This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI A M six forty, The Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app Life Office This lively music, exciting games, Cupid, shooting arrows. Oh plus, don't miss out on sending a special Valentine's Day graham to your special iHeart sweetheart HR line one.
Yeah, I don't think we do that anymore.
What the hell?
What did you got second grade?
That was uncomfortable? In second grade?
I remember being wildly uncomfortable as a young child. How did you guys do getting Valentine's Days Valentine grahams from boys?
Like you had?
What you had like a brown box bag?
Bole would drop them by your desk, and then like you found out that, like you know.
Go on, I don't want to name name? Was it Jimmy Dave?
There was like three Daves. Some of them went by David. There was like a good Dave and like a bad David anyway.
The uppity David, Yeah, the lazy David.
The athletic David.
Oh yeah, in second grade, the athletic David.
I later never mind, but anyway, terrifying, Like how uncomfortable was that?
I was so uncomfortable by that.
I figured it was free candy.
Yeah see boys, Yeah, I know, until you.
Get in like fifth or sixth grade, and then it's a little uncomfortable because you want to try to add just a specific note to the one that.
I like your boobs or just boobs.
No, not in sixth grade.
I don't know, but I didn't like it. I wasn't ready for any of that until I was about twenty five.
And then by then you were like, I don't want it any No, silly little Valentine's my little.
Hey, Gary and Chen.
A while back, wordle uh the word of the day, and wordle was oh yeah, And I had never heard that word before, and I thought I really had it nailed. When I entered volvah, oh boy, and was baffled, and that was not the correct word.
It happens. I just thought you might like.
To know I remember that day.
I thought of you.
I think of you every time I see the word uvula or volva, you and your wife, think about both of you.
I guess I appreciate the big stories that were following today. Of course, the rain coming back in this weekend. This week we will see some rain start to arrive tomorrow. The biggest day though, is going to be Thursday. It's just going to basically rain from midnight to midnight on two inches.
And so we should do we should send a Valentine an iHeart Valentine Graham to like the Woody Show or something.
Don't you think we should do that?
I would? Yes?
What should it say?
Like?
Yeah?
But we feel like you guys hate us. We don't know why we love your show. Happy Valentine's Day.
Why don't we just we love your show.
We don't need to, We don't need to back fill all of the emotional scarring that we have.
But then I feel like it's we're just being saying we love your show, like everybody says that.
Yeah, we do.
Though, well, we should make it specific.
We love it.
I like it when you wear your green socks.
I like no, specifically like it when Sammy says something funny, or when who's Sammy see it? Apparently you don't love the show. I'll take care of writing the Valentine to the Woody Show.
The Flu is back.
California's flu season, they said could be one of the worst that we've seen in a century. California Department of Public Health's weekly report show statewide influenza activity is high and increasing because things like COVID and RSV have been low.
They said, already it's.
One of the fourth worst that we've seen in about a century. And then finally, more than one hundred and seventy World War Two era practice bombs have been found beneath a playground in England during a renovation of that site.
Come that's fine.
A lawsuit filed against LA Unified that they've been spending money the wrong way, and that.
Is exactly the case.
Proposition twenty eight was all about new art programs in schools. This has been such an underfunded area of learning for kids. It's gone by the wayside.
It would be one.
Thing if we were knocking at it out of the park with our math and reading scores, but we're not doing that, and you're taking away the outlet for so many creative types in schools to grow through art classes and art programs and everything that comes along with that. So Prop twenty eight was passed to kind of fill that need. And instead of filling that need, what LA Unified has been doing is just going along status quo and using that money for other things and barely keeping the arts.
Program that was running up and running.
And that is putting it lightly because most of these programs are not up and running. They exist, but they're wildly under fund This was supposed to remedy that. Instead they're using the money for other things.
Yeah, about I'm billion dollars in additional art funding was raised a large portion promise to the underserved communities in about eighty percent of it specifically earmarked to hire new art teachers.
LAUSD got the biggest check.
It's the biggest school district in the state, obviously, but they said parents started noticing a problem that the district wasn't doing what was intended with the money. Former superintendent Austin Butner said that the district received seventy seven million dollars, but none of it went to hiring new teachers.
Right the district la Unified prioritized the use of this money to cover existing staff as well as higher new staff because you need more staff. The money was illegally redirected to things like increasing senior staff salaries. Their pay has increased fivefold since twenty ten, while at the same time student enrolled has plunged. These school bureaucracies are criminal
mafia like enterprises that need to be stopped. They've found a way to get all of the union goons involved, paid them handsomely to just run rackets left and right and listen.
The parents have the very simple cry of In this case, one mom wants her son he'd have no arts in middle school or high school. In his middle school, there's none, said. I want to make sure that the money's supposed to go to the schools that gets there. She just wants more art, less questionable math. Yeah, that's funny, true, and for her son to dance and not suffer any of the side stepping around his opportunity. She says, it's sad
you want the best for your kids. I'm not asking for more, I'm asking for what's rightfully theirs.
Man.
I don't know how I would have survived the questionable math years, the whole changing the way math is done math common course.
We were on the very very tail or the very very beginnings of that with our kids. So when they were in elementary school, obviously it was just we would teach, we would help them do the math the way we were also taught to do math, and it was easy to see. I mean there's minor, minor differences in how the teacher might describe how you're gonna, you know, carry
the one or whatever, but it all made sense. It was all very common, despite the the word meaning now it was easy for us to help our kids with math. And then on the very end of their their career, their high school careers, at least, when we could still help them with that sort of a thing, it started getting a little weird, like why are you.
Doing it that way?
I understand that someone told you that there's a way to do it that's easier for you to think of it. But it's okay to struggle with math, like it's okay to work through the problem. That's part of what's showing math matheahs, not just it's so valuable.
Yes, because I'm not a mass I loved matt.
I loved it, but I was not a savant.
Well it was it was.
I loved it because it was a you had a right answer and a wrong answer, and if you were wrong, you did something wrong and you had to go back and problem solve and figure out where.
You should be.
I liked that it was an actual challenge when so much of curriculum is not a challenge, So there are some schools that are trying to course correct. When it comes to the drop off in learning, some will say there's not a drop off, it just has been a failed system for quite some time, and they're trying to account for that with in class tutors and what's called data chats. Specifically, in the Associated Press they highlighted a middle school in Compton that these in class tutors and
data chats have made quite a difference. Schools have poured federal and local relief money into things like this following the pandemic, hoping to catch students up following the COVID mess, but as we reported to you, a new analysis shows that the average student remains half a grade level behind pre pandemic achievement in reading and math. In reading, especially, students are even further behind. Part of that is that
kids are just not reading for fun anymore. We've talked about that, and it's a lot of the screens and the parents using the screens. And screens are okay. Screens were a bad thing when we were kids. You know, you'd get maybe a little bit of television time, but you weren't allowed to just look at screens. God forbideo a screen in your room. You know, it just wasn't a thing. You had books, you had homework, and you had reading for fun. And that's just gone by the wayside.
And that's just the way it is. I mean, I'm not trying to say get off my lawn. I'm just saying times have changed and it's harder for people, and in adults as well. You're probably opening up fewer books as well. But this is making a difference there at that middle school in Compton when it comes to actually putting and the resources inside the classroom like that.
Yeah.
Well, the district responded by hiring about two hundred and fifty tutors that specialized in math and reading and students learning English. So certain classes are staffed with multiple tutors to assist the teachers, and schools offered tutoring before and during and after school. They also do a Saturday school and some summer programs for the students, about seventeen thousand of them there in the district.
They're also conducting dyslexia screenings in all elementary schools so students aren't just suffering and failing because of this and nobody knows about it this area, Compton, We're talking about a student body that's eighty four percent Latino, fourteen percent black. Now as a graduation rate of ninety three percent.
That is an outlier that.
Compared to fifty eight percent just about ten years ago. I mean, that's ridiculous. That is incredible.
There is a woman, a girl, excuse me, that they highlight in this article named Harmony No. She is eleven years old. She's in sixth grade, and she says, these tutors, these in class tutors and data chats have really helped given her more confidence in math. She has these data chats with her math specialist, part performance review, part PEP talk.
And how important is that?
It's so important to have confidence when you're learning, especially in math right, and to have that is so key, she says, Looking at my data, it kind of disappoints me. Harmon, He says, when the numbers are low, it makes me realize I can do better in the future.
And also now.
That brings up two issues. This whole story brings up two issues. That is one of them is are we doing enough to keep the kids apprised of their own progress?
Is there a way, because.
I remember doing on my own progress reports, like in high school, because I started thinking about, well, I better get the right grades for college, and I can't wait until every nine weeks to get an update from my teacher. Could I do it every other week and have them fill out the little form. Usually it was kids that were on some sort of academic probation, or they were on a sports team.
You had to do it.
If you were playing football, you had to have weekly updates from your teachers, kind of.
A precursor to having bringing a little slip into your court case or whatever when you get in trouble with the law. Growing up, you've got to get things signed off as an adulty.
But I remember that.
In class, like there were some kids who had to get things signed off on in their little card or whatever.
But I was doing it because I was I just want to make sure I was on the right pat like.
I'm the right conscientious kids and the troublemakers have those cards.
The other thing is, and I know that this maybe conflating a couple of issues, but one of the things that kids do is they look to their parents for the example of how to work right in school.
For an eleven year old.
President Trump hosted King Abdullah the Second of Jordan at the White House today. Of course, the topic of Gaza rev fugis is and will be at the top of the agenda. The President said he believes the King of Della and some other leaders in the Arab world will take in Palestinians from Gaza because they have good hearts.
At the news conference or the informal news conference that they did this morning from the Oval Office with the fireplace in the background, Trump did say that they had some great discussions already today and that they will continue to have them. There's a more formal news conference expected a little bit later. Top official in Trump's Department of Justice has instructed the federal prosecutors in Manhattan to drop federal corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York.
The Times that the case would be dismissed without prejudice, meaning that it could be reinstated. But these charges, the wire fraud, the bribery, soliciting illegal campaign contributions, would have carried up to forty five years in prison. Jury selection was going to start in a couple of weeks, he said.
The Justice Department, that is I think at Emil Bovol had said that this was another example of the Biden Department of Justice being weaponized against politicians, despite the fact that Eric Adams is a Democrat.
One of the things we're keeping our eye on. As well as this meeting between Trump and King Abdullah, he did say from the Oval Office alongside the King of Jordan that the US taking control of Gaza will lead to peace in the Middle East. Now, King Abdullah, for his part, pledged to take in two thousand Palestinian children. Trump at one point said, We're going to pull all our aid if you don't take in the Palestinian So
this seems to be a happy medium. We'll take in a couple thousand children, but that's all we're gonna do. Trump also doubled down on that deadline for Hamas, saying he doesn't think Hamas will meet the demand when it comes to releasing all those remaining hostages.
And I said that again today just now in the Oval Office.
If you've been to a high profile comedy show a lot of times now, they're using yonder pouches to prevent people from recording, and a yonder pouch is this is this? I guess high tech fabric pouch that locks with a magnet and you put your phone in there and you can't use your phone, and.
You can hold the pouch, you can get into.
It, can't get into your phone, and then once you leave, it's like you are you.
Put it next to the metal thing the magnet, it unlops open, get.
Your phone back.
And schools have been doing this because schools are now in instituting these policies where kids cannot have access to their phones during school hours, and whether it's a locker in some cases or these yonder pouches which then the kids get to carry with them, they're smart enough to figure out ways around it, and once one kid figures it out, it spreads like.
Wildfires, like Pruno through a jail. Yes, okay, exactly.
When you're locked up like children are in schools, News travels like wildfire. How to evade teachers, capture school lessons, plans, homework, yeah, general attendance. All of the lessons are learned pretty quickly amongst the masses.
Just like fermenting rotten fruit and your toilet in order to get some sort of wine.
Right, the kids are always going to outsmart the people who think they're smarter.
Than the kids.
Students in some cases aren't even putting their phones in the Yonder pouches.
They're just holding the Yonder pouches.
Or why not bring a Burner phone and bring and put it in there.
That way, how do they know you don't have that other phone that's in your back pocket.
There are students who have found that if you tear at exactly the right seam, you can open that Yonder pouchre smart.
Our kids are so smart. We just we're not paying attention.
The talk about the history of the Yonder pouch all which I think is a SoCal business if I'm not mistaken, there about twenty I think it's somewhere between twenty five and thirty bucks a piece, depending on the contract that Yonder is able to negotiate with the school district.
By twenty sixteen.
The technology and again by technology, it's just a significant pouch. It's been used in fifty seven venues. It was in three hundred schools. Denver school districts got the idea to try the Yonder pouches in twenty seventeen because teachers experienced locking their phones in Yonder pouches during local concerts, and somebody said, oh my gosh, if it works at a concert or a stand up a comedy special, it should
work in schools. So one of the chemistry teachers at Broomfield High School in Denver did so brought it to the school board. San Mateo High School became the largest public school to deploy Yonder pouches for seventeen hundred students, and the Yonder company saw more than tenfold increase in sales from government contracts between twenty twenty one and twenty twenty three.
Almost all of.
Those were school districts. However, doesn't mean it's infallible. And like I said, those smart kids or nefarious kids, or whatever adjective you want to add to those kids, they're smart enough to defeat these things. And it's still incumbent upon us as parents these children to teach them adequate, accurate,
positive phone etiquette. And one of the things that I would do is just tell my kids leave it in your car if you're going to school, if you're going to high school, leave it in your car, or leave it at home. It'll be here when you get here, fully charged and ready for you to turn your brain into mush.
I will read this book. I will watch the movie. It is all about the Gray Quill Society. This is a weekly memoir writing group for residents of the Motion Picture and Television Funds Woodland Hills Community for Aging Entertainment Professionals. This is a writing group for the retired the senior citizens, and it is proving that creativity is ageless.
I love it.
I have a thing to go back to for just for a second.
Is this about the Volva No, it's about the Valentine's Okay Party?
Yeah, there's no way in a Valentine's d graham to.
A co worker is appropriate.
It's tomorrow, right, it's not even on Valentine Say it's tomorrow.
That that bothers you, That bothers you.
Well, this is like the sixth thing on the list that bothers me.
It doesn't bother you that Catherine from accounting is going to send you or underwear and or iHeart Valentine's Graham.
That part of it.
I get that all the time. It's just it's that I forgot. It's been a while since you've got a pair of underwear sent to the office. Do you have another address you have?
What are you doing now? I know what you're doing. You make I do not want nor will.
I accept good idea.
If you want to send Gary your underwear for Valentine's Day, you know the address.
This Great Quill Society makes me laugh and I'm surprised it has not yet been.
Optioned into a show.
Now.
I mean it's built for streaming service eight episode something something.
Yeah.
I think I'd like to read the book first and then watch this.
Oh yeah, that's fine.
This is a group of a writing group, memoir writing group for residents at the Motion Picture in Television Funds Woodland Hills Community for Aging Entertainment professionals to would you say rest home perhaps for those who have worked in the industry, And I think.
Rest home is an antiquated term.
I don't even know what you call sior facility in your.
Home of happiness.
You can kich you call those things, he said, a retirement community. Yeah, that's nice, because then everybody's just leisure world, right. There are there are people, For example, Melody Sherwood eighty one years old. She says, one of carry Grant's favorite things to do was to tell stories. He had an abundant supply, and one of my favorite things to do
was listened to him tell them. Melody was spent thirty years working as Lou Wasserman's executive assistant at Universal, so she became a close friend of Carry Grant and went on to relay the only in Hollywood stale tale that involved Carry Grant's first time entertaining troops overseas, a joke played by actor David Niven, and why she had a vanity license plate with the letters GAFY printed on it, which was an acronym for go and f yourself.
That wasn't the only story heard at a recent morning amongst the Greg Quill Society. The group heard from a retired character actor about the time Doris Day persuaded her to help rescue a starving dog in Beverly Hills. They have all of these stories from the golden ages of Hollywood. There are people who drop in on these meetings whenever they can, hoping to soak up some of this Hollywood legendary folklore.
Shall you say?
It's run by a forty year old writer and producer named Victoria Bullock, and it's part writers group, part support group, occasional stand up show. They've got roughly two dozen members They're in age from sixty five to ninety five, and they all agree, most of them that this two hour meeting is the highlight of their week. Their shared experience working in Hollywood gives them an easy rapport. They said, it's such a unique group of people because we spent all our lives in the industry.
This started eleven years ago. It originally was only going to be about a four week writing class, memoir writing class, but they just continued indefinitely. They've published five essay compilations that you can buy at Amazon. And then you've got current celebrities John Ham, Matthew McConaughey, Billy Porter and others who have read some of the stories out loud as part of fundraisers.
And what I love about this.
Is that this group, you know, this motion picture of television funds Woodland Hills community there.
Is replete with story.
I mean, there are probably thousands of stories that would be fun and entertaining or eye opening or jaw whatever it is, but that they would there's just so many stories in the walls of that place, within that campus.
I mean, you know the deal.
It's like if you're a cop or a retired cop, specifically, you get together with your friends who or people you don't even know who worked in law enforcement. You could tell stories all day, all night for a week, and for a week, for a year, for several years. It's fun getting together with people who worked in your line of work and swapping stories or who you know in common. And this is just about Hollywood stars as well, so it's like another layer of fun and cool and nostalgia
on top of that. The founding leader was a volunteer by the name of Peter Dunn, a writer, producer, writing instructor who worked on Dallas Melrose Place as well, and he taught this group that there's a difference between autobiography and memoir. If autobiography is a recording of facts in chronological order, then memoir seeks to focus on specific moments, episodes, or people who changed the writer for better for worse. That's very cool, isn't it. It's an interesting specification when
it comes to autobiography and memoir. Memoirs seem like they're so much more personal, don't they.
And that's why. Yeah, And let's not be coy about what this place is. It is a rest home, retirement home. These people are in the winter of their years. Shall we say, well, not all of them. I mean some of them are sixty five, going.
Yeah, But.
Just to give you the idea, there's only one original member that's still in the group, And they say they don't talk about it much, but they kind of know.
Death is sort of just below the surface there.
And they always at the Television Foundation's campus. They always hold a memorial service for people who die there. They probably know each other very well, but specifically when one of the Great Quill Society members dies, they have their own rituals. They pick a piece that was written by that person who died, They read it out loud, they talk about that person's writing history and journey with the group, and then other members share their own memories.
It's just a nice way to it's good with.
Some of the stories are great.
A retired character actor shared a story about playing a cop on a TV series and getting a panicked phone call from her grandmother. Grandma was worried she'd taken a dangerous job in the police force. Another actor recalled the time she was in production of Arsenic and Old Lace with Bella Lugosi, who she worried wanted to suck her blood. Just great, just great stories, and how nice it is to have a group. I can't wait to pick out a place.
No. I was gonna say a passage to read at your passing.
Oh, well that's dark.
I just have so many different options.
I bet you.
I think I'll tell the vulva story.
You've been listening to The Gary and Shannon Show.
You can always hear us live on KFI AM six forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and any time on demand on the iHeartRadio app.