Stop & Talk

Singer 0:00
Stop. Talk to me.

Crystal Page 0:02
Hi grant,

Grant Oliphant 0:11
Hey Crystal.

Crystal Page 0:12
I hear we have a Prebys leadership awardee as our guest today

Grant Oliphant 0:15
We do. We are interviewing Afira Arrastia-DeVries, who is amazing. She heads the Monarch School, and in that role, is leading the only public K 12 institution in the country, exclusively focused on educating unhoused students.

Crystal Page 0:34
I have a feeling this interview is going to be good, so let Should we just jump to it?

Grant Oliphant 0:38
She's awesome. Let's go right to it.

Crystal Page 0:40
All right. See you on the other side.

Grant Oliphant 0:41
All right. Afira, thank you so much for joining me today.

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 0:48
It is my pleasure, friend.

Grant Oliphant 0:49
It really is my pleasurem actually. You are- We got to know each other early in my journey in San Diego, we were both part of a Lead San Diego class and made a bunch of friends. There you stood out as somebody who was doing really important work and determined to make a difference. And we're going to spend a lot of time talking about that and what it's like to do that in this moment today. But I am curious first to start to ground this narrative in who you are as a person, and you've talked a lot in my experience and in other places about the important role your parents played and your background. So just tell us a little bit about where you came from and why that's important to you.

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 1:39
Well, first of all, thank you for having me here. Thank you for giving me a reason to talk about my family, which is always fun for me. And the beginning of my career, I used to ask my parents for permission to talk about our life journey together, and then I kind of gave up on that, because they've kind of come along with me and appreciate the way that it's important to use our own journey as a reflection of the journey that a lot of communities struggle with. So I am first generation Puerto Rican. My parents are from the island. I grew up on the East Coast, and my parents really struggled to support us and their extended family. The way my culture works is, you know, nobody makes it if, if anyone's suffering, so it's if one person gets a stable job, the entire family is moving into the, you know, stable living environment you're in. And it can really be a heavy burden, but also kind of beautiful. But my dad was drafted and went off to Vietnam and came back a different person and struggled to make it in society, ended up in prison and came out, and my family really struggled with finding stability for a number of reasons, right, the institutional bigotry and racism that exists in our in our society. This is back in the 70s, the fact that my dad's an ex con, and carrying that with him through through life and that journey. So what I learned from that experience really early on, was really three things that matter a great deal to me. One is how important family is in sheltering kids, especially from the realities of the pain of society. I didn't have parents that made their struggles really evident to us, and so I didn't understand a lot of the times, the things we were going through. But why that mattered was I didn't also perceive that I was limited in any way. My parents just wouldn't allow for that, and I have an older brother and a younger sister. My parents also helped to raise a couple of my cousins, and so we just didn't have that perception. And I see now in my line of work now, and looking back, how critically important that was, and I don't know how my parents knew to do that, but giving us the space to develop our own sense of control over our lives changed our lives, because we could have succumbed to that feeling that the world was in charge, right, and that we just kind of were floating through life. So that's been incredibly important to me. The second thing is really how valuable it is to know that there is a community that will pick up whatever you can't hold. And that is what my extended family was to us. Whenever there was more than my parents could take, they had people to rely on to support us. And again, as a kid, I didn't recognize that as something unusual. So now

Grant Oliphant 4:30
that was your bubble.

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 4:31
That was my bubble, but it was a bubble that really was made up of family and friends and people that just understood the same struggle that matters now in my work Grant, because it's important to me, mostly as an advocate, to speak to the importance of community as an episteme, you know, and the way that that makes a difference in someone's ability to perceive a kid's ability to perceive their own stability and potential. And then the last thing, really, is, education is the way out. You know, education is the way out. And we don't live in a country that makes education easy for everyone, but it is the answer, and people know that. People can say that. They give a lot of lip service to that, but it's important to me to make sure I say it, because, again, we don't make it easy for everybody.

Grant Oliphant 5:14
It's, it's, it's so easy knowing you as I do to see how those three lessons shaped who you became and what you do, but we're going to tease that apart a little bit, and I'm, I'm curious to start with how those three lessons shaped you as a leader. So you're, you know it clearly shaped your childhood, but why did it make you want to do what you're doing inlife?

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 5:45
This goes back to my parents, too. On some level, both of my parents achieved a measure of stability as we got older, and as a result of that, my mother became a social care professional, became a rape crisis counselor, a Spanish language rape crisis counselor. And my dad, who I mentioned, was an ex con, a Vietnam vet, you know, was courted by gangs when he was young. My dad ended up going on to run a youth center in Worcester, Massachusetts for gang intervention and prevention support for kids. So my parents sort of embarked on this crazy journey in life, achieve stability in the face of a lot of adversity. And that was that was like genetic coding for me. And I really understood by the time I was about 17, I understood this is what I want to do. I want to take these skills that I feel like I have when you're 17, you don't really know what the heck you are with but I had this feeling inside me that there was something, there was a skill set I had that could be helpful to other people like me.

Grant Oliphant 6:44
Where do you think the social mission that they both clearly had came from for them?

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 6:49
Well, my parents

Grant Oliphant 6:51
It's interesting, that they both shared, that

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 6:53
They did. They did. My parents just really again, that sense of community, that feeling that if I have a little bit, you should have a little bit more. And so as they again achieved some stability for us, they recognized that they were good, stable parents and wanted to help other kids. It was really that simple. They took foster kids. I had, gosh, upwards of 50 foster kids in my house, growing up as as parents, as my parents stabilized, they just turned right around and chose to serve. And that's that was incredibly formidable for me.

Grant Oliphant 7:27
Yeah, so incredible role modeling around that probably not easy as a kid, though, to also navigate that when you when you talked about your dad, and you said he came back a different person, how did that manifest for you as a child.

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 7:42
Well, I wasn't born yet when dad went to Vietnam, when he got back, my understanding of his change was really there was a positive aspect of it, which was a real focus on moving forward in life and not being rooted in the trauma that he had experienced. But it also was a very common experience that I think veterans experience, which is just this disconnect from what is appropriate in social order, right, what the standards of behavior were. And so if, if it hadn't been for the strength and presence of my mom in his life, I think that his life would have taken a very different trajectory. But the deviance that comes from not having boundaries around life and death as a result of being in war, in really critical war zones, is just it changed him, and I'm not sure he's ever been the same as a result of it, it's always a struggle for my father to create the appropriate boundaries around the protecting of family and what's considered appropriate in society. So

Grant Oliphant 8:45
You talk lovingly of this circle that you grew up in. Did you ever at the same time you must have struggled with feeling othered in the broader society. I mean, you had, you had almost every label available to you,

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 9:01
forgot to mention my father also, my parents converted to Islam when I was really,

Grant Oliphant 9:05
yeah. Okay, so you got another one,

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 9:08
and my mom is half black. So let's, let's, let's just decide that if, if, if somebody hates it, I am it so. So how was that for you growing up? It was extraordinary in that I have a very deep well of cultural identity to draw from and a really clear understanding of the importance of culture in identity and shaping who you become. Conversely, I have been in situations of overt and micro, racist and aggressive environments, really, from the time I was very little. I'm little, just crazy, little things too. As I remember going being in college, and the first time I went to get my hair cut in college, I was in the South. I went to college in the South for undergraduate, yeah. And I walked into this hair salon, and it was like a record scratched, and the lady said, I'll just say it the way she said it, what is you? And I said, Huh? Because I'm from Massachusetts, and she's like, you know, are you black or are you white? Wow. And I said, I don't, I don't know. And she said, Well, we don't do your kinds hair,

Grant Oliphant 10:24
just straight up.

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 10:26
Yeah, she made the decision for me and decided that they didn't do my kinds little that seems maybe bigger to some people than others, but there's just so many collections of that because it came in so many different forms. And I wore hijab until I was 18, and so I remember being run out of an amusement park with my family once you know, being called all kinds of slurs, the experience of knowing what it feels like to be marginalized has carried me professionally and has really fired my fuel for advocacy.

Grant Oliphant 11:00
So let's, let's fast forward to what you do today and how that translates into what you do today. Tell us a little bit about the monarch school and what drew you to become the leader of an institution like that.

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 11:18
Yeah, so I have been a social care professional for, well, it's 27 years now. I'm also an applied sociologist, and I really love as a field of practice, as a sociologist working on scaling really, really strong social programs. So I was doing that work prior to coming here to San Diego for an organization called Spring impact, which is a global entity. And what I love about that Grant is the idea that one organization, one tiny group of people, somewhere in the world, figured out how to solve a problem, even if it was for five or 10 people, but they figured out how to address a social issue, and they may not have the bandwidth or skill or knowledge to scale that idea so that it impacts more people, but I do, right? I and my team, right? We have this idea, this this approach, and I love that idea, to me, that is how systems change manifests in practical ways, right? So when I got the call to consider monarch school, initially, I was so happy doing what I was doing. I was like, I think I'll stay where I am. But then I understood

Grant Oliphant 12:35
Remind me where that was.

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 12:36
So I lived in Virginia. Yeah, I was the CEO of the United Way in Roanoke, Virginia, and I left that job to work on this in this global program. But I didn't leave Virginia. So I was traveling a lot. And, you know, have children in San Diego, I get this call from San Diego, and I'm like, I'm busy. I'm trying to be a mother. I'm trying to do all this stuff. And I was, I was traveling too much. I was already feeling the pressure of not being the mom. Not being the mom I wanted to be, but loving my work, knowing something had to, had to give. And then COVID hit. So now I'm really dealing with this because, like, you can't travel. I wasn't traveling. I wasn't able to serve the way I wanted to. But what did it for me with Monarch was when, when it was just a line in passing, in the in the interview process, where one of the board members said to me, Well, you know, we're the only of our kind, and that's when I like, what? And that was it. I mean, I said, Okay, I'm gonna come and check this out. And I walked in the doors. I came out. I walked in the door. School was empty. It was, it was COVID. But there's something about the energy at Monarch school that feels like magic. You know, you can feel how different the energy is in that place, because it's built on the premise that this is a space of safety and that this is a place where kids can be kids and investigate who they're meant to be. And I just felt it and fell in love with it, and then already have this love for scaling important social work and thought, Man, this is just a gem, the only of its kind in the entire country, in a country where homelessness is ubiquitous, you know, the 1.3 million unhoused kids in the United States, and there's only one monarch school.

Grant Oliphant 14:16
So how was that this was actually something I wanted to ask you anyway, so I'll ask you now, how is that possible?

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 14:21
It's a great question. No, it's a great question. So there is, there's legislation that was ratified, and I think 1989 it's called the McKinney vento legislation, and it's great in a lot of ways. It provides federal funding for school systems to support unhoused students. However, in that legislation, it stipulates that schools cannot be segregated to utilize those resources to address the needs of unhoused kids, meaning you can't have school with unhoused kids exclusively. So monarch school is grandfathered into that legislation because we pre existed right. Now, The problem with that is, since then, the sociology on the trauma associated with homelessness has come a long way, right? We now understand more about the psychology of homelessness. We now understand the importance of the locus of control and the development of a student and how important it is for kids to not feel like they have to hide and to not feel like their trauma is a secret. Well, all of that's changed so much, but as with so much legislation, just because times have changed doesn't mean the legislation comes along with it, so that's partly why there's only one monarch school. But I've kind of found a way around that, in that the facility isn't what makes monarch monarch, it's our practices approaches and the exceptional training of our staff. And so we've codified that now and turned that into something that we can scale through learning and practice sharing.

Grant Oliphant 15:56
So when you talk about Okay, here is this school for unhoused children. Yeah, I think many of us hearing the concept of segregation in the context of that, we say, oh, yeah, you shouldn't do that, right? So I totally get the history of the legislation. Talk to us about why it works. What is it about the having this population in this school in San Diego that, to you, stands out as as having tremendous value to those students.

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 16:29
Well, so I'll start, I'll work my way back from evidence. The evidence is really, really clear. So just in the state of California, kids who are known to be unhoused in a traditional school setting. The average graduation rate is 69% of that population. We boast about a 93% graduation rate, and there's really no difference between our student population in terms of their living condition and the condition of unhoused kids in traditional school settings. So then you have to ask the question, right? Well, why is there such a difference? The difference is the understanding of the human nature involved in being homeless, right, the realities of the robbery of dignity that happens when a kid feels exposed in a school setting that is not able to provide for their really core needs. You show up and you're dirty and you need to take a shower, hard to do in a traditional school. You show up in dirty clothes, hard to do in a hard to figure out, right? A toothache, teen pregnancy, domestic violence in your family setting. These are things that kids learn to hide very early. And

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 17:43
when you are hiding and suppressing pain and trauma, you definitely aren't learning and you definitely aren't healing. So when you flip that on its head, which is what monarch does, and create an environment where learning is important, but it's actually not the number one priority, the number one priority is, let's get you here, and let's get you in a mental and emotional state to be able to learn. That makes a massive difference. Then you couple that with the recognition that every other kid in that environment is struggling with similar situation that you are, well, that creates a sense of belonging and completely in them, and eliminates that barrier, or that feeling of, I need to fly under the radar, right? I need to go hide in the bathroom all day. That is, other kids will make fun of me. Other kids are going to look at me and know that my parents are, whatever they're, the stories that kids tell themselves are not false stories, right, right? They're real stories, and they're afraid of them, but at Monarch, they don't have to be. And what that does is it leaves a lot of room for a kid to understand their own gifts, their own potential. That's what gets clouded for a kid, right? A kid isn't looking at themselves and understanding, oh, I'm a great artist, I'm a great athlete, right? They are living in survival mode. And when you clear the brush for a kid to figure out what their individual gifts are, regardless of their circumstances, well, now you've got answers.

Grant Oliphant 19:17
You know, probably the level on which most parents can understand. This is what we now know about sending kids to school hungry. If your child is hungry, they're not going to learn. You're just adding a whole set of layers of other social needs that they also your students also need to have attended to so they can be ready to learn, and you're trying to get them into that space.

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 19:40
That's right, and what adds to the uniqueness of it is that level of care and social intervention is also as is equally present for parents and caregivers at Monarch. So what we're doing then is we're addressing the holistic needs of the family at our school. We're a community school. Which makes it possible for us to send the kid back into the arms of a family that is also making progress, and that's how you achieve the kind of change that we achieve.

Grant Oliphant 20:10
And what's the relationship like, since you're an anomaly within the school district, what? What is the relationship like with the school district in terms of how they think of you as this very unusual entity?

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 20:26
Well, it's a great question, because that's part of what makes us so unique. Where, you know, we're a public private partnership, which means monarch school project is the nonprofit side of the organization happens to be the larger side, because, as I mentioned, that's really the priority work. But we actually partner with the San Diego County Office of Education, and our superintendent, Gloria Ciriza, is just, you know, a genius, as is her team. Because what we're doing is they're sending us, you know, well credentialed, well trained academic instructors, teachers and their curriculum, and we're sharing space. We're two organizations sharing space to address the needs of the same population. So we're such a unique organization that we're viewed as, you know, either lunatics or as this thing we should all try to become, right? And there are a lot of organizations that don't quite get us but want to, and there are others that really don't like the idea of us being a siphon from other school districts. Right now, we don't hear that as much now, because the issues associated with homelessness are so present, it's hard to deny them. But the realities, the reality is schools. School districts are businesses, and each kid is a commodity, and so when a kid leaves a school district to go to a special environment like ours correct, the Money Follows the kid. And so there's a lot of work that has to be done around advocating for that, but that's why our relationship with SDC OE is so important, because they block and tackle on that, and they do a really good job of of drawing the line in the sand and saying, This is important for these kids, and we will, we will protect them and their needs.

Grant Oliphant 22:09
And where do most of the kids come from?

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 22:12
Well, the reason why we're associated with sdcoe in such a tight way is because our kids come from all over San Diego County, and they take public transit to get to us. A lot of our kids live right near the border, and, you know, have a hard time getting to school in the morning, but they figured out. So this is one of the reasons why we're a K 12 Grant. A lot of people don't know the history of that, but we started off as a high school, but kids get parentalized pretty young when their families struggle. And so now we've got, you know, ninth grader coming with five of their younger siblings that are just hanging out all day waiting for their older sibling to be done with school. And we recognize this is some years ago. We recognized we need a learning environment for those kids too. So we've kind of evolved with them, but they're coming from all over. We've we have students from El Cajon, from Oceanside, from San Ysidro, and we have to be that kind of placefor our kids.

Grant Oliphant 23:06
And how many children have you got right now?

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 23:08
we fluctuate between about 280, to 300 on an annual so it's a large population. It's large, but it's not enough, right? It's It's we do what we can for the population we serve now. We also support about another 165 alumni. One of the other really unique aspects of monarch is that we follow our kids into adulthood, so when they graduate, we're with them for about a decade afterwards, really, yeah, I like to think of it as sort of surrogate grandparents. Yeah. You know, we're there if they need us, and they often do, and they come back and they they do, yeah. And it could be simple things. It could be I need steel toe boots, or it could be I haven't paid my electric bill in three months, and I need some support. But we do that because our kids enter into adulthood. When they graduate from monarch they it is incredibly rare for one of our graduates to find themselves in a position of homelessness. Again, in adulthood, they struggle sometimes, but they don't repeat that cycle, and that's because we stick it out with them. That's oftentimes. That's not the only reason, but that contributes.

Grant Oliphant 24:09
You refer to the model you use as a strengths based model,

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 24:14
It is a strengths based model.

Grant Oliphant 24:17
And how talk a little bit about that, what does that look like? Right?

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 24:18
So this is really important to me, and this goes back to the earlier question you asked me about my family, a strength based model is one that roots social service in the identification of a family's assets rather than their deficits, and leveraging those assets to discover potential solutions that are unique to that family. So if I sit down with you and you are an unhoused mom, the traditional social care approach would be something along the lines of, what is the problem? What do you need? Right? Where do things go wrong, right? How do we fix that, how do we fix you? How do we fix that, how do we fix the situation? Right? A strength based approach is tell me about what you're proud of, what are you good at, who are the people around you that you that you rely on for support, tell me what you do absolutely best, as a parent, as a woman, as a leader in your community. Talk to me about what's good and strong. And then you transition that conversation into, how can we take this inventory of assets and figure out how to leverage those to come up with a solution that is unique to your situation, that is a strength based approach. It is a rare approach to social care, and I am on a crusade to make it a more common and popular.

Grant Oliphant 25:40
Do you find that the kids who walk through your doors are prepared to have that conversation?

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 25:45
No, it depends on their age and their developmental readiness for it, but what I do find is that their parents and caregivers are and that they are often surprised by the questions, but able to answer them in a way that is inspiring.

Grant Oliphant 26:04
Have you seen a change? You've been at this for several years now. I'm just curious, given the changing tone of conversations in our society around how we view people among us who are vulnerable or dealing with various life challenges. Have you seen any changes in how the your students think of themselves or and how so? What are you? What do you-What are you witnessing?

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 26:34
What a great question that is Grant. That's probably the most unique question I've been asked in a long time, because you're asking me about the way students perceive themselves, which is a much different question than how does the world perceive them? And I'm battling that question all the time. I will say this, my kids, our kids, don't understand what homelessness is. If they have a place to sleep, and if they're surrounded by people they love, the younger the kid, the less they even understand the way the world is defining their experience. And so that's important to us, because if a kid hasn't defined themselves in a position of deficit, then why should we inform them that that's how they should think? Right, right, right? And as they get older, and they're coming up in an environment that doesn't allow for them to believe that that is their definition. Well, then they begin to push back on that definition as they enter their middle and high school years. And so now we've got high school students this last class, my students just grabbed my graduating class, just received their diplomas last week or the week before last, and these kids are going to go on to do extraordinary things. All right? They're they're brilliant kids, and I remember when most of them were juniors, we had this almost, I don't want to call it a revolt, but a moment where this particular cohort of students pulled the adults aside and said, Stop allowing people to walk through our school and view us like we're a problem that they need to solve. We are individual human beings with a lot of gifts and things to offer, and our living situation does not define us. Our kids told us, reminded us of that. Wow. So their view of themselves is really evidence of what happens when you put a kid in an environment where they can understand who they are in contrast to their circumstances.

Grant Oliphant 28:37
In a way you've answered this question. But what do you think educators and policy makers get wrong about this population of kids?

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 28:47
Stop telling kids what they are capable of. Stop setting the bar at levels that seem to make sense to you based on circumstantial evidence, rather than what is true for kids. The other message I would deliver is each child is an individual human being, and their needs are individualistic in nature. When we create academic environments that don't allow for individuality, what we are doing is intentionally marginalizing kids who learn differently, kids who think differently, and kids who have more or less than others. That is unhealthy for society. It is a perpetuating issue that is a problem that we haven't addressed in this country, I mean, and then there's just the distribution of wealth Grant, you know, just think about the ways that you know, when I think about our own community, there are school districts that have so much more than others do. There's no really good rationale for that other than taxpayer money. Who cares, right? Right? They're all kids. We've got to distribute this wealth wealth differently,

Grant Oliphant 29:55
and learning environments do matter. I mean, they

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 29:58
they're key. Yeah. Mean, where'd your kids spend most of their childhood? Because mine spent didn't in a classroom, right?

Grant Oliphant 30:04
Exactly. So one experience, I've had multiple experiences of you in different settings, and one was at the monarch school when you were having your arts event, which was a fundraising event for the school, where you show off the the artwork by the kids that they donate and and you sell. And you and I were talking, and you got distracted, because a student that you knew, I didn't know, but you obviously did, started playing the piano.

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 30:36
Oh yeah, you were with me

Grant Oliphant 30:38
with and it, and it, and and, and I saw your face transform because you were just blown away by this young man sitting at the piano and playing. Talk about that a little bit. Why was that an important moment for you?

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 30:54
Okay, so that young man, I'm gonna call him Dan, for the purposes of this, I forgot that you were with me when that happened. We just opened the chrysalis, which is our Art Center, and in he walks with his he's, he's big man on campus, right? He's our star athlete. Yeah, that's tall good looking kid, tall. Good looking kid, incredible basketball player and football player, athlete and so big man on campus, right? But he's known as an athlete. He is also a young man who has never had a stable home. He's been unhoused from birth, and has had a really turbulent childhood, and found, you know, a sense of self in sports, but in he walks into the chrysalis. You and I were chatting, and I think with some other people, but he made a beeline. I know, if you remember this, he went directly to the piano and sat down at the piano, and what was shocking was that he played it, yeah, yeah, and that he played it well he did. And everybody's jaw dropped, because it was one thing to hear the piano music, but then to look and to see that it was him, because no one associated Dan with music, they associated him with sports, which was a real learning for me, right? And so we're having the conversation afterward, and I'm asking him, Where did you learn to do this? Like, how do you know how to play the piano? And the story is mind blowing. He has loved piano since he was a little baby because his mother listened to piano music and musical she liked instrumental music from utero all the way through his childhood. So when he was little, he started looking on YouTube at videos for how to play piano, and he would play air piano for the majority of his childhood. That's the really Yes. And so when he walked into the chrysalis that day, when you and I were standing there, he sat down at the piano and played piano for the first time in his life on real keys.

Grant Oliphant 32:55
That is mind blowing, isn't it, this is mind- No wonder you looked- I mean, you just looked stunned when,

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 33:01
yeah, for a lot of reasons, I just but the story behind it, it just he was so excited to finally be able to touch actual keys for the first time because he learned how to play by watching YouTube videos and using his imagination. It's crazy. It's a beautiful story. And here's the other thing about that story, how dare any of us right, myself included, develop a comprehensive picture of who we thought this young man was without allowing him to lead the way in that def, in that definition process, right? Was a reminder. I don't, I don't have the right to decide what any kid is capable of. That's their job, and our job is to just make space for them to come to that conclusion.

Grant Oliphant 33:50
I love that story. Thank you, and I don't think I knew all of that. So no,

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 33:55
I forgot you were with me, I was like what is happening? Yeah,

Grant Oliphant 34:02
are there, you know, before we move on, I should ask you, are there other are there other moments that have? I'm sure there are, but you have so many exceptional stories and exceptional students. Are there others that you would share to illustrate the point about how special these kids are, and why you approach the work the way you do?

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 34:25
Yeah, there's so many.

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 34:27
I talked a little bit about the older kids, but the little ones, there's, there's this really obviously little kids are always adorable, right? But they're our kids are adorable and managing complex trauma. And sometimes they take on adult behaviors really young. So there's this one little guy who, when I met him, he was acting a fool on the basketball court. He's eight years old. Adorable. This kid is a little cherub. Adorable. Mouth like a sailor you wouldn't Believe the things this child would come out of his mouth. He just wouldn't believe it. So he's picking he's bullying another kid on the basketball court, little girl. And so I come over now, one of the things about the way monarch operates is we don't do punishment the same way a lot of other more traditional schools do. We believe in restorative practice. And so that first means and being trauma informed. So that first means asking a lot of questions, like, what's happening here, you know? So I got there, I asked the little girl, another little girl's like, hey, why don't you go off and do something else? We're gonna talk now we're still on the basketball court, and he turns on me and just unleashes vitriol like I've never heard just F you, and who are you? And he's so cute too, like saying all these crazy things, so I'm listening to him. And he went on and on, and when he was done, I said, you know, I heard you're really good at basketball. I'm not very good. Why don't you show me what you can do? And he was, you know, jarred by that, because he just thought this was going to turn into a whole thing, and he just unleashed his whole diatribe on me. And I was like, tell me about what you do, but I heard you're good at basketball. And so it distracted him, and so he kind of said, what? And I said, you heard me. I want to see what you can do. You're eight years old, you're little, but I heard you're really good. Let me see. Let me see. And he did. He took the basketball and he's tossing it, and as he's doing that, we're talking and I'm talking to him about, why are you so angry? Who are you really angry at? Was it really her? How do you feel about that? You know, wouldn't it kind of hurt your feelings, and then I'm throwing the ball, and he's telling me how much I suck at basketball and how I should be embarrassed and ashamed of myself. And I said, Well, I'm not, but you can teach me anyway. We started a little relationship that day, and from that day on, every single day, I would check in with him. And finally, after a few weeks, he turns to me, and because he's walking up the hallway, and he turns to me and says, Why are you always bothering me? Says, Why are you always asking me how I'm doing? Said, because I like you. And he said, nobody likes me. And I said, Well, I like you. Now. What are you gonna do? Like we're friends, right, whether you like it or not? And after a while, his behavior started to change. His grades started to change. He looked forward to coming to tell me how he had improved, what he got on his math test, what I thought about his new sneakers, and he changed. And I'm not saying I'm some sort of savior, but it is an example of what happens when there's one stable, consistent, even keeled, neutral adult in a kid's life. That is the one thing that if I were to talk talking to teachers across America, I would remind them of your emotions are meaningless in an environment where kids are struggling with things that you'll never understand. So be that neutral, calm adult, and watch how they change

Grant Oliphant 37:53
such a powerful story. And I think also models what you're talking about in terms of your approach with focusing on his strengths too. So you're modeling the calm behavior, but you're also finding something to value in him that he can identify with,

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 38:13
that's right. And now he perceives himself as a basketball player and as a scholar, and he has helped to learn himself better by just being supported in that. Yeah,

Grant Oliphant 38:24
incredible. Well, another way that I have experienced you is as a very powerful leader and public speaker, extraordinary public speaker, actually and like me, you like to speak without notes, and you've delivered some of the most amazing talks that I've that I've seen. Does that that is because you are also an advocate and and how, how much of your role do you believe is to be an advocate, not just an educator.

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 39:01
I think that is the job. I think that is the job.

Grant Oliphant 39:05
And say more about why.

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 39:06
I think because when you consider how often society, particularly decision makers, around policy, around funding, around government, when you consider how infrequently decision makers are considerate of lived experience and are considerate of voices that are accurately reflective of of the circumstances that they're making decisions for there has to Be a cohort of leaders that are willing to speak truth to power in representation of others without expecting the ego trip that comes along with being in that position. You know, I don't believe in heroic leadership. I believe in the importance of advocacy and. It's really, it really comes down to one thing, which is, I'm brown. I know what it feels like. I have a platform, I have a responsibility. So every job I do is about that. It's, what can I do to better represent a population that doesn't have the voice that I have now acquired? And so that's the job. You know, when I'm raising money for my school, I'm an advocate, not a fundraiser. I'm an advocate. We're trying to change things and solve things. When I'm giving speeches, I'm not trying to advance my own reputation, I'm trying to make a point, right, right? It's critical. It's critical to the work, because if I didn't perceive it that way, then it would just be a job, right? And it would make nothing better. It would just keep things status quo.

Grant Oliphant 40:48
So I want to take a recent example of this, where you wrote an extraordinary op ed for the San Diego Union Tribune, in which you described the set of policies coming out of the White House at the moment as cruelty described disguised as policy. Can you say a little bit more about what you were, what you were talking about in that op ed, and why you what will come to why you felt compelled to write it in a moment.

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 41:18
Yeah. Oh boy. There's a lot of reasons that compel me to write it, but what I meant was really very much what I said,

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 41:28
the utter lack of compassion and empathy for struggle has never been more evident in this country than it is now. Right? It is rooted in a belief that if you don't have enough, it's your fault. Everything about our society's infrastructure is evidence to the contrary of that notion. Right? It is not easy to get a living wage job. It is not easy to get into a place of shelter or home of your own that's affordable for people who are educated and well compensated, it's hard. How dare we now make kids pay for the idea that their struggles are probably their fault or the fault of the people who bore them right or who brought them into the society. It's cruel because it is not rooted in reality or even logic. It's rooted in a phony sense of fiscal accountability. But really, what we're talking about is creating and sustaining a hierarchy and social order that doesn't allow for the mitigation of oppression. You know, we are not a society that's known for being intentionally oppressive, right? We are. We're really proud of ourselves for being a nation that is sort of famous for being a place where you can come and and succeed, and if you work hard enough, you can succeed here. But everything that we're doing now policy wise, is setting us up for the opposite truth, and we've always been challenged with the realities of our societal structure. But there was this belief system at the root of it that was with the right education, the right support. Freedom means being able to live and stand on your own two feet and take care of your own. How dare we now look at kids and take away what minimal resources are available to them, whether they came here from another country or not, they're still children. The cruelty involved in deciding we don't care is reprehensible and needs to be spoken of at minimum and addressed permanently at best.

Grant Oliphant 43:52
So a lot of people in the present environment would say, would agree. I mean, first of all, a lot of people do agree, and a lot of people in your position wouldn't speak out, because it would feel safer not to, and the pressures might be to just try and keep your head down and do your work, that's not you. I know that's not you, but But tell me what it is about you that made you want to speak up about this.

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 44:34
I have a student. Had a student, I'm gonna call him Gus and his mom had been deported. He's 11. Mom had been deported. His father had been detained, and he was now an unaccompanied minor in under, you know, under this administration and the fear and pain of not knowing how I was going to be able to protect him, all of us, not just me, all the adults at Monarch that knew him and love him, how are we going to protect him? How are we going to make sure that he doesn't become detained himself and thrown into some unnamed camp somewhere? We know this child. We know what he looks like when he laughs. We know his sense of humor. He's wily and brilliant, great at math, really good at soccer. We know him and the feeling of not being able to protect him. He came here when he was one year one year, one year old, from Guatemala. He's American. You know, this is what he knows. I understood it to be the first of many of those situations. And I love him, and I wanted to save him. I couldn't. I just, I can't abide, you know, I don't care who gets angry with me, right? I don't care if people decide that, you know, they don't want to support us because we're making a stand that feels or sounds political. It's unimportant. You know, these years are going to pass and we're all going to look back at them, and we're either going to feel proud because we took a stand, or we're going to feel some measure of shame because we chose to be safe, and I refuse the latter.

Grant Oliphant 46:33
I Good for you, and I know that's I know that's who you are, but I think it deserves to be acknowledged, and I thank you for your courage and your and your willingness to see the this in such stark human terms, too. I think that's so important.

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 46:50
I can't really help that. You know, it's-

Grant Oliphant 46:52
Do your kids see it. Do you? I mean, the the students at Monarch, do they? Yes. Are they watching all of this and experiencing that as well.

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 47:00
Yes, they are terrified, and so are their families. Yes, they're they're terrified. We're seeing enrollment being impacted because of fear. We're watching. We're watching what it looks like to see people deal with true existential threat that isn't imagined, right? And the kids know and feel that. Kids always know and feel what's going on with the adults around them, right? A traumatized kid, they're skilled at feeling what adults feel. And so yes, they know.

Grant Oliphant 47:34
What do you think? I'm beginning to think about this question a lot. And so it's, it's not, it's not just for you, but it's partly I'm, I'm trying to figure it out myself. But so you beautifully described the the strain of American sentiment that is that is emergent right now, which views people who are suffering from hardship or challenge as it being their fault. That's not new. I mean, there's there has been that narrative as part of the American and human story for a long time. But to your point, it's always been intention with the hopefully stronger tendency towards compassion and Right, right? Why? Why

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 48:26
and leaving kids out of the equation

Grant Oliphant 48:28
Leaving kids Yeah, certainly leaving kids out of the equation. Why? I mean politics aside. Why do you think the others, the other tendency is so ascendant at the moment, or maybe we can't leave politics aside, and that is, yeah,

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 48:45
yeah. I don't think we can. I think that I mean any any social any sociologist that has studied politics, or any political scientist through historian will tell you that there are ways to galvanize society in positive ways or negative ways to achieve outcomes, right? And fear is an extraordinary motivator, as is nationalism. Yeah, right. These are these are evidence truths throughout history, and this is a country that is rooted in great deal in racism. Our institutions are rooted in racism. And so when we create environments where we are afraid of the other, even if we're benefiting from the other, but we're more afraid of the other, well now we're creating a situation we will galvanize people to work on behalf of an idea that is even counter to their own best interest. Right now, the opposite works too, right? We could do the opposite, we could galvanize people around the idea that the collective energy and collective success is a benefit to all of us, and that has happened throughout history also, but we're in a different time now, where we have made the decision as a nation to try to other, ourselves or each other, in a way that that is harmful to the progression of society, in my opinion,

Grant Oliphant 50:09
at our at the Prebys Foundation's WAVES festival that we launched as they are just great. Yes that you were, thank you. But David Brooks spoke, and he talked about some of this dynamic in society, and he and he spoke about America's experience coming out of the Gilded Age, and the emergence of the social gospel, where religion, and particularly Christianity, at that point, stepped in with a new vision of social responsibility to re establish what you just said. But how do we do that today?

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 50:47
I think it requires a great deal of courage from people who are not necessarily expected to demonstrate that level of or haven't been expected to demonstrate that level of courage, and I'm talking about people like you Grant that run powerful and important institutions. I'm talking about people who are part of the majority in our country that are willing and able to speak out as advocates on behalf of a population that they don't even relate to, to protect an ideal. The reality is black and brown and bipoc people in this country are are going to continue to be increasingly marginalized if our brothers and sisters, who are Caucasian, are not willing to stand in front of us and communicate what what needs to be done differently, and to do it with strength and with their whole chest, these things matter. It will also make a difference when people feel compelled by what they're ingesting, right? So media, their religious environments, wherever they're ingesting, their the information that gives them a perspective on what society should be what they're ingesting matters. We see that today, right? What happens when we're all getting our news from social media and that nothing good, nothing good. But maybe it could be, yeah, right? Maybe there's hope in how we use those vehicles differently.

Grant Oliphant 52:16
All right, we are in crazily out of time, because this just like sped by. But I do want to leave a moment just to ask you, as you think about what lies ahead, what excites you looking ahead?

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 52:35
Oh, geez, I am ever thrilled to watch our students enter adulthood, fired up to be the next generation of leaders. I think of a student that graduated a couple weeks ago. Her name is Karina. The kid's brilliant. She's man if she does well, I get it if she doesn't run for office, but she's got to do something I see not to pat myself on the back, because this kid's smarter than me, but I see myself in her, and that's exciting to me, because she's brilliant and she's got everything it takes to be successful. And there's classes and classes and classes of those kids graduating right now across the country. You know, that excites me. I look at my own daughters and recognize how completely brilliant they are and prepared they are to speak truth to power, that's exciting to me. And I'm watching also the way that sometimes things have to hit rock bottom before they rebuild, in a way that makes sense, and I think we're approaching that as a nation, I think there's a sense of we're falling apart a little bit, and maybe we need to do this differently. That excites me. And then personally, I would say, Grant, I'm excited about what's likely next for me, which feels like it's work that is at a more systemic level, I'm feeling called to and I don't mean that in a religious way. I mean I'm feeling like the moment is demanding people who have the will and skill that I have to do more and say more and be more present. And that excites me, even though I don't know what it looks like

Grant Oliphant 54:21
beautiful Well, I just, I have to say, before we wrap up, that you are, among your many other distinctions, a Prebys Leadership Award winner, yeah, and we are so proud to have you in in that community. You are a profile in leadership and courage and leading from a place of love and thank you for everything you're doing for this community.

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 54:48
Thank you, friend. Really, that award was a point of pride that will be etched on my gravestone. I think so. Thank you.

Grant Oliphant 54:59
No time soon. Please. All right, absolutely. All right. Thank you.

Afira Arrastia-DeVries 55:02
All right. Thank you.

Crystal Page 55:08
Never have I walked away from listening to an interview and realized how important it is when we're with our youth that we just sometimes we're quiet and we just listen to them.

Grant Oliphant 55:19
Yeah, everything about that interview was powerful, and that was one of the lessons, I think, just the way she values kids, by extension of what you said, was an incredibly important message, and the way she talked about meeting kids where they are and building on their assets and their strengths, as opposed to trying to fix them. I thought that was extraordinary. So a lot to think about in this interview, especially now, when we're in kind of this very difficult place around education and kids and culture in the country. What she's doing is providing really strong leadership,

Crystal Page 56:09
right? And building off of that, I think the moment when the youth reminded her, please don't tour people around here as if we are a problem to be solved, that brings an immediate dignity back to how we approach people, and I think we definitely need that in this moment.

Grant Oliphant 56:25
And I I am struck I'm sitting here also with the memory of having been in the room when that young man that we talked about came and played the piano. And I remember the look on her face, the complete surprise and awe, and I didn't know what was going on other than that, he was pretty good at the piano. And you know, I think one lesson for me is if we could just learn to value each other differently and kids obviously differently. We will have so much more of a productive future together.

Crystal Page 57:08
I think you're right, and as we wind down, I would say valuing the kids, but I noticed when you two started that conversation, she also had a value in herself. Her values are rooted deeply in her understanding who she is, what her parents brought to the table, regardless of where they were in their life. So I think it's yeah, that respect of others, but also us taking the time to get to know ourselves and what those roots are.

Grant Oliphant 57:33
Beautiful way to end. Yeah. All right.

Crystal Page 57:34
Great chatting with you.

Grant Oliphant 57:35
Thank you. Likewise.

Grant Oliphant 57:44
This is a production of the Prebys Foundation,

Crystal Page 57:48
hosted by Grant Oliphant

Grant Oliphant 57:50
CO, hosted by Crystal page

Crystal Page 57:52
CO produced by Crystal page and Adam Greenfield,

Grant Oliphant 57:57
engineered by Adam Greenfield,

Crystal Page 58:00
production coordination by Tess Karesky,

Grant Oliphant 58:03
video production by Edgar Ontiveros Medina.

Crystal Page 58:07
Special thanks to the Prebys Foundation team.

Grant Oliphant 58:10
The Stop and Talk theme song was created by San Diego's own Mr. Lyrical Groove

Crystal Page 58:16
download episodes at your favorite pod catcher, or visit us at prebysfdn.org

Transcribed by https://otter.ai