network, have access to those resources you've been naming, and also support Latina students.

We love alliterations, educators, who doesn't.

[Zamantha chuckling] And so, we took this and we created our four A's, which really drive each one of us on the team.

So I'm gonna walk you through these and tell you more about our programs and our initiatives and how each of them reflect that we wanna advance leadership, advance pathways to opportunity, activate collective impact, and amplify effective policy and practice.

So for our first A, advance, we do this through our fellowship.

This year, we have two cohorts of adults.

They might be young professionals, more seasoned professionals, coming from schools, the nonprofit world, or all these allied fields.

We also have two cohorts of people within the ages of 13 to 23 this year, Meding and Carrie.

which is phenomenal because they need to understand the power in their voice too.

And what is beautiful about our fellowship as well is that we do this through building identity development, right.

We help people connect to their history and their lived experiences and help that inform how they show up as leaders.

Remember what I asked you all at the beginning, how are you showing up?

But through the coaching that they have over the months, and then the community that they have for years to come, we really help them hone in that vision, have the courage to use their voice, and the valor, right, bravery to walk into spaces that may not be welcoming, walk into spaces that need some tender love and care, and do something about it.

So, with the community, with the resources, with the technical assistance, we find that people like Jatnna Acosta say, "Hey, I recognize the transformative power of my story.

And now, I lean into the opportunities to represent my community and my culture.

So people hear me, people see me, and people like me."

I also want you to walk away with this incredible resource, which is a Community Cultural Wealth Model by Josso.

That is the framework that is really informing a lot of how we approach this work.

This can be applied to any race or ethnic group.

And it really talks about, hey, what do people bring with them into the classroom?

What do people bring into the workplace?

It can be any number of these things.

They bring linguistic capital.

Perhaps they speak more than one language.

They have aspirational capital.

They have the motivation to pursue big dreams, to be the first in their family to do it.

They have familial capital.

They have siblings, cousins, all these people across community who are teaching them something, connecting them with a credible resource, right.

For us, we think about how important family is too for our communities.

You don't go through the process of applying to college on your own.

It's a whole family ordeal, right.

Social capital, that's thinking about who you know, who is mentoring you, and you know how critical that is.

Navigational capital, when a door is closed, how do you find another way in, right?

Resistant capital, if the door closes again, [audience chuckling] [Zamantha chuckling] how do you keep on trying, you know, look for that other door?

And anywho, it gets much deeper than this, but it's just a sneak peek.

I'd love for you all to chat with me more about this later or look up Josso, and possibly even meet her in September, because we may have a very special guest at our summit, sneak peek.

[Zamantha sighing in anticipation] But let's move on to the next A, access.

We work to improve post-secondary access to two main ways.

One is our College y Consejos Program, which translates to College and Advice.

And the other is through UndocuCarolina, which started at UNC Chapel Hill.

And now Meredith College has also joined the team of ally trainers who really help support undocumented students and mixed status as families through the application process.

And, you know, small lesson here if you're not sure what mixed status means, it simply means you may have a parent who does have documentation, a parent who doesn't.

You may have a sibling who does, and another who doesn't, right.

And things might also change.

Maybe you started with a worker's permit and now moved on to another type of visa and all those things.

Or families can look like all kinds of ways, but it's important to understand all the roadblocks for each of them and how we may better support them.

This is an example of what our trainings look like, if you are interested in having a professional development surrounding any of these issues on how to create more inclusive, welcoming spaces for students of these identities, we are more than happy to come and share more about this.

But like I said, just a sneak peek.

And what we also do, right, is focus on training the trainers, so giving counselors tools so that then you can have more influence in your local communities.

That leads into activate pretty nicely.

And this is where I spend a lot of my time thinking and working, because this is our partnerships lane.

We are thinking about how do we bring more people to the table to help inform priorities, to help make decisions, and then to implement some transformative actions to make things better.

One of the ways we do it is through the Hispanic Latino Action Coalition.

So this was a beautiful concerted effort with, now, 10 people on a steering team team to really build bridges with others across the state that are in education, in economic and workforce development.

This is that place where we're trying to build cross-sector partnerships, and it really came from people saying, hey, what now?

Now that we had a conversation as part of this tour, I wanna, you know, get into it, work with somebody and do something about this.

And we've had a, you know, now over a year of very successful convenings and just incredible minds coming together to think about some of these things.

Now, this next piece is very important, and we also have our wonderful storyteller here from LatinxEd, so definitely get a chance to meet her.

She is behind a lot of these efforts to amplify effective policy and practice.

I do want you to walk away with as much knowledge as I can give you during this short amount of time.

So, we'll start with this main, [Zamantha chuckling] y'all know this.

[audience laughing] This might not be a new one for you, but this is one that we like to stand behind, and it's the Leandro Plan.

Does anyone wanna share what it is or where you might learn more about it?

Is it, mic?

Does someone need the mic?

Right?

It's okay.

I know y'all know.

[audience laughing] But essentially, right, it's this plan that's saying hey, by law we're supposed to be meeting these minimum standards of education, but why is it not actually happening in practice?

[audience member commenting] - Yes.

So, Every Child NC has done a great job at giving you more information about that and saying, hey, this is doable because there are a lot of funds that have not been used or have been misappropriated.

And let's just get our act together [Zamantha chuckling] and make these funds a reality for the communities and schools that need it the most.

Now, here's another one that you'll probably wanna snap with your phone.

These are only some, definitely not an exhaustive list, of all the incredible, promising practices and policies across the state.

These are your guides.

If you need more information, what's going on in the legislation, what's going on in schools, they offer a ton, a ton of information.

And also opportunities to be with like-minded peers, right, people who have your same profession, who are interested in doing similar things.

They probably each have a version of a coalition or something that you might very well see fitting for you and your community, locally.

So definitely check them all out.

Yeah, we're in the business of increasing partnerships and making sure that these wonderful people can continue to do the work that they do.

[audience member commenting] - Now, I did promise you a chance to join us in expressing your commitment to this issue, because it takes each one of us.

And we tried this on our team, and I have not forgotten about this activity since we did it as a team.

So I'm hoping you all call me a few months down the line and say, hey, we tried it.

Hey, this is what came out of it.

It was beautiful.

But this is a mad lib, you know, fill in the blank sort of exercise.

And I do want you to take a minute and write this down.

Just start to think about it.

You can use your phones or whatever you have.

But start to say, okay, where is my genius?

What do my lived experiences teach me?

How can I bring that leader that I am, right, into all these spaces?

Think about your role or your roles, if that's a sibling, parent, teacher, counselor, college president, whatever.

Think about your goal.

And make it a stretch goal, something that's gonna be a little hard for you to achieve.

Maybe just 5% out of your comfort zone, but think of a stretch goal.

And then the desired impact you wanna have in what you are able to control and what you're able to create or influence, what do you wanna achieve?

And last but definitely not least, be honest and reflect.

What is getting in the way?

Is there something holding you back from bringing your full authentic self, from pursuing that goal, from getting back to it after you were doing so great but then something happened and, you know, it just fell off the priority list?

But the idea is that you say, I commit to using my brilliance in order to deepen our collective impact in 2023.

As a partnerships manager at LatinxEd, I challenge myself to build partnerships with people who are aligned in values and commitment in order to have more leaders and more graduates.

To reach this goal, I commit to letting go of self-doubt, of fear.

Make this personal to you.

Put it up in your mirror if you need to but think about it and remind yourself each day, right, you can do it.

And people are here to see you, see you make it happen and support you along the way.

But if each one of us are able to do this, our commitment will lead to more leaders and more graduates, graduates from kindergarten, all the way up to high school, all the way up to whatever, [audience chuckling] you name it.

[Zamantha sighing] So this is big for us.

All right.

I saw everyone snap a photo, so I will move on to this next piece.

And, of course, it's another alliteration.

but this is also a take home for you and that is our three Is.

LatinxEd asks you to imagine, invest, and innovate.

Why?

Because radical transformation requires radical imagination.

We're not gonna do things the way we've always done them.

We have new challenges.

We need new solutions.

This investment piece is big because investments reflect values, culture, and missions, investments of money, time, attention, resources, whatever that investment means for you.

And last but not least, we love to say this, and if the SomosNC Tour doesn't embody it.

[Zamantha smirking] But, those closest to the problem are the closest to the solutions.

You have to be in conversation with people who are feeling it, who are going through it, you know.

You can't be having these backdoor conversations and decision makers miles, miles away from the people who are actually affected by the problem.

So open up those meeting rooms, open up those boardrooms, make sure you have that, you know, teacher of the year, that assistant principal, that principal in communication with the Parent Teacher Association President, and all of their parents, friends, you know.

You name it, just bring the whole group.

But that's really where you'll find that you get those radical ideas that can create some meaningful change for us.

And I do want to give you all a chance to share a few questions, and we're getting close to wrapping up.

But I have big announcements for you.

If you go to our website, you can find this beautiful, beautiful report and share it with everybody.

You can also print it both in English and in Spanish, and have conversations with your team about it.

If you want us to help facilitate some of that, please let us know.

But you'll see a lot rich information, data, and even some of our partners spotlighted in this report.

Last but not least, remember I said something big is happening in September.

[Zamantha chuckling] To kick off Hispanic Heritage Month, we are having our second in-person annual summit, the LatinX Education Summit.

And you can go on our website and buy tickets now.

Also help invite anybody that you think should be there.

But it really is an incredible time to come together, see other people who care about this work and learn, learn from them.

We have a lot of panelists, a lot of people sharing incredibly, incredibly valuable information.

And it's always a good time, we do know how to party too.

[audience chuckling] But definitely, definitely feel free to connect with us, then or beforehand, and make sure that we know what it is your community is in dire need of, and then we can do what's in our power to make sure we advocate for those tools, advocate for those resources, and continue to be positioning ourselves in a way that helps uplift these issues, and uplift these leaders across the state.

We're also just trying to connect the dots, show that we're here, we have similar issues and also a lot of strengths that if we couple, we can make a lot of magical things happen.

But this brings me to my close, and I can't walk away without sharing how you can connect with us, both Latinx Education on all these different types of social media as well as UndocuCarolina, our partners.

And if you scan that QR code now, that'll definitely make sure we keep you in the loop.

That's how you can share a little bit about where you're from, who you work with, and also opt into our fantastic newsletter, which gives you just a wealth of information, from available internships, fellowships, job postings, to all kinds of cultural events and other things happening across the state.

[Zamantha sighing exhaustingly] [audience chuckling] That leaves us with about 10 minutes for questions, and you can really ask anything so don't hold back.

Thank you so much.

[audience applauding] [audience chuckling] [no audio] [no audio] - I have a question.

- Yeah.

[audience member commenting] - So, many of our folks are here today as early childhood educators.

So, based on what you've learned and based on your research, what may be advice for starting out or tips for starting out might you give to folks who are working in the early childhood setting and working with parents and families, LatinX parents and families as well?

- Yes, thank you for that question.

Well.

[Zamantha chuckling] Yeah.

Well, one of the first things that comes to mind is that connection to parents, family, and community governance, as we like to call it.

You don't have to create curriculums or field trips or anything on your own.

You can do that with the support of parents and students, the young voices too.

And so, help them to exercise their own leadership.

Make them feel like thoughtful partners, right, that help make decisions and exercise that agency and that power of choice.

But the idea, right, is that you should really evaluate how you're connecting with parents.

Is it just a one-off invitation?

Is it an intentional relationship building?

What are you doing to actually create community or coalition?

Because we all need that, right.

It gives that comradery.

It gives that sense of safety and support.

So think about embedding that within everything that you do, so that you could create those traditions in school and that climate that is so friendly and conducive to people feeling safe, people feeling prepared, and people feeling excited to learn.

And not just excited to learn, but also excited to teach.

We also think a lot about how do we create schools where students will just love to learn, but teachers love to teach?

So look at [Zamantha smirking] your buddy, your colleague and be like, hey, are you okay?

Hey, how can I help you, right?

So don't think that you have to front everything on your own.

Really lean on one another and recognize that teachers need that pouring of love just as much [Zamantha chuckling] as the students do.

So definitely want to just underscore the importance of having the fellowship and things like that that help educators to feel more encouraged and supported.

[no audio] [no audio] - Does your organization have any specifics in terms of how to reach out in terms of parent engagement, what we should do for, there are resources that you bring in that would help that effort?

[audience member smirking] - Yes, definitely.

I can think of our incredible partners in Alamance County where I'm from, Alamance Achieves.

They work with a national network called StriveTogether that really lays out a plan about how to do this, and all the PDFs are available online.

But yeah, if we're not bringing that information or lessons to you, we definitely connect you with others who do, who can do that work.

So, we're sharing the love.

That's the idea.

But yeah, I am so, so grateful that through the listening tour and our efforts to expand statewide, we have been able to just gather so many incredible resources, a lot of these assets across the state.

And we want to be able to be that referral system or connection to whoever might be in your area or on social media, right, providing some of those tips and resources.

- Thank you.

- Yeah?

- I'm on it.

I'm on it.

- I'm waiting.

[audience laughing] [audience member chuckling] So, as somebody who is a storyteller, as is Carol, are there stories or does your organization have stories that will give people like me an opportunity to learn what this population wants to see in media?

Like, what do these kids need to be seeing?

What types of characters, what types of stories, what things are they struggling with that we can then say, like, let's make a show about this?

- Yes, can I actually ask you to turn over to Carol because?

- Yes.

- She's got that answer.

[people chuckling] - So in short, yes.

We haven't had that angle, that slant, that perspective of saying, what is it that you want to see in media?

We've had it from the perspective of, what is it that you want from your own education?

How can we be supporting you?

And yet we know how these merge within each other, right.

We know the power that comes with seeing yourself represented, even just that kind of feels like putting on your superhero cape, right.

It's not tangible, but then when you have it, that impact that it has on you.

So, in short, we have those stories.

I've had the opportunity and the blessing to lead many of our storytelling products.

Like, I've had the chance to interview fellows, I've had the chance to interview so many in video.

You can see online.

We have also some amazing storytelling pieces from our under 20 leaders, just talking about what is it that they wanna see in education, what has their journey been like, but also where do they stand right now, and where do they wanna go?

So Mia, I think that we got a partner, that's what I'm hearing here.

[people laughing] - Yeah.

- Thank you.

Anybody else?

- I'm coming.

So, thank you.

So you said that you guys work with 36 counties, right.

For one, how do we know if you're working with our county and how do we go about connecting with your organization for, I guess like partnerships?

- Yes, well that's me, [Zamantha chuckling] your partnerships manager.

But you can reach me through info@latinxed.org, and then we have a nice little survey where you can say what you'd be interested in having us present and all of that good stuff.

But we are definitely looking for partners.

Yeah, we want to just increase the familia, right.

We wanna increase who's in the circle, who's in the know, who has increased access to these resources and opportunities.

Any last questions or just reflections or?

Well, this has been really, truly incredible and I do hope I get a one-on-one with each and every one of you.

I am so thankful for your time and your attention and just your willingness to think about these issues because we need a lot of minds to be thinking about them and to continue to move the needle here in North Carolina.

[Zamantha speaking in foreign language] Thank you.

[audience applauding] [audience cheering] [no audio] [no audio]