Who is also my mom. Im very lucky. So linda has worked in dps for 38 years. Founded three different schools, and started different Leadership Programs across the state. For that reason my brothers and i rarely saw her. Linda is an amazing inspiration to me, its why im an information and policy Education Student here. Im inspired by her every day. I hope i dont have to do the 5 00 a. M. Wake up to be just like her. Shes wonderful alongside carmen, there may inspirations. Im so lucky to have to introduce my mom, my favorite educator and best mount to this stage to talk about when grits is not enough. [applause] not always to get to be introduce by her daughter, its kind of cool. I think theyre opening up the back. So if you want to cedar if its too hot in here, think were getting more seats. Lets give it up for those kids. [applause] and why do what i do. Those kids came all the way over. There amazing teachers. Lets give it up. [applause] im here to talk about the book that you are all going to buy because the royalties go back to the kids and thats important to me. My first book still the royalties are going back so its important that you buy any buy from independent bookstores as well. First, i want to know who is in the audience before launching. How many of your teachers right now teaching . How many of you have ever taught . How many of you are leaving schools or organizations . How many of you have ever led schools or organizations. How many are grad students . How many are former grad students of mine . Thank you for being here. I wrote this book to start a larger conversation about what we believe will help students succeed after high school. I also wrote the book because im really angry. Im angry at what it takes to really create access and equity in this country. We continue to think its the responsibility of the most vulnerable amongst us, those with the least amount of access to create access for themselves. That is just not true. I wrote this book because in my first book the hardest questions that are [inaudible] the test i tell the story of sinead a. I get criticized a lot for. Sinead i was a student at the Boston Arts Academy. She graduated the top of her class, was accepted to her dream college with a full scholarship. She was the first in scholarship student. How many of your first gen kids . For complicated reasons she never step foot on her College Campus she lost her scholarship on the summer after high school because she missed a deadline to send in the deposit so lack of experience, and absence of cultural Financial Capital and im sure some shame. This one mistake had a dramatic affect the course of her life. That story became the impetus of this book. When i stepped down from the day to day of the Boston Arts Academy i wanted to examine some longheld assumptions of my. I began to interview alumni. Those who had gone on to college and those who had been. Those who had started and left, in total i interviewed 90 students spoken formally to dozens more. Sinead a story was not an exception. I began to reflect on the promise i made each year to my 125 freshmen. All of you id say would go on to college or postsecondary career but all of you will go on to college. Its the right promise to make. I still feel that way. But my emphasis was wrong. I didnt do enough to promote Career Opportunities along with college. Five assumptions or myths became clear. If we carefully began to interrogate them and thats invitation of this book, i believe will build better bridges between Higher Education and prek12. The book is organized around these five. One, money is not an obstacle. Two, race doesnt matter. Just work harder. Colleges for everyone. If you believe your dreams will come true. The College Acceptance rate of student from Boston Arts Academy is very high. I couldve just been pleased with those statistics. 94 98 are accepted and nearly two thirds graduate within six years. These are extraordinary figures but i wanted to understand what happened to those who were not successful and i wanted to understand the journey for those in college. Stu is he to assume that all students start in the same place everybody has access to the same. The recent New York Times article says, i quote, for young people, with pallet collegeeducated parents the path to Higher Education may be stressful but theres a roadmap, if their test scores are to look they can pay for prep course. If their essay is lackluster they can hire a writing coach. If they cant decide which is the best fit, they can visit. When theyre tempted to give up their parents will push them on. Few of the supports are in place for low income or firstgeneration students. Thats what this book is about. We assumed the deep social inequities can be overcome by individual efforts. And everyone has an equal chance for success and if we just work harder will be fine. We assume it because theres wonderful stories of people who make it. I do tell those stories too. Many of heard of diane, she plays a little latina and oranges new black. She was part of being interviewed for this book. But we make the assumption that those who just lacked determination or not sufficiently gritty either reason folks will get ahead. This grits, pedagogy if you will is popularized in our schools of education, i hope not here with this just work harder and so, i really want you to critically examine that. Going to read next from the book where described two classrooms. One where the teachers about grid and the other where the behavioral expectations are lax. I hope you will all buy the book and say grits is not what we need to be talking about right now. This is on page 84. Twentyfive thirdgraders sat crosslegged on a rug. As you know were about to begin the snake unit. This is the video i promise we watch. Hand shot up in the little girl asked in an odd whisper, is this the one we get to see the snake walk out of its skin. Yes, we will see the will take notes like scientists. Everyone nodded. The teacher distributed papers and pencils. This was a lesson they had been anticipating. When we are ready and sitting up and tracking me, ill start the video. Students reposition themselves and help the clipboards. However, to students in the back row were overtaken with giggles and had a hard time either putting in the paper paying attention. The teacher redirected that they were clearly in a world of their own. Suddenly the teacher said, its clear to me that the class is not ready to engage in learning. Lets go back until we have 100 engagement. Here completely thought about slanting. Did you lose your back muscles over the weekend. Was stopped to make sure if you know what slanting this. Set up, look, ask questions, not, track the speaker. Part of this is that all kids know how to do this on demand. The little girl whispered to her friends, we are showing respect. Her friend nodded, the student got to their feet they troop silently back to their desk. Now will have to wait until tomorrow to see the video. And i really dont want to to mirror. When the class was dismissed the teacher demanded they line up silently. They passed a second grade class who are walking and hugs and bubble formation. , very common and lots of schools, they held their arms crisscross across the chest their cheeks were puffed out as if they caught a bubble inside. They proceeded silently to the cafeteria there are five different classrooms in the cafeteria. All of them, ate and complete silence all teachers monitor the room. In the book i dont tell you what schools these are from, this is not an exceptional school. I visited many schools like this. I inquired if this was a punishment and i was informed it was a regular occurrence. We want students to have time in the day when their quiet and peaceful. It felt anything but peaceful. Seemed like a prison with the teacher is scarred. Gone is the joy of meeting friends at lunch and chattering about anything or nothing. Gone is being a carefree kid. None of the students in the school or why. But all of the teachers are young, white, female. What message does this send to kids. The school to me felt oppressive. While making eye contact is not wrong, the slant system is not contextualized. It used in the school emphasized behavior. In other words, youre considered a good learner if you can demonstrate slant. But this is a minimal condition for learning. For many students it has nothing to do with learning. Of course its hard to teach your students are cutting up in class. For the third grade teacher had been chained to stop the lessons in the absence of 100 compliance. Later the teacher admitted that she felt badly about aborting the lesson. In the school we believe students are practicing slant, then learning our compromise. Like the broken window. You have to take care of the small things before you take care of the big things are nothing will get fixed. But this adherence that i had witnessed they may wonder about the message we sent for young people. The word oppressive kept coming to mind. Little room existed for divergent thinking. Reflect on another school i visited which was the opposite. In an urban Public School in new york city i witnessed a group of eighthgraders discussing a novel. What struck me was how they had arrange themselves in the classroom. Some sat on top of the desk others were insurers and if you were standing. Not everyone in a circle. One young man sat outside the circle and participated even though he looked angry the entire time. Another set of the teachers desk. When i asked the teacher if their seating arrangement was distracting to him he looked at me curiously. Why should it matter how they said. If there participating in respecting one anothers opinion. Thats my goal. Can they talk to one another, can they find evidence . Can they build off of each other says . What about the fact that not everybody was living by the same rules. Look he began. What i like everyone to sit in a circle . Of course. I want to sacrifice valuable teaching and learning time to be reminded students of those expectations and more importantly, i want to make sure the classroom is a place where theres breathing room. I know its going on with carlos and edwards. The rest of the class doesnt care. I was a shy satisfy. I wanted to know if he had seen the practices where rules were easily quickly adhere to teachers how teaching could begin. Of course he told me. Many of the students came to the schools and their asked to leave because they were disciplined enough. Carlos is still smarting from the memory of his last school. By the way you wont see those college banners on my walls. My job is to teach my students to think. And to get them to think for themselves. I agree with it that was uncomfortable with the lack of structure in his classroom. I wonder if some of the excuses great pedagogy could be used. Wasnt he impressed with the test scores . Clearly they had learned to listen to one another. He said i know many colleagues believed that by following that formula kids will get into college in large numbers and get out of the ghetto. I dont think theyre asking the students what success would look like for them. Whats missing is learned about selfdetermination and advocacy. I know its a lot to ask for teachers, but we cannot keep seeing ourselves we as white teachers like me need to understand that students of color are in the situation because of systemic racism. We have to examine how we might be perpetuating that. He went on to describe how students are doing. The ones that challenged me the most are the ones who do the best, they know how to think critically and independently. So, in this book i asked whether the snow excuses slant interventions are successful. I question their effectiveness. I question the race and class implications. I question whether training teachers will create the classroom or teachers deserve. It may have been overrated. Traits such as curiosity give a short trip. The boys who giggle the most might be the most curious leaders later on. Those competencies, with creativity that you just saw here earlier that employers and others insist are the key are not well facilitated by the no excuses approach. We know its not true that college is for everyone. We have done little in our schools to prepare students for careers that will allow them to lead middleclass lives. We must change our language from college and career ready and move away from what i seen here which is everyone will go to college. My new collis success and dignity for all with the promise of earning a living wage. Here are the national statistics. 52 of High School Graduates enrolled in college. That means nearly half of the students do not. What kind of preparation are we giving them . To answer i looked locally and internationally. We must do a better job with career technical innovation, with internships and Work Experiences while young people are in high school. Consider this statistic. The teens with the highest employment rate come from families with income above 120,000. The teens with the highest employment rate. Come from families with incomes over 120,000. We are perpetuating again and again income inequality. The young people from low income sectors are in the greatest need but the least likely to receive them. Swiss sterling one of the countries i looked at Students Experience a cohesive approach to education. The 60 are involved in Vocational Education. Students can go back and forth between career and Technical Education and more academic education. There is a sense that apprenticeship or high status way to learn. I saw this level in some schools are country, not nearly enough. In the book i talk about a high school in the working class Ice Community outside of boston. One student said that using college as a place to grow up is expensive. Glad ive been exposed to areas i might want to specialize in. Another student said he was graduating from the Health Program and was graduating as a nurse but he didnt like patient care. He found he didnt like trek service work but rather the Science Behind it. I could have written another book about my experiences here, the school hold such promise real people and it has been underfunded for over three decades. I believe having a strong sense in which are interested in pursuing needs to become a focus of high schools across this country. Have many suggestions how we can reinvigorate the education. One of the things i spend time discussing is the need to reinvest in Community Colleges and we must ensure all High School Students have Work Experience, not just middle and upper class and not just 40 hours of Community Service but a real commitment and i even suggest a service year for all americans and a National Program where as a part of their senior year they can work in an area that speaks to their passion. Of course in this book those who know me i take on the countrys current obsession with highstakes testing. This is one of the reasons there is no longer room in the curriculum for the career and Technical Education. He has become so focused on ranking and sorting the students and schools that weve lost sight of the importance of teaching empathy and how to get along with those that are different from you at the time our Democratic Institutions are daily undermined, i believe a curriculum focused on Student Agency and activism can help prepare young people to enter a world in which they have the tools to reshape reality. We must continue to embrace the largest purposes of education to help our young people understand the context of their lives, including the cultural, racial, linguistic and the history as well as the wall of others different from themselves, and i know from seeing these young people play today, that an education in the arts does just that in the increasingly complex and uncertain world, we need to ensure that our young people graduate from high school having learned metaphorically speaking to walk in one anothers shoes. We must learn to embrace languages, culture, movements that are foreign to our own cloture and perspective. We must learn to express important Life Connections through drawing, painting, sculpting, building an and prest the differences from the coming impediments to change. As teachers, it is our job to help young people critically perceive the world the way they exist in the world and not the world as a static reality, but a reality in the process of transformation. Even in the era of trump, i remain hopeful. In large part, my hope is derived from the generations of students ive taught and those that i will continue to teach. My hope is further strengthened because of the amazing teachers i have known who continue to do such amazing work each day. They create classrooms where students camp realize their individual and collective dreams, so with humility i hope this book gives you the tools to keep fighting and i think you. [applause] i want to read. I promised this student i would read her email to me. I was on the radio a couple weeks ago. Dear ms. M ms. Nathan what a su. I was working as usual listening to npr when i heard your name and your book. I almost started to cry. A jury from hearing you and to hear that it was not my fault that i didnt make it. Happiness that someone is taking action in the silent tears of the struggle many of us go through to make it through college and never to. So, questions [inaudible] i think we have to ask you to use a microphone. I think there is a microphone right there. [inaudible] [inaudible] does a great comment. I talk a lot an in the book abot the importance of it obviously those kids understand. What i take on in the book is this Unhealthy Alliance with too many schools have made and particularly those of us in urban schools have to begin to target that, so the idea of working together is critical that the idea that it is your fault always that you dont succeed is not true and that is what i try to break out. I wonder if you addressed Teacher Retention as a problem in the schools and the reason i ask is because you describe the two teachers who figured out how to prioritized the educational issues and my experience everything in the classroom is a negotiation but over time if you stay with it long enough like three to eight years depending on the teacher, you start to have a nuanced sense of what all the tradeoffs are and you begin to really say these are the lines in the sand. I dont care if you said this way. Today i need you to show me that you understand the difference between whatever it is on the table, and it becomes a tiny year negotiation. These things i will negotiate these things i wont but the retentiodo thatretention is thet because young people leave the field and dont reach the point of being able to deal with the chaos and reality of the changing classroom. I dont address it in this book, but it takes eight years to make a great teacher, eight. If you havent gotten there, my teachers here can hear me say it, eight years to be a good teacher and then you can Start Talking about what you want to do. So, we have to get a whole lot better at the teacher attention because in year number three you are beginning and three to eight you are beginning to figure it out and year number eight you can begin to do some good work, so thank you for that comment. I was wondering about the students who Start College and then leave. How do they make it back to the. That is what started this. It is a tragedy. I have too many alums who are out there and in the book i tell the story of one who is still working to pay off those loans. One of the stories that talk about is the fact that kids who are not on a scholarship are able to drop that organic chemistry glassware biology class in the semester an of thee it in the summer. Kids on scholarship cannot, so we double jeopardize a lot of our students with the least experience. The book is a critique of how your ad i have to say i was appalled that in this 21st century by a lack of infrastructure for the firstgeneration kids. One of my students said to me if Higher Education was evaluated in the way that pre k12 is evaluated, half of our colleges would be shut down a. They accept us and then they dont graduate us, so this isnt about you of course personally, but there is no interface between financial aid, the success office, the stories of kids tomie that i document in here that are hairraising. It took me calling a College President of one of my alums who didnt have the wherewithal to address the bill to get back in enrolled as a junior in college. That should send alarm bells everywhere and that is a lot of what i wrote about, so thank you for the question and im glad that you are in the work and hopefully you can change your institution. Let me know how i can help. Students who are attending college, whose responsibility is it to provide this information guidance about how to navigate. Colleges can do some and we do and i argue for a better bridge, but i think thats what i was trying to say to her question that colleges have gotten off so easy on this one dot colleges dont think its there responsibility but it is. I had a terrible meeting some years ago with all of the admissions people from the boston area colleges and all of Boston High School headmasters and i dated to bring us together, and it was so clear to me that the College Folks didnt think it was the response ability. You send us prepared and we will take them and i dont think that is going to be successful. This book tells me its not. So thank you for the question. Thank you for being here today. As an eightyear teacher thank you for the previous comment. And a music teacher. [laughter] said, i would like to ask, you raised the question of the internship and Vocational Education for students in this country in order to help us move past the college ball into to begin to focus on the career and vocational field for all students as well and you mentioned madison park in particular were Just High School here in boston. I guess cambridge now, the vocational high schools across the river in boston and ultimately underfunding is one thing but do you feel that there is room for internships and apprenticeships for parttime Work Experience for introduction of vocation into smaller pieces from a younger age because once they are 14 then he will begin to solidify their identity so do you feel that there is a place for this . When i started in the late 70s as a middle School Teacher we were required to teach Career Education and weve gotten rid of some of the things that were the most important. For so many kids what they see in their neighborhoods and families is very limited, so i do believe that it is the schools responsibility, not colleges. Its the responsibility to god and, not to shrink the curriculum so thank you for that. Are there any other questions hello. Max smith. What you said about the dose really spoke to me and i also think about as the mindset, growth mindset and working hard and i was wondering how does your book or have you explored that . I talk about the grit and growth mindset and i kind of go back to the work where these ideas come together, and i think i nicely try to encourage them so that there is nothing wrong as i said with the idea of persevering and being tenacious. Theres nothing wrong with that. What is a bad thing is the way weve taken this and so many of the concerts i visited i told my stories in the book just be prettier in the pictures on the Bulletin Boards are max was gritty today when he did whatever. What about just being nice today. What is this, but theres nothing wrong with the growth mindset. I talk about that and i think i just want us to critically examine kind of the way weve swallowed this wholesale and i tried to be nice. I do. You know, i am not trying to bash anybody. She is a psychologist. I dont know if she knew how her work would be taken by the no excuses schools. Thank you. You dont have to feel you have to ask questions. We can start selling books in a minute. [laughter] i have a question about some of the observations you did in massachusetts and elsewhere. You had mentioned that the teacher that had more of a loose environment in his class was a man and im curious to know if you observed gender differences because in my own experience i feel like the male teachers demand Something Different from kids. I saw a lot of disturbing so im not sure if i differentiated. I dont think that i saw them commending better or worse than women for being more a ten to the philosophy or not they will have to start thinking about that. Thank you. Thank you so much for the presentation. You may do so many wonderful point. I just want to reflect for a minute about the nature of the opportunities available to the good 40 of the population right now, folks of color, immigrants and africanamericans in the urban areas and the impact that the racial and economic oppressions that you spoke of a has on how they are looking at education and also what we need to be doing a because on one hand we cathe onehand we can tat Vocational Education but if there are not decent jobs meeting the needs of communities and instead theres jobs meeting the needs of powerful corporations that are destroying communities, what does that mean for our educational systems and particularly the progressive systems and also, i think they e need to emphasize more the power of community. And im talking about the communities from which the students come from as being equally if not more important than the power of educators and administrators have social workers and so forth because i think we devalue and underestimate the capacity of indigenous leadership in the community. Nobody is or very few people like to say actually recognize the incredible kick up as the folks in the communities who may be low income but have been putting up their communities despite the horrible assaul assn the communities, so i just want to throw out a possible way of considering moving forward which is that we spend a little bit more time talking about creating opportunities for people from the community, parents and people who are not necessarily parents, people like myself and folks who may never have had an opportunity to go to school but people from the community to work with. Teachers and students and to begin offering their ideas about what yo we need to do to change education. So, i think we are missing a step. This is the fundamental step of people from the communities comy themselves, students especially, the leadership in boston is incredible. Parents and other folks in the community and then teachers and socialists coming together and spending years developing an education. Thank you for the comments. One of the reason i wanted to start with young people is you didnt see a conduct or hear of kids working together. They figured out the leadership issue so thank you for that. Are there any other questions . Yes. My name is joan and i am a great fan of your parents and they are here today and invited me to come. Through them, a great fan of you and i visited you when you are e principal of the School Formerly and i think you are terrific and really onto something. Shes being paid i think. [laughter] i wanted to particularly take you up on something you mentioned, which honestly i didnt feel was as important as now i do and that is the importance of internships for students in the even Elementary School but in particular middle school and high school and this is the experience i have become and now im wishing that this could be replicated in other places, so for a number of years i worked for harvard, 47 to be exact, and one of my positions was as an assistant director of ththe malcolm centeratthe malcol policy at the kennedy school. One day, and the things we looked at were education, social policy and health, those three areas and this was primarily on a masters degree level and doctoral levels and one day at a brandnew sent her one day ahead of ththehead of the center, a ge of the school very proudly so called me in and she said id just met with him, hes here in my office now and i want you to meet him. His name is steve davis, and he is the head of the Workforce Program in cambridge and i really think we should put our money where our mouth is and take on one of the students through this program and that started i think the most rewarding for me for her ship that went on for all these years that i continued to be with that center until i went to another position. So the first thing we did and she said we are going to take one of the student so for the students in cambridge Public Housing most of them than they had been a couple of eighth graders but all from cambridge and all in Public Housing so we took the first student, she was fabulous, and i was her supervisor, but he gave her projects to do for the center. We were a Research Center said she got to know a little about research and administration and she had a sweet 16 party and invited me and my mother to go to it and we went to it in cambridge and then im giving you sort of an example. Im going to cut you off because i think theres a few other questions that your point is a wonderful one. Very briefly i want to say this to them that we have for the longest was maria and we are still in close touch and we helped her apply to colleges. She went to college and the same thing happened to her as you were saying she got into terrible tent with credit cards, couldnt pay them off and had to drop off but it took her six or seven or eight years but she managed to graduate from college and the final thing i want to mention is that a at the time ae coming and i dont know if there still is, but sponsored by the state was a program in the summertime for kids in cambridge at a certain income level or below and that way we were able to employ eight of them at a time and give special programs for them and i wish we could do more now. Why dont we take one more question and then i will go sign. I have a twopart question. One is many people might say the push towards Vocational Training is back in an opposite way and they see now the relevance around that. This, i wonder how would you engage that come back, so thatt of the question but the second part, et years ago i taught at cambridge a and she told she toi found it interesting that the schools, independent schools, progressive schools, they provide students with these handthesehandson experiences in carpentry and internship, but they dont call it vocational. They dont even call it by the title tthattitle to get the stue schools with these experiences that are life skills and valuable tha but they see it differently based on the school and social economic and in the repackaging and experiences the question is very vibrant. I just got asked in a minneapolis the same question im as aware as anyone about the tracking that we historically perpetuated in the vocational schools. Its not just plumbing and cosmetology which is the way that we tend to think of the vocational. The strongest programs are in the Life Sciences so the kids are leaving with job skills and they can go right into job skills if you think of the design and visual communication kind of skills you can now graduate and im very proud that the Boston Arts Academy is a career and technical high school. We have two pathways. Fashion designers coming and visual communications is the other one. Cambridge lost its accreditation some years back and would go out to mannesmann and now its back into the idea that all ninth graders should take an exploratory and they are going through various studios so maybe if we use the word studios instead of career and technical, that would get us further and faster. You have been sitting and the lights are hot. I want to make sure i go out and sign. There may still be food, thank you all so much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] every month for the past 20 years, one of the nations top nonfiction authors has joined us on our indepth program for a threehour conversation. For 2018, indepth is changing its course and weve invited fiction authors on the set, authors of historical fiction, National Security thrillers, science writers, commentators like brad ford, brad meltzer, Geraldine Brooks and many others. Their books have been read by millions around the country and around the world. So, if you are a reader, plan to join us for in depth on book tv. Its an Interactive Program first sunday of every month that lets you call and talk directly to your favorite authors and a bowl kicks off on sunday janua january 2 nude with david ignatius, Washington Post columnist, and the author of ten National Security thrillers. You can join us live on january 7 or watch it on demand at tp. Org students can i cam in action. Video editing for the constitutional documentaries. This group showed us how it is done. Two interviews in one day. New students asked hardhitting questions about Immigration Reform and the dream act. Choose the provision of the u. S. Constitution and create a video illustrating why. Its open to all middle school and High School Students, grades six through 12. 100,000 in cash prizes will be awarded. The grand prize of 5,000 will go to the team with the best overall entry. The deadline is january 18. Get details on the website of the student cam. Org. Next on booktv afterwards, Progressive Policy Institute senior fellow David Osborne examines the Charter School movement and offers his outlook on the future of Public Education in his book reinvented americas schools. Hes interviewed by chester, senior fellow and president emeritus of the thomas b. Fordham institute. Host david, this book is such a