Equity Over Equality: Failing the Gifted Test, Parent Advocacy, and Asking Families What They Actually Want with Punam V. Saxena

Parent engagement advocate Punam V. Saxena failed the gifted test in second grade, and spent the next twenty five years believing she was not smart.

In this episode of Ronderings, Ron sits down with Punam, a TEDx and SXSW EDU speaker who started out teaching special education, for a conversation about what schools miss when nobody asks families what they actually want.

Punam grew up outside Atlanta in the 1970s, the only Indian family in the community. Neighbors asked what tribe they belonged to and how the bindi stayed on her mother's forehead. Her father, the first agricultural engineer of Indian descent hired in this country, once answered that they were Cherokee just to end the conversation. When a second Indian family moved in and their son was also kept out of gifted, Punam's parents told them to go advocate. He got in. He went to MIT.

At 22, with no training, she was put in a self contained classroom of students with autism. Later, teaching students with severe emotional disturbances in Florida, she noticed that not one parent came to her door. The turn came in an IEP meeting, where a mother who had taken two buses and unpaid hours off work sat silent while the professionals wrote goals. Punam stopped and asked what she wanted. The answer was life skills, because her son would graduate in seven years.

She and Ron get into the Puritan foundations still sitting under American schooling, and her dissertation on how second generation Indian American women build a hybrid cultural identity in college.

Tune in to hear why Punam's Ronderings is equity over equality, 100% of the time.

Chapters:

🎙️ 00:11 Welcome to Ronderings, and meeting Punam V. Saxena

🏡 05:14 One Indian family in rural Georgia, and the question about what tribe

📉 10:18 How failing the gifted test made her believe she was not smart

🧩 14:24 At 22, handed a classroom of students with autism and no training

💬 16:36 The parent who took two buses and was never asked anything

🏅 19:22 The next Indian family advocated, and their son got into MIT

🤝 23:21 Why showing up only when there is a problem makes teachers defensive

⛪ 32:32 An education system still built on Puritan ideals

📖 43:25 Her dissertation on being Indian at home and American at school

❤️ 52:37 The Ronderings question: equity over equality, 100% of the time

Links:

Website: punamvsaxena.com

LinkedIn: Punam Saxena

Email: PunamV.Saxena@gmail.com

Reach out to Punam V. Saxena for coaching, consulting, and workshops on parent engagement, or to bring her in to speak on what multicultural families need from the schools their children attend.

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