Five seasons of “Opportunity Gap,” and what we learned along the way

After five seasons, “Opportunity Gap” is ending. In this final episode, host Julian talks with Understood’s Gretchen Vierstra. Together, they look back at the guests and lessons that shaped the show, from a conversation about the school-to-prison pipeline to tips for not rushing in to fix things for your child.

But don’t worry. The show may be ending, but you can still find every episode and free resource at Understood.org.

• Listen: What is the school-to-prison pipeline? 

• Listen: What teachers want parents to know

• Listen: IEPs and English language learners

• Listen: Help kids face failure without stepping in to fix it

Julian Saavedra: OG listeners, it's been a minute. I hope you've had a great, restful summer and maybe, hopefully, you and your kids were ready for them to go back to school when the time rolled around. Today's episode is a little bittersweet for me — a lot bittersweet.

After five seasons, "The Opportunity Gap" is coming to an end. Of course, every episode will still be available to listen back and share, and on top of that, you can always check out all of the free resources to look at at Understood.org. That is at Understood.org.

But I wanted to take this opportunity to look back at what we've done on the show, because I'm really proud of the conversations that we've had. I'm proud of all the people we've been able to bring on and provide a platform for positive resources and support.

We've heard from so many of you about things that we've done to help you. So, we just want to look back today and celebrate all the great things that we've done with "The Opportunity Gap". Today joining me, I have the amazing Gretchen Vierstra. Hey Gretchen, what's going on?

Gretchen Vierstra: Hi Julian, how are you?

Julian: Oh, I'm fantastic. Thank you for joining me.

Gretchen: I'm so happy to be here.

Julian: I know you are one of the original podcasters with the Understood network, so how perfect for you to come on and join. I've known Gretchen since I first joined Understood back as a teaching fellow in 2019. She's an editor at Understood, and she's been a really great friend to our show. So, let me say this part one last time, and let's get it right.

Welcome to "The Opportunity Gap", a show where we talk about how to navigate the education system. I'm your host, Julian, an assistant principal with over 20 years of experience. Today, we're celebrating some of our favorite moments from the show.

Before we get into any of those specific episodes, I just wanted to say one thing that I've really, really loved about this show, and it's that you're not just a host, you're doing this work every day as an assistant principal.

Gretchen: And that's meant we as listeners could get a better understanding of what really goes on behind the scenes at schools. Even for someone like me who worked in schools for over 10 years, a former educator, it's been eye-opening.

So, my first question for you are: are there particular ideas or values or experiences from your work as a teacher and AP that you especially wanted to bring to the show?

Julian: Yeah, I mean, I'm on the front lines. I think part of the value of having this platform that Understood has provided me is where I get to share life experiences that are happening in the moment. You're getting like an up-close and personal view of what it looks like and feels like.

Over the last five years, education's changed. And I've gotten to kind of experience it with the listeners and the viewers, how things have changed so much over these last five years. So, to your question, I think the big values for me always are revolving around relationships.

The value of having strong relationships between school, the students, and home and the community — whether it's a parenting adult, whether it's an auntie or auntie or cousin or dad, mom, whomever is at the house and the community and the school and the student coming together — that value of relationship is at the center of everything.

And so I think being able to share that and express how important that is from the lens of being a school leader, I think it's really helping our listeners trust their instincts. And then my second thing is really around the idea of trust.

I hope that the educators that have listened to this understand that my success as a school leader and my success as a teacher comes from the idea of trust. That I've been able to build trust with my students and I've been able to build trust with the community I serve.

And that trust allows us to move forward and find success with our students. So, I hope that the idea of building relationships and trust has come through in all the work that we've done on the podcast.

Gretchen: I really think it does, for sure. And it makes me think then for you, as you've been doing this work and you've been talking to people, did it get you thinking about certain things? Were there things that you learned and that you brought back to your school?

Julian: Yeah, I mean, there's so many different interesting people that we've been able to bring on the show. As I started to do the research and do the entire process of producing a show and finding guests and learning about topics, I found that it gave me almost a second career track where I could learn about all these different things that I was interested in.

So, I thought selfishly, let me find people that are going to help me with my work, whether it be school psychologists or whether it was education lawyers to help me understand the legal process. One of my favorite shows was one that we did on the school-to-prison pipeline.

And we had an education attorney who specialized in disability rights, Malhar Shah. So, when we were talking, we found that there were some areas where we aligned and then we found there were some areas that we did not align.

He came at it from an advocate and an attorney representing families and students, and I looked at it from a school leader looking at the needs and rights of all of our students. So, it was a really robust conversation where it helped me look at my own work in a different way of how can I support students before we get to the point of having to involve lawyers.

And so that really helped me look at the laws and really do some research so that I really understood what was I doing on a day-to-day basis.

Gretchen: And let's face it, I feel like all educators are lifelong learners. And so doing something like this when you get to speak to someone like that, I'm sure you just brought so much back to your work. So, as we know, this podcast was made for families and caregivers navigating the education system, and families and caregivers especially with kids with learning differences.

(07:15) The unique perspective of being a Black Hispanic male educator.

Gretchen: As a Black Hispanic male educator, I feel like you brought a really unique perspective to that, and one that we don't always get to hear about. So, are there any conversations that you had on this show that really got into that?

Julian: There's just a wealth of things that and experiences that come with being the identity that I am. I am first and foremost, I'm a Black male, Latinx educator. That's who I am and everything that I do funnels through that identity.

And so being able to bring that perspective to a wider audience, I think hopefully debunks some myths and brought a different look at how do we look at the work when we're working with families of kids that are similar in cultural background.

And what does it look like for working with kids who are not of similar cultural background, but understanding that the challenges that are talked about, they're real. It's not something we're making up, it's not something that comes out of nowhere, but it also is not the only thing that dictates who we are as educators.

And so one of the conversations that comes back is during one of our first seasons, my former co-host, my buddy Marissa — Marissa Wallace, she and I, we worked together extensively as educators for a long time, still one of my best friends. She and I were co-hosting the show and we were able to interview a former Arizona State Teacher of the Year, Kareem Neal.

Now this brother, he is amazing. He's a special education teacher, he was on the show a few times, but he was in his classroom and he would get on the show after he had just taught class. So, it was fresh and it just felt like family when we would speak with each other. It's just like a familiarity that we had with each other that really it made it real.

And what was fascinating is that he's a Black man as an educator teaching in a demographic that has a heavily populated recent immigrant community. So, he has a lot of people who come from Mexico or Central America that are his students, many of them who are English as a second language learners.

So, his perspective was to learn about this different culture while also honoring his own. And so it was really fascinating to hear how he approached the work of supporting families as they navigated the IEP system while also being an ally as being a fellow minority person.

Just really kind of understanding his perspective because for me, I work in a predominantly African American community, so kind of talking through the differences in our experiences while also seeing, you know what, there's a lot of things we do the same, it was really interesting and cool to hear.

Gretchen: Okay, well we actually have a clip from that conversation, and it starts off with Marissa, your former co-host, speaking. Let's listen.

(09:37) Building trust with parents through communication tools.

Marissa Wallace: You made such a key point about the building relationships that I don't always feel that people understand what that means, right? Or like tangible things to do that because you have to gain the parent, the student, the caregiver's trust, because the relationship won't go anywhere if that trust is not set. So, I'm curious, what have you found in your 25 years of experience that has allowed you to build that trust first to be able to then expand on a relationship with families?

Kareem Neal: The funniest thing that I've did lately, the last few years, and it's worked like a charm is I found this site that automatically translates. So, it's called "ClassDojo" and I actually initially grabbed it because it kind of works well for kids in self-contained classrooms from the gate. But then it automatically translates what I say and automatically translates what parents say. And so we got them all on there and I was constantly posting pictures of what was happening in my classroom, posting pictures of work, and all of a sudden we all felt closer.

Marissa: That's awesome.

Kareem: Before, I had a lot of parents who would go straight to the paraprofessional in my classroom who spoke Spanish and they would talk to them. Now they felt comfortable coming up to me while still having maybe an interpreter nearby, but it was just like they felt comfortable with me because they felt like they knew me because we're talking all the time. So, finding that kind of communication tool if nothing else. I had a kid who him and his family, they signed and I went and learned sign language. Spanish, I've been trying to learn Spanish and I'm terrible at learning Spanish apparently, but at least I found this tool that made us feel closer as a group and then it was just like our relationships took off. And that kind of thing then makes a person say, "Oh, I can trust this person if he's saying I don't have to do this or don't worry about that, you or ice can't come to our school," stuff like that. You need that.

Julian: I wish my kids were in your classroom. I can already feel the vibe.

Gretchen: Well, shout out to Kareem from that clip, and I also want to mention that he, with you Julian, was an Understood Teacher Fellow, and you all did some of the first work on our site for educators.

Julian: Salute to Kareem, yes, salute to Kareem. Awesome work.

Gretchen: You know, there's so many things on this show that I've heard that I wished I knew when my own kids were younger. But one recent conversation you had really stuck with me with Dr. Nanika Coor. She's a family therapist in Brooklyn, and you guys were talking about something that I think a lot of parents do, which is have an urge to go in and fix things — and go in and fix things when it comes to school especially because we're so worried about their academics or how they're doing at school. And she had some really good advice. So, when that urge to fix things hits, here's what she tells us to do instead.

Dr. Nanika Coor: And so when your kid does bring you "here's a problem I'm having that's school-related," the first thing you do is just listen really. Like, sometimes the listening is the fix for a lot of kids. I'm having a problem and it's with a friend and it's bothered me, and sometimes me just talking about it out loud to you, and you not having some big reaction, right? Like you neutrally listening, keeping your anxieties and your judgments and your interpretations at bay while I am telling you this story, sometimes that's the fix. Me just sort of venting about it out loud helps me come to my own conclusion about what I want to do about this.

Julian: Dr. Coor, I want to stamp that for our listeners, because that's such an important point. And I'm stamping it for myself too. Listening is the fix. In many cases, that just the listening part — I have to say, that's one of the hardest things to do, especially if you have little ones, where sometimes they can ramble and sometimes the story goes on and on and on. But the fact that listening, authentically listening for understanding and not for solution, I love that. That's a great way to look at it.

Gretchen: So, again, I just love that piece of advice from Dr. Coor. I think it's amazing. Is there anything else from this season or seasons past, Julian, that has come up for you that you're really proud of?

(14:02) The importance of multilingual resources for families in the education system.

Julian: How much time do you have? I could talk at length about all the amazing things. But you know, again, I think going back to the beginning of our conversation, the opportunity to — no pun intended — but the opportunity to bring people on and I say put people on and provide a platform for those that might not get a platform is really important to me.

And one of my proudest moments was I was able to convince the producers and everybody involved with our show that we needed to provide instruction in Spanish for those that are Spanish-speaking listeners. And so we began by having a conversation with a few guests that were in the bilingual world and we talked about how those that are English language learners, how sometimes they're dually identified.

So, what happens if I'm a child who has special education services, but I also have language needs? And what happens when they're over-identified or under-identified? What happens in communities where there is not trust between school and the community, especially, you know, in 2024, that's a real thing.

And so we tried to bring on people that could talk through what those resources were. I thought we wouldn't do it justice unless we provided information in the widest-spoken second language in our nation. So, I said, let's bring somebody on to speak Spanish. And I even spoke a little Spanish to introduce for one of my episodes.

And then the entire episode was in Spanish. And then from that, we were able to work with Understood to build an entire series with former National Teacher of the Year, Juliana Urtubey, who Juliana is a great friend of the podcast, great friend of Understood, also a former Understood Fellow.

But Juliana was able to record an entire series that broke down the entire process for getting support with IEPs, but it was completely in English and then also in Spanish. And those resources are now on Understood. So, I was just really proud of the fact that from an idea that we had and then from the work that we did on our show, it was able to impact a wider audience and hopefully start to change and shift perspective a little bit for the company, but also for the people that were listening.

Gretchen: That series is great, and you can find it on our website. It's called "Understood Explains: IEPs" with Juliana Urtubey. All the episodes we've talked about were so great and you're right, there's just so much to be proud of.

But you know, all of you who have been faithful watchers and listeners of the show, don't worry, you can still dive into the archive and check out any episode that you want to play again or that you might have missed because all of that will still be available for you.

And before we wrap up, I just really want to say a heartfelt thanks to you, Julian. I'm just so proud of everything you did on this show, and I think that you really did bring a perspective that Understood needed. And I just thoroughly believe in educators. I think educators could rule the world.

Julian: We do.

Gretchen: I know! And I just think this was so great for families to hear from someone like you who could really break things down and tell them the truth of what's going on, how they can advocate. I think you did an amazing job and I want to thank you so much for doing it.

Julian: I appreciate it. And I would go right back and say the same thing for Understood. I think if anything, it allowed us to really bring reality and hopefully show regular people that our voice matters and our perspective matters and that there are resources out there for you.

So, before we go, if you take one thing — just one thing from these five seasons, I hope that it is this: navigating school for a kid who learns differently is hard. But you are not alone. That's what every one of these conversations has been all about. I hope you remember that more than anything.

Gretchen: And don't forget that Understood has so many great resources that parents and caregivers can use. We've got articles, expert Q&As, newsletters, a guide for IEP and 504 plans. We've got tools for talking to teachers and all of that is free and will remain available on our website for you.

Julian: So, if "The Opportunity Gap" was your way in, don't let it be your way out. We'll leave links in the show notes with other resources from Understood.org that you can follow. Gretchen, again, I appreciate you for coming on and doing this with me. OG family, what can I say? Thank you for sharing. Thank you for doing everything that you've done for these last five seasons. You've showed up for your kids, you've showed up for community, and you showed up for us. So, we appreciate that.

And last but not least, again, for me, thank you so much. I'll be around, don't worry, you will hear from me. So, we hope that you continue to be with us and thank y'all. See y'all out there. Thanks for listening today. We love hearing from our listeners. So, if you have any thoughts about today's episode, you can email us at opportunitygap@understood.org.

And be sure to check out the show notes for links and resources to anything we mentioned in the episode. This show is brought to you by Understood.org. Understood.org is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, donate at understood.org/give.

"The Opportunity Gap" is produced by Julie Subrin and Gretchen Vierstra. Video is produced by Calvin Knieand edited by Jessie DiMartino. Briana Berry is our production director. Jordan Davidson is our editorial director. From Understood.org, our executive directors are Laura Key and Scott Cocchiere. Thanks again for listening. Until next time, OG family.