- [Narrator] Funding for this edition of One-On-One with Steve Adubato has been provided by The New Jersey Education Association.

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- 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 co-anchor and colleague, Jacqui Tricarico.

Jacqui, first, how you doing?

- Great.

- You have to think about that?

- No, no, excited to set this one up with you, because we got the opportunity to speak with so many different people down at the NJEA Convention in Atlantic City.

And we're seeing a lot of those interviews on "One on One," and excited to set each one up with you.

- Yeah, and NJEA stands for the New Jersey Education Association.

Jacqui and I, and our terrific team, went down there, interviewed educators from across the country, keynote speakers, a whole range of folks who were there.

Jacqui, let's tee up this first one.

I did this first interview with Talena Lachelle Queen.

- Yes.

- Poet, educator, artist, activist, you saw the interview, I did it and watched it later.

There's a big connection between poetry and Paterson, New Jersey?

- Exactly, yeah, and we know that connection, Steve, because of programming we've done on "Remember Them," talking about Allen Ginsburg, he was a famous poet from Paterson as well.

But, yes, Queen, she goes by Queen, says she was really born a poet.

And she is really involved in the Paterson community in so many different ways as a poet, with the Paterson Poetry Festival, and as an educator.

And in your interview, Steve, she gets very emotional in one part of it, talking about the kids and the children that she educates and works with to create poetry.

I know you remember that part of that interview where she gets so emotional, you could just tell that that is one of the most important aspects of her career and what she does day to day.

- It's interesting, and by the way, on the back end of this, Andrea Hering, Jacqui did that interview, we'll tee that up after you see Queen talking to us.

But I'm curious about something, with Queen, with Talena Lachelle Queen, what I'm curious about is this question, why at a teacher's convention, the New Jersey Education Association, why was she such an important figure there, and what is her connection to the NJEA, one of our longtime underwriters?

What's the connection there, Jacqui?

- Yeah, she works at the NJEA in a couple of different roles, actually.

There was a poetry area set up at the convention this year, she worked with them on that.

As well as she has worked with them to support and design implementation of representative curricula throughout the state.

So her and the NJEA have been working together over the years, and she continues to thrive with them in those regards too.

- Real quick before we go into the interview, I've never said this on the air, I probably shouldn't, I struggle with poetry, meaning it doesn't resonate for me.

And I respect and appreciate all the great poets, like Allen Ginsburg and others who we featured on "Remember Them," which Jacqui is the executive producer and co-anchor of.

Are you, I hate to say it, are you a poetry person?

- I love poetry, I read poetry with my young girls, who are six and eight.

"Where the Sidewalk Ends" is a nice poetry book that we break out from time to time, and the girls love reading those, and trying to decipher them, and understand them.

I think poetry and music, there's a lot of synergy there.

And they're constantly asking me about different music, and what does that mean?

And we talk about how it's similar to poetry.

So I think poetry is really beautiful.

And Queen talks about how some of her students will say, "I'm not a poet, I can't write poetry."

And then she says, "But have you ever tried?"

And they work together and she sees them thrive in so many different ways when they really just give the attention to it, and open up, and open themselves up to be able to do that.

- 15 years we've been working together, I didn't know that you love poetry, now I know.

- You know.

(Laughs) - Learn something new every day.

This is Talena Lachelle Queen, this is the Queen talking about her passion for poetry.

Check it out.

- Hey, everyone.

Steve Adubato.

We're coming to you from the NJEA Convention here in Atlantic City.

We are honored to be joined by Talena Lachelle Queen, who goes by Queen.

Now, you're a lot of things.

You're a former journalist, broadcast journalist, but you're a poet, an educator, artist, activist, and you are here to share your poetry at the NJEA and also talk about the connection between poetry and education.

- Yes.

- Talk about that.

- Well, one of the most important things about sharing poetry is that it's telling a story that we can teach through.

Some students need to understand that their story, their life story, their culture, and their history and histories of all peoples can be taught through that lens.

And so, when it's no longer a lofty, unreachable poetry and more of a connected real life poetry, it empowers students to share their own voices and look at the world in a different way.

- I'm curious about this.

You come out of broadcast journalism.

We worked at the same network for a period of time.

When you got out of school, I was out of school for a lot longer.

- Yes.

(laughs) - But you... You don't have to say yes, we get that.

But you make this transition (Queen laughing) from broadcasting and journalism to teaching in Paterson, New Jersey in the area of poetry.

Why that passion for poetry?

'Cause also Paterson I know has a long history of great poets.

- Okay.

So, I feel like I was born a poet.

I started writing poetry at five years old.

My grandfather shared his poetry with me.

And five years old is a time before most people are reading well.

So, I was already writing poetry at that time.

So, I went to a school that was Rosa Parks School of Fine and Performing Arts, where I majored in creative writing and poetry.

And then, I went to college and started studying broadcasting, because - Mm.

- the creative writing program at the high school eventually became journalism.

They taught us all kinds of writing.

And so, I've always, I started as a poet, and then went to school and studied broadcasting at Montclair State University, and then interned at the... broadcast stations - Yeah.

- and lots of different ones.

- Yeah, we have too, Jacqui Tricarico, our executive producer here, comes out of the Montclair State University Broadcasting Program.

But you come out of that, and then you get into the classroom.

- Yeah.

- And here's what I'm curious about, Queen.

You're teaching poetry to young people, teenagers in Paterson, do they get it right away?

- They're afraid at first.

They really are afraid at first, and they're not sure they can do it.

And then, I show them different artists, and I ask them to trust their pen and to just- - Oh, go back, go back.

Trust their pen.

Give me a little more on that.

- Okay.

So, I'm asking them to trust their pens.

So, firstly, I'm saying just write something.

And I tell them, you are making clay, and once you put this clay on the page, then we can mold it into something else.

So, just trust yourself and whatever you're thinking in your body, it doesn't have to sound like a certain thing, just trust it, go with it, and let's see what happens.

And when that becomes something different, when we start to see it crafted into something that looks like what other professional writers have done, then I show them, you are writing like Nikki Giovanni, or you are writing like Bell Hooks, or you are writing like fill in the blank.

And then, they feel validated and will repeat that success again and again.

And so, I think it's important for students to trust their pens, to go ahead and trust their educators as well and make the clay and let us help them mold it.

- What's the connection between your work and the NJEA, New Jersey Education Association?

By the way, let me disclose the New Jersey Education Association, big supporters of public broadcasting, supporters of ours at the Caucus Educational Corporation as well.

You work with them how?

- I do a lot of poetry with the NJEA, but only because it's my passion.

I was actually brought on to do some curriculum writing in satisfaction of the Amistad law.

- [Steve] Right.

- And then, I joined the consortium.

But whenever I'm in a space with someone, I say, oh, let's look at this poetry.

Here's what I have to offer.

And so, the first piece that we ever saw through the Amistad commission work was a piece that I wrote called, "How Do I Tell Them?"

- I'm looking right here, "How Do I Tell Them?"

- Oh.

- That was just about your the step ahead - Yeah.

- in this way.

"How Do I Tell Them?"

What's the theme?

And dare I ask, can you give us a little bit?

- Maybe.

So, "How Do I Tell Them?

"- - Is that unfair to ask a poet?

- No.

A lotta poets memorize.

And I don't choose to memorize.

Every one of my poems have their own life, their own voice.

It doesn't have a predetermined cadence.

- Mm.

- And that makes it a bit more difficult to memorize.

But I've done it many times and I have resources here.

I put everything in my Google Drive, and so I have access to everything that I've been- - But what's the theme?

"How Do I Tell Them?"

- "How Do I Tell Them?"

is speaking from a mother's voice.

And it's asking African American writers how they teach students their history without breaking them, without making them feel bad about atrocities that have happened in history.

What's beautiful about early 1900s poets and others, is that they've recorded the history in their poems.

And so, what I'm doing is referencing the poems and asking the writers, how do I tell these stories?

And my first goal for writing that poem was to get artists, students to see and look up those other artists and find more about those poems.

And so, it references Nikki Giovanni and Terrance Jackson and Countee Cullen, and so many different poets.

- I'm sorry for interrupting.

I'm curious about this.

This is clearly your passion, your mission, a big part of why you're here, not just here, but doing what you do.

How rewarding is it for you to connect with one of your students in Paterson through poetry?

Not just professionally, but personally rewarding.

- I have tears all the time.

So, I'm in class- - Wait a minute.

Is it happening right now?

(Queen laughing) - You triggered it.

You triggered it.

- I know.

No, listen, I'm no Oprah.

She can get it going like that.

But why, as soon as I said students do you have this reaction?

- You're gonna ruin my makeup.

Because I love them so much and it's really incredible to see them find themselves in something and real...

It's just a moment when they realize like, I can do this.

It's so satisfying.

Okay.

It's so satisfying - And you help them do that.

- to have that experience.

But you help, you made, and I'm not gonna say you made, yeah, you partly made it happen, they made it happen, - Yeah.

- but you facilitated that.

You set the- - That's an important word.

- Yeah.

Why?

- Facilitate.

Because what I'm doing is not, I'm not creating something.

I'm sort of like, I'm mining it.

The cobalt is in the earth.

The gold is in the earth.

The oil is there- - But you're mining.

- We're not creating it, we're just mining it.

And so, when the students are discovering what they have inside, it's already there.

- Okay.

- And so, I like to ask this question, are you a poet?

- I would say no, but you ask them, do they say, what do they say?

- And they say no a lot.

And then, I say, how do you know?

And then, they learn in fact that they are.

And when they create something, I said, is this a poet's work?

And they say, yes.

I said, did you change your mind?

Are you a poet?

And there's a realization like, yes.

And that's incredible for them to hear someone else sitting next to them say, and they get to go, wait a minute, maybe if he's a poet, I could be, I need to try and find out.

And so, they all come into the room not sure.

- And they leave?

- And they leave accomplished with a product.

And so, I want to create products with them, so that they have an archive of what they've done in our time together.

- Hey, Queen, can I say this?

- Yes indeed.

- While you're crying on the air here at the NJEA Convention, (Queen laughing) don't blame me on this, you're the one, because you went to that place.

I'm sure you went to a place that you envisioned.

Well, listen, you're doing it, not me.

But you clearly connect and care deeply about your students.

You honor us by joining us to not just talk about your poetry, your teaching, your work, which you care deeply about and most of your students.

We wish you all the best.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

I appreciate you.

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

-We continue our conversations with folks down in Atlantic City at the New Jersey Education Association Convention.

Jacqui, Tee this up with Andrea Hering, which is a compelling, terrific interview, please.

- Yeah, so, well, her and her team, with Crisis Response Canines, are at the NJEA for the past couple of years.

For a while now, they show up there with their dogs.

You'll see one of the dogs on set with us while I'm talking to Andrea about this really important organization.

She started this back in 2018.

She was working at, you know, just a desk job, doing her thing, and she came up with this idea because of her passion working with dogs, to start this organization where the dogs will go out and be a support system to people who were going through major crisis, specifically, and right when this started, when there had been a lot of mass shootings.

So her and her team train the dogs, and have their handlers, and the handlers are trained a specific way as well, to be this response team that are deployed all over the United States.

It started here in New Jersey, but she's branched out over the years, deploying all over the United States to really help victims and survivors of mass shootings, but other really horrible events as well.

Their first deployment was Pulse nightclub down in Florida.

They've been to so many different places, including Uvalde and Michigan State University when the mass shootings took place there, and- - So they take, one second, Jacqui, they take the dogs there?

- Yeah, they travel with the dogs to these places.

And these dogs just serve as such an important tool, especially to young people, to help them open up and get through this tragedy or get them to a place where they can open up to the support professionals, the therapists, whoever else might be involved, because so many of them are shut off at that point and don't know how to move forward, and the dogs just serve as this really important tool in the whole process.

Andrea's amazing, her team's really great.

You'll see Lincoln on set with me, one of her service dogs who's really great, and Axel- - Lincoln's there?

Lincoln's in the- - Yeah, yep, yep.

And Axel's one of the other support dogs that was there.

And it's funny 'cause Andrea says, every year that they come back, the educators at the NJEA convention run over to see the dogs and they remember the dog's names, but they never remember the people there, their names.

- Jacqui, Mary Gamba, who is the executive director of the Caucus Educational Corporation, who is the co-anchor of our sister series, "Lessons in Leadership," and the executive producer there, she loves dogs, wants to do an animal rescue thing when she leaves me, which is probably gonna be any day now.

I'm joking.

But she loves dogs.

- Yeah, she has that passion.

I said, I was joking with one of our other producers while we were there with the dogs hanging out with them, I said, "Oh, if Mary was here, she'd probably be crying."

But these dogs are really, I mean, they're phenomenal, and they're trained a very specific way, like I said, the handlers are trained a very specific way, and they do the work, but are also very well taken care of too.

- Sometimes I don't appreciate how important and valuable dogs are in people's lives, and this interview that Jacqui did with Andrea Hering shows us why that in fact is the case.

They're incredibly important, check it out.

- Hi, I am Jacqui Tricarico on location at the NJEA Convention here in Atlantic City, and I'm so pleased to be joined kind of by two guests here, Andrea Herring, who is the president and founder of Crisis Response Canines, and this lovely gentleman here, Lincoln, one of the dogs that is working with you and your organization.

Tell us first a little bit about this organization that you started kinda grassroots here in New Jersey.

- Yeah, so the organization was founded in 2018 based on providing emotional support to first responders, victims, communities after tragedies.

- And, unfortunately, this type of emotional support is needed more now than ever.

It's sad to say that that is needed, especially in crises like mass shootings.

Talk about some of the places that you've been with these amazing dogs who are trained specifically to really be that emotional support for people during some of the worst moments in their lives.

- Absolutely, and I'll start too by saying I started in therapy dog work back in 2008.

As the world started to change, we started to see people realizing how beneficial canines were, but they were asking us to put them in more complex and unpredictable environments, such as large scale tragedies.

And we realized the dogs were fine, but the handlers needed the additional training.

So that is where kind of the Crisis Response Canines came into play, is now we're taking our partners with the canine and pairing it with a trained handler as well.

So we started our large scale deployments in 2016 with Pulse nightclub, was our very first one, and then we've been around the country.

- And down there, that was the shooting at the nightclub down in Florida.

- That is correct.

And we worked with the first responders, we worked at the reunification site.

We met family members and community members and provided comfort to those individuals.

- So going back to that time, 2018, that's the first response situation that you're put in to go and be with the people, the survivors of this horrific event.

- Correct.

- How did that spark even more fuel in your fire to be able to expand this?

'Cause now we're just not in New Jersey, you have several locations throughout the country, people, the handlers, the dogs, the therapy dogs going out and being that quick response to the folks that really need it.

- So from there, we realized how beneficial those canines were, paired with a handler that was trained in critical incident stress management.

So, you know, we've grown significantly, because now, we've started to incorporate the dogs, not only after large scale tragedies, but we have nine contracts with hospitals locally, and we work specifically with the staff, so when COVID happened and the burnout and all that.

So now, we provide animal-assisted workplace wellbeing programs for the staff as well.

So we're taking care of individuals and we're branching out from tragedies, but into everyday life with mental health.

- And mental health is a big theme here at the NJEA Convention this year, mental health of our students, but of our staff, the educators that are burnt out as well like you said it, just like our first responders are from COVID and everything that happened there.

How do you see the people that are coming by?

You're located over there with the dogs, they're in there hanging out with people.

How do you see the reaction is from the educators coming to see you and the dogs?

- They love seeing the dogs.

We were here last year, they remember the dogs, you know, that were here last year, they know them by name, so they're looking for them, which is really cool.

We've also started partnering with some of the school districts to provide that animal-assisted school counseling.

So we really focus on the goal-based interventions.

While there's the therapy dog animals and activities where, you know, a dog will go visit a classroom or something, we try to do goal-based, so we could have measurable outcomes.

So if our dogs are going into schools, maybe we'll do it with an occupational therapist.

The dogs will wear a vest and there's Velcro, so we can work with some of the students on, you know, some of the tactile stuff with vest.

So we try to gear it to a little more advanced therapeutic intervention.

- That's amazing.

And, you know, we talked about Pulse nightclub, there are so many other places, especially recently that you've been, up to Maine.

- That's correct.

- After the horrific mass shooting that happened there, Uvalde, with the survivors, especially the young kids there that survived that horrific mass shooting.

Talk about, for the dog, seeing them with these children.

What does that do for them?

'Cause it's an emotional support, but you talked a bit to me before we even did this about them helping opening those kids up to receive that next level of therapy and what they really need in that time to help them deal with these huge tragedies that they face.

- So a lot of times, after individuals, children, they experienced a tragedy, they become nonverbal, they don't wanna open up, they don't wanna communicate.

And what these dogs provide is a really good icebreaker to start breaking down those barriers, they gain trust instantly, they don't ask unwise questions.

And we could have a very casual conversation with a child, you know, "Do you like dogs?

Do you like the way he feels?

His name is Lincoln.

Do you have a dog?"

And just those simple conversations start opening up, you know, communication, and then we could allow, you know, professionals to take from there, you know, to start bridge that road to recovery - This was not your day job?

- No.

(both laughing) - You're doing insurance, and this is what you started, it's grown significantly.

Talk about what this work does for you too.

- It's a passion.

I mean, I really enjoy sharing, being able to share my animals, even being able to provide dogs and handlers to these people that when almost all hope is lost, this gives them some hope.

These dogs are willing to listen, no matter what.

You don't have to say anything.

- Judgment-free.

- Absolutely judgment-free.

You know, you don't have to say anything, you can literally just hold onto the dog, and they can provide, you know, nonverbal support to you.

So really, it's fulfilling to be able to give that back to the community.

- And supporting the dogs too.

You know, they're traveling a lot, they're around so many people, that's what they're trained to do, but you're also making sure you support the animals as well and the handlers.

- We do, so that's why it's very important that we have a very specific dog on our team.

You know, a dog that can handle the stress, they display stress signals properly.

We train our handlers in canine body language, so they could identify if their canines had enough of the situation.

So animal welfare is one of our top priorities for our handlers.

- That's awesome.

Well, thank you for bringing Lincoln over.

Thank you for talking to us.

Lincoln, good job, buddy.

First time on camera?

Probably not.

(Jacqui laughing) You're used to the camera, right?

Well, thank you so much.

- At least he didn't act like an idiot this time.

(both laughing) - He hang out, thank you.

- Yeah, thank you.

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

Celebrating 30 years in public broadcasting.

Funding has been provided by The New Jersey Education Association.

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

New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Valley Bank.

New Jersey Sharing Network.

PSEG Foundation.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

NJM Insurance Group.

And by Englewood Health.

Promotional support provided by Northjersey.com and Local IQ.

And by BestofNJ.com.

NJM Insurance Group has been serving New Jersey businesses for over a century.

As part of the Garden State, we help companies keep their vehicles on the road, employees on the job and projects on track, working to protect employees from illness and injury, to keep goods and services moving across the state.

We're proud to be part of New Jersey.

NJM, we've got New Jersey covered.