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The Preschool Pioneer: Tamar Andrews' Innovative Approach Fixes Education | Childcare Series · The Inspired Stories Podcast

• 0:04
  Welcome to another edition of Inspired Stories, where leaders
• 0:07
  share their experiences so we can learn from their successes,
• 0:10
  how they've overcome adversity, and explore current challenges
• 0:13
  they're facing. Welcome to another edition of
• 0:18
  the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their
• 0:21
  experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired
• 0:24
  by how they've overcome adversity.
• 0:27
  My name is Anthony Kotaspodi and today's guest is Tamar Andrews,
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  preschool director at Temple Isaiah, located in Los Angeles,
• 0:34
  CA. The preschool portion of the
• 0:37
  temple has been open since 1957, and Tamar has been director for
• 0:41
  a little over 20 years. She's also a professor at the
• 0:45
  UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information
• 0:48
  Studies. She is a university instructor
• 0:51
  at Cal State University, Dominguez Hills.
• 0:53
  She is a college instructor at Santa Monica College.
• 0:57
  She's also the director of the Early Childhood Education
• 1:00
  Department at the American Jewish University.
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  And we're going to hear how she has now fixed everything that's
• 1:06
  wrong with the American education system.
• 1:09
  She's conducting research on professional development called
• 1:12
  Teacher Addictive Behaviors, which explores why we've got
• 1:15
  professional development all wrong.
• 1:17
  We're going to hear a lot more about that before we get into
• 1:19
  all that good stuff. Today's episode is brought to
• 1:22
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  To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at
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  Add Back benefitsagency.com. OK, now back to our guest today,
• 1:50
  the Preschool Director at Temple, Isaiah Tamar.
• 1:52
  I appreciate you making the time to Share your story today.
• 1:56
  Hi, thanks for having me. So we've got a whole bunch of
• 1:59
  really good stuff to dive into here today I'm really excited
• 2:02
  about. So maybe let's just get a
• 2:04
  truncated an abbreviated version of what was the inspiration for
• 2:08
  you first getting started in childhood education?
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  Oh, this was not supposed to be my career.
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  I was actually accepted to A, at the time, a specialized program
• 2:21
  at UCLA where you would do your undergrad and grad school and
• 2:26
  then go straight into medical school.
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  And as you know, all Jewish parents want, I was going to be
• 2:31
  that proverbial Jewish doctor. And while I was going to school,
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  I was working in a child care center and loved it.
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  Loved it. So this is like a daycare.
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  This was a A school for young children.
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  Yeah, it was a preschool right near UCL as campus.
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  I would go to school in the morning and I was the afternoon
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  kind of like, you know, watch the kids, watch them play around
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  in the playground. And I was looking at these
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  little kids going, God, they're so strange.
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  They have no basis in logic or reality.
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  They're everything is make believe.
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  And I just found myself observing them and going, God,
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  this is so strange. Why don't they think normally?
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  And so was that the time where you said, OK, I'm going to
• 3:15
  change my direction, change my major?
• 3:17
  Oh, yeah, Yeah. I, I wanted to know more.
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  I wanted to know, you know, I had taken one of those, you
• 3:23
  know, required psych classes and the whole Freud.
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  Tell me about your mother and tell me about your childhood.
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  And I thought, wow, there's so much wrong in the world.
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  Imagine if I could get them when they're really young and fix
• 3:36
  them when they're young. Maybe I could fix the world.
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  I'm an idealist. I mean, quite obviously.
• 3:42
  We need more of that. So that's a great lead in to my
• 3:45
  next question. I want to hear more about the
• 3:47
  work that you're doing at the American Jewish University and
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  to use your words, how you've now fixed everything that's
• 3:53
  wrong with the American education system.
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  You've got listeners on the edge of their seats.
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  Tell us. Well, so turning on my professor
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  hat for a minute, our educational system in the United
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  States was actually created in the late 1800s.
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  And it was created by these really rich white men, if you
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  will, who had also created auto factories and other kinds of
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  factories. And so our school system really
• 4:21
  resembles a factory. You go into one room, you get
• 4:25
  your English, you come out, you go into another room, you get
• 4:27
  your mouth, you come out. And it's this.
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  None. Not at all connected, you know,
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  buffet of stuff that you have no choice over what to get.
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  And if you're blessed and you can master what's in every room
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  you come out with, you know, that perfect car.
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  But if you're not, you know, your life almost feels like
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  you're sent to the junkyard. And if you do get through it,
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  you're then sent to another factory called college.
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  And the first two years of college is really a
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  regurgitation of your last few years of high school.
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  So you've got to take that same psych class again, and the same
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  English class again, and the same math class again.
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  And for many people, especially nowadays when our job market is
• 5:15
  really looking to the future, not looking for skills you
• 5:18
  developed over a lifetime, but hoping that you are going to be
• 5:21
  the one inventing skills for the future.
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  Our school system is not really set up for people to work
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  creatively, collaboratively, collegially.
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  Our school system was set up to simply regurgitate, have a test,
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  take it on your own and do things independently, void of
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  all of those CS, right, the creativity, collaboration,
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  etcetera. And so having gone through
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  college, and especially when I did my master's at a school
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  called Cal State Los Angeles, I started off with 45 students in
• 5:55
  my cohort. Now, not everybody was in the
• 5:58
  same class with me because you were able to take whatever
• 6:01
  classes you wanted, right? And by the time I got to sit
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  down for my comp exams, there were six of us.
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  And again, being an observer of human nature, I thought, God,
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  this really? Wow, how horrible for those
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  people. Not even being able to finish
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  this degree that they started, many of whom had done at least a
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  full year or or more, but not being able to finish that degree
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  for whatever reasons. And I thought one day, one day
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  I'm going to build this perfect, you know, university experience
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  for folks. And nobody's going to fail my
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  program. And and that's how that was
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  born. So that's how the idea came
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  about, Yeah. How many years ago?
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  Oh, I'm a grandma. So so a.
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  Few years ago. A few years ago, the idea was
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  born. I actually pitched it at Temple
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  Isaiah many times. I said, let's just build a
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  university program here. I can do it.
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  I promise I can do it. And you know, people, I think
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  people doubt sometimes your ability to create something from
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  nothing. And I was doing such a
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  successful job in the preschool program.
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  You know why? Why rock the boat?
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  Until one day I was at an awards banquet.
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  There's this great program in on the East Coast called Matan, and
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  it's teaching people how to do better at special needs in
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  school. And for me, having a child with
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  special needs, it was really something that touched my heart.
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  And I went in as a as a trainee. And so they were giving an award
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  to this woman, Meredith Polsky, who had started this program.
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  And this woman came, comes up to me and goes, oh, are you Doctor
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  Andrews? And I said, yeah, hi.
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  And she said, oh, I've heard about you.
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  We have a a little program at American Jewish University.
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  Do you want to come teach a class for us?
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  And I said, you know, the light bulb went off that proverbial,
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  and I just spilled it out. I said, no, I want to make a
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  degree program. And she laughed.
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  And I think she was waiting for me to laugh back, and I didn't.
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  And it took her a moment. And she said, no, you're
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  serious. And I said, yeah, I'm serious.
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  And that was in March. And in August, we were WASC
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  accredited, the regional, the highest level of accreditation.
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  We opened our doors to our first eighteen students in a master's
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  degree. And so you might ask, why a
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  master's first? Because I needed to prepare the
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  next cohort of college instructors to then open ABA and
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  have them teach my BA students because they would know how this
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  program works. And sure enough, that's how it
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  is today with our BA Master's and Doctoral program.
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  And So what does somebody notice differently about this program
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  as they're going through it? What?
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  What have you fixed? Yeah, so you mentioned my
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  research. My research is teacher addictive
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  behaviors. And you know, at Temple Isaiah
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  before COVID, we had about 75 teachers and some of them were
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  there for 25 or 30 years. And you know, I came in college
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  instructor, excuse me, college instructor and professional
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  development. I do professional development
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  all over the world and I'm going to come in and I'm going to fix
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  them all. And I would do these
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  professional developments. I remember one in particular I
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  did on STEM in early childhood. I wrote, I even wrote the book
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  on how to do STEM in early childhood.
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  And they were all really excited and, and I was feeling like, oh,
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  I'm going to be great at this. And after about a week, I walked
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  into the classrooms and maybe two classrooms are doing STEM,
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  nobody else. But what did I do wrong?
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  I mean, I did such a great lecture and, and hands on and I
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  set everything up. I did it all right.
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  Why is nobody doing STEM with their kids?
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  They're all doing what they've been doing for the last, you
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  know, 10/15/20 years. And that's when the idea started
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  to, you know, ferment for me, which was, oh, they're addicted.
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  They're just addicted to the old ways.
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  OK. And you know, it took a while
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  because I had to change. Their this is hard.
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  Oh, I always say that the hardest thing a human will do is
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  change. And if it was easy, you would
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  never see a doctor smoking outside of the hospital, right?
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  Because they know better. And So what I realized was I've
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  got to, I've got to change the way we do things.
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  So, you know, diamonds are only formed by pressure now.
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  Too much pressure gives you anxiety and stress.
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  Just the right and it'll crack, right?
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  It'll totally crack that piece of coal.
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  But the right amount of pressure you have to figure out, you have
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  to really figure out what that right amount of pressure and who
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  the pressure comes from. So for example, at AJU, the way
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  we've changed our education system is you start off with the
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  same group of students you matriculate through the entire
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  degree with. So that provides peer pressure,
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  right? Just a little bit of peer
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  pressure. And then the other problem is
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  that in most teaching teacher prep programs, you don't do your
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  student teaching until the end of your degree.
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  By then you've forgotten everything you've learned.
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  So our program has, you have to document and do your practicum
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  work every single semester, documenting how you have
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  implemented what you've learned in the class into your
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  classroom. And the third thing that we
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  apply, which is pressure from a, you know, somebody who's more
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  knowledgeable, like a like your sponsor at a, a somebody who's
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  been through it is you have a mentor.
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  Everybody is assigned a personal mentor who will also exert just
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  that right amount of pressure. So that in the last six years,
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  we've only had one student not make it through our degree
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  program, which is very different than what you see in American
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  most American universities. So what I'm hearing, tell me if
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  I got this right, there's a little bit of peer pressure
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  because they're in the same class with everybody going, you
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  know, through the whole program. The 3rd and I'll skip to the
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  third thing. You've got the mentor who's
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  who's also helping them through through all of this.
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  And the thing that I think kind of stuck out to me as maybe the
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  most impactful or perhaps the most novel is that regular
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  practical implication application of what it is that
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  they're learning. Not just you learn it here as a
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  theory in week one. And then two years later you're
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  expected to retain that and put it into practice.
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  But you know, we're teaching you a new way of doing things over
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  here. And, and then, you know, very
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  shortly afterwards you've got to put that into play.
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  Exactly. You got it exactly right.
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  And after two or three years, it has now become internalized
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  behaviors. So the the work that you've been
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  doing in the research into the professional development, this
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  is all dovetailed into the work that you're doing at the
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  American Jewish University. This is sort of part and parcel,
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  one and the same. Well, yeah, exactly.
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  You've got it right. Because now after six years, we
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  see the success, right? I, I can, you can only make a
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  hypothesis, but you have to see the hypothesis either proven or
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  disproven in action. And so I think after these six
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  years, we have seen that hypothesis proven in action.
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  And it's proven by our graduates having earned more money, having
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  higher positions, being given much bigger raises.
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  And also, we're very blessed by having a lot of foundations give
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  us money to fund this in order for more people to afford to
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  attend our program. And so at what point do you feel
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  like we can start to see and perhaps even measure the
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  matriculation of this knowledge down into high schools, grade
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  schools, etcetera? Oh, that's.
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  Because it sounds like you're focused on on the top right,
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  which is kind of where it needs to start.
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  You need to teach the teachers, right, right.
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  And you're teaching at the highest level the master's
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  teacher, so they can then teach the, the, the bachelor programs.
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  And then when do you think we start to kind of see this, you
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  know, for kids my age who are 8 and 10?
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  Yeah, that's that's another hard one to crack.
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  So part of the problem in our school system as well.
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  You know, I always we have, we actually have a class in our
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  master's called Social Justice Colon, the unintended
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  consequences of good intentions. And I think that for many of our
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  legislatures and organizations, NGOs, whoever they are, the idea
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  of having these standardized tests and measuring children's
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  performance was a good intention, right?
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  They thought it would keep teachers in check by making sure
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  that they got all children to read and all children to do math
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  and science, etcetera. But it was to the exclusion, I
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  think, the complete exclusion of social, emotional and moral
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  development. And so what's to be done about
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  that? Oh, if I don't, you know, I have
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  this little line I say to people all the time, if I was queen of
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  the world. Making you queen for the day,
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  what would you do? You know, the nice thing about
• 15:59
  our school system in some regards is that we already have
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  the cohort model, right? We have that cohort model.
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  Kids matriculate through school unless you move together.
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  But I'll preface this by adding this line.
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  When you go to prison, you are identified by your crime, and
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  when you go to school you're first identified by your special
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  need. That's a really sad foundation
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  to begin with. Imagine if our school system
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  started you off in a cohort and 1st identified everybody by
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  their superhero skill, right? So I have a child who is special
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  needs, although now you would never know it.
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  I think in part I was blessed he was my #4 and so I knew what to
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  do with him at the time, but he was always and, and my daughter
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  is probably going to get mad at me for saying this, but I think
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  he's the funniest one in the family.
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  And he always made us laugh. Even, you know, in the throes of
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  his autistic behavior and he has level 2 autism, he always made
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  us laugh. He always know how to how to put
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  everybody at ease. That's his superhero's strength.
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  And also because he had autism, he perseverated.
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  And because perseverate is when you, you know, you can't get off
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  of something, you kind of hyper focus.
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  And because of that, he is now a master coder.
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  And he and his brother built an app that is now in almost every
• 17:26
  state of the country. And they've got government
• 17:28
  contracts. And I'm very proud.
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  They made 30 Forbes 30 under 30 last year.
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  Oh, that is impressive. Can we quickly call?
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  Out the name of the app. Sure.
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  It's called Playground. He built it.
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  They built it for me. It's a childcare management app.
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  I had gone to them one day and said, hey, my app's not working,
• 17:45
  can you fix it? And they said, oh, mom, that's
• 17:46
  not a good app, we'll make one for you.
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  And they did. And now it's everywhere.
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  And you know, the idea that you can take a child's superpower
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  and actually focus on it, right? Just absolutely focus on it and
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  turn them into real life superheroes is what we should be
• 18:08
  doing in our school system. And so, you know, you've got to
• 18:13
  have teachers talk to each other.
• 18:14
  And so you say things like, oh, in math we're going to be
• 18:17
  learning about triangles. So in history class, why don't
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  you learn about pyramids or learn about something related to
• 18:23
  triangles or shapes? Make things more interconnected.
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  Make it so that children see, you know, the application of the
• 18:31
  theory in some classes to the real life application in other
• 18:37
  classes. The same way we do at the
• 18:38
  university where you have to actually work on what you're
• 18:40
  learning in the classroom. Make it real.
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  Make it make it exciting. Make it something that is not
• 18:48
  just on Xerox sheets. So going back to the fixes that
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  you're implementing for the American education system, so
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  how does this scale? How do you get this out more?
• 19:05
  I know you said you've got some people who are giving donors who
• 19:09
  are, you know, giving you grants and giving you money that are
• 19:11
  helping to expand the education system there at the American
• 19:14
  Jewish University. Do you see taking this program
• 19:16
  to other higher learning institutions?
• 19:23
  FERPA will not allow me to name names, but I will tell you that
• 19:26
  our incoming cohort for our doctoral program has the chairs
• 19:31
  of many early and education departments in the country.
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  So that is one way I think we will be able to eventually
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  spread this out wider and farther.
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  So this means that the ways in which education is being taught
• 19:54
  at universities now could begin to change significantly in the
• 20:00
  next several years because of this new relationship that's
• 20:05
  forming. Well, I don't know that I would
• 20:07
  say significantly in several years.
• 20:11
  You know, I was just asked by one of our donors, if you have
• 20:13
  such a long waiting list, why don't you expand your program?
• 20:16
  So we went from 18 students six years ago to now just about 200.
• 20:21
  And I really believe in building, you know, the
• 20:25
  structure 1 brick at a time to make sure each one is perfectly
• 20:29
  positioned. I think the changes will have to
• 20:33
  be slow and methodical in order to take hold again.
• 20:37
  Doing that ongoing, just enough pressure to where you don't
• 20:43
  break things, but you slowly start to see those changes.
• 20:47
  You know, don't forget, our American education system has
• 20:50
  been ingrained in this way for over 150 years.
• 20:54
  It's not going to change in five.
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  So it's going to have to change slowly and methodically.
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  I am hopeful though, that through, you know, the the
• 21:05
  courses that we created at AJU, that the more immediate changes
• 21:10
  will be in the addition of the social, emotional and moral
• 21:14
  development teaching in schools at any age, literally at any.
• 21:20
  Age. Do you feel like there needs to
• 21:22
  be a component of this that's not just teaching the teachers,
• 21:24
  but teaching their bosses, the administrators, the principals,
• 21:29
  people they report to? Absolutely.
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  And not only that, but at AJU, we're also going to be opening
• 21:34
  up a parenting institute because parents have to be our partners.
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  I'm going to ask you actually a question.
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  I'll put you on the spot from the time, but you got to answer
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  kind of quickly from 2 to 18. What percentage of your life did
• 21:48
  you spend in school? I would say 25%.
• 21:53
  So it was less than 10, OK, if you and even an 8 hour school
• 21:58
  day would be 33%, right. But then take out Saturday like
• 22:04
  weekends, holidays, vacations, sick days, etcetera, it's going
• 22:08
  to be less than 10. And so the most important person
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  that we teach until a child is about 8 is not the child, it's
• 22:16
  the parent. Because if the parents again,
• 22:20
  that just the right amount of pressure, right?
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  So whatever we are teaching at school has to be continued at
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  home so that that just that right amount of pressure is
• 22:30
  continuously applied. You know, it's kind of like CPR,
• 22:33
  right? You only build up pressure in
• 22:37
  the in the in the body when you're doing CPR.
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  If you stop CPR for even a second, blood pressure goes down
• 22:43
  to 0. You've got to keep it going so
• 22:45
  that that body stays alive. And the same thing is true about
• 22:49
  moral, social and emotional development.
• 22:52
  You've got to keep that pressure going.
• 22:55
  So that way, when the child, you know, is engaged in a novel
• 23:00
  experience and they don't yet have it internalized as to how
• 23:04
  to respond to that experience, that little bit of pressure will
• 23:08
  make sure that they respond appropriately to eventually
• 23:11
  become an internalized response. You know, something you said
• 23:15
  that I really liked, it resonated with me, is focusing
• 23:18
  on the child's superhero power instead of their special need.
• 23:23
  To start with, obviously you can't ignore the special need
• 23:26
  that needs attention, right? But if, if you lead with this is
• 23:31
  what makes you special, this is what you're amazing at.
• 23:35
  You know, it's, it's a much, it's a much warmer invite to the
• 23:40
  student, right? Yeah, this is what makes you
• 23:43
  special. Instead of you have special
• 23:44
  needs. Right.
• 23:45
  I think, you know, as human beings, we're naturally wired.
• 23:49
  Especially, you know, I, I can say I am to look for the
• 23:52
  problems. What's the thing that needs
• 23:54
  fixed today? Looking around the house, the
• 23:57
  refrigerators acting up, the toilet's running.
• 24:00
  These are problems that need to be fixed.
• 24:02
  And just by default, I look at my kids the same way.
• 24:05
  You know, you're not paying attention.
• 24:06
  You're, you know, leaving your clothes everywhere.
• 24:08
  You're fighting with your brother.
• 24:10
  But when we focus on all the bad things, that's all that they
• 24:14
  hear is bad, bad, bad, negative, negative, negative.
• 24:17
  And if you can, yeah. I mean, you can't ignore those
• 24:19
  things. They don't go away unless, you
• 24:21
  know, you're teaching and you're coaching.
• 24:22
  But if we can reframe things in a way that, you know, hey, I
• 24:25
  really love it when you pick up your clothes, you know, what
• 24:28
  you're really great at is XY and Z.
• 24:30
  Yeah, You know, I watch my daughter and my son-in-law.
• 24:34
  They're raising my three grandkids who are 5, four and
• 24:37
  two. And whenever one of them does
• 24:40
  something inappropriate or starts crying for a reason that
• 24:43
  they shouldn't really be crying, the first go to line that they
• 24:47
  say to their child is, I think you have other choices to make
• 24:50
  right now. What could be another choice for
• 24:54
  you to make right now? And it's such a neutral
• 24:58
  statement, right? There is no good or bad to what
• 25:02
  you know, my, my kids are saying to their to my grandkids, but
• 25:06
  their answer is just their, their line is just.
• 25:10
  And I thought, wow, imagine if every parent simply asked their
• 25:14
  children, what are other choices you could be making right now?
• 25:18
  That thought process, right will take you into the future going,
• 25:21
  OK, I've got a problem right now, what is another choice I
• 25:25
  could be making that will yield a better result for me?
• 25:28
  Oh, what a world it could be, right?
• 25:31
  And they're they're saying this to their five year old.
• 25:35
  To their two year. Old to their two year old even.
• 25:37
  Yeah, and not only that, but it causes them to stop dead in
• 25:42
  their tracks and think for a minute.
• 25:44
  So you go out of that limbic, right, that emotional state,
• 25:47
  because I'm asking a question that causes you to have to like
• 25:51
  it forces your decision making to go up to your logical brain
• 25:55
  and and consider your options for a minute.
• 25:59
  You know, think about the person who's Rd. raging.
• 26:01
  They're not considering their options at the moment.
• 26:04
  And how do you get an elevated, a person who's in an elevated
• 26:07
  state to even consider that question, especially a child?
• 26:12
  But I mean, even at all, like like you mentioned road rage,
• 26:15
  they're not accessing that part of their brain.
• 26:17
  So 2 tips that you know child development expert number one is
• 26:23
  put your eye gaze to the child. Make your eyes lower than the
• 26:26
  child's because the child always wants to be in a position of
• 26:31
  control, right? That's what a young child wants
• 26:33
  more than anything in the world is to be in charge or in
• 26:37
  control. And as soon as your eyes are
• 26:39
  lower than your child, so you're kind of at a kneeling position,
• 26:43
  your child already physically feels OK.
• 26:45
  I'm in control of this situation.
• 26:47
  And that helps lower some of the cortisol and the adrenaline for
• 26:50
  the moment. And the other thing is talk low
• 26:55
  and slow. Most parents, when they see
• 26:58
  their child misbehaving, their adrenaline and cortisol starts,
• 27:02
  you know, increasing as well. And they'll talk much quicker
• 27:05
  and, you know, raising their voice, but you've really got to
• 27:09
  stop and listen. When somebody speaks low and
• 27:13
  slow, you've got to really kind of focus on those words.
• 27:17
  I like that. Yeah.
• 27:19
  I'm taking notes both for follow up questions but also to share
• 27:22
  with my wife later because these are some gems.
• 27:25
  I think I'm going to take that one question that you just gave
• 27:28
  me and put it on a T-shirt. What are other choices you could
• 27:30
  be making right now? I'm.
• 27:32
  Going to make one for everyone in the family because I I need
• 27:35
  to ask myself that same thing at times as well.
• 27:38
  Yeah. So I do want to talk about
• 27:41
  Temple Isaiah and your role as preschool director there.
• 27:45
  But before I get there, I, you know, when I was Googling your
• 27:48
  name and prepping for the interview Tamar Andrews, I kept
• 27:51
  seeing a lot of references to Kanye West.
• 27:54
  Yeah. What is that about?
• 28:01
  I there there are not many of us in the field who both are
• 28:08
  professors and know the theory as well as build schools.
• 28:12
  And one of the things that I enjoy doing is helping people
• 28:17
  open schools or help build up existing schools to be more
• 28:22
  successful. And so I got a call from a
• 28:25
  lawyer one day who said, hey, is this Doctor Andrews?
• 28:28
  Yeah, we've got a school we've just opened.
• 28:31
  We'd like to hire you to help, you know, kind of help the admin
• 28:36
  and take it to accreditation and run it for us.
• 28:40
  And didn't know until I walked into the building and had
• 28:45
  accepted the job. And I said, wow, everybody here
• 28:47
  wears black. It's kind of interesting.
• 28:51
  And somebody said, yeah, yay only lets us wear black here.
• 28:54
  And I said, oh, what's a what's AI?
• 28:56
  Didn't know what a yay was. I, I thought it was like some
• 28:59
  organization. And lo and behold, it's Mr.
• 29:03
  West. And it was a job that at the
• 29:10
  time I didn't know anything about him.
• 29:11
  I actually don't listen to that kind of music.
• 29:14
  For anybody that wants to know, I am an EDM affectionato.
• 29:18
  I got a Ultra and all of those kinds of things.
• 29:22
  Electric Daisy and I wear my candy on my wrist all the time.
• 29:28
  And I had met with the principal.
• 29:31
  She was a lovely woman. She had never really worked in a
• 29:34
  school before. And can you please help us?
• 29:38
  They really didn't know what they were doing.
• 29:39
  And so I started working there. It was a great gig.
• 29:42
  And just as a consultant, you know, I'm still director at
• 29:46
  Isaiah. And the cool thing about the job
• 29:51
  was that I was allowed to start from scratch.
• 29:53
  I mean, how often do you get to start from scratch with a
• 29:56
  preschool through 12th grade school?
• 29:58
  And I brought in concepts like restorative justice, which is
• 30:03
  something very near and dear to my heart.
• 30:05
  I also brought in something called UDL, which is universal
• 30:08
  design for learning, which again, gives every kid their
• 30:11
  superpower. And aside from wearing black,
• 30:17
  which I generally didn't do anyways, the school was really,
• 30:21
  it was amazing until I got a message from a friend of mine on
• 30:28
  LinkedIn saying, Oh my gosh, I just saw that you're working for
• 30:31
  Kanye West. You shouldn't be working for
• 30:33
  him. And this was literally at the
• 30:35
  same time on the same day that I get a call from him that he
• 30:39
  wanted to talk about something. And he said, you know, I've had
• 30:42
  a really rough day, you know, can we please discuss whatever
• 30:47
  it is about the school? And I said, you've had a rough
• 30:49
  day. Oh, my God.
• 30:50
  Like, hello, I'm the only Jewish person that works in this school
• 30:54
  and realized at that moment that I probably shouldn't be working
• 30:58
  there. And so I called the principal up
• 31:01
  the next morning and I said. Just just for context here, that
• 31:05
  this was a time when he was going off on some anti-Semitic.
• 31:08
  Rants big time anti-Semitic. That's what that's what
• 31:11
  triggered all of this, yeah. I am, I am I was born in Israel.
• 31:15
  I am a very proud Jew and you know, I've dealt with
• 31:20
  anti-Semitism my whole life and it doesn't bother me when people
• 31:24
  say, yeah, I don't like Jews. They probably just don't know
• 31:28
  enough of us or haven't experienced enough of us or
• 31:31
  they've only had a bad experience with a Jewish person.
• 31:34
  So being around anti-Semitism, you know, I'm a product of
• 31:38
  Holocaust survivors doesn't, you know, doesn't shake me.
• 31:42
  But it wasn't the school where I I to this day, I have not
• 31:48
  received one phone call from a parent in a very Christian
• 31:51
  School. Not one call from a parent or
• 31:54
  the pastor. Nobody.
• 31:57
  The only ones that I got calls from were one of my closest
• 32:00
  friends, Kelly. Shout out to Kelly who quit with
• 32:04
  me and the principal who also quit.
• 32:09
  And kudos to them. Just, you know, it wasn't
• 32:14
  something that that I wanted to stand for.
• 32:16
  I will tell you, this is the first time that I'm ever talking
• 32:18
  about it publicly. Never granted any interviews.
• 32:22
  I didn't want to make any money off of him anymore.
• 32:25
  I actually got calls from lawyers.
• 32:27
  You want to sue him? And I was like, no, I'm not
• 32:28
  going to make any more money off of him.
• 32:30
  Let him be in peace. I'm going my own way and that
• 32:35
  was it. So you were able to help get the
• 32:38
  program off the ground. You were still there working as
• 32:41
  a consultant. And then all of this blows up
• 32:44
  and you were like, and I, I didn't know I was signing up for
• 32:49
  this. Like I'm getting interview
• 32:52
  requests. I'm getting, you know, probably
• 32:54
  people offering to pay you, people who want to.
• 32:57
  Yeah, my kids were actually bombarded by paparazzi.
• 33:01
  My work was called. Every job, every consulting job
• 33:04
  I've had, they pulled photos of me from my Facebook where I'm
• 33:08
  like baking holla. I guess it says Julie, a picture
• 33:12
  as they could get for their cover story.
• 33:16
  Yeah. You know, it's, it's not
• 33:19
  something I'm ashamed of. I'm actually proud to have, you
• 33:22
  know, been the Jewish educator that quit his school.
• 33:25
  But at the end of the day, it didn't define me or anything
• 33:28
  about me. I'm, I'm just, you know, I focus
• 33:32
  on the future. I don't spend any time on the
• 33:33
  past. It's wasted energy.
• 33:35
  And so that was a big part of your decision not to grant
• 33:38
  interviews around this, not to take part in any lawsuits.
• 33:41
  You were like, wow, that's hurtful and painful.
• 33:44
  And the best thing for me to do is focus on tomorrow and just
• 33:47
  step aside and and put my energies on things that are
• 33:50
  helpful and building and creative and constructive.
• 33:55
  Yeah, and the school doesn't exist.
• 33:57
  I mean, it's once I quit and the principal quit it, it crumbled.
• 34:00
  It doesn't. Exist so the school it it it it
• 34:03
  it fell apart it's. No.
• 34:04
  Oh yeah, there is nobody running it.
• 34:06
  OK. And so I'm curious as you look
• 34:11
  back at that experience, how has it informed or shaped decisions
• 34:17
  that you make going forward? Do you look at new opportunities
• 34:20
  differently? I have turned down several
• 34:27
  consulting jobs. I will vet everybody or I'll
• 34:34
  have somebody vet people for me. It is also really made me focus
• 34:41
  much more on the program at AJU, realizing that, you know, it's
• 34:47
  not just anti-Semitism. There are people who are racist
• 34:51
  and prejudice in many ways. And you know, prejudice, no
• 34:55
  matter how much information you get to the contrary, it's still
• 34:58
  ingrained in you. Kind of like those addictive
• 35:00
  behaviors. And we just, we have a lot more
• 35:04
  work to do as humans. And at least for me, in the, in
• 35:09
  the, you know, in the institutions of education, it's
• 35:12
  where I can try to make some of those dents.
• 35:16
  I'm curious with the Kanye West situation, if you had had that
• 35:21
  sort of vetting process in place at that time, was there anything
• 35:25
  prior to the big blow up that we're talking about that would
• 35:29
  have indicated his feelings, his tendencies in those areas,
• 35:37
  prejudices his? You know, I had actually
• 35:41
  contacted a a relative by marriage who had been studying
• 35:47
  Jewish texts with Kanye and I said, Hey, have you heard what's
• 35:51
  going on? And he said, no, I, I've been
• 35:55
  like, I, no, because I don't, I think it's just the paparazzi
• 36:00
  making noise about him or taking things out of context.
• 36:03
  And the truth is I don't get TV in my home, so I don't watch
• 36:07
  news. I, I really am so busy with the
• 36:11
  work I do that I, I don't really know what's going on in the
• 36:15
  bigger world unless somebody, you know, shares it with me.
• 36:19
  My head is really in academia. I, I don't have a, you know, I
• 36:23
  am, I'll give you a little. I finished three years of chemo
• 36:28
  about a year ago. I was told that I had stage 4,
• 36:32
  you know, cancer and I wasn't going to make it past a few more
• 36:36
  years. And I was very blessed.
• 36:37
  I was patient number two in a clinical trial.
• 36:41
  And here I stand today and I've, I've got this renewed
• 36:45
  perspective about how I spend my time.
• 36:48
  So I don't, I try really hard not to waste time.
• 36:52
  It's very precious to me. So, you know, vetting process.
• 36:56
  No, there was no, you know, I, I'm an idealist, remember that.
• 36:59
  I think everybody is wonderful. We need more of that.
• 37:03
  Please don't lose that. Thanks.
• 37:06
  OK. So let's shift gears away from
• 37:08
  that into fun things, good things, areas that you're having
• 37:12
  lots of positive impact like Temple Isaiah, you're the
• 37:16
  preschool director there. You've been there for 20 years.
• 37:19
  Yeah. Tell me, what is your day-to-day
• 37:21
  at that institution look like? So I've actually handed the
• 37:26
  reins of directing over to a woman who has become one of my
• 37:33
  best friends. Her name is Avital and she is
• 37:37
  now I am the director emeritus, so I still play a role there.
• 37:41
  I'm actually going to do professional development there
• 37:44
  in a couple weeks. And she is the one that has
• 37:47
  taken over the day-to-day. I will tell you using that app
• 37:52
  that I talked about before that my kids made for me has made it.
• 37:55
  You know, even when I was going through chemo, that app has made
• 37:59
  it so simple to run any educational, early childhood
• 38:03
  educational institution because the whole school resides on your
• 38:07
  phone. And so she now gets the fun of
• 38:11
  going in and, and hanging out with the teachers.
• 38:13
  And I'm the one that really gets called for the big problems.
• 38:20
  But there aren't any. It's, you know, we've got a
• 38:23
  staff now that has been there forever.
• 38:27
  There is very little turnover at Isaiah, which is again, unheard
• 38:30
  of cousin childcare. The average turnover of teachers
• 38:33
  is 40% a year. And you know, there was a great
• 38:37
  study for any of you listening that might be in the field of
• 38:40
  education. There was a great study done a
• 38:42
  long time. Oh God, we're going back maybe
• 38:44
  15 years. And they asked school
• 38:47
  administrators, why do you think teachers stay in their jobs?
• 38:50
  And the administrators all said money.
• 38:53
  And then they went to those same schools and asked all the
• 38:56
  teachers, why do you stay in your job?
• 38:58
  Not why you take the job, why you stay in the job.
• 39:01
  And the number one reason was a feeling of being in on things.
• 39:08
  And what that meant was that if you feel ownership of the school
• 39:14
  you're a part of, rather than being a renter, right?
• 39:17
  Renters move from place to place.
• 39:20
  And if the water is dripping, renters don't care.
• 39:23
  But if you're an owner, you care when the water is dripping.
• 39:27
  And so when you're an owner, you feel like, oh, I have, there's a
• 39:29
  problem. I can fix it or I can tell
• 39:32
  somebody and they're going to fix it because they trust me.
• 39:35
  And so we have built up a staff there that is consistently of
• 39:42
  the highest caliber, many of whom, by the way, have taken the
• 39:45
  degree program at AJU, including Avital.
• 39:51
  And as a result, we've got a staff that is I, I, I'm, I'm
• 39:57
  just very proud of them, an incredible staff.
• 40:01
  Tell me more about how you instill that sense of ownership
• 40:05
  in the team. This is always one of my
• 40:06
  favorite questions to ask people in a tight labor market.
• 40:09
  You know, they got tighter. You know, coming out of COVID,
• 40:13
  it's hard to find good people. It's hard to retain good people.
• 40:17
  And you know, when I ask this question, a lot of people, well,
• 40:19
  we, you know, we focus on benefits.
• 40:21
  We, you know, we try to pay them well.
• 40:22
  We can try to treat them with respect.
• 40:24
  I think these are all important boxes to check.
• 40:26
  But you've touched on something I think really important here.
• 40:29
  And yet you want, you want to feel valuable.
• 40:31
  You want to feel like you're a part of a team.
• 40:33
  And in your words, you want to feel like you've got some kind
• 40:36
  of ownership in the process. How do you how do you build that
• 40:40
  culture? How do you communicate that to
• 40:41
  people? That's a great question because
• 40:45
  I think if more people did it, you wouldn't have the what we
• 40:49
  call what what the news is calling a teacher shortage.
• 40:51
  There is no teacher shortage. It's that people are leaving the
• 40:55
  field because they don't enjoy it anymore.
• 40:57
  And so the ownership comes from several components.
• 41:00
  So number one, it's making people feel like they have a
• 41:04
  superhero strength, right? Making them really understand
• 41:09
  that you are valued here because there is some something that you
• 41:13
  are contributing that we don't think anybody else can do.
• 41:17
  And really catching them, behaving in that way, like
• 41:22
  catching them while they're using their superhero strength.
• 41:24
  I remember once there's a teacher named Sharon, shout out
• 41:28
  to Sharon. And she was again, eye level
• 41:31
  lower than the child. The child is having a really
• 41:34
  hard moment outside the hallway and she's talking in her low and
• 41:38
  slow voice in a patient way. And she got that child to calm
• 41:41
  down faster than anybody I've ever seen a child calm down.
• 41:45
  And she respected that child so much in that moment where most
• 41:49
  people would have been like, Oh my God, that kid is driving me
• 41:51
  nuts. She respected him in that moment
• 41:54
  and she gave him so much unconditional love while he was
• 41:58
  having that meltdown. And so afterwards, I simply went
• 42:01
  over to her, touched her on the shoulder and said, I saw you.
• 42:05
  I just want you to know I saw you.
• 42:07
  She didn't see me watching her. She had her back to me.
• 42:10
  I said, I saw you and I wish every child could experience
• 42:13
  what I just saw you do with that child.
• 42:16
  And I think for her, in that moment, it was more valuable
• 42:22
  than any money I could have possibly have given her because
• 42:25
  I recognized her superhero strength.
• 42:27
  And so that's number one. Number two, And here's a
• 42:30
  monetary thing, you know, at Temple Isaiah, again, before
• 42:34
  COVID, we had like 350 kids. We had a budget up the gazoo.
• 42:38
  We had so many kids. I gave ownership of part of the
• 42:42
  budget back to the teachers and I said to them, I said, listen,
• 42:46
  I don't work in your classrooms, you do.
• 42:48
  So I'm going to give every classroom, you know, $1000 on
• 42:52
  top of all the supplies and everything else that we get each
• 42:55
  class. And you can spend it however you
• 42:57
  want. Now, if you want to take that
• 42:59
  $1000 and all of you guys go to Hawaii, so be it.
• 43:01
  But you're not getting any more money.
• 43:03
  So use it wisely. But you know, like one group,
• 43:07
  they were having some infighting in their group and one of the
• 43:09
  teachers came to me and she goes, you know, we don't spend
• 43:12
  all this money. Can I take 100 of it?
• 43:14
  Would it be OK? We're all going to go out to
• 43:16
  dinner because we've got to get some bonding going.
• 43:18
  I said your money. I think that's a great idea.
• 43:21
  Perfect use of the money, but great.
• 43:24
  And so they have ownership that way.
• 43:26
  The other thing that we did was we created a very transparent
• 43:31
  salary scale so nobody ever has to wonder if the person who's
• 43:35
  sitting right next to them is making more or less than they
• 43:37
  are. They know exactly how much
• 43:39
  everybody makes, and they also know what the teacher levels are
• 43:44
  and what you have to do to get to the next level so that you
• 43:50
  are in control. You are literally you take
• 43:53
  ownership of your salary and your position in the school.
• 43:59
  You know, hearing your story about the, the the call out that
• 44:05
  you gave to that teacher, private little call out, you
• 44:07
  know, and you know, complimenting them for how they
• 44:10
  respond to that child. I think parents listening to
• 44:14
  this is a good reminder for them.
• 44:16
  They can provide teachers with similar types of affirmation.
• 44:21
  I did this on a private Zoom call with one of my son's
• 44:26
  teachers and really thanked her for the way that she was able to
• 44:29
  help him through some challenges that he was going through.
• 44:33
  And I knew that she was going to be good at that because I had
• 44:36
  witnessed her in a classroom two years ago with my older son
• 44:40
  helping an autistic child calm down, you know, and keep himself
• 44:44
  sort of centered and, and doing it in a very subtle way that
• 44:48
  didn't draw a whole lot of attention.
• 44:50
  And I could tell that that meant a lot to her in the moment.
• 44:54
  But a few months later she ran into my wife at a social event
• 44:58
  and she brought that up and how much that meant to her to have
• 45:03
  felt seen and appreciated. And validated.
• 45:07
  And validated. Right.
• 45:08
  Yeah, yeah. And so I think, you know, as, as
• 45:11
  parents, right, we're a lot of times we're in contact with the
• 45:14
  teachers when something's going wrong, our child is misbehaved
• 45:17
  or we feel like they're not getting the attention or the
• 45:20
  services that they need. And then a lot of the good
• 45:23
  things that happen aren't getting called out because, hey,
• 45:27
  good things are going smooth. I can, I'm going to get back to
• 45:30
  what I was doing. I'm going on about my day.
• 45:31
  But I think, you know, whether it's, you know, a boss in an
• 45:35
  education situation or a parent in an education situation, it's
• 45:39
  really nice when you can call attention to those, those
• 45:42
  positive things that happen because there's a lot more of
• 45:45
  those in almost every scenario than there are the negative
• 45:48
  ones. And everybody likes to hear
• 45:50
  those. That's that's good.
• 45:51
  I don't compliment enough. I was in the elevator the other
• 45:55
  day and there was a woman who had put together just the most
• 45:59
  perfect outfit. And I, I said to her, I said,
• 46:02
  you know, I don't know how long it took you to get dressed
• 46:04
  today, but you have literally put yourself together in a way
• 46:06
  that is perfect. You are like Vogue cover ready.
• 46:10
  And she looked at me and she goes, Oh my gosh, do you think
• 46:13
  my husband will notice? What's his number?
• 46:17
  I'll text him now so. Cute.
• 46:21
  Yeah, that's funny. You know, you mentioned budgets.
• 46:25
  Another question that I like to ask is, you know, as leaders of
• 46:28
  different types of businesses, education institutions, we've,
• 46:31
  we've always got to keep our eye on the bottom line, right, the
• 46:34
  PNL because that that matters to keep the doors open and keep
• 46:36
  things running smoothly. And I'm curious in all of your
• 46:39
  years of experience, you know, there's sort of two levers that
• 46:41
  we can pull there. You know, one is how do we drive
• 46:44
  more revenue and the other is how do we lower expenses?
• 46:48
  Can you think of creative ways in which you've pulled one or
• 46:51
  more of those levers in the past?
• 46:54
  Oh sure. Well, first of all, benefits are
• 46:57
  a much more bottom line friendly way to spend or allocate a
• 47:03
  certain amount of money because you don't have to add the other
• 47:07
  25% that you would to a payroll increase.
• 47:11
  When you add in, you know, unemployment and health and and
• 47:14
  all these other taxes that are tied to payroll.
• 47:18
  And the other thing too is I don't think employees recognize
• 47:22
  how much benefits cost a company.
• 47:25
  So when we create contracts, we don't put in just your hourly
• 47:30
  salary and say, oh, and we're going to add health benefits.
• 47:33
  We put in the actual dollar amount that all of that stuff is
• 47:36
  going to cost us. Again, full transparency over
• 47:40
  the budget because ownership and you know, revenue is a fixed
• 47:49
  number in most schools because you know, tuition is tuition.
• 47:53
  You can always try to fundraise, but those dollars are now, you
• 47:57
  know, being spread. I think families are spreading
• 47:59
  those donation dollars across multiple places.
• 48:05
  I like to bring the employees in, the teachers in and say,
• 48:07
  look, I want to give you guys, I only have money for a 5%
• 48:10
  increase next year or a COLA increase.
• 48:13
  I would love it to be 10%. Can we brainstorm ideas of ways
• 48:19
  to bring in more money? Because when you get that hive
• 48:22
  mind going, you get many more lucrative ideas than if I try to
• 48:26
  think of them on my own and impose them on my teachers.
• 48:31
  So rather than me imposing them on the teachers, if I get them
• 48:34
  to think, oh, these new creative financial ideas are my ideas.
• 48:39
  Then again, there's that ownership component.
• 48:43
  And they are then in charge right of how to earn more money
• 48:48
  in order for you to make more money.
• 48:52
  Like that, how is the movement towards the transitional
• 48:57
  kindergarten program in California affecting you guys?
• 49:01
  Oh well, it's going to be everywhere.
• 49:03
  I I think eventually the government is going to fund 3
• 49:06
  and up. It's affected schools because
• 49:11
  obviously there are fours and fives are going to public
• 49:13
  school. Most schools, if they saw this
• 49:17
  coming, as we did, you started creating spaces for younger
• 49:22
  children. And I think especially now post
• 49:25
  COVID, we have more and more families who are, you know, dual
• 49:31
  income earners or there are people who are single, you know,
• 49:35
  parents and need to make more money.
• 49:37
  And schools have to adapt. So where schools used to be open
• 49:41
  from 9:00 to 3:00, you've got to be open from, I'd say, 7:00 to
• 49:45
  6:00. And ways to increase the bottom
• 49:49
  line is to offer flex, you know, flexible opportunities for
• 49:53
  parents to enroll their kids. And by doing so, you also
• 49:57
  increase the number of spaces you can actually put in.
• 50:00
  So if I've got a kid coming from let's say 7:00 to 3:00 and
• 50:04
  another parent needs somebody from 12:00 to 6:00, I have
• 50:07
  almost like a 1 1/2, you know, full time enrollment going in
• 50:12
  for one space. Licensing has also been doing
• 50:17
  some creative stuff. For example, in California.
• 50:19
  Here's a tip if you don't know this, if you're licensed child
• 50:22
  care provider in California, you can actually almost double your
• 50:26
  capacity if you get the fire department to sign off on you
• 50:31
  not using the yards with the whole school at the same time.
• 50:35
  So if you can show that you've got a yard schedule where half
• 50:38
  are outside and half are inside, you can almost double your
• 50:41
  capacity. So we were able to go from 176
• 50:44
  to 300 and something overnight by doing that.
• 50:48
  Wow. So with the transitional
• 50:51
  kindergarten, this is affecting what's the age group four and
• 50:54
  five year olds are now? Right now it's four, it's fours,
• 50:58
  but it's going to go down to threes.
• 51:01
  And do you think that's going to completely do away with threes
• 51:05
  and fours in in preschools because now there's the public
• 51:08
  component or some people are going to continue to stay in a
• 51:12
  private institution like yours because you have more services,
• 51:15
  better offerings, longer hours perhaps than a public school
• 51:18
  would? Yeah, I think it's the same
• 51:20
  thing like any kindergarten, right?
• 51:22
  You still have private and public kindergartens.
• 51:25
  Families are going to put their children where their friends are
• 51:30
  for religious beliefs, for community involvement.
• 51:34
  And public school enrollment is actually on a decline.
• 51:38
  So here I'll give you I'll give you the problem.
• 51:42
  Take a school like Westwood Charter, which is one of the big
• 51:45
  public schools in our neighborhood.
• 51:47
  Families will move into that neighborhood because they want
• 51:49
  to send their kids to a great public school.
• 51:52
  They'll move in and then their kids are going to go to school
• 51:55
  there from K through eight and then junior high and high
• 51:58
  school. So they're not moving out.
• 52:02
  So if there isn't any inventory for new families to move in with
• 52:06
  kindergarteners, they're going to have to move to another area
• 52:09
  where there is housing and go to that public school.
• 52:13
  As a result, that family staying in Westwood Charter right in in
• 52:17
  that location. Westwood Charter had a very low
• 52:21
  enrollment a few years ago. They had no choice but to offer
• 52:25
  the earlier class, you know, the four year olds because they had
• 52:29
  to get kids in, in order to get their state funds, their, their
• 52:33
  tax dollars, if you will, in order to fund their school.
• 52:36
  And as those families start to stay, there's no inventory,
• 52:41
  they're going to have no choice but to go to three-year olds in
• 52:44
  order to fund their school. And on top of this, the double
• 52:47
  whammy is that we had the Jarvis initiative, Prop 13 in
• 52:50
  California. So that family that might have
• 52:53
  moved in 10 years ago, excuse me, and is staying there for now
• 52:57
  for life. Their property tax will remain
• 53:01
  the same for the duration of their staying in that home.
• 53:04
  Wow. So the public school dollars
• 53:06
  come from property tax. So now the schools are also cash
• 53:11
  strapped because nobody's selling their homes, right?
• 53:15
  And they're still getting the same amount of tax dollars that
• 53:17
  they got 10 or 20 years ago. And it's not enough for the
• 53:20
  raises the teachers need, the infrastructure, the capital, you
• 53:24
  know, improvements we need to make, etcetera.
• 53:27
  So that is part of the huger, you know, the much larger
• 53:31
  problem with the public schools in California.
• 53:33
  And as a result, many parents then are sending their kids to
• 53:37
  private school because the only way the schools know the public
• 53:41
  schools know how to fix this is to pack more kids into a class.
• 53:46
  How does maybe what's the class size at Westwood Charter
• 53:49
  compared to what somebody would find at your school?
• 53:53
  Oh, so our school has a teacher ratio of one to four.
• 53:57
  What? Yeah.
• 53:58
  Or one to five. Yeah, we have an amazing.
• 54:02
  Yeah, well, you get what you pay for, right?
• 54:04
  When tuition is 25,000 a year that's that's what you get.
• 54:08
  OK, that's impressive. Yeah.
• 54:12
  Paint, Paint a little bit more of a picture of what the day is
• 54:15
  like for one of your preschoolers.
• 54:18
  Oh well, you never have to leave your car if you don't want to.
• 54:21
  We've got a car line in the front and a car line in the
• 54:24
  back. We've got armed security, as all
• 54:26
  Jewish programs do. The kids will say hello to the
• 54:29
  guards, say hello to the teachers that take them out of
• 54:31
  car line, and then they'll come in again, half inside, half
• 54:36
  outside. On playgrounds.
• 54:37
  We've got four huge playgrounds, which are amazing.
• 54:42
  One playground alone is just a giant sandbox with playground
• 54:47
  apparatus on it. Another one is the size.
• 54:49
  I'd say I'm not very good at measurement, but about the size
• 54:52
  of 3/4 of a football field, and it's got basketball courts and
• 54:57
  jungle gym and bikes and huge blocks and shade and all kinds
• 55:02
  of building stuff. Another yard is really more for
• 55:06
  the younger kids. And another third yard is for
• 55:09
  loose parts and STEM. The kids will play in their
• 55:14
  classrooms. They've got, you know, there are
• 55:16
  three or four teachers in a class.
• 55:19
  They've got their friends. We, we do STEM, we do literacy,
• 55:22
  we do social, emotional and moral development.
• 55:25
  They have, you know, music and dance and art and happy laughter
• 55:31
  pretty much all day. Tell.
• 55:35
  Me more about the social, emotional and moral development
• 55:39
  component. How is that introduced to this
• 55:42
  age group? Well, you know, the beginnings
• 55:45
  of social and emotional development really come from
• 55:48
  learning how to take turns cooperating as you build
• 55:51
  friendships and making those friendships more meaningful and
• 55:55
  deeper and respecting and accepting others.
• 55:59
  I have to share with you, this is Oh my gosh, maybe 10 years
• 56:03
  ago, we had a child who would never be able to actually walk
• 56:07
  or talk. He had a genetic defect.
• 56:10
  And the kids, as he came in with his, with his mom and his
• 56:16
  wheelchair, the kids were sitting on the on the floor in
• 56:19
  circle time. And you know, two of the kids
• 56:22
  immediately said, Oh, my gosh, move over, move over because he
• 56:25
  needs enough room. But they actually picked him up
• 56:27
  off the wheelchair and put him on the on the ground with his
• 56:30
  assistant. He had like a helper.
• 56:32
  And the mom was about to walk out and one of the kids shouted
• 56:35
  out, wait, wait, you can't leave yet.
• 56:36
  It's his first day. We need to know if he has any
• 56:39
  agirlies. And what she wanted to say was
• 56:41
  allergies. But they're all so sensitive to
• 56:46
  the needs of, of one another. Understanding boundaries, both
• 56:51
  physical boundaries, you know, language boundaries, you know,
• 56:56
  learning to negotiate, learning to solve problems together,
• 57:01
  learning how things connect and how there's a cause and effect.
• 57:04
  So when you learn all of those things, you then see how they
• 57:07
  affect one another. And the teachers really model it
• 57:12
  and, and talk about it throughout the day.
• 57:15
  There's a great book, by the way, How full is your bucket?
• 57:19
  And I remember one day walking in, I had done something to my
• 57:22
  hair and one of the little boys said, oh, tomorrow your hair
• 57:26
  looks really nice. And then he looked at the
• 57:28
  teacher and goes, I filled her bucket.
• 57:33
  And so, you know, again, reading books, talking about it, telling
• 57:37
  stories, and then and again, just going through those things
• 57:43
  and making that social, emotional, moral development an
• 57:46
  intrinsic part of everyday partnering with parents, loving,
• 57:53
  loving conversation, things like that.
• 57:57
  Tamar, you're obviously responsible.
• 57:59
  Oh, I don't hear you. Sorry.
• 58:03
  Tamar Yeah, OK, You're obviously responsible for educating a lot
• 58:09
  of the educators, right? Teaching the teachers, I'm
• 58:12
  curious, as part of your own education process coming up, you
• 58:17
  mentioned one book in particular, How to Fill Your
• 58:18
  Bucket. Are there other specific books
• 58:21
  or mentors that have been particularly helpful for you and
• 58:24
  your career? Oh, wow.
• 58:27
  Oh, I've got like a stack of them here.
• 58:31
  Here, I'll tell you what I'm working on right now.
• 58:33
  I I read several books at a time.
• 58:36
  Here there's a good one, the Connector Manager.
• 58:39
  This is a great book and it's written by Roca and Wilde, and
• 58:44
  it's why some leaders build exceptional talent and others
• 58:47
  don't, which is a great book. The other one is by Shane
• 58:53
  Parrish called Clear Thinking, turning ordinary moments into
• 58:57
  extraordinary results. And again, I am so I think of
• 59:01
  time as so precious, right? And then the other one is start
• 59:07
  with the Y I, I mark up all my books and it's by Synick.
• 59:11
  It's how great leaders inspire everyone to take action.
• 59:15
  So my goal in reading these books right now is, again,
• 59:19
  knowing that my time here on earth is limited, it's how to
• 59:23
  help others move forward with the same kind of work.
• 59:29
  That's great. Yeah, Simon Sinek also has a
• 59:31
  great Ted talk that he did years ago about the same topic that I
• 59:36
  think that was the first time that he kind of hit my radar and
• 59:39
  I think it it drew a lot of people to his attention.
• 59:42
  Yeah, there's also, if I can share, there's a great podcast
• 59:45
  also. I want people to listen to
• 59:46
  yours, but there is a great one. I'm going to butcher his name.
• 59:50
  It's called The Hidden Brain by Shankar Vedanta.
• 59:53
  I believe that's how you pronounce it.
• 59:55
  And the Hidden Brain is all about he has great people on
• 59:59
  there talking about all the different ways in which our
• 1:00:02
  brain can work or gets tricked or how to, you know, use what we
• 1:00:09
  know and, and how we think and to live better.
• 1:00:14
  We'll make sure we find that podcast and include a link to it
• 1:00:16
  in the show notes. There you go.
• 1:00:19
  Tamar, I just have one more question for you.
• 1:00:20
  But before I ask you, I want to do 2 things.
• 1:00:22
  First of all, if you're listening today and you like
• 1:00:24
  today's content, please hit the subscribe, like or share button
• 1:00:26
  on your favorite podcast app. Tamar, I also want to let people
• 1:00:30
  know the best way to get in touch with you.
• 1:00:32
  What's? The best way to get in touch
• 1:00:35
  with me is e-mail. My e-mail is
• 1:00:38
  tamartamar.andrews@aju.edu. That's the easiest.
• 1:00:45
  OK. Last question for you, Tamar.
• 1:00:48
  We've already talked a little bit on this, but maybe there's
• 1:00:51
  some additional ways for you to expand on this.
• 1:00:53
  How do you see your industry evolving in the next five years?
• 1:00:57
  What do you think some of the biggest changes are that are
• 1:00:59
  still coming? Oh wow.
• 1:01:07
  You know, I have this professional development I'm
• 1:01:11
  doing now called Finding the Right pitch, and the pitch
• 1:01:15
  stands for the four environments a teacher creates.
• 1:01:19
  So it's the physical, interpersonal, temporal, and
• 1:01:23
  curricular. And if you do it right, you get
• 1:01:25
  the H, which is harmony in the classroom instead of
• 1:01:27
  dysregulation. I think the biggest change, I'm
• 1:01:30
  hoping the biggest change is along those lines, which is not
• 1:01:36
  to look at the reading, the writing and the math, but to
• 1:01:42
  really look, you know, use a 360 view at what your role is as a
• 1:01:47
  teacher, as an administrator, and focus on all aspects of
• 1:01:52
  human development so that people don't come out just really smart
• 1:01:57
  but really dumb, but come out really smart and really capable
• 1:02:03
  of being able to affect change. I.
• 1:02:07
  Love that tomorrow I want to be the first one for thanking you
• 1:02:11
  to share your time and your story with us today.
• 1:02:13
  I really appreciate it. It was a pleasure.
• 1:02:16
  Folks, that's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories
• 1:02:19
  podcast. Thanks for learning with us
• 1:02:20
  today.