Welcome! This episode invites listeners into the heart of Worth Work: story telling and practices that help us tell our stories from our depths. Desmond shares triggering experience of racism at the school he works at. The practices Desmond is immersed in help him navigate the experience, feel it deeply and authentically express himself. Take this story in like you're sipping a special beverage.

01:35- What comes up for your when you think of worth work practices?

01:58- Jesse "Embracing our whole selves so that we can embrace others. In a quantum sense- 'you are my other me' and that comes from the In Lak Ech poem, that ancient Mayan concept. We are all connected, so its practicing that connection. Practicing our humanity."

02:36 Desmond- "There are a lot of folks dealing shame, a lack of self worth. Which creates all sorts of ways that our pain in manifesting in the classroom and in the systems. The idea is worth... of self worth, the value we innately have by being here and being here another day.... every time we see the next day there is something that decides we are worthy of seeing another day, without having to do anything. If we can stay connected to that, we don't fall victim to the way we convince ourselves that we're not enough."

03:32 Desmond "There is the work piece and the practice piece. Not just showing up to do the work when the work is needed, but practicing the skills you need in order to do the work. Its continuous, its daily.... there are times when we lose the human connection and we need to practice the skills that help us maintain the human connection while we deal with the challenges of meeting everyone's need in the system."

04:21- Desmond "A worth work practice is something you create yourself to practice internal skills, so when its no longer a drill, you're ready to act."

05:15 Jesse "In Worth Work- the vision is to create a world where everyone has access to everything they need to live their highest selves. In our context- eradicating white body supremacy.... we need practices to evolve. Some practices are passed down from our ancestors and then we also need to develop and expand new practices to adapt to what our times are calling for."

05:55 Desmond - "And having the skill set to adapt. Which may not be present if your don't have a creative practice... We are attempting to create something new...humans have always been dealing with the human condition... What we are trying to do is deal with the human condition together. "

07:00 Jesse- "These practices are way to deal with out pain. Like Resmaa Menakem says, clean pain over dirty pain. Pain will be expressed some how. Our practices help us express pain in productive ways, in ways that bring connection.... With worth work we are trying to build that human connection in the context of the institution of school despite all the obstacles we face on the daily. Which might be a good segue into your story of how to channel pain and the value of having practices."

08:18 Desmond "Yea cause when you said how to bring humanity into it. The simple answer is allowing our stories to be heard and told in community, in our classes."

08:45 Desmond sets up and shares an experience 2/15/22....

14:02- Desmond "It got to the point where I said 'the human part of me wants to go and have a conversation with the other classes, the teacher part of me is hesitant to do so. It was in that point that I realized, 'oh I'm a human before I'm a teacher.' I experienced the dehumanization of what was happening, through the word and the culture context that we're in..."