The Exchanges

Q The last thing I want to touch on before we wrap this up is how do we teach? I mean, one of the skills that I feel like we're not doing as good of a job as we can be doing with is critical thinking. So how do we teach critical thinking? To kids as parents, as teachers.

A So you can read about critical thinking. You can read, um, novels, stories about things, and then try to analyze what went wrong and whatever it was that that character was doing. That helps build critical thinking. Math helps build critical thinking also. But in fact, The thing that helps critical thinking development the best is doing it. And that's where the whole journalism thing comes in because you have to think critically every day when you are writing stories and analyzing data and figuring out who said what and does it make sense and are they lying and are they telling the truth? That is how you develop critical thinking by actually doing it. I just recommend that An easy way for parents is to read books and then talk about the characters and the decisions that they made, and whether those decisions were good decisions or bad decisions. Just reading the book by yourself, I mean, you can do, you know, it's helpful, but the learning comes, comes about in the discussion and the speaking and talking about things that happened. And, Going back, for example, through history, and looking at some of the things that happened historically, and how they impact the world today. I mean, one of the most impactful assignments that I gave to my students was, 1984. The book, they had to read the book, and most teachers just Have you write about what happened in the book and, you know, …

AI assessment note: “An easy way for parents is to read books and then talk about the characters”

Q That's incredible. Why do you think journalism is such a good thing to teach students in this day and age?

A Journalism is the subject of the future. It's the curriculum for the 21st century. And it's because just look at what a journalist learns to do. First, they learn to collect information from multiple sources. You know, they can be online, they can be in interviews, they can be just observing, walking around, and then you have to take all that information, all that data, and figure out what's most important, and I can tell you that's really, really hard for most people. They cannot figure out what's most important in all the information they collect, and so this is a skill that students develop And then, not only do they figure it out, they then have to write about it in a way that's engaging. Because I always say to them, if the most important part of your story is at the end, No one's gonna get there. Even if you tell them you're gonna give them a pot of gold, they'll never find out. Because if the first part, the lead of the story isn't engaging, then, you know, you've lost the battle. So you teach them how to communicate, how to write really well, how to speak well, because they have to work within teams. No one puts out a newspaper or magazine alone. You have to work with people, other people, And then in addition to that, you learn all the tech skills. You learn media literacy because it's all done online. You know, not only do we publish in hard copy, but we publish every…

AI assessment note: “It's the curriculum for the 21st century. And it's because just look at”

Q I think one of the byproducts of that is kids are interested. Like, what makes them interested? Like, what makes them interested in what you're teaching, or not even teaching, what you're Sort of facilitating them to teach themselves in a way.

A Well, what I'm teaching them is to how to express themselves about something that they're already interested in. So I try to make sure that I understand what they're interested in. And I'll tell you, kids have a hard time figuring out what they're interested in when they're in the 10th grade. That's when I get them. And the reason they have such a hard time is because they're so used to being told what to do. It makes them You know, at least eight weeks to figure out something that they want to write about, something that they're interested in. They're waiting for me to give them topics, like five different topics, and then they can choose between the topics. It's like, it's never coming. It's the whole world. You get to pick Everything between, you know, whatever you're interested in is what is the, what I want you to work on. And after the first, you know, eight or 10 weeks, they get better at it. By the time they're in the 11th grade or the 12th grade, they become experts at it. If you saw the stories that are in the publications, You would say, wow, but they're all stories that the kids have come up with. They're all things they are interested in. I mean, they did a spreadsheet on, um, divorce, for example, and the question was, how does divorce affect kids? They wrote it from their perspective. Like, okay, we know how it affects you if you're getting a divorce. But how abo…

AI assessment note: “what I'm teaching them is to how to express themselves about something that they're already interested in”

Q I definitely see the role of journalism in the future. It sounds so contrary to what I think of when I think of a classroom, which is almost memorization, and suffering, and listening carefully, and following instructions, and did you land on this naturally, or like, how did this happen?

A So yes, I, I, I did land on this naturally. I basically did not want to teach in the traditional method, where just as you describe, you know, the teacher's in charge, all you're doing is memorizing, memorizing things that you don't want to memorize, that you see no relevance for memorizing. Um, so I changed the whole structure starting in the 19 eighties, and I was, as you can imagine, seen as kind of a maverick. Like, what is she doing in that classroom? And fortunately, by the time You know, they got really serious about it. I already had tenure. So it was okay for me to continue doing this, even though there was a lot of sort of oversight of people like, you know, these kids, they need to sit quietly and memorize. Um, and I said, well, not in my class.

AI assessment note: “So yes, I, I, I did land on this naturally.”

Q Two more things I want to touch on before we go. Um, what do you see as the difference in generations? You've been teaching for a while now. How do you see kids changing?

A I was just with a group of my friends who brought their children up in the seventies and the eighties, and we all talked about how different it is today. Back in the seventies and eighties, we trusted our kids. You could walk down the street. You could go to the store by yourself. My children rode their bikes to the swim and tennis club by themselves when they were seven or eight years old. They went swimming. They, they were there swimming by themselves. There was a lifeguard at the pool, of course, but you know, they were eight years old and I didn't worry. And I, and there was no phone, so there was no way for me to, like, call them and say, you have to come home right now. So there was a lot more trust, and kids were growing up with a lot more independence. That is the biggest difference between what was happening in the seventies, eighties, nineties, and today.

AI assessment note: “kids were growing up with a lot more independence. That is the biggest difference”

Q find age-appropriate media for your kids, explore the various roles in bringing up a child between parents, teachers, and grandparents, and discuss how to teach critical thinking and so much more. It's time to listen and learn. You wrote a book that was passed to me by one of my friends called How to Raise Successful People, and the first question I have around this is what makes someone successful?

A Well, that's a, that's a great question. You're getting to the heart of the question right away. Um, I think what makes somebody successful is when they believe in their dreams and also have the support to achieve those dreams. And when they feel pretty good about themselves, I think that that's probably the number one definition I have of success, because a lot of people think that when I'm talking about success, I'm talking about having a lot of money, and that's not true, because I've seen a lot of people with a lot of money who are pretty unhappy. I think having support by people that care about you, love you, And people where you have a good relationship and where you can actually achieve some of your dreams. That's success.

AI assessment note: “what makes somebody successful is when they believe in their dreams”

Q So what should a parent do in that case? Like when a child is supposed to clean the room and doesn't, and you don't want to be the enforcer, which we, most parents would probably default to. How do you handle that?

A The reason you want to clean that house or whatever is so that, you know, you can move forward with the next day and have a clean house. So there's usually things that you have to do Or want to do, go out, you know, shopping, go for a trip, take a walk, go with a dog, or whatever. It's like, oh my god, I don't think we can go right now. Um, yeah, there seems to be a problem with your room and with the house. You know, how soon do you think you can get this, you know, cleaned up so that we can go? You have to enforce it, at least at the beginning, and then you won't have to do it later on, because once it becomes a habit, and once it becomes a Something that they see, oh, this is a block to the next activity.

AI assessment note: “how soon do you think you can get this, you know, cleaned up so that we can go?”

Q What was that? Can you explain that? I don't know. Brown versus.

A So the, the Supreme Court decision, which enforced integration of the schools, so that the busing came out of that, where, you know, your neighborhood school was no longer your neighborhood school. Your neighborhood school was a school where people were integrated. They were bused in from different areas of the city. So the neighborhood school became a melting pot. And that was an attempt to bring kids together so that they would understand each other's culture, so that they would understand that if your skin is black, or if your skin is white, or whatever color your skin is, whatever your ethnicity, we're basically all the same. And we can make friends with all these people. And so that works to some degree. But as we can see, inner city schools They're all usually one ethnicity, either black or Hispanic or, or both or something like that, and so the flight of the, you know, the, the white privileged is to private schools, so they don't, it doesn't impact the private schools. This decision, Supreme Court decision, did not impact the private schools, and so a lot of, a lot of kids Don't have this opportunity to know other people from other ethnicities, just like you said earlier. And, you know, if you're first meeting somebody from another ethnic group when you're 20, it's not like growing up with them. And it's better for kids to grow up with different ethnicities, different c…

AI assessment note: “the Supreme Court decision, which enforced integration of the schools”

Q Can you expand a little bit more on collaborative parenting, specifically what parents can do, and also maybe dive into a little bit of electronic device usage at home in the role of parents? Or maybe we can start with the role of parents versus the role of teachers at school and then dive in through each of them.

A Right. So we can talk about the role of parents. So we all have They, we all have things we want our kids to do, and when they're little, it's harder to collaborate with them, but you can still set up the pattern, you know, about what, what is it that you would like to eat? You can have two or three choices, so you're picking what you might want to eat. That's really easy for, you know, a little baby, you know, you give three choices, so it's, the idea is setting up choice. That's like, what do you want to eat? But then in terms of like rules around the house, Um, we, some of the things are, you have to pick up your toys, you have to pick up after yourself. Ok, let's set up a program, a pattern of behavior, where we're gonna decide, how are we going to clean the house? What do you think we should be doing? How should it happen? You know, mom doesn't want to clean the house all the time. Dad doesn't want to do that either. You know, you're part of the team. Even though you're smaller, You're younger. You're still a team member. So let's see what we as a team can decide about how we're going to clean the house, how we're going to clean your room, how we're going to do the laundry, things like that. You know, when they see themselves as part of a team effort, it's much easier for them to self-regulate because they know that they're, that they're part of a group, part of a team. An…

AI assessment note: “So we can talk about the role of parents... the idea is setting up choice.”

Q Can you elaborate a little bit on that's how we ruin empathy?

A Well, you ruin empathy by not having an opportunity To interact with other people. I mean, when you interact with other people, and you see how they feel, and you see their emotions, and then you can put yourself in their shoes, that builds empathy. And one of the things that I try to build into all my children, and all my students, is empathy. Empathy for those of us who don't have Everything that they need. Empathy for people who have bad luck or, you know, get a disease or don't have enough money to pay for things that they want. I mean, if we don't have real world interactions with people, we cannot develop that kind of empathy. Because on your computer and on your phone and in the movies, we see these things happening. We develop the roots of empathy. But we can't really do it because the other person isn't really there. There's no real human being. I mean, I have a story in my book, which is one of the stories about empathy. And I did this, actually, I guess it was just my personality. When we went out to buy a Christmas tree, every year we would buy Christmas trees. We didn't cut them down. Some years we did, but most of the years we went to a lot to pick a Christmas tree. And I would always say to the kids, Why don't we pick one of the trees that doesn't look as good as all the rest. Let's pick a tree that no one else would want and decorate it to make it into the most …

AI assessment note: “you ruin empathy by not having an opportunity To interact with other people.”

Q Where do we get this notion that success is tied up in long titles or money?

A Well, I think we get the notion, especially from money, that because you have money, then you have all this ability to do things. And while that might be true, You know, you have the ability to fly first class, ability to travel where you want, to buy these houses that you have always dreamed about, and I think that money does help. You need some money in order to be able to live in a reasonably decent place and have clothes and have food and, and have an ability to take vacations. They don't have to be really glamorous, but you don't need to have tons of money. You don't have to have billions. You don't even have to have millions. Um, and I think people assume that if you have the money that you're then somehow going to be really happy. But I've seen people who have a lot of money, you know, millions and billions, and they have a really hard time making friends. And I'm talking about friends, people who really care about you and have a good relationship with you. And part of the reason they have a hard time making friends Is they're never sure whether somebody wants to be friends with them because they have a lot of money, or somebody really likes them. And it's hard to figure that out. When you have a billion dollars, it's hard to figure out whether that person is there because of your money, or whether they're there because of you. Very difficult.

AI assessment note: “we get the notion, especially from money, that because you have money, then you have all this ability”