and uncles children of all ages and the earlier we start the better thanks to our new president well yes he is not our new president mr barack obama he has advocated this idea of lifelong learning but starting early starting early and i think that is so needed for a lot of people our special guest today is dr margaret j norris and i believe you have an academy named after you there is a chapter in a book that was called norris you nourse university that was a chapter in the book st soul tour that focused on some of the work that i had done in the community previously yes would you say that again you short for norris university wonderful so could you just be please share what that was about because i really remember reading it and being so feeling informed after i read it but i forgot what i read with thank you and good afternoon also thank you for having yes and maybe i should make sure we introduce mr michael steinbeck mr steinback is a treasure father and high school this fall he's an educator yes because when he was on he was such a wonderful a troubleshooting in the classroom dealing with misbehavior or people who were a little acting out and he had those skills and then he when he graduated he said his major was psychology and sociology as that kind those skills are needed today so much in schools so now he's teaching do you know what subject his teacher should be teaching biology  a community servant community educator work that idea with violence prevention and leadership development organization or make a boy scout law and in developing the academic program for the organization it appointed me the opportunity to work with youth youth who traditionally are said to be at risk i choose to say they are at promise and these young people  gangs some of whom been incarcerated or dealing with drugs and others in the never been in any level of trouble all the an opportunity to succeed and to achieve academically and so the program that i was able to develop dealt with not only their academic capabilities but also empowering them in terms of leadership skills and citizenry to prepare them so that they would be college and or career ready upon graduating from high all in so that's a part of what i was given an opportunity to do as i said as a community service educator well that's is so amazing because i was thinking about the transformative work that you do and i remember one time you did something that was like an acronym for students that spoke volumes and i think this type of work that you do you do is just saw transformative for human being and bringing out the humanity  individuals because i think so often we don't have people in abundance who can do this and that's why i was glad to hear you say that you are educational i think your title was education leader administrator making it all happen so presently would you mind sharing what you're doing currently i am a vice principal and serving as vice principal of a middle school in question here all that with you middle school which i love because it gives me the chance to serve in a capacity where i can affect change but not just change at a very specific site level but also to impact the community and to try to really educate staff educate the students their parents and also other administrators throughout the district in terms of what it's going to take to help all children all children succeed and i believe as an educator that every single child is educated ball and that a key element to  educational success ress parental support parental engagement by the school of the parents and also incorporating the community and using community resources as now becoming an evolving community parents i often think about what happened with me as a single mom a divorced mom when my three sons were seven eight and nine and my commitment to raising them so that they would be successful contributing men how was i going to do that and what idea it was nothing that was magical there's nothing that was beyond just commonsense but i reached out beyond myself and i realized that my children were the children of the community they were not mine and mine alone they came through me but they're not sol mine and with being able to do that i then i going and got father spent every single kind of resource that i possibly could get to help in the rearing of my children and fathers came in the  form whether it was a coach a teacher a minister my uncle the barber the neighbors you know agencies boys and girls club whatever it was  really galvanize people and resources so that every time my sons would turn around they knew they had someone to whom they had to be accountable and thinking on that these are some of the things that i've been able to really bring into a school setting such as where i am now and help harrods understand number one you can you must and you will raise your children but you don't have to do a lot and you're not alone and holmes look quite differently to many different families but there is no such thing as a broken home there's no such thing as a to me as a dysfunctional homes are made up of people none of us is perfect and so we have to really focus in on our perfection all of those excellent traits together to help our children and so that's part of the work that i do mr michael steinberg did i mention that you have been on the show before that i mentioned that already i share that with the viewing audience as i have all my goodness because the transfer more formative description that dr norris just made is the kind of thing that we're trying to bring forth with this show that goes out into the leader and we did a statewide conference because of the position paper that i wrote which was called the human resources are our vital resources and that often we take them for granted and we do not develop them and utilize them and they begin to tarnish and where way and they're good their expertise begins to get eroded they're not as valuable to anybody or even as an educator because those skills get corroded the thing that was so stein that was well with your son we had him on the show with you father and son and just see the two of you with such expertise that you shared so beautifully with the viewing audience and whenever i watched those videos with that you did we did with you the d v d is i think that this actually happened this was beautiful so some of that is just unique and we don't find fathers who do what you did and i raise a child i utilized it much like she did and that included other relatives and the people in the community that she mentioned but i did have a lot of help and that his mother was very much involved we were equally involved in raising him and his sister so they both benefited from having both parents  though at some point at one point we were not married anymore that did not diminish the parental involvement of both of us in supporting each other as parents so we realize we're parents for life regardless of where we live we're in this together and if we can get more people along the lines of what michael noble was talking about to continue the parenting regardless of the relationship that is key to having the children succeed because i'm thinking that just the very idea of taking away the right of a parent to be a parent sounds like that's what was happening also and sometimes it's because a vindictive  perhaps on the part of the former partner in the marriage bed did not believe in keeping that connection not knowing how vital that is because i believe in the anger that many young people have is because they haven't been parenting effective in fact the title of our show today is combined with the topic that you gave to us dr norris attaining academic excellence of students through parental engagement and by expanding the village at both of you mentioned the village above it so you mention expanding the resources of your school and bringing them together so how do you galvanizing all of those resources well i'm not doing it singularly any more than i did it singularly as a parent you do it through helping to teach number one teaching whether it's teaching parenting whether it is really opening doors for parents that were previously closed to them whether it's going out into actually accessing services from different organizations but you do this for me i it just comes second nature but i think the critical piece is that schools and communities really are going to need to open their minds to the back that parenting parent and her engagement looks different than what the traditional into people who do not look like they're because nowadays you have so many children coming to schools other geographic areas that are being bused or quasi tower bussed miles away still and schools that are traditionally used to serving populations that only look like them are not always welcoming of what they consider other people's children and this whole notion of other people's children needs to be dispel all children are our children and so there are levels of education i think that have to go on for status in order to begin to open up what is who is the parent and stack up to begin to see themselves also to a degree as that child's parent even though you're not biologically that child's parent these are the things that i think really did help me in the rearing of my own sons who are now thirty one thirty two or thirty three each of whom is a college graduate not by accident each of whom is successful in their own career one is even a teacher it's but it wasn't rocket science it was i'm going to make myself known to whoever is educating my child and i think in our community what we have to stop doing is happy with turning over the education of our children to strangers i always think about the fact that you don't necessarily know who is contacting who's in contact with your child on a daily basis and it's important that you go into the schools and meet those people who are who are interacting with your child all the time but the schools as i said earlier have to be a welcome mat for parents in many schools so the work that you are doing is are you creating those kinds of opportunities or options for or motivating them to do it for themselves absolutely absolutely and a lot of that begins with trust you have to establish trusting relationships and that means communicating little things little things like returning a phone call responding to an e mail sent in a postcard calling just becau and knocking on families doors those are the little steps that don't take a whole lot of money don't take a congressional decision but these are the steps in terms of building relationships and parents respond to this positively and that then gets the word out and it takes it's almost like a rippling effect and it's not all throughout the community so does it create demand on the part of parents for this to be in rich to offer to all parents or part of the other parents in the now they wanted to art and do you have enough people to do what you do or do you do it all by yourself i don't do it all by myself but at the same time i don't wait for anyone else to do it to help them to do it as well motivate them to do it or to teach them how i teach them how but i also simply give the example i have found that yes in terms of being able to formalize a structure on how to parent formalize a structure on how to reach parents doing training of staff of  necessary steps and we have to have structures in place to do that we need resources in place to do that and some of that does take a little extra funding to do that but can we wait on structures resources by the going to get the ball rolling no that's where individually i think it's really really critical that we go on and take the lead and this means that you know working for you not working a clock you're not working a nine to five day you know working a paycheck you're not working a job description you know unless you go down to the bottom line that says other duties as a side then sure but you have to go above and beyond and to me that's just that's a part of our history has a people the reason that all three of us are sitting here today is because someone went above and beyond mary to cloud the food went above and beyond in order for me to have an education you know she saw beyond what she had physically all she had was a binge outside on a hill that's all she had to begin with but she had a vision and she had a belief in a determination that every child could learn that every child had a right to learn and she used her own talents with  baking sweet potato pies to sail to the real world men so that she could help to build but the incumbent college but she didn't do it alone she had someone who was right there by her side who looked nothing i think it's just such an ideal model because she had those children take the prize down to the breakout role in exchange for the money the nickels or the quarters they learned math skills doing that they learned business skills doing that they developed near your skills and they also had real world men who were expecting something of them they had a certain level of the portman that they were expecting of those children in terms of how they presented themselves there were social skills that were learned a long way and those children came back and brought the money there was responsibility there was trust there and they also all bought into this individual can make tremendous things happen absolutely and so in today's age the work that you're doing needs to be replicated i'm sure that there are others that need to have built inside of the passion and determination but enthusiastic about doing that kind of work as well in all sincerity i haven't really given that piece of good a lot of thought i have an ideal city situation i hav ministry team in my crew i have a great principle wonderful young man great call it minister and they together we always keep our focus on educating the children and so i would say that at our particular school site yes as a team we're able to really you know make some moves and make some waves and we're having some really remarkable things happen at that site at the same time my mission my commitment my vision is not limited to that one particular group so that one particular locale i am driven to serve where right so i like to see things happening out in my own neighborhood right there at the beauty shop that i go to she has a group of girls the beautician has a group of girls where she brings them in on saturdays and she does the mentoring imagine a beautician doing this but she does some mentoring  girls and so i'm able to talk with some of these young people and provide you know a little bit of a positive example of what you can do you know give some encouraging words i mean when you think about what can you do there's so many pockets of things that can be done churches have programs you know churches have programs that need to be revitalized what can we do in you know our church of course we want to you know we good same church we have things in the city in san francisco that need to be and so i just try to i'm hoping that i can be a light where i go that's that's what my commitment will this sounds like this is a way that it's like i don't know if you call this little light but it's a little fly not a fly but it's a light that flies around and the light shines wherever they go so it sounds like that is a missionary kind of opportunity option and i'm thinking how to share in such a way that it multiplies and the people catch the spirit or catch the light the light goes off in the light book effect because i do believe that  some people who are enthusiastic turns other people on and if you're not enthusiastic sometimes you wonder how do we do this we still don't know how because the enthusiasm didn't seem to be there but i think that  that's where this comes in handy community educator right patricia or harper has written this book and it is a blueprint i think a blueprint for how communities can galvanize it gives critical questions that we need to ask of our selves in terms of serving our young people helping to develop successful you all of the different facets that are components that are involved she's laid it out here for us i think we have programs that work i know that michael is involved  terms of community service not cia in terms of central intelligence agency but cia in terms of community integrity agency because i really like what i have been able to read about the really reach out to all areas of the country but you do have a centralized force of people to whom you ca that the work is going to go on it's going to be carried on and i'm saying you can trust you can trust that they're in it for the good of the children the focus is never lost and i think that as a people as we grow in our idea of what community is what community looks like of what it means to educate our children of how we compare our children we have to have the foresight and commitment to keep at the center but this is about the children it's not about me it's not about us not about you this is our children you know take the ego out make it all we got you know we got to go in there and save our children and i think that you know that national peers movement and everything like the book that you shared with me a new way forward here with us what that new way forward is all about because that's what it's that project started by susan taylor i believe that you're on the board and tell us how that works the new way forward well it was really it's what she decided to do once she got to new orleans for them and since first of all no i want to go and she realized the devastation that took place there and it just put her in touch more closely with what's been taking place all over the country and not just as a result of hurricane and the levees breaking so the national care's mentoring movement started out of essence cares and when she retired from there she devoted her life to this mentoring project and it is you can go to  care's mentoring dot org and look at all of the work that's being done all over the country there are sixty circles throughout the country that have been  conglomerate of entities that have come together and they're all doing different things but the focus is on the children in some different ways some have very extensive mentoring programs and others going to the schools there are pilot programs now in chicago and south florida and soon detroit that are addressing specific issues and specific schools dealing with specific populations so it is there a lot of things going on and just what dr nourse was saying about the work that she's doing there we can't be so focused on what i'm doing and and what others are doing do what we can the light will shine and others will see it the excitement that we see from people doing the mentoring work and from the work that dr morris a story it is contagious and sometimes people just need to see that someone else is doing it oh it's all right for me to do it i've thought about this but i didn't know how i would do it so here's an example and patricia harbor has a lot of examples that she's put together from all over the country of community educators and looking very differently from one other well this is could you let us know how would you define community educators now right here in the subtitle a resource for educating and developing we're serving our youth and we're just developing them to become better citizens better people better community servants and that leads me to this particular question to what extent are community educators the significant people who always worked it is always work it has always worked it tell us a few the illustrations like when you mention miriam called the third that worked at any other examples of how it worked because i really think that's where in lightman comes when you see others doing success you know how do you make success happen and then attitude have an attitude of success also a river eleanor roosevelt she had that when she rode with a tuskegee airman she was helping people to be educated to know that there was for the lifelong commitment the various things like potential that people have how to bring that forth i think which one of you mentioned planting a seed or maybe nobles putting the seed in the ground and then letting people know it's there but it needs attention