Advocacy with Natalie Zwerger, Director at NYU’s Center of Strategic Solutions

Parts of this interview have been edited for clarity and concision.

Natalie M. Zwerger currently works as a Director at the Center of Strategic Solutions at NYU Steinhardt. With over two decades of experience as an educator, advocate and activist, Zwerger has impacted countless communities. She’s trained district and organizational leaders, students, school faculties, helping these individuals combat implicit biases, develop critical consciousness, and a deep understanding of their identity. Recently, Ben Solliday, campaign coordinator, had the privilege to sit down and talk to Zwerger on topics ranging from education, COVID-19, systems of oppression, and so much more. 

Ben: Thank you so much for sitting down with us today at the Aware Foundation. Could you introduce yourself and let everyone know who you are?

Natalie: Thank you so much for having me, Ben. My name is Natalie McCabe Zwerger, and I'm the director of the Center for Strategic Solutions at the NYU Metro Center. We are a national equity and racial justice center that works with schools, districts, and organizations around the country. We're really seeking to not just engage in rich dialogue and conversation, but actually propel their conversations into action and make some transformational change across their systems. 

A little bit about me. I identify as a white Puerto Rican, cis-hetero woman (she/her/hers), and I've been an educator for 20 years. I'm also a civil rights attorney. The most important role for me however, is being the mommy of a two-year-old. So working from home is always an adventure. Hopefully she won't join us for this interview!

Ben: That's so great to hear. Could you go over what initially inspired you to become an educator advocate and activist and how your background has really influenced your activism?

Natalie: Yeah, I mean, I think there's both educators and advocates all over my family. I grew up both heavily influenced by the power of education and learning and having access to information that ignited something in you. 

I wasn't exactly sure what career I would end up with, even when I got to college. After I graduated, I first started teaching and then continued to feel the pull towards advocacy. I thought about getting a law degree because I was teaching in New York City and there were just so many things that were influencing my children's education that had nothing to do with education. Such as the quality of their housing, immigration issues, lack of translation and interpretation services for monolingual Spanish speaking families. 

I actually left teaching, went to law school, ended up teaching during law school because I just constantly felt this tension between being pulled by two passions. After graduating law school was still really seeking out jobs in the education field. At some intersection of education and law, I actually encountered the former executive director of our center, Dr. Pedro Noguera at a conference and was just profoundly impacted by all that he talked about. Addressing racial disparities, really supporting underrepresented populations, and changing the education system in all of the ways that that spoke to me I've witnessed and experienced as an educator myself. 

And so finding him, I just followed him. And when you see someone who inspires you, you sort of chase them. As soon as I saw a job opportunity open up at the Metro Center, I jumped right on it. And I've been there now for seven years. Pedro hired me and I was able to work with him for a couple of years before he eventually left and went to another university. But I just consider him to be a grounding mentor; I don't think I ever would have imagined when I was back in college, that this was a type of job that you could go around the country and train folks and coach folks to be anti-biased and anti-racist. That you could, you know, speak to school boards and work with superintendents and actually you manifest changes in policies and practices that I think as a classroom teacher. I have always been drawn to the intersection of these two fields and really can't imagine doing any type of work that wasn't something to leverage both.

Ben: That's so great. I'd like to talk more about the systems that are already established. What do you think are some of the most important ways to dismantle the oppressive systems that have been established in our country and beyond?

Natalie: That's a big question. I think there's a couple of ways. It's a lot about access and opportunity. You have to be really clear right up front, you know, who has access, who has the opportunities and who does not. And what are the barriers, who are the gatekeepers, who challenge access particularly for marginalized and underrepresented youth. You start there. 

The second piece is narratives. There are stereotypical narratives that exist and so much of the work has to counter narratives, to disrupt them. For us as adults, it's like unlearning and it's kind of unraveling how you grew up. We will never eliminate biases, but we can find strategies to mitigate them… 

In schools, we're talking about, discipline systems, we're talking about curriculum, we're talking about access to AP and honors courses. Even things like engaging in sports, in clubs, in organizations. When a school can disaggregate that data and break it down to see which students are engaged in those types of social activities, we take a look at some of our young people who have a whole bunch of responsibilities at home outside of school because they're supporting their families financially, they're working, etc. It gives us a sense of who has even access and the opportunity to just be kids, to be social, to build those and foster those strong relationships. Which in many ways, leave children with great memories looking back at school. 

Frankly, it's hard work, particularly for educators and administrators who feel, and in many ways are pouring themselves into their work. In many ways, our educational institutions weren't built to support this type of close interrogation of disparities. There aren't enough structures built into the day to support teachers, to pay teachers to be great, critical thinkers, to move their curriculum forward. It does require an investment of time, of energy, of money so that folks can have space and frankly, be compensated for the hard work that they do. The systems wide view is one that pays off in the long-term if you're really hoping to make changes that last.

Ben: Something I'd like to branch off of what you said is the idea of implicit biases. Could you kind of just discuss what are some ways people can combat and recognize their implicit bias, whether it be directed towards POC, LGBTQ or neurodiverse individuals?

Natalie: The biggest challenge with implicit biases is that we often have them in contradiction to our expressed beliefs. Implicit biases manifest in our behavior. It manifests in those like split second decisions that we make. If you're a teacher in a classroom, it manifests in how you interpret behavior, which child gets in trouble, where your eyes turn first, when something happens in the classroom, whose story you believe more than someone else. 

The first step really is just acknowledging that you have biases and then being aware of the ways that they are activated. So being hyper clear on some of the stereotypical narratives for POC folks, for LGBTQ folks for neuro-diverse children and then calling yourself out. It's almost an internal process. I find it's really helpful to just ask yourself where could your bias be at play in interactions. And that could be a personal reflection. As a white cis-hetero woman, walking through spaces, as an able-bodied woman, walking through spaces, I'm hyper aware of the fact that the world was essentially made for me. 

The world privileges me in all kinds of ways every day. If I don't acknowledge that, then I'm not aware of the fact that I get positive association biases. When I walk into stores, people assume I'll spend money. When I walk into a job interview, people might assume I'm qualified. And so if I'm not aware of that, then I'm probably not going to be aware of the ways that I'm making negative association biases about other people who don't look like me. 

One of my mentors and best educators who I know is a woman named Jillian McCray, a black educator in Ossining, New York. She says, once you're aware, you're responsible and that's so powerful. I think those words can be transferred in so many different ways. Thinking about how to interrupt biases is to accept that sometimes we have an impact that isn't in alignment with what we intended. 

Ben: My second to last question is actually a little unrelated to some of the things we've been discussing, but I think it's important to ask. How has COVID and the ongoing pandemic affected your work and what have been some of the biggest challenges for you to overcome?

Natalie: So, there's a couple of things. We were quite literally the team who always said, you couldn't do this work through a screen. We said it was too emotional. It was too important to build community in a room together. We really had to change. We use all kinds of technology to basically do every type of activity we would do in the room with folks. It's really forced us to shift the way we can maintain being dynamic and engaging folks around really difficult topics through a medium that's frankly, exhausting. 

I think the interesting piece that influences my reflection, is that after George Floyd's murder at the end of May, there was this confluence of events. For us, we saw this huge increase in requests to do this type of work over the summer. It was one thing to carry through with folks that we'd been working with for some time and now just had to transition to the virtual platform. We would have had to do more relationship building upfront, and now folks are ready to just get right in it because, if you're not going to have this type of dialogue now, then it’ll be too late. I struggle with folks who still don't seem ready. We decided as a team very early on that we just were not going to accept that this would change our work. We decided that we were going to propel forward because it is too important to make any excuses.

Ben: So as we close this interview, I'd like to ask, in what ways do you think the next generation can positively impact their environments, and whether it be big or small?

Natalie: So many ways. I think every time I meet young people, I get excited to live in the world that you all are going to lead. I think people of my generation, we complicate things. I think we're still stuck in the mindset of trying to remain comfortable, of trying to unify. Those are not bad goals, but those are different goals than centering this country and institutions confronting really insidious histories and really racist systems and practices that exist all the time and are everywhere. 

There is no exception. There's going to have to be a reckoning. There has to be a tumultuous period, particularly for folks like myself who sit on pillows of privilege because of multiple identities that I hold. You have to grapple with that, both personally, but ancestrally. I am the descendant of people who enslaved other human beings — what does that mean for me as an educator? What does that mean for me as someone who facilitates this type of work, but I don't see how we come out stronger and more unified on the other side, if we don't accept that there has to be a reckoning with that history. We have to understand how the history of enslavement fosters and fuels our existing economy. 

I think for young people, just keep holding us accountable. Don't accept that this is the way things have to be… Part of what we do is asking folks to hold space for what an equitable and inclusive school would look like. What would the equitable and inclusive world look like? I hope that young people have an opportunity for a vision like that, because if you don't have a vision, then you don't know what address to plug into the GPS and you’re never going to get there. 

I think taking those opportunities to decide this is how we want the world to be, and this is the world we want to live in and lead eventually. I can't wait to continue to bear witness to seeing those types of shifts.

Ben: Yes definitely. It's really exciting to see how we will progress as a society, especially with this next generation, hopefully leading new progress and new innovation. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today. I can't thank you enough for talking to me. You've been such a great guest. It's been so insightful to hear all the things you've had to say. 

Natalie: My pleasure. Thank you so much.