Outrageous Love the Podcast: Our Journeys to Responsiveness

Outrageous Love the Podcast runs on a simple premise: ask an educator how they became culturally responsive, then follow the answer back to where it started. The episode titles follow one pattern, a guest's name followed by Journey To Responsiveness. Host Dr. Sharroky Hollie has his own term for the turning point he listens for. He calls it the light bulb moment, the point where an educator really recognizes inequity and realizes they will have to do something different, and he describes it as the beginning of the journey. For some guests, that moment came while they were still students. Micaela Altamirano remembers a five-paragraph essay she and her friends wrote together out loud and the trip to the office that followed. She also remembers her mother, a special education teacher, asking where the directions said they could not work together. What stayed with her was that nobody else's parent came in. Quincy Davis grew up what he calls 'hood rich', then went to school in the Palisades and felt like just another number on the roll. He also recalls students written off as bad kids who turned out to be bored, and he puts the blame on teaching that did not differentiate. Other light bulb moments came on the job. Cindy Krumplitsch applied for an opening almost at random and could hardly believe the support students there received, from recreational therapy to private tutoring. The children she had worked with on the east side had none of it, and she had not known to advocate for them. Her response is practical: she spends summers teaching in more challenged neighborhoods and tells parents directly which services they can ask for. The guests come from across the school building. Francine Binnert, appearing under the Celebrating CLR Librarians label, describes the library as a place of respite that became a place of passion and advocacy. She says that 'intentionally omitting stories from the library is intentionally invalidating somebody else's life experience.' Dr. Al Johnson, who dropped out of high school and later went back, speaks from school leadership: he served as an assistant principal, a principal and a director of equity services in a rural district northwest of Minneapolis. His account of adapting is pointed. That role taught him his approach to equity had to be different, and he says he no longer uses the words equity, CLR or critical race theory. Throughout, the host is an active listener, quick with a word of affirmation and willing to rephrase a question mid-thought. Andrew edits and produces the episodes and provides original music, in association with the Center for Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning, and each episode closes by pointing to the Center's services and curriculum. Series labels in the titles, including the Open Mic Series and Celebrating Special Education Educators, give a way in by role. A listener who works in special education might start with Cindy Krumplitsch, and one who runs a school library might start with Francine Binnert.