[Danielle Balocca]: Hey listeners, this is Danielle. And Shelley. Shelley is a radical Dravidian and racial equity activist.
[Chelli Keshavan]: And Danielle is a community mobilizer and changemaker. And this is the Medford Bites podcast. Every two weeks, we chew on the issues facing Medford and deliver bites of information about the city by lifting the expertise of our guests.
[Danielle Balocca]: Join us in discussion about what you hope for the future of Medford. And as always, tell us where you like to eat. All right, thank you both for being here with me today. If you don't mind starting with just some introductions, so saying your name, pronouns, and just a bit about who you are.
[SPEAKER_02]: My name is Joel Menasha. He, him, pronouns. I'm a guidance Councilor at Medford High School, and I also am the co-advisor of our GSA, the Gay-Straight Alliance.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_04]: My name is Sarah Fard, she, her pronouns, and I'm a music teacher here at Medford High School. All right.
[Danielle Balocca]: Well, thank you both. We're going to talk a little bit about a specific topic later on. But I wonder before we do that, if you all could answer the famous podcast question, which is, what is your favorite place to eat in Medford? And what do you like to eat there?
[SPEAKER_04]: Sure. Well, I am actually a little embarrassed to say that there are a lot of places in Medford I've eaten at. I'm usually very much on the go because I teach at a college evenings after a year. So I'm so grateful that we have a bistro here at Medford High School. It's part of the vocational school and the food is amazing. You can get coffee and it's just such And an amazing thing that like during my prep period, I can go up to the bistro and get a coffee. Their desserts are amazing. The staff does a wonderful job training students in the program. So that's my favorite place to eat in Denver.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I will second that the bistro is very good. In terms of restaurants, I would say Real Gusto is my favorite place. I like that it's, you know, you can get some water views. From there, it's very pretty, but also the chicken parm is excellent. So that would be my favorite dish there.
[Danielle Balocca]: I like that place too. Great. So we're going to talk today a little bit about like a special initiative that you're both involved in at the high school. But before we get to that, I'm wondering if you could both share a little bit about kind of what got you into teaching and maybe what you kind of appreciate about Medford High.
[SPEAKER_04]: sure um so i knew i wanted to be a teacher for a long time i come from a family of teachers so when it came down to what i wanted to teach i knew it was going to be some form of art my mom is a visual art teacher or what she's retired now um but music was always like the the most powerful thing to me so i i went into teaching Because I wanted to make music more accessible to more people. Because when I was learning music, I got some lessons, but I didn't get a lot. And if I hadn't had musical opportunities in school, I just wouldn't have had the experiences that I had to develop as a musician and play music and make music. One thing I really like about my job here at Medford is that I teach music electives at the high school level. Anyone can take them. So it doesn't matter if you've played an instrument before or you haven't. I teach music technology, guitar, and a fairly new class that's a popular music ensemble. So you can join if you have a lot of experience or you don't. I think that historically there's been a lot of gatekeeping to who can participate in music and who can play music and what type of music you're supposed to play and I'm just really happy to like I like to think anyways, like break down those barriers and invite anyone in who might not have had the opportunity to make music before. So yeah, and there are a good amount of students that that's where they play music. It's just in class and that's okay. You're not expected to have an instrument at home or take lessons. Unfortunately, that's not super common in a lot of other music programs. I'm curious if you have like a main instrument that you... My main instrument is guitar, so actually I floated around to a few other teaching jobs before I landed here, and one of the first things I noticed when this job was posted 10 years ago, was that they were specifically looking for a guitar player, which had never happened to you before. It was always, are you a brass, are you a woodwind, are you a choral person? No? OK, well, good luck. No one really cared that I was a guitarist, but for this position, they did. And I think it does give me advantage, because I'm able to differentiate. for a lot of different levels and styles and interests, because I'm familiar with the instrument. Whereas if it were clarinet methods, I could guide you, but maybe not so well.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, and when you when you mentioned that piece about kind of like making things more accessible, a guitar is like a cool instrument, I feel like, to youth, right? Like, somebody wants to play like, yeah, I feel like that. It's like also about, it sounds like it's also about attracting kids, making it feel interesting to them. And then once they're in it, it's like they can experience how
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah. And I said, I mean, the guitar's in so many different styles of music, which is nice. And it also lends itself to a lot of different modalities of learning that we're going to talk about. There are so many different visuals that you can learn guitar with, which isn't always common with other instruments. But I'm getting myself set up.
[Danielle Balocca]: No, thank you.
[SPEAKER_04]: We could talk about that all day, but I won't, I promise.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, we've got a few other things to talk about. Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_02]: Joel, what about you? You know, unlike Sarah, I did not expect to be working in education when I was in high school or even college. I went to college for journalism and I worked in journalism for four years after college in TV news and I thought that's what I always wanted to do. But I didn't find it very fulfilling and I had one of my best friends was a history teacher and I just learned at some point I think the idea of being a guidance Councilor kind of popped into my head. And I went to his school and I learned more about guidance, what guidance Councilors did. Long story short, I'm here now in Medford. This is my sixth year. I'm not just saying this because I'm in Medford and I'm on a Medford podcast, but I honestly feel like this is like my dream school. I think Medford's really special because of how diverse it is, kind of in every direction. And I appreciate that in large part because I learned so much. about different students and their experiences. And I also think it's so cool that we have this vocational school. It is the best part of my job is seeing students excited to be in this building. And I think for students, you know, who may not succeed as well in the classroom, that might not be the best way for them to learn, for them to have something to be excited and prideful about in their vocational shops. And we see it all of the time. And it's it's we're so lucky that so many of our students have this opportunity here, and I love that I'm able to be a part of that and encourage it.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you, yeah, and we met because you're, you said, co-leader? Co-advisor. Co-advisor for the GSA, yeah. So we met at the PRIDE event last year, I think? Yeah. And you and, you know, kind of the reason that we're here today is you had mentioned a scholarship initiative that you're both involved in, so I'm wondering if you could share a little bit about that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so this all started really, the roots of it are back in June of 2020 after George Floyd's murder. I think a lot of people were like, well, what can we do? It was a moment of reckoning in terms of like, what action can we take to do something positive? And that's what I think some of the educators here thought. So I wasn't part of things initially, but two efforts were kind of happening at the high school. One was one of our English teachers started a reading group to kind of read some anti-racist literature and for educators to talk about. And another one of our staff members started another effort, just a kind of an anti-racist teachers collective to talk about actions that we could be taking. And, you know, out of those kind of sentiments and groups came One of our other teachers, Nick Kane, who decided that a scholarship would be a great idea as something positive, as something practical, concrete, that we could do to support students. And, you know, more specifically, the thought was, let's create a scholarship for students of color. We looked at the numbers in terms of our school system. We have a pretty diverse student population. 41% of our students are students of color, and yet only about 5% of the teaching staff in Medford public schools. is staff of color, so if there's something we may be able to do to shift that even a little bit, this scholarship could be it.
[Danielle Balocca]: So is the scholarship aimed at students who are interested in studying education?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, so it's students who want to pursue education at the college level and for students of color.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, I work as a social worker. And we have a similar issue where we support folks, quite a diverse group of people. And we find that the pipeline for becoming a social worker is very wide. And there's a lot of barriers to that profession for lots of folks, too. And so it sounds like part of this intention is to mitigate some of those barriers for your students who may want to, go into education, become teachers, and help to reflect the student body here.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and... No, no, I'm just saying, I think, you know, a lot of people don't always think about how, and I'm sure it's probably the same for social work, there's a lot of cost involved in the requirements to become qualified for these jobs and it There are a lot of steps to it. There's a lot of, like, internship, like, unpaid work that you're going to, you're getting paid for. And I remember during COVID lockdown, there was a report, I believe it was from WBUR, that because schools were so strapped for teaching staff that they waived some of the requirements and the diversity numbers went up, which speaks to how some of these requirements are also barriers to getting more diverse qualified people in the field because it, you know, there's some financial parts of it too and I hope that and we talked a bit when we were starting the scholarship of what this what these funds could go towards right school and you know there are tests you have to take and all that all that costs money so we hope that this can help in some of that because I think there are there are real statistics that show that that's part of it.
[Danielle Balocca]: So how's it been like what's what was the like response when you guys announced this or how's it been going?
[SPEAKER_02]: We were excited. So last year was our first year that we launched it. We received donations from 50 different individuals or I think more than 50. And we raised more than $3,000 in our first year. Last year, we awarded our two first scholarship recipients, and they were both two students who are pursuing education at Bridgewater State. They were so worthy. Their applications and their essays were really kind of inspiring, and it just felt good knowing their stories, where this money was going to go, and it's really going to be helpful for them. And, you know, we're hoping to raise even more this year.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, how have you raised money? Where are those donations coming from?
[SPEAKER_04]: So we do have a website, MedfordTeacherEquityScholarship.org, and there is a space where you can donate through DonorBox. There's a button for that. If people are more comfortable, they can certainly send in checks to Renford Teacher Equity Scholarship Fund at 27 Elliott Street in Watertown, Mass. But for myself, I was just reaching out to people, posting online, sending emails, telling people about it. I mean, it was kind of word of mouth for me. I don't know about you, Joel.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well, I would like to also plug that we have created a non-profit, so these are tax-deductible donations, which is important for some people. But yeah, you know, we sent emails to the staff. I know our union sent out an email to members to donate, which we appreciated. And yeah, there were community members, there were school committee members. It's been really encouraging to see the amount of support we've gotten. And so we're excited to, you know, make things even bigger this year.
[Danielle Balocca]: And for listeners, this is hopefully coming out around Giving Tuesday, so it could be a good opportunity to donate to Medford High students. And there will be a link in our show notes so people can find the website there. Anything that surprised you about the process of starting this scholarship fund?
[SPEAKER_02]: I wouldn't say surprising. It was just, again, it feels good to be doing something. You know, last year here, I'm sure people have heard, was a pretty hard year. You know, there was school violence and just the culture here wasn't great. And, you know, I remember talking to Nick Kane again, who started this effort initially, and it was so important for me and for him and I think for a lot of people to be working on something positive that we felt like this is something we're directly doing to give back to students. And again, you know, Sarah was the one who announced the scholarships at our annual scholarship night. It was just such an exciting, emotional, proud moment for me to see those two students win, you know, take that money and feel like we've done something.
[Danielle Balocca]: Anything that you want to reflect on?
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I think Joel kind of hit it there, for sure. I wasn't involved with any of the, you know—I know there was like a lot of paperwork and stuff that, you know, I didn't do any of that. So I'm not surprised that it was there, but it was a bit of work to get it started for sure, I know, for the—for Nick and—Anthony, right? Anthony Guion. Anthony Guion was another teacher that helped set up the fund, like, you know, setting up an account for the fund. setting it up as a nonprofit and all that. So yeah, a lot of work went into that. I had no part in it, but it happened.
[Danielle Balocca]: Well, no, and it sounds like it's a bit of work outside of your regular jobs. And so I know it seems obvious that this is something that you both are pretty passionate about. And thank you for like putting that work in. It sounds like it was able to directly benefit some students. So thank you for doing that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I feel, you know, I will just add, I feel even more passionately about this given the recent Supreme Court ruling effectively banning affirmative action at colleges because, you know, I was thinking about this and if we think about the barriers to attending college or even getting into college, we know that wealthy students have more access to resources to maybe have tutors and get better SAT scores and there's data supporting all of that. So if we look at, you know, on the other side, well, if students don't have the same resources and they may not be able to get as high test scores or as high GPA, they may not just on paper be able to get into the same Ivy League schools or elite colleges. Well, those are the colleges that are best with financial aid. That's just the reality. So if you have fewer students of need who are now attending these Ivy League schools or other elite colleges, They're going to be going more into debt maybe, that could be a barrier for attendance. So again, I don't presume to believe that this scholarship is going to pay full tuition, but again, it's just another drop in the bucket to support students who may need that financial support even more now in the face of this affirmative action ruling.
[Danielle Balocca]: It's a really solid argument, and I feel like that lots of people are looking for something to do. Like, you know, we hear this news, and it's like, sounds, feeling helpless. Like, okay, like this is, you know, this change is really going to impact lots of us and our kids and our communities. And so donating to this scholarship is a thing you can do, right? Something that you can do to sort of feel part of this process and part of helping. Okay, perfect. All right. Well, thank you both for being here with me today, and good luck with the fundraising. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you. And I did not want to end this without saying thank you to Danielle, who, thanks to your efforts the past couple of years, Danielle has led fundraisers that have raised over $3,000 for our GSA here in Medford, which, by the way, we also use for scholarships in large part. We try to give scholarships to our seniors. So thank you so much. It means an incredible amount to our students to have all of that money. So thank you.
[Danielle Balocca]: I had a really awesome GSA growing up, so they're really important to me. And also it's thanks to our listeners who supported those fundraisers as well. So thank you guys. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. The Medford Bites podcast is produced and moderated by Danielle Balacca and Shelly Kisherman. Music is made by Hendrik Irenese. We'd love to hear what you think about the podcast. You can reach out to us by email at medfordpod at gmail.com, or you can rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts. Thanks so much for listening. Guys, what's the name of the podcast? Never Bites. Never Bites. Good job.