EYL #14 Homecoming feat. Valencia Clay

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All right, guys, welcome back, Welcome back.

We have another monumental episode in store for you, guys, Episode fourteen, Week fourteen.

We made it.

It's crazy time Fly Soundfly. So before we start. Before we start, we have to thank you guys for your support, for your continued support. You know, when we started this podcast, we don't really have any expectations on how far we wanted to go, and we didn't really we just wanted to reach the people. And in fourteen weeks we are in the top twenty five of iTunes business charts.

We had a Bloomberg Wall Street Journeys. It's crazy, and we're almost in the time one hundred for all podcasts, so all categories.

Now, it's encouraging a lot of different levels to see that the culture so engaged in financial literacy. It's not like we're talking about sports and we are talking about sports entertainment, but the financial side of it, right, So it's just encouraging to see that and we're not you know, we don't have any ads, we didn't have any training, we didn't have any publication that wrote about.

Us go to school for this na.

We just started. We just started it. That's it. So yes.

And also, you know, if you guys can use that as some inspiration too, if you think about just starting anything, you know, just start, You're gonna figure it out as you go, right, You're going to figure it out as you go. But also I wanted to think the people that you don't see that make this possible.

So we have Larry, we have said, we have Mike, we have Bam.

Thank you gentlemen, and you know, like I said, you see me and Joy a lot, but you might necessarily see the other gentlemen.

They make sure the visuals are good. They make sure our sound is on point.

So thank you, thank you.

We appreciate you for sure. So we're gonna jump right into it today. We have a very special guest. So today's the education episode, so we try to do different you know topics.

Homecoming.

Yeah, yeah, so it's education, but it's so part of the education if you go to any school is homecoming, right, That's like the biggest thing.

That's like the biggest thing. So it's the homecoming edition.

Actually, as we said before, our Baltimore tides run deep, but this is actually a Greenberg thing.

To the town, to the town, shout out to the town.

So we all are from Greenberg. We have special guests. Valencia.

Let's just call you a member, family member.

Family member of founder Valencia Clay.

I call her Valve, So I'll be calling her valve throughout the interview. It's just a habit of mine, but the world.

She's Valencia Dclay and she's about to be doctor Clay, so she really needs no introduction, but I'll just give one anyway.

She's a rock star teacher.

She has changed the Court of education, how teachers teach their classroom. She's given inspirations to millions of people. And above all that, Rihanna follows her. That's like the highest level of the only thing that is Beyonce.

So that's that's your biggest was like, I mean, Rihanna was crazy like she like, but when Jada follows you, you were.

Like, oh my god, was like amazing, Oh my god, I died.

Yeah, Rihanna, Jada Holly Berry, she was in Vogue, she's been on ABC News, NBC, she's working with National Geographics. She's lit all the way around. So we are honored to have her. And as I said, it's a Greenberg thing. She's from Harlem too. But it's a long story. But for this one, for this purpose is we're just gonna claim Greenberg. So we're gonna jump right into it. We got a lot of information to cover on education. A money play he's behind education how it all talks, because

He val.

I'm just gonna touch on the tutoring thing because that's like a billion dollar business. I don't think people really understand, especially when when we were talking about the college scandal, like parents trying to get their kids into schools. It's a thirteen billion dollar business. But people are paying for the preparation for the SAT prep for the counseling. Now that's a new thing in counseling because the pressure of trying to.

Take essays right, just that like counseling, that's social emotional. So people are making money off the social emotional warfare that is played on us, right, you know, and that I mean us as everybody, because yeah, let's talk about test anxiety, school anxiety period. I realized that my students, they always do my projects late unless we do every

I got a whole.

Quarter left, but so far the school year they haven't been able to turn anything in on time.

Why because it's hard, and that anxiety of feeling like you can't even do it is so real. It's learned helplessness, but it's still real. It's still real.

And that all comes from postal radislation syndrome, which is which is financial literacy that we don't even learn about. We don't learn about those aspects of what slavery did.

We don't learn about the financial aspects of it. We don't learn who we were before brown versus bored as cities.

We don't learn these things in school. So it all goes to curriculum cases.

That's what we start.

But none of our schools are teaching these kinds of curriculums because that's not on the standardized test. So you give people a standardized test and you say this is what you need to do in order to say.

That you are intelligent.

So then you get schools looking at that test saying I need to teach these things Y and Z only so that my students will do well in this test.

So that our school can keep its money.

I just read an article in the Post this morning about a mother in the Bronx she can't get her five kids into any charter schools in the city. And then that same publication rode a post that was in favor in favor of charter schools. So I'm looking at this post and I'm realizing they're using their platform right now, in my opinion, to say, look, we need more charter schools. See how these parents can't get their kids into charter schools.

They're in the public buildings.

Why are they charter schools because it's called that it's still a public school, but you're getting different money because somebody else is running it with the same kind of agenda to pass these standardized tests.

The problem and the problem with the test is it's like a one size fit to one, but everybody learns different.

So, yeah, it's a business show. So always like to tie it in the money, and education, like all things in society, is tied into money. Right, So we take these tests, like you said, the charter schools versus private schools, versus public schools, and these are things that the decisions that parents are making without actually really thinking about it. They're just doing it right. But ultimately it comes down to money.

It's money. It's a money issue, right. The standardized test is a billion dollar issue, and they are.

Thinking about it.

That mother in that article, she said, I don't want to send my kids to the.

Public schools because their test scores are terrible. Those were her words in the article. They are thinking about it.

They're thinking about what the oppressor wants them to think about.

They're thinking exactly about test scores. They're thinking about the stuff that.

We want them to think about, financial literacy, we want them to think about their history. We want them to think about how to be innovative, how to become an entrepreneur when you grow up in some sort of way, how to become a leader, how to become you know something more than somebody tells you you have to do the same thing over and over nine to five robot.

We are we want that.

But these parents that are saying let's send us to a sent to a charter, they're not realizing that these test scores are showing everything but what we want.

These test scores are not preparing right.

It's preparing them to pass a test, which in life, right after you've left college and those SAT scores, it's.

Supposed to prepare them to And if you look at our babies test scores, it's still shown that they're reading is at an all time love. And that's what I'm saying. That's the sense of urgency we have to have. If we're going to talk about business, then we need to think about how we rally businesses to make sure that kids have more.

Of what they need.

And I don't feel like enough businesses are talking about that are talking about children and schools and reading and writing and math and science school.

It's like I said, I read an article from the Brickins Is too and it was just like schools become a product. It's actual product that they're selling.

Right.

So like when we sell a test to a school district or state and they buy it, it's like, all right, everybod he passed this. Now the educator has to kind of like curtall what they're doing. It's like, you know what, I have to have these kids pass or I'll be viewed as ineffective, you know what I mean?

And right now.

My data, my school as a whole our kids did not move. A lot of our teachers have to have I'm not going to talk for everybody. I'm telling aout myself because I know people are listening. I don't let anybody to feel away. But my data, my data was only effective, not highly effective. Why because only a certain amount of my kids grew this year a certain amount of points I have. We had a goal all kids had to move this many points by the end of the year, and if they didn't, we don't get our money.

Nope, I'm not.

Like that's that's the money play behind it, because you're you're you're not understanding. Curriculum dictates what our children learn, who they become. It dictates who we are, what we're doing. And this is not a wee as in just teachers. This is the world because education is the world. How are you gonna how else could you get here? And you I, all three of us at this table have totally different We went to the same schools, granted, but then.

We have totally different educational narratives.

But then also he still ended up in the same place.

So for me, my personal perspective on education is, Okay, I'm outside because you guys work in schools. You're you don't like to teach this term teacher, You're an educator, right right?

Teacher both? Okay, so you're both.

I think the term is when he says you're a school teacher.

I mean, so, all right, you're both.

You're both educators, and I'm in business, right, I mean, you're both in business as well on a certain level. But so the thing about it is, I feel like my outside experiences have helped me more and even in sports have helped me more. So I don't feel like I don't think that what you learn in school is going to be the key to your success.

Yeah, because let me learn, it doesn't stop in the classroom.

It doesn't stop in the classroom, and you learn way more outside of the classroom than you ever learned inside.

Of the classroom because life is a teacher twenty four hours a day, you know what I mean, So like that's important.

Life is going to be your teacher.

So like when I see Valencia post things, I'm like, I can see the passion in her.

I know some of those things are not in the curriculum of Maryland.

My thing is, why is that okay with you?

No?

No, it's not okay. It's not okay that what.

You're saying is true, that we're not learning and what we need in schools.

So you what's your platform?

Has to keep doing this so that you can that was We can't sit here and be like, yeah, we not learning nothing in school. No, we have to knock the doors down and change that so that the bays are learning something in school. Because let me tell you what it looks like when they're wasting their time. It looks like then when I come in to try to give them as much as I can, they don't want it because they're so used wasting their time.

That's what they think they should be doing. That's all they want to do. That's what they desiring. Now, not everybody, but this is what's happening to too.

Many because it's like year one grade, right, So by the time they've gotten to you, they've had years of people who probably have not reached them. In a sense, it's like you only can be what you see, right, So like when they see somebody like you, it's like, wow, I can imagine the eighth pen that.

Yes, But also you don't understand what it looks like when you have.

Hard working teachers, well meaning.

That's why I love Cardigi was in chapter three, The Miseducation of the Ney World, he talks about the well meaning missionaries that went down south when we were well, when our ancestors were finally given the right to learn how to read them write. These well meaning missionaries went down and they opened the Freedman schools. But they taught them. What they taught them was not true history true. They taught them a whitewashed education. This is the same thing

You're gonna keep having the same podcast.

We got to make sure that this is a seed, but not the end all be all, because the goal is for us to not need The goal is for it to be a norm, that financial literacy being your healthiest money self.

Like you know what I'm saying, You're understanding.

It from a healthy perspective. If you can understand money from in the same way we understand food in a nutrition way, nutritious way. If we if we understood our money in our bank accounts and our finances, we understood the difference between saving right, if we understood the difference between spending and investing and the difference between those two words. If we teach the babies that and it's normal in their minds, that's that's.

Where we have to go.

Well, it's interested that you said the nutrition thing, because we don't understand nutrition. No, going back to some of us majority going back into school, right, like with the pizza and milk at the lunch and it's like this is terrible, right, And I was fortunate enough to never eat school lunch, like my mom packed me lunch every day.

That was very rare.

I remember that.

It's like, looking back on it now, that was such a blessing that she even took the time because she knew because it's like everybody else was eating pizza and and so what if.

We have the moms like your mom who you know, his mom was his mom?

What if we had more moms going into the community saying we can't let them feed our babies this, Like we just there's so much that we have accepted that we didn't know that we were accepting, or that we didn't know that there were more options for because there's so many other priorities that we have.

It's like we can't think about we just have got school lunch.

Like we don't realize that they're feeding us.

Yeah.

But then once again going back to the money, right, so these schools have contracts with food vendors, right, with dairy companies with so it's not like they're not just getting this food out the star.

It's a million million billion dollar.

Contracts doesn't if we talk about real estate, if we talk about banking, we talk about school, it all comes back to money man everything.

And that's the that's the beauty of the podcast because it's so broad ranging that we can talk about so many different things. But education is you know, like you said that, that's like the ground rule of the kids beginning, right, they go to preschool, they go to kindergarten, they go to you go to school. And school is is a business, right, it's a business. College college is a bit business.

We know that. We cover that, so so.

All right, so we talked about some problems, but we're not this podcast is not a great a cloud or you know, we're not going to just leave you in gloom. We're gonna now talk about some solutions and how we can hopefully change the world. That's what we had to do, all right, So once again, we're not going to leave you guys, you know, feeling like there's no hope, because

I wrote that down. I have the text.

I was like, wow, like that's super ambitious, Like, let's do it.

So you heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen, the pressure.

So all right, so that's one of your goals. And short, like I said, you're you're an educator as well. You both educated. So we know that money is and it's a lot of times people say, you know what the average this is the average person. I'm just gonnakeep it real. I can't fix it, so I even worry about it. Right, Like, this thing has been going on for so long. The

It's never going to be equal.

It's like almost like the marching syndrome, Like while we're gonna keep trying to march one This is why the entrepreneur thing comes into play with people like myself, not to say like when we tipped in, we used to that white think that's okay. I don't think it's okay. But I feel like I'm not expecting anybody to do something for me that they haven't done for four hundred years. Like know what I'm saying. So now let's do our own thing.

That's my personal thing. And there's a lot of people that feel like me.

So I want to get you guys's thoughts on how you think why it's important to change it from the inside, because you are inside, You're inside of the building literally, and you know.

Just your thoughts on that I'll start.

I just think representation number one is extremely important. Like I work in elementary school. I don't know if I've ever, I don't know how many black males or males of color are in elementary school. So having representation, seeing something that you can aspire to be. I would say that everything I do is super intentional from the way I talk, to the way I dress, to the music I listen to.

I want to stay in.

Tune with what the future generation is listening to so that we can always be engaged. I also think being culturally responsive is key, and I think that's one of the things that Val does to her post.

Her education is so responsive.

And people used to say, we need to be relevant, and I'm like, relevancy can change over time, you know what I'm saying. Every ten years, culture changes. Right if I'm from Jamaica, Right, if I went back to Jamaica, the culture is completely different from the one that my parents grew up in, right, So that we have to be responsive because culture is always changing. Things are always changing.

As seriously as as they should.

Right.

They get their curriculum, they say, this is what I have to teach. If they don't learn it, you know what, that's on them. But in the end it'll end up being on the educator themselves, right, because the test scores will dictate how effective the teacher is. So I think representation and being responsive to what's happening in culture.

Everybody doesn't have the same values at this point, so we need to start there. We need to start first with identifying the values in the community. We have to come together as a full community first. Right now, everybody's working in silos. People need to come together as one community. Community means whatever whoever you are, don't matter what you work.

What you look like, you live in that community. That's your community. Cool, everybody come together, everybody.

Then we identify the values, and for me, my number one value is education. Somebody else number one value might be something else. We don't know right now. But once we tally up the values, then we work from making a plan. Right now, we can't say what works, how are we going to fix it? We gotta implement a plan. That's what action research is. That's why I'm going back to school. That's why I gotta get my doctorate.

So what plan or what would you what would your plan specifically, what would your plan look like?

You're going back to Johns Hopkins, right, so you're gonna be what are you gonna be studying there?

My brain and teaching.

So I'm looking at things from a neurologist's perspective, which is very scary for me because I am not good at science and math. Right now, I'm getting better, but that's not my strong suit. So being a researchers always terrified the heck out of me, but I don't care. I have to get over that, which is another reason why I'm like, I cannot be on social media right now. I can't create right now. I have to study and become a better learner. Right now, my learning.

Habits are just really trash, Like I feel like I have ADHD.

I know I'm going on a tangent, but I do. Sometimes I just can't even focus, like look.

At my book.

I have to make myself a little daily monitor for my own behaviors because I feel like I'm like connected to everything else. Then, you know, anyway back to this, what we need to do. We need to do what I'm doing and self assess because it starts with you. But the other thing we need to do, which is why I'm going back to school, is we have to

And that's all I know right.

Now from the start.

That's just my little like, this is what I want.

I want to look at anger and I want to look at love from the teacher's perspective. So I want to look at a love based education. What does that look like? How do you gather data to assess the effectiveness of a love based education?

I don't know these things yet, so I can't say this is the solution.

Love is a solution until I do my research, until I gather the data, until I do it again with a bigger pool, until I have to keep going.

I have to, I have to test this out. So right now, I'm a student.

I'm a student right now, and I feel like that is one of the solutions I would give y'all or the US. So the community is become a student and be okay with being a learner at whatever place you are in right now, because no matter how many accolades you have, titles, or followers or friends or whatever the fuck you got, I don't know, excuse my language, but it doesn't matter if you don't know how to get where you want to go next, or how to get to the place that needs you next. The Instagram pages

I don't see myself personally doing enough work that says teach reading period, and I don't mean physically reading. Rashad is my number.

One example when I tell people about non readers. Shad knows everything.

Like if a shot doesn't read, for Shad reads non print, non print. That is the type of reader that our kids are.

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See more teachers like you, and there are more teachers like you in the world than us.

The teachers need.

You now, that's a fact.

They do need me first and form you can I just.

Touch on something really quickly.

I just thought really quickly because what you said is very interesting, Like if you asked me to throughout high school and even in college in post school, how many books I read, I probably could count on my hands, and I know I don't read enough.

And then I started. I read an article and I was like, wait, I do read a lot.

I read.

I read the Wall Street Journal every day. I read the Daily News with my dad would bring home every day.

I was reading print.

I just wasn't reading books, but I was the magazines when I was younger. I read cards like I always read, just not in the way that we would taught, Like, hey, you're not reading this literature book, so you're not a reader because.

You were taught to read for a grade grade right.

And I'm doing it for my own joy. I've always done it. That's good that you said that.

And they didn't. No one taught us to read. No one taught us how to love learning.

They didn't explicitly say this is what learning feels like.

Don't you feel good?

No one gave us those And I think I can't say no one because we did have good teachers, but I never got someone to say This feels good, doesn't it?

Girl? No one said that when I was learning.

I'm going if somebody would have helped me name that high, the natural high that comes from learning, how many more people would getting high of learning every day?

But also I think that you know, from the education standpoint, See, one of my problems with education is that. And I'm not anti education, I'm not anti school, but I just feel like I don't have faith in school because I've seen it fail too many times. Right, And one of the one of the main issues that I have with school is that everybody learns differently. I think I read somewhere it's where it's like just seven different learning styles, right, But school only teaches one way.

To learn to industrial styles.

So now you have thirty kids that's all learning the same way. So, like you said, I don't read books. I'm an audio learner, so I can hear something that I can process it much faster than if I read it. I know how to read, but my attention span is very short, right exactly, So I like to do audio books. So it's just it's not it doesn't discount my learning.

But back in the day, that's what even what am I saying back in the day, right now, our teachers have not been given the freedom to say, you know, your babies don't want to read that boring book? What else do you think they should do in order to get what you want?

You know, I know they come in my room all the time.

What lesson plan are you on in the lesson planned book? I'm like, seveneen, I don't know, but I have the data. Sorry for hitting table. I have the data. I have the data that shows these are the essays like look at I've got to keep.

I mean when we visited your classroom, I was like, this is the type of literature that our kids.

But no, no, no, no no, I'm talking about the data of the essays that say this is their first essay, this is their second, this is their third, and you see these grades going up. I'm not trying to stay on a lesson plan that's not teaching them how to get from A to B.

But then, this is the problem with education, even when we just posted on Instagram where a lot of people are saying it's college worth it right because they go to college and they get these degrees and they have a bunch of student loan debt and they can't get a job because they're not they don't they going without really knowing what they want to do. They're getting a general degree in something and it's not specialized, and they're just going out in the world, and it's like, what

Right.

I work at night.

I might stay up to four o'clock in the morning, so I don't feel like I have to get up at six thirty in order to feel good about myself.

Like you know, everybody's different.

But I think that that's because I was never really that great as a student. Decent student, but I was never really great, right, And I think one.

Terms of what was defined as greatness, because great is relative.

Well, what I'm saying in school, I was never a.

Great student's relative though as far as grades, grades and stuff.

In test school, I don't want you to a lot of times our babies, people come, we had all of us have these stories. Like me personally, I would tell my story of how terrible I was in high school. I was this, I was that, But the reality was I really wasn't that bad. I just thought I was that bad. There were so many other things, And there are the kids. There are kids who are not bad at all, who don't get to interact with our blanket statement of being not great.

And well, yeah, because I always like to tie in personal stories. So it's crazy now because it's like on Instagram, people will hit me all the time and it's flyering. I appreciate, but they're like, yo, you're so smart, You're a genius. Da da da da. But it's crazy because hey, nobody looks themselves like that. Right, we just reading information and we're just giving it back to the public. But so in school, I had an IEP. Right this, things

It's an individual education plan.

Yeah, so pretty much the said I had a learned disability, but I didn't. I don't think I had a learning disability. I just wasn't interested in learning. The way that I was being taught. Obviously I'm intelligent, like you know what I'm saying. So, but it's how many kids take that label and now their self esteem drops and now going forward, they don't feel good about themselves.

It's not the label because me, I feel like, give them a label if you're going to educate them on what that label is and not make.

It seem like that, you know what, Like, let's because I'm speaking for myself personally. When I got diagnosed, that freed the heck out of me. It made me feel like I am this is I'm normal. There are things to help me with how I feel right now. And this is because science. To that it was scary for me to not be like everybody else. Once I understood, and then I could and then once I educated myself on my label or my label, I could say this.

Is not actually my label.

I was showing signs of this, but I'm a little bit different than this and that because I was able to educate it myself with it.

Now with our babies, you have children who.

Don't even know what it means, what it means to be ADHD, but their IP says they have ADHD.

I have a little boy, I asked him. He said no. He said, Miss Clay, am I bad? And I said, no, you're not bad.

I said, we were talking about his thing, and I said, you just have ADHD.

He said, why would you say that?

Like he got really angry, and I'm like, so you would rather be labeled bad than to have ADHD.

He was like, yes, like that's that's not okay.

But what is Are we even showing that these labels of ADHD are even appropriate right?

Because he not?

And but the point is to still be. He doesn't even know what that means.

He doesn't know that it simply means that sitting still and learning is not the way for him.

He doesn't know what it means. He should be outdoors canoeing and putting up tents and learning project based learning. He doesn't know these things about himself because he doesn't even know what his label means.

He ain't seed on me dumb. It means I can't system This is me. I knew I needed my book because I get overstimulated. So I can't listen to you for a long period of time without moving and I don't want to say He start fidgeting, so I have to start writing.

That's how my learning style is. How many children don't know that about themselves.

They get in trouble because they can't sit still like this for the whole time.

Like it's it's like the industrialized way of teaching or building schools. Right in the Industrial Revolution, it was like, hey, everybody shows up at this time.

We go into this building.

A bell rings, We go to this room, another bell rings, we have lunch, another bell rings, we go home. It's the same thing that they've created with schools. It's like, all right, we go in first period, there's a belt, second period, there's a bell, third period, there's lunch. It's the same format. Everybody's supposed to learn the same. When everybody doesn't, everybody learns differently, and like when kids feel comfortable,

This is amazing.

But you know, we have to get away from that industrialized year of teaching.

And I think teachers need the permission and schools need the funding to get training, training on how to differentiate.

In your classroom, because don't get it twisted.

We're saying people are not doing but people are doing it really well, and there are so many studies like differentiation in the classroom should be happening every single day. You should be creating lesson plans, develop developing these lesson plans directly for your kids, tailor directly.

For your kids.

All of those kids, like this is data right now. These are my kids that got a failing grade on my essay. These are the kids that moved up. These have a bod. Now when I go in on Tuesday, I'm not going to give them all the same exact lesson. Yeah,

This group has something different. While I'm over here specifically with this little group, how many teachers are doing that a lot, a lot. But the thing is, the thing is not enough art well.

Because yeah, I was gonna say I've actually never seen a teacher do that, right, I'm just being honest. And I went to school, public school and private school, and most especially in public school, most of the teachers were just getting trying and get through the day.

And if you didn't curse them out, you gotta be.

Today.

I can tell you that happens. I can tell you that happens. I promise you, I can tell you that happens. And I'm not even going to talk about the negative. I'm going to stay in this zone right here.

A lot of people I want.

I want.

What I want to say is that I want any business person that's listening to this, if you got some bread, you go to your local school and you say, hello, principal, I'm giving you this donation to pay for a differentiation PD, a professional development for your teachers on differentiation and if they need somebody to run that.

PD, google it or come find us. Meet my peers, my principal.

I have people in DC Extraditionary Learning, but Baltimore Design School has, like, we have a lot of people out here, Gina Procter, one of my favorites, Like, we have some good teachers out here who can help you learn how to attend to every child in your classroom. The problem is not that teachers don't want it. Sometimes the problem is that that curriculum has a chain, you know what I'm saying.

It goes back to the test, to the.

Money, goes back to the test, because everybody is studying us but us, and creating more to keep us in this box that we are in.

Get out of Third grade is a critical year.

It's actually the first year that they actually start taking state tests.

And even in New York, a lot.

Of people they have the option to opt out of the test because really, the anxiety is a real thing now and I'm not sure what it really proves in third grade. Eighth grade is another critical year, but the test show like if a kid has a low reading score at third chances are they going to follow him to eighth Eighth They're going to follow him.

Because they know that that kid is likely to.

Drop out of school because now he has a low literacy.

Rate and teachers don't know.

Teachers have said to me, I don't know how to teach kids that are a low grade level. I've only been trained to teach my grade level. So you mean to tell me you are a sixth grade teacher, and you have kids that are reading on third, fourth, fifth grade levels and you don't know how to bring them up.

What happens when that kid get to eight, gets to ten, they're lower?

Now was your job?

It is?

But a lot of teachers don't see it is that because they don't even know how to do it. We need to make sure that this money, there's so much money, give your schools money to get the teachers training. Don't just buy us books, teach us how to teach those books, because a lot of teachers.

Need help learning how to teach. And that's just the name of the game.

Like I should be using iPads instead of these My baby should all have iPads in their hands. But not efficient enough on an iPad yet. So I'm doing this and they're doing this. Everybody has a notebook just.

Like mine, and we're working.

But they feel good carrying their little little notebook pad. But when do I get that iPad training? When when does every school say it is a requirement that every kid has an iPad instead of having a pen or a pencil. Because at this point, teach them how to use their iPhones instead of making them lock them in their lockers.

We used them how to Google.

We have actually some school districts here in westtern so where they've allowed that, that has been implemented and starting kindergarten.

Where is it where city? No?

No, no, I'm just saying that because it's an initiative, but it starts.

To Then Westchester's job is to make sure that they publicize that nationwide so people can see this is working in this district. Really well, everybody else needs to start doing it. They need to use their power, use that power. This is now we could get on the conversation of like, you know, black power versus white influence and all these different we could talk about, you know, allies versus co conspirators.

I need Wesester to be a co conspirator in.

This moment, and I need them to say this works with our children, specifically our children who are black and brown in this district. This works if they take that data and they show it. My principle reads everything. This is where she gets her brain skills ideas from. She gets these brands banking ideas every now and then, and they come from an article she references.

She's reading. She reads that and sees that it works guess what. We get the permission to do, We get the permission to try it. I should have been to about this, you know what I'm saying. So that's my thing is like we're doing a lot of great work, but we're still in a silo.

Community needs to come together and decide what are our values and then make a bucket for every value. These are the tools that work to get us toward that value because some people are really doing the work for those values.

We don't know. We don't know.

That should be on a shave room.

I want to see that on the shaved room, like I want to see I love seeing myself on places that I when you never guess, like Vogue crazy, I'll never guess. But I want to see the literacy deficit in those same spaces. I want to see more urgency around teaching people how to love learning their own individual paths of learning. Don't you love what you're doing right now? You love this and you're learning as you go. Absolutely, you're loving this learning process.

This is what it is.

That's one of the best things about being the teachers that helps you learn, right. So, like even when we post on Instagram, like I got to research the stories because I got to make sure you faction.

If you are a highly qualified right he sounds like what a highly effective teacher does. They research, they're continuing to look for more to gauge their their students, their audience.

So I don't know, you know what it is that.

We together can continue to do to make sure that this is happening, because now I feel like it's our duty since we've said this, to make sure that we check in.

But maybe that's what we can do. We can plan to have like some sort.

Of monthly community check in, maybe here or in different cities, I don't know. Then we can think about an initiative where we're just hearing or even just in your life.

Like you guys, I want you to continue this part of the conversation where you're really calling people to say, this is what we're doing in my community.

To keep this conversation being stake wide holders wide, stakeholders wide. You know what I'm trying to say, everybody had the table.

Everybody's stake holding in it, right, because I mean, if you you've come through education and if you have kids, they're going to go through everybody, he's a stake in.

This, Yes, Wow. That was powerful. That was powerful. Yeah.

Man, that was just very eye opening for a lot of different levels. Because you know, we go through the educations everybody, that's one thing by education.

Everybody goes through.

Everybody has to do it.

No, it's no opting out. Even if you're homeschool, you're still taught something like you can.

Opt out of the state test. Yeah, and not enough of us know that either. And it won't hurt you if you if parents opt a child out of a test, the standardized test, it doesn't hurt them their future.

And what would be the benefit of opting out of a state test?

You don't have to take it, yeah, because like I said, like we haven't figured out the purpose of it, right. It says that it's supposed to send us. It's supposed to have kids focusing more. They're supposed to work harder, to try for achievement. And it doesn't show that like.

Any state that you're in you can opt out.

Well, I know New York State, you can't.

That's the region any state.

No, No, no region is high school.

But we're talking about I'm talking about parks specifically, Like you can opt out of standardized tests like that, But.

The regions is another thing. I'm glad you said that because York that's just a New York, but some other states have regions exams. But like if I've passed, if I passed a region's exam, right, and I have a region's diploma, that's only good if I'm in New York. If I go to Connecticut, it means nothing. Or if I go to New Jersey that New York regions means nothing. So why are we mandating that our kids in New York have a region's diploma If they want to go to school somewhere else it means zero?

You know what I mean?

Like if I'm in California and I passed California money, Well it comes back to it again, right, So.

Just like why do you have to pay money to take the certification test?

Right?

And that every time you take it and you fail, you got to keep paying.

And now that you can take it more times, it used to be like four times a year. Now it's like every three weeks you can take it because it's more money.

Yeah, exactly, Keep making it harder so they.

Can't they can't pass it.

So they can't pass it, and put.

More in so that they people that look like you and I will tear us away from it, you know what I mean. That's why I said representation is key. We need to see more educators of color in all school.

Districts, you know what.

I feel like we're saying a lot without allowing people to understand where we're getting this information from.

But this is the thing about this show too, because we don't just me and Troy just don't give our opinions on things.

We bring.

We bring experts in the field than that are knowledgeable. So Troy is an expert in this because he's a teacher. But that's why we brought you in and talk about educated.

This is an edu I just wanted to go back to the text. That's all I'm saying.

You know what I'm saying, so but but yeah, so, but that brings me into what I was saying. As far as you know, we're talking about taxes. This isn't just we're just making this up, right. We're bringing in an account we had, you know, a lawyer, and we're not just going off. No, she knows and this is important too to highlight different people in our community that

Right. So she's a cool lawyer, she's a cool teacher. You know.

Oh he talks like me, but he's a mortgage broker. I can do that, you know what I mean, Like, it's not that it can't be that difficult. So yeah, So man, we can stay on this topic. We can stay on this education for so long because there's so much to talk about. But we want to just first and foremost, thank you for coming in. We appreciate it.

Teach whatever you do for a living.

You might you know, you might be an account and teach the kids about how to do taxi or go.

Back, go back to your school.

So if you're in your neighborhood and that's one of the things that you know, the first thing I had you do was like we had a career day.

I'm like, oh, come.

Back and speak to these kids because you are from our neighborhood. Come back and speak If whatever profession you're in, go back and find out what your school's doing, if they offer a career day or if they don't start one, and go back and talk to kids.

Man, because it's valuable.

No, it's important. It's important. Valve.

Do you have any initiatives or things coming up that you want to make the people aware of or can they support your I know you have a nonprofit organization.

Do you have any people can be aware of?

Me being in a purposeful silence on sabbatical from all speeches.

This is like my last public speaking thing. Mm hmm oh. I am going to be at the Dominican.

Writers I'm like, that's the panel, but that's it. After that, we're taking the Blossom Girls to Cuba this year, so you'll see some stuff coming out to donate to that.

Yeah, and before we go, once again, thank you God. But we will make you aware of something. Also, Choy, you want to talk about Patreon.

Yeah, Patreon.

I want to just give it a quick second to shout out our two newest members of Patreon. Cody he actually joined at our legacy Yeah, so Cody He Our legacy tear involves us having a three hour three one hour conversations a month, so we're going to be starting that this week. And I want to shout out Terry who joined it at the Blueprint here, so Terry's gonna get half an hour live stream with us to talk about the episode that you know, we debut that week.

And like I said, we appreciate that the marathon continues, you know, and as we said before, you know Nimsey he was our guy and that's one of the things that he really champion and Proud to Pay campaign. We're gonna give you the information for free, but you know, if you want to financially support the podcast and you know, allow like what I just said, you know, go to different cities, and we just want to keep spreading the

Us your feedback. We also have merch The merch is up.

The merch shop is doing well, and once again we make statements with our clothes and our culture and we complain about designers that we know don't care about us. Right, So all of the clothes have financial literacy kind of woven in. We have a hustle for your last name, asked us old reliability, a lot of different stuff. So you know, it's important to to make statements on what you're.

Doing very intentional. Everything we're doing is very intentional.

Yeah, So before I go, always say a book that I've read or that i'm reading. So my book tip of the week is soundless Cries don't lead to healing. And who is the author of this book? None other than our guests Valencia.

What is that?

What is that?

The book? Alsope mixtape coming.

It's not a mixtape like you think it is. Just just don't just buy it. She says, to do whatever she says to do, just do it.

Especially if you're in education. We talk about being responsive and that is really a guide. I remember you were coming up with the ideas for the book. You were just reaching out and I'm like, oh, this is dope.

I love this.

So like when I heard you then, I'm like, you know what, give me five copies. I just want five. We'll take it. So, if you're in education, definitely look into it and try to implement some of the ideas in it. It's very responsive to yeah, I need to buy twenty.

He's like jay Z when he brought a hundred mixtapes from.

Support the thing. Consume it.

There you go copy. Thank you guys for rocking with us. We will see you next week.

Peace.

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