Dr. Nadia Lopez & Marley Dias | The 2022 MAKERS Conference

MAKERS

Dr. Nadia Lopez & Marley Dias at the 2022 MAKERS Conference.

Video Transcript

- Please welcome Dr. Nadia Lopez.

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DR. NADIA LOPEZ: Sorry. I'm a little emotional. For me, making the future is about shaping the minds of our young people through education. It's about teaching them knowledge and skills, and ensuring that they have the strategies in order to become agents of change that can challenge the injustices of this world.

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It's also about-- thank you-- them becoming innovators and rising to the occasion of being leaders that will impact the next generation. But it is equally important to teach them the values of rest and self-care, and being able to create boundaries in order to preserve their mental and physical health.

Since the pandemic, there has been a surge of 50% of girls who have shared that they have experienced mental health issues. I experienced this firsthand while I watched my daughter who was then 18 experienced depression.

See, at the time, I had pulled her out of college to come back to our Brooklyn home simply because we were in the midst of the pandemic. And, you know, college students love their freedom. And now she was being confined. And we had to mourn countless deaths of so many friends and close relatives all because we were living in the epicenter.

So to keep herself busy, Cenne decided to take three summer courses. And after the first class, I noticed that she had such high levels of anxiety, that I said to her, do you think you can manage this? And she said to me, mommy, if you were in the same position, you would do this too.

And besides, I don't want to keep-- I don't want to make you feel like I'm not working hard enough or good enough. That hit me and hurt me to my core because I had to think about what would her future be like.

You see, education, for me, has always been my life. And in fact, it was my daughter who inspired me to become a teacher. But my work became my priority, and it consumed me to a point that I couldn't even spend quality time with her. And the job that I love was literally killing me.

It landed me in the hospital. And I was diagnosed with kidney disease as a result of stress and being the superwoman who never took off her cape. How many of you can relate to that? I had the official case of saviorism complex, and it's something that so many women in my life and educators deal with as well.

55% of teachers and 42% of principals have said that because of the mounting pressure of the work, before the pandemic and afterwards, has caused them to experience burnout, and to a place that they've now experiencing health issues. So they are choosing to leave this profession.

It wasn't until I was at home in my bedroom quietly just looking at the wall, I started to cry because it hit me, I could literally die because of the work that I loved.

And it was while I was on this medical leave I realized that I was creating a legacy of empowerment, but I was going to leave this Earth a martyr. And my child would be left motherless, and my then 75-year-old mother would be less daughterless.

At that moment, I realized that self-care wasn't just about being a hashtag, but actually, it needed to be a verb. So I found a therapist that could help me develop strategies that I needed in order to deal with my own personal traumas.

I engaged in mindfulness like yoga, meditation, and breathwork. And I was no longer going to allow myself to compromise rest to be in a rush. I reprioritized my family, and I set aside the work. But most importantly, I gave myself grace, because I am not perfect, and I should not be expected to be.

So here I stand before you so thankful to be alive and blessed to be in remission.

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And I am on a healing journey. And what this has taught me is that in order for us to make a future, we have to be good to ourselves. We have to take care of ourselves and teach that to our young people. And while they're facing all of these daunting societal issues like school shootings and the pushback around critical race theory, as well as the banning of books, we also have to teach them that with activism and creativity, they need to engage in mindfulness.

And they need to practice the types of things that's going to allow them to have sustainability because they are the leaders of the next generation, and they will use their intelligence, ingenuity, and even social media to influence those who come after them.

And so I'm extremely proud and happy to introduce a powerhouse, a dynamic young person. You may know her. She's a Harvard freshman, and her name is Marley Dias.

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That's right. Clap it up. She is the founder of the #1000BlackGirlBooks which she began at the early age of 10 years old. And the idea for her was to collect books that would feature Black female protagonists.

Her campaign went viral. And to date, she has been able to collect over 13,000 books and was at the White House with Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey, and has even hosted and produced her own show with Netflix.

But most importantly, she has also written her own book. So I want you to give her a loud applause as she comes to the stage. Marley Dias!

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OK. OK. I love it. Yes.

MARLEY DIAS: Hi, everybody.

DR. NADIA LOPEZ: We came in here--

MARLEY DIAS: Yeah.

DR. NADIA LOPEZ: --bringing it. That's right. So, first and foremost, Marley, I want folks to know the name of your book because I didn't mention that.

MARLEY DIAS: The name of my book is, "Marley Dias Gets It Done-- and So Can You." It came out with Scholastic in 2018. And it's a guide for caregivers, educators, and kids to learn how to use their passions and frustrations to help others.

DR. NADIA LOPEZ: Excellent. So now that you are a freshman at Harvard.

MARLEY DIAS: Yes.

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DR. NADIA LOPEZ: One of the most prestigious colleges in the nation, and a proud product of public schools, as myself. I hear it's something you feel strongly about, and a lot of debate for us to unpack.

So I wanted to ask you, as someone who became an activist at the tender age of 10, why do you think it was so important, and what was your intent around making sure that young people had literature that represented Black girls?

MARLEY DIAS: Well, I think when it comes to, like, the origins of #1000BlackGirlBooks, it wasn't out of the idea of just being an activist. It was that, if you experience a problem, you need to solve it. If you know this problem does not just impact you, you can be that voice.

And I think it really came from my mom in the sense of urgency that she employed to me to understand that I'm a part of a community, that my feelings, my actions, and my ideas do not exist and solely impact me. So when I noticed that my classroom-- in my fifth grade classroom, there were not books where Black girls were the main characters, I had two options where I could either go to my parents and ask them to buy me more Black girl books and read them at home or I could challenge my teachers and educators to do something about it to help all the 20 odd other Black girls in my grade.

And I chose the other option to make a difference that exists not only through my own experiences but outside in the larger community. And diversity and representation is a really critical part of public schools and education. It's that, a lot of the times when you exist in these sort of mandated spaces, where I woke up every day, I knew I had to go to school, that my parents, you know, this is the choice that they made for me.

That this really sets the tone of what kids see as a priority, who they see as important, the types of leaders they believe they can become. Because the information is not only coming from the teachers themselves but from our country, from our government. That this is a representation of what the state of New Jersey thinks I need to know.

And if we don't include or we only include narratives of Black girls as people who are enslaved, as people who participated in the Civil Rights movement, or as these small examples of people like Mae Jemison, who was a really powerful figure, is that we need to show the full humanity of all Black women. That we can't have five characters--

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--and five people that we draw upon.

DR. NADIA LOPEZ: Absolutely.

MARLEY DIAS: That was really the origin of #1000BlackGirlBooks.

DR. NADIA LOPEZ: Now, your mom, is she in the audience?

MARLEY DIAS: Of course.

DR. NADIA LOPEZ: Put that hands up. Yes.

MARLEY DIAS: Dr. J here.

DR. NADIA LOPEZ: So you name her as someone who is a major influence. What did she instill in you? Or how did she say to you or show you to show up as someone who became this activist?

MARLEY DIAS: Well, I think the first thing is that my mom is a sociologist. So that means I could not watch Disney movies in peace, I could not play--

[LAUGHTER]

--with dolls in peace. I never knew peace. I never just got to simply consume and enjoy things without any understanding of what they might have meant. Like, I could not-- and I'm sure anyone taking a sociology class, watched a YouTube video, you understand that weight and the change in the lens of how you view the world.

And she employed me with that lens at a very young age where we would watch Mulan, we would watch Jasmine, we would watch all these characters and really think and have open conversations about where their actions came from in a larger sense of the world. So even when we talked about, like, bullying in school, it would be, like, well, think about where these kids come from.

Are their parents active in their lives? Are they eating lunch at school? Do they get-- are they exercising? Like, there are multiple layers to the ways that people exist.

DR. NADIA LOPEZ: I just want you to pause for a second.

MARLEY DIAS: And then all these things--

DR. NADIA LOPEZ: This is off of a TV show, right?

MARLEY DIAS: Yeah.

DR. NADIA LOPEZ: You're unpacking this.

MARLEY DIAS: Yeah.

DR. NADIA LOPEZ: OK.

MARLEY DIAS: Like we will be going down the entire-- like, every, like, when did they wake up? Did they get 8 hours of rest? Did their parents tell them that they were beautiful when they woke up? Like, these are like-- these are really important elements. And she's laughing because it's true.

And these are really important elements of a person's development. And I think that her giving me that understanding of systems and how, like, these sort of compounded actions might result in this one isolated event, the things are never really isolated. She just really gave me that sense of understanding.

So any time that a problem happened in school, I was the first person to break it down and be, like what'd your mom tell you this morning?

[LAUGHTER]

What'd she say to you? You know, you really have to know and get that larger understanding. And I think that's what translates to #1000BlackGirlBooks and all this work is that I want to work, not just on collecting books, but then making sure that kids see themselves as the ability to be leaders.

What can business owners do to support kids' education? What can we do to create representation in television and movies? That all these things sort of branch out and are connected. And that's what allowed-- that's what's allowed for seven years now of being able to do this work.

DR. NADIA LOPEZ: Talk about developing a critical lens, mom. So let's-- I want to go into something a little bit more serious, and it relates to the banning of books. And you, being an activist around having access and representation, but also being an author, how has that affected you?

Because you never know, one day your book can be banned as well.

MARLEY DIAS: Well, book banning is a really, really honestly, terrifying thing that is happening in our country right now. Some of my favorite authors like Jason Reynolds and Jacqueline Woodson, who I cite as the reason why I wanted to start #1000BlackGirlBooks books are on the list of, like, the top 10 most banned books.

And for me, as a person that works in this space, there are two things that I try to do. So first thing is that I have a resource guide online at www.grassrootscommunityfoundation.org. I'll say the name. I know you didn't hear it. But look up #1000BlackGirlBooks resource guide, and you will find it.

It has a list of 1,000 titles that celebrate not only like authors published through Scholastic and Simon and Schuster, but self-published authors, which is a really critical element of the work that I do. People that write their books in their homes, bind them themselves, send them to me. And they'll send me hundreds and hundreds of copies.

So it's really important to have this digital log as a way to not necessarily skirt around the barriers that are being placed but to present the opportunity to say that we have so many different kinds of Black stories out there. And we need to support and embedded in our curriculum with stories from authors that are coming from all over the world and that are doing this work in their homes.

And the second thing is providing online resources such as "Bookmarks" which is the Netflix show that I hosted and executive produce is available for free on YouTube. So that's another resource for kids and for educators to say, even if these books are being banned, we do have-- we have YouTube series, we have interviews, we have all these online resources that allow authors to talk about their points of view, talk about these perspectives, even if we can't get the books in the classroom.

So we just try to use those two things as another aspect, but legislation is clearly super important. And I think the politicization of education has put us in this sort of standstill where people like me can only do more to encourage people to invest in educators on a one-on-one basis. Because we clearly see now that these larger structural institutions that focus on education are not supporting teachers in what they need.

DR. NADIA LOPEZ: So you do so much. And as a freshman, there is a high expectation because this sets the tone, right? Like, you're in your first semester. And I now have a 21-year-old in college as well.

And so I want to ask you, how are you engaging in self-care? Because when I was in college, that wasn't even a thought. It was, like, you've got to get this work together. How are you taking care of yourself?

MARLEY DIAS: Well, I think the thing that I have to work on and I'm trying is to just say nice things to myself. That's something that I don't do a lot, and I think is hard. Because I get-- I do get a lot of outside praise that I'm very grateful for, but it's not enough if you don't believe it yourself.

It's not enough if you don't feel that you've earned that praise. So for me, it's just been a lot of, like, reflection on what I've done over the past few years and to realize, like, this a career that has been built in the time of middle school to graduating high school that I should be really, really proud of.

And I'm, like, relearning, and sometimes I, like, rewatch my-- like, a video or a talk I did, and I'm, like, that was pretty good. I was actually pretty good.

DR. NADIA LOPEZ: [LAUGHTER]

MARLEY DIAS: That was not that bad. Like, I have to sort of retrain myself.

DR. NADIA LOPEZ: Yeah.

MARLEY DIAS: I've been doing that as a way to celebrate what I've already done, and to also learn from, like, the way that things have changed from. Like, when I first started, social media and social media activism was not a big thing at all. Hashtags had just sort of like-- it was before #MeToo before, like, celebrities have become involved in any sort of digital spaces of change making.

So now I get to look back and see how these spaces have evolved, and to also celebrate some of the things that I called long before people were calling them. So I love to do that too. And that's a part of my self-care. Is just looking back and really expressing gratefulness for the people that have continued to support me over these past long-- this long time for me.

DR. NADIA LOPEZ: And so I want to commend you for that. I want to thank you for acknowledging that you don't always feel that way. I think that's so super important, especially when you're in a position of what we consider the limelight where people look at a curated social account and think, like, oh, her life is perfect. She's traveling.

But the reality is that you're a human being. And so you have to take time for yourself. So self-affirmation is important. But I like to ask you, what is your hope and vision when we think about making the future?

MARLEY DIAS: When I think about making the future of education, I think-- my most important call to action is really supporting educators. I think that regardless of how much it might be easy for us to watch videos of people debating in Congress over critical race theory or pundits on a news media talking about it, that educators still have to wake up and do their jobs every single day.

That does not change regardless of the weather, regardless of the political climate, and regardless of their students. That we were always going to rely on them to be these incredibly important supports for our children. And if you look on Twitter and look up Texas educator, California educator, New Jersey educator, wherever, you will find lists and lists of teachers who are talking about the fact that they don't have enough money for books, that they're paying $300 out of pocket every semester to get crayons, to get markers.

And that we, as people who have these resources, who have an understanding and a visibility towards people that need help should be giving to them actively no matter what, as long as we can. Because we know that our educational institutions are not doing that.

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DR. NADIA LOPEZ: I felt that. And I thank you. And I think the same.

MARLEY DIAS: In making the future towards education and towards a culture of education, we also need to make sure that our social media platforms and the way that we engage-- and I'm saying we as in speaking towards adults, that you guys are all learners too. You continue to be in the education space even if we're not talking about the classroom.

So don't take everything that you see on social media as fact. Engage in critical debate, educate yourself, continue to read, like, not only research as an infographics online and podcast, but continue to engage in actually going through peer-reviewed articles, reading about the topics that you care-- we all care so much about, and extending beyond our personal experiences to make sure that we all see ourselves as learners regardless of our age.

Because oftentimes, the people that represent learning and people that are in politics are not actively taking steps to learn. They are speaking on how they feel. And if we don't engage in this curiosity in a more serious and a way that's full of integrity in our own hearts towards wanting to just gain more empathy towards these issues, we will not continue to progress in helping our kids and shaping our future.

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DR. NADIA LOPEZ: As an educator, I want to thank you for sharing that and echoing that, because we often feel like we're in isolation and not having the opportunity of being seen and heard. And we are taking care of so many young people. So with that, I want to just ask you this last question.

How or what would you say to the young people to encourage them to make their future?

MARLEY DIAS: I think for young people, the best way to make the future is to enjoy the present, to be up-- to really observe and pay attention to what's going on in our world right now.

Because I think, oftentimes, particularly as someone who is within the Black community and also within the women's movement that we feel blindsided by moments where we become egregiously oppressed, that things like the repealing of Roe v Wade feel like we had no idea that they were coming and they hurt us in these tremendous ways.

But if we pay attention presently and check our news sources every day, if we read and see the agendas of people that are working towards our oppression, they do that work every single day. It does not happen in one day. And if we continue to believe and let them think that we can be blindsided by these egregious acts of hate, we will never be able to create a future that we need-- a safe future, a kind future, an empathetic future.

So for young people, read the news every day. Try to learn something new every single day. Try to engage in a conversation with someone that you disagree with every day. Try to absorb our world as it is coming at you. Because instead of feeling unprepared for these really dark times that we are facing and have faced, we will have an everyday understanding of how inequality functions, and also an everyday understanding of how joy and how positivity and how social good is created in our world. So just be present.

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[CHEERS]

DR. NADIA LOPEZ: Thank you so much.

MARLEY DIAS: Thank you.

DR. NADIA LOPEZ: Marley for president. This was amazing. Thank you.