0:00:05.4 Vicki Brett: Welcome to the Inclusive Education Project. I'm Vicki Brett.

0:00:09.0 Amanda Selogie: I'm Amanda Selogie. We're two civil rights lawyers on a mission to change the conversation about education, civil rights, and modern activism.

0:00:19.3 VB: Each week we're gonna explore new topics which are going to educate and empower others.

0:00:25.6 AS: And give them a platform to enact change in education and level the playing field. Hi, friends. Welcome back.

0:00:34.8 VB: Hi. Hi.

0:00:35.9 AS: We have another guest on that we're very excited to kind of continue this conversation, this journey, if you will, that we've been on the last couple of months of really not just talking about what's important in education, but holistically, when we think about education and the purpose for children of bringing them into the world as members of society that can be productive and inclusive and good humans, if you will. And so we're so excited to have Tracy on the podcast. Tracy, welcome.

0:01:10.7 Tracy: Thank you. It's great to be here.

0:01:12.5 AS: Can you give our listeners a little bit of a background and talk a little bit about the work you're doing?

0:01:18.1 Tracy: Yes. Strangely enough, my training is in oceanography. I'm now doing college access in Arizona and couldn't be happier. Kind of fast forward on things. In the late 90s, early 2000s, I was teaching semesters at sea. So that's when you take college students out on a tall ship for a semester. And I was also instructing with Outward Bound in the National Outdoor Leadership School. And so all these programs have in common this experiential component where students are really put outside of their comfort zone and challenged and they gain great self confidence from that. And it's just, they're incredibly impactful courses. But I was finding, after years of doing this, I was only working with wealthy kids. And it got me looking into the education statistics and finding this persistent and large educational achievement gap between high income and low income students. Now, we know that that is not on ability alone. So what's going on? So I spent some time talking to teachers at predominantly low income schools and they said, Tracy, there's so many students that we know that were doing, taking the most challenging courses. They were excelling in those courses, they were working hard, everybody thought they were on track, so nobody was really paying attention and they didn't go on to college.

0:02:39.1 AS: Wow.

0:02:39.6 Tracy: Right? And so I was like, wow. Exactly. Is the response I had, wow, that's who I want to work with. I want to work with students who are working hard. They're ready and willing to put the hard work. They know education is the key. They are the first in their family, first generation in their family making a college degree. I want to work with them, I want to give them the confidence, I want to give them the guidance to then successfully not just go to college, and this is critical. It's not about going to college. It's about getting a college degree.

0:03:10.8 AS: Right? The end goal.

0:03:12.6 Tracy: Yeah. So in 2004, established STEP, the Student Expedition Program. And initially we started, and I hate to say just was just an expedition. Now, we did that with a partner that is the leader in expeditioning and outdoor leadership in the country. It's National Outdoor Leadership School. And we took, in 2000, the summer of 2005, we took our first nine students to Alaska in the wilderness, sea kayaking. Okay.

0:03:40.8 VB: Oh my gosh.

0:03:41.6 Tracy: We're taking these desert urban kids physically to about as foreign a place as possible. If I could put them on the moon, I would have.

0:03:52.7 AS: Where did I go to college?

0:03:54.6 Tracy: And instead, I'm taking them to cold, rainy, buggy, beautiful, gorgeous Alaska coastline. And for three weeks. And in the span of that three weeks, the transformation that happens with the students going from completely discombobulated to being expert. And going through that challenge, it's, what I've said to my students is it's never been about a nice trip to Alaska. Its about an extremely challenging trip to Alaska and getting through that challenge and recognizing internally at your core that you have the ability to meet unknown challenges in the future. Because as adults, we can say to young people until we're blue in the face, you can do anything you set your mind to, but until they really believe it at their core, it doesn't mean anything.

0:04:45.6 VB: And I think you give the opportunity and that's why we were really intrigued with what you were doing. And for Amanda and I and the populations that we work with and our whole basis foundation of our non profit, is that an equal opportunity to access their education. And education can take on so many different things. And in this instance, that educational equity and providing that. Because before you were seeing just the wealthy kids that were going abroad and they're on a boat and all this, and for you to kind of step in and see that there are issues, equity and to try to, and this is a bit outdated, but in the general sense of leveling the playing field is really creating opportunities for multiple student populations and particularly first generation, low income, these are all populations that we like to label things, humans like to label things. And that's what we were really wanting to have you come on and speak to. Because I think when people hear, equity, and we've heard a lot in this administration dei, we got to get rid of it, blah, blah, blah.

0:06:02.1 VB: And it's like, okay, diversity, equity, inclusion. We talk about inclusion ad nauseam here. And, okay, diversity. I believe we talk about that as well. And we do equity. But to have you come in and really kind of set the stage for what equity really looks like is enlightening and is a conversation that was needed.

0:06:25.6 Tracy: Well, let me tell you the other part of the story. Okay.

0:06:27.8 VB: Yeah.

0:06:28.3 Tracy: So we did this for, we started in 2005 and all the way through 2011, and it was this three week expedition. Well, I was really bonding with the students. I was going out as an instructor. And so they, it's about relationship. A lot of this is about relationships. And they were, they trusted me. And I would ask them, where are they applying to college? And they would invariably say, the local community college and maybe Stanford.

0:06:51.6 VB: Okay, wow.

0:06:53.1 Tracy: Local community college and one of our wonderful Arizona universities. But that was all that was in their idea of where they could go. Right?

0:07:02.1 VB: Wow.

0:07:02.3 Tracy: And then one day I had a girl come to me and she said, I'm gonna apply to Phoenix College, which is a local community college, and Smith College. And I knew that the only reason she even thought about Smith or even had heard that it was because it came out of my mouth. She didn't know Smith College from anything. But I had said it and she trusted me. Okay. So I got very excited and I said, oh my gosh, show me your transcript. I'm going to help you do this. Well, yeah, I looked at her transcript and my heart sank. Her transcript was 100% straight As. Okay. And she had never taken a single challenging course. So no educator at her high school thought, she is getting straight As, we should push her into an AP course. And so she wasn't going to be able to be admitted to Smith because she didn't have the rigor. Okay?

0:07:53.4 Tracy: That's the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I said, we got to jump in the deep end of the pool. We've got to do a multi-year college prep program where we are working with the students and the families to take them through the preparation and application process to really show our students what all the opportunities are out there. And what we do is we focus on, we certainly have a lot of students going to Arizona universities, but the only schools we focused on outside of Arizona are the ones that meet full financial need. Now, that's a 30, 40 colleges, 30, 40 universities in the whole country. They just happen to correlate being the top ranked schools in the country. Okay. So we target these schools not because they're top ranked, we target them because they meet full financial need. And really being able to expose our students and families to all the options. Because what we know is there's so many barriers to our students.

0:08:53.0 AS: Yeah.

0:08:53.6 Tracy: The financial barrier needs to be taken away in order for them to even think about being successful in college.

0:09:02.3 AS: Yeah. Yeah.

0:09:03.3 Tracy: And I want to backtrack. So that's really, now we're just incredibly comprehensive. We've become their college parents. So we're college prep program along with the leadership component. That happens in the summer between their junior and senior year. So we're kind of a full service organization now. But the important part of this is that the students are the ones making this happen. The students are the ones doing the hard work. Okay. I'm telling you, I am working with spectacular human beings. These students, a lot of our students have so many responsibilities outside of going to school. They're taking care of their younger siblings.

0:09:44.3 VB: Yep.

0:09:44.6 Tracy: They're possibly holding down a job, working to just help their family to to pay the bills. Then they're taking the most challenging we are encouraging our students to take the most challenging courses at their school.

0:09:57.6 VB: Wow.

0:09:58.3 Tracy: Because what we know is, when a high school student goes from however many college level courses they're taking in high school to college, they're jumping to 100% college level course. We want to encourage them to by their senior year to be in 100% college level courses. We know even with that, the jump in rigor is massive. Another piece of this is our students are going to large, predominantly low income, public high schools. They are going to elite, predominantly white, wealthy institutions and all of the challenges in that. And one of those is just the increase in rigor. And when you think about many of the students going to these institutions, they're coming from private boarding schools.

0:10:53.3 VB: Exactly.

0:10:54.3 Tracy: They have the academic background that really prepares them well for these schools. Essentially, these boarding schools are like mini top universities.

0:11:03.5 VB: Well, college camp. Yeah. And they're away from their parents and oftentimes...

0:11:10.0 Tracy: Exactly. So they've already had that experience. So, now you're taking a kid from Arizona.

0:11:19.1 VB: Arizona, yeah.

0:11:20.0 Tracy: And they're going to Yale.

0:11:21.8 VB: Where there's weather.

0:11:24.0 Tracy: The place is not level. It's not level in even just the academic preparation.

0:11:31.0 AS: Yeah.

0:11:31.5 Tracy: It's not level with leaving home for the first time and being away from family. It's not level. And another piece that is really important to understand is that when you're coming in as a first gen student, there's this idea that students will have and I think this happens a lot when people are coming from kind of places that are non-traditional at these institutions. And they feel like the, the way I'm going to prove that I can do this is to do it completely on my own.

0:12:06.5 VB: Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:12:09.3 Tracy: It's like that's the only way I'm going to prove that I actually belong, deserve to be here. And that mindset can be really, can really hurt them.

0:12:21.1 VB: Yeah, yeah. And it's not. And it's not true of the kiddos that boarding school or any of that. They were bred to...

0:12:32.4 Tracy: The kids that went to boarding school know they should ask for help when they need it. They totally should go to the tutoring. They know they should have all this stuff. So one of the things we really work with our students is you're showing strength by advocating for yourself and by going and getting the help that you need, you're starting to actually strengthen that.

0:12:55.5 VB: Absolutely.

0:12:56.8 Tracy: And also talking about imposter syndrome. And we bring alumni back to talk to our students that have been successful and said, I've gone through this. I know what you're going to face. You're going to feel like you don't belong. You're going to feel like they made a mistake.

0:13:11.1 AS: Yep.

0:13:11.7 Tracy: Or you made a mistake. And you're fooling everybody. All this kind of imposter syndrome stuff. And it's like in these students, these alumni come back and say, listen, I dealt with the same thing. Now I'm about to graduate from UPenn and I can tell you now after four years of UPenn, that I am on the same playing field as my peers coming from a more advantaged background.

0:13:40.7 VB: That is invaluable as well because any time somebody does something for the first time, it's always going to be the hardest. You don't know what to expect. And if you didn't have a parent or a cousin or someone, and even if it was a cousin that went 20 years ago, it sounds like the alumni, like you had just shared, they just finished. And so then the culture of a college campus is going to look a lot different than a cousin who went 20 years ago or even a parent. But then at least, they're being exposed to, I'm not alone. This is something that I might feel because those feelings can be completely overwhelming. And then, like I said, if you're going from Arizona to Yale or it snows and they have fall and all these cultural, just differences, it's a lot. It's overwhelming for sure.

0:14:42.3 Tracy: And when you think about it, our students, we are in Arizona, so just demographically, a lot of Latino students that we work with, that's just the demographics. We don't choose on gender, we don't choose on ethnicity... But they're coming from a very non-diverse situation, if you think about it. The schools they are going to a predominantly Latino kind of first gen of college kids, low income, et cetera. And now they're going and becoming what people are viewing as "the diversity".

0:15:20.6 VB: Yeah. Right, right, right.

0:15:22.7 Tracy: And in fact, they're going now into a situation where all of a sudden people look and come from very different places that they come from. And just the, I just can't even describe. It's hard to really imagine all of the barriers that our students have to kind of, well, basically power through in order to be successful in that situation. But I will tell you this, the idea, and this just really makes me so crazy, the idea that DEI is somehow less than. It's just, why have we just accepted that? With this incoming administration, it's just accepted that DEI equals less than, not qualified, et cetera. I can tell you this, I've been doing this for 20 years. The students that I'm working with are such incredible gems. The things that they have on their plate and they're still excelling and working hard and making this happen for themselves, you want to bet on that person. I will bet on that person every day of the week.

0:16:40.8 AS: And I think that goes to one of the important things that we try to instill in children and students, that one of these important skills that they can gain from school because they're not always getting it at home, is the ability to make connections and find those connections in their peers, in people around them. Because that's when, like when young people come together, when you're a freshman year in college, usually nobody knows each other. There might be some people that some people know, but like, everyone is meeting a lot of new people for the first time. And so the ability to be able to have like the, to be brave enough to find the connection in other people and find that we are more similar than we are different. And yes, we may come from different backgrounds, but there's connection in that. That is so important when you go to college. And I think that truly is a skill that goes along with self-advocacy and resiliency that really can help not just the individual student, but it really goes to push forward the idea that we are all equal and we should have this equity. If we're teaching it to young people, maybe the next generation will understand it better than our generation does.

0:18:00.1 Tracy: Well, I'll tell you this too, you guys. We all know that part of our pathway to success is who you know.

0:18:07.8 VB: Yeah.

0:18:11.6 Tracy: Seriously. And when you think about our students going to these top ranked institutions and you think about where CEOs come from, where politicians come from, where doctors and lawyers and teachers and where in boardrooms across the United States, where are these, where are a lot of these folks coming from? And a lot of these folks are coming from some of these really top ranked institutions. Right? And it's getting to know, it's having peers that you're getting connected into that network. Okay. And it's powerful. One of the things that I'm most excited about in what we do, one is it's generational change. Okay. A student gets a college degree, their younger siblings are now going to college, their cousins, their extended family members, and you know their children are going to college. So that's generational change through success in higher education. Okay. But I'm also excited to be putting the voices of our students in places where their voices typically haven't been historically in our country. And that is powerful and we need that.

0:19:26.7 VB: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Tracy, is there any way that if our listeners are not in Arizona, how can they contact you? How can we clone you? How can we... Where can people go to learn.

0:19:42.1 Tracy: If you'd like to learn more about what we do. If you Google and to make it easy, if you Google Step college prep or you Google STEP expedition, we're going to pop right to the top of that Google search. And we have an incredible website that really highlights what we do. And we also are on social media, et cetera, et cetera. But I am easily reachable and my contact information is on the website and I am happy to talk to anybody that wants to do this sort of thing where they live. I'm happy to talk with them and give any advice that I can to help them launch something similar in their area.

0:20:19.0 AS: Wonderful. Well, we love to... We just had such a great conversation. We love to end our episodes with kind of, we know you've told some wonderful stories already, but any story you want to end on that just, individual kid you worked with that just really left a lasting impression that gave you hope for the future generally.

0:20:41.2 Tracy: You know, again, speaking, I think to this idea that the DEI is somehow less. Right? I'll just talk about one of my students, Bill De la Rosa, who grew up in Nogales. There's an American side and Mexican side he would sell tamales with his mom door to door. When he was young he came into our program and he said gosh, I've always wanted to go to Harvard. I always want to go to Harvard. And I said, great, great, great, but let's look at some other schools too. And I said, hey, there's a fly-in program. And fly-in programs are all expense paid trips that students can take to the school to really look and see what the campus is like, et cetera. And I said, I really want you to go apply to this flying program to Bowdoin College. And so he did and he came back and he said, oh my gosh, I want to apply early decision one to Bowdoin because he fell in love with it. Right?

0:21:38.7 VB: Yeah.

0:21:39.3 Tracy: This is in Maine. Bowdoin isn't in Maine.

0:21:41.3 VB: Wow.

0:21:41.8 AS: Okay. So we're taking, we're going from Tucson, Arizona to Maine. Okay?

0:21:46.2 VB: Yeah, yeah.

0:21:46.8 Tracy: So anyway, long story short, four years, got his degree, was the commencement speaker and then went on and did two masters at Oxford University.

0:21:56.0 VB: Wow.

0:21:56.6 Tracy: Is currently completing his PhD in at Oxford and is at Yale Law School.

0:22:03.8 VB: Wow.

0:22:04.5 Tracy: Okay, now you tell me that that person is somehow less than. You know what I'm saying? This is a spectacular human being and he is, I'm just talking about one of our 750 alumni.

0:22:19.3 VB: Amazing.

0:22:21.1 Tracy: Yeah. I am so honored to be working with our students and families.

0:22:25.7 VB: And we are just so, so grateful for the work that you're doing and for taking the time to really dig in to equity with us. Because like I said before we started, it really has been weaponized. And yeah, we feel like we're taking crazy pills too, Tracy. I mean, every day. We have to center ourselves and continue to speak to people that are on, the boots on the ground. That has just been kind of our way of telling people, giving them calls of action and letting them know, start locally. These big, big problems that they are big and it's sometimes overwhelming. And so then to focus locally is a great way to make the change that you want to see in the world. So, Tracy, we grateful for your time and the work that you do and thank you so much for coming on to our podcast. We can probably talk to you all day. And listeners, if you have any follow ups, please let us know. I'm feeling we might have Tracy on again to talk about some other things, but we will talk to you next time.

0:23:32.3 AS: Bye. Bye.

0:23:32.8 Tracy: Thank you.