[00:00:00] Emily Race-Newmark: Welcome to This is How We Care, a podcast where we look at what it means to embody care, not as an individual practice, but a collective one, and to see what kind of world emerges from this place.

[00:00:12] Thank you for being here. I am your host, Emily Race.

[00:00:15] Emily Race-Newmark: Today we are joined by Mariah Rankine-Landers, she/her, who is a leader in pedagogical strategy, the co-founder of Studio Pathways, co-founder of the book, "Do Your Lessons Love Your Students? Creative Education for Social Change", and a teacher and artist at heart.

[00:00:31] Emily Race-Newmark: Her work through Studio Pathways addresses the root of social inequities that manifest in our education, work, and organizing systems through an inquiry based approach to culturally responsive teaching and learning.

[00:00:46] 

[00:00:46] Mariah Rankine-Landers: I really never wanted to be in education. I studied cultural anthropology and I wanted to be an artist, but it wasn't supported by my family to be an artist because they had in mind," you're never going to have a self economy that's not sustainable, my friends." 

[00:00:59] Mariah Rankine-Landers: But after college, I went with what was most accessible to me and that was teaching because I come from a family of teachers. My mother is a teacher. My grandmother was a teacher and she was one of the first female principals. . . 

[00:01:16] Mariah Rankine-Landers: I recently found out that my entire line on that family won a state award in Michigan for having the most amount of teachers in one family, generation after generation from the 1800s.

[00:01:31] Emily Race-Newmark: Whoa.

[00:01:32] Mariah Rankine-Landers: I know. I was like, excuse me, this was never shared with me. It's literally my lineage it is in my blood and I don't think it was avoidable . Now I'm like, oh yeah.

[00:01:43] Mariah Rankine-Landers: So I come from this very dedicated space and I grew up in their classrooms. I grew up in education. So I didn't need a lot of support to activate myself as an educator 

[00:01:54] Emily Race-Newmark: so you found yourself in education. Now you're working to help transform what that could look like. How did that journey begin for you?

[00:02:01] Mariah Rankine-Landers: I got my credential right as No Child Left Behind was implemented. It took all of the joy out of teaching and learning. 

[00:02:08] Mariah Rankine-Landers: There was no creativity. Nothing was engaging. It was reading from the textbook. 

[00:02:13] Mariah Rankine-Landers: I chose a Montessori school to start my teaching journey with because I knew that I could explore creative processes and I could respond more to humans in the classroom rather than what I was seeing happening in public education.

[00:02:28] Mariah Rankine-Landers: And then for reasons of whiteness, it was a very white space, my spirit could not maintain itself there. I am a mixed race black woman. And so I went to work at a 98 percent black African American school. 

[00:02:39] Mariah Rankine-Landers: So that school, was a return to No Child Left Behind structures, but I also was able to strive for practices that I thought would be more engaging and request more time.

[00:02:54] Mariah Rankine-Landers: I actually advocated for a longer school day for my students so that we could bring in the more joyful parts of learning.

[00:03:01] Mariah Rankine-Landers: And then I just really was tired of the grind that happens when you're forced to do canned curriculum day after day, and the demands of not being able to enter in with your creative soul and when you're not able to uplift students in their own creative and joyful spirit themselves, that was a mismatch for me.

[00:03:19] Mariah Rankine-Landers: Found my way to the Bay Area where I located myself at an arts integration school.  I was able to bring my full creative self to that place and it was the first time that I learned that there was already all of this rich history around arts learning that I had never been introduced to in my credentialing program.

[00:03:37] Mariah Rankine-Landers: I was like, yeah, this is it, this is teaching, and this should be happening for every child.

[00:03:42] Mariah Rankine-Landers: Obviously.

[00:03:43] Emily Race-Newmark: Obvious. Yeah, no brainer, but, yeah, somehow. So then at what point in this journey did Studio Pathways come to be?

[00:03:50] Mariah Rankine-Landers: Yeah, story continues.

[00:03:53] Mariah Rankine-Landers: Studio pathways is about really supporting culturally and contextually relevant teaching and learning methodologies. We want our students to experience that in the classroom and we want our teachers to really find their own liberated sense of self within that methodology. 

[00:04:11] Mariah Rankine-Landers: We're really just focused on teachers and administrators because teachers are guardians of life itself. 

[00:04:17] Mariah Rankine-Landers: When we're working with teachers, we're saying, "we know some of the major issues at hand with education. We have questions of how might we break patterns of practices that are harmful for students that no longer serve us?" then we explore that in a creative way. 

[00:04:35] Emily Race-Newmark: I initially was connected to Mariah through a mutual friend and was intrigued to get her perspective on how the educational system could evolve. 

[00:04:43] Emily Race-Newmark: And we do touch on that in this episode. But, one of the gifts in talking to Mariah that I didn't initially expect to receive, was to be immersed into her view of life through the lens of the artist.

[00:04:55] Emily Race-Newmark: Not just an artist with a capital A, the formal type of artist, but the artist that exists within each and every one of us, regardless of our profession or what we've been told about our own creativity in the past.

[00:05:07] Emily Race-Newmark: Creativity and the creative process has been a through line in Mariah's life and her work within the educational system. 

[00:05:13] Emily Race-Newmark: But it is also a lens that can be so liberatory to any of us living on this planet at this time, and really necessary, in fact, to meet the questions, the challenges and the needs of this moment.

[00:05:25] Emily Race-Newmark: I personally have so much unlearning to do around creativity that I needed Mariah to explicitly break down for me what she means by creativity.

[00:05:33] Emily Race-Newmark: So I'm going to turn it over to her to define that for us real quick. This episode was originally recorded in August of 2023.

[00:05:41] Emily Race-Newmark: I'm noticing in my body and in my mind that there has been a conditioning to think of creativity or the arts as "separate" and "over here".

[00:05:49] Emily Race-Newmark: I think it's because it's always been positioned as this "extracurricular" or in addition to, if you have the access and the opportunity and the money to do that. 

[00:05:58] Emily Race-Newmark: What I'm really hearing, front and center in everything you're talking about is creativity is at the center. It's not an extracurricular. It's part of the process of living and transforming.

[00:06:08] Mariah Rankine-Landers: Yes. Thank you for seeing that. And saying that. 

[00:06:12] Mariah Rankine-Landers: I think creative process is a gift of possibility. Because it is such a juicy entry point to know the world, to know yourself, to know others. It's such a great orientation. 

[00:06:25] Mariah Rankine-Landers: That is part of what I hope for educators to do. Is to get grounded in an orientation of creativity and thinking like an artist and claiming themselves as an artist ,which is really hard to do. 

[00:06:38] Mariah Rankine-Landers: I've spent years thinking about this world. And sometimes I will still say "I'm not an artist". Where does that talk come from? I'm over here championing, everyone really is an artist. We all have that ability to tap in creatively to the world around us. To listen and observe and then make some choices and decisions and actions around those observations. To express, to explore. I think about all of these things expanding not only our critical mind, but the way that we get to be activated humans on the planet.

[00:07:14] Emily Race-Newmark: Wow. Yeah. There is something very liberatory in that image that you just painted for us. Wow.

[00:07:20] Mariah Rankine-Landers: Exactly.

[00:07:21] Emily Race-Newmark: Wow. Amazing. Okay. 

[00:07:24] Emily Race-Newmark: I'm so excited for where this conversation is going to continue. So what does creativity look like? 

[00:07:29] Mariah Rankine-Landers: You can find creative process anywhere. It really means that you are going to examine something and make space to continue examining it.

[00:07:40] Mariah Rankine-Landers: So for instance I used to tap as a child, left it as an because I didn't think that's what adults did or only special adults like Savion Glover got to do for his life. 

[00:07:51] Mariah Rankine-Landers: And then found my way back to it years ago and committed to showing up for class every week. That led into me now exploring, I'll just go rent a studio and I'm just going to go explore my own tap processes.

[00:08:07] Mariah Rankine-Landers: It took many years to get here but I'm so proud of myself. 

[00:08:11] Mariah Rankine-Landers: Another example is making my coffee in the morning. It took a long time for me to figure out that I had a particular taste in coffee. And once I found out that I was like, I have a particular thing for coffee, maybe I can make sure that I always have a consistent coffee that I can make in the morning.

[00:08:30] Mariah Rankine-Landers: Then I started practicing with different flavors, I'm a dark roast person. What's my favorite dark roast. I explored with water, what kind of water, distilled water, tap water. I tried all the different waters and then kettle, versus pour overs, I've tried all the different things.

[00:08:47] Mariah Rankine-Landers: So now I have a measurement. I have my favorite instrument and I have my favorite water that I use and my favorite coffee type. And that is my ritual in the morning. 

[00:08:57] Mariah Rankine-Landers: And that is a creative process for me. To wake up, have my coffee ritual. In my favorite coffee cup. That's creativity. 

[00:09:04] Mariah Rankine-Landers: So also what I want to say is that there's research in the creativity. You are also in artistic research when you are following a creative process. 

[00:09:12] Mariah Rankine-Landers: I also want to make sure that I'm saying that there's room for grace here. You don't have to be constantly thinking and you can't analyze and create at the same time. But you can observe, you can reflect upon something after it's done.

[00:09:27] Mariah Rankine-Landers: There are a thousand things that you can do.

[00:09:30] Mariah Rankine-Landers: I'll give an example. Geoff Vu was a principal at Roots Middle School in East Oakland when I worked with him, he's now traveling the world.

[00:09:38] Mariah Rankine-Landers: When I was coaching him as an administrator, during one meeting he said, "Mariah, I just have not found my art yet." And I said, that's okay, cause I had posed the question prior "what is your art, Geoff? What are you moved and motivated by?" 

[00:09:55] Mariah Rankine-Landers: And so another week goes by and he shows me this video that he had done with a drone and I melted and the note was, I found my art.

[00:10:04] Mariah Rankine-Landers: And I was like, that's it. You're a videographer. That's so amazing. 

[00:10:09] Mariah Rankine-Landers: And that's literally what he's doing now. He's been traveling the world for two years. He is a photographer and videographer and he's now Instagram famous. 

[00:10:18] Emily Race-Newmark: Gosh.

[00:10:19] Mariah Rankine-Landers: I know, but this is the power of creativity.

[00:10:22] Mariah Rankine-Landers: This is the power of you, finding your art and being so moved to follow it.

[00:10:25] Emily Race-Newmark: That is such an amazing example of waking up this dormant part of ourselves that has so much to express and share and I also love that there's also the example of making the coffee, that's something that isn't getting shared on a platform or being sold in some way.

[00:10:41] Emily Race-Newmark: It's just a creative process that's for yourself, maybe you share with friends who come over to your house or something.

[00:10:46] Emily Race-Newmark: It was so difficult to cut down this episode because there was so much great content that Mariah covered in the hour And a half conversation we had together.

[00:10:54] Emily Race-Newmark: This is why we created some really great bonus edits over at our patreon for you to enjoy.

[00:10:59] Emily Race-Newmark: Every contribution made at Patreon, no matter the size, helps to fund the production of this podcast and it allows us to continue to have and share conversations like this one with a wider audience of people who are searching for them.

[00:11:11] Emily Race-Newmark: Please head over to our Patreon to enjoy bonus content from Mariah, including:

[00:11:15] Emily Race-Newmark: the origin of the grounding practice that we did and how Studio Pathways has been bringing this into classroom settings; How Studio Pathways came to be, and how they are specifically using art to shift social dynamics, not just in classrooms, but organizations as well; an example of how we might begin to unpack the systems we've inherited through a creative process; and specifically how the challenges of being a teacher in today's current systems impacted Mariah, and her advice for how teachers might be able to be a part of the bigger change while the systems themselves are still catching up.

[00:11:47] Emily Race-Newmark: That's enough for me. I'm going to turn it back to Mariah, who's going to speak to us about the challenge of our time and her vision for the world. 

[00:11:54] Mariah Rankine-Landers: We're living in someone else's imagination. We're living in a design that, has been, James Baldwin speaks of this, is it's someone else's imagination. And sometimes when I think about that, I'm like, yeah, I don't know if I love that. I don't love what's happening.

[00:12:13] Emily Race-Newmark: So trippy when you say that. I'm like, Whoa, yeah, you're right. 

[00:12:16] Mariah Rankine-Landers: Yeah. The power differentials that exist in our context and the caste system that's been designed and set up that this hierarchy in which folks have been like, "this is mine to design. And all y'all get to figure it out. This is going to work for us."

[00:12:35] Mariah Rankine-Landers: We all know the stories. So I think that's the problem. And I think that the answer, obviously for me, is the creative process. To change things, to turn the tide, we really need to explore, in these really rich ways. Follow your own beautiful audacious questions and then find a creative path that is most interesting to you and see how far it can take you into a state of resolve.

[00:13:01] Emily Race-Newmark: We're living in someone else's imagination and then on that note of creativity and imagination, if you were to wave a magic wand and create the world in your ideal form, how that would look, what would you see? 

[00:13:14] Mariah Rankine-Landers: It's to co create. I really believe in co creation.

[00:13:18] Mariah Rankine-Landers: I wrote my undergrad thesis, with my friend, and we got honors on it. And I co create with Jessa at Studio Pathways every day, and I love it. In my teaching classrooms, I was always collaborating with my teaching partner, whoever was teaching next door to me, those collaborations were phenomenal. 

[00:13:38] Mariah Rankine-Landers: I think anytime that I have experienced a co created space. It has taken me further and beyond than what I could achieve just huddled in my own mind.

[00:13:48] Mariah Rankine-Landers: It's really limitless if we activate co creation and then imagination and then do the legwork to make sure that we are analyzing the context around us so that we're being also guided by a moral compass that is about everyone's humanity and dignity on the planet, we can't be lawless with our imagination like Elon Musk, for example. If you can see my face.

[00:14:18] Emily Race-Newmark: I just sighed.

[00:14:22] Mariah Rankine-Landers: Yeah.

[00:14:23] Emily Race-Newmark: Yes.

[00:14:24] Mariah Rankine-Landers: So yeah, so there's destructive imaginative power and there's the non destructive which is about the beauty and the light, and that's where we need to be really poised with this idea of co-creation.

[00:14:35] Emily Race-Newmark: I find that co creation is such a liberating pathway for me versus feeling constricted and trapped in my isolation as well. So I love that you highlighted that.

[00:14:46] Emily Race-Newmark: It's a practice to be in co creation, to be in community with other people. 

[00:14:52] Emily Race-Newmark: How do you imagine our relationships with one another looking like if we were to be co creating?

[00:14:58] Mariah Rankine-Landers: I'm thinking back to how those relationships were formed. And usually there's an experience that happens, right? 

[00:15:04] Mariah Rankine-Landers: You might be traveling together and you might go to a conference together and you might go on a camping trip together. The way Jess and I started collaborating was we were forced to work together at work.

[00:15:15] Mariah Rankine-Landers: But then when we saw who each person was, we decided to start working out together. So we shared a personal trainer and worked out together and then decided to go on an art trip. We were both in our thirties. It was our very first art trip, as adults, we can just spend money to go visit art in New York and we did.

[00:15:36] Mariah Rankine-Landers: And that was amazing. And so I think when you have a moment or an experience that kind of gels you and connects you, that's really the jumping off point and then you can just keep going. 

[00:15:46] Mariah Rankine-Landers: You just make sure that you're in a committed practice of communication and it's work to be in relationships with people. You have to show up for each other. 

[00:15:57] Emily Race-Newmark: Yeah. Thank you. I love the visual of the seed of a relationship and then how it might grow and the places that may take us. 

[00:16:04] Emily Race-Newmark: What do you think makes a resilient community and how would we engage with one another?

[00:16:08] Mariah Rankine-Landers: I think it's about awareness, really knowing that there's more to develop in terms of your conscious awareness. Understanding how rank and power and status, gender, ability, race, racialized experiences, how all of those things have been part of our design that we live in as a society. 

[00:16:29] Mariah Rankine-Landers: And if we're not analyzing those well and looking to interrupt or disrupt them, we just keep perpetuating the same stuff. 

[00:16:38] Mariah Rankine-Landers: To be in community where it is a thriving, beautiful community, you've done that work of analysis. 

[00:16:44] Mariah Rankine-Landers: Otherwise, for example, I might be in a community that hasn't done that work and I choose not to say anything, but then I'm not my full self, right? You're only getting a part of me when I show up into a space where I can tell people have not done the social work that's needed for me to be a part of it. And that can be from my racialized stance or from my stance as a type one diabetic. That's a very invisible disability.

[00:17:10] Mariah Rankine-Landers: But if people haven't really thought about ability, and they haven't thought about what I might need. If I need to tap out or if I need to pause, one that's harmful to me, but I also don't get to really actively show up in my a hundred percent or 110 percent self in those spaces, because in the back of my mind, I'm off thinking about is my body going to be safe? Who am I going to call if I get let, it's things like that. 

[00:17:33] Mariah Rankine-Landers: There's just so many things that are unsaid, unknown. 

[00:17:36] Mariah Rankine-Landers: But if we've done the real work of looking at the caste system, I'll just recommend Caste by Isabel Wilkerson, if we know how this society, ranks and values people, if we know how power is divided based off of how we rank people, how status is conferred to folks by design, we will just confer status to the person who is white, tall ,cisgendered. And we do that unconsciously, right? 

[00:18:07] Mariah Rankine-Landers: I want to be in the society that has done the work. Let's envision and imagine something new and I am in deep community with folks that are already activating and pursuing that and I'm really grateful for that.

[00:18:18] Mariah Rankine-Landers: And I wish that for the world and I really wish that for education in particular, because that's really where, teachers as guardians of the universe, they're supporting our learners to understand. If there's not a disruption of rank and status in a classroom space, the child is just going to keep on performing in whatever situation they're in. 

[00:18:40] Mariah Rankine-Landers: They might be inclined to, as a black child, not speak up in class ever because that's what the system is saying to them, or they're like, I can talk anytime, free time, this is my time and take up space constantly without thinking about other children in the room. 

[00:18:57] Mariah Rankine-Landers: And that might be even thinking about just the way people process. I'm someone that needs a lot of think time to process before I say something out loud.

[00:19:05] Mariah Rankine-Landers: Jessa is a very verbal processor. She wants to talk everything first. And so how do you accommodate for those things? And also, how are those things directly related to our lineages? So Jessa has learned, from her ancestry, you better speak or you're not going to be heard. And I've learned, be quiet because that will keep you safe, right? 

[00:19:27] Mariah Rankine-Landers: There's so many complexities as we really dissect and analyze our social systems around us that are both personal, interpersonal, external and internal. There's a lot and it's complex and also we can do it. 

[00:19:42] Emily Race-Newmark: yeah, 

[00:19:42] Mariah Rankine-Landers: When you are in a culture building process, you really need to analyze narratives at play. What are the narratives that have been incredibly harmful? We understand that there are master narratives that come from colonization that come from patriarchy that come from places that have been built on other people's imaginations that have not been of service to humanity at full.

[00:20:06] Mariah Rankine-Landers: We need to look at our lineage. Everyone has a rich lineage that's not only a bloodline but also the lineages that have brought you into being. 

[00:20:16] Mariah Rankine-Landers: If you're a teacher, you come from a line of teachers. Who are the other educators that you've learned from, right? Who are the authors that have supported your knowledge around teaching and learning? All of that is lineage. 

[00:20:28] Mariah Rankine-Landers: If you're an artist, you certainly come from a line of other artists that helped you become and know all of the skills. 

[00:20:36] Mariah Rankine-Landers: In that analysis of lineage we want people to really explore where are there places in our lineages that we need to cut ties with? Maybe we need to do some remixing, build some new narratives.

[00:20:50] Mariah Rankine-Landers: Maybe we need to do some recreation there of stories that no longer serve us. And all of that is possible. We can let things go. Often we have a hard time letting things go. Particularly when we're in cycles or when our personal genetic codes hold stories, it can be hard to navigate in and through, but we can do it.

[00:21:12] Emily Race-Newmark: To clarify in the cutting tie piece, 'cause this is a theme that comes up often as well. What does that look like in practice? 

[00:21:18] Mariah Rankine-Landers: You can explore ancestry by doing some memory work, you can imagine someone, you can imagine their time and space, you can imagine their feelings, the objects that they might have encountered, the temperature outside, you know there's all of these details. 

[00:21:35] Mariah Rankine-Landers: Then you can entertain a conversation so you can bring yourself into time and space with that person and have a conversation. Or you might just be an observer. Or you might want to take on their role and actually take on a task that they might have done. 

[00:21:52] Mariah Rankine-Landers: And when you're doing that, your body's going to get information. 

[00:21:55] Mariah Rankine-Landers: Folks that are familiar with somatic work, it is known science that your body is able to sense patterns of the world before your conscious brain does. You need to be able to be in tune with the sensations that are happening when you do that. 

[00:22:11] Mariah Rankine-Landers: When information comes through, then we have choices that we can make. Then you need to always go through and analyze the data, right? This is the artistic research process. 

[00:22:22] Mariah Rankine-Landers: What are the sensations telling you? What is that conversation you had telling you? What is there to be known? What is there to be discarded? And then when you bring up something, stuff might be hard, right? What do we do with this stuff that's really hard to deal with? 

[00:22:37] Mariah Rankine-Landers: I love this practice that I've learned from one of my mentors Yvette Murrell, is to compost it.

[00:22:42] Mariah Rankine-Landers: Literally imagine turning it over to the earth, the earth can hold so much that is here for us. You can imagine planting it into the ground beneath you. The Earth knows how to compost that energy and turn it into the needed chemicals on the planet.

[00:23:01] Mariah Rankine-Landers: It gets to be a very metaphysical element, but it's also a creative process where we're really taking you through a creative process in your mind and in your body to examine, to know more, to surface deep wisdom, and to hopefully bring you to a place that's going to activate you towards a shift in your life or a different idea that needs to be explored. 

[00:23:26] Emily Race-Newmark: Thank you so much for walking us through that.

[00:23:28] Emily Race-Newmark: Okay. So now a slight shift in the conversation, I've seen, I believe it's on your website, this phrase "lessons that love our students".

[00:23:36] Emily Race-Newmark: What are lessons that love our students? What do those look like? And how does that fit into your vision for education?

[00:23:41] Mariah Rankine-Landers: Thank you. We have a book, it's called "Dear Lessons, Love Your Students, Creative Process for Social Change". 

[00:23:47] Mariah Rankine-Landers: And that question was developed out of our work in East Oakland of really looking at what is love driven education. 

[00:23:54] Mariah Rankine-Landers: I was wanting teachers that I was working with at that time to engage new methodology and a new pedagogical stance based off of this idea that responsiveness is coming from this place of love. And to do the work of being responsive to the context we're in, if you can center that in love, it's such a better positioning than to do that from a place of fear. 

[00:24:22] Mariah Rankine-Landers: You're navigating systems and structures that have long been harmful to students and teachers. And when you're asking the question, do my lessons love your students? You get to analyze yeah, is this Saxon math awesome or, is it terrible. 

[00:24:40] Mariah Rankine-Landers: The best way that we're going to uplift humans for the society that we need right now is This is it. This is the moment. We can do it. Things have to change. COVID taught us that. Things have to change. 

[00:24:52] Emily Race-Newmark: What is your vision for how we might support and show up for our teachers in the world?

[00:24:57] Mariah Rankine-Landers: Per the reason I had to leave teaching in the first place, a new economic freedom for teachers. 

[00:25:02] Mariah Rankine-Landers: And we should put teachers and artists at the center of our society. They should have our full spotlight and devotion.

[00:25:13] Emily Race-Newmark: That brings up deeper questions that I know we can't answer in this moment, like, what kind of economic shifts need to be made to do that? 

[00:25:21] Emily Race-Newmark: Because I'm also holding the question of are we getting rid of the current educational system as a whole? I see people leaving the system but then I see other who don't have the privilege of leaving the system and I'm just like, we really feel we're at this time this crossroads.

[00:25:36] Emily Race-Newmark: Yeah what is your answer to what I'm saying here if anything.

[00:25:40] Mariah Rankine-Landers: I don't know if I have an answer. I think about this all the time.

[00:25:44] Emily Race-Newmark: Yeah.

[00:25:44] Mariah Rankine-Landers: And I do see a lot of things that are changing and I think they're changing because the world is either not making the space for what needs to be. Because everybody's just responding essentially to economy, right? We're in an economy that we can't get by without a certain amount of money.

[00:26:05] Mariah Rankine-Landers: We can, but then our quality of life is terrible. 

[00:26:07] Mariah Rankine-Landers: I think we're gonna let's see what happens space. If you have an idea, if you have a best practice, if you have light behind a wisdom source of what can be , this is the time to share that.

[00:26:20] Mariah Rankine-Landers: To look to other countries that are doing it really well and to look at other practices, not only from Finland. There's richness around the world to draw from that we can take on. I think there's answers everywhere.

[00:26:33] Emily Race-Newmark: To bring it back to that systemic level of a vision, if you have one, is there even going to be a system, would we even refer to it as that? Or, what would be the collective vision around education, if any? It's a big question.

[00:26:47] Mariah Rankine-Landers: This is a multi century strategy here.

[00:26:52] Emily Race-Newmark: I know, right? 

[00:26:56] Mariah Rankine-Landers: I don't know if I can answer the big vision thing. I just think it's going to be, I think it's going to be creatively explored. And I think it's going to feel good. I think it's going to be joyful. I think that children are going to be free to be you and me, it should be that. It should be that.

[00:27:12] Emily Race-Newmark: That's something I'm finding for myself within this experiment, which is this podcast, which is when I ask someone to answer these big questions, it doesn't feel right in my body at least, what feels better is these smaller moments or these smaller ooh, this was the right direction at that moment based on the context, as you're saying so beautifully.

[00:27:29] Emily Race-Newmark: What I'm really hearing in your vision, is a vision around us returning to our sovereignty, to our creativity, to our creative process and moving from that place. 

[00:27:39] Emily Race-Newmark: I'm curious, what's your vision for how we might relate to creativity or our creative process? 

[00:27:46] Mariah Rankine-Landers: I have gotten so much out of shaping my world through the artists. I really didn't know about the contemporary art world until 15 years ago. That's a newer thing in my life, I would say, and so I continue to be fascinated by that and I studied art history and I still was not, I was like, what, and now that I have this opening in my life where I follow contemporary artists and cultural movement makers, I have understood so much more about the depths and layers of this world by allowing myself to entertain some of their own practices, exploring those, and being in awe. 

[00:28:26] Mariah Rankine-Landers: It's a whole lot of things, but front and center is the context of filling my world through an artful stance. And that's a constant practice. I'm not there 100%. It's a constant practice to be in a state of my orientation is creativity. That's real work for me, actually.

[00:28:46] Emily Race-Newmark: Yeah, thank you for sharing that honesty about that because we can almost idolize people be like, oh, they've got it figured out. They're living this way 100%. And is that true? 

[00:28:54] Mariah Rankine-Landers: No, no. 

[00:28:56] Emily Race-Newmark: But yes, moments at a time. 

[00:28:58] Emily Race-Newmark: So if folks could pause this podcast and take a action right now that would support everything you are sharing here, what might that be?

[00:29:06] Mariah Rankine-Landers: This is going to sound maybe not connected, but it totally is. 

[00:29:10] Mariah Rankine-Landers: My answer is to go heal a broken relationship.

[00:29:15] Mariah Rankine-Landers: The backstory is that I recently went through traumatic experience. What came from that is I had to move, for one, but I also went back and connected with people that I had a broken relationship with, two people in particular.

[00:29:31] Mariah Rankine-Landers: When I had those very difficult conversations, healing happened for one, mending was taking place. And I would say there's ongoing mending processes here. 

[00:29:41] Mariah Rankine-Landers: But things have shifted for me. I've experienced relief, joy, grief, stability or at least grief leaving my body in a way, because it's now being filled up with gratitude and a place where I get to, one, have this person back in my life and have joyful experiences again with this person. I think about how much that has served my own creativity, just being in relationship with others that are just beautiful people on the planet. I think that's really important, actually.

[00:30:16] Emily Race-Newmark: Thank you. What comes up for me is I can see how that's almost like a stagnation, these broken relationships can over time, calcify as a stagnation, and energy is no longer flowing there. And so however you want to transform that brokenness.

[00:30:28] Mariah Rankine-Landers: So well said. Yeah.

[00:30:30] Emily Race-Newmark: Yeah. But thank you for bringing that into this conversation. ​

[00:30:33] Emily Race-Newmark: Thank you for everything that you shared with us today. For just being who you are in the world and that being a revolutionary act in itself is just you being who you are so

[00:30:47] Mariah Rankine-Landers: Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

[00:30:50] Emily Race-Newmark: If Mariah's insights in this episode resonated with you, please explore Studio Pathways offerings. In addition to their book, their services include transformational coaching and the online course, "Do Your Lessons Love Your Students?" Both initiatives are based on the idea that personal change can drive wider societal progress using personal and professional development as a tool for community wide improvement.

[00:31:13] Emily Race-Newmark: Use the code CARE to receive a 10 percent discount on the course while also supporting the production of this podcast through our affiliate model. 

[00:31:21] Emily Race-Newmark: For direct links, head over to our website. 

[00:31:24] Emily Race-Newmark: And for more from this interview with Mariah, you can check out additional edits at patreon.com/thisishowwecare

[00:31:32] Emily Race-Newmark: Thank you for all the ways that you're supporting this podcast, whether it's through Patreon contributions, listening and leaving reviews, sharing episodes with the people in your life, or subscribing to our newsletter and Instagram to be a part of the conversation.

[00:31:45] Emily Race-Newmark: This episode was produced by me, Emily Race, co produced by Deondra Carter and Kimberly Anne, with audio by Andrew Salamone and music by Eric Weisberg.