- [Narrator] Funding for this edition of One-On-One with Steve Adubato has been provided by The Turrell Fund, supporting Reimagine Childcare.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

Here when you need us most.

RWJBarnabas Health.

Let'’s be healthy together.

New Jersey Institute of Technology.

NJIT makes industry ready professionals in all STEM fields.

NJ Best, New Jersey'’s five-two-nine college savings plan.

Wells Fargo.

New Jersey Sharing Network.

The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey.

And by Summit Health a provider of primary, specialty, and urgent care.

Promotional support provided by Meadowlands Chamber.

Building connections, driving business growth.

And by New Jersey Monthly.

The magazine of the Garden State, available at newsstands.

- This is One-On-One.

- I'm an equal American just like you are.

- The way we change Presidents in this country is by voting.

- A quartet is already a jawn, it'’s just The New Jawn.

- January 6th was not some sort of violent, crazy outlier.

- I don't care how good you are or how good you think you are, there is always something to learn.

- I mean what other country sends comedians over to embedded military to make them feel better.

- People call me 'cause they feel nobody's paying attention.

-_ It'’s not all about memorizing and getting information, it'’s what you do with that information.

- (slowly) Start talking right now.

- That's a good question, high five.

(upbeat music) - Hi everyone, Steve Adubato with my colleague and co-host Jacqui Tricarico the executive producer of "Think Tank."

Jacqui, set this up, we're about to go on location to Atlantic City, to the New Jersey Education Association Convention the NJEA, one of our longtime underwriters to fully disclose and an underwriter of public broadcasting overall.

Jacqui set up, we're about to see in this compelling half hour on location at the 2022 NJEA Convention in AC.

- Yeah, it was so great.

We both had the opportunity to be down there, to celebrate educators all throughout New Jersey.

Thousands of educators and support staff getting together, to just learn from one another and also learn from some of the amazing keynote speakers that they had this year, including Nikole Hannah-Jones, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and creator of the "1619 Project."

As well as Nyle DiMarco, who's a deaf activist and an actor as well, I got to speak with.

And you got to speak with David Hogg.

- David Hogg, I mean, I had read about this young man, survivor of the Parkland School tragedy, who has become a leader in this nation, fighting against gun violence.

And it's a very compelling, interesting interview.

You'll see a short clip from that, there's a broader long form interview that you'll see on one of our programs as well.

But he talked about trying to end the cycle of violence in our schools as it relates to school shootings and so many other people.

How about the educational leaders?

Didn't we talk to the teacher of the year?

- Yes, Christine Girtain, just a fabulous person doing awesome things down in Toms River, New Jersey and I had an opportunity to speak with her also, you'll see her in this half hour special.

As well as a lot of other fun, exciting people that we got to meet while we were down there this year.

- You'll see Jacqui led most of the interviews and they're compelling, she did a great job.

And also some of the officers of the NJEA.

One of the topics that's a very important topic, is all about the teacher shortage.

We did not ignore it, we did not shirk the responsibility to examine the teacher shortage in some initiatives to deal directly with that teacher shortage and learning loss for for students across the state of New Jersey and our public schools.

So, on behalf of Jacqui and myself, we go on location to the NJEA Convention in Atlantic City, where there's an awful lot to learn.

Check it out.

- Upbeat music - We are here just hanging out at the NJEA Convention.

- Yeah.

- What's it feel like to be here?

- Oh, it's great.

It's great to be back and, you know, building on as we come outta the pandemic.

Certainly what we saw last year, but even more, the energy coming back, the people, it's great to see.

We know it's the largest professional development opportunity probably in the world for educators, and this is a great space to be in, and we're seeing the excitement.

This is huge.

What's it like for you?

- It feels fantastic.

This has been a long-term plan with my team, I have a team of 15 folks that work with me in the Professional Development and Instructional Issues Division.

We collaborate on everything and it's a collective vision and it's come to life so it feels wonderful.

- As I look around here, there's a wellness initiative.

- Absolutely.

- There's the NJEA Consortium behind us.

First of all, what's the Consortium about?

- The Consortium is a project that's incredibly near and dear to my heart.

So when I was an associate director in the division I wrote a grant to secure funding through the National Education Association so that we could bring inclusive and representative curriculum to life throughout the state.

So throughout the state of New Jersey we have various curriculum inclusion mandates but the implementation has been really spotty throughout the state.

So this is an effort that's going to allow us to really pull all of the different inclusive curriculum areas that are mandated together and then expand beyond them as well.

-We have mandates in New Jersey that cover curriculum, AAPI, Amistad, LGBTQ disabilities, holocaust genocide.

And I think that historically that's been in silos and our work is to bring that together so that educators can ask great, beautiful questions that weave these things together and we learn more and more equitably.

- So we're really focusing on identity development, inclusion, equity, and making sure that we're not just focusing on one month of the year to highlight different identities but we're infusing throughout everything that we do.

- So the consortium is about putting representative books and representative lessons and representative groups inside our classroom.

So that's what it's about.

-We're also seeing a lot of influence coming from parents and caregivers, right.

We're seeing these school board meetings that are becoming viral, a lot of debate about what can and can't be on the bookshelves, and their children's schools.

And you talk about in the beginning of your book being a young girl and not seeing yourself so much represented on,- - That's right.

- On those shelves in the library.

How important or how influential should parents and caregivers really be in terms of what's in schools?

- So one, to be clear polling shows that the majority of Americans including the majority of, of parents, oppose book bans.

And I think it is perfectly fine for an individual parent to say "I don't want my child exposed to this text."

I don't think it's okay for parents to say what every other parent child should be exposed to.

And that's where the problem is.

- How important is the role of the school librarian?

How important is it for us as a community, for parents, to support the librarians that are in our children's lives as part of their education?

We as school librarians, we have teaching certifications and on top of that we have library certifications.

So we are dually certified and here we have community members coming to our libraries and saying that we don't know what we're doing.

And we are specialists in the field.

We are trained to provide expertise and proper materials for our school libraries.

And this is something that we have to remember.

School librarians materials are supplementary materials and they support state standards.

So anything and everything that we provide in our libraries is to support already existing policies and curricula and state standards.

We don't come up with these recommendations and with these books out of thin air.

If there is a certain book in the library, that book was purchased keeping in mind that we have to provide some level of support for classroom or for some kind of lesson plan.

So it's a well thought out process.

-We send our children to schools to be educated by professionals for a reason because there are professionals who create curricula, there are professionals who understand what texts are proper and appropriate for students.

And I really do think we should leave that to the professional educators that we charge with educating our children.

- What does it mean for a school librarian the role that they play in terms of book banning or specific issues that community members, parents, caregivers, bring up about the books that are being presented on the shelves in the libraries of our schools.

- When it comes to book banning, it's again, very very complex issue, but it's greatly under reported and our biggest problem here right now is that a lot of school districts are not following their school policies and are not following the state standards and laws.

So the issue is very under reported.

We as an association receive information from our members that school administrators or school board members come into the library space and make requests to remove something out of fear of potential book challenge.

That's sweeping the problem under the rug.

-So many of these bans, and books that are being challenged, our books that speak to the experiences of marginalized children, of children of color, of trans-children, of children who might be struggling with identity, and they deserve to see themselves in the texts that are being taught.

But also all of us become more tolerant when we're learning texts about people whose identities are different than ours, and whose histories and stories are different than ours.

- In terms of parents who say let's leave it up to the parents to decide if these books that are causing these issues or that are coming up in a lot of these school board meetings as books that should be taken off the shelves, leave it up to the parents to make that decision if the kids can have access to them.

- In some cases, seeing a protagonist struggling with the same problem that the child or the student is struggling, it might be life saving.

- You know, we're operating with a lot of data that tells us that student outcomes, all students do better when they see more diversely and equitably.

So it's not just about black and brown kids seeing black and brown kids in books and queer and trans kids seeing queer and trans kids in books, but it's about their peers seeing people that aren't like them as well.

- Understanding other people helps us become better people and better human beings.

- A better society.- - Yeah, absolutely right?

- We have to stop taking such a stingy view of our fellow Americans, and actually believe that it is a good thing for our children to learn, and be challenged in their views.

- 10,000 plus.. - 10,000, wow.

- books are available to educators that are here today that represent a cross section of what Kate and I have been talking about.

And unfortunately a lot of our schools don't have these books.

- That's right.

- The libraries don't have these texts.

And unfortunately as well, the educators are uncomfortable teaching these things.

So as Kate alluded to, that's what we want to do.

We want to include a comfort level of including books and lessons about these topics that so many people find offensive or so many people find that it shouldn't be in the classroom.

- [Narrator] To watch more One on One with Steve Adubato find us online and follow us on Social media.

- Let me ask you, Steve and I have talked about this before.

He's talked to me about the top agenda items that he sees, and that Sean Spiller, the President, sees.

For you, what are they and are they comparable to what's been going on the last couple years?

This is again, going by the time this is seen, it'll be close to three years into this pandemic.

Go ahead.

- Being on the leadership team for the last three years, I don't see it being very different than what it's been for the last couple of years.

I think the transition's gonna be pretty easy, being on the leadership team.

But some of the issues, I think the main issue is that pipeline, the educator pipeline.

- Teacher shortages.

- Teacher shortage.

- It's real, isn't it?

- It is absolutely real.

It's not just getting enough people to come into the career, but it's also trying to hold on to those that are in the career today, and not leaving the career early or, you know, midstream.

- It's a huge issue.

We've seen for the last decade now, the number of educators going through the teacher prep programs in New Jersey has been declining.

Another big problem we've seen, though, a lotta people talk about this in the context of the pandemic, thinking there's so many more people retiring, not really.

It's people leaving the career mid-profession.

- Mid?

Because?

- Mid, mid-profession.

Well, that's the issue, right, so we've gotta look at why is it that people aren't staying in?

And when we started to look at some of that data, and we polled our members.

We've asked, "What's going on?"

The inundation with paperwork and just things that keep you busy but don't have that relationship to your student success.

The stresses that everyone's facing.

We're short staff, so that means you're missing your prep period.

You're missing your lunch period to go cover a class to try and fill in for a colleague.

That adds more stress when you can't prepare for your classes.

You're being asked to cover more and more, right, so there's that added layer to it.

You're also talking about right now, a climate where you go to a board meeting.

It might be a tough situation.

- Let's talk about the.

Politics has always been.

Sorry for interrupting.

- Always, yeah.

- So politics has always been a part, but.

- Always.

- The level of politics, the level of intensity, the level of anger at school board meetings and directed toward public education has never been what it is, whether it's about critical race theory or the perception of what it is versus what it is.

Health/sex education courses, what it is and what the perception of what it is is.

What does that do to a teacher?

- Yeah, well, we're seeing it.

You leave the profession for many, and unfortunately, we see the stressors that those who still remain face.

It's a challenge.

You know, no one likes the acrimony you see.

We all are passionate about our kids, so that's a given, and we all want parents involved in our children's education.

That's top priority, but coming to a meeting, making accusations, wild accusations, attacking educators for teaching the curriculum that's their job to do.

- Attacking them personally sometimes?

- Yeah, often personally, often personally, and I think it's a space we've gotta get away from to say, "We all want what's best for kids here.

Let's come at it from that perspective and see how we can work together on issues," but if we don't change the climate, the very educators who've been doing a great job helping us have the number one schools in the nation are going to be leaving, and that's a big problem for all of us.

- What is the role of the NJEA as it relates to dealing directly with the teacher shortage?

- Well, since we represent the vast majority of educators, teachers, you know, support staff members in the state, we have a major role in that, right?

I mean, it's something our members care about, right?

Having the highly-qualified, passionate people in classrooms next to them, right?

- [Steve Adubato] Sure.

- And keeping, you know, public schools vibrant and moving forward.

They care about that.

And so our role is to work in partnership with the other statewide organizations to move that agenda, to highlight what are the issues.

Like, what's keeping people from applying for those jobs, right?

- Or staying in those jobs.

- Or staying in them, right?

So whether it's issues of pay, or pension security, or health benefits, those are kind of the typical things that a union would talk about.

But, - [Steve Adubato] Sure.

- we're also talking, as we've talked about in the past, right?

You know, what are the, racial and social justice issues - Racial and social justice.

- that are out there?

And you can see from our two days here in Atlantic City, that's a major theme.

- There's an initiative I want you to share, talk about with everyone.

It's the Aspiring Educators Program directed by The College of Education.

What, what are we talking about, and what's the impact?

- Yeah, it's one of my, my projects and my my passions because as an educator and anything else, your first job is to find your place- - Sorry.

Tell everyone your educational background.

- Oh.

I'm a high school social studies teacher.

25 years I taught at Bridgewater-Raritan High School.

So I know what a, a little bit about the profession itself and the things that we need to do to attract and retain our future educators.

And the program at TCNJ is something I've been heavily involved with.

In fact, we just renegotiated our, our agreement with them to really organize around the identification and the mentoring of future educators.

- On the high school level?

- [Steve Beatty] And middle school level as well.

- Really?

How the heck would you know that?

- Well, we know, because as, as educators in the buildings, we are the ones that can identify and say "That student may be."

And hopefully bring that out.

And a lot of kids, and especially in underserved communities, are members of color that we look for.

It's, sometimes they need a little help to be identified.

And what we've actually do with that program is have chapters, actual, our members, our teachers serve as advisors in the middle schools and high schools, and they advertise and find the kids to come into those programs and then mentor them, bring them out to statewide workshops, functions, connect them with other educators.

So we wanna mentor them through the process.

It's, it's not, not an easy job.

- It's a pipeline.

And when does it pay off, Steve?

Because the teacher shortage is now.

- Now.

- It pays off down the road.

- Yes.

- Several years.

- Yes.

There's short term and long term pieces of that.

And there's a great number of well-intentioned one-off programs as you mentioned.

The TCNJ worked as a program at William Paterson that we fund.

Rowan University has a MOCHA program looking to identify future educators of color, all great things.

What we're trying to do is aggregate all those initiatives.

Bring them into, I call it the gravity of the planet.

So we can have one overarching program that does effectively serve the short term and long term, to your point, to address the teacher shortage at its causal level.

- Talk about the Members-of-Color Network, and I know you're involved with that.

What is that and how was that represented here, at the convention, this year?

- So the Members-of-Color Network is one of our affinity groups within NJEA.

We have Early Career Networks.

We have NASSP Network, and now we have a Members-of-Color Network.

And how was it represented?

It's everywhere.

They had a Members-of-Color Day.

So yesterday you saw everyone walking around in their Members-of-Color shirts.

And really, what it is, it's just this unifying group in the association that provides information to our members of color, in terms of how to get more involved in their association and how to learn to take on bigger leadership roles within their association, and it's a space where members of color get to feel heard and get to feel valued as we continue to strengthen our resolve to be an all-inclusive union.

- School violence, shootings, mass murders.

First of all, is it overstated in any way?

B, is there a connection between that and teachers saying, "Hey, wait a minute, I'm tapping out."

- There's definitely a connection when you talk about the social and emotional health of both students and the staff who work in schools.

- Sure.

- I would say add to that the trauma, yes, from the shootings and the violence and the murders, but add to that the trauma of constantly having to drill, where you're told to hide in a corner, where you're told to be really, really quiet, where they don't tell you it's a drill because they can't, right?

They've gotta have you practice.

Someone shaking the door violently to even simulate somebody who's entered the building.

You don't know exactly what that is.

You don't know if it's real or not real.

You do that over and over and over.

I mean, the trauma that our students, that our staff are facing, the trauma from, of course, the violence that's actually occurring, it obviously takes a toll.

- Arming teachers, there're some watching right now, say, "Let's give teachers guns so they can protect themselves, so they can protect their kids.

That's part of the answer."

You say, David?

- No.

- Because?

- The reason why we shouldn't arm teachers is because that's...

I often think of this like, you know, we could try to stop fires from breaking out at buildings in the first place, or we could try to hire more firefighters, right?

The reality is, other countries, even ones with guns, like Switzerland, where they're a major part of their culture, there, do not have school shootings on a daily basis.

And you know why?

It's not because they have cops in every school, or their teachers are armed.

It's because in those countries, if you wanna own a gun, responsible ownership is mandatory, legally speaking, and not something that's voluntary.

You can't just own a gun and voluntarily, you know...

They have the right laws to ensure responsible gun ownership for those that do wanna own a gun in the first place.

The reality is, in our country, I think if our response to school shootings is just selling more guns.

That's what it just seems like to me, every one of these solutions that they bring up over and over again revolves around, one way or another, selling more guns.

- The solutions that are often suggested, like arming teachers, have been tried.

Like arming more school personnel.

You know, after Columbine it was, "We need more cops in our schools."

Guess what, my school in Parkland, Florida, had a cop, he failed.

He proved not to be a good guy with a gun, but to be a coward with a gun.

- And Uvalde speaks for itself.

- And Uvalde speaks for itself.

How many more times are we gonna have armed personnel, mind you, those people are highly trained, far more than any teacher would be with a gun, and they can't even intervene.

And I'm sorry for sounding angry, but I'm not.

I'm passionate because I know this won't work, and it's actually going to endanger our students more.

- [Narrator] To watch more One on One with Steve Adubato find us online and follow us on Social media.

- BookSmiles.

Let's talk about, I want you to describe it for me 'cause I know you've said that it's kind of like an all you can eat buffet meets a used bookstore.

- That's right.

What is BookSmiles?

Well, we're a nonprofit that I started in my classroom and garage back in 2017.

And the simple mission was get quality donated books, make sure that they're top notch and then give them to kids in need.

I'm a teacher in an underserved school district, so over the years, I've enlisted the help of many teachers.

And together, we have donated over 1 million books in the Philadelphia, New Jersey area.

- So books, not in the hands of young kids across our state, across our nation.

How common is that, that kids don't have books in their home?

- Well, there are such things as food deserts.

You've heard of that, right?

- Yes.

- Well, we also have book deserts and in book deserts there are thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of children who don't have these in the crib.

These are toys.

Why is it that in America, we don't have all children having these in their crib?

And then what comes next is kids will then get read to, and then they come to kindergarten knowing what books are and they're ready to read and learn.

- The deaf experience in public schools, that's something that you faced as a young kid but your mom, who you said is really your hero, was an advocate for you and your brothers to make sure that you had the best education.

Talk a little bit about that.

You know, from my earliest memories, I knew that a deaf school was where deaf kids went, right?

But peers like me, in schools, didn't sign very well.

Even my teachers couldn't sign, they weren't fluent.

Many of them were hearing and didn't know enough ASL to understand me, right?

There were oftentimes where they would ask a question and I would raise my hands to provide an answer, and they'd say, "Nyle, it's too fast.

You have to slow down.

We can't understand you."

Like this is like my space, right?

Like I'm at a deaf school, as a deaf kid and my teachers can't sign.

Like something's really off about that picture.

But why do you think that it's not being taught more in schools just across the nation?

Why aren't we making ASL tangible and easily accessible for kids so that we can learn this other language that could help us communicate with the deaf community?

- [Interpreter] Absolutely.

I think a big reason why we see those limitations and why we don't see ASL being taught across the US and all public schools is because there is still very much a stigma against the use of sign language.

You know, I've had so many meetings in my life.

You know, one that really sticks out to me was with Larry King, where you know, he said, "ASL is not a language.

It's just a series of gestures."

And I was like, "What?

For the last 10 minutes we've been having a pretty intense conversation."

I asked him did he think if that was all gesture or if there was any structure to it or any rules.

And he truly didn't believe that.

So I think a lot of people share that mindset, and it's a thinking and a stigma that we want to change.

Talk about your passion for science and STEM, and how that has evolved over the years, teaching for so many years in Toms River.

When I get to speak with the students and really hear their interests, and then also get to expose them to possibilities that they don't even know are possible is really when you see that a-ha moment and you see them get excited about something new that they didn't know existed and that they didn't even know that they would like.

So for me, that is a powerful place to be, to be able to have that ability to open doors for them and to be able to give them more choices so that they can really experience who they can become.

- Your students, I've seen some video clips of them, especially after you won NJEA Teacher of the Year, talking about you.

They refer you as Mama G, right (laughs)?

- Yeah (laughs).

- And you could just tell how much they love you, and appreciate you, and respect you in the community.

How does that make you feel?

- It's great, it is.

And it's hard when they graduate, right?

Because they leave and they are my children, right?

But (laughs) it's a special, sorry, it's a special relationship with those kids because I teach them for three years, and when I taught earth science, I taught them for four years.

It was really special to teach my daughter's friends because she just graduated.

So that group of kids that graduated last year was amazing.

I knew some of them since kindergarten, and that's a bond that you don't usually have with individuals.

And I've had a lifetime with some of those kids.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato has been a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by The Turrell Fund, supporting Reimagine Childcare.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

RWJBarnabas Health.

Let'’s be healthy together.

New Jersey Institute of Technology.

NJ Best, New Jersey'’s five-two-nine college savings plan.

Wells Fargo.

New Jersey Sharing Network.

The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey.

And by Summit Health Promotional support provided by Meadowlands Chamber.

And by New Jersey Monthly.

- [Announcer] What is your child's dream for the future?

Doctor?

Teacher?

Architect?

Whatever they aspire to be, a college education may realize those dreams and NJ Best can help.

It's the college savings plan specifically designed for New Jersey families.

Start saving today with as little as $25, because now is the time to invest in their future.

To learn about NJ Best 529 college savings plan, its investment objectives, risks and cost, Read the investor handbook available at njbest.com.