Angela interviews Mrs. Sandra Toll, Drama teacher. "The Pretty City Committee." Part 1. On radical collaboration.

00:00 We are natural storytellers. It's what makes us human. David Isay of StoryCorps describes oral history interviews seek to record and preserve in depth accounts of personal experiences and reflections. Welcome to walking the beat. You're tuning into our oral history project. This is our part in documenting knowledge, capturing the hard earned learning, making space for legacy so we can build forward. If we want to know about better policing, lets build off of the efforts of a chief who does that. If we want to understand the impact of lockdown drills on children, ask one. There is great intimacy in listening, allowing a beloved to unfurl their wisdom. There is also risk for us. We might be changed a little. We offer these testimonies as historical documents. The stories are as diverse as the people. What can we learn from each other about the conditions for safety? What is our role in interrupting violence in our communities? How might we collectively challenge violence as a culture and replace it with healthy habits, not just bodies? How can we protect each other's psyche? What might a story about a time we felt safe tell us about necessary public policy? Youth in the walking the beat program learned how to conduct oral history interviews on matters of community violence and public safety. We'll hear from a judge, a detective, a police chief, an elder, a third grader, a reverend, a social worker, a bunch of teenagers, a drama teacher. We have so many folks show up from our community and we have you. Let's listen. The first thing I'm going to do is welcome teacher Elizabeth Public School teacher Sandra Tole Artist Sandra Tole visionary and thought leader in the community Sandra Tole So Miss Tole thank you so much for being here. The first thing that I would like to do is tell you what you mean to us. You have been such an incredible partner for the Elizabeth Youth Theatre ensemble. This is amazing. But also as a teacher, you have given your energy, your effort, your talents, your tremendous amount of generosity and care to all of the students that you work with. People love you. They respect you, they look to you. And also for me, as a colleague, as a person, as a friend, you are somebody who embodies the best of us. And I wish there was more, many, many missed holes. But we're glad we have you. We want the best for you. We want your cup to be filled. We want you to be happy and we want you to be pleased. And we want your goals and your desires. And we want you to be well too. Right? As we talk about a culture of care, I'm going to say my name for the record. My name is Angela Kariotis I am in the Elizabeth Public Library, and it is November 19, 2022. Just so we know, we have consent to record. Can you say your name, the day and where we are?

03:31 My name is Sandra Tole It's November 19, 2022. We're in the Elizabeth Public Library, and I give my consent to be recorded today also.

03:42 So first, as an artist or as a teacher, right. So, you know, our theme. Our theme is safety. Yes, public safety. And also the idea of community violence, which. So it's hard to say that word, right?

03:57 Very. Isn't it like an oxymoron? It's like violence, right.

04:01 We're talking about violence, and that could show up in. In a lot of ways, but that's good thematically. That's what our conversation is going to be about. And it might dip in and out of there, but I just wanted to sort of prepare that. Does that word make you feel violence? Makes me feel very uncomfortable for me to say. How do you.

04:22 Do you ever say it?

04:23 Does it ever come?

04:24 Oh, I say it. I say it quite a bit, unfortunately. And it gives me, like, a tight feeling in my chest, I think, because it evokes, obviously, physical violence, images of physical violence, but also verbal, psychic, emotional. You know what I mean? Violence that I think is even more prevalent and more common because it's often normalized and expected. And so the violence that people don't react to as violence, I feel also very aware of and affected by.

05:04 Thank you. A part of our work in the program talks a lot about psychic violence, so thank you for contextualizing that. Often when we think about physical violence, it's almost like too late. Right?

05:14 Yes.

05:15 Like, that is at the end of the line of, if you're creating an intervention or a way to disrupt it, physical violence or trying to step in at that point is like the last points of the temperature line.

05:32 Precisely.

05:32 So can you tell me a little bit about it? You're in school, you're in the theater, you're in the world. You with your family, you're in the neighborhood, you're in a community. Right. So just as a person moving through the world, can you talk about how just the prevalence of psychic violence or all the violence that you're talking about, that's nothing physical. You talk about what that might be or look like or how we ignore it.

06:00 I think if I. If I could. If I could define it in a. In a very broad and general term, it stems from people not believing everyone's trying to do their best, maybe from the opposite, assuming others are against you assuming others are nothing, putting their best out there, are not doing the best that they can with what they have.

06:29 So when you see me taking notes, that's just. Yeah, try to write, right. I'm not trying to document the interview, like, word for word, but just writing some notes. Everyone doesn't believe we're all trying to do our best. So there's, like, a lot of suspicion.

06:45 A lot of suspicion. And we're quick to get furious rather than getting curious. Right. Rather than asking, you know, why is this behavior happening? Or why is this making me angry? Why do I believe someone might have something against me or be doing something to hurt me? I see it a lot, if I can be specific for a moment in the way sometimes community members approach their frustrations with the Elizabeth public school system. And I imagine every school system in the country, there's an approach of attack. And I understand it comes from feeling perhaps underserved, misunderstood, frustrated as parents and community members that we can't have better and do better for our children. So as a mom, I identify with that level of anger and frustration 100%. But I think to come to the table assuming that those in charge aren't already trying to do better for our children is a big mistake. Because if I'm ready to assume everything you do is wrong or not good enough or you don't care, then how can I believe we're going to come to the table and make anything better together? I've already sort of canceled you out of the equation. Right? And so you see it a lot at board meetings or now, of course, the Internet has exploded that that option to get on and complain and criticize, and it's often done without all the information. And so that's why I come back to curious, not furious. Like, when we're dealing with frustrations or things in the world that we can't control, it very easily makes us angry. But I think asking questions or coming to the table with an awareness that we don't have all the information available to us and we need more and that we need to come together in an open and cooperative fashion rather than be on the attack, that's when our children need the most. They need to see the adults in their lives in a united front for their greater good, not at each other's throats.

08:53 Right. So I imagine, like, what are. It's interesting because it was easy to assume, going to this conversation, we're strictly talking about, like, students and in the classroom and how they see each other. No children model behavior.

09:08 It trickles down. Exactly. And if you're hearing your parents at home saying the board doesn't care, the principal's garbage, that, you know, whatever criticisms are being voiced, that's the attitude the child's gonna bring into their school, into their environment, that they're in a place where no one cares about them or where they don't have any hope of being served well. And I think in all of these situations, some trust is required. Right. I find that students come to me to ask for help or guidance, but it's because I've earned their trust somehow, or they've decided to grant it to me. They've decided to believe Miss Tole has my best interests at heart and she's going to take care of me. A student who doesn't feel that way isn't even going to approach. Right. A faculty member, staff member for guidance or support.

10:07 So how do we do that? Like, how do we, how do. Cause I imagine that this conflict. So we're talking about conflict, and conflict can be good. Conflict is an opportunity. So we. That's true, but conflict for the sake of conflict or not allowing conflict to allow for relationship repair, staying at conflict is, is the problem. And I'd imagine it got worse in the last two years with all the.

10:32 Sure.

10:33 All the various unrests. How do we, what does. So you said you earn a student's trust. So that's an active you. When you earn something, that means you're doing something right, or it looks like something. There's some kind of active. You're not just asking for somebody's trust, you're earning somebody's trust. So what is it going to take for us to get into relationship repair between community and teachers? What is that going to look like? What do the rest of us need to do? And it might be like different people doing different things based on who you are and what you have access to. What would you like to see? What would you like to see?

11:18 Well, first I want to go back to what you said about conflict, because I agree with you. Conflict is an opportunity. Two things that happen really bother me. When a conflict erupts, particularly between parents and community members and the school system, it's either. Either the immediate reaction is, let's fix this, let's shut it down so nobody complains anymore. That can never happen again. Right. Sort of the squeaky wheel gets the grease kind of reaction. And the second thing is, those who are the squeaky wheel who speak up all the time, eventually get ignored, like any repetitive signal that. Right. And neither is true. Engagement neither is really an engagement of a conversation, of a real reception to how do we address what's going on? So, you know, one. I'm trying. I forgot your question.

12:22 How does the fronts like, what does that look like?

12:26 I think there needs to be more community conversation, and I don't know what that looks like. Maybe in small groups. Right. Because in large groups, it's impossible for everyone to feel heard and understood. Yeah, but focus groups, that could lead to maybe pockets of leadership in the community where these parents who are vocal, who are active, who want to be out there making a difference, can build more effective vocabulary and model those attitudes for their followers in the community so that we build greater rapport between the community and school board members and staff and students. An example I can give you, not that this has happened specifically in Elizabeth, but in the world of educational theater, there's a lot of, I don't know what to call it, unrest, I guess, you know, prickly, sort of nervous undercurrent about what theatrical pieces are appropriate for students to engage in. Whether the subject matter of a play or a musical has a racial context that is considered to be inappropriate, a historical one, a religious one, sometimes just an ethnic one. So when I am at workshops with other theater educators in New Jersey, for example, I'm hearing countless stories of, you know, we can't do that show. We don't have any african american students to be in it, or a parent complained, we can't do this show because no one in our community is jewish. So why would you do Anne Frank? There's, you know, sort of questions about what is the right way to approach storytelling that is not offensive, that's still educational, and that is fair. And this is one area where what I've experienced so far is officials sort of freaking out and saying, that's it. Well, don't do that. Don't touch that.

14:46 Don't touch that.

14:47 If it's a difficult topic, don't touch it. Do something nice and safe. And then my pushback to that is, well, then no one's learning anything.

14:55 Right. We're static.

14:57 Exactly.

14:57 Right. Right.

14:58 And beauty and the beast is lovely, but how many times. Come on.

15:02 I saw it with someone. Ready some rises.

15:05 So I get excited when there's a question like that, and I say, oh, great, my students are going to be turned on and tuned in because this is controversial, and we're going to get a chance to talk about it and find maybe some solutions or some compromise that makes everyone feel engaged and safe but doesn't completely bypass what is really currently, you know, it unnecessary else.

15:35 No, what's right. We're not talking about it. Doesn't fool them. Exactly. Yeah.

15:40 I mean, we've had incredible luck with the year we did Laramie projects. Senator Lesniak came in. We did the anti bullying pledge. It was engaged in a way, with. In a way that was. The community was very supportive of. And I think Elizabeth is unique that way. We often. I don't want to say get away with, but we're able to tackle difficult topics without much protest or pushback. I think people in our community appreciate it, but we did have isolated students whose parents didn't allow them to be in the production because of the subject matter. Fine. You know, sure. Unfortunate for that student maybe missing out on an opportunity, but it didn't mean it had to be canceled for everyone, for every. Right, right.

16:30 Not giving students that opportunity is not giving, but also for everyone involved, like the teachers that are working on it or the artists that are helping or the community, the members that are going to come to see it. Denying them that opportunity is also denying them to build that muscle.

16:49 Exactly.

16:49 Of wrestling through this. And it's like, how did we become so scared?

16:55 Right. Well, because it leads to violence. It leads to physical violence. All right? Because these are exactly the topics that. Because we shy away from speaking about them publicly, because we don't want to address them, because we don't want to rile up a community, the issue is still there.

17:13 The issue is no one's healing from it.

17:16 Right. No one's addressing it. And then it erupts.

17:20 It erupts.

17:21 It manifests in many ways.

17:23 Right.

17:23 It can be a safe protest.

17:25 Right.

17:25 Well, we know protests can lead to acts of violence.

17:28 Sure.

17:28 It can be an individual act of violence that it will protest, like, unchilled trauma.

17:34 Like, not. Not given the space to deal with something or manage through a feeling or experience or the idea to, like, how are you creating space for people to ask questions?

17:46 Yes.

17:47 Like, oh, that happened. Or that's what that person's experience is like. Or, oh, okay, we are a little. We are more like, I thought we were totally different and we couldn't relate. But this play or this experience allowed me to get to know people that are there or have that culture or whatever it might be. You're denying people the opportunity to ask questions, and then we're, like, living in a place where we're scared to ask anything because we don't want to get it wrong or be offensive or how unhelpful. Since all incredibly unhelpful.

18:26 And it's the thing that I talk about a lot with my students. Right. That theater. First of all, theater is about people behaving badly. You're not gonna find a play where everyone does their. Right. Get it?

18:36 I don't want to write.

18:37 Right. You know, that's an unrealistic conflict. Conflict. And the best theater elicits a response from the audience. It shouldn't feel like you went to the theater and took a nap.

18:49 Yes.

18:50 You should walk out wanting to engage in conversation. And so just conditioning ourselves to be okay with that, I think is so important to be okay with things that spark conversation and then finding safe ways to engage in that conversation that don't perpetuate conflict and violence, but lead us to finding proactive solutions. Another difficulty, and this is specific to Elizabeth now.

19:19 Sure.

19:20 And I've become more aware of this since the Internet happened. Right. Is that when there's an act of violence, especially a physical one, I think there were shots heard downtown yesterday in one of our neighborhoods. I'm not sure the details of the case, but the attitude you hear a lot or the response to that is, we got to get out of here about going somewhere else. Of course. That's our instinctive. Right. We're gonna run to safety. But how aware are we becoming that there's nowhere to run to? The idea that Elizabeth is this place that isn't safe compared to others, it's just erroneous. It's just not true. Perhaps there's greater occurrence of violent acts where the population is higher in number.

20:20 Right?

20:20 Sure. But there is no community that's got it figured out.

20:25 Right. Especially with random acts and violence that are prevalent, like, all the time. All the time. All the time.

20:31 So I think that gets to me at a very deep level, because out of personal choice. Right. I grew up in Elizabeth.

20:41 Right.

20:42 And many of my friends were like, I couldn't wait to get out of here, you know? Again, I understand it. And you dream of the quote, unquote, better life. Usually they imagine a neighborhood with more trees, I guess. Right. But my particularly personal choice was to stay and to think about how I could make my community the better place that I want to live in. Right. To make it, rather than go find it elsewhere. And I think we need more of that. Not that that should be everyone's choice, but I don't think it's seen as a possibility. Right. It's not posed as a possibility. And so often, students, especially high achieving students, are encouraged to go out there, make a great life for yourself. Find a better life.

21:31 Sure.

21:32 As if it's not here.

21:34 That's. That's a brilliant. I call that organic intellectuals. The idea of growing in a place and being an expert of the place that you're from, like being one of those folk and leaving and assuming you're getting or not your experience and you're working with other people. Like, growth happens, like who you run into and build with and all these data sets, how to read and these skills that you pick up and then coming back.

22:04 Right.

22:04 And then we never talk about that. There's always a benefit, of course, to leaving.

22:09 Of course.

22:10 Of course. But what we never. And growing and traveling and learning, but we never talk about the coming back. We never talk about the idea of, yes, go and grow and learn, and then what can you bring back to root yourself here so your growth can be a benefit to the community and the people that helped rear you.

22:34 Right.

22:34 We never talk about the. About the coming back. It was. I interviewed Chief Sacca. Let me tell you, it was a three hour interview, and he went all in, and I'm so glad we have that recorded, just so other people can learn from his example. And he talked about the idea of the role that community plays in public safety.

23:02 Right.

23:03 And he was really clear, like, officers are not. The officers keep, of course, the idea of officers and safety, but he's like, officers are not really the ones keeping us safe because they can't be everywhere and there's not a lot of them. That's just. So what is the responsibility and us keeping each other safe. And he believes in that. So I'll ask you, what is our role in community safety and what are the different ways that we can keep each other safe? And that might look like a lot of things.

23:38 I'll give you a little thing, an auto thing. Right.

23:41 Right.

23:42 I have a baby project in the back of my mind that I've not been able to attack. Right. And I got it.

23:50 You wrote it here.

23:51 I read it here, but I call it the pretty city committee.

23:54 Oh.

23:55 Because I think that littering and garbage is a real problem.

23:59 Yep.

23:59 Broken windows and an act of violence. Yes.

24:02 Yes.

24:03 Because it's an act of violence to think that our community is not important enough to make it a pleasantly clean place to live. And that's a reasonable thing to ask. Yeah. That ties into the whole idea of wanting to leave. Like, why do people want to leave? Because it's not, you know, if your environment is unpleasant, it's not comfortable. Right. That and trees and planting more trees all up her town, which I don't know if any people know, but the city offers, like, free cherry tree plants every year that you can request free of charge, and they'll come and plant it on your property.

24:46 But so there. There is. There's the idea of, like, broken windows. Broken windows.

24:51 Right.

24:52 Theory. Right.

24:52 Broken windows and trash.

24:54 Right. That there. There will be more violence in places like this. And I just want to name it for, like, folk listening, the idea of there will be more violence in a place where the landscape is not taken care of because criminality will believe nobody cares about it.

25:12 Exactly. Here. Exactly.

25:13 So I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do because nobody cares. And the likelihood of me getting away with it grows exponentially.

25:21 Exactly. And there's an anonymity.

25:23 Right.

25:24 To, you know. Well, nobody cares about this place. Nobody really lives here. Nobody's gonna know what I did. How can you tell?

25:31 Nobody cares.

25:32 And it's also true environmentally, in places where there's fewer trees planted and there's less shade, the heat is more intense in the summer. Right. Or it costs more money to cool. But, you know, places where people don't make enough money to cool their homes constantly is also an issue. Right. And heat makes you angry.

25:51 Heat makes you uncomfortable. But that's why, like, crime goes up. Right. The hottest days in the city, people are stressing. So if I'm in the city, I.

26:00 Would love to engage teenagers, okay, as community leaders in their neighborhoods, in each neighborhood, like, develop, you know, training for them, okay. To then train and mentor the younger generation in their neighborhood. So. So older teens would be mentoring maybe middle schoolers and elementary school children, which.

26:22 Is always a great role. I find that teenagers were like. Like, too cool for anything.

26:27 Exactly.

26:28 Once they're, like, the mentor, they like a little.

26:30 It can be large and in charge.

26:32 They're serious. Right, right.

26:35 And the pretty city committee would be just that. Everything from picking up trash to get it together.

26:41 What is it? We're getting together on a Saturday. We're going far. Go on the street.

26:44 We're going to clean up trash and focus on a different section or ward, you know, at different points in time.

26:51 There's more to this interview. Keep listening. Click on the next upload. Stay with us.