Talk Of The Neighborhoods

0:00I'm Gest Hosting Tonight for Joe Heisler who is on a well-deserved night off. We are coming to you live from our beautiful B&N Studios here in Eigelston Square. And you can also listen to us live on WBCA 102.9 FM. I have two incredible guests tonight. Our first half hour, we will be talking with John Griffin. John is at Partners in Democracy and he's the Executive Director for Mass Action. John in his organization are behind three of the ballot questions we'll be facing in November. So we're going to take a deep dive on those. And then in our second half hour, we have Dr. Deshon Washington. Dr. Washington has the distinction of being the first black man to be named as Massachusetts Teacher of the Year in 2024. And he's also the founder and president of Cultivating Changemakers. He's an author, a motivational speaker, and we're going to learn a lot from Dr. Washington tonight about financial literacy. So please stay tuned.

1:24Hello again. And thanks for staying with us. We are so pleased to have with us tonight, John Griffin. John is at Partners in Democracy and he is the Executive Director for Mass Action. And behind three of the nine ballot questions that we will see on our ballots. In November, John, thanks so much for being here tonight. Thank you, Mary. It's great to be here. So before we dive in on the three ballot questions here behind, tell us what the process looks like to even get a question on the ballot. Yeah. So Partners in Democracy, like you said, we're supporting three of the ballot measures that are going to be on the ballot in November. And each one of them is run by their own ballot committee. And there is a whole process by which they go to the ballot. And so what you do is a year or more before the actual election, you submit the language to the Attorney General's office. You only need 10 signatures when you do that. Okay. But then if the Attorney General says yes, then you have a lot more signatures that you need to get. That's 75,000, exactly.

2:24Not a light lift. No, not a light lift. And it's only within a couple of weeks in the fall, but that happens. Wow. So it's a real sprint. And even at that point, that's only the first step in a long hurdle. You do that. It goes to the legislature. The legislature can weigh in. If they don't, you have to then get another 15,000 and change signatures. Yeah. And if you do that and go through all those steps, then you get on the ballot and then the real campaign starts. And these are to be clear, these are binding ballot questions. So come November, if these measures get the required number of votes, which is the majority, within 30 days they become law, is that accurate? It's just like any other law that the legislature could pass. Okay. So it depends on what it says in the law. The law can say this one will come into effect in the next by any election. Interesting. Or can say it'll come into effect immediately upon passage. Okay. So the election reform we're talking about, that will go into effect two years after election day in 26, if it happens to win.

3:26Others might go into effect much earlier. Okay. And before we proceed, tell us what partners in democracy is for those that might not be aware of this organization. Yeah. So partners in democracy is an organization that was founded in Massachusetts to do something we call democracy renovation, which basically means giving people the tools that they need to engage in public life and civic life, and then also trying to reform our institutions in Massachusetts. So it actually responds when people flex that civic muscle. And right now we're working on these ballot measures, but we also work on legislation. We work on trying to give people civic skills and training. The idea is just to help make our civic culture healthier in Massachusetts over the long haul. Yeah. And this was founded by Professor Danielle Allen at Harvard, and I believe she's a professor of, is it the philosophy of political science? Is that accurate? She's a professor of many things. Okay. And philosophy of political science, that's right, public policy. She's at the education school as well. And yes, she founded partners in democracy, and she also founded and spearheaded one of

4:28the three ballot questions that we'll talk about today. Okay. And former gubernatorial candidate as well. In 2022. So she's done a lot. So before we dive in, tell me why one would go through this process of putting something on the ballot. What led you to this point? Yeah. So I grew up in Massachusetts in Walpole. I'm on the planning board in Walpole. Congrats. You know, thank you. Congrats, I'm sorry, whichever one you want to say. I'm a kid. Danielle, as you said, ran for governor in Massachusetts. And over the course of that campaign, saw firsthand the many ways in which people felt like they were being left out of the political process, which in a lot of the work that we've done together, I had also seen and experienced. And I think a lot of people in Massachusetts right now are very focused on the mess that is the federal government and national politics and really want to spine some way to get involved in making our politics better. And what I think a lot of people don't realize is that Massachusetts, if we want to be a leader

5:30in what democracy should look like nationally, we're actually pretty behind on a lot of key metrics right now. Okay. And a way that's not true of a lot of our history. And Massachusetts is often a leader, but we have the least competitive state elections of any state in the entire country. We're one of only two states where you don't have a right to make a public information request of your legislature or your governor. We have bigger black, white voter turnout gaps than states like Louisiana and Mississippi, depending on when you measure. And all of this means I think that if we want Massachusetts to take a step forward and say democracy is obviously not going to look like it looked in 2016 in the future, we have to have a question of what it means going forward. There are some places that are trying to restrict the right to vote. There are some places that are trying to gerrymander. I think if we want to have a different way of proceeding, we need to actually do well in our own metrics. And we have the opportunity to do that with these ballot measures to improve on what we have. Okay.

6:30So question one, which you are behind, and that's the public records. So tell us a little bit about how much of an outlier Massachusetts is in terms of being able to request and receive documents from legislators or the governor's office. So we're a huge outlier when it comes to this question. I think a lot of listeners might be familiar with FOIA, the Freedom of Information Act. Which is federal. Which is federal. And so you have the right when it comes to your federal government to make requests of how the government is operating in your name, things that it does in agencies and legislation. That's also true for cities and towns, even here in Massachusetts. So like I said, I'm on the planning board in Walpole. All of my emails and have to do with the volunteer job that I do there are all public records. If I'm interacting with people about the planning board activities, my constituents or anyone else could make a request and ask for that. That's not true of the legislature in Massachusetts.

7:33When they vote on things in committee, for instance, there's no right of the public to know how your legislator voted in a committee, which is a crucial step. They sometimes do release that of their own accord, but you don't have the right to it. And there are only two states in the entire country where you don't have that right for the legislature or the governor. It's just us in Michigan. It's just so interesting. So two democratic states, essentially, where this isn't permitted right now. Right. Two democratic states where there's the least required visibility, the least right to visibility for voters to know what's going on in their name. And for those that might be on the other side of this issue, because I know that not only is partners in democracy behind this, but you've got the League of Women Voters, I believe, some other progressive groups, what's the argument against doing something like that? Why would someone be against it? Yeah, there are a few important ones that when the groups that were involved in writing this question, we took it into account and tried to make sure that we understood the

8:35possible failure modes. One is that a lot of legislators worry that constituent information could become public if this bill or if this ballot initiative passes. In the law, it says specifically that constituent information is not public, even if this ballot measure passes. Because people do reach out to their legislators at times with deeply personal issues that might be impacting their lives, whether it's related to immigration issues or so. I can understand the fear around something like that. But this would not do that, you're saying. It wouldn't. And the reason why we know that with a fairly high degree of confidence is that it doesn't create any new law. All that it does is it says the same records law that applies to me and my town capacity or even to agencies, state agencies, will apply to the legislature. So the law has already been in effect in Massachusetts for many, many years.

9:40There are things that we can do to tweak around the edges to make it better. But we know that the law works in Massachusetts. And there's also additional protections to say specifically your constituents will not be revealed in the legislation. Okay, so that's important. And then, okay, ballot question number three. All party primaries. Yes. We're also known as nonpartisan primaries or is that not correct? All party primaries. Yes, yes. Okay, so that's right, because there are people, well you explain it, but you will do this better than I. I appreciate it. I'll start with the why. Okay. So, we actually just had a primary in Massachusetts, right? Which I hope many of your listeners voted in. One of the races was just solved today. Indeed. Indeed. We had a slow count. That's right. In Massachusetts, usually about a fifth of the voters vote in primaries. It's not a large number. It's a very disappointing number. It is a very disappointing number. It's especially disappointing because often in Massachusetts, the primary effectively decides who wins.

10:42You can have lots of opinions about what that means or why, but the fact of the matter is, in a lot of districts in Massachusetts, there's only one party on the ballot in the general election, or it's very lopsided. You know it advance who's going to win. More than half of our legislative races don't have more than one name on the ballot, more than one major party. And what's the percentage of races that go on contested, John? Do you know that? I mean, it's a fairly high number every two years. It's more than half. Yeah. I don't know exactly what's 60, something for some. I'm speaking conservatively off the cuff, but it gets well more than half. Most incumbents go and contested. The primaries are more contested than the general election, but very few people have a say in the primary, just because the turnout is so low. All party primaries tries to put the effective decision on who represents the district into the hands of the 60, 70, 80% of people who vote in November.

11:45OK. And the way that it does that is it says no more separate party primaries. Instead, we'll run our elections for legislature, a lot like we do in Boston, for city races. That's right, which are nonpartisan. Nonpartisan. The difference here is that on Boston's ballots, you don't see the party affiliations. That's right. Voters, under all party primaries, will still know what parties candidates belong to. They'll also be able to see endorsements from multiple major and minor parties right on the ballot. Oh, interesting. Yes. Which community groups could make use of. Could make a really long ballot. It could. It could. So, will primaries even be needed then? If this ballot question were to prevail, what would we vote on in the primary? The primary would win it down to two people. To the two top. So only you would only then participate in a primary if there were more than two candidates going into a pretty like that would be. And for a particular seat. Under the law, we don't eliminate the primary even in that case. Okay. That would certainly be a reasonable thing to think about doing going forward.

12:48Okay. But what it means is that anytime there's any competition for the seat at all, the people that decide are the vast majority of voters who vote in November. Regardless of whether two Democrats, two Republicans, are one of each or a Democrat in a green. Okay. The majority decides in November. So it seems to me that this particular question has been a bit more controversial. Tell me who's in favor of it and who's against it. Yeah. And what are the no folks saying? We have a great and growing coalition in support of this ballot initiative. So Governor Patrick is in support. We have auditor Diana DiZoglio, Congressman Joe Kennedy. We have a number of municipal officials who are coming out in support to Nisha Sullivan from the NAACP. Mm-hmm. Several democracy groups in Massachusetts, all of whom I think believe that we want to have more competition and elections so that our elected officials are listening to more voters so that voters know that they're going to be heard at the ballot box. There are some folks who are in opposition.

13:49I'm not sure. I don't want to call any person out specifically. What state party leader, what are they saying from? Both of the, so both of the two major parties are in opposition. And what they'll say is they think that parties should control their own nomination for who appears on the ballot. They're concerned that a longer election will make it harder for candidates to run. I think that it's important that the parties have a role in organizing, but it's also important that voters have a real choice on the ballot. The party still get to control who is their representative on the ballot. They just don't get to control who appears on your ballot. And when it comes to candidates running, the idea here is that if you don't have to worry about getting past the low turnout primary, it makes it easier for new candidates to get into that top two. You don't have to be the one person who succeeds in one primary. Interesting. A lot of the races that we just had, the primary races, you could see two Democrats appear and not have one of them eliminated so early.

14:49So the biggest thing I'm guessing that we would see as voters is that when I go to my polling place for the primary, they won't ask me anymore what party I belong to because if you're a Republican, you get the R ballot. If you're a Democrat, you get the D. Everyone would get the same ballot. Yes. And if you want to vote for a Democrat, for one office, or a Republican for the other office, you would have that. You could totally do that, which right now voters aren't allowed to. Until the general election. Until the general election. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. And then number four. Number four. Election day registration or same day registration. Tell me a bit about that one. So election day registration. All that this says is that on the day of the election, if you move recently, if you, for whatever reason, didn't fill out your municipal census, the little piece of paper you get in the mail every year asking you to verify where you live. And how many dogs you have?

15:49I didn't know that. There is a dog question. Did not even know there is. If for whatever reason you haven't registered at the time of the election day, this ballot question says you can register on the election day, provided that you have something stating where you live. Okay. And you can still cast your vote. So as long as you have your driver's license or a utility bill. Utility bill, anything that shows that that's the place where you live. Okay. And this is especially important. In Massachusetts, it happens to hundreds or thousands of voters every year that for various reasons they have difficulty voting or get turned away, either because they haven't registered or because they've changed registration or because they didn't fill out that census, they'd all be able to vote much more easily. And we know that this impacts places that have lots of renters. We know it impacts communities of color, especially Massachusetts, students, people often don't know retirees also because they move. It happens to many people in Massachusetts every year.

16:51And if you think about it, our primary is on September 1st to this year. Moving day for a lot of people. Yes, which is hard to even move around the city that day. Exactly, never mind good to vote. Exactly. And never mind get registered in time when you're moving. So especially in the state like Massachusetts where our primary happens around the time when some people move, this is going to make it a lot easier to call more people in and have them actually cast their vote and have their voice heard. Yeah. Tell me who's against this one. There's not a lot of people that are at least publicly against it at this point. I don't even think that there's a opposition committee that's been formed. I know the legislature has had a bill in the legislature for several years to pass this and for whatever reason has not done so. Interesting. And so this valid initiative is a way for the voters to do it themselves. Yeah. Yeah. I actually served as a poll observer in Maine a number of years ago in the midst of a contentious presidential election. And they have had election day registration for some time.

17:54And they had just a separate booth. So not the booth where you check into vote, but just another table with poll workers who seemed like a fairly seamless process. People were pulling out their driver's license. And I mean, currently we have a deadline that's what, typically three weeks before, three or four weeks, right? I think before the election where you have to either register if you've moved, but if you miss that deadline and for young people that might be, I mean, we've got a lot of movement in the city. People coming in, people going out and you hate for someone to miss their opportunity to vote and have their votes heard. And you can see it, like I said, in every election year, you can see that the turnout is lower in places where people move more often, where there are more barriers. And this is, again, a way of saying some parts of the country people are trying to take a way and put up barriers. We should be trying to remove barriers here. I'm curious to know, given the focus of your organization, there's been talk and I'm not aware of other states doing this and you probably would be, but what about Saturday

18:57elections? When I think about just the incredibly low turnout we see, even in, very, to me, every election is consequential. I wish everyone felt that way, but what other methods are you all looking to, to increase voter participation, to let people know that their voice really does matter? I mean, we had a election here in Boston that was determined by one vote. We just had a Senate race today that was determined by 35 votes. Every vote matters. What other things could we look to to break down some of these barriers that we know exist? Yeah. I mean, so I think that for one thing, the legislature did pass a great piece of legislation a few years ago, allowing no excuse vote by mail. Vote by mail is very helpful and making sure people are able to vote. And I think when it comes to other things that we could do, I think this is a great opportunity for cities and towns in Massachusetts. Something that we care a lot about, apart from his democracy, is trying to take more of an attitude of encouraging people to try out different ways to renovate their democracy,

20:01have more participatory elections. Cities and towns, I think, several of them want to change their election day. There are home will petitions of the legislature from a few cities and towns to do that. So it would have to go through the state house. So it's not under local control to say we're going to do elections on a Saturday. If you want to change your local elections, exactly, you can put them through the state legislature. But I think that across the cities and towns, there are lots of different groups that want to try out new ways of running elections, whether that's ranked choice voting, whether that's Saturday elections, whether that's moving local elections to be at the same time as state elections. I know in Canton, they have a home will petition for that. And my attitude, our attitude is that we should be encouraging people across the state to be thinking more about what are the ways that we can test these ideas out in the cities and towns so that we can see which ones work the best and work from that direction forward. Yeah. So what's next on the horizon for you, John, in your role? What are some of the, well, how are you feeling about these three in terms of likelihood and

21:03feeling pretty confident? I'm feeling pretty confident. Yeah. I mean, we've had some good public polling recently on question three, the all party primaries, feeling very confident about the public records law and the election day registration. I think I spend a lot of my time going out and doing community group conversations in all parts of the state. And everywhere I go, there's a hunger for people to think more about how we can make our democracy work better in Massachusetts. Again, a lot of people, I think, have a lot of fear. They have a lot of questions about the federal government. They want something to do here in Massachusetts. And I think there's a hunger to actually get involved and make things work better here in the state. Yeah, that's great. Well, John, thank you so much. Thank you. We'll have to have you back and have more conversations about what you're going to be up to for next year. So thanks for making the time. Thank you. And please stick with us. We will be back in just a few minutes with Dr. Deshawn Washington. So please stay tuned. Thank you. So I'm on to McCormick. And this is Jamaica Pond. Today, we've come down to talk about some of the history of it and take a lovely walk

22:07around this one and a half mile trail that surrounds it. Boats on the water swans near the shore, benches tucked into the trees. The longer you stay here, the more the pond starts to reveal. Located in Jamaica Plane, Jamaica Pond is part of Boston's Emerald Necklace. The historic park system shaped by Frederick Law Olmsted in the late 1800s. It also connects to the Boston Walking City Trail, a 27 mile route linking 17 neighborhoods and 30 public green spaces. The pond itself is a glacial kettle. Before it became the public park we know today, Jamaica Pond had a working life. In winter, portions of the frozen pond were cut and sold by ice dealers. The pond is deeper than it looks. From the path the shoreline can seem calm and shallow, but Jamaica Pond drops more than 50 feet at its deepest point. The water is foreboding, fishing, wildlife, and looking peacefully while quietly reminding everyone of Boston's beauty. The boat house brings people onto the water.

23:09The path connects people around it. It is a place for walkers, runners, families, photographers. You can see the traffic. You can hear it too. But around the pond, the sound gets mixed with ducks. Jamaica Pond also has smaller stories hiding in plain sight. In the middle of the water, it sits a small, tree covered island, known as Shays Island. That same mix of official park space and local personality shows up along the path with the Gorilla Bench. The Bench was installed by artist Matthew Hensman in 2006. And while not originally approved by the city, people liked it enough that it got to stay, which is probably the most Bostonian outcome possible, unauthorized public art becoming beloved. Jamaica Pond is not just a place people pass through. It's also a gathering space. One example is 826 Boston's half, half, half, half, marathon.

24:16A short 0.826 mile race held here at Jamaica Pond to support free writing and tutoring programs for students. Jamaica Pond is scenic, but not just scenery. It's a glacial pond. Wildlife habitat, people come here to walk and sometimes just be near the water for a while. From Jamaica Pond, I'm Monty McCormick. I'm Kenneth Klaus. My wife and I are proprietors, owners of the Brattle Bookshop. We're in downtown Boston and West Street. When my parents bought the store, there was a little side street in what was Scully Square called Brattle Street. To make it even more confusing, the street doesn't exist anymore. It's where Boston City Hall Plaza is now.

25:17When we first moved in 1969 to West Street, we're in a five-story, 150-year-old building. February of 1980, I got to call it four o'clock in the morning. The building was on fire. It literally burned to the ground. We essentially had no insurance, but the people near the soul gave us donated books. Kevin White, who was the mayor of the time, came down with a carload of books. Four years after that in 1984, we moved into this location and we've been there since. That's where we are now. The empty lot that many people, where we have our outside, stands and tables at, if you actually look at the building next door, you can see the outline of the old building. We're very aware of keeping the store name now there, and it's fun. Because basically what we are is stories, so there's a million stories to tell. Thanks for staying with us.

26:31I'm so happy to be joined by Dr. DeShawn Washington. Dr. Washington has the historic distinction of being the first black man to win Massachusetts teacher of the year in 2024. He was teaching in the Lexington Public Schools. He's also the founder and president of Cultivating Changemakers. He's the author of books. He is the creator of a financial literacy program, a TED Talk speaker, Dr. Washington. What a pleasure to have you here tonight. It's a pleasure, Mary. How are you this year? I'm doing fine, and I just learned we are neighbors here in the great city of Boston, which is very exciting. I didn't know you lived so close to me. Tell me a bit about I first met you because of your wonderful honor as being teacher of the year. How does one, you are competing against more than 100,000 teachers in the state of Massachusetts. How does that even happen for an educator? To be honest, I didn't even know that teacher of the year even exists in Massachusetts,

27:33keeping that 100%. I received the email right before Christmas New Year break during the school year, and it was email like, hey, we're nominating you for 2024 Massachusetts teacher of the year, and it came from a combination of my principal at the time and a parent. So I'm like, wow, that's a very distinct honor to receive such a high regard. And I really didn't think much of it. So I honestly made it application out of respect to the people who nominated me, but then after that, honestly, I didn't think about it so much. And so I made my application, it was probably like in January. I heard back, I went around to which I had a record of myself teaching and give myself a reflection. And third grade, were you teaching third grade? I was teaching third grade in this time, yeah. So I had the little ones eight, nine years old. Yeah, you know, and like the power of just teaching them, bringing the imagination and all that good stuff. So I had a chance to teach and do a reflection, still didn't think much of it.

28:38It wasn't until I became a semi-finalist in the spring. I was like, oh, I need to take this seriously. And I need to let my students know we are in a race to be the recognized classroom team in the Massachusetts. That was when the students also brought in to the process. And so my third round was an interview. Four-friar was like an all-day department of education, desi, and my school was following me, seeing me do all the different teaching and learning things. And when I became teacher of the year, I got announced and had my assembly at the Hastings Elementary School in Lexington. I would say it really propelled me as one of the greatest professional moments of my life. I can only imagine what did the kids they must have been over the moon. Well, here's the cool part, Mary, is that I actually looped with my students from third grade to fourth grade. Oh, nice. So I was a third grade teacher for the 22-23 school year.

29:40Okay. And then I looped with my students for the 23-24 school year. It's a fourth grade. So it was the same students that saw the very beginning of the process. We was able to actually celebrate together. And that's what really made that moment special. I remember this very vividly, I would tell my students right before the celebration because you couldn't tell anybody this. I need y'all to trust up on this Friday. And that was the cue. The law of them recognized, I think I kind of know what he's talking about, but it was like kind of an end thing. And so when I was announced, all the students were trusting and finding a selfie, they find us out. And it really wanted to be a celebration for them because that's a history moment for them to see the first black man in Massachusetts history to earn such honor and know that they were part of that journey. They can literally say like I was part of history, black history in the making, live in person. It's wonderful. And then tell me, is it almost like a sabbatical year that happens after the announcement, what

30:44did you do? Were you going to classrooms around the state? What did that year look like for you? Well, I wish it was a sabbatical. It was busy. It was busy. It was busy. First I still had a continued teaching in the classroom. Oh. Yes, I still had to report every day back in the classroom, continue to support my fourth grade students now. In addition to that, when you become teacher of the year, there is a group of teachers from all over the country that also nominate their state as teacher of the year. So there's about 50 states plus five other church dictions. So 55 total are meeting up multiple times a year to build community with each other and our service with teacher of the year. So nationally, that's what it looks like where we'll go to DC for the state dinner. We'll do advocacy work and legislation. We had a week where we did space camp and Huntsville, Alabama, went to a national football championship game in Atlanta.

31:45We did a lot of cool things. But then in Massachusetts, it's back to more of the groundwork, listening carefully to our teachers and our needs at the time. There was conversations about, for example, reading and literacy and just the needs of more supports in that area. And to educators talk about the resources that are available in their school community. Going around to do public speaking in various universities and school buildings and PDs, doing all that and teaching. Mindjell is also in a doctor program there. I was just going to ask about that and tell us what you were working on in your doctoral program at Vanderbilt in Nashville. Yes, I was at Vanderbilt University of study in K-12. The Harvard of the South. The Harvard of the South. You absolutely. Shout out to Vandy. That's right. You know, I was studying K-12, education leadership and policy at Vanderbilt University. So every other Friday, I would fly from Boston to Nashville to take classes Friday morning,

32:50all throughout the day Friday, all throughout the day Saturday, fly back Saturday night, go to church Sunday, back into the work on Monday, make it like it was really no issue with that at all. The thing about it is that when you're chugling now teacher of the year, you're going through a doctoral program, you're still called to teach and it's also life, right? You learn how to balance all of these components and give it this proper time. When I became teacher of the year, many people said, I think you should scale back of your doctorate. I'm like, no, I was already doing this before, teacher of the year. I'm going to learn how to make this new gig work for me as I continue to advance my doctorate. What tell us about your dissertation? Yes. Dissertation was focused on early literacy in Chattanooga, Tennessee. So, there was a school district I worked in and Chattanooga is a client. And they were looking at literacy rates.

33:51They found that in their school district, 75% of their third grade students were reading below grade level. Because of retention law in Tennessee, those students, if they didn't have tutor in, didn't have like IEP or some other metric that they were using to help students advance that they actually would be retained in that grade and fourth grade. So this particular school district said, all right, we're going to create a position called the Responsive Intervention Teacher or the RTI teacher. This is a teacher that's going to focus on reading. They're going to support the reading instruction. They're going to support evidence-based instruction. That's going to be rolled out in tier one spaces, which is the whole classroom where you teach in the classroom, you have all the kids in there. That's like your tier one whole space. And so they're going to work with those teachers, but then there's also a poll out we will call where some students might step out of the classroom and work with a teacher in a different space. That might be considered a tier two or tier three.

34:53Tier two being is a small group of students working together. Tier three is one's more individualized. And it will be another adult, another teacher that's working with those students. They wanted to create a pipeline where in any of the levels, whether you're in the whole classroom, whether you're in a small classroom, or if you're working individually with a teacher, you're again the best, most optimal reading experience from a trained tutor, a trained interventionist, from a classroom teacher, from a special education teacher. Whoever is in the space that's going to provide the instruction, those kids are going to do absolutely well. And so we work with them for an entire year. I was actually in a group with a couple other students. And at the end of the year, we found that students were progressing significantly in their reading because of these wrap around services, meaning they were getting services in all different parts of their learning day. Whether there's in their classroom, or if it's in their smaller group space, or if it's

35:54in a small individual, they're getting those services all throughout and is improving their re-instruction in the kindergarten first, second grade. So then when they take their state assessment and third grade, those students have a higher probability of being proficient or higher in the reading because they've seen what skills they need and what grade they met those needs. And now they have the ability to read, to learn. Yeah. Would you say that that experience for you in Tennessee, did that serve as a catalyst for you to become so deeply involved with the early literacy effort here in Massachusetts? Absolutely. So, you know, the early literacy conversations in Massachusetts, I'll say at the friendliest way I could say it is that it was certainly a debate conversation. It was definitely a lot of opinions on what was best for students, what was best for educators, what was best for the profession, teaching and learning. And you know, firstly, you know, being in a school district, you hear one side of an argument.

36:58And you know, being in my doctoral program, exposed me to a different argument, one argument being, well, you know, there's this argument, well, like if we create, you know, the standards for teaching, reading, that teachers going to lose their voice, they're not going to be able to do what they do to bring success. But then I went to Chattanooga and I got to see that work out there and I'm like, oh, wait a minute, not only do teachers maintain the authenticity, but they're trained in a way that's going to allow students to learn the letter sounds, they're going to be able to decode those letter sounds and be able to begin to read words on the page. They're going to learn about language, comprehension, word recognition, reading comprehension. All of those components are being taught from the expert to the teacher, which is then going to go over to the student. So those students are building up the skill set. So my research shaped my understanding of this work and it said, oh, man, like of course

38:02we need this in Massachusetts. And so it was probably like around soon afterwards as I was finishing up my doctoral program, we connected and talked about what does it look like to have a bill similar to that in Massachusetts where our kids get that same level of re-instruction, re- and support towards having a life long reading. Yeah, and now that's going to happen. And now that's going to happen. And I remember the day that you testified at the State House about the early literacy bill. And I also testified about a financial literacy bill. And that is something that you are also deeply passionate about. And I'm not sure if that was what led you to the creation of cultivating change makers, but tell us about your transition out of the classroom and into this new role that you've created and new organization that you've created. Yeah, so my transition out of the classroom really started one day in my last year teaching

39:03my students asked like, I want to learn how to use money, how to start a business. And I'm like, I got the perfect person that can come into the classroom to teach that. I invited a well-respected financial analyst to come to the classroom to teach financial literacy that day. And need us to say, those students just blossomed. They just loved everything they were learning, budgeting and credit scores. And you name it and we was talking about it. And I looked out in the pod for just the moment. So usually in schools, if you're teaching, let's say, fourth grade, you step out from your classroom, there's like a pod area with its other classrooms. They tend to be the same grade. So I see all my grade level team in the same space. And none of the other classrooms will learn about financial literacy on that day. So at first, I'm like, oh, well, they're probably going to get this anyway at some point. So it's probably not that big of a deal. But let me do some research to find out.

40:04And actually, very few students actually are getting financial literacy education in Massachusetts. There are only about 20 high schools that actually require students to take a standalone personal finance course out of the hundreds that are in Massachusetts. So most students going to go through K to 12, never learn anything in regards to financial literacy, money management, decision management, understanding the behaviors and habits about how you make a decision with money based on a particularly need, how to make sure that your funds are taken care of for an emergency circumstance that you have money for an emergency if it comes up. So these conversations and others just weren't happening enough. And come to find out there's actually correlations that are working to make sure that there is a standalone personal finance course that's going to be all throughout the high schools.

41:05So students are able to take and at least have the foundational skills for understanding financial literacy, money management, all those good things. So that's where that work started. And there's a lot of positive energy. A lot of people are like, yes, we need to have financial literacy. I spoke to hundreds of people that said to me in some way or another, I didn't have financial literacy when I was a kid. I wish I had it. Or... And that can't be. It wasn't offered to me. You know, so a lot of people wanted. I think one of the standing issues that has led to maybe it being paused or not advancing forward is how. Is how that's going to be implemented. Integrated into the school day, right? Integrated to schools. School is going to pay for the training and the professional development of our school community, our teachers and school leaders. So there's a lot of questions that's still there. But on the whole, there's more than 90 percent. This is survey that Massachusetts had, the Department of Education had, that 93 percent

42:13want to have financial literacy education. Yep. That survey was part, I believe, of the graduation council work that has been taking place over the last 18 months. And as a result of that, process in this 35-member committee that the governor appointed, financial literacy is part of the proposed new graduation framework. So that must feel really good. It feels good that there's a start where financial literacy is being proposed as part of the graduation council. I think there's definitely a space for that. I think where we need to go next, however, is more than just a module or more than just a one-time offering of personal finance. But truly a pipeline where there are educators that are trained and supported professionally coaching and mentorship on the personal finance. But there are more that are either credentialed to teach business or economics or bringing in

43:13new teachers, aspiring educators that are young, that want to teach the subject so that we have a plethora of teachers all across Massachusetts that could teach financial literacy because their school districts that have one high school, that have 5,000 students, it's unlikely that you're going to have one teacher teach 5,000 kids. You need to have multiple educators in spaces all around the Commonwealth to make sure that financial literacy is being taught to every single child. So it's a great start to have something on the table that says, we're going to be addressing personal finance, financial literacy. And it needs to be stronger than just an address of it, but really classes that is required for students to build their whole portfolio, if you will, they're brand, as many young folks will say today. So that when it get out to the world and they start owning their business, they have foundational skills in personal finance. And when would you start? I mean, if you could wave your magic wand, we know that it's part of the graduation framework

44:16so that will impact children in grades 9 through 12. How early would you start? Cultivating change makers will actually say that we should start as early as elementary school and even before that when children are four. Because research shows that children at the age of four years old are actually forming opinions about money. They hear conversations from their parents. They hear and people talk about money for good, not so good, whatever it is. Sometimes it's a stressful conversation. It's a stressful conversation. And so it actually form the rates how we view money early. So in our curriculum, we focus a lot on not just the knowledge base, that's obviously important. The children's books are important because we need to see children need to see themselves in books about money. But beyond that, there's also this part of identity and behavior. We have the examine who we are and who we're becoming as people in our relationship with finance.

45:17So for example, if I'm impulsive and I just make a lot of impulsive decisions, I tend to also make a lot of impulsive decisions around my finances. But if I understand my impulsivity early in life and understand that I'm prone to make decisions where I spend a lot of money, even though I don't earn a lot of money, I can actually begin to work on different types of habits of how that spending can actually go into an investment, can go into my emergency account that can go into a high yield savings account. And I can start to build wealth that's beneficial for me in case there's issues that come up later or want to save up for a vacation. I can start to build that out now and understand deeply who I am in my tendencies and my personality, now that all relates back to personal finance as well. So we're working and continuing to build on that portion of our curriculum where we're really examining who you are as a person in that relationship with money early.

46:18And if we can get that out in elementary schools, middle school, then in high school, now it's not personal finance 101, now we can really dive deep to an investment class. We could dive deep into an entrepreneurship class because now we have the tools and finance earlier in the game and we might even have practice time with a showcase or going up to a financial institution to display work earlier in our career. Then in high school is really about just holding in on brand new skills and then sub topic that we're covering. Yeah, that would be actually my son participated in an entrepreneurship class when he was in high school and he absolutely loved it. And I think that's just such a great way of thinking about how do we engage children in something that might be viewed as fun but could actually lead to building essential skills for whatever they might do next. And you talk about those essential skills. We call them those durable life skills. These are your critical thinking skills, your collaboration working together on a team.

47:22This is your metacognition and how you process thinking. You know, there's different durable life skills that's going to follow us beyond school into this thing called life. That's where personal finance also benefits as well. We're building up these durable life skills for kids today. Building them up so that way they have the tools necessary to actually utilize their finances in the real world or going back to reading for a moment, they could tap into the literacy aspect of personal finance and leverage that towards their success as well. Yeah. Do you think that it's opportunities or sort of outside the box classes like this, things that we, you know, that don't fall into sort of those typical categories of math, reading science, et cetera? Yes. Is that possibly an avenue for us to address some of the chronic absentee issues, for example, that we've been seeing, you know, ever since the pandemic and disrupted learning time and then back in school, but we continue to see districts struggling with getting kids

48:26to school every day. What do we need to do to better engage them and is financial literacy a piece of that puzzle? Well, as student once said to me, Mary, that I don't see the relationship of school with how my life operates. While I love to read, I love to do some math, I don't know where I'm doing math in my life. I don't really know where the history, lessons come in in life. And, you know, to those type of comments and statements, one, I acknowledge that school sometimes can have this distancing of what we're learning versus the actuality of experience. Right? Experiences teaches us in a whole different ways. You know, it's formal, it's continuous schooling, it's a space, it's one place that you could get education at the only place. But I think to your point where engagement really starts to lead up is the connection of how everything that we learn, whether it's reading, writing, math, history, science,

49:30personal finance, there's a connector back to our immediate life that we can pull in. You need to practice reading because those street signs is reading. There's a reading when it comes to picking up a newspaper and reading what's the latest news or reading when someone's laughing with versus at us. That's literacy as well. And there's folding, I think about folding all the time. Folding and getting your voice out is there's a literacy to be able to get your voice out to command what you're looking for from the candidates. And the same things like that for personal finance. And we could tap into more of how this skill could be immediately applied in your life and increase the engagement by not just getting a sitting get of knowledge, but having showcases, having opportunities with kids able to display their knowledge with creating children's books of choose your own adventures, for example, or creating board games that kids can

50:32practice playing that's influenced by some of the creative board games where there's folks on financial literacy. Now we're creators of knowledge, we're change makers of knowledge and wisdom. That's power. And when we could give young folks power like that and be able to cultivate power in that sort of way. That's when we start seeing excellence and kids can see, oh, what I am learning, I could bring back with me at four o'clock when I get picked up on the bus to go home. That's when that excellence really come out. All right, we're down to our last couple minutes. Let's talk about your book. And what's happening with your book, there you've been exciting event coming up later this month. Tell us about it. I have an event called a later this month called at the Frugal Bookstore. My book is called Thrive, Breaking Free from Survival Mode and Education. When I was a first year teacher, I was not that great of a teacher, Mary. I don't believe that, but. Yeah, you know, I learned how to teach, but there's some soft skills I didn't know, like the importance of cultivating connections, building classroom routines, things like that.

51:34I didn't have those skills immediately. And I actually needed support from my school administration and my classroom teachers and all those people that helped me to become a decent teacher over the years and pretty good one later on. So this book is a collection of stories from various educators from all around the world. And it's going to tell us all about how teachers, leaders, they don't have to be in education. They could be applied to any workspace. How to go from survival mode to thriving in any space that you operate. So my book, Thrive, I'm going to have an event on Friday, September 25th, 630 PM at Frugal Bookstore. Adress? Adress is going to be 57 on Warren Street. Okay. 7 o'clock. Is it 7? 630. 630. Okay. Great. Okay. All the welcome. Yes. Everyone's welcome.

52:34And your website is my website is cultivatingchangemakerslc.org. Wonderful. And that's where you can find, you know, a little bit about more about the background of my work currently with the financial literacy, how we're cultivating the community going from sea plants and to water and to prune it to harvesting. How we're going to harvest an entire community of young people who have the power and the knowledge to elevate excellence in a community space. That's so wonderful. Thank you for making the time. Thank you. Dr. Washington, such a pleasure to have you here tonight. So much, thank you. Thank you. Wonderful to have you all with us tonight. Please join again next week when Joe will be back and I hope you have a wonderful evening and a great weekend ahead. Good night.