Teru Clavel, WORLD CLASS: ONE MOTHER'S JOURNEY HALFWAY AROUND THE GLOBE IN SEARCH OF THE BEST EDUCATION FOR HER CHILDREN
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[1:01]I'm here today with Taru Clovell,
[1:03]who's the author of world class,
[1:05]one mother's journey half by year on the globe
[1:07]in search of the best education for her children.
[1:09]She is an education expert, columnist,
[1:12]and sought after public speaker.
[1:13]She has run her own educational consulting practice
[1:16]since 2010.
[1:17]She's contributed to the financial times
[1:18]in the Japan times among other publications
[1:21]and has appeared on CBS this morning,
[1:23]CNBC's Squawk Box, and other media outlets.
[1:26]She spent over a decade raising her family in Asia,
[1:28]which we're gonna talk all about.
[1:30]She has a BA in Asian Studies from Dartmouth College
[1:32]and an MS in Comparative International Education,
[1:35]which she received while living in Asia.
[1:37]She currently lives in New York with her three children.
[1:40]Welcome to her.
[1:41]Thanks for coming on Moms.
[1:42]Don't have time to read books.
[1:43]It's my pleasure, Zibi.
[1:44]Can you please tell us nurse what world class is about?
[1:47]Yeah, so I educated my kids, my three kids,
[1:51]in the local public schools of Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo,
[1:56]and then Palo Alto.
[1:57]I'm originally from New York City,
[1:59]so it chronicles how we left New York in 2006,
[2:03]and then we're in those cities for
[2:05]let's see, Hong Kong for four years, Shanghai for two,
[2:08]Tokyo for four, and then Palo Alto for two.
[2:11]And unlike the typical expatriate,
[2:14]we enrolled our children in the local public schools.
[2:17]So they had a fully immersive, cultural,
[2:19]and linguistic experience.
[2:21]And I was an education journalist overseas,
[2:24]and I have a master's in Comparative International Education.
[2:26]So it's, I would say, half anecdotal
[2:30]and half research-based, and it's basically
[2:32]to empower parents and educators
[2:34]and hopefully legislators, too,
[2:36]to understand what's going on overseas
[2:38]and what we can be doing differently,
[2:40]or what we are doing really well here in the US.
[2:42]The book was pretty clear in that we are not doing,
[2:45]it's got a job here as we can be doing.
[2:48]What are some of the things you found in Asia
[2:49]that really stood out to you is just like,
[2:51]wow, this is amazing, and we should be doing this?
[2:55]Well, there are a few things.
[2:56]I would say one of the, well,
[2:57]it started actually when we were in Hong Kong,
[2:59]and I enrolled my oldest at the time,
[3:02]who was just three years old,
[3:03]at a local public magnet school,
[3:05]that was nicknamed the prison.
[3:07]And everybody thought I was crazy for doing it,
[3:09]and they had nice ways of kind of saying,
[3:11]I was absolutely out of my mind.
[3:14]But I thought, you know, this is an experience
[3:17]where he'll actually learn Mandarin,
[3:20]and kind of be able to focus on what's important,
[3:23]which isn't the bells and whistles,
[3:26]the brand new desks or chairs or smart board,
[3:30]and it really, I mean, it looks like a prison.
[3:32]It was kind of on this concrete hill.
[3:34]Literally, the hill was made of concrete,
[3:37]and it was this foreboding structure
[3:39]with this courtyard that looked like
[3:41]it's where prisoners are released to walk around.
[3:43]I mean, it was very strange.
[3:44]There was barbed wire on the roof,
[3:46]but it was so magical in the sense
[3:48]that the teachers were so on top of the learning
[3:51]and starting at three years old,
[3:53]the kids had homework.
[3:54]And when you talk to my kids about it now,
[3:56]they laugh about it, because they say,
[3:58]there was so much homework.
[3:59]And in my mind, as an adult,
[4:01]there wasn't that much homework.
[4:02]I mean, they literally had one character
[4:03]that they had to copy three times,
[4:06]but it got them into this habit
[4:07]of starting homework at a really young age.
[4:09]So I say, that was the first thing
[4:11]in terms of where the money is going.
[4:14]And then it continues on when we went to Shanghai,
[4:16]when my oldest was in elementary school,
[4:18]and again, bare bones facility,
[4:20]they didn't have running water,
[4:21]there were troughs in the bathrooms, no heat,
[4:25]and he was kept after school one day,
[4:27]and this is a country that has a one child policy,
[4:29]but I had three kids,
[4:31]and I did do pickups, boom, boom, boom.
[4:33]And he was held after school,
[4:36]and I couldn't communicate really at that time.
[4:39]It was kind of illegal for me to have a child
[4:41]in local school, because he weren't Chinese residents
[4:43]or citizens, I should say, we were legal residents,
[4:46]but didn't have the citizenship
[4:48]that would have allowed us to go into the public school.
[4:50]So I couldn't make a fuss, is my point.
[4:52]And so they kept him after school,
[4:54]and because I was educated predominantly in the US,
[4:57]I had this kind of association
[4:58]that he was a discipline case.
[5:00]Why is my little six-year-old, oh my gosh, what did he do?
[5:03]And to make a long story short,
[5:05]he starts crying, he's with his math teacher,
[5:07]and I'm thinking, oh, did I screw up?
[5:08]I've, you know, poisoned this child
[5:11]against learning a school for the rest of his life,
[5:13]but it really turned out that he was kept after school
[5:15]because he didn't master his daily arithmetic quiz
[5:18]and didn't get a 95% and he teaches their stay
[5:21]for as long as it takes for the kids to learn,
[5:23]and it turned out kids sometimes stay through dinner
[5:26]and the teachers will stay for as long as it takes really.
[5:29]And only in writing the book did I realize
[5:32]that he was crying not because he was kept after,
[5:36]but because I was putting so much pressure on him,
[5:39]and it's just a common practice.
[5:41]So to me, people may think, oh, does he hate math?
[5:45]Do you okay, it was he, and to this day,
[5:47]he's two years ahead in math,
[5:49]and it's one of his favorite subjects.
[5:52]So having that high learning expectation,
[5:54]regardless of your background, was pretty huge,
[5:57]and I can talk about more of the more things that I share.
[5:59]I love the questions.
[6:01]One thing that I was particularly struck by
[6:04]that you did a compare and contrast thing is that in America,
[6:07]we spend a lot of money in the school system on things
[6:10]that essentially don't help education all that much.
[6:13]Perceptionists, operators like fancy gyms
[6:17]and the trappings of making school look
[6:22]and feel really nice versus the prison that you described earlier.
[6:25]Yeah.
[6:26]It's good.
[6:27]I mean, I think intellectually it makes me feel better
[6:30]thinking that my kids are not in school in prison all day.
[6:32]However, you're saying in Asia,
[6:34]they spent the money on the teaching.
[6:36]Yes.
[6:37]And how huge a difference that makes
[6:39]in the quality of education.
[6:40]Can you just speak a little to that?
[6:41]Yeah.
[6:42]So I think that is something that we can definitely learn
[6:44]from the Asian system because in the US right now,
[6:48]we have a major recruitment,
[6:50]retention, professional development problem.
[6:53]We can't keep teachers in the field.
[6:54]They stay less than five years.
[6:56]And there's nothing more important in that school
[6:59]than the relationship between the teacher and the student.
[7:03]And there are plenty of studies to show.
[7:05]You don't even need a classroom, a physical classroom.
[7:08]And you don't even need 15 kids in the classroom.
[7:11]We can have 30 if the teacher is really, really qualified.
[7:15]So is an example in Japan for 38,000 spots in teaching.
[7:22]They get 200,000 applicants.
[7:24]It's as hard to become a teacher in Japan
[7:26]as it is to become a doctor or a lawyer in the US.
[7:29]So sometimes I think, OK, imagine if your kids went to school
[7:32]every day and they were being topped by a lawyer or a doctor
[7:35]in just that level of professional training that was required.
[7:38]And I've been to conferences, education conferences,
[7:41]teacher conferences where states are
[7:43]trying to lower the average undergraduate GPA
[7:46]to become a teacher from a 3.0 to a 2.0.
[7:50]So when you think about that, it's such a shame
[7:54]because what we really should be doing in this country
[7:56]is putting the money towards improving the salaries
[8:00]and recruiting the best and the brightest from undergrad
[8:03]and then retaining them through professional development
[8:06]and giving them career tracks.
[8:08]So what it often happens in thriving economies
[8:11]is oftentimes you'll have teachers in this country that
[8:14]can be in the same classroom without any kind of promotion
[8:18]or career trajectory.
[8:19]And they can be in there for 20, 30 years,
[8:21]which for some people works maybe.
[8:24]But for other people who are maybe a little more ambitious,
[8:26]they want to know, OK, I'm on the superintendent path.
[8:29]I'm on the path to become part of the Department of Education,
[8:32]or maybe I can be a senior master teacher in our mentor.
[8:35]And we don't offer that in this country.
[8:37]Whereas in Japan, they do.
[8:39]And something that I think is pretty astounding
[8:42]is to become an elementary school teacher in Japan.
[8:45]These teachers have to be able to cite, sing,
[8:50]cite, read, and keyboard.
[8:52]They have to be able to swim every kind of stroke
[8:54]in the pool.
[8:55]And before their exams in March, it's
[9:00]that they just joke actually that the teachers in training
[9:04]have to go to the playground and do all these kind of spins
[9:06]on the bars because that's what they're tested on.
[9:09]Because they teach all those subjects.
[9:12]And you think about, could that ever happen in the US?
[9:14]Probably not.
[9:15]I mean, I couldn't do all this things.
[9:16]I couldn't do all the things.
[9:17]But to me, but then I'll be able to go to a job interview
[9:21]and spin around like the uneven parallel bars.
[9:23]I mean, we get a job.
[9:24]That's like if everyone had to do that to succeed.
[9:26]I know.
[9:27]It is.
[9:28]But they're the PE teachers too.
[9:30]And they're the classroom teachers,
[9:33]and teachers in Japan don't stay in their classrooms
[9:36]in terms of their grades for more than one year at a time.
[9:38]So the second grade teacher can become the sixth grade teacher,
[9:41]the next year, the first grade, third grade.
[9:42]So they understand the curriculum entirely
[9:46]and what's coming into their classroom
[9:47]and what they're preparing their kids for.
[9:49]So if we completely did an overhaul,
[9:52]and I think it's up to states to be able to do this.
[9:55]Because in terms of the education funding model,
[9:58]typical breakdown is 40.
[10:00]I percent from local taxes, 45 percent from the state and then 10 percent from the federal
[10:06]government.
[10:07]The states are the only equalizers, so it's incumbent upon them to really revamp the
[10:11]teachers of education, the credentialing, and then our pay, we have to pay our teachers
[10:16]better to get people to stay in the field to make it competitive is a career opportunity.
[10:21]So if you were to be the president tomorrow, let's just say congratulations, here's the
[10:27]Oval Office.
[10:28]So what one thing would you do first?
[10:30]Like what do you think this would help biggest bang for the buck?
[10:33]The biggest would be is the equity issue because right now if you have, you can get a better
[10:39]education and we're only as good as every person that we educate and I talk about this a lot
[10:45]and it is controversial to some, but the fact that we have districts that are penalized
[10:51]by low tax dollars because the real estate taxes are so low because their properties
[10:55]are less valuable, unfortunately, they don't have the support, the financial supports
[11:01]to get the best teachers in there to get better facilities to get, to make them safe.
[11:06]And I spent the 2017-18 academic year traveling across the country and I visited countless
[11:12]schools that are called, let's say, transformation schools when they're really, that's
[11:15]like a nice name for failing school and literally they have on the board the kids' scores
[11:23]that are on a smart board, so they're literally failing.
[11:26]Every single child in that class, their names are up there and in math, reading and
[11:31]in science, they're all in like the 30 to 40% range and they see that every single day.
[11:36]I mean, it's, I feel like it's a crime committed against our kids every day.
[11:40]Why would you want to go to school?
[11:42]And these kids are a lot of them are bored, some of them at the older levels are on
[11:46]their smartphones the entire class time and there's not enough done about it.
[11:51]So that's the first thing I would change, the equity and the access to quality education,
[11:55]funding model and starting that in early childhood education.
[11:59]So really even starting at zero years old because a lot of our families in this country
[12:04]have dual income earning families and the parents aren't around because they need to be
[12:10]earning.
[12:11]So we really have to have better supports in place.
[12:13]Well, if I were the president, I would install you as my, like, minister of education.
[12:17]Oh, thank you.
[12:19]You can do some get together.
[12:22]So let's talk a little about the book itself.
[12:24]Sure.
[12:25]Was fantastic.
[12:26]Thank you.
[12:27]First of all, when you were going off on all these mentors in the back of your head did
[12:30]you think to yourself, this is going to be a great book.
[12:32]Like, did you ever think that?
[12:33]I have to totally honest when I met a book editor in the fall of 2014 and it never occurred
[12:40]to me at that point.
[12:41]I was, I was an education journalist and then she was talking about, I mean, it was still
[12:45]after its prime, but e-pray love and she said this, you know, three part people can grasp
[12:50]this and I was like, oh, I have a book.
[12:53]I have Hong Kong Shanghai and Tokyo.
[12:55]So that was the first time that the idea was seated, but it only really came to fruition
[13:01]in 2016 when I came back to the US and my kids were in Palo Alto public schools.
[13:05]I love how the book was not just a treatise of education reform and what we should do
[13:11]and like a political anything, but it was really your story and you're sort of being
[13:15]a mom and taking your kids through the systems and what you learned and all this stuff,
[13:19]which is what I'm like most excited to talk to you about.
[13:22]You also, all your chapters were named after TV shows from when both us were growing
[13:28]up, which was fantastic and you said you had spent a lot of time watching TV growing
[13:31]up, a child of a single mom, tell us a little more about your background growing up
[13:35]and maybe this put you on the path to be an education advocate.
[13:40]Well, yeah, so I grew up in the New York, Connecticut area and my mom was, let's see,
[13:48]25 years younger than my dad and the fact that they got together at all was kind of miraculous
[13:54]because my mom was in Japan and her father fought against my American father in World
[13:59]War II.
[14:00]So I think I was just kind of, I don't say accident, but not a very common product
[14:06]and then my mom came to the US, but she was also very different because of her generation.
[14:11]She was born right after World War II and women of her generation were typically not that
[14:16]highly educated because it was considered a stigma because you would never get married,
[14:21]but she did very, very well at her high schools, one of the most competitive high schools
[14:25]and then she went off to college in Tokyo.
[14:28]She grew up in Osaka and that was, that was like she was cursed, like she was never
[14:32]going to get married.
[14:33]She kind of found her ticket out of Japan when she met my father, but he was older
[14:38]and he wasn't well.
[14:39]So he passed away.
[14:40]So for the most part, I was raised by this single Japanese immigrant and I wasn't only
[14:45]child and our home was very culturally Japanese and we spoke Japanese at home.
[14:51]So you know, and everybody else in my schools or at the time, like what I thought was
[14:55]just very American and then I spent my summer vacations on most of my holidays in Japan.
[14:59]So during elementary school, I went to school in Japan during my summer vacation because
[15:04]there's summer vacation begins at the end of July.
[15:08]So I always had this kind of bicultural comparative international education background that
[15:14]really informed my whole, like you said, trajectory and I was fascinated by education
[15:19]because things I saw were done so, so differently.
[15:22]Even today, I feel like the way math is taught in our schools is so controversial, especially
[15:28]since the common core was implemented.
[15:31]And often I feel like the Asian systems, the East Asian systems get criticized for being
[15:35]too wrote.
[15:37]And I can tell you math class in Japan growing up was really hard because everything was
[15:43]a word problem.
[15:44]Once you understood the concept, it was all word problems and that wasn't the way I was
[15:48]educated in the US school.
[15:50]And at one point, even from my oldest son, when I went to his desk when we were in Shanghai,
[15:55]his desk was just a mess and I was going through all the papers and it was annoying because
[15:59]everything was crumpled up and I can't read Chinese.
[16:02]I said, James, what is this?
[16:03]What is this book?
[16:04]And he goes, mama, it's my math book and there weren't even enough numbers in there for
[16:09]me to decipher that it was a math book because in first grade there were that many word
[16:13]problems.
[16:14]Wow.
[16:15]So when you talk about the application of the content that you learn, so I grew up with
[16:20]this.
[16:21]So I grew up with kind of understanding both sides.
[16:23]So I don't even remember what the question you asked was at this point.
[16:26]No, I just like hearing that.
[16:28]I was like, what did I do with that?
[16:30]No.
[16:31]And you also said when you were growing up how you missed a lot of field trips because
[16:35]your mom couldn't even read the language that they sent them the letters in.
[16:38]And so you felt like you were constantly like an outsider and missing out.
[16:41]Oh, totally.
[16:42]The worst was in first grade when I missed field day in that, and I was one of those tomboys
[16:47]who loved winning races and I remember showing up and it was already midway through
[16:51]field day.
[16:52]And just my mom had no idea, but that happened pretty regularly.
[16:57]So it was kind of funny that then I put my kids into school systems where I couldn't necessarily
[17:03]understand what was going on.
[17:04]So I didn't want the same experience.
[17:06]I didn't want my kids to have the same experiences.
[17:08]So I hired college kids to come and help me decipher and translate all the notices.
[17:14]And I made sure I was there.
[17:15]And even during there's a lot of required parent education in Japan, which I Japanese
[17:21]is my first language.
[17:22]So this wasn't much of an issue.
[17:23]But in Japan, you have to literally opt out of parent education.
[17:26]So you have to write a letter if you can't show up.
[17:29]But in China, where I couldn't speak Mandarin, I would actually bring a bilingual friend
[17:32]of mine to sit through, I mean, one time, it was three hours long and I felt so badly
[17:36]for us.
[17:37]But to translate everything that was going on so that my kids wouldn't be handicapped
[17:40]by my handicapped.
[17:41]Yeah.
[17:42]Was there ever any pushback from your kids, like the moving and the different cultures?
[17:47]Or this just is like what life is like for them?
[17:49]Yeah.
[17:50]And I mean, they didn't know any different.
[17:51]So it's some point, I forget, I think we were, maybe it was in Tokyo for two, we were
[17:56]in Tokyo.
[17:57]Like, okay, when are we moving again?
[17:58]It was just a way of life.
[17:59]But I have made it very clear that now we are home.
[18:02]We are not moving again.
[18:04]And I'm really happy about that.
[18:05]Well, I feel like this huge relief that one of your kids has ended up at a school or one
[18:10]of my kids.
[18:11]Which means that at least I have not totally messed up the education of one of my four
[18:16]children.
[18:17]No!
[18:18]And that's an opportunity.
[18:19]And that's something that I hope comes across, at least towards the end of world class.
[18:24]It's because I traveled through the U.S. to different schools.
[18:27]One of my final chapters is called Cheers, based after the TV show Cheers.
[18:31]And it's a testament to the amazing schools and educators that are out there.
[18:38]And I mean, there was one school I visited in LA and it was, their middle schoolers taking
[18:43]AP Physics in one term and they're getting fives out of fives on, you know, five out
[18:48]of five on the AP exam.
[18:50]There are, you mentioned in terms of, you know, how the money is being spent.
[18:54]There's a school I visited in D.C. that has one of the lowest cost for people spending
[18:58]budgets.
[18:59]And the head of the school said very clearly, look at my front office.
[19:01]I have two admin for this entire high school.
[19:04]And there are other schools where the principal of the school will do anything to champion
[19:09]for his or her students and will go to whatever level it takes to find the funding to find
[19:15]literally parents in the school who may be professors who have any area of expertise
[19:21]to come in and teach a class and just leverage as many resources as possible.
[19:24]And now I will go back.
[19:25]Now I remember your question about the TV shows.
[19:27]Oh, yeah.
[19:28]Yeah.
[19:29]I have to just say.
[19:30]So because my home was so Japanese, I learned so much from these TV shows.
[19:35]So that's what I named each chapter after a TV show from pretty much the 70s and 80s,
[19:40]although they're sound from the 60s that are thrown in.
[19:42]So I mean, my favorite was, sorry, I have to plug because I think it is funny.
[19:46]And I want to hear your reaction to this.
[19:47]But so the Gilligan's Island, yeah, when I landed in Hong Kong, I called it Gilligan's
[19:52]Island, landing on an island with a strange cast of characters.
[19:55]You know, because it's like, oh my gosh, this place was so foreign or when we first arrived
[19:58]in Shanghai.
[19:59]I call them.
[20:00]I shouldn't have possible because I thought I was gonna die.
[20:03]Like every day, it was just such a difficult place.
[20:05]Cause this was in 2010 when it was still a cash-based
[20:09]society and things were not as smooth as they are now.
[20:13]Well, it was very, it was very clever way to attack
[20:16]such like an intellectual topic with something
[20:18]that like, you know, made it sort of light and fun
[20:20]and you appreciate it.
[20:21]It's a good blend, too.
[20:22]How do you feel?
[20:23]I mean, I don't wanna really get into screen time,
[20:25]but you obviously watched a lot of TV.
[20:27]I feel like I watched a lot of TV grand.
[20:28]I don't know, it wasn't even like a thing.
[20:29]Like do you feel like education is interfered
[20:34]with too much by screen time or do you let your kids
[20:37]watch TV?
[20:38]Well, TV, I think it can be okay.
[20:40]It just depends on what it is.
[20:41]I think the content, I think what we considered,
[20:43]I mean, even movies.
[20:44]The movies that were rated are back then.
[20:46]I mean, I think today would be close to G.
[20:49]I mean, it's gotten so different.
[20:51]So I think it is hard to monitor
[20:54]cause kids have so much technology anyway
[20:56]and they're gonna watch the movies
[20:57]before you allow them to watch them anyway.
[20:59]So I think it's just really important to have
[21:01]as many pro, be proactive about your conversations
[21:05]with your kids cause you're gonna see it.
[21:07]Yeah, my husband Kyle and I were having this debate
[21:09]because my older son once YouTube and I'm like,
[21:12]but how can I give him the computer with YouTube
[21:13]unrestricted if I'm not around to see it?
[21:15]He's gonna download, like he's gonna watch
[21:17]like x-rated movies.
[21:18]Yeah.
[21:19]He's like, they don't have x-rated movies.
[21:21]He's like, what do you mean?
[21:23]Like he's like, they're not gonna like card you
[21:26]at the door and turn you away.
[21:27]They don't make those.
[21:28]He's like, if he wants to find it,
[21:30]he'll just find it on like, anyway, whatever stuff.
[21:33]I'm like, I'm back in this whole like 1980s
[21:36]like trying to get into a P2-13 movie in my head.
[21:38]I'm like, but my son, my middle one,
[21:41]actually did go to a movie theater with his friends
[21:44]and they tried to go see an art movie
[21:45]and they were turned away.
[21:46]Oh, good, okay.
[21:47]But of course, you know what they did.
[21:49]They bought tickets to another movie.
[21:50]And they snuck in.
[21:51]So there you go.
[21:52]At least, I mean, people, I mean,
[21:54]at least they're still a movie theater.
[21:55]I mean, I agree.
[21:57]But getting out of traffic.
[21:58]So the publishing process,
[22:00]you know, we've kind of been talking about this
[22:03]off-record off of the rest,
[22:05]but you had this idea sort of in 2014
[22:08]to make this into a book.
[22:09]Yeah.
[22:10]Then you went on and lived the exciting
[22:11]international, amazing life and learned all this stuff.
[22:14]Tell me about sitting down to write this book.
[22:16]Where were you?
[22:17]Like, how long did it take you?
[22:19]Did you enjoy the writing process?
[22:21]What did you not enjoy about this whole situation?
[22:24]So bring me to the current day.
[22:26]So I feel like it's when they say,
[22:29]everybody pays for it when you have a baby.
[22:31]Like, if your pregnancy's been smooth
[22:32]and afterwards, you go through to me,
[22:34]the process, which I think is complete
[22:37]anomaly to getting a book deal was seamless,
[22:40]which I think is almost completely unheard of.
[22:43]I pounded the pavement.
[22:44]I got my agent.
[22:45]My book proposal went to auction.
[22:47]It was like this bizarre thing.
[22:49]But then after, I mean, it hasn't been smooth sailing
[22:52]since then, I don't think.
[22:54]But basically, I get the book deal
[22:57]and I was living in the middle of Silicon Valley
[22:59]where things happen instantaneously.
[23:02]So I signed the book deal
[23:04]and they said, okay, you have a year to write the book.
[23:06]And I was like, a year.
[23:07]What am I going to do with a year?
[23:09]To me, it could have been 20 years from now.
[23:12]But I did take that year and I had all these pressures
[23:17]because I'd never written a book before.
[23:18]I was used to writing articles and I had deadlines
[23:21]and I met those deadlines.
[23:23]I was like, annoying person who, if it's due tomorrow,
[23:26]it's on the editor's desk by 8 a.m. that day, you know?
[23:29]And, but then when you have a year,
[23:31]suddenly you have to have the crazy self-discipline of,
[23:33]I mean, it was really a challenging process.
[23:36]And then I had in my mind, okay, well, you know,
[23:38]I have to wake up and have to put my kids
[23:40]to get them to school and not to sit at my desk and write.
[23:42]And I have to be productive and I have to,
[23:43]you know, and you do the math all day.
[23:45]If I write 10 pages this day and then this is how many,
[23:47]it never worked that way.
[23:48]I mean, half the thing was written at 2 a.m.
[23:51]in the car when the kids were at soccer.
[23:54]I mean, it was the most non-disciplined,
[23:57]like, discipline process.
[23:59]And my book was due, the manuscript was due
[24:02]end of August, 2000, when was it?
[24:06]So, 2018 and I had a complete meltdown in July.
[24:11]And I thought it was, I mean, I can't use exploit it
[24:14]but, you know, a pile of, you know what?
[24:15]And I thought this is horrific horrendous,
[24:18]the worst thing ever.
[24:19]I call my agent and she's like,
[24:21]you write on time.
[24:22]This is exactly when I get a call from my authors.
[24:24]Actually, you're, you're two weeks,
[24:26]like you was later or early or something like that.
[24:28]And I go, well, now what am I gonna do?
[24:30]This is terrible.
[24:30]I was like, I'm just gonna cut my losses, I'm done.
[24:32]I'm not, this is just, it's just the most disgusting
[24:36]piece of whatever.
[24:37]And that's when it caked into gear.
[24:39]I basically rewrote the whole thing in the next month.
[24:42]And it was, it's so much better.
[24:45]But at the time, my life was falling apart.
[24:47]I mean, it was literally, I remember sitting
[24:49]in a lobby of a hotel crying,
[24:51]because it was a nearest place.
[24:52]I could find it just sit down.
[24:54]And it was, and that's actually, believe it or not,
[24:57]when the idea of the TV titles came into play,
[25:00]it wasn't until the very kind of last minute.
[25:03]And then it kind of got my momentum going
[25:05]and I thought, okay, this is good.
[25:06]And then I spent the next year editing
[25:08]and then the book came out end of summer 2019.
[25:12]But the process was, I don't think,
[25:15]I mean, it was far from smooth.
[25:17]Yeah, but I guess I made it.
[25:19]But I think everybody has their own process
[25:21]and I think if anything, it's just,
[25:23]don't have so many preconceived notions
[25:25]of how it has to be done.
[25:27]Because let's feel, I mean, for both moms,
[25:30]like that's always gonna be my number one priority.
[25:32]And if my child needs me, I'm gonna be there.
[25:36]I'm not gonna be at my desk writing the book.
[25:39]And I also felt like I had an excuse
[25:41]because every time my child needs me,
[25:42]I'm like, this is ethnographic research.
[25:43]I'm like, okay, so I was like, okay.
[25:46]It's like a write-off, which I probably is an excuse
[25:49]too many times.
[25:50]But yeah, it was, yeah.
[25:52]But it wasn't, I mean,
[25:54]there are parts of it that have been challenging
[25:55]in terms of book publishing since it came out
[25:58]in terms of just, there's so much,
[25:59]and I didn't know this because it went so smooth until then,
[26:02]but people move around so much in the publishing business.
[26:05]And I had heard about it, but it's almost like,
[26:08]yeah, that doesn't mean anything to me.
[26:10]And then literally almost everybody
[26:12]who's behind my book left their companies
[26:15]when the book came out.
[26:17]And that's really hard because I'm like,
[26:19]hello, I'm a neophyte.
[26:21]I don't know what I'm doing.
[26:22]I need all the help I can get releasing a book.
[26:24]So it's been, you just need that toughness.
[26:26]Yeah, interesting, yeah.
[26:28]Any parting advice, let's say people are listening,
[26:31]they're reading your book,
[26:32]they're fed up with the way the system is,
[26:36]what can we do to help things in the United States right now?
[26:39]Like even just one person, is there anything we can do?
[26:43]Is it like, yeah, anything or should we just
[26:45]like sit back and watch things crumble further?
[26:48]No, no, no, don't do that.
[26:49]I think the way I think about it
[26:51]is there are a few macro things
[26:52]that require systemic change that may not change
[26:55]for a generation more than a generation.
[26:58]So those are things like the teacher training
[27:00]or the equity issues, the education governance.
[27:03]And changing the priority of where education is
[27:06]in our country, so something that I think about
[27:09]is when Xi Jinping gave his what's comparable
[27:11]to the state of the union addressed in China,
[27:14]he talked about education,
[27:15]he mentioned it 30 times.
[27:16]And during the last Democratic presidential debate,
[27:19]the word education came up zero times.
[27:22]So that requires a huge cultural shift.
[27:25]So what I like to tell parents and teachers
[27:28]is what can you do every day?
[27:29]And I break it up into the first thing
[27:33]is having your expectations and mission statement
[27:36]very clear in your home.
[27:38]So talk about what is an education?
[27:40]Is it about socialization, sports, academic outcomes?
[27:44]What is your academic expectation?
[27:46]Is it a 95%?
[27:48]Is it the 60% that schools require?
[27:50]What are you expecting if the school doesn't teach something?
[27:54]Are you going to teach it to your kids?
[27:55]Whether it be, I guess, memorizing your multiplication tables,
[27:59]which a lot of schools don't require anymore,
[28:01]but maybe if you do, you have to do it at home, grammar,
[28:04]spelling, how many books do they read?
[28:06]What is writing the whole child, the community,
[28:10]getting all those things, like define it in your home
[28:13]and something that I tell parents that I think is an easy
[28:15]takeaway is what are you modeling for them?
[28:17]What are you talking about?
[28:18]Because if all you're talking about is sports,
[28:21]they're going to get validation
[28:22]and they're going to think love from their parents
[28:24]by being really good at sports.
[28:26]But if you talk about how is this class
[28:28]and how are your friendships?
[28:29]You're showing them what's important
[28:31]and they will want to meet your expectations.
[28:34]It's literally like a pie chart, figure out
[28:35]how much time you're spending doing what
[28:38]in talking about what.
[28:39]So that's one actionable thing.
[28:40]And another thing is, please limit the technology.
[28:43]Because there's too much research now that shows
[28:46]the more exposure our kids have to technology,
[28:49]especially starting at an early age,
[28:51]the lower their academic outcomes.
[28:54]It's associated to all kinds of anxiety,
[28:56]social emotional issues.
[28:58]So as a society, we definitely have to take a step back
[29:02]but also as parents, we have to limit it
[29:05]until these kids have the self-discipline
[29:08]to be able to monitor it.
[29:09]And they just don't, if they're under 12 or 13 years old.
[29:13]And there's lots of research now that shows
[29:16]that the best indicator of academic success
[29:19]isn't IQ.
[29:21]It's actually self-discipline.
[29:23]And technology is the antithesis
[29:26]to instilling self-discipline.
[29:28]So those are some things that I would say.
[29:29]I don't know if you knew this or you probably did
[29:31]and I'm probably the last one to know this,
[29:33]but I was looking over one of my kids' shoulders
[29:35]when they were playing a game like from an app.
[29:38]Every two seconds, there's another ad for another app.
[29:41]And you have to play it to get to the, anyway,
[29:45]I spent like half an hour looking at this
[29:46]and now I've deleted every game on everybody's device
[29:49]and the whole, and I'm like,
[29:50]we are not playing games anymore.
[29:51]There are no games,
[29:51]not that everybody was sitting around playing games all day,
[29:53]but like even 20 minutes, even like whatever,
[29:56]I can't, it's like so bad.
[29:58]So anyway, I mean, this is like.
[30:00]A two-day old thing for me, but it's true and it's true. I mean, it's so like true. The product placement that our kids
[30:06]It's an ideal idea. It's it's very I mean Nikki it was sneaky
[30:10]I mean the fact that my 10-year-old daughter can tell you what
[30:14]See Alice is for and every other kind of medication because we'll just be watching family friendly TV and
[30:20]And I mean, it's a funny. She's like, oh, you have dry skin. She'll give you the solution
[30:25]This is this is different. This is not the way
[30:27]We were raised, you know, and then and then you know at the end they say all the caveats like you know if you're allergic to it
[30:33]You can have a heart disease. You could do this and this might go to make this death. Yes, exactly
[30:38]Okay, well, it's a risk. Yeah, there you go. I'm like, oh my gosh. My daughter's now going to be investing in in pharma tech
[30:47]Okay, wonderful parting advice to aspiring authors and this is something I have to tell myself
[30:51]So I'm I'm preaching to myself as I say this love the process and
[30:58]It's really hard
[30:59]But I would say don't wait for the accolades to come in because you have to love the process and be patient and the other thing
[31:05]I would say in this I'm learning to
[31:07]Get your network or support network because you have to find the people who will champion you and
[31:15]Know the answers to things when when you don't know what they are because there've been so many times in the last few months where
[31:22]Wait, this happened and I don't understand it and you just have okay here 10 people I can call who's gonna be available who has the answer?
[31:29]Because we've all been through it and I find so this is one thing
[31:32]I did go I went to a lot of education conferences
[31:34]I took writing classes of writing conference that I went to in 2014
[31:38]There was this keynote speaker who was a best-selling author and he said something that I that his always resonated me
[31:44]He goes it doesn't matter if you're successful or not in this business
[31:48]There are no a holes you can't be successful if you are one and
[31:53]Now that I'm a little further in the process
[31:56]It's because it's so humbling and you do want to help everybody else
[32:00]So finding finding those people. I think is is crucial
[32:04]Because you're solitary like when you're writing you're alone
[32:07]So, you know, it's important to get out there
[32:10]Excellent. Well, thanks so much for coming on mom's time to read books. Oh, thank you so much as it be
[32:14]Thank you. Thanks. Thanks for listening to mom's don't have time to read books the award-winning podcast
[32:20]Today's episode of mom's don't have time to read books was sponsored by
[32:24]Pediatrician in your pocket by Dr. Jennifer Tractenberg
[32:27]Dr. Dash Jen dot com and her code pip 20 pip 20 for 20% off of these
[32:35]Can't miss modules that will make your parenting life so much easier
[32:38]You can follow me on Instagram at mom's don't have time to read books
[32:42]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at texture sound for the sound editing and thank you to morning moon productions for providing this
[32:49]Fantastic intro and out trim music. Thanks for listening. You can always email me at zippy at zippyowens.com